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Chapter Two
© 2012 Pearson Education
Historical Perspectives: Continuity and
Change in World Politics
FRANCIS FUKUYAMA
“Realism . . . does not take
account of history . . . [it]
portrays international
relations as isolated in a
timeless vacuum immune
from the evolutionary
process.”
HANS J. MORGENTHAU
“It cannot be denied
that throughout
historic time,
regardless of social,
economic, and political
conditions, states have
met each other in
contests for power.”
© 2012 Pearson Education
International
Relations:
Continuity and Change
•For realists, a fundamental
continuity remains beneath
the surface of ongoing
change: the nature of the
game remains the same.
•Nothing has truly changed
since the Peloponnesian
Wars.
•Critics of realism say that the
world has evolved over time.
•Changing character of world
politics.
Summary of World Politics
• Major turning points in the evolution of the
state system:
1. 1648 – emergence and consolidation of the state
system
2. 1815 – the Concert of Europe
3. 1919 – the post-World War I experiment with
collective security
4. 1945 – the post-World War II bipolar era
5. 1989 – the post-Cold War international system
6. 2001 – the world after 9/11
•
•
Recurrent pattern: a major conflict or crisis
leads to an attempt to redesign the
international system to prevent a similar
conflict or crisis.
Dissatisfaction with the status quo emerges,
and another conflict or crisis emerges.
© 2012 Pearson Education
1648: The Birth of the State System
• Important terminology:
– State: political unit able to exercise effective governance and control
over a well-defined piece of territory and its population.
– Nation: refers to a group of people who see themselves, due to shared
historical experiences and cultural characteristics, as members of a
common group.
– Combine the two: nation-state
• Defined as a state that exists to provide territory and governance for a group of
people who see themselves as a single nation
• Nation-state ideal across the world is not fully realized.
– Some nations lack a state of their own: Palestinians, Kurds
– Some states contain within their borders members of many nations
© 2012 Pearson Education
1648: The Birth of the State System
• Modern ideology of nationalism
based on the belief that people
care about their national identity
and are motivated to seek a state
of their own.
– Did not exist prior to the 17th century
– Map of 17th-century world: multiple
overlapping political units invoking
competing claims to power and authority
over the same territory.
– Notion of sovereignty was different—
competition among units
– Change through advances in technology
and industry and religious changes
– Thirty Years War reworked the map of
Europe
© 2012 Pearson Education
1648: The Birth of the State System
• Results of the Peace of Westphalia
– Led to the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire
and the emergence of sovereign political units
free of interference from outside actors.
– End of religious war in Europe; future conflicts
would largely be over secular issues.
– Precursor to a new era of anarchy similar to that
envisioned by realists.
© 2012 Pearson Education
1815: The Concert of Europe
• Preceded by French Revolution/Napoleonic Wars
– The French Revolution served as a challenge to the legitimacy of
other European monarchs.
– Napoleonic War model threatened state sovereignty by
attempting to establish a continent-wide empire under French
control.
– As the Napoleonic era ended, the Congress of Vienna brought
the great powers of Europe (Great Britain, Russia, Austria, and
Prussia) together to settle a series of postwar territorial issues.
© 2012 Pearson Education
1815: The Concert of Europe
• Congress of Vienna also attempted to establish a more
general system of order in Europe that would avoid another
major war; known as the Concert of Europe.
– Concert model/Concert of Europe
• Rejected the assumption of the classical balance of power system
that balance could be preserved by self-interested states acting
independently; instead relied on collective oversight and
maintenance of balance by the great powers.
– Informal rules emerged to govern the Concert
• Collective responsibility for overseeing territorial decisions made
at Vienna.
• Changes could be made only with consultation of major powers.
• No change could be made that would advantage one power.
© 2012 Pearson Education
1815: The Concert of Europe
• Two key factors contributed to the success of the 19th-century
concert system:
– Consensus among the great powers that the status quo in Europe was
worth preserving
– At various points a key state played the role of a balancer state with the
power and interest in tending to the balance even when other states
waivered.
• Pax Britannica: Britain as key balancer
• Rise of nationalism and popular sovereignty
– Idea of popular sovereignty—that political legitimacy rested with the will
of the people—began to undermine traditional monarchies.
– Diplomacy became less about the interests of monarchs and more about
the interests of nation.
– Putnam: international relations as a two-level game
• Negotiations with other states and with key domestic societal actors
© 2012 Pearson Education
1815: The Concert of Europe
• By the end of the 19th century, the balance of power in
Europe was taking on a new form.
– Gone was the commitment of great powers to work in concert to
preserve order and the status quo.
– Gone was the balance of power system.
– Gone was the role of Britain as the balancer state.
• Two competing and rigid alliances emerged
– Triple Alliance: Austria-Hungary and the newly unified Germany and
Italy
– Triple Entente: Britain, France, and Russia emerged as an opposition
alliance
– Dissention and confrontation; European concert over
© 2012 Pearson Education
1815: The Concert
of Europe
In 1914, Archduke Ferdinand,
heir to throne of AustriaHungary, was assassinated by a
Serbian nationalist.
Austria-Hungary declared war
against Serbia.
The conflict quickly spread
across the continent.
Russian military mobilized in
support of Serbia; Germany
mobilized on behalf of AustriaHungary.
Why the breakout and rapid
spread of conflict?
1.
2.
3.
4.
Breakdown of the concert system
Emergence of competing alliances
Rise of nationalism, specifically the
unification of Germany and its rapid
rise in power.
Imperial competition for colonies
among the European powers
• Became the most destructive war in
human history.
•Other members of the alliances entered the
war; extended to the Far East as Japan
declared war against Germany, and AustriaHungary declared war against Japan.
© 2012 Pearson Education
1919: The Experiment
in Collective Security
•Woodrow Wilson
•Rejected the balance of
power—“great game now
forever discredited.”
•“Fourteen Points”
•In the last point he called
for a “general association
of nations.”
•Proposal for a system of
collective security
The Collective Security Approach
• Differs from the idea of balance of
power in three important ways:
1. Assumes that stability results from disequilibrium
of power in favor of peace-loving nations rather
than stability as an outcome when there is
equilibrium of power among nations.
2. While balance of power theory assumes multiple,
flexible alliances, collective security systems
eschew such competitive alliances in favor of one
grand alliance of peace-loving nations.
3. While balance of power remains a system based
on self-help, collective security creates a collective
organization of states with the right, obligation,
and power to monitor and regulate the behavior
of states in matters of war and peace.
•
Wilsonian scholars eventually labeled “idealists.”
– Test of this idealism would rest with the newly
established League of Nations.
– It failed to prevent World War II; ceased operations
after the war.
© 2012 Pearson Education
1919: The Experiment in Collective Security
© 2012 Pearson Education
1919: The Experiment in Collective Security
• Major League of Nation failures
– Failed to respond adequately to Japanese invasion of Manchuria in
1931.
– Sanctions against Italy after invasion of Ethiopia in 1934 had little
effect.
– No response to German invasion of Poland in 1939.
• Sources of failure
– Major powers were not members.
• The United States never joined.
• USSR and Germany initially denied membership
• Japan, Germany, and the USSR eventually left without
consequence.
– Voting was by unanimity, giving all states a veto.
– Collective security itself appeared to be a flawed theory.
© 2012 Pearson Education
1945: The Postwar Bipolar
System
• As WWII wound down, big issue: construction of a system of world
order that would help avoid another great power war
– Rejuvenate the League of Nations?
– Leaders of the Allied countries were not collective security optimists. Not in
favor of an international sheriff or the loss of their own state sovereignty.
– Resurgent “realist” thinking: Hans Morgenthau’s Politics Among Nations
• Result was an inclination toward a balance of power system, but
what type?
– Classical balance of power politics
– Concert system of the 19th century
– Revised approach based on the idea of spheres of influence: each of the great
powers, by mutual agreement among themselves, would be given sole
responsibility and free reign to handle its sphere of influence as it saw fit.
– Attractive to Churchill and Stalin; Roosevelt skeptical
© 2012 Pearson Education
1945: The Postwar Bipolar
System
•
•
•
In practice, the postwar order combined elements of several of these approaches
Yalta Conference – U.S. and Great Britain concede Soviet influence over Eastern Europe.
United Nations
–
–
•
•
•
Introduction of nuclear weapons
Cuban Missile Crisis (1962)
Proxy Wars: conflict in which one state confronts a main rival via third parties rather than
confronting the main adversary directly
–
–
–
•
•
•
•
Resembled an institutionalized version of the 1815 Concert of Europe
Undermined by the Cold War
Korean War (1950–1953)
Vietnam War (1960–1975)
Afghanistan (1979–1989)
Nixon’s policy of détente; SALT agreement
Sino-Soviet split/Nixon visit to China (1972)
Ronald Reagan—end of détente: Soviet Union referred to as an “evil empire” (1980s)
Cold War never went “hot”—bipolarity explanation or the balance of terror
© 2012 Pearson Education
© 2012 Pearson Education
1989: The Post– Cold
War Era
•1980s-era Soviet Reforms
•Perestroika (economic
restructuring)
•Glasnost (openness)
•Intended to save the system
but ultimately led to its collapse
•Symbolic end of the Cold War
was the fall of the Berlin Wall.
•Unification of East & West
Germany
•December 25, 1991 – Gorbachev
resigned and accepted the
dissolution of the Soviet Union.
The Difference of 1989
• End of a period of tension (Cold War) as
opposed to a traditional war.
• Thus the great powers did not make a
conscious effort to devise a new system for
world order as a means to prevent future
war.
• Changes did emerge, however, that many
hoped would provide the basis for a new
era of peace and stability:
1. The end of bipolarity: unipolar movement; likely
replaced by a new bipolarity or an emergent
multipolarity
2. Globalization
3. Democratization
© 2012 Pearson Education
1989: The Post–Cold War Era
• International relations theory and the end of the Cold War
– Liberals
• Saw the emergence of the Kantian triangle (see Chapter One)
• Reflected in expansion of trade and democracy at end of the Cold
War
• Demonstrated by the United Nations effort—led by the U.S.—to
repel the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990–1991
– Constructivists
• Saw the value of norms and identity in the remaking of the U.S.
relationship with the Soviet Union and the peaceful collapse of
communism in Eastern Europe
– Realists
• Believed the new optimism would be short-lived and that violence
would re-emerge.
© 2012 Pearson Education
© 2012 Pearson Education
2001: The World After 9/11
• Post–Cold War era ended abruptly on September 11, 2001.
• End of optimism about a peaceful world bound together by
democracy and markets
– U.S. response – President George W. Bush
• Neo-conservatives
– U.S. launches war against Iraq in 2003
• Debate over “Bush Doctrine” and preemptive versus preventive war
– Historically, preemptive war is war to prevent an imminent attack, and is
permissible according to international law.
– Preventive war is war to prevent a state from becoming a greater threat in
the future or to prevent it from having the capability to attack whether it
currently plans to or not. It is traditionally considered illegal under
international law.
– The Bush Doctrine argued that the line between the two had blurred, and
that the Iraq War was preemptive and legal, while critics said it was a
preventive, illegal war.
© 2012 Pearson Education
2001: The World After 9/11
• What factors define the post-post–Cold War era?
–
New multipolarity?
•
•
–
Some evidence of states increasing military spending and engaging in “soft
balancing,” perhaps as an effort to balance against the United States.
However, the U.S. remains the only multidimensional power with unrivaled
economic, military, and technological prowess.
The end of Eurocentrism?
•
•
–
The world’s attention is shifting from Europe to new centers of power,
particularly in Asia as India and China emerge as major economies.
This could lead to an increase in cultural politics.
Backlash to democracy and globalization?
•
Some trends in the 2000s suggest that a trend toward more democracy and
globalization may have slowed and in some cases reversed.
© 2012 Pearson Education
2001: The World After 9/11
• Questions that emerge in light of these trends
1. Will the great powers once again join in a global
effort to manage the challenges and strains of
the twenty-first century?
2. How successful will those efforts be?
© 2012 Pearson Education
© 2012 Pearson Education
Conclusion
• Central pattern: War and conflict followed by efforts
to design a system to prevent similar conflicts,
followed by the breakdown of that system with the
next war
• Central question: Have those multiple efforts
changed the way the world works?
– Has the world become more peaceful and orderly?
© 2012 Pearson Education