New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era (Paperback)

~ Mary Kaldor (Author) "In the summer of 1992, I visited Nagorno-Karabakh in the Transcaucasian region in the midst of a war involving Azerbaijan and Armenia..." (more)
Key Phrases: legitimate organized violence, new identity politics, humanitarian convoys, Cold War, Eastern Europe, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

“More than any other book, Mary Kaldor’s brilliantly sustained enquiry into ‘new wars’ helps us grasp the complex terrain of political violence since the end of the Cold War.”—Richard Falk, Princeton University

“A timely and important book. Putting the so-called ‘revolution in military affairs’ firmly to one side, Mary Kaldor has provided us with a window into the future of war.” —Martin van Kreveld,Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Product Description

Since 1989 and the breakup of the Soviet Union, both the threat of nuclear war and the threat of large-scale, interstate conventional war have receded. Yet, during the 1990s millions have died in wars in Africa, Eastern Europe, and Asia, and millions more have become refugees from war-torn regions.

In this pathbreaking book, the author argues that, in the context of globalization, what we think of as war—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 she calls “new wars,” a mixture of war, organized crime, and massive violations of human rights. The actors are both global and local, public and private. These wars are fought for particular political goals using tactics of terror and destabilization that are theoretically outlawed by the rules of modern warfare; an informal criminalized economy is built into the functioning of these new wars.

The author asserts that political leaders and international institutions have been unable to deal with the spread of these wars mainly because they have not come to terms with their logic; wars are treated either as old wars or as anarchy. Her 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. The author shows how this approach has profound implications for the reconstruction of civil society, political institutions, and economic and social relations.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 216 pages
• Publisher: Stanford University Press; 1 edition (February 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0804737223
• ISBN-13: 978-0804737227
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,181,434 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars boring academic prose but interesting argument, May 25, 2006

By	Charles J. Paver (United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Well, what can I say? It's an academic work (read--puts you to sleep), very narrow, that tries to advance the field of current military affairs.

Some chapters, actually, are interesting--especially the first one, where Kaldor describes in good detail her distinctions between old and new wars.

Very briefly, Mary Kaldor (lecturer at the LSE) argues that America--the last nation-state, cannot understand the new era of globalization in conjunction with identity politics (read--ethnic hatred, linguistic identities, or religious) and militarization. And America, and Americans, accd. to Kaldor, still live in the Rumsfeld Cold War mentality, where the world is divided into blocs between democratic and authoritarian-communist regimes, and that the only way to prevail over "evil" is to advance military technology evermore. She says that this is fictitious, at best, and at worse, extremely dangerous.

Old wars are between states, involving a clear distinction between combatants and civilians alike, and are organized vertically, with clear goals and objectives. New wars, on the other hand, begin as civil wars within states, and spill over into adjoining neighbor states, creating a mass diaspora and refugee crisis. In addition, there are mass rapes, civilians are the primary targets (rather than soldiers), genocide is typically the aim, and funding is very different--instead of coming from a vibrant economy, it comes from extortion through insidious taxes on illicit drugs, alcohol, arms weaponry, etc. In short, Kaldor contends that the new wars are those that occurred after the fall of the Berlin Wall (such as those in Eastern Europe, Rwanda, Congo, Sudan, Bosnia, and Iraq 2003). And what has empowered these "super-angry men" (ala Friedman) is globalization. How? Through the cheap weaponry in the global arms trade, the mass proliferation of Kalashnikovs (over 100,000,000 still unaccounted for, accd. to Michael Mann), the internet (facilitating easy communications via IM or email, or temporary web pages), and also, the negative effects of globalization: being excluded from those parts of the world where globalization has not yet included. This goes along the lines with Thomas Barnetts's "The Pentagon's New Map"--namely, draw a circle around those parts of the world that don't benefit from globalization, and you will find failed states, failing states, and mass insurrections.

Kaldor's solution, which in my opinion is grossly nieve, is in implementing a cosmopolitan rule of law by encouraging local police officers to arrest local agents (insurgents, etc.) before they can become too destructive. This is nieve because some people cannot be reasoned with, under any circumstances: see Eric Hoffer's wonderful "The True Believer" for further clarification. People such as Hitler, al-Zarqawi, bin Laden, Pol Pot, etc., are all ideologues, and they were and are unwilling to bend under any circumstances to permit those cosmopolitan forces from rising in the first place. They have to be taken out. Period. And I would add, had I been Kaldor, that one of the ways to deal with these thugs, which as worked so well for us in the past, is through the encouragement of corruption. Corruption is good, it is healthy. If the choice is between killing 50,000 people or bribing the dictator $500M, well, the corrupt leader will take the money. Ideologues will not.

Is Kaldor correct in asserting that our US military is antiquated in their beliefs and strategies? It is hard to say. I think on one hand, she actually is correct because if you look at the results of the Iraqi war now, it looks pretty bleak: daily insurrections, daily bombings, daily murders. There is no clear target, we have no idea who the insurgents are or where they are, and our estimates of them change annually: first there were 5,000 in Oct. 2003, then one year later, from 8,000 - 12,000, and now up to 20,000. In addition, we are using the latest and greatest in military technology to crush opponents that are marginally excluded from society, and weak. Our Abrams tank, for instance, used in Bosnia in 1999 couldn't cross the damn river because there were no bridges strong enough to support the enormous weight!

Clearly there are a proliferation of failed states, or failing states, where ethnic hatred and tension runs high. Look at what is happening in East Timor now.

It's worth the read, and since it's on many academic syllabi around America, I'd say, it has some value to at least have a look.

2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An excelent socio-economic analysis of 'New Wars', December 5, 2003

By	Masaki Tanaka "mtanaka7" (Tokyo, Japan) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Based on the field research on the conflicts in the Former Yugoslavia, especially those in Bosnia, Mary Kaldor offered a multifaced socio-economic analysis of organized violence in the Post-Westpharian System. She not only claimed the transformation of inter-state wars into civil wars, LICs and so on but also complex and privatized nature of 'New Wars,': the role of Military-Industrial Complex as well as underground economy, identity politics and the role of unofficial organizations such as NGO and Mafia.