the new wars: an introduction

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2 COURSE DESCRIPTION This seminar explores the theory, practice, and public culture of transnational security. Noting that many scholars, journalists, and defense analysts claim that wars and other forms of risk to established political and economic systems have fundamentally changed since the fall of the Soviet Union and, later, the 9/11 attacks, this course asks students to examine public debates over warfare, terrorism, and the cultural, economic, technological, environmental, and political changes that seem to make conflict proliferate globally. After evaluating theories describing what is "new" about systemic risk and violence in recent decades, the course will examine emerging military doctrines and practices, with a significant geographic focus on the United States, the Levant, the Persian Gulf States, and South Asia. Exploring journalism, fiction, film, television, and essays, we will discuss public explanations of the causes and consequences of conflict; aerial, digital, and environmental warfare; state surveillance and counterinsurgency; colonial land occupations and refugee crises; imprisonment, rendition, and torture; religious and ethnic violence; and the perspectives of prisoners, minorities, and refugees on emerging security regimes. Students will complete a major research paper and presentation on a topic of choice and will engage in regular classroom debate and discussion. the new wars: an introduction

3 WHY STUDY THE NEW WARS? Clockwise from top left: WTC tribute in lights; gravesite from the Rwandan genocide; bioweapon response team; fighters for a Somali warlord ; Why do they hate us? -- Foreign Policy cover on Islam and women s rights.

4 GUIDING QUESTIONS Do the theories about "the new wars offer an accurate and global way of understanding violence? How should war be defined? What is needed for a historical, cultural, and political/ economic framework for understanding the post-911 wars? What do representations of the novelty of war -- including literature, film, music, journalism and state documents -- do to help or hinder public understanding of conflict? What types of knowledge do people in the US need to know about the world outside the US in order to understand these wars? the new wars: an introduction

5 ORIGINS Although other parts of the world developed philosophies of war, the New Wars theorists respond primarily to ideas of war developed in Europe. During the early modern period, European states (ex. Germany) developed out of wars that allowed certain groups to capture more centralized control against both small local states and a receding Roman Empire. European militaries became fairly evenly matched. This allowed Europe to manage its own internal conflicts between states while allowing bloody colonial wars between the states to proliferate outside of Europe. European generals and military thinkers developed their theories of war based on this continental balance rather than looking to the colonial wars, which were considered wars over territories that weren't "real states" or "civilized lands."

6 ORIGINS The development of European theories of warfare best known in the work of Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz, On War, War is defined as the use of force to achieve one's will. It is comprised of a TRINITY of tendencies -- reason, chance, and hatred -- that are correspond roughly to three distinct groups united in war -- the state, the military, and the people. Fog of war ; politics by other means World War II -- The world's first truly global war, soldiers from six continents. Challenges to "conventional" warfare of the 18 th and 19 th centuries in Europe. Legacies: the Holocaust; mass death and displacement from aerial bombardments in Europe, Japan, and the Pacific Islands; major changes in the political map of the world; Europe's loosening grip on Asia and Africa; the establishment of the Cold War rivalries; the invention of WMDs and first use of nukes; and the beginnings of "the third world" political projects. Cold War deterrence theory (Schelling); credible threats work best as rational deterrents

7 ORIGINS Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld - considered the first new wars theorist, published The Transformation of War in 1991, where he declared that the majority of wars since World War II violated Clausewitz's trinity thesis. 5 points of Van Creveld: war can be fought by state or non-state actors; war can be about relationships between warring parties or their relationships to larger publics or states; tactics are diverse; war can be directed at a variety of goals, only one of which is to increase state power or capture it; war is driven by many motivations for individuals. Historical observation: wars are increasing, they are related to the decline in the power of some states, and they tend to be long, low-intensity affairs. Vietnam. During the 1990s and 2000s, a number of other authors (notably Paul Virilio, Mary Kaldor, and Herman Munkler) as well as the US neoconservative movement made related arguments. All of these theories shared the tendency to emphasize technology, globalization, and and redefinition of warfare.

8 WHAT WAS OLD ABOUT THE OLD WARS? Several assumptions exist here, based on the historical exclusion of colonial warfare and the rise of covert wars by the superpowers during the Cold War: --Since wars have political goals, violence is limited by diplomacy and shared interest. --War primarily occurs between states, or else between subnational groups vying for a state (civil war). States have monopolies on authorized violence. --Wars correspond to political declarations and national mobilizations. --Wars are between soldiers and happen on geographically contained battlefields. --Wars tend not to target civilians, and should limit damage to the population. --Wars should use force proportional to the perceived harm.

9 CHARACTERISTICS: ECONOMIC GLOBALIZATION --The Washington Consensus free trade system weakens small states: import dependence; limits taxation; creates health, nutrition, and environmental problems that threaten instability. Exacerbates tension over land and resources, increases internal, external threats. --Communications speed info on conflict and increase the propaganda element of wars ( hearts and minds ). Also increases diaspora participation and financing from abroad. --Profit motive to people who make careers and businesses out of armed conflict: security firms, mercenary firms, so-called "warlords." --Increases the availability of weapons/knowledge on the open market. --The very high cost of military tech means states are less interested in very expensive, protracted symmetrical wars.

10 CHARACTERISTICS: IMPORTANCE OF CULTURE --Publics appear less strongly affiliated to states or ideologies as they are to religion, ethnicity, or clan (Cf. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations ). This disrupts traditional alliances based on ideology during Cold War. --Increased focus on culture and ethnicity increases the tendency toward wars of hatred/genocide. --Long-simmering ethnic and religious tensions tend to produce longer, lower-intensity conflicts. --In response, states, especially "secular" liberal-democratic states, have become increasingly suspicious of minorities, introducing surveillance, profiling, disciminatory laws, and even violence and ethnic cleansing to keep them in check or else they introduce oaths of loyalty or tests of assimilation as immigration requirements.

11 CHARACTERISTICS: CHANGING TACTICS --Cheap weapons for small belligerents; powers have expensive, high-tech weapons that promise preemption, deterrence --Rape and other extreme forms of psychological warfare --Low-intensity conflict; long time-frame (no official start and end to battle) --Importance of the vertical policing of space (Weisman on occupied Pal.) --Legal restrictions on war not observed --Lower casualties per conflict but more overall civilian displacement and death --Attacks target civilian population; rise of genocide --Siege tactics: "guerilla" and "terrorist" attacks --Blurring between civilians and fighters; covert operations --State administration of propaganda (secrecy and leaks)

12 CHARACTERISTICS: BLURRED LINES --Clausewitz's "trinity" of state, army, and population --Borders between states; internal borders between regions --Distinction between soldiers and citizens, combatants and noncombatants --Distinctions between humans and nonhumans (targeting of environment, life support infrastructures; technologies replace some human actors) --Conventional and unconventional weapons ****

13 CASE IN POINT: THE 1991 IRAQ WAR Old War? Short time frame, formal peace treaty New War? WMD proliferation concerns; Iraq military previously funded by US; TV spectacle; one-sided aerial bombing; use of depleted uranium

14 CASE IN POINT: SRI LANKA, Tamil Tigers' movement for independence against majority Sinhalese Rebels funded by diaspora Low-intensity war featuring sporadic violence, peace treaties, assassinations Developed the tactic of modern suicide bombing State led total annihilation campaign to end war in 2009

15 CASE IN POINT: BOSNIA, Wars for independence from Yug Serbian-controlled army attempted to create "Greater Serbia" Ethnic and religious conflict Outside powers (NATO, Russia) Aerial surveillance and instant media Transnational fighters, humanitarian relief Ethnic cleansing, ethnic territories

16 CRITICISMS IN I.R. LITERATURE Wars have always involved brutality, logics of martyrdom, population displacement, and the tendency toward extermination Historically, violence by non-state actors and asymmetrical warfare is more common than limited war between states: colonial wars, Thirty Years War, Vietnam. There is nothing empirically new. Some scholars prioritize political-economic conditions over identity/culture as key factors driving conflict. However, these criticisms often don t address underlying assumption that war is a category that can be separated from econ/politics. In contrast, social theorists often argue for a continuity between domestic and international violence. Foucault, Society Must Be Defended: reverses Clausewitz s axiom about war being an instrument of politics the new wars: the criticisms

17 EVALUATING THE NEW WARS DEBATE Is the definition of war adequate to the objects of study? What assumptions guide the debate? What is the relationship between violence and "politics"? If theories of war have privileged European histories, how does war look different from a global perspective? In response to American exceptionalism (that the US is unique in its democratic political culture; that its form of liberalism has progressively increased freedom), how does an understanding of the US's historical role of intervention (as a kind of empire) change understandings of global administrations of violence? Can there be a new/old distinction? Is NWT itself an example of empire declaring its mission anew? the new wars: reframing the debate