The Emergence of Covert Warfare

Secret Wars ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 75-98
Author(s):  
Austin Carson
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
Control Technique ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Special Role ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
World War ◽  
Limited War ◽  
Technological Developments

This chapter describes the confluence of political, technological, and social changes that prompted the emergence of covert military intervention as an escalation-control technique. It lays the foundation for assessing how more recent political and technological changes, such as cyberwarfare and drones, influence the covert sphere. In particular, this chapter highlights the special role of World War I. It conceptualizes the Great War as a critical juncture that dramatized the dangers of large-scale war escalation and accelerated political, social, and technological developments that influenced escalation control. These changes sharpened the problem of escalation control by making leaders more vulnerable to hawkish domestic constraints and making intentions about limited war harder to discern. Yet it also made possible new ways of using military force anonymously through, for example, the development of airpower. World War I prompted major powers to experiment with ways of limiting war; this included manipulation of the form of external military intervention.

Introduction

Secret Wars ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Austin Carson
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
Control Problems ◽  
World War ◽  
Major Powers ◽  
Initial Decision ◽  
Limited War ◽  
Shared Interest ◽  
Basic Relationship

This chapter argues that escalation control and a shared desire to limit war can motivate covert intervention up front, collusion by major powers that detect it, and official non-acknowledgment if it is widely exposed. Since World War I, large-scale escalation of war has become unacceptably costly, yet leader control of the escalation process has been simultaneously weakened. While a range of factors influence the escalation potential for war, this chapter focuses on two specific escalation-control problems: constraints created by domestic hawks and misunderstandings among adversaries about the value of limited war. It claims that backstaging military intervention allows rival leaders to insulate themselves and one another from domestic hawkish constraints. In addition, embracing the backstage communicates shared interest in keeping war limited. This basic relationship provides a unifying logic for the initial decision to intervene covertly, a detector's decision to collude after detection, and an intervener's continuing non-acknowledgment of a widely exposed intervention.

‘Grey Dawn’ in the British Pacific: Race, Security and Colonial Sovereignty on the Eve of World War I

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse Tumblin
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War I ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Royal Navy ◽  
World War ◽  
Building Projects ◽  
Cooperative Security ◽  
Strategic Defense ◽  
Racial Discourses ◽  
The Way

This article examines the way a group of colonies on the far reaches of British power – Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and India, dealt with the imperatives of their own security in the early twentieth century. Each of these evolved into Dominion status and then to sovereign statehood (India lastly and most thoroughly) over the first half of the twentieth century, and their sovereignties evolved amidst a number of related and often countervailing problems of self-defence and cooperative security strategy within the British Empire. The article examines how security – the abstracted political goods of military force – worked alongside race in the greater Pacific to build colonial sovereignties before the First World War. Its first section examines the internal-domestic dimension of sovereignty and its need to secure territory through the issue of imperial naval subsidies. A number of colonies paid subsidies to Britain to support the Royal Navy and thus to contribute in financial terms to their strategic defense. These subsidies provoked increasing opposition after the turn of the twentieth century, and the article exlpores why colonial actors of various types thought financial subsidies threatened their sovereignties in important ways. The second section of the article examines the external-diplomatic dimension of sovereignty by looking at the way colonial actors responded to the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. I argue that colonial actors deployed security as a logic that allowed them to pursue their own bids for sovereignty and autonomy, leverage racial discourses that shaped state-building projects, and ultimately to attempt to nudge the focus of the British Empire's grand strategy away from Europe and into Asia.

World War I Conscription and Social Change in Guinea

1978 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Summers ◽  
R. W. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
World War I ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Railway Line ◽  
Military Conscription ◽  
Social Grouping ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Individual

When the French government introduced military conscription into the A.O.F. in 1912, the Guinean colonial authorities saw the measure as a means of training a local administrative corps to replace the traditional chieftaincy, through whose military defeat the conquest of Guinea had very largely been effected. However, the chiefs had by no means disappeared by 1914, and wartime demands for recruits were too massive to be supplied without their assistance. Their help was bought with promises to consolidate their authority in peacetime. Although able to marshal recruits, the chiefs seem to have been unable to prevent large-scale desertions before the moment of embarkation for France; village populations could also avoid conscription by overland migration out of the A.O.F. The colonial authorities therefore felt constrained to offer substantial inducements, mainly concerning improved social status vis-à-vis the chiefs, to the individual recruits. These contradictory policies were compounded by the recruitment drive of Blaise Diagne in 1918, which involved a further promise to recruits of improved status vis-à-vis the French authorities. The return of ancien combattants to Guinea was marked by outbreaks of strike action among workers in Conakry and along the railway line; by riots in demobilization camps; and by rejection of or agitation against chiefly power in the home cantons to which they dispersed. The anciens combattants did not form a coherent or organized political movement, but remained a conspicuous social grouping between the wars. Although they appear to have been strongly influenced by their experience of war and by contact with French socialists, their conflict with the chiefs seems to have counted for more with them than any confrontation with the French.

History and International Relations

Mind-Society ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 228-256
Author(s):  
Paul Thagard
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
General Theory ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Social Mechanisms ◽  
World War ◽  
Historical Explanation ◽  
Historical Developments ◽  
Insight Into

Historical explanation and the understanding of international relations can be enhanced by applying detailed psychological, neural, and social mechanisms to real-world events. By applying the method of social cognitive-emotional workups to the origins of World War I, this chapter shows the relevance of an integrated account of beliefs, concepts, values, rules, analogies, metaphors, emotions, inferences, and communication. The result transcends the limitations of purely narrative explanations in history and provides insight into why the field of international relations has lacked a satisfactory general theory. Explaining social changes in both groups and individuals requires understanding the communicative interactions of cognitive-emotional minds; the result is mechanistic-narrative explanation. Dealing with complex historical developments such as the outbreak of wars requires solution of the person–group problem.

The Theory of Lateral Pressure: Highlights of Quantification and Empirical Analysis

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nazli Choucri ◽  
Gaurav Agarwal
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
World War I ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Empirical Analysis ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Lateral Pressure ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
Dynamics Modeling ◽  
World War ◽  
Wide Range

The term lateral pressure refers to any tendency (or propensity) of states, firms, and other entities to expand their activities and exert influence and control beyond their established boundaries, whether for economic, political, military, scientific, religious, or other purposes. Framed by Robert C. North and Nazli Choucri, the theory addresses the sources and consequences of such a tendency. This chapter presents the core features—assumptions, logic, core variables, and dynamics—and summarizes the quantitative work undertaken to date. Some aspects of the theory analysis are more readily quantifiable than others. Some are consistent with conventional theory in international relations. Others are based on insights and evidence from other areas of knowledge, thus departing from tradition in potentially significant ways. Initially applied to the causes of war, the theory focuses on the question of: Who does what, when, how, and with what consequences? The causal logic in lateral pressure theory runs from the internal drivers (i.e., the master variables that shape the profiles of states) through the intervening variables (i.e., aggregated and articulated demands given prevailing capabilities), and the outcomes often generate added complexities. To the extent that states expand their activities outside territorial boundaries, driven by a wide range of capabilities and motivations, they are likely to encounter other states similarly engaged. The intersection among spheres of influence is the first step in complex dynamics that lead to hostilities, escalation, and eventually conflict and violence. The quantitative analysis of lateral pressure theory consists of six distinct phases. The first phase began with a large-scale, cross-national, multiple equation econometric investigation of the 45 years leading to World War I, followed by a system of simultaneous equations representing conflict dynamics among competing powers in the post–World War II era. The second phase is a detailed econometric analysis of Japan over the span of more than a century and two World Wars. The third phase of lateral pressure involves system dynamics modeling of growth and expansion of states from 1970s to the end of the 20th century and explores the use of fuzzy logic in this process. The fourth phase focuses on the state-based sources of anthropogenic greenhouse gases to endogenize the natural environment in the study of international relations. The fifth phase presents a detailed ontology of the driving variables shaping lateral pressure and their critical constituents in order to (a) frame their interconnections, (b) capture knowledge on sustainable development, (c) create knowledge management methods for the search, retrieval, and use of knowledge on sustainable development and (d) examine the use of visualization techniques for knowledge display and analysis. The sixth, and most recent, phase of lateral pressure theory and empirical analysis examines the new realities created by the construction of cyberspace and interactions with the traditional international order.

The Homosexual Scare and the Masculinization of German Politics before World War I

2014 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 737-759 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norman Domeier
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Sexual Morality ◽  
World War ◽  
German Politics ◽  
Political Events ◽  
Dreyfus Affair ◽  
Domestic Affairs ◽  
The Military

It may seem strange today to study aspects of the political sphere—from foreign policy to diplomacy and the military—in the context of sexuality. But the Belle Epoque (1871–1914) was an era of prestige politics, also with respect to the politics of sexuality. This article reveals how the Eulenburg Scandal of 1906 to 1909 used sexual morality as a way to explain and interpret the tensions that pervaded Germany's domestic affairs and international relations. The reliance on sexual mores as an explanation for large-scale political events was the result of an ever-intensifying chain of national and international complications—complications that later undermined Germany's sense of national honor. The Eulenburg Scandal is remembered today mainly as the first major homosexual scandal of the twentieth century, but contemporaries experienced it in a wider sense: it became Germany's counterpart to the Dreyfus Affair in France—two examples of political, social, and cultural conflict that threatened the foundations of their respective countries.

A Limited-War Theory of Secrecy

Secret Wars ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 26-74
Author(s):  
Austin Carson
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
Conflict Escalation ◽  
Political Constraints ◽  
Limited War ◽  
Modern War

This chapter defines and takes stock of the challenge of war escalation and the practice of limited war. It develops a logic for secrecy based on shared fears of large-scale conflict escalation. The theory is anchored in the nature of escalation dynamics in modern war and the difficulty of bounding conflict. The chapter argues that secrecy generally addresses two common pathways for unwanted escalation: political constraints and miscommunication. The heart of the chapter argues that covert forms of military intervention can simultaneously insulate leaders from outside audience reactions and communicate to adversaries one's interest in maintaining a limited-war framework. The chapter then connects these themes to two puzzles mentioned in the previous chapter by showing that limited-war dynamics make sense of collusion by an adversary and the continued value of widely exposed interventions. The chapter ends by explaining how the severity of escalation dangers influences the choice between frontstage and backstage and identifies process-related observable implications.

Energy Use in the Japanese Copper Industry from the Meiji Period to World War I

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-109
Author(s):  
Asuka Yamaguchi
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Energy Use ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Energy Sources ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
World War ◽  
Product Usage ◽  
Meiji Period ◽  
Financial Power

Abstract In recent years, energy constraints have been discussed from a historical point of view. This study aims at examining the copper industry’s energy use in Japan from the Meiji period to the time of World War I and clarifying the process of, and reasons for, the selection of energy sources. This study considered not only energy use in the large-scale mines but also energy use in the small-scale mines and miners’ homes. As a result, it was clarified that the mines changed into a space that was based on a diverse combination of energy sources, depending on differences in location (access to energy), natural conditions, financial power, the required amount and price of energy, energy use technologies, ore quality, and end product (usage).

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