Contours of Conflict in the 21st Century

ANNEx A – QUOTES DRIVERSdeterrence’. 202‘In future conflicts, the role of the military to deter and prevent wars will rise. To winwithout fighting will be preferred’. 203Role and Power of the State‘It is clear that state sovereignty, particularly the sovereignty of developingcountries, is being eroded during the process of globalization; the state is no longeran entity with absolute sovereignty. However, the state will not withdraw from theworld stage. To the contrary, for international relations, the state will continue tobe the main player, and mostly of the countries in the world are still developingcountries. It is important to stress that, no matter how seriously the nature of statesovereignty has been eroded, it will continue to maintain a form of sacredness.This is completely contradictory to the trend of globalization. From the standpointof world politics, such dilemma determines the development trend of internationalsecurity system. In an anarchical system of world politics, such dilemma will makeinternational conflicts more complicated and intense. Because of the fundamentalnature of this dilemma, as long as the status of the state as the basic unit in theinternational system, such dilemma will not get solved’. 204Strategic Resource Distribution‘Fighting for resources is the fundamental driving force of international conflicts.Wars in human society derive from the lack of two things: The first is the lack ofresources. Fighting for rare and strategic recourses that are critical to nationalsecurity and economic development is always is the root cause for a country to goto war. The second is the lack of trust… However, between the two factors that maycause wars, the lack of resources plays a more fundamental role’. 205‘A key characteristic of global security environment over the next few decades wouldbe the emergence of a variety of conflicts over oil’. 206‘Caused by the economic crisis, rising unemployment rates, inflation, falling living202 Geng, ‘Wèilái zhànzhēng xīn qūshì zhǎnwàng’ [New Trends in Future Warfare], 75.203 Lin, ‘Wèilái de zhànzhēng’ [Future Warfare], 20.204 Zhao, ‘Quánqiú huà: 21 Shìjì guójì chōngtú de zhǔdǎo yīnsù’ [Globalization: The Main Factor inWorld Conflicts in the 21st Century], 16.205 Wang, ‘Guójì chōngtú jiāng wéirào zīyuán zhǎnkāi’ [Future International Conflicts Will Be overResources], 57.206 Ibid.190 Contours of Conflict in the 21 st Century