Book. The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, as well as other conflicts, have caused a speech imbued with fear: humanity, profess the pessimists, would be at the dawn of a new planetary conflict. In his latest work, World War will not take place. The geopolitical reasons to hope (Odile Jacob, 288 pages, 23.90 euros), Frédéric Enfl, specialist in geopolitics and lecturer at Sciences Po, is fake against this apocalyptic posture. He believes that, if the wars will not disappear, the risk of a generalized conflict is infinitesimal for a series of reasons.
To start, the author deconstructs the theory, deemed “Inept”,, of “Civilization shock” From the American academic Samuel Huntington (1927-2008) who, in the 1990s, claimed that after the Cold War, civilizations-apprehended as frozen blocks-would form the main cleavage of international relations. However, they have never triggered war alone. Even the opposition between democracies and authoritarian regimes, already more relevant, is, according to him, one variable among others of international power relations.
Another reason for hope: historically, very little “Regimes” are “Suicida”. Certainly, there are a few counterexamples-the IIIe Reich and the Islamic State organization showed a “Right will to continue at all costs their destructive business at the risk of their own existence” -, but they are exceptions.
Consequently, he continues, nuclear deterrence radically changes the situation: the threat of annihilation limits the risk of open conflict between the powers endowed with the atomic weapons (United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel). The “Thucydide trap”, a theory of the American political scientist Graham Allison according to which the two dominant powers, namely today the United States and China, are pushed to conflict, therefore has little chance of closing.
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Source: Lemonde