Warfare, Bourne observed, exercised a psychological effect on the nation wholly salutary to the state and the classes that ran it. It regimented life and terrorized dissenters, granting the state new powers to punish citizens for the mildest divergences from orthodoxy. Wilson’s lofty rhetoric about a world made safe for democracy was merely filigree on his dangerous idealism of the state. Inevitably, the democratic principles he so fervently boosted came into conflict with the state’s need for power. Just as inevitably, Bourne wrote, Wilson decided “that it is the naiver democratic values that must be sacrificed.” …

…War, Hardt and Negri write, is no longer concerned merely with conventional strategic objectives but with “producing and reproducing all aspects of social life.” What is the “war on drugs,” for example, with its concept of zero tolerance, other than a bid for social control? What is the “war on terrorism,” with its embedded technologies of surveillance, other than a means to discipline civil society? … more