Understanding need for military intervention by democracies
- Accepting military intervention in conflicts with large implications
Claim
- The end of the Cold War was not the end of war. The world around the victors declined to remain peaceful after the First World War, the Second World War, and it has not done so now after the Cold War. Basically, the passing of the danger of a huge cataclysmic war between the two global alliances has been replaced with (has enabled) a significant likelihood of many small conflicts, as witnessed in the post-Cold War era. The democracies cannot ignore all of these. Humanitarian conscience may prevail from time to time. Even if conscience permits the democracies to remain apathetic and inactive, self-interests will not allow them to. Consider from an economic point of view that those parts of the globe that are likely to experience most tensions contain much of the raw materials democracies need. Worse yet is the potential that some of these nations may soon possess the capability to do massive and far-ranging military damage, specifically nuclear and chemical weapons. If the democracies nevertheless choose to ignore these issues, an unknown number of years ahead could be chaotic for conflict regions and democracies. In the event of a conflict whose implications democracies cannot possibly ignore, the difficulty arises when conflict resolution and all other channels of peaceful settlement have been thoroughly applied and failed. Peace would have to be made by fighting for it. This requires clear and brave leadership from the democracies (at the very least all those affected) once this is accepted, in order to gain international concensus. The failure to accept this protocol will only further paralyze democracies. Bosnia has taught the democracies these lessons the hard way.