Militarization of London Olympics Shows One More Host Country’s Fetish for Displays of Force

      Brad Evans

      Thursday, 26 July 2012

      SO, THE OLYMPIC GAMES are finally upon us. Whether we perceive this global extravaganza to be a triumphant social gathering which reveals all that is remarkable about the human spirit or yet another corporate feast of plenty, it nevertheless provides us with a pertinent moment to evaluate the operations of power in contemporary liberal societies. Not only does it illustrate how our postindustrial lifestyles are increasingly defined by “event-based” experiences, it also shows how terror has become normalized in the current historical conjuncture. As securitization policies become more visible, the corporate militarization of public space appears routine. It is even to be applauded as a reasoned and rational choice.

      For the past few weeks, the British public has been caught in an emotional crossfire that has become the hallmark of liberal societies. From one direction, we have been encouraged to positively embrace the “spirit of the Games,” with its promise to transcend the daily miseries affecting people the world over; the official sales pitch is that this is more than a sports event, that it holds the seed of global togetherness and peaceful cohabitation. From another direction, however, we have been made acutely aware of the dangers forever lurking in our midst; that we need to “secure the Games” is not in any doubt — from what, exactly, only speculative reason or a catastrophic passage of time may begin to reveal.

      The security operation for the games is itself an Olympian effort. More than 18,000 military personnel are deployed on the streets. This includes some 1,000 combat support troops, a number that is greater than British forces on the ground in Afghanistan. They are accompanied by state police and private security personnel, who by conservative estimates add another 30,000 staff. Drones hover over the London skies. HMS Ocean (the Royal Navy’s biggest warship) is moored in the Thames; RAF Typhoon jets remain on permanent standby with the directive to use “lethal force,” while surface to air missiles are deployed on housing estates in East London, leaving us in no doubt about the lethality of the freedom our liberal societies gratefully receive.

      None of this appears out of the ordinary for us despite its schizophrenic (dis)orientation. We have learned to fear what we actually produce. One only has to track the various terrorist elevation systems still in background use to discern this paradox. The more significant the public occasion — the more spectacular celebration — the more the risk of something catastrophic happening is heightened. Color-coded systems of anxiety management have become the fear heartbeat of nations. Compulsive securitization invariably becomes the allied response.

      While many in the post-9/11 moment questioned the abandonment of democratic principles and the violent excesses of the Global War on Terror, the privately-driven securitization of all aspects of life has continued unabated. Indeed, as Walter Benjamin understood all too well, what previously appeared “exceptional” (especially the abuse of power) quickly comes to reside in the normalized fabric of the everyday. Although the “War on Terror,” for instance, is perhaps notable by its sudden absence from the discursive arena of political polemics, its militarized logic has been sophisticatedly incorporated within an expansive strategic framework that connects all things endangering.

      Stephen Graham has pointed out how this security terrain is embodied in the Olympic Mascot, “Wenlock.” As Graham wrote,

      For £10.25 you, too, can own the ultimate symbol of the Games: a member of by far the biggest and most expensive security operation in recent British history packaged as tourist commodity. Eerily, his single panoptic-style eye, peering out from beneath the police helmet, is reminiscent of the all-seeing eye of God so commonly depicted at the top of Enlightenment paintings.

      For Graham, this represents the onset of a new type of surveillance society, one which openly declares its strategic priorities:

      The Olympics are society on steroids. They exaggerate wider trends. Far removed from their notional or founding ideals, these events dramatically embody changes in the wider world: fast-increasing inequality, growing corporate power, the rise of the homeland security complex and the shift toward much more authoritarian styles of governance utterly obsessed by the global gaze and prestige of media spectacles.

      Underwriting this security effort is the catastrophic imaginary that defines contemporary liberal governance. The Games have produced their own novel and fitting headline — “Olympic-geddon” — to account for all potential disasters that could erupt and force the capital’s vital networks to break down. This shift toward an all-hazard continuum of threat is the real legacy of the militaristic vision of full-spectrum domination. Threats have become indistinguishable from the general environment. Every petty anxiety can become the source of our deepest fears. And all potential racial prejudices are waiting to be resurrected as the nature of the threat offers no clear profile in advance.

      But what actually is “security”? Our problem here lies in the question. Ever since Thomas Hobbes wrote his landmark text The Leviathan, security has become the foundation stone of modern politics. Security is not, however, a “what” – it is a “how.” While Hobbes wrote of the anarchical war of all against all to prevent the masses from resisting the injustices of feudal exploitation, beneath the veil of his sovereign deceit was the arrangement of society into hierarchies. Liberal security uses this same inner logic, which is less about showing some allegiance to the principal object needing security (i.e., the State, the People, the Games), than it is with guaranteeing access to resources deemed essential to contested ways of living.

      Like Sauron, the all-seeing eye in J.R.R. Tolkien’s wonderful trilogy, the controlling gaze nevertheless has its weak points — it is insecure by design. This, however, is not a source for lament or dismay. It is a further condition of possibility. That the system cannot be made totally secure only serves to ratchet up securitization all the more. Resilience thus becomes a new term of art for a security-conscious society that has all but abandoned the dream of final security in exchange for a profitable existence. Those attuned to global risk-taking are, after all, the real moneymakers.

      Any informed critical theorist knows that the political depends upon the ability to bring into question what is not seen as problematic. This drives us to question why something is