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Introduction, Global Governance and the New Wars

Author: M Duffield
Date: 2001
Size: 21 pages (1.31 MB)

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Summary

Since the mid-1990s, changing perceptions of war and security have led to the ‘radicalisation of development’. Aid policy has shifted from humanitarian relief towards conflict resolution and societal reconstruction to avert future violence. What has triggered these changes? How has the nature of war changed since the end of the Cold War? Can the new development agenda deliver security in the face of ‘new wars’? This introductory chapter of the book “Global Governance and the New Wars” presents a critical reflection on the incorporation of war into development discourse. Northern policy-makers now focus on the security threat of underdevelopment in the South fomenting international instability through conflict, criminal activity and terrorism. The merging of the development and security agendas has led to a new political project, the ‘liberal peace’, which seeks to transform dysfunctional and war-affected societies into cooperative and stable entities.

Using a ‘systems’ approach, a new system of global governance is identified. The radical social transformation agenda is bringing together governments, NGOs, military establishments and private companies in networks of strategic governance relations that are increasingly privatised and militarised.

Other important findings are:

• The changing nature of North-South relations involves a shift from hierarchical and territorial relations of government to polyarchical, non-territorial and networked relations of governance.
• Changes in international trade during the last few decades have increased Southern exclusion from formal trade, leading to an expansion of parallel and shadow trans-border trade.
• The ‘new wars’ witnessed since the end of the Cold War involve networks of state actors, social groups, diasporas and strongmen, and have created ‘innovative’ forms of protectionism, legitimacy and entitlements to wealth.
• In both liberal peace and the new wars, traditional distinctions between people, army and government have been blurred, and new ways of projecting power have emerged.
• Interactions between the strategic complexes of liberal peace and the new wars have involved accommodation and complicity, for example where relief interventions have encouraged famine or fuelled conflict.

The author makes the following conclusions:

• It is questionable whether the increasingly privatised and regionally divided strategic complexes of liberal governance will be able to promote security that is socially and geographically inclusive.
• Increased attention is therefore needed in academic and policy circles to understanding the new development-security terrain.
• To understand the organisational dynamics involved, it is useful to use a systems approach, which focuses on interconnections, processes and self-transformation.

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Source: Duffield, M., 2001, 'Introduction, Global Governance and the New Wars', in Global Governance and the New Wars: the Merging of Development and Security, Zed Books, London.