Contemporary international relations is bereft with comparatively fewer major interstate conflicts than other points in history, particularly in comparison to the first half of the 20th century. This raises the question of whether interstate conflict is still relevant to contemporary international relations. Despite the current lull in the frequency of interstate war, sub-threshold conflicts have not replaced interstate war as the major force of change in the international system. A number of scholars have posited that interstate war has become too costly and ineffective to matter in contemporary international relations. However, major war, though less frequent, still occurs and may experience greater frequencies in the future. Moreover, the …show more content…
M. R. Sarkees, adapting the typology used by J. David Singer and Melvin Small, defined war as composed of sustained armed combat among organized armed forces exceeding 1000 battle deaths per year (Sarkees 2014, 240). Conflicts that do not fulfill this criteria or do not involve a minimum of two states would not meet the standard for interstate war and constitute what I will refer to in this essay as “sub-threshold conflicts”. In the 1990s, the most of the important conflicts of the decade, such as those in the Balkans, the Caucuses, and Africa, the central players were not traditional militaries (Fleming 2009, 219). As such they do not fulfil the requirements of interstate war. The significance of these events on discussion of international affairs and the lack of a similar number of interstate wars gave the appearance that these sub-threshold conflicts were beginning to replace interstate war as the major source of change on the international …show more content…
In general, sub-threshold conflict is not that important. Hybrid and limited conflicts that do not reach war thresholds, such as the hybrid war raged by Russia in Ukraine, are not applicable to resolving more important strategic rivalries such as a conflict between Russia and NATO (Charap 2015, 55). Even bloody intrastate conflict have had limited geopolitical consequences. How have events in the Balkans or Rwanda changed the global balance of power or impacted the security, even defined as human security, of people outside of the conflict zones? In comparison, interstate warfare of similar scale has had much more profound impacts. The success of the United States in the First Gulf War prompted the military modernization of the People’s Republic of China, arguably one of the most significant international security developments for the 21st century (Farley 2014; U.S. Embassy 1996). The current instability of the Middle East and the increasingly alarming strategic rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran is a direct result of the removal of Iraq as a strategic buffer by the American invasion in 2003 (Wehrey et al. 2010, xi-xii). In terms of actually driving changes in the international system, interstate war remains more important than sub-threshold conflicts, whose effects tend to be contained within the conflict in comparison to the much more dramatic
Vasquez, John A. "The Probability of War, 1816-1992. Presidential Address to the International Studies Association, March 25, 2002, New Orleans." International Studies Quarterly 48.1 (2004): 1-27. Print.
“We all fight on two fronts, the one facing the enemy, the other facing what we do to the enemy” (Boyden 199).
Some americans say that nations hinge on each other, while others say they also compete with one another. This gives rise to rivalry, which sometimes leads to war. Some wars emerge from differentiation in race, religion and culture. Due to the evolution of technology in an accelerated pace, highly sophisticated weapons are now available for use in wars. Wars also bring about widespread destruction, disrupt communication and hamper commerce. Thus, they cause heavy financial loss and great suffering to people. The effects of wars often affect countries that are not involved in the conflict. The threat of war can pressure a nation to waste immense amounts of money on defense instead of spending on developmental works like creating roads, hospitals, schools, and much more. War can halt a countries development. Some countries try to achieve political desires by using terrorism as a weapon against other countries. Terrorism spreads fear in civilians through acts of violence like killings and hostages. This intimidation has transformed into worldwide threat.
The United Nations General Assembly 36-103 focused on topics of hostile relations between states and justification for international interventions. Specifically mentioned at the UNGA was the right of a state to perform an intervention on the basis of “solving outstanding international issues” and contributing to the removal of global “conflicts and interference". (Resolution 36/103, e). My paper will examine the merits of these rights, what the GA was arguing for and against, and explore relevant global events that can suggest the importance of this discussion and what it has achieved or materialized.
War models are essential in demonstrating correlations between theory-associated variables and the risk of war. The econometric model built by Collier and Hoeffler, for instance, provides a fair war measurement by demonstrating opportunity as a source of conflict. It includes predominant variables such as Primary commodity exports, GDP per capita, GDP per growth and population. In most cases, low GDP per capita and slow growth rate increase the risk of war because they provided a low opportunity cost for rebellion. This corresponds to the phenomenon in which many countries that underwent civil war over the period 1960-1999 were poor developing countries such as Congo, Sudan and Zimbabwe. Yugoslavia likewise underwent an economic breakdown in 1989, shortly before the outbreak of wars in 1992. A poor overall economy generates social tensions, leading to war. Meanwhile, a high dependency on Pr...
2000 - 2004 -. The War to End All Wars. Michael Duffy. Original Material. Primary Documents Online -.
Kent, J. and Young, J.W. (2013), International Relations Since 1945: A global History. 2nd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
By the end of the Cold War the literature focusing on strategic studies has highlighted transformational changes within international system that affected and altered the very nature of war. As a result many security studies scholars have renounced traditional theories of strategic thought. Clausewitzian theory, in particular, has taken a lot of criticism, regarding its relevance to modern warfare. (Gray, How Has War Changed Since the End of the Cold War?, 2005)
Leenders, Reinoud. "Regional Conflict Formations': Is the Middle East Next? ." Third World Quarterly 28.5 (2007): 959-982. JSTOR. Web. 5 June 2011.
The purpose of this essay is to inform on the similarities and differences between systemic and domestic causes of war. According to World Politics by Jeffry Frieden, David Lake, and Kenneth Schultz, systemic causes deal with states that are unitary actors and their interactions with one another. It can deal with a state’s position within international organizations and also their relationships with other states. In contract, domestic causes of war pertain specifically to what goes on internally and factors within a state that may lead to war. Wars that occur between two or more states due to systemic and domestic causes are referred to as interstate wars.
Consequences of intervention can include the loss of lives from an otherwise uninvolved country, the spread of violence, and the possibility of inciting conflict over new problems, just to name a few (Lecture, 11/15/16). For example, John Mueller considers the potential negative consequences of intervention prove that they are insignificant to the cause of humanitarian intervention as a whole. Moreover, with intervention into ethnic conflicts, the outcome, no matter how positive, is overshadowed by a gross exaggeration of negative consequences (Mueller). In both Yugoslavia and Rwanda the solution, to Mueller appeared simple, a well ordered and structured militarized presence was all that was required to end the conflict (Mueller). If this is the case, when discussing whether or not intervention is necessary the political elite must not over-exaggerate the difficulty.
The first paradigm of international relations is the theory of Realism. Realism is focused on ideas of self-interest and the balance of power. Realism is also divided into two categories, classical realism and neo-realism. Famous political theorist, Hans Morgenthau was a classical realist who believed that national interest was based on three elements, balance of power, military force, and self interest (Kleinberg 2010, 32). He uses four levels of analysis to evaluate the power of a state. The first is that power and influence are not always the same thing. Influence means the ability to affect the decision of those who have the power to control outcomes and power is the ability to determine outcomes. An example of influence and power would be the UN’s ability to influence the actions of states within the UN but the state itself has the power to determine how they act. Morgenthau goes on to his next level of analysis in which he explains the difference in force and power in the international realm. Force is physical violence, the use of military power but power is so much more than that. A powerful state can control the actions of another state with the threat of force but not actually need to physical force. He believed that the ability to have power over another state simply with the threat of force was likely to be the most important element in analysis the power of as state (Kleinberg 2010, 33-34).
People’s ideas and assumptions about world politics shape and construct the theories that help explain world conflicts and events. These assumptions can be classified into various known theoretical perspectives; the most dominant is political realism. Political realism is the most common theoretical approach when it is in means of foreign policy and international issues. It is known as “realpolitik” and emphasis that the most important actor in global politics is the state, which pursues self-interests, security, and growing power (Ray and Kaarbo 3). Realists generally suggest that interstate cooperation is severely limited by each state’s need to guarantee its own security in a global condition of anarchy. Political realist view international politics as a struggle for power dominated by organized violence, “All history shows that nations active in international politics are continuously preparing for, actively involved in, or recovering from organized violence in the form of war” (Kegley 94). The downside of the political realist perspective is that their emphasis on power and self-interest is their skepticism regarding the relevance of ethical norms to relations among states.
Whenever world politics is mentioned, the state that appears to be at the apex of affairs is the United States of America, although some will argue that it isn’t. It is paramount we know that the international system is shaped by certain defining events that has lead to some significant changes, particularly those connected with different chapters of violence. Certainly, the world wars of the twentieth century and the more recent war on terror must be included as defining moments. The warning of brute force on a potentially large scale also highlights the vigorousness of the cold war period, which dominated world politics within an interval of four decades. The practice of international relations (IR) was introduced out of a need to discuss the causes of war and the different conditions for calm in the wake of the first world war, and it is relevant we know that this has remained a crucial focus ever since. However, violence is not the only factor capable of causing interruption in the international system. Economic elements also have a remarkable impact. The great depression that happened in the 1920s, and the global financial crises of the contemporary period can be used as examples. Another concurrent problem concerns the environment, with the human climate being one among different number of important concerns for the continuing future of humankind and the planet in general.
The study of international relations takes a wide range of theoretical approaches. Some emerge from within the discipline itself others have been imported, in whole or in part, from disciplines such as economics or sociology. Indeed, few social scientific theories have not been applied to the study of relations amongst nations. Many theories of international relations are internally and externally contested, and few scholars believe only in one or another. In spite of this diversity, several major schools of thought are discernable, differentiated principally by the variables they emphasize on military power, material interests, or ideological beliefs. International Relations thinking have evolved in stages that are marked by specific debates between groups of scholars. The first major debate is between utopian liberalism and realism, the second debate is on method, between traditional approaches and behavioralism. The third debate is between neorealism/neoliberalism and neo-Marxism, and an emerging fourth debate is between established traditions and post-positivist alternatives (Jackson, 2007).