"We can no longer apply the classic criteria to clearly determine whether and when we should use military force. We are waging war in Afghanistan, for example, but it's an asymmetrical war where the enemies are criminals instead of soldiers"
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Schily is doing something quietly radical here: he’s trying to rename war without sounding like he’s renaming war. By declaring the “classic criteria” obsolete, he signals that the old post-1945 toolkit - clear battlefields, uniformed armies, formal declarations, front lines - can’t keep up with Afghanistan’s messy reality. That move isn’t just descriptive; it’s strategic. If the categories no longer fit, then the constraints tied to them (legal thresholds, parliamentary oversight, public expectations of victory) start to look optional.
The loaded pivot is “enemies are criminals instead of soldiers.” It smuggles in a double reframe. Criminals are chased, investigated, detained, prosecuted; soldiers are fought under the laws of armed conflict. Calling the opponent “criminal” hints at policing logic - targeted raids, intelligence networks, preventive detention - while still justifying military tools. The subtext is permission: permission to blur the line between domestic security and foreign intervention, permission to accept indefinite timelines, permission to treat an entire theater as a security problem rather than a geopolitical contest you can end with a treaty.
Context matters: early 2000s Europe was trying to reconcile counterterrorism with rule-of-law identity. Afghanistan forced governments to sell participation to skeptical publics while avoiding the language of imperial war. Schily’s formulation threads that needle, but it also reveals the trap: once you define war as crime-control at scale, you normalize exceptional powers without the moral clarity - or the ending - that classic war frameworks at least promised.
The loaded pivot is “enemies are criminals instead of soldiers.” It smuggles in a double reframe. Criminals are chased, investigated, detained, prosecuted; soldiers are fought under the laws of armed conflict. Calling the opponent “criminal” hints at policing logic - targeted raids, intelligence networks, preventive detention - while still justifying military tools. The subtext is permission: permission to blur the line between domestic security and foreign intervention, permission to accept indefinite timelines, permission to treat an entire theater as a security problem rather than a geopolitical contest you can end with a treaty.
Context matters: early 2000s Europe was trying to reconcile counterterrorism with rule-of-law identity. Afghanistan forced governments to sell participation to skeptical publics while avoiding the language of imperial war. Schily’s formulation threads that needle, but it also reveals the trap: once you define war as crime-control at scale, you normalize exceptional powers without the moral clarity - or the ending - that classic war frameworks at least promised.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
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