The Triple Standard; Problems with the Use of Force

I recently read Robert Cooper's book The Breaking of Nations. In it, he grouped all of the world's countries into three categories:
The premodern- states which do not satisfy Max Weber's basic requirement of having a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. This can include the presence of insurgent groups, rampant criminality, tribal warlords, or secessionist movements; all of which prevent the government from exercising its most basic functions and influence every aspect of its domestic and foreign behavior. Somalia, Iraq, Sudan, Sri Lanka, Colombia and the other "narco-states," and most of Central Africa fall into this category.
The modern- these are states which are best understood in the context of the nineteenth-century European model. They have a centralized government (of whatever form, be in monarchist, democratic, authoritarian, etc), and are the principle actors on the international stage. They are states in the traditional sense, existing in an anarchic system, prone to the whims of nationalism, distrustful and suspicious of other states, as there is no way to be certain of anyone else's intentions.
The postmodern- Cooper can only point to Western Europe as an example of postmodern states. These are states which are tightly fitted into a global market, and are interdependent in political and economic means. Their militaries are small, efficient, and integrated, and they possess a high degree of transparency, reducing the uncertainty factor in their foreign relations.

The point of Cooper's book was that the United States is currently in the process of deciding whether to remain a modern state or to make the transition to the postmodern. This dilemma is essentially just another way of phrasing Brzezinski's "global dominance or global leadership" question, as well as Chomsky's titular "hegemony or survival." I want to take the analysis a step further, away from the specifics of the decision facing America at this particular time and place, and look instead at the general context of all rising states.

I think Cooper's analysis is an especially useful one. States in each general category, it seems to me, can be relied on to behave in broadly predictable ways. The needs and interests of premodern states are radically different from those of postmodern, or even modern states, and they will behave accordingly on the international stage. They will also be the site of the bitter, chronic, ethnic, sectarian, and tribal conflict which is likely to be ongoing in the twenty-first century. These are the poorest of the poor, the "failed states," the states most in need of international attention, as they are also a source of destabilization in their respective regions, (not to mention the likely source of future terrorist groups) and are thus a wider security and humanitarian concern, as Kennedy and Kaplan's theory I discussed earlier pointed out.

The modern states are governed by the logic of realism. They are, and will continue to be, aggressive and insecure by nature, and their foreign policy will always be based on the underlying threat of the use of force, which is the ultimate denominator of realist philosophy. And it also brings me to the second issue I want to address.

(So that it's clear I haven't forgotten the postmodern, Cooper seems to think that such states will largely base their foreign relations on international law, supranational organizations like the EU and the UN, and will be very integrated in their politics, economics, and military affairs. As I've already discussed in previous posts, that remains to be seen.)

I would suggest that the American experience in Vietnam, the Soviet experience in Afghanistan, and now the new war in Iraq are evidence that war is no longer an acceptable option in foreign relations. The techniques and tactics of asymmetric warfare have become too widely available, too easily replicated, and too durably sustainable for conventional warfare to be practical. This should require a significant paradigm shift in policymakers and diplomats, although there seems to be no sign of there being one.
While previously, occupation of territory was of essential interest to a state, for strategic as well as economic reasons, now foreign occupation is a nightmare. Conquering another nation is no longer an option--the costs are simply too great. It is an enormous drain on resources (according to Harper's Index in 2005, the United States spent more money in the month of March of that year guarding oil refineries than was produced by the sale of the oil refined there), not to mention on manpower and morale. It is virtually impossible to sustain in a democratic system for very long, as the idealist advocates of the Democratic Peace Theory never tire of pointing out. With the possibility and ease of terrorist strikes on the homeland of an occupying power, in addition to guerrilla war in the occupied territory and the ease with which supply lines, infrastructure, and communications can be disrupted by small but highly motivated groups, conquest is apparently something to be avoided at all costs.
That should deal with warfare between postmodern or modern states and premodern states, which really pose little to no conventional military threat. In the case of warfare between modern states, however, there is one of two cases: either the states in question are nuclear powers, or they are not.
In the first instance, war is no longer an acceptable option by any means. Campbell Craig's Glimmer of a New Leviathan does an excellent job of tracing the impact (or lack thereof) of this stark truth on realist theory, though he does not reach any practical conclusions. Essentially, if states are rational actors, there can be no war between nuclear powers. The idea of a "limited nuclear war" is a myth, since there would be no way for one state to recognize a "limited" strike rather than a massive one, and thus would be much more likely to engage in massive retaliation. There is no practical way to quickly overpower and disable an enemy nuclear state, since no government would rationally surrender to an enemy while it still possessed the power to easily annihilate that enemy. (This is not to advocate widespread nuclear proliferation to act as a deterrent against war, as Mearsheimer suggests, mind you).
In the case of non-nuclear powers, the two World Wars (or, more to the point, the long Iran-Iraq war of the 1980's) have clearly proven that conventional military technology has advanced well past the point where anyone stands anything to gain from engaging in total armed conflict. According to realist theory, states only begin wars because they think they can win (or, preemptively because they think they have no choice, but that implies the aggressor they are responding to thinks they can win) but it is exceptionally rare for anyone to genuinely win a modern war. It is for this reason that I consider realism to be a highly effective framework in terms of explanation and prediction, but extremely dangerous in terms of dictating policy. It's very good for figuring out what will happen and what has happened, but it is not something you want to base what should happen or what you want to happen on. The time of realpolitik and splendid little wars for small, specific gains which could be definitively begun and ended by governments ended in 1914, and to continue that philosophy in the modern era is, in my estimation, well beyond the foolhardy and into the suicidal.
This, of course, does not begin to address the diplomatic fallout of engaging in open war in the ineternational community, which obviously has virtually never stopped any state from doing so, but which is definitely a consideration.

All of this is not to say that I don't believe military force has any role in contemporary international relations. My views on the effective use of force are very nuanced, though, and revolve essentially around the principle of containment. I think military assets are best used not as chess pieces to breach enemy lines, take strategic pieces, and ultimately seize or remove the controlling apparatus, but rather like pieces in a game of Go, to be placed strategically in stationary positions for the purposes of isolating rising powers, to reduce the possibility of a local arms race and open hostilities, and to safeguard local national interests. This would mean a much longer, more pateint approach to great-power conflicts, but in answer to that, I would point towards the containment strategy of the Cold War, which to the best of my knowledge was the only instance in which one great power defeated another without engaging in open war.

In terms of concrete policy, I think it would be wise for the foreign policy establishment to take a close look at Cooper's analysis and devise a sort of system of triple-standards, in which states belonging to each category are related to in their own specific ways, tailored to the needs and interests and predictable behavior which accompanies each category. It is irrational to expect a premodern state to be willing or able to behave in the same way as a postmodern state, and that must be taken into account in diplomacy.