History of IR (lecture 3 + 4) Flashcards
international order
- regularized practices of exchange between political units
- stable, structured pattern of relationships among states
e.g. pattern of economic interactions, systems of infrastructure/transport/communication
political multiplicity
multiple political units in the international environment are forced to coexist in the absence of an overarching authority
Benchmark dates for IR
debated
most important:
1648 peace of Westphalia
(1555 peace of Augsburg)
Myth of Westphalia
7
- problem with the ‘‘big bang’’ account: the peace of Westphalia wasn’t one big change, it’s effects came gradually + there was a 400 year process leading to ‘‘Westphalian principles’’
- Nation-states aren’t the only successors to the medieval system (empires, city-states, kingdoms, duchies, urban leagues, confederations, papal states, merchant and bank companies, mercenaries)
- Linear boundaries and territorialization of sovereignty are gradual processes
- Nation-state is also a 19th century development
- wasn’t European-wide, let alone global
- gains of Westphalia were relatively slight (e.g. royalty remained powerful)
- peace of Westphalia undermines the 1555 peace of Augsburg: retracting the right of polities to choose their own religion (states were to keep the religion states held on 1 january 1624)
out of what treaties does the peace of Westphalia exist?
treaty of Munster and Osnabrück
Peace of Westphalia
5
1648
important peace converence: outcome of the 30 years’ wars
changes the international system: defines how ir will be managed/treated
historical origins of the modern sovereign state: break with the medieval system + distinction domestic and international
! didn’t end the Holy Roman Empire, may have even prolonged its life
Treaty of Augsburg
1555
sovereignty of religion:
internal affairs of a state get respected
Westphalian state system
states as the central actors in international relations/politics
Bellicist argument
4
- Tilly: War made the state and the state made war
- evolutionary argument to explain that states compete for population, territory and survival
explanation for the emergence of states:
1. threat of war: rulers forced to defend borders
2. larger, more centralized states, increased tax collection and military recruitment
3. expand representative rule and bureaucracy
4. strong states survive, weak states perish
Alternatives to the Westphalian argument
3
Bellicist arguments on the development of states
social contract arguments
! don’t limit yourself to Westphalia: there are other types of political units, other regional and international orders
Euro-centric narrative of Westphalia
2 examples
'’state’’ formation in East Asia 1000 years before Europe
Korea and Japan emerged as ‘states’ between the 5th and 9th centuries (centralized bureaucratic control)
legacies of the long 19th century
2
- rise of the West and the great divergence betwen the West and the rest of the world (what happens in the 19th century is building on earlier growing interconnectedness, it builds on earlier built networks of Europe)
- emergence of an unified international order (interdependence, first (technical) IOs)
Why does the long 19th century matter today?
- it shows early stages of globalization and inequalities
- exploitation and inequality at the global level
- hierarchy of power and influence
- racism and discrimination
- 1905: rise of the rest
Edward Hallett Carr
One of the founding father of IR
connected to the realist school
- debate about the causes of ww1
- structured the realism-liberalism debate
Cold war: hot again?
- popular in pop culture (perhaps out of fear it will happen again with China)
- sometimes insinuated that the situation between China and the US is a cold war
implications of the cold war on IR
6
- decolonization to cold-war rivalries
- bipolar world
- formation of long term alliances
- non-alignment movement
- nuclear revolution (-> long peace or still ungoing?
- emergence of institutionalized international order we know
origins Non-Alignment movement
Bandung conference 1955
First international order
might be ancient Sumer (sedentary communities specialized and cooperated)
Peace of Westphalia v. Peace of Augsburg
religious sovereignty of states -> principle of sovereign territoriality
Peace of Westphalia undermines the 1555 peace of Augsburg: retracting the right of polities to choose their own religion (states were to keep the religion states held on 1 january 1624)
19th century Great Divergence between the West and the rest
6
- industrialization
- emergence of rational states
- imperialism
- capitalism
- ideas of the European Enlightenment
- technological and tactical advances due to high frequency of European inter-state wars
*until the great divergence there was little difference in living standards between the most developed parts of the world)
Rational state
state organized less through interpersonal relations and family ties, and more by abstract bureaucracies such as civil serice and a nationally organized military
leads to more control over the use of force
forms of imperialism
direct-rule colonies
settler colonies
protectorates
bases
treaty ports
spheres of influence
shrinking of the planet
industrialization led to more communication and transport + distinction between industrial core and producing periphery
(before the industrial revolution international order were limited in scale)
What did the global transformation lead to?
shrinking of the planet + emergency of IOs and NGOs + unequal international order
How did the global transformation lead to emergence of IOs and NGOs?
technological change created demands for international coordination and standardization
unequal international order after the global transformation
scientific racism
economic exploitation
scientific racism
radically unequal view of world politics, idea that it was possible/desirable to establish a political hierarchy based on biological remarks
direct cause WW1
assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand -> Austro-Hungary declared war to Serbia -> Serbia had an alliance with Russia + Germany with Austro-Hungary -> European-wide conflict
how was WW1 a total war?
whole societies and economies were mobilized
Japan went to war in 1914 as an ally of Britain
US entered in 1917 (Woodrow Wilson)
Treaty of Versailles
1919
framework EU security and new international order
encouraged German revanchism
Munich Agreement
1938: appeasement politics British and French attempt to negotiate with Hitler over the Sudetenland
German invasion of the USSR
June 1941
failed in the winter of 1941
Holocaust
Nazis’ attempt genocide of the Jewish people and other minorities
idea behind the demise of imperialism
belief that national self-determination should be a guiding principle in international politics
What factors influenced decolonization
- attitude of colonial power
- ideology and strategy of anti-imperialist forces
- role of external powers
Apartheid
2
- after 1948
- South Africans engaged in an internal equivalent of imperialism
Were principles of self-determination quickly or slowly realized and why?
- slowly
- tribal factors
When did the cold war start?
debatable
- 1917 (Russian Revolution)
- between 1945-1950
Onset of the cold war
4
- failure to implement the principles agreed at the conferences of Yalta and Potsdam (conflicting ideas: national self-determination v. national security)
- Berlin 1948 Blockade of West Berlin by Stalin (lifted May 1949)
- april 1949 NATO + 1955 Warsaw pact
- US/UN involvement in North/South Korea war
1953
2
death Stalin -> Krushchev: modernisations + reformist forces in Eastern Europe
led to a period of high tensions, also because the attack on Egypt by France, Britain and Israel (following Nasser’s seizure of the Suez Canal)
Cuba in the cold war
1959 Fidel Castro revolution -> growing relation with Moscow
1962 Cuba missile crisis
detente
6
- 1962
- more countries atomic weapons
- USSR was focused on territorial dispute with PRC
- Willy Brandt Ostpolitik
- associated with President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger
- SALT (strategic arms limitation talks)
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
1968
halting arms race + stop production new atomic weapons
PRC
People’s Republic of China
Willy Brandt
Ostpolitik contri
end detente
2
- December 1979: NATO agreed to deploy land-based missiles in Europe if Moscow didn’t reduce military imbalances
- 1980 Ronald Reagan president US -> confrontational approach
‘second cold war’
Date
1979 - 1986
Strategic Defence Initiative
3
- star wars
- research program into space-based defences
- Ronald Reagan
Mikhail Gorbachev
5
1985 premier USSR
glasnost + perestrojka
revoked Brezhnev doctrine
started Sinatra doctrine (Eastern Europe allowed to do it their way)
Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty
effect of superpower involvement on civil and regional wars
in some cases it intensified and prolonged conflict
in other cases it may have prevented of shortened conflict
George H.W. Bush
Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty 1991
Moments of High atomic threat
- 1961 Berlin (wall)
- 1962 (Cuba crisis)
- 1973 (Arab-Israeli war)
- 1983 (Able Archer: NATO test may have been misinterpreted by the USSR)
In what way was the cold war a period of stability?
economic prosperity (certainly in the West)
Why does history matter?
important for IR context and benchmarking
The end of history?
1989 Fukuyama argued that at the end of the cold war liberalism won, there was no ideological alternative -> everything moves in the same direction = the end of history (no more competition, only one single proces)
Huntington: there is no thing as the end of history, cultures will remain different -> dynamics
Cyclical pattern of history
idea that history is cyclical:
- e.g. IOs disappeared and reappeared
- e.g. IR theories fell and came back
international system
comprehensive global context in which states operate (sum of all international relations)
- system is a grouping of units united by some form of regular interaction (some form of international order)
polarity
description of the international system looking at poles as accumulation of power
argue that focus on the actions of poles only makes for a good understanding of ir
- focusses mainly on material power (realism)
is bipolarity or multipolarity more stable?
bipolarity is more stable: limited conflict
multipolarity is unstable: a slight change in power-balance can lead to major shifts and conflicts
The US as sole superpower: unipolar moment?
4
American predominance: military expenditure, economy
in the past on one could compete with the US, now this is changing
never been unipolar system before, so it is hard to predict if the US can hold on + what will happen if it doesn’t
Haas: what does the US do with its primacy / what should it do with its primacy
question: is the world still unipolar or does the US just pretend that it is
Maersheimer 1990 on unipolarity
unipolarity is impossible, the US dominance shall not continue
Pinkner on the end of conflict / peacefulness of the world
4
Pinkner: world has never been more peaceful
- decline in violence over fatilities (relative number of casualties has gotten lower and lower in history)
- '’better angels’’ or ‘‘civilising process’’: rise of the sovereign state, education, democracy, equality, trade, wealth -> less violence and conflict
- less great power wars (mutually ensured destruction, accountable to IOs and other institutions, economic interdependence)
objection to the idea that the world has never been more peaceful
5
- more civil wars (less casualties, but huge consequences on society)
- data problems: only focus on battlefield deaths
- more wars in the developing world (less in the developed world)
- total number of conflicts increased (low intensity)
*critique on Pinkner and his calculations
Did 9/11 change IR?
- many scholars argue that the ascend of China in the WTO in 2001 was more influential
Yes: it was a transformative event
- shaped security polices of the US for two decades (war on terror)
- interesting for scholarship: influence/role non-state actors, role of relgion, terrorism back in the front row of IR
No: same responses to a new phenomenon
- response to 9/11 looks like old responses to threats: typical internal and external state security measures (directed at states, not the non-state actor)
for the study of IR it wasn’t that influential/important
Will the globalization of IR continue?
debatable/divided views
early on already debates about increasing inequality (which IR doesn’t study)
new discontents now:
- national-populism
- anti-globalizations movements (Brexit, Trump, Gilets Jaunes, BBB)
has the coronavirus changed IR?
6
did/should it lead to a fundamental reordering of global politics?
pandemic exposes/accelerates underlying trends:
- geopolitical tensions
- weaponization of interdependence (leverage to get geopolitical benefits)
- inequalities
- technological changes
- anti globalization movements
the response to the pandemic was mostly national, we did not come with global solutions
- new battle lines? global public bad? vaccine nationalism?
internationalization
growing connections between sovereign independent nation-states
globalization defenition + trends
7
uneven process of the widening, deepening, intensification and accceleration of trans-world connectivity which transcends states and societies
- economic interdependence
- technology -> more contact
- growth in transnational and global forms of governance
- world risk society
- transgovernmental networks
- deterritorialization
world risk society
national borders provide little protection from distant dangers or the consequences of systematic failures
global issues/risks are a structural feature of world politics
transgovernmental networks
national and local governmetn bureaucracies are increawsingly regionally and globally networked as are the world’s major cities
deterritorialization
activities are organized on a global scale, and thus detached from their place or locale
sceptical argument globalization
globalization is highly exaggerated and superficial, it is epiphenomenal
- realist: globalization is a product and tool of hegemonic power + interconnectedness isn’t new and doesn’t alter the importance of states
- marxist: primary force is capitalism, globalization hides imperialism and uneven capitalist development
epiphenomenal
a derivative of more primary forces
- e.g. some argue that globalization is epiphenomenal and that the primary force is capitalism or geopolitics
globalist argument globalization
+ subcategories
globalization is a process with significant dispruptive change in world politics
- transformationalists
- liberalists
- critical
transformationalists
globalization forms significant changes in the world, making it less predictable and more complex -> need for shift in the study of IR
liberal globalists
globalization is creating a flat world / emerging global network civilization overlaying the inter-state system
critical globalist argument
globalization from below -> alterglobalizations
alterglobalization = new forms of transnational politics (e.g. advocating for global justice)
Global Financial Crisis
2008 -> globalization backlash
crisis of globalization and the liberal world order
3
global populist revolt (less support for the liberal world order + less international political consensus)
return of great power rivalry
growing securitization of global connectivity
- geo-economic competition + covid-19 -> states seek to protect their networks e.g. restricting foreign investment/ownership and decoupling from global networks
crisis of globalization -> conjucture/turning point in world politics?
different views
5
sceptics: conjucture is because of the declining power of the US + such crises are inevitable (reflect historic process of rise and decline of powerful states)
realists: some fear the demise of the liberal world order, some don’t
marxist: liberal world order and neoliberal gloablization conceal the harsh reality of US hegemony
liberal globalists: conjucture leads to dystopian world absent a rules-based order (wants to strengthen and protect the liberal world order)
transformative globalists: crisis of globalization and liberal world order is exaggerated (current conjunture may lead to a more multicentric form of globalization)
reglobalization
new form of globalization is emerging, empowered by:
- digital technologies and digital capitalism
- China as principle force in globalization (since the GFC)
- Covid-19 -> mobilization of states + incentives to repair and rebuild economies and societies
globalization asks for a new approach to political science:
more holistic instead of state centric
less Western-centric
focus on transformational change instead of continuities
global politics
a politics of domination, competition, and resistence among and between powerful states and transnational non-state forces
new cold war?
- Russian intervention in Georgia 2008
- support for Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad
- Ukraine crisis 2014
- illegal annexation of Crimea
Arab Spring
2011
Middle Eastern countries began to throw off autocratic rulers
