Political violence and the practice of security

Political violence and the practice of security

Données clés

Professeur(s)	Stephan Davidshofer Christian Olsson
Enregistrement	2014, 2015
Cours	Political Violence and Security Practices

Lectures

• Political violence and the practice of security
• The birth of modern warfare: war-making and state-making from a Western perspective
• Transformations of war and violence in Europe
• War beyond the West: is the modern state a Western invention?
• What is non-state violence? The Case of Afghan Conflict
• Intervention: Reinventing war?
• Security professionals: bureaucratization, institutionalization, professionalization and differentiation
• The transformation of contemporary security practices: between war and global policing?
• The transformation of contemporary security practices: the logic of risk
• Privatized coercion: from mercenarism to private military companies
• Intelligence and Surveillance

We will look at war as the starting point for security practices. War is a form of organized violence. The point of entry is the birth of war, which is understood by war as a historical phenomenon. Through the war in the West, states have structured themselves around what it means to wage war. We will return to a historical sociology with Bourdieu, Tilly and Norbert Elias recounting how Western states were formed in a long process that allowed the concentration of power through war. By waging war, states become more powerful, state-controlled and bureaucratized. We are talking about the process of civilization of states. The state and the management of violence have been central elements in order to be able to talk about security today.

Allegory of war by Jan Brueghel the younger.

War is not necessarily universalisable, it is not something natural and ahistorical. War as a form of political violence is historically easy to locate as a form of historical experience in Europe and the West. To understand the phenomenon of violence in Europe, tackling a European phenomenon may not be the best tool to deal with political violence in the world.

We will propose a general framework for analysis. The idea is to alternate considerations on the one hand general and theoretical and on the other hand to show that these theories are not there to simply verify knowledge but to understand conflicts or conflict situations in particular practices of security and transformation. The aim is to alternate these theoretical considerations with very practical case studies such as the conflicts in Syria and Afghanistan.

The question of the "how" of war is a matter of why a particular war takes place at such a time. We often ask the question of why, but in this course, we will ask the question of how. War must take place in time and history, as opposed to a view that wars have always taken place, and they have not varied either in their explanation or in their fact. The war is situated in time and since this beginning, the war has varied a lot, Clausewitz says that the war is a chameleon that changes aspect in context, but remains the same in essence.

The aim is to look at the practice of organised violence, not for its own sake, but in order to better analyse its social and historical context. What is important to understand is that in seeking to understand the practice of organized violence, it is not seeking to understand violence in absolute terms. Organized violence has its own dynamics and logics that distinguish it from forms of violence and interindividual forms, and wars and armed conflicts cannot be understood without proper focus. It shows that organized violence has its own logics that require specific tools to understand it.

We look not only at armed conflicts, but also at the "social life" of the actors and organisations that make them possible and/or participate in them. There is a principle of limiting the subject, but at the same time we are broadening it since we will also deal with the actors who can use it, and we must also understand how these actors emerge. How organized violence is deployed in these organizations. So we're going to be interested in:

• Security practices:

1. War;
2. Police;
3. Information, etc.

• Political violence:

1. Terrorism;
2. Resurrection;
3. Guerilla, etc.

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The war: how?

The idea is not to wonder why some wars happen at one time and not at another, or even to wonder why some wars didn't happen when you might think they were going to start. In peace and conflict studies, we ask ourselves the question of the determinants of conflict in order to understand in which situation a war can be seen to emerge, why in certain situations a war has not emerged.

We will try to understand what are the structural conditions of possibility of war, that is to say what makes war possible in the absolute. How human beings make the phenomenon of war possible, whatever the regional area, whatever the historical period. What are the conditions that make the phenomenon of war possible? If we ask the question in this way, we no longer ask why the First World War began in 1914 and not in 1915, we no longer ask why there was no Third World War, but we ask what the permissive conditions are, that is to say, the conditions of possibility that have made war possible and made it a practice that seems to us today to be permanent and universal, but which is also not. What are the sine qua non conditions of 'war'? In other words, what are the necessary conditions of war, how war is possible and why and how war was impossible and why?

The war according to Hedley Bull

Hedley Bull is often identified at the British School of International Relations. In The Anarchical Society published in 1977, Bull postulates that war is "organized violence carried on by political units against each other". This definition highlights a number of important things:

• War is a relationship between political units, but these political units are not necessarily states. In international relations, it is often considered that the modern state did not always exist, but gradually emerged in the 16th and 17th centuries with the treaties of Westphalia in 1648. This is the moment when the principle of state sovereignty becomes a principle of territoriality. The states, sovereign, monarchs and emperors of Europe see their territorial power limited to a territory with clear borders. If we consider that it is indeed 1648 which sees the modern state gradually building up, Bull's definition implies that war may have existed long before with city-states, empires, armed bands which, if they are considered as political units, can have war units;
• War is called "organized violence". It is not disorganized, disorderly and spontaneous violence stemming from an alleged proposal by individuals to resort to violence in a particular situation, but it is organized violence with armed forces in the context of modern states. In the confrontation, historically on a battlefield between armed forces, this confrontation is itself organized. Even before the battle, the commanders will meet to agree on a place where and when the battle will take place, the forms in which the war can be considered legitimate and illegitimate, and then, during the battle, we will see military units deploy and confront each other in a more or less organized way. The organizational dimension is important to understand. If we ask the question of the necessary condition for war to occur, according to Bull's definition, we must understand the way in which societies are organized, the degree of organization of political societies and that, depending on the nature and degree of organization of these political societies, it can and cannot have war. Understanding war requires an understanding of the ways in which political societies can organize themselves to engage in these types of practices.

Organization

In political science, there is no consensual and unique definition of what an organization is, but we can define an organization as an arrangement of social activities that involves active control over human relationships that are deliberately ordered to achieve a goal. That is to say, an organization imposes particular forms on social relations between men, generally it implies a principle of hierarchy among the individuals within the organization, very often this hierarchy has a material base through organizational charts, laws, rules written in such a way as to give them a tangible existence, but this is not necessary, because there may be organizations that do not have an organizational chart defined by the organization chart.

In this sense, organizations generally involve relationships that are different from those of primary groups that are presumed to be spontaneous, unplanned or informal, such as in the context of a family or clan. In general sociology, a primary group is the groups based on the fact that each individual shares the same referents, particularly cultural ones, who share the same beliefs, the same sense of solidarity within the group, and a common culture that implies socialization such as the family, the clan, the village community. An organization is much more about a principle of differentiation, it is not the fact that individuals within the organization have the same role or belief that makes an organization strong, but what makes socialization is the fact that everyone knows their place. An organization involves different relationships because it is hierarchical, organized and goal-oriented. The U. S. military doctrine clearly states that "The Army's mission is to fight and win our Nation's wars". There is an explicit written objective that is one of the characteristics of explicitly formulating an organization that is not the case for primary groups.

Without a complex and hierarchical organisation, i. e. one that is also binding and possibly coercive, there can be no war. In other words, between individuals that we are an a priori unorganized individual, there can be no war because war requires complex organizations with a principle of differentiation, functions imposed by a hierarchy based in particular on coercion and many aspects of which are punished by disciplinary measures.

There are three stories about social organizations and war:

1. Mobilization: the problem of collective action;
2. The use of violence: the problem of coercion and coercion;
3. The collective goal: Unity problem.

Mobilization

The problem of collective action is a principle that was defined by Mancur Olson in the 1960s. The problem of collective action is the fact that if everyone in a group of individuals has an individual interest in collective action such as trade union mobilization, a strike or even a war, it is not because everyone has an individual interest that this mobilization will take place.

Council held by the Rats.

In the advice given by the rats from a fable of La Fontaine, the rats hold a council because they are threatened by a cat who wants to eat them one by one. In the face of this threat, rats realize that they all have to do something individually. If they do nothing, they are threatened as a group and as an individual. The proposed solution is to put a bell around the cat's neck so that rats can be warned and run away. The question arises of who is going to put a bell around the cat knowing that the rat that is going to do it will take a consequent risk. Individually, no one in the board is willing to take the risk. Of course, if they don't put this bell around the cat they will all die in the long run, but if a rat proposes to put the bell around the rat he risks dying immediately.

It is the problem of free rider, facing a collective mobilization everyone has an interest in doing something, in reality everyone will want someone else to do it instead of paying the cost and taking the risk. The same phenomenon can be seen in the phenomena of strikes and worker mobilization. The solution to this problem is simple: to organize. From the moment that there is a hierarchical and binding organisation, for example the trade unions in the face of employers, in armed conflicts, it is the armies, in an inter-state war the governments, based on authority, a principle of discipline and coercion, are going to select the rat that will be obliged to carry out the action that will be selected to carry out the activity.

When there is a collective action dilemma, an individual and collective interest in taking action, it is not going to mean that there will be action because there needs to be an organization. If we look at the civil war in Syria, what is the situation? It is assumed that a majority of Syrians want to get rid of the dictator Bachar Al Assad, considering not just that he threatens their community. It is not enough to have an individual and collective interest in this goal of getting rid of a dictator for someone to dedicate themselves, accept sacrifices to take risks and pay the costs of collective action. It is assumed that it is not because there is internal discontent for there to be a military uprising that there must be an organization capable of imposing choices that everyone believes are in the individual's best interests, but for which no one wants to take responsibility. In Syria, there was no such organization or rather that was on the side of Bachar Al Assad. These are organizations that will gradually appear, war will not appear, there will be armed conflict only when there are hierarchical and constraining organizations that will impose to fight. The Syrian Free Army will be created from former soldiers of Bachar Al Assad.

Without an organization capable of resolving the collective action dilemma, there can be no rat that puts the bell around the cat's neck, there can be no systematic and effective strike by workers against employers, and there can be no armed uprising by a population against an armed group, a government or any other threat. Without organization, the problem of collective action cannot be solved and there can be no broader, more effective collective action. The principle of war according to Bull is organized violence between political units acting in the name of a common good that can only be served if the dilemma of joint action is resolved, hence the importance of the organization.

The use of violence

The problem of constraint and coercion. On a front line, those on the front line are almost certain to perish will not fight if there is no coercion and discipline of war. There is an organization that keeps men standing up and fighting even if they are certain to perish rather than retreat or flee. If war is a form of violence organised by political units, sustained over time, then violence between individuals is a very specific moment, a one-off action, whereas war is a long-term action that imposes a permanent constraint and a permanent disciplinary principle which means that individuals who take the main risks are not tempted to flee or avoid combat. In order for systematic and organized violence to be used, there must be a principle of coercion that is essential, otherwise there can be no war.

The collective aim

The problem of unity. The way in which war is imagined today is that war is not just a hobby or hobby, but is a practice guided by a political and strategic objective, but if there is no structured and hierarchical organization defining the violence that constitutes war, there is a risk that the collective goal of any kind will become blunted and that it will no longer be a war for one.

Allegory showing Charles Quint (center) enthroned over his defeated enemies (from left to write): Suleiman the Magnificent, Pope Clement VII, Francis I, the Duke of Cleves, the Duke of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse.

The civil war in El Salvador in the 1980s and into the early 1990s pitted a U. S. -backed state in the case of the Cold War against socialist fighters supported by the Soviet Union. When the war ends with the end of the Cold War and a political agreement reached between politicians and rebel groups in 1993, violence increases. There is no more war action since the political units are no longer fighting each other, but the level of violence is increasing. Fighters who had previously opposed each other in the conflict between socialist guerrillas and government were also paid directly by governments and guerrillas indirectly by the United States and the Soviet Union. As soon as there is a peace agreement, they are no longer paid and will use violence to achieve their purely economic end as a "substitute wage".

To understand the difference between "inter-individual violence" and "war", it is necessary to understand that war pursues a collective objective. Is therefore put in place a system of economic predation and a system of organized crime. In order for war to pursue a collective goal, there must be an organization that remains focused on the collective goal and does not pursue a private agenda.

Critical approach

The idea is also to question two common and yet false ideas coming from philosophy and which have a specific meaning according to the authors:

• The state of nature defined by Hobbes in Leviathan in 1651 is the war of all against all. This quote has often been taken out of context to analyze civil wars. In this sense, it is nonsense since the war, understood in the sense generally given to it and illustrated by Bull's quotation, is impossible between individuals. The war of all against all is an empirical impossibility because it is not individuals who can make war, but the agglomeration of individuals through an organization that makes war possible. What Hobbes describes is a relationship between individuals and in this sense it cannot refer to war as we understand it.
• For Heraclitus, war is the father of all things, and of all things it is king. Before the war, there was nothing. At the beginning of civilization, at the beginning of history, there is war. This is also impossible, however, because the degree of organisation that many human communities had before the Neolithic made war as we understand it today simply impossible, and there was no possibility of carrying out war actions as had been understood today, in particular by Hadley Bull.

Battle between Heraclius' army and Persians under Khosrau II. Fresco by Piero della Francesca, ca. 1452

"The war of all against all"

Everyone's violence against everyone is possible, but it will be more like punctual violence. Instead of being sustained over time, where attrition rates are high, the spontaneous and most natural reaction is to flee. As long as we are in a relationship of all with all, in a relationship between individuals, a permanent relationship of war of all against all is an empirical impossibility.

Randall Collins has tried to show that individuals tend to avoid violence when it threatens them, they avoid killing, are generally reluctant to coordinate and organize when caught under fire even in the most defined war situations. As long as there was no coercive military hierarchy, military soldiers would fire in the air, perhaps for reasons of conscience or to hope that the enemy would do the same. Without hierarchy, without discipline, coercion and organization there is no coercion. If we take the war citation out of its Hobbesian context, war becomes impossible. Individual aggression and selfishness may lead to fighting, but not armed conflict. In armed conflict, there is sustained action over time and the idea of man's death.

It is man's sociality, it is the creation of organization, of principles of discipline, based on coercion that allows war, not selfishness, that allows sustained violence and "high intensity". Since sociality is evolutionary, it also explains why war cannot be seen as an immutable and natural reality, but rather as a mode of society.

War and armed conflict are social phenomena, not natural or universal. They require complex organizations, ideally endowed with administrations, bureaucratized, with functional specializations and professionalization. The State is a form of organization that is not universal, but it is a principle of complex, hierarchical and disciplinary organization. Wars between states have been the most lethal and destructive wars, far more so than wars that preceded the creation or historical emergence of the state. We therefore need a sociological viewpoint, one that looks at the socialization of humans in order to understand what makes war possible or impossible.

War: when?

According to Heraclitus,"war is the father of all things," claiming that war has pre-existed for all. If we look at the long term of human space in particular, we see that war is only a small part of human history. War, as generally defined, is a very recent phenomenon and not a timeless characteristic of humanity. There is no archaeological evidence of sustained organized violence prior to the "Neolithic Revolution" that took place in the Middle East between 8000 and 5000 BC. This period seems to coincide with the first archaeological evidence of sustained violence and mass violence between human collectives. The Neolithic Revolution is the phase in which agriculture was invented, which means that nomadic hunter-gatherer populations become sedentary, human communities settle down, cease to be nomads and will create the first villages first and then the cities. It is from this point onwards that the first archaeological evidence of violence appears. The neolithic revolution, since it sedentarizes a good number of communities, sees an evolution of the modes of organization with the emergence of the first empires, city-states and kingdoms leading to the emergence of war as we concede it today. If our species had appeared 200,000 years ago, then war in this respect would only concern 5% of its history.

If we want to understand war, we must not seek to understand humanity as a species, but its specific organization at a certain point in time. Sedentarization goes hand in hand with the creation of new political units. The principle of sedentarization is important, because establishing oneself as a sedentary community allows for a much more complex organization because sedentarization creates an agglutination around the same places requiring a more complex organization than a group of hunter-gatherers. Agriculture also generates an economic surplus that generates wealth rather than consumption. An economic surplus is produced. Creating an economic surplus means that not everyone needs to be involved in economic activity. In a sedentary society based on agriculture and the domestication of animals, there is an economic surplus that will allow the emergence of a class of administrators who do not themselves need to engage in productive activity. This means that we will be able to pay a category of people to specialize in a type of activity that is going to be war. With sedentarization, there is a specification of tasks that sees the emergence of a class of warriors. These cities, from the moment they are frozen and geographically fixed, become vulnerable to external attacks for nomadic societies, if a group of nomads is attacked, the most likely thing will be to move away and avoid the threat instead of a city where wealth is tied to the habitat. All these elements contribute to explain why settled societies develop warfare practices while at the same time they become more complex and more hierarchical and disciplinary in their functioning.

The Neolithic Revolution coincided with the first cities and defensive structures. The city of Jericho is considered to be one of the first cities known in the world, especially because of its defensive walls, which are defensive structures that suggest a preoccupation with attacks from outside. This shows the link between sedentarisation, the emergence of cities, complex structuring, the emergence of war and defence systems. Before the neolithic revolution, it would be anachronistic to talk about war, there would be forms of violence in hunter-gatherer societies. Lorenz shows in the book Aggression, a natural history of evil published in 1966, that hunter-gatherer societies used violence through sacrifices, bodily mutilation, but this is not proof of war. This shows that war is not something universal or eternal, it is something that appears at a certain point in history, in particular by analysing the forms and modes of organisation of the political societies in question.

Macedonian phalanx.

During classical antiquity, the war experienced a qualitative leap, linked to a higher degree of organization. It is often the Greek phalanx that is considered the father of modern forms of organized warfare. A phalanx is a group of warriors with spears and shields being compact units making attacking a phalanx a difficult task. When two phalanges face each other, it is very unlikely that the phalanges will disintegrate even if they are certain to die. The reason is simple, men are placed side by side, the principle is to hold the shield in one hand and the spear in the other, but the shield protects its neighbour. Everyone protects everyone, and if an individual escapes, the whole group is put at risk, so there is a collective constraint exerted so that no one escapes.

The phalanx is a complex, highly constraining, organized structure in which each person exercises control over a power, a constraint on each other. This shows that the war is based on an organizational principle that is more organized and sophisticated and will kill more people. Under the Roman Empire and Greek antiquity, wars became more lethal and lethal than they had ever been before. The principle of sophisticated organization cannot be separated from the social and political context allowing the phalanx to appear as a mode of organizing war units through the functional operationalization of tasks. The warriors will develop very precise and elaborate know-how based on a binding principle.

In the late Middle Ages, war "returned" to more erratic, nomadic forms, with raids and looting. During the Middle Ages, wars became less lethal than in antiquity, it is also linked to the fact that there is a principle of political disorganization. Under the late Middle Ages, there was rather feudalism, which was a decentralization movement in which the forms of organization were less organized, hierarchical and disciplinary.

It is the progress of the forms of political organization with the appearance such as the Roman Empire where the political units of Greek antiquity leading to the organization of the phalanx that lead to a more organized and lethal mode of warfare than were previously the wars. It is a principle that we see unfolding from the beginning of the Middle Ages to 1945. As abstract political units become hierarchical bureaucratic, concentrating more resources within them, armies become increasingly effective, but wars become more lethal. The creation of the state and modern armed forces will be another qualitative leap forward that largely explains the extremely deadly nature of modern inter-state wars. Between 1400 and 1700 the modern conception of war emerges gradually with a technological revolution in the military and political organization. There is a revolution in the political organization that will be the emergence of the state. It is necessary to understand the advent of the State as a specific form of organization in order to understand the advent of inter-State warfare until 1945.

War is not the father of everything, not universal or natural, it is a recent phenomenon, linked to a high degree of organization. In short, we need sociology, but also history to understand war.

War and modernity

The question is what is the specificity of war in the era of political modernity? When we talk about political modernity, we are not only talking about the contemporary period, but also about the era that began in the 15th and 16th centuries.

The modern state has a dual characteristic and is often seen as coinciding with:

• The "law and order": internally, it has the representation, which historically is not entirely false, that inter-individual violence declined from the 17th and 18th centuries onwards in most European political societies. The authors show a steady decline in inter-individual violence between the 17th century and today. The propensity of individuals to commit murders against their spouses, neighbours, competitors or partners is declining in this period, which could lead us to believe that political modernity is a constant march towards pacification, a progressive civilisation of mores in which violence would be more marginalized.
• International peace: when talking about the great movement of history in international organisations at UN level or elsewhere, humanity would march towards the end of history or at least towards a more ambitious attempt to put an end to inter-state wars. One might be led to believe that modernity coincides with a decline in interpersonal violence, but also with a relative decline in inter-state warfare, even in the cradle of the modern state.
• It is a vision of political modernity, but contradicted by another facet of political modernity.

But political modernity also coincides with:

• For example, genocide, which is the systematic and intentional practice of eradicating an entire group of human beings because of their supposed ethnic or religious affiliation, is part of political modernity. If we look at the Armenian genocide during the First World War, there is a tendency to perceive it as the result of the regime of the Ottoman Empire, but in reality it is not because the Armenian genocide is the result of the centralization of the bureaucracy of the Ottoman Empire.
• The "total war": these are the Civil War, the First World War and the Second World War, which are total wars characterized by the total mobilization of the state apparatus, characteristic of political modernity, which are characterized by the emergence of highly centralized states capable of mobilizing the whole of their society to the war effort.
• The "most violent century of all time": the 20th century was at once the most deadly century in terms of inter-state warfare, but also in terms of internal repression. It would be impossible to understand these mass killings without taking into account the interdependence between the increasingly deadly war and the increasingly centralised and binding form of political organization, hence the importance of understanding the modern state.

The paradox is summed up by Max Weber in 1919 in his famous lecture "The Vocation of Politics": « Today, the relationship between State and violence is particularly intimate[...] the modern State is a grouping of domination of an institutional character which has sought (with success) to monopolize, within the limits of a territory, legitimate physical violence as a means of domination and which, for this purpose, has brought together in the hands of the rulers the material means of management ».

Max Weber in 1894.

Max Weber allows us to understand the intimate link between state building and the use of violence. Through these links, political modernity has a pacifying face, but also a political modernity characterized by mass massacres. If there is an organized human community that monopolizes legitimate physical violence on its territory, it means that this organization, the government and its bureaucracies will be able to mobilize capacities of coercion and violence that will make the war know a qualitative leap forward in the direction of war that is becoming more and more deadly and violent. By monopolizing violence on a territory, it means that the population living in the territory loses its capacity to use violence, but also the right to do so in a legitimate way. Today, it is understood that interpersonal violence in general is illegitimate, illegal, punishable and punished in the name of the law by State services, including courts and police forces. The monopolisation of violence allows total wars, but also this progressive movement of human and interpersonal relations in the sense that violence is no longer a normal, legitimate option in social relations. Some authors clearly show that in the relationships between individuals in individual rural societies of the Middle Ages, violence was one type of relationship among others not suppressed by law and socially tolerated as reprimandable if not legitimate.

Weber adds that « what is peculiar to our time is that it grants all other groups, or individuals, the right to resort to violence only to the extent that the State tolerates it: it is therefore seen as the sole source of the "right" to violence ». In some borderline cases, as individuals, we may have to resort to legitimate violence as in the case of self-defence. The State is the source of the right to violence if legitimate violence can be used in some cases because the State allows it to be used in some cases. Self-defence is thus respectful of the Weberian definition, since the State has given us the right to do so. In contemporary warfare, it is increasingly common for private companies to deploy private and armed personnel to protect private or public buildings, but also diplomats. This private personnel, once called "mercenaries", can legitimately resort to violence. In general, these private companies have been delegated the right to resort to violence and therefore the State remains the source of the recourse to violence.

The modern state does not see warrior aristocracies being left in place as opposed to the Roman Empire, which ruled through pre-constituted warrior aristocracies. When the Roman Empire extended into present-day Germany, the Germanic warrior tribes were left in place, but were regarded as an echelon through which the Roman Empire governed its subjects. The modern state creates police forces, but this monopoly of the modern state is much more:

• linked to a distinct political order in which the state monopolizes allegiances. It is up to the authority to make decisions as a last resort. With the modern state will emerge nationalism, which is the development of ideologies that demand the obligation of every citizen to recognize himself in the authority that governs the state.
• It is linked to a differentiated administration, and not to the exercise of power through pre-constituted local elites, through which bureaucratic and impersonal power is exercised. Differentiated administration means that state administrations use resources that are differentiated from political society. This is different from the system we had in the Middle Ages where the weapons used were the property of aristocrats and not kings. The State is characterized by the fact that the administration has its own resources totally independent of private individuals, leading to a strict separation between the public and private spheres.
• territorial as opposed to empires and city-states: the state is politically organized, homogeneous, continuous and bounded by a linear border. The state is first and foremost for Weber a monopoly of legitimate violence. The modern state.
• The modern state is not universal, has not existed everywhere and always. The emergence of the modern state coincides with the qualitative leap in warfare.

Conclusions

There is an intimate link between form and degree of political organization and war. It is necessary to understand the forms of political organizations of societies that we are looking at, it also means that the war before the state. The advent of the State nevertheless marks a milestone or an important break with regard to the study of war, since the State represents the most centralised form of political organization, most clearly delineated on a territory and involving a degree of hierarchy and the most intense disciplinary principles known.

There is a co-constitutional relationship between war and the state. War is the state, the wars of the Middle Ages in their own logic and dynamics have contributed to their specific determination of what we call the state. The modern state has also constituted a particular form of warfare which is the modern inter-state warfare which is the most lethal and total form of warfare. To understand total war, one must understand how it was shaped.

Annexes

• Monde-diplomatique.fr,. (2015). Non, les hommes n’ont pas toujours fait la guerre, par Marylène Patou-Mathis (Le Monde diplomatique, juillet 2015). Retrieved 17 July 2015, from http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2015/07/PATOU_MATHIS/53204