New Old Wars

Deals with the implications of 'the new wars' in the post 9-11 world. This work shows how old war thinking in Iraq has greatly exacerbated what is the archetypal new war - with insurgency, chaos and the occupying forces' lack of direction prescient of a different kind of conflict emerging in the 21st Century.

Since 1989, the threat of nuclear war has receded and so has the threat of large-scale interstate conventional war. Yet during the 1990s millions have died in wars in Africa, Eastern Europe and elsewhere and millions more have become refugees or displaced persons. In this pathbreaking analysis, Mary Kaldor argues that, in the context of globalization, 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, which she calls 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. Political leaders and international institutions have been helpless in the face of the spread of these wars mainly because they have not come to terms with their logic; the new wars are treated either as old wars or else as anarchy. 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. New and Old Wars will be of great interest to students of international relations, politics and political thought as well as to all those interested in the changing nature and prospect of warfare.

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.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER SHORTLISTED for the 2021 Lionel Gelber Prize Thoughtful and brilliant insights into the very nature of war--from the ancient Greeks to modern times--from world-renowned historian Margaret MacMillan. War--its imprint in our lives and our memories--is all around us, from the metaphors we use to the names on our maps. As books, movies, and television series show, we are drawn to the history and depiction of war. Yet we nevertheless like to think of war as an aberration, as the breakdown of the normal state of peace. This is comforting but wrong. War is woven into the fabric of human civilization. In this sweeping new book, international bestselling author and historian Margaret MacMillan analyzes the tangled history of war and society and our complicated feelings towards it and towards those who fight. It explores the ways in which changes in society have affected the nature of war and how in turn wars have changed the societies that fight them, including the ways in which women have been both participants in and the objects of war. MacMillan's new book contains many revelations, such as war has often been good for science and innovation and in the 20th century it did much for the position of women in many societies. But throughout, it forces the reader to reflect on the ways in which war is so intertwined with society, and the myriad reasons we fight.

"On War" by Carl von Clausewitz (translated by J. J. Graham). Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

One of NPR's Best Books of 2019 “Lyrical . . . A thoughtful perspective on America’s role overseas.” —Washington Post From a decorated Marine war veteran and National Book Award finalist, an astonishing reckoning with the nature of combat and the human cost of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. “War hath determined us.” —John Milton, Paradise Lost Toward the beginning of Places and Names, Elliot Ackerman sits in a refugee camp in southern Turkey, across the table from a man named Abu Hassar, who fought for al-Qaeda in Iraq and whose connections to the Islamic State are murky. At first, Ackerman pretends to have been a journalist during the Iraq War, but after establishing a rapport with Abu Hassar, he takes a risk by revealing to him that in fact he was a Marine special operation officer. Ackerman then draws the shape of the Euphrates River on a large piece of paper, and his one-time adversary quickly joins him in the game of filling in the map with the names and dates of places where they saw fighting during the war. They had shadowed each other for some time, it turned out, a realization that brought them to a strange kind of intimacy. The rest of Elliot Ackerman's extraordinary memoir is in a way an answer to the question of why he came to that refugee camp, and what he hoped to find there. By moving back and forth between his recent experiences on the ground as a journalist in Syria and its environs and his deeper past in Iraq and Afghanistan, he creates a work of remarkable atmospheric pressurization. Ackerman shares vivid and powerful stories of his own experiences in combat, culminating in the events of the Second Battle of Fallujah, the most intense urban combat for the Marines since Hue in Vietnam, where Ackerman's actions leading a rifle platoon saw him awarded the Silver Star. He weaves these stories into the latticework of a masterful larger reckoning with contemporary geopolitics through his vantage as a journalist in Istanbul and with the human extremes of both bravery and horror. At once an intensely personal story about the terrible lure of combat and a brilliant meditation on the larger meaning of the past two decades of strife for America, the region, and the world, Places and Names bids fair to take its place among our greatest books about modern war.

Donald Trump’s insurgent candidacy and subsequent presidency are larger than the man. He has ridden a wave of populist anger, conservatism, and fervor for reform that is aimed directly at The Swamp: the entrenched powers-that-be in Washington and elsewhere, the Old Order of an elite government-media-academia triad. Swamp rulers and warriors alike have set the tone for American politics virtually unchallenged for a generation; now, however, they are caught surprised and flat-footed by the populist revolt that threatens their stranglehold on our nation’s policy and politics. Predictably, the Old Order has spent the Trump presidency attempting to delegitimize the New Populism—defining legitimate popular dissent as an outgrowth of racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry, while executing vicious personal assaults on the character of anyone who speaks for the movement, whether it’s Donald Trump, members of his administration, his few admirers in the media, or even average Trump-supporting Americans who have had the audacity to speak out. These explosive Swamp Wars, erupting almost daily in “breaking news” headlines, represent a pitched battle for the heart, soul, and future of America.