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War & Peacebuilding Summaries
and Lecture Notes - Week 1-7
This is a summary of all the readings and lectures throughout week 1-7.
The structure of a week is as follows:
Week number:
Readings for that lecture
Lecture notes
Etc.
Readings that are missing from this summary (sorry):
Week 2
Howard, M. (2000) The invention of Peace: Reflections on War and the
International Order (London: Profile). - too long
Week 4
Bellamy, A. & Williams, P.D. (2021, 3rd edition). Understanding peacekeeping,
“Chapter 1: Peace Operations in Global Politics”, Cambridge: Polity Press. -
couldn’t find it
Bellamy, A.J. & Williams, P.D. (2010). Understanding peacekeeping (2nd ed.),
Chapter/section 10.2 and Chapter 11. Cambridge: Polity Press. - couldn’t find it
Week 6
S/RES/1325 (2000). Security Council Resolution on women and peace and
security - bc its a resolution, not really anything to summarize
War & Peacebuilding Summaries and Lecture Notes - Week 1-7 1
, Week 7
Michalski, M., & Gow, J. (2008). War, Image and Legitimacy, “Chapter 5:
Television News”, pp.117-138. London: Routledge. - couldn’t find it
Good luck on the final!! :]
War & Peacebuilding Summaries and Lecture Notes - Week 1-7 2
, War & Peacebuilding Summaries
and Lecture Notes - Week 1-7
Week 1
Freedman, L. (2007). War, “Chapter 1:
Introduction”, pp. 3-8 Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Wars have shaped the international system and prompted social change.
They are at the same time products of social and economic development, and
threats to continuing progress.
War is a function of ambiguities in the state system.
People, territory, resources, and power are distributed unevenly.
By definition a state should enjoy a monopoly of legitimate and organized violence
within its territorial boundaries.
When that monopoly is seriously challenged, by external aggression or by an
internal threat such as a rebellion or secessionist movement, or when it sees
opportunities to expand its territory by using force, it can consider itself at war.
It is the severity of the threat, rather than the scale of violence, which makes the
difference.
Security is taken to refer to an absence of threat.
It is a combination of:
War & Peacebuilding Summaries and Lecture Notes - Week 1-7 1
, A physical condition, in the sense of being able to prevent others inflicting
harm.
A mental condition, in the sense of confidence that this is indeed the case.
Because of this mental condition there are aspects of security which have nothing to do
with armed force.
Wars tend to occur when there is a doubt about the outcome.
It is not just the quantity and quality of the armies and equipment that will be decisive, it
will be:
1. The strategic imagination with which they are deployed.
2. The nerve of the leaders in the face of set-backs
3. Their readiness to exploit breakthroughs
4. Their ability to forge and sustain alliances and disrupt those of the other side.
The miseries produced by war encourage the view that wars never solve anything.
Yet war has shaped too many states in the modern world to justify such a
generalization. Wars have toppled dictators and liberated oppressed people.
Reasons for studying war are:
1. The need to prepare to fight more efficiently.
2. Very little else in human affairs can be understood without reference to it.
3. It can simply be extremely interesting.
“War is the deadliest of sins, and unfortunately sin fascinates.”
War & Peacebuilding Summaries and Lecture Notes - Week 1-7 2
, However, war is in fact often boring for those involved.
There are often long periods of waiting and preparation, while the moments of
action are short and extremely confusing.
Williams, P. D. (2013). Security Studies (2nd
ed., pp.187-205), “Chapter 13: War”. New
York: Routledge.
Introduction
War is an intense form of political relations that impacts upon virtually every dimension
of human life.
It has caused huge amounts of suffering and destruction but it has also been a
major engine for social, political, economic and technological change.
War is much more than the strategies and tactics of war-fighting: it is a ‘full-spectrum’
social phenomenon that is present beyond the war front and beyond wartime, in and
among apparently pacific social, cultural and economic relations.
Three philosophies of war
The three philosophies of war are:
1. Political (Clausewitz)
Warfare as an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfil our will.
It was essentially a rational, national and instrumental activity: the decision to
employ the military instrument ought to be made on the basis of a rational
calculation taken by the political authority concerned in order to achieve some
specified goal.
2. Eschatological
War & Peacebuilding Summaries and Lecture Notes - Week 1-7 3
, A teleological view of history which would culminate ‘in a “final” war leading to
the unfolding of some grand design – divine, natural, or human.
Two variants are:
1. Messianic
The agency destined to carry out the ‘grand design’ is presumed to
exist already.
2. Global
The ‘grand design’ is presumed to arise from the chaos of the ‘final
war’.
3. Cataclysmic
War as a catastrophe that befalls some portion of humanity or the entire human
race. War could be seen as a scourge of God or as an unfortunate by-product
of ‘human nature’ or the anarchic ‘international system’.
Two variants are:
1. Ethnocentric
War as something disastrous that is likely to befall us; specifically war is
something that others threaten to do to us.
All that can be done is to forestall the impending disaster or alleviate its
worst effects.
2. Global
War as a cataclysm that affects humanity as a whole not just this or that
group of humans. No one is held responsible and no one will benefit
from it.
Focuses attention on the prevention of war.
Based on these descriptions, Rapoport suggested that ‘in political philosophy war is
compared to a game of strategy (like chess); in eschatological philosophy, to a mission
or the dénouement of a drama; in cataclysmic philosophy, to a fire or epidemic’.
War & Peacebuilding Summaries and Lecture Notes - Week 1-7 4
, The debate continues over whether Clausewitzean thinking (political philosophy) is still
relevant for analysing today’s wars.
1. The concept of the battlefield, so central to the way in which Clausewitz
understood warfare, has dissolved.
2. As the speeches of both Osama bin Laden and former US President George W.
Bush made clear, leaders on both sides of the ‘war on terror’ have often
rejected political narratives of warfare. Instead, they have adopted
eschatological philosophies in their respective rallying cries for a global jihad and a
just war against evildoers.
3. A third problem for advocates of the political philosophy – and one which Clausewitz
obviously never encountered – is war involving the ‘exchange’ of nuclear
weapons. Far from furthering the political objectives of the participants this is more
likely to resemble a mutual suicide pact between the states involved.
4. When confronted by ‘revolutionary’ wars, ‘military forces’ are often
indistinguishable from the local populace and one can never be sure they have
been eliminated ‘unless one is ready to destroy a large portion of the population’.
Generally, in the traditionally Anglo-American-dominated field of security studies the
political philosophy has been the most popular.
The functions of war
Warfare is not just an instrument of policy or an entirely negative phenomenon with
‘causes’ and ‘effects’; it also has functions.
As significant sectors of society may benefit from war.
War serves a variety of other functions besides victory:
1. Limit violence
This could be achieved in a variety of ways:
1. Geographically, efforts could be made to fight away from one’s own
homeland.
War & Peacebuilding Summaries and Lecture Notes - Week 1-7 5
, 2. Politically, one could ‘farm out’ violence and its adverse consequences to
militias or proxies.
3. Militarily, violence could be limited by avoiding direct confrontation/battles
with a competent armed enemy.
2. Fulfil the desire for immediate gain
This might be economic gain through the accumulation of commodities or the
desire for improved safety for one’s friends and supporters. But war may also
deliver psychological benefits.
3. Weakening political opposition
Not solely the enemy, but also by suppressing, dividing or delegitimizing actual
or potential critics within one’s own camp.
Importantly, all three of these aims ‘may not only compete with the priority of winning but
may also be actively counterproductive from a military point of view’
Trends in armed conflicts since 1945
Five main trends can be identified in armed conflicts since 1945:
1. Particularly 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 of 51 in 1991–1992, the number
of state based armed conflicts has dramatically declined.
This decline in armed conflicts can be explained with reference to four main
factors:
1. The end of colonialism removed a major source of political violence from
world politics.
2. The end of the Cold War, which encouraged the superpowers to stop
fuelling ‘proxy wars’ in the developing world.
3. The increased level of international activism spearheaded by the UN that
followed the end of the Cold War.
War & Peacebuilding Summaries and Lecture Notes - Week 1-7 6
, 4. 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. More than 400 non-state armed conflicts took place around the world since the
end of the Cold War.
5. The final trend worth identifying here is the shifting regional spread of armed
conflicts.
Since 1945, it is clear that at different times, different regions have experienced
far more wars than others. Until the mid-1970s East and Southeast Asiasuffered
the most battle deaths whereas during the latter stages of the Cold War most
such casualties were spread between the Middle East, Asia and Africa. During
much of the 1990s, however, sub-Saharan Africa proved to be, by far, the
world’s most conflict prone region.
Who fights? Who dies?
States are not the only belligerents in contemporary armed conflicts; armed actors
come in many shapes and sizes, including international organizations and a variety of
non-state actors.
Historically, the most prevalent armed non-state actors have been mercenaries,
private military companies, insurgents and a wide variety of paramilitaries, militias
and self-defence forces, tribal and clan-based groups as well as the infamous
suicide bombers.
With the reduction in the number of major engagements and the subsequent drop in the
number of battle-deaths, it is not surprising that a major part of violent deaths in
contemporary armed conflicts are civilians.
Humanitarian aid workers have also found themselves more likely to become the
targets of intentional violence.
War & Peacebuilding Summaries and Lecture Notes - Week 1-7 7
, However, the vast majority of fatalities in contemporary armed conflicts are so-called
‘indirect deaths’
These are people (mainly children, the elderly and women) who die from war-
exacerbated disease and malnutrition, usually brought on and/or intensified by the
process of displacement.
Is the nature of warfare changing?
In recent years debates about three questions have been particularly important in
addressing this question:
1. Whether the concept of ‘total war’ is useful for thinking about developments in
warfare.
2. Whether the processes of globalization have given rise to a ‘new’ type of warfare.
3. Whether advanced industrialized democracies in the West are waging a new type of
war compared to earlier historical periods.
The idea of total war
At its heart, the idea of total war revolved around the notions of escalation and
participation.
Fears of escalation derived from the concern that once started, warfare was difficult
if not impossible to control.
Now, total war is seen as a set of circumstances which reality can approach but
never reach.
As in practice, limits have always been placed or imposed on warfare.
Given these practical limitations, why has the idea of total war occupied such an
important place in the collective psyche of analysts and practitioners alike?
War & Peacebuilding Summaries and Lecture Notes - Week 1-7 8
