From citizen-soldiers to imperialism: The evolution of democratic warfare

The historian Andrew J. Bacevich has revisited the issue of democracies and wars of choice in his recent book Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country. The argument that democracies do not wage wars of choice goes roughly as follows: war is a negative lottery – many gain, a few lose grievously.¹ No rational person would accept such a lottery unless the danger to the community was so imminent and enormous as to make individual risk-taking acceptable (this is not always a rational calculation, of course; ‘Better dead than Red’ is a good example of hysterical over-simplification).²

From citizen-soldiers to professional armies

In the past, the democratic USA only had the draft in times of war. The draft remained after WWII. At the end of the Vietnam War, the US president eliminated this ‘lottery’ and replaced citizen-soldiers with professionals. A warrior ‘caste’ ensued. In a professional army, volunteers take on the risk of death, sparing ordinary citizens the ordeal and the risk of participating in the lottery. Bacevich argues that once risk is separated from gain, the citizenry is likely to embrace (or at least acquiesce in) wars of choice fought in distant lands. In so doing, it accepts unthinkingly the drift toward an imperial democracy. Revert to the draft, concludes Bacevich, and the imperial ambitions will be reduced accordingly.

A quick historical survey points to the fact that the UK indeed built its empire on a professional army and only introduced the draft in 1916.³ Republican France kept the draft throughout the 19th century and beyond but was imperialist nevertheless (it was less lucky, but that is another story). Italy had a draft and was imperialistic anyway (Italy promised its landless soldiers settlement in the occupied territories; it was a throwback to the ‘Roman Empire’). Russia outsourced its expansion to the Stroganoff traders.⁴ We need to look closer at the context, it would seem.

Ideally, democracies rely on production and exchange for wealth generation. They do not extract it from neighbours. Hence, they need not wage wars of conquest or domination. Levée en masse (mass national conscription) will defend it from aggression (should it eventuate). Mass national conscription are spasmodic affairs. They cannot be sustained for long. The pitched battle of the Greeks set the obligate pattern: a civilian population does not leave its occupation unattended for long (see The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece by Victor Davis Hanson).

Sustained and prolonged containment over time changes the nature of citizens’ involvement in wars. After Salamis, Athens and its allies maintained a fleet as a dissuasion force against the Persians: Athens silently transformed itself into an imperial democracy. Rome needed to contain the marauding Celts over decades – it developed a professional army to do so, which led to imperial ambitions. The Chinese empire relied on passive containment of nomads (the Long Wall), settlements of semi-barbarous populations in buffer zones, and armies manned by convicts. The draft was abolished around 32 AD, and the civilian population was left to do what it did best: produce the resources to feed its armies.

A citizen-army (and fleet)-in-being will dissuade low-level and opportunistic aggression, where the aggressor is led by benefit/cost considerations. These defence instruments can rely on the draft: in ‘normal’ circumstances, the draftees do not risk death – though they will be bored. The dissuasive role can also be taken on by natural defences: the sea has protected the UK and, even more, the USA from incursions.

Totalitarian ideologies of the 20th century put paid to this model. Both Nazism and Communism were intent on global domination.⁵ The cost of expansion was no longer dissuading. For a democracy thus threatened, relentless containment was inevitable.⁶ An arms race was on, demanding ever faster and more appropriate (read: sophisticated) responses (see Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War by Andrew J. Bacevich). A citizen-army was not credible in this role – and Vietnam proved it. Relentless containment rang the death-knell of the citizen-army.

The rise of imperial democracies

The progression from relentless containment to peace-as-dominion followed a logical path: preventive war – or perhaps strategies like ‘shock and awe’ – became tools to achieve comprehensive security. These methods aimed to ensure compliance that extended well beyond the initial impact of the shock. The ultimate objective was victory on the battlefield, followed by the establishment of peace-as-dominion. This marked the emergence of an ‘imperial’ democracy.

The Iraq and Afghanistan wars were not a success. Dominance could not be established, so stalemate ensued. Withdrawal left shattered societies. War-lordism and metastasising centres of private violence ensued (see Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War by Andrew J. Bacevich). ‘Light’ versions of preventive wars are being tried out – high-tech drones, 360° surveillance, and special operations.

This approach comes at a cost:

1. Wars are wars, and in a democracy, they demand direct involvement of the highest authorities. ‘Micro-wars,’ just as full-scale wars, represent an enormous distraction from the task of governing a democracy.
2. Professional armies and preventive wars are exceedingly expensive (Joseph Stiglitz calculated in 2008 that the Iraq War was going to cost over USD 3 trillion (see The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict by Linda J. Bilmes and Joseph E. Stiglitz; the figure is disputed, but the order of magnitude is not far-fetched). The opportunity costs of setting a democracy permanently on a military footing, rather than letting it evolve naturally, cannot be assessed. Additionally, unforeseeable at this point are the political and economic consequences of having funded much of the last two wars extra-territorially. Finally, professional armies can be destructive to the very fabric of a society (one might argue that Islamic civilisation failed to develop because, from the outset, it relied on professional armies; see The Armies of the Caliphs: Military and Society in the Early Islamic State by Hugh Kennedy).
3. Strategically, preventive wars are self-weakening. In a multipolar world, the aim of war is to increase relative power within the concert of nations. The USA achieved dominance after WWII mainly by outsourcing to Russia the fight against Germany. In Iraq and Afghanistan, the USA expended itself and, in this way, lost power relative to other main participants (China and Russia), who were more than happy to watch the USA bleed.

In this sketch, the relentless character of the military stance drove professionalisation: abolishing the draft was just a logical step along the way. Inverting course on the draft issue will not automatically void the policy of preventive wars. In any case, the Humpty-Dumpty of ‘the citizen-army’ cannot be put together again (not unless there is a massive threat at the nation’s doorstep). The only way forward is through an assessment of the context.

Redefining the goals of peace

Peace-as-victory has become unattainable, as the destruction of society it requires renders it meaningless (e.g. in WWII, achieving victory necessitated the destruction of Germany and Japan, which would be even more catastrophic today). The only realistic outcome now is peace-as-end-of-conflict, as seen in Korea and, to some extent, Vietnam. However, armies rarely fight for this type of resolution, and citizen-armies are even less likely to do so.

Peace-as-dominion might result in prolonged stalemates at regional or local levels – Israel serves as an example (though the sustainability of such an equilibrium is questionable). However, on a global scale, peace-as-dominion is highly unlikely. Leading nations, and even those of secondary status, will not remain subdued indefinitely. This is because imposing regime change through violence is no longer viable; it causes excessive destruction to the target society, as seen with Germany and Japan after WWII.

Of course, wishful thinking helps. Stalin thought that conquered countries would spontaneously follow the Soviet Union to communist utopia. Ironically, the neo-cons believed that ‘shock and awe’ could unleash freedom and democracy in the Middle East.

Peace-as-convergence (Bachevic uses the term ‘harmony’; I do not use it here, as it somehow implies a ‘desirable’ state; it is not, it is simply the point of intersection between stability and change, and the place from which evolution can progress) is the only possible solution ahead. It yields a dynamic equilibrium of self-domestication. It evolves by adaptation – over time, it yields silent transformations. Peace-as-convergence rests not on an ideal but on the stark recognition that conquest, or even dominance, is no longer possible.

Peace-as-convergence relies on many facets: growth, trade, reciprocal investments, and, of course, culture – silent and otherwise. Peace-as-convergence is only possible if participant countries eschew projecting dominance or aspiring to hegemony. The two policies cannot be pursued in parallel. Hegemonic stances and peace-as-dominion are perceived as unequal exchanges, which have no place in complex and modern societies but are a throwback to extractive empires. The fact that hegemony is no longer feasible – or let us say, more prudently, reasonable – should facilitate changing strategies to incorporate this reality.

According to Weber, a state is a ‘human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.’ In a sense, Weber has it backward. A human community eschewing the use of force in its exchanges will want to police this founding commitment and, if necessary, restore it. The monopoly of physical force is not a precondition for the emergence of a society; a free society resting on trust will, however, entrust an impartial structure with the task of policing the voluntary commitment. Commitment to voluntary cooperation secures trust; trust is the mainstay of the state. Informal social verification, as well as overt policing, is just a fitting adjunct to trust, not its source.

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1. Though the democratic peace theory was not rigorously or scientifically studied until the 1960s, the basic principles of the concept had been argued as early as the 1700s in the works of philosopher Immanuel Kant and political theorist Thomas Paine. Kant foreshadowed the theory in his essay Perpetual Peace, although he thought that a world with only constitutional republics was only one of several necessary conditions for perpetual peace. Kant’s theory was that a majority of the people would never vote to go to war unless in self-defence. Therefore, if all nations were republics, it would end war because there would be no aggressors. In earlier but less cited works, Thomas Paine made similar or stronger claims about the peaceful nature of republics. Paine wrote in Common Sense: ‘The Republics of Europe are all (and we may say always) in peace.’ Paine argued that kings would go to war out of pride in situations where republics would not.’
2. For a century, British governmental policy and public opinion were against conscription for foreign wars. At the start of World War I, the British Army consisted of six divisions and one cavalry division in the United Kingdom, and four divisions overseas. Fourteen Territorial Force divisions also existed, and 300,000 were in the Reserve Army.
3. As the Russian Empire expanded eastward under Ivan IV, in addition to overthrowing the Volga Khanates, Moscow’s forces also crossed the Urals for the first time, taking the Khanate of Sibir as a tributary. In 1571, the Khan stopped sending tribute, and the Russian ambassador who went to investigate in 1572 was killed. A somewhat haphazard response followed, one that was initially mostly a private endeavour but had a charter from the imperial government.
4. One force behind the expansion was likely the Stroganoff family, who for two centuries had built their wealth trading food, salt, metals, and fur. The Tsar was both one of their biggest customers and also a borrower of the Stroganoff fortune. In 1574, the family was awarded a trading monopoly east of the Urals (in Sibir territory and beyond). In the same era, a Cossack named Yermak began to lead punitive expeditions following trade routes into the region, in 1580–84 sacking a number of places in Sibir.
5. Whether the Soviet Union intended to spread Communism worldwide is a debated question. Following Viktor Suvorov: The chief culprit: Stalin’s grand design to start World War II., I’d like to suspect that he did. He certainly did not believe in ‘peaceful coexistence,’ and history has proven him right on this point.
6. NSC 68 (approved in 1951) sets the strategy from the USA point of view. I’ll leave it to specialists to decide whether it entailed pure containment, balance of terror, coercive containment, rollback, or even preventive war. The formulations probably were vague – the words had not been tested against context.

The post was first published on DeepDip.

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