Military globalization is defined by David Held as "the process which embodies the growing extensity and intensity of military relations among the political units of the world-system. Understood as such, it reflects both the expanding network of worldwide military ties and relations, as well as the impact of History of military technology, key military technological innovations (from steamships to satellites), which over time, have reconstituted the world into a single Geostrategy, geostrategic space".
[David Held, Anthony McGrew, David Goldblatt & Jonathan Perraton. (1999). ''Global Transformations; Politics, Economics and Culture'', Cambridge Polity Press, p 88.]
For Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye, military globalization entails 'long-distance networks of interdependence in which force, and the threat or promise of force, are employed".
Held divides the military globalization into three distinct phenomena:
#The globalization of the war system. This refers to the "Geopolitics, geopolitical order, great power rivalry, conflict and security relations".
#The global system of Arms industry, arms production and transfers, reflected in the global arms dynamics.
#The geo-governance of violence, "embracing the formal and informal international regulation of the acquisition, deployment and use of military force".
All three processes above "are connected to technological development, which made them possible in the first place. The result is increasing global interdependence and complexity".
The process of military globalization starts with the Age of Discovery, when the Colonial empire#European colonial empires, European colonial empires began military operations on the global scale. Their "New Imperialism#Imperial rivalries, imperial rivalry led to the First World War, which was the first World war, global conflict in world history". Keohane dates military globalization at least from the time of the Wars of Alexander the Great, conquests of Alexander the Great.
[Robert Keohane. (2002). ''Power and Governance in a Partially Globalized World'', London & New York: Routledge, p 195.]
See also
* International relations
* World government
* World war
* World War III
* Criticisms of globalization
References
Globalization
International relations terminology
Military historiography
Military history by topic, globalization
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