Regaining Strategy: Small Powers, Strategic Culture, and Escalation in Afghanistan

Abstract

In Western operations in Afghanistan, small European powers escalate in different ways. While Denmark and the Netherlands have contributed to Western escalation through integration with British and US forces, Norway and Sweden have done so by creating a division of labour allowing US and British combat forces to concentrate their efforts in the south. These variations in strategic behaviour suggest that the strategic choice of small powers is more diversified than usually assumed. We argue that strategic culture can explain the variation in strategic behaviour of the small allies in Afghanistan. In particular, Dutch and Danish internationalism have reconciled the use of force in the national and international domains, while in Sweden and Norway there is still a sharp distinction between national interest and humanitarianism.

Key Words:

• Strategy
• Escalation
• Afghan War
• Strategic Culture
• Small States

Notes

¹Richard Betts, ‘Should Strategic Studies Survive?’, World Politics 50/1 (1997), 8.

²John Stone, Military Strategy: The Politics and Technique of War (London: Continuum 2011).

³Justin Kelly and Mike Brennan, Alien: How Operational Art Devoured Strategy (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute 2009).

⁴Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World (London: Allen Lane 2005).

⁵On the transformation of European armed forces, see Anthony King, The Transformation of Europe's Armed Forces (Cambridge: CUP 2011) in general, and more specific details about the reduction of armed forces in Scandinavia, see Magnus Petersson, ‘En skandinavisk transformatjonsbolge’, in Tormod Heier (ed.), Nytt landskap – Nytt forsvar (Oslo: Abstrakt forlag 2011), 117; and Magnus Petersson, ‘Defence Transformation and Legitimacy in Scandinavia after the Cold War: Theoretical and Practical Implications’, Armed Forces & Society 37/4 (2011), 701–24.

⁶M.L.R. Smith, ‘Escalation in Irregular War: Using Strategic Theory to Examine from First Principles,’ Journal of Strategic Studies 35/5 (Oct. 2012), 613–37.

⁷Carl von Clausewitz, On War, transl. by Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton UP 1976), Book I, Chapter 1, Section 3, 77.

⁸On the rather more complicated relationship between war, escalation and politics in Clausewitz which is obscured in the most popular modern translation by Michael Howard and Peter Paret, see Jan Willem Honig, ‘Clausewitz's On War: Problems of Text and Translation’, in Hew Strachan and Andreas Herberg-Rothe (eds), Clausewitz in the Twenty-First Century (Oxford: OUP 2007), 57–73 and Andreas Herberg-Rothe, Jan Willem Honig and Daniel Moran (eds), Clausewitz: The State and War (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner 2011).

⁹See, e.g. David Ucko, The New Counterinsurgency Era: Transforming the US Military for Modern Wars (Washington DC: Georgetown UP 2009); David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One (London: Hurst 2009); Isabelle Duyvesteyn, ‘Great Expectations: The Use of Armed Force to Combat Terrorism’, in Jan Angstrom and Isabelle Duyvesteyn (eds), Modern War and the Utility of Force (London: Routledge 2010), 65–89; John Mackinlay, The Insurgent Archipelago: From Mao to Bin Laden (London: Hurst 2009).

¹⁰See, for example, Ahmed Rashid, Descent into Chaos: The US and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia (London: Penguin 2010); Seth G. Jones, The Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan (New York: Norton 2010); Robert Egnell and David Ucko, Rethinking British Counterinsurgency (New York: Columbia UP forthcoming).

¹¹See, for example, David Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice (London: Pall Mall 1964); John Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (Univ. of Chicago Press 2005).

¹²King, The Transformation of Europe's Armed Forces, 58. On the degree of integration of Danish and Dutch forces in southern Afghanistan, see King, The Transformation of Europe's Armed Forces, 256–60.

¹³This latter explanation has been used to explain Dutch NATO policies. See Alfred van Staden, ‘Small State Strategies in Alliances: The Case of the Netherlands’, Cooperation and Conflict 30/1 (1995), 31–51. For a counterargument, see Jan Willem Honig, Defense Policy in the North Atlantic Alliance: The Case of the Netherlands (Westport, CT: Praeger 1993).

¹⁴See, e.g. Alexander George and Andrew Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development in Social Sciences (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 2005).

¹⁵Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: McGraw-Hill 1979).

¹⁶Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York: McGraw-Hill 1948); John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: Norton 2001).

¹⁷James Gow, The Serbian Project and its Adversaries: A Strategy of War Crimes (London: Hurst 2003), 16–17; Betts, ‘Should Strategic Studies Survive?’, 12.

¹⁸Martha Finnemore, National Interests in International Society (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1996). Erik Ringmar, Identity, Interest, and Action: A Cultural Explanation of Sweden's Intervention in the Thirty Years War (Cambridge: CUP 1996).

¹⁹Lawrence Sondhaus, Strategic Culture and Ways of War (London: Routledge 2006).

²⁰Robert J. Art, ‘To What Ends Military Power?’, International Security 4/4 (1980), 17–18.

²¹Sondhaus, Strategic Culture and Ways of War, 4.

²²Alistair Iain Johnston, ‘Thinking About Strategic Culture’, International Security 19/4 (1995), 32–64.

²³Elisabeth Kier, Imagining War: French and British Military Doctrine between the Wars (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP 1997).

²⁴Martha Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention: Changing Beliefs about the Use of Force (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 2003), 15.

²⁵Peter Katzenstein, Cultural Norms and National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1996), 17–18.

²⁶Jeffrey Lantis and Darryl Howlett, ‘Strategic Culture’, in John Baylis etal. (eds), Strategy in a Contemporary World (Oxford: OUP 2007), 94.

²⁷Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention.

²⁸Jeffrey Legro, ‘Military Culture and Inadvertent Escalation in World War II’, International Security 18/4 (1994), 108–42; Martin van Creveld, The Transformation of War (New York: The Free Press 1991).

²⁹Theo Farrell, Norms of War: Cultural Beliefs and Modern Conflict (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner 2005).

³⁰Sondhaus, Strategic Culture and Ways of War, 127; Judith Goldstein and Robert Keohane, Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1993).

³¹Richard Jackson, Writing the War on Terrorism: Language, Politics and Counter-Terrorism (Manchester UP 2005).

³²Martin van Creveld, The Culture of War (New York: Random House 2009), 158.

³³Wilhelm Mirow, Strategic Culture Matters: A Comparison of German and British Military Interventions since 1990 (Berlin: Lit Verlag 2009).

³⁴David M. Jones and Mike L. Smith, ‘Noise but No Signal: Strategy, Culture, and the Poverty of Constructivism’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 24/6 (2001), 485–95; Iver B. Neumann and Henrikki Heikka, ‘Grand Strategy, Strategic Culture, Practice’, Cooperation and Conflict 40/1 (2005), 5–23.

³⁵Jan Willem Honig, ‘Myths That Keep Small Powers Going: Internationalist Idealism in the Netherlands’, in Cyril Buffet and Beatrice Heuser (eds), Haunted by History: Myths in International Relations (Oxford: Berghahn 1998), 23.

³⁶Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen, ‘What's the Use of It? Danish Strategic Culture and the Utility of Force’, Cooperation and Conflict 40/1 (2005), 67–89.

³⁷Honig, ‘Myths’.

³⁸Rasmussen, ‘What's the Use of It?’, 81.

³⁹Quoted in Rasmussen, ‘What's the Use of It?’, p. 77.

⁴⁰Rasmussen, ‘What's the Use of It?’, 80.

⁴¹Jan Willem Honig and Norbert Both, Srebrenica: Record of a War Crime, rev. ed. (New York: Penguin 1997).

⁴²Norbert Both, From Indifference to Entrapment: The Netherlands and the Yugoslav Crisis, 1990–1995 (Amsterdam UP 2000).

⁴³Arie Rem Korteweg, The Superpower, The Bridge-Builder, and the Hesitant Ally: How Defence Transformation Divided NATO, 1991–2008 (Leiden: Leiden University Press 2011), 216.

⁴⁴Thijs Brocades Zaalberg and Arthur ten Cate, Missie in Al-Muthanna, De Nederlandse krijgsmacht in Irak, 2003–2005 (Amsterdam: Boom 2010).

⁴⁵Christ Klep, Uruzgan, Nederlandse militairen op missie, 2005–2010 (Amsterdam: Boom 2011).

⁴⁶On Sweden's and Norway's relations with NATO, see Magnus Petersson, ‘The Scandinavian Triangle: Danish-Norwegian-Swedish Military Intelligence Cooperation and Swedish Security Policy During the Cold War’, Journal of Strategic Studies 29/4 (Aug. 2006), 607–32; Magnus Petersson, ‘NATO and the EU “Neutrals”: Instrumental or Value-Oriented Utility?’ in Håkan Edström, Janne Haaland Matlary and Magnus Petersson (eds), NATO: The Power of Partnerships (London: Palgrave Macmillan 2011); Kjell Engelbrekt and Jan Angstrom (eds), Svensk säkerhetspolitik i Europa och världen (Stockholm: Norstedts 2010); Rolf Tamnes, ‘The Strategic Importance of the High North during the Cold War’, in Gustav Schmidt (ed.), A History of NATO, Vol. 3: The First Fifty Years (London: Palgrave Macmillan 2001), 257–74; Rolf Tamnes, Norsk forsvarshistorie, Allianseforsvar i endring (Bergen: Eide forlag 2004); Vojtech Mastny, Sven Holtsmark and Andreas Wenger (eds), War Plans and Alliances in the Cold War: Threat Perceptions in the East and West (London: Routledge 2006).

⁴⁷The description of Swedish strategic culture differs from Gunnar Åselius' interpretation. Åselius focused only on national defence in his analysis and failed to recognize the importance of international norms as critical in changing Swedish strategic culture in the middle to late 1990s. See Gunnar Åselius, ‘Swedish Strategic Culture After 1945’, Cooperation and Conflict 40/1 (2005), 25–44. Åselius did, however, recognize other key features of Swedish strategic culture, such as the importance of administrative structure, social democracy and corporatism in the creation of the guiding strategic principle of ‘total defence’.

⁴⁸Mirow, Strategic Culture Matters; Christoph O. Meyer, The Quest for a European Strategic Culture: Changing Norms on Security and Defence in the European Union (London: Palgrave 2006).

⁴⁹Eyal Ben-Ari, ‘Changing Models of Military Violence? The Swedish Armed Forces since the End of the Cold War’, Paper presented at the ERGOMAS conference in Stockholm, June 2009.

⁵⁰Nina Graeger and Halvard Leira, ‘Norwegian Strategic Culture after World War II: From a Local to a Global Perspective’, Cooperation and Conflict 40/1 (2005), 50.

⁵¹Mattias Viktorin, ‘Exercising Peace: Conflict Preventionism, Neoliberalism and the New Military’, dissertation, Stockholm Univ. 2008. See also Peter Viggo Jakobsen, Nordic Approaches to Peace Operations: A New Model in the Making? (London: Frank Cass 2006), 187 and Karl Ydén, Kriget och karriärsystemet: Försvarsmaktens organiserande i fred (Gothenburg: Bokförlaget BAS 2008).

⁵²Magnus Christiansson, ‘Far Away, So Close: Comparing Danish and Swedish Defence and Security Policies’, Militaert tidsskrift 138/3 (2009), 1–18.

⁵³Finnemore, National Interests in International Society; John Gerard Ruggie, Constructing the World Polity (London: Routledge 1998); Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: CUP 1999).