Three Main Levels of Analysis in the Causes of Wars - Essay Example

Using examples from the major Twentieth Century conflicts, discuss the significance of the 3 main levels of analysis in the causes of wars There were several wars within the span of the twentieth century. These wars included World War 1, World War II, Korean Conflict (War), Desert Storm, Iraq War. Each of the wars included major and minor battles. They had varying and distinct reasons behind them. Allies and foes were distinctly different in each case. Each of the wars had a level of analysis. These levels were individual state, and system. The levels of war analysis form a hierarchy. The responsibilities of the hierarchy rely on the scale and nature of the operation. The individual level of analysis in war includes a basic idea of how human traits cause many of the social outcomes in historical instances, including war and peace. There are variations of this idea as listed in a paper written by Wade L. Huntley, Ph.D. titled Causes of War and Paths to Peace written in May of 2004. Those variations include: basic human nature, varying features of human nature and both perception and misperception. His considerations behind this would include that in factoring basic human nature, people are basically aggressive, loving, greedy and fearful and so forth. People would be of all sorts of types, some aggressive, others peaceful, greedy or generous. Perception and misperception can result as bad decisions are made, especially in times of stress, which continually exemplifies the limits of human understanding of more than just human nature. Now, the question is, why does this series of considerations explain how war can manage coming about According to the text written by Wade L. Huntley, Ph.D. titled Causes of War and Paths to Peace written in May of 2004 that would include such potential motivations as self interest, which would lead to dilemmas in security, the equivalent of fear, protection requirement as a result and then intimidation as a result of those protections. Uncertainty breeds doubt and thus creates misperception and misinterpretation of actions. Wars or conflicts that would figure into this particular style of analysis would include, the Kurds, Bosnia, and Afghanistan in the grand scheme of war analysis because it would be individual conflicts of interest and security involved. The state level of war analysis includes a basic idea that the key factor is not necessarily based on human factors, but governmental ones in organization and such. The constraints that are created as a result of the basic infrastructure of the country can become a root cause of war. There are two variations to this idea. One is the state's nature; because each state wants certain things just because they would happen to be states and things like security and unity or nationalism would be inclusive within that. Also, included within this perspective is, like individuals, every state would be different. There would be differences that include purposeful, ideological and structural differences to consider. Much like the man vs. man consideration, this would be, in order revolutionary vs. status quo, capitalism vs. communism and democracy vs. totalitarianism. So, how can we understand such things, well we examine one of the wars on a state level. This would be, in essence, the Vietnam Conflict in which half the country believed strongly in democratic process and the other half would believe strongly in the communist construct. The same could be said for the Korean War. Understanding the underlying reasons would hardly gain knowledge as to how the individual level of war interpretations would inevitably cause war. Nor, would this actually explain the impetus of war in the fact that uncertainty of the human condition exists. In the State level of war, you have states that control the military, so what happens within a state or affects that state, can affect the military. No matter how good the people are within that state, it hardly would imply that the governing body for that state would be the same. Regardless of how individuals see the world, states and governing bodies for those states will see things differently, and in essence, this can be a root cause for war. The final level in the causes of war would be the system level. The basic idea would be that states consider that they live in a different world than the individual, where individuals live in domestic societies, states live in international ones. It is the misperception of the fact that people believe that international systems carry characteristics of the individual societies that would assist in causing war. International systems are considered anarchical in creation but would, in the minds of individual states, be a form of stability that creates specified roles for states. This, because there are potential threats in all cases, causes the reason for security, for protection, and also potentially causes war as a result of worry over threats. System level wars would include wars like those occurring in Somalia, the American Civil War and many other civil conflicts worldwide. These three perspectives on the levels of war development and the reasons behind it would in fact cause many of us to ask questions. Yet, as a result of these three perspectives on the development of war, we also see in retrospect the causes of the wars that have occurred in history. Individual, state and system level considerations can be all inclusive in the development of war, as can be seen in the case of the American Civil War or the War of 1898. State and system level considerations can be located in other wars, including World Wars I and II. It would be our capacity at understanding the underside, the reasoning behind the wars that will allow us to facilitate the pathways toward peace. Compare and contrast the types of conflict common during the Cold War and post-Cold War period, and the manner in which the international community responded to them. The Cold War was a war of actions, words, and fierce battles between the US and the former Soviet Union and in several countries. During this time period of 1945-1991, the United States and the Soviet Union competed against each other in the development of advanced technology for the creations of weapons of mass destruction. Battles occurred in many places during the Cold War including wars in Afghanistan, Angola, Ethiopia, Somalia, Korea and Vietnam. There would be civil wars in both China and Greece to contend with as well. The Cold War was a struggle that emerged after World War II between the Soviet Union and the United States. Yet, the Cold War wasn't merely a battle between the two super powers, it was actually an extensive battle for much of the world in the jockeying for position as world powers. The battles that provided hot spots between these super powers would include Vietnam, which in all aspects was one that most, including nearly half of the American populace, would have been a war that should never have been fought by the US forces. This war was, in all respects, a "For those of us who came of age during the Cold War, its key features are etched in our memories. For almost five decades, from the late 1940s until the demise of the Soviet Union, the Cold War defined the main contours of the international landscape. It was, at its core, an ideologically charged confrontation between the West, that is, the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its satellites. Americans accepted that the stakes involved were nothing less than the preservation of our way of life". (http://www.state.gov/s/p/rem/9632.html) In analysis of the Vietnam War it is perceptible that it started as a war of state and finished as a war of the system, as a result of the different viewpoints of systems and also the conflict of state to state in regard to security. It would hardly be unusual for wars to change from one perception to another during their progression. The Korean Conflict, unlike the war in Vietnam, was one in which international cooperation was seen on both sides of the situation. The Soviet Union and its allies worked with North Korea and the Allied forces including the US and British forces along with others were involved in resolution between north and south. The Korean Conflict was assuredly, in all respects, a war of state, in the realm of analysis, due to the fact that half the country perceived the state of a Communist sort to be appropriate, where the other half of the country would perceive it as democratic. It would be for this reason that Korea was fought about and within. Somalia is and was and will probably always be a war of the system. The work that so many other foreign allies attempted to manage to end the war within the country merely exacerbated the problems involved. Ethiopia would be much the same in its concept and perception causing not merely inner turmoil, but inner conditions that cause the ultimate in suffering of their own people. Kosovo and Afghanistan would be included in this type of war fought in the suppression of women's rights and responsibilities, certain ethnic groups and so forth. The outright genocide involved in Kosovo represents fully the cost of war in the framework of the state level of war analysis. These battles in Kosovo, Ethiopia, Somalia and such would only represent a small portion of the battles that occurred during the Cold War years. Others included civil wars in China and Greece, both of which would be considered wars of state in analysis. Notice, it was a change of perception throughout the Cold War period that would have facilitated these wars and their resulting alterations of the world's political and social landscape. The Cold War ensured both systemic and governmental alterations on a global scale. The human security approach is too broad in scope to be coherent for security studies Discuss. In order to determine whether or not the Human Security Approach would be far too broad in scope, one must first understand reasons behind the approach. There are simple reasons in fact, though there are differences in basic determination as to what the Human Security Approach involves from one region to another. Human Security in essence would be the inherent need and desire to facilitate the management of the pursuit of life, liberty and safety by protecting the human condition from violent or malevolent threats. Human Security is a people-centered approach to foreign policy that recognizes that stability cannot be rewarded until we as the people are protected from violent threats to our rights, safety or lives. "Freedom from fear" and "freedom from want" have become the catch phrases of an approach to security called human security". "Often referred to as "people-centered security" or "security with a human face," human security places human beings - rather than states - at the focal point of security considerations. Human security emphasizes the complex relationships and often-ignored linkages between disarmament, human rights, and development" (UNIDIR website) The Human Security Approach focuses on the relationships between environmental change and human society, with an emphasis on the implications for human security. Global environmental change-related threats to human security are unevenly distributed across and within regions, social groups, and generations. Understanding who is most vulnerable, as well as how these threats contribute to conflict or cooperation, forms an important part of GECHS research (http://www.gechs.org/). Since the end of the Cold War, armed conflicts have increasingly taken place within, and not between, states. National security remains important, but in a world in which war between states is the rare exception, and many more people are killed by their own governments than by foreign armies, the concept of 'human security' has been gaining greater recognition. Unlike traditional concepts of security, which focus on defending borders from external military threats, human security is concerned with the security of individuals. For some proponents of human security, the key threat is violence; for others the threat agenda is much broader, embracing hunger, disease and natural disasters. Largely for pragmatic reasons, the Human Security Centre has adopted the narrower concept of human security that focuses on protecting individuals and communities from violence. Traditional security policy emphasizes military means for reducing the risks of war and for prevailing if deterrence fails. Human security's proponents, while not eschewing the use of force, have focused to a much greater degree on non-coercive approaches. These range from preventive diplomacy, conflict management and post-conflict peace building, to addressing the root causes of conflict by building state capacity and promoting equitable economic development. The new dimensions of human security are well outlined by the United Nations Development Program in their Human Development Report of 1994. A prime example of human security reasons would be, "in the final analysis, human security is a child who did not die, a disease that did not spread, a job that was not cut, an ethnic tension that did not explode in violence, a dissident who was not silenced. Human security is not a concern with weapons - it is a concern with human life and dignity." This concept will more than likely cause revolution throughout international society as a result of first its conception and secondly its inception since the end of the Cold War. Human Security has always been at issue in some format or another. You see it in the methods employed during peacetime and during war time. The methodology utilized might in fact be different from generation to generation, but the concept itself has hardly managed to evolve into something other than what its basics stem from. The pursuits of life and liberty, happiness and peace have been a part of the psyche of humanity since the beginnings of human existence. References: 1. Huntley, Wade L., Ph.D., Causes of War and Paths to Peace: Lecture to Peace Studies I Hiroshima City University, May 19, 2004 http://www.intl.hiroshima-cu.ac.jp/hyoshida/2004/2004-1/040519.pdf 2. Integrated Publishing MCWP 2-14 Counterintelligence http://www.tpub.com/content/USMC/mcwp214a/css/mcwp214a 22.html 3. US Department of State: First Gov: Copyright 2006 http://www.state.gov/s/p/rem/9632.html 4. The History of Wars Fought At Home and Abroad; Delaware County INGenWeb 2006 by Gina Richardson; http://www.rootsweb.com/indelawa/history_of_wars.htm#15 5. UNIDIR website: United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research: Ideas for Peace and Security http://www.unidir.org/bdd/fiche-periodique.phpref_periodique=1020-7287-2004-4-en 6. Global Environmental Change and Human Security; April 10, 2006 http://www.gechs.org/ 7. Gokcek, Gulriz Gigi; Department of Political Science, Ellison Hall: Ethnic Conflict and Interstate War: An Analysis of the Kurdish Problem: University of California, Santa Barbara; March 27, 2002 http://www.isanet.org/noarchive/gokcek.html 8. HDR 1994 New Dimensions of Human Security United Nations Development Programme Copyright 2005; Chapter 2: http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/1994/en/ http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/1994/en/pdf/hdr_1994_ch2.pdf Read More