Warlords and Logo Warriors: The Political Economy of Postmodern Conflict

This chapter has two aims. The first is to delineate the links between what has been termed post-modem peace in the developed world, post-modern weapons, and post-modern conflicts. There is a burgeoning literature on all three but little attempt has been made to consider the ways in which the first two have influenced the latter. The second aim is to examine the political economy of post-modern conflicts. I argue that the representation of contemporary conflicts as predominantly internal and as conflicts driven by irrational ethnic hatred ignores the political economy of conflicts where actors utilize control over local resources and links with global trading and other networks to accumulate the profits necessary to pay for arms, to reward supporters, and to accrue personal wealth.