The Pitfalls of Cross-National Comparison in Conflict Research

Abstract

Professor Joseph Soeters shows admirable ambition in comparing national styles of conflict resolution and is extremely eager to draw historical lessons from such comparative exercises. However, he gets entangled in national mythmaking as he underestimates the complexity of comparative history of this kind. Particularly the establishment of true causal links between national (strategic) cultures and actual tactical behaviour on the ground is far more difficult than he suggests in his recent book chapter and his reply to my article in this journal.

Key Words:

• Comparative History
• Counter-insurgency
• ‘Dutch Approach’

Notes

1 This paper was published as: Hew Strachan, ‘British Counter-Insurgency from Malaya to Iraq’, RUSI Journal 152/6 (Dec. 2007), 8--11. The author was present during this event.

2 Ibid. Strachan ascribed this tendency primarily to American scholars. He rightfully emphasized that the British in Malaya and other parts of the dwindling Empire were never about ‘being nice to the people’, but primarily about population control and ‘giving them a firm smack of government’.

3 Thijs Brocades Zaalberg and Arthur ten Cate, Missie in Al Muthanna: De Nederlandse Krijgsmacht in Irak 2003–2005 (Amsterdam: Boom 2010). Contrary to what Joseph Soeters suggests in his reply and in spite of the book's many nuances, the primary conclusion of the extensive study that Ten Cate and I published in 2010 on Dutch operations in Iraq was that relative stability in Al Muthanna province between 2003 and 2005 cannot be ascribed to a particular ‘Dutch approach’.

4 A valuable introduction into these concepts can be found in: Lawrence Sondhaus, Strategic Culture and Ways of War (Oxon and New York: Routledge 2005), 1--13. Another concise introduction into the concept of strategic cultures can be found in Rem Korteweg, The Superpower, the Bridge-Builder and the Hesitant Ally: How Defence Transformation Divided NATO 1991--2008 (Leiden UP 2011), 45--51. Key publications in the ‘ways of war’ debate are: Victor Davis Hanson, The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece (Oxford: OUP 1989) and that of his harshest critic, John Lynn, Battle: A History of Combat and Culture from Ancient Greece to Modern America (Boulder, CO: Westview 2003). On the debate surrounding the ‘American way of war’ see: Russell Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of the United States Military Strategy and Policy (New York: Macmillan 1973) and Brian McAllister Linn, The Echo of Battle: The Army's Way of War (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard UP 2007).

5 So is the suggestion that John Nagl's comparative study on Malaya and Vietnam is ‘a notable exception’. A useful introduction into comparative history is Stefan Berger's introductory chapter in Writing History: Theory and Practise (London: Hodder Eduction 2003). Here, one can also find a short introduction into the concept of cultural transfer, which Soeters pleads for by using the somewhat similar concept of isomorphism.

6 For instance, Soeters leaps from the notion of ‘national culture’ to the tactical level of operations when he refers to Martijn Kitzen's recent article in this journal on the Dutch key-leader engagement program in Uruzgan as ‘a prime illustration of the Dutch “polder model”’, meaning the consensus model for social and economic policy making in the Netherlands. Yet, Kitzen does nothing of the sort and has no intention to do so. See: Martijn Kitzen, ‘Close Encounters of the Tribal Kind: The Implementation of Co-option as a Tool for De-escalation of Conflict: The Case of the Netherlands in Afghanistan's Uruzgan Province’, Journal of Strategic Studies 35/5 (2012), 713--34.

7 In his recent book on ‘the cultural turn’ in the history of warfare, Jeremy Black warns us of the limits and prospects of culture as a tool for analysing military operations and emphasizes that cultures are not immutable but adaptable. Jeremy Black, War and the Cultural Turn (Cambridge and Malden: Palgrave 2012). Also Patrick Porter warned us in 2007 about ‘an overly determinist view of the tangled relationship between war and culture’ and advised us not to ‘neglect the dynamism of culture, of how cultures can change [even] in the course of wars’. Porter, ‘Good Anthropology, Bad History: The Cultural Turn in Studying War’, Parameters 37/2 (2007), 45--58. See also: Patrick Porter, Military Orientalism: Eastern War through Western Eyes (Columbia UP: New York 2009).

8 Joseph Soeters, ‘Odysseus Prevails over Achilles. A Warrior Model Suited to Post-9/11 Conflicts’, in James Burk (ed.), How 9/11 Changed Our Way of War (Stanford UP 2013).

9 Of particular interest on Dutch colonial warfare is: Petra Groen, ‘Colonial Warfare and Military Ethics in the Netherlands East Indies’, Journal of Genocide Research 14/3-4 (2012), 277--96. For an excellent and balanced view of the Malayan Emergency see: Karl Hack, ‘Everybody lived in fear’, Small Wars and Insurgencies 23/4-5 (Oct.—Dec. 2012), 671--99. Hack counterbalances the recent wave of revisionism on British counter-insurgency, that – despite its many merits and key role in busting some of the myths surrounding British counter-insurgency – seems to have gone overboard at times, particularly in the wake of revelations about the case of Kenya.