Economics have a profound influence on defence policy regardless of country. One merely needs to observe the debates on expenditure today for a look at how even a superpower like the United State’s armed forces is constrained by defence budgets. While the same holds true for the UK, it has been more noticeable since 1945 with Britain’s declining power and prestige.
Since the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the development sector has been engaged in debate concerning the failures of the NGO response. NGOs have destructively transplanted a parallel system of governance, often being caught up within an aid worker bubble which has stood between the Haitian state and its citizens and thus undermined the symbiotic nature of their social contract.
A lack of cooperation between agencies, ignorance in dealing with the methods of fund-gathering and fund-moving measures, and the implementation of contradictory policies have resulted in a system in which the West cannot find a comprehensive strategy to curb the financing of Islamic terrorism.
Resources are strategically invaluable economic and political tools. It is the unquestionable human thirst for black gold, and other vital resources such as water and minerals, where global capitalism, post-colonial kleptocracy and the disenfranchised insurgent will meet in an unpredictable and volatile new paradigm.
Traditional approaches to international relation, such as liberalism, realism, and realpolitik, have failed in Somalia. As policymakers determine what to do about Somalia, they should consider employing faith-based diplomacy jointly with traditional military operations and Track I diplomatic efforts.
The US experience in Venezuela helped nuance its wider policy towards Latin America by challenging the reliance on free market economics. While the Eisenhower administration chose to re-emphasise democratic values in order to combat rising Communist radicalism, practical support for democracy proved to be limited.
In the McCarthy era of the 1950s, anti-Communism created an atmosphere of fear which allowed political actors to accrue greater powers over the American population. This unusual situation was permitted as the public were manipulated by people with political interests into believing the USA had entered into a state of emergency in order to safeguard national security.
Despite the euphoria that accompanied the toppling of Felix Dzerzhinsky’s statue in Lubyanka Square in August 1991, the power of the KGB, now the FSB and the SVR, has not declined. True reform of Russia’s security services, despite some early intent, has not happened.
We may all agree that there is a moral imperative to halt mass atrocities. The problem is the reconciliation of such an obligation and our entrenched system of anarchy at the international level. Those states that are part of the United Nations should have a responsibility to respect the adoption of R2P principles, notably the moral imperative to halt mass atrocities and punish the perpetrators through the ICC.
It would be a mistake to deny that technological progress has been, and still is, a characteristic of our history. Men have gone from fighting with their gladios in ancient Rome to using gunpowder in cannons and rifles, and from deploying machine guns to applying the threat of nuclear war.
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