The Yellow Peril and the Ontology of the Enemy

How and when did war come to be understood as a “science”—one that could be quantitatively calculated and measured in such a way that one could derive universal laws? This paper turns to the archives of the Operations Research Office (ORO) during the Korean War to argue that race war orders and produces a scientific “truth” of war. This techno-scientific “truth” drives war to increasingly brutal forms of imperial and racial violence while simultaneously naturalizing and sanitizing this violence as the nature of war. Techno-scientific war produced a racialized enemy: the numerically superior Asian Communist attacked in human waves, willing to sacrifice soldiers because of an Asian disregard for life. But the enemy’s tactics, however seemingly irrational, could be rendered predictable through quantitative analysis. Race ordered techno-scientific war. Combat was rendered sensible through perfecting and managing the superior techno-scientific capabilities of the white race to overcome the problem of the Asian horde and ensure victory. By treating Korea as a “laboratory” for future combat, the ORO ordered and produced these racialized visions through technical manuals on infantry weapons, chemical weapons, and atomic weapons.