Global Conflict and Security

In both public debates and academic literature, globalization has often been linked to conflict and security issues. In the early globalization literature, its liberal ancestry often revealed itself in an implicit or explicit optimism about a more globally integrated world being an inherently more peaceful one (in continuation of similar expectations for free trade and interdependence since the late 18th century). However, since the 1990s, globalization has become more contentious, and potentially conflict-stimulating mechanisms have come into sight, culminating so far in the increasingly widespread view since 2001 that terrorism (and the global War on Terror) is also somehow an expression of globalization. In this view, new forms of global conflict are embedded in the transnationalization of economies, religions, and migrations. Within both peace and conflict research and social sciences like anthropology and sociology numerous case studies investigate the locally destabilizing effects of, in particular, the economic and cultural globalization radiating mostly from the West.

On the one hand, some studies show that a globalized economy and cultures threatens local politics and culture, and on the other hand, other studies show that locally anchored ideas, ideologies, and religions with transnational appeal and reach are phenomena that reinforce the globalization of conflicts. Thus, the relationship between globalization and conflict goes both ways and can, among many other things, manifest itself by providing new resources over which to compete or by introducing alternatives that can seem to be threatening fundamental ideas, values, or worldviews in given societies/parts of the world. The centrality of this issue to global studies, therefore, rests on two pillars: Our world is globally connected partly because our conflicts are interconnected; and we can only understand and handle conflicts in the world today if we understand them in a global perspective.

Especially in situations of conflict, threats and challenges are often conceptualized in terms of “security.” In conflict situations, states, societies, and cultural communities act on what they see as potentially disastrous threats against them or some of their essential attributes or possessions, and, therefore, a (security) policy is formulated as a “defense.”

Conflicts in global politics have traditionally been studied by two relatively disconnected fields: conflict studies (often labeled as peace and conflict research) and security studies (sometimes known as strategic studies). During the Cold War, their various differences in disciplinary origins and methodologies were reinforced by a political polarization where strategic studies were often relatively close to policymakers and thereby considered (and self-understood) as part of “the establishment,” whereas peace and conflict research was more critical and sometimes linked to peace movements or civil society-anchored conflict resolution (although much of conflict research was also academically detached). Since the 1980s, the two fields have been moving closer together, but it is still useful to present them separately.

This entry is therefore structured as follows: In the first two sections, the history (emergence) and main theories of each field are presented. Then, the current pattern of conflicts and security in the world is summarized as depicted by the two traditions. Since the definition of conflict and security is academically and politically contested—reflecting real conflicts—this entry begins with the observation that conflict is about social situations where (manifest or latent) violent and nonviolent behavior is related to the understanding by two or more parties that their aspirations mutually prevent the attainment or preservation of some valued object (material or immaterial). Security is broadly conceived of as the attempt to be free from threats. From the mid-20th century until the 1980s, this concept was primarily organized around military threats, but it is increasingly employed as a way to deal with a wider range of challenges in a threat-defense manner.

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