by Michael Renner

About the author: Michael Renner is a senior researcher for the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington, D.C., research organization that studies global and environmental problems.

The term “war” still conjures up an image of massed armies clashing on the battlefield. But this kind of war is now largely a thing of the past. The vast majority of violent disputes today (and quite likely of tomorrow) are of a different nature: civil wars in which the fighting is not limited to a delineated battlefield, and in which the distinction between combatants and non-combatants is blurred. In fact, of the more than 30 major armed conflicts active in 1992, none was unambiguously of the classical country-against-country variety, and only four displayed some of its characteristics. Analysts are now more concerned with the distinctions between “state-control&rdquo...