Why conflict, war and revolution

All books are the outcomes of choices made by authors who could say much more if they were aware of the interests of individual readers or had unlimited space and time. A book that draws together a number of different thinkers from different historical periods, chosen to illustrate and inform some of the ways in which contemporary discussions are orientated is always likely to attract criticism and objection on the basis of exclusions and omissions. Confronting a symposium of other authors with different interests and perspectives is a challenge but also a privilege as one sees how one's work is read and responded to even if that response is critical. I am grateful to each of the contributors for their engagement as well as their fascinating and provocative responses, all of which place my book in different debates and paradigms or traditions, in order to build more complex and nuanced interpretations of how political theory and ideas can engage with the complexities of the modern world and all of its disorder. Conflict, War and Revolution was written in a time of relative peace – peace is only ever relative and often only in the eye of the beholder and even then, only in particular places – where the conversation about war was mostly domestic, cultural and theoretical. Indeed, one of my concerns was the ease with which the term and reality of war are transposed into the characterisation of other political and rhetorical phenomena. Every disagreement has the potential to be reduced to ‘war’ but not all conflicts are wars in the same way. A war on crime or on ‘litter’ or a ‘culture war’ is not helpfully identified by the term, so I wanted to return to the way in which it is linked to conflict and especially organised violent conflict. However, the publication of the book coincided with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the return of a relatively traditional land war to Europe. This obviously had an impact on the way in which the book was regarded that was beyond my intention when I began writing or thinking about the respective thinkers covered in the book, and the themes I wished to derive from them. That war continues, but I write this on the weekend of the Hamas attack on Israel and the horrendous massacre of civilians that followed. At this moment, the terrorist assault is still being suppressed and the consequent (inevitable) military response in Gaza is only beginning. War is no longer outsourced to remote parts of the world ‘about which we know little’ and carried out by proxies as the ‘new wars’ discussed by Mary Kaldor (2012) assumes, nor is it transformed or even ‘humanised’ to use Samuel Moyn's (2021) term, whatever commentators may claim about Hamas being the puppets of Iran in a regional struggle with Saudi Arabia, or a Moscow initiated distraction from its failure in Ukraine. Similarly, the war we see, especially now, is visceral and the violence is dehumanising of the perpetrators, yes, but also of the victims, whose interests and status as non-combatants, women, children and elderly are overlooked, and whose very bodies are denied respect with ritualised humiliation and degradation including the timeless and ineradicable scourge of sexual violation. The phenomenon of violence and its ubiquity in ways of conceptualising and conducting politics is the central theme of the book and the primary point of debate with three of the four contributors. My interest in this is partly as a response to my default liberal intuitions with their surface ambition to contain violence and coercion and discipline them by reason and justice. It is also motivated by the ghost of Hannah Arendt, who is not directly covered in the book, but whose ambition to conceptualise politics without recourse to violence (in direct contrast to Schmitt, her unfortunate contemporary) remains a constant challenge if not the solution to contemporary political and international thought. In writing the book, I chose a series of thinkers who reject liberal moralism as the normative basis of politics on the grounds of its utopianism and who focus on the ways in which violence is not just a tool to deploy or a problem to be contained through Hobbesian or Weberian state monopolisation, but is central to the very conception of political community and of politics itself – although I am clear that this is not quite what Clausewitz meant with his claim that ‘war is politics by other means’. I am interested in examining the elision of politics and war and reject, for the purposes of this study, the cosmopolitan presupposition of much contemporary normative political theory. Most cosmopolitans claim that war is a failure of a cosmopolitan order and consequently that we need to create such an order if we are to overcome war. To her credit, one of the most instructive cosmopolitan theorists, Cecile Fabre, does not do this but instead offers us an account of a cosmopolitan theory of war, which I discuss briefly in the chapter on Locke (pp. 208–10) (Fabre, 2012). Too often the easy default to Kant and ideas of the democratic peace thesis are taken as the primary focus of international political theory, in the same way that the problem of justice was thought to be determinative of much modern political theory. As theorists have pushed back against a knee-jerk default to liberalism there is a legitimate challenge to the presuppositions of democratic peace. Frankel and Nederman are surprised that I do not discuss the democratic peace thesis in a book on war as this is the most popular response to theories of war in contemporary international political theory and that this is a failure of imagination and the conception of the book. I in turn find this puzzling as it suggests an unfamiliarity with the argument of the book and why I selected the canon I did. Of course, one could claim I should have written a different book and discussed a different canon but that is not an engagement with the book I did write. A cursory familiarity with the book would suggest that contrary to their claim the democratic peace thesis gets a lot of indirect attention in the book from Thucydides onwards. In many respects the presuppositions of a democratic, or as Frankel and Nederman suggest, the republican peace thesis does get extensive discussion. In particular, I would suggest a careful re-reading of the chapter on Rousseau as well as the chapters on Lenin and Mao and Carl Schmitt all of whom reject the idea that commerce leads to peace. Frankel and Nederman claim not only that I ignore the importance of the democratic peace thesis but that even democratic peace theorists such as Michael Doyle ignore the claims of Thomas Paine as its key theorist and mistakenly focus on the lesser contribution of Immanuel Kant. So, their argument is one against my ignorance and oversight but also the preoccupation of democratic peace theory with Kant, when the major thinker is really Paine. Consequently, I should have included a chapter on Paine in my book. I find this argument puzzling. Firstly, as I have indicated the challenge of the republican peace theory is discussed extensively by proxy in the book. Frankel and Nederman dismiss Kant's argument as undeveloped and simplistic, which seems to me a rather hasty position. Kant's view of the state as a juridical order draws heavily on the earlier republican tradition of Machiavelli and Rousseau, which have institutional arguments for a republican peace that are considerably superior to those offered by Paine. Frankel and Nederman speculate that Kant might have known of Paine's argument, but even if he did, I would seriously doubt whether he would have ranked it alongside those of Machiavelli, Adam Smith (whom Kant had read and been influenced by) and Rousseau, whose social contract theory and views on Abbe St. Pierre's theory of perpetual peace was a major influence. The five provisions of Kant's plan for perpetual peace are only one small part of his larger juridical theory of international order spelled out in the Metaphysics of Morals. In contrast to the sophisticated juridical discussion of Kant, what does Paine contribute? The claim is that non-republican states are aggressive, that there needs to be a democratic or republican revolution and that once achieved, the mutual benefits of trade will then prevent war. His argument is at best a conjecture. What is more surprising given Frankel and Nederman's advocacy for Paine, is the absence of any attempt to address Rousseau's challenge which has two parts: first, that the modern state system creates and sustains war; but second, that the solution is not an international order of free states but a rejection of commercial society and trade, which itself creates factions within republics that in turn results in international conflict. The republican tradition from the Greeks and Romans, through Machiavelli to moderns such as Rousseau had warned of the corrupting and destabilising effect of commerce and luxury: a theme that reappears in the arguments of Paine's revolutionary contemporaries in the Federalist. Rousseau is of course also addressing Smith's view that the problem of the modern state system is mercantilism and economic imperialism which in the long run is destabilising but in the short run is of benefit to the respective trading blocks and individual traders. What Rousseau and subsequent critics of economic imperialism such as Lenin and Mao, or economic power blocks such as Schmitt focus on, is the social and historical conditions of commerce in a world of unequal power. Paine's discussion, at least as summarised by Frankel and Nederman is remarkably thin, and I am left surprised at the ‘scant attention’ they have paid to Rousseau's challenge to Paine's commercial optimism, a topic that was widely discussed in the period in which he was writing. To conclude this discussion, I could have included Kant and Smith1 as both can be given a ‘realist’ reading that arguably links to other discussions in my book but it is hard to see from Frankel and Nederman what, if anything, Paine adds to the debate and how he is anything other than a footnote to Rousseau and Kant. Of course, exclusions of one's favoured thinker is a familiar response to any attempt to construct a canon. I make clear in the introduction that I do not claim to identify a definitive realist canon in political philosophy or international political theory or offer its history. Of course, there will be explicit and unconscious criteria of inclusion but the choice to avoid Kant, Smith or similar nineteenth-century liberals such as David Ricardo or J.S. Mill, was deliberately to reject the idea of a Whig history of international theory leading to the modern liberal democratic state. In so far as there is a narrative theme, it is that from Rousseau to Lenin, Mao and Schmitt where the state is itself implicated in the threat of war and violence as we saw with the crude deployment of a simplistic account of the democratic peace thesis by neo-conservatives advocating the forceful extension of liberal democracy during the second Gulf War. Commercial society in its current form of neoliberal globalisation is hardly an example of the effective delivery of peace and order. To be fair to Kant, the reliance on the contingency of historical development was never sufficient to bring about the right kind of international order, as ‘...out of the crooked of no can be In he the Rousseau, who often us far more about than we are to The other three contributors the point I make about the the state and the idea of a political community with the of violence and use this discussion of violence and its place in politics to of the arguments covered or to suggest ways in which the focus on violence and conflict the chosen of that can international political thought beyond the with what as a power an of war and conflict the idea of through a is interested in how of being in the world without into a simplistic history. different of how war and conflict are and in turn how those on the of social of and or the way in which we a series of paradigms how war and the social that with it or are by This to a nuanced reading that beyond account of the history of ways of war. seems to the way in which the same argument is in book of where he a account of state development by including and account is his contemporary he does not that the of history is or Of course, Clausewitz does not an account of and from this in the of military such as the who is as a and a more political in the of power. The discussion of Clausewitz is also of interest in that he his of war from an extension of the idea of the At the of of the different the of the remains the and extension of the idea are the of the and second the conflict by is still in the form of a – a struggle for two each other in the world or in the are still of individual for the Greeks and the moderns is a form of land on a It is much that the idea of that with the of complex by only as the nineteenth-century theorist of war, the and not only the idea of in conflict from the or to the larger of a but also the idea that engagement is modern is and often as a threat even if in to This of is most in the of where the and of is often all that is to far of the of the of a and my is a I can much in his narrative as a or narrative to my As I am more about the way in which paradigms of war into the way politics is I attention to the way in which paradigms of ways of and conflict. The of is especially as it beyond the of on and that have the return of traditional land war on the and I am to the discussion that The war has with and but it has also been by and and What is especially in account is the way that what are often discussions about and of in the of engagement in conflict and the of war. Of course, much of the of war and conflict is with the ways in which violence is on bodies and will always those of and which are only to the of the war in Ukraine or Gaza and are to the ways in which we conceptualise violence and war and how the of and are This will have a impact on how of war and their and the of conflict offers an that can return to about and and the of violence which does challenge the presuppositions of the of war and conflict – a that not only the way in which such as Hamas of and but also the way in which such as the have to of their the and of the response in the of remote and is a and challenge to the way in which the politics of war is The place of the of war and the of conflict as a major of conceptualising a order is the of is an historical of the of and he his short to the to which the current order is by the of the international institutional of a of order and its to the of war and and in particular the conflict the wars of the The is and as it the idea of a world which is itself from the of economic society out of the military and economic of the of and its in the of the state system and the or that from of the world society is that it all subsequent world wars in their and However, interest is the way in which this conception of world society leads to a order. This is the order of the and other major international which have power conflict but also the social from which a order may be this but without on the idea that there is a to history. Indeed, on my discussion of the of in history and history as or as it is in the nineteenth-century of and their the history of time is a world of with no order. That does not that we but it does we that the we have will His is that the of what he world or a to international order that might to the of war and military violence is especially in the of the Ukraine war and its The of the of in was the point of an order that ever has its way and its as it from the idea of and in to war are conflict. The of the Ukraine war are still to be as the of has to her but a world in which the Russian into Ukraine could is to the idea of a order and a to that is not just a for one but is a with a world order. The theory of a world society and a world order is in political and that can be to such as Kant, and and through them to and in the That in of the arguments in my book the ambition of is a and to the international theory of Carl Schmitt and his especially in the such as and of to the rejection of and the importance of as a particular and as to a or international theory was to challenge and the ideas of a society as a of what he a or order. As the idea of the state was transformed by the social and juridical that Schmitt a conception of a order in the idea of or in His intention was to the argument for a such as the and are to the idea of a or world order that the claims of the and at least the war, even thinking is always a and his is by his political choices but his as an to the idea of a order of a world society is the of a or order. does not directly engage with and instead his in the short space with its for the current of war Ukraine and he may not be to That and as ideas have from those who are to reject the idea of world society and order as on power. Schmitt, political conflict is always with a world of and although he this is to the coercion of modern international liberalism as a for commercial and military power. The of Schmitt in the and international politics and theory is an in its but it is clear that there are in the that to reject the idea of an international order and who will for many or to and the arguments of the of the ambition of was always much of it were to be in international and the return to a order or even an order of regional was as the in and the are to It is not my intention to that argument but only to challenge the for a of cosmopolitan order that the complex political from an state system to a cosmopolitan one to the advocacy of a order as a of peace or the of we need to and from challenge to the democratic peace and and historical that and my argument about the place of war in the of politics or the of international and contribution and my canon by ways in which it could The development of the canon in the way suggests is I had and for as to As one of the the work is Hannah Arendt, and especially her attempt to an account of the of the political which is from the extension of are and Schmitt, the in particular of his of violence and conflict in his conception of the political as a struggle with I conclude with a of but a chapter might have been and would have me from the but challenge that the canon is all is a very political thinker and a of a familiar canon of and in her also as an and challenge of his explicit advocacy of as a violent and as was influenced by Mao with who into the argument, the idea of revolution from the of a in the of nineteenth-century to an struggle in a of of my discussion of Mao was to from the or of revolution that was from Lenin and the which was an given the way Moscow saw as a in the world is right to point out how arguments also to and and their of violence and that do not the as in particular is the most given the way he the idea of violence in the way in which or more the of the on the and the of in the ways in which violence is also of the modern liberal state even when this is not power against and on of as well as the work of and the way in which violence is not an of state or the of to commercial Of course, liberal states may well have and and be for the thinkers see those kind of arguments as the What really is the way in which and state power is and is not just that is by whether or against the are but they also how power and even violent such that the of ways in which power from and to how and its are a of the of power. politics is a work of in of its of an that is not just to the bodies of the but to the very idea or of their As such the impact of and can itself in many and ways so that state or even democratic are or of as a of or is also a form of power. itself is a form of and discipline so that ideas of are Of course, the idea that violence power is can be a of and of This us to point that this can also be a way of beyond a and and the criticism is always some of as if the was one of a of power an just state or international order, when the reality is a world of constant and without a of order, the idea of revolution that Mao has me with an to of the argument that and could have been for which I am complex and of the challenge of thought is a but to the simplistic politics of liberal or the democratic peace thesis which sees a or the juridical state as the solution to the challenge of also an for why should have been included in the canon. All of illustrate the way that the central themes of the book are more than I could have at the time of writing and that the of violence and political power is not only in the of war which we find to but also that simplistic to peace as the absence of war much of the that war and organised violence to the way we about politics and its most The would to and for their to to this is of and of the of at was a at where he has for three is the and of books and his most publication is Conflict, War and is a book for has interests in political theory and the history of political thought and has been of A of and with of

Economics · Political economy · Political science · Global Peace and Security Dynamics · Psychology · Torture, Ethics, and Law · War, Ethics, and Justification

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