[BOOKS] Daniel Moran and James A. Russell || A series of strategy documents promulgated by the last three American administrations all note the decreasing prospect of large-scale interstate conflict. It is becoming increasingly difficult to imagine realistic scenarios of conventional conflict along the lines of the world wars. Needless to say, this does not mean that violent conflict will cease to trouble the world community. Warfare associated with the fragmentation of states, clashes among warlords and other shadowy contestants for political and economic influence, and attempts by the developed world to suppress dangerous behavior by states operating outside accepted international norms all remain familiar in the present, and likely in the future.
There is no question that violence of this lesser and still familiar kind can imperil the stability of the international system as a whole. Yet it is able to do so only by virtue of the reactions it may inspire among the system’s strongest members. In the final analysis a crisis among such states can only be brought about by their own actions. The only way for “rogue states” and “non-state actors” to achieve true strategic leverage is to induce the most powerful members of the system to act in ways that are self-defeating, even if they are not foreseen as such.
It is also possible, of course, that states with a presumptively strong stake in preserving international order may conclude that the system no longer serves their interests, and that it is better to risk overturning it by force than to suffer a diminution of their role or prospects. Recent history suggests that the chances of such a miscalculation are not large, however. Since 1945 war has been fought exclusively by or against inferior powers and revolutionary insurgencies with limited military potential. Although the results have often been appalling in human terms, the impact of such violence on global order has been far below what would be expected of general war, or required to incite it.
The Cold War provided many opportunities for the United States and the Soviet Union to fight each other. They never did, preferring instead to under write proxy wars conducted on terms calculated to limit the impact on the super powers’ bilateral relationship. Even in its death throes the Soviet Union did not attempt to save itself by rolling the iron dice of war, an expedient well known among doomed regimes of the past. There is little doubt why this happened: the world wars had demonstrated, beyond the illusions of even the most ideologically befuddled statesmen, that the consequences of modern war between advanced societies dwarf any prospective benefits. The spread of nuclear weapons has strongly reinforced this conclusion.
This book does not seek to challenge the prevailing consensus that large-scale conflict among developed states has become unlikely. Its aim is rather to reflect upon conditions in the one area of international life where serious observers still regard it as possible: energy security. It is in the energy sector that strategic planners now find it easiest to imagine major states reconsidering their reluctance to use force against each other. “Energy security” is now deemed so central to “national security” that threats to the former are liable to be reflexively interpreted as threats to the latter. In a world in which territorial disputes, ideological competition, ethnic irredentism, and even nuclear proliferation all seem capable of being normalized in ways that constrain the actual use of military force, a crisis in the global energy supply stands out as the last all-weather casus belli when the moment comes to hypothesize worst-case scenarios.
This is not a reason to assume that wars over energy are more likely now than in the past. Precisely because such conflicts have been limited and rare up to now, there is good reason to be cautious about estimating their likelihood in the future. The probabilities are further muddled by the fact that over-emphasis on the possibilities for great-power conflict favors important, and generally conservative, institutional interests within the defense establishments of developed states, particularly the United States. In a security environment that presents increasingly strong incentives to shift force-structure and doctrine toward irregular warfare, counter-terrorism, constabulary operations, and so on, the possibility of war to seize or defend energy resources provides a much needed rationale for preserving the heavy conventional forces that still consume the lion’s share of defense spending around the world. This is especially true of naval building programs, whose ostensible purpose is always presumed to include securing the sea-lines of communication that connect the producers and consumers of oil.
The prominence of energy security to military planning and budgeting may be exaggerated compared to its real salience internationally. Yet the anxiety that this issue is capable of inspiring is itself a measure of its significance, irrespective of any estimate of the probabilities. There were only two world wars in the entire twentieth century, after all, yet that is scarcely a reason to discount their importance...... [BOOK DOWNLOAD]
OTHER...
NUCLEAR
PROLIFERATION AND INTERNATIONAL SECURITY.
Sverre
Lodgaard and Morten Bremer Maerli
GLOBAL
INSURGENCY AND THE FUTURE OF ARMED CONFLICT DEBATING FOURTH-GENERATION WARFARE.
Terry
Terriff, Aaron Karp and Regina Karp
TERRORISM
AND WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION RESPONDING TO THE CHALLENGE.
Edited
by Ian Bellany
GLOBALIZATION
AND WMD PROLIFERATION
Edited
by James A. Russell and Jim J. Wirtz
POWER
SHIFTS, STRATEGY AND WAR DECLINING STATES AND INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT
Dong
Sun Lee
ENERGY
SECURITY AND GLOBAL POLITICS, THE MILITARIZATION OF RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Edited
by Daniel Moran and James A. Russell
