The "New War" in Iraq

Abstract

'In the images of falling statues', said President Bush on 1 May 2003, as, dressed in fatigues on the deck of USS Abraham Lincoln, he announced the end of hostilities in Iraq, 'we have witnessed the arrival of a new era'.1 Like his Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, President Bush claimed to have discovered a new form of warfare, making use of information technology so that war can be rapid, precise, and low in casualties. In the immediate aftermath of the invasion, military commentators were jubilant. Bush himself described the invasion as 'one of the swiftest advances in history'.2 Max Boot, writing in Foreign Affairs described the war as 'dazzling'. 'That the United States and its allies won anyway and won so quickly must rank as one of the signal achievements of military history'.3 The ongoing war in Iraq is, indeed, a new type of war in which all kinds of new technologies ranging from sophisticated satellite-based systems to mobile phones and Internet have been used. But if we are to understand the war in ways that are useful to policy makers, then its novel character should not be defined in terms of technology. What is new about the war needs to be analysed in terms of the disintegration of states and the changes in social relations under the impact of globalization rather than in terms of technology. This is the meaning of the distinction I make between 'old' and 'new' wars.4 'Old wars' are wars between states where the aim is the military capture of territory and the decisive encounter is the battle between armed forces. The 'new wars', in contrast, take place in the context of failing states. They are wars fought by networks of state and non-state actors, where battles are rare and violence is directed mainly against civilians, and which are characterized by a new type of political economy involving a combination of extremist politics and criminality. Bush's and Rumsfeld's conception of a new war, it can be argued, is more like an updated version of old war, making use of new technology. The failure by the United States to understand the reality on the ground in Iraq and the tendency to impose its own view of what war should be like has been immensely dangerous. It has fomented