The Permanent War Machine: The Modern State as Organized Crime

US actions in Venezuela have nothing to do with law.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and President Trump. Photo: A. Caballero-Reynolds/AFP

The following is a reprint of an essay we first published last June in response to the administration’s illegal bombardment of Iran. Since ‘law’ has now become whatever ‘we’ declare it to be, it is obvious that there will be other occasions to reprint, or at least refer to, this essay. We therefore ask our readers to visualize in the title a blank line (i.e., ‘____ and the Permanent War Machine’) in place of ‘Iran’ or ‘Venezuela.’ That way the names of other states can be penciled in later, as events warrant. — The Editors

‘No matter who you vote for, you always get John McCain.’ This oft-cited phrase may inspire a yawn, but it is nonetheless true.

On May 13, 2025, exactly a month before giving Netanyahu the go-ahead to start bombing Iran, President Trump declared, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, that he has exactly nothing in common with those war-mongering neocons.

“The so-called nation builders wrecked far more nations than they built,” Trump declared. “[T]he interventionists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves.” He even took on the neocons by name: “The gleaming marvels of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi were not created by the so-called ‘nation builders,’ neocons, or liberal non-profits.”

Throughout Trump’s presidential campaign, both the candidate and his big-name supporters earnestly promised the electorate that Trump was the guy who would not start new (‘stupid’) wars, unlike his Democrat opponents. During his inaugural speech, Trump repeated that promise.

Less than six months later, Trump has started a stupid war – what is more, he has started the very war that the neocons themselves have been clamoring for these past three decades, the very war that was so dear to the heart of Sen. McCain. The late neocon senator’s favorite song went: ‘bomb, bomb, bomb; bomb bomb Iran.’

That the U.S. was no by-stander in the Israeli attack is obvious, firstly, from the complicated logistics of the long-distance strikes, which simply could not be carried out without intricate support from US intelligence, radars, satellites, sophisticated weaponry, and other forms of technical assistance. But for those unconvinced by such ‘circumstantial’ evidence, one has only to read the words written on Truth Social by Trump himself, the day after the attacks began:

I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal ... I told them it would be much worse than anything they know, anticipated, or were told, that the United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the World, BY FAR, and that Israel has a lot of it, with much more to come - And they know how to use it. Certain Iranian hardliner’s spoke bravely, but they didn’t know what was about to happen. They are all DEAD now, and it will only get worse! ... Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left ...

Two conclusions can be drawn from the above. The first is that democracy in today’s America is essentially meaningless. The U.S. electorate repeatedly declares that it is sick of war, and repeatedly votes for candidates who promise not to initiate them. And yet the wishes of the electorate are just as systematically ignored. They were once again ignored, and in the most blatant way possible, by Trump on June 13th.

The second conclusion – and I willingly grant that, like the first, it is not exactly breaking news -- is that the U.S. government can under no circumstances be trusted by other governments.

Immanuel Kant, in his articles of peace, famously declared the impermissibility, indeed, the irrationality of any state engaging in “such modes of hostility as would make mutual confidence impossible in a subsequent state of peace.” Among such “modes of hostility,” according to Kant is “making use of treachery.” And yet what has Trump’s behavior been other than a combination of lying and treachery? What has been the behavior of the US government vis-à-vis Russia during past administrations (cf. the ignored Minsk accords, the promises not to expand NATO, the destruction of the Nordstream pipelines, etc., etc.) if not similar lies and treachery?

In the days leading up to the Israeli attack, the Trump administration pretended that it was still engaged in an active process of negotiations with Iran. Mr. Witkoff was scheduled to resume what were touted, including by Mr. Witkoff himself, as constructive negotiations with his Iranian counterparts on Sunday, June 16^th. It was therefore rational for the Iranian side to understand that, at minimum, the US and its Israeli proxy would not start hostilities, at the very least, until after Sunday. And perhaps not at all. And yet all the while Trump knew, and has admitted that he knew, that the attacks on Iran were starting Friday, several days before the negotiations were to recommence!

A close reading of Trump’s ‘Truth Social’ tweet yields a bonus third lesson. Its rhetorical style is that of a mob boss. ‘Do exactly as I say; that way I won’t have to kill you all.’ Some negotiating style!

Forty years ago, the sociologist Charles Tilly concluded that state making may often have much in common with organized crime.¹ This was particularly true when states first manufacture a ‘threat’ and then ‘protect’ their charges from this self-same manufactured threat. Doesn’t this exactly describe the political arrangement we currently have – indeed, that we have long been stuck with -- and by no means only with respect to Iran?

NOTES

1. Charles Tilly, “Warmaking and Statemaking as Organized Crime,” University of Michigan, February 1982. CRSO Working Paper No. 256