New & old wars : organized violence in a global era / Mary Kaldor.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kaldor, Mary.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Low-intensity conflicts (Military science).

World politics--1989-.

World politics.

Physical Description:

xiii, 231 pages ; 23 cm

Edition:

Third edition.

Other Title:

New and old wars

Place of Publication:

Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 2012.

Summary:

Mary Kaldor's New and Old Wars has fundamentally changed the way both scholars and policy-makers 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 or 'new wars', 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. This approach also has implications for the reconstruction of civil society, political institutions, and economic and social relations.

This third edition has been fully revised and updated. Kaldor has added an afterword answering the critics of the New Wars argument and, in a new chapter, Kaldor shows how old war thinking in Afghanistan and Iraq greatly exacerbated what turned out to be, in many ways, archetypal new wars - characterized by identity politics, a criminalized war economy and civilians as the main victims.

Like its predecessors, the third edition of New and Old Wars will be essential reading for students of international relations, politics and conflict studies as well as to all those interested in the changing nature and prospect of warfare. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Introduction 1

2 Old Wars 15

3 Bosnia-Herzegovina: A Case Study of a New War 32

4 The Politics of New Wars 71

5 The Globalized War Economy 94

6 Towards a Cosmopolitan Approach 119

7 The New Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan 151

8 Governance, Legitimacy and Security 185.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

080478549X

9780804785495

OCLC:

809978102