War and wildlife: The Clausewitz connection

International Affairs

Volumn 87, Issue 1, 2011, Pages 121-142

  Humphreys, Jasper ^a   Smith, M L R ^a  

^a KING'S COLLEGE LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 78851471083     PISSN: 00205850     EISSN: 14682346     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2346.2011.00963.x     Document Type: Article

References (94)

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2. Carl von Clausewitz, On war, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 75.
3. Clausewitz, On war, pp. 75-6.
4. Rupert mith, The utility of force: the art of war in the modern world (London: Penguin, 2006), p. 4.
5. Richard Grant, 'Paul Watson: Sea Shepherd eco-warrior fighting to stop whaling and seal hunts', Daily Telegraph, 17 April 2009.
6. Clausewitz, On war, p. 483.
7. Jonathan Leake, 'SAS veterans to join new war on poachers', Sunday Times, 21 March 2010.
8. Quoted in Leake, 'SAS veterans to join new war on poachers'.
9. Dominic Dyer, 'Poaching is now greatest threat to endangered species', Sunday Times, 21 March 2010.
10. Leake, 'SAS veterans to join new war on poachers'.
11. Dyer, 'Poaching is now greatest threat to endangered species'.
12. Leake, 'SAS veterans to join new war on poachers'. For an extensive and scientifically documented breakdown of the rhino population see Tom Milliken, Richard H. Emslie and Bibhab Talukdar, African and Asian rhinoceroses: status, conservation and trade, report from the IUCN Species Survival Commission (IUCN/SSC) African and Asian Rhino Specialist Groups and TRAFFIC to the CITES secretariat pursuant to Resolution Conf. 9.14 (Rev. CoP14) and Decision 14.89, 20 November 2009, pp. 1-18.
13. Milliken et al., African and Asian rhinoceroses.
14. Dyer, 'Poaching is now greatest threat to endangered species'.
15. For the classic expositions see Mary Midgley, Animals and why they matter (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983), and Peter Singer, ed., In defence of animals (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985). More recent work includes Peter Singer, ed., In defence of animals: the second wave (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006); Marc Bekoff and Jennifer Pierce, Wild justice: the moral lives of animals (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009); Jonathan Balcombe, Second nature: the inner lives of animals (London: Macmillan Science, 2010).
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17. White, 'The historical roots of our ecologic crisis', pp. 1203-07. See also, accessed 8 Feb. 2010.
18. The notion of biological hotspots was formulated by the British ecologist Norman Myers with the intention of establishing global conservation priorities. See Norman Myers, 'Threatened biotas: hotspots in tropical rain forests', Environmentalist 8: 3, 1988, pp. 187-208.
19. Quoted in 'Study finds most wars occur in earth's richest biological regions', press release, Conservation International, 20 Feb. 2009, accessed 8 April 2010.
20. Michael Walzer, Just and unjust wars: a moral argument with historical illustrations, 4th edn (New York: Basic Books, 2006), p. 44. On R2P see International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), The responsibility to protect (Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, 2001). See also Report of the Secretary General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, A more secure world: our shared responsibility (New York: UN General Assembly, 2004).
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25. There was talk of prosecuting Saddam Hussein for the deliberate firing of Kuwait's oilfields during the first Gulf War but this was never translated into action. See Aryeh Neir, 'Putting Saddam Hussein on trial', New York Review of Books 40: 15, 23 Sept. 1993;Tara Weinstein, 'Prosecuting attacks that destroy the environment: environmental crimes or humanitarian atrocities?', Georgetown Environmental Law Review 28: 4, Summer 2005, accessed 5 April 2010.
26. Robyn Eckersley, 'Ecological intervention: prospects and limits', Ethics and International Affairs 21: 3, Autumn 2007, p. 293.
27. United Nations Environment Programme, 'Disasters and conflicts', accessed 28 Jan. 20i0.
28. See Charles Alao, The tragedy of endowment: natural resources and conflict in Africa (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2007).
29. An extreme version of this thinking is provided in Robert D. Kaplan's dystopian The coming anarchy: shattering the dreams of the post Cold War (New York: Vintage, 2001); see also Martin Van Creveld, The transformation of war (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991).
30. Mark Duffield, Global governance and the new wars: the merging of development and security (London: Zed, 2001), p. 190.
31. Duffield, Global governance and the new wars, p. 7.
32. See Mary Kaldor, New and old wars: organised violence in a global era (Cambridge: Polity, 1999).
33. Christopher Cramer, Civil war is not a stupid thing: accounting for violence in developing countries (London: Hurst, 2006), p. 76.
34. For a discussion see M. L. R. Smith, 'Strategy in an age of "low intensity" warfare: why Clausewitz is still more relevant than his critics', in Isabelle Duyvesteyn and Jan Angstrom, eds, Rethinking the nature of war (London: Frank Cass, 2005), pp. 28-64.
35. Isabelle Duyvesteyn, Clausewitz and African wars: politics and strategy in Liberia and Somalia (London: Frank Cass, 2005), p. 6.
36. This is a process that can occur irrespective of whether a situation of civil strife exists. For example, the Madagascan government of former disc jockey Andry Rajoelina has been accused of encouraging the 'timber mafia' so that it can reap a percentage of export tax on hardwood sales, a policy that has had disastrous effects on the sensitive habitats that support the native lemur population. See David Smith, 'Madagascar lemurs in danger from political turmoil and "timber mafia"', Guardian, 17 Nov. 2009.
37. Jessica Tuchman Mathews, 'Power shift', Foreign Affairs 76: 1, Jan.Feb. 1997, p. 53.
38. Franz Perrez, 'The relationship between permanent sovereignty and the obligation not to cause transboundary environmental damage', Environmental Law 26: 4, 1996, p. 1207.
39. See e.g. Charles Alao, 'Diamonds are forever ... but so are controversies: diamonds and the actors in Sierra Leon's civil war', Civil Wars 2: 3, 1999, pp. 43-64.
40. 'Pretoria inquiry confirms secret battle for the rhino', Independent, 18 Jan. 1996. It should be noted that these allegations are contested.
41. See Paul Collier, Economic causes of civil conflict and their implications for policy (Washington DC: World Bank, 2000).
42. Gérard Prunier, The Rwanda crisis, 1959-94: history of a genocide (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), p. 31.
43. Coalition Against Wildlife Trafficking, 'Illegal wildlife trade', accessed 14 April 2010.
44. See World Wildlife Fund, 'Treading softly on a fragile earth', WWF-UK Annual Review, 2004/2005, p. 13, accessed 17 April 2010.
45. 'Shopping habits of China's suddenly wealthy', Financial Times, 21 Aug. 2010.
46. On Eximbank see 'Chinese bank defends record in Africa', Wall Street Journal, 8 March 2010.
47. See John Garnaut, 'State or mate? Who's behind China fund', Sydney Morning Herald, 17 March 2010.
48. Paul Eccleston, 'China allowed to buy ivory from Africa', Daily Telegraph, 15 July 2008.
49. Jeremy Hance, 'In the midst of poaching crisis illegal rhino horn tops gold', 25 Nov. 2009, at, accessed 14 April 2010. This report recorded that a kilo of horn was fetching $60,000. If this is multiplied by the average horn weight of 3-5 kilos it gives a mean figure of around $250,000 per horn.
50. 'Rhinos on the rise in Africa but northern white nears extinction', accessed 14 March 2010.
51. See Kes Hillman-Smith, Mankoto ma Oyisenzo and Fraser Smith, 'A last chance to save the northern white rhino', Oryx: International Journal of Conservation 20: 1, Jan. 1986, pp. 20-26;'White rhino numbers "halved"', BBC News, 6 Aug. 2004, accessed 16 March 2010.
52. Deborah Avant, 'Conserving nature in the state of nature: tragic choice for INGO policy makers', paper presented at the meeting of the Structure and Organization of Government Research Committee of the International Political Science Association, George Washington University, Washington DC, 22-24 May 2003, pp. 5-6, accessed 27 March 2010.
53. Avant, 'Conserving nature in the state of nature', p. 7.
54. Avant, 'Conserving nature in the state of nature', p. 7.
55. A WWF aerial survey in July 1997 recorded the presence of 49 poacher camps, along with 1 rhino, 29 elephants, 24 buffaloes, and 16 hippos listed as killed: WWF, press release, 'New Congo in great need of help to save endangered species,' 25 July 1997, cited in Avant, 'Conserving the state of nature in nature', p. 9.
56. See The African bushmeat trade: a recipe for extinction (Cambridge: Ape Alliance, 1998), pp. 12-32, 40.
57. Avant, 'Conserving nature in the state of nature', p. 9.
58. Marc Lacey, 'War and politics threaten Congo's endangered rhinos', New York Times, 28 March 2005.
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61. African Parks Network, accessed 28 March 2010.
62. Milliken et al., African and Asian rhinoceroses, p. 3.
63. Quoted in 'Rhino numbers at record levels ... but rare white rhino feared extinct', Daily Mail, 17 June 2008.
64. Nicholas J. Wheeler, Saving strangers: humanitarian intervention in international society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
65. Interview with authors, 5 Jan. 2010.
66. Eckersley, 'Ecological intervention', pp. 311-12.
67. Lynton Caldwell, International environmental policy: from the twentieth to the twenty-first century (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996), p. 578.
68. See Avant, 'Conserving nature in the state of nature', pp. 16-20.
69. UN Charter, Chapter 1: 'Purposes and Principles', 26 June, 1945, article 2(4).
70. UN Environment Programme, 'Rio Declaration on Environment and Development', accessed 12 April 2010.
71. Quoted in Eckersley, 'Ecological intervention', p. 299.
72. ICISS, The responsibility to protect (1), B.
73. The declaration grants 'recognition of the inalienable right of States to dispose of their natural resources in accordance with their national interests'. See 'Official documents: permanent sovereignty over natural resources-resolution adopted by the United Nations General Assembly at its 1194th plenary meeting', American Journal of International Law 57: 3, July 1963, p. 710.
74. Principle 4 of the Stockholm Declaration states: 'Man has a special responsibility to safeguard and wisely manage the heritage of wildlife and its habitat, which are now gravely imperilled by a combination of adverse factors. Nature conservation, including wildlife, must therefore receive importance in planning for economic development.' Declaration of the United Nations conference on the human environment, June 1972, at, accessed 17 April 2010.
75. Principle 24 of the Rio Declaration states: 'Warfare is inherently destructive of sustainable development. States shall therefore respect international law providing protection for the environment in times of armed conflict and cooperate in its further development, as necessary.' Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, June 1992, accessed 17 April 2010.
76. Eckersley, 'Ecological intervention', p. 307.
77. Nature Worldwide: National Parks and Nature Reserves World Institute for Conservation and Environment, 'The national parks and nature reserves of Botswana', accessed 21 April 2010.
78. Dan Henk, 'Biodiversity and the military in Botswana', Armed Forces and Society 32: 2, Jan. 2006, pp. 278-9. See also Lethoglie Lucas, 'Botswana's new high flyer', BBC News, 2 April 2008, accessed 23 April 2010.
79. Henk, 'Biodiversity and the military in Botswana', p. 280.
80. Henk, 'Biodiversity and the military in Botswana', p. 279.
81. Henk, 'Biodiversity and the military in Botswana', pp. 279-81.
82. Henk, 'Biodiversity and the military in Botswana', p. 284.
83. International Rhino Foundation, 'New unit to rescue rhinos in South Africa', 7 Oct. 2009, accessed 23 April 2010.
84. Cassandra Jardine, 'The very human values that saved the rhino', Daily Telegraph, 15 Jan. 2010.
85. See R. J. Rummel, Death by government (New York: Transaction, 1994). We are grateful to one of the anonymous reviewers for this point.
86. See Henk, 'Biodiversity and the military in Botswana', pp. 278-9. See also Lucas, 'Botwana's new high flyer'.
87. Charles Darwin, The descent of man (London: John Murray, 1871), p. 96.
88. Darwin, The descent of man, p. 96.
89. Grant, 'Paul Watson'.
90. 'Conservation news', Oryx, July 2010, p. 323.
91. Philippe Sands, Principles of international environmental law: frameworks, standards and implementation (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), p. 369.
92. John Vogler, The global commons: environmental and technological governance (New York: Wiley, 2000), p. 366.
93. Smith, The utility of force, p. 17.
94. Clausewitz, On war, p. 358.