‘A Brighter and Nicer New Life’: Security as Pacification

The article argues that the process of securing the insecurity of capitalist accumulation might best be understood as a process of pacification. Pacification is closely connected to the Vietnam War, but the article suggests that pacification has a much longer history, linking the original accumulation in the colonies with the movement towards capitalism in the West. Read in this way, pacification is a form of police power, securing the insecurity of capitalist order. This helps us make sense of the permanent ‘wars on ... ’ being declared by capitalist states, from the war on drugs to the war on terror, and suggests that ‘pacification’ is a crucial concept for understanding security.