INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, BRIEF EDITION, 3/E SAMPLE … · ternational economic competition. Those...

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INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, BRIEF EDITION, 3/E© 2006

Joshua S. GoldsteinJon C. Pevehouse

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■ U.S. marine and Iraqi girl whose mother was just killed, March 2003.

CHAPTER

■ The Study of IR

■ Actors andInfluences

■ History

1

The Study of IROur world is large and complex. International relations is a fascinating topicbecause it concerns peoples and cultures throughout the world. The scopeand complexity of the interactions among these groups make internationalrelations a challenging subject to master.

Strictly defined, the field of international relations (IR) concerns the re-lationships among the world’s governments. But these relationships cannot beunderstood in isolation. They are closely connected with other actors (such asinternational organizations, multinational corporations, and individuals); withother social structures (including economics, culture, and domestic politics);and with geographical and historical influences. IR is a large subject that over-laps several other fields.

The purpose of this book is to introduce the field of IR, to organize whatis known and theorized about IR, and to convey the key concepts used bypolitical scientists to discuss relations among nations. This first chapter de-fines IR as a field of study, introduces the actors of interest, and reviews thegeographical and historical contexts within which IR occurs.

UnderstandingInternationalRelations

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2 Chapter 1 Understanding International Relations

IR and Daily LifeSometimes international relations is portrayed as a distant and abstract ritual conductedby a small group of people such as presidents, generals, and diplomats. This is not accu-rate. Although leaders do play a major role in international affairs, many other peopleparticipate as well. College students and other citizens participate in international rela-tions every time they vote in an election or work on a political campaign, every timethey buy a product or service traded on world markets, and every time they watch thenews. The choices we make in our daily lives ultimately affect the world we live in.

In turn, IR profoundly affects the daily lives of college students and other citizens.The prospects for getting jobs after graduation depend on the global economy and in-ternational economic competition. Those jobs also are more likely than ever to entail in-ternational travel, sales, or communication. And the rules of the world trading system af-fect the goods that students consume.

Although international economics pervades daily life, war dominates daily life onlyinfrequently. Still, war casts a long shadow. In major wars, students and their friends andfamily go off to war and their lives change irreversibly. But even in peacetime, war isamong the most pervasive international influences in daily life. Children play with wartoys; young people go into military service; TV and films reproduce and multiply the im-ages of war; and wars disrupt economic and social life.

As technology advances, the world is shrinking year by year. Better communicationand transportation capabilities are constantly expanding the ordinary person’s contactwith people, products, and ideas from other countries.

IR as a Field of StudyAs a field of study, IR has uncertain boundaries. As a part of political science, IR is aboutinternational politics—the decisions of governments concerning their actions towardother governments. To some extent, however, the field is interdisciplinary, relating in-ternational politics to economics, history, sociology, and other disciplines. Some uni-versities offer separate degrees or departments for IR. Most, however, teach IR in polit-ical science classes. The focus is on the politics of economic relationships, or the politics ofenvironmental management.

Political relations among nations cover a range of activities—diplomacy, war, traderelations, alliances, cultural exchanges, participation in international organizations, andso forth. Particular activities within one of these spheres make up distinct issue areas onwhich scholars and foreign policy makers focus attention. Examples of issue areas includeglobal trade, the environment, or specific conflicts such as the Arab-Israeli conflict.Within each issue area, and across the range of issues of concern in any international re-lationship, policy makers of one nation can behave in a cooperative manner or a con-flictual manner—extending either friendly or hostile behavior toward the other nation.IR scholars often look at international relations in terms of the mix of conflict and co-operation in relationships among nations.

One kind of politics that has an international character is not generally included inthe field of IR: the domestic politics of foreign countries. That is a separate field of po-litical science called comparative politics. Comparative politics overlaps with IR to the

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The Study of IR 3

considerable extent that domestic politics influences foreign policy in many countries.Furthermore, the scholars who know about IR and foreign policies in a certain countryor region often are the same people who know the most about domestic politics withinthat country or region.

The scope of the field of IR may also be defined by the subfields it encompasses.Traditionally, the study of IR has focused on questions of war and peace—the subfield ofinternational security studies. The movements of armies and of diplomats, the craftingof treaties and alliances, the development and deployment of military capabilities weresubjects that dominated the study of IR in the past, especially in the 1950s and 1960s,and they continue to hold a central position in the field. In the 1990s, after the ColdWar, the subfield of security studies broadened beyond its traditional focus on militaryforces and the superpower arms race. Regional conflicts and ethnic violence began to re-ceive more attention. Meanwhile, interdisciplinary peace studies programs, whichemerged in the 1980s at many universities, sought to broaden concepts of “security” fur-ther—as did feminist scholars. While the study of war, weapons, and military forces con-tinues to be the core concern of international security studies, these trends have ex-panded the boundaries of the subfield.

In the 1970s and 1980s, as economics became increasingly central to internationalrelations, the subfield of international political economy (IPE) grew and became thecounterpoint to international security studies as a second main subfield of IR. Scholars ofIPE study trade relations and financial relations among nations, and try to understandhow nations have cooperated politically to create and maintain institutions that regulatethe flow of international economic and financial transactions. These topics mainly con-cern relations among the world’s richer nations. But, since the 1990s, growing attentionhas been paid to global North-South relations between rich and poor nations (see pp.14–15), including such topics as economic dependency, debt, foreign aid, and technol-ogy transfer. As the East-West confrontation of the Cold War has receded into history,North-South problems have become more salient. So are problems of international en-vironmental management and of global telecommunications. The subfield of IPE is ex-panding accordingly.

The same principles and theories that help us understand international security(in the first half of this book) also help us to understand IPE (in the second half).Economics is important in security affairs, and vice versa. The organization of this bookmay seem to create a divide between the two subfields, but in reality they are inter-woven.

Theories and MethodsIR scholars want to understand why international events occur in the way they do.Why did a certain war break out? Why do some states sign trade agreements while oth-ers do not? Why are some countries so much richer than others? These “why” questionscan be answered in several ways. One kind of answer results from tracing the immediate,short-term sequences of events and decisions that led to a particular outcome. For in-stance, the outbreak of war might be traced to a critical decision made by a particularleader. This kind of answer is largely descriptive—it seeks to describe how particularforces and actors operate to bring about a particular outcome.

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Another kind of answer results from seeking general explanations and longer-term,more indirect causes. For example, a war outbreak might be seen as an instance of a gen-eral pattern in which arms races lead to war. This kind of answer is theoretical because itplaces the particular event in the context of a more general pattern applicable acrossmany cases.

Understanding IR requires both descriptive and theoretical knowledge. It would dolittle good only to describe events without being able to generalize or draw lessons fromthem. Nor would it do much good to formulate purely abstract theories without beingable to apply them to the complex world in which we live.

Different IR scholars emphasize different mixes of descriptive and theoretical work.Like other disciplines, IR includes both basic and applied research. Generally, scholarscloser to the policy process are most interested in descriptive and short-term explana-tions that are useful for managing a particular issue area or region. Other scholars tend tobe interested in more abstract, general, and longer-term explanations. The methods usedin developing and testing various theories can be arrayed roughly along an empirical ver-sus theoretical axis. At one end, many scholars seek knowledge about IR by interviewingpeople in various places and piecing together their stories—a method well suited to de-scriptive explanation or to induction (building theories from facts). At the other end,some researchers create abstract mathematical models of relationships that are all theorywith no real grounding in the empirical reality of international politics—a methodsuited to deduction (predicting facts from a theory). Between these approaches are oth-ers that mix theory and empirical evidence in various ways. Many IR scholars try tomake quantitative measurements of things such as international conflict or trade, anduse statistical methods to make inferences about the relationships among those variables.All of these methods of learning about IR can be useful in different ways, though theyyield different kinds of knowledge.

IR scholars do not agree on a single set of theories to explain IR or even on a singleset of concepts with which to discuss the field. Traditionally, the most widely acceptedtheories—though never unchallenged by critics—have explained international out-comes in terms of power politics or “realism.” But there are many theoretical disagree-ments—different answers to the “why” questions—both within realism and betweenrealists and their critics. Throughout these discussions, no single theoretical frameworkhas the support of all IR scholars.

One way to look at the variety of theories is to distinguish three broad theoreticalperspectives, which may be called the conservative, liberal, and revolutionary world views(see Figure 1.1). In some sense, each is a lens through which the world looks differentand different things seem important. At the same time, the three perspectives can com-plement each other, and most theories draw on all three, though in different proportions.Each world view encompasses a variety of distinct theoretical approaches.

A conservative world view generally values maintenance of the status quo and dis-counts the element of change in IR. These perspectives focus on the laws of power poli-tics, which are considered timeless and universal. Conservative perspectives find theirmost fertile ground in the subfield of international security with its logic of militarypower. They see states as the most important actors (largely because states control thebiggest armies). Relative position with regard to other states is more important than the

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The Study of IR 5

LIBERAL(Freedom)

Evolution of status quo

REVOLUTIONARY(Justice)

Overthrow of status quoCh

angin

g stru

ctur

es

Uncha

nging

stru

ctur

es

CONSERVATIVE(Order)

Preservation of status quo

Primacy of individual

Primacy of society

State units

Class units

The Subject

FIGURE 1.1 ■ Conservative, Liberal, and Revolutionary World Views

Source: Adapted from J. S. Goldstein, Long Cycles: Prosperity and War in the Modern Age. New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 1988.

absolute condition of a state, because with an ever-present possibility of war, winning andlosing matter above all. Conservative approaches tend to value order. Their advocates areprudent and not eager for change, especially rapid change or change that upsets the hier-archy of power in the international system. These perspectives tend to see war as the nat-ural order of things, a necessary evil for which one should always be prepared. They see in-ternational trade as a potential source of national power, a view expressed in IPE asmercantilism (the accumulation of national war chests through the control of trade).

A liberal world view values reform of the status quo through an evolutionary processof incremental change. Theories that build on the liberal tradition often focus on themutual benefits to be gained in IR through interdependence and reciprocity. Gainingwealth in absolute terms is more important from this perspective than gaining power rel-ative to other countries. Liberal approaches find their most fertile ground in the inter-national political economy subfield because of the potentials for mutual gain in trade andexchange, with each nation exploiting its comparative advantage in particular productsand services. Liberal approaches tend to value freedom, especially free trade and freeexchange of ideas. They tend to see war not as a natural tendency but as a tragic mistake,to be prevented or at least minimized by international agreements and organizations.

WEB LINK

Liberalism

The Web Linkicon meansthat inter-active world-wide Webexercises areavailable atthis book’sWeb site (seep. 000).

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A revolutionary world view values transformation of the status quo through revolu-tionary and rapid change. These perspectives often focus on the unfair and exploitive as-pects of international relationships, and on efforts to radically change those relation-ships. Revolutionary approaches have found resonance in areas of IR scholarship dealingwith North-South relations and the developing world because of the evident injustice ofgrinding poverty suffered by a majority of the world’s people. Revolutionary approachestend to value justice. They often see war as a product of underlying exploitative economicrelationships, and see changes in those economic relationships as the key to solving theproblem of war.

Real-world politics mixes these three perspectives in various ways. In the UnitedStates, for example, most conservative politicians adopt classically liberal positions onfree trade. Some European social democrats combine a liberal emphasis on freedomwith a revolutionary concern for justice. Similarly, no theory or scholar in IR is purelyconservative, liberal, or revolutionary.

The theoretical debates in the field of IR are fundamental, but unresolved. Theyleave IR scholarship in a turbulent condition, racing to try to make sense of a rapidlychanging world in which old ideas work poorly. This book lays out the current state ofknowledge without exaggerating the successes of the discipline.

Actors and InfluencesWho are the actors in IR? In one sense, the answer is easy. The actors in IR are theworld’s governments. It is the decisions and acts of those governments, in relation toother governments, that scholars of IR study.

But, in reality, the international stage is crowded with actors large and small whoare intimately interwoven with the decisions of governments. These actors are individ-ual leaders and citizens. They are bureaucratic agencies in foreign ministries. They aremultinational corporations and terrorist groups. The main contours of the drama are de-fined by the interactions of large conglomerate characters—nations—while other actorsweave in and out of that drama.

State ActorsThe most important actors in IR are states. A state is a territorial entity controlled by agovernment and inhabited by a population. A state government answers to no higher au-thority; it exercises sovereignty over its territory (to make and enforce laws, to collecttaxes, and so forth). This sovereignty is recognized (acknowledged) by other statesthrough diplomatic relations and usually by membership in the United Nations (UN).(The concepts of state sovereignty and territoriality are elaborated in Chapter 2.) Thepopulation inhabiting a state forms a civil society to the extent it has developed institutionsto participate in political or social life. All or part of the population that shares a groupidentity may consider itself a nation (see p. 28). The state’s government is a democracy tothe extent that the government is controlled by the members of the population ratherthan imposed on them. (Note that the word state in IR does not mean a state in theUnited States.)

SIMULATION

What’s YourWorld View?

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In political life, and to some extent inIR scholarship, the terms state, nation, andcountry are used imprecisely, usually to referto the decisions of state governments. It iscommon to discuss states as if they werepeople, as in “France supports the UN reso-lution.” In reality, states take such actionsas the result of complex internal processes.Ultimately, only individual human beingsare true actors making conscious decisions.But treating states like people makes it eas-ier to describe and explain the relationsamong them.

With few exceptions, each state has acapital city—the seat of government fromwhich it administers its territory—and often asingle individual who acts in the name of thestate. We may refer to this person simply asthe “state leader.” Often he or she is the headof government (such as a prime minister), orthe head of state (such as a president, or a kingor queen). In some countries, the same personis head of state and government. In othercountries, the prime minister or the presidentor royalty has become a symbolic leadershipposition. In any case, the most powerfulpolitical figure is the one we mean by “stateleader,” and these figures have been the keyindividual actors in IR. The state actorincludes the individual leader as well asbureaucratic organizations (such as foreignministries) that act in the name of the state.

The international system is the set ofrelationships among the world’s states, struc-tured according to certain rules and patterns of interaction. Some such rules are explicit,some implicit. They include who is considered a member of the system, what rights andresponsibilities the members have, and what kinds of actions and responses normally oc-cur between states. The international system is discussed in detail in Chapter 2.

The modern international system has existed for less than 500 years. Before then,people were organized into more mixed and overlapping political units such as city-states, empires, and feudal fiefs. In the past 200 years the idea has spread that nations—groups of people who share a sense of national identity, usually including a language andculture—should have their own states (see pp. 28–29). Most large states today are suchnation-states. But since World War II, the decolonization process in much of Asia andAfrica has added many new states, not all of which can be considered nation-states. Amajor source of conflict and war at present is the frequent mismatch between perceived

Actors and Influences 7

POWERS THAT BE

States are the most important actors in IR. The UnitedStates is the world’s most powerful state. A handful ofothers are considered great powers. Here, Prime MinisterBlair and President Bush agree they were right to over-throw Saddam Hussein, 2003.

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nations and actual state borders. When people identify with a nationality that their stategovernment does not represent, they may fight to form their own state and thus to gainsovereignty over their territory and affairs. This substate nationalism is only one of sev-eral growing trends that undermine today’s system of states. Other such trends includethe globalization of economic processes, the power of telecommunications, and the pro-liferation of ballistic missiles.

The independence of former colonies and, more recently, the breakup into smallerstates of large multinational states (the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia) have increased thenumber of states in the world. The exact total depends on the status of a number ofquasi-state political entities. There were 191 members of the UN in 2005.

Some other political entities are often referred to as states or countries althoughthey are not formally recognized as states. Taiwan is the most important of these. It op-erates independently in practice but is claimed by China (a claim recognized formally byoutside powers and for decades by Taiwan itself), and is not a UN member. Formalcolonies and possessions still exist; their status may change in the future. They includePuerto Rico (U.S.), Bermuda (British), Martinique (French), French Guiana, theNetherlands Antilles (Dutch), the Falkland Islands (British), and Guam (U.S.). HongKong reverted from British to Chinese rule in 1997, and retains a somewhat separateeconomic identity under China’s “one country, two systems” formula. The smaller for-mer Portuguese colony of Macau also reverted to Chinese rule in 1999. The status of theVatican (Holy See) in Rome is ambiguous. Including various such territorial entitieswith states brings the world total to about 200 state or quasi-state actors. Other would-be states (such as Kurdistan and Western Sahara) also do not fully control the territorythey claim and are not widely recognized.

The size of the world’s states varies dramatically, from China with more than 1 bil-lion people to microstates (such as San Marino) with populations of less than 100,000.With the creation of many small states in recent decades, the majority of states nowhave fewer than 10 million people each, and more than half of the rest have 10 to 50million each. Only 23 of the world’s 200 states have more than 50 million people each.These 23 states contain three-quarters of the world’s people. In decreasing order of pop-ulation, they are China, India, the United States, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Russia,Bangladesh, Nigeria, Japan, Mexico, Germany, Vietnam, the Philippines, Turkey,Ethiopia, Egypt, Iran, Thailand, France, Britain, Italy, and Democratic Congo.

States also differ tremendously in the size of their total annual economic activity—Gross Domestic Product (GDP)1—from the $11 trillion U.S. economy to theeconomies of tiny states such as the Pacific island of Vanuatu ($600 million). The world

1 GDP is the total of goods and services produced by a nation; it is very close to the Gross National Product(GNP). Such data are difficult to compare across nations with different currencies, economic systems, andlevels of development. In particular, comparisons of GDP in capitalist and socialist economies, or in richand poor countries, should be treated cautiously. GDP data used in this book are mostly from the WorldBank. GDP data are adjusted through time and across countries for “purchasing-power parity” (how much agiven amount of money can buy). World total GDP is $47 trillion by this method, but only $32 trillionwithout it. See Summers, Robert, and Alan Heston. The Penn World Table (Mark 5): An Expanded Set ofInternational Comparisons, 1950–1988. Quarterly Journal of Economics 106 (2), 1991:327–68. GDP and pop-ulation data are for 2003 unless otherwise noted.

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POLICYPERSPECTIVES

Overview

International policy makers confront a variety of prob-lems every day. Solving these problems requires difficultdecisions and choices. Policy Perspectives is a box fea-ture in each chapter that places you in a particular deci-sion-making perspective (for example, the prime ministerof Great Britain) and asks you to make choices concerningan important international relations issue.

Each box contains three sections. The first,“Background,” provides information about a political prob-lem faced by the leader. This background information isfactual and reflects real situations faced by these deci-sion makers.

The second section, “Scenario,” suggests a new problemor crisis confronting the leader. While these crises are hy-pothetical, all are within the realm of possibility and would re-quire difficult decisions for the leaders and their countries.

The third section, “Choose Your Policy,” asks you tomake a choice responding to the Scenario. With each de-cision, think about the tradeoffs between your options.

What are the risks and rewards in choosing one policyover another? Are there alternative options that could ef-fectively address the problem within the constraints thatexist? Does one option pose more costs in the short term,but fewer in the long term? Can you defend your decisionto colleagues, the public, and other world leaders?

As you consider each problem faced by the decisionmaker, try to reflect on the process and logic by whichyou have reached the decision. Which factors seem moreimportant and why? Are domestic or international factorsmore important in shaping your decision? Are the con-straints you face based on limited capability (for example,money or military power) or do international law or normsinfluence your decision as well? How do factors such aslack of time influence your decision?

You will quickly discover that there are often no “right”answers. At times, it is difficult to choose between twogood options; at other times, one has to decide which isthe least bad option.

economy is dominated by a few states, just as world population is. The United Statesalone accounts for one-fifth of the world economy; together with six other great powersit accounts for more than half (see pp. 62–64). The world’s 15 largest economies—which together make up three-quarters of the world economy—are the United States,China, Japan, India, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Brazil, Russia, Canada, Mexico,Spain, South Korea, and Indonesia.

A few of these large states possess especially great military and economic strengthand influence, and are called great powers (see Chapter 2). The great power system may bedefined as the set of relationships among great powers, with their rules and patterns of in-teraction (a subset of the international system). Great powers have special ways of be-having and of treating each other that do not apply to other states. The most powerful ofgreat powers, those with truly global influence, have been called superpowers. This termgenerally meant the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, but theUnited States is now the world’s only superpower. The great powers and other majorstates (those that have large populations, large economies, or play important roles in in-ternational affairs) are the most important of the state actors in IR. Smaller and weaker

9

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states also are important in IR, but taken singly most of them do not affect the outcomesin IR nearly as much as the major states do.

Nonstate ActorsNational governments may be the most important actors in IR, but they are stronglyconditioned, constrained, and influenced by a variety of nonstate actors, which may begrouped in several categories. First, substate actors, groups and interests within states,influence the state’s foreign policy. For instance, the American automobile and tobaccoindustries have distinct interests in American foreign economic policy (to sell cars orcigarettes abroad; to reduce imports of competing products made abroad). They arepolitically mobilized to influence those policies through interest groups, lobbying, andother means.

The actions of substate economic actors—companies, consumers, workers,investors—help to create the context of economic activity against which internationalpolitical events play out, and within which governments must operate. Day in and dayout, people extract natural resources, produce and consume goods, buy and sell productsand services. These activities of substate actors take place in what is now clearly a worldeconomy—a global exchange of goods and services woven together by a worldwide net-work of communication and culture.

Increasingly, actors operating below the state level also operate across stateborders, becoming transnational actors. Businesses that buy, sell, or invest in a variety ofcountries are a good example. The decision of a company to do business with or inanother state changes the relationship between the two states, making them moreinterdependent and creating a new context for the decisions the governments makeabout each other.

The thousands of multinational corporations (MNCs) are important transnationalactors. The interests of a large company doing business globally do not correspond withany one state’s interests. Such a company may sometimes even act against its homegovernment’s policies. MNCs often control greater resources, and operate internation-ally with greater efficiency, than many small states. MNCs may prop up (or even create)friendly foreign governments. But MNCs also provide poor states with much-neededforeign investment and tax revenues. MNCs in turn depend on states to provideprotection, well-regulated markets, and a stable political environment. MNCs as inter-national actors receive special attention in Chapters 5 and 7.

Another type of transnational actor is the nongovernmental organization(NGO). These private organizations, some of considerable size and resources, interactwith states, substate actors, MNCs, and other NGOs. Increasingly NGOs are beingrecognized, in the UN and other forums, as legitimate actors along with states, thoughnot equal to them. Examples of NGOs include the Catholic Church, Greenpeace, andthe International Olympic Committee. Some of these groups have a political purpose,some a humanitarian one, some an economic or technical one. Sometimes NGOscombine efforts through transnational advocacy networks. There is no single patternto NGOs.

WEB LINK

NongovernmentalOrganizations

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International terrorist networks might not call themselves NGOs, but they operatein the same manner—interacting both with states and directly with relevant populationsand institutions. The spectacularly destructive attacks on the United States onSeptember 11, 2001, demonstrated the increasing power that technology gives terroristsas nonstate actors. Just as Greenpeace can travel to remote locations and beam video ofits environmental actions to the world, so too can the al Qaeda network place suicidebombers in U.S. cities, coordinate their operations and finances through the Internetand global banking system, and reach a global audience with the videotaped exhorta-tions of Osama bin Laden. “Global reach,” once an exclusive capability of great powers,now is available to many others, for better and worse.

Finally, states often take actions through, within, or in the context of intergovernmentalorganizations (IGOs)—organizations whose members are national governments. The UNand its agencies are IGOs. So are most of the world’s economic coordinating institutionssuch as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). IGOs fulfill avariety of functions, and they vary in size from just a few states to virtually the whole UNmembership. For example, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)seeks to coordinate the production and pricing policies of its 12 member states. TheWorld Trade Organization (WTO) sponsors negotiations on lowering trade barriersworldwide and enforces trade rules. Military alliances such as NATO and politicalgroupings such as the African Union are also IGOs.

Together, IGOs and NGOs are referred to simply as international organizations(IOs). By one count there are now more than 25,000 NGOs and more than 5,000IGOs. In this world of interlaced connections, states are still important. But to someextent they gradually are being pushed aside as companies, groups, and individualsdeal more directly with each other across borders, and as the world economy becomesglobally integrated. Now more than ever, IR extends beyond the interactions ofnational governments.

Both state and nonstate actors are strongly affected by the present revolution ininformation technologies. Our information-intensive world promises to reshapeinternational relations profoundly. Technological change dramatically affects actors’relative capabilities and even preferences. Nobody knows where those changes will takeus. Already, information capabilities are the central motor of “globalization.”Telecommunications and computerization allow economics, politics, and culture alike tooperate on a global scale as never before. The ramifications for various facets of IR willbe developed throughout this book.

INFOREV

WWW

THE INFORMATION REVOLUTIONIn each chapter, these “information revolution” icons pose critical-thinkingquestions about the impacts that rapid changes in information technology have onIR. To explore the questions, go to this book’s Web site at www.IRtext.com, enterthe page number in this book, and follow the Information Revolution icon.

To explore the question, go to www.IRtext.com

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Levels of AnalysisThe many actors involved at once in IR contribute to the complexity of competingexplanations and theories. One way scholars of IR have sorted out this multiplicity of in-fluences, actors, and processes is to categorize them into different levels of analysis (seeTable 1.1). A level of analysis is a perspective on IR based on a set of similar actors orprocesses that suggests possible explanations to “why” questions. IR scholars have

TABLE 1.1 ■ Levels of Analysis

Many influences affect the course of international relations. Levels of analy-sis provide a framework for categorizing these influences and thus for sug-gesting various explanations of international events. Examples include:

Global Level

North-South gap World environmentWorld regions Technological changeEuropean imperialism Information revolutionUN Global telecommunicationsReligious fundamentalism Worldwide scientific and business Terrorism communities

Interstate Level

Power IGOsBalance of power DiplomacyAlliance formation and dissolution Summit meetingsWars BargainingTreaties ReciprocityTrade agreements

Domestic Level

Nationalism Political parties and electionsEthnic conflict Public opinionType of government GenderDemocracy Economic sectors and industriesDictatorship Military-industrial complexDomestic coalitions Foreign policy bureaucracies

Individual Level

Great leaders LearningCrazy leaders Assassinations, accidents of historyDecision making in crises Citizens’ participation (voting, Psychology of perception and decision rebelling, going to war, etc.)

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proposed various level-of-analysis schemes, most often with three main levels (and some-times a few sublevels between).

The individual level of analysis concerns the perceptions, choices, and actions ofindividual human beings. Great leaders influence the course of history, as do individualcitizens, thinkers, soldiers, and voters. Without Lenin, it is said, there might well havebeen no Soviet Union. If a few more people had voted for Nixon rather than Kennedy inthe razor-close 1960 election, the Cuban Missile Crisis might have ended differently.The study of foreign policy decision making, which is discussed in Chapter 3, paysspecial attention to individual-level explanations of IR outcomes because of the impor-tance of psychological factors in the decision-making process.

The domestic (or state or societal) level of analysis concerns the aggregations ofindividuals within states that influence state actions in the international arena, such as in-terest groups, political organizations, and government agencies. These groups operate dif-ferently (with different international effects) in different kinds of societies and states.Democracies may act differently from dictatorships, and democracies may act differently inan election year from the ways they do at other times. The politics of ethnic conflict andnationalism plays an increasingly important role in the relations among states. Economicsectors within states, including the military-industrial sector, can influence their govern-ments to take actions in the international arena that are good for business. Within gov-ernments, foreign policy agencies often fight bureaucratic battles over policy decisions.

The interstate (or international or systemic) level of analysis concerns the influence ofthe international system upon outcomes. Thus it focuses on the interactions of statesthemselves, without regard to their internal makeup or the particular individuals who leadthem. This level pays attention to states’ relative power positions in the internationalsystem and the interactions among them. It has been traditionally the most important ofthe levels of analysis.

To these three levels can be added a fourth, the global level of analysis. It seeks toexplain international outcomes in terms of global trends and forces that transcend theinteractions of states. This level deserves particular attention because of the growingimportance of global-level processes. The evolution of human technology, of certainworldwide beliefs, and of humans’ relationship to the natural environment are allprocesses at the global level that influence international relations. The global level isalso increasingly the focus of IR scholars studying transnational integration throughworldwide scientific, technical, and business communities (see Chapter 8). Anotherpervasive global influence is the lingering effect of historical European imperialism.

Levels of analysis offer different sorts of explanations for international events. For ex-ample, there are many possible explanations for the 2003 U.S.-led war against Iraq. Atthe individual level, the war could be attributed to Saddam Hussein’s irrational gamblethat he could defeat the forces arrayed against him; or to President Bush’s desire toremove a leader he personally deemed threatening. At the domestic level, the war couldbe attributed to the rise of the powerful neoconservative interest groups who convincedthe Bush administration and Americans that Saddam was a threat to U.S. security in apost-September 11 world. At the interstate level, the war might be attributed to a lack ofa balancer to U.S. power. With no state willing to back Iraq militarily, the United States(as the largest global military power) was free to attack Iraq without fear of a large-scale

GOLD.7980.cp01.p001-044.v2 5/5/05 9:54 AM Page 13


2 Note that geographical designations such as the “West” and the “Middle East” are European-centered.From Korea, for example, China and Russia are to the west and Japan and the United States are to the east.

military response. Finally, at the global level, the war might be attributable to a global fearof terrorism or even a clash between Islam and the West.

Although IR scholars often focus their study mainly on one level of analysis, otherlevels bear on a problem simultaneously. There is no single correct level for a given“why” question. Rather, levels of analysis help to suggest multiple explanations and ap-proaches in trying to explain a given event. They remind scholars and students to lookbeyond the immediate and superficial aspects of an event to explore the possible influ-ences of more distant causes. IR is such a complex process that there is rarely any singlecause for an outcome. Note that the processes at higher levels tend to operate moreslowly than those on the lower levels. Individuals go in and out of office often; the struc-ture of the international system changes rarely.

An analogy can be drawn with scholars who seek to understand a pattern ofautomobile accidents. A careful study would consider such factors as the individual driv-ers (drunk?), the kinds of vehicles (mechanically unsound?), and the road system (poorlydesigned?). Just as different individuals would drive the same car differently, so woulddifferent national leaders drive the same state to different international outcomes.

GeographyInternational relations takes place in the context of geography. To highlight the insightsafforded by a global level of analysis, this book uses a division of the world into nine re-gions. These world regions differ from each other in the number of states they contain andin each region’s particular mix of cultures, geographical realities, and languages. But eachrepresents a geographical corner of the world, and together they reflect the overallmacrolevel divisions of the world.

The global North-South gap between the industrialized, relatively rich countries ofthe North and the relatively poor countries of the South (see Chapter 7) is the mostimportant geographical element at the global level of analysis. The regions used in thisbook have been drawn so as to separate (with a few exceptions) the rich countries fromthe poor ones. The North includes both the West (the rich countries of North America,Western Europe, and Japan) and the old East (the former Soviet Union and its bloc ofallies).2 The South includes Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and much of Asia.The South is often called the “third world” (third after the West and East)—a term thatis still widely used despite the second world’s collapse. Countries in the South are alsoreferred to as “developing” countries or “less-developed” countries (LDCs), in contrast tothe “developed” countries of the North.

Several criteria beyond income levels help distinguish major geographicallycontiguous regions. Countries with similar economic levels, cultures, and languageshave been kept together where possible. States with a history of interaction, includinghistorical empires or trading zones, are also placed together in a region. Finally, countriesthat might possibly unify in the future—notably South Korea with North Korea and

GOLD.7980.cp01.p001-044.v2 5/5/05 9:54 AM Page 14


China with Taiwan—are kept in the same region. Of course, no scheme works perfectly,and some states, such as Turkey, are pulled toward two regions.

The overall world regions are shown in Figure 1.3 (p. 20). The global North is di-vided into North America (the United States and Canada); Western Europe (mainlyEuropean Union members); Japan/Pacific (mainly Japan, the Koreas, Australia, and NewZealand); and Russia and Eastern Europe (mainly the former Soviet bloc). The South isdivided into China (including Hong Kong and Taiwan); the Middle East (from NorthAfrica through Turkey and Iran); Latin America (Mexico, Central America, theCaribbean, and South America); South Asia (Afghanistan through Indonesia and thePhilippines); and Africa (below the Sahara desert).

Most of these regions correspond with commonly used geographical names, but afew notes may help. East Asia refers to China, Japan, and Korea. Southeast Asia refers tocountries from Burma through Indonesia and the Philippines. Russia is considered aEuropean state, although a large section (Siberia) is in Asia. The Pacific Rim usuallymeans East and Southeast Asia, Siberia, and the Pacific coast of North America andLatin America. South Asia only sometimes includes parts of Southeast Asia. Narrow def-initions of the Middle East exclude both North Africa and Turkey. The Balkans are thestates of southeastern Europe, bounded by Slovenia, Romania, and Greece.

Using the nine world regions as an organizing framework, the world’s states and ter-ritories, whose locations are shown in Figure 1.2, are listed in Table 1.2, with an esti-mated of the total size of each state’s economy (GDP). Reference maps with greater de-tail appear after the preface.

Table 1.3 shows the approximate population and economic size (GDP) of each re-gion in relation to the world as a whole. As the table shows, income levels per capita are,overall, more than five times higher in the North than in the South. The North containsonly 20 percent of the world’s people but 60 percent of its goods and services. The other 80 per-cent of the world’s people, in the South, have only 40 percent of the goods and services.

Within the global North, Russia and Eastern Europe lag behind in income levels,having suffered declines in the 1990s. In the global South, the Middle East, LatinAmerica, and (more recently) China have achieved somewhat higher income levelsthan have Africa and South Asia, which remain extremely poor. Even in the somewhathigher-income regions, income is distributed quite unevenly and many people remainvery poor. Note that more than half of the world’s population lives in the densely pop-ulated (and poor) regions of South Asia and China.

IR scholars have no single explanation of the huge North-South income gap (seeChapter 7). Some see it as part of a natural process of uneven growth in the worldeconomy. Others tie it to the history of imperialism by European states, as well as byRussia, the United States, and Japan. Some see the gap as a reflection of racism—theNorth is predominantly white whereas most of the South is nonwhite.

With the nine world regions as an organizing framework, Table 1.2 lists the world’sstates and territories, and an estimate of each state’s aggregate GDP.

Geography provides one context in which IR takes place; history provides another.Of special interest in IR are the past 500 years, known as the “modern age,” the age ofthe international system of sovereign states. The remainder of this chapter reviews thehistorical development of that system and its context.

GOLD.7980.cp01.p001-044.v2 5/5/05 9:54 AM Page 15

COLOMBIA

MEXICO

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COSTA RICA

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ST. KITTS AND NEVISDOMINICA

MARTINIQUE

NETHERLANDS ANTILLES

BARBADOS

ST. LUCIA

GRENADA

ST. VINCENT ANDTHE GRENADINES

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

BELIZEJAMAICA

GUATEMALA

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BURKINAFASO

GHANA BENIN

NIGERIA

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NAMIBIA

CYPRUS

IS

LEBTUNISIA

PACIFIC OCEAN

ARCTIC OCEAN

ATLANTIC OCEAN

ATLANTIC OCEAN

PACIFIC OCEAN

16

GOLD.7980.cp01.p001-044.v2 5/5/05 9:54 AM Page 16

INDONESIA

TURKEY

RUSSIA

FRANCE

SPAIN

GERMANY

ITALY

PORTUGAL

POLAND

ROMANIA

UKRAINE

NORWAY

SWEDEN

FINLAND

BRITAIN

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ESTONIA

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FIGURE 1.2 ■ World States and Territories17

GOLD.7980.cp01.p001-044.v2 5/5/05 9:54 AM Page 17

TABLE 1.2 ■ States and Territories with Estimated Total 2003 GDP(In Billions of 2004 U.S. Dollars)

North AmericaUnited States 11,000 Canada 1,000 Bahamas 5

Western EuropeGermanya 2,300 Switzerland 200 Luxembourga 30Francea 1,600 Austriaa 200 Iceland 9Britaina 1,600 Portugala 200 Maltaa 7Italya 1,600 Greecea 200 Andorra 1Spaina 900 Denmarka 200 Monaco 1Netherlandsa 500 Norway 200 Liechtenstein 1Belgiuma 300 Finlanda 100 San Marino 1Swedena 200 Irelanda 100

Japan/PacificJapan 3,600 Guam/Marianasb 3 Nauru 0South Korea 900 Solomon Islands 1 Marshall Islands 0Australia 600 Samoa 1 Palau 0New Zealand 90 Vanuatu 1 Kiribati 0North Korea 20 Tonga 1 Tuvalu 0Papua New Guinea 10 Micronesia 0Fiji 5 American Samoab 0

Russia and Eastern EuropeRussiac 1,400 Uzbekistanc 50 Georgiac 10Polanda 400 Croatia 50 Albania 10Ukrainec 300 Sloveniaa 40 Macedonia 10Czech Republica 200 Lithuaniaa 40 Armeniac 10Romania 200 Azerbaijanc 30 Kyrgyzstanc 9Hungarya 200 Turkmenistanc 30 Tajikistanc 7Kazakhstanc 100 Bosnia and Herzegovina 30 Moldova 6Slovakiaa 70 Serbia-Montenegro 20 Mongolia 4Belarusc 60 Latviaa 20Bulgaria 60 Estoniaa 20

ChinaChina 6,600 Hong Kongb 200 Macaub 8Taiwanb 400

Middle EastTurkey 500 Tunisia 70 Lebanon 20Iran 500 Iraq 60 Jordan 20Saudi Arabia 300 Syria 60 Qatar 20Egypt 300 United Arab Emirates 50 Yemen 20Algeria 200 Libya 50 Cyprusa 10Israel/Palestine 100 Kuwait 30 Bahrain 10Morocco/W. Sahara 100 Oman 30

18

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Latin AmericaBrazil 1,400 El Salvador 30 Netherlands Antillesb 2Mexico 1,000 Paraguay 30 Virgin Islandsb 2Argentina 500 Bolivia 20 Bermudab 2Colombia 300 Cuba 20 Suriname 2Chile 200 Panama 20 French Guianab 1Venezuela 100 Honduras 20 St. Lucia 1Peru 100 Trinidad & Tobago 10 Belize 1Puerto Ricob 90 Jamaica 10 Antigua & Barbuda 1Dominican Republic 60 Nicaragua 10 Grenada 1Guatemala 50 Haiti 10 St. Vincent & Grenadines 1Ecuador 50 Martiniqueb 4 St. Kitts & Nevis 1Costa Rica 40 Barbados 4 Dominica 0Uruguay 30 Guyana 3

South AsiaIndia 3,200 Vietnam 200 Afghanistan 10Indonesia 700 Singapore 100 Laos 10Thailand 500 Sri Lanka 70 Brunei 7Philippines 400 Burma (Myanmar) 60 Bhutan 1Pakistan 300 Nepal 40 Maldives 1Bangladesh 300 Cambodia 30 East Timor 0Malaysia 200

AfricaSouth Africa 500 Mauritius 10 Mauritania 4Nigeria 100 Botswana 10 Central African Republic 4Sudan 70 Burkina Faso 10 Somalia 4Ethiopia 50 Namibia 10 Eritea 4Ghana 50 Equatorial Guinea 10 Congo Republic 4Democratic Congo 40 Mali 10 Reunionb 3Uganda 40 Rwanda 10 Sierra Leone 3Angola 30 Niger 10 Cape Verde 3Kenya 30 Chad 10 Liberia 2Zimbabwe 30 Zambia 9 Gambia 2Cameroon 30 Gabon 8 Djibouti 2Côte d’lvoire (lvory Coast) 30 Benin 8 Guinea-Bissau 1Tanzania 20 Togo 7 Comoros Islands 1Mozambique 20 Malawi 7 Seychelles 1Guinea 20 Swaziland 5 São Tomé & Principe 0Senegal 20 Lesotho 5

Madagascar 10 Burundi 4

aEuropean Union. bNonmember of UN (colony or territory).cCommonwealth of Independent States (former USSR).Note: GDP data are inexact by nature. Estimates for Russia and Eastern Europe. China, and other nonmarket ortransitional economies are particularly suspect and should be used cautiously. Numbers below 0.5 are listed as 0.Source: Data are authors’ estimates based on World Bank. Data are at purchasing-power parity. See footnote1 on pg. 8.

19

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GOLD.7980.cp01.p001-044.v2 5/5/05 9:54 AM Page 20

HistoryA new millennium found the world breaking free of the logic of the two world wars and theCold War that dominated the twentieth century. New possibilities were emerging every-where, some good and some bad. With so much change, one might wonder whether history isstill relevant to understanding the world. It is. The basic structures and principles of interna-tional relations are deeply rooted in historical developments. Our brief discussion of these de-velopments begins with a long-term perspective and gradually focuses on more recent history.

World Civilizations to 2000The present-day international system is the product of a particular civilization—Westerncivilization, centered in Europe. The international system as we know it developedamong the European states of 300 to 500 years ago, was exported to the rest of theworld, and in the past century subsumed virtually all of the world’s territory into sover-eign states. It is important to keep in mind that other civilizations existed in otherworld regions for centuries before Europeans ever arrived. These cultural traditionscontinue to exert an influence on IR, especially when the styles and expectations ofthese cultures come into play in international interactions.

North American students should note that much of the world differs from NorthAmerica, whose indigenous cultures were largely exterminated or pushed aside byEuropean settlers. Today’s North American population is overwhelmingly descended

TABLE 1.3 ■ Comparison of World Regions, 2003

Population GDP GDP per Capita Region (Millions) (Trillion $) (Dollars)

The NorthNorth America 300 $12 $39,000Western Europe 400 10 25,000Japan/Pacific 200 5 21,000Russia & E. Europe 400 3 7,000

The SouthChina 1,300 7 5,000Middle East 400 2 6,000Latin America 500 4 7,000South Asia 2,000 6 2,900Africa 600 1 1,700

Total North 1,300 (21%) 30 (60%) 23,000

Total South 4,800 (79%) 20 (40%) 4,200

World Total 6,100 $50 $ 8,200

Note: Data adjusted for purchasing-power parity. 2003 GDP estimates (in 2004 dollars) are from Table 1.2;those for Russia and Eastern Europe, and for China, should be treated especially cautiously.

History 21

GOLD.7980.cp01.p001-044.v2 5/5/05 9:54 AM Page 21


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History 23

from immigrants. In other regions, however (especially in Africa and Asia), Europeanempires incorporated rather than pushed aside indigenous populations. Today’spopulations are descended primarily from indigenous inhabitants, not immigrants. Thesepopulations are therefore strongly rooted in their own cultural traditions and history.

European civilization evolved from roots in the Eastern Mediterranean—Egypt,Mesopotamia (Iraq), and especially Greece. Of special importance for IR is the classicalperiod of Greek city-states around 400 B.C., which exemplified some of the fundamentalprinciples of interstate power politics. By that time, states were carrying out sophisticatedtrade relations and warfare with each other in a broad swath of the world from theMediterranean through India to East Asia. Much of this area came under Greek influ-ence with the conquests of Alexander the Great around 300 B.C., under the RomanEmpire around A.D. 1, and then under an Arab empire (around A.D. 600).

China remained an independent civilization during this time. In the “warring states”period, about the same time as the Greek city-states, sophisticated states (organized asterritorial political units) first used warfare as an instrument of power politics. By about A.D.800, when Europe was in its “dark ages” and Arab civilization in its golden age, Chinaunder the T’ang dynasty was a highly advanced civilization independent of Westerninfluence. Japan, strongly influenced by Chinese civilization, flowered on its own in thecenturies leading up to the Shoguns (around A.D. 1200). Japan isolated itself from Westerninfluence under the Tokugawa shogunate for several centuries, ending after 1850 when theMeiji restoration began Japanese industrialization and international trade. Latin Americaalso had flourishing civilizations—the Mayans around A.D. 100 to 900 and the Aztecs andIncas around 1200—independent of Western influence until conquered by Spain around1500. In Africa, the great kingdoms arose around A.D. 1000 (as early as A.D. 600 in Ghana)and were highly developed when the European slave traders arrived around 1500.

The Arab empire of about A.D. 600 to 1200 plays a special role in the internationalrelations of the Middle East. Almost the whole of the region was once united in thisempire, which arose and spread with the religion of Islam. European invaders—theCrusaders—were driven out. In the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, the easternMediterranean came under the Turkish-based Ottoman Empire, which gave relativeautonomy to local cultures if they paid tribute. This history of empires continued toinfluence the region in the twentieth century. For example, Pan-Arabism (or Arabnationalism), especially strong in the 1950s and 1960s, saw the region as potentially onenation again, with a single religion, language, and identity. The strength of Islamicfundamentalism throughout the region today, as well as the emotions attached to theArab-Israeli conflict, reflect the continuing importance of the historic Arab empire.

Europe itself began its rise to world dominance around 1500, during the Renaissance.The Italian city-states of the period rediscovered the rules of interstate power politics, asdescribed by Niccolò Machiavelli. Feudal units began to merge into large territorial na-tion-states under single authoritarian rulers (monarchs). The military revolution of theperiod created the first modern armies. European monarchs put cannons on sailing shipsand began to “discover” the world. The development of the international system, of im-perialism, of trade and war, were all greatly accelerated by the Industrial Revolution afterabout 1750. Ultimately, the European conquest of the world brought about a single worldcivilization, albeit with regional variants and subcultures. In recent decades, the world re-gions formerly dominated by Europe have gained independence.

GOLD.7980.cp01.p001-044.v2 5/5/05 9:54 AM Page 23


The

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GOLD.7980.cp01.p001-044.v2 5/5/05 9:54 AM Page 24

History 25

The Great-Power System, 1500–2000The modern international system is sometimes dated from the Treaty of Westphalia in1648, which enshrined the principles of independent, sovereign states that continue toshape the international system today. These rules of state relations did not, however,originate at Westphalia; they took form in Europe in the sixteenth century. Key to thissystem was the ability of one state, or a coalition, to balance the power of another stateso that it could not gobble up smaller units and create a universal empire.

This power-balancing system placed special importance on the handful of great powerswith strong military capabilities, global interests and outlooks, and intense interactionswith each other. (Great powers are defined and discussed on pp. 62–64.) A system of great-power relations has existed since around A.D. 1500, and the structure and rules of that sys-tem have remained fairly stable through time, although the particular members change. Thestructure is a balance of power among the six or so most powerful states, which form andbreak alliances, fight wars, and make peace, letting no single state conquer the others.

The most powerful states in sixteenth-century Europe were Britain (England),France, Austria-Hungary, and Spain. The Ottoman Empire (Turkey) recurrently foughtwith the European powers, especially with Austria-Hungary. Today, that historic conflictbetween the (Islamic) Ottoman Empire and (Christian) Austria-Hungary is a source ofethnic conflict in the former Yugoslavia.

Within Europe, Austria-Hungary and Spain were allied under control of theHapsburg family, which also owned the territory of the Netherlands. The CatholicHapsburg countries were defeated by mostly Protestant countries in northern Europe—France, Britain, Sweden, and the newly independent Netherlands—in the Thirty Years’War of 1618–1648. The 1648 Treaty of Westphalia set out the basic rules that have de-fined the international system ever since—the sovereignty and territorial integrity ofstates as equal and independent members of an international system. Since then, statesdefeated in war might have been stripped of some territories but were generally allowedto continue as independent states rather than being subsumed by the victor.

In the eighteenth century, the power of Britain increased as it industrialized, andBritain’s great rival was France. Sweden, the Netherlands, and the Ottoman Empire de-clined in power, but Russia and later Prussia (the forerunner of modern-day Germany)emerged as major players. In the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815), France was defeated bya coalition of Britain, the Netherlands, Austria-Hungary, Spain, Russia, and Prussia. TheCongress of Vienna (1815) ending that war reasserted the principles of state sovereigntyin reaction to the challenges of the French Revolution and Napoleon’s empire. In theConcert of Europe that dominated the following decades, the five most powerful statestried, with some success, to cooperate on major issues to prevent war—a possible prece-dent for today’s UN Security Council. In this period, Britain became a balancer, joiningalliances against whichever state emerged as the most powerful in Europe.

By the outset of the twentieth century, three new rising powers had appeared on thescene: the United States (which had become the world’s largest economy), Japan, andItaly. The great-power system became globalized instead of European. Powerful states wereindustrializing, extending the scope of their world activities and the might of their mili-taries. After Prussia defeated Austria and France in wars, a larger Germany emerged tochallenge Britain’s position. In World War I (1914–1918), Germany, Austria-Hungary, and

GOLD.7980.cp01.p001-044.v2 5/5/05 9:54 AM Page 25


the Ottoman Empire were defeated by a coalition that included Britain, France, Russia,Italy, and the United States. After a 20-year lull, Germany, Italy, and Japan were defeatedin World War II (1939–1945) by a coalition of the United States, Britain, France, Russia(the Soviet Union), and China. Those five winners of World War II make up the perma-nent membership of today’s UN Security Council.

After World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union, allies in the war againstGermany, became adversaries for 40 years in the Cold War. Europe was split into rivalblocs—East and West—with Germany itself split into two states. The rest of the world be-came contested terrain where each bloc tried to gain allies or influence, often by sponsoringopposing sides in regional and civil wars. The end of the Cold War around 1990, when theSoviet Union collapsed, returned the international system to a more cooperative arrangementof the great powers somewhat similar to the Concert of Europe in the nineteenth century.

Imperialism, 1500–2000European imperialism (see Chapter 7) got its start in the fifteenth century with the de-velopment of oceangoing sailing ships in which a small crew could transport a sizablecargo over a long distance. Portugal pioneered the first voyages of exploration beyondEurope. Spain, France, and Britain soon followed. With superior military technology,Europeans gained control of coastal cities and of resupply outposts along major traderoutes. Gradually this control extended farther inland, first in Latin America, then inNorth America, and later throughout Asia and Africa.

In the sixteenth century, Spain and Portugal had extensive empires in CentralAmerica and Brazil, respectively. Britain and France had colonies in North America andthe Caribbean. The imperialists bought slaves in Africa and shipped them to Mexicoand Brazil, where they worked in agriculture and in mining. The wealth produced wasexported to Europe, where monarchs used it to buy armies and build states. These em-pires decimated indigenous populations and cultures, causing immense suffering. Overtime, the economies of the colonies developed with the creation of basic transportationand communication infrastructure, factories, and so forth. But these economies were of-ten molded to the needs of the colonizers, not the local populations.

Decolonization began with the British colonists in the United States who declaredindependence in 1776. Most of Latin America gained independence a few decades later.The new states in North America and Latin America were, of course, still run by the de-scendants of Europeans, to the disadvantage of Native Americans and African slaves.

Acquisition of new colonies by Europe through the end of the nineteenth centuryculminated in a scramble for colonies in Africa in the 1890s. Latecomers such asGermany and Italy were frustrated to find few attractive territories remaining in theworld when they tried to build overseas empires in the late nineteenth century. Indiabecame Britain’s largest and most important colony in the nineteenth century. Only afew non-European areas of the world retained their independence: Japan, most of China,Iran, Turkey, and a few other areas. Japan began building its own empire, as did theUnited States, at the end of the nineteenth century. China became weaker and itscoastal regions fell under the domination, if not the formal control, of European powers.

In the wave of decolonization after World War II, it was not local colonists (as in theAmericas) but indigenous populations in Asia and Africa which won independence.

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History 27

Impe

rialis

m, 1

500–

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GOLD.7980.cp01.p001-044.v2 5/5/05 9:54 AM Page 27


Decolonization continued through the mid-1970s until almost no European coloniesremained. Most of the newly independent states have faced tremendous challenges anddifficulties in the postcolonial era. Because long-established economic patterns continuedespite political independence, some refer to the postcolonial era as being neocolonial.Although the global North no longer imports slave labor from the South, it continues torely on the South for cheap labor, for energy and minerals, and for the products of tropi-cal agriculture. However, the North in turn makes vital contributions to the South incapital investment, technology transfer, and foreign assistance (see Chapter 7).

The collapse of the Soviet Union and its bloc, which reduced Russia to its size of acentury earlier, can be seen as an extension of the post–World War II wave of decolo-nization and self-determination. There, as in much of the global South, imperialism hasleft ethnic conflict in its wake, as new political units come to terms with territorial di-visions created in distant imperial capitals.

Nationalism, 1500–2000Many people consider nationalism—devotion to the interests of one’s nation—to be themost important force in world politics in the past two centuries. A nation is a populationthat shares an identity, usually including a language and culture. But nationality is a difficultconcept to define precisely. To some degree, the extension of political control over large ter-ritories creates the commonality needed for nationhood—states create nations. At thesame time, the perceived existence of a nation has often led to the creation of a correspon-ding state as a people win sovereignty over their own affairs—nations created states.

Around A.D. 1500, countries such as France and Austria began to bring entire na-tions together into single states. These new nation-states were very large and powerful;they overran smaller neighbors. Over time, many small territorial units were conqueredand incorporated into nation-states. Eventually the idea of nationalism itself became apowerful force and contributed to the disintegration of large, multinational states such asAustria-Hungary (in World War I), the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia.

The principle of self-determination implies that people who identify as a nation shouldhave the right to form a state and exercise sovereignty over their affairs. Self-determinationis a widely praised principle in international affairs today (not historically). But it is gener-ally secondary to the principles of sovereignty (noninterference in other states’ internalaffairs) and territorial integrity, with which it frequently conflicts. Self-determinationdoes not give groups the right to change international borders, even those imposedarbitrarily by colonialism, in order to unify a group with a common national identity.Generally, though not always, self-determination has been achieved by violence. Whenthe borders of (perceived) nations do not match those of states, conflicts almost inevitablyarise. Today such conflicts are widespread—in Northern Ireland, Quebec, Israel-Palestine,India-Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Tibet, Sudan, and many other places.

The Netherlands helped to establish the principle of self-determination when it brokefree of Spanish ownership around 1600 and set up a self-governing Dutch republic. Thestruggle over control of the Netherlands was a leading cause of the Thirty Years’ War(1618–1648), in which states mobilized for war in new ways. For instance, Sweden draftedone man out of ten for long-term military service, while the Netherlands used the wealth

GOLD.7980.cp01.p001-044.v2 5/5/05 9:54 AM Page 28

History 29

derived from global trade to finance a standing professional army. This process of popularmobilization intensified greatly in the French Revolution and the subsequent NapoleonicWars, when France instituted a universal draft and a centrally run “command” economy.Its motivated citizen armies, composed for the first time of Frenchmen rather than merce-naries, marched longer and faster. People participated in part because their nation-stateembodied their aspirations and brought them together in a common national identity.

The United States meanwhile declared independence in 1776, held together in theCivil War of the 1860s, and developed a surprisingly strong sense of nationalism,considering its size and diversity. Latin American states gained independence early inthe nineteenth century, and Germany and Italy unified their nations out of multiplepolitical units (through war) later in that century.

Before World War I, socialist workers from different European countries had bandedtogether as workers to fight for workers’ rights. In that war, however, most abandonedsuch solidarity and instead fought for their own nation. Before World War II,nationalism helped Germany, Italy, and Japan to build political orders based onfascism—an extreme authoritarianism undergirded by national chauvinism. And inWorld War II it was nationalism and patriotism (not communism) that rallied theSoviet people to sacrifice by the millions to turn back Germany’s invasion.

In the past 50 years, third world nations by the dozens have gained independenceand statehood. Jews worked persistently in the first half of the twentieth century to cre-ate the state of Israel, and Palestinians aspired in the second half to create a Palestinianstate. While multinational states such as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia have frag-mented in recent years, ethnic and territorial units such as Ukraine, Slovenia, and EastTimor have established themselves as independent nation-states. Others, such asKosovo, are seeking to do so. More than ever, the influence of nationalism is a major fac-tor in international conflict and war.

National identity is psychologically reinforced on a daily basis by symbols such as thenational flag and by various practices designed to reinforce the identification of a popula-tion with its nation and government. In truth, people have multiple identities, belongingto various circles from their immediate family through their town, ethnic or religiousgroup, nation or state, and humanity as a whole (see pp. 133–135). Nationalism has beenremarkably successful in establishing national identity as many people’s primary affiliation.

Democracy can be a force for peace, constraining the power of state leaders to com-mit their nations to war. But popular influence over governments can also increaseconflict with other nations. Over time, democratic participation has broadened to morecountries and more people within those countries. The trend toward democracy seems tobe continuing in most regions of the world—in Russia and Eastern Europe, Africa, LatinAmerica, and Asia. Both nationalism and democracy remain great historical forcesexerting strong influences in IR.

The World Economy, 1750–2000In 1750, Britain, the world’s most advanced economy, had a GDP of about $1,500 percapita (in today’s dollars)—below the present level of most of the global South. However,today Britain produces more than ten times that much per person (with a much larger

WEB LINK

UnderstandingFascism

GOLD.7980.cp01.p001-044.v2 5/5/05 9:54 AM Page 29


population than in 1750). This accomplishment was due to industrialization—the use ofenergy to drive machinery and the accumulation of such machinery along with the prod-ucts created by it. The Industrial Revolution started in Britain in the eighteenth century(notably with the inventions of a new steam engine in 1769, a mechanized thread-spin-ner in 1770, and the cotton gin in America in 1794). It was tied to Britain’s emergingleadership role in the world economy. Industrialization—a process at the world level ofanalysis—spread to the other advanced economies.

By around 1850, the wooden sailing ships of earlier centuries had been replaced bylarger and faster coal-powered iron steamships. Coal-fueled steam engines also drove fac-tories producing textiles and other commodities. The great age of railroad building wastaking off. These developments not only increased the volume of world production andtrade, but also tied distant locations more closely together economically. In this period ofmechanization, however, factory conditions were extremely harsh, especially for womenand children operating machines.

Britain dominated world trade in the nineteenth century. Because Britain’s econ-omy was the most technologically advanced in the world, its products were competitiveworldwide. Thus British policy favored free trade. Britain served as the financial capitalof the world, managing an increasingly complex world market in goods and services. TheBritish currency, pounds sterling (silver), became the world standard. Internationalmonetary relations were still based on the value of precious metals, as they had been inthe sixteenth century when Spain bought its armies with Mexican silver and gold.

By the outset of the twentieth century, however, the world’s largest and most ad-vanced economy was not Britain but the United States. The industrialization of the U.S.economy was fueled by territorial expansion throughout the nineteenth century, addingvast natural resources. The U.S. economy was attracting huge pools of immigrant laborfrom Europe as well. The United States led the world in converting from coal to oil andfrom horse-drawn transportation to motor vehicles. New technical innovations, from elec-tricity to airplanes, also helped push the U.S. economy into a dominant world position.

In the 1930s, the U.S. and world economies suffered a severe setback in the GreatDepression. Adopting the principles of Keynesian economics, the U.S. government useddeficit spending to stimulate the economy. The government role in the economy inten-sified during World War II.

Following World War II, the capitalist world economy was restructured under U.S.leadership. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) date from this pe-riod. The United States provided massive assistance to resuscitate the Western Europeaneconomies (through the Marshall Plan) as well as Japan’s economy. World trade greatlyexpanded, and the world market became more integrated through air transportationand telecommunications. Electronics emerged as a new leading sector, and technologicalprogress accelerated.

Standing apart from this world capitalist economy in the years after World War IIwere the economies of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, organized on communistprinciples of central planning and state ownership. The Soviet economy had somenotable successes in rapidly industrializing the country in the 1930s, surviving theGerman assault in the 1940s, and developing world-class aerospace and militaryproduction capability in the 1950s and 1960s. It launched the world’s first satellite(Sputnik) in 1957, and in the early 1960s its leaders boasted that communist economies

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History 31

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would outperform capitalist ones within decades. Instead, the Soviet bloc economiesstagnated under the weight of bureaucracy, ideological rigidity, environmentaldestruction, corruption, and extremely high military spending. In the 1990s, the formerSoviet republics and their Eastern European neighbors tried—with mixed success—tomake a transition to some form of capitalist market economy, but found it difficult.

Today, there is a single integrated world economy that almost no country can resistjoining. At the same time, the imperfections and problems of that world economy areevident in the periodic crises and recessions of recent years. The emergence of a globalcapitalist economy has sharpened disparities between the richest and poorest world re-gions. While the United States enjoys unprecedented prosperity, Africa’s increasingpoverty has created a human catastrophe on a continental scale.

The Two World Wars, 1900–1950World War I (1914–1918) and World War II (1939–1945) occupied only ten years ofthe twentieth century, but they shaped its character. Nothing like those wars has hap-pened since, and they remain a key reference point for the world today. With perhapsjust two other cases in history—the Thirty Years’ War and the Napoleonic Wars—thetwo world wars were global or hegemonic wars in which almost all major states partici-pated in an all-out struggle over the future of the international system.

For many people, World War I symbolizes the tragic irrationality of war. It fascinatesscholars of IR because it was a catastrophic war that seems unnecessary and perhaps evenaccidental. After a century of relative peace, the great powers marched off to battle forno good reason. There was even a popular feeling that Europe would be uplifted andreinvigorated by a war—that young men could once again prove their manhood on thebattlefield in a glorious adventure. Such ideas were soon crushed by the immense painand evident pointlessness of the war.

The previous major war had been the Franco-Prussian war of 1870–1871, whenGermany executed a swift offensive using railroads to rush forces to the front. That warhad ended quickly, decisively, and with a clear winner (Germany). People expected thata new war would follow the same pattern. All the great powers made plans for a quickrailroad-borne offensive and rapid victory—what has been called the cult of the offensive.The one to strike first would win, it was believed. Under these doctrines, one country’smobilization for war virtually forced its enemies to mobilize as well. Thus, when aSerbian nationalist assassinated Archduke Ferdinand of Austria in 1914 in Sarajevo, aminor crisis escalated and the mobilization plans pushed Europe to all-out war.

The war was neither short nor decisive, however, and certainly not glorious. It boggeddown in trench warfare along a fixed front, with occasional charges over the top into theenemy machine guns. In one 1917 battle, the British in three months fired five tons of ar-tillery shells per yard of front line, over an 11-mile-wide front, and then lost 400,000 menin a failed ground attack. The horrific conditions were worsened by chemical weapons andby the attempts of Britain and Germany to starve each other into surrender.

Russia was the first state to crumble. Revolution at home removed Russia from the warin 1917 (and led to the founding of the Soviet Union). But the entry of the United Statesinto the war on the anti-German side that year quickly turned the tide. In the Treaty ofVersailles of 1919, Germany was forced to give up territory, pay reparations, limit its future

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History 33

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armaments, and admit guilt for the war. German resentment against the harsh terms ofVersailles would contribute to Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in the 1930s. After World War I,U.S. President Woodrow Wilson led the effort to create the League of Nations, a forerun-ner of today’s United Nations. But the U.S. Senate did not approve, and the League provedineffective. U.S. isolationism between the world wars, along with declining British powerand a Russia crippled by its own revolution, left a power vacuum in world politics.

In the 1930s, Germany and Japan stepped into that vacuum, embarking on aggressiveexpansionism that ultimately led to World War II. Japan had already occupied Taiwanand Korea, after defeating China in 1895 and Russia in 1905. In World War I, Japangained some German colonies in Asia. In 1931, Japan occupied Manchuria (northeastChina) and set up a puppet regime there. In 1937, Japan invaded the rest of China andbegan a brutal occupation that continues to haunt Chinese-Japanese relations.

In Europe, meanwhile, Nazi Germany under Hitler in the 1930s had rearmed,intervened to help fascists win the Spanish Civil War, and grabbed territory from itsneighbors under the rationale of reuniting ethnic Germans in those territories withtheir homeland. In an effort to appease German ambitions, Britain and France agreed inthe Munich Agreement of 1938 to let Germany occupy part of Czechoslovakia (knownas the Sudetenland). Appeasement has since had a negative connotation in IR, becausethe Munich Agreement seemed only to encourage Hitler’s further conquests.

In 1939, Germany invaded Poland, leading Britain and France to join the waragainst Germany. Hitler signed a nonaggression pact with his archenemy Joseph Stalinof the Soviet Union and threw his full army against France, occupying most of it quickly.Hitler then double-crossed Stalin and invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. This offensiveultimately bogged down and was turned back after several years. But the Soviet Uniontook the brunt of the German attack and suffered by far the greatest share of the 60 mil-lion deaths caused by World War II. This trauma continues to be a powerful memorythat shapes views of IR in Russia and Eastern Europe.

The United States joined World War II against Germany in 1942. The U.S. econ-omy produced critically important weapons and supplies for allied armies. The UnitedStates played an important role with Britain in the strategic bombing of German cities—including the killing of 100,000 civilians in the firebombing of Dresden in February1945. In 1944, after crossing the English Channel on June 6 (D Day), British-AmericanAmerican forces pushed into Germany from the west while the Soviets pushed from theeast. A ruined Germany surrendered and was occupied by the allied powers.

At its peak, Nazi Germany and its allies occupied virtually all of Europe, exceptBritain and part of Russia. Under its fanatical policies of racial purity, Germany roundedup and exterminated 6 million Jews and millions of others, including homosexuals,Gypsies, and communists. The mass murders, now known as the Holocaust, along withthe sheer scale of war unleashed by Nazi aggression, are considered among the greatestcrimes against humanity in history. Responsible German officials faced justice in theNuremberg Tribunal after the war (see pp. 000–000).

While the war in Europe was raging, Japan fought a war over control of SoutheastAsia with the United States and its allies. Japan’s expansionism in the 1930s had onlyunderscored its dependence on foreign resources: the United States punished Japan bycutting off U.S. oil exports. Japan then destroyed much of the U.S. Navy in a surpriseattack at Pearl Harbor (Hawaii) in 1941, and seized desired territories including

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Indonesia, whose oil replaced that of the United States. The United States, however,built vast new military forces and retook a series of Pacific islands in subsequent years.The strategic bombing of Japanese cities by the United States culminated in the onlyhistorical use of nuclear weapons in war—the destruction of the cities of Hiroshima andNagasaki in August 1945—which triggered Japan’s quick surrender.

The lessons of the two world wars seem contradictory. From the failure of theMunich Agreement in 1938 to appease Hitler, many people have concluded that only ahard-line foreign policy with preparedness for war will deter aggression and preventwar. Yet in 1914 it was just such hard-line policies that apparently led Europe into adisastrous war, which might have been avoided by appeasement. Evidently the bestpolicy would be sometimes harsh and at other times conciliatory, but IR scholars havenot discovered a simple formula for choosing.

The Cold War, 1945–1990The United States and the Soviet Union became the two superpowers of the post–WorldWar II era: Each had its ideological mission (capitalist democracy versus communism), itsnetworks of alliances and third world clients, and its deadly arsenal of nuclear weapons.Europe was divided, with massive military forces of the United States and its North AtlanticTreaty Organization (NATO) allies on one side and massive forces of the Soviet Union andits Warsaw Pact allies on the other. Germany itself was split, with three-quarters of the coun-try—and three-quarters of the capital city of Berlin—occupied by the United States,Britain, and France. The remainder, surrounding West Berlin, was occupied by the SovietUnion. In 1961, East Germany built the Berlin Wall separating East from West Berlin. Itsymbolized the division of Europe by what Winston Churchill had called the “iron curtain.”

Despite the hostility of East-West relations during the Cold War, a relatively stableframework of relations emerged, and conflicts never escalated to all-out war. Althoughthe Soviet bloc did not join Western economic institutions, all the world’s major statesjoined the United Nations (unlike the ill-fated League of Nations).

The central concern of the West during the Cold War was that the Soviet Unionmight gain control of Western Europe—either through outright invasion or throughcommunists’ taking power in the war-weary and impoverished countries of WesternEurope. This could have put the entire industrial base of the Eurasian landmass (fromEurope to Siberia) under one state. The Marshall Plan—U.S. financial aid to rebuildEuropean economies—responded to these fears, as did the creation of the NATOalliance. Half of the entire world’s military spending was devoted to the Europeanstandoff. Much spending was also devoted to a superpower nuclear arms race, in whicheach superpower produced tens of thousands of nuclear weapons (see pp. 000–000).

Through the policy of containment, adopted in the late 1940s, the United Statessought to halt the expansion of Soviet influence globally on several levels at once—military, political, ideological, economic. The United States maintained an extensivenetwork of military bases and alliances worldwide. Virtually all of U.S. foreign policy insubsequent decades, from foreign aid and technology transfer to military interventionand diplomacy, came to serve the goal of containment.

The Chinese communist revolution in 1949 led to a Sino-Soviet alliance (Sino meansChinese). But China became fiercely independent in the 1960s following the Sino-

History 35

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History 37

Soviet split, when China opposed Soviet moves toward peaceful coexistence with theUnited States. In the late 1960s, young radicals, opposed to both superpowers, ranChina during the chaotic and destructive Cultural Revolution. But feeling threatened bySoviet power, China’s leaders developed a growing affiliation with the United Statesduring the 1970s, starting with a dramatic visit to China by U.S. President RichardNixon in 1972. During the Cold War, China generally tried to play a balancer roleagainst whichever superpower seemed most threatening at the time.

In 1950, the Korean War broke out when communist North Korea attacked andoverran most of U.S.-allied South Korea. The United States and its allies (under UNauthority obtained after the Soviets walked out of the Security Council in protest)counterattacked and overran most of North Korea. China sent “volunteers” to helpNorth Korea, and the war bogged down near the original border until a 1953 truce. TheKorean War hardened U.S. attitudes toward communism.

The Cold War thawed after Stalin died in 1953. The first summit meeting be-tween superpower leaders took place in Geneva in 1955. But the Soviet Union senttanks to crush a popular uprising in Hungary in 1956 (an action it repeated in 1968 inCzechoslovakia), and the Soviet missile program that orbited Sputnik in 1957 alarmedthe United States. In Cuba, after Fidel Castro’s communist revolution in 1959, theUnited States attempted a counterrevolution in the botched 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.

The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 ensued when the Soviet Union installed medium-range nuclear missiles in Cuba. The Soviet aims were to reduce the Soviet Union’s strate-gic nuclear inferiority, to counter the deployment of U.S. missiles on Soviet borders inTurkey, and to deter another U.S. invasion of Cuba. U.S. leaders, however, considered themissiles threatening and provocative. As historical documents later revealed, nuclear warwas quite possible. Some U.S. policy makers favored military strikes before the missiles be-came operational, when in fact some nuclear weapons in Cuba were already operationaland commanders were authorized to use them in the event of a U.S. attack. Instead,President John F. Kennedy imposed a naval blockade to force their removal. The SovietUnion backed down, and the United States promised not to invade Cuba in the future.Leaders on both sides were shaken, however, by the possibility of nuclear war. They signedthe Limited Test Ban Treaty in 1963, prohibiting atmospheric nuclear tests, and began tocooperate in cultural exchanges, space exploration, aviation, and other areas.

The two superpowers often jockeyed for position in the third world, supportingproxy wars in which they typically supplied and advised opposing factions in civil wars.The alignments were often arbitrary. For instance, the United States backed theEthiopian government and the Soviets backed next-door rival Somalia in the 1970s;when an Ethiopian revolution caused the new government to seek Soviet help, theUnited States switched its support to Somalia.

One flaw of U.S. policy in the Cold War period was to see all regional conflictsthrough East-West lenses. Its preoccupation with communism led the United States tosupport unpopular pro-Western governments in a number of poor countries, nowhere moredisastrously than in the Vietnam War in the 1960s. The war divided the U.S. public and ul-timately failed to prevent a communist takeover. The fall of South Vietnam in 1975appeared to signal U.S. weakness, especially combined with U.S. setbacks in the MiddleEast—the 1973 Arab oil embargo and the 1979 overthrow of the U.S.-backed Shah of Iran.

WEB LINK

Cuban MissileCrisis

WEB LINK

Vietnam War

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In this period of apparent U.S. weakness, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in1979. Like the United States in Vietnam, the Soviet Union could not suppress rebel armiessupplied by the opposing superpower. The Soviets withdrew after almost a decade of warthat considerably weakened the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, President Ronald Reagan builtup U.S. military forces to record levels and supported rebel armies in the Soviet-alliedstates of Nicaragua and Angola (and one faction in Cambodia) as well as Afghanistan.Superpower relations slowly improved after Mikhail Gorbachev, a reformer, took power inthe Soviet Union in 1985. But some of the third world battlegrounds (notably Afghanistanand Angola) continued to suffer from brutal civil wars into the new century.

In June 1989, massive pro-democracy demonstrations in China’s capital of Beijing(Tiananmen Square) were put down violently by the communist government. Around1990, as the Soviet Union stood by, one after another Eastern European country re-placed its communist government after mass demonstrations. The toppling of the BerlinWall in late 1989 symbolized the end of the Cold War division of Europe. Germany for-mally reunified in 1990. The Soviet leader, Gorbachev, allowed these losses of power inhopes of concentrating on Soviet domestic restructuring under perestroika (economic re-form) and glasnost (openness in political discussion). In 1991, however, the SovietUnion itself broke apart. Russia and many of the other former republics struggledthroughout the 1990s against economic and financial collapse, inflation, corruption, war,and military weakness, although they remained political democracies. China remained acommunist, authoritarian government but liberalized its economy and avoided militaryconflicts. In contrast to the Cold War era, China developed close ties with both theUnited States and Russia, and joined the world’s liberal trading regime.

Scholars do not agree on the important question of why the Cold War ended. Oneview is that U.S. military strength under President Reagan forced the Soviet Union intobankruptcy as it tried to keep up in the arms race. Others claim that the Soviet Unionsuffered from internal stagnation over decades and imploded because of weaknesses ingovernance that had little to do with external pressure.

The Early Post–Cold War Era, 1990–2005The post–Cold War era began with a bang, while the Soviet Union was still disinte-grating. In 1990, perhaps believing that the end of the Cold War had left a power vac-uum in its region, Iraq occupied its neighbor Kuwait in an aggressive grab for control ofMiddle East oil. Western powers were alarmed—both about the example that unpun-ished aggression could set in a new era, and about the direct threat to energy supplies forthe world economy. The United States mobilized a coalition of the world’s major coun-tries (with almost no opposition) to counter Iraq. Working through the UN, the U.S.-led coalition applied escalating sanctions against Iraq.

When Iraq did not withdraw from Kuwait by the UN’s deadline, the United Statesand its allies easily smashed Iraq’s military and evicted its army from Kuwait in the GulfWar. But the coalition did not occupy Iraq or overthrow its government. The costs of theGulf War were shared among the participants in the coalition, with Britain and Francemaking military commitments while Japan and Germany made substantial financialcontributions. This pass-the-hat financing was an innovation, one that worked fairly well.

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History 39

The final collapse of the Soviet Union followed only months after the Gulf War. The15 republics of the Union—Russia under President Boris Yeltsin was just one—had beguntaking power from a weakened central government, declaring themselves sovereign states.This process raised complex problems ranging from issues of national self-determination tothe reallocation of property. The Baltic republics (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), whichhad been added to the Soviet Union only in the 1940s, were leaders in breaking away. Theothers held long negotiations under Gorbachev’s leadership to restructure their confeder-ation, with stronger republics and a weaker center.

The Union Treaty outlining this new structure provoked hard-liners in the oldcentral government to try to seize control of the Soviet Union in a military coup in1991. The failure of the coup—and the role of Russian President Yeltsin in opposingit—accelerated the collapse of the Soviet Union. Soon both capitalism and democracywere adopted as the basis of the economies and political systems of the former Sovietstates. The republics became independent states and formed a loose coordinatingstructure—the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Of the former Soviet re-publics, only the three small Baltic states are nonmembers. Russia and Belarus formeda quasi-union in 2000.

Western relations with Russia and the other republics have been mixed since the1990s. Because of their own economic problems and a sense that Russia needed internalreform more than external aid, Western countries provided only limited aid for the re-gion’s harsh economic transition, which had drastically reduced living standards. Russia’sbrutal suppression of its secessionist province of Chechnya in 1995 and 1999 provokedWestern fears. Russian leaders in turn feared that NATO expansion into Eastern Europewould place threatening Western military forces on Russia’s borders. Meanwhile, Japanand Russia could not resolve a lingering, mostly symbolic, territorial dispute.

Despite these problems, the world’s great powers increased their cooperation afterthe Cold War. Russia was accepted as the successor state to the Soviet Union and tookits seat on the United Nations Security Council. Russia and the United States carried tomajor reductions in their nuclear weapons in the 1990s.

The Gulf War was intended to set valuable precedents for the future—punishment ofaggression, reaffirmation of sovereignty and territorial integrity (of both Kuwait andIraq), utility of the UN Security Council, and willingness of the United States to lead thepost–Cold War order, which then-President Bush named the “New World Order.” Theprime architect of the “New World Order” of the early 1990s was, in many ways, FranklinD. Roosevelt in the 1940s. His vision was of a U.S.-led great-power collaboration througha new United Nations after the defeat of Germany and Japan and their reconstruction asdemocracies.

Hopes for a “New World Order” after the Gulf War quickly collided with less pleas-ant realities, however. Just after the Gulf War in 1991, the former Yugoslavia brokeapart, with several of its republics declaring independence. Ethnic Serbs, who were mi-norities in Croatia and Bosnia, seized about a third of Croatia and two-thirds of Bosniaas territory to form a “Greater Serbia” with the neighboring republic of Serbia. In thoseterritories, with help from Serbia, which controlled the Yugoslav army, the Serb forceskilled hundreds of thousands of non-Serb Bosnians and Croatians and expelled millionsmore, in an effort to create an ethnically pure state.

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The international community recognized the independence of Croatia and Bosnia, ad-mitting them to the UN and passing dozens of Security Council resolutions to protecttheir territorial integrity and their civilian populations. But in contrast to the Gulf War, thegreat powers showed no willingness to bear major costs to protect Bosnia. Instead, they triedto contain the conflict by assuming a neutral role as peacekeeper and intermediary. An armsembargo was imposed on unarmed Bosnia and heavily armed Serbia alike, despite the UNresolutions declaring Serbia the aggressor. The UN sent almost 40,000 peacekeepers toBosnia and Croatia, at a cost of more than $1 billion per year. NATO threatened militaryactions repeatedly, only to back down when costs appeared too high.

In 1995, Serbian forces overran two UN-designated “safe areas” in eastern Bosnia, ex-pelling the women and slaughtering thousands of the men, but then the tide of battleturned and Serb forces lost ground. Fears of a widening war, along with the pressures of anupcoming U.S. presidential election, finally triggered a more assertive international policyin Bosnia. Two weeks of NATO air strikes (the alliance’s first-ever military engagement) in-duced Serb forces to come to terms. U.S. negotiators pushed through the Dayton Agreement,which formally held Bosnia together as a single country, but granted Serb forces great au-tonomy on half of Bosnia’s territory. About 60,000 heavily armed troops, mostly fromNATO (20,000 from the United States, drawn “down and withdrawn by 2004”) establisheda stable cease-fire. Provisions on refugees’ return to their homes, and on the arrest of warcriminals, were not implemented, however. The international forces stayed on year afteryear (gradually shrinking), for fear that withdrawal would spark renewed war.

In contrast to their indecision early in the Bosnia crisis, the Western powers acteddecisively in 1999 when Serbian forces carried out “ethnic cleansing” in the Serbianprovince of Kosovo, predominantly populated by ethnic Albanian. The guerrilla KosovoLiberation Army had been conducting a violent campaign for independence, andSerbian forces had responded with massacres and forced displacements. After a Western-sponsored peace initiative collapsed, NATO launched an air war that escalated over tenweeks as the Serbian government intensified its campaign in Kosovo. Serbian strongmanSlobodan Milosevic was indicted for war crimes by the UN tribunal for the formerYugoslavia (and eventually was delivered for trial in 2001 after losing power). NATOcame under criticism from Russia and China for acting without explicit UN authoriza-tion and interfering in Serbia’s internal affairs. (The international community and theUN considered Kosovo, unlike Bosnia, to be a part of Serbia.) NATO blamed a targetingerror for its bombing of the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia, which triggered nationalisticanti-American demonstrations in China. In the end, Serbian forces withdrew fromKosovo and were replaced by a UN-authorized, NATO-led international force. Mostrefugees returned home, although much of the Serbian minority then fled Kosovo in theface of Albanian reprisals. The province’s destiny remains unsettled, although the in-ternational force remains on the ground.

Other Western military intervention decisions since 1990—outside the strategi-cally important locations of the Persian Gulf and former Yugoslavia—do not easily maponto a “New World Order.” In Somalia, a U.S.-led coalition sent tens of thousands oftroops to suppress factional fighting and deliver relief supplies to a large population thatwas starving. However, when those forces were drawn into the fighting and sustainedcasualties, the United States abruptly pulled out. In Rwanda in 1994, the genocide ofmore than half a million civilians in a matter of weeks was virtually ignored by the

WEB LINK

Kosovo War

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History 41

international community. The great powers,burned by failures in Somalia and Bosnia, de-cided that their vital interests were not atstake. In 1997, the Rwanda conflict spilled intoneighboring Zaire (now Democratic Congo),where rebels overthrew a corrupt dictator.Neighboring countries were drawn into thefighting but the international communitysteered clear even as conditions worsened andmillions of civilians died. The U.S. military in-tervened in Haiti to restore the elected presi-dent, but today Haiti remains mired in povertyand political instability.

Vladimir Putin succeeded Yeltsin asRussia’s president in 1999, while Putin’s waragainst Chechen rebels was still popular withRussians. Despite the leadership change,Russian relations with the West have beenstrained by the continuing challenges of con-flicting interests in multiple areas. FromRussia’s perspective, problems include NATOexpansion, Ukraine’s pro-Western tilt, the lackof foreign aid, the construction of new pipelinesto bypass Russian territory in moving oil fromformer Soviet republics to Western consumers,American withdrawal from the ABM Treaty,and criticism of Russia’s war in Chechnya.

New rifts opened in 2001 between the United States and both China and Europe.The United States stood nearly alone against the rest of the international community ona range of issues—missile defenses, the Kyoto treaty on global warming, a treaty toenforce the prohibition on biological weapons, a proposal to curb international small-arms sales, a proposed International Criminal Court (to replace the ad hoc war crimestribunals of the 1990s), and a proposal to curb tobacco marketing in poor countries.Signaling aspects of this shifting alignment, Russia and China signed a treaty offriendship in 2001, and European countries helped vote the United States off two im-portant UN commissions.

These divisive issues receded when the United States was attacked by terrorists onSeptember 11, 2001. The attack destroyed the World Trade Center in New York and awing of the Pentagon in Washington, DC, killing thousands of Americans and citizensof about 60 other countries. The attacks mobilized support for the United States by avery broad coalition of states, out of a realization that terrorism threatens the interstatesystem itself. President Bush declared a “war on terrorism” that was expected to last yearsand span continents, employing both conventional and unconventional means. In late2001, U.S. and British forces and their Afghan allies ousted the Taliban regime inAfghanistan, which had harbored and supported the al Qaeda network (led by Osamabin Laden) responsible for attacks on the United States.

CHANGE IN THE AIR

Peaceful trends mark the post-Cold War era, but war andterrorism continue. The uneasy relationship of Islam withthe West will influence the directions of the unfolding era.Here, women begin to remove the burqa covering afterthe liberation of Kabul, Afghanistan, December 2001.

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The great-power divisions reappeared, however, as the United States and Britain triedto assemble a coalition to oust Iraq’s Saddam Hussein by force. France and Germany (alongwith Russia and China) bitterly opposed the war, as did millions of protesters around theworld. As the U.S. secretary of defense called France and Germany “old Europe”—in con-trast to the more pro-American “new Europe” states of Eastern Europe just joiningNATO—the dispute brought the Atlantic alliance to a low point and wrecked France’sdream of leading a unified European foreign policy. The Iraq War also weakened the UN’spost–Cold War security role, since the U.S.-led coalition went forward despite its failure towin explicit authorization for war from the Security Council.

The invasion itself was brief and decisive. Iraq was overpowered in three weeks by aregional U.S. military force of 250,000 troops with advanced technology. Many Iraqiswelcomed the end of a dictatorial regime, as had most Afghans in late 2001, but the warinflamed anti-American sentiment especially in Muslim countries such as Egypt andPakistan. While the military phase of the war ended quickly, the stabilization and re-construction of Iraq has proceeded slowly. At the same time, the United States facednew crises involving nuclear weapons programs. North Korea restarted its program,possibly producing half dozen nuclear bombs in 2003, while Iran began, then suspended,processing nuclear material that could be used to build nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, alQaeda continued to carry out attacks around the world

The post–Cold War era may seem a conflict-prone period in which savage wars flareup with unexpected intensity around the world, in places such as Bosnia and Rwanda—even New York City. It is true that the era is complex and unpredictable, leaving someU.S. policy makers susceptible to Cold War nostalgia—longing for a time when worldpolitics followed simpler rules based on a bipolar world order. Despite these new com-plexities, however, the post–Cold War era has been more peaceful than the Cold War. Worldmilitary spending decreased by about one-third from its peak in the 1980s, though itbegan rising again after 2001. Old wars have ended faster than new ones have begun.Latin America and Russia/Eastern Europe have nearly extinguished significant interstatewar in their regions, joining a zone of peace already encompassing North America,Western Europe, Japan/Pacific, and China.

Warfare is diminishing worldwide but remains “hot” in an arc of conflict from Africathrough the Middle East to South Asia. Long, bloody wars in South Africa, Mozambique,and Ethiopia-Eritrea are over or ending. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict saw rising ex-pectations of peace in the 1990s, but the conflict worsened again in 2000 after a proposeddeal fell through. With the election of a moderate Palestinian president in 2005 after thedeath of Yassir Arafat, hopes for a durable peace rose again. A fragile cease-fire took holdin early 2005. Peace agreements ended long-standing wars in several countries. TheSerbian ultranationalism that undermined world order in the 1990s was put down by in-ternational action and then decisively repudiated by Serbs themselves. World order in the1990s did not spiral out of control with rampant aggression or major war.

In international economic relations, the post–Cold War era is one of globalization.Countries worldwide are integrating into a world market, for better or worse. New hubs ofeconomic growth are emerging, notably in parts of Asia with remarkable economic growthin the 1990s (despite a sharp setback in 1997). At the same time, disparities between therich and poor are growing, globally and within individual countries (including the UnitedStates). Globalization has created backlashes among people who are adversely affected or


CHANGINGWORLDORDER

A New Era?

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who believe their identities are threatened by foreign influences. The resurgence of na-tionalism and ethnic-religious conflict—occasionally in brutal form—results partly fromthat backlash. So does the growing protest movement against capitalist-led globalization.

China is becoming more central to world politics in the new century. Its size andrapid growth make China a rising power—a situation that some scholars liken toGermany’s rise a century earlier. Historically, such shifts in power relations have causedinstability in the international system. China is the only great power that is not ademocracy. Its poor record on human rights—symbolized by the killing of hundreds ofpeaceful demonstrators in Tiananmen Square (Beijing) in 1989—makes it a frequenttarget of Western criticism from both governments and NGOs.

China holds (but seldom uses) veto power in the UN Security Council, and it has acredible nuclear arsenal. China adjoins several regional conflict areas and affects the globalproliferation of missiles and nuclear weapons. It claims disputed territory in the resource-richSouth China Sea, but has not fought a military battle in 25 years. China is the only greatpower from the global South. Its population size and rapid industrialization make China abig factor in the future of global environmental trends such as global warming. All these el-ements make China an important actor in the coming decades.

The post–Cold War era has barely begun. The transition has been a turbulent time,full of international changes and new possibilities both good and bad. It is likely,however, that basic rules and principles of IR—those that scholars have long struggled tounderstand—will continue to apply, though their contexts and outcomes may change.Most central to those rules and principles is the concept of power, to which we now turn.

THINKING CRITICALLY1. Pick a current area in which interesting international events are taking place.

Can you think of possible explanations for those events from each of the four lev-els of analysis? (See Table 1.1, p. 12.) Do explanations from different levels pro-vide insights into different aspects of the events?

2. For a given nation-state that was once a colony, can you think of ways in which thestate’s current foreign policies might be influenced by this past history?

3. Given the contradictory lessons of World War I and World War II, for which sit-uations in today’s world would appeasement (a conciliatory policy) be the bestcourse? For which situations would hard-line containment policies be best? Why?

CHAPTER SUMMARY■ IR affects daily life profoundly; we all participate in IR.■ IR is a field of political science, concerned mainly with explaining political

outcomes in international security affairs and international political economy.■ Theories complement descriptive narratives in explaining international events and

outcomes, but scholars do not agree on a single set of theories or methods to use instudying IR.

Chapter Summary 43

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❑ A❑ B❑ C❑ D

➚

■ States are the most important actors in IR; the international system is based on thesovereignty of (about 200) independent territorial states.

■ States vary greatly in size of population and economy, from tiny microstates togreat powers.

■ Nonstate actors such as multinational corporations (MNCs), nongovernmentalorganizations (NGOs), and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) exert a grow-ing influence on international relations.

■ The worldwide revolution in information technologies will profoundly reshape thecapabilities and preferences of actors in IR, in ways that we do not yet understand.

■ Four levels of analysis—individual, domestic, interstate, and global—suggestmultiple explanations (operating simultaneously) for outcomes observed in IR.

■ A variety of world civilizations were conquered by Europeans over several centuries andforcefully absorbed into a single global international system initially centered in Europe.

■ The great-power system is made up of about half a dozen states (with membershipchanging over time). Great powers have restructured world order through recurrentwars, alliances, and the reign of hegemons (states that temporarily gain a prepon-derance of power in the international system).

■ Nationalism strongly influences IR; conflict often results from the perception of na-tionhood leading to demands for statehood or for the adjustment of state borders.

■ Democracy is a force of growing importance: more states are becoming democrati-cally governed, and democracies rarely fight each other in wars.

■ The world economy has generated wealth at an accelerating pace in the past two cen-turies and is increasingly integrated on a global scale, although with huge inequalities.

■ World War I and World War II dominated the twentieth century, yet they seem tooffer contradictory lessons about the utility of hard-line or conciliatory foreign poli-cies. For most of the 50 years since World War II, world politics revolved around theEast-West rivalry of the Cold War. This bipolar standoff created stability andavoided great-power wars, including nuclear war, but harmed third world statesthat became proxy battlegrounds.

■ The post–Cold War era that began in the 1990s holds hope of general great-powercooperation despite the appearance of new ethnic and regional conflicts.

■ A “war on terrorism”—with broad international support but uncertain scope and du-ration—began in 2001 after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

■ The U.S. military campaign in Iraq overthrew a genocidal dictator, but divided thegreat powers and heightened anti-Americanism worldwide.

ONLINE PRACTICE TESTTake an online practice test atwww.IRtext.com


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