Mary Kaldor, "Beyond Militarism, Arms Races, and Arms Control"
 Following the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, people have come to understand the dangers posed by unofficial warfare-that is, conflicts not waged by governments but by paramilitary organizations that are often international and clandestine. While the dangers have become clear, the most effective ways to respond to this kind of warfare are far less obvious. Few writers in our time have addressed the problem more thoughtfully than Mary Kaldor. In the aftermath of September 11, Kaldor wrote in The Nation about just how different this new kind of warfare is: "What we have learned about this kind of war is that the only possible exit route is political. There has to be a strategy of winning hearts and minds to counter the strategy of fear and hate. There has to be an alternative politics based on tolerance and inclusiveness, which is capable of defeating the politics of intolerance and exclusion and capable of preserving the space for democratic politics. In the case of the current new war, what is needed is an appeal for global-not American-justice and legitimacy, aimed at establishing the rule of law in place of war and at fostering understanding between communities in place of terror."
Currently the director of the Center for the Study of Global Governance at the London School of Economics, Kaldor has spent her professional life studying globalization and the transformation of modern warfare. In the 1980s, she helped to cofound European Nuclear Disarmament (END), a nongovernmental organization dedicated to convincing Western European states to refuse to stockpile a nuclear arsenal. Subsequently, Kaldor cochaired the Helsinki Citizen's Assembly, an international consortium of nongovernmental organizations promoting global peace and human rights; she was also a member of the Independent International Commission to Investigate the Kosovo Crisis. The author of numerous books on global and European politics, her most recent work, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era (1999), documents the shifts from an earlier form of warfare between armed combatants, where eighty percent of the casualties were soldiers, to the current form of organized violence, where eighty percent of the casualties are civilians. In the public talk reproduced here, Kaldor draws on this research to describe the challenges that unofficial warfare poses in the twenty-first century and to argue for the necessity of developing an international, humanitarian response to contain such conflicts.
Kaldor, Mary. "Beyond Militarism, Arms
Races, and Arms Control." Talk delivered at the Nobel Peace Prize
Symposium, December, 2001.
Biographical information from the
London School of Economics and Political Science web site.
Quotation from "Wanted:
Global Politics," The Nation, November 5, 2001.
Links to Explore:
"Beyond Militarism,
Arms Races and Arms Control": a hypertext version of Kaldor's
essay, with hyperlinks that provide additional information about the events
and ideas she discusses, as well as links to the other talks given at
this symposium on "new war."
"Good Muslim,
Bad Muslim – An African Perspective": an essay by Mahmood
Mamdani that seeks to complicate media representations of Islam and argues
for seeing recent developments not as a "clash of civilizations"
but as a "clash within civilizations."
The International Criminal
Court:home page for the United Nations' International Criminal Court,
which was put into effect on July 1, 2002. Includes links to an overview
page, which explains the history preceding the formation of this court,
and a
list of the nations who have ratified the Rome statute that brought
the court into being.
USA for the International Criminal
Court: home page for USAforICC.org, an organization committed to getting
the United States to resign the treaty that formed the International Criminal
Court. This organization is funded by the Campaign for United Nations
Reform.
Questions for Learning:
- "Beyond
Militarism, Arms Races and Arms Control" begins by establishing
a difference between "new war" and "Clausewitzean or
modern war." The hyperlinked version of Kaldor's includes a link
to Clausewitz's
On War, where he made his now famous declaration that, "WAR
IS ONLY A CONTINUATION OF STATE POLICY BY OTHER MEANS." After you've
had a chance to read through the Clausewitz' text, what would you say
his theory of war is? Would Clausewitz that any other social organization
besides a state can wage war?
- What practical consequences would follow from taking the "African
perspective" that Mahmood Mamdani recommends in "Good
Muslim, Bad Muslim"? How do you think American foreign policy
would have to change if "Official America" were to adopt Professor
Mamdani's view that this nation has been found on "on two monumental
crimes: the genocide of the Native American and the enslavement of the
African American"?
- Over fifty years in the making, the newly formed International
Criminal Court emerges out of the United Nations commitment to "securing
universal respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms of individuals
throughout the world." In particular, the establishment of the
ICC is seem as a decisive step in "the fight against impunity and
the struggle for peace and justice and human rights in conflict situations
in today's world." After you read the overview, can you explain
why it has taken fifty years for this court to be established? How will
this court be able to respond to the developments of "new war"?
- After you have visited the USA
for the International Criminal Court web site, can you summarize
the arguments against signing this treaty? Is the United States' historically
unprecedented move of "unsigning" this treaty itself evidence
of how the definition of politics and the process of justice have been
altered by the emergence of the "new war"?
Questions for Connecting:
-
In "A World on the Edge," Amy Chua argues that "market-dominant minorities are the Achilles' heel of free-market democracy" because their success inspires resentment that leads to instability and violence. In such a context, is it advisable for First World countries like the United States to move "beyond militarism," as Kaldor recommends? If the U.S. began to support a greater degree of international cooperation, would this approach to political unrest also help to defuse the tensions created by economic inequality, or might it actually worsen those tensions by making America's wealth and power even more frustratingly obvious? Would Chua agree with Kaldor's proposals for responding to netforce threats?
For additional connecting suggestions, please go to assignments and more assignments.
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