Page 114 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo I

114 XXXIV Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

Many parts of the world live in an intermediary status of «de-institutionalized war» ,
39
contradicting Cicero’s old saying, also quoted by Grotius, that «Inter bellum & pacem nihil
est medium» . After 1945, a «typical war» does not start with a formal declaration, often it
40
is hard to identify a precise date when hostilities begin, may last for decades (such as the
Vietnam conflict, in its two stages, French and American, or the revolt in Eritrea that began
in 1961 and ended only in 1991) and not end with a formal peace treaty (like the Korean
War). The consolidated relationship between state sovereignty, the monopoly of force and
territory got loose. Terrorists and criminals «often command large arsenals previously af-
fordable only to tax-raising governments, [but] they do not obey the rules that sovereign
governments observe» . Forcefully a type of organized violence emerges, which obfuscates
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traditional distinctions between internal or civil conflicts and transnational wars, wars fought
by «legitimate actors» and private wars bordering organized crime, external aggressions and
revolts, legitimate repressions of violent groups and large-scale violation of human rights.
Apart from regular armies, combatants of these conflicts are paramilitary units of local war
lords, mercenary groups , criminal bands, police forces and army drop-out units. Distinc-
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tions between legitimate combatants and illegitimate combatants, combatants and civilians,
soldiers, policemen and criminals vanish. Irregular fighters also enjoy advanced technology,
non-detectable landmines, light and easy-to-use weapons, which can even be used by chil-
dren, mobile telephones and are financed by robbery, black market, foreign aid, such as aids
from ethnic and religious diasporas, «taxation» on humanitarian aid, support from neighbour
governments, smuggling arms, drugs, precious goods, like oil and diamond.

the west at war in Other geOPOlitical scenes
«European international law on territory wars between States» succeeded in governing
and limiting wars, but «one should still see how it could be adapted to other populations who
have only seen colonial or civil wars in their past» . Actually, the very same Europeans and
43

Unfortunately, there exists no internationally accepted definition for terrorism, which distinguishes it from
guerrilla warfare and freedom wars. This is an old problem that appeared already during the Second World
War; just think of the issues raised on the Via Rasella attack in Rome.
39 K. J. Holsti, The state, war and the state of war, Cambridge, 1996, pp. 20-21, 27.
40 Cicero in the 8th Philippic, quoted in H. Grotii, De jure belli ac pacis, Amstelaedami, 1735, liber III, caput
21, § 1, p. 907.

th
41 J. Keegan, The Changing Face of War, in Wall Street Journal Europe, November 26 , 2001, p.
A6. Terrorist organizations are an example of «deterritorialization» of international relations in a
«post-Wesphalien» system, in which there are «transnational actors trying to have their autonomy
recognized by contesting the prerogatives of the states» (Roche, op. cit., p. 112).
42 A particular and distinct aspect of the phenomenon is the existence of agencies in the United States and
Great Britain, which are acknowledged by the state, offer «military services», in other words mercenaries,
and are hired when regular forces cannot be used (See O. Hubac-Occhipinti, Armées; La relative privatisa-
tion de la violence armée, in F. Géré-A. Blin [ed. by], Puissances et influences. Annuaire géopolitique et
géostratégique 2002-2003, Paris, 2002, pp. 189-194).
43 Schmitt, Premessa, cit., p. 92. Von Clausewitz mentions the reasons according to which «wars among civi-
lized nations are much less cruel and devastating than those among uncivilized ones» (Della guerra, cit., pp.
20-21), but, according to Keegan, he did not study this issue in-depth, because «he was struggling to advance