The Utility of Force

Rupert Smith. The Utility of Force. Penguin, London. 2006.

General Rupert Smith of the British Army has led the Queen’s forces in every major conflict of the 1990s, including Gulf War I and the interventions into Bosnia and Kosovo. His book is a reflection on the nature of war, as experienced through his years of service.

Theorists of contemporary warfare will not be surprised by the thesis of Smith’s book. Citing Thomas Kuhn, the good general describes changing trends in warfare using the concept of a paradigm shift, the latest of which begins in 1945. This is the paradigm of wars amongst the people, which take as their objective the loyalty and will of civilian populations caught in between the combatants. It is this paradigm of war which state militaries have encountered repeatedly post-1945, yet conceptually, they remain stuck in the paradigm of industrial war, and its objective of eliminating an opponent on a battlefield. Thus, the utility of military force applied by states in their post-war conflicts has utimately been minimal, if not counterproductive to the overall policy objectives for which state militaries are deployed.

To find new utility for military force, Smith suggests reconceptualizing the purpose for which force can effective in Wars Amongst the People. Whereas in the old paradigm, force achieved its political objective by militarily bending the enemy to one’s own will, by capturing cities or defeating his armies. In the new paradigm, force is useful in establishing and enabling the development of new conditions or conceptual space by which other means can be used to achieve the political objective. (272) As its name implies, War Amongst the People is about the local population in conflict. The ‘condition’ to which force assists in reaching the political objective is in fact the loyalty and will of the people. Because war is always against an organic, thinking, and strategizing adversary, the use of force must always take that adversary into account when using force. Thus. Smith cites Foucault’s Discipline and Punish to emphasize that ‘power is a relationship, not a possession,’ (242) and so the overall capability to use force is always relative to the opponent.

I found the poststructural reference interesting, especially in light of Smith’s discussion of what exactly ‘the people’ want.

At best, peoplw want things that may be divided into ‘freedom from’ and ‘freedom to’. They want freedom from fear, hunger, cold and uncertainty. They want freedom to prosper and do what they reasonably want. And they want the society of their families, friends and those of like mind…If the circumstnaces are those of fear and uncertainty then the people will look in the first instance to the leader whom they believe can alleviate, or better still, change the circumstances…Short of a situation where they face a direct armed threat, the people want an administration that they understand and relate to. (280)

What must be further investigated is how poststructuralism can explain the way people seek leadership in war, and how those leaders can exploit violence or previous conflicts rhetorically and discursively to mobilize the people. Insecurity is not necessarily something that exists objectively, but rather subjectively by each individual person who understands a threat in the context of a particular historical memory or reference. Smith alludes to this in specifying that Wars Amongst the People are timeless, and vacillate between long simmering confrontations and short, intense bouts of conflict. These understandings of past and present threats can be manipulated by political leaders and well as military adversaries. Through discourse and social communication, threats can to the people can be altered, manufactured, and manipulated to better suit the political objective of a combatant. Force is useful only if it aids in reinforcing a discursive strategy of mobilization, based on a common threat.

All and all, Smith’s book is great. It isolates the most important aspects of contemporary warfare and suggests a way of thinking to adapt to these conflicts. It nicely complements other theories of contemporary warfare, such as xGW or Mary Kaldor’s New and Old Wars (1998).