Militaryglobalization is defined byDavid Held as "the process which embodies the growing extensity and intensity of military relations among the political units of theworld-system. Understood as such, it reflects both the expanding network of worldwide military ties and relations, as well as the impact ofkey military technological innovations (fromsteamships tosatellites), which over time, have reconstituted the world into a singlegeostrategic space".[1]ForRobert Keohane andJoseph Nye, military globalization entails 'long-distance networks of interdependence in which force, and the threat or promise of force, are employed".[2]
Held divides the military globalization into three distinct phenomena:
All three processes above "are connected to technological development, which made them possible in the first place. The result is increasing global interdependence and complexity".[4]
The process of military globalization starts with theAge of Discovery, when theEuropean colonial empires began military operations on the global scale. Their "imperial rivalry led to theFirst World War, which was the firstglobal conflict in world history".[5][6] Keohane dates military globalization at least from the time of theconquests of Alexander the Great.[7]
As of 2025, only one book was devoted completely and explicitly to the subject. The author tells in "Preface":
The first version of this essay on globalization (2015) I contributed as a chapter to Wikipedia’s articleGlobalization. The Wikipedia Editors chose to create for this chapter a separate article, entitling itMilitary globalization. A year later, however the article was almost entirely deleted because Wikipedia is not a platform for original research. The Editors instructed to write basing only on works which explicitly deal with the subject. The complication was that there are almost no such works… All Wikipedia could find by 2017 sufficed for a stub article. Consequently, I decided to contact a publisher of original research. As to why, given so vast literature on globalization, military globalization today remains a field of original research is an intriguing question unto itself.[8]
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