New and old wars - Mary Kaldor

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 - characterised by identity politics, a criminalised 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.