Contextual Analysis: The ‘Non-dits’ OF THE MyTHEMES

The wider contexts of the warlord and state myths are the wars in these countries. It is noteworthy that, indeed, the notion of warlords is mainly used to describe warfare in countries which are or were also subject to external intervention and invasion.

Newspaper articles also provide a rich source of contexts with which the warlord theme is explicitly associated. Not all newspaper articles under scrutiny have displayed all functions of the warlord myth. Many articles actually deal with other central themes and use the warlord myth only as fleeting reference. Hence, the themes discussed are good indicators of the themes that are widely associated with the warlord myth. They are, in no particular order: rape as weapon of war and the dire conditions of women in these countries; child soldiering; conflict diamonds; the illicit exploita­tion of mineral resources or other illicit activities like drug smuggling or

Fig. 7.5 Counts of ‘warlord’ in the headlines in USA newspaper publications, 2007-2012 ( N = 998). Source: Author

human trafficking; humanitarian assistance and aid; or the inference of other unruly states like Pakistan in these areas. In short, the warlord myth is the crucial reference to make sense of all the misery and brutality of contemporary wars in countries which are already or might be the object of an international intervention. Importantly, the warlord myth locates the causes of wars, violence, and wretchedness in the actions of warlords, and distinguishes them in an essentialised narration from states and state action.

The myths create an imagination and understanding among the audi­ence not only by what they narrate, but also by what they do not tell. In the case of the warlord-state myth, violence, and particularly brutal, gra­tuitous violence is only associated with warlords and never with the state. If violence is associated with state action, it is so only in the careful framing of the state’s monopoly of the legitimate use of violence. It is violence that is controlled, framed, regulated, but never violence for sadistic pleasure or to terrorise civilian populations. Stories of drone attacks, of brutalities committed by foreign militaries, or of any other misery caused by the foreign intervention are never told in the same newspaper or academic research as the warlord-state myth.

As every folk tale opposes a story of the ‘good’ to a story of the ‘evil’, the opposition of the warlord-state myth opposes stories of ‘good’ politics to stories of ‘bad’ politics. The stereotyping and essentialisation of the two sides in these narratives decontextualises them. Hence, questions which are commonly linked to political rule—such as those about popular legiti­macy, about political efficacy, about the whys and why not—are excluded from the narratives.

Particularly with respect to the question of popular legitimacy, the myths predetermine which actors are legitimate and which are not through the mythemes. Every paradigmatic opposition of every mytheme leads to the final question of how legitimate warlords can possibly be, commonly answering this question in the negative: they simply cannot be legitimate. This mirrors the conclusion to draw from the state myth, namely that states are legitimate in their actions, no matter what.

The unspoken themes may loom large, but they are not discussed, as the myth has already narrated the foundational legitimacy of states.

intervention, as Stanski argues with respect to the orientalist framework (Stanski 2009). It is, beyond this conjectural purpose, to cement the unquestionable character of the state as foundational unit of the interna­tional system and as the ultimately only and only legitimate form of politi­cal organisation. Given that the state myth has been developed in the West and is stereotyping Western state emergence, the state’s unquestionable quality as the only and singularly legitimate political unit has become an ontological certainty and an epistemological a priori.

Conclusion

The chapter has shown that the construction of the category ‘warlord’ induces the narrative of binomial oppositions such as chaos-order, war­lord-state, arbitrariness/criminality-law etc. This is true also for accounts, which intend not to tell the story in this way, but which by the fiat of the warlord tale end up doing so. This is because the narrative of warlords only makes sense with its mirror of the state tale, just as the metaphor of the warlord is in itself and essentially orientalist. Consequently, the func­tions (in Propp’s sense) of the warlord tale necessarily entail a narrative logic that follows the mythical pattern, otherwise neither the use of the warlord metaphor nor the tale would make any sense.

This chapter also shows through the reflexive scrutiny of the context out of which the warlord myth is narrated that the notion and narration of ‘warlord’ is more effective in justifying the West’s current interventionism. Research relying on the warlord myth fails to provide a differentiated and reflexive view of statehood and intervention. Giustozzi’s conclusion from his study on warlords is telling:

In the case of Afghanistan, moreover, the problem is still state-formation more than state-building. Gradually I came to think that the formation of a “modern” and “diplomatically recognisable” state in the context of Afghanistan has little chances of succeeding unless it relies on the establish­ment of an international protectorate, with all the difficulties that come with that.

This is the white man’s burden all over again, and, unsurprisingly, Marten argues exactly in the same vein that Western military intervention is the only way of ending violence in the world (Marten 2007). But these authors are not only providing justifications for the military conquest of large parts of the world: their arguments are epitomising the attitude that the state is the only imaginable form of political organisation in world politics that, once consolidated and ‘working’, can create durable peace. This is certainly a political belief, but it is also an epistemological and ontological deflection that blends out the violence exercised by real exist­ing states domestically and, in this context more importantly, internation­ally, particularly in those countries mentioned here, where, according to Physicians for Social Responsibility, an estimated 1.3 million people have died in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan alone (IPPNW et al. 2015).

The focus on warlords establishes and maintains a firmly Eurocentric epistemological and ontological boundary between ‘us’ and ‘them’, and it will therefore only be able to explain partially where the violence in these world regions stems from. Abandoning warlordism can open our eyes that there are cases which represent—historically, politically, intellectually, and academically—alternatives to the ‘modern’ and ‘diplomatically recognisa­ble’ state and which challenge the idea that the state is the best guarantor of welfare and peace. The warlord myth is by itself a great impediment to the study of alternatives to statehood in world politics.

This is not to say that Giustozzi’s or Marten’s works, or the newspaper articles analysed, do not provide a lot of information about the persons they call warlords. They are also more or less detailed accounts of the his­tories of these warlords, well researched and presented. Yet, they remain firmly rooted in an essentialised vision of the international system with Western states as, by definition, legitimate and the only efficient actors.

What then is to be researched about the collective violence in these regions? If the notion of warlordism is to be given up, patient research on the ground will certainly be able to factually debunk many of the mythemes of the warlord myth. Examples of such diligent on-the-ground research exist, such as Krijn Peters’ book on the soldiers of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone that shows that the RUF did have an ideological grounding and even an utopian project (Peters 2011), or Georgi Derlugian’s serene archaeological approach in analysing the ori­gins of the Chechen wars (Derluguian 2005). What these two books share is a fundamental change of perspective on the subject, most notably by pursuing an epistemology that is not based on ‘definitions’ but treats the investigated actors from the point of view of their subject position.

Yet debunking the warlord myth factually will not lead to its aban­donment, just like the detailed historical research about the Treaty of Westphalia has done little to oust the myth of Westphalia (Teschke 2002; de Carvalho et al. 2011). What is needed is a sort of reflexive ‘secularisa­tion’ of our scientific thought about ‘others’ in world politics (who, cer­tainly not by coincidence, happen to be former colonial subjects), where the analytical gaze is turned to the immanent world of ‘us and them’ and not only to the world beyond ‘us’ at ‘them’.

Notes

1. This search has been repeated with the German and French words for war­lord without producing any other results.

2. According to Waldron (1991), Chinese historiographers and time witnesses used either the word junfa (¥M) or dujun (W¥) to designate the military figures who western observers quite disdainfully called warlords in 1920s China. The term junfa literally translates as ‘military group’ or ‘military clique’; hence, it does not designate an individual. The character jun (^) additionally is the character used for high-ranking military leaders, not com­mon soldiers, bandits, security agents, or other bearers of violence.

3. Note that this analysis was undertaken in 2012 and therefore lacks refer­ences to Syria or ISIS.

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