"If God grants me life, after madness, illness, crime, sexuality, the last thing that I would like to study would be the problem of war and the institution of war in what one could call the military dimension of society."

Michel Foucault

Introduction

Who fights and dies in the armed conflicts today? What are the changes in war and what are simply contemporary manifestations of an ancient phenomenon? These are some of the central questions occupying the minds of scholars regarding the role and nature of war in the contemporary era. War is now considered as a classic issue of security studies, or to use a metaphor, the "world's classic book" which must be read and understood by every student and practitioner of security studies and International Relations (IR). When we realize that was the need to study the causes of the First World War which triggered the emergence of IR as an academic discipline in 1919 at Aberystwyth University, we can easily understand the great impact this phenomenon has on shaping the world politics. However war as a social behavior not only affects but is also deeply affected by changes in culture, technology, way of production, international environment and of course in the way we think of war.

            The end of the Cold War and the density of the non-conventional armed conflicts that followed it sparked a myriad of discussions about the changing character and nature of war both in academic and military circles. These developments - encouraged also by the works of social scientists in their attempts to grasp the complexity of the phenomenon of globalization - lead to the questioning of the central assumptions about war that dominated the Cold War (strategic) thinking of war. Thus the Clausewitzian mindset of war became the target of a severe critique.   

Political Theory of War and "Trinitarian War" 

War as a sociological phenomenon is a fluid concept generating different definitions in different periods of time by different disciplines and scholars.[i] However, the political philosophy of war equated with the name of Prussian theoretician Carl von Clausewitz who classically framed it as the continuation of politics by other means, has been the one that has shaped the Western strategic thinking about war for more than two hundred years. Nowadays political theory of war is studied widely in military academies, but outside the corridors of academies it is widely challenged by the new developments and components that were absent in the Clausewitzian equation of war.

Clausewitz defined war as "an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfill our will". Accordingly war was conceived as a national, instrumental, controlled and rational political act. For him war had to be waged only with a clear purpose in mind after weighing  the costs and benefits of the instrumental use of force. In such a war, the victory would belong to the party who applied best the art of war. Clausewitz also made a distinction between the nature and the character of war. According to him while the nature of war was immutable the character of war would reflect the age it happens.[ii] This means that even the face of war changes due to the technology, political environment, historical context etc., its nature remains constant: like organized violence, fought for rational reasons etc. Clausewitz's immutability thesis rested on the assumption that three tendencies were ever present in war: basic violence, chance and uncertainty and the attempt to use war to achieve a purpose. These tendencies corresponded to three institutions: people, army and government (the state) which come to be known as the "wondrous trinity". Clausewitz also stressed the importance of balance among the components of trinity.

The influential historian of war Martin van Creveld, coined the term "Trinitarian war" to define the Clausewitzian mindset of war. Accordingly, war was considered as a means to an end, in other words, it was thought to occur between well organized state-controlled armies, with clear political objectives in mind. Additionally, the three components of trinity were not only assumed as balanced but in harmony with each other. Thus, people/state relations should conform the social contract which obligated the state to protect its citizens. State/army relations were assumed with a subordination of the latter to the former (the government sets objectives and army provides the means, but government should not interfere with the means chosen for their achievement). And the people/army relations were to be harmonious so far as the people regarded the military service as a national duty. Moreover, here the state was thought as the "Weberian" rational state, enjoying the monopoly of legitimate violence within his borders. Thus, state was presumed to represent their citizens (people) on the basis of a "social contract". Here the "people" appear as a meaningful unity, i.e a nation. Besides this, army was assumed as a unitary, hierarchically organized service operating on the principles of scientific works.[iii]

In a nutshell, it is not difficult here to note the spirit of levée en masse (the nation in arms) which apparently has influenced the Clausewitz thinking of war. It's worth mentioning also that according to the Clausewitzian approach, war is fought on behalf of a nation but not by the nation, because war is for the armies. This approach allowed a distinction between combatants and non-combatants which in turn would make possible the implementation of the jus in bello (laws in war). On the other hand, because war was deemed as a means to political ends, the possibility to regulate which political ends could justify resorting to war, enabled the development of jus ad bellum (laws of war). Thus war was not merely organized violence with political ends, but also regulated by law. It was, in the "realists" view, a normal tool for solving the inter-state problems in an anarchic international system.

The Clausewitzian outlook of war, as will be shown below, was challenged by the developments related with the impact of globalization on world politics.           

The Major Trends in Recent Armed Conflicts 

Post Cold War era has witnessed a shift from inter-state conflicts to intra-state ones where the former is now an exception and the latter is becoming the new norm. Thus the majority of armed conflicts taking place today are intra-state and asymmetric (when one of the parties is non-state actor with poor technology opposing to a strong state with high tech) in nature. These kinds of conflicts generally occur for the control of a state or territory, the secession of a region or the autonomy and self-determination of sub-state identity groups[iv] or to defend or expand a particular cultural autonomy against the globalizing pressures of Westernization, as in the case of Islamic fundamentalism.[v] Broadly speaking, in the words of Ken Booth, such intra-state struggles are defined by "state collapse, extreme ethnic brutality, elite manipulation, narcissistic identity politics, historical propaganda, naked fear, religious revival, neighbour versus neighbour violence, fluid political entities, and ethnic cleansing".[vi] The features above show a shift from Clausewitzian political violence to inter-ethnic brutality, which make the instrumentality of war hard to be defended.

On the other hand, the impact of globalization on diminishing the political, economical and cultural role of nation-state as well as the national identities on behalf of local, ethnic and religious one, is argued to have made the "wondrous trinity" irrelevant in our age. By the same token Mary Kaldor suggests that a new category of wars, which she labels as "new wars", has emerged since the last years of Cold War. Globalization is seen as the driving force of these conflicts, where the disintegration of states and the quest for national identity is typical in such conflicts.[vii] Thus Kaldor states that these "new wars" differ from the previous ones (Clausewitzian wars) in terms of their goals, methods and sources of finance. Moreover she argues that in these armed conflicts - as the wars following the dissolution of Yugoslavia have clearly showed - the traditional distinctions between war, organized crime and large-scale violations of human rights become increasingly blurred.[viii] According to Kaldor all these developments show clearly the erosion of the Westphalian state's monopoly of legitimate organized violence.[ix] Some of the characteristics which distinguish these armed conflicts from the previous (traditional inter-state) wars are summarized below.

            The distinguishing features of post Cold War armed conflicts, including the ones after 9/11, can be described in bold lines as firstly being fought not only by regular armies but also by militias, armed civilians, paramilitaries, warlords and military contractors (non-state actors) with little discipline, uncertain chains of command and with a debatable legality. Secondly, often there is a total collapse of state institutions in such conflicts.[x] Third, the civilians became main targets of hostility and lastly, the high-tech is used in these conflicts generally by a powerful state from outside. As a result the distinction between public and civil combatants in these conflicts becomes quite blurred. Thus in such cases the application of jus in bello (laws in war) becomes almost impossible reducing in minimum the protection of civilians and they who are deemed as hors de combat.

The high scale of violence and the high-tech can be considerate as two substantial characteristics of these conflicts. At first glance it looks paradoxical that a war waged by high-tech weapons can cause so many civilian victims. The main reason why we call these arms as high-tech weapons is because they have a high degree of targeting, precision and accuracy and this fact is supposed to reduce in minimum the civil causalities not to amplify them. The answer for such a contradiction can be found partly in the illusion created by the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). A brief look at the US-led armed conflicts would help us reveal the failure that lies behind this doctrine as well as understand other important characteristics of recent conflicts.

            According to some scholars the roots of the changing character of war can be found on RMA. The term of RMA even has its roots in the late 1070s Soviet Union's strategists it become internationally familiar with the 1991 Gulf War. The role of technology in shaping the war is well-known through history and this was proved again in the Gulf War, where technology as an amplificatory of power made possible to predict easily the culmination of war. The almost effortless victory of US backed by its superiority in technology suggested that the future operations would be determined by the possessing of high-tech like the guided weapons and space satellites etc.[xi]  This view claimed itself also in the NATO's Kosovo air campaign, where the US did not have a simple causality in man. These events generated some debates about the concept of "virtual war" dominated by information, communications, weapons targeting combined with media images.[xii] In the light of these facts we can argue that RMA is inspired by American concept of war that gives priority to the quick battle with the possible minimum of causalities. The American society is not prepared to wage a lengthy war. This view is also important to show us the close relationship between the society its culture and war doctrine.

            In addition the technological superiority has produced an Asymmetric warfare that can be considered as a means of the weak (non-state actor in general) against a sophisticated strong opponent (state actor). All US-led coalitions in Iraq, ex-Yugoslavia and Afghanistan produced an asymmetric conflict.[xiii] Because the majority of conflicts today are not a traditional state to state confrontation and because RMA emerged from a state-centric concept of warfare, what lies behind the successful military operations is a failure that consists in the large number of victims both civilian and military, as the cases of Afghanistan and 2003 Iraq War clearly shows.

            Another important feature of current conflicts is the scale of violence spread especially among the non-combatants. Once war moved out of the battlefield, deaths took a massive aspect[xiv] encompassing also the civilians. Furthermore the civilians come to be the main victims in intra-state wars, causing large numbers of refugees and displaced persons[xv] as the case of Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq War clearly showed. While the causalities during the conventional phase of fighting in Iraq War were historically low[xvi] they escalated both in military and civilian side with the evolving of fighting in residential areas. Guerrilla and terrorist attacks emerged as a reaction against superiority in technology contributing in the escalation of dead civilians. From this point of view we can't say that RMA changed the violence or the number of victims because the cases of Afghanistan and later the Iraq war showed the contrary. We can conclude that those who use high-tech can consider war "virtual" but it is anything but "virtual"[xvii] for who suffer from it.[xviii] 

Maybe the most distinguishing characteristic of contemporary armed conflicts is the rising role of the Privatized Military Firms (PMFs) known as the phenomenon of "outsourcing of war". However the privatization of war is not a new phenomenon. In fact the use of modern national-armies is a relatively recent idea going back to the establishment of the levée en masse Convent by Napoleon in 23 August 1793. Before this date the non-national and mercenary nature of armies was widely accepted. For example, the most severe critique of Machiavelli in the Prince, was directed especially to the "condottierri" (14-15^th century Italian mercenary). He saw them as dangerous and a kind of soldiers to whom could not be trusted for the outcomes of war, because for them was money that counted first.

However, this medieval phenomenon has returned back in contemporary battlefield in a different guise, that of PMF. The War of Iraq (2003) was the war in which the PMFs appeared in a massive density. According to the Peter Singer the War of Iraq cannot be described without mentioning about PMFs.[xix] It is supposed that, in this war over 60 PMF including a personnel that exceeds the number of 20.000, have participated.[xx] They were utilized in various operations including the ones done traditionally by national-armies as is the case of combating or tactical missions. Moreover the PMF is thought to play a positive role in overcoming some structural problems inside the military e.g the use of soldiers in the activities which are not directly linked with fighting may diminish the bellicosity of army, thus the utility of PMF in this regard is deemed as fruitful.[xxi]

Notwithstanding their utility in appearance, their legal status is not clear in the most cases. Moreover what is the most important problem with this practice is the ethic aspect of PMF. Because PMF fight for money, the end of war would mean the closing of a very profitable market for them, on the other hand the end of war is equal with the decrease of costs for the state. The latter constitutes the ethical aspect of the problem.[xxii] The increasing role of PMF shows also a divergence from the norm of national armies as defined in "wondrous trinity".

Last but not the least is the role of media. It was absent in the equation of Clausewitz but is present in all the contemporary armed conflicts. Media today provides a close encounter with war for large public through the television screen and makes war "transparent". As a result the "CNN effect" entered the international relations literature. The idea of media as a tool of propaganda is not a new one. It is believed that Napoleon once said to his generals: "Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets". This expresses the strong effect played by communication and psychological tools (visual or not) in shaping the public consciousness.

As a result public opinion plays an important role in shaping the decision-making process, particularly in the cases of humanitarian intervention, where severe human rights violations attract a large sensitivity. But as the case of Somalia showed, the CNN effect can be double-edged, because the same public opinion that forced the decision makers in America to intervene in Somalia, after watching the dead bodies of American soldiers they changed their minds and America has to withdraw its troops. This public sensitivity plays a crucial role in America and this is why the American "way of waging war" is based strongly on technology and on the reduction in minimum of causalities. It is been said that this public sensitivity has its roots on Vietnam syndrome. In addition the journalists are now an active part of "battlefield" shaping and even constructing the image of war for public at home. 

Conclusion 

The study of war matters and will continue to occupy the minds of intellectuals and scholars about its current transformation in relation with the effect of globalization. From the end of 1980s onward many eminent IR scholars have stressed the irrelevance of Clausewitzian mindset of war in contemporary era. Their views were also backed by other social scientists' findings regarding the diminishing role of Westphalian state system as well as the ambiguity of national-identities in the contexts of a globalized world. Thus the Clausewitzian equation of war was largely challenged not only by the emergence of a myriad of non-state actors in the battlefield which were absent in his trinity, but also the rationality of war itself as a means of politics was questioned for its uncertain outcomes. These developments lead many scholars to research the causes of the metamorphosis of war as well as its potential consequences in world politics and societies, by analyzing the post-Cold War era's armed conflicts.

The characteristics of recent conflicts selected in this article are not exhausted and can be extended far beyond to include the role of gender in war, child soldiers, terrorism and so on. However these are deemed to expose some important and stubborn features that challenge the traditional view of "Trinitarian war" and help us to better understand the current nature of armed conflicts.

[i] Michael Sheehan, "The Changing Character of  War", in John Baylis, Steve Smith and Patricia Owens eds., The Globalization Of World Politics:  An Introduction to International Relations, 4e., (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 213.

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Bjorn Moller, "Post-trinitarian war and the regulation of violence", in Steffano Guzzini and Dietrich Jung eds., Contemporary Security Analyzis and Copenhagen Peace Research, (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 81-84.

[iv] Tamara Duffey, "United Nations Peacekeeping in the Post-Cold War World", Frank Cass Journals, Journal Offprint, Civil Wars, Vol.1, No.3 (Autumn 1998), p. 2.

[v] Sheehan, op. cit., p. 222.

[vi] Ken Booth, Theory of World Security, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)

[vii] Ibid., p. 221.

[viii] See: Paul D. Williams "War", in Paul D. Williams ed., Security Studies, (London: Routledge, 2008)

[ix] Ibid., p. 165.

[x] Duffey, op. cit., p. 3.

[xi] Burak Çınar, "Irak Savaşı'nda, Tekonoloji-Ordu-Harekat Bağlantısı", Stardigma Strateji Analiz e-Dersisi, Ağustos 2003, Sayı 7, p. 1.

[xii] Ibid., p. 218.

[xiii] Ibid., p. 217.

[xiv] Burak Çınar, "Savaş ve Ölüm", Cumhuriyet-Strateji, 20 Ekim 2008.

[xv] Duffey, op. cit., p. 3.

[xvi] Sheehan, op. cit., p. 218.

[xvii] Ibid., p. 220.

[xviii] Ibid., p. 220.

[xix] Cited in Haldun Yalçınkaya ve Kadir Tamer Türkeş, "Yirmi Birinci Yüzyılda Çatışma Alanlarında Görülen Yeni Unsurlar", Güvenlik Stratejileri Dergisi, Ulusal Hakem Dergi, Haziran 2008 Yıl 4 Sayı 7, f. 77.

[xx] Ibid., p. 83.

[xxi] Ibid.

[xxii] Ibid.