War Without a Battlefield

The United Nations cannot wage war. Not really. It has no army, no territory, no sovereignty in the traditional sense. And yet it has been under attack for years. Not with bombs or missiles, but with blockades, budget cuts, vetoes, disinformation, legal attacks, and targeted delegitimization.
At a time when open military force has become increasingly costly politically, conflict is shifting to more subtle levels. The book develops an expanded concept of war and systematically analyzes how financial warfare, diplomatic sabotage, lawfare, information warfare, and physical threats against UN personnel interact. It shows that the weakening of the UN is not a random organizational failure, but the result of deliberate strategies by state and non-state actors who want to undermine order without open conflict.
This is about more than the future of a single organization. The attack on the UN is an attack on the idea that power can be limited by law. That global problems can be solved together. And that institutions can be more than just backdrops for international politics.
This book is an analytically sharp, interdisciplinary examination of modern warfare without a declaration of war. It is aimed at anyone who wants to understand why multilateral institutions today are failing without having formally failed - and what this silent conflict reveals about the state of the world order in the 21st century.
Bremen University Press has published over 5,000 specialist books in various languages since 2005.
January 2026