Is War the Surest Route to Sustainable Peace?

Edward N. Luttwak asserts states should resist intervention “not because they are indifferent to human suffering but precisely because they care about it”, indicating enabling war is the most peace-facilitating, and humane, response to the outbreak of conflict. This essay will conversely argue the avoidance of intervention not only demonstrates a failure of global actors to act upon certain privileges, but also only deals with bare minimum conceptions of war and thus possesses limited applicability. To assert this notion, Luttwak’s hypothesis will first be outlined, followed by the theoretical flaws in his argument and ethical limitations.

According to Luttwak, when intervention takes place during war, combat is merely “suspended momentarily” whilst “tensions (are) extended indefinitely”, suggesting war is the surest route to sustainable peace. This can firstly be attributed to the motivations of peacekeeping forces, as it is implied actors intervene on a self-interested basis to attract charitable donations and press coverage, subsequently improving international perceptions of the intervening state/organisation. As a result, intervention only occurs on a non-combative level and the locally stronger force is appeased to protect peacekeeping personnel and deter confrontation. Apathetic intervention has proven catastrophic for war-torn states, with the death of 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus in the 1994 Rwandan genocide coming as a result of “a lack of will to take on the commitment necessary to prevent the genocide”, according to previous UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. Likewise, corruption has also been evidenced in UN intervention with a 2017 Associated Press report revealing more than 100 peacekeepers ran a child sex ring in Haiti over a ten-year period, indicating peacekeepers have not only failed to alleviate conflict, but exacerbated it. Luttwak also proposes intervention jeopardises civilians as, under the false pretence of prolonged safety, they have limited time to flee when peacekeepers disengage and, those who do flee, are met with refugee camps that act as “desirable homes rather than eagerly abandoned transit camps”, subsequently causing displaced civilians to become multigenerational refugees.

Whilst Luttwak provides some compelling arguments for why war is the surest route to sustainable peace, his conceptualisation of war appears underdeveloped thus creating errors in causation when transcending minimalist conceptions of war. According to Vittorio Bufacchi, violence can be defined as violation in the form of an infringement of one’s dignity, self-ownership or human rights. By this logic, the violence observed in war exceeds merely the exercise of force and instead encapsulates psychological and structural violations that often manifest in the suspension of civil rights and proliferation of social injustice. Though Luttwak references military combat extensively, as evidenced by his frequent discussion of ceasefires, battles and strategy, the notion that war leads to sustainable peace fails to consider, or outright ignores, conceptualisations of war where violence, as force, is replaced by violence, as violation. Disregard of this notion is further apparent in the examples selected to support sentiments that wars burn themselves out, with each case study of failed intervention reiterating death tolls and physical losses in the context of combat. Whilst it is valid to argue issues have been exacerbated in this domain, there have been multiple instances where peacekeeping forces have drastically improved socio-political conditions in conflict zones, such as the Mano River Basin sub-region of West Africa. Upon UN deployment, this location has seen the implementation of nine presidential and legislative elections, and establishment of a Special Court for Sierra Leone where war criminals Charles Taylor and Laurent Gbagbo have been convicted for crimes against humanity. The longevity of the UN’s commitment to this region was reflected in its response to the 2014 Ebola crisis in which the specialised agency, WHO, can be credited for the eradication of the disease in West Africa in 2016. Proponents of a multidimensional understanding of violence, such as Johan Galtung, could thus argue that, whilst wartime violence as a force may be the surest route to a sustainable peace, wartime violence as violation breaks the causal pathway and thus renders Luttwak’s theory redundant. This is supported by evidence of intervention advancing access to medical care, political stability, food security and subsequently mitigating structural violence, making it apparent that a surer route to peace demands intervention.

Furthermore, the theory is compromised when examining the type of peace Luttwak identifies as being attainable when states fail to intervene, as notions of war being the surest route prove not only insufficient, but also unethical. Whilst it appears Luttwak’s hypothesis could be applicable when assuming a minimalist conception of war, according to feminist and post-colonial paradigms peace remains implausible for women, particularly black women, as sexual violence rates spike during war and cease to fall when war ends. This would imply Luttwak merely references negative peace in his proposition, as Galtung’s conception of positive peace requires the presence of social institutions that provide an “equitable distribution of resources and peaceful resolution of conflicts” where “social justice, equality and human well-being” exist; all of which are absent if wartime rape fails to subside with the elimination of war. In the context of conflict, sexual violence also transpires at a grossly disproportionate level as gender hierarchies and unanimity amongst soldiers allow the practice, usually carried out as a means of humiliation, biological genocide or bragging right, to go unchallenged. Likewise, the hypothesis is deeply problematic when racialised as the conflicts cited by Luttwak predominantly occurred in developing, third world states and, assuming Democratic Peace Theory, it is unlikely conflict will ensue between most of the global superpowers as democracies are hesitant to engage in warfare. It is thus questionable whether such a potentially devastating hypothesis would be tested in the unlikely event that two Western democracies went to war. Moreover, if the theory failed and war did not burn out, non-white populations, women and most notably, non-white women, would be at a cataclysmic disadvantage having not only suffered in physical warfare, but also rampant sexual violence, structural injustice, social inequality and psychological devastation. Therefore, this means of achieving peace does not outweigh the benefits of securing peace due to the likelihood of this peace being negative, and the probability of war creating sustainable peace also does not justify taking such a destructive, unbalanced risk.

To conclude, arguments that war is the surest route to sustainable peace are somewhat valid, but severely lacking in feasibility. Theoretically, the notion is flawed due to its exclusion of broader conceptions of war, rendering it only applicable in the context of direct violence and physical force in a perpetrator-victim framework. Not only this, but the theory is ethically contentious as its abstraction of peace demonstrates limited disaggregation of the violence incurred on a gendered and racialised basis, as well as the demographics who would fall victim to its implementation. Luttwak can, however, be credited for his recognition of the disastrous failures of much of the military intervention that has historically taken place, though a more intersectional, testable route to sustainable peace lies with mitigating these failures and tackling structural inadequacies in peacekeeping forces, as opposed to eradicating intervention altogether.