AN OUTLINE OF HOW DIPLOMATS ARE TO BLAME WHEN A MILITARIZED CRISIS ESCALATES TO AN ARMED CONFLICT
- Introduction
- The neo world is experiencing intensified discussions on conflict prevention, preventive diplomacy, and various other forms of preventive actions towards ending military crisis before escalation to armed conflicts and violence. Despite the elevation of these as a norm within the United Nations, diplomatic conflict prevention and preventive diplomacy continues to face insurmountable obstacles (Berridge 2016; Pigman 2010).
- Question: Are diplomats to blame when militarized crisis escalate to armed conflicts?
- Thesis: Drawing examples from recent high-level consultations on the topic of diplomatic failures, the essay will plunge into the area of how diplomats are to blame when militarized crisis escalate to armed conflicts; taking into consideration emerging opportunities and recurrent obstacles.
- Body – explanation of key concepts
Moens and Gillies (2000) explain that on the eve of the First World War, the world was characterised by shifting power balances, rapid globalization, socioeconomic stress, raising nationalisms, and transformative military technologies.
- Invention and construction of railway networks, dynamite, long-range artillery, submarines, aircraft, barbed wires, and repeating rifles altered the nature of war paralleling today’s precision guided munitions, anti-satellite missiles, land-based and sub launched anti-ship missiles, missile defence systems, space and cyber surveillance systems, and nuclear weapons (Hare 2016; Mellisen 2007). Armed conflicts between the great powers in today’s world would most certainly reveal that warfare has mutated and developed a novel of horrors for its participants.
- The 21st century is characterised by the establishment of professional militaries estranged from society but glorified by it leading to drawing up of war plans using novel technologies resulting in the fatal premise that the only effective defence is a pre-emptive offense. Such schemes have evolved without valid diplomatic input or political oversight (Kissinger 2016).
- Armed conflicts arise when military to military interactions among alliances take place without adequate supervision from civilian authorities, leading to unmanageable disconnects in policy that later become revealed when an actual war breaks out (Jonsson & Langhorne 2004).
The international community’s inability to resolve and prevent violent conflicts on many scenes in the globe has been the leading cause of intense political concern. One can appreciate the insatiable appetite among United Nations member states and other peacekeeping agencies to invest in preventive action. (Morini 2011; Vayrynen 1997).
- The idea of directing relatively modest amounts of resources to prevent armed conflicts rather than investing drastically in the costlier peacekeeping, humanitarian, stabilization of operations and reconstruction makes meaningful sense in a world experiencing a tumultuous economic slowdown (Sharp 2009).
- Contrarily, conflict preventive diplomacy have continued to gain negative traction in practice and policy. While such partly seems to stem from difficulties associated with anticipation of future challenges, the lack of uptake has been fundamentally linked to the changing nature of violence too
Regrettably, international diplomats and some other practitioners have been relatively slow to come to terms with ways in which the global burden of armed conflicts is changing what such means for diplomats to step up actions against conflicts.
- Whereas in light of the First World War the European imperialists would amicably come to solutions of their problems through trading colonies or other peripherals to reduce tensions between them, none of these factors are existent today (Moens and Gillies 2000; Mellisen 2007).
- The lack of peripheral trade interests means that there exist no effectual means of reducing the breakout of a military conflict between adversaries such as NATO against Russia, The U.N. against Iran, or China against Japan – among other pairings of war mongers who seem to enjoy to talk about war the most (Chakma 2012; Evans, Jacobson & Putnam 1993).
Alliances formed to facilitate cooperation as compared to the past, no longer oblige mutual aid or embody pre-concerted common purposes (Mattingly 2015; Kuniholm 2014).
- Such a welcome but dishonourable fact lowers the moral hazard implicit in Western power defence commitments to allies with weaker militaries and diminishes and potential prospects that they may act rashly citing powerful countries such as the U.S. having their back (Kuniholm 2014).
- Such only means finding other solutions to advance self-interest in the 21st century – widening the capacity for diplomacy (Cotter 2014).
The Western world diplomatic efforts have suffered repeated rebuke from unexpected developments. Some have had their foundation in Balkans – the Kindle pint of World War I – where ceasefires have been arranged, garrisons installed and such called peace (Chakma 2012; Jonsson & Aggestam 1999).
- Examples of diplomatic failures include the Israel-Palestine perpetual crisis, the Arab uprising (including the recent Syria), the Russo-Georgian War, regime changes in Iraq, the ever intensifying conflicts with Islamic militants, the “humanitarian interventions” in Libya and the collapse of Sykes-Picot (Berridge, Keens-Soper & Otte 2001; Kuniholm 2014; Morini 2011).
- More of such dramatic failures include the “pivot to Asia” amidst raging tussles in the South and East China Seas, the Ukraine Crisis, the Iranian and North Korean nuclear crisis, the Jihadist in Levant among other tests directed toward the Western statecraft (Langhorne 2004; Mattingly 2015).
- Conclusion–
Whereas commendable is the fact that military strength can never alone compel differences to Western desires and guarantee international order, importantly, such nations have to critically analyse diplomatic efforts directed towards alternate approaches to crisis prevention and less militaristic ways of dealing with the world beyond their borders.
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