Review of The Global Village Myth: Distance, War and the Limits of Power by Patrick Porter (original) (raw)
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Advances in information, communications, transport and weapons technology, leading US politicians claim, radically shrunk space and distance. They stripped geography of the protective function it once played and collapse the traditional distinction between ‘over there’ and ‘over here’: In the post-geographic age, the US and its allies are exposed to insecurities in and from all places, which is why global military operations are required to uphold American national security. But does this ‘globalist’ reading of world politics respect the logistical and strategic challenges posed to military operations? Patrick Porter’s book The Global Village Myth confronts the post-geographic narrative, its empirical validity and practical consequences. His critical examination is sophisticated and much warranted – yet the empirical narrative also unevenly developed, and the analysis difficult to adapt to non-US cases and thus international politics writ large.
Globalization – a Form of Manifestation of the Hybrid War
STRATEGIES XXI - Command and Staff College, 2021
The growing scale and diversity of specific events of globalization, taking place on a global scale in the first two decades of the 21st century prove indisputably that actions assimilated to the hybrid warfare have become the most significant threat to nations. Unlike conventional warfare, hybrid forms do not involve direct or declarative actions of open conflict, but rather involve complex issues that are constantly unfolding and that are constantly evolving. Like globalization, the conflict no longer has a geographical delimitation or an infrastructure component, and populations are no longer the main fighters of these conflicts. In this article I will seek to answer some questions about the phenomenon of globalization and its implications for amplifying the manifestations of hybrid warfare in the contemporary operational environment, especially those of a cyber, terrorist, climatological, biological and organized crime nature, while presenting the concerns of international actors for increasing investments in research in the armament industry, improving military intelligence and long-range capabilities, in order to use military power as a tool of intimidation in foreign policy, active involvement of forces in punishing actors on the "axis of evil", as well as the partial recovery of old areas of influence at regional or global level.
Globalization and the Nature of War
Antulio J. Echevarria II has written a monograph exploring the nature of war, and how it has changed as a result of globalization. He uses the Clausewitzian model of war’s trinity (political guidance, chance, and enmity) as a framework for understanding the nature of war, a concept that has been only vaguely represented in defense literature.
Globalization and Violence, Vol. 3: Globalizing War and Intervention (2006)
2006
The first set of volumes in the 'Central Currents in Globalization' series takes a particularly pressing manifestation of human relations-violence-and explores its changing nature in relation to the various processes of globalization. It is organized across the four volumes beginning with the historically-deep practice of empire-building Volume 1, Globalizing Empires: old and New. Imperial extension contributed to the processes of globalization to the extent that states sought to claim military and political control over extended reaches of territories-other places and peoples-that they imagined in terms of a 'world-space'. This was the case whether we talk of the Roman Empire in the first century or the British Empire in the nineteenth century, even though they are very different polities. The first volume covers the theme of empire right through to contemporary debates about globalization and Pax Americana. Volume 2, Colonial and Postcolonial Globalizations, takes up that same story, but examines the process from the perspective of the periphery rather than from the centre. It begins with Second Expansion of Europe and colonization in the mid-nineteenth century. It takes in the violence of decolonization across the world in the period through to the 1960s, and it considers the question of contemporary postcolonial violence-not just military, but broader questions of structural violence today. Volume 3, Globalizing War and Intervention, examines the changing nature of military intervention, including the remarkable shift in the form of violence across the globe from interstate violence to intrastate conflict in the late twentieth and early twentyfirst centuries. This volume includes a section on one of the most dramatic instances of global violence in our time-terrorism and the War on Terror. The emphasis here is on 'violence from above', as it were-violence that is in some way institutionalized or directed with the power of sovereign body. Finally, Volume 4, Transnational Conflict, complements the third volume by examining the different forms of transnational and intra-state violence in the world today, what might be called 'violence from below'. In all of the volumes we are concerned to understand both the globalizing processes and the more general effects of empire in world history.
GLOBAL WAR: THE CONCEPT OF MODERN WAR UNDER ATTACK
This article analyzes how the concept of modern war has been changed in its basic elements by the effects of globalization at the beginning of this century. The article takes a critical-analytical approach which seeks to structure the theoretical arguments from an historical perspective beginning with the transition from religious war to modern war. After examining how war became a globalized event at the beginning of the 21st century, the article proposes that one way to overcome —or attenuate the main effects of— the present reality presented by global war in the context of international relations would be to adopt a juridical globalism articulated into regionally based Nation State communities. KEY WORDS: Philosophy of law, international relations, war. RESUMEN. El presente artículo analiza cómo el concepto moderno de guerra ha ido cambiando en sus elementos básicos desde principios de este siglo, debi-do a los efectos de la globalización. El artículo parte de un enfoque crítico y analítico que busca estructurar los argumentos teóricos desde una perspectiva histórica, comenzando con la transición de la guerra religiosa a la guerra en su concepto moderno. Después de examinar cómo la guerra se convierte en un fenómeno globalizado a principios del siglo XXI, el artículo sostiene que una forma de superar —o atenuar— los efectos de la guerra global en el contexto mundial imperante sería mediante la adopción de un ordenamiento jurídico global a partir de la articulación de comunidades regionales de Estados.
Wars, Laws, Rights and the Making of Global Insecurities
2022
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rethinking Insecurity, War and Violence: Beyond Savage Globalization? (2009)
2009
"Rethinking Insecurity, War and Violence: Beyond savage globalization? is a collection of essays by scholars intent on rethinking the mainstream security paradigms. Overall, this collection is intended to provide a broad and systematic analysis of the long-term sources of political, military and cultural insecurity from the local to the global. The book provides a stronger basis for under-standing the causes of conflict and violence in the world today, one that adds adifferent dimension to the dominant focus on finding proximate causes and making quick responses. Too often the arenas of violence have been represented as if they have been triggered by reassertions of traditional and tribal forms of identity, primordial and irrational assertions of politics. Such ideas about the sources of insecurity have become entrenched in a wide variety of media sources, and have framed both government policies and academic arguments. Rather than treating the sources of insecurity as a retreat from modernity, this book complicates the patterns of global insecurity to a degree that takes the debates simply beyond assumptions that we are witnessing a savage return to a bloody and tribalized world."
The Changing Nature of Warfare
2004
: The conference was about warfare, that is, violence, killing, and coping with these phenomena, not particularly geostrategic matters, or deterrence, or arms races, though some of those subjects inevitably came up. If there were one major debate at the conference it was between those who said, Its Clausewitz foreverwar will always be the same, across the spectrum, vs. those who straight-lined todays concerns to the future and argued, Its insurgencies that well be explained to mean war in the context of everything else, including social, cultural, economic, and political dynamics .It was generally recognized that theres a migration of conflict down from the state-on-state level to internal conflicts and down to individuals, though one presenter made a strong case that Asia (from India-fighting mostly from now through 2020, including global terror as a form of insurgency. But the discussions were really more subtle than that and Clausewitz was Pakistan to Korea) is a potentially thre...
War in the Age of Late Globalization
Although war and globalization have always been dynamic partners in expansion and innovation, the beginning of the 21st century has witnessed a kind of phase shift in which the diversity of actors, capabilities, locations, durations, and lethalities of war are multiplying and speciating, rather than converging or diffusing. Therefore, the fights over whether there is ‘more’ or ‘less’ war after the Cold War, is, I believe, the wrong question, not because the frequency or lethality of war is not morally or strategically significant, but because the question itself lacks the conceptual rigor to describe the complexity of the empirical world. Rather than being a measurable, discrete phenomena, war in the age of late globalization should be a problematic, that is, a site for investigation and research about the shifting terrain of politics, violence, mobility, technology, and commerce.