Artur Malantowicz
Civil War in Syria and the ‘New Wars’ Debate [View PDF]
ABSTRACT
The last two decades saw a plethora of contributions to the academic debate on the shifting character of contemporary warfare. Some scholars praised the notion of unique features in the nature of contemporary violent conflicts and thereby coined new terms and approaches, such as ‘new wars’, ‘postmodern wars’, ‘wars of the third kind’, ‘peoples’ wars’, ‘privatized wars’ or ‘hybrid wars’; some, on the contrary, questioned the rationality of such distinctions, believing that these not-so-unique characteristics were long-present in the history of humankind. This article aims to review the main arguments of the dispute and look into its applicability in the context of the unfolding civil war in Syria, which, due to its significance to regional security, gained substantial international attention. The analysis proves the ‘New Wars’ discourse right in most of its basic assumptions about actors, methods applied, spread of violence and war economy typical for the new types of conflicts. The only point of disagreement was found in relation to the objectives of new wars since the Syrian conflict in particular and other contemporary wars in general still have a deep ideological and political background. Truly, these are frequently muffled by gratuitous violence leading to population displacement, but the importance of ideology should not be diminished notwithstanding. Altogether, as Newman rightly indicated, the ‘New Wars’ theories contribute to our understanding of civil wars by focusing our attention on the multidimensional concept of comprehensive security with its social, economic, political and human elements.
Keywords: new wars theory, new wars debate, civil war in Syria