New Wars

New wars is a term advanced by British academic Mary Kaldor to characterize warfare in the post-Cold War era. This form of warfare is characterized by:

Other terms used for the concept include "wars among the people", "wars of the third kind", "hybrid wars", "privatized wars", and "post-modern wars". The new wars thesis has been adopted and adapted by other authors, as well as critiqued from various perspectives.

Kaldor's definition of "new wars" is made within the context of a wider "new wars thesis" debate between academics on how to properly define or brand the apparent revolution in warfare in the post-Cold War world. Kaldor purports that new war characteristics must be analyzed within the context of globalization. Kaldor does admit that "new wars" are not necessarily new, in that they have no precedent in history; however, she insists on keeping the term because there is still a definite need for new policy responses. Old international strategies have failed to address the characteristics of new wars successfully and instead continue to treat it as old conventional warfare. The term is an antonym of conventional warfare whereupon conventional military weapons and battlefield tactics are no longer used between two or more states in open confrontation.

Other authors have also attempted to characterize the shift in warfare, but using other descriptors. Recognizing the blur between state and non-state actors and dual conflation of interstate and intrastate conflict, Frank Hoffman characterizes modern wars as "hybrid wars". John Mueller in Remnants of War describes modern warfare as "criminal" and perpetuated by small bands of greedy and predatory thugs. Martin Shaw chose the term "degenerate war" to describe how warfare is now directed toward the mass destruction of populations.

Often, the term "new war" is compared to or defined as "low intensity conflict", a term invented by the US Army which broadly encompasses all modern warfare that does not quite meet the threshold or level of violence found in conventional wars.

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