Postmodern Wars Imaginary and Real: World War III - Chris Hables ...

[ 156 ] The Past
when the cost seemed too high or the gain too small for the empire builders.
But seldom could primitive warfare defeat modern armies.
In the modern era resistance to Western expansion was tenacious, often
lasting hundreds of years. However, with very few exceptions (Haiti, Ethiopia,
Afghanistan, Japan) the West always triumphed eventually. These wars
were marked by the use of surrogate forces, the effective deployment of new
technologies, and incredible moral license. In many cases genocide was the
strategy for victory. These colonial conflicts were called "imperfect wars."
Capt. Bernardo De Vargas Machuca, who campaigned in Chile, wrote
the first manual on combatting guerrilla warfare in 1599. He advocated using
commando groups on extensive search-and-destroy missions of up to two
years to exterminate the Indians. Native tactics, such as living on the land,
ambush, and surprise attacks, were to be employed by the Spanish as part of
their strategy of extermination. Such wars ended with an extended manhunt
as the last "wild" Indians were tracked down with dogs and killed in cold
blood (Parker, 1988, p. 120). Bloodhounds were still being used to track
Indians as part of a successful strategy in the Florida wetlands and California
hills in the nineteenth century.
But at the end of World War II a sea change took place. Colonialism
was suddenly collapsing under political and military pressures that ranged
across the spectrum from satyagraha (the "truth force" of Mohandas K.
Gandhis independence movement) through voting to violence. Part of the
great rollback of colonialism was because of the obvious superiority, for the
West, of neocolonialism, as exemplified by the United States's domination
of Latin America and the Philippines. Other nations thrust off European
sovereignty only by ceding some measure of control to regional powers or to
the so-called Second World. The Communist bloc certainly did not lead
countries to liberation, but it helped create a space for room to maneuver, if
not real independence (Chaliand, 1978). This is seen most clearly in the case
of war. Consider the spectrum of allies the Vietnamese mobilized: Sweden,
China, the USSR, and large parts of the international peace movement.
While modern war was developing toward total war, it was often
challenged by irregular war. When Western armies met each other, they
fought modern wars, but when they went to war against other people it was
a more limited struggle, from the point of view of the Europeans. They called
it insurrection, revolution, guerrilla war, tribal revolt, rebellion, uprising,
police action, little war, imperfect war, colonial war, and limited war. These
wars were only limited on one side. For the nonindustrialized societies they
were total wars sure enough, often leading to the destruction of whole
cultures and the genocide, or near genocide, of entire peoples. Postmodern
war has imposed the framework of "minor" wars onto all conflicts, even those
between the great powers. This came as something of a surprise to them,
witness the stalemate called the Korean War.