When constructivists attack

(Have to preface this with a bit of international relations (IR) theory – I hope I don’t bore you.)

Constructivism is an approach to the social sciences (not so much a theory) that can be applied in any area of the field. It emphasises the power of ideas and ideational factors rather than the material factors that have been historically prevalent in much social science. Essentially, it argues that the social world consists of ‘social facts’, i.e. things that do not exist ‘out there’ as objective reality but that depend on human agreement and human ideas and concepts, etc., such as terrorism and human rights. In IR, constructivist approaches emphasise the ideational and particularly social creation of the international system and the concepts within it. They’ve also been noted for the concept of ‘security communities’, in which shared norms and understandings bring certain states together, e.g. NATO.

Constructivism really only gathered steam as an approach in the 1990s, partly due to the failure of the major schools – particularly realism – to predict the end of the Cold War, and partly due to its ability to produce new insights into a new world. However, constructivist approaches have been around for longer than that – in fact, any political activity that involves constructing a narrative can be construed as constructivism. Which brings me to my point, based on something that’s occurred to me as I’ve read a couple of things recently. The first was a reference to German strategy and operations (and less often tactics) in the Second World War, from the short but packed book War: A Short History by Jeremy Black. Black says in effect that Germany undercut its own military capabilities by not having a clear enough grand strategy, which filtered down to the operational level.

Black places the genesis of this issue in Hitler's similarity to Napoleon:

Hitler was ideologically and psychologically committed to continual conflict. Empire, for him and his supporters, was a means to a meta-historical goal of racial superiority ... as well as a new world order. (p. 138)

Black cites Operations Barbarossa and Blue as examples here. Barbarossa showed operational confusion between capturing territory and destroying Soviet units, which 'led to a lack of agreement over whether to advance on Moscow or ... overrun Ukraine and destroy the Soviet forces there (the option that was chosen)' (p. 139). As we know, German forces neither captured Moscow nor destroyed enough Soviet forces to knock the Soviet Union out of the war. Black sums up: 'Strategically, insufficient thought had been given to translating successes into victory.' (p. 139)

Blue is the other example here. 'A drive to seize the oilfields in the Caucasus, and thus to deal with [the Wehrmacht's] acute resource problem, was confused with the goal of capturing a bridgehead over the river Volga at Stalingrad.' On the standstill generated in that incredible battle, 'operational opportunities had been reduced to tactical impasse' (p. 140).

Essentially, they were running around like Huhns ohne kopf.

Backing this up was what I read recently about Hitler’s thoughts on foreign policy as articulated in his second book (Zweites Buch, not nearly as famous as Mein Kampf) – it’s based on states as quite unitary actors, much like the realism that predominated at the time, but with Hitler's own meta-narrative thrown in to judge their power. This, again, paid little heed to rational or material factors but based power on perceived racial capability - it was no wonder, then, that German forces were underprepared - perhaps 'strategically casual' would be a more accurate term - for the Eastern Front.

Of course, most modern states attempt to support war or violence with a narrative - see China in Xinjiang with the 'Al-Qaeda threat' or any Middle Eastern despot who's 'fighting terrorism'. Probably the most prominent has been the US's construction of a narrative to go to war with Iraq. The confusion here, however, seemed public from the outset. Did they go because of Al-Qaeda and 9/11? WMDs? Regime change? Then there was the conduct of the war - hearts and minds vs Fallujah, anyone? Nation-building vs damaging economic decrees?

Personally, I think that at a grand strategic level the mission was, much like Barbarossa, clear enough in itself: to transplant US power at first directly and eventually by proxy into a strategic area. I think that the mass of public signals the administration sent out were less an example of confusion than an attempt to hit all possible buttons. I'd argue that, again like Barbarossa, the real issue with the effectiveness of the strategy was that it was simplistic enough to lend itself to many interpretations and, therefore, conflicting operational and tactical goals.

What’s the moral? Be careful using ideational constructs in an area in which the material is critical. Even better - don't go to war.