POL208Y5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Arab Spring, Security Dilemma, Geopolitics
4 Dec 2017
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Pol208 introduction to international relations (i) causes. Politicized grievances, contested resources, a state"s inability to address grievances peacefully. Its extreme version (authority vacuum, lack of security, law of the strongest, etc. ) is a collapsed state. Other contributing factors: geography, resources (both a motive and a fuel for war), technology, historical animosity (ii) outcomes. Between adversaries: outright victory, partition, power-sharing, vote-pooling, federalism external use of force: intervention, Occupation from domestic to ir: diffusion, intervention, spillover from ir to domestic: domestic destabilization, foreign- policy induced domestic crisis. Violent internal conflict: a growing trend, especially in the 1990s. In ethnic conflicts, phenomenon of ethnic cleansing (removing of rival ethnic group from contested territory) Spring-summer 2011: pro-democracy protests, met with lethal violence, trigger widespread anti- Politicized grievances diffusion (arab spring) government rallies and armed response; war crimes committed. Early 2012: rebel groups form against government forces, fighting spreads; opposition fragments, evolves.
