Understanding global security - Peter Hough

MILITARY THREATS TO SECURITY FROM STATES
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of
unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial
complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and
will persist.
(Eisenhower 1961)
Pluralists
Pluralists dispute the Marxist proposition that war is an inevitable feature of
international politics in a capitalist world, and the Realist proposition that war is an
inevitable feature of international politics in any sort of world. The brutishness
of human nature in the Realist analysis or the irrelevance of human nature in the
Marxist analysis is rejected and a more optimistic assessment made on the likelihood
of war to remain a central feature of political life in the future. Just as many people
lead blameless lives, so many states avoid violent conflicts (for example Switzerland
and Sweden) and, although conflict is sometimes unavoidable for the preservation
of justice in the world, it could be consigned to the history books given political
change. To Pluralists the lack of progress of humanity in curbing the resort to war
is more nurture than nature. The arbitrary division of the world into competitive
units has seen the populations of these states dragged into wars by self-interested
governments, particularly non-democratic ones. This serves to exacerbate disputes
beyond what is necessary or rational and leads to wars being prompted by misperception
of an adversary and/or the likely gains to accrue from attacking them.
If war were truly rational every state that initiated conflict would win which, of course,
has not been the case. Hence, for Pluralists, a cure exists to rid humanity of the cancer
of war: the removal of its root cause through the erosion of state sovereignty.
Interdependence and, to a greater extent, integration serve to diminish war by revealing
that the mutual gains inherent in cooperation outweigh the spoils of individual
gain and reduce the likelihood of misperception causing unnecessary wars. The
improbability of a new Franco-German confrontation, after three major wars in the
course of a human lifespan, is the classic case used to uphold this view.
Conclusions
The ‘ending’ of the Cold War has not changed the military security threats to the
states or peoples of many states, including those still affected by it (for example
Korea or Cuba) or to those for whom it was never the principal concern (for example
India or Israel). However, the lifting of the over-arching threat posed by that conflict
and the nature in which it (at least partially) ended has brought into question a
number of long-held assumptions about the study and conduct of military security
policy.
Most in need of reappraisal is that most well established and still influential
Realist theory, the balance of power. There is a strong case to be made that the
preservation or restoration of a balance of power did maintain order in previous
phases of history, but this is not sufficient reason to believe that a contemporary
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