Article 1.
Introduction to the Study of War - Jack Levy, William Thomson
❖ Central points :
→ Over the years it has been one of the primary mechanisms for change in the world
system
→ The unquestioned importance of war as a social phenomenon
→ no consensus as to the causes of war
→ civil wars have actually been more frequent than interstate wars during most periods
→ theories of interstate war emphasize fundamentally different factors than do theories of
civil wars.
→ literature on the causes of interstate war is intimately tied to the literature on international
relations
→ As we write in summer 2009
→ The “Cold War” between the United States and the Soviet Union was a rivalry, not a war.6
violence is usually driven by a purpose.
The American colonel stated that, “You know you never defeated us on the battlefield.” The
North Vietnamese colonel replied, “That may be so, but it is also irrelevant”
❖ Important terms relative to the subject :
➢ warfare
➢ “rogue states,”
➢ “non-state” actors
➢ Interstate wars
➢ civil war, colonial war, ethnic war, tribal war
war : We define war broadly as sustained, coordinated violence between political
organizations.
→ By sustained we mean not only duration but magnitude.
→ between : reciprocate
→ political organizations ≠ individuals
→ Purposeful Nature: While not explicitly part of the definition, the coordinated violence is
usually driven by a purpose, with political organizations using force as a strategy to achieve their
goals. This aligns with Clausewitz's view that war is a political instrument. The goal is often to
influence the adversary's behavior
war : Malinowski ([1941]1968:523), an anthropologist who defined war as an “armed contest
between two independent political units, by means of organized military force, in the pursuit
of a tribal or national policy.
→ Our definition of war is based on the behavior of two adversarial political organizations,
not on their motivations
“Correlates of War Project” (Singer and Small, 1972). The “COW” project requires at least
1,000 battle-related deaths among all participating states and an annual average of 1,000
battle deaths for wars lasting more than a year.
→ It is less useful for earlier periods when populations and armies were much smaller and
when fewer battle deaths reflected a larger relative proportion of the army or of the
population
❖ Examples :
1. The United States has already fought two interstate wars in the first decade of the
new century – against the Taliban government of Afghanistan in 2001 and against the
Iraqi government in 2003 – and each war evolved into an internationalized civil war in
which the United States was deeply involved
2. the Russian–Georgian war of fall 2008 signaled a renewed Russian assertiveness in
international politics
3. Palestinian–Israeli conflicts, which recently led to short wars in Lebanon involving
Hezbollah in 2006 and in Gaza involving Hamas in 2008–09,
4. The prospective proliferation of nuclear weapons involves other possible flash points.
When Israel suspected that Syria was in the early stages of developing a nuclear
program, it launched a limited preventive strike against a Syrian facility in September
2007
explanation :
In 2007, Israel launched a preemptive airstrike on a Syrian facility suspected of developing
nuclear weapons, with involvement from North Korea raising international alarm.
5. Indo–Pakistani rivalry, which has already led to three major wars in the past 60 years
(1948, 1965, 1971) and which is increasingly dangerous because both sides have
nuclear weapons and because of domestic instability within Pakistan. The rivalry led
to a war over Kargil in 1999 and to high levels of tensions at other times, including
after the deadly terrorist attack on Mumbai in 2008. It is known that Pakistani citizens
led the attack, and India charges that Pakistani security forces trained and equipped
the terrorists.
explanation :
The 1948 conflict between India and Pakistan began shortly after their partition, primarily
over territorial disputes in Kashmir, driven by differing religious majorities.
The 1971 war led to Bangladesh's independence from Pakistan, fueled by ethnic and
linguistic differences and economic disparities between the eastern and western regions.
6. To take another example, the Arab–Israeli conflict goes back to the founding of the
state of Israel in 1948 and beyond. Yet we would not describe it as a continuous war.
7.
❖ Referrences :
➢ As Tilly (1975:42) argued, “war made the state, and the state made war.”
➢ Thucydides (1996) wrote his History of the Peloponnesian War over 2,400
➢ Iranian President Ahmadinejad’
➢ The German military theorist Carl von Clausewitz ([1832]1976:89) ended the
first chapter of his famous book On War by identifying “primordial vio- lence”
as the first element of a “trinity” of “dominant tendencies” of warfare.4
➢ “war is an act of force, and there is no logical limit to the application of that
force.”
➢ a continuation of political activity by other means
Here's a summary of the key information and terms related to "the changing nature of
warfare" from pages 11 to 14 of the source:
● Historical Trends
○ Ancient Warfare: Evidence suggests warfare dates back roughly ten
thousand years with the beginning of agricultural societies. Archaeological
evidence becomes more plentiful for the last 5,000 years, showing full-fledged
armies.
○ Increasing Severity: Deaths per war have increased significantly over time.
Major battle deaths more than doubled between the fifth and fourteenth
centuries CE, more than doubled again between the fourteenth and early
nineteenth centuries CE, and increased by a factor of 10 between the early
nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
○ Decreasing Frequency of Great Power War: Despite the increasing
destructiveness, the frequency of great power wars has declined over the
past five centuries. There was a decline from about 22 in the sixteenth
century to five in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There has been no
great power war in the last half-century.
● Post-World War II Changes
○ Shift in Location: Warfare has shifted away from Europe to other parts of the
world. The Yugoslav wars of the 1990s were the first in Europe since 1945.
○ Increase in Civil Wars: There has been a significant increase in the
frequency of civil wars and other forms of intrastate conflict. The ratio of
internal to external wars increased from about two to one before 1945 to
nearly five to one after 1945.
● Contemporary Warfare Characteristics
○ Shift from Interstate to Intrastate Conflicts: Warfare is increasingly shifting
away from state-to-state conflict toward civil war, insurgency, and other forms
of intrastate and trans-state warfare.
○ Asymmetric Conflicts: Contemporary warfare is increasingly asymmetric.
Rebel groups often adopt strategies of guerrilla warfare, insurgency, and
terrorism due to being outmatched by state military technology.
○ "New Wars": Contemporary civil wars rarely have decisive battles but are
instead protracted struggles. Tactics increasingly include the direct targeting
of civilians.
○ Role of Non-State Actors: Civil wars often involve multiple factions, such as
ethnic or religious groups, warlords, and globalized criminal networks. Armies
have increasingly "outsourced" traditional functions.
● Key Terms
○ Asymmetric Warfare: Conflict in which the opposing sides possess
significantly different resources and adopt different strategies and tactics.
○ Intrastate Conflict: Conflict within a state, such as civil wars.
○ "New Wars": A concept describing contemporary conflicts characterized by
the involvement of diverse actors, asymmetric tactics, and a focus on identity
and resources rather than traditional state interests.
○ Westphalian Model: The traditional model of warfare involving militarized
conflict between state armies, directed by state leaders on behalf of state
interests, and resolved by decisive battles.
● Examples
○ Russian-Georgian War (2008): An exception to the trend of intrastate
conflicts, though it was a highly asymmetric conflict.
○ American Civil War (19th Century): Contrasted with contemporary civil
wars, which often involve multiple rebel groups.
These patterns indicate a shift in the nature of warfare, moving away from traditional
interstate conflicts between great powers towards more localized and internal conflicts
involving diverse actors and asymmetric tactics.
What are the causes of war ??
- 2 schools of thought : realsim and …..
1) Realism :
human nature → human behaviour is aggressive in order to survive and obtain scarce
resources
States would act the same as individuals → striving to survive in an anarchical environment
In absence of no central state → Cf Hobbes
In IR : the fear of other states' behaviour - Survival leads to competition
→ leads to aggressive tendencies
conflict spiral of just arming yourself for protection actually
ex : North Korea and Nuclear , said protection - perceived as hostile by Japan, US and
South Korea and vice-versa
-
power transition theory :
- hierarchy of power, states or either satisfied or insatisfied - high potential of power
transmission of power basically :
ex : Thucydide : Athenian's power transmitted to spartiates' power
–
→ divert people's attention from domestic problems
ex : Bill Clinton facing sex scandals and engaging straight after in the middle eastern wars
→ Find a common enemy for better cohesion
ex : Argentina devastated by economic crisis
( opposition to the junta in power from 1976 )
→ They calculated that the uk would never respond militarily
However UK ( Margaret Thatcher ) dealt with its own domestic problems
2) Motivation for cooperation among states : liberalism
- After the cold war, claims about the decline of war
→ Idea that democracies do not fight each other and are more peaceful in some way
why ??
>> they share democratic values, and prefer conflict resolution through negociations
>> checks and balance - counter powers - opposition to the leader's single will
→ Capitalist peace theory : ( Kant, Montesquieu ) States that commerce together become
interdependent - no interest in wars
TOUGH
counterarguments :
Uk and Germany were largely commercing with each other on the verge of WW1
