RECENT INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CRISES - CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK AND EMPIRICAL INSIGHTS

Abstract

The international system possesses a series of interconnected characteristics (scale, dynamism, complexity, informatization, uncertainty, hybridization) shaped by developments such as the advancement of new technologies, globalization, geopolitical competition between actors, multilateralism, the diversification of actors on the international scene, economic instability, the hybridization of conflicts, exacerbation of social polarization and extremism, etc. These characteristics translate into both generating factors of international security crises and extensors of the typology of current international crises.
International security crises do not have an unanimously accepted definition in the specialized literature. Therefore, the present paper aims to develop the knowledge of this concept by identifying their recent characteristics, which, in conjunction with generating factors found in the specialized literature, will be used to substantiate a definition of international security crises and to empirically identify a recent typology of security crises. Moreover, this research sustains the idea of many crises happening in the world at the same time, being triggered by a growing multitude of extinction-level generator factors, leading to a meta-crisis, a crisis of permanent crises, potentially leading to humanity’s collapse.
This research supports the fundamental knowledge in the field of international security crisis, as well as the future development of concrete crisis management responses.