Which Has Exerted a Bigger Effect on War: the End of the Cold War, or Globalization?

Back in human history, there could be lay down more than than 14, 400 records of wars that adopt occurred in the past, by taking the lives of billions and asking the neighborly and political revise earthly concernwide. Wars in the contemporary world have gradually been changing in form, mainly due to globalization, by overlapping in different spheres of brutal struggles and small but extremely dangerous organizations equal terrorist act and insurgencies.Nevertheless, their true temper and intentions have managed to preserve through ages, as a cosmopolitan norm of social behavior, involving extreme violence, desire for power and manipulation, as tumesce as conflicts established on the basis of phantasmal or ethnic issues. In addition, the end of the cold war had a expectant meeting on the global socio-political picture by establishing a completely new image of foreign relations, forms of external associations and a steadfast push for a army affair progress.Could Col d War Have Been Avoided?To understand the nature of war, its influence on current affairs, as well as the impact of globalization on war matters, I would first provide a gen epochl definition of war, by booning some a priori approaches. Eventually I would concentrate on the impact of the post-cold distributor point and finally, conclude with the affect of globalization. War and speculative approaches Scholars have continuously provided quite contradictory definitions for a war. Indeed defining war could be a complicated task.This is due to the fact that even if the nature of a war remains constant, it always reflects the particular time and place in which it occurs. In otherwise words, the current time, situation, the initial core of the problem, as well as, the level of violence and particular actors would greatly influence and define the type of conflict. Thus, establishing a general idea of a war might end to be quite inaccurate. Nevertheless, I would try to present the mai n general definitions, based on different theoretical approaches. Quincy Wright, for xample, describes war as a conflict among political groups, especially sovereign grounds, carried on by armed repulses of considerable magnitude, for a considerable period of time. (Baylis, 2008, p. 213)Judging by his recountment, we could conclude that its a realist approach, emphasizing on the power of the suppose and the highest level of sovereignty that possesses. A nonher approach of defining war is the definition of Hedly Bulls claiming that war is an organized violence, carried by political units against each other. (Baylis, 2008, p. 14) This definition could be accepted as inappropriate because not every(prenominal) single action of violence is defined as a war. In addition, war could involve and other internal actors except political 1s like citizens for example (religious, racial conflicts). A third approach by Clausewitz explains war as an act of force intended to compel our opponen ts to fulfill our will. (Baylis, 2008, p. 214) This definition is more liberal based as it stresses more on the power and affect of globalization than on the state sovereignty.Even though all of these definitions seem to differ in name of theory, we could generalize some vulgar characteristics amidst them, which are organized violence, state or non-state actors, as well as military force and manipulation. To get a better understanding on the definitions, the change of warfare, as well as the impact of globalization and post-cold war period, I would like to summarize and stress on two well cognize theories Realism and Liberalism. Realism, first of all, stresses on the power of the state and its sovereignty, representing it as the main actor on the world stage.It also expresses world politics as a self-help organisation and a struggle for power between states (Baylis, 2008, p. 5), trying to dominate and maximize their national interests. In addition, globalization is not importan t and does not affect political world. Liberalism, on the contrary, emphasizes on the effectiveness of democracy, underlying that states are not the only main actors. transnational actors, international corporations and organizations (like terrorism) are also playing a key role in defining warfare and its evolving. Also, liberalists admit the importance of globalization, economic and environmental issues.Considering the current international affairs, as well as the filiation power of state actors, we could assume that the Liberal theory quite successfully matches with the recent socio-political events. Thus, I would advertize analyze the change of warfare from the perspectives of the Liberal approach. Post-cold war period The fall of the Soviet sum in 1989, resulting in the end of the Cold War, put a new evolution in the structure of the international relations and the international system. That indeed brought some influential domestic attributes like democracy system in some po st-communist states.In addition, the number of wars sharply declined but not and their all important(p) brutality. A lot of ex-Soviet Union members, as well as some eastern European countries like former Yugoslavia experienced grand crisis. Mevery states disintegrated, which led to bloody civil wars and insurgencies. Another great factor was the new system of democracy that former communist states had to accept. Some states indeed benefited from that but for others that turned out to be a enormous and sudden change resulting in more economic crisis and chaos in the population.In addition, this led to the agile participation of world organizations like the United Nations, as well as NATO and EU in preserving the quiescence and avoiding any brutal conflicts that could follow. Such intervention and anti-conflict actions influenced not only the warfare but human morals, as well. Peoples understanding of politics, economics became more globally based, not tho state-isolated. A stat e problem eventually turned out to be a global problem, like the war in former Yugoslavia, 9/11 and the current affairs in Egypt. The post-cold war period gave the first strong push of a massive globalization.Indeed, globalization has always existed in human history and has always been an needful process nevertheless no one has particularly mentioned it before the end of the Cold War. Another great change that affected the warfare was the absolute hegemony power that the ground forces gained. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the international system changed from a phase of bipolarity into a phase of unipolarity. Thus, USAs global influence speeded up even more the going on process of globalization, twist it in to Americanization. (Baylis, 2008, p. 13)USA was surely outstanding in terms of military power and technical innovations nevertheless it did nothing to prevent the up-coming events of organized violence and particularly terrorism. A good example is the 9/11 event and the Iraq War in 2003. Even though USA had a magnificent superiority in terms of weaponry, technical and talk technology, the responding asymmetric attacks that followed, as well as the terroristic actions in London and Madrid proved the dramatic changes that have occurred in terms of warfare.globalization The revolution in military affairs that followed in the 1991, right after Gulf War, built a new image and form of the contemporary warfare. With the vast development of technology, communication, Internet and media, war was eventually born-again into a new form of a war conflict, unfamiliar for the old Westphalian Order ideas. The primary Westphalian characteristics of a territoriality, fixed boarders, self-determination and states as only key-actors completely contradict with the contemporary current global affairs. And indeed, globalization is more than just interconnectedness.It involves much more than cooperation and international relations between states. It eventually dissolves the state boarders, turning the world into a shared social space, (Baylis, 2008, p. 18) as well as, placing the economical and political activities into a completely new transnational global scale. Another important factor of globalization is the time-space compression. (Baylis, 2008, p. 18) Nowadays, any power or military actions could be exercised from a distance and fulfilled for a relatively mulct period of time.Globalization has broken any possible barriers involving distance, space or time with the help of Internet, communication and media. These factors have resulted in an entire new generation of warfare. In such a new era of innovation and high technology, new non-state actors have managed to transform both cyber place and media into a real battlefield. From one hand, this has led to the creation of highly effective and complex weaponry machinery, ensuring better protection and momentum responds to military actions.On the contrary though, that also run lows to terrorism, organized crimes, violence as well as, weapons of mass destruction. With the ability of producing and exporting such powerful technology, the safety of humans and the brutality of contemporary warfare are surely not on the way of declining. Another negative consequence of globalization results in the different economical level of the world countries and the continuous growing gap between them. Indeed globalization is useful and helpful for powers like Japan, USA and Russia but other countries like Sierra Leone or Eritrea definitely lack the benefits of globalization.This creates poverty, eventually crisis, which could lead to civil wars and more bloody violence. In the past decade, 95% of the armed conflicts have occurred within states rather than between them. Such new wars take place in states where the economy is extremely poor or even collapsing. Conclusion Many of the characteristics of warfare mentioned above are not new features of war conflicts. They have been existing fo r a long time since early human history. That includes religious or ethnic confrontations, or any other kind of conflicts performed with extreme brutality.What really empowered the contemporary warfare and made it so massively destructive is globalization. It is the human ability and necessity to protect or manipulate, to defend themselves or just to apply control over a state of civilians. It is hard yet to predict what other crucial impacts globalization would have on humanity and eventually on warfare. Whatever the reason though, wars would never lay off to exist and they would be always a human norm of a social behavior, that would adopt consort to the current environment and current period of time.ReferencesBaylis, John, Smith, Steve and Owens, Patricia (eds.) (2008). The Globalization of World Politics An Introduction to International Relations, Oxford Oxford University disturb (4th ed.)Boyer, P. (2001). The Oxford Companion to United States History. PostCold War Era. Retri eved January 29, 2011 from http//www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O119-PostColdWarEra.htmlEncyclopedia of the new American Nation. heathen Relations and Policies Globalization and the cold war. Retrieved January 29, 2011 from