Moving Beyond Forever Wars: The Importance of Anthropological Perspectives

Last March I wrote an article arguing that for Western states in the 21st century, the collapse of the Westphalian order has necessitated a small footprint model of military intervention and permanent global engagement. Indeed, it seems that ‘forever wars’ are now an inevitable part of managing national security. However, given that Sun Tzu is reputed to have wisely counseled that ‘there is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare,’ it would stand to reason that this current state of affairs is unsustainable. The notion that ‘forever wars’ (entangling and permanent foreign engagements) are necessary is premised on a traditional understanding of the global security environment. Thus, to ensure the forever in ‘forever wars’ does not eventuate, a shift is required in how policy makers understand and interact with the changing global security environment.Coalition partners have already begun to affect this shift by embracing a more anthropological understanding of war. This process began in Iraq and Afghanistan. The problem is the application of anthropological knowledge has not risen above the tactical and operational level. At the strategic level, it continues to be obscured by state-centric, Western notions of security. This is apparent in the cases of both Afghanistan and Iraq. By 2004, dissatisfaction with the occupations in both countries began forcing many in defence, government, and academic circles to acknowledge that conventional approaches towards military strategy and international security are insufficient in combating modern day insurgencies. In the U.S. Naval War College publication, Proceedings, retired Major General Robert Scales wrote that current warfare required “an exceptional ability to understand people, their culture, and their motivation.” Arthur Cebrowski, Director of the United States Office of Force Transformation, reinforced this view a few months later when he concluded, “knowledge of one’s enemy and his culture and society may be more important than knowledge of his order of battle.”Anthropology, with its focus on understanding ‘the other,’ emerged as a repository of knowledge for military forces to turn to. This shift culminated in the drafting of the counterinsurgency manual, FM 3-24. By the time FM 3-24 was released and made doctrine, the ascension of anthropological knowledge, sometimes called socio-cultural intelligence in defence circles, was assured. While Iraq and Afghanistan arguably demonstrated that anthropological lessons were never fully learnt, they illustrated that insurgency and intrastate conflict required as much, if not more, attention towards the non-military concerns of target populations.Yet in Iraq and Afghanistan, the use of anthropological knowledge never rose above the tactical or operational levels. Its use was positioned firmly and solely within counterinsurgency doctrine.1 The refusal to extend the use of anthropological knowledge to inform more holistic understandings of the changes occurring within the broader global security environment has constrained the options available to decision makers, leading them to seek refuge in the only institution Westerners have viewed as best providing for global security – the state. The belief that emerging non-state threats are best dealt with through the preservation and pursuit of properly run states – legitimate, sovereign and central entities that are able to address the demands of their populations – dominates the foreign policy of Western states.At the core of this reliance on the state to provide security has been a lack of appreciation for the complexity of life in areas where state control is not the norm. In Western tradition, the state system became essential to international security after the signing of the Westphalian treaties of 1648 and reinforced in modern times at the end of World War II. As Hobbesian political philosophy explains, the state provides the type of governance required to ensure mankind’s natural aggressive inclinations could be tempered through the works of a strong centralized government exercising a monopoly on violence internally and backed by an army and alliances externally. By extension, this concept implies that absent a strong, central state, insecurity must rein. This view gained particular prominence amongst Western scholars and within governments following the Cold War, and it was reinforced after the attacks of September 11, 2001.2A growing list of authors are expressing their reservations with this popular view, which is referred to as the failed state paradigm. Jennifer Kesiter of the CATO Institute, for instance, laments the idea that ungoverned spaces represented an automatic threat to global order for simply not being under the control of one state and argues that these spaces are simply governed by other means. Keister writes, “contrary to their popular characterizations political order in these areas has not disappeared: it is simply wielded by actors other than the state...” It is these non-state actors, and the societies within they exist, that have consumed the attention of anthropologists. Such actors prove that the absence of a state does not necessarily mean the absence of order and justice. Indeed, anthropologists have often found that societies successfully provide security through other means.3It is the holistic nature inherent in an anthropologically infused view of global security that is now needed to inform a more sustainable global strategy for Western states. Continued reliance on the state-based system is increasingly becoming out of step with reality given the rising influence of non–state actors seeking to fill power vacuums and to craft a post-Westphalian order. The United States Army Special Operations Command SOF Support to Political Warfare White Paper rightfully claims that international relations is now characterized “by continuously evolving combinations of collaboration, conciliation, confrontation and conflict.” Given that a manifestation of violence is as flexible and as varied as the cultural patterns within which it operates, culturally informed strategies are imperative.Western forces have already operationalized anthropology at the tactical and operational levels and it has proven beneficial. It is now time to take this knowledge to the next level, moving it away from the idea of the state as sole provider of security towards a more intimate understanding of the emerging players in a world freeing itself from the state-based system that Westerners crafted for themselves centuries ago.While proclamations that the Westphalian order is ending are not new, the recent response to this new global security environment charts a course of permanent military engagement throughout the globe.

1. See for instance, http://humanterrainsystem.army.mil/deployedTeams.html for a description on the work of Human Terrain Teams and http://www.africom.mil/newsroom/article/7548/socio-cultural-research-and-advisory-team-adds-com for the work of the Socio-cultural Research Advisory Team with AFRICOM2. Examples during the Cold War included the genocide in Rwanda and conflicts throughout Central Africa and post 9/11, when US policymakers drew a direct link between the under development of Muslim communities in the Middle East and their radicalization process.3. For example E E Evans Pritchard, in his study on the Nuer in Africa, found this in his study on kinship, while E Adamson Hoebal broke ground in anthropology in his study of the Comanche Indians