international relations first semester - Enrico Fassi - 2021-2022, Appunti di Relazioni Internazionali

Scarica international relations first semester - Enrico Fassi - 2021-2022 e più Appunti in PDF di Relazioni Internazionali solo su Docsity! Anna Natalia Rodriguez 1 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 1ST SEMSTER 2021-2022 Anna Natalia Rodriguez 2 CHAPTER 1 – UNDERSTANDING IR The stakes in international relations sometimes simple the conflict and war rather than trading mutual economic benefits of. The war and terrorism have been a prominent part of America's recent engagement with international relations. However, in relative terms, America have been among the peoples of the world at least affected by the foreign wars. Since 1945 governments have cooperated with each other politically and economically in what is today called the European Union; a group of 28 European countries that abide by common laws and practices call mom and militarily in an alliance called the North Atlantic treaty organization, NATO. It requires the United States and its European partners to come to the defense of each other in the event of a military attack against one of them. In 2002 they have shared also a common currency called the euro. Members of the European Union worry very little about war with each other and very much about economic instability. International relations involve the ability of people themselves to move across those borders. The citizens of some countries have an easier time crossing borders than to the citizens of others. The rain the time of the Iron Curtain, a term coined by British leader Winston Churchill to capture the profound political and human divisions, separated the western and European parts of Europe. The eastern and western parts of today's Germany capital city, where divided by the Berlin Wall. International relations powerfully affect our everyday lives. There are 196 countries in the world today and they interact with each other over a wide variety of political, economic, social, cultural, and scientific issues. They also interact with an array of international governmental organizations (IGOs), which organizations that states join to further their political economic interest, such as the UN, IMF, WHO, WTO, OPEC. Countries also deal regularly with private actors whose work crosses borders. Basic concepts for international relations 1. Individual national leaders: By national leaders we mean individuals, who hold executive offices because of which they are entitled to make foreign policy and military decisions on behalf of their countries. We included those individuals, who was a result of the offenses they hold to give counsel to an implemented decision of their respective core executive leaders. 2. States: there are 196 states in the current international system. It is a political entity with two key features => a piece of territory which reasonably well-defined borders, political authorities who enjoy sovereignty which means that they have an effective and recognized capacity to govern residents within the territory and an ability to establish relationship with governments that control other states. This stage should be distinguished from another key international relation actor which is the nation. 3. Non state actors: these are actors others and states that operate within or across state borders with important consequences for international relations. Examples of non-state actors who have radically different aims and methods, are several criminal and terrorist organizations. State may have interests which are some conditions of the world sufficiently important that a state is willing to pay meaningful costs to maintain or attain. To promote or defend an interest state use the development and implementation of a strategy. A strategy ends at a political objective common outline what policy instrument will be used to attain that objective. Theories of international relations Theories of IR are needed because reality is very complex, and they help us to make sense of the world by working as models of reality. They tell us on what we must focus on to understand the reality. Theories are used by policy makers and provide guidance to foreign policies because every decision taken is based on explicit or implicit theoretical assumptions. The idea is to assume explicit and clear for everybody. Each theoretical approach catches and emphasizes important elements of IR, there is no right model because they are all useful in a way, they are based on the specific questions and aspects. There are five important theoretical traditions: • Realism • Liberalism • Constructivism • Marxism Anna Natalia Rodriguez 5 where labor is much cheaper. Northern countries also feel the southern countries, should do their part to advance international Economic Cooperation by opening their markets to the products of the north. Southern states point out that is difficult to develop in a world economy dominated by established, rich states. Developing economies want a special exemption in international trade and they want access to north and markets. There are also the north South divisions on environmental issues. Developing countries argued that rich countries developed without worrying about the natural environment. One of the vexing problems in international politics is that of dissatisfied states: states who feel that their influence, status, and material benefits should be higher than what they are achieving. A dissatisfied state is potentially dangerous. Anna Natalia Rodriguez 6 CHAPTER 2 – THE EMERGENCE OF A GLOBAL SYSTEM OF STATES, 1500-TODAY How did a fragmented world become a global, integrated System of States for which order is an ongoing problem? This Map shows that the knowledge of the world was still incomplete. For instance, North America was not completed because it was a European-centered world. The world in 2021 is different. If we look at the world in 1500, we see that it wasn’t divided into States but in political structures called empires, we were at the beginning of the process of the creation of nation states. Empires were the most relevant political units characterized by large territories, different peoples and one ruler. These empires were multi-national and had one ruler but the relationship between the ruler and the people was very thin. It was difficult for the people to understand were the authority was in the system. Another feature was that the contact between empires was very little, and they were like worlds on their own; the reason for it was that it was difficult to travel and communicate due to the geographical positions of the states that were far away because of the many free spaces in between countries and because there were few wars between countries that didn’t allow them to be in contact. If we look at the expansion of the ottoman empire, we see that the spaces composing it were scattered and separated and different regions were acquired in different moments of history. What did the Ottoman empire leave at the end of the 17th century? Europe in 1500 had a different picture there were only three big political spaces: Spain, France, and England with a huge part in the middle that was highly fragmented with small political units and some other kingdoms in the east part. There weren’t huge political empires but smaller political divisions. Level of analysis: the world of 1500 INDIVIDUAL STATE INTERNATIONAL Most individuals 1500 played little or no role in the governance of the entities in which they lived. Large regions of the eastern and western hemispheres in 1500s consisted of empires. Dynastic states, city states, or small duchies governed Europe in 1500s. China was a consolidated state in 1500 By 1500 a nascent system of dynastically ruled states came into existence in Europe. Anna Natalia Rodriguez 7 From the 1400s to the 1600s, a state system which is a group of competing states, came into being in Europe. In political terms what we see in Europe is the coexistence of different political principles that gave birth to different political structures. These principles were: • European feudalism: - territorial: nobility held lands from the crown in exchange for military service - vassals were in turns tenants of the nobles and were connected to them with personal bonds - the peasants (villains or serfs) were obliged to live in their lord’s land and give hi homage, labor, and a share of the production, usually in exchange for protection. • Holy roman empire: in German speaking areas, a loose and largely symbolic association controlled by the Augsburg dynasty by the early 1500s. - set up with the coronation of Charlemagne as emperor in 800 - created by the medieval papacy to unite Christendom under one rule: religious, universal and impersonal bond The formation of the European state system was the unintended consequence of a succession of failed efforts over 300 years by powerful European leaders to use war to establish control over the European continent. These imperial efforts were made by many different people over several centuries. A network of alliances was formed to prevent the creation of the empire in Europe. French monarchs demonstrated repeatedly over a period of 150 years that they were willing and able to put aside differences with two communities with which they had the most fundamental of differences in identity to prevent the establishment of an Augsburg empire in Europe. The theory is that states with common identity should find the cooperation easier than states with conflicting identities; this was a constructivist theory that suggested that belief systems influence the foreign policy decisions and actions of national leaders. In practice, the alliance between Catholic France in the Muslim Ottoman Empire that happened after France had lost several battles against the Habsburg forces, the French king attained a military alliance with the Ottoman Turkish empire => Even though they came from mutually hostile religious tradition, France worked with the Ottoman Empire against the Habsburgs. Ultimately, the wars for dominance and especially the 30 years’ war, gave rise to the modern State system, codified with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. Each signatory to the treaties was now a free agent. There was a system of sovereign states with no higher political authority that was called the Westphalian state system. This peace recognized and formalized the existence of what in fact was already an inter-state system in Europe. In the wake of the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, Britain, France, Russia, Austria, and Prussia established an informal “concert of Europe”. These powers would meet in Congress to address political problems that might threaten Europe’s peace. They sought to create an international order, a period of sustained peace and cooperation among the great powers. The emergence of the State System in Europe in 1400 and 1500: Anna Natalia Rodriguez 10 The idea behind the balance of power theory is that the only element that matters is power and its distribution, everything else works around this and the other things don’t matter for the functioning of the state. Up until the 1900, the threat of the European country is counterbalanced by two external powers: USA and Russia. European imperialism outside Europe European states were competing in Europe but used most of their resources to expand outside Europe. From 1500 until 1900, European states competed for control over most of the rest of the world, including Americas, Africa, and Asia. The rush to the conquest of these territories was inspired by the “doctrine of mercantilism” for which states should seek power, power is derived by wealth; worldwide wealth is fixed and so you must take it from other states or territories. Hence, mercantilism led states to pursue imperialism: the conquering of foreign lands to found colonies and exploit their resources. The European were quite successful in this expansion. At his maximum expansion, Britain was able to control all these territories and we also see an expansion of an economic system based on the exploitation of these colonies. Hence this was an economic and political expansion at the same time. European powers were controlling vast parts of the world. This system was characterized by an international political economy (IPE) and hence a system with economic and political features strictly connected. This specific system was characterized by the Rum Triangle Trade which was an economic triangle between Europe (Britain), west Africa and the Americas. This triangle was based on exchange and exporting manufactural goods (iron and beer) towards west Africa, in exchange for slaves. The slaves were transferred towards the Caribbean to produce sugar, tobacco etc., which was then sold in Europe. Explaining European success Four factors contributed to the success of the European imperialists: 1. The European states were geographically forced to collaborate in military terms etc. Also, the European states were “war machines” and hence forged by and for the competition. They were organized much better in all aspects. 2. They had economic capabilities with stronger economies which allowed them to perform trade. They also had technological innovation. 3. European states for decades had been caught up in a competitive, war prone states system, they were induced to mobilize the resources and find ways to foster economic growth and technological advances, which made them more formidable foes against the non-westerners. 4. The geographical and geopolitical fate meant that for the climate the agriculture was more productive, it was easier to trade and technological transfer thanks to the geography of Europe which is quite flat and hence easier to move and transport things. Also, diseases became weapons in other continents because the European population had access to more and different animals and were exposed to numerous diseases becoming immune. Anna Natalia Rodriguez 11 The result was that the map of the world changed in the 1900. But the situation didn’t last long because everything changed. European imperialism and resistance to European imperialism were largely responsible for shaping the international system of 1900. Europe shaped the world with imperialism. - Africa and many “Indo-Pacific” territories were under European control. - China was forced to open to foreign goods (opium wars). By 1900, European and American trading communities were operating in numerous Chinese supports and were immune from Chinese law. - Japan successfully resisted western imperialism and became imperialist. - The US gained its independence and started its expansion. - The ottoman empire was weakening and retained control only over the Middle East. Levels of analysis: formation of the international political system INDIVIDUAL STATE INTERNATIONAL From the 1500s to the early 1800s, leaders of major states in Europe tried but failed to establish control over the European continent. European states attained the sovereignty and projected power overseas from the 1500s to the early 1800s. The European system of sovereign states was formalized by the peace of Westphalia in 1648. No state achieved the Germany in Europe because of balancing by threatened states. The imbalance in power between European States and empires in the Americas and Asia led to the European conquest of the latter The path to World War I It was primarily a European war, and its origins are at the root of three European issues. 1. Alliances: European leaders created alliances that instilled fear and suspicion in foreign leaders => as an example of seeking to stabilize European affairs, Bismarck in 1878 sponsored the Berlin conference which wanted to help the major European states resolve disputes about the division of Africa into new colonies. Later, there is the creation of the Triple Alliance (Ge, Au-Hu, It) in 1882 signed by Germany to isolate France. Bismarck also signed a secret agreement with Russia in 1887, the Reinsurance treaty in which the two nations promised not to be dragged into war against each other by their respective allies, Austria, and France. Later, there was also the creation of the Triple Entente (Fr, UK, Russia) which led to a “security dilemma” because states couldn’t understand why the others were creating an alliance. The security dilemma is a classical feature of anarchic systems and hence you always have to be suspicious of the other states. 2. Wrong calculations: European leaders underestimated the difficulties of winning a war in Europe. Positive illusions like those demonstrated by the Schlieffen plan were common. This was a German military plan in which the Germans believed to be foolproof, and they stood on the defense against the Russian forces, undertaking a massive sweep through Belgium and France and, after outflanking and destroying the French forces, then turn east and destroyed the Russian army. The plan was not foolproof; hubris about the ease of military victory was a major cause of World War 1. These wrong calculations came from the previous experience and the European armies thought that, seen their armies, they would have found easy to conquer country by country. 3. Lost control of a local crisis: in 1914, European leaders lost control of a regional crisis that began in the Balkans with the killing of prince Ferdinand by a Bosnian terrorist. Anna Natalia Rodriguez 12 World War I It was unlike any war ever and it was thought to be “the war to end all wars”. It was the first based on how long it lasted, how big and large it became, and it created a huge number of deaths => four years of brutal trench warfare with 8 million soldiers dead and more than 20 million wounded and several million civilians dead or wounded. Also, these wars saw the use of weapons that were completely new due to the industrial revolution. After the assassination of the Austrian heir, Germany told Austria it would back it and later presented a severe ultimatum to the Serbian government; Serbia rejected elements of that ultimatum and Austria declared war on Serbia. The British, German, and Italian governments recommended negotiations, but Russia mobilized its army. Germany demanded the Russia stopped its general mobilization and that France promised neutrality if Germany fought Russia. They both rejected. Germany declared war against Russia and France; Italy announced it was neutral and Britain declared war on Germany. Germany defeated Russia in the east. Russia experienced a revolution that ended with the total victory of the Bolsheviks and the creation of the Soviet Union in 1922. A Western Front of France, Britain and USA faced off against the German forces along the deadly trench line that run from the English Channel to the Swiss border. The USA declared war on Germany in April 1917. In November, the Kaiser abdicated; Austria-Hungary surrendered, and the last Augsburg emperor abdicated. German representatives requested an armistice. The war ended with Britain, France, Russia, and the US that defeated the central powers. After the war there was the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 which was signed after the war which had enormous consequences for the following years. One of those was that for instance Italy and the defeated powers lost many territories, there was the placement of punitive demands on Germany, the ottoman empire was dismantled and the creation of seven new states. This also created many problems for the borders and for the populations living in some parts of the world. There was also the participation of Wilson with his principle of self-determination which created many problems because some countries didn’t know how to use democracy. Peace efforts after World War I Numerous efforts were made by the US to ensure a lasting peace. - At Versailles, the allies established the League of Nations, the first major attempt at international collective security which was the first IO with a liberal view. This cooperation needed some features to be useful like international organization, international law, and the rule of trade. There are pillars of the league of nations which was created by Wilson with the task of maintaining peace. Collective security is the opposite of the balance of powers in the sense that it does not address a specific threat and a specific state, but it tackles any potential threats and hence it is intended as a universal organization. The idea was that if any state threatened or actually used military force illegally against the one or a number of the members, all the members pledged to form an overwhelming condition to defeat the aggressor. - In 1925 the Locarno Accords further aided in easing tensions in Europe, primarily by settling border disputes. - In 1928, the Kellogg-Briand Pact outlawed war permanently by making it illegal. It started as a bilateral pact and then it became international. It was not respected in the following years. - During this period, trade returned to pre-WWI levels. The level of exchanges was so high that it is comparable to the second globalization. The idea behind this is that trading nations are less willing to go to war because the gains are much higher than people would push on the government to maintain peace and peaceful relationship between countries. Anna Natalia Rodriguez 15 3. Heterogenous => we are referring only to the ideological element. We can also see an ideological war. There was a pressure to adapt the internal features and characters of states to the features of the block they were belonging to. For instance, in Eastern Europe there was the need to introduce closed political systems and …. economy. In the west, the expansion of the free market and a democratic political system. This pressure was stronger in the middle of Europe. According to one scholar, when we look at the international system, we must analyze two variables homogeneity and power. We can have international system where the political units all have the same ideological views and have the same political system. There can also be systems with strong ideological oppositions. Changing alliances in an heterogenous system is more difficult because being part of an alliances has consequences in the internal features of a state then it is not possible to change alliances frequently. This creates fixed alliances. The ideological confrontation invested all fields from armaments, economics, the space race, and radio for Europe which was used to transmit info across the curtain and influence the public opinion. This also influenced sports, competition and cinema. 4. Blocked => we mean blocked by the existence of the nuclear weapons and the nuclear race in terms of distribution of nuclear weapons in the hands of the two superpowers. We reached a point of equilibrium where one power had enough nuclear weapons to completely destroy the other one. The point was that with the nuclear balance we reached the “nuclear balance of terror”, we have very powerful tools that nobody can use because we reach MAD which is mutual assured destruction. This doesn’t mean that the world was peaceful. This situation prevented direct war between the two powers. However, day USA and Soviet Union fought each other repeatedly in proxy wars, military conflicts of the Cold War in which US and USSR never directly engaged each other, but instead backed opposing sides smaller conflicts in an effort to gain influence throughout the world. Moreover, the superpowers often practice some brinksmanship, the willingness of a country to go to the brink of war to convince an adversary that they are prepared to fight, even though they prefer not to fight. The most dangerous episode was the Cuban missile crisis of 1962: it started when the United States discovered that the Soviet Union was placing nuclear missiles on the island of Cuba. But the Soviet leaders may have placed missiles in Cuba to gain leverage over the United States in Berlin and to reinvigorate their position as leader of the world communist movement. American leaders decided to impose a naval blockade of Cuba. It was willing to risk a war, but also allowing time for a possible diplomatic solution to be worked out. The problem for Cuba was possible American aggression. The missiles were a tangible sign of Soviet willingness to protect Cuba. America's allies clearly wished to avoid nuclear war, but the US commitment to defend them from the Soviet Union included a US pledged to fight a nuclear war, if necessary, to stop a Soviet attack of Europe. In the end, peace was maintained. Soviet ships that did not challenge the blockade, and US president John Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev crafted a mutual face-saving solution. 5. Suspended sovereignty => smaller states were formally sovereign and had all their classical powers and features but in practice their sovereignty was suspended. This is because the ultimate decision was not on their hands. Only the two superpowers had the final say on the fate of smaller allies. This is because the other countries wanted to avoid other wars. Peace was unlikely but nuclear war was impossible. There were proxy wars, where two superpowers tried to avoid smaller wars from happening. Levels of analysis: The global struggle of the Cold War INDIVIDUALS STATE INTERNATIONAL Stalin's personal aggressiveness may have contributed to western fears at the end of WWII. The United States and the Soviet Union each believed that states in their respective spheres of influence requires domestic institutions complementary to their own: democratic and capitalist in the West, authoritarian and socialist in the east. The two world wars destroyed the European balance of power system that had formed the basis of international order for 300 years. As the Cold War progressed, the new bipolar structure of US-Soviet rivalry greatly influenced the character of international affairs. Anna Natalia Rodriguez 16 How and why the cold war started? 1. Soviet union’s responsibility Soviet Union started because it had an expansionist agenda in Europe. The US soon articulated toward the USSR, a strategy of containment that is the deployment by one state of diplomacy, economic assistant, military power to counter and check when it believes our efforts by an adversary stated to extend its global sphere of influence. At the beginning there was a shift from the Soviet Union to contain the power in certain states. This led to the Truman doctrine which is the idea that the USA was able to support the democratic systems. In 1948, a coup in Czechoslovakia meant that the nations of Eastern Europe, were under the control of the USSR. The United States responded with the Marshall Plan designed to counteract Soviet influence in Europe by providing economic aid to help European nations rebuild after World War Two. In 1949 the United States, Britain, and several western European states formed a defense pact, the North Atlantic treaty organization also known as the NATO. 2. US’ responsibility  After the end of the war, the US was understanding if the Soviet Union was a trusted party or not. It saw that there was a need to contain the Soviet Union which was expanding and there was a soviet reaction against US free capitalism expansionist agenda. When the Soviet Union proposed to divide Europe in sphere of influence, the US opposed it because it couldn’t stand that there were some states controlling others and it imposed the idea of self-determination for which states can decide what to do by themselves. 3. Security dilemma  Reactional movements where leaders and states try to protect itself and this creates more insecurities and for this there is the orle of leaders’ perceptions and misperceptions. 4. Bipolarity  Incentives for accumulating allies to avoid that the other powers gain the global power. The USA had aspirations for the support of democracy during the Cold War. For instance, the Truman doctrine in 1947 promised to help free peoples to oppose the totalitarian regimes. Later, the Reagan doctrine of 1985 declared that America's mission was to nourish and defend freedom and democracy. In reality, American policymakers worried that leftist governments could easily be captured by anti US communist elements, and thus prefer to support the right-wing authoritarian regimes that took a pro US and anticommunist position. Cold war: a view from the south During this period also the third world changed. This is because we see processes of decolonization leading to the extinction of the European colonies and empires because of the European weakness and this led to nationalistic struggles and the consequence was the creation of many, poor and weak states from an economic and military point of view. This period is called the years of African independence. One of the causes of the process of decolonization is nationalism, an intense sense of national community by particular peoples in a geographically defined space, which increased significantly and led many people in the South to question the legitimacy of the international order in which some states were ruled formally by other states. This happened because of the strengthening of the idea of self-determination. Also, European powers faced the mounting administrative and military costs of maintaining colonial control over populations increasingly willing to resist them. In the end, the colonization transformed the international system. The consequence was that these states tried to find a different way to get order and so they moved towards the UN. This had a huge impact on the politics. In 1955 the UN was still very small composed of 50 states, and this was the international system of the times mainly composed of European and western states, hence there was the creation of the Non-Aligned Movement. Its goal was to provide a pathway by which these countries could remain aloof from the confrontations of the Cold War. This system changed very rapidly because the number of states that joined increased. A system that was created mainly by and for western powers in 40 years became huge and most of these states were not western and this is a result of the decolonization movements. The problem of development was not a concern in the 50s. In 1964, the United Nations conference on trade and development (UNCTAD), was formed to highlight the special problems of developing countries in the world economy. It spawned the group of 77 in which developing countries in a loose coalition seek to further their economic interests through collective diplomacy at the United Nations. In 1973, the Anna Natalia Rodriguez 17 organization of petroleum exporting countries (OPEC), a cartel of oil producing states, decided to throw its way behind developing countries economic demands for the new international economic order (NIEO). The term third world no longer meaningfully applies. Some states such as China, India, Brazil comment South Korea have powerful emerging economies that have moved from primary commodity production to manufacturing and even technology intensive activity. Others have been called a failed states that, in which governments are so weak and divided they cannot provide law and order for their home population. Idea: it was not enough to change one single institution, to coordinate among all countries but it was the world economic infrastructure that needed to change. The idea that those countries were prevented from developing unless by changing the rules of the game. Developing countries were in that situation because of the problem in the world economy and hence it was almost impossible to solve the situation. Levels of analysis: decolonization, the NAM, and the third world. INDIVIDUAL STATE INTERNATIONAL Leaders of a few key developing countries played a prominent role in organizing the South nonaligned movement. The achievement of independence by states formerly controlled by a colonial power is known as decolonization. The international system was transformed after 1945 as the third world sought to self- determination and brought about a vast expansion in the number of states in the system. The end of the cold war Two beliefs dominated the scholarly thinking during the Cold War. The first was end bipolar system of the United States and Soviet Union would last indefinitely, the second was that if the Cold War did end it would end in conflict. However, this did not happen. The Berlin Wall was turned down at the end of 1989 and Germany was reunified. The Soviet Union ceased to exist at the end of 1991 and broke apart into 15 constituent nation States. Leaders of the United States in the Soviet Union concluded arms control agreement calling for deep cuts in their nuclear arsenals. There are different reasons as to why and how the Cold War ended: 1. USSR collapse => there is a domestic explanation which is connected to internal policies created by Gorbachev. the peaceful end of the Cold War resulted from multiple political processes unleashed by Soviet economic failure. In the early 1980s, Soviet economic growth had seized, and innovation was nonexistent. Gorbachev is built a program of such reform to implement significant changes in the system both economic and politically. The perestroika was an economic plan of reconstruction because the soviet economic system couldn’t keep up with the western systems and so Gorbachev has introduced elements of economic freedom to revitalize the system. The Glasnost, which is transparency, is about political freedom and a political opening aiming at easing the oppression. The idea of this project went too far, and they were not able to control it. Once it became clear that Soviet repression was not forthcoming in eastern and central Europe, one communist leader after another was forced to flee. The final element was the nationalist discontent in the Soviet Union itself. Gorbachev tried to suppress independentist movements with the threat of military force. => External explanation of the collapse of the USSR has to be connected to the US under Reagan and his specific initiatives: the Star Wars initiative that was a defense system against soviet ballistic missiles. The idea that the US could invest 1,6 trillion $ to build this kind of shield against soviet missiles Highlighting the vast technological superiority in the western joint over the Soviet Union. It abandoned arms control efforts and sent aid to rebel forces in countries where Soviet influence held this way but not decisively. It also exposed the bankruptcy of the system and raising the costs of defense at empire, forcing the elite of the Soviet Union to undertake their risky reform steps that ultimately led to its demise. Also, there was the increasing pressure in proxy conflicts like Angola, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Afghanistan which required more investments to keep those states. Another view is that Gorbachev needed a benign international environment and by 1986 the USA seemed to rejoin western European emphasizing the importance of good communication and relations with the Soviet Union. Hence, Gorbachev was able to convince the headliners within his own government that the international environment was sufficiently benign to undertake the risky step of the perestroika and glasnost. Anna Natalia Rodriguez 20 CHAPTER 3 – IR THEORIES How do theoretical traditions in international relations differ on how to understand actors and their behavior on the global stage? The historical development of the IR theories can be outlined with three important steps. There is the beginning of IR as an academic subject later in 1919. Right after the WWI, IR was created with a specific mission to avoid the repetition of another war by understanding international politics. There were many failures in the 30s to try and avoid this mistake. There was much more optimism toward the liberal ideas after the WWI rather than after the WWII. This had consequences for the development of the new approach because the realist approach became more prominent as it was much more pessimistic. The main investment in the discipline came in the US, it became the dominant space where IR would have been successful. This is because the US was right in the middle of the global affairs to better understand the world and their position in it. There was also the need of bringing the European view to introduce into the IR. The US continued to dominate the discipline until the emergence of the interdependence liberalism in the 70s. There was an explosion of economic interdependence and realism was not equipped to explain it and therefore a new wave of thought was created. The idea of IPE (international political and economic approach) was introduced as economics cannot be understood if the political part is not taken into consideration. And this happened in the 70s as an alternative explanation to the interdependence liberalism and this happened because of the oil crisis of those years. There was the need for the states to reorganize in a way that was less oil and energy dependent. The developing countries tried very hard to push toward their economic agenda and this is why the international political and economic approach of the Marxist became very popular in 1979 there was the publishing of the book of the theory of international politics and there was the view of realism as something new which is the neo-liberalism. The liberals felt compelled to try and answer this challenge using the same methods and in the 80s there was the creation of neo liberalism which uses the same methodological approach to argue that some results are wrong by changing the assumptions. Neo-liberalism and neo-realism are very similar, and they sue some assumptions and compare them in two different ways producing two different views of the human nature even though they are very similar. There was also another change at the end of the 80s which is the end of the Cold War system, and this changed the international system, and some theories were not ready to explain the new world that was created. Hence neorealism and neoliberalism were obsolete, and this led to reemergence of other approaches that were very critical of the neo systems: constructivism, feminism critical theory and the postmodern theory. They all have in common the critique of the mainstream approaches to IR of the methodology. Today we have many different methodological approaches. These people are some of the most famous theorists connected to these IR theories and there are also some books. One popular way to organize these contributions is to look at the debates between the theories the so called “great debates”. In specific periods, there are some debates around some specific issues that mark the developments. The debates Anna Natalia Rodriguez 21 influenced by historical developments, the change of statehood, and debates of other disciplines. 1. utopian liberalism (idealism) vs. realism The creation of IR was influenced by WWI (1914-1918) and the idea was to never allow human suffering on such a scale to happen again and to come to grip with the problem of total welfare. The answers that the new discipline of IR came up with were profoundly influenced by liberal ideas: WWI was caused by - Egoistic and short-term calculations by great powers - Miscalculations of autocratic leaders because there was the suppression of democracy and usually public opinion has a general opposition towards the war. If the public opinion is not left free, then wars can arise. - There were heavily militarized countries like Germany and Austria. The foreign policy was led by generals and professionals, and this led to the security dilemma. This idea can be found in the book “The Great illusion” in 1909 by Norman Angell and he said that war is an illusion because the idea that countries could gain from an economic point of view from war is an old idea. The thesis is that in modern times, territorial conquest is expensive and politically divisive because it disrupts international commerce and hence war is irrational. The liberal view is that: - Humans are rational and they can use this rationale to change IR by using international institutions and law. - When reason is applied to IR, states can set up laws conducive to peace. - Public opinion is a constructive and positive force and there is the need to leave it free of doing what it needs to do => remove secret diplomacy The golden era in this view is the future while the realist view is the opposite. All of these ideas were absorbed by another liberal thinker who is Woodrow Wilson, who before becoming president was a thinker. He translated all of these ideas into specific actions and policies of the US. According to utopian liberalism, because of the war there are: - absence of democratic institutions they would have restrained war in some states. - system of alliances which drew democratic France and Britain into the war. - the obsolete theory and practice, of the balance of power had to be reformed => collective security. He thought that the problem of this interpretation is that there is a suggestion of the need to push democratization across Europe. Also, the system of alliances and the balance of powers were not working enough and then there is the need to move toward collective security. For these reasons, Wilson asked to the congress and the American population to intervene in the war because he wanted to bring these liberal views into practice. His aim was to bring Liberal Democratic values to Europe into the world and this was US’s sole purpose in the war. Academic IR developed first and most strongly in the two leading Liberal Democratic states: USA and UK. Following the impact that Wilson had during the war, the first chair of IR was called with his name. With the years, all of the views failed and with the book “twenty-years’ crisis” by Carr in 1939, he describes the liberal thinking as the utopian thinking, and he came up with the movement of realism. For him the liberal thinking profoundly misread the facts of history and misunderstood the nature of international relations. There was no harmony of interest between countries and people; some are better off than others and will try to keep their position, while the have-nots Anna Natalia Rodriguez 22 will try to overturn it, and this is all an inevitable struggle. For him, IR is more about conflict then cooperation. In fact, liberalism became “utopianism” versus realism. There are two very different approaches focusing on different elements. Realism emerges as the correct lens to interpret the time of the WWII and the new discipline moved towards the US because some European scholar moved (escaped?) from the Nazi regime and so we have two school of thought. There is a common way to think about IR and the human nature and between them there are some different approaches toward the same topics. NEO-CLASSICAL REALISM Some of the earliest insights about conflict between political groups reflect what we call the realist tradition of thinking about IR. Realism sees it as a struggle for power and security among competing nation-states in a dangerous world. In a world of anarchy, nation states must provide their own security, competition and conflict is inevitable according to the realist perspective. Morgenthau wrote the book “politics among nations” and published it in 1948. He had read previous contributions of realism and he went back to some classical readings even beyond the subject of IR. He tried to look at this very long tradition and search for a constant element of the realist view of the international politics. He summarized these ideas in a manifesto. He found ideas such as the fact that men are political animals, born to pursue power and who have an “animus dominandi” to conquest and rule over others and lust for power. There is a centrality of power in the social life, and this is reflected in the political community but not only. From these long traditions, he highlights some specific elements that are important in international politics: - Ethically: the political sphere is separated from the private sphere. This means that we cannot understand the political leaders, who have a specific role, to guarantee the security of the state and to do so they should be free to use whatever aims, by looking at them in the same way that we use for normal people. We consider politics as a separate thing. - The importance of having an independent political unit and states because it is the only way that people can use the tools of international politics to implement changes and strategies. There is the need for independent nation states, and it is the first step to survive in the international system so that states are not dependent on others. - Anarchical context: there is the struggle between states. - Foreign policy => prudence, moderation, resolve, courage. This analysis is a mixture of moderations and policies. State leaders must be able to grasp opportunities in order to increase power and their capacity to act in the international system and ultimately the security of the state. The ancient origins of Realism Thucydides wrote a book about the Peloponnesian war 431-404 BC. He talked about the war between Sparta and Athens, and he wrote about: • The inevitable competition among ancient Greek city-states and between Hellas and close empires (Macedonia, Persia). Competition was always there, and this was a peculiar aspect of this system. Anna Natalia Rodriguez 25 there are more opportunities to maintain the balance of power. In the bipolar system, if one power collapses then there is the possibility of the unipolar system becoming an empire, this doesn’t happen in the multipolar system. Also, in this system, countries are not obsessed with their enemies. Defensive and offensive realism There are also different approaches among realism. Within the neo-realist system, there are also opposing views: defensive and offensive realism. The difference is that Waltz says that the units of the system always act to maximize their security; Mearsheimer says that great powers always act to maximize power not security. In defensive realism you want to guarantee your own survival maintaining the status quo on the opposite offensive realism says that powers want to maximize their power to maximize security and become the hegemon. In theory, this applies to the whole world but also at the regional level. US and the hegemon Mearsheimer and Wallz weren’t just academics because as it is often the case in the US, they are an important voice in the community of the US. His opinions have a weigh in the foreign politics branch. His book “the tragedy of great power politics” and for him the tragedy is that this desire for power typical of humans is a recurrent element in history and it is still there. This is because history is a cycle and always repeats itself. The realist assumptions (assumptions are statements accepted as “given” truths without proof. In order to use a theory, the assumptions must be accepted find the user. Assumption to set the foundation for the application of a particular theory.) realism sees competition for power among groups or states as the central and enduring feature of international relations. 1. States are the main actors in IR → because anarchy creates insecurity, people divide themselves into conflict groups which are the states. Citizens are tied to the state and rely on it for their well-being. 2. States are reasonably rational actors; otherwise, the system would make the irrational states pay a cost. They are able to recognize the international circumstances in which they find themselves and risks and opportunities in the international domain. The states may have an irrational behavior, and this is one of the challenges for the realist as to how to explain it. Realist theory argues that states are serious and sober calculators of costs and benefits and that it is not in their interests to engage in ideological crusades to remake the world of pursue self-defeating acts of hubris. This in practice doesn’t always happens → e.g., Germany and Japan in the 1930s threatened others and triggered coalitions that brought their complete defeat. Hence, in theory states are depicted as rational decision makers. In practice, they can be loose and dysfunctional coalitions of societal interests who together pursue self-destructive foreign policy. 3. States operate in a world characterized by anarchy; they exist in a world where no higher authority can force rules or order. This means that states operate in a world of anarchy and that are left to their own devices to protect themselves. 4. Security is the central problem of IR; Mearsheimer would say that power is the priority instead of security. The bare essentials of international relations are revealed, and the bare essentials are about power and survival. 5. Competition and conflict are inherent in world politics. Interstate relations are mostly competitive and conflictual. Peace and cooperation can be achieved at least temporarily any specific ways, but it is not a permanent condition. The realist propositions (Propositions or statement that describe the concepts or relationships among the concepts (or variables) in this theory. Usually come under propositions later specific empirical expectations.) Anna Natalia Rodriguez 26 1. States seek a balance of power in IR, and often pursue such balance by forming alliances to countervail power. Power is used to neutralize or balance power. One of the oldest tendencies in international relations is for the rise of a powerful state to trigger the formation of a coalition of states that seek protect themselves as a group through counterbalancing the rising state. The most famous alliance is the NATO which ties together the United States and its European partners. It was established in 1949 the beginning of the Cold War as a joint protection against the Soviet Union, but it has survived the end of the Cold War. 2. The anarchic nature of the international system means that states can never be sure of other states’ intentions, a situation that can often lead to security dilemmas. There are often bad consequences from the actions of the states because the other states might see in them a security dilemma. This exists between states when one state seeks to ensure its survivability in the international system by acquiring military power but, in doing so, triggers insecurity in another state, leading it to try to protect itself by acquiring military power and thus making both states less secure. This is a dynamic driven by defensive steps undertaken by both states. 3. Due to the competition for power inherent in IR, states care deeply about relative gains. The focus of states is always on the relative amount of power an actor has compared to the other. What is important is the relative position in the system and if states are defensive actors, they want to maintain their relative position and the current power they have. Realists argue that states are in an ongoing and unending competitive game to enhance their power because they care more about relative gains than absolute ones and also that states will exhibit a tendency to make choices based on the relative benefits that accrue to the various parties. 4. International power transitions are fraught with danger. This is because there is no equal distribution of power, and any change of this distribution is dangerous a usually connected to a conflict. Conflict is possible because as the rising state grows more powerful, it will become dissatisfied with the existing international order presided over by a dominant but declining state. It will want to the international system to accommodate its interests and the older and declining state will be threatened by the rising state and seek to preserve its declining dominance. Power transitions do not inevitably end in war, but they are moments of danger 5. Nationalism and national interest are a dynamic motivating force in IR. States do what they do because of their national interests; idea that the domestic public opinion needs to be defended and to do that, externally we have to push the national interest to maintain national independence and increase its stability. State leaders have the duty to do whatever they can to increase the country’s stability. Within the realist tradition there are some contradictions for instance some agree that anarchy is important and that it tends to make states bold and aggressive, others think that anarchy tends to encourage states to be cautious and defensive. However, the important point is that they see international relations as a struggle for power and security among nation- states. Realism: criticism They think that they only can provide a realistic approach to the international system. Realist authors give the impression that there is just one view of the world. Nonetheless they have been criticized for a number of reasons: - They overlook cooperation attempts of the systems in different periods. - They overlook that the anarchical system is more like an anarchical society and states often share common rules. There are conflicts in the international system, but we don’t often see a devastating war which includes all states, and they nonetheless maintain certain rules and relations. - Important factors such as humans and NGOs are not considered in their theories. International law is not given enough relevance. - They are too pessimistic on possible progress and cooperation. Therefore war is still there, but we can say that there has been a progress. - The national interest is not the only value. - “Intellectual hegemony of realism” => a conservative and status-quo theory based on security and survival of existing states. It may be considered too biased. Nonetheless, realism remains a dominant tradition in IR especially when we talk about war and conflicts. Peace studies take the opposite view. Depending on the field there are different traditions considered. - Security is now something different, it is about individual security and global security. It does away with longstanding realist claims. Anna Natalia Rodriguez 27 ENGLISH SCHOOL It emerged in Great Britain in the post war era, this tradition acknowledges the realist view that states operate within anarchy. It emphasizes that states have organized themselves into what is called a Society of states. They have developed rules, norms, and institutions to manage the states system and its anarchical character. Their orientation is to explore the historical dynamics of the modern state's system. The English school is something in the middle between realism and liberalism. It is the attempt to find a middle ground between these two traditions. We live in a system which is anarchical, where the great powers are very important, and the idea is that there are rules to which states tend to obey in their behavior. Hence, we are not in a pure anarchical system but in something that we can call an anarchical society. States behave according to certain rules, and they make the international system and politics and social life more predictable. European powers were great powers which used rules to cooperate in several things. Bull in his book “Anarchical society” argues that states have shared interests in managing their anarchical circumstances. This is because they are self-interested but share an interest in a stable and rule-based environment. Especially they share an interest in establishing rules of the game in three areas: restrains in the use of force, sanctity of international agreements, and the security of property rights. This gave rise of what he calls “international society” and it exist when a group of states which not merely form a system, in the sense that the behavior of each is necessary factor in the calculation of others, but also have established by dialogue and consent common rules and institutions for the conduct of their relations. The English school emphasizes the importance of diplomacy and dialogue in international relations. The English school scholars differ on how social the system of state is because some emphasize the “pluralistic” character of International Society, while others emphasize the “solidaristic” character of international society. Levels of analysis: the realist tradition INDIVIDUAL STATE INTERNATIONAL state leaders are the most important decision makers, pursuing the national interests and maneuvering in a world of competing states. States are all competing for survival and advantage nationalism is a dynamic force which reinforces the centrality of the nation-state. LIBERALISM Deliberate tradition offers ideas about how and why corporations take place in the global system. Liberalism sees the internal character of states, particularly the interests and impulses of democratic and market- oriented states, as the most important feature of international relations of. It has three intellectual branches: 1. Focused on trade and its impact on IR. Liberals believe that the spread of capitalism creates economic interdependence, joint gains, shared interests, and incentives for international cooperation. 2. Focuses on democratic States and their interaction. The view is that democratic polities tend to seek affiliation with other democracies in build peaceful relations. 3. Focuses on the pacifying effects of law and institutions. Liberals view international law as outgrowth of liberal societies as they seek to establish rule-based relations between them. It foresees the spread and development of democracy and market relations that transform and soften DNR kicks struggle for power of importance to realism. There are different approaches within liberalism and many kinds of liberalism. We will focus mainly on liberalism, interdependence liberalism and neo-liberalism. Liberal assumptions 1. Individuals and groups are the main actors of IR => transcend classical inter-states-politics. This is because individuals can also be found building communities and political orders above and below the level of national state. Liberals are not surprised to see the rise of the EU in the decades after WWII. Individuals and groups Anna Natalia Rodriguez 30 Individuals and groups are important non-state actors in liberal theory, getting involved domestically to shape foreign policy and working across national borders to engage in exchange and other forms of cooperation. Liberal Democratic states have grown in power and influence through long-term process of economic and political modernization. Democracies tend not to fight each other, and they cooperate with each other more closely than do other types of states. The spread of liberal democracy, growth in interdependence, and the deepening of institutional cooperation create a more stable, prosperous, and peaceful international system. MARXISM Marxism is associated with class struggle, and therefore we talk about Marxism in the 70s. After the end of communism and the end of the Soviet Union we still talk about class struggle in the international system. Some names that are important for Marxism are: Lenin, Wallerstein, and Cox. Marx was not really focused on IR but rather on the economic side and theories of the movement. As the scholars puzzled over the implications of the industrial revolution for domestic and international politics, a school of thought pioneered by the political economists Karl Marx emerged in the mid 19 century that focused on class and class conflict. He sought to identify capitalism’s winners and losers and how capitalism and economics change shaped the politics and political life. The Marxist tradition focuses on conflict and revolution which are thought to be associated with economic change and the rise of rich and poor classes within and across the countries. It is a theory about the capitalism, and it is premised on the notion of historical materialism which is the idea that history is shaped and motivated by the underlying material or economic basis. In the view of Marxist theory, it is the owners of the productive forces of capitalism ultimately controlled politics and society as well. The issues that were brought about by Marxism are exploitation and underdevelopment and these views are opposed to the neorealists and neoliberalists. Basic concepts - Marx and Marxism This tradition goes well beyond Marx himself and what we study is neo-Marxist which means that it was developed after him. Marx is the theorist, and he was someone who developed some theoretical instruments that we use today. There is a separation between the political view and the theoretical instruments which are only tools. Marx focused mostly on the domestic political economy and a national economic system, then other scholars developed some instruments to elaborate more on the IR dimensions. He main works of Marxism are “manifesto of the communist party” of 1848 which is focused more on the political aspects and the “capital, III volumes” which is more about the theoretical aspects. - Marxism is based on historical materialism  History is shaped by the underlying material base of society. Hence history is not shaped on ideas but on material aspects and are driven and motivated by material needs and are able to buy the economic situation.  Actors are motivated by their economic circumstances.  Societies are shaped and reshaped around the need to produce the material requirements of life. The economic base/substructure determines the political superstructure. It is in the economic structure that everything happens, and the political dimension is the reflection of the relationships that happen in the economic realm.  In the modern era, capitalism has provided the organizing logic shaping the productive forces within and between societies. - Marxist political economy  Marx talks about the mode of production, which is the basic organization of the economy, and it is composed of technology and the relations of production. It is just about how individuals are organized within the system and especially how the technology is organized to have a material survival. Form a technological point of view we are in an economy based on industrialization and the capacity to produce products is in large scale and this implies the need for huge capitals. They are fundamental to invest in the industrial process and the technological aspects had some consequences. Anna Natalia Rodriguez 31  Capitalism is based on private property, and this is the idea that the means of production are owned by one class which is the bourgeoise and the other class, the workers-wage laborers, just offer the labor power. Between the earning of the capitalist and the wages of the workers there is a gap which is owned by the capitalists. The idea was to change the relationship of the MoP by abolishing the private property and this is the communist MoP which is opposed to the capitalist MP. Hence, workers collectively and harmoniously govern the economy and society.  The class conflict is the economic breakpoint in which workers take control form the capitalist owners of the means of production. Marxism (after Marx) = neo-Marxism Lenis will stress much more the aspects of the political impact of communism. In his book “imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism” published in 1916 he explains that imperialism is the consequence of capitalism, and it is what explains states’ behavior. The idea of “finance capitalism” that industries are important economic actors but are also becoming banks and financial institutions. There are strong linkages and the creation of capitalist cartels which were massive concentration of economic powers. Hence, this would have had consequences on political terms and this consequence is imperialism. There is this push toward underdeveloped countries and imperialism which are all explained by capitalism. This also explains the relationship among developed countries in the western economies because in Lenin view, the demand for new territories will not stop at the conquest of colonies but will transform at a competition for the conquest of these colonies. There is a center of the international economy which is the west and then there are the peripheries which are the colonies. There is also a political reason that would bring capitalism to an end which is that the clashes among imperialist powers and countries will escalate in a war in the center of the world. Hence, WWI was expectable. Marxist assumptions 1. Economics shapes politics (economic base => political superstructure). Political interests and relationships are determined by a person's position within the transforming economic system. The economic base shapes the political superstructure. The mode of production, the basic organization of the economy, shapes the relations of production which are the social and political relationships that emerge in society. An industrial and commercial class emerged as owners of factories and corporations, and workers emerged as wage laborers. Politics is what happens on the surface of societies, and it is shaped by the deep underlying forces of capitalism and industrial development. 2. Socio-economic actors are the main actors in IR: in a capitalist mode of production there are 2 classes: workers and capitalists that are opposed. 3. The modern state is organized to serve the interests of the capitalist class (directly and indirectly). The states reproduce this symmetry of power in the social classes. The state is an instrument in the hand of the bourgeoisie. The fundamental claim of Marxist theory is that modern states have as their goal the protection and advancement of the capitalist class. It is this class that rules most effectively when its control over society is least visible. 4. Class conflict will increasingly define the relations between workers and capitalists (also transnationally). There is the same struggle in each country and globally it can be found a division that cuts across the system between workers and capitalists and these collaborate between each other. 5. Revolution is the main source of political change. It is almost impossible to change this system with progressive amendments. This is because the system is so biased towards the interest of one class that there is the need to destroy the whole system to have an equal international system. Societies are to be transformed into a classless system and capitalism is to be turned into communism where there is no private property or capitalist state, and workers collectively and harmoniously govern the economy and society. Marx thought that capitalism was an extraordinarily dynamic and efficient system of production. Capitalist states would trade, invest, and expand outwards bringing the backward areas of the world into the arms of the capitalist system. In the 20th century, Marxist theory of capitalism evolved in various ways. Lenin wrote a book in 1916 called “imperialism: Anna Natalia Rodriguez 32 the highest stage of capitalism”. He argued that the capitalist class was becoming increasingly centralized in the major industrial countries. To keep their workers peaceful, these elites in the advanced capitalist states were exporting their capital to poor underdeveloped countries to finance the resources and cheap labor production. This dynamic of finance capitalism allowed Lenin to explain why the revolution would not come in the most advanced countries but rather in the exploited lesser developed countries. Thus, it was imperialism and war that spelled the doom of advanced capitalism. The spread of capitalism worldwide has mobilized the societies and raised many people up out of poverty. But the rich continue to get richer, while the poor remain poor. Some scholars offer arguments about hegemony to explain the way in which leading capitalist states dominated the resources and institutions of world politics. Marxist propositions 1. In the international domain, states will act in ways that protect and advance the interests of capitalism and the capitalist class = “keep the world safe for capitalism”. Realists have a “national interest” against the Marxist that see a “capital’s interest”. Structural influence of capitalism on foreign policy (capital friendly policies). The decision of state leaders is the reflection of the fact that the state is represented the interests of just one class. This is different from the idea of national interest, because here there is not a whole nation, domestically there's conflict. The leading elite is said to find the national interest and they do so in terms of their class interest. But the lower classes are the ones who are fighting the war. Instrumental influence of capitalism on foreign policy, in terms of pushing states to take in decision at the international level is made by the lobbies and the big donors. What we have seen in the 90s is an expansion of the capitalist system from the west to the east and towards the states that were part of the Soviet bloc. There are some specific cases in which this influence is much more circumscribed and reduced. The fact that politics itself is financed by private capital was something very common and the fact that they were financed outside of the legal realm (in Italy, there was “mani pulite”). States will uphold the property rights and the rules and institutions that support modern capitalism. Marxists see states working on behalf of capitalism while realists expected to see states acting to advance the economic interests of their countries for their national interests. Marxists differ on precisely how business controls the state and argue that there are structural and instrumental capitalist influences on foreign policy: - Structural influences refer to the ways in which states automatically pursued policies that advanced and protected the interests of capitalism. - Instrumental influences are the active lobbying or businesses that influences what states do. 2. Transnational business will be a salient feature of world politics The idea that there is a clear process that sees a concentration of the economic powers not just in the industry cartels but on some multinational corporations which do not belong to any country. The old relationship between one national economy (the economic champions for instance in Italy the role of Fiat) and its country is not present anymore. There is competition in this market. There is the internationalization and so trans-nationalization of business: from trade, to investments, to production (FDI – foreign direct investments). International economy could become a truly global economy with global value chains. MNCs and TNCs are very powerful actors compared to some big state’s powers. While when we look at developing countries this is a problem. There is at least the idea that private actors could impose some decisions on state actors, for example oil companies, agriculture, cars, big tech etc. These actors are pushing for their profits but also to gain power and exploit the other class. The political consequences are that capitalists win, and workers lose. This is possible because capitalists can cooperate to protect their wealth and maintain their privileged positions. National governments have incentives to treat international business well. Marxists argued that IR will bear the marks of this the classic conflict; national workers will press their governments for protection and international capitalists will lobby for an open world economy. Anna Natalia Rodriguez 35 In his book “social theory of international politics” he explains that the social dimension of int politics is made up of interactions and these shape states’ identities. It is important to understand how states associate concepts to ideas like anarchy. Anarchy can be something else from self-help and he looks at the discursive interaction between states to discover which “culture of anarchy has developed” between: 1. Hobbesian anarchy: states view each other as enemies “war of all against all” and in the realist view. War is endemic because conflict is a way of survival. Historically this happened and in specific moment of the existence of the states especially until the 17th century. For instance, also the war against ISIS. 2. Lockean anarchy: states consider each other rivals but there is restraint. Desire not to eliminate other states. There is mutual recognition, and this happened especially after the peace of Westphalia in 1648. This sis the situation that we have today. There are some conflicts in Taiwan etc. 3. Kantian anarchy: the idea of “security communities” and those states view each other as friends, they settle disputes peacefully and support each other. This is the situation among liberal democracies since the WWII. Norms and the formation of interests and ideas Martha Finnemore wrote an important book “national interest in international society”. Her contribution is important because she tried to understand where the states’ identities come from. She looks are the norms of the international society and the role of the norms on the definition of states’ interests and identities. The norms are transferred to states thanks to international organizations. Changes not explicable by pure national interests in power maximization. Example: role of the red cross in make states accept rule-governed norms of warfare. The red cross succeeded in prescribing what was “appropriate behavior” for “civilized” states involved in war. Also, the acceptance by developing countries of poverty alleviation as central norm of economic policy. Until the 60’ the focus was on economic growth while on the 70’ was on the “redistribution” pushed by the World Bank. Norms and domestic structures: strategic cultures? Katzenstein wrote a book called “cultural norms and national security” in which he thought that the systemic theorizing is inadequate because it does not consider how the internal make-up of states affects their behavior in international relations. He tried to understand why states react differently to the same external input, the answer is that they react differently because they have different strategic cultures. The idea that they have domestic cultures and traditions, political systems and ideas that influence how they look at the international norms. There is an emphasis on domestic normative structure and how it influences state identities, interests, and policy, which are leader decisions and hence strategic cultures. For example, we can look at how the shift of Japan from a militaristic foreign policy before 1945 to a pacifist one after. The war has diminished the leading position of the military and the constitution has endorsed a pacifist standing. The constructivist assumptions 1. Elite individuals in society and the state are the main actors in IR. The ideas and identities that these elites possess tend to shape the way the groups and states act within the international system. 2. The interest of those individuals, as well as of groups and states, are not set in stone or given. Interests are shaped by the identities of the actors. 3. Interest is shaped by the identities of the actors, and identities are molded by a variety of ideational factors like culture, religion, science, and normative beliefs. Constructivists argue that identities emerged from interplay of these real-world settings and the evolving ideas and beliefs inside the heads of people. 4. Communication also plays an important role in shaping and changing identities. Through communication and networking, elites tend to produce a collective or shared worldviews that shape how interests are defined and pursued. The focus of constructivists is on critical historical moments when elites communicate and build a consensus on who they are as groups and states, and how to think about problems. The constructivist propositions Anna Natalia Rodriguez 36 1. Constructivists propose that the “world is what you believe it is”. In a direct challenge to realism, one leading constructivist, Wendt, has argued “Anarchy is what states and make of it”. The world is anarchical, but this does not imply that inter-state relations will operate as realists’ theory predicts. Anarchy is shaped by how people think about it. It can be manifest in several different ways: - One type is the harsh world that realists describe. Indeed, the states regard other status as enemies that deserve no respect, are not necessarily legitimate or sovereign and can be conquered if circumstances allow. - Another type is where states view each other as rivals, but not enemies. And they seek to preserve the status quo and use force only for defensive purposes. - Another type is one where states view other states as friends, and they cooperate to maximize collective gain and the use of force is usually illegitimate. According to the constructivists view through learning and socialization the world can move toward a more cooperative and collective security-oriented anarchy. 2. States operate in global civil society, and constructivists argue that normative change is a major way in which world politics evolved from era to era. Civil society is the realm of private activity that lies outside of the political system. Global civil society is the sum total of these transnational groups and activities, and it is what facilitates elite learning and socialization, providing the communication networks through which elites develop ideas and identities that shape state policy, and gives shape to the character of anarchy. Normative changes are a major way in which world politics evolved from era to era. Constructivists argue that the learning and socialization that takes place across the global system does tend to move the world in a progressive direction. 3. State elites operate within and are influenced by a strategic culture. How the domestic feature contributes to the interpretation of the social reality, and this is a specific lens from which reality is looked at. State leaders operate in a strategic culture that shapes the foreign policy choices. This strategic culture refers to assumptions about the nature of the global system and strategies of action that are shared by government elites. These differences in strategic culture give the countries distinctive personalities as states. Levels of analysis: the constructivist tradition INDIVIDUAL STATE INTERNATIONAL they are the most important actors in world politics. It is the ideas in their heads that shape what groups and societies do within the global system. National political institutions and the reigning ideas and norms that embody, shape the way states define their interest and act within the wider world. The international system is composed of States and a global civil society. Anarchy doesn’t necessarily breed conflict, but it depends on what states make of it. POST-POSITIVISM IN IR Social sciences, according to post-positivism, we don’t have a neutral and accepted point of view so that we all look from the same perspective. There is no clear objective reality and no clear point of view to observe reality and saying that it is objective. We cannot have a neutral knowledge of our subject of analysis and so there is nothing like what we can have in natural sciences in which things are not dependent on the observer but just are. Each experience is not completely explicable to others, and we will never be able to do that using language, as a limited tool, to express a specific perception. There is no simple explanation because we are part of the social reality that we are trying to explain. According to this discourse, it is impossible to understand what other are seeing. Anna Natalia Rodriguez 37 Some strands of post positivism Within this post-positivist perspective, we find different schools of thought: - Critical theory: focused on language and discourse. - Feminism: underlines that women are disadvantaged group in the world, both in material terms and with respect to the value system. They view reality as it is influenced by the subject, and they start form a subjectivist perception of reality. Everything is influenced by the subjects, its history, and its ideas. Critical theory It is influenced by neo-Marxism, and it exists even outside IR. The origins come from the Frankfurt school originated after WWII and its exponents are Adorno, Marcuse, Horkheimer and Habermas. The idea of these scholars is to use some tools to propose a critique of capitalist society but mainly from an epistemic point of view and hence of how we could acquire a scientific knowledge of reality. It is against the positivist idea of science of subjective and objective. Positivism thinks that everything is ideologically determined and hence conservative. To do this they use two means: Marxism with a focus on historical determinants and dialectic with the critique of instrumental reason and the need for self-criticism and reflectivism. The general objectives are to revel how knowledge is transformed into a tool of political domination and the political goal is to change the status quo. If we think about this as something neutral, then we are maintaining the status quo. Instead, the idea of these scholars they wanted to make clear how knowledge and scientific knowledge is a form of power. If we want to empower the disempowered, then we must change how knowledge is produced in the society. The development of Gramsci and Cocks They look at international politics not only as the material aspects but also as the non-material one. They look at the global interaction of social, economic, and political forces (and not simply states). The attention is to the historical construction of IRs. In looking at this interaction we can make the difference between the theories that are status quo oriented and those which are called “problem solving” theories. Hence there is the change against the status quo. We need an emancipatory theory which is a theory with a political tool to emancipate the unempowered and critique the foundation of the system. A strong critique of neo-liberalism and other theories and they counter the false neutrality and the critique of ideology hidden in “scientific knowledge”. Every theory reflects a position in time and space. Robert cox: “a theory for someone and for some purpose”. IR is dominated by perspectives that reflect western position and hence when we look at the world, we don’t look at it in a neutral way. Hence behind each theory, even the scholar is not aware of this, he is advancing some interest and maintaining some elements of the status quo while what is needed is some reflection on the theory itself. FEMINISM It is part of the innovation in IR from the way we look at the problems and how we raise questions. It also reflects an evolution that goes on in society. The starting point is common and the fact that there are inequalities in domestic society concerning gender and in the global system. When we say inequalities, we consider that there are differences between the genders, but we say that there are consequences associated to these differences that transform these differences into inequalities. This is true also for politics and international politics. In our society, there is a tendency to associate to different qualities, a gendered view like with masculinity we associate rationality, ambition, and strength while for Anna Natalia Rodriguez 40 Levels of analysis INDIVIDUAL STATE INTERNATIONAL Different theoretical perspectives place different weights on importance of individuals; constructivism and feminism place the individual at the center of analysis; realism places the individual at the margins of its theory. Realism, constructivism, feminism downplay the significance of domestic institutions; liberalism and Marxism place them at the heart of their respective analysis, although the former stresses political institutions while Marxism-Leninism focuses on economic institutions. Realism places its main emphasis on the international system; feminism and constructivism argue that the effects of the international system depend on how actors perceive that system; and liberalism and Marxism argue that the effects of the international system are contingent on the domestic institution of states. FOREIGN POLICY – chapter 4 Anna Natalia Rodriguez 41 What factors most influence the foreign policy of states? Foreign policy analysis is a branch of IR, it focuses on explaining why a given country takes a specific decision in each context. When we look at current political events, we read about the foreign policy of a country. Most of the info that we get are read through the eyes of the foreign policies of one or more country and hence we identify international policies as something connected to foreign policies. IR is the patterns of interactions between two or more states while foreign policies indicate why a given country’s government has decided to take certain actions. Foreign policy analysts want to understand why a given country's government has decided to take certain actions toward foreign governments or foreign non state actors; why it has crafted a particular strategy to promote or defend those interests etc. They understand that a country's international context matters a great deal when its leaders identify interests and formulate strategies. What is a “foreign policy”? States have interests in the international system. In this case interest is “a situation in the world that leaders of a government want to exist”. States design strategies aimed at achieving their goals: Interests – general → goals → objectives-specific. A government is pursuing a particular foreign policy because it advances some interests. Interest is a situation in the world that the leaders of a government want to exist, so much that they're willing to pay costs to bring it about. National leaders have to accept that there is a gap between their hopes to promote a given interest in their capacity to do so; the pursuit of one requires giving up the pursuit of another. To define a foreign policy, we can say that there are interest goals and objectives which is that interests are more general and use them to talk about values for instance security, wellbeing etc.; interest are then quite generic. From interest we can derive more specific goals and to achieve them, people and states use strategies which is a way to link the general interests and more specific goals and objectives. Hence a foreign policy strategy consists of: - The specification of the objectives (the specific outcomes that help advance an interest). - The choice of instruments (the concrete measure aimed at achieving those objectives). Foreign policy instruments can be persuasive or coercive: • Persuasive instruments: Governments seek to achieve the foreign policy objectives by trying to persuade a for in actors to act or diseased from acting in some manner or another. They include: - Diplomacy → It is the process by which representatives of two or more governments meet and discuss matters of common concern either bilaterally or in a multilateral forum. They find a mutually agreeable solution to some problem or to develop a mechanism by which they can achieve individual gains through some form of joint action. Examples can be Obama and Cuba, Obama administration tried to normalize the relations with specific countries for instance with Russia and Cuba. The relations with Cuba have not been easy after the attempt to conquer the territory and the idea of Obama was to use diplomacy to achieve some specific goals to help Cuba on its transition of power but mostly and economic and political one. Obama started this attempt and what happened was that Trump stopped everything. Something similar happened also in the negotiations of the nuclear deal with Iran during Obama which was again stopped by Trump. The last example is the about Hilary Clinton and the Russian secretary and the restart bottle which was the image of the restarting of the Russian relations with the USA. This happened because since the 90’, there has been a tension between these two countries and there were many interventions. - Economic incentives → for instance we consider the EU in terms of economic power which helps and cooperate with its members and neighbors. An example is the “European neighborhood policy” which was started after the enlargement and the expansion of the EU from 15 members, and this happened because this changed the geopolitical presence of the EU in European continent. It created many different and new borders and to avoid this divide between the insiders and those left out, it created an “in between” for those countries in the middle. • Coercive instruments include: Anna Natalia Rodriguez 42 • Economic sanctions: A threatens B with some form of economic loss if B does something A does not want it t do, or fails to do something A wants it to do. Such sanctions include the imposition of tariffs or quotas, boycotting of purchases of particular goods from suppliers from the target country, seizure of financial assets owned by target country residents that are held in the initiating countries banks. For example, In early 2012, the United States and member countries of the EU began a boycott of purchases of oil from Iran in an effort to compel that country to negotiate an end to its efforts to build nuclear weapons. The P5 plus Germany and Iran made in 2013 allowed the two sides to scale back tensions. • Covert operations: they are other tools that often we don’t know about. They are activities that a government directs against the interests of another government or non-state actor in such a way that the foreign targets and others are kept from knowing that initiating government is responsible for activities. One example of this is the plan for the killing of Bin Laden. Pakistan was a US ally and it contributed to chase a terrorist, but this was not very effective. The US had enough information to think that Osama was hiding in a specific compound not far away from the Pakistan border and the US decided to go alone without the involvement of the Pakistani force. Some historians, think that the Pakistani were informed of the operation. This led to the capturing and killing of Bin Laden. These operations go on and often they involve the intelligence of some states. They also could lead to change of the governments. • Propaganda (black and strategic propaganda): It is the selective use of information, and at times a misinformation, in order to advance a country's interests. It is frequently used as a tool to mobilize one’s own population or to demoralize other populations in times of conflict or war. These two kinds of propaganda are about the circulation of information that aren’t real. • Coercive diplomacy: this is very based on visibility and on being seen. Diplomacy is a tactic of showing military power without the need to apply force and coercive diplomacy is based on showing the enemy that the means of military conflict are present. They are action short of the immediate large scale use of military forces such as moving an aircraft carrier close to the shores of another country to help convince it to rethink some behavior. • Military force: connected to the actual use of force. There are different degrees of use of force, and this is an instrument of last resort for many theories and for other is just the only instrument to do something (realists’ point of view). One of the specific objectives could change and so can the instruments used by the states. If we look at the “national security strategy of the USA”, it is a document that each US administration publishes to say very clearly its public opinion and its allies and enemies and what is their current view of the world shared by the administration. They indicate the challenges that they see and the specific strategies to deal with them. This can be compared between the different administration to understand how much they vary with time and based on the party and president in charge. This is part of the trump administration document of objectives. There can also be either positive or negative consequences of these objectives. There are very high expectations for foreign policies and then the results may not always be very high. Levels of analysis: the practice of foreign policy INDIVIDUAL INTERNATIONAL national leaders choose which interests to promote foreign policy, and select the strategies to advance those interests. Individuals are often the target of foreign policy: these individuals may be leaders of foreign governments; key diplomatic, military, or scientific personnel; or non-state actors like terrorists leaders. Given that they usually need the active cooperation of other states to achieve their interests, most states find it necessary to make some tradeoffs with other states in the pursuit of their interests. Anna Natalia Rodriguez 45 concerning war which led to this law. The idea that in the American public opinion there was a strong link between the number of US casualty and the support of the public opinion for the war and this relation was inverted which means the more the casualty, the less the support for the intervention. This depends also upon the % of winning the war and usually at the beginning there is more support and as the time goes by then the support diminishes more and more. this case is very focused on the US. The other is the Rally “round the flag effect” which is the fact that at the beginning of the military intervention there is always a strong rise of public opinion support for the government. Hence, the 9/11 showed high public opinion support which then declined rapidly and rose again during the invasion or Iraq and so on. - The news media The media are a triangle between the public opinion and the government. They could be a neutral tool but sometimes they can have an impact on its own, this can be seen very well from the social platform. The foreign affairs media are those individuals and organizations who report or comment on foreign developments in print, on television, over radio, and through the Internet. Scholars have found the news media participants can indirectly influence national leaders as they grapple with foreign policy problems. There are three mechanisms used by the news media: 1. Priming: make some aspects more relevant than others. 2. Framing: provide a narrative, a frame to interpret events. It is one of the most to used mechanism to influence and it is the process by which media participants select or present particular elements of a news story in such a way as to influence the opinions of recipients of this story. 3. “CNN effect”: accelerate the decision-making. The media play a larger role in democratic countries then in autocratic countries, where the media typically face restrictions imposed by the central government, or are expected to report and frame stories in a manner favorable to the central leaders. - Interest groups Interest group consists of individuals or organizations that share a common set of political concerns. They work through that association to persuade leaders and the public to pursue, support, or accept the policies that are in accord with the preferences of the association. They tend to be more prominent in democracies and they usually organize according to issue. Interest groups use a variety of means to try to influence national leaders and the public. In democratic states interest groups publish or fund the publication of policy papers and undertake lobbying, or personally meeting and speaking with members of legislatures. They also contribute to political candidates and political parties and they may organize protests and demonstrations in major cities. FP at the international level of analysis - Geography: geopolitics and the geographical position affects the foreign politics. Because geography is connected to interests which led to the creation of strategies. There is a difference between insular states like the UK, which had the chance to develop its naval power and expand the influence overseas while seeking to maintain a balance of power among the European states; and terrestrial states like Germany. also a country's immediate neighborhood helps to shape its foreign policy. Israel’s simultaneously defensive and aggressive foreign policy is influenced by the fact that Israel lives in close proximity to countries it has long seen as adversaries. Demographics and migration influences FP. For instance in Russia which in the last 20 years experienced a huge demographic collapse; while for instance in China there has been a huge increase in the demographic. The depopulation of Russia creates an effect in some territories which led people to move to the biggest cities and created the perception of free spaces which become very appetible for other states. - Relative economic development: it is not considered in absolute terms. Economic development could have an influence on military power which then increases the international influence. The level of development could lead to the creation of specific goals. A country's relative economic wealth, and the sources of that wealth, can influence how the country defines its interest and strategies. Historically countries with the largest and most dynamic economies have had opportunities to translate their wealth into military power and exert considerable interest in global affairs. This was true for great see their friends with Britain and Germany in the 19th century. Anna Natalia Rodriguez 46 - Relative national capabilities: we can consider demography and its role. For instance, the highest the population the bigger the army. Natural resources have another role and so does the scientific and technological sophistication like Israel which is at the top in this field. A country's relative capabilities are likely to condition both its interests and its selection of goals and policy instruments. Relative capabilities determine a country's international influence, it's positive ability to cause others to act in ways it prefers, and its negative ability to resist the efforts of other countries to induce it to do things it would rather not do. Leaders of especially powerful countries often believe that, in the absence of an effective international government, they have a special responsibility to contribute to the existing international order. Levels of analysis: sources of foreign policy INDIVIDUAL STATE INTERNATIONAL National leaders’ beliefs, which are likely to be shaped by his or her personality, formative political experiences, and motivated biases, play a large role in influencing the leaders’ approach to foreign policy. Once a leader has made a foreign policy decision, cognitive dynamics may constrain his or her ability to change course in the face of new information. Within a government, institutional and bureaucratic politics, as well as relations between different branches such as the executive and legislative in democratic systems, influence foreign policy. Within a country, dynamics that largely take place within its society, including elections, public opinion, the news media, and interest groups, substantially shape its foreign policy. Several international-level factors can influence both the foreign policy interests and strategies of a country, including its geography, relative economic development, and relative overall power. How and why states change their foreign policy? Like the sources of foreign policy, sources of foreign policy change also exist at each level of analysis National leaders, as a result of their own foreign policy experiences or those of their predecessor, sometimes change their understanding of world politics or the particular circumstances of their country in the international system. For example, prior to the Great Depression, government leaders in the USA, Canada, Britain, Germany subscribed to laissez-faire economic idea; governments should not interfere with market dynamics either at home or in the international sphere. At the outset of the Great Depression, those leaders had few international cooperative mechanisms available to deal with the collapse in national demand. Since the Great Depression, government leaders have largely believed that government should allow for the free operation of markets at home and overseas, but there is room for government intervention both through national monetary and fiscal policies and by way of international governmental coordination. Also a research shows that learning in the face of policy failure as a key element to our understanding of why the United states switched from neutrality to internationalism at the close of the WWII. In particular, president Roosevelt reflected on president Wilson's failure to obtain America's entry into the League of Nations and the US subsequent shift to a policy of political isolationism during the 20s and 30s and learned that these failures enabled Nazi Germany etc to pursue aggression. Roosevelt feared that the USA had to shift from a strategy of neutrality to one of internationalism. Overtime, a given leader may change ideas about his or her country's interest or strategy. For example, Gorbachev appears to have fundamentally changed his ideas about Soviet foreign policy from the time it took power in 1985 to the period during which he took steps that decisively ended the Cold War in 1988. Leaders experiences with officials from other countries, may change those leaders belief about their own countries situation and strategic options. The experiences of leaders and policy officials in international institutions might also affect their perceptions and values. For example, Gorbachev move to his new thinking stance on Soviet interests and the benefits of cooperation with Western countries have the interacted with decision makers from those countries, especially The US. The particular lessons leaders learn might not always yield successful outcomes. Anna Natalia Rodriguez 47 Leaders play a key role in crafting foreign policy, so changes in leadership can bring about the changes in foreign policy. For example, Soviet leaders from Stalin to Brezhnev never maintained iron-fisted control over Eastern Europe, using military force as necessary against Hungary and other countries. Dramatic political changes within a country, such as a change in its political regime, maintains large changes in its foreign policy interests and strategies. For example, at the beginning of the 20th century Germany had a political regime headed by the Kaiser. Germany's enemies in the war, imposed the very harsh Versailles peace treaty on Germany. It had lost much territory to its east, had Allies occupation forces in its western territories, was forbidden to have strong military forces and was required to pay massive reparations to different countries. After that the Weimar Republic wanted to revise the treaty. For example, Germany new leaders who wanted foreign forces out of Germany and a reduction in the reparation. After that, Hitler came into power and reversed the Weimar's policies. The German case drives home a key point: what a state does abroad is likely to be influenced by how it is organized at home. Constructivists argue that non-governmental organisations have had significant success in influencing the foreign policies of states, as well as the policies of international institutions those states control. They have started to exercise this influence by working individually and in network so to persuade the leaders of national governments they should broaden their definition of interests beyond the traditional security or economic concerns, and include issues such as human rights in the environment. There is evidence that internationally active NGOs have sometimes changed the ideas of policymakers and shaped their definition of foreign policy interests or strategies. An example is Amnesty International which helped move the US government to take more seriously human rights abuses in Latin America. Moreover, NGO advocacy groups have influenced the policy instruments the national government employed to protect the interests even in the sensitive area of national security. Finally, constructivists argue that NGOs played a decisive role in forcing leaders of Western countries to take a strong stand against South africa's white minority government and during the 1980s. Communities may sometimes be jarred out of their ideas about foreign policy by a major external shock. For example, the Japanese attacked in December 1941 against the American naval fleet at Pearl Harbor discredited the isolationist position in American politics, and helped to pave the way for the United states’ more internationalist stance after WWII. There is also the case of changes in relative power. As the US relative power position changed, so too did its conceptions of interest and appropriate strategy. This effect works in reverse as well. INDIVIDUAL STATE INTERNATIONAL Foreign policy can take a markedly different course either because new leaders come into office or because current leaders change their beliefs about the country's interests or strategy options. Changing countries political regime, or insensitive lobbying by non-state actors within the country, can bring about large changes in the countries’ foreign policy. External policy shocks as well as changes in a country’s relative power may contribute to significant changes in foreign policy. Anna Natalia Rodriguez 50 These are the incidence of inter-state wars. These war increased in frequency over the course of most of modern history and has declined in recent years. We don’t just look at the total number of conflicts in that years (in this case 95), but we are more interested in the average number of conflicts per year in each period. When we compare these numbers we can see a trend which is not constant. We can observe and find out the pattern and the explanation. The number of wars grew until the end of the 20th century and then it dropped. On the right side of the graph there is the same data organized on a precise question: is the period after the Cold War more peaceful? The first bar represents the incidence of Interstate wars during the Cold War era, and the second represents the incidents of such wars in the immediate years of the post-Cold War period. There is a modest decrease in the incidence of international wars over the two periods. The answer to the question is yes because empirically there is the reduction of interstate conflicts each year after the Cold War as we can see from the graph itself. This is the incidence of extra-states war. The reasoning is the same as for the previous graph. After the Cold War, the number of conflicts dropped even though the total number do wars is much higher, 162. We still don’t know the reason as to why the number of conflicts dropped. After having analyzed this graph, we can say that the inter-state wars are not the most “classical” ones. The MIDs graph shows that after the Cold War the number of wars have declined but not the number of conflicts. Hence, it can be said that the kind of violence has probably attenuated in the most recent years or changed but it still creates many conflicts. In the most recent period, from 2000 to 2010, the annual MID rate has stayed almost at the same level as it was during the previously 50 years. Also the number of MIDs is much higher, 2586 and this means that conflicts are much common than the other two. - Lethality: number of deaths/year. This variable shows how many victims have been created by particular wars and we can reach an empirical conclusion because we have enough data to do that. There is a clear peak in the first 50 years of the 20th century. This peak is about 900.000 deaths per year in those 50 years. The reason for this is the presence of the two WW and the tactics and technologies used for those wars. More powerful weapons, industrialization and the ability of states to produce the vast quantities of those weapons, and a stronger capacity of governments to mobilize national population produced armed forces that could inflict truly massive casualties on one another. The extension and involvement of civilians was huge. There is also the difference between the period before and after the Cold War and we see again a decrease in deaths after the war. The high number of casualties during the years of 1900 and 1949 could be due to genocides, the Nazi period and also the civilians that were involved in the wars. Anna Natalia Rodriguez 51 The lethality is much lower for this kind of wars. This is the case because probably the technology used was available just for one side of the war and this led to “fast” wars. Wars of decolonization could be especially lethal. During the Cold War there were proxy wars and this is the reason why there were so many deaths. The potential rebellions during the Cold War were sustained by the two superpowers. We don’t have much data regarding the deaths and hence we have to use proxy data. After the wars the use of force was the major part while after the Cold War, the display of force grew a lot. In these years, the display of force is more important than the actual use of force. Causes of war They can be immediate/apparent or underlying. If we look at the reasons for wars, there is usually a very apparent cause of war and this may sometimes be the true reasons for the parties to start the war; however, behind them there are usually recurrent and general mechanisms. Immediate causes of war Conflicts of interest often drive international conflict and they can include: - Economic disputes → conflicts of interest involving scarce economic resources have served to foment militarized violence between states. For example, disagreements between Israel and its Arab neighbors over water resources may have helped the set the stage for one of the major Arab-Israeli wars in June 1967. Economic conflicts involving energy have also led to militarized conflict. For example, China and its neighbors have been locked into a struggle for control of the oil and natural gas resources that may lie beneath the South China Sea, and this conflict of interest has produced a low level MIDs. - Policy disagreements can also produce conflicts of interest between states that have the potential for military conflict. For example in 2007, Israeli warplanes destroyed what appears to have been a nuclear reactor that Syria had under construction. The Syrian government intended to employ the reactor to build nuclear weapons, which they deemed an unacceptable possible threat to Israel. Israel's intolerance of Syria’s possible policy of acquiring nuclear weapons produced a militarized Interstate dispute. In the end it did not escalate. - Ethnic identity: issues of ethnic identity can also lead states into serious conflicts of interest. Ethnic identity is referred to the linguistic, cultural, religious beliefs and practices, common ancestral or kin ties, or other historical experiences that people believe they share in common and cause them to believe that they constitute a community. In 1999, members of NATO alliance attacked the Balkan country of Serbia. Ethnic Albanians, who comprised the majority of residents in Kosovo, were pressing for greater self-governance. In late 1990s, an ultranationalist Serbian government under the leadership of Milosevic abused and murdered Albanian civilians in Kosovo as a part of an effort to suppress an armed Albanian secessionist movement. The US and its NATO allies became concerned that Milosevic would unleash a war aimed at ethnic cleansing. By consequences the US and its NATO allies launched air strikes against Serbia to compel the Milosevic’s government to seize its anti-Albanian campaign and accept a NATO peacekeeping force in Kosovo. It has since declared its independence from Serbia. - Territorial disputes which can be about economic resources (Kuwait invasion of Iraq was about gaining resources and the reason was the same for USA to attack Iraq), areas of strategic importance (Israel sized the Golan Heights between the south of Lebanon and Syria and Israel, from Syria in 1967. This hill allows to control Anna Natalia Rodriguez 52 the whole territories from a strategic point of view) or to unite the nation. Regarding this last case, decolonization and the onset of the Cold War often divided similar cultural groups into separate states. Examples of this type of culture based international territorial conflict included the two Koreas, where unification is not occurred yet; or the two Vietnams in which unification eventually took place in 1975. INDIVIDUAL INTERNATIONAL Individuals are the main victims in war, either as combatants or a civilians. Interstate wars involve two or more states in intensely violent military conflict; MIDs also take place between states; and extra state wars involve States and non-state actors. Underlying causes of war Individual level of analysis: Realist international theory assumes that states are rationally unitary actors. They work with the assumption that when we analyze international affairs, we can gain strong insights into the behavior and interaction of states if we assume that states are unitary actors in the sense they act as if they were integrated, coherent entities. There are also other schools of thought which put forward arguments that emphasize that to understand the sources of war we needed to understand how state leaders may find it difficult if not impossible to act in accord with perfect rationality as assumed in realist theory. Is the leader a rational actor? At the individual level of analysis, the following can all lead to war: • Misperception due to stress. Misperception is about perceiving something about the world that is factually incorrect. For example the US leaders thought Saddam had threatening nuclear program, but he did not. Leaders are more likely to succumb to misperceptions because of stress. When they find themselves in a diplomatic crisis and perceive that the risk of war is present and growing, they are likely to experience severe physical and emotional stress. That stress could cause them to make mistakes in how they perceive their own policy options and those of their adversaries. Another cause of misperception may be motivated-biases. It is any belief or attitude that a person holds because it advances or protects some interest, desire, or preference. Such motivated biases can impair the capacity of the decision maker to revise his or her beliefs in the face of new information. For example, the difference in views about how many U.S. forces would be needed for Iraq in 2003. • Risk-taking attitude. This is a specific feature of political careers because the job opportunity could disappear very quickly and for this reason there is the need to have this attitude with the wish to reach the apex of their careers. • Over-optimism by leaders. This is explained by the selection mechanism of the political career which is almost a requirement. Individuals in general may be prone to positive illusions which is what we think we can accomplish is often greater than what we would expect to achieve that if we had a truly accurate picture of our capabilities. Individuals may be prone toward positive illusions because they inspire confidence and confidence impels us to strive harder than we otherwise would. Also, it is possible that sudden increases in a country's military power may cause at least some of its leaders and policymakers to become more belligerent. For example, Pakistan’s successful testing of a nuclear weapon in 1998 may have contributed to its decision to use force against India later that year. This infiltration sparked a war between Pakistan and India, also in possession of nuclear weapons, in 1999. Feminist international theory suggests that men and women differ systematically in the manner in which they view and approach international relations. After a study, it has been seen that males may have a propensity toward our overconfidence and this overconfidence may lead males to tend to launch wars to win the game. Hence, there may be connections between gender, overconfidence, and decisions for war. Recent studies have identified significant associations between the status of women within countries and the likelihood of those states becoming embroiled immediate conflicts with other countries. The social psychology of small groups →this is connected to this study called Group Thinking by Janis. An example is Bay of Pigs in April 1961 it was an attempt by the US to enter into Cuba to destroy Castro’s regime. It was a secret operation planned by the previous administration before Kennedy’s mandate. The idea was to Anna Natalia Rodriguez 55 using force, thus increasing the chances such force will be used. Leaders may be especially thrown to overoptimism in what they think they can accomplish through the use of military force thus enhancing the chances they will choose that option. Gender may play a role in generating positive illusions and groupthink. of institutional and normative constraints on the use of force. In all states, inter- governmental policy dynamics, including overly aggressive officials, can increase the risk of war. because the latter encourages states in a crisis to retain private information and undertake strategic lying during a crisis. International anarchy generates prisoners dilemma’s-like impediments to resolving conflicts of interests by state with diplomatic agreements. Internal wars (intra-state wars) Internal wars happen when politically organized groups within a country become engaged in sustained military operations against one another. Total number of conflicts after WWII (graph) We study domestic wars in IR because this kind of problems are really relevant. The interstate wars is the most common form of conflicts and this is why we look at domestic conflicts even though we need to explain the mechanism between domestic conflicts and the classical subject of analysis. Intrastate wars are also called internal wars and they are a war within a state, opposing politically organized groups engaged in sustained military operations against each other. International war matter for IR because: 1. Contagion state: conflicts could easily start in one country and move from there to other countries like a contagion. This happens because of two mechanism: → Movement of rebel forces pushed by the government to seek protection, resources or reorganize. This is something that happened between Afghanistan and Pakistan. →The other mechanism is the role of refugees and this is still debated. There are different theories and explanations. One which is quite agreed on is the fact that movement of refugees could bring across the border of the states the same reason for the conflict. One ethnic group tries to escape from one country and in the new one finds the same problem. An example of this is what happened between Rwanda and Zaire. 2. The foreign policy of a country where the domestic conflict is happening. Destabilized states are usually more aggressive with their foreign policies because sometimes these countries may need an external rival to strengthen their internal position. This is what is called the rally ‘round the flag. A state maybe do so both out of fear that other states are hostile to it, and to divert domestic attention from the problems the new government is having in establishing the legitimacy of its role as well as domestic order and stability. 3. Destabilized state might attract foreign intervention. →Temptation for other states to exploit the vulnerability like in the Iraq - Iran case. →This could came for different reasons like humanitarian reasons and this is called “the principle of responsibility to protect” this is the idea that in specific situations, international community see limits in international sovereignty, if a government cannot protect its population then the international community has the right and duty to intervene in that country according to this principle. There are many types of internal wars, including: 1. Civil war (92%): government vs opposition. Civil war is a sustained clash between forces that are controlled by the national government and forces that are controlled by an organized opposition group within the country. They produce at least 1000 battlefield deaths within 12 months. They usually have two goals. First, they may seek to overthrow the current regime and seize control of the central government. An example of this is the Libyan civil war which was a military struggle on the past of several loosely aligned domestic opposition forces, supported by a coalition of outside powers including the US, that fought to overthrow Gaddafi and his dictatorship. Sometimes the opposition group or Anna Natalia Rodriguez 56 coalition does not wish to seize control of the national government but wants to bring about the succession of a part of a country to form a new state. An example of such a secessionist civil war concerns Sudan which experienced two prolonged civil wars and in 2012 finally achieved independence and became the sovereign state of the Republic of South Sudan. The difference with an internal war is the actor because an internal war is a war within a state, opposing politically organized groups engaged in sustained military operations against each-other. 2. Internal-communal war (5%): no government is involved. They take place when members of different religious communities in a country become embroiled in large scale organized violence. This can happen among religious groups like the case of Lebanon in 1975-1990. This war gave birth to a specific state system in terms of solution to solve this specific kind of conflict. 3. Sub-national governmental units fighting non-governmental entities. The government is not involved. There is an only example which is China’s cultural revolution in 1967. Here we can see the incidence of internal wars and we can see that in the post-cold war period the number of conflicts has increased and this is an opposite trend compared to the other two cases. During the period of decolonization there was a sharp upward spike. The incidence of internal wars actually increased during the 2000-2007. This is the lethality of internal wars. We see a huge peak at the beginning of the 20th century and then we see a decline in the number of deaths. The reason for this is that during the Cold-War the countries started to use technology to support one of the two powers. We have seen a decrease in lethality but this is not due to the change in technology but because sometimes the government has reduced the number of victims because there is a huge asymmetry in weapons and this creates less victims. Causes of internal wars: levels of analysis Individual level of analysis There are two mechanisms often present in literature and some of them may be influenced by the economic branch of IR: • Greed: highlights that the conflict could start due to one specific reason which is the competition over resources and especially scarce resources. There is an intense desire for goods or money or diamonds, oil and rare minerals. This are cases in Sierra Leon or Angola. Greed may be a part of what motivates individuals and internal wars of all sort, but it may play a particularly large role in countries that possess natural resources that are termed lootable wealth which include diamonds, gold, minerals and oil. • Grievance: it is the feeling of exclusion from the state institutions. This is has to do with the asymmetric distribution of resources in the countries. The state usually has the capacity to counterbalance this asymmetrical distribution of resources. This is the perception of being excluded from the distribution of the resources. It also causes ethnic wars like in Rwanda and the conflict between Hutu and Tutsi. • Often combined: an example of this is Darfur and the war between African farmers who wished to settle and cultivate land and Arab semi-nomadic livestock herders who want periodic access to that land. A constructivist would argue that it is not the distribution of the resources the problem, but how this distribution is perceived and it is that that fuels the wars. Ethnic war: Rwanda 1994 Anna Natalia Rodriguez 57 Mass killing done with physical fights not with modern weapons. It is an entire ethnic population that started to kill the other ethnic population which was a minority. Political leaders used radios to reach the highest possible number of people. In every village there was a radio which was used to broadcast the narratives of what was going on even though the news were framed to increase the friction between the factions. It started with something very narrow but always highlighted. State level of analysis The following can both play a role in causing or preventing internal wars: • Societal inclusivity: The capacity of a state in its structure and policies to prevent greed and grievance. Governments in ethnically divided societies that favor one ethnic group, and systematically discriminate against other groups, are much more likely to induce the latter to take up some form of resistance, perhaps leading to a secessionist war. The presence of democratic political institutions does not appear to reduce the likelihood of civil wars. Examples are Lebanon in 1982-2006 and Iraq after 2003. The idea was to give a specific role and space in the territories to specific communities. • Stage capacity/resilience: this is the capacity of the state to implement these policies and to implement all of its policies across the whole territory. Sometimes conflicts starts in the areas where the government cannot really control the area. There is the need of the intelligence to prevent the conflicts; logistics to control the territory and the armies and conscription to coerce and co-opt. There is the need and the capacity to react but also to use force without the escalation of the problem. There is also the need to offer an alternative to the population, otherwise the problems cannot be solved. The inability of countries to apply these policies can be the explication of the conflicts. International level of analysis 1. Inter-state wars can lead to internal wars Sometimes, we find that interstate wars or extra state wars that are leading to domestic conflicts. One reason can be that the government in charge is in weak position to attack the government. The military defeat leads to domestic weakness. 2. Colonialism Many times conflicts happen because there are ethnic groups spread across different countries and this is the reason of the creation of the borders created by colonialism. This is a legacy for future conflicts. Colonialism was based on the exploitation of the colonies and this left the states after the WWII as weak states in terms of domestic resources which lack economic structures and not only that. There is an abundance of resources in some states and this increases the likelihood of conflicts. Colonialism also externally-imposed order leaving weak armies and police in certain states. It took hundreds of years for certain states to become modern as we know today; however, in some countries this had to happen in 15/20 years because of colonialism and the sequent decolonization. In addition, colonial powers in Sub-Saharan Africa focused mainly on extracting natural resources, and did little to create institutions, such as court systems. 3. Cold war Another issue which affect some states to maintain order domestically is the cold-war itself. It is the core element for the explanation of some elements. The two parties played a role in the domestic conflicts of the war of many states. They contributed to the pressure toward decolonization because of the principle of self-determination which was a reason for the Europeans to stop the colonial system. On the other hand, the war was important because the two superpowers used proxy wars as a supply of weapons and training. This created the condition for the continuation of conflicts after the cold war as well. The end of the CW created wars in the post-soviet space as well because of the collapse of the soviet union and the creation of new states. INDIVIDUAL STATE INETRNATIONAL Individuals may participate in an internal war because of greed, especially in the presence of lootable wealth. A state's capacity for inclusiveness of individuals from different backgrounds into important political and societal A state's participation in costly international wars may increase its susceptibility to internal wars. Colonialism and its legacies, Anna Natalia Rodriguez 60 foreign military assistance, and championing economic and political cooperation within the noncommunist world. This is called bipolar power balancing. 2. Band wagoning: which is about smaller and weaker states that affiliate with the more powerful states for protection. States are basically “following” the leader and exchanging some of their autonomy for protection. The relationship between the European powers and the US during the Cold War has been seen as a form of band wagoning. Because the choice was either Soviet Union or USA also because they couldn’t counterbalance them and hence they had to affiliate with the USA losing some of their power and autonomy. In war’s theory there was almost the idea of an automatic mechanism pushing states to always counterbalance, but later studies showed that historically speaking, we have many cases in which states decided to band wagon. These theories were inspired by the realist tradition. 3. Diplomacy: states also use this to achieve peace. Diplomacy is also one of the instruments of foreign policy in general. There is the analysis of conflict and war and different degrees of coercion that may be used. Diplomacy is used both to maintain peace and send the message that war could be one of the outcomes. We shouldn’t see diplomacy as an alternative to coercive means. It is one instruments of politics. It is part of the persuasive instruments of foreign policy. The idea that these instruments are used as a combination; one diplomatic effort is the opposite of coercion but sometimes they may be used together. It consists of action so that government undertake as their representatives negotiate with representatives of other governments to resolve disputes and establish collaborative bilateral or multilateral arrangements through which their countries can mutually achieve individual gains. It is what states do when they engage in dialogue and negotiation and it is used by states for many purposes. It dates back to the rise of the system of states in early modern Europe at the beginning of the 16th century. The small Italian states posed the diplomats in neighboring city States and used them to collect and disperse information and conduct negotiations relating to war and peace. By the 19th century, this formal systems spread worldwide with governments dispatching ambassadors to the other capitals of the world. States existed in a world of States and diplomacy was the institutional network of offices and officials that provided the means for the management of these interstate relationships. The breakthrough was the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648 which represented a new diplomatic arrangement and replaced most of the legal vestige of hierarchy, at the pinnacle of which were the Pope and the Holy Roman Empire. Power was disperesed into the hands of sovereign states. Territorial rulers were given the right to choose their religion in their territory. Strengthening the legal and political autonomy of territorial rulers to achieve a stable peace was the aim of the treaty. With the Vienna agreement, ambassadors were designated as ministers of the highest rank, with “plenipotentiary authority” to represent their heads of state. This was the term for high diplomats who represented the crown or state in foreign capitals. By the 20th century, the world's leading states had established large embassies in major world capitals with hundreds of ministers and staff. Diplomacy has also been increasingly carried out in a wide range of settings. Under international law, these embassies are the territorial sovereignty of the foreign government and as such, are above the law of the local host country. They have many privileges and immunities which are called diplomatic immunity. They were developed to allow the foreign state to maintain government relations and the chain of authority over its overseas embassies, necessary if the ambassador is to truly speak for the sovereign. This is deeply rooted in international law. Diplomacy then becomes a tool to try to diffuse the conflict and prevent war. However it does not always work. For example it failed during the run up to the first Gulf War in 1990. Iraq, led by Saddam Hussein, charged Kuwait with economic warfare by overproducing oil and stealing oil from Iraqi fields near the border. In August 1990 Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait and within a day seized control of the country. The problem was tried to solve with diplomacy but the Iraqis were unwilling to use the opening to withdraw from Kuwait and avert a war. By the end of the 1991, the Iraqis had been expelled from Kuwait and the war was over. Hence diplomacy and war are two activities that are alternative. Diplomacy is the tool a state uses to alter the actions of other states short of war. It can be an important tool for state leaders who find themselves on the road to war. The Bush administration found that offering diplomatic contact with Iraq was a way to build support for military action. STATE States employ diplomacy and undertake balancing to advance their interests, and in doing so may bring about peace. Anna Natalia Rodriguez 61 International law and institutions as mechanisms for peace This is another tool of diplomacy: international law and international institutions like IOs to create helpful mechanisms created by states for achieving international peace. There is the wish to create a sense of order and stability, there isn’t the guarantee to keep peace but it is a proposition. If there is an institutionalized system, then it is easier to have states maintaining and respecting this rules. This is the concept behind international law which is based on treaties and customary law. International law is the body of rules, norms and standards that states gave crafted over time and that give those states and obligations in their interactions. The goal is to establish a rule-based framework within which states expect each other to operate. The reason why this is created and used, is that states are the central actors of international law. It is a way to reinforce the concept of states as the most important actors of the system. States adhere to international law because it reinforces sovereignty, it creates a predictable environment and gives legitimacy to power. international institutions are international law class organizational arrangements that are designed to facilitate the implementation by states of international law. Powerful states use international institutions because the creation of international treaties and organization is a way to give legitimization to power. These gaps of power are more acceptable if the power is transformed in rules that all states have to obey. Powerful states will oppose treaties and institutions against their interest. The Treaty of Westphalia was itself an effort to establish agreed upon rules and norms for the conduct of relations among European sovereign states. In international relations, law is more limited as a governing mechanism. It applies primarily to states as sovereign personalities and not individuals. There are exceptions to this generalization. Individuals can be guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity and this is the reason why the International Criminal Court has been established in 2002. Groups of states can impose sanctions on states that are seen to violate international law. States that joined the ICC and other international courts, do accept the authority of these courts. Enforcement is not binding because it is up to states to impose costs on other States and in this sense, states have the last word. International law has many sources but the principal one is international customary law which is the accumulation of principles and norms that states have put forward over the centuries and which have come to be widely seen as legitimate and authoritative. Another source of international law has been the treaties which are written agreements that states establish with one another, which spell out to commitments and expectations in specific areas of conduct. Because governments recognize the treaties as having high legal standing, they have some of the authority of law. For example, the Law of the Sea Treaty establishes a framework of rights and responsibilities for states in their claims over coastal territories and the uses and management of the ocean environment and natural resources. It sets limits of national claims to offshore territories, established navigation and transit rules, it created regimes to govern rights relating to the continental shelf, deep seabed mining, scientific research, protection of marine environment, and settlement of disputes. It is now an operational body of international law and states have used it to settle disputes over maritime in rights, exclusive economic and fishing zones, and natural resource claims. Much of international law enforces the sovereignty and authority of states. Indeed the cornerstone of international customary law is independence of state. States are free to decide on their own if they will participate in international congresses and signed treaties and other agreements. International law works on the idea of reciprocity. It provides rules and principles that give the international system a sense of justice. Some aspects of international law give the great powers special rights and advantages. For example, the United Nations Security council gives the major states a permanent membership and the power of veto. In IR we are more interested with international institutions or IOs. Often they are treaties with a formal organization behind. IOs are created by states based on Keohane view, because of: - Functionalism: the idea that they are created for a specific function. - In game theory: to solve specific problems. Even if we adopt neo-realist assumptions, we could end up explaining why in certain cases there is the much more cooperation than a realist would predict. The point to remember is that they created an analysis of different situations that could be linked to classical cooperation problems: cooperation problems and coordination problems. To solve a problem we have to understand what is Anna Natalia Rodriguez 62 the nature of the problem. For different problems there is the need of different institutional solutions. The cooperation problems is what is called the prisoner’s dilemma. There is the need to convince the state to cooperate because alone it would create a situation which is not of immediate interest. There is the need for a very strong organization and a strong mechanism. In certain cases, there is the need to force states to do something that at the beginning is not in their best interest. And the idea is that free riders create IOs with strict rules and sanctions. On the other hand, the coordination problems are also called battle of the sexes. And we start with the situation that states want to cooperate and there is the need of an IO to provide focal points due to the presence of asymmetric information. Hence this organization provides the room for discussion and gives the information and controls states’ implementation of agreement and solves controversies. The problem is that when states think to be in the second situation, they actually are in the first one. The institution system is not equipped to do that. An example of this is related to international security. There is the idea to create institutions with the task of ensuring security in the international system. It could be a short term solution about alliances in which some states join and it can be against one or some states. There is also a permanent and long term solution which is a collective security in which all states are against any aggressors. League of nations A universal alliance that is always there, is the institutional principle behind the creation of the League of Nations. It was pushed by Wilson and became part of the Versailles treaty 1920 which lasted until 1945. The idea was to maintain peace and the independence and territorial integrity to all member states. A peacemaking instrument that combines elements of international law and alliances/balancing is collective security. Member states agreed to come to the aid of any member that is attacked by an aggressor from either within or outside the collective security arrangement. The idea was to avoid war through arbitration, reduction of armaments, threat of collective sanction. The assumptions were: - Universal membership. There is the need of all states participating for it to be effective. - Member states would not be able to block actions of the organization. The sanctions created by the league of nations could not be stopped by states. - Growing interdependence and the credible threat of sanctions. To work efficiently, sanctions need a system highly interdependent. The threat could be credible only in this way. - Response perceived as certain. There couldn’t be any exceptions to the rule. In the LoN states were to come together as equals. The League had an executive council but, adhering closely to the principle of the equality of states, the council's powers were simply to initiate investigations and make a recommendations to the body of the whole. It embodied the universal set of laws and principles intended to provide the foundation for a new era of peace. Two big problems were present, the USA and Russia and Soviet Union weren’t part of it. There is the missing of two very important actors. And the universality was never reached. There are also some general limits: - There was the absence of the US which was one of the powers that created it. Part of the opposition came from conservative and isolationist senators who did not want the US to be involved in foreign affairs. - It was too legalistic and this is the reason as to why USA didn’t take part. Basically the actions were automatic. - The context in which this institution worked, changed from the beginning of the 20s towards the following decades. Wilson had the expectations that all members would be democracies and this was credible in the 20s but not on the 30s. - The sanctions were not automatic and this was a moral hazard. Japan’s occupation of Manchuria in 1931 happened and it was member of the LoN. This was an infringement of the rules and the other states didn’t decide to apply sanctions immediately but wanted to send committees to analyze the situation. These committees worked for two years and in 1933 they finally came up with a resolution against Japan before imposing the sanction and Japan withdrew. Anna Natalia Rodriguez 65 Germany were controlling each other. This was a project of political integration and the creation of a common market, frontier and a single currency. During this period we also have an expansion in membership of the European union which changed the nature of this project. It started as a small group of European states and became very large. In 1973, there was the first enlargement with the inclusion of UK, Ireland and Denmark. This happened because Charles the Gaulle didn’t want the UK up until that moment. In 1981-86 there was another expansion with the inclusion of Spain, Portugal and Greece because there was the end of the dictatorship of Franco in Spain, the end of the dictatorship Salazar in Portugal and The Colonels in Greece. They regained their democratic status and hence they wanted to join EU. There was a strong limit of democracy and the community. Being a democracy became a condition to be a member. In 1995 there was another expansion with the inclusion of Austria, and some other countries. In the end the countries tried to start cooperation with European institutions like Erasmus, European market, exchange programs etc. It had a lot of incentives to create a buffer zone of intermediate integration with those countries that were never able to be part of the EU. The zone of peace was enlarged towards Eastern Europe: it is an area of economic and political cooperation even beyond the borders of Europe. The relationship between democracies and peace can be seen at the second level of analysis. At the transnational level, there are linkages established by population and the communities that are part of the democratic community. Democracy in the international system could create a club because they have similar traits that differentiate to them from the other countries. STATE INTERNATIONAL States have established international rules and institutions to facilitate cooperation and reinforce stability and peace. Western democracies have made repeated efforts to build a global and regional systems of collective security and rule based relations. International law may inform and constrain the behavior of states in ways that avert war and promote peace. The European Union is the most successful example of how international institutions can promote peace. Transnational mechanism for peace There are theoretical elements in the liberal school. There is a strong economic interdependence, driven by free trade and globalization, can be substantial driver for peace. Also, some argue that, in keeping with the democratic theory, gradual democratization of countries will lead to an expanding zone of peace. Behind the thesis of the democratic countries there are also the linkages studies of populations and the fact that democracies in the international systems could create private organizations because they have similar trades. The role of peace movements which are driven by citizens around the world as members in a global civil society, also promote peace. 3.1 Free trade has a pacifying effect on states: economic interdependence There is a strong positive link between economic interdependence and peace. Many liberal thinkers are convinced that extensive economic interdependence between countries creates domestic interests and constituencies that favors stable and peaceful relations. When countries are tied together in mutually beneficial trade and exchange, disrupting those relations is costly. British and American leaders also promoted the building of an open world economy because of the more general effects this would have on international relations. The joint gains from trade and the mutually beneficial economic ties that would grow between countries, would also create interests in these countries that favor peaceful and stable relationships. The intellectual roots of this idea are to be connected with Smith and Ricardo and the notion of comparative advantage which is about the fact that all nations could benefit from free trade. The causal logic is that free trade allows absolute gains for all nations; war and conflict disrupt free trade, jeopardize profits and employment; citizens of trading states have vested interest for maintaining cooperative relations. The abolition of the Corn Law in 1846 in Britain. It was a law used to maintain British agricultural sectors close and to protect agriculture from international market. It gain momentum within British society. From then on, there was an expansion of this idea and the result is what is called: the first era of globalization in 1870-1914. Hence Britain moved from mercantilism to free trade. We saw an increasing reduction of trade barriers and an increase in the actual level of Anna Natalia Rodriguez 66 exchanges which resulted in an increase in economic growth specifically for UK. This process was completely blocked by the war and everything that was established during this period, disappeared during the war. There was an interwar crisis: in 1914-1935 there was an economic chaos with war damages, debts and high costs of reparation. In 1929 there was also the wall street crash. Furthermore, the decision by the US to increase trade tariffs. In 1930 this was the first act that led to retaliation and the start of the process of trade protectionism which led to WWII. Coming from that experience the creators of this system after WWII, had in mind that they wanted a return of protectionism. They wanted to create a system based on a number of institutions organized around: - Multilateralism: decisions should be taken together and bilateral relations had to be overcome. The idea was to introduce the idea of nondiscrimination between countries based on previous alliances. - Embedded liberalism (open economies): world order created by the liberal powers. it is the fact that system was based on liberalism in economic terms with free trade. This liberalism should be embedded within national societies. There were limits to respect to maintain an equilibrium. Europe created a model of capitalism that tried to balance these ideas. It was a liberal economy balanced with the demand of the domestic political systems and the interests of the states and governments. All of these institutions had to work within this balance. Domestic actors behaved within certain rules that tried to encourage economic actors to behave in a certain way. This characterized only the western hemisphere in the Cold War but after that it expanded towards the rest of the system. Post war there is the creation of institutions which expanded to other countries. The GATT was transformed in the WTO. The IMF and the World Bank had already changed in the 80s but they expanded also to developing countries. Why did the US pushed on the enlargement of this system to other countries? According to the liberal theory, it was in the interest of the US because investing in institutional mechanisms was a way to maintain a hegemony. Because in the long term the power gaps would have been reduced but the systems which is institutionalized would have continued to work in a certain way. If we look at international institutions in the 90s we can see the role of the US. The west and the allied had the majority. The IMF voting system there was a veto power with the 15% of the votes and the US had 17%. The same was for the World Bank. These were institutions created by some actors and were sued to maintain their power in the system. This situation changed with the crisis of 2008. In these years there is the demand of an institutional set. One of this changes was the shift form the G7 and G8 as the center of world economic governance which was a western mechanism. This was the place where the global economics happened. There was also the need of something more representative of the world like the G20. Its members are many and almost all of the important ones in the world. The EU represented all of the states that weren’t part of the G7. The G20 was more representative of the current world economy and they represented the 80% of the world economy and global GDP. The problem was that the G20 is a forum and a limited organization created in a specific moment to allow the states to coordinate their actions in response to the economic crisis. It is based on consensus and the conclusions are not mandatory. It was created to solve problems of coordination. Today, we may need a stronger organization than the G20. What Biden is proposing is to create a separate organization for democratic states only to protect our democratic world against the potential challenge and aggression of non-democratic states. Some parts of the world are still non-democratic and democracies never was the majoritarian system in terms of number of states. In fact, nowadays it is about 45%. After this category, most of them are hybrid regimes and they have been in this category for 30 years. In the long term and in the last 40 years, there has been a spread of democracies and in the last decade we entered in what we can call a reduction in the number of democracies and hence this process stopped. Liberal thinkers believed the free trade leads to peace. The realist view is that it does not. Scholars have found that during the early decades of the 20th century, the costs of disrupting interdependence did not restrain countries from going to war. Economic interdependence does have impacts on domestic groups and political coalitions. Economic interest groups that benefit from trade will push for stable relations with other states. 3.2 Democratic peace theory and transnational mechanisms (security community) The democratic peace thesis focuses on democracy and the building of community among democracies. The characteristics of liberal democracies makes them predisposed not to go to war with other liberal democracies. As democracy spreads around the world, so too does the zone of peace in world politics which is the number of countries Anna Natalia Rodriguez 67 in the geographic space they possess within which states do not want to use military force or believe that it will be used against them. Democracies in the contemporary era have tended both to cooperate and to behave peacefully toward each other. Leaders embrace these ideas of democratic peace. Wilson was convinced that overtime these autocratic and authoritarian states they would join the world democratic community. While Roosevelt hoped that the United Nations might provide the master mechanism for world peace. American leaders made the far reaching commitments to build and manage the international order. If we look specifically at the area surrounding the EU, the situation 50 years ago was that after the enlargement, beyond the borders, the countries were mostly non democratic. When the EU completed this process of enlargement started this policy of the European neighbors. One of the goals was to make them part of the EU and convert them into democracies. The EU and the US started with a number of policies “democracy promotion policies” which were: diplomatic instruments; assistance; conditionality; economic sanctions; covert interventions and military interventions. Hence there is a mix of diplomacy and coercive measures. This might appear as a contradiction. The trade system was strengthened with the establishment of the World Trade Organization in 1995, which provided rules and dispute settlement mechanisms for the expanding world economy. The rise of China today will test these liberal ideas. Liberal thinkers argue that a peaceful rise of Chinese possible if its domestic system evolves toward liberal democracy. China would follow pathways similar to that of Japan after WWII. It will grow wealthier and gradually integrate with the world economic and political system. For realists, the changing power position of China and the US will matter more. China will seek to use its power to expand its influence and control over its region and perhaps the wider world. When the regime feels that it is too much under Russian control then it tried to cooperate with the west. On the one hand, the domestic opposition is now apparently much stronger. There are still demonstrations. The EU sanctions are stronger than before and there have been four rounds of sanctions in a brief period to increase pressure on the regime. The regime tried to blackmail EU using sanctions to counterbalance EU pressure. Reduce the sanctions until this became… on the one hand, the domestic opposition was much stronger and the new sanctions were stronger than before. We have 4 different rounds of sanctions to increase pressure on the regime. This regime actually tried to use migrants to counterbalance the European pressure. If we look at the map of the European neighbor today we can see that the map didn’t change much in the last 15 years because just Tunisia was able to maintain a democratic government. The common trend in this period didn’t really change. After 2010/11 Tunisia, Libya and Syria saw some changes. We can see that the change happened because of the Arab spring not because of the policies of the EU. Even today the initiative are not bringing significant changes. It is quite strong in helping countries to maintain the democratic system but not to create it. 3.3 Transnational forces: peace movements Society-based explanation Non-governmental organization and the citizens’ groups and political movements have also played a role in pushing governments to the peace table, particularly over the last two centuries with the rise of liberal democracy and the increasingly destructive experiences of war. They serve to draw attention to the cost of wars and to lobby governments to address the issues of human suffering and social injustice. Peace movements happened in Vietnam during the war; nuclear freeze; the Pugwash conference; physicians for social responsibility. Peace movements didn’t disappear because they still exist in every country. With the transformation of the digital revolution there is an increasing force of what we call an global society of peace movements. The devastation of the two nuclear bombs in Japan at the end of WWII, provided the political and symbolic catalyst for a new generation of peace activism, which gained additional participants in the early decades of the Cold War. Even nuclear scientists became involved in the search for arms control and disarmament. Peace movements have had many different specific aims. In the US, the Vietnam War triggered the most organized and vocal peace movement in the country's history. The demand was that the United States withdrew from the war and brought the troops home. The anti- Vietnam War movement ended when American troops finally left Vietnam in the spring of 1972. This happened even Anna Natalia Rodriguez 70 - Colombia: it is a country in South America with a constitutional government and a large economy. It gained independence from Spain in 1819 and established the Republic of Colombia in 1886. Episodes of political violence and civil war happened at the beginning of the 1940s. By the 1960s, violence between the political parties declined. At the beginning of the 1970s, various guerrila groups, some dominated by Marxist ideology, emerged to fight the government. Violent drug cartels that took hold of territory, increased their power and control of outlying regions in the following decades. Drug cartels were the Medellin cartel, led by Pablo Escobar and the Cali cartel. These cartels helped to finance an array of illegal armed groups, both right wing paramilitary groups and left wing insurgents. They have undermined the rule of the central government and soon began supporting paramilitary squads. Drug groups used their money and firearms to build private security protection arrangements for towns and people, further weakening the state. Along the way, Colombia became the leading drug producing country in the world. In recent years, the country continues to be plagued by drug cartels, insurgent movements, and the paramilitary groups. We can use as a proxy for the measure of state failure the state fragility index which shows if a state are in a sustainable, sable, warning or alert position. There is a concentration of challenges in almost the same places. The traditional Westphalian idea of the international system has been challenged in recent decades by a cluster of interrelated developments: - Advancements in technologies have made it easier for private groups to operate and inflict harm across national borders and at longer distances. Internet makes it easier to communicate and transfer funds across the world. Technologies of violence provide capabilities that allow non state actors to wield the destructive force that previously only states could possess. - The capacity of states to retain sovereign control over their national territories varies considerably. Many nation states are sovereign more in name than in reality like Afghanistan, Sudan, and Somalia. They provide attractive heavens for non-state criminal and terrorist groups to operate, offering training sites and launching pads for transnational operations. - Countries around the world have become increasingly concerned with the activities of non-state actors. The Westphalian system is under threat. One response is to target criminal and terrorist groups with intelligence, special operations, covert actions, and counter insurgent war. At the same time, the norms of state sovereignty are evolving, reflected most clearly in the rise of the norm of the responsibility to protect. It says that if a particular state is inflicting harm or violence on its own citizens or if it is unable to protect its own citizens from harm or violence, the international community has the right and the obligation to act. States will either find ways to adapt and strengthen the capacity of their sovereign authority or the world will enter a new epoch of transnational violence in this order. We will now look at the challenges. Piracy Pirates are non-state actors who commit robbery or criminal violence on the high seas. It is defined as acts of violence detention or depredation committed for private ends against the crew or passengers on board ships on international waterways. Pirates operate outside the law and also outside the Westphalian system of states. Piracy dates back to some of the earliest recorded history in the West. In the Middle Ages, pirates appeared in the waters around Western Europe, the north seas and in the Atlantic Coast. The Vikings engaged in piracy along the European coasts, from Scandinavia and the Baltic seas to the Iberian coast and military union see. Pirates also played on the other regions of the world. The Caribbean from 1560 until the mid-70s was a classic era of piracy. The Spain was the dominant Anna Natalia Rodriguez 71 force in the Caribbean during these years. All the conditions that allowed outlaws to flourish were in evidence: a region awash in treasure, expanding shipping traffic, and vast stretches of islands and waters that were outside the reach of Spanish naval power. But it also flourished in Asia and operated in the South China Sea with bases in Taiwan. The problem of piracy was one of the first diplomatic challenges of the newly independent United States. They were protected by English forces but when these protections lapsed, American ships were seized by privateers from Morocco and Algeria. Out of these struggles, the American Navy was born in 1794 and it did battle with the privateers and their sponsoring states along the North African coast in the barbary wars. With the rise of modern naval power in the late 19th and 20th century, piracy receded around the world. Costs of North and South America, Western Europe, North East Asia are relatively safe. In these waters, established naval powers safeguard the sea lanes and deter private gangs. Piracy remains a significant problem in the waters extending from the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, of the East African coast and in the Strait of Malacca and Singapore. Hence, it is still an ongoing challenge and it has especially been a problem between 2005-10 in the zone of the Somalia and the red sea. This is because our global economy is strongly based on free trade over the seas. To maintain this free trade, states have to contrast piracy. The Red Sea concerns the majority of oil trade and by controlling that straits then you basically control all of the trades. Somalia is a failed state and in particularly there was no capacity to control the coast of the country and these were used by the pirates. With time they became stronger and were able to buy bigger vessels and higher technology. This became a problem for the international community and this is why the UN and NATO started an operation in the territory to make the situation better and reduce the action of the pirates. Nonetheless, Somalia remains a failing state and piracy has not disappeared. Modern piracy is a form of crime on the high seas that does not directly threaten established the states of. It shows the limit of state capacity to enforce order and provide security on open waters. Piracy is aided by the weakness of states in the region. Pirates conduct dangerous business on water, but require heavens on land. Solutions are to be found on shore. The governments of the countries need to be strengthened so that they can establish stable order and defend their territorial waters against groups. Drugs, crime and failed states There is a link between drug production and the failed states. Different drugs have different markets around the world. Hashish and marijuana are produced in different countries but the most important markets for drugs are the western markets like Europe and north America. The fastest channels are from south to north America, from Africa and central Asia to Europe; and south east Asia for southeast Asia. They are regional markets both of production and consumption. In many countries there is the production is not legalized and hence there are huge profits. Even if there aren’t many actions against the producers to stop production. The market is huge but countries are reducing the market for it and the revenue is much smaller compared with other drugs. There are also chemical drugs which are not taken into account. Heroin and opium have a very different picture. There is a very concentrated production basically based just in Afghanistan and Myanmar. And the first one takes the largest share. If there is the wish to stop it then the international system has to look just at a single country. In these years, after the international intervention, we can see that in some area of Afghanistan there was a decrease in the production of opium, other were opium free, while in others there was an increase of opium production. If we look at the numbers of the cultivation in Afghanistan, then there was a decrease in the production of Europe only in the year of the war, after that the production just increased. The reason for this is that the international community was there, but was not able to offer an alternative of production to farmers; another explanation is that there is an increase of production because of an increase in the demand (main consumers are armies and in this case there was demand and supply in the same country). Cocaine is concentrated in regional and economic terms. There are a bunch of countries especially in south America where the production happens, and in some countries this became a problem because drug producers became a powerful force. The consumers are mainly US and Europe. The problem is the level of cooperation and engagement of local government in this matter. the problem was also that the drug cartels gained an influence to be able to exert pressure and influence and persuade the political structure. They also had enormous resources that allowed them to bribe the police and have many efficient weapons. This is true not only to the South-American officers. There is a certain level of corruption going on to allow this kind of trade otherwise it wouldn’t be possible. There was also the military aspect because some producers became so powerful that they were able to create armies and have tanks, submarines etc. and act in those territories where the lawful officers and armies could not reach. In this war there are many victims against Anna Natalia Rodriguez 72 the state and the civilians, what we also have are the… due to state actions against drug dealers. This is the case between Philippines and president Rodrigo Duterte. There have been many victims because of the government action against drug dealers and drugs. At the beginning the vigilantes were the highest numbers among the victims but with time this changed. New business: smuggling of migrants A new business for criminal actors is the revenue coming from smuggling migrants. This was particularly visible in Europe but is something that has been happening worldwide. The total number of migrants that were trying and were able to enter in Europe was very worrying. During the migrant crisis in 2015, we had more than 1 million illegal entries in Europe and they did so because of the form of “facilitation service” provided by smuggling networks. Of this 1 million nearly 90% entered in Europe using smuggling service which is about paying someone to get inside Europe and this created a market. Europol estimates that criminal organization involved in migrants smuggling had between 3 and 6 billion euros just in 2015. In order to organize these long and dangerous trips especially coming from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Libya etc. there was the need to cross many countries and in different ways. There was the need for an elaborate organization and the actors were the already existing ones like mafia groups. This is an example how different areas of crime collaborate together. Mafia groups mainly specialize in drug dealings but also have other interests. When we talk about criminal actors we talk about a truly global challenge. Terrorism Terrorists employ violence against civilians to achieve a political purpose. Used as a tool of war and political struggle, terrorism may be employed by a group seeking to intimidate, coerce, or manipulate the sentiments of other people by inflicting violence on innocent civilians. The immediate victims may be innocent civilians, but the ultimate target is the foreign policy of a state. In the 19th and early 20th century, terrorism primarily took the form of violence committed by nationalist movements resisting occupation and seeking independence from imperial or colonial domination. In the late 19th century Russia, opponents or anarchists, of the Tsarist state used bombs to kill state officials with the hope of inciting popular revolt. During the same period, Irish nationalists carried out attacks in England, foreshadowing the later activities of the Irish Republican Army, a group that carried out assassinations and political violence in their protests against the British present in Northern Ireland for decades. By far the most notorious international terrorist group is Al Qaeda. Founded in 1988 by Osama bin Laden, this Sunni Islamist extremist movement has carried out the acts of violence with the aim of ending foreign influence in Muslim countries and establishing a new Islamic califate. The perception is that terrorists are perhaps the greatest threat to international peace. It is a global challenge especially since the 9/11 and they are active in countries throughout the world. The symbolic aspect of the 9/11 attacks was clear. It was an attack on icons of American power. The twin towers served as a symbol of American global capitalism and the Pentagon as a symbol of American global military power. There are many reasons why angry militants engage in terrorism. One of them appears to be the quest for an independent homeland. Other groups have had more far reaching political objectives like the revolutionary in the 19th century Europe which sought to overturn capitalism and usher in a new social order. In terms of attacks, the middle east and north Africa is the number one and makes it the target of terrorism. However, it is a global challenge not directly particularly towards Europe or the USA. The main targets are other targets in the same area and Muslims countries mainly. There is still terrorism directed to USA and Europe but it is not the main aim. Terrorism is not something new and it was especially bad during the 80s. It was not only directed towards Islamism. There was a peak at the end of ’88 which happened in northern Ireland which was an act of international terrorism. Libya was accused of this act. International terrorism was mainly political terrorism and it is connected to domestic affairs and issues. Europe was prepared to contrast terrorism and there was the introduction of laws and mechanisms against domestic terrorists that became useful to contrast terrorism we are facing today. We were prepared to contrast terrorism, even more than today. If we look at the global trends in terms of attacks and death, we see a peak between 2014-15 because of the war against Daesh between Syria and Iraq. There are many different terrorists groups other than ISIS and Al Qaeda like Taliban. Ansar Allah (Yemen), Boko Haram (Nigeria). Anna Natalia Rodriguez 75 Levels of analysis: international responses STATE INTERNATIONAL the changing norms of state sovereignty have altered the rights and applications of nation states. Many countries agree in principle, but not always in practice, on the need for international cooperation to strengthen weak States and protect individuals from mass surveillance. Future of nation-states States have never been able to completely gain control and monopoly on the legitimate use of violence within their own territory. Pirates, warlords, and terrorists have long been part of the world scene. But forces of globalization, nationalism, and self-determination have also unleashed powerful non-state actors, such as terrorist organizations with global reach, who threaten the stability and order as it is secured by states. The force of globalization have made it easier for non-state actors to travel, communicate, and operate on a worldwide basis. Technological innovations in weapons allow these actors to potentially gain weapons of such destructive power that it is possible to imagine whole cities suffering at their violent hands. Terrorism is partly driven by aspiration for religious, political and social freedom as the peoples in various parts of the world struggled to define independence in a modernizing world. All of these moving parts have created openings for nonstate wielders of the force and violence to make a dramatic appearance. Non-state actors will be increasingly able to inflict harm on people. These non-state actors do not seem to have the capacity to replace the state or the state system. They do not have the ability to do what territorial entities can do which is build political communities with institution that tax, provide services, and offer security. They cannot offer an alternative way of organizing society and politics. The international community will need to find ways to build and strengthen states. Levels of analysis: future of the nation state INDIVIDUAL INTERNTIONAL Anna Natalia Rodriguez 76 the relationship between individuals and nation states has changed over the last century because of new technologies of communication, transport, and violence. The sovereign state system today is both more universal and more challenged than in earlier historical eras. WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION – CHAPTER 7 What is WMD’s impact on IR? Non state actors are very unlikely to use and possess nuclear armaments, is more likely that they produce chemical and biological weapons which can be used towards states or other non-state actors. Chemical and biological weapons Chemical weapons are artificial chemical compounds, created in the laboratory specifically to kill humans. They belong to the WMD and produce a huge number of victims. They are part of a specific categories exactly for this reason. There some examples of this. They have especially been used during WWI like the chlorin or mustard gas. These chemicals do their damage by blistering the lung tissue. The sarin gas is a nerve agent that causes suffocation through uncontrollable muscle contraction. has been used more recently and especially on one case in 1995 in the Tokyo underground. This was a small non state actor capable of planning and implementing a large scale attack using this gas. This gas was released in the underground and few people were killed creating an alert towards this chemical weapons. This is not new because we have a history of chemical weapons. They have been used especially in the wars during the 19th century and especially by the European states. Chlorine and pyrite were used in WWI by France and Germany. They were also widely sued by Japan in east Asia before and during WWII. European forces became aware of the dangers of these weapons because they can be difficult to control. Also Iraq used during the 80s chemical weapons against Iran during the war and used also against its own population: Iraqi Kurds in 1988. This caused more than 5000 victims domestically. We have also seen the use of gas in military conflicts like in the civil war in Syria in 2013 where the sarin gas was used in Damascus. It created many consequences and the area affected was quite big. The opposition forces accused the regime, Assad of the use of this gas against the opposition forces. There were also ideas that this plot had been made by the opposition forces. If the Assad regime has used chemical weapons in the civil war on civilians, then the USA would Anna Natalia Rodriguez 77 have intervened and there was the idea that for this reason the opposition forces were saying this. There was an agreement between US and Russia on how to maintain a balance of force to keep this situation under control. Conventions against chemical weapons There has been many efforts to try to limit and stop or ban the creation and use of chemical weapons. - Hague convention 1899-1907 - Washington treaty and Ginevra protocol - Chemical weapons convention (CWC): it is almost universal. It was done in 1993 and it entered into force in 1997. It includes 193 states. Israel signed but did not ratify and Egypt, north Korea, south Sudan are not members. This convention is implemented and controlled by the OPCW which is the chemical weapons prohibition organization. The convention is about the prohibition of production and possession. Biological weapons are any kinds of viruses or bacteria that are lethal and could be of natural origin or artificially created or modified. They are used to make many victims. There are different examples in historical terms on the use of these weapons. For instance, the use of Anthrax post 9/11 in letters that were sent to officers and were killed. They create also huge terror. They have always been used in histories since the existence of war. In ancient times bacteria were used to poison food and pollute enemy waters. These were developed during the 30s and 40s by Nazi Germany and Japan by doing experiments. They were sued by Japan against China in 1940. We also have some evidence that they were also developed by USA and USSR during the Cold War. This also became an issue during the pandemic of Covid-19. The USA accused China to produce willingly the virus in a laboratory to affect the western countries. This is an example of how the digital propaganda has become so important in our time. Also the EU created a way to digitally go against the propaganda fake news. Convention against biological weapons - Ginevra protocol 1925 - BWC – Biological Weapons Convention : was created in 1972 and put into force in 1975 which comprises 183 states. Israel, Chad, Eritrea and the microstates are not signatories. While Egypt, Somalia and Syria haven’t ratified. It prohibits the development and production and possession of large quantities of bacteriological agents. It is a quite ambitious convention. It does not provide for continuous monitoring or verification of compliance with the principle. It can be argued that this is a coordination problem. This creates a problem of trust because we don’t have much information on what the other states are doing and this may lead states to decide to keep arsenals of biological weapons aside in case of something as to happen. Chemical or biological agents may be delivered in various ways: they could be placed in a bomb to explode in a populated area, or perhaps used to contaminate a water supply. Nuclear weapons The us was the first to create a nuclear fission bomb during the Manhattan project and tried them in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In 1949, the soviet union successfully tested its own version of a fission atomic bomb; a thermonuclear bomb also known as the hydrogen bomb. It yields even greater amounts of destructive energy than a fission reaction alone. Today’s most sophisticated nuclear arsenal belongs to the US, and contains an array of impact that can be delivered from land, sea and air. There are also the intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine launched ballistic missiles and cruise missiles. The distinctive feature of nuclear weapons is their unprecedented destructive capacity. Nuclear explosions create: blast, heat and radiation effect. The blast effect is the immediate explosive effect of a nuclear weapon. The heat or thermal effect is the secondary effect of nuclear explosion, in which the heat waves from the Anna Natalia Rodriguez 80 India. To have the great power status or as an equalizer not as a great power but as a legitimate one. Some countries were considered excluded by the international community and they were willing to acquire nuclear weapons just to become legitimate members of the international community like Israel whose existence was denied by the neighboring countries for many years. Also North Korea, after the Cold War and the communism, felt the pressure of being excluded from the international community and not being able to defend themselves and having an ally. The idea that the regime could disappear (USA’s rhetoric) forced North Korea to acquire nuclear weapons. Also south Africa became part of the nuclear club not to become great power, but to show that they were treated as an inferior state while they belonged to the nuclear club. - Why most states do not want to be nuclear powers? Extended deterrence: it is what the US have been doing for Japan which is to provide the country and the region with the capacity given the huge nuclear capacity, to counterbalance any other nuclear threat. Reintegration in the international community: for instance, Libya stopped the nuclear problem in 2000 to ease the process of reintegration in the international community. Some countries like Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, inherited after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a huge number of nuclear armaments but decided to give them up (instead of keeping them or selling them in the black market). Theoretical perspectives: realism if we look at the balance of power and there are reasons to believe that our security is guaranteed by a strong nuclear power (like the US), the cost-benefit analysis would tell that country that they don’t need it. Liberals, would argue that treaties and institutions and rules are needed to stop the proliferation of the nuclear weapons. This is why many states feel tat they don’t need nuclear powers because they have enough security from those organizations and treaties and have trust on the international law. Constructivists, argue the point of the non-proliferation regime is the social norms behind the regime and the idea developed in the international community. There isa huge debate about the possibility of using or not these kind of weapons. There has been an evolution towards the idea that these weapons should be banned especially after Nagasaki and Hiroshima. It is like a “nuclear taboo”. - How dangerous is nuclear proliferation? For the first 40 years of the nuclear era, the possibility of all-out nuclear war between the superpowers preoccupied international relations scholars and practitioners. The more important concern is the spread of nuclear weapons and the possibility that nuclear war becomes more likely either by accident or design. Anna Natalia Rodriguez 81 There is the Waltz position which is that if we think in realist terms, nuclear proliferation is positive because the more we have the better it is for the stability of the systems. If countries know that other countries may have nuclear armaments, they might be more cautious in taking actions. His idea is that nuclear weapons are so specific in terms of consequences, that all the states would act in a more responsible way because if an intrinsic rationality in the creation and use of them. For instance he believes that India and Pakistan, bitter neighboring rivals which clashed in the past, will be less likely to fight any kind of war with each other now that both are nuclear powers. The Sagan position is the opposite which is that the less is better. Many countries in the world do not have a civilian (not all democratic), a stable, rational or transparent government and hence we cannot know what is happening. If reality is different than it may lead to problems. When there are huge arsenals then there is the deterrence because of the MAD (mutually assured destruction) but this does not apply to small arsenals. More nuclear states with fewer technological capacities might increase the likelihood of nuclear incidents which is something that has happened already with civil nuclear capacities in Chernobyl. It may also increase the likelihood of aggressive states to provoke other states being sure that no one would actually back them because of the fear of a nuclear escalation. - The non-proliferation treaty (NPT) It was created in 1968 and it included 191 states. It comprehend two categories of states: the nuclear states and the non-nuclear ones. The latter renounce and allow monitoring and they may obtain nuclear civilian technology to be developed. The nuclear states participate to make the system more stable and commit to tech and arms reduction; in exchange they must commit to transferring civilian nuclear technology to non-nuclear signatories in compliance with the terms of the NPT. They also pledged to take effective measures to reduce their own nuclear arsenals and work toward disarmament. It has established an institutionalized and international norm that nuclear proliferation, like nuclear use, is unacceptable. It has created legitimacy for nuclear weapon possessing states to intrude upon the sovereignty of non-nuclear States and inspect their facilities and activities. It also provides reassurances to some states that if they deny themselves nuclear weapons, they won't be at a disadvantage relative to their neighbors. The clear problem with the treaty is that those countries most determined to proliferate will either not sign the treaty or, if they do sign, at some point exercise the option to renounce it. The treaty is not well designed to prevent a hard cases from proliferating. The treaty lacks adequate enforcement measures because it does not call for collective sanctions against the violators. If the NPT cannot achieve these benefits, is there any way for interesting states to stop the small number of determined proliferators? Collective economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation sometimes work if applied consistently over an extended time period. Sustain the diplomatic pressure from a selected group of powerful countries may sometimes prove effective as well. Negotiations have makes the threats of punishment with the promise of rewards in the effort to convince North Korea that going nuclear is just not worth the cost. It helps to strengthen the idea that there is a nuclear taboo and that they are not for everyone. The humanity should move the limitation and elimination of these weapons. It provides also an economic rationale for non- nuclear states because they also get technological help. It is also a security reassurance for the non-nuclear states. It is a guarantee for everybody. The problem behind this treaty is that it is effective in monitoring but what happens when we find a county developing nuclear armaments? There is no associated sanction regime and there is no solutions for the violations. One of the most significant constraints of nonproliferation efforts for policymakers is the fact that nonproliferation may compete with other foreign policy priorities. This problem is evident in US policy toward the recent entrance to the nuclear club. Most scholars would argue that nuclear weapons states may be willing to control or reduce their arsenals, even substantially, but are not willing to give them up completely. The production and deployment knowledge would remain, with the potential to be exploited by States and groups seeking to take advantage of the restraint of others. The idea of getting to zero or total nuclear disarmament, remains alive and well and has been with us throughout the nuclear era. - How to stop proliferation? Anna Natalia Rodriguez 82 We started as a consequence of Iran non total compliance to pull some sanctions through the UN and it became a wide sanction regime with some sanctions for their economy. Another option is the common instrument to use economic resources or aid to help states and provide assistance. This is the case of the US to Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Also, there can be exports and missiles controls. It is the control of exchange of components and the tools needed to transform civilians into military capacities. There are many conventions controlling this aspect. Also, preventive military actions like Israel against Iran or Syria. There is also the missile defense system that the US has been trying to develop around Europe towards Iran. Are the US changing the nuclear balance by putting these defenses in Europe or in the pacific against China? Hence it may not be very defensive but offensive to change the balance of power. The main limits are the national interests like US vs. Israel, Pakistan or India. The position of the US is not very consistent because towards some regimes like Israel it has been quite silent or supportive of the nuclear problem. It has been also supporting Pakistan and the reason is that during the cold war it needed Pakistan’s support against the soviet union in Afghanistan and nowadays it is needed against China. STATE INTERNATIONAL many countries have relied on nuclear deterrence as well as physical defenses to prevent attacks against their territory and people who stop The NPT is an important example of global governance and an effort by many states that to find the cooperative solutions to the dangers posed by nuclear weapons. The NPT also reflects the inequality of nations in that it reinforces that some states have nuclear weapons and others do not. WMDs: a comparison They have different levels of lethality and destructiveness and the nuclear one are at the top of the rank. However also the biological weapons are very dangerous because they are difficult to control. There are many chemical weapons but they depend on the quantity. The possibility of defense for nuclear weapons are null unless there is prevention. Against biological weapons there may be preventive vaccinations. Against chemical weapons there may be gas masks. The possibility of production requires complex infrastructure in the case of nuclear weapons and regarding the chemical and biological ones there is the diffuse starting materials. The possibility of possession is grated to the nuclear club but not to others regarding nuclear weapons. While for the chemical and biological weapons there is the absolute prohibition to all countries to make and have them. Biological and chemical weapons are completely outlawed. The consensus qualified by international law is that no state, great power or otherwise should be allowed to use them deploy them or even stockpile them. Nuclear weapons are possessed by a handful of states and have the legal right to possess and deploy the weapons while the great majority of states do not. Arms control advocates hope the more universal prohibitions that applied to chemical and biological weapons will one day apply to nuclear weapons. Weapons of mass destruction in the hands of numerous nation states are a cause of great concern in international politics. The same holds true for non-state actors. INDIVIDUAL INTERNATIONAL Individuals or small groups can obtain and disseminate biological or chemical weapons, causing the type of death and destruction that we usually associate with the armed forces of sovereign states. The CWC is a landmark arms control agreement in that it completed forbids an entire category of WMD. WMD and terrorism When related to the problem of failing states and non-states actors, particularly under terrorist, we easily understand the problem of mass destructions and the nuclear one in particular. For this other form, terrorist have the capacities to Anna Natalia Rodriguez 85 severe droughts more frequently. These hard hit areas may experience in turn large refugee flows, resource disputes, and civil disorder with international implications. While industrial and industrializing countries are the source of the problem, many of the most harmful effects are being externalized to people in other parts of the world. The problem is how an environmental problem consisting of negative externalities is an international one. Developed and developing countries are trying to devise a legally binding international agreement that would require countries to reduce their CO2 emissions. The case of the civil war in Darfur how drought can instigate resource disputes between herders and farmers over water and land. If these disputes are reinforced by ethnic divisions, escalation of land and water disputes to full scale civil war is possible. Given that global warming might increase incidents of droughts in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, it is reasonable to speculate that there would be an increase the risk of civil violence resulting for competition over scarce water and land. If civil wars were to develop some of these new internal wars might bring external interventions. Global warming could cause international migrations of refugees that originate in drought stricken parts of Saharan and eastern Africa, or from flooded parts of Bangladesh. They could induce severe economic, social, and political stress in neighboring countries that receive these refugees, causing an increased risk of civil conflict. Scholars had cautioned that we should avoid environmental determinism which is the view that changes in the environment like climate change necessarily and automatically will cause human beings and human communities to react in particular manner. According to them a global warming is likely to cause environmental stress for massive numbers of people in the years ahead. By 2035, the global mean surface temperature change of 0.3 °C- 0.7°C. A very likely increase in extreme weather events like temperature extremes, heat waves, extreme precipitation events. - Ozone depletion: behind the mid 1970s in the mid 1980s, scientists determined that the ozone layer in the earth's upper stratosphere was diminishing and had reached such low concentrations over Antarctica that on ozone hole was developing. Most of it was caused by chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). It represented a serious environmental problem because the layer shields the earth from the sun's ultraviolet radiation. As it diminishes, ultraviolet radiation hitting the earth’s surface greatly increases, contributing to health problems. The degradation of that layer was an instance of a tragedy of the Commons: no one consumer, business enterprise, or national government wanted ozone depletion, but the rational commercial and policy decisions of all these actors regarding air conditioning and other products were leading inexorably to the depletion of the ozone layer. - Changing land/ water/ food availability: changing precipitation patterns like the wet regions will become wetter and the dry regions will become dryer. This will have different consequences in the different parts of the world and not all regions will be affected in the same way. This will also create problems in the changing in food production, consumption and trade patterns. Water and land scarcity in some regions. This will lead to scarcity in some regions and water scarcity in others. As more countries develop economically, they increasingly utilize fresh water for industrial processes and commercial purposes. This intensive use of freshwater resources is creating the risk of a contraction in drinking water, especially in developing countries. Around the world, pesticides are used to protect commercial agricultural crops and residential gardens. Eventually some of these pesticides reach a freshwater streams, rivers and fishing areas and even the drinking supplies of large human populations. These findings suggests that all countries are facing the resulting risks to their freshwater supplies. - Increasing pollution: only 2% of the global urban population is living with acceptable PM10. By 2050, air pollution is set to become the top environmental cause of premature mortality. In 2010 and explosion destroyed a drilling rig off the coast of Louisiana. It produced a rupture of the oil wellhead on the sea floor. The damage was caused by these environmental disaster to fishing stocks, coastal wildlife, marshlands and beaches. Another source of ocean pollution stems from accidents by oil tankers which involved the discharge of relatively small amounts of oil or huge oil spills. It is not possible to estimate the damage these oil spills have done to the environment. - Threats to marine life: a severe tragedy of the Commons may be unfolding in regard to commercial fishing on the high sea. Humans are overharvesting a number of marine species. Trends in global fish utilization, as reported by the FAO, have not been promising. There is then not much room for additional growth in annual harvesting of important global fish stocks as we move into the future. Other dynamics may be reducing commercial fish stocks, including accidental and intentional oil pollution, runoffs of dangerous substances such as chemicals and fertilizer, in global climate change. There is the continuing issue of the commercial hunting of whales for the purpose of consumption of whale meat. The other international marine life issues concerns Anna Natalia Rodriguez 86 dolphins. For many years, dolphins were being killed in the eastern tropical Pacific region, not because they are valued as food, but as a collateral damage arising from fishing techniques aimed at tuna. American consumer activism, and international accords, led to fishing fleets which are now largely used in safe harvesting techniques for tuna. The killing of dolphins has decreased. - Damage to land: deforestation is the clearing or over harvesting of the forests. This problem is particularly acute in the tropics. No person, firm, or government wants to over harvest the world’s Forests. However, stronger commercial demand for timber products and land, combined with weak government conservation efforts by individual countries and international community, have resulted in overharvesting of important forests stocks around the world. The loss of these forests in their capacity to absorb carbon, is more harmful to the earth than any gain that might be achieved by substituting traditional gasoline with ethanol or biodiesel. Tropical deforestation poses 2 serious risks to the global environment. First, fire is often used to clear forests and is clearing technique contributes to global warming. The other problem relates to biodiversity which refers both to the variety of forms of life on earth and to variability within species. The maintenance of a diverse biological world ensures that humans will have many different sources of building supplies, clothing, food and medicine. This is the reason why the conventional biological diversity has been created. When we talk about environmental change, we should take into account the demographic variable. An the population global trends. The world population will increase to 8.7 billion in 2035. The population growth rate is projected to slow from 1.2% per year in 2005-2010 to 0.66% in 2035-2040 given assumptions made on overall fertility reduction. Most of the increase in population will occur in the less developed countries that would reach 7.4 billion in 2035. Especially Africa and Asia will be more populated and most affected. The lest developed countries are expected to grow “dramatically” almost doubling in 2050. Also the fertility rates will increase and this puts pressure on scarce resources. This translates into the problem of food insecurity and the question posed by FAO organizations is who will suffer the most in the next 15-20 years? The answer is, mostly the African countries and the south of Asia. Also urbanization is taken into consideration. Globally, more than half of the world population lives in urban areas. The increase in population that will be experiences up to 2035 will be mostly absorbed by urban spaces. This leads to the increase of global megacities. A huge part of the population will be on the developing countries and also a large part will happen within big cities. Hence, in the future there will be more riots and political instability in these gain areas. The increase is quite impressive. This concentration in big cities is important for the foods risks because they are exposed to the consequences of global change like pollution etc. When we look at climate change, we are not taking into account that the actual impact of climate change will be mediated by other variables like energy, technology, politics and the economy. There are many variables and when we look at the potential climate effect, all of the different variables are important. Climate change impact on conflicts? As of today it is difficult to say what is the result of the climate change impact on conflicts. There are some potential mechanisms that are likely to be played in the future, but as today the evidence is quite low. There may be many mechanisms but it all boils down to the political system of the countries like if they are democracies or not. These potential mechanisms that may increase the likelihood of conflicts are: - Increased pressure on scarce resources in developing countries like land and water. It is also about how the international community can help these countries. - Increasing food prices. This leads to urban social unrest which is often mixed with other reasons like corruption. This can take the form of urban riots and they may be caused by mixed reasons. There are more riots Anna Natalia Rodriguez 87 for corruption than the ones for food prices. There is no agreement that the rise in prices is connected to climate changes but it is also often linked with oil prices. - Increasing forced migration. There is a new attention to migration as an international problem in the last years but we don’t have much evidence. There are some evidences which may be led to other variables. When migration is linked to ethnic conflicts, there is an export of the conflict from one country to the other but this is not directly linked with climate change. - Conflicts effects on vulnerability to climate change ? This is the capacity of the government which is affected negatively to face climate change. This creates a vicious circle of conflicts and climate change. Conflicts would add to vulnerability of states to climate change. Managing international environmental problems: key political variables 1. Role of NGOs and public opinion: often we are in cases of the prisoner dilemma where states are tempted to behave as free riders and there is the need to control them. There is the need of public opinion and NGOs to do that. There is the need to pressure the government and be watchdogs. 2. Consensus among political leaders based on scientific evidence: this is connected to the fact that we need scientific knowledge that is uncontested otherwise it is difficult to build a political consensus. 3. Specific needs of developing countries. 4. Costs: mitigation vs. adaptation: the mitigation is the effort to reduce climate change itself and these actions imply a cost of resources and this is related to climate change. Mitigation is too costly compared to adaption. There is a need of balance between these two options and relative costs. 5. Active participation of relevant states: the big states need to be involved and the final solution should be not against the interest of the main powers of the system. International environmental problems: key political approaches There possible approaches and types of intentional action. 1. Unilateral: One country taking problem on its shoulders and leading the way. This is the case of the USA in the dolphin protection especially during the tuna fishing with the creation of the Mammal Preservation Act. This involved also multinational corporations. A wide range of NGOs began a national campaign to raise public awareness of the issue, they launched a federal lawsuit to force the US government to implement the marine act more vigorously, pressed the government to exclude the foreign harvested tuna not caught with dolphin safe techniques from the US market. They organized a tuna boycott and this was effective and it then decided to ban some products from its market and this created a decrease in tuan fishing. It started an embargo toward Mexico to force it to do the same and later it became a treaty. 2. Bilateral: this is the problem of acid rains in US and Canada. This involved just two countries and where clear the actors, the causes and the two parties rapidly agreed on the scientific parts of the problem. It was caused by sulfur dioxide and nitrous dioxide emitted by American’s power plants. The two parties agreed with the US- Canada air quality agreement in 1991 and part of the damages in Canada were paid by the US. after some years, it could be seen the reduction of acid rains quite clearly. 3. Multilateral: an example is the Montreal protocol on the ozone layer of 1987. It is connected to the use of CFCs related to the tragedy of the commons. The scientific problem was very clear to all of the states, by using this product the sun ultraviolet light damaged the earth. The administration of some countries put pressure on them and the countries were able to reach an agreement. 180 members agreed and there was the 95% emission reduction. It was a success because there was scientific consensus, concessions to developing countries and there was the central role of the USA. We have seen the ozone layer reduce in less than 20 years and now the situation is constant and the process of reduction stopped. This was possible because there was a stronger community of scientists around the world who agreed there were grounds for concern that the ozone layer was being depleted. Furthermore, the government negotiators who worked to forge an agreement in this area recognized that developing countries would have had a hard time making the transition away from CFCs. They agreed that developing countries would have a grace period before reducing their use. Reflecting ideas in realist theory, the US used its economic power to facilitate the bringing of CFCs under international control. International institutions have played an important role in providing Anna Natalia Rodriguez 90 THE EMERGING ORDER – 6 MODELS – chapter 13 Will the international system undergo fundamental change in the future? None of them explain the full picture of what is happening but all of them focus on specific issues. To understand the feature of each model we can consider three questions: what is the key variable of the system?; who are the key actors?; which is the output, should we expect more cooperation or conflict?. 1. A world of geo-economic competition The idea is simple and it is that the world is characterized by competing economic blocs caught in a constant drive for increase economic security. There will be a reduce significance on the role of single states and the emergence of larger units which are economic blocs. Struggles between rising and declining great powers have usually ended in great wars. But the collapse of the SU which broke into more than 12 sovereign states, turned out differently. In accounting for the peaceful end of the Cold War, proponents of the geo-economic model would point to what they view as an increasingly powerful trend in the international system: the declining utility of military force in relations among great powers. The causes are that there will be a transformation of conflict and a declining utility of military force in today’s global economy. This competition will happen also because of the nuclear age which makes it impossible to compete with military force because it would lead to nuclear confrontation. The characteristics are that this system is driven by “economic security” which is the ability to maintain prosperity in a world of scarcity (mercantilism). Economic security replaces military security as the key nation- state objective. In theoretical terms, we might describe this model as ‘economic realism’ in that the basic dynamic is state competition, but the competition is in the economic arena. the central features are the development of competing economic blocs, with groups of states organized around the economics and currencies of major economic powers. North American bloc organized around the US economy and the use of dollar. A European bloc would center on the core members of the EU. In east Asia here might be a bloc or two. Each bloc would look to spread its influence into nearby regions. Russia could aspire to be an economic competitor in its own right, while a declining or unstable Russia would become the object of competition among more powerful economic blocs for its natural resources. Leading government would look to form close working relationships with key firms in leading sectors. The competition will be of the kind of economic nationalism. The evidence of this model is that we are already seeing an economy organizing around regional blocs. By looking at the distribution of GDP in terms of share, we can see that there are some economic powers around which everyone is organized. The economic blocs cooperate around the market and this idea that there might be some specific states that lead these bloc. This finds some evidence also at the institutional level, by looking after the Cold War we can see the strengthening of regional economic organization like the creation of NAFTA, EU. Hence the increase in regional free trade agreement is another supporting argument. Relations between Anna Natalia Rodriguez 91 business and government in both Europe and Japan have typically been marked by close cooperation in pursuit of national development goals. The global financial and economic crisis of 2008 created incentives for governments to step into their national economies to rescue aligning firms and save jobs for their populations. Counterargument may be various: we are seeing a transformation of the global economy, but this is not leading to a growing role of regional blocs because part of this transformation is because of MNCs and TNCs which have no home country. Liberal international relations theorists believe that, in an era of globalization, companies such as Nike and Philips have crossed the regional identities and interests. They have established operations and are players in all major regions of the world. Most big firms do not simply line up politically with their primary home governments in order to do economic battle with other businesses or government clusters. Also, there is the geo-economic competition which is about relative gains but there is also a global economic cooperation about absolute gains like the creation of G20 might have created a level of interdependence between the blocs; we cannot really talk about regionalism because these might be the building blocks for global economic cooperation like the EU instead of being closed and self-contained competitive economic blocs. 2. Multipolarity Idea of the realist school is that after the end of the Cold War we will go back to the usual form of the system that is a multipolar one in terms of balance of power. There are numerous great powers including US, China, Russia, Germany and Japan which balance each other in the international system. In this kind of system, the military competition will continue to be the defining feature of IR instead of the exception. Mearsheimer thought about the fact that there would have been the collapse of NATO. Also, an everchanging combination of flexible alliances guide the relations of the system’s power. Characteristics: the world politics would be dominated by three or more great powers that would engage in complex combinations of peace and hostility or cooperation and competition. Flexible alliances, in which countries form temporary pacts and shift from one partner to the other depending on the circumstances, are a hallmark of international politics in the context of multi polarity. In a multipolar world, China and Russia might ally to contain the US in some circumstances, but Japan and Russia might form an alliance against China. The supporting arguments are about that the unipolar moment is not something that could last for long because unipolarity is difficult to maintain and many scholars observed unipolarities in the 90s and thought about the fact that it was a passing moment. There are some evidences that the prevalence of attempt to counter US hegemony by pursuing soft-balancing strategies. For instance there was a growing opposition to US in the UNSC by China and Russia; from these two countries there were also free-riding on US sanctions and diplomatic opposition; the creation of economic alternatives by China and the creation of alternative IOs by China where the US is not the only party in charge. Also, China has a huge program in investment in infrastructure trying to link China with a number of countries around the land route of the one belt and the sea route “one road”. The long term idea is to establish more inter-dependence between China and Europe. Also, in military terms we are far from the possibility of challenging the US because it spent almost three times more than China on military. Governments alarmed by the greater disparaging power between the US and everyone else initially had limited options because it would be too costly to balance the US power. Hence, they have come to rely on what political scientists call soft balancing: steps to constrain or hobble the US that fall well short of the significant mobilization of military power in opposition to the US or the formation of anti US security alliances. Examples are opposing the US initiatives in the UN SC. Multipolarity was building by the end of the Bush era in 2008. The fact that the US could not pacify Iraq and Afghanistan raised doubts about the utility of its extraordinary military power. The counterargument regarding this multipolar system are connected to the question of who are the real other countries part of the system. The current uneven nature of the international system raises questions about the likelihood of a multipolar system arising anytime soon. There are possible ideas regarding Japan it is very small with not even an army and quite inferior economically compared to the USA and China; Russia, its economic basis is on oil and it is very exposed to crisis linked to oil prices and the regime is not clear because basically Anna Natalia Rodriguez 92 its power is in the hands of one man; Germany or the EU and maybe India and China. Also, one can question whether a 21st century multipolar system would really like the multipolar system of European history. For instance, how flexible really are the alliances? In what ways might nuclear weapons complicate the workings of multi polarity? 3. A new bipolarity Rather than multiple great powers arising, it is possible that one will emerge to challenge the dominant position of the United states. Great powers to be superpowers they need to be continental in size, have large populations and have a global reach. In this model two powers, the US and China, balance each other in the international system. China is a logical candidate. It combines many typical great power attributes: larger size, rapid economic growth, modernizing military capabilities, and the foreign policy ambitions. China has a long history of being the dominant power in East Asia. US-China relations have been generally positive since the two countries open diplomatic engagement in 1971. The more China grows, the more anxiety it creates among U.S. officials. The characteristic is that each would be the central focus of the other’s foreign policy. At both the government and societal levels, the US would view China as its principal geopolitical competitor and potential adversary and China will view the US in a similar fashion. Beijing would also try to offer some type of ideological alternative to an international system dominated by the values of the US. The US and China would try to enlist the support of other states, either informally or informal alliances. The coalitions with append on how political and economic relationship played out overtime. Regardless of the particular diplomatic and alliance configurations, the main feature of the new bipolarity would be reciprocal suspicion and hostility organized around competing coalitions. The supporting arguments: The two countries have cooperated. Support in the US initiated war and terrorism, nuclear nonproliferation efforts, and after the great financial crisis of 2008 to help stabilize in grow the global economy. China has acted with a peaceful rise, meaning that it sought to develop economic capability and political influence without threatening or provoking regional neighbors or the broader global community. Beneath the surface of cooperation there is the rise of China in recent years as the beginning of a transformation of the system towards a bipolar one. There is the idea of one power, China, which is putting a lot of resources to increase the capacity to challenge the US. This is inevitable because any hegemonic system, is due to last only for a certain period, while the hegemonic power is investing time to create IOs, at a certain pint, the cost to maintain this system starts to be more than the actual benefit. At the same time, within this system, there will be other states as free-riders, are not paying much but are profiting. The accusation against China was exactly this. For instance, China not only is challenging the hegemonic role of the US by being part of IOs like the World Bank; but it is creating IOs of its own like the Asian infrastructure investment bank which is another kind of world bank centered in Asia and China. There were also signs that each side was quietly preparing for the possibility of future geopolitical competition. The United states during the wars in the gulf and southwest Asia, expanded its Cold War security alliances in East Asia. China coupled its patient challenger approach with subtle yet clear signs that it expected to exert greater influence regionally and globally to support its interest and acknowledge the higher international status. Chinese leaders directed a combination of military intimidation Anna Natalia Rodriguez 95 adversaries. The same could be said for the eastern orthodox world. Cultural and religious similarities do not translate easily or necessarily into significant political cohesion. Greece, Bulgaria, and Romania are eastern in Huntington civilization typology but are politically and economically aligned with the West through NATO and the EU. Some countries are non-state actors within the Muslim civilization regard Israel as a mortal enemy and refuse to acknowledge its right to exist. 70 years ago, US and Japan were mortal adversary and culturally alien to each other. Today they are longstanding allies whose cultures and foreign policies have become increasingly intertwined. Some argue that economic opportunities and environmental challenges create more cohesion across civilizational divides. Also, to stipulate a clash of civilizations as the defining feature of international relations reinforces the views of the most anti-western extremists in the Middle East and the most xenophobic nationalists in Western Europe and the US. 6. Global fracture This is another model which is different from the previous ones for the way in which it looks at the future international system and the fact that there will not be a single factor uniting the countries. The idea is that sovereign nation state are under attack from above and below. Supranational institutions like the EU, are gaining more political authority as states pool their sovereignty or seed it to transnational authorities. Local actors like drug cartels, tribes and terrorist groups have challenged the authority of central governments and have even established control over territories, populations and the provision of services. The characteristics: Singer and Wildavsky argued that the traditional ways of understanding international politics needed to be replaced by new thinking: the world will separate into two parts. One part is zones of peace, wealth, and democracy. The other part is zones of turmoil, war, and development. In Cooper’s idea, states in the international system will be broken in three zones; the pre-modern world is a haven of lawlessness, where national governments have no control and non-state actors enjoy substantial power and influence like in Somalia; the modern world looks like today’s system of Westphalian states where sovereign governments control their countries internally and mobilize resources to pursue national interests. They engage in diplomacy and form alliances. Until the Arab Spring, Syrian foreign policy echoed that of an 19th century European power seeking to make its way in an anarchical state system. Since 2011, Syria has faced a different problem which is the breakdown of its central government and a civil war pitting the regime against an opposition willing to risk extreme violence in an effort to overthrow it. Syria as of 2013, had moved from the modern to the premodern world. The post-modern world consists of states that have relinquished some measure of sovereignty and banded together in cooperative efforts to attain greater peace and prosperity. This is connected to the idea of fragile states and the index which shows them. The supporting arguments are that the proponents of this model points toward: failed states as evidence of an emerging pre-modern-world; emerging great powers as the likely leaders of the future modern world; the EU as an example of a possible post-modern world. The counterarguments are about the lack of any sort of evidence for cohesion within these 3 different worlds and political forms. The model of a fractured international system would be especially powerful if the premodern, modern, and postmodern worlds formed a self-contained subsystems of limited interaction with each other. Cooper’s three worlds seem drawn together in many ways. The chaos and instability of the premodern world spills over into the modern and postmodern world. Genocide and famine in the premodern Anna Natalia Rodriguez 96 world are often too horrible in humanitarian terms for governments and people in the postmodern world to ignore. It is arguable that the modern world helped to create the instability of the premodern; great powers of an earlier era drew arbitrary colonial borders that created conflicts across the ethnic and tribal lines that remain unresolved. Also, some questions about what the role of a global power like the US would be in such a model because it cannot be easily categorized.