ABSTRACT
Contemporary civil wars have apparently lost any rationality, if not any political meaning. The cruelties committed in the course of war, the lack of political programs, and the endless proliferation of actors seem to hint at a growth of anomic violence. Some observers therefore argue that the development of warfare after the end of the Cold War displays only the irrationality of actors. Robert Kaplan’s article on “the coming anarchy” in 1994 was as widely read and discussed in the US as that of his German counterpart, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, with its similar dark messages: “Aussichten auf den Bürgerkrieg,” in 1995. Both authors maintain a depoliticization of violence, an irrationality that renders it questionable whether a scientific explanation of current occurrences of wars is still possible.
