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SPEAKING
FREELY
Wars and words
By Kamal Sidhu
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online
feature that allows guest writers to have their say.
Please
click here if you are interested in
contributing.
What's in a word? For the
eminent British historian Sir Michael Howard, evidently
quite a lot. In a recent discussion about American
foreign policy in the post-September 11 world, Sir
Michael - best known for his eloquent expositions on
British foreign policy in the run-up to World War II and
his widely read English translation of Clausewitz's
classic work On War - thought that the much
bandied-about phrase "war on terrorism" was being
misused by the Bush administration and too easily lapped
up by the American public. His particular gripe was with
the way the word "war" is being deployed.
The
point Sir Michael raises is hardly trivial. For this
"war" can be interpreted in one of two broad senses of
the word: either this is a war in the conventional
sense, ie, an armed conflict between states; or it could
be translated to mean "the struggle or fight against",
as in the phrase "the war on drugs" or "the war against
HIV/AIDS". So which war is the United States fighting:
The War on Terrorism or the war on terrorism?
The answer is relevant to how the US fights this
war, how other countries fit into that fight and,
perhaps most importantly, the expectations of the
citizens and constituents - namely Americans - who
ultimately sustain that effort. Three observations about
wars are relevant here.
First, in most wars the
means used to prosecute them are largely military in
character, and while the reason or aim of a war may not
be territorial in nature, wars are nonetheless usually
contested territorially. To be sure, the advent of
"total war" in 20th century Europe meant that war
involved much more than just any one state's military
power, to include the mobilization of all its economic
resources and even a reordering of its social
organization into one that could wage and win the war.
Second, the ends for which wars are fought, be
they economic, political or territorial, have one thing
in common: they are asserted and contested within the
realm of nation-states. States declare war and states
surrender.
Third, during wars the normal rules
of international relations are often disrupted or even
overturned. Wars, especially when engaged in by great
powers, have often been a means of overturning an
existing legal order or to force other states to adjust
to changed conditions in the international system. It is
thus common for wars to sever diplomatic relations
between countries, with a mixed effect on international
treaties.
At first glance, it appears that the
United States' war on terrorism bears the hallmarks of a
war in the formal sense of the word. The effort is
certainly one that encompasses the whole range of
resources available to the American state, from local
law enforcement and civil defense to international
policing, from economic to diplomatic measures, from
military assistance to intelligence and
counterintelligence operations. The tip of the spear,
though, is the US military, making this a largely
military-oriented affair. Furthermore, as we have seen
in Afghanistan and Iraq, territorial control is a major
component of the war on terrorism, especially where a
state becomes a breeding ground or hideout for
terrorists. The war on terrorism has also seen the US
fundamentally change its international relationships and
attitude towards some multilateral institutions. Take,
for example, the new emphasis on "coalitions of the
willing" instead of formal alliance structures. It can
be argued that states that rail against the US for
walking roughshod over international norms as they have
existed for the last 50 years still believe they live in
a world where this war does not exist. Yet wars are
often a means for forcing other states to adjust to
perceived changes in the international environment, and
September 11 no doubt signaled such a radical change to
the US.
On the other hand, this is clearly not a
typical war. It is debatable whether the military facet
of the American war against terror is the dominant one
or merely just one among many other components in the
effort. But more fundamentally, this cannot be a war in
the conventional sense of the word because the enemy is
not a state. It is a group of individuals who do not
play by the rules of the international system. It makes
the question of ending this war a problematic one: who
among the terrorists will surrender and to whom? Surely,
fighting against these non-state actors with war, a tool
of state-state conflict, does not make much sense. The
US probably realizes this. Hence we get the feeling that
the war on terrorism lies somewhere between a real war
and an international law enforcement effort. Hence the
US military invading Afghanistan and labeling captured
Taliban soldiers "enemy combatants" instead of prisoners
of war.
Some may dismiss all these distinctions
between war in the formal and metaphorical senses of the
word as useless semantics. But the distinction really
matters in the rhetorical function of the word "war" and
how it shapes people's expectations. Is the American
government using it in the formal sense or the "war on
drugs" sense?
It matters because of one somber
fact: terrorism will probably never be completely
defeated. There will always be extremists who are
willing to use violence to advance their hateful goals.
If this is true, the US government should be framing the
current conflict as a "war on drugs" kind of fight, one
that seeks to lessen the threat of terrorism to a
tolerable level but will never fully get rid of it.
Saying otherwise, that this is a war in the
formal sense, will make Americans assume that there is
an end in sight, that the enemy will be comprehensively
defeated. But that cannot and probably will not happen.
As a friend of mine correctly observed, the war on
terrorism lacks both the possibility of a negotiated
surrender and the existence of an enemy that can
surrender.
The American public is often derided
abroad for not being able to take a long-term view of
policy and quickly running out of patience when results
do not come fast. While this is not wholly accurate - we
must remember that Americans put up with containment for
almost 40 years during the Cold War - saying that the
war on terrorism is an actual war that will have an end
and then retreating to the position that it is a
struggle that may never see a definite conclusion, could
be disastrous for the support of the government
sustaining that effort.
At the moment it is not
clear if this is the war on terrorism or The War on
Terrorism, but one has the suspicion that the White
House's rhetoric tilts toward the latter. Sir Michael
Howard is perhaps right to be worried.
(Copyright 2003 Kamal Sidhu)
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online
feature that allows guest writers to have their say.
Please
click here if you are interested in
contributing.
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