The ideas of hegemony and power are central to the notion of
war. All form of international conflict is inherently a struggle for power,
whether it comprises of ethnic conflicts with one group trying to dominate the
other group or territorial disputes with countries trying to gain control over
strips of land. Conflict occurs when one player in a situation feels that the
other player will negatively affect something the first player values, which in
the case of international conflict is a dominant or hegemonic position.
A clear example of
this is the World War I where both the Allies (led by Great Britain, France and
Russia) and the Central powers (Germany and Austria) were at war with each
other in order to establish dominance over the world.
In such cases conflict transcends classification into a
single category and comprises of religious, ethnic, national, ideological and political
conflict. Simply put, because state actors feel that their position might be usurped
by the other player, the stakes become extremely high. In such a situation, wars
become a zero sum game with each player values the other player’s losses and is
willing to sacrifice for it. So any form of economic, human or capital losses that
states suffer become less crucial than the destruction of the “other”, a
phenomenon that was evident in all wars throughout history.
1 comment:
You mentioned how wars such as the first world war cannot be classified into any single type of war, however, to me it is quite evident that the first world war was something political scientist classify as a "hegemonic" war. A war that is fought in order to show who the real hegemon is in the post war world. Moreover, it can be argued that if states had perfect information about the outcome of war then war itself wouldn't occur, something along the lines of game theory presented by John Nash. because a state will only attack another if it is surely going to win, and a state will surrender without fighting if it is surely going to lose. So i believe that all wars in principle come down to rationality and the decreasing level of conflict in the world can be attributed to the easier access of information.
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