LEC1: War, what is it good for? Flashcards
How is war reasoned from the Russian and Chinese perspective?
However, the Russian perspective is still important.
- From the Russian perspective, invading Ukraine made sense from a political standpoint and war is waged for political purposes.
- Putin sees history, the strength of Ukraine and the meaning of peace differently than a western person would.
To understand the Chinese perspective you need to understand the content they have been exposed to, how they view and study history and how they view peace.
How countries see themselves and what their people are exposed to are vital to understand their political goals and how they would act on them.
What is the problem with the western perspective on war?
Only taking the Western perspective into account can be problematic, as was illustrated at the Berlin Conference 1884-1885 (scramble for Africa). The division of land without regard for the local and national perspectives still has long-run negative effects in Africa.
What is the definition of CLASSICAL Security Studies?
Security studies as an academic field
Is about:
- How to employ organised violence
○ Security studies as a field initially emerged from international studies.
- And on how to protect societies from organised violence.
○ In order to know how to protect we need to know how it is employed.
What is the definition of Security?
is a combination of
- a physical condition, in the sense of being able to prevent others from inflicting harm,
- and a mental condition, in the sense of confidence that this capacity to prevent others from inflicting harm is indeed in place.
This means that threats to security may be real or they may be imagined.
Threats to security may be economical, societal, natural, etc.
Mitigating these threats means building resilience and preparing yourself to protect and instigate violence yourself.
What is Traditional and Human Security?
What is the definition of Peace?
There are different kinds of peace
1. Peace
2. Peace, but constantly under the threat of violence
a. Even if you live in an area where there is no actual fighting but an always present threat of fighting, how can you talk about peace? Is that even peace?
What are the different Philosophies of War?
- Political
a. Clausewitz
b. Instrumental/rational perspective
c. Legitimate instrument of state policy
d. Balancing act: people, forces, government - Cataclysmic
a. War as major disaster
b. Epidemic
c. Happens to us
d. Ethnic cleansing & genocide
-Eschatological
a. Teleological view of history
b. Grand design: materialist, metaphysical
c. Messianic or global
d. Inevitable
AQ, communism, fascism.
What are the most important definitions of war?
The definitions of war
1. Carl von Clausewitz
a. War is merely the continuation of policy by other means.
b. War is an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will.
2. Thomas Hobbes
a. War does not only consist of the act of fighting, but also the fear of war breaking out at any moment
3. The absence of peace
a. The problem with this is that if you view war as an exception and peace as the normal state of affairs, you ignore the very close relationship humanity has with war. Humans go to war purposively and are good at it.
4. Correlates of War (COW) project
a. Substantial combat, involving organized armed forces, that results in a minimum of a thousand battle-related combatants fatalities within a twelve month period.
b. But the minimum time and combatant limit is a bit weird. If a lot of people died in a eleven month period it wouldn’t be a war, even though it ticked all the other boxes.
5. Hedley Bull
a. War is organised violence carried on by political units against each other.
i. This means that criminal activity is not war
ii. Economic warfare is not war
iii. One on one violence is not war
iv. Just killing people is not war, it needs to be violence against each other
b. Therefore, any political entity can wage war (insurgence group, terrorist group), as long they have a political purpose.
6. Freedman
Freedman argues that the threshold of calling something a war shouldn’t just consist of the scale of the violence but also the severity of the threat.
What are the reasons to study war?
- That war has completely shaped society.
a. But now, a large part of our (western) society that has been exposed to war (soldiers, refugees, old people) is dying out. Thus we might not be as afraid of it.
b. Experiences with war shapes the way we read and think about war.
c. War shapes the borders, the language we speak and the religions we follow.
d. The treaties following war are also very important in shaping a states’ future.
e. So remnants of war are everywhere, eventhough we have a difficult relationship with it.- We can learn how to fight more efficiently based on past experiences.
- Very little of human affairs can be understood without referencing war.
a. Thus the study of war is both instrumental and instructive.
War has a certain appeal, look at all the media we created around it.
Despite the nasty characteristics, war brings out certain characteristics in people that are admirable, like heroism, courage and sacrifice.
Is war an integral part of being human?
Is war an integral part of being human?
- Hobbes thinks yes
○ Humanity is condemned to fight wars, the natural state of mankind is conflict. A Leviathan (king) is needed, as it provides the law and order a society needs to survive.
- Rousseau thinks not
○ Humanity is not condemned to fight wars, war can be banned. The natural state of mankind is peaceful. ‘
○ Before the invention of agriculture and larger groups of people started to live together, violence tended to be internal rather than between groups. When people started to organize themselves, violence became inter-group.
○ Organization and a leader having the monopoly on violence had a positive effect on the general law and order of society. They also started to kill people that they thought threatened this order, just look at what happened to Jesus
- Tilly
○ War made the state, and the state made war
○ War and the state are intrinsically connected.
○ To achieve difficult things people need to work together, to protect and start a war people need to work together - Morris
○ War is the only invention that allowed us to construct peaceful societies
○ The organisation of people into groups, or society, to be able to apply organised violence (or defend themselves against other groups) led to civilization.
○ The level of organisation that makes warfighting possible also provides law order and justice – by monopoly of violence
○ These political units, although maybe not as their primary purpose, also make a lot of other human activity possible. - Freedman
○ “War can at the same time be the product of economic development and a threat to continued progress.”
What is the Role of Technology?
Technology used for warfare can also be used for non-violent purposes. War technology is often dual-use technology. Additionally, war can provide an incentive for fast innovation in technology.
What is the role of woman rights in war?
Womens rights also got better because of wars, when the men were gone to fight, the women took over at home. The contribution they made to the war effort made it almost impossible to keep up the notion that they didn’t have the mental capacity to vote. So war can at the same time be a threat to the economy and social progress, but it can also create opportunities.
What are the functions of war?
*Limit Violence
*Immediate Gain
*Weakening Political Opposition
