Lecture 1 à war, what is it good for?
- Fog of war = in war, truth is difficutl to know for many reasons, including access, intentional lying,
uncertainty and confusion
- Security is a combination of
o Physical condition, sense of being able to prevent from inflicting harms
o Mental condition = confidence that this capacity to prevent others from inflicting harm is
needed
o Threats à may be real / imagined
§ Ex. economical, lack of resources, societal, natural
o Traditikonal vs human security type of security (slide picture)
§ In this course à organized political violence, prepare society ot face organized
violence or to useofr specific purposes
- COW PROJECT à “Substantial combat, involving organized armed forces, that results in a minimum
of a thousand battle-related combatants fatalities within a twelve month period”
- 3 philosophes of war
o Political = war is a strategy, and about making the eright move, it’s a rational iinstrument of
policy and about balancing acts between people, forces and governments
§ Clausewitz
o Cataclysmic= war is looked as a major disaster, epidemic and it happens to us as a ethnic
cleansing or genocide.
o Eschatological = Often identified as messianic or global and as inevitable
- Is war an essential part of being human ?
o Yes
o No
Freedman 2007
War
- Happens because of ambiguities and inequalities between countries
- Tends to occur when there is a doubt about the outcome à one state is clearly weaker
- Could occur because there is a chance of winning
Security
The unifying concept is security, which is taken to refer to an absence of threat.
- It is a physical condition: Harm is prevented, and a
- mental condition: A confidence that this safety is indeed safeguarded. Other factors than internal
or external hostility could also be considered, such as the size of the country / border and the
degree of self-sufficiency. Because of vulnerabilities, there are aspects of security that have nothing
to do with armed force.
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, Williams 2013
War= intense form of political relations that impacts upon virtually every dimension of human life. It has
caused destruction and harm, but it has also led to many changes in society, economy, politics and
technology. War is much more than battlefront strategies, but it affects social phenomena on all aspects.
Security studies has always seen the use or threat of military force as the core of security studies.
Three philosophies of war
- Political philosophy of war
o Clausewitz important proponent à war = act of violence, seen as legitimate
o political challenge of warfare as how to achieve such rationality given the fluctuating
relationships between the people, the government and the military, given their principal
characteristics: Passion, reason and technique. War was seen as legitimate during his
lifetime, and the most tactically proficient side often won.
- Eschatological philosophy = teleological view of history in which a “final” war leading to the
unfolding of a final scheme, – divine, natural, or human’.
o It has two varieties, messianic and global eschatology.
§ messianic oneè this final mission already existed, but it just had to be carried out. Its
mission was to impose a just peace on the world thus eliminating war from future
history. Examples would be the Nazi doctrine of master race and ISIS vision of a global
caliphate.
§ global variant è the ‘grand design’ is presumed to arise from the chaos of the ‘final
war’. Examples are the Christian view which would involve that rally around Christ at
the Second Coming, and the Communist view in which the working class would beat
the bourgeoisie. (focus on the prevention of war)
- Cataclysmic philosophy = war as a catastrophe that befalls some portion of humanity or the entire
human race. Here, war could be seen as a curse of God or as a by-product of ‘human nature’ or the
anarchic ‘international system’. This philosophy also comes in two variants: ethnocentric and
global. The ethnocentric view sees war as something that is likely to befall us; specifically, war is
something that others threaten to do to us, and the negative effect is on the in-group itself.
3 challenges to Clausewitz political philosophy
- Concept of the battle field
- Leaders often rejected political narratives of warfare
- War involving nuclear weapons
Functions of war
- A first central aim of war beyond victory was to limit violence, especially one’s own exposure or that of
a key political constituency. This could be achieved in a variety of ways. Geographically you could fight
away from homelands, politically you could fight with proxies, militarily, violence could be limited by
avoiding direct confrontation/battles with a competent armed enemy.
- A second function of warfare is to fulfil the desire for immediate gain. This might be economic gain or
the desire for improved safety. War might also lead to psychological benefits.
- Finally, war can play a crucial role in weakening political opposition. Both in the enemy, and in itself by
suppressing, dividing or delegitimizing actual or potential critics within one’s own camp. Once war is
declared, you have to pick sides.
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,Trends in armed conflict since 1945
1. from the mid-1970s there has been a significant decline in interstate armed conflict, with intrastate
conflicts accounting for the vast majority of organized violence.
2. A second major trend is that since reaching a peak between 1991-1992, the number of these conflicts
has dramatically declined. This can be explained by the end of colonialism, the end of the cold war, the
increased level of international activism from the UN which led to preventive diplomacy, peacemaking
and peace operations, and the increasing popularity of global norms that proscribe the use of military
force in human relationships.
3. A third significant trend in armed conflicts since 1945 is the decline in battle-deaths.
4. A fourth trend was only spotted in the early 2000s. There’s an increase in non-state armed battles.
Until recently, this category of armed conflicts had been almost completely hidden from view and is
still not included in some databases of armed conflict.
5. The final trend worth identifying here is the shifting regional spread of armed conflicts. In global
historic terms, constraints imposed by geography and climate have meant that major wars have been
confined to a relatively small portion of the earth’s surface. In 1970, Asia was a major area where war
took place, while nowadays it mainly takes place in sub-Saharan Africa.
Who fights and who dies ?
- Indirect deaths = people who die from war-exacerbated disease and malnutrition usually intensified
by the process of displacement
The idea of total war
- At its heart, the idea of total war revolved around the notions of escalation and participation. Fears of
escalation were based on the concern that once started, warfare was difficult if not impossible to control. This
meant that wars were likely to increase in scale as well as intensity, thus eroding the various constraints of
war. Participation referred to the growing involvement of citizens in warfare, both as combatants willing to
fight and die for their nation, and as workers willing to make important sacrifices to fuel the war effort at
home.
o Growing totality of warfare
§ Technologiecal + industrial advances, governments increase national resources, expand scope
of war aims, increasing global scope, blur distinction between civilian + military spheres
New wars debate
A second way of thinking about how warfare might be changing involves the argument that, especially
since 1945, globalization has given rise to a distinctive form of violent conflict commonly labelled new
wars. In this, the traditional distinctions between war, organized crime and large-scale violations of human
rights are blurring. They are different from old wars in terms of their goals, methods and systems of finance,
all of which reflect the ongoing erosion of the state’s monopoly of legitimate organized violence
The contemporary western way of war
A third way of thinking about the changing patterns of warfare has focused on the ways in which Western
states prefer to use military force. For Western countries, war is almost like a spectator sport according to
some analysts.
spectator-sport wars.
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, First, they are expeditionary, based on the location of the conflict and away from the homeland. Second,
the ‘enemy’ is narrowly defined as the leadership/regime of the target state rather than the whole of the
enemy state’s society, even the opponent’s military is not necessarily the enemy. A third characteristic is the
desire to minimize collateral damage because only small elements of the enemy society are identified as
legitimate targets. Finally, force protection, that is, the need to minimize risks to Western forces, is a
significant priority.
Western countries have seen airpower as a way to achieve these characteristics. However, there are some
issues with it. The separation of combatants and civilians might sound easy in theory but is often difficult in
practice, and targeting errors, operational mistakes and technical malfunctions produce civilian deaths.
Furthermore, many ‘strategically’ significant installations are part of the civilian economy, and even ‘surgical’
strikes on cities terrorize civilians because of the constant fear of errors. Finally, the protection afforded to
pilots by flying at high altitude is offset in terms of efficiency by the presence.
Of course, the spectator-sport approach is only applicable to a small number of states and hence is not very
useful for understanding the dynamics of warfare in the rest of the world.
Gray 2012 à themes + contexts of strategic history
6 major themes that are relevant to every period in two centuries and to all matters of war + epace
1. Historical continuity and discontinuity, which is about what changes and what stays the same. The
author notes that the nature of war is as unchanging as its character is highly variable. The UN serves
as a vehicle for continuities and anticipated discontinuities in IR. ‘Fear, honours and interest’ provide
historical continuity of motivation for conflict and war.
2. The relationship between politics and war, strategic history is about the threat or use of organized
violence carried out by political units against each other for political motives. War can be denoted as
political behaviour that uses the agency of force. War has no meaning beyond the political, e.g. it is
not waged for entertainment. But it is often difficult to understand how organized violence will lead
to the intended political outcomes
3. The relationship between war and warfare, in which war is a legal concept, a social institutions that
refers to the relationship between belligerents. Warfare on the other hand refers to the actual
conduct of war in its military dimension. so warfare is done to conduct wars. An army can be excellent
at fighting (warfare) but is not necessarily successful in war, they can still lose, think of Germany in
WW II. War is not about fighting but warfare is. To be good at waging war is not necessarily to be
competent at the conduct of war.
4. The relationship between politicians and soldiers, which is a complicated relationship because
military and political actors have different values, personalities, skills, perspectives and
responsibilities. There is a big cultural divide between the two. Soldiers often are given impossible
tasks by policy-makers. Moreover, Clausewitz states that politicians need to understand the military
instrument they want to use. But reflecting on history this has been the exception. Because war is
fought for political goals, there needs to be an ongoing dialogue between politicians and soldiers.
5. The interdependence of war and society, in which war is a social institutions and its waged by
societies, not only by states. Wars often require the total mobilization of society, think of Germany,
the SU and Britain in WW II. Another aspect of this theme is that policy on war and peace needs to
consider public opinion as a significant factor due to the development of communication
technologies. So, societies and people with their values and beliefs make war, not just states.
6. The relations between war and peace, and peace and war, being a complex reciprocal relationship
between peace and war. After war it is difficult to state the desired condition of peace. War is fought
‘to attain a better peace’, meaning that the condition of peace after the war is better than the existing
peace before the war. As peace follows war, so war follows peace, and these cycles can be long or
short.
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