ON THE DEEP STATE
We are increasingly talking about the deep state, and I myself often use this expression. It is generally used to designate a typical characteristic of the US power system, but – even if in fact it is here more than anywhere else that we can reasonably talk about it – in reality it is not a reality limited to states; I recently wrote a text in which, for example, I spoke of a European deep state.
Strange as it may seem, the term originates in Turkey; it was the former left-wing prime minister Mustafa Bülent Ecevit who coined the expression (in Turkish, derin devlet), with reference to the secular-military power network that formed around Kemal Ataturk, and then survived his death.
The current definition of what the deep state is, however, is not univocal. According to Wikipedia, “at a political level, it is understood as the set of those bodies, legal or not, that thanks to their economic or military or strategic powers influence the agenda of public objectives, secretly and regardless of the political strategies of the States of the world, far from the eyes of public opinion. Also called ‘State within the State’, it is made up of lobbies and hidden, secret, covered networks of power capable of acting even against known public institutions.”
In my opinion, however, this definition risks being misleading, especially in reference to the situation par excellence, that is, the United States. The resulting image, in fact, closely resembles the well-known one of deviant services (with reference to the numerous episodes in which the Italian secret services have acted outside and against what was the official political line of the state). An image that tends to separate and contrast – precisely – the deep state and the official state. This type of interpretation, however, has two major flaws: the first, most obvious, is precisely that of making a distinction between these two levels, portraying them as separate and even possibly conflicting; the second is to represent the deep state as a state and as occult. Both things are not true.
Let's start by saying that all the elements that make up the deep state - and we will see what they are - have public visibility; perhaps they do not appear on TV in every news program, but they are well-known people and organizations, who publicly express their ideas and orientations. Obviously, just to say, the general public does not read reports of hundreds of pages drawn up in think tanks, but they are still easily available. And, most importantly, we are not faced with a State within a State. The representation as a state implies that we are in the presence of an organism, which has its own very precise structure, and above all a precise line of command. Which is not the case.
Let us therefore sketch out a portrait of what the deep state actually is – always referring to the American one.
The closest image we can borrow from the internet, we could in fact describe it as a network, that is, a network formed by nodes connected to each other in various ways, and which are united by the fact of having some form of power. In this sense, we could also talk about a community. Obviously within the network - even if we are talking about a reticular, horizontal structure - there are nodes that have a greater weight and others that have a lesser one, but they can still influence each other, and not necessarily in a vertical, top-down way.
To understand the nature and composition of the deep state, however, it is necessary to take a step back.
For a great imperial power, which draws most of its wealth (and therefore its power) not from its own productive capacity, but from its predatory capacity towards others, the maintenance of the empire, of its hegemony, is fundamentally a question of long-term strategies. When the formal structure of the imperial state has a democratic form, and therefore is subject to the turnover of the ruling classes, it becomes necessary to have a framework capable of guaranteeing continuity, regardless of electoral changes. In short, a set of elements is needed, not subject to the spoiling system, nor to electoral validation. This set is, in a certain sense, the core of the deep state, around which other forces, often much more powerful, agglutinate. It is in this humus that medium and long-term strategies are developed, and here that they are re-discussed, and here that – ultimately – not only are the imperial lines of action outlined, but the ruling classes to whom the task is to be entrusted from time to time are also identified.
All this, as far as the United States is concerned, in a context where democratic participation is quite relative, where public opinion is more easily manipulated than elsewhere, and where therefore oligarchic power is very strong, even if it willingly leaves the stage to others.
When we talk about deep state, therefore, we are referring to a series of organisms and/or individuals who, for different reasons, have effective power, but not necessarily the same vision of what the best strategies are, or the best ruling classes. In short, it is not a monolith. On the contrary, the internal dynamics of the network tend to be changeable and even lively, and the final outcomes are always the product of the power relations that are determined, and that reach a point of balance between different interests and ideological drives.
We can therefore, to begin with, take into account the network that set of public officials who guarantee the continuity of the federal state machine, and who can facilitate or hinder the action of the government. Still remaining in the public sphere, we can add the structure of the Pentagon, and the large community of security agencies. All organisms in which the turnover for the spoiling system usually occurs only for the top positions, while the bulk of the machine remains unchanged.
Next, we find the entire world of infotainment, from traditional media to Hollywood, to large social networks, etc., all fundamental elements for the control of public opinion. The academic world, especially that of the Ivy League (Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, Yale University), and the scientific world and research centers. And then, obviously, the economic world, both industrial and financial. In an apparently secondary position there is then a network of think tanks, financed by the various stakeholders, which deal with analysis and strategic development, in turn influencing the choices of the most important nodes. All this, needless to say, sketching in a very summary way the composition of the deep state.
The set of these subjects, each bearer of its own specific interests, is united – as was said – by the fact of having some form of power, by not being subject to frequent turnover like the political ruling classes, and – in a certain sense – by having a common interest in defending and strengthening that imperial power in which they thrive.
As can be easily understood, the extension and political relevance of the deep state is greater the larger and more important the dimension in which it operates (as is suggested by the fact that the expression was born in Turkey). On the contrary, the smaller the dimension in which it operates, and above all the less relevant it is, the more reduced the importance of the deep state will be (whose elements, as is evident, are present in every state society), to the point of being completely absent. For example, although in Italy there are de facto powers, different from the constitutional ones, these have never coagulated in a form similar to the one examined so far.
In conclusion, and returning to one of the initial points, the fact that the expression deep state is misleading in many ways certainly poses a problem, since its use risks generating misunderstandings – the most classic of which is to imagine two states, one hidden and one public, in which the first operates outside the law and against the second. As we have seen – for those who obviously share this reading of the phenomenon – in reality what we call deep state is not only not a state in itself (much less hidden), but is actually partially composed of pieces of the official state. Pieces that, it should be made clear, are not unfaithful to the public state (in some ways, one could even say that they are more so, compared to the political class that alternates). Simplifying to the extreme, one could say that – from their point of view – the elements that make up the deep state think and act according to a vision that, in temporal terms, transcends that of the political ruling classes pro tempore.
In light of these considerations, I have come to the conclusion that, in order to avoid the aforementioned misunderstandings as much as possible, from now on – and in my very small way – I will rather use the expression deep power, hoping not to generate confusion in turn.