The New Aztecs

Editor's note: In today’s article, Zhivan Alach revisits many of the themes we discussed this week: the decreasing utility of warfare; the absence of existential political-military threats in the West; changing security-related norms, to include democratization, and much more. He also argues that Western governments have returned to a mode of self-restrained, ritualized warfare that is reminiscent of how the Aztecs fought more than 500 years ago. In making this analogy, Alach finally suggests that the apparent demise of traditional war is not the result of Russet and O’Neal’s “beneficent triangulation,” or even Mueller’s changing international norms. Instead, the demise has its roots within the practices of modern militaries themselves.

Roughly half a millennium ago, the Aztecs of Central America fought a series of what were known as Flower Wars. At various times, depending on the harvest,[i] which limited the windows of opportunity, Aztec armies would be sent forth.

The Aztecs’ purpose, however, was not the conquest of their enemy, the expansion of Aztec territory, or some other goal we might term policy today; rather, it was the taking of captives for religious rituals. Restraint was key; killing a foe in battle was of little use. Thus their weapons were designed to cripple, not kill,[ii] and in battle, Aztec warriors would deliberately avoid lethal blows, thus putting themselves in danger when fighting enemies whose lives would later be forfeit and who fought to kill. Furthermore, the Aztecs, though they had large armies, fought as individuals. The captives would be brought back to the great city of Tenochtitlan, where they would be sacrificed to one of several Aztec gods, usually through the ripping of the captive’s still-beating hearts from their chests. Nor was nonlethality limited to native wars, for even when the Aztecs fought the Spanish conquistador, Hernando Cortes, they continued to fight for captives rather than simple victory.

For us in the West today, these Flower Wars may seem absurd. War is far too serious for us to limit it through rituals and risk death by deliberately restraining our own weaponry. Surely, the West fights logically and rationally,[iii] identifying its goals and then applying the forces required to achieve them. Our way of war is perceived as being dominated by Karl von Clausewitz, whose dictums lead so easily to a demand for total war.[iv]

And yet, closer examination of the evidence suggests that the contemporary Western practice of warfare is far closer in nature to that of the Aztecs 500 years ago, than it is to that utilized by the West itself in the World Wars.[v] We are the new Aztecs. We too are fighting for abstract spiritual concepts. Although ours are the product of reasoned discourse and a lengthy philosophical tradition, they are abstract spiritual concepts nonetheless. We do not have the sinister Tlacaxipeualiztli—Our Lord, the Flayed One—but rather the concepts of “humanitarianism” and “pacifism.” Our priests are lawyers and United Nations (UN) officials, and our goal the sanctity of life, not military victory.

[…]

The Return of Restraint

Since Vietnam, and especially since the end of the Cold War, the West has fought its wars in an increasingly restrained fashion,[vi] deviating from the previous historical trend toward increased totality in war. In many ways, the recent behavior of the West displays elements strongly reminiscent of primitive warfare.[vii] There has been little or no use of massive firepower, nor any attempt to undertake strategies of annihilation.[viii] Casualties, both friendly and enemy, have been strenuously avoided. Wars have been justified through careful appeals to abstract concepts such as humanitarianism, as well as the concrete manifestations of those concepts, such as international law. Ritualistic elements, especially those related to justification, such as the seeking of a UN mandate prior to any operation, have become stronger. Civilians have been carefully protected, and processes of conciliation, arbitration, and peacemaking have been carried out simultaneously with military operations. At the same time, certain elements of primitive war have not reemerged, such as its endemic nature, its emphasis on combat as a rite of passage to manhood and identity, and its lack of coordination between combatants.

This trend toward restrained war is not reflected in the military behavior of non-Western peoples across the globe.[ix] These combatants are often motivated by religion, although tribal ties or simple greed may also be important. They have few, if any, rational political goals as Clausewitz might perceive them.[x] Custom and culture drive them to battle, as it drove their ancestors and their ancestors before them.[xi] They fight in an increasingly brutal fashion, and it is here that they have largely broken from the restraints of primitive warfare. The West is partly to blame here, for it was Western involvement in the region that crippled and mutated traditional martial cultures, imbuing them with the bloodthirsty ideologies they have today.

We may thus be seeing an evolving and ahistorical divergence in global military culture.[xii] The West may be retreating toward restraint in warfare, whereas non-Western actors may be charging headlong toward unrestrained methods.[xiii]

[…]

Existential Threats and the Utility of War

During the Cold War, restraint in war was eminently understandable from a rational political perspective for one key reason: nuclear weapons.[xiv] Nuclear weapons, due to their destructive potential, were perceived as having unleashed a “wholly new and hitherto unbelievable dimension of horror.”[xv] They changed the relationship between destructive power and the capacity to recover to such an extent that any damage inflicted by a nuclear war would take much longer to repair than any political actor could choose to wait.[xvi] As such, it would be illogical to use nuclear weapons, as their use would be counterproductive.[xvii] Fear of nuclear escalation led to limited, restrained war: in Vietnam, we felt compelled to tolerate North Vietnamese sanctuaries; in Afghanistan, the Russians took care never to extend the conflict beyond Afghanistan’s borders.[xviii]

With the end of the Cold War, the threat of nuclear war began to diminish. It might have been hypothesized that in the absence of a threat to our existence, war would become increasingly unlimited; however, it would also need to be remembered that the aftermath of major wars is often notable for efforts to restrict further conflict. The evidence in this case seems to indicate a complex interrelationship between the end of the Cold War and the perceived utility of war.

[…]

With the end of the Cold War, no Western society faces a serious military threat, and as such the West is militarily hegemonic. Terrorism, which justified the West’s intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq, appears incredibly deadly when compared to the relative peace into which terrorism has reemerged,[xix] but pales into insignificance when compared to the destructive potentials inherent in the Cold War, the World Wars, or the threat of the Ottomans. The nature of military operations carried out by the West since the end of the Cold War—peace operations, humanitarian interventions, and counterinsurgencies—is strong evidence for our military hegemony, for they are all wars of choice.

In the absence of a serious military threat, questions about the utility of a war—its cost-benefit ratio, both in terms of money and of lives—become absolutely central.[xx] Modern warfare, due largely to hyperinflation in equipment costs, has become so expensive that it seldom makes economic sense.[xxi] Whereas in the past a quick raid or a colonial expedition could seize substantial compensatory booty, that is no longer the case today. And because there are few serious threats to state security, the motivation of self-preservation is also reduced. As such, war is regarded as a less useful tool of policy than it once was, and fewer resources are allocated to it.

Decisionmakers have thus tried to make “war on the cheap.”[xxii] They have been seduced by the promises of technology, often promoted as the key to rapid, low-cost success.[xxiii] This has led to a belief that technology, if sufficiently advanced, is a substitute for quantity, leading to calls for small, elite forces that can supposedly carry out missions that previously required much larger forces; this belief was behind the major mistake made in Iraq. In some cases, a skewed attitude has developed—as in Kosovo—that a war is a victory merely because the costs of the war, both in blood and treasure, are low, even if the benefits are infinitesimal.[xxiv] This concept of a victory without casualties has become very appealing to Western democracies with narrow self-interest.[xxv]

However, cost and lack of utility are not sufficient conditions for restrained war. After all, one could fight with limited means but in a brutal fashion; moreover, few wars are cheaper than a single nuclear strike. The key is the interaction between the declining utility of war and cultural beliefs.

Culture, Media, and Democracy

Giving shape to the West’s Perfected Reality of war—which, as noted, is possible because of the hegemonic power of the West—is a combination of cultural attitudes on morality, especially humanitarianism; the influence of the media; and the power of democracy.

Western cultures, far more than their non-Western counterparts, are constantly in a state of flux. Given this, it is not surprising that Western cultures have recently attempted to remake their style of warfare in what is felt to be the culturally correct form. Freed of the need to ensure its own survival, the West has decided to fight in a self-righteous manner, i.e., with one hand tied behind its back.[xxvi] This has had a strong effect on both its justifications for, and conduct in, war. There have been strong drives to rehumanize warfare, to make it more consistent with perceived widespread moral beliefs including the sanctity of life and respect for international law.[xxvii] This is particularly the case with the Global War on Terror. Because this war has been presented to the public in a way that makes it seem as much about Western values as about military success, it has constrained the methods regarded as acceptable.[xxviii]

The nature of democracies forces leaders to be cognizant of public attitudes toward warfare, which in turn affects the means utilized.[xxix] There is usually a lack of military experience among democratic politicians and, accordingly, they are especially prone to persuasive sophistry. Sophistical public attitudes are given further impetus by the news media, which, given their own liberal bias, demand strongly humanitarian behavior by military personnel.[xxx] The end result of these attitudes is a democracy-induced “restrained fighting calculus,” a way of war that attempts to balance cultural demands, military efficacy, and political requirements, but which seldom results in particularly effective military operations.[xxxi] Indeed, this calculus often increases the duration of wars, increases casualties, and causes costs to skyrocket.[xxxii]

Contemporary humanitarian attitudes are complex, but can be roughly compressed to two main issues: what happens to our soldiers, and what is done to the forces of the enemy and his civilians. Western societies today impose high standards on how their forces treat their enemies, in stark contrast to the historical Western tradition of seeing its non-Western foes as barbarous.[xxxiii] In those military operations where the West is perceived to have an unfair advantage, there is additional pressure for it to take the moral high ground and avoid the use of all the capabilities available to it.[xxxiv] Three of the most militarily active states—the United States, the UK, and Israel—all take great pains to avoid inflicting civilian casualties.[xxxv] They also make it clear that they do not perceive it to be moral to punish a civilian population for the actions of its leaders.[xxxvi]

An entirely natural belief that friendly deaths should be avoided has been given additional strength by the perceived lack of utility in contemporary warfare.[xxxvii] Because of this, risk aversion has become central to contemporary Western ways of war.[xxxviii] Western governments seem relatively willing to send soldiers to war, but extremely unwilling to have those soldiers die.[xxxix]

This latent pacifism is intensified by the technology that,[xl] as noted earlier, has deluded leaders into thinking war can be cheap;[xli] it has also deluded them into thinking that war can be immaculate, surgical, and nonlethal.[xlii] Precision munitions are now shaping the types of operations undertaken in a range of conflicts. The accuracy of these weapons has become the controlling factor, with strikes often disallowed unless they can meet some gold standard of accuracy. When munitions go wrong, as they are wont to do due to the friction of war, there is seldom an honest appreciation of the inevitable limitations. A single laser-guided bomb hitting a civilian warehouse is seen as a major catastrophe, showing the media’s ignorance of the enormous latent potentialities present in the arsenals of every Western military if they truly chose to fight in a brutal fashion.[xliii]

A further cultural element is oscillation in support for the military.[xliv] In the West, attitudes toward the military have changed dramatically since Vietnam, especially in America; it was a war that delegitimized much of military endeavor.[xlv] Contemporary America, and by extension Western culture, is far more inclined to honor the dead but benevolent hero over the live but death-dealing hero.[xlvi] The military heroes of today are not those who storm machinegun nests and slaughter entire platoons of Taliban, but rather those who save others under fire.[xlvii]

Public attitudes toward the military have been shaped by the increasing isolation of the military from broader society. Without conscription, militaries are small professional bodies; accordingly, a much smaller percentage of any Western population has experience of military life. Furthermore, the way in which many soldiers are now isolated from risk[xlviii] and can communicate from their theater across the world further contributes to a perception of soldiering as “just another job,” rather than a profession that traffics in death and danger. Peoples do not understand the Clausewitzian friction of war, and consequently they demand that war be carried out in a way that is unrealistic.

Professionalism

The final factor contributing to resurgent primitivism in warfare is the increasing professionalism of Western military personnel. The influences above are important, but they are not deterministic “forces of nature.” It does not matter how a president, prime minister, or general decides to fight, or that he decides to fight in that way due to a consideration of cultural beliefs, if the chain of command is not robust enough to ensure that those commands are turned into action at the individual level.[xlix] The individual soldiers who conduct war are human, and, as such, they are motivated by love, greed, hate, honor, and envy.

Contemporary rules of engagement, for example, require even the lowliest private soldier to have some understanding of the laws of armed conflict, something that was surely not expected amongst the slave-soldier hordes of Xerxes. Historically, increasing professionalism has contributed to restraint in war, as disciplined soldiers are less likely to commit acts of brutality. [l] In recent years, professionalism has continued to improve,(204) partly as an outcome of the development of military technology, but also partly because of demands posed by the increasing complexity in the tactics and strategy of war.(205) There is thus a somewhat circular relationship, in that increasing complexity demands increasing professionalism, which in turn enables even more complex and restrained styles of warfare.

[…]

[i] Victor Davis Hanson, Why the West has Won: Carnage and Culture from Salamis to Vietnam, London, UK: Faber and Faber, 2001, pp. 194-195.

[ii] John Keegan, A History of Warfare, London, UK: Hutchin­son, 1993, pp. 110-111.

[iii] Christopher Coker, Waging War without Warriors? The Changing Culture of Military Conflict, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2002, p. 6.

[iv] Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni­versity Press, 1976; Colin Gray, Another Bloody Century: Future Warfare, London, UK: Phoenix, 2006; Keegan, A History of Warfare; Peter Paret, Understanding War: Essays on Clausewitz and the His­tory of Military Power, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992.

[v] Despite the assertions of some. See Hanson, Why the West has Won, p. 21.

[vi] The same ritualized and restricted approach can also be seen in recent Israeli actions in Lebanon, American intervention in Haiti, the Gulf War of 1990-91, and even the British interven­tion in the Falklands in the early 1980s. Substantial politically motivated restraint was also apparent in Russian involvement in Afghanistan.

[vii] Keegan, A History of Warfare, p. 387.

[viii] Jeremy Black, War in the New Century, London, UK: Con­tinuum, 2001; Colin Gray, “How Has War Changed Since the End of the Cold War?” Parameters, Spring 2005, pp. 14-19; van Creveld, The Changing Face of War, pp. 219-267; van Creveld, “The Future of War,” p. 34.

[ix] Alex de Waal, “Contemporary warfare in Africa,” in Mary Kaldor and Basker Vashee, eds., Restructuring the Global Military Sector: New Wars, London, UK: Pinter, 1997; John Fishel and Max Manwaring, Uncomfortable Wars Revisited, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006; Herfrieds Munkler, The New Wars, Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2005.

[x] Cordesman, Iraqi Security Forces, p. 260.

[xi] Coker, Waging War without Warriors?; Coker, The Warrior Ethos.

[xii] Hanson, Why the West Has Won, pp. 21, 97.

[xiii] A trend toward brutality facilitated by the availability of weapons. Michael Klare, “An avalanche of guns: light weap­ons traffickers and armed conflict in the post-Cold War world,” 66

in Mary Kaldor and Basker Vashee, eds., Restructuring the Global Military Sector: New Wars, London, UK: Pinter, 1997, p. 57.

[xiv] Coker, Waging War without Warriors?, p. 57; Jack Levy, Thomas Walker, and Martin Edwards, “Continuity and Change in the Evolution of Warfare,” in Zeev Maoz and Azar Gat, eds., War in a Changing World, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2001, p. 30.

[xv] Brodie, War and Politics, p. 56.

[xvi] Raymond Aron, “War and Industrial Society,” in Leon Bramson and George Goethals, eds., War: Studies from Psychology, Sociology and Anthropology, New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1964, p. 379.

[xvii] John Garnett, “Limited ‘Conventional’ War in the Nucle­ar Age,” in Michael Howard, ed., Restraints on War: Studies in the Limitation of Armed Conflict, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1979, p. 80.

[xviii] Ibid.

[xix] James Kiras, “Terrorism and Irregular Warfare,” in John Baylis et al., eds., Strategy in the Contemporary World, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2002; Ralph Peters, “The West’s future foes: simplification and slaughter,” in Michael Evans, Alan Ryan, and Russell Parkin, eds., Future Armies, Future Challengers: Land Warfare in the Information Age,” Crows Nest, UK: Allen & Unwin, 2004; Barry Posen, “The Struggle Against Terrorism: Grand Strat­egy, Strategy, and Tactics,” in Russell Howard and Reid Sawyer, eds., Terrorism and Counterterrorism: Understanding the New Se­curity Environment, Guilford, CT: McGraw-Hill/Dushkin, 2004; Magnus Ranstorp, “Terrorism in the Name of Religion,” in Rus­sell Howard and Reid Sawyer, eds., Terrorism and Counterterror­ism: Understanding the New Security Environment, Guilford, CT: McGraw-Hill/Dushkin, 2004.

[xx] Coker, Waging War without Warriors, pp. 6, 82; Hanson, Why the West Has Won; Lynn, Battle.

[xxi] Benjamin Fordham, “The Political and Economic Sources of Inflation in the American Military Budget,” The Journal of Con­flict Resolution, Vol. 47, No. 5, October 2003; William James, “The Moral Equivalent of War,” in Leon Bramson and George Goeth­als, eds., War: Studies from Psychology, Sociology and Anthropol­ogy, New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1964, p. 22; Obaid Younossi, Is Weapon System Cost Growth Increasing? A Quantitative Assessment of Completed and Ongoing Programs, Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2007.

[xxii] Azar Gat, “Isolationism, Appeasement, Containment, and Limited War: Western Strategic Policy from the Modern to the Postmodern,” in Zeev Maoz and Azar Gat, eds., War in a Changing World, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2001; Peters, Wars of Blood and Faith, p. xv; van Creveld, “The Fu­ture of War,” p. 34.

[xxiii] Gentry, “Doomed to Fail”; Peters, Wars of Blood and Faith, p. 54.

[xxiv] Mandel, The Meaning of Military Victory, p. 9.

[xxv] Ibid., p. 149.

[xxvi] Brodie, War and Politics, pp. 219-220.

[xxvii] Coker, Waging War without Warriors? p. 58.

[xxviii] Cassidy, Counterinsurgency and the Global War on Terror, p. 13.

[xxix] James Anderson, Public Policy Making, London, UK: Prae­ger, 1975, p. 80; Black, War in the New Century, p. 11; David Chu and Nurith Berstein, “Decisionmaking for Defense,” in Stuart Johnson, Martin Libicki, and Gregory Treverton, eds., New Chal­lenges and New Tools for Defense Decisionmaking, Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2003, pp. 14-31; Yehezkel Dror, Public Policymaking Reex­amined, Scranton, PA: Chandler, 1968, pp. 199-200; Mandel, The Meaning of Military Victory, p. 59.

[xxx] Coker, Waging War without Warriors? p. 68.

[xxxi] Mandel, The Meaning of Military Victory, pp. 60-61.

[xxxii] Peters, Wars of Blood and Faith, p. xv.

[xxxiii] Coker, Waging War without Warriors?, p. 90; Farrell, “Hu­manitarian Intervention and Peace Operations,” pp. 301-303.

[xxxiv] Coker, Waging War without Warriors? pp. 70-71.

[xxxv] Hugo Slim, Killing Civilians: Method, Madness and Morality in War, New York: Columbia University Press, 2008, p. 169.

[xxxvi] Coker, The Warrior Ethos, pp. 78-79.

[xxxvii] Farrell, “Humanitarian Intervention and Peace Opera­tions,” p. 297; Gray, Another Bloody Century, pp. 162-164; Peters, Wars of Blood and Faith, p. 4.

[xxxviii] Coker, Waging War without Warriors? pp. 63-64.

[xxxix] See also Cassidy, Counterinsurgency and the Global War on Terror, p. 29; Hugh Smith, “The last casualty? Public percep­tions of bearable cost in a democracy,” in Michael Evans and Alan Ryan, eds., The Human Face of Warfare, St. Leonards, UK: Allen & Unwin, 2000, pp. 57-83.

[xl] Robert O’Neill, “The right to use force after the Cold War,” in Carl Bridge, ed., Pacific Prospects: Australia, New Zealand and Future Conflicts, London, UK: Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, 2002; Peters, Wars of Blood and Faith, p. 66; Slim, Killing Civilians, p. 58.

[xli] Gentry, “Doomed to Fail: America’s Blind Faith in Mili­tary Technology,” van Creveld, The Changing Face of War.

[xlii] Peters, Wars of Blood and Faith, p. 54.

[xliii] Cassidy, Counterinsurgency and the Global War on Terror, pp. 118-123.

[xliv] Black, War in the New Century, p. 9.

[xlv] Coker, The Warrior Ethos, p. 21.

[xlvi] Ibid., p. 102.

[xlvii] The two latest Victoria Cross winners in New Zealand and Australia both received their medals for rescuing casualties under fire.

[xlviii] Coker, The Warrior Ethos, p. 120.

[xlix] Carolyn Nordstrom, Shadows of War: Violence, Power, and International Profiteering in the Twenty-First Century, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004, p. 75.

[l] Weigley, The Age of Battles, p. 542.