• A great power is a state that has significant military

capabilities (10% or more of the total system’s

resources).

• A great power has a span of interests that exceeds its

immediate geographical environment

• A great power has significant reach capacity; it is

capable of quickly projecting significant military

capabilities across great distances.

• In the nuclear era, great powers posses a second-strike

nuclear capability

The international perspective of the

Great Powers is affected by the

following five factors

• The structure of the international system

• The nature of relations with other great powers

• The geopolitical position of each great power

• Historical experience

• Domestic structure

The American perspective of IR:

General characteristics

• Principal motivation for U.S. behavior in world politics is arguably economic: free trade and a free flow of resources, markets, and raw materials for U.S. economy.

• Regional dominance: the Monroe Doctrine

• History of isolationism

• Transformation through imperialism

• Gradually increased global involvement

• International stability as the key interest and its relationship to the economic sources of foreign policy

• Democratization as a secondary motivator; abandoned when it contradicts strategic or economic interests

• Most of the 19th century—Isolationism in global affairs;

economic involvement in Latin America.

• Toward the end of the 19th century—growing

involvement in world politics, mostly to protect

imperialist and trade interests.

• U.S. entry into WWI—forced by the unrestricted

German submarine warfare; the practical purpose was to

insure freedom of trade routes with Europe

• U.S. returned to isolationist policy between the two

world wars, but growing economic ties with Europe. U.S.

recession of 1929 had major economic effect on all of

the key European economies.

• The key lesson for U.S. foreign policy after WWII—the

untenability of isolationism in modern world politics

• U.S. foreign policy in the cold war can be broken up to three parts:

containment, détente, and unrestricted competition

• U.S. containment policy, born out of a series of crises in Eastern

Europe and the Far East (Korea). Characteristics—ideological

competition, attempts to forge anti-communist alliances, arms race.

• Detente emerged out of a growing recognition of the dangers of

continued competition, the need for peaceful coexistence under

limited competition, and the need to curb the nuclear arms race.

• The Reagan Administration escalated the ideological and strategic

competition with the Soviet Union

• Preserving a hierarchical international system, versus the need to

pay the price of being a global policeman.

• Dealing with rising competitors in the economic arena; the EU,

Japan, China

• Dealing with new threats to U.S. security—terrorism; anti-

Americanism, the possibility of a clash of civilizations.

• Unilateralism versus multilateralism

• The trials and tribulations of globalization.

• With power comes responsibility—dealing with environmental

and human disasters on a global scale

Central factors in Russian/Soviet foreign policy

1. History of invasions from the West

2. Lack of direct access to warm water ports

3. Multiethnic states

4. A history of political instability and limited legitimacy of the

regime.

5. Fundamental economic problems

6. Lack of democratic tradition

• 19th Century

•Balance of power politics

•Where is the industrial revolution?

• Early 20th Century

•The defeat in the Russo-Japanese War

•Reforms and WWI

• The Rise of Communism and the internal debate about

global or local revolution

•The Communist revolution and the Russian civil war,

1918-20

•The Stalin-Trotsky debate about the nature of communist

revolution

• World War II and its aftermath

•Building an iron curtain in Eastern Europe

•Dealing with western reconstruction incentives

• The Soviet Union in the Cold War

•The SU and Eastern Europe

•The SU and developing countries

• The China Rift

•Issues

•Ideological competition

• The Collapse of the Soviet Union and Russia’s foreign policy

•Reasons for the collapse

•The rise of Russian nationalism

•Economics, politics, and international affairs in the post-

Cold War era

Dilemmas of Russian foreign policy in the

post-Cold War era

• A significant gap between the self-perceived status of a Great

Power and the domestic and economic capacity to act as one

• Foreign policy towards post-communist states and former

Soviet republics

• The rise of a threat from the West

• Domestic problems plague the internal sovereignty of Russia

• Command and control of nuclear weapons

• Relations with rising powers in Asia

Chinese Foreign Policy: Basic

Characteristics

The historical legacy—a heritage of regional supremacy and global weakness

A vision of Asian hegemony and vulnerability

Problems of domestic size and instability

Population pressures

The Chinese brand of communism

Open marked socialism

Key Turning Points in Chinese History

The imperialist intervention in China

Sun Yat-Sen and the Chinese revolution of 1911

The split between Chinese nationalist and communist movements. The first stage of the Chinese civil war

The Japanese invasion of 1936 and WWII

The second stage of the Chinese civil war and the formation of Formosa/Taiwan

The Korean War

The Cultural Revolution

The Soviet-Chinese conflict

Détente with the West

China’s Market Socialism in the post-Mao era

Is China a Great Power?

China’s population—asset or burden

The stability of the regime

South-East Asian interests

Global interests?

Chinese economic and military potential

Will China assume the burden of major

powerhood?