| |
Editorial
12/2003 |
|
Civil war and intervention
Having experienced a long civil war in England (and certainly knowing about the one even worse in Germany) Thomas Hobbes published his book on human nature and the necessity of governments in 1651: Leviathan. The natural state of human beings appeared to him as bellum omnium contra omnes, Man as the most violent of all animals. “In such condition,” he wrote, “there is no place for Industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth, … no Arts, no Letters, no Society.“ He saw the only way out of barbarism in a contract which transferred the monopoly of power to an absolute sovereign at the head of the state, and irrevocably so: the violent masses must be legally incapacitated. J. S. McClelland has pointed out how unfortunate it was that Hobbes’ work, with which the concept of the social contract attained its actual meaning for the philosophical debate on state powers, at the same time devalued this concept: “Hobbes makes out a social contract case for the absolute government which the social contract had been invented to undermine.” However, by that McClelland leaves open the question of how else can such barbarian civil wars be ended.
What is happening today in many parts of the world, particularly in Africa, is very similar to the civil wars of the 17th century in Europe. And once again it offers a case for theories on the origin of the state. In his last book, published posthumously in 2000, Mancur Olson proposed the metaphor of the roving bandit for the situation of disorder before the stabilisation of a state. Jörg Faust described it so: “The plundering roving bandit strikes ever new areas and therefore is not interested in the well-being of the local people. He becomes a stationary bandit when he realises that it pays better to raise taxes from always the same people. Now he must take a great interest in economic growth because it increases his tax revenues.” So the stationary bandit is the state as a benevolent dictator that guarantees legal security, but by no means the civil freedoms whose emergence Olson describes in a later chapter. But is his metaphor at all suited to portray today's conditions?
Olson's stationary bandit is the ruler over the farmers and craftsmen that he taxes and the traders on whom he imposes road tolls. He must set great store in peace prevailing in the land – otherwise there would be fewer taxes and customs duties. But that was in the Middle Ages. The warlord of the 21st century, monopolising the trade in diamonds or coltan for his private profit or to pay his mercenaries, promoting the cultivation of poppies or concluding a contract with a foreign corporation on the exploitation of oilfields, does not need to bother about the rest of the country. He does not need it, and the people are saved from starving by international humanitarian aid. The economic sources from which the actors of today's civil wars finance themselves are not farmers and craftsmen but those of a selective and segmentary economy. That is not how a national economy comes into being, nor a nation or a society. “No Society” – in this respect the present diagnosis tallies with that of Hobbes.
Whereas Olson saw self-healing forces as being inherent in his model because a peaceful society yields greater profit for the ruler, there is no question of that amid the reality of today. Rather, an 'intact' society would be inconvenient for the warlord's profit. However, since the civil wars have considerable external impacts and result in unbearable misery for the people affected, these countries cannot simply be left to themselves. The international community must intervene and establish peaceful conditions. They must take over the monopoly of power if no state is in place on the ground. A state cannot be established by a social contract, but only by an intervention from outside. And, equally important, it must be ensured that the international business partners of the warlords – the industrial corporations as well as the drug traffickers – be called to account.
If this analysis is right, then it does not help to send troops to end current fighting at the respective places and lay down that they should be withdrawn after a few months. If all these civil wars are about resources they would flare up again the moment the foreign troops have left. Therefore the objective of the intervention must be to establish functioning institutions and a sound economy. But that means that intervention must be designed for the long term and be equipped with more than military means. Lakhdar Brahimi, in his report of August 2000 on UN peacekeeping operations, demanded the Security Council should not authorise any missions until the UN had sufficient troop strengths and money. This demand is significant, but does not go far enough. Funds for the reconstruction of the society must also be provided. Peace, as we can see in Afghanistan and Iraq, is not established by combat and occupation troops. How it can be established, we know not yet. But the attempts to help peaceful reconstruction and allow the people their own responsibility are heading in the right direction.
Reinold E. Thiel
|
