Old and New Wars - Literature review Example

Old and New Wars Name Course Institution Date Old and New Wars Introduction With the transformation of the state scheme as a result of globalization and post modernity, it was unavoidable that war, as a continuance of political affairs, would also transform. New wars are fundamentally different from old wars in that they are wars of the period of globalization while old wars were wars that prevailed in the 19th and 20th centuries. In general, new wars occur in regions where authoritarian nations have been significantly weakened as a result of globalization and opening up of states to the rest of the globe. In this context, the difference between non-state and state, private and public, political and economic and peace and war have been broken down. This paper looks at how new wars are different from old wars. Features of old wars and new wars According to Wievorka( 2009, p.16)old wars are generally described as clashes waged amid opposed states’ armed and uniformed forces, whereby the key encounters of warfare were clashes amid these forces The rules and disciplines that dictated traditional or old wars like official announcement or declaration of battle do not apply in new wars. There existed an apparent distinction amid civilian and soldiers in old wars. New wars smudge this feature with mere identity of civilians whereby they are labeled as fighters, usually leading to massive injury of civilians. Old wars were connected with the building of the nation as well as the rise of the contemporary nation state whilst new wars usually emerge from the breakdown of the state along with the resultant battle for power and authority amid countering forces with the aspiration to enforce their personal idea of the national identity of the state upon the populace (Kaldor, 2013, p. 5). The markedly created identity usually generates a contradiction amid the real demographic and exclusivity of ethnic and religious groups, breaking up the state, and may eventually result to warfare. This function of identity has turned out to be a major motivation as well as cause of clashes in a state. The absence f legitimacy amid the governments and their citizens or populaces usually undermines the authority of the state and thus leads to the weakening of the state itself. The instigation of new wars have been enhanced by new conditions that result from globalization as well as the inability of the governments to have the legitimacy that is essential to act as conventional Westphalia states (Kaldor, 2013, p.11 ). Origin of old wars and new wars Contemporary or new wars are qualitatively dissimilar from the earlier wars and a clear distinction amid new and old wars must be made so as to be able to analyze modern day conflicts in an efficient manner. According to Kadlor (2012, p.3) during the past decades of the 20th century, a novel form of organized hostility was created. New wars therefore developed as a result of the termination of the cold war. Conflicts that emerged after cold war are distinguished by an alteration of actors, a huge rise in civilian casualties as well as emergence of a novel shadow warfare economy. Actors in modern day conflicts transformed from state actors to non-state actors and from usual armies to unusual armies. The major actors in old or traditional wars were armies who were vertically systematized hierarchical units and under the control and command of the national state (kadlor, 2012, p. 9). Munkler(2013, p. 16) argues that with the termination of cold war and the surfacing of novel wars, countries have lost their monopoly of martial forces and their authorities are being confronted by numerous non-state actors. Even though state armed forces are still viewed as integrant parties within modern day conflicts, a huge number of diverse actors like paramilitary units, criminal gangs, mercenary groups and local warlords and highly being engaged in wars and therefore making it highly complicated (Kadlor, 2010, p.9). In addition, contemporary wars are distinguished by a rise in violence along with a high ration of military to civilian causalities. The ration of military to civilian casualties used to be low in old wars, but this ratio has dramatically increased in contemporary or new wars. Munkler(2023, p. 15) notes that the increase of civilian to military ratio is as a result of the changing form of clashes, from intrastate to interstate, and the actuality that there does not exist distinctions amid combatants and civilians. Additionally, the new created war economy is a key feature of contemporary warfare, as it varies from the more traditional war economy by being decentralized and globalised with low participation of civilians in war along with high rates of unemployment. These economies are mostly in existence due to illegal trade of fire arms, drugs as well as valuable commodities like diamonds, oils and human trafficking (Kaldor, 2010, p. 45). The surfacing of contemporary war economies can be better explained with the example of the Liberian warlord, Charles Taylor, who utilized overseas companies for economic and financing reasons. This displays that modern conflicts transformed due to the outcome hat, via more deregulated and open global economies, belligerent want to both maintain and develop an immense economic interest in the continuation of the war. Charles Taylor generated a huge revenue from the exploitation of Liberia’s resources such as iron ore, gold and diamond ( Dufffield, 2011, p. 176). The case of Charles Taylor illustrates that the aim of new wars isn’t to win but somewhat to legitimize activities that would be crimes in times of peace (Dufffield, 2011, p. 178). Berdal (2011, p.15) notes that the exploitation of national resources is a regular feature of warfare. Plundering is an act as old as war itself. Newman (2009, p.183) notes that all modern wars are fought as a result of economic conflicts and reasons. New wars are different from old wars and in the real sense, post cold war battles have transformed in motives, complexity, frequency, support and violence. The diminish of interstate armed wars and perceived increase in the occurrence of civil conflicts since the termination of cold war, have led to a novel wave of concern in civil battles. This concern focuses upon ethnic competition as the source of wars and broadly regards civil conflicts of post cold war period or new civil conflicts as fundamentally diverse from the antecedent old civil conflicts. New civil conflicts are characterized as criminal other than political occurrence (Newman, 2009, p. 189). Logics in old wars and new wars According to Kadlor (2010, p.9) since the influential new conflict of Bosnia Herzegovina that took place from 1992 to 19995, the global violence has shifted from mainly state oriented battles , entailing a mass of armed forces along with top to down centralized planning, to a sequence of low intensity or hybrid clashes that entail private contractors, illegal sponsors and paramilitaries. Remarkably, nationals are usual targets for these new wars that are normally aimed as collateral damage. For this reason, contemporary conflicts are propelled by exclusive and normally extreme types of political identity (Malesovic, 2010, p.42). Kadlor (2012, p.15) argues that new wars are majorly driven by political economy. Monetary security is the major driver in raising the authority of the state, and by inference, its legal monopoly of national violence. In the absence of this autonomy, a crooked political oligarchy increases its position via illegal schemes, and crumbling social support scheme throws a huge number of unemployed individuals into the hands of the increasingly nationalist causes or a nation that is seeking identity. According to Kadlor(2010,p.7) new wars take place in situations where the revenues of the state decline as a result of economic decline along with the spread of corruption and criminality. Violence is highly privatized due to rising organized crime and also due to the surfacing of paramilitary groups and disappearance of political legitimacy. The outcome is a intense distortion of the functions of criminals and soldiers. Territorially based national sovereignty is thus under risk. Hoffman( 2011, p, 32) a collapsing monopoly of lawful organized conflict is corroded from above through transnationalization of martial forces along with institutionalization of bloc scheme and below through privatization of national safety in an entire manner of grounds There exist three key features of new wars. The first feature is that new wars are propelled by exclusive types of political identity. The second feature is that in new wars, the conduct of war has been transformed from territorially based conflicts into politically based maneuvers that cause fear and hate. The lat characteristic of new wars is that they are globalized economic wars that are predatory and decentralized, and are funded via remittances, raids and crime. Political objectives of new battles are claims to authority based upon identity. Labels, particularly ethnicity and religion are utilized as a base for political allegations based upon fragments as well as inward looking communities and situated in hollowed structure that was once occupied by the state. This is caused to two major drivers. The first driver is the reaction to the rising impotence and diminishing legitimacy of instituted political classes. The second driver is the insecurity connected with the globalization process (Kadlor, 2010, p.91). Actors, goals, methods and financing of old and new wars Acccording to Kadlor (2010, p.25) new wars possess a logic that is diverse from the logic of old wars, or wars the dominated in the twentieth and nineteenth centuries. There is a difference in actors of old and new wars. Regular national armed forces were involved in fighting old wars. On the contrary, new conflicts are fought by different groups of networks of both non-state and state actors, entailing the normal armed forces, mercenaries, warlords, paramilitaries, and privatized security contractors. In regard to goals, old battles were fought as a result of geopolitical interests or due to ideology both socialism or democracy ideology. New wars are being fought for tribal, ethnic or religious identity. Identity politics is logically diverse form of ideology or geopolitics. The major objective is to attain access to the nation for certain groups that might be both transnational and local other than to undertake certain programmes or policies in the wide civic interest (Hoffman, 2011, p. 40). The increase in identity politics is connected with novel communication technologies, along with immigration both form town to country as well as across the globe and the corrosion of the more inclusive, normally national based political ideologies such as post colonial nationalism or socialism. Identity politics is developed via war and therefore political enlistment is the major objective of battle other than an apparatus of war as it used to happen in old wars (Keen, 2012, 17). Different methods are used in old and new wars. In old warfare, fight was the significant encounter. The scheme of waging battle comprised of seizing a territory via military means. On the contrary, in the new wars, fights are not common and a territory is seized via political means, via regulation of the populace. A distinctive technique is the displacement of a population which is the forcible elimination of individuals who have different opinions or a dissimilar identity. Violence is mainly directed against citizens as a scheme of regulating territory other than against the enemy forces (Keen, 2012, p.26). The forms of financing differ in old and new wars. Traditional battles were mainly funded by states via taxation. In weak nations tax income is collapsing and novel types of rapacious private funding entail pillage and loot and smuggling in people, oil, drugs and diamonds. New warfare is stimulated by economic gain. Some individuals political violence covers for financial reasons while others take part in rapacious economic deeds to fund their political causes. Whilst economies of old wars were normally centralizing and mobilized the populace, new warfare are a portion of the open globalised and decentralized economy whereby there is low participation and income depend upon continued violence (Malesovic, 2010, p. 54). The loss of control of the monopoly of the state of physical hostility in failed states results to a minimal capability of the state to collect income through taxes and to strengthen social unity. This results to an associated privatization of hostility with the most common types beings paramilitary groups Kadlor (2012, 34) notes that corrosion of the tax scheme results to redistribution of subsisting assets in favor of the battling units. In addition, new wars are funded via exterior source of funds, like remittances, foreign governments, humanitarian assistance and diaspora support. This implies that informalization of battle is paralleled I informalization of economy. Conclusion New wars are essentially different from old wars. New wars differ in goals, methods of fights, the people involved in fighting and methods of financing. Old wars were fought by the usual state armed military forces while new wars are fought by both non-state and state groups involving warlords , mercenaries and paramilitaries whose aim of the battle is attainment of political identity. New wars are also different from old wars in regard to the methods of fighting. In old battles a fight was a significant encounter and the war was aimed at seizing a territory and financing comes from state taxes. In new wars, battles are rare and a territory is capture through a political means especially through the displacement of individuals who have different opinions or diverse identity, with taxation coming from eternal sources of funds. Bibliography Berdal, M 2011 The ‘new wars’ thesis revisited. In: Strachan, H & Scheipers, S, The Changing Character of War, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Duffield, M 2011, Global governance and the new wars: The merging of development and security, Zed Books, London. 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