Award Category
Social Sciences
Publication Date
10-20-2011
Abstract
Globalization and democratization have added an increasing amount of complexity to the international system that theorists seek to define and forecast. It is no wonder then, that competing fields of thought all generally have some success in explaining certain aspects of it. However, for each success of a theoretical field, a failure, or counterexample, of the theory usually follows quickly behind. Realism since the Cold War has lost certain aspects of its predictive power, and both liberalism and constructivism are grappling with the large amount of factors that they recognize as potential variables in the international system. The problem with each of these is that they are too narrow. Instead of focusing on a complex synthesis of relatively equal factors, they try to pick one or two as causal forces and argue that the rest are effects. By redefining conflict in terms of a synthesis of relatively equal factors, we can get a better idea of which system is ideal for a “better off” world. The argument here is that U.S. unipolarity is constructed to mitigate almost all potential factors that disrupt security and stability, and also sets the stage for improvement of “smaller” human security issues, both of which contribute to a “better off” world.
Faculty Advisor
Seth Weinberger
Course
Politics and Government 335: Global Security