Abstract
In recent years the concept of the ‘warlord’ has increasingly entered into popular political parlance. The word has been particularly popularized by the international media as a general term of explain the fissuring of nation states and the emergence of militarized sub-national groupings. Warlords increasingly appear to be a major feature of the post-Cold War international scene in which the writ of governments scarcely runs outside national capitals and the countryside has been rendered insecure through armed gangs and militias struggling for political and economic influence. Beleaguered state administrative machines in a number of different countries have been found incapable of containing threats to their authority from various clan, tribal and ethnic factions, while the legitimacy of national leaders is continually threatened by local and regional strong men. Some analysts such as Robert Kaplan have even gone as far as seeing the warlord as representing a menacing threat to the long-term security of the international order, which is dismally projected to take on many of the features that are to be found in some of the disintegrating states of Sub-Saharan Africa.1
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Robert Kaplan, ‘The Coming Anarchy’, The Atlantic Monthly, vol. 273 (1994), pp. 43–76.
Samule Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1971), p. 198.
Yuan himself had national claims and was not really a proto-warlord. His Peiyang army was developed through the manipulation of the central government bureaucracy and was not based on regional support. Stephen R. Mackinnon, ‘The Peiyang Army, Yuan Shih-k’ai, and the Origins of Modern Chinese Warlordism’, Journal of Asian Studies, vol. XXXII, no. 3 (May 1973), pp. 405–23.
C.P. Fitzgerald, The Birth of Communist China (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1970), p. 52.
Arthur Waldron, ‘Warlordism versus Federalism: The Revival of a Debate?’, China Quarterly, vol. 121 (March 1990), pp. 116–28.
Arthur Waldron, ‘The Warlord: Twentieth Century Chinese Understanding of Violence, Militarism and Imperialism’, American Historical Review, vol. 96, no. 4 (October 1996), pp. 1073–100.
Edward A. McCord, The Power of the Gun: The Emergence of Modern Chinese Warlordism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), p. 4. Lucien Pye detected a virtue in this feature of Chinese warlordism since he considered it contained at least the foundations for a pluralistic society, something that was wiped out by the Communist régime in China after the revolution of 1949.
Lucien W. Pye, Warlord Politics: Conflict and Coalition in the Modernization of Republican China (New York: Praeger, 1971).
Hussein M. Adam, ‘Somalia: Militarism, Warlordism or Democracy?’, Review of African Political Economy, 54 (1992), p. 13.
K.J. Holsti, The State, War and the State of War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 34.
E.V. Walter, Terror and Resistance: A Study of Political Violence (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 291.
Geoffrey Fairbairn, Revolutionary Guerrilla Warfare (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974), pp. 41–4.
For Clausewitz’s conceptions of statehood see Peter Paret, Clausewitz and the State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976).
Some critics have pointed out that Paret rather underplays the moral dimension that Clausewitz attributes to the state as a Civilized political form. See Azar Gat, ‘Clausewitz’s Political and Ethical World View’, Political Studies, vol. XXXVII (1989), pp. 97–106.
Herbert Howe, ‘Lesions of Liberia: ECOMOG and Regional Peacekeeping’, International Security, vol. 21, no. 3 (Winter 1996/7), pp. 145–76.
Robert Jackson, Quasi States, Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World (Cambridge: CUP, 1990).
Tom Young, ‘RENAMNO and Counter Revolutionary Insurgency’, in Paul B. Rich (ed.), The Dynamics of Change in Southern Africa (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994), pp. 149–69.
Barnett R. Rubin, The Search for Peace in Afghanistan: From Buffer State to Failed State (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), p. 139.
John Glenn, ‘The Interregnum: The South’s Insecurity Dilemma’, Nations and Nationalism, vol. 3, no. 1 (1997), pp. 45–63.
Gerald B. Helman and Stevven R. Ratner, ‘Saving Failed States’, Foreign Policy, vol. 89 (1992), pp. 3–20.
Robert H. Jackson and Alan James, ‘The Character of Independent Statehood’, in Robert H. Jackson and Alan James (eds), States in a Changing World (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), pp. 6–7.
Richard H. Schultz Jr, ‘State Disintegration and Ethnic Conflict: A Framework for Analysis’, Annals, AAPSS, vol. 541 (September 1995), pp. 75–88.
Anthony D. Smith, ‘War and Ethnicity: The Role of Warfare in the Formation, Self-images and Cohesion of Ethnic Communities’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 434 (October 1981), pp. 375–93.
See the fascinating essay by Lionel Caplan, Warrior Gentlemen: ‘Gurkhas’ in the Western Imagination (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1995).
Jeffrey Herbst, ‘Responding to State Failure in Africa’, International Security, vol. 21, no. 3 (Winter 1996/7), pp. 120–44 repr.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1999 Paul B. Rich
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Rich, P.B. (1999). The Emergence and Significance of Warlordism in International Politics. In: Rich, P.B. (eds) Warlords in International Relations. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27688-2_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27688-2_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-27690-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-27688-2
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)