Lecture 11
Kaldor, M. (2013). New and old wars
Introduction
In 1992, I visited Nagorno-Karabakh in the midst of a war involving Azerbaijan and
Armenia.
It was then that I realized that what I had previously observed in the former
Yugoslavia was not unique; it was a contemporary predicament especially to be found
in the post-communist part of the world.
Later, I embarked on a research project on the character of the new type of wars and
I discovered that what I had noted in Eastern Europe shared many common features
with the wars taking place in Africa and South Asia.
My central argument is that, during the last decades of the twentieth century, a new
type of organized violence developed, especially in Africa and Eastern Europe,
which is one aspect of the current globalized era.
I describe this type of violence as ‘new war’.
I use the term ‘war’ to emphasize the political nature of this new type of violence,
even though the new wars involve a blurring of the distinctions between war,
organized crime and large-scale violations of human rights.
In most of the literature, the new wars are described as internal wars or as ‘low-intensity
conflicts’.
Yet, although most of these wars are localized, they involve a myriad of
transnational connections so that the distinction between internal and external,
between aggression and repression are difficult to sustain.
A more appropriate term is ‘post-modern’.
Like ‘new wars’, it offers a way of distinguishing these wars from the wars
characteristic of classical modernity.
However, the term is also used to refer to virtual wars and wars in cyberspace.
A more recent term used by Frank Hoffman is ‘hybrid wars’ – the term captures the
blurring of public and private, state or non-state, formal and informal; it is also used
to refer to a mixture of different types of war and, as such, may miss the specific logic
of new wars.
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, Finally, Martin Shaw uses the term ‘degenerate warfare’, while Mueller talks about
the ‘remnants’ of war.
o For Shaw, there is a continuity with the total wars of the twentieth century and
their genocidal aspects; the term draws attention to the decay of the national
frameworks, especially military forces.
o Mueller argues that war in general has declined and that what is left is
banditry disguised as political conflict.
Critics of the ‘new war’ argument have suggested that many features of the new wars can
be found in earlier wars and that the dominance of the Cold War overshadowed the
significance of ‘low intensity’ conflicts.
There is some truth in this proposition.
The main point of the distinction between new and old wars was to change the
prevailing perceptions of war, especially among policy makers.
In particular, I wanted to emphasize the growing illegitimacy of these wars and the
need for a cosmopolitan political response – one that puts individual rights and the
rule of law as the centrepiece of any international intervention.
Nevertheless, I do think that the ‘new war’ argument does reflect a new reality – a
reality that was emerging before the end of the Cold War.
o Globalization is a convenient catch-all to describe the various changes that
have influenced the character of war.
o the Revolution in Military Affairs, or Defence Transformation.
The argument is that the advent of information technology is as significant as was
the advent of the tank and the aeroplane.
In particular, it is argued that these changes have made modern war much more
precise and discriminate.
However, these apparently new concepts are conceived within the inherited
institutional structures of war and the military.
They envisage wars on a traditional model in which the new techniques develop in a
linear extension from the past.
The preferred technique is spectacular aerial bombing and most recently the use of
robots and drones, which reproduce the appearance of classical war for public
consumption but which turn out to be rather counterproductive.
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, Hence Baudrillard’s remark that the Gulf War did not take place.
These sophisticated techniques were initially applied in the Gulf War of 1991 and,
most recently, in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I share the view that there has been a revolution in military affairs, but it is a
revolution in the social relations of warfare, not in technology, even though the
changes in social relations are influenced by new technology.
Beneath the spectacular displays are real wars, which are better explained in terms of
my conception of new wars.
The new wars have to be understood in the context of globalization.
By globalization, I mean the intensification of global interconnectedness – political,
economic, military and cultural – and the changing character of political authority.
I consider that the globalization of the 1980s and 1990s was a new phenomenon
which can be explained as a consequence of the revolution in information
technologies, communication and data processing.
It is often argued that the new wars are a consequence of the end of the Cold War.
But equally, the end of the Cold War could be viewed as the moment when Eastern
Europe was ‘opened up’ to the rest of the world.
The impact of globalization is visible in many of the new wars: international
reporters, mercenary troops and military advisers, and diaspora volunteers as well as
international agencies.
Indeed, the wars epitomize a new kind of global/local divide between those
members of a global class who can speak English, have access to the Internet, who
use dollars, and those who are excluded from global processes.
In the literature on globalization, a central issue concerns the implications of global
interconnectedness for the future of the modern state.
The new wars arise in the context of the erosion of the autonomy of the state. In
particular, they occur in the context of the erosion of the monopoly of legitimate
organized violence.
This monopoly is eroded from above and from below.
o It has been eroded from above by the transnationalization of military forces
which began during the two world wars. The capacity of states to use force
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, unilaterally against other states has been weakened. Moreover, military
alliances, international arms production and trade, etc., have created a form of
global military integration.
o At the same time, the monopoly of organized violence is eroded from below
by privatization. The new wars are part of a process which is a reversal of the
processes through which modern European states evolved. The rise of the
modern state was connected to war. In order to fight wars, rulers needed to
increase taxation and borrowing. As war became the exclusive province of the
state, so the growing destructiveness of war against other states was paralleled
by a process of growing security at home. The modern European state was
reproduced elsewhere.
The new wars occur in situations in which state revenues decline
because of the decline of the economy, violence is increasingly
privatized both as a result of growing organized crime and the
emergence of paramilitary groups. Thus the distinctions are breaking
down between external barbarity and domestic civility or between the
soldier or policeman and the criminal. The barbarity of war between
states may have become a thing of the past. In its place is a new type
of organized violence that is more pervasive and long-lasting, but
also perhaps less extreme.
The new wars can be contrasted with earlier wars in terms of their goals, the methods of
warfare and how they are financed.
The goals of the new wars are about identity politics in contrast to the geo-political or
ideological goals of earlier wars.
In the context of globalization, ideological and territorial cleavages of an earlier era
have been supplanted by an emerging political cleavage between cosmopolitanism,
based on inclusive, multicultural values, and the politics of particularist identities.
o This cleavage can be explained in terms of the divide between those who are
part of global processes and those who are excluded.
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