Broken Windows: Special Operations and Clausewitz—Theory, Politics, and State Military Violence in the Limited Wars of the Twenty-first Century

Abstract

American societal enmity following the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, drove the narrative of the Global War on Terror and its legal justification in the Authorization to Use Military Force. The commitment of regular and special operations military forces into the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq reflected this enmity that Carl von Clausewitz noted was the wellspring of war. As American enmity and these wars wind down after eighteen years, anxiety replaces enmity. Special operations become ever more the force of choice by policymakers in pursuit of objectives within the narrative to reduce societal anxiety over terror attack at home. Outside a theater of the active form of war that conforms to the model of the phenomenon of war in politics that Clausewitz defined, can Special Operations be a military task at all—or solely an actor in a world of broken windows—answering only to itself and to a political directive in response to society’s anxiety toward personal safety, crime in the form of terror, and a legal opinion.