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The ‘Good War’ after September 11

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Peter Lawler
Peter Lawler*
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
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Extract

Rather Than Signalling The End Of War, As Many Liberal Minds had hoped, the end of the cold war has seen ‘hot’ war moving firmly to centre-stage, while at the same time presaging a reclassification of its predominant forms and purposes. Since 1990 there has been a rash of what Kaldor calls ‘new wars’. Although often highly localized, they confound settled understandings of inter-state or civil war by virtue of the diverse range of protagonists involved, the issues over which they are fought, and their consistently brutal impact upon civilians. A virtual revolution in media technology has also made such wars publicly visible to an unprecedented degree. In spite of the fact that new wars are often fought without recourse to the most sophisticated or destructive of military technology, the horrific impact upon populations caught up in them has clearly assaulted public sensibilities worldwide and generated a chorus of demands that something should be done about them. Consequently, the political and ethical dimensions of going to war in response to such threats have also moved in from the periphery to the centre of public and intellectual debate. As Walzer has recently observed, the ‘chief dilemma of international politics is whether people in danger should be rescued by military forces from outside’. From the point of view of the key members of the international community at least, armed ‘humanitarian intervention’ is no longer just a form of war but has become virtually synonymous with permissible war itself.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , April 2002 , pp. 151 - 172
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 2002

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References

1 Kaldor also identifies ‘low-intensity conflict’, ‘privatised’ or informal wars’ and ‘post-modern wars’ as other less satisfactory terms for ‘new wars’. Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1999, p. 2.

2 Walzer, Michael, ‘Preface to the Third Edition’, in Walzer, Michael, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations, New York, Basic Books, 2000, p. xi.Google Scholar

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4 Ibid., p. 27.

5 See for example, the results of Flash Eurobarometer 114, ‘International Crisis’, based on interviews conducted in mid-November 2001, http://www.eosgallupeurope.com.

6 A recent overview of humanitarian interventions advises the abandonment of the term ‘international community’ altogether unless ‘obfuscation is the objective’ because it fails to distinguish between very different actors — states, NGOs and regional organizations — with very different capabilities and intentions. It thus inhibits pointing the finger at who is responsible for failures in action yet ‘permits everybody to claim responsibility for success’. See Weiss, Thomas G., ‘Researching Humanitarian Intervention’, Journal of Peace Research, 38:4 (2001), pp. 423–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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8 Shaw describes Kaldor’s concept of ‘new war’ as a ‘degenerate form of total war, minus the national solidarity and progressive goals that characterised both state and guerrilla mobilisations at their best’. See M. Shaw, ‘Return of the Good War’, p. 2.

9 Kaldor, Mary, ‘Introduction’, in Kaldor, Mary (éd.), Global Insecurity, London, Pinter, 2000, p. 6.Google Scholar Such atrocities include mass rape and ‘the massive displacement of people from their homes’ not as ‘a side-effect… but a primary strategic goal’. See also M. Shaw, ‘Return of the Good War’, p. 2.

10 M. Kaldor, ‘Introduction’, p. 6.

11 The phrase is taken from M. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. 107. Writing some 25 years ago, Walzer makes the point that it is the shocking of the public’s moral conscience, not that of state leaders, that is of conequence here.

12 M. Kaldor, New and Old Wars, p. 11.

13 Note here post-September 11 electoral trends in Denmark and the Netherlands, long seen as exemplars of tolerant liberal societies.

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15 Bush’s indebtedness to the idealist tradition was not lost on Noam Chomsky, who depicted the declarations of a NWO as a case of the US ‘donning the garb of saintliness as it proceeds to crush anyone in its path, a stance that is called “Wilsonian idealism” ‘. Chomsky, Noam, World Orders: Old and New, London, Pluto Press, 1994, p. 5.Google Scholar

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17 M. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. xi. See also Thakur, op. cit., pp. 393–4.

18 M. Kaldor, ‘Introduction’, p. 11. Much was made of the ethical virtues of’smart’ weaponry, but it comprised some 2 per cent of the munitions used and stood in stark contrast to the sustained air bombardment of Iraqi military forces that took place largely outside the media’s gaze.

19 Freedman, Lawrence, The Revolution in Strategic Affairs, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 29.Google Scholar See also Lawler, Peter, ‘The Shadows of War: Anger and Beyond’, Arena (Australia), 95 (1991), pp. 18–33.Google Scholar

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22 See, for example, Richard Norton-Taylor, ‘Top Gun — and the Rest’, The Guardian, Wednesday, 13 February 2002, and ‘Who Needs Whom?’, The Economist, 9–15 March 2002, pp. 30–2. Even two years ago, US defence expenditure equalled that of all seventeen European NATO member states, Russia and China combined. President Bush’s proposal to increase the US military budget by $48 billion to $379 billion for the next fiscal year will lift US defence expenditure to 11 per cent above average cold war levels and values the US military as equivalent to the entire economy of Australia. Note, however, that only one fifth of the 15 per cent increase will be devoted to the war against terrorism.

23 Tony Blair, ‘Doctrine of the International Community’, Speech to the Economic Club of Chicago, 22 April 1999.

24 On this see Kofi Annan’s controversial report to the 54th General Assembly, Press Release GA/9596, New York, United Nations, 1999.

25 This point is adapted from T. G. Weiss, ‘Researching Humanitarian Intervention’, p. 422.

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27 See the case study of Bosnia-Herzogovina in M. Kaldor, New and Old Wars, pp. 31–68. Note also the little-reported efforts of Australian peacekeepers in Baidoa, Somalia to enact a robust form of peace-enforcement that stayed above inter-clan politics, achieved a high degree of local disarmament and actively pursued ‘bottom-up’ political and civil reconstruction. As a result, there was considerable local pressure to extend the Mandate of the Australian troops in direct contrast to the widespread hostility to US peacekeeping efforts. For an illuminating account see Patman, Robert G., ‘Disarming Somalia: The Contrasting Fortunes of United States and Australian Peace Keepers During United Nations Intervention, 1992–1993, African Affairs, 96 (1997), pp. 509–33.Google Scholar

28 Smith, Michael J., ‘Humanitarian Intervention: An Overview of the Ethical Issues’, Ethics and International Affairs, 12 (1998), p. 70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 Dillon, Michael, ‘Criminalising Social and Political Violence Internationally’, Millennium, 27:3 (1998), p. 545.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 This theme is illuminatingly explored in Campbell, David, ‘Why Fight: Humanitarianism, Principles and Post-Structuralism’, Millennium, 27:3 (1998), pp. 497–521.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 R. Price, ‘Is it Right to Respond with Military Attacks?’, p. 29.

32 Human Rights Watch, World Report 2001, New York, Human Rights Watch, 2000, p. xxiv.Google ScholarPubMed

33 120 countries voted to establish the ICC, 21 abstained, and 7 voted against. Interestingly, the latter group brought together the US and some of the key members of what President Bush now calls the ‘axis of evil’.

34 Spyros Economides, ‘The International Criminal Court’, in Smith, Karen E. and Light, Margot (eds), Ethics and Foreign Policy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 112–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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36 M. Kaldor, New and Old Wars, p. 126. See also Shearer, David, ‘Exploring the Limits of Consent: Conflict Resolution in Sierra Leone’, Millennium, 26:3 (1997), pp. 845–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37 M. Kaldor, New and Old Wars, p. 128.

38 Ibid., p. 131.

39 For a useful definition clearly dovetailing with Kaldor’s assessment, see the statement of aims and objectives for the ‘Cosmopolitan Militaries Project’ located in the Australian National University, http://rspas.anu.edu.au/ir/cosmop/.