The Gulf War and the New World Order

Abstract

In their introduction to The New State Of War And Peace, Michael Kidron and Dan Smith speculate that the new world order '...may, like the old, be well armed and prone to war or, at least, military risk-taking. But there would be two differences. New enemies would draw different lines of conflict and confrontation. And, unlike the Cold War, the new order will not - at least for a time, if ever - threaten total annihilation in total war.' Kidron and Smith obviously think about Soviets and Americans confronting and threatening each other - but these powers never fought each other directly. They interjected themselves into third party conflicts and subsumed these conflicts within their contest. From the bipolar system mentality of the Cold War almost every conflict, intranational and international, was viewed strategically - not in itself or regionally, but in its imagined implications on the bi-polar global balance of power. What is being 'discovered' after the collapse of bi-polarity is that Communism and the Soviet Union are not, nor ever were, behind, or the cause of, many conflicts. As nationalist or fundamentalist regimes clash with the interests of the industrialised world, and as there is no more danger of escalation between the super powers, there is more likelihood of direct western involvement in local conflicts. The fact that these conflicts no longer threaten total global annihilation only increases their likelihood.