Rethinking Warlords

Warlords in International Relations, edited by Paul B. Rich. New York, St. Martin's Press, 1999. 176 pp. $65.

The 1990s began with great optimism. The Soviet Union dissolved, its former components struggling to remake themselves into more or less democratic states. Eastern Europe was striving to join the West, new Asian tigers were emerging to join the old ones, Latin American democracy was apparently consolidating, and even some African countries were giving signs that a renaissance was conceivable. Many scholars prematurely rushed to celebrate the advent of a new world. But new worlds do not develop quickly and easily. "The old is dying," wrote Antonio Gramsci in his prison diaries, "and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a variety of morbid symptoms appear." Recent books are abandoning the initial triumphalism and are beginning to take stock of the morbid symptoms of the present transitions. Among these symptoms, one of the most disturbing is warlordism.

The world has not become more peaceful during the last decade, although the danger of a major confrontation between the superpowers no longer exists and even the "proxy wars" fought by their respective allies are a thing of the past. In part, the problem is the emergence of new ethnic or religious conflicts, which are replacing the ideological ones of the last fifty years. In part, the problem is the continuation of old conflicts that have lost their ideological veneer but are continuing as the power struggles they essentially had been all along. Angola offers an example of such a war over control of the country. But the most serious problem is the growth of seemingly meaningless conflicts like the one in Sierra Leone--a conflict that is neither ideological, nor ethnic, nor religious, and not even a conflict over control of the state. This is warlordism. Armed groups with unclear political goals and operating outside state structures are appearing with troubling frequency in an increasing number of states. Older armed movements, which ten years ago appeared to have political goals, are also giving way to warlordism.

As Paul Rich points out, the term warlord is associated historically with China in the period following the collapse of the Manchu dynasty in 1911 and before Chiang Kai-shek imposed a degree of control after 1927. In the vacuum of state authority during this period, military commanders established their hold in various regions and localities, pursuing, or so it seemed, warfare for its own sake. While the term warlordism was coined only in this period, the phenomenon itself is ancient: through the ages, seemingly aimless armed movements have made their appearance in periods of state weakness and acute economic hardship, making conflict into a way of life rather than a means to a goal. During the Middle Ages, many European regions experienced warlordism repeatedly, in addition to the organized warfare from which strong states were eventually born.

It is the apparent aimlessness, the violence and pillaging for no clearly discernible purpose rather than in the pursuit of a goal, that gives warlordism a particularly negative connotation. Whether any goals ever justify the employment of violent means is a question on which there is no agreement; no matter how noble a cause may be in theory, violence is always difficult to accept. Violence without goals is not only unacceptable, but also incomprehensible. While it is at least possible to understand why liberation movements have recourse to violence and even acts of terrorism, it is beyond understanding why the Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone maims children and adults for no discernible purpose.

Paul Rich stresses this view of warlordism as aimless violence originating from the decay of the state in his introductory article to Warlords in International Relations. In a cogently written essay that is convincing until the reader turns to the rest of the book, Rich singles out the breakdown of weak states as the main cause of warlordism. During the Cold War, many states--which he calls, following Robert Jackson...