Transformation of the “Legitimized” Violence from Virtue to Democracy: The Spiral of Security-Middle East and USA

This article begins with discussing the relationship between politics and violence and the historical transformation of this relation. In this framework, the first section of the article addresses the virtue notion of Machiavelli, who is one of the first to ponder upon violence and politics. The meaning of the virtue notion as a ‘common’ value for both soldiers and society is analyzed. At the same time, the potential/strength of this value in mobilizing the society as a unity is dwelled on. In the second section, it is claimed that politics and violence, which has become dependent on the market in the process of globalization, have transformed the new norm of the global place from virtue to ‘democracy’. It is asserted that the violence, used by the Sovereign who had virtue before, is legitimized in defending ‘democracy’ and ‘peace’ today. In the final section of this article, all those arguments are used to read the uprisings in the Middle East and to underline how again the Sovereign brings himself into existence with the help of militarist methods.