The Moral Obligation of Missile Defence? Preventive War Argumentation and Ballistic Missile Defence Advocacy

This article aims to assess the moral arguments that have been propounded for missile defence in the post-Cold-War era and to evaluate how these relate to those made for the ‘pre-emptive’ use of military force. Specific attention is paid to the argument that contemporary missile defence constitutes a form of moral obligation for the United States, a position explicitly advocated by just war theorist James Turner Johnson. Drawing on critiques of similar arguments made in the 1980s, the assumptions of this position are critically assessed. Finally, the article asserts that the general reconfiguration of imminent threats in recent US security strategy gives sustenance to the moral argumentation for missile defence as much as it does the anticipatory use of force more broadly understood, indicating how the two overlap and intersect in this regard.     

When Democracies Go to War: Public Debate and the French Decision on War in 1999 and 2003

On what grounds do democratic states wage war? Public opinion is often considered as being of crucial importance in the decision to go to war. This article analyses two debates over war in France. It finds that democracies debate war within a limited range of arguments from which classical reasons for war such as the geostrategic one are absent. However, within the limited range of arguments, public support for decisions to go to war seems to depend significantly on the convergence of all public opinion actors over the interpretation of the crisis situation. The high politics nature of crisis situations gives the political leadership strong leverage in the shaping of thick discourses. The control function of public opinion is then diminished and a de facto prerogative of the government established even though justifications remain restricted to a limited number of arguments. Thick discourses of justification seem to be framed predominantly by arguments of just war.     

Carl Schmitt's Five Arguments against the Idea of Just War

Carl Schmitt famously alleged that a commitment to just war fosters the criminalisation and demonisation of the enemy. The aim of this paper is to trace, analyse and evaluate five arguments that can be found in Schmitt's opus elucidating and supporting the above claims. The paper suggests that even though Schmitt's critique of just war is typically extreme, it can nevertheless enrich the current debate on just war in so far as it challenges the common claim that the just war tradition occupies the middle ground between bellicism (that always justifies war) and pacifism (that never justifies war). Arguing against this widely held view, Schmitt claims that in the 20th century a belief in just war, far from representing a moderate position between extremes, is instead at the fore of an ideology that aims at dehumanising anyone who does not share its core values.     

War,transparency and control: the military architecture of operational warfare

In contemporary research, transparency is commonly understood to indicate and guarantee openness, in ways that make it synonymous with positive characteristics of governing. However, the allegedly benevolent link between transparency and governing has also been questioned, giving rise to arguments that transparency enables violent social control. Drawing upon this latter view, the article stages an encounter between critical debates on transparency and critical accounts of war to examine the way that they come together in the operationalization of warfare. Engaging particularly with Jean Baudrillard’s writing on transparency, the article inquires into the way control is socially manufactured and administered through military doctrines. It concludes that the operationalization of warfare is not, as many tend to argue, first and foremost about a response to practical problems when conducting wars. Rather, it consists of the potential to unveil global space and global time as an attempt to maintain and control future political becoming.     

The Bush Doctrine and the Iraq War: Neoconservatives Versus Realists

The aim of this article is to contribute to our understanding of both the debate over the war in Iraq and its implications for the future of U.S. foreign policy by examining the relationship between neoconservatism and realism. The article begins by establishing the connection between the tenets of neoconservatism and the arguments for war against Iraq. The primary focus is on the neoconservative Bush Doctrine that served as the primary justification for the Iraq War. Next, we turn to the arguments that realists put forth in their attempt to steer America away from the road to war. The realists, however, proved to be unsuccessful in their attempt to prevent war and in the final section we address the central question of the article; why did realism fail in the debate over Iraq?     

War, ‘strategic communication’ and the violence of non-recognition

Contemporary Western war-fighting is animated by the fictitious imagination of a war free from antagonism. In this logic, winning wars is about winning the ‘hearts and minds’ of local populations, about persuasion rather than confrontation. In recent years, the concept of ‘strategic communication’ (SC) has been elevated to the top echelons of strategic thinking in United States military circles, focusing attention on how to communicate ‘effectively’ with local populations. Via an analysis of the concept of SC, this article examines the ethico-political dimensions of contemporary Western-led ‘population-centric’ war. Through a reading inspired by Judith Butler's recent work in Precarious life (London: Verso 2006) and Frames of war (London: Verso 2009), and an analysis that turns on the link between ethics and ontology, I reflect on the significance of the ‘communications turn’ in warfare for our study of war in ontological terms.     

War/Truth: Foucault,Heraclitus and the hoplite Homer

This article extends and critiques Michel Foucault's political sociology of war by taking it beyond its modern subjects. Positioning his work alongside Homer, Heraclitus and Plato, it analyses relations between war, truth and race in the transition from Archaic to Classical Greece. In doing so, it approaches philosophical texts as direct reflections on specific historical experiences of war, making the case for a political theory of fighting as a necessary and under-developed aspect of critical war studies. Such an approach, the article concludes, opens up new scholarly possibilities for the political sociology of war and resources political intervention against war-waging powers whose authority—inside and outside the academy—derives from a supposedly authoritative relation to the history and conduct of fighting.     

The Clandestine Political Economy of War and Peace in Bosnia

Most contemporary intrastate military conflicts have a criminalized dimension: In various ways and to varying degrees they use smuggling networks and criminal actors to create and sustain the material basis for warfare. Despite its importance, the criminalized side of intrastate war and its legacy for postwar reconstruction is not a central focus of analysis in most scholarly accounts of armed conflict. A detailed examination of the Bosnian conflict illustrates the explanatory usefulness of a "bottom up," clandestine political economy approach to the study of war and post-war reconstruction. Drawing on interviews with former military leaders, local and international officials, and in-country observers, I argue that the outbreak, persistence, termination, and aftermath of the 1992–1995 war cannot be explained without taking into account the critical role of smuggling practices and quasi-private criminal combatants. The article suggests the need for greater bridging and broadening of the study of security, political economy, and crime.     

The Perils of Politics: Why Staying Apolitical is Good for Both the U.S. Military & the Country

This article seeks to answer several vital questions about contemporary American civil- military relations. For example, why might the most professional military in United States history seem to be especially likely to engage in public dissent and advocacy? Why might political dissent and activity hold appeal for current and upcoming generations of military officers? And, how can present day officers be persuaded that retaining an apolitical ethos is fundamental to the American military, not just because of tradition but because public dissent can do real damage to the military institution and to the country it serves?     

War, Economic Development, and Political Development in the Contemporary International System

The European state-building experience has led many scholars to argue that war forces states to increase their fiscal-administrative capacity, or what we might refer to as political development, in order to compete in the international system. War also requires states to generate wealth to support such competition, which should lead to progressively increased levels of economic development. Yet, in contemporary empirical studies, war is often studied as a dependent variable, with economic and political development modeled as affecting its origination. This reading of theory and empirical work suggests that war, economic development, and political development constitute an endogenous system. In this paper, we develop expectations about how these three processes interact and test them using a three-stage least squares regression model. The results show significant simultaneous relationships between the three processes. We conclude that war, economic development, and political development are mutually constitutive processes in the contemporary international system.     

The Strategist's Curse: A Theory of False Optimism as a Cause of War

This article proposes a new theory of false optimism as a cause of war. Named for its similarity to the winner's curse in auctions, this theory explains how and why established sources of misperception (cognitive, psychological, bureaucratic, and organizational) interact with the selection of one military strategy from a set of alternatives to produce a surprising amount of additional false optimism. Even if a state's general perceptions of how well it will fare in a potential war are not biased toward optimism, this theory explains why its perceptions of the particular strategy on which it will base its plans for fighting that war will be systematically biased toward optimism. Simulations and formal modeling confirm the logic of the theory and suggest that the strategist's curse can sharply increase the probability of war due to false optimism.     

Changing the Rules: A Speech Act Analysis of the End of the Cold War

Constructivists often refer to the end of the Cold War to illustrate their contention that social rules are not immutable. Agents can change the rules by performing actions that undermine them. In this article, we describe the Cold War as a set of social rules sustained by superpower speech acts. We show that, by altering their behavior, the superpowers undermined the felicity of these rules. In so doing, they progressively dismantled the rules of the Cold War. Our model captures the competing arguments in the ongoing debate about whether the rationalist buildup argument or the constructivist new thinking argument better explains the end of the Cold War. Within the model, we identify the rules that, when made infelicitous by the superpowers, resolves tensions in the Cold War rule system in ways consistent with each argument. We conclude by showing how these competing arguments are reflected in contemporary debates concerning the nature of the global security rules emerging in the post-cold-war world.     

The Puzzle of Personalist Performance: Iraqi Battlefield Effectiveness in the Iran-Iraq War

Saddam's Iraq has become a cliché in the study of military effectiveness—the quintessentially coup-proofed, personalist dictatorship, unable to generate fighting power commensurate with its resources. But evidence from the later years of the Iran-Iraq War actually suggests that the Iraqi military could be quite effective on the battlefield. What explains this puzzling instance of effectiveness, which existing theories predict should not have occurred? Recently declassified documents and new histories of the war show that the Iraqi improvements stemmed from changes in Saddam's perceptions of the threat environment, which resulted in significant shifts in his policies with respect to promotions, training, command arrangements, and information management in the military. Threat perceptions and related changes in these practices also help explain Iraq's return to ineffectiveness after the war, as evident in 1991 and 2003. These findings, conceived as a theory development exercise, suggest that arguments linking regime type and coup-ridden civil-military relations to military performance need to take into account the threat perceptions that drive autocratic leaders’ policies toward their militaries. After discussing how to define and measure battlefield effectiveness, the article reviews Saddam's changes and their effects; addresses alternative explanations for the improvement in Iraqi effectiveness; and explains how further research based on this initial exercise could generate a better understanding of the observed variation in states’ battlefield effectiveness, including variation within and across autocratic regimes.     

The American Way of Going to War: Mexico (1846) to Iraq (2003)

Prior to the Iraq War, there had been a long series of American wars in which U.S. leaders often maneuvered the other side into “firing the first shot.” This strategy of “passive defense” amounts to an American way of going to war, and it dates back at least to the U.S.-Mexican War. The United States thus retained the moral and legal legitimacy, an asset which is especially important in a democratic political system. The Iraq War represents a fundamental departure from this American way. It might be the worst crisis since Vietnam. but that war was just another entry in the U.S. playbook for how to go to war. The Iraq War not only contradicts longstanding practices in American foreign policy, but it has the potential to issue in far greater international disorder than the Vietnam War. This catastrophe may make future presidents more heedful of John Quincy Adams’ prophetic words: go not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.     

International Relations Theory and the Second Korean War

Ever since the first Korean war in 1950, scholars and policymakers have been predicting a second one, started by an invasion from the North. Whether seen as arising from preventive, preemptive, desperation, or simple aggressive motivations, the predominant perspective in the west sees North Korea as likely to instigate conflict. Yet for fifty years North Korea has not come close to starting a war. Why were so many scholars so consistently wrong about North Korea's intentions? Social scientists can learn as much from events that did not happen as from those that did. The case of North Korea provides a window with which to examine these theories of conflict initiation, and reveals how the assumptions underlying these theories can become mis-specified. Either scholars misunderstood the initial conditions, or they misunderstood the theory, and I show that scholars have made mistakes in both areas. Social science moves forward from clear statement of a theory, its causal logic, and its predictions. However, just as important is the rigorous assessment of a theory, especially if the predictions fail to materialize. North Korea never had the material capabilities to be a serious contender to the U.S.–ROK alliance, and it quickly fell further behind. The real question has not been whether North Korea would preempt as South Korea caught up, but instead why North Korea might fight as it fell further and further behind. The explanation for a half-century of stability and peace on the Korean peninsula is actually quite simple: deterrence works.     

The building of the democratic tradition in South Africa's trade unions after 1973

This article traces the emergence of the democratic union tradition in the trade union movement that emerged in the wake of the 1973 strikes in South Africa. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that attributes the emergence of this tradition solely to a generation of young white union activists and labour-supporting intellectuals, the article argues that this tradition owes its origins to a multiplicity of sources. The article emphasises the social character of trade unions and how they bear the imprint of the historical and cultural heritage and social experiences of their members and leading activists. Thus the article challenges the notion that a social group enters into new associational forms as a tabula rasa. Instead, it claims that the building of the democratic union tradition in South Africa is not just an outcome of intellectual influences but significantly was shaped by the workers' ‘lived experiences’.     

The New Law of War: Legitimizing Hi–Tech and Infrastructural Violence

This article examines how humanitarian laws of war have been recast in light of a new generation of hi–tech weapons and innovations in strategic theory. Far from falling into disuse, humanitarian law is invoked more frequently than ever to confer legitimacy on military action. New legal interpretations, diminished ad bellum rules, and an expansive view of military necessity are coalescing in a regime of legal warfare that licenses hi–tech states to launch wars as long as their conduct is deemed just. The ascendance of technical legalism has undercut customary restraints on the use of armed force and has opened a legal chasm between technological haves and have–nots. Most striking is the use of legal language to justify the erosion of distinctions between soldiers and civilians and to legitimize collateral damage. Hi–tech warfare has dramatically curbed immediate civilian casualties, yet the law sanctions infrastructural campaigns that harm long–term public health and human rights in ways that are now clear.     

From Territorial Claim to War: Timing,Causation, and the Steps-to-War

The steps-to-war thesis has become one of the dominant frameworks for explaining war in the discipline. Substantial testing has supported the empirical claims of the argument, but key theoretical questions remain. These primarily have to do with the question of endogeneity. While the steps-to-war thesis argues that each step increases the probability of war, others have argued that you might find the same empirical relationships in cases where war was anticipated, or that rivalry is the underlying causal factor for both the different variables and war itself. This study addresses these critical challenges by examining the historic timing of the steps to war in territorial claims from 1919–1995 to determine whether their sequencing supports the causal argument of the steps-to-war thesis or the various challenges to it. The results indicate that there are clear categorical differences in territorial claims that result in war, and discusses the relevant theoretical implications.     

Fixing the Meaning of 9/11: Hegemony,Coercion, and the Road to War in Iraq

As the costs of the invasion and occupation of Iraq mount, scholars have sought to explain how the United States came to launch this war in the first place. Many have focused on the “inflation” of the Iraq threat, and indeed the Bush administration did frame the national dialogue on Iraq. We maintain, however, that the failure of most leading Democrats to challenge the administration's case for war in 2002–2003 cannot be explained fully by the bully pulpit, Democrats' reputation for dovishness, or administration misrepresentations. Rather, we argue that leading Democrats were relatively silent in the run-up to war because they had been “rhetorically coerced”, unable to advance a politically sustainable set of arguments with which to oppose the war. The effective fixing of the meaning of the September 11 attacks in terms of the “War on Terror” substantially circumscribed political debate, and we explain why this discourse became dominant. The Bush administration then capitalized on the existing portrait of Saddam Hussein to bind Iraq tightly into the War on Terror and thereby silence leading Democrats and legitimate the war. The story of the road to war in Iraq is not only one of neoconservative hubris and manipulated intelligence. It is also the story of how political actors strove effectively after 9/11 to shape the nation's discourse of foreign affairs and of how the resulting dominant narratives structured foreign policy debate. Behind the seemingly natural War on Terror lurk political processes of meaning-making that narrowed the space for contestation over Iraq.     

Liberal intervention in the foreign policy thinking of Tony Blair and David Cameron

David Cameron was a critic of Tony Blair's doctrine of the ‘international community’, which was used to justify war in Kosovo and more controversially in Iraq, suggesting caution in projecting military force abroad while in opposition. However, and in spite of making severe cuts to the defence budget, the Cameron-led Coalition government signed Britain up to a military intervention in Libya within a year of coming into office. What does this say about the place liberal interventionism occupies in contemporary British foreign policy? To answer this question, this article studies the nature of what we describe as the ‘bounded liberal’ tradition that has informed British foreign policy thinking since 1945, suggesting that it puts a distinctly UK national twist on conventional conservative thought about international affairs. Its components are: scepticism of grand schemes to remake the world; instinctive Atlanticism; security through collective endeavour; and anti-appeasement. We then compare and contrast the conditions for intervention set out by Tony Blair and David Cameron. We explain the similarities but crucially the vital differences between the two leaders' thinking on intervention, with particular reference to Cameron's perception that Downing Street needed to loosen its control over foreign policymaking after Iraq. Our argument is that policy substance, policy style and party political dilemmas prompted the two leaders to reconnect British foreign policy with its ethical roots, ingraining a bounded liberal posture in British foreign policy after the moral bankruptcy of the John Major years. This return to a pragmatic and ethically informed foreign policy meant that military operations in Kosovo and Libya were undertaken in quite different circumstances, yet came to be justified by similar arguments from the two leaders.