International Conflict Resolution

Ramesh Thakur, Ramesh Thakur

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429713293
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Politik

This book presents papers on different perspectives in tackling the economic, racial and other injustices which generate conflict. The papers infer that the nuclear threat provides the most urgent manifestation of the inadequacy of war as a means of resolving differences between nations.

1
The Last Child-Seventh Generation Ethic

Ramesh Thakur

The incidence of war in human society is as pervasive as the wish for peace seems universal. Contemporary references to international conflict resolution appear to regard war solely as pathological. Yet war has been an important means of conflict resolution throughout human history, and it used to be viewed as cathartic or therapeutic.

The use of force and the possibility of controlling it and so controlling others has preoccupied the minds of rulers and scholars alike since time immemorial, from Thucydides, Kautilya and Machiavelli to Karl Marx, Mao Zedong, Hans Morgenthau and Henry Kissinger. But so too have some of the most charismatic and influential personalities in human history—from Gautam Buddha and Jesus Christ to Mahatma Gandhi—dwelt upon the renunciation of force and the possibility of eliminating it from human relationships. Modern international society is organised into units of nation-states. At any given time, most of the countries in the world are at peace. Yet most of them are also ready to go to war if necessary. Modern governments have not, therefore, been excused of the responsibility of preparing their countries against the eventuality of external attack.

War has traditionally performed certain functions in international relations from three points of view (Bull, 1977). From the perspective of states, it approximates the Clausewitzian dictum of being an instrument of policy, a means to a desired end. Thus in Vietnam during the 1960s, the one belief that the opposing sides shared in common was that war was the most effective instrument of solving the dispute. From the perspective of the system of states, war has been the basic determinant of the shape of the international system. It has been the arbiter of the creation, survival and elimination of actors in the system, of the ebb and flow of political frontiers, and of the rise and decline of regimes. From the viewpoint of international society, war has a dual aspect. It is a manifestation of disorder which threatens the survival of the society; hence societal concern to contain and regulate war. But it can also serve as the instrument of society if used to enforce community values and goals, for example punishment of illegal behaviour or enforcement of change that the society as a whole regards as just or desirable. In the first sense war is dysfunctional; in the second sense it would become the functional equivalent of the coercive authority of a municipal police force.

Causes of War

Microtheories of violence trace the causes of aggression to individual behaviour: to particular personality traits, to the tendency to cognitive rigidity by key decision-makers in times of international crisis, to the displacement of frustration-induced hostility to foreign targets, to innate biological propensity to engage in aggressive behaviour, to socialisation into ritual aggressive behaviour; that is, to the greed, selfishness and stupidity that is inherent in human nature. Macrotheories of conflict postulate an even more bewildering array of causes of war: arms races, alliances, balance of power policies, military-industrial complexes, fascism, capitalism, communism, military dictatorships, militant religions, even the inexorable dialectic of an international crisis. The morphology of international crises is discussed by Victor Kremenyuk.

In a statement on violence in Seville on 16 May 1986, an international group of scientists rejected the contention that war is rooted in human nature. In particular, the group denied any scientific validity to five propositions condemning humans to the bondage of biological pessimism:

• — that human beings have inherited a tendency to make war from animal ancestors;
• — that violent behaviour is genetically determined;
• — that aggressive behaviour has acquired an evolutionary ascendancy over other types of behaviour;
• — that the human brain is violent;
• — that war is caused by human “instinct” (Scientists, 1986).

At the microcosmic end of the explanation, it is of course true that biological mechanisms enable aggressive behaviour by the human species; but the activation of these mechanisms depends upon appropriate stimulation. The attempt to root war in human behaviour falls into the trap of psychologism. The leap from an analysis of individual behaviour—which exhibits good and evil tendencies—to an explanation of the group phenomenon of war is inferential rather than empirical, and what analysts make of the evidence depends on the theories that they hold. At the macrocosmic end, the most elegant explanation of warfare is international anarchy, that is the absence of restraints upon unbridled national behaviour. Or, putting it more provocatively, the non-existence of world government is the cause of war. While this is general enough to explain all wars, it is not altogether satisfactory. The cause of every air accident can be traced to the invention of the aeroplane; the invention by itself is therefore insufficient to explain the cause of any particular air accident. We look for more proximate causes: structural or design defect, pilot error, equipment or maintenance failure, or negligent traffic control. Both with air accidents and warfare, plurality of possible causes indicates multiplicity of possible remedies.

Social scientists study wars with the help of such variables as the parties to a conflict, the issue fields, the tensions and actions. Do dictatorships, for example, go to war more often? If so, then does the reason for their behaviour lie in their tendency to distract attention from domestic troubles by foreign adventures or in their tendency to perceive democracies as weak and appeasement-prone? Social scientists look at the outcomes of conflicts: were they forceful or peaceful; did they produce compromise or complete capitulation? They examine settlement procedures in order to evaluate the relative successes of bilateral negotiations, multilateral conferences and international organisations in facilitating particular types of outcomes. The objective of social science research is to tease out generalisations about patterns of violent international behaviour which can be tested, refined and become commonly accepted as valid.

Unfortunately, social science is still some distance away from the realisation of this goal. Geoffrey Blainey’s chapter disposes of a number of shibboleths about the causes of war, positing them as explanations of rivalry and tension rather than war. He also argues that war and peace are not just opposites; they share so much in common that neither can be understood without the other.

The shortfall in the ambitious goal notwithstanding, social scientists have made some progress towards understanding aspects of violence in international relations. Furthermore, despite common mythology, the incidence of war per decade has been fairly stable since the Congress of Vienna (1815). While warfare has become more intense and destructive, it is not any more frequent. Indeed since there are several times as many independent actors in international relations today than was the case even up to the Second World War, the number of wars per actor unit in the international system has dramatically declined in the post-1945 era. The decline in the incidence of warfare is even more graphic in proportion to the number of conflictual relationships that are possible with greater number of actors in the system, that is, per possible conflict dyad.

Nuclear Spectre

The nuclear spectre haunting humanity today is the most urgent manifestation of the inadequacy of the institution of war. It is a sobering thought that an entire generation of people has grown up under the menacing shadow of the mushroom cloud. Though some perhaps may dream of the friendly blue skies which beckon beyond the clouds, for most people the nuclear spectre has been an inescapable element of the strategic landscape. For four decades, a majority of Americans and Europeans have accepted nuclear deterrence as a proper and dependable cornerstone of western security policies. Astonishingly, such a fundamental change in relations between different nations was put into place without serious public debate. Only in the 1980s has there been the sort of intensive and widespread call for justifying the strategy of nuclear deterrence that one would have expected at the start of the nuclear era. Today, not just a bunch of trendy intellectuals but a broad cross-section of concerned citizens have been scrutinising nuclear policies closely and demanding answers from their governments as to the ethics, military necessity and political wisdom of constructing defence policies around “the bomb.”

The enormous destructiveness of nuclear weapons has produced four major changes in military strategy. First, modern delivery systems mean that there is no protection against nuclear bombs. The only defence against nuclear weapons is to be certain of destroying every enemy missile and bomber. Such certainty is not available today nor likely in the foreseeable future. Second, nuclear weapons have not just made old fashioned defence impossible; they have also destroyed the gallantry of olden days which pitted soldier against soldier and left noncombatants alone if not in peace. The historical trend towards blurring the line between military and civilian sectors, already in evidence in the two world wars, has been completed by nuclear weapons. It is now possible to destroy the enemy society without defeating or even engaging enemy forces. Third, the destructiveness of nuclear weapons and the speed of their delivery systems mean that wars will no longer be protracted affairs. Nuclear war could be over in days or even hours, denying leaders a chance to think again and change their minds. The final consequence results from the third fact as well. Because of the speed of nuclear war, a country can no longer afford to mobilise fully only with the imminent onset of hostilities. Nuclear forces have to be in a state of constant readiness at full strength.

Some analysts have argued that the cumulative impact of the four changes has been to make nuclear weapons devoid of any military use whatsoever, their only purpose can be deterrence. But here too strategists are confronted with a fundamental paradox. If one side seeks to deter war by creating the fear that it will use nuclear weapons, then it must convince the opponent of its determination to use them in certain circumstances. If however the weapons are used and produce a like response, then the side striking first is very much worse off than if it had abstained. Posing an unacceptable risk to the enemy therefore necessarily poses the same risk to oneself. To prepare to fight a nuclear war is to impose on a nuclear equation the logic of pre-nuclear strategy: the circle cannot be squared. As the disquieting implications of this paradox have begun to seep through to the public consciousness, people have made their unhappiness felt to their governments.

For all the destructiveness of nuclear weapons, nevertheless, and contrary to public mythology, wars have not been made obsolete. Indeed since the Second World War the number of people estimated to have died as a result of international conflicts and civil wars is in excess of twenty million. This belies the proposition that the advent of nuclear weapons means that war, far from being a continuation of policy by other means, is in fact the breakdown of policy resulting in mutual annihilation. Most international conflicts involve non-nuclear states, e.g. Iran and Iraq. Several of the more important conflicts of our time have seen non-nuclear nations fighting nuclear states, e.g. the United States in Vietnam and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The use of nuclear weapons in such wars is limited by the fact that their political and moral costs would be greater than the desired military and political objectives. Finally, in theory, even nuclear powers can engage in wars between themselves without using nuclear weapons. In practice however this has not occurred, not the least because of the danger that wars once started are difficult to keep limited to predetermined levels of intensity—they tend to acquire a self-perpetuating logic of their own.

Despite the difficulties of military usability, therefore, nuclear weapons can still serve certain functions. The Harvard team (1983) identified seven goals of nuclear policy: basic deterrence; extended deterrence; crisis stability; war-fighting; war termination; counter-deterrence; and bargaining chip. Each of these purposes places its own requirements on type and level of nuclear forces. Not all the requirements can be fully met, and not all are consistent with one another.

Deciphering the strategic equation between the western and Soviet blocs is one of the great pastimes of our era. The actual numbers involved are not in serious dispute, and can be obtained with relative ease; but there is considerable controversy over how best to interpret the numbers. There are difficulties arising from the lack of symmetry between the elements which make up the strategic equation: weapons category, technological quality, geographic imperatives, and security interests. Because the two sides are not symmetrical, it is always possible to pick a category of weapons in which one side is superior to the other. All claims of superiority and inferiority should be treated with scepticism in any case: both sides have a huge margin of overkill. Similar caution is warranted in regard to the role of nuclear weapons in having kept the peace since 1945. How many of the modern-day great powers are likely to have gone to war against one another even in the absence of nuclear weapons? If the major cause of the two world wars was the problem of German power in Europe, then is the peace of post-1945 Europe attributable to the problem having been solved by the division of Germany? Perhaps peace has been a function as much of the progressive universalisation of the international system as of the nuclear factor?

Twentieth Century Illegitimacy

After the First and Second World Wars, peoples of the world were moved to demand that the institution of war be formally delegitimised. This was done, however imperfectly and however qualifiedly, in the Covenant of the League of Nations and the Charter of the United Nations Organisation. The Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 was another important milestone in the developing international movement to outlaw war.

Kal Holsti points out that by the standards of today, the costs of defeat in wars of the 17th—19th centuries were not disastrous. Regimes and states were not extinguished, the legitimacy of actors was not challenged, prolonged occupation was not attempted, civilians remained unaffected if they did not lie in the path of advancing (or retreating) armies. The total wars and the cold wars (both global and regional) of this century have not been similarly circumscribed by shared underlying values, limited goals, moderation in means, insulation of civilians and acceptance of enemies in battle as legitimate actors in international politics.

The nuclear dimension has given particular cogency and urgency to the progressive delegitimisation of war in this century. There is certainly growing questioning of the moral basis of the policy of nuclear deterrence. First, nuclear deterrence openly contemplates—indeed must be directly based on—the deliberate killing of people in the millions. In their pastoral letter of 3 May 1983, the Catholic Bishops of America expressed firm opposition to strategies of deliberate attack on large populations, and strategies that would result in catastrophic loss of life as an “unintended consequence” of weapons aimed at military targets. In the “butchery of untold magnitude” caused by a nuclear war, it would not be very comforting to know that one had died an innocent victim of “collateral damage.” Second, most of the people killed would be innocent non-combatants. Western political rhetoric has it that citizens behind the Iron Curtain are persecuted victims of their own governments. That being so, is it not immoral to visit nuclear punishment upon innocent people for the sins of their totalitarian leaders? It is certainly immoral to destroy peoples in neighbouring countries through radiation, and arrogant of the human race to destroy other species because it could not manage its own affairs. Third, the only goal of nuclear retaliation when deterrence has failed would be revenge. Many religions and moral systems have difficulty reconciling vengeful killings with proper conduct; the disproportionate and indiscriminate scale of nuclear retaliatory vengeance cannot be reconciled with any self-respecting moral doctrine.

The above three are doubts about the morality of nuclear war. Interestingly, in their thoughtful and weighty effort to apply religious and moral principles to nuclear weapons, the Catholic Bishops condemned nuclear war yet gave “a strictly conditional moral acceptance of deterrence” in order to protect the independence and freedom of nations and peoples. The letter issued a profound challenge to US military policy and contributed to a delegitimisation of nuclear doctrines. Its conditional acceptance of nuclear deterrence was consistent with Pope John Paul Iľs statement to the United Nations in 1982: “In current conditions, ‘deterrence’ based on balance, certainly not as an end in itself but as a step on the way toward a progressive disarmament, may still be judged morally acceptable.”

The conditions are more important than the fact of papal acceptability. Deterrence must be temporary and transient, pending but leading to progressive disarmament. It must also be “based on balance,” that is on parity or “essential equivalence.” This does not require equality, let alone superiority, in every weapons category; it does require willingness to concede parity to the adversary. Finally, the Pope argued that nuclear deterrence may still be judged morally acceptable—meaning that it is not automatically nor always so.

The Catholic Bishops in 1983 similarly qualified acceptance of nuclear deterrence as a necessary evil with significant conditions. In particular, even deterrence cannot evade the requirements of “just war” doctrines. Thus deterrence must satisfy the principle of discrimination between combatants and non-combatants: a smaller evil cannot be justified by a greater good. Secondly, deterrence must follow the rule of proportionality. The first requirement forbids the targeting of populations as nuclear hostages; the second places limits on the extent to which installations can be targeted, for even unintended damage may not justly exceed the evil to be avoided or the good desired to be achieved. Contemporary superpower targeting of “military related” enemy industry and utilities would inflict death and misery on millions of non-combatant citizens as “collateral” damage, and is therefore immoral.

Ali Mazrui poses the question as to the ethical difference between nuclear terrorism by states and terrorism by individuals and groups: is criminal activity done by officials on a large scale—terrorism against humanity—to be condoned while lesser mortals receive condemnation for relatively less significant acts of random terror? Those entrusted with the command of nuclear weapons must make compromises with their conscience in order to live in comfort despite holding the world to ransom. Nor are moral qualms stilled with the knowledge that the ruling elites of the nuclear powers build deep shelters and airborne command posts for themselves while offering their citizens as hostages. All this in the name of a policy supposed to guard citizens against enemy attack, a policy enunciated and devised by officials bearing the primary responsibility for protecting their citizens. What sort of morality can allow the privileged elite to be sheltered while leaving their wards unprotected?

Nuclear deterrence also poses a number of other moral challenges to our conscience. Deterrence rests on the threat to wage nuc...