{"id":2747,"date":"2013-07-03T20:13:29","date_gmt":"2013-07-03T20:14:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/?p=2747"},"modified":"2017-11-14T21:28:36","modified_gmt":"2017-11-14T19:28:36","slug":"too-many-archdukes-too-many-bullets-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/too-many-archdukes-too-many-bullets-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Too many archdukes, too many bullets"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Ninety-nine years ago this Friday, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his pregnant wife Sofia were gunned down in Sarajevo by a nineteen-year old Bosnian Serb nationalist named Gavrilo Princips.\u00a0 The assassinations quickly provoked a crisis that more quickly erupted into world war.\u00a0 Ironically, many of the elites in Europe believed that an early 20th<\/sup> century version of globalization and economic interdependencies on the continent made war too expensive to contemplate or to wage.\u00a0 Indeed, Nobel Prize winner Sir Norman Angell\u2019s The Great Illusion<\/i>, written in 1910 and required reading for the intelligentsia, made that case eloquently and, as it turned out, entirely wrongly.<\/p>\n

Today, the nearly four hundred year old Westphalian international political system of sovereign states is confronting and absorbing the shock of a far more powerful, robust and interconnected form of globalization.\u00a0 This collision or comingling has created Four New Horsemen of the Apocalypse that threaten and endanger mankind and, in turn, produced a surfeit of potential archdukes and bullets.\u00a0 Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea, cyber attack, economic instability and Asian territorial disputes demonstrate that there is no shortage of ticking time bombs.<\/p>\n

But what is both more interesting and perplexing, as well as frightening, is that there need not be any direct connection between a spark or fuse and the explosion it generates.\u00a0 A Tunisian fruit vendor self-immolates and ignites the so-called Arab Spring.\u00a0 An inadvertent Koran burning in Kabul and a fifth rate anti-Islamic video posted on U-tube prompt anti-American riots throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds.\u00a0 The consequence is that this combination of potential archdukes and an excess of potential bullets, even those fired from far distant and unanticipated or unexpected locations, has produced a volatile and highly dangerous mixture that too easily could explode into crises.<\/p>\n

The reasons are due to the impact and shock of globalization on the state system.\u00a0 Globalization has not merely connected or interconnected virtually all people and states of the world electronically, economically, financially, socially and culturally.\u00a0 Globalization and the diffusion of all forms of power have transformed politics by empowering individuals and emerging states as well as non-state actors to unprecedented levels of influence.\u00a0 The U.S. still remains the most powerful state in absolute terms.\u00a0 However, relatively, its power, influence and authority clearly are waning.\u00a0 Furthermore, globalization has increased the complexity of the Westphalian system as laws, rules and regulations abound to complicate both governing and the conduct of economic and financial intercourse.<\/p>\n

These interactions have spawned the first of the new Four Horsemen: failed or failing governance.\u00a0 From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe with Brussels and Washington in between, perhaps the greatest danger and threat to humanity is the failure of governments to govern adequately.\u00a0 Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and a litany of other states underscore this failure.\u00a0 But so too, many rightly argue that America\u2019s government is broken or at best dysfunctional.\u00a0 And given the inability to jump start economic recovery in Europe, the limits of government and the European Union—itself a morass of excessive regulation, rules and laws—provide further evidence to the presence of this new rider.<\/p>\n

The second steed arises from the first: economic disparity, disruption and despair.\u00a0 An interconnected world means that few people are not aware of how others live. Decency, equality and dignity have become universal aspirations that can be only filled by economic improvement.\u00a0 When they are not, unrest becomes endemic, explosive and exploitable.<\/p>\n

The third horseman is resurgent ideological and religious fanaticism empowered by globalization.\u00a0 Al Qaeda is the poster child and the Internet is the weapon of choice.\u00a0 Soon, cyber will become a more viable tool beyond recruitment and training grounds for would-be terrorists.\u00a0 A form of a computer virus such as Stuxnet in the hands of terrorist groups is a threat that will emerge and probably very soon.<\/p>\n

The fourth horseman is climate change or more directly global warming.\u00a0 As globalization has generated far greater demands for energy, electricity, mobility and production, obviously the amount of green house gases and other environmental threats have and are changing our habitat fundamentally.<\/p>\n

Taken together, the collision between the long-standing state system and the forces of globalization has catalyzed a dramatically changing global order for both international and domestic politics.\u00a0 The crucial questions are what can and should be done in response and are states and individuals capable of acting accordingly.<\/p>\n

Over the next year and in time for the commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of the start of World War I, this columnist will be seeking answers to these key questions and, of course, means for corralling the New Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The result will be a book tentatively titled Too Many Archdukes, Too Many Bullets: Preventing a 21st<\/sup> Century June 1914<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Stay tuned!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ninety-nine years ago this Friday, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his pregnant wife Sofia were gunned down in Sarajevo by a nineteen-year old Bosnian Serb nationalist named Gavrilo Princips.\u00a0 The assassinations quickly provoked a crisis that more quickly erupted into world war.\u00a0 Ironically, many of the elites in Europe believed that an early 20th century version of globalization and economic interdependencies on the continent made war too expensive to contemplate or to wage.\u00a0 Indeed, Nobel Prize winner Sir Norman Angell\u2019s The Great Illusion, written in 1910 and required reading for the intelligentsia, made that case eloquently and, as it turned out, entirely wrongly. Today, the nearly four hundred year old Westphalian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2745,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,84,76,86,102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog-en","category-global-governance","category-harlan-ullman-en","category-international-peace-security","category-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2747"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2747"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2747\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2749,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2747\/revisions\/2749"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}