ABSTRACT
What many of the critics of the ‘new wars’ thesis miss is the policy implication of the argument. By describing the conflicts of the 1990s as ‘new’, I wanted to change the way policy-makers and policy-shapers perceived these conflicts. In particular, I wanted to emphasise the growing illegitimacy of war and the need for what I called a cosmopolitan policy response – one that put individual rights and the rule of law as the centrepiece of any international intervention (political, military or civil).
