Today was a lovely day and a good one: bright enough to justify the use of sunglasses, with quite a good amount of work completed, to boot. Before my lecture, I finished this week’s Economist and completed a solid outline (including introduction) for the paper I am writing for Dr. Hurrell. With luck, by the time Emily and I meet on Sunday evening to edit papers, I will have both of the ones due for Tuesday finished.
After today’s advanced study of IR lecture, which was delivered by Dr. Hurrell, I had the chance for a very brief stopover at Wadham before moving onwards to the exam schools and a Changing Character of War Program lecture. It was delivered by General Sir Rupert Smith, on the topic of the utility of force. Most of his points were quite familiar, but the one bit that struck me as quite clever was a rebuttal to something that has become the accepted wisdom with regards to fighting terrorism: namely, that it is an asymmetrical conflict. The idea goes that when states with regular armies try to fight non-state groups with irregular forces, they have a rough time of it. The point General Smith made is that it is a requirement of good generalship to turn any conflict you are involved in into an asymmetrical one, to your advantage. To designate the wars where we are doing badly as ‘asymmetric’ and leave it at that is a therefore both a misunderstanding and a poor excuse.
His more familiar contentions include how terrorist groups and other non-state military actors have adopted the practice of operating below the threshold at which the forces of states have utility. He also talked a lot about generating and maintaining support from both your domestic constituency and within the areas where you are operating, as well as the new role of the armed forces in creating the conditions under which stability can exist, rather than defeating the enemy in a straightforward and conclusive way.
After the talk, I had dinner with Roham at St. Antony’s, watched a few minutes from Pirates of the Caribbean, and had a beer. The film reminded me pleasantly of the first time I saw it, in Montreal with Viktoria P. It’s definitely the sort of trend that it would have been nice to extrapolate for the evening, but my two upcoming essays are wailing at me for completion and there is much else to do besides. Tomorrow, I am determined to spend as much time as possible (aside from the quantitative methods lab and bloggers’ gathering) in the Social Sciences Library reading for the papers and next week’s seminar.
Miscellaneous other:
- Thankfully, I’ve been able to defer my battels and fees, yet again. Anyone considering coming to Oxford should take note of how astonishingly difficult and time consuming it can be to transfer money here.
- If people in Group B, with Dr. Roberts and Ceadel, could take a look at this thread on the forum, that would be excellent.
I found it interesting how General Smith, who served as the military commander in Northern Ireland for quite a while, attributed the cessation of hostilities there to the increasingly large middle class and, more generally, economic development.
Can that be applied to the terrorist dangers that Western nations are facing now?
I don’t know enough to answer, but I would suggest reading his new book: “The Utility of Force,” reviewed here.