ABSTRACT
In this chapter I will be examining the extensive debate on globalisation in International Relations (IR) and its relevance to analysis of conflicts beneath the level of the state, including state breakdown and ‘state failure’. In the first part I shall address some of the main features of the globalisation debate and the degree to which globalisation appears to be eclipsing both the state and state sovereignty in the international system. I shall then proceed in the second part to discuss the nature of sub-state conflict explanations for the intensification of ethnic, religious and insurgent conflict in the period since the end of the Cold War. This is then followed by a discussion of the new and distinct form of military challenge presented by the international terrorist movement al-Qaeda, while in the final part I shall attempt to show that the theory of globalisation provides only a weak level of explanation for conflict at the sub-state level, and that a far more robust theoretical explanation lies in the concept of ‘non-trinitarian warfare’ and its detailed application to the terrains of state fragmentation and breakdown.
