• Religion and culture; tribalization (Jihad).
• Global capitalism (McWorld) that seeks stability rather than democracy.
• Relationship between states (e.g. France with its former west Africa colonies).
• Unfair national boundaries that do not match the distribution of resources (e.g. the West Africa coastal countries)
• Competition for resources (water, etc.), disease, population growth, and their interactions.
• Multi-centered powerhouses in the world that allow a deeper and deeper fragmentation of religions, ethnic groups, etc.
• Democratic governments (such as India) that are less and less able to provide leadership over problems of the environment and resources.

The problems that cause international contentions go well beyond culture and religion, and tie in with greater, more global issues like resources, global disease, the environment, etc. They are also associated with political factors, such as decolonization and neo-colonialism (French west Africa), the way national boundaries were arbitrarily drawn up, and how the decline of ideology has in some cases loosened the ties between former colonies and mother countries. It is a combination of political and environmental factors that cause world problems, and often religion is the manifestation of political problems, e.g. the loss of standard (what is a nation, after all), and the loss of external mechanisms to check on social and ethnic disintegration: after all, one cannot count on global capitalism to carry on the ideological tasks that were formerly carried out by governments during the Cold War.

2. Solutions:

• Confederate governments all over the world (Barber) to provide a degree of democracy.
• Your take?