Ouroboros: Understanding the War Machine of Liberalism

Looking at partisan groups such as the FLN, the Vietcong, and the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan, Ouroboros: Understanding the War Machine of Liberalism assesses how they convert their knowledge of self into tactical and strategic advantages that nullify the Clausewitzian advantages in the distribution of military power. Reynolds argues that liberalism has a global transformative mission that requires an ideologically democratic core and an illiberal periphery. By assessing the ouroboros, which sees action as definitive and final, the book explains how it powers the new strategy of preemption that intervenes in the periphery, ostensibly to set up democratic, security-centered adjuncts.

Table of Contents:
1. Liberalism, the State, and War 2. Explaining Clausewitzian Power 3. The Security Dispositif as an Ordering Framework 4. The Domestic and the Periphery 5. The Origins of the War Machine 6. How the War Machine Become Permanent 7. Key Components of Clausewitzian War 8. The Problem with Clauswitzian War and the Trinity 9. How the Singularity Is Revealed 10. The Uninhibited Partisan, Terror and Force 11. Algeria and the Ordering of Society 12. Vietnam and the Immediate Threat 13. Afghanistan and Killing a War Machine 14. 9/11 and Comparative Advantage 15. Crux 16. Problems with Preemption 17. Preemption as Method 18. Generating Certainty PART SIX -CONCLUSIONS 19. Liberalism and the War Machine 20. The Singularity 21. Preemption as Imperative 22. The Ouroboros

About the Author :
Phil W. Reynolds is visiting scholar at the Center for Future Studies, Hawaii.

Review :
With Ouroboros: Understanding the War Machine of Liberalism, Phil Reynolds lays bare Liberalism’s inherent penchant for war. In a robust and ultimately scathing critique of Liberal strategies of preemption, Reynolds helps us think through this unfolding contradiction. Why does such incongruity arise? What drives this apparent paradox forward? By answering these questions, Reynolds encourages us to see Liberalism as serpentine, twisting and contorting as it swallows its own tail. Ouroboros is an important book that brings clarity and conviction in an age of doublespeak and deception. “Reynolds has written a thoughtful and challenging work that reinterprets recent US foreign policy. Through his utilization of European critical philosophers, Reynolds provides a fresh lens through which we can make sense of the recent peripheral wars with which the United States and its allies have struggled.” This book stretched my brain into areas I had never considered over the past thirty-five years of studying war. Phil Reynolds, in keeping with the best traditions of the “warrior-scholar” artfully weaves elements of traditional military strategy and philosophy from the 18-19th centuries with contemporary 20-21st century concepts of post-modern political theory, guerrilla warfare, and counter-insurgency doctrine. If you ever imagined Clausewitz dancing with Foucault to a tune piped by Mao and danced by Afghan and Iraq insurgents, you will find it here. It is a book worth studying for those seeking deeper understanding of why great powers intervene in other people’s business, and often fail. Drawing on a wide-array of sources and in-depth case studies of Algeria, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, Reynolds argues that many of the conflicts the West faces today are largely due to the rejection of neoliberal ideas by groups on the "periphery" whose visions of the future are rooted in local identities rather than universal truths (as defined by liberalism). Liberalism, he contends, uses war for two reasons: to secure domestic happiness through ordered economic exchanges and to "snuff out" the illiberal. And these are primarily achieved through preemptive and remote wars. Undoubtedly, some will take exception to his thesis. Nevertheless, it deserves its day in court.