Force and diplomacy in the contemporary world

The negotiated settlement of conflict, which is the role of diplomacy, is barely visible in today's world, while the use of force is escalating. The immediate cause is the terrorist attacks on the United States on 11 September 2001, and the martial response, but the puzzling nature of the contemporary world, already evident a decade earlier at the end of the Cold War, may be a factor. The international system of sovereign states has been behaving oddly since then. Familiar terms, like sphere of influence, hegemony and balance of power, which had more or less successfully described the way order was imposed by military power during the last three centuries, either by the supremacy of one state over others or by checking one alliance with another, lost currency. Terms like 'borderless world' or 'end of history' or 'two sovereignties', suggesting that a different kind of world was in the making, took their place. © 2005 Australian Institute of International Affairs.