WARNING: This article contains spoilers.
After months of anticipation, the latest installment in the Star Wars franchise, The Force Awakens, was released on December 18, becoming the fastest film to reach $1 billion in box office sales in the process. As an avid Star Wars fan and foreign policy wonk, I couldn’t help but watch it not only for enjoyment of the story but also to pick out some lessons and themes about politics—national, global, and inter-stellar. While critics have been praising The Force Awakens for its effective callback to the characters, themes, and events of the original Star Wars trilogy, the the film’s story also draws on contemporary and historical precedents. In doing so, the latest episode reflects current concerns and anxieties in global affairs, and makes illustrative points about politics, history, and policy that remain all too relevant for international relations today.
The Peril of Proxy
The Force Awakens takes place thirty years after The Return of the Jedi, the last chronological episode in earlier installments of the series. At the end of The Return of the Jedi, the heroic Rebel Alliance led by Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and Han Solo successfully defeats the evil Galactic Empire and sets out to create a new Galactic Republic. At the beginning of The Force Awakens, however, we learn that an imperial successor regime called the First Order has emerged to threaten peace. The New Republic has thus far avoided military clash with the First Order but has given military assistance and shelter to a group called the Resistance, led by former-Princess now-General Leia. The Resistance, as described by Vox’s Zack Beauchamp, is a non-state group operating across the border of the New Republic and the First Order. In this capacity, they are fighting a shadow war against the First Order and its allies.
The Resistance echoes the historical and contemporary use of deniable proxy forces to achieve military and political objectives. Currently, the Donetsk People’s Republic in Eastern Ukraine serves as a Russian-backed proxy, keeping the central government of Ukraine unstable and, despite a ceasefire agreement in February 2015, maintaining a slow-burning insurgency against Ukrainian government forces in the country’s East. In eastern Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces fight as an American-backed group against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant while Lebanese Hezbollah and Iraqi militia groups serve as proxies for Iran.
The fate of the Republic in The Force Awakens highlights the danger and instability inherent in the use of proxy forces. Frustrated by continuing Resistance attacks and the inability to strike a blow against the elusive group, the First Order decides to turn its fury against the Republic itself. In dramatic fashion, First Order military commander General Hux addresses a Nazi-esque military parade of Stormtroopers, the main combat troops of the regime, on the First Order’s stronghold, Starkiller Base. Promising an end to the Republic government that “acquiesces to disorder,” General Hux fires the base’s main weapon, a powerful cannon that destroys the Republic’s capital planet and the majority of its battle fleet. The failure of the Republic to pursue a clear strategy, either one of clear confrontation against the First Order or détente with it, is key in its destruction.
The First Order’s devastation of the Republic highlights the dangers of the ambiguity surrounding proxy forces. The Republic’s leaders’ faith in an ambiguous policy toward the First Order that allowed them to both maintain peace while striking blows against the Resistance resulted in a much larger military escalation. With the publication of Russia’s latest national security strategy, which identifies both the United States and the expansion of NATO as threats to Russian security, Russia seems likely to increase support for proxy forces in Eastern Europe to subvert and hamper Western influence on its borders. The ambiguity in these conflicts raises the risks of military escalation, including possibly even a nuclear exchange, which could devastate both the United States, Europe, and Russia, constituting an ongoing threat to regional and world peace. Likewise, the continued American aversion to large-scale combat military deployments, especially in the Middle East, will likely result in the greater enabling of American-backed proxies in the region. While this use of proxy forces can help nations avoid the controversy and casualties of combat, the specter of the First Order’s attack on the Republic reminds of the danger of proxy conflict: it lends itself to deception and miscalculation, and can lead to its much more devastating and destructive counterpart, full-scale, conventional war.
Revanchism of the Sith
Although the background behind the rise of the First Order from the ashes of the Galactic Empire is only hinted at in the film, the stories of its rise to power also draw on current and historical precedent and make important points about the conduct of international affairs. After the events of The Return of the Jedi, the New Republic continued to battle the forces of the Empire. After finishing off the majority of the Imperial Starfleet at the planet of Jakku (the setting for the first half of The Force Awakens), the Republic signed a treaty called the Galactic Concordance, ending the war with the Empire. The treaty fixed the remaining boundaries of the Empire and limited the size and armament of the remaining Imperial military. Satisfied, the Republic left the Imperial remnants isolated and marginalized, eventually allowing a group of loyalists to form the First Order.
The treaty, which humiliates and limits the Imperial Remnant, parallels agreements like the Treaty of Versailles, which limited Germany’s military capabilities, saddled it with war reparations, and facilitated the rise of the Nazis. Similarly, the arms limitations of the Washington Naval Conference of 1921-22, which resulted in opposition among the Japanese military, helping push Japan towards war. Recent events surrounding the end of the Cold War in the 1990’s offer another parallel. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States stood as the sole global superpower, and throughout the next two decades was willing to use military force with little regard for Russian protests and opposition. Such uses of force included Kosovo in 1998, Iraq in 2003, and Libya in 2011. Along with this international humiliation, the United States made few efforts to seriously help Russia rebuild its economy and society after communism, helping well-positioned businessmen and ex-government officials to acquire huge holdings of the nation’s wealth at great personal gain while the majority of Russians suffered through years of stagnant economic growth. The post-Cold War humiliation of Russia is central to the revanchist policies pursued by President Vladimir Putin, who famously called the collapse of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th Century.” The Western failure to successfully assist Russian integration into the global community and actions perceived as marginalizing Russia in international affairs helped lay the ground for Russian military adventurism and confrontation with the United States in Ukraine and Syria today.
The Republic’s treaty with the Empire demonstrates these same errors, and most likely contributed to the rise of the First Order and its determination to overthrow the Republic. Humiliated by the New Republic, the Imperial stalwarts, like the Germans and Japanese in the 1930’s or the Russian military and political elite today, reformed their military and political systems. They marshaled their forces and commenced new political and military campaigns for regional and global power. In Star Wars as well as in history, the failure to reconcile volatile political differences in a diplomatic settlement at the end of conflict can sow the seeds for the next round of confrontation. Recently, American negotiators have worked hard to find a diplomatic solution to the ongoing conflict in Syria. As these talks to reconcile competing Syrian and international objectives continue, The Force Awakens reminds of the dangers of concluding military conflicts without resolving their underlying political crises. Agreements that do the former but not the latter often fail, leading to renewed and even more savage fighting.
Imperfect Institutions and Imperial Decline
In the original Star Wars movies, the Galactic Empire is depicted as maintaining iron discipline and brutal efficiency. Imperial commanders and troops display heroism in the face of defeat and death. Commanders named in the original trilogy, such as Grand Moff Tarkin and Admiral Piett, face potential defeat confidently and stoically and subsequently die in rebel attacks. The Imperial Stormtroopers are depicted as ruthless orderly fighters, accepting heavy losses to fulfill their orders. For all of their power, the First Order’s soldiers shows degradation in discipline and morale when compared to their Imperial predecessors, not unlike the fighters of the Iraqi military. As the First Order base is destroyed, the officers in the command station abandon their positions and flee for their lives. Similarly, a pair of storm troopers turns on their heels and march away from an encounter with their commander, who is infuriated over a prisoner escape, demonstrating both a dysfunctional relationship between senior commanders and the troops and an undercurrent of fear among the First Order. Unlike the shock troops of the Empire, these soldiers display none of the stern discipline of their predecessors. With these subtle clues, The Force Awakens demonstrates the lack of discipline and moral among the First Order troops, reemphasizing the vital importance of those intangible elements in helping modern nations construct effective military forces.
This parallel is particularly pertinent to the fight against ISIL. When several hundred ISIL fighters attacked the Iraqi city of Mosul in June of 2014, roughly 10,000 Iraqi troops abandoned their positions and retreated haphazardly south towards Baghdad. The collapse of the Iraqi Army, trained and equipped over the last decade at great expense by the United States, shocked observers and lead to significant intervention in Iraq against ISIL by both the United States and Iran. While numerous events precipitated the Iraqi military’s collapse, especially notable was the decline in professionalism and a subsequent decline in morale caused by corrupt and ineffective commanders, often appointed for political reasons rather than military experience. While only subtly, The Force Awakens reveals a similar dynamic of decline in the armed forces of the First Order in comparison to the armed forces of the Galactic Empire. As American trainers once again work with the Iraqi army, The Force Awakens provides a small but important reminder of the need to help rebuild morale and competence among the troops and officers of the Iraqi military.
These are far from the only examples of parallels between international affairs and the events of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and critics and analysts have already been picking apart the film’s resonance with the world today. As with all fictional stories, Star Wars gives us a chance to reflect on the dynamics that drive human life, from politics, economics, and war to family, memory, and emotion. As Disney readies the inevitable sequels and stand-alone movies to tie into the new Star Wars storyline, historical and contemporary parallels will continue to illuminate both the new story and the trends influencing events on our own planet today.
Image Source: Wikimedia/Bel Adone