War and Wildlife, The Clausewitz Connectiond Wildlife, The Clausewitz Connection

War and wildlife:
the Clausewitz connection

JASPER HUMPHREYS AND M. L. R. SMITH
The militarization of wildlife protection
Invoking notions of force in the name of protecting the environment, and
wildlife in particular, is intuitively unacceptable for many concerned analysts.
Daniel Deudney argues that for environmentalists to dress their programmes
in the blood-soaked garments of the war system betrays their core values and
creates confusion about the real tasks at hand.
1
But is this necessarily the case? We
contend that such views are mistaken on intellectual, practical and moral grounds.
In particular, such thinking, well intentioned though it might be, ignores pressing
realities on the ground. We assert, by contrast, that appraising the thinking of
the nineteenth-century Prussian philosopher of war, Carl von Clausewitz, could
help us understand how some of the serious threats posed to endangered animal
populations by war and political instability might be addressed.
Clausewitz argued that war is an act of force to compel our enemy to do our
will, adding that attached to force are certain self-imposed, imperceptible limita-
tions hardly worth mentioning, known as international law and custom, but they
scarcely weaken it.
2
Though Clausewitz plainly regarded these imperceptible
limitations as insignicant, in referring to them he touched upon a vital inter-
face between the exertion of force to overcome an enemy and the myriad social
and practical inuences that in reality limit the scale of violence to a degree that
enables the application of force, or threat of it, not only to be politically efca-
cious butjust as importantlyto be perceived as proportionate and legitimate
by those in whose name the act of force is carried out. In simple terms, we might
suggest that Clausewitz was articulating the distinction between what we would
call today soft and hard power approaches towards the securing of political
interests. In the context of his own time, Clausewitz unambiguously declared in
favour of the latter, seeing the maximum application of force as inherently more
logical than the introduction of moderation for its own sake: for if one side uses
force without compunction, undeterred by the bloodshed it involves, while the
other side refrains, the rst will gain the upper hand.
3
1
Daniel H. Deudney, Environmental security: a critique, in Daniel H. Deudney and Richard A. Matthew,
eds, Contested grounds: security and conict in the new environmental politics (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1999), p. 214.
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. 756.
International Afairs 87:1 (2011) 121142
2011 The Author(s). International Afairs 2011 The Royal Institute of International Afairs. Published by Blackwell Publishing
Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford ox4 2dq, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
Jasper Humphreys and M. L. R. Smith
122
International Afairs 87: 1, 2011
Copyright 2011 The Author(s). International Afairs 2011 The Royal Institute of International Afairs.
War, however, is not necessarily an exercise in crude military might, and seeing
it as such, as Clausewitz himself recognized, can lead to an inaccurate under-
standing of the utility of force. General Rupert Smith noted that often there
is a deep and abiding confusion between deploying force and employing force. In
many cases forces have been deployed and then force has not been employed.
4

Forcethe exercise of physical coercioncan be understood in a variety of ways:
as a revelation of strength and power, as an act of compulsion, or simply as the
demonstration of inuence. Though frequently considered synonymous with
military power and organized violence, force is just one element of any strategy
whenever there is a clash of wills and interests.
The use of force in the context of wildlife protection presents a unique
strategic challenge in that one side of the conict is defenceless against its human
opponent, yet has to rely on the altruism of other humans for its protection.
Soft power approaches towards animal conservation predominate, notably in
the form of international covenants on the protection of endangered species.
Examples of hard power protection are rare and usually spring from ancillary
imperatives such as the need to protect species for the sake of tourism. Thus
the forceful struggle to protect animal life is left to the more radical end of the
conservation spectrum, such as the marine conservation group Sea Shepherd,
whose passiveaggressive confrontations with Japanese whalers gain large
audiences for the Whale Wars series on Animal Planet TV.
5
Sea Shepherds opera-
tions epitomize both the increasing militarization of conservation activities and
the growing public support for such actions. Direct action of this kind gains
widespread backing in part, as Sea Shepherds leader Paul Watson emphasizes,
because his organizations actions are intended to enforce international maritime
lawone of Clausewitzs imperceptible limitationsunder the United Nations
World Charter for Nature.
6
The example of Sea Shepherd illustrates an evolving, and intriguing, develop-
ment in international afairs, which is the capacity for self-generating resistance
beyond the state in support of transnational laws and norms. Clausewitz, in fact,
visualized a form of this phenomenon in his Peoples in Arms idea, even while
admitting that in his own time this sort of warfare is not as yet very common.
7

But to make a more explicit connection between Clausewitzian ideas and the
protection of animals requires an articulation of how threats to wildlife can be
said to possess a distinctive identity within the web of international politics. Here
it is possible to point in particular to the huge commercial incentives that revolve
around attacking and exploiting the natural resource base. In the worst instances,
criminal enterprises operating beyond the law lead the way in the destruction of
habitats and the specic targeting of sensitive wildlife in ways that have serious
security implications to which responding with force is one logical option.
4
Rupert Smith, The utility of force: the art of war in the modern world (London: Penguin, 2006), p. 4.
5
http://animal.discovery.com/tv/whale-wars, accessed 21 April 2010.
6
Richard Grant, Paul Watson: Sea Shepherd eco-warrior ghting to stop whaling and seal hunts, Daily
Telegraph, 17 April 2009.
7
Clausewitz, On war, p. 483.
War and wildlife: the Clausewitz connection
123
In the past, the notion of protecting species with force has been an issue where
the safety-catch has for the most part been left on. In recent years, however,
there is growing evidence of a willingness to take it of. Wildlife charities now use
their resources to train and equip game park rangers in several African countries
to counter the sharp growth in poaching arising from the activities of increas-
ingly sophisticated and violent criminal gangs. This support has seen the provi-
sion of weapons, ammunition, barracks, vehicles and even light aircraft by the
International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) for the Kenyan Wildlife Service,
while the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has hired former British Army Special
Air Service veterans to train game wardens in catching elephant poachers in the
Gashaka National Park, Nigeria.
8
According to Dominic Dyer of Care for the
Wild International (CWI), sensitive animal populations
are being wiped out by poachers who are increasingly well equipped with automatic
weapons, GPS satellites, night-vision kit and heat-seeking telescopes to spot animals
at night. That means we also need a more robust approach to enforcement, so we are
supplying kit, ranging from boots and clothing to night-vision goggles and military-style
vehicles. We are also deploying armed escorts. Wardens need that kind of support to go up
against people with machine guns and assault ries.
9
These developments have been fuelled by an increasing demand for wildlife
products, especially from China. With ivory trading at over 1,000 per kilo and
expanding markets for precious furs and animal organs, the long-term impact on
sensitive animal populations has become very marked.
10
Since 1979 the African
elephant population has fallen from an estimated 1.3 million to under 400,000.
11

The decline has been most dramatic in the past few years, which has seen the
elephant population in the Zakouma National Park in Chad drop from 4,000 in
2006 to just 600 at the beginning of 2010. Elsewhere, the number of tigers in India
reported across 23 game reserves registered a drop from 3,700 in 2002 to 1,400 in
2010.
12
It is estimated that only about 4,200 black rhinos are left in the wild in
Africa; in Asia the numbers are even lower, with just 370 Nepalese rhinos and a
mere 130 surviving Javan rhinos.
13
The growing militarization of wildlife protection also follows steep rises in the
number of game wardens in Africa killed in gun battles with poaching gangs.
14

For those states most afected, along with the wildlife organizations and charities
that support them, the situation establishes a classically Clausewitzian escalatory
dynamic in attempts to counter the activities of the poaching gangs. In the words
8
Jonathan Leake, SAS veterans to join new war on poachers, Sunday Times, 21 March 2010.
9
Quoted in Leake, SAS veterans to join new war on poachers.
10
Dominic Dyer, Poaching is now greatest threat to endangered species, Sunday Times, 21 March 2010.
11
Leake, SAS veterans to join new war on poachers.
12
Dyer, Poaching is now greatest threat to endangered species.
13
Leake, SAS veterans to join new war on poachers. For an extensive and scientically 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. 118.
14
Milliken et al., African and Asian rhinoceroses.
124
of CWIs Dominic Dyer, We have to use force and that means putting people
into the eld with the right training and military equipment.
15
A new moral imperative?
The increasing resort to force in wildlife protection originates not merely in a sense
of desperation to save species on the verge of extinction, but in wider social and
political ideas at work in the international system. As the Cold War high politics
of superpower summitry, dtente and arms control have receded, problems of
insurgency and low politics that include interrelated green issues linked to
the environment, biodiversity, the global economy and population growth have
grown in prominence. These developments chime with broader investigations
into the sentience of animals and how this might confer increased responsibility
on humans to protect them.
16

These themes, in turn, resonate with reinterpretations of stewardship: just
who is responsible for the management of the environment? Philosophers arguing
against anthropomorphismthe attribution of human traits to non-human
beings or inanimate objectsmaintain that anthropomorphic understandings
institutionalize the view that human life is innately superior to all other species,
which are thus rendered dispensable, mere biological machines in the service of
humans. Anti-anthropomorphism has gained currency since the 1960s, notably
after the medieval historian Lynn White claimed that the victory of Christianity
over paganism was the greatest psychic revolution in the history of our culture.
17

The Church, it was held, had encouraged humans to regard themselves as superior
to other species by its interpretation of stewardship as conferring on humans the
right to exploit the earths resources for their own benet.
Worldwide awareness about protecting wildlife has moved a long way since the
rst conservation treaty was signed in 1889 to regulate salmon shing in the Rhine.
Today there are eco-philosophers calling for simian sovereignty in the form of
trust territories for apes, while the International Great Ape Project lobbies the
United Nations for a Declaration on Great Apes to give certain species of primates
the same moral recognition as humans in a community of equals with rights to
life, protection of individual liberty and the prohibition of torture.
18
Philosoph-
ical and ethical developments in understanding the place of animalsand indeed
humanswithin the biosphere has undoubtedly heightened the appreciation of
human responsibilities for the protection of animals and the wider environment
which they inhabit. These concerns have been reinforced by growing evidence
15
Dyer, Poaching is now greatest threat to endangered species.
16
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 Bekof 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).
17
Lynn White, The historical roots of our ecologic crisis, Science 155: 3767, 10 March 1967, p. 1205.
18
White, The historical roots of our ecologic crisis, pp. 120307. See also www.greatapeproject.org, accessed
8 Feb. 2010.
125
that many forms of wildlife are critically endangered by the human propensity
for conict with other humans.
Moreover, the earths richest areas of biodiversity lie in tropical and subtropical
regions of developing states, many of which have been afected by conict at one
time or another. A report by the leading US-based charity Conservation Interna-
tional (CI) showed that 80 per cent of the armed conicts between 1950 and 2000
occurred in areas it designates as hotspots, which are areas deemed to contain
particularly diverse ranges of threatened species.
19
According to CIs president,
Russell Mittermeier: The fact that so many conicts have occurred in areas of
high diversity loss and natural resources degradation warrants much further inves-
tigation as to the underlying causes and strongly highlights the importance of the
areas for global security.
20
Given that a linkage between conict and an adverse impact on wildlife can be
demonstrated, it may be argued that conservation eforts register crucial connec-
tions with issues related to sovereignty, statehood and the security arrangements
within and around national borders. Out of this milieu arises a potentially new
arena of international interventionism that takes its cue from the UN-endorsed
Responsibility to Protect (R2P) agenda and the principle of just cause in war,
which, as Michael Walzer observes, springs from the articulated norms, customs,
professional codes, legal precepts, religious and philosophical principles and recip-
rocal arrangements that shape our judgement.
21
The prospects for interventionism
Estimates of the number of species disappearing globally vary, but one informed
study suggests that the scale ranges between 10,000 and 25,000 a year. This equates
roughly to the extinction of one species every 20 minutes.
22
Some consider that
this rate of destruction constitutes ecocide, or, as the Booker Prize winner
Margaret Atwood puts it, that the world is riding the Eco-death Express.
23

One side of the attempt to combat the scale of decline involves soft power
diplomacy and the threat of sanctions aimed at protecting the environment
through a range of treaties and international declarations. There is even a move
to create a global environmental legal enforcement framework led by the Rome-
19
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. 187208.
20
Quoted in Study nds most wars occur in earths richest biological regions, press release, Conservation
International, 20 Feb. 2009, http://www.conservation.org/newsroom/pressreleases/Pages/study_wars_
occur_biodiversity_hotspots.aspx, accessed 8 April 2010.
21
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 Generals High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, A more secure world: our shared
responsibility (New York: UN General Assembly, 2004).
22
See Conservation International, Ensuring species survival, http://www.conservation.org/LEARN/
BIODIVERSITY/SPECIES/Pages/overview.aspx, accessed 9 April 2010.
23
Margaret Atwood, Act now to save our birds, Guardian, 9 Jan. 2010.
126
based International Court of the Environment Foundation.
24
The Convention on
International Trade and Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) is
the best-known example of soft power protection. Established in 1973 and now
with 175 signatories, CITES aims to ensure that international trade in specimens
of wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival.
25
While CITES has
attempted to construct an international consensus, its weakness is that it relies
solely on goodwill and cooperation among signatories and lacks the means of
enforcing compliance in the face of mounting and complex threats to animals,
including some threats that did not exist and some animals that were unknown
when CITES was originally established. The growing challenges presented to soft
power approaches will be examined in more detail below with a study of the
dilemmas faced by the WWF over the strategy to protect the endangered northern
white rhino in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The inefectiveness of international conventions is underlined by the fact that
while international law has been applied to environmental disputes, such as the
Trail smelter case between Canada and the United States in 1938,
26
and in spite of
the existence of a panoply of declarations in favour of environmental protection,
no action has been taken against any actor for wilful environmental destruction.
27

The lack of enforcement or collective intervention with respect to environmental
damage, let alone to protect endangered species, would seem to support Clause-
witzs robust scepticism towards the limitations of international law.
Nevertheless, the idea of internationally coordinated ecological intervention
has gathered adherents. Robyn Eckersley, for example, has ofered a theoretical
rather than prescriptive approach, pulling together the philosophical and
practical strands regarding legitimacy and morality relating to the possibilities for
ecological intervention. She was unafraid to explore freighted words like ecocide
and speciesism (prejudice against non-humans because they are not humans)
through various philosophical prisms (Kantian, utilitarian, communitarian), and
to consider the subtleties of animal rights advocacy (animal liberation, biocen-
tric and ecocentric) as well as international law. Ultimately, Eckersley posed
the question: Might the wilful or reckless perpetration of mass extinctions and
massive ecosystem destruction be regarded as crimes against nature such as to
support a new form of ecological intervention and an international environmental
court? If the international community condemns genocide, might it one day be
ready to condemn ecocide?
28
24
See http://www.icef-court.org/, accessed 17 March 2010.
25
What is CITES?, http://www.cites.org/eng/disc/what.shtml, accessed 19 April 2010.
26
Reports of International Arbitral Awards (Trail smelter case, United States, Canada), 16 April 1938 and 11
March 1941, vol. III, pp. 190582 (United Nations, 2006), http://untreaty.un.org/cod/riaa/cases/vol_III/1905
1982.pdf, accessed 26 Feb. 2010.
27
There was talk of prosecuting Saddam Hussein for the deliberate ring of Kuwaits oilelds during the rst
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,
http://www.allbusiness.com/legal/international-law/950618-1.html, accessed 5 April 2010.
28
Robyn Eckersley, Ecological intervention: prospects and limits, Ethics and International Afairs 21: 3, Autumn
2007, p. 293.
127
Ecocide and resource wars
According to a number of studies the incidence of resource-based wars has been
growing steadily. One UN report suggests that 18 of the 35 conicts recorded
since 2000 have been about or fuelled by issues to do with the exploitation and
control of natural resources, as opposed to wars fought over issues of ideology
or territorial security.
29
Such wars are less clashes of interstate interests and more
often civil wars within states, and are particularly prevalent in Africa.
30
Clausewitz conceived war in its totality as a paradoxical trinity, composed of
primordial violence, hatred and enmity, which are to be regarded as a blind natural
force; of the play of chance and probability within which the creative spirit is free
to roam; of its element of subordination, as an instrument of policy, which makes
it subject to reason alone.
31
He goes on to elaborate that these three elements of
war comprise politics (usually a state government), which govern a social actors
use of force; military power, exercised by an army; and collaboration between
government and the people serving the state.
32
A critique of the Clausewitzian view, albeit one built on shaky foundations,
holds that this conception of war is redundant in areas where state power dissolves
and power is wielded instead by actors such as drug barons and warlords.
33
These
new forms of power, it is maintained, give rise to a new typology of warfare that
Mark Dufeld has termed network war. The new wars, as well as requiring the
mobilization of networks to realize wealth and provision violence, are similarly
concerned with restricting the efectiveness of other networks, taking them over
or eliminating them altogether.
34
An important driver of network war is the
control of extractable resources, of which wildlife is a major element. These
conicts work through and around states: the threat of interstate war as the
primary security concern has been replaced by the fear of underdevelopment as
a source of conict, criminalized activity and international instability.
35
In this
regard, network war is a development of the new wars thesis in that the causes
and nancing of such conicts take place in an era of globally interconnected
markets,
36
particularly those webs of illicit markets that have thrived in an era of
greater communication and weaker regulation.
37
New wars theorists have detected an essentially contra-Clausewitzian,
apolitical character to such conicts. Warlords are deemed to have no political
29
United Nations Environment Programme, Disasters and conicts, http://www.unep.org/conictsand
disasters/, accessed 28 Jan. 2010.
30
See Charles Alao, The tragedy of endowment: natural resources and conict in Africa (Rochester, NY: University of
Rochester Press, 2007).
31
32
33
An extreme version of this thinking is provided in Robert D. Kaplans 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).
34
Mark Dufeld, Global governance and the new wars: the merging of development and security (London: Zed, 2001), p.
190.
35
Dufeld, Global governance and the new wars, p. 7.
36
See Mary Kaldor, New and old wars: organised violence in a global era (Cambridge: Polity, 1999).
37
Christopher Cramer, Civil war is not a stupid thing: accounting for violence in developing countries (London: Hurst,
2006), p. 76.
128
programme and to employ violence to accumulate wealth for its own sake, devel-
oping inherently despotic and kleptocratic elites. Although this view captures
something of the essence of resource wars, the new wars thesis is based on an
elementary misreading of Clausewitzs ideas.
38
In particular, it misses the impor-
tance of Clausewitzs key understanding that all war derives from political circum-
stances: War is an instrument of policy. It must necessarily bear the character of
policy and measure by its standards.
39
Thus, when substate groups aggregate polit-
ical power by force through the accumulation of wealth, even though the process
dees the conventional notion of politics as some sort of ideological struggle it
is still deeply political and invariably results in the emergence of a quasi-state
apparatus, the inuence of which is often restricted to urban concentrations and
dominated by criminal plunder, with limited jurisdiction over its subjects, and
minimal or non-existent supply of welfare and social services to the population.
These are diferent kinds of wars, and a diferent kind of politics drives them.
Isabelle Duyvesteyn demonstrates the relevance of Clausewitzs paradoxical
trinity in relation to resource wars in Africa, showing that the participants in
these wars pursue their political agendas through violence in order to increase
their power by whatever means necessary at the expense of time-consuming state-
building, using force with brutalising terror, plumbing the depths of depravity.
In so doing, new forms of rule and authority are created.
40
In other words, the
state merely becomes a conduit for booty for these elite groups. The politics
of criminally directed looting can have signicantly adverse efects on wildlife
as plunder and wealth accumulation take precedence over the preservation of
the environment.
41
The crucial question that arises is: how should the efects of
these wars be mitigated? In the absence of viable state institutions or coordinated
intervention from other states this unenviable task often falls to non-govern-
mental organizations (NGOs), either those sponsored by multinational bodies or
individual charities.
The dilemmas of the NGO mandate
One of the more relevant contentions of the new wars thesis is that sovereignty
is being eroded not just by the collapsing authority of failed or failing states in
the aftermath of the Cold War but also by the increasing power of supranational
actors, ranging from transnational corporations and alliances like NATO through
entities like the European Union and the UN to an array of international agree-
38
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. 2864.
39
40
Isabelle Duyvesteyn, Clausewitz and African wars: politics and strategy in Liberia and Somalia (London: Frank Cass,
2005), p. 6.
41
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
maa so that it can reap a percentage of export tax on hardwood sales, a policy that has had disastrous efects
on the sensitive habitats that support the native lemur population. See David Smith, Madagascar lemurs in
danger from political turmoil and timber maa, Guardian, 17 Nov. 2009.
129
ments, norms and associations, including NGOs. Jessica Tuchman Mathews even
identied a power shift from state to non-state actors, arguing that NGOs had
the power to push around even the largest of governments.
42
As we shall see, this
is not actually true.
In reality, NGOs are constrained by physical and self-imposed limitations. Poten-
tially, the more prominent and well-endowed NGOs can weaken the capacity of
developing states to manage their own societies. More commonly, though, NGOs
assist state power by helping to consolidate central authority, thereby helping to
secure sovereignty over both territorial borders and the resources they contain.
Yet there are several areas of contention in the NGO mandate, including, rst,
how far they can, or should, intrude on sovereignty, and second, whether they
have an independent mandate to use force in the name of conservation, especially
in places where state authority barely exists.
Wildlife forms part of the natural resource base of the state. The principle of
permanent sovereignty, as enshrined in the UN Charter, is regarded as a basic
right of self-determination, and provides for exclusive control of the resources
within state boundaries.
43
The issue of sovereignty, however, becomes particu-
larly fraught in resource-rich areas. Wildlife parks and reserves are themselves
often located in areas possessing abundant mineral wealthoil, diamonds, timber
products and coltan, for example. These areas invariably become sites of conict,
which rapidly erodes any concern for conservation,
44
not least because the remote
terrain often shelters the armed groups along with the wildlife. Consequently,
in conditions of conict territorial boundaries, whether belonging to a state, a
park, a reserve or a protected area, are rendered meaningless, further facilitating
the exploitation of wildlife. Nor, given the commercial opportunities involved, is
such activity necessarily conned to non-state gangs or guerrilla groups. A South
African commission, appointed by Nelson Mandela in 1989, alleged that the South
African army had organized the smuggling of wildlife products, principally ivory
and rhino horn, on a massive scale during its incursions into Angola and Namibia
in the 1970s and 1980s.
45
Since the end of the Second World War there have been an estimated 160 wars.
Fifty-two active conicts in 42 countries were recorded for 1993, 34 in 1995 and
27 in 1999. It is calculated that during the 1990s there were three times as many
ongoing wars than at any time in the 1950s and twice as many as at any point
during the 1960s.
46
As the predominant face of war has increasingly exhibited an
intrastate character, involving political factions and ethnic groups, the resulting
mass migrations of refugees come to share a common need with the military forces
42
Jessica Tuchman Mathews, Power shift, Foreign Afairs 76: 1, Jan.Feb. 1997, p. 53.
43
Franz Perrez, The relationship between permanent sovereignty and the obligation not to cause transboundary
environmental damage, Environmental Law 26: 4, 1996, p. 1207.
44
See e.g. Charles Alao, Diamonds are forever but so are controversies: diamonds and the actors in Sierra
Leons civil war, Civil Wars 2: 3, 1999, pp. 4364.
45
Pretoria inquiry conrms secret battle for the rhino, Independent, 18 Jan. 1996. It should be noted that these
allegations are contested.
46
See Paul Collier, Economic causes of civil conict and their implications for policy (Washington DC: World Bank,
2000).
130
that oppress them, namely to survive of the land, with devastating efects on
wildlife and wider ecosystems. During Rwandas civil war nearly 50 per cent of the
countrys 7 million people were displaced into camps along the eastern regions of
the Congo. Of these, approximately 860,000 refugees settled around the Virunga
National Park, home of the mountain gorilla, with another 330,000 camped in the
Kahuzi Biega National Park, the only home of the Grauers gorilla.
47
The scale and the continuing aftermath of wars such as that in Rwanda exacts
a massive environmental price that inevitably leads to further problems, such as
illegal logging and the expansion of the bushmeat trade, as well as the supply of
luxury commodities like ivory and rhino horn. Taken together with the illegal
trade in live species, the combined wildlife trade is estimated to be worth $10
billion a yearthe third biggest market in illicit goods after those in drugs and
guns.
48
There are many other commercial and social factors that are exerting unprec-
edented pressure on wildlife. These include overpopulation and changing migra-
tion patterns, which result in massive loss of habitat.
49
Moreover, with the
growing inuence of China in the developing world comes a heightened scramble
for resources along with diferent cultural attitudes to the natural world.
50
The
Chinese policy of ofering soft loans channelled through Eximbank and the secre-
tive China International Fund,
51
which provides aid with no political strings, has
enabled it to discreetly invade the continent, extracting raw materials on a vast
scale to fuel its burgeoning economy.
52
Chinas involvement in the process of
resource exploitation brings with it an enticement for local people to poach and
trade wildlife. The decision by CITES in 2008 to allow a limited trade in ivory
in response to Chinese pressure has been blamed for an increase in poaching in
eastern and southern Africa.
53
With prices soaring so that, for example, a rhino horn may fetch $250,000,
54
the
illegal wildlife trade presents high-reward/low-risk opportunities for poachers,
especially given exceptionally weak enforcement regimes. Despite being signa-
tories to a raft of treaties and agreements, many countries do not live up to their
obligations, whether through inertia, lack of money or corruption. The cumula-
tive impact of these political, economic and social forces is one of unrelenting
pressure on sensitive wildlife. Governments and wildlife charities have begun to
react to the challenge in ways that have sought to bring an element of coercive
47
Grard Prunier, The Rwanda crisis, 195994: history of a genocide (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995),
p. 31.
48
Coalition Against Wildlife Trafcking, Illegal wildlife trade, http://www.cawtglobal.org/wildlife-crime/,
accessed 14 April 2010.
49
See World Wildlife Fund, Treading softly on a fragile earth, WWF-UK Annual Review, 2004/2005, p. 13,
http://www.wwf.org.uk/lelibrary/pdf/annualreview0405.pdf, accessed 17 April 2010.
50
Shopping habits of Chinas suddenly wealthy, Financial Times, 21 Aug. 2010.
51
On Eximbank see Chinese bank defends record in Africa, Wall Street Journal, 8 March 2010.
52
See John Garnaut, State or mate? Whos behind China fund, Sydney Morning Herald, 17 March 2010.
53
Paul Eccleston, China allowed to buy ivory from Africa, Daily Telegraph, 15 July 2008.
54
Jeremy Hance, In the midst of poaching crisis illegal rhino horn tops gold, Mongabay.com, 25 Nov. 2009, at
http://news.mongabay.com/2009/1126-hance_rhino_gold.html, 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 35 kilos it gives
a mean gure of around $250,000 per horn.
131
pressure to bear in order to curb the worst excesses of the illegal killing of endan-
gered species. Two case-studies examined below illustrate some of the methods
that have been tested in the eld to date. As will be shown, these initiatives have
met with varying degrees of success. Eforts at coercive conservation are employed
by organizations very much as a last resort and often in appallingly difcult condi-
tionsnone more so than the rst case to be evaluated, that of the attempt to
defend the white rhinos of the Congo.
Case-study 1: soft powerthe protection of the northern white rhino
Garamba National Park is one of ve parks and reserves in the DRC that are
designated World Heritage Sites. The park was founded in 1938 and is located in
the north-eastern corner of the country. It once held signicant populations of
savannah animals including girafes and elephants. Further, it is the last bastion
of the northern white rhino, for some years listed as critically endangered on
the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources
(IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species.
55
Estimates of the numbers of white rhino
in Garamba have hovered precariously from 1986 to 2004 at between 13 and 22.
56
In the late 1980s the WWF combined its eforts with those of other interna-
tional groups to develop and restore the park.
57
According to the study under-
taken by Deborah Avant, the plan was designed as a holistic attempt to integrate
wildlife and human uses of the natural resources Garamba ofers:
the project combined the provision of essential services (health care, water and food
supplies) and education to the local community with eforts to improve anti-poaching
(including reconnaissance ights, airstrips, roads, river crossings, and observation posts).
It provided new vehicles, HF (high frequency) walkie-talkie radios, computers, guard
uniforms, patrol rations, and solar energy equipment in the anticipation that these would
ensure efective patrols, and ofered bonuses (salary support) to staf.
58
Initially, this hands-of approach, working in conjunction with and supporting
the Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature (ICCN), proved successful
and the park was revived by the early 1990s. However, the ICCN struggled in the
face of economic and political collapse following the genocide in Rwanda, along
with the spillover efects of the longstanding civil wars in southern Sudan and in
Uganda. Thousands of refugees, along with guerrilla groups from Sudan, partici-
pated in a sustained poaching campaign orchestrated by the Sudanese Peoples
Liberation Army. Avant records that the park guards in Garamba were no match
55
Rhinos on the rise in Africa but northern white nears extinction, http://www.iucn.org/knowledge/
news/?1146/Rhinos-on-the-rise-in-Africa-but-Northern-white-nears-extinction, accessed 14 March 2010.
56
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. 2026; White rhino numbers halved,
BBC News, 6 Aug. 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3542060.stm, accessed 16 March 2010.
57
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, 2224 May
2003, pp. 56, http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/6/4/4/9/pages64495/
p644951.php, accessed 27 March 2010.
58
Avant, Conserving nature in the state of nature, p. 7.
132
for the numbers of refugees and military capacity of the guerilla ghters. More
elephants and bufalo fell to poachers and the number of armed contacts between
park guards and poachers grew. For several years after 1993 there were numerous
shoot-outs between rangers and poachers, resulting in deaths and injuries among
the parks staf.
59
In 1994 the International Rhino Foundation (IRF) joined forces with the WWF
to help administer Garamba, but two years later the DRC itself collapsed into
full-scale civil war, with troops and guerrillas from all sides invading the park,
forcing the rangers to leave, which in turn resulted in the further slaughter of
wildlife.
60
By 1997 the WWF was faced with a difcult choice. Garamba was now
taking up 60 per cent of its rhino budget: could it aford to carry on, or would the
money be better used elsewhere? The WWF reviewed its options, one being to
employ private security companies to mount armed patrols and train local guards,
which to some seemed like the only way of stopping the poaching. But was it
right for a wildlife charity to initiate an armed approach? Moreover, there was the
issue of impinging on the DRCs sovereignty by assuming a role that was more
properly the function of the central government (even if that government had for
all practical purposes ceased to function). Other questions arose: what might be
the rules of engagement? Would it be right to shoot poachers, some of who were
starving refugees, who used only crude nooses and snares to capture the animals?
61
The tragic choice, as Avant termed the WWFs dilemma, prefaced all the
problems confronting conservation organizations in the years ahead over the
dilemmas and limitations of resorting to force:
While hiring mercenaries was appalling and violated both an intrinsic anti-militarism
many felt and the explicit purpose of a non-governmental organization to act within its
mandate to advocate conservation but not to replace the government, the thought that the
organization would preside over the extinction of a speciesan explicit violation of its
missionwas equally unspeakable.
62
After delaying any decision, in 2000 the WWF handed over full control of the
park to the IRF. Five years later a well-rehearsed plan to transfer ve rhinos to
Kenya was vetoed by Congolese politicians, who used the long-neglected rhino as
a convenient nationalist vote-catcher, a decision that efectively signed the rhinos
death warrants.
63

Around the same time heavily armed poachers appeared on horseback from
over the Sudanese border, slaughtering elephants and using mule-trains to trans-
port the ivory.
64
A further setback occurred on 9 January 2009 when the parks
59
60
A WWF aerial survey in July 1997 recorded the presence of 49 poacher camps, along with 1 rhino, 29
elephants, 24 bufaloes, and 16 hippos listed as killed: WWF, press release, New Congo in great need of help
to save endangered species, 25 July 1997, wysiwyg://18/http://www.panda.org/news/press/news_140.htm,
cited in Avant, Conserving the state of nature in nature, p. 9.
61
See The African bushmeat trade: a recipe for extinction (Cambridge: Ape Alliance, 1998), pp. 1232, 40.
62
63
Marc Lacey, War and politics threaten Congos endangered rhinos, New York Times, 28 March 2005.
64
Garamba park under attack!, press release, International Elephant Foundation, 13 July 2004, http://www.
elephantconservation.org/downloads/news/1/PR_GNP.pdf, accessed 18 April 2010.
133
administrative centre was destroyed after the combined forces of the Ugandan,
DRC and Rwandan armies attacked the Lords Resistance Army militia, which
was camped in the park. Ten people were killed in the ensuing ghting, mostly
rangers and members of their families.
65

Since 2010 Garamba Park has been administered by African Parks, a
Johannesburg-based company that manages parks in publicprivate partnerships
with governments on a long-term basis, by combining world class conservation
practice with business expertise.
66
However, the damage caused by the turmoil of
the preceding years appears already to have been done. A survey in 2008 failed to
locate any trace of the white rhino.
67
According to Martin Brooks of the IUCN
Species Survival Commission African Rhino Specialist Group, Unless [these]
animals are found during the intensive surveys that are planned under the direction
of the African Parks Foundation, the subspecies may be doomed to extinction.
68
Saving species: the challenge to sovereignty
The dilemmas of the soft power option in conditions of war and civil strife of
the kind that faced the WWF in the Congo raises a fundamental question: is
the international community prepared to stand by and allow the massacre of rare
species? Just as the wars in Bosnia and Rwanda compelled commentators to ask
how far collective action could go to intervene in states with the aim of saving
strangers from massacre and genocide,
69
so the idea of saving species requires
similar consideration. A former director-general of the World Society for the
Protection of Animals (WSPA), Major-General Peter Davies, says: Intervention
of any sort is not popular after Iraq and Afghanistan. Realistically I cant see any
country invading on behalf of animals.
70
Robyn Eckersley concurs, but suggests
attitudes are changing.
71
Some commentators, such as Lynton Caldwell, argue
that nothing less than a second Copernican revolution is taking place: The
rst revolution removed the Earth from the centre of the Universe; the second
removes humanity from the centre of the biosphere.
72
If attitudes are changing
about the centrality of humans in the environment, then a discussion naturally
follows about the extent to which traditional notions of state sovereignty can be
transgressed in the name of protecting wildlife.
The sorry history of the northern white rhino in Garamba Park brought to
the fore the issues connected with sovereignty, intervention and the defence of
65
Garamba National Park (DRC) attacked by LRA rebels, World Heritage UNESCO News, 7 Jan. 2009,
http://whc.unesco.org/en/news/479, accessed 17 April 2010.
66
African Parks Network, http://www.african-parks.org/apfoundation/index.php?option=com_content&tas
k=view&id=33&Itemid=71, accessed 28 March 2010.
67
Milliken et al., African and Asian rhinoceroses, p. 3.
68
Quoted in Rhino numbers at record levels but rare white rhino feared extinct, Daily Mail, 17 June 2008.
69
Nicholas J. Wheeler, Saving strangers: humanitarian intervention in international society (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2003).
70
Interview with authors, 5 Jan. 2010.
71
Eckersley, Ecological intervention, pp. 31112.
72
Lynton Caldwell, International environmental policy: from the twentieth to the twenty-rst century (Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 1996), p. 578.
134
wildlife. In the case of Garamba, the prospect of hiring a private security rm split
the WWF: those on the ground were in favour, while those working at a distance,
for example in ofces in Nairobi, were against. The debate also highlighted an
area of tension within the conservation community between the developers and
the protectors. Protectors argued that in the absence of government security
inaction would be disastrous and therefore all potential avenues for action should
be explored. Developers saw the insertion of an armed unit as a decision for
governments and not for any wildlife charity, and felt that assuming a security
role would go beyond the bounds of legitimate action set out in its mandate.
73
The UN Charter enshrines the principle of sovereign equality of all its
members and clearly forbids any state to use or threaten force against the territo-
rial integrity or political independence of any state, except in cases of individual
or collective self-defence against armed attack under UN Charter Articles 2(4)
and 51.
74
Though environmental and conservation issues were not covered in the
original Charter, the General Assembly and the United Nations Environmental
Programme (UNEP) have developed a range of important environmental decla-
rations and treaties over the last four decades. The 1992 Rio Declaration, for
example, announced that peace, development and environmental protection are
interdependent and indivisible,
75
and Eckersley noted that the then British Prime
Minister, John Major, speaking as president of the Security Council, declared
that non-military sources of instability in the economic, social, humanitarian and
ecological elds have become threats to peace and security.
76
Furthermore, out of the original Responsibility to Protect study in 2001 an
embryonic principle was developed which asserted that states have an obligation to
protect their citizens: moreover, in the face of any systematic failure to safeguard
the population in conditions of gross human rights violations the principle of
non-intervention yields to the international responsibility to protect.
77
After a
surge of early enthusiasm, R2P has faded from view in the light of western inter-
ventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, but nonetheless the process of debate and aware-
ness has edged along.
So, would it be inconsistent with UN authorizations for intervention in states
for humanitarian reasons if similar action were sanctioned to save a highly endan-
gered animal? As we have shown in the case of the northern rhino, its extinction
was guaranteed by the vociferous last-minute interference by self-serving Congo-
lese politicians, and thus a prima facie case for international action might have been
established.
While wildlife has been traditionally understood to form part of the natural
resources of a country and therefore to be subject to the sovereignty and self-
determination of the state, as codied in the UN Resolution on Permanent
73
See Avant, Conserving nature in the state of nature, pp. 1620.
74
UN Charter, Chapter 1: Purposes and Principles, 26 June, 1945, article 2(4).
75
UN Environment Programme, Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, http://www.unep.org/
Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=78&ArticleID=1163, accessed 12 April 2010.
76
Quoted in Eckersley, Ecological intervention, p. 299.
77
ICISS, The responsibility to protect (1), B.
135
Sovereignty over Natural Resources in 1962,
78
putative modications to the sover-
eignty principle have been taking place. The 1972 Stockholm Declaration and 1992
Rio Declaration have signied changing attitudes as to what is acceptable environ-
mental behaviour.
79
In theory, the Rio Declaration could permit the Security
Council to authorize military intervention under Chapter VII of the UN Charter,
as Majors speech intimated.
80
Now that international support can be found for certain standards of human
decency, the idea of intervention on behalf of threatened wildlife is potentially
more viable. As Eckersley states, there is a mood to develop new policies and laws
that enable the mutual ourishing of the human and non-human world rather
than the ourishing of humans at the expense of the non-human world.
81
Laws, covenants and international goodwill are one thing, but giving practical
meaning to these positive values ultimately requires enforcement on the ground.
The willingness to acknowledge the status of the non-human world has, as we have
observed, led to increased public acceptance of tough measures to protect wildlife,
whether in the form of support for the activities of groups like Sea Shepherd, or
the readiness of conservation charities to train and equip park rangers in paramili-
tary techniques, even to the extent of contracting private military companies to
oversee such work. These developments have at various times crystallized into
state-directed military intervention to defend wildlife. It is here that we examine
our second brief case-study, relating to the use of hard power to stop the killing
of elephants in Botswana.
Case-study 2: hard powerthe curbing of elephant poaching in
Botswana
The 1980s witnessed a huge rise in professionalized poaching over eastern and
southern Africa. Well-armed criminal gangs took advantage of regional conict
and instability to boost sales of ivory and rhino horn to the Persian Gulf and Far
East. So serious did the problem of elephant hunting become that in Botswana
the countrys armed forces (the Botswana Defence Forces or BDF) were given
an explicit mission to protect the countrys wildlife. The mission stemmed from
78
The declaration grants recognition of the inalienable right of States to dispose of their natural resources
in accordance with their national interests. See Ofcial documents: permanent sovereignty over natural
resourcesresolution adopted by the United Nations General Assembly at its 1194th plenary meeting,
American Journal of International Law 57: 3, July 1963, p. 710.
79
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 http://
www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?documentid=97&articleid=1503, accessed 17 April
2010.
80
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
conict and cooperate in its further development, as necessary. Rio Declaration on Environment and
Development, June 1992, http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?documentid=78&art
icleid=1163, accessed 17 April 2010.
81
Eckersley, Ecological intervention, p. 307.
136
the desire to protect the countrys internal security from the destabilizing efects
of well-organized foreign criminal poaching gangs, as well from a concern to
safeguard the wildlife tourism industry, a substantial revenue earner in a country
where 17 per cent of the territory is designated either as national park land or as
conservation areas.
82
The plan to employ the BDF to counter poaching activities sprang from the
initiative of their deputy commander at the time, now the countrys president,
Sandhurst-educated Major-General Ian Khama, a keen conservationist who had
become exasperated at the inefectiveness of the police and the department of
wildlife in tackling the deepening crisis.
83
The involvement of the armed forces in
conservation eforts was a matter of some controversy: not only did it provide the
BDF with an explicit internal security mandate, but some Botswanan politicians
argued that the anti-poaching move merely pandered to the privileged concerns
of westerners, perpetuating a supposedly colonialist mentality. But Khamas force
of character drove through the policy.
The BDF began its rst anti-poaching operations in northern Botswana in
October 1987, deploying a specialized commando squadron to hunt down the
poaching gangs, some of which numbered as many as thirty. These gangs were
skilled at bushcraft and heavily armed with automatic weapons. According
to the authoritative study by Dan Henk of the Air University in Alabama, the
BDF evolved an efective counter-poaching strategy utilizing small-unit foot
patrols of skilled trackers from Botswanas hunter-gatherer society backed up by
helicopter-borne rapid reaction forces.
84
Within months, Henk wrote, dozens
of poachers had been killed or captured, and the amount of poaching began to fall
of dramatically.
85
The Botswanan anti-poaching efort was characterized by good organization
and well-trained troops. In the mid-1990s the theatre of operations was expanded
towards the countrys southern and western borders, with up to 10 per cent of the
BDF, some 800 troops, being committed to the operation. By 2004 the number
permanently engaged on anti-poaching duties stabilized at around 300400
personnel, and by this stage the operation had developed a successful intelligence
network to track down the gangs, along with efective inter-agency cooperation
involving the police and other elements of the bureaucracy.
86
Henk points out
that the BDFs anti-poaching role was readily accepted by society at large, this
acquiescence arising from a widespread desire for public order that provided the
government with considerable latitude to crack down on poachers with hard
military power.
87
82
Nature Worldwide: National Parks and Nature Reserves World Institute for Conservation and Environment,
The national parks and nature reserves of Botswana, http://www.nationalparks-worldwide.info/botswana.
htm, accessed 21 April 2010.
83
Dan Henk, Biodiversity and the military in Botswana, Armed Forces and Society 32: 2, Jan. 2006, pp. 2789.
See also Lethoglie Lucas, Botswanas new high yer, BBC News, 2 April 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/
africa/7325400.stm, accessed 23 April 2010.
84
Henk, Biodiversity and the military in Botswana, p. 280.
85
86
Henk, Biodiversity and the military in Botswana, pp. 27981.
87
137
This use of the Botswanan armed forces illustrates what can be achieved with
sustained commitment and efective organization. Undoubtedly this has inu-
enced evolving anti-poaching operations elsewhere, as other military and paramil-
itary forces in Africa take the lead in similar operations. In 2009, a year that saw
84 rhinos killed across the country, the South African authorities set up a special
anti-rhino-poaching investigation unit, while the armed forces started patrolling
the porous border between Mozambique and the Kruger National Park tourist
hotspot where numerous rhinos have been slaughtered.
88
In Kenya in 2009 the
poaching of endangered species hit new levels, with twelve black rhinos and
six white rhinos being reported killed. Kenya has 27 national parks managed by
the Kenya Wildlife Service. Its ranger department is now run on paramilitary
lines: rangers are armed, wear uniform, and employ spotter planes and infrared
cameras. Between 1999 and 2007 42 Kenyan rangers were killed in clashes with
poachers until the current director, Julius Kipngetich, ordered a crackdown and
increased ranger recruitment. Its a deadly war. We shoot to kill and last year got
ve poachers, he said.
89
In war, unfortunately, hard power solutions are usually
the only truly efective ones.
No voice, no choice
The discussion presented in this article has been concerned with exploring Clause-
witzs views on war in order to engender a debate about the utility of force in
conservation. The debate highlights how humanity struggles, intellectually and
morally, when trying to articulate a comprehensive relationship with the rest of
the planets ecology. It also illustrates a particular paradox. On the one hand, the
concern for animal conservation springs directly from secular liberal thought,
where the principle of universal human rights is now progressively broadening
into animal rights. Yet, on the other hand, this conservation agenda clashes with
emphatic notions of sovereignty and self-interest in a way that directly confronts
a post-colonial guilt complex that is itself a product of western liberal thinking.
From this paradox a number of controversial, even incendiary, implications
follow. We shall not seek to hide from these contentious issues but deal with
them directly.
The most controversial implication that might be seen as underlying the
conservation agenda is exemplied by the diference between the two case-studies
cited. Botswana is an example of a strong, functioning state. Where an efective
government has control over the means of destruction it can secure the territory
of endangered wildlife and physically defend the animals. This, of course, is the
template that provides physical security for humans as well. Botswana was thus
able to utilize the military instrument to destroy the poaching gangs.
The DRC, by contrast, is a failed state with almost no civil institutions capable
of ofering protection to wildlife. In the absence of workable governmental
88
International Rhino Foundation, New unit to rescue rhinos in South Africa, 7 Oct. 2009, http://www.
rhinos-irf.org/en/art/737/, accessed 23 April 2010.
89
Cassandra Jardine, The very human values that saved the rhino, Daily Telegraph, 15 Jan. 2010.
138
structures, external intervention through the activities of animal charities is the
only way to help protect endangered species. But here is the rub: the DRC is far
more typical of the contemporary African state than is Botswana. In the DRC, as
in much of Africa, the state has turned pathological and the rudiments of govern-
ance are used as a means of exploitation and the enrichment of small elites, with
no vestige of a social contract with the rest of the population.
90
Investigating the possibilities of using force to protect wildlife, then, unavoid-
ably confronts the paradox embodied in bien pensant western social ethics that
asserts an increasing desire to defend animals but recoils from confronting the
failure of post-colonial arrangements in Africa, where much of the species degra-
dation takes place. Moreover, the message potentially communicated by the
heightened interest in conservation is that the welfare and protection of animals
are more important to westerners than the welfare and protection of Africans,
who have been left to sufer and die in their millions as a result of war, famine and
underdevelopment. Many Africans see the white westerners they encounterthe
safari touristsas more obviously interested in, and more concerned about, the
animals than the local human population, which sets up an uneasy, if unspoken,
tension in conservation eforts. It is this tension that accounts for the initial resist-
ance from Botswanan politicians Ian Khama experienced with his plans to tackle
elephant poaching,
91
and it certainly explains the way in which the WWF tore
itself apart over how best to respond to the crisis over the northern white rhino.
So, what is this tension exactly? Let us be blunt. It is the sense that conservation
is the harbinger of a sublimated racism that places a concern for animals above the
lives of black Africans. We can be equally forthright in responding. Five reasons
can be put forward to refute any such charge and, more signicantly, to convey
where the true moral imperative to protect animals resides.
First, the concern for animal conservation and welfare is not conned to what
is happening in Africa. It is a worldwide phenomenon. Conservationists and
animal welfarists, whether they are individuals or organizations, often demon-
strate similar levels of commitment to issues that arise within developed countries.
One needs only to note the campaign against the innate cruelty of killing foxes
for pleasure in debates over foxhunting in the United Kingdom in recent years to
illustrate the point.
Second, as the examples, among others, of Ian Khama in Botswana and Julius
Kipngetich in Kenya demonstrate, the desire and the feeling of obligation to
protect endangered animals are not conned to privileged westerners.
Third, that so much human and animal sufering is caused by state failure should
be a cause for alarm wherever it occurs and signies that conservation and humani-
tarian concerns are, or certainly should be, explicitly linked. If intervention to
protect animals is countenanced then it should be countenanced wherever humans
are endangered as well.
90
See R. J. Rummel, Death by government (New York: Transaction, 1994). We are grateful to one of the
anonymous reviewers for this point.
91
See Henk, Biodiversity and the military in Botswana, pp. 2789. See also Lucas, Botwanas new high yer.
139
Fourth, animals do inhabit a diferent moral category from humans. As a conse-
quence of the advanced development of their consciousness humans are able to
exert a measure of control over their surroundings. If we accept the logic of
Darwinian thinking that humans are not at the centre of some divine plan, then
a responsibility to defend animals clearly arises out of the human capacity for
sympathy for beings, be they human or non-human, weaker and less advantaged
than ourselves (sympathy, according to Charles Darwin, being one of the noblest
virtues with which humans are endowed).
92
Lacking the capacity to understand
the human world, animals cannot, unlike even the most distressed of human souls,
choose to ee a war zone. Even if that choice is only to escape to a squalid refugee
camp, it is still a choice. Animals are, thereby, the ultimate victims, and the moral
imperative to protect becomes paramount, because in war, as in so many other
areas of their engagement with humans, animals have no voice, and therefore they
have no choice.
A fth and nal reason is that the collision of social forces related to animal,
humanitarian and environmental concerns is already having an efect and presaging
further change. It is happening all around us, and we had all better get used to it.
Charles Darwin himself, as ever, was prescient in his observation that the exten-
sion of humanity to the lower animals is a virtue that while honoured and
practised by some few men is likely to spread through instruction and example
to the young until it eventually becomes incorporated in public opinion.
93
The
point is that where some organizations may remain reticent and conicted about
their obligations to intervene to protect animals, others will act to ll the void in
line with evolving public sentiment. These forces are likely to be more robust in
their approach, less tortured by guilt complexes, and less concerned with feelgood
posturing. Here, the example of Sea Shepherds Paul Watson is instructive. Watson
himself was a founder member of the Greenpeace environmental organization,
but was expelled because he was considered a violent extremist. According to the
journalist Richard Grant, during an anti-whaling mission in 2008, lmed by the
Discovery Channel, the dramatic tension comes from watching his amateurish,
incompetent, bickering crew make an incredible, agonising series of blunders. You
watch it on the edge of your seat, shaking your head and clasping it from time to
time, waiting to see what will go wrong next and if it will get someone killed.
Yet, Grant continued:
Ultimately a kind of tragic absurdity shines through the whole enterprise. Greenpeace
went down to Antarctica too. Its volunteers held up their signs and took pictures as whales
were slaughtered all around them. When the Sea Shepherds nally arrived, the whaling
stopped because the Japanese were too busy defending themselves or running away. For
all their bungling, Watson and crew did succeed in saving the lives of some 500 whales.
94
92
Charles Darwin, The descent of man (London: John Murray, 1871), p. 96.
93
Darwin, The descent of man, p. 96.
94
Grant, Paul Watson.
140
Conclusion: Clausewitz and conservation
Wildlife conservation stands at a major crossroads, with a growing number of
species confronting extinction as they face overwhelming economic and social
pressures that lead to habitat loss and the relentless hunting of animals for commer-
cial gain. There is now a realization in conservation circles that drastic measures
are required. One solution is to relocate threatened species either to zoos or to
other parts of the world where they are less threatened.
95
Just as assisted migra-
tion of species has emerged out of heightened necessity, so does the use of force
to protect wildlife, as this study has endeavoured to argue.
But where does this necessity come from? Why should we seek to protect
endangered animals? The environmental law expert Philippe Sands suggests there
are three reasons why we should be concerned to promote conservation: rst,
because the environment is a source of biological resources; second, because it
maintains conditions that support life on earth; and third, because biodiversity
is worth maintaining for non-scientic reasons of ethical and aesthetic value.
96
Western social ethics would seem now to recognize the inherent virtue of these
three imperatives, and consequently conservation eforts are placed higher on an
evolving policy agenda. Though environmental and wildlife conservation did not
greatly concern those drafting the UN Charter, the UN has fostered a range of
treaties, declarations and initiatives over the last four decades, starting with the
establishment of the UN Environment Programme in 1972 and continuing with
CITES and the 1992 Rio Declaration, which recognized that peace, development
and environmental protection are interdependent and indivisible (principle 25).
Although there are plenty of legal instruments and international conventions
in relation to the protection of wildlife, legal enforcement rests with local judicial
structures that are often fragile or non-existent. Armed conicts in many parts of
the world today are often battles over the creation and control of new economic
space. The ghting, be it over trade routes or natural resources, is often illicit
in nature and its participants are rarely constrained by the web of international
laws and norms, meaning that conventional conservation organizations struggle
to confront the dangers to sensitive animal populations with soft power solutions
in areas where state power and corresponding civil institutions are weak.
Clausewitzs warnings about the weakness of legal constraints suggest that
hard power is the only realistic answer to wildlife protection in many parts of the
world. Yet, as we have shown, the notion of ghting to protect wildlife sits on the
horns of a philosophical dilemma. On the one hand, the urge to defend wildlife
through force springs from the liberal tendency, principally in western society, to
conserve the natural environment, and enjoys much popular support. Indeed, as
John Vogler notes, as political discourse increasingly securitizes the environment,
people will be tempted to stretch traditional denitions of security in accordance
95
Conservation news, Oryx, July 2010, p. 323.
96
Philippe Sands, Principles of international environmental law: frameworks, standards and implementation (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1995), p. 369.
141
with the evolution of the cultural and moral values that motivate the public.
97
But
on the other hand, the conservation agenda places heavy demands upon altruism
which ultimately clash with established notions of sovereignty and self-interest.
As this analysis has argued, the destruction of wildlife is not a naturally occur-
ring activity but reects political circumstances arising from a concerted efort
towards resource extraction, which conrms the Clausewitzian maxim that war
is a continuation of politics by other means. For Clausewitz, force was a fact of
life, which he had observed at rst hand, while wars purpose was to achieve an
outcome that met political objectives. Clausewitz pregured network war with
his idea of the people in arms, noting the emerging phenomenon of non-state
guerrilla ghters taking up arms for their own cause. While he did not live long
enough to explore the implications of his insight for state sovereignty, Clausewitz
had realized that it was not only the state that could efectively employ force.
Rupert Smith has perhaps come closest to completing the Clausewitzian chain of
reasoning implicit in the idea of people in arms, when observing not only that
the modern battleeld has shifted to war amongst the people, but also that the
purposes of war have changed from clear objectives of interstate war to objectives
that relate directly to the interests of individuals or groups within the state, or
indeed, in the case of animal defence organizations, beyond the state.
98
In other
words, the increasing militarization of wildlife protection by non-state organiza-
tions like animal charities and the self-generating resistance of groups like Sea
Shepherd that take it upon themselves to physically defend animal populations are
classic manifestations of Clausewitzian imperatives.
Fundamentally, the exercise of force in the context of wildlife protection can
be readily understood within the parameters of Clausewitzian thought. At the
end of the rst chapter of On war, Clausewitz introduced the wondrous trinity,
which explains the essence of force. This trinity, like the Christian trinity, is really
three autonomous elements united in one, arising out of the constant interplay of
popular passions, chance and reason. From the perspective of conserving wildlife
the trinity can be seen to relate to the motivations of both the resource extractors
and the resource protectors (passion); to the contingent intervention by either
side that produces clashes between extractors and protectors (chance); and to the
objectives of the controlling end-user of the exploited resource, or the myriad
conservation groups, states and charities that seek to counter those actors intent
on wildlife and environmental degradation (reason).
Therefore the thinking of Carl von Clausewitz, as we have argued throughout
this study, provides an efective framework in which to view current trends in
wildlife protection. Furthermore, Clausewitzs aphorism about war and politics
can also provide guidance about the best strategy to adopt towards wildlife conser-
vation. In book six of On war, he weighs up the theoretical advantages and disad-
vantages of defence versus attack, concluding that defence is the easier form of war,
but with the weaker motive, conducted in order to preserve the agents of force.
97
John Vogler, The global commons: environmental and technological governance (New York: Wiley, 2000), p. 366.
98
Smith, The utility of force, p. 17.
142
Ultimately, defence will not achieve the positive aim of victory, which guarantees
the attainment of the political ends sought; for this, attack is usually necessary:
A war in which victories were used only defensively without the intention of
counter-attacking would be as absurd as a battle in which the principle of absolute
defencepassivity, that iswere to dictate every action.
99
Despite the reserva-
tions of some analysts, and the seeming incongruity of summoning a philosopher
of war in the name of threatened species, Clausewitzs thinking about war and
politics is both practically and morally relevant to the conservation of wildlife.
99

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