Can Nations Effectively Deal with Crises Without International Cooperation?

In the course of history, all nations in the world would at certain period of time experience crises. These crises could be domestic crises or crises that originated from the other parts of the world and eventually proliferated throughout the globe, resulting in international crises. These crises range from political crises to economic crises and they sometimes require the attention of all nations involved to deal with it, in terms of resolving it or reducing its impact. However, the question on whether or not nations can deal with these crises unilaterally or through international cooperation such as using regional and international organisations like the United Nations, remains debatable. However, it is likely that whether nations can effectively achieve the desired results when dealing with crises - with or without international cooperation - largely depends on the type and scale of the crises, and generally domestic crises could be dealt with domestically.

The political crises affecting individual nations in the world are generally resolved by the affected nations themselves. These crises include political turmoil due to the various uncompromising and warring political factions in the country. Moreover, these usually involve days or even months of protest activities which would effectively bring the nation to a standstill. Being political in nature, the nations involved in such crises would usually jealously guard their rights to decide on their political issues and would not welcome foreign intervention because of the consideration of national integrity and sovereignty. Similarly for these reasons, foreign nations would refrain from interfering in the political crises of nations. This could be seen in the case of Thailand where after the 2006 coup that ousted former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra from office, various political groupings such as the pro-Thaksin's United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) and the anti-Thaksin's People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) have grown, with each fighting respectively for and against Thaksin's return to political office. And with the passage of four years, no attempt has been made for regional or even international cooperation to resolve these crises - exactly because such political crises are strictly domestic affairs of countries.

A protracted conflict or crisis affecting certain nations would usually also warrant no international cooperation, provided that it does not escalate into regional conflicts or affects regional neighbours. This is where the crises in some nations take a violent turn with various factions picking up arms, resulting in a civil war within the nation, and occasionally, this might threaten the stability and security of neighbouring countries. When these affected neighbouring countries interfere, the domestic conflict would be regionalised, therefore also threatening regional security. Thus by then, international cooperation is needed to bring peace and stability back to the badly shaken region. This could be seen in Southeast Asia, where the domestic crises of Cambodia in the 1970s gradually escalated into a regional conflict involving the interference of Vietnam, This in turn alarmed other neighbouring nations such as Thailand because Vietnam's interference was viewed as expansionist in nature. Being in a constant state of turmoil and great uncertainty, the region eventually sought, lobbied and acquired a United Nations-led international resolution of the crisis. Hence, it is no surprise that should crises escalate into affecting regional or international relations, international cooperation could effectively resolve these crises.

There are other types of crises which need international cooperation to resolve, and domestic efforts to resolve or tackle them would largely be ineffective in the longer term.

The major outbreak of diseases across the globe would require international effort and cooperation to effectively deal with the crises. This could be explained in the context of an increasingly globalised world where the movements of people across the globe are made relatively easier by the advancement of the transportation system. This thus encourages travel among the people. Thus, the outbreak of highly contagious diseases in some nations could easily and quickly proliferate worldwide, mainly through the medium of the high volume of travellers. For example, the swine flu of the previous years originated from Mexico and eventually spread on a worldwide scale and affected many nations. This thus required global cooperation to curb the inflow of people from affected areas or conducting stringent health checks at various immigration points. Nations affected engaged in international cooperation where they exchanged various information such as health care statistics and figures of the number of people affected by the outbreak, and also pooled resources to come up with effective vaccines. The nature of the crisis - which affects many countries and individual countries