Stormtroopers and the Work of Empire

The tools of empire aren’t always so obvious.

by Matt Houle

One of the first introductions we get to the Imperial Stormtrooper in Star Wars is the observation that “only Imperial Stormtroopers are so precise.”

The moment comes early in the film, as Ben Kenobi and his soon-to-be protege Luke Skywalker are observing the smoldering wreckage of a Jawa sand crawler. The bodies of the robed desert scavengers lay scattered haphazardly across the sands.

“Precision,” of course, is less about hitting a target and more about producing the same result every time. And considering how infrequently we see those Stormtroopers manage to accurately shoot things, one might imagine that Old Ben is actually talking not about aim but rather about how frequently Imperial Stormtroopers massacre civilians in the aftermath of a battle. 

George Lucas doesn’t actually show the audience how the Imperial Stormtroopers slaughtered the Jawas, but he does show us that the aftermath of the massacre has enough in common features with other Imperial massacres as to make the perpetrators identifiable. The realization that the faceless white-clad Stormtroopers might soon be knocking at the doors of his adopted family drives Luke to rush home, only to find that the very massacre he dreaded has already occurred. His family is dead at the hands of a distant empire.

This event stands out to me now while I search for ways to understand my own experience working for Empire (in a broader sense than just The Empire of a galaxy far, far away).

While I never pulled a trigger in the service of Empire, my own work shared many similarities to that of the Stormtrooper. 

I was a volunteer in the Peace Corps, and even though I never pulled a trigger in the service of Empire, it’s hard not to notice that my own work shared many structural similarities to that of the Stormtrooper. 

As a Volunteer in the Peace Corps, my work was explicitly in support of the interests of the United States—one of the inspirations for The Empire of Star Wars. While Volunteers are not issued blasters, they do receive training and equipment towards accomplishing the Peace Corps’ goals. Volunteers are initially sent through a three month training program, although the exact nature of this training varies from place to place. I was taught a variety of skills: language skills, medical skills, teaching skills, grant-writing skills, skills to help keep me safe and probably other skills that didn’t make it back with me.

Additionally, I was outfitted with a cellphone, a water filter, a medical kit full of antibiotics, some vaccinations, a monthly stipend around $300 USD, and a lengthy list of necessary items I had to provide myself. These together supposedly constituted everything I would need to deal with any situation that could arise.

Here, then, are some of the situations I faced: I could not speak the most prevalent language of my area. I did not initially share a language with any of the younger members of the family with whom I lived. On the first day of the school year, I arrived at work and found out that my main teaching colleague, and our shared teaching materials, would be absent most of the year. At a certain point, the government shutdown cellphone service in my area after a bungled special forces raid in a neighboring village left dozens of casualties. I only found this out when I traveled to the nearest city thinking my cell phone had finally died only to receive a call from the Peace Corps telling me to evacuate. Needless to say, I consistently ran into instances where my training from the Peace Corps was insufficient.

One doubts that it’s the Stormtroopers who decide on bringing the blasters, much less plan their operations. And while George Lucas doesn’t show anyone explicitly ordering any Stormtroopers to shoot up a sandcrawler and a farm, somebody certainly made sure they were capable of doing it while on their mission to find some missing droids. With an explicit order or not, the Imperial Stormtrooper is set up to always deliver the same result.

The Imperial Stormtrooper is set up to always deliver the same result.

The same holds true with the Peace Corps. Since so much of the work in the Peace Corps relies on skills or procedures, it is easy to forget that someone—somewhere—decided those goals and procedures would be sufficient. Viewed through this lens—the question of what, exactly, we were actually prepared to accomplish—it becomes difficult to ignore the question of what the goals of the Peace Corps actually are.

My supervisors in the Peace Corps only visited a handful of times in my two years of work, and only one of them spent any extra time working with me beyond filling out a form or getting a picture taken with my students. Whether or not I made a worthwhile and lasting difference in my community, the Peace Corps certainly seemed to make sure that it looked like I did. I can only conclude now that, regardless of who a Volunteer is or what they do, the central goal of the Peace Corps is not actual benevolence, but rather the appearance of benevolence—the outcome itself is less important than the apparent optics of a friendly American citizen helping out a foreign country.

Part of the brilliance of the Imperial Stormtroopers is that they lay bare the machinations of a distant empire. They appear robotic and mechanical, faceless minions who exist only to carry out military and political goals with few tools other than brutality and blaster fire. In the real world, the maneuvering of empire is rarely so overt. But the purpose of an organization like the Peace Corps becomes just as obvious when it’s judged on the mission and goals it seems designed to accomplish. Neither group can be understood purely on their actions moment-to-moment, but rather on their relationship to the goals of the distant power that put them there.

While the Stormtrooper and the Volunteer are both directly responsible for their own contributions to the work of Empire, it takes the collective efforts of Empire to get both on the ground and at work. It takes a village to raise a child, but it takes an empire to line the village up against a wall.

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