Devastation: field artillery, conventionality, and the pathological economy of modern warfare

Conventional weapons are paradoxical. While labeled as “normal” and “acceptable” in warfare, these weapons have inflicted mass human suffering and devastation in modern conflicts. This paper argues that such paradoxes are not incidental or even inherently contradictory but stem from the very epistemic foundation of conventionality, which is rooted in an economic vision of violence. The paper shows how the principle of the economy of force—the idea that weapons must be used efficiently, with maximum output for minimum cost—has not contained violence but rather rationalized and normalized its dramatic expansion. Eradicating the means-ends of warfare, this economic logic transforms devastation into a self-perpetuating procedural goal that ultimately creates a strategically and morally pathological normalization of organized violence. By introducing the notion of the uniformed brutalization of the world to unpack this process, the paper theorizes how the modern economic epistemology of conventionality renders the self-perpetuation of mass violence epistemically legitimate and morally unaccountable. To do so, and drawing on archival research in the United States and France, the paper traces the economy of force in American and French field artillery across three major conflict configurations: positional warfare (World War I), maneuver warfare (World War II), and counterinsurgency (the two Indochina Wars). It concludes by projecting this argument into the present, suggesting that conflicts such as the War on Terror and the wars in Ukraine and Gaza reflect the enduring power of the economy of force in the changing yet still ongoing proliferation of military-driven devastation.