The American way of war in Africa: the case of Niger

ABSTRACT

Increasing attention paid to US casualties in far-flung places such as Tongo Tongo, Niger, and headlines claiming ‘secret wars’ have fueled discussion about American military’s involvement in Africa. Though the continent has been a part of the American way of war since the beginnings of the US – consider the early combat actions of US Marines in Tripoli –, current African conflicts are challenging our understanding of war and approaches to winning it. This article examines the ways America seeks to achieve its ends in Africa with a particular focus upon the last 10 years of US counter-terrorism and stability operations in Niger and the Sahel Region. The author proposes unifying American, Allied, and partner efforts through a strategy of Active Containment.     

Z and other cinematic tales from the 30-year Greek civil war

Greek cinema has documented and debated the civil war and its repercussions under different angles, largely defined by censorship, the general political climate, and cinematic trends. This article, first, offers a retrospective that traces the evolution of Greek cinema's ‘takes’ on the civil war vis-à-vis the political changes. Second, it provides an in-depth analysis of Costas Gavras’s film Z, examining its relevance to Greece and how political conflict, in general, is cinematically depicted. The article argues that Z and Gavras’s cinema have been affected and have affected the Greek political situation. However, while Z has spearheaded an international cinematic genre (political thriller), it had minimal effect on the Greek cinema.     

Being there: US Navy organisational culture and the forward presence debate

ABSTRACT

This article argues that the US Navy’s roles (which have historically been bifurcated between warfighting and political use of force) manifest in its organisational culture as two different concepts of war: the US Navy as diplomatic actor and the US Navy as warfighting force. The conflict between these different concepts of war can be seen in the current debate about the definition and function of presence. The debate about presence is not just theoretical, but represents a deep and enduring conflict within the Navy as an organisation about its concept of war. Since the end of WWII, the Navy has been designing its fleet architecture according to a Mahanian concept of war, despite the preponderance of non-lethal missions and activities. The result is a mismatch between platforms and tasks.     

A Good Ally - Norway and International Statebuilding in Afghanistan, 2001-2014

The article examines the findings of the Commission of Inquiry established by the Norwegian government in 2014 to evaluate all aspects of Norway’s civilian and military contribution to the international operation in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2014. Concerned with the wider implications of the Commission’s findings, it focuses on two issues in particular: (1) Norway’s relations with the US, a close and long-standing strategic ally whose resources, capabilities and dominance of decision-making dwarfed that of all other coalition partners in Afghanistan; and (2) Norway’s record in the province of Faryab, where, from 2005 to 2012, a Norwegian-led Provincial Reconstruction Team was charged with bringing security, good governance and development to the province. How Norway prioritised and managed relations with the US highlights and helps to problematise the challenges – political, practical and moral – facing small and medium-sized powers operating in a coalition alongside the US. Norwegian efforts in Faryab are revealing of the dilemmas and contradictions that plagued and, ultimately, fatally undermined the international intervention as a whole. As such, Norway’s experience provides a microcosm through which the inherent limitations of the attempt to transfer the structures of modern statehood and Western democracy to Afghanistan can be better understood.     

Fighting a Just War in the Midst of an Unreasonable International Strife: World War I and the Collapse of the Central European System of the Triple Imperial Dominion

ABSTRACT

This article constitutes an attempt to demonstrate the complexity of factors affecting the legitimate acquisition and reasonable exercise by a political community of the right to war as specified in the just war criteria of jus ad bellum. To achieve this purpose, a brief analysis is presented of the intentional participation in World War I of thousands of Polish volunteers forming military units deployed by the Central Powers on the Austrian-Russian front. Considered in light of the standard principles of just war, the military enterprise of the Polish Legions, as they were called, turns out to be a paradoxical instance of warfare which, while being part of a state-to-state aggression, must be deemed compliant with all the principles in question. As a means of explaining this paradox, a modification of the concept of justified intervention is proposed, embracing military efforts aimed at the ultimate defeat of all the (unjustly) warring parties operating within a given territory. In consonance with the classic just war approach, it is also argued that the justification for such an intervention is essentially dependent on its being initiated by, or attributable to, an unquestionable state agent acting in defence of the state’s basic prerogatives.     

Bringing it all back home: Hollywood returns to war

This essay looks at two Hollywood films Black Hawk Down and We Were Soldiers as reflective of a more general popular mood in the US that accompanied Operation ‘Enduring Freedom’ and the removal of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. In part this mood was a militaristic one, though this can also be seen as a rather belated response by Hollywood to invest moral purpose in the US military following an earlier spate of hostile Vietnam war films. The two films examined are different in form: Black Hawk Down is a combat film about extraction while We Were Soldiers is unusual for a US Vietnam war film for investing moral purpose in both the US combat troops as well as the Vietnamese enemy. Overall it is possible to conclude that both films contribute to a kicking by Hollywood of its earlier Vietnam war ‘syndrome’ which is likely to have wider cultural and political repercussions.     

The misguided and mismanaged intervention in Libya: Consequences for peace

In this paper, I critically analyse the doctrine of the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP), as it relates to the responsibility of intervening forces towards the people they claim to protect and the challenges that the situation in Libya now poses in the region and for the African Union (AU). I focus most of my attention on the coercive elements of the RtoP framework (Pillar III). This is the most contested element in the framework. Three questions guide this article: were there legitimate grounds to justify an external intervention in Libya? In the words of Hugh Roberts in Who Said Gaddafi Had to Go, ‘[w]hat if anything has Libya got in exchange for all the death and destruction that have been visited on it’ since 2011? What are the practical implications and consequences of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) intervention, led by the United States (US), for regional peace? I discuss the problems surrounding the US–NATO intervention, followed by an analysis of the various positions and narratives leading up to the intervention, the framing and justifications provided for the intervention, and an analysis of the AU's proposal for the resolution of the Libyan crisis. I analyse the various debates that took place in the US (Pentagon/White House), at the United Nations, among scholars in the West and in Africa, and among various actors who tried to broker a ceasefire in Libya before and during the intervention. I conclude with a discussion of the implications for regional peace.     

Majority rule,minority issues: The Macedonian question in the Dekemvriana

This article examines the role of the Macedonian Question in the 1944 December Uprising (Dekemvriana) in Greece. While the Dekemvriana is commonly portrayed in right–left terminology in the historiography, this article argues that part of the reason for the left’s failure was their inability to manage the Macedonian ethnic component of the struggle, either within their armed forces or in their relationship with Yugoslavia. As such, this article integrates the early phases of the Greek Civil War into the broader literature on minorities in civil conflict, while simultaneously exposing some of the myths about Macedonian involvement that result from its contemporary political ramifications.     

Currency Warfare and Just War: The Ethics of Targeting Currencies in War

ABSTRACT

Is Currency Warfare defined as, the use of monetary or military force directed against an enemy’s monetary power as part of a military campaign, a just way to fight a war? This article explores the ethics of waging currency warfare against the Just War Tradition’s principles of jus in bello (just conduct in war) and its criteria of discrimination and proportionality. The central argument is that currency warfare is inherently indiscriminate but may be proportionate when policy makers consider the nature of the threat confronted and the targeted currency's level of internationalization, that is, to what degree it is used in foreign transactions or used as a foreign currency reserve. I evaluate this argument against historical cases during the Second World War (1939–1945), the Gulf War (1990–1991), subsequent operations against Saddam Hussein in the early 1990s, and the ongoing campaign against ISIS.     

Storming to partition: Croatia,the United States,and Krajina in the Yugoslav War

To many scholars and policymakers, ‘partition’ offers the most efficacious means of resolving ethnic-civil wars. Others reject partition as a solution, citing flaws (both logical and empirical) and harmful international implications should such an approach become commonplace. What has been missing from this debate is an understanding of how the process of partition unfolds. In this article we examine such a process, the case of the Krajina in the war in Yugoslavia, 1994–1995. The US aligned itself with Croatia against Serbs rebelling in the Krajina region of Croatia. The culmination of this alignment occurred in August 1995 when Croatian forces initiated ‘Operation Storm’ (Oluja) against Croatian Serb insurgents. Croatian forces effectively cleansed the Krajina of its Serbian population. Eager to initiate a diplomatic peace process, Washington welcomed the Croatian operation, and largely because of Operation Storm, negotiations at Dayton became possible.     

Nobody wins the victory taboo in just war theory

ABSTRACT

This article examines how scholars of the just war tradition think about the ethical dilemmas that arise in the endgame phase of modern warfare. In particular, it focuses upon their reticence to engage the idiom of ‘victory’. Why, it asks, have scholars been so reluctant to talk about what it means to ‘win’ a just war? It contends that, while just war scholars may have good reason to be sceptical about ‘victory’, engaging it would grant them a more direct view of the critical potentialities, but also the limitations, of just war reasoning.     

Bernard Fall and Vietnamese Revolutionary Warfare in Indochina

This article assesses Bernard Fall’s concept of Vietnamese Revolutionary Warfare in Indochina between 1953 and 1958. It also investigates differences in the conceptualization of Revolutionary Warfare between Fall and proponents of French military doctrine known as la guerre révolutionnaire. The last component of the article considers limits of Fall’s influence on counterinsurgency doctrine.     

Pragmatism over principle: US intervention and burden shifting in Somalia, 1992–1993

ABSTRACT

The conventional wisdom about the 1992 US intervention in Somalia is that it was a quintessentially humanitarian mission pushed by President George H. W. Bush. This article challenges that interpretation, drawing on newly declassified documents. The Somalia intervention, I argue, was largely a pragmatic response to concerns held by the US military. In late 1992, as the small UN mission in Somalia was collapsing, senior American generals worried about being drawn into the resulting vacuum. Hence they reluctantly recommended a robust US intervention, in the expectation that this would allow the UN to assemble a larger peacekeeping force that would take over within months. The intervention ultimately failed, but the military learned useful lessons from this experience on how to achieve smoother UN handoffs in the future and thus effectively shift longer-term stabilisation burdens to the international community.     

US warfare in Somalia and the trade-off between casualty-aversion and civilian protection

This article examines the ways in which the two normative concerns of casualty-aversion and civilian protection influenced US military strategy in the particular context of the asymmetric conflict in Somalia in the early 1990s. The article critically evaluates US military operations through the prism of international humanitarian law and examines whether American forces started prioritizing casualty-aversion over the safeguarding of Somali civilians. Finally, by drawing on emerging moral guidelines (such as Michael Walzer's idea of ‘due care’), the article examines whether lower numbers of Somali civilian deaths could have been achieved if marginal increases to the risks faced by US soldiers had been accepted.     

Westmoreland was right: learning the wrong lessons from the Vietnam War

Fourth Generation Warfare is a theory of contemporary warfare that posits a number of different ideas that are able to shed light on current conflicts. Whilst much of the debate has been concentrated on the linear development of warfare and also on analysis of the current situation of US forces in Iraq, it has resonance for a number of different conflicts taking place in Africa, if only because the US has become involved in contemporary conflicts in Somalia and the Mahgreb. There are clearly significant issues with the US-centric, flawed linear approach to history, but the actual analysis of modes of warfare has much to offer policymakers in a continent that is under-represented in the literature, and is also in danger of being forgotten in the shadow of analysis of Iraq. This paper moves on from criticising the stepped approach to history and looks at patterns of warfare in contemporary Africa, arguing that there is much in the theory that could be used to explain seemingly illogical tactics or patterns, and thus has much to tell policymakers engaged in conflict analysis.

Rebellions can be made 2 per cent active in a striking force, and 98 per cent passively sympathetic.1 ?1. T.E. Lawrence, ‘Science of Guerrilla Warfare’, 1929, published in Malcolm Brown (ed) T.E. Lawrence in War and Peace: An Anthology of the Military Writings of Lawrence of Arabia (London: Greenhill Books, 2005) p.284.      

US strategic preferences in the early twenty-first century

This article investigates how US national security planners have envisioned the emerging strategic environment during the early twenty-first century and evaluates how their perceptions of this strategic environment have changed during these years. This conceptual evolution can be seen in how defense planners define threats, identify defense priorities, and design security strategies. Five key strategic planning documents serve as the basis for this analysis and illustrate significant shifts in how the US government has envisioned its own security requirements as well as the context within which its strategic vision will need to be realized. These planning documents are: (1) Joint Vision 2020, (2) the Bush Administration's 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States, (3) the Obama Administration's 2010 National Security Strategy, (4) US Strategic Defense Guidance entitled Sustaining US Global Leadership: Priorities for 21^st Century Defense, and (5) the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff's Capstone Concept for Joint Operations: Joint Force 2020.     

How do wars end? A strategic perspective

ABSTRACT

This article gives an overview of the literature on war termination both in the fields of behaviouralism social sciences and policy-oriented strategic studies. It identifies shortcomings and problems related to both lines of research. The main problem is the undifferentiated and indiscriminate use of the term ‘war’. The article proposes a categorisation of wars that could form the basis for more thorough research on the topic of war termination.     

RAIN,GROWTH, AND CIVIL WAR: THE IMPORTANCE OF LOCATION

We re‐examine the Miguel et al. (2004 Miguel, E., Satyanath, S. and Sergenti, E. 2004. Economic shocks and civil conflict: an instrumental variables approach. Journal of Political Economy, 112(4): 725–753. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) study of the impact of growth on civil war, using growth in rainfall as an instrument. Miguel et al. (2004 Miguel, E., Satyanath, S. and Sergenti, E. 2004. Economic shocks and civil conflict: an instrumental variables approach. Journal of Political Economy, 112(4): 725–753. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) – in our view, erroneously – include countries participating in civil wars in other states. Restricting the conflict data to states with conflict on their own territory reduces the estimated impact of economic growth on civil war. We show how spatial correlations in rainfall growth and participation in civil conflicts induce a stronger apparent relationship in the mis‐classified data.     

Conceptual failure,the Taliban's parallel hierarchies,and America's strategic defeat in Afghanistan

ISAF exists to protect the Afghan constitutional model. This strategic objective will be defeated because the GIRoA model has a conceptual flaw that renders it incapable of delivering governance at the local level (Tier IV). This fatal flaw has enabled the Taliban, by developing parallel hierarchies, to displace GIRoA and establish itself in southern locales as the political authority. The Taliban are fighting a revolutionary war, a Maoist displacement strategy that uses guerrilla tactics to advance a political program. Petraeus and McChrystal failed to recognize the character of war, and believed the Taliban are pursuing an exhaustion strategy. They failed to devise a counter-RW strategy. The ‘Surge’ was doomed ab initio.     

Competitive Statehood in Libya: Governing Differently a Specific Setting or Deconstructing its Weak Sovereign State with a Fateful Drift Toward Chaos?

Abstract

Libya in 2011 witnessed a real process of political change, though different from all the policy-oriented jargon equating transition with a teleological transition to democracy. Due to the resilience of the Qadhafi regime in power and with the essential role of NATO intervention, the process was eased out by a eight-month civil war. Governance in post-Qadhafi Libya was not done through the rebuilding of centralized authorities. But it took the specific form of the emergence of multiple non-state actors embedded in local dynamics and then connected with weakened central authorities that had access to the huge Libyan resources. That raised complex questions about the quality of this mode of governance, especially at a time of pressing problems for Libya and its neighbors, whether direct ones (Tunisia, Egypt, Mali) or farther countries across the Mediterranean sea: terrorism with the expansion of Da’esh into the country and flows of refugees crossing Libya’s uncontrolled borders and flowing into Italy and then Europe by thousands.