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STRA531 – final exam (June 5, 2014)Shane Wilcox300309751

#####Answer to question 1 – “Strategy without violence is like football without tackling. It’s

not the real thing.”

The earliest considerations of strategy were explicitly and directly linked to the use of armed force. The term itself is derived from the Greek for “the art of the general,” and although strategic concerns have evolved beyond the tactical level this early usage implies, the ties to the effective wielding of military force have persisted. Indeed, Colin Gray sees the function of strategy as a “bridge” linking military power and political purpose as “invariable” throughout history.

However, even as the Cold War and the academic institution of Strategic Studies came into being with the loss of a US monopoly over nuclear weapons in the 1950s, the “managerial movement” began to appropriate some of the language of strategy in its attempts to theorise the links between material production and capital return. Strategy, in this sense, was about the manipulation of labour and materials in the pursuit of profit. Its byword was “efficiency,” and a business had “competitors” rather than “enemies.” No doubt, reference was made to business “enemies,” but the distinction remains – to the extent that legitimate businesses and corporations operate within the law of a functioning state, their interactions are not violent, and competition takes place at the level of efficiency, marketing, quality control, etc. Which is to say that, as a general rule, a business may outstrip, or “defeat” a competitor by way of being more efficient, having better market research, and/or a better product, all of which factors are, in principle, within the control of the business in question. Business, or managerial strategy (in addition to various other analogous “brands” of strategy that populate the discourses of education, medicine, and other public services, for example) thus amounts in essence to preparation and planning.

Such preparation and planning also occurs with respect to the employment of military force, of course. But the critical difference here is precisely in the use of violence, or its threat, unmediated, in the final analysis, by enforceable law, despite the various principles and conventions that would limit its use. The linear logic that governs business interactions, for example, breaks down with the introduction of violence, which institutes, in Edward Luttwak’s terminology, a fundamental paradox. The basis of this paradox draws on Clausewitz’s understanding of the “culminating point.” The introduction of violence into a competitive situation entails that at some point, potentially but not necessarily determinable in advance, one’s planning and preparation will trigger a violent response aimed, at a minimum, at the disruption of one’s capabilities. The more one successfully penetrates the enemy’s territory, the greater one’s vulnerability to counter-attack. The more one prepares for

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“conventional” war, the more likely one is to become involved to “unconventional,” “asymmetric,” or possibly, even nuclear conflict. The examples (as a perusal of Luttwak’s writing will attest) are virtually endless, and may affect every level of the interactions between armed opponents.

On this reading, it is military force (as a special case of a more general violence), whether in actual or potential use, that separates strategy from “mere” planning and preparation in the interactions between opponents.

#####Answer to question 11 – “Nuclear dangers have increased even though global stockpiles

are now much smaller.”

In at least one sense, the quantities of deployed nuclear weapons have almost nothing to do with the danger posed by nuclear weapons – it would appear to matter little whether their possessors are capable of extinguishing the conditions for continued human existence ten or a thousand times over. Therefore, reductions in the stockpiles held by the US and Russia, far and away the major players in this game of nuclear accumulation, even by an order of magnitude, leaves each with many times the warheads of all the remaining nuclear powers (Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea) combined, with little real impact on their destructive potential.

If there has been a shift in the level of nuclear danger coincident with the reduction in stockpiles, the reasons have nothing to do with sheer numbers of weapons, but where they are, and who has access to them. For most commentators, the danger no longer lies primarily in the risk of nuclear “exchange” between the US and Russia, recent events in Ukraine, announcements regarding Georgia’s future in NATO, and the calls for a greater US presence in the Baltics notwithstanding. The risk of escalation of the sixty-seven year old conflict between India and Pakistan remains, but the danger here would seem to lie less in the “nuclearization” of an interstate conflict than in the risk that one of this pair, namely Pakistan, ceases to be a functioning state, and thereby loses control of its arsenal. The local presence of any number of non-state actors with stated or demonstrated terrorist and jihadist intentions makes such fears very justifiable.

North Korea, which continues to pursue its “grand strategy” of appearing “crazy, dangerous and weak,” might be regarded as another potential perpetrator of a nuclear attack. The pattern of escalation and partial defusing of conflicts with its neighbours (even, in muted form, with China, its only sponsor) is well-established, but requires periodic extension into new territory, literally and figuratively, if it is retain its effectiveness in keeping the northeast Asian powers not only sufficiently interested to maintain communication and piecemeal accession to demands, but also sufficiently wary to avoid open confrontation. The launching of a nuclear device into another’s territory, seems on this basis to represent an escalation it would be difficult to climb down from and therefore inconsistent with this strategy. There

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remains the possibility, however, that the “crazy and dangerous” arms of the strategy go beyond mere appearances.

For various reasons, the other nuclear powers are generally considered less likely threats. A possible exception is Israel, and it might plausibly be argued that keeping Israel from posing a greater risk is sufficient reason for preventing Iran from developing their nuclear weapons programme.

One oft-cited risk relates again to the developing or acquiring of nuclear weapons by non-state actors. It is reported that Osama bin Laden, for example, had such plans. Even if one accepts that such groups as al-Qaeda and its affiliates genuinely desire such access (and it is not clear that this goes beyond rhetoric), it must equally be accepted that such weapons are not straightforward to produce, maintain, or deploy. While the physical principles underlying the generation of nuclear explosions are relatively simple, workable missiles capable of delivering such a payload to an enemy at any distance are an extraordinary feat of engineering. George Friedman has noted that “the last thing” a potential nuclear aggressor would want is for a failed missile with a “made by al-Qaeda” (or “the DRK” or “Iran”) label on it to be found in the US or Japan or Israel. Exhaustive testing is required if such an outcome is to be avoided, and such testing is difficult to conduct clandestinely.

It is difficult to quantify the danger posed by nuclear weapons in the present, perhaps even more difficult than it was during the Cold War era. Nevertheless, while the very existence of such weapons entails some risk, the constraints on their use, both political-strategic and physical-engineering, suggests that this risk may at least be stable.

#####Answer to question 12 – “Climate change and water problems are threats without

enemies. As such they do not belong in a strategic studies syllabus.”

On the face of it, and in reference to the response to Question 1 above, it is arguable that the statement as given is true. Climate change and water shortage do not in and of themselves threaten violence, and might, at least in principle, be approached from the perspective of preparation and planning rather than of strategic thinking as such. It might further be argued that even absent its foundation in violence as such, strategic thinking, by emphasizing conflict over cooperation, could serve to exacerbate the conditions thought to contribute to accelerated climate change. Assuming for now the connection between strategic and security studies, there is also the concern that the “securitization” (in the somewhat unfortunate coining of Buzan, et al) of climate change could, while undoubtedly making the problem more prominent and “urgent,” might also tend to crowd out approaches better suited to correcting or at least managing the problem.

Nevertheless, it remains indisputable that the immediate environmental effects of both climate change and water shortages provide new or exacerbate current conditions for actual or potential conflict both within and between states. Such conflict may simply be over

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increasingly scarce food and water resources, for example, but it is conceivable that the interruption of their supply might also come to be viewed as a weapon of sorts, as potentially devastating as other weapons of mass destruction, their threat or use directed at populations rather than military forces per se, and therefore subject to the same considerations and theorizing in terms of “the power to hurt” (a la Schelling) for example. Other second-order effects might also include uncontrolled migration and the problem of “environmental refugees” (I assume this term belongs to someone!), placing further stresses on regions perhaps otherwise unaffected (or even benefitting) by climate shifts, exacerbating ethnic tensions, providing yet another boost to destructive nationalism, etc. As just noted, such environmental changes are very unlikely to be equally distributed, potentially relieving, in part, some present inequities, but probably more often exacerbating them, both by the brute effects of the changes themselves, and by the capacities of those affected to adapt to or moderate those changes.

In short, one of the risks imposed by climate change is to throw into ever sharper relief the anarchy underlying the international system, given by realist theory to be the prime mover of interstate conflict, and the driver, therefore, of a good deal of strategic thought. The growing sense of the futility of such accords as the Kyoto protocols in significantly moderating the behaviour of polluters in strategic competition serves to highlight the potential fragility of any similar arrangements when the stakes become sufficiently high. If it is within the purview of strategic studies to examine the means by which violence might be avoided as well as conducted, then the examination of these accords and treaties, both in the observance and the breach, may suggest ways of bolstering efforts to offset the worst of climate change (if that remains possible), or at least to mitigating its effects on future conflict. This should, it seems, serve to put these issues very much on the agenda for strategic studies.