GLOBALIZATION Week 4 . Class Notes
International Security: After the Cold War, what are the main sources of conflict in the global system? Does economic interdependence reduce or increase tensions between nation states?
09.26.02
Readings:
- GT: 2: "The Expanding Reach of Organized Violence" Read 2.1-2.3, 2.5, 2.8
- Globalization accompanied by enormous suffering due to the use of military technologies and organized violence
- Early
Initial instances of associated w European expansion, even though China had been poised to do so, and even though there had been previous instances of civilizational clash (e.g. Islam v Christianity, Mongol expansion)
- European Expansion
- Age of Discovery - late 15th-17th C
- Consolidation - 17th-mid19th C
- World Empire 1850-1900
- Age of Global Conflict 1914-1990
- Imperial colonies pulled into conflicts
- Mobilization of entire Empire to feed war machine
- Alliances required for survival
- End of European global hegemony
- Cold War - since nuclear war was unthinkable, the Superpowers played out the war throughout the world, esp. in Third World nations
- Post Cold War
- US has enormous firepower advantage vs rest of world (new)
- 2nd-level players have very muted rivalries (new)
- Major wars are obsolete (new)
- Local/regional wars are more prevalent (Iraq v Iran, Yugoslavia)
- Increased security arrangements and multilateral agreements
- Intense financial interconnectedness (worries about China can crash a market in Argentina)
- permanent demand for some type of global cooperation (environmentalism, drug trafficking control, terrorism)
- International insecurity because states seek peace through power (more weapons = increased threat of weapons use, perhaps)
- Former superpower alliances/pacts have become regional security alliances to promote control and to battle more dispersed threats (e.g. "rogue states", terrorism)
- Global regulatory structure is rooted in military paradigm - thus we might account for rampant capitalism rather than rampant cooperation
- Novel event - right of the international community to intervene in the (formerly) sovereign affairs of states
- Dale C. Copeland "Economic Interdependence and War"
- Liberals - more interdependence = less war ("trade, don't invade"). Liberals tend to emphasize the benefits
- Realists - more interdependence = vulnerability = more war. Realists tend to emphasize the costs
- Theory of economic expectations - fuses liberal + realist in a cost-benefit analysis: trade v. autarchy (political autonomy based on economic independence, with independence derived from a protected market rather than from a free market (and the expectation of future costs and benefits
- Michael T. Klare "The New Geography of Conflict"
- Fareed Zakaria, "The Return of History: What September 11 Hath Wrought"
- Barber: Ch.2 "The Resource Imperative"
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