Why Are Wars Becoming Endless?

Vikas Shah - April 14th 2011

Manchester Business School – Transforming Management - http://shah.tm.mbs.ac.uk

The nature of global conflict is changing. Until the apocalyptic end of World War II,
we had seen a 'textbook' approach to war, with ever increasing competition in the
dimensions of firepower, manpower and speed contributing to the success of any
given belligerent.

Since then, war has moved into its fourth generation. As William Lind (a military
expert) explains in a paper for the USAF Air University, "...In Fourth Generation
war, the state loses its monopoly on war. All over the world, state militaries find
themselves fighting non-state opponents such as al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and
the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Almost everywhere, the state is losing.
Fourth Generation war is also marked by a return to a world of cultures, not merely
states, in conflict. In Fourth Generation war, invasion by immigration can be at least
as dangerous as invasion by a state army. Nor is Fourth Generation war merely
something we import, as we did on 9/11. At its core lies a universal crisis of
legitimacy of the state, and that crisis means many countries will evolve Fourth
Generation war on their soil. America, with a closed political system (regardless of
which party wins, the Establishment remains in power and nothing really changes)
and a poisonous ideology of multiculturalism, is a prime candidate for the home-
grown variety of Fourth Generation war, which is by far the most dangerous kind..."

Another characteristic of this form of war is the blurring of begging, and no-apparent-
end meaning perpetual conflicts with waxing and waning levels of ferocity (such as
the conflict between Israel and Palestine).

Why Do Some Wars Become Never-Ending?

To fully understand why wars become perpetual, you need to understand the
dynamics of conflict.

Paul Hensel (Associate Professor of Political Sciences, University of North Texas)

identifies in a paper, "Recent research on interstate conflict and rivalry has shown
that most conflict occurs between long-time rival countries, and has used enduring
rivalries to test propositions on arms races, deterrence, and power transitions. Yet
most of this research has focused on the dynamics of already-established rivalry; little
is known about how adversaries become long-term rivals. The present effort attempts
to account for the origins of rivalry with an evolutionary model of interstate rivalry
that treats rivalry as a dynamic process, evolving out of interactions between two
adversaries. Empirical analyses reveal that the context of recent relations between
two adversaries has a great influence on their conflict behaviour, particularly on
their probability of engaging in further conflict along the path toward or away from
enduring rivalry. As two adversaries accumulate a longer history of conflict, their
rivalry relationship tends to become "locked in" or entrenched, with future conflict
becoming increasingly difficult to avoid; characteristics of their past confrontations
can hasten or reverse this movement toward rivalry."

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If we understand these findings against the background of 'fourth generation conflict'
we also see that while in 'classic' conflict-theatres the adversaries and targets were
fairly well defined (such as soldiers, military sites, strategic sites); in modern warfare,
not only has the theatre itself become amorphous (arguably global) but the system
now contains an unprecedented diversity of actors, many of whom (as non-military)
are far more likely to be influenced by history (with family members killed by
adversaries, and livelihoods destroyed).

To see this in a different context; "Our body..." cites Erkki Ruoslahti in Scientific
American," is a community of cells, in which each cell occupies a place appropriate
for its tasks on behalf of the whole. With the exception of white blood cells, which
patrol the body for microbial invaders and tissue damage, normal cells stay in the
tissue of which they are part. Cancer cells, however, are rogues that trespass
aggressively into other tissues. Metastasis, the spread of cancer to distant sites in the
body, is in fact what makes cancer so lethal. A surgeon can remove a primary tumor
relatively easily, but a cancer that has metastasized usually reaches so many places
that cure by surgery alone becomes impossible. For that reason, metastasis and the
invasion of normal tissue by cancer cells are the hallmarks of malignancy."

If we keep this metaphor in mind, we see the general population being akin to a
community of cells who, together, form an efficient and productive society. If we
consider conflict and conflict-provoking ideologies as Cancer-cells- we can start to
see that malignancies caused by Cancer do- indeed- model malignancies in society
which cause and exacerbate conflicts, eventually leading to failure of societies (or
death of the cancer sufferer) without treatment.

The foreign policy surgeons (much like their medical counterparts) try to extract
malignancies (such as a dictator, or a regime) but if the idea has spread? Then the
system may still fail. It does not take a great deal of imagination to apply this
paradigm to our current "War on Terror" which creates a continuous stream of
geographically diverse conflicts (malignancies) regardless of all the interventions
(surgeries) which take place.

How Do We Cure a War?

Cancer and conflict have another commonality. The mechanisms used to spread
productive and important ideas through society are the same as those used to create
social and political malignancy and as much as "...disappointingly little is as yet
understood in molecular detail about the mechanisms that turn a cancer from a
locally growing tumour into a metastatic killer..." our insight into how an ideology
spreads falls on a similar lack of understanding.

For medicine, this lack of understanding led to innovations in treatment routes

meaning researchers try to inhibit the production and spread of the cells before they
become malignant, and even try to modify the host's DNA to remove a predisposition
to Cancer at the most fundamental level.

Our Foreign Policy architects must understand that these are similar treatment routes
to those which must be adopted to begin to cure the alarming increases in global
conflict. Alongside the occasional (necessary) interventions, policymakers must also
adopt considerably larger programmes of economic and social development

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(including education and healthcare) to not only remove the predisposition of
individuals to be influenced by ideologies, but to remove the economic and social-
incentives for actors to turn to war (functioning economies experience considerably
less radicalisation, for example). As Epictetus said “Only the educated are free.”

The downside for our generation (as a host of societal malignancy) is a fairly
damning prognosis- there are too many embedded and fast-spreading issues for there
to be a really lasting and robust peace. The hope for our civilisation, though, comes
from our ability to prevent the generation after us from facing a similar fate.

“If we are to teach real peace in this world..." as Mahatma Gandhi said, "and if we
are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children.