Evidence of 4GW

Peter at The Strategist has voiced some frustration at the discussions over fourth generation warfare - he doesn't think that there is any "there" there. So he's going to talk about it at his blog, try to figure things out. I like the idea, personally - I think it helps answer a lot of things as to how the nexus of military, technology, politics, and culture influence the style of warfighting. There's a good deal of debate on both sides, the conventional Clausewitzeans and the 4GW advocates (although I think even 4GW can be viewed to act along Clausewitz's principles).

So I wandered over to the Duck of Minerva and saw Charli Carpenter's post on tallying collateral damage in conflicts, and it rang a bell in my mind. She has some graphs at the site that you can look at.

So are unintentional civilian deaths trending up or down in absolute terms and / or as a percentage of all civilian deaths? This analysis suggests that collateral damage rather than war crimes now constitute the majority of civilian deaths worldwide, and that the total number of collateral damage deaths is 20 times higher than at the turn of the last century.

The ratio of collateral damage victims to war crimes victims has dramatically increased since the end of the Cold War. According to Downes' dataset, between 1823 and 1900, unintentional deaths constituted 17% of all deaths in war. Since 1990, that number has risen to 59%. 
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 But if these numbers are anywhere close to correct (and I suspect if anything they are conservative) this analysis suggests an urgent need for a rethinking the laws of war designed to protect civilians. In the 1970s, when the Geneva Conventions were hashed out, governments' key concern was to protect civilians from intentional attack. War crimes are dropping in part because international laws against targeting civilians are working. Collateral damage is increasing in part because of the absence of such clear-cut rules. It's time for this to change. 

Here's my theory - the increase of collateral damage can be correlated with the rise of 4GW, because it is a fight between non-state actors and states, where the civilian populace is the venue for warfare. It used to be that the civilians were left out of warfare in 1 and 2GW, but increasingly were involved in 3GW (after 1900). As Charli notes, developing the "laws of war" to protect noncombatants has helped reduce war crimes, but nothing to stop collateral damage.

This is preliminary research, and the statistics need to be checked (in particular, the graph in Charli's post needs to show better resolution in the 1900-1944 period), but I'm kind of excited about this idea. It could represent evidence of the shift from 3GW to 4GW, following World War 2. Or not - but it's still interesting stuff.

Comments

[Ray]

It seems to me that a way forward in this particular tangled web is to find some legal definitions. What is meant by War Crimes, Collateral Damage, and what are deemed legitimate targets involving civilians. It's a very heavy subject. I think that a hefty volume could come out of it, but it would have pages and pages of references, and no central conclusion- except one perhaps: the increasing destructive power of weapons and collapse generally of respect for human life. I think it was Wellington who replied to one of his officers, who had admiringly commented on Napoleon's abilities as commander in chief, and his subjugation of Europe and it's civilian populaces. "Yes" Wellington agreed, "But he is not a gentleman". I think we have to look at the Causes first, and the Means next, and the Results last. But someone else can pursue that if they wish- I'm swinging from apple trees in between visiting this blog. The apples are damn'good this year. This afternoon, the British Tommy is moving forward to attack some Taliban, and I'm carrying baskets of apples to the house. Strange feeling; different worlds. Difficult to focus on the 4GW subject , but that's my problem.

[Greg Sanders]

That's a really interesting way of looking at things. Thanks, I wouldn't have seen this otherwise. I know a few other combat datasets, I'll have to see if any of them have applicable data.

As a side note, I think one of the main blocks to developing laws of war relevant to wars between states and non-state actors has been a consistent reluctance to treat non-state actors as legitimate players. That may be part of why we haven't addressed the collateral damage issue.

[Trev]

Aren't non-state players closer to criminal than military? Maybe this is a thread that can be investigated. The Mafia liked car bombs, the IRA had morter teams, if you don't have to worry about tanks and aircraft then a robust police response might be the way to go. IEDs and RPGs will make things tougher, though.

[J.]

I actually had a post about a year ago on this very topic. Yes, the term "non-state actor" is actually quite broader than just addressing terrorism.

[Charli Carpenter]

Jason, thanks for the blog response. I have more thoughts up at Current Intelligence now on this topic. I guess I'm interested in finding out if the relationship suggested by my cut at Downes' data is valid before I get into trying to explain it. Needs some corroboration across other datasets.

I don't think the issue of engagement with non-state actors is necessarily implied as an explanation of those particular results, though, because Downes' data is only on interstate wars. He explicitly excludes civil wars that often involve non-state actors on one side. Even the Iraq war only has data through 2003, when it was primarily a war against another army. So the numbers here really reflect the pre-4th-gen warfare (they also reflect a coding scheme that wasn't really designed to get at this particular nuance in the law).

I think an exhaustive look at the issue would require a better dataset or at a minimum, a better meta-analysis of several datasets, and it would definitely need to include civil and internationalized wars as well. Then we could get into hypothesis testing like you're talking about.

This kind of initial cut is certainly useful for hypothesis-building, though, eh? Some of the comments on Drezner's blog also put forth hypotheses, such as "it's all about aerial warfare;" one colleague has written me suggesting the higher absolute numbers are just a result of population growth worldwide. For my part, I'm interested in the extent to which war law itself is the problem. Targeting of civilians and even indiscriminate attacks are clearly prohibited by law. But there's very little legalization in the area of "accidental" civilian deaths. Lots of interesting questions there. Cheers.