La forza della debolezza : un'analisi operazionale degli interventi militari in contesti di frammentazione

Thalin Zarmanian The Strength of Weakness: an Operational Analysis of Military Interventions in Fragementation Contexts The thesis addresses the problem of the so called paradox on unrealized power in IR. Most IR theorists define the current system as unipolar and assume that the United States are capable to militarily impose their will on weaker opponents. Empirical reality seems to contradict this assumption: not only the United State’s ability to achieve their military objectives in the post-Cold War era is disputed, but they also seem to encounter most difficulties in prevailing against the “weakest” members of the system. After explaining, in chapter 1, why the existing literature on the subject fails to satisfactorily explain this “anomaly”, the thesis argues that in order to overcome it, it is necessary to integrate the recent work of Stephen Biddle – author of the best theory of military effectiveness so far – with the work of IR theorists, mostly European, as the members of the English School, Carl Schmitt and Raymond Aron, who analyzed the deep connection between the form taken by the fundamental institutions (i.e. the political, economical and social structures) on which an International System is based determine the form taken by warfare. Chapter 2 and 3 show how this can help drawing a theoretically useful distinction between conventional warfare and s.c. “unconventional” warfare. Chapter 4 provides a model of conflicts in contexts where the “normal” institutional framework of the international system has collapsed and tries to show how this generates an indeterminate and unstable operational military horizon and therefore how US difficulties in achieving their military objectives can be explained by looking at the institutional dimension.