THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM Nations and groups of nations experience bouts of political stability and instability that seem to progress in a certain pattern.  You might say that instability leads to stability, which then sets the stage for instability on a higher level.  By “instability” we mean the presence of conditions that increase the likelihood that violent conflict may erupt.  It could be due to a large, radical protest movement demanding change, or two nations having a border dispute.  Any situation where more than one center of political power is present has some degree of instability that is heightened when one or more of them represent some level of dissatisfaction.  The more power centers there are to interact, the more political fault lines there are and the greater the potential for conflict.  A power center can be a nation with an army, or an alliance, or an international political movement, or on a smaller level, a terrorist organization or even a political party or labor union.  The way that instability leads to stability is that once a conflict is resolved, the warring parties may become friends and pursue commerce, or the loser may completely absorbed by the winner, or they may form an alliance against a common enemy.  They have now merged to form a new, larger power center--on some level anyway--that now finds itself in an unstable relationship with another large power center, itself perhaps an alliance or an empire.  And just as earthquakes along major fault lines are less frequent but more destructive, so are wars between these larger actors.         Some examples:  Europe throughout the Middle Ages was made up of a large number of small and medium-sized  fiefdoms.  Throughout the era they warred and merged with one another until the modern states of Europe emerged--who then continued to war with each other in turn.  Of course, it was a two-steps-forward-one-step-back process as empires and kingdoms disintegrated even as others consolidated, and super-national power centers such as the Catholic Church had considerable influence much of the time.  But by the 20th century we were seeing wars and political fault lines not just between nations but large alliances.  WWI was mainly between two large European blocs, while WWII involved even larger quasi-global blocs of which there were actually 3. (Of course, earlier conflicts such as the Thirty Yeas War and the Napoleonic Wars involved large alliance blocs and they did produce instability/stability cycles within their own contexts.)  For some time now it had been unthinkable that longtime foes Britain and France would fight another war--they had become a single power center, joined by the United States and many others in the course of the two World Wars.  And with the Cold War there emerged the highest level of instability--more or less the entire World was divided into two more or less stable blocs.  The Iron Curtain represented the ultimate political fault line and had the instability along this line erupted into full-blown conflict, it might have destroyed the World.         Now then, the next important concept to introduce is the distinction between natural stability and artificial stability.  Natural stability exists when there are genuinely friendly relations among the political entities in a given region.  The Western Alliance aka the Free World and all--or most--of the nations comprising it could best be characterized in this way.  By contrast, artificial stability exists when a regime is capable of keeping a lid on any potential for unrest or secession movements.  The Soviet bloc--or just about any dictatorship or empire--was/is artificially stable; despite the yearning of so many people to break free from its grip, there was always greater potential for conflict with forces outside the Communist World than within it.  Then, when the Communists did finally lose their grip on power, the former Soviet Empire was plunged into a state of instability from which the process of developing natural stability continues.         It was instability in the Balkans which led to WWI, and that conflict left a great deal of instability in its wake, but it was progressive in a couple of ways.  It undid the (last vestiges of the) artificial stability of the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires and produced several new, ostensibly stable states in Central Europe.  But in the Balkans, stability alternated between artificial and non-existent.  The creation of Yugoslavia appeared to unite the Southern Slavs, but political and religious rivalry led to infighting that raged even amid the throes of WWII.  The Communist regime which followed was artificially stable right through the Cold War, after which the country erupted in serious bout of instability, to say the least.  The complex three-way war in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the mid-1990s illustrates the problems encountered when international borders are drawn leaving ethnic peoples on the wrong side.  Usually they wind up as oppressed minorities, but it was fear of such an outcome that drove Bosnian Serbs and Croats--supplied by their newly independent parent countries who had inherited most of Yugoslavia’s military equipment--to assert themselves militarily.  Having no parent country, the Bosnian Muslims (who tended to not be very religious) took the worst of it.  They suffered some of the worst atrocities Europe had seen the Third Reich, mainly at the hands of the Serbs, who pursued a policy of “ethnic cleansing” aimed converting the patchwork of ethnic enclaves into geographically contiguous zones.         Despite the carnage, the international community was slow to react.  Intervention by the United Nations was limited and ineffectual--the global organization was accustomed to peacekeeping operations and was unprepared for a peacemaking operation that would have them confront full-size armies in combat.  The United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) consisted of only a few thousand troops and was very limited in its rules of engagement and in its mission, which was to protect Sarajevo airport and relief supply convoys.  The ravages of ethnic cleansing were allowed to continue, and when UNPROFOR designated several Bosnian towns as “safe havens”, it was unable to adequately protect them and massacres ensued.  This was enough to overcome the isolationist forces in American politics and open the door for NATO to launch air strikes on Serb forces.  This rapidly led to a peace agreement to be negotiated in Dayton, OH and the deployment by NATO of the Implementation Force (IFOR) with 60,000 peacekeepers.         There are a number of lessons to be learned from Bosnia.  One of them is that the United Nations lacks the power and authority to intervene effectively in even a medium-sized conflict.  The UN can only ask that member states to contribute troops to a given operation, and, partly to avoid stiffening opposition to its presence, partly to avoid cold-feet-inducing casualties, restrains them from any meaningful confrontations with combatants.  It would appear that a large-scale commitment by a major power such as the United States--around which can coalesce a coalition--is necessary for a peacemaking operation to be successful.  But another lesson that seems not to be as well-learned is that the ad-hoc nature of these coalitions-- disbanding and then reinventing themselves on a case-by-case basis--can result in neglect or at best delay in the face of a humanitarian catastrophe.  The 1991 Gulf War coalition, while it couldn’t have been expected to oust the Iraqis from Kuwait overnight, was assembled rapidly and was effective and resolute in enforcing the ultimatum against Saddam Hussein’s forces.  But with Bosnia there was much more dithering while civilians in large numbers were slaughtered, and in Rwanda the international community failed altogether to intervene in stopping a massive campaign of genocide. There needs to be some way of speeding the process of assembling military coalitions capable of effectively intervening in such crises without overreaching for a One World Government, which is far too unrealistic a proposal.         Much greater promise is shown by a region-by-region approach to internationalism.  Along with geographic proximity, countries that make up a given region have a certain degree of shared history, language, religion, economic interdependence, and--whatever works--shared resentments against the US and other powers.  What’s more, keeping the process of internationalization compartmentalized by allows each of them to proceed at their own pace.  Leading the way is, of course, Europe with is European Union.  The adoption of a common currency in the euro was a major step, as was the elimination of customs controls, and the establishment of region-wide institutions including the EU Parliament.  But the kind of military and political integration necessary for the regional organization to prevent a situation like Bosnia is a point to which it has not yet evolved.  Steps toward economic integration are more palatable in the early stage than military since there is less overt an association with peoples’ sense of national pride.  Yet there have been some promising examples where countries neighboring trouble spots have taken on their share of the burden in military interventions, such Caribbean islands that joined the invasion of Grenada in 1983 and of course the Arab states that joined the Gulf War coalition in 1990.  But these were US-dominated operations along with Bosnia, Kosovo, etc. needs the ability to act independently in mounting peacekeeping and peacemaking operations.           One region that has made some admirable progress amid some of the most difficult circumstances is Africa.  In 2002 the Organization of African Unity became the African Union.  This entailed a strengthening of the common-market style economic relationship and espoused a lot of high-minded principles of continental unity and shared interest, but also has teeth enough to authorize military intervention in the event of “war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity”.  In the first 3 years of it existence, the AU has assembled forces from member states to intervene in conflicts in places like Burundi, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Congo and Sudan, considerable success. But just as interesting is the recent creation of the Pan-African Parliament, to which each AU member state has agreed to send 5 members (at least one of whom must be a woman).  What’s significant is that for the first time, representatives will be elected directly elected by the people, thus circumventing the national governments and allowing opposition parties representation in an international organization for the first time.  The treaty establishing the PAP calls for a 5-year period during which it will mainly be a forum for debating the issues affecting the continent, but later it is slated to possess real legislative authority.   We’ll see how ultimately successful this foray into regionalism will be and where it will lead.  Some prominent participants have envisioned an ultimate goal of creating a “United States of Africa”--which would make it a regional federation.            Looking around the world, one can begin to see a number of other regional groupings emerge that seem to have some potential for a regional unity movement to take hold.   Latin America is a good example.  To a very large extent they share a common language and religion.  They also share a degree of resentment toward US dominance which, while being unhelpful overall, provides a common set of grievances that can help drive a regional unity movement.          At first I had the idea of a regional federation called “Anglo-Oceania” comprising the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the various Pacific islands of, etc. But realistically they’d become the 51st+ states.  A regional federation consisting of a superpower orbited by a number of smaller, weaker states presents some problems.  Rather than try to lump every country into 1 of exactly 9 superstates, it’s a bit more realistic to look for potential unions among contiguous, roughly equal states, and look for others to remain on their own indefinitely.  The US is already a regional federation.  Likewise, China, India, and Russia are to large to play well with others.