‘The term escalation dominance is being rediscovered. And the realization is: we don’t have it. How can we get that again?’ It could be a question Western countries are asking themselves today, with European politicians and citizens anxiously awaiting what President Putin will do next with the gas tap – or what all those Russian threats with nuclear weapons mean.
But it is Commodore Frans Osinga who says it during a working group in the profession coercive diplomacy and deterrence which is given at the Dutch Defense Academy (NLDA) in Breda. Ten years ago, the first master’s degree in war studies was established here, an area where the Netherlands had long been a barren wasteland. Today the UN mission Unprofor is being discussed in Bosnia, a mission that culminated in the Serbian conquest of the ‘safe haven’ Srebrenica on lightly armed Dutch blue helmets.
One of the students is an Unprofor veteran himself. When Osinga explains what was wrong with the UN command line, he can fill in, drawing on personal experience. “Some national lines of command, like the Dutch, were more reserved about self-defense than others, like the French.”
After class, another student, Melanie Waitz, shares her enthusiasm for this subject. ‘This is really about understanding the mind of your enemy, or adversary.’
‘But it is also about the willingness to delve into it’, answers another student, Hente de Ruijter. ‘You can study that at university, but the question is precisely within such a military organization: are you prepared to delve into it? I think it is important to take this approach in an interdisciplinary way – from the perspective of international relations, the military side, the social side.’ But, she adds with a laugh, ‘we might be ten or twenty years later.’
‘The knowledge was limited’
Safety studies come from afar, in the Netherlands, says professor Osinga. Very far. ‘I also noticed when we came to the Royal Military Academy, in May 1982, that the attention for military operations and military strategy was low. Knowledge was limited, even at the military academy. The study of war and warfare was hardly invested.’
They are on the rise, says Osinga, but the real ones war studies remain controversial in some academic circles. ‘Even during my inaugural lecture at Leiden University in 2019, I heard that afterward some critical remarks had been made by professors from other departments. Like: is it really a choice that Leiden University is involved in warfare? So there are still parts of the academic world that think that studying warfare actually legitimizes war.’
During that inaugural lecture in 2019, Osinga said, among other things: ‘We are mainly concerned with peace operations, but unfortunately the risk of a major war must also be taken seriously again. (…) Action is needed in Europe to restore credibility to conventional and nuclear deterrence. Especially now that the old order is fading, but it is not yet clear what will take its place.’
‘So the development here’, concludes Osinga, ‘doesn’t match that in the UK and America.’ The study of the subject at established institutions such as King’s College London (since the mid-19th century) has long been established there. The United States has, in addition to its war colleges, famous places to study international diplomacy as well as war and strategy, the oldest of which – The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy near Boston – was founded the year Hitler came to power in Germany. : 1933.
Osinga: ‘If you look at academic development in the Netherlands, it was housed for a long time under the polemology department, which you could study in Leiden, Utrecht and Groningen. This was mainly about conflict prevention. Escalation, nuclear warfare and how to prevent all of that. In Amsterdam you had military history, but that was very traditional.’ But says Osinga, strategic studies, ‘hard security, war studies, as they developed in the Anglo-Saxon world in the 1970s and 1980s, are not to be found in the Netherlands. This also has to do with our strategic culture. You see the same in Germany and the Scandinavian countries. We actually think that war is a thing of the past and we should not concern ourselves too much with that.’
However, interest has grown here too, especially over the past decade. What also appeals to the students in Breda about the study is who is in the class. Waitz: ‘We have a division in class between civilian students like us and officers. They come with their experiences, we with the knowledge from our previous training.’ As a result, the students say, the discussions during lunch break are often just as interesting as those during class.
A mix of military and civilian students
General Paul Ducheine, who, like Commodore Osinga, is a professor at both the NLDA and a university (in his case the University of Amsterdam, where he teaches ‘armed forces and constitutional law’ and digital warfare), says the desire to combine military experience with ‘fresh theoretical knowledge’ of the universities is one of the reasons for admitting civilian (top) students to the academy. ‘That could be psychology, geography, anything. This is how we create the mix between military practitioners and young civilian students with a good resume and relevant experience. One third to half are civilian students. You come to get something and bring something when you study this – even if it’s just counteracting.’
Osinga, together with Ducheine and the then director of education and professor Myriame Bollen, was the driving force behind the plan ten years ago to establish a serious master’s program in strategic studies for the first time in the Netherlands, ‘a cross between strategic studies and war studies’, following the example. from King’s College. The training was accredited in 2013. A few years earlier, in 2010, the NLDA had begun a military science bachelor’s degree for aspiring officers.
Things are not going so smoothly at the universities with the hard security studies. They do offer international relations and conflict management – but knowledge of wars and warfare is lacking in many places, as has been evident since Russia began its massive invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
They are furthest in development in Leiden, says Osinga. ‘I am now developing two courses there in the field of war studies. And that is a reflection of the increased interest: suddenly you see that students are interested in this. Paul and I bridge the gap between military practice and academic debates. I also hear that in Leiden, where students say: you open a box that always stays closed. Precisely about those military-strategic dynamics.’
‘A childhood dream’
Students Waitz, who previously studied Scandinavia at the UvA, and De Ruijter, who studied cultural anthropology and conflict management, appear to be attracted to the study of war for various reasons. De Ruijter: ‘I first did the social side. But I think if you want to look at conflict in a sustainable way – or how we prevent it – you have to be able to understand the diplomatic as well as the humanitarian and the military actor. And in this way you get a kind of glimpse behind the scenes, also of how the organization works here.’
Waitz wants to get into the military profession. “It sounds a little crazy, but it’s a childhood dream. And the security situation has been changing for some time, just look at the war in Georgia in 2008. I think it is very important to strengthen our defense apparatus. I see it as a kind of immune system of our society.’
De Ruijter wants to apply her knowledge ‘in the humanitarian world, or in research’. So it’s going to be the NGO world? ‘Yes, and then who knows after a few years back to defense, because I find the organization very fascinating.’ According to her, it was not so much the war in Georgia that prompted the increased interest in security studies. “I know plenty of people who say, huh, was there a war in Georgia? But at the end of my high school you did have the Arab Spring, that migratory flow in 2015, the attacks in Europe. As a result, the instability from outside Europe came closer.’
What comes as no surprise to both students is the high number of women interested in security studies. Waitz: ‘I went to the KMA a number of times on an open day, and the distribution was very equal, in terms of men and women.’ De Ruijter also saw ‘many women’ in Leiden who went in that direction, ‘although it is mainly the social and political side of it’. The time when war and peace was a man’s business are long gone – witness not only the many female European defense ministers, but also the numerous female experts who now interpret the war in Europe.
“Peace has always really been a relatively short period between wars,” Waitz says. ‘We are fortunately now in a very long period of peace, but if you look at the last century alone…’