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Lecture 1: Ernst Dijxhoorn& Eamon Aloyo– War, What is it (good for)?Freedman, L. (2007). War, “Chapter 1: Introduction”, pp.3-8
When is something a war:
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 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. Urban
rioting in the United States may be vicious but it is essentially a police matter: it does not take on the
characteristics of a civil war until an attempt is made to take over the basic functions of the state. States
do not only go to war because of an immediate threat to their own survival. They are often part of
alliances such as NATO. Through which they accept some obligations to protect others.
Security:
Security is a combination of a physical condition, in the sense of being able to prevent others inflicting
harm, and a mental condition, in the sense of confidence that this is indeed the case. So much of the
threat assessment will be dependent not only on identifying hostility in the external or internal
environments but on an awareness of a vulnerability within the society that the hostile might target and
exploit. Because of these vulnerabilities there are aspects of security which have nothing to do with
armed force. A government which senses that its people are getting restless may be better advised to
look to economic conditions or means of free political expression than to physical repression.
Occurrence of war:
Wars tend to occur when there is a doubt about the outcome. If the power relations are clearcut then
the weak may recognize that they have little choice but to comply with the wishes of the strongest. Even
where there is awareness of a potential enemy, preparation for war is not the only option. There may be
a deal to be done or a shared interest to be jointly developed which might deflect attention from more
divisive matters, or a display of reassurance to convince this potential enemy that there is no reason to
be suspicious.
,Williams, P. D. (2013). Security Studies (2nd ed., pp.187-205), “Chapter
13: War
War
War is much more than the strategies/tactics of warfare, it is the full spectrum of social phenomena far
beyond warzones and wartime in social/cultural/political/economic relations in a society. And most
fatalities in armed conflicts are indirect deaths (children, woman etc..) through disease and/or
malnutrition for example. The three philosophies of war describe war as follows >
- Political: war is a game of strategy (Clausewitz)
Clausewitz was arguably the most proponent of the political philosophy of war. This defined 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 political challenge of warfare was how to achieve such rationality
given the fluctuating relationships between his central trinity of actors - the people, the government and
the military - given their principal characteristics - passion, reason and technique.
- Eschatological: war is a mission A teleological view of history. Rapoport offered 2 variants:
Messianic: in the messianic variant the agency destined to carry out the grand design is
presumed to exist already. Its mission was to impose a just peace on the world, thus eliminating
war from future history.
Global: In the global variant, the grand design is presumed to arise from the chaos of the final
war.
- Cataclysmic: war is a disaster ‘’as a catastrophe that befalls some portion of humanity or the entire
human race’. Here, war could be seen as a scourge of God or as an unfortunate by-product of ‘human
nature’ or the anarchic international systems. This philosophy also comes in 2 variants:
Ethnocentric: sees war as something that is likely to befall us; specifically war is something that
others threaten to do to us.
Global: views 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.
Rapoport suggested that in political philosophy war is compared to a game of strategy (like
chess); in eschatological philosophy to a mission or the denouement of a drama; in cataclysmic
philosophy, to a fire or epidemic.
Clausewitzean thinking is contested in the modern era for several reasons:
1. The first is that the modern battlefield is no longer aligned with that of when Clausewitz came
up with the concept. The urbanization of warfare, the reach of terrorist organizations and the
hybridization of warfare all contribute to this.
, 2. The second reason is that for example with the war on terror both sides have often rejected the
political narration of the war. Instead what they did in their rallying cries was to focus on
Eschatological concepts, for example in the cry for a global jihad.
3. Thirdly, the introduction of nuclear weapons goes way further than political reasoning of war. It
is a mutual suicide pact for both sides. And finally we see that insurgencies, revolutions do not
call for the classic approach of destroying your opponent’s military forces, as often the enemy is
blended within the civilian populations.
The functions of war:
War seems to be the effort to win a violent contest against an enemy as soon as possible, however
studies have shown that this is not always the case and that other functions of war play an important
role as well. Several functions other than victory are >
- Limiting violence: The aim is to limit your own exposure and your constituency to the violence.
This is achieved by outsourcing the war to your proxies, fight the war outside your own territory
and/or avoid battles against a better equipped army.
- Immediate gains: two ways > economic gain through accumulating resources, or psychological
gain by giving people the sense of playing a important role in society.
- Weakening political opposition: can be the enemies or own political opposition. Suppressing,
dividing or delegitimizing of potential critics within your own camp.
Trends in armed conflicts since 1945:
- Decline in interstate conflicts, rise in intrastate (between a state and an internal opposition
group) conflicts.
- State based armed conflicts have declined significantly, partially due to the end of colonialism,
the end of the Cold War, increased level of international activism by for example the UN and
finally the increased popularity of global norms. This decline can be explained with reference to
4 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 fueling ‘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.
4. the increasing popularity of global norms that proscribe the use of military force in human
relationships
- Sharp decline in battle deaths.
, - Sharp increase in non-state armed conflicts.
- Shifting regional spread of armed conflicts, meaning that the historic constraint of climate and
geography have become less important. Constraints imposed by geography and climate have
meant that major wars have been confined to a relatively small portion of the earth’s surface.
Since 1945, it is clear that at different times, different regions have experiences far more wars
than others.
Is the nature of warfare changing?
Three important ideas
The total war: The concept revolves around the notion of increased escalation and participation.
The fear is that once started a war is hard to contain and control, the increased participation
refers to the growing involvement of civilians in warfare both as combatants and laborer’s for
supplies, and the fear that they would be targeted in a war. But in reality there have always
been restraints in war, morally and or practically.
“The new war”: The idea that “new wars” are distinct form “old wars” in terms of their goals,
methods and systems of finance, which all would reflect the erosion of the state’s monopoly on
organized violence. Some of the fears are that these “new wars” are financed through a
decentralized global system, use of guerrilla and insurgency tactics and the goal of eradicating
certain identity groups. But many of these fears are contested, wars have been globalized for a
long time and insurgency tactics have been used for a long time as well.
The contemporary Western way of war: The trend of mostly Western countries changing their
warfare ambitions to spectator sports. Using a limited aid of advisors or small expeditionary
forces to achieve a goal. The reasons for this development are the new definition of Western
states of the enemy, which used to be a state, but now is much narrower. The enemy is now
often just a single leader or its regime. And the delegitimization of civilians as acceptable
targets, which means Western states want to minimize collateral damage. And finally these wars
do not require full societal participation such as the First and Second World War for example.
Instead they are fought by a small number of professionals.
Key characteristics of spectator wars:
1. They are expeditionary: based on the localization of the conflicts concerned and a desire to fight
away from the Western homeland.
2. The enemy is narrowly defined as the leadership. Regime of the target state rather than the
whole of the enemy state’s society.
3. The desire to minimize collateral damage because only small elements of the enemy society are
identified as legitimate targets.
4. Force protection, that is, the need to minimize risks to Western forces, is a significant priority.
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