Power and Terrorism

Question 1

What is Power?

Answer 1

The ability to influence the outcome of events.

In GloPo this includes the ability of a country to conduct its own affairs without the interference of other countries.

Question 2

Politics is…?

Answer 2

Power, the ability to achieve a desired outcome of a country’s goals.

Question 3

Power in International Politics is…?

Answer 3

In terms of the various countries capabilities.

• wealth
• natural resources
• size of population
• economic strength
• military, etc.

Question 4

Relational Power

Answer 4

The ability of one actor to influence another actor or actors.

Question 5

Compellance

Answer 5

A method designed to force an enemy to make concessions against their will through war or threat of aggression.

Question 6

Deterrence

Answer 6

A method designed to prevent aggression by emphasizing the scale of likely military response.

Question 7

Elements of National Power

Answer 7

• military strength
• economic development
• population
• geography

Question 8

Structural Power

Answer 8

The ability to shape the frameworks in which global actors relate to one another which affects the method countries accomplish goals.

Question 9

The knowledge Structure

Answer 9

Influences actor’s beliefs, ideas or perceptions

Question 10

The Financial Structure

Answer 10

Controls access to credit or investment

Question 11

The Security Structure

Answer 11

Shapes defence and strategic issues

Question 12

The Production Structure

Answer 12

Affects the economic development and prosperity

Question 13

“war on terror”

Answer 13

• Refers to the efforts by the US and its allies to root out and destroy the groups deemed responsible for global terrorism.
• Most influential theory of the WoT is Samuel Huntington’s theory of the ‘clash of civilizations’
• Bush identified Iran, Iraq and North Korea as the ‘axis of evil’
• ‘bush doctrine’
• Obama changed the tone of the US engagement in the middle east
  - key speech in Cairo in June 2009 where he called for a “new beginning” between the US and Muslims around the world
  - he acknowledged that ‘no system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by another.’

Question 14

Clash of civilizations

Answer 14

Suggests that it is part of a larger trend for cultural, and more specifically religious,conflict to assume greater prominence in the 21st C.

Question 15

9/11

Answer 15

• 9/11 is treated like the decisive point in the formation of world order to take down terrorism
• This date marked the true nature of the post-cold war era
  - Global strife, instability
• “America did not change on September 11. It only became more itself” - Robert Kagan

Question 16

Bush Doctrine

Answer 16

-The USA had the right to treat states that harbor or give aid to terrorists as terrorists themselves.

Question 17

Issues with the ‘War on Terror’

Answer 17

• Three problems
  
  • Arguably the USA overestimated the efficacy of their military power
    - This weakened the US ‘soft power’ of influence and damaged their reputation across the Middle East
  • The strategy of imposing ‘democracy from above’ has proved to be naive at best, failing to recognize the difficulty in nation building
  • Lack of progress with the ‘Palestinian question’ continues to poison the politics of the middle east