Today's wars - underneath the chaos
Conspicuously missing from many accounts of the "new world disorder" is any sense of the vested political and economic interests driving the apparent "chaos" - and indeed the interests that may be behind its very depiction as chaos.
Part of the problem is that we have tended to regard conflict as, simply, a breakdown in a particular system, rather than as the emergence of another, alternative system of profit and power. Similarly, we would be unwise to point despairingly to the "collapse of the State" without understanding how international financial institutions have often wilfully undermined the State in favour of the "market economy", or how the State has sometimes sponsored its own demise, with elites fomenting violence to prop up their own positions of privilege. In these circumstances, labels like "chaos" and "mindless violence" can be actively - and even sometimes intentionally - disabling.
In the absence of a strong State
Although we have come to regard strong States capable of commanding a disciplined army as somehow "normal", these States only emerged in Europe from a long and difficult struggle with local warlords, as central rulers were handicapped by their own underpaid soldiers. In many parts of the world, a modern bureaucratic State has never been properly established; in others, the modern State is extremely fragile. In such cases, and where resources available to States are diminishing (not least through structural adjustment programmes), the opportunities for prospective warlords to challenge State sovereignty would appear to be considerable.
The military historian von Clausewitz saw war as overwhelmingly waged by States, which were seen as possessing a monopoly on the means of violence. He famously said that war was a continuation of politics by other means. But States may not have a monopoly on the means of violence, and rebel groups may also find it hard to direct or control violence within their areas of operation. Particularly where chains of command are weak, war may be a continuation of economics by other means.
The sense behind the violence
The functions of violence in civil wars can be divided into two broad categories. First, violence may be oriented towards changing (or retaining) the laws and administrative procedures of a society. In a sense, this is political violence. Second, violence may be aimed at circumnavigating the law. This covers a range of functions that, far from being concerned with rewriting the rules at national level, are local and immediate.
Particularly when looking at why "ordinary" people participate in violence during civil wars, it is important to consider the immediate economic, psychological and security functions of such actions. Even acts of revenge, vandalism and ritual humiliation which appear to serve no economic, military or political purpose should not always be seen as "mindless" or "senseless". Such violence will have been generated by a particular political economy: it may be fuelled by fear and anger, which themselves reflect political and economic processes in the immediate or distant past.
Thus, the functions of war (for those carrying out the violence) may diverge from the military to the economic. If this happens, warfare may come to resemble a virus which "mutates", making it much more difficult for outsiders to tackle, particularly if they do not understand the nature of this mutation.
The deadly role of elites
A great deal of contemporary violence has been initiated not so much by revolutionaries seeking to transform the State but by elites seeking to deflect political threats by inciting violence, often along ethnic lines. Many of these elites have gained ascendancy in post-colonial States, and many others enjoyed privileges under communist regimes. Pressure for democratization has threatened such elites and sometimes this pressure has been combined with outright rebellion, creating, along with economic austerity, the conditions for major "elite backlashes".
However, while elites have often amassed considerable personal wealth, they have typically presided over States that lack the means for effective and disciplined counter-insurgency, not least because available revenues have been siphoned into private pockets. Elites have repeatedly recruited civilians into un- or underpaid armies or militias. Such recruitment has typically, but not always, been along ethnic lines. Very often, some combination of fear, need and greed has created among this civilian population a willingness to be mobilized for violence.
Who wins?
The image of war as a contest has sometimes come to serve as a smoke-screen for the emergence of a wartime political economy from which rebels and even the government may be benefiting. Some parties may thus be more anxious to prolong a war than to "win" it. The most revealing question may not be which groups "support" a rebellion or counter-insurgency campaign but which groups seek to take advantage of it and for what purposes of their own. Just as this question can usefully be applied to those in a position to orchestrate violence "from the top", so it can also be applied to ordinary civilians.
Not so mad
Contemporary civil wars have been widely labelled as mindless, mad and senseless but, in some ways, 19th and 20th century Western notions of war may be closer to madness. When war is seen as an occasion for risking death in the name of the nation State, with little prospect of financial gain, it may take months of brainwashing and ritual humiliation to convince new recruits of the notion. A war in which one avoids battles, picks on unarmed civilians and makes money may make more sense. Likewise, both political and economic motivations may create an interest in prolonging conflict.
For an undemocratic regime, economic violence may be advantageous not just in rewarding supporters but also in prolonging a conflict that legitimizes authoritarian or military rule and serves as justification for attempts to stifle political opposition. Undemocratic or "exclusive" regimes have often sought to protect the economic interests of their supporters by portraying certain kinds of political opposition as manifestations of "rebel activity". This can provide cover for moves against the opposition, and the concept of a "rebel" may be kept conveniently fluid.
The
manifold functions of violence are often missed in human rights
discussions, in which the emphasis is frequently on condemnation
rather than explanation, and in which acts of violence are often
labelled as "inhuman", as if it were not human beings -
with all their diverse characteristics of need, greed, fear, lust,
resentment and even altruism - who were carrying out these acts.
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