Dr William James
Well, good afternoon, everyone. My name is Will James. I’m the Transatlantic Defence Research Fellow at the Oxford Changing Character of War Centre, and I’ll be chairing this event today. So, we’re here to discuss a new book, War Time: Temporality and the Decline of Western Military Power, which is edited by Sten Rynning, Olivier Schmitt and Amelie Thuessen. It’s the latest publication in Chatham House’s Insights book series, which is published by Brookings, and it’s an edited volume, which brings together 17 scholars looking at conflicting perceptions of time, on Western institutions, norms and military operations. They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but if you do it bodes well for this book, as it has quite a striking image, which I really encourage you to check out.
Now before introducing our panel, a couple of pieces of housekeeping for you. First of all, the event will be held on the record, and you can tweet about it using the #CHEvents. We’ll have about 20 minutes for Q&A at the end. If you could please write your questions in the ‘Q&A’ box, I’ll then call on you, you’ll be unmuted, and you can come online and introduce yourself and ask the question. The “Chat’ box will also be open during the event, but please keep the questions in the ‘Q&A’ section.
So, to our panel. First up, we have Professor Sten Rynning, one of the Editors of the new book. Sten founded the Centre for War Studies at the University of Southern Denmark in 2011 and headed it until 2019. He is the former President of the Nordic International Studies Association and currently serves on several boards of academic institutions and journals, including the Danish Institute for International Studies, as well as the Editorial Board of the European Journal of International Security, International Affairs, the Journal of Strategic Studies, the Journal of Transatlantic Studies, and the Scandinavian Journal of Military Studies. His research focuses on NATO and modern war.
Dr Natasha Kuhrt is our next contributor, and she wrote one of the chapters in this book, which is titled Conflicting Norms of Intervention: When and how to use military force. Natasha is a Lecturer at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. She holds a PhD from UCL on Russian policy towards China and Japan. Her research interests include international law, conflict and intervention, as well as a regional focus on Russian foreign security policies, particularly in Asia, on which she has published widely. She is the co-convenor of the British International Studies Association Working Group on Russian and Eurasian Security.
Last but certainly not least we have Dr Alexandra Schwarzkopf, a Consultant. Alexandra has studied law, literature and history at the universities of Heidelberg, Geneva and Frankfurt. Thereafter, she became a scholarship member of an international graduate programme from the German Research Foundation. Within this programme, she wrote her joint PhD in political communication at the universities of Frankfurt and Trento. In 2012, she founded Schwarzkopf Consulting, focusing on information – focusing on informing and advising clients in questions of German history and culture, as well as current political debates. Furthermore, she organises events to promote the dialogue between politics, industry, the military, and representatives of the cultural sector.
So, let’s turn to our discussion now, and let’s begin with you, Sten, as one of the three Editors. So, first of all, can you tell us about the motivation for writing this book, and also what you mean by the subtitle, The Decline of Western Military Power?
Professor Sten Rynning
Well, thank you, Will, and yes, and speaking on behalf of my co-Editors as well, of course, Olivier Schmitt and Amelie Theussen, the book grew out of our curiosity as to why very powerful Western countries were losing wars, and they were losing them very slowly and very visibly, sort of a sustained losing effort. And so why is it that the West went from this era of predominance to one of losing wars? And as we pondered this and discussed it, you know, one question that immediately came to mind was, is this really part of the great transition to a more pluralistic scene of power? Is this the rise of China, etc.? But these other powers, great powers, are not really involved in these wars that the West has been losing, so then we looked to is this the – you know, why the weak win wars, we have the literature on that.
And we were curious. Isn’t there something in the West itself that helps us understand why these wars have been a problem for the West, without detracting from the ability of its adversaries to win wars? And so, we looked inside the West, and we observed that there’s a debate on continuous advantage of being the West, which has to do with its self-government, its civic tradition, its tradition of enlightenment and science and exploring new ideas, democratic government. And then there’s another argument saying that the West is really a very, very short-lived phenomenon, pretty much confined to the 19th Century, it got lucky and so, of course, now it’s no longer lucky and so of course, it’s losing wars.
And at this, we said, “Well, how do we sort out this debate on what the West is?” And we looked at a couple of key concepts. One is temporality, which is about how the West perceives itself in time. Is time on the side of the West? Is the opposing side, is it losing as time moves on? How does it understand time? And then how does it engage war? And what we found, to be really brief, is that there’s an inherent tension in the West between institutions that believe time is on the Western side, that are progressive in their approach to history, they have a linear understanding of war, or of time. And then, institutions that see time as cyclical and war as an inevitable tragedy that must be managed but can never be overcome. And in a way, the Western type of government is about maintaining a balance between these institutions, and perhaps the West was losing this balance. And as it did so, it also lost its ability to conduct war in service of political objectives, and this is what we explore in the book.
Dr William James
Fascinating. So, the book, as you say, is kind of divided into three broad themes: the sort of civic, military tension, then the focus on norms, and then finally, on military operations. Do you want to sort of unpack some of these broad themes and then we can kind of delve into a couple of them?
Professor Sten Rynning
Certainly, so the first section of the book, with the – all the sections have three chapters and then one scenario chapter that provokes you to think about what you’ve just been reading. But the first section of the book is about this debate on is the West – the Western civic military – militarism tradition, this tradition of keeping institutions in balance, those that believe in progressive time and those that believe in cyclical time, civil society and warriors, keeping them in balance to the benefit of effective military policy. Is this a permanent advantage of the West or is this a very confined historical phenomenon? And what does that mean for how we think about the West today? So that’s the big historical piece.
In the second section, we focus on the normative environment that the Western states have navigated, largely since the Second World War, with a very sharp distinction between peace and war. And then, in order to manage – to confine war and manage it, but then obviously running into problems when adversaries, they explore the grey zone between these normative categories of peace and war.
And in the final and third section of the book we move to the military domain, military operations, and we look at why is it that during most of the post-World War Two decades, the West became committed to speed, speed in war, fast war is good war, manoeuvre warfare. So, exploring the operational dimension of war, and how that became a set piece within this normative order of distinguishing between peace and war, and how that conception of how to run military operations is being challenged by a number of military developments as well, and what that means for Western doctrinal thinking.
And so, one of the lessons that comes out of this is that to ponder these issues and manage them, in the context of current war, the West needs to really slow down and appreciate the ability of adversaries to exploit conflicts within the West on how to see war and explore the timelines of war that our different institutions harbour.
Dr William James
Yeah, one of the many sort of fascinating paradoxes about the concept of time that you explore in the book, and within that there. We’ll come back to this idea, I think, of the military need for speed, which conflicts with society’s sort of slower approach to things. Let’s focus though on the normative aspect of the book, the second part, which Natasha, you have a chapter in. And, you know, your chapter is on intervention and how the West is sort of torn between two temporalities, one calling for swift action to protect civilians and the other sort of feeding this reluctance to go to war. Do you want to sort of expand on that and explain how your chapter fits within the book’s argument?
Dr Natasha Kuhrt
Yeah, I mean, so I think really, in the chapter, I’m looking quite a lot at the ambiguity and disagreement on the norms – on norms of intervention within the West itself, as well as also looking on the other side at, you know, the understanding of those norms by, for example, Russia and China. And as you said, you know, there is this – and as Sten said as well, this wish for swift intervention to protect civilians, but at the same time, there’s a kind of desire to avoid protracted armed conflict. And I mean, I think, you know, the disagreement or – well, I mean, on the one hand, there’s this kind of idea that there is a consensus over intervention.
For example, if we look at R2P, but actually if you really looked quite in detail at R2P, it’s never really been accepted as a norm, or where it looks as if on the surface, it’s been accepted as a norm. If we look at the 2005 UN World Summit where, you know, all UN member states signed up to R2P and they said, “We recognise there is a responsibility to protect,” and so on. At the same time, you know, step aside from after the summit, if you like, on the sidelines, talking to, you know, different actors, you can see that they have rather different understandings of what this actually meant, even, right? And obviously, particularly then Russia and China, you know, were kind of pushing back and saying, “Well, we don’t need a new norm.” Russia said, China said, you know, “We have to be very cautious in approaching the development of these new norms, especially in terms of protecting civilians and so on.”
And so, I feel that there was a kind – there was a sort of consensus perhaps in 2001 for a little while, which then somehow kind of disintegrated by 2005, partly perhaps because of Iraq, because although that wasn’t actually a kind of R2P type intervention, I think the kind of, sort of, if you like, at various points, you know, the US and the UK gave different justifications for the intervention. You know, there’s the kind of UN-based justification. You know, invoking the various resolutions, going back to 1991. You know, the revival of Resolution 678 and all necessary measures and so on, a very legalistic kind of argument that I think perhaps the UK leant on a lot more. Then there was also the kind of WMD paired with 9/11, you know, self-defence argument. But then, at other times, there were humanitarian arguments made.
So, no-one quite really knew what, you know, what the actual justification was for that intervention. But again, you know, there was this perception that, you know, the intervention would be very swift, you know, that victory would be fast and that the goals would be achieved, that the Iraqis would be, you know, welcoming the West, if you like, very warmly, and you know, victory was kind of more or less declared quite quickly, but clearly, you know, that was a chimera and, you know, the West was actually quite bogged down there. And actually, if we go back to Kosovo, 1999, you know, we might view that on one level as a success, but on the other level, actually, this was supposed to take a few days and then the aerial campaign took 78 days, you know.
And then there were also questions around the effectiveness of the humanitarian intervention conducted from the air, you know, which actually also led to deaths of civilians, you know. So, I think that this has kind of built up over quite some time, and I think that now, if we also even look into, for example, peace support operations, for example, if we look at the UN peace support operations, stabilisation operations, as they’re now called, I think that’s an interesting area, actually, to keep an eye on, because we now, in these stabilisation missions, which in themselves are very problematic, ‘cause we don’t have a proper definition of what stabilisation means, again, as Sten said, you know, is it war, is it peace, is it somewhere in-between? Nobody really quite knows. You know, but here again, it’s protecting civilians. So, in order to defend the mandate, if protection of civilians is part of the mandate, you may actually need to use, at various points, strategic force, which will, you know, subject your troops, your peacekeeping troops, to a much higher level of harm.
So, I think there are all sorts of areas where we’re kind of seeing – and this is something that, you know, I think Russia, for example, has said it’s very uncomfortable with, monitoring human rights by using force in these sorts of operations. So, I think there are a number of areas where we can see that, you know, agreements, if you like, over the use of force, you know, when force should be used, but also, the kind of erosion of the line between war and peace, are leading to problems.
Dr William James
And am I right in thinking then, that it’s not so much that Russia and China are developing their own norms, it’s that they’re capitalising on Western divisions over what we might consider as established norms? But do you – if that’s the case, do you perceive any sort of differences in the way Russia and China are going about this? And is it a similar approach or are they kind of contrasting?
Dr Natasha Kuhrt
Well, I think – and I mean, it’s perhaps becoming a little bit of a cliché, but I mean, you know, essentially, China tends to chip away more incrementally, whereas you know, you might say that Russia is, you know, more of a kind of grandstanding type of power, if you like, for various reasons, obviously one of them being that it does actually still possess, you know, a much more powerful military than China does, at this point in time. But you know, clearly, I mean, Russia has, you know, deployed its military, in various situations now, you know, it’s not just Crimea, which obviously was a very particular type of intervention, in its own space, you might suggest, or what it perceives to be its own space. And there we very clearly saw, you know, the elements of surprise, speed and superior information coming into play.
But since then we’ve also had Syria, where, you know, again, I think Russia can kind of learn to some degree from the West by first of all its, you know, very – it really went to great pains to emphasise the fact that it had been invited in by the Assad regime, and I think that that is an important point, because it’s kind of saying, “Well, you know, technically, we’re here legally, and so on, and this does confer a certain amount of legitimacy on this intervention, whether you approve of it or not.” And I think, you know, this kind of is reflecting back to us, the various flawed, you know, legally flawed justifica – interventions, you know, that have been undertaken by the West, at various points. So, you know, so that’s kind of part of, I think, you know, Russia, if you like, reflecting things back to us.
With China, I think, you know, it’s still building up its military. Obviously, it’s engaging in all sorts of activities in the South China Seas, for example. It’s a much more incremental type of campaign, if you want to call it that, type of intervention. But you know, and this – of course China is participating in all sorts of – in various peacekeeping missions now, stabilisation missions in Mali, for example, in a combat role. You know, it’s learning quite a lot, I think, from these experiences, you know, its military can learn from this. So, it’s a different – it’s kind of a partial participant to a much greater degree, you could argue, than Russia is, in you know, actually Western interventions. Although, of course, the Mali intervention is a UN intervention, but there’s a very large component, you know, of Western countries, unusually, compared to most stabilisation missions, which, you know, largely we’re talking about non-Western components there.
But I think Russia is very – expresses – and China as well, expressed quite a lot of concern over this kind of grey zone of, you know, well, the blurring of the boundaries between war and peace, and I think if we think about the so-called ‘Gerasimov doctrine’, which I know – I’ll put that in quotes – I mean, actually, one of the things that he highlighted in his kind of big speech that, you know, has become so famous, is precisely this blurring by the West of the boundary between war and peace. And particularly, he said, “The open use of forces, often under the guise of peacekeeping and crisis prevention, is resorted to only at a certain stage.” You know, and if you look at stabilisation missions, for example, you know, the idea is that you do only – that you still stick to the three principles of peacekeeping and that you do only use force in self-defence and so on. But as we know, increasingly, they are having to resort to a much more strategic use of force, perhaps even more fighting. You know, so I think this is where, you know, Russia’s saying, “Actually, you’re the ones, you know, who are changing these norms, you know. That’s – and so we’re just kind of copying you, we’re just mimicking you.”
Dr William James
And Alexandra, you’re an expert on German foreign policy. How did the book’s arguments over norms and also military operations, how do they resonate in the, sort of, German debate over intervention and military operations?
Dr Alexandra Schwarzkopf
Well, unfortunately, as you may know, there is no real German debate, at least not – of course in intellectual circles and within the Ministry of Defence and among Politicians, but in a broader German public, and here I’m talking about the politically interested, informed German public, but still, when it comes to defence and when it comes to Germany’s strategical role, actually, people are not – either they’re not really interested or also, I think they sometimes kind of – they want to look to the side.
So yes, when it comes to let’s say talking about UN mandates or talking about NATO sometimes co-operating with partners, which maybe are not necessarily the world’s finest democrats, this might be questions, areas, issues where a broader politically interested German public gets involved, and there’s a debate kind of, well, what NATO should not do or where Germany should be very carefully watching when the West is basically – that goes back to what Natasha said. If we, the West or if first and foremost the US are basically using international law, especially international customary law, by promoting their ideas.
So, when it comes to – well, actually, when it comes to criticising missions, especially military missions, even if they are under the auspices of the UN, then there is a pretty active German debate. But in general, unfortunately, even now in the 21st Century, after World War Two, I mean, over the decades, we have become so used to being kind of something what I call, like a big Switzerland. I would say the majority, even of the politically interested German electorate, likes to see German as a big Switzerland, which, I mean, being economic prosperous, but more or less neutral. That would be, I think, the ideal concept, notion, for many Germans.
And that’s why, of course, that has historical reasons, and basically, we were also – when I think of me being in school, basically, we were taught that because of German’s terrible history in the 20th Century, we should kind of, well, step back and well, be very careful, when it comes to getting the military involved. And so, it’s only a late development, I would say, that I just read something that in 2019, there was a survey where the majority of Germans, and here we’re talking about like 56-60%, but it’s still pretty new, that a majority of Germans acknowledge how important it is for a powerful state like Germany to invest in their military, meaning the Bundeswehr. Because up until, as I say, several years ago, I would say also a majority of Germans was pretty critical whether it is so important to have a strong Bundeswehr and many Germans were not as aware of how important it is also, to be part of the alliance. I mean, they might take things for granted, but it’s not necessarily appreciated in the way it should be, though I would say, within the last two years, the awareness has gone up.
Of course, the Trump administration, kind of, promoted this tendency that the German public grew up, in a way, that they got it, that we cannot 100% rely on the US any longer, and that helped to make the debate the within German society about strategical questions a little bit more dynamic, more vivid. But still, I would say, we have – we, in Germany here, we have a lot of work to do to inform our public about, well, what our responsibility in the world and within the alliance and also, frankly, within the EU is. Because as you also – I guess everybody has been following that. I think it’s very disturbing to see how many Germans are now criticising the German Government that we did not go alone when it came to buying vaccines and negotiating with the big pharmaceutical companies, better deals for Germany than the one the Germans have now as being part of the European Union. And I think this is terrible, that there is so little awareness how important it is for us, as Germany, to stick together with our European partners, but also, with our NATO partners within the alliance.
Dr William James
Great, I think you’ve touched there on one of the real core ideas of the book, which is about a sort of public attachment from strategic conversations. And Sten, in your section, and as well in the third section, is this sort of discussion around how policymakers have kind of gone for this sort of fudge, this solution where they’ll try and do war on the cheap, through borrowing or through going to private military companies or whatever it might be. Do you want to expand on that and then talk a little bit – I know that Olivier obviously is not with us today but talk a little bit about how the military response is sort of to fight wars quickly and get it done with as fast as possible, so there is this focus on technology, which contrasts with the sort of slower societal approach to things.
Professor Sten Rynning
Right, so, one of the obvious reasons why the Western militaries will want to fight and with high-tech at high speed is because they’re good at it, and because Western societies, they produce this high-tech that they can instrumentalise in war to their advantage. However, it is also about the military as an institution responding to a disconnect that has been within Western societies latent for at least a couple of centuries, whereby liberal society, civil society in Western states, they paid Politicians to be left alone, and so they paid taxes, and the Politicians then establish professional militaries and, etc., and they did war. And so, the tension was built in-between the progressive part of Western society and the cyclical warring part of society.
For a moment, there’s – Western societies have tried to connect them with conscription and other mechanisms, but what we established in the book is that these mechanisms, they have either been torn down or they have been weakened. So, we’re back to a schism between the military as an institution and civil society as an institution. And so, it’s in the interests of the military, if it’s asked to fight a war for society, to fight it fast and hard, because it knows that society doesn’t understand war, and it expects a quick victory that will end with a – you know, a step towards a progressive, better future. That’s a lot, and the military knowing that, you know, a sustained military campaign will typically, you know, involve a lot of cost, tries to go for a quick victory. And the disposition for this comes out of the manoeuvre warfare paradigm that we have sort of become accustomed to since World War Two.
And so, on top of all this, you have Western decision-makers, and what one of the chapters lay out very nicely, by Sarah Kreps and Adi Rao, is that they used to be in a position where they had to negotiate the military and society, and thus, reach a compromise that would be tenable, because they had to tax society to run war. But increasingly, war is financed by borrowing. You go on the financial markets and you obtain the finances you need to run the war, without taxing society. And so, decision-makers have loosened their ties to society, and they are thus, less constrained or less obligated to ponder the consequences of quick war efforts. And the decision-makers wanting to also deliver the progressive outcomes that societies hope for, will invest in the high-tech hardware that the military says it needs to fight quick and hard and deliver victory. And so, it becomes a vicious cycle for Western institutions. They’re slightly disconnected, and decision-makers don’t have the constraints upon them to seek to bridge the two. And this is where, sort of the gist of what goes on in section one and three of the book.
Dr William James
Okay, well, I think I’d like to, before we move to the Q&A, so if everyone could get their questions in the ‘Q&A’ box coming in, that would be great. Just ask one final question to the whole panel, which you can take, perhaps Natasha first. Which is around, do you think the West at least recognises the problem? Do Western governments understand what’s going on and if so, what can be done? Over to you, Natasha.
Dr Natasha Kuhrt
Again, a nice easy question there, thank you. Yeah, I mean well, as we’ve already seen, the West is not necessarily a unitary actor here. I mean, clearly there are divergences. But I mean, I think there is a realisation about the problem, but it’s still the problem of the issue of political will to actually do something, unfortunately. And I think the chapter on Afghanistan by Kathleen McInnis, which was in the same section as me, kind of highlighted the fact that with Afghanistan, you know, there was kind of a realisation, understanding, obviously the whole issue of winning hearts and minds and, you know, the inability really to protect civilians, you know, I think really became a problem and people – there seemed as if there was an understanding of the problem, but there does seem to be an inability to really know how to – what to do and how to approach it.
And I think it comes back partly to the problem, and there was a question in the ‘Chat’ about that. The problem that, you know, we go back to the 1990s and Obama with the Pottery Barn Rule, you know, once you break it you own it type of thing, you know. And with Kosovo, for example, Bosnia and Herzegovina, East Timor, you know, these interventions, you know, they were political missions actually, they weren’t part of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, they were political missions, huge amounts of money poured into them. We’re not going to do that again. I mean, that’s not happening again.
Now we have these stabilisation missions, which some people, I think, see as a kind of answer, if you like, to – you know, rather than these very ambitious kind of political missions to build peace and impose values and so on. But then the stabilisation missions, these are about restoring the legitimate authority, and often alongside counterinsurgency campaigns, and you know, there’s a concern that, you know, we in a way, you know, we are often perhaps sponsoring the wrong people there.
I think – I don’t know really what the solution is, but I think it may be partly to go back to examining, you know, what – you know, is there a clearer line between war and peace and do we need to just generally scale back our ambitions there? And perhaps think a bit more about what the exit strategy is and what we want to leave behind, if you like. You know, what is the outcome, what is peace in that scenario? Because Libya really showed – you know, lots of people said, “Oh, responsibility to protect,” but you know, irresponsibility to protect, you know, because we kind of pushed things into Mali, and we spread the conflict, you know, and this is where Germany’s kind of risk aversion, you know, I think for some people was, you know, the right policy.
Dr William James
Alexandra, do you want to come in on that and talk about this idea?
Dr Alexandra Schwarzkopf
Yeah, but first I’d like to come back to this disconnect between the military and politics or military and civil society. I think part of that is also because Politicians are simply afraid of how their electorates would react if they talked more openly and more honestly, with their populations. And therefore, I would say it does make a difference in which stage or how resilient the society as a whole is. Like, for example, in Germany now, well, we will have the upcoming federal elections in September, and for sure the Green Party will be a member of the next government, and I’m pretty hopeful or at least optimistic that with a very self-confident Green Party of the 21st Century, a Green Party which is no longer the Green Party of the 1980s and 1990s, which is primarily a pacifist party, even with some socialist elements, but nowadays it’s basically a party out of the middle of society and actually, it’s the members of the Green – or the people voting for the Green Party, on an average, are the most wealthy voters in Germany, so to speak.
So, what I want to say is if a system, if a government is built out of a coalition of very self-confident parties, self-confident partners, I’m optimistic that there is the chance to have a more straightforward debate with the public about the challenges we have to face, and also to explain to the public that of course peace and liberal values are not taken for granted, and they have to defend it, and that costs money, and that will also unfortunately, cause casualties.
And so, I think, to ask Politicians to conduct a more honest debate with the public, with the electorate, about what war is about, what are the costs of war, first and foremost we have to make sure that within our societies our Politicians are not, well, too afraid of their own voters all the time. And of course, another important issue, when we discuss the resilience of the society is of course disinformation. So, how do we make sure that there’s not too much disinformation out there or the disinformation which is out there, that we still have a vast majority of our populations that is critical enough to be able to deal with fake news and false information, and only if the overall stage of a society, of our Western societies is stable and sane, only then I think, there is a realistic prospect that necessary discussions can be led in a more honest straightforward way, which of course I think they have to, because otherwise, we the West will not be able to stand up against the challenges of, well, actually, frankly, a whole value set, the challenges which are posed by not-so-friendly big stakeholders in world politics.
Dr William James
Great, Sten, do you have any burning thoughts on that, or shall I – I can turn to the Q&A?
Professor Sten Rynning
So, very quickly, we do offer some policy proposals or ideas. We don’t pretend to be able to fix everything here and now and we leave it – actually, we leave it to smarter people to figure out how this can actually happen, but we do put some ideas on the table for what needs to happen. One, in Western societies, Western governments, we need to be more humble about what war can actually achieve. So, if we have doctrines like, “Don’t do stupid stuff,” we probably all remember that. In a way, it’s a terrible doctrine, because it suggests that you get to control what to do and not to do. But you may not have control and war may be imposed on you, and so you want to start thinking about war, even though you don’t like war.
Second, you want to think about what happens after victory? There’s co-existence, so the communities you fight today will be there tomorrow, even though the leadership changes. And you want, as a society and as a government, to think about these relationships in the longer term. Thirdly, you want the costs of war, high taxes, you know, the costs of social wellbeing and human life, you want that to be visible to society and be felt in society, because that will put constraints on decision-makers, so that they actually ponder war for what it is. The totality of that is, we need to slow down, and we need to recognise, at a political level, that war does belong to policy and that we need to wrap our heads around the way in which limited efforts can serve limited objectives. We’ve lost the sense of that, but we need to re-establish that.
Dr William James
That’s a great way in which to turn to the Q&A. There’s a question here from Rob May and Rob has reminded us that today is the day of the Integrated Review being published in the UK, which will be an interesting thing to basically be having. Rob, do you want to come online and ask your question?
Rob May
Yeah, hello, can you hear me?
Dr William James
Yes.
Rob May
Hi, thank you to all the panellists, a really stimulating discussion, and I will definitely purchase the book, it sounds good. Yeah, I mean, it’s very timely, from a UK perspective, to be having this discussion with the Integrated Spending Review, which is revealing the UK’s ambitions to stockpile nuclear weapons and to create niche capabilities to make the UK at least militarily a technological superpower. And I’m wondering what Carl von Clausewitz would have made of all of this, with his notion about friction in war slowing everything down. And I wonder if this obsession with combat technology is a policy comfort blanket, but is that technology removing the West further and further away from the realities of new modern wars? I wonder what the panel think about that.
Dr William James
Okay, well, that seems to be mostly turning towards Sten’s section. Sten, do you want to go first?
Professor Sten Rynning
Okay, so thank you, Rob, for a great question. I think that this also – this comes out of also the third section of the book, that there’s no two ways around military technology, it will involve – and the West or Western states to stay competitive need to invest in technology. So, the key question is, how do you construct the political institutions that control and steer this potential in a direction that – where it can serve political objectives?
And I think what we see in the West, in Britain, but also in pretty much every other country, is that first of all, at a national level, the connection between the military institution and civil society is weak and it’s weakly connected at the level of government. So, I’ve said that earlier. But it’s being reinforced by the way in which decision-makers upload their war efforts, and you talked about niche capabilities, so they insert themselves into multinational coalitions, they fight coalition wars, and their decision-making becomes part of a multinational coalition that is really very difficult to manage, in terms of decision-making.
And so, there’s a tendency to say, “Well, the US will solve it,” and that really is a way to say, “We abstain from the political leadership necessary to define the, again, limited objectives that this war effort must serve,” and instead, there’s a tendency for decision-makers to resort to the normative categories of thought that Natasha has talked about, that then becomes drivers of a societal engagement. “We do this to, you know, to solve all the ills of the Sierra Leonian society.” And thus, you create disconnects in-between your public expectations, your decision-making, your military effort, and the result is that you have these different institutions running on different understandings of time, at different speeds. And adversaries will know how to exploit that.
So, my short – my long answer, I’m sorry for this being long, is you need to recreate these political institutions that tie down military effort to national objectives.
Dr William James
Natasha or Alexandra, do you have anything to add to that, or shall we go to a different question? Okay, Natasha?
Dr Natasha Kuhrt
Yeah, I mean, I just, yeah, I broadly agree with what Sten said. I mean, I think, I mean, that’s absolutely right about these coalitions, and I think if we talk about – I mean, if we talk about UN peacekeeping missions, they are obviously – it’s not really about national interests as such, but you know, the P – you have the P3, the US, UK and France, who are the penholders on writing the mandates for these peacekeeping missions, and so inevitably, there is a certain kind of, you know, view, if you like, of you know, how these operations should go, if you like. But of course, we’re not actually generally contributing any troops to these operations, so there’s a kind of disconnect there as well, and yet, you know, there are certain kinds of, you know, ideas about stabilisation, for example, which is the kind of new normal, I guess, in peacekeeping, which come from US and UK experiences in Afghanistan, for example, which are feeding into those missions, which, again, I think is problematic, maybe, in the longer-term.
Dr William James
And William Kenny has a question on the meaning of peace in the book. Do you want to come online, William?
William Kenny
Hello, can you hear me?
Dr William James
We can, yeah.
William Kenny
Thank you. Thank you for the really fascinating conversation. Yes, I’ve got a question which is short, but I don’t think it’s so easy to answer. Catholic social teaching has been saying, since the end of the 1960s, that peace is much more than the absence of war, and the panellists were speaking about the blurring of the border between war and peace. I wonder what the panellists mean by peace?
Dr William James
Alexandra, do you want to tackle that one first?
Dr Alexandra Schwarzkopf
Yeah, I think, I mean, that kind of is connected to what we talked about earlier in this debate, or I talked about this. The overall stage and sanity of a society, so I guess we should think of peace more than just the absence of a military conflict on a territory, that if – we really need to really be at peace with us and within our societies, we need to have stability. And stability, of course, also demands, for at least the vast majority of our citizens, to feel socially safe, at least to a certain degree, and also to feel safe, when it comes for – well, their health situation, which we all can see now, or have been observing, in the last 13 months, when it comes to COVID.
So, I think to really have a society in a stage of peace, we have to have, well, a broader – well, it’s more than just the absence of violence, and therefore it is so important that we, as Western societies, if we really want to be able to continue to live in this value set, that we make sure that we invest in our societies, not only what I mentioned earlier, everybody has mentioned earlier, in a straightforward, honest debate and make sure there is no longer that vast disconnect between the military and the civil society. But I would also say it’s so important to invest in education. And I mean, of course, this is a topic that has been talked about over the decades, but still, if we don’t start to educate our next generation, how to critically question the validity of sources and our value set and the challenges we have to face, then we are really doomed to fail. But I don’t want to be that pessimistic, but yes, it’s important to put emphasis not only on violence or the absence of violence, but on many other core pillars of society to make us resilient against a vast variety of threats to our whole set of society. Thank you.
Dr William James
I’d like to try and take one more question before we close. So, Natasha and Sten, do you want to quickly, if you’ve got anything to add, come onto that?
Dr Natasha Kuhrt
I have one really quick thing to say about that. Obviously, you know, it’s in the literature, peace is much more than the absence of war, and there’s a whole literature now on positive peace and peace-building, post-conflict peace-building and so on. But as I said, I think there’s been, certainly within the UN system, there’s more of a kind of move towards separating things out and these stabilisation missions seem to be much more about restoring legitimate authority. But I would also just make one quick point, which is that I think Russia’s understanding of peace is very different, if you look at, you know, the way they brought peace to Chechnya or Syria for example, you know, it’s about stability, it’s about regime stability, and for them, it is the absence of war, but it’s a very different kind of peace that will be imposed.
Professor Sten Rynning
Could I throw in my two cents on this one, Will? Just, it’s a wonderful question. My two cents, peace in the Western tradition has tended to be thought out in opposition to politics and in opposition to war. So, Sir Michael Howard has written on pacifism as an idealistic tradition that never took root in politics, and we see how, you know, good life in liberal Western society is thought out, in terms of peaceful society and building on the normative categories of peace versus war. And so, this opposition between what peace is and what war or politics is, is something that these other understandings of war or conflict or struggle, that they exploit in the competition with Western societies. But I think as a question, it directs us to some of the key building blocks of how we appreciate war, peace and the use of armed force, etc.
Dr William James
Great, I’m going to take two final questions, and we’ll have to go to some quickfire answers, and you can have a minute each to sum up. So, firstly, Jeannette Mills has a question on the costs of war, and then Bernhard Hermann on how we define the West. Jeannette, can you come online?
Jeannette Mills
Yeah, thank you, and my question has been partially answered already, especially by Dr Schwarzkopf with her plea for a more straightforward debate about the realities and costs of war. My question was, how can Western decision-makers detach themselves from society’s horror of too many body bags, and I would add, and still win votes? Obviously, this is only part of the vast debate, but I would be interested in whether other panellists or all of them, have any further thoughts in the wider context than just body bags?
Dr William James
And to Bernhard? Okay, I’ll read out his question. It’s, “How does one define the West, considering the large number of cultures involved?” So, I’ll let the three of you try and take a – you can pick which question you like and try and squeeze in a sort of concluding sentence or two, from your own perspective, and we’ll go over a couple of minutes just over. First to you, Natasha.
Dr Natasha Kuhrt
Okay, well, on the question of, how can the West detach itself? I mean, I don’t think it should detach itself, that’s my answer. Because that’s part of the problem, that we have been trying to detach ourselves and have been in denial about the body bag problem, you know. So, I – that’s basically my answer. And as regards, what is the West? I mean, yes, I mean, you’re kind of right to challenge it, because I mean, obviously we have, for example, in the European Union, the former members of, you know, the Soviet Bloc, you know, and in any – you could call them the new West, if you like, but I mean, clearly there is not a consolidated West. But I mean, I guess a kind of shorthand is, you know, NATO, but you know, within that we have Turkey, for example, so I mean, you know, I think it is – I mean, the short answer is, it’s increasingly difficult to talk about ‘the West’. We can talk about ‘the rest’ and we can say what the West is not more easily than what it is.
Dr William James
Alexandra?
Dr Alexandra Schwarzkopf
Yeah, to Jeannette’s question, I would hold the same opinion, like Natasha, we should not further, or we should not a system where it makes it easier for Politicians to detach themselves from casualties. But on the other hand, I think what one can – and here I come back to kind of my theme of, we have to have a more straightforward, more honest, more adult discussion between Politician and decision-makers in general and the general public, and we should tell – we should try to inject in the debate, this idea of on the one hand, we should be more modest when it comes to the expectations of how fast we can be successful in a military conflict, and that goes back to also what Sten has been pointing out. I mean, of course, military conflicts, wars, it’s not – it shouldn’t be expected that things go smooth and fast, and here we should – we all probably should become more modest, and we should prepare our publics that modesty is a good character trait.
But on the other hand, I would also say, we, as the West, and not we as kind of the new West or the rest of the West, we should be also more self-confident, in a way to say, at least, in my perception, up until now, we still have the better story to tell than other forms of government, other forms of value sets. And I think this is also part of kind of the package we have to offer to our publics on the one hand, tell them the truth of things, which are not going smoothly and about terrible things and costs. But on the other hand, to also tell them what – why it is worth to invest, be it monetarily or even with casualties, why is it worth to fight for what we stand for? And I think there is still enough substance, positive substance, of what we stand for, and we should really have this debate out also and say we’re self-confident representatives of liberal democracies, and we don’t give in too easily to other forms of government.
Dr William James
That was a very powerful conclusion, Alexandra, thank you. Over to Sten.
Professor Sten Rynning
Okay, thank you. So, on defining the West, we have a take on this in the book. And we essentially adopt the West as a practice, as a practice of self-government, restrained government, government by law, held accountable to its people, etc., and we view this as a practice that has varied over time. So, it has been strong at some points in time and then weak, and it has varied, in terms of its geography. And so, we – and then we leave the debate about boundaries and, you know, high points, to the wider debate, and we hope to provoke some thoughts on where the West is today, in terms of managing war. And in terms of votes and how can, you know, decision-makers win political power and run war, the – what we hope to get out of the book is to leave a small mark on the debate, on this debate, and heighten our awareness of what it takes.
If we must go to war, then what does it take to tie war to realisable, limited objectives? To control war, in other words. And we’re asking, you know, decision-makers and everyone involved in these decisions, to ponder war as something bigger than just a battlefield or a military exercise. Or put differently, strategy is more than just a plan for getting from A to B, but strategy as a way to manage a relationship to an adversary that has a different sense of self in time and fights in a different tempo and has a different approach to speed and war. All this we need to understand if we must go to war. And if we can contribute to that debate, then we will have succeeded.
Dr William James
Sten, thank you, and thank you to the rest of the panel for such a concise conclusion. It’s a very timely conclusion there, Sten, on the day the Integration Review is published, so that was a very good finish. I encourage everyone listening to go and buy the book. It’s a really interesting study, and temporality is something that’s not discussed enough in international relations, so it’s a really, quite a novel way of looking at it. All that is left for me to do is to thank the panellists for their time today and for sharing their research and ideas and thank you all for joining. Thank you very much.
Dr Natasha Kuhrt
Thank you, William.
Professor Sten Rynning
Thank you, Will, and thank you, everyone.
Dr Alexandra Schwarzkopf
Thank you, everyone.
