Civil War: The History of the Concept

Civil war has the reputation of being the most destructive and aggressive of all types of human conflict. Nowadays, the risk of civil wars is talked about from every corner, just look at the headlines of American periodicals alone: «The Risk of a New American Civil War» (The New Yorker), «Opinion: Is the US on the brink of another civil war?» (CNN), «More than 40% of Americans think civil war likely within a decade» (The Guardian). The recently released film "Civil War" ("The Fall of the Empire") has become one of the most discussed films in the English-speaking segment of the Internet. A similar situation is characteristic of Brexit-era Britain - in 2019, a film starring Benedict Cumberbatch with the telling title "Brexit: The Uncivil War" was released. During the crises of the early 2020s, European news tabloids were filled with warnings about a possible conflict between left and right radicals: «The new European civil war» (Social Europe), «The Threat of Civil War in Europe» (The American Conservative), «The coming civil war on Europe’s Right» (UnHerd).

The main reason why civil war is eternally a rhetorical "scarecrow" lies in the insufficient understanding of the term itself. As many researchers have noted, there is no great work "On Civil War" that could stand alongside the canonical "On War" by Carl von Clausewitz or "On Revolution" by Hannah Arendt. Until now, civil war has not been given separate consideration, which has led to the term being used without much caution, acquiring vague and slippery features.

As the representative of the "violence studies" direction Stathis Kalyvas rightly wrote about the ontological confusion of the term:

"The process of classifying civil wars often resembles the unfolding of a matryoshka doll: one layer of interpretation pulls along another, reminiscent of an endless and unsolvable search for the 'true' nature, supposedly hidden deeper."

Often due to such confusion, even the most eminent researchers of state collapses prefer to push the phenomenon of civil war to the background. For example, the leading classic in this field, Theda Skocpol, although she distinguished between revolutions and civil wars, did not explain their essential difference or interconnection. The situation was not eased by Skocpol's main follower, Jack Goldstone, who decided to divide internal wars into several types. What happened in Russia in 1917–1922, according to him, would be more appropriately called a "revolutionary civil war," as it not only occurred after the revolution but also mobilized all those who enjoyed privileges under the Old Regime, and even those who simply did not want any changes. If the agents of the October Revolution did not have a "dream of realizing a new concept of social justice," the conflict that flared up could simply be called a "civil war." Later, Goldstone himself acknowledged the conditional nature of this division, doubting the correctness of even using the term "revolution," preferring to replace it with the phrase "social breakdown."

The conditional nature of the definition of civil war was also noted by the aforementioned Kalyvas:

"A more accurate term would be 'internal war'" – he wrote – however, the term 'civil war' is still more familiar and commonly used. It is an 'armed confrontation' (this concept implies some organization of each of the camps and a certain violence of actions), undermining the authority of the current government, which can serve various purposes, but some of them are quite definitely political.".

The problem with this definition lies in its excessive generalization. Kalyvas calmly analyzes the events of the Peloponnesian War, the feudal war in Japan, the German occupation of Soviet territories during World War II, the Vietnam and Iraq campaigns of the United States as equivalent episodes of civil wars, although the difference between the extreme events is almost two and a half thousand years.

Of course, the enumeration of authors can go on endlessly. Some analyze civil war from the perspective of a philosophical-political paradigm, while others do not bother to disclose terms at all. What is important in this path is one thing – the problem of civil war has deep historical roots that need to be taken into account.

For the first time, the term "bellum civile" (from which "Civil war," "Bürgerkrieg," and "гражданская война") is encountered in Cicero's enthusiastic speech in favor of Pompey the Great in 66 BC. For the Romans, the phrase "bellum civile" was contradictory and somewhat taboo. For any Quirite, it was obvious that bellum (i.e., "war," in the manner of the Greek "polemos") could only be waged against people outside the civic community. This feature is well seen in the names of Roman campaigns: "Punic War" (i.e., war directed against the Punics), "Gallic War" (war against the Gauls), "Slave War" (war against Spartacus), etc. "Bellum civile" (war of citizens) for contemporaries is a clear oxymoron. Internal wars, previously considered a misunderstanding (between Sulla and Marius, between Caesar and Pompey, between Octavian and Antony), with the beginning of our era become constant companions of Roman history. Thanks to Tacitus, Horace, Sallust, Appian, and many other intellectuals of Antiquity, a strong narrative is created about a cursed empire mired in constant internal war. This narrative, thanks to the efforts of Blessed Augustine, contributes to the development of a later understanding of civil war in early modern Europe.

After the revival of classical education during the early Renaissance, Italian scholars and students began to study poetry and rhetoric through classical Latin texts by Caesar, Sallust, Tacitus, and Cicero. Gradually, these works began to penetrate Europe and have an incredible impact on contemporaries. For example, Lucius Florus's "Epitomes of Roman History," containing plots from the civil wars of Marius, Caesar, and Pompey, became the main textbook on history at Oxford.

With the beginning of the 16th century, the phenomenon of civil war was again perceived through the prism of forgotten ancient tradition. Clashes between Spanish conquistadors in the New World were increasingly called "tragic civil wars" by contemporaries. Often religious wars were also called civil wars. One of the greatest English historians and writers, Samuel Daniel, in 1595 wrote the greatest historical epic "The Civil Wars Between the Houses of Lancaster and York." Following him, inspired by parallels with Rome, William Shakespeare began writing a historical chronicle about Henry IV. In 1637, the work of the Italian Francesco Biondi, dedicated to the history of the civil war of the Red and White Rose in England, became popular.

Gradually, by the middle of the 17th century, discussions about the essence of civil war moved from the realm of poetry and history into the realm of emerging political theory. According to the founder of political science, Thomas Hobbes, civil wars are unleashed precisely when there is a division of sovereignty, when a new one is born within one political body. Since Leviathan (i.e., the state) is a mortal god, any rebellion or internal war is akin to suicide or a deadly disease for it. Hobbes, directly stating his aversion to any uprisings against supreme power, made the prevention of political turmoil the main goal of civil philosophy.

A different point of view was held by the equally great theorist of the 17th century, John Locke. Although he agreed that civil war leads to the disappearance of the state, the collapse of civil society, and the exit from civilization, he still recognized the legitimate right of the people to resist. In cases where legislators attempt to take away or destroy the people's property or subject them to the slavery of despotic power, they put themselves in a state of war with the people, who are thereby freed from any obligation to obey.

By the mid-18th century, the musings of representatives of the English Enlightenment on the essence of civil wars found their response in the field of emerging international law theory. The most authoritative jurist of his era, Emer de Vattel, unlike Hobbes or Locke, paid no attention to the chaos accompanying civil war. Vattel was interested in a much more curious thing: the situation in which Leviathan grows a second head leads not only to the destruction of a single state but also to the creation of entirely new political bodies. From this, it followed that new representations formed on the fragments of a destroyed state acquired sovereignty based on the presence of their own government, laws, army, and independence. Thus, any internal war where the people are freed from their old obligations turns into an "international" one. Adhering to the right to national self-determination, other sovereign states are fully entitled to enter the flared-up conflict as if it were a war between two equal states. It seems unsurprising why Vattel's work "The Law of Nations" played the role of a real "desk Bible" for the Founding Fathers. The principle of national sovereignty would be laid in the foundation of the US Declaration of Independence.

At the end of the 18th century, there was a sharp turn in all political thought. The source of reflection was once again a revolution, this time the French one. After active reflection on the events of 1789, the concepts of "revolution" and "civil war" found themselves in fierce opposition. For some, this may seem counterintuitive, but the term "revolution" is significantly younger than its terrible "brother."

Although revolution as a political phenomenon began to be written about in the 17th century, the term existed in several linguistic traditions. On the one hand, ancient roots were evident: the Latin term "revolution," formed from the verb "revolve," meaning an action implying a return or transformation to a previous state. On the other hand, under the influence of Italian thinkers and events in 17th-century England, the term acquired political meanings – revolution began to take on the character of a spontaneous and uncontrollable phenomenon leading to regime change.

The linguistic dualism of revolution is well expressed in the words of a character from Hobbes's "Behemoth" about the events of 1649–1660:

"I saw this revolution as the circular movement of Sovereign Power through two usurpers Father and Son [Oliver and Richard Cromwell], from the late King to his Son [Charles I and Charles II]."

Later, the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688 became part of the overall revolutionary context of the 17th century and acquired the features of the final stage of a process that restored the "old order" of things.

However, the distinctive feature of the French Revolution was its distinctly progressive and utopian character, expressed literally in all spheres: in education, morality, law, politics, and religion. Eric Hobsbawm called the French Revolution a turning point in all European history. It was then, in his opinion, that the "Age of Revolutions" began, which was to unfold a liberating expansion throughout the world. The revolution, from an uncontrollable phenomenon, became a source of sovereign power, in whose name any political violence in defense of the new regime could be proclaimed.

Of course, there were those who continued to uphold the old principles of the cyclicality of revolution. The founder of conservatism, Edmund Burke, used the comparison of the situation in France with the period of the "Glorious Revolution." According to him, the main difference in the English experience lies in the principles of "preservation and correction," where the general structure of the state is not destroyed but only restored in favor of lost rights and freedoms. In turn, the true essence of what is happening in France, Burke continued, is a civil war, where the face of the French nation is represented by royalists. Although these musings ultimately create a conservative point of support, where the dominant principle was the "conservative revolution," the progressive view still turned out to be dominant in Europe.

The concept of revolution gradually began to be opposed to the concept of civil war. The most famous victim of the "rebranding" was the Anglo-American conflict of 1775–1783. At the time of the events themselves, the term "civil war" was freely used by journalists, congressmen, representatives of the British government, and parliament. In the midst of the conflict, a historical novel by writer Samuel Jackson Pratt "Emma Corbett or the Miseries of Civil War" was even published. As already mentioned above, there were grounds for such a designation because there was a split among the colonists into "patriots" and "loyalists." On the side of the British crown, in addition to slaves and the indigenous American peoples of the Mohawk and Cherokee, there were about half a million white people out of a total of 2.2 million colonists. About 19 thousand of them became volunteers in the British army. After the end of the war, about 60 thousand "loyalists" emigrated from the USA, mainly to British Canada. However, after the French Revolution, Americans increasingly began to use the term "American Revolution" to emphasize the progressive nature of the War of Independence.

In general, the influence of the French Revolution was so enormous that it fundamentally changed the established semantics of words. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, a huge number of intellectuals were engaged in spreading revolutionary ideals that opposed the old reactionary monarchical system. Civil war finally fell out of political and legal connotation and became associated with the terrible "paralysis" of civil society. For example, during the American War of 1861–1865, neither side of the conflict wanted to acknowledge the outbreak of civil war: while the Northerners positioned the conflict as the suppression of an unconstitutional rebellion, the Southerners proclaimed the beginning of an international war between independent American states – "War Between The States."

In Russia, after the February Revolution, at the April All-Russian Conference of the RSDLP(b), the Bolsheviks were forced to take into account the growing fear of the population of civil war, so they adjusted their public position and temporarily removed the slogan of turning the imperialist war into a civil war.

Throughout the 20th century, the term "civil war," like the term "genocide," stirred the minds of the international community but nevertheless remained quite vague in its definition. The intention to limit internal conflicts was reflected in the protocols of the Geneva Conference of 1949. However, after the start of the "Cold War" and the unleashing of dozens of proxy wars around the world, more clarifications were needed. In 1975, the Wiesbaden Protocol was drawn up, which served as the basis for the Additional Protocols of 1977. But even in this case, everything hinged on the international community's determination of whether a particular conflict was of a non-international character or not.

The crisis in this area is illustrated by numerous disputes around the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). One of the accused by the ICTY was Bosnian Serb Dusko Tadic, who claimed that the tribunal had no right to judge his actions since the statute establishing the tribunal applies only to international armed conflicts. In response, the Appeals Chamber ruled that Article 39 of the UN Charter ("Threat to Peace") could also apply to internal conflicts, as was the case during the Congolese crisis of the 1960s or during the civil wars in Liberia and Somalia in the 1990s.

Things are not so simple with the war in Syria, which began in 2011. As David Armitage rightly pointed out, not everyone agrees to call this conflict a "civil war." The Assad regime saw it as an attempt at an unconstitutional uprising, the opposition perceived themselves as participants in a "revolution," and world powers, primarily the USA and Russia, fiercely debated the status of the conflict in the context of the right to intervention. Some researchers suggested calling this conflict a "regional war," as within a few months of the uprising, almost all regional forces intervened: Iran, Hezbollah, Turkey, Jordan, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.

Thus, the study of internal conflicts is a relevant task for a very understandable reason – most modern conflicts can be classified as "internal." However, among researchers, there is still no consensus regarding the measurement and definition of civil war. Even conventional agreements do not always allow for a clear determination of the form of the conflict that has erupted. It is not uncommon for the participants in internal wars themselves to avoid classification, preferring to use general terms such as "turmoil," "anarchy," "revolutionary war," etc. Without reconstructing the meaning and usage of words, it is impossible to formulate a general concept and ontology of the term, which we unfortunately still observe today.