class: center, middle, inverse, title-slide # Dirty Wars ## Historicising Dirty Wars ### Jack McDonald --- class: inverse # Pre-Lecture Discussion .question[Did anything surprise you in the Osterhammel reading? Why?] ??? --- class: inverse # Before We Begin: Literature Reviews ??? /// --- # How Do I Pick a Topic? .pull-left[ 2000 words (most students), 2500 words (Year 2 part time students only), 33% of marks either way In-line citation format (Author Date) for this assessment - What interests you? - What are academics interested in? So long as you can demonstrate __importance__ and __relevance__ there is no difference between a literature review on YouTube censorship and one on the Rwandan genocide. ] -- .pull-right[ Four questions that you should be able to answer: - Why is this topic important in the context of dirty wars? - How have scholars examined this topic? (...what is controversial?) - Why is their scholarship important? (...does the type of scholarship matter?) - Is there something important that they have missed? (...why did they miss it?) ] ??? /// --- # Example Paths to a Search Question to a Title .left-40[ .medium[ Initial question: Why do Coalition militaries systematically under-report civilian casualties in Iraq/Syria? Thought: What kind of people are concerned with measuring civilian casualties? Question guiding literature search: Who are civilian casualty estimates important to, and why? Question arising from literature review: **Why do militaries differ in their measurement of civilian casualties to NGOs?** Insight from literature review: Militaries generate organizational knowledge about civilian casualties to a different epistemic standard than NGOs ] ] -- .right-40[ .medium[ - International relations -> Norm theory -> Norms of war -> Prohibitions on targeting civilians - International relations -> Norm theory -> Norm entrepreneurs -> Civilian casualty NGOs - International relations -> Norm theory -> Epistemic communities -> Military professionals - International law -> Law of armed conflict -> Civilians - Security studies -> Human security -> Civilian death in armed conflict - Strategic studies -> Narratives -> Strategic consequences of civilian casualties - Public health -> Risk Factors -> Armed conflict -> Excess mortality - Ethics -> Just war theory -> Non-combatant immunity - Organizational theory -> Organizational knowledge -> Forms of military organizational knowledge - Communication studies -> Open source intelligence -> Casualty monitoring organisations ] ] ??? --- class: inverse # Outline .pull-left[ > Dirty wars are conflicts where one or more parties denies the political, legal, and/or moral status/standing of their opponents. When did our current baselines appear? Why do they matter? ] .pull-right[ - Institutions and International Order - State Power and Modernity - Who Matters in War and National Security? ] ## Main Points Dirty wars presuppose modern bureaucratic states, and universal shared assumptions about good conduct How states and other actors interpret and respond to global norms of status and classification is a means of understanding the stakes of a conflict Bureaucrats matter more than we think in war and national security! ??? --- class: inverse # Part 1: Institutions and International Order ??? --- # States as Institutions .medium[ > An institution is a relatively enduring collection of rules and organized practices, embedded in structures of meaning and resources that are relatively invariant in the face of turnover of individuals and relatively resilient to the idiosyncratic preferences and expectations of individuals and changing external circumstances. ] -- .medium[ > There are constitutive rules and practices prescribing appropriate behavior for specific actors in specific situations. ] -- .medium[ > There are structures of meaning, embedded in identities and belongings: common purposes and accounts that give direction and meaning to behavior, and explain, justify, and legitimate behavioral codes. ] -- .medium[ > There are structures of resources that create capabilities for acting. ] -- .medium[ > Institutions empower and constrain actors differently and make them more or less capable of acting according to prescriptive rules of appropriateness. ] -- .medium[ > **Institutions are also reinforced by third parties in enforcing rules and sanctioning non-compliance.** James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, _Elaborating the “New Institutionalism”_ ] ??? --- # Institutions Everywhere... .pic80[![Spidey meme](../img/2021/spidey-meme.jpg)] ??? --- # Empire-States and Nation-States > Empires are large political units, expansionist or with a memory of power extended over space, polities that maintain distinction and hierarchy as they incorporate new people. The nation-state, in contrast, is based on the idea of a single people in a single territory constituting itself as a unique political community. -- > The nation-state proclaims the commonality of its people - even if the reality is more complicated - while the empire-state declares the non-equivalence of multiple populations. -- > Both kinds of states are incorporative - they insist that people must be ruled by their institutions - but the nation-state tends to homogenize those inside its borders and exclude those who do not belong, while the empire reaches outward and draws, usually coercively, peoples whose difference is made explicit under its rules. The concept of empire presumes that different people within the polity will be governed differently. Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, _Empires in World History_ ??? --- # International Order .left-33[ ![Graphic from Cooley and Nexon](../img/2021/international-order-nexon.gif) .small[From Cooley and Nexon, _Exit from Hegemony_] ] .right-33[ .medium[ > At heart, “international order” refers to relatively stable patterns of relations and practices in world politics. These patterns emerge from the behavior of states, international institutions, transnational movements, and other important actors in international politics. They also constrain, enable, and channel how those actors behave. Alexander Cooley and Daniel Nexon, _Exit from Hegemony_ - Thin (minimal) descriptions vs thick (including rules/institutions) descriptions - Sources: Power/position (balance of power, hegemony) vs rules (constitutional) - Regional/global orders - General/specific orders - Emergent/intentional and centralised/de-centralised orders International order transforms through revolutionary processes (e.g. shocks such as major war between great powers, global financial crises) or evolutionary processes (gradual long term transformations) ] ] ??? --- class: inverse # Small Group Discussion .question[ What, if anything, fundamentally differentiates modern states from states in the 19th Century? How has that affected war and political violence? ] --- class: inverse # Part 2: State Power and Modernity ??? --- # Units and Orders: What's New? .left-40[ .small[ > The evolution of the state and the development of a state system were mutually reinforcing processes... the competitive nature of the system determined the nature of the constitutive units. At the same time, sovereign states preferred similar modes of organization in their environment. Actors intentionally created a system of sovereign, territorial states. Hendrik Spruyt, _The Sovereign State and its Competitors_] ![Map of percent of nation states vs empires](../img/2021/nation-state-percent.jpg) ] .right-40[ - Non-state organisation important until 17th century, largely extinguished as a competitor in the 18th/19th century - Fiscal-military states come to dominate Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries - Some European territorial states also develop into empires via corporations and dominate large sections of globe - Industrialisation and "great divergence" between Europe and Asia from 1800 onwards - Nationalism in late 18th/19th centuries leads to nation states, which dominate world after WW2 and decolonization era - Forced integration of globe (European empires, scramble for Africa) ] ??? --- # Transformations in War and Violence .pull-left[ ![John A. Lynn's Cultural Model](../img/4/lynn.jpg) .medium[ > The very nature of the Discourse on War dictates that it diverges from the Reality of War. In fact, the variety of these discourses within a single society ensures that no one reality could match the diversity of conception. > Different peoples can have dissimilar conceptions of war as it should be, and when they clash in battle, the fact that they are fighting by different rules creates a reality that neither adversary expected. John A. Lynn, _Battle_ ] ] .pull-right[ - Scale of inter-state warfare increases over the 19th century, reaching an apex in WW2 - Intensity does not necessarily change: many colonial/irregular conflicts were wars of extermination - Transformation in the material requirements of effectively waging war (preparation, logistics, technologies such as tanks and aircraft carriers) - Terrorism using dynamite, then other tools of modernity, becomes a key concern of states - Organised mass killing able to murder in the millions (holocaust) ] ??? Lynn quote p.363 --- # War in International Order .left-33[ ![1914 World Map](../img/2021/world-map-1914.png) ![Cold War Map](../img/4/coldwar.png) ![Cold War Map](../img/2021/world-map-2021.jpg) ] .right-33[ - Development of modern international law in 19th century - International organizations in 20th Century (League of Nations, United Nations) - Collapse of empires and legitimacy of empires in international order after WW2 - War moves from legitimate sovereign option to outlawed practice (1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact) - 1945 UN Charter establishes UNSC as a key ordering body, UNGA as key body in international politics - 1945 Bretton Woods system rooted in multilateral cooperation, established International Monetary Fund - Cold War (1945-1989) was "hot" in many places: great powers avoided direct conflict/escalation through mix of proxies, coups, covert action, etc - UDHR (1948), ICCPR/ICESCR (Signed 1966, effective 1976) ] ??? --- # The Rules of War: Two Metaphors .pull-left[ ![Pile up](../img/3/pileup.jpg) ![Frankenstein](../img/3/frankenstein.jpg) ] .pull-right[ .medium[ > ...the mutability of the just war tradition is conditioned by a certain element of continuity. Cian O'Driscoll, _The Renegotiation of the Just War Tradition_ > Throughout history, international law has been critically dependent on a general willingness of governments to abide by it. This willingness has been explained... in a wide variety of ways - as a command of natural law, as international legislation by way of customary practice, as tacit or explicit agreement, as a consequence of a common juridical conscience, as a function of self-restraint and due regard for the rights of others, as rational self-interest on the part of actors, as a fear of sanctions that offended parties might inflict, and doubtless many more besides. Stephen C. Neff, _Justice Among Nations_ ] ] ??? Driscoll quote from p.160 Neff Quote from p.478 --- # The Modern World of Global Norms .left-33[ ![Greek slavery, public domain pic](../img/2020/slavery.jpg) ![Marianne, public domain pic](../img/2020/marianne.jpg) ] .right-33[ .medium[ > **Article I** - Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions can be founded only on the common good. > > **Article VI** - The law is the expression of the general will. All the citizens have the right of contributing personally or through their representatives to its formation. It must be the same for all, either that it protects, or that it punishes. All the citizens, being equal in its eyes, are equally admissible to all public dignities, places, and employments, according to their capacity and without distinction other than that of their virtues and of their talents. _Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, 1789_ ] - Citizenship - Human Dignity - Status in War - Human Rights ] ??? --- class: inverse # Small Group Discussion .question[ To what extent are dirty wars little more than a reflection of the standards of international order? ] ??? --- # State Power and Bureaucracy .pull-left[ State capability increases over the 19th and 20th centuries in response to both internal and external pressures - Development of central institutions of state and civil service - Information technologies (census, communications networks, identity registers) - Modern police organisations, internal security institutions - Centralised intelligence and decision-making apparatus - Professional officer corps on Prussian model The scope of state activity increases, as does its coercive/disciplinary mechanisms ] .pull-right[ > The documentary state is very old. Its key elements - the registration of property, of tax and military recruitment liabilities and the recording of person and family names - have existed for thousands of years in the rice-growing societies of Asia. Keith Breckenridge, _Biometric State_ ![Jon Agar Metaphors of government table](../img/2021/agar-metaphor.jpg) ] ??? --- # Desk Killers .pull-left[ .pic80[![Killing fields photographs](../img/2021/cambodia-genocide.jpg)] > The clear implication of _'Schreibtischtaeter'_ from its early usage was somebody who killed from their desk - the figure who, by giving orders, uses paper or a phone or a computer to kill, instead of a gun. Dan Gretton, _I You We Them_ ] .pull-right[ Key transformation: bureaucratic/administrative requirements of large scale warfare and political violence Bureaucracies enable standardisation of practice, and centralisation of decision-making Law of war built around decisions and actions, but bureaucracies distribute both within an organisation, or between organisations Key theoretical issue: informational contributions to war and political violence ] ??? --- class: inverse # Part 3: Who Matters in War and National Security? ??? --- # Coordinating Legitimate Violence .pull-left[ .medium[ > war is a social phenomenon that requires organised social action, collective intentionality, the systematic use of weapons, sophisticated linguistic coordination and ritualism. In many ways... war is the exact opposite of aggression. Siniša Malešević, _The Sociology of War and Violence_ War, national security, and rebellion involve (competitive) social coordination problems Illegitimate violence inhibits or prevents social coordination So: Rather than seek to understand "who counts" in an objective sense, we might alternately investigate how and why different actors evaluated legitimate harm in a given conflict ] ] -- .pull-right[ .pic70[![Bush's 9/11 address to the nation](../img/2/bush.jpg)] > A public ritual is not just about the transmission of meaning from a central source to each member of an audience; it is also about letting audience members know what other audience members know. Michael Suk-Young Chwe, _Rational Ritual_ ] ??? --- # Frames of War and National Security .left-column[ ![Michael Fallon](../img/2/fallon.jpg) ![Gavin Williamson](../img/2/williamson.jpg) ] .right-column[ > We might think of war as dividing populations into those who are grievable and those who are not. Judith Butler, _Frames of War_ > If you are a British national in Iraq or Syria and if you have chosen to fight for [ISIS] – an illegal organisation that is preparing and inspiring terror attacks on our streets – then you have made yourself a legitimate target Michael Fallon > Quite simply, my view is a dead terrorist can't cause any harm to Britain... I do not believe that any terrorist, whether they come from this country or any other, should ever be allowed back into this country... Gavin Williamson ] ??? Butler quote, p.38 Terrorism, subversion, insurgency ...and social movements Securing the state, or the status quo? --- # Cosmopolitan and Communitarian Obligations .left-column[ ![Machiavelli](../img/2/machiavelli.jpg) ] .right-column[ > Machiavelli’s values, I should like to repeat, are not instrumental but moral and ultimate, and he calls for great sacrifices in their name... > The moral ideal for which he thinks no sacrifice too great — the welfare of the _patria_ — is for him the highest form of social existence attainable by man; but attainable, not unattainable; not a world outside the limits of human capacity, given human beings as we know them... > If you object to the political methods recommended because they seem to you morally detestable... Machiavelli has no answer, no argument. Isaiah Berlin ] ??? --- # Status: Expectations and Denial Expectations of restraint arise from ideas, and power relations, in the context of international politics A person, or institution's expectations, of how they should or will be treated by an opponent relates to their perception of social order Key categories of status are a means of investigating the order as it exists, and as it is perceived to exist > The liberal powers of the West have escaped the opprobrium of bellicosity, despite the frequency with which they have gone to war, because the majority of their wars were 'small'. But if these wars are now brought within the pale of total war, the hands of the United States and Britain, to name only the most obvious, look less clean... In wars against native populations, the burning of villages and the destruction of crops were customary; the taking of prisoners was not. Hew Strachan, _On Total War and Modern War_ ??? Strachan quote from p.353 --- class: inverse # Conclusions .large[ The "Liberal International Order" enabled/justified many illiberal activities during and after the cold war Basic global concepts create different ways of thinking about and categorising persons We can look evaluate conflicts in terms of how states and other actors violate norms, but also in how they prioritise categories of person, and explain any resulting violations ]