New wars is a term advanced by British academic Mary Kaldor to characterize warfare in the post-Cold War era. This form of warfare is characterized by:
attempts to achieve political, rather than physical, control of the population through fear and terror
conflict financed not necessarily through the state, but through other predatory means that seek the continuation of violence[1]
Other terms used for the concept include "wars among the people", "wars of the third kind", "hybrid wars", "privatized wars", and "post-modern wars".[2] The new wars thesis has been adopted and adapted by other authors, as well as critiqued from various perspectives.
Kaldor's definition of "new wars" is made within the context of a wider "new wars thesis" debate between academics on how to properly define or brand the apparent revolution in warfare in the post-Cold War world. Kaldor purports that new war characteristics must be analyzed within the context of globalization. Kaldor does admit that "new wars" are not necessarily new, in that they have no precedent in history; however, she insists on keeping the term because there is still a definite need for new policy responses. Old international strategies have failed to address the characteristics of new wars successfully and instead continue to treat it as old conventional warfare. The term is an antonym of conventional warfare whereby conventional military weapons and battlefield tactics are no longer used between two or more states in open confrontation.
Other authors also attempted to characterize the shift in warfare but using other descriptors. Recognizing the blur between state and non-state actors and dual conflation of interstate and intrastate conflict, Frank Hoffman portrays modern wars as "hybrid wars". Martin Shaw chose the term "degenerate warfare" to describe how a belligerent attacks the enemy's civilian population as part of a broader military campaign, as in aerial bombing of cities, but destroying it is not the ultimate goal: the enemy is the state, not the enemy's population.[3]
Often, the term "new war" is compared to or defined as "low-intensity conflict," a term invented by the US Army which broadly encompasses all modern warfare that does not quite meet the threshold or level of violence found in conventional wars.
Kaldor's concept of new wars has been criticized by some, who question whether the distinction between old and new can be made.[6] De Waal stipulates that the idea of "New Wars" used by Kaldor is not a description of new conflicts as such but a description of conflicts in less governed countries.
Duffield suggests that what is viewed as "new" is the security terrain which has been shaped by what he terms network wars, which are described as "rhizomatic and anti-institution in character" and which can be typically associated with alterations in social life. Network wars are seen as an uncertain and violent form of reflexive modernity and where "war as a reflexive network enterprise does not follow the traditional state-based pattern of escalation, stalemate, and decline". Furthermore, the wars in Africa are seen as involving not just national but also other international actors.[6]
Edward Newman writes of the importance of considering historical examples for making any statements about qualitative changes in recent wars. He suggests that there are many valuable points made in new wars scholarship, including the importance of social and economic dynamics to warfare, and that there are examples of modern wars such as the Bosnian War that fit the new wars template. However, he argues that most of the elements of "new wars" are not actually new, but rather have existed for at least the past century. In Newman's view, these elements have been more and less prominent at different times and places, rather than just increasing in recent times, and the major differences now are that "academics, policy analysts, and politicians are focusing on these factors more than before" and understanding them better and that the media have increased public awareness of the realities and atrocities of war.[7]
In 2013, Kaldor addressed the four main components of her detractors' arguments: whether new wars are ‘new’; whether new wars are war or crime; whether the data support the claims about new wars; and whether new wars are ‘post-Clausewitzean’.[8] Kaldor immediately points out "one of the problems with many of the critics is that they lump together the different versions of the argument and treat criticism of one particular aspect contained in one particular version as a criticism of the whole argument."[9] First, she counters the critique against distinguishing between 'old' and 'new' wars. Critics concede the 'new wars' thesis is helpful in foreign policy decisions, which was her intent.[10]
Another critique is that new wars do not capture the gendered logic and impact of war.[11]
Notes
↑ Kaldor, Mary (2012), New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era (Cambridge: Polity)
↑ Kaldor, M., (2013). "In Defence of New Wars". Stability: International Journal of Security and Development. 2(1), p.Art. 4. http://doi.org/10.5334/sta.at
↑ Martin Shaw, War and Genocide: Organised Killing in Modern Society (John Wiley & Sons, 2015); cited in A. Dirk Moses and Lasse Heerten, Postcolonial Conflict and the Question of Genocide: The Nigeria-Biafra War, 1967–1970 (Taylor & Francis, 2017), 27.
↑ Mary Kaldor, “In Defence of New Wars,” Stability: International Journal of Security and Development 2, no. 1 (March 7, 2013), https://doi.org/10.5334/sta.at, 1.
↑ Chinkin, Christine, Mary Kaldor, and Punam Yadav. "Gender and new wars." Stability: International Journal of Security and Development 9, no. 1 (2020).
Bibliography
Hoffman, Frank (2007), The Rise of Hybrids Wars (Arlington, VA: Potomac Institute for Policy Studies
Mueller, John (2004), The Remnants of War (New York: Cornell University Press)
Shaw, Martin (2003), War and Genocide (Oxford: Polity Press)
United States Department of the Army (5 December 1990), Field Manual 100-20: Military Operations in Low Intensity Conflict
De Waal, A. (2009). Mission without end? Peacekeeping in the African political marketplace. International Affairs (London), 85(1), 99-113.
Conventional warfare is a form of warfare conducted by using conventional weapons and battlefield tactics between two or more states in open confrontation. The forces on each side are well-defined and fight by using weapons that target primarily the opponent's military. It is normally fought by using conventional weapons, not chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapons.
Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people — usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group — in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word γένος with the Latin suffix -caedo.
Vom Kriege is a book on war and military strategy by Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831), written mostly after the Napoleonic wars, between 1816 and 1830, and published posthumously by his wife Marie von Brühl in 1832. It is one of the most important treatises on political-military analysis and strategy ever written, and remains both controversial and influential on strategic thinking.
War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, aggression, destruction, and mortality, using regular or irregular military forces. Warfare refers to the common activities and characteristics of types of war, or of wars in general. Total war is warfare that is not restricted to purely legitimate military targets, and can result in massive civilian or other non-combatant suffering and casualties.
An ethnic conflict is a conflict between two or more contending ethnic groups. While the source of the conflict may be political, social, economic or religious, the individuals in conflict must expressly fight for their ethnic group's position within society. This criterion differentiates ethnic conflict from other forms of struggle.
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World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability is a 2003 book by American legal scholar Amy Chua. It is an academic study of ethnic and sociological divisions in the economic and political systems of various societies. The book discusses the concept of "market-dominant minorities", which it defines as ethnic minority groups who, under given market conditions, tend to prosper, flourish, and dominate economically, often significantly, over other, often ethnic majority groups in the country.
A proxy war is an armed conflict between two states or non-state actors which act on the instigation or on behalf of other parties that are not directly involved in the hostilities. In order for a conflict to be considered a proxy war, there must be a direct, long-term relationship between external actors and the belligerents involved. The aforementioned relationship usually takes the form of funding, military training, arms, or other forms of material assistance which assist a belligerent party in sustaining its war effort.
Fourth-generation warfare (4GW) is conflict characterized by a blurring of the lines between war and politics, combatants and civilians.
Herfried Münkler is a German political scientist. He is a Professor of Political Theory at Humboldt University in Berlin. Münkler is a regular commentator on global affairs in the German-language media and author of numerous books on the history of political ideas, on state-building and on the theory of war, such as "Machiavelli" (1982), "Gewalt und Ordnung" (1992), "The New Wars" and "Empires: The Logic of World Domination from Ancient Rome to the United States". In 2009 Münkler was awarded the Leipzig Book Fair Prize in the category "Non-fiction" for Die Deutschen und ihre Mythen.
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Mary Henrietta KaldorCBE is a British academic, currently Professor of Global Governance at the London School of Economics, where she is also the Director of the Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit. She also teaches at the Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals (IBEI). She has been a key figure in the development of cosmopolitan democracy. She writes on globalisation, international relations and humanitarian intervention, global civil society and global governance, as well as what she calls New Wars.
Hybrid warfare is a theory of military strategy, first proposed by Frank Hoffman, which employs political warfare and blends conventional warfare, irregular warfare, and cyberwarfare with other influencing methods, such as fake news, diplomacy, lawfare and foreign electoral intervention. By combining kinetic operations with subversive efforts, the aggressor intends to avoid attribution or retribution. The concept of hybrid warfare has been criticized by a number of academics and practitioners due to its alleged vagueness, its disputed constitutive elements, and its alleged historical distortions.
Political violence is violence which is perpetrated in order to achieve political goals. It can include violence which is used by a state against other states (war), violence which is used by a state against civilians and non-state actors, and violence which is used by violent non-state actors against states and civilians. It can also describe politically-motivated violence which is used by violent non-state actors against a state or it can describe violence which is used against other non-state actors and/or civilians. Non-action on the part of a government can also be characterized as a form of political violence, such as refusing to alleviate famine or otherwise denying resources to politically identifiable groups within their territory.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to war:
The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World is a treatise on modern warfare written by General Sir Rupert Smith and published in 2005. Smith is a retired general who spent 40 years in the British Army; he commanded the 1st Armoured Division in the First Gulf War and served as General Officer Commanding Northern Ireland at the end of the Troubles. He was motivated to write the book by his experiences in the Balkans. He commanded the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) in Bosnia from 1995 to 1996, during which time the Srebrenica massacre occurred and the capital, Sarajevo, was under siege by Serb forces. Smith was instrumental in the lifting of the siege by arranging for NATO air strikes and an artillery barrage. This enabled a ground assault by Bosnian and Croatian forces that ended the siege and led to the Dayton Agreement. Smith's second involvement with the Balkans was in 1999 during the Kosovo War, when he was serving as NATO's Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, overseeing air strikes against Serb targets.
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