Changing Character of War

A 'deliberately provocative' assessment of contemporary conflict. In 'The End of Peace and Optimism: Assessing the Changing Character of War', CCW Director Dr Rob Johnson discusses a broad range of subjects pertinent to understanding the evolution of modern war - from the changing impact of religion to the increasing centrality of the civilian dimension - and does so with reference to several competing disciplinary approaches.

Dr Heather Roff discusses the role of autonomous weapons systems within the international community. She provides a theoretical framework for defining and classifying these systems, examining the diplomatic and moral concerns that they pose. For the past three years the international community convened a series of informal meetings of experts under the auspices of the United Nation’s Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) to consider whether or not to preemptively ban lethal autonomous weapons systems under an additional protocol to the Convention. The debate has circled the same set of concerns: what exactly lethal autonomous weapon systems (AWS) are and whether it is incumbent upon states to ban them before they are developed. Without a definition states argue they cannot know what exactly it is they are supposed to ban. Yet after three years of expert testimony, there is no agreement on any meaningful definition. Diplomatic considerations are pressing, but Dr Heather Roff believes that the source of this confusion is due to an antecedent and more profound concern, one that is inherently tied to the question of defining what constitutes an AWS. In plain terms, it is a concern with the authorization to make war and the subsequent delegation of this authority. Until now, humans have been the sole agents authorized to make and to wage war, and questions of authorization and war have never been technologically dependent. Rather, they have been moral considerations and not empirical ones. She attempts to provide a theoretical framework for defining and classifying autonomous weapons systems. By so doing, she argues the moral quandary over autonomous weapons has its roots in concerns over the delegation of a (moral) faculty: the authority to wage war.

Professor David Galbreath gives a talk for the Changing Character of War seminar series.

Since the ‘Arab Spring’ uprising of 2011, the United States and a network of European and regional Sunni allies have applied instruments of coercion against Syria that collectively take on the character of ‘hybrid warfare’. In this conflict, Washington and its alliance partners have undertaken a wide range of lethal and non-lethal covert operations, with heavy reliance placed upon those performed by regional Sunni allies. By empowering jihadis as proxies, President Obama has borrowed much from the Reagan administration’s Afghan playbook. As he signaled the launch of this campaign in August 2011, President Obama served notice that the United States would be “pressuring President Assad to step aside”. But one year later, a Defence Intelligence Agency report revealed a hitherto unacknowledged sectarian war goal: the establishment of a “declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in eastern Syria”. It geo-political function would be to break the Shiite crescent. As of today, this hybrid war has produced not just one, but a conglomeration of religiously cleansed Sunni Islamist principalities in northern and eastern Syria. Some are controlled by the Islamic State and al-Qaida, while others are dominated by so-called moderate armies and militias. Among the latter are Washington-backed jihadist formations, such as Jaish al-Fateh and Jaish al-Islam. In all of these principalities, social pluralism has been replaced by Sunni supremacism, impacting not only religious minorities, but also non-Islamist, secular Sunni Muslims. This presentation will demonstrate the relationship between the dynamics of Washington’s hybrid war in Syria and the process of religious cleansing and the dismantling of state structures that support social pluralism.

The power of poetry to move Arab listeners and readers emotionally, to infiltrate the psyche and to create an aura of authenticity around the ideologies it enshrines, make it a perfect weapon for militant jihadist causes. Over the last three decades, several Islamic extremist magazines have regularly featured poetry extolling the virtues of, and rewards for, militant jihad. However, scholars and analysts alike have almost entirely neglected contemporary Arabic jihadist poetry, skipping over these classical mono-rhymed passages in favour of more direct position statements and theological debates. Yet poetry can carry messages to a broader audience as it plugs naturally into a long tradition of oral transmission, particularly on the Arabian Peninsula. This presentation asks: How relevant is poetry? What are its main characteristics? What does it actually do and what can it tell us? Dr Elisabeth Kendall is a Senior Research Fellow at Pembroke College, Oxford.

One of the aspects of the changing character of war is an increased awareness of and attention to those who go missing due to armed conflict. This presentation will discuss changing norms and competing frameworks that surround the search for the missing. Derek Congram is a forensic anthropologist and a Research Associate in the Global Justice Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, Canada. He has a Ph.D. in Archaeology, with a focus on bioarchaeology (the analysis of skeletal remains in archaeological contexts).

Kenneth Payne explores the evolutionary basis of strategic behaviour, and assesses the impact of non-biological intelligence on the future of warfare. From chimpanzees to computers, via a dose of Clausewitz: hopefully something for everyone. Dr Kenneth Payne is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Security Studies at King's College London. This talk covers some of the research for his forthcoming book, of the same title. His earlier books considered the psychology of decision-making in the Vietnam War, and the connections between liberal warfare and human evolution.

Do criminal groups use 'strategy'? Are crime wars really wars? This talk will reveal criminal groups using force and other means to determine political outcomes to suit their own agendas and competing with states in a common 'market for government'. Dr James Cockayne (United Nations University) has recently published a new book 'Hidden Power: The Strategic Logic of Organized Crime'.

Steven Jermy gives a talk for the Changing Character of War Programme seminar series. Steven Jermy's analysis builds on an article published in 2013 for the Russian International Affairs Council, and on original science set out in in draft paper for the Royal Society. Included amongst his conclusions is the prediction of a 24% reduction in global GDP by 2030, together with preliminary thoughts about the geopolitical consequences therein.

Mohamed Haji Ingiriis gives a talk for the Changing Character of War Programme seminar series. Using oral testimonies, visual evidence and ethnographic observation, and drawing from literature across social sciences, this presentation seeks to trace the persistent and perpetual Somali conflicts in which the waves and webs of violence were conceptualised in various ways.