Clausewitz and African War

Politics and Strategy in Liberia and Somalia

Isabelle Duyvesteyn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• Print ISBN: 9780714657240
• eBook ISBN: 9781135764838
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

This book shows that wars that have hitherto been mainly interpreted as driven by economic, resource, ethnic or clan interests (such as the conflicts in Liberia and Somalia in the early 1990s) do have an overriding political rationale, which revalidates Carl von Clausewitz's nineteenth-century understanding of war.

1
CLAUSEWITZ, THE NATURE OF WAR AND AFRICAN WARFARE

War

Understanding the nature of war was the main ambition of Carl von Clausewitz when he wrote his magnum opus, Vom Kriege.¹ Clausewitz developed his ideas on the basis of his first-hand experiences during the Napoleonic wars. In particular, the defeat of his native Prussia at the hands of the French army proved to be a catalyst for him to put his ideas to paper. Clausewitz started by analysing war as a phenomenon that tends towards extremes. Left to its own devices, war tends to become limitless. Clausewitz saw the Napoleonic wars as coming closest to limitless war. This he called absolute or ideal war. In practice, war is always tempered by several factors, the most important of which he identified as politics. Therefore, he postulated famously that war was the continuation of politics with the admixture of other means.²

War, furthermore, was made up of three elements: the government, the army and the people. War, according to Clausewitz, was a political instrument at the disposal of governments. The army could be used for the protection of the interests of government and people. This idea of warfare is also called trinitarian because it consists of three essential elements.³ First, the government has ultimate authority over military force. Second, military power is used and exercised by an army, which again is under control of the government. In this way military force is an instrument of politics. Third, the government uses the army with the aid of the people; people fight in the army's ranks on behalf of the state. This trinity forms the essence of war, according to Clausewitz.

Clausewitz's attempt to dissect the nature of war and study the phenomenon objectively has influenced many generations of military thinkers since the nineteenth century. His interpretation of war has formed an important part of almost any theoretical debate about the nature of war.⁴ His identification of politics as the main operative factor in war has long been seen as the closest thing the field of strategic studies has had to a ‘law’. Clausewitz influenced the thinking of politicians and military commanders alike: ‘Clausewitz stands at the beginning of the nonprescrip-tive, nonjudgemental study of war as a total phenomenon, and On War [Vom Kriege] is still the most important work in this tradition’.⁵ However, Clausewitz and his interpretation of war are now said to have lost their relevance. This is not the first time that Clausewitz has been declared obsolete.⁶ For example, during the nuclear war debate in the 1960s, the threat of total nuclear annihilation precluded any rational approach to war and therefore, according to the specialists, had made Clausewitz irrelevant.⁷

Clausewitz himself seems to have been in two minds about whether his theories were supposed to be applicable to all wars at all times. Most of his examples in Vom Kriege are based on the Napoleonic wars. According to Beatrice Heuser, the young and idealistic Clausewitz, when he had just started putting his thoughts to paper, did aim to write a universal theory. Clausewitz the older and more realistic writer revising his extensive manuscript, however, did not clearly restate this claim.⁸

This introductory chapter will first treat in more detail the non-trinitarian interpretation of war. Second, shortcomings in this argument will be pointed out. There then follows an outline of an interpretation of why Clausewitz continues to be relevant for understanding the nature of war, which forms the main argument of this study.

Non-trinitarian war

Several thought-provoking studies have appeared since the early 1990s which question Clausewitz's interpretation of the nature of war.⁹ One of the main observations has been that the state and its adjunct the army have been creations of modern times.¹⁰ In the pre-modern age, a knight and his followers, rather than the state, conducted warfare. Just as the age of the knightly wars came to an end, so too we are now witnessing the end of the age of the state.¹¹ In order to conduct war, entities other than the state have now taken centre stage. Warlords, bandits, drugs barons and other enterprising individuals are seen as the main actors in warfare today.¹²

When the state is no longer an actor, it is argued, war becomes divorced from politics. No longer are political interests dominant among the reasons for which people fight. Rather, religion, existence and personal wealth are among the reasons ascribed to the actors fighting in war. It has also been argued that war is not necessarily a means to an end. War purely for the sake of war is likely to occur.¹³ Several interpretations have been put forward. First, wars have been described as concerned with questions of identity such as ethnicity, community and religion.¹⁴ Second, war as divorced from the state has been interpreted as being dominated by resource and economic considerations.¹⁵ These suggestions are very com- pelling because they touch at the heart of the basic values and driving forces of human beings.¹⁶

Ethnicity has a very broad definition: culture, religion, race, language, tradition, tribe, heritage, history and myth are all used to define and delimit it. Ethnicity and ethnic identity have been linked to tensions that can erupt in war. Whether ethnicity is a given and set element or a social construct is a topic for debate.¹⁷ Ethnicity can be seen as an inherently conflict-promoting or -producing element.¹⁸ It can also be interpreted in an instrumental way with emphasis on the role of the leadership and elite, who use ethnicity to their advantage. Social networks and social interaction, which are outside individual control, have also been put forward as the link between ethnicity and conflict.¹⁹

An ethnic security dilemma can arise. While the original security dilemma in international relations theory has been formulated with regard to the international system of states, ethnic groups can experience the same dilemma.²⁰ A security dilemma can arise when one state feels insecure and decides to arm. Other states witnessing the arming can feel their security threatened and can decide to arm too. This has the effect of decreasing even further the security of the state that started out arming. For ethnic groups, when a decline in ethnic security occurs, the ethnic group can feel a need to arm.²¹ One ethnic group arming can prompt the same reaction from other ethnic groups. Arming to acquire security could avoid costs in the future of fighting a war against a stronger opponent. The effect is an overall decrease in security, a decrease that can lead to the outbreak of war.

Not only is ethnic rivalry a force that can cause wars to break out, it can also compound the fighting and polarise the parties. As a permanent or given element it will play a role throughout the war. As an instrument, it can be manipulated by leaders, in order to create a following. Ethnic rivalry can be a reason for both leaders and individuals to continue fighting.²² Ethnic interests can become more important during the course of war, when other ethnic groups prove stronger or when other categories for common identity are absent.

Religious factors have also been identified as important in the nature of wars. Ethnic and religious identities are often difficult to distinguish because ethnic identity can be (partly) based on religious distinction.²³ However, religion as a separate factor in war warrants attention, not least because the spread of Islam, in particular, has been identified as contributing to armed conflict.²⁴ Religious conflict is likely to occur in times of crisis and uncertainty.²⁵ Religious identity and religion can be an inherently conflict- promoting factor, an instrument in the hands of leaders, or it can be a product of social construction.²⁶ Apart from considerations of ethnic and religious identity, economic and resource explanations have also been found important.²⁷

Armed conflict can break out when a chance for financial benefit is recognised. Furthermore, conflict, after it has broken out, might be driven directly by the financial interests that develop in a war economy. These interests might become so important that those involved will do anything to keep the war machine going. Pillaging, blackmailing practices, trading stolen goods, forcing labour, extracting mineral resources and stealing humanitarian aid – all these, among others, are ways to enrichment.²⁸ These economic interests develop under the circumstances of war. Once interests in the maintenance of this informal economy become vested, the formal economy can be replaced. Wars, according to this interpretation, are actually economic undertakings. There are economic motivations to start war and economic incentives to continue war.²⁹

War becomes both a means and an end for economic advantage. Warfare is an economic instrument for gain and, at the same time, a condition in which new economic interests are established. To paraphrase Clausewitz, war is here the continuation of economics with the admixture of other means. Important roles in this explanation are reserved for international business, multinationals and entrepreneurs operating internationally.³⁰ These ideas of ethnic and resource factors defining the nature of war put a different perspective on Clausewitz's idea that war is in the hands of political actors and is used as an instrument to further political aims.

Together with the state as an actor and political interests, another of Clausewitz's elements, the army as an instrument of the state, is said to have lost importance in these non-trinitarian explanations. More important in the understanding of today's wars are private military forces or military factions. The way the military instrument is used has also changed. Armed force is no longer seen as a means to an end. Force can be used for its own sake. The use of weaponry is not geared towards the defeat of an enemy and no longer shows a centre of gravity. However, when military power is used to achieve an end, this end is no longer political but is described in ethnic, religious and resource terms, as outlined above.

When the military instrument is used, the type of war that ensues has been described as ‘low-intensity conflict’ (LIC) or guerrilla war.³¹ These wars are not literally low in intensity but mostly involve developing states, irregular armies and indirect fighting techniques. It has been argued that the concept of strategy is not universally valid but can be linked to distinct historical periods. Strategy defined as ‘[t]he art of “using battles in order to achieve the objectives of war” presumes that the two sides have considerable armed forces and that those forces are distinguishable from each other, separated by geography, and at least potentially mobile’.³² This is no longer the case, according to these interpretations. War is fought on many different levels and at many different points characterised by an irregular nature.

People, the last of Clausewitz's elements, can no longer be counted on to fight a war on behalf of a government. When the state is not the most important actor and force is not used towards political ends, the people fighting will have to be recruited along different lines. Suggestions have been made that people are mostly interested in fighting in armed factions in order to attain ethnic safeguards, personal wealth and glory. Equally important is the observation that there is no organisation present that clearly binds these people together. Individuals operate alone or in very small groups. War has become a conflict of all against all, resulting in anarchy and chaos.

These interpretations present a picture of war in which the concept of trinitarian war no longer applies. To understand war, other entities, different reasons and distinct ways of conducting war have to be taken into account. Despite these thought-provoking suggestions, there are, however, also indications that the Clausewitzean concepts continue to be relevant to understand war.

Trinitarian war

This study will argue that despite the contributions on the changing nature of war, a trinitarian perspective is still applicable.³³ Several points indicate that this is the case. The make-up of actors that are taking part in armed conflict in the developing world have characteristics similar to those of state actors:

The Clausewitzean idea of all military effort as being driven by an interaction between the trinity of government, military and people may have been based on the idea of the state, but it is easily adaptable to forms of warring social organizations that do not form states.³⁴

It might very well be the case that these social organisations or actors are themselves political actors. They could exhibit the trinity of a political leadership, a following and a military potential. It thus needs to be investigated whether these non-state social organisations involved in war are in fact political actors and whether they command military force with the support of a substantial number of people.

Despite the valuable contributions of war for its own sake or war to keep a system of profit going, social organisations involved in armed conflict have fought throughout the ages for political interests. Even before the birth of the state, social organisations would take up arms to defend what was important to them. Pre-state organisations in every part of the world used military force as an instrument with which to fight for political interests.³⁵ It thus seems very possible that actors can fight for their political interests without a state being present. In the cases of state collapse, e.g. the problems in Somalia, it might thus very well be the case that political interests play a role in the armed conflict.

Concerning the army: could it not be true that the picture these wars present to the outside world causes them to be interpreted as low-intensity conflict, insurgency or chaos because other ways of categorising them are inadequate, rather than because they are actually fought in ways that correspond to the ideas of important insurgency theorists?³⁶ The fact that these wars take place in the developing world deserves more attention in this regard. We may note that

Where resources are available, as in Ethiopia and Angola, [war] can turn into full-scale conventional warfare, including air combat. Where the fighting factions cannot afford sophisticated weaponry, as in Mozambique or Sierra Leone, violence easily degenerates into brutalizing terror, plumbing the depths of depravity.³⁷

When resources to fight war are limited or scarce, this might very well be the form that wars take. The common occurrence of cruelty and looting might signify that these are expressions of violence in cases where resources to conduct war are lacking.³⁸ It does not discredit war as an instrument, let alone war as a political instrument. When looked at from a historical perspective, for example, the operation of armies in early modern Europe exhibited a similar picture of unrulines...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Clausewitz and african war
• Preface and acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• 1: Clausewitz, the nature of war and african warfare
• 2: Case study I Liberia, 1989–97
• 3: Case study II Somalia, 1988–95
• 4: Political actors
• 5: Political interests
• 6: Political instruments and conventional war
• 7: Politics and strategy in african wars
• Notes
• Bibliography