Issues in Contemporary International Politics Part IV: Conflict, War and Terrorism

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Issues in Contemporary International
PoliticsPart IV Conflict, War and Terrorism

• Jervis, Huntington Zakaria
• (including Weber, C8)

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Context

• End of the Cold War
• American Hegemony
• 9/11
• Bush Doctrine
• Anti-Americanism
• Failed states and nation building.
• Alternatives to the rules of the West?
• Testing theory.

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Jervis

• Is the threat of war between great powers a thing
  of the past?
• Current world context.
• Democracies (idea of security communities)
• Non-democracies
• Implications for theory?

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Jervis Five Questions

• An end to security threats to the members of the
  Community?
• Will the Community endure?
• What are the causes of its construction and
  maintenance?
• What are the implications for this transformation
  for conduct of international affairs?
• What does this say about theories of the causes
  of war?

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Will the Security Community Last?

• Failure of European unity?
• Development of a European security competition
  with the US?
• Nature of expectations of the great powers.

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Explanations for the Security Community

• Social Constructivism (identities and
  socialization)
• Liberalism
• Democracy
• Interdependence

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Explanations for the Security Community

• Realism
• American Hegemony
• Nuclear Weapons
• A Synthesis
• Cost/benefit of war
• Values
• Democracy
• Diminished presence of territorial disputes
• Destructiveness of modern warfare
• Learned cooperation during the Cold War

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Jervis, contd

• Four Possible Futures
• Significant erosion of national autonomy
• More extensive and intensive cooperation in the
  Community
• US hegemony continues
• Counter-balancing to the US emerges
• Implication for theories of war

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Huntington

• What will be the basis for future conflict?
• Pre-French Revolution wars between Kings
• 19th Century through WWI Wars of nationalism
• The 20th Century
• WWII Fascism v. Liberalism
• Cold War Communism v. Liberalism
• Post Cold War What next?

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Huntington

• It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source
  of conflict in this new world will be not
  primarily ideological or primarily economic. The
  great divisions among humankind and the
  dominating source of conflict will be cultural.
  Nation states will remain the most powerful
  actors in world affairs, but the principal
  conflicts of global politics will occur between
  nations and groups of different civilizations.
  The clash of civilizations will dominate global
  politics. The fault lines between civilizations
  will be the battle lines of the future
  (Huntington in AJ, 391).

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Huntington

• Westerners tend to think of the nation-state
  as the principal actors in global affairs. They
  have been that, however, for only a few
  centuries. The broader reaches of human history
  have been the history of civilizations (392-393).

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Huntingtons Civilizations

• Defined A civilization isthe highest cultural
  grouping of people and the broadest level of
  cultural identity people have short of that which
  distinguishes humans from other species (393).

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Huntingtons Civilizations

• Variables language, history, religion,
  customs, institutions (199324).
• Example People have different levels of
  identity a resident of Rome may define himself
  with varying degrees of intensity as a Roman, an
  Italian, a Catholic, a Christian, a European, a
  Westerner. The civilization to which he belongs
  is the broadest level of identification with
  which he intensely identifies (392)

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The Civs

• Western
• Confucian
• Japanese
• Islamic
• Hindu
• Slavic-Orthodox
• Latin American
• African (possibly)

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Why Civilizational Conflict?

• Differences between civilizations are real and
  basic.
• The world is shrinking.
• Modernization challenges identities.
• The dual roles of the West (i.e., the
  dual-edged sword of Western Power)
• Cultural characteristics are less mutable and
  hard to compromise.
• Economic regionalism is increasing.
• (See Weber 160-161)

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Huntington

• The West versus the rest.
• Torn countries.
• Dont fight the United States unless you have
  nuclear weapons (403). (And WMD in general).
• The modernity question

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Zakaria