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The impurity of war

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 September 2009

François-Bernard Huyghe
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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

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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.

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.

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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).

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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.

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