War and the New Disorder in the 21st Century PDF
Preview War and the New Disorder in the 21st Century
War and the New Disorder in the 21st Century This page intentionally left blank War and the New Disorder in the 21 st Century Jeremy Black c o n t i n u u m WNEW YORK LONDON Continuum The Tower Building 15 East 26th Street 11 York Road New York London SE1 7NX NY 10010 www.continuumbooks.com Jeremy Black, 2004 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission from the publishers. First published 2004 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 0-8264-7124-2 HB Typeset by RefineCatch Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk Printed and bound by Cromwell Press Ltd, Trowbridge, Wilts For Tim Rees This page intentionally left blank Contents Abbreviations viii Preface ix 1 The Nature of War 1 2 The New Disorder: State Weakness 26 3 The New Disorder: International Tensions 69 4 Future Conflict 119 5 Conclusions 163 Index 175 Abbreviations ABM anti-ballistic missile ASEAN Association of South-East Asian Nations CIA (US) Central Intelligence Agency EU European Union FBI (US) Federal Bureau of Investigation IMF International Monetary Fund NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization NMD National Missile Defence Scheme RAM Revolution in Attitudes towards the Military RMA Revolution in Military Affairs SALT 1 Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (1972) UN United Nations Preface The end of the Cold War led to an attempt to define a new world order: a reconceptualization that was closely linked to particular political strategies in the 1990s, most vocally to the call for an order based on humanitarian norms and policed by peacekeeping forces operating under inter- national authority. The validity of this interpretation of international relations was questionable, but irrespective of this it was placed under greater pressure as a result of the al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001. These led not only to a more mili- taristic attitude on the part of the American government and a related burst of war but also to a widespread lack of confidence that the new world order was more than an uneasily controlled disorder. In the closing decade of the twentieth century there had been much talk of the obsolescence, not to say end, of war. Arguments varied, but a combination of the destructive- ness and spread of atomic weaponry, a declining interest in both conquest and military service, and the supposed weakness, not to say collapse, of the state combined to lead to such claims. If war was outdated for these reasons it was also, in a separate analysis, presented as pointless because of the overwhelming military hegemony of one state, the USA, the leading economic and scientific power in the world. The notion of a Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) was advanced in order to describe changes in the nature of military power and, in particular, both the
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