• Home
  • About RSIS
    • Introduction
    • Building the Foundations
    • Welcome Message
    • Board of Governors
    • Staff Profiles
      • Executive Deputy Chairman’s Office
      • Dean’s Office
      • Management
      • Distinguished Fellows
      • Faculty and Research
      • Associate Research Fellows, Senior Analysts and Research Analysts
      • Visiting Fellows
      • Adjunct Fellows
      • Administrative Staff
    • Honours and Awards for RSIS Staff and Students
    • RSIS Endowment Fund
    • Endowed Professorships
    • Career Opportunities
    • Getting to RSIS
  • Research
    • Research Centres
      • Centre for Multilateralism Studies (CMS)
      • Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS Centre)
      • Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS)
      • Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (IDSS)
      • International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR)
    • Research Programmes
      • National Security Studies Programme (NSSP)
      • Studies in Inter-Religious Relations in Plural Societies (SRP) Programme
    • Research @ RSIS
    • Other Programmes
      • Science and Technology Studies Programme (STSP)
  • Graduate Education
    • Graduate Programmes Office
    • Overview
    • MSc (Asian Studies)
    • MSc (International Political Economy)
    • MSc (International Relations)
    • MSc (Strategic Studies)
    • NTU-Warwick Double Masters Programme
    • PhD Programme
    • Exchange Partners and Programmes
    • How to Apply
    • Financial Assistance
    • Information Sessions
    • RSIS Alumni
  • Alumni & Networks
    • Alumni
    • Asia-Pacific Programme for Senior Military Officers (APPSMO)
    • Asia-Pacific Programme for Senior National Security Officers (APPSNO)
    • SRP Executive Programme
    • Terrorism Analyst Training Course (TATC)
  • Publications
    • RSIS Publications
      • Annual Reviews
      • Books
      • Bulletins and Newsletters
      • Commentaries
      • Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses
      • Commemorative / Event Reports
      • IDSS Paper
      • Interreligious Relations
      • Monographs
      • NTS Insight
      • Policy Reports
      • Working Papers
      • RSIS Publications for the Year
    • Glossary of Abbreviations
    • External Publications
      • Authored Books
      • Journal Articles
      • Edited Books
      • Chapters in Edited Books
      • Policy Reports
      • Working Papers
      • Op-Eds
      • External Publications for the Year
    • Policy-relevant Articles Given RSIS Award
  • Media
    • COVID-19 Resources
    • Cohesive Societies
    • Great Powers
    • Sustainable Security
    • Other Resource Pages
    • Media Highlights
    • News Releases
    • Speeches
    • Vidcast Channel
    • Audio/Video Forums
  • Events
  • Giving
  • Contact Us
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube
RSISVideoCast RSISVideoCast rsis.sg
Linkedin
instagram instagram rsis.sg
RSS
  • Home
  • About RSIS
      • Introduction
      • Building the Foundations
      • Welcome Message
      • Board of Governors
      • Staff Profiles
        • Executive Deputy Chairman’s Office
        • Dean’s Office
        • Management
        • Distinguished Fellows
        • Faculty and Research
        • Associate Research Fellows, Senior Analysts and Research Analysts
        • Visiting Fellows
        • Adjunct Fellows
        • Administrative Staff
      • Honours and Awards for RSIS Staff and Students
      • RSIS Endowment Fund
      • Endowed Professorships
      • Career Opportunities
      • Getting to RSIS
  • Research
      • Research Centres
        • Centre for Multilateralism Studies (CMS)
        • Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS Centre)
        • Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS)
        • Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (IDSS)
        • International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR)
      • Research Programmes
        • National Security Studies Programme (NSSP)
        • Studies in Inter-Religious Relations in Plural Societies (SRP) Programme
      • Research @ RSIS
      • Other Programmes
        • Science and Technology Studies Programme (STSP)
  • Graduate Education
      • Graduate Programmes Office
      • Overview
      • MSc (Asian Studies)
      • MSc (International Political Economy)
      • MSc (International Relations)
      • MSc (Strategic Studies)
      • NTU-Warwick Double Masters Programme
      • PhD Programme
      • Exchange Partners and Programmes
      • How to Apply
      • Financial Assistance
      • Information Sessions
      • RSIS Alumni
  • Alumni & Networks
      • Alumni
      • Asia-Pacific Programme for Senior Military Officers (APPSMO)
      • Asia-Pacific Programme for Senior National Security Officers (APPSNO)
      • SRP Executive Programme
      • Terrorism Analyst Training Course (TATC)
  • Publications
      • RSIS Publications
        • Annual Reviews
        • Books
        • Bulletins and Newsletters
        • Commentaries
        • Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses
        • Commemorative / Event Reports
        • IDSS Paper
        • Interreligious Relations
        • Monographs
        • NTS Insight
        • Policy Reports
        • Working Papers
        • RSIS Publications for the Year
      • Glossary of Abbreviations
      • External Publications
        • Authored Books
        • Journal Articles
        • Edited Books
        • Chapters in Edited Books
        • Policy Reports
        • Working Papers
        • Op-Eds
        • External Publications for the Year
      • Policy-relevant Articles Given RSIS Award
  • Media
      • COVID-19 Resources
      • Cohesive Societies
      • Great Powers
      • Sustainable Security
      • Other Resource Pages
      • Media Highlights
      • News Releases
      • Speeches
      • Vidcast Channel
      • Audio/Video Forums
  • Events
  • Giving
  • Contact Us
  • instagram instagram rsis.sg
Connect

Getting to RSIS

Map

Address

Nanyang Technological University
Block S4, Level B3,
50 Nanyang Avenue,
Singapore 639798

View location on Google maps Click here for directions to RSIS

Get in Touch

    Connect with Us

      rsis.ntu
      rsis_ntu
      rsisntu
    RSISVideoCast RSISVideoCast rsisvideocast
      school/rsis-ntu
    instagram instagram rsis.sg
      RSS
    Subscribe to RSIS Publications
    Subscribe to RSIS Events

    RSIS Intranet

    S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies Think Tank and Graduate School Ponder The Improbable Since 1966
    Nanyang Technological University Nanyang Technological University

    Skip to content

     
    • RSIS
    • Publication
    • RSIS Publications
    • CO06089 | Breda and Guernica: Two Images of War in South Lebanon
    • Annual Reviews
    • Books
    • Bulletins and Newsletters
    • Commentaries
    • Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses
    • Commemorative / Event Reports
    • IDSS Paper
    • Interreligious Relations
    • Monographs
    • NTS Insight
    • Policy Reports
    • Working Papers
    • RSIS Publications for the Year

    CO06089 | Breda and Guernica: Two Images of War in South Lebanon
    Paul T. Mitchell

    25 August 2006

    download pdf
    RSIS Commentary is a platform to provide timely and, where appropriate, policy-relevant commentary and analysis of topical and contemporary issues. The authors’ views are their own and do not represent the official position of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, NTU. These commentaries may be reproduced with prior permission from RSIS and due recognition to the author(s) and RSIS. Please email to Mr Yang Razali Kassim, Editor RSIS Commentary at [email protected]

    Commentary

    IN 1638, Spanish Renaissance painter Diego Velasquez unveiled his masterpiece “The Surrender at Breda”, commemorating the capture of the Dutch town of Breda by Spanish forces under their general Ambrosio Spinola in 1625. Nearly 300 years later, the cubist maestro, Pablo Picasso, painted “Guernica” to memorialize the Nazi bombing of that eponymous village during the Spanish Civil War. Together, these paintings are bookends to our understanding of modern warfare. Indeed, the messages that each render to the modern viewer play out currently in the present struggle in Lebanon.

    The Rules of War: The End of the Siege of Breda

    The Siege of Breda took place in the midst of the bloodiest war Europe had experienced until the Second World War. The city of Breda was part of the “Spanish Netherlands” that had fought and won its independence at the close of the sixteenth century. The truce between Spain and the Netherlands ultimately collapsed and after a seven-month siege, the Dutch commander, Maurice of Nassau, surrendered the city to Spinola in February of 1625, thus saving it from the customary sack.

    Vasquez’s painting is interesting from a number of points of view. The vanquished and the victor appear on the same plane, conveying a sense of equality that is often missing in paintings treating the subject of surrender. Indeed, Spinola, the central figure appearing on the right hand side, extends his hand magnimoniously to the shoulder of Maurice on the left, as if to reassure the gentleman that while he has lost the battle, he has done the “right thing” by surrendering the town before a final Spanish assault and the murderous chaos of a sack that would inevitably accompany such an action.

    For his part, Maurice appears positively grateful that Spinola has offered such advantageous terms, avoiding the typical humiliation of defeat. In the side areas and the background we see both armies in relative order, their pennants flying. Soldiers of both sides are still carrying their firearms, although they are across their shoulders in a position of rest, pointed away from each other.

    The painting conveys a very specific sense of the nature of warfare. The relationship that is depicted between the victor and the vanquished demonstrates an attitude of the legitimacy of war in the relations between nations, and the rule-based order that underlies its practice. It is a highly ritualized portrayal of conflict, with roles and behaviour strictly codified. Each side has accepted these rules and is behaving accordingly; indeed, one could easily transpose the image into a scene from a sporting event, with each team leaving the playing field after shaking one another’s hands.

    War as Chaos: Guernica

    Picasso gives us a very different picture of war. His Guernica was painted in 1937, the same year as the German air raid and was exhibited by the Spanish Republican government at the Paris World Fair, later the same year. To a German officer inquiring if he had created the painting, Picasso reportedly said that he had thought, rather, that the Germans had something to do with it. Guernica has since entered the iconography of the peace movement. During Vietnam, it was the scene of quiet protest by those opposed to the war, in its home at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

    The painting departs radically from the classical style of Velasquez. Its cubist style fits naturally with the ugly and chaotic form of warfare itself. In the painting, we see the tortured bodies of men, women, and children, as well as animals, all appealing to an impassive sky dominated by the sun in the form of a light bulb. It is as if the world has gone mad, descending into a form of Hell itself, made manifest by the cruel reason of modern technology. There are no rules here, no polite forms of society. Nor is there any hope of response: the only man in the scene lies dead with a broken sword in his palm.

    Rules and Chaos: Israel and Hizbullah

    Both of these scenes describe a reality about war. As Clausewitz teaches us, war as the continuation of policy, is subject to the rules that states establish for its conduct. War is a continuation of a dialogue between belligerents where the use of force has replaced words. Were war the untrammeled descent into violence that some imagine it to be, our wars would be far worse than we can imagine. As terrible as the action of some American troops have been, the actions of the US military in Iraq pale beside those of the Waffen SS in Poland and the Soviet Union. Still, as events in South Lebanon have shown, war is fundamentally brutal and at its most basic, it is irreducibly about barbaric destruction: of the enemy and all his sources of support.

    In nations that have enjoyed the relative stability of the Cold War and the brief spring that followed its end, we have forgotten both Picasso and Clausewitz’s commentaries on warfare. We have sought to transform warfare into a bureaucratic process, governed by rationality and rules as if the existential struggle between Hizbullah and Israel could be run like some bizarre debating society of the Hague. Each pursues incompatible objectives; there is no common ground between them. A pause in violence is only a pause, not a step towards a solution, as long as Israel remains committed to its continued existence, and Hizbullah, to its destruction.

    Thus, the precarious UN-brokered ceasefire agreement in Lebanon must ultimately break down. It would be well that it does so before hapless and helpless peacekeeping troops are drawn into the fray. Were this war more like the image of Velasquez, a limited conflict between two parties accepting the legitimacy of the other, they might have a role to play.

    Sadly, sooner or later, peacekeepers will be forced to make a choice in terms of preventing Hizbullah from attempting to rearm, or ignoring such action. In either case, they will have declared sides and the pretence of any peacekeeping neutrality will be shattered. Into the fray steps the madness of Guernica, willing order through the brutal application of violence. It’s not desirable, it’s not rational, but as the American scholar Stanley Hoffman once observed: “War burns a way through when no other means will suffice.”

    About the Author

    Paul T. Mitchell is an Associate Professor with the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, Nanyang Technological University

    Categories: Commentaries /

    Last updated on 03/10/2014

    RSIS Commentary is a platform to provide timely and, where appropriate, policy-relevant commentary and analysis of topical and contemporary issues. The authors’ views are their own and do not represent the official position of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, NTU. These commentaries may be reproduced with prior permission from RSIS and due recognition to the author(s) and RSIS. Please email to Mr Yang Razali Kassim, Editor RSIS Commentary at [email protected]

    Commentary

    IN 1638, Spanish Renaissance painter Diego Velasquez unveiled his masterpiece “The Surrender at Breda”, commemorating the capture of the Dutch town of Breda by Spanish forces under their general Ambrosio Spinola in 1625. Nearly 300 years later, the cubist maestro, Pablo Picasso, painted “Guernica” to memorialize the Nazi bombing of that eponymous village during the Spanish Civil War. Together, these paintings are bookends to our understanding of modern warfare. Indeed, the messages that each render to the modern viewer play out currently in the present struggle in Lebanon.

    The Rules of War: The End of the Siege of Breda

    The Siege of Breda took place in the midst of the bloodiest war Europe had experienced until the Second World War. The city of Breda was part of the “Spanish Netherlands” that had fought and won its independence at the close of the sixteenth century. The truce between Spain and the Netherlands ultimately collapsed and after a seven-month siege, the Dutch commander, Maurice of Nassau, surrendered the city to Spinola in February of 1625, thus saving it from the customary sack.

    Vasquez’s painting is interesting from a number of points of view. The vanquished and the victor appear on the same plane, conveying a sense of equality that is often missing in paintings treating the subject of surrender. Indeed, Spinola, the central figure appearing on the right hand side, extends his hand magnimoniously to the shoulder of Maurice on the left, as if to reassure the gentleman that while he has lost the battle, he has done the “right thing” by surrendering the town before a final Spanish assault and the murderous chaos of a sack that would inevitably accompany such an action.

    For his part, Maurice appears positively grateful that Spinola has offered such advantageous terms, avoiding the typical humiliation of defeat. In the side areas and the background we see both armies in relative order, their pennants flying. Soldiers of both sides are still carrying their firearms, although they are across their shoulders in a position of rest, pointed away from each other.

    The painting conveys a very specific sense of the nature of warfare. The relationship that is depicted between the victor and the vanquished demonstrates an attitude of the legitimacy of war in the relations between nations, and the rule-based order that underlies its practice. It is a highly ritualized portrayal of conflict, with roles and behaviour strictly codified. Each side has accepted these rules and is behaving accordingly; indeed, one could easily transpose the image into a scene from a sporting event, with each team leaving the playing field after shaking one another’s hands.

    War as Chaos: Guernica

    Picasso gives us a very different picture of war. His Guernica was painted in 1937, the same year as the German air raid and was exhibited by the Spanish Republican government at the Paris World Fair, later the same year. To a German officer inquiring if he had created the painting, Picasso reportedly said that he had thought, rather, that the Germans had something to do with it. Guernica has since entered the iconography of the peace movement. During Vietnam, it was the scene of quiet protest by those opposed to the war, in its home at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

    The painting departs radically from the classical style of Velasquez. Its cubist style fits naturally with the ugly and chaotic form of warfare itself. In the painting, we see the tortured bodies of men, women, and children, as well as animals, all appealing to an impassive sky dominated by the sun in the form of a light bulb. It is as if the world has gone mad, descending into a form of Hell itself, made manifest by the cruel reason of modern technology. There are no rules here, no polite forms of society. Nor is there any hope of response: the only man in the scene lies dead with a broken sword in his palm.

    Rules and Chaos: Israel and Hizbullah

    Both of these scenes describe a reality about war. As Clausewitz teaches us, war as the continuation of policy, is subject to the rules that states establish for its conduct. War is a continuation of a dialogue between belligerents where the use of force has replaced words. Were war the untrammeled descent into violence that some imagine it to be, our wars would be far worse than we can imagine. As terrible as the action of some American troops have been, the actions of the US military in Iraq pale beside those of the Waffen SS in Poland and the Soviet Union. Still, as events in South Lebanon have shown, war is fundamentally brutal and at its most basic, it is irreducibly about barbaric destruction: of the enemy and all his sources of support.

    In nations that have enjoyed the relative stability of the Cold War and the brief spring that followed its end, we have forgotten both Picasso and Clausewitz’s commentaries on warfare. We have sought to transform warfare into a bureaucratic process, governed by rationality and rules as if the existential struggle between Hizbullah and Israel could be run like some bizarre debating society of the Hague. Each pursues incompatible objectives; there is no common ground between them. A pause in violence is only a pause, not a step towards a solution, as long as Israel remains committed to its continued existence, and Hizbullah, to its destruction.

    Thus, the precarious UN-brokered ceasefire agreement in Lebanon must ultimately break down. It would be well that it does so before hapless and helpless peacekeeping troops are drawn into the fray. Were this war more like the image of Velasquez, a limited conflict between two parties accepting the legitimacy of the other, they might have a role to play.

    Sadly, sooner or later, peacekeepers will be forced to make a choice in terms of preventing Hizbullah from attempting to rearm, or ignoring such action. In either case, they will have declared sides and the pretence of any peacekeeping neutrality will be shattered. Into the fray steps the madness of Guernica, willing order through the brutal application of violence. It’s not desirable, it’s not rational, but as the American scholar Stanley Hoffman once observed: “War burns a way through when no other means will suffice.”

    About the Author

    Paul T. Mitchell is an Associate Professor with the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, Nanyang Technological University

    Categories: Commentaries

    Last updated on 03/10/2014

    Back to top

    Terms of Use | Privacy Statement
    Copyright © S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. All rights reserved.
    This site uses cookies to offer you a better browsing experience. By continuing, you are agreeing to the use of cookies on your device as described in our privacy policy. Learn more
    OK
    Latest Book
    CO06089 | Breda and Guernica: Two Images of War in South Lebanon

    Commentary

    IN 1638, Spanish Renaissance painter Diego Velasquez unveiled his masterpiec ...
    more info