Dialectical Reflections on Transformations of Global Security during the Long Twentieth Century

Abstract

Drawing on the synthetic, open-ended dialectical approach developed in the Dialectics of World Orders Project, this article explores three global doctrinal debates (fusing ideas and policy practices) in three different periods that have shaped global security in the twentieth century. The article focuses first on a detailed examination of the system of great power balancing that opened the twentieth century, with special attention to its internal logic, inner workings (rules and practices), its internal contradictions, and how they generated a demand for greater institutionalization and the establishment of a system of collective security. The breakdown of collective security under the League is considered, and its re-emergence within the UN system (in a transformed state), and its subsequent marginalization by superpower Cold War power balancing in the post WWII period is described next. Again, the internal logic, inner workings (rules and practices), and internal contradictions of the security system of Cold War bipolarity are described, as well as how its collapse generated space for a more effective collective security system in the post-Cold War period. The current contestation over norms of intervention, the redefinition of sovereignty, power transitions, responses to transnational threats, and emergent elements of the contemporary security order are also identified. The article concludes with some reflections on insights gained from looking at global security debates through dialectical lenses.