War and World Politics PDF

Chapter 14 War and world politics tar ak bark awi Framing Questions What is war? What is the relationship between war and politics? How should we study war? Reader’s Guide people. This chapter discusses what war is, how it fits...

Chapter 14 War and world politics tar ak bark awi Framing Questions What is war? What is the relationship between war and politics? How should we study war? Reader’s Guide people. This chapter discusses what war is, how it fits into the study of international relations, and how it Along with trade and diplomacy, war is one of the affects societies and politics in the Global North and oldest and most common elements of international South. The chapter begins by examining the work of relations. Like trade and diplomacy, war has evolved the leading philosopher of war, Carl von Clausewitz, in over time and changes with social context. War elicits order to outline the essential nature of war, the main strong reactions. Many believe it is necessary to pre- types of war, and the idea of strategy. It then turns to pare for and to fight wars against potential and actual some important developments in the history of war- enemies. Others believe war itself is the problem and fare, both in the West and elsewhere. It highlights the that it should be eliminated as a means to settle dif- close connections between the modern state, armed ferences and disputes between states and groups of force, and war. 226 tarak barkawi Introduction Questions of war and peace are central to the study other scholars advise governments in how to wage war of international relations. Scholars debate whether more effectively. They study what kinds of weapons to democracy offers a path to peace (see Opposing acquire, consider strategies to pursue, and investigate Opinions 14.1). Constructivists look at how friends the character and goals of potential adversaries. and enemies define one another, and at the social con- This chapter addresses the essential character of war struction of threats. Scholars of civil and ethnic wars, and how it changes in different social and historical con- particularly those fought in developing countries, texts. By centring attention on what war is and how it study ways to resolve conflicts and build a durable changes, we can better assess how it fits into the larger peace. Feminists and analysts of gender politics draw study of international relations. One of the paradoxes of attention to the centrality of war for gender relations, war is that it is both a violent conflict between groups, and to how changing constructions of masculinity and also a way in which antagonistic groups become con- shape war and violence against women, as for example nected with one another. That is, war is a social relation in the prevalence of rape in war (see Chs 9 and 17). among the parties to the conflict. Understanding what International lawyers study the legal dimensions of kind of social relation war is helps to situate it in the study going to war and of waging it. Scholars who specialize of world politics. Doing so reveals that different parts of in ethics and normative philosophy also study war. Yet the world have experienced war very differently. Opposing Opinions 14.1 Democracy creates peace among states For Against Immanuel Kant thought representative government could Statistical studies linking democracy with peace are less bring an end to war. In Perpetual Peace, written in 1795, Kant convincing than they appear. Prior to 1939, there were very argued that Europe would always be at peace if it were com- few democracies, especially if one considers as democratic only posed only of republics which obeyed the rule of law, guaranteed states with universal adult suffrage. After 1947, liberal democra- freedom of travel, and were members of an international federa- cies were allied with one another against the Soviet bloc and had tion (Kant 1991: 93–130). little reason to go to war with each other (Gowa 2000). Statistical tests suggest Kant might have been right. Democratic states have fought against democratic move- Depending on the exact definitions and data sets used, the find- ments. Western states have waged war against popular insur- ing is that no or very few democratic states have waged war gencies, such as anti-colonial movements or those seeking to against one another since 1816 (Doyle 1983a, 1983b; Russett remove authoritarian governments allied with the West. et al. 1993; Rummel 1997). Democracies fight covert wars that do not appear in sta- Democratic institutions make it harder for a state to go to tistical tests. The US overthrew a number of elected regimes it war. Separation of powers in government, the rule of law, and a feared were susceptible to communism during the cold war, but free media and public opinion all constrain the ability of leaders used the CIA and foreign proxies to do so (Barkawi 2001). to go to war. Explanations for peace are to be found at the level of the Democrats do not like to go to war against other democrats. international system, not regime type. Factors such as the bal- Liberal opinion in one democracy will argue against going to war ance of power, the relationship between the Global North and against another democracy. According to John Owen (1998), this is South, or the advent of nuclear weapons better explain when why Britain and the US did not go to war against one another after wars occur and what kinds of wars are fought (Barkawi and Laffey the War of 1812, despite serious crises in the nineteenth century. 1999; Layne 1994). 1. Do ‘democracy’ and ‘war’ change over time? Can their definitions be fixed for statistical tests? 2. Why do democratic states remain likely to go to war with non-democratic states? 3. Are the exceptions to the ‘democratic peace’ significant? For advice on how to answer these questions, see the pointers www.oup.com/he/baylis8e  Chapter 14 War and world politics 227 Defining war What is war? How should one think about it in the one last element of war is still missing. When a political study of world politics? First, wars have happened in entity fights a war, its leadership has in mind a purpose all known recorded histories. War predates the world for the violence. They have some idea of what they might of sovereign states, as well as that of globalization. War gain, or protect, by going to war. This determines how is very old, and it is all too common. It will likely be a political entity plans and prepares for war, and the with us long into the future. If war is a historical con- moves it makes once it goes to war. Thinking about the stant in one sense, in another it varies endlessly. War purposes pursued in war, and the planning and prepa- takes many different forms, from violent feuds between ration involved, is the subject of strategy. Political and local clans to the world wars of the twentieth century. military leaders try to make war serve as an instrument, In essence, war happens when two or more groups con- a means to an end they are trying to achieve. They think duct their relations with one another through violence. strategically, trying to connect the means—war, vio- They organize themselves to fight each other. Many lence—to some purpose, such as defending their home- different kinds of groups have done this: tribal peo- land; seizing a piece of territory; gaining independence; ples, nation-states, street gangs, guerrilla and terrorist or pursuing an ideological goal, such as spreading com- groups. They have used diverse weapons, from swords munism or Islam, or making the world safe for democ- to rifles, slings to drones, wooden ships to nuclear-­ racy or from terror. In contrast to strategy, tactics are powered aircraft carriers. the techniques employed by armed forces to fight other War is organized violence between political entities. armed forces, to win the combats or battles that make A political entity in this context is any kind of group up a war. Classically speaking, strategy is the art of capable of waging war. Such a group has a leadership arranging battles to serve the purposes of the war, while and it has resources—the human and material means— tactics are the art of winning battles (see Box 14.1). to organize violence. To organize violence means to In sum, war is organized violence among groups; it assemble an armed group, one capable of fighting other changes with historical and social context; and, in the armed groups. War happens when such groups actu- minds of those who wage it, it is fought for some pur- ally fight each other. War varies greatly because fight- pose, according to some strategy or plan. ing takes so many different forms. War is shaped by the kinds of societies that fight it, by the prevailing level Box 14.1 Clausewitz on strategy and tactics of technology, by culture, by economic circumstances, and by many other factors. War always has an under- The conduct of war... consists in the planning and conduct of fighting. [Fighting] consists of a greater or lesser number of lying similarity—violence between groups—but this single acts, each complete in itself, which... are called ‘engage- shifts and changes depending on when and where it is ments’ [or battles]. This gives rise to the completely different fought, and between whom is it fought. This changing activity of planning and executing these engagements them- character of war can be captured through the idea of selves, and of coordinating each of them with the others in war and society: society shapes war, and war shapes order to further the object of the war. One has been called tac- society. tics, and the other strategy... According to our classification, then, tactics teaches the use of armed forces in the engagement; This discussion yields a definition of war (orga- strategy, the use of the engagement for the object of the war. nized violence between political entities) and a broad (Clausewitz 1976: 128; emphasis in original) approach to studying it (war and society). However, Key Points War is organized violence among political entities, including both states and non-state actors. Ahow‘warwarandhassociety’ approach to the study of war looks at shaped society and at how society has shaped War has occurred frequently in history, but changes with war. context. Strategy is a plan to make the war serve a political purpose, Many kinds of groups can wage war, but in order to do so they have to ‘organize violence’ or create an armed force. while tactics are the techniques that armed forces use to win battles. 228 tarak barkawi War: international and global How does war fit into the study of world politics? form that this circulation takes (Barkawi 2005). War A first cut at this question begins with the sovereign connects the groups waging it. During the US invasion state. Today’s world can be described as national–­ and occupation of Iraq (2003–11), Iraqi and American international. National refers to nation-states, the main histories became entangled. What happened in Iraq ‘units’ of the international system. International refers affected the United States, and what happened in the to relations among sovereign nation-states. United States affected Iraq. War reorganizes the politi- From this national–international perspective, there cal entities and societies that wage it. In doing so, war are two types of war: civil war within a state, and inter- can have global effects. For example, the Second World national war between two or more states. A civil war War was composed of many different, but connected, happens when internal groups battle over control of a conflicts in Europe and the Asia Pacific, and is con- sovereign state, or when a group or groups within a state ventionally dated between 1939 and 1945 (see Case want to secede and form their own state. In the Spanish Study 14.1). As the war developed, it conjoined con- Civil War (1936–9), republicans and fascists fought flicts across vast spaces, killing over 60 million people. over who was to govern Spain. The American Civil War It was a global experience, even if remembered—and (1861–5) started when southern states organized a con- dated—differently by different countries. Some con- federacy and tried to secede from the United States. An sequences of the Second World War were the forma- international war occurs when two or more sovereign tion of the United Nations; the fatal weakening of states fight each other. An example is the Iran–Iraq War the European empires, leading to the new states that (1980–8), which began when Iraq invaded Iran. emerged from decolonization in Africa and Asia; and International and civil wars comprise an impor- new technologies, such as jet aircraft and nuclear weap- tant tradition in the study of war. However, war is both ons, which fundamentally altered the world that fol- older than the sovereign state and likely to endure into lowed. The Second World War demonstrates how the any globalized future. This suggests that we should think also about war outside of the sovereign state sys- Box 14.2 The international dimensions of tem. Until the 1960s, much of the world was made up of ‘civil war’ empires and colonies. The way in which these empires broke up set the stage for many of the conflicts that Many contemporary wars are ‘civil’ wars in that they are fought followed. on the territory of a sovereign state, and ultimately concern how and by whom that territory is to be governed. But these civil Many of the wars fought to build and defend wars typically involve an array of international actors, such as empires, and those which followed in the wake of empire, the United Nations (UN), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization do not fit into the model of a world made up of sovereign (NATO), humanitarian organizations and NGOs, foreign fight- nation-states. Wars today, and in the past, involve com- ers such as jihadis, and the covert or overt involvement of for- plex combinations of state and non-state actors fighting eign states. NATO intervention was decisive in civil conflicts in Kosovo in 1999 and Libya in 2011. In the on-going Syrian civil in a single territory, or across many territories. Civil wars war that began in 2011, several foreign states are directly and often involve an array of international actors and dimen- indirectly involved, including Russia, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, sions (see Box 14.2). War has evolved within and beyond the United States, France, and Britain. Also involved in Syria the nation-state. The global war on terror has brought is Hezbollah, a political party and armed group in Lebanon. together police, intelligence, and military forces, within Important populations and groups in the Syrian civil war stretch and among countries, to share information and conduct across different states, such as the Kurds, who are also in Iraq, Turkey, and Iran. Religion and politics bond together actors operations. The war on terror is fought across many across borders, as with Hezbollah, Shi’a Iraqi militias, and Iran. different territorial jurisdictions in connected ways. A The so-called Islamic State, another party involved in the Syrian bewildering array of actors, separately and in combina- civil war, at one point controlled territory across Iraq and Syria tion, engage in contemporary conflict. and had links to affiliates based in Libya, Afghanistan, Somalia, The imperial past and the transnational present and Nigeria, among other states. These international dimen- point to a second, global approach to the study of war in sions of ‘civil’ war show how the political groups and forces that wage war are in tension with, and spread across, the sovereign world politics. Globalization involves the circulation of territories of the national–international world. people, goods, and ideas around the planet. War is one  Chapter 14 War and world politics 229 Case Study 14.1 War and Eurocentrism: the Second World War and Mao Zedong’s communist party. This war raged between 1927 and 1936, paused for a truce to fight the Japanese, and started again in 1945, ending in 1950. In China, the Second World War is known as the anti-Japanese Resistance War. It was only a part of the more fundamental struggle over who would govern China that began in 1911 when the last imperial dynasty fell. For North Americans and Western Europeans, the Second World War is usually understood as a war between democ- racy and totalitarianism. But for East Europeans, Balts, many Ukrainians, and others, 1945 brought a Soviet occupation that would not end until the Berlin wall fell in 1989. East and West Europeans remain divided to this day over the memory and meaning of the Second World War. Similarly, for South Asians, the Second World War ultimately Chinese soldiers en route to India, Second World War brought them independence in 1947, not from the Japanese or © Everett Collection Historical / Alamy Stock Photo Germans, but from the British. As in the First World War, the British did not intend to give their own colonies self-determination. They While most of the wars mentioned in this chapter are followed were only forced to do so because the Second World War drasti- by their official dates in parentheses, these dates are subject to cally weakened Britain and it could no longer afford to hold on to dispute. For example, in Britain, the Second World War is dated India. Because the British had not promised independence at the 1939–45. Britain entered the war in September 1939, when Nazi beginning of the Second World War, some Indians fought on the Germany invaded Poland; the war ended for Britain in 1945, side of the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan). when Germany surrendered in May and Japan in August. In many Like the Indians, Koreans (who were ruled by Japan) ended histories of the war, these dates are taken as definitive, as marking up on both sides; many were recruited to serve in the Japanese the beginning and ending of the Second World War. We conceive army, while others joined Mao Zedong’s communists and fought a world war through European lenses ( J. Black 1998). first the Japanese and then Chiang Kai-shek’s forces. When Mao What made the Second World War a world war, and a global was victorious, he sent his Korean soldiers home to North Korea, experience, was the conjoining of the war in Europe with that in where they helped invade South Korea in June 1950, beginning the Asia Pacific. Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 the Korean War (1950–3). brought the United States into the war. For the United States, the When the Second World War happened, and what the war was war dated from then until Japan’s surrender in 1945. Japan’s attack about politically, shifted with geography. The interconnections on Pearl Harbor grew out of its involvement in a war in China, the among various wars and combatant societies can be difficult to Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45), a war rooted in resistance see when we use only the official, Eurocentric dates that separate to Japan’s invasion and occupation of Manchuria from 1932. The out different wars. Western powers imposed an embargo on Japan because of its actions in China. Japan decided it had to expand the war to acquire Question 1: Why is it difficult to definitively date wars? oil and other raw materials for its war effort in China, which led to Pearl Harbor. Japan’s war in China, in turn, was nested within Question 2: Why do the familiar dates of major wars seem to the Chinese Civil War between Chiang Kai-shek’s Republic of China reflect Western experience? war and society approach described above applies not Key Points only to the societies directly engaged in war, but to the shape of world politics as a whole. War, then, connects peoples and places and has global International war is a war fought between two or more sovereign states. dimensions. At the same time, the contemporary world remains organized around sovereign nation-states. States Awhich civil war is a war fought inside a sovereign state, but in practice may involve many different international generally possess the greatest military power, even if they actors. cannot always use it effectively. Wars are shaped by the Wars connect the combatant societies; through war, the parties to the conflict shape one another. national–international world in which they are fought. Both the international and the global are important in Wars ideas. lead to the global circulation of people, goods, and the study of war and world politics. To think more deeply about what war is, the next section turns to the principal Wars can shape world politics as a whole and have long-lasting consequences. philosopher of war, Carl von Clausewitz. 230 tarak barkawi Clausewitz’s philosophy of war Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831) was a Prussian officer primary trinity of passion, chance, and reason, the ele- in the French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1802) and the ments of this second trinity come together in variable Napoleonic Wars (1803–15). He served on the staffs of configurations in any actual instance of war. The char- generals and directed Prussia’s war college. He died acter of the combatant peoples, the qualities of their unexpectedly in a cholera epidemic, leaving behind armed forces, and the abilities of their leaders deter- unfinished papers which his wife, Marie, drew together mine the course of wars. and published as On War (Clausewitz 1976). This text is read in nearly every military academy and staff college Limited and total war in the world. Clausewitz was still working out his ideas when he died. His lengthy papers are subject to mul- From the basic framework of the two trinities, tiple, even contradictory interpretations. Clausewitz developed several additional points about the nature of war. One is that there are broadly two types of war: limited and total. A limited war is fought Clausewitz’s trinities for a lesser goal than political existence, for example a Clausewitz tried to capture the nature of war through war over a disputed territory or access to markets. The the idea of ‘trinities’. A trinity is made up of three dif- Falklands/Malvinas War (1982) was a limited war for ferent factors or tendencies, each of which can vary, cre- both Argentina and the United Kingdom; whatever ating many different possible combinations. According happened to the islands it was fought over, both states to Clausewitz, war has three dominating tendencies— would exist after the war. They never planned to invade passion, chance, and reason—which come together in each other’s home territories. A total war occurrs when varying combinations in any given historical instance a state or other political entity is fighting for its exis- of war. War always involves passion, in the motives for tence. In the Second World War, the Allies demanded fighting and in the enmities that inspire and sustain unconditional surrender from Nazi Germany. The killing in war. War is also a sphere of radical contin- war ended Adolf Hitler’s regime, the Third Reich. gency, of sheer chance. Anything can happen. All the Note that a war can be limited for one participant, different elements involved in military operations, from and total for another. During the First Indochina War human error to the weather, created infinite, unpredict- (1946–54), Vietnamese forces fought for liberation able combinations that shape the outcomes of wars and from the French empire (see Case Study 14.2). The war the fates of peoples. Finally, as in the notion of strat- was total for the Vietnamese—about the possibility of egy, war involves reason. Political leaders and military independence—while France would continue as a state staffs seek to achieve objectives through war. In doing with or without its empire in Indochina. The war was a so, they subject the use of violence to rationality; they limited one for France. try to contain and direct the violence to particular mili- The distinction between limited and total wars is tary and political purposes. Fundamentally, Clausewitz connected to another distinction: between real, or believed that war consists of various combinations of actual, war, on the one hand, and the true, or absolute, passion, chance, and reason. nature of war on the other. Real wars, wars that histori- Clausewitz went on to connect this primary trinity cally happened, were always limited by certain factors. to a second one, associating each of the three tenden- Human beings could only do so much violence to one cies with a component of a political entity. The realm of another (Clausewitz was writing before nuclear and passion he connected to the people, their feelings and biological weapons). Things always conspired to limit, beliefs about a war, and their will—or lack thereof—to to some degree, the amount of violence that might wage it. Chance he gave to the armed forces, who have occur in war. One limiting force Clausewitz called fric- to test their abilities against the trials and fortunes of tion. Friction was like a Murphy’s Law of war: every- war. Reason he attributed to leadership, to the political thing that can go wrong, will go wrong. Clausewitz authorities who decide on the war and set its ultimate thought that another limiting force was policy, the aims, and to the generals and other military leaders strategy a political entity was following. Leaders would who have to translate these aims into reality. Like the try to keep the war on track, to achieve its purpose.  Chapter 14 War and world politics 231 Case Study 14.2 War and society: France, the United States, and Vietnam At the Geneva Peace Conference of 1954, Vietnam was divided between a communist North under Ho Chi Minh and a new state in the South, under Ngo Dinh Diem, supported by the United States. A guerrilla insurgency broke out in South Vietnam, supported by North Vietnam and its Soviet bloc allies. At first the United States sought to conduct the war with advisers and other assistance, but in 1965 it committed its own troops, eventually numbering over 500,000. The United States, like France, believed it could not lose a war to non-Europeans, and was afraid of showing weakness to the Soviets. But it could not decisively defeat the insurgency or the North Vietnamese troops who infiltrated into South Vietnam. The Vietnam war ended President Lyndon Johnson’s hopes of re-election, while President Richard Nixon’s administration expanded the war Vietnamese and Western evacuees wait inside the American into Laos and Cambodia in increasingly desperate efforts Embassy compound in Saigon hoping to escape Vietnam via to bring it to a close. South Vietnam finally fell to the North helicopter before the arrival of North Vietnamese troops Vietnamese in April 1975. The United States, too, had been © Photo by nik wheeler / Corbis via Getty Images humiliated. As a consequence, the war in Vietnam came to occupy a central place in US politics, society, and culture for decades. France and the United States fought two long wars in Vietnam Presidential candidates were vetted for what they had done after the Second World War, known respectively as the First during the war. Were they war criminals or heroes? Had they and Second Indochina Wars (1946–54, 1955–75). The wars in supported the war? Did they evade the draft? Hollywood joined Indochina are case studies in how war conjoins countries in a the fray with numerous movies about the war. The films not violent, mutual embrace in which passion overcomes reason. only traced American society’s efforts to come to terms with the The wars shaped politics in all the combatant societies during the war, they also rewrote history and ventured into the realm of fighting and even long after it stopped. masculine fantasy. Sylvester Stallone’s character Rambo sought Vietnam had been part of the French empire from 1884. to restore America’s honour by returning to Vietnam to res- The Vietnamese independence leader, later known as Ho Chi cue US prisoners of war left behind. When the United States Minh, was at the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919. He had went to war against Iraq over the invasion of Kuwait in 1990–1, hoped to see President Woodrow Wilson and make his case President H. W. Bush claimed it had kicked the ‘Vietnam syn- for the self-determination of the Vietnamese people. Ignored, drome’, the reluctance of the United States to use force after Ho Chi Minh shifted to communist and radical politics, and defeat in Vietnam. Like the French war in Algeria, both of the US returned home to fight for independence. The Japanese occu- wars against Iraq (1990–1, 2003–11) were shaped by the puta- pied Vietnam during the Second World War and Ho Chi Minh tive lessons of Vietnam. In 2004, the war in Vietnam was again was ready to take over when they surrendered. But Britain sent front-page news as the Democratic Party presidential candi- its Indian army to Vietnam to hold it until France returned. date John Kerry was attacked over his military service and his Humiliated by its defeat at the hands of Nazi Germany, France subsequent anti-war activism. In the 2016 Republican primary hoped to restore its sense of greatness by reasserting its impe- campaign, candidate Donald Trump argued that Senator John rial role in the world. A nine-year war ensued between France McCain was not a hero because he had been captured by the and the Viet Minh (as Ho Chi Minh’s forces were known), with North Vietnamese. France’s involvement largely paid for by the United States. It took Vietnam decades to recover from the wars. While France supported US policy in Europe in exchange. The Soviet France and the United States suffered casualties in the tens of bloc supplied the Viet Minh, who finally defeated France at thousands, the Vietnamese lost between 2 and 3 million peo- the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Even more humiliated, ple in three decades of war. Much of South Vietnam had been now having been defeated by non-Europeans, the French army sprayed with Agent Orange (a herbicide) by the United States, returned home and went on to fight in Algeria, where another and unexploded ordnance continues to claim lives to this day. independence struggle was under way. When the French started to lose in Algeria, elements of the French army along Question 1: How and why do wars continue to shape society and with European settlers in Algeria plotted a coup attempt. The politics after they end? French Fourth Republic fell and Charles de Gaulle returned to power. France had suffered regime change as a result of losing Question 2: What do the wars in Vietnam tell us about the colonial wars. ­relationship between democracy and war? 232 tarak barkawi When this was accomplished, or when it was no longer achieved through extreme violence, such as Hitler’s possible, the war would be drawn to a close. vision of eradicating European Jews. In Clausewitz’s However, in contrast to these limiting factors of own time, the French Revolution had mobilized the real war, the true or absolute nature of war was esca- people for war, creating large armies of revolution- latory. Clausewitz thought that war has an inherent ary citizens. Politics fuelled rather than limited the tendency to extremes, to ever more violence. Each violence of war: ‘War, untrammeled by any conven- side is tempted to increase the amount of force it is tional restraints, had broken loose in all its elemental using to try to defeat the enemy, to compel surrender. fury’ (Clausewitz 1976: 593). War tries to draw into its cauldron ever more human Revolutionary and Napoleonic France pursued and material resources. Left to its own devices, in the ultimate aims. In seeking to establish French-allied absence of policy and friction, war would escalate in republics in states and principalities across Europe, scale; become more violent; go on longer; and extend France posed an existential challenge to the monar- over more space. As Clausewitz (1976: 77) noted, war chical regimes of the continent. Consequently, the is an act of force and there is no logical limit to an act French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars were total of force. Each move is checked by a stronger counter- in character; they provided the historical models for move until one of the combatants is exhausted. This Clausewitz’s theories. The twentieth century, with its inherent tendency of war to escalate is moderated by two world wars and the cold war, opened up new and the real human limits on the use of force. horrifying possibilities for the totalization of war. The capacities of modern states to organize unprecedented levels of violence seem unlimited. War and politics Clausewitz’s aphorism about war being the con- For Clausewitz, some of the limits to the use of force tinuation of politics draws our attention to how potentially arose from reason, in the form of strategic politics can both limit and fuel the violence of war. policy, the goal or purpose leaders were pursuing in It also highlights that war connects the politics of going to war. His most famous aphorism was that war is combatant societies. What happened at the war front a continuation of politics, with the use of other means affected what happened back home. For example, (see Box 14.3). By this he meant that war does not put a stop to politics, to relations with the other side. What happens is that violence is added to those relations. Box 14.3 Clausewitz on the primacy of A state can threaten or use force as a negotiating move, politics in war to get another state or political entity to do what it wants. Policy [or political purpose] is the guiding intelligence and For example, in order to get the Democratic Republic war only the instrument, not vice versa. No other possibility of Vietnam (DRV, or North Vietnam) to sign the Paris exists, then, than to subordinate the military point of view to Peace Accords in January 1973, the United States heav- the political... In short, at the highest level, the art of war turns ily bombed Hanoi and Haiphong in December 1972. into policy—but a policy conducted by fighting battles rather The basic idea is that the political purpose behind the than by sending diplomatic notes. We can now see that the assertion that a major military development, or the plan for use of force—such as getting the DRV to the negotiat- one, should be a matter for purely military opinion is unac- ing table—limits the use of force. One uses only enough ceptable and can be damaging. Nor indeed is it sensible to force to achieve the aim, as any more may be counter- summon soldiers, as many governments do when they are productive. In a war, force becomes part, but not all, planning a war, and ask them for purely military advice... No of the on-going political intercourse between states major proposal for war can be worked in ignorance of political and other combatants. In making war an instrument factors; and when people talk, as they often do, about harm- ful political influence on the management of war, they are not to achieve purposes, politics could limit or contain its really saying what they mean. Their quarrel should be with the violence. policy itself, not with its influence. If the policy is right—that is, But Clausewitz was well aware of a problem successful—any intentional effect it has on the conduct of the with this thesis. A different kind of politics, such war can only be to the good. If it has the opposite effect the as nationalism for example, could have the oppo- policy itself is wrong... Once again: war is the instrument of policy. It must necessarily bear the character of policy and [be site effect on violence. Especially when it comes to measured] by its standards. war, passions can overcome reason. Some politi- (Clausewitz 1976: 607–8, 610; emphasis in original) cal ideologies have irrational aims that can only be  Chapter 14 War and world politics 233 wars in Vietnam and Iraq shaped presidential politics Key Points in the United States (see Case Study 14.2). President Lyndon B. Johnson ended his campaign for re-elec- tion in the wake of the Vietnamese communist Tet Clausewitz developed two trinities to describe the nature of war: a primary one consisting of passion, chance, and Offensive of 1968. Conversely, what happened at reason, and a second one consisting of political leadership, armed forces, and the people. home, like the election of a new president, shaped the war. In the 2008 US presidential campaign, American Clausewitz divided war into two types: limited war fought for a purpose less than political existence, and total war in voters chose candidate Barack Obama, who promised which existence was at stake. to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and bring the troops home. So war is a continuation of politics Clausewitz made a distinction between ‘real war’, or war as it actually happens, and ‘true war’, the inherent tendency in a more fundamental sense. The political entities at of war to escalate. war impact one another, make one another different in myriad ways, because war connects them together. War for Clausewitz is a continuation of politics between the combatant societies with the addition of other— They continue their relations together by other violent—means. means, their histories and societies co-mingling in Political purposes can both limit and fuel the violence of war. the violence of war. War, state, and society in the West The modern nation-state, which would become the Greek and Roman practices concerning the training basis of the national–international world, developed in of disciplined, regular infantry. Armed with pikes and Western Europe from the sixteenth century onwards. willing to stand against cavalry, infantry could defeat Changes in the organization of armed force were cen- knights. But soldiers took time to train and cost money tral to this process. The state became a war-making to equip, pay, and supply. Central authorities had to machine which monopolized violence in its sovereign have sufficient funds on a regular basis, as the Roman territory. Western states went on to dominate world Empire did at its height. The second development was politics through the twentieth century. the invention of gunpowder, and the development of effective cannon and muskets. Such weapons ended the dominance of knightly cavalry and were eventually From feudalism to the nation-state able to breach castle walls and other fortifications. Particular kinds of armed forces—military technolo- In order to pay for these new armies, European gies and weapon systems—make possible particular sovereigns drew on the wealth of the great trading cit- kinds of politics. The control of force provides a basis ies. These cities wanted protection for themselves and for political power, so it matters what kind of armed their trade, too often taxed as it crossed every lord’s fief. forces are available. Consider the armoured knight of Disciplined armies were raised, bringing more territory medieval Europe. Historically, when knightly cavalry under the control of the sovereign. A kind of positive dominated the battlefield, political power fragmented. feedback loop was created. Larger territories meant Small groups of knights, under a lord and with a forti- more taxes, which could sustain armies and further fied place such as a castle at their disposal, could both conquest. From this fiscal–military cycle, the modern hold off central authorities—the king—and dominate territorial state grew. their local area. They extracted taxes and rents from Sovereigns went into debt paying to administer, the peasantry and from commerce. Territorial rule defend, and extend their territories. To help raise funds, was parcelled out, and the king was dependent on the from the sixteenth century onwards, sovereigns, cit- fealty of his lords to assemble an army or otherwise ies, and elites turned to long-distance trade in slaves, exercise power. sugar, spices, precious metals, and other goods, and Two military developments changed this: the emer- to the establishment of colonies and trading posts in gence of infantry armies and advances in military Asia, Africa, and the Americas. The new disciplined technology (McNeill 1982). During the Renaissance, soldiers—many recruited locally in the colonies—and European soldiers and scholars recovered ancient their firearms helped to secure these nascent empires. 234 tarak barkawi The state in Europe became a kind of ‘bordered power nineteenth century were Germany and Italy unified as container’ (Giddens 1985: 120). Inside its territory, it nation-states through a succession of wars. Western subjected society and economy to rule by a central European nation-states became extraordinarily authority. The state had ‘hard’ borders, imposing tariffs dynamic political, economic, and military entities. and controlling what came in and out of its territory, The territorial and popular nature of the nation-state and it defended these borders with its armed forces. The made it a particularly effective basis for mobilizing home population developed new, larger-scale national military power, as the world wars of the twentieth identities. They came to speak a common language, read century proved. But even in Europe, the nation-state about their country and its politics in the newspapers, was not everywhere. In the Balkans, in South-eastern and were administered under a common set of customs and Eastern Europe, and in Russia, large multina- and laws. They imagined themselves part of the same tional empires—the Ottomans, Austria-Hungary, and nation (B. Anderson 1983). The ‘nation-state’ emerged the Russian Empire—held sway until the First World as a form of political organization, in which a national War. Moreover, all the great nation-states of Western people live on the sovereign territory of their national Europe were also empires. Their colonies were mostly state (see Ch. 30). outside of Europe. Spain, Portugal, Holland, Britain, The composition of the new infantry armies shifted France, and Belgium had large overseas empires, to male citizens enlisted through mass conscription. important elements of which survived into the 1960s Until the French Revolution, the new infantry armies and 1970s. Angola, for example, won its independence were often described as mercenary. They were paid war from Portugal only in 1974. troops, many recruited abroad. But in 1793, at war with By the time the Angolans started fighting for inde- most of Europe, the French Revolutionary government pendence, the nation-state had already come to be seen turned to mass conscription, a levée en masse. The idea as the principal vehicle for self-determination. The was that male citizens had an obligation to serve the problem was that, both in and beyond Europe, popula- nation in exchange for their increased say in public tions and identities were not sorted into neat territorial affairs. Nationalism and citizenship became bound up packages. Ethnic identities did not always match the with military service. Since military service at the time national identity of the state. Population movements was seen as suitable only for men, this had implications from wars, famines, and other causes left people under for the extension of voting rights to women, which did foreign rule. How to make a patchwork of populations not occur until the twentieth century. Nationalism also and their identities match neatly the nation-state ideal? gave political leaders a new tool to stir the passions of Attempts to answer this question bedevilled politics, their populations, to encourage them to support the and often led to war, in and beyond Europe during the war effort. National conscription made military service twentieth century. a national experience for young men. In continental Europe, many of them did obligatory military service From the world wars to the cold war throughout the nineteenth century and most of the twentieth (when women, too, started to participate in Observing Napoleonic France, Clausewitz wrote that the armed forces in significant numbers). war had become the business of the whole people, not Max Weber, a German social and political thinker just a matter for governments and their small merce- from the turn of the twentieth century, captured the nary armies. But the state could not actually conscript centrality of war-making to the nation-state. For every young male. For one thing, it could not afford to Weber, the European state had an administrative staff feed, house, and clothe such a big army. The economy that upheld its claim to the monopoly on the legitimate could not produce enough weapons or supply enough use of force in a given territorial area (M. Weber 1978: ammunition. At the height of the Napoleonic Wars, 54). The state, the people, and the territory are sealed armies numbered in the hundreds of thousands. But together in one package by the monopoly on force. over the course of the nineteenth century, industrializa- From today’s perspective, the idea that we all tion, fossil fuels, and modern methods of mass produc- live in nation-states and typically possess a single tion made possible the raising and equipping of armies national citizenship seems natural. But the nation- of millions. With steam-powered ships and railways, state is a particular historical development, and a states could mobilize, move, and sustain these armies in relatively recent one. Only in the second half of the the field. Truly total wars became possible. For instance,  Chapter 14 War and world politics 235 Germany mobilized over 10 million to serve in its armed how the Soviet Union and the United States could deter forces in the First World War and nearly 20 million in each other was far from obvious. What mix of nuclear the Second World War (Bond 1998). and conventional forces was necessary? How was each During the world wars, the nation-state was a vehicle side to know what the other was capable of? for the mobilization of military power and the pursuit During the cold war, each side feared what was known of war. State bureaucracies provided the administra- as a disarming first strike. This was a nuclear attack that tive backbone necessary to run wartime militaries and destroyed the other side’s ability to retaliate; it would economies. Nationalism and nationalist ideologies, destroy all, or most, of their nuclear weapons. Defenceless, such as National Socialism or fascism in Germany, they would have to surrender. Fears like these led to legitimated the war effort and inspired people to par- enormous military budgets and huge, redundant nuclear ticipate. The experiences and sacrifices of war could forces composed of thousands of warheads. Jet bombers bond together people, state, and armed forces, if prop- and intercontinental and submarine-launched missiles erly managed by political leadership. were developed to deliver them. Both the Soviet Union However, the world wars also proved bigger than and the United States devoted enormous resources to the nation-state. War was waged at such scale, over each new generation of weaponry, while each spied on such vast spaces, that multinational alliances, like the its adversary. Across the Western world during the cold Axis and the Allies, formed to fight it. Wartime plan- war, transnational peace movements and a campaign for ning, both for military operations and for the economy, nuclear disarmament got under way. People in many dif- accustomed the Western allies to working together, lay- ferent places protested against the apparent insanity of ing the basis for NATO during the cold war. Imperial preparing for nuclear war. In the cold war, as in earlier powers such as Britain and France drew heavily on periods in history, the nature of warfare and the kind of their colonies for recruits and resources. The British weapons available shaped political developments, inside Indian army numbered over 1.5 million during the countries as well as across and between them. First World War and over 2 million during the Second The two sides in the cold war formed blocs, or alliances, World War, while hundreds of thousands of West and of states, each led by one of the superpowers. Both blocs North Africans fought for France. Imperial Japan maintained large conventional armed forces in Europe, ruled Manchuria and much of China as well as Korea, along the border between East and West Germany. Any and hundreds of thousands of Koreans served in the actual use of these forces against one another threatened Japanese army during the Second World War. to escalate into nuclear war. Another meaning of cold There was another, more deadly sense in which war war was this continual preparedness to wage old-style, seemed to outgrow the nation-state: nuclear weapons. conventional war, but never actually doing so. The actual The United States ended the war against Japan by drop- fighting in the cold war occurred mostly outside Europe, ping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. These parts Japanese had little choice but to capitulate. To avoid of the world were known then as the Third World, the being put in such a position during the cold war, both the areas from which European empire had retreated. In the United States and the Soviet Union built large nuclear Third World, the cold war was often conducted by proxy. arsenals. The problem with nuclear weapons from a stra- The superpowers advised and supported their allies, or tegic point of view was that they were too destructive. covertly intervened in civil wars. Thus, as a global experi- They threatened to destroy whatever it was one might be ence, the cold war was largely cold in Europe and North fighting over. If nuclear strikes on the scale imagined by America, and hot nearly everywhere else (Westad 2007). cold war planners had ever been carried out, they would When the cold war ended, large conventional armed have caused a ‘nuclear winter’, the collapse of life on forces were scaled back. Conscription was finally stopped much of the planet. In such a situation, total war, or any- in many European states. Armed forces became profes- thing that might lead to it, had to be avoided. sional and volunteer. Nuclear weapons were retained This created a paradoxical situation known as by most of the powers that had them. But without the nuclear deterrence, a cold war between ideologically ideological contest between Soviet communism and hostile blocs. Each side had to have nuclear weapons to Western democracy, the fear of a nuclear war receded. keep the other side from using them or threatening to Instead, the concern soon became that unstable states use them. They prepared to wage nuclear war in order or a terrorist or other militant group might be able to to stop each other from waging nuclear war. But just acquire a nuclear weapon (see Ch. 29). 236 tarak barkawi Key Points Armed force is an important basis for political power, and the types of military technology available shape Nationalism and war had a symbiotic relationship: nationalism motivated many people to go to war, while war politics. increased national feeling. Modern states claimed a monopoly of legitimate violence within their territories. Since Western states were both sovereign states and empires, their wars had both international and global dimensions. War, state, and society in the Global South War and society in the Global North and South are con- America, where it involved Spain, France, England, and nected, both historically and in the present. The wars Native Americans and was known as Queen Anne’s War of decolonization and other violence that accompanied (1702–13). The Seven Years’ War (1755–64) involved inter- the retreat of empire shaped much of today’s world. connected campaigns fought in North America, Europe, And the fraught outcomes of these wars lie behind South Asia, and the Philippines. Along with the War of many contemporary conflicts. In much of the Global Austrian Succession (1740–8), which involved fighting South, armed forces came to be directed primarily at in Europe, North America, and South Asia, these wars their own populations, on missions of internal security. are good candidates for the title of ‘world war’ (see Box They regularly fought ethnic and civil conflicts within 14.4). But because wars are usually studied and named their sovereign territories, but these conflicts were rife from a Western perspective (see Case Study 14.1), only with foreign intervention of various kinds. While in the the twentieth-century wars which devastated Europe to West conflict often took the form of international war, an unprecedented degree are known as world wars. in the Global South conflict ran in and through sover- Most of the time, for the states of Europe, the pri- eign states and involved many non-state actors. What mary threat came from other states and their armed made the war on terror so different from previous forces. Near continual warfare among European states eras of armed conflict involving the Global North and South was that non-state actors from the non-European Box 14.4 What is a ‘world war’? world—the jihadis of militant Islam—directly attacked Western societies. What makes a war a ‘world’ war? The wars listed below con- sisted of linked campaigns fought across different continents and oceans. In the Seven Years’ War, for example, Britain Wars of empire sought to defeat France by attacking its colonies in South Asia and North America as well as by fighting in Europe. A higher If war and society in Europe from the sixteenth century standard for considering a war a world war is whether or not was about state-building, in the non-European world it a war has led to a new world order. The Second World War, was about empire-building. European powers first pen- for example, brought an end to the era of formal European etrated and then defeated political entities in the non- empire. Wars that changed world order are marked with an European world, beginning with the Spanish conquest asterisk. Possible world wars: of the Americas. Britain and France fought over North America and South Asia. Eventually, even large non- War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14)* European powers such as the Chinese and Ottoman War of the Austrian Succession (1740–8) empires were subordinated to Western powers. Africa Seven Years’ War (1755–64) was carved up by European states. French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1802)* As the previous section showed, imperial expan- Napoleonic Wars (1803–15)* sion was an important dimension of state-building in First World War (1914–18)* the West. This meant that conflicts among European Second World War (1939–45)* sovereigns had imperial dimensions as they fought over Cold war (1947–91)* colonies and trade routes. For example, the War of the Global war on terror (2001– on-going)* Spanish Succession (1701–14) was fought partly in North 238 tarak barkawi peacefully amid increasingly hostile host societies. Racial Key Points prejudice and fears of immigration among Westerners became bound up with the war on terror (see Chs 18 and 28). Western military action in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, State-building in Europe meant imperial wars in the non-European world. and elsewhere killed many more civilians as so-called Empires were concerned with internal security and used armies and security forces raised from colonized ‘collateral damage’ than jihadi terrorists managed to do populations. on purpose. As in earlier periods in history, but in new ways, war and society in the Global North and South Great powers used military assistance to intervene in the Global South after decolonization. were bound up together. Violent events and actions in one part of the world impacted people in another part War and society in the Global South and North have become interconnected in new ways in the war on terror. of the world, through a global chain of cause and effect. Conclusion From the development of the nation-state in Europe of war, and the dominant tendencies in war. The chap- through to the present day, armed forces and war were ter has shown how, in different parts of the world, in central to world politics. Military power shaped the different moments in history, war has shaped politics kind of politics that were possible, while war decided and society. In turn, politics and society have shaped which powers and ideologies dominated. War and the character and purposes of war. The types of mili- armed force have had both affinities and tensions with tary technology available and the prevailing forms of the nation-state and the national–international world. military organization have determined the character of They have also had global dimensions. War-fighting world politics. required multinational alliances. Western nation- War remains an unpredictable, creative, and very states were also global empires. What was happening violent force in world politics. New ways of organizing in Europe, or between the Soviet Union and the United violence, and of making war, are evolving. Neither the States, had consequences for the Global South. national–international nor the global dimensions of war This chapter has considered what war is as well as and society look set to disappear any time soon. Much its social and historical character. It used Clausewitz will depend on how and in what ways these dimensions to introduce the fundamental nature of war, the types continue to intersect with one another in the future. Questions 1. Explain and evaluate Clausewitz’s two trinities. 2. What is the difference between a limited war and a total war? 3. In what ways is war the continuation of politics by other means? 4. Analyse a war using the war and society approach. 5. What is strategy? What are tactics? 6. How did war and armed force shape the development of the modern state? 7. What is the relationship between nationalism and war? 8. Explain the difference between the national–international and global dimensions of war. 9. How are the national–international and global dimensions of war connected? 10. Explain how patterns of warfare differ in the Global South and North. Test your knowledge and understanding further by trying this chapter’s Multiple Choice Questions www.oup.com/he/baylis8e