Wars Less About Ideas Than Extreme Tribalism

27 March Christian Science Monitor commentary - Today's Wars are Less About Ideas than Extreme Tribalism by David Ronfeldt.

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Western strategists and policymakers should stop talking about a clash of civilizations and focus on the real problem: extreme tribalism. Recent events - riots in many nations protesting cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, Sunni-Shiite warring in Iraq, the Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan - confirm that the West is not in a clash with Islam. Instead, Islam, which is a civilizing force, has fallen under the sway of Islamists who are a tribalizing force.

Unfortunately, the tribalism theme has difficulty gaining traction. After the end of the cold war, many American strategists preferred the optimistic "end of history" idea that democracy would triumph around the world, advanced by Francis Fukuyama in 1989. A contrary notion - reversion to tribalism - made better sense to other strategists, such as France's Jacques Attali in 1992. Indeed, the emergence of ethnic warring in the Balkans and elsewhere confirmed that when societies crumble, people revert to tribal and clan behaviors that repudiate liberal ideals.

Perhaps partly because the idea of "tribalism" sounds too anthropological for modern strategists, it has not taken hold. American thinking has shifted to revolve around a more high-minded but less accurate concept: "the clash of civilizations" articulated by Samuel Huntington in 1993...

So let's shift away from the civilization paradigm. The tribalism paradigm is better for illuminating the crucial problem: the tribalization of religion. The more that extremists create divisions between "us" and "them," vainly claim sacredness solely for their own ends, demonize others, revel in codes of revenge, crave territorial and spiritual conquests, and suppress moderates who disagree - all the while claiming to act on behalf of a deity - the more their religious orientation becomes utterly tribal and prone to wreaking violence of the darkest kind. They can only pretend to represent a civilization.

The "war of ideas" should be rethought. Western leaders keep pressing Muslim leaders everywhere to denounce terrorism as uncivilized. But this approach, plus counterpressures from sectarian Islamists, has put moderate Muslims on the defensive, stymieing them from speaking out. An approach that focuses on questioning extreme tribalism may be more effective at freeing up dialogue and inviting a search for common, ecumenical ground...

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19 July Wall Street Journal commentary / book review - The Tribal Way of War by Robert Kaplan.

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Forget Clausewitz: Nations now fight clans driven by pride, vengeance and martial religiosity.

While the U.S. spends billions of dollars on sophisticated defense systems, the dime-a-dozen kidnapper and suicide bomber have emerged as the most strategic weapons of war. While we tie ourselves in legal knots over war's acceptable parameters, international law has increasingly less bearing on those whom we fight. And while our commanders declare "force protection" as their highest priority, enemy commanders declare the need for more martyrs. It seems that the more advanced we become, the more at a disadvantage we are in the 21st-century battlefield.

In "Insurgents, Terrorists, and Militias," Richard H. Shultz Jr. and Andrea J. Dew, both of Tufts's Fletcher School, have produced a wise and cogent briefing book about who our enemies are and how to anticipate their field tactics. The problem, they state early on, is that the Pentagon--the product of a rational, science-based Western culture--relies on objective quantification for its analysis. But what happens, the authors ask, if there is nothing to quantify? What happens if the enemy is merely an organic part of the landscape, revealing its features only at the moment of attack? Well, then all we can do is study these "idiosyncratic" human landscapes and use anthropology to improve our intelligence assessments.

Forget Karl von Clausewitz's dictum that war is a last resort and circumscribed by the methodical actions and requirements of a state and its army. Forget Hugo Grotius's notion that war should be circumscribed by a law of nations. As the authors remind us, paraphrasing the anthropologist Harry Turney-High: "Tribal and clan chieftains did not employ war as a cold-blooded and calculated policy instrument. . . . Rather, it was fought for a host of social-psychological purposes and desires, which included . . . honor, glory, revenge, vengeance, and vendetta." With such motives, torture and beheadings become part of the normal ritual of war...

Because Mr. Shultz and Ms. Dew take tribes seriously, they don't stereotype them. The whole point of this book is that, because each tribal culture is unique, each will fight in its own way; it is a matter of knowing what a culture is truly capable of once it feels itself threatened. Thus the heart of the book is case studies....

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And "Insurgents,Terrorists and Militias"

Lordy do those books look good ! Thanks for the heads up .


I see MCA stocks the latter book , usual sources doesn't seem to
carry " The Tribal Way of War" yet .

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Because Mr. Shultz and Ms. Dew take tribes seriously, they don't stereotype them. The whole point of this book is that, because each tribal culture is unique, each will fight in its own way; it is a matter of knowing what a culture is truly capable of once it feels itself threatened. Thus the heart of the book is case studies....

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I reiterate my 2 rules of cross-cultural understanding and relations:

1. They don't think like you do...
2. They have an agenda in all they do with you...

As in this case, they don't fight the way we do and their agenda in fighting does not equate to our campaign plan objectives. Hopefully this book on case studies will illuminate those thoughts. I know that the reason I took anthropology as a minor was the opportunity to look at various cultures through a lens colored by value-laden judgements or assumptions.

Best,
Tom