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Chapter Seven: The Changing Nature Of War
Review |
This chapter examines changes in the nature of warfare, and in particular the breakdown of norms to limit violence and protect civilians during wartime. The chapter begins by examining Clausewitz’s belief that war had to be carefully managed and controlled in order. It then examines how the increasing destructiveness of the weapons and tactics of the World Wars and the Cold War led to the possibility of total war. From there, the chapter examines the advent of “smart” weapons designed to win wars with limited casualties. Concerns about the destructiveness of war are not limited to wars between states. The second half of the chapter focuses on unconventional warfare within states. It examines the particular problems associated with guerrilla warfare and failed states. It then considers why intrastate wars erupt and how they are best managed. Finally, the chapter turns to one of the most challenging contemporary problems, global terrorism.
1. War as an extension of politics
The West’s greatest military strategist, Karl Maria von Clausewitz, wrote extensively on the relationship between war and politics. He feared that future wars would grow beyond the political aims for which they were fought.
2. On the road to total war: the world wars
a) Clausewitz’s fears were realized as industrialization and ideology caused wars to grow more and more global until they threatened the very survival of humankind.
b) The two world wars saw a dramatic growth in the level of violence and the geographic spread of war, as well as erosion of norms protecting civilians.
3. Technology and interstate wars
The relationship between war and politics, tactics, and the safety of civilians has been tied to changing military technology. The implications of advances in military technology are often misunderstood. Such misunderstanding led generals to believe that offensive operations would dominate World War I which turned into a war of attrition.
a) Technology and the conduct of World War I
- Technological advances critical for fighting World War I include the development of railways and steamships, the Bessemer process for making steel, the canning of food, the machine gun, barbed wire, and the use of tanks, submarines, and poison gas in combat.
- Europe’s leaders failed to recognize that many of these changes tipped the balance in favor of defensive warfare. Instead, they believed they needed to take the offensive to survive.
- The failure of Germany’s Schlieffen Plan demonstrated the consequences of this flawed thinking.
b) Technology and the conduct of World War II
- Germany and Japan effectively adapted technologies first developed in the previous war in World War II. France, in contrast, assumed World War II would be fought like World War I.
- Large-scale strategic bombing, culminating in America’s dropping of 2 atomic bombs, dramatically raised the level of violence against civilians.
c) Technology and the Cold War standoff
- Technological developments in the Cold War era include nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons and new delivery systems.
- These new technologies increased the threat to noncombatants and reduced the effectiveness of state boundaries as a source of security.
- New efforts, missile defenses, also evolved to manage and limit wars.
4. The era of smart weapons
a) New microelectronic technologies are being used to develop “smart” weapons that reduce promise to reduce casualties in warfare.
b) These high-tech precision weapons and the tactics they involve are having a great impact on warfare, especially in reducing civilian casualties and collateral damage.
c) However, countries that do not have access to these technologies may turn to weapons of mass destruction to counter them.
d) Smart weapons are also ineffective against low-tech adversaries who employ terrorism and guerrilla warfare.
5. Irregular wars
The nature of warfare has transformed again since the end of the Cold War. The number of interstate wars is in decline, while intrastate ethnic, nationalist, and religious wars are on the rise. Many of these wars are fought in the developing world.
a) Guerrillas, ant-colonial struggles, and revolutionaries
- Hit-and-run tactics have evolved to be used against conventional armies to increase guerrillas’ popular support, especially in the countryside, and broaden opposition to governments.
- Modern guerrilla strategists are inspired by the tactics used by Mao Zedong in China’s civil war and Che Guevara in Cuba’s revolution.
- These tactics have been especially useful in anti-colonial movements in Asia and Africa.
b) Machetes and failed states
- Violence has become endemic in several LDCs that are falling apart owing to poverty, ethnic and tribal cleavages, and corruption.
- The governments of these states are generally deemed illegitimate, are unable to exercise authority over their territory, cannot provide security or support for their citizens, and usually face armed resistance.
- Cases of state failure include Somalia, Liberia, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
c) Others at risk of state failure
- Several large and important states, like Colombia, Nigeria, and Indonesia, have not yet collapsed in violence but threaten to do so.
6. Intrastate war
There are a variety of explanations at different level of analysis for the outbreak of intrastate wars.
a) Sources of intrastate war
- The fallout of interstate conflict: the global level of analysis
Intrastate wars may be a product of conflicts between states that share a transnational ethnic group or of meddling by external powers.
- State-level explanations
- Ethnic hatred provides an inadequate explanation of conflict, even identity conflict.
- More often, groups fight over economic gain or righting past and present political, economic, and social injustices. Such groups become caught in a security dilemma that is difficult to escape.
- Individual-level explanations
- Social identity theory suggests that conflict may arise out of members’ efforts to distinguish their groups from others and prove it has higher status.
b) Managing intrastate war
- Intrastate conflicts are particularly difficult to resolve because the parties must live together in the aftermath.
- Intrastate wars are most often resolved with the assistance of foreign parties to oversee the implementation of peace agreements.
- In the case of identity conflicts, power-sharing agreements or physical separation of hostile groups may be necessary.
7. Global terrorism
Terrorism is a form of irregular warfare that entails the threat or use of violence against noncombatants either by states or militant groups.
a) Early terrorist activity
- Terrorism dates back centuries. It is known to have been used by groups in the first century AD. Early groups often pursued a religious agenda.
- Some states also have used terrorism against their enemies, including the French state during the Revolution and Vladimir Lenin after Russia’s 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.
- International terrorism emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. It was first used by revolutionary left-wing groups in Europe and by Palestinian groups seeking to advance their cause against Israel.
b) Today’s terrorist threat
- Terrorism is changing as today’s terrorists employ modern technology, have a global range, exhibit more ambiguous political motives, and achieve greater destructiveness.
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Focus Questions |
Q1 What role did interstate war play in the affairs of European states after the Peace of Westphalia, and how has this role changed?
A1 Europe's religious wars, in which crime and legitimate violence were indistinguishable, convinced leaders of the need to limit wars, a conviction articulated by the Prussian military strategist Karl Maria von Clausewitz. Following Clausewitz, Europe's leaders regarded war as an instrument of policy wars were initiated to achieve specific objectives and in which the level of violence should not exceed the magnitude of those objectives. Observing the intensification of war under Napoléon Bonaparte, Clausewitz warned against losing sight of the political objectives and letting violence get out of control until it bore no relationship to the original reasons for going to war. The spread of nationalism and industrialization in the 19th century dramatically increased the intensity and possible magnitude of warfare. World War I reflected Clausewitz's worst fears as generals rather than statesmen decided when and how the war should be fought, the original war aims were forgotten, whole nations were involved in the struggle, and enemies mobilized military power to harm both civilians and soldiers in an effort to crush one another. World War II continued the process as Hitler initiated the Holocaust against the Jews and others who were detested by the Nazis, and to extirpate communism and enslave the Slavic peoples of the Soviet Union. The war became global after Japan's attack on the United States and was fought on all the world's continents. The bombing of cities, climaxing in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, confirmed that the distinction between innocent civilians and armed forces had disappeared.
Q2 What is the role of technology in war?
A2 Technology is a major factor in warfare, but generals and statesmen rarely understanding the implications of new military technologies. Even though technological advances before World War I had shown in the case of the American Civil War that the next war would be long and arduous and that the defense would dominate the offense, most leaders believed it would a short war dominated by rapid movement and bold offensive action. In fact, a combination of massed artillery, machine guns, barbed wire, industrialized production, submarines, smokeless powder, and poison gas among other factors made World War I a static war of attrition and massive casualties. In preparing for World War II, the victors of 1918 assumed a future conflict would be like that which had just ended. In fact, defensive preparations like France's Maginot Line proved virtually useless again Germany's and Japan's innovative use of technologies first used in World War I—the tank, the bomber, and the submarine. The Cold War saw the introduction of weapons of mass destruction, especially nuclear weapons, and a continual arms race between the two blocs. These were weapons, however, that could not be used without incurring a risk of mutual suicide. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has introduced a new generation of high tech precision weapons combined with electronic surveillance of entire battlefields. Such weapons, it was believed, would reduce casualties—both military and civilian—and make wars shorter and less destructive. Starting in 1991, such weapons were used with great effect. However, they have not been effective in America's efforts to contain the insurgency in Iraq or ending the civil war that has engulfed that country. As a result, the Iraq War has focused attention again of irregular warfare.
Q3 What is irregular war, and what are some of its consequences?
A3 Since the end of the Cold War, there have been few conventional interstate wars and an increase in civil and transnational violence involving guerrillas, militias, and mercenaries that routinely target civilians. Such wars often involve efforts to win political rather than military victories. Guerrilla warfare, which uses evasion and deception, and subversion and in which operations are conducted by predominantly indigenous soldiers who may appear as civilians, dates back millennia. However, in recent decades guerrilla warfare was pioneered by Mao Zedong and the Chinese communists who sought successfully to cultivate support among China's rural population during the Chinese civil war and by Ho Chi Minh who used guerrilla warfare with great effect during the Vietnam War. In recent decades, irregular warfare has become increasingly common in the developing world where it is conducted by militias in search of booty and political power. In these contexts, it is linked to the failure of states like Somalia, Sierra Leone and Liberia in which public services have disappeared, the state no longer provides security, and civilians become victims and refugees. There is concern that the future may witness the collapse of larger states such as Nigeria and Indonesia.
Q4 What are the sources of intrastate war, and what ways exist to manage it?
A4 Intrastate or internal wars are fought for political power, territory, booty, and ethnic revenge, and have few of the attributes associated with the warfare described by Clausewitz. Causes of such warfare can be found at all levels of analysis. One cause at the system level is the presence of a transnational ethnic group and an irredentist neighbor, a condition present in the outbreak of the war in Bosnia in 1992. Another system-level cause is intervention by powerful outside states, a factor that was important during the Cold War. State-level causes include ethnic hatred, high economic dependence on natural resources like oil or diamonds, a search for vengeance by one or another group for past wrongs, and domestic security dilemmas. Finally, individual-level explanations include a psychological need on the part of individuals to belong to groups and maintain a distinctive identity. Among the strategies that have been developed to manage intrastate wars, foreign intervention—humanitarian intervention—can be effective in guaranteeing agreements and protecting adversaries as they disarm, providing foreign aid, or even tipping the balance in favor of one of the adversaries. Another approach involves power-sharing arrangements among adversaries in which power and economic benefits are allocated among adversarial groups. Finally, physical separation of enemies may be necessary to bring an end to violence.
Q5 What is international terrorism, and how has it evolved?
A5 Terrorism is a weapon of the weak to influence the strong by threatening or using violence against innocent civilians and so demoralizing and intimidating enemies. Terrorism has been used fro centuries by both governments and their enemies, but the threat of terrorism by leftist groups in Europe and Latin America and national groups ranging from the Provisional Irish Republican Army to the Palestinian group Black September became acute in the 1960s and 1970s. Recent decades have witnessed the emergence of a far more dangerous terrorist threat on the part of those like Islamic militants who are prepared to commit suicide and use weapons of mass destruction to great mayhem among enemies. These new terrorists are more fanatical than earlier terrorists, more willing to kill large numbers of people indiscriminately, and more willing to give up their own lives. They are also more likely to be organized transnationally and to make use of modern technology like the Internet and WMD. |
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