Contemporary Irregular Conflicts

On the last issue of the academic review “Security, Terrorism, Society” it has been published my last paper titled “Contemporary Irregular Conflicts: New and Old Ideas”, which represents a summary of a long research work. Contemporary international system is at a political turning point due to security issues partially related to the concept of irregular warfare. Over the last three decades, several theories have emerged around the idea that war has changed and should no longer be considered in some areas and contexts state versus state. The goal of the essay is to analyse the nature of contemporary irregular warfare, showing, on the one hand, the continuities of the current debate with old strategic ideas (mainly related to the notion of insurgency) and, on the other hand, its consequences for politics and security. The issue of contemporary irregular conflicts is relevant because most of the modern theories arise from conflicts in the Mediterranean region: Israel-Palestinian conflict for van Creveld; Yugoslav wars for Kaldor; Hezbollah and Lebanon wars for the notion of Hybrid Warfare; Iraq for counterinsurgency and related concepts. Therefore studying them is a way to study not only the current strategic debate, and its legacy with past warfare, but also instability in the Mediterranean region using the lens of Strategic/Security Studies. Moreover, the paper aims at distilling and elucidating on the nature of irregular conflicts that are longer than conventional ones, involve population, use different tactics and approaches, and consequently terrorism emerges as one of the most used method.

The paper is available here.
The entire issue of the review is here.