There Are
Vested Interests in War Making
By JONATHAN POWER
LONDON--War is today sweeping Kosovo. The UN-brokered
peace is breaking down in Angola. In Rwanda, Hutu militiamen
killed 34 Tutsis watching the World Cup in an hotel.
We hear about it all and ring our hands in despair at
the ethnic hatred that now seems to be unhindered by the
disciplines imposed by the exigencies of big power politics
during the Cold War. What we don't do much of is to look at
it in, should I say, more positive terms. What use is
conflict? In whose interest is it waged?
We assume too blithely that these wars happen despite the
intentions of rational people. In fact they happen often
BECAUSE of the intentions of thinking people. War is often
not simply a breakdown of the system but a way of creating
an alternative system of profit, power and protection. To
paraphrase Clausewitz, war has increaingly become the
continuation of economics by other means.
Indeed, "winning" in the conventional sense may not be
particularly desirable. For war lords and their
foot-soldiers--Jonas Savimbi's UNITA in Angola is the
supreme example==the point of war may be nothing less than
the legitimacy which it confers on actions which in normal
times would be punishable as crimes.
We hand-wringers on the outside assume war is an "end",
and the abuse of civilians the unfortunate "means". We are
wrong. The end in many of these wars (ex-Yugoslavia is the
most dramatic example) is to engage in abuse (torture, rape
etc.) And crimes (looting, stealing houses and their
contents from those they dispossess) that bring immediate
reward. The means is war and its perpetration.
In the days of colonial empire or communist expansion
fighting was seen as either the struggle for a specific
goal==liberation from imperial possession or the overthrow
of an oppressive feudalistic structure. In both cases there
tended to be ideological self-discipline. By and large,
troops under the command of Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel
Castro or Che Guevara did not pillage. Nor did they rape and
intimidate the population they were trying to liberate. And
in Cold War days rebels could often win subsidies, both cash
and guns, from Moscow, Beijing or Havana.
Nowadays everything has to be paid for. UNITA in Angola,
the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and the Fuerzas Armadas
Revolucionarias de Colombia are all examples of movements
that have gravitated from a strong ideological purpose to a
narrow, self-satisfying, economic one. (In Colombia these
erstwhile leftist guerrillas are today called the "third
cartel", so deep is their involvement in the drug business.)
Moreover, rebels without a financial and political godfather
are more likely to resort to brutality in an effort to make
maximum impact with minimum funding. Civilians have become a
tool of war.
Much of it is initiated not by rebels seeking to
transform the state but by elites intent on defending vested
interests. Many of such elites gained power in post-colonial
states; others like Slobodan Milosevic in Yugoslavia won
their privileged position in communist days, and were
determined to hang on to it after, come hell or high
water.
All this begs the difficult question, what can be done by
outsiders to diminish the power of such people, hamstring
their effectiveness and give a better chance of life and
security to their would-be victims? Can the international
community "reduce the benefits of violence and increase
those of peace?" This question is posed in a lucid
exposition by David Kean in a new study written for the
London-based International Institute for Strategic
Studies.
One way is to give the leadership an economic incentive
to switch to peace. This, in fact, is what the Oslo Accords
did for Yasser Arafat and his cabal of officials who run the
Palestinian Authority. They have gained tangible economic
benefits from "peace" with Israel--from international aid,
business monopolies and the ability, much of the time, to
move freely in and out of Israel. The Minister of Civil
Affairs, Jamil Tarifi, has even won contracts to build
Israeli settlements!
Such "peace" can be a problem when the violent men make
peace, as the Palestinian case shows only too well. But it
is much better than what went before and gives the chance
for outside pressure to be brought to bear to fashion a
long-term peace that is more attractive than war for the
majority, not just for the elite.
In fact, all outside help can be double-edged. Emergency
aid, while reducing the need to bleed the populace, can fuel
the violence by feeding the combatants to fight another day,
as is clearly happening in the Sudan today.
Even pushing for democracy may not always be a panacea
for deeply divided societies. Crime is eminently compatible
with democracy as Milosevic has shown. Unless the law is
also free, and the press and the non-governmental
organizations too, thus enabling the development of a
widespread peace culture, democracy can be manipulated to
the old elite's advantage.
Thus whilst offering the carrot of economic
incentives--rather than the often negative blunderbuss of
sanctions--it is useful to couple them with certain
penalties. One way, rarely used surprisingly, is to deny the
leadership and their families access to foreign bank
accounts and overseas travel. Colombia's decision to freeze
guerrilla bank accounts and confiscate their assets seems to
have been more effective than direct military attacks.
If the warlords are in the ethnic violence business
essentially for economic reasons then the would-be
peacemakers must also play the economic game. Making peace
in today's world has this new dimension. It deserves more
attention than it's getting.
July 15, 1998,
LONDON
Copyright © 1998 By JONATHAN POWER
Note: I can be reached by phone +44 385 351172
and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
|