New Forms of International Conflict Essay -- International Politics

The conflicts of the last few centuries have been dominated by the West. The two world wars and the subsequent Cold War were dominated by Western states and ideals. It is posited that as the USSR collapsed and the Cold War ceased, the conflict of the West subsided and allowed conflicts of other nations and factions have come to the fore. As the bipolar world system became unipolar, other issues emerged or gained prevalence, the economy seeped back into world economy, technology has advanced at a rapid rate completely changing the way wars are fought and America pursued its goal of democratisation. America became the dominant superpower in 1989, as the world moved into a unipolar system; thus changing the country’s foreign policy. Instead of fighting the ‘evil empire’ (Reagan: 1983) the foreign policy changed to protecting international stability and leading a worldwide movement for democracy. This policy has portrayed figures, arguably rightly, as modern-day Hitler’s. Saddam Hussein, Colonel Gadaffi and Hosni Mubarak have seen this treatment, until the pretence of forming a ‘new world order’ (Carpenter: 1991: 24) The US has been seen to have become the world police. This has created anger amongst many Arab states as the US attempts to force democracy on countries with mixed results; Grenada and Panama were successful whilst Lebanon and Iraq proved costly, in terms of money and human lives, and the failure to establish an effective democracy. Lebanon saw 250 American casualties whereas Iraq has seen 4483. (iCasualties.org:2011) This chang e in conflict has been brought on by nearly global acceptance of democracy and the lack of a significant opponent to challenge the US. China may be where the world is looking to rival the US but ... ...Order (2002) 7. B Gokay and R B J Walker (eds), 11 September 2001: War, Terror and Judgement (2002) 8. Ronald Reagan, ‘Evil Empire Speech’, March 9th 1983. http://www.nationalcenter.org/ReaganEvilEmpire1983.html 9. Icasulties details the casualties occurred during the Iraq war. http://icasualties.org/iraq/index.aspx, 07.12.2011 10. Geohive, a website, 2011, that gives estimated world population numbers. http://www.geohive.com/ 11. Google public date explorer, 2011, gives information about various economic statistics about world states http://www.google.co.uk/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=ny_gdp_mktp_cd&idim=country:CHN&dl=en&hl=en&q=china+gdp#ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=ny_gdp_mktp_cd&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=country&idim=country:CHN:USA:GBR&ifdim=country&hl=en&dl=en 12. M. Van Creveld (1991) On Future War. London: Brassey’s.