The organisation of military violence in the 21st century

Abstract

In this article, I analyse the sociological foundations of military violence in the 21st century. The first part of the article engages critically with the three dominant contemporary approaches in the study of organised violence: (a) the decline of violence perspective, (b) the new wars theories and (c) the technological displacement approach. I argue that despite their obvious merits, these three perspectives do not provide adequate interpretation of recent social change. In particular, I contest their emphasis on the radical discontinuity in the character of the contemporary military violence when compared to the previous historical periods. Hence, to remedy this – in the second part of the article – I develop an alternative, a longue durée, sociological interpretation centred on the role of organisational, ideological and micro-interactional powers in the transformation of military violence. In contrast to the three dominant perspectives, I argue that the 21st-century organisation of military violence has changed but it still exhibits much more organisational continuity with the last two centuries than usually assumed. More specifically, my argument centres on the long-term impact of the three historical processes that have shaped the dynamics of military violence over long stretches of time: the cumulative bureaucratisation of coercion, centrifugal ideologisation and the envelopment of micro-solidarity.

Introduction

War and other forms of organised violence receive a great deal of public and scholarly attention. There is also an enormous literature on military organisations and how the internal dynamics of such organisations shape the character of armed conflicts and vice versa. Much of this scholarship has recently become preoccupied with the following question: is military violence undergoing a dramatic and historically unprecedented transformation? Hence, some scholars argue that we live in the most peaceful period of human history and that all indicators point out that violence is becoming a thing of the past. Other scholars express profound disagreement and argue that the recent violent conflicts have generated more misery and torment than many of its predecessors. They also contend that such conflicts are likely to proliferate in the near future. Finally, some researchers challenge both of these accounts by shifting their analytical gaze towards the new military technologies. In their view, military violence is experiencing unparalleled change but this has less to do with human motivations and much more with the nature of technological advancements which allegedly have radically transformed armed conflicts for good.

While all these perspectives shed some light on the transformation of military violence, they generally lack a broader, sociological understanding of historical change. In other words, instead of treating violent conflicts as fundamentally sociological phenomena, the tendency is to reduce this complexity to a rather narrow set of variables: biological propensities, globalised economics, superior technology or influential intellectual movements. In this article, I challenge these dominant accounts of military violence by articulating an alternative interpretation that is firmly rooted in the tradition of historical sociology. The article identifies the key blind spots of the three influential perspectives and then develops a longue durée account that explores the transformation of military violence in the context of long-term historical change. By zooming in on the three open-ended historical processes – the cumulative bureaucratisation of coercion, centrifugal ideologisation and the envelopment of micro-solidarity – I attempt to show that despite some recent alternations, the organisation of military violence has not experienced a historically unprecedented transformation. Instead, the longue durée vantage point allows us to identify much organisational continuity where others see complete discontinuity.

Military violence in the 21st century

Many scholars of military violence agree that the institution of warfare has changed over the last two to three decades. There is a pronounced shift in the character of wars with the overwhelming dominance of civil strife over inter-state wars. The analysts also emphasise marked changes in the scale, frequency and dynamics of contemporary violent conflicts. However, there is no consensus on questions such as the following: is this a temporary or permanent development? What are the causes of these changes? Does this transformation of military violence indicate that our descendants will live in a less or more violent world? The researchers have offered very different answers to these questions. These different answers are now articulated around three distinct approaches: (a) the decline of violence perspective, (b) the new wars theories and (c) the technological displacement approach. These three perspectives offer contrasting interpretations with the first and second favouring optimistic and pessimistic accounts, respectively, and the third oscillating between pessimistic and optimistic views.

Representatives of the decline of violence perspective, such as Pinker (2011), Gat (2013), Goldstein (2011), Mueller (2009), Morris (2014) and Horgan (2012), argue that the fatalities of war have dramatically declined over the last 50 years and that this is part of the long-term waning of all forms of organised violence. For Pinker (2011), this historical trend developed in the context of a civilising process that was underpinned by the humanitarian revolution and the gradual extension of human rights discourses on a worldwide scale. In his evolutionary account, shared also by Morris (2014), violence is understood as an innate biological requisite which impelled early humans to be highly aggressive in order to survive. With the development of civilisation and the increased policing capacity of states, violence was gradually reduced over the last millennium. Drawing on Elias (2000 [1939]), Pinker argues that the civilising process has stimulated the expansion of state power, trade, increased literacy rates and the emergence of cosmopolitan institutions all of which have contributed to a taming of violence. Consequently, he argues, all forms of violent action have declined ‘over long stretches of time’ so that ‘today we may be living in the most peaceable era in our species’ existence’ (Pinker, 2011: xxi).

Although they do not share Pinker’s and Morris’ evolutionary psychology, other scholars developed similar declinist theses. Hence Mueller (2009) and Goldstein (2011) emphasise the role of changed social norms in the wake of World War II (WWII). They contend that international organisations, such as United Nations (UN), European Union (EU) and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), among others, were decisive in institutionalising norms that delegitimize territorial conquests by making violent changes to state borders illegal. In a similar vein to Pinker, they also pinpoint the significant role that humanitarian organisations and social movements have played in fostering humanitarian principles and the non-violent resolution of political disputes. For Goldstein (2011), decline in warfare is in part linked to effective peacekeeping policies. In their view, such institutionally supported normative changes have contributed to the situation that in the 21st century, one can witness fewer wars, more localised, shorter and smaller violent conflicts than was the case with wars in previous centuries.

The new wars perspective challenges such interpretations. In this view, organised violence is not in decline but instead takes different forms, many of which generate more destruction and human suffering. In contrast to Pinker and Mueller who see ever-increasing state power as the central mechanism for taming violent impulses, the new war theorists such as Kaldor (2007, 2013), Munkler (2004), Bauman (2002, 2006) and Duffield (2001) argue that the opposite is the case. In this perspective, the shift from inter-state to intra-state warfare is rooted in the increased weakness of state power throughout the world. For Kaldor (2007), the end of the cold war stimulated the proliferation of different types of conflicts which bear no resemblance to 19th- or 20th-century inter-state wars. Instead, these ‘new wars’ are decentralised, chaotic, often de-territorialised and focused on targeting civilians rather than soldiers. Where the declinist approach sees success, the new war theorists see failure. For example, Pinker (2011: 682–683) argues that the global proliferation of ‘gentle commerce’ stimulates peace as ‘once people are enticed into voluntary exchange, they are encouraged to take each other’s perspectives to clinch the best deal (“the customer is always right”)’. In direct contrast, for Kaldor (2007) and Bauman (2006), globalisation fosters violence: the neo-liberal hunger for cheap labour, resources and markets helps destabilise already weak states, thus creating conditions for the emergence of new wars. In this view, unequal and exploitative global trade undermines the sovereignty of many states, which ultimately can lead to the loss of the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence and the emergence of paramilitary warlords capable of privatising coercive power.

For representatives of this approach the new wars are a by-product of globalisation-induced state collapse. They are seen to be a parasitic development where leaders of paramilitary militias utilise cultural and religious differences and the remnants of state apparatuses to wage genocidal campaigns against civilians under their control. While recognising that battle deaths have decreased over the past several decades, they argue that other forms of violence have substantially increased. Thus, unlike Pinker or Gat who devote little or no attention to civilian casualties, the new war theorists emphasise the ever-increasing number of civilian deaths from malnutrition, poor health condition, severe stress and many other factors not captured by the major war fatalities datasets. Moreover, as UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) data indicate, there are more war-displaced individuals in the world today than at any point in the last 20 years. For example, in 2015, there were 59.5 million refugees (http://www.unhcr.org/558193896.html). Thus, for the new war approach, violence is not in decline but has taken different forms and as such is likely to substantially increase as neo-liberal globalisation continues to spread throughout the world.

The technological displacement perspective differs from the other two approaches in the sense that it shifts the focus from human interactions to technology. While accepting the view that warfare is in a state of significant transformation, this analytical standpoint emphasises the centrality of new technologies in shaping the direction of contemporary and future wars (DeLanda, 1991; Dolman, 2010, 2015; Singer, 2009, 2010; Singer and Friedman, 2014; Virilio, 1997, 2006). Thus, in this view, the debate about human casualties is likely to become less relevant as developments in science, technology and engineering allow for the mass production and widespread use of non-human devices in wars. The earlier versions of this approach, as articulated by Virilio and DeLanda, emphasised the inherent connection between technological advancements and social change. Thus, Virilio (2006) argues that ‘history progresses at the speed of its weapons systems’ while DeLanda (1991) charts the gradual convergence of human beings and machines leading towards something he calls ‘a war machine’.

More recently, scholars working in this tradition have focused on developments in cybernetics, robotics, pharmacology and nanotechnology. In a highly influential book, Singer (2010) argues that a revolution is taking place in the way military technology shapes warfare. With a spotlight on robotics, he contends that these technological changes are on the same scale as those following the introduction of gunpowder. The key argument is that war itself is likely to be redefined as technology continues to increase both physical and emotional distance from the battlefields. With the proliferation of unmanned robotic systems such as drones, there will be less need for direct human participation in combat. On the one hand, this can reduce the number of human fatalities, but on the other hand, robotics can also make war more frequent and less humane. While the military use of robotics is not new, the last decade has witnessed an unprecedented increase in deployment of remote-controlled unmanned aerial vehicles. It is estimated that at least 50 states have such devices with the United States possessing over 12,000 military drones. As Coker (2013) points out, ‘there are now more drone pilots in the US Air Force (USAF) than there are pilots of F16s’ leading him to conclude that ‘robots will be fighting robots in 2035’ (pp. xxiii, 147).

In addition to drones that are used for reconnaissance missions, and precision aerial attacks among other things, robotics is becoming more present in the navy (advanced designs for unmanned submarines) and army (sentry guns, a four-wheeled patrol robot, unmanned mine sweeping and autonomous sniper systems). With the increasing development of nanotechnology, research has also focused on the design of nanorobots, miniature size machines capable of entering and operating in a person’s blood stream or lungs. Even greater advances have been made in military cybernetics. The governments of many states have invested heavily in cyber warfare programmes focused on preventing cyber attacks, disabling enemy’s satellites and computer networks, collecting intelligence and espionage. Some recent wars, such as those involving the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq and the 2008 Russia–Georgia conflict, were preceded by effective cyber attacks. Cyber warfare has also spread to non-state actors with MI6 infiltrating Al Qaida websites and Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) attempting to hack the US power grid (Bender, 2015). Here, too, the focus has shifted from direct human engagement towards technologically mediated conflicts. Nevertheless, this technological displacement of humans from the battlefields is interpreted differently. Some scholars such as Arkin (2011) argue that new technologies can lead to more ethical and less destructive wars as ‘autonomous weapons systems’ can be programmed not to hurt human beings. Others are more sceptical, warning that technological advancements in past eras regularly resulted in increased destructiveness of warfare (Coker, 2013).

These three accounts provide very different and in some respects mutually exclusive interpretations. They all contribute to better understanding of the contemporary transformations taking place in military violence. However, as they offer incongruous diagnoses, it is crucial to briefly evaluate each approach. The decline of violence perspective is valuable in identifying some recent patterns in terms of changed dynamics of war. It is true that the last three decades have witnessed a decline in wars of all kinds and a decrease in the number of battlefield fatalities. However, historically speaking, this is a very short period of time in which one could not make plausible long-term projections. As critics have pointed out, Pinker’s notion of ‘long peace’ is a statistical illusion. Cirillo and Taleb (2016) demonstrate that less frequent wars do not automatically imply more moderation. On the contrary, they might suggest ‘fewer but deeper departures from the mean. The fact that nuclear bombs explode less often than regular shells does not make them safer’. Furthermore, the declinist view operates with functionalist arguments deeply rooted in idealist epistemology (Malešević, 2014: 70) and as such cannot explain why violence declines in the second half of the 20th century and early 21st century but not earlier, although the ‘humanitarian revolution’ was in full swing long before. This norm-centred account is largely unfalsifiable as no causality is established between the dominant Enlightenment-inspired values and the decline in warfare (Malešević, 2013b, 2017).

The new wars approach is convincing in its critique of the reductionist arguments built on data that centre solely on battlefield fatalities. As civil wars have largely replaced inter-state wars, the notion of pitched battles and fixed frontlines has become chimerical. Thus, civil wars do generate more civilian losses and coercively displaced populations and such casualties can range from direct killings to deaths from malnutrition, stress, deteriorating health condition and so forth. However, this perspective overemphasises the role of neo-liberal globalisation in contemporary wars. Weak state power, privatisation of violence and economic liberalisation are not new historical phenomena. The end of the 19th century and early 20th century were characterised by similar social and economic condition, yet with very different outcomes: instead of civil wars, inter-state and conquest-oriented colonial wars predominated. In addition, the critics have questioned the novelty of ‘new wars’. Many 19th-century civil wars exhibit very similar features: targeting of civilians, reliance on terror, dominance of warlords and paramilitaries and the privatisation of violence (Kalyvas, 2001; Newman, 2004).

The technological displacement approach is also useful in highlighting the degree of the military’s reliance on science, technology and industry. While technological advancements have markedly shaped warfare throughout the early modern and modern periods, dependency on sophisticated technologies has accelerated over the last two decades. Nevertheless, while technology certainly impacts social relations, fighting patterns, logistics, strategy or military tactics, it does not determine human relations. In order to avoid technological determinism, it is crucial to recognise not only that technology shapes social relations but also that social relations shape technology. Human beings are never passive users of technology, including military devices; they conceive them, transform them and adapt them to fit changing social relations. The idea that superior technology is likely to make the presence of humans in war obsolete is premised on the wrong assumption that technology rather that social actions moulds the outcomes of specific wars. Such a view has been made throughout history whenever a new technological breakthrough was achieved but human interactions still remain central for the conduct of wars (Coker, 2013: 294–295).

Furthermore, the technologically determinist accounts often lack a sociological understanding of violent conflicts. For example, the claim that future wars are likely to exclude humans and involve robotic devices only is built on a too symmetrical view of technological access. Not all humans will have resources to acquire robots. As recent conflicts in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq demonstrate, drones do not fight other drones but instead attack humans. In other words, if it ever happens, technological displacement is likely to be highly stratified with powerful and wealthy states confronting technologically weaker enemies who are less likely to be able to afford such advanced military technology. While in the future some human bodies might be less exposed to physical destruction than today, it is difficult to imagine how or even why all humans would be removed from the theatres of war. If war is an extension of politics by other means, then it is difficult to envisage that those who seek power would dispense with the use of violence against other human beings. While technological advancements create new opportunities to make war more humane, they also generate new means for destruction.

What is happening to military violence today?

The three dominant perspectives on the transformation of military violence contribute to our understanding of this phenomenon. However, as they tend to focus on a relatively short historical time frame, they overemphasise discontinuity over continuity. This is particularly pronounced in the new war approach and the technological displacement thesis, both of which highlight unprecedented novelty in the character of recent wars and possible future trends. While the declinist approach, as articulated by Steven Pinker and Ian Morris, aims to offer analysis of violence transformation over much longer historical periods, this account too is primarily centred on the modern period and especially on the last 50 years. Nevertheless to make a plausible argument about the transformation of military violence, it is vital to analyse this phenomenon over much longer periods of time. As I argue in my previous work, military violence is a complex historical phenomenon that can best be captured through the longue durée analysis (Malešević, 2010, 2013b, 2016, 2017). More specifically, I emphasise the central role played by three long-term historical processes: the cumulative bureaucratisation of coercion, centrifugal ideologisation and the envelopment of micro-solidarity. In other words, I zoom in on organisational and ideological powers as well as how these macro forces tap into the micro-interactional networks of solidarity. When military violence is studied through these processes, one can identify a very different picture of social reality than the one offered by the three dominant perspectives. In other words, rather than experiencing sharp discontinuity, there is more continuity in the development of military violence over the past centuries.

Organisational power and violence

In popular perceptions, often reinforced by neo-Darwinist academics, human beings have always fought wars. For example, Low (1993) argues that warfare is ‘as old, or older than, humanity itself’ (p. 13). However, as much contemporary archaeological and paleontological research demonstrates, collective violence develops very late in human history (Fry, 2007; Fry and Sorderberg, 2013; Malešević, 2017). The simple foragers, who constitute 98% of our predecessors, were generally nomadic, egalitarian, highly mobile and very fluid groupings that shunned inter-personal violence and had neither organisational nor ideological means for collective violence. For much of our pre-history, violence was something identified with the non-human other: carnivorous predators, poisonous plants, insects and other animals, unpredictable environmental changes and so on. There is very little indisputable evidence that human beings fought other human beings as groups before 12,000 years ago. Neither the skeletal remains nor the cave paintings show the presence of collective violence in pre-history. For example, well-preserved Palaeolithic and Mesolithic cave paintings (i.e. Altamira, Lascaux and Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc) depict some instances of violence but exclusively against animals, not humans (Guthrie, 2005: 422). Similarly, the oldest archaeological sites with possible human casualties of violence such as those in South Africa (Kasies River, 90,000 BCE), The Czech Republic (Predmosti, 50,000 BCE) or Italy (San Teodoro, 40,000 BCE) usually include one or two humans only. In some respects, this is understandable as protracted collective violence cannot be initiated or sustained without some kind of institutional support. Thus, it is no historical accident that the institution of warfare emerges at the same time as the complex division of labour, sedentary lifestyle, agriculture and elaborate forms of social stratification: in the early Mesolithic (10,000–12,000 BCE; Fry, 2007; Malešević, 2010, 2017). Simply put, there is no military violence and war without social organisation.

As I have argued previously, this is a relationship of interdependence – not only is the military power dependent on the presence of durable social organisations but organisations themselves are inherently coercive entities (Malešević, 2010, 2017). All complex social organisations entail a division of labour, hierarchical delegation of tasks and responsibilities, a degree of discipline and control and, where the lack of compliance with the rules is penalised, they have to rely on the use of coercive means to accomplish organisational goals. This coercive underpinning of organisational action was prominent in early history with wars, corvée labour, religious persecutions, massacres, slavery and serfdom shaping social relationships both domestically and in the inter-state arena. Once organisational power is in place, this is often reflected in increased military capacity. While not all historical polities were excessively war prone, military violence was the backbone of early civilisations – from Sumer Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt, China and India to the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. Moreover, war and military might were just as decisive in the rise of early chiefdoms, some of which, such as those ruled by Genghis Khan or Attila the Hun, prospered on continuous attacks against the sedentary civilisations of their day. In both of these cases, the sedentary polities and the largely nomadic chiefdoms, organisational power was at the heart of military capability.

Another important feature of organisational power is its isomorphic character. As the Stanford School representatives documented well, successful organisations tend to be imitated and replicated: from relatively uniform constitutions, rationalised demographic record keeping, development-oriented economies to standardised educational systems and welfare provisions (Meyer et al., 1992, 1997). Although Meyer’s focus is on contemporary institutions where this becomes almost a routine practice, this argument applies in part to many pre-modern contexts. It is true that this process of institutional imitation intensifies in modernity as the bureaucratic models gradually replace patrimonial systems of authority, but one can trace organisational isomorphism all the way back to the many pre-modern polities. From the ancient empires, city-states, khanates, tribal confederacies and composite kingdoms, rulers often attempted to reproduce the technological and organisational models that had proved to be successful. This was particularly the case in the military sphere where many technological inventions (i.e. stirrup, chariot, gunpowder, iron, pike, catapult or compass) and organisational novelties (military drill, codes of practice, unit flexibility, standardised training practices etc.) spread from polity to polity. Of course, before the modern era, this was often a slow and uneven process. In some instances, the new inventions did not generate mass use for centuries and had to be ‘re-invented’ in other parts of the world (i.e. gunpowder and the compass in China and early modern Europe). Nevertheless, where military conflicts intensified, reliance on the new technologies and modes of organisation became essential not only to achieve military victories but also to survive. Typical examples are the Spring and Autumn and Warring states periods in ancient China and the period of military revolution in Western Europe (1450–1700; Childs, 2005; Tin-bor Hui, 2005). In this context, pioneering discoveries in the military sphere stimulated changes in civilian organisational structure too. It is no accident that the majority of organisational inventions used in the civilian sector throughout history were initially generated for military purposes: from the division of labour, expert knowledge, new modes of communication and transport, to industry, technology and science (Giddens, 1986; Hirst, 2001). Meyer is completely right that organisational isomorphism strengthens and deepens in modernity and especially in the last two centuries. However, it is also important to recognise that such organisational expansion has much longer and more coercive roots.

One of the central features of organisational power is its inherent coerciveness. Organisations develop, expand, contract and disappear depending on their ability to maintain and grow their coercive capacity. While this is perhaps less discernible for business corporations or religious organisations, it is quite blatant in the military sector: armies that cannot compel their soldiers to fight or do not have viable military organisational structures lose wars and disintegrate. This coercive capacity has been crucial for the expansion of military power over the centuries. As Tilly (1985), Mann (1986, 1993), Giddens (1986) and Hirst (2001) have demonstrated, military coercion was the decisive mechanism of state formation. As organised minorities proved capable of dominating disorganised majorities, the foraging populations were gradually incorporated into the established state structures. Although the pre-modern empires and city-states still had weak infrastructural powers, they initiated the process of ‘social caging’ through which ordinary individuals were forced to trade individual freedoms for state protection (Mann, 1993). With the gradual expansion of state power, this process was reinforced through legally sanctioned forms of political racketeering: state subjects participated in wars and paid taxes in exchange for some citizenship rights and protection from other polities. Once in motion, these processes became self-perpetuating with states and wars constituting each other: to fight ever more protracted and devastating wars, states had to increase taxes and mobilise large numbers of recruits. The direct consequence of these mutually interdependent processes was a continuous increase in the organisational capacity of states (Tilly, 1985). Although Mann and Tilly focus on state power, this coercive organisational expansion has historically affected many other forms of organisation. ¹ When compared to their pre-modern predecessors, most contemporary organisations have greater coercive organisational capabilities. This leads us to another important feature of organisational power – its cumulative character.

To say that, historically speaking, coercive organisational power has been cumulative does not suggest that this is some kind of evolutionary, teleological, project. On the contrary there is nothing inherently expansionist in social organisations. It is quite obvious that throughout history, organisations, including militaries, states, religious or economic entities, have disintegrated or were incorporated into other social organisations. Even the largest polities, such as the Roman, Mogul or Ottoman, empires have collapsed as have many religious organisations, business corporations and a variety of military entities. Nevertheless, while individual organisations disappear, are amalgamated into other organisations, split into more entities or simply self-destruct, organisational power as such has continued to grow over the past 12,000 years (Malešević, 2010, 2013b, 2017). Since their inception in the early Mesolithic, durable and complex social organisations have shown themselves to be the most effective vehicles of political, economic, cultural and military power. The possession of complex organisational apparatuses has proved advantageous in maintaining social order involving large numbers of individuals. Moreover, the control of specific organisations has been decisive in expanding one’s power both internally and externally. This was particularly the case with military organisations as control of the means of destruction often matters much more than control of the means of production. The largely continuous increase in the organisational capacity of states over the last three centuries owes a great deal to their ability to monopolise the legitimate use of violence over their territories (Hirst, 2001; Mann, 2013; Tilly, 1985; Weber, 1968). The power of military organisations has increased as they became better integrated in the political and economic apparatuses of modern states. The development of technology, transport and communication systems together with the greater professionalisation of recruitment, supply, training and fighting techniques have all made state militaries better functioning organisations.

As states became more centralised, regulated and bureaucratised in a Weberian sense, so did their militaries. Similar processes are discernible outside of the state structures: revolutionary organisations, terrorist networks, associations of insurgents and many other non-state actors have increased their military capacity through organisational development (Della Porta, 2013; Malešević, 2016). To be effective against the ever-increasing organisational abilities of modern military machines, terrorist outfits also had to enhance their organisational capacity. Hence, over the years, such organisations have developed better systems of recruitment, training, financing, promotion, weapon supply and decision making. This also applies to many other non-state military actors. All of this suggests that the organisational capacity of military power has, for the most part, been cumulative. While there were many historical ups and downs and regional and local oscillations, military organisations as such continue to grow and expand. The fact that some contemporary states have reduced their military budgets or have smaller armies does not imply that their coercive abilities have shrunk. On the contrary, this is often a reliable sign that a particular state apparatus is organisationally and coercively so strong that it can operate effectively without mass mobilisations of ordinary citizens. With the continuous rise of organisational coercive power, there is little need to deploy excessive forms of violence. The gory images of people burned at the stake or boiled alive that one associates with the Dark Ages were not an indicator of a state’s strength but rather of its weakness. Precisely because many pre-modern polities lacked the organisational capacity to control large populations, they had to utilise gruesome forms of violence to deter unwanted action (Malešević, 2010; Mann, 1986).

In contrast, modern states penetrate their civil societies and have the ability to control and punish anti-state acts without needing to use excessive violence. Thus, the longer periods of peace experienced in the 21st century should not be interpreted as a sign of inevitable decline of violence. For one thing, this is not historically new as many parts of the world have lived without major violent conflicts for decades – from Western and Central Europe between 1870 and 1913 to South America for much of the 20th century to many parts of Asia in the 18th century. For another thing, such (temporary) episodes reflect an ever-increasing rise in the coercive organisational might of modern military and other organisations. It is true that the last several decades have witnessed a decrease in the number of battlefield casualties. However, this is not the best yardstick to measure the extent of coercive power. Military fatalities are only one segment of the much more complex processes that shape military and other forms of coercive action. The decline in the number of human casualties has very little to do with Pinker’s humanitarian revolution and much more with the capacity of states and non-state actors to achieve military goals with fewer soldiers and more sophisticated technology and science. The technological displacement approach is right that advancements in modern technology make military power less reliant on huge numbers of recruits (Fazal, 2014). The new technological developments in medicine, electronics, computing and military technology help reduce the number of fatalities on both sides of the frontline. Nevertheless, this does not mean that coercive power is decreasing. On the contrary, the new technologies and the more sophisticated modes of organisation make military violence even more potent. Leaving to one side the nuclear arsenal that can destroy the entire planet many times over in a matter of minutes, a large number of states have at their disposal conventional weapons that can also kill millions in a short period of time. World military spending has experienced a continuous increase over the past two decades, and it now stands at $1.756 trillion per annum which makes it ‘higher than in any year between the end of World War II and 2010’ (SIPRI Military Expenditure Database, 2013: 2). The theorists of new wars are right that the decline of the battlefield deaths does not mean than other forms of violent action are decreasing too. Recent wars had fewer direct fatalities but more indirect casualties. For example, as UNHCR documents, the number of displaced people has dramatically increased over the last decade from 37.5 in 2004 to 43.7 in 2010 to 59.5 million in 2014, ‘the highest level ever recorded’ (http://www.unhcr.org/558193896.html). All of this indicates that there is more continuity than discontinuity in the character of military violence. While military violence can change its form and utilise new modes of technology and organisation, there is no sign that its coercive might is in decline. On the contrary, it seems that the organisational capacity that underpins military violence is undergoing continuous and cumulative increase. That is why I refer to this ongoing historical process as the cumulative bureaucratisation of coercion.

Ideological power and military violence

The defining feature of military power is coercion. This involves the external capability to inflict violence on adversaries in times of war or major crisis. It also entails internal capacity to quickly implement decisions through the hierarchical chain of command without significant resistance. In this sense, military organisations have greater coercive capacity than most other social organisations. However, no social organisation can operate for long periods of time without a degree of legitimacy. Even the least popular military regimes have to devise some kind of narrative to justify their usurpation of state apparatuses. Throughout history, political rulers and military leaders have tended to rely on a variety of doctrines to legitimise their right to rule. Combining coercion with religion, mythology, political ideology or imperial creeds was often necessary to maintain one’s grip on power. Before modernity, coercion regularly trumped ideology but the rulers still needed to justify their position to their fellow aristocrats. For example, since the rulers of Mameluk Sultanate (1250–1382) were the descendants of a slave army, their right to govern the sultanate was disputed by the rulers of neighbouring polities who refused to recognise the Mameluks as the legitimate rulers. For example, when Mameluk sultan Baybars approached King Hetum I of Armenia, he was dismissed because of his lowly origin: Hetum called Baybars ‘a dog and a slave’ (Broadbridge, 2008: 13). In a similar way, the right to govern the pre-modern and early modern European kingdoms was determined by one’s bloodline, often along the principle of the divine right of monarchs.

One of the key legacies of the French and American revolutions was the dismantling of traditional modes of political legitimacy. The onset of modernity was defined by substantial structural transformations but also by a gradual shift from the idea that a ruler is subject to no earthly authority towards the notion that political sovereignty is to be located in the will of the people. Much of the analytical focus has been on how this organisational shift extended rights to the large number of ordinary individuals (i.e. the French 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and the US 1791 Bill of Rights). However, what is equally important is that this dramatic transformation was also a catalyst of unprecedented ideological bifurcation. In other words, the institutional recognition that all members of a particular polity are of equal moral worth and that as such should have equal right to elect their rulers ² opened up room for the emergence of new ideological vistas. If the rulers have no God given right to rule and if all members of the nation are nominally equal, then pursuing different ideological projects and diverse group interests becomes not only possible but inevitable. Simply put, by dismantling the ancient regime, modernity helps politicise ordinary individuals, thus generating competing understandings of the present and desirable future. Since political decisions now entail popular legitimacy, it becomes paramount to articulate relatively coherent and comprehensive blueprints of a better social order which would appeal to the wider public. Hence, modernity fosters ideological cacophony where ideologies emerge as the key social mechanism for both mass mobilisation and political legitimation. It is no accident that most recognisable and most popular political doctrines, from liberalism, socialism, conservatism, anarchism, racism to religious fundamentalism, emerge in the modern era. The changed social conditions stimulate the proliferation of competing ideological discourses, but they also generate new and ever-rising, and ideology-prone, publics. The dramatic rise in literacy rates combined with the standardisation of vernaculars, centralisation and mass expansion of educational systems, booming of the affordable mass media, pamphlets and books have also contributed to the expansion of the public sphere, development of civil societies and the greater ideologisation of modern individuals (Gellner, 1983; Giddens, 1986; Malešević, 2013b; Mann, 1986). Hence, what is distinct about modern social orders is that they generate and sustain more ideological power than their historical predecessors. In contrast to pre-modern empires, such as the Ming dynasty China, Abbasid Caliphate or Chalukya dynasty India, which had neither organisational nor ideological means to penetrate their societies, modern states are ideological and organisational giants. While the traditional empires were ‘capstone’ polities (Hall, 1985) where the elites essentially presided over different societies that they could not penetrate, modern social orders are defined by organisational and ideological interdependence. In this sense, ideologisation is a process that involves the state apparatuses and the civil society, both of which are infused with the greater ideological capacity. As the control of the state apparatuses now depends on continuous popular legitimacy and as the non-state actors require mass mobilisation, ideological doctrines and practices become a cornerstone of social and political life in modernity.

This is particularly visible in the context of military violence. Since traditional rulers generally could not trust their subjects, their military might was confined to the temporary alliances of aristocrats. In this sense, both their organisational and ideological powers were quite limited: they could not arm their subjects as they would quickly turn these weapons against their masters and they had little or no ideological support for military undertakings. In contrast, modernity provides ample space for the mass mobilisation and mass legitimisation of violence. Increased organisational power provides the means to increase military capacity. Hence, the last three centuries have witnessed a continuous rise in the industrialisation of the military; the development and mass production of new weaponry; the increased size of militaries; the stronger integration of science, technology and the military; and the greater expansion of infrastructural capacities linked to the military sector (transport, communication, logistics etc.; Giddens, 1986; Hirst, 2001). In addition, organisational expansion was also pivotal in stimulating and then channelling ideological support for the use of organised violence. Whereas in the pre-modern world rulers had no organisational means, ideological know-how or even interest in mobilising large numbers of its subjects to fight a particular war, in modernity, warfare entails popular participation and public support. With greater ideological penetration and increased popular ideologisation, the use of military violence becomes linked to the realisation of specific ideological blueprints. Hence, while in the past one could convert or leave one’s land to avoid being killed, in modernity, one is killed for who she is (Smith, 1999).

Since modern ideological vistas are often rooted in the discourse of science, universal ethics and rationality, they tend to embrace doctrinal purism and ideological inflexibility. Unlike traditional belief systems which were largely focused on the afterlife, most contemporary ideological projects, including those couched in religious rhetoric, such as Salafism or Christian fundamentalism, are really political projects centred on this earthly world. Although different normative doctrines tend to project very different threats and adversaries, the ideological rationale offered is often very similar: the very existence of the enemy is a threat to our own survival. From the French Revolution to the most recent wars in Syria and Iraq, the ideological discourses show a great deal of continuity and similarity. It is no accident that the French revolutionaries and ISIS leaders utilise similar discourses. Both Louise Saint Just and al-Baghdadi speak of the ‘prompt, severe and inflexible justice’ leading to mass killings of the enemy. For Saint Just, the post-revolutionary French Republic ‘consists of the extermination of everything that opposes it’ (Malešević, 2013a). Similarly, for al-Baghdadi, the current war in Iraq and Syria ‘is the war of every Muslim in every place, and the Islamic State is merely the spearhead in this war. It is but the war of the people of faith against the people of disbelief’ (Independent, 15 May 2015). Nonetheless, this type of righteous zealotry is not confined to radical movements but is often an integral part of the discourses deployed by state leaders and accepted by populations in times of conflict. Hence, during WWII, both Soviet and American military activities were justified in terms of this totalist logic. The atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, together with the carpet bombing of Tokyo and other Japanese cities, was, as polls show, quite popular with the US public who supported the idea that more bombs should be dropped and that all Japanese should be killed (Hixson, 2003: 239). This view was also reflected in President Truman’s statement on the destruction of Japanese cities that ‘when you have to deal with a beast, you have to treat him as a beast’ (Alperovitz, 1995: 563). Similar attitudes were present among Soviets who were largely supportive of the mass killings of German civilians and were in favour of Japan’s destruction. This was echoed in Stalin’s speeches which often refer to the ‘annihilation of all enemies’ including domestic ‘traitors’: ‘we will mercilessly annihilate everyone who by his actions and thoughts (yes, thoughts too) assails the unity of the socialist state’ (Midlarsky, 2011: 134).

What differentiates modern ideologies from traditional belief systems are their absolutist ambitions which are often grounded in the view that they possess ultimate truths and have access to the indisputable parameters of what constitutes justice. While many proto-ideological discourses contain seeds of this type of reasoning, it is only in modernity that organisational developments allows for both the proliferation of specific ideological discourses as well as for the greater societal penetration of such discourses. Although in the last several decades the scale of human bloodshed might have decreased, this in itself is no indicator that organised violence is in decline. On the contrary, with greater organisational and ideological penetration, violence becomes firmly embedded and better legitimised and thus less visible in contemporary contexts. This applies equally to modern states and many non-state organisations: while states can only in modernity establish a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence over their entire territories, non-state organisations expand in the modern age by increasing their coercive and legitimising capacities to police their members (Foucault, 1975, 2003).

Hence, where the three dominant perspectives on military violence see unprecedented discontinuity, one can in fact find a great deal of continuity. The declinists may be right that battlefield fatalities or recent wars have decreased. The new war theorists might also be right that contemporary conflicts generate more civilian hardship than before. One could also agree with the technological displacement thesis that new inventions generate novel war realities. However, none of these changes indicate a profound organisational or ideological rupture in the way military violence operates. On the contrary, the current situation is a reflection of processes that have been in motion for very long periods of time. Despite various historical oscillations, organisational power as such has been on the increase since the inception of the pristine states and other early forms of organised authority. Similarly, the various proto-ideological discourses have been fermenting for millennia. The onset of modernity did not abolish violence, as the proponents of the Enlightenment hoped, but actually intensified the organisational and ideological expansion that ultimately fostered a greater increase in the capacity for violent destruction. In this sense, there is a clear upward trajectory in the character of organised violence. Initially, there was a shift from the Medieval type of violence defined by excessive cruelty and a very low military efficiency to the wars of modernity characterised by the gradual displacement of gruesomeness and greater military proficiency resulting in enormous human casualties (i.e. WWII). More recently, one could witness another gradual shift from the modern high death ratios towards military power typified by the penetration of highly superior coercive and ideological powers (Malešević, 2014, 2017). Hence, in addition to the cumulative bureaucratisation of coercion, modern social organisations remain underpinned by another ongoing historical process – centrifugal ideologisation.

Micro-solidarity and violent action

Large-scale protracted military violence is inconceivable without organisation and some kind of legitimising doctrine. Wars, revolutions, insurrections, genocides, terrorism and many other forms of collective violence are defined by the presence of concrete social organisations and specific ideological discourses that help justify the use of violence. Obviously, all organisations depend on the action of their individual members. This raises the question, why do humans consent to the use of organised violence against other humans and why in the case of military organisations do they take part in violent action? The leading representative of the decline of violence perspective, Steven Pinker, argues along neo-Darwinian lines that human beings are intrinsically violent creatures, something that they allegedly share with the rest of the animal world. In his own words, ‘most of us … are wired for violence’ (Pinker, 2011: 483). In this interpretation, military organisations only reflect innate biological drives where wars and other forms of organised violence are means to obtain resources and mates for the self-reproduction of an organism. Furthermore, for Pinker, the decline of violence is premised in part on the rise of humanitarian ideas and in part on the ability of states to control human violent impulses. In contrast, the new wars perspective interprets violence as something that does not come naturally to human beings but as a phenomenon generated by the neo-liberal capitalist unyielding thirst for profit. For the key representative of this perspective, Mary Kaldor, violence is a means of economic power often utilised through the ‘identity politics’ of divide and rule. To counter this trend Kaldor (2003) advocates deployment of cosmopolitan institutions built on the idea that all human beings belong to a single moral community. Hence, while for Pinker humans are inherently violent, for Kaldor (2003), humanity is defined by the universal propensity for compassion. In this account, once the violent economic conditions are replaced with a ‘world civil society’ humans are likely to move away from war.

Despite their almost mutually exclusive understandings of violence both of these perspectives operate with a simplified and, for the most part, non-sociological view of human action. While Pinker reduces the social to the biological Kaldor conflates the normative with the explanatory. Nevertheless, to fully understand the social complexities of violence, it is necessary to focus one’s attention towards the dynamics of social action on the micro-level. The decades of research on the behaviour of human beings in micro-violent contexts demonstrate that violence has its own logic. Instead of being an innate biological reflex or externally imposed form of indoctrination, violent acts entail prolonged social action. Most violent acts are committed not by lone individuals but by groups of people who know and care about each other. Since the deployment of violence often goes against universally shared moral norms or normal interaction rituals, violence is not easy, and unless channelled by specific organisations, it tends to be messy, short and incompetent (Bourke, 2000; Collins, 2008; Grossman, 1996; Holmes, 1985).

As Collins (2008: 370–412) shows, even in well-organised contexts, such as military organisations at war and police forces dealing with murderous crime or gang fights, violent acts usually involve quite a small number of participants. The available evidence for 20th-century wars indicates that the majority of soldiers have never killed an enemy combatant and that most of the killings were committed by a handful of highly motivated individuals in each platoon. Similarly, most police officers and violent gang members have never killed a human being, with most such acts undertaken by the ‘violent few’. Hence, to understand what motivates individuals to take part in violence, it is crucial to demythologise the popular perception that violent acts can be performed with ease. If this was the case, there would be no need to employ the variety of sophisticated methods used to mobilise individuals to fight wars. However, it is quite clear that throughout history, military organisations had to deploy coercion, propaganda, material inducements, emotional blackmail and many other techniques to make soldiers fight. This is not to say that human beings have a natural aversion to violence. On the contrary, as complex, interactive and learning-prone beings, humans have the potential for both violence and compassion. This duality of action is quite apparent in human animal relations where some animals are cherished as loved pets while others are routinely slaughtered for food. In this sense, human beings are plastic creatures that generally dislike the use of violence but are capable of learning to be violent as a part of social action conducted with other human beings. Collins (2008) is absolutely right that most forms of violence involve groups rather than individuals. Even when violent acts are undertaken by solitary individuals, one can often find that this act was accomplished in reference to, or with the help of, significant others. From suicide bomber missions, assassinations and sniper kills to protest self-immolations and acts of revolutionary violence, strong social ties regularly determine the motivation behind individual actions (Collins, 2008; Della Porta, 2013; Sageman, 2004; Turner, 2007; White, 2000). This equally applies to relatively small scale violent acts such as vigilantism or political assassinations as well as to large scale violence including wars, revolutions or genocides. In all of these cases, one can encounter intense social action that makes violent acts possible.

However, there is a substantial difference between small groups where individuals are usually involved in direct, face-to-face, interaction and those comprising of a huge number of anonymous individuals. Whereas small groups can initiate and engage in ad hoc forms of violence, this is almost impossible for large scale entities that require much more coordination and planning. Simply put, wars, revolutions, genocides and other types of collective violence require the presence of organisational power. Military violence is inconceivable without the complex organisations which are necessary for all segments of military activity: recruitment, supply, armament, strategy, tactics, information gathering, morale and so forth. Furthermore, unlike the small violent groups that may not necessarily be held together by coherent ideological doctrine, most durable military organisations require ideological glue that holds them together. While some violence-yielding organisations are more explicitly ideological than others (i.e. ISIS, Al-Nusra or Tamil Tigers) even when there are no clearly defined ideological vistas, all military outfits have to find a way to justify their use of violence.

Although macro- and micro-level action often differs substantially in terms of organisational and ideological power, there is also something they all share – micro-solidarity. In small scale face-to-face groupings, this sense of group attachment is a cornerstone of social action. Networks of friendship and kinship have regularly been identified as a decisive mechanism through with individuals engage in violence. These findings relate equally to violent gang membership, terrorist units, insurgency cells, secret societies or even more radical neighbourhood vigilante outfits. In all of these cases, it was affective ties, a sense of ethical fulfilment and micro-group responsibility that were recognised as the key drivers that hold group members together (Della Porta, 2006; Malešević, 2013b, 2015; Sageman, 2004; White, 2000). While this is less visible in the case of macro-organisations, they too are often built around, and sustained by, similar emotional and cognitive ties. Obviously, an organisation consisting of millions of individuals (i.e. the Chinese or Russian military) cannot develop such intimate bonds between its members as the small, face-to-face, groups do. However, all large scale violence-yielding entities also utilise the energy of micro-level solidarity. This is not done directly but through specific organisational and ideological processes that, when successful, make macro-level organisations resemble micro-level bonds (Thornborrow and Brown, 2009). In some important respects, the internal coherence and external efficiency of large scale military organisations are premised on their ability to mimic the discourse and practices of micro-group attachments, a process I call the envelopment of micro-solidarity (Malešević, 2015, 2017). Since human beings are emotional and meaning-focused creatures that tend to achieve cognitive, affective and moral fulfilment through close personalised bonds, it is paramount for social organisations, including military ones, to tap into these feelings and cognitions. Hence, over the last 12,000 years, military organisations were eager to find ways of tapping into the micro-universe of friendships, family, peers and other close-knit group attachments. While with a few notable exceptions most pre-modern polities had neither the organisational nor ideological capacity to penetrate this microcosm, modern political and military orders have perfected the mechanisms to permeate this micro-world.

Over the last 300 years, and in conjunction with modern state apparatuses, military organisations have become capable of numerous new roles: monopolising the use of force over their sovereign territory, introducing mass conscription, the mandatory registration of all its citizens (with compulsory birth certificates, id documentation, passports etc.), enhancing their policing and juridical monitoring of their citizens, utilising advanced communication and transport networks to establish centralised control from the capital to the provincial regions, introducing a variety of surveillance and censorship programmes and the ability to enforce taxation at source (Malešević, 2010, 2017; Mann, 1986, 1993). In line with the Weberian diagnosis, as militaries gradually shifted from patrimonial towards legal-rational models of organisation, they also become more formal, anonymous, bureaucratic and distant. Hence, to maintain their grip on society, it was essential that military organisations appropriate the discourse and practices of micro-solidarity, thus presenting its very existence in terms of close-knit micro-groups. To accomplish this feat, the growth of organisational power had to be accompanied by the rise of ideological facility including the expansion of mass scale, state-sponsored and state-controlled educational systems; dramatically increased literacy rates; the development of civil society; mass media and increased interdependence between state and society. In such an environment, ideological power had both means and priming to envelope networks of micro-solidarity.

The long-term outcome of this process was further integration of coercive organisational and ideological powers with the emotional, cognitive and ethical ingredients of the micro-world. In other words, by penetrating the grass roots, military organisations were capable of blending the national with the local, the macro with the micro and the organisational with the personal. Thus, instead of defining themselves as bureaucratic entities involved in destruction of other bureaucratic entities (i.e. other militaries and states), such organisations embrace the language and rituals associated with the family, deep kinship and friendship ties. So the military establishments deploy nationalist, religious or other ideological topoi to depict the military as ‘a band of brothers’ who fight to preserve the ‘honour of their mothers and sisters’. In this rhetoric, formal organisations such as the state and military lose their cold bureaucratic properties and become ‘motherland’, ‘fatherland’, ‘homeland’, ‘our brave boys and girls’ and so on. In this context, the success of organisational and ideological penetration is to be measured by the popular normalisation and naturalisation that does not allow for serious questioning of organisationally produced ideological categories. Hence, it is through this centrifugal ideologisation and the cumulative bureaucratisation of coercion that micro-solidarity becomes enveloped and integrated into the everyday workings of the military machine. What is crucial here is that this process has experienced continuous growth over the past 300 years, and regardless of whether the militaries and states are involved in wars, their organisational and ideological grip has continued to expand.

It is true that the last several decades have witnessed a decline in the number of military fatalities and a decrease in the number of wars worldwide. Nevertheless, this has had no impact on the continuous expansion of the bureaucratic and ideological military apparatuses of most powerful states. Even during the post-cold war periods, underpinned by Thatcherite ideas of the minimal state, both the military and state apparatuses of the United States and the United Kingdom have grown (Mann, 2013). Similarly, China and Russia now have substantially larger organisational and ideological structures than their 1980s predecessors, with Russia having five times the size of bureaucracy that the entire USSR had (Gudkov, 2015). ³ Obviously, the size of the organisational and ideological apparatuses does not necessarily mean that they are more efficient. However, this indicates greater penetration in everyday life and as such demonstrates that coercive power is not on the wane. With the continuous growth of organisational and ideological powers and their better embeddedness in networks of micro-solidarity, military violence is likely to expand rather than decline as argued by Pinker and others. However, this expansion seems to follow neither the visions of the new war nor the technological displacement theorists. Rather than indicating profound discontinuity with the past, the current trends point towards the continuous rise of military power in the 21st century.

Conclusion

Military violence is often understood as a mere means to achieve specific political or economic goals. From Machiavelli (1997 [1532]) and Von Clausewitz (1997 [1832]) to Kenneth Waltz (2008) and John Mearsheimer (2001), scholars have overemphasised the political and economic instrumentality of military power. Although Clausewitz was well aware that the ‘fog of war’ often generates its own unpredictable dynamic, he too was adamant that military violence is a handmaid of politics. However, to fully understand how military violence operates through time and space, it is crucial to recognise its unique sociological and organisational dimensions. Since war is first and foremost a human institution dependent on the symbiotic relationship between technology, organisation, ideology and solidarity, its dynamics are shaped by the contingent interplay of all of these factors. The three leading perspectives on military violence, as outlined here, neglect this inherent historical complexity of collective violence. By focusing only on a single dimension, they overemphasise the role of technology, economy or biology in the transformation of military power. Consequently, they see radical discontinuity where there is much organisational, ideological and micro-interactional continuity in the way military violence operates in the 21st century. The bottom line is that while military violence is aided by sophisticated technology, complex economic systems and even some cultural and biological propensities, wars can still be waged with very little technology, minimal economic output and some basic normative principles. However, there is no war without organisation. Since its emergence 12,000 years ago until the present day, warfare has continued to change in parallel with the organisational forms that underpinned it. In this sense, what is really fascinating about military violence is not that it changes with time, as it inevitably does, but that its organisational foundation remains stable and keeps growing and expanding over the centuries. In this sense, the early 21st century is not the exception but the rule.