From subjects to objects: honor flights and US ontological insecurity
| Author | Brent J Steele |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00471178221133965 |
| Published date | 01 December 2022 |
| Date | 01 December 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178221133965
International Relations
2022, Vol. 36(4) 616 –637
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/00471178221133965
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From subjects to objects:
honor flights and US
ontological insecurity
Brent J Steele
University of Utah
Abstract
Following the 2004 establishment of the World War II memorial in Washington DC, itself a
product of the collective re-commemoration of the so-called ‘Greatest Generation’ of WWII
veterans in the US, nonprofit organizations began the practice of ‘Honor flights’. These flights
transported US veterans of the Second World War to Washington DC to visit that memorial and
other commemorative sites, meet with Congressional members, and return to their local airports
to great fanfare and celebration. The practice has evolved to incorporate Korean War and now
Vietnam War veterans. As honor flights include much more than the veterans themselves, and
as it has become an affectively charged festival for local communities to ‘honor’ their veterans
during periods of unresolved wartimes, I articulate the Honor Flight as a treatment for – but
also a symptom of – US ontological insecurity in the 21st Century. Honor flights are celebratory,
judgmental, and political micro-practices that reflect and reproduce US militarism in ways that will
likely outlast the wartimes of the 21st century United States. Along with other micro-practices of
US ontological (in)security, Honor Flights threaten to destabilize the politics of military intervention
hereafter, and encourage the extension of or inauguration of new times of war.
Keywords
honor flights, micropolitics, ontological security, wartime
Eldon Akers walked out of the plane, patiently waiting for others who required assis-
tance. Some needed wheelchairs, others had walkers or canes but required the help of
those they brought with them. His son Al was next to him, but Eldon required no such
Corresponding author:
Brent J Steele, 260 South Central Campus Drive, Suite 3345, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah
84112, USA.
Email: brent.steele@utah.edu
1133965IRE0010.1177/00471178221133965International RelationsSteele
research-article2022
Article
Steele 617
help. Once he had a clear lane, he walked down the hallway of the Cedar Rapids airport,
down the escalator, and took in the spectacular crowd. They were waiting there on this
evening of September 13, 2011, all of them, for him, and his fellow passengers, follow-
ing a wondrous roundtrip from the Eastern Iowa Airport to Reagan National in
Washington, DC. Little American flags, the Knights of Columbus, the patriot guard,
police officers, firefighters, reservists, family members, lots of kids, all clapping, even a
local news team with cameras – all of this greeted him and his fellow passengers.
It had been a long but fascinating day. He and his honorees visited the new World War
II memorial in DC, but also toured all the other memorials throughout the area.1 Not
surprisingly, considering his branch and theater of service, the Marine Corps Memorial
(the ‘flags of Iwo Jima’), proved to be Eldon’s favorite. Greeted by politicians including
his local Congressional Representative, he and his fellow honorees were well fed,
respectfully escorted, and celebrated throughout their tour. It was a great time for this
group of Iowans, this slice of the Greatest Generation, now returning home and to a com-
munity that thanked them, cheered them, embraced them. As he walked to the crowd, he
shook every hand that was extended to him, giving the thumbs up to smiling strangers,
concluding with his family who hugged him and his son, to welcome them home.
Following the 2004 establishment of the World War II memorial in Washington DC,
itself a product of the collective re-commemoration of the so-called ‘Greatest Generation’
of WWII veterans in the US, nonprofits began the practice of ‘Honor flights’. These
flights transport US veterans of the Second World War to Washington DC to visit the
memorial and other memorials, meet with Congressional members, and return to their
local airports to great fanfare and celebration. The practice has evolved to incorporate
Korean War and now Vietnam War veterans.
In this paper, and contribution to the special issue, I interrogate honor flights as
involving much more than the veterans themselves. I utilize concepts, referents, and
insights from Ontological Security Studies (OSS), a growing research community
within International Relations. Ontological security occurs most fundamentally with the
individual, starting from the time they are an infant building a trust system with a guard-
ian, whose return becomes a part of the infant’s everyday routine.2 But it also occurs
with groups and states, as the literature on ontological security has long posited.3 As
seen throughout Catarina Kinnvall’s work on nationalism,4 and Alexandria Innes’s on
the everyday,5 some of the most urgent issues disclosed in OSS are those that analyze
the tensions between the drive for ontological security at various levels, including the
ways in which collective communities insecuritize, via their narratives, particular indi-
viduals, and groups. This tension, I argue, is marked in honor flights.
As it has become an affectively-charged festival for local communities to ‘honor’
their veterans, I articulate the Honor Flight as both a treatment for but also a symptom
of US ontological insecurity in the 21st Century. As treatment, Honor Flights function
as a form of vicarious victory, an identification with the US’s ‘Greatest Generation’
who fought and ‘won’ the Second World War. The phenomenon of vicarious identity,
and practices of vicarious identification, are an increasingly prominent focus within
ontological security studies.6 For, as Chris Browning first noted in his 2018 study, such
identification helps groups ‘cope with existential anxieties of nonbeing and establish a
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