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New Wars

Restructuring the Global Military Sector, Volume I

Since the mid-1980s there have been substantial cuts in military spending everywhere except Pacific Asia. The reasons are both political, such as the end of the Cold War, democratization in Africa and Latin America, and economic, with structural adjustment programmes, debt and cuts in public spending. This is the first volume of a study by the United Nations University to investigate the changes taking place world-wide in armed forces, arms industries and all other military-related activity. The main conclusion of the study is that a fundamental transformation is taking place in the nature of warfare. It argues that recent wars arose from the disintegration of state structures. Participation in wars is low, compared with earlier wars, as are casualties. However, the new wars are very disruptive in social terms. The book argues that it is possible to identify a certain logic to the new wars which can be analyzed so as to provide a basis for alternative forms of conflict prevention and resolution. New Wars is the first of a three-volume study commissioned by UNU/WIDER to investigate the changes taking place worldwide in armed forces, arms industries, and all other military-related activities.

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Editor

Mary Kaldor

Basker Vashee

Details

December 1997

Continuum International Publishing Group,

Volume 1, Number of Volumes 3

© UNU-WIDER

Region

Africa

Table of contents
  1. Part I
    1. Introduction
    Mary Kaldor, Basker Vashee
  2. Part I
    2. Organized Crime and New Wars
    Cherif Bassiouni
  3. Part I
    3. An Avalanche of Guns: Light Weapons Trafficking and Armed Conflict in the post-Cold War Era
    Michael Klare
  4. Part I
    4. Islam and Social Conflict
    Mohammed El Sayed Said
  5. Part I
    5. The United Nations, the Rule of Law and Humanitarian Intervention
    Richard A. Falk
  6. Part II
    6. The Political Economy of the War in Bosnia-Herzegovina
    Vesna Bojicic-Dzelilovic, Mary Kaldor
  7. Part II
    7. Wars in the Transcaucasus
    Arkadii Popov
  8. Part II
    8. Russian Peace-keeping Forces in the post-Soviet Area
    Alexander Sokolov
  9. Part II
    9. New Forms of International Intervention: The United Nations Military-Civilian Intervention in Cambodia
    Reg Austin
  10. Part II
    10. Conflicts in South Asia: Kashmir and the Tamil Eelam
    Radha Kumar
  11. Part II
    11. Contemporary Warfare in Africa
    Alex de Waal
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