ABSTRACT
War between states has always been central to the study of International Relations and widely accepted as an inevitable feature of state-to-state relations. This is understandable given that this form of conflict, historically, has been so prominent and so costly in lives. The Realist model of powerful states vying for supremacy, restrained only by the countervailing power of other states, seems to be borne out by considering the scale and nature of the major wars in history. Most of the conflicts listed in Table 2.1 were ‘clashes of the Titans’ involving the world’s premier military powers. The four biggest clashes had a catalytic effect on International Relations beyond their direct human and governmental impact in the states directly involved. These wars were infernos in which new international orders, normatively altering state relations, were forged. The Korean and Vietnamese wars, however, were only indirect clashes of the Titans and, in fact, great-power collisions have not been seen since the ultimate of such clashes in 1939-45. That the potential ‘mother of all’ clashes of the Titans, the Cold War, should end with a peaceful transition to a new order, rather than military victory, served to challenge the ascendancy of Realism in the study of military security. Incidences of inter-state war, in general, have also receded over recent decades (Human Security Centre 2005). The spectre of this sort of war, however, still looms large over much of the conduct of government foreign policies. There can be little doubt that the Afghan and Iraq wars have been the most high-profile international political events since September 2001, when the normal order of security prioritization was briefly overturned.
