New & old wars - Mary Kaldor

Mary Kaldor s New and Old Wars has fundamentally changed the way we understand contemporary war and conflict. In the context of globalization, this pathbreaking 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. An informal criminalized economy is built into the functioning of the new wars.

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 second edition has been fully revised and updated to deal fully with the implications of
the new wars
in the post 911 world. In a new chapter, Kaldor shows how old war thinking in Iraq has has greatly exacerbated what is, in many ways, the archetypal new war
with insurgency, chaos and the occupying forces
lack of direction prescient of a different kind of conflict now emerging in the 21st Century.

Like its predecessor, the second 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.

M. Kaldor , Professor of Global Governance and Director at the Centre for the Study of Global Governance, London School of Economics and Political Science

"New and Old Wars
stands as the first port of call for those who think that most of the world s wars do not correspond to the strategic logics identified by Western theorists."

Australian Journal of Political Science

"If you don
t read Mary Kaldor
s
New and Old Wars
you won
t understand the world of violence we live in. And you will miss the only way out: the perspective of a cosmopolitan realpolitik that Kaldor opens up and paints in detail in her highly sophisticated and original analysis. It is the classical book on new wars."

Ulrich Beck,
University of Munich

"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. The richness and clarity of the overall presentation greatly strengthens Kaldor
s stature as one of the most consistently imaginative and conceptually creative thinkers of our time on the central issues of global affairs."

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 Creveld,
Hebrew University of Jerusalem