Afghanistan and Iraq each had authoritarian regimes that were on the verge of collapse when the United States invaded. In each case, the U.S. and its allies have faced loose networks of combatants rather than a standing army.

In those ways and more, the two Middle East conflicts meet Mary Kaldor’s definition of “new wars.” The author of New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era shared her perspectives when she delivered the 12th annual Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh C.S.C. Lecture in Ethics and Public Policy.

Kaldor is professor of global governance and director of the Centre for the Study of Global Governance, London School of Economics. She is highly regarded for her innovative work on democratization, conflict, and globalization. Kaldor argues that in the context of globalization, what we think of as war is becoming an anachronism. In its place is a type of organized violence that could be described as a mixture of war, organized crime, and massive violations of human rights.

Her March 28 talk was titled “The New Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.” She began with her perspective that President George Bush’s and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsefeld’s vision of new war is actually updated old war, in which the latest technology is grafted onto World War II-era strategies of aerial bombardment and defensive maneuvers.

Typical of countries embroiled in new wars, both Iraq and Afghanistan had authoritarian regimes that were on the verge of collapse when the U.S. and its allies invaded in 2002-03, she said. Neither state could generate enough tax income to support itself. Both
were experiencing a big rise in crime — the poppy trade in Afghanistan, corruption in Iraq. Since Saddam Hussein’s regime fell in Iraq and the Taliban lost to the United States in Afghanistan, battles have been fought not by regular armed forces, but by loose networks of state and non-state actors, such as religious party
militias.

In both countries the primary victims of war have been civilians, mostly because of the inability to distinguish insurgents from civilians — another hallmark of new wars. “The United States has been dragged more and more into a new war,” Kaldor noted, “and the more it presents it as an old war, in which U.S. democracy is fighting Islamic terrorism, the more Islamic terrorists and the more new war it spreads.”

The situation in Iraq is especially depressing, she told her audience in the Hesburgh Center auditorium.

“The only alternative I see is creation of an international protectorate for both countries, authorized by the United Nations, in which you see a big increase not just of forces, but also policemen, reconstruction experts. Most importantly, they would see their primary job not of defeating insurgents, but protecting individuals. America would have to play a big role — it would need a huge rethinking of attitudes toward multilateralism and war.”

Kaldor put that suggestion into a global context in her March 29 lecture, “Just War and Human Security.” She began by saying that a transformation of global society is under way, driven by five changes:

•   The emergence of a global consciousness, emerging in part from the ability to see the Earth from space, which underscored its fragility and people’s shared responsibility.
•   Increased migration. “Most people belong to several overlapping communities.”
•   Global interconnectedness. Many important decisions are no longer made by states, but by organizations such as the World Bank.
•   The changing character of warfare. “Battles are really too destructive to be fought. We learned that in the Second World War.”

In such a transformed society, she said, the goals of war would be protection of civilians, and stabilization rather than victory.
Kaldor contrasted this humanitarian “just cause” for war with the traditional “just war” theory, which she considers outdated. “It’s very easy to shift from just war as a kind of ethical guide to just war as a way of simply legitimizing murder.”