The Problem of War

Abstract

The phenomenon of war is a foundational problem for analysts of contemporary world affairs, not in the philosophical sense that it speaks to some theory of knowledge, as foundationalists like René Descartes would have us do, but rather in the sense that it is a condition of possibility that gives rise to the modernist project and continues to shape its key characteristics—namely, the states-based system, capitalism and the widespread use of reason as an end unto itself—as those characteristics, in turn, reshape war. When analysts provide accounts of war, in all its complexity, they encounter significant empirical obstacles and conceptual difficulties. As types of political violence, state aggression and armed conflict eclipse crimes against humanity, genocide and transnational terrorism in terms of human casualties, material destruction and the potential for producing systemic transformation across the international order, though each of these constitutes an enduring and unruly problem for those who seek to govern contemporary world affairs. Yet can war, a much-contested concept, really be problematized in such a way that divorces it from the more mundane practices of everyday political life? In this chapter, I canvass several concepts of war before proposing a novel way of thinking about this phenomenon that differs from those conventional approaches which treat “war” as a synonym for either “state aggression” or “armed conflict,” or both. I draw on Michel Foucault’s notion of silent war to propose that politics is best understood as an extension of the use of armed force before suggesting that the modernist project is the continuation of politico-cultural war. I conclude by warning that those individuals and groups struggling among one another to govern contemporary world affairs keep questions of war separate from the routine politics of international life as means of demonstrating the value of their own roles and responsibilities and of preserving their associated privileges.