War the Nature of Modern

¶ … War

The Nature of Modern War

If there is one thing that can be said about modern warfare with total certainty, it is that it is not the same in its carrying out either practically or ideologically speaking. That is, the technologies, instruments, strategies, and methodologies of warfare are undergoing/have undergone drastic changes, and the root causes behind wars and/or defining the groups at war with each other are also quite different from what they are. Defining anything in the negative is problematic, of course, and the vagueness of this description certainly does not improve such an attempt in this particular case: saying that war simply is not what it used to be provides no means of understanding war as it exists now. Starting with the idea that it has been fundamentally altered raises some specific questions, however, and in attempting to answer these questions a clearer positive definition of modern warfare might emerge -- might, because there is hardly consensus on the subject amongst scholars.

Mary Kaldor defines and describes "new wars" as essentially related to identities, a term that she uses to refer to the labels that people and their cultures use to delineate and separate themselves. Identities are largely fixed by birth, though Kaldor notes there are some exceptions, and because of their fixed and automatic nature these identities are inherently backward-looking: they are concerned with a shared history, real or imagined, and with a sense of commonality borne more of nostalgia than of a conscious and explicit common purpose for the future. The "politics of identity" can thus be contrasted to more forward-looking "politics of ideas" as being more reactive and closed to additions or evolutions within defined groups.

In Kaldor's view, "new wars" consist of smaller fighting groups using more guerilla tactics and relying less (or not at all) on conventions of warfare such as specific fields of battle, military units and equipment, and the like. The manner in which modern politics of identity fracture larger groups and create cohesion amongst smaller enclaves contributes to this, and as the world grows smaller through the forces of globalization local and regional governments are actually gaining greater control. National governments are losing both the capabilities and the legitimacy they possessed in the twentieth century, and smaller identity groups are attempting to reassert control in their regions of influence. In Kaldor's view, this is leading to warfare that takes place on a smaller scale both in terms of its quantifiable elements and in more abstract elements such as ideological scope or intent -- small identity groups rather than full nation states end up in conflicts, asserting certain rights or perspectives only in their own regions without attempting to assert more global control.

This contrasts completely with another theory of modern warfare put forth by Samuel Huntington, who agrees that warfare is transitioning away from its previous incarnation(s) but actually sees war and conflict increasing in its scope, especially from an ideological perspective. In Huntington's view, war in the modern era (beginning in the seventeenth century) has moved from wars between princes or monarchs (wars between individuals in authority, such as the animosity between certain French and English rulers of the period, for instance) to wars between nation-states (wars between peoples, such as the American Revolution as one example) to wars of ideology that involved several or many nations on both sides of the engagement (the two World Wars and even the Cold War serve as examples). Now, Huntington contends, warfare is continuing this trajectory of an increasing scale by becoming wars of civilization: essentially wars between Western and non-Western civilization(s). The commonality of Western civilization in terms of ideology and practical needs/desires now outweighs other bonds and divisions between these nations and the others of the world, to the point that nations cease to matter as the most potent political units -- another point of agreement between Huntington and Kaldor. Whereas Kaldor sees localities filling the power void left by the failure of nation-states, however, Huntington sees civilization-wide unity as the natural and empirically observable successor.