Threats to Global Security in Post-Cold War Period - Essay Example

?Conflict and Security in the Post-Cold War Global System: ‘Old and New Wars’. In discussing the difference between “old” wars and “new” wars in his essay “The Transformation of War,” Martin Van Creveld describes the “Clausewitzian” as the essential characteristic of the “old” view of war. (Van Creveld, 1991, p.ix) This view portrays “old” wars as characterized by WWI and WWII, where the entire globe was considered the battlefield for imperial powers, entire societies were industrialized for military production, the greatest advances in mass-production, science, and rationalization were used to create the most violent weapons of mass destruction the world had ever known. The nation-states drafted or enlisted vast segments of the population base to build huge armies, navies, air forces, and nuclear weaponry, and the military command of each nation used this force with unrestrained power, even against civilian populations. The “old” war pattern led to hundreds of millions of individual deaths across the world during the course of the 20th Century. In a different interpretation focusing on media, Heidi Schaefer writes in “Old Wars New Wars”: “The famous photograph of a man being executed by a shot to the head by South Vietnam Lt. Colonel Ngyen Ngoc Loan, Saigon Chief of Police... taken by Eddie Adams, in 1968, on a side street in Saigon and later won him... a Pulitzer prize. In Adams’ obituary, the Washington Post wrote on this defining image of the violence of war in the latter half of the 20th century: ‘It was war in its purest, most personal form.’” (Schaefer, 2009) Thus, in evaluating the definition of “old” wars, it can be stated that on the global or international level, “old” wars operate on the Clausewitzian model of “total war” and mass-mobilization of societies that cause immense amounts of social and economic destruction. On the local level, “old” wars operate as in the Eddie Adam’s photo, the brutality of a man shot in the head, the passion of the scene, the emotions, and desperation are all caught on camera and recorded as a “total history”. In using this understanding to build a conception of “new” wars, these can be seen as “conflicts” that operate on a limited or isolated basis globally, generally in failed States or in surgical military operations led by the hegemonic powers. Where “total war” characterized the old paradigm, “contained war” is symbolic of the new. This may also include increased systematization, de-personalization, and abstraction of violence so as to understand that State violence becomes more “stylized” in the operation of “new” war, as in a “cosmopolitan” police action. Additionally, there is a greater tendency to covert action, marginalized conflicts, lack of media coverage of non-central States, and disappearance of history that suggest in the local operation of “new” war, there is an inherent secrecy or hidden aspect that relates to containment, and can be seen as contrary to the Eddie Adams model. This means the media may not be centrally present in the “new” wars; the violence may not be recorded and broadcast in graphic imagery, but rather masked and stylized by the State in Hollywood manner in order to continue status quo operations with violence contained to the destruction of media-driven stereotypes of “foreign enemies” and “terror”. In reviewing the academic literature on the definition of “old” war and “new” war, there is a consistent theme of scholars writing on the subject to identify the 9/11 attacks as ushering in a new paradigm in the conduct of war. In "Old Laws, New Wars: Jus ad Bellum in an Age of Terrorism," William K. Lietzau writes: "At 8:46 on the morning of 11 September 2001, a handful of terrorists propelled the globe into an era of profound change... Whether or not recognized, acknowledged, or asserted, 9/11 and the response thereto brought forth a nascent legal regime that will alter the way nation states apply the rule of law in combating terrorism." (Lietzau, 2004) Yet, the war on terrorism, never-ending by definition and likely to create more aspects of what it seeks to eliminate through the use of force than if it were not to engage militarily displays a hidden tendency. The Military-Industrial Complex in advanced economies profits off of the continual conduct of war. This leads to a vast concentration of defence contracts in the hands of private companies with a very small minority ownership in the population. The representative democracy system encourages the buying and selling of legislation through special interests, and the combination of military violence, physical threat, and profit creates and overwhelmingly powerful cartel of political influence that controls power asymmetrically in “new” war, conducting war that is undeclared and against the will of its own democratic populace. This points to a new form of political alienation and repression of minority interests in society politically, and it relates to the manner in which the peace movement is repressed in Western societies when the government, unbound by popular control, conducts “new” war on old imperial models of foreign policy. The protest element of the “Moral Left” can be seen as an inherent element of “new” wars, and this also leads to the further stylization of violence, hiding of violence through covert operations, and “spinning” the media imagery on the war in a manner different from classical reportage in “old” wars. However, it is important to note that not all scholars believe that “new” war is limited to superpower States, late-capitalist democracies, and Western societies. Rather, one element of “new” war is that it is contained outside of Western societies and primarily limited to the super-poor nation-states of the world as a theatre of conflict. This is exemplified in Rwanda, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Dafur, the Balkans, Sierra Leone, and other post-Vietnam wars. In “Old and New Wars” (2003) by S. Mansoob Murshed, the author writes: “We are used to viewing war as something that happens between states. Contemporary wars, however, mostly occur between groups within the same country, and primarily within the developing world.” (Murshed, 2003) While some such as Murshed ask if is not obvious that these conflicts and civil wars could easily be solved by the peaceful discussion of issues and point to the irrational nature of conflicts such as Rwanda, the other aspect of the issue involves arms sales to developing regions and attempts to build international States and national identities from a fragmented and poverty-stricken local population of multiple indigenous tribes and cultures. Economic development proceeds according to the plans of the State and the “foreign” multinational corporations in the developing world, and this values little the suffering or local voices of the people in developing nations who are the victims in the “new” war. From this it is possible to conclude that the 9/11 attacks broke the containment model of “new” war that limited violence to the developing nations and “third world” arenas, but that classical or Clauswitzian elements of “old” war were conditioned or contained in the “police” response of the American military. The stylization of violence through increased de-personalization can be seen in the increasing preference for satellite surveillance, military airstrikes, cruise missiles, and predator drone attacks over “boots on the ground” as violence is increasingly more abstracted through technology and related to ever smaller minority control of political institutions. In “New and Old Wars” by Mary Kaldor, the distinction between the “old” wars and “new” wars is most strongly developed. She writes that, “In the context of globalization... war between states in which the aim is to inflict maximum violence is becoming an anachronism. In its place is a new type of organized violence which could be described as a mixture of war, organized crime and massive violations of human rights. The actors are both global and local, public and private. The wars are fought for particularistic political goals using tactics of terror and destabilization that are theoretically outlawed by the rules of modern warfare. Kaldor's analysis offers a basis for a cosmopolitan political response to these wars, in which the monopoly of legitimate organized violence is reconstructed on a transnational basis and international peacekeeping is reconceptualized as cosmopolitan law enforcement.” (Kaldor, 1999) This mixture of organized crime, violence, and human rights violations is a definition that must be applied equally, as Chomsky and others note, to the Western economic powers and the developing nations. (Chomsky, 2008) Terrorism as espoused by armed groups such as al Qaeda, the PLO, Hamas, Basque separatists, Sri Lankan rebels, Columbian drug cartels, and groups like the Red Army Brigade all included an “underworld” element related to criminal activity in the broader sense of Western understandings. Yet, organized crime can also be seen as an inherent aspect of the Military-Industrial Complex itself, or of the political parties that organize State violence and use it as a means to concentrate social power and profit. Both of the sides in “new” war have the elements of organized crime, and it is important to view “shock and awe” techniques and regime change as a type of terrorism and totalitarianism of the State contrasted with an ideal of rational and respectful communication among human beings and autonomous self-determination as characteristic of the discussion of political issues. (Chomsky, 2008) The recognition of the moral questions of war in the social context, within the wider global peace movement, is another aspect of “new” war that relates it to “old” war. As a paradigmatic example of the “old” style of war, examples can be given of how “yellow journalism” is used to first create a sense of nationalism or patriotism in mass-populations, and then further incite that population to war fervour that is based on a biased or one-sided framing of issues. The sinking of the Lusitania or the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, even Pearl Harbor, all follow this pattern in modernism and classic war. Post-Vietnam, the anti-war and pacifist elements of society are organized, following the civil rights struggles and protest movements of the 1960’s, and these groups collectively form what can be called the counter-culture. After Vietnam, the Western States can no longer prosecute war effectively in the old manner because of draft resistance and social unrest. Thus, the domestic aspects of the anti-war movements condition and limit the response of the State technically, yet do not limit it totally in application, but rather force it into more covert actions, higher secrecy, greater division in society related to police control and mass-surveillance, and aspects of domestic security that run far more extreme than many of the worst elements of modernist States, such as the secret police in the Soviet State and Eastern Block. With the war on terrorism enacted at a cost of trillions of U.S. dollars to the taxpayer, the corporate interests rarely paying taxes, and the Military-Industrial Complex exerting a dark and controlling influence on government deep from within the halls of power as Eisenhower described in his farewell address, “new” wars are conducted in the environment of “spin” democracy where the State must at all costs maintain the appearance of the status quo functioning efficiently in order to be successful. The victims of the war in the developing world, such as Iraq or Afghanistan are somehow still viewed as “other,” less than human, or less valuable than national identity groups, friends, and families who suffer locally. The irrationality described in the use of violence in civil war conflicts and failed States is also seen repeated in the superpowers, yet they must continue to maintain the symbols of authority in the media through the conduct of “new” war. Yellow journalism changes to how many war photos are staged, war stories are “enhanced” for the media, reporters are “embedded” in order to give biased and flattering reports rather than “real” journalism, and critical review of the facts and evidence, such as that leading up to the Iraq war, is ignored by the mass-media “news” in order to seek a closer alliance with the power of the State. The fundamental irrationality of this system is in the unequal application of values and ideals to peoples around the world. This relates to social, political, economic, and human rights. For example, “collateral damage” is routinely and casually accepted in developing nations, yet it is an atrocity and terrorism in the West. (Chomsky, 2008) The division is based solely on the refusal to apply the same fundamental values equally between cultures, but these divisions can be traced to the deepest historical roots of human civilization in the psychology of war. What is different in many ways in “new” war is that it is conducted in the historical awareness of the horrors of WWI and WWII, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the Holocaust, and other of the worst symbols of “old” war. Because of this, the late-capitalist, liberal societies become increasingly divided historically in a manner similar to that which occurred over the issue of slavery in America, or civil rights and women’s suffrage eras. After Vietnam, the U.S., Britain, France, and other traditional imperial powers have lost the ability to maintain a traditional empire through the success of the anti-colonial and anti-imperial movements post-WWII that led to the foundation of the “developing nations” of today. “New” war adapts old patterns of imperialism related to natural resource control on old models, but uses also soft power such as finance, law, and media to the same ends of profit and power. In this manner, the moral force of the opposition in the domestic polity relates to solidarity with the anti-colonial movements and developing nations as a way pointing to a rising beyond war and building globalization on a foundation of world peace rather than world domination. Yet, this is politically a minority view in the Western powers, untenable in the media, unrepresented in the political parties, and marginalized through the use of police domestically that operate on the same model as the military internationally. The police enforce law and morality domestically, including with it the dominant values of corporate hegemony, while the military police international law globally through the U.N., NATO, “coalitions of the willing,” and other ad hoc groups that are used as a symbol of State authority. The police model and reference to authoritative justification in law is an essential characteristic of “new” war, but the threat is always the abuse of power and the rise of the Police State. Hersch Lauterpacht is quoted as stating "...If international law is, in some ways, at the vanishing point of law, the law of war is, perhaps even more conspicuously, at the vanishing point of international law." (Lietzau, 2004) This is an “old” war view. In the Clausewitzian “total war” all law vanishes, entire populations are targeted, ethnic cleansing is systematic, holocaust is industrialized, and cities vaporized with atomic weapons. In the “new” war, hegemonic powers who emerged victorious from the previous round of world wars and who have a dominant global economies built from the basis of imperialism, slave labour, and the theft of national resources historically in colonialism all seek to extend and protect their advantage for as long as possible, as well as to expand this system of advantage globally in a manner that gives the control element even more wealth and power. The “new” war is fully legal, fully justified in the media, at the UN, in international law, even if the documents are a forged to fit the policy and there is no democratic control of the representatives. The “new” war of the Western hegemony is also different from the “new” war of the intra-State conflicts of the developing world. The basis of judgement is that if the superpower has identified its State interest in a region, related to political or economic goals, there will be a relative response. Where this is also the basis of “old” war foreign policies there is little change, yet the methods of justification and the symbolic arguments do change with wars rarely declared formally as per the Constitution, police actions and standing armies continue perpetually, and in essence, a constant state of war is engaged against an ever-present terrorist “evil” in society, both domestically and abroad. In ‘"New" And "Old" Civil Wars: A Valid Distinction?’ Stathis Kalyvas questions the basis of judgment invoked by this understanding of historical paradigms and suggests that it may say more about a change in the moral awareness of the war societies themselves making the judgements. For example, he writes: “According to this argument, ‘new’ civil wars are different from ‘old’ civil wars along at least three related dimensions--they are caused and motivated by private predation rather than collective grievances and ideological concerns; the parties to these conflicts lack popular support and must rely on coercion; and gratuitous, barbaric violence is dispensed against civilian populations. Recent civil wars, therefore, are distinguished as criminal rather than political phenomena. This article traces the origins of this distinction and argues that it is based on an uncritical adoption of categories and labels, combined with deficient information on ‘new’ civil wars and neglect of recent historical research on ‘old’ civil wars. Perceived differences between post­cold war conflicts and previous civil wars may be attributable more to the demise of readily available conceptual categories caused by the end of the cold war than to the end of the cold war per se.” (Kalyvas, 2001) This criticism is important because it suggests that there may not be a fundamentally different type of war being displayed now from previously, but rather a changed way of perceiving and justifying war in Western societies following first Vietnam and then later 9/11. “Old” and “new” war theories in this sense may be related to a shift in conscience related to not only the anti-war movement and counter-culture of Vietnam, but also the success of the anti-colonial struggle in people’s liberation movements worldwide, and the changing perceptions of the West following 9/11. The legalistic use of violence betrays the fundamental moral basis of society because it is by nature the breakdown of the political process. If civil communication worked or functioned properly, there would not be war. Rather, war represents organized violence, group and social patterns of violence, which may repeat across time and history from the earliest days of stone weapons, to the iron age, industrial war, and nuclear M.A.D.. To a large degree, the education initiatives of the anti-war movement, counter culture, and “Moral Left” has led to a wider acceptance of the goals of world peace as an ultimate goal of society. It may or may not be easier to rally the State to war, as the Iraq invasion post-9/11 indicates; the State will proceed as ordered by domestic political leadership however they seize power and control of institutions. What changes between “old” and “new” concepts of war is the social basis of how wars are justified and “spun” to the electorate in the West, and how they are critically appraised in the media. The internet to a large degree has as influence on this as it relates decentralized knowledge sharing on alignment groups in ways that are quicker and less expensive than traditional print or mass-media related to centralized control. In “A Violent Peace,” Paul Rogers writes: “While nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction will be major features of the coming decades, the main methods by which the world’s powerful states, especially the United States, seek to maintain their control of international security are through the appropriate use of conventional forces. Threats are seen to stem from a possible revival of a belligerent Russia, or of an increasingly powerful China, together with the activities of ‘rogue states’ and terrorists and even of ideological or religious movements, especially militant Islam. The western military are making the transition to post-Cold War forces that can keep the lid on threats to western security. Global reach, rapid deployment forces, counterinsurgency, and missile defences all have their role to play, and there is a persistent emphasis on control from a distance, especially if it can involve a minimum of risk.” (Rogers, 2001) Rogers locates the critical moment for the emergence of the new paradigm in the end of the Cold War, for this changed the ideological justification for militarism in the West as there was no longer an expansionist Socialist-Communist enemy with industrial powers and nuclear deterrent. The new paradigm targets “rogue states” as any major military power that significantly challenges the status quo of the current international order. In this view, hegemony is established in the post-imperial era through international law and the control of international institutions by the dominant economic powers of late-capitalism who seek to preserve their monopolies and any imbalances of power as that leads to a further concentration of wealth and authority in minority status groups locally. “Rouge States” such as Serbia, Iraq, Iran , North Korea, and others are eliminated in a pattern that may have begun with Panama or Grenada post-Vietnam but dates back to “Rough Riders” in Cuba or post-war clandestine operations in Europe and elsewhere to control the free, domestic politics of sovereign nations or institute regime change. In building a summary from the view that war, State violence, and its organization represents a moral wrong, a breakdown in civil society, and a type of policy that exists in government structures and thus can be changed, there is a critical view that is far different from the Clausewitzian or the Machiavellian principles of modern warfare. It is also possible on this basis to judge the actions of the State in war historically, and apply the same standards of idealism to all sides of a conflict impartially. Yet, because the military industrial complex operates on principles of “realism” that use idealism only in Orwellian terms, the process Rogers describes can be seen as a “violent peace” or characteristic or global hegemony where entrenched late-capitalist powers maintain control and expand through globalization. Rogers writes: “Some quite fundamental rethinking of our attitudes to security is necessary. Countering socioeconomic divisions and embracing sustainable development are actually core requirements for stable international security. In one sense this is nothing new and has been a common argument in writings on environmental and development issues for a couple of decades, such as the Brandt and Bruntland reports. What is different is the need to link this to thinking on international security so that the prevailing paradigm of a western elite maintaining its security, if need be by military means, is recognised as not just unsustainable but actually self-defeating. There are many impressive arguments that a polarised and constrained world is not acceptable on the grounds of morality and justice. From a security perspective, it cannot and will not work. An alternative security paradigm is required.” (Rogers, 2001) In this statement, Rogers recognizes that “new” wars are related to old drives for natural resources and economic expansion into new markets, and that the rhetoric of “democracy” that serves as a justification for this stands on the same basis as the Romans attempted to extend and maintain their empire through the use of symbolic idealism in the popular rhetoric of imperialism to mask the motives of State power. As the age becomes corrupt, so do the values if the fundamentals relating to economic development are not met worldwide, while militarily dominant cultures consume at rates of conspicuous consumption hundreds or thousands of times that of the world’s poorest people. That this pattern of economic consumption cannot be exported globally, that it is unsustainable environmentally, and that it rests on a fundamentally unjust militaristic basis which imposes policy internationally by physical force little different from organized crime on a mass-scale, are just a few of the conclusions that can be drawn from this reading. In recognizing the way that global poverty is related to “new” war in that its victims, living and breathing humans in the developing world with lives, families, hopes, and goals that have no value to the hegemonic military powers and can be seen as “collateral damage” for “shock and awe” policies, there is the inherent characteristic that symbolizes both aspects of “new” war fundamentally. Where superpowers exert their military force through increasingly de-personalized ways such as predator drones, air strikes, cruise missiles, and the like rather than armed occupation, or when they justify the collateral damage of regime change operations in the developing world, they implement policy on a double-standard that would not be viewed as acceptable, for example, if another foreign State or alliance attempted to implement a similar policy on their own sovereign nations. The hegemonic powers economically do not value the life of the world’s poor, while consuming at levels way beyond what is sustainable environmentally. Militarily, the hegemonic powers do not value the life of the poor in the developing nations, refusing to see their own military actions as terrorism as Chomsky has written. On the contrary, the hyper-reactive media aspects of modern late-capitalist democracies creates a hysteria around every terrorist event that occurs, leading to ever more exaggerated responses by the State, and the introduction of policies that question the civil liberties of the democracies themselves. As Rogers suggests, this is inherently a policy that cannot work, it will fail despite the trillions in collective resources spent on “new” war and police actions against terrorism. Sources Cited: Caparini, Marina, Alexandra, Andrew, Baker, Deane-Peter (2008), Private Military and Security Companies -Ethics, Policies and Civil-Military Relations (London: Routledge). Chomsky, Noam (2008), The Culture of Terrorism, Pluto Press, 1988. http://books.google.co.in/books?id=nhMcEPWTkIMC Duffield, Mark (2001) Global Governance And The New Wars: The Merging of Development and Security (London: Zed Books). Kaldor, Mary (1999), New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era, Stanford University Press; 1999. Kaldor, Mary (2010) ‘New Wars’, The Broker; http://www.thebrokeronline.eu/en/Dossiers/Special-report-Who-is-the-enemy/New-wars Kalyvas S.N. (2001), ‘New and Old Wars: A Valid Distinction?’, World Politics, Vol.54, pp.99-118. Holsti, Kalevi Jaakko (2001), The State, War, and the State of War, World Politics, Cambridge University Press, 2001. Lietzau, William K. (2004), Old Laws, New Wars: Jus ad Bellum in an Age of Terrorism, Max Planck UNYB, 2004 Melander, E., Oberg, M., and Hall J. (2009) ‘Are 'New Wars' More Atrocious? Battle Severity, Civilians Killed and Forced Migration Before and After the End of the Cold War’, European Journal of International Relations, 15(3): 505 - 536. Murshed, S. Mansoob (2003) Old and New Wars, BICC Bulletin, No. 26, 1 January 2003. Newman, Edward (2004) ‘The ‘New Wars’ Debate: A Historical Perspective is Needed’, Security Dialogue, Vol. 35(2), 173-189 Parker, Sara (2008) “New Wars”: The Case of Sierra Leone, APSA Teaching and Learning Conference, San Jose Marriott, San Jose, California, Feb 22,; http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/4/5/6/9/pages245697/p245697-1.php. Rogers, Paul (2001) A Violent Peace, The Ploughshares Monitor, September 2001, volume 22, no. 3; http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/monitor/mons01d.html Schaefer, Heidi (2001) Old Wars New Wars, Leeds Met Gallery 18.9.09-17.9.09, Exhibition essay, 2009; http://www.heidischaefer.net/oldwarsnewwarsessay.pdf Van Creveld, Martin (2001) The Transformation of War, Simon and Schuster, 1991; http://books.google.co.in/books?id=mHLIKApIEA8C Read More