Violent Non-State Actors in Modern Conflict

<span style="color: rgba(119, 119, 119, 1)">Recent conflicts such as those in Syria, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan are increasingly characterised by a pluralisation of irregular and privatised forms of violence. These actors include, among others, warlords, mercenaries, terrorists, transnational organised crime groups, foreign fighters and Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs). While some pose a direct challenge to the state, others are in a complementary and symbiotic relationship with it. As such, violent non-state actors are both competing and cooperating with state actors in modern conflicts and their hybrid nature raises questions with regards to how best to understand these actors, as they often escape neatly defined categorisations. In modern conflicts the lines between terrorists and organised crime groups, irregular and regular forces, as well as economic and political motivations to fight, are increasingly blurred. As a result, 'new' and 'old' types of violent non-state actors are defining elements of modern conflict.</span> <span style="color: rgba(119, 119, 119, 1)">The extreme complexity of twenty-first century conflicts requires a more integrated approach between military and civilian actors in order to respond more effectively to its challenges.</span>

David Brown is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Defence and International Affairs at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He has written extensively on a range of security related issues, publishing books and articles on US and UK foreign and defence policy, contemporary power relations, aspects of European security and international intervention. His new research project is on understanding the development of Coalition foreign and defence policy in the UK.

Previous Work

War Amongst the People: Critical Assessments

The Development of British Defence Policy: Blair, Brown and Beyond

George W. Bush's Foreign Policy: Principles and Pragmatism

<br />Power Relations in the Twenty-First Century: Mapping a Multipolar World

<br />Multipolarity in the 21st Century

Donette Murray is a Senior Lecturer at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. She holds a doctorate from the University of Ulster and an LLM in International Law from the University of Maastricht. Donette is the author of four books on US foreign policy, including US Foreign Policy and Iran: America-Iranian relations since the Islamic Revolution and Principles and Pragmatism: the evolving foreign policy of George W Bush 2001-2008 with David Brown and Martin A. Smith, and the co-editor of two volumes on Power in the twenty-first century. A former political advisor, she has also taught at Ulster University and the Queen s University of Belfast.

War Amongst the People: Critical Assessments

George W. Bush's Foreign Policy: Principles and Pragmatism

Power Relations in the Twenty-First Century: Mapping a Multipolar World

Multipolarity in the 21st Century

US Foreign Policy and Iran: American-Iranian Relations since the Islamic Revolution

Kennedy, Macmillan and Nuclear Weapons

America and the World since 1945

Malte Riemann is a senior lecturer in the Department of Defence and International Affairs at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. Dr Riemann studied in Bremen and Pietermaritzburg, and holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from the University of Reading. His research has been funded by the German Academic Exchange Service, the Earhart Foundation and the European International Studies Association. His fields of interest include the privatisation of war and its effects on the state s legitimate monopoly on violence, the medicalization of security, and the historicity of non-state actors. He is currently in the process of writing a monograph in German on the transformation of war provisionally titled War in the 20^th and 21^st Century and his most recent publication Problematizing the medicalization of violence: A critical discourse analysis of the Cure Violence initiative has just appeared in Critical Public Health.

War Amongst the People: Critical Assessments

Norma Rossi is a senior lecturer in Defence and International Affairs at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. Dr Rossi studied in Rome and Paris and received her Ph.D. in Politics and International Relations from the University of Reading on an Earhart Foundation fellowship. In her current project she explores how violent non-state actors challenge state sovereignty with a specific focus on the Italian state and the Sicilian mafia. Her research shows how the Sicilian mafia and the Italian state have historically built their identities through opposing spatial, temporal and social narratives, which enable contesting claims to political authority. She has also written on the rise of far-right parties in Europe, specifically exploring how the politics of anxiety fuel distinctive dynamics between mainstream parties and the far right. Recently, she ha