Places and Forms of Power

The notion I’m going to deal with is Places and Forms of Power. In politics and social science, power is the ability to influence people’s behaviour. On the other hand, a place can represent some sort of power, for example; Buckingham Palace (a symbol of the British monarchy), but it can also be a country, such as the United States, which is powerful enough to influence events throughout the world.

I would like to illustrate this notion through the theme of wars in the 20th century because wars are the perfect example of places exercising their power in the world. The question I will answer is: To what extent are wars imposed to people?

In order to answer this question, firstly, I will talk about how wars are imposed and how people react to this imposition. My second part will talk about wars that received popular support and, finally, my third part will deal with the factors that influence this support.

First of all, it is important to state that wars are generally the consequence of government’s foreign policies and their motivation to show their power. Throughout history, we have seen that wars are not the result of people’s will to fight for their country. On the contrary, wars obey to the secret interests of the ruling class, such as presidents, prime ministers or what we know as men of power. However, some countries are more involved in war than others and their actions affect the world in many ways. For instance, the United States that is the principal military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending. The United States have taken part in many wars, but all of them obeyed to its interests like the well-known Invasion to Irak. There were only two reasons for invading Iraq: control over oil and preservation of the dollar as the world's reserve currency. Yet the government kept silent on these factors, putting the blame on Sadam Hussein. Or, for example, Vietnam War, in which the USA intervened because of The Domino Theory. This was the belief that if one country fell to communism, it was likely that the neighbouring ones would also fall. This had happened in Eastern Europe. China had become communist as well and communists were in control of North Vietnam. The USA was afraid that communism would spread to South Vietnam and then the rest of Asia, so it decided to go to war in order to control third countries and show its power to the Soviet Union (its principal enemy), which is why the USA is sometimes seen as the new symbol of imperialism.

Yet, people don’t generally have a call in these policies and they are mostly unable to do something about them. Moreover, they are also affected by them. Wars are not merely games of power, they are also a sentence to those who aren’t men of power. Heraclitus, an ancient Greek philosopher, said that people, naturally, can’t live in conflict because it doesn’t let them be happy and it is true, nobody can be happy living in permanent conflict. That’s why, in contrast to these unfair policies, a series of anti war movements spread all over the world demanding peace and equality for everyone. These movements were especially popular in the 60s, in the context of Vietnam War. The famous hippie movement (also named counterculture movement) fought for peace and women’s rights but they also protested against war. Enormous war protests consisting of thousands of mostly younger people in every big American city, effectively united millions against the war, and against the imposed war policy that prevailed during two presidential administrations. Indeed, we can see that people are not indifferent towards war and when they realise the injustices that happen because of it, tend to do something to stop it.

In order to illustrate better how people react to this imposition, I have chosen a protest song of the hippie movement, called Vietnam Song and written by Country Joe Mcdonald, an American singer and member of this movement as well. This song was performed at the Woodstock festival, which was a music festival in which the movement reunited to protest against war, through music. The song represents perfectly the cry of a generation that was against any kind of war. It criticises the mentality that forced young men to leave their studies and lives to go dying in Vietnam. This is well illustrated by the following verse: (So put down your books and pick a gun/And you can be the first ones in your block to have your boy come home in a box) unfairly. It also criticises the fact that nobody really knew why they were involved in Vietnam ( as we can see in the verse: what are we fighting for? Don’t ask me I don’t give a damn), but they kept going to war anyway. The singer tries to draw our attention to the fact that there were secret interests at stake in this conflict (There’s plenty good money to be made) and that the consequences of the war affected, above all, Vietnamese people that suffered even more than Americans committed atrocities against them. (But just hope and pray that if they drop the bomb, they drop it on the Viet Cong). It is interesting to remark as well that the tone of the song is very sarcastic and light and that’s why we can consider this song as a satire of the American pro war mentality. At the same time, while criticising all of this, we can notice that the song is very melodic and catchy, which was intended to spread these ideas an criticisms to the highest possible number of people.

However, some wars were supported by a large number of people, creating a sense of community and union all over the nation. Indeed, a country can unite itself in order to support its army and its soldiers. This was the case of the United States and the United Kingdom during WW1 and WW2. As a matter of fact, people in these countries actively supported the army’s effort to beat the enemy. Furthermore, the figure of the soldier was glorified, being seen as heroes that saved the country from its enemies, that were demonised. Soldiers were seen as brave men who had a sense of sacrifice and duty. Millions of civilians contributed to this war effort by working in industry, agriculture of jobs left open when men enlisted, especially women who were enthusiastic about taking part in their country’s victory, in a society where they didn’t even have the right to vote. When the USA got involved in the WW1 in 1917, there was a great outburst of patriotism and, as a consequence, many Americans volunteered for military service. In the United Kingdom, a similar process took place and battle victories were celebrated all across the nation, without any criticisms towards war and its atrocities. There was no debate , no questioning about who the enemy was.

We can see, then, that the USA and the UK saw a systematic mobilisation of the country’s entire population and economy to

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