The Future of Warfare: Where Do We Stand?

1
The Future of Warfare Where Do We Stand?

• William Reno
• Northwestern University
• reno_at_northwestern.edu, www.willreno.org

2
Studying change in warfare Focus on components
or logics?

• Actors
• Goals
• Methods
• Resources
• What changes the logics of violence and what are
  the consequences of these changes for the
  components of warfare?

3
Past Futures of Warfare Dar es Salaam, 1965 Why
these particular actors, goals, methods,
resources?

• US activist Cora Weiss with African liberation
  movement leaders. Back from left Pascoal
  Mocumbi, Frente de Libertação de Moçambique
  FRELIMO Eduardo Mondlane, President of
  FRELIMO Weiss Amilcar Cabral, President of the
  Partido Africano da Independência da Guiné e Cabo
  Verde PAICG. African activist archive, MSU

4
Past Futures of Warfare

• Narratives of conflict Solidarity Poster of
  Africas Future, c.1970, from Inkworks Press,
  Berkeley, CA

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Present futures of warfare What has changed?

• Networks New or just more intense versions of
  old ones?
• Cultural narratives These have always played
  roles in conflicts, but more now?
• Communication A qualitative or a quantitative
  change?
• Internal character of state authority

6
Present Futures of Warfare Incorporating more
networks, such as cocaine trafficking

• From David Blair, Special Report West Africa
  welcomes Latin Americas drug barons, Telegraph,
  3 Dec 2008.

7
Present futures Shifts in global narratives, new
ways of expressing identities

• Freetown, Sierra Leone street scene West Side
  Boys Tupac imagery

8
Telecommunications

• Mobile phone service reaches everywhere
  (Batkano, Sierra Leone in the 2000s.)

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State authority symmetrical irregular warfare

• Sierra Leone highway in 1990

• Sierra Leone highway in 2013

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STATUS OTHER ARMED GROUPS SOUTH SUDAN
STATUS OTHER ARMED GROUPS SOUTH SUDAN
(K-7)
LEGEND The locations/areas on this map are
approximate. Names, sectors, locations,
alignements, affiliation are to be verified.

SPLA deployment areas/locations.
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What is a network in the context of a state
that has very weak bureaucracies? And what is
on Riek Machars reading table?
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The uses of an AK-47 in the mind of the artist

• The puzzle of why narratives in really awful
  places remain so parochial The wall of a
  medical clinic, Lofa County, Liberia during the
  LURD offensive, 2003

13
New social structures of Violence Slightly
demobilized RUF, Sierra Leone

• Observe the attire Distinguishing units and
  commander position and associations by footwear,
  1999

14
As go states, so goes the future of Warfare.

• Think of wars states Where one finds
  Conventional states, one tends to find armed
  groups with bureaucratic hierarchies. Where
  modernist visions of states fail, so goes the
  vision of unified armed groups.

15
The End ECOMOG position, Monrovia

• Sometime back in the 90s