International Conflict and U.S. National Security Policy into the 21st Century
Abstract
Global politics are undergoing rapid and extensive changes, and the resulting flux has engendered a significant debate within the United States concerning which policies to adopt in the post-bipolar international system. Defining contemporary U.S. national security requirements within the changing context of armed conflict in global affairs has become a key element in this debate. This study is intended to examine how armed conflict in the post-Cold War world is likely to affect the structure and operation of the international system, and the formulation and implementation of U.S. national security policy within that system. It is already clear that patterns of armed conflict in world affairs will not simply be a continuation of hostilities that prevailed during the Cold War. The U.S.-USSR superpower confrontation has ended, but violence has become more prominent among lesser powers on the peripheries of the international system. By examining these developments from the perspectives of the international system and U.S. national security interests, the effects of transformations in armed conflict can be accurately assessed and their policy implications better understood. In the future, armed conflicts among the major powers will not occur. Local conflicts almost certainly will be present, but they will not possess the significance they once did for affecting the structure and operation of the international system. Virtually all of the local conflicts that do take place will involve fighting over the domestic political authority structure of the smaller states in which they occur. Conflicts caused by overt foreign military aggression will cease to be a primary instigator of fighting between nations. And the interest of major powers in local conflicts and the potential for their participation in the fighting will be significantly lower than in the past when the great power paradigm operated as a determining influence in patterns of international conflict.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 1994
- Accession Number
- ADA444259
Entities
People
- Bob Warrington
Organizations
- National War College