“Construct Live” and Genocide in the Pacifist's War

The Foucauldian notion of “construct live” has in warfare been ingrained and internalized to a great extent, and that is a point of great pride for pacifists. We may never see the loss of armies in a scale comparable to the World Wars again, because even in war, the armies involved are not out to kill but rather to enable continual survival; a protective mentality reaches out to “the enemy's” ground troops too. The issue in war today is the removal of arms from the enemies' hands and the dispersal of the enemies from strategic points in a territory, while ensuring that the least amount of lives are lost.

A problem emerges due to this notion of “construct live” (or “let 'the enemy' live”): that the enemy which is in command of a region of interest, when dispersed and displaced by a stronger force, comes to another region within the territory where it is once again in command. When the weaker side is removed from one place it is simply moved somewhere else and becomes the new controller of that other region, without any direct exercise of its will or force. For the side with a weaker army, this invasion-without-force becomes ideal: it simply needs to evade the sporadic gunfire in one region and will find itself ruler of the next. And for the pacifists, the war-without-force is ideal, because it entails lesser casualties in the armies. The enemy becomes a permanent/immortal fixture in warfare, as long as the notion of “construct live” remains and there is land to move to, and this “immortal-and-mobile enemy” has shown that it can be more violent than peaceful.

We may therefore seriously acknowledge that indeed the pacifists are in control of war with this tenet of “construct live,” but that their faith in “construct live” is submitting more and more territories to brief but traumatic militaristic rule as the weaker side moves from place to place. "Construct live" and "mobility-and-immortality" lead to the rationalization and perpetration of genocide by the displaced, weaker side, because of these reasons: the lack of connection/loyalty with the land one is currently in charge of as the sole armed force, the frustration at displacement by a stronger side, the amount of idle time in this new type of warfare, the experience of privilege and comfort at not being killed, and most importantly, the constant maintenance of a certain high level of military strength. After the genocidal act, the tenet of “construct live” is abandoned and a new, more lethal phase in war begins.