Although warmongering is not a clearly defined concept within the literature of global security studies, political science and international relations, the term nevertheless does evoke lucid images of the using of war for political gain. From the perspective of realism and state interests, warmongering is therefore a decision to provoke violent conflict, either directly or through proxy actors, so as to gain some political advantage. At the same time, a society can also be caught up in warmongering. This is a mass manipulation of society, whereby a government actor presents to the greater public arguments for why a nation should participate in violent conflict. Once again, the advantages of the state that warmongers seems to be the determinative factor in the phenomenon’s existence. For example, the United States has continually supported Islamic fundamentalist fighters in Syria against the Assad regime, although the Assad regime is a largely secular regime. Warmongering thus here takes on the realist form of advancing what is perceived to be U.S. interests: a de-stabilized Syrian government and the continual emphasis on the necessity of supporting armed conflict in Syria has a geopolitical aim.
Globalization eradicates what is some times in the literature called “the tyranny of distance.” The facilitation of global communication has had profound effects, for example, on business and economy. At the same time, globalization has also presented new security challenges. Technological advancements that make globalization possible, opening new relationships and potentialities, now also makes crucial technological segments of society more open to infiltration and attack. For example, cyber-warfare has become a crucial aspect of current conflict, with various hackers attacking key websites of antagonists. The contemporary Chinese doctrine of “Unrestricted warfare” underscores this point. The Chinese concept of modern war does not limit conflict to the historical battlefields. Instead, war can take place through computer networks on non-military targets, such as the stock market, thus destabilizing a country’s security. With the increase of globalization there has namely been an increase in potential targets for attack. This notion also ties in with the relevance of globalization to the terrorist threat. By definition terrorists are clandestine and fluid. Globalization understood in terms of the facilitated movement of people accordingly has clear benefits to terrorist strategy: the world-wide movement of terrorists is now less restrictive.

Western imperialism has been a continuous problem in world security and international relations since the Western European nations began practicing colonialization. In colonialization, other cultures and foreign lands were something to be subjugated so as to ensure political hegemony: there was a fundamentally imperialistic aspect to these policies. Yet this approach to security and international relations has not decreased in the 21st century, despite the apparent elimination of the colonial paradigm. For example, the United States’ decision to invade Iraq in the early 2000s can be cited as a clear example of Western imperialism. The reasons behind the war presented at the UN Security Council, for example, that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction which could be used to attack the US, turned out to be completely false.

Yet with the war, the U.S. gained clear strategic and geopolitical advantages. They established a political presence in Iraq that was no longer hostile to US interests in the region. Furthermore, they established a strategic position on the Islamic Republic of Iran’s borders, thus furthering US as well as Israeli policy goals. In so far as imperialism may be understood as the continued desire for global hegemony and power, the U.S.’s wars in the Middle East in the 21st century could thus be presented as adhering to this definition. ]