Military Integration after Civil Wars

Multiethnic Armies, Identity and Post-Conflict Reconstruction

Florence Gaub

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780415642026
• eBook ISBN: 9781136896033
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

This book examines the role of multiethnic armies in post-conflict reconstruction, and demonstrates how they can promote peacebuilding efforts.

The author challenges the assumption that multiethnic composition leads to weakness of the military, and shows how a multiethnic army is frequently the impetus for peacemaking in multiethnic societies. Three case studies (Nigeria, Lebanon and Bosnia-Herzegovina) determine that rather than external factors, it is the internal structures that make or break the military institution in a socially challenging environment. The book finds that where the political will is present, the multiethnic military can become a symbol of reconciliation and coexistence. Furthermore, it shows that the military as a professional identity can supersede ethnic considerations and thus facilitates cooperation within the armed forces despite a hostile post-conflict setting. In this, the book challenges widespread theories about ethnic identities and puts professional identities on an equal footing with them.

The book will be of great interest to students of military studies, ethnic conflict, conflict studies and peacebuilding, and IR in general

Florence Gaub is a Researcher and Lecturer at the NATO Defence College in Rome. She holds a PhD in International Politics from Humboldt University, Berlin.

1
The armed forces as a social agent

While the military’s purpose is war, let’s not forget that it is first and foremost an organisation created within a certain society. As a consequence it is, intentionally or unintentionally, a part of the wider social system. Thus, the military has been described as the school of the nation, as the cradle of the state, and as the grande muette – the big mute one – because of its political aloofness from society. Although distinctly set apart from society in many ways, the armed forces are connected to society by their staff, by their ideological outlook, and by their intermediary position between society and the state. Describing the military as a social agent might seem a stretch to some because it is perceived, and perceives itself, as a war machine rather than a social integrator. Yet there is a social dimension that can’t be overlooked, especially in the case of a disintegrated society following a civil war.

In several ways, the military is a natural integrator. Build as a group endeavour that seeks unity, its functioning, purpose and effectiveness depend on collectivism rather than individualism. These organisational features transcribe into an integrative effect which can be, and has been, used for social purposes. Its capacity as a social agent thus has three dimensions: on the micro level, the military is a profession that socialises the individual; on the meso level, the military interacts between society (or rather its diversity) and the state by expressing the state’s attitude towards this diversity; and on the macro level, the military has been considered, possibly falsely, as a natural nation- and state-builder because of its integrative function.

The micro level: the military as a profession

The most visible interaction between the military and its surrounding society is the armed forces’ staff. It is usually drawn from the society it is anchored in – if not, the armed forces are an army of occupation or a colonial army. The military as a profession influences its individuals in a certain, collective manner. Its special work and life situation turns it into a total institution which separates it from the rest of society and regulates daily life. Other social contacts are strongly restricted, the separation from the outside world further underlined by the barbed wire and the walls that usually confine army barracks. Goffman goes as far as to compare these total institutions (other examples would include prisons or asylums) to societal greenhouses that are trying to change the character of individuals by dissociating them from the world, the life and the self they used to have before joining the institution. Regulating clothing is just one way to influence someone’s self-perception and identity.¹

These mechanisms apply to the armed forces as well: in some armies, recruits are not allowed to go home for the first two months in order to disrupt their social ties and form new ones within the military institution, and they receive uniforms right away and are discouraged to talk about personal backgrounds. ‘The role of the cadet must supersede other roles the individual has been accustomed to play. (…) In addition, the knowledge of common interests and a common destiny serves as a unifying force that binds together.’² Those recruits that stay in regular contact with home usually make the poorest adjustment to military life.³ The importance of rituals within the military stresses its distinctiveness from other institutions even further.⁴

However, the socialising of the men that make the military is a two-way street. Self-selection for the military profession makes for candidates who subscribe to certain values before joining the armed forces. As in many other occupations,⁵ the military disposes of a set of professional attitudes, values and ethics that are of importance to the individual who seeks to be, or already is, a soldier. By self-selection, and subsequent selection, the armed forces assemble men that share these values. ‘Potential candidates to the military profession emphasise the prospects of outdoor life, good comradeship, and patriotism.’⁶ On the other hand, it is clear that the military sorts out those it deems unfit, physically or mentally, for the job, and chooses those that correspond to the military values that specific military organisation stresses. This is useful because

a certain amount of uniformity in some areas of attitudes or behaviour can be necessary or be perceived as desirable in order to enable the group to reach its goals. (…) The more uniform the opinions or behaviours in a group are, the better the group can function as social reality for its members.⁷

Similarity, proximity, common fate, good continuation, and set and past experiences⁸ are all elements that simplify the establishment of bonds.

But what are these so-called military values? The first ingredient of the military occupational mind is nationalism.⁹ ‘The modern military establishment patterned its organisational structure after that of the nation-state, and its corporate orientation was designed to perpetuate and preserve the nation-state’s integrity.’¹⁰ The nation, or the state, being the ‘client’ of that occupational group, it seems only logical to conclude that an organisation designed to protect something will uphold this something. However, other values such as discipline, loyalty and honesty and, last but not least, comradeship are frequently mentioned.¹¹ The block of comradeship, corporatism and cooperation stands prominently among military values. Why is that so?

The aim of these values is, among other things, the creation of cohesion. In combat, armed forces are able to sustain themselves only so long as individual members commit themselves to collective goals. As Janowitz and Shils have shown, it was not political conviction that kept German Wehrmacht soldiers fighting despite desperate situations, but rather the primary group connection. As long as this was functioning, the men would not abandon the fight.¹² Hence, personal ties seem to be relatively more important than an overall goal – a result that has been confirmed in several studies.¹³ National ideologies and symbols are, in this view, only indirectly a precondition for the formation of cohesion. As a cohesion-forging element, it only works if a generally accepted national identity exists as well as a general consensus about the social role of the military.¹⁴

Other studies suggest that it is not so much personal friendship but rather common training and drill that create cohesion.¹⁵ Some go as far as distinguishing between social cohesion and task cohesion: while the former refers to the nature and quality of the emotional bonds, the latter refers to the shared commitment among members to achieving a goal that requires the collective of the group.¹⁶

Either way, cohesion is not just cause; it is also effect. The armed forces, more than any other institution, rely on cooperation in order to be operative, which has a positive side effect in terms of cohesion. ‘There will be more friendliness among individuals in a cooperative situation than in a competitive situation.’¹⁷ Not only does the military rely on corporatism and cohesion, it also produces it by its mere structure. So, the value of comradeship is not just a means to an end, but more like a closed loop: because the military needs cooperation and cohesion it picks men that emphasise it as well, and who will grow even closer by working in the military. Some go so far as to state that this strong military identity can be qualified as quasi-ethnicity – the military as an ethnicity apart.¹⁸ The often used statement in the army, ‘there is no black or white, only (army) green’, is, perhaps, an expression of this idea.

Can this professional identity supersede other social identities and mould them into one, common identity?

Studies in the US Army have shown that the relations between whites and African-Americans improved after cooperation in mixed units,¹⁹ but studies from the Israeli army have shown no impact of contact on friendship choices.²⁰ These divergent outcomes indicate an important factor that possibly resides outside the military. Thus, the positive effect of contact among members of different social groups in the military depends largely on real or imagined previous experiences the men had with the other group.²¹ This indicates that the army is not a ‘natural’ integrator, in the sense that it is not disconnected from developments outside of its zone of influence, and that in spite of its cohesive effect it might not be capable of wiping out intergroup conflict.

But if it is not capable of doing so, this would indicate that one of the armed forces’ key mechanisms, cohesion, is endangered. The looming question, then, is: does the military open the door towards society’s problems by hiring people from its midst?

Since ‘an army always resembles the country from which it is raised and of which it is the expression’,²² it seems safe to assume that political and social problems of the very same society are imported into the military along with the staff. Some belief that full professionalization of the officer corps would lead to its disinterest in politics.²³ The ideal military institution would thus be politically mute and remove itself, and its staff, from society’s problems, while politicised armed forces typically would be the outcome of immature societies.²⁴ The problem with this assumption is that, first, it is precisely the strong identification with the armed forces and its ideals that has contributed to military intervention into politics;²⁵ and second, it leaves out the fact that the military is not just a profession like teacher or baker – it is a fusion of organisation and occupation, and is closely linked to society, state and their respective foundation myths. Ultimately, the question boils down to what influences individuals employ in the armed forces more: their social surroundings, or their military occupation?²⁶

The individual shuttling between a job and a private life switches identities just as he or she switches emphases. Identities are never fixed; they fluctuate, move, take precedence over one another. They are not part of a zero-sum game. Numerous aspects affect the forming, and deforming, of identities, whether in a professional context or one of social conflict: occupational satisfaction is connected to promotion, socialisation, and distribution of assets, tasks and finances. Social conflict can impact on group identity in different ways; depending on the degree to which the conflict has developed, and how much it is really affecting the individual, group identity tends to enforce within a feeling of threat. This is especially the case when the identity cannot be changed (as in an ethnic or a religious identity). In the complex interplay of different identities, there is no inevitability in conflict being carried into the military as an organisation, although there is a possibility.

Social conflict is most successful in affecting the armed forces when the institution itself is already strained. Let’s not forget that the military is, after all, an organisation, and thus bears typical organisational features – among others, conflicts over authority, distribution and promotion. Rather than saying that the individual transports the conflict into the military, one could argue that the external conflict connects to institution-immanent conflicts and gains influence only then. For instance, an officer from a certain social group which feels excluded from opportunity in society might consider the postponement of his or her promotion through this lens.

In a post-civil war setting, this would imply it being crucial to ensure transparency, meritocracy, fairness and equal opportunity within the armed forces in order to shield against possibly lingering social conflict. In the interplay between professional and social identity, institutional and societal conflict, there are, however, no simplistic answers possible, except for one: a strained society will not inevitably have a strained military, and a strained military might very well be situated in a perfectly harmonious society.

Colliding concepts? Multiethnicity and the military

The armed forces interact with society on not only the individual level, but also one level above – the meso level. The meso level can be described in this context as a level of social interaction that is neither the state nor the individual, and hence comprises more or less organised forms of community. In our case, that would be the ethnic group. Depending on their location within the state’s structure, the extent of their political relevance, and their self-perception, ethnic groupings can, or cannot, take on forms of community representation.

The relationship between state and ethnic groups is often an uneasy one: ethnicity as such seems to antagonise the nation-state ideal, and stands for particularity where unity is expected. That said, ethnic and national identities are often intertwined. It is only where they are not that they are perceived as rivalling concepts for loyalty. Where an ethnic identity has not succeeded in imposing itself as a national identity it stands for a societal subdivision, and hence is located on the meso level.

By the same token, the military as an agent and expression of the state is situated at the meso level as well. While being removed from state and politics to some degree, it is amidst the institution where society and state effectively meet. Interaction between ethnic groups and the military thus takes place on the meso level.

Although both phenomena are on the same level of social dimension, they seem antagonistic. Because the military embodies cohesion and unity, ethnicity seems to constitute the exact opposite: standing for particularity, possible ambitions of separateness and negation of the state/nation medal, ethnicity and the military are diametrically opposed. And yet they are not. Although ethnicity has often been portrayed as the obstruction on the road to modernity and a relict from traditional times, it is on the contrary an essential ingredient in the creation of states. Hence, just as the ideal of the homogeneous nation-state only rarely exists, so does the ideal of the perfectly homogeneous army. A non-exhaustive list of countries where the military is facing ethnic considerations shows clearly how widespread this ‘problem’ in fact is: Belgium, Bolivia, Canada, China, Ethiopia, Ghana,²⁷ Great Britain, Guyana, India, Indonesia, Iraq,²⁸ Israel, Jordan, Kenya, Laos, Malaysia, Morocco, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Sudan, South Africa, Switzerland, Syria, Trinidad, Uganda and the United States are all countries where the armed forces do not comprise a single ethnic group. The state, throughout time, has used (and continues to do so) ethnicity and particularity as power source and basis.

Because analysis of the military’s effect on ethnicity has mostly focused on integrat...

Table of contents

• Cass Military Studies
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 The armed forces as a social agent
• 2 Case study: the Nigerian Army
• 3 Case study: the Lebanese armed forces
• 4 Case study: the armies of Bosnia-Herzegovina
• 5 Military integration after civil wars
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index