Understanding global security - Peter Hough

MILITARY THREATS TO SECURITY FROM STATES
due to the nationalistic zeal which typically accompanies revolution (Snyder 2000,
Zakaria 1997). Social Constructivists have highlighted the phenomenon of ‘warlike
democracies’ to demonstrate how ideas and perception undermine the logic of
democratic peace. ‘[D]emocracies to a large degree create their enemies and their
friends – “them” and “us” – by inferring either aggressive or defensive motives
from the domestic structures of their counterparts’ (Risse 1999: 19–20). Risse does,
however, concede that democracies are overwhelmingly peaceful in their relations
with other democracies. Perpetual peace, then, might only become a reality when
there are only ‘us’ and no ‘them’ in the world. This ‘end of history’ is not yet with us.
From balance to an imbalance of power
The chief cause of Realist caution or fear for the ‘New World Order’ was that it
threatened a central tenet of their recipe for world order, the balance of power. The
unipolar world that has emerged, according to orthodox Realist logic, should prove
unsustainable and prompt other states to topple the USA’s pole position. This has
not happened, of course, but the fear persists among some statesmen and Realist
commentators that American preponderance is bound to breed resentment and be
a source of general global instability. Some western governments have voiced
concern over the implications of US freedom to manoeuver on the world stage with
French statesmen and commentators, in particular, making reference to the dangers
inherent in there being a world ‘hyperpower’. Kagan, an American academic with
strong political connections to the State Department, has articulated the concern that
a hyperpower is reflexively drawn to an aggressive foreign policy.
A man armed only with a knife may decide that a bear prowling the forest is a
tolerable danger, because hunting it with a knife is riskier than lying low and
hoping it never attacks. The same man armed with a rifle, however, will likely
make a different calculation.
(Kagan 2003: 2)
This becomes problematic when the man takes to shooting at targets just in case
they turn out to be a bear. These concerns came to greatest prominence in 2003
when the USA sidestepped both the UN and NATO in prosecuting war against Iraq.
Other states, in no way aligned to the USA, have been more vitriolic than the French
in their criticism of their foreign policy. President Bush’s assertion in the aftermath
of the Afghanistan war in 2002, and lead-up to the Iraqi war, that Iran was part of an
‘axis of evil’ prompted Iranian Foreign Minister, Kamal Kharazi, to state that ‘[t]he
world will not accept US hegemony’ (Theodoulou 2002). US preponderance is such
that their hegemony looks unchallengeable but there is little doubt that it has bred
resentment in some parts of the world that threatens to puncture the idea of post
Cold War peace.
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