Description
While old wars were about geo-political or ideological goals, new wars are about identity. So argues Kaldor (global governance, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK) as he describes how the globalization has wrought a political cleavage between universal, multicultural cosmopolitanism and the politics of particularist identities of nation, clan, religion, ethnicity, or language that gives rise to new wars. He analyzes the characteristics of new wars including changing modes of warfare that draw on lessons from guerilla warfare and counter-insurgency and the decentralization of war economies. Finally, he explores the implication of his theory for conflict management, suggesting that the long term solution to new wars--the restoration of legitimacy--is both a political process of rebuilding trust and support for public authorities and a legal process of reestablishment of the rule of law. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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Mary Kaldor's New and Old Wars has fundamentally changed the way we understand contemporary war and conflict. In the context of globalization, this path-breaking book has shown that what we think of as war?that is to say, war between states in which the aim is to inflict maximum violence?is becoming an anachronism. In its place is a new type of organized violence which could be described as a mixture of war, organized crime and massive violations of human rights. The actors are both global and local, public and private. The wars are fought for particularistic political goals using tactics of terror and destabilization that are theoretically outlawed by the rules of modern warfare.Kaldor's analysis offers a basis for a cosmopolitan political response to these wars, in which the monopoly of legitimate organized violence is reconstructed on a transnational basis and international peacekeeping is reconceptualized as cosmopolitan law enforcement.
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