2011: The year of global insecurity
Author: By Max Brandt
The year 2011 revealed two worrying trends in global security. First of all, the world saw a year filled with wars and violent conflict. Second, a selective rise in global military expenditures (especially in crisis regions) seems to have laid the groundwork for future conflicts.
In 2011, the German Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research identified more violent conflicts than in all other years since it began keeping record in 1945. Among these conflicts were 20 full-scale wars in 2011, while records revealed only six full-scale wars and 18 limited wars in 2010. Taking into account cases with the use of less violence and those without violent methods, the researchers observed a total number of 388 conflicts in total last year.
The high number of newly emerging and escalating conflicts can mainly be attributed to the shockwave emanating from the Arab Spring in the Middle East and Northern Africa. The fall of authoritarian regimes in many cases goes hand in hand with armed conflict: not only the anti-regime struggle itself, but also the subsequent political instabilities and disputes that result over the sharing of power after the regime has fallen. The developments one can observe now are comparable to the political disorders that occurred after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which led to several violent uprisings and wars in the 1990s.
From the Drug War being fought between the Mexican government and the lethal drug cartels in Central America, the struggles for national power in Cote dґIvoire, to the confrontations between states, like the border clashes between Thailand and Cambodia- the reasons behind todayґs many violent crises vary widely.
A closer look at Europe shows that the Caucasus remains the continent’s hot spot with regard to conflicts and political crises. Besides the internal power-struggles that exist, it is the separatist regimes in South-Ossetia, Abkhazia and the situation between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh which produces the sporadic violence. As noted by various experts, the situation between Yerevan and Baku has reached a critical level in the last year and the risk of it becoming more and more explosive is high.
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