H. Dawary
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International politics is defined by interests in terms of power. Nations promote their interests but can only do so through power. The mechanisms towards carrying this out can be in multitudinous ways, be it through ideologue, economy, subterfuge, influence, or even outright military force. The end goal is to increase the nations power.
In the previous century we witnessed multiple power struggles beginning with the first world war, the second world war, and later the cold war. The first world war was marred by an Alliance system which each nation fermented in increasing its power, there was the entente alliance and the central powers. The central powers were concerned with increasing its power outwards, and the entente by crushing the already growing power of the centrals and maintaining/increasing the power they already wielded, losing it would have meant losing the power they already wielded, which meant their source of wealth from the colonies they occupied throughout Africa and Asia and the territories they possessed within their own borders. Thus a war was an inevitability, this is what we know as the Thucydides trap, which is the threat of a great power that displaces an already existing one.
After the conclusion of the first world war, the central powers were broken up and punished, Germany had to pay war reparations and surrendered territories to France and Poland and couldn’t have an army force of more than 100,000, Austria Hungary was balkanised into smaller states. A war wearied Germany grew dissatisfied with its territorial loss and through it gave birth to a personality like Adolph Hitler, who in a few decades seized power and made Germany powerful. Hitler first sought power within Germany and later outside of Germany through territorial expansions.
At this point in history there were major powers around the world, Japan which had achieved a high level of centralisation and industrialisation, Germany, France, England, America, and the USSR. Japan, Germany’s ally, made the first move by invading China in 1937, and two years later Germany did the same with Poland igniting the second world war. The result in the end was a humiliating defeat for Germany and Japan which forced them to surrender to the “Allies” under varying treaties for both nations, one of which was an everlasting US military presence in both Japan and Germany, now although Britain and France won the second world war it was a Pyrrhic victory for them, their power had been drastically reduced and they lost most of their territories in the subsequent years after due to the costly second world war.
Something interesting also happened right after the second world war was finished, the first was the United Nations, and the second was nuclear weapons. At the time there was a looming conviction that the struggle for power could be eliminated by attempting to organize the world. It was a great theory, but experience later showed, the cold war per se, that nations had not eliminated their desire for power. Even if some nations managed to do so, it would have been useless and self destructive as the desire for power cannot be eliminated everywhere, and those who abolished their desire for power would simply fall victims to those who desired power.
In earlier points of history whenever a civilisations harnessed great amounts of power and came face to face with other nations that also had power, one powerful nation would often destroyed the other, which we witnessed with Alexander and the Persian empire, Rome and Carthage, Sassanids and the Caliphate, so on and so forth. Before the advent of nuclear weapons there was a climactic reaching point where direct confrontation was an inevitability, but after nuclear weapons it became more of a war of ideologies which is what we have witnessed between USSR and USA, which was Communism vs Capitalism, first which happened between the two Koreas, later with Cuba, then with Vietnam and finally Afghanistan which later led to the collapse of USSR.
No longer did two great powers come to a direct confrontation, but rather an indirect confrontation by breaking the enemy without a fight and changing their ways of thinking. The USSR collapsed and fragmented, however, the wars fought between the two were indirect, and each side did their best to gain alliance and change the ideas of its people.
Now what does it mean if great powers will not come to direct confrontations? And what can we expect in the coming future? Wars will no longer be conventional, two powers will not collide into direct confrontations but rather indirect ones and will support opposing ideologues against powers that seek to increase their own powers. Future wars will be to win the hearts and minds of the people and make a people doubt their ways of living by enemy states causing rebellions. We can expect nations to suppress their people if they hold counter ideologies within the nation, and the ideology that is the strongest will survive this test of time, and that which is the weakest will wither in time. This will be the future of politics and warfare as we are witnessing already and will witness.
In the previous century we witnessed multiple power struggles beginning with the first world war, the second world war, and later the cold war. The first world war was marred by an Alliance system which each nation fermented in increasing its power, there was the entente alliance and the central powers. The central powers were concerned with increasing its power outwards, and the entente by crushing the already growing power of the centrals and maintaining/increasing the power they already wielded, losing it would have meant losing the power they already wielded, which meant their source of wealth from the colonies they occupied throughout Africa and Asia and the territories they possessed within their own borders. Thus a war was an inevitability, this is what we know as the Thucydides trap, which is the threat of a great power that displaces an already existing one.
After the conclusion of the first world war, the central powers were broken up and punished, Germany had to pay war reparations and surrendered territories to France and Poland and couldn’t have an army force of more than 100,000, Austria Hungary was balkanised into smaller states. A war wearied Germany grew dissatisfied with its territorial loss and through it gave birth to a personality like Adolph Hitler, who in a few decades seized power and made Germany powerful. Hitler first sought power within Germany and later outside of Germany through territorial expansions.
At this point in history there were major powers around the world, Japan which had achieved a high level of centralisation and industrialisation, Germany, France, England, America, and the USSR. Japan, Germany’s ally, made the first move by invading China in 1937, and two years later Germany did the same with Poland igniting the second world war. The result in the end was a humiliating defeat for Germany and Japan which forced them to surrender to the “Allies” under varying treaties for both nations, one of which was an everlasting US military presence in both Japan and Germany, now although Britain and France won the second world war it was a Pyrrhic victory for them, their power had been drastically reduced and they lost most of their territories in the subsequent years after due to the costly second world war.
Something interesting also happened right after the second world war was finished, the first was the United Nations, and the second was nuclear weapons. At the time there was a looming conviction that the struggle for power could be eliminated by attempting to organize the world. It was a great theory, but experience later showed, the cold war per se, that nations had not eliminated their desire for power. Even if some nations managed to do so, it would have been useless and self destructive as the desire for power cannot be eliminated everywhere, and those who abolished their desire for power would simply fall victims to those who desired power.
In earlier points of history whenever a civilisations harnessed great amounts of power and came face to face with other nations that also had power, one powerful nation would often destroyed the other, which we witnessed with Alexander and the Persian empire, Rome and Carthage, Sassanids and the Caliphate, so on and so forth. Before the advent of nuclear weapons there was a climactic reaching point where direct confrontation was an inevitability, but after nuclear weapons it became more of a war of ideologies which is what we have witnessed between USSR and USA, which was Communism vs Capitalism, first which happened between the two Koreas, later with Cuba, then with Vietnam and finally Afghanistan which later led to the collapse of USSR.
No longer did two great powers come to a direct confrontation, but rather an indirect confrontation by breaking the enemy without a fight and changing their ways of thinking. The USSR collapsed and fragmented, however, the wars fought between the two were indirect, and each side did their best to gain alliance and change the ideas of its people.
Now what does it mean if great powers will not come to direct confrontations? And what can we expect in the coming future? Wars will no longer be conventional, two powers will not collide into direct confrontations but rather indirect ones and will support opposing ideologues against powers that seek to increase their own powers. Future wars will be to win the hearts and minds of the people and make a people doubt their ways of living by enemy states causing rebellions. We can expect nations to suppress their people if they hold counter ideologies within the nation, and the ideology that is the strongest will survive this test of time, and that which is the weakest will wither in time. This will be the future of politics and warfare as we are witnessing already and will witness.
