IR1198 LECT 4 PEACE & WAR

• War


  Organised violence carried on by political units against each other
• War


  The use of armed forces in a conflict, especially between countries
• War


  Organised set of hostilities conducted by states and initiated by the sending of large armed forces across an international boundary
• War (Clausewitz)


  Large scale military confrontations between the representatives of states
• Purpose of war (Clausewitz)

  An act of force intended to compel our opponents to fulfil our will and a continuation of political intercourse with a mixture of other means
• Nature of war (Clausewitz)

  • War's universal and eternal characteristics, such as the use of violence for political ends, do not change over time
• Forms of war (Clausewitz)

  • Constantly changing, including the ways in which wars are fought, transformed by changes in society and technology
• War and the state (Tilly)

  War makes the state and the state makes war
• Wars are often fought between non-state actors, not just states
• Conflicts in the Global South are more likely to subvert rather than support sovereignty
• Greed


  Wars are sometimes fought for material gain, such as additional territory, access to markets, or access to resources
• Even democratic states prefer to explain their international behavior in more noble terms, though material gain remains a central driver
• Grievance (faith and identity)


  Wars have been waged in the name of specific sets of ideas and values, with religion being an especially potent source of conflict
• Samuel Huntington's 'Clash of Civilizations' thesis has been heavily criticized for oversimplifying the complex character of Islam and the West
• Wars fought for faith and identity are most often fought between members of the same faith or identity group, although these can spill over into conflicts with other nations
• Revolution


  Revolution and the rise of revolutionary states have been another source of conflict, as revolutions intensify the security competition between states and sharply increase the risk of war
• Throughout the 20th century, nationalist revolutions and the belief in the need for revolutionary violence to overthrow Western domination have been principal sources of war
• Revolutionary wars aim to transform or overthrow the existing structure of international society, supporting Clausewitz's description of war
• The October Revolution of 1917 serves as an exemplary case study of how revolutions can increase the likelihood of conflict
• Throughout most of the 20th century, nationalist revolutions and the belief in the need for revolutionary violence to overthrow Western domination have been principal sources of war
• It was the folding of these nationalist struggles against the West into the wider Cold War that made conflict in the 3rd World so bloody
• Wars of national liberation were fought over 3 continents for the better part of 40 years after 1945, forcing Europeans to withdraw from their colonies in Africa and Asia, and handing the USA its most important military defeat of the post-WWII era
• Revolutionary wars


  Aim to transform or overthrow the existing structure of international society, supporting Clausewitz's description of war as a rational political tool
• Wars caused by the break-up of failed states have become far more common in recent years
• Military competition prior to 1989/1991 was either between different kinds of states (USSR VS USA) or for the establishment of new states (Vietnam's extended struggle against Japan, France and the USA)
• Civil wars have long been fought in the US in the 1860s and elsewhere in England, China, Russia, France and Spain prior to the Cold War
• Civil Wars


  Also known as INTRAstate wars, they are by-products of long-standing domestic conflicts that had been papered over by the Cold War until the superpowers' withdrawal of economic and political support from their clients around 1989/1991
• Withdrawal of support caused developing states (already traumatised and brutalised by the Cold War) to implode, hence these tend to take place in weak, failed, disintegrating states
• Resulting civil wars have made life quite literally 'poor, nasty, brutish and short' for the millions affected by them
• Forms of new wars

  • Secession from pre-existing states (as with the Tamils in Sri Lanka and the Chechens in Russia)
  • Gain control of state power (as in Angola and Mozambique)
  • Acquire access to lucrative commodities such as diamonds and other valuable raw materials (as continues to happen in the Eastern province of the Democratic Republic of Congo)
• New wars


  • Take place in states whose economies can no longer provide for their citizens' needs - unable to provide their citizens with public goods, states lose the loyalty of their populations and armed forces
  • Violence becomes increasingly privatised as criminal gangs and paramilitary groups gain control of people and territory
  • Political power shifts from the state to local identity groups, each of whom tries to defend its home territory against its neighbours
  • The line between 'soldier' and 'civilian' gets blurred, resulting in mass civilian casualties as armed identity groups attempt to 'ethnically cleanse' the areas they control
  • The result is a 'new war' in which mass civilian casualties, systematic rape and genocide become legitimate tactics in eyes of political leaders whose main aim is to defend and extend their identity group's territorial reach
• New wars do not tend to remain localised for long - they often draw international players into their civil conflicts, creating highly complex internationalised civil wars with a variety of local and foreign participants (i.e. ISIS in Syria and Iraq)
• New wars may be fought locally, but because of globalisation (and social media) they tend to involve what Kaldor terms a 'myriad of transnational connections' as well
• As a result, new wars are often conducted with the world's media present and local forces can count on some forms of external support
• Although they appear local, new wars are anything but that - they tend to draw foreign states that can ill-afford to stand idly by while another state falls apart, spreading the impact of civil conflicts through the length and breadth of international society (i.e. USA and Russia in Syrian conflict)
• These new wars bring powerful new weapons and tactics to bear, using the fruits of the revolution in military affairs (RMA), to prosecute wars in distant lands, against obscure enemies and for causes that often defy easy definition
• When thinking about the causes of war in the modern world, we have to consider the role played by the 'liberal' West
• By and large the West has viewed its post-Cold War foreign policy as benign - its strategic purpose, if it could claim to have one, was to do as little as possible on the assumption that there was no serious enemy to fight
• Instead, the USA and its allies tried to spread the political and economic values that had been so successful in seeing off the Soviet adversary (i.e. Bill Clinton and his reaction to Yugoslavia and Rwanda)
• However, herein lay a contradiction - if, after all, there were governments 'out there' who refused to accept this Western definition of order, what should be done about rogue states who insisted on playing by their own rules?