This essay will argue that there are large differences between the social relations of wars fought before and after the end of the cold war era, which are termed “old wars” and “new wars” respectively. The changing character of organised violence is reflected in the shifting aims of actors from ideologically-driven to identity-driven, the different social organisation of actors and how they finance themselves, who the new targets of violence are, and whether the actors use these acts of violence to ultimately compel their opponent to their will.

The shifting aims of actors in the last decades of the twentieth century, from ideological to identity-based, is evident in the increase of wars along tribal, ethnic or religious lines. During the Bosnian War, the aims of the Serb and Croat factions respectively was ethnic cleansing (Kaldor, 2006, p.35), and during the Iraq War, what was seemingly a “moral crusade” of American democratic idealism revealed itself to devolve into sectarian Sunni-Shi’ite violence (ibid., p.154, p.161). Mary Kaldor argues that there are two globalisation-related causes for the emergence of such conflicts, which demonstrates the novelty of these wars (ibid., p.35). The first is that many states reliant on strategic foreign assistance during the cold war were deprived of it, instead relying on commercial borrowing, which brought upon mounting debt, structural adjustment programmes, and ultimately the decline of state revenue (ibid., p.85). This resulted in the erosion of the state, indiscipline and military hierarchy breakdown in many African and Post-Soviet states, where soldiers lacking pay sought independent sources of income through criminality and warlordism, Tajikistan being an example of the latter (ibid., p.98). In Bosnia, it was a similar sequence of events that led to criminality among the ranks of the League of Communists. A notable example is that of Fikret Abdić, party boss in Bihać province who was implicated in the Agromerc scandal and later served in a key role in the civil war (ibid., p.40). A second factor is the international pressure for democratisation, that resulted in Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein empowering tribal identities (ibid., p.157), the Rwandan regime sowing the seeds of genocide (ibid., p.98) and the concentration of regime resources towards certain religious or tribal groups in states such as Zaire, Nigeria and Sudan (ibid., p.85). While identity has doubtlessly played an important role in “Old Wars”, as shown by Tilly’s analysis of the Vendée rebellion (Kalyvas, 2001, p.112), and ideology in modern wars such as in the civil war in Mozambique(ibid., p.110), it does nonetheless appear that globalising forces led to many formerly authoritarian states adopting identity politics in a more novel way to maintain their grip on power.

The same period has also seen a decline of interstate warfare, which has been supplanted instead by intranational and transnational conflict fought by a variety of both state and non-state actors. In Bosnia, Sarajevo was defended by paramilitaries like the Patriotic Leagues and Tuzla by local police forces while their opposition included the “Tigers” paramilitary group led by a figure of the Belgrade criminal underworld known as Arkan (2006, pp.48-50). In Georgia, paramilitaries were embedded into the military (ibid., pp.98-99), while in Iraq, the coalition forces found themselves fighting many transnational insurgents (ibid., p.160). This is a deviation from the perception of traditional war, that is fought primarily by state actors. It is also notable that these units, unable to rely on traditional sources of income such as taxation, turn to extralegal methods which blur the line between criminality and civil war, which as discussed above, can also serve as a source of conflict rather than just an effect. Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan states that the “pursuit of diamonds, drugs, timber, concessions and other valuable commodities drives a number of today’s internal wars” (2001, pp.102-103). Other forms of financing war also differ from earlier, state-based revenue sources, these include remittances or direct assistance from the diaspora. Croatian leader Tudjman notes the cruciality of the Croatian diaspora in North America (2006, p.42), and the Armenian diaspora was contributive during the Nagorno-Karabakh War (ibid., p.109). This also shows divergence as the diaspora becomes a meaningful actor in itself, capable of providing financial assistance as well as providing an outlet for mobilization through media. During the Kosovo War, it was the diaspora that set up an Albanian-language satellite channel that could be received by Kosovars, and ultimately the role of the KLA was amplified through the support given by the diaspora as well (ibid., p.90). These developments distinguish new wars as wars of a globalised society where the role of the state has diminished.

The most outwardly visible sign of the deviation between old wars and new wars is the frequency of violence targeting civilians in relation to violence between combatants. During the Bosnian War, only 40,000 to 60,000 of 260,000 total casualties were combat casualties, and in Iraq, coalition forces suffered 4804 casualties while the war led to the deaths of 100,000 to 1,000,000 Iraqi civilians (Kaldor, 2013, p.8). While at the turn of the twentieth century, the ratio of civilian to military casualties were 1:8, in the wars of the 1990s that ratio became inverse, becoming 8:1 (2006, p.9). It is likely this fact that has resulted in a similar uptick in the figure of refugees and displaced peoples over time: from 327,000 per conflict in 1969 to 1,316,000 in 1992 (2013, p.9). As for why this is the case, Kaldor relates these back to the theme of criminality, the non-state actors involved and identity politics. These non-state actors, Kaldor argue, fight in the same vein as preceding guerrilla conflicts, but instead of the strategies and doctrines formulated by Mao Zedong or Che Guevara that stress the need to capture “hearts and minds”, these militias borrow from counter-insurgency tactics of destabilisation (2006, p.9). Kalyvas, critiquing the idea that this violence is not senseless, demonstrates that violence was strategic in Mozambique and Sierra Leone’s civil wars, in the former, the example of RENAMO is given where their extreme atrocities was in fact part of a drawn out plan to harden young conscripts, and that a majority of their crimes were concentrated against people in FRELIMO-supporting areas (2001, pp.116-117). However, this fact supports Kaldor’s idea that identity politics is utilised and recognised in new wars and that violence is targeted towards civilians because of this. Kaldor does not deny that the violence is strategic, rather it is part of new strategies of new wars.

With most violence being directed against civilians for the purpose of control rather than with the intent of eliminating the opposing side, and with the vested interests established in the continuation of wars, it is possible to ask whether new wars are “Clausewitzean”. Clausewitz described war as a social activity where violence is used to compel the opposing state to submission (2013, p.12). Modern wars, Kaldor argues, are not contests of wills as described by Clausewitz but rather mutual enterprises where both parties have vested interests in the continuation of the conflict and do not intend in the political destruction of the other party (ibid., p.13). For example, Kaldor explains the war on terror using these terms. The United States gains political capital both at home and abroad through its portrayal of itself as defending both American civilians and democracy, while Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organisations are able to substantiate the idea of global jihad, drawing in further recruits into their ranks (ibid.). The influence of the diaspora, far removed from the conflict yet also able to influence it through media and similar developments furthering globalisation, can also have the effect of promoting the continuation of hostilities. For this reason, perhaps, there has been a rise in the average duration of conflicts (ibid., p.7). As a result, these new, long conflicts differ fundamentally from old conflicts with defined conclusions.

New wars are wars shaped by globalisation, a process that creates vast differences in what came before and after it regarding many areas of social activity. It is only natural, then, that wars of the era of globalization would differ in their social relations. As argued in the essay, the aims, actors, means and ends of new wars are all shaped by the processes of globalisation and result in fundamental differences between them and old wars.

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Bibliography:

Kaldor, M. (2006). New & Old Wars. 2nd Edition. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Kaldor, M. (2013). ‘In Defence of New Wars’. Stability: International Journal of Security and Development, 2(1), pp.1-16. Available at http://doi.org/10.5334/sta.at

Kalyvas, S. N. (2001). ‘“New” and “Old” Civil Wars: A Valid Distinction?’. World Politics, 54(1), pp.99-118. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1353/wp.2001.0022