Democratic Mechanisms and Political Risks to Waging War Essay - 1

Democratic Mechanisms and Political Risks to Waging War - Essay Example â€Å"The relation between military organization and the civilian environment can be shaped in different ways: in some countries, the civilians are executing firm oversight over the armed forces, whereas in some other countries the military can perform its duties regarding national security in its own, autonomous way, if not even in the way where the military imposes its principles of governance over the citizens. In the contemporary society, the last, i.e. military-dominated political systems are rare†(Jelusic,2007). But at the same time, Shultz (1999) points out that within democratic mechanisms, the political leaders tend to face higher political cost to waging war and therefore the threat to war is often resisted by the target nation. Indeed, the wider ramifications of threats by democratic state are less likely to be taken seriously by rogue nations than by threats from non-democratic states. However, history is witness to the fact that this is not always true. Moreover, according to Jelusic the idea more common are civilian-dominated political systems, in which civilian political leaders control the military in very authoritative way, or where the whole civilian environment through the channels of the democratic control over the military imposes the tasks, the execution of tasks and respect for democracy in the inner-military organizational structures. America’s war against Iraq was fought not for political leverage but for personal gain vis-à  -vis access to the vast resources of oil and gas (Habermas, 2006). The democratic constraints and reasons for waging war have therefore become increasingly contentious issues that need to be looked from the wider perspectives of emerging new equations of political economy that has redistributed wealth and created new power structure. Globalization has brought huge changes not only in the economic circles, but also in the political circles.