The New War Plays

From Kane to Harris

J. Boll

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781137330017
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137330024
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism

How can war be represented on stage? How does the theatre examine the structures leading to violence and war and explore their transformation of societies? Springing from the discussion about 'New Wars' in the age of globalisation, this interdisciplinary study demonstrates how these 'New Wars' bring forth new plays about war.

1

War

Fear is arguably the most sinister of the demons nesting in the open societies of our time.

(Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Times, 2007)

A recent consideration of the future of empire suggests that, instead of progressing into a peaceful future, we have slipped back in time into the nightmare of a perpetual and indeterminate state of war. War, it seems, is no longer the exceptional state, but ‘the primary organising principle of society’ (Hardt and Negri 2006: 7), thus returning to Heraclitus’ observation that ‘war is the father of all things’ and echoing Giorgio Agamben’s declaration that the state of exception has become the status quo (Heraclitus 1987: 37, Agamben 2005: 8). In what follows, I will propose that the philosophical and political-theoretical discourse surrounding the changing nature of war coincides with the attempt by recent plays to engage with the state of war as it has become prevalent during the two decades which straddle the turn of the millennium.

Exemplarily, this may be observed in what has become one of the most canonical plays of the 1990s: ‘Looks like there’s a war on’, one of the characters in Sarah Kane’s Blasted (1995) notes in the second scene of the play, looking out of the hotel window. Her partner on stage remains remarkably unperturbed. The conversation quickly turns to a local football match and the room service is used, while the conflict raging outside is not acknowledged any further, let alone explained (Kane 2001: 33–34). The circumstances might refer to the suppression of a rebellion, peacekeeping measures, maybe a colonial invasion; even skirmishes between autonomous military troops seem possible, but while the play descends further and further into the portrayal of a world decidedly out of joint, the characters have long accepted their position in the midst of instability and the antagonist they are playing against: the war as the unlisted but ever-present character.

Agamben asserts that it is difficult to define the state of exception due to its close relationship to civil war, insurrection and resistance, as civil war is contrary to ‘normal conditions’ and thus ‘lies in a zone of undecidability with respect to the state of exception, which is the state power’s immediate response to the most extreme internal conflicts’. ‘In this sense’, he states,

modern totalitarianism can be defined as the establishment, by means of the state of exception, of a legal civil war that allows for the physical elimination not only of political adversaries but of entire categories of citizens who for some reason cannot be integrated into the political system. Since then, the voluntary creation of a permanent state of emergency (though perhaps not declared in the technical sense) has become one of the essential practices of contemporary states, including so-called democratic ones. (2005: 8)

Importantly, there is no need for an official declaration to effect the state of exception. Located in the liminal region between the juridical and the political state, it is precisely defined by its exception from the rule – even the rule which defines its existence.

New War theory

In order to be able to fall back on these theories in the later discussion of the intersection between the political and social developments and the plays, the following will give a concise overview of the New War theories and adjoining developments in political and social theory.

In the past two decades, a number of political theorists have discussed the possibility of a new form of war, the so-called ‘New Wars’. The term was coined by Mary Kaldor in her study New and Old Wars (1999) to describe the development of a new type of organised violence emerging during the last decades of the twentieth century as ‘one aspect of the current form of globalisation’ (2006: 1).¹ Earlier studies had already carried out research into similar areas, such as Martin van Creveld’s survey On Future War (1991), Robert D. Kaplan’s investigation of ‘The Coming Anarchy’ (1994), Kalevi Holsti’s account of the state of war in the late twentieth century (1996), and Mark Duffield’s research on warlords and private protection in post-modern conflict (1998). The interest in establishing a new category with its own typology and the number of ensuing publications grew rapidly, so that Henderson and Singer in their 2002 critique of various of these approaches already spoke of ‘New War’ theorists (2002: 165). Also in 2002, Herfried Münkler published his study on the New Wars, synthesising many previous approaches and establishing the similarities to pre-modern wars as a common reference, while reasoning that the economic circumstances of globalisation and ‘shadow globalisation’ should be taken into account when examining the motives and backgrounds of the New Wars.

While Mary Kaldor considers that ‘post-modern’ wars might be a more appropriate term, as it would allow for these wars to be discussed dissociated from those that are considered to be ‘characteristic of classical modernity’, she maintains that this specific term is also used in reference to ‘virtual’ wars and wars in cyberspace. More significantly, the New Wars combine elements of pre-modernity and modernity, as Kaldor emphasises. They involve

a blurring of the distinctions between war (usually defined as violence between states or organized political groups for political motives), organized crime (violence undertaken by privately organized groups for private purposes, usually financial gain) and large-scale violations of human rights (violence undertaken by states or politically organized groups against individuals). (2006: 2)

She stresses the interdependency of war and the evolution of the modern state (15, a point more extensively treated by Münkler 2005: 51–73) and argues that society derives from this history a stylised notion of war which ‘still profoundly affects our thinking about war and dominates . . . the way policy-makers conceive of security’ (17). Modern warfare, as developed in the nineteenth century, would typically comprise war between nation states, ‘with an ever-increasing emphasis on scale and mobility, and an increasing need for “rational” organization and “scientific” doctrine to manage these large conglomerations of force’ (26). And while reasons to join up and fight during ‘old wars’ were clearly defined, the post-war period has shown that ‘at least in Western countries, there are few causes that constitute a legitimate goal for war for which people are prepared to die’ (29). The development of terminology is important: for a new understanding of war it has to be clear that the state of war is no longer tied to the act of declaring war or agreeing on peace. In fact, one of the characteristics of these New Wars is that they rage on as a de facto state of war whether the international public acknowledges this by use of the label ‘war’ or not. The public interest in labelling or not labelling a conflict as war is frequently tied to the public interest to be or not to be involved.

Kaldor contrasts the New Wars with earlier wars in terms of their goals and the methods of financing (6): a thought that has also been developed by Münkler in his analysis The New Wars (Die neuen Kriege, 2002),² who argues that, since a direct pursuit of war is less expensive than in the past, the military force is destabilised or even privatised. Certain forms of violence that used to be tactically subordinate to a military strategy such as guerrilla warfare and terrorism have acquired a strategic dimension of their own. Consequently, forms of violence that used to be part of a single military system are rendered autonomous. Once regular armies have lost control over the course of war, it will be in the hands of players for whom war as a contest between like and like is an alien concept (3). Münkler lists para-states or partly private actors such as local warlords, guerrilla groups, firms of mercenaries operating on a world scale and international terror networks as the New Wars’ principal belligerents (1, also Kaldor 2006: 6).

Kaldor builds on this assessment of the interdependence of asymmetric warfare and contemporary war financing in the New Wars by explaining that they occur

in the context of the disintegration of states (typically authoritarian states under the impact of globalisation). . . . fought by networks of state and non-state actors, often without uniforms . . . where battles are rare and where most violence is directed against civilians as a consequence of counter-insurgency tactics or ethnic cleansing. . . . [T] axation is falling and war finance consists of loot and pillage, illegal trading and other war-generated revenue. . . . [T]he distinctions between combatant and non-combatant, legitimate violence and criminality are all breaking down. These are wars which exacerbate the disintegration of the state – declines in GDP, loss of tax revenue, loss of legitimacy, etc. (3)

Underlining the erosion of dichotomies accompanying twentieth and twenty-first century life, Kaldor asserts that this evolution involves ‘both integration and fragmentation, homogenisation and diversification, globalisation and localisation’ (4), enabling a global presence within the New Wars, which comprises international reporters, mercenary troops, military advisors, diaspora volunteers, NGOs and international institutions including peace-keeping troops (4–5). Foreshadowing what Ulrich Beck would later describe as a general breakdown of modernity’s dualisms (2009), and providing a vital link to Agamben’s assessment of the state of exception as the status quo, she explains that ‘[t]he erosion of the distinction between public and private, military and civil, internal and external, also calls into question the distinction between war and peace itself’ (32).

Ethnic-cultural tension and increasingly also religious conviction play an important role in contemporary wars, as do strong nationalist movements. This emphasis on sectarian identities (religious, ethnic or tribal) undermines the sense of a shared political community, allowing for mass murder, genocide and deportation. Kaldor suggests this could be considered the purpose of these wars (2006: 80–91), arguing that the goals of the New Wars are often not of a geo-political or politicoideological nature but about identity politics, by which she means ‘the claim to power on the basis of a particular identity – be it national, clan, religious or linguistic’ (6). Complementarily, Bettina Schmidt and Ingo W. Schroeder argue that an escalation of long-term violence between clearly established groups of actors is the actual root of war, derived from an ‘ideology of antagonism’ which is replicated again and again, completely dissociated from any other conflict, which leads to the violence that reproduces violence (Schmidt and Schroeder 2001: 15).

In an early assessment of the structures leading to large-scale civil war Robert Kaplan observes that many of the intra-state wars of the late twentieth century are governed by a pre-modern formlessness, reminiscent of the wars in medieval Europe before 1648, when the peace of Westphalia formed the foundation of the era of organised nation-states (Kaplan 1994: 41). Especially in West Africa, but also increasingly in Middle Eastern countries, the concept of crumbling or failed states can be witnessed, characterised by central governments withering away, the rise of tribal and regional domains, the free spread of disease and the growing frequency of war (42). Münkler emphasises how similar to seventeenth-century Europe the current conditions are, when ‘the state is no longer what it was then not yet: the monopolist of war’ (2). Consequently, he suggests that these New Wars could in fact herald the ‘return of something thoroughly old’ (ibid.), as if those pre-nation state wars reverberated through them. Using the Thirty Years’ War as the ‘analytic framework and comparative reference’ underlying his analysis of the New Wars (32–50, here 42), Münkler points at the

characteristic mixture of private enrichment and hunger for personal power, political drives for expansion into neighbouring states, intervention to save and protect certain values, . . . internal struggle for power, influence and domination (2)

which is underscored by significant religious-denominational connections (3). With only some exceptions, most of the major wars of the last few decades demonstrate similar combinations of values and interests and of belligerents, Münkler explains. He lists the wars in sub-Saharan Africa alongside the wars related to the collapse of Yugoslavia, the conflicts in Eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus region, the protracted Middle Eastern conflict, the hostilities in Sri Lanka and the wars in Afghanistan since the early 1980s as bearing ‘much greater resemblance to the Thirty Years’ War than to the inter-state wars of the eighteenth to twentieth centuries’ (3, 10, 47).

One of the major attributes of the Thirty Years’ War is the widespread ‘use of force not only against the armed enemy but also – at times principally – against the civilian population’, Münkler maintains (42), describing the marauding troops of the seventeenth century who, strikingly similar to recent trends, ‘plundered and murdered their way across the land’ (44). He adds that there is also an obvious structural parallel to the New Wars

in the war economy organized according to the principle of bellum se ipse alet (war feeds war). . . . [W]ar itself becomes part of an economic life that is no longer under political control or subject to political limitation. . . . [S]ince these wars do not usually involve rapid and total mobilization of forces but slowly use them up on an ongoing basis, most of them last a long time and keep flaring up after temporary lulls. (44–5)

Considered in the light of Münkler’s analysis, the structures of contemporary warfare may well be described as palimpsestic, displaying the framework of something not new in every way, but in some ways rather old.

Globalisation and risk transferral

There is a significant difference to be found between Kaldor’s claim of the New Wars’ finance consisting mainly of ‘war-generated revenue’ (2006: 3) and Münkler’s assessment of the same issue. Again, he points to research on the Thirty Years’ War to attest that the war ‘could not have lasted for thirty years in Germany if new reserves had not continually flowed in from abroad’, arguing that fresh foreign troops and funds subsidised the war and hence prolonged it (45) and that equally in the twenty-first century, under the conditions of globalisation, the ‘ belligerents have unhindered access to the resources of the world economy’ (46). In the New Wars, he observes a range of interest groups which expect profit from a continued state of war and hence ‘find nothing to suit them in peace’ (3). The material presented by Münkler opens up the possibility of a careful critique of the whole complex system of globalised economic structures, brought to the point by Neil Curtis, who notes a decisive shift away from the common Utilitarian belief that supposedly ‘no one benefited from wars except for a few contractors and arms manufacturers’ (Curtis 2006: xiii). He maintains that there is a fundamental fault to be found with the prevailing Utilitarian argument that trade should be free because economic rivalry was amongst the primary causes of war: this line of reasoning, Curtis argues, fails to address the intricate relationship between finance, trade and violence (xiv) and the mechanisms by which finance and trade often profit from ongoing violence and conflict. Wolfgang Sofsky agrees that ‘people like to cling to the illusion that economic and democratic developments can guarantee peace’ (Sofsky 2003: 131).

Kaldor suggests...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. War
• 2. Taboo
• 3. Testimony
• 4. Palimpsest
• Conclusion
• Appendix: Summaries of Plays
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index