Technology And Warfare

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evidence

1. describe the threat of insurgency (two front war)
2. describe how gas (limited but public andexceptionally terrifying violence) fosters pscychological fear
3. describe how gas was self enforcing
4. describe how this increased real or perceived threats to political power

Summary

demonstration effect

1. external superficial loyalty not actual belief
2. shows the nature of authoritarian politics
3. discursive practices are not just aesthetic but productive
4. rhetoric creates site of contestation

limitations of demonstration effect

1. disimulation (forcing the population to conceal the truth) makes the population complicit
2. awareness of ones complicity with something distasteful is divisive
3. although the power to induce complicity is significant it affirms the regiems reliance on participants to maintain power (as opposed to rentier state)
4. disimulation deprives the regieme of the ability to accurately gauge public sentiment
5. discourses of superficial loyality become effective conduits for outright rebellion and subtle mockery while operating from within the discourse itself

demonstration effect

1. Effectiveness operates in such a way that the more ridiculous the disimulation the more powerful it makes the regime look
2. this process creates a self enforcing process
3. disimulation is useful becasue it promotes obedience, co-opts the population with complicity, and identifies dissenters and organizes national discourse

motivation for demonstration effect

1. Asad's personality cult is a tool to cultivate national membership and minimize ethnic divisions
2. the personality defines membership guidelines in terms of speech and behavior
3. the cult of personality generated preformitive practices
4. the cult of personality works as an effective sub-system fo coercive control
5. the cult is representative of and increases the amount of political power the regime has and lengthens then tenure of its rule

significance of demonstration effect

1. Why does the Demonstration effect explain the significance of the use of Chemical weapons on civilians?

Demonstration effect

• why produce a politics that depends on the external and easily falsified trappings of loyalty, rather than on people's internal beliefs?
• answering this question will illuminate the specific nature of authoritarian politics in countries.
• can show how language and symbols are used both to exemplify and to produce political power.
• that the discursive practices and imagery constitutive of Asad's cult are not "mere aesthetic
• In Syria, official rhetoric creates a site of important contestation, the titillating and chilling effects of which are evident in such individual transgressions

limitations of demonstration effect

• Dissimulation is a form of deception in which one conceals the truth.
• It differs from simulation, in which one exhibits false information.
• Dissimulation commonly takes the form of concealing one's ability in order to gain the element of surprise over an opponent.
• A politics of "as if' registers the soldiers' complicity and the regime's power.
• But like all demonstrations of obedience, inducing complicity by enforcing public dissimulation also has its limitations.
• First, behavior that encourages awareness of one's complicity reminds each soldier that he and the regime are at odds, that a gap exists between performance and belief.
• Second, although this gap affirms the regime's power to induce complicity, complicity itself registers the regime's reliance on participants to uphold the system.
• Third, requiring citizens to act "as if' leaves the regime in the predicament of having to evaluate popular sentiment through the prism of enforced public dissimulation. Ritual dissimulation allows Syrians to keep their internal thoughts private.42
• Fourth, as M's example shows, professions of complicity sometimes become opportunities for subtle mockery or even outright rebellion.
• choosing an alternative mythology that nevertheless situates his rebellion in the very rhetorical universe he seeks to re-order. He uses the regime's formulae and imagery to reveal the regime's corruption rather than glorify its power.

The demonstration effect

• The more absurd the required performancem the ore clearly it demonstrates that the regime can indeed make most people obey most of the time.
• And demonstrations of obedience create the depoliticizing conditions in which compliance becomes habitual and self-enforcing.
• It enforces obedience, induces complicity, identifies and ferrets out some disobedient citizens, such as M, and organizes the symbolic context within which struggles over the meaning of the nation, of selfhood, and of both political power and individual transgression take place.

motivation for demonstration effect

• Asad's regime has had to manage an ethnically, culturally, and politically fragmented polity while constructing institutions capable of delivering goods and services.
• Asad's cult is part of the regime's effort to build an effective state, which requires the regime to enforce its political dominance, even as it appeals to a broad constituency and cultivates a sense of national membership.
• The cult operates to define the terms of membership by putting forth the guidelines for politically acceptable speech and behavior.
• It provides Syrians with a coherent system of rules, norms, prohibitions, and constraints to regulate public conduct.
• The cult and the performative practices it generates also work as an effective sub-system of coercive control which not only represents the regime's political power but produces it anew in ways that contribute to the regime's longevity.

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