Have globalization, virulent ethnic differences, and globally operating insurgents fundamentally changed the nature of war in the last decade?
Interpretations of war as driven by politics and state rationale, formulated most importantly by the 19th century practitioner Carl von Clausewitz, have received strong criticism. Political explanations have been said to fall short in explaining conflicts in the Balkans, Africa, Asia and the attacks of 11 September 2001 in the United States.
This book re-evaluates these criticisms not only by scrutinising Clausewitz's arguments and their applicability, but also by a careful reading of the criticism itself. In doing so, it presents empirical evidence on the basis of several case studies, addressing various aspects of modern war, such as the actors, conduct and purposes of war.
1 Introduction: Debating the nature of modern war 2 Strategy in an age of ‘low-intensity’ warfare: why Clausewitz is still more relevant than his critics 3 The concept of conventional war and armed conflict in collapsed states 4 Warfare in civil wars 5 A different kind of war? September 11 and the United States’ Afghan war 6 New wars, old warfare? Comparing US tactics in Vietnam and Afghanistan 7 The wars in former Yugoslavia in the 1990s: bringing the state back in 8 International operations to contain violence in a complex emergency 9 Theories of globalisation and sub-state conflict 10 Elaborating the ‘new war’ thesis 11 Rethinking the nature of war: some conclusions
Biography
Isabelle Duyvesteyn is a lecturer at the Department of History of International Relations, Utrecht University, The Netherlands.
Jan Angstrom is a researcher at the Department of War Studies, Swedish National Defence College.
