The Importance of International Theory for National Security – Demerara Waves Online News- Guyana

Last updated on Wednesday, September 4, 2024 at 5:28 AM by Denis Chabrol

By Dr. Randy Persaud, Professor Emeritus, Institute for Strategic Studies, American University, Washington, DC

In 2016, I published a research article entitled “Neo-Gramscian Theory and Violence in the Third World: A Moment of Enlargement” in the journal Globalizations (vol. 13, no. 5). The aim of the article was to provide an overview and critique of neo-Gramscian political economy and international theory. This was a difficult task because my PhD supervisor (two decades earlier) was none other than the world-renowned neo-Gramscian scholar Robert W. Cox. Moreover, Professor Stephen R. Gill, a prolific scholar on neo-Gramscian international relations, was also on my thesis committee. Another neo-Gramscian theorist, Craig Murphy of Wellesley College, who wrote a powerful book with the Italian diplomat Enrico Augelli, was my external examiner.

As you might expect, writing a critique of three of the most influential neo-Gramscian scholars was a difficult task because of the respect I had for these men and their brilliant work. Yet, in many ways, they were the ones who had paved the way for challenging the established order of things. They were also the ones who, within international critical theory, championed Thomas Kuhn’s call to break the backbone of “normal science.”

Knowledge building is like that, that is, it requires not only intelligence and hard work, but also courage. The criticism I made was that neo-Gramscian international theory was too “northernist” and, therefore, tended to find more consensual relations in the international system compared to IR scholars who combined critical political economy, international security and postcolonialism. In other words, scholars working from a “southern” perspective, like this writer, found more violence and less consensus in the international system. What I found in my research was a real North/South epistemological divide.

For that work, I examined all the major wars between Western powers and Third World societies. These were not direct wars between states, because for a significant period in question, the West was at war with colonies fighting for independence. What I wanted to find out was the rates of combat deaths. I had hypothesized that the “death rate” was in excess of what I considered necessary to achieve a standard battlefield victory. I knew intuitively that there had been excessive killings that could never meet the criteria for “just wars.” It should be noted that I know that “just war theory” does not deal with death rates per se.

I examined data from the following wars: Belgium vs. Congo Free State (1886–1908), US vs. Philippines (1899–1902), Germany vs. Namibia (1904), Italy vs. Ethiopia (1936), Netherlands vs. Indonesia (1945–1949), Britain vs. Kenya (1952–1956), Britain vs. Malaysia (1948–1960), France vs. Algeria (1954–1962), Portugal vs. Angola (1961–1975), Portugal vs. Mozambique (1961–1975), France vs. Vietnam (1946–1954), US vs. Korea (1950–1954), US vs. Vietnam (1954–1975), USSR vs. Afghanistan (1979–1989), and US vs. Iraq (2003–2012).

I did not include conflicts with fewer than 1,000 combat deaths, and I also excluded the highest and lowest estimates for each war. Note that we have the exact number of Western dead (338,822 between 1886 and 2013), but wide ranges of estimates for Third World deaths.

I found three ratios of combat deaths based on different assumptions. The highest was 45:1 and the lowest 36:1. This means that at the high end, for every 45 Third World deaths, there was one Western death; at the low end, for every 36 Western deaths, 36 Third World people died. I ran other scenarios, and based on conflicts over a 125-year period, we can estimate that in any future large-scale war between a Western power and a Third World state, the historical ratios will hold.

Based on that, I wrote a professional memo on the first day of the Israeli invasion of Gaza. I did not make any calculations for the West Bank. My memo predicted that the war would slow down or stop when 40,000 Palestinians were killed. Please note that I made this projection based entirely on analysis of historical data.

Good readers always ask: what’s the point? Fair enough. The point is that international security is not just what you see on the battlefield. It’s more than fighter jets, tanks, precision-guided munitions, JDAMS and even beyond wanton destruction.

Security is a largely knowledge-based issue at all levels. The most pronounced aspects are in the areas of developing a Grand Strategy and defining how it shapes the national posture in terms of defence, firepower and the balance between defence and offence. Other critical areas that depend on deep knowledge include acquisitions, intelligence operations, strategic communications, policies and behaviour in relation to “allies and friends” and, among other things, internal strategies for maintaining state cohesion, stability and order and maintaining confidence in state and national institutions.

The empirical research I have undertaken to critique neo-Gramscian international theory has allowed me to go beyond mere critique. The analysis of the data clearly laid the groundwork for reconstructing the theory, which was the original intention. Based on the quotes in the article, some of that is happening. That kind of work and research in different subject areas are now critically important for any security architecture. Tactics without strategy are a sure recipe for failure. Strategy is essentially a knowledge-based enterprise.

The 2016 article mentioned above is available (free) on Google Scholar.

Dr. Randy Persaud is an Advisor to the Office of the President and Director of the National Defense Institute.