When do democratic mechanisms increase political risks to waging war Essay

When do democratic mechanisms increase political risks to waging war - Essay Example In the current times, the inter-dependency of resources becomes one of the most critical issues for peaceful negotiations of crisis across borders. It can also be argued that technology has redefined communication and has helped transform international political economy that relies on global consensus and global views. â€Å"The relation between military organization and the civilian environment can be shaped in different ways: in some countries, the civilians are executing firm oversight over the armed forces, whereas in some other countries the military can perform its duties regarding national security in its own, autonomous way, if not even in the way where the military imposes its principles of governance over the citizens. In the contemporary society, the last, i.e. military-dominated political systems are rare†(Jelusic,2007). But at the same time, Shultz (1999) points out that within democratic mechanisms, the political leaders tend to face higher political cost to wagi ng war and therefore the threat to war is often resisted by the target nation. Indeed, the wider ramifications of threats by democratic state are less likely to be taken seriously by rogue nations than by threats from non-democratic states. However, history is witness to the fact that this is not always true. Moreover, according to Jelusic the idea more common are civilian-dominated political systems, in which civilian political leaders control the military in very authoritative way, or where the whole civilian environment through the channels of the democratic control over the military imposes the tasks, the execution of tasks and respect for democracy in the inner-military organizational structures. America’s war against Iraq was fought not for political leverage but for personal gain vis-a-vis access to the vast resources of oil and gas (Habermas, 2006). The democratic constraints and reasons for waging war have therefore become increasingly contentious issues that need to be looked from the wider perspectives of emerging new equations of political economy that has redistributed wealth and created new power structure. Globalization has brought huge changes not only in the economic circles, but also in the political circles. For example, America and China were not in good terms before the introduction of globalization. However, both the countries realized the importance of meaningful cooperation for mutual benefits. At present, China is one of the major trade partners of America. Moreover, plenty of American companies are operating in China and America is one of the major markets for Chinese products. In short, the magnitude of interdependencies between China and America is huge at present and hence these two countries are not at all clashing each other aggressively when political differences widen in between these two countries. It should be noted that China is supporting Palestinians whereas America is supporting Israel in the Middle East conflict. At the time of writing this paper, intense fight is going on in Gaza between Israelis and Palestinians. However, neither China nor America seems to be interested in interfering in this issue even though both these countries have contrasting views regarding this war. The silence of these two superpowers clearly suggests that they do not want to spoil their economic relationships for political gains. The case is not much different as far as the problems in Syria are concerned. Yet despite the grisly murders by the Syrian regime, the Arab League remains silent. The Arab regimes remain silent. In the meantime, Walid al-Muallem, the Syria Foreign Minister, had the chutzpah to chide the Arab ambassadors in Damascus for not condemning the