Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T23:43:10.015Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The impurity of war

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 September 2009

François-Bernard Huyghe
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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
Information
International Review of the Red Cross , Volume 91 , Issue 873: Typology of armed conflicts , March 2009 , pp. 21 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © International Committee of the Red Cross 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

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.

3 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. Michael Eliot Howard and Peter Paret, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1989.

4 Gaston Bouthoul, L'infanticide différé, Hachette, Paris, 1970.

5 Clausewitz, above note 3, I, ch.1.

6 Ibid.

7 Galtung, Johan, ‘Violence, peace and peace research’, Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 6 (3) (1969), pp. 167–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Ex parte Quirin 317 US 1 1942.

9 Martin van Creveld, The Transformation of War, Free Press, New York, 1991.

10 On the notion of ‘pre-emptive’ (rather than preventive) war, see François-Bernard Huyghe, Quatrième guerre mondiale – Faire mourir et faire croire, Éditions du Rocher, Paris, 2004.

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

12 Catherine Bertho Lavenir and François-Bernard Huyghe (eds.), La scène terroriste, Cahiers de médiologie No. 13, Editions Gallimard, Paris, 2002, available at www.mediologie.org/collection/13_terrorisme/sommaire13.html (last visited 13 February 2009).

13 How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qa'ida, 2008, Rand Monograph Report, available at www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG741 (last visited 13 February 2009).

14 Andrew Latham, Understanding the RMA: Brandelian Insights into the transformation of Warfare, No. 2, PSIS, Geneva, 1999.

15 See Metz, Steven, ‘La guerre asymétrique et l'avenir de l'Occident’, Politique Etrangère, No. 1 (2003), pp. 26–40.Google Scholar

16 General Charles Krulak, Commandant US Marine Corps, Remarks at the National Press Club, Washington Transcript Series, 10 October 1997.

17 William S. Lind et al., ‘The changing face of war: into the fourth generation’, Marine Corps Gazette, October 1989, available at www.d-n-i.net/fcs/4th_gen_war_gazette.htm (last visited 19 February 2009).

18 Fidler, David, ‘The meaning of Moscow: “non-lethal” weapons and international law in the early 21st century’, International Review of the Red Cross, Vol. 87 (859) (2005), pp. 525–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 See definition in François-Bernard Huyghe, Maîtres du faire croire. De la propagande à l'influence, Vuibert, Paris, 2008.

20 Myriam Klinger, Héritage et actualité de la polémologie, Téraèdre, 2007; see also F. B. Huyghe, Anthologie de textes sur la polémologie, 2008, available at www.huyghe.fr/actu_482.htm (last visited 13 February 2009); ‘Polemology’; Ervin Laszlo, Linus Pauling and Chong-nyol Yu, World Encyclopedia of Peace, Pergamon Press, New York, 1986.

21 Immanuel Kant, Practical Philosophy, trans. and ed. Mary Gregor, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996, p. 12.

22 Lang Qiai and Xiangsui Wang, Unrestricted Warfare, Pan-American Publishing Company, Panama City, 2002.