Exploring the utility of force: some conclusions

Abstract

This conclusion looks at the debate about the utility of force. It brings together the conclusions of the contributions in this special volume, linking them together with the positions in the debate and outlining further avenues for research.

Keywords:

• utility of force
• armed conflict
• destruction
• deterrence
• coercion
• containment
• amelioration

Notes

 1. For a discussion of the military fallacy of the exit strategy notion see: Rose, ‘The Exit Strategy Delusion’, 56–67. Duyvesteyn, ‘Understanding Victory and Defeat: Some Conclusions’, 232.

 2. This is among others the assessment of Alice Hills in the case of the Falluja crisis in 2004: Hills, ‘Fear and Loathing in Falluja’, 624. Others have argued that during the reign of Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, the control of civilian leaders over military affairs developed into political micro-management: Hersh, Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib.

 3. Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World.

 4. Gow, ‘The New Clausewitz? War, Force, Art and Utility – Rupert Smith on 21st Century Strategy, Operations, Tactics in a Comprehensive Context’, 1151–70. Indeed Smith is a true Clausewitzean, e.g. chapter 1 and passim.

 5. Taking up this argument is: Betz, ‘Redesigning Land Forces for Wars Amongst the People’, 221–43.

 6. Rose, Fighting for Peace: Bosnia 1994; Rose, Washington's War: From Independence to Iraq; Clark, Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo and the Future of Combat; Clark, Winning Modern Wars: Iraq Terrorism and the American Empire.

 7. Gow, ‘The New Clausewitz?’, 1161.

 8. Smith, Utility of Force, 375.

 9. Posen, ‘Military Responses to Refugee Disasters’, 108.

10. Smith, Utility of Force, 9. See also Egnell in this issue; ‘Peace and support operations are inherently political and value laden, often based on just war theory and international legal frameworks’. Egnell, ‘Between Reluctance and Necessity’, in this issue.

11. Quoted in: Powell, My American Journey, 576.

12. Sarkesian and Connor, The US Military Profession into the Twenty-First Century: War, Peace and Politics, 195.

13. Smith, The Utility of Force, 18.

14. Smith, The Utility of Force, 278.

15. Smith, The Utility of Force, 270.

16. Smith, The Utility of Force, 4.

17. Smith, The Utility of Force, 182.

18. Sullivan, ‘War Aims and War Outcomes: Why Powerful States Lose Limited Wars’, 496–524.

19. Fishel, Civil Military Operations in the New World.

20. Smith, Utility of Force, 182.

21. Smith, Utility of Force, 331.

22. Smith, Utility of Force, 372.

23. Smith, Utility of Force, 320–1.

24. Kaplan, Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts: The American Military in the Air, at Sea and on the Ground.

25. Interview with Robert Gates, ‘Gates Faults NATO Force in Southern Afghanistan’, Los Angeles Times, 16 January 2008.

26. Compare this to the explanations for the failure in Vietnam, more force would have been the solution: Summers, On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War.

27. Luttwak, Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace.

28. Luttwak, ‘Counterinsurgency Warfare as Military Malpractice’, 33–42.

29. Creveld, The Changing Face of War: Lessons of Combat from the Marne to Iraq, 269.

30. Department of the Army, The U.S. Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual: U.S. Army Field Manual No. 3-24.

31. Sewall, ‘Introduction to the University of Chicago Press Edition: A Radical Field Manual’, xxiii.

32. David Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice, 89; David Kilcullen, ‘Counterinsurgency Redux’, 129.

33. Burton and Nagl, ‘Learning As We Go: The US Army Adapts to Counterinsurgency in Iraq, July 2004–December 2006’, in this issue.

34. Andrew Mack, ‘Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars: The Politics of Asymmetric Conflict’, 175–200; Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars; Arreguin-Toft, How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict; Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam; Jeffrey Record, Beating Goliath: Why Insurgencies Win.

35. Record, Beating Goliath; Angstrom and Duyvesteyn Understanding Victory and Defeat.

36. Record, Beating Goliath, xii.

37. Clark, Waging Modern War, xxiii.

38. Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, xiv.

39. Biddle, ‘Toppling the Taliban in Afghanistan’, in Understanding Victory and Defeat, 187. This idea has a longer pedigree. Steven Metz talks about a El Salvador model of counterinsurgency in which local forces play a crucial role: Metz, ‘New Challenges and Old Concepts: Understaning 21st Century Insurgency’, 20.

40. Rothstein, Afghanistan and the Troubled Future of Unconventional War.

41. Duyvesteyn, ‘Great Expectations: The Use of Armed Force to Combat Terrorism’, in this issue.

42. Sullivan, ‘War Aims and War Outcomes’.

43. Freedman, Deterrence, 5.

44. Kersti Larsdotter, ‘Exploring the Utility of Armed Force in Peace Operations: German and British Approaches in Northern Afghanistan’, in this issue.

45. Fortna, ‘Does Peacekeeping Keep Peace? International Intervention and the Duration of Peace After Civil War’, 288.

46. Doyle and Sambanis, ‘International Peace Building: A Theoretical and Quantitative Analysis’, 779–802; Lijn, Walking the Tightrope: Do UN Peacekeeping Operations Actually Contribute to Durable Peace?; Seybolt, Humanitarian Military Intervention: The Conditions for Success and Failure.

47. Etzioni, Security First.

48. Stedman, ‘Policy Implications’.

49. Duyvesteyn, ‘The Effectiveness of Intervention Instruments in Armed Conflict: Conflict Resolution is the Only Solution?’.

50. Glassmyer and Sambanis, ‘Rebel Military Integration and Civil War Termination’, 365–84.

51. Paris, At War's End: Building Peace after Civil Conflict.

52. DeRouen and Sobek, ‘The Dynamics of Civil War Duration and Outcome’, Journal of Peace Research, 303–20.

53. Fukuyama and McFaul, ‘Should Democracy be Promoted or Demoted?, 23–45.

54. Mansfield and Snyder, ‘Democratization and the Danger of War’, 5–38; Mansfield and Snyder, Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War; Hegre, Gates, Gleditsch et al. ‘Toward a Democratic Civil Peace? Democracy, Political Change, and Civil War, 1816–1992’, 16–33.

55. Gleditsch, Christiansen and Hegre, ‘Democratic Jihad? Military Intervention and Democracy’, paper Prepared for the International Studies Association Conference 17–20 March 2004. Available at: http://www.prio.no/sptrans/-139794680/file49713_democraticjihadapril2007.pdf (accessed 1 July 2008).

56. Hegre, ‘Disentangling Democracy and Development as Determinants of Armed Conflict’, paper prepared for the World Bank, 9 January 2003. Available at: http://folk.uio.no/hahegre/Papers/DisentanglingWB.pdf (accessed 19 April 2008).

57. Zakaria, The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad.

58. Hegre, ‘Disentangling Democracy’.

59. Collier, Hoeffler and Soderbom, Post Conflict Risks , 5. Available at: http://www.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1256&context=csae (accessed 1 July 2008); Collier et al. Breaking the Conflict Trap: Civil War and Development Policy, 158.

60. Hegre, ‘Disentangling Democracy’.

61. Dobbins et al., America's Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq.

62. Egnell, ‘Between Reluctance and Necessity’, in this issue.

63. Smith, Utility of Force, 307.

64. This section is inspired by the discussion in Duyvesteyn, ‘The Effectiveness of Intervention Instruments in Armed Conflict’.

65. Human Security Center, The Human Security Report , 2005, 154. Available at: http://www.humansecurityreport.info/ (accessed 1 July 2008).

66. Hufbauer and Elliot, ‘Same Song, Same Refrain? Economic Sanctions in the 1990s’, 403–9; Elliott, ‘The Sanctions Glass; Half Full or Completely Empty?’, 50–65; Pape, ‘Why Economic Sanctions Still Do Not Work’, 66–77; Huffbauer, Schott and Elliott, Economic Sanctions Reconsidered: History and Current Policy, Even the effectiveness of smart or targeted sanctions is disappointing: Elliott, ‘Analyzing the Effects of Targeted Sanctions’, 171–82. There is some evidence that the present sanctions practices are more effective against democratic regimes compared to non-democratic ones: Lektzian and Souva, ‘An Institutional Theory of Sanctions Onset and Success’, 848–71.

67. Mueller and Mueller, ‘Sanctions of Mass Destruction’, 43–53; Weiss, Cortwright, Lopez and Minear, Political Gain and Civilian Pain.

68. Fruchart, Holtom, Wezeman, Strandow and Wallensteen, United Nations Arms Embargoes: Their Impact on Arms Flows and Target Behaviour.

69. The Human Security Brief 2006, 4. Available at: http://www.humansecuritybrief.info/ (accessed 19 April 2008); Duffy Toft, Peace Through Security: Making Negotiated Settlements Stick; Regan and Aydin, ‘Diplomacy and Other Forms of Intervention in Civil Wars’, 736–56; Collier, Hoeffler and Soderbom, Post Conflict Risks; Fortna, Peace Time: Cease-Fires and the Durability of Peace.

70. Smith, Utility of Force, 274.

71. Larsdotter, ‘Exploring the Utility of Armed Force in Peace Operations’, in this issue.

72. Egnell, ‘Between Reluctance and Necessity’, in this issue.

73. Barnett, The Pentagon's New Map.

74. Sewall, ‘Introduction to the University of Chicago Press Edition’, xxxi.

75. Angstrom, ‘Inviting the Leviathan: External Forces, War and State-Building in Afghanistan’, in this issue.

76. Angstrom, ‘Inviting the Leviathan: External Forces, War and State-Building in Afghanistan’, in this issue

77. Smith, The Utility of Force, 394.

78. Sewall, ‘Introduction to the University of Chicago Press Edition’, xl–xli. Sarkesian and Connor, The US Military Profession, 22. See also Burton and Nagl, in this issue.

79. Record, Beating Goliath, xii. Ralph Peters too comments: ‘The US military, otherwise magnificently capable, is an extremely inefficient tool for combat in urban environments’. Peters, ‘Our Soldiers, Their Cities’, 43.

80. Cooper, ‘The Utility of Force by General Sir Rupert Smith’, Sunday Times, 18 September 2005.

81. Record, Beating Goliath, xii.

82. Egnell, ‘Between Reluctance and Necessity’, in this issue.

83. Belloni, ‘The Trouble with Humanitarianism’, 451–74.

84. Smith, Utility of Force, 376–7.

85. For criticism towards this point of view see: Ralph Peters, ‘Progress and Peril; New Counterinsurgency Manual Cheats on History Exam’.

86. Freedman, The Transformation of Strategic Affairs, 26.

87. Egnell, ‘Between Reluctance and Necessity’, in this issue.

88. Larsdotter, ‘Culture and the Outcome of Military Intervention: Developing Some Hypotheses’, 206–23.

89. Art, ‘To What Ends Military Power?’, 3–35.

90. Art, ‘To What Ends Military Power?’, 10–11.