The Great Transformation and the Failure of Illiberal Hegemony - Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order - page 173

Violence, Insecurity, and Democratic Legitimacy
Another deep change that erodes or challenges the Westphalian logic of order is in the
sources of violence and insecurity. The security problem at the heart of the Westphalian sys-
tem is great-power war. But as noted earlier, various developments in the modern global sys-
tem have diminished this threat to security. Nuclear deterrence and the fact that most of the
great powers are liberal democracies together make war among these states less likely. It is
now the threat of violence projected out of weak states—wielded by nonstate actors—that
shapes how the advance countries organize themselves and engage in security cooperation.
This new development might be called the privatization of war or the rise of informal viol-
ence. In the past, only states—primarily powerful states—were able to gain access to means
of violence that could threaten other societies. Now we can look out into the future and see
the day when small groups—or transnational gangs of individuals—might be able to acquire
weapons of mass destruction. The technologies and knowledge almost inevitably will diffuse
outward. Determined groups of extremists will increasingly be in a position to obtain increas-
ingly lethal violence capabilities.
This is a transformation in the ways and means of collective violence in international polit-
ics that is driven by technology and the political structure of the system itself. The effect of
this transformation is to render more problematic the old norms of sovereignty and the use of
force. It raises troubling new questions about the relationship between domestic politics and
international relations and raises to greater national security significance parts of the world
that previously could be ignored. It also creates new functional challenges that inevitably will
influence patterns of security cooperation.
What does seem clear is that the privatization of war alters how states conceptualize secur-
ity and cooperate to protect against new threats and insecurities. “Effective wielding of large-
scale violence by nonstate actors reflects new patterns of asymmetrical interdependence, and
calls into question some of our assumptions about geographical space as a barrier,” Robert
Keohane argues. “Contemporary theorists of world politics face a challenge similar to that
of this earlier generation [who had to make sense of the nuclear revolution]: to understand
the nature of world politics and its connections to domestic politics, when what Herz called
the 'hard shell' of the state has been shattered. Geographical space, which has been seen as a
natural barrier and a locus for human barriers, now must be seen as a carrier as well.” 50 A
global consensus does not exist on how to deal with this new type of diffuse nonstate threat.
But it plays havoc with old notions of deterrence, alliance, and self-defense, and with Article
51 of the United Nations Charter (which affirms the right of individual and collective self-
defense).
A final background shift in the global system has been the rise and maturation of demo-
cratic society within and beyond the Atlantic world. As noted earlier, this is a defining