ABSTRACT
Since the Second World War, Europe and North America have been almost free of direct experiences of war. Despite the rather anachronistic terror movements in Spain and Northern Ireland and the bloody collapse of Yugoslavia, the main theater of warfare has been the so-called Third World. More than 90 percent of the 218 wars that were counted in the period between 1945 and 2001 took place in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. The overwhelming majority of them were so-called ethnic and civil wars, which tend to last longer than classical inter-state wars and which are more difficult to end by political efforts and mediation of third parties.1 In these intra-state wars, physical force has become a power resource of religiously, ethnically or ideologically mobilized militias and their “warlords,” of various groups of organized crime, or of independently acting state security units following their own particular political
and economic interests. In cases such as Afghanistan, Myanmar, Cambodia, Colombia, Lebanon, Liberia, Palestine, Somalia, or the former Yugoslavia, the population has been exposed to years of violent terror and destruction, whilst the majority in the Western world has experienced the growth of personal wealth and democratic liberties.
