Liberal Way of War

Discussion

Adam Tooze:

"The liberal way of war.

This has four essential components: Normative, Historical, Tactical, Political.

In normative terms, the enemy is the bad guy - uncivilized, the aggressor, standing in the way of progress. They must be erased. “Exterminate the brutes” is the battlecry.

Though the particular forms of stigmatization are distinctive, this general structure is not particular to liberal conceptions of war. It is the combination of this normative denunciation with the other three elements that makes the liberal mode.

The second key point is that in a classic liberal war, the odds are stacked spectacularly in “our” favor and against “them”. We are rich and powerful. Our enemies are poor and weak. Nor is this by accident. The asymmetry of the conflict, is not a bug, but a feature. It is not something to be ashamed of, or shy about. It is evidence of the fact that history has already spoken its verdict, in our favor.

This also means that the final outcome, at least on the battlefield, is not in doubt.

But rather than breeding a confident and measured response, this asymmetry unleashes a kind of rage. Given how obvious the outcome is, the enemy’s continued defiance indicates that they are not just bad, but mad. And this necessitates a particular type of tactics.

The sensible thing to do with “mad dogs” is to shoot them, preferably at a safe distance. We apply massive asymmetric force to achieve a decisive outcome. To wrestle with a mad dog, on equal terms - to run the risk of it biting us - would make us mad too. In military terms, for the Israelis to engage in combat with Hamas on symmetrical terms would be a dereliction of duty.

Duty to whom? This is the fourth, political, point.

The Israelis, like us, claim to be a liberal democracy. I use liberal here in the restricted sense that those acknowledged as full citizens of the state have an absolute right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Ideally, that would mean that they would have a professional army to protect them against all possible threats. But, if a regime of this type has to rely on citizen soldiers - as the Israelis do and as the British and Americans did in World War II - those soldiers have a right to the absolute maximum of possible protection. In the liberal mode of war, manpower is precious, not expendable. Every single casualty, is one too many. Any force, however spectacular or expensive, is justified to minimize our own casualties - all the more so when the enemy meets criteria 1. and 2. above. And since we are rich, it would, again, be a dereliction of duty not to go for overkill.

Furthermore, the leaders of liberal wars must expect that if this basic logic is not respected, it will be enforced at the ballot box. This is where the democratic component comes in. It is what the great UCLA sociologist Michael Mann once called the “dark side of democracy”.

If, in formulaic terms, this is the Israeli logic of war, then one thing is for sure. As Mann shows, they did not invent it. “We”, the “West”, did.

This mode of warfare emerged from the increasingly asymmetrical colonial wars of the late 19th century - until the industrial revolution began to transform war deeply such encounters were far more balanced and uncertain in their outcome. It reached its modern form through the harsh politico-industrial-military learning process that extended across the 20th century, from the preludes to World War I via the great conflagrations of 1914-1945, to Korea, Malaya, Vietnam, the Falklands, Afghanistan and Iraq.

As I’ve argued in several of these newsletters, there are several other major conflicts ongoing around the world at present which are having devastating consequences for tens of millions of people. “We”, the West and other outside powers, are implicated in all of them in various ways - raw materials, allies, supply of weapons etc. None of them exists in isolation. All are connected to their broader regional and global context.

The singularity of the Israeli campaign in Gaza lies in the asymmetry of power, its intensity, its enclosure, its direct connection to a settler colonial project."

(https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-405-bulldozing-gaza-thanatocene)