Background The world of work is rapidly changing, and military organisations are no exception. Military organisations are increasingly subject to political and public scrutiny. At the same time, various treaties and codes of conduct have placed greater accountability on soldiers and military leaders for their actions during times of peace and combat. The transformation of the roles which military organisations fulfil, as well as the way in which soldiers and military leaders are to conduct themselves, led to the relatively recent introduction of the term ‘New Wars'. The new war construct encapsulates models, theories and approaches which stand in stark contrast to those of traditional warfare and has not yet received much attention from scholars in the field of leadership. In an attempt to respond to the various contextual factors encompassing a modern approach to warfare, military leaders need to adopt new, i.e. more contextually relevant, approaches and strategies in order to accomplish the desired outcomes of various crucial missions within a changed context. Aim of the research study The aim of the present research study was, therefore, to identify a new leadership theory, model and/or approach, which will be better suited to a changing military landscape. In order to achieve this aim, a novel view on leadership, i.e. virtuous leadership, was suggested. It is argued here that virtuous leadership will enhance military performance within a modern operational environment. In the present study, the direct and indirect relationship between virtuous leadership, new war practices and military performance was investigated. Research design and method Given the dearth of literature in this field of study, an exploratory research design was employed to gain insights pertaining to the proposed relationship between Virtuous Leadership, New Wars and Military Performance. A composite questionnaire consisting of items responded to on Likert-type response scales, and open-ended questions were designed to measure the constructs under investigation. Qualitative data from open-ended questions, as well as quantitative data from close-ended questions, was, therefore, collected, i.e. a mixed-method approach was employed to collect data. The data was further collected crosssectionally, i.e. at a given point in time from a convenient or non-probable sample of military personnel (n=138). Data analysis Descriptive statistics and inferential statistics were calculated to summarise sample statistics and determine the strength and direction of the relationship between variables of interest, respectively. The PROCESS procedure (Hayes, 2018) was further employed to estimate the mediating effect of new war practices on the relationship between virtuous leadership and military performance. Results The statistical analyses revealed a statistically significant positive relationship between virtuous leadership and military performance; virtuous leadership and new war practices; as well as between new war practices and military performance. The results further revealed a statistically significant direct and indirect, i.e. a partially mediated, relationship, i.e. that new war practices significantly mediated the relationship between virtuous leadership and military performance. Findings Virtuous leadership is positively attributed to positive organisational outcomes. These research findings suggest that military organisations could enhance desired organisational outcomes by incorporating virtuousness with other leadership approaches for optimum military performance. Contribution Based on these findings of the current study, the military leadership theory has hopefully been enriched with new construct and insights. It is therefore recommended that virtuous leadership should be part of leadership training from the junior level in order to shape desired military conduct within and beyond the organisational premises. Qualitative insights suggested that military leaders demonstrated outstanding communication skills, military professionalism, compassion and exemplary leadership throughout peacekeeping deployment. However, most soldiers cited competence, emotional intelligence, courage and fairness as attributes that require further development to enhance leadership effectiveness in a new war context.

Contemporary counterinsurgency has been characterised by a shift from the ‘kill or capture’ of insurgents to prioritising winning over civilian populations. This focus on the population brings a particular skillset to the centre of military practice. Prioritising understanding culture, training, mentoring and relationships, practices previously associated with peacekeeping operations are conducted alongside combat. Feminist literature on peacekeeping has traced the relationship between entrenched hierarchies of gender and race in military institutions and abuses perpetrated by peacekeepers. This thesis contributes to that literature. It focuses on the British Armed Forces to analyse how identity is constructed in relation to contemporary counterinsurgency, in order to understand changing military roles and the potential impact on civilian populations. The thesis comprises a feminist discourse analysis of select British military doctrine. Doctrine draws together practice, teaching, and policy and offers a productive site to study institutional identity. The analysis shows how these non-combat practices are made sense of in relation to different configurations of masculinity, which don’t evoke combat or aggression. Nonetheless, they are constructed as masculine identities, hierarchical in organisation and constituting relations of power. I argue this recourse to masculinity enables the framing of non-combat practices as warfare and so valuable military activity. However, this framing simultaneously restrains the ways in which they can be understood. The thesis further highlights an ambiguity in the texts which argue both for widespread institutional adaption to the practices, and their limitation to a specific specialism and personnel. This ambiguity I argue is productive for an institution facing an uncertain future, leaving open possibilities for reform, or to revert to focussing on traditional understandings of core combat related military tasks. This thesis contributes to feminist debate about the possibility for military reform, and the capacity for Armed Forces to act as agents for peace. I argue that military reform is possible and occurring; the British Armed Forces are developing more sophisticated approaches to gender, human security and culture. However, whilst this is likely to have some benefit, the (re)establishment of gendered and raced hierarchies, limit the extent to which such reform offers meaningful change.

The focus of this dissertation is the theatrical representation of both the individual and war in a time of disintegrating national states and the dramatisation of destruction versus survival as the driving forces on stage. In a study on the future of empire it has been observed that instead of progressing into a peaceful future, the 21st century has slipped back in time into the nightmare of perpetual and indeterminate state of warfare: ceasing to be the exceptional state, war has become 'the primary organising principle of society', thus echoing Giorgio Agamben's declaration that the state of exception has become the status quo. Seminal studies on contemporary warfare and society such as Mary Kaldor's New & Old Wars (2005) and Ulrich Beck's World at Risk (2008 [2007]) trace how the face of war has changed over the past fifteen years. The dramatic texts examined in this thesis reach from plays depicting inner-state conflict, civil war and the politics of fear, for example Caryl Churchill's Far Away (2000), Sarah Kane's Blasted (1995) and Zinnie Harris's war trilogy (2005-2008) over documentary and verbatim-based plays and their attempt to portray the trauma of war by recreating on stage the process of giving testimony and by endorsing public grieving (e.g. various Tricycle productions and Gregory Burke's Black Watch [2006]), to adaptations of Greek tragedies (like Martin Crimp's Cruel and Tender [2004]) and a Shakespearean play. The questions underlying this work are: how can war be represented on stage? and, how do the plays replicate the sociological structures leading to violence and war and explore their transformation of societies? Springing from the discussion about 'New Wars' in the age of globalisation, it will be demonstrated here how these 'New Wars' also bring forth new plays about war.

This examination criticises some of the main textual efforts within the self-identified politiography of Algeria that have attempted to help make the last twenty years of violent conflict in Algeria intelligible to Western audiences. It attends to the way in which particular representations of Algerian violence were problematised within, and cross-problematised with, prevailing international security discourses and practices, especially the concurrently emergent litterature on civil wars and armed humanitarian intervention. Unsatisfied with general international response to the conflict in Algeria in the 1990s, particularly the major massacres of 1997 and 1998, this study questions how certain problematisations were used to understand the violence and how those renderings contributed to the troubled relationship between the representation of mass violence in Algeria and international efforts to intervene against it. As a study in politiography, the primary object of analysis here is not the entire discursive field of Algerian violence but rather select yet influential scholarly texts within the genre of late Algerian violence. While these works helped co-constitute the broader discursive formations of Algerian violence that enabled its own representation as such, this examination does not necessarily address them vis-à-vis unique, superior or competing representations drawn from the traditionally privileged sites of initial discursive production of international security. The primary method of critique here is deconstructive in so far as it simply uses the texts — their arguments, their evidence and their archival logic — against themselves. Borrowing insights from currents in recent neopragmatist thought, this study seeks to reverse engineer some of the more dominant international problematisations of Algerian violence, so as to unearth the deeper politics of naming built into specific representations of Algeria and more generic frameworks of international security. After first exploring the conflict’s contested political and economic etiology (chapter three), as well as its disputed classification as a civil war (chapter four), this study closely examines the interpretations of the most intense civilian massacres, those that occurred between August 1997 and January 1998 (chapters five and six). How these representations resulted in the threat of (armed) humanitarian intervention are of particular concern (chapter seven), as are the ways in which foreign actors have attempted to historically contextualise Algeria’s alleged tradition and culture of violence (chapter eight). The aim is not to produce — though it cannot but help contribute to — a new history or account of the politics of the Algerian conflict and its internationalisation. The intent is first to underscore the inherent yet potentially auspicious dangers within all problematisations of mass violence. Secondly, it is to advocate for ironic forms of politiography, given the politics always-already embedded within acts of naming, particularly when it comes to questions of mass violence. A politiography that is able to appreciate the contingency of representation and intervention, and so underscores the need for a more deliberately and deliberative ethical and democratic politics of representation in the face of atrocity.

[pt] Tendo como referenciais teóricos o instrumental do campo de resolução de conflito e a discussão feita por Michel Foucault em Vigiar e Punir, esta dissertação tem por objetivo verificar a relação entre o programa de Desarmamento, Desmobilização e Reintegração (DDR) desenvolvido pela ONU e a percepção das ex-crianças soldado acerca do processo de transição à vida civil no pós-conflito armado. Estima-se que, atualmente, há cerca de 300 mil crianças soldado em todo o mundo. Diante deste cenário, um dos principais desafios é reverter os efeitos da participação em conflitos armados e, conseqüentemente, restabelecer o futuro destes jovens. O programa de DDR direcionado às crianças soldado aparece como a principal ferramenta para lidar com as necessidades destes jovens e garantir o retorno deles à vida civil no pós-conflito armado. Assegurar o rompimento destes meninos e meninas com a vida militar é um dos passos fundamentais do processo de peace-building, uma vez que estamos lidando com um grupo que funciona como um motor indispensável das novas guerras. Argumenta-se que o programa de DDR é uma ferramenta em potencial, i.e., apresenta recursos capazes de contribuir para transição bem-sucedida de exmeninos e meninas soldado à vida civil. No entanto, a adoção de um padrão de infância pelas Nações Unidas, que não é necessariamente adequado às distintas sociedades, minimiza as chances de sucesso do programa de DDR na prática. Através da análise de 86 depoimentos de ex-crianças soldado, busca-se identificar se há ou não correspondência entre os desejos, medos e frustrações expressos nestes relatos e a prática do DDR. / [en] By using as reference the theoretical field of Conflict Resolution and the debate presented by Michael Foucault in Discipline and Punishment, this dissertation aims at verifying the relationship between the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration program (DDR) developed by the UN and the former child soldiers’ perceptions about their transition to civilian life in postarmed conflict. It is estimated that at the present time there are over 300.000 children participating in armed conflicts around the world. In face of the child soldier problem, the challenge is therefore how to reverse the effects of the child soldiering, and, in doing so restore children’s future. The Child DDR is considered today the most satisfactory tool to attend the needs of former child soldiers and ensure their return to a civilian life. Ensuring the former child soldiers’ safe transition to civilian life is one of the key steps in the process of peace-building, since we are dealing with a group that serves as a vital engine of the new wars. It is argued that Child DDR is an instrument in potential. In theory, the program indeed has the resources that can contribute to a successful transition of former child soldiers to civilian life. However, the UN adoption of one specific notion of childhood as a pattern, which is not necessarily appropriate to different societies, reduces the Child DDR program s chances of success. Thus, through the analysis of 86 testimonies of former child soldiers, this research aims at identifying whether the desires, frustrations and fears raised by these demobilized youths are answered or not by the Child DDR program.

This study delves into the conflict landscape in the form of a case study of the Central African Republic, with a specific focus on the involvement of the private military company Wagner Group, framed within Mary Kaldor's theory of New Wars. The theory emphasises that since the 1990s wars have been carried out in the name of identity politics, are between the state and non-state actors, that violence is directed at civilians and that the global economy is a driving condition. These characteristics are generally true for the conflict in CAR. The Wagner Group's role remains largely unexplored within academic circles, necessitating a closer examination of its impact on conflict dynamics to better understand the broader implications for regional stability and global power dynamics. Since CAR became independent in 1960, CAR has been imprinted by armed conflict and widespread violence against civilians. In 2018 the government ceded parts of its monopoly on violence to the Wagner group through an agreement where the group protects the state in exchange for access to natural resources. The Wagner group's presence also contributes to increased regional conflict dynamics and can lead to increased violence and criminal activity.

Submitted by Leda Lopes (ledacplopes@hotmail.com) on 2017-03-10T11:59:04Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Bruna_Cavallari_ Dissertação.pdf: 1150900 bytes, checksum: 8338685846dae5d0d61b1adb5abb5576 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Aline Batista (alinehb.ufpel@gmail.com) on 2017-03-10T19:24:34Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Bruna_Cavallari_ Dissertação.pdf: 1150900 bytes, checksum: 8338685846dae5d0d61b1adb5abb5576 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Aline Batista (alinehb.ufpel@gmail.com) on 2017-03-10T19:26:46Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Bruna_Cavallari_ Dissertação.pdf: 1150900 bytes, checksum: 8338685846dae5d0d61b1adb5abb5576 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-03-10T19:26:55Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Bruna_Cavallari_ Dissertação.pdf: 1150900 bytes, checksum: 8338685846dae5d0d61b1adb5abb5576 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-09-23 / O fim da Guerra Fria trouxe mudanças na agenda da segurança internacional: escoamento de armas do Norte para o Sul Global, o surgimento das Novas Guerras, o fortalecimento dos Direitos Humanos, o aumento do número de democracias formais e um novo tipo de intervencionismo. Diante de questionamentos empíricos e teóricos diante de crises humanitárias de grandes proporções, a comunidade internacional foi instigada a encontrar uma harmonização entre os conceitos de soberania e Direitos Humanos. Assim, o preceito da “Responsabilidade de Proteger” surgiu e ganhou relevância na agenda de segurança internacional e nos meios políticos e acadêmicos. O objeto desta dissertação, portanto, configura-se para além de uma ideia teórica e normativa, operando concretamente no ambiente internacional através das intervenções humanitárias. Desta forma, questiona-se em que medida a sub-agenda da “Responsabilidade de Proteger” reflete as relações geopolíticas entre o Norte e o Sul Global, entre os anos 2005 e 2015. Compreendendo esta divisão Norte/Sul para além de aspectos somente geográficos e, considerando a complexidade do sistema internacional frente a classificações e divisões demonstrou-se que a “Responsabilidade de Proteger” trouxe pouca inovação prática ao cenário internacional e perpetua as assimetrias de poder entre o Norte e o Sul Global. / The end of the Cold War brought changes in the agenda of international security: flow of weapons North to the Global South, the emergence of the New Wars, the strengthening of human rights, increasing the number of formal democracies and a new type of interventionism. In the face of empirical and theoretical questions facing humanitarian crisis of major proportions, the international community was instigated to find a compromise between the concepts of sovereignty and human rights. Thus the precept of "Responsibility to Protect" emerged and gained relevance in the international security agenda and political and academic circles. The object of this paper therefore sets itself apart from a theoretical idea and rules, operating specifically in the international environment through humanitarian interventions. Thus, we question to what extent the sub-agenda of "Responsibility to Protect" reflects geopolitical relations between the North and the Global South, between 2005 and 2015. Understanding this North / South divide beyond only geographical aspects and considering the complexity of the international system against classifications and divisions demonstrated that the "Responsibility to Protect" brought little practical innovation to the international scene and perpetuates the power asymmetries between the North and the Global South

In recent years, the IRI has managed to increase its influence in the Middle East. The strategic use of proxy warfare has played a central role as surrounding countries have become destabilised. However, following the positivist logic of structural IR theories, the materially inferior IRI should not be a stronger player in the region’s conflicts than the US and its Arab allies. The Iranian success in proxy warfare, therefore, provides a paradox for the explanatory framework of reductionist IR theories which rely on rational and positivist epistemologies. I argue that this is because these perspectives do not endorse an adequate comprehension of the mutual embedded relations which have served the IRI a strategic advantage in proxy warfare. In a challenge to the parsimonious reductionism of structural IR and security studies, I adopt Feklyunina’s constructivist framework for analysing soft power as a relational identity. Thereby, I switch the focus from a top-down analysis of the IRI to a focus including Iraqi insurgencies’ acceptance or rejection of the IRI’s national identity and foreign policy goals. I argue that identity matter in proxy relations. Hence, I estimate the IRI’s strength in proxy warfare based on potential Iraqi insurgencies’ compatible identities. I employ a longitudinal historical research design tracing the development of collective identities within Iraq. The study finds that the Iraqi Shi’ites share important common facets of their identity with the IRI and have subsequently been willing to fight as proxies against American and Sunni forces in Iraq. However, identity and legitimacy structures in the Middle East are complex, multifaceted, constantly changing, and dependent on context. Iraqi Shi’ites still preserve some reservations and antipathy towards the Iranian regime due to a nationalist sense of community.

The Yugoslav wars of the 1990s - namely Croatia/ Bosnia (1991-1995) and Kosovo (1998-1999) - were the focus of unprecedented, and uninformed, international attention. This attention accepted at face value an ethnic rationale for the conflict that was often peddled by the combatants themselves; such rationales served to mask the economic and political aspirations of engaged state- and non-state actors. The wars allowed organised crime to take root and proliferate exponentially across geographical, political, and economic spheres. It became a tool of states, militaries and militias; states co-opted criminals, and vice-versa. The Serbian state became a criminal entity (as did, to a lesser extent, surrounding states) in partial control of a thoroughly criminalised regional combat economy, often in collusion with supposed ethnic `enemies.¿ Reconstruction, development, and governance interventions conducted by international actors in the successor states of the former Yugoslavia remain stifled by an absence of understanding of both the systematic infrastructural presence of organised crime, and a lack of acknowledgement of the economic rationales underlying the wars themselves.

This study investigates the legal and ethical challenges posed by cyber warfare in the ongoing Russian-Ukraine war. Cyber warfare represents a transition from traditional conflict dynamics, impacting civilian populations and national security without direct physical confrontations. The significance of this research is the inadequacy of current legal norms that govern the rapidly evolving techniques of cyber-attacks which challenge established norms of International Humanitarian Law. Hence, the research question explores how cyber warfare challenges existing legal and ethical norms for civilian protection, and what the broader implications are for the regulation of modern conflicts. Through a qualitative case study approach, the thesis analyses three cases of Russian cyber-attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure: the 2015 attack on the Ukrainian power grid, the 2023 cyber-attack on Kyivstar, and the 2022 Asylum Ambuscade. In the simplified legal framework by Hoffman and Rumsey, these cases were analysed using the Tallinn Manual, and Mary Kaldor’s New Wars theory to highlight the challenges and violations of IHL. The findings conclude that the IHL framework is insufficient for the unique challenges of cyber warfare. Moreover, the study addresses for the revaluation and updating of international legal norms to keep up with the constant development of cyber warfare. In all, this thesis showcases the need for enhanced legal standards that can safeguard civilian populations and maintain international security, contributing to the fields of international law and conflict resolution.