ABSTRACT

Tectonic shifts in global politics have to do with more than just changes in the distribution of power. In this short chapter, I identify two such shifts that I believe will transform the international security environment during the twenty-first century. The first has to do with the changing character of organized political violence in the Global South. 1 Drawing on the work of Mark Duffield, the argument I make in this connection is that the contemporary dynamics of world order transformation have created the structural conditions-of-possibility for “liberal war” – that is, wars fought by the West or Global North to deal with the less desirable side-effects of “globalization.” The second major tectonic shift has to do with the advent of new global cultural discourses that are transforming the ends and purposes of the state (at least in the Global North) and its derivative institutions of global governance. Drawing on the work of Ulrich Beck, the argument I make in this connection is that liberal war is not simply a rational response to an objective set of challenges. Rather, it is a way of thinking about the character and purposes of war that is powerfully inflected by the cultural norms of what Beck calls the “global risk society.” 2 To the extent that this is true, theorizing the future of international relations will require not only thinking through the phenomenon Zakaria labels as the “rise of the rest,” but also coming to terms with more profound changes in both the nature of the global political economy and the way in which the West understands (and feels it has to respond to) the risks posed by the changes.