Refusing to Budge: The Role of the Domestic in Low-Intensity Maritime Conflict - A Cod Wars Perspective

This chapter engages with the roles the domestic spheres inhabit during low-intensity maritime conflicts. During such conflicts, analysts often focus upon the policy-makers, constabulary forces, or both. However, when it comes to managing escalation and the role of force in such conflicts, it is often the domestic scene – ‘the people’, to use an element of Clausewitz’s second trinity – who ultimately decide on whether escalation is to occur. Drawing upon Clausewitz’s two trinities, and using the Cod Wars as a case study, this chapter highlights how policy-makers can quickly lose their monopoly on the role of force due to domestic passions being inflamed. This chapter draws upon the argument and include portions of text from an MA thesis submitted by the author in 2019 on the topic of the Cod Wars and use of force, with an increased focus on the domestic.