Regional konflikt och militär upprusnting: Realismens maktbalans i regionala konflikter

Sammanfattning: This essay focuses on the effects that regional conflicts may have on rearmament in the affected region and its neighbors. To this end the two conflicts we will be discussing are the Russo-Georgian war and the invasion of Crimea from the perspective of Kenneth Waltz realism in international relationships theory due our hypothesis being that in a matter of self preservation countries would be more inclined to invest more into their defense as the perceived risk of war increases due to conflicts in their surrounding area. The countries in question that we’ve decided to include in this paper are Latvia, Poland, Lithuania and Finland mainly due to their historic relation to Russia but also because of the fact that they all share borders with Russia as well. The timeframe of which we study is the period of 2006-2016, as it gives us an ample chance of studying not only the time before the conflict but also the aftermath.