War Of Necessity Research Articles

When war hits home: Taiwanese public support for war of necessity

AbstractWhen a war directly intrudes citizens’ living space, it becomes a war of necessity for the public to defend themselves. However, current literature on public support for war has focused exclusively on wars of choice, not of necessity. Thus, we wonder if existing indicators of war support have explanatory power in this context. In this article, we examine existing indicators in a war of necessity—a cross-Strait conflict between Taiwan and China—to study how the public in Taiwan reacts. In addition to finding support for most of our hypotheses, the new context also contributes novel findings to the literature.

Neglectful Archives: Representations of Afghanistan

The United States, through its military occupation, has been directly involved in Afghanistan for over fourteen years now. Under President George W. Bush, the U.S. intervention was described not only as part of the so-called “War on Terror,” it was also defined essentially as a triumphal “mission civilisatrice” that insisted on “nation-building” and “creating democratic institutions” in the war-ravaged country. President Barack Obama – who had once characterized the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan as “a war of necessity” – has withdrawn the bulk of U.S. troops from the country and has been outlining, at least in public, a seemingly different course of action: extricating the U.S. involvement in the Afghan theatre by training and revamping Afghan security forces to stand up against the Taliban insurgency, that is, in essence, “Afghanizing” the Afghan conflict.

Obama, the Media, and Framing the U.S. Exit from Iraq and Afghanistan. By Erika G.King. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2014. 226 pp.

Obama, the Media, and Framing the U.S. Exit from Iraq and Afghanistan. By Erika G. King. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2014. 226 pp. Erika G. King's new book is a systematic effort to document the voices in the domestic public sphere pertaining to U.S. policies on Afghanistan and Iraq. It specifically focuses on the Obama administration's surge-then-exit policy (p. 74) in Afghanistan in December 2009 and its decision to withdraw U.S. combat forces from Iraq in August 2010. Although this period is anticlimactic compared to the 2001-2003 buildup, its voices illustrate equally as much about the recent state of U.S. political discourse. The book is organized into five chapters. Chapter 1 discusses the contentious discourse surrounding the surge strategy in Iraq during the administration of George W. Bush. The chapter shows how General David Petraeus came to be publicly and politically associated with the surge strategy--conveniently serving as a vehicle for Bush to ward off attacks from the Democrats regarding his actions in Iraq. Chapter 2 highlights the Obama administration's strategy in Afghanistan. Obama had faulted the Bush administration for failing to deploy troops in Afghanistan and Pakistan and thereby losing ground to al Qaeda--that is, in the real on terror. By casting the campaign in Afghanistan as a war of necessity (p. 51) and not as a of choice, Obama legitimized the need to commit troops there as part of a surge-and-exit intervention. Chapter 3 then captures the various criticisms involving these surge-and-exit strategies in mainstream U.S. media outlets. Criticisms emerged concerning the legitimacy of President Hamid Karzai; the illegitimacy and ineffectiveness of U.S. forces on the ground as violence reigned in Pakistan; and Obama's decision making, especially involving a troop level purportedly insufficient to carry out a full-scale counterinsurgency mission and an exit plan that was unclear and indefinite (or, in contrast, too clear and definite in the eyes of some). Chapter 4 shifts to Obama's framing of Iraq's situation from 2008 to 2010. It presents the administration's effort, in preparation for the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces, to account for its success and accomplishments as well as its aspirations for Iraq. Chapter 5, then, describes the voices in the domestic media that competed to define the U.S. legacy in Iraq in light of the long-term damage and the ongoing, unsettling situation there. One theme of this criticism targeted the deteriorating conditions in Iraq, evident from rising civilian casualties and insurgent attacks, as well as the lack of basic services and employment opportunities in Baghdad. Another theme pertained to the cost of the conflict to the U.S. economy, a figure likely to be above $3 trillion, attributable in part to cost overruns and outright contractor fraud as well as to U.S. soldiers, who experienced high rates of suicide and stress-induced problems during and after their deployment. It is worth noting, however, that the conflict had fallen out of the headlines by 2008, to about 1% of top news coverage during early 2010 and only about 10% around August 2010, when the withdrawal decision was announced. …

Just War Theory, Afghanistan, and Walzer

In this short article I call into question the view that the current United States war in Afghanistan is a war of necessity. In this effort I am primarily engaged with the thought of the famous just war theorist Michael Walzer as it has developed from I977 until 2009.

Richard N. Haas, War of Necessity, War of Choice: A Memoir of Two Iraq Wars

Richard N. Haas, <i>War of Necessity, War of Choice: A Memoir of Two Iraq Wars</i>

War of necessity, war of choice: a memoir of two Iraq wars

Nearly six years after making the phrases “war of necessity” and “war of choice” a part of the American lexicon, Dr. Richard N. Haass delivers a well-written, eagle-eyed account of the White House decision-making process during the first and second Gulf Wars. In War of Necessity, War of Choice: A Memoir of Two Iraq Wars, Haass expounds on the terms he brought to the forefront in his 2003 Washington Post Opinion Editorial. He asserts that Operation Desert Storm (ODS) should “be viewed as essentially unavoidable, that is [an act] of necessity” and that Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) should be viewed as “just the opposite, reflecting conscious choice when other reasonable policies [were] available . . . .”

Reflections on Leadership

Last year I read Partners in Command, a book by Mark Perry. It is an account of the unique relationship between General Dwight D. Eisenhower and General George Marshall, and how they played a significant role in the American victory in World War II and laid the foundations for future success in the earliest years of the Cold War. Eisenhower and Marshall are, of course, icons, legends etched in granite. Their portraits hang in my office. One of the things I found compelling in Partners in Command is how they were both influenced by another senior Army officer who is not nearly as well-known and in fact, as a reader of history, I had never heard of. His name is General Fox Conner, a tutor and mentor to both Eisenhower and Marshall. Conner and Marshall first became friends when they served together on the staff of General Black Jack Pershing during World War I. In the 1920s, Eisenhower served as staff assistant under Brigadier General Conner in the Panama Canal Zone. Three Axioms From Conner, Marshall and Eisenhower learned much about leadership and the conduct of war. Conner had three principles of war for a democracy that he imparted to Eisenhower and Marshall. They were: * fight unless you have * fight alone. * And never fight for long. All things being equal, these principles are pretty straightforward and strategically sound. We have heard variants of them in the decades since, captured perhaps most recently in the Powell Doctrine. Of course, all things are not equal, particularly considering the range and complexity of the threats facing America today, from the wars we are currently in to the conflicts we are most likely to fight. So I would like to suggest how we should think about applying Fox Conner's three axioms to the security challenges of the twenty-first century. Never fight unless you have to. That one should only go to war as a last resort has long been a principle of civilized people. We know its horrors and costs. War is, by its nature, unpredictable and uncontrollable. Winston Churchill wrote in January 1942: Let us learn our lessons. Never, never believe that any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter.... Once the signal is given, the statesman is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events. In a dictatorship, the government can force the population to fall in behind the war effort, at least for a time. The nature of democracy, however, limits a country's ability to wage war, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. Indeed with perhaps the exception of World War II, every conflict in America's history has been divisive and controversial here at home. Contrary to what General George Patton said in his pep talks, most real Americans do not like to fight. Consider the conflicts today. Afghanistan is widely viewed as a war of necessity--striking back at the staging ground of the perpetrators of the September 11th attack. The Iraq campaign, while justified in my view, is viewed differently by many people. In testimony in front of the Congress on the Iraq war, I observed that we were attacked at home in 2001 from Afghanistan. We are at war in Afghanistan today, in no small measure, because we mistakenly turned our backs on Afghanistan after the Soviet forces left in the late 1980s. We made a strategic mistake in the end game of that war. If we get the end game wrong in Iraq, I told the Congress, the consequences will be far worse. Truth to tell, it is a hard sell to say we must sustain the fight in Iraq right now and continue to absorb the high financial and human cost of the struggle, in order to avoid an even uglier fight or even greater danger to our country in the future. We have Afghanistan to remind us that these are not just hypothetical risks. …

Hitting first: preventive force in U.S. security strategy

The U.S. war in Iraq was not only an intelligence failure - it was a failure in democratic discourse. Hitting First offers a critical analysis of the political dialogue leading up to the American embrace of preventive war as national policy and as the rationale for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Taking as its point of departure the important distinction between preemptive and preventive war, the contributors examine how the rhetoric of policy makers conflated these two very different concepts until the public could no longer effectively distinguish between a war of necessity and a war of choice. Although the book focuses on recent events, Hitting First takes into consideration the broader historical, ethical, and legal context of current American policies. Precedents are examined for preventive military action based on conventional as well as nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons threats. The authors also consider recent examples of the rhetoric of humanitarian intervention, which have tended to undermine traditional notions of national sovereignty, making purportedly morally justifiable actions easier to entertain. Intelligence gathering and its use, manipulation, and distortion to suit policy agendas are also analyzed, as are the realities of the application of military force, military requirements to sustain a policy of preventive war, and post-conflict reconstruction. Hitting First presents a timely and essential view of the lessons learned from the failures of the Iraqi conflict and offers a framework for avoiding future policy breakdowns through a process of deliberative public and governmental debate within a free market of ideas. The critiques and prescriptions offered here provide a unique and valuable perspective on the challenges of formulating and conducting national security policy while sustaining the principles and institutions of American democracy. This collection will appeal to students and scholars of American foreign policy, international relations, political communication, and ethics.