(C) Kapok Tree Diplomacy. Jan. 2011. All rights reserved. Jeff Dwiggins. 12.5 pages, double-spaced, 3,310 words. 30 references.
Introduction FREE CONTENT
For the last twenty years following the end of the Cold War, the nature of conflict has transitioned from mostly interstate conflicts to predominantly intrastate conflicts characterized by a “complex web of social, economic, cultural, political and religious factors” (Bercovitch & Jackson 3). As the context underlying conflict has changed, the approaches to conflict resolution (CR) and post-conflict reconstruction (PCR) have adapted as well. Policy-makers have a variety of military, political and economic tools at their disposal to contend with the security, welfare and political representation issues resulting from fragile and failed states.
This essay will analyze the policy tools available for CR and PCR, and, in doing so, answer the following questions:
(1) To what extent are the political, economic and military tools available to policymakers for use in conflict resolution and post-conflict reconstruction interconnected?
(2) Has the application of such tools become considerably more challenging since the end of the Cold War? If so, how and why? If not, why not?
Section One of the essay will provide a brief summary of how the environment of conflict has changed since the end of the Cold War. Section Two will analyze the military tools. Section Three will cover the political tools, and Section Four will address the economic tools. Section Five will include a brief summary of how these tools are interconnected, but the assertion that they are interconnected will be made in each section of the essay.
Likewise, the question of whether the application of these tools has become considerably more challenging since the end of the Cold War may be answered in the affirmative with the how and why addressed throughout each section of the paper. Section Six will conclude the paper with a brief summary of the essay.
The views and opinions expressed in this paper are completely my own and do not represent the views or opinions of the Department of Defense (DoD), the Department of the Navy (DON) or any of the Armed Forces.
