Wars, New

The rupture with classical modernity that is associated with the process of globalization is perhaps most decisively illustrated by the changes in the pattern of organized violence. The 20th century can be identified as the period in which the nation-state system reached its apogee, and this period will probably be best remembered for the terrible barbarity of totalitarianism and war. In the future, however, the 20th century may also be remembered as the moment when the nation-state system exhausted itself and when these statist phenomena (totalitarianism and interstate war) began to disappear, like slavery in an earlier period.

Old wars are the wars of the 20th century: militarized clashes between states, involving huge casualties and mobilizing whole populations. Or rather old wars are our idealized version of the wars of the 20th century The term new wars is a way to distinguish the wars that take place in the contemporary era from old wars; the aim of the term is to change our understanding of war. Old wars were outlawed in the United Nations Charter after World War II, but the idea of old war was kept alive during the Cold War. It is only since the end of the Cold War that awareness of new wars became a topic of scholarly attention and policy concern.

The only wars between states in the 21st century have been those between Iraq and the United States (2003) and Georgia versus Russia (2008). Indeed, wars involving states in general are on the decline. The Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) shows that the number of wars involving states on at least one side and involving more than a thousand deaths in battle declined from 21 in 1999 to 17 in 2009. What is on the increase are non-state conflicts and what the UCDP calls onesided violence against civilians, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. These are what are known as new wars.

Old wars were associated with state building. According to Charles Tilly (1975), “The State made War and War made the State” (p. 42). From the late 18th to the 20th century, wars between European states became the main legitimate forms of violence on the European continent. Domestic pacification (the elimination of private armies and the reduction of corruption, violent crime, piracy, and brigandage), the growth of taxation and public borrowing, the regularization of armed forces and police forces, the development of nationalist sentiment all became mutually reinforcing in wartime. New wars are an extreme manifestation of the erosion of the [Page 1766]autonomy of the nation-state under the impact of globalization. Indeed, in contrast to the old wars, in which states were able to mobilize resources and extend administrative capacities, the new wars could be described as implosions of the state.