OPINION: The significance of international theory for national security

Last Updated on Friday, 6 September 2024, 20:26 by Writer

By Dr. Randy Persaud, Professor Emeritus, SIS, American University, Washington, DC

In 2016 I published a research article under the title “Neo-Gramscian Theory and Third World Violence: A Time for Broadening” 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 challenging task because my PhD supervisor (two decades’ prior) was none other than the world renowned Neo-Gramscian scholar, Robert W. Cox. To boot, Professor Stephen R. Gill, a prolific scholar in Neo-Gramscian IR was also on my dissertation 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.

You can imagine that writing a critique of three of the most influential Neo-Gramscian scholars was a tall order because of the respect I had for these men and their brilliant work. Yet, in many ways, they were the ones who had constructed the pathway to challenge the established order of things. They were also the ones within critical international theory who championed Thomas Kuhn’s call to break the backbone of ‘normal science’.

Knowledge construction is like that, meaning it takes not only intelligence and hard work, but also courage. The critique I offered was that Neo-Gramscian international theory was too ‘Northernist’, and because of that, it tended to find more relations of consensus in the international system compared to IR scholars who were combining critical political economy, international security, and post-colonialism. Put differently, scholars working from a ‘Southernist’ perspective, such as this writer, were finding more violence and less consensus in the international system. What I found in my research was a real North/South epistemological divide.

For that paper, I examined all the major wars between (or among) Western powers and societies in the Third World. It was not straight up state-to-state wars because for a significant period under consideration, the West was at war with colonies fighting for their independence. What I wanted to find out was the battle-death ratios. I had hypothesized that the ‘kill-ratio’ was beyond what was necessary for what I saw as necessary for standard battlefield victory. I knew intuitively that there had been overkill that could never meet the criteria for ‘just wars.’ Note, I know ‘just war theory’ is not about kill-ratios per se.

I examined the data for the following wars – Belgium vs. Congo Free State (1886–1908), United States vs. Philippines (1899–1902), Germany vs. Namibia (1904), Italy vs. Ethiopia (1936), the 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), United States vs. Korea (1950–1954), United States vs. Vietnam (1954–1975), USSR vs. Afghanistan (1979–1989), and United States vs. Iraq (2003–2012).

I left out those conflicts with fewer than 1,000 battle deaths, and I also excluded the highest and lowest estimates for each war. Note we have the exact number of westerners killed (338,822 between 1886 and 2013), but wide bands of estimates for those killed in the Third World.

I found three battle-death ratios 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 1 western death; at the lower end, for every 36 western deaths, 1 person in the Third World was killed. I ran some other scenarios and based on conflicts over a 125-year period, we can estimate that in any future full-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 day one of the Israel invasion of Gaza. I did not calculate for the West Bank. My memo predicted that the war will wind down or stop when 40,000 Palestinians are killed. Keep in mind that I made this projection based entirely on the analysis of the historical data.

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

Security is an intensely knowledge-based affair at all levels. The most pronounced aspects are in areas of framing a Grand Strategy, and defining how the latter shapes the national posture on defense, firepower, and the defense-offense balance. Other critical areas dependent on deep knowledge include procurement, intelligence operations, strategic communications, policies and behavior regarding ‘allies and friends,’ and among other things, the internal strategies on maintaining state cohesion, stability, order, and maintenance of confidence in state and national institutions.

The empirical investigation I had embarked on to critique Neo-Gramscian international theory has allowed me to go beyond mere critique. The data analysis clearly set the basis for the theory to be reconstituted, which was the original intention. Based on citation of the article, some of that is happening. That kind of work, and research in different issue areas, are now critically important to any security architecture. Tactics without strategy, is a sure recipe for failure. Strategy is essentially a knowledge-based enterprise.

Dr. Randy Persaud is Adviser in Office of the President and Director of the National Defence Institute.