Page 298 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo II

800 XXXIV Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

rise of real “emergent political complexes” , non-governmental entities or Post-Adjustment
22
States, based on political projects and rational dynamics. Domestic conflicts, and in general
emergency situations, would not be seen therefore only as a period of passage, irrational and
transitional explosions of violence, on the contrary, it would be considered as innovative and
an enduring adaptation to the globalization process. The nature of similar systems, therefore,
can only be understood keeping in mind the elasticity and the potentiality of informal econo-
mies that open large opportunity spaces at a global level overcoming traditional forms of
territorial, bureaucratic and judicial authority. In fact, the reference frame is the globalization
process where economic deregulation and increasing market influence have eroded States
power and legitimacy since the Seventies. The decline of the State-nation, meant as a devel-
opment model based on the State strength and efficiency, lead up to a new conception of the
political authority nature. The new pressures at a supranational and international level (mar-
kets growth, supranational institutions, intergovernmental organizations and NGOs) and at a
subnational level (processes of privatization and localization) modify the State sovereignty.
The new sovereignty forms are different between North and South. In fact, according to Duf-
field, while in the northern countries this tendency produces networks of economic coopera-
tion and regional systems, in the South it produces processes of fragmentation and political
authoritarianism. For this reason and in a similar scenario the southern countries activate
strategies of adaptation: these new centers of authority, so-called “emergent political com-
plexes” rise in order to exploit all the resources given by the informal economy networks.
Global political economies no longer trust the inclusive competence of the national State.
With a weakened center of power, multiple sovereignties arise exploiting the informal and
23
parallel economies. Post-adjustment States, mafias, “warlords” , private armies, rebellions:
24
they are the protagonists of the post-modern conflict.
These governmental and non-governmental entities exploit the potential of the network,
whereas for “network enterprise,” Castells intends the new form of organization of the glob-
al-informational economy . This new form of economic, social and political organization
25
of the society is characterized for its flexibility and horizontality as well as its autonomous
and decentralized components ability to perform in global trade networks. The war would be
adapted to this new network configuration of the society . Transnational wars, as in Afghan
26
and Colombian cases, do not represent the failure of the modernity; contrarily, they fully
realize and exploit all its potentialities.
Through the concept of war as a network enterprise we underline the war complexity
that cannot be reduced, according to some economicistic analyses, to the action of avid and

22 M. Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars, Zed Books, New York, 2001.
23 Some authors use the metaphor of new-medievalism in order to show the absence of a power center and the
formation of a complex system of poliarchic networks: see Cerny (1998), Verdery (1996) e Deibert (1997).
24 Warlordism is referred to the classic studies on the so called Chinese “warlords” that in the ‘20s, after the
collapse of the imperial dynasty, controlled wide zones of the country where the state authority was very
weak. See Sheridan J., China in Disintegration: The Republican Era in Chinese History 1912-1949, New
York, Free Press, 1975.
25 Castells Manuel, The Rise of the Network Society (vol. 1), Blackwell, Oxford, 1996.
26 Duffield, “War as a Network Enterprise. The New Security Terrain and its Implications” in Cultural Values,
2002, 6(1-2), pp. 153-165.