Superpowers Flashcards
How are powers defined demographically?
- Links to the size of the econ by reflecting level of Human Resources (workforce)
How are powers defined economically?
- Need a strong econ, high GDP, trade, TNCs
- Strong currency
- Large econ = more power as determine most countries’ imports and exports
- Can spend more on tech + military
How are powers defined militarily?
- Can invest more in weapons, research, intelligence networks
- Have larger global reach through physical force
How are powers defined culturally?
- Rich, popular, appealing cultural history
- Cultural diffusion
How are powers defined through access to natural resources?
- Secure control in terms of energy and water etc.
- Resource nationalism or trade to aid economy (high demand)
- Plus geo-strategic control e.g. Suez Canal
How was power maintained by direct colonial control (imperial era and Britain)?
- Colonies extend inland, conquer territories, tech/infrastructure to connect empire together
- British Empire held 25% of the world’s land area
- TNCs extracted resources for Industrial Revolution
- Huge naval power, railway networks, steamships
- Spread of English language, sports
What is the importance of the characteristics defining superpowers in maintaining status?
- The US invests in developing + periphery countries for industrial change/repaying loans
- Able to control their economic decisions, spread culture through brands, countries feel the need to pay back USA
What is Mackinder’s geo-strategic location theory?
- 1900s, the Heartland theory, controlling East Europe = control Heartland and therefore whole world
- Command of their physical and human resources
- 1950s, containment of spread of communism via Soviet Union, China, Cuba
What is hard power?
- Military action or threats
- Economic + military alliances to marginalise others
- Economic sanctions to damage other economies
What is soft power?
- Education promotes ideology, media for values and news for messages
- Religion reinforces politics
- Cultural hegemony as majority accept it as common sense (can involve global brands)
How does the effectiveness of hard and soft power vary?
- BRICS is mainly soft power, popular and widespread culture e.g. Bollywood
- Still use hard power with high military expenditure, investments, buying land and resources
What is BRICS?
- Brazil, Russia, India, China and added S Africa in 2010
How are BRICS and G20 important to global economic systems?
- New Development Bank to compete with IMF ($500bn budget)
- Contingent Reserve Arrangements vs World Bank ($100bn budget)
- Attempts at reform in IMF and World Bank by G20
What is the G20?
- 19 countries plus the EU (excluded Russia)
- 85% of world’s economy
- No enforcement, based on peer pressure
How are G20 and BRICS important to global env governance?
- Effect of manufacturing and pollution esp China and Amazon deforestation
- Typically hypocritical as CC agreements are ineffective and leaders are not sustainable (private jets)
- Brazil, China, Russia didn’t attend Paris CC agreement
What is the dependency theory?
- Core and periphery depend on each other but disproportionate power
- Core receives political support, raw materials, brain drain, debt repayments
- Periphery receives aid, manufactured goods, polluting industry, political and economic ideas
What does multi-faceted, indirect control involve?
- Political: foreign aid to buy support, dominance in international decisions, disproportionate influence
- Economic: Trade blocs + deals for economic alliance, interdependency, IMF/WTO/World Bank
- Military: joint operations, global threat of armed forces, selective arms trading to allies
- Cultural: global media + TNCs to spread ideology, values through consumer culture
What is the neo-colonial mechanism of poor terms of trade?
- Developing countries export low value goods
- Import expensive, manufactured goods
What is the neo-colonial mechanism of a debt-aid relationship?
- A country owes money for past loans
- But their poverty means they’re dependent on foreign aid (country giving aid can control them)
What is the neo-colonial mechanism of brain drain?
- The brightest and most productive people migrate to developed countries
- Makes economic development harder as this creates a further disadvantage
- Don’t have a solid workforce
What environmental weaknesses inhibit Russia’s future geopolitical role? (maybe an emerging power now)
- Threat of deforestation caused by extensive logging
- Rate has increased due to foreign logging operations
- Lack of adequate funding for parks and other personnel
What cultural weaknesses inhibit Russia’s future geopolitical role?
- Tension between legitimacy of central government across vast spaces
- Competing ethnic claims to chunks of national territory
What military weaknesses inhibit Russia’s future geopolitical role?
- NATO is Russia’s no. 1 military threat
- Considering broader use of precision weapons to deter foreign aggression
What political weaknesses inhibit Russia’s future geopolitical role?
- Russia could be flooded with European goods without tariffs due to existing free trade regime between Kiev and Moscow
What are the Kondratiev cycles?
- They look at world history in 50-60 yr cycles
- 4 stages: prosperity, recession, depression, improvement (prosperity from investment/wealth with infrastructure projects)
- Chinese investment changes power rship
What cycles have the UK gone through?
- Growth: based on telecommunications and social inequality
- Stagflation: inefficient work with high unemployment, spending on wars
- Deflationary: careful public spending = protectionism = LT unemployment
- Depression: need to resolve social shift, public sector to kickstart investment with new tech
What is the World Systems Theory?
- Objects to Marxist 2 tier world, static of rich-poor
- Believes in 3 tiers where change occurs in (semi)periphery through class struggle and social change
How do superpowers influence the global economy? (IGOs)
- World Bank: assistance to developing countries, end poverty
- WTO: manage global rules of trade
- IMF: economic reform, TNCs access developing countries
- World Economic Forum: promote globalisation w annual meetings
How superpowers influence economy through free trade and capitalism?
- Promoting no taxes or quotas that restrict volumes of trade, encourages others to trade with them
- Capitalism promotes wealth creation + accumulation, people make profits for themselves
- Creates wealth disparity and countries/individuals struggle financially with little to no help
- Equals disproportionate power
Public vs state-led TNCs
- Public: shareholders own, benefit and profit from operations
- State-led: states sometimes control operations e.g. Emirates, not typically global brands
How do TNCs dominate the global economy and cultural globalisation?
- Economies of scale can outcompete
- Free market means selling goods to new consumers in emerging countries
- Change consumer mindset
- Appeal with brand value (consumerism, capitalism + absorbing best aspects of another culture)
What does global cultural influence involve?
- Glocalisation but retain significant elements
- e.g. McDonalds fast food culture but different menus
What is westernisation?
- Adoption of Western culture
- Form of soft power
How is global cultural influence linked to economic influence and tech?
- Vertical integration, buy small/local companies (can change some values to make them more western)
- Importance of having latest tech and solving problems
- Tech facilitates trade and exchange, reinforcing cultural message
What is intellectual property licensing?
- Patents for new inventions, technology and systems
- Copyright for artistic work
- Trademark for designs e.g logos
How do TNCs dominate economies through terms of technology? (Intellectual property)
- Leads to westernisation as patents mean no local reproduction
- Superpowers are paid for inventions they created decades ago
- Developed TNCs can invest in research+development so patent holders become patent developers
- Over 85% of royalties are paid to US, EU, Japan
What is the global system of intellectual property rights?
- Run by the WIPO, part of the UN
- Prevents stolen ideas
- Incentive to innovate and justifies initial costs of R+D
How are intellectual property rights undermined by counterfeiting?
- Includes pharmaceuticals, electrical goods and software
- Costs up to $80 bn/yr
- 75% is Chinese production, lack cooperation w US State Department
What resource demands are there from superpowers?
- Food: deforestation for crops/pastures, agriculture = 20% of GHG emissions
- Fossil fuels: industrial pollutants high in atmosphere = acid rain, used in industry + domestically
- Minerals: China manufacturing cheap goods that others depend on
How do resource demands cause environmental degradation?
- Over intensive farming without crop rotation means declining soil quality (same nutrients all year)
- Atmospheric pollution + GHGs
- Oil spills as extract more quickly to keep up
How do superpower carbon emissions contribute disproportionately to CC?
- Brazil’s food production increased 25% from 2002-12
- China is the main importer and consumer of coal (makes up 50% of global consumption)
- China responsible for 30% of emissions in 2015
What are China’s and Russia’s willingness to reduce carbon emissions?
- Countries need to be willing but tragedy of the commons = self interest
- China: doesn’t want economic ruin or famine but poor env reputation needs to be challenged
- Russia: surplus of carbon credit, focusing on nanotechnology but natural gas surplus
What are USA’s and the EU’s willingness to reduce carbon emissions?
- USA: wants liberalism not government intervention, influential CC sceptics
- EU: want to protect farmers and manufacturers but does enforce carbon markets
What do global agreements on environmental issues depend on?
- Requires shame and peer pressure
- One country acts selfish/selfless, others follow
- Need tech, income, political partners
- World follows superpowers due to markets/innovation, maybe should act independently
How does the growing middle-class in emerging superpowers affect key resources?
- Begin to spend more on tech but west already did so no longer invest as much
- Non-renewable resources so high demand pressures supply
What is the availability and cost of rare earths?
- Superpowers extract materials from overseas through TNCs to fuel supply
- China produces 85% of world’s supply
- Rare earth’s toxic content seeps into groundwater
- 2000 tonnes of waste for every tonne produced
What is the availability and cost of oil?
- Direct political challenge over key resources as middle class requires more energy until efficiency increases
- Political damage to developing/emerging countries from extraction
What is the availability and cost of staple grains and water?
- China and India increase demand (wheat, rice etc)
- Transition to western diets = more meat and dairy
- Use of appliances e.g. dishwashers
- 70% used for agriculture
What implications does a growing emerging middle-class have for the environment?
- Problem disposing consumer waste
- Consumption = resource extraction = ST challenges e.g. pollution and LT e.g. habitat destruction + degradation
- CO2 emissions with more energy consumption
How does acquisition of Arctic oil and gas create tensions?
- Oil been exploited since its discovery
- Because economic growth is needed to legitimise power
- And depleting source of non-renewables so need to find more
- Supply and demand in market, energy security
How is ownership in the Arctic disputed?
- TNCs and negotiation with foreign governments ignores indigenous wishes (40 groups)
- Ocean territory of 200 nautical miles north of coastline overlap
- Some use military power
What disagreements exist over acquisition of physical resources?
- Green politics with environmental activists
- Pollution, GHGs, habitat destructions
- Environmental limitations influence political legitimacy in local areas
What forms of exploitation do tensions arise over?
- Increase in tourism especially with sea ice cover retreating
- Icebreaker vessels creates routes for shipping, leading to pollution of water and atmosphere
- Over fishing and under reporting
What are political spheres of influence?
- Spatial extent of level of control
- Reference from colonialism, areas of the world linked by same culture
- Hard and soft power
How are spheres of influence contested?
- Over new resources that are found
- Exaggerated military threats, a changed balance of power
- Those on the edge/periphery can become contested e.g. A8
How is there open conflict over territory and physical resources?
- China is developing nuclear armed power
- Threaten aircrafts in international airspace
- China and Japan’s Exclusive Economic Zones overlap
What implications do contested spheres of influence have for people and the environment?
- China still has rural poverty, pollution and HRs issues
- Money invested in open conflict rather than people and env
- Derails progress as emerging power, less GDP invested in services and env protection
