Mutual Interdependency and the Potential for Conflict

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Introduction After the Cold War, the system of international relations entered a new era. With the bipolar world order broken, countries started a complex conflict and cooperation process to establish a new multipolar world order. Stemming from basic strategic interests, these countries have to make adjustments and supplements foreign strategic position to win favorable positions to their interest in the international system. The similarity and/or differences in interests, ideological perspective, history, culture ... between countries are always a major factor and dominant impact issues of cooperation and conflict. Besides the efforts to maintain peace and expand cooperation for development, the world witness many international conflicts in both large scale and small scale. Therefore, when talking about the trend of peace and cooperation it is impossible to ignore the impact and influence of current international conflicts as well as the possibility of new conflicts future. Meanwhile, the world is further shaken by a series of regional conflicts, internal conflicts. From 1945 to date, although there is no world wars occurred, but there are more than 60 small and medium sized wars with conventional weapons and high-tech weapons. It seems that there is a development in the trend of conflicts, not cooperation. The two prominent schools of thought, Realism and Idealism, both identify conflict as the main issue in international relations. For Realists, war is the product of the states’ competition for power; therefore, war is unavoidable. On the other hand, Idealists believes that war is the product of socio-economics inequality and the interest of the monarchy. It is difficult to address a single cause of war. However, in the world... ... middle of paper ... ...dence, there is a need for further study perhaps in some larger countries and their relationship with superpower. In this study, I choose the case of a very small nations opposing a large nations not only to show the potential of conflict due to the lack of interdependence and equal legal status but also show the leveraging power of a small nations under the new world system and how that very leveraging power without interdependence can lead to conflict. Base on the evidences presented in the case study that show the two conditions required for a conflict between states to happens, I conclude that as long as the three conditions in which, states are equal legally, are not interdependence upon one another and a states see the other as an obstacle that prevent it from achieving its interest, conflict between two states can happens even when the power is asymmetrical.

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