Interminable Chaos

Is the ongoing global geopolitical security crisis ephemeral or a continuum?

- Raviprasad Narayanan

The past few years have seen inter- and intra-state conflicts dominating the headlines. Rising casualties and destruction of public and private infrastructure are increasing economic misery and deepening existing societal fault lines. Reportage on all communication forms with the commentariat has led to one inescapable question—What is happening in geopolitics? Lots of interconnected events, actually.

Increasing flashpoints in several countries and regions—Gaza and Israel, Russia and Ukraine, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Yemen—have been metamorphosing. Each of these countries reveals how the legacies of the Second World War (1939-45) transformed into ideological extremes with absolute political personalities propped, leaving behind political, ideological and economic fissures compounded with a mix of societal divides in ethnic, historical, linguistic, pseudo-nationalist terms, hastening several sovereign states into becoming vacuum expressions, exhibiting anarchy and anomie.

Enthralling globalisation processes are determinants conveying economic success to be the only template of state legitimacy. The implosion of the erstwhile Soviet Union as an example to comprehend whether 'stasis' or 'dynamic' is better became a mantra for new-age economics. The Second World War as security in theoretical and action terms came to an end decades ago, leaving behind devastated economic spheres globally, not restricted to Europe alone. Realism gave way to neo-realism, followed in tandem by Institutionalism, and Constructivism. With chaos appearing interminable, aren't there any new theoretical vistas finding acceptance? Or, is theorising obsolescent?