Security During The Cold War

After the fall of the Soviet Union (USSR), the United States (US) being the only superpower remaining, becomes a global hegemon. The hegemonic stability theory explains that because hegemon faces no power challenges and have the power to remove regional conflict, it reduces interstate conflict over security concerns and ensure peace. This essentially increases the prominence of non-state actors in the international arena and shifts the focus of interstate Cold War security concerns to contemporary security issues like nuclear weapons proliferation and possession, terrorism and civil wars, particularly ethnic civil wars. Although realism still provides some framework to explaining new security issues, it is too rooted in its assumptions and

The proliferation of nuclear arms during the Cold War was thus to deter against aggression from the other power by reducing benefits and raising the cost of facing retaliatory capabilities that will keep the other side in fear of striking first. Nuclear deterrence can also be precarious where missteps could easily spiral, as seen in the Cuban Missile Crisis when US and USSR came close to having a nuclear war. After the collapse of the USSR and with the increase in nuclear states, nuclear proliferation became a renewed security concern as the source for deterrence have changed and nuclear arms have increased destructive power. The incentive of nuclear deterrence in ensuring the security of states could cause a proliferation of nuclear weapons, further increasing the number of dyads in the already multipolar system. A neo-realist like John Mearsheimer will argue that since multipolarity breeds instability, the increase in dyads creates greater imbalances in power which makes deterrence harder and more prone to miscalculations that could easily escalate to nuclear war, and is hence a great security

The magnitude of such crisis could lead to mass dislocation, violation of human rights and famine, and pose a potential international crisis for states. Thus, ethnic civil war has become a new security issue in international relations. Neorealism can explain ethnic civil war but not accurately nor sufficiently. The perception of an emerging anarchy in multi-ethnic communities creates a security dilemma where the different ethnic groups began to self-help. This security dilemma is made worse as offence-defence is indistinguishable – guns and knives as self-defence or attacking weapons, and groups perceive the offensive to have an advantage since they live in coexistence with other ethnic groups who might threaten the survival of their own ethnic group hence they have an incentive to strike