Farewell to „eternal peace“? New wars and their moral and legal challenges

This essay first discusses modern wars and the idea of „eternal peace“ as developed in modernity. It shows how in the 20th century the reality of war (as well as the concept of peace) was already transformed due to the development of new technologies such as the nuclear bomb. Now, peace was replaced by a „cold war“. The essay then goes on to introduce the concept of post-national wars (as opposed to modern national wars). It argues that this concept fails fully to describe contemporary warfare. What is needed is a deeper analysis that considers most recent technological developments such as the world wide web or drone technology and the way these technologies paradigmatically change the concept and reality of war (and of peace, too). The essay concludes by arguing that the moral and legal challenges of this kind of war deserve more attention than they are getting in the current discussion