In an interview on Non-Military Solutions to Political Conflict

Let’s move on to Beebe and Kaldor’s The Ultimate Weapon is No Weapon.

This is a wonderful review of how military doctrine is changing. One of the book’s authors, Shannon Beebe, was a U.S. army colonel. He read some of Mary Kaldor’s earlier books and wrote to her. ‘What you’re saying about the nature of warfare is true,’ he said, ‘because I’m experiencing it.’

In essence, war has changed. Most wars are now civil conflicts. The combatants are civilians by day and insurgents by night. The casualties are civilians. This means that the response cannot simply entail military bombing or heavy artillery. It has to be a measured one and win hearts and minds.

The book analyses incisively the situation in Afghanistan. The theoretical doctrine of the NATO forces is to cooperate with people to improve governance, provide economic opportunity and win people away from the extremists. But in practice, U.S. and NATO forces have focused on combat: searching and destroying, killing insurgents and breaking into homes.

We know from experience, and this book says it so well, that you can’t win these campaigns by just trying to kill the insurgents. A political bargain has to be struck. You have to convince people that there’s a better route than extremism. For that, you need to have better options in terms of governance, economy and education.

I think the ideas in this book are wonderful – if only the world could be like that. What worries me is that I think people want to fight. Young, adrenaline-pumped men aren’t looking for a peaceful solution.

If we can give young men attractive socio-economic and educational opportunities, they are less likely to gravitate towards violent insurgency. There is aggression in many people but there are also cooperative instincts. Part of the challenge for society is to structure the options so that the cooperative impulses get more emphasis.