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The impurity of war

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 September 2009

Abstract

Progressive democratization, the presence of a military superpower and the dream of an international order maintained by an international authority do not enhance the appearance of conventional armed conflicts. However, the discovery of new frailties that can be exploited by aggressors, the proliferation of motives – including ideological motives – for waging war, and the spread of technologies that can be used in new forms of warfare have led to war and armed conflicts breaking out of their classic mould, becoming hybrid and going beyond their previous boundaries. The author argues for an updated polemology which endeavours to explain the mechanisms of these new types of warfare.

Type
Typology of armed conflicts
Copyright
Copyright © International Committee of the Red Cross 2009

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References

1 Alberico Gentilis (De jure belli, 1585) defined war as ‘armorum publicorum justa contentio’, or ‘war is an armed conflict that is public and just’ (just in the eyes of those practising it, of course).

2 Including ‘performative’ statements which create a new situation merely by virtue of having been pronounced. See John Langshaw Austin, How to Do Things with Words, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1962.

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11 Giulietto Chiesa, La guerra infinita, Feltrinelli, Milan, 2002.

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