New Wars on the Balkans - Business as Usual

The monopoly over the exercise of violence is the main defining element of states according to the Weberian ideal-type taxonomy. (Weber 1991, in Jung, 78) However, the ability to wield effective control over a fixed territory and to use physical force, extract taxes and operate a system of arbitration has been claimed and successfully attained by other actors. The military conflict in Former Yugoslavia, which raged throughout the 1990s and has serious implications to this day, has often been assessed in humanitarian and traditional International Relations terms. In this paper, I discuss the Balkan conflicts as 'New Wars' which unlike traditional statist military exercise pose a lot more questions and confront one's perceptions of right and wrong.