The fall of the Berlin Wall under the weight of popular protest on November 9, 1989 marked the beginning of the end of the Cold War, a process that culminated with the collapse of the Soviet Union two years later. The Cold War had dominated international politics, and the studies of many political scientists and other scholars, since the late 1940s. Much of the large-scale violence that had occurred during these four decades was a direct consequence of the Cold War. The threat of unimaginable destruction grew at the same time with the buildup of the American and Soviet nuclear arsenals. The end of the Cold War transformed international politics. With that global change came a challenge to the focus of traditional security studies on the threat and use of force and its instruments. Should examining large-scale violence remain the purpose of security studies?
The nature of this transformation on global politics and its academic study, however, was far from clear. The emerging world configuration would surely not be the world order that postwar planners during the Second World War had hoped for, the order for which the United Nations was designed, the order that might have prevailed had it not been for the Cold War. The world's popula-tion had more than doubled since 1945, and, as a consequence of decolonization, the number of states in the system had more than trebled. Nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction had been introduced. There had been unprecedented economic growth that made possible immense improvements in living standards while, at the same time, the chasm between the extremely rich and the extremely poor grew. International govern-mental and nongovernmental organizations had grown in number and authority. Yet, because of sovereignty, states remained the dominant forces in international politics; they alone could tax and conscript. The system continued to be one in which states had to provide for their own and international security. Permutations for diverse interactions among states—as well as nonstate actors—greatly increased.
What would threaten national and international security in this evolving new world structure? The demise of the Cold War lessened fears about dangers that might stem from a massive confrontation of the military forces of the two sides in Europe, the Soviet-American nuclear arms race spiraling out of control, or the initiation, spread, and escalation of proxy wars fought in developing countries as part of the broad ideological struggle. These had been the issues on which international security studies had primarily focused during the Cold War years (e.g., deterrence, limited war, arms races, and alliance structures). International security studies had achieved considerable understanding of these problems, and national and international officials had gained substantial experience in dealing with them in ways that minimized violence. How relevant would this understanding and experience be for different issues? How much did inter-national security studies need to redefine its concerns to continue to be relevant? These questions could not be answered without a clearer understanding of the new ways in which large-scale violence might arise, be conducted, and be mitigated.
The 1990s provided both theories and evidence relevant to rethinking the nature of national and international security. In The End of History and the Last Man (1992), Francis Fukuyama argued that, with the collapse of communism and increased reliance on markets and private property, a broad trend toward the establishment of liberal democracy throughout the world had emerged. A number of scholars found empirical evidence to support the democratic peace hypothesis that asserts democratic nations do not engage in war with each other. Thus, if Fukuyama and others (e.g., Max Singer and Aaron Wildavsky) were correct in anticipating that all the major powers were becoming democratic, the sources of large-scale violence would be eliminated or at least sharply limited.
Other analysts, such as Jessica Tuchman Mathews in her article on "Redefining Security" in Foreign Affairs (Spring 1989), argued that the whole concept of security had to be redefined so that it would encompass resource, environmental, and demographic issues. Many other observers of international political economics maintained that the principal dangers that the world faced would stem from economic issues, particularly the conflicting pressures of economic globalization and protectionism.
But a substantial number of security specialists argued that their studies should continue to focus primarily on the instruments, threat, and actuality of large-scale violence. And the decade of the 1990s provided ample evidence that violence within and among states did not need the Cold War as a stimulus; wars ravaged Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and even Europe.
Even if there was modest agreement that the focus of international security studies should continue to be large-scale violence, this hardly settled the matter. As Robert Jervis suggested in his 1991 article on "The Future of World Politics" in International Security, though large-scale violence remained a possibility, and states continued to be concerned about providing for their security, the nature of violence would surely be different than it had been. International security studies needed to develop a new and broader understanding of the sources of large-scale violence, the instruments that might be used, and the techniques that might be employed to mitigate violence.
Samuel P. Huntington, in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996), provided one dramatic example of the way sources of violence might change in a new international structure. His provocative argument contended that the international politics of the future will be defined by the clash of civilizations. In his analysis, he sought to provide a new paradigm for understanding international security issues and argued that: "In the emerging era, clashes of civilizations are the greatest threat to world peace, and an international order based on civilizations is the surest safeguard against world war" (p. 321).
The December 1997 conference "Violent Conflict in the 21st Century," organized by the Midwest Consortium for International Security Studies (MCISS) of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, draws on and links to the many efforts in the 1990s to reconceptualize international security studies. The plenary talks presented at this conference make up this volume. The book does not offer a new paradigm for the study of international security issues. However, it does go beyond exploration of the sources of conflict to examine the instruments that might be used in conflicts and the ways that conflicts might be mitigated.
The first chapter, by Robert D. Kaplan, provides a broad framework for thinking about international security issues in the twenty-first century. It is a cautionary message; it challenges much of the dogma that became common among international security analysts in the 1990s. Kaplan argues that the apparent worldwide trend toward democracy should not promote undue optimism about the elimination of conflict. He maintains that stable democracies depend upon the presence of a strong and sizeable middle class, a condition that is absent among most of the world's population. What he sees emerging in the opening decades of the twenty-first century are not stable democracies but rather "democratic heresies" (p. 7) or "diseased variants of democracy" (p.10). Nor does he believe that technology will provide easy solutions for security problems. On the contrary, he foresees that technology and, in particular, miniaturization will favor ter-rorism. Finally, he argues that the abundance of information in the new era can do more to stimulate the power of the mob than to promote coherent and disciplined civil society.
The second chapter, by Harvey Drucker, develops, elaborates, and expands in detail one of the themes in Kaplan's overview. Kaplan suggests that technological advances would enhance and strengthen the capabilities of terrorists. Drucker makes several points. He argues that our increasing dependence on technology has made our technological infrastructure more vital to our daily lives and has also made us more vulnerable to attacks on the infrastructure. Technology for attacking the infrastructure has become more easily available. Technology for defending the infrastructure has not kept pace with technology for destroying it. He stresses the vulnerability of our infrastructure and its defenses, a vulnerability that was made clear most recently when 'secret' nuclear designs were stolen from a national laboratory using computer technology.
The third chapter, by W.K.H. Panofsky, is an important reminder that the Cold War has left a dangerous residue, weapons of mass or—as he prefers to call them—indiscriminate destruction. He argues that in the twenty-first century analysts and officials must continue to be concerned about preventing the use of nuclear weapons. The fact that since the presentation of his paper at the conference two of the undeclared nuclear weapons states, India and Pakistan, have openly tested nuclear weapons underscores his point. As the twenty-first century opens, there are seven states that have acknowledged that they have nuclear weapons and one state that has nuclear capabilities but has not openly declared that it has nuclear weapons. Proliferation could continue. Nuclear weapons cannot be uninvented. While the dismantling of U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons, as a consequence of arms control measures, has reduced the threat of the use of nuclear weapons, it has created an immense, unsolved problem of disposing of the nuclear materials. Chemical weapons have been banned, but disposing of them poses immense difficulties. Equally troubling is the potential use of biological agents. In short, weapons of mass destruction remain a serious problem for national and international security.
The next two chapters, by Marilynn Brewer and Donald L. Horowitz, deal with human sources of conflict. Brewer is a psychologist. Her chapter draws on social identity theory to show how group loyalty is created and how intergroup conflict arises. The precondition for con-flict is an absence of trust or a sense of obligations among groups. Ironically, interdependence exacerbates inter-group tension because it increases the need for trust. Brewer analyzes the possible solutions to this phenom-enon, such as separatism, establishing higher order goals, and creating multiple loyalties that cross-cut the ways we may differentiate ourselves. In her view, the last of these strategies offers greatest promise.
Horowitz is a lawyer and political scientist. His chapter focuses on ethnic conflict and, particularly, on what he terms the deadly ethnic riot, the sudden "lethal attack by civilian members of one ethnic group on civilian members of another, the victims chosen because of their group membership" (p.91). He probes the supports for such attacks. He argues that such attacks are broadly approved by the wider society in which they occur. He then explores how deadly ethnic riots have declined in some societies where they once were common. Professionalization of the police provides a partial explanation, as does an increase in people being equality-minded, but the underlying explanation for such a reduction is a change in social support for violence.
The final chapter, by Kennette Benedict, provides a broad and integrative framework for thinking about the sources and instruments of large-scale violence in the twenty-first century and instruments for mitigating such violence. She analyzes the forces and consequences of globalization, shows how the disintegration of states contributes to the outbreak of violence, and relates these themes to the prominence of identity politics. Her prescription for mitigating violence is the creation of a transboundary legal order and system of governance. She concludes her chapter with comments on issues of institutional design that build on the institutional developments of the second half of the twentieth century and support multidisciplinary approaches to social research.
Several important arguments are contained in this collection. First, large-scale violent conflict will continue to be a major concern in the twenty-first century. Second, analysts and national and international officials ought to be cautious in projecting the pacific consequences of the trend toward democratization; the world is a long way from being governed by a collection of stable, liberal democracies. Third, weapons of mass destruction exist and will for the foreseeable future constitute a serious danger. Fourth, even if organized inter- and intrastate conflict could be tamed, small groups of terrorists can increasingly cause large-scale violence. Finally and most importantly, the sources of conflict are within us as individuals, as are ways of mitigating conflict. Human beings have a basic need for identity, and this clearly can be and is a source of violent conflict, as daily events in the 1990s have demonstrated. Human beings also have a capacity to satisfy their need for identity in ways that do not spark violence and to reject violence as a mode of dealing with differences. Institutions can be crafted to facilitate progress in these directions. This is the optimistic message of this collection. This positive message, and the broad arguments about the possibilities for large-scale violence in the twenty-first century, provide a framework for thinking and teaching about research and policy agendas for international security studies in the coming decades.
Charles Hermann,
Harold K. Jacobson,
and Anne S. Moffat
Chicago, Illinois
May, 1999
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