The Changing Nature of War (PO9D1)

In recent decades popular perceptions of the nature of war have begun to transform. While open armed conflict between states has become increasingly rare, debates about war have come to entail an ever-growing use of prefixes as a means of helping to categorise and understand contemporary armed conflicts. Thus, we hear talk of civil wars, insurgency wars, new wars, ethnic wars, virtual wars, spectator wars, cyber wars, hybrid wars, humanitarian wars, vicarious wars, and even the possible emergence of post-human war. Alongside, and in conjunction, claims are also frequently made that processes of privatisation, technologisation and the ongoing 'revolution in military affairs' are changing how, where and by whom wars are fought, while the emergence of a so-called MIME-NET (military-industrial-media-entertainment network) is also promoting processes of militarisation throughout societies in new ways.

This module will encourage students to reflect on and interrogate these various claims about the social, economic, political, normative and technological transformations in the nature of armed conflict in the contemporary age. In particular, focus will be placed on how claims about such transformations (and the transformations themselves) raise important political and ethical questions about the use of force and its utility in providing and promoting security.

Students will learn to comprehend and work with the technical concepts and language of security studies, as well as to critically interrogate those concepts and the claims frequently made about contemporary war and conflict. The module will be assessed through a 5,000 word essay.

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