The last of a five-part guest post by Prof. Brien Hallett, University of Hawai’i at Manoa.
“We Were Warriors” and Unarmed War
While viewing the film, “We Were Warriors,” the warlike character of the 1960 Nashville lunch counter sit-ins is hard to ignore (2000). Although James Lawson, the protest leader and organizer would no doubt vigorously deny it, his unarmed “warriors” met all but one of the Article 13 Geneva criteria. They did not carry “arms openly,” as warriors usually do. But, then, by definition, unarmed war means waging war without arms. Said differently, is the status and condition of being a warrior dependent solely upon carrying “arms openly?” Does any hunter or gang member who carries “arms openly” qualify as a warrior? As Article 13 makes clear, hunters and armed gang members do not qualify because they fail to meet the other three Geneva criteria, unlike the Nashville students who did.
Thus, Lawson’s students were members of an “other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements.” In addition, a) they were “commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates,” in this case, James Lawson. He had given them extensive training and organized them into “platoons” equal to the number of stools at the lunch counters. Eventually, Lawson commanded a “battalion” of about six hundred student “warriors.” b) The students also had “a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance.” In this case, coat and tie for the men, a Sunday dress for the women, and schoolbooks for all. As the unusually well dressed students marched four abreast down the street in close order, no one could mistake them for college kids out for a movie and a coke. And, c) the students conducted “their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.”
This last point is particularly significant. In the eyes of the courts and the police, the students were outlaws. They had clearly violated the laws of peace and were sent to jail for doing so. Outlaws, of course, are not warriors because they operate outside of the law. Warriors, if they wish to keep their Geneva status, must operate within the boundaries of the “other” system of law, “the laws and customs of war,” as Article 13 makes clear. Most particularly, the laws of war require warriors to abide by the jus in bello criteria of proportionality and discrimination so as to honor the principle of economy and thereby to minimize non-combatant injury. In order enforce these jus in bello requirements, in part, responsible commanders issue Rules Of Engagement to their subordinates. This James Lawson did. As is seen in the film, he ordered his “platoons” to march in good and close order the several blocks from Fisk University to the designated lunch counters. Upon arrival at the objective, they were to seize, occupy, and defend the lunch counter stools until closing time. If the police came and arrested them, their Rule Of Engagement was to cooperate with the police and go to jail. If attacked, their Rule Of Engagement was not to respond. Instead, the students were to adopt the protective postures they had learned during their training.
By their scrupulous and disciplined observance of Lawson’s Rules Of Engagement, the students effected their legal transformation from outlaws under the laws of peace to warriors under the laws of war. Not incidentally, the disciplined observance of Lawson’s Rules Of Engagement also meant that the students waged an unarmed war. Significantly, had discipline broken down and had the students responded to an attack by punching back, they would have continued to be warriors under the laws of war, but this insubordination would have changed them from unarmed to armed warriors.
At first glance, therefore, any insubordinate violation of Lawson’s Rules Of Engagement would appear not only insignificant–the students would still be warriors–but also well justified. As the film shows, the thugs who attacked the protestors richly deserved a good punch. But this is only to consider war and warriors as defined by the Geneva Conventions. To understand how serious such insubordination would have been, one must return to Clausewitz’s insight that war in the material sense is basically an ends-means problem, although King’s formulation of war as an ideal in process is easier to work with. Taking up King’s formulation, what ideals motivated James Lawson and his student “warriors” to initiate what kind of process?
The Nashville sit-ins were motivated by a desire to desegregate Nashville. Wisely though, Lawson chose not to attack the abstraction “segregation.” Instead, he chose a concrete, highly visible, exceptionally nonsensical manifestation of segregation. He chose the city’s lunch counters, which were as concrete a terrain objective as can be wished for. Equally important, the lunch counters were highly visible, open to both the rest of the store and to the street. Cameras, journalist, and ordinary citizens could not be kept out. Maximum publicity would be achieved. And, finally, the discrimination was nonsensical. Confronted in the climatic scene by Diane Nash on the steps of city hall before a massed protest, Mayor Ben West responded that, no, it did not seem fair for a store to take people’s money for other purchases and then to refuse them service at the lunch counter. Fairness aside, any profit-making enterprise that refuses paying customers service is not really serious about making profits.
The concrete end or ideal sought, therefore, was a racially integrated lunch counter. The end-state needed to realize this ideal would be a number of white customers and a number of black customers sitting on the lunch counter stools eating tuna fish sandwiches and drinking chocolate milkshakes. The best means or the process by which this end-state could be achieved would be to have a number of white customers and a number of black customers march down to the lunch counter, sit on the stools, and order tuna fish sandwiches and chocolate milkshakes. In fine, the means used and the ends desired did cohere; the process employed was the desired ideal in the making.
Of great importance, Lawson’s ideal could not be realized using arms. It had to be realized by unarmed “warriors.” Marching to a lunch counter with armed men would not achieve the ideal. Armed men ordering tuna fish sandwiches and chocolate milkshakes is an act of force to compel the storeowners to do Jim Lawson’s will. This was not the desired ideal. The desired ideal was racial integration, not an act of force to compel.
Of even greater importance, though, any violation of Lawson’s Rule Of Engagement not to respond to provocation would both destroy the process and kill the ideal. In unarmed war, as in anything else, accomplishing the desired end requires focused and discipline execution of the chosen means. Changing the means from occupying the lunch counter stools to punching thugs both changes and defeats the end. The one will not accomplish the other. Only by means of a strict and single-minded persistence on occupying and defending the terrain objective could the unarmed warriors sustain the process and, eventually, achieve their desired ideal–integration. Punching out thugs would serve other, entirely different ends. As disciplined moving forward by means of fire and maneuver allows the armed warrior to achieve his objective so disciplined sitting on his lunch counter stool allows the unarmed warrior to achieve his objective. Getting distracted and changing the objective accomplishes nothing.
In sum, two facts conspire to force the conclusion that war may be waged either as an armed or as an unarmed struggle. First, participants in both armed and unarmed wars are warriors. Both meet the criteria found in Article 13 of the First Geneva Convention of 1949. The only difference is that the one carries “arms openly,” while the other carries no arms at all. Second, both armed and unarmed social movements confront the same ends-means / ideal in process problem and resolve that problem in the same ways. After the failure of negotiations, both identify strategic terrain and move men to defend or attack it.
From a Military perspective, then, whether arms should or should not be used in any given operation is a purely contextual or circumstantial question. For Ulysses S. Grant in 1863, the strategic terrain to which warriors had to be moved was Vicksburg, Mississippi. Once Vicksburg was occupied, the full length Mississippi River would be open to Federal gunboats and the western States of the Confederacy cut off and isolated. In contrast, for James Lawson in 1960, the strategic terrain to which warriors had to be moved was thirteen lunch counter stools in three or four department stores in downtown Nashville, Tennessee. Once occupied, the commercial incoherence of not serving paying customers because of their race would be dramatized. Grant could not have occupied Vicksburg without arms; Lawson could not have occupied the lunch counter stools with arms.
And, finally, turning to war as a Subjective phenomenon, “We Were Warriors” can be viewed for its effect on the viewer as well as an objective representation of the material world. When this is done, most viewers will judge the film to be “non-violent,” because little of the action violates any of commonly held aesthetic norms. This judgment, however, is not clear-cut. Yes, most of the action violates no aesthetic norm. Yet, when the thugs attack, the judgment is less clear. Certainly, the thug’s attack is aesthetically repulsive, but, because the students do not respond, it is perhaps less repulsive than an armed battle. The student’s courage, discipline, and non-response introduce an aesthetically pleasing or admirable element to this potentially “violent” scene that is absent in an armed battle.
However one might sort these ambiguous aesthetic judgments, the affect on viewers of an absence of arms is usually a judgment that a scene is “non-violent.” These consideration lead to a final revision of the Military and Visual characteristics of war, thereby completing the Non-Essential Definition:
A Non-Essential Definition of War
I. War as a Mental Phenomenon
A. “War is a violent struggle between two hostile, independent, and irreconcilable wills, each trying to impose it-self on the other.”
II. War as a Material Phenomenon:
A. The Policy Goal
1. Formally, war is a performative speech act (i.e., a declaration), which may be either open and formal or informal.
2. Substantively, war is a dispute over sovereignty, either sovereignty itself (eg, the American Civil War, WWII in Germany) or a portion of sovereignty (eg, territory, treatment of minority, trade policy, etc.). Minimally, war is a dispute over who shall lay down the law.
3. Legally, war is the state or condition of enmity. Peace is the state or condition of amity.
B. The Other Means
1. Cold War
a. Diplomatically, war is, in general, a policy “that peace and justice may thereafter prevail” (Cicero, 1967, I, xi, 35). In particular, war is the resolution of the grievances denounced in the formal or informal declaration of war, most probably along the lines of the peace terms articulated in the same declaration.
b. Economically, war is the disruption, reduction, or severance of trade and commerce.
2. Hot War
a. Militarily, war is movement to or defense of favorable terrain so as to place the enemy in a disadvantageous position.
i. Armed war: The movement to or defense of favorable terrain may be facilitated at the tactical level by the use of fire or fire and maneuver.
ii. Unarmed war: The movement to or defense of favorable terrain may be achieved without the use of fire or fire and maneuver at the tactical level.
III. War as a Subjective Phenomenon
A. Visually, armed and unarmed war affect viewers differently.
1. Armed war at the tactical level violates common aesthetic norms and affects most viewers as aesthetically “violent.”
2. Unarmed war at the tactical level does not violate common aesthetic norms and affects most viewers as aesthetically “non-violent.”
By definition, a Non-Essential Definition is not exclusive; characteristics other than the Mental, Material, and Subjective dimensions of war could easily be added to the “family resemblance” checklist. For example, I have heard war defined in a New Age sort of way as a certain kind of “consciousness,” although I have never understood what is meant by this. One might also want to define war explicitly as an historical or moral phenomenon, instead of leaving these characteristics implicit. In light of the vast complexity of war, the list of possibly relevant characteristics is very, very long. In contrast, one might also want to follow Clausewitz’s example and reduce the number of explicitly listed characteristics to the Material alone. For example, is the explicit listing of the Mental dimension truly necessary? The U.S. Marine Corps seems to think so, but is it really? Clausewitz used this characteristic basically as a straw man to kick-start his dialectical argument. How necessary is a straw man to any definition? Or, again like Clausewitz, one might want to leave the Subjective dimension of war off the checklist of explicit characteristics. After all, by the end of his dialectic, Clausewitz concluded that, stripped of its “passionate and emotional” aspects, the rational ends-means / ideal in process dimension of war was all that was really needed to understand war in a practical or material sense. As he summarized this conclusion, war is the continuation of policy by other means (1976, 87).
However, I feel this latter suggestion is a mistake. To begin with, most people, most of the time, conceive of war as “violence” in this Subjective manner. Not to include this most popular definition explicitly is to fail to meet people where they are. It is to fail to explain where their intuitive conception of war fits in and to specify which Material acts produce or generate their aesthetic judgment that armed war is “violent.” More pointedly, though, the Subjective dimension of war must be listed explicitly when one wishes to argue in support of Mark Grimsley’s provocative thesis, “Why the Civil Rights Movement Was an Insurgency” (2010). No such supporting argument can be made without explicitly connecting the Material and the Subjective dimensions of war. Such an argument must make explicit the connection between the aesthetic judgment that armed war is “violent,” on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the aesthetic judgment that unarmed war is “non-violent.”
And, finally, I must thank Mark Grimsley for his generous invitation to publish this argument on his blog.
References:
Clausewitz, Carl von. 1976. On War. Michael Howard and Peter Paret, eds. and trans. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Grimsley, Mark. 2010. Why the Civil Rights Movement Was an Insurgency. Military History Quarterly 22 (3), Spring, 34-45.
York Zimmerman Inc. and WETA Washington, D.C. 2000. “We Were Warriors.” In A Force More Powerful. Princeton, NJ: Films for the Humanities & Sciences.
