Analitical Essay

The character of the 21st century will be war-prone. It is not possible for mankind to renounce of organized violence. The nuclear threat is not banned, despite all the progress. The global society has a new warfare, which the soldier is replaced by hackers.
Initial hopes for a world without war after the end of the Cold War were sadly disappointed. Although, initially the immediate threat to mankind was banished with an all-out nuclear missile war, but a large number of military conflicts and wars blew up on mankind in full force. Not only in Asia and Africa, wars have raged, it was brought back to Europe as well. The global society prepares for a possible revolution in warfare and military strategy because of the computer age. The computer becomes a weapon itself. Modern technologies allow changing missions; the society will be exposed to new and dangerous threats.

The history books are full of wars, peace treaties and new wars. It seems like a constant anthropological that people are always killing each other. Human aggression seems to be inevitable - not war. If we look at human nature, we find that aggression is expressed in completely different behaviors. Evolution has developed a broad spectrum. War is just one of many ways in which collectives can interact with each other. According to Mearsheim, “Some suggest that aggressors almost always lose. In the past, states that initiated war, however, won roughly 60 percent of the time” (Mearsheim 2001, 73). Wars are taking place today without rules and often with extreme brutality. The warring parties are seldom States, but more and more ethnic or religious groups, terrorists, and private armies or militias. Often actually, it is not entirely clear who is fighting against whom there and why. States want to raise their power in this world and as of that they will go back to organized violence. After the end of the "Cold War" instead of demilitarization, new militarization took place. Especially in the United States constantly more modern and more and more expensive weapons are being developed. Those weapons have to be tested and old ones have to be replaced with new ones. The foreign policy is helping the military and arm companies with that. Each year, the NATO countries and NATO experts increase the military budget. Older weapons are sold to NATO addicts and to Third World countries. As States want to gain more power in this world, they also try to build up their nuclear programs.

The nuclear threat is not banned. Mearsheim acknowledges that, “Nuclear weapons make great power war less likely, but they do not render it obsolete” (Mearsheim 2001, 73). Nuclear weapons will be further tested in the laboratory and testing grounds, the number of overt and covert Nuclear powers has increased. The U.S. and NATO still insist on the first use of nuclear weapons, an option that already was questionable at the time of the Cold War. The world's existing stocks of highly enriched uranium and plutonium are so big, that several nukes could be built from it. In the worst case scenario, the material could fall in the hands of terrorists to build nuclear weapons and so-called "dirty bombs", conventional weapons, that with the explosion of those weapons, radioactivity will be released. Nuclear terrorism could be possible. Another problem arises with Iran and North Korea, both countries have little in common, yet the Western world is afraid of them. In 2005 North Korea had admitted to possessing nuclear weapons. North Korea had in April to a new missile test with another one coming up within a few weeks. Iran conducts a nuclear program - for peaceful purposes, says the Iranian regime. However, the U.S. and Israel fear that it is with the aim to build an atomic bomb, and to overturn the power structure in the Middle East. Just like Mearsheim states that, “states will build lots of counterforce capability and push hard to develop effective defenses in the hope that they might gain nuclear superiority” (Mearsheim 2001, 72). However, the global society has to face a new type of war.
In recent years, a new "theater of war" was discovered: The computer war or cyber warfare, information warfare, or simply referred to as "virtual war". In the age of global data networks and satellite communications a great universal fascination with the idea that future wars – if they even necessary - would be mainly performed in "cyberspace." For every technological innovation base the art of war was enriched with a new type. In the last century there were no doubt that the development of aviation and the invention of nuclear weapons threated mankind, who has left its mark on the war. Today, there are attempts to make the space ready for military purposes (such as satellite-based missile defense systems), or even the effort, to provide the computer technology, in broad sense, in the service of the military. There is an increase, particular, by the use of computers in all areas of the military. Substantial parts of clashes can be played out in the virtual world of computer systems or networks. It includes penetrating opposing information system to manipulate information or to destroy them (Hacker War). This includes the smuggling of computer viruses, worms, logic bombs, and Trojan horses. A variant of this would be chipping: the integration of certain functions in electronics components from the exports of weapons which can be activated by remote release and lead to errors in the weapon systems.

Events of the war of the 21st Century will be determined mainly by the acts and omissions of the leading world powers. However, that is nothing new. Therefore, it will lie in the hands of the leading industrial nations and military powers, whether we are moving towards a century of permanent war or a century of peace. The views on the solution of world problems also differ between leading states. This is quite logical, since each state defends its own interests and wants to enforce its desires. But international law is not yet the law of the jungle! Even democratic countries might recognize the right in resolving international problems, and they realize it and put it through, even though they are rejected in their legal system. What can we say that the military strategy of the United States "the right to use nuclear weapons first," still contains and that the U.S. government doesn’t want to give up this "right" in any case. Difficult problems exist in Europe, but even greater in Africa, Asia and partly also in Latin America. The deep contradictions often lead to bloody wars.

Reference:
Mearsheim, John J. 2001. The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Electronic Format.