Democracies and Small Wars

Efraim Inbar

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN: 9780714655345
• eBook ISBN: 9781135757557
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

By their nature, democracies clearly have greater constraints than autocratic regimes on their freedom of action as they have to meet constitutional, legal and moral criteria in their use of force. This collection analyses a number of case studies showing how democracies have won small wars.

Part I
Democracies and Small Wars in Comparative Perspective

1
Western Democracies in Low Intensity Conflict: Some Postmodern Aspects

AVI KOBER

Western democracies have been engaged in small wars and low intensity conflicts (LICs) fairly extensively since World War II. During the Cold War they found themselves involved in struggles against groups and organizations for national liberation in Asia and Africa. They have also faced LICs in the framework of East—West rivalry, when Soviet-sponsored insurgency was directed against them. In the post-Cold War era, by contrast, they have been coping with LIC challenges stemming from the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia and from the blend of ethnic aspirations and religious extremism.

As one can tell from the names given by Western democracies to sub-conventional conflicts during the Cold War era—‘LICs’ by Americans, ‘small wars’ by the British, or ‘current security’ by Israelis—there has been a tendency to understate their significance. Despite their pervasiveness, importance, sometimes quite sophisticated nature, and devastating results for the weaker side’s people,¹ they have usually been perceived of as being low-stake, less intense conflicts—sometimes even quite primitive—in comparison with traditional, symmetrical, inter-state high intensity conflicts (HICs).² As such, they have required neither national mobilization nor an extensive commitment of resources.³ Some of these characteristics seem to have changed in the aftermath of the Cold War.

This essay will point to changes that constitute significant departures from modern characteristics of LICs. The new face of LICs is referred to as ‘postmodern LICs’. The term does not characterize LICs of our time in general. It applies to the relatively few LICs in which Western democracies have been involved since the 1980s, and has so far been typical of two countries in particular—the US and Israel. It is irrelevant to most non-Western democracies and to most of their opponents. Postmodern LICs have in recent years been referred to in the literature from five main angles, either separately or in combination: political, strategic, technological, sociological, and economical.⁴ While the theoretical discussion has been limited in scope, one can find many studies that focus on empirical case studies. Although most of the studies have reflected a Western democratic perspective, they did not focus on the triangle of Western democracies—postmodern war —LICs. This article undertakes to analyze some aspects of this triangle and to address two main questions. First, what is the nature of postmodern LIC reality? Second, how effective can Western democracies be in coping with the challenges posed by this reality? The main argument is that as a result of a change in values in Western democratic societies, the conduct of LICs by Western democracies has become significantly constrained by the need to manage such conflicts morally and in a less costly manner. Although technology has become a force multiplier for the weak, the stronger Western democracy can mobilize its technological edge for conducting LICs both effectively and at less cost, thus being able to sustain such conflicts despite their protracted nature.

The first part of the article will characterize postmodern LIC reality and the challenges it has produced. The second part will try to explain why and how Western democracies can cope with these challenges.

THE FACE OF POSTMODERN LICs

In the post-Cold War era, a new, expanded approach to security has emerged. Threats are now originating on the domestic, rather than the external scene, and their nature is comprehensive, rather than military. Given the nature of the new threats, the response entails non-military, as well as military dimensions. The commitment to protect the well-being of the individual has replaced the commitment to assure the well-being of the state.⁵ All these trends in the phenomenon of LICs will be discussed below. This new LIC reality manifests itself at both the systemic and the unit levels. As many LICs are nowadays internal conflicts, the systemic level also refers to sub-state players.

The Systemic Level

Challenges. In the past, it made sense to distinguish between conventional, unconventional, and sub-conventional low intensity conflicts. Nowadays, the capability of terrorists to demoralize entire societies and the availability of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) to non-state actors,⁶ in combination with the salience of personal safety (for reasons discussed below) have aggravated the threats stemming from LICs and blurred the traditional border between different types of conflicts and threats.

In the US, LICs are still conceptually associated with a third-grade category of conflicts, representing a significantly lesser challenge than both first-grade-global existential threats—and second grade—intermediate threats such as a Gulf War-like challenge.⁷ In 1994, US Defense Secretary William Perry distinguished between situations involving ‘vital’ national interests that require a readiness to risk military action; ‘important but not vital’ interests, where force should be used more selectively; and ‘humanitarian’ interests, where force should be used only if needed to deal with a catastrophe.⁸ The worldwide war on terrorism that the US declared following September 11, however, meant that it was now practically treating the apparent third-grade challenge as if it were a first-grade one. The reason for this is obviously the fact that the terrorists have brought the war to American soil.

Israelis have traditionally considered ‘current security’ threats—their name for guerrilla or terrorist activities conducted against their military or civilians—a minor challenge relative to the ‘basic security’ threats posed by the regular armies of the Arab states.⁹ But as early as ten years before the end of the Cold War, this distinction began to erode. Four examples appear to testify to this erosion. First, in the early 1980s, Defense Minister Ariel Sharon reintroduced new casi belli to Israeli defense policy, including, for the first time, a tacit casus belli that for many in Israel related to ‘current security’ threats —insurgency from neighboring countries.¹⁰ In 1986, Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir reacted to an attempt made by a Syria-dispatched Abu Nidal operative to place a bomb on an El Al plane leaving London’s Heathrow Airport for Tel Aviv,¹¹ by declaring that, had the aircraft been exploded, Israel might have launched a war against Syria.¹² In 1995, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin declared, for the first time, that, for Israel, terrorism represented a ‘strategic threat’.¹³ Finally, in the midst of a wave of Palestinian suicide bombers against Israeli citizens in 2002, Israeli Chief-of-Staff Shaul Mofaz said that, for Israel, the conflict was ‘an existential war’,¹⁴ while Prime Minister Sharon declared that Defensive Shield Operation against Palestinian terrorism in March/April 2002 was ‘over our home’.¹⁵

Missions. In postmodern LICs, it is often difficult to distinguish between traditional military challenges, on the one hand, and crime, which needs to be treated by law enforcement forces, on the other. Postmodern terrorism, in particular, all too often resembles criminal activity. Both organized crime groups and politically-motivated insurgents could adopt terror strategies or tactics—the first in order to maximize profits, the latter to produce a political outcome. In light of this ambiguity, postmodern LIC has sometimes been referred to as Gray-Area War. The term stands for a situation that ‘involves an enemy…that seeks primarily profit, but which has political overtones and a substantially greater capability for strategic planning and the conduct of armed conflict than traditional criminal groups’.¹⁶ The process wherein the distinction between military and police operations has blurred is no novelty—one of its typical expressions has been narco-terrorish¹⁷—but it has intensified in the postmodern era.

In the post-Cold War era a new, postmodern concept of missions has emerged which has blended the defense of the homeland with missions such as humanitarian operations, drug enforcement, or coping with ecological degradation, leading to an increasing convergence between non-military and military missions.¹⁸ The forces involved in such missions, too, have been characterized by a blend of military and non-military means and methods. A good example of this effect is the concept of Operations Other Than War (OOTW), which appeared in the US Army’s doctrine in the early 1990s. It confuses traditional missions fulfilled by the military, such as ‘support for insurgencies and counterinsurgencies’, typical of modern LICs, and missions that do not require any combat, ranging from ‘support to US, state and local governments, disaster relief, nation assistance, and drug interdiction to peacekeeping, noncombatant evacuation, and peace enforcement’.¹⁹ The latter have not deserved to be included in the framework of the conservative, modern approach to LICs. True, LICs in which no significant combat ensued already took place during the Cold War, as was demonstrated by the American intervention in the Dominican Republic (1965), Grenada (1983), and Panama (1989); or the Soviet intervention in Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968). However, LICs involving a very limited use of force, if any at all, might be even more typical of a transitional period from conflict to peace, such as the post-Cold War era. Examples include the American interagency involvement in El Salvador (1989), the American intervention in Haiti (1995), the multi-national operation in Somalia (1992), the American relief operation in Northern Iraq (1991), or NATO’s intervention in the civil war in Bosnia. They may become a pattern in areas undergoing a transition to peace, such as the Middle East. Challenges that might characterize such a period include, for instance, various violations of agreements, attempts to bring deadlocked negotiations back on track by a use of limited force, civil uprising, or support for friendly regimes in jeopardy.²⁰

Players. Walter Laqueur depicted postmodern terrorism, inter alia, as one carried out by weird individuals, such as the technology-hating Unabomber.²¹ Yet, this is not the only change that has taken place in postmodern LICs as far as players are concerned. One of the most interesting new phenomena concerns the increasing role played by the media in such conflicts. As Moskos and others have pointed out,²² the media has become more independent and has lowered its dependence on governmental or military authorities for fulfilling its mission. This is true for obtaining information as well as for being at the scene of hostilities. When intervention in LICs (generally an undesirable option for Western democracies), took place (for example, in Somalia, Haiti, or Bosnia), the media often were already independently based on the scene long before the interventionary force arrived, and had also become logistically self-supportive. As such, they have become an indispensable and valuable information source for the military about the political, societal, and military situations in the country where the troops are to operate.

The ‘CNN effect’ has also intensified with the growing independence of the media. Whereas in the past the government usually initiated agendas, now often governments respond to the initiatives of the media. One of the assets at the media’s disposal is commercial remote sensing. Bomb damage assessments, for example, are now subject to technical analysis and debate by NGOs and news media. Thus, as with the internet and other advanced information technologies, commercial satellite imagery challenges the ability of state authorities in Western democracies to maintain control of policy debates, in general, and in LIC situations in particular.²³

Transnational terrorism, which consists of members from different countries ...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
• INTRODUCTION
• PART I: DEMOCRACIES AND SMALL WARS IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE
• PART II: CASE STUDIES
• ABSTRACTS