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New Cold War and the Crisis of the Liberal Global Order
Currently, international relations
and the global order are in turmoil
and disorder. The bases of the international
order and the means by which it was regulated
are in the process of being dismantled,
such as the central considerations of
the Treaty of Westphalia that guided international
politics and diplomacy for centuries.
As the world becomes increasingly polarised
into different opposing and competing
geopolitical camps, the question needs
to be asked, why is this happening? The answer
seems to lie, at least in part, in a rapidly
evolving and changing system of global
political hegemony, where liberal democracy
is on the wane. This is also further
influenced by the declining economic
and military power of the West, where
the US is still the unipolar hegemony, but
is declining in its hard power and ability
to manage/control international affairs
as it was able to do in the 1990s (such as
the First Gulf War in 1990–91 and Kosovo
in 1999). This paper analyses the rise and
decline of the West, and the international
consequences and results. A conclusion
of this paper, although the West is significantly
weakened in terms of its political,
military and economic power, it is trying
to stave off its decline. Therefore, the ‘New
Cold War’ is an important element in this
strategy as a means to try and unite a divided
and wary domestic audience by attempting
to invoke the spectre of a foreign
‘threat’ and to do this through the concept
of a crisis. A crisis represents an extraordinary
situation, which if accepted, becomes
the basis for applying extraordinary mea sures to ‘rescue’ the public from the hazard.
It is a means to try and bargain the public’s
freedom for their sense of security.