How have certain modern conflicts been described as 'New Wars?'

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How have certain modern conflicts been classified as ‘New Wars?’

Whilst ‘old’ wars have sometimes been referred to as ‘interstate industrial warfare’ which involve wars between states being fought by armed forces in uniform, with decisive encounters being decided on one battlefield, ‘new’ wars  have been described by Mary Kaldor as ‘intra-state’ wars. In the last 20 years we have seen a paradigm shift; from armies with comparable forces doing battle on a field to strategic confrontation between a range of combatants using different types of weapons .These so-called ‘new’ wars which involve the use of civilians as both targets and objectives to be won, have been said to have been led by globalisation, due to the fact that the integration created has led to “fragmentation,” as seen in the Yugoslav wars with these wars being wars on identity.

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An identity war is a conflict in which the quest for cultural regeneration, expressed through the demand that a people’s collective identity is publicly and politically recognised, is a primary motivation for conflict. These ‘new’ wars have constructed new sectarian identities (religious, ethical or tribal) that undermine the sense of a shared political community. They recreate the sense of political community along the new lines through purpose of fear and hate. These ‘intra-state’ identity conflicts have been prominent in many recent conflicts, with the Iraq war and The Arab Spring seeing the recurrence of tensions between the Shia and Shiite ...

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