How globalized world issues could be helped? Essay

â€Å"The people want to topple the regime† was the anti-government graffiti painted by a group of Syrian children in the Daraa city in March 2011. These children were arrested and tortured by the local security authorities (Diehl, 2012: 7). This act eventually led to an anti-governmental uprising due to the outrageous reaction of a community over children’s mistreatment after incarceration by the local security authorities. The uprising demanded the release of children, justice, freedom as well as equality for all people. At the core, these peaceful demonstrations were considered to be against the sectarian and family dictatorship because the political power was mainly held by the Alawite elite (Diehl, 2012). In response to these demonstrations, the Syrian government planned to enforce security forces for the protestors to suppress them. This gave rise to the tensions dramatically and tensions spread in the entire country. This rebellion further turned into a full-fled ged civil war between the Free Syrian army and the Syrian regime (Thompson, 2016). The main allegation that the Syrian regime associated with the protestors was that they were Islamic Al- Qaeda’s extremist terrorist gangs who were supported and funded by the various countries such as Turkey, Qatar, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia as well as the United States of America by which they try to seek peace with Israel (Sommier, 2014). Similarly, the same Syrian regime was present in the front line with Israel who was supported by Russia, Iran as well as China (?) (Fisher, 2012). Ever since this happened, the situation and complexity of the war has been deepened with different actors entering from the international, regional or Syrian side and due to which Syria was turned into a proxy battlefield (Wimmen and Asseburg, 2012) The death toll as recorded and presented by the Syrian center for policy research approximately totaled at 470,000 as a result of ongoing conflict till February 2016. Due to the intensification and spread of fighting, a dire humanitarian crisis was evident since 4.8 million people tried to take refuge abroad and 6.1 million people were internally displaced as per the records of UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. It has also been reported by the Syrian Network for Human Rights that since 2011, more than 117,000 people have been either disappeared or detained by the governmental forces. In the detention, ill-treatment and torture are two rampant things that have also resulted in the death of thousands of people in detention. In addition to all the crisis events going on, ISIS (Islamic State) made more complications by the widespread and systematic violations. This was achieved by ISIS through targeting civilians with artillery, kidnappings, executions, using childr en as soldiers, and torture (Human Rights Watch, 2016). One of the biggest challenges that the international relations could face was about how globalized world issues (?) could be helped. With the help of deep research and fascinating drawing of the international relations, the concept has been explored in the book of International Relations Theories (Where is ’ with the name of the book) by Steve Smith (Smith, Kurki and Dunne, 2016: 11) Why you delete the original statement here?. Based on this, there are various currents that can be evident in the international relations theories with a particular focus on the Syrian conflict. Constructivism and realism are two entirely different things are they take up different approaches. Compared to a normative approach, realism takes up an explanatory approach for the study of international relations. Realism is based on the following 3 core competencies: 1. States are owned by egoism and self- interests and are the unitary and rational actors 2. States are considered to be the central actors of international arena WHY you delete â€Å"statism†? (Dunne and Schmidt, 2017: 109) 3. Anarchy is visible in the international system (Ikenberry and Parsi, 2009) Anarchy can be described as a system that comprises of various independent states who do not have any particular authority over them (Mearsheimer, 2001: 30). This ultimately guarantees survival as well as security through material capabilities and self- help (Waltz, 1979: 213) A pessimistic outlook of persistent danger and threat is possessed by the realists, based on which it mentioned that all the state actors are driven by the requirement of greater power and dominance for reducing the elimination of actor’s potential and create a balance of power (Gellman, 1988). Within an anarchic system, the type of competition and insecurity inherent, such type of concentrations automatically adapt to the balancing responses by either by internal balancing where material capabilities are made up or through external balancing where capabilities are aggregated. This provides evidence that alliances are not so much appreciated in terms of realism and shared ideas and values, however, it does through raison d’etat and self- interests (Morgenthau, 1948). In realism, it should be noted that the states are not equal and are placed in a hierarchical order as per the amount of power they have. In an anarchical system, the only way to defend and survive is to use the military power (Slaughter, 2011). Some of the egoistic passions are given primary emphasis by the realists, especially that the presence of political action with an evil in it as mentioned by Donnelly in 2000 (Morgenthau, 1946: 203). Due to this condition, politics turn into such a struggle where the shadow of war WHERE IS â€Å" is something that is considered to be ever- present (Aron, 1970: 36); mainly due to the irreconcilable aspirations of the states (Carr, 1946). According to this, every state would try to obtain as much power as possible. But in case there is an imbalance of power, the likelihood of war becomes high primarily because the stronger state may attack the weaker state without any loss to itself. This idea about power not only encompasses around the military power, rather it also encompasses around the economic power. This means that states whose economies are growing help the states to gain more power; this is because power in the international system is demonstrated through economic strength. Therefore, the attention of realists is focused on economy of a state as it is related to its power (Mearsheimer, 2016). As per the realists, who consider that non- governmental organizations lack military power, they are not able to compete with the international systems. This means that the role played by United Nations is limited (Dunne and Schmidt, 2017: 106). This is deemed important because the main actors in international relations are worried about gaining higher benefits than the others have gained. Strategies like mutual mistrust, selfishness, power- seeking, recklessness, as well as survival securing, are considered to be capable for producing structures like security dilemmas, international self- help systems, political communities, unrestricted politics of national interests, the permanent potentiality of war and violence and many others. The above discussed theoretical formulation of realism can also be applied to the conflict of Syria being studied in this paper. This conflict of Syria can be regarded as a struggle of gaining power among foreign actors or states who contrasted in their interests but were involved in the conflict. For example, Russia, China, United States of America, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and others who approached Syrian war, all of them had their personal benefits as well as predicted results in mind to achieve. The power of United States of America in the international system was tried to be restricted by the support of al- Assad government by China, Russia, and Iran with the militia- cum- party of Hezbollah. This was achieved through the formation of an alliance with Syria as well as vetoing interference by United Nations Security Council. This helped them to restrict the US from gaining any sort of advantage over North Africa or Middle East (Yan, 2013). Ever since the conflict started in Syria, Assad was supported by Russia by all means including in terms of weapons, technical advisors as well as by sending military advisors. Eventually, in 2015, September 15, a direct military intervention was opted by Russia despite the fact that it aimed to fight ISIS but it was mainly meant to target opponents of Assad (Spaulding, 2015). Since the cold war ended, Russia’s identity as one of the world powers has greatly reduced and as per the framework of zero-sum competition for power provided by Dunne and Schmidt (Dunne and Schmidt, 2017: 110), the only way out for Russia is to avoid definite exclusion from the area while balancing Washington’s sway as well. Moscow’s projection of power in the Eastern Mediterranean was also dependent upon the survival of Assad so that the power could be specifically projected to geopolitical ambitions and interests of Russia (Litsas, 2017). This further poses a big question about whether Ru ssia can be sure about its position and safety of its economic interests or not (Freedman, 2010). On the other hand and on an equal basis, there was a breeze of uneasiness in between American government and Iran because the American government was able to make an influence in the region and in return was upsetting the regional power as mentioned in Sick et al. (2008: 1) WHY you change the reference and put the name of the writer out WHERE IS the original statement (â€Å"it is clear that Iran is now a centerpiece of American Policy† (Sick et al., 2008: 1) that Iran was the centerpiece of attraction for the American policy. Due to this, Iranians took greater defensive measures as they continued to internally balance and build their nuclear capabilities. Considering the military standing between Syria and Iran that is only meant to secure the borders and state to balance the potential threats that may arise from Turkey, Israel, American ally of the Sunni Gulf States and others (Laub, 2017). Iran is still considered to have a stronger strategic position due to the fact that S yria would be at their hands with the loyalty of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Palestine at one site. This is also one of the justifications that have been used by Iran to support its involvement in ideological motive because Allah has ordered all Muslims to defend and protect each other from all sort of outside threats, as per Imam Khomeini. This is another reason with which Iran supports its view of protecting and supporting Palestinians because they are not recognized by the West and are repressed by Israel (Segall, 2012).