Total War or Not? State-Building in the United States, Mexico, and Egypt

By Yuchen Ge

Abstract

Total war is a government-led practice aiming at maximizing the accumulation of political resources within national borders and has been adopted by several countries as their primary strategy for building modern nation-states. It is contended within political science academia that total war played a central role in the formation of the modern United States but only played a minor role in Egypt and Mexico. While it seems that total war would apply solely to physical conflicts, this paper builds on the understanding that the concept also applies to nonviolent state-building policies in Mexico and Egypt. In contrast to the violent state-building employed during the American Civil War, Mexico’s political elites used total war to integrate the country’s fragmented territory in a militant manner by resorting to the use of agricultural censuses. Similarly, in Egypt, state leaders used total war to totalize all societal actors through the resolute reforms of national education and the redefinition of peasantry. Although state builders in these three cases employed fairly different initiatives according to each country’s course of development, their techniques can generally be categorized into the same group, that is, the strengthening of the state’s control over societal actors.

Introduction

Among different countries, the methods for forming modern nation-states vary significantly according to their historical experience and sociopolitical environments. Nevertheless, it is worth noticing that several countries have adopted total war as their primary strategy of state-building. A government-led practice, total war aims at the full concentration and mobilization of political power within national borders. Some political scientists have contended that total war held a dominant position in the state-building model of the United States but failed to found modern state institutions in Mexico and Egypt. This argument stands up when war is strictly limited to actual combat between armed forces since, among the three cases, only the United States managed to restructure itself into a modern nation-state through an all-out and devastating civil war. However, the total war approach can also apply to the cases of Mexico and Egypt, on condition that the meaning of war is not restricted to physical conflicts but extends to the competition for critical political resources between various domestic forces. Even though Mexico and Egypt used nonviolent methods to achieve their state-building objectives, their techniques can still be classified as total war—namely, the reinforcement of the state’s control over society.

Definition of Total War

Total war, a nationwide campaign for the accumulation of political power, has received extensive attention from policymakers around the world because of its close association with many of the state’s intrinsic features, particularly the divergence between its integrated appearance and heterogeneous nature. In State-in-society, American political scientist Joel Migdal equates the state with “a field of power marked by the use and threat of violence” within which the image of a well-organized, uniform people and the multiplicity of actual practices by its components coexist (Migdal, 2001, p. 15–16). Such a situation occurs in a variety of countries and emanates from their bureaucratic institutions’ lack of decision-making authority. This is a result of societal actors, theoretically part of the “people” that live under the bureaucrats’ jurisdiction, wielding excessive amounts of political power relative to the state. As a country develops, societal actors, who often survive under the cover of influential organizations such as tribal and ethnolinguistic communities, can even challenge the states’ domestic sovereignty by creating rules “against the wishes and goals of state leaders” (Migdal, 2001, p. 64). Given the manifest inconsistency between the state’s image and reality, power holders in the national government have the incentive to acquire people’s devotion to them by strengthening their grip on society. As the contradiction between defiant societal actors and power-hungry state leaders escalates and complicates, developing countries are destined to witness a fierce struggle over “who has the right and ability to make the countless rules” regarding the populace’s social activities and codes of conduct (Migdal, 2001, p. 64). To fully overwhelm their rivals in this power struggle, state leaders need to embark on a systemic movement that goes beyond the mere formation of “state agencies that can apply fearsome sanctions” upon societal actors and the organizations to which they are affiliated (Migdal, 2001, p. 65). The key for the state to prevail over disobedient domestic forces, according to Migdal, is to “wean the population from such organizations and their rules” through measures as forcible as warlike behavior so that the people can only rely on state institutions for the provision of necessary goods and services (Migdal, 2001, p. 65).

Despite its overtly militant name, total war does not necessarily involve using armed forces since the state can carry it out by a variety of policy means. Apart from physical warfare in which coercive organizations like the army and the police participate, numerous capitals assist the state with the concentration of political power at home. These range from concrete entities, such as economic institutions, to abstract matters, as exemplified by informational and symbolic resources (Bourdieu, 2018, p. 57). Among them, “a symbolic capital of recognition” stands out for its promotion of political legitimacy within the populace and complementarity with the accumulation of coercive and financial assets, both important elements for establishing domestic sovereignty (Bourdieu, 2018, p. 60). Importantly, the collection of informational capital, especially facts and statistics crucial to effective social governance, facilitates state leaders’ assemblage of economic resources. This occurs through the “unification of the cultural market,” a nationwide process that entails totalization practices such as census, cartography, and codification (Bourdieu, 2018, p. 61). With all these capitals in hand, the state can set about making society “in its totality” by bringing rebellious societal actors into its control and establishing political homogeneity at home under modernistic, noble banners such as civic duty, the nation’s collective destiny, and the country’s sacred mission (Bourdieu, 2018, p. 61). This state-building approach, even in the absence of actual armed conflicts, can be generally referred to as “total war” for its outright treatment of all domestic forces as a congruent entity under the command of the sole national government. The Argentine military junta’s massive abuse of political prisoners during the Dirty War exemplifies such an integrationist technique. Under the military dictatorship, maltreatment against abducted dissidents at the hands of state-sponsored “working groups” was rendered “the cultural meaning of the totalization of society by the State” (Gregory & Timerman, 1986, p. 63) as it directly aimed at the creation of a “new Argentina” (Gregory & Timerman, 1986, p. 69) in which the “disappeared ones” had no place to exist. In that case, power holders of the Argentine military junta waged a total war against unruly domestic forces by attempting to forge a totalizing state “through the cannibalization of society” (Gregory & Timerman, 1986, p. 65).

Total War in the United States

The total war approach is germane to the state-building frameworks of many countries during their modernization processes. The American Civil War, a highly destructive conflict between the Northern Union and the Southern Confederacy, was the quintessence of total war as it laid the foundations for the modern American state. Following the conclusion of the War of 1812, the United States embraced the Jeffersonian ideal of a night-watchman state, that is, a government that defends the domestic population with the minimum input by demobilizing “a good deal of the national military” (Pollack, 2009, p. 209). Nevertheless, the unilateral secession of Southern states in early 1861 that triggered the outbreak of the four-year Civil War completely altered Washington’s calculations. Within the first year of the war, the U.S. Army’s manpower skyrocketed from 16,000 to more than 700,000 (Pollack, 2009, p. 212). When the internal strife finally came to an end with the Confederacy’s defeat in 1865, about 2.1 million men battled for the Union and roughly 600,000 to 750,000 for the Confederacy (Pollack, 2009, p. 212). While this considerable wartime military expansion helped the American state preserve its territorial integrity, it also necessitated the enlargement of Washington’s civilian bureaucracy to oversee the budgets. From 1861 to 1865, the number of civil servants who worked for the national government in the capital city almost tripled, and the entire federal bureaucracy expanded to nearly 50,000 personnel (Pollack, 2009, p. 213). This leviathan, which consisted of a large number of government officials and the world’s “largest and best equipped standing army,” enjoyed an unprecedented high level of political authority over its citizens (Pollack, 2009, p. 211). By reviving the largely disarmed American state, the military buildup during the Civil War produced significant transformations in Washington’s policy making, leading to the emergence of “a powerful nation-state” in North America (Pollack, 2009, p. 211).

The political legacy of the American Civil War has been ingrained in Washington’s domestic governance, as evidenced by the state’s ever-increasing control over societal actors. During wartime, Washington extended its reach to crucial fields of American society and overshadowed the influence of local power holders through various policy measures. For instance, the Republican administration increased the state’s leverage on fiscal affairs by adopting “a more aggressive system of revenue extraction” (Pollack, 2009, p. 214) that involved a national income tax, leaving the country’s wealthiest groups virtually no choice but to “acquiesce in the Union government’s demands for revenue” (Pollack, 2009, p. 223) amid the total war. Despite its severe repercussions on economic production and solidarity among compatriots, the Civil War was highly conducive to America’s state-building since it opened the door to the continuous expansion of government power. Under the revenue imperative, Washington exerted greater influence on the national economy and maintained its fiscal expenditures at high levels even with the “retrenchment of the military force and tax system” (Pollack, 2009, p. 233). During this crisis period, when the wholeness of the Union was at stake, the American state became “simply larger and more activist” through the total war against rebellious domestic forces, namely secessionists in Southern states (Pollack, 2009, p. 234). Considering the numerous long-term benefits that the state obtains by partaking in warfare, it stands to reason that total war, to some extent, is central to “the health of the state” (Lutz, 2002, p. 724).

Total War in Mexico

The total war approach likewise contributed to the formation of the modern Mexican state. However, unlike in the United States, physical warfare failed to play a significant role in Mexico’s state-building because of the country’s frequent political turmoil and constant weakness after its independence in 1821. Throughout the 19th century, pro-European political elites in Latin America who “could boast of many symbols of modernity and of diverse successes” derived from the Enlightenment often cherished lofty aspirations for national institutional development (Centeno & Ferraro, 2013, p. 5). Unfortunately, these noble ideals were overly precocious because of their incompatibility with the harsh realities encountered by most Latin American countries. Public institutions in these states generally remained powerless under numerous thorny trials, including financial incapacity, domestic insurgencies, and rampant banditry (Centeno & Ferraro, 2013, p. 5). The weakness of such Latin American states was characterized by the persistence of brown areas, that is, outlying regions “subject to systems of local power” instead of the power of the national government within their territories (Centeno & Ferraro, 2013, p. 6). In Mexico, the state’s inability to effectively control the entirety of its territory, especially the far north, became a serious obstacle to institution-building. This disadvantage resulted in disastrous outcomes for state building when the whole far north, an area equivalent to “more than half of Mexico’s territory,” was lost to the United States in the mid-19th century (Safford, 2013, p. 41). The Mexican state’s failure to curb sustained political turbulence at home and the resulting “discontinuity in governance” constituted another liability that prevented its leaders from employing physical wars for state-building purposes (Safford, 2013, p. 45).

Notwithstanding their lack of military victory against defiant domestic forces, Mexican policymakers still utilized the total war approach for the establishment of modern state institutions. In the Mexican version of total war, nationwide censuses were pivotal in forming a centralized, powerful state under the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Following the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in 1910, political elites considered the redistribution of farmland among the rural population a feasible solution to the Gordian knot of territorial fragmentation. Throughout the process of land endowment, the agricultural census, an official survey of demographic data, became a ritualized strategy for the expansion of state influence over self-governing societal actors by creating “a new category of rights-bearing individuals with the lifelong right to receive land from the state,” namely the so-called “agrarian-rights subject” (sujeta de derecha agraria) (Baitenmann, 2005, p. 177). The post-revolutionary Mexican state’s systematic gathering of informational capital closely related to the national economy in 1930, a procedure adopted once again by policymakers in the 1991 neoliberal-oriented agricultural census, resembled the waging of warfare for its “capacity to create subjects or citizens” as well as its “giving and taking away of rights with real material implications,” albeit in the absence of actual physical conflicts (Baitenmann, 2005, p. 186). Even with divergent motives and outcomes, the two censuses were both instrumental in constructing the Mexican state’s colossal, unrivaled image relative to society and in buttressing the decades-long one-party rule by the PRI. Their strong influence on Mexico’s state-building made the PRI a mascot of institutional stability among Latin American countries often riven by internecine strife and upheavals. In the political history of modern Mexico, these agricultural censuses were arguably among the most effective policies for the political consolidation of power. Despite not being a physical conflict, Mexico’s state-building is a clear example of total war because of its full concentration of the country’s political power.

Total War in Egypt

The implementation of the total war approach in the state-building of Egypt was analogous to Mexico since the Egyptian state did not modernize its governing mechanism by engaging in physical warfare either. In the 1830s, Muhammad Ali, the Albanian-born Ottoman governor of Egypt, revolted against the Sultan by sending troops to take over Greater Syria. Although Ali’s military conquest successfully shocked the Ottoman court, it failed to bring about the complete centralization of political power at home as Britain and other European countries intervened in the interests of Constantinople. Their involvement forced Egypt to abandon most of its newly gained territories in exchange for its status as “one of a number of autonomous or privileged Ottoman provinces” (Genell, 2013, p. 7). The following decades saw a prolonged “Ottoman-European legal contest over Egypt” (Genell, 2013, p. 8) under the dynastic rule of Ali’s descendants and a struggle between Cairo and London over the control of Sudan, a region viewed by the Egyptians as “an integral part of Egypt from time immemorial” (Genell, 2013, p. 100). Egypt’s loss of territorial integrity was accompanied by a crisis in its national identity when Egyptian intellectuals internalized their Oriental character, which, from their perspective, was the source of their country’s continuous decline from its “past greatness” to its “present backwardness” under foreign domination (Mitchell, 1988, p. 169). Plagued by both foreign intrusion and domestic instability, Cairo’s political elites could hardly use physical wars as opportunities to reorganize Egypt into a nation-state in the modern sense.

Despite institutional restraints from their Ottoman and British overlords, Egyptian reformers targeted the thorough overhaul of their country’s education system and the peasants’ negative image as the keys to attaining national revival. Political elites like Ali Mubarak attempted to increase the state’s sway over society through the mass production of disciplined, informed citizens under a state-led education system. To achieve this end, they remodeled Egyptian cities according to the principle of “enframing.” The concept of enframing emphasizes “the connection between spatial order and personal discipline,” as represented by the placement of schools in the city centers (Mitchell, 1988, p. 63). This urban layout patterned after French models not only enhanced the beauty and orderliness of Egyptian cities but also made education a major symbol of state power that covered “the entire surface of society” (Mitchell, 1988, p. 69). Egyptian policymakers also replicated England’s Lancaster system, a school model known for its high uniformity in teaching and learning, to create “disciplined members of the community” and nip any insurgent trends in the bud (Mitchell, 1988, p. 71). With these reform measures, the Egyptian state acquired more recognition from its citizens by having space to “exist and build relations of power” in education and hence to hold more symbolic capital (Mitchell, 1988, p. 76). 

Moreover, under the enduring threat of foreign intervention, many unfavorable qualities traditionally associated with Egyptian peasants, including permanency and timelessness, gradually took on “new meanings in the confrontation with British occupation” and even became “positive markers of the collective identity of Egyptians” (Gasper, 2009, p. 8). The reversal of the peasants’ long-standing negative image, albeit partially, helped Egyptian policymakers establish a community of shared future among all citizens and remold the millenary country into a vigorous modern nation-state. Similar to the case of Mexico, these state-building practices in Egypt bore a high resemblance to the making of war, notwithstanding the absence of actual combat.

Conclusion

As a state-building strategy that maximizes the accumulation of political resources, total war assists state institutions in strengthening their authority over societal actors. Despite its manifestations that vary with each country’s course of development, this approach applies to the formation of modern nation-states in the United States, Mexico, and Egypt. In the United States, policymakers launched a physical total war against defiant domestic forces to completely annihilate secessionists in Southern states. In Mexico, political elites integrated the country’s fragmented territory in a militant manner by resorting to the use of agricultural censuses. In Egypt, state leaders totalized all societal actors through the resolute reforms of national education and the redefinition of peasantry. Since the processes of state-building in all three cases share similar intentions and essences, the argument that total war was central to only the establishment of the modern American state does not stand up as long as the meaning of war is not limited to physical conflicts between armed forces.

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