Global Alliances and International Conflict: Past, Present, and Future
This paper examines how international alliances have evolved from World War I through the Cold War, analyzing patterns of cooperation and conflict among major powers. It reviews the formation and purpose of global organizations like the United Nations, WHO, and WAAAR, then assesses how contemporary security threats—particularly terrorism and regional aggression—will shape future alliance patterns. The paper argues that coordinated international action through coalitions of democratic nations is essential to address 21st-century global challenges, while acknowledging the political will and economic costs required for such sustained commitment.
- Introduction: Why Alliances Matter: Governments form alliances for power; this paper examines how alliances shape future conflicts
- Historical Context: World War I (1914–1919): Defensive alliances and imperial competition sparked the chain of events leading to World War I
- Historical Context: World War II (1939–1945): Axis powers against Allies; alliances reformed as Japan replaced Austria-Hungary in the partnership
- Historical Context: The Cold War (1948–1989): Communist Soviet Union became pariah; ideological divide split former WWII allies
- The United Nations: A Global Model: UN prevented global conflict for 70 years through institutional power-sharing among five permanent members
- WHO and WAAAR: Specialized Global Alliances: Focused coalitions address health and antibiotic resistance through coordinated member participation
- The Big Five Powers Today: United States, Russia, China, France, and Britain navigate terrorism, regional aggression, and competing interests
- Terrorism: The Common Threat: Islamic extremism and caliphate ambitions represent a global threat requiring coordinated military response
- Building Coalitions for the Future: Regional powers and secondary military forces must commit to defeating terrorism alongside major powers
- Conclusion: Two Paths Ahead: Either terrorism is defeated through global alliance, or extremists establish a world caliphate
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What makes this paper effective
- Uses concrete historical examples (WWI, WWII, Cold War) as scaffolding for understanding modern alliance dynamics, showing how past patterns inform present behavior.
- Effectively illustrates the UN's success in preventing World War III since 1945, using a measurable outcome to validate the argument that global coalitions function.
- Grounds abstract claims about international cooperation in specific organizations (UN, WHO, WAAAR), each serving as evidence that coordinated action is operationally possible.
- Engages current events (Russia-Ukraine, Charlie Hebdo, ISIS territorial claims) to make the stakes of alliance-building urgent and relevant to readers.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper employs historical analogy and comparative analysis to build a causal argument. By tracing how alliances formed, reformed, and fractured across three major historical periods, the author establishes that geopolitical anxiety and perceived threats (encirclement, power imbalance, ideological conflict) consistently drive alliance behavior. This pattern is then applied to the current terrorism threat, arguing that if past alliances formed around military and ideological concerns, similar coalitions should logically form around the shared interest in defeating extremism. The technique is rhetorically effective because it lets historical precedent do much of the argumentative work.
Structure breakdown
The paper is organized chronologically through history (WWI → WWII → Cold War), followed by an analysis of modern global institutions (UN, WHO, WAAAR), then shifts to contemporary geopolitical actors (the Big Five powers and regional players), before concluding with a forward-looking argument about terrorism and alliance formation. This structure moves from historical grounding (what happened) to institutional evidence (what works) to current analysis (what is) to future stakes (what should be). The result is a narrative arc that builds credibility through depth before advancing a prescriptive claim.
Introduction: Why Alliances Matter
The world changes in countless ways each day. Governments make and break alliances, treaties, and agreements for financial and political gain, as well as for power and control, in a constantly fluid manner. Such changes have been taking place as long as countries have existed, so these diplomatic maneuvers should not surprise us. This paper seeks to determine how ongoing changes reflect the current global environment and how alliances will influence governments over the next several years and decades.
Historical Context: World War I (1914–1919)
A recent historical report states that "with deliberate deceptions, lies and attempts on all sides to appear as the wronged, it is little wonder that, after a hundred years, there is still no consensus on why the July Crisis escalated into the First World War" (Mombauer, 2014, p. 23). World War I was known as the war to end all wars, but it started innocently enough with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary and his wife Sophie on Sunday, June 28, 1914, in Sarajevo, Bosnia by Bosnian nationalists. Mombauer posits that ever since that time, fierce arguments about the chain of events leading up to that assassination have been debated by historians, politicians, and journalists (Mombauer, 2014). The alliances of the various players in that historical context are particularly interesting, especially when compared to World War II, which took place less than twenty-five years later. World War I started with Germany supporting Austria-Hungary's efforts to hold Serbia accountable for the murder of the Archduke and his wife.
Mombauer states that the reason Germany may have been so supportive was due to Germany's desire to test the Entente Powers (Russia, France, and Great Britain), whose combined might encircled Germany and its ally (Mombauer, 2014). Germany and, to some extent, its allies (Austria-Hungary, Italy) worried that the Entente Powers were gaining too much power and wished to stem the tide. The Triple Alliance (Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary) in some manner welcomed the chance to weaken the alliance between the Entente Powers (France, Russia, and Great Britain), even if only on the slightest of pretenses.
Roslyng-Jensen provides another reason the war could have begun: the preceding period of peace between many countries as they looked to facilitate imperial expansion around the globe (2012). According to Roslyng-Jensen, this imperial expansion allowed governments to appease their own citizens, who viewed a general European war over a colonial dispute as unacceptable, and the expense of war outweighed its profitability. Additionally, the major powers practicing imperial expansion regularly cooperated in "suppressing threats to European interests, as happened during the Boxer rebellion in China" (Roslyng-Jensen, p. 530). Many of the European alliances shaped before World War I were defensive in nature, and it was because of this defensive orientation that clear acts of aggression were restrained by the alliance system (Mulligan, 2011, p. 15). According to Mulligan (2011), states cooperated on issues of specific interest, and even on the eve of war, spheres of influence in the declining Ottoman Empire were agreed upon by Britain, Germany, and France.
As with almost all alliances, however, the major powers see what other players are achieving through imperialism and cooperation and become worried that they are being left behind or that after other players have taken over smaller countries, they would then turn their eyes, military might, and other resources toward bigger targets. Bogdanor (2014) states that two rival nationalisms—Slav nationalism seeking to unite all the southern Slavs and German nationalism seeking to expand eastward—created a tension that directly contributed to the initiation of World War I.
Once Austria-Hungary invaded Serbia and Germany announced its full support for the action, other European countries quickly climbed on board, fearful to some extent of the fallout or possible consequences of not being aligned with other like-minded governments. France, Russia, and Great Britain immediately sided with the Serbs and declared war. It could not truly be declared a World War until the other fledgling superpower, the United States, joined the conflict; that took place later in the war.
Historical Context: World War II (1939–1945)
Some of the alliances formed before and during World War I remained strong in the years preceding and during World War II, but at least one significant change occurred among the major powers. Germany and Italy remained strong partners, but instead of Austria-Hungary as a third member, Japan was invited to join their alliance, forming the Axis. On the Allied side, the United States, Great Britain, Russia, and to a much smaller and weaker extent, France remained together in order to halt the aggression displayed by the Axis.
Originally the Axis was challenged by France, Great Britain, and the British Commonwealth (Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia). However, after Russia was attacked by Germany and the United States was attacked by Japan, both superpowers declared war and joined with the other Allies to fight the Axis. China joined with them the same year to assist as well. The Allies not only won the war but also became known collectively as the United Nations.
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