By Win PPE student, POL 232 International Relations
Introduction
Many countries in the world become into power in many forms’ several type of power. There are military preparedness, population, sizes of the state, natural resources, industrial capacity, moral legitimacy, diplomacy, popular support of government and ideas powers. These powers can affect one state to another state both in negative and positive in various ways. Actors are powerful to the extent that they affect others more than other affects them. Therefore, this paper is especially talking about military force and terrorism. Military force is one an important power for a country and its territory. As the same time, military force can threat to peace from local to regional and international level.
There world military force such as UN peacekeeping force, NATO, US troop are to maintaining international peace and security, and for restoring peace when it breaks downs. These alliances have been formed coalition from different countries after WWII.
Japan surprise attack on the U.S base at Pearl Harbor in 1941 was a short-term superiority that drove out U.S force and occupy Southeast Asia region. Later on, in the long-term the Unites States had greater power resources due to its underlying economic potential, its build up military capabilities over the next few years that gradually match and then overwhelmed those of Japan and Specific. A military capability allows actors to exercise influence in short term. Military force: the size, composition and in a short-term military confrontation than do their respective economics or natural resources. Military industrial has capability to quickly produce tanks, fighter planes, and other weapons.
This paper is going to represent about the use of Military Force and how this is probably the essential example of the dominance of principle. And how state use of military force, the drive of military force and they try to achieve some goals in the international relationship. The State prepare for the possibility using military force by building up military forces which is complicated, expensive and quake as central preoccupation state. The actors create particular problem in the international conflicts and maintain capabilities to use violence to achieve their own goals by using military force.
Type of military forces
(1) Conventional Force – (army, navy, air force)
(2) Irregular Force – (militias and terrorists) and
(3) Weapon of mass destruction – (notably nuclear weapon)
There are three basic types of military forces which are being used by actor or state from the difference purposes to achieve significant goals.
One is conventional force. Conventional forces provide the bulk of the nation’s military power. They consist of combat and support elements from all four Services which are not including units dedicated to special operations and nuclear prevention. The major categories of conventional forces are land, naval, aviation (air force), and mobility forces.
Second type is irregular forces which is militias and terrorist, state responsible terrorist every time is irregular. Furthermore, they operate out of uniform; they don’t obey the law of war. They are important in non state military forces.
The third type is for weapon mass of destruction especially nuclear weapon. This is usually had by smaller number of state rarely used in war. Iraq uses chemical weapon in Iran-Iraq war. But a little mass very complicated war. Weapon of mass destructive used in war they helped by law stated as deterrence against other states.
(1) Conventional force
Conventional forces are against irregular forces. This provided challenge of the state who expense in some case in trillion of dollar building up the conventional forces because this is large forces identified other large forces conventionally train. They have to fight small, very lower irregular unit as systematic of warfare. Nowhere, it better evidence but the challenging is in Pakistan. Pakistan has spent billion of dollar of building military over decades to fight India.
In Afghanistan we have NATO forces with US army, air force, and Franc, Britain, German Troop all from NATO countries. Conventionally train, they try to fight Taliban and try to hold on in the contact where they have a weak government system in Afghanistan. And difficult for the international forces to NATO to fight the Taliban because the structure mention the Taliban forces invested themselves in population.
Conventional force is a military force, methods of fighting a war that do not involve nuclear weapons. A state leader in a conflict can apply various kinds of power to reach a more favorable outcome. One set of levers represents nonviolence means of influencing others states, such as foreign aid, economic sanctions, and personal diplomacy (less tangible include the use of norms, morality, and other ideas).
A second set of levers is represented about violence actions. These levers set armies marching, suicide bombers blowing up, or missile flying. They tend to be costly both the attacker and the attacked.
Military force, beyond defending their territories, states develop military capabilities for several other purposes. States also use military forces for humanitarian assistance after disasters, for peacekeeping, for surveillance of drug trafficking, and for repression of domestic political dissent, among other missions.
More developed countries have great powers continue to dominate the makeup of world military force. For example, great power countries such as United States, Russia, China, France, Britain, Germany, and Japan have great-power military capabilities in the world.
Military capabilities divided into three categories as already mention above. They are conventional forces (army, navy, air force), irregular forces (terrorism, militias), and weapon of mass destruction (nuclear, chemical and biological weapon). Among them, conventional forces are most important because they are active in all fields of wars currently in progress.
Military logistics make territoriality all the more important because of the need to control territories connecting military forces with each other. An army’s supplies must flow from home territories along supply lines to the field. In the 2003 Iraq war, a major challenge for U.S force was to secure supply lines hundreds of miles into Iraq. Therefore, the most fundamental purpose of conventional forces is to take, hold, or defend territory.
Nearly two years after the Hussein regime was toppled and major combat operations ended, U.S. and coalition troops are still fighting an Iraqi insurgency.
There many alliance troop died and wounded who were from different foreign countries according to international relation term the U.S. and Coalition in Iraq.
There have been 4,707 coalition deaths in the Iraq war as of March 24, 2010, according to a CNN count. The soldiers, Marines, airmen, sailors and Coast Guardsmen whose deaths have been reported by their country's governments and also includes 13 U.S. Defense Department civilian employees. At least 31,739 U.S. troops have been wounded in action, according to the Pentagon.
Armies are adapted to this purpose. Military forces with armed foot soldiers can occupy a territory militarily. Foot soldiers are called infantry. They use assault rifles and other light weapons such as (mines and machine guns) as well as heavy machine gun of various types. M16 is usually has been in service for over many years. M16/M4, AK 47, AR-15 (civilian version) and the C7/ C8 (Canadian version) are used by many armies troop around the world for combatant. Some of the countries, such as the UK, only use M16/M4/AR-15/C7/C8 rifles for their special forces.
Foot soldiers are more important in both close terrain but also such as jungles and cities. For this reason, the armies of industrialized states have a greater advantage over poor armies in open conventional warfare, such as in the Kuwaiti desert. In jungle, mountain, or urban warfare, however as in Afghan mountains and Iraqi cities- such as advantage are eroded, and cheaper, and more lightly armed force of motivated foot soldiers or guerrilla may ultimately prevail over an expensive conventional army.
The superiority of conventional armed forces to irregular force in open battle was graphically demonstrated in Somalia at the end of 1006. We can learn about conventional force in Iraq war 2003 and Afghanistan war in 2001. The Islamists, like most irregular forces, then had to fall back to guerrilla attacks rather than taking and holding territory. A common tool of guerrillas, insurgents and the government fighting them are landmines which are simple, small and cheap containers of explosive with a trigger activated by contact or sensor.
Navy - Navy are adapted primarily to control passage through the sea and to attach land near coastlines. Controlling the seas in wartime allows states to move their own goods and military forces by sea while preventing enemies form doing so. Navies can also blockade enemy ports. For most of the 1990s, western navies enforced a naval blockade against Iraq.
Aircraft carriers – mobile platforms for attach aircraft – are instruments of power projection that can exert negative leverage against virtually any state in the world. Sending an aircraft is carrier sailing to the neighborhood if an international conflict implies a threat to use force. For example, the United States dispatched two carriers to the Taiwan are when Chinese war games there threaten to go up in 1996.
Aircraft carriers are extremely expansive and typically require 20 to 25 supporting ships for protection and supply. A few states can afford even one. The United States currently operates large carriers (12 of them, costing more than $ 5 billion each). Eight other countries, French, India, Russia, Spain, Brazil, Italy, Thailand, and the United Kingdom) maintain smaller carriers that use helicopter or small airplanes.
Marine is one part of the navy forces. Marines are also useful great-power intervention in distant conflicts where they can insert themselves quickly and establish local control. For example, 1992-1993, U.S. Marines were already waiting off-shore while U.N Security Council was debating whether to authorize the use of force intervention in Somalia.
Air Force is a part of country’s military force which uses aircrafts and fights in the air. According to the mission of the United States Air Force is to fly, fight and win … in air, space and cyberspace.
To achieve that mission, the Air Force has a vision of Global Vigilance, Reach and Power. That vision orbits around three core competencies: developing Airmen, technology to war fighting and integrating operations. These core competencies make our six distinctive capabilities possible.
Nowadays, air forces can attack anywhere, anytime and do very quickly in short time with greater concern than ever before according to technological advance. Air forces serve several different purposes. They are strategic booming of land or sea target (close air support), interception of other aircraft, reconnaissance and aircraft of supplies, weapons and troops. Missile-whether fire from air, land or sea- are increasingly important. Air forces have developed various means to try to fool such missiles with mixed result.
Logistics and Intelligence
All military operations rely heavily on logistical support such as food, fuel, and ordnance of weapon and ammunition. Military logistics are a huge operation, and in most armed forces the majority of soldiers are not combat troops. Global-reach capabilities combine long distance logistics support with various power projection forces.
According to U.S department of defense, only the United States today fully possesses such as a capability with worldwide military alliances, air and naval bases, troops stationed overseas and aircraft carriers carrying out the world oceans. (See table). Russia and China’s military force are oriented toward regional and internal conflicts but they are not global scope.
Space forces are one of the military forces designed to attack in or from outer space. Satellites are used extensively for military purpose, but these purposes thus far do not include attack. Satellites perform military surveillance and mapping, communications, weather assessment and early warning of ballistic missile launches.
(2) Terrorism
Terrorism is a violence action for political purpose. Government must cooperate if they are to fight international terrorism. Since September 2001, governments and ordinary people have paid much more attention to terrorism than ever before. Terrorism refer to political violence that targets civilians deliberately and indiscriminate. Most terrorism occurs in Middle East, Europe, and South Asia. There are 42 foreign terrorist countries by the U.S State Department list.
The primary effect of terrorism is psychological. As of 2007, the United States accused five states of supporting international terrorist, North Korea, Iran, Syria, Sudan and Cuba. Since September 2001, as governments, companies and individuals worldwide adapt to the new security environment that comes from a global terrorist threat.
(3) Weapon of Mass Destructive
Weapon of Mass Destructive include three general types. They are nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. But they are rely been used in warfare. Weapon of Mass Destructive serve different purposes from conventional weapons.
The production of nuclear weapons is technically within the means of many states and some none states actors, but the necessary fissionable material (Uranium or plutonium) is very difficult to obtain. The lost mass of Nuclear is transformed into energy according to Albert Einstein’s famous formula E = mc, which shows that destroyed Nagasaki, Japan in 1945 converted to energy roughly the amount of mass in a single penny.
There are many states in the world have nuclear weapons, US, UK, Russia, China, Britain, France, Iran, North Korea, India, Pakistan and Israel. Five are considered to be "nuclear weapons states", an internationally recognized status conferred by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). In order of acquisition of nuclear weapons these are: the United States of America, Russia (successor state to the Soviet Union), the United Kingdom, France and China. These five countries only have the potential targets to the world of nuclear weapon.
Except from nuclear weapon there are various types of mass destructive weapon such as proliferation, ballistic missiles and other delivery systems. Moreover, the chemical and biological interfere with the nervous system, blood, breathing or other body function. In 2001, soon after September 11 attacks, someone sent mail amounts of anthrax spores thorough the U.S mail to high government and media offices, killing several people and massively disrupting mail distribution.
Conclusion
The world watched the political, economic and emotional effects of war on the home front and around the globe. Most industrialized states, and many poor ones, have refrained voluntarily from acquiring nuclear weapons. These states include two great powers, Germany and Japan.
As far as my knowledge a new treaty bans the possession and use of chemical weapons. Several states conduct research into biological warfare, but by treaty the possession of such weapon is banned.
Military governments are most common in poor countries, where the military may be the only modern institution in the country. Military forces provide states with means of leverage beyond the various nonmilitary means of influence widely used in international bargaining. Political leaders face difficult choices in configuring military forces and paying for them. Military spending tends to stimulate economic growth in the short term but reduce growth over the long term.
In the 1990s, military forces and expenditures of the great powers - especially Russia- were reduced and restructured. Military forces include a wide variety of capabilities suited to different purposes. Conventional warfare requires different kinds of forces than those needed to threaten the use of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. Except in time of civil war, state leaders – whether civilian or military – control military forced through a single hierarchical chain of command. Military can threaten the domestic power of state leaders, who are vulnerable to being overthrown by coups defeat.
Arms control agreements formally define the contours of an arms race or mutual disarmament process. Arms control helped build confidence between the super powers during the Cold War.
Finally, there are 115 countries peacekeeping contributors for police, military expert on mission and troop December 2009 to help countries torn by conflict create the conditions for lasting peace.
Reference:
(1) Year in Review, United Nations Peace Operations 2009
http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/
(2) Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Online publication
http://carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=30993
(3) International Relations, Eight Edition, Joshua S. Goldstein. American University Washington, D.C. University of Massachusetts, Amherst. And Jon C. Pevehouse, University of Chicago
(4) International Crisis Group, Working to prevent conflict worldwide. http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm
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