Call for Papers
Philosophy and New War
Edited by Bassam Romaya and Lisa Portmess
In the past fifteen years, philosophers, political scientists, historians, international relations
theorists, military ethicists, and policy analysts have grappled with the notion that contemporary
armed conflict has ushered in a new era of warfare, different from wars in the modern period.
With the release of Mary Kaldor’s first edition of New and Old Wars, many thinkers have
grappled with the changing nature of warfare and underscored its philosophical significance for
the ethical analysis of contemporary war.
New war theorists maintain that new wars introduce crucial differences that undermine existing
frameworks (such as Just War Theory) for the ethical analysis of war. Theorists emphasize
emergent properties of new wars that include the rise of intrastate identity-based conflicts,
asymmetric warfare involving states and non-state actors, the blurring of distinctions (e.g.,
combatant vs. noncombatant, state vs. non-state actors, real-time vs. imagistic/theatrical war,
state borders vs. unmarked/undeclared global war zones), perpetual nature of new wars, high
civilian to combatant death ratios, growing disregard for the laws of armed conflict, and
increased use of irregular (or prohibited) war strategies and tactics that may or may not include
the use of new technologies. Examples of common new war tactics (used by states and non-states
alike) include collective punishment, ethnic cleansing, genocide, use of human shields, state and
non-state terrorism, economic warfare, unmanned war (UAVs), autonomous weapon systems,
and cyberwarfare.
The new war hypothesis is not a unified doctrine: new war theorists such as Herfried Munkler,
Paul Gilbert, Chris Hables Gray, Mary Dudziak, Joseph Margolis, and others have appealed to
one or more of these key features in their work on contemporary war. While debates concerning
the new war hypothesis are frequently marginalized within broader philosophical analyses of
warfare, we intend for this collection to make an important and timely contribution to the
growing literature on new wars. We seek papers from a variety of philosophical approaches but
also welcome submissions with interdisciplinary approaches. This edited collection is currently
solicited by Palgrave Macmillan, though other academic presses may also be pursued.
Possible paper topics include but are not limited to:
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The ontologies of new wars
The ethical impact of new wars on societies involved in them
Different or ambiguous roles of new war actors
The role of technological development in fostering or averting new wars
Assessing asymmetry in new war conflict environments
Articulating the conflicting meanings of “new war” from a global perspective
The role of identity-based conflicts, globalization, or economic dimensions of the new
war thesis
An analysis of transformative qualities that distinguish new wars from modern
Clausewitzian wars
The notion of peace in light of the new war thesis
Critiques of the new war hypothesis or the work of individual new war theorists
The status of or challenges to international law in virtue of the rise of new wars
The idea of state borders in new wars, or the traversing of state lines in new war violence
The moral status of civilians or noncombatants in new war environments
An analysis of tactics used by multiple adversaries in new wars
The perpetual nature of new war violence
Case studies of contemporary conflicts and the features of new war
Developing alternative philosophical methods for the analysis of new war (beyond
conventional Just War frameworks)
Submission Guidelines:
1) Interested contributors are invited to submit a) completed papers of approximately 6,0008,000 words, along with an abstract of approximately 200 words, or b) an extended abstract of
500 to 700 words.
2) Please include a current CV with your submission and send your material in a Word or PDF
file by email to newwaranthology@yahoo.com.
3) The submission deadline for completed papers or extended abstracts is: October 31, 2013.
Please direct inquiries to Bassam Romaya at Bassam_Romaya@uml.edu
or Lisa Portmess at lportmes@gettysburg.edu
Please distribute widely!