The challenges to the state include globalization, transnational crime, transnational movements, and ethnonational movements. Globalization is growing integration of the world in terms of politics, economics, communications, and culture. It is a process that undermines traditional state sovereignty. For instance, new and indiscreet technologies; e-mail, fax machines, and worldwide TV networks increasingly destabilize the state’s control over information and therefore its control over its citizens. Transnational crime has led to the accelerating association of illegal drugs, counterfeit goods, smuggled weapons, laundered money, and trafficking in poor and oppressed people. This crime has created new businesses while also altering national and …show more content…
Ethnonationalist movements can be defined through The Clash of Civilizations by Sam Huntington. Huntington describes that the differences between civilizations are simple: history, language, culture, tradition and religion. These are also the root challenges behind ethnonationalist movements. Interactions between people from different civilizations are increasing which builds awareness of others' beliefs and cultural differences. As people define their identity in ethnic and religious terms, they are likely to see an "us" versus "them" relation. Example, the Kashmir conflict. Huntington argues that the conflicts in our world today are no longer due to ideological reasons, but that conflicts are due to cultural differences with religion possibly being the major cause of conflict. Contemporary examples include the war in Yemen, South Sudan, and also the Syria-Iraq …show more content…
Individuals strive to be cognitively consistent, warranting that images stay together unfailingly within their belief systems. An example would be when U.S. decision makers failed to take the conflict between Argentina and Great Britain seriously, when looking at the war over the Falkland/Malvinas Islands in 1982. An evoked set can be described as when elites in power look for details of a current issue that look like a past one, while often ignoring the important differences. The book’s example for this is when the British prime minister Anthony Eden viewed the Egyptian president Nasser as another Hitler that could not be appeased. Mirror images often shape perceptions while considering one’s own action noble and moral; while the enemy is automatically found to be evil and unreasonable. An example of mirror imagery would be the United States’ view of Russia during the Cold War. The psychologist Irving Janis noticed that small groups have psychologically based dynamics that challenge the rational model, which he decided to call ‘groupthink’. The described dynamics of the group include: an illusion of invulnerability and unity, unwarranted optimism, belief in their own morality and the enemy as criminal, and often pressure placed on dissenters to modify their views. An example of groupthink would when President Lyndon Johnson held lunch meetings to discuss Vietnam, with his advisors whom were loyal and close friends to him. Members of this group viewed the war effort as