War and Other Military Conflicts in the Third World

It is almost impossible to define and measure the use of military, organization, equipment, and manpower in military conflict. Their very existence is a threat, and the threat itself constitutes a use. Indeed, most of the time the mere possession of weapons and the threat to use them -- nuclear bombs, an action-ready army or police force, or a simple gun in the hands of a bank robber -- produce the effect for which the weapons and the armed organization behind them were designed. The perpetual threat of military "intervention" in the political process in Third World countries, no matter how apparently "free" and "democratic" their elections may seem, constitutes military-political intervention. The difficulty of defining military action and conflict applies equally to "international" conflicts across the borders of two or more states. But in this case the difficulty is augmented by that of defining and identifying "international," since the participation or intervention of a second or third state in any particular conflict is often deliberately vague.

Therefore the many attempts to define, identify, count, and analyze military conflicts in the Third World since 1945 are more confusing than clarifying. Depending on the criteria used by the analyst, the number of such conflicts counted has ranged from 30 to 350. The often cited responsible studies by Istvan Kende and by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) count 119 military conflicts in the Third World between 1945 and 1975, and the latter adds a further 14 conflicts for 1976. According to these studies, then, on the average twelve military conflicts were going on in the Third World on any given day since the Second World War. While he was still U.S. Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara claimed in 1966 that:

In the last 8 years alone, there have been no less than 164 internationally significant outbreaks of violence. . . . What is striking is that only 15 of these 165 significant resorts to violence have been military conflicts between two states. And not a single one of the 164 conflicts has been a formally declared war. Indeed, there has not been a formal declaration of war -- anywhere in the world -- since World War II.

Of course, the war Mr. McNamara waged against Vietnam was not declared either. And many of the other "internationally significant outbreaks of violence" were so significant for the United States that it felt impelled to intervene in them in one way or another, usually without declaring it was doing so.