Warlords

Warlords are individuals who exercise military, economic, and political control over a region, often one without a strong central or national government, typically through informal control over local armed forces. Warlords have existed throughout much of history, albeit in a variety of different capacities within the political, economic, and social structure of states or ungoverned territories. The term is often applied in the context of China around the end of the Qing dynasty, especially during the Warlord Era. The term may also be used for a supreme military leader.

Historical origins and etymology

The first appearance of the word "warlord" dates to 1856, when used by American philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson in a highly critical essay on the aristocracy in England, "Piracy and war gave place to trade, politics and letters; the war-lords'' to the law-lord; the privilege was kept, whilst the means of obtaining it were changed."

During the First World War, the term appeared in China as ''Junfa'' ( 軍閥), taken from the Japanese ''gunbatsu''. It was not widely used until the 1920s, when it was used to describe the chaos after 1918, when provincial military leaders took local control and launched the period that would come to be known in China as the Warlord Era. In China, ''Junfa'' is applied retroactively to describe the leaders of regional armies who threatened or used violence to expand their rule, including those who rose to lead and unify kingdoms.

Conceptions of warlordism

Warlordism as the dominant political order of pre-state societies

The other major consideration in categorizing warlords is through the lens of history. Warlordism was a widespread, dominant political framework that ordered many of the world's societies until the modern state became globally ubiquitous. Often warlord governance in pre-modern state history was constructed along tribal or kinship lines and was congruent with early perception of "nation". In colonial empires warlords served in both cooperative political capacities and as leaders of rebellions. In modern states the presence of warlords is often seen as an indicator of state weakness or failure. American historian David G. Herrmann noted, "Warlordism is the default condition of humanity."

Economics of warlordism

Economist Stergios Skaperdas views warlordism as a default—albeit inefficient—competitive economic model that emerges in states where state capacity is low, but that innately evolves into an institution governing political order that uses violence or the threat of it to secure its access to "rent"-producing resources. It may actually have a stabilizing effect on a region. In both cases there is an inherent inefficiency in the model, as "resources are wasted on unproductive arming and fighting." However, the functionality is often sustainable because it presents citizens with no choice but to accept rent levies in exchange for protection. Charles Tilly, an American political scientist and sociologist, theorized that organized crime can function as a means for war and state making. He argues that the monopoly of crime by the state—in this case being the warlords—is in order to receive protection from external rivals as well as internal political rivals.

Political scientist Jesse Driscoll uses the term "redistribution politics" to classify the bargaining process between warlords and the regime in states where cooperative warlord politics prevails, and when that bargaining leads to accords or informal arrangements concerning the extraction of rent—which can refer to natural resources, territory, labor, revenue or privilege. In his study of warlordism in Georgia and Tajikistan, Driscoll cites "land reform, property ownership and transfers, privatization in non-transparent closed-bid settings, complex credit swaps cemented via marriages, money laundering, price-fixing schemes, and bribery", as principal sources of exchange in redistribution politics.

Understanding warlordism in the context of European feudalism

Noted theorist Max Weber suggested that classic feudalism in pre-modern-state Europe was an example of warlordism, as the state regime was unable to "exercise a monopoly on the use of force within its territory" and the monarch relied on the commitment of loyal knights and other nobility to mobilize their private armies in support of the crown for specific military campaigns. As noted French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville and political scientists such as E. J. Hobsbawm and Theda Skocpol observed in their analyses of the Ancien Régime, the French Revolution and democratization in Europe, that commitment was contingent upon a bargaining process in which the king or queen had to guarantee additional territory, revenue, status or other privileges, meaning that these early European states were weak and the relationship between the crown and feudal lords constituted the form of interdependent warlordism known as cooperative warlord politics.

Under the feudal system of Europe, nobility—whether feudal lords, knights, princes or barons—were warlords in that they served as regional leaders who exercised military, economic and political control over subnational territories and maintained private armies to maintain that status. While their political power to exercise social order, welfare and regional defense within their territory was derived from hereditary rights or edicts from the monarch, their military strength afforded them independence and strength to negotiate for privileges. Should the feudal lord or other noble withdraw his support from the king, either in rebellion or to form an alliance with a rival kingdom, that feudal lord or noble was now ascribing to the political order of ungoverned warlordism.

Warlordism in the contemporary world

Within political science there is a growing body of research and analysis on warlordism that has emerged within weak states that have gained independence as a result of the collapse of empires. Warlord states are disproportionately concentrated within two regions—the former European colonies of Africa and the former Soviet republics of Eurasia.

Cooperative warlord politics

While warlords are commonly viewed as regional leaders who threaten the sovereignty of a state, there are a number of states where the central government functions in collusion with warlords to achieve its goal of exercising its sovereignty over regions that would otherwise fall outside its control. In such decentralized states, particularly those where armed groups challenge national sovereignty, warlords can serve as useful allies of a central government that is unable to establish a monopoly over the use of force within its national territory.

Philippines

As political scientist Dr. Ariel Hernandez documented, one example is the Philippines, where successive presidential administrations—at least since Ferdinand Marcos secured power in 1965—have "franchised violence to regional warlords" to counter the inroads of communist insurgents, Islamic rebels and organized criminal gangs. This has led to the formation of at least 93 "Partisan Armed Groups", armed militias loyal to regional warlords who, in exchange for their loyalty and willingness to use their private armies to quell the threats from these opposition groups, are granted a degree of autonomy within designated regions, the exclusive right to use violence and the right "to profit from the 'economy of violence' that they establish in their own areas".

Afghanistan

Warlordism in Afghanistan—another state where the central government is unable to extend political, military or bureaucratic control over large swaths of territories outside the capital—functions cooperatively within the framework of the state, at times. The warlords, with their established militias, are able to maintain a monopoly of violence within certain territories. They form coalitions with competing warlords and local tribal leaders to present the central government with a challenge, and often the state will bargain to gain access to resources or "rent", loyalty from the warlord and peace in the region.

In exchange for peaceful coexistence, the warlord coalitions are granted special status and privileges, including the right to maintain '' de facto'' political rule within the agreed-upon territory, exert force to retain their monopoly over violence and extract rent and resources. "By limiting access to these privileges, members of the dominant warlord coalition create credible incentives to cooperate rather than fight among themselves."

In the case of Afghanistan, state–warlord bargaining sometimes extends beyond these informal accords and elevates to the status of political clientelism, in which the warlords are appointed to formal government positions, such as regional governor; a title which provides them political legitimacy. During the state–warlord bargaining phase, warlords in Afghanistan have a high motivation to prolong war to create political instability, expose weakness of the central state, prompt regional criticism against the government and continue economic extraction.

Post-Soviet republics

In his study of warlordism in Georgia and Tajikistan, political scientist Jesse Driscoll emphasizes how the collapse of the Soviet Union precipitated the rise of militant, independence-seeking nationalist movements within the republics—particularly within the Central Asian and Caucasus regions—resulting in armed conflict and civil war. Many strongmen warlords had served in the Soviet military, police units or intelligence services and had experience operating within highly organized bureaucracies. These warlords formed well-structured militias that not only established political and economic control over territories, but institutionalized bureaucracies to establish and maintain their monopolies over violence and rent and "incentivizing the behavior of citizens within a particular geographical space". Driscoll termed this warlordism "militia coalition politics". A truce was reached without any disarmament of militias; instead, the warlord coalitions reached a non-violent "order producing equilibrium", and eventually agreed upon a warlord-friendly civilian figurehead to assume head-of-state duties to demonstrate the legitimacy as a sovereign state to the rest of the world. This opened up Georgia and Tajikistan as states eligible to receive international aid, which thereafter became a major source of "rent" for the warlords, providing them with resources to increase their power and influence over these societies. As Driscoll observed, the "warlords colluded to create a state".

Ungoverned warlordism, or warlords as "stationary bandits"

One political theory, pioneered by American economist Mancur Olson, posits that warlords can function as stationary bandits. In some African states, warlord politics can be a product of endowment-rich, extractable resources. Some nations, such as Liberia and Sierra Leone, have had stationary bandits who use extraction of resources such as diamonds, cobalt and timber ("conflict resources") in order to increase their political power. They often enforce their right to these resources by claiming to be protecting the people. These warlords, or stationary bandits, often partner with compliant foreign firms and create symbiotic relationships

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