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February
27, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
Daniel
Pearl: Should His
Editors Have Sent Him There?
February
26, 2002
Jonathan
Steele
Kabul's
Loss
Vasily
Streltsov
The
Pentagon in
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CounterPunch
Wire
How
Corporations Use Shadowy "527" Groups to Influence
Politicians
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Robert Bowman
ABM
Treaty: Alive or Dead?
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
A
Prayer for America
February
25, 2002
John Clarke
Interrogated
at US Border
Blankfort,
Poirier, Zeltzer
ADL
Blinks, Settles Spying Case
Alex Lynch
Naked
from Sin:
The Ordeal of Nahla
and Sami Al-Arian
John Chuckman
Ashcroft
Speaks in Tongues
February
24, 2002
David
Vest
Skate
Date
February
23, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Axis
of Evil and
Media Monopolies
Bahour/Dahan
Cracks
in the Occupation
February
22, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
Axel
of Evil: Sex Crimes
and the Constitution
February
21, 2002
Gary Leupp
The
Philippines: Second Front in US's Global War
David
Vest
Reagan
Clone Project?
Mokhiber
and Weissman
Chicago
School and Corporate America: Rotten to the Core
February
20, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
The
Shallow Throat Document
Kay Lee
The
Prison Guard Who Never Owned Up to His Crimes
February
19, 2002
David
Orr
Waylon
Jennings, the Duke,
and the Navajo
John Chuckman
The
Devil and Georgie Bush
Prudence
Crowther
Giblet
Gravitas
Ramzi
Kysia
Caught
in the Iraq DMZ
February
18, 2002
Ron Jacobs
The
US and Iran
George
Lewandowski
Empire
in Declline
Lenni
Brenner
Life
and Death of a Folk Hero
February
17, 2002
Robert
Fisk
Lost
in a Pit of Desperation
February
16, 2002
Phillip
Cryan
Colombia
in War Time
February
15, 2002
C.G. Estabrook
From
New York to Porto Alegre
Robert
O'Brien
The
View from Porto Alegre
Mokhiber/Weissman
Resisting
the Assassins
February
14, 2002
Levy and
Easton
Ante
Pavelic
Real Butcher of the Balkans
Joan Claybrook
Dear
Jeb Bush,
About You and Enron
John Chuckman
Time
for a Woman Prez
Alexander
Cockburn
Banning
the Koran
February
13, 2002
Sen. Russ
Feingold
War
Powers and
the War on Terror
Tom Turnipseed
Bush's
Folly
George
Monbiot
American
Imperialism
February
12, 2002
Uri Avnery
The
Great Game:
Oil, Sharon and Iran
Tommy
Ates
Black
Land Loss
February
11, 2002
Walt Brasch
The
Synergizing of America
John Troyer
Enron's
Deep Throat?
February
9, 2002
John Blair
Criticize
Cheney, Go to Jail
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
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February 27,
2002
The Future of War and Peace
By Eric Hobsbawm
The 20th century was the most murderous in recorded
history. The total number of deaths caused by or associated
with its wars has been estimated at 187m, the equivalent of
more than 10% of the world's population in 1913. Taken as having
begun in 1914, it was a century of almost unbroken war, with
few and brief periods without organised armed conflict somewhere.
It was dominated by world wars: that is to say, by wars between
territorial states or alliances of states.
The period from 1914 to 1945 can be regarded
as a single "30 years' war" interrupted only by a
pause in the 1920s - between the final withdrawal of the Japanese
from the Soviet Far East in 1922 and the attack on Manchuria
in 1931. This was followed, almost immediately, by some 40 years
of cold war, which conformed to Hobbes's definition of war as
consisting "not in battle only or the act of fighting,
but in a tract of time wherein the will to contend by battle
is sufficiently known". It is a matter for debate how far
the actions in which US armed forces have been involved since
the end of the cold war in various parts of the globe constitute
a continuation of the era of world war. There can be no doubt,
however, that the 1990s were filled with formal and informal
military conflict in Europe, Africa and western and central
Asia. The world as a whole has not been at peace since 1914,
and is not at peace now.
Nevertheless, the century cannot be treated
as a single block, either chronologically or geographically.
Chronologically, it falls into three periods: the era of world
war centred on Germany (1914 to 1945), the era of confrontation
between the two superpowers (1945 to 1989), and the era since
the end of the classic international power system. I shall call
these periods I, II and III. Geographically, the impact of military
operations has been highly unequal. With one exception (the
Chaco war of 1932-35), there were no significant inter-state
wars (as distinct from civil wars) in the western hemisphere
(the Americas) in the 20th century. Enemy military operations
have barely touched these territories: hence the shock of the
bombing of the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon on September
11.
Since 1945 inter-state wars have also
disappeared from Europe, which had until then been the main
battlefield region. Although in period III, war returned to
south-east Europe, it seems very unlikely to recur in the rest
of the continent. On the other hand, during period II inter-state
wars, not necessarily unconnected with the global confrontation,
remained endemic in the Middle East and south Asia, and major
wars directly springing from the global confrontation took place
in east and south-east Asia (Korea, Indochina). At the same
time, areas such as sub-Saharan Africa, which had been comparatively
unaffected by war in period I (apart from Ethiopia, belatedly
subject to colonial conquest by Italy in 1935-36), came to be
theatres of armed conflict during period II, and witnessed major
scenes of carnage and suffering in period III.
Two other characteristics of war in the
20th century stand out, the first less obviously than the second.
At the start of the 21st century we find ourselves in a world
where armed operations are no longer essentially in the hands
of governments or their authorised agents, and where the contending
parties have no common characteristics, status or objectives,
except the willingness to use violence.
Inter-state wars dominated the image
of war so much in periods I and II that civil wars or other
armed conflicts within the territories of existing states or
empires were somewhat obscured. Even the civil wars in the territories
of the Russian empire after the October revolution, and those
which took place after the collapse of the Chinese empire,
could be fitted into the framework of international conflicts,
insofar as they were inseparable from them. On the other hand,
Latin America may not have seen armies crossing state frontiers
in the 20th century, but it has been the scene of major civil
conflicts: in Mexico after 1911, for instance, in Colombia since
1948, and in various central American countries during period
II. It is not generally recognised that the number of international
wars has declined fairly continuously since the mid-1960s, when
internal conflicts became more common than those fought between
states. The number of conflicts within state frontiers continued
to rise steeply until it levelled off in the 1990s.
More familiar is the erosion of the distinction
between combatants and non-combatants. The two world wars of
the first half of the century involved the entire populations
of belligerent countries; both combatants and non-combatants
suffered. In the course of the century, however, the burden
of war shifted increasingly from armed forces to civilians,
who were not only its victims, but increasingly the object
of military or military-political operations. The contrast between
the first world war and the second is dramatic: only 5% of those
who died in the first were civilians; in the second, the figure
increased to 66%. It is generally supposed that 80 to 90% of
those affected by war today are civilians. The proportion has
increased since the end of the cold war because most military
operations since then have been conducted not by conscript armies,
but by small bodies of regular or irregular troops, in many
cases operating high-technology weapons and protected against
the risk of incurring casualties. There is no reason to doubt
that the main victims of war will continue to be civilians.
It would be easier to write about war
and peace in the 20th century if the difference between the
two remained as clear-cut as it was supposed to be at the beginning
of the century, in the days when the Hague conventions of 1899
and 1907 codified the rules of war. Conflicts were supposed
to take place primarily between sovereign states or, if they
occurred within the territory of one particular state, between
parties sufficiently organised to be accorded belligerent status
by other sovereign states. War was supposed to be sharply distinguished
from peace, by a declaration of war at one end and a treaty
of peace at the other. Military operations were supposed to
distinguish clearly between combatants - marked as such by the
uniforms they wore, or by other signs of belonging to an organised
armed force - and non-combatant civilians. War was supposed
to be between combatants. Non-combatants should, as far as
possible, be protected in wartime.
It was always understood that these conventions
did not cover all civil and international armed conflicts, and
notably not those arising out of the imperial expansion of
western states in regions not under the jurisdiction of internationally
recognised sovereign states, even though some (but by no means
all) of these conflicts were known as "wars". Nor
did they cover large rebellions against established states,
such as the so-called Indian mutiny; nor the recurrent armed
activity in regions beyond the effective control of the states
or imperial authorities nominally ruling them, such as the raiding
and blood-feuding in the mountains of Afghanistan or Morocco.
Nevertheless, the Hague conventions still served as guidelines
in the first world war. In the course of the 20th century, this
relative clarity was replaced by confusion.
First, the line between inter-state conflicts
and conflicts within states - that is, between international
and civil wars - became hazy, because the 20th century was
characteristically a century not only of wars, but also of revolutions
and the break-up of empires. Revolutions or liberation struggles
within a state had implications for the international situation,
particularly during the cold war. Conversely, after the Russian
revolution, intervention by states in the internal affairs of
other states of which they disapproved became common, at least
where it seemed comparatively risk-free. This remains the case.
Second, the clear distinction between
war and peace became obscure. Except here and there, the second
world war neither began with declarations of war nor ended with
treaties of peace. It was followed by a period so hard to classify
as either war or peace in the old sense that the neologism
"cold war" had to be invented to describe it. The sheer
obscurity of the position since the cold war is illustrated
by the current state of affairs in the Middle East. Neither
"peace" nor "war" exactly describes the
situation in Iraq since the formal end of the Gulf war - the
country is still bombed almost daily by foreign powers - or
the relations between Palestinians and Israelis, or those between
Israel and its neighbours, Lebanon and Syria. All this is an
unfortunate legacy of the 20th-century world wars, but also
of war's increasingly powerful machinery of mass propaganda,
and of a period of confrontation between incompatible and passion-laden
ideologies which brought into wars a crusading element comparable
to that seen in religious conflicts of the past.
These conflicts, unlike the traditional
wars of the international power system, were increasingly waged
for non-negotiable ends such as "unconditional surrender".
Since both wars and victories were seen as total, any limitation
on a belligerent's capacity to win that might be imposed by
the accepted conventions of 18th- and 19th- century warfare
- even formal declarations of war - was rejected. So was any
limitation on the victors' power to assert their will. Experience
had shown that agreements reached in peace treaties could easily
be broken.
In recent years the situation has been
further complicated by the tendency in public rhetoric for the
term "war" to be used to refer to the deployment of
organised force against various national or international activities
regarded as anti-social - "the war against the Mafia",
for example, or "the war against drug cartels". In
these conflicts the actions of two types of armed force are
confused. One - let's call them "soldiers" - is directed
against other armed forces with the object of defeating them.
The other - let's call them "police" - sets out to
maintain or re-establish the required degree of law and public
order within an existing political entity, typically a state.
Victory, which has no necessary moral connotation, is the object
of one force; the bringing to justice of offenders against the
law, which does have a moral connotation, is the object of the
other. Such a distinction is easier to draw in theory than
in practice, however. Homicide by a soldier in battle is not,
in itself, a breach of the law. But what if a member of the
IRA regards himself as a belligerent, even though official UK
law regards him as a murderer?
Were the operations in Northern Ireland
a war, as the IRA held, or an attempt in the face of law-breakers
to maintain orderly government in one province of the UK? Since
not only a formidable local police force but a national army
was mobilised against the IRA for 30 years or so, we may conclude
that it was a war, but one systematically run like a police
operation, in a way that minimised casualties and the disruption
of life in the province. Such are the complexities and confusions
of the relations between peace and war at the start of the new
century. They are well illustrated by the military and other
operations in which the US and its allies are at present engaged.
There is now, as there was throughout
the 20th century, a complete absence of any effective global
authority capable of controlling or settling armed disputes.
Globalisation has advanced in almost every respect - economically,
technologically, culturally, even linguistically - except one:
politically and militarily, territorial states remain the only
effective authorities. There are officially about 200 states,
but in practice only a handful count, of which the US is overwhelmingly
the most powerful. However, no state or empire has ever been
large, rich or powerful enough to maintain hegemony over the
political world, let alone to establish political and military
supremacy over the globe. A single superpower cannot compensate
for the absence of global authorities, especially given the
lack of conventions - relating to international disarmament,
for instance, or weapons control - strong enough to be voluntarily
accepted as binding by major states. Some such authorities exist,
notably the UN, various technical and financial bodies such
as the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO, and some international
tribunals. But none has any effective power other than that
granted to them by agreements between states, or thanks to the
backing of powerful states, or voluntarily accepted by states.
Regrettable as this may be, it isn't likely to change in the
foreseeable future.
Since only states wield real power, the
risk is that international institutions will be ineffective
or lack universal legitimacy when they try to deal with offences
such as "war crimes". Even when world courts are established
by general agreement (for example, the International Criminal
court set up by the UN Rome statute of July 17 1998), their
judgments will not necessarily be accepted as legitimate and
binding, so long as powerful states are in a position to disregard
them. A consortium of powerful states may be strong enough to
ensure that some offenders from weaker states are brought before
these tribunals, perhaps curbing the cruelty of armed conflict
in certain areas. This is an example, however, of the traditional
exercise of power and influence within an international state
system, not of the exercise of international law.
There is, however, a major difference
between the 21st and the 20th century: the idea that war takes
place in a world divided into territorial areas under the authority
of effective governments which possess a monopoly of the means
of public power and coercion has ceased to apply. It was never
applicable to countries experiencing revolution, or to the fragments
of disintegrated empires, but until recently most new revolutionary
or post-colonial regimes - China between 1911 and 1949 is the
main exception - emerged fairly quickly as more or less organised
and functioning successor regimes and states. Over the past
30 years or so, however, the territorial state has, for various
reasons, lost its traditional monopoly of armed force, much
of its former stability and power, and, increasingly, the fundamental
sense of legitimacy, or at least of accepted permanence, which
allows governments to impose burdens such as taxes and conscription
on willing citizens. The material equipment for warfare is now
widely available to private bodies, as are the means of financing
non-state warfare. In this way, the balance between state and
non-state organisations has changed.
Armed conflicts within states have become
more serious and can continue for decades without any serious
prospect of victory or settlement: Kashmir, Angola, Sri Lanka,
Chechnya, Colombia. In extreme cases, as in parts of Africa,
the state may have virtually ceased to exist; or may, as in
Colombia, no longer exercise power over part of its territory.
Even in strong and stable states, it has been difficult to eliminate
small, unofficial armed groups, such as the IRA in Britain
and Eta in Spain. The novelty of this situation is indicated
by the fact that the most powerful state on the planet, having
suffered a terrorist attack, feels obliged to launch a formal
operation against a small, international, non-governmental organisation
or network lacking both a territory and a recognisable army.
How do these changes affect the balance
of war and peace in the coming century? I would rather not make
predictions about the wars that are likely to take place or
their possible outcomes. However, both the structure of armed
conflict and the methods of settlement have been changed profoundly
by the transformation of the world system of sovereign states.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union means
that the Great Power system which governed international relations
for almost two centuries and, with obvious exceptions, exercised
some control over conflicts between states, no longer exists.
Its disappearance has removed a major restraint on inter-state
warfare and the armed intervention of states in the affairs
of other states - foreign territorial borders were largely uncrossed
by armed forces during the cold war. The international system
was potentially unstable even then, however, as a result of
the multiplication of small, sometimes quite weak states, which
were nevertheless officially "sovereign" members of
the UN.
The disintegration of the Soviet Union
and the European communist regimes plainly increased this instability.
Separatist tendencies of varying strength in hitherto stable
nation-states such as Britain, Spain, Belgium and Italy might
well increase it further. At the same time, the number of private
actors on the world scene has multiplied. What mechanisms are
there for controlling and settling such conflicts? The record
is not promising. None of the armed conflicts of the 1990s ended
with a stable settlement. The survival of cold war institutions,
assumptions and rhetoric has kept old suspicions alive, exacerbating
the post-communist disintegration of south-east Europe and
making the settlement of the region once known as Yugoslavia
more difficult.
These cold war assumptions, both ideological
and power-political, will have to be dispensed with if we are
to develop some means of controlling armed conflict. It is also
evident that the US has failed, and will inevitably fail, to
impose a new world order (of any kind) by unilateral force,
however much power relations are skewed in its favour at present,
and even if it is backed by an (inevitably shortlived) alliance.
The international system will remain multilateral and its regulation
will depend on the ability of several major units to agree with
one another, even though one of these states enjoys military
predominance.
How far international military action
taken by the US is dependent on the negotiated agreement of
other states is already clear. It is also clear that the political
settlement of wars, even those in which the US is involved,
will be by negotiation and not by unilateral imposition. The
era of wars ending in unconditional surrender will not return
in the foreseeable future.
The role of existing international bodies,
notably the UN, must also be rethought. Always present, and
usually called upon, it has no defined role in the settlement
of disputes. Its strategy and operation are always at the mercy
of shifting power politics. The absence of an international
intermediary genuinely considered neutral, and capable of taking
action without prior authorisation by the Security Council,
has been the most obvious gap in the system of dispute management.
Since the end of the cold war the management
of peace and war has been improvised. At best, as in the Balkans,
armed conflicts have been stopped by outside armed intervention,
and the status quo at the end of hostilities maintained by
the armies of third parties. Whether a general model for the
future control of armed conflict can emerge from such interventions
remains unclear.
The balance of war and peace in the 21st
century will depend not on devising more effective mechanisms
for negotiation and settlement but on internal stability and
the avoidance of military conflict. With a few exceptions, the
rivalries and frictions between existing states that led to
armed conflict in the past are less likely to do so today. There
are, for instance, comparatively few burning disputes between
governments about international borders. On the other hand,
internal conflicts can easily become violent: the main danger
of war lies in the involvement of outside states or military
actors in these conflicts.
States with thriving, stable economies
and a relatively equitable distribution of goods among their
inhabitants are likely to be less shaky - socially and politically
- than poor, highly inegalitarian and economically unstable
ones. The avoidance or control of internal armed violence depends
even more immediately, however, on the powers and effective
performance of national governments and their legitimacy in
the eyes of the majority of their inhabitants. No government
today can take for granted the existence of an unarmed civilian
population or the degree of public order long familiar in large
parts of Europe. No government today is in a position to overlook
or eliminate internal armed minorities.
Yet the world is increasingly divided
into states capable of administering their territories and citizens
effectively and into a growing number of territories bounded
by officially recognised international frontiers, with national
governments ranging from the weak and corrupt to the non-existent.
These zones produce bloody internal struggles and international
conflicts, such as those we have seen in central Africa. There
is, however, no immediate prospect for lasting improvement in
such regions, and a further weakening of central government
in unstable countries, or a further Balkanisation of the world
map, would undoubtedly increase the dangers of armed conflict.
A tentative forecast: war in the 21st
century is not likely to be as murderous as it was in the 20th.
But armed violence, creating disproportionate suffering and
loss, will remain omnipresent and endemic - occasionally epidemic
- in a large part of the world. The prospect of a century of
peace is remote.
Eric Hobsbawn
is the author of Age
of Extremes: a History of the World, 1914-1991. A longer
version of this article appears in the London Review of Books.
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