ABSTRACT
The end of the East –West con flict nurtured expectations that war and threats of war would from now on belong to the past. Mankind could finally realize its age-old dream of lasting, if not perpetual, peace, and thereby soon pocket a considerable peace dividend by reducing defence budgets. These expectations endorsed prognoses by numerous scholars, from Auguste Comte to Joseph Schumpeter, who regarded the penchant for war and military affairs as the disposition of an élite, which they thought would gradually disappear with the development of industrialization and capitalism. Immanuel Kant’s essay Perpetual Peace was also based on the idea that the spirit of commerce, at least in the long run, is incompatible with that of war. After this development had been blocked by nationalism and totalitarianism, it was thought that with the end of the bloc confrontation, all of those dynamics and processes would resume and subsequently cause the disappearance of war. This, of course, was a delusion. What was coming to an end was the era of conventional interstate wars, of the old wars, but not war itself. This distinction between old and new wars – and the historic transition from the former to the latter – is the subject of this chapter. It is structured in three parts: first, the transition from old to new wars is traced in recent history. Second, some objections to the concept of new wars are discussed. The third part presents a conclusion and ventures an outlook on the future of warfare.
