Mary Kaldor: New Wars as a Social Condition

The keynote speech by Mary Kaldor was part of the workshop ‘New Wars’ and the Human Condition—An Interdisciplinary Workshop, which took place at the IWM on 10-11 May 2017.

Building on her longstanding and groundbreaking research on the “New Wars,” this lecture by Mary Kaldor explains that the difference between old and new wars is not empirical but conceptual. New wars have a different logic from old wars. Old wars (both inter-state wars and classic civil wars) can be analyzed in Clausewitzean terms as a contest of wills. New wars are more like a social condition.

Mary Kaldor is Professor of Global Governance, director of the Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and CEO of the DFID-funded Justice and Security Research Programme. Kaldor is the author of several books, including The Ultimate Weapon is No Weapon: Human Security and the Changing Rules of War and Peace, New and Old Wars: Organised Violence in a Global Era, and Global Civil Society: An Answer to War. She was cochair of the Helsinki Citizens Assembly, a member of the International Independent Commission on Kosovo, and convenor of the Human Security Study Group, which reported to Javier Solana.

In cooperation with Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung (HIS).

Further information:
https://www.iwm.at/