Unipolar politics and global peace: a structural explanation of the globalizing jihad

Abstract Following the end of the cold war, the international system transformed from a bipolar to a unipolar system. Unipolarity is not peaceful. It has contributed to the generation of conflict-producing mechanisms and nonstate actors that have driven sovereign states in lengthy asymmetric wars. Drawing on IR debates on the “peacefulness” of the unipolar system, this paper investigates how unipolarity and unipolar policies contributed to the transformation of “domestic jihad” into “global jihadism” and the emergence of Jihadi-Salafi Groups (JSGs). By focussing on the emergence of these actors within the unipolarity context, this paper adds asymmetric warfare in scholarly debate on the peacefulness of the unipolar system which is conventionally approached from the “interstate warfare” perspective. The purpose of this paper is developing a structural explanation of the emergence and expansion of JSGs and their impact on global peace.