4 - Peripheral War: A Recipe for Disaster?

Summary

American national strategies, not to say many others, have long made a distinction between major wars and minor conflicts. Over the years the terminology has changed but the essential concepts remain. In the United States, for example, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, America's military high command, use the terms general war and limited war. A general war is an armed conflict in which the total resources of the belligerents are involved and their national survival is at stake. Limited war denotes a lesser conflict, one in which there is open fighting between military forces of two or more nations but basic existence is not at issue. The limited war falls short of the major war situation. During the high Cold War, when the nuclear confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union stood at the fore, different terms denoted these concepts. Military strategists then utilized the phrases “central war” and “peripheral war” in these same contexts. The central war would have been a direct conflict between Washington and Moscow. Peripheral war could be indirect and could take place anywhere around the world that forces, and not necessarily American or Soviet forces, were in contact.

This chapter aims to examine the impact of lesser conflicts upon the overarching security interests and key capabilities of major powers. For this purpose, I adopt the terminology of the earlier age, the age of the nuclear strategists, that is, “central” versus “peripheral” war. Note that no a priori judgments are being implied thereby: This examination of peripheral wars does not posit that the arenas of conflict lacked importance to the major powers, were geographically or economically unimportant, or in fact inferior in any respect.