Understanding the Changing Nature of Conflict Against the Backdrop of Globalization

Abstract

This chapter introduces the contextual framework within which this book’s argument has to be understood—a transnational context in which the state competes with state and non-state actors in complex conflict environments. The state’s challenged role in a post-modern international system and the altered nature of the state’s role in complex post-modern operational environments constitutes the conceptual foundation for understanding security provision as a global good in humanitarian intervention as a typical post-modern conflict. In particular, this chapter demonstrates two major paradigm shifts in post-modern warfare that affect the soldier’s and the contractor’s conduct in future military humanitarian interventions: first, the privatization of force; and second, the use of unconventional insurgency/terrorist strategies and tactics.