In a new paper, John Morrissey identifies a military-strategic studies complex that constitutes a key academic support for US geopolitical and geoeconomic imperialism.

In the power–knowledge symmetry of the academic–military world, strategic studies discourses do vital geopolitical work: they prioritize, disguise, legitimize and characterize entire conflicts; they reduce political and cultural geographical knowledges of distant places; and they erase the signature of, and accountability for, “our” violence. In a world of euphemisms and neologisms, well paid mercenary soldiers become “contractors” or “security employees”; ungovernable spaces of abject violence and misery become areas currently experiencing “a slight uptick in violence”; and waterboarding becomes “simulated drowning”, not actual drowning interrupted or torture.