NATION STATES AT WAR
“We make war that we may live in peace” — Aristotle[1]
1. ‘Why nations go to war’ is a seminal book into its 11th edition, transmitting an understanding of warfare from World War I to the present day by John G. Stoessinger. It is built around ten case studies, culminating in the new wars that ushered in the twenty-first century: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the wars between Arabs and Israelis in Gaza and in Lebanon. While the distinguishing feature of the book remains the author’s emphasis on the pivotal role of the personalities of leaders who take their nations, or their following, across the threshold into war. While we put leaders as the locus foci for plunging nations into war, it may be pertinent to also figure as to what emboldens these leaders to take the final step. Clausewitzian truism of war as continuation of politique[2] in On War, there is a theory of grand strategy because Clausewitz had conceptualized the nation-state as equipped to participate in perpetual international intercourse. For Clausewitz, “war is not merely a political act but a real political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, a carrying out of the same by other means”. That is to say, war is one means of political intercourse, characterized by military force, to accomplish political ends. The implication is that the nation-state is equipped with multiple means of political intercourse, which war is but one.
2. The transition to war is emboldened by other vectors of CNP; diplomacy, economy, technology and cognitive dominance. These factors of CNP have provided the heft to leaders to embark on this costly endeavour. Just for proving my hypothesis, technology divergence is predicated on education index of a nation, if 1857 was to be considered the beginning of British Raj the education index of India and Great Britain were poles apart. But by 2005 India has reached same levels and that took away the edge, Western World had over India. Similar data analysis also prove that India contributed 60% to the global output which dropped to less than 10% in 1860s as the Industrial revolution in Europe converted India from a merchandise producer to raw material provider and led to Imperial Plunder in India.
Fig-1: Transition of Primary Education: 1850–2005[3]
3. A simplistic metrics for the reasons for conflicts in the world can be attributed to technological divergence, technological convergence and shared vulnerabilities. This hypothesis can be explained through the table given at Fig-2. What is quite evident from the analysis is the role technology and its contribution to CNP provides the leaders with the propensity to transition from peace to war. However, the recent conflict in Afghanistan which were not classic inter-state war disproved the hypothesis as Taliban with no technology was able to bring to knees the great tech giant USA.
4. Though war has been studied in a variety of contexts, generally focus is on diplomacy of pre-war time and immediate postwar period. Yet, in the words of one historian, war must be studied “in the framework of economic, social and technological history as well”[4] Technological convergence due to diffusion in an age of internet and networks had allowed Osama Bin Laden to plan on a tech-intensive attack on USA. Tech convergence has thus migrated away from great power rivalry to conflicts between states and non-state actors. This technological driver of conflict is what can be called kitchen-sink weapons. In the pre-modern age, the ability to produce weapons was limited by the resources that were available (wood, iron) but their make and use was widely distributed. In the modern era however, the instruments of war became very heavily industrialized and complex. We are in many areas coming full circle; the ability to make complex weapons has become much easier with technologies such as the internet, 3D printing and bio-engineering.
5. Technology besides being a vector of delivering violence has also provided non-state actors methods to recruit, collect funds and corporatize their organization. The problem nation states face is how to respond to the mobilising effects of informational and communication technologies (ICT) making the character of war techno-political. Techno-political means political messages that cannot be separated from the technology used to deploy it. The conveyance of message today can also be done without loss of human life and this has emboldened states to adopt new methods of warfare which are non-kinetic and non-contact with a high degree of plausible deniability. Loss of life in wars has fallen radically and this drop in cost of war has made nations more amenable to transiting to conflict albeit not in the kinetic domain. Adoption of new lexicon of warfare; unrestricted warfare, hybrid warfare, ambiguous warfare and grey Z warfare are methods to go to war without the costs of a conventional conflict. The same can be seen from the Fig-3 below.
Fig-3: Deaths in State Based Conflicts[5]
5. The recent Russo-Ukraine conflict however, has turned on the head quite a few hypothesis, loss of life, collateral damage, duration of conflict and resurgence of proxy war in a great power rivalry. However, there are two prerequisites for a war between (rational) actors. One is that the costs of war cannot be overwhelmingly high. By that we mean that there must be some plausible situations in the eyes of the decision makers such that the anticipated gains from a war in terms of resources, power, glory, territory, and so forth exceed the expected costs of conflict, including expected damages to property and life. Thus, for war to occur with rational actors, at least one of the sides involved has to expect that the gains from the conflict will outweigh the cost of war. Secondly there is a failure of bargaining which alludes to the fact that a mutually beneficial arrangement cannot be reached. Following are the reasons for bargaining failure:-
(a) Asymmetric information about the potential costs and benefits of war predicated on biases and pre-conceived ideas about the adversary.
(b) Resources that are not willing to be shared, mutually beneficial bargaining agreements are not feasible.
© Aspiration mismatch, where the aspiration of leaders differ from those of the populations that they represent.
(d) Multilateral interactions where every potential agreement is blocked by some coalition of states or constituencies who can derail the same or embolden leaders to pursue war aims which are impractical.
6. The recent conflict ticks all the four boxes mentioned above, however that is predicated on the fact that we are to consider Putin as a rational actor and secondly it was impossible to know in advance how fiercely an opponent will resist, and leaders contemplating an attack are more often than not are to underestimate it. Failure to appreciate the power of nationalism is one reason for this tendency, and the related tendency to see one’s own nation as innately superior to all potential foes encourages aggressors to discount an opponent’s ability to resist. Nobody starts a war if they recognize their opponent is stronger, is more united, and cares more about the outcome; the remarkable part is states starting a war get this wrong. However, all wars do come to an end eventually, of course, but that is cold comfort when the costs far outweigh the benefits. The lesson is; wars may sometimes be necessary, they should be entered into with the greatest reluctance and only under direst necessity. Those charged with making such decisions must never forget that going to war unleashes powerful political and social forces that are hard to anticipate or control. Once the dogs of war are unleashed, there’s no telling who will end up getting bitten. It is a safe bet, however, that it will take a lot longer and cost a lot more than one had imagined.
[1] Aristotle Quotes. BrainyQuote.com. https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/aristotle_136706 accessed on 18 Mar 23.
[2] https://warroom.armywarcollege.edu/articles/grand-strategy-clausewitz/ accessed on 18 Mar 23.
[3] https://ourworldindata.org/global-education accessed on 19 Mar 23.
[4] https://www.grandstrategy.net/Articles-pdf/evaluating_war.pdf accessed on 19 mar 23.
[5] https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace accessed on 19 Mar 23.
