Risk Society & War

What does the risk society tell us about war?
{Department of International Relations, London School of Economics and Political Science}

In the last two decades, security studies have been characterized by a new form of analysis, concerning the concepts of risk, risk-management, precaution and prevention, which have gradually replaced the old logic of threat, deterrence and defence. According to Williams, risk society represents the focus of the international realm’s politics, given the debate on international affairs is no longer centered upon power politics and balance of power dynamics rather more about the management of uncertainty. Accordingly, the conceptualization of a world risk society provided by Beck, for whom the world after the Cold war exists within a system of “late modern risks” , refers to a renowned international environment or new world, which underlines the existence of a new stage of modernity. This international risk society can be described through a constructivist perspective, according to political practices of its main actors are underpinned by a kind of reflexive rationality. In such a way, reflexive rationality, has emerged as distinctive feature of risk society, “preoccupied with averting an array of possible adverse undesirable consequences that may or not may materialize” and in sharp contrast with the traditional “means-ends” rationality defined by Weber, assumed as the only way for understanding the actions of social agents.

In the first book by Beck on risk society, three major global threats to security were identified: the environmental challenge, global poverty and its side effects, the existence and potential proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction by terrorists organizations. However, in the last decade, new security challenges have come out, such as international terrorism, and great powers have rediscovered war as an instrument for coping with them.
As the war on terrorism has shown, strategic thought has been deeply influenced by the afore mentioned concept of reflexive rationality. On the one hand, in this essay I will be presenting the main characteristics of this reflexive modernity as they emerge from the risk society while, on the other hand, I will draw the relation between strategy and war, and risk society, by wondering to what extent the latter has modeled the formers in their own practices and logics, in particular by focusing on the factors of anxiety and uncertainty.

War and risk management

According to Beck, the end of the bipolar system has caused the disappearance of a world of enemies but the emergence of dangers and risks. Risks, in these terms, are conceived as the “modern approach to foresee and control the future consequences of human action, the various unintended consequences of radicalized modernization”. The new or “reflexive” rationality needed to overcome and manage these environment is shaped by three points that Rasmussen frames under the label of “desire for control” : management, the presence of the future and the boomerang effect. The first point refers to the effort of managing risks effectively within a context of “political wilderness”, through a set of recognized rules different from the “old” ones and adapted to the world risk society. The “presence of the future” looks at the process of risk management as concerned with the possible events in the future, by analyzing the potential tendency of risk. In this light, society must take actions today for preventing the problems of tomorrow: in so doing, “society must act on the knowledge of its lack of security to prevent possible destruction”. Uncontrollability and uncertainty of risk mark the reflexive era, that is affected by a two-fold “boomerang effect” which arise when policy-makers try to manage both of them: on the one hand the paradoxical effect of increasing anxiety about risk; on the other, by assuming risky behaviour. As Williams reports, “in attempting to control the future, to manage the risk, risk itself eludes our control as the side effect of risk management is the proliferation of risk.”
Against this backdrop, according to Coker even the role of war has changed, becoming an activity of “risk management in all but name”. As a matter of fact, great powers like Great Britain and the US “talk the language of risks and ‘do’ risk management against” the actors of international realm that pose no more threats to their interests or security rather risks, such as terrorist networks, rogue and failed states, proliferation of and clandestine WMD programmes. For this reason, war is seen as the best instrument for coping with current risks and, at the same time, war itself has been reformulated and “re-grounded in terms of managing risks”. Theoretically speaking, this assumption is based on the same Clausewitzian thought: given the inescapable trinity of violence, chance and instrumental use of wars which shapes the “concrete totality” of war, Clausewitz is well aware that “every age [has] its own kind of war, its own limiting conditions and its own peculiar preconceptions. It follows that the events of every age must be judged in the light of its own peculiarities”. Indeed, Aron underlines this aspect by stressing that “war possesses not a logic, but a grammar of its own” , which is shaped and substantiated by the political logic of the moment. By this token, issues such as proliferation and terrorism, already present during the Cold War, have gained priority in the security agenda, by virtue of the new globalized and strategic context.

In order to clarify war as a risk management activity, Heng has identified three major features or ‘operational indicators’ strictly intertwined with the points grasped by Rasmussen in defining the concept of reflexive security. War, in these terms, is reconsidered in light of: the significance of risk’s probabilities and consequences as relevant components to security management; the role of precautionary principle and surveillance as tools to manage the future according to the concepts of ‘active anticipation’ and ‘reflexive’ considerations; above all, the objective of war, no more focused on providing the perfect solutions or “decisive victories”, regards a more modest aim: “to reduce risks and prevent hypothesized future harm”, paying particular attention in not creating ‘boomerang effects’.

As Coker remarks, this ‘new security paradigm’ has been adopted by the US in addressing three different challenges emerged in the first years of this century: the rise of terrorism, the rise of China and the growing anarchy provoked by a deterritorialized and de-bounded world, where even the concept of geopolitics goes through an ontological change given the fact that “risk has replaced threat as the centre of security studies”. As a matter of fact, this conceptual shift is reflected in the US Quadrennial Defense Review (2001), which describes risk as “the single most important strategic tenet” of national security thinking and in NATO’s Strategic Concepts of 1991, 1999 and 2010, where the management of risk is supposed to be the Alliance’s most important strategic purpose.

Despite the gloomy strategic landscape just depicted, the world risk society is not more dangerous than previous era, instead it is one of the safest in history. However, what makes this temporal and spatial frame darker is the awareness to be subjected on future risks at any time. The “uncertainty of what to expect and the nature of the system makes today’s society feel less secure” , characterizing the contemporary world as blocked and barricaded into the anxiety of risk, and no more concerned with the fear provoked by a visible, bounded and paradoxically reassuring, threat.

War and the risk society: anxiety and complexity

The distinction between threat and risk is a central feature for understanding the role of war within the risk society. As Heng underlines, during the Cold war assessment of threat depended on two components: intentions of the Soviet Union and the count of its military capabilities, tanks and military hardware. According to the means-end rationality, threat was objective, material, estimable and it could be contained through the rules of deterrence. Risk, conversely, is a socially and culturally constructed term: on the one hand, a “risk” occurs after having located a potential danger and the countermeasures for mitigating and preventing its effects in the future; on the other hand, the inherent uncertainty of risk could cause different assessments on its dangerousness and, therefore, it can be risky to a country but not to another one. The character of subjectivity that underpins risk explain why Iraq has been “a perfect case for constructivism”, in which, as Solana stated, there were different perceptions of risk between the US and the EU foreign policy. Furthermore, the Iraqi case and the strategy adopted by the American policy-makers within the War on Terror, are suitable examples of war meant as a risk management activity. Is a fact that by the Afghan campaign in 2001, former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld “was advocating a paradigm shift in conceptualizing a new type of war” . Since the War on Terror is a “war against an abstract noun” , the orientation to prevent and to adopt proactive policies against hypothesised future harm is at the core of war as a risk management activity, because it deals with risk defined according to the famous ‘unknown unknowns’ theorized by Rumsfeld: “there are risks we know about, and risks we don’t know we are running, and finally there are things we don’t know we don’t know.”

Shifting from the systemic to the agent level of risk analysis, Coker affirms that the subjective and cultural nature of risks affects people imagination: in fact, anxiety and apprehension, the most representative features of risk society, are rooted in what we imagine, in what might happen rather than in some well defined threat. In addition the increasingly complexity of world connected with globalisation, has ripened this feeling of insecurity and the degree of self-reflexivity, the latter conceived as a fundamental trait of modernity and contemporary meaning of war: “war has become increasingly complex and as a result increasingly indecisive”, as the Afghan and the Iraqi wars have shown.
By stressing the ‘post-heroic’ character of war, where decisive battles and results are out of the current strategic understanding, Luttwak adds that warfare has radically changed toward a new concept more attentive to “a patient and modest strategic outlook able to appreciate partial results”. Being war a risk management instrument, it should adapt itself in a complex globalised interconnected world, looking for a balance between “doing too much, which might be costly and disruptive, and simply wringing one’s hands, which could impair global stability.”

Finally, the aim of such a post-modern kind of war should be to reduce uncertainty and anxiety and try to eliminate the most pressing dangers to international society, such as terrorism. In other words, war should manage effectively the Global complex disorder by changing radically and dialectically its function. In so doing, war strengthens its human character and remains an instrument that “cannot be divorced from individuals and the society, which perceives the threats, prepares for conflict and wages war”.

Conclusion

In conclusion, currently contemporary warfare faces a challenge, that is neither a risk nor a threat: namely, war has to adapt itself to the peculiarities, perceptions and conditions of this very historical period characterized by risk, anxiety and global complexity, in order to fulfill its own functions. From a theoretical standpoint, constructivist approaches could be useful guides for this task, but the presence of the future in assessing contemporary dangers, means that the role of the strategists is changing too. According to Rasmussen, risk strategy does not necessarily lead to war, given the possibility of unpleasant boomerang effects and the emergence of strategic quagmires as has happened in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, there are several possibilities to implement strategically the use of war: as a matter of fact, conceiving of war as a risk management activity whose decisiveness is no longer the main concern for resulting effective, strategy has become more flexible and presents policy-makers with more and more choices for using armed force with different degrees of engagement and relying on a wider spectrum of technological developments.

Bibliography

Tagged NATO, Reflexive Rationality, Risk, Society, Stragic Concept, War