Five Wars of Globalisation

I agree that the traditional security threats are no longer the major security concern in this century. Major conflicts over territorial control have become rarer than that in the 20th century due to the efforts of United Nations and the fear of the outbreak of destructive nuclear war. From the article (Naim, 2003), there are five wars of globalization: illegitimate business in drugs and medicine, intellectual property, arms trafficking, money and people, which trigger more troubles than before.

The first problem is that these five global wars are not geographically constrained under globalization (Naim, 2003). Henderson (1999, as cited in Wolf, 2004) defines globalization as “free movement of goods, services labour and capital” and “there are no foreigners”. Not only does the normal business can benefit from the economic globalization, but also the illegal one. As for drugs, there are too many hidden, flexible bases of smuggling drugs which is really challenging to discover each of them, unlike the war of the pasts, which can set up frontlines as shown in the map.

Another setback is that the concept of sovereignty is ignored. (Naim, 2003). Kranser (Kranser, 2001) defines sovereignty as” actual control of movement across state's borders”. Criminal gangs, which have more resources and incentives, would not be limited by traditional boundaries by sending refugees across the border (Naim, 2003), while the governments are still struggling with the problems of compromising of one nation’s sovereignty, leading to the nonstop illegal business.

As for humanitarian intervention, which is defined as “to protect civilians, by force, if necessary—from war crimes…when national governments fail to do so.” (Western & Goldstein, 2011), is one of the effective ways to secure civil people.

In 2005, the “responsibility to protect”, which based on the underlying international laws, was affirmed by whole members of United Nations. (UN, 2014). This commitment was achieved successfully in Libya case. Resolution 1973 was passed with no opposition in UN Security Council, which started the NATO’s military intervention in Libya against Gaddafi’s troops. This was a success not just because it led to the end of Gaddafi government and the civil war, but also prevent Gaddafi’s army from annihilating civilians by forcing the army to defend the NATO’s attack. (Western & Goldstein, 2011). Libya case in 2011 showed that humanitarian intervention, which is enhanced in 2005, has become a more credible and useful tool in protecting humanity.

It is also worth noting that the nations become more mature and sensitive in supporting each other in humanitarian intervention. The experience from genocides in Somalia, Bosnia, and Rwanda gave lessons to the countries which they should backup each other with additional forces when things’ becoming more serious (Western & Goldstein, 2011).