the charisma theory of war
The NATO intervention in Libya has made people ask: Why now? Of all the crazy, genocidal tyrants, why bother with Gadaffi? Here’s my answer: some countries are just annoying. They cultivate a particularly aggravating stance in the global community that just invites retaliation. They are the mosquito in the ears of the powerful and they get swatted.
Of course, this is not a complete account of war. Nations fights wars for all kinds of reasons – genuine security threats, national pride, humanitarian missions, or just grabbing more territory. But a nation’s charisma is also an important factor. Some nations keep doing things that rile the public. In Gaddafi’s case, he engaged in terrorism, allied himself with Hugo Chavez, and tried to usurp Western nations as a patron in Africa.
Like I said, this is by no means a complete account of war making. Other theories, I think, account for more. But charisma does pop up from time to time and it should not be ignored. For example, charisma is definitely a factor in the Iraq War. Saddam Hussein’s anti-Western stance and terrorism overseas eroded what support he had from the US in the 1980s. By 1990, conservative think tanks already had Baathist Iraq in their sights.
Similarly, Iran is frequently targeted. The Iranian regime is clearly evil, but there are all kinds of crazy governments that pose threats. The reason that some Western policy intellectuals focus on Iran is because the regime engages in nasty public displays anti-Semitism and anti-Westernism.
Bottom line: If you are a murderous dictator, we’re more likely to leave you alone if you just keep your mouth shut.
however, even where charisma is involved, it’s not so much these leaders’ charisma that is upsetting, as their exhibitions of hubris and nemesis.
these ancient greek dynamics are supposed to be contradictory. zeus would dispatche nemesis, the goddess of divine vengeance, to strike down humans who displayed hubris, the pretention to be godlike, the capital sin of pride.
but some rare leaders fuse the two dynamics: part of their hubris is to play nemesis against others they accuse of hubris. it’s an energizing and dangerous combination. and it applies, to varying degrees, to the leaders you mentioned.
source: “Beware the Hubris-Nemesis Complex: A Concept for Leadership Analysis” (1994), at
http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR461.html
david ronfeldt
April 13, 2011 at 1:31 am
the problem with this explanation is that it kind of ignores that Qadaffi had actually been really well-behaved, actually kind of a suck-up, for almost a decade. it’s been a long time since he bombed a disco, blew up an airliner, and shot Doc Brown in the parking lot of the Twin Pines shopping Mall.
gabrielrossman
April 13, 2011 at 1:57 am
@Gabriel: Would you say that someone is well behaved if they killed your family “only” ten years ago? That kind of thing is hard to erase.
fabiorojas
April 13, 2011 at 2:03 am
Fabio,
listen, my 2007 junket there notwithstanding (kidding, kidding), i’m no fan of Libya. i agree that it’s worth keeping in mind that it is the same regime that did all sorts of really nasty stuff in the 1980s. Qadaffi has a special place in Hell waiting for him over Lockerbie, the Berlin disco bombing, etc. not to mention his crimes of a more local nature. I distinctly remember being livid at the British government for that bullshit medical release a few years ago. that said, there are a lot of really nasty regimes out there and even if we refuse to allow a “time decay” for misbehavior Libya pales next to North Korea or Iran.
furthermore, i think it is appropriate to have a time decay. international relations has a strong element of “what have you done for me lately” and it’s pretty clear that Qadaffi has stayed out of our way for 20 years and actively sought rapprochement for the last 7.
certainly i don’t buy that Qadaffi was a particularly annoying loudmouth and that’s why we’re bombing him. to the extent that he’s opened his mouth lately it’s to recite enough pious platitudes of good governance to provide several dissertations worth of material to John Meyer’s students. in contrast if you want to talk about an obnoxious loud mouth look at Hugo Chavez, whose goal in life seems to be to annoy the United States but nonetheless is failing badly at it.
anyway, i just don’t buy that we’re in Libya because Qadaffi annoys us. rather, I find it a lot more plausible to see Libya as the Lehman Brothers of the Arab Spring.
gabrielrossman
April 13, 2011 at 2:49 am
Nice post and thread for a late night of procrastination — avoiding a stack of undergraduate papers to be graded.
I am intrigued at how easily one goes back and forth between the country name and the incumbent leader’s name in this discussion. I had always used “charisma” as a personal attribute, never for a firm, organization, or country. It is an interesting form of metonymy to interchange Gaddafi and Libya, and as was often the case in Europe 5 years ago, George W. Bush and the USA. Is this trope compelled by “negative” charisma?
And, thank you to Gabriel. There is something delightfully poetical about your turn of phrase, “the Lehman Brothers of the Arab Spring”.
Randy
April 13, 2011 at 3:59 am
Hi Fabio, I agree with Gabriel that this theory just isn’t very plausible and doesn’t stand up to evidence (I think the Chavez comparison is a knock-down argument against it. Lots of negative charisma, no invasion.)
But I’m curious about what you take the normative implications of your theory to be. Suppose you are right: Gadaffi is getting it now because he’s “just annoying”, and if the U.S. ever bombs Iran it will “really” be because “the regime engages in nasty public displays anti-Semitism and anti-Westernism”. Not some objective difference in strategic interests between Iranian and U.S. elites.
Compare this to some pretty standard anti-war rhetoric. Many members of the peace movement argue that while the publically announced reasons for U.S. wars on other countries (national security, human rights, etc.) do seem somewhat compelling, they too radically underdetermine the choice of which countries to invade. That much follows your line of reasoning. They then identify the “real” reason: geopolitical advantage, which reduces ultimately to securing resources and markets for multinationals with deep ties to the U.S. policy establishment. Since this “real reason” is obviously driven by pure greed and lust for power, it is not a legitimate basis for war. If the U.S. only went to war for “legitimate” reasons, it would choose its enemies very differently, goes the argument. (I leave aside those who think there are no legitimate grounds for war.)
Back to your theory. Is your theory that countries like Iran, Venezuela, and Lybia are “inviting retaliation” simply by being annoying, an implicit critique of the attack on Nato attack on Lybia? I ask because there something strange about the tone of this post. It’s like you are almost justifying the smackdown as something small countries should understand that big countries with a lot of firepower are going to engage in. While you do describe NATO as a kind of impatient bully, you don’t really say it. Instead, you are describing the little guys as, well, stupid enough to speak out against globabl hegemony.
Thomas
April 13, 2011 at 6:59 am
Hmmm… China must be the most charismatic nation in the world, then.
Guillermo
April 13, 2011 at 3:53 pm
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