Armed Conflicts and International Security: A factual and analytical review

There can be no doubt about the dominance of conflict as a concern in modern security analysis and policy. Localized and active conflicts have attracted proportionately much greater attention since the ending of the East-West Cold War and, with it, of the essentially static military confrontation in Europe that had carried the potential for global annihilation. They produce more shock and shame, as well as concern, in the onlooker because they appear as exceptions to the trend of stabilization in inter-state and inter-regional relations since 1990 and as a reversion to “pre-modern” methods of behaving in the global society. They carry more complicated material implications for non-combatant states because of the generally increasing interdependence and “globalization” of the world economy.