CIAO DATE: 9/07
Culture and Conflict: Volume 56 (Winter 2005)
In this article, Alessandro Dal Lago analyses the new forms of international conflict through which the American power manages to impose its agenda to the governments and/or regimes that would resist it or are considered a threat. The author enumerates the main characteristics of this new interventionism, while carefully distinguishing the latter from classical wars. The first characteristic is the asymmetry of status existing between the protagonists of these new wars, or rather the refusal to recognise any kind of political legitimacy to those who oppose the American military power. A second feature is that through this kind of interventionism, war, that used to be considered an exceptional practice, becomes a normal way of eliminating any form of resistance to the existing order. Finally, these interventions and the way they are implemented blur the very distinction between the civilian and the military, as they were traditionally understood. In this respect, these ambiguous wars also affect western societies though the fight against terrorism. These three characteristics lead the author to use the metaphor of a « global police » to analyse contemporary military interventionism.