3 Session 1 Part 2

President Obama meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013. Both understood that their relations were partly cooperative and partly conflictive. (Ju Peng/ Xinhua/Newscom)
Session 1

OBJECTIVES

1. Pre-World War I. Dominance of the great European empires in the nineteenth
century until 1914. In systems theory, this period exemplifies a balance-of-power
system, but by 1910 it had decayed.
2. World War I through World War II. The empires destroy themselves from 1914
to 1945. With several major players refusing to respond to threats, the mterwar
period might be termed an "anti-balance-of-power" system. It is inherently
unstable and temporary.
3. Cold War. The collapse of the traditional European powers leaves the United States and USSR facing each other in a bipolar system. But the superpowers block and exhaust themselves from 1945 through the 1980s, and the bipolar system falls apart.
4. Post-Cold War. The collapse of the Soviet Union ends bipolarity, but ideas on the new system are disputed, ranging from multipolar (several power centers) to zones of chaos and from globalization to Chinese-U.S. duopoly. We will consider several possibilities.
POWER IN OUR DAY

Power is widely misunderstood. It: is not big countries beating up little countries. Power is one country's ability to get another country to do what it wants: A gets B to do what A wants. There are many kinds of power: rational persuasion, economic, cultural, technological, and military. Rational persuasion is the nicest but rarely works by itself. Military power is the least nice and is typically used only as a last resort. Then it becomes force, a subset of power. When Ethiopia and Eritrea quarreled over their border, they mobilized their armies and got ready to use force.
Countries use whatever kind of power they have. President Obama urges Iran to put its nuclear pro­gram under international control. Tehran demands conditions. U.S. military power is massive, but Tehran has oil power. In our age, energy resources have become one of the most important sources of power.
CONCEPTS : POWER

THE EUROPEAN BALANCE-OF-POWER SYSTEM

A system is something composed of many compo­nents that interact and influence each other. If you can analyze the logic of a system, you can roughly predict its evolution or at least understand what could go wrong. Statesmen who grasp the current international system can react cleverly to threats and opportunities. Those who do not can damage their own country.
"The strong point about systems thinking is that it trains us to see the world as a whole rather than just as a series of unrelated happenings and problems. It also encourages us to see how a clever statesman may create and manipulate events to get desired results. If he presses here, what will come out there? Will it be bad or good?
CONCEPTS : SYSTEM

THE UNSTABLE INTERWAR SYSTEM

THE BIPOLAR COLD WAR SYSTEM

The bipolar system locked the superpowers into frantic arms races that grew increasingly expensive, especially for the weakening Soviet economy. More and more bought them less and less security, for the armies and weapons could not protect the superpowers or extend their power; their attempts to expand power collided with nationalism.
Third World nationalism arose, and both superpowers made the mistake of fighting it. Playing their zero-sum game, the two superpowers tried to get or keep peripheral areas m their "camps." They pushed their efforts into the Third World until they got burned—the Americans in Vietnam and the Soviets m Afghanistan.
At least one of the two camps split. One of the polar "continents" cracked apart, and a large piece drifted away: the Smo-Soviet dispute. Dominance breeds resentment. The other "continent" developed some hairlme fractures, as NATO grew shakier.
The economic growth of the Pacific Run countries made both superpowers look foolish. While the military giants frittered away their resources in expen­sive weapons and dubious interventions, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and other Asian inlands boomed.
The expensive arms race on top of an inherently defective economy and botched reforms led to the Soviet collapse m 1991. America, by outlasting its antagonist, in effect "won" the Cold War. The world that emerged from the bipolar system, however, is not completely to America's liking.
'Was the bipolar world stable? It did not blow up m nuclear war and lasted nearly half a century, but it could not endure, for at least five reasons:

WHAT KIND OF NEW SYSTEM?
Multipolar?

Unipolar?

Counterweight?

Stratified?

Some claim the new global system is a duopoly of power between the United States and China, the so-called "G2" (Group of Two), indicating they are the only ones that really count now. G8 and G20 meetings are unimportant because, com­pared to the United States and China, the others are mid-sized players. The duo­poly model envisions a world jointly led by the United States and China. But this so-called "Chimerica" is a chimera.
U.S.-China Duopoly?

Globalized?

Some thinkers warn we are moving into an "age of scarcity" marked by a scramble for natural resources, especially petroleum. Rapidly industrializing China needs ever-more resources, lo secure them, China makes exclusive deals with producing states (and never asks about their human rights record). Instead of a free market, this is a tied market that blocks the free flow of natural resources to all customers, a bit like old-fashioned colonialism. The questions of who owns the China Seas and who controls transportation corridors from the Persian Gulf and Central Asia loom larger. The 1991 and 2003 wars with Iraq might qualify as resource wars.
Resource Wars?

Clash of Civilizations?

One may hope that the emerging international system will be an improvement, but its basic components are still sovereign states, and they tend to trip up plans for a peaceful, cooperative world. The concept of the modern state, nation-state, or the colloquial term "country" goes back about five centuries, when important changes rippled through West Europe.
ARE STATES HERE TO STAY?

States are generally defined as groups of humans having terntory and government. This government, in turn, has the last word on law within its borders (sovereignty, which we consider presently). Only the state has a legitimate monopoly on coercion; that is, it can legally force citizens to do something. The mafia, of course, can force you to repay a debt, but it has no legal right to punish you. The Internal Revenue Service, on the other hand, can legally send you to prison for nonpayment of taxes.
Some use the term "nation-state," which adds the concept of nationality to state. Members of a nation-state have a sense of identity as a distinct peo­ple, often with their own language. Nation-states are fairly modern creations, probably not more than half a millennium old. International relations does not use "state" in the U.S. sense, such as the "great state of Kansas." In IR, in fact, the 50 American states are not states at all, because they lack sovereignty. They do not have the last word on law within their borders; the federal government in Washington does.
CONCEPTS : THE STATE

Sovereignty has always been partly fictional. Big, rich, and powerful coun­tries routinely influence and even dominate small, poor, and weak countries. Lebanon, for example, lost its sovereignty as it dissolved in civil war in 1975, its territory partitioned by politico-religious militias and Syrian and Israeli occupi­ers. Israel's pullout from the south of Lebanon in 2000 scarcely helped, as the ter­ritory was occupied by Hezbollah fighters, not by the Lebanese army.
IS SOVEREIGNTY SLIPPING?