The Police at a Turning Point

The army has always been identified as a major institution in any state. Perhaps this essentially began with the international and inter-state affairs of much of history in the past: states were likely to invade one another, and so the army was important as a unit of defense for a state. In developing countries in today's times however, conventional and formal wars with standing armies are seldom fought, and the army exists as a thoroughly politicized entity. In a globalizing world, any institution that exists only as a political mechanism, that is, only in order to play into a power-relation of other political entities which are actually dedicated to something outside of political formalism (non-army political institutions are political for a reason and a cause), should actually quickly fade away. Each political party has a nationalist agenda, and the army fits into the agendas of all parties. It is no longer solely the expression of one particular political party or ideology. The army is getting integrated into the political arena as a 'pawn,' and it is a deliberate tactic in the state that each party includes the army component within its agenda, dividing the generals along political lines and thereby internally fragmenting the army. This fragmentation is the final condition of the army. The political apparatus as a whole, including all parties, works to stretch the army out and divide it politically in order that it not arrive under control of one particular political party or ideology; it is under broad consensus to so divide the army.  The globalizing world is a world where traditional wars for territory are no longer fought the same way, and hence the army as an institution is getting infected with and divided by politics and should eventually weaken considerably. But where the army is 'divided and controlled,' the police seems to escape, as we will see.

We begin with this prediction regarding the army because the army is never an institution made for the forward movement of globalizing societies. The developing country's army does not get foreign aid, support in weapons, or any significant tactical guidance without an accompanying political agenda, and any time there is a political agenda coming from foreigners attached to the army, the crowd thinks it is a form of foreign intervention and imperialism. If the objective is to maintain stability and peace, the army has to remain untouched, and this isolation from the global sphere of influence is beginning to form an obstacle for its contextualization in the globalizing world. Furthermore, any help to the army simply goes against the logic of conquest, where the more powerful state wishes to see the weaker state's army weak and get even weaker relatively. This also leads us to see something positive about the army: it was a representative of the nation's progress (if the army does well, it means we are doing well as a nation) and it therefore inspired nationalism among the nation's subjects. Perhaps its legacy as such an institution inspiring nationalism also lives on, but a positive nationalism is no longer a spirit which requires the use of weapons. In fact, the armies of third world countries were never more than politicized entities, previously important as symbols and indicators of national progress, but today no longer important as such. Perhaps they will attempt to redefine their role and re-situate themselves, but in this transitional process they may well lose a lot of appeal to young recruits. 

The decline of the army as an institution has also to do with the nature of wars and the relationship of conflict to differences in identity. Wars are no longer fought because some undesired identity claims their own land and independence (partly because the construction of identities is today in free flow, with sub-identity upon sub-identity being formed in each national territory precisely because the superpower no longer worries about identity politics causing problems), but wars are fought more for economic resources and strategic gains in the globalizing world. Wars are no longer about direct invasion of territory to bring within a common, governing logic of the superpower, but, deliberately an attempt to maintain a separate entity that can trade; war is necessary for the establishing of conditions of trade between two different entities. In all of these cases and more, the police is the more important 'offense-and-defense'-oriented institution in a state. The foreign enemy in today's warfare is seldom present in bodies, or even in the minds, of the politicians, for the politicians have already been completely indoctrinated to the point that the presence of the indoctrinating superpower is no longer necessary. The politicians act as automatic machines, not as puppets guided by strings. So, the enemy is within the nation, the nation's own subjects, rather than people outside of it, which is why the police as a repressive instrument is more important than the army of traditional international relations of war and conquest. 

Today, the (riot) police acts by repression of political events. What the connection between police and repression essentially shows is that repression is not necessary against an uprising or protest, but it has been deemed important in order to legitimize the police as an important institution in a state today. In other words, the police, being a new institution in the state-level control mechanism (we believe its previous duties were never to stop political uprisings and rebellions; it was never before involved in the criminalizing of people based on their political standpoints) needs to be tested for its strength, to see if it can withhold and endure the onslaught of resistance aimed at it. As the police institution is at such a new stage in relation to other controlling and repressive institutions in the state (the hospital in particular is a very well established controlling institution and so is the media), it is being tested more and more as a 'weak link' primarily by the design of protest movements and struggles. The ease with which protest movements enter the streets as a form of protest shows that the instincts of the resistors points to a weakness in the police as a political force because it has just begun to get embroiled in the political arena in a significant way. That the police is embroiled in politics does not mean that the police is a political party, but it definitely is a significant agenda for a party or politician to consider.

The police is the direct object of the politically rebellious acts and events today. Gone are the days when political rebellions were aimed at the political elites and the police stood in the way. Today, the people come to the streets to confront the police themselves, because they understand that the police are a dominant institution of control in their own right. This will only make the rebellions more violent, as it will be aimed directly at the police and therefore will not let go for any other demands but only express victory in the reclamation of the street. A weakness of the protests in this regard, however, is that they will be more sporadic, more particular, more individualized, for people are only concerned of the bodies of the policemen before them, and not seriously contemplate the political agenda they are fighting for; it is a truly 'post-political' revolutionary fervor. The police are no longer considered bystanders in the political struggle, but they are identified as beneficiaries of foreign aid, tactical support, weapons, and political clout. Whereas previously the police's ambiguous role in politics meant that it shied away from taking action in the social and cultural sphere, today the police acts precisely because it cannot be categorized in any political agenda; the police's actions become a thing contested among different political parties for a claim over policing power, but in its application of policing power it always appears outside of politics. The turning point of today is the police attempting to establish itself precisely as this force at work in globalization in its own right, and unlike the media and the health-care system which smoothly integrates with the global, the police's transition from local to global looks more shaky. This is what invites more repression and the use of physical force in the streets out of frustration and to demonstrate that the police is an institution ready to work for the global capitalist logic. The police no longer operates for other politicians and political agendas (it is no longer the security guard), for the first time it is free to operate by its own logic and for its own legitimacy and longevity. This autonomy speaks of a negative character in imperialism: to give an institution a duration of time to 'prove itself' means that it will compete with other institutions harshly and it will corrupt itself to falsify its actual achievements. Indeed, the troubling scenario is that the police will actually invite political unrest and subsequent riots just to prove its might. The police is that standardized unit which comes to face all types of political struggles, and as such, it is the common 'other' of all political struggles, understanding which the rebel needs to realize that all struggles now have been reduced to a common goal, that of addressing the police. With the police as the common enemy, all types of struggles are interconnected.  

Whenever a decision is made, or an event takes place, due to the result of power-relations, it takes place when every single institution within the power relation gets something positive out of the decision or event. The police will not simply utilize itself in the controlling of riots without benefits from the event, but it speculates the benefits and the costs. The police makes demands to some force; it only works for a price. In the globalizing world, these 'demands' of the police are directly addressed to the superpower because the police is not really a nationalist institution, existing as the army did under a national political agenda and nationalist ideology; the police is an institution of power in the 'post-national' (but not 'post-nationalist,' which implies that a nation's subjects are themselves no longer dedicated to the nation) world. The police exists on par with the political apparatus as another institution of control, it is a apolitical entity but still has to manage and control the politics of others and hence manages to get embroiled therein. It does not exist completely under politics, but encroaches upon the political, intervenes into it. It does not defend anyone in the developing world, it only attacks (and represses). Those that are disciplined by the police's weapons are simply those through which the police expresses a repression meant for the whole of society. In the developing world, the police does not act for side A against side B, but when it utilizes its force, it acts to silence both sides. The police is that institution that must demonstrate most to us the 'formality' and triviality of politics in the developing world, for both sides are essentially being beaten into discipline, discipline as articulated by the external superpower. In the developing world, the police acts as a silencing of politics as such.