In his latest book, Drugs and Contemporary Warfare, Paul Rexton Kan attempts to understand the relationship between drugs and armed conflict. Kan is not the first to connect the two topics, such as Gretchen Peters’ book on poppies in Afghanistan. However, Kan’s book is exceptional for developing an overarching theory on drugs and armed conflict in modern history. Kan knows what he is talking about. An associate professor at the U.S. Army War College, Kan’s previous monograph explores the implications of drug intoxicated irregular soldiers on the battlefield (available for download free).

Drugs and Contemporary Warfare is organized into six chapters: Hazy Shades of War, Drugging the Battlefield, High at War, Narcotics and Nation-Building, Sober Lessons for the Future, and Shaky Paths Forward. Kan’s first chapter summarizes the history of the drug trade’s influence on warfare, with emphasis on conflicts after the Cold War. With insightful anecdotes, Kan both introduces readers to the topic and lays the groundwork for concepts presented later.

Chapter Two asks why drugs have become so common in modern conflict. Kan argues drugs provided armed groups with an alternative source of funding after the demise of their superpower patrons. The drying up of international financial support drove armed groups to develop complex, interdependent relationships with drug traffickers. In exchange for protection and military muscle, drug traffickers provided armed groups with income to support their operations. Kan’s interdisciplinary expertise shines in this chapter. His analysis goes beyond discussing drugs in aggregate, instead examining how the individual characters (growing, production, transportation, consumption) of each type of drug affects the behavior and strategy of armed groups.

Kan’s third chapter discusses the use of traditional, transshipped, looted, and synthetically produced drugs by combatants. Kan analyzes when regular and irregular forces promote or restrict drugs use amongst themselves and their enemies.

In Chapter Four, Kan argues drugs decrease the probability that armed groups will make and hold peace agreements. Specifically, the drug trade provides a means for group leaders to employ their constituents in post-conflict environments. Kan expands this discussion in Chapter Five, warning that forces in charge of enforcing peace agreement must take into account the interdependent relationship between armed groups and drug traffickers. You cannot attack one without damaging the other. When armed groups party of a peace agreement are heavily connected to drug traffickers, operations against the latter are a threat to the former.

Kan’s final chapter presents a series of strategies to address drugs in armed conflict. First, following political realism, the resources of major powers and military might could be brought to bear against the drug trade directly. Second, following liberalism, international regimes and norms could be established to erode the connection between narcotics and warfare. Third, the international society could concede that large scale international projects will have little effect and leave the problem to lower levels of governance. The final strategy, and the one Kan is most in favor of, would:

… seek to develop a network of actors at various levels who would challenge he networks employed by warring groups that are involved in drug fueled conflicts. This approach requires a high degree of multilayered cooperation among nation-states, international organizations, NGOs, and local communities to cope with the dynamics of the intersection between the drug trade and warfare, combat the strategic use of drugs, and assist in moving ongoing drug-fueled conflicts to abeyant conflicts, to settled. (Kan 2009, 137)

Kan’s book has much to offer. Readers are presented with a coherent and well cited exploration of the relationship between drugs and armed conflict. However, the book stumbles in two aspects. First, Kan ties together the strategic implications of narco-conflicts and the effect of drug use on the combatants themselves. Transitions between the two are often awkward. At times it feels akin to a book on superpower nuclear strategy including a chapter on the dangers of radiation exposure on the human body.

Second, the strategy Kan proposes is detached from political realities. His multilayered approach requires a network and infrastructure even the global health community can only dream about. It is unclear if he posits this strategy as a realistic option, or an ideal to which the international community should strive towards.

The weaknesses of the book are easily forgiven, for it succeeds in so many more areas than it fails. Drugs and Contemporary Warfare offers one of the first systematic attempts to incorporate drugs into the theory of armed conflict. It offers a new perspective on wartime and post-war behavior, based on a solid theoretical foundation. Kan’s book would be a welcome addition to the bookshelves of any student of modern conflict.

Crossposted on MountainRunner.us.

Full Disclosure: I received a review copy of this book.

Leo van Bergen’s book, Before My Helpless Sight, is a history of suffering in World War I, a description the author readily admits: “At the roots of the book lies the question of what can happen to a soldier between the moment he steps onto a train or ship bound for the theatre of battle an the point at which he is evacuated wounded, or whether dead or alive, buried in the ground” (pg. 1). Needless to say, the book is not a light read.

The book is divided into five parts: Battle, Body, Mind, Aid, and Death. Battle is a chronological history of the suffering on the Western Front. Body explores trench life, disease, and wounds. Mind examines shell shock (PTSD). Aid describes the medical services (or lack there of). Death looks at killing, being killed, and burial.

Van Bergen cannot be criticized on methodology. The book is impressively well researched (and cited), including qualitative and quantitative sources in numerous languages. Apart from the organization of the book itself, you see very little of the author in the pages. Readers are bounced from anecdotal accounts to descriptive statistics with little commentary or fanfare. This is not necessarily a negative, the sources speak for themselves. Their sheer, horrifying weight is ample to progress the book forward.

Whether on purpose or by accident, readers are left mostly alone in a dense text of grim personal accounts and tragic statistics. Where the author does introduce himself often seems out of place. At one point during a discussion of mustard gas the text digresses onto a quick commentary on wearing kilts in war, leaving readers jarred. The author also has the nasty habit of not properly introducing and defining new concepts. During the same description of gas weapons, the author awkwardly switches from referring to the weapons by their common name (mustard gas, chlorine gas, etc…) to referring to them by the the color of the artillery shell’s identification markings (yellow cross, green star, etc…) without connecting the two labels.

Finally, the author has the curious habit of including fictional descriptions in his sources. Readers are forced to be mindful of whether an anecdote is a primary source or the passage from a novel. I resorted to skipping fictional accounts when I came across them altogether, if only to keep separate in my head what was based on observation and imagination.

However, in the light of the book’s contribution these issues are quickly forgotten. Before My Helpless Sight is a powerful counter to the innumerable discourses on WWI tactics and strategy. Van Bergen pulls back the curtains of glorious offensives and magnanimous generals, revealing the grim, muddy reality of life on the Western Front. It is a story of pus, rats, hunger, dirt, disease and madness. You do not know World War I before reading this book.

Full Disclosure: I received a review copy of this book.

Mary Kaldor’s book, Human Security, is a collection of seven essays describing the historical context, theoretical foundations, and development of human security as a concept. Kaldor argues the world is seeing the emergence of what she coins “new wars”, that is “… wars that take place in the context of the disintegrating of states… fought by networks of state and non-state actors… where most of the violence is directed against civilians” (pg. 3). From this assumption she moves the reader through a series of logical steps, concluding with a new and unorthodox approach to human security and hence, the use of military force.

Kaldor’s first four essays lay out the historical context in which the modern debate over human security takes place. Specifically, the essays explore 1) a decade of intervention, 2) the american concept of power and compliance, 3) new nationalism, and finally 4) a case study of the Balkan intervention. The goal of these essays is to illustrate a new emerging concept of new wars where nationalism, informal combatants, and criminalized informal economies align to perpetuate conflict, and the American classic military doctrine is unprepared and ill equipped to face them.

Her next two essays build the theoretical foundations of human security. Chapter 5 follows the changing meaning of “global civil society” from ancient Greece to the present. The chapter holds an impassioned argument to “establish a set of global rules based on consent” (pg. 153), that is: global governance to minimize domestic and international violence. In Chapter 6, Kaldor tackles Just War doctrine. She argues new wars blur the distinction between international and domestic , combatant and non-combatant, and thus between war and peace, and in the face of this, “a new ethical approach is needed, grounded in the notion that the rights of individuals supersede the rights of states and that, therefore, international law that applies to individuals overrides the laws of war” (pg. 154-155), a concept she defines as “Just Peace”.

The real meat of Kaldor’s book lies in her final chapter. Here, she posits a new definition of security that “is about confronting extreme vulnerability not only in wars but in natural and man-made disasters…” (pg. 183) and a new definition of development that goes beyond improving standards of living to include “feeling safe on the streets or being able to influence political decision-making” (pg. 183). Based on these new definitions, she proposes five principles of human security: the primacy of human rights, legitimate political authority, multilateralism, the bottom-up approach, and regional focus.

First, a human security approach places human rights above everything. Kaldor argues: “this principle means is that unless it is absolutely necessary and legal, killing is to be avoided. For the military it means the primary goal of protecting civilians rather than defeating an adversary. Of course, sometimes it is necessary to try to capture or even defeat insurgents but this has to be seen as a means to an end, civilian protection, rather than the other way round. So-called collateral damage is unacceptable” (pg. 186). Furthermore, she argues gross human rights violations must be as “individual criminals rather than collective enemies” (pg. 186). [Emphasis mine]

Second, human security requires institutions of political authority considered legitimate by local populations. Thus, gaining political legitimacy is a central goal in any operation. This requires a commander “who understands politics and has access to political authority” (pg. 188). I am in firm agreement with her on this point.

Third, human security operations must include a commitment to 1) work with international organizations, 2) create and enforce common rules, and 3) focus on coordination.

Fourth, human security approaches must be bottom-up. That is, decisions in human security operations should be made in consultation with local populations. Regarding this, Kaldor takes a stance many operators would consider naive in the extreme: “the solution is to talk to everyone and it should not be so difficult to identify people with conscience and integrity who could act as local guides” (pg. 189).

Finally, a human security approach demands conflicts be examine at the regional, rather than state, level. She accurately argues new wars have no clear boundaries and thus restricting the focus to state-level perspectives makes us vulernable to epiphenonoma is neighboring states.

Overall, Kaldor’s book is an excellent and interesting perspective on human security, evidenced by the numerous “Wow!” comments I semiconsciously wrote in the margins. The last chapter contains her core argument. The middle five chapters are seemingly present only to (sometimes disjointedly) guide the reader to the logic she presents in the final chapter. Readers strapped for time could gain a good portion of the book’s worth by reading only the introduction and last chapter.