Give more detail about what happen in international conflict previously.

1. International Conflict

2. The Wars of the World
• Largest contemporary wars
– Iraq
– Western Sudan (Darfur)
– Afghanistan
• Of the 13 wars, all are in the global South.
• All but Colombia and the Philippines are in a zone of
active fighting spanning parts of Africa, South Asia, and
the Middle East.
• In five smaller zones, dozens of wars of recent decades
have ended.
• Most peace agreements in the world’s postwar zones
are holding up.
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3. Figure 5.1
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4. Types of War
• Hegemonic war
– War over control of the entire world order – the rules
of the international system as a whole, including the
role of world hegemony.
– Last hegemonic war was World War II
– Likely that due to the power of modern weaponry, this
kind of war could not occur any longer without
destroying civilization
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5. Types of War
• Total war
– Warfare by one state waged to conquer and occupy
another
– Goal is to reach the capital city and force the
surrender of the government, which can then be
replaced with one of the victor’s choosing
– Napoleonic Wars
– Evolved with industrialization, which further integrated
all of society and economy into the practice of war
– Last total war: World War II
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6. Types of War
• Limited war
– Includes military actions carried out to gain some
objective short of the surrender and occupation of the
enemy.
– War to retake Kuwait from Iraq (1991)
– Raids
• Limited wars that consist of a single action
• Raiding that is repeated or fuels a cycle of retaliation usually
becomes a limited war that is sometimes called a low-
intensity conflict.
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7. Types of War
• Civil war
– Refers to war between factions within a state trying to
create or prevent a new government for the entire
state or some territorial part of it.
– U.S. Civil War of the 1960s - secessionist civil war
– El Salvador in the 1980s - civil war for control over the
entire state
– May often be among the most brutal wars
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8. Types of War
• Guerrilla war
– Includes certain types of civil wars; is warfare without
front lines
– Irregular forces operate in the midst of, and often
hidden or protected by, civilian populations.
– Purpose is not to confront an enemy army but rather
to harass and punish it so as to gradually limit its
operation and effectively liberate territory from its
control.
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9. Conflicts of Ideas
• Six types of international conflict:
– Ethnic
– Religious
– Ideological
– Territorial
– Governmental
– Economic
• Most difficult types of conflict have intangible elements such as
ethnic hatred, religious feeling, or ideology – all conflicts of ideas
• These identity-based sources of international conflict today have
been shaped historically by nationalism – link between identity and
internationally recognized statehood
Ideas
interests
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10. Nationalism
• Devotion to the interests of one’s own
nation over others
– May be the most important force in world
politics in the past two centuries
– Nationality is a difficult concept to define
precisely.
• Historical development of “nationalism”
– Principle of self-determination
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11. Ethnic Conflict
• Quite possibly the most important source of conflict in
the numerous wars now occurring throughout the world.
• Ethnic groups
– Large groups of people who share ancestral, language, cultural,
or religious ties and a common identity
– Often form the basis for nationalist sentiments
• Territorial control
– Pressures to redraw borders by force
– Outside states concerned about the fate of “their people” living
as minorities in other state
• Ex.: Albanians in Kosovo, Armenia and Azerbaijan, India and Pakistan
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13. Control of Governments
• Most struggles to control territory do not involve changing borders.
• They are conflicts over which governments will control entire states.
• In theory, the norm of sovereignty keeps states from interfering in
each other’s governance.
• Not so in practice.
– Cold War
• Occasionally, one state invades another in order to changes its
government.
– Soviet Union --> Czechoslovakia
– U.S. --> Iraq
• International conflicts over the control of governance usually lead to
violence.
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14. Religious Conflict
• Because religion is the
core of a community’s
value system in much of
the world, people whose
religious practices differ
are easily disregard and
treated as unworthy or
even inhuman.
– Fundamentalist
movements
– Secular political
organizations
• Islamist movements
• Islamist groups
– Turkey
– Nationalist movements
expressed through
religious channels
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15. Ideological Conflict
• Ideology symbolizes and intensifies conflicts between
groups and states more than it causes them.
– Because they have a somewhat weaker hold on core values and
absolute truth than religions do, they pose somewhat fewer
problems for the international system.
– China Maoist communism in 1949; Russia’s Leninist
communism in 1917, U.S. democracy in 1776
• All eventually went on to pursue national interests rather than
ideological ones
– Angola
• Ideologies can mobilize national populations
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16. Conflicts of Interest
• Territorial disputes
– Means of controlling territory – primarily military
– Secession – province or region leaving an existing state
• Ethnic cleansing - driving out or massacre of designated ethnic population
– Interstate borders
• Role of the norm of territorial integrity
– Remaining disputes – Israeli borders; Kashmir; Spratly Islands;
Okinotori; Falkland Islands; Kuril Islands
– Territorial waters – part of national territory
• UNCLOS
• EEZs
– Airspace
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18. Economic Conflict
• Economic competition is the most lasting form of
conflict in international relations because
economic transactions are continuing.
• Such transactions contain a strong element of
mutual economic gain.
– Usually do not lead to military force and war
– But this was not always the case historically
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