Diasporas and the Current World Order

There is wide consensus among political analysts and scholars that the new world order is leading to a marked decrease in the propensity of nations to go to war and to escalate their quarrels to violent confrontations. Whereas in earlier centuries such wars and confrontations were continual threats to the existence and sovereignty of nation-states, today the sovereignty of most established states seems to be assured. Despite continuing inter-state conflicts and tensions, today the likelihood of conquest and occupation of entire states and their annexation is negligible. That trend is partly attributable to a gradual increase in the number of functioning democracies, which tend not to fight each other, and in most cases they also refrain from the use of violence in their adversarial relations with non-democratic states (Doyle 1986; Maoz and Abdolali 1989; E. Cohen 1990; Maoz and Russet 1991, 1992). It is also attributable in part to the collapse of all empires and to a gradual liberalization and democratization of authoritarian regimes. Such transformations have reduced authoritarian states' inclination to wage war and consequently have reduced the number of instances in which democratic countries have to react to inter-state aggression. Most of those reformed and reforming states accept the new rules of the international game, including respect for states' external sovereignty.