CONCEPT OF REGULAR ENEMY AMIDST THE CONTEMPORARY PROJECT OF INDIVIDUALIZED WAR: CONTINUITIES, TRANSFORMATIONS, AND CONTRADICTIONS

Across the last three decades war has shown signs of turning more and more into a form of uneven struggle; a struggle between powerful states and small groups or single individuals. This research employs the concept of enemy to critically look at the increasing individualization of war. Throughout the thesis it is questioned what does remain of the modern concept of regular enemy in the post-Cold War era, when the way of war is characterized by an apparently incontrovertible tendency to focus on single human subjects. To do so, the thesis in a first part traces in a genealogical way how the concept of regular enemy is crafted by some key modern political thinkers, whose thought is analyzed in three different streams: the ethical, the legal, and the strategic. In the second part, while keeping as the analytical frame the distinction between the three streams, the thesis analyzes three contemporary modes of conceptualizing the enemy peculiar to individualized war: an ethical, a legal, and a strategic mode. Such modes of argumentation are crafted by experts and authoritative speakers as philosophers, lawyers, policymakers, and military strategists committed to rethink the concept of regular enemy in war under the light of the project of individualization of war. The thesis contends that the modern concept of regular enemy does not disappear altogether in the aftermath of the Cold War and after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, but it is substantially redefined by a tendency to projecting hostility towards the single individual.