Constructing war in West Africa (and beyond)

Abstract

This article investigates the variation of the conduct of war in three Mano River countries in West Africa-Côte d'Ivoire, Liberia and Sierra Leone. A theoretical framework that views war as an institution is provided to explain this variation. While an existing idea in social sciences, to date it has largely been used to understand historical case. This article extends its scope to encompass non-state actors and the modern era through an account of how war was constructed in the Mano River region. The idea of war as an institution highlights the value of cultural sociological investigations of war. As institutions structure action, the framework offered carries immediate consequences for strategic thought.

War as nothing but a duel: war as an institution and the construction of the Western military profession

“…It is nevertheless, first and foremost, in this legal construction of war where one finds Bacevich's professional orthodoxy, which has become a limiting factor in contemporary war. As elaborated in a companion piece, war can be constructed in varying ways (Käihkö 2018). This suggests that Eurocentrism and the normative idea of legitimacy associated with the state may have become part of the problem.…”

‘Once a combatant, always a combatant’? Revisiting assumptions about Liberian former combatant networks

“…As in the mobilisation to fight against Taylor in the 1999–2003 war, even a decade later social embeddedness played a role. To assume otherwise normalises violence to a degree unseen in Liberia (Käihkö 2018 b ).…”

Toward Strategic Cohesion: A Reply to King’s Criticism of the Call for a Broader View of Cohesion

“…Even King's definition of cohesion is rather Clausewitzian in the sense that it emphasizes the centrality of violence to war. While there are valid reasons for doing so, this kind of emphasis on violence may itself be criticized as modern (Honig, 2012(Honig, , 2017, if not Eurocentric (Käihkö, 2018b). My main worry is that emphasis on microlevel tactics at the cost of macrolevel strategy may lead us to a situation not unlike that witnessed in Vietnam-and also Afghanistan and Iraq, the main cases investigated in The Combat Soldier (King, 2013, p. 22): While the United States and its allies inflicted terrible losses on their opponents, they still lost these wars.…”