War §

• War has always existed
• Key Terms
  • Eschatological
  • Cataclysmic

Definition of War ¹ §

• War in the past “an act of force intended to compel our opponents to fulfil our will”

  • “a continuation of political intercourse with a mixture of other means”
  • War is a form of politics

• War now: is harder to define because Non-State actors

  organized violence carried on by political units against each other

Nature of War ¹ §

• Violence is a necessary, but not a sufficient, requirement for a conflict to be defined as a war.
• War requires highly organized societies.
  • Internal Scale Cooperation: is possible which war requires a society to cooperate in performing complex tasks on a large scale.
  • External Scale Cooperation: is difficult to cooperate making hostilities
• War can be a powerful catalyst for change.
• The nature of war remains constant, but its form reflects the particular era and environment in which it occurs
  • Contemporary warfare takes place in a local context,
  • but it is also played out in wider fields and influenced by
    • non-governmental organizations, intergovernmental organizations, regional and global media, and users of the Internet.
    • In many ways, contemporary wars are partly fought on television, and the media therefore have a powerful role in providing a framework of understanding for viewers of the conflict.
  • Contemporary warfare is being influenced by Globalization
    • As the world is now interconnected, wars are hard and too costly to manage than just cooperating or solving arguments peacefully

	Past Wars	Modern War
Parties	Inter-State Wars	Intra-State War, different factions & groups in control of each part of state
Consequences	Only affect rural people	affects everyone, Mass destruction & deaths, genocide, global economic ripple
Means	Conventional weapons, airforce, navy	More destructive capabilities, nuclear weapons, cyberattack, satellite
Causes	Pursue state’s objectives

• Size of state and power determines war strategy of states
  • Powerful states try to catch up on arms race
  • Weak states practice guerilla tactics, whoever lasts the longest will survive
• Globalization increases the sales of weapons around the world

1. Three Variants of War Literature ² §

Clausewitz says war is a political instrument §

• Friction is common in war: there’s always small incidents that’s uncontrollable which slow down the planned objective.
• Total War: every single person in the state have a role to play in the war
  • How to know if a war is total?
  • Whether the political objective of opponent is limited/unlimited
  • You have to match or go over the political objective of the opponent

1.2. Eschatological Philosophy §

• Eschatological: the end of the world, the end of time
  • Doomsday
• Eschatological Philosophy: war is destructive to everything and is part of a grand design
  • World domination: Christian Crusade
  • Ethnic domination: Nazi-Germany
  • Ideological Conviction: Al-Qaeda

1.3. Cataclysmic Philosophy §

• Cataclysmic Philosophy: wars are natural disaster.
  • Inevitable: There’s no point in trying to prevent it.
  • You can only slow down or reduce its damage
    • using International Institution, Rules, Laws, Norms: Human Rights

2. The New Traditions of War §

2.1. The “New War” Tradition §

• After Cold War ended, Clausewitz is criticized: leading to ‘New War’ movement

• The “New War” Tradition: traditional assumptions can’t explain actors, dynamic, goals, and resolution potentials anymore

  • State & Non-State Actors:
    • internal armed conflicts happen far more often that inter-state conflicts
    • actors are no longer states
      • Guerrilla, Somalia Pirate, Uniformed Soldier, Terrorist, Private Security Company, Child Soldier
  • goal is no longer political:
    • Ethnic and Religious violence
    • Profit
  • resource can be got from forcing civilians than state
    • No longer distinction between civilians and combatants
  • Hard to bring to an end

• Counterinsurgency and War of pacification

2.2. The “Spectator Sport” tradition §

• The “Spectator Sport” tradition: war has become a game for Western countries
  • 3 Transformation in Wars
    1. Global conflicts is no longer possible
    2. Political goal of the war is no longer total, but now only limited
       • Governing a country is harder than winning it
       • When great powers are bored they leave the conflict. Such as in the War in Afghanistan
    3. War doesn’t need passion of people anymore
       • Civilians are willing to pay tax to hire conscripts instead of fighting the war themselves
       • Drone strikes, plane bombings instead of Infantry or soldiers on the ground

References §

Footnotes §

1. Globalization and War ↩ ↩²

2. C11- SSAI-Security Studies an Introduction by Paul Williams (2008) ↩