The Metamorphosis of War

267 Pages·2012·1.514 MB·English

by  Avery Plaw

The Metamorphosis of War
At the Interface
Series Editors
Dr Robert Fisher
Dr Daniel Riha
Advisory Board
Dr Alejandro Cervantes-Carson Dr Martin McGoldrick
Professor Margaret Chatterjee Revd Stephen Morris
Dr Wayne Cristaudo Professor John Parry
Dr Mira Crouch Dr Paul Reynolds
Dr Phil Fitzsimmons Professor Peter L. Twohig
Professor Asa Kasher Professor S Ram Vemuri
Owen Kelly Revd Dr Kenneth Wilson, O.B.E
Dr Peter Mario Kreuter
Volume 80
A volume in the Probing the Boundaries series
‘War, Civil Conflict, Peace and Security’
Probing the Boundaries
The Metamorphosis of War
Edited by
Avery Plaw
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2012
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO
9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents -
Requirements for permanence”.
ISBN: 978-90-420-3571-3
E-Book ISBN: 978-94-012-0846-8
©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2012
Printed in the Netherlands
Table of Contents

Acknowledgements vii

Introduction: The Transformations of War ix
Avery Plaw and Axel Augé

Part I New Concepts of War and Terror

Fighting for Peace: From the Social War to 3
Armed Democracy
Nick Mansfield

Foucault and the Continuation of War 21
Jason Edwards

Why There is No Such Thing as Political Terrorism 41
Bob Brecher

Part II Confronting the New Wars: Law, Security and Diplomacy

The Legality of Targeted Killing as an Instrument of War: 57
The Case of the US Targeting of Qaed Salim
Sinan al-Harethi
Avery Plaw

Insecurity by Impreciseness: Towards a Specific Concept 73
of Security
Benjamin Rampp

Towards an Enhanced Understanding of Diplomacy as 99
the Business of Peace
Stuart Murray

Part III New Wars, History and Cultural Change

The Changing Ottoman Perception of War: From the 125
Foundation of the Empire to Its Disintegration
Mustafa Serdar Palab(cid:2)y(cid:2)k

Youth and Peace: Alternative Voices in Lebanon 149
Pamela Chrabieh Badine
The Correspondent’s Experience of War 167
Tim Markham

Part IV Waging the New Wars

‘Like a Phoenix from the Ashes’: The IRA as a 193
Multi-Generational Movement and its Relevance
for the War on Terror
Timothy D. Hoyt

Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright 223
Graeme Goldsworthy, Toby Chesson and Erica Pasini

From Manifest Degradation to Latent Anticipation: 241
Military Boredom in the First World War
and Afghanistan
Bård Mæland
Acknowledgements
Every book is a collaborative project, but an interdisciplinary collection of
papers is especially so. Such a project is unlikely to reach completion without
the patient and cooperative workof many.Soit is hardly surprising that there
are numerous people who deserve acknowledgement and gratitude for their
shares in this book.The first of these isAxel Augé to whom I’m thankful for
his critical contributions to the introduction. Aaron Cardoso, KristenEmmett
andRyan Carreiro also have my deep gratitude for their invaluable help with
editing and formatting the manuscript. I’d also like to express profound
thanks to the Steering Group of the War, Virtual War and Human Security
Project which organized the conference that brought these authors together
and which authorized the publication of this book. Special thanks go to
Robert Fisher and Graeme Goldsworthy, who led the conference, as well as
to Bob Brecher, Andrew Wilson, Jones Irwin and Julia Boll for theirwork on
itand the other publications that have resulted. A very special vote of thanks
must also go to Anthony Garro, the Provost of the University of
Massachusetts at Dartmouth, whose generous Publication Subvention Grant
aided immeasurably in the preparation of this book. Last but not least, I
would like to thank all the contributors who have literally madethis book by
sharingtheir reflections, analysis and insight.
Introduction:
The Transformations of War

Avery Plaw and Axel Augé

This book is a product of the Fifth Global Conference on War,
Virtual War and Human Security (WVW5) held in Budapest, Hungary from
the fifth to the seventh of May 2008. The conference served as an
interdisciplinary forum in which scholars attempted to come to grips with the
rapidly changing character of modern armed conflict and contemporary
responses to it. The following volume encompasses the most valuable
contributions to that project. This introduction frames the chapters that follow
by briefly sketching some important developments in the concepts, practices
and purposes of war since the beginning of the nineteenth century.

1. The New Wars
Some eight years ago, Herfried Münkler pointed out how jarringly
different ‘new wars’ look in comparison with ‘classical inter-state wars’
exemplified in the ‘great battle’ in which uniformed armies clash across a
clear if shifting front.1 Indeed, as he noted, the very language of war has been
transformed in recent decades,2 as formulas like asymmetrical,
dissymmetrical, informal and unconventional war, low-intensity conflict and
counterinsurgency warfare have risen to prominence.3 Likewise, attention has
shifted to unconventional participants in warfare like child soldiers, warlords,
female suicide-bombers, paramilitary groups, death squads, guerrilla forces,
private military contractors, and Predators, Reapers and other unmanned
aerial vehicles. The rapid mutation and diversification of war has even called
into question the continuing relevance of the conventional laws and norms
that have traditionally regulated armed conflict.4
How then can we understand the increasingly diverse forms of
violence that have come to share the nomenclature of war? How should we
respond to them? The common premise of WVW5 and this book is that the
best hope of answering these important questions lies in mobilizing and
coordinating the full range of disciplines concerned with war and its effects
in an interdisciplinary dialogue devoted to analysing these questions critically
and synthesizing the results. The WVW5 conference actively promoted
cross-fertilization between research in fields as diverse as strategic studies,
literary theory, psychology, international relations, philosophy,
communications and media studies, history and politics. This volume offers
expanded versions of twelve chapters selected for publication. The final
versions of these chapters reflect the productive exchange of ideas achieved
through the conference. By consequence, these contributions reflect an active
dialogue rather than a series of disparate reflections on related topics.
x The Transformations of War
______________________________________________________________
2. New Wars for Old
In the early nineteenth century the Prussian Major-General Carl von
Clausewitz famously described war as ‘policy by other means.’5 He
presented it as, in its essence, ‘nothing but a duel on a larger scale,’ or a
wrestling match.6 The figurative duellers or wrestlers, in his day, embodied
states.7 The object of the exercise, he believed, was to render the opponent
‘incapable of further resistance’ through the use of force, and thus to ‘compel
our enemy to do our will.’8 In essence then, for Clausewitz, modern war was
simply the means by which one state (or states) forcibly imposed its policy
on another (or others).
Clausewitz and his work remain canonical for both scholars and
practitioners of war today. Scholars, scientists and soldiers still continually
invoke his famous dictum that war is ‘merely the continuation of policy by
other means.’ What is often overlooked is the detailed attention that
Clausewitz devoted to the ways in which the aims, means, tactics and
strategies of war have metamorphosed over time. In Book Eight of On War,
for example, he discusses ‘the transformations of war’:

The semibarbarous Tartars, the republic of antiquity, the
feudal lords and trading cities of the Middle Ages,
eighteenth-century kings and the rulers and peoples of the
nineteenth century—all conducted war in their own
particular way, using different methods and pursuing
different aims.9

Clausewitz goes on to detail the form of war that dominated each epoch, each
with its distinctive aims, and argues that an acute awareness of the on-going
transformations of war is essential to understanding its character in one’s
own day, and in particular to forming a successful plan of war. He attributes
the defeat of Napoleon’s opponents in 1805, 1806 and 1809, for example, to
their failure to fully grasp the metamorphosis of war in their own time.10
There is a deep irony then in the continued reliance of strategists and
practitioners of war today on von Clausewitz’s insightful examination of the
form of war dominant at the beginning of the nineteenth century. He himself
warns us of the dangers of such reliance.
Martin Van Creveld has forcefully argued that the new wars seen
today depart radically from the Clausewitzian model.11 He argues that, in
contrast to nineteenth century inter-state wars decided by great battles, ‘[t]he
great majority of wars since 1945 have been Low Intensity Conflicts. In
terms of both casualties suffered and political results achieved, these wars
have been incomparably more important than others,’ particularly those few
that have had a more classical Clausewitzian character (e.g., the Falklands,
the First Gulf War or even the Iran-Iraq war).12