The Myth Of Global Chaos

An Article Summary of Yahya Sadowski

With the end of cold war in 1989, American was like a baby tasting its first mouthful of peanut butter: both delighted and confused. They could neither understand how it had happened so quickly nor figure out how to adjust to a new world without the ‘red menace’.

Initially the optimism of American society prevailed, where the first vision of life after the Cold War was articulated by Francis Fukuyama in his famous article ‘The end of History’. In which he states that the Soviet Union had been defeated not by the force or arm but by the universal allure of American values. And now it shows that the whole world was scrambling to emulate the democratic capitalism epitomized by the United States.

But, within short time with the triumph of Liberal Democracy, it has been marked by the violence broke up of the USSR, the civil war in Somalia, shocking genocide in Rwanda, conflict in the former Yugoslavia. It appears that religious fundamentalism, ethnic conflict and plain old nihilism also seems become more popular, it seems that the whole conflict slipping into an epoch of ethnic and cultural violence.

Mediating on this prospect, a group of American thinker began to develop into three conclusions:

1. Globalization is forcing more and more people to confront alien values, where it subdues the local culture.
2. When the basic values of a culture are threatened, violence becomes more common.
3. As a result of globalization and the way it threaten traditional values, the world it witnessing an explosion or irrational violence, manifest in various form, such as tribal massacre in Africa, Fundamentalist revolt in Middle East and ethnic cleansing in the Balkan.

Thus, the process of globalization that Fukuyama thought had destroyed communism might be planting seeds for an epoch of global chaos. These ideas collectively called “global chaos theory”

The architect of global chaos theory include some of sharpest political strategies working in America today, they have been working in various complex school of thought raging from urbanization, narcoterrorism, immigration, humanitarian disaster and so on to give influence on American policymakers.

In this article, what is the writer is going to say is he try to prove that the major claim of global chaos theorist turn out to be false. Because great majority of conflict are not on the basis of clash of civilization, but it derives from complex problem, and cultural clash is only one problem contribute to the global conflict. The writer further asses that war today appear to be cause by the mixture of forces that have been propelled combat throughout history, from fear, desperation, want, arrogance, foolishness and myriad other forces.

Now the contribution of global chaos theorist proves that Washington can’t draw lesson from their assessment. Here some fact that their assessment seems to failed to asses the argument and the actual fact.

First, the myth that democratization and globalization will encourage into cultural resentment need to be explain, in this way United States must be cautious about it, why? Because even if globalization does appear to disrupt societies and sometimes it produces conflict, yet another long term globalization also seem to often promote prosperity, political legitimacy and even greater cultural understanding.

Secondly, the myth of Huntington thesis ‘The west versus the Rest’, where he called for Washington to construct a system of alliance that ensure the victory of the West against the rest, an alliance of industrial countries of the ‘zone of peace’ to face the threat and trouble that seem to characterized the third world. What need to analyze is that the Global South are diverse, in includes some of the world fastest growing economy as well as the fastest decaying one, all of these diversity has never enough to make them single bloc, and an effort to treat them in the similar way will fail. The fact is, the current trend today, the best investment are in ‘emerging market’, differences of culture rarely prevent states from understanding when they share common interests.

Third, the critique of global chaos theory concern the organization and application of the U.S. military, they regard that combatants in culture conflict make them imperfect to do the normal calculation or deterrence, pressure and force majeure. But even if war is in fact an ugly business, but ethnic or cultural wars are not substantially different from ordinary war, what the global chaos theorist should learn what Iraqis did in Kurdistan in 1980s, where the regular Iraqis armies can defeat the guerillas.

From above arguments, the conflict on the basis of cultural clash was not the sole source of global conflict; where the global chaos theorists were overestimate the possibility of conflict. In this way, nothing changed at the end of the Cold war that, by itself America to develop e new from of military organization. The enemies, threat and nuisance Washington faces today resemble with those it has dealt in the past, where in fact ethnic or cultural wars are won much by the same means that lead to victory in the other battles.

Perhaps, the myth about the idea of ‘global chaos theory’ helped to propagate that actually Washington will be generally powerless to deal with ethnic conflict. And chaos is not strategic threat, it can not be legitimately invokes to justify maintaining the Pentagon’s inflated budgets or compel European allies to keep their wagon in the circle of Atlantic alliance.

The writer further gives another assessment of the state collapse, where the major sources of ethnic violence or cultural wars were mainly as a result of the absence of material prosperity and political stability. So to prevent such wars one need to promote economic growth and good government and obviously not simple. For example the success of the green revolution as Bangladesh, the industrialization in case of South Korea, the spread of revival of democracy in Latin America, part of Asia and Africa shows the prospect of civil government. Although, somehow a state might needs years and decades for such economic growth and good government would be attainable.

Indeed, the effort of these two areas can make a contribution to reduce the number of ethnic and culture war, sometimes culture war can be prevented by marginal improvement in an economy by maintaining an minimal level of political order. Even when no immediate means are available to influence the economic and political forces that may be breeding a culture clash in some country, appreciating the role of policymakers to better deal with the situation.

In conclusion the writer said, that ethnic conflict can be prevented when they are addressed early before it turns into broader conflict, in this way ‘prevented diplomacy’ was needed to resolve the conflict. And above all, grappling with the structural conditions that promote ethnic and culture conflict will be learning process, as all policies are a matter of an experiment, each global issues much be threat with the complexity and above all international environment is not chaotic, rather its certainly complex. Learning to recognize, acknowledge and deal with the complexity may be the hallmark of successful diplomacy in the coming year.