WHAT IS DISTINCTIVELY NEW ABOUT SO-CALLED ‘NEW’ WARS?

Abstract

In the post-Cold war era, there has been a growing tendency to suggest the classification of ‘new’ wars, since the perception of the threat has changed. Since threats coming from within states have recently become dominant, many scholars have studied this development. The consensus they have reached is that this type of threat represents a different kind of war. Kalevi Holsti has named it a third kind of war (1996); Martin van Creveld has named it ‘Low-Intensity Conflict’ (1991); and Mary Kaldor has named it ‘new war’ (1999). This article will embrace Mary Kaldor’s ‘new war’ concept and use it to analyse and describe this different kind of war and compare it with old wars. In contrast to these aforementioned arguments, some scholars, such as Edward Newman and Stathis N. Kalyvas, have argued that there are no new wars in the contemporary world. According to them, many features of the so-called new wars can be seen in old wars. This paper also aims to unfold whether the new wars are in fact new or not. To better observe this, first the characteristics of new wars and old wars will be considered and then they will be compared to find out what is distinctively new about so-called new wars.