“In Fourth Generation war, the state loses its monopoly on war. All over the world, state militaries find themselves fighting nonstate opponents... Almost everywhere, the state is losing.”
- William Lind [1]
Abstract: The NATO has accommodated numerous challenges since the Cold War. It showed organizational flexibility by expanding its mission, scope and membership. From immigrants to terrorism, at present it is indubitable that greater global interconnectedness results with spillover effects of remote conflicts onto the Allies’ territory. An emergent challenge is a new type of warfare: “new” or “stateless wars,” where state and super-state institutions generally show powerless in their pacification. Stateless wars prove more durable than classical interstate wars and more destructive than terrorist activities. Stateless wars’ main feature is predominance of economic gain on the agents’ agendas, due to the process of commodification of violence/security as a service on the global market. Their economic character and flexible corporate structure make them resistant to traditional military concepts and instruments the Alliance’s has preferred so far. NATO’s recently expanded notion of security embraces peacekeeping, humanitarian interventions, democracy-promotion and support to economic development. The European Union’s neighborhood policies are measured as more successful in economic and political development, while NATO’s military capacities far exceed those of the EU. Combined EU’s “soft power” and NATO’s “hard power” is proposed as a proper response to stateless wars.
Key words: new wars, NATO, profit, violence, security
The end of the Cold War led a number of researchers on both sides of the Atlantic to anticipate the end of NATO, arguing that without a common threat, the Alliance becomes obsolete.[2] Some American NATO-skeptics have stated that membership in the Alliance has become an unnecessary burden for the States and that any international organization impedes the US in promoting its national interests abroad. Some Eurocentrics, on the other side, have called for greater self-sufficiency of the European Union, mainly in terms of defense and security, if it is to become an independent equal partner to the US in international politics; some even advocate an exit from the Alliance, fearing to become an instrument of American foreign policy.[3]
However, this is not the first internal crises NATO has faced and managed to live through. As Ryan Hendrickson shows, the Alliance has already passed through several serious and numerous minor crises since its conception[4] and has overcome them all, proving that “NATO’s ability to successfully address transatlantic discord suggests a pattern of dispute resolution and effective adaptation.”[5] Still, each crisis stretched the NATO between the poles of unilateralism and united alliance, and by each adaptation, the organisation had to be redefined to some degree, distancing its mission and structure from the original concept of security-provider for the primary member-states.
In 1991, in response to its post-Cold War “identity crisis,” NATO markedly populated its security agenda with democratization, humanitarian actions and peacekeeping. It began addressing conflict prevention and crisis management issues; it extended its diplomatic outreach and military partnerships to Central and Eastern Europe. The Alliance was active in Bosnia and in Kosovo. The 9/11 presented the most striking, although, some would say, not the deepest, of the recent crises. It prompted the US to soon initiate an overhaul of NATO’s raison d'être, its mission, structure and strategy. “Fighting terror” was promoted as the new common ground for more countries than the Alliance had ever included.[6]The notion of security changed, as the major NATO players felt the spillover effects of violence from distant conflicts, poverty and political turmoil.
Stateless Wars
“… we live in an interdependent world, where we cannot maintain security merely through the protection of borders; where states no longer control what happens within their borders; and where old-fashioned war between states has become anachronistic. Today states … function in a world shaped less by military power than by complex political processes involving international institutions, multinational corporations, citizens’ groups and, indeed, fundamentalists and terrorists—in short, global politics.”
- Mary Kaldor[10]
The terrorist attacks on the main Member-States’ territories may be merely the peak of the iceberg that endangers the security of the Allies. A relatively new phenomenon, a particular type of warfare, emerged under the familiar outlines of local civil wars of exhausting length and non-dramatic number of casualties in the remote areas of the world.
According to recent studies,[11]the end of the Cold War is simultaneous to a change in global tendencies of warfare: interstate conflicts have dropped in number, while intrastate and regional conflicts have taken up an upward trajectory. “More important, however, the nature of wars has changed,” claims Kaldor[12]. Scholars address this phenomenon within a theoretical framework of the so-called “new,” “post-modern” or “Fourth Generation” wars.” The classical notion of “international conflict” refers to inter-state wars. However, these “new” wars are international without states for significant players. The super- and sub-state levels where these wars function, as well as the increasing role of non-state actors, suggest the name of “stateless wars,” a term I shall propose and justify in this article.
Briefly, the patterns and character of these wars include: continuous low-intensity conflicts spread over shifting territory regardless to state boundaries; duration over decades, with irregular upsurges and temporary ceasefires which follow social exhaustion rather than victory or defeat; sustenance by illicit war economy; international linkages; and, general irrelevance of state institutions, multilateral and international organizations in their suppression. Sample cases include Angola, Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Sudan, Afghanistan, Cambodia, some Caucasus conflicts, etc., with the most recent case of Iraq showing traits of increasing statelessness of warfare.
The growing involvement of the NATO on territories other than those of its member-states prompts us to examine the patterns of emergence, maintenance and pacification of this new type of warfare. We shall see how the nature of stateless wars renders them resilient to uprooting by force, although military action may be a necessary component in their prevention and mollification. It is worthwhile noting that terrorism prospers on the same roots as stateless wars, and the most effective prevention strategy in the “war on terror,” or rather “peace, prosperity and politics,” may show identical to stateless war prevention.
Violent Entrepreneurs International
The term “new wars” may be misleading, as there is not much difference how wars were fought in the history of pre-state warfare compared to contemporary conflicts. Their roots, unsurprisingly, lie in poverty, inequality, and political dissatisfaction. Massive availability of cheap or for-free combatants with nothing to lose and everything to gain (livelihood, social position, power, voice) from war makes continuous conflict desirable. The relative novelty of stateless wars is, primarily and ultimately, what the fight is for. Unlike classical wars,[13] whose aims could be legitimate (such as territorial control, state-making, violent promotion of ideologies, protection of indigenous human rights), the aim of the new warfare, however, is profit.
A growing body of scientific texts observe that some side-effects of the recently intensified global connectivity influence the structure of contemporary warfare, its actors and agendas: economic benefit takes precedence over the “old war” goals. The main distinctive feature of stateless wars is the symbiosis of violence and profit. Conventional “old” wars are distinguishable by a prevalent (although non-exclusive) feature of “governmental” and “not-(mainly)-for-profit” violence. They also presuppose the existence of states and typically sought to establish a new state or to consolidate existent state power. The old-war limits, in terms of time, scope and enemy, are defined by geopolitical aims, territory and borders. Although old-war goals may still be publicly promoted by new-war parties, stateless-war leaders utilize such paroles in order to mobilize recruits[14] and obtain international support, while fulfilling a different agenda, the pursuit of economic gain. Stateless wars are juxtaposed to the classical concepts of warfare the NATO and, in general, every state army is structured to respond to.
The means of stateless wars are, most often, fear and expulsion of civilians,[15]aiming more at harm than at killing (mutilation, rape, intimidation, destruction of food and water sources, destruction of cultural monuments, among the rest)[16], with preferred guerrilla-style warfare, unusual combinations of archaic and hi-tech weapons (e.g. a suicide bomber with a satellite phone), while direct confrontation with armed forces is avoided when possible. From paramilitary groups, organized crime, professional mercenaries, to unemployed citizens, corrupted state servants, police and army in disintegration – those who can profit more on war than on peace abound.Kaldor[17]observes that the profiteering feature of the contemporary violence stems from the changes in global economy of the 1980s and 1990s, when the opening up of previously resource-constrained local economies to global competition brings unequal players in a game of equal rules. The unintended results of often awkwardly implemented and more than often opportunistically manipulated liberalization programs, structural adjustment, and transition policies, are unemployment, inequality, informal economy and black markets. Mafia-style enterprises, urban gang operations and guerrilla movements grow alike in means and ends, linking the suburbs of the Western capitals with Eastern Europe and the Third World by the common trait of profit-oriented violence.
The Diminished State
From another perspective, Ivo Daalder links the emergence of stateless wars to the shift away from strong states: “one important consequence of globalisation is the diffusion of power away from states. Non-state entities, ranging from businesses to transnational citizens organisations, from crime cartels to terrorist groups, are often more nimble than states and frequently succeed in frustrating their policies. The changing policy agenda and rise of these non-state actors mean that even the most powerful state is losing its ability to control what goes on in the world.” Non-state actors can be local and/or international; they can function within formal and/or informal organizations, with licit and/or illicit activities – the most successful ones usually practice both sides of these, still, artificially constructed state-centric dichotomies.
Examining the emergence and sustenance of war economies, Jeroen de Zeeuw and Georg Frerks[18] explain how “[I]mproved communication technology, fast capital movements and increased deregulation in Western economies have created the necessary preconditions for coalitions between local warlords, private business, intermediary agents and emerging private security companies to capitalise upon the lack of states control on resource extraction.” This,[19] in Berdal’s more cautious view, may have enabled the development and sustenance of a vested economic interest in continued conflict.
In previously strong but now withdrawn states, as well as in weak or failed states, violence, among the rest, is de-monopolized and privatized; the security zone is populated by private actors - often security companies, paramilitary or local warlords. William Reno[20] suggests that modern warfare might be better understood as "an instrument of enterprise and violence as a mode of accumulation." Let us take a look of the new service on the free market: violence, and its bright side, security.
Violence as commodity
An observable phenomenon nowadays is that terrorist, resistance or liberation movements increasingly change their activities to secure profit on the internationalized money flows,[21] while corporations increasingly may profit on local armed movements.[22]The ability to deliver or withhold violence, i.e. to provide security, together with the related skills and services, is commodified into a value-free service and offered to the highest bidder on the market, regardless to the motives of the hiring agent and its hireling. As motives have no bearing on the market price of the service, it is economically rational to hire violence/security providers of any orientation. In brief, when the cardinal value of a war agent’s agenda becomes profit on the global market (when territory, state, ideology, justice, freedom, development, society, lifestyle, or any other non-profit good drops down in the list of preferences), such actor becomes representative to the stateless wars.
The influence of global economic changes has affected not only the agenda of the war-related actors, but also the way business and war are run. International corporations resemble guerilla structures, and guerillas resemble businessmen. Corporations and new wars appear to have learnt from each other the most efficient model of operations: high decentralization and outsourcing, loose networks of highly autonomous units within mixed relations of (sometimes simultaneous) confrontation, competition and cooperation, shifting alliances formed ad hoc, aligned toward a common gain-maximizing goal and broken for the lack of it, light-step approach (without heavy investments, binding territory or property), high mobility, flexibility and indiscernability from the surrounding. Organizationally, corporations and new-war structures are polycentric, rarely vertically structured hierarchies; they diversify their products and services, some licit and some illicit; they rather rent or are rented, than to buy or be bought; their operate through networks indiscriminately and equally comprising state offices, firms, local gangs, mercenaries, experts, criminals and so on.[23] How to fight such a new Leviathan?
Responses
Old-war tactical and strategic frame is likely to fail when required to quell a new type of war, because the war is fought on different levels. William Lind points out that old-war generals and the new-war actors measure defeat and success in incomparable terms: the prior measure them in terms of territory, comparative attrition rates, firepower and technology, while the latter measure them in economic benefits, moral victory, civilian support and mass-psychological effects.[24] Lind also notes that “no state military has recently succeeded in defeating a nonstate enemy,”[25]which is much due to the aforementioned structural and organizational traits of stateless wars.
As stateless wars feed on weak states, poverty, inequality and political dissatisfaction, the solution in the long run would obviously have to address these conditions for breeding violence. What is believed to be the best prevention strategy is economic development, social justice and political representation (democracy). NATO’s new international commitment, as stated on the Riga Summit, acknowledges the idea that merely military action may fail short of the desired result of providing lasting security for its members. However, there are different ways of responding to regional instability and stateless wars. One issue is how to act (hard and/or soft power), and the second is who acts (international, all-alliance, multilateral, bi- or unilateral action). The response agenda of diplomacy, peacekeeping, nation-building, economic aid and democratization assistance moves more in line with the European “globalist”[26] foreign policy relying on international cooperation. The EU policy is dissimilar although not mutually exclusive with the occasional US preference for regime change by force and its tendency toward somewhat unilateral interventionism.[27]
The relative efficacy of these diverging lines of practice can be measured by the economic and democratic developments in the new and future members of NATO and the EU. Colonel Moisan and Moroney examine how successfully NATO has modelled the EU’s Barcelona Process and the European Neighbourhood programs to incorporate its members and partners within the newly defined security agenda. “Unfortunately,” they conclude, “these programs have met with mixed reviews. Tellingly, partners have remarked that they see no measurable improvement in participation, prospects for integration, and especially additional capabilities.”[28]
The vague link between NATO and democracy may be an additional factor in its lower scores in democracy promotion. Helene Sjursen, in her top-cited article “On the Identity of NATO,” lists the following reasons for caution: first, NATO is not an organization based on the rule of law, and it cannot become one without cosmopolitan law to which the Alliance can refer for justification. Second, NATO relies on a decision-making process without procedures for adjudication by third parties, a tribunal or a court, to resolve internal disputes; third, although the present decision-making process renders indirect legitimacy sufficient, it “renders the conception of NATO as a liberal democratic security community problematic. It gives an illusion of democratic legitimacy to an organization that has neither a democratic mandate nor a democratic structure of decision-making such as majority voting.”[29]
Comparing the success of NATO’s democracy promotion in Eastern Europe to that of the European Union, Barany[30]concludes that NATO’s “less impressive” influence is due to three sets of reasons: first, the neighbourhood factor; second, the stricter EU membership criteria and a compelling set of sanctions and rewards; three, the EU all-encompassing engagement in institutional policies (from human rights legislation to health standards and agricultural policy).
The neighbourhood argument aside, the relatively better success of the Union, at present, to foster lasting economic and democratic reforms, suggests further restructuring of NATO in the direction of modelling the EU neighbourhood toolkit, its adjustment and application globally. On the other hand, it appears that the Union as well, in lack of common defence but with clear interest in international engagement, can model NATO – what has functioned in the relatively peaceful European neighborhood may not function farther. As Kaldor concludes, “Tolerant politics cannot survive in conditions of violence— this is the point of the new wars...”[31] She delineates two ways of response to the contemporary patterns of global(izing) conflict[32]: defensive (to dismiss the new wars as "anarchy" or "primitivism," overlooking their organized and highly modernized structure, as well as their global spread) and offensive - to establish peace, rebuild states and, I’d add, to sanction direct and indirect war-profiteers both in the developed and in the target countries.
Conclusion
Stateless wars, which share their roots with terrorism, are likely to become the prevalent feature of the conflicts of the future. They are one of the key challenges NATO will have to accommodate and remodel itself accordingly. The Alliance is increasingly involved in areas, such as Afghanistan and Iraq, where new wars take sway and the insufficiency of the classical understanding of war shows in practice. It is likely that in future NATO’s outstanding military capacities will make its engagement even more desirable as a peacekeeping and stabilization force. Will it meet the new challenge of stateless wars? The EU “soft power,” with strict conditional support to democratic and economic reforms as security components, combined with NATO’s “hard” military capacity to provide environment where such reforms can be initiated and maintained, is potentially a successful model for preventing and quelling stateless wars.
To still think in the way of classical wars, strategy and tactics, to require better success with more budget for more sophisticated military technology, cannot win stateless wars. Instead, what is needed is a new way of thinking, in the direction of lasting remedies which will help stabilize economies and foster functional political and social systems – and the military may often be necessary to enable the delivery of such remedy. Permanent global insecurity, futile old-style peacekeeping missions, misused aid, licit economy devoured by black markets, state-building programmes sabotaged by recurrent violence, waste of human lives and potential, may be the price of not acknowledging the challenge of stateless wars.
Notes:
[1] William S. Lind. “Understanding Fourth Generation War” Military Review, vol. 84, issue 5 (Sep-Oct 2004): 13.
[3] Ivo H. Daalder. “The End of Atlanticism” Oxford University Press: Survival, vol. 45, no. 2 (summer 2003).
[4] Hendrickson names three major pre-Cold War crises: 1956 Suez Canal crisis, the 1966 France withdrawal from NATO’s integrated military commands, de Gaulle’s demand to remove NATO headquarters and military installations from their territory, and the 1986 US bombing of Libya. Also, the allies had disagreements over European defence spending levels, the Vietnam War, Germany’s Ostpolitik foreign policy, the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan, the American military invasions of Grenada and Panama, the deployment of American missiles in Europe, etc. Post-Cold War crises include Afghanistan 2001, Turkey 2003, and Iraq 2003. (Ryan C. Hendrickson. “The Miscalculation of NATO’s Death” US Army War College: Parameters, vol 37, issue 1(spring 2007): 103).
[5] “Thus, it is a stretch to be nostalgic about NATO’s ‘commonly’ shared vision during the Cold War. NATO’s history is replete with profound transatlantic differences and internal debates, which the allies overcame...” (Hendrickson 2007)
[6] Russia and China, for their own reasons and in their own way, willingly joined the call for global “war on terror.” In a different context, it should be noted that non-NATO members, such as Australia, Japan, South Korea, Brazil and India, support NATO-led international engagements and have contributed to peacekeeping operations in crisis areas.
[7] NATO - OTAN 2007. NATO Basic Texts. “Comprehensive Political Guidance” http://www.nato.int/ (accessed May 20, 2007).
[8] NATO - OTAN 2007. NATO Public Diplomacy Division: “NATO after Riga” http://www.nato.int/ (accessed May 20, 2007).
[9] The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan; the Kosovo Force (KFOR); Operation Active Endeavour in the Mediterranean; NATO Headquarters – Sarajevo; the NATO Training Mission in Iraq; and support to the African Union Mission in Sudan.
[11] Monty G. Marshal and Ted R. Gurr. “Peace and Conflict: A global survey of armed conflicts, self-determination movements and democracy” Center for International Development and Conflict Management (CIDCM), University of Maryland (2006). http://www.cidcm.umd.edu (accessed May 20, 2007).
[12] Mary Kaldor.“A cosmopolitan response to new wars” Peace Review, vol. 8, issue 4 (Dec 1996).
[14] “Whereas in old-fashioned wars, people were mobilized to participate in the war effort, in the new wars, mobilizing people is the aim of the war effort…” (Kaldor 2001: 15)
[15] This is dissimilar to the wars of classical modernity, whose aim (not means) were massive casualties of the enemy forces, achieved in direct confrontation, and the target is a clearly demarcated army.
[16] “Some see the new wars as a reversion to primitivism. But primitive wars were highly ritualistic and limited by social constraints. The new wars are rational, applying rational thinking to the aims of war and rejecting normative constraints.” (Kaldor 1996)
[18] Quoted in: Mats Berdal. “How ‘New’ Are ‘New Wars’? Global Economic Changes and the Study of Civil War” Global Governance, vol. 9, issue 4 (Oct-Dec 2003).
[19] Also, the possibility of instantaneous trading and global communication, the deregulation of industries, the partial removal of policy barriers, cross-border financial transactions and mergers, offshore activities, expanded networks of subcontractors and front companies.
[21] E.g. local warlords provide security for international actors in Afghanistan in exchange for political or economic gain; non-state commanders secure oil companies and oil fields in Africa; etc.
[22] E.g. Western security companies in Iraq; private military advisory firms, companies profiting on arms transport, logistics or communication services, etc.
[26] Bush’s recent parole that “the mission defines the coalition” opens wide the door for non-allied functioning of the Alliance.
[27] Colonel Anne M. Moisan and Jennifer D.P. Moroney “NATO Stability Teams: The Next Stage of Capacity Development” Joint Force Quarterly (JFQ), issue 43, 4th quarter (2006): 65.
[28] Helene Sjursen. “On the Identity of NATO.” International Affairs, vol. 80, issue 4 (July 2004): 695.
[29] Zoltan Barany. “”NATO’s Post-Cold War Metamorphosis: From Sixteen to Twenty-Six and Counting” International Studies Review, vol. 8, issue 1 (March 2006): 176.
Bibliography:
All texts, unless marked with (*), are available at EBSCOhost® Research Databases. http://www.ebsco.com/
Barany, Zoltan. “”NATO’s Post-Cold War Metamorphosis: From Sixteen to Twenty-Six and Counting” International Studies Review, vol. 8, issue 1 (March 2006): 65-178.
Berdal, Mats. “How ‘New’ Are ‘New Wars’? Global Economic Changes and the Study of Civil War.” Global Governance vol. 9, issue 4 (Oct-Dec 2003): 477-502.
Daalder, Ivo H. “The End of Atlanticism.” Oxford University Press: Survival, vol. 45, no. 2 (summer 2003): 147–166.
Hendrickson, Ryan C. “The Miscalculation of NATO’s Death.” US Army War College: Parameters, vol 37, issue 1(spring 2007): 98-114.
Kaldor, Mary.“A cosmopolitan response to new wars.” Peace Review, vol. 8, issue 4, (Dec 1996): 505-515.
Kaldor, Mary.“Wanted: Global Politics.” The Nation, vol. 273, issue 14 (Nov 5, 2001): 15-18.
Lind, William S.. “Understanding Fourth Generation War.” Military Review, vol. 84 issue 5, (Sep-Oct 2004): 12-16
*Marshal, Monty G., and Ted R. Gurr. “Peace and Conflict: A global survey of armed conflicts, self-determination movements and democracy.” Center for International Development and Conflict Management (CIDCM), University of Maryland (2006). http://www.cidcm.umd.edu (accessed May 20, 2007).
Menon, Rajan. “The End of Alliances.” World Policy Journal, vol. 20, issue 2(summer 2003): 1-20.
Moisan, Anne M., Colonel, and Jennifer D.P. Moroney “NATO Stability Teams: The Next Stage of Capability Development” Joint Force Quarterly (JFQ), issue 43, 4th quarter (2006): 64-67
*NATO - OTAN 2007: NATO Basic Texts. “Comprehensive Political Guidance,” http://www.nato.int/ (accessed May 20, 2007).
*NATO - OTAN 2007: NATO Public Diplomacy Division: “NATO after Riga.” http://www.nato.int/ (accessed May 20, 2007).
Sjursen, Helene. “On the Identity of NATO.” International Affairs, vol. 80, issue 4 (July 2004): 687-703.
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Stateless War: NATO's new challenge 
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