World Politics in The 21st Century

Includes a website with online quizzes, assessment of key concepts, video documentaries and interviews, and news feeds
so you arent always stuck in the book Has a design that is sleek, friendly, and easy to use. Think BMW, but in paper form. OK, bad analogy. Really though, it looks nice. And thats only the beginning. To help get the material across and make it easier for you, each chapter includes Test Prep Questions, a Marginal Glossary that gives you definitions right when you need them, Key Terms at the beginning of chapters, Marginal Icons that link you to web content, and a Learning Objectives Review so you know whats going to be covered. Oh yeah, and the website is very cool. Its got the stuff mentioned above plus video interviews and documentaries from CNN, photo essays, and additional articles. See people like Maria Stephan from the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict. Get a better handle on concepts like mutually assured destruction by watching a CNN video. If youre like me and learn better from visual information, youll love this website . . . . !!!
website: www.Between Nations.org/
Some Last Things
--> -> Before the Fun Begins

So what you end up with is a text that is well organized, easy to read, and maybe, just maybe, even enjoyable to use. Its been tailor-made to include the type of things you want so that studying (and your grade) come easier. When students were asked to compare a chapter from this book to another, they responded overwhelmingly in favor of this one. So thats it. You can quit reading this and start using a book thats easier and more enjoyable. Yes, you still have to read it, but hey, at least students like you helped design it.
This page intentionally left blank
World Politics in the 21st Century

Student Choice Edition

W. Raymond Duncan
State University of New York, Brockport
Barbara Jancar-Webster
State University of New York, Brockport
Bob Switky
Sonoma State University
Houghton Mifin Harcourt Publishing Company

Boston New York
Publisher: Suzanne Jeans Senior Sponsoring Editor: Traci Mueller Marketing Manager: Edwin Hill Discipline Product Manager: Lynn Baldridge Senior Development Editor: Jeffrey Greene Senior Project Editor: Nancy Blodget Senior Media Producer: Lisa Ciccolo Content Manager: Janet Edmonds Art and Design Manager: Jill Haber Cover Design Director: Tony Saizon Senior Photo Editor: Jennifer Meyer Dare Senior Composition Buyer: Chuck Dutton New Title Project Manager: James Lonergan Editorial Assistant: Evangeline Bermas Marketing Assistant: Samantha Abrams Editorial Assistant: Jill Clark Cover Image Credits Protesters: Peter Turnley / CORBIS Sumo wrestler: Creasource / CORBIS Student Choice logo: Trevor Hunt / iStockphoto
Copyright 2009 by Houghton Mifin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Houghton Mifflin Company unless such copying is expressly permitted by federal copyright law. Address inquiries to College Permissions, Houghton Mifin Company, 222 Berkeley Street, Boston, MA 02116-3764. Printed in the U.S.A. Library of Congress control number: 2007940571 Instructors exam copy: ISBN 13: 978-0-547-05634-0 ISBN 10: 0-547-05634-6 For orders, use student text ISBNs: ISBN 13: 978-0-547-05634-0 ISBN 10: 0-547-05634-6 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 WEB 12 11 10 09 08
Brief Contents
Part 1 Foundation of World Politics
Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 The Importance of World Politics 2 Approaches to World Politics 30 Analyzing World Politics 62
Part 2 Driving Forces in World Politics

Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Power in World Politics 96 Foreign-policy Formation and Execution 130 Intergovernmental Actors 160 Non-state Actors 200 Political Geography 230 Nationalisms Power in World Politics 262
Part 3 Significant Issues in 21st Century World Politics

Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Global Violence: Wars, Weapons, Terrorism 290 Human Rights, Women, and Global Justice 328 International Political Economy and Developed Countries 368 The Politics of Development 400 The Global Environment 434
vii
Contents
Preface xiii
Chapter 1 The Importance of World Politics 2

What Is World Politics? c 5
Politics as the Authoritative Allocation of Values 5 An Overview of World Politics 8 Current Political Trends 10
What Are the Subjective Approaches to c World Politics? 55

Critical Theory 56 Constructivism 56 Feminist Theories in International Relations 57 Critiques of Constructivism 58 Critical Theory in Perspective 58
Why Study World Politics? c
13
Join the Debate: Looking Out for Number One 59 Learning Objectives Review 61 Resources on the Web 61
Relating International Affairs to Your Life 13 Interconnections and Patterns in Politics 15
What New Forces Are Shaping the Planet? c
18
Information Technology 18 The New Global and Transnational Issues 20 The Increasing Inability of the State to Solve Problems 21 The Rise of Ethnic Nationalism and Religious Fundamentalism 22 New Citizen Activism 25
Chapter 3 Analyzing World Politics 62

The State: The Basic Unit of Analysis in the c International System 64
The State and Its Primary Characteristics 64 The Origins and Development of the State The European Experience 67
Join the Debate: Should There Be One World Government? 27 Learning Objectives Review 29 Resources on the Web 29
What Are the Levels of Analysis? c
71
Chapter 2 Approaches to World Politics 30

What Are the Tools of Analysis in World Politics? c
Political Realism 34 Idealism 36 The Ecological Paradigm 38
The International System as a Whole 71 The Regional Level of Analysis 77 The State Level of Analysis 78 The Substate Level of Analysis 80 The Individual Level of Analysis 84
Applying the Levels of Analysis to Understand c 33 International Relations 89

Applying the Levels of Analysis: The Example of Afghanistan 90 Afghanistan from the Systems Level of Analysis 90
What Theories of World Politics Flow from the c Paradigms? 41

Political Realism 42 Idealism 45 Marxism 45 Liberalism 48 The Ecological Paradigm 50
Join the Debate: The New Global Civil Society Is Great! 92 Learning Objectives Review 94 Resources on the Web 95
viii
Contents
ix
Chapter 4 Power in World Politics 96

What Is Power, and How Is It Measured? c
The Nature of Power 99 Dynamics of Power 101
Chapter 6 Intergovernmental Actors 160

98 What Are Intergovernmental Organizations? c
The Structure and Functions of International Organizations 162
162
What Are the Major Elements of Power? c
105
Why Do Countries Join Intergovernmental c Organizations? 165

The Benets of IO Membership 165 Supranationality and Reciprocity among Member-states 167 Rejecting IGO Membership 169
Objective (Tangible) Sources of Power 105 Subjective Power Factors 111
What Patterns of Power Relationships Exist c among States? 116

Balance of Power 117 Power Shifts and Realignments 121 The Rise of Terrorist Power 124 Collective Security as a Method of Seeking Security 124
What Is the United Nations, and How Does It Work? c

The Historical Road to the United Nations 170 Managing Global Peace through the Security Council 171 Managing Global Economic and Social Issues 175 Managing the UNs Affairs 179 Assessing the UNs Effectiveness 182
170
Join the Debate: The Big Debate About China: Will It Be the Worlds Next Superpower? 126 Learning Objectives Review 128 Resources on the Web 129
What Is the European Union, and How Does It Work? c

The Origins of the European Union 185 The Rationale for European Cooperation 185 The Main European Union Institutions 187 How Voting Matters in the EU and in IGOs in General 190 The Future of the European Union 192
184
Chapter 5 Foreign-policy Formation and Execution 130

What Is Foreign Policy? c 133
An Approach to Translating Power into Action 133 A Set of Core, Middle-range, and Long-range Goals 135
Join the Debate: The United States Should Leave the United Nations 196 Learning Objectives Review 198 Resources on the Web 199
How Is Foreign Policy Formulated? c
141
International Systemlevel, State-level, and Individual-level Factors 141 Beliefs Shape Foreign-policy Decisions: Ideology, Religion, and Nationalism 143 Some Perspectives on Foreign-policy Decision Making 144
Chapter 7 Non-state Actors 200

152 What Factors Explain the Rise of Nongovernmental c Organizations? 203
Political Factors 204 Economic Factors 205 Technology 206
What Are the Foreign-policy Repercussions of 9/11? c

Americas War on Terrorism 152 The Bush Doctrine 153
Join the Debate: Globalization Demands a New Foreignpolicy Approach for the Sovereign State 156 Learning Objectives Review 158 Resources on the Web 159
What Are the Goals, Strategies, and Tactics of NGOs? c

Greenpeace 207 Amnesty International 209
207
What Corporate Actors Operate in the International Arena, c and How Powerful Are They? 211
Exploring the International Business Scene 211 The Economic Clout of Corporate Actors 214
How Do History and Location Shape Twenty-rst Century c Nationalism? 276

Russias National Identity 277 Americas National Identity 278 Distinctions in Ethnic Nationalism 279 Religious Nationalism 281
What Is the Relationship between States and NGOs? c

Complaints against NGOs 215 Political Opposition to Greenpeace 216 Political Opposition to Amnesty International 218 Political Opposition to Corporate Actors 220 State-NGO Relations in Perspective 223
215
How Do Leaders Use Nationalism in Foreign Policy? c
283
Join the Debate: Should the International Community Allow Minke Whaling? 226 Learning Objectives Review 228 Resources on the Web 229
Seeking to Legitimize Power 283 Promoting State Political Unity and Economic Development 284 Promoting Self-determination Movements 285 Legitimizing a Leaders Preferred Policy Direction 285 A Summary of Nationalism 286
Join the Debate: Should America Try to Transplant Its Civic Nationalism Abroad? 287 Learning Objectives Review 288 Resources on the Web 289
Chapter 8 Political Geography 230

What Is Political Geography? c 233
Issues and Perspectives of Political Geography 234 The Players in Political Geography: Uniting and Dividing Forces 239
Chapter 10 Global Violence: Wars, Weapons, Terrorism 290

What Are the Causes of War? c 292
Wars for Material and Political Gain 293 The Nature of the State 295 Wars Based on Ideas or Perceptions 295 Structural Causes of War 298 War: A Complex issue 299
How Does Geography Impact a States Power and c Security? 244

Location and Power 244 Geographys Impact on Territorial Security 249
How Does Geography Shape Human Perceptions? c

The Power and Problem of Perceptions 253 The Power of Territory in Self-Identity: National, Regional, and Religious 254 Maps and Perceptions 256
253
What Are the Weapons of War, and Can They Be c Controlled? 300
Weapons of Mass Destruction 301 Conventional Weapons Versus Unconventional Weapons 303 Controlling the Weapons of War 306
Join the Debate: Does Geography Matter in a Globalized World? 259 Learning Objectives Review 261 Resources on the Web 261
What Is Terrorism, and What Can Be Done about It? c

Types of Terrorism 310 Terrorist Objectives and Tactics 311 Why Terrorists Stop Terrorizing 313 International Counterterrorism Efforts 315 Future Terrorist Threats 316
310
Chapter 9 Nationalisms Power in World Politics 262

What Is Nationalism? 266 c
National Identity: Taproot of Nationalism 266 A Psychological Group Identity among People 267 An Emotional Force that Ignites Peoples Passions 268 Historical Force of National Identity 271 A Driving Force with Positive and Negative Effects 273
How Can Global Violence Be Controlled? c
318
Reducing Motivations for Violence: Deterrence 319 Nuclear Deterrence among States 319 International Law and Organizations 321 The Future Applicability of International Law 324
Contents
xi
Join the Debate: Is the World Safer with More Nuclear States? 325 Learning Objectives Review 326 Resources on the Web 327
What Are Free Trade and Protectionism? c
373
Chapter 11 Human Rights, Women, and Global Justice 328

What Are Human Rights? c 333
The Origin of Human Rights 333 Global Justice 335 Justice as Fairness 336 International Conventions on Human Rights 338
The Policy of Free Trade 373 An Analysis of Protectionism 377 Trading Blocs 382 Protectionist Trends 382 Managing the Global Trading System 384 The World Trade Organization 384
How Does the Global Financial System Work? c
388
A Brief History of Currency 389 Unifying a Region: Europes Single Currency 390 Managing the International Monetary System 392
Join the Debate: What Is the Impact of Multinational Corporations? 397 Learning Objectives Review 398 Resources on the Web 399
Why Are Womens Rights Human Rights? c
342
A History of Low Political, Economic, and Social Status 342 The Rise of the Womens Movement 343 Womens Rights Today 344 Womens Rights as Human Rights 345
Chapter 13 The Politics of Development 400

What Is Meant by Development ? c 403
A Transformation of a Countrys Underdevelopment 406 Crafting a Denition of Development 408 Classifying the Worlds Countries 410
How Do Feminist Theories of International Relations c Address Human Rights? 347

Five Feminist International Relations Theories 347 Feminist Explanations of Gender Bias in International Relations 349
What Theories Explain Rich and Poor Countries? c
412
How Has the International Community Responded to c Human Rights Violations? 355
International Response to Improving the Status of Women Around the World 355 The UN and Human Rights Intervention 360
Three Main Theoretical Approaches 412 Theory and Practice of Cooperation among Developing Countries 417
What Factors Affect the Politics of Development? c
419
Join the Debate: Womens Rights Are Not Human Rights 365 Learning Objectives Review 366 Resources on the Web 367
Chapter 12 International Political Economy and Developed Countries 368

What Is International Political Economy? c 370
Theoretical Perspectives on International Political Economy 370
The Colonial Legacy 420 Economic and Human Health Factors 421 Government Factors 422 Violence within and between Developing Countries 423 The Role of Globalization and Relations with Developed States 426 The Role of Non-Western Political Thought 427 The Role of Ethnic and Religious Nationalism 428
What Is the Relationship between Development and c Democracy? 429 Join the Debate: Can Outside Aid Help Africa? 432 Learning Objectives Review 433 Resources on the Web 433
xii
Chapter 14 The Global Environment 434

What Factors Inuence Sustainable Development? c
Natural Resources 438 Population 441
Endnotes A1 Photo Credits A11

438
Answers to Test Preppers A12 Name and Subject Index I1
What Are the Challenges to Sustainable c Development? 443

The Challenge of the Industrial and Scientic Revolutions 443 The Green and Biotech Revolutions 454
How Is the International Community Addressing c These Challenges? 456

Climate Change 457 Air Pollution 459 Energy Wars 462 Water Scarcity and Water Pollution 465 Why Cant the International Community Agree on a Common Strategy? 467
Join the Debate: The Best Strategy for Solving Global Environmental Problems 469 Learning Objectives Review 472 Resources on the Web 473
Preface
c The Student Choice Edition:
A Team Approach: Built by Professors and Students, for Professors and Students
Over the past two years Houghton Mifflin has conducted research and focus groups with a diverse cross-section of professors and students from across the country. The purpose of this endeavor has been to create the rst textbook that truly reects what professors and students want and need in an educational product. The result of this effort is World Politics in the 21st Century, Student Choice Edition. Everything in this textbookfrom its structure and organization to its learning system, design, packaging and marketinghas been orchestrated to meet the teaching and studying requirements of todays instructors and students. We believe you will nd this breakthrough textbook model provides a unique path for your students to advance their understanding of the complexities of twenty-rst century world politics.
c What Students Told Us

Students have told us that they want above all a textbook that reects the way they actually learn and studyas well as a price they can afford. This means they are looking for a textbook that has true value to them. Toward this end we have used their practical and creative ideas about how they study and gain knowledge to develop an educational learning model like no other on the market today. World Politics in the 21st Century, Student Choice Edition meets a students primary goals: a price-conscious textbook/media package loaded with concepts presented in a way that makes learning more pleasure than pain. We know that different students learn in different ways. Some learn best by reading, while others are more visually oriented. Still others acquire insight through practice and assessment. While students learn in different ways, almost all students told us the same things regarding what they want their textbook to look like. The ideal textbook for students gets to the point quickly, is easy to understand and read, has shorter chapters, has pedagogical materials designed to reinforce key concepts, has a strong supporting website for quizzing, testing, and assessment of materials, is cost conscious, and provides them with real value for their dollar. And for more visually oriented students, we have developed a special website, BetweenNations.org, that provides video documentaries and interviews as well as news feeds from BBC World News and the United Nations.
xiii
xiv
c Taking What Students
Told Us to Create the Student Choice Model

World Politics in the 21st Century, Student Choice Edition
World Politics in the 21st Century, Student Choice Edition provides exactly what students want and need pedagogically in an educational product. While other textbooks on the market include some of these features, this Student Choice Edition is the rst international relations textbook to incorporate fully all of these cornerstones, as well as to introduce innovative new learning methods and study processes that completely meet the wishes of todays students. It does this by: z Being concise and to the point z Presenting more content in bulleted or more succinct formats z Highlighting and boldfacing key concepts and information z Organizing content in smaller, easier-to-manage chunks z Providing a system for immediate reinforcement and assessment throughout the chapter z Creating a design that is open, user friendly, and interesting for todays students z Developing an integrated Web component that focuses on quizzing and assessment of key concepts z Creating a product that is easier for students to read and study z Providing students with a product they feel is valuable When we asked students to compare a chapter from this new learning model to chapters from traditional competing textbooks, students overwhelmingly rated this new product model as far superior.
c Organization of the Book

The central aim of this textbook is to address the wide range of 21st century issues that lie in the domain of world politics. With this goal in mind the text includes both topics that have been the traditional subject matter of international relations and those that commonly are considered non-traditional topics. The rst category includes the concepts of the state, the nation, power, foreign policy decision-making and international organization. The second category includes topics that in many texts form a minor part of a chapter or are not presented in a comprehensive form. In this textbook you will nd a whole chapter devoted to geographic factors that shape world politics, another dedicated to women, poverty, and human rights, and a third that looks at the environment as a key international issue in itself, rather than an addendum to the problem of economic development. The text is organized to introduce the study of these issues in a systematic and logical manner. Chapters are in three parts. Part One explores the foundations of world politics, with chapters on the importance of how to study and what to analyze in this eld. Part Two examines the major driving forces in world politics, such
Preface
xv
as power, foreign policy, intergovernmental actors, nongovernmental actors, political geography, and nationalism. Part Three looks at signicant issues in 21st century world politicsglobal violence, wars, weapons and terrorism, human rights, women and global justice, the international political economy and developed countries, the political economy of development, and the global environment. Chapters move from the more basic concepts and principlessuch as how to think about and analyze world politics in terms of the state, power, and foreign policytoward a discussion of the multiple dimensions of todays world politics arena. Each chapter contains learning objectives to make clear the important points to keep in mind, mini quizzes to make certain key elements are grasped, a debate to sharpen understanding of major issues and a case study at the end of the chapter to give deeper meaning and relevance to the chapters discussion. World politics today poses a real challenge to our understanding, yet this textbook offers keys that will open the doors for us. The main theme of this book is that we can make sense of world politics by nding patterns in world events. The principal pattern is centralization versus decentralization. Centralizing tendencies of international relations are found in the twin processes of globalization and global interdependenceand in international organizations. Decentralization tendencies show up in forces such as nationalism, religious fundamentalism, terrorism, and divisive ideologies. Spreading globalization and inter dependence have made state boundaries less relevant to commerce and nance and have undermined old concepts of state sovereignty. Intergovernmental organ izations (IGOs) that tie states together now span the globe, while a host of new non-governmental organizations (NGOs) unite people across state boundaries and work tirelessly to solve age-old problems, such as race, religion, economic degradation, and territory disputes that threaten to tear the world apart. Decentralizing forces, on the other hand, are mirrored in numerous driving forces examined in this text. They include ethnic national groups that seek to fragment states into even smaller land areasa legitimate endeavor from the perspective of the individual groups in search of control of their lives. The Palestinian drive for statehood inside Israelwith all its explosive violence in that part of the worldis a case in point. Iraq, meanwhile, illustrates the volatile and divisive inuence of religion as Sunnis battle Shiites, while the Kurds would like independence from both these groups. Nuclear and conventional weapons proliferation, not least of which is the spread of ballistic missile technology as well as chemical and biological weapons, fall into the category of decentralizing forces. North Korea and Iran hence become natural points of concern by much of the world community when it comes to nuclear weapons.
c Skills-focused Pedagogical Features

The text contains an array of pedagogical tools designed for student self-assessment and reinforcement, including chapter-opening outlines and learning objectives that correspond to each major section of the book; Test Prepper questions at the end of each section to check for understanding; key terms that appear at the beginning of each chapter, and then again in the margins of the text pages; marginal icons linking students to website material, which includes online quizzing and multimedia assets; a marginal glossary to dene unfamiliar terms; and a learning objectives review at the end of chapters to help students review the chapters main points.
xvi
c An Effective Teaching and Learning Package

FOR InSTRUCTORS
Online Instructors Manual. Written by the authors and based on their extensive classroom experience, each chapter contains a wealth of active and collaborative learning techniques, Internet projects, home assignments, and case study teaching techniques. HMTesting Instructor CD. This CD-ROM contains electronic Test Bank items. Through a partnership with the Brownstone Research Group, HMTestingpowered by Diplomaprovides instructors with all the tools they need to create, write/edit, customize, and deliver multiple types of tests. Instructors can import questions directly from the Test Bank, create their own questions, or edit existing questions, all within Diplomas powerful electronic platform. Instructor Website. This website offers valuable resources for course preparation and presentation, including downloadable Instructors Manual les and classroom response system (clicker) slides. A news feed provided by the Associated Press provides a steady stream of current events for classroom discussion. Visit the Instructor Website at college.hmco.com/pic/duncanWP. BetweenNations.org. This website is an online learning tool designed specically to engage students in the international political process through a variety of media, including original videos, short-form documentaries, writing excerpts, and additional resources. Students are asked to answer a series of questions in the online Notebook, which records their answers and allows you to keep a record of the assignment. Correlated to the Table of Contents in the text, the site offers instructors two to ve quality homework assignments per chapter and content that engages students and invigorates class discussions. In addition, to keep your students current with world affairs there are news feeds from BBC World News and top stories from the United Nations News Centre.
FOR STUDEnTS
BetweenNations.org. Each copy of this book includes passkey access to the valuable resources of BetweenNations.org, a dynamic and user-friendly website providing an array of multimedia content and web-based assignments for students. With a narrative approach featuring real people in real-world political environments, the sites video clips and interactive resources bring concepts to life and directly complement the textbook chapters. Students complete assignments on the website and submit their work to instructors with the click of a button. Students will also have access to ashcards to check their comprehension of key terms, practice tests, audio concept study tools for download, and the news feeds from BBC World News and the United Nations.
c Professors and Students:
We Couldnt Have Done It without You
We are very grateful to all the students across the country who participated in one form or another in helping us to create and build the rst educational product
Preface
xvii
pedagogically designed specically for them and their learning and educational goals. Working with these students was an honor, as well as a lot of fun, for all of us at Houghton Mifin. We sincerely appreciate their honesty, candor, creativeness, and interest in helping us to develop a better learning experience. We also appreciate their willingness to meet with us for lengthy periods of time and to allow us to videotape them and use some of their excellent quotes. We wish them much success as they complete their college education, begin their careers, and go about their daily lives.
STUDEnT PARTiCipAnTS
Acosta, Pricilla, University of Texas at Brownsville Adamec, Christopher J., Indiana University, Bloomington Aiken, Katie, Miami University Albert, Chris, California State University, Sacramento Allen, Laura, Carroll College Araujo, Javier H., University of Texas at Brownsville Arreola, Jose, University of Texas at Brownsville Back, Hillary, James Madison University Baker, Elaine, Iowa Lakes Community College Barrett, ONeil, Borough of Manhattan Community College Barron, Joe, Providence College Beal, Laura, Miami University Belle, JaLisha Elaine, Adrian College, MI Beverly, Carolyn, Southwest Tennessee Community College Bis, Ryan, Boston University Boyd, Shawn, Southwest Tennessee Community College Brantley, Gerius, Florida Atlantic University Brewster, Angie, Boston College Brez, Cyleigh, Miami University Bruss, Joy, Carroll College Buchholz, Mike, James Madison University Butters, Amy, Carroll College Calvo, Veronica, Keiser College Campbell, Jessy, James Madison University Chester, Elaine, Columbus Technical College Chimento, Kristin, Miami University Coker, Nadine, Columbus Technical College Collins, Shayla, Southwest Tennessee Community College Connolly, Catie, Anna Marie College Cooper, Angelique, DePaul University Cooper, Jolinda, Beaufort County Community College Counihan, Mallory, James Madison University Day, Brian, Georgia State University Delaney-Winn, Adam, Tufts University Denton, Justin, California State University, Sacramento DiSerio, Stephanie, Miami University Diz, Rita, Lehman College
Dolcemascolo, Christine, California State University, Sacramento Dolehide, Maggie, Miami University Dripps, Matthew, Miami University Duran, Gabriel, Florida International University Ebron, Clara, Beaufort County Community College Espinoza, Giovanni, Hunter College Fahrenbach, Tanya, Benedictine University Fargo, Sarah Louise, Indiana University, Bloomington Faridi, Muneeza, Georgia State University Fischer, Christina, University of Illinois at Chicago Fisher, Emily Katherine, Indiana University, Bloomington Fleming, Linda, Columbus Technical College Frazier, Sharita, Georgia State University Gabri, Holli, Adrian College, MI Gagnon, Danielle, Boston University Gamez, Iris, University of Texas at Brownsville Garza, Brenda, University of Texas at Brownsville Gillispie, Renata, Southwest Tennessee Community College Glater, Paulina, DePaul University Gonzalez, Donna, Florida International University Goulet, Michelle, Carroll College Greenbaum, Barry, Cooper Union Grifs, Jill, Carroll College Hall, Rachel, Miami University Harris, Emma, Miami University Hawkins, Roy, Southwest Tennessee Community College Hightower, Kendra, Southwest Tennessee Community College Hill, Erika, University of Florida Hoff, Joe, University of WisconsinLaCrosse Hooser, Ginny, Western Illinois University Huang, Jin, Georgia State University Janko, Matt, University of MassachusettsAmherst Johnson, Peggy, Iowa Lakes Community College Johnson, Stella, Columbus Technical College Keltner, Travis, Boston College Khan, Javed, University of Central Florida Knowles, Mary, University of Central Florida
xviii
Konigsberg, Matthew, Baruch University Kozeibayeva, Leila, Indiana University, Bloomington Krouse, Molly, James Madison University Kuhnlenz, Fritz, Boston University Lambalot, Lindsey, Northeastern University Lanier, Mary, Southwest Tennessee Community College Largent, Thomas, Adrian College, MI Lawrence, Lucy, Beaufort County Community College Lee, Cheng, University of WisconsinLaCrosse Lippi, Steven, Boston College Long, Crystal, Iowa Lakes Community College Lopez, Henry, Florida International University Ly, Bryant, Georgia State University Lynch, Jessie, Miami University Mancia, Mario, Georgia State University Marcous, Michael, University of Central Florida Marith, Sarah, Boston University Marshall, Nichole, Columbus Technical College Mavros, Nichelina, Fordham University McLean, Chad, California State University, Sacramento McNamara, Meghan, California State University, Sacramento Medina, Jose A., University of Texas at Brownsville Michalos, Marika, City College of New York Miller, Evan, Parsons School of Design Monzon, Fernando, Miami Dade College Moore, Donald, Beaufort County Community College Nitka, Matt, University of WisconsinLaCrosse Noormohammad, Rehan, Northeastern Illinois University Ofnger, Caitlin, Amherst College Ortiz, Laura, University of Texas at Brownsville Paredes, Idalia, University of Texas at Brownsville Paruin, John, Adrian College, MI Queen, Durrell, University of New York Randall, William, Southwest Tennessee Community College Rayski, Adrienne, Baruch University Rederstorf, Melonie, Adrian College, MI
Ringel, Kevin, Northwestern University Rodriguez, Juan F., University of Texas at Brownsville Rodriguez, Uadira, University of Texas at Brownsville Rosenwinkel, Wendy, Iowa Lakes Community College Royster, Megan, Indiana University, Bloomington Savery, Alison, Tufts University Schaffner, Laura, Miami University Schiller, Raquel, University of Central Florida Schlutal, Aubrey, James Madison University Silgvero, Jesus Javier, University of Texas at Brownsville Silva, Miriam, University of Texas at Brownsville Simkovi, Jordan, Northwestern University Smith, Christine, James Madison University Smith, Everrett, Southwest Tennessee Community College Smith, Karl, Western Illinois University Smith, Letesha, Southwest Tennessee Community College Staley, Ahmad, Columbus Technical College Stenzler, Michael, University of Central Florida Stondal, Adam, Adrian College, MI Teekah, Karissa, Lehman College Thermitus, Patrick, Bentley College Thurmon, Lorie, Beaufort County Community College Toft, Gregory, Baruch University Tolles, Rebecca, Miami University Tran, Vivi, University of Central Florida Trzyzewski, Sam, Boston University Uribe, Vanessa, Florida International University Vayda, Kristin, Miami University Werner, Michael, Baruch University Wesley, Adrian, Southwest Tennessee Community College White, Robert, DePaul University Williams, Jen, Carroll College Williams, LaTonya, Southwest Tennessee Community College Wong, Helen, Hunter College Yusuf, Aliyah, Lehman College Zittericsch, Steve, Iowa Lakes Community College 525 Students in MKTG 431: Principles of Marketing, San Francisco State University
We are equally grateful to all the professors across the country who participated in the development and creation of this new textbook through content reviews, advisory boards, and/or focus group work regarding the new pedagogical learning system. As always, professors provided us with invaluable information, ideas, and suggestions that consistently helped to strengthen our nal product. We owe them great thanks and wish them much success in and out of their classrooms.
Preface
xix
PROFESSOR PARTICIPANTS
Blakely, Malika, Georgia State University Boeckelman, Keith, Western Illinois University Brown, Paula E., Northern Illinois University Eliason, Robert, James Madison University Fine, Terri Susan, University of Central Florida Fisher, Bruce, Elmhurst College Fox, Mark, Indiana University South Bend Hensley, Kermelle, Columbus Technical College Hladik, Paula, Waubonsie Community College McConnel, Lisa, Oklahoma State University Nalder, Kimberly Love, California State University, Sacramento Peterson, Suzanne, Arizona State University Schultz, Debbie, Carroll College Silver, Gerald, Purdue UniversityCalumet Thannert, Nancy, Robert Morris College Thomas, Ron, Oakton Community College Thompson, Kenneth, DePaul University Weeks, Benjamin, St. Xavier University
c Acknowledgments
We are grateful to the following reviewers and consultants who provided feedback for this and previous versions of this book: Linda S. Adams, Baylor University E. Perry Ballard, Brescia University Amanda Bigelow, Illinois Valley Community College Patricia Bixel, Maine Maritime Academy Merike Bloeld, Grand Valley State University J. Barron Boyd, LeMoyne College Sophie Clavier, San Francisco State University Jane Cramer, University of Oregon Michael Deaver, Sierra College Mark Denham, University of Toledo Jeff Dense, Eastern Oregon University Rado Dimitrov, University of Minnesota Manochehr Dorraj, Texas Christian University David V. Edwards, The University of Texas at Austin Larry Elowitz, Georgia State College and University Rick Foster, Idaho State University Erich Frankland, Casper College Andrea Grove, Westminster College Nancy Haanstad, Weber State University Steven Jones, University of Charleston Kelcchi Kalu, University of Northern Colorado Roger E. Kanet, University of Miami Patricia Keilbach, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs
xx
George Kent, University of Hawaii Deepa Khosla, Willamette University Bertin K. Kouadio, Florida International University Lawrence LeBlanc, Marquette University Christopher Leskiw, Cumberland College Guoli Liu, College of Charleston Domenic Maffei, Caldwell College Vince Mazzeo, Everest College Zach Messitte, St. Marys College of Maryland Matthew Morehouse, University of Nebraska at Kearne Joel C. Moses, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Michael Nojeim, Prairie View A&M University Richard A. Nolan, University of Florida Christopher Prososki, University of Nebraska at Kearney Jeffrey Ross, Yale Gordon College Joseph R. Rudolph, Towson University Christopher Scholl, Wheeling Jesuit University Thomas Schrand, Philadelphia University Charles Sewall, Jr., Robert Morris College Shawn Shieh, Marist College Adam Silverman, University of Florida Robert E. Sterken, Jr., University of Texas at Tyler Paul E. Sum, University of North Dakota David Van Heemst, Olivet Nazarene University Peter M. Volpe, Meredith College Carol Woodn, Palm Beach Atlantic College Raymond F. Wylie, Lehigh University A special note of appreciation goes to Dr. Nikolai V. Semin of Moscow State University for his invaluable help in PowerPoint design and presentation, and in his ability to reformat for Microsoft Word virtually any text we put in front of him. Our deep thanks as well to the many students who assisted in Web research, proofreading, collating, and doing the countless things that a book this size demands. Our thanks go to Ty Haussler, James Schledewits, Eric Okanovc, Paul Ferland, Kara Gable, Alison Schweicher, Mary Buggie-Hunt, Marian Gentzel, and Carrie Labell. We would also like to thank Marcelle Stickles, Secretary, Department of Political Science and International Studies, SUNYCollege at Brockport. Any errors that remain of course are our own. Last but not least, we must thank our ever-patient spouses without whose constant support and encouragement we could not have brought this book to a successful completion. W. Raymond Duncan Barbara Jancar-Webster Bob Switky
The Importance of World Politics
Our Rapidly Changing World
Learning Objectives
1
Understand how world politics affects your life and how studying international affairs will help you develop analytical skills to better see patterns in the complexity of current events.
Dene world politics and be able to understand current political events through the competing forces of centralization and decentralization.
Politics is the authoritative allocation of values.

David Easton
Chapter Outline
What Is World Politics?
Politics as the Authoritative Allocation of Values An Overview of World Politics Current Political Trends
What New Forces Are Shaping the Planet?

Information Technology The New Global and Transnational Issues The Increasing Inability of the State to Solve Problems The Rise of Ethnic Nationalism and Religious Fundamentalism New Citizen Activism
Why Study World Politics?
Relating International Affairs to Your Life Interconnections and Patterns in Politics
Identify the ve most signicant forces shaping the world today and understand how these forces have centralizing or decentralizing effects on world politics.
World Politics Today

n the rst decade of the twenty-rst century, rapid change and
globalization dominate our world. Rapid change is all around us.
Globalization The process by which economic, social, and political institutions become worldwide in terms of activity, inuence, and application.
At the end of World War II, intercontinental plane service was a rarity, and a ight from New York City to Shannon, Ireland, took over nineteen hours with stopovers. Today, you can y nonstop from Seattle to Tokyo, a far greater distance, in thirteen hours. The increase in airplane speed and the universality of air travel has made the planet smaller and brought previously inaccessible places within the reach of virtually every traveler. It also made possible the horrors of the World Trade Center catastrophe of September 11, 2001, and facilitated the lightning spread of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic around the world in 2003.
www.BetweenNations.org
4
Key Terms
CHAPTER 1
THE IMPORTANcE OF WORLD POLiTicS
globalization p. 3 authority p. 4 treaty p. 4 sovereign p. 4 decentralization p. 5 centralization p. 5 politics p. 5 intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) p. 6 non-state actors (NSAs) p. 6 resource p. 7 struggle for power p. 8 balance of power p. 9 collective security p. 10 terrorism p. 10 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) p. 10 comparative government p. 15 Cold War p. 16 religious extremism p. 16 transnational p. 20 global commons p. 21 non-state actor (NSA) p. 25 nongovernmental organization (NGO) p. 25
For more information see The Treaty of Westphalia www.BetweenNations.org
Authority The right or power to enforce rules or give orders. In the modern world, who has this authority is usually decided by elections. Treaty A contract in writing between two or more political authorities, such as states, formally signed by representatives of those states, and most commonly ratied by the legislature of the signatory states. Sovereign No higher authority can control the states decision. The state has a monopoly on the use of force.
The high-tech revolution of the 1970s and 1980s brought the personal computer, the Internet, the cell phone, and hand-held personal digital assistants, which are now commonplace throughout the world. The days of media companies or government-owned organizations that gathered, monitored, and controlled information ow have given way to news that is transmitted over TV and the Web as it happens. In the last thirty years, there has been a similar revolution in biotechnology. Modern advances promise cures for many of humanitys ailments and at the same time raise the threat of biological warfare. Global interconnectedness shapes our experiences. Rapid technological change makes the world a global village, where what one group of people does in one part of the planet can be immediately acted upon in another part. The collapse of the World Trade Center towers was lmed as it happened and instantaneously transmitted around the globe in real time. On a more positive note, the high-tech revolution has brought great economic benets. A college students purchase of a T-shirt with a particular design at a Wal-Mart in Des Moines, Iowa, or a Grande Surface in Lyons, France, triggers a computerprogrammed merchandise accounting-and-ordering system that crosses continents with the speed of light and generates new orders from China that are shipped out the next day. For the college student in the West, this high-tech ordering system enables him or her to buy goods at the lowest possible price. For the Chinese factory owner, the system ensures a constant demand for the product, and for the worker, steady wages. The absence of an overarching world authority is a third characteristic of the modern international system. Rapid change is taking place in a world where there is no overarching authority that can use force to restrain the violent or bring the offenders to justice. We live in a world whose outlines were set by the Treaty of Westphalia, a seventeenth-century treaty signed by the states of Europe that were eager to work out ways to stop the violence that had been tearing their continent apart for thirty years (see chapter 3). The treatys program for peace was based on the twin notions of state sovereignty and noninterference in the affairs of other states. Three and a half centuries later, the principal world actors remain the sovereign states, or independent countries, like China, Japan, Russia, France, and the United States. When we call a state sovereign, we mean no higher authority can control its decisions: the state has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Almost all of the worlds states are members of the world organization of states, the United Nations (UN), but UN decisions are not binding on its members because the UNs institutions have no coercive means to compel compliance. Sovereignty thus presents states with opportunities for conict or cooperation. In particular, sovereignty engenders political forces within states that promote cooperation with other states, as well as forces that emphasize the states individuality, uniqueness, and national interest. World politics today is
c WHAT IS WORLD POLiTicS?

push-and-pull between the forces of decentralization and forces of centralization; you will nd this theme recurring throughout this book. Since the 1970s, nonstate actors have played an increasing role in inuencing subgroups within states one way or the other. These actors include international intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and non-state actors representing groups of individuals rather than governments. These actors have taken advantage of rapid change and global interconnectedness to undercut the longtime dominance of states in world politics. Through their activities non-state actors have challenged the viability of actions long accepted as lying solely within the jurisdiction of states, such as war, treaty making, and diplomacy. This text is designed to give you the analytical and factual tools to develop your own appreciation of how the interaction of these forces shapes world politics. To help you understand your world better and to address its challenges, chapter 1 introduces you to the subject matter of world politics. It gives you three major reasons for studying world politics. The chapter closes with a discussion of the signicant forces currently at work in the world. This discussion will help you nd patterns in current events and to locate yourself and your place in the world today. At the end of the chapter, we provide a case study on The Report of the 9/11 Commission of the U.S. Senate and New Forces Shaping the Planet. The case study draws together and puts into practice the chapters main points. n
Decentralization The spreading or distribution of functions and power from a central authority to regional and local authorities. In world politics, decentralization infers the strengthening of the functions and powers of the various entities that make up the international system, including states and non-state actors. Centralization The concentration of political or administrative power in a central authority with diminished power at lower or local levels of government. In world politics centralization infers the concentration of political power in some kind of central institution with the states giving up some of their powers of self-rule. Politics The theory and practice of government at all levels of organization. The total complex of relations between humans in society.
What Is World Politics?

1 Dene world politics and be able to understand current political events through the competing forces of centralization and decentralization.
The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (384322 bc) wrote, Man by nature is a political animal.1 Politics comes from the Greek word for the principal form of state organization in ancient Greece, the city-state, or polis. Aristotle took for granted that a primary feature of a political community is authority to make decisions for the well-being of the community. This authority or power may be exercised in a legal or dictatorial manner, and it may be located in one person (a king or dictator), a few people (oligarchy), or many people (representative government or mob rule). The nineteenth-century thinkers Karl Marx and Max Weber emphasized the importance of power deployed within a given territory as central to the concept of a political association.
Politics as the Authoritative Allocation of Values

Twentieth-century political scientists have built on these theories. We discuss two denitions that are particularly useful to world politics today. Political scientist Harold Lasswell denes politics as a power struggle about who gets what, when, and how.2 His colleague David Easton says, Politics is the authoritative allocation of values or scarce resources.3 Let us examine these denitions to understand aspects of relations among the worlds states and non-state actors.
CHAPTER 1
The Major Actors

The major actors in world politics are the ones who, in Lasswells denition, compete to gain sufcient power to have a say in determining what the issues of political power struggle are and how the struggle will be played out. a. As we saw at the beginning of the chapter, the principal group of actors are the 191 sovereign and independent states located around the globe. The governments of these states make decisions in the name of the state based on what the government determines are the national interests of the country. While in principle these decisions are independent of the inuence or actions of other actors in world politics, in practice a states decisions are based on the ebb and ow of the international political activity in which that state is engaged (see chapter 5 on foreign policy). b. The second group is composed of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs). These intergovernmental organizations are made up of representatives of state governments that have agreed to participate in them. The largest of these entities is the UN, of which almost all the worlds states are members. Then there are regional IGOs, such as the European Union (EU), as well as regional trade, economic, and cultural organizations such as the North Atlantic Free Trade Association (NAFTA), which includes Canada, the United States, and Mexico and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), a loose association of Southeast Asian states interested in pursuing common economic and, to a lesser degree, social policies. c. Non-state actors (NSAs) are the third group of major actors in world politics. The members of these organizations are not representatives of states but of groups of individuals with shared economic, social, religious, or environmental interests. NSAs are a diverse group ranging from paramilitary and terrorist groups to international business corporations to scientic and professional organizations, humanitarian groups and religious movements. NSAs are the most recent arrivals on the international scene and among the most signicant, as you will see throughout the book. d. Finally, we should not fail to mention the importance of individuals as actors in world politics. History is full of people who change the course of history by virtue of their military, economic, or scientic genius. We talk about some of them in chapter 2.
Intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) Organizations composed of representatives appointed by state governments that have agreed to become members of the organizations.
Non-state actors (NSAs) Members of groups of individuals with shared economic, social, religious, or environmental interests.
Interactions among the Actors

If politics is about who gets what, when, and how, interactions among the actors are the when and the how. Timing and the ability to carry out a decision economically and efciently are key determinants of the struggle for political power. a. Timing: When a state decides to undertake an action on the international stage is critical to the probability of its success in that action. Throughout the 1930s, Chancellor Adolf Hitler of Germany engaged in small invasions into the territory of other European countries, starting with the Rhineland and ending with his takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1938. With each invasion, he tested the response of the Western democracies. After almost ten years of little or no response, Hitler judged the time was ripe for a full-scale invasion. His timing was perfect. The United States and Great Britain were not prepared to go to war.

b. Ability to Carry Out a Decision: Hitler underestimated the capabilities of his opponents. He invaded Poland and started World War II in 1939 because he wrongly thought that the Western democracies were so weak that they lacked the capability to oppose his superbly trained armies. c. The Struggle for Power: This World War II example illustrates the hard fact that politics everywhere is a struggle for power. In the game of who gets what and how, power is exercised by somebody over someone else. Politics, in Eastons denition, is the authoritative allocation of resources. Some actor or group of actors must gain sufcient power to be able to decide what the other actors in the game get. How political actors understand the exercise of power determines, to a large extent, their sense of timing and the way they develop and utilize their capabilities. These issues are raised in the discussion of the modern state in chapters 3 and 4. Theoretical approaches to understanding how power is exercised divide into two main viewpoints. The so-called realist approach sees the struggle for power as a game between players in which there is a clear winner and loser. While other players may improve their situation, the game is always about who wins and who loses. The idealist approach to power says while the struggle for power is a fact in world politics, states do not need to resort to violence or force to get what they want. In this view, peaceful cooperation for long-term gain is a vital component of any states vision of its future. We talk more about the theoretical approaches to world politics in chapter 2.
Resource A source of supply, support, or status; a natural source of wealth or revenue.
Allocating Resources
Resources constitute the nal component of Lasswells denition, the what, or the values of Eastons denition. These resources may be conveniently divided into three types: political resources, economic resources, and social and cultural resources. a. Political resources refer to a countrys power, prestige, and status, backed by military power. We call these scarce resources because of the internationally perceived hierarchical arrangement of world order. As we show in chapter 3, we tend to perceive the international system as a four-tiered structure with the developed industrial states at the top and the poorest and failed states at the bottom. Developed countries can leverage their status and prestige to gain their objectives even if they lack military power. Poor and failed states can only use their weakness as bargaining chips. One state, the United States, is a superpower. Other industrialized states, like Japan, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, are world powers. All these states have in common stable political systems. Although elections may be hotly contested, the transition of power from one leader to the next is peaceful. States with stable political systems are less likely to collapse or fail than states with weak political institutions. States like Russia and China are harder to categorize because they are in the midst of enormous political as well as economic transformation. However, Russias nuclear weapons and Chinas large military gives these countries more power and greater status than very poor countries, like Chad, or failed states, almost non-states, like Somalia. b. Economic resources include a states nancial resources, such as wealth, annual national income, supply of capital, and investment opportunities; industrial and agricultural production; and natural resources (oil, coal, soil, water, and
CHAPTER 1
Struggle for power The struggle to compete for and reach dominance in an organization, a state, a region of the world, or the whole world.
mineral resources). Like political resources, these are also scarce resources not equally distributed around the globe. For example, most of the worlds capital is located in the hands of the top 1 percent of the worlds population, living primarily in the United States, Japan, and Western Europe. The United States attracts foreign investment, especially from Asia, because of its huge nancial resources and relatively free nancial markets, which make it easy to invest. Asia, by contrast, has become the global industrial powerhouse, producing the majority of consumer goods for the rest of the world. By far, the most significant scarce economic resources are energy resources. So important is oil to the developed worlds economies that many of us tend to explain world politics simply in terms of the struggle for control of the worlds oil supplies. We look at this issue in chapter 7. Water is another scarce resource whose availability is grossly under appreciated. The world may eventually learn to do without oil, but human beings can never do without water. From California to Mexico, to Australia, China, and the Middle East, the Earths water supply is increasingly failing to meet the needs of the Earths large population. The twenty-rst century is likely to see water wars (see chapter 14). c. Social and cultural resources may not seem directly related to the global struggle for power , but they most certainly play a huge role. Like all other resources, these are scarce and unequally distributed around the globe. They include health, education, a clean environment, and a population that agrees on the major values of its government so that ethnic or religious diversity adds to the power of the state rather than undermines it. Once again, the United States, Japan, and Western Europe lead the world in these resources. They have the most educated populations, the healthiest people, and relative harmony between diverse ethnic and racial groups within national borders. A sick population has little strength to engage in economics or politics. For example, the AIDS epidemic in Africa is so severe that it is wiping out the middle generation of Africans, the very individuals who should be actively engaged in the economic and political life of their countries. Despite its political instability, Russia remains a powerful state, able to project itself on the world stage because it has a highly educated population with high-tech skills that are valuable all over the globe. What keeps Russia in a secondary power position is the declining health of its citizens. AIDS is becoming widespread throughout the country, and, as in Africa, threatening to wipe out much of that educated population. We see, then, that who gets what, when, and how in world politics depends, in large measure, on which states can demonstrate sufcient power to determine or dominate decisions on the distribution of the worlds scarce resources. It should come as no surprise that the wealthiest states with a strong military, high educational and health levels, and relative ethnic harmony should be the states in the best position to make their decisions prevail.
An Overview of World Politics

Audio Concept Cultural Resource www.BetweenNations.org
In world politics, as we have said, there is no authoritative institutionno world governmentthat is recognized as such by its member states and that has the power to make decisions about the distribution of the worlds scarce resources.

Hence, throughout history, world politics has been characterized by the struggle for power. The international system has provided the jungle-like setting where force, conict, and violence have often played key roles. We discuss the nature and exercise of power in chapter 4. Traditionally, power has been the exercise of brute force by a dominant and dominating authority to maintain order.
The Struggle for Power in European History

The struggle for power is an historical fact. Europe in particular has been the scene of bloody conicts about which dynasty or state was to control the continent. So much has conict characterized European interactions that the ruling European governments frequently tried to mitigate the violence by creating institutions promoting peace. z Birth of the Modern State System: In 1648, the leading states of Europe ended the Thirty Years War that each of the combatants at last realized it could not win. In the Treaty of Westphalia, signed that year, the competing states agreed not to try to overthrow each others governments, not to interfere in each others internal affairs, and generally to work toward a more peaceful Europe. The treaty was a landmark in that it set up mechanisms through which new states could be recognized and all the signatories could interact peacefully. Diplomacy became a regular practice in Europe, and although wars continued, some progress had been made to curtail the use of brute force to decide what was going to happen, when, and to whom. z Balance of Power: At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Napoleon Bonaparte of France led his triumphant armies to the gates of Moscow, overthrowing long-established governments in his path. To stop him, the leading states of Europe banded together and, in 1815, dealt Napoleon his deathblow at the Battle of Waterloo. Napoleon was exiled to a remote island for good. That same year, the European powers came together again, this time in Vienna, to negotiate the composition of Europe after Napoleon. One of the concepts that played a determining role in the negotiations was that of the balance of power. No one or even two states should be allowed to grow as powerful as France had. To prevent this, states chose their allies with an eye to seeing that the military might of one alliance was roughly equal to that of another. (Balance of power is discussed more fully in chapter 4.) World War I marked the demise of the balance-of-power concept as a way to lessen or resolve conict. Not only did the two major alliances at the end of the nineteenth century fail to prevent war, they may have actually promoted it. Germany, Italy, and Austro-Hungary were allied on one side, and England, France, and Russia on the other. When the heir to the Austrian throne was murdered in Serbia, Germany sprang to the rescue and said it would go to war for the honor of its Austrian ally. Russia protested, saying it had a paternal interest in the Slavic populations of Eastern Europe and would protect its Slav cousins if anyone invaded Serbia. (The Russians and the Serbs are two of many Slavic ethnic groups.) The British said a treaty was a treaty, and they backed their Russian allies. And so one of the bloodiest wars of the twentieth century began. The war was fought to a stalemate in 1917, with huge losses on both sides. The entrance of the United States into the war on the British and French side swung the balance of forces, and Germany was forced to surrender.
For more information see The View From: Lost Empires www.BetweenNations.org
Balance of power The distribution of power among two or more nations where the pattern of military and economic dominance among them is balanced such that no single nation has dominance over the others.
10
CHAPTER 1
Collective security The maintenance of peace and prevention of war through the united action of nations.
z Collective Security: At the Peace Conference at Versailles, outside Paris, France, the nations of Europe once again came together to talk about the organization of a postwar world. Europe was in a shambles, its economy in ruins. France had spent all the wealth accumulated in the previous century and lost 20 percent of its population. Because the Americans had had the decisive power to stop the Germans, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, a former political science professor and president of Princeton University, presented to the Conference his view of an international organization where collective security would replace the old alliance system and the nations of the world would resolve their conicts peacefully in a global assembly. The Conference delegates agreed somewhat reluctantly to form a League of Nations. However, despite Wilsons efforts, the United States Senate refused to ratify the treaty. With the most powerful world player absent, the League had a short life. In 1933, Hitler became chancellor in Germany. Just two decades after signing the Versailles peace treaty, Europe was at war again. The vision of an international institution that could deal with conict remained alive through the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust. In 1945, a new world organization came into being, the United Nations. This organization is still in existence. On balance, it has achieved a great deal and done much to alleviate world poverty and conquer disease. However, it has proved unable to stop conict. We discuss the UN and its current role in world politics in chapter 6.
Terrorism and the Changed Face of the Struggle for Power

In the twenty-rst century, as we learned, the world faces a new kind of war, a war launched by a faceless NSA, a group or groups of individuals who may reside anywhere on the globe. They recognize allegiance to no state or national government but are able to inuence governments to support them or cease to oppose them. Because these individuals are networked all over the globe, they have the capability to launch an attack at any time and any place. One of the central questions of our time is how to cope with this new kind of terrorist threat (discussed in chapter 10). Can or should the UN be given more authority to pursue the issue? Should one state, such as the United States, be allowed to take the lead, as the empires of old did? Is the mobilization of national police by each country the answer? We have returned once again to the focus of politics: Who gets what, when, and how?
Terrorism Politically motivated violence, usually perpetrated against civilians. Terrorists and terrorist groups normally want to change by force or by threat of force a political context that they oppose. North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) A military alliance, initially formed in 1949 between Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, and the United States. The alliance created a system of collective defense whereby the member states agreed to mutual defence in response to an attack by an external party. At its beginning the attack was expected to come from Soviet Russia. Greece and Turkey joined in 1952 and West Germany in 1955. France withdrew from the alliance in 1959 to pursue an independent defence. After 9/11 NATO expanded its area of activity to include taking charge of the mission in Afghanistan.
Current Political Trends

The current world situation returns us to the major theme of this book, the push and pull of the forces of centralization and decentralization. The 2006 elections in the United States revealed the frustration and weariness with the global war on terrorism and the war in Iraq felt by the majority of the electorate of the United States. In October 2004, the Afghan people voted for a president in the rst free election in decades. Free parliamentary elections were held a year later. The elections constituted a major achievement for the Afghan government in cooperation with the United States and its allies in the UN and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). By 2007, the Taliban had regrouped from their safe bases inside Pakistan and threatened to undo this progress. The increasing sectarian violence in Iraq presents an even more complex picture, demanding a high level of international cooperation that so far the international community has not come together to

provide. Europe and the United States have two very different approaches to internationalization. Europe prefers to see the UN as the authoritative decision maker in the world, doubtless because of that continents horric experience with an aggressive Germany trying to carve out a greater living space in two world wars. As the planets sole superpower, the United States prefers to consider the UNs deciencies in its calculus of that organizations role as world decision maker. The United States is thus less ready for the world to become more centralized politically than it already is. On the other hand, the United States is one of the leading advocates of economic globalization, whereas large groups of Europeans and Asians are not so ready to embrace that reality. Lets look at the worlds experience with central world organizations. We begin with historic attempts to form central world organizations and the possible consequences of centralization. We then consider the rise of non-state actors in the postWorld War II era and the possible consequences of decentralization.
11
A Peaceful World Order under a Central World Organization

If the struggle for power and dominance has been a central feature of world politics, the efforts to create order in place of conict cited above suggest another dynamic that has also been at work, the push and pull of two opposing forces: centralization and decentralization. Forced centralization was a primary condition of the traditional empires of China, India, and Rome. However, each emperor had to allow some expression of regional differences to keep the empire intact. The empires fell apart under pressure from outside invaders and regions seeking more say in imperial affairs. In the history of Europe, as we have seen, the movement since 1648 was toward voluntary centralization, culminating in the League of Nations and the UN. But the road was littered with the dead of European wars. In 1957, the Europeans took perhaps their most innovative and challenging step in forming the European Common Market, whose supranational governing institutions had the authority to impose rules and regulations on the governments of the member-states and to make sure those rules and regulations were enforced. Today, the Common Market has become the European Union (EU), with a membership of twenty-ve states. We talk about the EU in chapter 6.
The Consequences of Centralization

Ultimately, the tendency toward centralization could lead to world government and the globalization of the world economy. Global economic integration (discussed in chapter 12) is well on its way. However, while world government has many supporters, it is unlikely to occur any time soon. Those in favor of it argue that a world government would more easily solve the planets most urgent problems of violence, hunger, disease, poverty, and environmental decay. Those against it hold that because these problems cant be solved even on a national level, it is pie-in-the-sky thinking to believe a world government could solve them. They further argue that a world government would not end the power struggle that characterizes all of politics. Moreover, such a government would be so huge and create such a huge bureaucracy that no one on Earth would be able to identify with it. World citizenship is a long way off. Nevertheless, both sides would probably agree that the UN could be given more authority to make binding decisions on some of the more critical global issue areas, such as economic development, poverty, and disease.
Audio Concept Centralization www.BetweenNations.org
12
CHAPTER 1
The Rise of Non-state Actors and Increasing Decentralizing Tendencies

The movement toward voluntary centralization initiated by the European states was supported by the victorious powers of World War II, the United States, and Soviet Russia. The UN was designed to include all the states in the world so decisions about global issues could be made centrally by delegates from every government on the planet meeting in an inter-nation or inter-state assembly. However, the founders of the UN made no provision for the rise of non-state actors, and it is precisely these actors who form the core of the decentralizing and fragmenting forces at work in the world today. Not only terrorist groups, but religious organizations and even humanitarian or environmental groups sometimes seek to change social structures and political outcomes in the countries where they are working. On March 11, 2004, just prior to national elections, a terrorist group bombed one of Spains main railways, killing more than 200 people. The action had a decisive inuence on the outcome of the elections and encouraged the new Spanish government to pull its troops out of Iraq.
The Consequences of Decentralization

At the extreme end of decentralization is the descent of the world into prolonged chaos, where non-state actors have succeeded in bringing down or destroying national governments and have weakened the resolve of the powerful nations to take action. Niall Ferguson, a professor of history at Harvard University, suggests the dening movement of our time is not a shift of power upward to a centralized international organization like the UN but rather a shift of power downward. States have lost their monopoly over the means of violence and, with the advent of the Internet, can no longer control how and what individuals communicate to each other. Ferguson posits that the non-state actors now wield the power to decide who gets what when and how. The resultant scenario, as he sees it, is the plundering of the wealthiest countries of Europe, North America, and Asia, limited nuclear wars, pirate attacks on the high seas, an AIDS plague in Africa, and other horrors.4 Others argue that decentralization is not such a bad thing, as it allows nonstate actors and individuals access to inuence and decision making that was impossible before the Internet and the World Wide Web. In the last twenty years alone, citizens have overthrown dictatorial governments in the Philippines, Nicaragua, the Soviet Union, and Eastern Europe, and staged a massive protest in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, the capital city of Communist China (1989). Instant photos and replay enabled these events to be transmitted immediately around the globe, so the whole world could see what was happening. Decentralization has its positive aspects, they argue.
c WHY STUDY WORLD POLiTicS?

Test Prepper 1.1
True or False? Multiple Choice
13
Answers appear on page A12
_____ 1. IGOs (intergovernmental organizations) are the principal actors in international politics. _____ 2. NSAs (non-state actors) have only recently become major players in the international system, yet are among the most signicant. _____ 3. The idealist approach to power attempts to obtain as much power as possible by focusing on elevating a states status and prestige. _____ 4. Social and cultural resources are signicant factors in whether a state will have power in the international system. _____ 5. A state using the balance of power approach to international politics will attempt to balance its political and economic resources as much as possible.
Practice Test Questions Practice Test 1.1 www.BetweenNations.org
_____ 6. Which of the following makes the Treaty of Westphalia a landmark treaty for international affairs? a. Allowed for recognition of new states and for peaceful interactions between states b. Ended a war that had gone on longer than most other wars during that period of history c. Bypassed traditional diplomatic practices in favor of the use of force d. Allowed states to band together to form collective security alliances _____ 7. Which of the following is not an example of centralizing tendencies in international politics? a. The League of Nations b. The United Nations c. The European Union d. Non-state-actor inuence in the international system
Why Study World Politics?

2 Understand how world politics affects your life and how studying international affairs will help you develop analytical skills to better see patterns in the complexity of current events.
Among the many reasons that might be given for studying world politics, we offer three: The study of world politics will help relate the worlds future to the rest of your life. World politics will help you see the connections between international issues and the politics of individual states. And studying world politics will help you nd patterns in the complexity of current events.
Relating International Affairs to Your Life

Before 9/11, you might have thought about taking a course in world politics to satisfy some core college requirement, or because you wanted to understand your world better so you could choose a career or be directed toward a rewarding job. For example, you might have read about the high-tech jobs shifting to India, or the transfer of manufacturing jobs to China and Mexico, and wondered whether an understanding of the global forces behind such events could save someone (you) from a similar fate. Or you might have been planning to study or work abroad and wanted to know more about the place in world affairs of your
14
CHAPTER 1
country of destination. One of the most common reasons for studying world politics is in preparation for a career in the foreign service or the United States Department of State.
World Politics and International Events

Perhaps one of the most important reasons for studying international relations is the hard truth that ignorance is not bliss. World politics affects every aspect of your daily lifethe clothes you wear, the food you eat, the technology you buy, and the gas you put into your car. Before 9/11, Americans had so little grasp of international affairs that they couldnt begin to understand the event. Why do they hate us? they asked. Today, you need world politics more than ever to enable you to understand the forces that are shaping your life and your future. You must live and breathe world politics to grasp what may be in store for you. The 9/11 attacks were a tragic demonstration of the main theme of this book, namely, the increasing tension between the centralizing forces of globalization and the decentralizing forces of religion and ethnicity, which extend to every corner of our Earth. The U.S.led war in Iraq and the subsequent transfer of sovereignty back to an Iraqi government turns the world spotlight on the role of the UN as a centralizing force for peace and stability and the proper exercise of power by member-states, like the United States, to compel regime change in states ruled by tyrants.
World Politics and Your Career

The economic downswing of 20012003 illustrates a second aspect of how world politics affects your life: the interdependent and transnational character of the issues. In 2002, Enron, a huge global corporation with deep ties to the powerful in Washington, suddenly went bankrupt. Its chief executives were accused of fraud, and its employees lost their life savings. Other major American corporations followed Enron into bankruptcy, their chief executive ofcers exhibiting the same fraudulent behavior as Enrons. The news of corruption in the U.S. economy quickly went out over the TV, radio, and Internet. Europe congratulated itself that its more regulated companies could not behave in the same wayuntil its business executives were charged with the same kinds of actions. The value of stocks on the U.S. stock market rose and fell in violent swings, and foreign stock exchanges experienced similar confusion. This confusion further reduced the value of stocks on Wall Street. The stock decline made U.S. consumers fearful that their pensions and life savings, invested in the stock market, might disappear. So they decided to buy less. Fewer consumer orders to U.S. companies forced those companies to reduce their orders of supplies from foreign companies. Receiving fewer orders, the Asian and Latin American factories were forced to cut both expenses and production and to re their employees. Unemployment rose and consumption fell around the world. International uncertainty about the U.S. economic future was increased by the war in Iraq and fear of oil shortages. In the United States, this international uncertainty translated into higher heating and energy costs, further raising the cost of production and discouraging consumer spending. In this discussion of an economic downswing we circled the globe and introduced issues ranging from local production decisions to global war and peace. The modern world is so complex and interconnected that you cannot begin to know how to act without understanding the connections.

Studying World Politics and Developing Analytic Skills
In this book, we address z The building blocks of world politics (the international system, power, foreign policy, international organizations, the global economy) z The major issues (political geography, global justice, the environment) z The theoretical and factual background that can enable you to answer those questions most important to you:
15
What role should the United States play in world affairs? How can we ensure that we wont run out of energy? How can we ensure that the planet will continue to be hospitable to human
life?
How can we reduce the huge gap between the rich and the poor nations? What can be done about terrorism?
To help address these and related questions, each chapter contains a Join the Debate box that you can use to argue the theoretical points made in the chapter, or a box that invites active participation. If you work on these questions, when you have nished the book, you will be able to work out your own answers to questions of importance to you. In summary, the study of world politics helps you make sense of your world. It gives you a set of tools with which to assess the world situation, whatever the crisis or driving forces at work may be. World politics provides methods of analysis to help you understand the diverse positions of the worlds leaders and peoples, and it proposes frameworks for evaluating the media sound bites that ood the daily news. Last, studying world politics shows you how the world out there is closely tied to your world at home and how the interaction between the two affects your life.
Interconnections and Patterns in Politics

In the modern world, no country conducts its domestic affairs in a political vacuum but there are real differences between international relations and comparative government.
World Politics and Comparative Government

World politics is the study of interactions between international actors, such as those listed earlier in the chapter. Its focus is on who gets what, when, and why in the international arena. World politics thus differs substantially from comparative government whose subject area is the contrasts and similarities between who gets what, when, and why in different types of national governments. If we want to compare the role of the chief executive, like the president in the United States to the role of the president in Russia, we would turn to the tools of comparative government. The boundaries become confused, however, when we seek to compare national foreign policies, and the actions of state governments in the global arena. The fact is that in the real world, we cannot make a total separation between the conduct of actors within states and the conduct of these same actors between states. Domestic politics impacts on world politics and vice versa.
Comparative government The comparison of interactions of state actors within state borders.
16
CHAPTER 1
World Politics and Domestic Politics: Intermestic Issues

Political scientists have coined the word intermestic to describe the interconnectedness of international and domestic political issues. You have seen this linkage in the discussion of the 20012003 international economic downswing. Here is a specic example. In the 2006 U.S. elections, the Democratic Party won majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. The new majority interpreted the election results as a mandate to get U.S. troops out of Iraq as soon as possible. Republican President George W. Bush responded by initiating a surge in troops to Iraq to reduce the violence and bring more law and order to the capital city of Baghdad. The Democrats in the House reacted to the initiative by passing a budget that included stipulations and dates as to when the troops in Iraq were to be withdrawn. As is his prerogative under the U.S. Constitutions system of checks and balances Bush vetoed the budget, which then had to go back to the legislature for reconsideration. Bush argued that the Constitution made him commander-inchief, and in that capacity, he had the right to initiate any action he considered necessary in the war in Iraq. We have been talking about this situation so far in comparative-government terminology: the separation of powers according to the U.S. constitution, the powers of the separate branches of government, and the checks and balances on these powers. How does the tension between the legislature and executive in the United States differ from an analogous tension between Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the British House of Commons? Where does tension between the legislative and executive lie in France? Can such tension exist under the more autocratic Russian constitution? As students of world politics, however, our question is not about relations between branches of government as a comparative-government issue, but how these relations impact on the conduct of U.S. foreign policy. How does the bickering and bargaining between the executive and legislature in the United States structure foreign policy inputs and outputs? What effect does all the inghting have on the Sunni-Shiite conict in Iraq? When we ask these questions, we are treating the current legislative-executive standoff in the United States as an intermestic issue.
For more information see The Beginning of the Cold War www.BetweenNations.org Cold War The great ideological and power conict between the Soviet Union and its allies and the United States and its allies, which lasted roughly from 1946 to 1991. Religious extremism The use of religion to rationalize extreme actions such as terrorism or militancy against a recognized government.
Finding Patterns in the Complexity of Current Events

Perhaps the most important reason you need to study world politics, as we noted at the beginning of the chapter, is that the world of the twenty-rst century is changing at a more rapid pace than at any other time in history. In the nal decade of the twentieth century, we witnessed a revolution in communications and technology, and the end of the Cold War. The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, the two major powers in the world at that time, lasted almost fty years (from 1946 to 1991), and the global bipolarity of that era seemed a permanent xture of the international landscape. Suddenly, the war was over, leaving the international community grasping for a denition of the new era. Too soon, however, terrorism supplied some of that denition, as did religious extremism , which has become a major ideological factor in world politics in the new century. Giving students tools for understanding the complex, rapidly changing circumstances around us is an important goal of this book. Despite the seeming chaos of the events portrayed on the nightly news, patterns can be found. The principal patterns on which we focus in this book are the centralizing and decentralizing forces at work in world politics today. Forces for centralization can be

seen in the twin processes of globalization and global interdependence. In contrast, forces for decentralization are those that insist on their own identity, selfworth, and autonomy of action. They can be found in ethnic nationalism; in individual, group, and state terrorism; religious militancy; and in immediate citizen access to information. The 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States are a dramatic example of the centralizing/decentralizing tensions in the modern world. Islamic terrorists justied their murderous actions through references to Islam and the Koran. In so doing, they energized supporters of Islam in the Middle East, and Central and East Asia (decentralizing force). The rallying of the whole world around the United States in its moment of tragedy was a centralizing force that focused world attention on the need to deal with terrorism. In the course of this book, we return to this theme of centralizing/decentralizing tensions repeatedly in our study of the structure, actors and issues of world politics. When you are asked why you have chosen to study world politics, you can now give at least three important answers: z World politics provides you with a framework with which to evaluate and dene your life and future. z World politics also enables you to see the interconnectedness of international and domestic politics, and to understand that decisions made in one country may one day profoundly affect you. z You need to study world politics to nd the patterns that can make sense of those forces that are so rapidly changing our fast-moving world. The last section of the chapter looks at the main forces at work in world politics today that are shaping your future and the future of the planet.
17
For more information see Globalization and Sovereignty www.BetweenNations.org
Test Prepper 1.2

True or False?
_____ 1. Religion and ethnicity act as centralizing forces leading to increased peace and stability in international politics. _____ 2. The bankruptcy of corporations in America has the potential to lead to the increase in unemployment and reduced consumption throughout the rest of the world. _____ 3. Comparative governmentthe study of political processes internal to governments around the worldcan be clearly separated from the study of international affairs, which focuses on politics between states.
Multiple Choice
_____ 4. Which of the following is not a proposal from the UN Commission on Global Governance? a. A system of global taxation for individuals and companies that burn fuels emitting carbon dioxide
b. A standing UN army to intervene in states that abuse human rights c. A system that allows individuals to sue states that engage in economic policies that counter free trade practices d. UN authority over global commons such as the oceans _____ 5. Intermestic issues deal with: a. The intersection between politics of developed countries and developing countries b. Internal political processes inuenced by domestic lobbying groups c. Issues that have both a domestic and international component d. International economic situations that affect the UNs ability to provide funding for its internal operations
Practice Test Questions Practice Test 1.2 www.BetweenNations.org www.BetweenNations.org
18
CHAPTER 1
What New Forces Are Shaping the Planet?

3 Identify the ve most signicant forces shaping the world today and understand how these forces have centralizing or decentralizing effects on world politics.
In this book, we discuss ve forces that are important in shaping our world at present. These are not the only forces, but to our mind, they are the most signicant. They are: z information technology z new global and transnational issues z increasing inability of states to solve their problems individually z rise of ethnic nationalism and religious fundamentalism z new citizen activism Whether these forces will push the world closer together or farther apart it is too soon to tell. But it is safe to say that at present, each of them can be either centripetal or centrifugal. They can work toward greater cooperation or toward more global fragmentation. Let us look at each of these forces in turn. High-tech Meets Low-tech
Information Technology
Since 1980, the industrialized nations have shifted to what are termed postindustrial technologies. These technologies make distances shorter and increase the speed of communication. They range from currency-exchange transactions via the computer to the transfer of ideas and pictures via satellite, fax, E-mail, and the Internet. Our lives have been transformed by the information revolution. How have these technologies affected international relations? Here are a few examples.
High-tech cell phone mixes with low-tech begging bowl as this Hindu sadhu or holy man in Allahabad, India, connects with the faithful by phone. His begging bowl recalls his poverty and his dependency on others, just as all living things are connected in the divine web of being.
The Global Village: The Internet and Videotechnology

On September 11, 2001, thanks to an array of improved information technologies, TV viewers around the world watched in disbelief as two airplanes crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, causing them to collapse. The lm sequence was played over and over again in the days and months that followed. Since then, Osama bin Ladens organization, al Qaeda and other terrorist groups have made consistent use of the mass media to publicize their goals, their view of the world, and their selected killings of those who would be against them. They have successfully planned and executed terrorist attacksnot only in the United States but also in Saudi Arabia; in the port city of Aden on the Red Sea; at a Jewish synagogue in Morocco; at a vacation resort in Indonesia; on the fast rail line between Madrid and Seville, Spain; in London, UK; in resort towns in Egypt; and all over Iraq. Behind their success lies a skillful, coordinated usage of old and established technologies such as bombs and airplanes with the new technologies of rapid communication, instant replay, and mass audiences.
Information Technology and Global Financial Markets

In 1987, the U.S. stock market fell more points in a single day than on Black Friday in 1929. In 1998, the stock market went on a roller-coaster ride, leaving investors breathless. In March 2007, volatility on the Shanghai stock exchange caused mar-
c WHAT NEw FORcES ARE SHAPiNG THE PLANET?

kets around the world to fall. There was talk of a possible crash. In both cases, computer technology and instant satellite communication of corporate and market news played a role in market volatility. Lets look at how. Computer programming and instant recording of stock sales have played a major role in the roller-coaster market that characterized the beginning of the twenty-rst century. Before the Internet, brokers handled all stock dealings. Today, individuals may manage their own stock transactions over the Internet, or they can send instructions to their brokers to program the computer to trigger the automatic sale of a stock when it rises or falls to a specied value. The computer has thus enabled thousands of people to enter the stock market who never had participated before. Information technology has created twenty-four-hour virtual stock markets. When the real stock market closes in Tokyo or Hong Kong and before it opens in New York, computer stock traders are already trading stock based on activity in the Asian markets. In international nancial dealings, information technology, in a very real sense, is a force integrating global nancial markets, even risking the replacement of real stock exchanges with virtual ones. On the other side of the coin, information technology is a decentralizing force, as it provides access to information previously obtainable only by being physically present at the stock market and thus enables individuals to play the market independently of a stockbroker or exchange.
19
Information Technology as a Decentralizing Tool

A third example of the impact of rapid information technology on world events is the incredible speedup of information exchange. Anyone who perpetrates a terrorist act can immediately evaluate the results of a bombing, shooting, or killing by watching how the media report the event on that days evening news program. Of key importance is the medias assessment of the actions impact on public opinion. The bombing of the World Trade Center provoked universal horror and sparked a major U.S. offensive against terrorist camps in Afghanistan. The bombing of a Spanish train in March 2004, however, produced an opposite reaction. In this case, horror moved the Spanish people to give in to terrorist demands that Spain withdraw its troops from Iraq. Because the effect of terroristic acts on public opinion within states and around the world is immediately visible through the intensity of public outcry and government response, terrorist groups quickly learn to exploit the weak links in the chain of opposition to them to inuence world opinion in their favor.
For more information see Why It Matters to You: Why Shouldnt I Download Music from the Internet Free? www.BetweenNations.org
Information Technology: A Tool for World Centralization or Decentralization?

Today, we nd ourselves in the middle of the information revolution and can only begin to assess its impact. Change occurs so fast that we may not be able to understand the dimensions of this revolution until we have experienced its unintended consequences. A search on the World Wide Web will locate virtually any infor mation one could want and bring together like-minded people around the world. The information revolution has liberated individuals from dependence on some authority for information and, thus is a powerful decentralizing force. So much information is available, in fact, that individuals have difculty separating reliable and trustworthy information from erroneous hearsay. The revolution thus risks producing a worldwide population of information junkies who lack the tools for nding meaning in the message but who are ready to react to it. On the centralizing side, the new technology has the ability to disseminate information around the globe, permitting governments and corporations to make
20
CHAPTER 1
instant global connections. Equally important, it can unite individuals in one chat room for discussion on a subject of mutual interest. So we must wait and see before we make a nal judgment on information technology.
The New Global and Transnational Issues

Transnational Going beyond state borders or unstoppable at state borders. Air pollution, for example, may be conned within the boundaries of one state, or it may be transnational, crossing state boundaries. We call this instance transboundary air pollution.
In the twenty-rst century, events in one part of the world can reverberate on the global level. They differ from the old issues in that they are transnational, freely crossing state borders.
The Global Economy
One example, in the new global economy, is the transnational corporation. This is a corporation that can use communications technology to run a global business without having a national home. It can invest and locate anywhere on the planet, beneting the people who live in that location with jobs, but it is ready and willing to pull capital out and move elsewhere if the business climate in that country shifts to its disadvantage. When global capital pulled out of Indonesia in 1997, the Indonesian people were quickly reduced to poverty. In some regions and countries, such as Russia, corporations are reluctant to invest global capital. Other countries seem to attract capital. We talk more about transnational capital transactions in chapters 10 and 11. A main feature of our world today is the large gap between the worlds rich and the worlds poor, both within countries and transnationally. This problem highlights one of the paradoxes of the tension between centralization and decen tralization. Global capital responds to the global market. In so doing, it acts at odds with attempts by the international community to put weak or failed states back on their feet. Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan, has made frequent appeals to the McWorld Is Here international community to invest in his country, At the end of the twentieth century, large corporations produced with few responses from global capital sources. and marketed literally around the world. McDonalds was the first The global economy allows corporations of the to market fast food successfully by selling a standardized hamburger major industrialized countries to take advantage of and French fries in California. The company expanded operations low costs and cheap labor in the developing counthroughout the United States and prides itself in maintaining the tries in order to manufacture products to market same quality of food service around the world today. This photo was around the world. On the plus side, people all over shot in Ortokoy, Istanbul, Turkey. the globe benet from the quantity and quality of goods produced by global corporations. On the downside, the economies of mass production can drive out local companies and local products causing large-scale unemployment whenever a local industry shuts down.
Environmental Degradation
Environmental degradation is another transnational and interdependent problem. Early environmentalists such as the English poets William Blake,5 and William Wordsworth6 deplored Englands satanic mills and stagnant waters. In the New World, John James Audubon painted and Henry Thoreau7 decried the disappearing ora and fauna of the rapidly expanding American frontier.

In 1969, we went to the moon and for the rst time appreciated how fragile and small our planet really was. In the industrialized countries, environmental degradation has become increasingly obvious in the pollution of waterways, and smog in the larger cities. At rst, these problems seemed to be solvable by the action of national governmentswhere a problem such as pollution of a river involved several statesor by a group of states. Now we know that these problems require a transnational approach to their solution. The 1980s brought recognition of a new dimension to environmental pollution: the degradation of the global commons. The global commons are areas of the planet, such as oceans and the Earths atmosphere, which are shared by all the worlds population. Soil erosion, deforestation, and water pollution are more than local problems; they are transnational as well. Not only does the cutting down of forests lead to local soil erosion but also to reduced rainfall caused by deforestation that contributes to regional droughts, as in Saharan Africa, and to global warming. The jury is still out as to whether reduction in our consumption of fossil fuels would signicantly slow down the process. Nevertheless none of us would wish by our actions to contaminate the atmosphere in such a way as to risk life on Earth. At the opening of the twenty-rst century, climate change and sustainable development have become international priorities. (We talk more about these issues in chapter 14.)
21
Global commons Areas of the Earths biosphere that are shared by all the worlds population, such as oceans and the atmosphere.
International Terrorism
Finally, terrorism recognizes no state borders and has no single source. In recent years, the face of terrorism has changed. Terrorists are now networked all over the globe, and their attacks have become more deadly. They come from a diverse set of countriesIran, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Peru, and Central America. Fifteen of the nineteen hijackers who commandeered the four planes on 9/11 were Saudi citizens. Identifying terrorists and preventing attacks are transnational tasks that necessitate timely coordination of both large amounts of information from all parts of the world and action among countries. Can you identify other transborder problems? Do not overlook international drug trafcking, the global child and sex trade, and the large migrations of refugees who seek to escape the consequences of global problems. These, as well as the issues that we have identied, have acquired a life of their own, demanding international agencies to assure maximum benets and minimum hardships to all the worlds people. The new issues thus operate as a powerful force pushing the world toward cooperation and international community building.
The Increasing Inability of the State to Solve Problems

The twenty-rst century has seen the ability of the state to resolve serious problems both within and without its borders decline. Not only are governments nding it harder to solve transnational problems on their own but they are also discovering they can no longer solve basic domestic problems. Why is this so? Let us rst consider transnational problems, and then domestic.
Transnational Problems and Transnational Solutions

An important theme that runs throughout this book is that no state can solve the new transnational problems on its own. Solutions to terrorism, migration, drug trafcking, environmental degradation, and the global child and sex trade require the cooperation of the major governments around the world, including the
22
CHAPTER 1
Garment Workers in a Factory, Seeduwa, Sri Lanka
A negative aspect of globalization has been the setting up by transnational corporations of manufacturing plants in countries, like Mexico, where wages are low. The practice takes jobs away from workers in the United States, while offering the low-wage earners between $1.00 and $3.00 a day. The pay for the workers in the developing countries is often the difference between want and subsistence, but it puts workers in the affluent, higher paid, industrialized countries out of work.
exchange of sensitive information, the standardization of laws relating to these issues, and the coordination of national police forces. We have seen the difculties faced by states trying to solve transnational problems on their own. Even a nation as powerful and wealthy as the United States cannot stop terrorism or drug trafcking by unilateral action. In the case of the environment, it is clear that no one country can undertake the cleanup of the worlds oceans or air by itself. Some reduction of domestic levels of carbon or sulfur dioxide emissions into the air can be achieved through the passage and enforcement of national emission standards. But these reductions are generally limited to local areas. The achievement of worldwide reduction of emissions requires a global agreement on the nature of the problem and its solution, with stipulations on which country is to do what to contribute to the solution.
Inability of States to Solve Problems at Home
If states are limited in what they can do to solve the new transnational problems, they are also limited in their ability to solve problems that were once viewed as purely domestic single-handedly. This is an entirely new situation requiring rethinking of what noninterference in the affairs of other states mean. Problems such as a fair wage for workers, the right price for wheat, and standards for industry and consumer goods are now enmeshed in the politics of globalization. The U.S. Congress could raise the minimum wage to $10 an hour, but many U.S. industries would quickly move to Mexico, the Caribbean, or Southeast Asia, where the cost of labor averages a dollar a day. The result would be rising unemployment in the United States and a further increase in the gap between rich and poor, as more unskilled workers are thrown out of the U.S. work force. In addition, the $10 hourly labor cost would increase the cost of products made in the United States to a level where they could not compete with cheaper products on the world market. The United States could try to push China and India into adopting a higher wage scale, but clearly, both countries would see this as interference in their domestic affairs. Globalization has been one of the strongest forces in reorienting state problem solving in the direction of international organizations (centralization). On the other hand, the perceived erosion of the states control of the domestic agenda has contributed to an increase in decentralizing tendencies within state borders.
The Rise of Ethnic Nationalism and Religious Fundamentalism

The weakening of centralized state power has encouraged decentralization in many parts of the globe. For examples, please take a good look at Table 1.1. Where state power has dramatically decreased, ethnic nationalist and religious movements have sometimes succeeded in breaking that state into national ethnic entities, as happened in Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia in the 1990s after the collapse of communism. More frequently, the inability of the central government to quell ethnic tensions has resulted in a persistent low-level state of civil war. For example, each of the Central Asian states that arose from the fall of the Soviet

TABLE 1.1 Some States Experiencing Internal Dissension
State
Mexico Great Britain Spain Belgium Russia Georgia Azerbaijan Israel Iraq India/Pakistan China Sri Lanka Sudan
23
Source of Dissension
Low-level conflict between Mexican government and the Native Americans of Chiapas for greater autonomy of the Chiapas region Conflict in Northern Ireland between Roman Catholics and Protestants Basque separatist movement wants either independence or more autonomy Continuous dissension between Flemish- or Dutch-speaking Protestant North and Frenchspeaking Catholic South Chechnya seeking independence Conflict between majority Christian Georgians and minority Muslim Abkhazi demanding independence Conflict between majority Muslim Azeris and minority Christian Armenians who want the Armenian-controlled part of Azerbaijan ceded to Armenia Delineation of a Palestinian state Conflict between minority Sunni Iraqis, ethnic Kurds, and majority Shiite Iraqis Conflict between Muslims, supported by Pakistan, and Hindus, supported by India, for control of the territory of Kashmir Fifty-year-old conflict between Chinese government and Tibetans over Tibetan desire for independence Ongoing conflict between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils Two conflicts: 1) A civil war between the black Christian south and Arab Muslim north that has been going on for decades 2) In Darfur, in western Sudan, raids and mass murders of black Muslims by Arab Muslims
Rwanda Ivory Coast
Ethnic rivalry between Hutus and Tutsis Civil war between largely Christian south and Muslim north
Union has a multiethnic population. In many of them, the larger ethnic minorities would prefer their own independent country, or at least a large share of self-rule. Since 1991, civil wars have raged in Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Tajikistan, as has a war for independence in Chechnya a region of Russia. (To understand the differences among state, the nation, and ethnic groups, review Figure 1.1.)
Ethnic and Religious Tension

Ethnic and religious tensions have increased in many parts of the world. In Africa, the most salient examples are the civil wars in Sudan, Somalia, Rwanda, the Ivory Coast, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. An example of seemingly irresolvable religious nationalism is the century-old conict between Jews and Pales tinian Arabs in what is now Israel and the Palestinian territories. The conict is made more complex by the division between the Palestinians themselves over
24
CHAPTER 1
FIGURe 1.1 Do You Know the Difference Between ...?

State Multinational State: A state such as China, India, Nigeria, Russia, or the United States, which contains more than one nation within its territory. Most states are multinational. Multistate Nation: A single nation occupying more than one state boundary. The German, Russian, and Kurd nations are classic examples. Ethnic Nationalism: An ethnic group that seeks independence and bases its right to independence on the right to speak its own language (the Hungarians in Slovakia and Romania; the Kurds in Iraq, Iran, and Turkey; the Basques in Spain and France; the Albanians in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo). In contrast to the American ght for independence, which was based on self-rule over a specic territory regardless of language, most modern nationalist movements are language oriented. We call groups seeking independence under such conditions ethnic national groups. Race: A division of humankind possessing biological traits that are transmissible by descent and are sufcient to characterize it as a distinctive human type. Based on the criteria of pigmentation, color and form of hair, shape of head and nose, and stature, anthropologists generally agree on three major races: the Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid. To classify humans on the basis of race is highly problematic, for there has been an intermingling of races since earliest human history.8
z A geographic territory with internationally recognized boundaries z An internationally recognized and identiable population that lives within those boundaries z An internationally recognized authority structure or government
Nation
z A group of people linked together in some manner, such as by a common territory (Estonians, Czechs, Norwegians), although not necessarily by a common territory (Arabs, Tamils, Kazaks) z Common culture that may or may not be based on religion z Common language z Common history or understanding of the past z General desire for independence
Ethnic Group
z A group of people linked together similarly to those of a nation, EXCEPT: No expressed desire for independence Most important unifying or identifying factor is language z Religion is often a unifying factor.
whether to follow a more traditionally nationalist path to self-government represented by President Abbas and his party, al Fatah, or to take the more extreme religious nationalist route of Hamas (the majority in the legislature) and become a Muslim state. In Kashmir, Indian Hindu soldiers have faced Pakistani Muslim soldiers since 1948 in a bloody drama of hostility, over which country (and religion) is to prevail. In Sri Lanka, the Tamils, a minority ethnic group, want independence from the Sinhalese ethnic majority. The French-speaking Catholic Canadian province of Quebec has held several referendums on whether it should become independent of Canada. The driving force behind the rise of religious fundamentalism has been the rise of militant Islam. While militant Islam is composed of many diverse terrorist groups, its primary leader is Osama bin Laden. Scholars differ as to the objectives of militant Islam, but it is generally conceded that its goal is to end the domination of the world by the Western, highly industrialized countries that militant Islamic groups consider decadent and corrupt, and to replace the existing world order with a Muslim universal caliphate rooted in the Muslim holy book, the Koran, and Islamic law known as the Sharia. To achieve these goals, terrorists groups have

attacked strategic sites in Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America. Nowhere is the struggle for power being more ercely fought than in Afghanistan and Iraq.
25
New Citizen Activism

The fth and last new force we discuss as inuencing world politics is the rise of citizen activism. People around the world appear frustrated by what they see as the weakness and failure of the state to pay attention to their concerns. They may blame their governments for corruption, for abandoning traditional values or traditional religion, or for failing to take sufciently radical measures to either create or halt change.
Citizen Activism and Citizen Empowerment

The efforts of citizens to take power into their own hands and change the politics of their country has markedly increased since the 1970s. In Iran, angry citizens in 1978 protested against what they perceived as their governments inhuman and absolutist methods of rapid industrialization. In 1979, within a little more than two weeks they ousted the ruling shah and welcomed home Ayatollah Khomeini, a cleric urging the return to fundamental Islamic values. In Indonesia in 1998, thousands of young people took to the streets to demand democracy as a solution to the collapse of the Indonesian economy. In 20032005 citizens in the Republic of Georgia and Ukraine in what became known as the Rose and Orange Revolutions, organized massive sit-ins in their The Green Belt Movement main squares demanding a more democratic government. The mass Nobel Peace Prize Winner Dr. Wangari demonstrations against the World Trade Organization (WTO) at every Maathai of Kenya working with volunteers meeting it has held since November 1999 provide another illustration from the Green Belt Movement planting trees of this new level of citizen activism with the protesters demanding the to reforest Kenyas degraded environment.9 end of globalization. In the rst four examples, citizen activism brought changes in the government of the country where the demonstration took place. Iran became an Islamic Republic, Indonesia embarked on its democratic road. In Georgia, the new government has brought economic growth and greater political freedom, while Ukraine has been forced to learn the value of compromise and national reconciliation. Citizen empowerment is thus more than a passing phenomenon. Unlike any other technology, the personal computer or cell phone linked to the Internet gives the individual the ability to seek and send information and to communicate with individuals who have similar views but live in other countries and cultures. Messages owing across the Internet provide the infrastructure necessary to support citizens organizations.
Rise of Non-state Actors

Citizen activism is not only a matter of mass demonstrations. Increase in citizen activism has gone hand in hand with the accelerated growth of individual initiatives and non-state actors (NSAs). Non-state actors are actors on the international stage that are not states. NSAs may be subdivided into four main groups: inter national paramilitary and terrorist groups such as the Shining Path (Sendero luminoso) in Peru or al Qaeda and its associated terrorist groups; rms and business with a global reach, such as multinational corporations (MNCs); the international media; and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) . The 2006 Nobel Peace Prize
Non-state actor (NSA) In international relations, these are actors on the international level that are not states. Nongovernmental organization (NGO) An international organization made up of groups or individuals, recruited across state boundaries, joined either by profession or interest. www.BetweenNations.org
26
CHAPTER 1
winner exemplies the individual and non-state-actor dimensions of citizen activism. The 2006 prize went to Bangladeshi native, Muhammad Yunus for his founding of the Grameen Bank, the rst bank to give microcredit to poor people. As noted earlier, NGOs are organizations of citizens with a common agenda or set of demands they would like a government to implement. NGOs are discussed in more depth in chapter 2 and chapter 7. Some NGOs go back to the nineteenth century, but most got started in the 1970s or later. NGOs may be organized at the grass-roots level, or at the state and international levels. Grass-roots groups commonly organize around a local issue. National NGOs organize to pressure national governments to adopt certain policies or legislation, while the newest of the NGOs, international NGOs, aim to inuence international organizations, such as the UN. NGOs are as diverse as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (national), Friends of the Earth (international), the Adirondack Mountain Club (local), Sister Cities International (international), and al Qaeda, an international terrorist organization. Pressure exerted by global NGOs became so strong that in the late 1980s the UN agreed to give legal standing to NGOs that registered with them. Legal standing means that the registered NGOs are represented in an ofcial capacity at world conferences and in deliberations about UN activities. Such a practice would have been unthinkable one hundred years ago. As you can see, the new citizen activism can reinforce the centralizing tendencies at work today through the formation of like-minded NGOs that can inuence policy at the local, national, and international levels. It can also strengthen the fragmentation of world politics through the proliferation of groups with specic agendas. International terrorism is not the product of one large terrorist organization but rather a collection of smaller groups that are loosely associated and tend to act on their own volition for their own goals.
Test Prepper 1.3

_____ 1. Forces such as information technology either act as centralizing or decentralizing forces in world politics, but not both. _____ 2. Transnational corporations operate in multiple countries but do not possess a national home. _____ 3. While the origins of transnational problems may lie across multiple countries, oftentimes it is possible for just one powerful country (such as the United States) to solve the problem. _____ 4. Ethnic or national movements leading to internal dissent is a problem faced by many different countries, including countries in the developed world such as Great Britain and Spain. _____ 5. With the changing world landscape after the attacks in the United States on 9/11, the world has seen a signicant decrease in citizen-based efforts to take power into their own hands.
_____ 6. The global commons are: a. A variety of afliated IGOs dealing with transnational economic issues b. A subdivision of the UN that focuses on bridging the gap between divergent viewpoints throughout the world c. Issues, such as human rights, that generally act as centralizing forces in world politics d. Areas of the planet shared by all the worlds population _____ 7. A geographic territory with internationally recognized boundaries is one element of a: a. state c. race b. nation d. ethnic group
JOiN THE DEBATE
27
Case Study
The Report of the 9/11 Commission of the U.S. Senate and New Forces Shaping the Planet
See www.BetweenNations.org
Join the Debate Should There Be One World Government?

OVERVIEW
In 1995, the United Nations Commission on Global Governance published Our Global Neighborhood. This report was commissioned after a meeting in 1991 in Stockholm, Sweden, entitled Common Responsibility in the 1990s: The Stockholm Initiative on Global Security and Governance. The report suggests changes in the way the world community goes about running its affairs in order to promote a more just and equitable world society. It presents a cogent argument for consolidating our current international organizations by giving more power to the organizations of the United Nations. The concept of global governance is opposed by those who see the road to one world government as the end of state sovereignty and an opening of the door to tyranny on a scale the world has never seen, all overseen by a gigantic, faceless, unelected bureaucracy. You are just starting your course on World Politics. It is more than likely you have never given any thought or marshaled any arguments in favor of one world government or national sovereignty. Below, we give you some arguments to start you off. Go ahead. Try it. What about one world government? z UN authority over the global commonsthe oceans and the atmosphere z An end to the veto power of permanent members of the UN Security Council z A new Petitions Council to which individuals and NGOs could bring suit against states for noncompliance with international law z A new International Court of Criminal Justice, whose verdicts would be binding on all the member states of the UN. (This court, established in July 1998but without binding jurisdiction on all UN member statesis now located in The Hague, the Netherlands.) z Expanded authority for the secretary-general of the UN.
Arguments for a Stronger, More Powerful United Nations Organization

z A small world needs a world government. The world is already so small that we can y around it in supersonic planes or satellites in three hours or less. z The worlds economy is already globalized. What better way to promote more equitable labor conditions and conservation of environmental resources than through a central organization empowered to oversee the planets human and natural resources? z Intervention by one country in the affairs of another is unacceptable. Decisions on the invasion of member-states must be made collectively within the UN Security Council. z There already exist UN military forces with specic orders for specic places and targets. The upgrading of these forces into a permanent army would give more clout to UN decisions on the resolution of global conicts.
Most Important Proposals

z A system of global taxation based on the levy of special-user charges, such as a carbon tax, for individuals and companies that burn any kind of fuel that emits carbon dioxide z A standing UN army that would have the sole au thority to intervene in states that abuse human rights z An Economic Security Council that would oversee more equitable payment for labor, the promotion of sustainable development around the world, and policies to alleviate poverty and disease
28
CHAPTER 1
z The International Court of Justice should have mandatory jurisdiction over all member-states of the UN. How else is the world to ght criminal abuses of authority by heads of state, national armies, and international terrorists?
NGOs. That would put al Qaeda on the same parliamentary standing in the NGO assembly as the United States is in the current UN General Assembly. You will discover as you debate that the issue of global governance is more complex than it seems at rst and that it demands some heavy thinking.
Arguments against a Stronger United Nations

z The larger the government, the more likely it is to rule tyrannically. We dont need global government; we need honest national governments willing to act rst and foremost in the national interest. z There are no internationally recognized global values and no consensus on how a world government should be organized. One of the most severe value conicts in the world today is over the rights of women and children. If the UN cannot resolve these conicts today, a more centralized UN will have to impose its values throughout the world. z Regulation of the world economy by a UN economic institution would promote a global welfare state in which resources are taken from the most productive global citizens and distributed to the least productive. What is needed is to step up the training of the poorest members of the global community in effective methods of food production and technology development. Education, not welfare, is the answer. z People are not prepared to surrender their national sovereignty and to entrust the security of their homes and families to a UN army. If states give up their military and police forces, how secure will we be against terrorists, criminal gangs, drug rings and sheer cranks? z Sovereign states must have the right to intervene and invade other states whose expressed policies and interests are opposed to their own and threaten the world community. The arguments pro and con highlight the basic problem: that the formation of a global government with its own military force and court of justice to enforce decisions of a global legislature means each state must surrender its sovereignty. This surrender is made all the more problematic by the reports proposal to form a separate parliament composed of recognized
QUESTIoNS
1. How could a world government more efciently and more equitably handle such global issues as regional conflict, poverty, and environmental degradation? 2. How readily do you think any state would be persuaded to give up voluntarily the right to control its own political, economic, and social affairs? 3. How do you understand the term global governance? Do you see the centralization of the worlds economic and political activities as a positive or negative step? Why?
SELECT READINGS
United Nations Commission on Global Governance, Our Global Neighborhood (Oxford University Press, 1995). Peter Singer, One World: The Ethnics of Globalization (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002). Victoria Wise and Dloyd Hedrick, Global One: The New World Government (New York: Morris, 1999). A novel written by a housewife about an astronaut who runs afoul of the Organization of Nations and faces persecution by the Prince.
SELECTED WEBSITES
www.sovereignty.net/p/gov This site provides the total text of Our Global Neighborhood, plus material supporting the con side of the global governance debate. www.lse.ac.uk/Depts/global The Centre for the Study of Global Governance at the London School of Economics provides information, links, and evaluations of materials published on global governance. http://globalization.about.com/od/globalgovernance/ This site provides a bibliography of articles and reports on the institutions and practice of global governance.
RESOURcES ON THE WEB
29
Learning Objectives Review

1 2 world 3 politics 4 and be 5 able to 6 understand 7 8 9 Dene current political events through the competing forces of centralization and decentralization. 10 future player in the global economy, a future professional or businessperson, and as a consumer concerned about your health, your present and future lifestyle are profoundly affected by international relations.
We dened world politics as the global allocation of the planets scarce political, economic, social, and cultural resources. 1 2 Because there is no world government, this allocation takes place through the struggle for power and dominance by international actors, including states, inter national intergovernmental organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and individuals. Over the past centuries, various institutions have been created by European governments to promote peace, including: the birth of the modern state system, the balance of power, and collective security.
4 6 signicant 7 8 shaping 9 10world Identify the5ve most forces the today and understand how these forces have centralizing or decentralizing effects on world politics.
The ve most signicant forces shaping the world today:

- The new information technology - The transnational character of the new issues, such as AIDS and other pandemics, terrorism, and global environmental degradation - The inability of traditional states to solve these problems on their own - The rise of ethnic nationalism and religious extremism - The new citizen activism promoted and sponsored by the new information technology
3 4 how world 5 6 7 your 8 life and 9 how 10 Understand politics affects studying international affairs will help you develop analytical skills to better see patterns in the complexity of current events.
The study of world politics is important to you. It is not just a subject for diplomats and experts. As a voter, a
Resources on the Web

To use these interactive learning and study tools, including video and audio multimedia resources, go to www.BetweenNations.org . Practice Tests Audio Concepts Flashcards Case Studies Primary Sources Historical Background Current Events Daily Newsfeeds from The Washington Post Weblinks for Further Exploration
Approaches to World Politics
Understanding Complexity through Theory
Learning Objectives
1
Identify and understand the key theories that result from realism, idealism, and the ecological paradigm.
Understand and be able to summarize the key assumptions of political realism, idealism, and the ecological paradigm.
30
Theories provide the lens through which we look at ourselves.

Barbara Jancar Webster
Chapter Outline
What Are the Tools of Analysis in

World Politics?
Political Realism Idealism The Ecological Paradigm
What Are the Subjective
Approaches to World Politics?

Critical Theory Constructivism Feminist Theories in International Relations Critiques of Constructivism Critical Theory in Perspective
What Theories of World Politics

Flow from the Paradigms?
Political Realism Idealism Marxism Liberalism The Ecological Paradigm
What are the subjective approaches to world politics? Understand how such approaches differ from realism, idealism, and the ecological paradigm.
International Relations Theories and Paradigms
n chapter 1, we said that world politics was the struggle for power among the worlds sovereign states in the absence of a world government to enforce the rules of the game. We further said that this struggle over the worlds scarce resources was the continuation of a historic phenomenon that has been going on since the human race began. This struggle takes place within the framework of movement toward centralization countered by movements toward decentralization. However, the struggle at the beginning of the twenty-rst century differs from those in the past due to new forces that are shaping the planet. These include the high-technology revolution; the globalization of political, economic, and social issues; the inability of one state to solve even
32
Key Terms
CHAPTER 2
APPROAcHES TO WORLD POLITIcS
paradigm p. 32 political realism p. 33 idealism p. 33 ecological paradigm p. 33 realpolitik p. 35 zero-sum game p. 35 mutually assured destruction (MAD) p. 36 regime p. 38 ecosystem p. 38 sustainable development p. 38 tsunami p. 39 anthropogenic p. 40 carrying capacity p. 40 balance-of-power theory p. 42 hegemon p. 43 neorealism p. 44 security dilemma p. 44 offensive realism p. 44 Marxism p. 45 imperialism p. 46 dependency theories p. 47 liberalism p. 48 democratic peace theory p. 48 collective security p. 49 neoliberalism p. 49 deep ecology p. 52 symbiosis p. 52 ecofeminism p. 52 ecojustice p. 53 constructivism p. 56
domestic problems without taking a global perspective; the rise of ethnic nationalism and religious extremism; and the new citizen activism. How do you make sense of all that is happening in the world today? What does all the news in the media add up to? Do the rapid changes taking place provide any idea where the world is heading? What are your predictions based on Figure 2.1? Here is where theory can help. Chapter 1 supplied numerous bits of information. The only way to make the information intelligible is by organizing it in a systematic way. All such systems are rooted in the assumptions you make about human behavior in relation to the world around you. A group of those assumptions is called a paradigm . Philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn has dened a paradigm as an entire constellation of beliefs, values and techniques ... shared by the members of a given community.1 In the case of international relations, members of the given community would be scholars in the political science discipline. A paradigm is thus the intellectual framework from within which we derive theories about the natural and social world. As shown in Table 2.1, theories, in turn, provide the lens through which we are able to describe events, explain them, and, less accurately, make predictions about them. Theories also help us make policy recommendations; this is a very important way in which theory and reality are linked.
FIGURE 2.1 The Difculty of Prediction
Theories Help Us To
z Describe things z Explain things z Make predictions z Make policy recommendations
Paradigm The framework of assumptions from within which we derive theories about the natural and the social world.
The year was 1984 and a political prophet was asked to predict what would happen in the world in twenty years time. He looked into his tea leaves and prophesied in twenty years that communism would have collapsed, that China would be a member of the World Trade Organization, that the biggest threat to the United States would be from militant Muslims then being supported by the United States, that apartheid would have ended in South Africa, and that Germany would be reunited into one state. People at that time would have thought the prophet was a lunatic. In fact, in 1984 no one predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union. You be the prophet. What do you think the international system will look like in 2024? Which states will be the major powers? What will be the major alliances and trading blocs?2
c WHAT ARE THE TOOLS OF ANALYSIS IN WORLD POLITIcS?

TABLE 2.1 International Relations Paradigms, Theories, and Assumptions
Parent Paradigm
Realism
33
Assumptions
Human beings are imperfect. The international world is a jungle characterized by an anarchic struggle for survival and power. War is inevitable. The only thing that stops power is power.
Theories Derived from Assumptions

Political Realism Balance of Power Hegemonic Stability Neorealism (structural) Offensive Realism Marxism Imperialism Dependency theories Liberalism Democratic Peace Theory Collective security Regime Theory Neoliberalism Subjective Approaches Critical Theory Constructivism Some feminist theories
Idealism
Utopianism: The world is getting better. Human beings are basically good and perfectible. Caring and compassion are innate. Everyone has equal value and human dignity. We can cooperate to build a better world. We must restructure flawed institutions to create good ones.
Ecological Paradigm
The human world is a subset of the global ecosystem. Resources on Earth are finite. Humans cannot exceed an ecosystems carrying capacity or that system will collapse. Sustainable development is the answer to a planet at risk.
Sustainable Development Theory Deep ecology Ecofeminism Ecojustice
In this chapter, we present three of the major paradigms with their accompanying theories. In the rst section, we present each of the paradigms, and in the second, the theories that derive from them. In the last section, we look at theories that are critical of the assumptions behind the major paradigms and are starting to play a larger role in analyses of world politics. n
What Are the Tools of Analysis in World Politics?

1 Understand and be able to summarize the key assumptions of political realism, idealism, and the ecological paradigm.
Political realism A philosophical position that assumes that human beings are imperfect and possess an innate desire for power. The international system is composed of states and other entities whose primary interest is to survive and thrive in an anarchic jungle whose competing actors are constrained by no higher authority. The fundamental purpose of the state is to use its power to further its interests while containing the power of other states that might prevent this from happening. Idealism A philosophical position that argues that human beings are basically good. War can be prevented when the proper international institutions are created. States can cooperate to solve problems and improve the existing world order, given the right institutions. Ecological paradigm The approach to international relations that assumes that the world of humans cannot be studied apart from its natural environmental context and that sees the human world as a subset of the global ecosystem. Central to this paradigm is the view that planet Earth, with its surrounding atmosphere, represents a nite ecosystem.
In this section, we discuss three paradigms that underlie theory building in world politics today and help us understand the international world: political realism, idealism, and the ecological paradigm. In many ways, the three paradigms differ dramatically from each other. You must read and decide which worldview best suits your outlook on life. Keep in mind as well that each can offer useful insights into how the world works.
34
CHAPTER 2
Political Realism
For more information see The View From: The Indian Realist Thinker Kautilya www.BetweenNations.org
Political realism is the dominant paradigm in international relations. The paradigm is based on the twin assumptions that human beings are imperfect and that they have an innate desire for power. Realists thus like to theorize about the uses of power, the consequences of power, and the containment of power. Central to this view is the belief that we live in a world of anarchy, where only their offensive and defensive capabilities keep states from each others throats. Security is thus the big issue in realist analysis.
An Overview of Political Realism

For more information see The Melian Dialogue www.BetweenNations.org
The realist approach to international affairs traces its origins to the ancient Greek historian Thucydides, who wrote what was probably the rst systematic analysis of war, titled The Peloponnesian Wars. The work recounts the story of the thirtyyear war between the Greek city-state of Athens and its great rival, Sparta (431404 bc). In a celebrated passage, Thucydides has the Athenian Assembly debate the fate of a rebel colony, Mytilene on the island of Lesbos. The angry response of the Athenian army to the revolt was to order the whole colony put to death. The Athenian citizens protested that order, and they called for another meeting of the Assembly. Using arguments based on political realism, the ruler of Athens, Cleon, urged that the punishment be carried out and the colonists executed. He claimed that the rebels had known what they were doing and had planned the whole thing. Here are three of Cleons arguments: z One only forgives actions that are not deliberate. (That is, we should not feel pity for the rebels.) z A sense of decency is only felt toward those who will be our friends in the future. (That is, give these people what they deserve.) z It is a general rule of human nature that people despise those who treat them well, and look up to those who make no concessions. (That is, punishment is the best medicine.)3 These arguments and others like them have been used to justify the use of force throughout history. The realist path runs through the Indian philosopher Kautilya (3rd Century bc) to Niccol Machiavelli (14691527) and his famous book, The Prince. Written to gain favor with the Medici rulers of Florence, Italy, the author describes an ideal ruler very similar to the cruel and cunning prince of the Papal States, Cesare Borgia. The Medicis rejected the book, and it outraged the Florentine public. Since that time, Machiavelli has had a bad reputation. Machiavelli wrote of the realities of state power through an analysis of the means by which individuals have tried to seize and keep power in the highly volatile and fragmented environment that was Renaissance Italy. Perhaps his best-known statement is It is better for a prince to be feared than loved, but a wise ruler will take care not to be hated. His central idea was that power was so changeable, a single mistake could topple a ruler. To stay in power, the ideal prince must enforce his will through a combination of strong character, ruthlessness, a love of risk taking, and an ability to calculate the consequences of his actions. Machiavelli was the rst major Western thinker to uncouple politics from ethics. To him, politics was solely about getting and keeping power. A century later, Thomas Hobbes (15881679), an adviser to another prince Charles II of Englandset forth his realist approach in his treatise on government,
For more information see The Prince by Niccol Machiavelli www.BetweenNations.org

entitled Leviathan, or the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth. Hobbess use of the Hebrew word leviathan, or sea monster, as a metaphor for the states power over its citizens, gave the word a negative connotation. When we speak of a leviathan state today, we are probably referring to an authoritarian state with a huge bureaucracy to enforce its rule. Hobbes based his arguments for the leviathan state on his realist view that human nature is imperfect, rooted in the senses, and prone to strong emotional reactions and imprudent decisions. He argued that to be happy, human beings needed a common power to keep them all in awe; otherwise, every person would be the enemy of every other person. Hobbes saw the causes of conflict as endemic in the nature of human beings: competition, distrust, and desire for glory.4
35
Modern Political Realism

Political realism has become synonymous with the practices of Otto von Bismarck, the Prussian prime minister who engineered the unication of modern Germany in 1871. Bismarck, in fact, coined the term realpolitik (politics of the real) to characterize his foreign policy. Bismarck was a leading supporter of the balance-ofpower principle, discussed later in the chapter and in detail in The Father of Modern Realism chapter 4. As a realist, he saw power primarily in terms of armaHans J. Morgenthau (19041977), the leading ments and military preparedness. He did much to build up Germaproponent of realism in America after the Second nys military so that Germany quickly became a leading European World War and author of Politics Among Nations. power that challenged Great Britains supremacy. In the United States, Hans Morgenthau probably made the largest contribution to the development of American political realism Realpolitik A term coined by the after World War II. Morgenthau argued that events that occurred between the two nineteenth-century German chancellor Otto world wars, as well as World War II itself, demonstrated that human beings do not Von Bismarck to describe his foreign policy for come into the world inherently good. They are capable of both good and bad, but Germanynamely, the building up of the milithe drive for power is innate and instinctive. War is thus a certainty. Governments tary to make Germany one of the leading and individuals must devise their actions and responses in the international world European powers, rivaling Great Britain. based on the worst-case scenario. The central event in Morgenthaus life was the onset of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union (USSR). If the United States wanted to keep out of a hot war with the USSR, he argued, For more information see national security required it to have superb offensive and defensive capabilities, Contemporary Realism: and to be dedicated to opposing communism.
Political Realism Today

Drawing on the work of Bismarck, Morgenthau, and others, realists today emphasize the primacy of foreign policy over domestic policy, the importance of a strong military force and cutting-edge military technology, and the centrality of national security. The major player in the international arena is the state. States operate on an international stage where anarchy rules. With no higher power to constrain their behavior, states struggle to increase their power and prestige at the expense of other states. World politics is a zero-sum game, where the winner takes all and is the most powerful state. Where idealists argued that we should do away with nuclear bombs because they present a hazard to humanity, realists argued that the only way to keep power-hungry states like the USSR from attacking was through
Morgenthau www.BetweenNations.org
Audio Concept Zero-Sum Game www.BetweenNations.org Zero-sum game The concept that in politics, the winner takes all; if one side gains, the other must lose.
36
CHAPTER 2
Mutually assured destruction (MAD) In the context of the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, both sides were deterred from attacking each other because they believed the destruction of both countries was be assured if one initiated a nuclear attack.
the building of a nuclear arsenal on each side that guaranteed the other would not attack. This situation was known as mutually assured destruction (MAD). In summary, political realism: z Starts from the premise that human beings as well as the world in which they live are imperfect. z The games of states take place in an arena dominated by the struggle for power. z Realists tend to support a strong military and to put national security ahead of international cooperation. z In aligning themselves with national sovereignty and independence, realists are skeptical of a centralized world order, preferring a more decentralized and exible relationship among states.
Idealism
Idealism is the second major approach to international relations. Idealists differ from realists in that they ask what the world could or ought to be and how to get there. In contrast to realists, they believe that human beings are basically good. Therefore, institutions must be developed that will enable them to be the best they can be. The two great transforming ideologies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Marxism and liberalism, stem from the idealist view of the world. Many scholars would not place Marxism in the idealist camp. Karl Marx was an idealist, however, in the sense that he was a utopian and believed the world would become more just and more equitable by means of fundamental changes in the way human society is organized. In addition, the subjective approaches discussed at the end of the chapter also derive from Marxism. In January 1918 ten months before the end of World War I, U.S. president Woodrow Wilson in a speech to the U.S. Congress presented fourteen points that announced a new approach to international relations. These ideas came to be known as liberalism. The central tenet was that war could be prevented. It was not inevitable if the proper international institutions were created. Rather than the balance of power keeping nations from war, nations would join a League of Nations dedicated to collective security: An attack against one is an attack against all. The League would operate on the principles of international law, provide a forum for discussion to prevent war, and threaten the potential aggressor by collective military action. World War II demonstrated that neither international law nor the League of Nations was capable of preventing war. Still, idealists were not disheartened. Human beings may be imperfect, but they are perfectible. The League was a badly conceived institution, they argued. It was open only to democratic nationsand, unfortunately, the largest democratic nation, the United States, did not join. After the war, idealists, both Marxists and liberals rallied around the formation of a new international organization, the United Nations (UN; see chapter 6). This time, membership was open to any duly recognized state. The United States and the Soviet Union were among its founding members, and the United States took the lead in designing the organization. Although some may argue the point, other international institutions and agreements formed after World War II, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trades (GATT), owe their existence most analysts believe to the analogous liberal

Screening Patients for Sleeping Sickness in Chad
37
The World Health Organization has done a superlative job in cooperation with national health organizations such as the U.S. Center for Disease Control, monitoring contagious diseases around the globe. Early warning from the IGO alerts governments to a possible epidemic. The national responses to the warning help contain some of the deadliest diseases, such as SARS, saving millions of lives. WHOs most significant success has probably been the eradication of smallpox.
conviction that cooperation can be achieved in the economic sphere and is a rational alternative to bankrupting nations and starting trade wars.
The Importance of Cooperation to Build Peace

Idealists share the conviction that altruism is as fundamental to the human condition as competition and rivalry. Human beings through the centuries have understood the benet of cooperation to minimize risks and maximize benets for all the participants.5 Governments and states can and should work together to develop policies and strategies that call humankind to a world order of justice, compassion for the less fortunate, and concern for basic human values. A common concern of most idealists is the horror of modern war. If the two world wars were terrible in general, the dropping of the atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which killed more than 140,000 people, was especially horric. Idealists were erce critics of nuclear war and the nuclear buildup between the United States and the USSR. During the Cold War, Marxist thinking provided the ideological underpinnings for many Western peace movements. Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, idealists (liberals and Marxists alike) fought for more international cooperation, more international regulation, and the value of multinational treaties such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Montreal Protocol, which limits the emission of chlorouorocarbons into the atmosphere. Idealists are often active members of peace movements, womens movements, and environmental and human rights movements. Today, many idealists center their hopes for a cooperative future on the extra ordinary increase in the number of international treaties that have been signed and ratied by the worlds governments. These treaties cover a wide range of subject matter. Generally, they outline a procedure or identify a process that the treaty signatories agree to follow. The process or procedure that is born of a treaty
For more information see Camp David Accord www.BetweenNations.org
For more information see Why It Matters to You: Are You A Liberal or a Realist? www.BetweenNations.org
38
CHAPTER 2
Regime The process or procedure that is born of a treaty that the signatories agree to follow. The treaty usually sets up a goal to be reached, a process by which to reach the goal, a timeline, and a permanent organizational framework to monitor progress.
is termed an international regime.* The existence of international regimes challenges the realist assumption that only the struggle for power can characterize international relations. Each state may be out for itself. But the existence of regimes is an indication that cooperation between states without coercion from a global authority is not only possible but also an effective way to resolve or promote international concerns. The idealist paradigm builds on the notion that altruism is a fundamental characteristic of human behavior. It just needs the right kind of social and government structure, to be released. States can and should cooperate among themselves with the aim of constructing a more just and cooperative world order. Violence can be prevented by binding states together through international treaties and addressing the causes of violence through the combined efforts of the world community.
The Ecological Paradigm

The third approach to international relations that we present is the ecological paradigm. Of far less prominence than realism or idealism, it dates from the late 1970s and was developed by political scientists Herman Daly and Dennis Pirages, along with many others. The element that differentiates the ecological paradigm from any variant of idealism or realism is its insistence that the world of humans cannot be studied apart from their natural environment. The human world, in fact, is a subset of the physical universe; humanity survives or disappears according to its ability to adapt to the global ecosystem. Central to this approach is the realization that planet Earth and its surrounding atmosphere are nite. Most important, the planet possesses nite resources. No amount of money can substitute for the exhaustion of these resources. If humankind is to continue to exist, it must conduct its global transactions in such a way as to sustain or build up the ecosystem and not destroy it.
Ecosystem A community of interacting organisms and their natural environment.
Sustainable Development
Sustainable development In the interests of its own survival, the human race must not undertake any economic development that leaves a larger footprint on the environment than the ecosystem can successfully accommodate without breaking down.
A vital concept for the ecological paradigm approach is sustainable development (see Figure 2.2). Sustainable development means that in the interests of its own survival, the human species must not leave a larger footprint on the environment than the ecosystem can successfully accommodate without breaking down. If we overgraze our elds, erode our farmlands, cut down our forests, and use up and pollute our water, our species will disappear, like the dinosaurs. In the context of the theme of this book, the ecological paradigm posits that many decentralized regional or national acts of environmental degradation ultimately add up to global pollution. In other words, the domestic policies of individual countries, such as rapid deforestation, the promotion of farming on marginal soils, the spread of the urban metropolis, and the concentration of the worlds populations in cities combine to, produce intermestic environmental issues that can only be solved on a global scale.
*Political scientist Oran Young was the rst to look at regime formation resulting from environmental treaties and to ask how we can determine whether or not a regime will successfully complete or follow the process demanded of it by its treaty.

FIGURE 2.2 Piragess Five Capitals and Three Pillars of Sustainability
Sustainability: Community control and prudent use of ve types of capital supported by what Pirages calls the three pillars of sustainability. The Five Types of Capital 1. Natures capital = natural resources 2. Human capital = people and the body of knowledge they contribute to community and production 3. Human-created capital = products and technologies created by humans 4. Social capital = civic trust and civic involvement in a place; participation in the political life of a particular community, newspaper readership, membership in associations from sports clubs to the Lions Club, from unions to choral societies. Social capital denes where you are and the importance of that place to you. 5. Cultural capital = a communitys culture, including factors that provide it with the means and adaptations to deal with the natural environment and modify it, such as creation myths and dreams of a better world.
From Dennis Pirages, Building Sustainable Societies (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1996), pp. 4348.
39
The Three Pillars of Sustainability 1. Economic security = the control that individuals have over their own economic lives and the degree to which they are capable of shielding themselves from external economic shocks 2. Ecological integrity = living in harmony with natural systems: clean air, water, and land use that meets human needs and maintains the essential elements of the ecosystem 3. Democracy = citizen participation in community decision making. The three pillars are created and supported by the ve forms of capital.
In 1988, the former president of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, was the rst world leader to put sustainable development at the top of the global political agenda. His placing of planetary survival on the international agenda encouraged politicians and scientists in other countries to address the issue.
Think Globally, Act Locally

In 1998, Hurricane Mitch brought torrents of rain down on the Central American countries of Honduras and Nicaragua. In the resulting oods and horrendous mudslides, some 10,000 people died. One of the principal reasons for the scope of the tragedy was the rapid deforestation of tropical forests in both countries. Another was the pressure on the poor peasants to till marginal land, because the good land had all been dedicated to export agriculture. In December 2004, a submarine earthquake in the Indian Ocean and attending tsunami, the deadliest ever recorded, killed upwards of 187,000 with 43,000 missing in the Indian subcontinent, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia.6 In August 2005, Atlantic Hurricane Katrina devastated the city of New Orleans causing at least 1800 deaths, and $81.2 billion in damages. A major reason for the lethal destruction caused by the two storms was the human alteration of natural coastlines and watersheds, such as the Mississippi River, to the benet of industry, pisciculture, and the resort business. Similar tragedies might be avoided in the future if the international community presses forward in its promotion of
Tsunami An ocean wave produced by a submarine earthquake, landslide, or volcanic eruption. These waves may reach enormous size and travel across entire oceans.
40
CHAPTER 2
The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River, China
Research is showing that dams may frequently do more harm than good. On the positive side, they generate electricity from falling water, one of the cleanest ways to generate power. On the negative side, they store water in huge reservoirs, completely changing a rivers ecology. Environmentalists all over the world have been protesting the construction of huge hydroelectric projects like this one in China.
Anthropogenic Caused by humans or originating from human actions. Carrying capacity Carrying capacity is usually dened as the maximum population of a given species that can be supported indenitely in a dened habitat without permanently impairing the productivity of that habitat.
sustainable development programs and prevails on the nations of the world to agree to them. Hurricanes, earthquakes, oods, typhoons, and ice storms are natural phenomena. They become human tragedy when the anthropogenic, or human-created, impact exceeds the carrying capacity of the at-risk ecosystem, causing the ecosystem to collapse.7 Sometimes we can predict the collapse. Sometimes it comes as a surprise. We talk more about the surprise factor in the environmental paradigm in chapter 14. In summary, the environmental paradigm believes: z That world politics is essentially environmental politics. z Individual states need to recognize that their domestic and foreign policies have signicant environmental repercussions for the global community. z On their part, centralizing world-order institutions, like the organizations afliated with the UN, must be able and willing to assist states in ensuring not only their environmental security but also the security of the world as a whole. The proliferation of natural disasters in the twentieth century resulting from human activities suggests that the ecological paradigm may well take center stage in the international politics of the twenty-rst century.
c WHAT THEORIES OF WORLD POLITIcS FLOw FROM THE PARADIGMS?

Test Prepper 2.1
True or False?
41
_____ 1. The dominant theories of world politics allowed scholars to predict the fall of the Soviet Union. _____ 2. Proponents of realism believe that the international system is characterized by anarchy. _____ 3. Idealism argues that international institutions should be developed in order to allow human beings to be the best they can be. _____ 4. Marxists and idealists basically believe the same things when it comes to explaining international politics. _____ 5. Because of increased environmental concerns in the past decade, the ecological paradigm has become the dominant approach to international politics in recent years.
Multiple Choice
_____ 6. Which of the following does theory help us do? a. Describe things b. Explain things e. Make predictions d. Make policy recommendations e. All of the above
_____ 7. A zero-sum game refers to which of the following situations? a. When both countries in a nuclear arms race are devastated completely through nuclear war b. When anything gained by one country must come at the expense of another country c. When the absolute gain made by two countries through economic trade zeroes out d. When the relative gain by one actor is reduced to zero through excessive military spending e. None of the above _____ 8. A central idea in the ecological paradigm is that: a. The environment should take precedence over all other living things as life cannot survive without a hospitable environment. b. Global warming is the single most threatening environmental problem faced by humanity. c. The planet Earth and its surrounding atmosphere are nite and possess limited resources. d. The environment must be studied apart from the humans that occupy it to truly understand the environments impact on world politics.
What Theories of World Politics Flow from the Paradigms?

2 Identify and understand the key theories that result from realism, idealism, and the ecological paradigm.
How do these basic paradigms about the human condition inuence the theories one adopts to explain the international world? Throughout this book, we explain a variety of global events and issues based on one or a combination of theories derived from these paradigms. Take another look at Figure 2.1 to get a better understanding of what political theories have been developed from the three paradigms. Now let us take each of the paradigms in turn to explore the theories each has spawned. Keep in mind that the chapter looks only at the dominant paradigms and theories in world politics, with realism and idealism rivals for rst place.
42
CHAPTER 2
Political Realism
Realisms central concerns are war, peace, and security. War may be inevitable, but we can limit the desire of enemies to wage war by appropriate military preparedness and by diplomatic maneuvers to redirect that countrys interest. We use diplomacy as long as it promotes our state interest but are ready for war if diplomacy fails. In the words of the nineteenth-century Prussian general Karl von Clausewitz, War is nothing but the continuation of politics by other means.8 In every international interaction, the gains of one state come as a loss to another. To give you a sense of realism as a tool to understand world politics, we present three modern theories that derive from the realist perspective. Many others also come from realism, some of which were mentioned earlier. The theories presented here are balance-of-power theory, hegemonic stability theory, and neorealism or structural realism.
Balance-of-Power Theory
Balance-of-power theory Posits that peace and security are best preserved by a state of equilibrium between the major players in a potential war.
According to the realist balance-of-power theory, war is avoided by a condition of equilibrium between the main players in the potential war. Just as we can nd out a babys weight by placing him or her on one side of a scale and adding increments of pounds or kilos to the other side of the balance until the two sides of the scale are in equilibrium, so we can measure global or regional equilibrium by weighing the power attributes of one state or set of states against the power attributes of a second state or set of states. Power attributes of states include: z Military and economic potential z Nature of a states leadership z Extent of international involvement If the power attributes of one side outweigh those of the other, the balance goes out of equilibrium and war ensues. Balance-of-power theory dominated diplomatic and international military and economic relations throughout the nineteenth century. Using this theory, Admiral Alfred Mahan of the United States and English geopolitician, Sir Halford MacKinder argued late in the nineteenth century that power was determined by strategic and geopolitical factors. Geopolitics is now a subdiscipline of international relations that we discuss in chapter 8. The theory was also used to justify the formation of the two alliances that dominated Europe prior to World War I: the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente. According to the theory, World War I was caused by a breakdown in the rough equality or balance between the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austro-Hungary, and Italy, and the Triple Entente between France, Great Britain, and Russia, as shown in Figure 2.3. A number of scholars, including Paul Kennedy, George Modelski, Immanuel Wallerstein, and Chase Dunn have questioned whether in the rise and fall of world systems, the United States today is historically in decline as a world power and how that decline might affect the international balance of power. Balance-ofpower theory is also a good tool to use in investigating regional conict, such as Iraqs invasion of Iran, or the difculties in nding a solution to the century-old conict between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East.

FIGURE 2.3 Realpolitik and the Balance of Power, 18781914
43
Triple Alliance
Triple Entente
World War I 19141918 18791918 The Dual Alliance: Germany/Austro-Hungary 18811887 Three Emperors League: Germany, Austro-Hungary, Russia 18811895 Austro-Serbian Alliance: Austria, Serbia 18821915 Triple Alliance: Germany, Austro-Hungary, Russia 18831916 Austro-German Romanian Alliance Central Powers Atlantic Powers 19021913 Russo-Bulgarian Military Convention: Russia, Bulgaria 19041918 Entente Cordiale: France, Great Britain 19071917 Anglo-Russian Entente: Great Britain, Russia 19071917 Triple Entente: France, Great Britain, Russia
Hegemonic Stability Theory

A second theory in the realist paradigm argues that economic and/or political stability in the world or in a region requires a strong power, termed a hegemon, from the Greek word for leader. Contrary to balance-of-power theory, hegemonic stability theory (HST) does not fear an imbalance of power but rather argues that the imbalance, is necessary. Why were the Asian countries of Japan, Korea, and Taiwan able to industrialize as rapidly as they did in the last quarter of the twentieth century? HST says they were able to do so because there was a hegemon (the United States) in the Pacic basin that provided the military and economic security necessary for these states to develop. Moreover, the United States was strong enough economically to keep its markets open to the products of Asian countries, which a weaker power could not do. HST thus argues in favor of a dominant political, economic, and military state that can guarantee the order necessary for weaker states to develop, provide the force necessary to secure the peace in a given region, and commit its inuence to treaty implementation.
Hegemon A country whose overwhelming military, political, and economic power gives it the ability to write and enforce the rules of the international system. A powerful regional state that tries to use its military or economic power to dominate countries in the regionas in Iraqs invasion of Kuwait in August 1990.
ishing Services Inc. Politics in the 21st Century, 3e
44
CHAPTER 2
Neorealism
Neorealism An approach to international relations, developed by Kenneth N. Waltz, that argues that while humans may be selsh by nature and driven by a lust for power, power is not the true end. States really pursue power in order to survive. The goal is national survival.
Security dilemma Because the international system is characterized by anarchy, any attempt by a country to increase its security results in a corresponding decrease in other countries security. The dilemma faced by states, then, is how to increase ones own security without threatening other states and thereby making yourself less secure as a result.
A third theory based on the realist paradigm, neo- or defensive realism, was rst formalized by U.S. political scientist Kenneth N. Waltz (1979). Waltz agrees that people are by nature selsh, that they are driven by a lust for power, and that international relations is, as Hobbes put it, a war of all against all. But Waltz no longer considers power an end in itself. States, in his view, pursue power for the sake of survival. For Waltz, the single most important property of the international system is the absence of central governing institutions. States operate in an anarchic world, where uncertainty of other international actors intentions reigns. To overcome the security dilemma, states must pursue their offensive capabilities if they want to survive. In general, neorealists agree with the following points: z States remain the primary actors on the world stage. The main goal of all states, however, is not power but survival in a dog-eat-dog environment. z The primary difference between states is not different goals but their differing capabilities to inuence the course of international events. z The unequal distribution of capabilities denes the structure of the international system and shapes the ways states interact with one another. We talk more about this point in chapter 3. Neorealists pay little attention to what is going on inside statesas, for example, whether states are democratic or dictatorial. Regardless of internal beliefs and ideologies, the foreign policies of all states in their view, are driven by the same systemic factors present in the international system; they are so many billiard balls obeying the same laws of political geometry and physics.9 Because the structure of the international system is dened by the capabilities of states, neorealists are pessimistic about achieving international cooperation and a world of peace and justice. The anarchic structure of the system compels states to worry about their relative position in the distribution of power and in self-defense to compete to improve or just maintain their position. For neorealists, permanent insecurity is the major impediment to global cooperation, and it is built right into the anarchic international system, whether we admit it or not.
Offensive Realism
Offensive realism A theory that blames conicts in the world on the anarchy of the international system, not on human nature. Great powers tend to seek hegemony to limit or destroy challenges from other great powers.
Of the fourth theory, offensive realism , turns neorealism on its head. Its leading proponent, John Mearsheimer, holds that states are not content with the power they have, but seek dominance or hegemony, to satisfy their sense of vulnerability in an insecure world. Mearsheimer argues that there is no such thing as the status quo. Every great power faces the problem of determining how much power is enough for its survival and thus is constantly striving for world dominance to eliminate the possibility of challenge by another great power. Offensive realism contrasts with Waltzs theory of defensive realism, where insecurity forces states to compete to keep their relative position in the global distribution of power.10
Realism in Perspective
Political realism has its gloomy moments. Its predictions for the future are not hopeful. Realists do not want to be discouraging, but they do insist we look at reality as they see it. That reality is an anarchic world where, in the absence of a central

authority or world government, states and other international actors compete in a erce and brutal struggle for survival. The only way to contain power is with power. During the Cold War, nuclear war was prevented through the realpolitik of mutually assured destruction. In the postCold War world, the insecurity brought about by the changed landscape of states, the globalization of the economy, and other problems all call for the state to maintain its vigilance to look out for Number One.
45
Idealism
Idealists are nowhere near as skeptical of international cooperation as are realists. Their assumption, that the world can be made better if we can only get the institutions right, leads us to two important theoretical perspectives on international relations. Idealists believe that the world, or at least its human institutions, is perfectible. In this sense, idealism is utopian. Idealists ask, What is wrong with human society? How can it be improved? Idealists are convinced that change is for the better and that human beings can become more caring, more mindful of others needs than they generally are. They believe that human beings can be perfected through education and by changing institutions and their relationships. The right structuring of institutions, they assert, enables human beings to bring about a better world, free of greed and envy. The two great transforming ideologies of the twentieth century, Marxism and liberalism, stem from the idealist view of the world. Many scholars would not place Marxism in the idealist camp. Karl Marx was an idealist, however, in the sense that he was a utopian and believed that the historical process, as it unfolded, would bring about a more just and equitable world through transformative changes in the way human society was organized. In addition, many modern critiques of the tenets of realism and idealism derive from Marxism. We discuss a few of these approaches in the last section of the chapter, What Are the Subjective Approaches to World Politics.
Marxism
History, according to Marxist theory, is a one-way street from the past into the utopian future. As we move from the past to the present, we see that certain thresholds in human experience mark turning points, or decisive changes, to a different form of socioeconomic and political organization. The historic instrument of these changes was what Marx called the class struggle. Every major socioeconomic change in the history of humankind, Marx said, occurred as a consequence of the struggle between the two most important socioeconomic groups in that period of time: the property-owning class, or haves, that controlled the key economic assets and made all the rules, and the property-less class, or have-nots, that owned none of the assets and worked for and obeyed the ruling class. Marx argued that the changes were typically violent because they involved real struggle between the haves and the have-nots. But the changes were always a change forward and indicated a progressive betterment of the human condition. Communism, for Marx, was the end-state of human social organization. Under communism, he asserted, all exploitation would cease; there would be no rich or poor and no class divisions, and the state would no longer possess coercive and oppressive authority. All humankind would live in harmony according to the principle From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
Marxism The theory that history is a oneway street from the past to the future. As history progresses, thresholds in human experience mark a turning point in terms of socioeconomic and political organization. These changes are always a change forward and indicate the progressive betterment of the human condition. The engine driving the change is the class strugglethe tension between the class that possesses the means of production in a given society and the class that works for it. Marx identied the human race as having gone through prehistoric society, slaveholding society, feudal society, and capitalist society. The end condition of human society would be the classless society of communism.
46
CHAPTER 2
The Fathers of Communism
Karl Marx (left) wrote his Communist Manifesto in 1848 and started two movements to improve the conditions of the working class, socialism and communism. Vladimir Ilych Lenin (right), the leader of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and first communist ruler of the Soviet Union, introduced the theory of imperialism into Marxist thinking.
The ideas of Marx inspired both the democratic socialist democracies, with their pluralist, multiparty systems, in Western Europe and the dogmatic communist regimes in Eastern Europe, Eurasia, and Asia. In Western Europe, the social democratic party was the party of the have-nots, the working class, whose aim was the improvement of the workers life by peaceful means, such as elections and legislation. A central assumption of communist regimes is that improvement of the lot of the working majority of a population can come about only through violent means. Once the communist regime comes to power, the state can create a new man (or woman) who will have all the best qualities. To achieve these goals, capitalism, with its emphasis on individual and private gain, must be abolished and a new system of state ownership of the economy established. Once the revolution has been achieved, the state can then focus its vast powers on the education of the new man or woman and provide work in the new working environmentwhich is no longer governed by the prot motive but by the workers enthusiasm for work.
Imperialism A theory developed by Vladimir I. Lenin, who described it as the highest stage of capitalism (see Marxism). Under imperialism, national states driven by economic success and the need for more and more raw materials acquired colonies. These they proceeded to exploit for cheap labor and natural resources and to use as an expanded market where they could sell their goods.
Imperialism
The application of Marxism to the international arena produced two corollary theories. The rst was developed by the rst leader of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Ilych Lenin. Lenin used the term imperialism to describe the division of the nineteenth-century world by the European powers into colonial empires for each power. Imperialism, he said, was the most advanced stage of capitalism. Imperialism involved the movement of domestic capital abroad to Asia, Africa, and the Americas, in search of cheap raw materials, cheap labor, and new markets that the

mother country no longer or never had possessed. Lenin was quick to see the disruption of traditional lifestyles brought about by the transfer of the industrial system to the colonies. The class struggle that Marx had identied between worker and capitalist in one country, Lenin saw transferred to the international world. The capital-exporting countries were the imperialists, and the peoples of the colonial countries were the proletariat. Until the late 1980s, the USSR and China based their foreign policies on antagonism to imperialism. They endorsed Lenins view that the institution of private property inevitably led to wars and rivalry for power. Socialism, they believed, brought the end of private property and thus opened the door to peaceful international cooperation. Unfortunately, history proved otherwise. For years, these two communist nations conducted a foreign policy hostile to the worlds industrialized countries and to the United States in particular. For years as well, Soviet and Chinese leaders each claimed that their country represented the leading edge of the world march toward communism. Interstate rivalry produced a mini-cold war for leadership of the so-called socialist states that at times broke out into hot wars along the SovietChinese border. In the new century, the word imperialism still resonates in the expansion of the U.S. and European transnational corporations production, distribution, and retail facilities around the globe. This concept of economic imperialism is matched by the concept of political imperialism. Many states, both Muslim and non-Muslim, believe the United States attacked Iraq for purely imperialist reasons. In 2003, for example, France considered the United States such an imperialist threat that it forged a coalition with Germany and Russia to threaten to use their veto power in the UN Security Council to try to stop the United States from invading Iraq. One reason that Americans do not like to admit that the United States is an imperial power is because of Marxisms association of imperialism with the resource- and territory-grabbing European powers of the nineteenth century. By contrast, Harvard historian Niall Ferguson argues that empires are the great engines of world history, and that they can accomplish positive things, like maintain law and order among rival ethnic groups, and promote a civilizing mission around the world.11
47
Dependency Theories
A second derivative of the dogmatic Marxist branch of idealism is dependency theories. In the two decades following World War II, most of the colonies of the European powers became independent states and were admitted to membership in the United Nations. The end of colonialism was a major event of the time. One of the big problems of the new states was how to develop their economies, prompting the elaboration of scenarios of how states could become industrialized as efciently and quickly as possible. As time went on, many of the new states seemed to be growing economically, but they were not developing in the sense of becoming industrialized states. A new theory, dependencia, or dependency, was born. The term comes from Spanish because the concept evolved in Latin America. Dependency theorists use state classications similar to those of imperialism: industrial states (core countries) and the developing states (periphery countries). They address questions such as, Why dont the developing states becoming industrialized? Why do they remain sources of raw materials and cheap labor? These questions are examined in detail in chapter 13.
Dependency theories A set of related theories that have in common the belief that lessdeveloped countries can never develop because they are dependent on the industrial states for capital and technology. The argument is that foreign investment in developing countries is a means of dominating and extracting capital from weaker states.
48
CHAPTER 2
Liberalism
Liberalism A philosophical approach that argues that human nature is basically altruistic and that human altruism enables people to cooperate. In the international arena, compassion and caring for the welfare of others should motivate state actions. War is not a certainty because violence and selshness are not part of the human condition but rather the result of awed institutions. In addition, all wars are a matter of collective concern.
Consistent with the idealist approach, the core assumption of liberalism is that the world is perfectible and, by choosing the right institutions, human beings can make it so. In contrast to Marx, who saw the perfectibility of human institutions and human beings rooted in immutable historical laws, liberals emphasize the individuality of each person and the fundamental human ability to choose. The liberal argument may be summarized as follows: Human nature is basically good andmore importantaltruistic; we care about others. These qualities make us perfectible. Through education, we can learn to use our reason. We can learn to consider the whole of humankind and not just our national or local problems. Liberals believe government can create institutions that will train citizens to greater tolerance and produce a society dedicated to social justice. One of the main goals of a liberal democracy is to provide universal education to all its citizens so they can make rational choices about their leaders and the policies they would like to see adopted. Participation in government also develops our reason. According to liberal thinking, democracy is the best and ultimate form of government because citizens elect representatives to make decisions for them based on their understanding of the candidates and the issues. The election process makes elected ofcials accountable to their constituents and thus limits their power to act arbitrarily. The result is a stable political system and a prosperous economy. Democracy provides sufcient security to its citizens so they can develop their capacity to care for others. Liberals also assert that our natural altruism lies at the heart of international cooperation and trust. Because their citizens feel secure, democratic states are less prone to make war on other states. And thanks to democracys internal stability, trade prospers among democratic states, improving the standard of living for all. One part of the liberal reform program insists on the merits of free trade to replace the economic nationalism that liberals believe propelled Hitlers Germany into World War II. Compassion and concern for the welfare of all should inform all actions taken on the global stage. An example of the worlds compassion is the humanitarian aid given to states experiencing famine or natural catastrophe. Another example is the enormous outpouring of sympathy for the families of the victims of 9/11 and for the United States as a whole from people and governments all over the world. In addition, according to liberalism, violence and selshness result from awed institutions rather than the human condition. Agreements made between states in secretwhat is called secret diplomacyis one example of a awed institution that can lead to war, as was the case with World War I. Liberals believe dictatorships are awed institutions that promote violence and oppression, and they therefore urge the promotion of democracy worldwide. The United States asserts its liberal philosophy when it calls states that have oppressive dictatorships, such as North Korea, rogue states.
Democratic peace theory Democratic peace theory argues that although liberal democracies may go to war with non-liberal states, they remain at peace with each others. To put it another way, democracies do not ght each other.
Democratic Peace Theory

This theory holds that although liberal democracies may go to war with nondemocratic states, they typically do not ght each other. A key issue is the extent to which democracy has been consolidated in a country. History shows that new or

transitional democracies can be war-prone in their international politics. In addition, democratic peace theory does not explain the impact of democratization on internal conict. Iraq today illustrates high internal conict as the democratic process struggles forward.
49
Collective Security
Liberals are convinced that war is not a certainty. It can be avoided by perfecting institutions designed to control violence. Liberals are strong advocates of the United Nations and seek to extend and strengthen the Security Councils mandate of collective security, the second offshoot of liberalism we address. Collective security holds that individual agreements between countries are no guarantee against war. As a consequence, all wars are a matter of collective concern. The two world wars of the twentieth century demonstrated that agreements between states are no guarantee against war. The best guarantee is when all countries subscribe to the notion that an attack against one is an attack against all. When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, U.S. President George H. W. Bush immediately called together the UN Security Council and secured a UN mandate to drive Saddam Husseins army out of Kuwait. The UN action against Iraq in 1991 may be viewed as a success story of collective action from the liberal point of view.
Collective security A concept of world order maintaining that aggression can be deterred by promising overwhelming collective retaliation by the combined power of the worlds states against any community member that pursued aggression. In other words, an attack against one is an attack against all. Collective security rst took form in the League of Nationswhich the United States refused to joinimmediately following World War I.
Regime Theory
A third derivative of liberalism is regime theory. This theory assumes that international policy making can be organized in such a way as to promote cooperation. It is possible to devise treaties and international agreements that will set up a process or regime to implement the aims of the signatory parties. Once the process is initiated, the states can move forward toward the treatys goals by making little modications, one by one, over an extended period. For example, the 1973 Polar Bear Treaty provides for specic action by the signatory states, a joint research program, and periodic consultation. The U.S.Russian extension of that treaty in 2000 goes further in establishing a joint commission to supervise and coordinate activities. Regime theorists believe that if states can agree on a general direction of action, subsequent meetings and consultations can rene and direct that action into increasing cooperation between states.
Neoliberalism
A third offshoot of liberalism is neoliberalism . Neoliberalism developed as a response to what liberals saw as the failure of realism. Realism proved unable to predict or explain the peaceful disintegration of the USSR in the early 1990s, the enormous transformation of global society that took place in the late twentieth century, and the emergence of global problems, such as environmental pollution, the AIDS epidemic, mass migrations, population growth, and failed economic development. The neoliberals proposed a new look at liberalism based on the following assumptions: z Progress in international relations can be achieved only through international cooperation. z International institutions can help countries resolve their differences peacefully. This is one reason why neoliberals are sometimes called neoliberal institutionalists.
Neoliberalism A philosophical position that argues that progress in international relations can be achieved only through international cooperation. Cooperation is a dynamic rather than a static process. By focusing on understanding the dynamics of the web of relationships driving the international system, states and other international actors can use the international institutions spawned by the system to promote peace and cooperation. More recently, the neoliberal economic argument in support of a global free market has come under criticism.
50
CHAPTER 2
z The world may look chaotic, but it has patterns that can be found by studying the dynamics of international relationships. z Peace and cooperation can be promoted if we focus on understanding the dynamics of the web of relationships and inuences driving the international world, such as democratic government, free trade, international law, international orga nizations, collective security, arms control, and moral decision making. Neoliberals, ask questions like these: z What kinds of political and economic processes promote cooperation? z How can negotiations lead to a cooperative solution for all parties? z What types of governments or institutions tend toward cooperation rather than going it alone? z What are the elements of conict resolution? z What kinds of economic institutions lead to stability and greater prosperity? Neoliberalism claims not to be a theory per se. Its basic assumption is that process determines outcome. Neoliberalisms economic aspect has come increasingly to the fore since the 1990s. Advocates argue that neoliberalism promotes universal prosperity through free trade, a balanced budget, and stable currencies. Critics respond that global market liberalism is just another term for global capitalism, whose chief international institutions are the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization (WTO). In their insistence on a deregulated global market, these institutions have been the main contributors to the worlds increasing social and economic inequalities. In addition, the assumption that the operation of the market can be the main guide for human activity in developing countries, replacing traditional religious or moral beliefs belies the pain and suffering globalization has inicted on the worlds weaker citizens. Opposition to the economics of neoliberalism inspired the creation of the anti-globalization movement and led to the mass demonstration at the WTO meetings in Seattle and Genoa. We discuss this approach more in chapter 12.12 If we look at the theories derived from idealist assumptions, we can see that, essentially, they all aim to transform the world in some wayto make it better. They provide a theoretical framework that explains how and why the world is badly organized and how and why reforming or modifying the appropriate institutions will bring the desired world harmony. On the negative side, both Marxism and liberalism, especially neoliberalism, have a strong utopian component. The goal of each is a perfect social system within which everyone lives in harmony. History suggests that that goal will not be achieved any time soon.
The Ecological Paradigm

The main tenet of the ecological approach is that you cannot separate humankind from nature either in theory or in fact. Humankind sprang from nature and depends on nature for survival and sustenance. From a tiny group, Homo sapiens gradually spread over the globe until the human species dominated the Earth. From the ecological approach, then, any theory of global politics that does not put Earth rst underestimates the interdependence between humankind and the planet. From this perspective, new theories have emerged.

Taos Blue Lake
51
Hidden in the mountains of northern New Mexico lies Blue Lake or Ba Whyea, an ancient sacred site for the Taos Pueblo community. Deep ecologists hold only veneration of the sacred in nature can deter the human race from annihilating its most treasured landscapes and keep it in touch with the wellspring of human existence.
Sustainable Development Theory

Sustainable development theory evolved from the development theory, a concept which did not exist until the 1940s and which found its most enduring expression in W. W. Rostows book, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto, published in 1960. Rostow posited that economic growth went through a series of well-dened stages, starting with traditional society through development takeoff, economic maturity, and high consumption. At rst the focus of development was on industry and agriculture with the goal of improving living standards. In the late 1970s Paul Streeten and others advocated a focus on basic needs, such as education, sanitation, health care, employment. Growing awareness of the unevenness of the development process, the gap between rich and poor within and between countries, and the realization that development was putting inordinate demands on local ecosystems and the global environment called for a new approach to development. By the mid-1980s scholars were questioning whether Earths ecosystem would survive the increased strains on its resources, if all nations reached satisfactory levels of GDP by, say, 2050. When the UN World Commission on Environment and Development published its report, Our Common Future, it sought to address the problem of competing environmental and developmental goals by formulating a denition of sustainable development. In her forward to the report, Gro Harlem Brundtland, prime minister of Norway and chair of the commission, dened sustainable development as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generation to meet theirs.13 While a denitive denition of sustainable development does not exist, a denition has emerged around three important features: z Economic: An economically sustainable system provides goods and services on a continuing basis equitably to all Earths citizens.
52
CHAPTER 2
z Environmental: An environmentally sustainable system maintains a stable resource base, avoiding both the depletion of nonrenewable resources and the over-exploitation of renewable resource systems. An environmentally sustainable system further ensures the continuation of biodiversity, atmospheric stability, and clean watersheds. z Social: A socially sustainable system ends the imbalance between rich and poor, provides adequate social services, and promotes gender equality, and political accountability and participation.14 As you can readily see, sustainable development theory is more a set of goals to be reached than basic assumptions about the functioning of the world economy or international relations. The goals raise questions of how to balance competing objectives and how to judge success. Despite these drawbacks, sustainable development as a theoretical model dominates our thinking today about how human kind can continue to live on this planet without causing its ecosystem to crash. We will discuss the concept more in Chapters 13 and 14.
Deep Ecology
Deep ecology A worldview that promotes a reverence for nature, a concern for ecological principles such as complexity, diversity, and symbiosis, and that sees human beings in a living relationship with their environment. The environment does not exist for human use alone; we gain our identity from it. Deep ecology proposes to reconnect humankind with nature. Symbiosis The living together of two dissimilar organisms in a mutually benecial relationship.
Deep ecology developed out of the thinking of Norwegian environmentalist and philosopher Arne Naess15 and others like him who saw the ecological concepts of complexity, diversity, and symbiosis, as the way to relate human life to all things on the planet. For the deep ecologist, the environment has its own value independent of human needs. Human beings need to rediscover their place in natures web of interdependent elements and treat nature reverently. The deep ecologist sees human beings in a living relationship with their environment. The environment has its own reasons for being. It speaks to each of us and assigns us our identity. Modern society has lost this sense of identity. Many of us are indifferent to where we live. But to the Mohawk, the Huron, or the Navaho, a particular mountain or stream, or a particular lay of land, is sacred. A tribal member nds renewal by going back to the natural home revered by his ancestors. Deep ecology proposes to reconnect modern humans to their natural home. In international affairs, the deep ecologist tends to oppose large earth-moving projects, such as the construction of the Three Gorges Dam in China, extensive logging, the paving over of swampland for parking lots, and the destruction of habitat for agriculture or a new factory. For the deep ecologist recognition and acceptance of our rootedness in nature is the ultimate wisdom.
Ecofeminism
Ecofeminism A theory whose proponents argue that women are more closely associated with the natural world than men are. Men have an instrumental attitude toward nature and ask, How can I use it? Women have a reverence and empathy for nature, as they contain within themselves the secrets of birth and regeneration.
A third offshoot of the ecological perspective is ecofeminism . The ecofeminist argues that women are more closely associated with the natural world than men because they are the child bearers and thus actively participate in the renewal of the species. Men, the ecofeminist argues, have an instrumental attitude toward nature. What can nature do for me? Women, on the other hand, have a reverence and empathy for nature, containing within themselves the secrets of birth and regeneration. Ecofeminism holds that capitalism is the last and worst outgrowth of a patriarchal, male-dominated society. The division of labor that capitalism calls efcient divided men and women into two separate worlds, one the world of paid work, and the other the world at home. Men, with the aid of male-dominated modern

science, proceeded to rape the planet in search of raw materials to satisfy their always-hungry industrial machines. As a result, the world has lost most of its forests and biodiversity. Ecofeminists relate male domination of nature to male domination of women, arguing that the structure of domination is the same in both cases. Women and nature are considered instrumental to the achievement of male goals, be they pleasure or power, and are treated accordingly. Some scholars dismiss ecofeminism as irrelevant. But ecofeminists are quick to point out that at the local level, where women are most active politically, women are in the forefront of local environmental groups. Women organized the movement in India to save the subcontinents tropical forests. The most vocal opponent of the Three Gorges Dam in China is a woman.16 Women were the principal protesters against the dumping of chemical wastes into Love Canal in Niagara Falls, New York, and maintained their vigilance until the U.S. government agreed to buy the homes contaminated by toxic waste. Ecofeminists argue that the global environment remains at risk as long as the international community continues its primarily male view of it. At the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, womens NGOs argued without success with national delegates to include phraseology guaranteeing indigenous peoples the right to benet as much as the international drug companies from the scientic extraction of useful medicine from a local herb. (See chapter 11 for more details on the womens movement.) To the male ecologists argument that males can also feel a special closeness to the natural world, the ecofeminists answer that males who do develop an intimacy with nature are in essence discovering the womens world. Ecofeminists would like to see the major international organizations give up their patriarchal emphasis on economic development as primarily industrial development and begin to assess the impact of development in terms of our place in nature and our spiritual need to connect with it.
53
Ecojustice
The fourth theory derived from the ecological paradigm is ecojustice . Ecojustice theory starts from the observation that environmental quality is not equally distributed around the globe. Some environments are more desirable than others. Some environments, like the worlds forests, belong to a few states but are essential to all humankind to protect our common atmosphere. The ecojustice movement originated among working black women in Warren Country, North Carolina, on land that had been predominantly owned by black people since the end of slavery in 1865. The movement began when Warren County was selected to be the nal burial site for over 32,000 cubic yards of soil contaminated with PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls). A woman named Dollie Burwell objected to the location of the site, which was just behind her and her neighbors backyards. The merging of race, poverty, and pollution in a single issue rapidly picked up followers all over the United States and around the world, most notably in Kenya, Nigeria, and Russia. In Russia, in 1991 women lawyers took the initiative in organizing an ecojustice group, Ecojuris, to publicize the inequity of pollution in Russias major cities. The lawyers filed suit in a number of landmark cases, arguing that the principal victims of industrial pollution were women and young children.
Ecojustice The concept that, as environmental quality is not equally distributed around the world, methodologies and procedures must be developed to address the environmental inequalities that are the result of lack of natural resources, poor location, and poverty.
54
CHAPTER 2
Today, international relations scholars in the environmental eld have added ecojustice to their theoretical tools of analysis. Ecojustice theory drives the argument of the developing nations that because todays industrial pollution was generated by the industrialized countries, those countries must therefore pay for the cleanup. At the Third Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, commonly known as the conference on global climate change, in Kyoto, Japan, in 1998, China and other developing countries opposed a treaty to limit emissions from the use of fossil fuels because it was not fair. In Chinas view, the industrialized nations were eager to prevent global warming and reach an international agreement because they already had achieved full development by polluting the planet at no cost to themselves. An adoption of the treaty would prevent developing countries from reaching their development goals. Ecojustice theory attempts to develop methodologies and procedures to answer those questions by analyzing the connections between poverty and environmental degradation. A leading ecojustice theorist, Andrew Szasz, found, for example, that toxic victims are, typically, poor or working people of modest means. Their environmental problems are inseparable from their economic condition.17 In Russia, ecojurists have documented connections between environmental degradation, the living conditions of low-paid workers, and high mortality rates. In accordance with the environmental paradigm, ecojurists believe that justice in human society cannot be divorced from a search for a just distribution of environmental goods. The environmental paradigm is the newest arrival in international relations. Many texts on world politics do not mention it at all. After reading about ecotheories, you may very well say, So what? Sure, the environment is important, but lets be real. It has nothing to do with power relations between states. Is this a fact? What about mass famines created by the expansion of the desert in Africa? What about torrential rains and mudslides in Central America? What about earthquakes in San Francisco? No one emigrates to Mexico after a California earthquake. But you may be sure that thousands moved northward from Nicaragua and Honduras after the disastrous rains of 1998. The environmentalists argue that citizens in the industrialized world are living the good life in a clean environment because they have transferred their most polluting industries to the developing world. The industrialized states have not tried sustainable development and so far have shown little desire to do so. To achieve sustainable development, the industrial states must recognize the primary importance of the environment to all humans, and not just a privileged few. The inequitable transborder effects of environmental pollution are already causing increased tension and conict in the world. This recognition demands both a retreat from the instrumental view of the environment as a human resource and a deeper understanding of the functioning and value of the environment in and of itself.
c WHAT ARE THE SUBJEcTIVE APPROAcHES TO WORLD POLITIcS?

Test Prepper 2.2
True or False?
55
_____ 1. Balance-of-power theory argues that war is most likely to occur when states in the system have reached balance. _____ 2. According to realists, the only way to contain power is through power. _____ 3. Marxists argue that class struggle is the key dynamic that fosters socioeconomic change over time. _____ 4. Democratic peace theory refers to the belief that liberal democracies typically do not ght one another, although they may go to war with non-democratic states. _____ 5. Ecofeminists believe that women are more closely associated with the natural world because they bear children while men view the environment as an instrument for achieving material objectives.
Multiple Choice
_____ 6. Which of the following statements would a neorealist agree accurately represents international politics? a. States are the primary actors in the international system.
b. All states have the same goals, but they differ in their ability to inuence world politics. c. The structure of the international system is dened by the unequal distribution of power among the countries of the world. d. None of the above e. All of the above _____ 7. Neoliberals believe which of the following statements about international politics? a. Progress in international relations occurs through the good will of individuals. b. The chaos of world politics can only be addressed using economic theories of behavior. c. International institutions are effective at assisting countries resolve their differences without resorting to conict. d. A combination of a focus on power in the military realm and cooperation in the economic sphere is the most effective way to analyze the international system. e. None of the above
What Are the Subjective Approaches to World Politics?

3 What is a subjective approach to world politics? Understand how such approaches differ from realism, idealism, and the ecological paradigm.
In the last quarter of the twentieth century, philosophers and political scientists launched increasingly sharp attacks on the basic assumption of political realists, idealists, and ecologists that the world and its political, economic, and social structure could be objectively known. The assumption that there is a real world out there, independent of ourselves, that all of us, using our reasoning power, can discover and use to our benet, underlies all Western philosophy from the Greeks to the Enlightenment. Realists and idealists may disagree as to whether humankind is basically imperfect or basically cooperative and develop contrasting theories as to whether world politics is continuous anarchy or can become a cooperative venture. Ecologists and realists may disagree about whether the Earth is warming or not, but both groups base their arguments on empirical evidence drawn from objective observations of the real world.
56
CHAPTER 2
Critical theory, constructivism, and most feminist theories in international relations question the ability of human beings to look objectively at the world. All people, they argue, are shaped by the society and culture in which they live. Our perceptions are formed by our societys dominant attitudes about wealth, race, gender, and religion. This assumption that our background and upbringing totally inform our perceptions of the world derives from the Marxist teaching that all science, art, and culture reect the interests of a given societys ruling class. Throughout history, each social class that rose to power imposed its prejudices, its ethics, its way of doing things on the society it governed. In their struggle against the ruling class, the other classes developed their own class culture and identity in response to the reigning status quo. Critical theory and constructivism carry this logic to its conclusion and hold that every individuals perception of reality is determined by personal experience of a given societys dominant culture relative to that persons position in its social structure.
Critical Theory
Audio Concept Critical Theory www.BetweenNations.org
The term critical theory was rst used by members of a scholarly group that formed at the Institute of Social Research at the University of Frankfurt in the 1920s and lasted into the 1950s. These scholars were appalled by the rise of what they saw as the lack of freedom and irrationality in European capitalist societies in the 1920s and 1930s, culminating in fascism in Germany and Italy.18 Herbert Marcuse (18981979) and Jrgen Habermas (1929 ) are two major contributors to the ongoing evolution of critical theory in the latter half of the twentieth century. The common thread between them is that in modern society, human beings are increasingly losing their autonomy, their capacity to make independent individual decisions exclusive of outside control. Marcuse argued that advanced industrial society creates false needs to integrate individuals into the existing system of production and consumption. Mass media and contemporary culture, advertising, and industrial management all reinforce the political and suppress opposition.19 Habermas posited that the technological revolution had contributed to the suppression of individual freedom by forcing humans to learn and adapt to new technologies that function on the machines inner logic. The market, the state, and social and economic organizations: all operate on some form of strategic/instrumental rationality based on how technology works rather than on how humans really live. Habermas argued for social change through communication. A freer, more democratic world was possible not through revolution, as the Marxists taught, but through people nding community through communication.20
Constructivism Constructivism is a philosophy of learning founded on the premise that, by reecting on our experiences, we construct our own understanding of the world we live in.
Constructivism
The critical theory started by the Frankfurt School leads directly into constructivism. Constructivism, like critical theory, posits that because human beings exist within society, knowledge can never be objective, only subjective. We all can use reason to try to gure things out, but how we reason is culturally determinedthat is, it is shaped, or constructed, by the society and culture in which we live. Thus, all perceptions and all cultures reect the worldview and social structure of a given social group, be it tribe or nation. We can never know what reality is, only what our perceptions of it are. Because reality cannot be known, every culture, every society presents a worldview that is equally valid. Contrary to the neorealist and neolib-
c WHAT ARE THE SUBJEcTIVE APPROAcHES TO WORLD POLITIcS?

eral viewpoint, constructivism holds that the structure and institutions of the international system function only insofar as the international actors think they function and so do not inuence states behaviors per se. Rather, the political culture, the diffusion of ideas circulating in the international system, informs, or constructs, the interests and national identities of states that, in turn, shape the dynamics of world politics.21 Constructivism in international relations leads to a focus on an individual or groups experiences both as regards their understanding of the world and the actions they choose to take. Political scientist David Campbell uses the constructivist approach in his analysis of the emergence of Bosnia as an intractable ethnic problem. How did a once successful multicultural society turn into an international nightmare? Campbell nds that both the peacemakers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the belligerents in Bosnia failed or refused to take into account the possibility of overlapping identities. For example, a man could simultaneously be Bosnian, and a Serb, and a Muslim, or he could be a Bosnian, a Croat, and a Catholic. But instead of recognizing this fact, both sides shared the same misperception of identity: namely, that a national grouping had to have a self-contained shared history and culture, speak the same language, and live together in denable borders. Campbell faults the poverty of Western thought in developing concepts that promote identity politics within heterogeneous communities (national, ethnic, or linguistic groups that do not live in separate, culturally distinct, social enclaves). He concludes that Europe and the United States intervened in Bosnia not in the interests of saving a once vibrant multicultural community but to support the nationalist idea in order to prevent the spread of multiculturalism beyond national state borders at home.22
57
Feminist Theories in International Relations

There is no single feminist theory of international relationships but rather several different and often conicting theories. We look at some of these theories more closely in chapter 11. While the roots of feminist theory go back to Mary Wollstonecraft (17591797) and the struggle for womens suffrage, the European Marxist womens movement of the nineteenth century bequeathed a powerful legacy to modern feminist theory building. Most feminists today agree that basic attitudes and behaviors are culturally determined. Western civilization is a patriarchy, a male-dominated enterprise. Males have dominated politics, science, economics, and the arts. Realism and idealism are constructions of the male imagination. Traditional Western male thinking perceives reality as a set of mutually exclusive dichotomies: black, white; rational, irrational; weak, strong; chaos, order; war, peace. Every term has a denition that limits its meaning to a specic thing. States have identiable borders that separate them from other states. International governmental and nongovernmental organizations have constitutions, identiable memberships, and identiable goals. State organizations operate at different and distinct levels in the world system. Feminism refuses to see the world in these terms. Instead of seeing it as a rather static dichotomous (either/or) hierarchical international system, feminists approach world politics as a to-be-determined, unstructured, interdependent, dynamic set of interrelationships, similar to those in their personal and family lives. Constructivists and feminists alike understand political theory not as an approach to understanding objective reality but as a prescription, a recipe for
58
CHAPTER 2
The Rebuilt Bridge at Mostar
Stari most, the old bridge, crosses the Neretva River at Mostar, where Bosnian Muslims and Croat Catholics lived side by side for centuries. Built in 1566 by the Ottoman Turks, it was destroyed by Croat fighters during the bitter fighting between Mostars Muslims and Croats in 1993. It was reconstructed using the same methods and materials employed by the original builders 500 years ago. Its reopening in 2004 is living witness to the concept that ethnic rivalry is not a given but is a subjective assumption that can be deconstructed.
action. They see information and communication about world events as data to feed into an activist agenda directing what should be done rather than a framework within which to analyze facts describing what actually happens.
Critiques of Constructivism
Critical theory, constructivism, and feminist theories have played a decisive role in shifting our focus from external, state-to-state relations to a closer look at the subjective dynamics of international affairs. But in so doing, they have produced what one educator has called the evidential dilemma.23 If there is no empirical evidence, on what does an individual, tribe, or state base a decision for action?
Critical Theory in Perspective

This section has looked at three critiques of subjective approaches to international relations theory. Constructivism and feminist theories have been important in drawing attention to the gap between what a culture says the world is like and actual individual experience. If, however, realist and idealist international relations approaches lead to excessive concerns about the struggle for power and the nature of war or peace in an anarchic world, the critical theorists can lead us into a quagmire of uncertainty about whether or not we can know anything about the nature of global issues and why states behave as they do in the international system.
JOIN THE DEBATE
59
Test Prepper 2.3

_____ 1. Subjective approaches to world politics are so named because they rely strictly on opinions and are opposed to collecting data of any kind. _____ 2. Constructivist approaches to world politics tend to focus on the state level of analysis because they combine the impact of various entities when analyzing political behavior. _____ 3. Rather than having a single approach to world politics, there are multiple and conicting feminist theories of international relations. _____ 4. Generally speaking, critical theory questions the objective nature of reality, arguing that each individual constructs their own reality based on their own perception.
_____ 5. Most feminists argue which of the following? a. Basic attitudes and behaviors are biologically determined. b. Western civilization is a patriarchy (or male-dominated enterprise). c. Males have dominated the military while women have had an opportunity to control the arts. d. All of the above
Case Study
The Future of Afghanistan
Join the Debate Looking Out for Number One

OVERVIEW
Traditionally, realists argue that it is necessary for states to focus on their own self-interest. Kautilya, an Indian scholar writing in the third century bc consistently advocated the need to, in essence, Look out for Number One. Advocates of the U.S. invasion in Afghanistan and the preventive military action in Iraq might make a similar case. Osama bin Laden has been organizing and masterminding terrorist actions since the early 1990s. For an entire decade the United States took little aggressive action, even when U.S. ships and seamen were bombed and embassies blown up. The attacks of 9/11 changed all that. By doing nothing, the United States encouraged bin Laden to think it were scared to use its power. If the United States had waited until the UN agreed it should go to war in Iraq, Saddam Hussein would have thought the same thing and launched possibly a terrible preemptive strike of his own. Each nation has the right to use its power to defend itself. The UN cannot look out for all its members. A state either looks out for itself and forcefully uses its power, or it goes into decline. Advocates of collective security and international cooperation look at the U.S. action in an entirely opposite light. Iraq was a country where international sanctions had been in place for a decade. During that period the people became impoverished and Saddam Husseins military preparedness decreased. Iraq was not a threat to any country, least of all to the United
60
CHAPTER 2
States. Negotiations were in progress. The United States broke international convention by rushing headlong into a ventureone that has proved costly in lives and materielcontrary to the counsel of the worlds major powers. There is no indication that negotiation would not have worked. The proper way to conduct national affairs in a global community is through the global institutions established by that community. The United States has acted like a global bully, trying to push weaker states around. A realist looks after Number One. An idealist looks to international cooperation as the only way to secure peace and prosperity for all states. In essence, the debate focuses on two key questions: (1) What does looking after Number One entail? Does it mean only using a states own power resources, or can it include cooperating in international organizations? (2) In what ways can cooperation contribute to a states prosperity? In what ways could it be a hindrance?
Con: Arguments for Collective Security and International Cooperation

z Looking out for Number One to the exclusion of the interests and needs of the global community leads to needless violence and suffering by innocent people. z War is to be avoided at all costs. Any war can lead to nuclear war, as nuclear weapons are readily available. z War directed at one state puts at risk the independence and political stability of neighboring states and escalates violence to surrounding countries. z In the modern world, one state can no longer impose its will on another and risk such consequences. z Negotiation and diplomacy remain the best instruments of peaceful solutions. z If war seems necessary to avoid the consequence of a widening war, military intervention should only be allowed with UN approval.
Pro: Arguments for Number One Looking after Number One

z There is no world government, only other states testing you and ready to move against you in the struggle for power. z States that openly declare their hostility to you are your enemy. z Each state has the right and obligation to act in its own interests. z Self-defense is vital to a states preservation and should not require either international approval or catastrophes like Pearl Harbor or 9/11 to attack an enemy. Preemption is sound survival strategy.
QUESTIoNS
1. Depending on which side you took, did you nd that all the arguments you used came exclusively from either the liberal or realist approach? 2. In what areas did your arguments cause you to change approach? 3. Did you nd yourself arguing in favor of more centralized global oversight of state behavior or for the right of states to be the main actors in global politics? What reasons did you give?
61

1 2 3 and be 4 able to 5 summarize 6 7 key 8 Understand the assumptions of political realism, idealism, and the ecological paradigm. 9 From the idealist perspective come the theories of 10 Marxism and liberalism (the two major theories of the past 150 years) and the more recent dependency theory, collective security, and neoliberalism. Liberal theories tend to argue in favor of centralized cooperation by states in global organizations and to downplay the importance of national identity. Within the ecological perspective, we nd deep ecology, ecofeminism, and ecojustice. These theories seek to bridge the gap between the human footprint on the local environment and its impact on the global community.
Realism holds that human nature is, by denition, imperfect. We all have an innate drive for power. National governments, therefore, should concentrate on promoting the national interest through a strong military to defend against aggression and a whats-in-itfor-me posture in the conduct of foreign policy. Idealism posits that human beings are perfectible. With the right institutions to guide them, individuals and states can learn to cooperate and to prefer peace to war. The ecological paradigm posits human society as a subset of the natural environment. This environment has 1 2 limits, and we must learn what those limits are and accommodate our institutions to them if humankind is to survive.
4 is a subjective 5 6 approach 7 9 10 What to 8 world politics? Understand how such approaches differ from realism, idealism, and the ecological paradigm.
3 4 understand 5 6 key theories 7 8 result 9 from10 Identify and the that realism, idealism, and the ecological paradigm.
Critics of these approaches have developed critical theory, constructivism, and feminist theories of international relations that focus on the psychological and social components of state identity and behavior. These theories seek to explain how the identities of cultures and societies are formed and how these relate to their behavior on the international stage
From the realist perspective, we derive the theories of the balance of power, hegemonic stability, and neorealism. These are theories that explain the management of the international system as a decentralized, many-sided process that takes place among states.

Analyzing World Politics
Different Lenses for Different Pictures
Learning Objectives
1
Understand what is meant by levels of analysis and who are the primary actors that operate at each level.
Identify the primary characteristics of a state. Understand how the state has developed over the past centuries and its current role in world politics.
62
All the worlds a stage.

William Shakespeare
Chapter Outline
The State: The Basic Unit of Analysis

in the International System
The State and Its Primary Characteristics The Origins and Development of the State The European Experience
Applying the Levels of Analysis to
Understand International Relations
Applying the Levels of Analysis: The Example of Afghanistan Afghanistan from the Systems Level of Analysis
What Are the Levels of Analysis?

The International System as a Whole The Regional Level of Analysis The State Level of Analysis The Substate Level of Analysis The Individual Level of Analysis
Understand how the levels of analysis are used to understand international relations; apply the levels to the case of Afghanistan.
Analysis as a Tool to Understand Our World
n chapter 1 you learned that one of the ve forces shaping the planet is the increasing inability of the state to solve problems because of decentralizing ethnic, religious, and economic tensions. You further learned that most issues today are transnational and transboundary in character, promoting a centralizing tendency in the international systemas, for example, the tendency for states to turn to the United Nations (UN) and other international agencies for regulations and guidelines. What is this entity called a state, and why does international politics seem to revolve around it? How can we understand the tensions that push states toward dissolution and the tensions that push them toward international cooperation?
64
Key Terms
CHAPTER 3
ANALYZING WORLD POLITIcS
Treaty of Westphalia p. 64 nation or ethnic group p. 65 multinational or ethnic state p. 65 interdependence p. 67 international system p. 67 levels of analysis p. 71 multipolar system p. 76 balance of power p. 76 bipolar system p. 76 unipolar system p. 76 European Union p. 77 irredentism p. 82 race p. 82 groupthink p. 86
This chapter enables you to address those questions. We rst look at the statewhat it is, how it arose, and why it plays such a central role in international relations today. We then look at the structure of the international system by applying levels of analysis. For example, we may study the international system in its entirety, as we might study the solar system as a whole. Thats one level. But we can also study the international system at the regional level by looking at regional organizations of states such as the European Union (EU) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). For a third perspective, we can study the international system at the state levelthat is, by looking at the world from the standpoint of the behavior of individual states. This is a very important level because the basic unit of analysis in the international system is the state. We can also study the international system at the substate level, looking at ethnic conict or civil wars and how these tensions affect the state and its ability to function at the regional and international levels. Finally, we can look at the international system through the role individuals play in moving and shaking world politics. We conclude the chapter by showing that by understanding what the state is and how it functions at these ve levels, we can begin to understand the centralizing and decentralizing tendencies at work in the world today. n
The State: The Basic Unit of Analysis in the International System

1 Identify the primary characteristics of a state. Understand how the state has developed over the past centuries and its current role in world politics.
For all the paradigms, states are the basic building blocks of the international system. Chapter 1 presented three characteristics that differentiate a state from a tribe, an ethnic group, or a nationality. To review, a state is: 1. a geographic territory with internationally recognized boundaries 2. an internationally recognized and identiable population that lives within those boundaries 3. an internationally recognized authority structure or government Let us look more closely at these characteristics.
The State and Its Primary Characteristics

Treaty of Westphalia The treaty, signed in 1648 at the close of the Thirty Years War, called for the recognition as sovereign states of territorial entities that could no longer be dominated and that had xed borders, a recognized population, and an acknowledged government.
The modern state, as we understand it, grew out of rivalry for power and wealth among the ruling dynasties of Europe from the fteenth to the seventeenth centuries. The concept of an international system dates from the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years War. The war had decimated large sections of Europe, and, important for our purposes, left no clear victor. Our modern understanding of state, then, is derived, essentially, from the European experience. The treaty recognized that none of the rival European powers at war could achieve a decisive win to dominate the other powers. The treaty thus called for the
c THE STATE: THE BASIc UNIT OF ANALYSIS IN THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM

recognition of these territorial entities as states, with xed borders, an acknowledged government, and a population identied as living within that states borders. The treaty recognized these states as sovereign, or self-ruling, and promised that the government of one state would not interfere in the affairs of another. Relations between states would be characterized by diplomacy and regulated by international law in the form of treaties and agreements.
65
Definition of a State
The modern denition of state is based on the principles set forth in the 1648 treaty. Central to the denition are the concepts of legitimacy, sovereignty, and formal obligations. z Legitimacy means that all states have a right to exist and that the authority of the government in that state is supreme and accepted as lawful. z Sovereignty means that no higher authority than the state exists, or in Max Webers words, the state has a monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force.1 The United Nations is made up of states, yet it has no authority to compel member-states to take any action or refrain from any action. It has no army of its own and must rely on the member-states to contribute their armed forces when any UN armed intervention takes place. In the last analysis, each state decides its own course of action. z States have formal obligations, or expectations vis--vis one another. States agree to rules drawn up according to international law for declaring and ghting a war, for implementing treaties, for continuing to recognize the legitimacy of the governments of other states, and for exchanging and treating diplomatic representatives. In recent years, however, the new global and transnational issues have prompted new thinking on this front. Although at an operational level the state still retains full control over the actions of its police and military, the conditions for their use are increasingly shaped by rules and regulations receiving their legitimation from the UN and other international institutions.2 For example, the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 was considered illegitimate by many (but not all) because the United States failed to secure the approval of the UN Security Council for the action.
Audio Concept Sovereignty www.BetweenNations.org
The Nation-state and the Multinational State

A discussion of the state and its characteristics would not be complete without distinguishing between two kinds of states that appear frequently in this text. The rst is the nation-state. The nation-state is composed primarily of one ethnic or nationality group or nation. The common denition of nation or ethnic group is a group of people who have a common language, common ethnicity, common culture, common territory, and a desire for independence. Ethnic groups like the Kurds and the Palestinians in the Middle East or the Chechens in the Caucasus form ethnic nations. All demand independence in a specic territory, based on a common language and common culture. A nation-state is that nation once it has gained political independence, as East Timor eventually did. Examples of older nation-states are Germany, the Netherlands, France, and Japan. The second kind of state is the multinational or multiethnic state, as it is often called. As the name suggests, the population in this kind of state is composed of two or more ethnic groups or races. Most of the worlds states fall into this category. The worlds largest statesRussia, China, India, and the United Statesare
Nation or ethnic group A group of people linked together in some manner, such as a common territory, with a shared culture that may or may not be based on religion. This culture can be monocultural or multicultural a shared language, a shared history or understanding of the past, and a general desire for independence. Multinational or multiethnic state A statesuch as Nigeria, the United States, Russia, and Indiathat contains more than one nation and/or ethnic group within its territory. Most states are multinational in nature.
66
CHAPTER 3
all multinational. So are some of the worlds smallest states, such as Switzerland, Belgium, and many states in Africa and Asia. Multinational states frequently suffer from the desire of the component ethnic groups to live their own lifestyle or obtain more power in the central government.
The Vulnerability of the Modern State

While the principles of legitimacy, sovereignty, and duty are still in force today, the forces of change discussed in chapter 1, particularly the new global and transnational issues, the inability of the state to solve problems on its own, and the technology revolution, have undermined sovereignty. Increasing state vulnerability is one of the most visible decentralizing forces in the world today. First, state sovereignty has been weakened through the growth of networks of communication and linkages among non-state actors that are beyond the states immediate control. These interdependent networks have grown most rapidly among non-state actors in the global economy and non-state actors such as Greenpeace and al Qaeda. The 9/11 attacks highlighted two additional important dimensions of a states vulnerability: the dangers posed by failed states and the insecurity of even the most powerful state in the world. Not all states are successful. Some fail to maintain law and order within their borders or to provide the level of economic wellbeing, education, housing, food, and security their populations demand. Failed states today include Angola, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and Sudan. In each of these states, economic and political chaos reigns. Failed states, such as Afghanistan before 9/11, offer havens for criminals, terrorists, drug trafcking, and cross-border mayhem. In so doing, they promote global insecurity. The United States bombed Afghanistan in 2001 not because it had declared war on the state of Afghanistan but because this failed state harbored Osama bin Ladens terrorist organization. In the interests of guaranteeing security at home, the United States, for the rst time since the Treaty of Westphalia, declared war, calling it a war on terrorism, against a non-state actor, who had been given sanctuary in Afghanistan, arguably violating the internationally recognized sovereignty of that state. The war in Iraq that started in 2003, departed from the Westphalian norms governing state sovereignty in two ways. 1. The war was billed as a preventive action, intended, according to the U.S. government, to prevent the Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, from completing the development of weapons of mass destruction and distributing them to terrorist groups. 2. The declared U.S. goal of regime change in Iraq undermined Iraqs state sovereignty, and the legitimacy of its internationally recognized government. The invasion of Iraq marked the fth time in recent history that the United States took preventive action to force regime change in another state. z 1961: The United States sponsored a failed attempt to bring down Fidel Castros communist government in Cuba. z 1983: The United States invaded the state of Grenada to prevent the consolidation of a Marxist regime on the island. z 1989: The United States invaded the state of Panama to replace the dictatorship of Manuel Noriega with a pro-American government. While the world community was not happy with these actions, they occurred during the Cold

War and, to a certain extent, could be justied by the necessity of preventing the further projection of Soviet power into the Western hemisphere. z 1999: Similarly, Western Europe accepted the U.S. bombing and invasion of Yugoslavia in 1999 because of the perceived need to prevent a worst-case scenario, namely, genocide of the Kosovar population in that country. z 2003: In contrast, the United States was unable to present a rationale for its invasion of Iraq that was acceptable to the other power centers of the international community. France, Germany, and Russia felt their power threatened by the prospect of the dominant world power taking military action whenever it perceived its national security to be at risk. The Iraqi invasion thus brought home the hard fact that, in the absence of a world government, the concept of sovereignty is a political football in the decentralized struggle for power among the worlds states.
67
The Interdependence of States

Like a two-edged sword, the three forces mentioned above as contributing to decentralizing tendencies promote centralizing tendencies as well. Some analysts of the liberal persuasion hail the increased vulnerability of states as testimony to the growing interdependence of states. These analysts consider the coming of globalization and interdependence a good thing. In their view, states that depend on other states for raw materials and export markets are less likely to go to war to resolve differences and are more likely to cooperate. Neorealist Kenneth N. Waltz and others criticize this position as simplistic. We need to look at how states depend on one another, they say, and honestly admit that the United States can probably get along without the rest of the world better than most states can get along without the United States. Waltz argues that the low level of U.S. dependence on other countries is a primary source of its great power status and the relative facility with which a great power can unilaterally control the behavior of less powerful states.3 We return to this idea in chapter 4. A third position on globalization, derived again from the liberal paradigm, is reected in the work of James Rosenau, who sees the growing loss of sovereignty as signaling the end of the dominant role of states in the international system. The salient characteristics of the emerging post-Westphalian system, he argues, are the inclusion of non-state actors and the development of global civil society. After the 9/11 attacks, Rosenaus perspective seems most convincing and also most terrifying.4 How can any state control the behavior of non-state actors whose membership is largely invisible? We talk more about the behavior of non-state actors in chapter 7.
Interdependence The linking of states together in a web of wide-ranging interactions. These include: international nance, trade and commerce, environmental pollution, the information revolution, transnationalism, intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs.)
The Origins and Development of the State The European Experience

How did the world come to be dominated by states where ethnicity and nationalism play such a strong role? The state is both a relatively new arrival on the international scene and an old form of social organization that appeared for relatively short periods of time in antiquity. Today, the international system has outgrown its European origins and expanded to include the entire globe, with 191 states5 and a growing number of non-state actors. The state derives from a diverse heritage of independent self-governing citystates in ancient Sumer in Mesopotamia, Greece, China, and classical Rome. The
International system A concept that includes a number of key actors (states, nations, IGOs, and NGOs) and the patterns of actions among them that can be explained by the distribution of power and other factors. The state plays a pivotal role within this system, because the system has no central authority to maintain order and dispense justice.
68
CHAPTER 3
Sumerian city-states ourished at the dawn of human civilization in Mesopotamia in what is now Iraq. The city-states of Greece, Rome, and China were at their height between the fth century bc and the second century ad. The modern state had its rise in the Middle Ages, long after Rome fell. The history of Europe is the history of rivalrywar and conquestamong feudal chieftains, with the periodic ascendancy of a strongman. These rulers were eager to expand their domains. To do so, however, they needed to create sufcient wealth to raise an army. The medieval city was just coming into its own as a commercial power. Some cities, like Venice and Florence in Italy and Dubrovnik in modern Croatia, ourished as independent city-states. Others, like Prague, London, or Paris, accepted the rule of the prevailing strongman. Through patronage, royal subsidies, and the granting of imperial or royal charters, these cities became centers of trade, nance, and learning. In return for their liberties, the cities paid taxes to the king to support his armies. With tax money rolling in and helped along by marriages of convenience to princesses with large land holdings, the kings gradually became stronger than the feudal chieftains, whose power largely resided in their agricultural land base. The consolidation of royal power in the fteenth century put Europe well on its way to playing midwife at the birth of the modern state. Additional factors that led to the evolution of the modern state include the following: z Ideology and a Common Culture: We cannot be sure that modern states would have evolved out of this process if it had not been for the long political conict between the rising nation-states of France, Spain, and England, on the one hand, and, on the other, the pope in Rome, who called himself Vicar (deputy of Christ) of Christendom, by which he meant Europe. Over the centuries, the royal powers challenged the temporal or non-religious authority of the medieval Church and carved out a space where they could rule independent of its control, eventually leading to the development of Protestant and Catholic sects. Each sects acknowledgment of its king as the guardian of the one true faith led to the identication of a national leader and, by extension, the nationstate with a particular belief or ideology. Eventually, the ideology of nationalism replaced Christianity as the glue that bound European peoples together. z Technology and the Growth of Nationalist Sentiment: Perhaps no other development had as great an impact on the rise of the national state and the promotion of a common language as the printing press. In one month, Johannes Gutenberg could turn out more German bibles than the monks could write by hand in Latin in several years. Thus, the printing press made literature in the vernacular (the language people spoke in a particular locale) easily available and readily disseminated in the form of the printed book. People rushed to learn how to read and to buy the new books. Printing thus gave nationalism a big boost. With the appearance of books in vernacular languages such as English, French, and Spanish, people began to buy only those books whose language they could understand. In the process, some languages were winners. Some were losers. Because the printing press made it easy to distribute the printed word and booksellers made more sales with books printed in the local language, the press prompted kings to standardize the language throughout their domains. By the sixteenth century, in part due to having acquired a set of common languages, Western Europeans had developed a strong sense of nationality, territory, and common history. The French Revolution of 1789 spread the ideology of nationalism as far as Russia with
69
The Inventor of the Printing Press
Printing was actually invented in China, where the emperors disseminated their edicts and orders through a printed text composed of ideographs or picture symbols. European written languages use an alphabet representing the sounds or phonemes present in the spoken language. The advantage of the alphabet is that many combinations of sounds can be written down using a few letters. Johannes Gutenbergs achievement was the invention of movable type. Instead of carving a font of a word or ideograph, as the Chinese had to do, Gutenberg used a line of type that could be filled with different letters, depending on the word appearing in the text. Just before the year 2000, Time-Life conducted a poll asking worldwide leaders in science, education, government, technology, medicine, and other fields to name the most important events of the last 1,000 years. The printing press was voted the most important event.
the march of Napoleons armies eastward, thereby awakening the East European peoples to the possibilities of independence and the right to speak their own language, rather than the language of their German and Russian imperial masters. z Europe Becomes a Continent of Nation-states: In 1815, the European powers united to defeat Napoleon. But Napoleons legacy lived on. In Western Europe, England and France emerged as the two leading states promoting democracy as an integral part of their nationalist ideology. Throughout the rest of Europe, still under the rule of autocratic empires, nationalism assumed a more cultural aspect, leading to the consolidation of German states into a unied German Empire and the creation of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, based on two ruling ethnic groups. Other nations living under imperial rule also demanded national recognition. In their push for their own separate national state, they turned to the European great powers for support. The instability and threat to the status quo posed by these developments resulted in the Triple Alliance (made up of
70
CHAPTER 3
Germany, Austro-Hungary, and Italy, 1882) and the Triple Entente (England, France, and Russia, 1907). Great-power rivalry and the fear that one European state might gain the ascendancy over all the others led to a balance-of-power game that played out in a domino-like series of events culminating tragically in World War I. World War I marked the fall of the Ottoman and German empires and the ascendancy of nationalism as the basis of the state. These two empires were replaced with nation-states. The one remaining traditional empire was the Russian Empire. Although instability caused by the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 forced the new leader, Vladimir Ilych Lenin, to give up the Baltic territories as well as Russias share of Poland, the remainder of the empire was reformed as the Soviet Union. In the twentieth century, the great overseas empires of Britain, France, Germany, Spain, and Portugal were replaced by independent states. From 19891991, the last European land empire, the Soviet Union inherited from the Russian tsars and enlarged after World War II, broke up to be replaced by independent states. z The Modern International System: The founding of the United Nations in 1945, at the end of World War II, formalized the concept of a global international system composed of national states. The UN began its existence with fty signatory states. Amazing as it may seem, most of todays states have come into being since then. Of the 191 UN member-states today, some are very small, like the African states of Sao Tom and Principe. Others are large land masses, like the United States, Canada, Russia, and Australia. As we show in chapter 8, geographyincluding size, location, and shapeplays a big role in the ability of states to participate in international politics effectively. Because most of the new states came into being as a result of the breakup of the colonial empires, virtually all their borders were drawn by the colonial powers. The citizens of the new states had virtually no say. With the exception of some island states, many of the new states contain more than one ethnic group. Some do not have a common language or a common ethnic group. As a result, a major problem is developing citizen loyalty to the new country and a sense of belonging among people who, just a generation earlier, were living under their tribal leaders in an imperial system of government imposed by rulers from far away. Nigeria is an excellent example of this kind of problem where over 300 ethnolinguistic groups were consolidated into one country by an imperial ruler. Under the principles of international law, the new states are as sovereign and independent as the older and more established powers. The principle of equality is recognized through the mechanism of one country, one vote in the UN General Assembly. In practice, however, the newer states can do little to oppose the power of the major states. The best they can do is to play one power off against the other to assure they do not fall under the control of one state permanently. In addition, todays states are living in a period of U.S.superpower dominance. It is hard for small, weak states to oppose the United States or larger regional entities, such as NATO, in their part of the world. The dynamics of the modern international system remain the same as in the days of the Treaty of Westphalia, at least in terms of the interaction between strong and weak states. Weak states must decide the merits of forming regional alliances, giving in to the superpower, or going it alone. The difference between 1648 and today is that the international action now covers the entire globe. In 1648, it covered only the continent of Europe.
c WHAT ARE THE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS?

Test Prepper 3.1
True or False?
71
_____ 1. The state is the primary actor in the international system because no other actor in the system has the ability to harm the state. _____ 2. State sovereignty allows the United Nations to force its member-states to take actions when it is in the interests of the UN to do so. _____ 3. Both China and the United States are examples of multinational states. _____ 4. The majority of the 191 states that have membership in the United Nations today did not exist when the UN was rst formed in 1945. _____ 5. The 2003 United States invasion of Iraq followed the traditional Westphalian norms governing state sovereignty.
Multiple Choice
_____ 6. Which of the following is NOT a characteristic of a state in the international system: a. A geographic territory with internationally recognized boundaries b. An internationally recognized and identiable population that lives within those boundaries
c. An internationally recognized authority structure or government d. An entity with membership in the United Nations Security Council e. None of the above _____ 7. Which of the following was a factor leading to the evolution of the modern state: a. The temporary slowdown of technological advancement leading to a focus on national unity rather than economic self-interest b. The feudal nature of European society in the early 1800s c. The development of a common culture and/or ideology among a group of people constituting the nation d. The devastating effects for the average person during the War of 1812
What Are the Levels of Analysis?

2 Understand what is meant by levels of analysis and who are the primary actors that operate at each level.
How are we going to analyze the interactions of 191 states and various regional governmental and nongovernmental organizations? Because doing so is extremely complex, political scientists have developed a tool for getting a handle on the international system, its players, and how they relate to one another. It is called levels of analysis, a system for organizing the players into ve levels of international activity (see Table 3.1). Lets begin with the highest level.
Levels of analysis A method of classifying the players in the international system and how they relate to one another on ve levels.
The International System as a Whole

System level analysis enables us to make generalizations and predictions about patterns of interaction among the actors in the system. The basic assumptions underlying system level analysis are: 1. The international system is considered as a single whole. 2. Within this whole, actors interact with and respond to one another in ways that are predictable. An analogy might be a forest. A forest is composed of trees, but if youre interested in the system, you do not look at each individual tree but rather at the
72
CHAPTER 3
TABLE 3.1 Levels of Analysis

Levels
1. International system level 2. Regional level 3. State level 4. Substate level 5. Individual level
Actors
States, non-state actors, and individuals States, regional NSAs, individuals States, state-level NSAs, individuals Interest groups, ethnic groups, individuals Individual people
component parts of the forest, such as the deciduous trees and the coniferous trees. By identifying the behavior pattern of each component, you can classify the deciduous trees into oak, maple, larch, or birch. The coniferous trees might be pine, hemlock, and spruce. Through study of the forest, we can make generalizations about the conditions necessary for the survival of all forestsand of species of trees within the forest. In similar ways, though with considerably less accuracy, we can consider the international system as a whole and identify its components. Among the most important components are the types of actors within the system.
Grouping the State Actors

As you already know, the principal actors are the states. We commonly group these states into categories, based on the level of economic and political development a state has attained. As Table 3.2 presents, we categorize states into four sets: 1. The rst set contains the industrialized states, such as the United States, the West European states, Japan, and Australia. 2. The second set consists of the former communist countries in transition to a democratic society and market economy: Russia, the countries of East Central Europe, and the independent states formed from the former Soviet Union and located in Central Asia and the Caucasus. 3. The third set comprises the developing states, including countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, and most of Africa. 4. The fourth set are the at-risk states, or those that may not develop the economic and political institutions necessary for survival. The at-risk states include Somalia, Chad, Ethiopia, the Central African Republic, and other African states that are desperately poor and possess virtually no natural resources. It is important to understand that Table 3.2 represents a classication of states, not a rank order. The second set of states are all those states that experienced communist rule in the second half of the nineteenth century. Most developing states never experienced communist rule, Vietnam and China being the most visible exceptions. And most developing states do not fail. There is an expectation that developing countries will want to develop further into developed states, but probably not all those states will do so. This classication is far from perfect, as many states dont readily t into the categories, and there is no agreement among scholars on an appropriate terminology. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) assigns three categories: the advanced economies, countries in transition from communist one-party regimes, and developing countries. This set of categories uses level of economic and political development as the principal criterion. Some political scientists prefer just two classications, developed states and developing states. But this classication lumps all the worlds stateswith their wide array of incomes per capita, political systems, and economic developmentinto just two groups. Finally, scholars have increasingly come to refer to very poor states and those states that have either

TABLE 3.2 The Four Sets of State Actors in the International System
Set One (Developed or Industrialized States) Set Two (Countries in Transition) The states that have experienced substantial industrial development: North America, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan Countries in transition from communism to a free market economy: Russia, states of East Central Europe and Central Asia, and the independent states formed from the former Soviet Union in Central Asia and the Caucasus States undergoing the process of development: Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, most of Africa States that are so poor that they may never be able to take the road to development
73
Set Three (Developing States) Set Four (Failing or At-Risk States)
collapsed or are in danger of falling apart because of political, social, or economic circumstances as failed or failing states. For the purposes of this book, the terms developed states, countries in transition from communism, developing states, and failing states are used. As you can see, the groups of states are not equal in power and wealth, and some states dont readily t into the categories. Because of its low gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, China is in many respects a developing country, but its military and the unparalleled growth of some parts of its economy put it among the industrialized states. In terms of its political system, it belongs in the second set, but not economically so, because of its extensive capitalist reforms. Although in theory all states are dened by the same characteristics, and each has one vote in the General Assembly of the United Nations, in practice we automatically assume differences based on economic and political factors. Indeed, the classication suggests a rank order, with the industrialized states at the top and the atrisk countries of the fourth set at the bottom. We thus may expect the leading states of the international system to be found in the industrialized world.
Lead State Actors of the International System

Lead actors or great powers at any time in history have always come from the most economically advanced regions. In the rst century ad, India, China, and Rome were the most economically advanced regions and world leaders. In the fteenth century, China, the Ottoman Empire, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain were the world leaders. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the major European powers were the movers and shakers. In the international system of that time, England, France, Germany, Austria, and Russia maintained a fragile balance of power at the top, and they divided the rest of the world between them as parts of their colonial empires. As a result of World Wars I and II, the power position of the European countries substantially weakened. The United States and the Soviet Union emerged as the two superpowers, each possessing the capability to destroy each other and the world. What is fascinating to students of the international system is that neither country sought the superpower role.
74
CHAPTER 3
TABLE 3.3 Types of Non-state Actors

International government organizations (IGOS) International organized crime and drug groups International paramilitary and terrorist groups Public interest and professional nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) Firms and businesses, especially multinational corporations (MNCs) The international media Transnational diaspora communities
Non-state Actors
Realists hold that the international system level of analysis includes states only. Liberals see the arrival of non-state actors as the evolution of a new global civil society where non-state organizations and groups both complement and challenge the state system. The category of non-state actors divides into several groups as shown in Table 3.3.
z Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs): IGOs are those whose members are national or multinational states (see chapter 6). Examples of IGOs are the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the International Court of Justice, as well as regional IGOs such as the European Union, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the Organization of African States.
z Organized Crime: The second group of non-state actors are organized crime and drug groups, such as the Maa. z Paramilitary and Terrorist Groups: including al Qaeda, Basque terrorist groups, and U.S.based groups like the anti-abortion Army of God, and the Earth Liberation Front. These organizations operate in a shadow world, recruiting and training volunteers to carry out acts of terrorism or protest. While it would be great to excommunicate them and put them beyond the pale of global civil society, we still have to deal with them. In both the Muslim and the non-Muslim worlds, al Qaeda exerts an almost magical inuence. Some see al Qaeda as unabashedly bad, but many see it as their rescuer from the wretchedness of personal lives or the visible and extensive corruption in high places. z Nongovernmental Organizations: These are generally described as not-forprot organizations and their members are individuals rather than representatives of states. Four categories of NGOs may be identied. 1. Professional and scientic NGOs whose members are professionals in their elds and address issues generally related to their professional expertise. Examples are the International Political Science Association and the International Union of Concerned Scientists. 2. Religious or faith-based NGOs, whose members advocate responses to an array of topics supported by shared religious convictions. Examples include the World Council of Churches, and the American Jewish Committee. 3. Environmental NGOs represent the third category. Members of Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, or Friends of the Earth promote the goals and purposes of the NGOs charter. 4. Single-issue NGOs are exemplied by women taking leading roles in notfor-prot activities and forming NGOs focused specically on womens issues, such as Virtual Sisterhood and the Womens Jurist Association/ Womens Advocacy Center. z Transnational Corporations (TNCs): TNCs do business in the global economy. Many of these have budgets larger than those of some states (see chapter 7). A TNC branches out internationally and may set up headquarters in one state, build plants in others, and conduct business around the globe, depending on the business climate in a given state. Its sales are worldwide.

Examples are McDonalds, Wal-Mart, Exxon Mobil, IBM, Microsoft, Intel, General Motors, and Toyota. Because of their wealth and economic clout, TNCs have long been the target of heavy criticism by neoliberal scholars for exploiting poor countries where labor is cheap, robbing them of their resources, and maximizing corporate prots. Realists prefer to argue that TNCs are the glue of the global economy, providing jobs in one state and inexpensive, highquality products in another. z International Media: Media such as CNN and al Jazeera, the Arabic language TV network, now present broadcasts in most European languages. z Diaspora Communities: Diasporas are international migrations, both forced and voluntary, of diverse ethnic groups and individuals. Members of these groups may organize to represent their group interests in the domestic or international community. An example of such an organization is the AmericanJewish Public Affairs Committee, with member units in Europe, Canada, and the United States. Opinions vary on the assessment of the activities of NGOs in the international arena. Many international relations experts, such as James Rosenau, see the emergence of NGOs as a positive development. In Rosenaus view, they operate as active lobbying groups in a global civil society that reaches out to everyone. Others argue that these groups are not representative of any interest, as their members are nonelected individuals and, as such, merely represent themselves. In addition, some of them, like the terrorist NGOs, are dedicated to destroying the international system as we know it.
75
Relations between Actors in the International System

A rst important generalization that emerges from this discussion is that relations between states and, indeed, between states and non-state actors are characterized by power relationships. At any given time in history, one or several states are on top. Pick any date in the past, and the international system may be characterized by how the powerful states relate to one another and to the rest of the world. The emergence of non-state actors does not signicantly change the power relationships between the weak and strong states. Weak states, however, can and do use both the IGOs and NGOs as advocates for, negotiators of, or simply extensions of their foreign policy. FIGURe 3.1 A Multipolar System
A
76
CHAPTER 3
Multipolar system An international system based on three or more centers of power (poles) that may include states or IGOs, such as the European Union. The nineteenth-century international system may be described as multipolar. Balance of power A foreign policy principle that world peace and stability is best preserved by way of a basic equilibrium among the worlds major actorstypically states. Bipolar system A balance-of-power system in which states are grouped around two major power centers. Unipolar system When a single superpower dominates the international system.
A second generalization derives directly from the notion of power relationships among lead actors, supporting actors, and very weak actors. At the system level of analysis, the strong states may be dened as those that attract weaker states into their orbit as the systems poles of power. During most of the nineteenth century, several powerful European states were rivals for power. The international system of the period may thus be described as a European multipolar system. As each state sought to prevent others from acting too aggressively and disrupting the system, it entered into an alliance with what it perceived to be like-minded states (see Figure 3.1). A so-called balance of power was produced through the alliances of two opposing groups of states. Because England was an island apart from the continent of Europe and had by far the largest empire, it saw its role as a balancer of power to prevent France, Germany, or Russia from dominating the European continent. The European multipolar system gave way after World War II to the bipolar (two-pole) system of the Cold War, where the two poles were the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). But the latter collapsed in 1991, and entering this century, no other countrywith the possible exception of China comes close to challenging the United States either militarily or economically. The current system could be classied as unipolar (see Figure 3.2). However, although there may be only one superpower, many regional powers are economically strong. Thus, the current system may be redened as overall unipolar with one superpower but with a multipolar regional structure. An in-depth discussion about the balance of power and power relationships follows in the next chapter. As mentioned, interacting with the groups of states are the increasing number of non-state actors. Since 9/11, there is some question as to whether groups like al Qaedaand others, such as Friends of the Earthare eroding the sovereignty of the state, as James Rosenau and other neoliberals contend. For example, the events
FIGURe 3.2 Unipolar World (System Level)
United States
European Union
China
Japan
Asia
Latin America
Russia and CIS

of 9/11 entailed an attack against the United Statesa member of the UNby al Qaeda, a group whose members, numbers, and location are unknown but that can strike anywhere at any time. No member-state of the UN has these privileges. If you recall, states have formal obligations to one another. The UN was founded to keep aggressor states in line and to promote collective peace, but the UN document says nothing about protecting states from NGOsand NGOs have no obligations to states. The fact is that a non-state actor has attacked a sovereign state and forced that state to respond as a state, not as a police power. This is a totally new event in the modern world. Moreover, NGOs may now apply and receive formal NGO status at the UN. Every major international conference, such as the Seventh Global Forum on Reinventing Government held in Vienna, Austria, in June 2007, has a set of ofcially recognized NGOs in attendance, which lobby the UN delegates and promote their point of view. Do these developments minimize the importance of states in the international system? Many scholars argue that the international system is fast becoming a civil community of state and non-state actors recruited from all over the globe who appeal to the UN with multiple proposals for the collective resolution of world problems. In practice, however, states alone have the combined economic, political, and military authority to implement solutions to these problems. TABLE 3.4 Major Regions of the World
Africa Australia and Oceania Latin America and the Caribbean North America East and South Asia West and Central Asia Europe
77
The Regional Level of Analysis

The regional level of analysis compares one region to another, or across regions, and compares one state with another within a region. As with the systems level of analysis, the focus is on the actors that make up the system and the generalizations that can be made about them. The major regions of the world are shown in Table 3.4. The regional level looks at the same actors as at the international level. The difference is that at the regional levelcomparing, for example, economic growth in Southeast Asia with economic growth in sub-Saharan Africainvolves looking at specic states and non-state actors in those specic regions. At the international systems level, the emphasis is on how the actors behave in the overall power structure. Comparing the combined economic and industrial capacity of states grouped as regions conrms, on further study, the hypothesis made earlier in the chapter that although the current system may be a unipolar system with one superpower, there is also a strong multipolar distribution of economic power within regions. To prove the point, compare the wealth of the European Union (EU) with that of the continent of Africa, or the per capita income of Kenya or South Africa to that of Ethiopia or Chad, in northern Africa. At the regional level, the dynamics of regional organizationsof IGOs and NGOsin various parts of the world may also be studiedfor example, the structure, organization, and activities of IGOs with similar goals but with differing ranges of function and jurisdiction, such as the EU, the North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA), the African Union (AU), the Organization of American States (OAS), and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Finally, a study of the international reach of regional organizations, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the EU, may attempt to predict from the behavior of the most active regional IGOs a general future pattern of regional IGO behavior.
European Union (EU) A multipurpose international organization comprising twenty-seven Western European countries. It has both supranational and intergovernmental characteristics.
78
CHAPTER 3
Analyzing Regional NGOs

Regional NGOs are not quite as visible as their international cousins. They seem most active in the EU, where a supranational government has the authority to make laws and regulations binding on the member-states. For example, the European Social Action Network focuses on developing coherent European policies on human rights, and the European Union Migrants Forums unite and provide representation at the EU level for some 190 migrant organizations throughout Europe. Regional NGOs can and often do inuence regional agreements. Environmental NGOs such as the Union de Grupos Ambientalistas, a federation of thirtyeight Mexican environmental NGOs, and the U.S.based Sierra Club, which unites groups in Canada, Mexico, and the United States, played a decisive role in ensuring the attachment of an environmental agreement to NAFTA, that went into effect in 1994. Regional womens groups, particularly in Africa and South Asia, have been instrumental in making governments in those regions aware of the problems women face in agriculture and commerce both within the region and in interregional trade. Some paramilitary and terrorist groups operate exclusively at the regional level. These include the Latin American terrorists groups operating in Columbia, Peru and Equador, and the Basque terrorists groups in Spain and France.
The State Level of Analysis

As its name suggests, the state level of analysis looks at and contrasts the behavior of individual states. But how do you compare and contrast states to understand better their position in the international system? What specic features do states have in common? The four factors most often considered are power, wealth, status and prestige, and population.
Northern Border Crossing
Trucks entering the United States from Canada at the Ambassador Bridge connecting Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit, Michigan. Since NAFTA went into effect in 1994, trilateral trade between the United States, Canada, and Mexico has increased. Canada and Mexico send more than 80 percent of their exports to NAFTA partners. U.S. Canadian trade represents the largest bilateral flow of income, goods, and services in the world. Mexico is the second-largest trading partner of the United States. Ninety percent of the goods that are traded are moved by service transportation and threequarters of that movement is by truck.

z Power: The way that power is organized and distributed within a state relates to its system of government, its constitution and legal system, and its requirements for citizenship and participation in politics, such as the right to vote or the minimum age for holding public ofce. z Wealth: Wealth and its distribution involve all aspects of a states economic system. Wealth factors include the quality and quantity of natural resources, agricultural and industrial output, labor indicators, external and internal trade, gross domestic product (GDP), taxation policy, public nance, and technological development. z Status and Prestige: The concept of status and prestige relates to a states social system, health and education policies, and the distribution of justice. Comparing status and prestige among states provides an investigation of whos on topthat is, which group most inuences the conduct of government. In modern democratic states, education is a determining factor in assessing the kind of profession or job you have and your ability to exert inuence in your local community or at the national or international level. Health is another determinant of status and prestige in todays world. Epidemics and serious health problems weaken a state, sometimes threatening its very existence. In determining whether to invest in a state, the international investor needs to know how healthy its population is. Statistics tell us, for example, that most of the worlds AIDS cases are found in sub-Saharan Africa. If you compare the health of the population in Uganda with the health of the population in Thailand, another of the states most threatened by AIDS, you will nd that Thailand has started a public health project to educate its citizens about AIDS and also has a more comprehensive public health care system than does Uganda. z Population: The last factor used at the state level of analysis, population, includes much more than the size of a states population and its demographic characteristics. Besides such factors as the age prole, the rate of population growth, the birth rate, and age of marriage, an analysis of a states population is also concerned with the level of unity. What is a states ethnic and/or religious makeup? How much harmony or disharmony exists among groups? How productive are its people? What level of education do they possess? For example, a state whose population has a very low level of literacy is at a distinct economic disadvantage in comparison with states that invest in education and require high levels of educational achievement in its people. The new technologies all require highly educated people. As the whole world participates in the technological and communications revolution, the opportunities for workers with a low education level is steadily diminishing. Just these four factors, compared across states, can yield generalizations regarding the capability of each to be a strong and effective player in the international system. For example, one hypothesis to test is whether or not states with strong government institutions and a more equal distribution of wealth tend to be more active and aggressive players than those with weak government institutions and an unequal distribution of wealth. Or a question may be asked about the correlation between a states level of economic development and the health and education of its population. What is the impact of AIDS or any other serious health threat on the stability of government institutions in such diverse states as South Africa and the United States? In conducting foreign policy, governments make such analyses every day. These questions are taken up later in the chapter.
79
80
CHAPTER 3
The Substate Level of Analysis

Beneath the state level of analysis is the substate level. At this level are all the units that make up a state or that act as players in a regional organization. The discussion looks rst at the actors at the substate level and then turns to the generalizations that can be made about them.
The Actors and Their Issues

The subunits of the United States are the fty states. In Germany, the subunits are the Lnder (Lands) similar to the U.S. states. Belgium is divided into Flemishspeaking provinces and French-speaking provinces. The United Kingdom is composed of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Russia is composed of a multiplicity of overlapping administrative units that are based on the uneven distribution of more than 160 ethnic groups. Until recently, scholars paid little attention to the substate level. As discussed in chapter 1, however, as the new forces shaping the planet have tended to make states more vulnerable, their central governments have come under pressure from both without and within to loosen central control. These decentralizing tendencies have given new life and power to the states subunits.
Increased Prominence of the Substate Level

Increased activity at the regional level has also contributed to new vitality at the substate level. For example, over the past forty years, the states of Europe have been gradually harmonizing their markets, legal systems, and monetary systems to form a European Union. The EU is a supranational authority to which the member-states have yielded some of their sovereignty in specied legal areas. If a law of one state within the EU does not meet the requirements or specications of EU regulations, it must be revised to meet those standards. The subordination of the state governments to the institutions of the EU has, to a large degree, weakened the extent to which they can dictate to their subunits. These, on the other hand, have recognized the transfer of member-state sovereignty to the EU as an opportunity to assert their powers and privileges at the substate level. A similar phenomenon may be taking place in the United States. The United States and Canada have an international agreement, binding on both countries, regarding the conservation and use of the Great Lakes. Initially, this agreement primarily regulated water use. In the 1970s, the agreement was amended to include the harmonization of pollution control. However, neither the United States nor Canada has taken much action in this regard. Most of the work has been done at the substate level, with U.S. states bordering the Great Lakes forming an organization and inviting their Canadian counterparts, the provinces of Ontario and Quebec to join them. Moreover, substate NGOs, such as the Great Lakes Consortium, are pursuing agendas to link the two countries in a single environmental management effort. As you can see, the environmental paradigm is particularly relevant at the substate level. The Great Lakes basin forms a natural ecosystem. The political entities within that basin, both states (used here, in the sense of subunits of the United States) and provinces (subunits of Canada), recognize the vital importance of that ecosystem to their survival and future livelihood. They thus have a greater interest in working out cooperative arrangements than do the more distant federal governments, which have a great many international interests to address.

A Good One
81
Fisherman checking his line under the five-mile long Mackinaw Bridge over the Straits of Mackinac connecting the state of Michigans Upper Peninsula with its Lower Peninsula. The Straits link the upper Great Lakes to the lower Great Lakes and thence via the St. Lawrence River to the Atlantic Ocean. Canadians and Americans cooperate in preserving the beauty and history of the Great Lakes, and local NGOs take especial pride in promoting the conservation of this largest body of fresh water in the Americas.
Decentralizing Elements at the Substate Level

China provides another interesting case of the power and importance of emerging substate actors. China is divided into rich and poor provinces. Chinas rich provinces are on the countrys east coast. These provinces have been granted special rights, as free enterprise regions, to enter into agreements with foreign corporations and sell directly abroad. As foreign capital has poured into these provinces, the economies have grown by leaps and bounds, the populations have been lifted out of the grinding poverty of the rest of the country, and the provincial governments have grown wealthy through the taxation of their upwardly mobile people. One of the great fears of the central Chinese government is that these provinces will grow so wealthy that they will refuse to pay taxes to the central Chinese authorities and choose to secede from the rest of the country. The arrival of substate actors on the international scene adds yet another dimension to the growth of international civil society. To be players in the international arena, substate entities need to attract and keep the attention of the major players in the international system. To give legitimacy to their push for greater selfrule within the state or for complete independence from the state, these substate units often turn to a superpower like the United States, a regional actor like the EU, or an IGO such as the United Nations, to request recognition and assistance. The Autonomous Republic of Chechnya in Russia is one example; Kosovo in Serbia and Montenegro is another. In their struggle for international attention, the substate actors play on the same themes that brought the state of which they are a part into being: legitimacy, sovereignty, and the obligation and expectation to live up to international rules and laws.
Conflict at the Substate Level

Often the issue that divides a substate from its mother state (Kosovo from Serbia) or one substate from another (Dagestan from Chechnya) ows from disputes over
82
CHAPTER 3
Irredentism A foreign policy directed toward the incorporation within one states boundaries territories that historically or ethnically were related to it but are now subject to another political authority. Irredentism can lead to war when one state claims the people, and a part or a whole of another state.
territory, ethnicity, language, and/or religion (see chapter 1). Boundaries, closely related to the issue of territory, can cause serious problems. In the nineteenth century, the colonial powersGreat Britain, France, and Germanycarved up Africa. They drew boundaries that were useful to themselves, but these had little relation to the living patterns of the inhabitants. This situation is not limited to Africa. In Asia, India and Pakistan have clashed a number of times since the two states were created from British India in 1947. The issue is where to draw the boundary between them in the Himalayan territory of Kashmir. Neither state appears to care that a large majority of the actual inhabitants of Kashmir would probably prefer independence. History shows that boundary lines can be very important to the people who live within them. It also shows that not everybody who lives within a set of boundary lines wants to be part of the state those lines describe. Quite often, ethnic groups are spread out beyond the confines of one state. Sometimes one state has lost territory or lays claim to territory it believes it owns. Such situations can create irredentist pressures upon the home state to extend its political power to include lands lying within a neighboring state, more often than not inhabited by ethnic cousins. The Italian term, terra irredenta means unredeemed land. For example, when the Austro-Hungarian Empire broke up at the end of World War I, Hungarians were living in all parts of the Empire but considered Hungary their homeland. The victorious Entente powers carved up Austria and Hungary, and distributed the land to other states. Suddenly some Hungarians found themselves a minority ethnic group in another country. As a consequence, irredentist feelings ran high in Hungary in the period between the First and Second World Wars. The nationalist policy to regain lost territories, or irredentism, drove Hungary to ally itself with Nazi Germany during World War II. When a people or ethnic group within the borders of a recognized state, like the Kurds in northern Iraq, wishes to carve out a part of the recognized state and set up its own sovereign government, we call this a movement for self-determination. In 1991, for example, the Kurds rose up to demand self-determination from Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi regime bloodily repressed the nascent civil war, using poison gas, bombing, torture, mass killings, and deportation. The regimes tactics forced NATO to establish a no-y zone in northern Iraq, declaring the area off limits to Saddam Husseins bombers and protected by NATO troops. See Table 3.5 for an overview of substate movements. Ethnicity Probably the single most signicant factor in substate conict is the presence of a heterogeneous population, meaning that a variety of ethnic groups are represented. An ethnic group, as discussed in chapter 1 is a group of people linked by a common bond. Most frequently this bond is language, but it may also be one of belonging to the same tribe or religion. Less frequently, race is a common bond. Language is the most common bond of ethnicity. If you have ever traveled to Europe, you will remember that in Paris the Americans tend to group together in one corner of a caf, the Germans in another, and the French somewhere else. Language is obviously an important reason for these divisions. When you visit Switzerland, you will nd that it is separated into three distinct areas, each of which is primarily populated by a different ethnic group. In each partthe French cantons, the German cantons, and the Italian cantonsthe signs are in the language of the majority population.
Race A division of humankind possessing biological traits that are transmissible by descent and that are sufcient to characterize it as a distinctive human type. Skin color is the major trait identied with race today.

TABLE 3.5 Substate Movements
Independence breaking away from the host country (Slovakia broke away from Czechoslovakia, Slovenia and Croatia from Yugoslavia, East Timor from Indonesia) Civil War occurs when a. Ethnic groups in the substate unit disagree over seeking independence or staying with the host country. b. Ethnic groups in the substate unit fight the army of the host country for independence (Kosovo, East Timor). Irredentism a foreign policy directed toward the incorporation within one states boundaries of territories that historically or ethnically were related to it but are now subject to another political authority (Hungary in between the First and Second World Wars, Hitlers Anschluss in 1938, Armenias current desire to annex the Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh, Chinas goal to get back Taiwan)
83
In Afghanistan, one of the main problems in creating a national state is that each of the countrys ethnic groups speaks a different language. The largest group, the Pashtuns, would like to control the government and have their language, Pashtun, become ofcial. The ethnic Tajiks and others disagree. And so tension between the tribes and their chieftains threatens the existence of the fragile state. Religion A third major reason people want to live apart is religion. Religious conict tends to occur wherever two religions neighbor each other and where the boundaries between the two are porous (or not well dened, meaning that people can easily cross the boundary and move from one region to another). The island of Ireland is a prime example. The Irish people in the independent Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom, all speak the same language or languages. The 100-year-old civil war in Northern Ireland is over religion. z The Republic of Ireland is Catholic and wants to remain so. About half the people in Northern Ireland are Catholic, and most of these would like to join their Catholic relatives and neighbors in the Republic of Ireland. They also would like to share in the good economic times that country is enjoying. z The other half of the people in Northern Ireland are Protestant, the descendants of English and Scottish immigrants. They are afraid that the Catholic Irish will take over the province and vote to join the Republic of Ireland. Protestants then would have, in the Protestant Irish view, no rights at all. A peace accord signed on Good Friday, April 10, 1998, promised resolution of this conict. In 2006, the British and Irish governments and all the major political parties in Northern Ireland agreed to a permanent end of the ghting and the formation of a new Northern Ireland executive. Religion can be a source of conict between Muslims as it is between some Christians. Among the critical challenges to the future of Iraq are constitutional decisions relating to the sharing of power between the Shiite majority and the
For more information see The View From: The Holy Land: The IsraeliPalestinian Conict www.BetweenNations.org
84
CHAPTER 3
Religion with a Vengeance
The market in the Shiite neighborhood of Sadriya, Baghdad, Iraq, April 18, 2007, after a Sunni-driven truck exploded, killing 140 people, smashing cars, and shattering buildings.
Sunni minority, in particular the sharing of oil revenues. The same is true in Kosovo, where ethnic cleansing rst by Orthodox Serbia and then by Muslim Kosovars make the presence of NATOs armed force indispensable to the areas security. In conclusion, when you combine territorial, religious, and ethnic issues into one package, you often discover a substate/state conict of seemingly irresolvable proportions. This is the case with the IsraeliPalestinian conict. This conict between Jew and Arab is now entering its second century. History offers a rather brutal lesson. Any government that has tried to create one nation from a multiethnic population has, in the main, had to rely on force to achieve its goals. You encounter this lesson again and again when reading the history of France, Britain, and Germany or when exploring the story of white expansion across the American continent. The Native American tribes were beaten back until the few that remained were sidelined onto reservations. The United States prides itself today as a multiethnic state that celebrates cultural diversity. But its history has several chapters on ethnic cleansing, including this signicant one about the people who reached the Americas rst.
The Individual Level of Analysis

At the individual level of analysis, we examine the role individual human beings play in the international system. In reading this section, note that this role can be more important and critical than you may have expected.
The Actors
The rst actors usually considered at this level are powerful government ofcials or leaders with a world reputation, such as the president of the United States, the pope, or the head of the World Bank. But inventors, artists, actors, and athletes also

fall into this category: people like Bill Gates, the chairman of the board of a large U.S. corporation, or a famous rock or opera singer. At the individual level of analysis, any person who exerts inuence on world politics may be considered an actor. The tendency is to think of an individuals power and inuence based on the role he or she plays. Anyone who becomes president of the United States exercises a tremendous amount of individual inuence by virtue of the ofce. Individual inuence is also generally associated with roles played in large established institutions. But how would you rate the inuence of the Saudi nancier Osama bin Laden, alive or dead, the mastermind behind al Qaeda who organized a worldwide network of terrorists and established training camps for terrorist activities in Afghanistan? And how do you assess the inuence of Mother Teresa as compared with that of bin Laden, Bill Gates, or Saddam Hussein? Would the power of the United States be more or less if the president today were Teddy Roosevelt, who led a group of volunteer soldiers known as the Rough Riders to defeat the Spaniards in Cuba in 1898? Does President Bush have the inuence to persuade the American people to ght the war on terrorism indenitely? Clearly, the personality and beliefs of a national leader have a decisive impact on both the input and the outcome of an international event. The individual level of analysis attempts to measure or assess the relative inuence on world politics of one individual against another on the basis of his or her personal characteristics.
85
The Impact of Individuals on World Politics

It is possible to make several generalizations about the impact of individuals on world events. First is the basic proposition that individuals do have the ability to inuence world affairs in a unique direction, although much depends on the time and place. At the beginning of World War II, Winston Churchill galvanized the British to ght rather than capitulate to the Nazis with his rousing speech on blood, sweat, and tears. As soon as the war was won, however, the British people threw him out of ofce at the next election. Clearly, they did not think he was the right person to be in charge of rebuilding the war-torn British economy. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton wanted to stamp his image on world history when he used force for humanitarian purposes and sent the U.S. military into the Balkans. President George W. Bush would doubtless like to go down in history as the winner of the war against terrorism. Clearly, the personality and beliefs of a national leader make a difference in the outcome of international events.
Political Psychology
The second generalization to be made about the role of individuals in world events is that their perceptions and motivations play a key role in their decisions. Political psychology, a branch of international relations, is devoted to understanding these aspects of decision making, and the eld has produced testable hypotheses about the attitudes and thought processes of leading international political actors. z Misperception and Groupthink: One of the leading proponents of political psychology is Robert Jervis. Based on his study of the Cuban missile crisis, Jervis developed a series of hypotheses on the role of misperception in the management of crisis situations. For example, he claims that actors tend to see the behavior of others as more centralized, disciplined, and coordinated than they are, and that actors tend to overestimate the degree to which others
86
CHAPTER 3
Groupthink A mode of thinking that people engage in when the cohesiveness of their group is high and the members striving for unanimity overrides their motivation to evaluate alternative courses of action.
Audio Concept Groupthink www.BetweenNations.org
are acting in response to what they themselves do.6 In his analysis of the decision-making process of the principal U.S. actors during in the crisis, Jervis expanded on another important concept in political psychology: groupthink, earlier identied by Yale social psychologist Irving Janis in his seminal work, Victims of Groupthink (1972). The term describes a situation where each member of the group attempts to conform his or her opinions to what they believe to be the consensus of the group. This results in the group ultimately agreeing on an action, such as the Kennedy administrations attempted invasion of Cuba, which individual members by themselves might normally consider unwise. z Cognitive Dissonance: Cognitive dissonance theory, developed by Leon Fes tinger in 1957, explains the psychological phenomenon of discomfort an individual experiences when he or she discovers a discrepancy between what he or she already knows or believes and new contradictory information. Cognitive dissonance occurs when there is a need to accommodate new ideas. When individuals are confronted with new facts that contradict what they knew before, they tend to resist the new learning or the new reality. Political leaders are no different. An example of cognitive dissonance might be the Pentagons initial picture of a swift and decisive American military victory in Iraq despite information that U.S. forces would meet a very different kind of reception. z Leadership Typologies: The nal aspect of political psychology mentioned here is the typologies of leadership offered to explain a leaders choice of certain kinds of decisions and actions rather than others. Some scholars like to talk about leadership styles based on a states political development: the traditional leadership of a prince or a monarch, the charismatic leadership of a modernizing leader like Fidel Castro or Franklin Roosevelt, or the organizational leadership of a leader in an already operating pluralistic polity, like former U.S. President Jimmy Carter or Helmut Kohl of Germany. Others scholars follow Sigmund Freuds typology of three dominant personality types: the erotic personality that needs to love and to be loved, the obsessive or inner-directed personality, and the narcissistic or charismatic personality that aims to change things for the better or the worse. A third typology used by scholars is the Myers-Briggs personality model based on four personality continua: introversion-extroversion, sensing-intuition, thinking-feeling, and judgingperception. The analysis of why certain individuals exert inuence or act as they do is fascinating, and if you are drawn to the topic, you may want to take a course in political psychology. Decision making is discussed in more detail in chapter 5.
The Power of Individual Actors

For more information see Why It Matters to You: Powerful Sayings www.BetweenNations.org
The third set of generalizations that may be formulated about individuals has to do with the amount of power they have. Indeed, almost all questions about individual actors on the international stage center on power: What is it, who has it, and how is it used? The word power comes from the Latin word posse, meaning to be able, to have the ability to act or to do. In politics, power involves the ability to get someone to do something that he or she otherwise would not do voluntarily.

The common way for individuals to acquire power is out of the barrel of a gun, to quote the father of Communist China and former dictator, Mao Zedong. The majority of powerful people since the dawn of time have gotten that way largely through conquest. Although rare, a few individuals are recognized as powerful for their inuence on our thinking or for their example of human goodness (such as Socrates, Saint Francis of Assisi and Mahatma Gandhi). Finally, certain people become powerful through their recognized role as head of a people, a nation, or a state. For example, no matter who lls the role, the president of the United States is one of the most powerful persons in the world today. Regardless of personality, the president exercises organizational leadership over the U.S. government. How do individuals exercise power? Throughout history, there are only two ways: through force or through persuasion. Frequently, the two may be combined. Force is customarily violent: military might, terrorism, or compelling economic means (hostile takeovers, embargoes). Persuasion may be achieved through negotiation and bargaining, propaganda or advertising, by direct one-on-one inuence over someone less powerful, or by persuasive example, as in the case of Saint Francis. Political scientist Theodore White rst focused our attention on the notion of power as inuence in his studies of the making of the U.S. president in the 1960s. When someone easily persuades others to do something they otherwise would not do, we say that person has charisma.
87
Ordinary People as Global Actors

Finally, in our explanation of the role of the individual in the international system, generalizations can be made about average people. Believe it or not, many people
Two People Who Have Made a Difference in International Affairs
At the turn of the twenty-first century, two of the major players on the world scene were George W. Bush, president of the United States, and Osama bin Laden, Saudi terrorist.
88
CHAPTER 3
whose names are unknown exert considerable inuence. For example, many states agreed to give money to alleviate the suffering of the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia. Large nancial institutions pledged billions of dollars in loans that have taken a long time to process. In the meantime, individuals from humanitarian NGOs, such as the Catholic Relief Organization and the International Red Cross, have long been at work, caring for the needy. Tsunami victims in South Asia, hurricane victims in Nicaragua and Honduras, refugees returning to Kosovo, famine victims in Rwanda and Ethiopia, the victims of earthquakes in Iran, and refugees in Darfur are all causes that individuals support. Some people help by sending a check, others by giving personal time to an organization that is raising money. Still others actually go to the area that needs help and volunteer their labor. In 1995, after the Fourth UN Conference on Women, held in Beijing, American and Canadian women who had heard about the murder of girl babies in China spent their own money to go to that country, adopt baby girls, and save their lives by bringing them back to Canada and the United States. Volunteers organize and manage the countless sister city programs, like the Albany/Tula Alliance and the New York City/Tokyo program, that connect local administrations, organizations, and individuals in a web of citizen diplomacy. Without the involvement of individuals at the grass-roots level, many international projects that alleviate suffering or promote cultural dialog could not be realized. When individuals care about someone or some problem in the world and act upon their feelings, they have an impact. You too can be a player at the individual level in the world today. Volunteers for Habitat for Humanity Building Homes in the Philippines
Dr. Robert T. Potter, along with 200 other volunteers, went to the Philippines to help Filipinos build a home for themselves. Volunteers are found in every NGO and provide home, food, and clothing to the millions of poor, sick, and homeless in our world today. The global community cannot do without them.
Source: Courtesy of Dr. Robert T. Potter.
c APPLYING THE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS TO UNDERSTAND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Test Prepper 3.2
True or False?
89
_____ 1. The levels of analysis allow us to organize international actors and events into ve distinct levels of international activity. _____ 2. Non-state actors include groups as diverse as the United Nations, al Qaeda, Greenpeace, international drug cartels and transnational corporations. _____ 3. Because they rob the state of power, realists view transnational corporations (TNCs) as a disruptive force for the international economic system that should be regulated. _____ 4. The most important factors used when focusing on the state level of analysis are power, wealth, and geographic location. _____ 5. Generally speaking, there is a lack of conict at the substate level of analysismost conict occurs at the international system.
Multiple Choice
c. Former communist states d. Failing or at-risk states e. None of the above _____ 7. Which of the following best describes the level of analysis that focuses on organizations like the EU, OAS, NAFTA, and the AU? a. International system b. Regional c. State d. Substate e. Individual _____ 8. Which of the following is NOT an example of an approach used to study the individual level of analysis? a. Misperception b. Groupthink c. Cognitive dissonance d. Power balancing e. All of the above
_____ 6. Which of the following categories would you use to place China so that all of its attributes are accurately represented (political, economic, military)? a. Developing states b. Industrialized states
Applying the Levels of Analysis to Understand International Relations

3 Understand how the levels of analysis are used to understand international relations; apply the levels to the case of Afghanistan.
The discussion of the ve levels of analysisthe international system as a whole level, the regional level, the state level, the substate level, and the individual levelleads to a number of questions. What is the best use to make of them? Do analysts look at only one level at a time? Can levels be combined? By this time in your studies of international relations, you can probably answer those questions on your own. The levels can be used in any way. Analysts focus on a particular level of analysis on the basis of three things: 1. The type of situation 2. What they want to nd out 3. What paradigm or political theory they intend to use to determine what they want to nd out.
For more information see Democracy and Peace www.BetweenNations.org
90
CHAPTER 3
Applying the Levels of Analysis: The Example of Afghanistan

How can using the levels of analysis shed light on the problems of Afghanistan? Let us start at the state level. Only rarely in its history has Afghanistan been under the sole rule of a single leader. Its rugged geography and harsh climate facilitated the rise of tribal chieftains and helped perpetuate their hold on the local peoples. In addition, Afghanistan is landlocked, with powerful neighbors to the north, east, and west. At the substate level, the social structure of Afghanistan is still tribal with power residing in the tribal chieftains. Seven tribes, each with its own language and belonging to its own ethnic group, form the bulk of the population. Their size and location are determining factors in the Afghan distributions of power. Each of the seven has ties with relatives of the same tribe beyond the Afghan border. Members of the Pashtun tribe, the largest tribe in Afghanistan, live across the Afghan border in Pakistan, a relatively weak country. The Taliban, defeated in the U.S.led invasion of 2001, were from the Pashtun tribe. The relatives of the Uzbeks and Tajiks live in the new states of Central Asia, which are supported by Russia and, to a lesser extent, the United States. This support explains why the two tribes forming Afghanistans Northern Alliance were given three prestigious ministries in the interim Afghan government and why they will continue to exert power under the new government. While the Afghan elections of 2004 spoke volumes about progress made toward a viable Afghan state, elected ofcials need a power base from which to operate. With the Taliban prevented from returning to power, the Northern Alliance, with its powerful tribal chieftains, is well placed and organized to ll the power vacuum. Finally, the entire country embraces Islam, a religion that has shown a strong preference for traditional values. The United States has insisted on promoting a regime change to a democratic government based on Western experience and has a relatively free and fair election to show for its efforts. But the path to democracy is experiencing severe roadblocks. As a budding international relations expert, you immediately suspect that something is going on at the system level that is impeding progress.
Afghanistan from the Systems Level of Analysis

From 1948 to 1991, the international system was bipolar, with a cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union. In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to shore up a communist coup in the country. The United States responded by working with Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries to promote an Afghan resistance to Soviet occupation organized around local chieftains. In 1989, the Soviets were forced to withdraw from Afghanistan. In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, and the bipolar system ended. You might think that the climate would then have been ripe for the development of a proWestern government in Afghanistan. But in supporting the local chieftains in their ght against the USSR, the United States had been promoting an emerging new force on the international stage: militant Muslim guerrillas drawn from Arab and Middle Eastern volunteers. During the 1980s, the United States armed and trained Muslim groups in Pakistan to operate across the border in Afghanistan. Many of these groups were associated with al Qaeda. With the collapse of the Soviet Union,
c APPLYING THE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS TO UNDERSTAND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

al Qaeda and the militant Islamist movement emerged as a global power in its own right. The nancing for the movement came from Muslim states, particularly Saudi Arabia, and Iran, a neighbor of Afghanistan. From 1992 to 1996, Afghanistan was torn by a violent civil war between the very chieftains who had fought together to evict the Soviet army. The Taliban victory, while unexpected, was not surprising, as the Taliban came from the majority Afghan tribe with ties to Pashtuns in Pakistan. The Taliban imposed a rigid Islamic government on Afghanistan and permitted al Qaeda and other militant groups to re-form and train there. With the Russians out of the country, the Taliban and their terrorist associates thought to expand their efforts to rid the entire Muslim world of foreign inuence. Once again, the Muslim oil countries, along with the lucrative domestic poppy industry, provided the nancing. The result is that even though the bipolar international system gave way to a unipolar system led by the United States, the United States cannot dictate the terms of the current or future Afghan government for a multitude of reasons: 1. Real power continues to reside in the same tribal leaders who led the ght against the Soviet Union (individual level of analysis). 2. Rivalry for power among the tribes inhibits any from making a compromise (substate level). 3. The United States alone has not the military, material, or nancial resources to impose a solution while guaranteeing an ever-improving lifestyle back home. It has to seek allies (state level of analysis). 4. The existing relationship between the terrorist NGOs in Afghanistan and Pakistan and the Muslim states that nance them means that no solution will be permanent unless it is Islamic (regional level of analysis, distribution of power). 5. The United States needs Pakistan to wage its war on terrorism in Afghanistan to nd the perpetrators of 9/11, yet it cannot alienate the Muslim oil-producing countries upon which it relies for energy. Russia cannot meet all the energy needs of the United States and send oil to Europe at the same time (international system as a whole). In the preceding case, we have used the levels of analysis like a lens on a camera, zooming in on the individual level, out to the system level, and moving freely between the centralizing tendencies of the system level and the decentralizing elements at the state and substate levels? With the levels of analysis as a structure and the state as the main unit, you now are ready to try to gure out what it would take for a democratic regime to emerge in Afghanistan. This chapter has been about the building blocks or fundamental units of the international system. It thus has done more describing than theorizing. We use theory much more in the coming chapters, but these basic conceptsthe levels of analysis and the way power is used within each of themrecur as essential themes. In fact, so important is the concept of power that the entire next chapter is devoted to that one idea.
91
92
CHAPTER 3
Test Prepper 3.3

True or False?
_____ 1. The state level of analysis is the most effective at explaining the situation faced by Afghanistan. _____ 2. When looking at Afghanistans tribal structure we are using the substate level of analysis. _____ 3. The international systems level of analysis cannot be used to explain the lack of democracy in Afghanistan.
_____ 4. The United States does not possess the military or nancial resources to impose a solution in Afghanistan without the assistance of allies. _____ 5. The Talibans role in Afghanistan can be viewed strictly from the regional level of analysis.
Case Study
North Koreas Pursuit of Nuclear Weapons
Join the Debate The New Global Civil Society Is Great!

BACKGROUND
States remain the principal actors on the international stage, but since World War II, they have increasingly been challenged by a growing set of non-state actors claiming to speak for specic interests and concerns in global society. Seven sets of actors are identied in this chapter: Among these are the international governmental actors (IGOs), terrorist and paramilitary groups, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs),and transnational corporations (TNCs). Representatives to IGOs are ofcially appointed by their member-states and must promote the position of their government. As such, the IGOs do not represent the global civil society but continue the tradition of state domination of the international system. The other non-state actors are different. Drug and terrorist groups have their own violent agendas and operate in a shadowy world that is difcult for states to penetrate but whose actions serve to expose the states vulnerable underside. NGOs operate in the full light of international scrutiny. Some are organized around professional interests, some have religious agendas, while others are primarily service organizations that provide humanitarian aid as needs arise around the globe. Published charters or constitutions setting forth the NGOs goals and procedures guide most of them. Professional groups like the International Meteorological Association have members from many countries who are experts in their eld and are not duty bound to speak for their country. Decisions are reached on the basis of a vote in a governing body that comprises the most inuential individuals in that particular area of expertise. Humanitarian groups like the International Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders recruit large numbers of volunteers from any country or region. TNCs have been heavily criticized for exploiting the cheap labor, widespread political corruption, and lax environmental laws of developing countries. However, it is generally recognized that globalization is here to stay. Among its benets are cheap goods for the industrialized world and jobs for the developing countries. Many political scientists welcome the arrival of non-state actors on the international scene. In their view, these organizations provide input into international problems that go beyond the pure national interests of any one state, speaking for the global community
JOIN THE DEbATE
93
as a whole. The World Wildlife Foundation (WWF), for example, works toward the improvement of habitat for endangered species all over the world. Its scientists speak for the conservation movement as a whole, not for any one country. Others say the NGOs do not represent people but rather push their own agendas with no accountability. The WWF may demand the preservation of the Siberian tiger, for example, but only states can guarantee that action will be taken to preserve them. What do you think? Join the debate!
ply the hidden arm of the major states foreign policy and are paid accordingly, or they are carrying out the wishes of well-endowed foundations and corporations. z NGOs, particularly the international environmental groups, have come under criticism recently for making matters worse in the interest of making them better. The international environmental NGOs have been the most vocal opponents of the construction of large dams anywhere in the world, arguing that the electricity produced by them goes to the TNCs and not the poor people dislocated by the projects. z TNCs may provide jobs, but they destroy local economies and local lifestyles and ruin the livelihood of local merchants who cannot compete in price with the global giants. They also exploit workers, hiring them at the lowest possible wage in developing countries, where TNCs do not have to provide benets, such as health care, as they would in the developed states.
Arguments for the Benets of a Global Civil Society

z NGOs are composed of like-minded people around the globe who share an interest, a goal, and a need. z A large number of NGOs perform vital humanitarian functions that no other type of organization is capable of performing. Without the International Red Cross, who would organize relief for victims of disasters around the world? z States have their own agendas. Many issues would fall off their radar screens, particularly in the environmental and human rights areas, if NGOs did not speak up and make the issue public. Look at Darfur. Would the UN Security Council have made any resolution if humanitarian organizations had not publicized the terrible conditions there? z People contacting others around the globe are able to inuence actions of individual governments and bring about needed change in a peaceful, positive manner. One of the best examples is the cooperation between East European, West European, and American NGOs that challenged the existing dictatorships and contributed to their destabilization prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. z National governments think and act only in the interests of the state they rule; nationalism and national interest destroy peace and cooperation.
QUESTIONS
1. What role do you see NGOs playing in world politics? How can they promote contrasting views to problems? How do they hinder the formulation of solutions? 2. If you were the head of a Western government and wanted to spread education about diseases to a developing country, what kind of organization would you use to develop the program? Why? 3. What vital roles do states play in world politics that NGOs and TNCs cannot?
SUGGESTED READINGS
David C. Korten, Nicanor Perlas, and Vandana Shiva, Global Civil Society: The Path Ahead, The PeopleCentered Development Forum, http://www.pcdf .org/civil-society/default.htm. Sebastian Mallaby, How NGOs Hurt the Poor, Foreign Policy (September/October 2004): 5058. Jessica T. Mathews, Power Shift, Foreign Affairs (January/February 1997). See also the websites of NGOs ghting World Bank efforts to ght poverty: Friends of the Earth, www.foe.org; Environmental Defense, www.environmentaldefense .org; Swedish Society for Nature Conservation, www .snf.se/english.cfm.
Arguments against the Benets of a Global Civil Society

z NGOs and TNCs are not elected bodies. The leadership speaks for no one and is not accountable to anybody. Being self-appointed, it acts in the interests of a small clique of individuals interested in pursuing a particular goal. z If you know where an NGO gets its money, you know what it stands for. To a large extent, NGOs are sim-
94
CHAPTER 3

1 2 4 characteristics 5 6of a state. 7 8 19 Identify the3primary Understand how the state has developed over the past centuries and its current role in world politics. 2 10 3 4 what is 5 meant6by levels 7 of analysis 8 9 who 10 Understand and are the primary actors that operate at each level.
A state is dened as a territory inhabited by a people with a common language and a common culture. The characteristics of the state are sovereignty, legitimacy, and formal international obligations. States are either national, multinational, or multiethnic. The origins of the modern state, which emerged in Europe in the fourteenth and fteenth centuries, lie in the city-states of antiquity in Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome. Its current evolution can be tied to the following factors:
- ideology and common culture - technological advancement - Europe becoming a continent of nation-states
The system level of analysis. The basic assumptions at this level are that the international system is considered as a single whole and within this whole, actors interact with and respond to one another in ways that are predictable.
- The principal actors are the states with non-state actors playing a secondary role. Key non-state actors include intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), whose members each represent a participating state, and nongovernmental actors (NGOs), whose membership is global and voluntary. - Non-state actors have become increasingly visible in the postCold War world.
The structure of the international system is based on states. Under the principles of international law, all states are equal in sovereignty. Today, state domination of the international system is challenged by the large number of states (191) and their vulnerability to events and NGOs they cannot control.
The regional level of analysis enables us to compare across regions and to compare states within regions.
- At the regional level of analysis, we can generalize about economic and political capacity across regions, the structure of power within a region and across regions, and the dynamics of regional IGOs and NGOs.
The state level of analysis looks at and contrasts the behavior of individual states, which are the actors at this
RESOuRcES ON THE WEb
95
level. Common factors to compare and contrast 1 about 2 individual states are power, wealth, status and prestige, and population. The substate level includes the units that make up a state (provinces, states such as those of the United States, or Lnder) or that act as players in a regional organization, as well as IGOs and NGOs active at this level.
- The issues around which substate conicts revolve are most often of an ethnic, religious, or linguistic nature and frequently involve boundary disputes.
4 5 how the 6 levels 7 8 are used 9 Understand of analysis to10 understand international relations; apply the levels to the case of Afghanistan.
We use the levels of analysis like the lens of a camera to zoom in and out of a situation, looking at:
- The international system level of analysis for the broadest view of power relationships. - Zooming in on the state or substate level for an analysis of the variables that explain why a state or substate unit acts the way it does. - Zooming further in to the individual level to understand the characteristics and abilities of the individuals who seem most involved with the situation under analysis. - And returning to the regional level for an analysis of the power relationships at the level that may support the state or substate unit under investigation.
The individual level of analysis:

- Investigates the role individual human beings, including average people, play in world politics, based on time period, location, and power position. - Political psychology has produced testable hypotheses that generalize about the attitudes and thought processes of leading international political actors.

Power in World Politics
The Primacy of Power
Learning Objectives
1
Understand the difference between objective and subjective elements of power. Be able to describe each of the key objective and subjective power capabilities possessed by states.
Dene power, focusing on both hard and soft forms; understand the dynamics of power that make dening power a difcult task.
96
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Lord (John Emerich Edward Dalberg) Acton
Chapter Outline
What Is Power, and

The Nature of Power Dynamics of Power
How Is It Measured?
What Patterns of Power Relationships

Exist among States?
Balance of Power Power Shifts and Realignments The Rise of Terrorist Power Collective Security as a Method of Seeking Security
What Are the Major Elements

of Power?
Objective (Tangible) Sources of Power Subjective Power Factors
Understand what is meant by balance of power and identify key types of balance that may exist in the international system. Understand the concept of collective security and its prospects for securing peace in the international system.
Understanding Power Is Critical to Understanding World Politics
Preventive war A preventive war is undertaken in order to prevent a possible future attack. A preventive war is initiated for purposes of national defense, but not in response to an imminent attackas when the United States attacked Iraq in 2003. Although the Bush administration described its attack as preemptive, it more accurately can be classied as preventive, given the circumstances.
ost questions addressed in world politics, as you learned in the rst three chapters, tend to focus on power. This is so because power (the ability of actors to get other actors to do what they want them to do) is all about politicsthe process of deciding who gets what, when, and how. A second, similar, denition of politics as the authoritative allocation of scarce resources again brings us face-to-face with power. The point is that allocating resources and getting people to do what we want them to do requires power. When President George W. Bush, for example, determined to launch a preventive war on Iraq on the grounds (later proved false) that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that represented a possible threat to the United States, he employed a
98
Key Terms
CHAPTER 4
POWER IN WORLD POLITIcS
preventive war p. 97 preemptive war p. 98 inuence p. 100 geopolitics p. 108 landlocked state p. 108 temperate zone p. 108 diplomacy p. 114 deterrence p. 117 alliances p. 118 globalization p. 121 ethnic nationalism p. 125
Preemptive war A preemptive attack occurs when State A believes that an attack by State B is imminent. State A attacks in order to preempt Bs attack. An example of preemptive war is the 1967 Six-Day War, launched by Israels preemptive attack on Egypts air force at a time when Israel faced increased military activity near its border. The war was fought between Israel and its Arab neighbors of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Algeria contributed troops and arms used against Israel.
traditional realist version of power: military force in the quest of security. So did Israel when it initiated a preemptive war against Egypt in 1967, because it faced immediate military activity on its borders. Realists, you remember, believe the games of states take place in an anarchic global arena, dominated by a struggle for power. The only factor that will check power is powernot international law or appeals to moral behavior. By contrast, antiwar protests against President Bushs attack on Iraq immediately erupted around the world in another form of power, inspired by idealism: peace marches and street demonstrations. So politics and power play big roles in the paradigms used to study world politicsin these cases, realism and idealism. Because politics and power are so directly involved in world politics, they are underlying causes of centralization and decentralization in the international arena. As we esh out the concept of power, we will: z Examine the nature of power and how to dene it, with special attention to the concepts of hard and soft power. z Explore the major elements of power, looking at its objective and subjective characteristics as well as the difculties in measuring them. z Explore power patterns that have existed among states, such as balance of power and multipolarity, both of which illustrate different combinations of power alignment among states. z By the time you nish studying this chapter, you should be well grounded in one of the most important elements at work in world politics in the twenty-rst centuryand a major element in the understanding of unity and separation in the world political arena. n
What Is Power, and How Is It Measured?

1 Dene power, focusing on both hard and soft forms; understand the dynamics of power that make dening power a difcult task.
When power in world politics comes up for discussion, the rst inclination is to think of military power, or brute force. This is not surprising, because in an anarchic system of states with no higher government to settle conicts, the nal option for self-help is military power. You see this impressive brand of power dramatically at work in most parts of the world. Yet, many observers make a compelling case that soft power should be used more effectively to spur cooperation. Power literally jumps out of each days news. On September 11, 2001, members of Osama bin Ladens al Qaeda terrorist organization hijacked U.S. commercial airliners and used them to crash into New York Citys World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., killing thousands of people. A fourth plane crashed in a eld in western Pennsylvania after passengers and crew intervened to prevent the hijackers from diverting the ight to another target in Washington. Here was a case of raw power exercised by a group with far less military muscle than its target,
c WHAT IS POWER, AND HOW IS IT MEASURED?

the United States. The United States responded with classic military strength by bombing Afghanistan to dislodge the Taliban government, an Islamic religious group that had gained control of the government and provided sanctuary for bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist forces. The Taliban government collapsed in December 2001, but remnants of the Taliban and al Qaeda ed into neighboring Pakistan and subsequently began to regroup. The United States next turned its attention to Iraq, which it alleged was hiding weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and allegedly had close ties with al Qaeda (both assumptions later proved false). In March 2003, the Bush administration launched its attack on Iraq (without support from the big powers in the international community or the United Nations) overthrew and subsequently captured its dictator, Saddam Hussein, and installed a military occupation (with the goals of rebuilding and bringing democracy to Iraq). Examining the context of this use of military power, however, the 9/11 Commission report, released in July 2004, found no credible evidence of strong al Qaeda ties to Husseins Iraq and no link between Hussein and the 9/11 attack on the United States. Nor were WMDs discovered in Iraq after the U.S. invasion. Review the case study in chapter 1 for more on the 9/11 Commission report. These events, however, are only part of the story of power and how it operates in world politics. Lets take a closer look at the nature of power, its denitions, and the differences between hard and soft power. Then we can examine the role of power in world politics.
99
The Nature of Power

Power lies at the heart of world politics. If politics is all about who gets what, when, and how, then power explains the political process as it plays out in the human drama of international relations. The politics of almost anything you can imagine from education, energy, health care, and military spending to conict management and cooperation on regional disputesentails power and the human
Venezuela Is among the Top Four Exporters of Oil to the United States
With huge oil profits, Venezuelas President Hugo Chavez has become the self-appointed champion of antiAmericanism, given significant financial support to like-minded Latin American leaders, and delivered millions of gallons of heating oil at a significant discount to lowincome residents in Philadelphia, Boston, the Bronx, and cities in Maine, Vermont, and Rhode Island.
100
CHAPTER 4
Inuence The capacity of one actor to change or sustain the behavior of another actor in the global system.
struggle to seize and use it in order to accomplish objectives. It lies behind the foreign policy of states as they pursue their goals in world affairs, it affects international intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and it shapes the nature of decision making inside states. In a nutshell, power is at work around the globe twenty-four hours a day. Power can be described in two distinct ways, objective and subjective. Objective sources of power include a countrys assets that can be seen, touched, or measured, while subjective sources of power lie in the domain of human strengths or weaknesses. These objective and subjective capabilities represent the base of a countrys index of power or strength and will be covered in more detail later in the chapter. When translated into action that affects the behavior of a countrys population as well as that of other countries, those power assets become what might be called kinetic power, or power in motion. If potential power becomes kinetic power, it reaches the stage of influence. We speak of inuence because at this point power capabilities are in motion to affect the behavior of others inside a country as well as leaders and followers abroad. Power capabilities and inuence also take hard and soft forms. z Hard power generally refers to the tangible, measurable assets, such as military and economic strength, that give some countries more power than others. Hard power is the coercive kinds of power, such as economic sanctions applied by the United States to Cuba, or the military force used by the Israelis to occupy the West Bank. z Soft powercomprised of the subjective types of power discussed beloware those elements that give a country the ability to get what it wants through its capacity to attract and persuade rather than by its capacity to coerce through military or economic might.
Powers Hard Profile

Powers hard military prole is visible around the world on a day-to-day basis. Taiwan, for example, looks across the Taiwan Strait at Chinas growing military capacity. Beijings coastal weapons deployment is designed to remind Taiwan that it considers Taiwan part of China and that it should never declare its independence. Still, Taiwans president, Chen Shui-bian, has continued to defy China by asserting Taiwans sovereignty. Mainland China meanwhile continues to improve its navy, air force, and ground forces facing its rival across the Taiwan Strait. China raised its military budget by nearly 18 percent in 2007the largest increase since 1995. The use of hard military power, however, can have unintended negative consequences on a countrys overall power. The United States, in the years since it invaded Iraq, has experienced a dramatic deterioration in its image around the world. It may come as no surprise that China is matching its expanded military budget with an orchestrated soft-power offensive to bolster its peace-loving image.
The Soft Side of Power

Audio Concept Soft Power www.BetweenNations.org
Whereas hard power is a states economic and military capability to coerce, soft power is its ability to inuence through cultural, ideological, and moral appeal. Soft-power factors constitute major elements of a countrys overall power inventory. In part, soft power rests on the appeal of a countrys ideals and culture and on its ability to establish an agenda that will persuade others to agree on values, institutions, and behavior.1 Numerous critics of U.S. foreign policy believe the United States has not used its potential soft power adequately in recent years. Indeed, as
101
Information Technology Workers in Bengalooru [formerly Bangalore]
In India, Bengaloorus big draw for outsourcing is its deep pool of skilled technology workers who speak English. They cost one-tenth of what they would cost in the United States and Western Europe. Bangalore changed its name to Bengalooru in November 2006.
the U.S. occupation of Iraq continued many foreigners came to perceive the United States as arrogant, self-absorbed, self-indulgent, and contemptuous.2 The image of the United States has not been helped by photos and reports of U.S. torture of prisoners at Iraqs Abu Ghraib Prison. By 2008, dislike of everything American was on the rise. Other forms of soft power include: z Information revolution: exemplied by the Internet and the World Wide Web, the information revolution clearly affects soft power. Consider that nearly a billion people now use the Internet on a regular basis. These relatively cheap ows of information have vastly expanded the number and variety of transnational channels of contact and have made state borders and other controls more porous. Indeed, terrorist organizations use the Web and the Internet to communicate and to incite violence. z Economic growth and development: Outsourcing of U.S. corporate operations to places like India and China illustrate this changing nature of power in the twenty-rst century. z Investments in education: As for U.S. investments in science, in June 2004, forty-eight U.S. Nobel Prize laureates criticized the Bush administration for ignoring scientic evidence of global warming, for its negative stance of stemcell research, and for cutting funding for scientic research.
For more information see The View From: Bengalooru [Formerly Bangalore] www.BetweenNations.org
Dynamics of Power
According to Hans Morgenthau, often referred to as the father of modern political realism, power refers to control over the minds and actions of othersa psychological relation between those who exercise it and those over whom it is exercised.3 A stunning example of this denition of power is the catastrophic March 11, 2004, terrorist railway bombings in Madrid that killed 200 people and injured some 1,800. The ten bombs that exploded on four trains in three Madrid stations
102
CHAPTER 4
during the busy morning rush hour were the work of an Islamic terrorist group associated with al Qaeda in Europe. In a letter faxed to the Spanish daily newspaper ABC, the group claimed responsibility for the attacks and warned that unless the country halted its support for the United States and withdrew its troops from Iraq, they would turn Spain into an inferno. In reaction to the bombings, during which the government of Spain engaged in a colossal cover-up that failed attempting to blame the attack on Basque terroristscitizens launched a massive antigovernment protest. With public opinion already against the war in Iraq, three days after the terror attacks, Spain voted out the proU.S. ruling party of Spain and brought into power a new socialist prime minister. A month later, the last of Spains 1,300 combat soldiers were pulled out of Iraq ahead of schedule. The terrorists had the capability to blow up trains, an act of power that inuenced Spanish voters to throw out the proU.S. Prime Minister and elect a new prime minister more in tune with their overwhelming opposition (and that of the Islamic terrorists) to the U.S. war in Iraq. Dening power is not as easy as it may seem. As we will see later in the chapter, measuring power is difcult because of its conditional nature. Multiple factors make the concept of power in world politics a subject difcult to pin down.
Differing Forms of Influence

While power is the major ingredient of political relationships, understanding how and in what ways it operates can be annoyingly elusive.4 For example, we know that inuence involves Party A getting Party B to do something it otherwise would not do; however, this endeavor can be less straightforward than it might seem. If Party A seeks to inuence Party B to do something, it may try, for example, to persuade, reward, threaten, coerce, or punish. An excellent example of power at work is the case of Libyas giving up its nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons programs in 2003. After months of secret diplomacy and intense negotiations with the United States and Great Britain, Libya announced in December 2003 that it had agreed to reveal and renounce its programs to build weapons of mass destruction. It did so in part as a result of U.S. economic sanctions on Libya after the bombing in 1988 of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Libya acknowledged responsibility and promised to pay $10 million in compensation for each of the 270 victimsat rst maintaining that it would not pay (applying its own brand of power) until all international sanctions were lifted. It caved in, however, in part because of the U.S. war in Iraq and what that war might mean for Libya in view of its perceived ties to terrorist organizations, and because it had become economically crippled and wanted foreign oil companies to return. In June 2004, as part of a carrot-and-stick power approach to Libya taken by the UN and the United States, full diplomatic relations with the United States were restored after a twenty-four-year break.
Power Is Shaped by Perceptions

Perceptions, as suggested earlier, play a major role in dening power. This is so for Party A, which intends to use some type of power capability, just as it is for Party B, the intended recipient of the inuence. By perceptions we mean how policymakers interpret reality. Unlike computers, humans tend to simplify the outside world in order to organize it mentally and so deal with it. Compound this basic human limitation with all the components of perceptions that shape ones realityvalues, beliefs, cognition (how individuals interpret incoming information), and stereo-

typing. For example, the brutal beheading of the American contractor Nicholas Berg in May 2004 in Iraq (one of several beheadings),while widely condemned and perceived as barbaric, was seen by many Arabs simply as an inevitable act of revenge for U.S. prisoner abuse at the Abu Ghraib Prison. Perceptions, as the example above indicates, play a powerful role in world politics. Interestingly, although a power capability may not be in use, it still is in play if it affects the perceptions of leaders in other countries. Possession of nuclear weapons by one country, for example, typically deters others from launching a military campaign against it out of fear of retaliation. Such deterrent power is a key ingredient in world politics, especially in terms of how state leaders view each other. Remember, too, that the breakthrough with Libya in 20032004 no doubt was accelerated by Libyas perception of U.S. military power in Iraq, although military power had not been brought to bear directly on Libya.
103
Power Is Dynamic and Changing

As we saw in chapter 1, and as we are seeing as this century advances, rapid changes in power have occurred due to a number of driving forces. The Internet and World Wide Web have created a signicant power shift. This technological power has made all state borders more porous, as demonstrated in the international communications that lay behind 9/11, thus weakening traditional power capabilities (the military) for maintaining territorial security. On the ip side, the information revolution has contributed to centralization by fostering globalization and state interdependence. Because of the connectedness of international nance, banking, and commerce, what happens in one countrys economy can produce a chain reaction in countries around the globe, affecting the economic power of all. Power shifts are created by other factors. The militarys technological innovations, such as computers and global positioning systems, long-range aircraft, nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, biological weapons, and chemical warfare, are cases in point. States that move forward in acquiring sophisticated equipment and WMDs assume strong power positions on the globe. The power capabilities of states rise and decline over time. This chapters case study about the United States illustrates that point. Meanwhile, Chinas economic and military power is on the rise, while Japans economic strength waxes and wanes. Cubas economy, military strength, and global reach went into a tailspin in the early 1990s with the collapse of its chief supporter, the Soviet Union. Russias economy faltered after the breakup of the Soviet Union, as Russia struggled to replace a state-controlled economy with a market economic system. This is important because changing power relations create incentives for preventative attack and windows of opportunity to do so. Dale Copeland, in his book, The Origins of Major War, contends that war among major powers may likely occur when a dominant states power has peakedor is decliningand faces a growing threat from another state.5
Power Is Relative
Any one states power can be evaluated in context only. For example, China has great economic power when compared to its next-door neighbors Vietnam or Taiwan, but not when compared to the United States. Mexico has much greater overall power in relation to Guatemala, which lies to its south, than in relation to its northern neighbor, the United States. Vietnam worries more about Chinas power than about Cambodias, given the power difference in its two neighbors.
104
CHAPTER 4
Power, then, is relative, not absolute. While Russia has suffered severe economic decline, it still has a powerful military capability, and its presence is felt in those countries that lie close to it geographically, which Moscow refers to as the near abroad. The United States has vast objective power, but its perceived negative image abroad makes it vulnerable nonetheless. The relativity of power can also be seen in the capabilities of al Qaeda. Although this is an organization rather than a state, the will of its members and their readiness to commit suicide while killing as many people as possible have proven enormously effective in posing a threat to Western powers. Al Qaeda by no means possesses the colossal power of the United States, nor can it effect change through the use of commerce, nance, trade, or conventional military weapons. Nevertheless, it has demonstrated signicant relative power in its ability to cause the United States to shift huge resources to homeland security and increased military spending and to pay attention to a war on terrorism.
Power Is Situational
Power is meaningful only within a specic policy context. Here is one example. One states military capacity to win a war against anothers states military forces may be successful, but the so-called victor does not necessarily win the war against the defeated states population. U.S. military power cleaned house on Iraqs military in March 2003, yet it would be difcult to claim the United States had won the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. U.S. military and civilians were being killed weekly after the military victory. This example shows that while Americas military power is very meaningful on the battleeld, it is much less capable of inuencing the civil society of a defeated country.
Test Prepper 4.1

_____ 1. Hard power refers to basic military weapons such as guns and conventional bombs while soft power refers to technologically advanced weaponry (nuclear bombs, aircraft carriers, etc.). _____ 2. World leaders, like humans in general, are incapable of dealing with all the complexity of the world and thus are required to simplify the world in order to deal with it. _____ 3. Power levels are relatively stable for most countries over the long run. _____ 4. An absolute increase or decrease in a countrys power is meaningless unless it is placed in context (which country gained or lost, what is the relative effect vis--vis its adversaries, etc.).
_____ 5. Which one of the following does not contribute to a countrys soft-power capabilities? a. Cultural inuence b. Moral inuence c. Technological developments d. Investments in education e. None of the above _____ 6. Which of the following accurately describes what is meant by situational power? a. A country that is located between two small powers is situationally powerful. b. A country that is located between two large powers is situationally weak. c. Power capabilities that are meaningful in one context are not necessarily useful in another. d. The most effective way for a superpower to maximize its power is to spread military bases across the globe. e. All of the above
c WHAT ARE THE MAJOR ELEmENTS OF POWER?
105
What Are the Major Elements of Power?

2 Understand the difference between objective and subjective elements of power. Be able to describe each of the key objective and subjective power capabilities possessed by states.
Objective elements of power have traditionally included those capabilities or assets that can be seen, touched, and measuredor, in other words, empirically veried. How and where these elements of power are distributed on the global stage establishes who will be the big players and who will be the small actors in the drama. Neither Haiti nor Bangladesh has much chance of making its voice heard in the daily political struggle over who gets what, when, and how, whereas the United States, the European Union, China, and Russia do. Saudi Arabia has oil that the United States, Western Europe, and Japan need. This gives Saudi Arabia power; for despite its past role in supporting schools that teach anti-Western Islamic fundamentalism, states that need petroleum count Saudi Arabia as an ally. Terrorism and suicide bombings are other forms of objective power, with the awkward caveat that they are difcult to count or measure until the bombs go off. That they possess armed force (objective power), however, and the will to use it (subjective power) is not in doubt.
Objective (Tangible) Sources of Power

Objective or tangible sources of power come in various forms. In trying to determine how much potential power a state may possess, scholars and policymakers look at the capabilities of a countryor a non-state actor. Capabilitiesanother word for sources or assetsmeans those resources available to an actor that can be used to inuence others. The point is that because power is so complex to measure, one way to estimate how much potential power or inuence an actor possesses is to look at the resources under the actors control. A variety of resources can be used to measure an actors inuence in the international arena.
Military Capacity
Military preparedness has traditionally been the most compelling aspect of a countrys objective power. This is so because military capacity has been the way in which a country protects its territory and people from threats of aggression and furthers its objectives abroad. The world has changed rapidly, with new threats from sources other than nation-states. Threats now include terrorists, black-marketweapons proliferators, organized crime afliates, drug trafckers, and cyberspace outlaws. Longstanding ethnic and tribal conicts generate civil wars not easily quelled by conventional weapons, and porous borders do not lend themselves to predictable responses by military doctrines. At the same time, the worlds states continue to assemble weapons to defend against hostile or potentially hostile states. Military capability in our world of change still retains a high place in national leaders perceptions of power. That military capability occupies a priority position in terms of how state leaders calculate power is underscored by the level of global military spending. World military expenditures remain high; in fact, more money is spent on the military and the arms trade that on anything else in the world: over $1 trillion annually.6 By comparison, the entire budget for the United Nations is only about 1.5 percent of
106
CHAPTER 4
this amount. The military budget of the United States for scal year 2008nearly $650 billionis larger than military spending by all of the other states in the world combined.7 Figure 4.1 depicts U.S. military spending compared to some of the worlds other military spenders. States seek to acquire weapons despite porous borders and the numerous associated threats that seem to defy a military deterrent. South Korea worries about North Korea. Israel lives in a distinctly hostile neighborhood. India and Pakistan have their problems. Israel must deal with a two-war situation, one against Palestinian suicide bombings and another potentially waged by the surrounding countries. The Israeli situation is complicated by various terrorist organizationsHamas, Fatah, Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, Islamic Jihad, al Qaeda, and Hezbollahfunded by nearby Middle Eastern states.
FIGURE 4.1 World Military Spending: 2007

USA United Kingdom France China Germany Japan Russia Italy Saudi Arabia South Korea India Canada Spain Australia Brazil Turkey Netherlands Israel Taiwan 0 66.2 60 58 57.4 44 32.4 32 31.2 23.8 21.3 16.9 15.8 14.5 13.2 11.4 10.3 9.4 7.9 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500 550 600 Military Spending 533
Billions ($)
The World CIA Factbook; SIPRI, Center for Defense Information and Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, 2007, British Ministry of Defense and European Union government ministries. Experts at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a military think tank, say that Beijings ofcial gures underestimated real spending. NB: The following countries are shown with 2006 gures: Italy, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Spain, Brazil, Turkey and Netherlands. Figures for Israel and Taiwan are 2005.
Duncan: World Politics in the 21st Century, 3e 1036905_la_04_01 11/1/07

National Infrastructure and Level of Economic Development
National infrastructure is a major asset that must be factored into the power equation. This category includes a countrys industrial base, scientic and technological development, transportation networks (railroads, roads, ports, air transportation), and information and communication systems (satellites, computers, cell phones). National infrastructure lies at the base of economic power. z When we speak of a countrys industrial base, we refer to the quantity and quality of its industries. These range from steel production to manufacturing and services. Industries lead to exports and thus income-generating activities and the ability either to exert economic pressure on others or to resist their economic pressures. Industrialized states are well situated in this respect compared to developing countries. z A countrys level of economic development is a key aspect of power because it reects its ability to sustain itself, engage in nance and trade, and maintain a strong military establishment. A thriving economy, typically measured by a countrys gross national product (GNP)the total value of goods and services produced anywhere in the world by the residents of the countryindicates the strength of its international power. Figure 4.2 illustrates global per capita (GNP) to capture the worlds economic power disparities.
107
FIGURE 4.2 Gross National Income Per Capita Map
GNI Per Capita in U.S. Dollars $785 or less $768$3,125 $3,126$9,656 Above $9,656 No data
The values for the class intervals above are taken from the World Banks cutoff figures for low-income, lower-middleincome, upper-middle-income, and highincome economies. 0 0 1000 2000 Miles
1000 2000 3000 Kilometers
108
CHAPTER 4
Geography
The geographic size and location of a state, as you might imagine, are extremely important as elements of objective power. Indeed, these factors are so important that a whole eld of study centered on geography and politics, called political geography or geopolitics , has emerged over the years. As we show in chapter 8, a number of geographic factors affect a countrys power capacity. z A country with natural harbors and outlets to the sea, for example, is much more favorably located than a landlocked state. z A country located in the temperate zone which lies between 23.5 degrees and 60.5 degrees north latitude and 23.5 degrees and 60.5 degrees south latitude has a climate more favorable for human and agricultural productivity than a country located near the equator or in the far north or south of the globe. z Mountains can deter potential invaders, as in Switzerland, or they can impede a countrys internal economic development, as in Bolivia and Peru.
Geopolitics The study of the geographical distribution of power among states throughout the world, with specic attention to the rivalry of the major powers. Landlocked state As the term suggests, a state surrounded by other sovereign states and shut off from easy access to the sea; examples include Paraguay and Bolivia in South America. Temperate zone Two (north and south) areas of the globe that lie between 23.5 degrees and 60.5 degrees north latitude and 23.5 degrees and 60.5 degrees south latitude. They are temperate in climate and said to be prime territorial areas conducive to economic development owing to temperature and other climatic factors.
Natural Resources
Natural resources constitute a key power capability closely associated with geography. These vital factors make it possible for a country to feed and shelter its population, industrialize its economy, and engage in trade. Access to natural resources like arable land for food production; coal, oil, and uranium; rivers for energy sources to run industries; or iron ore for steel production are the basis for comparFor more information see ative levels of GNP, levels and balances of trade, and military preparedness. If a Why It Matters to You: country does not have sufcient land to raise food, then it must import it, which Why Do Gas Prices means less money for other vital investments. If a country must import its oil, gas, Rise at the Pump? or coal, it has less money to spend on education and health care. So the natural www.BetweenNations.org resource base of a country becomes a key ingredient of powerand of course that base can change over time. Let us look more closely at the oil issue. Today the United States must import oil, whereas it used to be self-sufcient. Figure 4.3 depicts U.S. oil imports. Some observers have concluded that owing to U.S. oil FIGURE 4.3 dependence on countries like Saudi Arabia, the latter has the United States over a barrel. They point out U.S. Petroleum Imports by Country: 2005 U.S. Petroleum Imports by Country, 2005 that in 1970, the United States could trade a bushel of wheat for a barrel of oil in the world market. By 2002, Canada it took nine bushels of U.S. wheat to buy a barrel of oil. Note that the United States is the worlds largest Mexico importer of oil and its largest exporter of grain.8 Saudi Arabia U.S. dependence on oil illustrates how energy Venezuela resources affect a countrys power base and foreign policy. Oil, and who controls it, drove wars in the Nigeria twentieth century and was the main reason for conIraq icts such as the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and, arguably, for the U.S. preventive attack on Iraq in 2003. Angola Oil has given Saudi Arabia remarkable power in Ecuador its relations with the United States. While some observers take exception to Michael Moores docu0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 mentary lm Fahrenheit 911, the lm depicted the Millions of Barrels per Day nature of the Saudi kingdoms close oil ties with the Source: Energy Information Administration. Used by permission. United States.
Duncan: World Politics in the 21st Century, 3e 1036905_la_04_03

Oil isnt the only energy source states have at their disposal: z Nuclear powergiven Middle East oil supply insecurity and global warming is back on the agenda as a major source of energy. Nuclear power represents over 16 percent of the worlds electricity, around 24 percent of electricity in OECD (Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development) countries, and approximately 34 percent in the European Union states. Irans effort to produce nuclear energy has been a major point of conict with the United States out of fear Iran will use nuclear power to produce nuclear weapons. z Rivers are another valuable natural resource that can add to a states objective power. They provide drinking water and transportation, facilitate commerce, and serve as energy production (hydroelectric power) through the use of dams. A related consideration is a countrys freshwater as a key source of power. Within twenty-ve years, fty-nine countries with a combined population of 3 billion people will experience freshwater difculties.9 We look at the question of the diminishing global supply of freshwater from the perspective of the ecological paradigm in chapter 14. Geography and natural resources, then, are major sources of a countrys power. The size of a country, its location, and its natural resources go a long way in enabling it to become powerful. Until recently, the three most powerful countries were also the three largest geographically: the United States, the former USSR, and China. Each of the three has signicant natural resources.
109
Population
Population as a critical ingredient of power depends on factors including its size (relative to the land size of the state it occupies), age distribution, health, and education. z Population size and density vary greatly from state to state, but, in general, a large population in a large territorial state can be an asset. It provides a base for selecting soldiers for military service and a work force for the economy. Small developing countries that face regional threats, however, may create large military forces despite their relatively small populations, as in the case of North Korea. With the high-tech smart weapons in todays military arsenals, however, big armies are no longer really as signicant as they once were. Figure 4.4 illustrates the top ten countries in terms of population size. The bottom line is that the large territorial states with huge populationsChina, the United States, Russia, and Indiatend to have substantial military forces with potential inuence in their region or the world. While China is often viewed as a potentially powerful country because of its 1.3 billion people, India is second in the world with just over 1 billion. The United States, by contrast, has a population of roughly 300 million, less than a third of Indias. Present-day Russia has roughly 143 million people. In keeping with our discussion in the preceding paragraph, keep in mind the geographic size of these FIGURE 4.4 Population: 2007
China India European Union United States Indonesia Brazil Pakistan Bangladesh Russia Nigeria 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 Population in 2007 (billions) 1.4
Source: 2007 C.I.A. Factbook. Used by permission.
www.BetweenNations.org Duncan: World Politics in the 21st Century, 3e 1036905_la_04_04 11/1/07
110
CHAPTER 4
countries. Russia is vast (6,592,812 square miles); the United States and China are each just over half the size of Russia; and India is only one-third the size of these. That means that India is less than one-fth the size of Russia but has seven times its population! z Population demographics affect a countrys power base. For example, if a large sector of the population is under fteen years of age, a substantial percentage has not yet entered the work force and therefore is unlikely to participate in the countrys economic productivity. Such is the case in many developing countries. A states population in the sixty-ve-and-older bracket also typically does not participate in economic productivity, yet it draws on social security programs and health benets. The United States faces this problemas does China with a rapidly aging population growing faster than its younger population. Figure 4.5 maps the average annual population growth rate for the years 2001 to 2015. z A key aspect of populationin addition to its level of educationis its health. By 2008 the HIV/AIDS pandemic has affected the security of states throughout the world. Over 40 million people are living with AIDS, with nearly 8,000 dying every day during 2006. Figure 4.6 illustrates how the AIDS epidemic is impacting different regions of the world. A point to remember is that countries with a FIGURE 4.5 Population Growth Rate
Average Annual Population Growth Rate, 20012015 Projection based on 198097 fertility rates and 1997 age-sex structure of populations Less than 0.0% 0.0%0.5% 0.6%1.0% 1.1%2.0% More than 2.0% No data
0 0 1000 2000 Miles

FIGURE 4.6 Global AIDS Epidemic Impacts Different Regions of the World: 2006
111
The HIV/AIDS pandemic is undermining the power and security of states throughout the world.
NORTH AMERICA 1.4 million (880,000 2.2 million)
WESTERN AND CENTRAL EUROPE 740,000 (580,000 970,000)
EASTERN EUROPE AND CENTRAL ASIA 1.7 million (1.2 2.6 million) EAST ASIA 750,000 (460,000 1.2 million)
CARIBBEAN 250,000 (190,000 320,000)
NORTH AFRICA AND MIDDLE EAST 460,000 (270,000 760,000)
SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA 7.8 million (5.2 12.0 million)
LATIN AMERICA 1.7 million (1.3 2.5 million)
SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA 24.7 million (21.8 27.7 million)
OCEANIA 81,000 (50,000 170,000)
Source: Global AIDS Alliance, http://www.globalaidsalliance.org/index.php/21. Used by permission.
healthy, literate, and socially mobile population enjoy a solid base for economic andPolitics political development. Countries with an unhealthy, uneducated, Duncan: World in the 21st Century, 3e 1036905_m_04_06 and socially immobile population have a less promising base for economic 11/12/07 and political power.
Subjective Power Factors

Subjective power factorsthose that entail human values, beliefs, perceptions, and motivationare less empirically measurable but remain enormously important in assessing a countrys power base as we discussed above. Subjective factors also help us understand why conict or cooperation arises among states, IGOs, NGOs, and other actors on the world political stage. Subjective factors are expressed in the ways people participate in government, express nationalism (see chapter 9), engage in diplomacy, display their work ethic, react to world events, and otherwise engage in political life. Lets turn now to a closer look at some of the major subjective power factors at work in world politics today. NuGraphic Design, Inc. 7 Laurelwood Drive, New Fairfield, CT 06812 (203) 746-4181 (203) 746-4182 fax nugraphicdesign@charter.net
112
CHAPTER 4
National Culture
When we speak of national culture, we refer to qualities of intellect and behavior that are distinctly imprinted on and valued by national groups across the worlds stageRussians, Vietnamese, Germans, and so on. Not only do these qualities set national groups apart, they also distinctly inuence a number of attributes associated with power. These include attitudes toward workas in the cases of China and Japanpolitical culture, interethnic stereotyping, behavior within and between the peoples and cultures occupying state territory, and negotiating styles in diplomacy.10 Certainly cultural values impact how a country chooses to use power in world politics. Chinas culture produces a realist approach to power, demonstrated by its military buildup, while Japan is more pacist in its attitude toward the use of military power. How long Japan will retain this posture, however, is an open-ended question. Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (elected in 2006, resigned in 2007) has argued that Japan should consider acquiring a preemptive military capability in view of North Koreas missile program. National cultures remain tenacious in world politics, despite what appear to be the homogenization effect of globalization and, by implication, the centralizing tendencies globalization is expected to produce. This fact has deep implications for power relationships in world politics, because looking at the world through the lenses of a national culture shapes one states perceptions and expectations about the power of another, conditions how it conducts its diplomacy, and can serve to unite a people in a common cause. The general aspects of a peoples behavior tend to stand out over time. The Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, and South Koreans are known for their ethic of work, saving, thrift, and high value given to education. In Malaysia, Chinese dominate the business and nancial world, while Malays tend to control the government. Germans are known as extremely hardworking. American and Japanese workers also are recognized for their high productivity. A Confucian tradition runs from Japan to Singapore and encompasses the robust economies of Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and China. The Confucian ethic stresses self-restraint, which might explain this regions high savings rates. A believer in Confucian principles emphasizes scholarship and having to pass a difcult examination to enter the civil service. This emphasis has produced comparatively strong literacy rates throughout the region. In Japan, cooperative behavior and interpersonal relations are highly valued, as is the concept of efciency. This characteristic may have deep historical roots, as the Japanese people long ago built an agricultural society from the paddy eldsa task that required cooperation. Another cultural aspect of Japan is that, unlike America, it places society ahead of the economya cultural trait that in tending to unify a people becomes a power factor for the state as a player in world politics.11
National Morale
Although elusive and unstable, national morale reects the determination of a nation to support the policies of its government. After the 9/11 attacks, the Bush Administration, among other activities, used the media to rally the population in support of rst, retaliation against the Taliban in Afghanistan, and subsequently in preparation to attack Iraq. The Vietnam War is a classic case in which Vietnamese

Thriving Downtown, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
113
In Vietnams brand of market socialism, Ho Chi Minh City is the pulse beat of the countrys economic life. Some observers have seen it as Vietnams version of frenetic New York City, while Hanoi in the north is more like Paris, France, in terms of cuisine and culture.
national morale played a signicant role. As the United States became increasingly entangled in Vietnam from the early 1960s onward, morale on both sides affected its outcome. The Vietnamese, ghting on their own territory against foreign invaders, remained tenacious, while U.S. troops became decidedly demoralized as the body count rose. Todays Vietnamese, eld research and interviews reveal, are surprisingly optimistic about the future and are fascinated and comfortable with foreigners despite past foreign domination of their country. 12 In contrast, al Qaeda members and many Middle East Muslims are bitterly disenchanted with Western globalization, their governments ties with the West, and their own profound poverty. Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are filled with demoralized people of all agesmaking them a spawning ground for suicide terrorists.
Quality of Government and Political Stability

The structure of the political system, its cohesiveness, and its effectiveness in decision making are all aspects of a governments quality. We can identify three key categories: z Authoritarian governments, such as that of China, are noted for their efciency in decision making and a high degree of predictability. z In contrast, democratic governments shift policy in reaction to swings in public opinion and the election of new representatives to the parliament or Congressin the United States, Congressional elections occur every two years. Because democratic foreign policymaking involves so many actorsthe executive branch, Congress, interest groups, the media and public opinion, and the militarydecisions are less predictable and less efcient. Still, democratic governments tend to be more stable in the long run than authoritarian dictatorships and do not typically go to war against each other.
114
CHAPTER 4
z Some states, however, suffer from a nearly total lack of government, and these so-called weak or failing states have little political and economic cohesiveness. They generally cannot mount a strong foreign policy and therefore suffer a lack of national power. Afghanistan, Angola, Azerbaijan, the Central African Republic, Georgia, Somalia, and Zambia are cases in point. Do you believe Iraq ts this category? The quality of government is undermined by internal conicts and loss of legitimacy. Internal conicts can arise from religious differences, ethnic frictions, military inghting, drug trafckers, guerrilla movements, and breakaway efforts by separatist groups using either ballots, as in East Timor versus Indonesia, or bullets, as in Kosovo. Loss of central government legitimacy is associated with internal conicts like these, as well as with rising widespread corruption. Although no state is immune from corruption, Mexico, Russia, and Bosnia were particularly corrupt at the turn of the twentieth-rst century. Another quality of government that plays an enormous role in a countrys power base is its ability to foster economic growth and quality of life for its citizens. Norways oil-fueled economic growth and government-led quality of life in health care, education, and welfare is a case-in-point. A countrys internal organization and political stability is a vital element of power. Countries with strong internal organizationexible, cohesive, and perceived as legitimate by their populationsare better prepared to mobilize power and use it effectively in the world arena than those that are divided, or, worse, racked by internal civil war. Switzerland, for example, is recognized as stable and economically efcient, while Haiti is not.
Quality of Foreign Relations

Arguably, two of the most critical elements of national power are the quality of foreign relations, dened in terms of a states diplomacy, and the quality of its intelligence. Erroneous intelligence, for example, led to the U.S. preventive war against Iraq. But let us rst turn to diplomacy. Diplomacy Diplomacyeither with or without military teethtranslates national power capabilities from potential to policy and inuence. As Hans Morgenthau states, diplomacy is the art of bringing the different elements of national power to bear with maximum effect upon those points in the international situation which concern the national interest most directly.13 While negotiating styles vary from country to country, requiring negotiating partners to be sensitive to these differences, the guiding principle is that a country should use diplomacy to make the most of its hard- and soft-power capabilities. z Poor diplomacy can lead to wars. Poor intelligence to support diplomacy pushed the Bush Administration to the March 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. Iraqs leader, Saddam Hussein, acted as if he were trying to hide WMDs. Poor diplomacy is also illustrated by Yugoslavia under Slobodan Milosevic. In the early 1990s Milosevics brand of diplomacy resulted in four bloody wars. Following the classic Balkan negotiating styledeceive, obfuscate, bully, never accept a proposal from the other side without rst attempting to change it to t your own purpose, and agree only when under severe pressureMilosevic drove
Diplomacy The negotiating process by which states and other international actors pursue international relations and reconciliation of competing interests by compromise and bargaining.

four of the states constituent republics to declare their independence and left the remains of Yugoslavia with a devastated infrastructure and minimum national power base. These Balkan wars also undermined the legitimacy of Milosevics government and ultimately led to his downfall. z Good diplomacy requires diplomats who are discreet, practical, and careful, and who possess a strong sense of responsibility. While all diplomats are out to advance the national interests of their country, one may argue that good diplomacy means cooperation to advance security and justice in the world and to reduce violence and poverty. This diplomatic styleaimed at positive global governanceis distinctly unlike the diplomacy of the Cold War, which rested not on compromise but on attempts by each side to reach a goal at the expense of the other.14 The United States and the former Soviet Union began to move in this cooperative direction after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985. Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan found common ground together, and the two sides started to manage their relations more peacefully in the Third World. Intelligence The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee Report, Great Britains Butler Report of July 2004, the 9/11 Commissions Report of July 2004, and the Iraq Survey Report of October 2004 have underscored the record of intelligence failures that lay at the heart of the U.S. and British decisions in 2003 to wage war against Husseins Iraq.15 In both cases, the governments used awed intelligence to justify the war; in effect, the reports show that the key assertions made to justify the invasion of Iraqthat Hussein had chemical and biological weapons, that he was working to make nuclear weapons, and that he could launch an attack in forty-ve minuteswere wrong and based on false intelligence or overstated analyses. Flawed intelligence in the case of the war on Iraq may have weakened U.S. and British power in the world political arena. Will the two countries have difculty convincing the international community about their future estimates of perceived threats elsewheresay, from North Korea or Iran? Will allies like China and South Korea believe what the United States and Britain have to say about North Korea and its nuclear weapons?
115
116
CHAPTER 4
Test Prepper 4.2

_____ 1. Of the objective sources of power, military power has been the traditional focus among nation-states. _____ 2. A countrys level of economic development is important when measuring power because it captures a states ability to do many different things (sustain itself, engage in trade, maintain military forces). _____ 3. Population is such an important element of power that any methods to increase a states population should be employed when attempting to increase ones power. _____ 4. National culture, while important for those who focus on subjective elements of power, rarely has any practical effect on the way a nation employs the power at its disposal. _____ 5. Russia, which has experienced less than stellar economic performance in the past decade, is the prime example of a category of states called weak or failing states.
_____ 6. Which of the following is an example of successful diplomacy? a. Milosevics handling of Yugoslavian politics in the early 1990s b. The relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union in the period following 1985 c. The March 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States d. The UN resolution of the conict in Rwanda in the mid 1990s e. All of the above _____ 7. Which of the following statements is accurate: a. U.S. spending on its military budget is about twice the annual budget of the United Nations. b. Total military spending across the globe is second only to economic-infrastructure investment. c. The United States will spend more in 2008 on military expenditures than the rest of the world combined. d. Most countries have experienced a relative decline in military spending since the end of the Cold War. e. None of the above
What Patterns of Power Relationships Exist among States?

3 Understand what is meant by balance of power and identify key types of balance that may exist in the international system. Understand the concept of collective security and its prospects for securing peace in the international system.
Over the past 300 years or so, state decision makers have been guided by a principle referred to as the primacy of the state, meaning that states have centered their foreign policy on advancing their interests by using power to protect their territorial security, economic vitality, and political independence. In this view, each state relies on its own power, either by itself or in alliance with other states, precisely because no world government exists to regulate the affairs of territorial states. Recall that a major reason for the absence of world governmentor far-reaching international lawis that states view themselves as sovereign. They do not recognize any higher legal authority, including the UN, as discussed in chapter 2. Consequently, throughout history states have existed in
c WHAT PATTERNS OF POWER RELATIONSHIPS EXIST AmONG STATES?

a situation of semi-anarchy, and their leaders have felt the need to be self-reliant to protect themselves. Pursuing power, mainly military power, to defend their primacy against external threats thus became a paramount concern of states. As you know, this theory of power politics is known as realism. While states are not the only actors in world politics today, they remain the central actors. So we must look at types of power relationships found among states operating in the global setting. This discussion about the traditional distribution of power among the states takes us into the domain of balance-of-power policies as they play out in world politics. Power, however, is dynamic, relative, situational, and changing, as we observed earlier in this chapter. Two signicant forces have changed the traditional model of balance-of-power politics among states: 1. Interdependence and Globalization: In its dramatic process of change in todays world, we see how states have become more economically interdependent (the EU and NAFTA, for example) and have joined in interdependent military alliances (as in NATO). Todays porous borders, globalized nature of power, and interdependence raise a host of new issues in the life of the state and the role power plays in it. 2. Terrorism: In their use of power to protect themselves in a global setting without world government, Western states, especially the United States, today nd themselves in a new era where a powerful non-state enemy (an ideological adversary as opposed to another states traditional military armed force) has emerged. The problem is that the use of traditional military power to attack the state perceived as the enemy does not lend itself to ghting this non-state ideological belief system. In discussing power relationships, then, we take a closer look at interdependence and globalization, as well as ideology-based terrorism, with a focus on how these trends have transformed patterns of power as they operate in contemporary world politics. Keep in mind that chapter 10 discusses terrorism in greater depth.
117
Balance of Power
The balance-of-power theory, about which much has been written, emerged after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 as a way to promote world stability. The idea was that if one or more countries had sufcient power to balance the power of another country or alliance, then peace and stability would follow. The strategy checked power with power; if one alliance seemed to be gaining the edge in power, then an opposing alliance should increase its powerand vice versa. Keep in mind, however, that the balance-of-power theory did not work consistently well and had many breakdowns during this period. Balance-of-power tactics can be seen during the Cold War, when the United States and NATO faced off against the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. But many scholars argue that it was not the balance of power that kept war from breaking out between these two alliance systems but rather the balance of terrorthe fear of nuclear retaliation if one side attacked the other with a nuclear weapon. What prevented this, in the balance-of-terror model, was deterrence: posing costs and risks to a country thinking about launching a nuclear attack that outweighed any perceived potential gains. Such costs and risks would come in the form of a devastating, retaliatory second strike against the country that initially attacked.
Deterrence A defensive strategy to dissuade, without the actual use of force, another country from attacking. Normally used in the context of nuclear deterrence.
118
CHAPTER 4
Alliances Alliances are groups of states that come together in quest of mutually benecial ends. They affect the distribution of power among states by pooling their power to offset the power of other states and alliances. They may seek to augment their power, prevent the loss of power vis--vis other states or alliances, and to reduce uncertainties about their power. Types of alliances include defense pacts, nonaggression pacts (agreement not to attack each other), ententes (agreement to coordinate policies), or treaties of friendship (expressing common interests in world politics.
Alliances, a coalition of states seeking to increase their power relative to other states, obviously play a big role in balance-of-power politics. Alliances date far back in history, certainly to the time of warring Athens and Sparta. Typically formed to pool resources to offset the power of a perceived threatening state or coalition of states, the politics of alliance formation has been described by many terms: z Chain ganging refers to one alliance member acting in a way that instigates conict, forcing the others to follow, leading the international system to collapse as in World War I. z Burden sharing points to who shoulders what costs within the allianceas within NATO. z Free riding or Buck passing describes an alliance partner that contributes less to an alliance because a weaker state in the alliance has less of a choice, as in Australias alliance with the United States. z Bandwagoning happens when weaker states join a stronger state instead of uniting to balance against it. Many states have jumped on the bandwagon with the United States since post 9/11 because they may not wish to appear to be on its bad side. Does this mean that bandwagoning has replaced balancing since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003?
Balance of Power in Multiple Forms

In reading todays news headlines or listening to policymaker speeches, you may have heard references to balance of power, a term used to convey the idea that one country or another is seeking to correct the balance of power. The problem, however, is to determine how the speaker or news release is using the term, for it has multiple meanings. The term may refer to one country or alliance trying to check and balance another countrys or alliances growth in military power and perceived threat by adding more weapons to its own arsenal. This occurred frequently in military weapons acquisitions by the United States and Soviet Union during the Cold War. Balance of power may refer to a regional setting. It could be argued that the Bush Administrations war in Iraq after 2003 upset a balance of power in the Middle East. Although Saddam Hussein was a tyrant, an argument can be made that he produced a balance of power in the Middle East that made the world a safer placesince he did not possess weapons of mass destruction, did not have ties to al Qaeda, and did not cause the 9/11 attack on the United States. With Hussein out, a civil war has emerged in Iraq with multiple parties seeking to ll the vacuum Iran for example. In Asia, Pakistan and India have each detonated a nuclear weapon to maintain a balance of power with the other. Balance of power can also refer to various structural models by which power is distributed: z A tight bipolar balance, as during the late 1940s and early 1950s in the United States/NATO versus USSR/Warsaw Pact face-off. z A loose bipolar balance, roughly beginning in the mid-1950s, as China moved away from the USSR and France from NATO, and the Third World countries began to organize in the neutral and nonaligned movement. (See Figure 4.7.) z A beginning multipolar balance, referring to the period of the 1970s and 1980s when North America and Western Europe grew apart economically, Japan and China became more independent and powerful, the Soviet Union remained intact, and the developing countries moved off in different directions.

FIGURE 4.7 An Age of Bipolarity: The Cold War ca. 1970
JAPAN
119
Pac i f i c O c e an
PHILIPPINES SOUTH KOREA FORMOSA
UNITED STATES
S. VIETNAM N. VIETNAM
CANADA UNITED STATES

GUATEMALA
MONGOLIA
THAILAND
CHINA
Ar ctic O cean SOVIET UNION
E. PAKISTAN
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC PUERTO RICO
INDIA GREENLAND
TAN
ICELAND Atlantic O c e an An Age of Bipolarity: The Cold War ca. 1970 Soviet bloc U.S. and allies
NORWAY
IRAN
UNITED KINGDOM DENMARK E. GERMANY HOLLAND BELGIUM W. GERMANY FRANCE SPAIN

ALBANIA
POLAND IA CZECH. . AN NG OM R . HU UL B YUGO.
TU
RK
EY
IRAQ
ITALY
GREECE
z Multipolarity, as demonstrated in the breakup of the USSR, the rise of China, and emergence of trade blocs like the European Union and NAFTA, and so on. In this conguration, multiple centers of various types are forming. Whether balance can occur in this conguration is still an open question. See Figure 4.8, g Services Inc. which depicts power shifts in Europe from 1989 to 2005. z Unipolarity, referring to the United States as the single dominant military power in the global system. In this system, U.S. power may be viewed as the ultimate guarantor of world stability through military policingor as instigat2nd Proof 3rd Proof Final ing global instability through U.S.driven cultural imperialism and a protracted war against terrorism that can produce endless insecurity.16
cs in the 21st Century, 3e
The Future of Balance-of-Power Relationships

Looking to the future, scholars debate what it may look like in terms of global power distribution thirty to fty years from now. One view foresees the rise of China as the most likely scenario, with the EU a second likely candidate to challenge the United States in its current unipolar world.17 China comes into this future balance-of-power equation as the obvious power on the rise in the international system in terms of economic growth and expanding military power. India, however, also is on the radar screen, given its economic progress. The EU is a candidate in a future balancing role vis--vis the United States because it is expanding its
PAKIS
120
CHAPTER 4
FIGURE 4.8 Europe: Political Changes 19892005

1989
ICELAND 0 0 250 250 500 Miles Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Warsaw Pact Countries (excluding the USSR) North Atlantic Treaty Organization Countries European Community (formerly the EEC)
500 kilometers
SWEDEN
AT L ANT I C OCEAN
FINLAND NORWAY
DENMARK IRELAND ENGLAND NETHERLANDS

BELGIUM LUX.
USSR
CZEC
FRANCE
SWITZ.
AUSTRIA
HUNGARY ROMANIA
YUGO SLAV IA
Black Sea
PORTUGAL SPAIN
ANDORRA
ITALY
ALBANIA
BULGARIA TURKEY GREECE
Mediterranean Sea
0 0 250 250 500 Miles
2003
ICELAND
500 kilometers
Former Republics of the USSR, now independent countries Russian Federation NATO Countries, 2000 Associated with NATO/petitioned for entry SWEDEN FINLAND European Union (formerly the EC) European Union applicant countries
Duncan: World Politics in the 21st Century, 3e 1036905_m_04_08A 11/27/07
ATLANTIC OCEAN
NORWAY
ESTONIA LATVIA LITHUANIA RUSSIA KAZAKHSTAN
DENMARK IRELAND ENGLAND NETHERLANDS
RUSSIA
BELARUS
LUX.
MOLDOVA
FRANCE
SWITZ.
AUSTRIA SLOVENIA CROATIA
HUNGARY ROMANIA
BOSNIAHERZEGOVINIA
Black Sea
GEORGIA ARMENIA
PORTUGAL
ANDORRA SPAIN
ITALY
BULGARIA
AZERBAIJAN
ALBANIA
MACEDONIA
TURKEY GREECE
Mediterranean Sea
Source: John L. Allen and Elizabeth J. Leppman, Student Atlas of World Politics, 6th edition, 2004, map #18, p. 31. Used by permission.
Duncan: World Politics in the 21st Century, 3e 1036905_m_04_08B
Ca
CZECH REPUBLIC
UKRAINE
SLOVAKIA
spi an Se
POLAND GERMANY BELGIUM NuGraphic Design, Inc. 7 Laurelwood Drive, New Fairfield, CT 06812 (203) 746-4181 (203) 746-4182 fax nugraphicdesign@charter.net
Ca
HOSL
OVAK
IA
spi an Se
WEST GER.
EAST GER.
POLAND

territorial size by adding new member-states and is developing a stronger military capability. How all this works out remains to be seen. Meanwhile, regional balances of power also merit attention, as in North Korea versus South Korea and mainland China versus Taiwan. Yet much scholarly debate about the balance of power in the early twenty-rst century has focused on the unipolar nature of todays international system, the U.S. role as an overwhelming global power (albeit with sharply declining soft power), and what might happen if the United States were not so dominant in the global system.18 Some authors worry that if a multipolar world does not emerge and the United States is unable to play a positive role for centralization, what could emerge is a chaotic nightmare like a new Dark Agewaning empires, religious revivals, and incipient anarchy.19
121
Power Shifts and Realignments

That power relationships between states change over time is apparent from even a brief reading of history. Immediately after World War II, defeated Germany and Japan were in ruins. Yet each regained much of its lost power during the postwar period. At the turn of this new century, Russia is a shadow of the once powerful USSR that so dominated news headlines during the Cold War. China and India perhaps even Brazilwith their large populations, could become great powers once they become more fully industrialized. China is a strong focus for those who study shifts in the balance of power. Its defense budget is rising. It is modernizing its military capabilities for all levels of war ghting. It has been mobilizing its international resources to balance U.S. power by cooperating in international trade and nancial systems to become a large player in the global economy.20
How Power Shifts over Time

States rise and fall in power over time, and as they do their power relationships with other countries shift dramaticallya phenomenon that illustrates not only change in a states power capabilities but also its relativity of power at any given time. Scholars, including Paul Kennedy, a historian at Yale University, have given much attention to this issue. In his book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Kennedy argues that since the year 1500, great powers have declined when they overcommitted to military expenditures and far-ung military operations abroad.21 In this respect, Kennedys work may point to the United States, which may be overextending its foreign defense obligations and commitments, thus risking the same fate as Spain in the 1600s, Britain in the 1900s, and Hitlers Germany in the 1940s. U.S. military spending fell dramatically after the Cold War ended. It rose again at the end of that decadeand increased even more after the horrifying events of 9/11. The U.S. war with Iraq has cost hundreds of billions of dollars as discussed earlier. At the same time, the United States faces massive budget decits and a rising debt that some economists foresee as a looming crisis for the U.S. and world economiessomething that could dramatically undermine U.S. global power.22 Keep in mind that the United States borrows billion of dollars daily from foreign governments to service its foreign-held debtnot a sign of good economic health.
Globalization and Shifting Power

Globalization is a dominant force shaping power distributions in world politics today. Recall that globalization refers to expanded economic integration and
Globalization Globalization refers to widened economic integration and interdependence among the worlds states by way of international free trade, market economies, investments, and capital ows. Huge multi national corporations (MNCs) and global economic organizationsthe International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and World Trade Organizationcome to dominate global commerce as world trade expands. Globalization is also produced by the spread of global beroptic networks, digitalization, satellite communications, the World Wide Web, and computer technology. www.BetweenNations.org
122
CHAPTER 4
interdependence of states through international free trade, market economies, investments, and capital ows. World trade has grown astronomically, and huge multinational corporations (MNCs) and global economic organizations (Inter national Monetary Fund, World Bank, and World Trade Organization) dominate global commerce. These trendslinked with the spread of global ber-optic networks, digitalization, satellite communications, the World Wide Web, and computer technologyhave impacted state-to-state power relationships dramatically. How so? z Positive Effects of Globalization: In casting a giant shadow over the entirety of world politics today, proponents of globalization see the positive consequences on state-to-state power relationships. Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist, in his book, the Lexus and the Olive Tree, views globalization as making old-fashioned power politics obsolete, owing to the imperatives of global capitalism. For Friedman, globalization leads to a democratic world, reduced poverty, higher standards of living in lesser developed countries, and thus less global conict, more unity and expanded regional integration. In his The World Is Flat, Friedman envisions more states such as India entering the global marketplace, demonstrated by outsourcing. Although positive for India as its power increases, U.S. economic power wanes under global ization. All states do not necessarily benet, at least in the short term, with increased interdependence. z Negative Effects of Globalization: Other observers believe globalization works negatively on power relationships. For one thing, in many parts of the lesser developed world, globalization is viewed as yet another brand of Western cultural imperialism. Competition has kept economic elites in power rather than generating wealth for everyone. Workers and the environment are exploited. In Latin America, Leftist leaders have come to power in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, the Dominican Republic, and Uruguay, largely due to broad disillusionment with globalization, neoliberal free trade policies, market economies, and corrupt democratic governments ruled by powerful elites. In the recent outpouring of criticism of globalization, John Lewis Gaddis points out that 9/11 illustrates the dark side of globalization and interdependence, for globalization has spawned deep grievances against the United States as well as provided the power and means to attack it, as demonstrated in the use of civilian aircraft for suicide bombers.23 Joseph Nye argues that while never since Rome has any country loomed so large in power above the others as the United States does today, even Rome eventually collapsed. His point is that America is not invincible; it could undermine its own power through unilateralism, arrogance, and parochialism. Stanley Hoffmann, a professor at Harvard University, has also weighed in on the massive effects of globalization on power in world politics. Hoffmann stresses three forms of globalization, each with implications about power: z Economic globalizationwhich has recently been undergoing revolutions in technology, information, trade, foreign investment, and international business
Audio Concept Cultural Globalization www.BetweenNations.org
z Cultural globalizationwhich has led to recent assaults against Western culture (denounced as arrogant, secular, and smacking of U.S. hegemony) z Political globalizationwhich is characterized by a domination by the United States and its political institutions

Hoffmann notes that globalization has spread resentment around the world against the United States, produced threats to state sovereignty, stimulated rising violence, and spawned virulent forms of terrorism. Each negative consequence has profound implications for how power now takes new forms in an interdependent globalized world and how states in a globalized world should mobilize power to combat terrorism. Older concepts of the balance of power and collective security become inappropriate in this world of porous borders, and none of Americas traditional power capabilities, including the military, provide protection against future terrorist attacks.
123
Impact of Change in the Global Distribution of Power

Scholars have given much attention to the impact of change on the global distribution of power over time. Change in military technology, for example, affects how war is conducted, and therefore the behavior and perceptions of states affected by weapons innovation. If a state possesses nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them, it has the power to deter other nuclear-owning countries from attack. Possessing the bomb, in effect, helps move a country toward great power status, as has been the case with the United States, Great Britain, France, and other nuclear powers. The United States emerged from World War II with tremendous power compared to war-torn states, and consequently became a major actor in the international system from the mid-1940s onward. The ups and downs of who has power and who does not affect the distribution of power in the international system and hence how power operates. Although political scientists are by no means in total agreement, many studies have reached the following conclusions about patterns of change: z The world seems most prone to violence during times of rapid shifts in the global distribution of poweras occurred following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.24 z Rapid shifts in power distribution tend to create more instability than slower shiftsvividly illustrated in the increased power of international terrorism that led to 9/11 and subsequent instability around the world. z Bipolar systems tend to be more stable than a multipolar power distribution in the international system. z Multipolar systems with four or more poles have the highest probability of waralthough given the recent U.S. preventive war against Iraq, a unipolar system also has a high probability of war. z Globalization and the information technology revolution have both positive and negative and both centralizing and decentralizing effects on power relationships among states and non-state actors. z New forces shaping power relationships reect a transnational character and the inability of states to single-handedly solve the problems created by them. At the end of the twentieth century, the world had one economic and military superpower due to the collapse of the USSR in 1991 and its breakup into fteen independent states. The Warsaw Pact fell apart as many of its member-states moved from communist to more democratic political systems. While these changes in global power distribution reduced the possibility of nuclear war between the two Cold War superpowers (the United States and the USSR), international terrorism, regional instabilities, and civil wars continued to haunt the
124
CHAPTER 4
international system. Two newly nuclear-armed countries, India and Pakistan, repeatedly came into conict, and al Qaeda terrorists and the Palestinian-Israel crisis added to world instability and decentralization.
The Rise of Terrorist Power

The Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States of July 2004 underscores how power in world politics comes in different forms and how the terrorist acts of 9/11 raised non-state, ideology-based terrorist power to a new level in the arena of world politics. In this new age of terrorism, a prominent power issue is not so much which countries will become the next superpowers but how non-state terrorist groups will carry out their next act of aggression through porous state borders. A case in point is al Qaedaa non-state terrorist organization committed to suicide bombing in the name of its anti-West cause. Although not a state, it nevertheless possesses organizational and informational capabilities, cyberspace technology, and human willpower that can pierce state borders and as such poses a major threat to the non-fundamentalist Islamic world. Because terrorist organizations like al Qaeda and Hamas are potential recipients of WMDs from rogue states like North Korea and Iran, or from other groups with access to neglected stockpiles of the former Soviet Union, they have raised the specter of terrorist power to particularly dramatic levels. While we still use traditional indexes of power dened in terms of objective and subjective factors and according to the concepts of hard and soft power, we also nd ourselves in a new age of terrorist power. This new age, in which traditional military, organizational, informational, communications, and human-commitment capabilities and inuence are combined with terrorist approaches, has raised enormous problems for state stability in the world political system and for sustained progress toward centralization. Terrorism seriously complicates how to live and cooperate in an interdependent global communitywith its positive centralizing aspects as well as its negative decentralizing impact around the world. Indeed, Islamic terrorist power may be viewed as a byproduct of globalization, a distinctly negative reaction of fundamentalist Islamic culture resisting perceived domination by Western culture.
Collective Security as a Method of Seeking Security

A different method for trying to achieve territorial security in the international system is the collective-security approach. This approach to preserving world peace and stability was introduced by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson following World War I. It calls for a system that combines the military power of peace-loving states to create an overwhelming power base capable of deterring would-be aggressors. In this sense, an attack on one state is considered an attack on all statesto be met with collective action. z A Failed Attempt at Collective Security: The League of Nations was the rst international organization developed to implement a collective-security approach to international politics. To the dismay of its advocates, the very countries that proposed it, including the United States, did not implement it. Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931 and China in 1937; Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935, and Germany marched into Czechoslovakia and other European countries from the 1930s onwardall with impunity. When the strategy of collective security failed to head off World War II, balance of power came back into vogue.

z Collective Security Resurfaces: By the late twentieth century, however, UN resolutions legitimizing the use of force in situations like the Persian Gulf War, coupled with its peacekeeping operations in Bosnia, exemplied a modied form of collective security that has reappeared on the world stage. The message may be that authoritarian governments, militaristic states, and dictators can no longer hide behind their countrys sovereignty to conduct acts that grossly violate human rights. Collective security may be expanding from a strategy of stopping acts of aggression by one state against another to stopping such acts by a countrys leadership inside its sovereign territory. z Has Collective Security Supplanted Balance of Power in World Politics? The jury is still out on how the international community will address concerns of ethnic nationalism the identity of a people based on ethnic rootsand systematic violations of human rights, such as genocide, inside sovereign states. Whereas ethnic national genocide in Kosovo produced NATO action without UN legitimacy, ethnic national genocide in Rwanda failed to produce either NATO or UN effective action. Darfur, in Sudan, currently faces the same type of problem. UN collective security clearly did not work in the case of authorizing the 2003 U.S. preventive attack of Iraq, however, and much of the international community did not approve this action. The United States struggled with lagging UN Security Council consensus on going to war against Iraq for its material breach of earlier UN disarmament mandates. While the November 2002 UN Resolution 1441 invoked unspecied serious consequences for any new failure by Iraq to cooperate with weapons inspectors, Germany, France, China, and Russia wanted more time for inspections to take place in February 2003. Still, once the United States and Britain toppled the Hussein regime after March 2003, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1483 in May. This resolution legitimized the U.S.led invasion by anointing the United States and Britain as the occupying authorities and went as far as authorizing the United States to take over Iraqs oil industry. The UN, moreover, set up its own mission in Iraq, headed by its special representative, Sergio Vieira de Mello. In a stunning act that demonstrated sharply contrasting perceptions of the legitimacy of the U.S. and UN presence, Vieira de Mello, with more than twenty others, was killed when a truck bomb exploded directly under his ofce in Baghdad in August 2003. This act led the UN to pull out a large number of its staff in Iraq. In summary, collective security can have a centralizing impact on regional politics, as when the UN legitimized the use of force against Saddam Husseins invasion of Kuwait and when NATO intervened in Bosnia to stop Serb-orchestrated ethnic cleansing in the mid-1990s. Yet collective security has its limitations, as demonstrated by the failure of world governments to intervene in the Rwanda civil war of 1994, and the attempts at stopping genocide in Sudan have been woefully lacking. With an estimated death toll from violence of over 500,000 in Sudan, the rst of 10,000 UN troops nally arrived in April 2005 to keep the peace. The limi tation of collective security lies in bringing a coalition of countries together to address a shared regional issue. In the case of the U.S.led invasion of Iraq, many key members of the UN Security Council simply did not agree with U.S. perceptions of the need for military action at the time. Since the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, collective security has not worked well.
125
Ethnic nationalism Identity of a people focused essentially on ethnic roots, such as Serb or Russian identityexpressed in behavior ranging from peaceful to violent.
126
CHAPTER 4
Test Prepper 4.3

_____ 1. The two most signicant forces that have changed the traditional model of balance-ofpower politics are globalization and terrorism. _____ 2. Deterrence is successful when a state is able to restrict the use of force to a moderate level. _____ 3. Chain ganging refers to the situation where two adversaries continually increase the level of conict between one another until all-out war breaks out between them. _____ 4. The world has yet to see a unipolar balance of power exist in the international system. _____ 5. Rapid shifts in power distribution tend to create more instability than slower shifts.
_____ 6. Which of the following is the most stable balance-of-power system? a. Distributed balance system b. Unipolar c. Bipolar d. Multipolar e. None of these systems are any more stable than the other _____ 7. Which of the following organizations was the rst developed to implement a collective security approach to the international system? a. League of Nations b. Organization of African Unity c. United Nations d. International Atomic Energy Association e. The International Criminal Court (ICC)
Case Study
Power Factors in World Politics: Is Americas Power in Decline?
Join the Debate The Big Debate about China: Will It Be the Worlds Next Superpower?
OVERVIEW
Chinalike much of the rest of the world, especially its neighbors Japan, South Korea, and Indiaspends a lot of time conjecturing about its future. In Asia, and around the world the concern is that Chinas economic strength, coupled with its rising nationalism, could one day lead it to assert its power aggressively, even militarily. China must be concerned about its foreign relations in order to keep its commercial, trade, and diplomatic ties working smoothly. Toward this end, Chinese leaders frequently assert that their country is peace-loving, would never seek hegemony, and is a benign emerging state rising peacefully, ready to cooperate with others on international issues. This setting brings us to a number of factors that must be calculated to reach a prognosis on whether or not China will become the worlds next superpower. Which side of this great debate do you think is most compelling?
JOIN THE DEBATE
127
THE PRo PoSItIoN

The pro side of the argument includes the following debate points:
blitz to portray itself not as a communist threat, as in the 1960s and 1970s, but as a peaceful and benign country with economic opportunities for Asian neighbors and Western friends like the United States. z China has integrated its foreign policy with the international system by joining many international and trade arrangements, engaging positively with other countries, moving to resolve a number of territorial disputes, and adopting a more transparent decision-making process. z Its prestige in space exploration is growing. z Tourism is exploding. Amenities for visiting business and diplomatic delegations are gaining positive recognition. Chinas new elites are no longer isolated from the outside world as in the pastand China will host the 2008 Summer Olympics. z Visitors to China are impressed by its thriving indus trial zones along the east coast as well as the numerous state-of-the-art amenities and development projects, such as the German magnetic-levitation train (that whisks passengers in from Shanghais new Pudong airport at 250 miles per hour), modern glass and concrete ofces, shops, and apartment buildings; and the mammoth Three Gorges dam on the Yangtze River, with its enormous hydroelectric potential.
Chinas Emergence as a Great Economic Power

z Few countries have developed so quickly or remarkably as China has since the 1970s. z China has liberalized its economy with sweeping reforms and a stunning growth in the private sector. z It has transformed its production sector from uncomplicated exports to high-technology goods including computer hardware and software. z China, a member of the World Trade Organization since 2001, achieved a steady and enviable annual increase in gross domestic product of 10.7 percent in 2006 and 10 percent in 2007. z China is the single most important nancier of the enormous trade decit of the United States. It is the worlds second-largest importer of oil. Before 2010 it will be the number-one exporter of goods in the world. It is the worlds second-largest military power and second largest economy. z China enjoys billions in direct foreign investment, a huge domestic consumer base, and a cheap work force.
Chinas MilitaryThe Peoples Liberation Army (PLA)Is Modernizing

z The Peoples Liberation Army (PLA)which incorporates the army, navy, and air forcehas been modernizing rapidly since 2001. Chinas military spending jumped by nearly 18 percent in 2007, the largest increase in a decade. z Missiles and space forces have received much attention, including intercontinental ballistic missiles, intermediate-range ballistic missiles, and shortrange ballistic missiles. China has a substantial inventory of weapons of mass destruction. In January 2007 China blasted its weather satellite (launched in 1999) into oblivion with a land-based anti-satellite missile. This was the rst destruction of a satellite by a land-based missile ever accomplished by any country. z Much of Chinas focus is on acquiring sufcient force to compel Taiwan to reunify with it.
THE CoN PoSItIoN

The con side of this debate is as follows:
Chinas Economic Prole Has Flaws

z Chinas economic reforms favor state-owned enterprises. It gives them preferential access to technology, capital, and markets. Yet its reforms also favor foreign investment, resulting in foreign rms gaining control of most of Chinas industrial exports. Consequently, Chinas industry is burdened with inefcient state-owned enterprises and non-Chinese rms in increasingly dominant positions. z With Chinese rms strongly relying on foreign investment and technology, China is far less an independent industrial and technological giant than might appear at rst glance. z Regional inequalities remain profound, and income growth in rural areas lags well behind the urban centers. Because much of China is rural (typical housing is mud huts without sanitation), much of the population is being left behind. In contrast, newly arriving workers from the country drive down already low wages in urban areas.
Chinas Soft Power Is Impressive

China concentrates on developing its soft power in Asia and in the West. It has launched an all-out diplomatic
128
CHAPTER 4
z Unemployment is higha product, in part, of factory privatizationand more than 8 million people have lost their jobs in shut-down state-owned industries. z Chinas population is aging. This will place rising demands on the economy, as China must nd ways to care for its elderly. This problem will be especially severe in the rural areas, where the elderly are not covered by pension plans. Given its massive aging population, it may not be able to sustain its level of economic growth and spend sufciently on the military to overtake the United States. z China is plagued by low health and safety standards, underscored by frequent industrial accidents and epidemics like AIDS and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). Dirty, unhealthy, overcrowded, highly polluted, and environmentally damaged urban centers contribute to Chinas health problems. z Corruption is widespread, despite government crackdowns. z Growth is straining Chinas infrastructure. The power grid is inadequate, reforming the state enterprises is taking much longer than anticipated, and the country is increasingly dependent on oil imports. z Chinas agricultural sector faces many problems. Although the country can feed itself today, its emphasis on food self-sufciency has produced huge surpluses of types of grain not in demand abroad.
Chinas Military Power Is Less Impressive than It Seems

z Chinas defense industry is state-owned and extremely inefcient, and it has a poor record of developing sophisticated weapons. z Much of Chinas weaponry is obsolete and outdated. Its oversize army is focused primarily on internal security.
Chinas Soft Power May Be Overrated

z Chinas soft power is undermined by continued suspicions of China despite its peaceful and benign posture. Its political system is still opaque and can be perceived as threatening the economies and livelihoods of its neighbors. z China is not moving toward democracy. It remains controlled by the communist party (the CCPthe only political party permitted) and its high ofcials continue to exercise enormous power in dening and executing the rules of organized behavior, including the economy. This kind of power frequently leads to corruption. z With the current rapid pace of industrial development, Chinas oil consumption is likely to riseand pollution levels with it. Which factors do you think are most important? Where do you see China in, say, ten years from now?

1 2 power, 3 focusing 4 on both 5 6 and soft 7 forms; 8 Dene hard understand the dynamics of power that make dening power a difcult task. 9 10 Key dynamics of power make pinning down the concept difcult. These dynamics include the following:
- - - - - - Power translates into differing forms of inuence. Power is multidimensional in nature. Power is shaped by perceptions. Power is dynamic and changing. Power is relative and not absolute. Power is situational.
Power is a capability that, when translated into inuence, enables one country (or IGO or NGO) to get another state (or IGO or NGO) to do something that it would not otherwise normally do. Power capabilities fall into two general categories: hard and soft.
- Hard power refers to objective capabilities, such as military or economic power. - Soft power is the states ability to inuence subjectively through cultural, ideological, or moral appeal, or through its economic strength and information technology skills.
It is important to note that changes in a states power base can have dramatic effects in the international system, such as changing the overall distribution of power, shifting the system from bipolar to multipolar, producing hegemonic states, or contributing to regional wars or cooperation.
129
3 4 the difference 5 6 7 objective 8 and19 2 10 Understand between subjective elements of power. Be able to describe each of the key objective and subjective power capabilities possessed by states.
Objective elements of power include those capabilities or assets that can be seen, touched, and measured, or, in other words, empirically veried. Objective power capabilities include the following:
- Military capability - Economic development (national infrastructure, industrial base, technology, transportation systems, information, and communication systems) - Geography - Natural resources - Population
4 5 what is 6 meant7by balance 8 of power 9 10 Understand and identify key types of balance that may exist in the international system. Understand the concept of collective security and its prospects for securing peace in the international system.
Power shapes different relationships among states, with power shifts and realignments common over time. The term balance of power, for example, has a variety of meanings with regard to patterns of power. Balance of power may be seen in terms of different distributions of power within the international system, such as bipolarity, multipolarity, and unipolarity. Among the most dramatic forces changing the nature of power are
- Globalization - Interdependence - The information revolutionthe Internet and the World Wide Web.
Subjective power factors include the following: human values, beliefs, perceptions, and energy. They too help account for conict or cooperation among states, IGOs, and NGOs in world politics. They include:
- - - - - - National culture National morale Quality of government Political stability Quality of diplomacy Quality of intelligence
The emergence of non-state ideological beliefs, specically those of radical forms of Islamic fundamentalism, has produced a new form of terrorism power that threatens international stability. This threat was identied in the Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States of July 2004. Collective security calls for the pooling of state power in one organization, like the UN. This power is used to deter or defeat any country that has attacked another. Collective security has not worked well because states have been reluctant to place their military forces under UN authority and because of competing versions of national-security interests.

Foreign-policy Formation and Execution
Power into Policy
Learning Objectives
1
Understand what factors at each level of analysis affect the formulation of foreign policy and identify the various perspectives used to explain foreign-policy decision making.
Understand how foreign policy translates power into outcomes, and identify the associated core, middlerange, and long-term goals that accompany it.
130
By this I mean that a political society does not live to conduct foreign policy; it would be more correct to say that it conducts foreign policy in order to live.
George F. Kennan
Chapter Outline
What Is Foreign Policy?
An Approach to Translating Power into Action A Set of Core, Middle-range, and Long-range Goals
What Are the Foreign-policy

Repercussions of 9/11?
Americas War on Terrorism The Bush Doctrine
How Is Foreign Policy Formulated?
International Systemlevel, State-level, and Individual-level Factors Beliefs Shape Foreign-policy Decisions: Ideology, Religion, and Nationalism Some Perspectives on Foreign-policy Decision Making
Identify the different phases in the U.S. war on terror; understand the key components of the Bush Doctrine, and be aware of the criticisms of that approach.
Foreign Policy Is a Key to Survival in a Turbulent World
hen you read daily newspaper headlines or watch television news, you quickly realize that at any given moment, foreign policy is a major aspect of world politics. Foreign policy is put into play by the worlds states, but other players, such as intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)including militant Islamic organizations like al Qaeda may also make decisions that affect the foreign policy of states. Each of these actors tries to employ some form of power and inuenceboth hard and soft powerto achieve desired objectives. When actors use foreign policy to interact and cooperate with other actors, it serves as a centralizing force. A good example of foreign policy as a centralizing force is Russian President Vladimir
132
Key Terms
CHAPTER 5
FOREIGN-POLIcY FORMATION AND EXEcUTION
diplomacy p. 134 old diplomacy p. 135 new diplomacy p. 135 coercive diplomacy p. 135 core objectives p. 135 containment p. 138 national interests p. 139 intermestic p. 140 globalization p. 142 secular p. 143 nationalism p. 143 Bush Doctrine p. 153
Putins decision in October 2004 to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, a step in the direction of cooperating with other states to combat climate change and global warming. Another example is the dramatic announcement of Libyas Colonel Muammar al-Qadda in December 2003 that Libya would disclose and dismantle all its weapons of mass destruction. This surprise foreign-policy move led the European Union in October 2004 to end eighteen years of economic sanctions against Libyaa remarkable example of centralization. When foreign-policy decisions lead to conictas when the United States, backed by Great Britain, invaded and occupied Iraq in March 2003decentralizing forces are at work in the international system. The Iraq invasion split the world into countries that supported the actions versus the large part of the international community that did not. Many foreign countries do not see terrorism as a war, even though they are opposed to terrorism and may cooperate in ghting terrorism as a police action by arresting suspects or freezing suspected nancial assets. Foreign policy can involve the actions of a country or maybe an organization (like Greenpeace) or an individual (think of Osama bin Laden) abroad and the manner in which those actions are carried out. Individuals and groups that hold decision-making authority inside the state (or IGO or NGO) play a major role in shaping its external behavior. An obvious example is the personality, perceptions, and background of big-power leaders. For example, on one hand, President George W. Bush of the United States and former Prime Minister Tony Blair of Great Britain both forcefully pressed for the war in Iraq. On the other hand, were the strong leadership personalities of former German Chancellor Gerhard Schrder and former French President Jacques Chirac, both of whom strongly opposed going to war with Iraq in 2003. Given foreign policys pivotal role in world politics, this chapter looks closely at its major characteristics and how it affects the international system. z We begin with an examination of foreign policys close links to various kinds of power capabilities, discussed in chapter 4 and to its principal goals and the kinds of issues it entails. Among the key factors that drive foreign policy are: 1. National interests (vital interests or core objectives) 2. Political and government leaders 3. Domestic economic and political structures 4. International inuences We show how these elements come into play, and how and why foreign policies change while basic core goals stay in place. z Of great importance in this study is how foreign-policy decisions are made, and this chapter delves into that big question by examining four distinct dimensions of foreign-policy decision making:
c WHAT IS FOREIGN POLIcY?

1. Rational 2. Organizational 3. Political 4. Individual z Finally, given the enormous impact of 9/11, we conclude this study of foreign policy with a look at the foreign-policy repercussions of 9/11. This discussion examines the Bush Doctrine, advocated by the Bush administration as it sought to maintain national security following 9/11. n
133
What Is Foreign Policy?

1 Understand how foreign policy translates power into outcomes, and identify the associated core, middle-range, and long-term goals that accompany it.
For more information see Why It Matters to You: Declining Concern Over Foreign Student Enrollments at U.S. Schools www.BetweenNations.org
To get a grip on why leaders of countries and other organizations pursue all kinds of goals on the world political chessboard, we need to understand the basic elements of foreign policy. Beyond simply trying to do this for its own intellectual attraction or because you are taking a course on the subject, it is important to understand the foreign policy of your own country, as well as that of others, because it matters greatly in our lives. The Report of the 9/11 Commission of the U.S. Senate, as examined in the online case study for chapter 1 (www.Between Nations.org), for example, shows how numerous aws in U.S. national security intelligence gathering and processinga major aspect of U.S. foreign policy played a huge role in making possible the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, with their horrendous loss of lives. The following discussion illustrates another consequence of foreign policy in your life. Seeing how relevant it is to each of us, let us probe this subject by concentrating rst on foreign policy as an approach to translating power capabilities into favorable outcomes, and then look at its core, middle-range, and long-range goals.
An Approach to Translating Power into Action

In chapter 4 we discussed the numerous power capabilities at the disposal of states and other actors in the world political arena. We looked at hard power (military and economic) and soft power (a countrys core values and how other countries perceive them) as well as objective and subjective types of power available to leaders of states, IGOs, NGOs, and some individuals. Power as inuence comes in multiple forms based on multiple capabilities, as discussed in chapter 4. Foreign policy, as you can see, is a vital aspect of world politics, and power is one of its key components. To focus on the links between some kind of power/ inuence and foreign policy is a valid approach because without some type of power, it is difcult to have an effective foreign policy. Foreign-policy techniques and strategiesfrom diplomacy that promotes the legitimacy of a countrys values or suicide bombings that express the radical ideals of a proselytizing Islamic crusadeare how key actors on the international scene pursue goals and objectives. They do so by translating available power into specic actions designed to inuence other actors.
134
CHAPTER 5
Power and Policy Tools

Once a state knows what their foreign-policy goals are, they have at their disposal a wide range of tools for translating available power capabilities into specic policies. The United States, for example, in response to the 9/11 attacks, used its military power rst to bomb, then chase on the ground, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and later to attack and occupy Iraq. India and Pakistan have threatened to use nuclear weapons against each other in their dispute over Kashmir, although they have pursued peaceful negotiations, too. Islamic insurgents in Iraq have used the power of the swordliterallyto behead hostages in seeking to inuence their home countries. How leaders translate available power into policies and the tools they use varies from state to state, actor to actor, and situation to situation. The tools for translating power into policy range widely. Some are benign and peaceful, such as soft power, information programs, humanitarian aid, and diplomacy. Others are coercive: embargoes, economic blockades, espionage and sabotage, and military force. Each policy option requires underlying power to be put into playmoney or goods for humanitarian aid, printing presses and lm production for information programs, ships and naval weapons to establish an effective blockade. Figure 5.1 depicts this range and the types of foreign-policy tools available to state leaders and other actors.
Changes in the Diplomatic Climate

Diplomacy The negotiating process by which states and other international actors pursue international relations and reconciliation of competing interests by compromise and bargaining.
For more information see The Marshall Plan www.BetweenNations.org
Note that diplomacy is the overarching tool at the disposal of state leaders. Diplomacy is the way a country negotiates with other countrieshow a state conducts its political, cultural, economic, and security relationships. The issues on which states negotiate include everything from trade agreements to military conict. Diplomacy establishes representation abroad. It defends a countrys policies and observes other countries behavior. As Figure 5.1 indicates, there are two kinds of diplomacy, benign and coercive; within each category is a range of actions from most benign to most coercive.1 The nature of diplomatic negotiations has changed, however, over the years. Before World War I, for example, Europe was the focus of much diplomacy. Few nationalist sentiments complicated the diplomatic process, and ideologies like communism or Nazism had not yet established a footing in world politics. Secret diplomacy was the name of the game, and the diplomatsthat is, chief
FIGURE 5.1 Tools for Foreign-policy Implementation

Benign or Peaceful Diplomacy Coercive Diplomacy
Ambassador and Consular Representation
Information Programs
Foreign Aid and Assistance Trade
Tariffs
International Organizations
Humanitarian Aid
Military Large Intervention Conventional War Espionage and Boycotts Clandestine Nuclear Sabotage and Embargoes Military War Action
Blockades
Source: The United States Naval War College, National Security Decision-making Department, Case Study, 19921993. Used by permission.

negotiatorstended to have a common aristocratic identity, with French as the key language. They represented governments, many of which were monarchies connected by intermarriage. This period before World War I is referred to as the era of old diplomacy. After 1919, the world entered what is called the period of new diplomacy. New diplomacy is more open and public, with less secrecy and more public opinion and public press inuence than during the earlier era. Furthermore, ideologies like Marxism-Leninism became more prominent, and although MarxismLeninism largely died out in Russia, it continued in mainland China and in Cuba into the twenty-rst century. Europe ceased to be the dominant geographic pivot of diplomacy as more and more sovereign states entered the international political playing eld and as diplomacy became globalized. Other changes are associated with new diplomacy. The United Nations became increasingly important as a forum for diplomatic representation and exchanges, and it gathered momentum in its global peacekeeping operations. Summit diplomacynegotiations between heads of government and heads of state as opposed to negotiations between embassies, consulates, and diplomatsbecame more common. The world also saw the rise of coercive diplomacy: the threat and use of force in tandem with diplomatic pressure by an alliance like NATO. For example, the NATO alliance used coercive diplomacy to try to get Serbia to cease its military activities in Bosnia and Kosovo. The United States tried coercive diplomacy on Iraq in 20022003 to try to nd hidden weapons of mass destruction, but it later resorted to a preventive military attack. Americas public diplomacy has suffered recently. The agency that has long dealt with public diplomacy, the U.S. Information Agency, has seen its resources reduced over the past decade, and in 1999 it was merged into the Department of State, where its functions have been fragmented and its resources even further depleted. This situation has weakened dramatically U.S. soft power, as discussed in chapter 4. At a time when the United States needs a healthy image for security in the post9/11 period, its image remains broadly negative in Europe, Canada, Latin America, and in much of the Islamic world. The Bush administrations return to international diplomacy in May 2007 regarding what to do in Iraqdemonstrated by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rices attendance at the May 2007 world conference in Egypt to launch the International Compact with Iraq (ICI)may help to alter that negative image.
135
Old diplomacy The form of diplomacy that characterized the era prior to World War I. European-centered, it emphasized secrecy and was generally devoid of nationalism. New diplomacy The style of diplomacy that has evolved since World War I, with emphasis on openas opposed to secretnegotiations and summit meetings, and in which nationalism has a greater impact on the negotiating process.
Coercive diplomacy The threat and use of force in tandem with diplomatic pressure by one actor on another. The UNs coercive diplomacy on Saddam Hussein to reveal more information on Iraqs WMDs in 2003 is a good example. (Coercive diplomacy failed in this case.)
Audio Concept Old Diplomacy www.BetweenNations.org
A Set of Core, Middle-range, and Long-range Goals

A sound approach to understanding the goals and objectives pursued by states in the international arena is to begin with the assumption that a countrys foreignpolicy objectives tend to be hierarchical and shaped by many forces. By hierarchical we mean that foreign-policy goals cover a range of (1) core or vital interest objectives; (2) middle-range objectives; and (3) long-range objectives. These three types of foreign-policy goals are dened easily enough.
Core Objectives
A countrys most vital national interests guide its core objectives. They include maintaining its 1. territorial security, 2. economic strength, and 3. political independence.
Core objectives A term used in foreign policy to identify a states primary objectives (or interests), such as pursuit of its physical (territorial) security, economic vitality, and sovereign political independence.
136
CHAPTER 5
Hardships of War
The Chechen capital Grozny, February 2000. Wars leave desolation and despair in their wake.
If a state is to remain a cohesive actor with some inuence and some sovereignty and exibility within the international arena, it must at all costs use foreign policy to serve its core or vital interests. No matter what a states central belief system or ideological persuasionfrom Irans and Pakistans Islamic beliefs to Indias adherence to Hinduism and Israels Judaismeach must attend to these three core interests if it is going to survive in the competitive international political system. To determine what exact policy will best serve a countrys core or national or vital interest can be difcult. Territorial security is a good case in point. The Bush administration decided to go to war against Iraq, rst, to protect American territory against the threat of an attack by Iraq using weapons of mass destruction which Iraq allegedly possessed. When it turned out Iraq did not possess such weapons, the justication for war and occupation switched to build democracy and make democratic Iraq a model for the Middle East. The more democracies the better, the theory went, because according to democratic peace theory (see chapter 2) democracies do not make war against each other. The war and occupation policies, however, rather than protecting American territory may have made it more insecure. Money and attention were diverted from Homeland Security, and the U.S. Army became weaker due to extended and repeated tours of service. Americas soft power image abroad suffered. We see this pursuit of core national interests in the U.S.led attack on Afghanistans Taliban forces, which protected bin Laden and al Qaeda insurgents, after the events of 9/11. The Taliban and al Qaeda represented an obvious security threat that had to be met. Core security interests equally were at stake in Israels military assaults on Palestinians as a consequence of Palestinian suicide bombings inside Israel since 2002. Saudi Arabias crackdown on radical Islamic insurgents in that country during 2004 underscores the royal familys focus on a rising national security threat. When you think about the international political system, keep in mind the key points you learned in earlier chapters. States operate in a global arena that has no world government to regulate interstate relations, no legal authority higher than

the sovereign state actors, no world executive to implement decisions, no world legislature or international legal system with teeth, and no world military to enforce peace within the system. We do have UN peacekeeping forces and the NATO military forces to try to deal with regional conicts. But we do not have a global military organization capable of enforcing broad collective security, defending against international terrorists, or enforcing international law. When the International Court of Justice (IJC) in July 2004 declared Israels over 400-mile security barrier in the West Bank illegal and urged its removal from inside the occupied territories, Israel stated that it simply would not abide by the ruling. You can see that states, NGOs, and individual actors operate within what might be termed a primitive political systemnot completely anarchic, but still primitive compared to life within most states, which have common internal belief systems, legal order, and power to enforce the law.
137
Middle-range Objectives
States also pursue a number of mid-range goals as a way of making certain their vital interests remain primary. For example, states may enhance their prestige and viability in the international system by engaging in foreign aid programs and cultural exchanges, by sponsoring trade shows and conferences of heads of states, by exploring outer space, or by exchanging diplomatic delegations. They engage in such activities while seeking to support primary core interests. Here are specic illustrations: z China hosted its expensive fty-fth Anniversary of the Communist Revolution in October 2004, an event designed to portray Chinas image as a unied political state with a dynamic economic model of developmentone way to project the perception of power. z Russia continued to sponsor its outer space program after the Soviet Union collapsed and despite limited resources.
Opening Ceremony of the 2004 Olympic Games in Greece
In hosting the Olympic Games, Greece attained a middle-range foreign-policy objective.
138
CHAPTER 5
z President Vladimir V. Putin hosted a huge celebration in Moscows Red Square on May 9, 2005, to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany. Invited guests included U.S. President Bush and dozens of other leaders who watched a decked-out military parade replete with Soviet symbols and Russian pride. z Greece hosted the 2004 Summer Olympic Games to promote its middle-range objectives.
Long-range Goals
As part of their long-range interests, many countries promote their belief systems and overarching basic values abroad. You can see this agenda at work throughout history and certainly during the Cold War years following World War II. The Cold War, roughly 19471991 (when the Soviet Union collapsed) was a period of open rivalry without direct ghting (hence Cold War) between two groups of states practicing different ideologies and political systems. The Soviet Union led one group of states, frequently referred to as the Eastern bloc. Mainland China belonged to this group for a period of time before it began to develop its own tensions with the Soviet Union. The United States and its allies were on the other side, often referred to as the Western bloc. During the Cold War the former Soviet Union, for example, sought to promote Marxist-Leninism, with its unique blend of economic determinism, permanent class conict, and basic antagonism between communism and capitalism. Toward that end, it sought to promote socialism and socialist-oriented allies in the developing countries, like Cuba under Fidel Castro, and to undermine the United States wherever and whenever possible. z Cold War Politics: The United States, for its part, operates on a different belief system or worldview, one that is centered in a liberal, democratic orientation. This set of perceptions was played out time and again during the Cold War and has emerged strongly in the postCold War period. During the Cold War, the main focus of U.S. policy and its long-range objective was based on containment, or curtailing the expansion and spread of communism. Prolonged competition and confrontation, with brief periods of cooperation and conciliation, characterized Soviet-American relations during the Cold War. In a mirror image of each side, American domestic and foreign policy reected virulent anticommunism, while deep suspicion of the West typied the Soviet leadership. The Soviets feared capitalist encirclement, and the Americans feared an international communist conspiracy. Each side, in mirror image, has seen the other as intransigent and aggressive. Much of U.S. policy since the collapse of the Soviet Union has focused on the long-term promotion of democratic governments and market economies. We see this objective in U.S. policy toward Russia, Eastern Europe, China, and Bosnia, underscored by the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords, which aimed to bring democratic government to war-torn Bosnia. z Promoting Islamic Principles: Long-term objectives are at work in Irans promotion of Islamic principles abroad, especially under Ayatollah Khomeini in the 1980s and during Afghanistans Taliban regime in the 1990s. Al Qaeda seems bent on dramatically altering U.S. and Western policies toward the Islamic world, although not necessarily upon destroying the United States or its freedoms and liberties, and upon expanding Muslim beliefs and support for a traditional Islamic form of government.2
Containment A U.S. foreign policy pursued during the Cold War that aimed at preventing the Soviet Union from expanding into Western Europe, Asia, and other regions of the Third World. President Harry S Truman announced it in 1947.

Osama Bin Laden and his supporters appear determined to generate worldwide Muslim identity and loyalty in support of militant action orchestrated to remove U.S. and Western forces from Saudi Arabia; Iraq, Afghanistan, and other Muslim territories; to end U.S. aid to Israel and ultimately eliminate that state; and to end U.S. protection of Muslim regimes that repress other Muslims in Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere.3 Because the United States supports governments like those of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, al Qaeda sees the United States as the main obstacle to its goals. The Wahhabi form of fundamentalist Islam sponsored by Saudi Arabia and mirrored in the teaching in Pakistans madrassas (traditional Islamic schools) and in bin Ladens statements ironically is supportive of this long-term objective (see this chapters case study), even though the United States has longstanding interdependent ties with Saudi Arabia.
139
A Focus on Key Issues Associated with Goals

Each core, middle-range, and long-range goal is tied to a range of issues associated with what scholars and policymakers term a countrys national interests. This term typically refers to a countrys (1) territorial security, (2) economic vitality, and (3) political sovereignty. Leaders must keep these goals foremost in mind in orchestrating their foreign policies. The challenge is to decide exactly what policies to pursue in order to protect the homelands territory, build its economy, and guarantee its political cohesiveness and strength. To illustrate this point, assume that policymakers are sitting around a conference table discussing how to defend their country. Defense, of course, is a vital aspect of territorial security. How will they be certain they have accurate intelligencea big problem in the U.S. decision to go to war in Iraq? What will they do to protect the countrys infrastructure (ports, airports, hydroelectric system, nancial buildings)? Which weapons systems will they fund? How will they use their troops? Economic vitality is another goal that must be promoted by specic policies. How much control should a government exert over the countrys economy? The range is wide, from Chinas market socialism to the market capitalism of the United States. Should a country join in a common market or free trade organization, like NAFTA or the European Union, or should it remain aloof from such arrangements? Norway and Switzerland have remained independent of the EU, and North Korea has pursued a unique brand of independent economic foreign policy. How much should the country spend on social overhead capital (investments in elements of the economy that enhance the production of goods and services, such as roads, railways, sewerage, electricity, and education)? How much national spending should go to education, communications, and transportation, and highways and bridges? What makes the concept of vital national interests so complex is the fact that policymakers around the world frequently nd it difcult to determine the specic policies that will support their agreed-upon interests. The U.S. and British decision to go to war against Iraq was not widely supported. France, Germany, Russia, China, and most other countries across the globe did not support that decision. Inside America the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives voted for the war, but twenty-three members of the Senate and 133 members of the House voted against the Iraq War Resolution in October 2002. Indeed, in the buildup to this warto rid Iraq of its alleged WMDsthe State and Defense departments differed strongly over what constituted the best course to follow.
National interests The principal priorities pursued by states in the international arena. Territorial security, political independence, and economic vitality are a states key national interests. To determine national interests in precise policy measures, however, can be difcult.
140
CHAPTER 5
Intermestic Issues that affect both foreign and domestic policy, such as international trade.
Meanwhile, on economic policy, U.S. labor organizations have opposed strongly the accepted policy of allowing offshore tax shelters for American businesses as well as the whole range of outsourcing that has become widely publicized in recent years. Similar patterns are found inside many states, where internal foreign-policy differences can be profoundas, for example, inside China, France, Germany, Israel, and Russia. In todays globalized and interdependent world, dening the best way to protect a countrys national interests and determining what issues to pursue have become exceedingly complex and difcult. The Soviet Union, for example, assumed that it was pursuing its national interests (and communism) in the most effective way possible by engaging in a weapons race with the United States. That quest, in the end, undermined its economy and environment drastically, as the world discovered in the 1990s after the Soviet Union collapsed. Keep in mind that the task of ensuring core interests affects a states internal or domestic activities as well as its external ones. Thus, as we have seen, foreign and domestic interests are in many ways interconnected. Examples of this intermestic phenomenon (international-domestic connection) include foreign policies in the arenas of international trade, defense spending, and the environmentall of which affect the job market, personal incomes of individuals who live in the home state, and quality of life in terms of air and water purity. Remember that the line between foreign and domestic concerns is often blurred.
Test Prepper 5.1

_____ 1. States are not limited to coercive or hard power methods for translating power into policy. _____ 2. The two kinds of diplomacy include defensive and offensive. _____ 3. As a result of improved technology, new diplomacy is much more effective at maintaining secrecy so the objectives of foreign policy are met. _____ 4. Territorial security, economic strength, and political independence are examples of longrange objectives in foreign policy. _____ 5. Dening a countrys core national interests is a fairly straightforward task.
_____ 6. Which of the following is a viable tool for translating power into policy: a. Use of information programs/propaganda b. Espionage c. Economic blockades d. Humanitarian aid e. All of the above _____ 7. Which of the following activities would be directly related to the pursuit of core national interests? a. The U.S.led attack on Afghanistans Taliban forces b. The French sinking of the Rainbow Warrior vessel c. Participation in a United Nations Commission on refugees d. Greece hosting the Olympic Games e. All of the above
c HOw IS FOREIGN POLIcY FORMULATED?
141
How Is Foreign Policy Formulated?

2 Understand what factors at each level of analysis affect the formulation of foreign policy and identify the various perspectives used to explain foreign-policy decision making.
Many factors inuence a states foreign policy; its self-image (history, beliefs, and values), the availability of natural resources, and geographic location (see chapters 4 and 8) are three examples. Historically, the self-image of the United States has been composed of a sense of moralism and pragmatism. Russias historic self-image has focused on conict between its Westernizers (who thought Russia should adopt European practices) and its Slavophiles (who rejected Western thought in favor of Slavic culture), the drive for territorial expansion, and emphasis on great-power status. While national self-images certainly change with time, we still can see elements of these historical self-images operating in foreign policy. The strong moral tradition of the United States is evident in its approach to Saddam Husseins Iraq leading up to the 2003 war. Russias leaders demonstrate the old conict between Westernizers and Slavophiles in their attitudes toward NATO expansion. Asian countries like China, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan have cultures that value hard worka major asset when it comes to economic production. The type of power resource possessed by a country, IGO, NGO, or individual actor is another crucial issue in foreign policy. Saudi Arabia has oil, and this fact deeply affects how Saudi Arabia can translate available power into policy. Argentina and Canada have food to export. France has nuclear-powered elec tricity to export. These different exports earn hard currency to help support core economic interests. In exploring the many factors that inuence foreign policy, with their multiple centralizing and decentralizing inuence, we will: z Examine the three levels where policy is made: the global, state, and individual levels. z Look more closely at the dynamics of foreign policieshow they spring from human beliefs and are tied to concepts like nationalism and religion. z Touch on the need to coordinate foreign-policy objectives and look at bureaucratic struggles in the formulation of foreign policy.
International Systemlevel, State-level, and Individual-level Factors

As you learned in chapter 3, a useful frame of reference for analyzing the complex world of international relations involves ve levels: the international system, regional, state, substate and individual. We will focus here on the international system, state, and individual levels. Lets begin at the international system level.
International Systemlevel Factors

Many key forces operate at the international system level. One important factor is the international distribution of power. Which countries are the big powers? How is power shifting within the system? Here we need to remember our discussion of power in chapter 4. In the rst decade of the twenty-rst century, for example, we
142
CHAPTER 5
Globalization The process of becoming worldwide in scope. When we speak of the globalization of industry, we refer to the process of industries going worldwide in scope, the internationalization of industry. The effects or consequences of globalization include the reduction of regional differences in lifestyle and the loss of distinctive regional identities.
see the United States as a dominant player in military and economic terms. Russia under the leadership of Vladimir Putin has been rebuilding and reasserting its power in world politics. The question of power distribution, use, and potential, then, are central aspects of the international system arena. Another major factor at work in the international system is the extensive worldwide impact of globalization that is, the growing links between people, communities, and economies around the world. Globalization has increased the interdependence of a country and the international or regional trade systemfor example, Mexicos membership in NAFTA or the participation of France and Italy in the European Union (EU). Now that it has joined the World Trade Organization (WTO), Chinas foreign economic policies will be affected by its rules. In short, countries that participate in regional trading groups must adapt their foreign policies to the dynamics of these organizations, just as membership in NATO shapes the foreign policies of member-countries. Another aspect of globalization is the Internet. A compelling example of this transformation in the global context of foreign policymaking is the websites associated with al Qaeda, where its essays, articles, and editorials may be found.4 Another example is the Middle East news media, Al Jazeera, which uses the Internet to broadcast major opinions, information, and attitudes coming out of the Middle East. Other factors at the international level that affect foreign policy include: z IGOs and NGOs: In 1995 the UN reported that around 29,000 NGOs were operating at the international level. By the year 2000, it was estimated that there were over 2 million NGOs in the United States alone. The most obvious highlevel IGO is the United Nations, a giant actor in world politics that makes foreign policy and certainly affects the foreign policies of other countries. z Worldwide climate change: The big question is how global warmingwith its mega-droughts, coastal ooding, devastating hurricanes, food scarcity, and many other types of ecological disasterswill threaten national security in countries around the world.
State-level Factors
State-level factors refer to those elements inherent to a given country. They include such items as its geographic location and natural resources, with attention to its neighbors as well as its size, shape, topography, amount of arable land for growing food, climate, and a host of other factors that affect its power base. Other statelevel factors include type of government (dictatorial or democratic), level of economic development (highly developed and rich, or underdeveloped and poor), military power, belief systems, and cultural underpinnings. Democratic governments, for example, make policy by means of a process that differs sharply from that of authoritarian-style governments. The former, like the United States, have a system that includes checks and balances, separation of powers, numerous actors, lobbyists, a free press, public opinion, and many other factors. Authoritarian systemslike those in China, Iraq under Saddam Hussein, Syria, and Zimbabweare more likely to make decisions based on input from a limited number of people and in the context of a controlled press. Saddam Hussein, a dictator, had more individual control over foreign policy than the U.S. president does. A states culture operates at the state level. Japans culture since World War II has reected a posture of pacicism in terms of military power. Japans rising nationalism, however, may foreshadow increased militarism in its future foreign

policies. The United States has a distinct moral element in its approach to dening its national interests. Iran has a proud Persian historic legacy. So to understand how a state denes its national interests, we need to examine its national culture or in some cases, its ideology as in the Soviet Unions communism during the Cold War or Chinas version of market socialism today.
143
Individual-level Factors
Individual-level factors include the role of political and government leaders, which is driven in part by their personalities, beliefs, and values. You can see this factor vividly when you consider the monumental role played by Adolf Hitler in leading Germany into World War II, Joseph Stalins policies of occupying Eastern Europe after World War IIpolicies resisted by U.S. President Harry Truman, resulting in the Cold War. A more recent example is Osama bin Ladens role in orchestrating al Qaedas infamous 9/11 attacks and the subsequent neoconservative ideological and religious beliefs of President George W. Bush in orchestrating the war on Iraq.
Beliefs Shape Foreign-policy Decisions: Ideology, Religion, and Nationalism

The predominant beliefs of states and individuals come in different forms that inuence foreign-policy decisions. Ideologies are a collection of beliefs shared by a group of people. They can be divided into different categories, such as political ideologiesideas about how to govern a countryand religious or philosophical ideologies regarding how people should make decisions. A case in point is Islamic socialism. A variety of socialisms are found in Africa. Christian Democratic ideology is a Latin American version. Marxism-Leninism in the Soviet Union and liberal democracy in the United States and the West converted the Soviet Union and the United States into natural enemies during the Cold War. The Bush administrations neoconservative ideology aptly illustrates how a set of beliefs shapes foreign policy. Religion is another belief system that impacts foreign policy. Religious beliefs like the radical Islamic ideas of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda have led to mortal combat with the United States and the Western world. Of interest to Middle East watchers, however, are the two versions of Shiite Islam vying for attention in Iran and Iraq. Whereas many of Irans Shiite Islamic leaders advocate an all-embracing system of clerical rule personied by Irans famous Ayatollah, the late Ruhollah Khomeini, other powerful Shiite clerics in Iraq propose a quieter brand of Islam, more secular in nature, and are less enthusiastic for an Islamic state.5 In Iraq not all Shiite clerics are of the same mind, and disagreements exist among them. Muqtada al-Sadr, is a young leader who disagreed with the older Shiite Ali alSistani, who had avoided direct involvement in politics. Nationalism and national identity affect how, and in what ways, a state denes foreign policy in pursuit of its vital interests. Nationalism (see chapter 9) refers to a peoples sense of connection through their shared culture, language, history, and political aspirations. Nationalism is the emotive force these shared values gen erate as state leaders pursue foreign policies crafted to protect their peoples aspirations, values, beliefs, and territory. (See chapter 9 for more detail.) National identity and nationalism have long been powerful in foreign policies and have become dramatically pronounced since the end of the Cold War. Chinese nationalism has been on the rise since the late twentieth century as its communism has been in declineand the same could be said for Vietnam. Powerful Serb, Bosnian, Slovene, Croat nationalism led to the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.
Audio Concept Ideology www.BetweenNations.org
Secular The state of being separate from organized religion.
Nationalism A strong emotional attachment to ones nation that can be expressed in a range of behaviors from peaceful to violent.
144
CHAPTER 5
Some Perspectives on Foreign-policy Decision Making

In trying to understand how states formulate their foreign policy, it helps to look at the decision-making processes that explain foreign policy from different perspectives. Different perspectives (rational, organizational, and individual) help explain why foreign policies are not easily coordinated, which is most notable in, but not exclusive to, democracies. Even in totalitarian governments such as Nazi Germany and the Stalinist former Soviet Union, several groups vied for power. Democracies, however, speak with more than one voice when it comes to making foreign policy. In the case of the United States, for example, the president is the chief diplomat and major player, but the Senate, House of Representatives, and other public and private groups have a say as well. The November 2006 United States midterm elections produced a turnover of the House of Representatives, the Senate, and a majority of governorships and state legislatures from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party. The election has led Democratic Congressional foes of the Republican president to clash bitterly over a U.S. timed troop withdrawal from Iraqand over House Speaker Pelosis visit to Syria in April 2007. Democracies have other difculties, too, in coordinating their foreign-policy agendas. One is the clash between the need for secrecy in some foreign-policy issues versus the publics right to accurate information. Other factors include: z z z z the power of the press public opinion lobbying by interest groups in democratic systems separation of powers that creates checks and balances in democracies.
By contrast, totalitarian leaders and dictatorships do pretty much what they want, without concern for the populations likes or dislikes. The point here is that a number of organizations and groups inuence foreign-policy decision making in most countries. z In democracies you have a states executive leaders, legislative leaders, defense industries and defense leaders, and a wide range of interest groups, plus the media and public opinion. z In Islamic countries, different religious groups vie for power, as in Iraq, with its Sunni and Shiite divisions. In Iran, the authoritarian Shiite clerics have been at odds with more secular-minded educated Iranian citizens. z Russias President Vladimir Putins harsh stiing of dissent and political power points to his increasingly strong authoritarian role in foreign-policy decision making. Anti-Kremlin rallies have led to dozens of protesters beaten and detained in 2007.
An International System Level Approach to Decision Making

Scholars have devised numerous models to analyze the decision-making process in foreign policy as discussed below. From among these, we look at four models, each of which gives us a different view of what happens in the foreignpolicymaking process.5 Foreign-policy Input-Output Model Figure 5.2 depicts the many actors, pressures, and forces shaping a foreign policy decision. Note their variety, like informal processes, situational factors, and information uncertainty.

FIGURE 5.2 Foreign-policy Input-Output Model
FEEDBACK INTERNATIONAL INPUTS Diplomacy Economics Information Military Operations Situational Factors Covert Operations Information Uncertainty
145
INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENT IGOs NGOs States
DECISION-MAKING ARENA Executive Leadership Formal Structure Informal Processes
SYSTEM OUTPUTS Decisions, Policies, Actions
DOMESTIC ENVIRONMENT Public Opinion News Media Interest Groups Law Makers
DOMESTIC INPUTS Resources Political Support Situational Factors Information Uncertainty
Source: David K. Hall, An Introduction to Policy Making and Implementation, The United States Naval War College, National Security Decision Making Department, Case Study, 19921993, p. 3. Used by permission.
The Rational-actor Perspective The rational-actor model focuses on the state as the key unit of analysisand inter-state relations as the setting for analysis. Figure 5.3 depicts this model. In this model, the state is viewed from the perspective of its leader, whom the model assumes is a rational (purposeful) decision maker. The leader makes foreign-policy choices calculated to achieve outcomes consistent with his or her states goals (for example, defending its territory). To achieve the states goals, the rational decision maker examines which alternative choice takes priority. The top choice will be the one that will maximize the benets and minimize the costs in achieving the countrys goal. In other words, the decision maker selects the option that has the highest payoff in terms of achieving the states goal. To summarize: people make the decisions for the statedecisions that have options, constraints, and informationso the rational-actor model takes a look at how a leader chooses among alternative courses of action. An example of where the rational-actor model has FIGURE 5.3 been used to understand Electronic Publishing Services Inc. foreign-policy decisions is the Rational-actor Model Missile Crisis, of October 1962. At that time PresDuncan, Cuban World Politics in the 21st Century, 3 e ident John F. Kennedy learned that the Soviet leader, DUNC.7322.0017 State A Nikita Khrushchev, had positioned nuclear missiles in Fig. 5.3 Cuba. The rational-actor model was used to generate 1st rational Proof answers 2nd Proof 3rd Proof Influencing to the following questions: Final 1. Why did the Soviet Union decide to place offensive missiles in Cuba? 2. Why did the United States respond to the missile deployment with a blockade? 3. Why did the Soviet Union withdraw the missiles?
State B
To do x
The state acts as if it were a unitary actor that rationally decided a policy on the basis of interests and outcomes.
Source: The United States Naval War College, National Security Decision-Making Department, Case Study, 19921993. Used by permission.
146
CHAPTER 5
The rational-actor model, then, is useful in trying to make sense out of complicated foreign-policy decisions, for instance, to help construct rational explanations as to why a countrys leader made certain decisions and to gure out how state A should react to state Bs behavior. The key assumption here is that people do act purposefully in ways that mirror their goalseven though they may not have sufcient information to make the most rational choices. Because humans are limited information processors, critics of this approach argue that: z A signicant weakness of this model is that it assumes a states leader makes foreign-policy decisions in a strictly logical, unemotional manner. z It fails to account for characteristics of the individuals who make these decisions on behalf of the state. Individuals have personalities, perceptions, emotions, beliefs, values, ideologies, selected information, and a host of other traits that affect their rational decision. z Decision makers may not evaluate a situation correctly, may be misinformed, lack adequate informationand may make choices that produce unintended consequences that undermine a states goals rather than advance them. The Organizational Perspective The organizational perspective of decision making (also known as the bureaucratic-politics model) emphasizes that large organizations view foreign-policy issues as opportunities for, or threats to, their organizations mission. This means that a large percentage of foreign-policy choices ow from the output of large organizations in pursuit of their organizational, not state, interests. Figure 5.4 depicts this perspective. Organizations have set ways of doing things, and they tend to focus on selected aspects of problems in terms of their own goals. Thus, foreign policy is the FIGURE 5.4 product of a power struggle between organizations. Organizational Model of Foreign-policy Decision Making In addition, organizations determine the information and options available to the top leaders, and State A these too ow from organizational interests. State B State Department Americas foreign-policy decision making relative Treasury Department to the Iraq War initiated in 2003 is rife with organizaDefense Department Policy decision To do x Congress tional in-ghting, turf battles, and conicts of organiLobbyists zational interests. The Defense Departmentunder the leadership of Donald Rumsfeld before his resigOrganizations competing inside State A lead to a policy decision nation in November 2006essentially ran the show that seeks to influence State B to do x with extraordinarily tight control. Former Secretary of Government is a collection of many organizations. State Colin Powell disagreed strongly with Donald Each organization responds to a foreign policy problem in terms of Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, both of the impact of the problem (threat/opportunity) on the organization. Organizations are concerned with avoiding uncertainty. whom were eager for war with Saddam Hussein An organization's policy decision is shaped by routine standard and disagreements between these parties continued operating procedures (SOPs), which limit its flexibility. after the war began and as it became increasingly A government's foreign policy actions may be viewed as outputs of large organizations employing standard operating procedures and unpopular.7 Rumsfeld, for his part, had a low regard programs. for the Department of Stateand for Condoleezza Organizations determine the information and options forwarded up Rice as National Security Adviser and as Secretary of to the top leaders, and they implement the policies decided by the top leaders. State (after November 2004 when she replaced Colin Powell). A growing animus developed between the Source: The United States Naval War College, National Security Decision-Making Department, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Case Study 19921993. Used by permission. Security Council (NSC) during the war. In essence,

effective coordination of wartime policies among the relevant U.S. organizations essentially broke down. The organizational model, as you can see, provides a far more complex and messier picture than does the rational-actor model. As for national decision making in the organizational management of the Iraq war, the coordinating of civilian and military efforts had become so complicated by 2007 that the White House sought to appoint a high-prole czar to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Individual Perspective Remember that states do not make decisions, people doas we saw in the rational-actor model. The individual perspective reminds us that peoplewherever they are in the decision-making processare subject to huge pressures. They must, for one thing, process gigantic quantities of often conicting information. In dealing with such pressures, individuals such as presidents and foreign-affairs leaders differ in style, perception, and psychological reactions. The human mind has structures for selecting, sorting, storing, recalling, and comparing information to ease decision making. In essence, the goal is simplicity, consistency, and stability when solving problems. When reality is muddled and uncertain, people push even harder for simplicity. For this reason cognitive psychology is used by some political scientists to understand better the human factor in foreign-policy decision making. Cognitive psychology looks at a persons internal mental processes such as problem solving and memory. U.S. presidents and foreign-policy leaders provide many examples of this process. James David Barber, a scholar of presidential personalities, has examined presidents in terms of style (habitual ways of performing political roles), worldview (politically relevant beliefs), and character, or the way the president orients himself toward lifenot for the moment, but enduringly.8 Barbers discussion of presidential personality types includes Active Positive and Active Negative. The essence of these two types is captured in the following display, which outlines two dimensions of presidential character: Active Positive Can-do peopleenergetic, accept responsibilities. Relatively high self-esteem. Emphasize rational mastery of their job. Self-respecting, happy, open to new ideas, and able to learn from mistakes. Best able to guide the country. Examples: Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Life seen as a hard struggle to achieve and hold power. Want to know if they are winning or losing, gaining or falling behind. They view their actions (if not the world) as being good or bad. They are gamblers, and their rigidity can plunge the nation into a tragedy. Examples: Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and George W. Bush.
147
Active Negative
While active-positive presidents, according to Barber, learn from their mistakes, this may not be so in every case. Some presidents, President George W. Bush, for example, may believe they have not made any mistakes to guide future learning. Note that recent research places George W. Bush in the Active Negative category.
148
CHAPTER 5
Foreign Policymaking in the International Arena

For more information see The View From: Mexico City, Mexico www.BetweenNations.org
Let us now take a look at foreign-policy decision making in the global arena. Latin America is a good place to begin. Here we see the unintended consequences of Americas focus on the war in Iraq with Latin America distinctly out of focus in American foreign-policy decision making. Some of the consequences include: z Loss of U.S. inuence in that region z Mistrust of the United States z Rejection of the U.S. posture in the world It came as no surprise that President Bushs trip to Latin America in March 2007 led thousands to express their disapproval of the visiting president by protesting in city streets. Mayan priests in Guatemala vowed to purify an archeological site of Bushs bad spirits after he left, and around two thousand protesters tried to storm the U.S. Embassy in Mexico. Latin Americas disenchantment with its northern neighbor stems from two driving forces. z First, President Bush has virtually ignored the region since the 9/11 attacks, instead electing to go to war in Iraq based on false premises. As Latin Americans see it, President Bush simply has not offered effective leadership in helping to improve the quality of life in Latin America since he came to ofceapart from trade and anti-narcotics policies. z Second, the two-decades-old U.S.sponsored drive to privatize state industries and lift trade barriers (neoliberalisms free market economics) has excluded vast numbers of the regions poor. Outside of sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America in the early twenty-rst century has the worlds most unequal distribution of wealth.
As a result of discontent with U.S. decision making and neoliberal economic choices, one Latin American decision maker after another has been elected on platforms dedicated to improving the lives of the lower classes. One in four Latin Americans live on less than two dollars a day, and crime and unemployment is running high.9 New Leftist presidents have come to powerin Argentina, Chile, and Brazil where social democrats occupy the presidency, and in Peru, Mexico, and Colombia where the Left did not win presidential races but proved to be nonetheless powerful forces. The ery anti-American Venezuelan leader, Hugo Cha vez, was reelected president in December 2006. Chavez called his election victory another defeat for the North American empire and has vowed to deepen his socialist revolution.10 He has close ties with Fidel Castros Cuba. He met Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, when Irans leader came to Latin America to court some of the leftist leaders of Latin American in his hope to gain allies in his ght against Washington. The objects of Ahmadinejads courtship include the leaders of Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia. Chavezs decision making lends itself to the indiHugo Chavez of Venezuela and Lula da Silva of Brazil vidual perspective model. They meet at the Latin American summit in Rio de Janeiro, A major state-level and regional-level issue facing the Brazil, November 2004. United States is illegal immigration from Mexico. Spawned

Ahmadinejad Embraces Latin America
149
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega wave to supporters in Managua. Ahmadinejad, on a January 2007 Latin American tour to round up anti-U.S. allies, promised closer ties to Nicaragua. Rest assured that we will improve our relations to the point of fulfilling every wish and thing that we desire. It is our will to walk hand in hand, Ahmadinejad said after meeting Ortega. Earlier, the Iranian president had been in Venezuela, where he signed business agreements with President Hugo Chavez, an outspoken critic of George W. Bush. Each proclaimed the other an ideological brother.
by deepening poverty, loss of land to giant agribusinesses proting from market economics and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), tens of thousands of Mexicos small farmers have been forced to sell their corn-growing land to the food giants. The food corporations have beneted from billions of dollars in subsidies that allow them to pump cheap corn into the Mexican market, where tortillas are a basic food substance. Poor Mexicans consequently have ooded illegally across the border in search of employment, while the United States government struggles with what to do with the estimated 12 million illegal Mexicans living in the United States. How the United States reacts to this state- and regional-level problem will be shaped not only by Americas top individual leaders, but also by U.S. organizations that have a stake in the decision, and by the political process. Then, there is Mexico. Decisions made by Mexicos leaders play a role in the evolving outcome, for example, whether or not Mexico can create more jobs to meet the challenge posed by thousands of unemployed or underemployed Mexicans. If not, the human tide across the border continues. Once inside the United States, having crossed the border illegally, Mexicans want amnesty (citizenship) and have taken to the streets in places like Los Angeles to demonstrate this desiresimilar to the street protests against President Bush in Latin America during his March 2007 trip. Demonstrations about immigration policy have occurred across the United States, and have made the issue a factor in the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign. Immigration Protests
Thousands of demonstrators gather in the streets of downtown Los Angeles to protest legislation that cracks down against illegal immigrants.
150
CHAPTER 5
In addition to Latin America we can see how foreign-policy decision making plays out in other parts of the world. z Japan: In the Far East, in Japans new Prime Minister, Yasuo Fukada (elected in September 2007 after the former Prime Minister, Abe Shinzo, resigned) must contend with a complicated multiparty system ridden with many factions and prone to corruption. To stay in power and lead Japan, he must address this problematic internal system, which has contributed to over ten years of economic stagnation. That kind of economy affects the rest of world by holding back global growth. Not so long ago, Japan was the engine of Far East economic growth that helped propel the global economy. z Middle East: Arab countries are non-democratic, with strong authoritarian rulersalbeit not without their own internal factions. Such forces have complicated democracy building in Iraq, to put it mildly, as in the civil war between Shiites and Sunnis, coupled with tribal and clan divisions. Two examples illustrate authoritarian rule as it will impact foreign policy. Egypt is dominated by President Hosni Mubarak, although he faces strong opposition from the Muslim Brotherhood. Saudi Arabias king rules by decree in accordance with Islamic law (Sharia), with the backing of senior princes and religious ofcials. The king acts as the ultimate source of judicial power. He is commander-inchief of the armed forces. He approves and amends international treaties and agreements and regulations by decree. There are no institutional checks on royal authority. As a result, the king has enormous power in foreign policy. z South and Southeast Asia: The links between domestic politics and foreign policyand the usefulness of the four-perspectives modelare clear too. Although Indonesia, with the worlds largest Muslim population, is experiencing a historic shift into democratic government, the countrys political system comprises many political parties, ethnic and religious factions, and strong, charismatic individual leaders at the local and regional levels. With much constant political inghting, Indonesias foreign policy will be subject to these internal domestic pressures as well as to those of the external environment. z Pakistans president General Pervez Musharraf leads a country notorious for its long record of military involvement in politics, religious political parties, and hard-to-control ethnic groups in its northern regionsa competitive domestic political setting, to say the least. Pakistan is also well known for harboring al Qaeda and Taliban members, who are even embedded in the security and military forces Musharraf overseesanother complicating political factor in his domestic and foreign decision making. Because Musharraf has been the target of al Qaeda attacks himself, and because Pakistan closely supports the U.S. war on terrorism in return for substantial economic and military aid, Musharraf must crack down on al Qaeda militants now and then, capturing and arresting them when he can. Pakistan is also a good illustration of how individuals inuence foreign policy. z Afghanistan is notorious for its multiple ethnic groups, tribes, clans, factions, and warlords. Today these groups have made drugs the dominant feature of Afghanistans economy, and the warlords have tightened their grip on power. They oversee 90 percent of the worlds opium production and supply 90 percent of the worlds heroin, connected to international cartels, crime, and large amounts of money.11 Some people have termed Afghanistans President Karzai

Afghan Warlord in Poppy Field
151
There has been a resurgence of chaotic conditions and opium production in Afghanistan.
the mayor of Kabul (Afghanistans capital) rather than the president of Afghanistan, over which he has far less control. All in all, then, using the concepts of foreign-policymaking discussed in this section is helpful in knowing what to look for in the settings that shape foreign policies across the globe.
Test Prepper 5.2

_____ 1. While different in many respects, authoritarian and democratic governments use a mostly similar process when developing foreign policy. _____ 2. For some countries, religion plays an active role in the formulation of foreign policy. _____ 3. The president of the United States provides the sole voice for American foreign policy. _____ 4. In most countries, a number of organizations and groups inuence foreign-policy decision making. _____ 5. One of the criticisms of the rational-actor model is that it views a state leader as capable of making foreign-policy decisions in a strictly logical way.
_____ 6. At what level of analysis do we focus when examining the role IGOs and NGOs play in inuencing the foreign policy of states? a. Individual b. Substate c. State d. Regional e. International _____ 7. Which of the following is NOT a difculty faced by democracies when coordinating foreignpolicy agendas? a. Clash between the need for secrecy and the publics right to accurate information b. Lobbying by interest groups c. The role played by an independent press d. Public opinion e. None of the above
152
CHAPTER 5
What Are the Foreign-policy Repercussions of 9/11?

3 Identify the different phases in the U.S. war on terror; understand the key components of the Bush Doctrine, and be aware of the criticisms of that approach.
The foreign-policy repercussions of 9/11 are dramatic. President George W. Bush declared war on terrorism and developed a new national security strategy that became a major decentralizing force in world politics and a source of friction between the United States and much of the international community. The war on terrorism ultimately led the United States and Great Britain to spearhead an attack on Iraq on the mistaken assumption that Saddam Hussein had both WMDs and close links to al Qaeda. Following the invasion and occupation of Iraq, much of the Arab and Muslim worldand much of the rest of the worlddistanced itself from these two countries. Several countries that initially joined the U.S., British, and other coalition forces in Iraq later pulled out when their citizens working in Iraq were kidnapped or killed by insurgents or when their homeland became the target of terrorist action. Spain is a case in point, as is the Philippines. We now turn to a closer look at the repercussions of 9/11.
Americas War on Terrorism

Americas war on terrorism, announced by President Bush following the 9/11 attacks on the United States, evolved through several phases. Much of the world initially sided with the United States as it directed military force at Afghanistans Taliban government, which had allowed Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda forces to train and plan the 9/11 attacks in Afghanistan. In the second phase of the America-led war on terrorism, the global alliance began to unravel as differences in strategy and tactics widened the distance between the United States and its allies. For example, the Europeans, as well as the Russians and the Chinese, differed sharply with the Americans, as did much of the Muslim Middle East, when the United States began to talk about attacking Iraq. The Muslim world was especially distressed over U.S. reluctance to intervene more directly in the Israeli-Palestinian conict and for its perceived pro-Israel bias. In the third phase of Americas war on terrorismas President Bush developed his perceptions of the axis of evil (North Korea, Iraq, and Iran), which he had introduced in his January 2002 State of the Union addresscracks between the United States and its previous allies opened still wider. By the end of the summer of 2002, as Congress returned from its recess, President Bushs more pronounced talk of attacking Iraq led to sharp splits between the United States and previous worldwide allies, although the UN did send weapons inspectors back to Iraq for a time. The fallout from 9/11 was now producing decentralization in world politics, largely because the Bush team seemed prepared to go to war against Iraq even without support from France, Germany, Russia, and China, key members of the UN Security Council (UNSC). While none of these countries doubted that Saddam Hussein was evil, they preferred to contain Iraq with more UN inspectors backed by UN peacekeeping forces rather than to initiate war. The United States and Great Britain argued that Iraq posed an immediate threat. Other countries of the UNSC did not appreciate the go-it-alone approach of the United Statesbasically a uni-
c WHAT ARE THE FOREIGN-POLIcY REPERcUSSIONS Of 9/11?

lateral approach to a world security issueeven though Great Britain and lesspowerful countries joined the U.S.led action. In the fourth phase, the Bush administration appeared to be moving toward more collective action in cooperation with UN Security Council members against Iraq. In September 2002, President Bush addressed the UN and challenged it to swiftly enforce its own resolutions against Iraq. The next month, the UNSC unanimously approved Resolution 1441, which imposed tough new arms inspections on Iraq and made clear it faced serious consequences if it did not cooperate. This phase ended in March 2003, however, when the United States and Great Britain realized they would not have UNSC backing to attack Iraq; in particular, France, Germany, and Russia wanted intensied UN inspections in Iraq instead. The United States and Great Britain then led the attack on and occupation of Iraq in March/April 2003against the opposition of China, France, Germany, and Russia, members of the UNSC. That rift between the United States and most of the international community continued to decentralize the worldup to, and after, the transfer of Iraq sovereignty to its new governing council in July 2004and as the country spun out of control into deepening civil war. Several members of the U.S.led coalition, including Spain and the Philippines, pulled out due to rising terrorist military actions in Iraq. As proposed elections approached in January 2005, Iraq remained in a high state of violent civil conict. Meanwhile, with the U.S. Defense Department shift of attention (and troops) to Iraq, the situation in Afghanistan deteriorated. A new phase began in May 2007 when the United States sent Secretary of State Rice to attend the international conference on Iraq, held in Iraq. With over fty countries gathered, Secretary Rice and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki urged the world to rescue Iraq from chaos and bankruptcy. In addition, the U.S. Secretary of State met with Syrias foreign minister, which was the rst such high level meeting between the two countries in several years.
153
The Bush Doctrine

Lets now turn to what has been called by scholars and policymakers the Bush Doctrinethe foreign-policy strategy pursued by the Bush administration in its pursuit of U.S. national security. The term originally referred to the policy expressed by President Bush after the 9/11 attacks: that the United States would make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them. The Bush administration applied this doctrine in its invasion of Afghanistan in early October 2001, once the Taliban government refused to hand over Osama bin Laden. Today the term generally refers to the broader set of policies announced by President Bush in his speech of June 1, 2002, to the graduating class of West Point and expressed in the ofcial National Security Strategy of the United States, published in September 2002. The key components of this doctrine express how the United States will: z Engage in a war against what it calls global terrorism conducted by terrorists or rogue states. z Exercise its right of self-defense and extend that right in order to authorize a preventive attack if and when the United States or its allies are threatened by terrorists or by rogue states engaged in producing weapons of mass destruction. z Exercise its right to pursue unilateral military action when acceptable multilateral solutions to security threats cannot be found.
www.BetweenNations.org Bush Doctrine President George W. Bushs foreign-policy agenda, as published in a document titled The National Security of the United States (September 2002). The doctrine emphasizes that the United States will take unilateral preventive action against any country that poses a threat to U.S. security interests, and it may take unilateral action when its interests are threatened.
154
CHAPTER 5
z Keep U.S. military strength beyond challengethat is, continue its status as the worlds sole military superpower. z Spread liberal democracy and freedom in all regions of the world and strive to build a balance of power that favors freedom. (While not explicitly stated, you can see the shadow of democratic peace theory at work here, namely that the assumption that the more democracies around the world the better.) Democracies, according to the theory, may go to war with non-democratic states, but they remain at peace with each other. (See chapter 2.) In a global system without world government or enforced international law, the United States simply has to exercise a unilateral preventive war posture, based on military strength beyond challenge, according to the Doctrine. It must look out for its own vital security interests with the use of hard power, whether or not the rest of the international community agrees. Yet in the nations sharp focus rst on Afghanistan and then on Iraq, a number of foreign-policy specialists were deeply concerned that throughout this Bush-Doctrine period, Iran and North Korea were moving ahead in their development of nuclear-weapons programs. These countries could prove a greater threat to the United States and other countries than Saddam Hussein had been, given the on-site, ongoing weapons inspections in Iraq just before the U.S. attack. Much of the rest of the world did not agree with the U.S. position. The doctrine of preventive war differed from the previous U.S. practice of the doctrine of containment, of deterrence, and of mutual assured destruction during the Cold War. As the U.S. war in Iraq continued after 2003, eventually morphing into a civil war, the Bush Doctrine produced increased criticism for its declaration of American hegemony, unilateralism, and the right to attack anywhere in the world when the United States decided alone that it was in its interests to do so. Behind the scenes two schools of thought had developed within the U.S. administration. ThenSecretary of State Powell and thenNational Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, plus U.S. Department of State specialists, argued that existing U.S. defense policies should continue. This meant keeping in place the diplomacy of seeking multilateral consensus with the international community for actions against common enemies and the containment of such enemies, as during the Cold War. Opposed to this view were Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and other inuential neoconservative defense policymakers, including Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. They argued for direct and unilateral action. Their views won the debate, as underscored in the key tenets of the Bush Doctrine.
Criticism of the Bush Doctrine

Critics of the Bush Doctrine, both at home and abroad, have been many and vocal. Among the sharper objections from a variety of sources are the following: z It disrupts the balance of power by advocating that the United States use its military force unilaterally and preventively without international support for military action. z The doctrines war on terrorism is too vague and imprecise in dening the nature of the enemy. The adversary is a worldwide radical Islamic insurgency comprising ideological Islamic militants, not an enemy called terrorism. Terrorism is a method of military strategy.
c WHAT ARE THE FOREIGN-POLIcY REPERcUSSIONS Of 9/11?

z The Bush Doctrine violates accepted (centralizing) international obligations and treaties, with actions such as pulling out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and advocating unilateral action and preventive military attacks without gaining acceptance in the international community. z Undermines the UNa policy that seems strange, given that the United States was one of the key countries pushing for its establishment after World War II. z The doctrine justies the U.S. attack and occupation of Iraq, which has dramatically alienated Muslims across the globe and decentralized the world. It has produced a foreign policy, bitterly resented by radical Islamic groups, that is generating rising hostility toward the United States and willing followers of radical Islam and recruits for al Qaeda ideology. It is not Americas core values and belief system that al Qaeda followers resent but rather U.S. foreign policies in the Middle East. z It has failed to unite the international community to ght radical Islamic militants and failed as well to recognize the role of soft power in world politics. z By sanctioning a war against terrorism and not playing a more balanced role in the Palestinian-Israeli conict, it has contributed to escalating conict in that part of the world, notably by legitimizing Israels war against Palestinian terrorists. As a consequence, the doctrine has created even deeper antiU.S. sentiment in the Muslim world. By 2007 the United States found itself virtually alone in a civil war in Iraq, ghting groups with widely different goals, whereas the original coalition in Iraq numbered forty-vealbeit deeply unpopular amongst the citizens of the coalition members. Since the announcement of the Bush Doctrine in 2002 and invasion of Iraq in 2003, the U.S. government has become increasingly alienated from many foreign-policy specialists in the United States and from much of the world. In October 2004, over 725 foreign-affairs specialists in the United States and allied countries signed an open letter opposing the Bush administrations foreign policy and calling for an urgent change in course.12 The Pew Global Attitudes Project (AGAP) has tracked declining world support for Washingtons global war on terror and its occupation of Iraq. Consider the following observation. In 1958 authors William Lederer and Eugene Burdick published a book entitled The Ugly American. It became a best-selling ctional account of American arrogance and blundering, corrupt, and incompetent behaviors of Americans in Southeast Asia. It was a devastating portrait of how America was losing the struggle with communism in that part of the world. The book led President Dwight Dwight Eisenhower to study and reform U.S. aid programs in the region. Some would argue that the Ugly American is now the view held by many of Americas former supporters around the world.13 Figure 5.5 illustrates the percentage of those polled in countries around FIGURE 5.5 Declining U.S. Esteem Abroad: 2007
Mexico Brazil Britain France Germany Greece Turkey Lebanon Egypt Russia China South Korea Indonesia Australia 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 Declining U.S. Esteem Abroad, 2007
155
90
Source: Time Magazine, March 26, 2007. Bars represent percentage of population polled in specic countries that believe the United States is mainly a negative inuence in the world. Used by permission.
Duncan: World Politics in the 21st Century, 3e 1036905_la_05_05 www.BetweenNations.org 11/1/07
156
CHAPTER 5
the globe that believe the United States is mainly a negative inuence globally. Overall, the least admired countries were Russia (40 percent), North Korea (48 percent), the United States (51 percent), Iran (54 percent), and Israel (56 percent). The most admired countries were: Canada, Japan, France, Britain, and China. Still, an interesting point about this table is that none of the countries listed like the United States less than fty percent.
Test Prepper 5.3

_____ 1. Initially the broader international community supported the United States in its war against terror (when the United States was focused on Afghanistan). _____ 2. While not supported by many countries, the March 2003 invasion of Iraq was supported by a majority of UN Security Council members. _____ 3. The Bush Doctrine does not call for the United States to remain the worlds sole military superpower. _____ 4. The Bush Doctrine differed from previous U.S. policies of containment and deterrence through its advocacy of preventive war.
_____ 5. Which of the following is a criticism of the Bush Doctrine? a. The doctrines war on terrorism is too vague when dening the nature of the enemy. b. It violates accepted international treaties such as the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. c. It undermines the authority of the United Nations. d. It failed to unite the international community against the threat posed by radical Islamic militants. e. All of the above
Case Study
The U.S.Saudi Arabian Relationship
Join the Debate Globalization Demands a New Foreign-policy Approach for the Sovereign State
OVERVIEW
The exponential expansion of globalization has raised a major debate in world politics. The big question is whether or notand if so, to what extentglobalization has rendered obsolete traditional foreign policies that sovereign states have pursued over the past three centuries. As we know, states have long been the source of physical security, economic vitality, and political
JOIN THE DEBATE
157
independence for their citizens. Consequently, a states foreign policy traditionally has focused on how to pursue its vital national interests: physical security, economic strength, and political security on the stage of world politics. Over time, however, globalization has brought porous borders and interdependence, thus facilitating the exchange of goods, ideas, and information, financial transactions, and institutions to connect people in a global human community. Does this mean that globalization is displacing the older realism (power politics) and idealism (international legal norms to govern state behavior)as well as traditional balance-of-power and collective security mechanismsthat have guided international relations over the past centuries?
non-state actors. New power realities created by globalization include the information-technology revolution, interdependence, and porous borders, through which multiple forms of soft power ow. The new issues on national and international agendas cannot be solved by one country alone.2 z New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman writes that the inexorable integration of markets, nationstates, and technologies to a degree never witnessed beforein a way that is enabling individuals, corporations and states to reach around the world faster, deeper and cheaper than ever before simply means that we must think of foreign policies with new techniques and agendas.3 In his more recent book, The World Is Flat, Friedman argues that the economic playing eld has been leveled by the global ber-optic network into which some 3 billion people are rushingfrom China, India, the former Soviet Union, and other countries whose economies have thrown off socialism.4 These countries are recipients of U.S. outsourcing, while U.S. leaders, according to Friedman, are letting the countrys scientic and engineering base erode. z Globalization has produced wars that states are losing because they have not adopted new strategies.5 The stateless, decentralized networks that cannot be fought by traditional foreign-policy techniques are terrorism, drugs, arms trafcking, intellectual property misuse, alien smuggling, and money laundering. Many would argue that the United States is losing its war on terrorism and that, in fact, attacking and occupying Iraq has increased the number of terrorists now opposed to the United States. z The attacks of 9/11 highlight the point that the globalized world in which we live is one where traditional foreign policy and powerful defense systems (including long-range missiles and nuclear weapons) may not protect American citizens.
THE PRo SIDE

Yes, globalization clearly has spawned a new inter national system. Porous borders and interdependence have undermined the capability of states to pursue security, economic growth, and political sovereignty through traditional uses of power, state-to-state relations, and balance-of-power or collective mechanisms. Specic instances of the limitations of traditional power include: 1. Failures of military force, as demonstrated in the pitfalls of the U.S. rush to war in Iraq. 2. Economic interdependence, as illustrated when a downturn in a single states economy affects the whole system. The Southeast Asian and Latin American debt crises in the 1990s led to a global economic downturn. In addition, consider the following facts: z Globalization has placed states in a strategic straitjacket, and national interests must be redened. Globalized partners have a stake in maintaining their interdependent operations. The use of force to gain strategic advantage or to resolve disputes among globalizing states is irrationaland unlikely. War between the great powers (United States, West European states, China, India, and Japan) is almost unthinkable. Each operates with a strategic straitjacket imposed by globalization.1 z As Joseph Nye argues, the pawns on the world politics chessboard present the real challenges, such as
THE CoN SIDE

While globalization may have created new realities within the international system, nation-states and their governments have not disappeared. They remain key players on the international landscapeand most certainly big-country realism and power politics in
158
CHAPTER 5
their foreign policies still make a difference. Consider the following: z Rivalries and security concerns between great and small states still operate in world politics. The United States invaded Iraq in 2003. China is at odds with Taiwan, North Korea with South Korea, and India with Pakistan. States still seek conventional weapons as well as those of mass destruction; the traditional state of war still persists.6 z If wars between states have become less common, wars within states (civil wars) have been distinctly on the rise. Outside states have found it necessary to intervene through NATO or under UN auspices to prevent such civil wars from spreading regionally. Think of former Yugoslavia during the early 1990s. z Globalization has not created an international society of global citizens, and IGOs frequently have little independence. Globalization has not seriously challenged the profoundly national nature of citizenship. When push comes to shove, national identity and national culture will trump global or international identity. z Some states remain far more powerful than others, and their foreign policies are more dominant than others. Traditional U.S. foreign policyand the power that backs itis the prime player in this scheme.
z The major national security threat to the Western states today is terrorism. The primary responsibility of a states government is to protect its people.
QUEstIoNs
1. Which side of the issue strikes you as more compelling? 2. Do you see elements of truth on both sides, leaving you somewhere between the two opposing sides of the debate?
NotEs
1. This view is derived from Banning Garrett, YaleGlobal, February 2004, http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/ display.article?id=3311. 2. See Joseph S. Nye, American Power and the 2004 Campaign. Project Syndicate, March 2004 Project Syndicate is an international association of 209 newspapers. 3. Thomas L. Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1999), 78. 4. Thomas L. Friedman, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2005). 5. Moiss Nam, Five Wars of Globalization, Foreign Policy (January/February 2003): 2937. 6. Stanley Hoffmann, Clash of Globalization, Foreign Affairs (July/August 2002): 104115.

1 2 3 how foreign 4 5 6 7 8 9 Understand policy translates power into outcomes, and identify the associated core, middle-range, and long-term goals that accompany it. The foreign policy of states involves three elements: 10
- an approach to translating hard or soft power (see chapter 4) into policies to pursue core, middle-, and long-range goals - a focus on key issues associated with the goals pursued - the individuals and groups inside the state (or IGO or NGO) that play a major role in determining foreign policies
Foreign policy is the course of action pursued abroad mainly by a government but also by a nongovernmental organization or individual in quest of some goal. Foreign policy is put into play by the worlds states and their governments, IGOs, and NGOs, including militant organizations like al Qaeda. Each tries to employ some form of power and inuencefrom hard to soft powerto achieve its desired objectives.
Power refers to the objective and subjective capabilities discussed in chapter 4, and policy refers to how power gets translated into policies, such as using hard- or softpower capabilities.
159
The highest foreign-policy priority goes to core interests (also known as national interests): territorial security, economic vitality, and protection of the political system. Each goal can be achieved by a number of policies. Territorial security, for example, can be achieved via weapon use or acquisition, disarmament, arms control, or alliances. Problems arise in the course of choosing 1 2 among policy options. 1 2 3 4 what factors 5 6 each level 7 of analysis 8 9 10 Understand at affect the formulation of foreign policy and identify the various perspectives used to explain foreign-policy decision making.
- The individual dimension, in which the focus is peoplethe unique beliefs, emotions, values, and cognitive processes (how they sift through information and reach conclusions) that each brings to the decisionmaking table.
4 6 phases 7 in the8U.S. war 9 on terror; 10 Identify the5different understand the key components of the Bush Doctrine, and be aware of the criticisms of that approach.
Global-level factors are those broad international inuences on foreign policies (like the UN, the World Bank, globalization, and the Internet) State-level factors are those inherent to the country itself, such as its geographic location and belief system and core values Individual-level factors are the personality and perceptions of the leader of a countryor nongovernmental leaders who make a big difference in world politics. Key perspectives on how foreign-policy decisions are made:
- The systems approach depicts the many actors, pressures, and forces simultaneously operating to shape a states foreign-policy decision. - The rational dimension or aspect of foreign policy, which focuses on the state as a unitary actor, with no internal forces shaping its decisions. - The organizational dimension, which focuses on the important role of organizations in shaping policy outcomes.
The foreign-policy repercussions of 9/11 are dramatic. The United States declared war on terrorism and developed a new national security strategy (the Bush Doctrine) that became a major decentralizing force in world politics and source of friction between the United States and much of the international community. The war on terrorism ultimately led the United States and Great Britain to spearhead an attack against Iraq under the mistaken assumption that Saddam Hussein had both WMDs and close links to al Qaeda. The attack on and occupation of Iraq has led to rising numbers of al Qaeda followers and the isolation of the United States and Great Britain from much of the rest of the world, including some of their traditional greatpower allies within the UN Security Council and the international community (France, Germany, and Russia). The 9/11 attacks and other expressions of hatred directed at the United States stem not so much from objection to U.S. core values and beliefs but rather its policies in the Middle East, which have alienated many Muslims. The Bush Doctrine, with its emphasis on preemptive strikes, potential use of nuclear weapons, and unilateral foreign-policy implications, has decentralized world politics dramatically.

Intergovernmental Actors
Independent Actor or Tool of the State?
Learning Objectives
2 1
Dene intergovernmental organization, understanding how scope and purpose differentiate organizations from one another.
Identify the factors that lead states to join intergovernmental organizations as well as the reasons why a state might not join an IGO.
Understand how the UN attempts to manage security, economic, and social issues in world politics as well as issues with the management of the UN itself.
160
Nothing is possible without men; nothing is lasting without institutions.

Jean Monnet
Chapter Outline
What Are Intergovernmental

Organizations?
The Structure and Functions of International Organizations
What Is the United Nations, and

How Does It Work?
The Historical Road to the United Nations Managing Global Peace through the Security Council Managing Global Economic and Social Issues Managing the UNs Affairs Assessing the UNs Effectiveness
Why Do Countries Join
Intergovernmental Organizations?
The Benets of IO Membership Supranationality and Reciprocity among Member-states Rejecting IGO Membership
What Is the European Union, and

How Does It Work?
The Origins of the European Union The Rationale for European Cooperation The Main European Union Institutions How Voting Matters in the EU and in IGOs in General The Future of the European Union
Be able to identify and explain the functions of the key institutions that make up the European Union and discuss its prospects for the future.
The Power and Limits of International Organizations
ealism teaches us that the world is dominated by states, that no entity in the world is more powerful than a state, and that states rarely give up sovereignty to international organizations. In short, for realists and their contemporaries, the most important unit of analysis in world politics is the state. As we demonstrated in the rst ve chapters of the book, to a large extent, the realists are correct. A quick glance around the world, however, reveals a diverse array of non-state actors that have transformed international affairs. Most members of international organizations would probably take issue with the realist perspective of the world. Many believe the idealist or ecological paradigms better explain how the world does work and should work. n
162
Key Terms
CHAPTER 6
INTERGOVERNMENTAL AcTORS
intergovernmental organization (IGO) p. 162 collective security p. 167 supranational organizations p. 168 reciprocity p. 169 League of Nations p. 171 Security Council p. 171 unanimity voting p. 172 majority voting p. 172 weighted voting p. 172 peacekeeping p. 172 General Assembly p. 177 the North p. 177 the South p. 177 qualied majority voting (QMV) p. 191
What Are Intergovernmental Organizations?

1 Dene intergovernmental organization, understanding how scope and purpose differentiate organizations from one another.
In general, we can divide international organizations (IOs) into two groups. One group consists of states; these are called international intergovernmental organizations, or IGOs. Some of the more important ones include the: z United Nations (UN) z European Union (EU) z North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) z Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) z Organization of American States (OAS) Membership in the second group of IOs consists of individuals or groups from different countries; these are known as international nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs. Examples of international organizations whose members are individuals or groups, not states include: z Greenpeace z Amnesty International z International businesses z International terrorist groups For a comparison of IGO and NGO membership, consider the following example. As an individual interested in human rights around the world, you can join an NGO like Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch. However, as an individual, you cannot join the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) because only states can be members of this IGO.
Intergovernmental organization (IGO) An international grouping of states.
The Structure and Functions of International Organizations

Although IGOs and NGOs differ in some ways, they do share many traits, including the following:1 z Voluntary membership z A basic instrument (or charter) stating goals, structure, and method of operation z A representative consultative conference system z A permanent secretariat to carry on administrative, research, and information functions z Procedures based on consent and recommendation rather than compulsion or force International organizations have contributed to, or have been produced by, both the centralizing and decentralizing forces in world politics. The weakening of
c WHAT ARE INTERGOVERNMENTAL ORGANiZATiONS?

centralized state power, for example, has encouraged decentralization around the world, which in turn has made it possible for many NGOs to thrive. At the same time, the centralizing forces at work around the world over the past decade or more have encouraged greater cooperation among countries, and this has facilitated the rise of many IGOs. The EU is one concrete manifestation of this centralizing tendency: it now consists of twenty-seven countries. Keep in mind, though, that the centralizing tendency has limits. The EU countries, for example, did not act as a unied organization when it came to the Iraq War. Some states supported the U.S.led war, while others were vehemently opposed to it. The International Telegraph Union, started in 1865, was one of the rst modern IGOs, but the number of international organizationsboth IGOs and NGOs grew enormously in the twentieth century. In 1909, there were about thirty-seven IGOs and 176 NGOs. Since World War II, the number of IOs has ballooned, and today there are hundreds of IGOs and tens of thousands of international NGOs. Intergovernmental organizations undertake extremely varied tasks. For example, some IGOs are global in scope. The UN, for instance, is involved in many places around the world, and its membership includes most of the worlds countries. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is an example of a regional IGO; it comprises the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Another feature that varies among IGOs is that some have many purposes, such as the EU, while others are designed for a specialized, limited purpose, such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and OPEC. In short, IGOs can be multipurpose or singleissue organizations, and global or regional in scope. NAFTA, for example, is a regional intergovernmental organization that seeks to facilitate the free ow of goods and investment across the borders of the three member-states. Canada, the United States, and Mexico have already eliminated or plan to eliminate hundreds of barriers to trade (including tariffs and quotas) as part of the agreement. Each country expects to gain from membership in NAFTA, although not necessarily in the same way. As you will see with the European Union, NAFTA has a set of institutions and regulatory responsibilities. NAFTA also has a Commission for Environmental Cooperation that grants individuals the right to bring cases against corporations and countries that fail to keep the environmental regulations of the treaty. In addition, NAFTA has established many rules that apply to all members. The NAFTA countries, for example, have agreed to bring their commercial standards and environmental legislation into harmony so that, for example, a truck licensed in Mexico and traveling from Mexico to Canada will meet safety and emissions standards in all three countries. NAFTA and most other regional trading arrangements around the world differ in many ways from the European Union. z Common Policies: Missing from NAFTA, but present in the EU, are common policies, such as agriculture policy, monetary policy, social policy, and environmental policy. In terms of regional policy, for example, the EU spends about $35 billion a year for payments to its poorer regions.2 No such mechanism exists in NAFTA, although some NAFTA critics believe that regional and social policies would improve NAFTA enormously.3 z Elected Assembly: Another difference between NAFTA and the EU is that NAFTA has no elected assembly.
163
164
CHAPTER 6
z Judiciary: The EUs judicial branch has considerable inuence in the affairs of member-states; NAFTA does not have its own judicial branch per se. More is said about NAFTA and trade blocs in chapter 12. One of the interesting recent developments related to regional IGOs is the formation in the summer of 2002 of the African Union (AU). The AU replaced the thirty-nine-year-old Organization of African Unity (OAU) and took on an ambitious agenda designed to replicate many of the features of the European Union. In 2004, the AU established a Pan-African Parliament and a Peace and Security Council. The AU also has a peacekeeping force with the authority to intervene in national conicts. Recently, in fact, the AU dispatched about 7,000 troops to address the conict in Darfur, Sudan. In early 2007, the UN approved a hybrid UNAU peacekeeping force of more than 20,000. Most of the troops in the hybrid force will be African.4 In addition, the AU plans to create an African Court of Justice, an African Monetary Fund, an African Central Bank, and even a single currency. Supporters of the AU deliberately chose the EU as a model in order to promote democracy, the rule of law, and respect for human rights. Whether the AU will succeed in any of these endeavors is hard to say. But for the rst time, many (more than fty) former OAU members seem willing to give up some of their sovereignty, as EU members have, in exchange for the eventual benets of international cooperation. The commitment toward democracy is an encouraging sign for a continent with a history of dictatorships and military rule. Because the world has so manyand so many kindsof international organizations, we address them into two separate chapters. In this chapter, we explore several important IGOs, including the UN and the EU. NGOs are the subject of chapter 7. The rst main section of this chapter raises the question of why countries join intergovernmental organizations. The next two sections explore the worlds two most important IGOsthe UN and the EUand how they function. The aim of both this chapter and chapter 7 is to enhance your knowledge of the major players in world politics and to remind you that although states do drive international relations, they do not do it alone. Ignoring IGOs and NGOs would leave us with an incomplete understanding of the world. The twentieth century moved well beyond the state system that evolved from the Treaty of Westphalia, which envisioned sovereign states as the key players in international relations. The twenty-rst century is not likely to resemble that system either. The chapter case study on the International Criminal Court (ICC) taps into many of these ideas by looking at the demand by many states for the creation of this new non-state actor. It also considers the resistance to the ICC by some countries, most notably the United States.
c WHY DO COUNTRiES JOiN INTERGOVERNMENTAL ORGANiZATiONS?

Test Prepper 6.1
165
_____ 1. There are two kinds of international organizations, peaceful (economic-based) and conictual (security-based). _____ 2. The number of international organizations in the world grew signicantly in the twentieth century. _____ 3. The two variables used to classify international organizations are purpose (single-issue vs. multipurpose) and size (small vs. large). _____ 4. By most measures, both NAFTA and the EU are fairly similar organizations.
_____ 5. Which of the following is NOT an example of a nongovernmental organization? a. Greenpeace b. Amnesty International c. Human Rights Watch d. OPEC e. PepsiCola _____ 6. Which of the following is NOT a characteristic of an international organization? a. Compulsory membership b. A charter stating goals, structure, and methods of operation c. A permanent secretariat (or executive) to carry on administrative functions d. Procedures based on consent rather than compulsion or force e. None of the above
Why Do Countries Join Intergovernmental Organizations?

2 Identify the factors that lead states to join intergovernmental organizations as well as the reasons why a state might not join an IGO.
Depending on the type of IGOmultipurpose, single-issue, global, or regionalcountries consider membership for a variety of reasons. In every case, states must weigh the costs and benets of membership. With many benets associated with membership, there is one clear cost of participation in an IGO: the potential loss of at least some national sovereignty because a country must sometimes go along with the other IGO members when it may not completely want to.
The Benets of IO Membership

We suggest several economic, political, and security reasons for joining an IGO. It should be noted, however, that aside from these specic reasons for joining IGOs, states sometimes join simply for the international prestige that membership confers upon them.
For more information see Why it Matters to You: OPEC and the Price of Gas www.BetweenNations.org
Economic Rewards
Some countries join an IGO because membership yields positive economic rewards. NAFTA, for example, was formed in part because of the perceived economic benets that would accrue to its three member-states: the United States, Canada, and Mexico. As a member of NAFTA, Mexican companies get better access
166
CHAPTER 6
NATO at Work in Central Europe
NATO was originally designed to deter and repel a Soviet attack during the Cold War. Its activities, however, can be more mundane such as leading refugees to safety in Kosovo.
to the lucrative U.S. market. Chinese membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) offers a similar example. China knows that membership in the WTO will allow it to buyand, more importantly, to sellgoods more freely to all of the other WTO members. Similarly, France originally joined the Common Market (the forerunner of the EU) in part to improve its economic situation following the devastation wrought by World War II. As we describe later in the chapter, most countries belong to some type of regional trade organization because of the potential economic benets.
Political Influence
Another reason countries join IGOs is because they may gain political inuence. The Netherlands and Portugal, for example, are too small to inuence the course of world affairs on their own, but as members of the EU, they enjoy real political clout. In a similar way, membership in the UN allows smaller states to be seen and heard on world issues, to vote on an equal basis in the General Assembly, and to join UN programs and have an impact on how those programs are developed. The same argument holds for Uruguay and Paraguay in MERCOSUR (the Common Market of the South),5 a NAFTA-like arrangement in the southern cone of South America. And one reason that Germany and Italy supported the creation of the European Common Market in the 1950s was that they wanted to show the world especially the French and other Europeansthat they could be trusted as cooperative political partners and that they were not likely to start another world war in the heart of Europe.
Security
A country may also join an international organization because the IO can provide security. NATO is the most inuential security organization in the world. It is made

up of the United States, Canada, and many Western European countries. Like many security organizations, NATO guarantees each member protection if it is attacked. It is worth noting that NATO was established as a collective security alliance to prevent attack by and expansion of the Soviet Union in Western Europe. With the collapse of the communist states in Europe, however, some people have raised questions about the continuing relevance of NATO. Another example of a security organization is the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, comprising fty-six countries, including all European states, some Central Asian states, and the United States. Its aim is to provide a forum for discussing the security concerns of NATO and non-NATO countries, as well as for those who were not aligned with either the United States or the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
167
Collective security The concept behind a security alliance that guarantees protection for each member of the alliance if it is attacked.
Supranationality and Reciprocity among Member-states

As we stated earlier, national leaders must cope with the ever-present tension between the benets of cooperative membership and the risk of lost national sovereignty. Lets now take a closer look at the power relationship between sovereign states and the international organizations to which they belong. Most international organizations are intergovernmental in naturethat is, member-states
For more information see The View From: NATO www.BetweenNations.org
FIGURE 6.1 The Expansion of NATO

NATO Member Countries
BELGIUM NETHERLANDS DENMARK NORWAY CZECH REPUBLIC POLAND
LITHUANIA LATVIA ESTONIA
ALASKA (U.S.A.) CANADA
ICELAND
UNITED KINGDOM
BULGARIA ROMANIA
FRANCE
U.S.A.
PORTUGAL SPAIN
TURKEY
LUXEMBOURG GERMANY ITALY SLOVENIA HUNGARY SLOVAKIA GREECE
Source: http://www.mapsofworld.com/nato-members-map.htm. Used by permission.
168
CHAPTER 6
dominate their direction. Intergovernmental organizations consist of representatives of national governments, and they promote voluntary cooperation among those governments. The central administrative authorities of IGOs, often called secretariats, tend to have very restricted responsibilities or authority to make decisions on their own, and they tend to have little or no coercive power to enforce their will.6 Because national sovereignty is such a highly guarded commodity, governments cooperate with each other but try to minimize the inuence of their joint international institutions.
Supranational Organizations
If international institutions gain considerable powers of their own, however, they become supranational actors because in some ways they are above the state. Supranational organizations have autonomous authority or certain powers of coercion independent of the member-states. EU scholar Roy H. Ginsburg described supranationality in the EU as follows: There is a body of law which is supreme over national law, and there are EU bodies which have powers independent of member governments, powers delegated to the former by the latter ... and, decision-making is based on majority voting.7 In this respect, both the EUs Commission and the European Court of Justice are supranational organizations. Keep in mind, though, that supranational organizations do not exercise total authority over member-state governments. Supranational institutions can inuence their members in several ways: z Voting Rules: An IGOs voting rules may be structured in such a way as to force countries to act more cooperatively than if they had full sovereignty. We present an example of this later when we consider the European Union. In organizations that are not supranational, such as the United Nations, states have greater inuence on the organizations decisions. For example, in order for the UN to use military force, all ve permanent members of the Security Council must agreethat is, there must be a unanimous vote. z Legal Authority: Supranational IOs can have legal authority over the memberstates. For example, the EUs European Court of Justice can overrule the national court of an EU member-state (such as Germany or Poland). z Inuence in New Areas: Supranational institutions may gain considerable inuence when a totally new policy issue arises. Instead of national governments dominating the new policy issue, supranational organizations can take advantage of the situation by leading or taking what is called an entrepreneurial role in developing new policies. In some respects, environmental policy in the European Union emerged in this way.8 z Interest Group Facilitation: IGOs can also be supranational in that they help foster cooperation among interest groups from member-states. Interest groups such as labor organizations and business associations (made up of representatives of different businesses) may do this on their own, of course, but they may be encouraged to do so by IGOs as well.
Supranational organizations International organizations that have been granted a signicant amount of authority from national governments. This autonomous authority is above the state and has designated powers of coercion that are independent of the memberstates. Supranationality, however, does not mean total authority over national governments.
Member-state Cooperation and Reciprocity

As Robert Keohane has shown, international institutions can teach countries how to cooperate in mutually benecial ways.9 This is possible because IGOs can lower the administrative and political costs of making and enforcing agreements. For

example, instead of having to reinvent the wheel of cooperation every time two or more countries wish to resolve a problem, IGOs can serve as permanent arenas where diplomats can meet routinely to resolve their differences and negotiate compromise solutions. International institutions can also act as neutral participants who monitor how well governments comply with their commitments. In addition, international organizations can help reinforce positive behavior, as when one countrys responsible behavior is reciprocated by others. Reciprocity gives states an incentive to keep their commitments so that others will too. To put it another way, international organizations can help dampen the fears of defection by others. Finally, general conformity to the rules of the international organization makes the behavior of other states more predictable. As you know, predictability is highly prized in a dangerousand, as some would say, anarchicworld.
169
Reciprocity The concept that international organizations help reinforce positive behavior of states; one states responsible behavior is reciprocated by others, giving states incentive to keep their commitments.
Rejecting IGO Membership

Before proceeding, it is worth spending a moment to explore the question of why states might not join an IGO. Despite worthwhile arguments for joining, many states opt out of membership in some IGOs. Several reasons can help explain why. z Sovereignty: Membership in an IGO can mean a loss of sovereignty. As a par ticipant in an IGOor as a signatory to a treatya state commits itself to abide by the joint decisions made by that organization or treaty. Thus, membership can reduce a states foreign policy exibility. For example, the United States chose not to become a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC) because ICC membership is believed to pose a threat to individual U.S. military personnel serving overseas. The fear is that Americans, as representatives of the worlds superpower, will be subject to politically motivated charges of such crimes as genocide and crimes against humanity. z Insufcient Benet: States may not join an IGO because membership may not serve any signicant economic, political, or security function. Switzerland, for example, has stayed out of the EU. Like an island surrounded by a sea of EU members, Switzerland feels comfortable pursuing its political and economic goals independent of the EU. Russia, to offer another example, has no interest in joining OPEC because it believes its national interests would be hurt by having to compromise with OPEC member-states. Now that we have a better sense of what IGOs are, why countries join them (or dont), and what their intergovernmental and supranational features are, we can explore two of the worlds major IGOs: the UN and the EU. After studying these IGOs, you will have a better understanding of their diversity in both scope and purpose. Note that we examine each of the following: z The type of IGO: political, security, economic, or some combination of these z The power relationship among its member-states z The power relationship between the IGO and its member-states z The presence or absence of a supranational body within the IGO z The extent of the IGOs legal authority over the member-states z The type of voting rules used by the member-states of the IGO
Audio Concept Reciprocity www.BetweenNations.org
170
CHAPTER 6
Test Prepper 6.2

_____ 1. Certain IGOs, like OPEC, result in no costs for member statesonly benets. _____ 2. The main benets to joining an IGO are categorized under the following headings: economic, political, cultural, and ideological. _____ 3. NATO is an example of a collective security IGO. _____ 4. IGOs have the potential for reducing the political and administrative costs associated with making and enforcing agreements. _____ 5. Reciprocity refers to IGOs whose primary purpose is to provide humanitarian assistance to other countries.
_____ 6. A supranational organization is one that: a. Transforms its member-states into substantially more powerful countries than they were prior to membership b. Reduces the need for member-states to worry about security concerns c. Has sufcient powers of its own, in some ways above the states that are its members d. Is able to exercise complete control over its member-states _____ 7. Which of the following is NOT a reason why states might opt out joining an IGO: a. Loss of sovereignty b. Lack of economic gain c. Lack of political gain d. Lack of security benet e. None of the above
What Is the United Nations, and How Does It Work?

3 Understand how the UN attempts to manage security, economic, and social issues in world politics as well as issues with the management of the UN itself.
The UNs geographic scope and diverse activities are unmatched by those of any other international organization. The comprehensiveness of the UN is reected in its many specialized agencies, including the International Labor Organization (ILO), the UN International Childrens Emergency Fund (UNICEF), the World Bank, and the World Health Organization (WHO). People who do not know much about the UN make two common mistakes about it. One mistake is to overestimate its importance; the other is to underestimate it. In this part of the chapter, we explore the power and limitations of the UN and the areas where it is active. We also look at the way the UN makes decisions because, often, the way a decision is made is as important as the decision itself.
The Historical Road to the United Nations

The idea for creating the UN did not occur all of a sudden at the end of World War II. Roots of the idea can be found in the early part of the twentieth century, in the political idealism that inuenced many world leaders (see chapter 2). At the start of the twentieth century, many political leaders sought to create a cooperative community of countries that would ensure the collective security (also discussed
c WHAT IS THE UNiTEd NATiONS, ANd HOw DOES IT WORK?

in chapter 4) of its members. The idea behind collective security organizations is, in short, that an attack against one is an attack against all. The notion of collective security combined with the harsh lessons of World War I, led U.S. President Woodrow Wilson to propose the formation of the League of Nations in 1918. Consequently, the main mission of both the League of Nations was and the UN is to maintain peace and security. Despite the Leagues inability to prevent World War II, many political leaders did not conclude that IGOs were useless in preventing war. On the contrary, with the nuclear age upon them, they saw even more clearly the need for international cooperation. The critics of realism interpreted the failure of the League of Nations differently. They said the League failed because a key country (the United States) was not a member, and they believed that different decisions by France and Britain could have prevented World War II. This helps explain why the idea of a global security organization survived and thrived amid the ashes of World War II. The UN emerged from those ashes. Article 1 of the UN Charter, however, describes an IGO that goes much further than a mere security organization. According to its Charter, the UN seeks to develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of people. It seeks international cooperation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, and humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all.
171
League of Nations An international organization established in 1919 to maintain world peace and security. Although it did not prevent the outbreak of World War II, it did have a signicant inuence on the creation and structure of the United Nations.
Managing Global Peace through the Security Council

The UN is an institution devoted primarily to peace and security in the international system. As a collective security organization, it seeks to prevent war through the threat or actual use of collective action against countries that violate international peace. If the UN wishes to use military force, the Security Council must authorize it. In fact, the Security Council is the only UN body that can make decisions that are binding on all UN members.
The Security Council and UN Voting Schemes

The Security Council consists of fteen members; ve of the countries are permanent members, while ten other countries are elected by the General Assembly for two-year terms. The ve permanent members are: z the United States z the United Kingdom (Britain) z France z China z Russia (which inherited the Soviet Unions seat). The other Security Council members are chosen not by a strict rules-based formula but by a political arrangement that tries to ensure that both big and small countries are selected and that countries from different parts of the world have a more or less equal chance of serving. For example, ve nonpermanent members are elected from Africa and Asia combined; one from Eastern Europe; two from Latin America; and two from Western Europe and other areas. For the Security Council to authorize the use of military force, nine of the fteen members must approve. The UN founders, however, recognized that some
Security Council The most important branch of the United Nations. It deals primarily with peace and security issues, and can authorize the use of military force. The Security Council consists of fteen countries: ve permanent members (Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States) and ten others that rotate periodically.
172
CHAPTER 6
Unanimity voting A voting rule that requires a unanimous decision. This type of voting rule gives each person (or country) a vetothat is, it takes only one no vote to nullify a proposal.
Majority voting A voting rule in which the majority of states (or individuals) must agree.
Weighted voting In international organizations, a method of voting in which extra weight is given to the votes of states with larger populations or greater economic inuence.
elements of realisms balance of power had to be combined with the notion of collective security and thus created a special voting rule for the permanent members. In order to accommodate the status of the worlds most powerful countries, the Security Council uses unanimity voting : A unanimous decision is required among the permanent members to authorize the use of UN force. Even if nine non-permanent members agree to the use of military force, any one of the permanent ve can veto the proposal. In short, a single veto from one of the permanent ve will block UN action. Note that the U.S. decision to go to war against Iraq in 2003 did not entail an ofcial vote in the Security Council. The United States knew it did not have the support of all permanent members, so it did not request a vote. Instead, the United States bypassed the UN structure and formed a coalition of the willing. With the existence of the veto rule, one might predict that the Security Council would rarely authorize the use of force. After all, the ve permanent members differ signicantly in their interests, and at least one of them is bound to use its veto. In fact, this has been the case. The Security Council was virtually paralyzed, for example, during much of the Cold War because of the frequent use of the veto, particularly by the United States. But this condition was deliberate; the UN founders wanted to make it difcult for the organization to use military force. They understood the dangers inherent in waging warespecially by an international organizationand they recognized that a political consensus among the worlds great powers was needed for the military force to be politically successful as well as victorious on the battleeld.10 The entire UN does not use unanimity voting, however. The UNs General Assembly (discussed in more detail later in the chapter) uses majority voting : a majority of states must agree to an action or policy. In the General Assembly, each country, no matter how big or small, is allotted one vote. A third form of voting is used in yet other parts of the UN. For example, in the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, variations of weighted voting are usedthat is, a country gets more voting weight if it makes a larger nancial contribution. With this voting rule, the United States has much more inuence than, for example, Kenya, because the United States is one of the largest nancial contributors to these institutions.11
Peacekeeping
Peacekeeping A military operation, normally associated with the United Nations, whose aim is to provide a buffer between warring parties who allow a neutral force to carry out peace plans. Peacekeeping operations may include overseeing the development of democratic institutions (also known as peace building), and sometimes the UN is called upon to enforce a peaceful solution when one or more sides do not wish for peace (also known as peacemaking).
A more common use of UN force is peacekeeping. Although peacekeeping is not in the UN Charter, it has become an increasingly important and controversial part of UN activities. The idea behind peacekeeping is that the UN steps in as a buffer when warring parties agree to allow this neutral force to carry out peace plans. In all, almost 84,000 people from over 110 countries now serve in eighteen UN peacekeeping operations around the world.12 Peacekeeping takes many forms, including: z z z z power-sharing arrangements electoral support strengthening the rule of law economic and social development.
Peace building is a term that describes peacekeeping plus additional UN efforts to oversee the development of democratic institutions. Sometimes the UN is called

FIGURE 6.2 Uniformed Personnel in UN Peacekeeping: 19912006
100,000 Number of Uniformed Personnel July 1993: 78,444 (Largest missions: UNPROFOR, UNOSOM, UNTAC) Uniformed Personnel in UN Peacekeeping: 19912006 Oct 2006: 80,976 (MONUC, UNMIL, UNMIS, UNIFIL) November 2001: 47,778 (UNAMSIL, UNTAET)
173
Dec 2006: 80,368
80,000
60,000
40,000
20,000
Jan. 1991
Jan. 92
Jan. 93
Jan. 94
Jan. 95
Jan. 96 Police
Jan. 97
Jan. 98 Total
Jan. 99
Jan. 2000 Projection
Jan. 01
Jan. 02
Jan. 03
Jan. 04
Jan. 05
Jan. 06
Jan. 07
Troops
Military observers
Source: Prepared by the and Security Section ofSection the United Department of Department Public Information in consultation with the Military Planning Service Source: Prepared by Peace the Peace and Security ofNations the United Nations of Public Information in consultation of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, DPI/2444, January 22, 2007, http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/chart.pdf. Used by permission. with the Military Planning Service of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations DPI/2444 January 22, 2007.
upon to enforce a peaceful solution to a conict when one or more sides do not wish peace. This situation, sometimes called peacemaking or peace enforcement, became more common the 1990s, sometimes with unfavorable results, in part Duncan: World Politics inin the 21st Century, 3e 1036905_la_06_02 because the UN may be perceived to be taking sides in the dispute. Despite our 11/12/07 attempt to distinguish among the three terms in this paragraph, you should know that people often use the term peacekeeping to describe all of them. Figure 6.2 graphs the trend in UN peacekeeping operations between 1991 and 2006. Aside from the surge in UN activity in the mid-1990s, the recent trend has been an ever increasing demand for UN peacekeepers. How successful are these operations? According to a study by the Rand Corporation, a foreign-policy think tank, of eight completed UN peacekeeping operations: in the Belgian Congo, Namibia, El Salvador, Cambodia, Mozambique, Eastern Slovonia, Sierra Leone, and East Timor, about two-thirds of these were deemed successful.13 Peacekeeping operations have become controversial in part because of recent disasters or near-disasters. One of the most problematic UN peacekeeping operations in the 1990s was in Somalia. This case demonstrated, among other things, that when UN operations move into highly volatile places, peacekeeping can evolve into even more peacemaking or peace enforcement. The Somalia NuGraphic Design, Inc. dangerous 7 Laurelwood Drive, New Fairfield, CT 06812 (203) 746-4181 (203) 746-4182 fax nugraphicdesign@charter.net case, however, does not typify the UNs peacekeeping experience. In many battered countries, including Cambodia, Namibia, Nicaragua, South Africa, and East Timor, the UN successfully has sent impartial observers to ensure that free and fair elections are carried out. In general, peacekeeping operations are more likely to succeed when the warring sides agree to allow the UN to help resolve their differences. This was not the case when the headquarters for the UN mission in Iraq was attacked in 2003, forcing the UN to leave the country.
174
CHAPTER 6
UN Troops and Personnel

The UN has no army, so how does it get its peacekeeping troops and other security-related personnel such as military observers and civilian police? Member-states voluntarily supply them. Many Americans have the impression that the United States is always the worlds police force. If one takes a closer look at U.S. participation in UN peacekeeping operations, however, one gets a very different picture. Since 1948, roughly 750,000 military and civilian police personnel and thousands of other civilians have given their service to UN peacekeeping. The countries contributing the largest number of peacekeepers have been Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Jordan, and Nepal, in that order. In fact, the United States actually plays a small role in peacekeeping operations. For example, despite the fact that the United States contributes about $1 billion to UN peacekeeping operations,14 the United States contributed only 321 personnel, or less than 1 percent of all UN peacekeepers, and the United States ranked 43rd, just behind Rwanda.15 Another security concern is who commands UN peacekeeping troops (known as Blue Helmets). Some Americans, for example, are hesitant about committing U.S. troops to the UN because they fear that non-Americans will be commanding U.S. soldiers. This offers another example of how a member of an IGO is nervous about losing some of its sovereignty. The arrangement between the United States and the United Nations is that the command authority over U.S. troops will always be the U.S. commander-in-chiefthat is, the president of the United States. U.S. forces, however, may be under the operational command of a trusted ally, such as a NATO member. When a foreign commander is in charge of U.S. troops, he or she does not have the right to: z z z z z change the mission agreed upon by the president divide U.S. units allocate their supplies administer discipline change a units organization
A Triumph for the UN
Thanks in part to the intervention of the United Nations, citizens of East Timor celebrate independence in this flagraising ceremony.
The UN Charter (Articles 43 and 47) envisions a UN force that operates by agreement with individual states that function under the collective chiefs of staff of the permanent members and report to the Security Council. Again, however, although a permanent member of the Security Council, the United States has never agreed to any such arrangement.16
UN Limitation
In the tension between national sovereignty and international cooperation, the UN is limited in what it can do because it is an intergovernmental organization with member-states that have divergent interests. UN members (especially the

The UN under Attack
175
The UN attempts to bring peace and security to many parts of the world, but it can also become a target in war-torn areas. In this photo, demonstrators in Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of Congo, surround a burning UN van during a protest over the capture of the town of Bukavu by rebels.
ve permanent members of the Security Council) still retain almost all decisionmaking power over what the UN does. In fact, among the basic principles of the UN is recognition of the primacy of the nation-state. It is thus worthwhile reviewing the options that UN member-states have, especially the large ones, for preventing the UN from doing something they dont like. 1. Resolutions from the General Assembly (discussed below) are nonbinding, meaning a country is not obligated to follow them. 2. In the case of the permanent members of the UN Security Council, a veto is sufcient to prevent the UN from using military force. 3. Only the Security Council may make decisions that are binding on all UN members. However, the permanent members may, of course, veto any decision they do not like. 4. Member states may also withhold payment to the UN with a de facto nancial veto that can prevent the UN from carrying out certain programs. This option is not available to UN members who make very small nancial contributions. To get a better understanding of the nonmilitary aspects of the UN, we now turn to its efforts at managing global economic and social problems.
Managing Global Economic and Social Issues

The UN has developed a number of special agencies to manage the diverse nonmilitary activities of the organization. Table 6.1 lists some of the UNs nonmilitary activities. Some UN organizations help save children from starvation and disease, while others provide help for refugees and victims of disasters. The UNs World Health Organization (WHO) has been a leader in the eradication of diseases like smallpox and tuberculosis, and it is now helping to coordinate the ght against the worldwide AIDS epidemic. The UN has also advanced international rights to
176
CHAPTER 6
TABLE 6.1 Nonmilitary Activities of the United Nations
The United Nations is an intergovernmental organization with an almost endless number of tasks to perform. While it certainly deals with military matters, especially in the Security Council, it also handles many nonmilitary activities, as the list below suggests. You are probably already familiar with some of them.
Branch of the UN
The United Nations International Childrens Emergency Fund (UNICEF) United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) The United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) The United Nations Population Fund (UNPF) The United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) The Universal Postal Union (UPU) The World Health Organization (WHO) The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)
Function
Establishes child health and welfare services around the world. Promotes international trade. Provides technical assistance to stimulate economic and social development. Promotes cooperation in education, science, and culture. Promotes international cooperation on all environmental matters. Promotes industrial development, especially among the members. Assists the UN to become more effective through training and research. Promotes humanitarian treatment of refugees and seeks permanent solutions to refugee problems. Assists both developed and developing countries in dealing with their population problems. Conducts research into the problems of economic development during different phases of economic growth. Promotes international postal cooperation. Improves health conditions in developing countries. Provides protection for literary, artistic, and scientific works.
protect children and migrant workers, and it has been a major global force for the advancement of the equal rights of women (see chapter 11). We talk more about these organizations in chapters 1114. Furthermore, the UN is involved in countering global crime and drugs. In some places, the UNs job is primarily to build democratic institutions. As noted earlier, the UN has sent impartial observers to ensure free and fair elections in many countries. It has also helped armed opposition movements transform themselves into political parties in El Salvador, Mozambique, and Guatemala. Typical examples of UN agencies or missions include the United Nations Angola Verication Mission (UNAVEM III), the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), and the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), which continues to observe a 1974 ceasefire agreement between Israeli and Syrian forces in the Golan Heights.

The General Assembly
The most important body in the UN for dealing with this diverse array of issues is the General Assembly. The General Assembly is the only UN body that directly represents all member-states. It is heavily involved in social welfare and economic matters, and it acts as the focal point of activity for the many agencies, committees, and institutions that deal with them. The General Assembly also serves the following functions, typical of national parliaments: z It is a forum for airing ideas and complaints from constituents. z It provides an arena for debate among member-states. z It constitutes an environment for evaluating and approving the UN budget. From a political perspective, the General Assembly has important internal challenges. As the European colonial era ended in the 1960s, more and more newly independent countries joined the UN. As a result, in many General Assembly debates, vocal opposition to the United States and other advanced industrial countries grew to such an extent that many Americans felt the General Assembly had become a place to bash U.S. foreign policies. Some UN opponents from the United States even complained that the UN was still largely in the grip of a substantial majority of dictatorial, authoritarian and statist regimes.17 The clash within the General Assembly between many of the worlds developing countries and the United States reected a more profound division among UN members: the split between the industrialized countries of the North (the developed countries), and the mostly poor, often politically unstable countries of the South (the developing countries). This division is also related to how different countries view the mission of the UN. z Southern countries complain that the rules of the international systems, established by the wealthy countries of the world, are structured against them. From their perspective, most of the worlds problems, from political instability and ethnic conict to the AIDS epidemic and population pressures, occur in the Southern states. Some of these problems, they argue, result from policies of Northern countries, especially the United States (see chapter 13 for more details). In their view, then, the UNs mission should emphasize solutions to the problems in the South. z The Northern countries have resisted giving the UN a greater role in addressing Southern concerns. Some Northern states are reluctant, for political or nancial reasons, to grant the UN signicantly more powers. Many Americans, in particular, resent the antiU.S. rhetoric of many General Assembly members, and others simply feel the UN is not the right vehicle for effecting change in the South. The North-South and other splits within the UN are likely to persist well into the twenty-rst century. The voice of Southern countries is enhanced by the voting system in the General Assembly. As we noted earlier, every country in the General Assembly is given one vote regardless of size. This puts small countries like Peru and Cambodia on the same level as the United States, India, and China. (The U.S. Senate works in a similar way; regardless of the size of the state, each gets two votes. California or Texas, for example, has no more inuence than Rhode Island.) Because the poor countries of the UN vastly outnumber the wealthy states of the North, sheer numbers give the advantage to the South.
177
General Assembly A branch of the UN in which each member-state is allotted one vote, regardless of size. It is heavily involved in social welfare and economic matters, and it acts as the focal point of activity for the many agencies, committees, and institutes that deal with UN matters.
The North Loosely, the advanced industrial democracies of the northern hemisphere. Developed countries. The South Loosely, the less developed countries of the southern hemisphere. Developing countries.
178
CHAPTER 6
Two important points about the General Assemblys inuence must be made. z First, unlike the Security Council, the General Assembly is weakened because, for the most part, it can only make recommendations. Even though it is involved in a wide variety of activities, it cannot issue binding legislation, and it does not have the legal clout to bring violators to justice. This, of course, also hurts the efforts by Southern countries to achieve their goals. z Second, the General Assembly is weakened by the widely diverse interests of its members. Besides the North-South split, the General Assembly is fractured by countries with different religions, cultures, languages, and traditions as well as different territorial, political, and economic interests. General Assembly members even disagree on something the UN claims to uphold: human rights. Religious and cultural splits are particularly evident over issues involving the treatment of women (see chapter 11).
Other Important UN Bodies

There are many other important UN bodies designed for specic tasks. The Secretariat, for example, is the primary administrative organ that runs the UN on a dayto-day basis. It is headed by the secretary-general (currently Ban Ki Moon of South Korea), who acts as the UNs chief spokesperson and diplomat. The secretarygeneral is appointed by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council for a ve-year term. The Secretariat is also supported by a large staff from over 170 countries. The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) is another of the UNs main organizational bodies. As mandated by the UN Charter, the ECOSOC is responsible for: z promoting higher standards of living, full employment, and economic and social progress z identifying solutions to international economic, social, and health problems z facilitating international cultural and educational cooperation z encouraging universal respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms In carrying out its mandate, the Council consults with academics and representatives from the business sector. ECOSOC also plays a pivotal role in the UNs dialogue with over 2,600 nongovernmental organizations, many of which help carry out UN programs. As a consequence of its broad scope of responsibilities, ECOSOC receives over 70 percent of the human and nancial resources of the entire UN system. Another important branch of the UN is the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Located in The Hague, the Netherlands, the ICJ handles cases brought by states, not by groups or individuals. The Court is composed of 15 judges elected to nine-year terms of ofce by the General Assembly and Security Council. Note that the ICJ is different from the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is only loosely afliated with the UN. The two courts are discussed in greater detail in chapter 10.
The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund

Two of the worlds most important international nancial IGOs, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), are part of the UN framework. Together with the World Trade Organization (WTO), these IGOs are designed to help manage the international political economy. Shortly after World War II, most

of the worlds major states felt that a selsh national strategy of going it alone in an anarchic world was ultimately destructive. Instead, states sought cooperative ways to rebuild after the destruction of the war and to build institutions and longterm rules that could guide international political and economic life into the distant future. Britain and especially the United States took the lead in setting up the IMF, the World Bank, and the precursor organization of the WTO. The roles of the IMF and the World Bank (formally known as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development) increasingly overlap, but their missions have traditionally been quite distinct. The IMF is responsible for overseeing the international monetary system by promoting exchange rate stability and orderly currency exchange relations among its member-states. The goal of the World Bank, by contrast, is to promote the economic development of the worlds poorer countries. It assists these countries, for example, through long-term nancing of a variety of development projects.18 We reserve a more detailed explanation of the functions of the IMF and the World Bank for chapter 12.
179
Managing the UNs Affairs

Like many large organizations, the UN employs thousands of people. Think of the UN as a huge bureaucracy designed to tackle many issues. As with many bureaucracies, managing those thousands of peoplescattered across the globeand other resources can be quite a job. In the following pages, we discuss several management challenges facing the UN. In the 1990s and continuing today, the UN came under intense pressure to improve the management of its budget and streamline its administrative organs. Under separate sorts of pressures, the Security Council has been called upon to reform its membership to reect better the global political balance of power. Lets now turn to these issues.
Audio Concept Bureaucracy www.BetweenNations.org
The UNs Funding and Its Controversies

In order for the UN to undertake any operations, military or otherwise, it needs money. Unlike a sovereign state, however, the UN does not levy taxes. The UN relies on dues and voluntary contributions from UN member-states. The UN budget has three main elements: the regular budget, the peacekeeping budget, and voluntary contributions for specic UN programs and activities. The General Assemblys Committee on Contributions assigns each member-state a percentage share of the budget, ranging from a minimum of .01 percent to a maximum of 25 percent. The top seven contributors to the UN in 2006 were: z United States (22 percent, or almost $425 million, or $1.42 per person in the United States)19 z Japan (19.47 percent) z Germany (8.66 percent) z z z z z Britain (6.13 percent) France (6.03 percent) Italy (4.89 percent) Canada (2.81 percent) Spain (2.52 percent)20
Note that as a result of changes in relative economic inuence, Japans contribution drops to 16.6 percent while Chinas increases from 2.05 percent to 2.66 percent for the 20072009 period. This kind of payment arrangement may seem unfair to the largest contributors, but how much a country pays depends on the size of the countrys population, the size of its economy, and its per capita income. For example, because the United States is the wealthiest country in the world, it is expected to pay a higher
180
CHAPTER 6
share. In return, however, the United States is given more UN Secretariat jobs than any other member-state. Recently, for example, the United States has held the top posts at many UN agencies including UNICEF, the UN Development Programme, the World Bank, the World Food Programme, the International Court of Justice, and the Universal Postal Union. The UN has no legal obligation to provide specic jobs to the major contributors; it is more of a political bargain. The regular UN budget has risen over the last four of ve years from $1.48 billion to about $2 billion.21 This covers the Secretariat operations in New York City and Geneva as well as ofces in Nairobi and Vienna, plus ve regional commissions. While this gure may sound large, one must put it in the context of the vast number of tasks the UN must perform. In addition, to understand the size of the UNs budget, it helps to compare it to the budgets of other organizations. For example, when compared to the scale of U.S. defense spending (over $600 billion) or even the budget of a major city, the UNs budget seems quite small. Many countries (for example, the United States) fail to pay their dues to the UN for political reasons or for reasons of real or supposed economic hardship. The UNs budget situation was particularly bleak in 1999, when member states owed the UN almost $3 billion in dues: $1.7 billion for peacekeeping, almost $1.1 billion for the regular budget, and $148 million for international tribunals. In order to pay regular budget expenses, the UN often borrows from peacekeeping funds, which means the UN has been unable to reimburse those countries that have provided peacekeeping troops and equipment.22 The largest debtor has been the United States, which at one point owed the UN $1.67 billion, or two-thirds of the total due. The United States actually risked losing its vote in the General Assembly by not paying its bill at the end of 1999. This predicament was resolved by a last-minute compromise. U.S. pressure on the UN to reduce its contributions from 25 percent of the UN budget to 22 percent nally succeeded in early 2001, and in September 2001, the United States nally agreed to pay its UN dues of $862 million. Many less developed countries did not understand why the worlds most prosperous country, in the midst of unprecedented economic growth, should demand making fewer UN contributions. Nevertheless, by the end of 2006, the United States again owed the UN back dues, this time $291 million.23
The UNs Administrative Reforms

As controversial as the UN budget is, the bureaucracy of the United Nations may be even more so. We now turn to the politically charged, but unrelated, issues of mismanagement and membership in the Security Council. Examples of UN waste and mismanagement are not hard to nd. For instance, in the late 1990s, the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus hadnt found a single missing person in over twenty years. The committee was kept alive in part because Cyprus has considerable inuence in the U.S. Congress.24 Other cases have involved black-market operations, bribery, and egregious waste of resources.25 It was primarily at the insistence of the United States that the UN cut down on waste, fraud, and mismanagement. From the U.S. perspective, reform essentially meant cutting back on UN staff resources and budgets. Ko Annan, SecretaryGeneral at the time, said in an interview in 1997 that after 50 years of existence, like all organizations, weve picked up some excess baggage that we are trying to shed.26 By the end of the 1990s, the UN had, in fact, made major cuts in its labor force, and budget levels were frozen. Despite improvements, however, the UN still

experienced important organizational problems. Investigations continue into the so-called oil-for-food program in Iraq. According to Annan, the oil-for-food program accomplished one of the largest, most complex and unusual tasks ever entrusted to the [UN] Secretariat. Despite these positive aspects of the program and the praise from the former head of the UN, independent inquiries, led by the well-respected American Paul Volcker, found widespread corruption and mismanagement of the program. According to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, Saddam Hussein exploited the program, earning some $1.7 billion through kickbacks and surcharges, and $10.9 billion through illegal oil smuggling.27
181
Reforming the Security Council

Another administration issue, also highly politicized, is reforming the membership of the UN Security Council. The basic problem is that Security Council membership has barely changed since its founding sixty years ago. The permanent ve members once spoke for about 40 percent of the worlds population but now account for only 29 percent.28 Some states that do not have permanent seats on the Security Council play signicant roles in world politics and make important contributions to the UN. Moreover, membership is poorly represented geographically. For example, no Latin American or African country has a permanent seat, nor does an Islamic state. Hence the call to reform the membership of the Security Council. Many Security Council reform proposals have circulated over the years. One potential solution to the Councils antiquated membership is to provide a permanent seat to a representative country from each region of the world. Three countries, one each from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, could then have a permanent seat. The seat could rotate among countries in each region. In late 2003, Ko Annan set up a high-level panel of eminent personalities to examine other potential Security Council congurations. One proposal involved expanding membership from fteen to twenty-four states in three tiers. z The rst tier would include the existing permanent members, each of which would retain the veto. z The second tier would consist of seven or eight states elected on a regional basis for a renewable term of four or ve years. Japan, Germany, Brazil, India, and South Africa could be in this tier. z The third tier would involve rotating regional members elected for a nonrenewable two-year term (as it is now). Negotiations have continued, and other plans have been debated, but no solution has been achieved. The fall-back position, of course, is no solution. Often when countries cannot agree among themselves on how to reform their organization, they make no changes at all. Granting other states the special status of permanent member with veto power doesnt sit well with the existing permanent members, who would have to give up some of their inuence to accommodate the new arrivals. Some states oppose granting permanent membership to one state because they feel just as worthy. Germany could make a strong case for permanent membership, but Italy could oppose the move until it, too, got a permanent seat. Or, for example, why should Brazil get a seat if Argentina does not?
182
CHAPTER 6
In spite of the sometimes obvious aws in the UN administration, public support for this IGO remains strong around the world. Support in the United States has been substantial over the last thirty years until recently. By the late 1990s, the vast majority of those polled in the United States72 percentthought the United States should not act alone to reduce international crises without the support of its allies.29 According to a 2002 study by the Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs, 57 percent of Americans said it should be a very important foreign-policy goal to strengthen the UN.30 Over the past several years, however, favorable attitudes toward the UN in the United States have declined. For example, in 2006, only 31 percent of those surveyed said that they had a positive opinion of the UN.31 A Gallup Poll in 2007 found that 66 percent of Americans surveyed thought that the UN was actually doing a poor job.32 Nevertheless, according to Daniel Drezner of Tufts University, the majority of Americans support giving up Americas veto in the UN Security Council if it means a more effective global body.33
Assessing the UNs Effectiveness

Has the UN been an effective IGO? An assessment of its effectiveness depends on ones expectations. Despite a recent drop in the number of war casualties worldwide,34 the number of wars since the founding of the UN has increased, and violence is still a core component of world politics. A partial explanation is that the UN does not have the military power to prevent or end complex disputes. For example, the UNs peacekeeping budget is around $5 billion a year which may sound like a lot of money, but it accounts for only 0.5 percent of global military spending.35 In fact, the UN spends less each year on peacekeeping than the City of New York spends on its police department.36 As we noted earlier, the UN does not have its own army. This reects the fact that UN members are sovereign states that are unwilling to grant such important authority to the UN (see chapter 3). Social and economic problems around the world also seem worse today than ever before. In addition, the UN was sidelined in one of the worlds most important event in years: the U.S.led war against Iraq. Not only was the UN bypassed in the decision to go to war, it played only a restricted role (helping put together the Interim Iraqi Authority, for example) in the stabilization of Iraq since the end of the main military operation. Thus, one might get the impression that the UN is relatively ineffective regarding both its security and non-security missions. However, as the UNs second Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjld, liked to say, the UN was not created to take humanity to heaven but to save it from hell. And as Pulitzer Prizewinning author Samantha Power asserts, Even escaping hell requires an international organization that is up to the job.37 In some ways, but not all, the UN has been effective. For an overview of the strengths and weaknesses of the UN, see The United States Should Leave the United Nations. When the UN has been ineffective, the root of the problem has often been linked to a problem inherent in all IGOs: when member-states essentially have full control over the actions of the IGO, they should share both the credit and the blame for its successes and failures. Moreover, the UN should not be blamed for every war that breaks out; that implies unrealistic expectations about its capabilities. If we cant expect the UN to prevent all wars, what can we expect? The UN does have inuence to foster peaceful relations between countries that previously were at war, thanks in part to its legitimacy among the nations of the world. Since 1945, the UN has been credited with negotiating over 170 peaceful settlements

that ended regional conicts. Some observers believe UN legitimacy would help achieve greater stability in Iraq. What will be the role of the UN in the near future? As you learned in chapter 1, it is often hard to make predictions in world politics. The war in Iraq that began in 2003 may have permanently altered the role of the UN. Some observers argue that when large states act against Security Council wishessuch as the United States waging war against Iraqthe UN becomes politically irrelevant. And there are some in the United States who demand withdrawal from the UN. The UNs demise, however, is unlikely. For example, as the depth of postwar problems in Iraq became apparent to the Bush administration, the United States began turning more although not much moreto the UN for help. It is likely that the UN will struggle along with scarce resources and a divisive set of member-states to address security, social, and economic problems. At least for now, the UN will remain an ambitious but restricted intergovernmental organization.
183
Test Prepper 6.3

True or False?
_____ 1. The primary goal of the United Nations is the establishment of a single world government. _____ 2. The most powerful body within the United Nations is the General Assembly. _____ 3. The Security Council uses a unanimity voting system while the General Assembly uses a majority voting system. _____ 4. Plans for implementing Security Council reform are fairly uncontentious and have the approval of a majority of the permanent members of the Council. _____ 5. The top seven contributors to the UN in 2006 were: the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Canada, and Spain.
Multiple Choice
_____ 6. Permanent members of the UN Security Council have what limitation placed on their membership? a. They may only use their veto power once per year. b. They are not allowed to vote on issues where they have a conict of interest. c. They are required to provide foreign assistance to less powerful Security Council members in their geographic region.
d. They must provide peacekeeping troops for any mission they authorize. e. None of the above _____ 7. Which of the following is an option available to all UN member-states who wish to prevent the UN from doing something? a. Ignoring resolutions passed by the General Assembly b. Preventing the UN from using force by a veto vote in the Security Council c. Appealing to the International Court of Justice to prevent the UN Secretary General from taking his post d. Using the ECOSOC as a buffer to carve an exception to human rights regulations e. None of the above _____ 8. The largest debtor to the United Nations has been: a. China d. Russia b. France e. United States c. Iraq
184
CHAPTER 6
What Is the European Union, and How Does It Work?

4 Be able to identify and explain the functions of the key institutions that make up the European Union and discuss its prospects for the future.
While the UN is a global IGO, many regional organizations exist as well. The main example of a regional IGO that we present in this chapter is the European Union. Many other regional organizations, including the African Union (AU), NAFTA, the Organization of American States (OAS), and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), are international organizations with more limited scope and jurisdiction. The AU, as we discussed earlier in the chapter, has existed for only a few years and has not developed the extensive degree of policy coordination found in the EU. NAFTA, for the most part, only addresses economic issues, notably freeing trade among its members. The EU, as you will see, goes much further than both of these IGOs. The European Union is a unique phenomenon in the history of the world, especially because it brings together states that, throughout history, have waged war against one another. Remember, for example, that Germany and France went to war in 1870, and almost all of Europe fought in World Wars I and II. What began in the 1950s primarily as an economic-oriented organization of six West European countries has evolved into the most complex and integrated set of institutions anywhere in the world.38 The EU now comprises twenty-seven democratic member countries from west, central, and eastern Europe representing 490 million people. The U.S. population, by contrast, is roughly 300 million. The broad scope of the EUs responsibilities is reected in its three pillars. z Economic aspects z Common foreign and security policies z Justice and home affairs The economic aspects of the EU make up the rst pillar in the EUs framework. Most EU laws deal with economic matters among the member-states. In addition, several EU countries have pushed economic cooperation to such an extent that they have even created their own currency, the euro. To manage the euro, the EU established the European Central Bank. So far, thirteen EU member-states have given up their national currency in favor of the euro. Thus, for example, there are no more French francs, German deutschemarks, and Italian lira. Notably missing from the euro-zone are Britain, Denmark, and Sweden. The second pillar covers common foreign and security policies. Through the EUs third pillar, justice and home affairs, the EU states coordinate their policies to address immigration and drug trafcking and to cooperate more on border controls. This area has grown in importance with the threat of terrorism. The EU also has highly developed institutions including a trans-European parliament and Court of Justice. Thus, no other IGO can match the EU in depth of institutional structure or the scope of policies under its jurisdiction. The next section of the chapter explores the historical roots of the modern EU. After that, we provide an overview of the main EU institutions, the impact of EU voting rules, and the EUs constitution.
c WHAT IS THE EUROPEAN UNiON, ANd HOw DOES IT WORK?

This section of the chapter concludes by looking at the future opportunities and challenges facing the EU.
185
The Origins of the European Union

After centuries of warfare between empires and states, why did European countries create the most comprehensive set of international institutions of all time? We can offer ve main reasons for why countries with a historical background of rivalry and warfare chose to work together. The rst three are primarily economic; the others are more political and military in nature.
For more information see European Union www.BetweenNations.org
The Rationale for European Cooperation

1. European cooperation began in the late 1940s with the need to rebuild wartorn economies. Many European countries realized that going it alone would not be sufcient to transform their struggling economies. Assistance from the U.S. Marshall Plan was helpful in this regard. 2. A lesson from the Depression era and from World War II was that when states create signicant barriers to trade, economic conditions worsen and international relations become more tense. Thus, the Europeans sought to lower trade barriers and enhance economic competition. 3. The six founding EU member states, as well as the states that joined later, recognized the benets of economies of scalethat is, they saw the advantages of combining their resources in order to become more competitive internationally. Over time, this issue would become more prominent in the context of competition with the United States, Japan, the newly industrializing countries (NICs) of Asia, China, and others. 4. A more cohesive Western Europe was viewed as being better able to prevent the spread of communism, which was threatening on two fronts. In the 1950s, Western Europe was concerned about an invasion by the Soviet Union and its allies. In addition, communist parties had made strong inroads in the domestic politics of some European countries, notably France and Italy. During World War II, the French and Italian communists underground had fought heroically against the Nazis, and the postwar electorate rewarded them with many votes. 5. In the immediate postWorld War II period, many feared a resurgent Germanythe country that had been fully or partially responsible for three major wars in Europe in two generations (18701945). By integrating Germany economically and militarily into the EU, it was hoped that German militarism would be tamed and World War III would be less likely to occur.
The Creation and Expansion of the European Community

The rst step in the creation of the EU was the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1952. Created to manage the commercially and militarily important coal and steel industries, the ECSC also showed that the French and Germans could actually get along and that Germany and Italy could be trusted partners. The ECSC was also important because it created a set of institutions that would later evolve into the institutions of the EU that we know today. The ECSC thus taught its member states, some with historically deep animosities, that they could cooperate in a vital sector and that the new international institutions with independent political power could function to the benet of all.
186
CHAPTER 6
With the signing of the Treaty of Rome in 1957, France, Germany, Italy, and the Benelux countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg)the six members of the ECSCformed three new European communities: the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom), the European Defense Community (EDC), and the European Economic Community (EEC). Unlike the EEC, both Euratom and the EDC proved ineffective, which is one reason why some old-timers continue to call the European Union the EEC.
EU Membership
EU membership has expandedknown as wideningon several occasions since 1957. Figure 6.3 shows the old and new members of the EU. In 1973, for example, the EU grew from the original six members to nine with the admission of Britain, Ireland, and Denmark. In the 1980s, Greece (1981), Spain (1986), and Portugal (1986) joined. Although not technically considered an expansion of the EU, East Germany became part of the EU in 1990 after it was reunied with West Germany. In 1995, Austria, Finland, and Sweden were admitted. The most ambitious widening occurred in 2004 with the addition of eight central and eastern European states FIGURE 6.3 An Expanded European Union
EU Expansion Original 6 Joined 1973 Joined 19811986 Joined 1995 SWEDEN Joined 2004 FINLAND Joined 2007 Applicant Countries
ESTONIA LATVIA LITHUANIA
ATLANTIC OCEAN
UNITED DENMARK KINGDOM IRELAND NETHERLANDS BELGIUM
GERMANY
LUXEMBOURG CZECH REPUBLIC
POLAND
SLOVAKIA
FRANCE
AUSTRIA SLOVENIA CROATIA
HUNGARY ROMANIA
Black Sea
BULGARIA TURKEY GREECE
PORTUGAL SPAIN
ITALY
MALTA
CYPRUS
Mediterranean Sea
Duncan: World Politics in the 21st Century, 3e

Unity in Diversity
187
The European Union holds one of its first major meetings after its enlargement from fifteen to twentyfive member-states in Rome, October 2004.
as well as Malta and Cyprus. The most recent additions to the EU were Bulgaria and Romania which joined in 2007.
The Main European Union Institutions

The functioning of the European Union is based on a shifting balance among the twenty-seven member-states and both intergovernmental and supranational actors. Five institutions together handle most of the EUs affairs. In some respects, some of these appear to act like the main institutions in a typical country that has judicial, executive, and legislative branches. Appearances, however, can be deceiving. We address each of these institutions in turn: z The European Council z The Council of the European Union (also known as the Council of Ministers) z The European Parliament z The European Commission z The European Court of Justice Of these, the two that are primarily intergovernmental are the European Council and the Council of Ministers.
The European Council

The European Council is a group that consists primarily of the heads of government and state (HOGS) and foreign ministers of the member-states. Every six months (or more frequently, if there is a crisis), the leaders of the twenty-seven member-states gather to discuss major political issues and practices. This is really the only time that national politicians (prime ministers and presidents) directly affect the governance of the European Union. Even though this is the only main EU organization that does not meet daily, its inuence can be profound in setting the overall agenda for the EU.
188
CHAPTER 6
The Council of the European Union

The Council of the European Union (often called the Council of Ministers) is a central legislative body that meets daily, unlike the European Council. This body has considerable inuence because it has nal say on most important pieces of EU legislation. The Council of Ministers is made up of at least one minister from each of the twenty-seven member-states; thus, each meeting should have at least twenty-seven people. In actuality, many councils exist, depending on the policy area. What helps give the Council of Ministers its intergovernmental avor is that the ministers main responsibility is to the home government rst. The Swedish sheries minister, for example, tries to push forcefully for what is best for Sweden at the sheries council meeting. Leadership in the Council of Ministers rotates among the member-states every six months. The country that holds the council presidency at any time is responsible not only for providing overall direction of the EU agenda but also for chairing (leading) all the council meetings. The six-month period was chosen in part because it allows many countries the opportunity to lead council activities. The time frame, however, is too short for any one country to dominate the others. A drawback, of course, is that the progress made by one council presidency may not be maintained in the subsequent presidency. This often happens because the country taking over the council presidency has a different agenda. The EU tries to get around this problem by having a troikathat is, cooperation among the current, past, and incoming council presidencies.
The European Commission

Whereas the Council of Ministers does a great deal of the EUs legislative work, most of the executive power in the EU resides with the Commission, whose members are nominated by the Commission president and then approved by the European Parliament.39 It is made up of twenty-seven ofcials from all the memberstates, and each commissioner is responsible for a different policy area, such as foreign policy, agriculture, sheries, relations with less developed countries, and so on. The commissioners are supposed to act in the interests of the EU as a whole, independently of national governments. This contrasts with the Council of Ministers, whose members push whats best for their own country rst. What are the functions of the Commission? z The most important role of the Commission is to propose legislation. With a few exceptions, the Council of Ministers cannot pass legislation unless it is proposed by the Commission.40 z Another important function of the Commission is ensuring that EU treaties are being followed. z The Commission plays a key role in ensuring that EU legislation is implemented. Most of the policy implementation is handled by the member-states (because they have the personnel and resources, and the Commission does not), but the Commission oversees the entire process. z The Commission is a key player in the EUs budget process. z The Commission helps varying sides (governments, companies, interest groups, or individuals) reach compromises when they have a dispute.

z The Commission mediates differences between the other institutions of the EU. z The Commission represents the EU as a negotiating unit in trade negotiations such as those with the WTO. All in all, the Commission has enormous responsibilities and is viewed by the public as the key supranational institution in the EU.
189
The European Parliament

The legislative responsibilities of the EU are shared between the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament, to which we now turn. The 732-seat European Parliament (EP) is the most visible part of the EU to average citizens. Members of the EP (or MEPs) are the only EU ofcials for whom citizens actually get a chance to vote, which makes the EP a unique international body. The EP also differs from the other main EU institutions in that it is organized in ideological or party groups. There is a Socialist party group, a mostly Christian Democratic group, a group called the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, and others. In each of these party groupings are citizens of different EU countries who look out not just for their countrys national interests but for the agenda of their party group as well. By contrast, the Council of Ministers is based on national representation rst and functional area of expertise second. So, the EP is supranational in the sense that its members are supposed to be loyal to their party ideology and Europe rst. Some powers of the EP are similar to those of national legislatures. z The EP provides an arena for airing the concerns of EU citizens. z It issues oral and written questions to the Council and Commission. z It claries, criticizes, and reviews proposed legislation. z It can dissolve and censure the Commission with a two-thirds vote. The EP almost dissolved the Commission in early 1999 (because of mismanagement and corruption), but the Commission, under pressure, chose to resign instead. z The EP plays an important role in EU budgetary matters. The international composition of the EU makes the EP different from national parliaments in many important respects. The most important difference is that the EP is the weakest of the EU institutions. The advice of the EP is often ignored by Council and Commission members, in large part because the EPs opinions are not legally binding. Another important difference is that the EPs political parties have members from different countries. The two largest political groups are the Christian Democrats (the European Peoples Party, or EPP) and the Socialists, whose members come from every EU member-state. As noted, compared to the other EU institutions, the EP remains relatively weak. But its inuence has grown steadily as EU ofcials and the public recognize the need for more democratic input into how the EU functions. The EP has gained inuence using preexisting powers. The landmark decision by the Commission to resign in early 1999 reected the EPs determination to force it to acknowledge and x problems of mismanagement, corruption, and nepotism. When the Commission did not address these problems, the EP began proceedings to throw out the entire Commission (because it couldnt impeach individual commissioners).
190
CHAPTER 6
Additional EP power has more frequently come from new treaties. The Amsterdam Treaty, which took effect in 1999, and the proposed constitution are expected to make the EP the legislative equal of the Council of Ministers in many policy areas, including judicial cooperation in civil matters (except family law), antidiscrimination measures, and specic industrial policy support measures.41
The European Court of Justice

The EUs judicial branch helps make the EU unique among all international organizations. In short, no other IGO in the world has such a court of justice. World War II taught many Europeans that international relations should be driven by law, not by power. The Europeans also came to understand that common policies (in agriculture, coal, and steel, for example) require a common legal framework. As a result, by the start of the twenty-rst century, the EU had built up an impressive body of legal documents, although not a constitution in the American sense. In 2004, however, the EU completed work on its rst constitution,42 designed to amalgamate the various treaties and acts that had accumulated since the founding of the EU in 1957. At the apex of the EUs legal system is the European Court of Justice (ECJ), made up of twenty-seven judges and eighteen advocates general. The ECJ is assisted by nine advocates general. They are all appointed by the member-states and serve renewable six-year terms. The extended EUs legal system consists of the Court of First Instance, the Court of Auditors (which performs functions similar to the American Government Accountability Ofce), and a parliamentary ombudsman (who hears complaints made against EU institutions). The ECJ is the ultimate arbiter of laws made by the EU. As with rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court, ECJ rulings cannot be appealed. The rulings are binding on citizens of the EU as well as on the governments of the EU. What gives the ECJ considerable clout (and demonstrates its supranational character) is that when EU law conicts with the laws of a national government, EU law takes precedence. When countries create such an international legal structure, it of course implies that member-states have given up a lot of sovereignty. To put this in perspective, consider the following question: Would United States citizens be willing to accept an arrangement whereby the United States as a whole, its states, and its companies agreed to abide by an international legal body when the international legal body overruled the U.S. Supreme Court?
How Voting Matters in the EU and in IGOs in General

Voting in the European Union is just as important as it is in a democratic nationstateand, as we noted earlier, how decisions are made can be just as important as the decisions themselves. We provide an overview of the EUs voting methods and note interesting parallels with what youve learned about voting in the United Nations. The method of voting in the EU depends on many things. The most important thing is to know that each EU institution uses a different method. The European Council, for example, generally makes its decisions by consensus.43 The Commission, ECJ, and EP tend to vote along majority lines.44 It is the Council of Ministers, however, where we need to focus our attention. Why? Because the Council is where nation-state inuence in the EU is most direct on a day-to-day basis, and because the Council often has nal say on EU legislation.

As you learned in the context of UN Security Council voting, unanimity voting means that if just one country vetoes a proposal to use military force, the UN cannot use military force. Unanimity voting is also used in the Council of Ministers in limited circumstances, such as when a member-state fears its vital national interest is at stake. It is used, for example, on decisions to add new countries to the EU and in the areas of taxation, asylum and immigration, and foreign and security policy. Just as with the ve permanent members of the UNs Security Council, each member-state of the EU has veto power when the unanimity voting rule is used. Over time, EU member-states came to realize that the extensive use of the veto was hurting the EUs ability to get important legislation passed. The problem was summed up nicely by former Belgian Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene in 1999: If you keep unanimity, you have immobility.45 As a result, the EU has used other voting rules for a growing number of policy issues. Sometimes, simple majority voting is used. A simple majority is achieved with support from more than 50 percent of the countries. Another commonly used voting rule is qualified majority voting (QMV). Under the QMV rule, the larger countries have more votes than the smaller countries. Since the EU expanded in 2004,46 for example, Germany, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom each have twenty-nine votes, while smaller Austria and Sweden get ten votes each, and tiny Malta gets only three.47 For a qualied majority to pass legislation, a total of 255 out of 354 votes must be in favor of the measure.
191
Qualied majority voting (QMV) Associated with the Council of the European Union (Council of Ministers), a voting rule in which the larger countries have more votes than the smaller countries and no country has a veto.
TABLE 6.2 How Different Voting Systems Matter
In IGOs, states behave differently when voting rules change. In addition, some voting systems are better than others if the IGO wants to get work accomplished. In general, for an IGO to get things done, it may need to have voting rules that limit national control. Think of voting systems as falling along a continuum, with ease of decision making at one end and safeguarding of national sovereignty at the other. Consider the following diagram.
Voting Method
Unanimity Voting
Implications for Sovereignty

Best voting system for maintaining sovereignty.
Implications for Efciency

Because every member has a veto, it is often hard to get things accomplished. Very good, because it takes many countries to block legislation. Not as efficient as majority voting but better than unanimity voting.
Benets for Big vs. Small Countries

Because this is the best system for maintaining sovereignty, it is helpful to small as well as big states.
Used by (Examples)
z UN Security Council z EU Council of Ministers z O rganization for Economic Cooperation and Development z UN General Assembly z EU Council of Ministers
Majority Voting
Not very good for preserving national sovereignty.
Small countries tend to benefit most because they are much more numerous.
Qualified Majority Voting (Weighted Voting)
Not as good as unanimity voting but better than majority voting.
Big countries are given more votes, but small states may actually come out the winner (e.g., compare Luxembourgs population with Germanys).
z EU Council of Ministers z T he IMF and World Bank (based not on population but on level of financial contribution)
192
CHAPTER 6
QMV matters a great deal because, unlike unanimity voting, it forces states to compromise to get what they want. Refer to Table 6.2, which compares voting methods. Note the contrast in the differing goals and outcomes of these different voting systems. Since November 2004, in response to the ten-member expansion of the EU, a qualied majority is reached if (a) a majority of member-states (in some cases, a two-thirds majority) approve, and (b) a minimum of votes is cast in favorwhich is 72.3 percent of the total. In addition, a member-state may ask for conrmation that the votes in favor represent at least 62 percent of the total population of the EU. If this is found not to be the case, the decision will not be adopted. While this may sound complicated, and it is, the EU sought to meet the demands of big and small states as well as to manage better the trade-off between decisionmaking efciency and the protection of individual state interestsall of which were important, by the way, during the constitutional debates among the thirteen American colonies.
The Future of the European Union

The EU faces several challenges as it looks to the future. Europeans are concerned, for example, about reducing unemployment and the corresponding challenge of improving economic competitiveness vis--vis the United States, Japan, and many other countries. In addition, the EU has concerns that face many nation-states, like stemming the ow of illegal drugs and reducing the threat of international terrorism. All of these issues are directly or indirectly related to globalization. The EU must also contend with two all-embracing issues: adjusting to the 2004 and 2007 membership expansions and making institutional changes to cope with it. Lets look at both of these issues in turn.
The Opportunities and Challenges of EU Expansion

The EUs 2004 expansion and the smaller expansion in 2007 are viewed with a mixture of admiration and hesitation. On the political level, the EUs embrace of many former communist countries is considered a vital step in closing a difcult chapter in European history. The countries of Central and Eastern Europe have committed themselves to a westward orientationaway from Russiabecause the West offers a more secure and independent future and because of the Wests greater economic opportunities compared to Russias. They have committed themselves to a democratic, capitalistic future. Nevertheless, it will take some time for the new members to become fully integrated, let alone economically competitive, with the rest of the EU member states. While the EUs most recent member-states add a large population to the EU, they do not add much economically and are well below the EU average in GDP per capita. According to the British magazine The Economist, if the new members managed only 3 percent growth (which is actually quite good), it will take them ninety years to catch up with the fteen EU members before the 2004 expansion.48
A United States of Europe? Institutional Changes to the EU

If one plots the trend of political and economic integration in EU history, one may get the impression that we will soon see a United States of Europe, or U.S.E. Since its founding in the 1950s, the EU has integrated more and more. An increasing number of policy areas are within the EUs jurisdiction, including monetary policy, and others, such as common foreign and security policies, are being addressed

more forcefully. In addition, EU decision making is occurring more often at the supranational level (for example, with more power granted to the European Parliament and greater use of QMV in the Council). These centralizing developments of greater policy coordination and supranationalismare known in EU jargon as deepening. One scenario for a United States of Europe envisions the following institutional arrangement as deepening continues: z Judiciary: European Court of Justice z Executive: Commission z Legislative: Council of Ministers (similar to the U.S. Senate) and the European Parliament (similar to the U.S. House of Representatives) This scenario is possible, but it is hard to say under what circumstances it might actually materialize. z First, one should be cautious about assuming that the EU will inevitably progress, with one policy area spilling over into another until all policies are handled by the EU. Historically, Europeans have always been reluctant to give up national sovereignty to the EU. Many Europeans are unhappy about the powers that have already shifted from their own governments to the so-called Eurocrats in Brussels, Belgium (the quasi-capital of the EU). It is thus possible that the integration of EU countries will reach a certain level of deepening and then stop. Many EU states, for example, do not use the euro. Nationalist feelings run deep in Europe, and people still identify more with their own country than they do with the complicated and seemingly remote institutions of the European Union. z Second, when the Commission was forced to resign in 1999 over corruption and incompetence charges, the member-states became increasingly concerned about granting it more powers. Their reluctance undermines the idea of the Commission as the only institution with executive powers. z Third, even though the EP has gained considerable inuence since the founding of the EU, there is still signicant resistance to making it a truly effective legislative body. z Fourth, the EU has exhibited and will continue to exhibit a serious legitimacy problem. To put it bluntly, the EU does not have very democratic institutions. It is often mentioned with irony that if the EU were a state and applied to join the European Union, it would be turned down on the grounds that it was not a democracy.49 As you now know, the only democratically elected institution in the EU is the EP, but the EP does not appear to have much relative clout. Further, in the 2004 EP elections, for the rst time the turnout rate was below 50 percent. As Romano Prodi, former president of the European Commission, described the link between weak democracy and the low voter turnout rate, The message is plain and simple. Many Europeans feel the [EU] does not come up to their expectations and so they saw no point in voting.50 Thus, a major challenge for the EP is to change this perception. z Finally, the EU often does not act as a coherent organization. Remember that the EU now consists of twenty-seven countries, and that those twenty-seven voices do not always say the same thing. Historically, for example, the EU
193
194
CHAPTER 6
Energy Resources under the Sea
The off-shore oil rig has become one of the symbols of the worlds dependence on oil.
membership has often been at odds over foreign-policy issues. The divergent attitudes among EU member-states toward the Iraq War is an important recent example. Several eastern European countries and Britain backed the United States, while othersespecially France and Germanywere vehemently opposed to the war. Perhaps most important of all, the EU has had trouble establishing policies in critical areas such as defense. Three recent examples of this problem include the EUs incoherent response in the early 1990s to the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, its political divisions when the crisis in Kosovo erupted in 1999, and the lack of unity over the war in Iraq that began in 2003. Thus, it is probably safe to conclude that the EU will not look like a United States of Europe, any time soon. But it is also unlikely that the EU will backslide much, or at all. At least for now, we are more likely to see is a United Europe of States than a United States of Europe. We use the conclusion of this chapter as an introduction to the next. We have seen here in chapter 6 what intergovernmental organizations are, why states form them, and how some of the important ones work. An important theme of this chapter and of chapter 7 is that states drive international relationsbut they do not do so alone. For a better understanding of the centralizing and decentralizing forces at work in world politics, we must not ignore the role played by IGOs and NGOs. That said, we must also be aware of the limits of what international organizations can achieve. As we saw in this chapter, for example, IGOs can be ineffective when their member-states refuse to cooperate. This reects the natural tension between the urge to preserve national security and the urge to seek international cooperation. These themes are also at work in the following case study on the International Criminal Court.

Test Prepper 6.4
195
_____ 1. The EUs responsibilities rest on four pillars: economic, cultural, environmental, and security. _____ 2. The EUs Council of Ministers has signicant inuence as it has nal say on most important pieces of EU legislation. _____ 3. The European Commission houses most of the executive power of the EU. _____ 4. Qualied majority voting provides smaller countries in the EU more power to ensure that minority interests are not overwhelmed by major powers. _____ 5. Recent developments strongly point toward the establishment of a United States of Europe by the year 2012.
_____ 6. Which of the following is NOT a rationale for European cooperation: a. The need to rebuild war-torn economies after World War II b. The need to impose barriers to trade in order to protect edgling economies c. Economies of scale between EU member states made them more competitive internationally d. A cohesive Europe was better equipped to halt the spread of communism e. None of the above _____ 7. Which of the following is NOT a characteristic of unanimity voting: a. It is the best system for maintaining sovereignty. b. It makes getting things accomplished very difcult. c. It provides states with the most viable means of security. d. It is helpful to both large and small states. e. None of the above
Case Study
State Power, Individuals, and the International Criminal Court
196
CHAPTER 6
Join the Debate The United States Should Leave the United Nations
Since the end of the Cold War, many Americans have become uncomfortable with U.S. membership in the United Nations. Emphasizing the altered geopolitical landscape in which the United States has become the sole superpower, opponents view the UN as anachronistic or worse. The most recent doubts about the UNs relevance came with the U.S.led war in Iraq. While the Bush administration viewed the war as vitally necessary for U.S. national security, major UN members either opposed the United States or simply looked on. Supporters of continuing U.S. involvement in the UN, however, contend that the UN continues to play a vital role in world politics and that the United States, as its most important member, should recognize the valuable services the UN can provide. This debate explores the reasons the United States should and should not leave the UN. power, should have the same voting weight in the General Assembly as small, even tiny, states. This does not serve U.S. interests. Yet another reason to oppose the UN is that repellent members sometimes have inuential roles in the organization. For example, states with terrible human rights records routinely became members of the UN Human Rights Commission, and their representatives even become the chair (or head) of the commission. Members of the commission that were routinely criticized for human-rights violations included Cuba, China, and Sudan. In 2003, despite U.S. opposition, Libya was actually elected chair of the commission, backed by thirty-three states and opposed by only three. Thus, the UNs main human rights organization was headed by a country with an appalling record on human rights.3 Adding insult to injury, the United States was voted off the commission in 2001.4
THE PRO SIDE

The United States should leave the United Nations for many reasons. First, the United States should not rely on the UN for its most important national security issues. The American Sovereignty Restoration Act, yet to be passed by Congress, calls for the American people to remain as a free and independent people of a sovereign United States of America.1 As Ron Paul, a nine-term congressional representative from Texas, put it, UN globalists are not satised by meddling only in international disputes. They increasingly want to inuence our domestic environmental, trade, labor, tax, and gun laws. UN global planners fully intend to expand the organization into a true world government, complete with taxes, courts, and possibly a standing army. This is not an alarmist statement, says Paul; these goals are readily promoted on the UNs own website. UN planners do not care about national sovereignty; in fact they are openly opposed to it.2 Another reason to oppose U.S. participation in the UN is the UNs organizational weaknesses. The UN often suffers from massive, bloated bureaucracies that cant seem to control spending or prevent the inefcient use of scarce resources. In terms of voting power, it is unfair that the United States, as the worlds super-
THE CON SIDE

Despite the many challenges facing the UN as described in the chapter and in the pro side of this debate, one should not overlook the many contributions the UN has made, especially given its scarce political and nancial resources. The interdependent character of world politics today has made the UN a valuable organization for the United States. Many of the serious challenges facing the United States are challenges that do not respect national borders. For example, international terrorism, economic instability, and environmental degradation cannot be contained in one or two countries; these are global problems and U.S. problems at the same time. If the United States leaves the UN, it is likely to lose the international cooperation required to tackle these problems. The United States could also lose its moral authority to lead the world. It is already struggling with a poor reputation in many regions, and it could lose even more of its international prestige by leaving the UN. Ultimately, its ability to persuade states to do what it wantsin other words, to use its soft power (see chapter 4)would also decline. The UN, fortunately, offers a forum to discuss and negotiate how challenges to the
JOiN THE DEBATE
197
United States and the world can be addressed in a cooperative and legitimate setting. One should also recall many of the positive UN contributions to a better world. In 2001, the UN and SecretaryGeneral Ko Annan were given the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of their work for a more peaceful world. Annan was singled out for his commitment to human rights, his campaigns to take on new challenges such as the AIDS crisis and international terrorism, and his efforts to bring new life to the UN.5 This was the rst Nobel Prize for the UN as a whole, but the organization has received seven previous awards for individual programs. For example, in 2005, the UNafliated International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and its director General Mohamed ElBaradei were also awarded the Nobel Prize for their efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that nuclear energy is used in the safest possible way. The United States, like most countries, has a stake in global stability, and the UN has been active in helping increase stability around the world. By 2004, the UN was deploying a monthly average of 56,000 military peacekeepers, four times the level of 1999. In 2006, the UN had about 84,000 peacekeepers involved in operations around the world. One must also remember the UNs extensive measures to address vital social and economic problems facing the people of the world. For example, the UN Development Programme has supported more than 5,000 projects in the areas of agriculture, industry, education, and the environment. UNICEF offers another example. The UNs children organization spends about $800 million a year on immunization, health care, nutrition, and basic education in more than 135 countries. The World Health Organization has been instrumental in helping eliminate contagious diseases in many parts of the world. Polio, for example, is on the verge of being wiped out worldwide.6 While the United States decided to go to war against Iraq in 2003 without UN authorization, the UN is still viewed as having a relevant role to play. By fall 2003 and early 2004, for example, even the Bush administration was making overtures to the UN for help in the reconstruction of Iraq. Many UN supporters believe the UN could help add legitimacy to U.S. efforts, thus speeding the reconstruction and saving American and Iraqi lives and nancial resources.
While the jury is still out in the case of Iraq, the UN has shown its value not only to the world but to the United States as well. As a member of the UN, the United States can have considerable inuence not only on security matters (because the United States has veto power in the Security Council) but also on the many economic and social issues under UN jurisdiction. For these reasons, the United States should be an active member of the United Nations.
NOtEs
1. A petition in support of the bill, which is available on the Internet, says that by signing the petition, you, as an American, demand to remain as a free American and not to become a state under the control of the United Nations nor to be assimilated in the UNs call for globalization. See http://www .petitiononline.com/HR1146/petition.html. 2. Speeches and Statements of Ron Paul, http://www .house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2003/cr042903 .htm. Ron Pauls ofcial website is http://www.house .gov/paul/). In Utah, inspired by similar sentiments, the La Verkin and Virgin city councils in 2001 considered ordinances declaring themselves United Nationsfree zones. La Verkins ordinance passed, making it the rst city in the United States to make such a declaration. See Marla Sowards, Resolution Calls for U.S. to leave U.N., Brigham Young University NewsNet, http://newsnet.byu.edu/story.cfm/ 42399, February 19, 2003. 3. Libya Takes Human Rights Role, BBC News, http:// news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2672029.stm, January 20, 2003. 4. The United States regained its seat in 2003. 5. Colum Lynch, U.N. Secretary General Awarded No bel Peace Prize, Washington Post, October 13, 2001. 6. According to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, a branch of the World Health Organization. Before 1988, when the WHO started a global anti-polio campaign, there were more than 350,000 cases worldwide. In 2006, only 2,000 cases were reported, mostly in Nigeria and India. See the Global Polio Eradication Initiative website, http://www.polioeradication .org/casecount.asp. See also David Pilling, WHO in Sight of Wiping Out Polio Worldwide, Financial Times, January 7, 2000.
198
CHAPTER 6

1 2 intergovernmental 3 4 5 6 7 18 29 Dene organization, understanding how scope and purpose differentiate organizations from one another. 3 10 4 5 how the 6 UN attempts 7 8to manage 9 security, 10 Understand economic, and social issues in world politics as well as issues with the management of the UN itself.
Intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) are organizations whose members are states. They are different from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), whose members are individuals. International relations are usually dominated by nation-states, but non-state actors are playing an increasingly important role. IGOs vary depending on their scope and their purpose. IGOs can therefore fall into one of four main categories:
- Single-purpose, regional: NAFTA (economic; North America) - Multipurpose, regional: the European Union (economic, political, security; Europe) - Single-purpose, global: World Health Organization (health; no geographic restriction) - Multipurpose, global: the United Nations (economic, political, social, cultural, security; with no geographic restriction)
The United Nations is primarily an intergovernmental organization. It was developed, in part, as a collective security organization to replace the failed League of Nations. It has many functions, including the preservation of peaceful relations among states, running programs to help poor children around the world, and supporting agencies devoted to world health. The two most important UN bodies are the Security Council and the General Assembly.
- The Security Council, as its name indicates, deals with the UNs military matters. It consists of fteen members, ve of whom are permanent (Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States). A veto from any one of these ve members will prevent the use of UN military force. - The General Assembly deals with security issues as well, but it deals extensively with all of the nonmilitary UN activities. Every country, regardless of size, has one vote. This voting method gives tiny countries the same weight as large ones like the United States or India.
3 6 states 7 to join 8 9 10 Identify the4factors 5 that lead intergovernmental organizations as well as the reasons why a state might not join an IGO.
Governments sometimes yield some of their national sovereignty to IGOs because they perceive that international cooperation is in their national interest for economic, political, or security reasons. The political, economic, and military benets of membership in an IGO, even if its institutions are powerful (that is, supranational), are often perceived as outweighing the costs. But states always face the tension between their desire to cooperate internationally and their desire to retain as much independence as possible.
Although the UN gets a lot of press for many of its positive contributions, one should not overestimate its inuence on world politics. For example, the UN cannot act militarily unless it has sufcient support from the permanent members of the Security Council. The UN is also hurt by a lack of funding and by bureaucratic problems.
199
5 6 7 8 10 of the key Be able to identify and explain the9functions institutions that make up the European Union and discuss its prospects for the future.
rules outweigh the costs in lost national sovereignty. Many countries in Central and Eastern Europe agree, and that is why so many of them recently joined the EU. The main EU institutions are the European Council (meetings among the national leaders), the Council of Ministers (meetings of specic government ministers), the Commission (the semi-executive branch of the EU), the European Parliament, and the European Court of Justice. These institutions could potentially evolve and create a United States of Europe, but this is unlikely. EU citizens still place their loyalty in their home government rst, and many are worried about too much power being shifted to the EU.
The European Union is a unique IGO in terms of its membership (democratic, mostly rich countries), the depth and inuence of its institutions, and the number of policy areas for which it is responsible (such as a single currency, common trade policies, common regional policies, and an emerging common foreign and defense policy). The EU has both intergovernmental and supranational features. Countries have decided, rst of all, that they want supranational institutions, and, second, that the benets of following supranational institutions and

Non-state Actors
The non-governmental organization Greenpeace comes under attack as it puts its ideas into practice. Gleizes/Greenpeace.
Learning Objectives
2 1
Identify and understand the political, economic, and technological factors that have led to the rise of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).
Using Greenpeace and Amnesty International as examples, identify the goals, strategies, and tactics of NGOs.
Identify the economic scope of international corporate actors and determine how powerful multinational corporations relate to state actors.
200
Tell me, and Ill forget. Show me, and I may not remember. Involve me, and Ill understand.
Native American Proverb
Chapter Outline
What Factors Explain the Rise of

Political Factors Economic Factors Technology
Nongovernmental Organizations?
What Corporate Actors Operate

in the International Arena, and How Powerful Are They?
Exploring the International Business Scene The Economic Clout of Corporate Actors
What Are the Goals, Strategies,

and Tactics of NGOs?
Greenpeace Amnesty International
What Is the Relationship between

States and NGOs?
Complaints against NGOs Political Opposition to Greenpeace Political Opposition to Amnesty International Political Opposition to Corporate Actors State-NGO Relations in Perspective
Identify the criticisms associated with NGO interactions with states; be able to recount specic examples associated with Greenpeace and Amnesty International.
Can One Person Make a Difference in the World?
hapters 1, 3, and 6 introduced you to the growing visibility of non-state actors without going into much detail about them. That is the task of this chapter. A variety of non-state actors exist, including nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), international businesses, international media organizations, and even international terrorist organizations. The focus of this chapter is on two of these non-state actors: NGOs and international businesses. NGOs are organizations of individuals that seek to transform a political, economic, or social condition in one or more countries. International businessesusually referred to as multinational corporationsare introduced in this chapter but are explained in more detail in chapters 12 and 13. International terrorist groups like Hezbollah and al Qaeda are addressed in chapter 10. For now,
202
Key Terms
CHAPTER 7
NOn-STATE AcTORS
prisoners of conscience p. 209 corporate actors p. 211 home country p. 211 host country p. 211
it is useful to remember that all of these organizations are non-state actors made up of individuals who seek change that may be economic, political, social, religious, scientic, or cultural in nature. Besides the well-known NGOs like the Red Cross and Greenpeace, some rarely publicized NGOs are increasingly altering the landscape of world politics. For example, the Women in Development Movement and Women for a New Era have gotten the UN to focus on the role of women as an integrated part of a countrys overall development process. Around the world, there are thousands of NGOs,1 including: z Humanitarian z Scientic z Educational z Environmental z Womens rights z Religious organizations According to the Yearbook of International Organizations, there are over 6,500 international NGOs and millions of exclusively national NGOs, many of which are organized into international federations.2 The large number of NGOs is matched by their diversity. Some NGOs are single-issue oriented, while others deal with a wide variety of political, economic, and social problems. NGOs may be funded by individuals, unions, nation-states, local governments, and IGOs such as the UN. An important issue to track in this chapter is the relationship between nonstate actors and sovereign states. As we discussed in chapter 3, one of the signicant characteristics of our era is the weakening of the state-dominated Westphalian system (established roughly after 1648) through the emergence of non-state actors. As many parts of this chapter show, non-state actors can be unpopular with the worlds nation-states because non-state actors directly challenge government policies, and they are often perceived as threats to a countrys national interests. In addition, foreign non-state actors may be viewed with suspicion because of their ideas, values, or, in the case of international businesses, their products, particularly cultural products such as lms and TV programs. The result may be local resistance to non-state actors. Exposure to the globalization process associated with or nurtured by non-state actors can challenge old beliefs and social identities. People often react defensively to the forces of globalization by trying to hold on even tighter to local customs and beliefs. On the other hand, contact with non-state actors can increase peoples awareness of social, political, and economic discrepancies around the world.3 This chapter also brings out the theme of centralizing and decentralizing tendencies in world politics. As you read in chapter 1, for example, citizen
c WHAT FAcTORS EXPLAIn THE RISE Of NOnGOVERnMEnTAL ORGAnIZATIOnS?

activism can reinforce centralizing tendencies through the formation of likeminded NGOs that inuence policy at the local, national, and international levels. This centralizing phenomenon may come in the form of transnational religious, environmental protection, or human rights movements that go on to spawn NGOs. Sociologist Amitai Etzioni takes this idea even further. He believes we are entering a new era of global cooperation in which information is shared among NGOs and governments in order to tackle common concerns about managing global trade and banking, about dealing with international drug trafcking and terrorism, and about challenges related to human health and the destruction of the environment. In the international effort to address these problems, NGOs can bridge cultural and national divides among peoples and contribute to a global civil societythat is, individuals and groups united across borders in cooperation to achieve common goals.4 The rise in the number of non-state actors, each with its own agenda, however, also attests to the power of the decentralizing forces, or fragmentation, in world politics. International terrorist organizations, a specic type of nonstate actor that seeks political change through violent means, provide a vivid example of decentralizing forces. It is hoped that by the end of the chapter you will appreciate the variety and inuences of non-state actors on the world stage. This chapter will cover the following during our discussion of non-state actors: z The factors leading to so many NGOs. z An examination of two highly visible NGOs: Greenpeace and Amnesty International. z The variety and economic clout of corporate actors. z The relationship between states and non-state actors. z The chapters case study about Doctors Without Borders draws out many of the themes you will learn about in this chapter. n
203
What Factors Explain the Rise of Nongovernmental Organizations?

1 Identify and understand the political, economic, and technological factors that have led to the rise of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).
The international system established by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 enshrined nation-states as the most important unit in world politics. As we saw in chapter 6, intergovernmental organizations play an important role as well. The power of most NGOs cannot rival that of nation-states, but they are now a permanent part of the global landscape. Some observers have even suggested that NGOs are a crucial force in world politics. Michael Edwards of the Ford Foundation, for instance, sees NGOs as
For more information see Why It Matters to You: NGOs and Citizen Activism www.BetweenNations.org
204
CHAPTER 7
NOn-STATE AcTORS
becoming a force for transformation in global politics and economics.5 In this respect, NGOs contribute to the centralizing forces at work in world politics by, for example, creating a transnational sense of identity. In an era of increasing globalization, or at least regionalization, NGOs have helped establish or nurture links not just across national borders but across cultures as well. In the following pages, we address this issue of NGOs as a centralizing force and explore why there are now so many NGOs on the international stage. Several reasons explain why NGOs are so visible in world politics today. These reasons are rooted in politics, economics, and technology.
Political Factors
A host of political factors exist that have led to the increased presence of NGOs in the international system today. These include a favorable political climate; the increase in the number of weak states around the world; the further development of international law; and for some states the politics of foreign aid. z Favorable Political Climate: NGOs tend to thrive in democratic environments because democracies allow freedom of expression and association. By contrast, when government dominates society, as in communist and other authoritarian countries, it may be impossible for members of an NGO to meet and organize.6 In China, for example, one of the main problems for NGOs is that they fall into a legal gray area and are often unable to register as legal organizations. This unclear legal status leaves many organizations open to government criticism or worse.7 Elsewhere, since the collapse of communism around 1990, more and more countries have opened up politically and opted for democratic reforms, thus creating a more favorable climate for NGOs. z Weak States: Another political reason we have so many NGOs is that more states are either falling apart or struggling to provide services that people have come to expect from the state. As you saw in chapter 1, among the new forces shaping the planet is the growing inability of states to resolve their problems. Whether the state must contend with terrorism, migration, drug trafcking, or environmental degradation, it is increasingly required to seek the cooperation of other governments and international organizations. When a country cannot even provide basic services for its peoplebecause of poverty, its own incompetence, or deliberately harmful policiesNGOs are often there to help out. NGOs, for example, can help by providing expert analysis and identifying and managing problems. They can deliver immediate humanitarian assistance, and they can be important links to international relief efforts.8 We should expect, then, that as statesespecially in the developing world and the former Soviet bloc continue to face political, social, and economic upheaval, NGOs are more likely to step in as long as they are allowed to. z International Law: Another political reason for the growing importance of NGOs relates to the development of international law over the last fty years. For most of modern history, international law was created and managed by states. With the weakening of the state-dominated Westphalian system, however, the relationship between NGOs and international law has grown stronger. A specialized journal even addresses this topic: Non-State Actors and International Law. According to this journal, non-state actors are now a
c WHAT FAcTORS EXPLAIn THE RISE Of NOnGOVERnMEnTAL ORGAnIZATIOnS?

permanent feature of modern international relations, and they play a vital role in almost every eld of international law and regulation. According to legal scholar Shirley Scott, NGOs can inuence international law through scientic, technical, or statistical information. Many NGOs are also important as accredited observers at IGO meetings that inuence international law. Some NGO also help implement and monitor compliance of international law. The international Commission of Jurists, for example, plays a major role in the development and implementation of international humanitarian law.9 z Saving Face: Yet another political explanation for the rise of NGOs is that some governments prefer to receive aid directly or indirectly from NGOs rather than other governments. Sometimes, for example, a struggling country does not have the administrative capacity to carry out humanitarian assistance, so it allows NGOs to do so. NGOs are often perceived by states to be more trustworthy and efcient at allocating funds from a donor state.
205
For more information see Interview with Maria Stephan www.BetweenNations.org
Economic Factors
More open economic environments also help explain the rise in the number of NGOs. The work of NGOs always entails moneysometimes a lot of it. Getting money from the donors to the international NGO and then to the recipient almost always takes place across borders. Open economic systems facilitate the transfer of money across international borders. Open economies also allow national governments to funnel money through NGOs to people or groups in other countries. In societies dominated by authoritarian or Marxist governments, NGOs do not tend to crop up. First, NGOs may face direct competition from governmental agencies. Second, the government may actually ban the activities or even the mere presence of NGOs.
The International Red Cross
The Chad Red Cross deliver much needed food supplies from the World Food Programme (WFP) to the Touloum camp near Iriba town on the Chad-Sudan border. Aid workers prepare to distribute the food to the refugees using a system of ration cards under the scorching midday sun and stifling heat in the dry border area between Chad and Sudan. The United Nations says fighting between Arab Janjaweed militias and African rebels in Darfur, western Sudan, has killed some 30,000 people and created the worlds worst humanitarian crisis with 1 million people forced to flee their homes.
206
CHAPTER 7
NOn-STATE AcTORS
Technology
As we saw in chapter 1, advances in telecommunications and computer technology have facilitated the proliferation of NGOs around the world. The reverberations of the information ageincluding global news, the Internet, and faxeshave rendered national borders meaningless for some purposes. This revolution in telecommunications has beneted NGOs in a critically important way: members can communicate much more easily than ever before, both within a country and across the entire globe. Modern technology and rapid communications can, for example, link scientists in virtually any part of the world who are committed to the eradication of a worldwide disease. It can link student protesters with their supporters in other countries. It can also link aid workers in a remote village to their NGO headquarters in New York, London, or any other city. Two of the more recent successful NGOled campaigns, Jubilee 2000 and the International Campaign to Ban Land Mines, probably would not have succeeded without the Internet.10 Taken together, these three elementspolitics, economics, and technology have contributed to the enormous growth in the number of NGOs over the past fty years or so.
Test Prepper 7.1

_____ 1. The favorable climate that has led to an increase in NGOs in recent years is the establishment of a UNsponsored fund for new international organizations. _____ 2. With the weakening of the state in recent years, NGOs have begun to play a more prominent role in the development of international law. _____ 3. Economic openness between countries has hindered the growth of NGOs. _____ 4. NGOs often pull out of states in an attempt to cover up their mistakes.
_____ 5. Which of the following is an example of how technological innovation has assisted in the expansion of NGOs? a. Increased computer capabilities allow NGOs to operate more productively and are easier to establish as the cost of administrative tasks has decreased. b. The telecommunications revolution allows NGO members to communicate with ease, dramatically increasing their ability to form, grow, and accomplish their objectives. c. The Internet allows NGOs to register with the multitude of state registries required for operation within a states boundaries. d. All of the above
c WHAT ARE THE GOALS, STRATEGIES, AnD TAcTIcS Of NGOS?
207
What Are the Goals, Strategies, and Tactics of NGOs?

2 Using Greenpeace and Amnesty International as examples, identify the goals, strategies, and tactics of NGOs.
This section looks at two specic NGOs to provide examples of the kinds of goals NGOs pursue, and the strategies and tactics they employ in that pursuit. The NGOs presented hereGreenpeace and Amnesty Internationalare well known and global in scope. Keep in mind, though, that hundreds of thousands of smaller NGOs operate internationally, nationally, and even locally. In general, the objectives and activities of all of these NGOs vary considerably (see Table 7.1). Both Greenpeace and Amnesty International can be highly controversial because their missions clash with the cultural, political, or economic interests of many countries. Thus, we begin with overviews of both NGOs and then later in the chapter, we look more closely at how states respond to them.
Greenpeace
Greenpeace is a not-for-prot organization made up of a network of national and regional ofces in over forty countries. Its membership consists of almost 3 million individuals worldwide, and its worldwide total income is roughly $200 million.11 Originally called the Dont Make a Wave Committee in Vancouver, Canada, this NGO was reorganized and renamed Greenpeace with the aim of creating a greener and more peaceful world. The green refers to the support of environmental protection, and the peace stands for the nonviolent resolution of differences.
Audio Concept Biodiversity www.BetweenNations.org
The Mission of Greenpeace

Like many NGOs, Greenpeace was founded on the idea that a few individuals can make a difference in the world. As a result, one of its main goals is to bring public opinion to bear on policymakers. The organization is heavily inuenced by Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhis philosophy of nonviolence as well as by the Quaker tradition. Among Greenpeaces principles and core values are respecting democratic principles and solutions that promote global social equity; having no permanent allies or adversaries in exposing threats to the environment; and ensuring nancial independence from political or commercial interests.12 Greenpeaces more specic goals include the following:13 z Promote peace, global disarmament, and nonviolence. z Prevent pollution and abuse of the Earths oceans, lands, and fresh water. z End all nuclear threats. z Protect biodiversity in all its forms. Biodiversity refers to the protection and conservation of the diversity of plant and animal species in an ecosystem.
Greenpeace Strategy and Activities

This philosophical background pervades Greenpeaces tactics and strategy. Greenpeace members are advised to achieve change through civil disobedience, peaceful demonstration, and educational campaigns. Greenpeace pioneered peaceful
208
CHAPTER 7
NOn-STATE AcTORS
TABLE 7.1 Types of International Non-state Actors

Type of Non-state Actors
Humanitarian Human Rights Environmental Scientific Womens Rights Business Business Association Terrorist Religious
Example
Catholic Relief Services Amnesty International World Wildlife Federation International Council of Scientific Unions Women for a New Era ExxonMobil International Federation of Airline Pilots Associations Islamic Jihad World Council of Churches
civil protests in many places, including Lebanon, which was ravaged by civil war in the 1970s; in the Soviet Union and, later, Russia; in China; and in Turkey. Tactics used by Greenpeace include holding demonstrations in front of prominent public buildings; publishing scientic, economic, and political research; and lobbying politicians. The tactic for which Greenpeace receives widespread publicity is its blocking of nuclear-powered, whaling, sealing, or other vessels engaged in what Greenpeace calls the extinction-for-prot of a species. Greenpeace also carries out boycotts of companies, such as the 2002 consumer boycott of fuels sold by Esso, a division of ExxonMobil, for its failure to support the Kyoto agreement on climate change. The Kyoto agreement aims to reduce the quantity of greenhouse gases emitted by the burning of fossil fuels. Thanks to pressure from the 30,000 e-mails and letters sent to the Greenpeace headquarters in Europe, McDonalds agreed in 2006 to stop selling chicken fed on soy beans grown in newly deforested areas of the Amazon rainforest. As a result, Greenpeace reports, McDonalds vast buying power has created a huge demand for soy beans that have not been grown in the ashes of the rainforest.14
Protesting against Nuclear Pollution

The environmentalthat is, greengoals of Greenpeace have sent its members around the world in an attempt to preserve the Earths oceans, land, and atmosphere. Greenpeace has specically protested the devastation caused by nuclear and toxic pollution. Highlighting the international scope of this NGO, Russian Greenpeace volunteers gathered on Valentines Day 2007 in front of the Japanese embassy in Moscow to convey their love for Japan but also to ask Japan to stop whaling in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. Similar events were held in twenty-eight countries. In Argentina, for example, Greenpeace members danced the tango in front of the Japanese embassy in Buenos Aires. In Tokyo, volunteers give whale-shaped
c WHAT ARE THE GOALS, STRATEGIES, AnD TAcTIcS Of NGOS?

chocolates to the members of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) who were meeting there at the time. (See Join the Debate, pages 226228, for more on the whaling controversy.)15 To offer another example, in April 2007 Greenpeace protested the beginning of construction of a new oating nuclear power plant in Severodvinsk, Russia. Greenpeace and other NGOs have often complained about the danger of oating reactors and their unprotableness. According to Greenpeace, oating reactors are known to have suffered at the least 100 accidents varying from leakages to melting of active zones and detonations.16 Greenpeace also helped publicize the dangerous connection between the use of chlorine-based chemicals and the destruction of the ozone layer. Greenpeace is partially responsible for the ozone-safe refrigerators that are now standard in the United States and in many other parts of the world. Greenpeace was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 for its efforts in the environmental area. The discussion here has enumerated many of its accomplishments. Later, the chapter explores some of the controversies that surround this NGO.
209
Amnesty International
In 1961, London lawyer Peter Benenson read about a group of students in Portugalthen a dictatorshipwho were arrested and jailed for raising a toast to freedom in a public restaurant. The incident prompted Benenson to launch a one-year campaign called Appeal for Amnesty 1961 in the newspaper London Observer. The Appeal for Amnesty called for the release of all people imprisoned because of peaceful expression of their beliefs, politics, race, religion, color, or national origin. Benenson called these people prisoners of conscience. His plan was to encourage people to write letters to government ofcials in countries that held prisoners of conscience, calling for their release. The campaign grew enormously, spread to other countries, and by the end of 1961 the organization Amnesty International (AI) had been formed.17
Prisoners of conscience People imprisoned for peaceful expression of their beliefs, politics, race, religion, color, or national origin.
The Mission of Amnesty International

The mission of AI differs signicantly from that of Greenpeace. AI promotes the human rights enshrined in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international standards (see chapter 11 for a more thorough treatment of human rights). In particular, AI campaigns to: z Free all prisoners of conscience z To ensure fair and prompt trials for political prisoners z To abolish the death penalty z To end torture and other cruel treatment of prisoners z To end political killings and disappearances18 It has expanded its mandate to include human rights abuses committed by nonstate actors, and it has also targeted violence in the home or community where governments have been complicit or have failed to take effective action. AI has also sought to end the multibillion dollar trade in what are called conict diamonds. Much of the prot helps fund militias that have been responsible directly or indirectlyfor the deaths of over 3.5 million people in such places as Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Sierra Leone.19
210
CHAPTER 7
NOn-STATE AcTORS
The London-based AI has over 1.8 million members and supporters in over 160 countries. It also maintains specialist networks of peoplemedical professionals, lawyers, and otherswho use their expertise to campaign for victims of human rights violations. Like Greenpeace, AI attempts to remain impartial and independent of governments, political persuasions, and religions. AI believes part of its strength comes from being perceived as an unbiased champion of human rights. In fact, one of its principles is that people have fundamental rights that transcend national, cultural, religious, and ideological boundaries.
AI Strategies and Activities

The tactics used by AI to achieve political change are similar to those of Greenpeace. Its activities include public demonstrations and human rights education programs. To raise money and awareness, AI has sponsored concerts featuring performances by popular music groups. In 2007, for example, AI teamed up with Warner Bros. Records and released an album Instant Karma with songs by the Black Eyed Peas, Snow Patrol, Christina Aguilera, U2, R.E.M., and John Lennon. Proceeds went to support AIs campaign to stop the violence in Darfur that, by 2007, had cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and forced more than 2.5 million civilians to ee their homes.20 One of AIs most common techniques involves letter-writing campaigns on behalf of prisoners of conscience. In these campaigns, AI members adopt a prisoner and write letters to ofcials in that prisoners country, calling for the prisoners release. AI also helps the prisoners family. Because letter campaigns focus on individuals and not countries or political systems per se, AI is able to maintain a measure of political neutrality. Another strong focus for AI is the mistreatment of prisoners around the world. According to AI, prisoner mistreatment is commonplace and widespread throughout the world. In over forty countries, torture or ill-treatment, lack of medical care, or cruel, inhuman, or degrading prison conditions were conrmed or suspected of leading to deaths in custody.21 According to Larry Cox, the executive director of AI in the United States, even the U.S. human rights record is a problem. Especially since the 9/11 attacks and the Bush Administrations War on Terror, serious violations of human rights, including torture and disappearances, have not only been committed but justied by the very countrythe United Statesthat has invaded other countries in the name of human rights and democracy. The assertion that the United States is above international law is a very dangerous one to make not only to the cause of human rights but also to the security of all Americans.22 AI considers its work accomplished when conditions in a prison are improved, when torture is prevented, and when prisoners are given real hope by the knowledge that they have not been forgotten. AI also has ofcial standing in the UN and frequently presents testimony to the U.S. Congress. We return to AI, and its more controversial aspects, later in the chapter.
c WHAT CORPORATE AcTORS OPERATE In THE InTERnATIOnAL AREnA, AnD HOw POwERfUL ARE THEY?
Test Prepper 7.2
211
_____ 1. Although not a completely clean energy source, nuclear power is considered to be more effective than coal because it does not produce greenhouse gases. _____ 2. Prisoners of conscience are people imprisoned because of peaceful expression of their beliefs, politics, race, religion, color, or national origin. _____ 3. Amnesty International is focused strictly on abuses that occur in countries in the developing world.
_____ 4. Which of the following is a goal of Greenpeace? a. Promote peace, global disarmament, and nonviolence b. Free all prisoners of conscience around the world c. End the trade in conict diamonds d. All of the above e. None of the above _____ 5. Which of the following is a type of international non-state actor (NSA)? a. Humanitarian b. Scientic c. Terrorist d. Business e. All of the above
What Corporate Actors Operate in the International Arena, and How Powerful Are They?
3 Identify the economic scope of international corporate actors and determine how powerful multinational corporations relate to state actors.
Corporate actors Businesses and business associations; a catchall term for multinational and transnational corporations.
Corporate actors differ signicantly from the NGOs we just described. The primary mission of corporate actors is to make money. Since World War II, international corporations have played an increasingly powerful role in the world. By the early 1980s, these non-state actors accounted for about 80 percent of the worlds trade in noncommunist countries. By the same time, the twenty-ve largest banks were worth about $3.7 trillion.23
Exploring the International Business Scene

Before describing the inuence of international businesses, it is worthwhile to ask what motivates a company to go abroad in the rst place. While the overall rationale is prot, there are several specic reasons. z By going abroad, a company can often lower its costs of production. Sometimes, for example, the cost of labor in the companys home country is too high. A U.S. company may want to set up shop in a host country , such as Mexico, because there it can pay Mexican workers four or ve times less than what it would have to pay American workers. z Another reason for a company going abroad is to gain better access to a foreign market. Often companies have little knowledge of the foreign market where they want to sell products. By being on the scene, the company can learn what consumers want and how best to market their products.
Home country The country of origin, or home base, for an international company. Host country The country that hosts an international company. For the company, it is a foreign country.
212
CHAPTER 7
NOn-STATE AcTORS
z Other reasons for a company going abroad include establishing market dominance in the host country, avoiding high taxes in the home country, evading tougher environmental standardswhich increase production costsin the home country, and avoiding trade barriers in the host country. There are basically three kinds of international corporate actors behind all of this business activity: z Multinational corporations (MNCs) z Transnational corporations (TNCs) z Business alliances The following paragraphs describe MNCs and TNCs and the differences between them. We then look at the economic power the largest corporate actors wield.
Multinational and Transnational Corporations

Multinational corporations are loosely dened as businesses with operations in more than one country. However, it can be helpful to distinguish between multiFIGURe 7.1 Manufacturing Facilities
Number of manufacturing facilities owned, leased, or operated by companies comprising the Coca-Cola system.
Europe, Eurasia and Middle East 202
North America 160
Africa 174
Asia and Pacific 218
Latin America 228
Summary of Manufacturing Facilities 33 Concentrate and syrup plants 8 Juice and juice-drink production facilities 5 CCDA water plants 1 Food service juice concentrate plant 935 System bottle/can plants Total 982 plants
c WHAT CORPORATE AcTORS OPERATE In THE InTERnATIOnAL AREnA, AnD HOw POwERfUL ARE THEY?
TABLE 7.2 The Worlds Top 50 Economic Entities
Rank 20052006
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
213
Economic Entity
United States Japan Germany China United Kingdom France Italy Spain Canada India Brazil Korea, Rep. Mexico Russian Federation Australia Netherlands Belgium Switzerland Turkey Sweden Exxon Mobil Wal-Mart Saudi Arabia Royal Dutch Shell Austria
Market Value (Billions of US$)

$12,416,505 4,533,965 2,794,926 2,234,297 2,198,789 2,126,630 1,762,519 1,124,640 1,113,810 805,714 796,055 787,624 768,438 763,720 732,499 624,202 370,824 367,029 362,502 357,683 339,938 315,654 309,778 306,731 306,073
Rank 20052006
26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50
Economic Entity
Poland Norway Indonesia British Petroleum Denmark South Africa Greece Ireland Finland General Motors Iran, Islamic Rep. Chevron DaimlerChrysler Toyota Portugal Argentina Hong Kong, China Ford Thailand ConocoPhillips General Electric Total Venezuela, RB ING Group Citigroup
Market Value (Billions of US$)

$303,229 295,513 287,217 267,600 258,714 239,543 225,206 201,817 193,160 192,604 189,784 189,481 186,106 185,805 183,305 183,193 177,703 177,210 176,634 166,683 157,153 152,361 140,192 138,235 131,045
Sources: For companies, the data refer to revenues in 2006: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2006/full_list/. For countries, GDP data is used from 2005: World Bank, http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DATASTATISTICS/Resources/GDP.pdf.
national corporations (MNCs) and transnational corporations (TNCs). MNCs have foreign subsidiaries that are clones of the parent company. For example, a U.S. company with a German subsidiary consists of a self-contained operation in Germany that makes almost everything it sells in Germany, buys supplies in Germany, and employs mostly Germans. A TNC24 is based on the idea that there is only one economic unit: the world. TNCs usually view themselves as non-national entities. In common parlance, however, the term multinational corporation encompasses any company with business-related activity in two or more countries. Multinational corporations generally have a local perspective when it comes
Audio Concept Transnational Corporation www.BetweenNations.org
214
CHAPTER 7
NOn-STATE AcTORS
to sales, service, public relations, and legal affairs, but they have a global perspective with respect to parts, machines, planning, research and development, nance, marketing, pricing, and management. The UN estimates that there are more than 60,000 MNCs operating in the world, controlling 600,000 production plants and employing about 86 million people (see Figure 7.1, which shows the distribution of Coca-Cola plants all over the world). By 2004, MNCs accounted for about 25 percent of the worlds economic production and about 33 percent of world trade.25
The Economic Clout of Corporate Actors

As more companies become international in scope, calls for international laws and rules for the global economy increase. As we show in chapters 12 and 13, however, getting control of the huge corporate actors can be a difcult task. Many international businesses control vast economic resources. Some international companies have more economic clout than most of the countries of the world. WalMart, for example, controls more economic resources than all but twenty countries in the world. In Table 7.2, you can see that many companies are represented among the worlds top fty economic entities. Because economic clout often translates into political inuence, such large companies can have a tremendous impact on the political economies of both host and home countries. In some cases, they even employ large numbers of security guards to ensure the smooth running of their operations. While this practice is not widespread, some fear such militarization of corporate actors. It is important to keep in mind that most MNCs are not economic goliaths like Wal-Mart and BP. Most MNCs are not household names. China Garment Manufacturers (CGM), for example, is a Taiwanese-owned clothing company operating in Southern Africa. It employs nearly 7,000 workers in the small Kingdom of Lesotho. It uses fabric from China, India, and Pakistan and makes jeans and pants for the Gap, K-Mart, Old Navy, and other U.S. chains. Its business activities are valued in the millions, not billions.26 Many MNCs are even smaller.
Test Prepper 7.3

_____ 1. MNCs generally have subsidiary companies in other countries that are clones of the parent company while TNCs view themselves as nonnational entities. _____ 2. Some MNCs, like Wal-Mart, control more economic resources than entire countries. _____ 3. In order to be considered an MNC, a company must have subsidiaries in at least ve countries. _____ 4. The greatest increase in economic clout held by corporate actors occurred during the time between WWI and WWII, with the expansion of power tapering off in the latter half of the twentieth century.
_____ 5. Which of the following is a reason why a country might move its operations to another country? a. Reduce labor costs b. Avoid high tax rates in the home country c. Evade tough environmental standards at home d. Establish market dominance in the host country e. All of the above
c WHAT IS THE RELATIOnSHIP BETwEEn STATES AnD NGOS?
215
What Is the Relationship between States and NGOs?

4 Identify the criticisms associated with NGO interactions with states; be able to recount specic examples associated with Greenpeace and Amnesty International.
The relationships between states and NGOs may be cooperative or confrontational. Sometimes a symbiotic relationship can exista relationship that is benecial to both parties. In some cases, governments wishing to tap into popular support for certain issues seek cooperative alliances with related NGOs. For example, the Brazilian governments Environmental Agency asked Greenpeace to monitor the Amazon rainforest for environmental violations such as illegal logging. A debt-relief campaign for heavily indebted poor countries, Jubilee 2000, was designed specically to change the perceptions of governments, the IMF, and the World Bank so they would be more environmentally friendly. Through its cooperation with Jubilee 2000, the British government gained popular international legitimacy. This debt-relief program managed to collect 25 million signatures supporting the program from around the globe and encouraged banks to cancel $30 billion in debt.27 Thus, as Kerstin Martens explains, NGOs are often directly involved in the design of policies and may shape political processes from inside the ofcial arenas.28
Complaints against NGOs

Despite such examples of cooperation among states and non-state actors, very often the two groups of actors are at odds. This can happen whether the non-state actor is a corporate actor, a NGO, or, of course, a terrorist organization. There are ve general criticisms leveled at NGOs: 1. They interfere in internal politics. 2. NGOs are misguided. 3. They threaten governments. 4. NGOs perform dangerous work. 5. They lack transparency. We will cover three of these in more depth below. Greenpeace in Berlin, Germany
Greenpeace uses a mechanized road roller to crush ten thousand energy-wasting light bulbs at the Brandenburg Gate.
Greenpeace / Andreas Schoelzel
NGOs and the Right of Interference

One of the most controversial ideas held by many humanitarian NGOs is that the international community has the right of interference in countries that violate the rights of minorities.29 Recall that national sovereignty, as dened in the principles of the Treaty of Westphalia, suggests that states have the right to govern their territory as they see t. The notion that organizations outside the sovereign territory have a right to interfere represents a serious challenge to sovereignty, which has been the cornerstone of international relations for over 350 years.
216
CHAPTER 7
NOn-STATE AcTORS
Many NATO supporters, for example, claimed the humanitarian disaster that unfolded in Kosovo in 1998 and early 1999 warranted NATOs bombing of Serbian (Yugoslav) targets. None of the NATO members had a direct quarrel with Yugo slavia, and yet Yugoslav territory was attacked with the aim of forcing Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic to alter his policies toward his countrys Albanian Kosovars. After Milosevic agreed to withdraw forces from Kosovo, many people wondered whether these events represented a new trend that would play itself out in the twenty-rst century. While this example involves an IGO (NATO), the notion of a right of interference is increasingly accepted by humanitarian NGOs. NGOs may become targets not just of states but of other non-state actors as well. For example, recent anti-globalization efforts in Seattle, Prague, Davos, Genoa, and Washington have made NGOs targets of criticism by businesses and IGO ofcials. Religious groups may oppose NGO activities related to reproductive rights because they view NGO activities as sinful or disruptive of traditional family values. Many businesses and government ofcials critically describe many NGOs accredited by the UN as being either radical, leftist, feminist, pro-abortion, proenvironment, or pro-homosexual because their politics are divisive and unrepresentative of the mainstream.30
NGOs Are Misguided

Some Western NGOs have also been criticized for focusing too narrowly on a particular issue that reects the interests and concerns of the NGO donors but not the recipients of NGO aid and attention. Laurie Garrett of the Council on Foreign Relations found this to be true with respect to health problems in developing countries.31 Likewise, NGOs draw the publics attention to human rights violations of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and the terrible conditions in Darfur, Sudan, but NGOs were far less vocal about Saddam Husseins campaign against the Kurds and the Shiites in Iraq, or about the atrocities committed by the terrorists and armed Shiite groups in Iraq.
Lack of Transparency
Many NGOs are controversial in that many of them are not transparent or accountable. In short, how they make decisions and nance their activities is not always apparent, and they do not always have democratic accountability. NGOs may even fabricate information in order to push their agendaan agenda that may actually hurt the people it is supposed to help. Journalist and author Sebastian Mallaby has shown how some NGOs used false or misleading statements to galvanize opposition to dam projects in Uganda and China despite the local populations support. To help demonstrate these issues, the remainder of the chapter explores the many ways in which NGOs struggle against the interests of states. Lets rst look at political opposition to the two NGOs highlighted earlier: Greenpeace and Amnesty International, and then examine political opposition to corporate actors.32
Political Opposition to Greenpeace

The mission of Greenpeace can clash with the activities and interests of countries and companies with differing viewpoints. We offer the following example to highlight the many obstacles this NGO faces in achieving its mission.

Challenging French Nuclear Testing
Perhaps the most publicized confrontation between Greenpeace and a sovereign state came in July 1985, when French commandos bombed the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior, killing a Dutch citizen. Greenpeace had been protesting French nuclear testing in the South Pacic. France, however, wanted to avoid the negative publicity that often comes with Greenpeace exposure by destroying the Rainbow Warrior while it was harbored in Auckland, New Zealand. Because someone was killed in the incident, the publicity turned out to be almost all negative for the French, both in New Zealand and internationally. At one point, for example, Australias foreign minister said, Every French defense ship or airplane seeking to visit this country will need to give us a guarantee that it is not, and will not in any way, be involved with ... the nuclear tests in the Pacic. If they do not give that assurance, they will not be allowed to land nor will they be refueled or in any other way assisted by Australia. The Pacic Council of Churches said that if it is safe to carry out nuclear tests, do it in France and keep our Pacic nuclear-free.33 Two agents of the French Directorate General of External Security, Major Alain Mafart and Captain Dominique Prieur, were prosecuted in New Zealand on charges of manslaughter and willful damage to a ship by means of an explosive, convicted, and sentenced to ten years in prison in New Zealand. Unhappy with this decision, however, the French government put economic pressure on New Zealand, and the case nally ended up in the lap of United Nations Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar. Under his mediation, the French paid New Zealand $7 million, issued a formal apology, and pledged not to use the inuence of the European Union (then the European Community) to limit New Zealands exports to the EU.34 In the end, France went ahead with its nuclear testing in the Pacic. A decade later, Greenpeace sent another ship to the French Mururoa Atoll when French President Jacques Chirac announced his decision to do more testing. Exactly ten years after the rst Rainbow Warrior was sunk, the French navy stormed Rainbow Warrior II when it sailed inside the twelve-mile exclusion zone around the test site. Commandos red tear gas at the crew, cut the boats communications links, and towed it out of the test area.35
217
Criticism of Greenpeace Policies

Greenpeace has been active in opposing genetically modied (GM) foods, in part on scientic grounds but also because it believes the large biotech companies that produce GM crops exploit farmers who become dependent on these crops. Greenpeace also opposes the situation in which consumers eat GM foods without even knowing it. While the Greenpeace stance on GM crops has drawn the ire of many companies, many countries in the developing world are also upset with Greenpeace. Developing countries look on GM foods as a partial solution to widespread hunger, and they also recognize many of their nutritional benets. Golden rice, for example, is enriched with vitamin A. Some observersincluding Patrick Moore, a founder of Greenpeacehave been critical of Greenpeace for ignoring the possibility that genetic modications could increase yields while reducing pesticide use. Greenpeace, however, dismisses this argument in general and Moore in particular as someone who sold out the NGOs ideals for personal gains made in industry.36 You can see how complex these issues areand how difcult it is to arrive at the truth. (For more about GM foods, see chapter 14.)
218
CHAPTER 7
NOn-STATE AcTORS
Greenpeace has gotten into trouble with countries and companies because of its own mistakes. For example, in 1995 it claimed that the deliberate sinking of the Royal Dutch/Shell oil platform, Brent Spar, would endanger marine life. But the NGO later admitted that its claims were scientically unfounded.37 As Michael Edwards, a Ford Foundation researcher and former NGO ofcial, said, NGOs are often less concerned with righting specic wrongs than with stirring up controversy. John Clark, who deals with NGO relations at the World Bank, has said that NGO campaigners sometimes gloss over facts because they are in a hurry to make their point. An even more unattering evaluation of some NGOs comes from Caroline Harper, a research director at the UK Save the Children fund. Harper explains how few NGOs have the in-house resources to master complex issues. Coming from an activist tradition, NGOs have generally neglected rigorous policy analysis, seeing such research as costly, a luxury and impractical. NGO advocates have tended to leap from the local to the global, armed only with highly contested anecdotal evidence.38 Despite the controversies, Greenpeace shows no signs of diminishing its efforts worldwide, and it has clearly played an important role in raising environmental consciousness.
Political Opposition to Amnesty International

The nature of Amnesty Internationals work makes it susceptible to opposition from sovereign states. In the paragraphs that follow are many such examples, with particular attention paid to China and the United States.
China and Amnesty International

Amnesty International has been highly critical of the Chinese government for a long time and on many accounts. Consider the scope and variety of human rights abuses in the following examples. Amnesty International has reported widespread human rights violations in Tibet. AIs ndings are consistent with those of other organizations, including the Boston-based Physicians for Human Rights.39 Tibet is in the Himalayan mountains between the northeast part of India and the southwest part of China. The historical relationship between Tibet and China has alternated between conquest and cooperation. Tibet has historically never been a part of the Chinese empire or of China. But in 1949, as the communists led by Mao Zedong gained control of China, the Chinese invaded Tibet, and today they have no plans to give it up. According to AI, the occupying Chinese forces are guilty of torture and ill treatment of prisoners. Tibetan nationalists and Buddhists appear to be special targets. In addition, hundreds of prisoners of conscience, among them monks and nuns, remain in prison under conditions that are often cruel and degrading. Chinas behavior is noteworthy because China has signed several international human rights conventions, including the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. In addition, Chinas own criminal law (for example, Article 136) states that it is strictly forbidden to extort confession by torture.40 z Amnesty International is a vocal opponent of the death penalty. In 2006, for example, AI recorded almost 1,600 people put to death. Iran executed at least 177 people, Pakistan at least 82, Iraq and Sudan each at least 65, and the United States 53.41 China executes more people than the rest of the worlds governments combined. China ofcially executed 1,000 people in 2006. How-
For more information see The View From: Amnesty International www.BetweenNations.org

ever, the data on the use of the death penalty in China are a state secret; and AI believes that the true number could be as high as 8,000.42 z AI has been very critical of Chinas relationship with the Sudanese government and the conditions in the Darfur region. According to AI, Sudan represents Chinas largest overseas investment, worth at least $3 billion, and is the third-largest supplier of oil to China. AI has held demonstrations to highlight the failure of the Chinese government to use its inuence to pressure the Sudanese government to admit a viable peacekeeping operation into Darfur.
219
Amnesty International and the United States

It is perhaps surprising to many Americans that Amnesty International has often targeted the United States for systematic human rights problems. The most visible clash is between AI and those U.S. states where the death penalty is legal. Amnesty International particularly opposes the U.S. practice (in twentyone states) of allowing the execution of persons under eighteen who commit capital crimes. Such legislation puts the United States in the same company as Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Saudi Arabia, the only other countries that have the death penalty for minors. The United States is also faulted by AI on a number of other issues. Consider the following. z In 2000, Amnesty International accused NATO (and hence the United States, indirectly) of war crimes for not taking enough precautions to prevent civilian casualties during the war in Kosovo. z AI has been critical of antiterrorism measures like the U.S.A. Patriot Act, which has been widely imitated in other countries. AI believes the United States has not lived up to its commitment to the Geneva Convention because it refuses many prisoners the right to be informed of the reasons for their detention, the right to prompt and condential access to counsel of ones choice, and the presumption of innocence. Amnesty International Monitors Countries around the World, Including the United States
One of Amnesty Internationals complaints about the United States is its support for the death penalty. In this photo, opponents of the death penalty protest against this American policy.
z In a major 1998 report, AI was critical of the United States for many aspects of its criminal-justice system. Across the country thousands of people are subjected to sustained and deliberate brutality at the hands of police ofcers. Cruel, degrading, and sometimes life-threatening methods of constraint continue to be a feature of the U.S. criminal justice system.43 For example, women inmates in U.S. prisons and jails are routinely subjected to sexual abuse by male guards.44 z In response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita, AI joined forces with the U.S. Human Rights Network to call on the U.S. government to recognize Katrina survivors as Internally Displaced Persons and to respect and adhere to the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement.
220
CHAPTER 7
NOn-STATE AcTORS
Global Human Rights Violations

China and the United States, of course, are not singled out by Amnesty International as the worlds only violators of human rights. AI nd itself at odds with most countries. The following examples help demonstrate the geographic scope of AI as well as the types of political opposition it faces. z Israel: AI has been critical of Israeli treatment of Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories. Since 2000, for example, Israeli army and settlers have killed about 3,700 Palestiniansmost of them unarmed and including over 600 children. AI also points out that Palestinians have killed almost 1,000 Israelis most of them civilians and including more than 100 children.45 z Brazil: AI has criticized Brazil for death squads that have participated in the extra judicial executions of criminal suspects in situations sometimes described as social cleansing as well as in the context of organized crime, often with the direct involvement of former and active police ofcers. z Cuba: For more than forty years, AI has campaigned against human rights violations committed by the Cuban government. The main focus has been on the imprisonment of political dissidents and journalists as a result of severe restrictions on the freedom of expression, freedom of association, and assembly. There are also concerns about detention without charge or trial as well as harassment and intimidation of dissidents and critics. z Pakistan: AI has denounced the plight of Pakistani women, who suffer physical abuse, rape, acid attacks, burns and slayings which have prompted us to call on Pakistani authorities to protect women and take concrete steps to prevent a repetition of situations such as these. Similar concerns have been raised about women in Myanmar, who have been tortured, raped, and murdered by the countrys military junta.46 (See chapter 11 for more information.) These examples show not only the diverse nature of AIs complaints but also the diversity of AIs targets.
Political Opposition to Corporate Actors

The growing presence of international corporate actors around the world has led to opposition not just from sovereign states but from other NGOs as well. Developing countries especially can feel threatened by the power of giant MNCs. The vast resources available to some foreign companies can inuence not just the economy of a developing country but its political system as well. We explore the relationship of developing countries and international corporate actors in greater depth in chapter 13. For now, lets look at the challenge that MNCs can face from other NGOs. Many NGOs are concerned about the economic, political, social, and environmental impact of corporate actors. For example, they may oppose the way in which local businesses are threatened by large foreign companies, and they oppose MNCs when their activities lower wages or create unsafe working conditions. As a result, NGOs that are critical of international corporations often demand actions from them that typically have little to do with traditional business activity. For example, the Nongovernmental International Business Leaders Forum argues that corporations have the responsibility to resolve conicts and foster socioeconomic

development in the countries where they are located. Oil companies, for instance, must proactively create positive societal value by engaging in innovative social investment, stakeholder consultation, policy dialogue, advocacy and civic institution building.47
221
NGO Pressure on Corporate Actors

NGOs can and do inuence how MNCs operate in some countries. Shell, for example, extracted oil from Nigeria for over fty years without much concern for the local population or environment. But due in part to pressure from NGOs, the company has made important strides in helping its host country. Even Human Rights Watch, one of Shells harshest critics, has admitted that development spending by the oil companies has also brought schools, clinics, and other infrastructure to remote parts of the country that might otherwise be far more marginalized by the Nigerian government.48 Consider these other examples. z Starbucks announced in 2000 that it would buy coffee beans from importers who pay above-market prices to small farmers (for so-called fair trade beans) and sell them in more than 2,000 of its shops across the United States. z The NGO Oxfam America has joined a broad coalition of other NGOs, student groups, and Ethiopian community members to force coffee roasters, such as Starbucks, to respect the intellectual property of three specialty coffee names in EthiopiaHara, Sidamo, and Yirgacheffe. The goal is to allow Ethiopian farmers, and not just foreign coffee companies, to enjoy the benets of Ethiopias indigenous crops.49 Roasters: Recognize the Rights of Ethiopian Coffee Farmer
The Prot Disparity
90% goes to foreign importers, distributors, and roasters 10% goes to Ethiopians
Regulatory Action by MNCs

As NGO and public pressure has increased, MNCs have increasingly begun implementing certication arrangements. These are codes of good conduct, production guidelines, and monitoring standards that govern corporate behavior and even the behavior of companies that supply MNCs. The certications can take several forms. 1. They may be written by a single company, as in the case of Johnson & Johnson, which wrote its rst environmental health and safety report in 1993. 2. Certications may be organized by industry or trade associations, such as the chemical industrys global Responsible Care program. 3. Certication can involve an external group, often an NGO that imposes its rules and compliance methods onto a particular rm or industry. The NGO Center for Responsibility in Business, for example, designed auditable standards and an independent accreditation process for the protection of workers rights. By mid-2001, the center had certied sixty-six manufacturing facilities around the world, mostly toy and apparel factories. 4. Certication may also involve government or multilateral agencies, as in the case of the UNs Global Compact, which lists environmental, labor, and human rights principles for companies to follow. To be certied, companies must submit online updates of their progress for NGOs to scrutinize. These certications are now common in many industries, including the chemical, coffee, forest products, oil, mining, nuclear power, transportation sectors, apparel, diamond, footwear, and toy industries.
222
CHAPTER 7
NOn-STATE AcTORS
Protests against Home Depot
One of the largest home-improvement stores in the United States, Home Depot, has been a target of the Rainforest Action Network for selling lumber from old-growth forests.
MNC-NGO Cooperation
The record of certication so far is mixed. In some economic sectors, the impact is noticeable, particularly in the forest products and clothing industries. The World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace, for example, created the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). Companies that meet the councils requirements can put the FSC logo on their products. Because of pressure from NGOs such as the National Labor Com mittee, GAP, Inc., became the rst retailer to agree to independent monitoring of a foreign contractor. While certications may lead to the improvements that NGOs seek, critics of this approach are concerned that, in the end, certification will be a weak substitute for a stronger political (state) role in addressing a countrys problems. In addition, some observers believe that NGO demands of MNCs can be inappropriate and that NGO criticisms can be misplaced. According to Marina Ottaway, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, no matter what it does, Shell cannot pacify its Nigerian and international critics because what they want is beyond any single actors capacity to deliver.50
Typically, NGOs are critical of multinational corporations, and the bigger the company, the greater the criticism. However, sometimes the world is more complicated than the youre either with us or against us attitude suggests. For example, in 2002 the United Nations chose corporations as the main entities for tackling health problems in Southern Africa mostly because the companiesnot local governments or NGOshad the necessary resources. The Britain-based mining group Anglo-American, for example, plans to offer HIV/AIDS drugs to its workers and provide medicine regimens in the rural communities where the company nds its miners. While the motive may be seen as purely economicthe AngloAmerican estimates that about 23 percent of its 134,000 employees in Southern Africa are HIV-positivethe results may turn out to be very positive for the employees.51 In the future, companies and governments may nd it to their advantage to work more closely with NGOs, even if they are criticized for pandering to the NGOs, and even if the NGOs themselves are criticized by hard-core activists who argue that the NGOs are selling out to the enemy. For better or worse, some observers claim that increased cooperation between NGOs and MNCs is creating a new type of diplomacy. NGOs have put public pressure on companies at both the national and international levels to be responsible and responsive to the people with whom they interact. Still, the record thus far shows that NGOs often make only supercial progress with big businesses. When NGOs were critical of UK Minnow Premier Oil for its investment in Myanmar, the company responded with a detailed description of its social and environmental performance and commissioned an independent social audit, but it remains in Myanmar. Likewise, British Petroleum keeps its Petrochina stake, despite criticism from and a dialog with the Free Tibet Campaign.52

State-NGO Relations in Perspective
The goal of this section has been to review the many ways in which NGOs can shape international events and nation-states. In general, NGOs can affect nationstates in the short, medium, and long term, and the relationship between NGOs and nation-states can range from complete hostility through peaceful coexistence to overt cooperation. Keep in mind, though, that regardless of the relationship, some NGOs have no impact whatsoever on nation-states.
223
Short-, Medium-, and Long-term Views

In the short term, NGO successes can, but do not always, occur. The impact of NGO activity on a sovereign state may be immediate, as in the case of UN mediators forcing France to pay for its attack on Greenpeaces ship Rainbow Warrior. Thereafter, although the French continued their nuclear testing program, they reduced the number of tests. A medium-term success case is Amnesty Internationals Campaign Against Torture, begun in Mexico in October 2001. It led to a 50 percent increase in AI Mexico membership and an agreement with a popular radio station to promote human rights issues.53 While this achievement has not transformed Mexican society overnight, AI considers it an important step. Most NGOs do not succeed in the short run because their demands typically include making large political or economic entities change the fundamental way they operate. When the interests of these entities are entrenched, short-term successes are likely to be rare. It is over the long run that NGOs may have a more important impact on nation-states and world politics in general. This is because the impact of NGOs can be indirect and subtle. People who have only recently learned about the mission of such NGOs as Greenpeace, Oxfam, or Human Rights Watch, for example, may not act at the time of a particular humanitarian crisis, but their new-found awareness may lead them to action in the future.
NGOs Fighting AIDS in Developing Countries
224
CHAPTER 7
NOn-STATE AcTORS
According to Craig Warkentin of the State University of New York at Oswego, in order for nation-states or other large organizations (such as MNCs) to alter their behavior, a change of attitude is often required, and NGOs contribute to a longterm change in public attitudes.54 For example, NGOs can identify transnational problems that might otherwise be ignored. They may help establish internationallevel values and norms that can guide future international policies taken by nationstates or international organizations such as the UN.55 Although Greenpeace is still struggling in its campaign to ban whaling, for example, it is thanks to sustained Greenpeace pressure that the International Whaling Commission was transformed from an organization allocating whaling quotas into an organization protecting whales.56 Of course, if NGOs are unable to change enough peoples minds, they will continue to face formidable political obstacles. For instance, Amnesty International and other human rights organizations face a long, uphill struggle to convince countries (including China and the United States) to end the use of the death penalty. In China, the AIDS Action Project, an NGO that is partially funded from international sources, publicized government incompetence in the sale of HIV-tainted blood that may have killed over 1 million people. The governments response was to evict the NGO from its ofces in an effort to silence the group.57
The Varied Impact of NGOs

As for corporate actors, multinational corporations can have a major impact on both the host and home countries. Recall the vast economic resources that MNCs control and the political clout that can accompany such economic power. Some regulation of MNC activity is possible, but no country can completely rein in international businesses without threatening to lose the benets derived from the international businesses in the rst place. The problem is worse for countries that are politically and economically weak. The relationship between states and terrorist NGOs takes many forms. z Some states sponsor terrorism by providing nancial, political, or other support to terrorist groups. In this sense, states and terrorist organizations have a cooperative relationship. z Other states, of course, are targeted by terrorist groups. Britain, Spain, Israel, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Statesto name just a fewhave all had to contend with the scourge of terrorism. Clearly, the impact of NGOs on nation-stateswhen, in fact, there is an impactcan be quite varied. Sometimes the relationship is hostile, sometimes it is cooperative, and sometimes the relationship is simply young and evolving.58 The relationships between NGOs and MNCs, for example, are as varied as the relationship between NGOs and nation-states. The stereotypical image is of NGOs protesting the behavior of rapacious MNCs in some developing country. The NGO complaint usually centers on the MNCs environmental, labor, or human rights record. While this stereotype applies to many NGO-MNC relationships, it does not apply to all of them. As with NGOs and the oil industry, for instance, in some cases the two sides have chosen to cooperate instead. NGOs, then, can have both a short-term and long-term impact on nationstates and corporate actors. The relationship between NGOs and nation-states and corporate actors is often hostile, but it need not be. When NGOs confront entrenched interests, such as nation-states that pursue their perceived national

interest at the expense of the environment, or companies that seek short-term prot regardless of NGO complaints, progress is likely to be slow or nonexistent. This chapter concludes by returning to one of the main questions raised in both chapter 6 and here. How inuential can corporate and nongovernmental actors be in a world dominated by states? From one perspective, it appears that IGOs and NGOs are indeed chipping away at the sovereignty of nation-states. If one looks at the power wielded by international corporate actors, the inuence some international organizations have on countries, or the actions of international terrorists, the nation-state seems to be in retreat. In terms of sheer numbers, the future looks bright for both IGOs and nonactors. Global capitalist relations are encouraging an expansion of the powers of corporate actors on a regional levelas in NAFTA and the European Unionand on a global scale. NGOs such as Amnesty International are likely to be active as long as people are threatened in unstable or repressive countries. And as long as environmentally harmful substances, nuclear weapons, and civilian nuclear power are used, NGOs like Greenpeace will also be active. Finally, NGOs are likely to prosper as more countries open up their political systems and allow for greater freedoms of expression and associations.
225
Test Prepper 7.4

_____ 1. Many NGOs are criticized for their lack of transparency, in other words, they do not fully disclose their sources of revenue and how they spend their funds. _____ 2. After the publicity nightmare faced by the French after destroying the Rainbow Warrior, the French government and Greenpeace were able to establish positive relations that have lasted until today. _____ 3. Greenpeace has gotten into trouble not only for the positions it has taken, but also because of the mistakes it has made (such as making false claims). _____ 4. While Greenpeace has been criticized by many for its interference in domestic political affairs, Amnesty International has steered clear of controversy. _____ 5. Certication of businesses by NGOs has been an overwhelmingly positive force for environmental change by MNCs around the globe.
_____ 6. Which of the following complaints are made against MNCs? a. They interfere in the internal politics of states. b. They avoid high tax rates in home countries. c. They evade tough environmental standards at home. d. They establish market dominance in the host countries. e. All of the above _____ 7. Which of the following were NOT a subject of Amnesty International criticism? a. Brazil d. United States b. Mexico e. None of the above c. Israel
Case Study
Doctors Without Borders/Mdcins Sans Frontires
226
CHAPTER 7
NOn-STATE AcTORS
Join the Debate Should the International Community Allow Minke Whaling?
For years, Greenpeace and other conservation groups have battled to make all countries abide by the International Whaling Commissions (IWC) 1986 moratorium on whale hunting. However, pro-whaling states such as Japan, Norway, and Iceland have not complied with the moratorium. This has led to violent interactions on the high seas. For example, in the summer of 1999, when Greenpeace attempted to prevent ships from hunting minke whales near Norway, one of its boats collided with a Norwegian coast guard ship. One U.S. and two British Greenpeace members were arrested, while others escaped and returned safely to their boat. Because Greenpeace was in Norways waters and because Norwegian law allows whaling, the coastguard felt justied in thwarting the efforts of Greenpeace.1 The events raise interesting questions. What motivates Greenpeace members to put themselves at risk? Why have prowhaling states ignored the IWC moratorium? This debate explores the arguments for and against whaling. The issues discussed provide a concrete example of how NGOs and nation-states may compete against each other when they pursue incompatible goals. It also addresses the potential impact NGOs can have on nation-states. It remains to be seen if antiwhaling NGOs like Greenpeace will alter state policies in the short term or the long term, or if they simply face an uphill battle against states that will do what they want to do regardless of international pressures. ing in the past decades has had no signicant effect on the status of the stock.4 The Japanese government takes a similar position.5 From a cultural perspective, whaling has a long tradition in many parts of the world. As pro-whaling protesters in Japan often claim, whale meat is part of Japanese food culture.6 During a protest in 2002, demonstrators shouted slogans such as This is our dietary culture. Resume whaling now! and Fight off Greenpeace and the eco-eccentric anti-whalers!7
Norwegian Whaling
Vasquez/Greenpeace
THE PRO-WHALING PERSpECtIVE

Support for whaling has been justied on economic, cultural, and political grounds. According to the Norway-based NGO High North Alliance, the rights of whalers, sealers, and shers to harvest renewable resources in accordance with principles of sustainable management must be supported.2 Norway estimates that the Northeast Atlantic and Central Atlantic whale stocks amount to 107,000 and 72,000 animals respectively. These stocks are large enough to provide a sound basis for sustainable harvesting.3 The government of Iceland also estimates that minke whale hunt-
JOIn THE DEBATE
227
Culture and economics can be inseparable when it comes to whaling. For example, the Norwegian government believes that shing, sealing and whaling are among the principal means of livelihood of the coastal population, especially in the northernmost parts of the country.8 In addition, unlike large commercial shing operations, the typical whaling vessel is generally run as a family business, with a crew of three to eight, including the owner. The belief among these outts is that such small business operations do not threaten whale stocks. Icelandic pro-whalers make a similar claimthat minke whaling has been conducted around Iceland using only small motorboats for most of the past century. From the pro-whaling perspective, the problem with anti-whaling states and with NGOs like Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund is that they are practicing a form of cultural imperialism in preventing a resumption of the industry even though minke whale stocks are abundant. As Keiji Fujino, who runs a whale meat stall at the Karato (Japan) wholesale market, put it, They should stop telling us what to do. How would people in Britain like it if we told them not to eat cow?9
THE ANtI-WHALING PERSpECtIVE

There are many arguments against whaling, the primary one being that it is an unnecessary and inhumane practice that is decimating already endangered whale populations. Over the centuries, whale stocks of all kinds have dropped enormously, and if hunting continues, many whale species could face extinction.10 While pro-whaling countries argue that whaling is important for local communities, the industry of whaling can be quite involved and go far beyond the local level. Greenpeace, for example, claims that some of Norways whaling vessels cross international waters, travel over 1,000 miles to reach hunting grounds, and that their ships act as small factories, ensing whales on board and remaining at sea for weeks at a time. In addition, Greenpeace claims that Norways real goal is to export whale meat to Japan, where prices are several times higher.11 Japan claims that its whaling is for scientic research into the relationship between whales and sh in the north Pacic.12 But Greenpeace claims that hundreds of millions of dollars in whale meat harvested by Japanese research hunting is sold on the market.13 The scientic opinion on the legitimacy of the research pro-
gram is divided, complicating efforts by Greenpeace and other anti-whaling organizations to discredit completely the research hunting argument. A Japanese survey of attitudes toward whaling has raised the ire of anti-whaling groups even more. According to the Japanese national newspaper Asahi Shimbun, only 4 percent of Japanese reported eating whale meat sometimes, and an additional 9 percent reported eating it very rarely.14 Anti-whaling advocates also highlight the unethical tactics used by pro-whaling states in the international arena. In some cases, pro-whaling states have resorted to bribery to get their way. For example, Japan has bought votes in order to gain greater whaling rights from the IWC. According to Greenpeace, Japan spent over $220 million of its fisheries aid in recent years on securing the support of ten countries, including Morocco, Guinea, and several Caribbean states. They have tied aid to votes, New Zealands minister of conservation, Sandra Lee, said. If this continues, then we will reach a point where countries that give the most aid in international forums will be able to swing issues their way. Instead, we should be debating on merit.15 Another argument against whaling is that maintaining a moratorium on whaling is crucial because whales mature and breed slowly. As the World Wildlife Fund argues, it can take a whale population several decades or even generations to recover from any depletion.16 Whales are also threatened by the by-catch problem (being accidentally caught in shing nets) and by the consequences of industrialization such as global warming, ozone depletion, and toxic chemicals. Given these natural and human-induced challenges, people opposed to whaling argue that whales should not also have to suffer the fate of being harvested. Finally, some scholars doubt the link between Japanese culture and the tradition of whaling. Jeff Kingston, for example, believes that whaling is an invented tradition. The support for whaling, he says, is rooted in more nationalistic traditions. There is a consensus in Japan that as part of the natural right for a sovereign nation it is perfectly right to continue whaling.17
NOtES
1. See Agence France Presse, Three Greenpeace Militants Arrested in Norway, June 12, 1999; and Green peace Blamed for Environmentalist Injury, Nordic Business Report, June 21, 1999.
228
CHAPTER 7
NOn-STATE AcTORS
2. Alex Kirby, Norway Seeks Tripled Whale Catch, BBC News Online, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ science/nature/3753919.stm, May 28, 2004. 3. Norwegian Minke Whaling, Norwegian Embassy in Canada, http://www.emb-norway.ca/facts/ general/whaling/whaling.htm. 4. Information Center of the Icelandic Fisheries Ministry, http://www.sheries. is/stocks/whales.htm, September 25, 2004. 5. Agence France Presse, Some 700 Japanese Rightwingers Demand Reopening of Whale Hunt, May 19, 2002. 6. For an ofcial statement from the Japanese government, see the following link to the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, http://www.mofa.go .jp/policy/q_a/faq6.html (May 7, 2007). 7. Jonathan Watts, Whaling Ban in Danger as Japans Inuence Grows, The Guardian, May 20, 2002. 8. Norwegian Minke Whaling. 9. Watts. 10. The International Whaling Commission (IWC) maintains population estimates of most whales. See the IWCs website at http://www.iwcofce.org/ conservation/estimate.htm. 11. Greenpeace, http://www.greenpeace.org.au/ oceans/whales/whaling/norway.html. 12. Dan Goodman, Blubber Banned, Letter to the Editor, The Economist, September 30, 2000. 13. Reuters, Greenpeace Blasts New Japanese Whale Hunt, November 9, 1999. The Japanese govern-
14.
15. 16.
17.
ment, however, argues that the whale meat sold in the market is a requirement set forth by Article VIII of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling. Also, according to the government, the sale of whale meat does not create any prot in Japans case. A nonprot research institute, which carries out this research program, sells the byproduct in order to cover a portion of its research costs. The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/q_a/faq6.html, May 7, 2007. Japan: The World Is Watching, Greenpeace, http:// www.greenpeace.org.au/oceans/whales/whaling/ japan.html. Jonathon Watts, Whaling ban in danger as Japans inuence grows, The Guardian, May 20, 2002. WWFs Position Statement on Whales, Whaling, and the IWC, World Wildlife Federation, http:// www.panda.org/about_wwf/what_we_do/species/ publications/, July 2004. Kingston also quotes Tomohiko Taniguchi of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs: This has become a touchstone issue for Japanese people who are sick and tired of being pushed around and told what to do by other countries like the United States, he argues. The forces that drive Japanese whaling, BBC News, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ asia-pacic/5080508.stm, June 15, 2006.

1 2 3 understand 4 5 political, 6 economic, 7 8 Identify and the and technological factors that have led to the rise of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). 19 2 10 3 5 scope 6 of international 7 8 corporate 9 Identify the4economic actors and determine how powerful multinational corporations relate to state actors. 10
International NGOs, organizations whose members are groups and individuals but not countries, are diverse and have rapidly grown in number, especially in the past fteen years, thanks to technological advances and more open political and economic conditions.
Greenpeace
- The NGO Greenpeace promotes global disarmament and nonviolent approaches to resolving political differences. - Greenpeace seeks to prevent pollution and the abuse of the Earths oceans, lands, and fresh water. - It opposes nuclear weapons and nuclear power and seeks to protect the biodiversity of the planet. - It seeks to raise public awareness through informational campaigns, demonstrations, and publicity stunts.
RESOURcES On THE WEB
229
Amnesty International
- Amnesty International is a human rights NGO. It opposes the imprisonment of individuals for their political views, seeks to ensure fair trials for political prisoners, and opposes the death penalty, torture, and political killings. - It conducts letter-writing campaigns, holds fundraising concerts with prominent musicians, and issues regular reports on human rights conditions in most of the countries of the world.
5 7 associated 8 9 NGO 10 interactions Identify the6criticisms with with states; be able to recount specic examples associated with Greenpeace and Amnesty International.
4 6 scope 7 of international 8 9 corporate 10 Identify the5economic actors and determine how powerful multinational corporations relate to state actors.
Sovereign states can be inuenced by NGOs such as Greenpeace and Amnesty International. NGOs are highly controversial in countries where their missions are counter to the existing social, political, or economic order. For example, states may oppose NGOs because NGOs threaten their sovereignty (as in the case of humanitarian intervention), because they perceive the goals of NGOs as misguided, and because NGOs may lack transparency. Sometimes NGOs are able to publicize government activity they oppose, thus helping to effect short- or medium-term change (such as shutting down a polluting factory), or long-term change that involves peoples attitudes and, eventually, state policies. While much of this chapter described examples of political opposition to NGOs, the relationship between NGOs and nation-states and international businesses can range from hostile to cooperative.
International corporate actors are businesses whose activities take place in more than one country. Some have simple subsidiaries designed to address a particular countrys market, while others look at the world as a single huge market. Corporate actors have become major players in inter national affairs, especially since World War II. The economic power of some corporate actors rivals that of most countries. Corporate actors can have an important impact not only on the home countrys political and economic situation but also on that of the host country.

Political Geography
The Political Power of Geography and Maps
Learning Objectives
1
Identify and understand how certain geographic factors impact a states power and security.
Identify the key premises of political geography and be able to dene the major terms and concepts within the eld.
230
Geography is the study of earth as the home of people.

Yi-Fu Tuan
Chapter Outline
What Is Political Geography?
Issues and Perspectives of Political Geography The Players in Political Geography: Uniting and Dividing Forces
How Does Geography Shape

Human Perceptions?
The Power and Problem of Perceptions The Power of Territory in Self-identity: National, Regional, and Religious Maps and Perceptions
How Does Geography Impact a

States Power and Security?
Location and Power Geographys Impact on Territorial Security
Understand how human perception interacts with geographic characteristics to affect world politics.
Political Geography: Exploring the Power of Place
o begin this study of political geography, think about all the connections between land and politics in play around youin your hometown and in the country at large. Local issues that may come to mind include heated debates over property taxes, landlls, zoning restrictions, strip malls, water rights, or off-campus student housing. Within your state, you might nd political hot potatoes in the form of conicts between green-space proponents (those who believe in open space) and real estate developers, between political parties arguing over the territorial boundaries of congressional districts, and between corporations and individuals with competing views of where to dump nuclear waste. These issues fall within the domain of political geography. So does the
232
Key Terms
CHAPTER 8
POLITIcAL GEOgRAPHY
political geography p. 234 geopolitics p. 236 geostrategy p. 236 natural resources p. 246 Kurds p. 254
United States relative to its abundant natural resources, arable land, climate, and ocean frontiers. Compare U.S. access to ocean harbors relative to Russia with its problem of access to warm water ports and difculty of extracting oil and gas from under the permafrost and transporting it. The study of political geographys spatial relationships and political processes illustrates the many ways in which the worlds geographic realms are growing both more interdependent (globalization) and more divided at the same time. A geographic realm refers to the large arenas of the world you very likely already knowlike Europe, Russia, the Middle East, and North America.1 A realm consists of different regions, such as Russias Siberia. The study of political geography at work among the states and nations that occupy realms and regions helps us explain the scope and shape of a geopolitical world undergoing rapid transformation that impacts world politics. Given the great changes since the end of the Cold War, scholars working on world politics have shown a renewed interest in political geography.2 Political geographys focus on the links between political power and territorial space help us understand our constantly evolving political landscape at the local, regional, and global levels. From desperate Mexican migrants traveling north over the sizzling Sonora Desert trying to cross the border into the United States to find work, to sectarian violence in Iraq, to Taliban ghters crossing from northern Pakistan into Afghanistan to launch a comeback, distinct groups of people are struggling over territorial space. States torn apart: z by one group ghting another (Congo, Rwanda, Nigeria, Sudan) z by gangs who control swaths of territory (Colombia and Brazil) z by warlords who usurp the power of legitimate government (Afghanistan, Somalia) z by conict over holy land (Palestinians versus Israelis in Israel) illustrate political geographys decentralizing forces. Terrorism generated by al Qaedas radical Islamic fundamentalistsin part a reaction to modernization within their territoryreects regional and global decentralization. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the European Union (EU), on the other hand, highlight regional centralizing forces at work in political geographygiven the ways in which they tie together people and states. In this chapter, we begin by looking at what political geography is all aboutits focus, assumptions, and actors. Figure 8.1 sets the scene by depicting the worlds current states. Then we look at key spatial relationships that impact world politics, such as a states or regions absolute and relative location and boundaries. Absolute location refers to places latitude and longitude (a global location). Relative location tells us about one place relative to another in terms of landmarks, time, direction, distance, or related physical ties. As a leading video instructional series makes clear in its detailed survey of world
c WHAT IS POLITIcAL GEOgRAPHY?

FIGURE 8.1 Current World Political Boundaries
NORWAY
a
EST ON IA LAT VIA LIT HU A RU SSIA NIA
233
ARCTIC OCEAN
North Sea
RUSSIA
MAURITANIA SENEGAL GAMBIA NIGER

BURKINA FASO
GREENLAND (DENMARK)
ARCTIC OCEAN
DENMARK
NETHERLANDS
GERMANY
Ba
l ti c
Se
MALI
POLAND
BELARUS UKRAINE
ARCTIC OCEAN
UNITED STATES CANADA
GUINEABISSAU GUINEA SIERRA LEONE LIBERIA
BELGIUM CZECH LUX. REP.
FRANCE IVORY COAST GHANA TOGO BENIN
SLOVAKIA
AUSTRIA
NIGERIA
ICELAND
UNITED KINGDOM IRELAND
NORWAY
FINLAND SWEDEN
LA
SWITZ. SLOVENIA
HUNGARY
MOLDOVA
ROMANIA Black Sea BULGARIA
RUSSIA
CROATIA YUG. ITALY BOSNIAHERZEGOVINA ALBANIA

Medi t er ra
TURKEY
ne
an
Sea
FRANCE
ANDORRA
Black Sea
KAZAKHSTAN
GREECE
MONGOLIA
TURKMENISTAN
UNITED STATES
PA C I F I C OCEAN
PORTUGAL
SPAIN TUNISIA LIBYA
TURKEY
CYPRUS LEBANON ISRAEL
SYRIA
KYRGYZSTAN TAJIKISTAN
AN
NORTH KOREA
AT L A N T I C OCEAN
MOROCCO WESTERN SAHARA MAURITANIA ALGERIA MALI
IRAQ JORDAN
IRAN
AFGHANISTAN
MEXICO U.S.
EGYPT
PA
QATAR
ST
NEPAL BHUTAN
CHINA
JAPAN
SOUTH KOREA LAOS TAIWAN
KI
SAUDI ARABI
NIGER
NIGERIA
UNITED ARAB EMIRATE
BANGLADESH
CHAD SUDAN
OMAN YEMEN ERITREA

ETHIOPIA
INDIA
MYANMAR (BURMA) THAILAND CAMBODIA SRI LANKA BRUNEI MALAYSIA VIETNAM
PHILIPPINES
COLOMBIA ECUADOR
0 0 300 Miles 300 Kilometers
GUYANA SURINAM FRENCH GUIANA
PA C I F I C OCEAN
VENEZUELA BRAZIL BOLIVIA
THE BAHAMAS CUBA MEXICO JAMAICA BELIZE GUATEMALA EL SALVADOR HAITI
PERU
CAMEROON EQUATORIAL GUINEA CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC GABON CONGO REPUBLIC
ZAIRE RWANDA BURUNDI
DJIBOUTI SOMALIA UGANDA

I N D I A N O C E A N
KENYA
ANGOLA ZAMBIA NAMIBIA
TANZANIA MALAWI MOZAMBIQUE
I NDONESIA
PAPUA NEW GUINEA
SOLOMON ISLANDS VANUATU
MADAGASCAR
MAURITIUS FIJI
ST. KITTS AND NEVIS ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA HONDURAS DOMINICA MARTINIQUE ST. LUCIS NICARAGUA ST. VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES GRENADA
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC PUERTO RICO
CHILE
PARAGUAY
AT L A N T I C OCEAN
BOTSWANA SOUTH AFRICA
URUGUAY ARGENTINA
ZIMBABWE SWAZILAND LESOTHO

BLACK SEA
AUSTRALIA
RUSSIA GEORGIA AZERBAIJAN NEW ZEALAND
COSTA RICA PANAMA COLOMBIA
TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO
ARMENIA TURKEY AZERBAIJAN
VENEZUELA
BARBADOS
IRAN
geography, different cities, regions and states around the world generate power depending on their relative location and what is happening there politically,3 We next examine how place and territory shape human perceptions and inuences foreign policy. n AElectronic Publishing Services Inc.
Duncan, World Politics in the 21st Century, 3e DUNC.7322.0029 Fig. 8.1 1st Proof 2nd Proof
What Is Political Geography?

3rd Proof Final
Identify the key premises of political geography and be able to dene the major terms and concepts within the eld.
To understand the news that pours through televisions, newspapers, magazines, and increasingly, the Internet, we need at least an elementary understanding of world geography and how it intersects with politics and power. Just as geography and power have played a vital historic role in determining the growth of civilizations and empires, so they do today in the dynamics of continuity and change in the worlds political landscape.4
For more information see Why It Matters to You: Iraqs Political Geography www.BetweenNations.org
234
CHAPTER 8
POLITIcAL GEOgRAPHY
Issues and Perspectives of Political Geography

Political geography has always inuenced the news headlines. Since World War II, for example, political geography has inuenced the wars in Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf region (two wars against Iraq), Afghanistan, the former Yugoslavia, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In todays postCold War era, we see states and regions interconnected and interdependent in military and trade organizations. At the same time, as shown above, internal battles inside states are fragmenting them and generating regional and global conicts.
Political Geography: A Particular Focus

Political geography Political geography looks at how, and in what ways, geographical features at the local, state, and regional level interact with politics and power.
For more information see Entanglements in Guatemala and Cuba www.BetweenNations.org
Political geographyand its related eld of study, geopoliticshas a particular focus. It looks at how, and in what ways, geographical features at the local, state, regional, and global level interact with politics and power. We can express this territory-space relationship in different ways to capture its essence. For our purposes, think of it as the study of geographic impacts on politics and political issues within and between states and regions. Conversely, it examines the inuence of politics and political issues on geography and the lives of people who live within states and regions. Political geography, then, looks at power in terms of territorial spatiality, or to put it another way: how power and political processes interact with geographic features. One thing becomes clear in the study of political geography. Geography frequently inuences political decision making, just as political power inuences geographical space. This means that a citys, states or regions: z z z z z absolute and relative location natural resources topography climate and other geographic factors
are subjects of study through the lenses of political geography. Iraqs oil reserves for example, coupled to its pivotal location in the oil-rich Middle East, bounded by six neighbors (Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Iran, and Kuwait), and locked in sectarian civil war, make it a likely candidate for a political geography assessment. Here people struggle for control of territorial space with a vengeanceand that struggle affects foreign-policy decision making and the lives of many other people outside Iraq. Those who look at geographical factors as a way to understand world politics are concerned, as one observer puts it, with the geographical consequences of political decisions and actions, the geographical factors that were considered during the making of any decisions, and the role of any geographical factors that inuenced the outcome of political actions.5 In other words, the spatial features of international politics are the heart of political geography. Think of political geography as a eld of inquiry that studies the numerous geographic forces that drive world politics, including the following: z The absolute and relative location, size, and terrain and borders of a state that inuence its development, national power base, foreign policy, security concerns, and territorial disputes. z Political control of key resources, such as arable land, oil, coal, water, and natural resources, drives national priorities in foreign policy.

z How spatial relationshipsfor example, borders and topographyaffect the perceptions and decision making of key actors, such as state governments, ethnic national groups, IGOs, and NGOs. z How the diversity of states and regions across the globefor example, their differing ethnic national identities, language groups, belief systems, and territorial conictsinteract to affect power in international economic, political, social, and military relations. Political geography plays a huge role in who gets what, when, and how in the game of world politics. Take, for example, the costs and benets of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. That invasion has led to the loss of an average of 2 million barrels a day of Iraqi oil from world markets. This affects economies around the globe, most notable in higher oil prices. Whereas Iraq used to produce nearly 3.5 million barrels of oil per day and exported nearly 2.5 million barrels of them when Saddam Hussein was in power, most of that oil is no longer available. For Iraqis and the world, the consequences of this loss of oil have been huge.6
235
Political Geographys Premises

Three basic premises of political geography stand out. 1. Locations Effect on Power: Where humans live and what territorial states they occupy in great measure conditions their level of development and power base vis--vis other humans in states in other parts of the world. In other words, the impact of geography and geographic location on human development is profound. Jared Diamond, a professor of physiology at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Medicine and a Pulitzer Prizewinning author, stresses that since the beginning of human history, geographyespecially in terms of the plant and animal species available for domestication in a given location has shaped each human societys culture and competitive position.7 This means that continental differences in levels of civilizationfor example, Western Europe as compared to Africaarise from geographical differences.8 2. Competition for Territory: Geography, however, does more than set the ground rules for human development. A second premise, also spelled out in Diamonds research, is that humanslike most animal speciescompete with each other for territorial space and have been doing so since their very beginnings. Indeed, Diamond makes a compelling case for the theory that human behavior is close to animal behavior in terms of territoriality, especially given that humans share 98 percent of our genetic program with the pigmy chimp of the Congo basin and the common chimp of the rest of tropical Africa.9 Diamond argues that territorial conicts generally take the form of wars between adjacent groups. 3. Perceptions Shape Reality: A third premise of political geography is that our perceptions of the world constitute a kind of prism through which we interpret realities around us.10 Recall chapter 2, where the constructivist position posits that policymakers and their followers act on their perceptions, on their understanding of what is going on around them. Each set of policymakers sees the world through the prism of its dominant cultures view of the world. This third premise, that perceptions shape reality, holds that the unique characteristics of each territory on which humans livedened by its topography, resources, climate, location relative to neighboring states, and ethnic/cultural diversity shape the perceptions of its inhabitants. When we look at territorially based perceptions, we nd clues to how population groups dene their national
236
CHAPTER 8
POLITIcAL GEOgRAPHY
identity and national interests (territorial security, economic vitality, political goals) and why they utilize different kinds of power and diplomacy to pursue those interests. Their perceptions generate conict and cooperation between states, acting as either centralizing or decentralizing forces that, in turn, dene the role of political geography in foreign policymaking.
Major Terms and Concepts in Political Geography

Political geography has a host of terms and concepts that illuminate the signicance of geographys inuence in world politics, whether of a decentralizing (conictual) or centralizing (cooperative) nature. The following are among the most important ones. Try not to be overwhelmed by the number of geos in this list. They go with the territory. Most of these terms center on the conictual side of political geography; cooperative aspects are discussed in the section on IGOs, NGOs, and international law.
Geopolitics Geopolitics is a method of political analysis, made popular in Central Europe during the rst half of the twentieth century that stresses the role played by geography in foreign policy and world politics. Geopolitical theorists, for example, justied German expansion during the Nazi era, emphasizing Lebensraum. Lebensraum is a German word that means living space, a term used by Adolf Hitler to justify German territorial expansion into neighboring states. The global contest between the United States and Soviet Union during the Cold War is a good example of geopolitical thinking in foreign policy. Geostrategy Foreign policies pursued by states or intergovernmental organizations (such as NATO) that focus on territory and the geographic distribution of power. The U.S. postWorld War II policy of containment of the Soviet Union illustrates geostrategy.
z Geopolitics, mentioned earlier, is the study of the geographic distributions of power among states, with attention to rivalry between the major states. The global contest between the United States and Soviet Union during the Cold War is a good example. Geopolitics comes into play especially when leaders make foreign-policy decisions about military operations and assess a countrys overall power, when they look at a regions balance of power or at a country that may dominate a region and/or threaten regional stability. z Geostrategy is a territorial-based foreign-policy concept associated with geographic factors such as potential alliance partners, location, and terrain. The U.S. war on terrorism has distinct geostrategic overtones. The Bush Doctrine of preventive war illustrates geostrategic thinking in that it focuses on states whose foreign policies are perceived as threats to U.S. security. Geostrategy may view particular states as targets of interestor on the strategic importance of waterways like the Suez and Panama Canals and the Straits of Hormuz (an oil route). Geostrategy was at work, too, during the days of European colonialism, as in Spain and Portugals colonization of the Americas for God, glory, and gold. During the Cold War, Eurasia was extremely important in U.S. geostrategy aimed at containing the former Soviet Union. Al Qaeda is a loose collection of adherents of radical and militant Islam that has used a geostrategy of suicide attacks on U.S. and Western countries territorial assets by penetrating weaknesses in their defense systems. Al Qaeda reasons that weakening the power of the United States and the Westas well as Western-backed elites that dominate the Middle East masseswill create opportunities to strengthen fundamentalist Islam, especially in the Middle East in lands of what had been an Arab Empire of the seventh to thirteenth centuries. We return to this point later. z Offensive realism (see chapter 2) is a concept introduced by John J. Mear sheimer.11 While traditional realists assume that a state will seek to preserve its security with military power, by joining in an alliance when necessary, Mearsheimer sees it differently. He argues that great powers constantly search for opportunities to gain power over perceived rivalsand hegemony is their final goal. This neorealist perspective is different from traditional realism that assumes states seek security rather than power per se, and thus the global political system may be less predatory and conflict-prone than Mearsheimer argues.
For more information see The Soviet War in Afghanistan www.BetweenNations.org

z Americas unipolar primacy is the concept used to describe the distribution of global power since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, leaving the United States as the sole superpower in the world. Much discussion in world politics today centers on the unipolar nature of the international systemalbeit a unipolar world that may be fading. As G. John Ikenberry notes, while American power is not uniformly welcome around the world, no serious geopolitical balancers have emerged to challenge the United States. After the Soviet Unions collapse, scholars debated the prospect of cooperation and conict in a post Cold War and post-hegemonic world. Now much debate is over the character and future of world politics within an American unipolar order.12 z Geographys role in U.S. primacy is cited by scholars who study issues of international security. Their point is that geography plays a major role in creating and extending U.S. power. The classic axiom in world politics is that a dominant hegemonor great powertypically invites its own demise. Other countries will gang up on the big guy and form alliances to check his power, as happened to Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. The rule has been: power begets countervailing superpower. U.S. unipolar dominance after the Cold War, however, is a different kind of hegemon as some scholars see it. Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth point to geographic location as key element of U.S. dominance in the international system.13 It has weak and friendly neighbors to its north and south, and oceans to the east and westunlike, say, Russia. So the United States has no great power as a threatening neighborin contrast to previous hegemons and is separated from the rest of the world by two great oceans. This geographic setting tends to make (but does not guarantee it in every state around the world) the United States perceptually less threateningat least before the U.S.led invasion of Iraq. The argument is that if a potential challenger were to have a go at the United States, its neighbors would fear for their local security. They most likely would form an alliance to create a regional balance in that neck of the woods, and thereby check the country challenging the United States. Finally, it has been argued that ocean space represented by the Atlantic and Pacic Oceans makes most American leaders less inclined to try to dominate directly other great powers. z Regional hegemony points to the power that a state exercises over more than one neighboring country. China may be seen as the hegemon actor in East Asia. Russia exerts a powerful inuence over many states of the former Soviet Union. The United States dominates the rest of North America. z The stopping power of water is a phrase that comes up in discussion of offensive realism and of the United States as the dominant power in the world as we see in the discussion above. Mearsheimer makes the point that a key reason why states do not actively seek hegemony in regions lying on the other side of bodies of water is because the water space makes it difcult for them to project power. Great Britain, for this reason, has not sought to build regional hegemony on continental Europe. Wolfforth pointed out back in 1999 that the United States enjoys immense strategic territorial space advantages, because it is in North America (no threatening neighbors; protection by oceans) while other potential poles of power lie in Eurasia.14 Enemies would nd it hard to project power to North America, just as projecting North American power abroad is no easy task. The weakening of U.S. military strength due to Iraq exhausted troops, worn-out equipment, repeated toursunderscores this
237
Audio Concept Hegemony www.BetweenNations.org
238
CHAPTER 8
POLITIcAL GEOgRAPHY
point.15 The 9/11 attacks on the United States, however, raise questions about the assumption that oceans make the United States more secure. z Choke points are strategic straits or canals that can be closed or blocked to stop sea trafc critical to the transshipment of goods and oil. Some of the more important choke points in the world are the Strait of Hormuz (oil shipments) at the entrance to the Persian Gulf (Oman), the Panama Canal (ships carrying goods) connecting the Atlantic and Pacic Oceans, and the Suez Canal connecting the Red Sea and Mediterranean Sea. See Figure 8.7 for choke points. z Shatter belt refers to a region of chronic political splintering and fracturinga highly unstable area in which states appear, disappear, and reappear with numerous changing names and boundaries. Central, Eastern, and Southeast Europe, with their age-old rivalries and animosities, have given this part of the world a shatter-belt identity. The breakup of former Yugoslavia, beginning in 1991, into sovereign states illustrates the shatter-belt effects of colliding ethnic identities (Slovene, Croat, Bosnian, Serb, Albanian, and Macedonian) and the Christian, Eastern Orthodox, and Muslim religions.16 The geographic region in and immediately surrounding Israel is a shatter belt where Islam, Judaism, and Christianity collide. See Figure 8.2.
For more information see Ethnic Conict www.BetweenNations.org
z Balkanization is a related term referring to the typical consequence of shatterbelt activitythe breakup of a region or state into smaller and frequently hostile political units. This concept is associated with the Balkan region, where the states of former Yugoslavia are located. Some scholars, such as Samuel Huntington, believe the United States runs the risk of becoming balkanized due to the inow of non-assimilating Spanish-speaking Hispanic immigrants. z Buffer state or states refers to a country or a group of countries that separate other ideological or political rivalsand that consequently come in for a good deal of buffeting from power-competing neighbors. Jordan is a buffer state between rival Middle Eastern states, just as Eastern Europe was a buffer region between Western Europe and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. As buffer states, Hungary and Czechoslovakia launched movements to become independent in 1956 and 1968 respectively, only to have them squashed by Soviet military forces. Poland has suffered dramatic consequences from its territorial buffer-state position in Eastern Europe and, in fact, has been carved up territorially more than once by rival power contenders. z Geo-Green strategyis a term introduced by New York Times correspondent, Thomas Friedman.17 Friedman proposes that Americas leaders should seek to aggressively curb Americas energy consumption and make an all-out effort to develop renewable and alternative energiesincluding expanding nuclear power. The Geo-Green strategy aims to reduce U.S. dependence on Middle East oil, reduce the price of oil (less oil consumption and demand for it), address the global-warming crisis, and force Middle East regimes to reform. The United States, with its second-to-none production of corn (ethanol), has a natural bases on which to build a culture of biofuels. z Geography of oil power also comes up frequently in discussions of political geography and world politics. The basic concept is that those countries with vast quantities of oil are able to wield political power within their regions and in the world. Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, and Venezuela come immediately to mind.

FIGURE 8.2 The Geopolitical World at the Beginning of the Twenty-rst Century
239
MARITIME EUROPE AND THE MAGHREB UNITED STATES NORTH AND MIDDLE AMERICA
RUSSIA Eastern Europe
EURASIAN CONTINENTAL REALM
EU
EAST ASIA REALM MIDDLE EAST SHATTERBELT CHINA INDIA SOUTH ASIA
JAPAN
Central Africa Quarter-Sphere of Marginality

E
African Horn
ASIA PACIFIC RIM
SOUTH AMERICA
T R
A
D
E
Indochina SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA
E
D
N
Geopolitical World at the Beginning of the Twenty-first Century Geopolitical regional boundaries Geopolitical realm boundaries Shatterbelt Compression zone Gateway region
0 0 1000 2000 Miles
M A R I T I M E
L M R E A
The Players in Political Geography: Uniting and Dividing Forces

1036905_m_08_02 The key players in the world of political geography are the same as those found in 11/12/07 the domain of world politics. They include states, nations, IGOs, and NGOs. In this section, the focus is on how and in what ways geography inuences the life of the state and nation. The section also deals with IGOs and NGOs as they operate in the global geographic settingsometimes in the context of international law and sometimes not. The players can have both uniting and dividing impacts in world politics. Duncan: World Politics in the 21st Century, 3e
State and Nation

Lets take a closer look at the geographic aspects of the statethat primary, but not exclusive, actor on the world stage for over four centuries, as discussed in chapter 3. Remember that a state occupies a portion of the Earths territory with NuGraphic Design,limits, Inc. 7 Laurelwood Drive, New Fairfield, CT 06812 (203) 746-4181 (203) 746-4182 fax nugraphicdesign@charter.net generally recognized even though some of its boundaries may be undened
240
CHAPTER 8
POLITIcAL GEOgRAPHY
or disputed. Stateswhich vary dramatically in size, shape, resources, topography, and, above all, in powergenerally are viewed as sovereign. Although the territorial state has dominated the world scene since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 (see chapter 3) and is recognized by other states for its legitimacy and sovereignty over a spatially dened territory and population, this is not the complete story. While states make and conduct foreign policy, form cooperative alliances, and constitute the membership of the United Nations, a states territory rarely contains a homogeneous population, all members of which share a single national identity. Our globe has many more national groups than it has territorial states. Further, the worlds present territorial states do not necessarily represent the aspirations of the several thousand national groups found around the world.18 Keep in mind the difference between nation and state. A state is a geographically bounded territory with governmental structures and sovereignty, while a nation is a group of people who consider themselves linked in a cultural and political togetherness. This situation of multiple national groups inside the same state has been one of the leading sources of civil warsconict within states, as opposed to between statesin the postWorld War II period. Yugoslavias breakup and Palestinian or Kurdish aspirations illustrate this state-national territorial dilemma. The number of sovereign states occupying real estate on the globe conceivably could grow dramatically in the future. States are in constant ux, with state boundaries shifting dramatically as a result of war, self-determination movements, negotiation, arbitration, and even by the sale of territory, as in the case of Russia selling Alaska to the United States in 1867. This constant emergence of new states around the globe deeply affects state-to-state relationships and foreign policy. Figure 8.2 illustrates these relationships as they were at the beginning of the twenty-rst century. To understand the inuence of geography on the power of any state, nation, or region, however, consider the following questions: z Where is the state located (positioned) on the globe? Are its neighbors friends or adversaries? z What is its multinational and multiethnic composition? z How large or small is it relative to other states? What is its size and shape? z What natural resources are contained within its boundaries and affect its power? z How do its topography and climate facilitate or deter security, economic development, and the acquisition of power? z What strategic role, if any, do waterwayssuch as the Panama Canal or the Middle Easts Straits of Hormuzplay? Todays Iraq illustrates ethnic and national complexities inside a single state that make its future governance tenuous at best. The Kurds in the north dream of independence rather than being part of Iraq. They have a strong secular national identity. Iraqs long-suppressed Shiites in the souththe largest population grouphave a strong religious identity and do not typically support secular political parties. Many Shiites believe their majority position entitles them to rule all of Iraq and to impose their version of an Islamic state. The Sunni Arabs in the center of Iraqwho dominated the Kurds and Shiites under Saddam Husseins rule through the Baath Partyare essentially nationalist in identity. They see them-

selves as part of a larger Arab nation. Iraqs oil, however, is concentrated in the Kurdish north and Shiite south, and the Sunnis in the center do not occupy oil-rich territory. Where Sunni concentrate is referred to as the Sunni Triangle.19 The situation in Iraq is illustrated in Figure 8.3.
241
FIGURE 8.3 Distribution of Religious and Ethic Groups in Iraq

0 2000 Kilometers 200 Statute Miles
TURKEY
0
Zkh Dahk Rawndz
Tall Kayt Irbil Sinjar Mosel Karkk
Khurmala (Turkey) Bai Hassan (Russia) Kirkuk (Russia)

As Sulaymniyan
SYRIA
IRAN
Tozkhurmato
At Tamim Bayji
Saddam (Russia)
Buhayrat al Qodisiyah
Eu ph
ra
tes
Qasr-e Shirin Tikrit Salahad Din Khnaqin Buhayrat Pol-e Smarr Jall ath Zahab harthr Al Mansriyah Balad At Taji Al Habbniyan Zurb Slman Pk Badrah Al Iskandariyah Al Musayyib Wasit Babil gr is Al Kt Al Hindiyah Al Falljah Al Khlis Diyala Ba'qbah
Al Haqlniyan
IRAQ
Ar Ramdi
Buhayrat ar Habbanyah Buhayrat ar Razzah
Mandali
Ahdeb (China)
BAGHDAD
Ar Rujbah
West Qurna (Russia)

Al Amrah
Karbal Ar Najaf
Al Hillah
Ti
An Nu'maniyh
Ad Diwniyah An Nasinyah
Majnoon (France)
Ti gr is
Eu
Najaf* (Tunisia) SAUDI ARABIA Nasiriya (Italy, Spain)
*Approximate location Distribution of Religious and Ethic Groups Majority Groups Minority Groups Sunni Arab Yezidi Sunni Kurd Shia Arab Sunni Arab and Sunni Kurd Sunni Arab and Shia Arab Turkoman Iranian Christian Mandaean Jewish
p h ra
te s
Al Basrah
Nahr Umar (France) North Rumaila (Russia)

Kuwait
Suba-Luhais (Russia-Belarus)
Old fields Pipelines
Christians represent different sects and ethnic groups. Yezidis, Mandaeans, and Jews, although shown as religious groups, may also be considered as separate ethnic entities.
242
CHAPTER 8
POLITIcAL GEOgRAPHY
Keeping in mind these thoughts and questions about states and nations many of which center on conict and decentralizationlets look at how political geography can provide information about cooperation and centralization.
IGOs, NGOs, International Law, and the Influence of Geography

Cooperation and centralization stemming from spatial relationships among people, territory, and politics are a part of political geography. International law began to develop with the rise of the territorial state. In the twentieth century, international law grew rapidly owing to the need for rules and regulations to manage complex issues associated with security, trade, nance, travel, and communication stemming from spreading interdependence. Sources of international law include common practice and custom over time, international treaties, general practice of law as recognized by states (represented by the International Court of Justice), and international law that emanates from the many UN declarations and resolutions. The Law of the Sea illustrates this point. It stems from a UN treaty governing the oceans and from Admiralty law. The UN Treaty on the Law of the Seas, among other things, provides for legal controls to manage marine natural resources, pollution control, navigational rights, and jurisdiction over coastal water. Admiralty law refers to a distinct body of law that governs maritime issues and offenses. The term territorial waters refers to waters under the sovereign jurisdiction of a state both marginal sea and inland waters. The UN Law of the Sea Treaty (1994) codied territorial waters of twelve nautical miles (13.8 miles) and an exclusive economic zone of 200 nautical miles (230 miles). As for international air law, each state has exclusive sovereignty over the airspace above its territory, including its territorial sea. An Outer Space Treaty (1967)
Relief Programs Needed
Regions in Africa are well known for poor production and ineffective government policies that spawn the need for international relief programs.

represents international space law that bars parties to the treaty from placing nuclear weapons or any weapons of mass destruction in orbit of the Earth. While international law by no means always works smoothly, nor is it always obeyed, it still contributes greatly to cooperation and commonality of interests. In the wake of 9/11, a host of antiterrorist UN declarationsand hence international lawswere passed. In political geography today, international law also focuses on z Drug trafcking z Environment z Womens rights z Human rights z Social justice z Refugees z Trade z Child labor
243
Test Prepper 8.1

True or False?
_____ 1. Political geography focuses on how geography features intersect with politics at the international system level of analysis. _____ 2. The Bush Doctrine is an example of geostrategic thinking. _____ 3. While geography is an important element when dening a states power, the strength of the United States rests on its people and their technological and economic capacity, rather than on geographic strengths. _____ 4. A shatter belt refers to the area of a country that is most likely susceptible to an air or sea attack (although not a ground attack). _____ 5. The Law of the Sea is an example of the intersection between geographic interests and international law.
Multiple Choice
_____ 6. Which of the following is not a basic premise of political geography. a. Where people live and what states they occupy are signicant factors in explaining their level of development. b. Human beings, like most animal species, compete with each other for territory.
c. Territorial features, such as topography and climate, are only important in a relative sense and there are no objective qualities to such features independent of the broader environment. d. The unique characteristics of a territory in which a population lives shape that populations perceptions, including how they dene their national identity and national interests. e. None of the above _____ 7. Which of the following is relevant when considering the inuence of geography on a state or nation? a. Whether a state has friends or adversaries on its borders b. Its relative size and shape c. The natural resources contained in its land d. The climate and topography of the territory in which it resides e. All of the above
244
CHAPTER 8
POLITIcAL GEOgRAPHY
How Does Geography Impact a States Power and Security?

2 Identify and understand how certain geographic factors impact a states power and security.
With an understanding of major terms and concepts used in political geographyand the pivotal role played by territorial space in the life of a state and nation, we turn now to a closer look at geographys impact on a states power and security. Every country is located somewhere on Planet Earth, and that location translates into the relative power of place. States with access to the sea are better off in terms of trade possibilities than landlocked states. A country with vast oil deposits is more likely to exert inuence in regional and world affairs than a poverty-stricken country poor in natural resources, like Bangladesh or Haiti. This section focuses on location and development and then turns to location and territorial security.
Location and Power

The discussion earlier centered on the imprint of geography on a states power and foreign policy. Among the issues are: z Location z Access or lack of access to water z Size and shape of states z Transportation routes and communication channels z Boundaries z Airspace Geographic factors dramatically affects a societys economic and political development. Tied to location are such factors as climate, topography, natural resources, and other elements. Jared Diamond points out that a societys location determines how readily it can facilitate the spread of agriculture, disseminate and receive technology, and share knowledge.20 In Figure 8.4 note the North-South axes that run from North America to South America and within Africacompared to the East-West axis that runs through Eurasia. The geographic effects of this axis orientation are enormous because, according to Diamond, the East-West axis generally facilitated transmission of goods and knowledge more readily than a North-South axis. In terms of food, for example, Diamond notes that Eurasias East-West axis allowed Fertile Crescent crops quickly to launch agriculture over the band of temperate latitudes from Ireland to the Indus Valley, and to enrich the agriculture that arose independently in eastern Asia.21 This spread effect was blocked in the Americas and Africa by huge dif ferences in latitude, climate, topographical barriers (deserts and jungles, for example), and other geographic features. As you might expect, the worlds great empiresArab, Chinese, Greek, and Romandeveloped along the East-West axis. The area was the scene of the Renaissance, the center of the modern agrarian and industrial revolutions, the place where the democratic political state originated,
c HOw DOES GEOgRAPHY IMPAcT A STATES POwER ANd SEcURITY?

FIGURE 8.4 Major Axes of the Continents
245
Eurasia
Americas
Africa
Source: Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), Figure 10.1, p. 177. Used by permission.
and the setting for the birth of the modern powerful territorial state. Relative location along the East-West axis was a determining factor in these developments. The Americas, to be certain, developed empiresAztec, Mayan, and Incan of no small signicance in that part of the world. Yet these empires succumbed to Spanish and Portuguese conquest and colonization. South America, with its mountains, deserts, and jungles, became known as the hollow continent, and urban life developed along the coastlines rather than within. Thus, the interior area remained isolated from much of the world, and many of its countries faced problems involving agriculture and the availability of arable land.
Climate
The East-West Axis lies in the temperate zone, which illustrates the important role played by climate in a societys development and power. Where a state is located affects its climate and, arguably, its potential for development. The temperate zones, as noted in chapter 4 are between 23.5 degrees and 60.5 degrees north latitude and 60.5 degrees and 23.5 degrees south latitude. The temperate zone theory holds that in these temperate zones a number of forces favor economic development, including an average mean temperature of around 70F, a four-stage seasonal pattern, and adequate rainfall. The temperate zones contain the United States, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, part of South Asia, Southeast Asia, and much of the Far East (China, Japan, and South Korea).
ronic Publishing Services Inc. can, World Politics in the 21st Century, 3e C.7322.0032 8.4 1st Proof 2nd Proof
3rd Proof
Final
246
CHAPTER 8
POLITIcAL GEOgRAPHY
In contrast, as we have seen, countries located near the hot and humid equator have a less favorable record in terms of economic developmentas measured by rates of increased gross domestic product and equality of income distribution. Latin America, the geographic region of the world with the highest income inequality, stands out in this regard. Recent research by the Inter-American Development Bank demonstrates that countries that lie near the equator have systematically higher income inequality than countries in more temperate zones.22 Indeed, research indicates a high correlation between latitude and inequality in this part of the world. z One reason cited is that life in tropical regions near the equator is complicated by disease and by problems connected with soil and water quality and with pests.23 z Another is that work is often to be found on tropical plantations where unskilled laborers must accept low pay. Incidentally, those large income distribution disparitiesnotably in Latin Americamean that political power tends to remain in the hands of the wealthier income groups. This situation helps account for low rates of democratic political development.
Natural Resources
A states natural resources play a big role in conditioning its development and power base, and therefore its capacity to find territorial security and exert inuence within the international system. Recall the discussion in chapter 4 of power factors in shaping foreign policy and international affairs. Does the state have strategic resources, like oil, to meet its own energy requirements or to export? Does it have arable land to feed its population? If not, it will have to import energy and food. In addition to the oil producers we have discussed previously, keep in mind the worlds food-producing states: the United States, Canada, and Argentina.
Natural resources A states basic resources that spring from its physical setting, such as oil, gas, uranium, coal, and arable land, so vital to agricultural productivity.
For more information see The View From: The Caspian Sea www.BetweenNations.org
Natural Resource Conflict

The location of strategic natural resourceswater, sh, timber, spices, gold, diamonds, and oilcan lead to both conict and cooperation in world affairs. When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, for example, world oil prices rose sharply because Iraqi and Kuwaiti oil disappeared from the market. This caused serious alarm among the oil-importing countries, such as the United States, the West European states, and Japan. Even more fearful was the specter of a possible Iraqi invasion of Saudi Arabia, with Iraqs leader, Saddam Hussein, in a position to control world oil prices. As a consequence, the United States led the Persian Gulf War to expel Iraq from Kuwait. So great was the perceived threat to oil supplies that many countries cooperated with the United States in the 1991 military action against Iraq. The Iraq War of 2003, it could be argued, was a continuation of the rst Persian Gulf War both stemming from the Carter Doctrine. In January 1980 President Jimmy Carter declared that the United States would use force if required to stop any effort by a hostile power to block the free ow of oil from the Persian Gulf. These Gulf Wars illustrate a fundamental point: states have been ghting for control over valuable resources since the earliest wars were recorded. Michael T. Klare views natural resources as the driving force in wars between and within states.24 Klare argues that given the past role played by natural resources in spawn-

ing conict, we can anticipate an increase in the level of resource-driven conict in the future. This will be caused by increased population pressure on limited resources. Such resources will include energy sources, but also transboundary water (rivers), diamonds, other minerals, and timber. In the Middle East and North Africa, for example, water is important to the different economies in the region; over 90 percent of the water resources cross international boundaries. In Sierra Leone, Congo, Liberia, and Angola, oil, diamonds, and other key minerals have fueled ongoing civil wars inside those states. In the world of political geography, as Klare sees it, natural resources likely will become more important security issues than terrorism. See chapter 14 for more on possible water wars.
247
Topography
Topography, or the physical and natural features of a region or state, affects its opportunity to integrate itself politically and protect its political sovereignty. Peru is less well endowed than Argentina from this perspective. Two-thirds of Peru lies on the eastern side of the Andes Mountains, much of which is unexplored even today. This makes two-thirds of Perus territory difcult to integrate politically because so much of it is so hard to reach owing to huge mountain barriers. Although it also lies to the east of the Andes, Argentina, in contrast, has a more forgiving territorial conguration that lends itself to a nationally unied state by way of telephone, telegraph, and transportation links. Economic integration of states in trade groupings is likewise affected by topographical relationships. Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay are territorially more accessible to each other, allowing greater economic ties within their trade organization (MERCOSUR) than with Chile. That state lies on the other side of the Andes from them. Members of the European Union enjoy geographic proximity links similar to those of MERCOSUR members.
Size and Shape

The worlds many small states, many with less than 200 square miles, do not carry much weight in world politics. Think of Andorra (180 square miles), Barbados (166), and Grenada (133 square miles). Bigger countries tend to be far more powerful. Yet large countries have their own problems: z z z z z multinational populations living inside their borders numerous languages spoken extensive borders to be defended large numbers of people to be fed communication and transportation links to be maintained.
The largest countries in land area, in descending order are Russia, Canada, United States, China, Brazil, Australia, and India. Size and shape help or hinder a states unity, development, and overall power. States come in ve basic shapes: compact, elongated, perforated, fragmented, and protruded. z Compact states are those where distances from the center to boundary do not vary greatly, as in Belgium (Figure 8.5a: Belgium). z Elongated states, like Chile and Vietnam, tend to be more difcult to manage than compact states (Figure 8.5b: Vietnam)
248
CHAPTER 8
POLITIcAL GEOgRAPHY
FIGURE 8.5 Shapes of States
a. Belgium: A Compact State

North Sea Zeebrugge Oostende Brugge Antwerp Gent Kortrijk Mons Hasselt GERMANY NETHERLANDS
b. Vietnam: An Elongated State

CHINA Cao Bang Lao Cai Viet Tri Thai Nguyen Hong Gai Son La Hanoi Halphong South Nam Dinh China Thanh Hoa Gulf Sea Hainan of LAOS Vinh Tonkin
n An
MYANMAR (BURMA)
Dong Hoi Dong Ha Hue Da Nang Quang Ngai VIETNAM Quy Nhon Tuy Hoa Nha Trang
rd ille
am
BRUSSELS
Co
Indochina
Lige
THAILAND
Charleroi Namur
Kon Tum Andaman Sea CAMBODIA Play Cu
Paracel Islands (Administered by ChinaClaimed by Vietnam)
FRANCE
Bastogne LUXEMBOURG
Gulf of Thailand
Buon Ma Thuot
Ho Chi Minh City
0 0
20 40 km 20 40 mi
Da Lat Bien Hoa Phan Rang-Thap Cham Phan Thiet Vung Tau My Tho Long 0 120 miles Xuyen Can Tho
0 120 kilometers
ra
c. South Africa: A Perforated State

ZIMBABWE BOTSWANA NAMIBIA Messina Pietersburg PRETORIA Johannesburg Upington SWAZ. Ladysmith LES. Richards Bay Durban
South Atlantic Ocean
d. Indonesia: A Fragmented State

MOZ.
Andaman Sea Gulf of Thailand
THAILAND
Strait of Malacca
VIETNAM
South China Sea
Philippine Sea
PHILIPPINES
BRUNEI
Celebes Sea
Medan
MALAYSIA
Borneo
North Pacific Ocean
Celebes Biak
Pekanbaru Sumatra Indian Ocean
Kimberley
Kalimantan Palembang JAKARTA
Bloemfontein De Aar
Java Sea
Saldanha
Prince Edward Islands not shown.
Cape Town
Port Elizabeth Mosselbaai
East London
0 0
Indian Ocean
Cirebon
Cilacap
0 200400 km 0 200 400 mi
Semarang Ujungpandang Madura Surabaya Denpasar Kupang
Ambon
Banda Sea
Java
100 200 km 100 200 mi
Timor
Timor Sea
AUSTRALIA
e. Afghanistan: A Protruded State

UZBEKISTAN TURKMENISTAN TAJIKISTAN CHINA
Electronic Publishing Services Inc. Qal' h-ye Now Duncan, World Politics in the 21st Century, Bamian 3e Herat Chaghcharan DUNC.7322.0035 AFGHANISTAN Teywarah Fig. 8.7a Ghazni
Shindand
Feyzabad Mazar-e Konduz Sharif Sheberghan Samangan Taloqan Sar-e Pol Baghlan Meymaneh
Charikar Asadabad Kabul Jalalabad Gardeyz Khowst
1st Proof
IRAN
Farah 2nd Proof Delaram Lashkar Zaranj Gah
Tar|n Kowt
3rd Proof Qalat

Orgun
Qandahar
Electronic Publishing Services Inc. ine Cease F ir e L Duncan, World Politics in the 21st Century, 3e DUNC.7322.0036 Sources: Fig. 8.7b a. http://www.cnr.vt.edu/boyer/geog1014/topics/108States/shape.html. Final b. http://www.mapquest.com/atlas/main.adp?print=vietnam. 1st ProofINDIA 2nd Proof 3rd Proof Final
c. http://www.cnr.vt.edu/boyer/geog1014/topics/108States/shape.html. d. http://www.cnr.vt.edu/boyer/geog1014/topics/108States/shape.html. e. http://www.mapquest.com/atlas/main.adp?print=afghanis. All used by permission.
PAKISTAN
tan ges
0 0 100 Miles 100 Kilometers
R|
Electronic Publishing Services Inc.

z Perforated states (when one state completely surrounds another), like South Africa (Figure 8.5c: South Africa), which has Lesotho in its midst, and Italy, which surrounds both Vatican City and San Marino. z States that are fragmentedalso called archipelagossuch as Indonesia, with over 18,000 islands (Figure 8.5d: Indonesia), and the Philippines, are extremely difcult to manage, as demonstrated by self-determination movements and terrorist activities in both these states. z Finally, some countries are protruded in that they have a panhandle or extended arm, such as Myanmar and Thailand. Benefits include possible access to waterdemonstrated by the Belgians when they assumed control of the Congo and created a westward proruption (corridor) of about 300 miles that followed the Zaire (Congo) River and provided the colony with access to the Atlantic Ocean. A proruption can be formed for other strategic reasonsfor example, to separate two states that might otherwise share a common boundary. The British did this during the nineteenth century when they controlled Afghanistan by creating a 200-mile-long, twelve-mile-wide corridor to the east to prevent their geopolitical competitor, Russia, from sharing a border with the area that later became Pakistan (Figure 8.5e: Afghanistan).
249
Natural Disasters
Location can create obstacles to a countrys development and overall economic and political power in the global arena when it exposes a state to natural disasters such as earthquakes, typhoons, and hurricanes, which can sap nancial resources needed for economic development. Think of hurricanes in the Caribbean Basin and Central America or earthquakes in India, Indonesia, Mexico, and Turkey.
Geographys Impact on Territorial Security

Geographic-power connections play major roles in a countrys territorial security. The classic example is Switzerland, surrounded and protected by the majestic Alps. Thanks to the protection provided by its mountainous terrain, Switzerland remained neutral and not involved in either World War I or World War II. Its commitment to neutrality in world politics remains high, although it nally joined the UN in 2002. Poland, in contrast, has been exposed to attacks from the east and west because it has no natural territorial barriers. Let us take a closer look at geography and territorial security.
Location and Territorial Security

In addition to its effects on development, a states absolute and relative location on the face of the globe is a powerful factor affecting its basic national interests (see chapter 5): territorial (physical) security, economic vitality, and political control over its territory in defense of its sovereignty. Lets rst look at the issue of territorial security. In the Western hemisphere, Mexico, Cuba, and Caribbean states like the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Nicaragua have long been concerned about the power of the United States. Cubas location at a strategic point in the Caribbean and Mexicos border ties with the United States historically have placed both countries on the defensive in a lopsided power relationship with the United States. Cubas proximity to the United States, moreover, led Soviet premier Nikita S. Khrushchev to use the island as a base for missiles aimed at the
250
CHAPTER 8
POLITIcAL GEOgRAPHY
United States during the Cold War in 1962, an action that brought the USSR and the United States to the brink of nuclear war. Territorial security and defensive measures have always been a natural geographic strategy on the global chessboard. Ancient China built its Great Wall, European medieval castles had their moats, and before World War II, France built an elaborate system of heavy fortications on its eastern frontiera system that failed to prevent invasion by Nazi armies. Since 9/11, the United States has worried about renewed terrorist attacks across its porous borders and has built a long fence on its southwestern frontier with Mexico (which does not actually deter Mexicans who cross over illegally into the United States). Israel has built a fence or wall through the West Bank to protect against Palestinians bent on suicide bombings. The former Berlin Wall dividing East and West Germany was ninety-six miles long; Israels wall is expected to be over 400 miles in length. The Berlin Wall was, on average, around twelve feet high; Israels wall is about twenty-ve feet tall.
Access to Water
A states access or lack of access to water has a powerful impact on its ability to develop and acquire power for territorial security within the international system. In this respect, landlocked states, or those with no natural access to the seacoast, are not in an enviable position. The forty-two countries in this situation face huge economic and logistical difculties in trade and transportation that entail taxes and impediments by neighboring states that, in effect, nearly cut them off from the world. Landlocked states are found in Africa, South America, Europe, Central Asia (Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan), and Northeast Asia (Mongolia). The gross domestic product (GDP) of landlocked sea countries typically is low. While one might think a landlocked state simply could resort to ying its goods in and out of the country, think again. Most goods in daily lifefood, clothing, and other commoditiesarrive overseas by ship because this is the least expensive means of transportation. With no coastline or ports, as shown in Figure 8.6, you can see the problem. To complicate matters, some countries are doubly landlocked that is, other landlocked countries surround them. Uzbekistan and Liechtenstein are cases in point. Other countries are known as transit statesthat is, states with or without a seacoast that are situated between a landlocked state and the sea and through whose territory trafc in transit passes. Uganda in Africa is such a transit state; it provides transit routes for both landlocked and other transit states. So is Afghanistan, discussed in the case study in chapter 2.
Boundaries and Boundary Disputes

Political boundaries have long characterized how humans organize the turf on which they live. This is so in relations between states and nations, and we also see it at the substate level, as discussed in chapter 3. Prominent physical features such as rivers and mountain ranges, as might be expected, frequently serve as boundaries. The Rio Grande, which divides the United States and Mexico, is a classic example. The Andes Mountains, which run the length of western South America, dividing Chile from Argentina, also illustrate the point. In 2007 Iran seized fteen British Royal Marines in the Shatt-al-Arab waterway for violating Irans territorial waters. Great Britain claimed their marines were in international waters. In any case the navy of the Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) took the marines into custody.

FIGURE 8.6 Landlocked Countries
251
Source: http://www.cnr.vt.edu/boyer/geog1014/topics/108States/neighbor.html. Used by permission.
Boundaries are sources of conict between states as well as between ethnic national groups inside states, which are sometimes in quest of land to create their own state, as are the Kurds and Palestinians. In another scenario, national groups divided by a state political boundary may wish that boundary removed so they can form one state. Witness the unbridled enthusiasm of East and West Germans in 1989 as they dismantled the Berlin Wall, which had divided them. Porous borders, on the other hand, can also cause tension, as with illegal immigrants and drugs pouring into the United States from Mexico.
Ocean and Airspace
Keep in mind that boundaries are three-dimensional.25 They have land, water, and air dimensionsand airspace over countries also has boundaries. Planes that wander into the airspace of another country, despite the international rules of innocent passage, run the risk of being shot down. Such an event occurred on September 1, 1983, when a South Korean civilian airliner, on a ight from Alaska to South Korea carrying 269 passengers, entered Soviet airspace. A Russian Air Force ghter shot down the plane, which crashed into the international waters of the Sea of Japan, killing all aboard. Another incident of this type occurred on February 24, 1996, when two small planes from South Florida wandered into Cuban airspace and ctronic Publishing Services Inc. were shot down by Cuban MiG ghter jets. Because states claim and exercise sovncan, World Politics in the 21st Century, 3e ereignty on, above, and below their territory, as well as over adjacent coastal waters, NC.7322.0040 international rules governing civilian use of national airspace and coastal waters . 8.8 have been set forth. They articulate the principle of free international airspace. A 1944 convention an airspace monitoring body, the International Civil 1st Proof 2nd Proof created 3rd Proof Final Aviation Organization (ICAO) that came into being in 1947.
252
CHAPTER 8
POLITIcAL GEOgRAPHY
Transportation and Communication

Consider global transportation and communication links within and between the worlds states as key aspects of geopolitics. These systems provide for the ow of commodities and people, which make them important sources of development and power; they play a major role in the political world of who gets what, when, where, and how.26 Transportation and communication arteries include roads, railroads, waterways (canals, rivers, and straits), pipelines (for gas, oil, water), bridges, tunnels, maritime transport routes, air transport routes, and communications networks (for telecommunication, satellites, and the Internet). Such transportation and communication routes take on strategic signicance when they connect population centers, thus opening opportunities for: z trade and commerce z high-stakes nancial advantages z access to or denial of energy sources. Canals illustrate the geopolitical importance of waterways. The Panama Canal is a good example of a major waterway that remains important to a number of Latin American countriesalthough it faces the need to expand its facilities to accommodate the worlds largest ships. The Suez Canal gured prominently in power struggles in the twentieth century and today plays a signicant role in international commerce as a major point of entry and exit to and from the Mediterranean Sea. Turning now to other kinds of waterways, the Strait of Hormuz (located between Iran and Oman; see Figure 8.7) carries a huge volume of oil trade vital to the economies of the United States, Western Europe, and Japan. Thanks to the Great Lakes and the Mississippi, Missouri, and St. Lawrence rivers, the United States has achieved great economic development. Transportation and communication routes deeply affect the power of states and the power relationships between states, thus contributing to cooperation and conict in world politics.
The Panama Canal
The Canal handles around 13,000 ships each year. It is an immense timesaver when compared to a trip passing around the tip of South America. The trip between the Atlantic Ocean entrance north of Coln and the Pacific Ocean south of Balboa is around 51 miles. The Canal opened in 1914.
Test Prepper 8.2

_____ 1. Being located on an East-West axis facilitated growth of an empire because it facilitated the transmission of goods and knowledge. _____ 2. The favorable climate of countries located near the equator has facilitated their economic and political development. _____ 3. The distribution of natural resources among different countries has been a contributing factor to conict for well over a thousand years and is likely to increase in the future. _____ 4. Both absolute and relative location of a state play an important role in its level of territorial security.
_____ 5. Which of the following is not considered when examining the role geography plays in a states territorial security? a. Location b. Access to water c. Proximity to transportation or communication corridors d. All of the above
c HOw DOES GEOgRAPHY SHAPE HUMAN PERcEPTIONS?
253
How Does Geography Shape Human Perceptions?

3 Understand how human perception interacts with geographic characteristics to affect world politics.
At the beginning of this chapter, we noted that human perceptions form a kind of prism through which we interpret the world. Lets look at this assumption more closely and see how it applies to geography. Perceptions are the mental processes of leaders and followers from past to presentdecision makers at the highest levels in government and leaders of IGOs, NGOs, national groups, and guerrilla and terrorist organizations. Perceptions are what people think is true about the territorial world around them and their underlying assumptions about that world.
The Power and Problem of Perceptions

Perceptions about territorywhether or not they reect objective realityhave a potent impact on the actions of leaders and their followers. How al Qaeda members perceive the United States persuades them to undertake suicidal missions, just as how President Bush perceived Saddam Husseins Iraq resulted in the U.S. attack on that state. Similarly, Indias and Pakistans differing perceptions of Kashmir have led them into a conictual relationship. Perhaps the basic question is: Who is to say what reality is? Unfortunately, humans are not as rational in interpreting the outside world as they may think they are, because they have a limited capacity for remembering and processing information accuratelyincluding geographic information. Humans are nowhere near equal to computers when it comes to high-speed information processing. Because humans are limited by what they know or can know, their perception and cognitive processes lead them to simplify the outside world. The limits to human perception and cognition mean that much of the thought and action taken in world politics is distorted in one of the following ways that are conditioned by territorial space and power. Humans: z See the geographic world through the lenses of their own national identity and past. z Behave on the basis of biases, stereotypes, and prejudices relative to those who live elsewhere on the planet. z Ignore information inconsistent with their own core values about people living in another territory (cognitive dissonance). z Oversimplify the outside territorial world of states, nations, and people. These misperceptions and errors in cognition have a great deal to do with human decisions that lead to centralization and cooperation as well as to decentralization and conict in world politics. The following section examines how these behavioral characteristics stem from the power of territory in shaping national, regional and religious identity that inuence world politics.
For more information see Global Statistics www.BetweenNations.org
254
CHAPTER 8
POLITIcAL GEOgRAPHY
The Power of Territory in Self-identity: National, Regional, and Religious

A persons national, regional, or religious identity is shaped in part by territory. Let us take a closer look at these links between self-perception and territory.
Territory and National Identity

In the case of national identity, territory serves a number of purposes.27 National identity (see chapter 9) plays a political role in generating loyalty and a sense of belonging to a piece of land occupied by a people through history. It gives members of the national group a common tangible focus: the homeland, an identiable place on the Earth, a piece of territory with boundariesas with Americans in the United States, Russians in Russia, and Germans in Germany. Territory-based ethnic national identity has become a major factor in world politics in recent years and is often the cause of conict and disintegration. Ethnic national groups make decisions based on perceptions of territorial space and on the political relationships such factors breed.
Conflict in Multinational States

Kurds A stateless nation of people who live in four states: Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria. They have striven for years to create a state of Kurdistan.
Multinational states frequently are the scene of conict between national groups over territory. The Kurdsspread across four states (Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria) have sought a sovereign state for over a century. None of the states in which they live, however, want to cede territory to a Kurdish state, and their national groups are in conict with the Kurds. Leaders of multiethnic national states have little interest in giving up territory with its resources to ethnic nationalist breakaway movements. They typically come down hard on such groups. When Iran encouraged nationalist Kurds in Iraq to rise up in protest during the Iran-Iraq War, Baghdad used poison gas against its own Kurdish citizens! The struggle for territory for a Palestinian state in Israel, another example, has produced horrendous bloodshed in recent years.
Multinational States, Territorial Civil Wars, and Refugees

Territory-based identity in multinational states and its resulting civil wars have produced an extraordinarily large number of refugees. Refugees are civilians who have been displaced by persecutions and armed conict. They may wind up living in camps or wandering in their own country, where they are not protected under international refugee law. Indeed, their own government may attack them while they remain inaccessible to outside monitors or providers of humanitarian assistance. The number of internally displaced persons is in the tens of millions.28 The conict in Darfur (Sudan), a case in point, has caused at least 350,000 deaths and displacement of 1.8 million people, for whom life remains precarious. In Darfur, however, one observer points out that the real roots of conict are not Arab against African, but nomad herders versus settled farmers. The drying up of the environment in Darfur, the parched soil, and desertication may be caused not by too many people and poor stewardship of the land, but by global warming. So while Darfur may be an ethnic and religious issue, it may be also one of the rst conicts fought over climate changeas it impacts natural resources, in the case of Darfur, land. So just as there were past wars over natural resources as discussed earlierin fact the whole colonial expansion was over appropriating scarce resourcesglobal warming likely will bring new winners and new losers and new

security issues for lots of countries.29 We will have to wait and see what happens (see chapter 14).
255
Territory and Regional Identity

Territory shapes regional identity, illustrated by European countries membership in the European Union and U.S. participation in NAFTA. Regional identity also inuences Russian foreign policy in terms of how Russian leaders perceive NATO expansion and its Eurasian or Central Asian political frontiers. Russian leaders are acutely conscious of threats from Central Asia (ows of narcotics and refugees across unprotected borders), and the always-present China, with whom Russia has a long border. During the Cold War, the United States believed that if the communists controlled one country, adjacent countries would also inevitably fall to communism. This so-called domino theory prompted U.S. intervention in Vietnam during the 1960s and in Central America and the Caribbean during the 1970s and 1980s. European colonialism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries produced much conict, as one colonized state after another sought to break away from colonial controlmost notably from 1947 onward, after Indias break with Great Britain. In each of these cases, human perceptions of territorial regions led to major foreign-policy decisions. With the breakup of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Harvard professor Samuel Huntington predicted that future conicts would be between different civilizations occupying distinct territories around the globe. He called these future conicts the clash of civilizations, with the principal conict centered on the West (Western Europe and North America) versus Islamic civilizations. In the long run, Huntington believes it will be the West against the restthat is, nonWestern civilizations including Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, SlavicOrthodox, Latin American, and possibly African civilization. The key conicts of the future, he argues, will take place along the cultural fault lines that separate one civilization from another.30 Huntingtons critics argue that his denition of civilization is too vague, that he underestimates the role of the modern industrial states within civilizations and certainly the power of ethnic nationalism in the twenty-first century.
Audio Concept Civilization www.BetweenNations.org
Territory and Religious Identity

Millions of people across the globe adhere to any number of religious practices.31 What captures ones imagination, from the perspective of geography, is the interplay of territory, religion, and politicsand how religious identication can produce conict and cooperation associated with territorial space. Perceptions of territorial regions have major consequences in world politics, for example, radical Islamic fundamentalists anger at the presence of U.S. forces in parts of Saudi Arabia wherein lie Mecca and Medina, holy cities in the Islamic world. Another example is territorial conict between Iraqs Sunni and Shiite Islamic groups. Religion is often a key element in national identity, which, in turn, is a force for conict or cooperation. For example, Eastern Orthodoxy is a part of todays Serb national identity, which has spurred conict with neighboring Bosnians, whose religious heritage is Islamic. As a consequence, Bosnia is divided into land controlled by Muslim Bosnians and Catholic Croats on the one hand, and on the other by Orthodox Serbs. Russia, with its own Eastern Orthodox roots, initially backed the Serbs in their power struggle with the Muslims, while the Muslims found backing from Islamic states. Religious tensions are equally strong on the
256
CHAPTER 8
POLITIcAL GEOgRAPHY
Indian subcontinent, where Indian Hindus and Indian Muslims live in a tense peace and Indian Hindus clash with Pakistani Islamic believers over Kashmir.
Maps and Perceptions

Geopolitical concepts about world politics take us into the world of maps, of which many kinds are to be found. z General geography maps show states or countries and major cities. z Road maps depict transportation routes between cities and towns. z Special-purpose, thematic maps illustrate earthquake regions, military installations, natural resources, or population density. z Some maps include space satellites and remote sensing, while nautical charts are used in maritime trafc. As representations of geographic areas, maps provide a wealth of information from location, size, and shape of states to territorial and topographical features, such as jungles, deserts, and mountains as well as borders and resources. But what is truly exciting about todays maps are the advances in cartography made possible by computer technology, including sophisticated optics, satellite imaging, digital processing, global positioning systems (GPS), remote sensing, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS)complex databases that store data and create graphic outputs. Satellite images, for example, give us views of the Strait of Hormuz (left) and Strait of Gibraltar (right) in Figure 8.7two important shipping lanes mentioned earlierfrom outer space. Satellite, remote sensing, and GPS FIGURE 8.7 Strait of Hormuz (left) and Strait of Gibraltar (right)
Source: M-SAT Ltd./Science Photo Library/Photo Researchers, Inc.

FIGURE 8.8 Cubas Proximity to the United States
UNITED STATES
Atlantic Ocean
257
60% of NATO resupplies 45% of U.S. imports/exports
Gulf of Mexico
CUBA
Caribbean Sea
55% of U.S. crude oil imports

MONA PASSAGE
MEXICO
Pacific Ocean
65% of ships transiting Panama Canal carry goods to/from the United States
SOUTH AMERICA
Source: Department of State and Department of Defense, The Challenge to Democracy in Latin America, Washington, DC, 1986, 5. Used by permission.
maps have become vital tools in nding resources like sh and oil, projecting crop production, identifying climate change and environmental deterioration, tracking the AIDS epidemic, and following refugee ows stemming from civil wars and repressive regimes. The eld of mapmaking is experiencing revolutionary innovations in terms of attention to detail, visual quality, and accessibility.32 Maps are used constantly in foreign policy to shape public perceptions. U.S. relations with Cuba are a case in point. During the Cold War, when Cuba had established close ties with the former Soviet Union, the Cuban government in Havana became a major thorn in the side of U.S. foreign policymakers. Because the sea lanes of the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, as we see in Figure 8.8, have long been considered vital security interests of the United States, Washington policymakers perceived Soviet inuence in Cuba as a major threat. Maps were utilized time and again to illustrate to Congress and the U.S. population Cubas proximity to the United States and the threat it posed to U.S. interests. The Cold War map in Figure 8.8 illustrates how Cubas location, coupled with its Soviet ties, cast it in the role of a giant warship controlled by the Soviets and conducting operations inimical to the well-being of the United States. The map of Cuba illustrates a key point about maps. Most people think of maps as unbiased reference objects, although they actually depict, like a photograph, a subjective point of view. This map is designed to convey the sense of Cuba as a geographically proximate security threat to the United Statesa strategic extension of Soviet power directly into the American backyard. The map legitimizes the U.S. foreign-policy position vis--vis Cuba and the former Soviet Union, depicted ctronic Publishing Services as adversaries thatInc. must be confronted with power. Maps, then, illustrate what the mapmaker wants to emphasize. Denis Wood makes this point in his classic book, can, World Politics in the 21st Century, 3e 33 The Power of Maps. NC.7322.0043 8.10
1st Proof
2nd Proof
3rd Proof
Final
258
CHAPTER 8
POLITIcAL GEOgRAPHY
Test Prepper 8.3

_____ 1. Perceptions on territory, whether based on objective reality or not, play a signicant role in how a world leader acts with respect to other countries. _____ 2. The linkage between territory and identity has led to an extraordinary number of refugees as a result of civil wars in multinational states. _____ 3. The clash of civilizations refers to the ideological conict over two geographic spheres of the worldthe United States and USSR during the Cold War. _____ 4. Religion, while once important, is no longer a signicant factor tied to geography in world politics. _____ 5. Maps, while reecting an objective reality, are often used in strategic ways to affect the publics perception of events in world politics.
_____ 6. All world leaders tend to do which of the following when dealing with world politics. a. See the geographic world shaped by the lens of their own national identity b. Behave based on biases and stereotypes relative to those who live elsewhere in the world c. Ignore information when it does not coincide with preexisting beliefs or values d. Oversimplify the outside territorial world of states, nations, and people e. All of the above _____ 7. In which of the following ways does territory not affect national identity? a. It gives members of a national group a common tangible focus. b. It provides resources that allow a government to facilitate bonding over a group identity. c. It generates loyalty and a sense of belonging to a piece of land occupied throughout history. d. All of the above
Case Study
Political Geography and Al Quaeda Terrorism
JOIN THE DEBATE
259
Join the Debate Does Geography Matter in a Globalized World?

OVERVIEW
The worlds borders clearly are becoming more porous and states more interdependent under globalization. In the most recent Globalization Index conducted by Foreign Policy magazine, Internet growth in developing countries had deepened global links. Singapore, Switzerland, the United States, and Ireland topped the ranking of political, economic, and technological globalization of sixty-two countries.1 With the catastrophic events of 9/11, however, a number of scholars began to predict the end of globalization. They believed the porous borders that made possible the movement of money, goods, people, and ideas leading up to 9/11 would result in states throwing up barbed wire fences around themselves, dramatically slowing trade and travel. Yet globalization has continued to ourish. So what is the bottom line? How important is geography as the world marches forward with its information technology revolution, high-speed Internet, and World Wide Web services, and interconnected banking, commercial, and trade transactions? Do porous borders and the emergence of non-state actorsboth good and badmean the end of geographys pivotal role in world politics? What are the consequences of these trends for centralization or decentralization in world politics? from the clash of civilizations, as opposed to the clash of states, are based on the importance of geographic regions and of civilizations and their values.2 4. Although wars between states admittedly have decreased in recent decades, wars within states are on the rise. Civil wars involve the geography of territorial disputes, as in the breakup of Yugoslavia during the 1990s, much of Africa, and parts of Latin America (notably Colombia). Iraq entered a state of civil war after the U.S.led invasion of March 2003. 5. The unipolar global system, where U.S. power dominates, grows out of the U.S. geographic location non-threatening neighbors to the north and south, ocean barriers to the east and west. See the previous discussion on the stopping power of water. 6. One need only look at U.S.Mexico border tensions to grasp the meaning of geographic locationin this case a superpower next to a developing country with its millions of people looking for work. 7. Globalization has not altered the constant nationalstate nature of citizenship. Because human identity remains territory-based, it strongly resists cultural homogenization. 8. To underscore scholars and policymakers attention to the continued role of geography in world politics, we need only look at all the attention currently given to U.S. hegemonic power and how it is being used (or misused).
YES, GEogRAPHy STILL MATTERS

1. Borders may have become more porous, but state leaders still follow policies of realist and neorealist hard power when it appears to serve their countrys interest in survival and security. The U.S. attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq illustrate this point. Realism and state-to-state power politics are still in play. 2. Many scholars of world politics argue that nothing has changed in international relations since Thucydides and Machiavellithat is, a territorial states economic and military power still determines its fate, and interdependence and globalization are secondary and fragile. 3. Even the dire predictions of Harvard professor Samuel P . Huntington that future conicts will arise
No, GEogRAPHy IS NoW IRRELEVAnT

1. Thomas Friedman, a journalist with the New York Times, has it right. Globalization is the dening international system of our time.3 Economic interdependence among states has made war too costly to contemplate, with one or two exceptions, as in Iraq. More commerce will produce more peace. Cultural and personal interactions will reduce misperceptions and misunderstandings that lead to conict. Globalization, moreover, will spread open and representative governmentand that spread will end wars.
260
CHAPTER 8
POLITIcAL GEOgRAPHY
2. Building on his 1999 The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Friedmans The World Is Flat argues that the globalized era is one where states matter less, and the principal driving force is a level playing eld for international trade. The level playing eld has been made possible by software and the global beroptic network. Onto this playing eld have rushed servicing and manufacturing companies in China, India, the Philippines, and the former Soviet Union that attract the outsourcing market.4 3. While the state has remained the most signicant political organization of human beings for over three centuries, its decline was predicted well before the intense discussion of globalization in the 1990spreceded by discussion of interdependence in the 1970s. 4. In this era of electronic media, satellite television and the Internet increasingly are connecting people with distant images, ideas, and sources of information. This is the age of the electronic state.5 This use of electronic media is creating a major gap between physical place and information. The emerging cyberworld opens the door to social and political actions and movements by nongovernmental actors that transcend the power and author ity of the state.6 5. Globalization underscores economic integration and interdependencethe spread of free markets, capital moving across national boundaries without
restriction, the intertwining of the economies of the worlds states. The world is becoming a single, globalized marketplace. Which side of this debate do you nd more compelling? Why? What questions do you think this debate raises that would help inform you more about political issues?
NoTES
1. The Globalization Index, Foreign Policy (November/December 2006): 7481. 2. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations, Foreign Affairs, 72, no. 3 (1993): 2249. 3. Thomas L. Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, rev. ed. (New York: Anchor, 2000), 250. 4. Thomas L. Friedman, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005). 5. Stanley D. Brunn, Jeffrey A. Jones, and Shannon OLear, Geopolitical Information and Communications in the Twenty-rst Century, in Reordering the World: Geopolitical Perspectives on the 21st Century, 2nd ed., George J. Demko and William B. Wood, eds., 304305. 6. Simon Dalby, Geopolitics, Knowledge, and Power at the End of the Century, in The Geopolitics Reader, Gearid Tuathail, Simon Dalby, and Paul Routledge, eds. (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 308.
261

1 2 4 5 political 6 geography 7 8 be 9 Identify the3key premises of and able to dene the major terms and concepts within the eld. 10
- Locations power lies in: natural resources, topography, size and shape, and disasters - Territorial security (and power) stems from: access to water, boundaries and boundary disputes, ocean and airspace, and transportation and communication.
Studies how geographic factors and power interact at the international system, regional, state, substate, and individual levels. It illuminates geographys role in world politics, from national identity to a states power and 1 2 development, to foreign-policy decision making. Assumes that a states location in a realm and region inuences its power, politics, and security. Location and territory go a long way in shaping the perceptions and actions of the people who live in states and identify with a nation. Focuses on the strategic and military power aspects of territorial spatial relations. Involves major actors in political geography, e.g. states and nations and their location, size, and shape relative to its neighbors, friends and adversaries, natural resources, topography, climate, and proximate waterways.
4 5 how human 6 7 8 interacts 9 with 10 Understand perception geographic characteristics to affect world politics.
Think of perceptions as the mental processes of leaders and followers from past to present. Perceptions are what humans think is true about the territorial world around them and their underlying assumptions about that world. Leaders act on these perceptions whether or not they actually reect the real world. Unfortunately for world peace, cooperation, and stability, human beings are not as rational in interpreting the outside world as they might think. Humans have a limited capacity to remember and process information accurately. Perceptions and cognitive processes lead to foreign policy based on biases, stereotyping, and prejudices. Territory shapes self-identity: national, regional, and religious. Maps are used extensively to shape perceptions.
3 4 understand 5 6 certain 7 geographic 8 9 10 Identify and how factors impact a states power and security.
Geography impacts a states power and security in world politics. This inuence occurs through locations inuence on a states power and on its territorial security.

Nationalisms Power in World Politics
Mexican Flag-waving Football Fan at the World Cup, Germany, 2006
Learning Objectives
1
Understand how history and location impact nationalism, using Russia and America as examples.
Be able to identify and explain the factors that make nationalism such a potent force in world politics.
262
Of the many unforeseen consequences of topography, the emergence of nationalism is, perhaps, the most familiar.
Marshall McLuhan
Chapter Outline
What Is Nationalism?
National Identity: Taproot of Nationalism A Psychological Group Identity among People An Emotional Force that Ignites Peoples Passions Historical Force of National Identity A Driving Force with Positive and Negative Effects
How Do Leaders Use Nationalism in

Foreign Policy?
Seeking to Legitimize Power Promoting State Political Unity and Economic Development Promoting Self-determination Movements Legitimizing a Leaders Preferred Policy Direction A Summary of Nationalism
How Do History and Location Shape

Twenty-rst Century Nationalism?
Russias National Identity Americas National Identity Distinctions in Ethnic Nationalism Religious Nationalism
Understand how nationalism is used by world leaders for both personal and national gain.
Nationalisms Power in World Politics
revious chapters introduced the concepts of state and nation. You learned that each is different in important ways. These differences have powerful implications for the study and understanding of world politics. A state, of course, must not be confused with a nation. States are geographically bounded territories, with governmental structures and sovereignty, such as China, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, and Russia. The size and power of individual states vary greatly, but all are recognized as legally equal members of the international system of states. Chapter 8 discusses states in more detail. A nation, on the other hand, need not be geographically bounded or legally dened. A nation is best understood as a group
264
Key Terms
CHAPTER 9
NATIOnALISMS POWER In WORLD POLITIcS
ethnic group p. 264 civic national identity p. 266 national self-determination p. 269 xenophobia p. 270 devolution (or autonomy) p. 275 clan p. 279 Kurdistan p. 280 Catalonia p. 280 Galicia p. 280
of people who consider themselves linked in a cultural and political togetherness, typically consolidated by past or current struggles and suffering. Think about a nation, as Benedict Anderson describes it, as a psychological association, or as an imagined community.1 Anderson stresses that a nation is an imagined group of people, because fellow members of the nation likely will not meet, know, or hear about most of the nation-identifying groupeven though they share in their minds their cultural and political togetherness. Look at the fan waving the Mexican ag at the World Cup matches in Germany in 2006. He is expressing the emotive side of national identity, in this case rooting for Mexico against other nations in sports competitioneven though we can hardly expect that he knows every Mexican personally. A ag is a key symbol of the nation. Keeping in mind that denitions are incomplete and partial, we can make a number of observations that at least help us understand what a nation is. A nation in essence is a group of people who consider themselves culturally, historically, linguisticallyor ethnicallyrelated.2 Identity with a nation actually takes two distinct forms: (1) civic national identity and (2) ethnic national identity. Lets look at these distinctions more closely. Civic national identity refers to groups of people bonded together through: z Citizenship z Political participation within a circumscribed community z Shared common language and core political values regardless of the ethnic origins of the people within that group The civic nation togetherness is basically voluntary and associated with representative democracy in countries such as the United States (U.S. Declaration of Independence) and France (Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen). This form of national identity dates back to the eighteenth century. As in the case of ethnic national identity, ties to territory play a big role in bonding people together. Ethnic national identity stems from an ethnically dened group of people who share: z physical characteristics z a common culture, religion, language and ancestry Whereas the civic nation includes people of different ethnic origins who have assimilated into a common overarching core political value system, the ethnic nation tends to be dened by lineage and closed to outsiders. To be more precise, here the nation is dened by ethnic group identitythat is, a population of human beings who identify with each other on the basis of presumed common ancestry, culture, linguistic, ritualistic, and religious traits. Keep in mind
Ethnic group A population of human beings who identify with each other on the basis of presumed common ancestry, culture, linguistic, ritualistic, and religious traits.
265
Many Thousands Protest against Power of Turkeys Islamists
Tens of thousands of pro-secular demonstrators wave a huge Turkish flag during a rally in Istanbul, Turkey, Sunday, April 29, 2007. Tens of thousands of secular Turks gathered in Istanbul and chanted slogans against the pro-Islamic government, which faced severe criticism from the powerful military for allegedly tolerating the activities of radical Islamic circles. The demonstration against the government shows a deepening division between secular and Islamist nationalist camps in Turkish society. Protesters demanded a president with no Islamist ties.
Photo by Murad Sezer, Associated Press. Used by permission.
that an ethnic group typically becomes a nation when it begins to seek political control over its destinyoften by seeking its own state or more political control within the state in which it nds itself. Examples of nations that stem from ethnic identity are Tamils, Turks, Croats, Czechs, Kurds, Russians, and Serbs. When apprehended as an idea, to use Sir Ernest Barkers phrase, national identity becomes an exceptionally powerful force. Think of Adolf Hitlers brand of nationalism leading up to World War II, or Japanese nationalism during this same period. Here you can see national identitys power in mobilizing people into movements. For that matter, think of the assertive American national identity and nationalism expressed in the Bush Doctrine since 9/11 (see chapter 5). The Bush administration with its evangelical base, as historian Anatol Lieven points out, has invoked radical American nationalism to wage a unilateral, morally based, war against evil-doers.3 In Lievens view, this struggle between good, that is, America and those who agree with it, and evil, those opposing freedom and liberty, has fueled a self-righteous nationalist extremism that has strained Americas relations with the outside world. We look at radical American nationalism later in this chapter. This chapter examines how national identity becomes nationalism and how nationalism dramatically decentralizes world politics. While nationalism integrates people who identify with the same nation, it divides the people of one nation from those of another and all too frequently leads to conict. This consequence is vividly seen in Serb nationalism versus Croat nationalism in the erce ghting involved in the breakup of former Yugoslavia in the rst half
266
CHAPTER 9
Audio Concept Civic National Identity www.BetweenNations.org
of the 1990s. How the population of a nation sees itself, however, can divide perceptions within the same nation. Turkish nationalists are divided over how much Islam to bring into government policies. In April 2007, 700,000 people, waving the red national ag, gathered in Istanbul to protest the Islamic tilt of Turkeys ruling party and the ruling partys then presidential candidate, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul. The rst section of this chapter examines the nature of nationalism in more depth and its world political consequences. Next the discussion turns to how nationalism is manifested across the world and acts as a decentralizing force. This understanding of nationalism leads on to how leaders have used nationalism as a powerful emotive force in domestic and foreign policy. n
What Is Nationalism?
1 Be able to identify and explain the factors that make nationalism such a potent force in world politics.
A sensible place to begin to explore the force of nationalism in world politics is to take a closer look at national identity and its many forces across the globe. In essence, nationalism is basically how national identity is expressed by an individual member, group, or mass constituents of a nationfrom ag waving to singing the national anthem to waging war in defense of the homeland as America did in World Wars I and II.
National Identity: Taproot of Nationalism

National identity, as discussed above, is in part an identity with a piece of territory. As a well-known observer of nationalism, Anthony D. Smith, puts it, national identity has a strong spatial or territorial conception, where a nation of people identify with a well-dened territory.4 Civic national identity as it evolved from the late eighteenth century onward came to encompass the idea of a political community of laws and institutions that reect the national peoples political will and express their political sentiments and purposes within a given territory.5 National identity then, is a we feeling, a collective identity of a people, bound by culture and a sense of shared territory. Anthony D. Smiths book National Identity provides a good summary of the underlying assumptions in a peoples sense of national identity in either its civic or ethnic types.6 It is an identity with shared: z Historic territory or homeland z Myths and historical memories z Mass public culture z Legal rights and duties for all members z Economy It would be difcult to overstate the powerful impact of nationalism on world politics. As a remarkably potent magnet that crystallizes peoples loyalty to a home country and cultural hearth, its uniquely diverse faces have produced both
Civic national identity A group of people bonded together through citizenship, political participation within a circumscribed community, and a shared common language and core political values regardless of the ethnic origins of the people within that group.
c WHAT IS NATIOnALISM?
centralizing (within a nation) and decentralizing (nation versus nation) consequences for the world political system. As a centralizing force, nationalism has brought people with shared roots together inside new states, promoted unied democratic governments, challenged imperialism, and spurred economic development. These effects might well be classied as positive. Yet on the negative, decentralizing side, nationalism has led to horric world wars (German and Japanese aggressive nationalism in World War II), unspeakable genocide of a people (German nationalism against the Jews in the 1940s, and mass killings of Bosnians by Serb nationalists in the 1990s). Nationalism has less horric, yet still decentralizing, inuences too. Both French and Dutch voters rejected the European Union (EU) constitution in May and June 2005. French and Dutch opponents to the EU constitution worried, among other things, about loss of national control and identity to a large impersonal bureaucracy. This nationalist rejection sent the EU reeling, because the charter requires approval from all EU states to take effect. Now let us look at the nature of nationalism. A close examination of this key driving force in world politics reveals that at heart, in both its civic and ethnic types, it is: 1. A psychological group identity among people 2. An emotional force that ignites peoples passions 3. A power factor with strong historical roots 4. A driving force that leads to positive and negative impacts in international relations
267
A Psychological Group Identity among People

From the psychological point of viewthat imagined community in Benedict Andersons termsnationalism works as a bonding agent. It ties people together with a common set of reference points and perceptions of reality. This group identity separates one national group from another across the world. It creates unity among group members and separates them from other groups. This bonding occurs through shared language as well as art, culture, heroes, religion, and customs. Flowering in Europe in the revolutionary fervor of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, nationalism united people around a multitude of ags and pieces of territory all over the world. The United Nations, with its original ftyone member-states, now includes 191 countries, many of which have more than one national self-identifying group inside them. Nationalist sentiments, as noted above, proved a strong psychological force in the Soviet Union after 1917. Throughout the Soviet years, Moscow wrestled with how to keep its restless nationalities under control and devised an elaborate federal political system to do so. In the end, these efforts proved useless. The Soviet Union broke up in 1991, which set the scene for Yugoslavia to follow a similar and far more violent path. At the beginning of the twenty-rst century, Russia is still struggling with determined nationalist groups seeking autonomy, as vividly demonstrated not only by the tenacious Chechnya nationalist breakaway movement in the Transcaucasian regionan area of many contentious nationalitiesbut also by restive militants in Dagestan. Nationalism as a psychological force is fostered in a variety of ways. The mass media are perhaps the most effective means of triggering its appeal. In many
268
CHAPTER 9
countries, the government controls the instruments of mass communication, such as mail, newspapers, telephone, telegraph, and television, Internet, radio, and satellite transmissions. By promoting the symbols of the nation, governments can motivate their people to all kinds of endeavors. Following 9/11, for example, Americans came together in a psychology of defense of the nationwhen the administration used many symbols of the nation (national anthem, ag, references to previous wars and others, defense of liberty and freedom) against al Qaeda forces. In contrast, a nationalist mural in Baghdad before the U.S.led invasion depicted Saddam Hussein ghting a three-headed serpent representing British Prime Minister Tony Blair, President George W. Bush, and then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.7
An Emotional Force that Ignites Peoples Passions

Nationalism is a deeply felt emotional force. Nationalist emotions are deeply present in sporting events, such as the Olympic Games and World Cup soccer (football) matches. The Olympics are of course the premier state for nationalist competition, and these games have a history of political conict. In the 1936 games held in Berlin, Germany, for example, Adolf Hitler tried to use them to propagandize Aryan race superiority. This goal was undercut by the black American track star, Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals. The German public followed him wherever he went in Germany. The dark side of nationalism and sport appeared in 1972 at the Munich Olympics, when Palestinian nationalists murdered Israeli athletes. Yet nationalism can work in positive ways to spur defense and industrial power. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 7, 1941, the United States mobilized rapidly to go into high-gear wartime production. Americas women and national patriotism played a major role in this wartime effort. See the photo of Rosie the Riveter. Meanwhile, nationalism is constantly at work in political parties during elections around the worldfrom the Scottish National Party to the Chinese Nationalist Party in Taiwan. It remains a strong force within the countries that make up the European Union (EU).
Rosie the Riveter
Six million U.S. women began to work in manufacturing plants that produced munitions and materiel during World War II, when the men normally doing factory work went to fight in the European and Pacific fronts. The U.S. womens role in the war effort is depicted by the character whose name was Rosie the Riveter. Rosie is a feminist icon and symbol of womens economic power.
Image courtesy of US National Archives. Produced by Westinghouse for the War Production. Created by J. Howard Miller. Modications Jone Lewis 2001. Used by permission.
Nationalist Passion and World Politics

When the psychological power of nationalism is sparked by leaders, it makes an enormous imprint on the world stage. Nationalist passions have been used to: z Rally a people in time of war, as in Adolf Hitler appealing to German nationalism, Japans leaders to Japanese nationalism, and Franklin D. Roosevelt to American nationalism after Pearl Harbor. z Seek territorial control over disputed land in order to create a new state for a stateless people (Palestinians in Israel). z Fight for independence against foreign oppressors (Vietnamese against their many invaders from China, France, Japan, and the United States). z Eliminate alien national groups inside or in nearby states (Hitlers Germans against the Jews; Serb ethnic cleansing of Croats and Bosnians in Yugoslavia). z Spark breakaway nationalist movements from inside an existing state to form a new state with its own sovereign institutions (Biafra in Nigeria; Chechnya in Russia; Basques and Catalans in Spain; Quebec in Canada; East Timor in
Indonesia; Eritrea in Ethiopia). These national self-determination movements frequently lead to bloodshed. For example, Indonesian militia groups went on a killing rampage against pro-independence people in East Timor after they voted for independence in 1999. The following brief list captures nationalisms wide-ranging possibilities and shows how over time it has united and divided peoples occupying the same territory in the international political system. It is a force at work at all levels of analysis. Studying nationalism helps explain how and why: z Violence and war occur in the international political system. z People act as they do toward each other across state boundaries and within multinational states. z Misunderstanding occurs so frequently in world politics. z Diplomatic negotiations can be exceedingly difcult over many issues. z Perceptions form an important element in assessing conict and cooperation. z Leaders manipulate the masses. Ethnic national identity, discussed above, has become more pronounced in spawning ethnic nationalism in world politics in the twentieth and twenty-rst centuries. It has led to frequently expressed emotionally bitter grievances against foreigners, passionate struggles for national self-determination and independence, and longing desires for a separate territorial state. As one scholar of ethnic nationalism, Eric Hobsbawm, notes:
Every separatist movement in Europe that I can think of bases itself on ethnicity, . . . that is to say, on the assumption that wethe Basques, Catalans, Scots, Croats, or Georgiansare a different people from the Spaniards, the English, the Serbs or the Russians, and therefore we should not live in the same state with them.8
269
National self-determination The right of all people to determine their own government.
For more information see Terrorism www.BetweenNations.org
This obsessive ethnic nationalism, for example, lies at the heart of the postCold War breakup of Yugoslavia, in the wrenching upheavals in the Transcaucasian region, and in many other geographic regions of the world. American civic nationalism is different; characterized not by a particular ethnic group but by a melting pot of ethnic groups who adhere to a political creed embedded in American democratic institutions and ideals deemed superior to all others.9 Like its more ethnic-based counterparts, American nationalisma kind of patriotism rather than ethnic superiorityhas strong emotional patterns too. President Woodrow Wilson tapped into American nationalism as a reason for entering World War I, President Roosevelt for entry into World War II, and President George W. Bush for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the more amorphous war against terrorism. While new driving forces of globalization, interdependence, and the information revolution are transforming world politics, as discussed in chapter 1, nationalism simply refuses to go away. Its power to mobilize people through high drama and intense emotions, and its universal presence from around the world, left an unmistakable imprint on the twentieth century. Nationalist sentiments became powerful forces in world politics right after World War I, when the Ottoman Empire fell apart, when colonial powers like Great Britain and France assumed League of Nations mandates to control places like Egypt and
270
CHAPTER 9
Nazi Party Holds Mass Meeting in Buckeberg in 1934
This was one of the cigarette coupon photographs. Cigarette coupons could be redeemed for a series of photographs of Adolf Hitler taken by his personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann.
Mesopotamia (current-day Iraq), and as colonial rule was increasingly challenged. Here are historic examples of nationalisms emotive appeal in the twentieth century.
Nazi Germany
In the 1930s, Adolf Hitler mobilized the German people, whom he referred to as the Aryan race (pure fair-haired, light-skinned Germans, not Jews, Gypsies, or Slavs), by using propaganda techniques. He touched a sensitive cord in Germans with his emotive speeches at mass rallies arguing that the Germans had been stabbed in the back by the peace settlement at the end of World War I. This settlement saddled Germany with guilt and a huge nancial burden for causing that war. In the midst of the severe postwar economic depression, Hitler gained an enormous following by organizing goose-stepping jackboot parades, mobilizing youth movements, and holding charismatic nighttime speeches attended by thousands of his compatriots. Month by month, he laid out his plans for the superior German people to rule Europe. He envisioned a hierarchy of peoples, with the Germans dominating everyone else, slaves at the lowest level, and Jews and Gypsies entirely eliminated. Passions released by his ery xenophobia, or hyper-nationalism, led to World War II, the Jewish Holocaust, and ultimately the virtual destruction of Germany by Allied forces.
Xenophobia Xenophobia is a fear of foreigners. A form of extreme nationalism that unleashes violent action, it has led to genocide toward other ethnic national groups.
Postcolonial Nationalist Sentiments

After World War II, the emotive power of nationalism continued to mobilize people in all kinds of movements with all kinds of effects on international relations. Much of the world colonized earlier by France, Germany, Great Britain, the Nether lands, and Portugal, for example, began to break up into new sovereign states after 1947, largely as the result of pressure from nationalist movements throughout the colonies. After decades of struggle to get rid of its colonial yoke, India won
For more information see War in Angola www.BetweenNations.org
independence from Great Britain in 1947. It was partitioned into two countries: India, with a Hindu majority, and Pakistan (which at the time included Bangladesh), with a Muslim majority. The origins of ethnic national conict in Africa, where many ethnic groups live inside single states (like the Yoruba, Hausa, Fulani, and Igbo [or Ibo] inside Nigeria) stem from European colonialism. The European powers carved up Africa (as well as the Middle East) in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with ethnic groups living inside articial territories that became states in the postcolonial period. The problem was magnied when European authorities gave preferential treatment to historically weak minor ethnic groups. Those groups used the coercive instruments of the state to suppress their ethnic group enemies and stay in power during the post-independence period. The problem in Africa, then, is the existence of scores of ethnic groups (many transformed into ethnic national movements) organized into a limited number of states. Minor ethnic groups are simply overpowered by majority ethnic groups coexisting inside the same state.
271
Historical Force of National Identity

It would be difcult to pinpoint exactly when the concept of a nationa people with a national identitywith all the emotional content of nationalism, took form. Yet most historians and students of national identity and nationalism agree that as ideas that seized peoples imaginations, the distinctive consciousness of the nation and its counterpart, nationalism, became increasingly pronounced during the latter half of the eighteenth century in Western Europe and America.10 From this perspective, the power of national identity and nationalism became major forces in world affairs well after the creation of states, which started to appear after 1648.
Nationalism Flourishes: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

As we saw in chapter 2, the printing press and newspapers helped feed nationalism, as did: z The growth of towns and cities z An educated intellectual class who wrote about the virtues of civic patriotism z A growing sense of shared nationality among a people11 In the eighteenth century, the American and French revolutions reect these forces, especially through the use of civic national symbols, such as the ag, patriotic songs, folktales, ballads, poems, and even billboards and murals. These revolutions also ushered in the concept of popular sovereignty, which is discussed in more detail later. Given momentum by these revolutions and by resistance throughout Europe to Napoleons quest for empire, nationalism was an essentially French movement that appeared more and more in different countries in a variety of ways throughout the nineteenth century. For example, it gained strength in England and Prussia (via the Germans); among the Czechs, Slovaks, and Poles; in Italy and Spain; and within the Ottoman Empire, from which the Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, and Romanians became independent. By the late 1840s, civic and ethnic national identity and nationalism were going strong, and a rash of nationalist movements broke out in Europe, notably in the vast Austrian Empire of the Hapsburgs. That empire was made up, at the time, by at least ten recognizable nationalities or language groups.
272
CHAPTER 9
Shifting Boundaries: The Twentieth Century

By the late nineteenth century, large nations began to consolidate inside large statesin a new German empire, a unied kingdom in Italy, and the AustroHungarian dual monarchy granting power to the dominant German and Hungarian ethnic groups within the Hapsburg empire. Versions of nationalism appeared to be growing, too, as the new century progressed, the Ottoman Empire crumbled and became reorganized under British and French League of Nations mandates after World War I. Turkish national identity and nationalism is a good case in point, illustrated by the secularist Turkish leader, Kemal Ataturk, who played so great a role in the founding of Turkey as a state. In Egypt, Syria, and the British mandate of Palestine, Arabswhether Muslim or nottried to forge a sense of Arab nationalism, a common identity within states and across the Arab world. Transforming the community into an Arab national identity, however, has been fraught with difculties that include competing traditional ethnic, tribal, sect, and clan afliations as well as divisions within Islam, with associated differences in legal rights and duties.12 While Saudi Arabia emerged as an Arab state with a strong religious identity, the Turks, Kurds, and Iranians represent non-Arab national identities informed by the Muslim faith. Iran, in fact, identies itself as a Shiite republic. So the principle of nations, with a people inhabiting states, was well under way as the twentieth century began.13 Do not forget that World War I began when a young Serbian nationalist, Gabriel Principe, chang under Austrian rule, assassinated Archduke Francis Ferdinand, the heir to the Hapsburg Empire. The assassi nation occurred in the streets of Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a remote province of the far-ung Austrian Empire.
Ethnic Nations: A Recent Trend

Most separatist movements at the turn of the twentieth century were based on ethnicitythe assumption that the people seeking autonomy are a different
Nationalism Deeply Rooted in History
Archduke Ferdinand, heir to the imperial throne of the Austro-Hun garian Empire, and his wife, Count ess Sophia, walk to their car in Sarajevo, June 28, 1914, just prior to their assassination. A nineteenyear-old Serbian student, a member of the Young Bosnia movement dedicated to a Bosnia free of Aus trian Hapsburg rule, assassinated them, igniting World War I.
people from those who rule them. So Basques and Catalans opposed the Spaniards, Irish the English, and Armenians the Turks. Todays ethnic claims to nationhoodand the right to a separate territorial stateare quite different from the versions of nationhood and nationalism that existed during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Nationality, as it first bloomed, did not consider ethnicity essential to the consciousness of a people. The original nations of Europe and the Americas had no unitary ethnic base but rather a national identity based on cultural and political perceptions that constituted what it meant to be British, French, German, or Dutch.14 Nor, as discussed earlier, was ethnicity mandatory for the original American revolutionary nationalism that inspired the formation of the United States. These earlier versions of nationalism were rooted in the eighteenth-century concept of popular sovereignty, the basic democratic principle that the people are the ultimate source of all legitimate authority. This was expressed in the American and French revolutions of 1776 and 1789, respectively. As we have seen, however, by the end of the nineteenth century and in the early years of the twentieth, nationality and nationalism increasingly mirrored the ethnic component. Thus, when U.S. President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the notion of self-determination of nations as a guiding principle for international relations at the conclusion of World War I, he opened the oodgates for any ethnic-national group to declare a national right to its own sovereign state. President Wilsons Secretary of State Robert Lansing worried that the idea of national selfdetermination was so loaded with dynamite that it might make the world dangerous.15 He said, It will raise hopes, which can never be realized. It will, I fear, cost thousands of lives.... What a calamity that the phrase was ever uttered!... What misery it will cause.16 If Secretary Lansing could see todays ethnic-national conicts and selfdetermination movements, he probably would not be surprised. President Wilson, of course, was using the self-determination phrase to mean the consent of the governed. Unfortunately for stability in the international system, Wilsons phrase became interpreted as national self-determination. It was translated in the minds of many ethnic leaders as the right of ethnic-national groups to have their own sovereign states. Thus, many ethnic groups around the world began pounding the doors for their right to a self-governing state. Still, the existence of more than one nationally conscious ethnic group inside a statea multinational state, as discussed in chapters 3 and 8does not mean an automatic breakup of the state. Many multiethnic national states, such as Switzerlandor the United States with its native Indian groupsare integrated entities. In other cases, autonomy emerges when a states government grants more political and economic power to ethno-national political groups in order to hold the country together. This has happened in Italy, where Rome granted more minority power to Italys separatist Northern League. The United Kingdom has done the same with Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and Belgium is really three regions: French-speaking Wallonia and Flemish-speaking Flanders and Brussels (bilingual).
273
Audio Concept Popular Sovereignty www.BetweenNations.org
A Driving Force with Positive and Negative Effects

The negative aspects of nationalism, with its highly charged ethnic content and its inuence on international conict and decentralization, should be clear. As a
274
CHAPTER 9
negative force, it has created a security nightmare for the international community. The problem is how to manage nationalism or prevent it from spreading its wide range of accompanying problems, including the creation of multitudes of refugees. (It should be noted, however that recent research by the World Bank on civil conicts around the world shows that rebel ghting more often is motivated by the greedy pursuit of lucrative commodities.)17 Still, nationalism has its benets as well as its dangers. Defenders of nationalist causes tend to subscribe to what may be termed liberal nationalism, the belief that every nationally conscious ethnic group should have its own state and that one ethnic or cultural group should not rule another.18 Those favoring this idea, however, do not suggest that every minuscule ethnic group, such as the Sorbs or Wends in Germany and the Amish in the United States, should have its own state. Yet they do believe that larger ethnic-national groups, such as the Kurds, Igbo, and Tibetans, are entitled to a state in order to avoid the large-scale violence seen in many multiethnic national states, such as China, Nigeria, and Russia. Proponents of liberal nationalism argue that democracy does not work in societies divided along linguistic and cultural lines. Examples cited include the former Soviet Union, China (with the Tibet problem), Nigeria (three sizable ethnic groups) and Iraq (Sunni, Shiite, and Kurds). Switzerland, with its distinct cultural and linguistic groups, is a notable exception to this claim. Given nationalisms liberal dimensions, as associated with the American and French revolutions, let us consider its positive and negative effects. Positive effects of nationalism: z Promotes democracy by uniting people in a set of core values and sense of history and destiny. z Stimulates the idea that political power legitimately resides with the people and that political leaders exercise power only as agents of the people; leaders receive their authority from elections. z Encourages self-determination and allows nationalities to preserve their cultures and govern themselves according to their own customs. z Stimulates economic development by mobilizing people in a common effort, as occurred in Germany and Japan after World War II. Negative effects of nationalism: z Lead to hyper-nationalism (xenophobia), feelings of superiority (Germans under Hitler, Serbs during the breakup of Yugoslavia), and ethnic cleansing, or the extermination of inferior ethnic-national groups (as occurred in Germany and Yugoslavia). z Produce messianismthe propensity to think that one nations duty is to save other nations or bring its core values to other areas. Some argue that mes sianism runs deep in current U.S. nationalism in its sense of mission to bring Western-style democracy to Iraq, as proclaimed by the Bush administration. z Stimulate violent self-determination movements and consequent bloodbaths.
z Spawns great conict in the world, as between India and Pakistan and between North and South Korea, as well as generating suspicion, as with Chinas suspicion of Japan and Russias suspicion of the outside world. Facing separatist sentiments among the Armenian population, the Muslim government of the declining Ottoman Empire in 19151916 mounted a genocidal campaign that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Armenians, a large majority of whom lived in the Ottoman Empire and who were Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox Christians. Given the power of nationalism, you might wonder how multinational states hold together at all, especially as people who identify with the same nationality do not necessarily cluster in one part of a states territory. People may live in different towns and regions, as was the case inside Croatia, Bosnia, and Serbia in Yugoslavia. When Croatia and Bosnia separated from Yugoslavia to form new multinational states, their multinational groups were not clustered in one part of the new states territory. This by no means is to suggest that people of different cultures or religions or languages cannot possibly live in the same state without either killing each other or seeking to break away and form their own states. Examples of people living peacefully in multinational states abound, from the United States to Switzerland and beyond. Most states, in fact, are multinational and peaceful. How do states adjust to multinational settings? States have tried to cope with, or govern, national groups within their borders in a variety of ways: z Federalism: We see this form of government in the United States, Russia, India, and Nigeria. z Genocide: Dominant groups seek to physically eliminate minority groups through violence, as in Sudans Darfur region, Hitlers Germany, Milosevics Yugoslavia, and the Hutus in Rwanda. z Expulsion: This occurs when a dominant group expels minority groups or scares them out. Milosevic pursued this method, as did Idi Amin in Uganda in the 1970s. Indonesia has acted similarly against the Chinese. z Integrationist Nationalist Ideology: Cuba and Mexico have a national policy that attempts to bring together different ethnic groups into one identity: blacks, mulattos (black/white mix), and whites are different groups of Cubans; Indians, mestizos (Indian/white mix), and whites are different groups of Mexicans. Cuba appears to have been more successful in this effort than has Mexico; Mexicos many Indian groups (Mayan, in particular) do not necessarily identify as Mexican, as blacks identify as Cuban in that country. z Autonomy (or Devolution): This occurs when national groups are given more autonomy, as with Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom. Devolution refers to a transfer and consequent sharing of powers from the central government to local government. Scotland and Northern Ireland have a traditional form of devolved government consisting of leg islative and executive branches, while Waless experience with devolution has been more limited. Scotlands ve million people, for example, have distinct legal and education systems, and the Scots have voted in their independence party.
275
Devolution (or autonomy) The process whereby regions within a state demand and gain political power and growing autonomy vis--vis the central government. Devolution can lead to self-determination movements, whereby ethnically identifying regions within a state break away and form their own independent sovereign new state.
276
CHAPTER 9
Test Prepper 9.1

True or False?
_____ 1. The two types of national identity are civic and ethnic. _____ 2. Civic nationalism is based on a strong historical connection while ethnic nationalism is founded upon a psychological group identity. _____ 3. Nationalism acts strictly as a centralizing force in world politics, bringing a group of people within a state together _____ 4. Earlier versions of nationalism were based on sovereignty of the people while the most recent trend is based on ethnic connections between people. _____ 5. Liberal nationalism refers to the division of a population based on political leanings.
Multiple Choice
_____ 6. Which of the following is not shared by a group of people who possess a common national identity? a. Economy b. Mass public culture c. Legal rights and duties for all members d. Myths and historical memories e. None of the above
_____ 7. The Olympic Games and World Cup soccer matches are examples of what characteristic of nationalism? a. A strong psychological connection b. An emotional force that ignites peoples passions c. A powerful factor with strong historical roots d. A driving force leading to positive and negative impacts in world affairs e. An identity that competes with transnationalism for a peoples loyalty _____ 8. What is the primary source of ethnic-national conict in Africa? a. European colonialism b. Economic disparity c. Linguistic differences d. Self-serving national leaders e. None of the above
How Do History and Location Shape Twenty-rst Century Nationalism?

2 Understand how history and location impact nationalism, using Russia and America as examples.
How nationalism is expressed in the twenty-rst century stems from the nations history and location. National identities found in the New World realms of North America, Central America, and South America, for example, are melting pot national identities of people whose families came from the Old World, mixed in with the native inhabitants of the new land. Mexico is a case in point. A Mexican identity emerged during and after Mexicos 1910 revolutionan identity that included both white, Indian, and mestizos. Cubas national identity incorporates black, mulatto, and white heritageall identifying with Cuba. In contrast, Serbian identity back in the Old World stems from a single ethnic group, the Serbs, because they live in their homeland rather than having sailed off to the New World. It must be said that the New World melting pot type of nationalism, however, is incomplete. One still nds ethnic-based nationalism
c HOW DO HISTORY AnD LOcATIOn SHAPE TWEnTY-FIRST CEnTURY NATIOnALISM?

among Indian groups in Mexicoand in the Indian groups in the United States and indigenous peoples in Canada too. With these differences in mind, let us look more closely at Russia and America to see how history and location shapes different brands of twenty-rst-century nationalism.
277
Russias National Identity

The death of former Russian President Boris Yeltsin on April 23, 2007, at the age of seventy-six, marks an appropriate turning point to observe the recent evolution of Russian national identity. Yeltsin became the rst president of Russia in June 1991, when the Soviet Union was just months from collapse. When the collapse came and with it the end of communism in Russiathe country began a widespread search for, and discussion about, what exactly constitutes the Russian national identity. Yeltsin announced in 1994 the formation of a National Idea Commission to search for a new national idea. The commission failed to produce signicant results. Part of the problem was how fast Russia was changing during the 1990s, the huge gaps in income, and vast regional differences, as between far east Russia and Moscow. In the past few years, a national idea seemed to catching on, in part as a result of Vladimir Putins popularity. Putin describes himself as a patriot and stresses that Russian values are essentially love of ones motherland, and of ones home, people, and culture. Speaking on behalf of Russia and its core interests, he constantly presses the point that Russians take great pride in Russian history and achievements, to the exclusion of the history and character of the other hundred or more different ethnic groups that live in the Russian Federation. Nor does his national identity show a strong belief in democracy as the organizing principal for Russias state-society relations. He is more in tune with a strong centralized state
Russians Gathered at Red Square
Russians celebrating the failure of the coup. Russians gather in Red Square, in an explosion of Russian nationalism, to celebrate the failure of an attempted coup in August 1991 against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. Members of the Politburo and the Soviet military and security services had orchestrated the coup. Although unsuccessful due to lack of Russian military support and Boris Yeltsins opposition leadership, the August coup sped up the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
278
CHAPTER 9
and great-power Russian chauvinism, as demonstrated in his characterization of Chechens as bandits, terrorists, scum [and] dark forces. As observers have pointed out, this kind of Russian chauvinism does not bode well for a Russia in which the population is, at minimum, 20 percent non-ethnic Russians.19 Under Putin, the government brought back the old Soviet anthem with different words. It approved the double-headed eagle of the tsars and the pre-revolutionary white, blue, and red ag as national symbols. The Soviet-period red star was reinstated as the militarys ofcial emblem in 2002. So Putins Russia and national identity incorporate the Soviet past as well as the legacy of the Russian Empire. Russia now has a national program called civic culture that teaches children what it is to have a Russian national identity.
Americas National Identity

In contrast, American nationalism is based on an optimistic civic creed centered on respect for Americas institutions, individual freedoms, and constitutional lawalthough as Lieven and others point out its optimistic outlook can turn jingoistic and militaristic. Among its basic core values are the following:20 1. A political doctrine expressing the ideals of liberty, democracy, equality, the rule of law, opportunity, not cultural or ethnic superiority 2. A feeling of triumph not the result of or fueled by grievances caused by external powers 3. Emphasis on the value of life, the pursuit of happiness, and the possibilities of the future 4. An image of America as a land of promise with a destiny of prosperity 5. An image of a land lled with diversity and numerous freedoms 6. A place where constitutional rights and liberties ourish 7. A heritage of gloried moral values This civic nationalism, as discussed earlier, shapes American foreign policy, just as nationalism shapes Russian and other countries foreign policies. Scholars argue that Americans not only take great pride in their core values but also regard them as universally applicableand this belief not infrequently leads to a missionary kind of foreign policy that undermines rather than strengthens its national interests.21 Countries on the receiving end of this nationalism do not necessarily agree with U.S. policies, and they react negatively to Americas foreign-applied patriotism. The backlash is especially pronounced when U.S. foreign policy appears chauvinistic in its desire to spread the American creed to those whose national identity is dened more in ethnic terms and past grievances against foreign powers. Keep in mind that U.S. nationalism, as described above, is based on universalistic ideals such as: z Democracy z Rule of law z Marketplace Whereas that of other nationals is more likely based on: z Ethnicity z Religion z Language z Geography

Other nations often view U.S. foreign policy as self-serving, aimed at promoting Americas national interest rather than furthering its ideals. Because the United States is geographically insulated from the rest of the world, its citizens do not easily understand other countries types of national identity. This communication gap is quite large, and not only because of geography. Polls showed that only 22 percent of Americans had traveled to another country in the previous ve years, compared to 66 percent of Canadians, 73 percent of Britons, and 60 percent of the French. In the years just before 9/11, only 30 percent of Americans claimed to be very interested in news about other countries. Astoundingly, even after 9/11, the average American did not demonstrate a strong interest in international affairs.22
279
Distinctions in Ethnic Nationalism

Ethnic nationalism, as we have discussed, refers to the identity of a people rooted primarily in ethnicity that has become politicized, such as Serb or Russian identity. Most of the worlds countries have more than one ethnic-national group living inside their boundaries. Some of these groups feel persecuted, most often because they are not granted major participation or political representation. This explains why ethnic nationalism has become such a driving force in world affairs. The discontent does not always translate into selfdetermination movements but takes many forms of political expression, not least of which is the struggle for land. In many cases, the struggle is a reaction to state-sponsored Divided Nationalism on the Korean Peninsula genocide.23 A leading characteristic of many ethnic-national A North Korean and South Korean soldier stand close groups is animosity toward neighboring ethnic groups, to each other across the borderline between two Koreas. which leads almost automatically to conict with them. In While the Clinton administration attempted to facilitate this sense, identifying as a Serb in Yugoslavia during that cooperation between North and South Korea, the Bush countrys breakup beginning in the early 1990s produced administration has demonstrated more caution and routine hatred of Bosnian Muslims and Croats. restraint in dealing with North Korea and its militant The terms ethnic group and tribe are at times used internationalism. changeably. You read in newspapers or textbooks about, say the Iroquois tribe in the United States; the Karen and Shan tribes or nations in Burma; and the Igbo or Yoruba tribes in Nigeria. Although the meanings of the two terms are very close, today what people used to call a tribe are referred to as an ethnic groupand when that group (like the Igbo in Nigeria) become politically active in seeking their own state (the Igbo have wanted a state they called Biafra) we may appropriately identify them as an ethnic-national group as discussed above. The term clana social group composed of several families Clan A social group composed of several families with a common ancestor. with a common ancestorrepresents another kind of social group. Clans, like those in Scotland, are found also in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia, where clan warfare has been devastating. A clan is an extended family, whereas a tribe can include strangers who have been taken in.
280
CHAPTER 9
FIGURE 9.1 Traditional Kurdish Territorial Homeland
Today the Kurds are the fourth-largest ethnic group in the Middle East after the Arabs, Persians (Iranians), and Turks.
Black Sea Sokhumi Samsun
Ank Ankara
RUSSIA GEORGIA
T'bilisi
Bat'umi
Caspian Sea AZERBAIJAN Sumqayit

Yer rev van Baku
Trabzon KURDISTAN RD
ARM MEN NIA
TURKEY Konya Icel (Mersin)

Nicosia
Van n
Diyarbakir Adan an na Aleppo A p l Arbil bi SYRIA A IRAQ
Tabriz i Rasht
Tehran
?? ????
CYPRUS Damascus LEBANON N Golan Heights Haifa West Bank* ISRAEL Jerusalem J r
Gaza Strip Amm A man ma
Latakia Hims Beirut
Kirkuk k Ker Ke rman r
Qazvin Qom IRAN Arak Esfahan Ahvaz Abadan
Baghdad ghd dad
An Nasiriyan A i an Al Basrah
Suez
J JORDAN Al' Aqa Aq qabah qa
Kurdistan
For more information see The View From: Kurdistan www.BetweenNations.org
Kurdistan The Kurds, around 30 million in number, have lived for over 3,000 years in a region today comprising Turkey, Syria, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. Kurds are also found in Iran and Iraq. A stateless nation, the Kurds dream of living in a free homeland called Kurdistan. Catalonia The region in Spain inhabited by Catalans. Galicia A region in Spain inhabited by an ethnically identifying group called Gallegos.
Earlier discussion identied the multinational statea state with multiple ethnicnational groups inside it like Switzerland. Another phenomenon is the case of a multi-state nation, that is, a situation where national group is spread across different states. The Kurds are a classic case in point. They identify with their original homeland of Kurdistan, which is now divided into different states. Their heartland is a territorial area divided among Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Iraq (Figure 9.1) that they have been trying to establish as the sovereign state of Kurdistan.
Spains Ethnic-national Groups

The second-biggest country in Western Europe, Spain has a rich variety of ethnicnational groups to match its size. Its two most distinctive ethnic-national regions are the Basque and Catalonia areas. The power of these two regions is signicant because their presencealong with that of Galiciahas undermined Spains unity since the fteenth century. Catalonia accounts for nearly 20 percent of Spains GDP, although it has only 13 percent of Spains population. Barcelona, a Catalan city, well might claim to be Spains most successful urban center, with its new airport, new seafront, and thriving businesses. See Figure 9.2 for a look at Spains autonomous ethnic-national regions. The Basques are extremely nationalistic, particularly regarding their language, which has no link to Spanish.24 Basque nationalism has produced the Basque terror-
Electronic Publishing Services Inc. Duncan, World Politics in the 21st Century, 3e DUNC.7322.0048 Fig. 9.3

FIGURE 9.2 Spains Autonomous Regions
Bay of Biscay La Coruna GALICIA
Oviedo Gijn Santander
281
ASTURIAS CANTABRIA LA RIOJA Valladolid CASTILE-LEON

Madrid
BASQUE COUNTRY San Sebastian

Bilbao Vitoria
FRANCE ANDORRA
Logrono
NA
Pamplona
VA
RR A
Zaragoza ARAGON
CATALONIA Barcelona
Minorca
CASTILE-LA MANCHA
Mrida
Crdoba Sevilla Atlantic Ocean Strait of Gibraltar ANDALUSIA
A CI UR M Murcia
VAL
PORTUGAL
ENC IA
Toledo
U AD R A
Palma de Majorca Valencia Majorca Ivbiza BALEARIC ISLANDS Mediterranean Sea
MOROCCO
Source: DeBlij and Muller, Realms, Regions, and Concepts, p. 90. Used by permission.
ist organization ETA, which originated in 1959. Both the Catalans and the Basques have their own political parties that press for issues favoring their ethnic-national groups and territories. Within Catalonia and the Basque region however, people hold a range of views. Some are staunch defenders of independence movements; others are more moderate. Catalans and Basques do not raise the question of separation from the state, yet argue for more autonomy and power for their region.25 Because of Spains strong regional sentiments, especially the tenacious Catalan, Basque, and Galician identities, the Spanish constitution of 1978 recognizes and guarantees the right to autonomy of all the nationalities and regions of Spaina clear decentralization of power. Spains devolution policy has spilled over into international relations. After Spain granted autonomy to its regions, it joined the European Union, which makes clear its interest in negotiating directly with Spains regions as well as with the Spanish state itself. The map in Figure 9.2 shows Spains autonomous communities, which are political systems designed to hold the state together despite strong multiple regional identities.
Religious Nationalism
For more information see Why It Matters to You: Religious Nationalism in India and Pakistan www.BetweenNations.org
Religious nationalism, found in many parts of the world, is a synthesis of religion blishing Services Inc. nationalism that merges cultural identity with the legitimacy of older and secular 26 Examples of d Politics religions. in the 21st Century, 3 e religious nationalisma basic fact of contemporary international politicsmay be seen in Poland and Ireland (Catholicism), Afghanistan, 047
EX TR EM
Alicante
Cartagena
Mlaga Cdiz GIBRALTAR (U.K.) CEUTA (Spain)
2nd Proof
3rd Proof
Final
282
CHAPTER 9
Bangladesh, India, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, and Sudan. Indeed, its impact may be witnessed in U.S. domestic politics as well, in the inuence of the Christian Moral Majority and related movements since the 1980s, including the 2004 presidential campaign. Religious nationalism has spurred new levels of conict around the world, particularly in Israel, Sudan, and India. In Israel, contending versions of how to create a Palestinian state have led to escalating conicts among Palestinians and between Palestinians and Israelis with many people killed on both sides. As a result of religious nationalism, Sudan has been the scene of extreme violence characterized as genocide, creating one of the worlds most terrible humanitarian crises. Sudans government in Khartouman embodiment of a dark version of Arab nationalismhas sanctioned the oppression and brutalizing of its black, non-Arab Muslim population in the western region of Darfur, which is rich in oil. Tensions between the Arab Muslim government and its black tribes in the south are ongoing, not least because the government is trying to impose Islamic law on the tribes. Tensions grew into a full-blown humanitarian crisis in 2003, when two rebel groups emerged: the Sudan Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement. They demanded that the Sudanese government stop arming Arab militias (the Janjaweed) and stop their rampage through Darfur. Since then, as many as 400,000 people have died, two million have been displaced while eeing the Janjaweed, who rape, pillage, and murder the black population.27
Test Prepper 9.2

_____ 1. The melting-pot style of nationalism refers to a situation where all members of a country have adopted a common national identity. _____ 2. Efforts to revive Russian nationalism have been successful, in part, because of the high concentration of ethnic Russians within the country. _____ 3. While sometimes used interchangeably, an ethnic group can transform into a tribe once it becomes politically active in seeking its own state. _____ 4. Ethnic nationalism generally has the same effect on world politics, regardless of the group espousing the nationalist sentiment.
_____ 5. Which of the following is not a core value of American nationalism: a. A place where constitutional rights and liberties ourish b. An image of America as a land of promise with a destiny of prosperity c. A land populated by like-minded people who espouse American dominance in world affairs d. Emphasis on the value of life, the pursuit of happiness, and the possibilities of the future e. A heritage of gloried moral values _____ 6. Which of the following countries has not experienced religious nationalism? a. Poland b. Ireland c. United States d. Afghanistan e. None of the above
c HOW DO LEADERS USE NATIOnALISM In FOREIGn POLIcY?
283
How Do Leaders Use Nationalism in Foreign Policy?

3 Understand how nationalism is used by world leaders for both personal and national gain.
The role of leaders in mobilizing and directing nationalist forces is extremely important. Nationalist sentiments, as you might imagine, offer an attractive source of power for leaders to use in pursuit of a variety of goals. The origins of Nigerias persistent political instability, for example, may be traced to this basic political behavior when political leaders stir up nationalist feelings, typically against other ethnic-national groups, to advance their own interests. The consequences are rising tensions and decentralization. Some leaders use nationalism to promote political unity and economic development, while others tap its emotional appeal to urge national self-determination movements to break away from the current home state. In other cases, leaders turn to nationalism to mobilize a countrys population for war, and still other leaders orchestrate an overarching nationalism, hoping to surmount separatist ethnicnational sentiments inside the country. These multiple purposes of nationalism are discussed below.
Seeking to Legitimize Power

Franjo Tudjman, who died in December 1999 at seventy-seven years of age, led Croatia to independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. He did so by appealing to Croatian nationalism, insisting in Croatias constitution of 1990 that it be the national state of the Croatian nationdespite the presence of 600,000 Serbs, 12 percent of the population. What makes his appeal to ethnic nationalism interesting is that Tudjman was previously a die-hard communist, and the various ethnic groups of Yugoslavia lived in relative harmony before he used nationalism to retain power after the Cold War ended. The result was the wholesale dismissal of Serbs from civil service jobs, at which point the Serbs in Croatia began arming themselves. Civil war broke out, and Serbias Serbs came to the aid of Croatian Serbs. Serbias Slobodan Milosevic is another example of a leader who used the passions of nationalism to promote his agenda. A committed communist during the Cold War, Milosevic shifted to the ideology of nationalism in order to legitimize his power and control over internal policy by mobilizing Serb masses against outside adversaries. Milosevic launched a secular but moralistic nationalist crusade to expand Serb territory and ethnically cleanse the foreign elements that stood in the way: Croats and Serb Muslims in Bosnia and the Kosovars in Kosovo. The result was four civil warsin Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovoat a staggering cost in lives and infrastructure. Both Tudjman and Milosevic kept the violence going throughout the process by arousing ethnic-national passions. Arab governments have used religious nationalism to legitimize their rule, as in: z Sudan, with Khartoums insistence on enforcing the concept of an Arab region z The Arab rejection of the rights of Kurds in and around northern Iraq
284
CHAPTER 9
z Algerias approach to the Berbers z Egypts insistence that there are no minorities in Egypt The process of legitimizing governments, then, is sometimes fostered by the use of religious nationalism.
Promoting State Political Unity and Economic Development

Fidel Castro is legendary for the way he has orchestrated revolutionary Cuban nationalism to stimulate unity and economic development. This approach characterizes Castros revolution of 1959 and the years that followed, and it is also expressed in his speeches and in the government newspaper, Granma. Castro overthrew the U.S.backed dictator, Fulgencio Batista, notorious for his corrupt politics, and nationalized U.S. property, including sugar plantations and the telephone and telegraph systems. He emphasized pride in Cubas revolutionary past and its struggle for independence from foreign Fidel Castros Return from Exile control dating to its 18681878 ten years Thousands gathered in Havanas Revolution Square in December 2006 to war with Spain. Cuban nationalism incorsee the military parade marking the 50th anniversary of Fidel Castros porated all racial and religious groups, and it return from exile. became all-inclusive in promoting a unique Cuban national/communist identity. Castros charismatic appeals became the engines for self-sacrice, defense of the homeland, and socioeconomic equalityhelped along, it must be said, by Soviet economic, military, and technical support for many years. The kind of revolutionary nationalism found in Cuba and Mexico has been orchestrated not only to promote political stability and economic development but also, theoret ically, at least, to overcome separatist senti ments that run along racial lines. The Cuban and Mexican leaders orchestration of nationalist symbols is designed to appeal to a peoples higher sense of loyalty to the nation and to overcome those latent separatist sentiments based on racial identities. Having a perceived big bully as their northern neighbor, of course, helps promote this kind of nationalism. This use of nationalist ideologies is also at work in Malaysian nationalist appeals, where Malay, Chinese, and Indian groups coexist, and in Yugoslavias efforts to appeal to a Yugoslav identitywhich, however, did not work.
c HOW DO LEADERS USE NATIOnALISM In FOREIGn POLIcY?

Promoting Self-determination Movements
Nationalism nds classic expression when an ethnic-national group, existing in a multinational state, asserts its right of national self-determinationin effect, creating a movement to break away from its current state and form a new state. Such movements have proliferated around the globe, as pointed out in chapter 2. Cases in point are Eritreans in Ethiopia; Slovenes, Croats, Bosnians, and Albanians (in Kosovo) in Yugoslavia; and Basques and Catalans striving for self-determination in Spain. A variation of this use of nationalism occurs when a leader mobilizes a minority segment of the population that feels disenfranchised inside a state in order to overthrow the government and establish a new regime. Examples include the Farabundo Marti Liberation Movement (FMLN) in El Salvador and the Sandinista movement in Nicaragua during the 1970s and 1980s. Both movements were named after a national hero who had resisted the United States.
285
Legitimizing a Leaders Preferred Policy Direction

Nationalism, with its symbolic content and psychological drawing power, is used by leaders around the worldby both those in power and those who seek power to legitimize the policy direction they believe their country should take. We see this in a nations contending political parties, like Mexicos leftist Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador and his Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) versus the conservative Felipe Caldern National Action Party (PAN). In the heated December 2006 elections, Caldern won a narrow victory over Obradoryet both campaigned as devout nationalists, albeit under different brands of Mexican nationalism. Now lets take a brief look at other cases. In Russia we nd Vladimir Putin exercising a strand of Russian nationalism quite familiar in that countrythe strongman capable of asserting Russian power abroad, not least through Russias oil and gas revenues. Russian nationalism appears to carry a pattern of thought that presses for dominance and control of neighbors as a way to alleviate a lurking fear of geographic threatsChina to the east, radical Islam to the south, and NATOs enlarged shadow in the west, Putin may well fear that Russia is being threatened and encircled. The committee appointed by President Putin in 2007 to dene an ofcial Russian national identity, for example, produced the slogan Russia for Russians as the basis of Russian nationalism. Russias muscle exing quite naturally does not t well with its nearby neighbors and has raised eyebrows in the West. Chinas surge in nationalism has drawn attention, certainly in Japan and in Taiwan and the United States. One of the difculties in assessing Chinas nationalism is that it comes in both peaceful and aggressive formssome would argue not unlike Americas peaceful and more assertive forms.28 When Chinese leaders speak of nationalism, they accentuate Chinas cooperative and peaceful nature and its desire to work for a peaceful international environment to sustain its economic growth. Chinas leaders have been working hard on their soft power image as discussed earlier. Yet in dealing with Japan, Taiwan, and the United States, its more aggressive kind of nationalism emerges. It should be said that in both Japan and China, leaders tap into nationalism to shore up support for their political parties that have been losing groundthe communists in China and the LDP in Japan. Nationalism, in short, drives a range of behavior and policies.
286
CHAPTER 9
Japanese Temple
The Yasukuni Shrine was founded in 1869 as Tokyo Shokonsha, meaning the shrine or place to which the divine spirits of those who have made the great sacrifice are invited. It was renamed Yasukuni Shrine in 1879, to commemorate and worship those who died in war for their country. The shrines name today means peaceful country. Japans Asian neighbors, who experienced Japanese militarism and imperialism see the shrine differently in their own nationalist eyes. They find it offensive and ultra-nationalistic when Japanese prime ministers visit it.
A Summary of Nationalism
To summarize this overview of nationalism, nationalism has had a profound impact on world politics since its emergence in the eighteenth century. z It has provided the means for a nationally self-conscious people to resist perceived foreign oppression and has given rise to new governments and new territorial states for more than 300 years. z It energized the American and French Revolutions, broke up empires from the Austro-Hungarian to the Ottoman to the Soviet, and carved new states from the colonial and imperialist conquests of England, France, Germany, Spain, and Portugal. z It has played a huge role in the life of the state and international affairs, from igniting national self-determination breakaway movements to sustaining revolutionary momentum in places like Cuba and Mexico, to inspiring Palestinians to ght for statehood. Nationalism has engendered enormous international violence and conict, and it continues to pose complex problems for the international community, such as: 1. How to control the violence it generates (as in Bosnia and Kosovo) 2. Under what conditions international bodies such as the UN and NATO should intervene In some instances, however, nationalism is the impetus for healthy democracy, self-government, economic modernization, and development. The bottom line is that nationalism is a vital part of the contemporary international scene, and in the new millennium, the world will continue to experience its force.
JOIn THE DEBATE
287
Test Prepper 9.3

_____ 1. Slobodan Milosevic, a die-hard communist during the Cold War, fought to save the integrity of all of Yugoslavia when it began to destabilize into civil war. _____ 2. Russias use of nationalism carries a pattern of thought that stresses dominance and control of its neighbors. _____ 3. Chinese nationalism is unique as it comes in both aggressive and peaceful forms.
_____ 4. Which of the following world leaders used nationalism to legitimize power that resulted in war: a. Nicolas Sarkozy (France) b. Angela Merkel (Germany) c. Nelson Mandela (South Africa) d. Franjo Tudjman (Croatia) e. All of the above _____ 5. Which of the following is an example of nationalism used to develop state unity: a. Olusegun Obasanjos political campaign in Nigeria b. Fidel Castros revolution in Cuba in 1959 c. Farabundo Marti Liberation National movement in El Salvador d. None of the above e. All of the above
Case Study
Ethnic Nationalism and Nigerias Prospects for Democracy
Join the Debate Should America Try to Transplant Its Civic Nationalism Abroad?
POSITIVE SIDE
Yes. The United States should try to transplant its civic core values abroad wherever, whenever, and however it can. 1. Ideals of liberty and democracy, equality and opportunity, rule of law, separation of powers, and the supply-and-demand marketplace are the strong core values for life and for societyand people should be encouraged to follow them. 2. The core values of the United States are those most likely to make people happy and prosperous. 3. If more people in more countries followed these values, the world would be more stable and more economically thriving. As democratic peace theory suggested, liberal democracies do not go to war against each other. 4. If the world were more stable, democratic, free, and economically prosperous, there would be fewer wars and greater possibility of world peace. 5. As the worlds leading power on the side of peace, the United States has a responsibility to embed its core values abroad. This is a civilizing mission of which all Americans should be proud.
288
CHAPTER 9
NEGATIVE SIDE
No, absolutely not. America should not try to transplant its core values abroad. 1. Look at what has happened to the U.S. image abroad since the Bush Doctrine began to push American ideals in Iraq. The United States has become the most disliked country in the world. Thanks to the U.S. occupation of Iraq, al Qaeda is now a brand of militant Islam franchise. Its anti-American, antiWest religious ideology has spread across the world. 2. American citizens do not have a corner on the market of core values by which to live. They have no business pushing their culture on others. When they do, they all too easily can embrace a doctrine of force and become cultural imperialistsforcing their nationalism on others. 3. U.S. citizens do not follow world events in depth. In fact, no more than 22 percent of the U.S. public follows, or even knows much about, world affairs. How can Americans possibly have the remotest idea, therefore, of what is best for the rest of the world? 4. If American values are pushed on the rest of the world, the United Statesin the context of good versus evilwill stand out like a sore thumb and become the target of suicide bombers here and around the world.
5. U.S. nationalism lately has taken a Christian evangelical religious tilt that followers of other religions, or no religions, around the world nd particularly offensive. Anatol Lievens America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism stresses that in waging a crusade abroad American nationalism has taken a radical, evangelical, and counterproductive form. 6. Because such a low percentage of U.S. citizens actually vote, the U.S. form of government is far less representative than it appears in theory. This point alone invalidates the U.S. governments export of national core values 7. The downside of American nationalism is its false sense of moral superiority and racism.
QUESTIOnS
1. Which side of the debate makes the most sense to you? 2. What factors to you think have most contributed to Americas type of nationalism? 3. How strongly do you think Americans disagree on the core values of their national identity and how they should be expressed in terms of domestic and foreign policies?

1 2 3 4 5 8 Be able to identify and explain the6factors 7 that make nationalism such a potent force in world politics. 9 10 expressed in terms of grievances against foreigners, struggles for independence, and the right to a separate territorial state. Hyper-nationalism or ultranationalismalso known as xenophobiaas it appeared in Germany, led to the European Jewish Holocaust. Nationalism can best be thought of as
a psychological group identity an emotional force that ignites peoples passions a power factor that dates back in time a driving force with positive and negative impacts on world politics - an identity that competes with transnationalism for a peoples loyalty. - - - -
States, nations, and nationalism are key features and driving forces in todays international system. Whereas a state is a piece of territory with a government possessing sovereignty and inhabited by people, a nation is a psychological identity of people who see themselves as part of a common group. Nationalism springs from national identity that comes in two distinct forms: civic national identity and ethnicnational identity. Nationalism of the twentieth century increasingly had ethnic identity as its base, and therefore was frequently
RESOURcES On THE WEB
289
Nationalism has both positive and negative effects 1 on 2 world politics. On its dark side, American nationalism under the inuence of the Bush Doctrine (see chapter 5), has become jingoistic and militaristicundermining American inuence abroad, according to Anatol Lieven, one observer among many.
4 5 how nationalism 6 7 is used 8 by world 9 leaders 10 for Understand both personal and national gain.
Some states try to control disparate nationalist forces inside their borders by creating a power-sharing federal form of government, as in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. The principal ways leaders use nationalism to try to:
- Legitimize their power - Conquer perceived enemy ethnic groups - Promote state political unity and economic development by overcoming separatist sentiments within the state - Lead self-determination movements - Legitimize their preferred policy direction
3 4 how history 5 6 location 7 impact 8 9 Understand and nationalism, using Russia and America as examples.
10
Both history and location shape nationalism. Numerous distinctions are expressed in ethnic identity; some lead to cooperation, while others, more frequently, lead to tensions and conict. American and Russian versions of nationalism illustrate vivid contrasts. American nationalism is less focused on ethnicity than Russian nationalism. Religious nationalism has demonstrated a particular tendency to violence and conict. Sudan illustrates violent religious nationalism at work today, as did radical Islam under Afghanistans Taliban before 9/11.
Nationalism helps political scientists understand why:

- Violence and war occur in the international political system. - People act as they do toward each other across state boundaries and within multinational states. - Misunderstanding occurs so frequently in world politics (a result of differing perceptions of nationalist realities). - Diplomatic negotiations can be so difcult (diplomats approach negotiations from different nationalist perspectives). - Perceptions play such important roles in assessing conict and cooperation. - Leaders manipulate the masses.

10
Global Violence: Wars, Weapons, Terrorism
The Pentagon Rebuilds after the 9/11 Attack
Learning Objectives
2 1
Be able to identify the various reasons why war occurs.
Be able to identify the different types of weapons used in war and understand the methods used to control these weapons.
Dene terrorism and understand the objectives and tactics of terror groups; also identify methods for dealing with the problem of terrorism.
290
It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.

Robert E. Lee
Chapter Outline
What Are the Causes of War?

Wars for Material and Political Gain The Nature of the State Wars Based on Ideas or Perceptions Structural Causes of War War: A Complex Issue
What Is Terrorism, and
What Can Be Done about It?

Types of Terrorism Terrorist Objectives and Tactics Why Terrorists Stop Terrorizing International Counterterrorism Efforts Future Terrorist Threats
What Are the Weapons of War, and

Can They Be Controlled?
Weapons of Mass Destruction Conventional Weapons Versus Unconventional Weapons Controlling the Weapons of War
How Can Global Violence Be Controlled?

Reducing Motivations for Violence: Deterrence Nuclear Deterrence among States International Law and Organizations The Future Applicability of International Law
Identify and be able to explain what methods are available for deterring global violence.
Explaining the Nature and Causes of War
hen the Cold War confrontation between Soviet communism and Western democratic capitalism ended in 1991, there was a sense of optimism that a new and more peaceful world order would emerge. Despite the end of the Cold War, however, violence in many parts of the world occurred throughout the 1990s and in some places actually increased. The rst few years of the twentyrst century gave the impression that for most of the world, war and the prospects for war would be as prevalent as ever. As we look to the future, the threat of nuclear war persists because of tensions between India and Pakistan, because of Russias inability to control its vast supplies of nuclear materials, because of tensions between North Korea, its neighbors, and the United States,
292
Key Terms
CHAPTER 10
GLOBAL VIOLENcE: WARS, WEAPONS, TERRORISM
misperception p. 296 biological weapon p. 303 chemical weapon p. 303 conventional weapon p. 303 structural arms control p. 307 operational arms control p. 309 domestic terrorism p. 311 international terrorism p. 311 Interpol p. 315 Europol p. 315 second-strike capability p. 319
and because more countries seek to acquire nuclear weapons. In addition, non-nuclear weapons are becoming more numerous, more widely available, and, in some cases, more lethal than ever. Put these weapons in the hands of terrorists, and you have a very dangerous world indeed. It would surprise virtually every analyst of world politics if you, or even your children, lived to a ripe old age without having to confront the scourge of international violence. Interstate and civil wars occur on almost every continent, and the threat of terrorism increasingly confronts everyone. This chapter examines these traditional subjects in the study of international relations. The rst part of this chapter lays out a description of, and analytical framework for, understanding why wars occur. The next section provides an overview of the tools of global violence, including weapons of mass destruction and conventional weapons. This discussion is followed by an overview of the pressing issue of international terrorism, its impact, and how the world is responding to it. The nal section of the chapter takes a broad look at how global violence may be controlled. We review the ability to eliminate the motivations for going to war and, as an introduction to the next chapter, the ability (or inability) of international law and international organizations to keep the peace. As this chapter demonstrates, both centralizing and decentralizing forces are at work in the causes and prevention of global violence. z Decentralization is manifest, for example, in the growth of ethnic and religious conict in many parts of the world and in the efforts of nationalist movements that use violence to create a separate national identity (such as the Basques in Spain). (See chapter 9.) Centralization is present in the trend toward establishing international law and global structures to implement itfor example, military tribunals to try people accused of committing crimes against humanity. z Centralizing trends are also evident in the attempts by the United States, European countries, and many other states to provide a more coordinated response to terrorism. How these forces interact will help determine the extent to which global violence will be a feature of the world political landscape in the years to come. n
What Are the Causes of War?

1
For more information see Clausewitz, On the Nature of War www.BetweenNations.org
Be able to identify the various reasons why war occurs.
One of the most perplexing questions that faces humanity is, Why does war occur? This simply stated query has no simple answer; scholars are often at odds about every aspect of this question. In the next few pages, we provide a framework for answering it. One useful way to look at the many causes of war is to examine two categories. Underlying causes of war are generally long-term. For example,
c WHAT ARE THE CAUSES OF WAR?

FIGURE 10.1 Casualties in Selected Major Conicts Compared to Other Causes of Death
Total killed in Vietnam War Cambodians killed by Khmer Rouge, 19758 Total killed in Iran-Iraq War, 1980s Total killed in U.S. Civil War Americans killed in World War II Americans killed in World War I Nuclear attack on Hiroshima, 1945 Americans killed in Vietnam War Total killed in 3 days at Gettysburg Total killed on U.S. highways per year Japanese killed on Saipan, WWII 112,000 100,000 58,000 50,000 42,000 30,000 600,000 405,400 1,000,000 1,750,000 1,700,000
293
Americans killed on Saipan, WWII 3,144 Total killed at World Trade Center (9/11) 2,752 0 400,000 800,000 1,200,000 1,600,000 2,000,000
fear of the spread of communism led to U.S. intervention in Vietnam; U.S. dependence on foreign oil contributed to its involvement in the Persian Gulf War. Immediate, or proximate, causes of war are generally short-term and applicable to a specic context. Think of them as the trigger that sets off a war. The immediate cause of World War I, for example, was the assassination of Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914. Which is better at explaining the causes of warunderlying or immediate causes? Scholars are split on this question. To help demonstrate why, consider the causes of World War II. You will quickly understand why even very knowledgeable people disagree. Was World War II caused by Germanys long-term attempt to dominate Europe (underlying cause)? Or was the war caused by Adolf Hitlers personal rise to power (an immediate cause)? Or was the war simply the second act of a two-act play (World Wars I and II) in which the land-based Germany attempted to challenge the global leadership of sea-based Great Britain (underlying cause)? These are, obviously, not easy questions to answer. We now turn to a more systematic analysis of the causes of war. In order to make better sense of immediate and underlying causes, weve lumped the causes of war into three broad categories, which we explore below. But rst, take a look at Figure 10.1, which compares the number of casualties in several distinct conicts, compared to other causes of death. You may be surprised to learn how many people died in warparticularly if the war did not get much press coverage.
For more information see Why It Matters to You: The Toll of WarCasualties in Some Major Selected Conicts www.BetweenNations.org
Publishing Services Inc. Our rst category of causes for war highlights material or political motivations. In World Politics in the 21st Century, 3e this category are the desire for territorial gain, bids for national independence, 22.0900 economic causes, and domestic political pressures. Lets look at each in turn. 2nd Proof 3rd Proof Final
Wars for Material and Political Gain
Proof
294
CHAPTER 10
Desire for Territorial Gain and Independence

Two of the most obvious reasons for war are the desire to acquire territory and to achieve national independence. For example, two countries might ght over natural resources such as oil or access to the sea. Iraqs 1990 invasion of Kuwait was portrayed by the Iraqi government as an attempt to reacquire territory that it claimed should always have been part of Iraq. Germanys 1939 invasion of Poland and, later, other eastern and western European countries during World War II is an example of a countrys desire to regain territory lost during a previous war, in this case World War I. In the future, we are likely to see conicts over access to fresh water. Wars of independence may start because one group of people desires selfgovernment through the formation of a new state. The American colonists went to war with the British to gain their independence and form the United States.
The Security Dilemma

Realism, as we saw in chapter 2, recommends that states be well-armed in order to defend against an attack or to deter an attack in the rst place. However, a dilemma can emerge when a state begins to build up it military capabilities. Other states may view such behavior as a growing threat to their own security. In response, they will try to improve their own security by building up their own militaries, acquiring allies, and so on. These actions could then make the rst state feel even less secure than before. This security dilemma can lead to destabilizing arms races and even war. Consider, for example, the security dilemma for Iran. Iran is trying to build its rst nuclear weapons in part to improve its security. However, as it does so, Iran has become less secure. In addition to Iranian fears about the already nuclear-armed Israel, there has been a widespread belief in Iran for years that the United States is likely to attack it. Rumors even spread in the United States that the Bush administration was preparing to attack Iran in order to prevent it from becoming a nuclear state.
Economic Causes
There are numerous economic causes of war. In the Persian Gulf War, for example, Iraq, the United States, and indeed all members of the UN coalition had an economic interest in going to war. Kuwaits oil elds and the Kuwaiti treasury enticed Saddam Hussein to go to war. The United States and UN were galvanized to take Kuwait back from Iraq because of concerns that a successful Iraqi invasion would leave too much oilthe backbone of the global economyin the hands of Saddam Hussein. Economics can also be an important cause of wars involving smaller countries. The Red Cross has shown how corruption, banditry, and ghts for diamonds, minerals, and timber fueled war in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Angola. In addition, war can actually generate income. For example, weapons manufacturers can reap enormous prots from ongoing struggles, and smugglers can evade blockades or sanctions so they can charge high prices for their illegal goods.1
Domestic Political Causes

Sometimes wars occur not because of problems elsewhere (international politics) but because of problems at home (domestic politics). Two prominent examples are relevant in this respect. The rst deals with complete or nearly complete domestic political disaster. In failed states, economic and political chaos reign. As you learned in chapter 3, examples of failed states today include Angola, the

Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Somalia, and Sudan. This type of domestic political cause of war is primarily related to intra-state war, or wars within in a state. However, neighboring states can often get caught up in the chaos as well. The second type of domestic political cause of war addresses violent conicts between two or more states. The diversionary theory of war offers insights into this problem. According to this theory, political leaders who are unpopular at home will try to regain popularity by taking their country to war with another country. There is considerable evidence that Argentina went to war with Britain in 1982 because the political leaders in Argentina were struggling for popularity in the midst of an economic crisis.
295
The Nature of the State

Partially related to domestic political causes of war is the notion that the nature of political systems make some states more prone to wage war. An example discussed in chapter 2 is democratic peace theory. This theory holds that although liberal democracies may go to war with non-democratic states, they typically remain at peace with each other. As war scholars Greg Cashman and Leonard C. Robinson put it, democratic constitutions and institutions based on the principles of separation of powers and check and balances create powerful restraints on the ability of political leaders to take their countries to war.2 By contrast, according to the theory, autocratic states are much less institutionally restrained from initiating war. Scholars have argued, however, that although the theory may hold some truth for consolidated democracies, newly established democracies tend to be warprone in their international politics.
Wars Based on Ideas or Perceptions

War between states may be about more than the material or political factors noted above. Our second set of causes of war involved ideas and perceptions. We begin by exploring the impact of ideological differences, then psychological factors, religious and ethnic difference, misperception, and the reasons for states to authorize preemptive attacks. We close this section by looking at the impact of gender as a cause of war.
Ideological Causes
Ideological differences have contributed to many wars of the past and are likely to be involved in future wars as well. The Korean War, for instance, can be portrayed as the attempt by democratic capitalist states to prevent the spread of atheistic, authoritarian communism. In fact, the entire Cold Warbetween the United States and the free world on the one hand and Soviet-led communism on the otherrepresented a massive struggle between two competing ideologies that encompassed political, economic, philosophical, and religious differences. Another type of ideology is religious in nature, and al Qaeda offers an important example. Al Qaeda, as some scholars see it, is less an organization than an ideology. It violently seeks a radical change to the world order but is not linked to a specic individual or organization. Many who believe in al Qaedaism, for instance, are not associated with Osama bin Laden directly, but they do follow his precepts.3 Another element of the ideology is the feeling of political, economic, and cultural humiliation. The Islamic world has seen its inuence decline and now, for example, Islamic states in the Middle East rank among the lowest on most indicators of development. The sense of frustration among terrorists is aggravated
296
CHAPTER 10
by ongoing U.S. foreign policies in the Middle East, such as the U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, and U.S. support for Israel. Al Qaeda also vehemently opposes U.S. support for the political leaders of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, all of whom are targets of al Qaeda for their lack of religious purity and repressive policies. While al Qaeda is hostile to the U.S. way of life, it is especially motivated by opposition to U.S. foreign policies. A related idea motivating many Islamic terrorists is the presence of indels on sacred Islamic lands. Saudi Arabia is host to two of Islams holiest sites, Mecca and Medina. During the Persian Gulf War in 19901991, the Saudi government requested the aid of Western troops to safeguard the country from an Iraqi attack. But the presence of Christian troops on Saudi soil was viewed as an affront to Islam and brought back painful reminders of the bloodshed of the Crusades. This ideology of violent international jihad has been able to generate a seemingly inexhaustible supply of volunteers and recruits. Even if Osama bin Laden is killed or captured, al Qaeda will be difficult to neutralize, given the appeal of the ideology.
Psychological Causes
Audio Concept Psychological Causes of War www.BetweenNations.org
Many psychological factors can be used to explain why wars occur. Some psychological analyses of war focus on individual psychology; others deal with group psychology. For example, we could say that an individual leaders thirst for power partially explains Adolf Hitlers decisions that led to World War II. We could also apply many psychological theories in attempts to understand the personalities and motivations of Franjo Tudjman and Slobodan Milosevic, both of whom were responsible for starting the violence in Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
Perception and Misperception

Sometimes war may occur not because of actual conditions (such as the distribution of power among states) but because of the perceptions that leaders have about what real conditions are like. These misperceptions take a variety of forms, such as: z One country may get the wrong signals from another. z One side may incorrectly perceive either its own strength or that of its adversary. If one side is deluded into thinking it has a superior military force, it may expect victory in a short war, but the mistake may prove disastrous. John Stoessinger argues that misperception is the single most important reason for war. For Stoessinger the actual distribution of power or the actual strength of the enemy isnt what counts; it is the perception of these things.4 A vivid example of the role of misperception is the Persian Gulf War sparked by Iraqs invasion of neighboring Kuwait in 1990. The Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, had many reasons to invade Kuwait. After a war with Iran that lasted throughout most of the 1980s and that cost Iraq 400,000 lives, Saddam Husseins political standing was tenuous. In addition, the war had depleted Iraqs treasury, which was $70 billion in debt. Saddam probably thought that a quick victory over Kuwait would help Iraq in two ways. 1. Iraq would have access to Kuwaits rich oil elds. 2. It could loot the Kuwaiti treasury.5 And, of course, a successful takeover of Kuwait would make the Iraqi president a popular gure at home and possibly elsewhere in the Arab world. But Saddam
Misperception When applied to war and international relations, a cause of war in which one or more countries in a dispute misinterpret the intentions of the other. The misunderstanding leads to a war that perhaps was not desired by any country.

Hussein was subject to several misperceptions. The most important one was that he probably didnt expect the United States to get involved. In retrospect, this seems an obvious mistake. At the time, however, the Iraqi dictator and his advisers had ample reason to think that the United States would not get involved. Saddam Hussein was aware of the continuing inuence of the Vietnam War on the American psyche that is, the American public was reluctant to send U.S. troops to far-ung places with the likelihood of major casualties. Another signal Saddam received was that the United States was unlikely to get involved in the Middle East. In several instances, U.S. citizens or soldiers had been attacked in the Middle East without a strong U.S. response. Consider the following examples in the lead-up to the Persian Gulf War:6 z In 1976, the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon, Francis C. Meloy, was assassinated. The U.S. government downplayed the event to avoid public or congressional pressure to retaliate against those responsible for the murders. Another Face of Terrorism
297
For decades, terrorism has been a part of life in Northern Ireland, a part of Britain. The differences between Catholics and Protestants led to this incident in 2001 where Catholic parents and children ran a gauntlet of Protestants screaming obscenities at them.
z In 1983, terrorists bombed U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 American servicemen. The United States simply withdrew, taking no military action. The United States didnt want to offend Syria, a client state of the Soviet Union. z In 1984, CIA agent William Buckley was kidnapped and tortured to death the following year by Syrian-backed terrorists. The United States averted its eyes. z In 1988, Colonel William Higgins of the U.S. Marines was killed by terrorists, who released a video of his corpse hanging from a rope. Because none of these incidents generated much public outrage in the United States, Saddam Hussein had the impression (or misperception) that the United States would not act in the Middle East. After Egyptian leaders and others in the Middle East told the United States that Iraq would not attack Kuwait, the United States failed to take decisive action. For example, when the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, went to talk to the Iraqi president, she did not send him strong enough signals to deter the attack.
Preemptive and Preventive War

A country may also go to war if it expects to be attacked. Preemptive war starts when one state attacks another because of an immediate threat to its security. A classic example occurred in the early 1980s when Israel attacked an Iraqi nuclear power facility because it feared the facility would be used to build nuclear weapons that could threaten Israel. A more recent and controversial example is the war in Iraq. (See the discussion of the Bush Doctrine in chapter 5.) The Bush administration argued that Iraqs weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs could be shut down only by military force. If left unchecked, the Bush administration argued, Iraqs WMD programs could threaten Iraqs neighbors and Israel. It was
298
CHAPTER 10
also possible that Iraqs WMD could have been used by terrorists in attacks against the United States and other targets. After Iraq failed to provide the UN with adequate explanations for its weapons programs and after the UN chose not to authorize force against Iraq, the United States and a coalition of countries used military force to achieve regime change in Iraq. Nevertheless, controversy persists over the Bush administrations decision to go to war. z First, after extensive searches, no signicant numbers of WMD were found. z Second, some doubt that the government of Saddam Hussein would have ever used WMDs against the United States. Moreover, many analysts believed that the Iraqi leader had been contained after the Persian Gulf War because of U.S. and British patrols of the no-y zones and because of the UN sanctions. z A third point of contention has to do with the very denition of preemptive war. As explained above, a preemptive war occurs when a country feels there is a clear and present danger of attack. A preventive attack, by contrast, occurs out of fear that another country might pose a danger in the medium or long term. Most analysts now conclude that Iraq did not pose a clear and present danger to U.S. interests. Since Iraq might have posed a serious threat at some distant time, the Iraq War is more appropriately viewed as a preventive war.
Ethnic and Religious Differences

As you saw in chapter 9, ethnic national and religious differences can lead to international violence. Religious differences are at work in the wars between Israel (primarily a Jewish state) and many of its neighbors (which are primarily Islamic). Religious differences are also at the core of many internal conicts, like the one between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland (a part of the United Kingdom), and those between Hindus and Muslims in India, Pakistan, and elsewhere. Ethnic differences often lead to violence among groups, as shown in the Transcaucasus region of Asia, Rwanda in Africa, and in the Middle East among Kurds, Arabs, and Turks.
Gender-based Causes
Another more recent trend of analysis by feminist political researchers points to gender as a reason states go to war. As we saw in chapter 2, there are many strains of feminist thought in international relations. Some feminists believe natural differences (nature) exist between the sexes. Others believe the social environment (nurture) in which people are raisedan environment that encourages males to be aggressive and violent, and females to be quiet and cooperativeis more important. Both the nature and the nurture feminists might agree that war is essentially a male enterprise, but they might disagree as to why. Feminists also disagree on why, when women reach the apex of political power, like Englands Queen Victoria in the nineteenth century and Margaret Thatcher in the twentieth, they seem as ready to go to war as their male counterparts.
Structural Causes of War

Yet another important cause of war can be the structure of the international system. In fact, most international relations scholars view this factor as a primary cause of war, but they disagree over how it operates.

The Structure of the International System
What do we mean by structure? Most observers agree the international system can have three basic structural patterns; you are familiar with these concepts from chapters 3 and 4. z A multipolar structure, which has many great powers in the international system z A bipolar structure, which has two dominant countries z A unipolar structure, which has one country with predominant power In addition, most observers agree with the following three points, all of which should sound familiar. z First, anarchy in the international system makes wars more likely because of the tension created by uncertainty over what other countries will do. z Second, we live in a world where each country must rely on itself for survival (it is a self-help system). z Third, as we have stressed in many parts of this book, the world has no world government or global police force to enforce international rules for keeping troublesome countries in line. Moreover, as the old saying goes, there are no permanent allies or enemies in this uncertain world. Differences of opinion appear, however, when analysts ponder which international structure is the most dangerous or the most likely to produce peace. Some people believe multipolar systems are more peaceful because countries have more choices in forming alliances, and they can better balance each others power to prevent war. Others argue that bipolar systems (as during the Cold War) are safer because the two main countries (the United States and the USSR, in that case) know that the risks of going to war are high and therefore will avoid doing so. A major dispute revolves around the unipolar international system structure. Some analysts believe that because power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, a single country dominating the international system creates the most dangerous situation. Proponents of the Hegemonic Stability Theory, however, argue that a single dominant country, a hegemon, is required to help maintain a peaceful global political economy. Many believe that power shifts or changes in the international distribution of power can be a primary source of instability, international friction, and, ultimately, major conagration among states. In short, the transition from one international power structure to the next can be an extremely dangerous situation.
299
War: A Complex Issue

Now that you have read about the many reasons for wars, you should have a better appreciation for the complexity of the question. From the above discussion, we may draw several conclusions. First, there does not appear to be one overarching cause for all wars. Second, keep in mind that several causes may explain why states go to war. Finally, people commonly assume that all wars are offensive wars. However, as we mentioned, states may go to war for defensive reasons (as Britain did in World War II because it was attacked by Germany) or for national liberation (as Algeria did against France in the late 1950s and early 1960s).
300
CHAPTER 10
Test Prepper 10.1

_____ 1. We can divide the reasons for going to war into two categories: long-term and historic. _____ 2. The security dilemma illustrates how preparing to defend against a potential attack may actually increase the likelihood that you will be attacked. _____ 3. While there are a variety of reasons that explain why a country may go to war, all of these explanations center around international (not domestic) factors. _____ 4. Misperceptions in world politics can result in wars that none of the warring parties had desired. _____ 5. Virtually all scholars of world politics argue that multipolar balances of power lead to the most stable international systems.
_____ 6. Which of the following is a material or political motivation for going to war? a. Desire for territorial gain b. Bids for national independence c. Economic causes d. Domestic political pressures e. All of the above _____ 7. Which of the following statements is false? a. Anarchy in the international system makes wars more likely. b. In terms of security, the world is a selfhelp system. c. Except for the United Nations, the world has no world government. d. There is no such thing as a permanent ally or enemy in world politics. e. None of the above
What Are the Weapons of War, and Can They Be Controlled?

2 Be able to identify the different types of weapons used in war and understand the methods used to control these weapons.
Global violence is affected not simply by the outbreak of war but also by the type and number of weapons involved. This section deals with the tools of global violence. Most people are aware, at least vaguely, of the destructive power of nuclear weapons. (The bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 killed about 100,000 people.) Increasingly, however, people are becoming aware of the threats posed by biological and chemical weapons. Compared to nuclear weapons, these weapons are cheaper to make, easier to make, and easier to make in secret. They are often called the poor mans weapon of mass destruction. Atop a missile, red from an advanced bomber, or even delivered by foot, biological and chemical weapons can have an enormous impact. The United States, its allies, and its rivals are all heavily involved in research in or acquisition of weapons technology, with the hope of gaining the edge. Advanced technology improves the force of explosives, makes targeting more accurate, makes information processing more efficient, and, ultimately, determines how well aggression is deterred and who wins a war. Lets take a closer look at the weapons of violence in world politics.
c WHAT ARE THE WEAPONS OF WAR, AND CAN THEY BE CONTROLLED?

Weapons of Mass Destruction
The term weapons of mass destruction (WMD) encompasses nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. The paragraphs below describe each of these types of weapons, but you should rst be aware of two controversies surrounding the expression WMD. z First, some weapons experts believe that attacks with chemical and biological weapons will not result in mass casualties. The attacks could be lethal but not necessarily result in mass destruction. (Of course, much depends on ones denition of mass, and there is no commonly accepted denition.) Nevertheless, these weapons are likely to lead to massive clean-up operations affecting health-care professionals, businesses, civil engineers, and so on. Thus, perhaps a better expression for these weapons is weapons of mass disruption. z Second, some believe the expression is heavily politicized. According to New York University professor Andrew Flibbert, WMD is more a political term and a rhetorical device used with the clear purpose of describing the kinds of weapons that American adversaries may seek and that the United States and the international community does not want them to have.7 Thus, one should keep in mind, for example, that U.S. nuclear weapons, numbering almost 10,000, should also be considered weapons of mass destruction. Before turning to descriptions of these weapons, take a look at Figure 10.2, which shows states possessing nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.
301
Nuclear Weapons and Radiological Bombs

For most of the Cold War, only ve countries admitted to having nuclear weapons: z United States z Britain z France However, others, including Israel, have been suspected of having them for some time. The most recent members of the nuclear club are India and Pakistan, each of which conducted nuclear blast tests in 1998, and North Korea. In addition, Iran may join the club in the near future. Stopping the spread (or proliferation) of nuclear weapons is a daunting challenge for the international community. Aside from the existence of todays 28,000 nuclear devises, the concern is not just that new nuclear states will emerge but that terrorists might get a hold of either nuclear weapons, or more likely, nuclear material that can be used in a conventional explosion. According to Harvards Graham Allison, the world is losing the race to secure a growing amount of nuclear material. Part of the problem is that the Nonproliferation Treaty allows states to build nuclear material facilities for peaceful purposes, but the nuclear material produced in those facilities can also be used in nuclear weapons.8 Few expect nuclear weapons to be used any time soon, now that the Cold War is over. A more pressing concern is the use of nuclear material in radiological, or dirty, bombs. These bombs use conventional explosions to spread radioactive contamination. They are easier and cheaper to make than nuclear bombs, but they are not as devastating as nuclear explosions. There is a growing fear that terrorists could obtain nuclear material through theft or illegal purchases from many of the worlds nuclear laboratories. The biggest source of loose nukes that could z China z Soviet Union
302
CHAPTER 10
fall into the wrong hands is Russia. Studies by the International Atomic Energy Agency reveal that thousands of radioactive sources worldwide, designed to generate high levels of radiation for industrial and medical equipment, are lying virtually unguarded in factories and hospitals, and more than 100 countries may have inadequate programs to prevent or detect thefts.9 Problems exist even in states that have relatively good records of keeping track of nuclear material. For example, Austrian nuclear physicist Fritz Steinhausler notes that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission lists an average of 200 radiation sources that are stolen, lost, or abandoned within the United States every year.10
Biological and Chemical Weapons

Like nuclear weapons, chemical and biological weapons do not discriminate between soldier and civilian. Figure 10.2 breaks down the distribution and use of these weapons across the globe.
FIGURE 10.2 Proliferation of Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Weapons, 2007
Nuclear Proliferation
Declared nuclear weapon states Non-NPT nuclear weapon states Suspected nuclear weapon states States with suspected clandestine programs
Chemical, Biological, and Missile Proliferation

Suspected Biological Warfare Stockpiles
(Country may have offensive biological weapons or agents)
Suspected Biological Warfare Research Programs
(Country may have active interest in acquiring the capability to produce biological warfare agents)
Suspected Chemical Warfare Stockpiles

(Country may have some undeclared chemical weapons)
Worldwide Nuclear Stockpiles

Country
China France India Israel Pakistan Russia United Kingdom United States
Total Nuclear Warheads

410 350 75110 100170 50110 ~16,000 200 ~10,300
Missiles with Ranges Exceeding 1,000 km in 6 Countries of Proliferation Concern

Country
India Iran Israel North Korea
Missile
Agni II Shahab III Jericho II No Dong Taepo Dong I Taepo Dong II Ghauri/No Dong Ghauri II CSS-2
Range
2,0002,500 km 1,300 km 1,500 km 1,300 km 1,5002,000 km 5,500 km 1,300 km 1,5002,000 km 2,600 km
Declared Chemical Weapons Slated for Destruction
(Country has declared its chemical weapons, and committed to destroying them under the Chemical Weapons Convention)
Ballistic Missiles with Over 1,000 km Range
Pakistan Saudi Arabia
Total
~27,600
Source: The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Washington, DC, 2007), http://www.CarnegieEndowment.org. Used by permission.

z Biological weapons contain living organisms. Such weapons, developed by the United States and other countries, include lethal agents such as Bacillus anthracis and botulinum toxin; incapacitating agents, including Brucella suis and Coxiella burnetii ; and anti-crop agents, such as rice blast and wheat stem rust.11 z Chemical weapons do not contain living organisms. They include harassing agents, irritants (for example, tear gas), and casualty agents, such as poison gas and nerve gas. Some nerve gases are so strong that a milligram is enough to kill a human being. Another category of chemical weapon includes incendiary devices, such as napalm; anti-plant agents, such as defoliants; and anti-crop agents, such as soil sterilants. In light of the inadequate surveillance of Russias chemical and biological weapons, U.S. Senator Richard Lugar has described the threat of catastrophic terrorism from bioweapons as possibly the gravest challenge to global security.12 Since anthrax letters were sent through the U.S. postal system in the fall of 2001, much greater attention is now paid to the potential use of biological weapons. Anthrax occurs naturally, and about 2,000 people worldwide contract anthrax annually through the skin, mostly from handling contaminated wool, hides, or leather.13 It is also developed in laboratories by several countries, including the United States. According to a congressional report, if an estimated 60 pounds or so of anthrax spores were released upwind of Washington, D.C., 13,000 to 3 million people could be killed.14 Antibiotics can stop anthrax if taken in time. If not, the mortality rate is estimated to be 90 percent.15
303
Biological weapon A weapon that utilizes living organisms such as anthrax or botulinum toxin. It is a weapon of mass destruction in that it does not distinguish between soldier and civilian. Chemical weapon A weapon consisting of harmful chemicals including tear gas, napalm, or poison gas. It is a weapon of mass destruction in that it does not distinguish between soldier and civilian.
Conventional Weapons Versus Unconventional Weapons

Any weapon that is not nuclear, biological, or chemical is typically considered a traditional or conventional weapon. However, a growing number of other weapons are quite unconventional. In the following paragraphs we review several of these types of weapons.
Conventional weapon A loose term referring to any weapon that is not a weapon of mass destruction.
Conventional Weapons
Most conventional weapons have been around for a long time or are simply modern variants of weapons that predate the twentieth century. For example, all the armed services make use of various kinds of guns, bullets, and bombs. Other common weapons include hand grenades, cannons, artillery shells, and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) as well as various platforms for ring weapons, such as submarines, planes, helicopters, and aircraft carriers. Furthermore, radar-evading cruise missiles guided by global positioning systems (GPS) can be launched from ships or jets. Smart bombs have sophisticated tracking and targeting systems, while dumb bombs (or gravity bombs) basically get dropped from a plane and land on their target by gravity. An unusual bomb is the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb (MOAB) weapon, also know as the Mother of All Bombs. It weighs 21,000 pounds, is GPS-guided, and is designed to spread devastation over a broad areamuch like its smaller predecessor, the Daisy Cutter, which was used in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf wars.16 The worlds biggest conventional bomb, it is designed to spread devastation over a broad area or to penetrate hard and deeply buried targets, like the caves of Afghanistan.17 The term light weapons encompasses some of the weapons already mentioned but characterizes those that are light in weight, such as pistols, ries, and
304
CHAPTER 10
hand grenades. Light weapons may not seem as effective as weapons of mass destruction, or as powerful and precise as cruise missiles, but they are the weapon of choice in much of the developing world, and they can also lead to devastating results. In Rwanda in 1994, for example, 800,000 to one million people were killed after the Hutu-dominated government spent millions of dollars on rifles, grenades, machine guns, and machetes. These were later used to slaughter Tutsi civilians.18 In brief, then, conventional weapons is a loose term encompassing a wide range of offensive and defensive weapons.
Other Weapons
It is worth noting several other types of weapons. As a result of scientic and technological advances, scientists, engineers, and weapons manufacturers have become increasingly imaginative and innovative in nding new ways to subdue a foe. Some of the new or proposed weapons are designed to incapacitate a soldier, while others are designed to render military hardware useless. Many are also being designed to help acquire battleeld intelligence. Laser weapons, for example, are designed to inict temporary or permanent blindness on the enemy. Weapons designers are working on non-illuminating paints to make military vehicles invisible to radar. They are also developing armor as exible as skin, tough as an abalone shell, and enhanced with living characteristics such as the ability to heal itself when torn.19 Some of these weapons will not be developed for technical reasons; others may not be developed for political or ethical reasons. For example, even though supporters of blinding laser weapons believe the weapon is a nonlethal way of stopping an opponent, othersincluding the Red Crossargue that such weapons should be outlawed because they are inhumane.
The Israeli-Hezbollah Conict in Lebanon
Lebanese trucks remove debris from sites bombed by Israel in the July August 2006 conflict between Israel and Hezbollah fighters based in Lebanon.
Associated Press, Andrew England ,Lebanese Industry Counts Costs of Reconstruction, Financial Times, September 26, 2006. Used by permission.

Air Power without Pilots
305
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), such as the Predator pictured here, began to prove their worth as reconnaissance and attack vehicles at the start of the twenty-first century.
Land Mines: The Worlds Most Dangerous Weapons

When asked, What is the worlds most dangerous weapon? most people quickly say, Nuclear weapons. One should keep in mind, however, that the degree of danger a weapon poses is determined both by its destructive capacity and the likelihood of its use. A good case can be made for land mines being the worlds most dangerous weapon. They have killed or maimed far more people than all victims of chemical, biological, and nuclear warfare put together. The production of land mines requires no fancy technology. Land mines are generally inexpensive, and they are often hard to detect and eliminate. It is estimated that between 80 and 100 million mines are still active, some in areas never identied as mine elds. Every twenty minutes, someone, somewhere, is injured by a mine, and every year 26,000 people are maimed or killed. Eighty percent of victims of land mines are civilians. In Cambodia, for example, 1 out of every 384 people is an amputee.20 Recently in Colombia, in a one-year period, 1,100 people were killed or maimed by mines, more than in Afghanistan, Cambodia, or Chechnya. Most of the mines were laid by Marxist rebels, and according to the Colombian Campaign Against Mines, more than 30 percent of the casualties are civilians.21 The 1980 Geneva Convention governing the use of conventional weapons limits the use of weapons such as land mines, which are deemed to be excessively injurious or to have indiscriminate effects. The United States, however, is one of the few countries unwilling to sign an international convention that would ban the use of land mines. It argues that the dangerous border between North and South Korea makes land mines indispensable and that any treaty banning land mines would be impossible to monitor or implement. International efforts to reduce the dangers of land mines have made some progress in recent years. A total of 138 countries have signed the Ottawa Treaty banning the manufacture, trade, and use of land mines, and 110 of those countries have ratied it. In addition, 22 million stockpiled land mines have been destroyed over the past few years by more than fty nations. The number of countries producing
306
CHAPTER 10
The Machete: A Weapon of Mass Destruction?
The 800,000 to one million people killed in Rwanda in 1994 were not the victims of nuclear, biological, or chemical attack. The machete a conventional weaponwas responsible for much of the mass killing that took place between Hutus and Tutsis. In this photo, Hutu refugees walk past thousands of abandoned machetes.
From Corbis, Clea Koff, A Personal Legacy of Death and Heroism, Financial Times, February 5, 2005. Used by permission.
mines has dropped from fty-four to sixteen. Despite these signs of progress, however, more than 250 million remain in the arsenals of 105 nations.22
Controlling the Weapons of War

In this section, we construct a framework for addressing the very difcult questions of why the nations of the world build so many weapons and whether we can control them. To get a handle on these issues, it helps if we think in terms of both the supply of weapons and the demand for weapons. If supply and demand are both high, controlling them is all the more difcult.
Supply and Demand

Lets begin with the demand for weapons. A country, or its political leaders, has several reasons for wanting to be well armed. Consistent with the realist perspective, for example, a country may demand more weapons because it is preparing an assault on another country. Political leaders may also believe that a well-armed country can deter potential aggressors. A country may also want weapons in order to keep up in an arms race (which also contributes to deterrence). As the competition between India and Pakistan suggests, sometimes countries may also demand weapons for reasons of prestige and international recognition. The reasons for the massive supply of weapons are also numerous. z For starters, when the demand for weapons is strong, supply is sure to follow, at least for national security reasons. To put it another way, when a country decides it needs weapons, it will try to obtain as many as it can afford. z Another important reason for the wide availability of weapons is that the arms business can be extremely lucrative. One thousand companies in ninety-eight countries around the world produce small arms and ammunition, according to a study conducted by the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.23

z A third reason for the large supply of weapons is the need to maintain a viable domestic arms industry. Just as no country wants to be dependent on another country for food, an independent arms industry is often a national priority, especially among the worlds great powers. With the end of the Cold War, many American weapons manufacturers saw the number or size of their government contracts drop precipitously. One response to the decrease in the governments demand for weapons was a more aggressive approach to export to other countries. Most analysts of the global arms trade believe it will be hard to stem the tide.24 All the major industrial powers sell weapons, especially light weapons used in conicts in the developing world, where most of the worlds turmoil is. Many analysts believe that a top priority is control of the seemingly endless ow of weapons around the world. The weapons not only pose dangers to soldiers and, increasingly, to civilians, but also they can lead to costly arms races. Unfortunately, the task of arms control is more complicated than just limiting the number of weapons out there, in part because the demand for weapons is so strong. Efforts to control the spread (or proliferation) of weapons fall into two general categories: structural and operational. We explore these topics next.
307
Structural Arms Control

The concept of structural arms control is the one that most people are familiar withthat is, controlling the number of weapons and preventing the proliferation of weapons to certain countries. For example, it has been the stated policy of the ve great nuclear powers (the United States, the United Kingdom, France, China, and Russia) to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to other countries. Of course, their efforts have not always been successful, as demonstrated by the nuclear tests conducted by India and Pakistan in 1998 and North Koreas recent construction of nuclear weapons. (See Is the World Safer with More Nuclear States? on page 325.) In general, structural arms control seeks to decrease the sense of instability or vulnerability that can be created by overly armed potential adversaries.
Structural arms control A type of arms control designed to control the number of weapons and prevent the spread (or proliferation) of weapons to certain countries.
The Dangers of Land Mines
The NGOs Amnesty International and Oxfam International created gravestones in central London to illustrate the campaign against arms sales in general and land mines in particular.
308
CHAPTER 10
A familiar saying in international relations is if you wish peace, then prepare for war. While this may make sense on the surface, preparing for war can increase tensions and make ones adversaries so nervous that war becomes more likely as was discussed earlier with the security dilemma. z Strategic Arms Limitation Talks: An instructive example of structural arms control is the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), which began in 1969 and concluded in 1972. As the United States and the Soviet Union realized the dangers (each side had enough nuclear power to destroy the planet) and nancial costs of the nuclear arms race, they began the rst major arms control efforts of the Cold War. SALT resulted in an agreement in which neither side would attempt to gain superiority over the other. It limited the number of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile launchers each country could have. In addition, the two sides agreed that deployment would only be used for deterring warnot for aggression or victory in a war.25 SALT also limited each side to two anti-ballistic missile (ABM) deployment sites, with no more than 100 ABMs at each. This was later changed to only one ABM site. z The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty: Another agreement, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, signed by the United States and Soviet Union, sought to keep both states vulnerable to a missile attack. This notion may not make sense at rst, but the logic is that if each side knew that one could destroy the other, neither would start a nuclear war (see the section on deterrence below). In 2002, however, the Bush administration pulled the United States out of the ABM Treaty because of its faith in a missile-defense system that could potentially stop at least a limited number of incoming missiles. No country currently has the capacity to stop large ballistic missiles, and it will be some years before this goal is achieved by U.S. scientists and engineers. Some actually doubt the United States, or any country, will ever be able to build an effective missile-defense system. z Strategic Arms Reduction Talks: As the Cold War wound down in 1991, SALT evolved into the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START). As the 1990s progressed, Russia and the United States were not just capping the number of nuclear weapons systems but also were paring them down. START I set limits of 1,600 on the number of deployed strategic nuclear weapons systems and 6,000 on nuclear warheads. START II, begun in 1993, called for both sides to reduce their strategic nuclear warheads to no more than 3,000 to 3,500 by 2008. Illustrating the difculty of achieving structural arms control, the START II treaty was never ratied by the U.S. Senate. When George W. Bush became president, he said the United States would not ratify the START II treaty. The Bush administration eventually pushed for important reductions, but with the exibility to keep almost 4,000 warheads available in storage.
Our Latest Model
Many sales techniques are used in the lucrative weapons market, including sex appeal.

Structural arms control, then, may involve not just limiting or reducing the number of weapons. It may also involve disarmament the elimination of weapons.
309
Operational Arms Control

Almost as widely used as structural arms control, operational arms control achieves greater security but without actually or directly limiting the ow of weapons. Oper ational arms control takes on many forms, including 1) keeping track of weapons, and 2) notifying the other side of what you are up to. The principles that underpin both of these ideas are good will and reputation. If countries can learn to share information and build up at least some trust, the idea goes, then tensions should diminish and the odds of war decline. Lets look at both aspects in turn.
Operational arms control A method of controlling weapons without actually or directly limiting the ow of weapons. It includes measures that foster trust among adversaries, such as notifying the other side of war games, hotlines, and public disclosure of weapons sales.
Keeping Track of Weapons

When countries know what weapons their potential adversaries have, they are less likely to make an unnecessarily dangerous decision based on limited information. Knowledge is power, but it can also reduce tensions between adver saries. With this in mind, in 1991 the United Nations developed a Register of Conventional Arms for the purpose of making it more transparent who buys how many weapons, and from whom. Countries are supposed to furnish the UN with information about weapons sales and purchases by companies operating within their borders.
Notifying the Other Side

Countries often notify each other of troop movements and training exercises. The rationale is that if the countries regularly notify each other of such events, they will be less likely to perceive an adversarys war games or training exercises as a prelude to, or pretext for, war. One such operational arms control agreement between the United States and Soviet Union was the establishment of a hotline granting almost instant communication links between the leaders of the two countries. The goal was to make it easier for the two side to avoid a catastrophic misunderstanding. Inspired by similar concerns, India and Pakistan set up a hotline in 2007 between the two countries foreign ministries in order to reduce the risk that one or the other might overreact.26
The Challenge of Verification

As we noted above, not all arms control plans work out. Sometimes it is hard to verify arms control agreements. Why sign an agreement with a potential adversary if there is no way to verify that the adversary is complying? Negotiations on the UNs Convention on Biological Weapons, for example, have been stalled by disagreements over a system for verifying whether parties are observing. Lack of guarantees on verication also explains, in part, why the U.S. Senate decided not to support the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Often, one side or another objects to strict verication procedures. As Sha Zukang, Chinas director-general of arms control, put it, if verication procedures are too intrusive and affect the legitimate security or economic interest of the states parties, or are too costly and impossible to sustain in a long run, they will not be able to get widespread support, and in the end the universality of the treaties will be undermined, which, in turn, will be detrimental to the strengthening of the nonproliferation regime.27
310
CHAPTER 10
Test Prepper 10.2

_____ 1. Some analysts would argue that WMD should stand for weapons of mass disruption. _____ 2. Biological weapons are more devastating than chemical weapons. _____ 3. Some analysts of international relations would argue that land mines are more dangerous than nuclear weapons as land mines have killed or injured many more people than nuclear weapons. _____ 4. Structural arms control mimics the structural nature of the international system, with bipolar agreements being the most effective at reducing arms races. _____ 5. Operational arms control makes no active effort to reduce the number of weapons in the world.
_____ 6. Which of the following is one of the original ve nuclear weapons states? a. Japan b. Germany c. India d. France e. None of the above _____ 7. Which of the following statements is false? a. Anarchy in the international system makes wars more likely. b. In terms of security, the world is a selfhelp system. c. Except for the United Nations, the world has no world government. d. There is no such thing as a permanent ally or enemy in world politics. e. None of the above _____ 8. Which of the following would be characterized as a conventional weapon? a. Rie b. Submarine c. Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb d. Cruise missiles e. All of the above
What Is Terrorism, and What Can Be Done about It?

3 Dene terrorism and understand the objectives and tactics of terror groups; also identify methods for dealing with the problem of terrorism.
Terrorism is nothing new in world politics. Besides the obvious case of Americans as terrorist targets, people in Britain, Spain, France, Colombia, Pakistan, India, Indonesia, Israel, and many other countries have often been the targets of terrorism. This section explores types of terrorism, provides a description of what terrorists objectives and tactics are, and suggests ways in which terrorism may be stopped.
Types of Terrorism
Terrorism is a method of violence or military strategy that is used sometimes by states but especially by non-state actors. According to military analyst George Friedman, terrorism is an attempt to defeat an enemy by striking directly against its general population and thereby creating a sense of terror which, it is hoped, will
c WHAT IS TERRORISM, AND WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT IT?

lead the population to move against the government and force it to some sort of political acquiescence or accommodation.28
311
Domestic Terrorism
In the 1990s, U.S. citizens were reminded that terrorism need not be international in nature. The bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 people, was a striking example of homegrown or domestic terrorism. In fact, historically, domestic terrorism has been a bigger problem than international terrorism. One of the most serious sites of domestic terrorism is Algeria, where the government has been ghting what amounts to a civil war against Islamic extremists who are trying to overthrow the government. The 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States are also widely believed to be the work of domestic terrorists; the perpetrators remain unidentied.
Domestic terrorism Terrorism whose perpetrators are from the same country in which the terrorist act takes place; homegrown terrorism.
International Terrorism
What we are primarily concerned about in this chapter, however, is international terrorism, which involves citizens of more than one country. The nature of international terrorism can be extremely complex and involve many countries. For example, the suicide attack at Israels Lod Airport in 1972 was not simply an attack involving Palestinian terrorists and Israeli targets. Twenty-six people were massacred and almost eighty others wounded in an attack by Japanese terrorists who had gone to Israel on behalf of Palestinians to kill passengers on an inbound U.S. ight. More then half of the people on the plane happened to be Puerto Rican pilgrims visiting the Holy Land.29 As we discussed in chapter 7, international terrorist organizations are nonstate actors that are essentially beyond the control of states. Thus, a major challenge in stopping international terrorist organizations is dealing with non-state actors who have no formal or direct links to a state. It is easier to target a state than an elusive non-state actor. This problem is much worse in the twenty-rst century because of the global scope of the Islamic terrorist movement and the globalization of modern communications systems, illegal weapons, and nancial networks. We now turn to the objectives of terrorist groups and the tactics they use.
International terrorism Terrorism involving citizens or the territory of more than one country.
Terrorist Objectives and Tactics

As the denition of terrorism indicates, the main objectives of terrorism are political in nature. But the specic political goals of terrorists vary widely. Much depends on the region of the world, the specic political, economic, and social conditions, and the particulars of the terrorists involved. z Some Palestinian terrorists, for example, seek to destroy Israel, while others merely seek the creation of a separate Palestinian state. z The Basque terrorist organization ETA, mostly active in Spain, seeks independence for the Basque people living along the Spanish-French border. z The Irish Republican Army (IRA), a Catholic terrorist group in Northern Ireland, seeks independence from Britain, while Protestant terrorists seek to deny the Catholic terrorists objective. The goals of these terrorists are geographically relatively restricted. The geographic scope of al Qaeda as well as its appeal and objectives, however, are global in nature and deserve closer scrutiny.
312
CHAPTER 10
Al Qaeda: Global Objectives

As we discussed earlier in the chapter there are ideological causes of war. The main objective of many al Qaeda members is to create a united Islamic community (or umma) that restores power and dignity to the faithful. This goal is linked to another objective: the creation of a caliphate, or single Islamic state, that would encompass the Middle East, North Africa, southern Spain, Central Asia, and elsewhere.30 Al Qaedas immediate concerns are local or regional (e.g., Middle East) in nature, but it is not unreasonable to imagine that many terrorists would eventually like to see every part of the planet subsumed under a global caliphate. In this respect, al Qaedas efforts represent a signicant centralizing force in world politics. Several important obstacles stand in the way of al Qaedas regional and global objectives: z The United States is one major obstacle, according to the militants, because it supports repressive Middle East political systems and, to a lesser extent, because it supports the Jewish state of Israel. In the minds of militant Muslims, the West, and the United States in particular, have prevented the necessary changes in their countries.31 The United States was also an obstacle because of its military presence in Saudi Arabia, home to sacred cities in the Islamic faith. z Another obstacle to the formation of a unied umma and caliphate is Western ideas that conict with the terrorists interpretation of Islam. One major consequence of the technological revolution, discussed in chapter 1, is that ideas from the decadent West are transmitted through the globalization of commerce, technology, and communications. According to Robert L. Hutchings of the U.S. National Intelligence Council, exposure to Western mass culture, for example, has served both to attract and alienate these societies.32
Osama bin Laden

z A more immediate obstacle, in the minds of the terrorists, is the existence of corrupt, false-Muslim political systems, especially in the Middle East. Given the radical nature of the terrorists complaintsand the structural changes they demand of the world orderit should be easy to understand why al Qaedas threat may last a long time.
313
Terrorist Tactics
Terrorist tactics are varied, but they generally aim to put fear in the minds of the general public or a specic group of people. In this respect, one could say that the main weapon of terrorists is psychological. A variety of tactics are available to terrorists, including: z Bombings: The most common terrorist tactic is bombing, such as the December 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people, and the March 2004 bombings of crowded trains in Madrid, Spain, killing nearly 200 people and injuring up to 1,900. z Other Traditional Tactics: Both old methods and new technologies allow terrorists to exploit technological and scientic advances to carry out their plans. These tactics include arson, kidnapping, hijacking, sabotage, and threats that sometimes are not even carried out. As 9/11 showed, terrorist tactics can be quite unusual. Hijackings of commercial airliners and the use of jets or even crop dusters and other light planes for terrorism remain a concern not just for the United States but any country deemed a target by terrorists. z Biological and Chemical Attacks: Terrorists may also resort to biological attacks on the food supply. The United States feared that an al Qaeda cell may have been planning to poison water in the Seattle area in the summer of 2002. In addition, terrorists may resort to chemical attacks, as did the Aum Shinrikyo cult in 1995 when it released sarin nerve gas in Tokyos subway. z Environmental Attacks: Another form of terrorism, known as environmental terrorism, involves the targeting of hazardous waste disposal and even attacks on medical facilities that address health-related aspects of environmental pollution.
Why Terrorists Stop Terrorizing

The nature of terrorist activities varies from place to place and from time to time, as do the reasons terrorist activities cease. In the late 1990s, at least in some places, terrorist activities declined for a variety of reasons.
Groups Inspired by Communism

For example, many terrorist groups in the postWorld War II era were inspired by Marxist-Leninist or Maoist ideology. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the groups aligned with international communism lost much popular support, and the communist-oriented governments that had sponsored them were no longer around to provide nancial or military support. In addition, in some instances, terrorist groups realized that their terror campaigns proved less effective than peaceful negotiations with established political authorities.
Northern Ireland
One example of a terrorist group that chose to stop terrorizing comes from Great Britain. In Northern Ireland (a part of Britain, not the Republic of Ireland), the
314
CHAPTER 10
Catholic and Protestant communities, which had been ghting for two centuries, made a major commitment to end the violence by signing the Good Friday Accord in 1998. Under the leadership of the British and Irish governments, both communities and the political parties that represented them agreed to compromises that would create new, local governmental institutions for resolving conicts. These compromises also meant turning away from terrorism as an accepted political instrument. In support of the peace process, mostbut not allparamilitary terrorist groups on both sides agreed to a ceasere.
Preventive Measures by States

Implementing strong preventive mechanisms can also deter terrorists. For example, many ideas considered radical, politically impractical, or simply unnecessary before 9/11 have since become realities. The United States, for instance, has taken many steps to prevent and react to terrorist attacks, including the following: z Reorganizing bureaucracies that learn about, prevent, and respond to terrorist attacks. Examples include the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the overhauling the FBI and CIA, which failed to anticipate the 9/11 attacks. z Improving the ability of health care personnel to respond to large-scale attacks involving conventional weapons, biological weapons (such as smallpox), and chemical weapons (such as sarin gas). z Beeng up airport security. z Shutting off terrorist organizations funding sources from legal and illegal economic activities.
Why Terrorist Activity Ceases

Building on the above examples, we can begin to make a list of major reasons terrorist groups stop terrorizing. 1. Poor leadership or internal power struggles can render a terrorist organization less effective or completely ineffective. Internal divisions, for example, helped weaken the New Peoples Army in the Philippines. 2. Domestic or international nancial, logistical, or political support can decline signicantly or be cut off completely. The lack of nancial resources, in particular, makes it difcult to train and transport terrorists, acquire weapons, and so on. 3. The public may overwhelmingly oppose the tactics or the aims of terrorist organizations. This public opposition leads to pressure on governmental authorities to take action against them. For example, in Saudi Arabia, popular revulsion with terrorist activities resulted in one of the rst spontaneous popular demonstrations in that country in 2004. 4. Counterterrorist measures can succeed. Terrorist groups may be exhausted by government authorities through legal and sometimes extralegal means. International military cooperation, such as NATOs campaign in Afghanistan, is another tool for countering terrorism. Nonviolent antiterrorist measures can include improved intelligence, extradition, freezing terrorist assets, closing businesses linked to terrorists, closing newspapers that support terrorist organizations, and inltration of terrorist groups. Some countries, such as Italy, make it illegal to pay ransom for hostages.

5. All of the terrorists demands can be met. In this situation, terrorist groups achieve their political aims and thus no longer perceive the need to carry out terrorist activities. This review of methods for dealing with terrorism raises an important question: Can the global terrorist threat posed by al Qaeda be stopped? Many terrorism experts believe the threat posed by Islamic-inspired terrorism could last for generations. As discussed earlier in the chapter, al Qaeda as an ideology demands fundamental political, religious, and cultural changes in many parts of the world, especially the Middle East. Antiterrorism efforts by the United States, Europe, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and other states have seen many successes since the 9/11 attacks, and Osama bin Ladens ability to carry out terrorist attacks may have been diminished. But most of Islamic terrorisms objectives existed before bin Ladens rise to power and will persist after he is gone. In many ways, Islamic terrorism is a manifestation of a long-term struggle within the Muslim community over what Muslim society should be like. Islams internal debate includes basic questions such as the role of religion in state affairs, the extent to which democracy and Islam are compatible, and the role of women in society. It will take time to resolve these issues, and many individuals will seek to resolve them by terrorist force.
315
International Counterterrorism Efforts

Efforts at controlling terrorist organizations are still dominated by state governments. International forms of control include state-to-state cooperation as well as multilateral cooperation, such as through the international police agency known as Interpol. Unfortunately, Interpols effectiveness is limited by several factors. 1. Although it maintains a data bank on criminal activity around the world, it is poorly funded and understaffed. 2. It is generally not supposed to get involved in political problemsand most international terrorist activities are highly political. The European Union has developed a European police force, Europol, with aims similar to those of Interpol. Fighting drugs and human trafcking accounts for almost half of Europols work, but counterterrorism has recently been pushed up the agenda.33 However, it will be years before Europol has the political, technical, and nancial support needed to tackle not only organized crime but terrorism as well. Like Interpol, Europol also suffers from limited information sharing among European police and terrorism agencies. Combating international terrorism also involves interstate military cooperation. For example, the search for bin Laden in Pakistan involves Pakistani troops ghting along its western frontier while U.S. troops search for al Qaeda and Taliban personnel on the other side of the border in Afghanistan. An important debate among U.S. allies after the U.S.led war against Iraq in 2003 centered on how much interstate military cooperation was needed to combat terrorism in Iraq. So far, the United States has taken most of the responsibilityand casualties with support from only a few other countries. The books theme of centralization/decentralization is at work here in the international efforts to combat terrorism. For example, cooperation among Europol and Interpol member-statesas well as among independent pairs and small groupings of statesis evolving, albeit slowly, because the international scope of terrorism is forcing states to recognize the need for greater coordination.
Interpol An international police force that maintains a data bank on criminal activity around the world. It also fosters country-tocountry and multilateral cooperation.
Europol A Europe-wide police force that fosters country-to-country cooperation as well as multilateral cooperation.
316
CHAPTER 10
As we saw in chapter 1, terrorism is a problem that one state cannot solve on its own, especially when terrorist organizations are using the benets of the technological revolution to coordinate their activities.
Future Terrorist Threats

For more information see The View From: The Most Wanted Terrorist www.BetweenNations.org
Terrorists pose many kinds of threats to countries around the world. Car bombings, kidnapping, radiological bombs, and cyberattacks on vital economic, administrative, and military computer networks are just a few possibilities. Suicide bombings, another terrorist threat, have been used extensively, for example, in Israel by Palestinian militants, in Sri Lanka by Tamil Tigers ghting an ethnic war for a separate state, and in Iraq since the U.S.led occupation, as Islamic insurgents have gone after foreigners as well as Iraqi citizens seen to be working with foreigners. There is some concern that the Iraq War is increasing the threat of future terrorist attacks. The instability in Iraq since 2003 appears to offer both recruiting opportunities and on-the-job training for new terrorist elements. Thus, despite the fact that the war in Iraq was incorrectly viewed as part of the war on al Qaeda inspired terrorism, it is becoming so as time passes. If we combine the problems of the Iraq War with disputes between the Palestinians and Israelis, the tensions within Lebanon, and the struggle of the international community to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, the Middle East has become a major incubator of international terrorism.
Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Materials

It is unclear how well prepared states are to face these terrorist threats, although many signs suggest that much needs to be done. A 1999 study commissioned by the U.S. government to look into the threats posed by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction around the world found the U.S. government was poorly organized to combat the proliferation of nuclear weapons and lacked the necessary technology to protect soldiers from nuclear and chemical attacks. Of the thousands of possible chemical and biological threats, only a few can be detected by sensors, which have a very limited range.34 An audit of both the Energy Department and Nuclear Regulatory Commission found that neither agency was keeping accurate inventory of nuclear materials loaned out for domestic research.35 Much has been done since the 9/11 attacks, but it is unclear whether those efforts have signicantly reduced the threat of terrorist attacks.
Audio Concept Infrastructure www.BetweenNations.org
Arms Smuggling
Another source of concern is the many ways weapons or terrorists might be smuggled into the target country. For example, in 2000 alone the following passed through U.S. border inspection systems: z 489 million people z 127 million passenger vehicles z 11.6 million maritime containers z 11.5 million trucks The magnitude of the trade in goods and the mobility of people make it impossible to track everything. In October 2001, an al Qaeda suspect was found inside z 2.2 million railroad cars z 829,000 planes z 211,000 vessels

a Canada-bound container in an Italian port. The container had arrived from Egypt, and the man inside it was equipped with a laptop computer, a mobile phone, a bed, and food and water for the voyage to Halifax.36 In March 2002 alone, some twenty-ve Middle Eastern men were smuggled into the United States in shipping containers. According to one estimate, it takes ve inspectors three hours to conduct a physical examination of a loaded forty-foot container or an eighteenwheel truck, making it almost impossible to inspect everything.37
317
Vulnerable Infrastructure Targets

As 9/11 showed, future terrorist threats could involve a variety of unexpected methods. For example, in October 2001, a drunken man with an extensive criminal background took a high-powered rie and red several shots at the Trans-Alaska pipeline. One shot punctured the pipelines protective layer of galvanized steel and four inches of insulation, spilling over 285,000 gallons of oil. The pipeline, the most important link in the U.S. domestic oil network, is 800 miles long, about half of it above ground on open public land and thus difcult to protect.38 Other vulnerabilities exist as well. Less than 1 percent of U.S. imported foods are tested by government authorities at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The Bush administration proposed funding increases for both the FDA and the Department of Health and Human Services, but critics believe the resource allocations to these organizations will still be inadequate to the task. Yet another fear is that terrorists might strike some of the 15,000 chemical plants and chemical storage sites that handle hazardous chemicals in the United States. According to a study by the Environmental Protection Agency, at least 123 chemical plants keep amounts of toxic chemicals that, if released, could form deadly vapor clouds that would put more than a million people at risk.39 So, in terms of terrorist activities, what will we see as the century progresses? First, we can, unfortunately, be quite sure that terrorism will still be around as a powerful force. Both old and new methods are available to terrorists with the motivation, money, and organizational skill to carry out attacks. Terrorists are likely to nd ways of using old technology in new ways, just as they did for 9/11. For example, terrorists might use a dirty nuclear bomb, which is believed to be easier to build and use than an actual nuclear bomb. Cyberterrorist attacks are also increasingly viewed as a threat to all countries, especially those heavily dependent on the Internet. Computer hacking can cause millions of dollars in damage, shut down vital government websites, and so on. The tentative efforts by the United States and other countries to prepare for terrorist attacks have become signicant efforts since 9/11. As we described earlier, many ideas considered radical, politically impractical, or simply unnecessary before 9/11 are now turning into reality. But as long as potential terrorists believe that political authorities will yield to their pressure, terrorism will persist. It is in this context that the U.S. 9/11 Commission Report has urged dramatic changes in the U.S. intelligence-gathering and processing structure.
318
CHAPTER 10
Test Prepper 10.3

True or False?
_____ 1. Terrorism is an attempt to defeat an enemy by striking directly at its general population in an attempt to mobilize that population to foster change in their government. _____ 2. While the main objectives of terror groups vary widely, the specic tactics used by such groups is remarkably similar. _____ 3. In the 1990s terrorist activities declined for a number of reasons, including: the collapse of the Soviet Union as well as preventive measures taken by states. _____ 4. Interpol is the worlds primary counterterrorism agency because it has been given signicant power and funding to accomplish its objectives.
Multiple Choice
_____ 5. Which of the following is a main objective of many al Qaeda members? a. To have Osama bin Laden sit on the Saudi Arabian throne b. To create an independent Palestinian state coexisting with Israel
c. To create a united Islamic community (umma) that restores power and dignity to the faithful d. The creation of three caliphates to cooperatively govern the entire Islamic world e. All of the above _____ 6. Which of the following is not a tactic used by terror groups: a. Bombings b. Kidnapping/hostage taking c. Hijacking ships or airplanes d. Environmental attacks e. None of the above _____ 7. Which of the following is a valid reason given as to why some terrorist groups stop their activities? a. Poor leadership within the terror organization leads to its demise. b. An overow of support from the host areas of the groups leads to divisiveness among competitors for power. c. Terror group members become disillusioned with their lack of effectiveness and disband. d. All of the above e. None of the above
How Can Global Violence Be Controlled?

4 Identify and be able to explain what methods are available for deterring global violence.
Most observers of world politics believe that the twenty-rst century is likely to be as violent as the twentieth. The decentralizing forces affecting more and more countries often lead to violent nationalist and separatist movements. In addition, with the greater ease of acquiring weapons and their increased lethality and variety, the potential increases for conicts that stem from territorial disputes, personal ambitions, and religious and ethnic differences. If people are to reduce global violence, the motivations for going to war must be reduced. This chapter, as well as others in this book, suggests several ways of doing this. International law and international institutions, for example, are designed, in part, to help manage peacefully the relations among countries. But lets not forget the realist position that a strong country can deter aggression, thus contributing to peaceful (but perhaps tense) relations among countries. We look at this subject of deterrence rst. Then we look at strengthening international institutions and international law.
c HOw CAN GLOBAL VIOLENcE BE CONTROLLED?

Reducing Motivations for Violence: Deterrence
One of the most useful ways to prevent war is to make the potential aggressor think that an attack would be fruitless or worse. That is, a country can be deterred from starting a war if it thinks its objectives wont be achieved or the war will actually make things worse. Deterrence, thus, may be dened as credibly threatening an adversary with unacceptable consequences in order to prevent the adversary from doing something dangerous. Deterrence of a potentially aggressive country can be achieved in several ways. Being well armed is the most obvious strategy. A wellarmed defending country is not an attractive target to the potential attacking country. Some countries have followed this strategy by acquiring nuclear weapons, and some even seek deterrence by obtaining chemical and biological weapons. However, it takes more than just a good weapons arsenal to deter countries from attacking. In general, four major factors need to be in place for deterrence to work.40 To help demonstrate this, lets look at the logic of nuclear deterrence.
319
Nuclear Deterrence among States

1. Second-strike capability: First, the country hoping to deter a nuclear attack must have a second-strike capability . This means that the defending country must be able to absorb an initial attack and still have the capability to inict unacceptable damage on the attacker. For example, lets say that the attacking country (well call it Country A) knows the defending country (Country D) has nuclear weapons. But Country A also knows it can wipe out those nuclear weapons with its initial attacka rst strike. Country Ds nuclear weapons will thus not serve as a deterrent. However, if at least some of Country Ds nuclear weapons survive and can be used against A (in a second strike), A could be destroyed. Putting it in real-life terms, the Soviet Union may have resisted launching an all-out war against the United States because it believed the United States had a second-strike capabilitythat is, the United States might have had enough nuclear weapons left over after an initial attack to strike back. Note that some countries could lose their second strike ability if the United States succeeds in building effective ballistic missile defenses. If, for example, the United States were able to destroy all inbound Chinese ballistic missiles, Chinas missiles would no longer deter the United States from attacking. Currently, however, the United States has only a rudimentary ability to destroy enemy ballistic missiles. Despite the Bush administrations claim that Americas rst missile defense system became operational in late 2004, there are widespread doubts about its abilities. 2. Unacceptable damage: A second requirement for deterrence is the ability to inict unacceptable damage on the attacker. There is no hard-and-fast denition of unacceptable damage. However, complete destruction of the attacker is not necessary for deterrence to work. Unacceptable damage could simply mean the loss of several major cities. Because unacceptable damage is a subjective notion, a country might be deterred from attacking if it believes that only one of its major cities could be at risk. This would especially be true of many developing countries that have only a few population centersas, for example, Baghdad in Iraq. 3. Psychological component: Just as important to the success of deterrence is the psychological component. Basically, for deterrence to work, Country A (the attacking country) must believe that Country D will actually use its nuclear
Second-strike capability The ability to withstand a nuclear attack and retain the capability to retaliate with nuclear weapons.
320
CHAPTER 10
weapons to retaliate against Country A. This psychological component of deterrence gives the concept a seemingly illogical side effect. Normally, we tend to think that uncertainty in an anarchic world breeds tension among countries. Such tension is believed by many to make war more likely. (Recall how close we came to World War III during the tense days of the Cuban missile crisis.) Ironically, however, deterrence can actually be enhanced by psychological uncertainty. As we have said, if Country A believes that Country D will retaliate, Country A will be deterred. This also works when Country A is uncertain about Country Ds intentions. As the noted international relations theorist Kenneth Waltz put it, if youre not sure that the other side will use nuclear weapons, you wont want to take any chances; knowing that the other side may retaliate is enough to deter a potential attacker.41 In short, maybe Country D wont use nuclear weapons in a counterattack, but maybe it will! 4. Reliable control: The fourth requirement for a country to deter an opponent is reliable command and control of the nuclear arsenal. In essence, Country D must be able to distinguish between an actual attack by Country A and a false alarm. Moreover, it must not allow the unauthorized use of nuclear weapons.
For more information see Mutually Assured Destruction www.BetweenNations.org
One of the great questions for the second half of the twentieth century is, Why didnt the United States and the Soviet Union go to war? Most analysts believe that deterrence was the keyin particular, mutual assured destruction (MAD). Both the United States and the Soviet Union had acquired enough nuclear weapons (with second-strike capabilities) that an attack on one country would have led inevitably to the destruction of the other. Each side had enough nuclear weapons to rain down destruction not only on the other but on the world as a whole. Hence, neither country initiated a war against the other. Is it possible to deter a country without assuring the total destruction of the attacker? Yes, because of the second requirement of deterrence: the ability to inict unacceptable damage. This may explain why we may not see a war between India and Pakistan. Their nuclear arsenals are limited, but even a single warhead exploded in the others national capital could inict unacceptable damage. Would India risk a war with Pakistan if it knew Pakistan could wipe out New Delhi? According to deterrence theory, that is unlikely. The same could apply eventually to Israel (which has nuclear weapons but wont admit it) and Iran (which is attempting to build nuclear weapons).
Deterrence and Terrorists

Can deterrence prevent terrorist attacks? It is difcult to say denitively. However, we do know that many of the features that make deterrence effective for nationstates do not seem relevant for terrorist groups. The most obvious reasons lies in the difculty in locating terrorists. If one cannot nd the attacker, retaliation is impossible. Second, nation-states are not likely to risk suicide, but individual terrorists may. In fact, terrorists can have signicant leverage over nation-states. Terrorists believe states will yield to their demands because states will nd unacceptable the death of even a few people and, in some cases, even one person. For example, as the Islamic terrorists expected, Spain withdrew its armed forces from Iraq after the March 2004 bombings in Madrid. Spain was deterred from keeping its troops in Iraq for fear of further attacks in Spain. The Philippine government withdrew its troops from Iraq in 2004 after terrorists took a Filipino civilian worker hostage. Similarly, terrorists believe Egypts refusal to send troops to Iraq to help the United

States demonstrates how Egypt is deterred out of fear of terrorist activity within its borders. Thus, the ability of deterrence to work against terrorist organizations is quite limited, while some states may be deterred from actions that conict with terrorist goals.
321
International Law and Organizations

The question of wars existence has a parallel question that is just as complex: Why is there peace? The answer may be rooted in deterrence capabilities, as described above, but it may also lie in the strength of international law and international organizations (IOs). In short, global violence may be reduced thanks to the successful application of international law and the effectiveness of international organizations. Both methods may help competitive states cooperative less violently or nonviolently, but they do suffer from important limitations. We rst look at IOs and then at international law. Note that a more comprehensive treatment of IOs can be found in chapters 6 and 7.
The Effectiveness and Limitations of the UN

The primary global security institution is, of course, the United Nations. As we saw in chapter 6, the UN and other IOs can help states cooperate in a variety of ways. They can coordinate the interests of member-states and interest groups. They can lower the administrative and political costs of making agreements. They can promote compliance with (or enforcement of ) agreements. The UN, however, is not the worlds police force, nor does it write international law as a legislative branch does in the domestic political setting. Its ability to diffuse tension or stop a war is limited by the ability of its main member-states to agree on a course of action. As long as relations among the permanent members of the UN Security Council remain strained, the effectiveness of this IO in limiting global violence will be impaired. For these reasons, the UN, as well as other IOs, has not been particularly effective in preventing global violence in such places as East Timor, Chechnya, Kosovo, and Rwanda. The U.S.led war in Iraq was initiated without the UNs approval, and in the rst few years after the ghting began, the UN was a peripheral player.
International Law
Can international law moderate the competitiveness of states? Perhaps. To understand why, it helps to begin with another important question: If there is no global government to write global law and no global police force to enforce global law, then why do states adhere to it? Two main answers explain why. 1. First, a state may follow international law to gain a positive reputation as a state that can be trusted. Such trust is important in the dangerous and, as realists would say, anarchic world of international relations. 2. Second, states write and follow international laws because of the concept of reciprocity. Good behavior on the part of one country may be reciprocated by another. So, when countries have good reputations and can count on reciprocal treatment, interstate tensions diminish and war becomes less attractive and less likely.
The International Court of Justice

Despite the absence of a global police force and global judicial system, there are many commonly accepted methods for resolving international legal disputes.
322
CHAPTER 10
z Mediation, for example, allows an outsider (or third party) to propose a nonbinding solution for the disputing states. z With arbitration, a third party (a judge, for example) gives a binding decision. For the decision to be followed, of course, both sides of the dispute must agree in advance to accept the third party and that the third partys decision will be binding. z A more formalized method for resolving disputes is known as adjudication. This involves an institutionalized court that renders binding decisions. Such a court exists not just to resolve the dispute in question; it is a permanent legal body that handles cases year after year. The most prominent court of this nature is the UN-afliated International Court of Justice (ICJ), also called the World Court. The ICJ and its predecessor, the League of Nations Permanent Court of International Justice, established in 1922, was designed as a permanent court to ensure continuity in legal rulings across many cases. Unlike in mediation and arbitration, the ICJ is not subject to preliminary limitations on its procedures, evidence to be considered, or legal principles to be applied.42 A permanent court also has the advantage of consisting of judges well versed and experienced in deciding many kinds of international legal disputes.
The International Criminal Court

An international court that began operation in 2002 is the International Criminal Court (ICC). It differs from the ICJ in several important ways. First, the ICJ is a component of the UN, while the ICC maintains only a loose afliation. More importantly, the ICJ has no criminal jurisdiction regarding the prosecution of individuals because it deals primarily with disputes between states. The ICC, however, is specically designed to prosecute individuals for the following offenses: genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. z Genocide refers to acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group. Children Soldiers z Crimes against humanity comprise a long list of crimes including murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation or forcible transfer of the population, imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law, torture, sexual violence, and so on, when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population.43 z War crimes are serious violations of both the law regulating international armed conict and rules covering internal armed conflicts. They can include the following offenses: rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, and forced pregnancy when committed during an international or internal conict.44
In many parts of the world, especially Africa, children are being enlistedand sometimes forcedinto militias and army units.

In short, then, the ICC is designed to deterand, if necessary punishleaders such as Adolf Hitler (Germany), Slobodan Milosevic (Serbia), Pol Pot (Cambodia), and Idi Amin (Uganda). For advocates of human rights law, the creation of the ICC represents a major achievement in the history of international law. However, the ICC may be limited in its ability to fulll its mission. One important limitation, according to its supporters, is that the United States has not become a member of the ICC. Fearing that adhering to the ICC will undermine its sovereignty and that ICC cases will be brought against American military personnel for purely political reasons, the United States has resisted participation.
323
The Limitations of International Law

The failure of the ICC to achieve international consensus highlights a major problem for international law in general. Historical animosities between and even within states cannot be eliminated easily. Religious differences are notoriously difcult to resolve. History is full of ruthless leaders who spark wars for reasons of greed and personal aggrandizement. The current political, economic, and social trends do not indicate the disappearance of such leaders in the future. Another weakness of international law has to do with the issues of compliance and enforcement. If the international community is unwilling to act, laws are ineffective in stopping violence. So, despite the value of reputation and reciprocity, states may choose to ignore international law. In many prominent cases, states have outed international law that had the backing of the rest of the international community. z 1979: Iranians stormed the U.S. embassy in Irans capital, Tehran, and held many of the embassys staff hostage for 444 days. The United States led suit against Iran before the ICJ, but Iran refused to recognize ICJ jurisdiction. Thus, the United States was unable to use the ICJ to help free the hostages. z 1982: A few years later, the United States found itself on the other side of an ICJ ruling. In the early 1980s, the Reagan administration grew nervous about the activities of leftist forces in Central America. The United States tried to overthrow Nicaraguas elected Sandanista government. Nicaragua brought the issue before the ICJ, claiming the United States had illegally mined its ports and supplied money, military assistance, and training to the antigovernment forces known as the contras. Despite U.S. denials, the ICJ ruled in favor of Nicaragua. The U.S. response was to ignore the courts ruling. z 2004: More recently, the ICJ ruled against Israels construction of a wall separating Palestinian territories from parts of Israel. Israels motive for building the partition was to reduce the number of Palestinian suicide bombings. Yet despite the ICJs ruling, Israel chose to ignore the world court, just as Iran and the United States had done in the other cases. Further reducing the effectiveness of international law is the way in which it is written. For example, the Universal Declaration on Human Rightsagreed to by most statesis an authoritative guide to interpretation of the UN Charter and represents the sense of the international community.45 However, it is not binding on states; it simply offers guidelines for states to follow. (See chapter 11 for more on human rights.) Another example is that international law often allows an escape clausean opportunity for states to avoid international law if they believe vital national interests are at stake. Even when states sign agreements to have disputes settled by arbitration, they typically exclude cases that affect their vital national
324
CHAPTER 10
interests.46 Making matters more complicated for international law is that each state decides for itself when its vital national interests are at stake. Even among allies, agreement is difcult, as demonstrated by U.S. unwillingness to go along with its allies and support the ICC, the Kyoto protocol (which deals with environmental destruction), and treaties or protocols banning land mines, torture, and the death penalty.
The Future Applicability of International Law

Behind all of the above examples is the inuence of power in world politics. Some people believe states use and respond to power and will do whatever they think is in their best interest regardless of international law or the reaction of international organizations. In this view, national interest and power politics will always be more important than either international law or IOs. From this realist perspective, if states follow international law and organizations, it is because it is convenient to do so. And yet, if states come to believe that the global problems of terrorism, drug trafcking, human rights abuses, and environmental destruction require international solutions, a common international legal framework may become increasingly appealing. Because many of these problems are centralizing forces in world politics, it is possible that we will see more centralized international law in the future. How centralized it will be, of course, depends on the willingness of states to follow and enforce it. The citizens of the twenty-rst century, then, are likely to face many challenges. The tools of global violence are more available, more varied, and in some cases more lethal than ever, and the motivations for going to war are likely to be similar to those of the past. The desire to prevent global violence in the twenty-rst century may galvanize the worlds states into forging stronger international institutions and laws, but much may also depend on the traditional method of deterring aggression with strong militaries.
Test Prepper 10.4

_____ 1. Deterrence has been found to be one of the most effective weapons a state has against terror groups. _____ 2. Mutual assured destruction (MAD) was used during the Cold War to reduce the likelihood that nuclear weapons would actually be used. _____ 3. Unacceptable damage allows for an attacking country to be hurt, but not completely devastated. _____ 4. The UNs chief limitation in preventing conict lies in the fact that member states must come to an agreement before action can be taken. _____ 5. Similar to the founding of the UN, the United States has been the chief architect and proponent of the International Criminal Court.
_____ 6. Which of the following is a not a condition for successful deterrence? a. Second-strike capability b. Weapons of mass destruction c. Command and control of nuclear weapons d. Ability to inict unacceptable damage e. None of the above _____ 7. Which of the following is a commonly accepted method for resolving legal disputes at the international level? a. Mediation c. Adjudication b. Arbitration d. All of the above
JOIN THE DEBATE
325
Case Study
Why People Turn to Terrorism
Join the Debate Is the World Safer with More Nuclear States?
For decades, the ve major nuclear powers tried to prevent other countries from acquiring nuclear weapons. This was done, in part, for political reasons. If the big ve could keep their club exclusive, they would retain a unique advantage over other countries. The ve nuclear powersthe United States, France, Britain, China, and the Soviet Unionalso tried to keep a lid on nuclear weapons proliferation because new nuclear powers were believed to lack safe command and control systems. For example, a states structure for linking everyone involved in the decision to use the bomb may not be secure, or procedures for implementing that decision may not be safe. Main concerns focused on how new nuclear powers could ensure their nuclear weapons wouldnt be red accidentally, and that nuclear material wouldnt be sold to another country or fall into the hands of terrorists. One keen observer of nuclear arms control, Scott D. Sagan, highlights six problems related to controlling nuclear weapons.1 These issues are especially worth tracking since Pakistan and India joined the nuclear club in 1998 and because several states, including North Korea and Iran, are alleged to be actively involved in building nuclear weapons. First, emerging nuclear powers may lack the organizational and nancial resources to produce adequate mechanical safety devices and safe weapons design features. After the Persian Gulf War, for example, weapons inspectors found that Iraqs nuclear bomb design was highly unstable. It called for the bombs core to be crammed with so much weapons-grade uranium that it would be perpetually on the verge of going off. As one weapons inspector put it, I wouldnt want to be around if it fell off the edge of this desk. In addition, deterrence might not work with emerging nuclear powers because of poor communications with their adversaries. During the Cold War, the United States and Soviet Union eventually learned to communicate routinely in order to avoid a miscalculation. In the case of relations between Iran and Israel, however, Iran has refused to talk to Israel, and its president has called for wiping Israel off the map. Many in Israel and elsewhere wonder whether Iran is even a rational country.2 Second, because the major world powers oppose nuclear weapons proliferation, emerging nuclear powers must develop their weapons under conditions of great secrecy and thus without thorough monitoring of safety efforts. Public debate is less lively, making it more likely that a small number of bureaucratic and military interests are in control and unchallenged. Third, in countries with volatile civil-military relations, accidents are more likely to happen. In 1990, for example, the Pakistani air force may have loaded nuclear weapons on its F-16 aircraft without informing then Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. As if this werent bad enough, the United States said that the F-16 hadnt been properly modied to carry nuclear weapons. In addition, this incident took place during a period of crisis over Kashmir.3 Fourth, because countries seeking to acquire nuclear weapons often face adversaries that are geograph ically close, reaction time and margins for error narrow signicantly. Between India and Pakistan, for example, there wouldnt be much time to determine whether an attack was real or not. Fifth, instant nuclear powers may not have the benet that the older nuclear powers had in learning about testing, training exercises, and deployments. In the early 1990s, for example, safety problems at military bases in Ukraine reportedly increased radiation levels at nuclear storage sites and produced violations of the schedules for technical servicing of missile warheads.
326
CHAPTER 10
Finally, because political and social unrest are likely in the future of many emerging nuclear states, the risks increase for accidental and unauthorized weapons detonations. Disgruntled operators, for example, might engage in acts of sabotage that could inadvertently or deliberately produce accidents. These problems call for serious attention, but they neglect to mention that even the major nuclear powers have not always been in complete control of their own nuclear weapons. Consider the following examples not from India, Pakistan, Israel, or even Iraqbut from the United States. In Damascus, Arkansas, in September 1980, during routine maintenance in a missile silo, a technician caused an accidental leak in a Titan II missiles pressurized fuel tank. Nearly nine hours after the initial leak, fuel vapors within the silo exploded. The pair of doors covering the silo, each weighing 740 tons, were blown off by the blast, and the nine megaton warhead was hurled 600 feet away. The warhead was recovered intact. One technician was killed in the explosion.4 More recently, the U.S. General Accountability Ofce reported that the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore laboratories were guilty of safety violations, including exposing their employees to radiation and inadequate monitoring of radiological contamination.5 In a major effort to limit the development of nuclear weapons, most of the countries of the world have
sought to implement a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). The treaty assumes that if countries give up their right to test nuclear weapons, they will not try to develop them. By the end of 1999, 152 countries had ratified the global Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. President Clinton signed the treaty in 1996, but the Senate has yet to give its approval. Given the information above, it seems obvious that more nuclear states make the world more dangerous. However, could more nuclear states actually make the world safer because of deterrence?
NOTES
1. The following discussion borrows generously from Kenneth Waltz and Scott D. Sagan, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995), 8085. 2. How MAD can they be? The Economist, February 10, 2007. 3. See also Seymour Hersh, On the Nuclear Edge, The New Yorker, March 29, 1993, p. 5673. 4. CNN, http://cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/experi ence/the.bomb/. CNN cites the following sources for this information: The U.S. Defense Department; Arkansas Democrat Gazette, September 20, 1981; Stephen Schwartz, letter to the editor, Commentary, January 1997. 5. Periscope, Newsweek, June 28, 1999, p. 4.

1 2 3 4 5 reasons 6 why 7 war occurs. 8 19 Be able to identify the various 2 10 Wars are caused by many factors, and not all wars are caused by the same things. These factors include:
- - - - - - - - The desire for territorial gain and independence Economic causes Ideology Psychological causes Ethnic and religious differences Domestic political causes Misperception The structure of the international system
3 4 5 6 7 of weapons 8 9 Be able to identify the different types used in 10 war and understand the methods used to control these weapons.
Weapons of mass destruction (WMD), such as nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, do not discriminate between soldier and civilian. Weapons that are not WMDs are called conventional weapons. Some conventional weapons are extremely dangerous. Land mines, for example, pose the greatest threat to the largest number of people on a day-to-day basis. New weapons inspired by high-tech advances are changing the face of warfare. These include unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), lasers weapons that can inict
Immediate causes of war are the short-term factors that spark its outbreak. Underlying causes of war are the long-term trends that create tension between states.
327
temporary or permanent blindness, and high-powered microwaves that can melt electronic systems. The global demand for weapons has remained robust in the postCold War era. Countries want to be well armed for many reasons, including preparation for waging offensive or defensive war. Countries also acquire weapons to deter potential attackers. Structural arms control agreements attempt to limit the number of weapons in existence. Operational arms control doesnt directly limit the ow of weapons but reduces tensions, and hence the need 1 2 3 for weapons, through measures that foster trust among adversaries, such as notifying the other side of war games, hotlines, and public disclosure of weapons sales.
Middle East and to attack Western countries that get in the way. Terrorists may be stopped by military confrontation (such as the war in Afghanistan) or by effective antiterrorist efforts, such as capturing and killing terrorists or cutting off their funding. But as long as terrorists believe terror is their only weapon and that political authorities will yield to their demands for political change, terrorism will persist.
5 6 be able 7 to explain 8 what 9 methods 10 are Identify and available for deterring global violence.
4 terrorism 5 6 understand 7 8 objectives 9 10 Dene and the and tactics of terror groups; also identify methods for dealing with the problem of terrorism.
Countries may be dissuaded from starting a war because of deterrence. International organizations like the UN can help make countries see the merits of cooperation and, at the same time, provide a military response to those who engage in aggressive activities. Terrorists, on the other hand, are much less susceptible to deterrence because their whereabouts are unknown, thus making it difcult for a state to threaten unacceptable damage on the terrorists and their allies. International law, while easily ignored because of the lack of a global police force, can still help states resolve differences peacefully, especially through the concepts of reciprocity and reputation. Controlling global violence has never been easy. Deterrence can fail, and both international organizations and international law may be ignored by determined, aggressive states.
The short-term aim of terrorists is to instill fear in a civilian population. Their longer-term objectives are political in nature. This helps distinguish terrorists from (common) criminals. International terrorist organizations have been, and will continue to be, inuential actors in the politics of many countries, as in the case of religious-inspired attacks in Northern Ireland, suicide bombers in Israel, ETA in Spain, and al Qaeda in many parts of the world. Al Qaeda may be thought of as an ideology. It seeks, by force, to overthrow the false Muslim states of the

1 1
Human Rights, Women, and Global Justice
Afghani women brave possible retaliation to cast their rst votes in 2004. Because women had endured cruel suppression under Taliban rule, the United Nations insisted that womens rights be at the forefront of the Afghan agenda to rebuild the nation.
Learning Objectives
2 1
What is meant by the term human rights? Understand the origins of these rights and the international conventions that support their existence.
Understand why womens rights should be given special standing in the study of world politics.
Identify the different types of feminist theories and how they approach the topic of human rights.
328
Human rights are womens rightsand womens rights are human rights.
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Chapter Outline
What Are Human Rights?
The Origin of Human Rights Global Justice Justice as Fairness International Conventions on Human Rights
How Do Feminist Theories of International

Relations Address Human Rights?
Five Feminist International Relations Theories Feminist Explanations of Gender Bias in International Relations
Why Are Womens Rights

Human Rights?
A History of Low Political, Economic, and Social Status The Rise of the Womens Movement Womens Rights Today Womens Rights as Human Rights
How Has the International Community
Responded to Human Rights Violations?

International Response to Improving the Status of Women around the World The UN and Human Rights Intervention
Understand how the international community addresses human rights violations, especially in the case of womens rights.
Human Rights in an Imperfect World
Human rights Universal rights held to belong to individuals by virtue of their being human, encompassing civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights and freedoms, and based on the notion of personal human dignity and worth. Convention An agreement between states, sides, or military forces, especially an international agreement, dealing with a specic subject, such as the treatment of prisoners of war; an international treaty.
his chapter focuses on human rights, women, and global justice. The issue of universal human rights rose to the top of the international agenda in the years immediately following World War II with the adoption of the Convention Against Genocide in 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that same year, and the Convention on the Status of Refugees in 1951. Since that time, the international community has drafted and signed many other conventions designated to protect the human rights of the most vulnerable groups on our planet, including women, children, and migrant workers. If the record of conventions is admirable, the record since 1945 of abuse of human rights on a global scale is far from laudable. For all the talk of human rights, the twentieth century was one of the
330
Key Terms
CHAPTER 11
HUMAN RIGHTS, WOMEN, AND GLOBAL JUSTIcE
human rights p. 329 convention p. 329 feminist theories of international relations p. 347 Human Development Index (HDI) p. 357 Gender Development Index (GDI) p. 357 Gender Empowerment Index (GEM) p. 357 microcredit p. 358
For more information see Genocide www.BetweenNations.org
most violently abusive, especially toward women. Throughout the century, predatory and unscrupulous rulers used man-made famines as a way to keep their populations in line. The most famous was the famine in the Ukraine in 19321933, engineered by Joseph Stalin, dictator of the Soviet Union, to eliminate all Ukrainian resistance to communist rule. Ukrainian scholars estimate that from 19201939, from 25 to 30 percent of the total Ukrainian population of 31 million died.1 Another massive famine occurred in 2002 in Zimbabwe. Tragically, women and children bear the brunt of these cruelties. The twentieth century is also famous for its renewal of the practice of genocide. In 1915, the Ottoman Empire conducted the centurys rst genocide against the Armenian population within its territory. In the 1930s and 1940s, Adolf Hitler sent an estimated six million Jews 2 to the gas chamber in an attempt to exterminate the Jewish people. In the 1970s, the regime of Pol Pot in Cambodia murdered over two million Cambodians who might have opposed his plan to reconstruct Cambodia into his ideal of a communist society.3 During the 1990s, in the Bosnian civil war and the war in Kosovo, the Serbs tried to uproot all Muslims in Bosnia by breaking into their homes and burning them down. In 1994, up to a million Tutsis were savagely murdered by extremist Hutus in the ethnically divided state of Rwanda.4 States that join the Union Nations must accept the obligations of its Charter, one of which is the promotion of respect for human rights.5 Yet, as we saw in chapter 7, even states like the United States that are in principle committed to upholding human rights have been accused of serious abuses by international NGOs, like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Children are the helpless victims of these events. War and environmental disaster have orphaned millions of them. Many children suffer acts of discrimination, abuse, and sexual violence inside the classroom and in refugee camps. In 2004, terrorists seized a school in southern Russia. The majority of the victims killed in the bomb explosion and subsequent shootout were women and children. A new and disturbing problem is the recruitment of hundreds of thousands of young boys who have been orphaned or are otherwise without resources as soldiers into impromptu armies to risk their lives for whatever cause their mentors espouse. Child soldiers are being used in more than thirty countries around the world.6 Three hundred million indigenous peoples, stretching from the Arctic to the South Pacic and the Amazon, nd their culture and lifestyle at risk by the advance of globalization. The lives of religious and ethnic minorities are also at risk. So severe has been their persecution in the past 50 years that the UN has brought back to life the international treaties on identifying crimes against humanity and established the International Criminal Court to try persons accused of such crimes. One human rights situation that has improved is the status of refugees. With the return of millions of people to Afghanistan, Angola, and Sierra Leone,
331
the number of refugees dropped from a high of 17 million in 2004 to 9.2 million in 2006, the lowest number in twenty-ve years. However, the number of displaced people within their own country is growing. The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) is expanding its role in this area. Tragically, women and children under seventeen represent 73 percent of this number.7 Of this 73 percent, 70 percent will be uprooted women and girls. Of all these abused groups, women and girls are the most vulnerable. Not only do they suffer abuse and discrimination as a result of their refugee status but they are also maltreated simply because they are women. During World War II, the Japanese military practiced the mass rape of women in China and Korea as part of its strategy to subdue the country. During the civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s, the Serbian army systematically raped Muslim women so that they would be rejected by their families and communities. In many countries today, women continue to be considered and treated as second-class people. z In India, husbands and mothers-in-law sometimes burn women if they do not give birth to a boy child or if their dowry is judged too small.8 z In China, women sometimes kill their girl children at birth or abandon them on the steps of orphanages because Chinas one-child policy permits only one child per family, and most families want boys. z In Iran and Afghanistan outside of Kabul, women can be beaten to death because their dressknown as a burka, and legally required to cover them from head to toeis too short. z All over Asia and in Central and Eastern Europe, women are sold into slavery for the sex parlors of the prosperous industrialized countries. Our case study examines the global sex trade and the challenges the international community faces in alleviating the suffering of the victims. The plight of the victims calls forth our concern and our compassion. Why isnt the international community doing more about human rights? This chapter moves issues of human rights and womens rights from the periphery to the center of world politics. In so doing, we follow the neoliberal paradigm and environmental paradigms, which include the well-being of all humankind as a key value of international relations. Liberals consistently attach great importance to human rights and support humanitarian aid to correct the worst abuses. Concerned as realism is with interstate relations and the dominant role of power in the global jungle, realists traditionally consider human rights as marginal to the central problem of power. In their scenario, womens issues are a domestic problem that national governments should solve within their own territory. The attacks of 9/11 forcefully challenged liberal and realist assumptions. Political observers were unanimous in their opinion that endemic poverty and inequality were root causes of the tragedy. As a result, in post-Taliban
332
CHAPTER 11
FIGURE 11.1 Urban Poor by Region

50 40 30 20 10 0
Percent of all poor households that are woman-headed Percent poor households of total population
Percent
Africa
Arab States Asia-Pacific Latin America Transition Urban Poor by Region
Source: UN Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat), State of the World Cities Report 2001, p. 18 pdf: Web address http://ww2 .unhabitat.org/istanbul+5/statereport.htm. Used by permission.
Afghanistan, the international community not only insisted that women be given a role in the new government but also that they have complete access to education. In January 2002, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) sponsored an international conference on poverty-reduction strategies where women were front and center in the sessions on poverty and inequality. If terrorism is rooted in inequality, then liberals and realists must recognize that the abusive treatment of women and other minorities in poor countries contributes in ways we do not yet fully understand to the formation of the terrorist mentality. The relationship between urban poverty and women-headed households in the developing regions of the world is shown in Figure 11.1. Our books theme of centralization/decentralization comes into play here. The IMF 2002 Conference on Poverty-Reduction Strategies started from the realization that a countrys societal attitudes, violence, and lack of education taken together foster poverty. The international community has a track record of helping states in the areas of economic development, education, and health, but societal attitudes and human rights are traditionally considered problems to be solved at the state level. However, economics is not and should not be, the only centralizing issue where the international community can come together and cooperate. The very concept of human rights means that rights accrue to all the worlds people, not just some of them. The challenge of the twenty-rst century is to make that happen. Electronic Publishing Inc. is divided into four parts: Services This chapter Duncan, World Politics in the 21st Century, 3e DUNC.7322.0051 1. The rst asks what human rights are and looks for answers in peoples search for global justice and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Fig. 11.1 1st Proof 2nd Proof 3rd Proof Final
c WHAT ARE HUMAN RIGHTS?

It concludes with a brief discussion of the major UN human rights conventions. 2. Because it is beyond the scope of this book to discuss all forms of human rights abuse in detail, we focus on discrimination against women in the second section. When our attention centers on human rights in general, women become marginal to discussions of discrimination against religious, ethnic, and refugee groups, or crimes against humanity, such as genocide. But women represent half or more of the victims in all these groups, and thus deserve to be placed at the center of the issue. In the second section, we turn the human rights question on its head to ask, How does the socially and culturally determined low status of women affect the promotion of human rights? In this section, we take a brief look at the status of women in the past and present and at the strategic role women play especially in the developing economies. 3. The third section presents the unique aspects of a feminist perspective in international relations and explores how feminist international relations theory contributes to our understanding of human rights issues. 4. In the fourth and last part, we look at the international response to violations of human rights. In this section, we examine the UN response to two kinds of violations: violations by states based on economic, social, and cultural conditions, and gross violations of human rights, such as genocide. In the discussion of the rst kind of violation, we use the problem of womens rights and unequal treatment of the sexes as an example of UN response to similar violations of other human rights. The case study highlights one of the consequences of unequal treatment of men and women around the globe: the increase in the global slave trade in women and children. n
333
What Are Human Rights?

1 What is meant by the term human rights? Understand the origins of these rights and the international conventions that support their existence.
The typical dictionary denition of a right is a just and fair claim to anything whatever that belongs to a person by law, nature, or tradition.
The Origin of Human Rights

The concept of inalienable rights, rights that cannot be taken away from any human being, is relatively new, essentially the product of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European thought. Traditionally, religions as well as the great legal systems, such as that of ancient Rome, have dealt with the duties and obligations of the individual. In 1215, the British feudal lords joined at Runnymede to force upon King John the Magna Carta, or Great Charter. The landmark document established the legal rights of Englishmen, such as no taxation without the consent of Parliament, the right to petition the king, and the right to a fair and
334
CHAPTER 11
Audio Concept Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen www.BetweenNations.org
speedy trial. To address the deeper issue of what kind of government the English would accept, however, political philosophers such as Hobbes (see chapter 2) and John Locke asked fundamental questions such as these: How did governments originate in the rst place? Why would anyone want to be subjected to one? The answer came from an unexpected source. At that time, Europeans were rapidly colonizing the New World. Their rst impressions of the Native Americans was that they were uncivilized, or, to put it more kindly, living in a state of nature. A state of nature meant to the Europeans that there was no established government. So the question, became: What would urge a person living in a state of nature to agree to submit to a government? Hobbes and Locke answered the question by arguing that a person in a state of nature enjoyed life and liberty but lived in constant fear losing of both. If a person had property, it could be taken away at any time by anyone stronger. So the answer to why would one enter into a contract to form a government was that he would do so to secure his prior right to life, liberty, and property. So basic were these rights that Hobbes and Locke asserted they were given by God as a natural right, and thus could not be taken away by any government. This concept of rights was cogently set forth by Thomas Jefferson and others in the U.S. Declaration of Independence. We hold these truths to be self-evident: that man is endowed by his Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these rights are the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Essentially, Jeffersons inalienable rights are human rights that we claim at birth by the sheer fact of being human. Jefferson and others insisted that a list of rights be appended to the Constitution, and so in 1791 Congress passed the rst ten amendments, known as the Bill of Rights. The United States was the second state to endorse such a comprehensive list. In 1789 the revolutionary French government passed the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen universalizing the concept of human rights. The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights derives essentially from the Declaration des droits de lhomme et du citoyen rather than from the U.S. Bill of Rights.9
The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights

It is important to note that the concept of human rights as God-given and rooted in some vague assumption of how governments come into being is not universally accepted. The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the rst multinational document mentioning human rights by name. It is ironic that while the declaration satises no one state, it is the best consensus the international community was able to achieve on the subject at the time. We have a woman, Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt (19321945) to thank for her persistence and diplomacy in getting any declaration of rights appended to the UN Charter. As chair of the newly formed UN Commission on Human Rights in 1945, she became a passionate advocate for the worlds weak and forgotten. She was convinced the world needed a statement that set forth the goals of global justice. In her own words to the Third General Assembly of the United Nations in 1948, the declaration was not an agreement or a treaty. It is a declaration of basic principles of human rights and freedoms, to be stamped with the approval of the General Assembly by formal vote of its members, and to serve as a common standard of achievement for all peoples of all nations.10 We must emphasize that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is not a legal document; it does not state unequivocally that humans have the right to life

or liberty and that it is the duty of the state to provide these. It is a document intended as a common standard of achievement of global justice. What does this mean? To understand human rights as a standard, we must understand what global justice is.
335
Global Justice
One way to dene global justice is to look at it is as a sort of balance or equilibrium between one states assets and those of other states (wealth, power, status, health, welfare, education) and the distribution of these assets among the states constituent groups. This denition highlights the fairness aspect of justice. Lets look a little bit more at this concept of justice.
For more information see Why It Matters To You: Human Rights for Nonstate Actor-Detainee www.BetweenNations.org
Justice as Equal Shares

First of all, let us look at justice as equal sharesfor example, in the worlds resources, as discussed in chapter 8. As the ecojustice movement rightly says, there For more information see International Law is no such thing as equal shares. About a fourth of Russia is above the Arctic Circle, www.BetweenNations.org where farming is very difcult and where most people do not want to live. Large portions of Canadas territory are also unsuitable for agriculture or for habitation by large numbers of people, while the African state of Chad is almost all desert. Some states, like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, are rich in natural resources; others, like Japan, have few natural resources. Nor are states equal in size, in the educational achieveDetainees at Guantanamo ment of their population, in technological development, Their treatment has become the subject of worldwide interor in economic prosperity. To realize justice as an equilibest because the way the United States treats its prisoners is rium where every state is equal to every other state in even seen by many as an indication of its commitment to equal one dimension, such as per capita income, would mean a justice for all. gigantic transfer of wealth from the rich industrialized states to the three-fourths of the world living in poverty. While much needs to be done and can be done to lift the worlds poor out of poverty, few would argue that everyone or every state sharing all the worlds resources equally is either realizable or practical.
Justice as Due Process

If justice is not about equal shares for all, what is it about? When we think about justice as a balance, two meanings of the word come to mind. z The rst is contained in the idea that justice involves a process that operates the same way for everyone according to a standard set of accepted rules and regulations. z The second involves the idea of fairness, which we discuss later. In the United States, the standard set of rules that denes the judicial process is contained in the rst ten amendments to the Constitution. When we talk about global justice as due processa process that considers everyone in the global community impartially on the same
336
CHAPTER 11
termswe see immediately that an accepted global standard or set of principles must exist to enable due process to take place. We nd this global standard in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The UN Declaration sets forth general principles for a common judicial, political, and social process that the member-states assert to be universal. Selected principles are covered in Figure 11.2. z The rst set of principles assures equality before the law and redress of grievances. These concepts of justice are those that U.S. citizens generally associate with the notion of a fair trial. z The second set comprises principles associated with the building of a democratic society, such as freedom of speech and association. But because these rights are universal, the UN Declaration goes further to assure the right of asylum, the right to information wherever obtained, and the right to a nationality. z The third set of principles delineates an individuals economic, social, and cultural rights, including not only the right to work and to receive an education but also the right to marry whomever one chooses. z The nal set binds both individuals and member-states to furthering the principles described in the UN Declaration. These articles set the ground rules for all states that, if adopted, lead to the development of legal processes that support the rule of law, democracy, and equal opportunity, as institutionalized in the Western parliamentary states. Not all states adhere to the principles of the Declaration. Many countries today still do not assure the accused a fair trial, permit freedom of speech and assembly, or have a free and fair electoral system. In many states, education remains the province of wealthy and privileged men. There are millions of refugees in the world with no rights at all. Indigenous peoples are being denied their right to lead their traditional lifestyle. Women in most of Asia and Africa do not have the same rights as men either before the law or in guarantees of equal access to education, health care, and work. In particular, women do not have the same rights as men to marry and have a family. We talk more about human rights and women later.
Justice as Fairness
The second way to view justice is as an equalizing factor for the human condition. This aspect makes us think a little harder about the idea of fairness. What do we mean when we say it isnt fair that some people are born into poverty and some into wealth? It isnt fair that there is no gender equality or that people are judged by their race. In these instances, our talk of fairness refers to a condition that seems to exist in society or is inherent in the biological condition of a human being. In our best moments, we would like to even the odds a little. The U.S. Declaration of Independence rather grandiosely asserts that all men (and women) are born with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Thats a tall order for any country to deliver, let alone the international system. But the liberal and idealist side of us would like to believe that human-made institutions can and will rectify the most egregious inequities of the human condition.
Rise of Concern for Fairness

During the nineteenth century, the Industrial Revolution created more wealth in a few generations than had been created in the previous history of humankind. This

FIGURE 11.2 Selected Universal Human Rights as Set Forth in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948
Equality before the Law, Articles 116 Social, Economic, and Cultural Rights, Articles 1617, 2227
337
All human beings born free and equal in dignity and rights. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. No one shall be held in slavery and slavery shall be prohibited. No one shall be subject to torture. Everyone has the right to recognition before the law. All are equal before the law and entitled to equal protection without discrimination. Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by national tribunals for violations of rights. No one shall be subject to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile. Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair public hearing by an impartial tribunal in the determination of his rights. Everyone has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty. No one shall be subject to arbitrary interference with his privacy. Everyone has the right to freedom of movement within the borders of each state and to leave any country and to return to his country. Everyone has the right to seek asylum in other countries and that right may not be revoked. Everyone has the right to a nationality and no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.
Building of Democratic Societies, Articles 1821
Men and women of full age have the right to marry and found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage. Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the spouses. The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and entitled to protection by society and the State. Everyone has the right to own property and no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property. Everyone has the right to social security and is entitled to realization of the economic, social and cultural rights. Everyone has the right to work. Everyone has the right to equal pay for equal work. Everyone has the right to form and join trade unions. Everyone has the right to rest and leisure. Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care, the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age, etc. Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children shall enjoy the same social protection Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory.
Universal Obligations, Articles 2830
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression. Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association. Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives, through public service. The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government expressed through periodic and genuine elections held by universal suffrage and secret ballot or their equivalent.
Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in the Declaration can be fully realized. Everyone has duties to the community. In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others. No state has the right to engage in any activity aimed at the destruction of any of these rights and freedoms.
Source: UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html. Used by permission.
338
CHAPTER 11
wealth was made, not inherited, and much of it came in a very negotiable form money. Many individuals who were born in poverty, such as the great U.S. steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, ended up extraordinarily rich. As people began to notice the gap between those who made it and those who did not, they started to ask why some became rich and others remained poor. The Industrial Revolution was still young when labor unrest and worker revolutions rudely shoved the question to the fore. In 1830 and 1848, European workers took to the barricades, demanding a change in their economic and social conditions to produce a more equal distribution of wealth. A studious young German named Karl Marx studied the workers plight and came up with two answers. The rst was the Communist Manifesto, published in 1848, which called on European workers to revolt to change their circumstances. The second was Das Kapital (Capital), Marxs explanation of why workers lived in such abominable and depressing conditions. These two works inuenced the course of the modern world perhaps more than any other books written in the nineteenth century (see chapter 2 for a brief discussion of Marxism). They also played a seminal role in the European womens movement, discussed later in this chapter. Despite the problems associated with removing inequalities of condition, disaffected human beings in all parts of our planet have shown a remarkable persistence in trying to change the world, or at least the distribution of outcomes. The concept of justice as fairness lies at the foundation of such movements as national struggles for independence, ethnic and religious struggles for equal representation in political, social, and economic life, legislation outlawing discrimination and establishing a minimum wage, and the international womens movement. In every case, violence has failed to win the battle. History suggests the only way to ensure fairness of any kind is to assure due process through the guarantee of human rights, those same human rights set forth as standards of achievement in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
International Conventions on Human Rights

As we stated earlier, the UN Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR) is not a legally binding document. In order for the rights set forth in the Declaration to have the force of international law, they must be written up in treaties called covenants or conventions.
The UN Bill of Rights

The rights in the UNDHR were separated and codied into two separate conventions, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. z The rst treaty denes the rights contained in the concept of justice as due process and recalls the rst ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution. z The second addresses the justice-as-fairness issue and species an individuals rights to basic necessities like food, housing, and health care, the right to work and form trade unions, the right to education, and the right to participate in a states cultural life. Each covenant contains articles setting forth procedures for monitoring a signatory governments compliance with the covenant and establishes a committee within the UN to monitor compliance. However, as we already know, the conven-

tions essentially had no teeth, no provisions for enforcing the treatys terms on the member-states. The UNDHR, together with the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, constitutes what is known as the United Nations Bill of Rights.
339
Group Rights
The UN Bill of Rights sets forth the individual rights of every human being on this planet. In the course of its history, however, the UN has found itself handling problems associated with the rights of groups, like refugees, that have experienced or are under threat of genocide and with the rights of prisoners, women, children, and, most recently, migrant workers. Figure 11.3 lists the various human rights conventions with the date they were formally adopted by the UN General Assembly.
Humanitarian Law
The nal component of international human rights is what is known as international humanitarian law. International humanitarian law is a set of rules that seek, for humanitarian reasons, to limit the effects of armed conict. It protects persons who are not or are no longer participating in the hostilities and restricts the means and methods of warfare. International humanitarian law is also known as the law of war or the law of armed conict. The fair treatment of prisoners of war, victims and perpetrators of genocide, torture, and other forms of cruelty are all covered under international humanitarian law. A list of some of the U.N. conventions that cover these issues is found in Figure 11.3.
For more information see Laws of War www.BetweenNations.org
Process of Adoption of a Convention

Note the asterisks next to the names of many of the conventions. These indicate conventions the United States did not ratify. After a convention is drafted by representatives of the member-states of the UN and approved by the drafting committee, it goes to the states for ratication. When a majority of the states have ratied it, the convention goes to the General Assembly for adoption. Not all states ratify each convention. States have several choices: z They may sign and ratify the convention. z They may sign and ratify with reservations. z They may sign and not ratify, or they may decide not to sign at all. In democracies, the head of state may sign the convention, but it must be ratied by the elected legislature. Among conventions the United States has ratied, only a few were ratied without reservations. One of these is the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. The two best-known cases where the United States has signed with reservations is the Protocol amending the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights abolishing the death penalty and the Convention Against Torture. Because public opinion in the United States is in favor of the death penalty, the United States would not recognize an international right to abolish it. In the case of the Convention Against Torture, the United States recognized the principles of the convention but reserved the right to prosecute allegations against U.S. citizens in U.S. courts rather than in an international court. As you know, the United States does not recognize the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (see chapter 6).
340
CHAPTER 11
FIGURE 11.3 Principal Human Rights Conventions

Convention Protection of Individual Rights Date of Adoption Name of Monitoring Agency
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights * International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
Protection of Minority Group Rights
1966 1966
Commission on Human Rights Economic and Social Council
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crime of Genocide * Convention for the Suppression of the Trafc in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field (Geneva Convention) Convention on the Political Rights of Women * Convention on the Nationality of Married Women * Convention on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage, and Registration of Marriages International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination * International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid * Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment * Convention on the Rights of the Child * Convention on the Rights of Migrant Workers and the Members of Their Families Convention on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Draft only, 1994 * The US has not ratied these conventions.
1948 1949, updated 2001 1949
Judiciary of member-states Member-states
International Red Cross
1953 1957 1962 1966
Commission on Human Rights
Member-states Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities Commission on Human Rights Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women Committee Against Torture Committee on the Rights of the Child Committee on the Protection of the Rights of Migrant Workers and Their Families Working Group on Indigenous Populations
1973 1979 1985 1989 1990
Source: Nancy Flowers, ed., Human Rights Here and Now: Celebrating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Used by permission.

Sovereignty Versus Global Rules
You have spent enough time studying world politics to grasp the real reason the United States and other states are not quick to ratify UN conventions regarding human rights. The basic issue is sovereignty. The U.S. government, from the beginning of the UN, has been reluctant to give up decisions about human rights, among other issues, to an international organization. By contrast, the member-states of the European Union were required to give up part of their sovereignty to the European Union, and many of them now have considerable experience accommodating their culture and values to supranational legislation. Other countries that either have not signed or not ratied the various conventions have reservations similar to those of the United States. If anything, their objections touch the deeper cultural chord that echoes in the debate on whether womens rights are human rights. To a large number of member-states, the conventions on human rights reect Western values and Western culture. In addition, these states are reluctant to endorse economic, social, and cultural covenants that would put their economies at a disadvantage with the states they perceive to be pushing the human rights agenda. The world remains decentralized clusters of conicting views and values.
341
Test Prepper 11.1

_____ 1. The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights is accepted in whole by all member-states of the organization. _____ 2. The UN Declaration covers the following areas of rights: equality before the law; rules to foster a democratic society; economic, social, and cultural rights; and other principles designed to support the Declaration. _____ 3. The key issue that makes the enforcement of human rights at the international level difcult is state sovereignty. _____ 4. Humanitarian law seeks to limit the effects of armed conict.
_____ 5. Which of the following best describes the nature of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights? a. A legally binding document b. A resolution of the UN General Assembly c. A common standard of achievement regarding social justice d. All of the above _____ 6. Which of the following is not a provision of the UN Declaration? a. No one shall be subject to torture. b. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression. c. Everyone has the right to own property. d. Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of both spouses. e. No one shall be required to live under a totalitarian government.
342
CHAPTER 11
Why Are Womens Rights Human Rights?

2 Understand why womens rights should be given special standing in the study of world politics.
For many women, this question brings the retort, arent women human beings like men are? The history of women makes it clear how excluded they have been from due process and fairness. Until recently, the discipline of international relations had little to do with women. Womens history, however, shows that individual women could and did exert enormous inuence over the world politics of their generation. With the onset of early modern times in the seventeenth century, areas that had traditionally been womens preserve, like the household economy and care of the sick, moved into the new public world of the economy and science dominated by men. The womens movement grew from the realization, especially by middle-class women, that the much-touted benets of science and the Industrial Revolution had primarily beneted men. Even today, 70 percent of people living on less than a dollar a day are women.
A History of Low Political, Economic, and Social Status

Throughout recorded human history, women have been treated as second-class subjects or citizens relative to men, regardless of race, religion, or geographic region. Some evidence indicates that in ancient Crete (c. 2000 bc), women as well as men took part in civic ceremonies and in the governance of society. There is no substantial evidence regarding earlier civilizations elsewhere in the world. At the height of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta (see chapter 2), the great Greek writer of comedies, Aristophanes, wrote Lysistrata. The comedy suggests a slowly dawning awareness in Athens that women could and did exert inuence in society. In the play, women refuse to have sexual relations with their men unless the men stop ghting and make peace between Athens and Sparta. The Roman world that followed Greece valued women primarily as mothers. Neither Indian nor Chinese civilization treated women any better than did the Greco-Roman world. After Confucianism triumphed in China in the seventh century, women were totally shut out of public life. Throughout Asia, when a woman married, she typically left her family forever to take up her home with her husbands family. She lived most of her adult life as a daughter-in-law under the control of her husbands mother.11 In upper-class Chinese society, it was considered elegant for women to have small feet. While still toddlers, girl children had to submit to the painful practice of having their feet bound and their foot bones crushed so they would never again be able to walk freely. The most inuential women in history were queens, empresses, rulers of feudal efdoms, or unmarried women of rich families who either were forced into a convent or chose it to escape the frequently harsh conditions of married life. Wellborn women, like Isabel of Castille (14511504, architect of the unication of Spain in 1492), Queen Elizabeth I of England (15221603), who gave her name to one of Englands golden ages, and Catherine the Great of Russia (17291796) acquired power through marriage or birth and stayed in power by cunning, ruthlessness, and panache. An Asian royal counterpart, the Dowager Empress of China Tzu Hsi (18341908), made a last desperate effort to suppress foreign inuence and keep the Ching Dynasty on the Chinese throne. These women had the attitudes and
c WHY ARE WOMENS RIGHTS HUMAN RIGHTS?

beliefs of their times, and they were primarily concerned with power politics. Other less well-placed women made their mark in religious life, in writing, or in their conversational abilities in the royal drawing rooms or the salons of the new middle class of merchants and intellectuals. Their lives are exceptions to the general condition of women down to the nineteenth century. As such, they underscore the point that without a concept of justice and human rights that includes women as well as men, women historically had very tough going.
343
The Rise of the Womens Movement

The Industrial Revolution did little to change the status of women for the better. The seventeenth century saw economics taken out of the private family sphere and elevated to the public domain of rational scientic knowledgea domain, as we know, occupied by men. The Scotsman Adam Smith dened for the modern world how the invisible hand of the market worked under a capitalist system. The English economist Thomas Malthus was the rst to warn of the dangers of population increases (see chapter 14). Neither theory did any favors for women, who were excluded from the marketplace and seen as primarily responsible for population growth. The modern womens movement began in the middle of the nineteenth century and essentially evolved in two directions that reect the two meanings of justice discussed earlier in the chapter. z The Anglo-American womens movement leaned toward equating womens liberation with the achievement of equal rights under the law, or due process. z The European variant emphasized the fairness aspect of justice and focused on equal conditions. In the United States, justice as due process for (white) men was very much alive in the nineteenth century, providing the legal underpinnings for the expansion of capitalism and democracy through the civil rights to own property, to enter into contracts, and to vote. By the end of the eighteenth century, women were questioning the existing legal system.12 In 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton read a manifesto at a meeting of women in Seneca Falls, New York, demanding that women be given the same rights as men, particularly the right to vote. This meeting marked the founding of the womens suffrage movement in the United States. Perhaps because of their lower civil and political status, American middle-class women, and especially those who participated in the suffrage movement, were sensitive to the immorality of slavery. The abolition movement produced some of the most determined and heroic women, both white and black, who greatly inuenced U.S. and European views on slavery and justice. Among 19th century black women active in promoting the equality of blacks, of particular mention are Sojourner Truth, revered for her work in the Underground Railroad, and Ida B. Wells, one of the rst women editors anywhere in the world, who risked her life to expose the injustices of postCivil War Southern Jim Crow laws against blacks. In continental Europe, the womens movement joined forces with the socialist movement to focus on obtaining justice as equality of condition. By coincidence, Marxs Communist Manifesto came out in 1848, the same year as Stantons Manifesto on the Rights of Women. Marxism, as we know from chapter 2, teaches that history is the history of the class struggle. According to Marx, the rst class division and thus the rst class struggle was between men and women in the family. Marx held that women were among the worst exploited, as their unpaid work in the
344
CHAPTER 11
The Suffragettes Parade in 1911
Womens suffrage in the United States goes back to 1776 when Abigail Adams wrote her husband, John Adams, to remember the ladies in the code of laws. Adams replied that men would fight the despotism of the petticoat. Women of property had the right to vote in some of colonial America, including New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and New Jersey. They lost this right in 1787 when decisions about voting were left to the states. Women organized for their rights in 1848, and fought long and hard for the vote, using civil disobedience as their tactics. Some western states give women the vote before 1900, but they did not get the right at the national level until passage of the 19th amendment in 1920.
Source: The Grainger Collection, NY. Used by permission.
home made them totally dependent on their husbands for every material good. A large number of highly educated and intelligent European women in France, Germany, and in Central and Eastern Europe were persuaded that emancipation from such intolerable conditions was the only way to womens liberation, and they worked actively under the socialist aegis throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Russia in particular after 1861 produced an extraordinary group of women reformers and revolutionaries. Russia is the only country today where women have founded their own political party. Wherever European women traveled during the nineteenth century, they brought their ideas of emancipation with them. Thus, as womenespecially middle- to upper-class womenbecame more involved in the suffrage or socialist movement at home, their peers were experiencing culture shock in the European colonies in Asia and Africa and demanding equal rights for all women everywhere.
Womens Rights Today

Womens demands were not answered quickly. Among the developed countries: z New Zealand was the rst country to give women the right to vote in 1893. z Norway was the rst European country to give women the vote in 1913. z Kuwait was the last country to give women the vote, May 16, 2005. Women in the Western world still do not earn equal pay with men, and their representation as heads of state and in most national legislatures continues to be low.13 Outside the Western world progress has been uneven. After World War II, women began to organize in many of the newly independent states in Asia. The most active womens movements are probably in the Philippines and India. In India, women lawyers have been untiring in their attempts to stop bride burning and to generate
c WHY ARE WOMENS RIGHTS HUMAN RIGHTS?

more respect for the girl child. In the Philippines, womens groups have struggled to end the smuggling of young women to the brothels of Southern Asia, Canada, and the United States and to give them legal protection (see case study). Japanese women only began to organize in the last decade of the twentieth century, but already they have been able to le lawsuits for age discrimination in hiring and ring women and have made sexual harassment a major issue in Japanese boardrooms. In India, women remain at the bottom of the social ladder, despite the remarkable rise to power and leadership of Indira Gandhi (19171984) and the strong political inuence of her daughter-in-law, Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, in Indian politics today. In Sri Lanka in 1960, Sirimavo Bandaranaike became the rst woman in the world to serve as a nations prime minister. Her daughter, Chandrika Kumaratunga, is president of Sri Lanka today. In both cases, however, the women rose to power in the traditional way, through the position of their family or husband. In China, the government has taken a brutally practical approach to trying to decrease the rate of population growth. In the early 1980s, the government announced a policy of one child per family, which it enforced by carrot-and-stick tactics. The consequences of the policy are now becoming visible. On the plus side, without the one-child policy, China would have 300 million more people today. That is the equivalent of the entire U.S. population.14 On the negative side, the rapid and extraordinary economic development of China is blighted by the specter of girl babies left on orphanage doorsteps or murdered at birth. Desperate parents have taken desperate measures to ensure the desired boy despite ofcial assertions of equality of the sexes. Today, the ratio of males of marriageable age to females has become a national issue, 100 girls to 117 males. In absolute numbers, that equals two million girls murdered or aborted before birth!15 Table 11.1 indirectly demonstrates the preference for boys in some countries, especially China, but not others. While most Muslim countries have accorded women the right to vote, they have been among the last states to grant women fundamental human rights and documented abuses remain high, for wife burning and stoning for alleged adultery. Africa is suffering from an AIDS epidemic, where women constitute the largest proportion of victims. HIV is now infecting women more rapidly than men. AIDS workers say the increasing infection of women is due, among other things, to poor education, poor protection, and the habit of men going off to the city to work and returning to wife and family on the weekends. An entire middle generaTABLE 11.1 tion of Africans, especially women, is at stake. Diaper DiasporaPercent of Foreign Adoptions of Children, by Sex and by Womens Rights as Human Rights Country of Birth How are we to explain this situation? z First, womens right were not written into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. There is no universally accepted standard that says that women have a right not to be beaten, to marry by choice, to be educated, and to receive equal pay. We may infer these rights from the relevant passages of the Declaration, but they are not addressed specically to women. z Second, a large number of the worlds leaders and heads of state do not see the womens human rights issue as an issue at all. To quote the UN Womenwatch Report on Progress in Womens Rights Since Beijing, 1995, There is an absence of political will necessary to undertake action that will achieve lasting change.16
Birth Country
South Korea Russia Vietnam India China
345
Female
42.0% 48.7 57.2 72.6 96.2
Male
58.0% 51.3 42.8 27.4 3.8
Source: Diaper Diaspora, Foreign Policy (January/ February 2007): 32. Used by permission.
346
CHAPTER 11
Despite setbacks, women have not given up on their agenda. However, they realize that without political pressure, all the ideas about equality, justice, and democracyeven those agreed upon in the Universal Declaration of Human Rightsare mainly talk. A notable exception to the slow progress of women is Norway where 38 percent of the parliamentary deputies are women and where gender equality now concerns promoting male equality! At the 1995 Beijing Conference on Women, Hillary Rodham Clinton represented the United States as its First Lady. She was considered militant by the media and many of the African and Asian delegates to the conference when, in her opening remarks, she called for the inclusion in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights the sentence Womens rights are human rights. In practice, then, womens rights are not yet seen as human rights. Throughout the world, including the developed countries, women continue to be thought of and treated differently from men, and their rights remain less than fully human.
Test Prepper 11.2

_____ 1. It is only in the last 500 years that women have held such low social, economic, and political status in countries. _____ 2. The most inuential women in world history have predominantly been women of high status, mostly royalty. _____ 3. In some areas of the developing world, women are subjected to degrading and violent practices, including infanticide, sexual slavery, and bride burning. _____ 4. Womens rights were an integral part of the UN Universal Declaration on Human Rights written in 1948.
_____ 5. The Anglo-American womens movement focused on ________ while the European movement focused on ________. a. due process under the law; equal conditions b. equal conditions; due process c. equal pay for equal labor; equal social opportunities d. equal social opportunities; economic opportunities outside of the home e. the right to marry whom you choose; equal pay for equal labor _____ 6. Among the developed countries, which of the following countries was the last to give women the right to vote? a. The United States b. Norway c. Great Britain d. Kuwait e. France
c HOw DO FEMINIST THEORIES Of INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS ADDRESS HUMAN RIGHTS?
347
How Do Feminist Theories of International Relations Address Human Rights?

3 Identify the different types of feminist theories and how they approach the topic of human rights.
When confronted with the global circumstances of women, many of us shake our heads in resignation. But we need to make sense of this situationwhich leads us directly into theory. Theory, as we saw in chapter 2, enables us to put the many parts of a picture into a frame. Feminists do not buy the argument, normally advanced by men, that equality is merely a matter of economic development and education. Feminists know that even in the developed countries, women are not equal to men. How, then, do feminist theories explain the inequality? Feminist theories of international relations are what many call a gender-neutral theory of international relations and, as such, t primarily into the ecological or subjective thinking paradigms. Recall the discussion of feminist theories in chapter 2, where we said that most feminists would agree that basic attitudes and behaviors, including gender behaviors, are culturally determined. Because men have dominated politics since the beginning of history, views of politics in every society are based on male perceptions of the world. Realism and idealism are simply the modern variants of the same old thing. Universal human rights, the feminists argue, cannot be achieved unless the old liberal and realist paradigms are abandoned and the insights from feminist theories are adopted. According to feminist theories, men interpret history primarily in terms of wars, weapons, and conquests, whether military or economic. Mainstream international relations theorists generally term these issues high politics. Women see history in a different light. Wars bring destruction, and women tend to gain the least from wars. Their husbands may be killed, their sons may die, and their homes may be destroyed. War brings enslavement and hardship to all its victims, but the physical violation of women is generally considered a conquerors right.
Feminist theories of international relations An approach that believes that gender is the key to understanding international relations. The aim of feminist theories is to uncover the gender dichotomies, that are concealed or rejected by mainstream international relations and to lay these bare before the public eye.
Five Feminist International Relations Theories

Rather than give wars primacy, feminist theories consider a range of factors that mainstream international relations theorists, realists and idealists alike, term low politics. These factors include the role of the following in downplaying the value of womens experience: z Culture z Economics z Religion z Globalization z Gender Please note the plural in feminist theories. When we talk about feminist contributions to international relations, we actually refer to multiple strains of feminist scholarship that focus on different aspects of world politics. Virtually all of
348
CHAPTER 11
the theories agree that male concepts of international relations articially separate men and womens spheres of activity into a male public sphere of production and economic development and a female private and thus, unmentioned, sphere of reproduction and the role of the home in raising and feeding children. V. Spike Peterson and Anne Sisson Runyan group these strains of theory into ve general categories.17 1. Radical feminists focus on the role of culture in downplaying womens experience and womens ways of acquiring knowledge. Radical feminists hold that the division between public (industrial and agricultural) production and private reproduction (childbearing and child rearing) is a deliberate male construct designed to keep womens status low. Some members of this group go so far as to advocate complete separation of women from men as the only solution to the achievement of total gender equality between the sexes. 2. Socialist feminists stress the importance of economic issues in achieving equality and their relationships to power and culture. They agree with the radical feminists that the division between public production and private reproduction is the cornerstone of patriarchy. Far from advocating total separation of the spheres, they argue that each complements the other and that neither would be economically viable in isolation. The socialist feminists thus argue for using the same criteria of value on womens unpaid work in the home as is done in the public economy. Many mainstream economists appreciate the socialist feminist argument. The UN, in particular, is trying to perfect a formula that can be used worldwide to calculate the value of womens unpaid work. 3. Liberal feminists are the most active in equal rights movements. They seek to overcome the gender dichotomies of public and private spheres by replacing the concept of gender difference with the concept of gender sameness. Women have the same capabilities as men, they assert. They see U.S. Army privates Jessica Lynch and Shoshana Johnson, who served in Iraq, were captured by the Iraqis, and subsequently liberated, as prime arguments for mixed sex combat units, where women ght alongside men. In response, other feminists argue that in emphasizing sameness, liberal feminists run the risk of taking masculine traits and abilities as the norm to which women should aspire. How are we then to evaluate uniquely womens work like childbirth and child rearing? 4. Postcolonial feminists focus on the experiences of women of color. In the tradition of Marxism, this group sees globalization as a continuation of the process known as colonialism or imperialism in previous centuries. Specically, the fall of the Soviet Union and advances in communication technology have enabled global corporate and nancial institutions to bypass state regulations, while the greater permeability of state borders has aided and abetted transnational organized crime, including the global sex trade. Postcolonial feminists contest the Western feminist description of the division between the public and private sphere as a male construct. For women in the developing world, they argue, a clear division does not exist. Men dictate all cultural and societal values. Women have virtually no privacy to which they can retreat. In the public sphere, women are told how to behave in culturally authentic ways if they want to work. For example, in most Muslim countries, women must wear the burka or a suitable head covering. A man can stone his wife to death and have the backing of his community. In some parts of India, a woman is ostracized if she is seen in public alone, without her husband. In Bosnia, her family and community consider a Muslim woman raped in public

by a Serbian soldier worthless. Thus, for women in the developing world, the private sphere per se, separated and apart from the public sphere, does not exist, but is always subsumed into what is happening in the public world, whether it be renewed outbreaks of racism, sexism, or ethnic or religious violence. As a consequence, postcolonial feminists place great emphasis on grassroots movements that try to reach women where they are living to build up private support groups. 5. Postmodern feminists, in line with the critical approach to international political theory, take issue with the very concept of gender. They argue that, like the concept of sex, the concept of gender contains within it biological determinism. Sex is determined by biology, male or female. Gender is culturally determined by society. It embodies how society expects men and women to behave. Gender thus emphasizes relations between men and women that are not biologically determined. However, according to the postmodern feminists, the continued cultural assertion in many societies that men and womens roles are unchangeable or established by God leads those societies to believe these roles are determined by ones sexthat is, by biology. The postmodern feminists urge us to rethink all our gender-based concepts and attitudes and to see them as social constructs that are created and embedded in interlocking systems of male-dominated power. Postmodern feminists disagree with the postcolonial feminists that there is a sisterhood of all women. Rather, they insist that any and every action that a group of women takes must arise from struggle and consensus within that particular group. Instead of looking at womens situation with global concepts and global instruments of change, these theorists assert that we should concentrate on the discrete and individual action of particular groups. As you can see, each of these ve approaches has its strengths and weaknesses. You must decide for yourself which approach offers you the best explanation for womens continuing low status in the world today. To help you decide, lets look at how these approaches can be applied more directly to international relations.
349
Feminist Explanations of Gender Bias in International Relations

All these theories agree that gender, the culturally dened roles society imposes on us, provides the key to our understanding of international relations. Broadly speaking, the aim of feminist theory is to uncover the gender dichotomies that mainstream international relations conceals or rejects. The feminist goal is to map the subconscious male-dominant underside of world politics and to bare it before the public eye. To understand what these theories do, we look at three core areas of international relations (IR): international security, international economics, and environmental security.
Audio Concept Gender www.BetweenNations.org
International Security
How can we understand violence in the world today? Feminist theorists assert that understanding starts with the acknowledgment that virtually all cultures reward men for violence. Realism, feminists argue, is really the strategy and practice of using violence judiciously to achieve a states goals. High politics has always been dominated by men who have perceived the international arena as a dog-eat-dog no-mans-land characterized by a Darwinian ght for the survival of the ttest. In
350
CHAPTER 11
chapter 8, one concept of geopolitics presented involved the struggle for territory. This struggle, say the feminists, is typical of all male creatures in the animal world. Mao Zedong liked to say that Revolution [male violence] is not a dinner party [a female activity]. In mainstream IR, consideration of questions associated with low politics, such as international development, world poverty, womens issues, and human rights, comes after the issues of war and security have been exhaustively discussed. High politics, feminists argue, is to international relations what the national economy and industrial production is to domestic politics. Low politics corresponds to the female or reproductive sphere. Feminist theorists are united in the conviction that this distinction between high and low politics is a distorted way of looking at world politics. They argue that the traditional high politics of international relations is largely irrelevant to todays security concerns. Take the male concept of the state as an independent sovereign entity dened by territorial borders and a select population. Feminist theorists argue that this concept no longer ts the reality of the international arena. The modern world, the feminists say, is highly interdependent and faces multiple threats from so many sources that state independence may no longer be possible or desirable. Will the Balkans be more secure with an independent Kosovo? How sovereign is Afghanistan under virtual occupation by UNprovided troops? The citizens of East Timor may have gained their independence from Indonesia, but they will be facing certain starvation unless international investment revives their economy. The Palestinians have been ghting for independence for over a century, yet their fundamental insecurity is not a military threat from Israel but their own desperate need for economic development, a process that requires working with Israel, not against it. Feminist theorists were rst to argue that modern security is multidimensional and multilevel. The feminist argument for the multidimensional reality of security is represented by international relations feminist scholar J. Ann Tickner. Tickner questions the relevance today of the distinction between state (public) security and individual (private) security. In her view, the heavy emphasis on militarily dened security, common to the practices of the modern state, does not always ensure and may even decrease the security of individuals as well as their natural environments. Individuals, she says, face many forms of insecurity: ethnic conict, poverty, natural catastrophes, local terrorist acts, unemployment, family violence, and environmental degradation. None of these kinds of security are commonly linked with what states have traditionally dened as their national security goals. If the worlds multiple insecurities are to be addressed, virtually all the feminists approaches agree that international relations must be reformulated.18 z In this reformulation, the male emphasis on a states independence, sovereignty, and national or racial distinctness from other states has to go. The postcolonial feminist perspective sees striving for attachment and communityconcerns associated generally with womenas much a part of politics as the desire for independence and self-identication. Building community from the grass roots up is a dimension of international behavior in its own right, and, contrary to the male emphasis on independence and state sovereignty, is a unifying, centralizing, and cooperative activity. z The proliferation of community-building regimes like the European Union in the last half of the twentieth century, and even trade agreements like the World
351
Bibi Mukhtaran
Bibi Mukhtaran (in burka) was sentenced to be raped by her villages tribal council in Pakistan because in June 2002, one of Bibi Mukhtarans brothers was falsely accused of having an affair with a high-status woman. The tribal council determined that the proper punishment for the hypothetical affair was for high-status men to rape one of the boys sisters. So the council ordered Bibi Mukhtaran to be gang-raped, and she was. Rather than commit suicide, Ms. Mukhtaran brought her attackers to court and ordered them to be punished. To rape, she allegedly argued, is morally worse than being raped. The attackers were sentenced to death and Ms. Mukhtaran received the equivalent of more than $8,000 from the president of Pakistan Pervez Musharraf and around-the-clock police protection. She used the money to open schools for girls and through her media connections raised additional money abroad. Her work became famous, and in 2005, she was invited by a Pakistani-American group to the United States to lecture. The Pakistani authorities response to the invitation was to arrest her to prevent her from going, claiming she might say things that would embarrass Pakistan.19
Trade Organization and NAFTA, provide evidence of the relevance of the feminist analysis. We may indeed be moving toward types of international organization that demand different, more inclusive denitions of national sovereignty than we now have. Feminists nd it signicant that Europe is the continent moving fastest toward a new form of state integration and that its integrated institution, the EU, is one of the most aggressive agencies in promoting gender equality. z Feminists also argue that there is a need to modify the realist and liberal views of the world that are based on assumptions of rigid boundary distinctions: levels of analysis, domestic versus foreign policy, internal versus international
352
CHAPTER 11
violence, and the ordered domestic life of the state versus anarchy in the international arena. Postcolonial, socialist, and postmodern feminists alike posit the need to identify interrelationships among all kinds of international actors at all levels of society. Conceptualizing violence as permeating all levels of society can help us rethink our traditional denitions of the state and lead to models that might, for example, provide ways to link domestic violence with regional and world wars. For example, the Serb-Christian rape of Muslim women and the Japanese rape of the Chinese women of Nanking represent individual acts by individual people. They took place in a climate of war, where such acts were praised and celebrated by their respective national governments as appropriate acts within the framework of the national culture. Boys and girls are taught to accept such behavior as the sign of male virility and strength. More than fty years after World War II, the Japanese have not apologized for the rape of Nanking. Feminists argue that the war on terrorism, though seemingly focused on the high politics of national defense and secure state borders, relies more than ever before on low politics for victory. Traditional womens issues, like culture, education, and sense of community at the local level, determine the origins of terrorism and are among the most powerful weapons we have to reduce the probability of the emergence of new terrorists. If only boys attend school and they are taught only the male virtues of violence and retaliation in a pseudo-military educational atmosphere, the likely result is the creation of young soldiers ready to die. The feminist analysis thus bypasses the issues that the United States and the West have raised, like the merits of returning violence for violence and what makes the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq legal or illegal. The solution, for feminists, is to broaden educational opportunities and perspectives. They urge the international community and NGOs to take the leadnot by force but by programs directed at the grass roots up. Some may argue that this position is too idealistic, yet few would deny that education is the only way to change long-held traditional attitudes.
International Economics
For more information see The View From: Women in Poverty www.BetweenNations.org
In the economic sphere, the socialist feminists argue that current models of economic development do not take into account womens particular needs nor the role they play in the development process. It is abundantly clear that the exploitation of womens unpaid labor in the home and local community and their lowerpaid and underpaid labor in the monetary economy have been crucial for the expansion of the global economy. As noted earlier, until recently, world economic data made no effort to assess womens unpaid contribution to a states economy. The UN is working on models to make these kinds of statistics available. Because women have been marginalized in the international economic system, most feminist theorists, especially liberal and socialist feminists, prioritize international issues associated with the achievement of social justice for women. One of the most important objectives of the world womens movement is to overcome womens exclusion from the halls of economic and political power and to promote new forms of economic production based on womens needs and requirements. To use Tickners words once more, Social justice, including gender justice, is necessary for an enduring peace.20 Women are at the forefront of most social justice movements precisely because they sense their exclusion from productive society. Through the Internet, women

have found and maintained contact with women in similar situations all over the globe. For example, today when the World Bank mishandles small loans to women in Ghana, women throughout Africa and Asia know about it. News from the Philippines on how womens groups are helping women victims of spousal abuse leave home and live a new life quickly nds it way to multiple websites that address womens problems.21 Feminists argue that the presence of more women in high places in the international world can bring to international decision making this sense of social justice for the marginal and peripheral. If the new global market system is to work, it must redress inequities of economic and educational opportunity throughout the world, overturning the status quo where women are at the bottom of both hierarchies.
353
Environmental Security
As in the economic area, women have shown themselves the chief organizers and participants in local environmental organizations. In India, Vandana Shiva became world-famous overnight when her group of women, known as Treehuggers, hugged trees they did not want logged in their local communityand stopped the logging. These tactics have now spread worldwide. Men, say the feminists, do things to nature. Men decide to log, build dams, or turn wetlands into farmland. Women, ecofeminists argue, think and act differently (see chapter 2). They could bring to international decision making a sense of the oneness of humankind with the planet and a sense of the need for caring and maintaining the planet for the next generations. It perhaps was not by accident that a former Norwegian woman prime minister, Gro Harlem Brundtland, headed the UN World Commission on Environment and Development that in 1987 published its ndings in a report entitled Our Common Future.22 The report mentioned for the rst time the need for sustainable development if the human species is to survive. Norway is one of the most active countries in the world today in terms of promoting gender equality.
Vandana Siva
Indian feminist environmentalist and fighter for the rights of Indias poor.
354
CHAPTER 11
In summary, the main contribution of women to international relations theory and practice lies in a sense of self that is of and with this Eartha sense of interrelatedness that moves beyond boundary lines and frontiers, a sense of our commonality with the rest of humankind regardless of state borders, and a sense of our being an integral part of the natural world. Why is it that we view these values as womens values? The answer lies in the background and history provided in this chapter. Traditionally, social justice and equality have not been the primary concerns of international relations and arguably are not yet at the top of todays agenda. Feminist theorists argue that these are becoming major issues on the world agenda for two reasons. z The rst is the visibility of a host of new insecurities promoted to the forefront of the international agenda by 9/11. These insecurities relate vertically to individuals, families, and communities more than to the traditional horizontal concept of national security as territorial borders that are militarily safe from another state. These insecurities are forcing the worlds leaders to rethink the traditional and essentially masculine concepts of power, national security, and the anarchy of the international arena. z The second is that women, through international organizations and individual spokespersons, have become leading advocates of social justice, clearly articulating the relationships between social justice, womens rights, and economic fairness. In so doing, they have moved beyond the neoliberal belief in cooperation as a means to ensure global justice to a broader focus on achieving a more equitable world.
Test Prepper 11.3

_____ 1. Feminist theories of international relations are considered gender-biased theories because of their focus on women. _____ 2. Radical feminists focus on cultural factors that explain the status of women in international politics and argue that these factors are a deliberate male construct. _____ 3. Socialist feminists argue that women should not be required to work in the home and that the government should fund programs that make fathers more likely to stay at home with their children. _____ 4. Liberal feminists argue that women are capable of doing everything that men can do and should not be restricted from activities such as combat. _____ 5. Feminists were the rst to argue that modern security is multilevel and multidimensional in nature.
_____ 6. Which of the following would be considered high politics? a. Diplomatic negotiations between two major powers b. Environmental concerns between two countries c. War between states as a result of a boundary dispute d. All of the above _____ 7. Postcolonial feminists a. focus on the experience of women of color b. see globalization as simply a continuation of imperialism c. contest the Western feminist depiction of the division between public and private sphere as a male construct d. do none of the above e. do all of the above
c HOw HAS THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY RESPONDED TO HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS?
355
How Has the International Community Responded to Human Rights Violations?

4 Understand how the international community addresses human rights violations, especially in the case of womens rights.
The previous section argued that the changing nature of high politics brought on by: z The globalization of the economy z The rise of terrorism z Articulate, energetic international womens NGOs have modied the traditional attitudes of the international community toward nonintervention in the domestic affairs of states. Indeed, the UN has responded in different ways depending on the human rights issue. In this section, we continue to use womens rights as the focal point of our chapter discussion and add another area of human rights that has come to the fore in recent years: state violations of human rights.
International Response to Improving the Status of Women around the World

The United Nations has been reluctant to take up the challenge that womens rights are human rights because many states do not agree with this position. Primary among these are the Muslim states, China, and India. One of the tragic consequences of Chinas one-child policy has been the literal murder of millions of girl infants, both unborn and born, because the parents wanted a boy. The government is now trying to remedy the situation with a new program entitled Care for Girls. This program will try to reduce the 117 boys per 100 girls to near parity by 2010 by permitting families to have a second child if the rst child is a girl and by paying families to keep their girl babies.23
World Conferences and International Law

The UN did not directly address womens issues until its rst conference on women held in 1975 in Mexico City. The communiqu from the First World Conference sets a pattern for the international communitys understanding of womens issues. While it admits that women everywhere share the painful experience of receiving or having received unequal treatment it sidesteps the issue of human rights. Instead, it uses womens enormous economic potential as the rationale for providing women with the same opportunities as men to participate in the life of their country and work toward world peace.24 From the rst UN conference on women to the fourth conference in 1995, womens issues were addressed as economic development concerns. z However, out of the rst conference came an important milestone for womens right in the adoption by the UN General Assembly in December 1979 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. The convention, labeled The International Bill of Rights for Women, was signed by 165 states. The United States was not among them.
356
CHAPTER 11
z The second or Copenhagen conference (1980) noted that signs of disparity were beginning to emerge between womens secured legal rights and their ability to exercise these rights. To address these issues, the Action Programme called for stronger national measures to ensure womens ownership and control of property, as well as improvements in womens rights to inheritance, child custody, and loss of nationality.25 z By the third conference in Nairobi, Kenya (1985), the delegates generally recognized that economic development by itself was not going to improve womens status. The conference communiqu attributed the lack of improvement to the failures of development in developing countries and to an increasing gap between rich and poor countries. The Forward-Looking Strategy for Women recognized that women did not enjoy equal rights but did not stress these rights as human rights. Still, gains were made at Nairobi. For one thing, the importance of the role of women in development was recognized and linked to equal treatment in employment, health, and education. As in the previous documents, the communiqu called for the political will to promote development strategies for women that seek to alter the unequal conditions.26 z At the Fourth World Conference (1995) in Beijing, the Action Programme nally identied twelve critical areas of concern where women received unequal treatment. Among these we nd for the rst time the statement that human rights and fundamental freedoms are the birthright of all human beings; their protection and promotion is the rst responsibility of governments.27 As at past conferences, however, there was strong disagreement among the delegates on the issues of human rights, violence against women, girl children, and the role of women in the economy. The Fourth Conference demonstrated more clearly than ever that the developed states view of gender equality differed substantially from that of the rest of the world. Even the developed states were not ready to push for the implementation of womens rights as human rights. Since 1995, the Commission on the Status of Women has adopted resolutions asserting the right of women to housing, and property and land ownership. And Resolution 2002/49 adopted by the Commission on Human Rights asserted womens right to equal ownership, and right of access to and control over land and property.
The Role of Women in Development

A second area where the UN has sought to advance womens rights has been womens critical role in the development process, a theme clearly stated at all four world conferences. With women forming the majority of the worlds poor, it is abundantly clear that unless the international community targets programs to bring them out of poverty, the poor states will remain poor. By the Nairobi conference, development is no longer understood as just economic development but rather as a complex political, economic, and social process. As development experts tried to understand the complexities of development, they saw a need to create a measurement system that would more accurately assess development within countries and provide a more precise comparison of development between countries. The result was the development in the 1990s of ve indices related to poverty and development. These indices combine criteria to develop an entire measurement structure or system. Each index ranks states

according to its selected criteria. A given state may have a slightly different rank on each index. We can thus see immediately where every state is in relation to all the others across all the development indices. For the purposes of this chapter, you must be familiar with three of these indices: z Human Development Index (HDI) z Gender Development Index (GDI) z Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) The HDI provides a comparative measure of a states economic development. HDI is a mix of many factors related to development: GDP and GDP per capita, as measured on purchasing power parities between states (PPPS); life expectancy at birth; combined enrollments in elementary, secondary, and university education; and the adult literacy rate. When all these factors are thrown into the hopper, mixed, and sorted, we nd that in 2001, Norway and Iceland come out at the top of HDI, followed by Sweden, Australia, and the Netherlands. The United States is in seventh place. At the bottom of the list of 174 countries is Sierra Leone, with Niger, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, and Mali ranking only slightly higher. China ranks 104th and India 127th as medium-development countries.28 The GDI for the rst time recognizes the achievements of women in the measurement of human development and statistically illustrates how cultural or economic bias against women depresses a states overall level of economic development. Essentially, the index uses the same data and same statistical measures as HDI but also captures inequalities in achievement between women and men. GDI is HDI adjusted downward for gender inequality. A third index, the GEM, measures the extent to which women have become equal participants with men in leadership positions in the social, economic, cultural, and political life of their country. The GDI and GEM round out our picture of human rights, social justice, and gender equality in the world. The GDI tells us that only a very few countries have a systematic practice of breaking down the barriers to gender equality, with the Scandinavian countries and Australia leading the way. The GEM shows us that, in the last analysis, attitude counts for something. The Scandinavian states occupy the rst ve ranks, indicating they have done the most to bring women into the decision-making process. In the bottom rankings of the sixty-four states that provided data, we nd states with a continuing societal bias against women: Bangladesh, Turkey, and Egypt.29 The indices of human development give us a more rened and accurate comparative picture of social, economic, and political conditions around the world than we have ever had before. Next we show how these indices have contributed to a change in the design of programs to alleviate the gender inequality they attempt to measure.
357
Human Development Index (HDI) An index that provides a comparative measure of a states economic development. It is used in UN comparative economic databases. Gender Development Index (GDI) An index that puts the conditions of women into the measurement of human development. Essentially, the index uses the same data and same statistical measures as HDI but also captures inequalities in achievement between women and men. Gender Empowerment Index (GEM) An index that measures the extent to which women are equal participants with men in leadership positions in the social, economic, cultural, and political life of their country.
Targeted Micro- and Macroinvestments

The indices we have just reviewed are pointers to where international assistance and investment could be most effectively targeted. As rst stated in the communiqu from the First World Conference on Women, improving the status of women requires empowering them at the local level to own land and property, access capital, and go into business.
358
CHAPTER 11
Foreign direct investment (FDI) has been a traditional option, and, since 1990, private nancial ows to developing countries have increased a little over ve times. However, 80 percent of these investments went to just ten developing countries and represented only 2.5 percent of all FDI ows.30 Very few of these investments targeted women directly or indirectly. To help women, the international nancial community seems to be settling on two other complementary and more innovative responses. 1. One strategy is to empower individuals at the local level to become entrepreneurs by providing capital up front. The poorest states support this objective but add that reconstructing the local economy will not work unless the industrialized countries abolish all tariffs for the forty-eight poorest countries so local products of these states can reach the global market. 2. A second answer is to focus on women, the poorest adult members of every society, as the vehicle to turn poverty around. Microinvestment The change in the world nancial communitys attitude from big is best to small may be better is largely attributable to the work of Muhammad Yunus and his invention of microcredit. After Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus nished his studies in the United States, he decided he could do more for his country by researching the causes of poverty than teaching abstract economics to a privileged few. He conceived the idea of microcredit one day in 1976 when he was interviewing a woman who made bamboo stools. He learned that because she had no capital, she borrowed the equivalent of 50 cents to buy the raw materials for the stools. After repaying the middleman, she had a penny left after all her work and the sale of the stools. Yunus found forty-two other women in the same situation. These women were not lazy, he realized; they simply lacked capital. He reached into his own
Microcredit The provision of small loans by a lending institution to individuals.
The Grameen Bank
Bangladeshi women meeting with a representative from the Grameen Bank to obtain microcredit to start a business. Microcredit has helped millions of women around the world lift themselves out of poverty by running small businesses that cater to local needs.

savings and lent each the equivalent of U.S.$5.50. He knew he had to institutionalize this lending process for it to expand and grow, and when no bank would work with him, he started his own experimental project, stafng his bank with his graduate students. In 1979, the Central Bank of Bangladesh was won over and arranged for the Grameen or village project, as it was called, to be serviced from the branch ofces of the seven state-run banks, rst in one province of the country, and, by 1981, throughout the country. Grameen was incorporated as an independent bank in 1983. The bank now has over 7.27 million borrowers, 2,459 branches, and over 500 Grameen spin-offs, including the Full Circle Fund on Chicagos south side whose clientele are mostly welfare mothers who borrow as little as $300 a month.31 Loan repayment at the bank is extremely high, putting the lie to the nancial worlds traditional perception that the poor do not repay their debts. What is more amazing is that 97 percent of its clients have been women. Loaning to women, even in the United States in 1976, was considered in bank circles a risky business. Many states required a male cosigner of the loan. Yet virtually all the women who borrowed from the Grameen project repaid their loans. The Grameen Bank now has initiatives in India, China, the United States, Latin America, particularly in Mexico, Africa, and the Arab world. Today, there are some 10,000 micronance institutions lending an average of less than $300 to 40 million poor borrowers worldwide.32 Critics of micronancing argue that micronancing may provide women with cash and boost their condence but not more much more. For lending really to lift a poor economy off its feet, the money should go to small and medium businesses that create jobs or to encourage savings.33 But there is no doubt that it has become one of the foremost international tools to lift families, particularly women, out of poverty with Bangladesh the star witness to the effects of the program. By 2004, Bangladesh had already achieved gender parity in its primary and secondary schools. Its fertility rate had fallen from 6.4/1000 in 1970 to 3.2/1000 in 2004. The number of deaths of children under ve per 1,000 live births went from 239 in 1970 to 77 in 2004. More than 13,000 women had been elected to local government positions.34 Macroinvestments In the area of health, the World Health Organization and humanitarian NGOs, in cooperation with national health organizations, have eradicated some of the worst communicable diseases and provided minimal health care to the very poor. For example, today, smallpox has been eradicated, and over 90 percent of the worlds children have been vaccinated against tuberculosis (TB) and the major childhood diseases. Unfortunately, in the last five years of the twentieth century, tuberculosis made a comeback, reaching epidemic proportions in Russia. While more men die of TB than women, it is still the leading cause of death from infectious diseases among women.35 A second serious threat to the health of poor women is the AIDS epidemic raging throughout Central Africa, Thailand, and Southeast Asia. States in subSaharan Africa may be losing most of their most active and educated population (over 25 million live with HIV/AIDS), a loss that helps explain the persistent instability, violence, and economic problems in that region. What is less known is that in Africa, the most vulnerable are women of childbearing age. The UN estimates that AIDS has orphaned some 13.2 million African children.36 Moreover, without
359
360
CHAPTER 11
treatment, infected women give birth to infected children, continuing the epidemic. While great advances have been made in the treatment of HIV, the medications are very costly and thus inaccessible to the majority of Africans. The international community has responded generously to the AIDS crisis and other targeted health concerns. A declaration of commitment on HIV/AIDS in 2001 united four nancing streams to fund an international effort to combat AIDS that is estimated to cost $10 billion annually. These streams are: z Domestic state spending on AIDS projects z Bilateral funding with the United States, the leading bilateral donor in terms of absolute dollars z Multilateral initiatives represented by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria z Private-sector funding led by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations large donation to help combat the epidemic. In contrast to the small is better approach of microinvestment to help women improve their situation in the developing economies, the international approach used to ght AIDS is to merge funds from multiple sources into one integrated distribution system.37 The Global HIV/AIDS and Health Fund now estimates that it provides 20 percent of all AIDS funding and 60 percent of all TB funding. And the money keeps coming. The international community with the United States in the lead gave $7 billion to alleviate illness and suffering from the Asian tsunami in 2004. And in January 2006, thirty-ve nations gave $2 billion to stop the spread of Avian inuenza.38 Critics of disease-targeted macroinvestment say that the public health of the worlds poor, especially women and children, will never improve unless the money is reoriented to stopping the brain drain of doctors from the developing world to the developed countries and to tackling the overall organization and delivery of public health. What benet is it if HIV-positive expectant mothers receive drugs to hold infection at bay but cannot obtain even the most rudimentary gynecological care or infant immunization?
The UN and Human Rights Intervention

The preceding section demonstrated that the UN has approached the unequal treatment of women at a global level with resolutions, plans of action, and programs to modify the situation, without directly calling for interfering in the laws, customs, and economies of the worlds states. This approach is typical of its handling of all human rights issues, whether they be the rights of children, indigenous peoples, ethnic minorities, or persons being tortured. Because the UN is not a centralized world government, compliance with international laws adopted under its aegis remains voluntary. When it comes to serious violations of human rights, such as crimes against humanity that are identied as such in international law, the UN has taken a more assertive approach. These violations include genocide and mass murder. The last section considers this question: What can or should the international community do when there is an egregious violation of rights? First we look at aspects of international intervention since World War II and then turn to a discussion of the pros and cons of such actions.

International Intervention
In August 1945, as Allied victory in Europe was secure, the Allied powers met in London to draw up an agreement on the procedure for prosecuting and punishing persons charged with crimes committed during World War II. The resulting Control Council Law No. 10, enacted in December 1945, identied three kinds of international crimes: 1. Crimes against peace 2. War crimes 3. Crimes against humanity Among the crimes identied in Article II, Section C of the document were enslavement, torture, rape, other inhumane acts committed against a civilian population, and persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds whether or not these acts violated the domestic law of the country where the acts were perpetrated. Resolution 96(1) of December 11, 1946, of the newly constituted General Assembly of the United Nations afrmed that genocide was a crime against international law.39 On December 9, 1948, the General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which stated that cases of genocide were to be adjudicated by the state in which the crime had been committed but signatories to the convention under Article 8 could call upon the competent organs of the United Nations to take action ... as they consider appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide.40 The door was open for possible UN intervention.
361
UN Preventive Actions
The human rights conventions clearly do not authorize the UN to intervene in the affairs of sovereign states without just cause. But it can take action, if the Security Council so resolves. Among the many ways the UN has taken action are sanctions, peacekeeping, the Conference on Human Rights (1993), and ad hoc tribunals. In the course of its history, the UN has initiated sanctions against three states for violations of human rights: South Africa, Rwanda, and the former Yugoslavia. Of these, the forty-eight-year sanctions against South Africa resulted in the governments ending white rule in that black majority country. The UN has sent peacekeeping missions to suppress or inhibit violations of human rights to Bosnia in 1992 and to Haiti in 2000. In both cases, the action failed. In 1993, the UN called a World Conference on Human Rights to develop an action program to strengthen adherence to the Universal Declaration and the various human rights conventions. In particular, the conference called attention to the plight of: z National, ethnic, and religious minorities z Indigenous peoples z Women and girl children z Children in general z Migrant workers z Disabled people z Prisoners undergoing torture
362
CHAPTER 11
It further called for human rights education and identies the Centre for Human Rights under the High Commissioner for Human Rights as the coordinating and monitoring agency.
Ad Hoc Tribunals
For more information see Hague Conferences www.BetweenNations.org
The 1990s, however, demonstrated that the realization and practice of human rights, if left to the good will of the states, as they are in all the conventions, would never take place. The horrors of genocide in the Balkans led the UN to go back to the ad hoc tribunals of the period after World War II, when the leaders of Germany and Japan were put on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, established in 1993 at the Hague, represented the third ad hoc tribunal since the 1940s. The new tribunal was empowered to hear cases involving grave breaches of the Geneva Convention, violations of the laws of war, and genocide. (see Figure11.3 for the appropriate conventions) The fourth ad hoc tribunal, established in 1995 in Tanzania, followed the horric genocide in Rwanda. The two recent tribunals have contributed greatly to the establishment of precedent as to what constitutes a grave breach of human rights and to the reinforcement of the concept that justice is necessary for lasting peace. There is now talk of organizing a tribunal to investigate the genocide in Cambodia in the 1970s.
Direct Military Intervention

UN peacekeeping in Bosnia and Haiti broke down because none of the parties wanted to give in, and the UN peacekeepers had no authority to take military action; only states can do that. The action becomes UN sanctioned if the Security Council approves it. Here are six cases of direct military intervention by states where serious breaches of human rights are at issue but not always the stated purpose of the action. 1. When the UN peacekeeping effort broke down in 1996, the United States, with Security Council approval, led a NATO force to Bosnia.
A Cry from the Grave
Coffins containing the identified victims of the July 1995 Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia. In July 1995, the Bosnian Serb army staged a takeover of the small spa town and its surrounding region that the UN had made a safe area. The massacre occurred under the eyes of the UN peacekeepers. Over a period of five days, the Bosnian Serb soldiers separated Muslim families and systematically murdered over 7,000 men and boys in fields, schools, and warehouses. The massacre is considered the worst case of genocide in Europe since World War II.

2. In 1999, evidence of Serbian attempts to ethnically cleanse the Kosovar population in the Serb province of Kosovo encouraged U.S. President Bill Clinton to ask the Security Council for another peacekeeping force. His proposal was stify resisted by Russia and China, so the United States led a second NATO military initiative in the Balkans, this time without UN approval. 3. In 1999, following the launching of a campaign of violence by Indonesian security forces after the East Timorese voted in a UN-sponsored referendum on independence, the Security Council formally authorized a multinational force under the command of Australia to prevent mass killing and provide security for the country. 4. In 2002, France unilaterally used troops in the Ivory Coast to stop a humanitarian disaster and to ensure a ceasere in a civil war there. In early 2003, the Security Council approved the French action, and a UN peacekeeping force was formed to assist the French. 5. In 2003, U.S. President George W. Bush requested Security Council approval to send troops to Iraq and to remove Saddam Husseins weapons of mass destruction and to effect regime change toward a democratic order. Opposition from France, Germany, and Russia ruled out any Security Council approval or NATO initiative. The United States went ahead and intervened with what it called a coalition of willing states. 6. In 2007, the Security Council approved intervention in the war-torn area of Darfur in Sudan, but was refused permission to send troops by the Sudanese government. These events suggest that the UN has become more assertive in its response to violations of human rights, but only as long as the big ve in the Security Council are in consensus on military intervention and the member state is in no position to refuse the troops.
363
For more information see Nuremberg Trial www.BetweenNations.org
Current Arguments for and against International Military Intervention

Today, there seems to be no international consensus on UN intervention. Before the invasion of Iraq, most nations thought that intervention to stop agrant human rights abuses was appropriate even if that intervention violated the sovereignty of UN member-states. But opposition to this policy was building with the U.S. decision to bomb Serbia and invade Kosovo. One of the staunchest defenders of the right of UN intervention is former UN Secretary-General Ko Annan. On a number of occasions, he has offered a persuasive vision of a world community that sets human rights equal to or above the right of state sovereignty. In his view, the Charter of the United Nations empowers the Security Council to use force in the common interest. What is the common interest? The UN Charter says that it is human security. Annan argues the world cannot stand idly by when people are suffering from the scourge of war.41 Annan sees global human security as linked to individual security, which in turn is linked to good governance and respect for human rights.42 He thus urged intervention in Darfur in Sudan but adamantly opposed the U.S. intervention in Iraq over the issue of WMDs. Others point out that UN interventions have been few and highly selective. All involved small states but not all small states with severe human rights violations. There was no intervention in Rwanda, for example, when the Hutu and Tutsi tribes practiced genocide on each other. The Security Council is of split opinion on intervention in Sudan. Of the states the UN did take military action against, one involved
364
CHAPTER 11
a brand-new state with a nonfunctioning government, Bosnia; the second involved the formation of a new state, East Timor, from an old state with serious social and economic problems, Indonesia; and the third, the Ivory Coast, was a failed state and a former French colony. Equally important, the organization of the UN is founded on state sovereignty. If the UN has the power to intervene at the discretion of the Security Council, the whole state system is put at risk, and global governance becomes reality. In summary, some argue that the UN Charter empowers the world community to take up arms in cases of serious violations of human rights. Others argue that state sovereignty takes priority. The interests of the dominant, stronger states rule the world, as they always have. The stronger states pick and choose what instances of human rights violations they act on based on the relative power capability of the state so accused. Can you identify the liberals and the realists in the argument? This section shows that the UN approach to intervention in response to violations of human rights has been far less consistent than its approach to economic and legal remediation in the case of womens rights. Which approach, in your opinion, brings the world closer to the realization of global justice?
Test Prepper 11.4

_____ 1. The UN has been reluctant to view womens rights as human rights because many countries (including India, China, and Muslim states) do not agree with this premise. _____ 2. The UN has held four conferences on women; prior to the rst conference held in 1975 the UN had not directly addressed womens rights. _____ 3. The womens Bill of Rights was a product of the UNs rst conference on women. _____ 4. Microcredit has traditionally ignored the role women may play in a national economy. _____ 5. The AIDS epidemic is the single most deadly infectious disease for women in the developing world.
_____ 6. Which of the following UN indices of economic and political development takes into account womens participation in leadership positions in the social, economic, cultural, and political life of their country? a. GENI b. HDI c. GDI d. GEM e. None of the above _____ 7. In which of the following cases did the UN Security Council authorize troops to address a human rights situation, but the troops were rejected by the country where the violations were occurring? a. Bosnia in 1996 b. Serbia (regarding Kosovo) in 1999 c. Iraq in 2003 d. Sudan in 2007 e. None of the above
Case Study
The Global Sex Trade: A Violation of Human Rights or Business as Usual?
JOIN THE DEBATE
365
Join the Debate Womens Rights Are Not Human Rights

OVERVIEW
This chapter stresses that although there has been a general movement toward recognition by the international community that womens rights are human rights, the United States and other states have not signed the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women. The failure to ratify the convention suggests that most nations do not accept it as representative of their approach to womens issues. If we think about the reasons, we can divide them into at least four categories: 1. Culture and tradition: Muslim women scholars cite three cornerstones of Islamic culture fundamental to Islamic society: the extended family system, the welfare of the group over the individual, and the differentiation of sex roles. In the extended family system, each family member has obligations to promote the welfare of the family and also nds in the family the support at all generational levels for the problems attending that level, whether it be choice of spouse, child care, or the care of the aged. Such a tradition promotes individual integration into a larger whole. Individualism, as practiced in the West, is foreign to the Muslim tradition. Finally, Islam insists on differentiation of sex roles. Muslims are leery of incorporating womens rights into a unisex UN human rights framework for fear that women all over the world will lose their feminine identity.1 In Asia, where populations have survived for centuries on strong extended families, the welfare of the whole is also considered more important than the desires of any individual. Women occupy a special place in the family and the home, and many men and women believe that legislation must support that place, not undermine it. In India, womens entry into male jobs and careers has occurred as the number of suicides, wife beatings, and other violence to and by women has increased.2 Hindu womens problems of wife burning and girl infanticide, sensationalized by the Western media, are largely attributable to the general subjugation of women worldwide. An Indian study found that the United States leads the rest of the world in familial femicide. Murders of women committed by close family relations in the United States are 15 per year per million population. The rate in Pakistan is 6.44 per million. Indias is 6.25 per million. Arguably, greed and excessive need for control are the underlying causes, not cultural or religious factors.3 The unisex roles identied as signs of womens liberation are all male sex roles. The West has urged success in career, as a nancial provider, and as a decision maker as universal values for the whole society, while the roles dealing with child care, a nurturing environment, and social relationships have been downplayed and even despised. 2. Economics and politics: In no country have women achieved unisex rights with men. The closest, according to UN statistics, are the Scandinavian countries, which have small, homogenous populations and a harsh winter climate that prizes cooperation for survival over conict and tension. However, the Western world exemplies the fallacy of pushing for womens rights as human rights. In the industrialized states, violence against women, including child beating, wife beating, and wife murder, is on the rise even as women dominate the institutions of higher learning and graduate to high status careers. Somewhere in America a woman is battered, usually by her intimate partner, every 15 seconds. At least four million incidents of domestic violence against women are reported every year.4 The United States is a country that tries to provide every opportunity for women in the economic and political sphere. Yet, at home, women are not receiving the dignity and respect due them. Local newspapers in the United States all too often report murders of women and children by close male acquaintances. 3. Womens rights and service in the military: If womens rights are equal to human rights, women will be
366
CHAPTER 11
forced to serve in the military where there is a draft. In countries where they participate in some form of combat, such as ying planes, women are questioning the appropriateness of their role. Women have always defended their home and family. In a world fraught with terror, women should not be the ones to sacrice their lives for the next generation. 4. To ensure the human family continues, throughout history, women have needed specic rights accorded to them alone to protect the institution of motherhood and the education of children. Where women are largely viewed negatively, as other than males, as in the Western world, we see these institutions downgraded. In all countries where women are achieving so-called unisex quality with men, the birthrate has plummeted. Womens rights are not human rights. We need a Universal Declaration of Womens Rights!
NoTES
1. Dr. Louis Lanya al Farugi, Islamic Tradition and the Feminist Movement: Confrontation or Cooperation, Islam for Peace, http://www.jannah.org/ sisters/feminism.html. 2. Hinduism and the status of women, http://hindu website.com/hinduwomen.htm. 3. Information cited from a study by Hindus Against the Abuse of Women, presented at the Second International Conference on Bride Burning and Dowry Deaths in India, Women in Hinduism, http://www .atributetohinduism.com/Women in Hinduism.htm. This information is also found in Violence Against Women: A Violation of Human Rights, A Resource Guide to the Video. Institute for Development Training, RFD 1, Box 267 B Route 230, Trention, Maine 04605, http://www.curowrc.org/06.contributions/ 1.contrib_en/27.contrib.en.htm. 4. Statistics from V-Day Loyola, Womens Studies and Womens Resource Center, Loyola University, New Orleans, http://www.loyno.edu/womens.center/ vday.html.
Using any of the ve feminist theories of international relations, defend or refute the arguments of this thesis.

1 2 is meant 3 by the 4 term 5 human 6rights?7Understand 8 19 What the origins of these rights and the international conventions that support their existence. 2 10 3 4 why womens 5 6 7 9 10 Understand rights should be8given special standing in the study of world politics.
Human rights are rights that human beings claim at birth and that governments ought not to take away. A sense of justice, or equality, informs how states address these rights. Justice may be seen as due process, with its emphasis on a legal system in which everyone is treated equally under the law regardless of wealth, race, sex, or religion. Human rights, the principles or standards on which due process is built, are set forth in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and in international humanitarian law. Justice, as fairness, seeks to redress the inequality of condition among human beings by redistributing resources.
Womens history is one of almost universally low political, economic, and social status. No culture has considered women human in the same way it considers men to be human. Few women have been inuential individuals, and most of these were upper-class women, women rulers, or, in rare instances, philosophers and writers. The situation did not change with the Industrial Revolution. In the 1800s, women in Europe and America organized to protest their lack of equal rights. The womens movement dates from 1848. It had essentially two branches:
- The American and British movement focused on due process - The continental European movements focused on equality of condition, utilizing Marxist arguments to advance their cause.
367
While the modern-day womens movement has helped achieve economic progress and human rights for women in many countries, the United Nations has yet to endorse the statement that womens rights are human rights.
4 6 types 7 8 theories 9 10 how Identify the5different of feminist and they approach the topic of human rights.
Feminist theories of international relations help us uncover gender bias in world politics. There are ve kinds of feminist international relations theory: radical feminism, socialist feminism, liberal feminism, postcolonial feminism, and postmodern feminism. We used these approaches to uncover gender bias in three areas of international relations: international security, the international economy, and the global environment. We noted that feminist theories emphasize cooperative centralizing tendencies in world politics over what feminists see as divisive decentralizing tendencies in male theories of international relations.
- The proling of womens issues in four world conferences on women - The adoption (in 1979) by the UN General Assembly of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women - Development of a comprehensive data-collection system that measures and compares states economic development, the status of women, and the empowerment of women in public life (HDI, GDI, and GEM indices) - The elaboration of investments and aid programs specically targeted toward women, microinvestment strategies in the economic area, and combined macrofunding strategies to combat HIV/AIDS
The United Nations has responded to state violations of human rights in the following ways:
- Passage of international laws, after World War II, identifying crimes that can be prosecuted at the international level: crimes of war, crimes of peace, and crimes against humanity - Sanctions, peacekeeping, ad hoc international tribunals, Conference on Human Rights - Direct intervention (There have been three cases of UN intervention on charges of a states violation of human rights and commission of crimes against humanity, and two instances of non-UN sanctioned intervention.)
5 7 international 8 9community 10 addresses Understand how the human rights violations, especially in the case of womens rights.
Current arguments for and against intervention pit issues of human rights against state sovereignty.
The international community has responded in different ways to different kinds of violations. In the case of womens rights, the UN has responded as follows:

12
International Political Economy and Developed Countries
Global Trade Occurs on a Massive Scale, 24-7
Learning Objectives
1
Identify the different views held by advocates of free trade and protectionism; explain how global trade is managed.
Be able to dene international political economy and understand its key theories.
368
The world is flat.

Thomas Friedman
Chapter Outline
What Is International
Political Economy?
Theoretical Perspectives on International Political Economy
How Does the Global Financial

System Work?
A Brief History of Currency Unifying a Region: Europes Single Currency Managing the International Monetary System
What Are Free Trade and

Protectionsim?
The Policy of Free Trade An Analysis of Protectionism Trading Blocs Protectionist Trends Managing the Global Trading System The World Trade Organization
Understand how the international monetary system is managed, identifying the primary international institutions that handle monetary issues.
Where Politics and Economics Meet
o major event around the world can be explained without considering the links between politics and economics. Economics inuences every political issue, and every economic issue takes place within a political context, whether the event involves war, trade disputes, international loans, the expansion of a security organization, or the decision to create a single currency for many countries. Surprisingly, though, undergraduate students majoring in economics do not receive much training in politics. Likewise, political science or government majors are not required to take many economics courses. Whats more, few undergraduate political science and economic majors learn very much about politicaleconomic links at the international level. Unfortunately, the real world is not divided as neatly as it is for many college majors. n
370
Key Terms
CHAPTER 12
INTERNATiONAL POLiTicAL EcONOMY AND DEVELOPED COUNTRiES
What Is International Political Economy?

1 Be able to dene international political economy and understand its key theories.
The eld of study that explores economic and political links at the international level is called international political economy (IPE). The main focus of IPE analysts centers around two concerns: 1. The way international inuences affect domestic politics and economics 2. The impact of domestic forces on global political and economic relations The centralizing and decentralizing forces discussed in each chapter of this book are at work in international political economy as well. Decentralizing forces, for example, are evident in the anti-globalization protests that challenge the way rich companies allegedly exploit people in poor countries. As we saw in chapter 1, the anti-globalization movement is a good example of citizen activism facilitated by the proliferation of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Decentralizing forces are also present in the growing questions raised about the value of international organizations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Centralizing forces are, of course, also at work. For example, thirteen European countries now share a single currency (the euro), and, as we saw in chapter 6, the European Union expanded its membership in the past few years from fteen to twenty-seven countries. Centralizing forces are in evidence as the worlds states seek global trade agreements through the World Trade Organization (WTO) and submit to its rulings in trade disputes among themselves. The online case study for this chapter (www.BetweenNations.org) explores these centralizing and decentralizing dynamics with a look at the global sugar trade. The way these opposing forces interact will help differentiate the twenty-rst century from previous centuries. As you have probably guessed by now, IPE is an extremely comprehensive eld. To make sense of its complexity, scholars have developed several theoretical approaches. As we discussed in chapter 2, without theory, we would be wandering aimlessly in an ocean of seemingly unconnected ideas, facts, and gures. In this chapter, therefore, we revisit some of the theories already covered in this book as well as introduce three major IPE approaches: economic liberalism, neomercantilism, and the rational choice approach. A central issue raised in the next section is the merits and shortcomings of free trade and its opposite, protectionism. The section then looks at the extent to which global trade is managed by states and international organizations. Particular attention is devoted to the WTO. The focus of the next discussion is the operation of the global nancial system. We explore the value of currencies and exchange rates and describe the roles of the World Bank and the IMF. Because IPE is a very large topic, this chapter emphasizes the political-economic relationship among developed countries, and the next chapter focuses on the IPE of development and the relationship of the worlds rich and poor countries.
International Monetary Fund (IMF) p. 370 Bretton Woods system p. 374 comparative advantage p. 376 mercantilism p. 377 neo-mercantilism p. 377 infant industry p. 378 rational choice approach p. 378 tariff p. 380 quota p. 381 nontariff barriers (NTBs) p. 381 regional trading bloc p. 382 most-favored-nation principle (MFN) p. 385 Uruguay Round p. 385 intellectual property rights p. 385 World Bank p. 393 national champion p. 397
International Monetary Fund (IMF) The United Nations agency responsible for overseeing the entire international monetary system. The IMF promotes exchange rate stability and orderly exchange relations among its member countries.
For more information see International Political Economy www.BetweenNations.org
Theoretical Perspectives on International Political Economy

We know that international political economy is an extremely complex matter; how should we go about trying to understand it? There is no single answer to this question. With a topic as comprehensive as IPE, it is not surprising that scholars differ in their approaches.
c WHAT IS INTERNATiONAL POLiTicAL EcONOMY?

Three Approaches to IPE
Among the most valuable approaches to IPE are economic liberalism, neomercantilism (or the economic nationalist perspective), and neo-Marxism. Each perspective begins with its own assumptions, explaining IPE events in different ways, offering different policy prescriptions, and making different predictions about the future. This chapter also introduces an increasingly popular method for studying IPE topics: the rational choice approach. Neo-Marxism is described only briey below; it is taken up in greater depth in chapter 13 because of that chapters emphasis on relations between developed and developing countries and its exploration of why there are rich countries and poor countries. The other IPE approaches are also introduced here and amplied as the chapter proceeds. 1. Economic liberalism grows out of the classical economics tradition. Students who have taken a basic microeconomics course will nd many elements of this approach familiar. For example, microeconomic assumptions about human behavior assert that human beings are rational actors and that they try to maximize their utility, or satisfaction (in terms of prots, for example). This approach assumes the government should play a minimal role in regulating the economy and that countries should be free to trade with each other. Note that economic liberalism should not be confused with political idealism, described in chapter 1. 2. Neo-mercantilism is associated, in part, with the realist tradition in international relations because its goal is to maximize national inuence. It emphasizes the role of the state in helping guide its own economy in one direction or another so as to increase its power. Neo-mercantilism does not necessarily support the idea that countries should be free to trade with each other. For example, neo-mercantilists tend to support exports as much as possible while protecting the states companies with barriers to imports. 3. Neo-Marxism highlights the role of major classes of people in society, particularly the capitalist and working classes. This approach assumes that powerful economic actors drive political, economic, and social development by enlisting the political support of weaker states to further their own power. NeoMarxists believe liberal economic policies, such as free trade, can only contribute to the impoverishment of the worlds poorest because global corporations make their biggest prots by exploiting (underpaying) workers. A popular branch of Marxism is the dependency approach (see chapter 2), which centers on the exploitative capitalist relationships between rich core countries and poor periphery countries as the causes of poverty (see chapter 13 for further information on neo-Marxism and dependency). The three approaches described above dominate the eld of IPE. However, another approach is also widely used and deserves special attention. The rational choice approach, like economic liberalism, is based on microeconomic assumptions about human behavior, but it emphasizes the domestic political sources of international economic policymaking. The rational choice approach focuses on what motivates individuals or companies (for example, prots) and the extent to which individuals and groups in society benet or lose as a result of government economic policies. The rational choice approach must not be thought of as a paradigm in its own right, as it is an outgrowth of economic liberalism. Some prefer to call it a method for studying IPE issues. In any event, we highlight it later in the
371
For more information see Why It Matters to You: Should I Care About Intellectual Property Rights? www.BetweenNations.org
372
CHAPTER 12
TABLE 12.1 Theoretical Approaches to Understanding IPE

Economic Liberalism, Classical Economics
Position on free trade General comments about the political economy
Free trade is good.
Neo-mercantilism, Mercantilism, Realism

Free trade is good if it serves state interests. The state uses the economy to increase its power.
Rational Choice, Public Choice

Free trade may be good for some groups in society but not all. Individuals in the market and the state are rational actors seeking to improve their satisfaction (utility).
Marxism & Neo-Marxism

Free trade is bad.
Free market principles should dominate the political economy. Note: This liberalism is different from political liberalism (which grew out of political idealism). The individual or the firm.
Economic factors dominate politics and society.
Most important unit of analysis Expectation about the IPE
The state.
Interest groups, individuals (demand), and government officials (supply) Cooperation or conflict, depending on the demands for either alternative.
Class (capitalist and proletariat) or the international capitalist system. Inherent conflict, especially class conflict; revolutionary change until Marxist utopia.
Harmonious and selfregulating; international economic integration through the world market.
Inherent struggle among states; regulated by a balance of power.
Audio Concept Markets www.BetweenNations.org
chapter because of its special insights into the dynamics of IPE, especially the role played by domestic political actors. A common theme running through all theories of IPE is the interaction of states and markets.1 The term states refers to the governmental or public aspects of IPE issues, while the term markets reects the economic and private elements. The IPE approaches covered in this chapter deal, in different ways, with the interaction of states and markets. Table 12.1 compares these approaches to IPE. In the next section, we look at the historical roots of todays IPE by reviewing the Bretton Woods system, and we examine more closely the liberal economic philosophy that has dominated much of the thinking about the world economy for the past sixty years. We explore the pros and cons of free trade and use other IPE theoretical approaches to make better sense of the global trading system and the international monetary system.
c WHAT ARE FREE TRADE AND PROTEcTiONiSM?

Test Prepper 12.1
373
_____ 1. Analysts of international political economy (IPE) focus strictly on the way international inuences affect domestic politics and economies. _____ 2. Economic liberalism assumes that government should play a minimal role in regulating the economy. _____ 3. Neo-mercantilists tend to support exporting as much as possible while at the same time protecting domestic companies through import barriers. _____ 4. The rational choice approach emphasizes the international political sources of economic policymaking.
_____ 5. Which of the following IPE theories argues that free trade should be pursued only when it is in the states interest to do so? a. Economic liberalism b. Neo-mercantilism c. Rational choice d. Neo-Marxism e. All of the above _____ 6. Which of the following IPE theories argues that the nature of IPE is inherently conictual and centered around the class struggle? a. Economic liberalism b. Neo-mercantilism c. Rational choice d. Neo-Marxism e. None of the above
What Are Free Trade and Protectionism?

2 Identify the different views held by advocates of free trade and protectionism; explain how global trade is managed.
For over a century, scholars and political leaders around the world have debated the merits and shortcomings of global free trade, a system in which companies can freely buy and sell goods and services across national borders without much governmental interference. Our theories of IPE take conicting positions in this debate, and politicians rarely agree as to the ultimate costs and benets of free trade and its opposite, protectionism (restrictions on trade). We begin our exploration of this debate with the rationale for global free trade and then discuss the rationale for protectionism. Along the way, we look at how countries protect their companies and workers, whether regional trading blocs are good or bad for the global economy, and whether protectionism is on the rise around the world.
The Policy of Free Trade

In order to understand the fundamental debate between free traders and pro tectionists, a bit of historical background is needed. As with much of our understanding of contemporary international relations, World War II and the period immediately after it are crucial.
The Roots of Free Trade

Anticipating victory even through the turbulent months of 1944, the Allies in World War II met at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to discuss how to regulate the
374
CHAPTER 12
Bretton Woods system An international political-economic system of rules, procedures, and institutions designed to foster a liberal global economy through cooperative trade and monetary policies; named after the location of the original meeting in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire.
postwar international political economy. The principal philosophy that infused the discussions was economic liberalism. Essentially, the lesson political and economic leaders drew from the 1930s and 1940s was that economic policies limiting free trade (protectionist policies) were chiey responsible for both the Great Depression and World War II. They felt that a radically different global economic system was needed to prevent similar tragedies. The new system was designed to foster a more constructive and cooperative environment among states and their companies. Instead of each state looking out purely for its own economic interest and selshly seeking its own benet at every turn, common rules should be established covering a wide variety of trade and monetary issues and specic economic sectors. In light of our discussion about national sovereignty and international law and organizations in prior chapters, it is worth emphasizing that the founding states in the Bretton Woods system decided to be bound by international rules even if it sometimes meant unfavorable rulings. What emerged from the Bretton Woods discussions were the main global trade and nancial organizations we have today. In the international monetary area, the Bretton Woods delegates set up the World Bank (also referred to as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development) and the International Monetary Fund. In the trade area, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was established.2 The World Trade Organization, the successor to GATT,3 came into existence in 1995. The key points of the Bretton Woods system are summarized below: z Free trade among countries is encouraged and protectionist barriers to trade minimized. z U.S. leadership ensures the smooth functioning of international trade and monetary relations. z International monetary relations are based on a xed convertibility into gold. That is, a specic amount of gold (1 ounce) can be exchanged at a xed rate against the U.S. dollar ($35). This arrangement is called the gold standard. z International institutions are established to encourage both international free trade (GATT) and stable international monetary relations (the World Bank and the IMF). Thus, instead of each country going it alone, as was done prior to World War IIwith disastrous consequencescountries trade and invest more freely with one another. The emergence of the Bretton Woods system provides another example of the dual forces of centralization and decentralization. On the one hand, Bretton Woods can be seen as a centralizing force because of the greater cooperation and coordination of the powerful (non-communist) states. On the other hand, the reduced government interference of states in international trade means that companies are much freer to go about their business, so to speak, in directions of their own choosing. The system put in place at Bretton Woods in 1944 still affects world politics and economics. Was the Bretton Woods system successful? The answer depends on ones time frame. Through the 1950s and 1960s, the world experienced a historically unprecedented economic boom. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, the Bretton Woods system frayed and then eventually was torn apart by economic strains in the United States and changes in the rest of the international political economy.

Despite the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, two of its important features are still very much alive, and they both maintain an important place in IPE. z First, the notion of an open, liberal international economy still holds considerable appeal for much of the world. For example, many of the former communist countries in central and eastern Europe made so many free marketoriented changes that they qualied for membership in the European Union in 2004. z Second, the international institutions set up to help increase state-to-state cooperation and manage global trade and monetary relations continue to play vital roles.
375
The Rationale for Free Trade

People who grow up in capitalist countries are typically raised to believe that companies should be allowed to buy and sell goods in other countries without government interference. Although they may not understand why this should be the case, they generally feel strongly that trade among companies in different countries should be possible. We offer two theoretical underpinnings of this belief, both of which were central to the leaders of the Bretton Woods meetings in 1944.
For more information see Free Trade www.BetweenNations.org
Free Trade Benefits Everyone

According to the economic liberalism approach to IPE, global free trade benets both big and small states and both the developed countries and developing countries. The expansion of world trade over time tends to support to this view. For example, between 1948 and 1997, global trade increased at an annual rate of 6 percent, and total trade in 1997 was fourteen times the level of 1950.4 According to supporters of this view, many benets that come from an open international trading system derive from competition. Competition among companies for your hard-earned dollars leads to several advantageous outcomes. z It can help reduce the price of goods and services. z It can help increase the quality of available goods and services. z It can increase the variety of goods and services sold. Competition among businesses can also make companies more efcient. These economic benets of competition can occur at both the domestic level and at the international level. From the economic liberal perspective, trade restrictions can impede the efcient use of resources and distort trade, to the detriment of all types of consumers. For example, on a global scale, it is estimated that farm trade restrictions by developed countries cost developing countries $1 trillion a year.5 Because of limited competition in the global sugar trade, the price for rened sugar in the United States is 250 percent higher than the world price. In Europe, domestic prices are 300 percent higher than the world price, and in Japan, prices are more than 900 percent higher.6 An example that helps demonstrate the advantages of global competition involves two of the worlds largest airplane producers. In late 1998, United Airlines threatened its main airplane supplier, Boeing, with going to the competition, Airbus Industrie of Europe. According to Andy Studdert, United Airlines senior vice president for eet operations, United told Boeing to improve quality and support, or United will be forced to use Airbus. In the case of airplanes, such threats matter
376
CHAPTER 12
enormously because planes cost so much; the cost of the planes ordered in one deal can reach $75 million or more.7 Threats of going to the foreign competition should occur more often in the future if the globalization process continues throughout the twenty-rst century. Economic liberalism is not the only approach that supports global free trade. For example, some (but not all) feminists believe trade restrictions can have a negative impact on female workers. Restrictions on textile exports to Western countries, for instance, can limit the potential earning power of millions of poor women working in the developing world.8 Neoliberal economists have a common saying about global free trade: A rising tide lifts all boats. No matter how big or small the boats are, the tide will lift them all. The analogy implies that global free trade will benet both the economically powerful states (big boats) and the developing countries (small boats). This notion is linked to two important concepts in economics and IPE. 1. Positive-sum game: Because a rising tide lifts all boats, a global free trading system is considered a positive-sum gamea game all of the players can win. In reality, of course, not everyone can win, but economic liberalism suggests that, in the long run, there will be far more winners than losers. As discussed below, this prediction contradicts the neo-mercantilist view, which sees the IPE as a zero-sum game; a win for one company (or state) must mean a loss for another company (or state). 2. Free Trade Promotes Comparative Advantage: The second important concept is the notion of comparative advantage, popularized by nineteenth-century British economist David Ricardo. In a liberal international economy, the theory goes, if countries specialize in what they do best and if no barriers to trade exist, then everyone will be better off. This is another example of how economic liberalism believes global free trade is a positive-sum game. In such an environment, free trade will lead to the best use of resources and an optimum distribution of wealth among countries. To demonstrate this key point, imagine a country that excels in making computers and another that excels in growing wheat. Comparative advantage tells us that if both countries specialize in what they do best and then trade with each other, they will both be better off than if they didnt trade at all. This holds true even if one country is better at making computers and at growing wheat, as the country will have more of both computers and wheat than it would without trade. In the end, though, for comparative advantage to work, trade between countries must not be blocked by trade barriers, such as quotas and tariffs (discussed below). Thanks in part to the application of these ideas, a growing number of products are losing their national identity. For example, Americans might think that buying a Ford means that they are buying an American car. However, only 30 percent of the parts of this car might be American. The General Motors brand Chevrolet uses the marketing slogan An American Revolution, but the Chevy Aveo is made in South Korea, and six other General Motors cars, including four different Chevrolets are made in Mexico. Six other GM cars, including three more Chevys are built in Canada.9 A liberal global economy has also led to foreign companies making cars in the United States. According to Toyota, for example, the company has ten factories in the United States employing more than 380,000 people with a total investment of about $15 billion. As a result, as much as 80 percent of a U.S.built Toyota Camry
Comparative advantage In a liberal international economy, the notion that countries should specialize in what they produce most efciently and/or at lowest cost compared to other countries.

comes from the United States. In all, almost fty different foreign cars, including some BMWs, Hondas, Nissan, and Saabs are built in the United States.10
377
An Analysis of Protectionism
Are you convinced of the merits of global free trade? Most people are not. In fact, if you follow international trade at all, you know that states actually create many barriers to free trade. In this section, we offer several theoretical rationales for trade restrictions as well as examples of the protectionist tools governments use.
The Mercantilist and Neo-mercantilist Views of Protectionism

Mercantilism and its modern variant, neo-mercantilism, offer insights into the question of why so many protectionist policies exist today. These IPE approaches emphasize the power of the state, assume that a strong economy is vital to the political strength of the state, and contend that, as a result, the state should play an important role in guiding the economy. This contrasts with the economic liberalism approach, which calls for minimal state intervention in the economy. Mercantilist policies were used in Europe from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries to solidify national unity and increase the wealth and power of the state. Among these policies were the acquisition of precious metals, notably gold and silver, and the implementation of protectionist measures, such as tariffs, both of which helped ll state treasuries. The mercantilist approach helps explain the rise of the German state in the nineteenth century. Feeling the need to catch up with its rivals, especially France and Britain, the German state organized its economy and society in order to develop a more competitive industrial base. Neo-mercantilism in the twentieth century evolved from the Great Depression, the end of the gold standard, and, later, from a general disillusionment with global free trade that had set in by the 1970s. In the postWorld War II era, states exhibited elements of neo-mercantilism because they feared other states would prosper more and hence become more powerful. To improve chances for survival in the harshness of global competition, neo-mercantilists called for the state to help overcome the economic problems of the day. Thus, the neo-mercantilist recommendation is to try to manage international trade with policies that protect the state and its industries and to minimize the relative economic gains of other states.11
Mercantilism An approach to the international political economy that emphasizes the power of the state. A national strategy developed in the seventeenth century to increase state power and wealth, primarily through the accumulation of precious metals. Neo-mercantilism A contemporary form of mercantilism in which the state plays an important role in ensuring economic growth and stability. It is normally associated with protectionist policies and may involve import substitution and export promotion strategies. The mercantilist focus on precious metals is of relatively little importance for neo-mercantilism.
The Rationale for Protectionism

Neo-mercantilism typically involves the use of protectionist policies, or policies that restrict imports from other countries, and most governments around the world strongly support such policiesincluding states, like the United States and Japan, that otherwise lead the way in global free trade. Two broad explanations help account for this. z First, some countries say it is dangerous to abandon the production of a certain product because another country does it more efciently. (This is a criticism of comparative advantage.) For national security reasons, for instance, a country may want to produce certain things no matter what. Food security and the guarantee of home production of weapons for national defense are two good examples. In addition, with free trade, countries may end up specializing in economic sectors that are not helpful to their overall economy. Tourism offers one such example. Specializing in agriculture (such as coffee) or raw
378
CHAPTER 12
materials (such as copper) can make a country particularly vulnerable to price uctuations over time, and many countries believe specialization can threaten their economic security. Countries that rely too heavily on oil exportsfrom Russia to Norway to Mexicohave, at times, also had trouble because of sustained periods of low oil prices. Nigeria, for example, lost over $2 billion in a ten-month period in 1998 due to low oil prices. This drop in oil revenue was a major blow to the governments budget and planning.12 z A second major reason states support protectionism is to achieve a diversied economythat is, an economy that does not depend on only one or two products. One rationale for protectionism that seeks to enhance diversication is called the infant industry argument. A state considering building a national car company from scratch, for example, might feel international competition is too stiff. Trying to enter the global car market from scratch is almost impossible, given the existence of such behemoths as General Motors, Ford, Toyota, Honda, Daimler Chrysler, and Volkswagen. The idea behind the infant industry argument is that the government should provide temporary help until the infant industry grows up. In the 1970s and 1980s, for example, the Japanese government helped block imports to strengthen the Japanese telecommunications and computer manufacturing sectors.13 When the infant industry is mature enough to compete on its own internationally, state support is supposed to end. Often it does not, however, and the infant industry argument can simply be a cover for traditional protectionism.
Infant industry A government and business strategy in which a new industry is granted protection from foreign competition so it will eventually be able to compete internationally on an equal footing.
The Rational Choice Approach

Rational choice approach An approach to IPE based on microeconomic assumptions about rational human behavior and emphasizing the domestic political sources of international economic policymaking.
Another explanation of why countries use protectionist policies is offered by the rational choice approach (also called the public choice approach). This approach to IPE shares many features of economic liberalism. However, the rational choice approach emphasizes the idea that protectionist economic policies are heavily inuenced by domestic political factors. Instead of seeing a nation-state as a single unit, this way of thinking perceives national government policies as the work of individuals and groups struggling for inuence in the political system. Thus, the most important levels of analysis, for this approach, are the individual and group levels. Consistent with traditional microeconomics, the rational choice approach assumes people are rational beings both in the marketplace and in politics. Thus, individual consumers, workers, managers, and company owners all weigh the costs and benets of the available alternatives with the aim of improving their satisfaction (or utility, as economists would say). An important contribution of the rational choice approach is the idea that rational reasoning occurs in politics as well as in economics. Politicians support or oppose policy alternatives by weighing their costs and benets. However, they weigh the costs and benets in terms of what is rational for the politician. Because they are not running businesses, satisfaction (or utility) in terms of higher prots is not what matters. In democracies, at least, what matters most to politicians is getting elected or reelected. Thus, politicians trying to maximize their satisfactionthat is, maximize their votessupport the policy most likely to guarantees their electoral success. The interesting concept offered by the rational choice approach is that politicians seek to maximize their votes whether or not their career is good for the country as a whole. One may wonder why the German government, for example, insisted that beer sold in Germany use only German water. The rational choice
379
European Farmers Worried about a Loss of Income Protest in Berlin, Germany
The farmers, like those across the European Union (EU), are integrated into the EUs Common Agricultural Policy. So, protests are often directed not just at the national government, but against EU officials in Brussels.
approach suggests that German politicians are responding to protectionist pressures from German brewers regardless of the interests of all German beer drinkers. In the end, German beer drinkers could pay higher prices and have their beer options limited, as the protection reduces foreign competition. So, whether or not protectionist policies are rational for the economy, they are rational from the politicians perspective if those policies help in the next election. The idea that politicians are more interested in getting elected than doing what may be right for the country, of course, goes against much of what people are raised to believe in democracies. Elected ofcials in the rational choice world are driven more by the desire to hold ofce than by any ideological stance or concern for the good of the state. If this is true, all one can hope for is that elected ofcials will choose policies that serve both the self and the state. How can this approach help us understand why states use protectionist policies? The rational choice approach suggests that government ofcials will create or maintain protectionist policies if enough pressure is brought to bear on them. Elected ofcials, after all, need to keep their important constituents happy. If enough of the constituents demand protectionist policies, the government is more likely to supply them. It should be pointed out, however, that free trade is still possible as long as voters or inuential groups encourage politicians or candidates to support free trade. Let us now briey summarize the theoretical rationales for protectionism. As we have seen, free trade can create both winners and losers in the competitive economic struggle. For at least three reasons, countries seek protection. 1. According to the neo-mercantilists and consistent with much of realism, states try to protect certain aspects of their economy on the grounds of national security.
380
CHAPTER 12
FIGURE 12.1 U.S. International Trade Balance, August 2002August 2004

January 2005 Trade Balance$58.3 Billion 160 140 120 Billions ($) 100 80 60 40 20 0 January 2003 January 2004
Imports Exports
Balance
2. States may also want to minimize their economic vulnerability by diversifying their economy through the development of new sectors, which may involve protecting infant industries. 3. The rational choice approach tells us that countries use protectionist foreign policies if political leaders are concerned about getting into ofce (or staying in ofce) and when enough protectionist pressures come from important interest groups in society.
Balance of Trade
Two goals of protectionist strategies are securing prots for companies and jobs for citizens. States also try to balance the value of goods coming into and going out of the country. This refers to a countrys balance of trade. A countrys balance of trade is said to be in decit, for example, when more money is leaving the country than coming in. Figure 12.1 shows that the gap between U.S. imports and exports between 2002 and 2004 created a $54 billion trade decit.14 For 2006, the trade balance decit was almost $820 billion15 and should continue to grow, especially if oil prices remain high. A trade surplus implies that more money from trade is coming into the country than leaving. Chinas trade surplus with the United States, for example, has been rising steadily for years (see Figure 12.2). By 2006, for example, China had a $233 billion trade surplus with the United States.16 Note that this means that the United States had a $233 billion trade decit with China. The balance of trade can be manipulated with protectionist policies. If a countrys trade balance shows imports excessively outweighing exports, protectionist policies can reduce imports and/or increase exports. How can states achieve this kind of outcome? We answer this question below by describing tariffs, quotas, and nontariff barriers to trade.
January 2005
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, http://www.census.gov/indicator/www/ustrade.html. Used by permission.
FIGURE 12.2 Chinas Trade Balance

250 Chinas Trade Balance
Visible Trade ($ billions)
200
150
100
50
2000
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
Source: Thomson Datastream as reported the Financial Times, May 22, 2007. Used Source: Financial Times , May 22,in 2007. by permission.
Tools of Protectionism
Governments wishing to protect their companies or industries have many tools at their disposal. The most common, and the most obvious, protectionist tools are tariffs and quotas.
Tariff A form of tax on goods being z Tariffs act like taxes on imports. For example, say that the Koreans wish to sell imported into aWorld country. Compare with Duncan: Politics in thequota 21st. Century,their 3e cars in the U.S. market. Each car originally costs $20,000 in the United
1036905_la_12_02 11/12/07
States. However, imagine that the U.S. government has imposed a tariff of $1,000 on every Korean car imported into the United States. This makes the same Korean car now cost the buyer $21,000. What does this mean for Americans, and what does it mean for Koreans? For U.S. car companies, the tariff is benecial. Because of the tariff, Korean cars are now more expensive, and Americans are both less likely to buy them and more likely to buy American
blishing Services Inc. ld Politics in the 21st Century, 3e 0056

cars. The U.S. government also benets because the tariff revenues ($1,000 on each car imported into the United States) ll government coffers. U.S. consumers, however, do not benet from the tariff. Either their choice is effectively limited or they have to pay more for the Korean car they really want. Korean car companies and their workers are obviously adversely affected by this situation. z Quotas are quantitative restrictions or numerical limits on the number of items that can be imported. Using the Korean car example, imagine the United States sets a quota of 5,500 on Korean cars. This means that Korean companies can send only 5,500 cars to the U.S. market each year. In the case of quotas, there is no tax on the cars, simply a limit on the number that can be imported. Can the same product have both tariff and quota restrictions? Yes. For example, the U.S. sugar industry is governed by a tariff-rate quota (TRQ). The TRQ allows countries to ship specied quantities of a product (in this case sugar) to the United States at a low tariff rate, but subjects all other imports of that product to a higher tariff. The winners and losers are basically the same with quotas as they are with tariffs. U.S. automakers know that only a few Korean cars will be on the market competing with their cars. U.S. consumers, if they dont act quickly, will not be able to buy Korean cars. Korean car companies and their employees will also be hurt because they wont be able to make and sell as many cars as they want to. Note that, unlike tariffs, the U.S. government does not collect revenues with quotas. Overall, however, the costs to consumers of import quotas tend to be much higher than the cost of tariffs. In the United States, for instance, the peanut quota system allows only a tiny fraction of U.S. consumption. James Mac, a lobbyist for the Peanut Butter and Nut Processors Association, says this translates into a virtual embargo on peanut exports from foreign countries.17 From the end of World War II through the 1970s, the use of tariffs and quotas dropped dramatically, thanks, in part, to global acceptance of economic liberalism and to the rules adopted by GATT. However, because of two oil price shocks in the 1970s, the decline in U.S. global economic leadership, and the uncertainty that followed, countries began to nd new ways to protect their companies. Because GATT had in many ways rendered tariffs and quotas off-limits, the protectionist tools of choice became nontariff barriers (NTBs) . Compared to tariffs and quotas, NTBs are much more difcult to eliminate because they are much more subtle. Often countries can make a strong case for restricting free trade. The examples that follow help demonstrate why. NTBs generally fall into three categories: scal barriers, physical barriers, and technical barriers.18 Fiscal barriers to trade involve different tax rates on goods and services. Often, goods are exempt from tax when sold in the country of origin but subject to tax in the country that imports them. In addition, tax breaks are sometimes granted to local rms, which makes it harder for foreign goods to compete. Physical barriers are those arising from delays at borders for customs reasonsfor example, excise dutiesand administrative burdens, such as checking forms, collecting statistics, and complying with complicated import licensing procedures. Technical barriers may involve the need to comply with technical regulations within a country. Other types of NTBs include low-interest loans to local companies, export nancing assistance, and voluntary export restraints. Sometimes people even call for protectionism because of unacceptable labor standards. Again, the aim of
381
Quota A limit on the number of items a country can export to or import from another. Compare with tariff.
Nontariff barriers (NTBs) Methods of restricting foreign imports that are neither tariffs nor quotas. Examples include subsidies or tax breaks for domestic companies and relatively rigid health and safety standards for foreign competitors.
Audio Concept Technical Nontariff Barrier www.BetweenNations.org
382
CHAPTER 12
these policies is to protect employment levels and domestic rms or industries from international competition.
Trading Blocs
Regional trading bloc A loose expression that may encompass both free trade areas and customs unions. These are political-economic arrangements that seek to foster greater trade cooperation among member states.
A check of the political-economic arrangements of countries around the world quickly yields a long list of regional trading blocs, often referred to as regional trading arrangements (RTAs), many of which have come into existence in the past 15 to 20 years. Most of the worlds major and minor countries are members of one type of trading bloc or another. RTAs are found on every continent, and sometimes membership crosses oceans, as in the case of the Asia-Pacic Economic Cooperation (APEC). One important question for observers of international political economy is whether RTAs are good or bad for global free trade. As noted earlier with respect to the Bretton Woods system, GATT and the WTO are based on the idea that members should cooperate in a multilateral (global), rather than bilateral or regional way. However, because of the increased use of protectionist policies, especially nontariff barriers, some IPE observers are concerned that the rising number of trade blocs will harm the global, multilateral free trade approach of the WTO. The worst-case scenario is a world of belligerent trade blocs in which a Fortress Europe competes against a Fortress North America, which competes against a Fortress Asia. Some opponents of trade blocs focus on the potential for job losses for some of the countries within a trade bloc. Many American opponents of NAFTA, for example, fear the agreement will encourage U.S. companies to move their operations to Mexico, where the wage rate can be ve times lower than in the United States. Why pay workers $20 an hour in the United States when you only have to pay them $4 an hour in Mexico?19 This problem is related to job outsourcing (and is the subject of the online case study for chapter 13, www.BetweenNations.org). Also in the case of NAFTA, people worry that many U.S. and Canadian companies set up shop close to the U.S. border in Mexico to evade the more stringent environmental standards in the north. Maquiladora factories allow mostly U.S. companies to invest in plants in Mexico, ship raw materials there, and then export nished goods back to the United States without customs duties. The maquiladora program was so successful that by 1999, there were 3,050 factoriesa third more than when NAFTA took effect (see chapter 14 for more on environmental aspects of this development).20
Protectionist Trends
The question of whether the world is becoming more or less protectionist has seemingly contradictory answers. In some respects, the world is indeed closing up. Since the 1970s, global economic troubles have built momentum, as exemplied by the increased use of nontariff barriers. In addition, in the wake of the Asian nancial crisis of the late 1990s, many countries have resorted to a variety of protectionist policies. Nevertheless, the desire still exists to maintain and even strengthen free trade and the multilateral approach. Compared to GATT, for instance, the WTO breaks new ground in the elimination of barriers to free trade. In addition, China, with one of the largest and fastest-growing economies in the world, is now a member of the WTO and bound by its trade rules that foster free trade. An interesting signpost for the future direction of free trade and protectionism is the outcome of the so-called Doha Round of WTO meetings. These global trade

talks began in November 2001 at a conference held in Doha, Qatar. While it is common for comprehensive global trade negotiations to last for years, by 2007, there were doubts whether the trade deal round could ever be nished. As Alan Beattie of the Financial Times put it, global trade agreements need three ingredients to succeed: broad agreement between the US and EU, an overwhelming belief in a multilateral system, and exporters greed to overcome domestic producers fear. Since trade talks began in 2001, says Beattie, the Doha Round has lacked all three.21 1. The United States and the EU are especially at odds with each otherand with many developing countriesregarding how to address their high levels of protection in agriculture. 2. Support within the Bush administration for a multilateral approach to many international problems has been historically quite low. This explains in part why the United States seems recently to have favored regional trade agreements over multilateral ones. 3. Beatties third requirement is consistent with the rational choice approach: politicians seem to be responding to the voices of groups favoring protectionism while the companies and others who would benet from free trade are not lobbying hard enough.
383
Of course, in these WTO negotiations, the decisions of the developing countries is also important. Some countries have asked for exceptions to free trade in sensitive economic sectors, that is, sectors believed to be unable to withstand global competition. Such positions, when taken to the extreme, do not facilitate cooperation with countries hoping to boost their exports. In the end, failure of the Doha Round could signify that the trade pendulum was swinging toward the protectionist side. Success of the Doha Round would imply that the pendulum was swinging toward more free trade. We address these WTO talks in more detail in the next section of the chapter. The development around the world of regional trade blocs also reects the dual trend toward greater protectionism and further opening of global trade. In some ways, trade blocs can limit the free ow of goods globally, but in other ways they may be seen as building blocks to a more open international economy. The countries in the key trade blocs are also the key players in the WTO, an organization committed to global free trade. Moreover, trade between the United States and the EU is enormous (accounting for over 55 percent FIGURE 12.3 of world GDP and 40 percent of world trade)22 and many jobs on one side of the Atlantic are dependent on what The Main U.S. Trading Partners by Percentage of Total U.S. Trade happens on the other side. For example, roughly half are Americans who owe their jobs directly or indirectly Canada 17% to EU companies. See Figure 12.3, which charts the main U.S. trading partners. Note that Americas NAFTA partners account for 27 percent of U.S. trade. By 2003, Other European Union the total amount of two-way investment was over $1.5 50% (25) 15% 23 trillion. These two major trading bloc partners have a strong stake in keeping trade owing. Mexico 10% To summarize this section, the forces for global free trade can be associated with worldwide centralizing Japan 5% China 3% tendencies because of the growing number of states Source: Adapted from the WTO, Merchandise Trade of the United States by Region and willing to coordinate and manage international trade Economy, 2005. Used by permission. through international trade organizations (see below).
www.BetweenNations.org Duncan: World Politics in the 21st Century, 3e 1036905_la_12_05 11/9/07
384
CHAPTER 12
The forces of protectionism can lead to fragmentation on a regional level (more protectionist trade blocs) or on a state-by-state level, where countries struggle against each other with competitive protectionist policies. But, as we have seen, support for global free trade and support for greater protectionism are both at work.
Managing the Global Trading System

FIGURE 12.4 Share of World Merchandise Exports
Canada 4% Middle East 5% Japan 6% China 8% United States 9% Rest of the world 27% European Union (25) 38% Africa 3%
Source: Adapted from the WTO, World Merchandise Exports by Region, 2005. Used with permission.
Whether you support free trade or protectionism, you may wonder how more than 190 countries and their millions of companies manage to do business every day. Figure 12.4 shows the countries leading the world in exports. In many respects, global trade may appear not to be managed at all. The forces of supply and demand regulate who buys and sells the multitude of products and services out there. But we also know that states impose rules (such as tariffs and quotas) to help manage the impact of participation in the global market. In addition, thanks to a historical convergence of circumstances, one of the most important international institutions is actually designed specically to help manage global trade. We now turn to this institution, the World Trade Organizationits mission, its contributions, and its critics.
The World Trade Organization

Duncan: World Politics in the 21st Century, As 3e noted in chapter 6, international organizations can be a major force in deter1036905_la_12_06 mining the direction of the international political economy. The global economy is 11/12/07
not ruled completely by the invisible hand of self-interest. It is inuenced by the most powerful countries in the world and by the rules and institutions they helped create. In the area of international trade, the major international organization that buttresses the relatively liberal trading system is the World Trade Organization (WTO), the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). One early goal of GATT was to create a productive economic environment that would help countries rebuild from both the Great Depression and the destruction of World War II. Similar to other international organizations established by the Bretton Woods system, GATT created a permanent forum where countries and companies could discuss trade issues that concerned them. This forum was designed to be multilateralthat is, it involved many states, unlike the more cumbersome and historically protectionist bilateral and regionally oriented trade arrangements. At the heart of GATTs (and the WTOs) foundation was the desire to foster freedom of trade by the systematic and long-term strategy of lowering trade barriers. GATT focused at rst on the most serious and common barriers to trade: tariffs and quotas, which were discussed above. For nearly two decades (the 1950s and 1960s), thanks in part to GATT, the world experienced a historically unprecedented economic boom. By the early 1970s, GATT could proudly say that its basic aims had been achieved. Although it subsequently faced rising protectionism, it still ign, Inc. 7 Laurelwood Drive, New Fairfield, CT 06812 was (203)a746-4181 (203) 746-4182 fax nugraphicdesign@charter.net signicant factor in freeing up international trade. Between 1950 and 1996, for example, world exports rose sixteen times and world output rose ve times. World export of manufactured goods rose thirty-one times, while manufacturing

output rose by a factor of 9.24 In addition, GATT had only twenty-three member countries when it was founded in 1947; the WTOs membership now stands closer to 150, with more countries waiting to join. Moreover, the WTO countries account for over 97 percent of world trade.25 There are three key principles within the WTO framework that you should note: z One of the free-trade elements of the Bretton Woods system that remains today is the most-favored-nation (MFN) principle. Members of the WTO, according to the MFN, are supposed to grant tariff or other barrier reductions to all other WTO members. z A second important principle of the WTO is reciprocity. Reciprocity bolsters the MFN principle because it implies that a states reduction in tariffs, for example, will be reciprocated by other WTO members. z A third principle is nondiscrimination, which means that foreign goods will be treated the same as domestic goodsand not be discriminated against. GATT and, later, the WTO were highly successful at reducing trade barriers among members through the global economic boom years following World War II. However, in the 1970s and 1980s, the world economy faced serious challenges. The response by many countries, including the United States, was to reestablish or enhance existing barriers to foreign competition. Because GATT had made most tariffs and quotas off-limits, countries devised new forms of protectionism by using nontariff barriers, as discussed above. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, GATT members held a long series of trade talks, known as the Uruguay Round (the talks began in Punte del Este, Uruguay), which attempted to tackle some of the nontariff barriers that were increasingly hindering free trade. One outgrowth of the Uruguay Round was the WTO. The WTO was given many new responsibilities that increased its potential influence as an international organization. For example, the WTO included intellectual property rights within its responsibilities as part of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The WTO now has an expanded scope of responsibility that includes services as well as goods. Thus, the WTO now addresses trade disputes in consumer services, which cover such businesses as restaurants, hotels, and travel agencies. The WTO will also address problems in producer services, which involve investment and banking, insurance, intellectual property rights, advertising, data processing, and so on. Moreover, the WTO plans to integrate into its multilateral framework certain economic areas that were not a part of GATT. These include agriculture, textiles and clothing, telecommunications, and even labor standards and the environment. Another major new development in the WTO is a more effective and timely dispute-resolution mechanismthat is, a more efcient way for companies and countries to resolve their problems quickly and in an orderly way. Finally, the WTO has greater powers to enforce its own rules. Like GATT, the WTO can rule against a country for unfair trade practices, but the WTO is now less likely than GATT to be ignored by the offending country. Just how effectively these WTO rules will be enforced is still to be determined. In it rst few years, the WTO was, in many ways, very successful. For example, most of the 163 cases brought to the WTO between 1995 and the end of 1998 were settled without the need for arbitration. When the WTO was called on to
385
Most-favored-nation principle (MFN) A pillar of GATT and now the WTO whereby imports from one state are granted the same degree of preference as imports from the most preferred states.
Uruguay Round A series of negotiations as part of GATT that lasted from 1986 and 1994. The aim of the round, begun in Punte del Este, Uruguay, was to tackle global trade barriers, especially nontariff barriers that were increasingly hindering free trade. It addressed seriously for the rst time services and agricultural goods. Intellectual property rights Rights given to persons over the creations of their mind. Such rights are customarily divided into two main areas: copyright and rights related to copyright; and industrial property, which includes protection of distinctive signsparticularly trademarksand industrial designs and trade secrets.
386
CHAPTER 12
For more information see The View From: Anti WTO Protesters www.BetweenNations.org
adjudicate disputes, no government deed any of its rulings. Even though some countries were short-term losers in particular cases, they still abided by the WTO because of the broader and long-term benets of WTO membership. The United States, for instance, was a short-term loser when the WTO forced it to lift illegal restrictions on imports of Costa Rican underwear. In another case, Japan was forced to reform its alcohol tax policies after complaints by the United States, the EU, and Canada. Nevertheless, WTO rules arent always clear-cut or completely enforceable because of opposition from member-states and the public.26
Challenges Facing the WTO

As we look to the future, what are some of the major challenges facing the World Trade Organization? Applying Pressure to Violators of Intellectual Property Rights z First and foremost, the WTO must deal with the question of what type of organization it will be. Most observers agree it will continue to be dominated by governments seeking to retain as much national sovereignty as possible. Most of its members are not interested in granting the WTO too many powers. One should not get the impression, however, that the WTO is totally hamstrung by the whims of its member-states. WTO members do understand the need for cooperation, and the WTO is heading into an increasingly large number of new trade areas. z Second, WTO member-states rarely come to any real consensus about how sensitive policy problems should be dealt with. For example, one of the most contentious issues in the ongoing Doha Round is the international trade in farm products. The EU, Japan, and the United States all support major policies giving assistance to their farmers that help distort global trade, but none of them seems inclined to make signicant concessions. z Third, the WTO faces considerable opposition regarding international trades effects on the environment and job security. We address environmental issues in much more detail in chapter 14; however, the crux of the protesters environmental complaint runs along these lines. Most people perceive a trade-off between the environment and the economy; what is good for one is bad for the other. For example, the conservationist World Wildlife Fund (WWF) argues that trade has a destructive impact on the environment because it encourages the overconsumption of natural resources. The WWF also believes that strengthening environmental regulations worldwide should take place before greater trade liberalization is sought.27 Another point made by many environmentalists is that companies try to evade costly environmental standards in one country by setting up shop in a country that has lax standards. The labor complaint of WTO protesters, like those at the 1999 Battle of Seattle and others in Cancun, Mexico in 2003; Seoul, South Korea in 2005; New Delhi, India in 2007; and elsewhere, focuses on the wages of workers in the developing world, where transnational corporations may pay workers a dollar an hour or
A steamroller crushes some of the half million compact discs at a dump site northwest of Moscow. Such efforts to crack down on companies who steal intellectual property are gaining momentum but still have a long way to go, particularly in the developing world.

less and where working conditions are often inhospitable and even dangerous. Of particular concern to the labor protesters is the apparent trend of international businesses to set up factories in countries with very low wages. Chinese manufacturers labor costs, for example, are about 5 percent of those in Germany and 20 percent of rival factories in Eastern Europe.28 Lower wages in developing countries, they believe, end up affecting wage levels in the United States. In essence, U.S. workers must settle for lower wages in order to keep their jobs from being sent overseas. In the long run, then, the labor protesters worry that U.S. jobs will be lost and that worker standards and wage levels in the United States will decline. The global trading system, then, is managed by several forces. z The market forces of supply and demand have a profound impact on what and how much is produced and where it is traded. z Individual companies, large and small, are responsible for setting the direction of global trade. Nevertheless, states can foster or hinder international trade. They can establish bilateral trade agreements and sometimes create regional trade agreements, such as the EU and NAFTA. z International organizations, notably the WTO, also help manage trade along the guidelines of liberal economic liberalism. As this section suggests, however, much of the global trading system may not seem managed at all. Trade disputes among states are commonmany of them highly charged politically and can fester for years or decades.
387
Violent Protests
Riot police guard the front of a Nike store from looters and vandals in downtown Seattle during the protests against the World Trade Organization in November 1999.
388
CHAPTER 12
Test Prepper 12.2

True or False?
_____ 1. The arguments for free trade clearly outweigh any arguments in favor of protectionism. _____ 2. One of the key elements of the Bretton Woods system was that international monetary relations were based on a xed convertibility into gold. _____ 3. The economic liberal approach argues that free trade benets all states, although larger states benet more than smaller ones. _____ 4. Protectionists argue that it is oftentimes benecial to not produce certain products as it provides an incentive for obtaining those goods more cheaply from others. _____ 5. One of the key problems that remains to be solved with the WTO is the absence of an effective and timely dispute-resolution process.
Multiple Choice
_____ 6. The Bretton Woods system was designed to: a. Increase competition among selfinterested actors in order to maximize prot b. Prevent unlimited free-trade policies that would destroy infant industries c. Maintain the existing system of economic policies in order to foster stability
d. Foster a more constructive and cooperative environment among states and their companies e. All of the above _____ 7. Comparative advantage refers to the belief that: a. All countries must act in their own self interest and take advantage of opportunities to capture markets whenever possible. b. Lesser developed countries have an advantage in developing today because they can utilize the lessons learned by the industrialized states 100 years earlier. c. All countries should specialize in what they do best and, with the absence of trade restrictions, everyone will be better off as a result of such behavior. d. Global free trade is a negative-sum game, therefore all countries must use whatever capabilities are at their disposal to gain an advantage over other states. e. None of the above _____ 8. The World Trade Organization uses which of the following in maintaining trade relations between states? a. Most-favored nation status b. Reciprocity c. Nondiscrimination d. All of the above
How Does the Global Financial System Work?

3 Understand how the international monetary system is managed, identifying the primary international institutions that handle monetary issues.
The political ramications of monetary relations are evident at both the global and national levels. At the national level, for example, budget decits and surpluses affect a states prosperity and, ultimately, its power and inuence in the world. Global financial interactions can even threaten the sovereignty of states. In our increasingly interdependent world, autonomous national economic policymaking is not really possible, especially for smaller states. Any states monetary relations are really international monetary relations. As a result, many people argue that at least some international cooperation is needed. The trouble, however, is that international cooperation is difcult to achieve.29 In the
c HOw DOES THE GLOBAL FiNANciAL SYSTEM WORK?

following discussion of monetary relations, we explore how currencies are valued, discuss one of the most interesting experiments in international monetary relations in a long time (Europes single currency, the euro), and address the efforts at international cooperation in nancial matters by looking at the IMF and the World Bank.
389
A Brief History of Currency

Throughout the centuries, money has taken a variety of forms. The rst types of cash were metal or clay. At various times, barley and other goods were also used as currency. In Mesopotamia, we see the beginning of casting and coiling as the worlds rst cash appeared in the form of rings of silver. China developed the worlds rst paper currency, and the rst paper currency to be used in Europe was issued by a private bank in Sweden in the early 1660s. In the New World, the Massachusetts Bay colony used paper money in 1690 to fund a military expedition ordered by London. The rst modern printed checks, which depositors could use to pay anyone, appeared in England in 1781. For money to be usefulno matter what it is made ofit must be able to store value, that is, it must be valuable in some way. The value of a countrys currency depends on many factors, including the: z economic health of the country issuing the money z condence people have in the currency z how much people demand the currency. (As for other goods, there is a supply and demand for money.) For much of the postWorld War II period, the U.S. dollar was the most stable and desired currency in the world. It was also easy to tell how much it was worth; the Bretton Woods system xed the value of the dollar to a certain amount of gold: 1 ounce of gold was worth $35. However, the dollar left this gold standard in 1971. The value of currencies compared to one another thus became exible; currencies were allowed to oat against one another without the link to gold.
The Effects of Exchange Rates

To help demonstrate the effects of allowing currencies to uctuate against each other, consider the following example. Imagine you were in the United States on July 22 and wanted to buy a British jacket that cost 100 pounds sterling (100), roughly the equivalent of $205. However, you couldnt get to the store until the end of September. By then, unfortunately, the value of the dollar had dropped compared to the pound. This is called devaluation. Because of the devaluation in the dollar, your dollars are not as valued as they were back in July. Thus, at the end of September, it will take more dollars to buy the jacket. Now you have to pay, say, $225 for the jacketeven though it would still be priced at 100 in Britain. What do you do now? Consumers are normally faced with three options. 1. They may decide to pay the extra $20 to get the British jacket they really want. 2. Instead of paying more money for the British jacket, they could decide to buy an equivalent U.S. jacket for $205. 3. They can, of course, forget about buying jackets altogether. But what are the political-economic implications if everyone in the United States chose to go with the U.S. jacket made cheaper by the devaluation of the dollar? More
390
The Euro
CHAPTER 12
The new currency used by most European Union countries. It replaces the French franc, the German mark, and the Italian lira, among other national currencies.
U.S. jackets would be sold and fewer British ones would be sold. As a result, more jobs would be supported in the United States, as you and everyone else bought American. Because fewer British goods are sold, the job situation gets worse in Britain. British export companies wont do as well as they would have before the dollar devaluation. Ultimately, the trade balance shifts in favor of the United States. As this example suggests, changes in the value of a states currency can have a profound impact on the employment rate and the states trade balance. Consider these issues when you read about Europes single currency, which eliminates currency uctuations.
Unifying a Region: Europes Single Currency

One of the most important new developments in the international monetary system is the advent of the European Unions single currency, the euro. Unprecedented in history, the euro has now replaced thirteen national currencies, including the German mark, Spanish peseta, and the Italian lira. Because the EU has a population and combined economy larger than that of the United States, many have speculated about the impact of the euro on EUU.S. relations as well as on the international monetary system in general. Will the euro rival the U.S. dollar as the currency of choice around the world? Foreign banks, companies, and individuals will likely hedge their bets (and spread out their risk) by diversifying their currency holdings with euros as well as dollars. Although it is still too early to tell, the U.S. voice in determining the direction of global monetary relations may soon not be as loud as it once was. What drove other EU countries to create the euro? Note that not all EU member-states have adopted the new currency. Britain, Denmark, and Sweden opted out of the euro-zone for a variety of reasons. But there are a number of reasons for those that opted in. z One of the main reasons was a desire to create a more stable monetary environment in Europe. The roots of this desire go back decades, particularly to the

1970s. After the United States abandoned key elements of the Bretton Woods system, and after a series of wars in the Middle East and the OPEC oil shocks, the international monetary system was highly unstable. Leaders in France and Germany spearheaded the establishment of the European Monetary System (EMS) to help coordinate several major European currencies. The EMS did, in fact, achieve a certain degree of monetary stability in Europe. This rudimentary form of monetary cooperation, however, was deemed insufcient for handling many of the nancial problems facing the continent. z Second, many Europeans felt that in order to achieve a true single market in Europea market in which goods could be traded freely, without complicationpriority had to be given to ending the hindrances of a dozen or more currencies across the continent. One of the most obvious problems with fteen currencies for fteen EU countries was that converting currencies was costly and time-consuming. A person who began with the equivalent of $100 in Spain and who then spent a few days in France, Belgium, Germany, and Denmark had to convert the dollars into each of the countries currencies and keep track of what all the different numbers meant. In addition, banks and currency-exchange ofces charge fees, or commissions, for making the currency conversion. Such transaction costs are now eliminated within the euro-zone. z Third, EU members wanted the benets from competition that would emerge from the transparency of prices. In theory, it should be easy to compare the costs of goods from one part of Europe to the next. In practice, however, before the euro, this seemingly simple exercise was anything but. Should I buy a new Volkswagen here in Germany, or would it be a better deal in Italy? If I add in the transportation costs and the different taxes I would have to pay, and then take into account the currency conversion.... This arrangement was obviously more complicated than it is for, say, someone in Kansas looking to shop across the border in Missouri or for a Virginian considering buying a car in Maryland. z Finally, Europe had a variety of political reasons for establishing the single currency. For example, establishing the euro was intended to create a viable alternative to U.S. hegemony in global monetary relations. By working together, the twelve (and eventually more) European countries have more clout in global monetary dealings than they had individually. Another political reason is that many Europeans felt the EU needed a momentum boost. They feared that without this major policy initiative, the entire EU would atrophy. A third, more concrete, political reason goes back to the 19891991 period of German unication. A loose agreement was struck between Germany and the other major European powers: On the one hand, East and West Germany were allowed to unify; on the other, Germany, led by Helmut Kohl, committed itself to furthering EU economic and monetary union. No one is expecting members of other regional trade blocs, like NAFTA, MERCOSUR, and ASEAN, to give up their own currencies any time soon. However, it is interesting to speculate that if the EUs euro proves successful in the long run, more and more people are likely to consider the prospects of a common currency in other regional trade organizations. It will, of course, take time for this to occur. One thing is certain from this discussion about single currencies: the link between economics and politics is extremely important.
391
392
CHAPTER 12
Managing the International Monetary System

The international monetary system has several major players. In addition to the worlds major countries, banks, and other nancial companies, international institutions are vital to the management of global nancial relations. The two main international institutionsboth part of the UN frameworkthat help oversee global monetary relations are the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Although their responsibilities sometimes overlap, the two IOs are designed to address different monetary challenges.
The International Monetary Fund

The IMF, which has 185 member countries and a staff of over 2,700 from most of those countries, was created to oversee the international monetary system by promoting international monetary cooperation and stability in currency exchanges among its members. It was also designed to address temporary balance-of-payments problems. Balance of payments refers to a states international economic transactions. In short, it measures ows of money to and from one state to others. To address balance-of-payment problems, the IMF may offer assistance, for example, in the form of short-term loans when a country needs to make payments but cannot get sufcient nancing on affordable terms. When addressing economic troubles in particular countries, the IMF seeks to achieve economy-wide nancial stability, but its loans can be used by recipient governments to address specic problems. The IMF offers developing countries two types of nancial assistance: low-interest loans and debt relief. Some IMF loans are made with interest of less than 1 percent.30 The IMF also performs a surveillance function (monitoring economic and nancial developments) and provides technical assistance (such as training and policy advice). The IMFs resources come mainly from the money, or quota subscriptions, that countries pay when they join. Each member is assigned a quota that is based on its relative economic size. Members pay up to 25 percent of their quota subscriptions in major currencies, such as U.S. dollars or Japanese yen, or what are called Special Drawing Rights (SDRs). The other 75 percent is payable in the members own currency, to be made available for lending as needed. In 2007, total quotas amounted to $327 billion. SDRs, sometimes called paper gold, are a supplementary reserve asset that the IMF can allocate periodically to members when needed. IMF member-countries may use SDRs in transactions among themselves, with institutional holders of SDRs, and with the IMF. Originally, the value of one SDR was equivalent to 0.888671 grams of gold, which, at the time, was equivalent to one U.S. dollar.31 Since the end of the Bretton Woods system in 1973, the value of SDRs has been set daily using a basket, or combination, of four major currencies: the euro, the Japanese yen, the pound sterling, and the U.S. dollar. And, just as the value of a national currency can uctuate from day-to-day (or even during the same day), so can the value of SDRs. For example, on July 2004, one SDR was equivalent to $1.48. In May 2007, one SDR was worth $1.5232 When making decisions, the IMF, like the World Bank, does not use the rule one country, one vote. The IMF uses a weighted voting system in which national inuence is determined, in part, by the share of quotas in the IMF. As Figure 12.5 shows, the United States has the largest quota share and thus the most formal inuence in IMF voting. While it may seem fair that the countries with the highest

FIGURE 12.5 Members with Ten Largest Quotes in the IMF, 2007
United States Japan Germany France United Kingdom China Italy Saudi Arabia Canada Russia 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18
393
Source: Adapted from IMF, IMF Executive Directors and Voting Power, http://www.imf.org/external/np/ sec/memdir/eds.htm, May 15, 2007. Used by permission.
monetary contributions should get the biggest say in its decision, critics complain Duncan: World Politics in the 21st Century, 3e an exploitative tool for a small numthat this voting arrangement makes the IMF 1036905_la_12_07 ber of rich and powerful countries. We discuss other criticisms of the IMF (and 11/1/07 World Bank) later in the chapter.
The World Bank Group

The aim of the World Bank is to promote the long-term economic development of the worlds poorer countries by nancing specic projects that can achieve institutional and structural economic changes.33 An example of World Bank activity is its $10.7 million loan to Ecuador designed to help NGOs provide free legal services to poor women, who are greatly disadvantaged in the Ecuadoran legal system.34 On a broader scale, in 2004 the World Bank provided $20.1 billion for 245 projects in developing countries worldwide.35 The World Bank Group consists of four main organizations or agencies, each designed to address specic nancial challenges in developing countries.
World Bank The United Nations agency designed to promote the economic development of the worlds poorer countries and to assist them through long-term nancing of development projects.
1. Most of the World Banks activity involves very low-interest loans through the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), which has sign, Inc. 7 Laurelwood Drive,$360 New Fairfield, 06812 (203) 746-4181 (203) 746-4182 fax nugraphicdesign@charter.net loaned over billion CT since 1945. It typically loans $1415 billion for over 100 operations.36 2. The World Banks International Development Association (IDA) is designed specically to serve for the worlds poorest countries. It provides interest-free loans that can last thirty-ve years or longer. The loans are designed to improve such basics as primary education and health services, and drinking water and sanitation systems. The IDA provides roughly $10 billion in nancing for more than 150 projects in low-income countries.37
394
CHAPTER 12
3. A third agency of the World bank is the International Finance Corporation (IFC). While the IBRD and IDA make loans to countries, the IFC makes loans to companies. Making loans to companies in developing countries is risky; the IFC seeks to reduce these risks to investors. The main goal is to entice more investors to help companies in the developing world. 4. The fourth World Bank agency is the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA). Like the IFC, MIGA seeks to attract investors and private insurers into difcult operating environments. It provides political risk insurance for foreign investments, technical assistance, and dispute mediation services that may remove possible obstacles to future investment.38
An Evaluation of the IMF and the World Bank

The IMF and World Bank claim some credit for the progress in helping the troubled economies of the world since the 1950s. As the World Bank has noted, more progress has been made in reducing poverty and raising living standards since World War II than during any other period in history. z Life expectancy has increased from fty-ve to sixty-ve years. z Incomes per person have doubled. z More children are attending schools (from less than half of all children in the world to more than three-quarters) z Infant mortality has been reduced by half. Liberal economists argue that the objectives of the World Bank and IMF are laudable and that the two IOs can point to many success stories. But not everyone is happy with their policies. The two institutions have acquired a long list of detractors over the years, especially since the nancial crises in the 1990s, notably the Mexican peso crisis (19941995) and the Asian nancial crisis (19971998). Many of these institutions harshest critics come from poor countriesthe countries that are supposed to benet from IMF and World Bank attention. A review of these criticisms can provide greater insight into the operations of the two nancial institutions. z One criticism is from those who see an inefcient overlap between IMF and World Bank activities. The problem of whos responsible for what has dogged the two institutions since their founding, but this overlap in responsibility grew more pronounced in the 1990s. Jessica Einhorn, a former managing director of the World Bank, has described how in recent years, the World Bank has been called on for emergency lending in the wake of the Asian nancial crisis, for economic management as part of Middle East peacekeeping efforts, for postwar Balkan reconstruction, and for loans to combat the AIDS tragedy in Africa, in addition to taking a role in such areas as biodiversity, ozone depletion, narcotics, crime, and corruption.39 This widening agenda, according to critics, has led to ineffectiveness and a lack of focus. z Another general criticism, consistent with expectations of the Marxist approach to international political economy, IPE, is that the World Bank and IMF are tools of the industrialized states to dominate the worlds poor states. The World Bank, for example, requires that countries receiving its loans make economic policy changes through structural-adjustment programs. The

strings attached to World Bank loans can be quite onerous to governments in developing countries. Similar complaints are lodged against the IMFs conditions placed on borrowers. Conditionality, as it is called, is designed to help ensure that by borrowing from the IMF, a country does not just postpone hard choices and accumulate more debt. However, conditions attached to the loans often require states to cut social spending in order to balance government budgets. The cuts in social spending usually put a heavy burden on the poor, who depend on social services such as clean water supplies and public transportation.40 Opponents of conditionality and the World Banks structuraladjustment programs argue that they violate sovereignty and cause serious economic and social disruption, among other negative consequences. z A related problem, highlighted by feminist commentators, among others, is that structural adjustments required by IMF and World Bank loans tend to be particularly harmful to poor women. As the IPE scholar Theodore Cohn explains, women have primary responsibility for household maintenance, including cooking, cleaning, and health care. IMF and World Bank loans, as noted above, can require cutbacks in social spendingin health and nutrition, for exampleon which women depend heavily. In addition, the school dropout rate among young girls tends to increase when the government implements structural-adjustment programs, as girls must help with the household labor. Some economic liberals argue that it is a bad idea for the IMF to make loans to countries with serious economic troubles because banks might make dangerously high-risk loans to developing countries if they know the IMF will bail them out in a crisis. z Others criticize the lack of compliance with the IMFs and World Banks own rules, their disregard for the environment in favor of economic growth, and the two organizations lack of public transparencythe secret way in which they make decisions. Moreover, some critics complain that some of their policies have actually destroyed local jobs and industries.41 z A nal criticism of the World Bank is that it is irrelevant for the twenty-rst century. Today, investment and loans from private lending institutions and banks vastly outpace the resources of the World Bank. As Harvards Kenneth Rogoff has stated, the banks nancial structure is a complete anachronism, a remnant of the days when private capital was scarce.42 According to the World Banks Global Development Finance 2007 report, private capital ows to developing countries reached a record level of $647 billion in 2006 while World Bank lending to these countries that year was only $23 billion.
395
The IMF and World Banks Response

In response to many of the above criticisms, both the IMF and the World Bank have discussed a variety of reform proposals. One change, for example, has been to pay greater attention to the negative effects on the poor in World Bank structuraladjustment loans. To offset cuts in government food subsidies, for instance (as part of a program to lower the government budget decit), the World Bank assists poor people by means of school lunches, food stamps, and food aid.43 The 2003 Annual Review of Development Effectiveness, an independent but internal review of World Bank activities, recommends that the World Bank be much more cautious about making loans to countries that are not serious about reform. This report
396
CHAPTER 12
indicated, for example, that 30 percent of all World Bank loans were unsatisfactory, while 60 percent of the loans to the transition states of the former Soviet Union were unsatisfactory. Nevertheless, critics of the World Bank and the IMF are unimpressed with the generally slow pace of reform of the two institutions. Neo-Marxists and dependency theorists, for example, are particularly incensed because they believe the two institutionseven if reforms are madewill still be tools of rich countries.
Test Prepper 12.3

_____ 1. A shift in exchange rates between two countries may mean consumers in France will have to pay more for an item sold in Germany, even though the price hasnt changed in Germany. _____ 2. All states of the European Union have switched to the euro as their national currency. _____ 3. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) was established to provide long-term loans for countries that need to develop infrastructure to become competitive on the world market. _____ 4. In the IMF, countries that contribute more to the Fund have the most inuence. _____ 5. The World Bank and the IMF, while not perfect, have generally been regarded by most as positive inuences on international economic development.
_____ 6. Which of the following does not affect the value of currency? a. How long it has been in circulation b. Economic health of the issuing country c. Peoples condence in the currency d. Demand for the currency e. None of the above _____ 7. Which of the following did not lead countries to adopt the euro as their national currency? a. To create a more stable monetary environment in Europe b. To foster the development of a true single market c. To increase competition as a result of transparency in pricing across borders d. To give the European Union a boost in momentum to maintain its importance for the European public e. None of the above
Case Study
Bitter Disputes in the Global Sugar Trade
JOiN THE DEBATE
397
Join the Debate What Is the Impact of Multinational Corporations?

Recall from Chapter 7 that multinational corporations differ from transnational corporations, but that most people use the term MNC to refer to any large company with operations in two or more countries. MNCs have grown enormously in the past two decades in terms of both geographic scope and economic inuence. Most MNCs are small. PAL International, for example, is an English company that sells hygienic work-wear including cooks jackets. This MNC has only 65 employees, three of whom work in China to supervise Chinese contractors who make more than 50 percent of the com panys products.1 However, as we saw in Table 7.1, some corporate actors have more economic clout than most countries. The 1990s witnessed an even larger number of mergers among MNCs, a phenomenon that created even larger companies. Exxon acquired Mobil to become ExxonMobil, Travelers Group acquired Citicorp to create Citigroup, and so on.2 The size and nature of these international businesses have profound political implications, but observers strongly disagree over whether MNCs are ultimately good or bad for international political economy. According to the economic liberalism approach, MNCs provide many benefits to the home and host countries. Because of their size, MNCs can exploit economies of scale and thus increase economic efciency enormously. In addition, they can create new jobs in both home and host countries. MNCs can also teach workers and managers in the host country about efcient methods of production, management skills, and the transfer of new technologies and processes. As we saw in the case of NAFTA, the economic liberalism approach predicts that, because of the presence of more MNCs, Mexico will ultimately have more welloff consumers interested in buying American products. Other benets should result from the increased global competition that is fostered by MNCs. Instead of each country having a national champion , for example, foreign companies can compete with domestic companies for consumers money. Competition from Japanese carmakers in the 1980s and 1990s most likely
National champion A company or industry, supported in various ways by the government, that dominates the home market. Both business and government interests lie in making the company competitive internationally.
prompted increased productivity in the U.S. auto industry and eventually higher quality in Americanbuilt cars. Critics of unrestrained MNCs, however, point to a variety of features they view as detrimental. For example, they say that because capital is more mobile than labor, MNCs move to where costs are low at the expense of their workers. Many opponents of MNCs decry the conditions under which host country employees work. Others point to the limited degree to which foreign knowledge or technology is passed on or adapted in the host country. Sometimes the MNC restricts the more advanced business aspects of the company to home employees leaving host country employees with bluecollar jobs only. Another complaint is that once a large MNC sets up shop in a host country, local businesses face bankruptcy because they cannot compete with its vast economic resources. Host countries can try to regulate the foreign company (for example, by requiring that a large percentage of the workers be local), but if they push too much, the MNC can simply threaten to pull out of the host country and go somewhere else. This is particularly relevant when cheap labor is vital to the companys operations, and most developing countries can offer plenty of cheap labor. Are MNCs good or bad for the global political economy? As the previous paragraphs suggest, the answer is, It depends. The opportunity exists for MNCs to have both positive and negative consequences. Much depends on the company and its relationships with the home and host countries. The answer also depends on ones perspective. What, for example, would mercantilists say about MNCs? What would the perspective be from the ecological paradigm? Should greater restrictions on MNCs be imposed by home countries, host countries, or both? Regardless of the answers to these questions, one thing is certain: multinational corporations are a permanent and growing feature of international political economy in the twenty-rst century.
NOTES
1. Jonathan Guthrie, You Have to Take Your Hat Off to Going Global, Financial Times, October 12, 2006. 2. The Years Biggest Deals, Business Week, January 11, 1999, p. 8.
398
CHAPTER 12

1 2 3 4 5 political 6 7 8 Be able to dene international economy and understand its key theories. 9 10 society benet or lose from different government economic policies. If enough groups demand protectionist government policies, politicians (seeking to maximize their votes at election time) will supply those policies.
International political economy (IPE) is the study of the interaction of political and economic forces at the international level. IPE is a critical eld of study because every major and even most minor issues have both eco1 nomic and political elements. Economic liberalism assumes that because rational human beingsas business owners, workers, consumers, and so ontry to maximize their satisfaction (in terms of prots, for example), the most efcient economic outcomes will result. Government is supposed to play only a minor role in regulating the economy, and free trade should be encouraged among states. Neo-mercantilism emphasizes the role of the state in helping guide a countrys economy so as to increase the power and security of the state. Neo-mercantilist policies often involve protectionist policies such as tariffs, quotas, and nontariff barriers to trade. The rational choice approach emphasizes the domestic political sources of international economic policymaking. It looks at not only what motivates individuals (for example, prots) but also which interest groups in
3 5 views6 8 of free 9 Identify the4different held by7advocates trade and protectionism; explain how global trade is managed.
10
According to the economic liberalism approach, if countries keep down their trade barriers to each other, everyone should be better off. If countries specialize in what they do best, comparative advantage suggests that national economies and the global economy as a whole can be run as efciently as possible. Protectionism places restrictionssuch as tariffs, quotas, and nontariff barrierson imports. Those who favor protectionism say that countries sometimes want to advance a particular industry (or company) for economic reason (such as the infant industry argument), for national security reasons (no country wants to depend on another for food or weapons), or for the protection of jobs.
399
Global trade may appear not to be managed at all, but several forces act on the apparently chaotic international trading system.
- The forces of supply and demand play a part in regulating who buys and sells what to whom. - Governments impose rules (such as tariffs, quotas, and nontariff barriers) to help control the impact of their countries involvement in the global economy. - One of the worlds most important international organizations is the World Trade Organization, which, inspired by the economic liberalism approach, seeks to encourage global free trade.
Today, the value of a currency depends on many factors, including the health of the countrys economy and how strong that economy is compared to the economies of other countries. This combination of factors establishes a countrys exchange rate. One of the most important developments in IPE in a long time is the establishment of a new currency in Europe, the euro. Thirteen European countries including Belgium, Spain, and the Netherlands have chosen to eliminate their own national currency in favor of a single currency for all. The two most inuential international organizations in the global nancial system are the IMF and the World Bank.
- The IMF is designed to stabilize the overall health of a countrys economy or a geographic region that has been hit hard nancially. - The World Bank was established to promote economic development in the worlds poorer countries by nancing specic projects.
4 5 how the 6 international 7 8monetary 9 system 10 is Understand managed, identifying the primary international institutions that handle monetary issues.
Modern economic systems depend on currencies that are accepted by everyone. In the past, currencies have sometimes been linked directly to the price of gold.

13
The Politics of Development
Worlds collide: The poor and the well-off live side-by-side in most countries
Learning Objectives
2 1
Identify what is meant by development while understanding the difculties associated with arriving at a commonly accepted denition of the term.
Understand how different theories approach the issue of development and how each explains why some countries are rich while others are poor.
Identify and understand the political factors that affect the development process.
400
The forgotten world is made up primarily of the developing nations, where most of the people, comprising more than fifty percent of the total world population, live in poverty, with hunger as a constant companion and fear of famine a continual menace.
Norman Borlaug
Chapter Outline
What Is Meant by DEVELOPMENT ?
A Transformation of a Countrys Underdevelopment Crafting a Denition of Development Classifying the Worlds Countries
What Factors Affect the Politics

of Development?
The Colonial Legacy Economic and Human Health Factors Government Factors Violence within and between Developing Countries The Role of Globalization and Relations with Developed States The Role of Non-Western Political Thought The Role of Ethnic and Religious Nationalism
What Theories Explain Rich and

Poor Countries?
Three Main Theoretical Approaches Theory and Practice of Cooperation among Developing Countries
What Is the Relationship between

Development and Democracy?
Be able to discuss the relationship between development and democracy.
Searching for the Keys to Development
espite the technological and scientic advances of the twentieth century, poverty remains an unrelenting challenge in many of the worlds countries. Although global poverty rates have been falling, half the worldnearly three billion peoplelive on less than $2 a day.1 In some countries the literacy rate is 40 percent or lower (Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, Niger), and in the least developed countries, where the prevalence of HIV/AIDS is high, life expectancy is in the thirties, compared to the upper seventies in the advanced industrial democracies. The largest concentration of poor people is in Asia, but most of Africa is also a serious concern, as are many parts of Latin America. Conditions have improved in many countries in the past fty yearsin parts of India and China, South Korea, Taiwan, and
402
Key Terms
CHAPTER 13
THE POLITIcS OF DEVELOPMENT
development p. 407 economic development p. 407 political development p. 407 social and cultural development p. 407 newly industrializing countries (NICs) p. 411 economic liberalism p. 412 modernization school p. 412 periphery p. 415 colonialism p. 415 core countries p. 415 import-substitution industrialization p. 416 New International Economic Order (NIEO) p. 416 capital formation p. 420 social overhead capital p. 420
Chile, for examplebut the solution to poverty and political instability remains elusive. It is likely that in the twenty-rst century, large numbers of people will remain mired in distressed economic, political, health, and environmental conditions. A helpful indicator of the gap between the worlds haves and havenots is purchasing power parity (PPP). See Figure 13.1 for a better understanding of the relative wealth of people living in different countries. This chapter looks not only at the problems facing the developing countries but also the reasons for the existence of poor (and rich) countries. In addition, it explores a variety of policy recommendations for improving the political and economic conditions of the worlds less developed countries (LDCs). Because there is much disagreement as to which paths successfully lead to development, it is expedient to rely on several theoretical approaches as guides. Fortunately, the theories discussed in previous chapters provide a solid foundation. With this chapter overview in mind, the sequence of topics is as follows: z First, the chapter looks at what is meant by development, with a focus on the politics of development. z It then examines key theories that explain why there are rich and poor countries. z The next section studies the factors that affect the politics of development, by which is generally meant whether countries are governed in ways that initiate and sustain the process of development or hold it back interminably.
FIGURE 13.1 Relative Wealth of Nations: Purchasing Power Parity, IMF 2006
GDP (PPP) per capita 40,00190,000 10,00140,000 6,25110,000 2,5016,250 1,5012,500 5011,500 251500 0250 No data
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:GDP_PPP_per_capita_world_map_IMF_gures_for_year_2006.png.
c WHAT IS MEANT BY DEVELOPMENT?

z The nal section discusses how states have approached development, with a look at some of the links between democracy and development. This chapters online case study (www.BetweenNations.com) on the pros and cons of job outsourcing and its effect on development carries this discussion more deeply into the sphere of development, with its overall impact on centralization and decentralization. n
403
What Is Meant by DEVELOPMENT ?

1 Identify what is meant by development while understanding the difculties associated with arriving at a commonly accepted denition of the term.
A useful way to begin a discussion of development is to look at povertythe very thing development tries to erase. Poverty in some developing countries today is truly monumental, and in certain countries it has gotten worse as the gap between rich and poor countries widens and as the worlds poorest states become more vulnerable than before. Many policymakers and scholars worry that povertyin itself a terrible condition for people to endureand violence interact to drive each other.2 This connection between poverty and worldwide violence is a dangerous example of decentralization in the international system. Examples of growing lawlessness associated with poverty can be seen, among other places, in Haiti and in Sudans Darfur region. Eighty percent of the worlds twenty poorest countries have suffered a major civil war since 1990, as in Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Haiti. Behind rising global anarchy lies the growing gap between the worlds rich and poor countries and the failure of globalization to improve the lives of the vast majority of the worlds poor. In addition to purchasing power parity, a useful way to understand levels of development in countries is to designate them in terms of Gross National Income (GNI), the method used by the World Bank. Previously known as Gross National Product, Gross National Income comprises the total value of goods and services produced within a country in the form of wages, prots, rents, interest on the activities produced in a particular country plus all transfers of income from other countriessuch as prots on foreign investment, remittances of migrants, foreign investment inowsminus all such transfers of income to other countries. Gross National Income Per Capita is the GNI divided by population. This designation leads to the following country comparisons of annual per capita income: 1. In low-income countries the GNI per capita is $745 or less; 2. In lower middleincome the GNI per capita is $746$2,975; 3. In upper middleincome countries the GNI per capita is $2,976$9,205; 4. In high-income countries the GNI per capita is $9,206 or more. The less or least developed countries are those in the low- and lower middle income groups, while the developed countries fall into the high-income group. When you read about the developing countries, the reference typically is to those not in the high-income group. The World Bank calculates the GNI of countries by means of a conversion method that reduces the impact of exchange rate uctuations in the comparison of national incomes.
For more information see Globalization www.BetweenNations.org
404
CHAPTER 13
TABLE 13.1 The Eight UN Millennium Development Goals

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. Halve the proportion of people living on less than $1 per day. Halve the proportion of people who suffer from hunger. 2. Achieve universal primary education. Ensure that boys and girls alike complete primary schooling. 3. Promote gender equality and empower women. Eliminate gender disparity at all levels of education. 4. Reduce child mortality. Reduce by two-thirds the under-five mortality rate. 5. Improve maternal health. Reduce by three-quarters the maternal mortality rate. 6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases. Reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS. 7. Ensure environmental sustainability. Integrate sustainable development into country policies and reverse loss of environmental resources. Halve the proportion of people without access to potable water. Significantly improve the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers. 8. Develop a global partnership for development. Raise official development assistance. Expand market access. Source: World Bank, World Development Report 2004: Making Services Work for Poor People, 2004.
Poverty, of course, has many dimensions. Its multiple aspects include: z Illiteracy z Poor health z Gender inequality z Environmental degradation z Gross inequality in political power and access to social services
These aspects of poverty are reected in the UNs Millennium Development Goals, a pledge made at the UN Millennium Summit in September 2000. At the summit, these eight goals, to be achieved by 2015, were made. They are shown in Table 13.1. Behind these goalstracked annually by the UNlies a pledge by developed states to provide 0.7 percent of their gross national product (GNP) as development aid for the poor.3 Six years after the Millennium Development Goals were set (2006), only Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg had achieved or surpassed the 0.7 percent target for development aid. Overall, the world was spending far less on development aid annually compared to the over $1 trillion in military spending. Meanwhile, the faces of global poverty persist, as reected in Table 13.2 Some of the more prominent features of poverty are shown in Table 13.3.

TABLE 13.2 Poverty in Developing Countries
Adult Literacy Rate (% ages 15 and above) 2002
76.7 52.5 63.3 90.3 88.6 57.6 63.2
405
Region or Country Group

Developing Countries Least developed Countries Arab States East Asia Latin America and Caribbean South Asia Sub-Saharan Africa
Life Expectancy at Birth 2002

64.6 50.6 66.3 69.8 70.5 63.2 46.3
GDP per Capita (PPP US $) 2002

4,054 1,307 5,069 4,768 7,223 2,658 1,790
Population Lacking Access to Safe Water (% of pop) 2000

22 38 14 24 14 15 43
Undernourished People (% of total population) 1999/2001

17 37 13
11 22 32
Source: World Bank, World Development Report 2004: Making Services Work for Poor People, 2004. Used by permission.
Conditions in developing countries vary considerably. A study by the Brookings Institution explored the gap between rich and poor states between 1980 and 2000. The study found that the gap is widening. However, the study also found that, in general, people in developing countries are living longer, the number of countries that have negative growth is lower than in 1980, and Asia expanded faster than all
TablE 13.3 Povertys Facts and Statistics

1. H alf the world, nearly 3 billion people, live on less than two dollars a day; 1.3 billion people have no access to clean water; 3 billion have no access to sanitation; 2 billion have no access to electricity. 2. T he GDP (gross domestic product) of the poorest countries (a quarter of the worlds countries) is less than the wealth of the worlds three richest people combined. 3. N early one billion adults entered the twenty-first century unable to read a book or sign their names. 4. L ess than 1 percent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000, and yet this did not happen. 5. Fifty-one percent of the worlds 100 wealthiest bodies are corporations. 6. T wenty percent of the population in the developed states consume 86 percent of the worlds goods. 7. T he lives of 1.7 million children were needlessly lost in 2000 because world governments failed to reduce poverty levels. 8. A mere 12 percent of the worlds population uses 85 percent of its water, and these 12 percent do not live in the developing countries. Remember that water is not distributed equally over the globe. That cannot be changed. Source: http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Faces.asp. Used by permission.
406
CHAPTER 13
Contrast of Rich and Poor in Developing Countries
A long line of South Africans wait for their minibusses home to their townships as a luxury car drives past in Johannesburg, South Africa, April 2004. More than ten years after South Africas first free and fair elections, the country still has huge differences in income and wealth. Millions of black people are still poor with no basic human needs such as running water.
other areas of the world. In fact, incomes there rose much faster than among developed countries. Poverty and economic inequality continue, as in the past, to be linked to political inequality. One consequence of poverty and political inequality is that the majority of victims of human rights violations are peasants and rural and urban laborers.4 They, along with indigenous groups and women, fall into the category of the suppressedwith far less political power than landed elites, military ofcers, business and commercial groups, industrialists, and other power elite groups. The depth and spread of poverty, and its vast system of social and political inequalities, call into question the value or credibility of the legally guaranteed constitutional rights of citizens to a fair trial, a job, medical care, and access to education. This is true despite the appearance of new democratic governments that are supposed to promote citizenship rights. Behind these deplorable conditions lies the legacy of a states colonial heritage, geographic location, depth and scope of corruption, inadequate formal government institutions, and poor leadership. Each of these factors is discussed later in the section about the politics of development. Given the scope of poverty in the world and the large number of developing countries, scholars of world politics have devoted much attention to the developing world and the political dynamics that drive it. To borrow a phrase from Thomas Hobbes (15881679), life in the Third World can be nasty, brutish, and short.5 Given this dour perspective, the obvious questions to ask are, why are conditions in developing countries so bad, and how can these countries develop? The answers are explored in the following sections.
A Transformation of a Countrys Underdevelopment

For more information see The View From: China: Market Socialism www.BetweenNations.org
Fortunately, Hobbess pessimistic predictions and observations do not apply to everyone in every country. z First, not all poor countries today were always poor, and some countries are growing out of poverty. For example, China at one time was the richest country

in the world, and India was thriving up to the end of the eighteenth century. Both were ranked as very poor countries in 1980, but neither country is among the ranks of the very poor today. z Second, and more important, some countries have made great strides in the past fty yearsa relatively short time. With luck, more countries will solve such seemingly intractable problems as poverty, political instability, illiteracy, discrimination against women and other minorities, child labor practices, and even slavery. Along the way, however, developing countries face many internal and external obstacles to improvement. Internal obstacles include lack of social cohesion, political inequality, and problems determining effective governmental policies. External obstacles include global economic competition, trade imbalances, dependency on single-export economies, and political pressure from other countries. Despite interest in development over the past half-century and the postWorld War II explosion in the number of newly independent underdeveloped states in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the concept of development does not have a commonly accepted denition. Most people would agree, however, that development is an overall process of change over time in a countrys economy, political system, and social structure that improves the quality of human life and makes possible widened civic participation and sharing in political decisions. The key point here, drawing on Monte Palmer, a leading scholar of comparative politics and development, is that development is not random change and transition but rather purposeful change that moves toward the attainment of a specic goal.6 It helps to think in terms of a finish line in the process of development, which allows you to measure the actual development in a countrys economy, polity, or society. When you think of the nish-line idea, think about purposeful change in a specic directionlike human beings growing or developing into mature adults.7
407
Development Overall change in a countrys economy, political system, and social structure that improves the quality of human life.
An Improvement in Economic, Political, and Social Life

Development, then, may be thought of as an improvement in a countrys economic, political, and social life. Economists look at economic development, which is the easiest to follow because it involves physical progress in standards of living that can be empirically measured. Political scientists emphasize political development, which is harder to measure: among other things, it refers to wider civic participation among a countrys populationor less inequality in political power. Each countrys level of political equality and civic participation is, of course, linked to its history and culture. Sociologists and anthropologists write about social and cultural development, which is equally important but even more difcult to chart and measure. Given these three aspects of the development process, how can we make sense of the changes taking place in the worlds poor countries? z First, we know underdevelopment when we see it in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, because poverty conditions are crystal clear, as indicated in the data presented in this chapter. Yet debate still surrounds how one measures overall development, especially in the political and social realms. Some observers, for example, criticize modern concepts of political development that stress democracy and emphasize the creation of market economies by a countrys political leaders. They say such concepts are Western-based in that they reect the experiences and values of Western Europe and the United States. As such,
Economic development The use of land, labor, and capital to produce higher standards of living, typically measured by increases in gross national product (GNP) and more equitable distribution of national income. Political development An intangible concept measured, to some extent, by civic participation in government and political equality among citizens. Social and cultural development Progress in a countrys standards of living and quality of life, characterized by a growing middle class.
408
CHAPTER 13
the argument is that they may not reect the culture, religion, attitudes, and values practiced in a developing country. z Second, rates of development, as in economic development, vary greatly from one country to the next. China is moving rapidly in economic development, while Haiti and African states south of the Sahara are not. South Korea is far ahead of North Korea in economic growth, while Mexico is ahead of Guatemala, and Taiwan is doing much better economically than Sudan. Rates of development are by no means the same across countries, nor do they affect everybody within a country in the same way. A country may look like it is making economic progress, while in fact inequality may remain high among its population. As to alternative paths to economic growth, these vary widely from state to state. China, Vietnam, and Cuba follow variations of single-party rule (the Communist Party) that exist within the context of market economics. Bhutan, a small country in the Himalayas, pursues a philosophy of gross national happiness that recognizes the individuals spiritual needs, not dened simply as fulllment of material wishes. z Third, when development occurs in one sector of a country, such as its economy, that sphere of development tends to change other sectors, like the political and social systems. Indeed, many political economists believe economic development is a precondition for political (democratic) and social development (a growing middle class). If standards of living rise and an economy becomes more modern and diversied, it can generate movement toward a more democratic systemas occurred in Mexico just over a century ago. In fact, a look at the history of Latin America indicates that economic development typically leads to major change in a countrys political system, including the emergence of multiple political parties. Such a political transition might occur because a more diversied economy tends to produce more interest groups and political parties, higher literacy, and the spread of mass communication media like newspapers and television. A thriving economy, moreover, should generate more opportunities for upward mobility and higher standards of living for women as well as men. z Fourth, most of the developing countries have been affected by globalization, especially the technology revolution (see chapter 1). If you travel through developing countriesfrom China and Vietnam to Mexico and Guatemala you can see the presence of Internet cybercafes, IGOs, NGOs, MNCs, and global banking and nancial institutions. Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola have been globalized, along with McDonalds and K.F.C. (formerly Kentucky Fried Chicken). Still, opposition to globalization is common in some parts of the developing world. The reaction is caused by the perception that the development process is not homegrown but generated from abroadand, specically, by the West (think of al Qaeda). It is also a response to the conicts in identity arising from the interplay of changing economy, a changing social and cultural system, and the political regime.
Crafting a Denition of Development

Development has traditionally been dened in economic terms, rst in terms of overall economic growth (as measured by GNP or by gross domestic product, GDP) and later in terms of economic growth per person (GDP per capita). Such measurements are useful but incomplete. They are useful because they indicate

North Koreas Leader Kim Jong Il
409
The son of, and successor to, longtime North Korean leader, Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il is known as Dear Leader. An autocratic leader of enormous power and influence, he has dramatically impoverished his country.
whether or not a country is doing well economically and whether or not it is doing better or worse over time. A country, however, could have a rising national income but still exclude much of its population from the political process. Similarly, a country may be growing economically in the short run but destroying its environment in the process, thus hurting long-term economic growth. To encompass these and other denitional problems, we propose ve components to the denition of development. z The rst component is economic. Because the equitable distribution of wealth (equity) matters just as much as overall economic growth, the notion of economic health is measured by GDP per capita. It is necessary to focus on not only the size of the economic pie, however, but also on how the pie is divided. For example, a countrys development would be very restricted if only 1 percent of the population beneted from 99 percent of the economic growth. z A second component of development is the health of the population. The most useful measurement is the infant mortality rate, which reects the quality and quantity of food, the availability of housing, and the quality of and access to medical care. z A third component of development is literacy. A countrys literacy rate is a useful indicator of development because it measures quality and access to education. Most people in the rich industrialized countries take for granted the ability to read and write, not to mention basic math skills. Illiteracy is a terrible problem in many countries, as shown in the tables above. Around the world, about one billion people are illiterate. z Environmental sustainability is the fourth component of development. This is the ability of a country to advance in economic development without destroying the environment in the process (see chapter 14 for more details).
410
CHAPTER 13
z The fth component of development is civil rights, particularly gender rights. In most countries, women play a relatively small role politically as well as economically (by traditional measurement). Thus, improvements in this area would see greater participation of women in political and economic life. (The fourth and fth components of development are not yet widely accepted among mainstream political scientists and economists. Historically, few people paid attention to these two issues, and there is still reluctance to include them. In short, then, development has come to encompass many elements besides economic progress. Development, then, is movement toward higher standards of living, widening opportunities to live a better life, upward social and economic mobility, and expanding participation in government. Explicit definitions of economic, social, and political development are the next topics to consider.
Classifying the Worlds Countries

By using one or more indicators, it is possible to rank countries in terms of devel opment. A relatively complex system of ranking countries, the Human Development Index (HDI), was presented in chapter 11. As you learned, a variety of political, economic, and social elements are factored in so countries can be compared by their HDI score. From your reading of chapter 3 and this chapter thus far, you know that categorizing countries in terms of development can be confusing. To simplify matters, this chapter uses the World Bank method of low-, lower middle, upper middle, and high-income groups. Think of developing FIGURE 13.2 countries as those not in the high-income groups. People Living on a Dollar a Day (See Figure 13.2.) An older, but still widely used, method for categorizing countries evolved during People in poor countries struggle in many social, political, and the Cold War. In this system,
economic areas. However, over the past 15 years or so, progress has been many at least in terms of the number of people living on less than a dollar a day. Unfortunately, as we noted at the start of the chapter, half the worldnearly three billion peoplelive on less than two dollars a day.
The Breadline 1.25 1.20 People Living on Less Than $1 per Day (billions) 1.15 1.10 1.05 1.00 0.95 30 28
z First World countries are developed, rich, and democratic. z Second World refers to the worlds communist or former communist countries. These countries are also referred to as countries in transition. z Third World covers the rest of the worlds countriesthose that are relatively poor and polit ically unstable. A common expression that encompasses Third World countries is the global South, after the hemisphere where most Third World countries are located. This term contrasts with the North, after the hemisphere where most of the First World and Second World countries are found. Other terms commonly used to describe the Third World are less developed countries (LDCs), underdeveloped countries, and undeveloped countries. z Fourth World is sometimes used to refer not to countries but to indigenous peoples, such as the Tamils in Sri Lanka and the Mayans of Guatemala. It is important to note that there is no
24 22 20 18
1990
1993
1996
1999
2002
2004
Source: The Economist, AprilApril 28, 2007. by permission. Source: The Economist, 28, Used 2007.
Copyright 2009 Cengage Learning, Inc. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part.
Duncan: World Politics in the 21st Century, 3e
Percentage of Total
26

progression from Fourth World to First Worldthat is, it doesnt make sense for countries to go from Fourth to Third to Second to First World status. If so, it would mean a Third World country would have to become a communist country (Second World) in order to become a First World country. This system is a useful way to make sense of the worlds many countries, but it is full of nagging problems. 1. Some countries do not t neatly into one category. China, for example, may be classied as a Second World country from a political perspective because a single political party, the Communist Party, dominates it. However, China has added so many capitalist elements to its economic system that the term Second World no longer makes perfect sense. 2. It makes sense to create certain exceptions to the First, Second, and Third World categorization system. This is often done for oil-rich countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and for the newly industrializing countries (NICs), such as South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore. 3. Many people object to the term Third World because it has a negative or pejorative connotation; it is viewed as implying inferior status. 4. Another problem with this commonly used category system is that some Third World countries have regions that could well be dened as developed. India, for example, is more developed than China in some ways but not in others. For instance, India is much more democratic than China and has a much freer press. It also has a much lower literacy rate than China. Likewise, some developed countriesthat is, countries in the First Worldhave regions that resemble the Third World. Consider, for example, which parts of the United States may have Third World features. Thus, the terms First, Second, and Third World are useful but crude shortcuts for categorizing the worlds countries; they are helpful, but only to a point.
411
Newly industrializing countries (NICs) Those countries previously classied as less developed countries (LDCs) that have raised signicantly their levels of production and wealth typically through export-led growth.
Test Prepper 13.1

True or False?
_____ 1. A key decentralizing force in world politics today is the interaction between poverty and violence. _____ 2. As a result of the UNs Millennium Development Goals pledge, many developed countries now contribute 0.7 percent of their GNP to development aid. _____ 3. The GDP of the poorest countries is less than the wealth of the worlds three richest people combined. _____ 4. An acceptable denition of development focuses on two types of change in a countrys condition: economic and political. _____ 5. Countries that have industrialized in recent years but have not yet obtained high levels of
economic wealth are characterized as Second World countries.

Multiple Choice
_____ 6. Which of the following components would you leave out when crafting a denition of development? a. Economics b. Civil rights c. Literacy d. Culture e. None of the above, all are important
412
CHAPTER 13
What Theories Explain Rich and Poor Countries?

2 Understand how different theories approach the issue of development and how each explains why some countries are rich while others are poor.
In many of the chapters, you have considered extremely difcult questions, such as, Why are there wars? In this chapter, you consider an equally daunting question: Why are some countries rich and politically stable, whereas others, are poor and politically unstable? This question leads to a host of other challenging questions: How can poor countries improve their economic situation? Must countries trying to develop economically also be democratic, or can a country be too poor to be democratic?8 Should the state play a dominant role in the economy, or should a hands-off approachletting the market drive the economybe chosen? Should all states try to develop by creating a U.S.style economy? Unfortunately, there are no easy answers to these questions, nor is there a consensus among academics or practitioners. Nevertheless, you can make signicant progress in addressing these questions by building on the theoretical foundations from earlier chapters.
Three Main Theoretical Approaches

The three approaches that follow offer different explanations for why there are rich and poor countries. They also offer different prescriptions, or policy recommendations, for helping developing countries improve their lot. Chapter 12 provides a head start in understanding the following theories. Specifically, this discussion briey reviews the economic liberal and neo-mercantilist approaches. It then explores in greater depth the neo-Marxist and dependency theories introduced in chapter 2. These approaches are shown in Table 13.4.
Audio Concept Adam Smiths The Wealth of Nations www.BetweenNations.org
Economic Liberalism
Economic liberalism An approach to IPE based on free-market principles and open international trade and monetary systems. Founded, in part, on the belief that the role of the state should be minimized because of potential inefciency as well as the fear of states abusing their power.
Modernization school An approach to development that seeks to modernize backward countries through the adoption of policies consistent with economic liberalism and free trade. The United States is usually seen as the successful model to emulate.
As chapter 12 showed, economic liberalism (neoliberal economics) grows out of the classical economics tradition. It is a variation on the classical free-trade and free marketeconomy liberalism of the nineteenth century, made famous in Europe with the 1776 publication in England of Adam Smiths The Wealth of Nations. According to this approach, free-market principles should dominate a countrys political economy. Domestically, the state should limit its regulation of the economy. Internationally, the state should not construct barriers to trade and investment with other countries. When individuals can buy, sell, and trade freely across borders, everyone is better off in the long run. Since the 1960s, U.S. foreign policy toward developing countries has essentially relied on this approach. A look at the third edition of Walt W. Rostows 1991 book, The Stages of Economic Growth,9 shows how little the approach has changed since then. The modernization school, espoused by Rostow and others, attempts to modernize backward countries by encouraging the kinds of policies that helped the United States become so successful. The modernization theory also stresses the internal obstacles to development, that is, those located inside the developing countries themselves. How does this economic liberal approach answer the question, Why are there poor countries? The primary response is that in developing countries problems
c WHAT THEORIES EXPLAIN RIcH ANd POOR COUNTRIES?

TABLE 13.4 Three Theoretical Approaches to Development
Economic Liberalism
General comments about the political economy: Free-market principles should dominate the political economy. The individual or the firm. Harmonious and self-regulating international economic integration through the world market. Mostly internal.
413
Mercantilism, Economic Nationalism

The state uses the economy to increase its political power. The state. Inherent struggle among states; regulated by a balance of power.
Neo-Marxism Dependency
Economic factors dominate politics and society.
Most important unit of analysis: Expectation about the IPE:
Class (capitalist and proletariat) or the international capitalist system. Inherent conflict, especially class conflict; revolutionary change until Marxist utopia.
Main obstacles to development:
Internal and external
Mostly external.
are created or made worse by failed government policies. Policies that restrict trade, for example, can lead to what economists call market imperfections that hinder the efcient use of land, labor, and capital. Governments that meddle too much in the economy, that are excessively incompetent, or that are exceedingly corrupt also hurt development prospects. In some troubled countries, for instance, government policies favor a small minority of wealthy people. Kleptocracies are governments that essentially steal from the people; this was the case in the Philippines under the regime of Ferdinand Marcos (19651986). These political factors are discussed in greater depth later in the chapter. Proponents of the neoliberal economic approach admit that the international political and economic environment is competitive and sometimes even hostile. In the long run, however, there is no substitute for sound domestic policies. This point was recently echoed by the United Nations, which argued that effective governance, in conjunction with sound international assistance, is essential for development. As Mark Malloch Brown, the former head of the UNs Development Program, put it, Governance is a critical building block for poverty reduction.10
Neoliberalism in Practice
From the 1990s onward, in many developing countries, neoliberalism has emphasized: z Free trade z Market economies z Selling off inefcient state-owned enterprises z Exports z Decreased tariffs z Streamlining bureaucratic processes z Attempts to diversify economies
414
CHAPTER 13
For example, after decades of failed neo-Marxist economic programs, in the early 1990s India adopted neoliberal policies under the leadership of Manmohan Singh, the architect of Indias economic reforms and the present prime minister. His development philosophy is that government should reduce bureaucracy, open markets to attract foreign investment, and reduce the states role in business activity. From this perspective, the governments job is to concentrate its efforts where markets alone do not serve the public interest well. Critics of this viewpoint claim that such policies have not produced consistently positive results. In Latin America, for example, poverty remains entrenched and the environment has suffered. Critics of neoliberalism also associate poverty with the perceived negative effects of globalization.
Neo-mercantilism and Economic Nationalism

A second theoretical approach to development has much in common with the realist paradigm. Realism, mercantilism, neo-mercantilism, economic nationalism, and what some prefer to call statism all share a belief in the primacy of the state. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, mercantilist policies, followed especially by Spain and Portugal, were used to increase national unity and the power and wealth of the state. These policies primarily involved the acquisition of precious metals (gold and silver bullion) and protectionist trade policies (for example, tariffs). Neo-mercantilism evolved in the nineteenth century as Germany sought to build a stronger industrial capacity through protectionist policiesbut without the reliance on bullion. Neo-mercantilists believed the state should be the main determinant of organized political, economic, and social activity.11 Neo-mercantilism remained highly relevant through the twentieth century, when the international political economy was hit by the Great Depression in the 1930s as well as the collapse of the gold standard and the oil shocks of the 1970s. As a response to these devastating events, many countries soured on the economic liberal faith in an unfettered international market economy. Like earlier mercantilists, they saw the need for the state to resolve the countrys problems through various forms of trade protection. Many of todays neo-mercantilists, or economic nationalists, use the term managed trade to describe increased government regulation of global trade. What is the neo-mercantilist explanation for underdevelopment? Consistent with its emphasis on the power of the state, neo-mercantilism contends that international power struggles make political and economic life harder for weaker countries. Thus, domestic policies that allow too much foreign domination of the economy can be harmful to a countrys development. Neo-mercantilists often oppose the prescription of neoliberal economists. Instead of letting market forces drive the economy, neo-mercantilists argue, as long as market forces hurt a country, they should be curbed through the kinds of protectionist policies described in chapter 12: tariffs, quotas, nontariff barriers to trade, and so on. Instead of the state remaining relatively aloof from the economy, it should assume an active role in guiding the economy. Note, however, that neo-mercantilists do not call for a totalitarian state. The state is to serve as an important guidenot a dictatorof economic affairs.
Neo-Marxism and Dependency

As with mercantilism and neo-mercantilism, the rst question to examine is what makes the neo version of Marxism new. Marxism, as developed by Karl Marx,

Friedrich Engels, and others in the nineteenth century, focused on the struggle between the capitalist and proletarian classes within a country. Marxists predicted that domestic (or internal) economic crises in individual states would result in the revolutionary and violent overthrow of capitalists in favor of a dictatorship of the proletariat (working classes). This movement on a national scale was eventually expected to sweep the globe as country after country succumbed to the inevitable logic of Marxist socialist development. Neo-Marxism, which developed in the early part of the twentieth century due to the inuence of V. I. Lenin and others, has a much more international focus. Imperialism, as we learned in chapter 2, was seen as the most advanced stage of capitalist development by which rich (primarily European) countries sought cheap raw materials in the undeveloped parts of the world. Rich countries created colonies in the worlds periphery (a process known as colonialism) and then geared those colonies development to the benet of the home country or to a small number of local capitalists. Neo-Marxists predicted that the oppressive capitalist class eventually would be overthrown and that poor countries would similarly throw off the oppressive inuences of rich countries. Neo-Marxists thus built on Marxism by grafting on this international element. The neo-Marxist explanation for political and economic problems in developing countries is their exploitation by rich countries. Neo-Marxism became especially prominent after World War II. Thanks to the work of Latin American scholars in particular, the dependency approach, a variant of Neo-Marxism, became standard fare in college courses on development. The basic point of dependency theories is that if development were to occur at all in developing statesthat is, the peripheryit would be dependent on an exploitative relationship with the developed worldthat is core countries. An interesting example of this is Frances efforts to create an economy in Algeria that would serve Frenchnot localneeds. This included the production of wine, which was in high demand in France but of little value to the local Muslim population.12 Some of the main targets of the dependency approach were multinational corporations from rich core countries that invested in the periphery. It was believed the vast majority of the prots generated by MNCs in the periphery were simply sent back to the core country, thus enriching the wealthy at the expense of the poor. Figure 13.3 illustrates how this works. MNCs from developed countries often set up factories in poor (that is, periphery) countries because wages there are much lower. Take the example of the Barbie doll. According to Eric Clark, author of The Real Toy Story, Barbie dolls bring in $3.6 billion annually in retail sales (for the MNC), but very little of this goes to the people who make the dolls. A Chinesemade Barbie, for example, retails in the United States for about $10. Only thirtyve cents goes to the factory.13 Like the neo-Marxists, proponents of dependency theories believe the structure of the international system is biased against poor countries. For example, the trading relationship between core (developed) and periphery (developing) countries is often lopsided in favor of the core. These poor terms of trade result in income being transferred from the periphery to the core. The neo-Marxist approach offers a variety of policy prescriptions for dealing with the external forces hindering development.14 It begins with the premise that if the right changes are made to the international political-economic structure, the situation will improve for the worlds poor countries. Some people believe if the core were simply to increase aid to and provide better market access for the
415
Periphery In the international system, that region or substate entity that is not part of the central decision-making group of states. Kosovo, Chechnya, Kashmir, and East Timor may be considered part of the periphery. Africa has been, up to now, a peripheral region of the international system. Colonialism Control of territories in what is now considered the Third World by rich, mostly European countries with the aim of gearing colonial development to the benet of the home country.
Core countries In the language of the dependency approach, the worlds rich countries, or First World countries.
416
CHAPTER 13
FIGURE 13.3 The Dependency Explanation of How the Rich Exploit the Poor
As the diagram suggests, multinational corporations from rich countries set up shop (invest) in periphery countries, usually with assistance from wealthy local capitalists (the core in the periphery). Profits from the MNC operations in the periphery are then sent back to the home country, leaving the peripheral country no better (or even worse) off than before.
MNC Exploitation Core Country Profits
Core Periphery Country
Import-substitution industrialization Policies designed to increase national politicaleconomic independence by building up national industries so the country will not have to rely as much on expensive imports. Examples include nationalizing foreign companies, trade barriers on foreign goods, and diversifying the national economy in order to reduce dependence on a few exports. New International Economic Order (NIEO) The effort by developing countries to alter the rules of the international system, especially with respect to trade and nancial structures.
periphery, things would improve for the periphery. Neo-Marxists, however, believe these are only partial measures that wont signicantly alter the dependent relationship between the core and periphery. They argue that periphery countries should sever political and economic ties with core countries. By cutting the links to the exploitative core countries, development will no longer depend on their demands. One method of severing ties is to nationalize a foreign companythat is, to take over the factories and facilities of the MNC. On their own, periphery countries could then diversify their economy (become less dependent on a few exports) and avoid spending scarce cash on expensive imported goods. These prescriptions, import-substitution industrialization , were the centerpiece of the most important policy adopted by developing countries after World War II. In short, the policy called for domestic production to substitute for imported products. Another neo-Marxist, dependency-inspired strategy culminated in the 1970s with the establishment of the New International Economic Order (NIEO). The NIEO was an attempt by developing countries to elevate the issue of economic development to the top of the international agenda and to make international institutions more responsive to the concerns of poor countries.15 The NIEO called for developed countries to: z Provide more aid to developing countries z Create debt-relief programs z Reduce their trade barriers to goods from developing countries In short, developing countries essentially demanded a restructuring of the international system to eliminate bias against them. For a time, it seemed as if the developing countries were nally gaining leverage, especially after the oil shocks caused by OPEC. By the 1980s, however, it was clear the NIEO had failed. The neoMarxist policies, such as import-substituting industrialization, adopted by many developing countries, especially those in Latin America, contributed to huge government budget decits, enormous debts, and rampant ination. The NIEO also failed because the much more powerful developed states were unwilling to cede signicant inuence to the worlds poorer countries. Even though these shortcomings, as well as the collapse of communism in 1989 1990, largely discredited dependency notions, similar ideas persist to this day.
Electronic Publishing Services Inc. Duncan, World Politics in the 21st Century, 3e

z Opponents of global capitalism have made disruptive appearances at the WTO meeting in Seattle in 1999 and at meetings of the IMF in Washington in 2000 and in many other cities since then. While many of todays anti-capitalists may not call themselves neo-Marxists, they do share some assumptions. Modern capitalism and globalization, for example, are believed to be responsible for a massive concentration of corporate power within and across national boundaries, a concentration supported by the World Bank, the IMF, and other international organizations dominated by developed countries.16 z The desire to rewrite the rules of the international system also persists. In April 2000, for example, the Group of 77 (developing countries) called for a new global human order. They specically asked the worlds rich countries to open their borders to imports from developing countries, to forgive debts, to increase aid to poor countries, and to share new technologies. In addition, the Group of 77 called for a stronger voice in the decision-making powers of the World Bank and the IMF. Furthermore, they asked the United Nations to play a bigger role in economic aid, rather than channeling it through organizations controlled by rich nations.17 z Finally, developing countries desired to reorder the rules of the international system by calling for better access to developed countries markets through the WTO and its lengthy negotiations as part of the Doha Round of trade talks.
417
Theory and Practice of Cooperation among Developing Countries

It seems logical that if developing countries band together, they will be able to put more pressure on the worlds rich and politically powerful countries and thus alter the rules of the international system in their favor. The NIEO was one such attempt. Another option for developing countries is to cooperate when certain products they possess are in high demand by the rest of the world, especially the developed states. The best example of this is the formation of OPEC, discussed in chapter 6. Although OPEC may appear to be a purely economic organization, the implications of its actions can have a signicantly political impact. In 1973, OPEC raised oil prices from roughly $3 a barrel to $12 a barrel, which sent political shock waves around the world. Another shock came in 1979, when OPEC again raised the price of oil; it seemed OPEC was clearly in the drivers seat in this most critical of industries. These two events in the 1970s represented the best opportunity yet for developing countries to gain leverage over developed countries, most of which were highly dependent on oil imports, particularly from the Middle East. However, the benets of this new-found power were not equally distributed among the developing countries and in some cases, the oil shocks actually hurt countries in the developing world. Of course, the oil-producing countries beneted most. Many poor non-oil-producing countries suffered the same problem as developed countries. They had to pay much higher prices for oil. As you read in chapter 12, OPECs inuence on the world stage did not last. Through most of the 1980s and 1990s, not only was more oil found (increasing world supply) but also most developed countries became more efcient energy consumers (decreasing demand). In addition, OPECs member-states started cheating signicantly on their output targets; they pumped more oil than they said they would, thus creating an oversupply and driving prices down. The incredibly low oil prices of 1998 and early 1999 made some observers wonder
418
CHAPTER 13
whether OPEC would ever play the kind of role it did in the 1970s. But it was those low prices that motivated OPEC and even non-OPEC countries to work together to stabilize and thus raise world oil prices. This effort led to the doubling of oil prices in the United States between 1999 and 2000. By 2004 and 2005 very high oil prices were again helping OPEC members (as well as non-OPEC oilproducing countries). The lesson of OPECas a group of developing countries banding together to leverage developed countriesis difcult to apply in other contexts. z First of all, OPECs successes have been limited, and oil has not been the cureall for its members economic and political woes. z Second, most countries in the developing world do not possess raw materials or manufactured goods or services that are in as high demand as oil. As a result, efforts to form effective cartels in other commodities have generally failed. After reviewing the above theoretical approaches to development, it is apparent that developing countries have generally followed three strategies, based on theoretical ideas and actual experience.18 1. First, some countries have tried to detach themselves from the international political economy (the neo-Marxist and dependency recommendation). For the most part, these efforts have failed. The change in attitude toward contact with developed countries is exemplied by the attitude of Brazils former president, Henrique Cardozo. Cardozo had been a leading proponent of the dependency approach and had denounced U.S. MNCs as instruments of American imperialism. By the 1990s, however, he had come to believelike many leaders in the developing worldthat MNCs can provide the capital and technology necessary for economic development.19 2. The next strategy for some developing countries was to change the international political-economic order. The most prominent attempt was the NIEO. This strategy thus far has also failed. The 1980s and 1990s saw a major ideological shift among developing states as more and more countries adopted neoliberal economic policies (for example, less regulation, favoring foreign investment). This offers a partial explanation for Mexicos decision to support NAFTA. 3. The nal strategy of developing countries has been to adopt neo-mercantilist domestic policies and to maximize the benets of participation in the international political economy. Almost every country in the world has, in varying degrees, supported the neo-mercantilist prescription of protecting domestic industries from foreign competition.
c WHAT FAcTORS AFFEcT THE POLITIcS OF DEVELOPMENT?

Test Prepper 13.2
419
_____ 1. The economic liberal approach to development argues that failed government policies are the key reason why developing countries are still poor. _____ 2. Neoliberalism emphasizes free trade, market economies, increased exports, and decreased tariffs (among other things) as important strategies for developing countries. _____ 3. Neo-mercantalists argue that the state should be the main determinant of organized political, economic, and social activity. _____ 4. The dependency approach to economic development argues that a certain level of dependence on the international economic system is healthy for states and that, in the long run, it will lead to economic development. _____ 5. The lesson of OPEC is that, if only the developing states would make the effort, economic cooperation between developing states clearly leads to success both economically and politically.
_____ 6. Which of the following is an example of a failed government policy that may be used to explain a countrys lack of development? a. Policies that foster trade at the expense of internal development b. Governments that fail to monitor and adjust economic factors when the situation is warranted c. Excessive corruption by government ofcials d. None of the above e. All of the above _____ 7. Which of the following did the New International Economic Order (NIEO) ask developed states to provide developing countries? a. Technology credits b. New low credit loans c. Debt-relief programs d. Reduced prices on defensive weapons systems to increase political stability e. All of the above
What Factors Affect the Politics of Development?

3 Identify and understand the political factors that affect the development process.
Directly related to the foregoing discussion of the theories of development is what may be called the politics of developmentthe title of this chapter . This term refers to how developing states are governed, how their political leadership operates as they try to launch and sustain economic growth, how political elites allocate their countrys scarce resources, and how development patterns result from the nature of relations with developed countries. Generally speaking, the politics of development concept brings the realm of politics to bear on the economic, political, and social lives of everyone who lives inside the state and is subject to its rule. Politics, both domestic and international, can contribute to development or hold it back. In many parts of the developing world, a few people in control of the political system use it to enhance their personal wealth rather than to advance the interests of their people. Such was the case in Zaire (todays Democratic Republic of Congo) under the late Mobuto Sese Seko, or Zimbabwes strongman, Robert Mugabe. Haiti is a disaster case, whereas the nature of politics in Costa Rica or Singapore is associated more with economic and social development.
420
CHAPTER 13
The politics of development, as all politics, involves who gets what, when, where, and how (see chapter 1). As the economic liberal and neo-mercantilist approach emphasizes, politics and governing are intimately tied to all those decisions and outcomes that affect whether or not a country is moving toward improved standards of living for more and more people and toward wider popular participation in government. A countrys political system is most likely to promote developmenteconomic growth, equity, and increased civic participationif it meets three specic conditions.20 The countrys: z Leaders believe in the priority of development goals.
Audio Concept Managed Trade and Capital www.BetweenNations.org
z Political system is in control of its human and material resources. z Political system is able to mobilize human resources in support of development goals. In looking at a countrys politics of development, several questions come to mind. How do political decisions affect a countrys capital formation ? In other words, how are land, labor, and physical capital (like factories for manufacturing) developed to generate income in the country? What political decisions are made that affect a countrys vital social overhead capital, such as education and health? Who becomes educated? What do they study? How does politics determine whether or not roads, bridges, schools, dams, and communication facil ities are builtand whether or not they are built in the right places to benet the whole country? Where does politics come into the equation in terms of how much public spending supports the military versus schools, hospitals, and public health programs? To get a handle on these questions, lets look more closely at the factors that shape the politics of development.
Capital formation The process by which land, labor, and physical capital (like factories for manufacturing) are developed to generate income in a country. Social overhead capital A term used in economic development studies to indicate factors, such as a populations health, education, and welfare, that contribute to economic growth.
The Colonial Legacy

Many countries in the developing world were created from former colonial European empires. As such, they inherited economic, social, and political systems from the colonial era, during which they were exploited by Britain, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain, among others, as sources of cheap labor and raw materials to fuel the manufacturing industries back home. The colonial legacy left a distinct imprint on the politics of development in the developing world. It led to great shifts of wealth from todays developing countries to industrialized Europe, thereby contributing to todays poverty and population growth. Colonialism also left in its wake state boundaries with no cohesive national territories. Other consequences of colonialism were: z Political institutions designed on European models, created for colonial rule of the countries rather than linked to traditional cultural norms of the colonized area. In many cases, this resulted in unworkable postcolonial settings, with the military emerging as the only institution with enough power to maintain order and stability.21 z Economic systems geared to exploit raw materials and cheap labor for the benet of the mother country rather than for sustainable economic development in the colonized country. z Inadequate infrastructures for successful economic development, including low literacy rates, poor housing and health facilities, and inefcient transportation and communication.
For more information see Why It Matters to You: Global Development www.BetweenNations.org

z Ethnic, caste, tribal, religious, and linguistic divisions among the colonized states population, which contributed to chronic postcolonial instability. Iraq, for example, in the region known from ancient times as Mesopotamia, was earlier ruled by the Turks. When the Ottoman Empire collapsed after World War I, the League of Nations gave Great Britain the mandate to oversee Mesopotamia and Palestine. In 1921, the British drew some lines in the sand and created Iraq. Inside this new country were Kurds, Sunni Muslims, and Shiite Muslims who previously had not been governed together but rather treated as separate provinces by the Turks. Stability in Iraq came in the form of the heavy hand of a dictator. In Palestine, Great Britain determined to create a Jewish homelanda decision still playing out in the Israeli-Palestinian conict today. The colonial era left many such examples of multireligious and multiethnic articial states.
421
Economic and Human Health Factors

Todays postcolonial politics in poor states is affected by the basic lack of economic and natural resources, extensive poverty and inequality, and weak power compared to the developed countries.22 Remember that 80 percent of the worlds population lives in countries that generate only 20 percent of the worlds total income.23 (But see the discussion that follows on measuring economic assets in developing countries.) This means that political leaders have fewer resources available to initiate positive change and respond to growing demands from an expanding population with high birthrates. Added to this is the persistence of high-level government corruption, resistance to change from entrenched elites that hold political and economic control, and the willingness of both haves and have-nots to resort to violence in order to make their position clear. Remember that corruption diminishes available economic assets that otherwise could nd their way into development projects.
Human Underdevelopment
With respect to human underdevelopment affecting the politics of development, sub-Saharan Africa, for example, enters the twenty-rst century with lagging school enrollments, high child mortality, and widespread endemic diseases like malaria and AIDS. Such diseases cut life expectancy by twenty years or more and undercut rates of savings and growth. In addition, many of this regions countriesas is the case elsewhere in the Developing Worldare plagued by an inability to produce sufcient food to feed their people. Add to this deciency in arable land the lack of other economic resources, such as those linked to energy (oil, natural gas, coal), and you can see how the problems of development multiply.
Income Inequality
Income inequality is extremely high in the developing states. In Latin America, which is typical, the ratio of income of the top 20 percent of earners to those at the bottom is around 16 to 1; in Brazil, it is nearly 25 to 1, compared to about 10 to 1 in the United States and 5 to 1 in Western Europe24 Needless to say, a countrys top leaders do not want to give up their privileged position. This breeds a political system featuring, among other problems, uncollected taxes, which deprives the state of money that could be invested in development projects; minimal political change, which impedes the incorporation of more people into national political life so their interests may be represented; and siphoned-off state funds for
422
CHAPTER 13
personal use. A classic case is Mexico, where corruption has held back more effective allocation of the states resources to improve human development at a time when peasant groups are demanding more land and labor is striving for higher wages. Indeed, in Mexico the ruling party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), that long ruled Mexico has been accused of channeling public funds to election campaigns.25 In a recent survey of high-ranking public ofcials and key leaders of civil society in over sixty developing countries, the respondents rated public sector corruption as the most serious obstacle to development and growth in their countries.26
Government Factors
Any discussion of lagging economic resources, as is clear in the preceding discussion, naturally brings into focus other issues of government in the developing countries. One of the big issues within that realm is the lack of government legitimacy.
Lack of Government Legitimacy

Many countries face a lack of legitimacy of their governments.27 In other words, most of the population of the state has little faith in the government and how it makes decisions, or they may simply not identify closely with the government, which they see as having virtually no effect on their lives. Many reasons account for this situation, including some already discussed in this chapter: abject poverty of the lower classes; vast income inequalities; populations living in the hinterlands, far from the capital city and other large population centers; and ethnic diversity, with its distinct cultural preferences and linguistic differences. For example, numerous ethnic tribal groups in the jungles of Guatemala do not speak Spanish, the language of Guatemala and its government. As a result, these groups barely identify with their government. This is not surprising, because the Guatemalan military has been responsible for killing scores of peasant Indians at random over recent years.28 In 1996, Guatemala ofcially ended its thirty-six-year civil war, which left more than 200,000 people, primarily Mayan Indians, dead and over a million people upro oted. Even today, right-wing civil patrols of soldiers and paramilitary groups operate unchecked in rural Guatemala, undercutting government legitimacy in the eyes of their victims. In Colombia, meanwhile, drug lords and right-wing paramilitaries control much of the countryside, reducing the ofcial governments control over Colombian territory. Where ethnic groups are numerous inside a state, as in Nigeria, it is difcult for any government to gain the respect and support of those ethnic groups who are not represented in the governments instruments of power. A review of the differences between ethnic nations and states in previous chapters highlights this point for you.
Lack of Government Power and Authority in the Countryside

Governments in developing countries simply may not have the power and authority to affect the lives of people in the countryside, who are far from the capital city, the center of government. If the states administrative apparatus does not extend much beyond the capital city or one or two other large cities, its power is noticeably limited. In this situationwhich exists in parts of Africa and Latin America even if a government were dedicated to mobilizing its human and material resources

in support of modernization and development, it would be difcult to do so. Not far from La Paz, the capital of Bolivia, paved roads become dirt roads and ropepulled ferries are used to transport local buses across rivers. In other parts of Latin America, it is common for large landowners in rural areas to drive their farm workers (campesinos) to the city at election time and force them to vote for the landowners preferred candidates.
423
Violence within and between Developing Countries

Causes of violence within and between developing countries are many, as you learned in chapters 9 and 10. One such cause is the lack of democratic institutions to resolve conict between groups, including ethnic national groups. Others are poor economic conditions and the stresses of economic transformation. Economic inequalities, discriminatory economic and political practices, ethnic minority status, and political alienation all contribute to violent conict. Examples of violence within developing countries that undermine its economic development include: z Palestinian-Israeli struggles over territorynotably the conict over a territorial homeland (sovereign state) for the Palestinians. Whether or not the Middle East peace conference in November 2007 hosted by the U.S. in Annapolis, Maryland, will produce progress toward a sovereign Palestinian state remains to be seen. Major points of disagreement are: the Palestinian states actual borders, Jerusalems status, the right of Palestinian refugees to return to homes now a part of Israel, and how to guarantee Israels security. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, and Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, were weak politically, while Palestinians were divided between two rival political groups: (1) Hamas, voted into power in January 2006, in control of Gaza, and (2) Fatah, led by Mr. Abbas, driven from Gaza into the West Bank by Hamas forces. Hamas refuses to recognize Israels right to exist indenitely.
A Slum Outside of Bombay, India
424
CHAPTER 13
z Iraqs civil violencein part a reection of deep historical frictions among Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurdslingering after the U.S.led invasion dramatically illustrates how civil instability undermines economic development. In Iraq, the issue is not so much development as simply reconstruction to return to its prewar economic status. The number of people living in absolute poverty in Iraq in 2007 reached 43 percent of the population. These people lack the required food, clothing or shelter to survive. Poverty helps generate recruits for the anti-United States insurgency. Civil wara product of political decisions to make war against another group (typically another ethnic national group inside the state)is catastrophic for economic development. Civil conict destroys infrastructure such as roads, bridges, railways, telegraphs, schools, hospitals, and dams, promotes the use of force over peaceful approaches to conict resolution, and causes the governments legitimate power to disintegrate.29 In addition civil violence drives away domestic and foreign investment. A look at what has happened in Angola, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Iraq, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and Sudan in the last decade of the twentieth century and the onset of the twenty-rst illustrates this point. Figure 13.4 depicts how turbulent the politics of civil wars have been in Africa. Keep in mind that one of the causes of civil war in developing countries is the intense identication with ethnic nationality rather than with the government of the state in which the ethnic groups live.
The Impact of Military Elites

Military elites remain strong in a number of developing countries and, as such, undermine economic development, hold back human rights and social justice, and inhibit the growth of democratic government. Pakistan is a case in point, with its frequent coups, low economic growth, and ineffective civilian political institutions. Pakistans military simply has outstripped edgling civilian institutions, leaving the legislative branch of government weak, the judiciary underdeveloped, the press stilled, and one prime minister after another dependent on the military to sustain public order.30 Economic growth has suffered under military-dominated conditions. It has been made more difcult by a population growth of about 2 percent, although this is much less than Liberias 4.91 percent and Gaza Strips 3.7 percent growth rate. Still, a 2 percent annual population growth rate is high in comparison to the more developed countries in Europe and North America, as well as Japan, Australia, and New Zealand, where the population is growing by less than 1 percent annually. Indeed, population growth rates are negative in many European countries, including Russia (-0.37%), Estonia (-0.64%), Hungary (-0.25%), and Ukraine (-0.64%). If the growth rates in these countries continue to fall below zero, population size will slowly decline, whereas in countries like Pakistan the population is growing rapidly. With the Pakistans ve main tribes, each loyal to a head clansman, the central government is not seen as legitimate by the majority of the population. Algeria is another case of politics dominated by the military, a place where the government implements policies selected by the army.31 Military power remains behind the scenes in parts of Latin Americaas, for example, in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela.
Cultural Factors
Not all the problems and issues associated with developing countries government are due to colonialismor to economic or government issues. In analyzing

FIGURE 13.4 Turbulent Africa
425
SENEGAL
NIGER
ERITREA CHAD SUDAN ETHIOPIA
NIGERIA LIBERIA SIERRA LEONE GUINEA BISSAU CONGO BRAZZAVILLE
SOMALIA DEMOCRATIC REPUPLIC OF CONGO UGANDA RWANDA BURUNDI
ANGOLA
Turbulent Africa
Civil conflicts Countries where conflicts could easily start up again Civil conflicts that entail military intervention by other African countries Interstate conflicts
LESOTHO
Source: From Foreign Policy, no. 114 (Spring 1999): 15. Used by permission.
todays politics of development, a number of scholars increasingly have turned their attention to traditional attitudes and values embedded in a developing countrys culture as a major obstacle to development. In his 1994 book The New World of the Gothic Fox, Claudio Vliz argues that Latin America has been held back in terms of modernized democratic and advanced economic development by its culture. In making his argument, Vliz contrasts the Anglo-Protestant and Ibero-Catholic legacies in the New World. Latin Americans, he says, tend to be populist, oligarchic, or absolutistand awed by their social and racial prejudice and intolerance toward political adversaries. By populist is meant a leader who connects with the masses by stressing that the average person is oppressed by an elite that controls the countrys wealth. The remedy, the populist argues, is that he or she should use the government to seize power from the self-serving elite and use it for the benet and advancement of the people as a whole. So populism reaches out to ordinary people, talks about their economic and social concerns, and appeals to their common sense. The problem is that populism has produced oligarchic ublishing new Services Inc. power, that is, control of government power by a small faction of
rld Politics in the 21st Century, 3e .0064
426
CHAPTER 13
people or families. Populist appeals by a leader, according to Vliz, often lead to absolutism in Latin America, meaning all power should be vested in one ruler as in Cuba in the heyday of Fidel Castro or in current day Venezuela under Hugo Chavezs leadership. In contrast, Anglo-Protestants are more egalitarian, pragmatic, innovative, and adaptable to the compromise and bargaining inherent in democratic governance. A number of cultural traits are linked to economic and political development. Some of the more notable attitudes and values may be summarized as follows:32 z Time Orientation: A progressive culture stresses the future, while a static culture focuses more on the present or past. z Work and Achievement: The culture that values hard work as a key to the good life progresses, while the static culture focuses less attention here. z Frugality: Investment and a frugal approach toward nancial security tend to characterize progressive cultures; in static cultures, the values represent a threat to the egalitarian status quo, and one persons gains are thought to occur at the expense of another. z Education: Although the trigger for advancement in a progressive culture, education is of marginal importance, except for the elites, in static cultures. z Merit: An emphasis on merit and achievement are extremely important for advancement in a progressive culture, while family connections are more important in the static culture.
The Role of Globalization and Relations with Developed States

Globalization and relations with developed statesin the minds of a number of scholars and policymakers, as seen in the previous discussion of theories of developmenthave been, at best, a mixed blessing in the developing world. Globalization has had widely different effects, uplifting some parts of the developing world and leaving others in economic stagnation and human deprivation.33 As we learned in the theories section, complaints against the North-dominated capitalist system have been quite specic. The problem is that international ows of capital, the emergence of a globalized trading system, and globalized nancial markets have increased the income inequalities between the richest and poorest parts of the developing world and within many developing countries as well. In some countries, particularly those in Asia, the number of poor people has declined. Yet in much of Africa and Latin America, poverty and income inequalities continue to grow. Countries that have fared best in the globalized economy have moved toward less state intervention and higher export growth, especially in manufactured goods. Africa has not done well in either regard. Globalization came under siege, as noted in chapter 12, in late 1999 and early 2000. One of the more interesting arguments against globalization is raised by Amy Chua, a professor of law at Yale University. In her bestselling book, World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability, she makes the case that pushing globalized capitalism and open elections can make circumstances more difcult in many countries. Her thesis is that many developing countries are dominated by market-oriented minoritiesthat is, small ethnic groups that control the wealth and the economy. Examples include the Chinese in the Philippines, the Indians in East African countries, and whites in South

Africa. Pushing globalization and capitalism in these countries only makes these minorities more powerfuland builds resentment against them and against those capitalist countries that appear to support them. Her book, then, should be read as a companion piece to Thomas Friedmans The Lexus and the Olive Tree, which makes the positive case for globalization.34
427
Resistance to Western Versions of Change

The impact of globalization has been dramatic around the world, and the spirit of development has red the imaginations of many people throughout Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East since World War II. In addition, the Western worlds international nancial institutions, like the World Bank and the IMF, have pressed for development along with the idea that a states people should be able to exercise more control over government decisions. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) is well known for its programs in support of development in poor countries. Indeed, this chapter began with a look at the UN Millennium Goals to eradicate world poverty. Yet despite all this, older traditional ways of thinking and self-identifying continue to be powerful forces affecting the politics of development.35 While key cultural values in the Westwhence the development idea has sprungare individualism, market economies, and political democracy, the non-Western world tends to embrace other values. Because the West makes up only a small percentage of the worlds population but promotes its values almost everywhere, cultural clashes seem inevitable. As Harvards Samuel P. Huntington argues, the principal distinctions among people in the postCold War world are not ideological, political, or economic but rather cultural, and in many parts of the developing world, people are attempting to answer the question, Who are we? Their traditional answer is to identify not with a market economy or a democracy but rather with ancestry, religion, language, history, values, customs, and local institutions.36 These divisions between civilizations can be quite pronounced. In fact, in a speech at the UN in September 2004, Pakistans President Pervez Musharraf warned that an iron curtain threatens to divide the Islamic and Western worlds, much as East and West faced off during the Cold War, unless more is done to address Muslim grievances.37 Musharraf is a main U.S. partner in the ght against al Qaeda, but Pakistan is well known for the fundamentalist Islamic beliefs that permeate the country and its political system.
The Role of Non-Western Political Thought

Non-Western modes of political thought exist throughout the developing countries. These shape the nature of decision making, goals and objectives, and the overall political processand, in turn, economic and social development. We nd such non-Western modes of thought vividly expressed in the pronouncements of Islamic fundamentalists, Arab nationalists, Hindu fundamentalists, Iranian revolutionaries, Chinese Marxists, Chiapas leaders in Mexico, the Shining Path movement of Peru, as well as by South American novelists, Caribbean political theorists, and Indian lmmakers. As one scholar of non-Western thought aptly pointed out, the values of the non-Western world are widespread and should be considered when we think about the politics of development.38 Non-Western political thought has a number of dimensions that condition the politics of development. Preoccupied with what they see as a threat to traditional
428
CHAPTER 13
cultures and religions, its radical proponents tend to indict the West as neoimperialists and neocolonialists who exploited their countries in the past, ripped away the cultures, silenced the languages, belittled the religions and denied the histories of native peoples. Imperialism was more than alien rule; it was cultural annihilation.39 Beyond resenting imperialism, radical upholders of non-Western political thought tend to be highly suspicious of perceived continuing Western hegemony, while stressing themes of cultural and economic emancipation from Western dominance. While it is an oversimplication to lump all non-Western thinking together, one component that much of it seems to share is the conviction that communitarian values and responsibilities take precedence over individualism. Progress, dened as moving toward a Westernized world of globalized market interdependence and secular materialist utopia, is not always the most desirable outcome. Progress instead should be measured in terms of the principles of, for example, Islam, Confucianism, or Buddhism. Bhutans pursuit of gross national happiness is an example of such traditional values in action.
The Role of Ethnic and Religious Nationalism

Ethnic national conicts, as you saw in chapter 9 have contributed greatly to many development problems, including weak states lacking legitimate institutions, corruption, undermined democratic institutions, poor economic development, and high violence and loss of life. Still, for a number of scholars and policymakers who have studied this problem, it is not ethnicity and religion per se that spawn the kind of mass violence witnessed in the former Yugoslavia or generated by Islamic fundamentalism in Iran or Afghanistan. Some observers argue that the impact of ethnic and religious differences is linked to how a countrys leaders manipulate ethnicity and religion for their own endsand whether or not they ignite ethnic and religious passions of one group against another. Such conicts are also, of course, generally fueled by poor economic and social conditions.40 Widespread violence among ethnic groups in former Yugoslavia, for example, was promoted by worsening economic conditions and a scarcity of resources, coupled with leadership styles of men like Franjo Tudjman of Croatia and Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia. Other leaders fueling violence include religious nationalists such as the leaders of militant Palestinians in Hamas and Islamic Jihad who oppose the Palestinian-Israeli peace process.
c WHAT IS THE RELATIONSHIP BETwEEN DEVELOPMENT ANd DEMOcRAcY?

Test Prepper 13.3
True or False?
429
_____ 1. Generally speaking, the consequences of colonialism have been negative for todays developing countries. _____ 2. While income levels in the developing world are not high when compared to the developed world, the income distribution within most developing countries is fairly even. _____ 3. One of the factors that negatively affect development includes violence (such as civil war) within many developing countries. _____ 4. Weak military elites are common throughout the majority of the developing world leading to a lack of stability. _____ 5. The effect of globalization in the developing world has largely been the same: negative.
Multiple Choice
_____ 6. Which of the following are necessary for a country to successfully promote development? a. Its leaders believe in the priority of development goals. b. Its political system is in control of its human and material resources. c. Its political system is able to mobilize human resources in support of development goals. d. All of the above e. None of the above
_____ 7. Which of the following explains why many developing countries do not have control over their countryside? a. The states administrative power is not strong enough to extend out to the countryside. b. Given the small size of most developing countries there is not much political gain in focusing on these areas. c. Because of the colonial legacy these areas have traditionally been managed by corporate interests that took over once the colonial powers departed. d. All of the above _____ 8. Which of the following is a cultural trait linked to economic development? a. Time orientation (focus on the past versus the future) b. Work and achievement c. Education d. Merit e. All of the above
What Is the Relationship between Development and Democracy?

4 Be able to discuss the relationship between development and democracy
In this last section of the chapter, we raise question about the relationship between development and democracy. For example, must countries become democratic in order to develop? Or must countries postpone democratic reforms while free-market policies are implemented, as neoliberalism would recommend? Have all developing countries followed a similar development path? Simple answers to these questions are not possible because of the wide variety of experiences throughout the developing world. During the latter part of the twentieth century, economic development occurred throughout the developing world, in various stages and at different rates of speed. In some countries, these changes occurred without democratic governments. In Chile, for example, the military
430
CHAPTER 13
authoritarian regime of General Augusto Pinochet promoted economic growth in the 1970s and 1980s, as do China and Vietnams centralized Communist Party governments today. Still, most scholars agree that economic development is tied to the transition to democratic institutions over time, although democracy does not automatically secure sustained economic growth at the outset.41 For economic development to occur, the countrys political elites must provide law and order, prop erty rights, and macroeconomic stability. They will do even better if they go beyond these requirements and prevent monopolies, corruption, and wide income inequalities through appropriate tax structures and other public policies, such as those pertaining to education and public health.42 How strong is democracy in the developing countries? Democratic government caught re in the 1970s and swept parts of the developing world in the 1980s, spreading through Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and Riots in Buenos Aires, Argentina, as Banks Failed, 2002 Latin America. But by the 1990s, the idea that democEconomic vitality and political stability, factors of power, are closely racy was the wave of the future began to cool because interconnected. A failing economy often leads to political instability. it proved less successful in many countries than rst This is depicted in this photo of rioting that took place in Argentina imagined, in the sense that elections did not guar in 2002 when the population was unable to recover their money antee consolidation of democratic processes. In subfrom the countrys banks, owing to mounting economic difficulties. Saharan Africa, the surge to democracy fell apart, and in Latin America it produced a mixed picture.43 Today, many developing countries engaged in economic development projects profess to be democraticwhile, in fact, they remain highly authoritarian. Many resist the complex transition to democracy; it threatens the privileges of the powerful and arouses distrust in the disenfranchised. The big point here is that elections do not guarantee democratic rule, because traditional political cultures can get in the way. Links between economic development and democratic development are revealed in the very practical matter of how a country prioritizes its policies. Many scholars point to the trade-offs in the development process, and they note that no country can achieve all its development goals at the same time. Thus, governments must establish priorities. Lets look at two important countries to see how they have addressed perhaps the broadest trade-off in development: whether economic development precedes or follows political development. As youve read elsewhere in this book, since the late 1970s, China has chosen a path of economic development while the government keeps a rm nondemocratic political grip on the country. China still has only one political party, the Chinese Communist Party, and does not tolerate opposition gladly. In contrast, Russia has attempted to change its politics and its economics at the same time. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Russia has thrown off many of its communist-era economic structures. The grip of the Communist Party has been destroyed, but the grip of the nomenklatura remains. The Russian term nomenklatura () is derived from the Latin
c WHAT IS THE RELATIONSHIP BETwEEN DEVELOPMENT ANd DEMOcRAcY?

nomenclatura. It means a list of names, originally the list of higher responsibility positions or jobs whose occupants needed to be approved by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The nomenklatura were only a small, elite subset of the general population of Party members, Moreover, the Russian security forces were never destroyed and are now stronger than ever. Still, Russia has turned increasingly toward centralized control and away from democracy recently under the leadership of Vladimir Putin. The record of Russias economic growth under Vladimir Putin has been impressive, while Putins politics have been less than stellar for those who support democratic reforms. Russias overall economic performance, based largely on its huge reserves of mineral resources, especially mineral fuels, has demonstrated solid progress in the early 21st century. Russia contains possibly as much as one-half of the worlds potential coal reserves and likely holds larger reserves of petroleum than any other country. Driven by high international oil and gas prices, its economy expanded over 7 percent during 2007, helping to reduce poverty, raise income and wages, and lower unemployment. Still, crime and corruption in the public sector remain high, and Russia ranks third globally in the number of billionaires. Politically, Russia has become increasingly centralized in the executive branch under the control of Vladimir Putin. He has sharply strengthened the secretive Federal Security Service, appointed people to government positions who, like himself, served in the KGB, and eliminated election of regional governors appointing them personally. In the parliamentary elections of December 2007, he orchestrated an outcome that produced a sweeping victory for his party and paved the way for him to remain Russias real leader even when he leaves ofce in 2008. The elections were criticized domestically and internationally as illegitimate.
431
Test Prepper 13.4

True or False?
_____ 1. The promotion of economic growth is possible in non-democratic environments. _____ 2. In the past fteen years the interest in democracy among developing nations has begun to wane, and many governments that profess to be democratic are actually authoritarian.
_____ 3. Russias attempts at development and democratization have led to a more decentralized political system in recent years. _____ 4. While Russia has experienced comparatively slow progress away from its communist past, they have been successful at reducing problems like ination and corruption.
Case Study
Is Job Outsourcing Good or Bad for Developing Countries?
432
CHAPTER 13
Join the Debate Can Outside Aid Help Africa?

An important question surrounding the development prospects of poor countries is whether or not aid from developed countries can have a positive impact. Here we debate the issue in an African context. countries. For example, he recommends canceling existing debts in Africa and suggests that aid from wealthy countries could be channeled to effective African governments in the form of grantsnot loans, which could exacerbate existing debt problems. Thus, for Sachs, with a combination of more (and better) foreign aid, greater openness of rich countries to trade from Africa, and the transfer of technology, African countries could be much better off in the decades to come.
THE PRO POSItION

An intriguing development proposal that calls for extensive foreign assistance is offered by Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York and former special adviser to UN SecretaryGeneral Ko Annan. Sachs believes that many countries in Africa have achieved adequate levels of governing capability (an internal factor of development), making them excellent candidates for aid from developed countries. Countries that get good governance ratings include Ghana, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Senegal, and Zambia. Even small nancial commitments from wealthy countriesas little as $3 billion a yearcould have enormous political-economic benets, including saving a million lives yearly in these and other African countries. In some cases, nancial assistance may be less important than opening domestic markets of rich states to goods from Africa and encouraging the transfer of technology from developed to developing countries. Wealthy countries have both moral and security reasons for helping Africa. According to Sachs, with only a small percentage of what the United States spends on military and reconstruction aid in Afghanistan and Iraq, it would be possible to enable hundreds of millions of people to break out of poverty. Helping African countries would also help reduce terrorist threats to the world. As the cases of Sudan and Afghanistan show, terrorist groups like al Qaeda nd failed states excellent locations in which to base their operations. Thus, the worlds rich states should do what they can to prevent African countries from becoming similarly failed states. Sachs also believes international organizations (IOs)like the IMF, World Bank, and, especially, the World Banks International Development Association (IDA)could play vital roles in getting much-needed aid to developing countries in Africa. He recommends, for example, tripling IDA aid from $8 billion to $25 billion, about half of which should go to Africa. Sachs admits that these IOs are not perfect, but he believes they can change their operations to the benet of poor
THE CON POSItION

Important obstacles stand in the way of such a plan. First, getting the rich countries to contribute signicantly more aid will be a challenge. According to Sachs, for example, the United States is the worlds stingiest donor, giving a miserly 0.15% of its GNP. The United States spends over $450 billion a year on defense but only $15 billion on development assistance. Second, it may be difcult for the worlds banks to cancel the existing loans held by African states. A third challenge is the extent to which corruption could turn the much-needed aid into free money for inept and greedy government ofcials. Even the states rated as having good governance have problems with corruption. An important lesson here is that even when external funding is available, success still depends on internal factors of development.
CONcLUSION
So, given this information, what do you nd are the pros and cons of giving aid to African countries? Should aid be given to countries that may have corrupt governments? Should the United States and other wealthy countries be less stingy in their foreign aid? Are proponents of neo-Marxism and the dependency approach correct in doubting the interests and commitment of rich countries to help the poor?
NOtES
Jeffrey Sachs, Doing the Sums on Africa, The Economist, May 22, 2004. , The G8 Must Fund the War Against Poverty, Financial Times, June 7, 2004. , How to Save the World, The Economist, October 30, 2004.
433

1 2 3 is meant 4 by development 5 6 7 understand8 9 Identify what while ing the difculties associated with arriving at a commonly accepted denition of the term.
Factors that affect the politics of development are: 10
- Colonial legacies - Economic forces, such as lack of economic resources, poor human development, and gross income inequality. (But De Soto has documented the fact that poor peoples property is not represented in the legal system, and thus their combined vast wealth is restricted from the realm of capitalism.) - Governing forces, like insufcient government legitimacy, corruption, ethnic and religious violence, and military elites - Cultural forces, including traditional culture and resistance to Western versions of development The types of politics that advance or hold back development in the developing world vary signicantly from country to country. China, Vietnam, and Cuba practice different versions of market socialism. In market socialism, the state monopolizes political power, typically by means of a single-party system, while slowly loosening the screws of control on the economy.
Development is a transformation in a countrys poor living conditions that leads to a higher quality of life. It may also be viewed as an improvement in economic, political, and social life for men, women, and children. Development has traditionally been dened in economic terms. There is much more to development than how much a countrys economy is growing. Just as important is how equitably income is distributed throughout the country. Political participation, the presence of human and civil and gender rights, and ecological conditions are also factors of development.
3 4 how different 5 6 8 the issue 9 Understand theories7approach of 10 development and how each explains why some countries are rich while others are poor. 4
The liberal neoclassical economics approach recommends capitalist, free-trade principles as the way out 1 of poverty. 2 3 The neo-mercantilist approach emphasizes the role of the state in fostering development. Neo-Marxism and dependency theory emphasize exploitative capitalist relationships between rich core countries and poor periphery countries as the causes of poverty.
5 6 7 relationship 8 9 10 development Be able to discuss the between and democracy.

The relationship between democracy and economic development is complex. In some countries, for example, the pace of democratic reform has been slow; in other countries, political reforms have occurred more quickly. Some countries have pursued neoliberal (pro-market) policies along with democratic reforms while others have fostered economic development without the promotion of democracy. Given the experience of the past sixty years or so, we may conclude that economic development is tied to the transition to democratic institutions over time, although democracy does not automatically secure sustained economic growth at the outset.
4 5 understand 6 7 political 8 factors 9 that 10 Identify and the affect the development process.
The term politics of development refers to how developing states are governed, how political leaders actions encourage or impede growth, how political elites allocate their countrys scarce resources, and how the international political economy affects political and economic decisions in the host country.

14
The Global Environment
The habitat of the Arctic polar bear is threatened by the rapid melting of the Arctic ice attributed to a combination of natural and cyclical increases in south to north energy ows in the atmosphere and global warming.
Learning Objectives
1
Be able to identify and explain the major challenges to sustainable development.
Dene sustainable development and understand the factors that inuence the viability of sustainable development within a state.
434
The sedge is witherd from the lake and no birds sing.

John Keats (17951821)
Chapter Outline
What Factors Inuence

Natural Resources Population
Sustainable Development?
How Is the International Community

Addressing These Challenges?
Climate Change Air Pollution Energy Wars Water Scarcity and Water Pollution Why Cant the International Community Agree on a Common Strategy?
What Are the Challenges to

Sustainable Development?
The Challenge of the Industrial and Scientic Revolutions The Green and Biotech Revolutions
Identify the major environmental issues the world currently faces and understand how the international community is addressing these issues.
Global Environmental Challenges and Concerns
Sustainable development We use the Brundtland Commission denition: Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. (See chapter 2.) Climate change Any change in climate over time whether due to natural variability or as a result of human activity.
he principal challenge to our Earth in the twenty-rst century is ensuring the sustainable development of the planet. The greatest threat to our Earth for the next century is climate change. According to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), climate change is any change in climate over time whether due to natural variability or as a result of human activity. The Panel was established under the UN in 1988 to investigate and report on warming trends on the globe. Three earlier IPCC reports found a warming trend in global temperature. The fourth report of April 2007 conrmed that trend in the strongest terms the IPCC has ever used: z There was very high condence that the global average net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming.1
436
Key Terms
CHAPTER 14
THE GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT
sustainable development p. 435 climate change p. 435 desertication p. 437 water stress p. 439 technological monoculture p. 445 ecological footprint p. 453 megacities p. 453 green revolution p. 454 biotech revolution p. 454 agribusiness p. 455 cloning p. 455 paleoclimatology p. 457 cap and trade system p. 459 global commons p. 459 regime theory p. 463
z It is very likely that climate change can slow the pace of progress towards sustainable development, either directly through increased exposure to adverse impact or indirectly through erosion of the [planets] capacity to adapt.2 Climate change is real: The polar icecaps are melting, polar bears are endangered, sea levels are rising in coastal areas around the globe. Worse case scenarios predict that the temperate climates of the globe will dry up and become desert, the Arctic will warm, and the Gulf Stream may turn around and head south. If the cost of climate change is highnamely, the collapse of the Earths environment and global social chaos, the cost of doing something about climate change is also high and there is no certainty that the measures will be effective. As we stated in chapter 1, the twenty-rst century is the century of the ecological paradigm. Today, for the rst time in human history we are face-to-face with the fact that human institutions and societies are not above and master of the natural world but are an integral part of the global ecosystem. The main concern of the human race today is to keep the Earth sufciently people-friendly so that the 9.3 billion human beings projected3 to inhabit it by 2050 will be able to survive. Keeping the planet people-friendly means understanding the complex relationships among the: z Global biochemical cycles z Human society z Worlds ecosystems so the environmental damage that now threatens human and other forms of life may be repaired. Sustainable development means developing sustainable forms of agriculture, animal and sh husbandry, industry, and lifestyles that can accommodate increased numbers of humans without ecosystem collapse. It also means preserving wild spaces that maintain and preserve our planets extraordinary biodiversity. These tasks are global in scope but demand continuous local attention. Environmental problems are thus among the most centralizing of all world problemsand the most decentralizing. Most environmental problems cross state borders or are inter-state in character. Hence, the environmental pollution of one country or failure to solve jointly an inter-state environmental problem affects the environmental conditions of many states. A single state, acting alone, cannot realize the solution to such problems; they require dedicated, focused, long-term international cooperation. Realists have come to share the idealist and environmentalist view that humankind cannot continue the same exploitative behavior as in the past. They also have come to believe that planning for the future must include environmentally sustainable programs and technology.
437
Human beings have caused and overcome environmental problems since the dawn of the species. The rst humanoids may have come down out of the trees looking for food when the harvest of fruits and nuts became scarce. Historical evidence shows that the rst city-states between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and along the Indus River between India and Pakistan ceased to exist because of the salting of the irrigation channels caused by primitive ditch construction and erosion from the cutting of forests ever farther up river. The difference between the impact of earlier human societies on the environment and the impact of modern society today is one of scale. In early human history, humans were few, environmental damage was local and frequently could be remedied by a local solution or by migration to another location. In the twentieth century, the human race spread all over the globe, and except for the high mountains and the Arctic regions, now dominates the planet. As a result, problems such as poor water quality, air pollution, and soil degradation have become global in scale, requiring solutions at a global level that address specic ecological conditions at the local level. This chapter addresses these global problems and discusses potential solutions. The environmental challenges facing our world come in different forms; all of them involve pollution. Traditional pollution is the main problem of the developing countries: poor water quality, soil degradation, deforestation, desertification. z The major polluter is agriculture. Seventy percent of the worlds poor live in rural areas. Agriculture takes up more than one-third of the planets area and accounts for more than two-thirds of the worlds water withdrawals. Competition for water and land is increasing as urban populations grow and with them the demand for food. Forests are cut down to plant crops with the inevitable result of soil erosion. Climate change is altering the patterns of rainfall and the temperatures on which agriculture depends. The depletion and exhaustion of these resources poses a serious threat to our capacity to produce enough food and other agricultural products to feed the worlds people.4 Around the world, 1.1 billion people lack access to a clean water supply and 2.6 billion lack improved sanitation.5 z A second and possibly even more damaging form of pollution comes from advances in technology and the production of chemicals and man-made materials that have only recently been developed. The atomic age began when the United States dropped the rst atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Nuclear energy raised the twin horrors of planetary collapse through nuclear war and the danger of worldwide radioactive fallout through nuclear accidents, such as Chernobyl, Ukraine in 1987, or the improper storage of nuclear waste. z Chemicals pose an equal risk to the planet.6 The impact of pesticides, such as DDT, and herbicides on human health and the environment are major
Desertication The process of land becoming desert due to mismanagement or climate change.
438
CHAPTER 14
global concerns. The most recent global outcry has been over advances in biotechnology that allow for alteration of gene systems in plants and the cloning of animals. Genetically modied foods are the subject of the chapters online case study (www.BetweenNations.org). To date, every scientic advance in warfare, agriculture, and health has brought unanticipated consequences. We will talk more about that in a later section. The question is: Can the peoples of the Earth, through international cooperation, learn to alleviate both the old and the new environmental threats? This chapter is designed to start you thinking about how you would answer that question. z Our discussion focuses rst on the major components of the environmental problem: natural resources and population. z The next section examines the challenges to the global environment, describing the positive and negative effects on the Earth of the increased application of science and technology. z The third section looks at what the international community is doing to alleviate environmental problems. Although cooperation among the worlds states seems an obvious strategy, the drive to secure the shortterm economic and political survival of individual states and substate units (ethnic groups) has brought the negative decentralizing tendencies to the fore. z The last section asks: Why cant the international community agree on solutions to environmental problems? n
What Factors Inuence Sustainable Development?

1 Dene sustainable development and understand the factors that inuence the viability of sustainable development within a state.
In chapter 8, you learned that geography has a profound impact on human development. The territories people inhabit condition their level of development and their ability to become powerful on the world stage. For some regions, notably Saharan Africa, Siberia, and the Canadian Arctic, the environmental conditions are so unfavorable as to make sustaining human life very difcult. This section is divided into two parts: z The rst deals with the role of natural resources in human development. z The second looks at the impact of population on those resources.
Natural Resources
Natural resources include all the resources on Earth that sustain human life: air, water, soil, and climate, as well as energy and construction resources, forests, coal, oil, gas, and mineral deposits. The first group are termed renewable resources,
c WHAT FAcTORS INfLUENcE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT?

because while some, like water and soil, may become exhausted, or like air, polluted, they can be rehabilitated and used again. The second group (with the exception of forests), falls into the category of nonrenewable resources. Coal, natural gas, oil, and all mineral deposits were formed millions of years ago in a long, slow process of decay. Once humankind has extracted all the coal there is from the Earth, there will be no more. That resource will be no longer available.
439
Renewable Resources
The rst factor that most people mention as essential to life on Earth is airnot frigid Arctic air but air that blows not too hot and not too cold, providing a temperate climate where the growing season lasts a long time and it is easy to keep warm. Until recently, no humans lived on Antarctica, and only a few hardy tribes lived in the Arctic. Until very recently, there were no large cities in the Arctic. Even now, the populations of the largest Arctic cities do not exceed the populations of mediumsized cities in the rest of the world. The tropics also were not densely settled until recent times. While their warm climate is favorable to human beings, it is also favorable to disease-causing microbes. Neither the Congo River basin nor the Amazon River basin was densely settled until modern times. The indigenous tribes that formerly occupied the tropics were largely hunter-gatherers who had, over the millennia, adapted to a climate rife with lethal infections and where crop growing was difcult. The soil of the rainforest provides few of the nutrients for its trees and plants and hence few nutrients for an agricultural crop like corn. Dense mangrove forests protect coastlands from killer waves and, once gone, take a long time to regrow. Because climate plays such a substantial role in where human beings choose to settle, dense human settlements inevitably create air pollution and heat islands, and thus, to a degree not yet totally understood, affect climate change. How climate change will play out in terms of the modication of worldwide population distribution and the location of suitable land for industrial and agricultural use, no one knows. A steady and dependable source of fresh water is the second crucial component for the emergence of settled human society. The rst agricultural communities were in the river basins of the big rivers, the Nile, the Indus, the Tigris and Euphrates. Water today remains one of the Earths most precious resources. Large numbers of people live without adequate access to water, and the situation will only get worse. In the third section we discuss the new phenomenon of water stress. Today, all around the globe, the temperate lands retain their geographic and ecological advantages over areas of climate extremes. The highest population density is in this area. The most trade and sharing of information occurs between states in the temperate climate zones. The states located in the tropics continue to have major difculties with disease (AIDS, malaria, TB), agricultural and industrial development (land reform, technology), and the establishment of stable forms of government.
Water stress A term used by the United Nations to indicate consumption levels that exceed 20 percent of available water supply.
Nonrenewable Natural Resources

Sooner or later, human societies exhaust the resources closest to them and need to exploit resources farther aeld. The resources farther away are the tin mines, the gold mines, the oil eldsin other words, the nonrenewable natural resources. As society moves to these new sources, it must develop new tools and new approaches to use them. The invention of the new methods and their practical
440
CHAPTER 14
application we call technology. The close connection between the exploitation of natural resources, technology, and the environment has proved both a blessing and curse for our planet. In todays world, the two kinds of natural resources most in demand are energy resources and mineral resources. The country with the richest mineral reserves and oil and gas resources is Russia. However, most of these reserves lie in Siberia, where the harsh climate makes it difcult to build permanent settlements, attract people to live, and bring the minerals and oil out of the ground. In addition, Siberia is a long way from everywhere. To get the resources to market, the Russians must build lengthy pipelines and maintain a long transportation infrastructure, once again under the harshest climatic conditions. By contrast, the only energy resource of Western Europe is coal, and compared to the reserves in China, the United States, and Russia, the amount is small indeed. Western Europe is also lacking in mineral resources. Hence, most of the efforts of the European industrial states have been put toward either acquiring colonies rich in natural resources or making trade deals to secure them. The developed states consume so large a share of the mineral and energy resources that one of the big tensions in the growth of the developing countries, as you saw in chapter 13, is how to secure for the poor countries the materials and energy necessary for indusFIGURE 14.1 Crude Oil Reserves Worldwide
Russia 48.6 Norway 9.4 Kazakhstan 5.4
Britain 4.9
Iraq 112.5 United States 22.4 Libya 29.5 Algeria 9.2 Mexico 26.9 Saudi Arabia 261.8 Qatar 15.2
Kuwait 96.5 Iran 89.7 Oman 5.5 China 24.0
United Arab Emirates 97.8 Indonesia 5.0
Crude Oil Reserves Worldwide Of the globes 1 trillion barrels of estimated reserves in 2002, some two-thirds of that was in the Middle East. Here are the reserves of major producers, in billions of barrels.
Venezuela 77.7
Nigeria 24.0
Source: 2004 The Christian Science Monitor, http://www.csmonitor.com. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Duncan: World Politics in the 21st Century, 3e 1036905_m_14_01
c WHAT FAcTORS INfLUENcE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT?

FIGURE 14.2 Global Population Trends, 19502050
10 9 8 Population (billions) 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 Year
Source: World Resources Institute, World Resources 19981999. Used by permission.
Global population continues to rise Africa Asia and Oceana Europe Latin America and Caribbean North America
441
2010
2020
2030
2040
2050
trialization at a price they can afford. The developed countries want strict environmental controls on the extraction and distribution of resources. The developing countries would prefer to industrialize rst, as the industrialized world did, and then talk about environmental regulation. The most critical natural resource today is oil. As you can see by Figure 14.1, the largest and also most accessible reserves are in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and the United Arab Emirates top the list; Kuwait, Iran, and Russia come next. We will look at the energy challenges to our Earth in section 3. These countries hold the reserves to keep cars on the highway and industry in production. So both the developed and the developing countries want to make sure they secure their much-needed share of the black gold. In chapter 8, we learned about past and present oil wars. If China and India maintain their fast pace of development, and we nd no other source of energy for transportation, then we can expect more oil wars in the future. The global environmental challenges posed by industrialization and the domination of the process by fossil fuels are discussed in the next section.
nic Publishing Services Inc. Population n, World Politics incomponent the 21st Century, e The last of the 3 global environment is population. In June 2007, the 7322.0067 world population was estimated at 6.6 billion7 and growing at the rate of about 80 2 million persons per year.
z Ninety-six percent of projected 2nd Proof 3rd Proof population Final growth will be in the developing countries,8 with India expected to have the largest population of any country by 2050. In the 1970s and 1980s, the growth rate of the worlds population seemed so high that there were predictions that it would reach unsustainable levels and go over 12 billion people by 2050. Figure 14.2 shows that this prediction, fortunately, will not come to pass. While the upward trend in population
st Proof
442
CHAPTER 14
growth will continue, it will do so at a slower rate and will be marked by sharp differences in growth rates among major regions. As the band representing the European growth rate gets smaller toward 2040, the band representing Latin America and the Caribbean gets wider and wider, as does the band representing Africa. Can you explain why the band for Africa is so small, despite being the continent with the highest birthrate in the world? z Second, in addition to unequal rates of population growth, there are huge inequalities in population distribution. Population density, the number of people in 1 square mile, is increasing in the large cities and along the seacoasts at such a rate that city governments and urban planners cannot design and install the needed infrastructure to cope with it. Today, over 50 percent of the worlds population lives in urban areas. The major growth of megacities, or urban conglomerates of over ten million people, is most pronounced in the developing countries. z Third, as birthrates decline, the number of senior citizens per 1,000 population is increasing. In 2000, 6.9 percent of the global population was sixty-ve or older. Between 2000 and 2050, the ratio of elderly persons to working-age persons (ages 1564) will double in more developed regions and triple in less developed regions. By 2050 one out of ten people will be over 65.9 z A nal characteristic of global population trends is the increasing number of migrants. In 2005, there were an estimated 191 million migrants worldwide, up from 176 million in 2001. Roughly 3040 million of these were undocumented workers. Half of them were women. These migrants send home to their families in the developing world an estimated at $233 billion annually. The money enables those families to have a higher standard of living and thus helps boost the economic wellbeing of the entire country. The impact of outmigration varies from continent to continent. The impact of migration on Asia and Latin America has been small because of their large and growing populations despite declining birth rates. By contrast, Europe and North America have experienced substantial net inows of population.10 In 2001, immigration was estimated to represent upward of 70 percent of annual population growth in the developed world. Immigration now accounts for 89 percent of Europes population growth and is the primary reason the population growth rate in the United States is a positive number. Large-scale migration requires signicant adjustments of cultural and behavioral attitudes by immigrant and host-country citizens to integrate the newcomers. The riots and destruction of property that occurred in the suburbs of Paris and other French cities in the summer of 2006 in large part reect the inadequacy of migrant-assimilation policy. This brief description of key components of the global environment raises serious issues about the human future on this planet. How did things get so critical? Will attempts to solve environmental problems lead to peace or war? Will we beat climate change? The next section discusses the challenges to the global environment.
c WHAT ARE THE CHALLENgES TO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT?

Test Prepper 14.1
443
_____ 1. Nonrenewable resources include water and soil because once polluted these resources cannot be used again. _____ 2. The origins of settled human societies along big rivers was a result of access to fresh water and a moderate climate. _____ 3. With time, human societies exhaust resources close to them and require technological solutions to exploit resources farther away or more difcult to obtain. _____ 4. Over 90 percent of population growth will occur in the developing countries.
_____ 5. Approximately what percentage of the worlds population live in urban areas today? a. over 10 percent b. over 30 percent c. over 50 percent d. over 70 percent e. over 90 percent
What Are the Challenges to Sustainable Development?

2 Be able to identify and explain the major challenges to sustainable development.
We will focus on the challenges to the global environment as a result of the historical impact of humans on the environment. The contributions of the industrial and scientific revolutions have led to an internationalizing of environmental problems.
The Challenge of the Industrial and Scientic Revolutions

The terms industrial revolution and scientic revolution refer to a historical process whereby human beings, by applying science and ingenuity, created tools and ways to use those toolsthat enable them to do things they otherwise would not be able to do.11 The word revolution describes the process because technological inventions and their incorporation into daily life literally revolutionized the way people lived. For example, before the wheel was invented, humans could travel only on foot or on the backs of animals. The wheel made it possible to move much larger loads and enabled water to be moved in greater quantities and more efciently from the irrigation canal to the eld. The widespread adoption of gunpowder as a weapon in the fteenth and sixteenth centuries made the fortress-like medieval stone castles irrelevant. As a result, small dukedoms and earldoms were unable to withstand the power amassed by wealthy monarchs. As castles gave way to country estates and urban palaces, medieval Europe gave way to modern Europe, with its nation-states. Technologies not only transform a societys way of life, they change the way the society thinks about the world. Fifteenth-century Europe was recovering from a terrible plague a century earlier that killed one-third of the continents population. Many areas had long since run out of wood, and most of the gold and silver mines on the continent had been mined to the technological limits of the time. Environmental degradation was increasingly visible. At the same time, the Chinese compass, the European invention of the astrolabe, and scientic proof that the Earth
Audio Concept Scientic Revolution www.BetweenNations.org
444
CHAPTER 14
was round brought together a set of technologies that gave European sailors the condence to sail across uncharted oceans. The knowledge they brought back of the lands they found changed the way Europe thought about itself and the world. In a single century, Europe leaped from a musty backwater of the planet to the center of global activity. During the next two centuries, the application of technology for industrial purposes, known as the Industrial Revolution, enabled Europe and then the United States to take the lead in the expansion of international trade and the conduct of international affairs. As modern technology has spread farther and farther around the globe, the economies of individual regions and countries have become intertwined. In many ways, this process has proved a centralizing force. Among the negative results, however, is the almost total destruction of preindustrial societies, many of which had long practiced sustainable development. Another negative corollary has been environmental pollution on a global scale, accompanied by uneven distribution of economic and environmental costs among the wealthy industrialized states and the poor developing statesa decentralizing force in the modern international system.
The Costs of Technology: Environmental Pollution and Ecosystem Destruction

For more information see Pollution www.BetweenNations.org
The uneven distribution of technology creates distortions in the consumption of energy and other natural resources. z First, the concentration of technology use in the northern industrialized states produces one set of benets and costs in terms of environmental pollution. z Second, the continuation of traditional lifestyles on the edge of the more technologically advanced cities in the developing countries presents costs and benets associated with public health and the control of disease. A look at the benets and costs of technology follows, and the next section deals with the benets and costs of applying science to public health. Technology has, arguably, raised the standard of living in virtually every country on the globe. Modern conveniences have made life easier for all fortunate enough to have them and are sought by people in countries that are striving to industrialize. Throughout the world, the cell phone and e-mail have become common modes of communication. As a matter of principle, most people agree that everyone ought to share the benets that technology has brought. The problem is that the application of technology does not bring only benets; it also brings unpleasant environmental surprises. The rst major problem with technology, as distinguished former Harvard professor Harvey Brooks explains,12 is that the benets of an invention are immediately evident and indeed, seem to increase as the use of the invention spreads. The environmental and social costs remain hidden for quite some time. By the time the negative consequences of the technology register in the public consciousness, society can no longer do without it. Take the automobile, for example. Despite the old-timers teasing, Why dont you get a horse? the benets of driving a car so clearly outweighed the problems of caring for and feeding a horse that purchases of new cars steadily increased in the early years of the twentieth century. With the arrival of Henry Fords mass-production assembly line, cars became affordable for nearly everyone. As fast as they could think them up, the new automobile companies provided innovations and adapted their product to the publics needs. Paved roads came into being.

The Model T Ford
445
The Model T Ford was the first car built on a mass-production assembly line. The Model T rolled off the production line at the Piquette Avenue plant in Detroit, Michigan, October 1, 1908. Over the next nineteen years, Ford built 15 million automobiles with the Model T engine, the longest run of any single model with the exception of the Volkswagen Beetle. Because of its low cost, the Model T put the ordinary American behind the wheel, starting the United States love-in with the automobile.
Today, the negative impact of the automobile is now only too evident: clogged highways, high gasoline costs, and worst of all, tailpipe emissions that contribute 8 percent of the nitrogen oxide pollution that promotes global warming. Yet in the United States, there is no longer another viable transportation option, without a huge economic investment. The culture of the automobile has permanently changed the way American society is organized. We cannot go back to the horse or even the train, and no one quite sees the way out of this dilemma. We live in a technological monoculture, a combination of market domination and political, economic, and social inuence exhibited by the auto industry. Technological Monoculture As you saw in Table 7.2, the annual income of General Motors is larger than the GDP of all but the wealthiest countries. Furthermore, the auto industry has tight links with the petroleum, synthetic, and natural rubber industries. Its production network operates worldwide. In order to use the automobile efciently and safely, the worlds governments are paving the globe with two- and four-lane highways. To service cars in the developed countries, small businesses have set up public parking lots, repair shops, delis, and food marts at the gasoline stations that line the roads. The fast-growing Chinese economy has generated thousands of middle-class jobs, enabling middle-class Chinese to buy their own cars at an unprecedented rate. In 2004, China became GMs secondlargest market after the United States, overtaking Germany.13 Auto travel takes off where air travel ends through the car-rental business anchored at the airport. The automotive industry, with its supporting systems, now constitutes a more and more self-contained social system that is unable to adapt to the environmental stress brought about by its success. Today, the auto industry is the main contributor to air pollution. While big city governments like Los Angeles government can crack down on gasoline-powered lawnmowers and the types of machines and chemicals used by your corner dry cleaner, it has proved less effective in cracking down on gasoline-powered cars.14
Technological monoculture The domination of the market by one variant of a technology that is utilized in a specic industrial sector by a company or group of companies, and the use of this domination for political, economic, and social inuence.
446
CHAPTER 14
Millions of people need to get from here to there every day. Their needs keep millions of other people employed maintaining roads, selling gasoline and groceries, and building malls where you can park your car and shop. Short of a major economic collapse, the prospects are dim that Americans will be able to adapt their car-based lifestyle to the exigencies of global climate change.15 Reduction in Variability Technology monoculture leads to the second problem with technology: reduction in variability, both within human society and in the environment where that society is situated. Just as the domestication of plants and animals thousands of years ago led to the concentration of certain ora and fauna on human-managed land to the exclusion of other species, so technology is a selective process. By contrast, healthy natural ecosystems are marked by high variability. Human activity affects these systems in ways that only now are beginning to be understood. All human management of the environment, whether it be the city, farm, or maintaining wilderness, provokes a response from the ecosystem as it tries to adapt to the impact of human disturbance. In Figure 14.3, human-managed society is shown as interacting with the Earths ecosystems and the global biochemical cycles that moderate the atmosphere. Human society takes from those ecosystems the renewable and nonrenewable resources humans want, thereby changing the original ecosystems in that location. However, this ecosystem, over time, has found a stable equilibrium between its diverse elements through its interaction with the global biochemical cycles in what is called the Gaia (from the ancient Greek word for Earth) principle. When human activity intrudes on the stable equilibrium formed from all those varied patterns, the ecosystem responds to reach a new equilibrium based on the new patterns. The reaction is always a reduction in the variety of patterns and in the
FIGURE 14.3 Model of the Gaia Principle and Environmental Surprise

GLOBAL BIOGEOCHEMICAL CYCLES
GAIA
SOCIETY Technological Monoculture
SURPRISE Discrete, Discontinuous New Information ECOSYSTEM Reduction in Variability

Source: Barbara Jancar-Webster, Technology and Environment in Eastern Europe, in James R. Scanlan, ed. Technology, Culture, and Development: The Experience of the Soviet Model (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1992), 178. Used by permission.

number of plants and animal species. It holds true whether the subject is the paving over of forest land for a parking land, building a gigantic suburban mall, or the human settlement of islands like the Hawaiian islands.16 Reduction in variability has sped up even more in the twenty-rst century because of the huge capabilities of earthmoving and construction technology, the high speed of travel, and the numbers of people on the move. Species are becoming extinct at an alarming rate, despite our efforts to preserve biodiversity through legislation aimed to preserve and protect endangered species. Environmental Surprise When the human impact is too strong, nature reacts to the stress through what scientists call surprise. Flooding is a good example of surprise. When coastal wetlands are destroyed, as on the U.S. Gulf Coast or Indonesia, coastal communities have no buffer against the storm surge brought by hurricanes. Deforestation on hillsides exposes the soils on the hills to the elements. When deforestation is combined with agriculture on this marginal land, rain washes away both the homesteads and the planted areas with the soil. People not only lose their homes and livelihood, thousands can die, as they did in the catastrophic oods in China in 2001, 2003, 2005, and in India in 2005. Similarly, overgrazing of marginal grassland and the absence of rain because of climate change, have contributed to an expanding desert and waves of famine in Africa. Problems like tsunamis, hurricanes, and oods have necessitated the mounting of global efforts to rescue the victims, feed the hungry, and tend the sick. Surprise in the world today moves quickly from the local to the international system level. Can human society learn to anticipate surprise and avoid its consequences? Yes and no. One generation can predict some consequences of our management of the environment, but not all of them. And it can take steps to remediate them. However, long-term buildups may not manifest themselves in a single generation. Todays children, or their childrens children, may need to devise solutions to problems their grandparents or parents set in motion years earlier. However, as the process by which a technology produces environmental surprise becomes better understood, the international community has a better chance of anticipating that surprise and perhaps head it off. Until the 1990s, states and international organizations tended to downplay the obviously negative relationship between industrialization and environmental pollution because the environmental surprise was not signicant enough to mobilize world opinion. The continuous stream of natural disasters in the last decade has shown the world community that inaction is no longer an option. Please see Earthquakes and Tsunami at www.BetweenNations.org.
447
The Benefits of Applying Science to Health

Like technology, applied science has proved a Pandoras box of benets and costs. Its major contribution has been the improved health of the worlds populations. Prevention of Disease Probably the most signicant application of science to human health has been the understanding and prevention of disease, with the accompanying longer life expectancy. As with technology, the initial results of disease control were dramatic and immediate. Epidemic disease has been the scourge of humankind since the dawn of civilization. Until the nineteenth century, the worlds population had been hostage to the seemingly random and ferocious outbreaks of epidemics, which frequently killed 60 to 70 percent of a citys population.
For more information see Why It Matters to You: Earthquakes and Tsunami www.BetweenNations.org
448
CHAPTER 14
So destructive of human life was the Black Death (bubonic plague) that raged through Europe in the fourteenth century that many scholars believe it undermined the sociopolitical system and contributed to the rise of new forms of government and religion that did not insist on absolute authority. The increase in size of European cities, particularly during the seventeenth century, created optimum conditions for the spread of plagues of epidemic proportions. Advances in the science of medicine eventually brought the dreaded epidemics under control. Three of the most signicant advances are outlined below. z New Medical Technology. The Dutchman Zacharias Jensenns invention of the microscope in the 1590s enabled European scientists to see organisms invisible to the naked eye, transforming their understanding of disease. In due time, the bacilli causing the major epidemics were identied. New medical technology continues to revolutionize the practice of medicine and save lives from debilitating illnesses. z Sanitation. The progressive enactment in the nineteenth century of sanitation and water-treatment programs in all of Europes major cities and, eventually, in the countryside brought epidemics under control for the rst time in history and made cities safe for habitation. Western colonial administrations helped spread scientic medical practice around the globe. As the worlds regions adopted Western sanitation measures and used vaccines to inoculate their populations against disease, epidemics became less frightening, and the death rate in both Western and non-Western countries dropped. z Vaccines, Antibiotics, Insecticides. In the twentieth century, science turned its attention to the eradication of contagious diseases. In 1901, a campaign was launched to eliminate yellow fever from Havana by attacking mosquito-breeding places. Forty years later, the invention of DDT contributed to the U.S. victory over Japan by protecting U.S. troops from the mosquitoes carrying the malaria and yellow fever viruses. In 2000, New York City health ofcials used the same approach to limit the spread of the West Nile virus as was used in Havana 100 years earlier; they attacked mosquito-breeding places, only this time they used highly sophisticated bioengineered chemicals. The Internationalization of Medical Research By the twentieth century, most of the scientic work on disease was performed at the national level: in the medical research community, in university and government laboratories, and in hospitals. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, has been a key player in collecting data and providing timely warnings of the path of an epidemic. Fol lowing the establishment of the UN, the World Health Organization (WHO) was created in 1950 with the goal of ensuring that health services were available to everyone on the planet. WHO has led the way in distributing vaccines and medi cations, and in providing the health workers to deliver the medication to aficted countries, particularly the developing countries. A major achievement has been the eradication of smallpox. The last case of known smallpox was in 1977. WHO also has led the struggle to eradicate TB. The discovery of penicillin in 1928, encouraged its successful use as an antibacterial during World War II. WHO led the international effort to eradicate TB in the 1950s and 1960s. It looked as if international cooperation in science had conquered all the worlds major diseases. Then came AIDS in the 1980s. AIDS has now reached epidemic proportions, particularly in Africa, South Asia, Russia, and China. The 1990s saw the emergence of a more deadly TB bacillus, increased instances of malaria, and the emergence of
For more information see The View From: Africa and the Developing World www.BetweenNations.org

FIGURE 14.4 Leading Causes of Death, 2001
Infectious and Parasitic Diseases
449
Injuries
27.2% 9.0%
Respiratory and Digestive
9.8%
5.3%
Maternal and Neonatal Diseases
14.4%
Cancers
Cardiovascular Diseases
29.3%
4.9% Other
Source: The World Health Organization, World Health Report, 2002, Annex: Table 2, Death by Cause, Sex, and Mortality Stratum in WHO Regions, http://www.who.int/whr/en/ or http://www.who.int/whr/2002/en/. Used by permission.
new diseases like West Nile virus and Ebola hemorrhagic fever. In 1991, cholera swept down the west coast of South America, the rst such outbreak in nearly a century. Between 1991 and 1995, it infected one million people and killed 11,000.17 In 2003, a killer virus known as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) was identied in Hong Kong. In a very short time it had infected people all over the planet, sowing panic in its path. A major concern in the twenty-rst century is bird u, known to be spread by birds and poultry. Figure 14.4 shows that infectious diseases represented over 27 percent of the leading causes of death in 2001. Eightythree percent of these deaths occurred in the developing countries. Why have old diseases returned, and why do new viruses keep appearing? The immediate answers are found in environmental pollution: namely, the substandard living conditions and malnutrition that set entire populations at risk in the developing countries. Insufcient and contaminated water supplies are highways carrying waterborne infections and disease to populations whose immune systems are already weakened from malnutrition. The malnutrition is brought on by the farming of lands degraded by overuse, drought, and pesticides. In the shantytowns or barrios surrounding the major cities Africa, Asia, Central and South America (see chapter 13), sanitation and clean water are difcult to come by. In these conditions, insects and rats multiply. The overtaxed urban administration nds itself without sufcient resources to confront the problems properly. So the epidemics return. vices Inc. The second answer lies in the millions of people who are on the move in our the 21st Century, 3e modern world. Statistics on migration in the past century were given earlier in this chapter. The consequences of that migration indicate how much of a global problem these mass movements of people have become. Wherever people move, they carry with them the infections they may have at the time, thus globalizing disease. Proof Airplane 3rd Proof Final travel facilitates this movement of population, since you can y from Asia to Europe or North America in less than a day.
450
CHAPTER 14
A Chinese Couple Ties the Knot at the Height of the SARS Crisis
Note that the bride and groom are both wearing facemasks, but they manage to complete the requisite marriage kiss anyway. They are photographed in Tiananmen Square, Beijings central square.
The catastrophic die-off of Amerindians from infectious diseases brought by the Europeans serves as a global warning. A microbe that has stabilized and been rendered relatively harmless to its home population can destroy a population on another continent. And so, at the beginning of the twenty-rst century, the developed countries nd they can no longer remain insulated from the spread of contagious diseases. Instead they must now seek to reduce the risk of infection by going abroad to solve public health problems in the developing countries. Public health is no longer the domain of health ministries acting in their individual countries. Its regulation and promotion have become the concern of WHO and private and public organizations throughout the world. At the start of the twenty-rst century, the containment of disease is being sought through the promotion of sustainable development at the international level.
The Costs of Applying Science to Health

Increased Rate of Population Growth One of the clearest results of improved public health around the world has been the increase in the worlds population. Population size and growth trends have been a global concern every since Thomas Malthus (17661834) compared European population data with European agricultural production at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The twenty-rst century saw the emergence of new concerns about population growth. The demographic forecast up to 2050 is for virtually all population growth to occur in the developing world, with the concentration of huge masses of people in large urban areas intensifying global environmental stress. Although, as noted, the population growth rate has slowed, the application of science to public health has brought new demographic issues to the fore. Four of these are highlighted next: the general increase in the global population, environmental wars, reduced birthrates in the industrialized world, and increased population density.

Increased Global Population At the end of the eighteenth century, the world population passed the one billion mark. In 1950, the world population was 2.5 billion. It doubled to ve billion by 1985 and is expected to reach seven billion by 2010.18 For comparisons of world population growth in billions across the years, turn again to Figure 14.2. There is little question that the healthier a population is, the longer it lives. Moreover, the more women who live to childbearing age, the greater the increase in the birthrate. The enormous improvements in the health of the global population that occurred in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were key factors in the explosion of population that became manifest in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Chapter 13, you will recall, presented data suggesting a connection between high poverty, low development, and high incidence of disease. Africa is a case in point. From 1980 to 1995, Africas average annual growth rate was 2.92 percent, the highest of any continent. As a comparison, the whole of Europe, excluding the former Soviet Union, had an average annual growth in population of 0.29 percent, and North Americas, including the Caribbean and Central America, was 1.69 percent. Africas high birthrate means that despite disease, wars, and famine, its population is steadily increasing. Take another look at Figure 14.2. Do you see how expected population growth in Latin America and the Caribbean is expected to soar, whereas Africas population is expected to grow much more slowly. What do these data tell you about the impact of science and public health in the two areas? Africas growth in population necessarily is related to improved health care and the efforts of the international community to vaccinate entire populations. From 1980 to 1995, Africas average infant mortality rate dropped from 135 babies per 1,000 born to 95 per 1,000, while the average under-ve mortality rate fell from 147 per 1,000 to 67 per 1,000 childrena remarkable feat.19 Between 1950 and 1990, the population of Rwanda expanded 4 times, the population of Nigeria 3.8 times, and the population of Ethiopia almost 3 times, despite record famine and wars. However, increased population creates ideal environments for microbes, which prefer many hosts to a few. Increased population also puts tremendous pressure on governments to provide for basic human needs, not to mention education and health. If these are not provided, disease spreads, unrest grows, and population growth slows. Given Africas disease-prone semitropical climate, epidemics and social conict may be expected to keep returning to the continent. One way of looking at Africas predicament is to see it as a closed circle: improved health, more people living to old age, increased birthrate, high population growth, return of epidemics and social unrest. The data seem to conrm what is termed the Pandoras box effect of the impact of science on the health of the developing countries populations. Improved health leads to more children, which strains a developing states economic and social resources, and so infection and disease return. Countries like India and China that have worked hard to reduce their population growth rate have struggled to maintain an adequate public health system to keep their population in relatively better health. Environmental Wars A large population, limited natural resources, and limited land for agriculture are a recipe for political and social conict over the distribution of scarce resources. As countries run out of their environmental resources, we are seeing more and more civil and interethnic wars being fought over the spoils.
451
452
CHAPTER 14
The 1990 civil war in Rwanda may be one of the rst identied cases of a civil war caused by environmental concerns. The post-independence growth of both the Tutsi and Hutu populations made huge demands upon the Rwandan environment, demands that no government was able to meet. Environmental stress was evident in widespread deforest ation resulting from uncontrolled cutting of trees for fuel, overgrazing, soil exhaustion, soil erosion, and pervasive poaching. The political tension between the major ethnic group, the Hutus, and the ruling group, the Tutsis, that was present at the founding of the state in 1959 boiled over in horric genocide and mass ight into neighboring countries. But perhaps the environmental war that has received the most media attention in recent years is the war in Darfur, in Sudan. While many have called it a racial war between Arab and Black African, or a war ignited over the management of the oil elds in the region, the initial cause of the war is beginning to be understood as environmental. The north of Africa has been experiencing reduced rainfall for decades. Reduced rainfall causes herders to graze their flocks on reduced vegetation, the desert expands, rival herders compete for pasture. These are the prime ingredients of an environmental war.20 Proponents of the green paradigm pessimistically predict that environmental wars will be ever more frequent in the future, unless the world as a global community moves quickly to take measures that promote sustainable development and ecojustice at the same time. Reduced Birthrates in the Industrialized States A second major inuence of science on population growth involves such developments as the contraceptive pill and amniocenMother and Child in Ethiopia tesis. Chapter 11 presented the negative side to amnio At the turn of the twenty-first century, Africa is a catastrocentesis as used by women in India and Pakistan to practice phe of poverty, famine, disease, violence, and ecological sex-selective abortion. The pill has its two sides as well. On degradation. Each of these problems feeds off the rest. the positive side, it has dramatically altered attitudes Research is beginning to clarify the links among them, toward human reproduction by separating the act of pro opening a new area in international relations called creation from the sexual act. Where the pill is used, fear of ecological security. pregnancy has almost become obsolete. Women can have children when, if, and as oftenor as infrequentlyas they please. In China, the pill was a major instrument in implementing the One Child program. The pill took a long time to reach Africa, which is another important reason why the population increased so rapidly. But the pill quickly conquered the Western world and much of Asia, where it played a big role in reducing the birthrate and keeping it down. The ability to choose when to give birth, like all technological and scientic advances, brought enormous immediate benets to women, who enthusiastically entered the business and professional worldlong the domain of men. The pill also had its negative side. Where adopted, it produced an environmental surprise. With decreased social stigma, intercourse before marriage increased,

especially among teens, with a concomitant rise in communicable sexual diseases. The pill also dramatically affected adult womens lifestyles. With the choice of childbirth theirs, most women in the industrialized world preferred to have no more than two children. Today, as discussed, European states, Japan, and especially Russia, have a negative population growth rate. This means that not enough new people are born to replace the current population. As we noted above, 80 percent of the population growth in Europe is from immigration. While the pill cannot be faulted totally for this trend, it certainly aided women in their choice of how many children to have. In Japan and China, where the One Child policy has been in place since the 1980s, demographers talk about the coming popu lation crunch.21 While Green advocates of population control may welcome the pill, other environmentalists like Danielle Hierenberg and Mia MacDonald from the World Watch Institute see it differently. They argue that low rates of population growth in the developed world have encouraged high levels of consumption in rich countries and that this consumption combined with the large populations in the developing world is taking a heavy toll on the planets resources. They note that z Carbon dioxide levels are 30 percent higher in 2007 than in 1960. z Half the worlds original forest cover is gone. z Industrial eets have shed out at least 90 percent of all large ocean sh. z Ten to 20 percent of the worlds cropland is degraded. As global consumption of oil, food, electricity, and a host of paper products rises, the impact of population numbers becomes more severe. Each new person increases total demands on the Earths resources, but the size of the ecological footprint required to support that person varies from continent to continent. There is no doubt about it, the largest ecofootprints are in the developed world. With smaller families or one-person households, the consumption of energy, appliances, and furnishings rises. According to Hierenberg and MacDonald, a one-person household in the United States uses 17 percent more energy than a two-person home.22 Increased Population Density A nal major impact of science on population growth has been the rapid increase in population density. The concentration of energy use in large cities in the twentieth century helped create megacities, but the two largest cities of that time with populations over eight million, London and New York, were small compared to the largest urban areas today: Tokyo (34.1 million), Mexico City (22.7 million) and Seoul, Korea (22.25 million).23 Fifty percent of todays global population lives in cities. Population densities are the highest in Asia and are increasing even though the birthrate is declining. For a picture of how urbanized and densely populated some areas of the world are, go to Web Explorations (www.BetweenNations.org). The urban populationthe number of people living in citiesis expected to double by 2030. Already, cities of over 30 million people are a fact. By 2025, ve billion people are expected to live in urban areas, four billion of which will live in cities in the developing world. Urbanization, or the movement to the city, can bring improvements in health through sanitation and safe drinking water. But urban poverty can also bring epidemics of new diseases caused by the slum conditions new migrants from rural areas all around the globe are compelled to accept. Moreover, the crowding of migrants from different ethnic
453
Ecological footprint The biologically productive area required to support one person.
Megacities A term used to describe cities with populations of over 10 million.
454
CHAPTER 14
groups with different cultures speaking different languages is likely to bring increased violence, as each group struggles for its share of material goods already in scarce supply in the megacities of the developing world. Third and nally, as the densely populated megacities expand to accommodate the increased population, the amount of arable land available to feed the enormous numbers of urban mouths steadily decreases. Feeding the urban hungry in developing countries may increasingly depend on food imports from the developed world.
The Green and Biotech Revolutions

Green revolution The great increase in yield of grain crops, such as corn, rice, and wheat, due to the development of high-yielding hybrids, the use of fertilizers and pesticides, and the implementation of more efcient land management. Biotech revolution The widespread appli cation of bioengineering to increase food production and improve plant and animal strains.
The green and biotech revolutions involve the application of science to agriculture and animal husbandry with the aims of improving crop yield and crop resistance to pests and climate variation, and enhancing breeds of domestic animals. Both these scientic advances have had centralizing as well as decentralizing impacts on the world. The green revolution started in the 1920s and continues today. The biotech revolution extends the application of biological science to the breaking of animal and plant gene codes and the human gene code.
The Green Revolution

The green revolution refers to the great increase in yield of grain crops, such as corn, rice, and wheat, due to the development of high-yielding hybrids, the use of fertilizers and pesticides, and the implementation of more efcient land management. The fathers of the green revolution were Iowa-born Henry Wallace24 and Norman Berlaug, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work in reducing food shortages in India and Pakistan in the 1960s. Today, most of Asia, with the exception of Japan, can feed itself without major imports of food. The major criticism of the green revolution is that it destroyed local knowledge and local culture and made formerly self-sustaining regions dependent on the global market and international corporations. There is truth in this criticism. Until recently, the world did not give much thought to the disappearance of local cultures and lifestyles. Now it no longer denies the importance of this loss.25
The Green Revolution: Workers in a Golden Rice Paddy
The Green Revolution, spreading over the period from 196768 to 197778 transformed India from a food-deficient country depending on food imports to one of the worlds leading agricultural nations.

A second complaint against the green revolution is that it makes the local farmer dependent on the global market. Hybrid seeds do not reproduce themselves. To produce high yields, they require large amounts of fertilizers. They are also vulnerable to pests and crop diseases and hence require pesticides and herbicides. Seeds and fertilizers cost money. As a result, the green revolution primarily benets the larger farmer who has sufcient managerial capability and the resources to prot from it. The smaller farmer is driven out of business or left to till marginal lands, resulting in increased soil degradation. Unless there is demand for it on the international market, local produce becomes increasingly rare as the world shifts to a standardized food menu dictated by agribusiness. A nal argument against the green revolution is that growing for the global market requires a lot of land. As more and more acreage is planted to global standardized crops, biodiversity (discussed earlier in the chapter) is put increasingly at risk. The major counterargument is that the green revolution has brought with it a trend toward harvesting more from fewer acres. Experts have calculated that Indias transition to high-yield farming spared it from having to plow up an additional 100 million acres of virgin land, an area equivalent in size to California and halted deforestation. U.S. policy has encouraged the farmer to return unused arable land to prairies and recreational areas.26
455
Agribusiness The totality of industry engaged in the operations of a farm, the manufacture and sale of farm equipment and supplies, and the processing, storage, and distribution of farm products. Agribusiness may also refer to one giant multinational corporation engaged in one of these farm operations, such as Archer Daniels Midland (ADM).
The Biotech Revolution

The biotech revolution enables domesticated plants to resist disease and pests through the introduction of pest-resistant genes from an exogenous life form, or one not present in the host plant. In many ways, this revolution may be seen as a continuation of the green revolution. Proponents of genetically engineered foods argue that given the known dangers of pesticides and herbicides, it makes sense to pursue a path where fewer and fewer of these toxic polluting chemicals are used. Integrated pest management is one variant of the biotech revolution, where plant and insect species are used to control each other. The latest dimension in the biotech revolution is the use of genetically modified (GM) nonfood plants and animals to produce everything from stronger and softer kinds of cotton, ethanol fuel for cars, and biodegradable plastics to twenty-first-century medicines to cure twenty-first century diseases.27 A controversial aspect of the biotech revolution is cloning. On July 5, 1996, Scottish scientists produced the rst cloned sheep named Dolly. Since then, cloning has taken off. The ethics of cloning will surely be one of the most critical international issues of the twenty-rst century. Thus far, science has trumpeted its biotech achievements to a world that has responded rather negatively, as far as food products are concerned. (The issue is discussed in the online case study for this chapter. See www.BetweenNations.org.) However, the acceptance of the nonfood use of genetic modication has encountered far less resistance. Pest-resistant cotton with yields higher than or equal to that of non-GM cotton is now planted in 20 percent of the worlds cotton elds. Research has produced fast-growing pine trees with more cellulose and less lignin to reduce the cost of producing paper, and GM pigs can now produce human proteins for medical use.28 The fact is that what is grown and sold on the worlds markets is becoming an international environmental problem, with a potentially decentralizing impact, requiring international regulation.
Cloning The growing of an individual from a single cell of its parent. The individual gen erally is considered an identical copy of the parentfor example, Dolly the sheep.
456
CHAPTER 14
Test Prepper 14.2

_____ 1. One of the negative results of technological advancement and the Industrial Revolution has been environmental pollution on a global scale. _____ 2. While the benets of technological advancement are seen immediately, the environmental consequences often remain hidden for considerably longer. _____ 3. Environmental surprises are instances where the environment unexpectedly recovers from pollution or overuse. _____ 4. More and more civil wars are being fought in parts of the world as a result of overpopulation and scarce resources. _____ 5. Not all environmental activists welcome the advent of the contraceptive pill as a positive for the environment.
_____ 6. Applying science and technological advances to the area of health has led to which of the following policy concerns at the international level? a. Overpopulation b. Pandemics as a result of antibiotic resistant illnesses c. Conict between international organizations regarding access to medicine d. Local corporations producing counterfeit drugs e. All of the above _____ 7. Norman Borlaug received the Nobel Peace Prize because a. he developed high yield strains of rice b. his work resulted in the elimination of indigenous cultures c. he helped reduce food shortages in India and Pakistan d. he built on the research of Henry Wallace e. he cloned Dolly the Sheep
How Is the International Community Addressing These Challenges?

3 Identify the major environmental issues the world currently faces and understand how the international community is addressing these issues.
This section briey considers the major environmental problems of our timeclimate change, air pollution, and global water problemsand indicates how the world is organizing to address them. At the outset, you ought to be aware that the states of the world have signed a large number of environmental treaties that constitute a signicant body of international environmental law, and that under UN auspices, a host of IGOs are working on global environmental problems, as shown in Table 14.1. In addition, as discussed in chapter 3, numerous international environmental NGOs are working in different parts of the world to improve environmental conditions. Before turning to a discussion of the international response to global environmental problems, it is only tting to emphasize the role of NGOs and, indeed, individuals in moving the world community to action. Among the movers and shakers of environmental issues, many are women such as Kenyan Nobel Prize winner, Wangari Maathai, and Indian ecologist Vandana Shiva, who have organized groups at the local level to promote environmentally sustainable policies, and in so doing, achieved international recognition for their efforts. It may
c HOw IS THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY AddRESSINg THESE CHALLENgES?

surprise you, but when you think about contributions to environmental sustainability on the planet, individuals rather than states or political groups assume the most prominent role. This is not to say that international environmental NGOs like the World Wildlife Foundation, the World Conservation Union, and Greenpeace have not made important contributions to preserving ecosystems and combating environmental issues. The NGOs have been especially successful as environmental advocates at the United Nations and in assisting the international community during natural disasters. But the catalyst for environmental action more often than not seems to be individuals.
457
Climate Change
Climate change is the foremost challenge to our planet in the twenty-rst century.
International Findings
Scientists generally agree that global temperatures have risen a little over a degree F in the last 150 years and that carbon dioxide levels have risen about 30 percent. But scientists do not agree on the cause of this trend, nor what to do about it. Paleoclimatology has evidence of what might be called natural periods of warming and cooling throughout Earths history. Scientists do not know precisely why they occurred or whether climatic uctuations based on the Earths orbit around the sun and uctuations in solar energy provide the entire explanation. Scientists have been collecting meteorological data for only the last 150 years or so. Considering the age of the Earth, that may be an insignicant database from which to make major predictions. A large number of scientists believe human activity has made a major contribution to the currently rising temperatures. Others are withholding judgment. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) makes the strongest case for the theory that man-made emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is forcing current global warming. Forcing means increasing warming faster than would occur under normal conditions. In 1990, the IPCC published its rst lengthy report backing a conclusion that while natural greenhouse gases keep the earth warmer than it would be otherwise (the greenhouse effect), emissions resulting from human activities are substantially increasing the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, thereby contributing to the Earths warming faster and more than is good for its ecosystems.29 As we saw at the beginning of the chapter, the IPCCs Fourth Report published in 2007 asserts with even greater certainty that climate change in our time is driven by the emission of man-made greenhouse gases, most notably CO2.30 Those who question the IPCCs analysis argue that the Earths climate is dynamic, constantly changing. There will be change but not the catastrophic change forecast by the IPCC. We do not know enough about climate change, and the hypothesis centered on the greenhouse effect is only one of many in play. If the models now in use were good ts to actual climate data, then why havent the temperatures risen as much as the models predicted? The 1.6 degree F average increase in the Earths surface temperature in 150 years is far less than earlier studies forecast. Roy W. Spencer, for example, senior scientist for climate studies at NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center believes that neither current measurements nor climate change theory supports the popular perception of global warming as an environmental disaster.31
Paleoclimatology The study of climate variations in the far distant past.
458
CHAPTER 14
The Consequences of Global Warming

Source: http://geoscape.nrcan.gc.ca/h2o/bow/images/ climatel_e.jpg. Used by permission.
Snowpack
Glacier melt
Reduced water supply from shrinking glaciers
Forest fires
Warmer, drier summers and earlier springs may lead to increased forest fires.
A possible reduction of snowpack could change water supply.
Extreme weather
A possible increase in extreme weather, e.g., tornadoes, hail storms, heat waves, droughts, dust storms, floods, blizzards
Agriculture
Calgary
Reduced flow decreases power generation. Increased demand for irrigation and a change in crop types due to a longer growing season
Hydroelectric power
Lower water tables cause some shallow wells to go dry.
Groundwater
Warmer river temperatures stress cold-water species such as trout.
Lower river flow reduces water supply, water quality, and recreation activities.
Habitat River flow
What is a layperson to make of these arguments? Certainly there are signs of climate change all around. Many parts of the world, including much of the United States, have been experiencing drought in the past few years. Yet 2002 saw heavy rain in Europe that caused catastrophic oods in Eastern Europe. In 2004, four devastating hurricanes struck Florida, and a deadly earthquake and tsunami struck Southeast Asia. In 2005 Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. How should these signs be interpreted? Do we wait and see? Should the use of fossil fuels be drastically curtailed? Let us take a look at the international communitys response to the problem.
The International Response

The prudent course, according to some, is to take whatever steps are necessary to mitigate the impact of human activity on climate change. In 1982, as information hardened that the release of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) into the environment might erode the protective ozone layer, Mostafa K. Tolba, executive director of the UNEP, positioned his organization to initiate the effort to develop a global convention on the ozone layer. Five years later, the UN convention on the ozone layer was ratied at Montreal, Canada. The convention signers agreed to phase out CFCs. A subsequent meeting in Helsinki in 1989 set the year 2000 as the deadline for the phaseout, and at the further urging of Tolba in London in 1990, the industrialized countries agreed to contribute $240 million to help the developing countries comply over the next three years.32 Meanwhile, at the national level, the states of the European Union, the United States, and other countries passed laws aimed at reducing the emission of greenhouse gases. The efforts seem to have produced results. Since 2000, with some uctuations, the ozone hole over Antarctica has become smaller in size and depth.33

At the UN Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, a framework agreement on the reduction of greenhouse gases was signed. Under Rios inspiration, the states of the European Union, the United States, and other countries passed laws aimed at reducing the emission of greenhouse gases. The signing of a more detailed protocol in Kyoto in 1998, dening specic emission reduction targets for the worlds thirty-nine industrialized nations, stalled on the refusal of developing countries like China to become part of the regime. Without China and Indias participationthe key continental countriesthe Soviet Union, Australia, and the U.S. would not consider ratication. Russia eventually agreed to sign, but Australia and the United States have continued to argue that a treaty on CO2 emissions without the signatures of India and China, the next two largest CO2 polluters after the United States, is no treaty at all. With the publication of the IPCCs fourth report, global attention became focused on alternative fuels and on regulating CO2 emissions by a cap and trade system. The U.S. Congress voted large sums to promote the conversion of corn into ethanol. The Middle West went into high production. Ethanol refineries sprung up in the corn states of the United States almost over night. Then around the world came complaints that there was no corn for fodder, or for use in food production, where corn is used in multiple ways. Corn became a scarcity, and the price skyrocketed. To complicate matters, turning corn into ethanol may not cut greenhouse gas emissions since processing it is energy intensive. What is more, it turns out that ethanol at the pump also pollutes the air. The search then shifted gears for a more environmentally friendly source of biofuel. The European Union has led the way in adopting a CO2 cap and trade system. In its rst year in operation results indicated an increased production of CO2 rather than decreased production, necessitating a revision. The revision means securing a new agreement from all the member states that entails drastic cuts in their emissions. On the U.S. side, the Bush administration in 2005 signed bilateral agreements with China and India to increase investment in, and transfer of, green technologies, and in June 2007 called for the international setting of limits on CO2 emissions with the worlds states working out their own programs, timetables, and enforcement measures for meeting those limits.34 The hard fact is that reducing greenhouse gas emissions requires a radical change in lifestyle, and no country knows quite what that change will cost it. So the response of the international community remains: Lets keep talking and wait and see.
459
Air Pollution
The air we breathe is a global commons. The air belongs to all people, and it belongs to no one. It is what might be called the common property of humankind. But if the air is free to everyone to breathe, it is also free to everyone to pollute.
Cap and trade system A central authority (usually a government agency) sets a limit or cap on the amount of a pollutant that can be emitted. Companies or other groups that emit the pollutant are given credits or allowances that represent the right to emit a specic amount. The total amount of credits cannot exceed the cap, limiting total emissions to that level. Companies that pollute beyond their allowances must buy credits from those who pollute less than their allowances, or face heavy nes. This transfer is referred to as a trade. In effect, the buyer is being ned for polluting, while the seller is being rewarded for having reduced emissions. Thus companies that can easily reduce emissions will do so, and those for which it is harder will buy credits, which reduces greenhouse gases at the lowest possible cost to society. The Kyoto Protocol provided for this kind of system to reduce CO2 emissions. Global commons Areas of the Earths biosphere shared by all the worlds population; examples are the oceans and the atmosphere.
Air as a Global Commons

The concept of a global commons was derived by ecologist Garrett Hardin (1915 2003) in 1968, from the concept of the common, or public land situated at the center of rural towns in England and New England two centuries ago that was intended to be used by all. Because the land was held in common, any town resident who had cattle or sheep and no pasture of their own could graze animals there. The inevitable results were overgrazing and the destruction of the commons.
460
CHAPTER 14
The global commons are those parts of the biosphere held in common by all humanity. These include the oceans, outer space, the seabed, Antarctica, the electromagnetic spectrum, and the atmosphere. One major problem of the oceans and the atmosphere is that they are fast becoming pollution dumping grounds for everyone in the world. In his book The Endangered Atmosphere, Marvin Soroos argues that humanity faces the daunting challenge of constraining its releases of air pollutants to preserve the essential qualities not only of the atmosphere but also of the larger Earth system.35 Take another look at Figure 14.3. The model tells you that human society, the natural ecosystem, and the atmosphere are all interconnected. Without the planets unique atmosphere, there would be no life on Earth. The emission of greenhouse gasses threatens the life-saving layer that protects human beings from the suns lethal rays. The major air pollutants are carbon dioxide (CO2), other greenhouse gases, sulfur dioxide (SO2), and particulates, tiny solid or liquid particles suspended in gas. Air pollution impacts on public health and wellbeing, and the functioning of earths ecosystems. The industrialization of most of the world has made air pollution a global condition.
Energy Consumption and Air Pollution

The main culprit in air pollution is energy consumption. As you saw in chapter 8, energy consumption is a central issue in world politics and crucial to both industrial development and human survival on this planet. Nonrenewable Energy Sources A central problem is that the kinds of energy most usedfossil fuels (coal, oil, gas)are nonrenewable resources, meaning that the Earth contains a xed amount of the resource that is fast being used up. Plutonium and uranium, used to produce nuclear energy are also nonrenewable resources. The second problem is that most kinds of energy are heavy polluters. Gasoline burned in motor vehicles contributes 9 percent of all CO2 emissions. The burning of coal to make electricity produces sulfur dioxide, one of the airborne pollutants that can be carried long distances by the wind and that can return to Earth as acid rain many miles from the source of the burn. Acid rain is a major culprit in the dieoff of lakes and forests in many regions. Nuclear energy burns clean, but if something goes wrong at the plant, the accident can be a major disaster, as at Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986. Even if nuclear power plants could be made 100 percent safe, the problem of how to dispose of the spent nuclear fuel rods and store them for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years would remain. Despite these drawbacks, soaring oil prices since 2005 have made nuclear energy again appear more attractive as the most efcient way to generate large amounts of electricity. Wood and biomass burning also contribute to greenhouse gases. Over 2.5 billion people in developing countries depend on rewood, animal dung, or crop residue for cooking. In 1999, Indian scientist Veerabhadran Ramanathan and a team of researchers discovered a huge blanket of soot and smoke nearly two miles thick hanging over the Indian Ocean. Nicknamed the Asian brown cloud, the discovery suggested that soot may be as critical a factor as CO2 in climate change.36 A second problem with burning wood is that you have to cut down trees to do it. Deforestation is a crucial global environmental problem, because the tropical forest stands in Asia, Africa, and Latin America are essential to the absorption of CO2 from the air and its storage as energy-producing material. The Earth needs forests so human beings can keep breathing. It also need forests along rivers and streams
461
and on hillsides to prevent soil erosion, mudslides, and catFIGURE 14.5 astrophic ooding. Motor Vehicle Trends, 19462001 Of all the nonrenewable energy sources, natural gas is the cleanest. New discoveries of gas reserves have greatly 70,000 increased the availability of natural gas, and for the short term, gas seems to be the best answer to energy pollution. 60,000 Consumption of gas is in third place behind the consump50,000 tion of oil. Oil represents around 40 percent of the worlds total 40,000 energy supply, or what is currently on hand for distribution. 30,000 In addition to this supply, there are proven reserves (roughly how much oil is in the ground at a certain location) and 20,000 potential reserves (a guess at how much there is). Most of the easily obtainable oil lies under the Arabian Peninsula 10,000 and in Iran and Iraq. Mexico has some excellent reserves off 0 its coast in the Gulf of Mexico. But the rest of the easy-to1 Year extract oil has already been taken out of the Earth. Finding and extracting more oil is a job for the big petroleum MNCs 1961 1971 1981 1991 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 and national oil companies. The limitations of oil are the 2000 2001 2002 Linear (1961) most discussed and pressing concern because oil is the major fuel of the modern transportation system. The numSource: World Resources Institute, World Resources 19981999, http://www.wri.org/ ber of the vehicles has increased world wide eleven times wri/powerpoints/trends/sld026.htm. Data from American Automobile Manufacturers Association, World Motor Vehicle Data 1993, p. 23, and Motor Vehicle Facts and Figsince 1946! (See Figure 14.5 for current data.) ures 1996, p. 44. Used by permission. To date most of the motor-vehicle registration is in the industrialized world. But China is undergoing a huge economic boom, and its population of 1.3 billion is becoming increasingly prosperous. In 1973, the developed countries consumed about 62 percent of all energy produced in the world (see Figure 14.6). In 2003, their share is down to 50 percent. By contrast, Chinas share of total energy consumption has doubled in that amount of time, and it is now the second consumer of energy after the United States. If China and India adopt the energy-proigate lifestyle of the West, Americans will FIGURE 14.6 Regional Shares of Global Energy Consumption
Regional Shares of Energy Consumption, 1973 and 2002 1973
15% 17% 6% 62% China Developed Countries Developed Countries Developing Countries Countries in Transition China 51% 27% 10% 12%
2002
Developing Countries
Countries in Transition
Source: Compiled from World Energy Agency/World Energy Outlook 2002, Figure 2.3, and International Energy Agency, Energy Information Administration/International Energy Outlook 2006, World Total Energy Consumption by Region, Reference Case 19902030, Table A1, http://www.eia.doe.gov/olaf/ieo/pdf/ieoreftab_1.pdf. Used by permission.
Number of vehicles (millions)
462
CHAPTER 14
Wind Turbines: Alternate Energy or New Environmental Pollution
Wind energy experienced the largest growth in the United States in 2005. Total world generating capacity at the end of 2004 was enough electricity to service 9 million households. Wind turbines generate 20 percent of Denmarks electricity. The American Wind Energy Association forecasts a bright future for the industry. Detractors argue that wind energy does not come pollution free. The big turbines catch birds in their blades, killing or injuring them. Environmentalists find wind farms an aesthetic eye sore in such environmental havens as Cape Cod or the Adirondack Park in upstate New York.
almost certainly experience a dramatic change for the worse in their lifestyle, increased air pollution and higher rates of asthma and lung disease. Most analysts doubt there is enough non-renewable energy if the whole world consumes at the rate the industrialized world does today. Renewable Energy Sources The turn to renewable energy sources like solar, wind, and geothermal power is hampered mainly because of cost, according to economists Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren.37 The breakeven point, where costs for geothermal heating equal costs for oil or gas heating, is projected at twenty years. Solar power is about the same. At present, the cheapest form of renewable energy is wind power. The problem with wind power is that you need some fty square miles of wind turbines to generate electricity for around 70,000 homes. Many people do not like the look or sound of so many wind turbines so close to their houses. In sum, people are not rushing to use renewable, or soft, energy sources because they are either too expensive or not aesthetically pleasing. Perspectives change, however, and wind power started to look increasingly attractive. The high cost of soft energy today does not mean it will not become more attractive tomorrow. But some things will never change. Solar energy demands continuous sunlight. Wind power needs constant wind. So far, these events do not occur regularly anywhere on the planet. The viable options today are still reliance on fossil fuels, particularly natural gas, and on energy conservation.
Energy Wars
Securing energy is a global problem that is likely to become worse. In 2001, California, which has the fth-largest GDP in the world, experienced rolling blackouts. For many countries, such blackouts have long been routine. They simply do not have enough energy available to keep the lights on all the time. Increased energy use in China, terrorism on the pipelines in Iraq, and a bad hurricane season in the Gulf of

Mexico pushed oil prices to new highs in 2005. As the impact of Indian and Chinese demand hit the world oil markets, gasoline prices in the United States reached another new high in 2007. The need for access to secure sources of energy drives the foreign policies of most of the worlds states. As we saw in chapter 8, energy scarcity poses the dangers of future global oil wars with destruction and population displacements at a level that may make todays wars in the Sudan, Nigeria, and Iraq look trivial by comparison. The solution must include cleaner air.
463
The International Response to Air Pollution

To the credit of the worlds states, atmospheric pollution has now been recognized as a serious problem, and the international community has passed major treaties to reduce the emission of air pollutants worldwide. These include: z The Partial Test Ban Treaty (1963) against nuclear testing in the atmosphere, outer space, and on the seabed z The Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP) Convention (1979) z The Montreal Protocol for the Protection of the Ozone Layer (1987) z The Kyoto Framework Convention on Climate Change (1992) Each of these major treaties establishes what is called an environmental regime (see chapter 2). Typically, the treaty sets up a goal to be reached, a process by which to reach the goal, a timeline, and some kind of permanent organizational framework to monitor progress. In the early 1990s, regime theory, developed by international relations scholar Oran Young, was thought to be the up-and-coming way to get the worlds states to move from signing treaties to implementing them. 38 The evidence today is ambiguous. Looking at the 1979 LRTAP Treaty, for example, the evidence indicates that ambient concentrations of SO2 have declined in many cities of Western Europe and North America, in countries that signed the treaty. But SO2 concentrations remain high in Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, where coal continues to be used and where there is a great deal of diesel trafc. Forest dieback caused by acid rain is still a serious problem in Eastern Europe and the eastern Canadian provinces, while the northeastern states of the United States continue to suffer the death of lakes from acid precipitation. A 1995 World Bank calculation of the health costs to China in 2020 from its increased use of coal and increased number of motor vehicles ran into millions of cases of respiratory damage.39 Despite the phasing out of CFCs required by the 1987 Montreal Protocol, ozone pollution has continued to rise in cities in Europe, North America, and Japan as auto and industrial emissions have increased. Nitric oxide emitted by motor vehicles is the major culprit in the creation of the yellow smog over Los Angeles. Ozone pollution can cause breathing difculties, impair lung function, and cause shortness of breath, asthma attacks, and chest pain.40 As indicated earlier, the climate change regime was in serious trouble at a very young age. How it will be implemented remains to be seen. Its critics predict its implementation will cause the collapse of the world economy. The war on terrorism has shifted many governments attention away from global environmental issues to the problem of securing energy sources. The developing states are reluctant to pay for expensive environmental cleanup. The resurgence of popular interest in the global commons sparked by Al Gores work and his reception of the Nobel Peace Prize could be the catalyst for a cooperative international response to the twin issues of energy consumption and climate change.
For more information see Environmental Protocols www.BetweenNations.org
Regime theory Developed by Oran Young, this theory holds that international cooperation depends on well-designed regimes. If a treaty promotes a well-designed regime, the chance of the treaty being implemented is much greater than if it designates a awed regime.
464
CHAPTER 14
FIGURE 14.7 Water Stress Dened in Terms of Percentage of Total Available Water Withdrawn
1995
2025
Water withdrawal as percentage of total available More than 40% 40%20% 20%10% Less than 10%
Source: World Water Organization, Water Demand and Scarcity, p. 5, http://www.worldwater.org/waterData.htm. Used by permission.

Water Scarcity and Water Pollution
Of all the global environmental problems, water scarcity and the absence of clean water probably present the most immediate threat to humans in the next century. Water security could turn out to be a most divisive and decentralizing issue leading to water wars and violence in the coming century. Figure 14.7 graphically summarizes the problem. By 2025, the entire Middle East, South East Asia, and North Africa will be consuming more than 40 percent of the water available to these regions. The United States, Europe and China also will experience water stress.
465
International Research on Water

According to the UNs assessment of freshwater resources, one-third of the worlds population lives in countries experiencing moderate to high water stress, meaning consumption levels that exceed 20 percent of available supply.41 As Figure 14.7 indicates, by 2025, one-half of the worlds population, including that of the United States, will be experiencing water shortages, and two-thirds will be living in areas undergoing moderate to high water stress. Water Scarcity Poor countries are particularly vulnerable to the dangers of water scarcity. But water scarcity and water contamination affect every continent and most states. Agriculture accounts today for about 70 percent of water consumption around the world (see Figure 14.8). Increasing amounts of this water are being distributed to elds by irrigation. The UN expects a 50100 percent increase in irrigated water by 2025.42 The negative effects of irrigation are clearly seen in the drying up of the Aral Sea in Central Asia. At one time, two great rivers, the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya, owed into this landlocked sea. In the desire to turn Central Asia into one of the worlds leading cotton-producing regions, the former Soviet government paid for the construction of huge irrigation systems. Pesticides and herbicides followed. By the end of the 1980s, the Aral Sea had lost a third of its
FIGURE 14.8 World Water Use by Consumption Category and Region

World Africa Europe Asia South America Central America North America Oceana 0 20 40 60 80 100
Agriculture dominates water use, but its share will decline Agricultural Industrial Domestic
Source: World Resources Institute, 19981999 World Resources (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 188. Used by permission.
466
CHAPTER 14
size because the rivers had stopped owing into it. By the 1990s, the sea was down to half its former size. China presents another illustration of what happens to rivers when a country turns to irrigation to water its elds. Slowly but surely, the northern part of China is drying out. The Yellow River is simply being overused for irrigation. As more and more water is diverted to industry and cities upstream, less is available for use downstream.43 Water Pollution Pollution further contributes to the water crisis. Outbreaks of water poisoning are becoming common in the United States. The green revolution in agriculture, with its extensive use of fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides, has dumped a range of pollutants into river basins. Wherever industry exists, toxic chemicals and heavy metals seep into waterways.44 Dams for Flood Control and Hydroelectricity Finally, the damming of rivers for water power and ood control has contributed to water shortages and changed river basin environments. Damming has further affected human health. The newest case is the Senegal River development project in West Africa, where the dam has failed to live up to its promise in ridding the area of age-old diseases.45
International Response to Water Pollution

To understand the nature of international regulation of waterways, rst take a look at available freshwater around the world. Virtually all the industrialized countries in the north have access to freshwater. The situation is far different in the southern half of the globe. This unequal access is compounded by the fact that almost all major global waterways cross national borders. Few countries have the luxury of using water that originates and ends solely within their boundaries. Water Wars Modern history has no record of international water wars. The waterstressed and conict-ridden Middle East, however, is one place where a water war might break out. A major obstacle to the solution of the Israeli/Palestinian conict, peace between Israel and Syria, and improved relations between Israel and Jordan, is the allocation of the waters of the Jordan River. At the present time, the Israelis use the lions share of the water, with the Jordanian and Palestinian share below internationally established average minimum consumption. The end to the Israeli/Palestinian conict and Israels conict with her neighbors must include the signing of an international agreement on the shared use of the waters of the entire Jordan basin.46 International Water Treaties Probably the most common way to solve the problems of international waterway use is the water treaty. Water treaties exist in all parts of the world. The two best known in North America are the treaties on the Columbia and the Colorado rivers. International river treaties are especially difcult where there are multiple users as with the Danube and the Rhine rivers in Europe. In February 2000, a cyanide spill at the Baia-Mare gold mine in northwestern Romania heavily polluted the Tisza River, a tributary of the Danube River. The international community wrung its hands, but ruled that the international treaty governing the Danube did not apply to this case, and thus, neither the affected Hungarian nor the Serbian government had legal recourse to compensation to remediate the damage. The UN Regional Seas Programs International water treaties also exist to govern the worlds regional seas and oceans. The UNs Regional Seas Programs are perhaps

the most active of the water treaty regimes. Examples are the Regional Seas Program for the Mediterranean, the Caspian, and the Black Sea. Regime-creating treaties have been signed in the areas of global warming and transboundary air pollution. Water treaties, like all other international treaties, depend on the voluntary compliance of the states that sign them. Liberal proponents of regime theory argue that having a regime in place binds the signatory states to a centralizing system from which they can extricate themselves only with difculty. Those who question the usefulness of regimes argue that a treaty that is on paper only, with few states in compliance, is not a treaty at all. In summary, all nations talk positively about the need for and benets of sustainable development but the problems persist. University of Toronto Peace Studies Professor Tad Homer-Dixon popularized the term environmental security, arguing the close connection between the environment, scarcity, and violence. In his view, as societies become more complex, and resources scarcer, they become less able to cope and turn the situation around. People have less condence that the experts know anything or can solve anything. In Dr. Homer-Dixons words, the world is experiencing an ingenuity gap.47 Without universal consensus on the meaning of sustainable development and the ingenuity to pursue it, the international community seems powerless to act.
467
Audio Concept Environmental Security www.BetweenNations.org
Why Cant the International Community Agree on a Common Strategy?

If all these environmental problems are so serious, why cant the international community listen to the scientists and agree on the right solutions? This chapter suggests many answers to that question. These are summarized below. 1. Environmental problems are not equally distributed and affect each region and country differently. While water scarcity is a world problem, its effects will be less severely felt in North America than in China and the deserts of Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia. 2. Reasonable people, including scientists, differ in their assessment of the severity and cause of environmental problems. There may be general agreement that the world is warming; there is less agreement about why it is warming. 3. Every environmental remedy has its cost. The closer you come to really clean air and really clean water, the higher the cost. How clean is clean is thus not a scientic question but a political question demanding a political solution. 4. Every state has a different capacity to pay the cost of environmental remediation. The United States, Western European countries, and Japan can afford to undertake costly pollution-control programs. Most other states cannot. These poorer states accuse the rich states of having caused the problem and demand that they pay for the damage. 5. States like to point ngers, as all people do. The developed states look at the developing states and say, Dont do as I do, do as I say. Well help you, too. The developing states, including China, say, Well clean ours up when we become as rich as you. 6. Some nations may benet from the ecological downturn of others. If the Earth really is warming, then Canada and Russiacold countriesstand to benet. If the seas rise, people living in regions toward the middle of the worlds continents will be better off than those along the coast. Upstream water-users have an easier time imposing their views of water allocation upon downstream users.
468
CHAPTER 14
7. Environmental problems are highly complex. Scientic knowledge of how nature responds to human activity is too limited to be able to predict future response with any degree of accuracy. 8. Last but not least, all human beings are part of the problem. Most people are locked into a culture of denial. The lesson from the industrial and scientic revolutions is that we cannot continue to dene all technological change as progress. The motto of the environmentalist links the decentralized locality with the international center: Act locally, think globally. More than any other issue before the world today, environmental concerns challenge the international system and state governments to nd ways to cooperate for a healthy planet.
Test Prepper 14.3

True or False?
_____ 1. Global warming is not currently supported by the scientic community; efforts to address climate change are generally the result of environmental alarmists. _____ 2. The global commons refers to natural resources (such as air or water) that cannot be cleanly divided into territorial elements when it comes to pollution. _____ 3. The United States argues that the Kyoto Protocol is critically awed because countries like China and India are not parties to the treaty. _____ 4. One of the reasons why the environmental issues covered in the chapter have not been addressed is the cost associated with xing the problems.
Multiple Choice
_____ 5. A cap and trade system creates a. A dilemma for states where pollution is decreased in some areas but signicantly increased in others as a result of competition among industries b. Environmental pockets or protected zones where wildlife are safe from the effects of pollution
c. Limits on the amount of pollutants a corporation may produce while at the same time providing incentives for producing less than the limit d. Environmental disasters in the developing world e. None of the above _____ 6. The primary source of air pollution is a. Toxic waste b. Deforestation c. Overpopulation d. Energy consumption e. None of the above _____ 7. Which of the following is an international response to water scarcity? a. Partial Test Ban Treaty b. LRTAP Convention c. International water treaties d. Kyoto Protocol e. Regional Seas Program
Case Study
Should the International Community Regulate Genetically Modied Foods?
JOIN THE DEBATE
469
Join the Debate The Best Strategy for Solving Global Environmental Problems
OVERVIEW
This chapter identied basic environmental factors, such as clean air and clean water, that humans need to survive on Earth. To meet the challenges posed by the industrial, scientic, and technological revolutions, many multilateral treaties have been signed. The regime building that results from these treaties suggests that the states of the world may be moving toward a centralized approach to global environmental problem-solving; there is international recognition of the problem and a willingness to cooperate. Many view this development as highly positive. Others argue that the treaties are awed and have done nothing but create new levels of UN bureaucracy that achieve no progress towards sustainable development. In this view, strong legislation based on shared experience at the state level is the most effective and efcient way to go. In these arguments, note the underlying tension between the forces of decentralization and centralization. From your reading of the chapter and the chapter on intergovernmental organizations, describe the type of world environmental governance that would provide the best management of our difcult global environmental problems: Would it be a more centralized UN management system with the IGOs calling the shots, continuing the treaty/regime building system? Or more emphasis on the role of individual UN member-states in developing the best and most enforceable national laws? Support your answer by consulting Table 14.1 listing IGOs and multilateral agreements that play the key roles in global environmental governance. of global environmental management is needed, not less. z The UN intergovernmental institutions have proved effective in improving the public health of the worlds population. They could be equally effective in managing the worlds environmental problems. z International treaties bring the signers into a regime where there is consensus on how the environmental object is to be managed with regard to standards and implementation procedures. z International treaties promote a sense of shared environmental stewardship among the treaty signers. In the Ramsar Agreement, all wetlands come under the treaty, not just those of one state. All states feel a common bond with the problem. z Environmental problems are unequally distributed around the Earth. International governance helps equalize the material and nancial burden of dealing with problems among the worlds states. z The polluters of the worlds environment are also unequally distributed. International treaties, as international law, force polluters to pay for their environmental destruction. z International environmental NGOs provide the input from civil society at the global level, identifying areas of concern and priority areas z IGOs are catalysts for environmental cooperation, whether it is treaty making, treaty implementation, or environmental legislation at the state level. For example, UNEP played an important role in developing regimes such as the Montreal Protocol and the Convention on Biological Diversity. The World Conservation Union has an impressive record in drafting and promoting national and international environmental law. It has helped over 75 countries prepare and implement national conservation strategies. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change played a major role in building consensus for the Kyoto Protocol through its analysis and projections of climate processes.
THE PRo SIDE: CENtRALIZED MANAGEmENt THRoUGH tHE UN

z The worlds environmental problems are globalized; one state or even a few states cannot solve them effectively. Some international treaties have been surprisingly successfulthe Montreal Protocol, for example; compliance has been high, and concentrations of CFCs have dropped. More centralization
470
CHAPTER 14
TABLE 14.1 Selected IGOS by Date Established and Multilateral Agreements by Percentage of States Party to Them in Global Environmental Governance
Selected IGOs in Global Environmental Governance Organization
UN Affiliated Food and Agricultural Organization UN Educational, Scientific & Cultural Organization International Maritime Organization World Health Organization International Atomic Energy Agency UN Industrial Development Organization UN Development Program UN Population Fund UN Environment Program Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Commission on Sustainable Development Outside the UN System Intergovernmental Council for the Exploration of the Sea World Bank, International Monetary Fund and regional development banks World Conservation Union Global Environmental Facility World Trade Organization 1902 1948 ICES coordinates undersea research, including assessment of sea stocks. These multilateral finance institutions provide loans, technical assistance and other support to improve environmental management around the world. IUCN assists countries to preserve and protect their environmental resources. GEF is the designated international financial mechanism to fund largescale environmental projects. WTO monitors sustainable environmental practices as they impact on global trade. 1945 1945 1948 1948 1957 1966 1968 1969 1972 1978 1992 FAO is lead UN agency responsible for assessing state of global agriculture. UNESCO promotes global cooperation in education, science, culture and media. IMO is responsible for maritime safety and monitors pollution from ships. WHO manages international cooperation to improve public health among nations. IAEA monitors nuclear safety and non-proliferation agreements. UNIDO focuses on increasing industrial capacity in developing countries. UNDP connects countries to knowledge and resources needed to develop. UNPF provides reproductive health and family planning information and assistance to states requesting such services. UNEP promotes wise and sustainable use of the global environment. IPCC assesses information pertaining to global warming and climate change and provides periodic status reports. CSD monitors and reports on implementation of Rio Earth Summit treaty.
Est.
Function
1948 1991 1995
Selected Multilateral Environmental Agreements Percentage of World Nations Party to Treaty

13% 44% 57%
Treaty
1. Aarhus Convention on right of public access to environmental information and decision-making 2. Convention on Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals 3. Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change
Responsible IGO
Aarhus Conv. Sec. UN Economic Commission for Europe UNEP CMS Secretarial UN Climate Change Sec.
Budget
$855 thousand $1.8 million $16.8 million
JOIN THE DEBATE
471
Selected Multilateral Environmental Agreements Percentage of World Nations Party to Treaty

70% 74% 82% 84% 91% 91% 96% 97% 97%
Treaty
4. Ramsar Convention on on Preserving Wetlands 5. UN Convention on the Law of the Sea 6. Basel Convention on Control of Transboundary Movement of Acid Rain and Waste 7. Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) 8. World Heritage Convention 9. Montreal Protocol on Substances Depleting Ozone Layer 10. Vienna Convention on Protection of Ozone Layer 11. Convention on Biological Diversity 12. UN Convention to Combat Desertification
Responsible IGO
IUCN RAMSAR Bur. UN Division Ocean Affairs UNEP Basel Convention UNEP CITES Secretariat UNESCO UNEP Ozone Secretariat UNEP Ozone Secretariat UNEP Biological Diversity Sec. UN Sec. on Combating Desertification
Budget
$2.4 million $1.2 million $4.2 million $6.7 million $8.1 million $3.9 million $1.2 million $10 million
Source: Derived from World Resources Institute, Decisions for the Earth (Washington, D.C.: World Resources Institute, 2004), Tables 7.1 and 7.2, pp. 142143, 146147. Used by permission.
THE CoN SIDE: DEcENtRALIZED MEmBER-StAtE MANAGEmENt

z Willing states need to produce strong environmental laws. These laws must have similar standards that are set by international agreement. But the enforcement and implementation mechanisms must be left to the states, because only the states have the power to enforce their own laws. z These laws may stress cooperation in joint and multilateral efforts to address global environmental problems. z Any centralized uniform approach to global environmental problems solving is doomed to failure for the following reasons: 1. Treaties are useful in bringing together a global consensus on the nature of the problem. Environmental treaties, like all treaties, however, are enforceable only by the signatory states. If environmental law and enforcement are weak in a particular state, treaty implementation is also weak. 2. While some international treaties have specic provisions, the framework treaties favored by the UN are devoid of real substance, binding the signatories to virtually nothing. 3. Environmental treaties are not systematic. They are just a hodge podge of agreements, and they
do not constitute a unied system of international law. There is no mechanism to develop common approaches or even common understanding of what they mean. 4. Although multilateral environmental agreements are legally binding, multilateral instruments to settle disputes are weak, and the implementation of treaties is slow. The International Court of Justice, the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, is obliged to rule on legal disputes submitted to it by UN member-states. But treaty enforcement is different from settling a dispute The treaty regimes have no powers of treaty enforcement and no authority to monitor treaty implementation. z With respect to using the UN as an enforcement and monitoring agent, corruption is so high that no real remediation of environmental problems can take place. Look what happened to the oil-for-food program in Iraq. z The budget allocated to each treaty is low, and it pays only for the bureaucracies at the international level. The total sum allocated to the treaties in 2003 was $92 million, compared to the $19 billion New York State spent on education in 2004. Where do you stand? Join the debate!
472
CHAPTER 14
FURtHER INfoRmAtIoN
An absolute must is the World Resources Institute biannual publication on selected environmental themes: World Resources 20022004: Decisions for the Earth (Washington D.C.: World Resources Institute). It provides a wealth of information on environmental regimes and decision making at all the levels of the international system as well as the need for input from civil society, the role of NGOs, and much more. Carlo Carerro, Carmen Marchiori, and Sonia Orrice, Endogenous Minimum Participation in International Environmental Treaties, Social Science Research Network Electronic Paper Collection: http:// papers.ssrn.com/abstract_id=XXXXXX, December 2003, http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:Jt5Yraz GrTMJ:www.feem.it/NR/rdonlyres/2C7B6772-5545
-40D3-B914-9B1E500EB5DC/975/11305.pdf+inter national+environmental+treaties&hl=en. Marcia Mulkey and Keith E. Chanon, Ofce of Pesticide Programs, United States Environmental Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Wash ington, D.C. 20460, National Compliance and Enforcement of International Environmental Treaties (Washington, D.C.: US Environmental Protection Agency, n.d.), http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache :NBlIt8iIB-kJ:www.inece.org/conf/proceedings 2/19-NationalCompliance.pdf+international +environmental+treaties&hl=en. ENTRI, Environmental Treaties and Resource Indicators, http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/entri/index .jsp.

1 2 sustainable 3 4 5 6 understand 7 8 Dene development and the factors that inuence the viability of sustainable development within a state. 9 The benets of technology come with costs: 10
- The rst cost is technological monoculture. This occurs when a technology is locked into the economic and social fabric of society in a way that cannot be changed. - The second cost is reduction in variability, both within human society and in the environment where that society is situated. Nature is eclectic. Technology is selective. - The third cost is environmental surprise, natures reaction to technological change.
The focus of the chapter is the environmental paradigm, namely, that human society is rooted in the planets ecosystems. The main concern of the human race today is sustainable developmentthat is, survival on this planet. Survival depends on learning how to relate to the natural world in such a way as not to destroy its capacity to sustain all living beings. The global environments key components are natural resourcesboth renewable and nonrenewableand human resources or population.
Applied science has its benets and costs:

- The benets include the prevention and eradication of disease through new medical technology, sanitation, vaccines, antibiotics, and insecticides. In the twentieth century, science focused on the eradication of disease. National research laboratories led the research and data collection effort, while the World Health Organization is the lead agency in implementing global public health programs. - The costs of science and improved health are increased global population, reduced birthrates in the industrialized states accompanied by high consumption levels, and increased population density.
3 4 5 6 8 9 to 10 Be able to identify and explain the7major challenges sustainable development.
The challenges to the global environment are the huge human footprint made by the industrial and scientic revolutions, including environmentally destructive industrial monocultures such as the automobile, megacity societies, and the increased density of a still-growing population forced on the move by wars, marginal farming, famine, and the desire for a better lifestyle.
The green and biotech revolutions represent the new challenges to the global environment. Their footprint and implications are still unknown.
473
4 6 7 8 9 world10 Identify the5major environmental issues the currently faces and understand how the international community is addressing these issues.
- International Research. There is no scientic consensus on the exact relationships between the greenhouse gases released by human activities into the atmosphere and the current period of global warming. - The International Response. In the absence of certainty about what is happening, the international community has taken steps to prevent further human contributions to the warming trend. These steps include the Montreal Protocol for Protection of the Ozone Layer (1979) and the Kyoto Framework Convention on Climate Change (1992). Not all states endorse these steps. Some states like the EU have signed regional agreements, other like the United States, have signed bilateral or multilateral agreements.
Climate change
on another country far away. The emission of chlorouorocarbons (CFCs) into the atmosphere has contributed to the deterioration of the ozone layer that is vital to the maintenance of life on Earth. - The international response to global air pollution problems include the Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP) Convention (1979), the Partial Test Ban Treaty (1963) against nuclear testing in outer space and on the seabed, the Montreal Protocol for the Protection of the Ozone Layer (1987), and the Kyoto Framework Convention on Climate Change (1992).
Water scarcity and water pollution

- Water problems constitute perhaps the most serious environmental threat to the world today. - Water resources are unevenly distributed around the world. Most major rivers go through three or more countries, necessitating international solutions to their problems. The causes of the worlds water problems include the high demand for water required by agriculture, widespread irrigation projects, and pollution of water systems by industrial and agricultural run off. - The international response to water scarcity includes water wars, international water treaties, and the UN Regional Seas Program. - Solutions to global water pollution and water scarcity problems fall heavily on the international nancial institutions; they must also provide funding for water treatment plants and urban development projects.
Air pollution
- Energy sources are the main contributors to pollution. The world today is dependent on fossil fuels as its major energy source, and fossil fuels are the principal contributors to the greenhouse gases that produce global warming. The least polluting fossil fuel is natural gas. Nuclear energy is still considered too dangerous, and energy from renewable resources, like solar power, windpower, and geothermal sources, is either too unreliable or too expensive to be used efciently on a mass scale. - Emissions of air pollutants from one country can be borne by the wind and air currents to fall as acid rain
Environmental problems are hard to resolve especially because people are locked into a culture of denial.

Endnotes
Chapter 1
1. Aristotle, Politics, trans. Benjamin Jowett, The Modern Library (New York: Random House, 1943), 5155. 2. Harold Dwight Lasswell, Politics: Who Gets What When and How (Magnolia, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1990). 3. David Easton, A Systems Analysis of Political Life (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1965), 50. 4. Niall Ferguson, A World Without Power, Foreign Policy (July/August 2004): 3239. 5. William Blake, Jerusalem, from Milton, A Poem in Two Books (18041808), The Portable Blake, ed. Alfred Kazin (New York: Viking, 1946), 412. 6. William Wordsworth, in The Oxford Book of English Verse, ed. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952), 617. 7. Henry David Thoreau, Walden, or, Life in the Woods, in Henry David Thoreau, ed. Robert F. Sayre, Library of America (New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1985), 321587. 8. For more discussion, see Ruth Benedict, Race and Racism (London: Routledge, 1942), and Race, Science, and Politics (New York: Viking, 1945). See also Thomas Sowell, The Economics and Politics of Race: An International Perspective (New York: Quill, 1983), 1519. 9. The Green Belt Movement has over 30,000 members and has racked up substantial achievements in forestation, food security, and the empowerment of local Kenyan communities to preserve and restore their environment. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1992), chap. 1; and David Reed, ed., Structural Adjustment, the Environment and Sustainable Development (London: Earthscan Publications, 1996), chap. 2. Arne Naesss thoughts are best set forth in Ecology, Community, and Lifestyle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). Dai Qing et al., The River Dragon Has Come! The Three Gorges Dam and the Fate of Chinas Yangtze River and Its People (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1998). 1996 gures from U.S. Department of State data. http://countrystudies.us/afghanistan/38.htm. Andrew Szasz, Ecopopulism: Toxic Waste and the Movement for Environmental Justice (London and Minneapolis: Minneapolis University Press, 1994), 151. Wikipedia, The Frankfurt School, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Frankfurt_School. May 5, 2005. Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964). Jrgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action. Vol. 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society, reprint (Boston: Beacon Press, 1985). Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), chap. 6. David Campbell, National Deconstruction, Violence, Identity, and Justice in Bosnia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998). Michael R. Matthews, Constructivist Thinking in Science and Mathematics, in National Society for the Study of Education, 99th Yearbook, ed. D.C. Phillips (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 161192.
15. 16.
17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.
Chapter 2
1. Denition provided by Thomas Kuhn in the 1969 postscript to the second edition of his book, The Structure of Scientic Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), Postscript. 2. Prophesy adapted from Sir John Hackett, The Third World War (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1982). 3. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, trans. Rex Warner (New York: Penguin, 1981), 212217. 4. Thomas Hobbes, The Leviathan, The English Philosophers from Bacon to Mill: The Age of English Philosophy, ed. Edwin A. Burtt, The Modern Library (New York: Random House, 1939), 160162. 5. For an exposition of this view, see Robert Wright, Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny (New York: Vintage, 2001), 2944. 6. U.N. Ofce of the Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery, The Human Toll, http://www.tsunamispecialenvoy.org/country/humantoll.asp. 7. The carrying capacity of a natural ecosystem is determined by its maximum sustainable yield and this in turn is the product of its size and regenerative powers. Grasslands and forests in humid areas have greater capacities of regeneration and hence greater carrying capacities than have semi-arid regions (Lester R. Brown, The Twentyninth Day [New York: W. W. Norton, 1978], 13). 8. As printed in Dictionary of Quotations, ed. B. Bergen Evans (New York: Avenel, 1978), 734735. 9. Owen Harris, Realism in a New Era, Quadrant 39 (April 1995): 13. 10. Mersheimers theory is set forth in his book, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003). 11. Harvey Blume, Interview with Niall Ferguson, Boston Globe, September 24, 2006. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/ 2006/09/24/qa_with_niall_ferguson/. 12. For a discussion of this point of view, see Paul Treanor, Neoliberalism: origins, theory, denition, http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul .Treanor/neoliberalism.html. 13. World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, Paragraph 27, Chairmans Foreword, http://ringofpeace.org/environment/brundt land.html). 14. For a discussion of these aspects, see Johan Holmberg, ed., Making Development Sustainable: Redening Institutions Policy and Economics (International Institute for Environment and Development:
Chapter 3
1. Max Weber, Politics as a Vocation, lecture given in 1918 at Munich University, Munich, Germany, Paragraph 4, http://www.mdx.ac.uk/ WWW/STUDY/xweb.htm. 2. See Markus Jachtenfuchs, The Monopoly of Legitimate Force: Denationalization or Business as Usual, European Review (2005), Vol. 13: 3752 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). 3. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1976), 129160. 4. James N. Rosenau, Turbulence in World Politics: A Theory of Change and Continuity (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990), 114140. 5. The United Nations recognizes 191, but the independent state of the Vatican chose not to join. Taiwan would like to be recognized as independent but so far has not obtained international recognition. 6. Robert Jervis, Hypotheses on Misperception, World Politics 20, no. 3 (April 1968), reprinted in Richard A. Falk and Samuel S. Kim, eds. The War System: An Interdisciplinary Approach (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1980), 481482.
Chapter 4
1. Joseph S. Nye, Hard Power, Soft Power, Boston Globe, August 6, 1999. 2. Associated Press, reported in the (Rochester) Democrat and Chronicle, July 32, 2002. 3. Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, 6th ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979). 4. Ibid. 5. Dale Copeland, The Origin of Major War (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000). 6. See data on military spending from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), http://www.sipri.org. 7. Budget of the United States Government Fiscal Year 2008. Department of Defense Ofce of Management and Budget. Available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2008/defense.html. Accessed January 18, 2008.
A1
A2
NOTES
8. Lester R. Brown, Earth Policy Institute, April 14, 2004, http://www .earth-policy.org/Updates/Update38.htm. 9. International Wildlife (September/October 1999): 24. 10. Morgenthau, 146153. 11. Peter F. Drucker, In Defense of Japanese Bureaucracy, Foreign Affairs 77, no. 5 (SeptemberOctober 1998): 78. 12. Observations by one of this books coauthors, W. Raymond Duncan, based on a research trip to Vietnam in the summer of 1998. 13. Morgenthau, 159. 14. Vladimir Petrovski, Diplomacy as an Instrument of Good Governance, 1998, http://www.diplomacy.edu/Books/mdiplomacy_book/petrov ski/regular/default.html. 15. The Iraq Survey Report, authored by Charles Duelfer, adviser to the Director of Central Intelligence on Iraq weapons, was released in October 2004. It concluded that the Iraqs WMD program was basically destroyed in 1991 and that Saddam Hussein ended Iraqs nuclear program after the 1991 Gulf War. See U.S. Almost All Wrong on Weapons, Washington Post, October 7, 2004. 16. See Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership (New York: Basic Books, 2004). 17. John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001). 18. Niall Ferguson, The End of Power, Foreign Policy (July/August 2004): 3239. 19. Ibid. 20. James F. Hoge Jr., A Global Power Shift in the Making: Is the United States Ready? Foreign Affairs (July/August 2004): 27. 21. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Vintage, 1987). 22. In an informal poll of 100 academic economists, a large majority rated the U.S. economy as a serious problem, and one in five described it as in crisis. The Economist, October 9, 2004, p. 31. 23. See John Lewis Gaddis in Strobe Talbott and Nayan Chanda, eds., The Age of Terror: America and the World After September 11 (New York: Basic Books, 2001). 24. John Rourke, International Politics on the World Stage, 6th ed. (New York: Dushkin/McGraw Hill, 1997), 7477.
13. Zbigniew Brezinski, formerly President Jimmy Carters National Security Adviser and professor of American Foreign Policy at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, describes the foreign policy of President George W. Bush as catastrophic. See Brzezinski, Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower (New York: Basic Book, 2007), chap. 5.
Chapter 6
1. Adapted from A. LeRoy Bennett, International Organizations: Principles and Issues, 5th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1991), 2. 2. Suspect Subsidies, The Economist, November 22, 2003. 3. See, for example, Jorge G. Castaneda, NAFTA at 10: A Plus or a Minus? Current History (February 2004): 5155. 4. See Congos Adada to Head Darfur Peacekeeping Mission, Reuters, May 8, 2007; and the Coalition For Darfur, http://coalitionfordarfur .blogspot.com/2007/05/darfur-congolese-to-head-un-au.html. 5. MERCOSUR members include Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela. 6. For a more thorough description of IGOs, NGOs, and supranationalism juxtaposed with confederalism, federalism, and consociationalism, see John McCormick, The European Union: Politics and Policies (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1996), 1013. 7. Roy H. Ginsburg, Demystifying the European Union (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littleed, 2007), p. 164. 8. See, for example, Environmental Policy in the European Union, in Helen Wallace and William Wallace, Policy-Making in the European Union (London: Oxford University Press, 1996), 236255; Michael G. Huelshoff and Thomas Pfeiffer, Environmental Policy in the EC: Neo-functionalist Sovereignty Transfer or Neo-realist Gate-keeping? International Journal 47 (Winter 19911992): 136158; Rdiger Wurzel, Environmental Policy, in Juliet Lodge, ed., The European Community and the Challenge of the Future (New York: St. Martins, 1993), 178197. 9. Robert O. Keohane, International Institutions: Can Interdependence Work? Foreign Policy (Spring 1998): 8396. 10. Another IO that uses unanimity voting is the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). 11. Adapted from Lawrence Ziring, Robert E. Riggs, and Jack C. Piano, The United Nations: International Organization and World Politics, 3rd ed. (Orlando, Fla.: Harcourt Brace, 2000), 61; and Regular Budget Payments of Largest Payers: 2004, Global Policy Forum, http:// www.globalpolicy.org/finance/tables/reg-budget/large04.htm, October 2004. 12. The current top ten nancial contributors are: United States (27 percent), Japan (19 percent), Germany (9 percent), United Kingdom (7 percent), France (7 percent), Italy (5 percent), Canada (3 percent), Spain (3 percent), China (2 percent), and the Netherlands (2 percent). See the following links at the UNs peacekeeping website: http:// www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/contributors/ and http://www.un .org/News/Press/docs/2006/pko152.doc.htm. 13. UN website, http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2006/pko152.doc .htm. 14. Nile Gardiner, The Decline and Fall of the United Nations: Why the U.N. Has Failed and How It Can Be Reformed, Heritage Foundation Reports, February 7, 2007. 15. The UNs peacekeeping website, http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/ dpko/contributors/. See also Carola Hoyos, US Takes Chance to Target Peacekeeping, Financial Times, July 2, 2002. And while just under 2,000 UN peacekeepers from 106 countries have died in the line of duty, only fifty-seven of these were American. See United Nations, http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/fatalities/totals.htm. See also the United Nations, as quoted by the Public Broadcasting Systems, http://www.pbs.org/tal/un/budget.html, and the U.S. State Department website, http://www.state.gov/p/io/rls/fs/2001/4842 .htm. 16. United Nations Bureau of International Organizational Affairs, U.S. Department of State, April 1997, http://www.state.gov/www/issues/ iofaqs2.html#ONE, and The Charter of the United Nations. Senior military ofcers, staff ofcers, and military observers serving on UN
Chapter 5
1. This model and discussion is adapted from Michael A. Freney, Andrew E. Gibson, and W. Raymond Duncan, The International System, The United States Naval War College, National Security Decision-Making Department, Newport, Rhode Island. 2. Ibid. 3. Michael Scheuer, Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror (Washington, D.C.: Brasseys, 2004), xviii. 4. For example, see the websites of Al-Islam (www.al-islam.com), AlAnsar and Alneda (www.wincoast.com). See also the site of the Saudi oppositionist Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia (www.islah .info). These sites are available to any Muslim, and they explain and amplify bin Ladens words and intentions. Al Jazeera can be found at www.aljazeera.com. 5. Christian Science Monitor, February 20, 2004. 6. William R. Farrell and Mel Chaloupka, Four Perspectives on Decision Making and Execution in National Security Organizations, The United States Naval War College, National Security Decision-Making Department, Newport, Rhode Island. 7. Bob Woodward, State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006). 8. James David Barber, The Presidential Character: Predicting Performance in the White House, 4th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1992). 9. Chris Kraul, The Jerusalem Post, December 5, 2006, p. 9. 10. Ibid. 11. MSNBC, September 2, 2006; Fareed Zakaria, The U.S. Lets Afghanistan Founder, (Rochester) Democrat and Chronicle, August 4, 2004. 12. Security Scholars for a Sensible Foreign Policy, http://www.sensible foreignpolicy.net/index.html. In essence, the scholars asserted the current foreign policy harmed the struggle against Islamist terrorists and pointed to a long list of blunders by the Bush team in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.
NOTES
A3
17. 18. 19.
20. 21.
22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.
28. 29. 30.
31. 32. 33. 34.
35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.
missions are directly employed by the UN, usually on temporary transfer from their national armed forces. Peacekeeping troops participate in UN peacekeeping under terms that are carefully negotiated by their governments and remain under the authority of those governments. The troops and their commanders are deployed as national contingents that report on operational matters to the missions Force Commander and, through him or her, to the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General. The authority to send or withdraw peacekeepers remains with the government that volunteered them, as does responsibility for pay, disciplinary, and personnel matters. Paul Lewis, U.S. Panel Splits on Ways to Improve the U.N., New York Times, September 13, 1993, p. A13. World Bank, http://www.worldbank.org/, August 1998. The UN regular budget provides funding for the General Assembly, the Secretariat, the Security Council, ECOSOC, and the International Court of Justice. Additionally, the regular budget provides partial funding for certain UN agencies, such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the UN Environment Program. For more information about the UNs budget, see the website of the UN Association of the USA, http://www.unausa.org/site/pp.asp?c =fvKRI8MPJpF&b=1813833. Ibid. Global Policy, http://www.globalpolicy.org/finance/tables/sum budgetanddebt.htm; and The United Nations Association of the United States of America, http://www.unausa.org/site/pp.asp?c =fvKRI8MPJpF&b=1813833. United Nations Department of Public Information, DPI/1753/Rev. 15, March 1999. Global Policy Forum, http://www.globalpolicy.org/nance/. Edward Mortimer, Tight Hand on the Purse, Financial Times, May 8, 1996. Ted Carpenter, Delusions of Grandeur: The United Nations and Global Intervention (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 1997), 128 129. Washington Times, February 25, 1997, p. A15. Council on Foreign Relations: http://www.cfr.org/publication/7631/ iraq.html. See also The NewsHour, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/ bb/middle_east/july-dec04/oil-for-food_12-3.html; and Julia Preston, Former Chief of U.N. Effort Faces Charges of Corruption, The New York Times, January 17, 2007. Samantha Power, The Worlds Most Dangerous Ideas: Business as Usual at the U.N., Foreign Policy (September/October 2004): 39. The poll was conducted between October 15 and November 10, 1998. The Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, quoted in http:// www.clw.org/pub/clw/un/399chicagopoll.html. Worldviews 2002 Survey of European and American Attitudes and Public Opinion on Foreign Policy, Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, http://www.worldviews.org/detailreports/usreport/html/ ch4s4.html. Rasmussen Reports, http://www.rasmussenreports.com/2006/ September%20Dailies/UnitedNations.htm. Gallup Polling, http://www.pollingreport.com/defense.htm. Daniel W. Drezner, Mind the Gap, The National Interest, Winter 2007. The number killed in battle has fallen to its lowest point in the post World War II period, dipping below 20,000 per year by one measure. Associated Press, Despite Headlines, Global War Casualties Decline, September 1, 2004. UN website, http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2006/pko152.doc .htm. See also How peacekeeping works, BBC News (online), April 17, 2007. UN website, http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/faq/q9.htm. Power, 39. R. ODonnell, Economic Union, in B. Laffan, R. ODonnell, and M. Smith, Unsettled Europe: European Integration in a Transformed World (London: Routledge, 1997), 17. Previously, the commissioners were appointed by common agreement among the member states and approved as a whole by the European Parliament. The Commission shares the power of policy initiation with the
41. 42.
43.
44.
45. 46.
47.
48. 49.
50.
Council in Pillar II (Foreign and Security Policy) and in Pillar III (Justice and Home Affairs). Neill Nugent, The Government and Politics of the European Union, 5th ed. (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2003), 88. Some refer to the constitution as a treaty. A constitution is a contract between a state and its citizens, but a constitutional treaty is an agreement between sovereign states. See, for example, George Parker, One Summit Conquered, But It Is Still a Hard Climb to the Peak of Ratication, Financial Times, June 21, 2004. For a discussion of EU decision making in the European Council and the other EU bodies, see Youri Devuyst, EU Decision-making After the Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe, Policy Paper No. 9, University Center for International Studies, EU Center/CWES, at the University of Pittsburgh website, http://www.ucis.pitt.edu/cwes, July 2004. There are three main procedures for enacting new EU laws: codecision, consultation, and the assent rule. The main difference between them is the way the EP interacts with the Council. Under the consultation procedure, the EP merely gives its opinion; under the co-decision procedure, the EP genuinely shares power with the Council. The European Commission, when proposing a new law, must choose which procedure to follow. In principle, the choice will depend on the legal basis of the proposal. See the EUs website, Europa, for more details: http://europa.eu.int/institutions/decision -making/index_en.htm. Reuters, Veteran Politicians Hand Over EU Reform Blueprint, October 18, 1999. Before the EU expanded in 2004, 10 votes went to big countries like Britain and Germany, while Spain got 8 votes; others get 5, 4, or 3; only 2 went to tiny Luxembourg. There were a total of 87 votes, and for a legislative measure to pass, 62 votes, or 71 percent of the total, is needed. (In a variation of QMV, in certain circumstances, 54 votes had to be achieved by 8 states.) As of the November 1, 2004, change, the total number of votes for the full 25 member-states is 321. Here is the complete list of voting weights in the Council: Germany, France, Italy, United Kingdom 29; Spain, Poland 27; Netherlands 13; Belgium, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Portugal 12; Austria, Sweden 10; Denmark, Ireland, Lithuania, Slovakia, Finland 7; Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Luxembourg, Slovenia 4; and Malta 3. When East Meets West, The Economist, November 22, 2003. Quoted in Simon Serfaty, Imagining Europe After the Cold War (New York: St. Martins, 1992), 162163. For a nice summary of the debate over the democratic nature of the EU, see Philippe Schmitter, Amitai Etzioni, Vivien Schmitt, and Fritz W. Scharpf, EUSA Review Forum, European Union Studies Association 17, no. 1 (Winter 2004). George Parker, One Summit Conquered, But It Is Still a Hard Climb to the Peak of Ratication, Financial Times, June 21, 2004.
Chapter 7
1. The Union of International Associations, quoted in Maryann K. Cusimano, Mark Hensman, and Leslie Rodrigues, Private-Sector Transsovereign Actors: MNCs and NGOs, in Maryann K. Cusimano, ed., Beyond Sovereignty: Issues for a Global Agenda (Boston: Bedford/ St. Martins, 2000), 256. 2. As quoted in Margaret P. Karns and Karen A. Mingst, International Organization: The Politics and Processes of Global Governance (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2005). 3. A nice summary of NGOs and the globalization process is by L. David Brown, Sanjeev Khagram, Mark H. Moore, and Peter Frumkin, Globalization, NGOs, and Multisectoral Relations, in Joseph S. Nye Jr. and John D. Donahue, eds., Governance in a Globalizing World (Washington, D.C., Brookings Institution, 2000), 271296. 4. Tadashi Yamamoto, Emerging Civil Society in the Asia Pacic Community: Nongovernmental Underpinnings of the Emerging Asia Pacic Regional Community: A Twenty-fth Anniversary Project of JCIE (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1996). 5. Ibid. 6. This section borrows from the nice summary laid out in Cusimano, Hensman, and Rodrigues, Private-Sector Transsovereign Actors, 257261.
A4
NOTES
7. Virginia A. Hulme, 250 Chinese NGOs: Civil Society in the Making, China Business Review 29, no. 1 (January/February 2002). 8. Kelly-Kate Pease, International Organizations: Perspectives on Governance in the Twenty-rst Century, 2nd ed. (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2003), 3435. 9. Shirley V. Scott, International Law in World Politics (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2004), pp. 7678. See also Anne-Marie Slaughter, The Future of International Law: Ending the U.S.-Europe Divide, www.crimesofwar.org, September 2002. 10. Quentin Peel, How Militants Hijacked NGO Party, Financial Times, July 17, 2001. 11. The Greenpeace 2004 Annual Report lists total income at 163,439,000 euro. 12. Greenpeace, http://www.greenpeace.org/international/about/our -core-values (May 5, 2007). 13. Greenpeace Canada, http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/about -greenpeace. 14. Greenpeace, http://www.greenpeace.org/international/about/ victories and the McDonalds website http://www.mcdonalds.com/ corp/values/purchasing/supply_initiative/rain_forest_policy.html, (May 5, 2007). 15. Greenpeace, http://www.greenpeace.org/russia/en/press/releases/ we-love-japan-but-whaling-bre. 16. Greenpeace, http://www.greenpeace.org/russia/en/press/releases. 17. Amnesty International, http://www.web.amnesty.org/, May 28, 1999. 18. Amnesty International, http://www.amnesty.org/web/aboutai.nsf. 19. Amnesty International, http://www.amnestyusa.org/Our_Issues/ Conict_Diamonds/page.do?id=1011014&n1=3&n2=74. 20. Amnesty International USA, http://www.amnestyusa.org/. 21. Facts and Figures About Amnesty International, Amnesty International, http://www.web.amnesty.org/web/aboutai.NSF/. 22. Amnesty International, USA, http://www.amnestyusa.org/About _Us/Executive_Director_of_Amnesty_International_USA/page .do?id=1101198&n1=2. 23. Joan E. Spero and Jeffrey A. Hart, The Politics of International Economic Relations, 5th ed. (New York: St. Martins, 1997), 96148. 24. A short description of the distinction between transnational and multinational corporations is in Peter Drucker, The Global Economy and the Nation-State, Foreign Affairs 76, no. 5 (September/ October 1997): 159171. 25. Thomas Oatley, International Political Economy: Interests and Institutions in the Global Economy (New York: Pearson-Longman, 2004), 5. 26. For more information on CGM, see John Reed, U.S. Law Gives Lesotho Textiles Cutting Edge, Financial Times, September 14, 2004; The African Growth Opportunity Act website http://www.agoa.info/ ?view=.&story=news&subtext=124; and Pursuit Magazine online http://www.pursuit.co.za/archive/augsep_denim.htm 27. See Quentin Peel, How Militants Hijacked NGO Party, and Alan Beattie, Campaigners Offer Integrity for Inuence, Financial Times, July 17, 2001. 28. Kerstin Martens, Examining the (Non-)Status of NGOs in International Law, Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, 10, no. 2, Summer 2003, pp. 124. 29. See, for example, Gareth Evans and Mohamed Sahnoun, The Responsibility to Protect, Foreign Affairs (November/December 2002); Lee Feinstein and Anne-Marie Slaughter, A Duty to Prevent, Foreign Affairs (January/February 2004); and Lara Marlowe, Advocate of Right of Interference Chosen to Restore Kosovos Civic Life, Irish Times, July 5, 1999, p. 15. 30. Pease, 3536. 31. Laurie Garrett, The Challenge of Global Health, Foreign Affairs 86, no. 1 (January/February 2007). 32. Keith Suter, Nuclear Testing: Paradise Lost, Bulletin of American Scientists 51, no. 5 (September/October 1995). 33. See Conciliation Proceedings: Ruling by UN Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar, New York, 5 July 1986; text in International Legal Materials 26 (1987): 1346. 12A: Ruling Pertaining to the Differences Between France and New Zealand Arising from the Rainbow Warrior Affair (http://www.jura.unimuenchen.de/tel/cases/Rainbow _Warrior.html); and ibid.
34. Suter, Nuclear Testing. 35. Tom Abate, Greenpeace Founder Defends Biotech, San Francisco Chronicle, June 10, 2002. 36. Guy de Jonquires, The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing But ..., Financial Times, July 20, 2001. 37. Ibid. 38. Cesar Chelala, Torture in Tibet, Boston Globe, June 22, 1999, p. A15, Op-Ed. 39. Ibid. 40. Number of Executions Worldwide Falls by More than 25 Percent, Press Release, Amnesty International USA, April 27, 2007. 41. Ibid. 42. Barbara Crossette, Amnesty Finds Widespread Pattern of U.S. Rights Violations, New York Times, October 5, 1998. 43. Barbara Vobejda, Abuse of Female Prisoners in U.S. Is Routine, Rights Report Says, Washington Post, March 4, 1999. 44. Amnesty International, Israel: Occupied Territories, http://www .amnestyusa.org/By_Country/Israel/. 45. Amnesty Now (Fall 2004): 19. 46. International Business Leaders Forum, The Business of Peace, quoted in Marina Ottaway, Reluctant Missionaries, Foreign Policy, no. 125 (July/August 2001): 4454. 47. Marina Ottaway, Reluctant Missionaries, Foreign Policy, no. 125 (July/August 2001): 4454. 48. Roasters: Recognize the Rights of Ethiopian Coffee Farmer, Oxfam America, http://www.oxfamamerica.org/whatwedo/campaigns/ coffee/starbucks/. 49. This discussion of corporate certication draws primarily from Gereffi, Garcia-Johnson, and Sasser, The NGO-Industrial Complex. See also Bennett Freeman, Drilling for Common Ground, Foreign Policy, no. 125 (July/August 2001); and Ottaway, Reluctant Missionaries. 50. See James Lamont, Summit Accused of Ignoring Aids, Financial Times, August 30, 2002; UN Looks to Businesses for Help in Fight Against AIDS, Financial Times. August 30, 2002; and Business Plea for Greater Investment in Poor Nations, Financial Times, August 29, 2002. 51. NGOs Refine Ways to Go After Big Oil, Petroleum Intelligence Weekly, April 24, 2002. 52. Putting an End to Torture ... Nation by Nation, Amnesty International brochure, 2002. 53. Craig Warkentin, Reshaping World Politics: NGOs, the Internet, and Global Civil Society (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littleeld, 2001). 54. L. David Brown, Sanjeev Khagram, Mark H. Moore, and Peter Frumkin, Globalization, NGOs, and Multisectoral Relations, in Joseph S. Nye Jr. and John D. Donahue, eds., Governance in a Globalizing World (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2000), 271296. 55. Bond. 56. Cindy Sui, Chinese NGO That Probed Village AIDS Deaths Evicted, Agence France Presse, July 3, 2002. 57. Jon B. Wolfsthal, Russian NGOs Go Nuclear, Foreign Policy, no. 129 (March/April 2002): 9092.
Chapter 8
1. See H. J. de Blij and Peter O. Muller, Geography: Realms, Regions and Concepts, 12th ed. (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2006). 2. See John A. Agnew, Global Political Geography Beyond Geopolitics, International Studies Review 2, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 9199. 3. The Power of Place: Geography for the 21st Century, http://www .learner.org/resources/series180.html. 4. See W. Gordon East, The Geography Behind History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1965). 5. Martin Ira Glassner, Political Geography, 2nd ed. (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1996), 11. 6. Youssef M. Ibrahim, The World Has Lost Iraqs Oil, USA Today, October 21, 2004. 7. Jared Diamond, The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal (New York: Harper Perennial, 1992). 8. Ibid., 236. 9. Ibid., 2. 10. See, for example, John T. Rourke, International Politics on the World Stage, 7th ed. (New York: Dushkin/McGraw Hill, 1999), 124.
NOTES
A5
11. John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001). 12. G. John Ikenberry, American Power and the Empire of Capitalist Democracy, Review of International Studies 27 (2001): 191212. 13. Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, American Primacy in Perspective, Foreign Affairs 81, no. 4 (July/August 2002): 24. 14. William C. Wohlforth, The Stability of a Unipolar World, International Security 24, no. 1 (Summer 1999): 541. 15. Mark Thompson, Broken Down, Time Magazine, April 16, 2007, pp. 2841. 16. For more on this fascinating concept, see George J. Demko and William B. Wood, Reordering the World, 3132, 5355. 17. Thomas L. Friedman, The Geo-Green Alternative, New York Times, January 30, 2005. 18. William B. Wood and George J. Demko, Introduction: Political Geography for the Next Millennium, in Demko and Wood, eds., Geo political Perspectives on the 21st Century, 2nd ed. (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1999), 8. 19. The Sunni Triangle is a roughly triangular area of Iraq to the northwest of Baghdad. Inhabited mainly by Sunni Muslims of the same ethnicity as former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and most of his Baath Party, it became the center of armed Sunni opposition to coalition rule after the U.S.led invasion. The Triangles three corners lie in or around Baghdad, which is on the triangles east side, with Ramadi on the west side, and Tikrit on the north. 20. Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998), chap. 10. 21. Ibid., 184. 22. Inter-American Development Bank, Facing Up to Inequality in Latin America: Economic and Social Progress in Latin America, 19981999 Report, Distributed by the Johns Hopkins University Press for the Inter-American Development Bank, Washington, D.C., 1999. 23. Ibid., 98. 24. Michael T. Klare, Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conict (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2001). 25. George B. Demko, Why in the World, 63. 26. See Martin Ira Glassner, Political Geography, 2nd ed. (New York: John Wiley, 1996), chap. 36, for an excellent review of this subject. 27. These observations are drawn from Guntram H. Herb and David H. Kaplan, eds., Nested Identities. Nationalism, Territory, and Scale (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littleeld, 2000), 1619. 28. See the Global Displacement Project website, http://www.idpproject .org/global_overview.htm. 29. Stephan Faris, The Real Roots of Darfur, Atlantic Monthly (April 2007), 6769. 30. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations, Foreign Affairs 72, no. 3 (Summer 1993): 22ff. 31. See Edward F. Bergman, Human Geography: Cultures, Connections, and Landscapes (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1995), chap. 8. 32. Ibid., 227. 33. Denis Wood, The Power of Maps (New York: Guilford Press, 1992).
10. Ibid. 11. Carleton J. H. Hayes, Modern Europe to 1870 (New York: Macmillan, 1953), 417418. 12. See the excellent account of the emergence of Iraq out of the collapsing Ottoman Empire by Christopher Catherwood, Churchills Folly: How Winston Churchill Created Modern Iraq (New York: Carroll and Graf, 2004). 13. R. R. Palmer, A History of the Modern World (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1954), 520521. 14. William Pfaff, The Absence of Empire, New Yorker, April 10, 1992, pp. 5969. 15. Robert Lansing, The Peace Negotiations: A Personal Narrative (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifin, 1921), 97. 16. Ibid., 98. 17. The World Bank studied forty-seven civil wars that occurred from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe between 1960 and 1999. Research indicates that the single biggest risk factor for the outbreak of war was a countrys economic dependence on commodities. The drive for prots from coffee, narcotics, diamonds, and other gemstones both prompts outbreaks of violence and determines their strength over time, says the study. Diamonds Are the Guerrillas Best Friend. New York Times, June 16, 2000. 18. Michael Lind, In Defense of Liberal Nationalism, Foreign Affairs 73, no. 3 (May/June 1994): 8799. 19. Astrid Tuminez, Russian Nationalism and Vladimir Putins Russia, PONARS Policy Memo 151 (April 2000), American International Group, Inc., and Council on Foreign Relations, 3. 20. See Minxin Pei, The Paradoxes of American Nationalism, Foreign Policy (May/June 2003): 3137. 21. Ibid., 32. 22. Ibid., 3637. 23. Ibid.; and Rudolph J. Rummel, Death by Government (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1994). 24. Parliamentary Affairs 51, no. 2 (April 1998): 259. 25. Publius 27, no. 4 (Fall 1997): 138. 26. Mark Juergensmeyer, Religious Nationalism: A Global Threat? Current History (November 1996): 372376. 27. Robert McMahon, Sudan: Darfur Crisis Highlights Struggle Over Genocide, Intervention, Radio Free Europe, August 30, 2004. 28. Bill Powell, Chinas Split Personality, The China Blog, Time and CNN, April 9, 2007.
Chapter 10
1. Forum: War, Money and Survival (Geneva: International Committee of the Red Cross, March 2000). 2. Greg Cashman and Leonard C. Robinson, An Introduction to the Causes of War (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littleeld Publishers, Inc., 2007), 17. For overviews of democratic peace theory, see also Spencer Weart, Never at War: Why Democracies Will Not Fight One Another (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998); and Bruce Russett and Harvey Starr, From Democratic Peace to Kantian Peace: Democracy and Conict in the International System, in Manus Midlarksy, ed., Handbook of War Studies II (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), 93128. 3. Jason Burke, Al Qaeda, Foreign Policy (May/June 2004): 18. 4. John G. Stoessinger, Why Nations Go to War, 7th ed. (New York: St. Martins, 1998). 5. Rick Atkinson, Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War (Boston: Houghton Mifin, 1993). 6. Stoessinger, 187. 7. Andrew Flibbert, After Saddam: Regional Insecurity, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and Proliferation Pressures in Postwar Iraq, Political Science Quarterly 118, no. 4 (Winter 20032004): 558. 8. Graham Allison, Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe (New York: Times Books, 2004). See also Kurt J. Campbell, Robert Einhorn, and Mitchell Reiss, eds., The Nuclear Tipping Point: Why States Reconsider Their Nuclear Choices (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2004). 9. Clive Cookson, Security Warning on Radioactive Materials, Financial Times, June 26, 2002. 10. Vicki Haddock, A Radioactive Dirty Bomb Could Be Headed for Your Neighborhood, San Francisco Chronicle, April 28, 2002.
Chapter 9
1. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London and New York: Viro, 1991); rst published in 1983. 2. Walker Connor, A Nation Is a Nation, Is a State, Is an Ethnic Group, Is a ..., in John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith, eds., Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 3746. 3. Anatol Lieven, America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). 4. Anthony D. Smith, National Identity (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1991), 9. 5. Ibid., 10. Smith calls this element the national peoples sense of patria. 6. Ibid., 14. 7. Todd S. Purdum, Threats and Responses: U.S. Hurries; World Waits, New York Times, September 18, 2002. 8. Erik Hobsbawm, Whose Fault-Line Is It Anyway? New Statesman and Society, April 24, 1992, pp. 2426. 9. Minxin Pei, The Paradoxes of American Nationalism, Foreign Policy (May/June 2003): 3137.
A6
NOTES
11. Ronald M. Atlas, Combating the Threat of Biowarfare and Bioterrorism, Bioscience (June 1999): 465477, Table 2. 12. Vladimir Isachenkov, U.S., Russia Working to Protect Bioweapons, Associated Press, May 28, 2002. 13. Anthrax Effect Depends on Exposure, Los Angeles Times, October 13, 2001. 14. Alexander Nicoll, Bioweapons Set to Dominate, Financial Times, July 10, 2002. 15. Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies at Johns Hopkins University, Texas Department of Health, and the U.S. General Accounting Ofce. See also Bioterror Threats, Knight-Ridder Newspapers, October 10, 2001. 16. Alexander Nicoll, US Deploys Old Airborne Toysand Tries Some New Ones, Financial Times, November 7, 2001. 17. Satellites and Horsemen, The Economist, March 9, 2002. The Daisy Cutter is succeeded by the MOAB bomb. 18. See, for example, Michael T. Klare, The New Arms Race: Light Weapons and International Security, Current History (April 1997): 173 178. 19. Carl T. Hall, Pentagon Examines Uses for Biotech, San Francisco Chronicle, June 23, 2001. 20. Brochure, Campaign for a Landmine-Free World, http://www.vvaf .org, 1998. 21. Juan Forero, For Colombians, A Growing Peril From Land Mines, Washington Post, November 2, 2006. 22. Paul Donovan, Making a Killing, The Guardian (London), February 7, 2001. See also http://www.vvaf.org/htdocs/landmine/freeworld .html. 23. 639 Million Guns Surveyed, Press Democrat News Services, June 30, 2002. 24. On the impact of light weapons sales, see Klare, The New Arms Race. 25. Seyom Brown, The Causes and Prevention of War, 2nd ed. (New York: St. Martins, 1994), 203205. 26. Amy Yee, India, Pakistan agree on nuclear pact, Financial Times, February 22, 2007. 27. Sha Zukang, Thoughts on Non-Proliferation, Presidents and Prime Ministers 8, no. 2 (March 1999): 10. 28. George Friedman, Naming the War, Strategic Forecasting, Inc., http://www.stratfor.com/coms2/page_home, August 3, 2004. This denition is essentially in line with the denition of terrorism contained in Title 22 of the United States Code, Section 2656f(d). That statute contains the following denitions: The term terrorism means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to inuence an audience. See Appendix B: Background Information on Terrorist Groups, U.S. Department of State, Ofce of the Secretary of State, Ofce of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Patterns of Global Terrorism, Washington, D.C., U.S. Department of State, http://web.nps.navy.mil/~library/tgp/tgpmain .htm. 29. Brian Michael Jenkins, Forward, in Ian O. Lesser et al., Countering the New Terrorism (Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand Corporation, 1999), vi. 30. Burke, Al Qaeda, 19. 31. Dominique Mosi, Tragedy Exposed a Groundswell of Hatred, Financial Times, September 24, 2001. 32. Robert L. Hutchings, X + 9/11, Foreign Policy (July/August 2004): 71. 33. Europol Dispute Knocks Pledge to Co-ordinate Terrorism Fight, Financial Times, June 8, 2004. 34. U.S. Ill-Prepared for Weapons Proliferation, Commission Warns, Baltimore Sun, July 9, 1999. 35. John Heilprin, Nuke Inventory Flaws Revealed, Associated Press, November 7, 2001. The problem of keeping track of nuclear material is prevalent even in the more responsible countries. According to Austrian nuclear physicist Fritz Steinhausler, Within the United States, youre losing track of radioactive material literally every other day. Every other day. And controls here are among the highest in the world. He notes that the U. S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission lists an average of 200 radiation sources that are stolen, lost, or aban-
36. 37. 38.
39. 40. 41. 42. 43.
44. 45. 46.
doned within the country every year. See Haddock, A radioactive dirty bomb. The Trojan Box, The Economist, February 9, 2002. See Flynn, America the Vulnerable, 64; and James P. Pinkerton, Ship Ahoy, What Evil Lies in the Cargo Holds, Newsday, May 28, 2002. Tim Woolston, spokesman for the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company, reported that the pipeline had been shot more than fty times in the past, but never seriously enough to create an oil spill. See Maureen Clark, Alaska Pipeline Continues to Spew Oil, Associated Press, October 6, 2001; Kim Murphy, Alaska Pipeline Poses WideRanging Security Risk, New York Times, October 14, 2001; and Maureen Clark, Clamp Slows Leak in Alaska Pipeline, Associated Press, October 7, 2001. Eric Pianin, Vulnerability of Chemical Plants Causes Worry, Washington Post, August 6, 2002. Kenneth N. Waltz, in Scott D. Sagan and Kenneth N. Waltz, More May Be Better, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995), 2029. Ibid. A. LeRoy Bennett and James K. Oliver, International Organizations: Principles and Issues, 7th ed. (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2002), 110. The London Agreement embodying the Charter of the International Military Tribunal (IMT). See Antonio Cassese, International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 248, and Shirley V. Scott, International Law in World Politics: An Introduction (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2004), 258. Scott, ibid. Kelly-Kate Pease, International Organizations: Perspectives on Governance in the Twenty-First Century, 2nd ed. (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2003), 237. Cassese, 11.
Chapter 11
1. Since we have no rm data of the period, it is very difcult to know how many people perished during that time. The Soviet government made a conscious effort to deny the genocide took place and only a few reporters were able to reach the affected regions to determine the facts. For estimates on the deaths caused by the famine, see Christian Science Monitor reporter William Henry Chamberlin, The Political Famine of 19321933 The Ukraine: A Submerged Nation (New York: the Macmillan Company, 1944) as published at http:// ukraine-today.com/reference/facts/17.shtml. There is a great deal of other information relevant to the persecution of the Ukrainians during that period. Thousands who resisted collectivization were sent off to concentration camps where they perished. Interested students will also want to look at the Library of Congress webpage: http://www.historywiz.com/ukrainefamine.htm that has links to multimedia exhibits as well as Library of Congress archives on the subject, and also http://www.infoukes.com, the website of the Ukrainian community in Canada. This website contains rsthand accounts as well as general accounts of the causes, progress, and effect of the famine. Finally, to get an idea of the range of estimates as to how many died, see Matthew White, Source List and Detailed Death Tolls for the Twentieth Century Hemoclysm http://users.erols. com/mwhite28/warstatl.htm and 30 Worst Atrocities of the 20th Century at http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/atrox.htm. Both sets of data have been updated to 2004. 2. Vincent Chtel and Chuck Ferre, The Victims of the Holocaust: An Estimation,http://www.jewishgen.org/ForgottenCamps/General/ VictimsEngl.html. 3. Talking about Genocides, Cambodia 1975, http://www.ppu.org.uk/ genocide/g_cambodia1.html. 4. PBS, Chronology of Slaughter, The Triumph of Evil: How the West Ignored Warnings of the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda and Turned Its Back on the Victims, 1999. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/front line/shows/evil/etc/slaughter.html. 5. We, the peoples of the United Nations, determined ... to reafrm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women ... have
NOTES
A7
6. 7.
8.
9. 10.
11.
12.
13.
14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.
22. 23. 24.
25.
resolved to combine our efforts to accomplish these aims. United Nations, Preamble, Charter of the United Nations, http://www.un .org/aboutun/charter/index.html. Human Rights Watch, Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, http://www .hrw.org/campaign,crp/index.htm. For the latest gures on refugees and internally displaced persons, see UNHCR, The State of the Worlds Refugees (Oxford and London: Oxford University Press, 2006). Also see UNHCR,Protecting Refugees, A Childs World, http://www.unher.ch/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/ home?page=PRO-TECT&id=3b8373992. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Refugees and Others of Concert to UNHCR, 2000 Statistical Overview (Geneva: UNHCR, August 2002) Table iii.1 Refugee population by country/territory of asylum, sex and age, end-2000, 4/4. National Public Radio devoted a section of its news coverage on June 8, 2000, to reports of continued bride and wife burning in India. The report especially stressed the role of the mother-in-law in wanting to be rid of her daughter-in-law. For a copy of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, see www .yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/rightsof.htm. Eleanor Roosevelt, Speech Presenting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to the Third UN General Assembly, December 9, 1948, http://www.americanrhet-oric.com/speeches/eleanorroosevelt declarationhuman-rights.htm. John King Fairbank, China: A New History (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1992), 1819. Evelyn Fox Keller, Reections on Gender and Science (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985). In 1791, the ardent French proponent of the rights of women, Olympe de Gouges, responded to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen with a Declaration of the Rights of Women and the Female Citizen. Because of her unyielding opposition to the bloodshed and terror of the revolution, she was guillotined in 1793. In 1792, English author and feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft, published Vindication of the Rights of Women. Norway was the rst European country to give women the right to vote in 1913. Women got the right to vote in the United Kingdom in 1918, and in the United States in 1920. Women did not get the right to vote in France or Italy until after World War II, and gained this right in Switzerland only in 1971. Joseph Kahn, The Most Populous Nation Faces a Population Crisis, New York Times, May 30, 2004. Robert Marquand, China Faces Future as Land of Boys, Christian Science Monitor, September 3, 2004, p. 1. Executive Summary, Women Watch Working Groups, http://un.org/ womenwatch. The classication of feminist theory is grounded in the analysis found in V. Spike Peterson and Anne Sisson Runyan, Global Gender Issues, 2nd ed. (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1999), 165177. The following discussion is based on J. Ann Tickner, Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 127144. As reported in the op-ed editorial by Nicholas D. Kristof, Sentenced to Be Raped, The New York Times. September 29, http://tecfa.unige .ch/staf/staf-e/marquis/nyt2.html. The following discussion is based on Tickner, 129. Amnesty International, Stop Violence Against Women [Philippinestime to end abuse in the home], ASA 35/001/2004 (5 March 2004), http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGASA350012004 ?open&of=ENG-PHI. United Nations, World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). Christian Science Monitor, September 3, 2004, p. 1, http://www .csmonitor.com/2004/0903/p01s03-woap.html. Resolution adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations concerning the World Conference on International Womens Year, Mexico, 19 June2 July 1975, as cited on http://www.choike.org/ nuevo_eng/informes/1453.html. Resolution 35/136, World Conference of the United Nations Decade for Women (adopted on 11 December 1980 by the General Assembly
26.
27.
28. 29. 30.
31. 32. 33.
34. 35. 36. 37.
38. 39.
40. 41. 42.
at its 35th session), http://www.choike.org/nuevo_eng/informes/ 1454.html. Report of the World Conference to Review and Appraise the Achievements of the United Nations Decade for Women: Equality, Development and Peace Nairobi, 1526 July 1985, http://www.earth summit2002.org/toolk-its/women/un-doku/un-conf/narirobi.htm. Womenswatch, Information on the 12 Critical Areas of Concern of the Beijing Platform for Action, and on Other Emerging Thematic Issues, http://www.un.org/women-watch/asp/user/list.asp?Parent ID=30. United Nations, Human Development Report 2003, Human Development Indicators 2003, Table 22, 110113. United Nations, Human Development Report 2001, Gender Empowerment Measure, Table 22, 214217. Carol Adelman, Americas Helping Hand, Wall Street Journal, August 21, 2002, p. 12. Federal budget data is from Congressional Budget Ofce, Historical Budget Data, 19602001, Table 1, http:// www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=1821&sequence=0#t6. Grameen Bank webpage, www.grameen-info.org/bank/GBGlance .htm. Time to Take the Credit, The Economist, March 17, 2007. Thomas Dichter, Hype and Hope: The Worrisome State of the Microcredit Movement, online, 2005, http://www.micronancegateway.org/content/article/detail/31747. The conservative think tank, the Cato Institute, argues that the potential of microcredit to lift the worlds poor out of poverty is grossly overestimated. According to a Cato study, The average poor person in the past [and today] is not an entrepreneur, and when he or she has access to credit, it is largely for consumption or cashow smoothing. Cato prefers savings-based services. Source: Barney Jopson, Potential of microcredit grossly overestimated, Financial Times, February 16, 2007. Executive Summary, Women Watch Working Groups, http://un.org/ womenwatch, p. 5. United Nations, World Health Organization, Prevalence and Death Rates Associated with Tuberculosis, Geneva, 2002, http://www .developmentgoals.org/mdgun/23.htm. United Nations, Johannesburg Summit 2002, Medio Info. Fact Sheets, Facts about Africa, http://www.johannes-burgsummit.org/html/ media_info/factsheets.html. The prepublication draft, UNAIDS Global Resource Tracking Consortium, Financing the Expanded Response for AIDS (Geneva: UNAIDS, 2004), http://www.eldis.org/ef/search/disp/DocDisplay .cfm?Doc=DOC15220&Resource=flhiv. Information on funding found in this chapter was derived from this document. Laurie Garrett, The Challenge of Global Health, Foreign Affairs (January/Febeuary 2007): 1520. United Nations, General Assembly, Resolution 96 (I) The Crime of Genocide, December 11, 1946 (Resolutions Adopted by the General Assembly During the Second Part of Its First Session from 23 October to 15 December 1946 [Lake Success, N.Y.: United Nations, 1947]), as published at http://www.armenian:genocide.org/Afrmation.227/ current_category.6/afrmation_detail.html. United Nations International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article 8, http://www.hrweb .org/legal/genocide.html. Ko Annan, Address at the United Nations University, Japans World Role in the 21st Century, Tokyo, November 11, 1999, http://www .un.org/News/ossg/sgcuff99.htm. Ko Annan, Remarks at the World Bank, On Peace and Development One StruggleTwo Fronts, Washington, D.C., October 19, 1999, http://www.un.org/News/ossg/sgcuff99.htm.
Chapter 12
1. See, for example, David N. Balaam and Michael Veseth, Introduction to International Political Economy, 3rd ed. (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 2005). 2. A more comprehensive International Trade Organization (ITO) had been proposed in the late 1940s, but it was opposed by the U.S. Congress. The ITO was never submitted for ratication, and the less substantial GATT emerged by default. See Don Babai, General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, in The Oxford Companion to
A8
NOTES
3.
4.
5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.
12.
13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.
20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.
Politics of the World, Joel Krieger, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 342348. GATT remains, but essentially as an agreement for trade in goods. The WTO oversees trade rules in various treaties including GATT. Unlike GATT, the WTO also overseas the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), the Agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs), and the Agreement on Trade-Related Investment Measures (TRIMs). Theodore H. Cohn, Global Political Economy: Theory and Practice, 3rd ed. (New York: Pearson-Longman, 2005), 237. World Trade Organization, Annual Report1998 (Geneva: WTO, 1998), 5. See also Robert OBrien and Marc Williams, International Trade, in Theodore H. Cohn, Global Political Economy: Evolution and Dynamics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 141. OBrien and Williams, ibid. International Sugar Trade, The Canadian Sugar Institute, http:// www.sugar.ca, July 10, 2004. Bloomberg News, United Tries Tough Love to Correct Boeing Issues, USA Today, October 26, 1998. OBrien and Williams, 141. Global Game: What Is an American Car, Consumer Reports, April 2007, 19. According to a Toyota advertisement in The Economist, March 3, 2007. The U.S. Super 301 provision of the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1998 is viewed by many as an example of a managed trade tool that allows the United States to retaliate against countries that the United States deems to be trading unfairly. The budget, for example, was based on $17 per barrel, but prices eventually fell to as low as $9. This led to a budget shortfall of 46 percent. Agence France Press, Hit by Dwindling Oil Revenue, Nigeria Slashes Public Workers Pay, December 28, 1998. Joan E. Spero and Jeffrey A. Hart, The Politics of International Economic Relations, 5th ed. (New York: St. Martins, 1997), 66. U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services Highlights, U.S. Census Bureau, Foreign Trade Statistics, October 14, 2004, http:// www.census.gov/indicator/www/ustrade.html. U.S. Census Bureau, http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/ c0004.html#2006. Lost in translation, The Economist, May 19, 2007. Gerald M. Meier, The International Environment of Business (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 8485. Klaus Heidensohn, Europe and World Trade (London: Pinter, 1995), 3233. Basic trade theory helps explain these phenomena. The HeckscherOhlin theorem of factor price equalization posits that free trade will cause all factor prices (wages, in this case) to equalize across countries. In the case of the United States and Mexico, for example, the lower Mexican wages will eventually rise and the American wage level will eventually drop. Such a development, of course, is not appealing to American workers and labor unions. In addition, the Stolper-Samuelson model suggests that free trade will benet the abundant factor of production and harm the scarce one. In the case of NAFTA, the United States has an abundance of capital and is scarce in unskilled labor compared to Mexico. So, over time, one would expect unskilled American workers to be hurt most by the greater free trade between Mexico and the United States. Christopher Parkes, Mexicos Free Trade Zone May Be Victim of Its Own Success, Financial Times, May 14, 1999. Alan Beattie, Weight of expectation buries deal, Financial Times, July 25, 2007. European Commission, http://ec.europa.eu/trade/issues/bilateral/ countries/usa/index_en.htm, February 2006. Ibid. Martin Wolf, Wealth of Nations, Financial Times, May 19, 1998. WTO, http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/inbrief_e/ inbr02_e.htm, July 10, 2004. The Beef over Bananas, The Economist, March 6, 1999, p. 65. Frances Williams and Vanessa Houlder, WTO Defends Record on the Environment, Financial Times, October 15, 1999. Geoff Dyer, Ford to buy more parts from China, Financial Times, October 27, 2006.
29. Spero and Hart, 30. 30. International Monetary Fund, http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ ft/exrp/what.htm#where, July 2004. 31. Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), IMF, http://www.imf/org/external/ np/exr/facts/sdr.htm, May 29, 2007. 32. Raymond Colitt, Brazilian President Releases Loans for Sanitation Crisis Killing 50 People a Day, Financial Times, December 17, 2003. 33. World Bank, http://www.worldbank.org/, August 1998. 34. Thomas Oatley, International Political Economy: Interests and Institutions in the Global Economy (New York: Pearson-Longman, 2004), 319320. 35. Bank Information Center, http://www.bicusa.org/bicusa/issues/ world_bank/index.php#resources, October 30, 2004. 36. Oatley. 37. World Bank Information Center and IDA Replenishments, http:// web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTABOUTUS/IDA/ 0,,contentMDK:21021125~menuPK:2842661~pagePK:51236175 ~piPK:437394~theSitePK:73154,00.html, May 30, 2007. 38. Yukiko Omura, About MIGA, IMF, http://www.miga.org/sitelevel2/ level2.cfm?id-1069. 39. Jessica Einhorn, The World Banks Mission Creep, Foreign Affairs 80, no. 5 (September/October 2001): 2235. The vice president of the German Bundesbank has also complained about the IMF encroaching on World Bank responsibilities. See Jurgen Stark, The Fund Must Stick to Its Mandate, Financial Times, July 16, 2004. For another critical review of the World Bank, IMF, and other aid agencies, see William Easterly, The Cartel of Good Intentions, Foreign Policy (July/August 2002). 40. Oatley, 356357. 41. Nancy Dunne, World Bank Policies Boosting Poverty, Financial Times, August 14, 1998. 42. Kenneth Rogoff, A Final Grade for Wolfensohn, Newsweek International, January 17, 2007. 43. Theodore H.Cohn, Global Political Economy: Theory and Practice, 3rd ed. (New York: Pearson-Longman, 2005), 209.
Chapter 13
1. The World Bank, World Development Indicators 2007. 2. Coralie Bryant and Christina Kappaz, Reducing Poverty, Balancing Peace (Bloomeld, Conn.: Kumarian Press, 2005); presentation at Centre for Peace and Human Security, April 2006. 3. UN, Millennium Development Goals Report, 2006, http://mdgs.un .org/unsd/mdg/Resources/Static/Products/Progress2006/MDG Report2006.pdf 4. Carlos M. Vilas, Introduction, in Douglas A. Chalmers, Carlos M. Vilas, Katherine Hite, Scott B. Martin, Kerianne Piester, and Monique Segarra, eds., The New Politics of Inequality in Latin America: Rethinking Participation and Representation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). 5. Hobbes was actually referring to man in the state of nature, not to conditions in the developing countries. 6. Monte Palmer, Political Development: Dilemmas and Challenges (Itasca, Ill.: F. E. Peacock, 1997), 1415. 7. Ibid. 8. Robin Wright, Freedoms Formula, Los Angeles Times, February 25, 1992. 9. W. W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 10. Barbara Crossette, U.N. Says Bad Government Is Often the Cause of Poverty, New York Times, April 5, 2000. 11. David Sylvan, The Newest Mercantilism, International Organization 35 (Spring 1981): 375379. 12. Mahfoud Bennoune, The Making of Contemporary Algeria: 1830 1987 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 176195. 13. The Tale of Barbie and Li Mei, The Economist, May 5, 2007. 14. Joan E. Spero and Jeffrey A. Hart, The Politics of International Economic Relations, 5th ed. (New York: St. Martins, 1997), 154155. 15. David N. Balaam and Michael Veseth, Introduction to International Political Economy, 3rd ed. (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005), 337338. 16. Robert Gilpin, The Challenge of Global Capitalism (Princeton: Prince ton University Press, 2000), 300.
NOTES
A9
17. Associated Press, Poor Countries Draft Proposal on Poverty, New York Times, April 12, 2000. 18. Spero and Hart, 151. 19. Gilpin, 172. 20. See Palmer, 4041. 21. Randal L. Cruikshanks and Earl D. Huff, Prospects for the Future, in Joseph N. Weatherby et al., The Other World: Issues and Politics of the Developing World (New York: Longman, 1997), 274275. 22. William A. Joseph, Mark Kesselman, and Joel Krieger, Third World Politics at the Crossroads (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1996), 11. 23. Nancy Birdsall, Life Is Unfair: Inequality in the World, Foreign Policy, no. 111 (Summer 1998): 7677. 24. Ibid. 25. The News (Mexico City), March 28, 2000, p. 12. 26. Cheryl W. Gray and Daniel Kaufmann, Corruption and Development, Finance and Development (March 1998): 710. 27. Joseph, Kesselman, and Krieger, 11. 28. Stephen Connely Benz, Guatemalan Journey (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996), Part II. 29. For further discussion of this and related points, see Marina S. Ottoway, Democracy Challenged: The Rise of Semi-Authoritarianism (Wash ington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2003). 30. Sumit Ganguly, Pakistans Never-Ending Story, Foreign Affairs 79, no. 2 (March/April 2000): 26. 31. Labouari Addi, Algerias Army, Algerias Agony, Foreign Affairs 77, no. 4 (July/August 1998): 4453. 32. This list is drawn from an article published by Lawrence E. Harrison in the journal The National Interest (Summer 2000). Harrison directed the United States Agency for International Development missions in ve Latin American countries between 1965 and 1981. He is a senior fellow at Harvard Universitys Academy for International and Area Studies and coeditor of Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress (Basic Books, 2000). 33. Blanca Heredia, Prosper or Perish? Development in the Age of Global Capital, Current History (November 1997): 383388. 34. Amy Chua, World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability (New York: Doubleday, 2003). 35. Ibid. 36. Samuel P. Huntington, The Many Faces of the Future, Utne Reader, no. 81 (May/June 1997): 7577, 102103. 37. Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, N.Y.), September 21, 2004. 38. Donald J. Puchala, Some Non-Western Perspectives on International Relations, Journal of Peace Research 34, no. 2 (1997): 129134. 39. Ibid. 40. Carnegie Commission, Preventing Deadly Conict, Final Report, at http://wwics.si.edu/subsites/ccpdc/pubs/rept97/nfr.htm. 41. Ronald L. Tammen et al., Power Transitions: Strategies for the 21st Century (New York: Chatham House, 2000), 123. 42. Heredia. 43. Thomas Carothers, Democracy Without Illusions, Foreign Affairs 76, no. 1 (January/February 1997): 8599.
Chapter 14
1. IPCC, 2007, Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Summary for Policymakers, p. 3, http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assess ment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-spm.pdf. 2. IPCC, 2007, Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, Summary for Policymakers, p. 20, http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment -report/ar4/wg2/ar4-wg2-spm.pdf. 3. UN projection as reported in BBC News February 28, 2001, http:// news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/1194030.stm. 4. Paraphrased from 2007 World Economic Indicators, The Environment, p. 121, http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/ DATASTATISTICS/0,,contentMDK:21298138~pagePK:64133150 ~piPK:64133175~theSitePK:239419,00.html. 5. U.N. World Water Day 2007, Improving health through better access to water, p. 20 (http://www.unwater.org/wwd07/downloads/docu ments/escarcity.pdf ).
6. Perhaps the most serious toxic chemical incident was the 1984 explosion of toxic methyl isocyanate gas at a Union Carbide plant. The gas enveloped the Indian city of Bhopal, killing directly, according to the ofcial Indian government report, more than 3,000 people and permanently disabling over 11,000 more. The data are from a long-delayed ofcial report by the Indian government in 2004, as cited in T. V. Padma, Long-delayed Report on Bhopal Disaster Offers Little New Information, Nature Medicine, published online, 30 December 2004, http://www.nature.com/news/2004/041229/pf/ nm0105-5a_pf.html#top. Considerable uncertainty surrounds the actual number of deaths and long-term injuries, such as lung disease, that were caused directly by the accident. Union Carbides gures for deaths agree with the Indian governments 3,800, while it sets the permanent disabilities gures at 11,000 (http://www.bhopal .com/chrono.htm). According to Amnesty Internationals 2004 twenty-year report on the tragedy, 7,000 died the night of the accident, and another 15,000 died later, while 150,000 to 600,000 suffered debilitating illnesses as a result of the tragedy (Mohammed Owals, volunteer at Hamidia Hospital, Bhopal, India, Clouds of Injustice: Bhopal Disaster 20 Years On, http://web.amnesty.org/ pages/ec-bhopal-eng). Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, states that thousands were killed outright and the injured now number anywhere from 150,000 to 600,000 (http://www.answers.com/topic/ bhopal-disaster). The BBC reports give the same gures. The Bhopal Medical Appeal and Sambhavna Trust, established to seek medical and legal remedies for the victims, states that 20,000 died from the accident: half a million were exposed to the gases, and 120,000 still suffer from health problems caused by the disaster (http://www .bhopal.org/whathappened.html). Since none of the larger gures are backed up with any statistical evidence, the ofcial Indian government gures seemed the most appropriate. 7. Central Intelligence Agency, The World Factbook 2007, World, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/ print/xx.html. 8. UNFPA, Introduction, State of World Population 2004, http://www .unfpa.org/swp/2004/english/ch1/page7.htm#1. 9. Gerhard K. Heilig, World Population Prospects: Analyzing the 1996 UN Population Projections, Chapter 1, World Population: Major Trends, IIASA electronic working paper, http://www.iiasa.ac.at/ Research/LUC/Papers/gkh1/chap1.htm. 10. Data from International Organization of Migration, Global Estimates and Trends, 2005, http://www.iom.int/jahia/page254.html. 11. See the discussion of technology in Rudi Volti, Society and Technological Change, 3rd ed. (New York: St. Martins, 1995), 315. 12. Harvey Brooks, The Typology of Surprises in Technology, Institutions, and Development, in W. C. Clark and R. E. Munn, eds., Sustainable Development of the Biosphere (New York and London: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 329. See also Stephen Schneider and B. L. Turner II, Summary: Anticipating Global Change Surprise, Summary remarks from a 1994 Conference on the Typology of Surprises in Technology, Institutions, and Development, held at the As pen Global Change Institute, Aspen, Colorado, and found at http:// www.agci.org/publications/eoc94/EOC2/EOC2-summary.html. 13. In June 2005, General Motors announced plans to purchase a small vehicle producer in Qingdao and to build a multi-million dollar engine plant in the Chinese southwestern city of Liuzhou. Earlier that year, GM opened a new plant in Shanghai. China has generated the bulk of GMs prots from the sale of cars over the past few years. It expects to make 1.3 million vehicles and 20 new models by 2007. These moves place GM in a strong position to replace Volkswagen as the automotive company with the largest vehicle market share in China. Reuters, GMN to build $387 million China engine plant as reported in ABC News Business, June 13, 2005. http://abcnews.go .com/Business/wireStory?id=811853. 14. CNN.com, Lung Association Ranks Most Polluted Cities, April 29, 2004, http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/04/28/air.pollution/. For the last systematic data, see World Resources Institute, World Resources 19941995 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 199, Table 11.2. 15. Price drives a lot of this. As long as gas prices are relatively low, people wont make the switch. Sustained high prices with the expectation of long term or permanent high prices will eventually force people to use smaller cars or alternative transportation.
A10
NOTES
16. Hawaii provides an example of the consequences of human management of the environment that led to reduction in variability. Because of its nearly inaccessible location in the middle of the Pacic Ocean, Hawaii once had perhaps the most diverse plant and animal life of any place on Earth. Around a.d. 300500 (A Brief History of Hawaii, http://www.deephawaii.com/hawaiianhistory.htm), Polynesians from the South Pacic arrived in double-hulled boats, bringing plants, animals, and agricultural technology. These exotic or foreign species thrived in the Hawaiian climate, having left their natural competitors behind. By contrast, many of the weaker Hawaiian species became extinct. With the nineteenth-century arrival of Americans and Europeans, who brought their industrial enterprises and the practice of covering large amounts of land with only one crop, more plants became extinct. Today, very few native species of plant or animal survive in the entire Hawaiian archipelago. The rich ecosystem that took millions of years to evolve reacted in less than 2,000 years to human and industrial intrusion with a reduction in variability (see Edmund O. Wilson, The Future of Life [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002], 4254). 17. World Resources Institute, Cholera Returns, World Resources 1998 1999 (New York: Oxford University Press 1999), 22. 18. U.S. Census Bureau, Historical Estimates of World Population and Total Midyear Population for the World, 19502050, http://k12science .ati.stevens-tech.edu/curriculum/popgrowthproj/worldpop.html. 19. World Resources Institute, World Resources 19941995, 270273. 20. For the full story of Darfur, turn to Stephan Faris, The Real Roots of Darfur, The Atlantic Monthly (April 2007): 6772, http://www.the atlantic.com/doc/200704/darfur-climate. 21. Demography and the West: Half a Billion Americans, The Economist, August 22, 2002, http://economist.com/PrinterFriendly.cfm ?Story_ID=1291056. 22. Danielle Hierenberg and Mia MacDonald, The Population Story ... So Far, World-Watch (September/October 2004): 1417. 23. About.com: Geography, Largest Cities in the WorldList Two, 2006, http://geography.about.com/od/urbaneconomicgeography/a/ agglomerations2.htm. 24. Iowa-born Henry Wallace (18881960) was a former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture under President Franklin D. Roosevelt and a candidate for U.S. president in 1948. Wallace tried mating or cross-breeding different kinds of corn to produce more prolic plants. He kept exact records of his trials. When he thought he had good results, he took his hybrid corn seeds to the farmers. At rst there was reluctance to buy his seeds and apply his methods. But some farmers did try. They talked up their excellent results to friends and the green revolution was launched. For a laymans account of Wallaces contribution to the green revolution, see John C. Culver and John Hyde, American Dreamer: A Life of Henry Wallace (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), 3108. 25. See, for example, Darrell A. Posey, IUCN Biodiversity Programme, Traditional Resource Rights: International Instruments for Protection and Compensation for Indigenous Peoples and Local Governments (Gland, Switzerland, and Oxford: IUCN, World Conservation Union, 1996). 26. For more information on the pros and cons of the green revolution see the following articles: Susette Biber-Klemm, Farmers Knowledge at Risk: Are Intellectual Property Rights the Solution? Infoagrar News (Switzerland, n.d.), pp. 67, http://www.infoagrar.ch/Informa tioncenter/mediadir.nsf/0/887fe2cca68b81a4c1256b91003f2616 ?OpenDocument. Bernice Wuethrich, The Changing Landscape of Knowledge, in Smithsonian Institution, Forces of Change: A New View of Nature (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 2000), 190191. John Henkel, Drugs of the Deep: Treasures of the Sea Yield Some Medical Answers and Hint at Others, http://www.fda .gov/fdac/features/1998/198_deep.html. 27. See Special Report, Non-Food GM: The Men in White Coats Are Winning, Slowly, The Economist 373, no. 8396 (October 9, 2004): 6366.
28. Ibid., 64. 29. World Meteorological Association, UN Environment Programme, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Executive Summary, Climate Change: The IPCC Scientic Assessment (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), xi. 30. The IPCC is backed up by the 2007 ndings of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change commissioned by the British Treasury setting forth the case for action. The scientic evidence is now overwhelming: climate change is a serious global threat, and it demands an urgent global response (UK Government, HM Treasury, Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, January 2007), http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/independent_reviews/stern _review_economics_climate_change/sternreview_index.cfm. 31. Roy W. Spencer, How Do We Know the Temperature of the Earth? Global Warming and Global Temperatures, in Ronald Bailey, ed., Earth Report 2000: Revisiting the True State of the Planet (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000), 39. 32. Robert C. Fleagle, Global Environmental Change: Interactions of Science, Policy, and Politics in the United Nations (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1994), 183185. 33. Info from the Ozone Hole Processing Team, NASA/GSFC Code 916, ftp://jwocky.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/eptoms/images/qcplots/zmqchl _v8.png. 34. Hannah K. Strange, U.K. Frustration over U.S. Climate Deal, United Press International, June 13, 2005, http://www.climateark.org/articles/ reader.asp?linkid=42851. 35. Marvin Soroos, The Endangered Atmosphere (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1997), 3. 36. John J. Fialka, Soot Storm: A Dirty Discovery over Indian Ocean Sets Off a Fight, Wall Street Journal, May 6, 2003, pp. A1, A6. 37. Jerry Taylor and Peter VanDoren, Soft Energy Versus Hard Facts: Powering the 21st Century, Earth Report 2000 (New York: McGrawHill, 2000), 135139. 38. See Oran Young, The Politics of International Regime Formation: Managing Natural Resources and the Environment, International Organization 43 (1989): 349376; and Oran R. Young and Gail Oshe renko, eds., Polar Politics: Creating Environmental Regimes (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993). 39. World Bank, Clear Water, Blue Skies: Chinas Environment in the New Century (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1997), 19, Table 2.1. 40. World Resources 19981999, 6465, Box 2.6. 41. World Watch Institute, Water: Critical Shortages Ahead, http:// www.wri.org./trends/water2.html. 42. World Summit on Sustainable Development, Freshwater, Global Challenge Global Opportunity: Trends in Sustainable Development, p. 10, http://www.johannes-burgsummit.org/index.html. 43. Lester R. Brown, Falling Water Tables in China May Soon Raise Food Prices Everywhere, message sent by Infoterra@cedar.at, May 3, 2000. 44. In 1998, the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, experienced water poisoning, although the citys water treatment system met U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations. In May 2000, an E. coli outbreak in the water system in Walkerton, Canada, made 1,000 people sick and killed 17. 45. Regional Proles: Senegal, World Resources 19981999, 114. 46. For a sobering presentation of the issues surrounding the use of the waters of the Jordan River Basin, see Jad Isaac, Core Issues of the Palestinian-Israeli Water Dispute (Jerusalem: Applied Research Institute, 1995), http://www.arij.org/pub/corissues/. 47. Thomas Homer-Dixon, The Ingenuity Gap: Facing the Economic, Environmental and Other Challenges of an Increasingly Complex and Unpredictable World, 2nd edition (New York: Vintage Books, 2002). For a thoughtful and sobering analysis of the relationship between the environment, scarcity, and violence, see, by the same author, Environment, Scarcity and Violence (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001).
Photo Credits
Chapter 1 Page 2: NASA; p. 18: Deshakalyan Chowdhury/Getty Images; p. 20: Owen Franken/ CORBIS; p. 22: Reuters/CORBIS; p. 25: AP/Wide World Photos. Chapter 2 Page 30: Kuni Takahashi/Boston Herald/ReexNews; p. 35: Courtesy of the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs; p. 37: Patrick Robert/CORBIS; p. 40: AP/Wide World Photos; p. 46A: The Granger Collection, NY; p. 46B: Hulton Archive/Getty Images; p. 51: Dan Budnik/Woodn Camp [Associates]; p. 58: Danilo Krstanovic/Reuters/CORBIS. Chapter 3 Page 62: Attar Maher/CORBIS SYGMA; p. 69: Culver Pictures, Inc.; p. 78: AP/Wide World Photos; p. 81: Daniel Dempster/Dembinskey Photo Associates; p. 84: Wathiq Khuzaie/ Getty Images; p. 87A: Michael Kleinfeld-Pool; p. 87B: Reuters/CORBIS; p. 88: Courtesy of Dr. Robert T. Potter. Chapter 4 Page 96: AP/Wide World Photos; p. 99: Steve Starr/CORBIS; p. 101: Jagadeesh/ Reuters/CORBIS; p. 113: AP/Wide World Photos. Chapter 5 Page 130: Marcus Brandt/AFP/Getty Images; p. 136: AP/Wide World Photos; p. 137: Clive Brunskill/Getty Images; p. 148: AP/Wide World Photos; 149: Miguel Alvarez/AFP/Getty Images; p. 149: Lucas Jackson/Reuters/CORBIS; p. 151: Sayed Jan Sabawoon/EPA/Landov. Chapter 6 Page 160: AP Images; p. 166: Tyler Hicks/The New York Times; p. 174: Wally Santana/ AP Photo; p. 175: Reuters TV; p. 187: AP/Wide World Photos; p. 194: AP/Wide World Photos. Chapter 7 Page 200: Gleizes/Greenpeace: Gleizes/Greenpeace; p. 205: Olav A. Saltbones/ Norwegian Red Cross/Reuters/CORBIS; p. 215: Greenpeace/Andreas Schoelzel; p. 219: Scott Langley/www.langleycreations.com; p. 221: Oxfam America/http://www.oxfamamerica.org/ whatwedo/campaigns/coffee/starbucks/; p. 222: AP/Wide World Photos; p. 223: Paula Bronstein/Getty Images; p. 226: Vasquez/Greenpeace: Vasquez/Greenpeace. Chapter 8 Page 230: Foto Marburg/Art Resource, NY; p. 242: Mikkel Ostergaard/Panos Pictures; p. 252: Sven Creuztmann/Zeitenspiegel. Chapter 9 Page 262: Patrik Stollarz/AFP/Getty Images; p. 265: AP Photo/Murad Sezer; p. 268: CORBIS/Created by J. Howard Miller. Modications Jone Lewis 2001; p. 270: CORBIS; p. 272: Hulton Archive/Getty Images; p. 277: Peter Turnley/CORBIS; p. 279: Yun Suk-Bong/ NewsCom; p. 284: Rodrigo Arangua/AFP/Getty Images; p. 286: Arcaid/ CORBIS. Chapter 10 Page 290: Department of Defense; p. 297: Boyes Kelvin/Gamma Press USA, Inc.; p. 304: Andrew England/Associated Press; p. 305: Getty Images; p. 306: Clea Koff/CORBIS; p. 307: AFP/Getty Images; p. 308: Reuters/CORBIS; p. 312: AP/Wide World Photos; p. 322: Reuters/CORBIS. Chapter 11 Page 328: AP/Wide World Photos; p. 335: AP/Wide World Photos; p. 344: The Granger Collection, New York; p. 351: Ian Fisher, The New York Times; p. 353: Nic Paget-Clarke/NPC Productions; p. 358: Reuters/CORBIS; p. 362: AP/Wide World Photos. Chapter 12 Page 368: Lester Lefkowitz/CORBIS; p. 379: AP/Wide World Photos; p. 386: AP/Wide World Photos; p. 387: Reuters/CORBIS; p 390: Premium Stock/CORBIS. Chapter 13 Page 400: Andrew Wong/Reuter/CORBIS; p. 406: Kim Ludbrook/EPA/Landov; p. 409: NewsCom; p. 423: Reuters/CORBIS; p. 430: Reuters/CORBIS. Chapter 14 Page 434: Stephen J. Kraseman/Photo Researchers, Inc.; p. 445: Alamy Images; p. 450: Reuters/CORBIS; p. 452: Rei OHara/Black Star; p. 454: Lindsay Hebberd/CORBIS; p. 458: Reproduced with the permission of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada, 2007, and Courtesy of Natural Resources Canada; p. 462: AP/Wide World Photos.
A11
Answers to Test Preppers

Chapter 1
1.1 1.2 1.3 1. F 1. F 1. F 2. T 2. T 2. T 3. F 3. F 3. F 4. T 4. c 4. T 5. F 5. c 5. F 6. a 6. d 7. d 7. a
Chapter 8
8.1 8.2 8.3 1. F 1. T 1. T 2. T 2. F 2. T 3. F 3. T 3. F 4. F 4. T 4. F 5. T 5. d 5. T 6. c 6. e 7. e 7. b
Chapter 2
2.1 2.2 2.3 1. F 8. c 1. F 1. F 2. T 2. T 2. F 3. T 3. T 3. T 4. F 4. T 4. T 5. F 5. T 5. b 6. e 6. e 7. b 7. c
Chapter 9
9.1 9.2 9.3 1. T 8. e 1. F 1. F 2. F 2. F 2. T 3. F 3. F 3. T 4. T 4. F 4. d 5. F 5. e 5. b 6. e 6. b 7. b
Chapter 3
3.1 3.2 3.3 1. F 1. T 8. d 1. F 2. F 2. T 2. T 3. T 3. F 3. F 4. T 4. F 4. T 5. F 5. F 5. F 6. d 6. e 7. c 7. a
Chapter 10
10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 1. F 1. T 8. e 1. T 1. F 2. T 2. F 2. F 2. T 3. F 3. T 3. T 3. T 4. T 4. F 4. F 4. T 5. F 5. T 5. c 5. F 6. e 6. d 6. e 6. b 7. c 7. c 7. a 7. d
Chapter 4
4.1 4.2 4.3 1. F 1. T 1. T 2. T 2. T 2. F 3. F 3. F 3. F 4. T 4. F 4. F 5. a 5. F 5. T 6. c 6. b 6. c 7. c 7. a
Chapter 11
11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 1. F 1. F 1. F 1. T 2. T 2. T 2. T 2. T 3. T 3. T 3. F 3. T 4. T 4. F 4. T 4. F 5. c 5. a 5. T 5. F 6. e 6. d 6. c 6. d
Chapter 5
5.1 5.2 5.3 1. T 1. F 1. T 2. F 2. T 2. F 3. F 3. F 3. F 4. F 4. T 4. T 5. F 5. T 5. e 6. e 6. e 7. a 7. c
7. e 7. d
Chapter 12
12.1 12.2 12.3 1. F 1. F 8. d 1. T 2. T 2. T 2. F 3. T 3. F 3. F 4. F 4. F 4. T 5. b 5. F 5. F 6. d 6. d 6. a 7. c 7. e
Chapter 6
6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 1. F 1. F 1. F 8. e 1. F 2. T 2. F 2. F 2. T 3. F 3. T 3. T 3. T 4. F 4. T 4. F 4. F 5. d 5. F 5. T 5. F 6. a 6. c 6. e 6. b 7. e 7. a 7. c
Chapter 13
13.1 13.2 13.3 1. T 1. T 1. T 8. e 2. F 2. T 2. T 3. T 3. T 3. F 4. F 4. F 4. F 5. F 5. F 5. F 6. d 6. c 6. d 7. c 7. a
Chapter 7
7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 1. F 1. F 1. T 1. F 2. T 2. T 2. T 2. F 3. F 3. F 3. F 3. T 4. F 4. a 4. F 4. F 5. b 5. e 5. e 5. F
Chapter 14
14.1 14.2 14.3 1. F 1. T 1. F 2. T 2. T 2. T 3. T 3. F 3. T 4. T 4. T 4. T 5. c 5. T 5. c 6. a 6. d
6. e
7. e
7. e
A12
Index
abolitionism, 343 abortion, sex-selective, 452 absolute location, 232233, 234, 249250 Abu Ghraib Prison, 101, 103 active negative presidents, 147 active positive presidents, 147 activism, 2526, 5253 ad hoc tribunals, 361, 362 adjudication, 322 Afghanistan applying levels of analysis to, 9091 foreign policy in, 138139, 150151 war on terrorism in, 153 women in, 331332 Africa AIDS in, 8, 12, 29, 79 aid to, 432 conict diamonds in, 209 ethnic and religious conict in, 23 health and development in, 421 nationalism in, 271 natural resources in, 452 population growth in, 451 wars in, 294, 424, 425 womens rights and, 345 African Union, 164 agribusiness, 455 agriculture in China, 128 environmental impact of, 437438 free trade and, 375 green revolution in, 454455 megacities and, 454 political geography and, 244245 water scarcity and, 437, 464466 Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud, 148 aid programs, 137138, 205, 416, 417, 432 AIDS (acquired immune deciency syndrome) in Africa, 8, 12, 29, 79 in China, 128 macroinvestment and, 359360 research on, 448449 security and, 110111 women and, 345 air law, international, 242243, 251 air travel, 3 Al Jazeera, 142 alliances, 118, 212 al-Maliki, Nuri, 153 al Qaeda Afghanistan and, 9091 arms smuggling by, 316317 geostrategy of, 236 ideology of, 295296 Internet and, 142 media use by, 18 morale in, 113 objectives of, 312313 in Pakistan, 150 power and, 9899 rise of, 124 sovereignty and, 7677 stopping, 315 U.S. training of, 9091 altruism, 3738, 48 Amazon rainforest, 215 American Sovereignty Restoration Act, 196 Amnesty International, 162, 207, 209 210, 223, 224 political opposition to, 218220 analysis, 6295 individual level of, 8488 levels of, 7189 regional level of, 7778 the state in, 6471 state level of, 7879 substate level of, 8084 system level of, 7177 analytic skills, 15 Anderson, Benedict, 264 Annan, Ko, 180, 181, 197, 363 anthrax, 303, 311 anthropogenic impact, 40 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, 308 Aral Sea, 465466 arbitration, 322, 323324 Aristotle, 5 arms control, 306310 arms smuggling, 316317 at-risk states, 72 attitudes, changing, 223224 Audubon, John James, 20 authoritarianism decentralization and, 12 liberalism on, 48 nongovernmental organizations and, 205 power and, 113 authority, absence of world, 4 automobile industry, 376377, 378, 380 381, 444446, 461462 autonomy, 275 balance of payments, 392 balance of power, 4243, 117121 Bismarck on, 35 Bush Doctrine and, 154 challenges to, 117 collective security and, 125 denition of, 9, 76 in Europe, 910 balance of trade, 380 Balkanization, 238 bandwagoning, 118 Barber, James David, 147 Barbie doll, 415 Barker, Ernest, 265 Basques, 280281, 311 Batista, Fulgencio, 284 Beattie, Alan, 383 Beijing Conference on Women, 346 Benenson, Peter, 209 Berg, Nicholas, 103 bin Laden, Osama, 18, 24, 59, 139, 143. See also al Qaeda biodiversity, 207, 455 biofuels, 238, 459 biological weapons, 300, 301302, 313, 316 biomass, 460461 biotechnology, 4 biotech revolution, 454, 455 bipolar systems, 76, 118, 123, 299 bird u, 449 birthrates, 452453 Bismarck, Otto von, 35 Blair, Tony, 132 Blake, William, 20 bombings, 313 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 9, 6970 Bosnia, 330 ethnic conict in, 57, 363364 United Nations in, 362363 boundaries, 82 conict over, 250251 porous, 83, 103 Brazil, 220 breakaway movements. See self-determination Brent Spar, 218 Bretton Woods system, 373375, 385, 389 British Petroleum, 222 Brooks, Stephen G., 237 Brundtland, Gro Harlem, 51, 353 Buckley, William, 297 buck passing, 118 buffer states, 238 burden sharing, 118 Burdick, Eugene, 155 bureaucratic-politics model, 146147 Bush, George W. religious beliefs of, 143 war in Iraq, 16, 9798, 132 war on terrorism of, 153156 Bush Doctrine, 153156, 236, 265, 297 298 business alliances, 212 Campbell, David, 57 Canada, NAFTA and, 163164 capabilities, 105. See also power cap and trade systems, 459 capital cultural, 39 formation of, 420 human, 39 human-created, 39 natures, 39 social, 39 social overhead, 420 capitalism ecofeminism on, 5253 imperialism and, 4647 Marxism on, 46 Cardozo, Henrique, 418 careers, world politics and, 14 carrying capacity, 40 Cashman, Greg, 295 Castro, Fidel, 284 Catalonia, 280281 Centers for Disease Control, 448 Central America, deforestation in, 39 centralization conict and, 292 consequences of, 11 denition of, 5 forced vs. voluntary, 11 foreign policy in, 131132 information technology and, 1820 international organizations and, 162 163 nongovernmental organizations and, 203206 certications, 221222 chain ganging, 118 change, 34, 122124 charisma, 87 Chavez, Hugo, 148 checks and balances, 16 chemical weapons, 300, 301302, 313, 316 Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs, 182 child labor, 243 child soldiers, 330 China, 73 Amnesty International and, 218219 economic development in, 430 energy consumption in, 461462 foreign policy in, 137, 142 girl babies in, 88, 331, 345, 355 imperialism and, 47 nationalism in, 285 national morale in, 112 nongovernmental organizations in, 204, 224 nuclear power in, 309 substates in, 81 as superpower, 126128 Three Gorges Dam, 53 China Garment Manufacturers, 214 Chirac, Jacques, 132, 217 chlorouorocarbons (CFCs), 458, 459, 463 choke points, 238 Christianity. See also religion civilization clashes with, 255 religious conict and, 8384 Chua, Amy, 426427 Churchill, Winston, 85 city-states, 6768 civic national identity, 264267, 287288 civil rights, 410 civil war, 424 ethnicity and religion in, 2225 in Iraq, 150, 424 in Sudan, 164, 219, 254255, 282, 363, 452 clans, 279 Clark, John, 218 class struggle, 4546, 47, 56, 343344 Clausewitz, Karl von, 42 Cleon, 34 climate, 439 political geography and, 234, 245246 power and, 108 climate change, 55, 435436 conict due to, 254255 ecojustice and, 54 foreign policy and, 142 Greenpeace and, 208 international responses to, 457462 as transnational problem, 21 Clinton, Bill, 85 Clinton, Hillary Rodham, 346 cloning, 455 Coca-Cola, 214 coffee, 221 cognitive dissonance, 86, 253 Cold War as bipolar system, 76 denition of, 16 diplomacy in, 115 foreign policy in, 138 realism on, 35 collective security, 10, 49, 124125 NATO and, 167 United Nations and, 170171 colonialism, 415416 boundaries set in, 82 dependency theories and, 47 development and, 420421 identity and, 255 nationalism and, 270271 state creation in, 70 United Nations and, 177178 Commission of Jurists, 205 Common Responsibility in the 1990s: The Stockholm Initiative on Global Security and Governance, 27 communication infrastructure, 252 communism, 4546, 72, 185, 313 compact states, 247, 248 comparative advantage, 376 comparative government, 15 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, 326 conditionality, 395 conict. See also terrorism; war change and, 123 climate change and, 254255 in multinational states, 254 nationalism and, 269, 274275, 286 over boundaries, 250251 over natural resources, 246247 realism on, 35 struggle for power and, 910 substate level, 8184 conict diamonds, 209 consensus, 190 constructivism, 5657, 58, 235 consumption, 440441, 453, 460462 containment, 138 contraception, 452453 Convention Against Genocide, 329 Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, 339 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, 355 Convention on the Status of Refugees, 329 conventions, 329
I1
I2
InDEX
cooperation development and, 417418 European Union, 185187 peace building and, 3738 supranational organizations and, 168 United Nations and, 174175 Copeland, Dale, 103 core countries, 415416 core objectives, 135137 corporate actors, 211214. See also multinational corporations (MNCs) corruption, 14, 114, 189190, 294, 421, 422 Council of Ministers, 187, 188 Council of the European Union, 187, 188 countries in transition, 72, 73 Cox, Larry, 210 crimes against humanity, 322323, 360 364 critical theory, 56 Cuba, 220, 257, 284 Cuban missile crisis, 8586, 145146, 249250 cultural capital, 39 cultural exchanges, 137138 cultural resources, 8 culture automobile, 444445 development and, 424426 foreign policy and, 142143 as power, 112 states and, 68 women in, 347 currency, 389391. See also monetary systems cyberterrorism, 317 Daly, Herman, 38 death penalty, 209, 218219, 224, 339 debt relief, 206, 215, 416, 417 decentralization conict and, 292 consequences of, 12 denition of, 5 information technology and, 1820 international organizations and, 162 163 nongovernmental organizations and, 203 substate level analysis and, 8081 decision making foreign-policy, 132133, 144151 geography and, 234, 235 leadership typologies and, 86 organization perspective of, 146147 system level approach to, 144147 Declaration of Independence, 334 deep ecology, 52 deforestation, 447, 460461 Greenpeace and, 208 natural disasters and, 39 as transnational problem, 21 Dehaene, Jean-Luc, 191 democracy development and, 429431 European Union, 193 foreign policy and, 144 liberalism on, 4850 nationalism and, 274 nongovernmental organizations and, 204 stability and, 113114 sustainability and, 39 United Nations and, 176 democratic peace theory, 4849, 295 demographics, 79, 110. See also population dependency theories, 47, 413, 414417 deregulation, 50 desertication, 437 deterrence, 117, 318321 devaluation, 389390 developed countries, 72 birthrates in, 452453 energy use by, 440441 United Nations and, 177178 developing countries, 72 dependency theory and, 47 free trade and, 383
gross national income in, 403 nongovernmental organizations and, 220222 United Nations and, 177178 development, 400433. See also economic development cooperation and, 417418 denition of, 403404, 407 democracy and, 429431 factors affecting, 419429 globalization and, 426427 health and, 421422 indexes of, 356357 political, 407 social/cultural, 407 theoretical approaches in, 412417 underdevelopment and, 406408 devolution, 275, 281 Diamond, Jared, 235, 244 diasporas, 75 diplomacy, 9, 114115 climate of, 134135 coercive, 135 denition of, 134 foreign policy and, 134135 new, 135 nongovernmental organizations and, 222 old, 135 secret, 48 disarmament, 207, 309 dispute resolution, 385386 diversionary theory of war, 295 Doha Round, 382383, 386, 417 domestic policy, 3536 domino theory, 255 Drezner, Daniel, 182 droughts, 458 drug trafcking, 21, 105, 150151, 176, 243 due process, 335336, 343, 344 Easton, David, 5 East Timor, 363, 364 East-West axis, 244245 ecofeminism, 5253, 353354 ecojustice, 5354, 335 ecological footprint, 453 ecological integrity, 39 ecological paradigm, 33, 3841, 5054, 80. See also environment Economic and Social Counsil (ECOSOC), 178 economic blockades, 134 economic development, 409 Chinese, 127128 nationalism and, 274 political geography and, 245246 as power, 101, 107 United Nations in, 178179, 182, 197 women in, 202, 342, 356357 World Bank in, 393394 economic imperialism, 47 economic inequity, 20, 207, 405406, 421422 economic liberalism, 371, 372, 374376, 412413 economic policy, 184 economic resources, 78 economics, 368399 feminist theory on, 352353 foreign policy and, 139140 of intergovernmental organization membership, 165166 neoliberal, 4950 nongovernmental organizations and, 205 sustainable development and, 51 war and, 294 women in, 347, 352353 economic security, 39 economic vitality, 139 economies of scale, 185 ecosystems, 436 carrying capacity of, 40 denition of, 38 technology and, 444447 variability in, 446447 education, 101, 202
Edwards, Michael, 203204, 218 Eisenhower, Dwight, 155 elongated states, 247, 248 embargoes, 134 empowerment, citizen, 25 energy consumption, 440441, 460462 energy resources, 8 nonrenewable, 460462 renewable, 462 wars over, 462463 Engels, Friedrich, 414415 Enron, 14 environment, 434473. See also climate change development and, 404, 409, 435 ecological paradigm and, 3841 international law on, 243 international responses on, 456468 outsourcing and, 382, 386 population and, 441443 the state and, 22 surprise in, 446, 447 sustainable development and, 435, 438443 as transnational problem, 2021 water scarcity and, 464467 World Bank and, 395 environmental organizations, 74, 202, 207209, 221222 environmental regime, 463 environmental security, 353354, 467 environmental terrorism, 313 epidemics AIDS, 8, 110111 macroinvestment and, 359360 SARS, 3 science and, 447450 equality, 354, 404. See also justice espionage, 134 ethanol, 459 ethnic groups, 279 denition of, 24, 264 nation-states and, 65 substate level analysis and, 80 ethnicity colonialism and, 421 development and, 428 genocides and, 125 identity and, 254 legitimacy and, 422 multiethnic states, 6566 national identity and, 264265 nationalism and, 17, 2225, 272273 political geography and, 235 as social/cultural resource, 8 states and, 6770 substate conict and, 8283 war and, 298 ethnic nationalism, 17, 2225, 24, 125, 279281 Etzioni, Amitai, 203 euro, 184, 390391 Eurocrats, 193 Europe centralization in, 11 diplomacy in, 134135 origins and development of states in, 6770 struggle for power in, 910 European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), 185186 European Commission, 187, 188189 European Council, 187, 190 European Court of Justice, 187, 190 European Monetary System, 391 European Parliament, 187, 188, 189190 European Union (EU), 11, 184195 balance of power and, 119121 benets of membership in, 166 centralization and, 163 counterterrorism in, 315 currency of, 184, 390391 denition of, 77 expansion of, 186187 future of, 192194 institutions of, 187190 as intergovernmental organization, 162 nationalism and, 267
nuclear power in, 109 origins of, 185 rationale for, 185187 regional NGOs and, 78 substate level analysis and, 80 trade with the U.S., 383 voting in, 190192 Europol, 315 exchange rates, 389390 expulsion, 275 extinction, 208 ExxonMobil, 208, 397 failed/failing states, 66, 73, 114, 294295 fairness, 335336, 338 federalism, 275 feminist theories, 5758 ecofeminism and, 5253 on free trade, 376 on human rights, 347354 on IMF and the World Bank, 395 on war, 298 Ferguson, Niall, 12, 47 Festinger, Leon, 86 feudalism, 68 Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, 124 nancial markets, 1819 First World, 410 scal barriers to trade, 381 oods, 447, 458, 466 food supplies, 405 genetically modied food and, 217, 438, 455 terrorism and, 317 foreign direct investment (FDI), 358, 424 foreign policy. See also political geography Bush Doctrine in, 153156 as centralizing force, 131132 decision making in, 132133, 144151 European Union, 184, 193194 formation and execution of, 130159 formulation of, 141151 globalization and, 156158 goals in, 135 individual perspective in, 147 input-output model of, 144145 maps in, 257 nationalism in, 283286 organization perspective on, 146147 as power, 114115 power relationships and, 116126, 133135 rational-actor perspective on, 145146 realism on, 3536 terrorism and, 152156 United States, 278279 Forward-Looking Strategy for Women, 356 Fourth World, 410411 fragmentation. See decentralization fragmented states, 248, 249 France, nuclear testing in, 217, 223 Frankfurt School, 5657 free riding, 118 free trade, 373377 economic benets of, 165166 European Union, 185 liberalism and, 48 NAFTA and, 163164 political economy and, 370 French Revolution, 6869, 271, 273, 286 Friedman, George, 310 Friedman, Thomas, 122, 238, 259260, 427 Gaddis, John Lewis, 122 Gaia principle, 446447 Galicia, 280281 Gandhi, Indira, 345 Gandhi, Mohandas, 207 Garrett, Laurie, 216 GATT. See General Agreement on Tariffs and Trades (GATT) gender, 347, 349 gender-based war, 298 Gender Development Index (GDI), 357
InDEX
I3
Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM), 357 gender-neutral theory of international relations, 347354 gender rights, 410 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trades (GATT), 36, 374, 381, 384385 General Assembly, UN, 175, 177178 General Motors, 445 genetically modied (GM) foods, 217, 438, 455 Geneva Convention, 305, 362 genocide, 125, 267, 275, 330 conventions on, 361 in Darfur, 164, 219, 254255, 282, 363, 452 Holocaust, 10, 330 international law and, 322323 United Nations on, 360364 geography. See geopolitics; political geography Geo-Green strategy, 238 geopolitics, 42, 108, 234, 236. See also political geography geostrategy, 236 geothermal power, 462 Ginsburg, Roy H., 168 Glaspie, April, 297 global biochemical cycles, 436, 446447 global civil society, 9293, 203 global commons, 21, 459460 global interconnectedness, 4 globalization balance of power and, 117 cultural, 122 denition of, 3, 121 development and, 408, 426427 economic, 122 foreign policy and, 142 geography and, 259260 homogenization and, 112 identity and, 202 movement against, 50, 216 nongovernmental organizations and, 204 political, 122 power shifts and, 121123 pros and cons of, 11, 122 state problemsolving and, 22 women in, 347 Globalization Index, 259 global justice, 335336 global positioning systems (GPS), 256257 gold standard, 374, 377, 389 good will, 309 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 39, 115 Gore, Al, 463 government. See also world government comparative, 15 development and, 422423 individual actors in, 8488 power and, 113114 Grameen Bank, 26, 358359 Great Lakes, 252 greenhouse gases, 457458 green paradigm, 452 Greenpeace, 162, 207209, 215, 224 certication programs, 222 nuclear testing and, 223 political opposition to, 216218 whaling and, 226228 green revolution, 454455 green technologies, 459 gross domestic product (GDP), 73, 192, 405 gross national income (GNI), 403 gross national product (GNP), 107 Group of 77, 417 groupthink, 8586 Guantanamo Bay detainees, 216 Gutenberg, Johannes, 68 Habermas, Jrgen, 56 Haiti, 361, 362363 Hamas, 124 Hammarskjld, Dag, 182 Hardin, Garrett, 459 hard power, 100
Harper, Caroline, 218 health, 110111 in China, 128 development and, 404, 409, 421422 macroinvestments in, 359360 nongovernmental organizations and, 216, 222 population growth and, 450454 science and, 447450 United Nations and, 197 health care, 314 hegemonic stability theory, 43 hegemons, 43 hegemony, 237 hierarchy, 135 Hierenberg, Danielle, 453 Higgins, William, 297 hijackings, 313 Hitler, Adolf, 67, 143, 265, 268, 270, 296, 330 HIV. See AIDS (acquired immune deciency syndrome) Hobbes, Thomas, 3435, 44, 334, 406 Hobsbawm, Eric, 269 Hoffmann, Stanley, 122123 Holocaust, 10, 330 home countries, 211 homogenization, 112 host countries, 211, 397 human capital, 39 human-created capital, 39 Human Development Index (HDI), 357, 410 humanitarian law, 339 humanitarian organizations, 88, 202, 204 human rights, 328367 Amnesty International and, 209210, 218220, 224 conventions on, 338341 denition of, 329 feminist theories on, 347354 global justice and, 335336 group, 339 international law on, 243, 322324 nongovernmental organizations and, 216 organizations for, 202 origin of concept of, 333335 responses to violations in, 355364 United Nations and, 175176, 197, 360364 womens rights and, 342346, 365366 Human Rights Watch, 221 hunger, 405 Huntington, Samuel, 255, 427 Hussein, Saddam, 59, 82, 97, 99, 118, 181 Kuwait invasion by, 125, 296297 hydroelectricity, 466 Iceland, whaling in, 226227 idealism, 7, 33, 3638, 45 identity. See also nationalism civic national, 264 deep ecology and, 52 ethnic national, 264265, 269 foreign policy and, 141, 143 globalization and, 202 national, 254255, 264267 overlapping, 57 perception and, 253 political geography and, 235236, 254256 of products, 376377 regional, 255 religious, 255256 transnational, 204 ideology, 68 denition of, 143 foreign policy and, 143 wars and, 295298 IGOs. See intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) Ikenberry, G. John, 237 IMF. See International Monetary Fund (IMF) immigration, illegal, 148149 imperialism, 4647, 70, 428 import-substitution industrialization, 416
income, 403 independence, wars for, 294 India boundary clashes in, 82 ethnic/religious conict in, 24 nationalism in, 270271 nuclear weapons in, 118, 320 tsunami in, 39 womens rights in, 344345 indigenous peoples, 330, 336, 410411 individuals as actors, 6 foreign policy and, 143, 147 individual level of analysis and, 8488 inuence of, 201203 Indonesia, 39, 88, 150 industrialization ecojustice and, 5354 energy use and, 440441 fairness and, 336, 338 import-substitution, 416 sustainable development and, 443454 inequality, 207 infant industry, 378 inuence, 100, 102. See also power information technology, 1820 cybercrime and, 105 as power, 101 power shift and, 103 infrastructure in China, 128 colonialism and, 420 political geography and, 252 as power, 107 terrorism against, 317 integrationist nationalist ideology, 275 intellectual property rights, 385 intelligence, 115, 133 interdependence balance of power and, 117 foreign policy and, 142 of states, 67 interest groups, 168 intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), 74, 160199 benets of joining, 165170 denition of, 6, 162 European Union, 184195 foreign policy and, 142 global, 163 limited purpose, 163 political geography and, 242243 regional, 163 in regional level analysis, 7778 structure and functions of, 162164 supranationality/reciprocity in, 167 169 United Nations, 170183 voting in, 190192 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 457 intermestic issues, 16, 38, 140 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), 197 International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. See World Bank International Bill of Rights for Women, 355 International Campaign to Ban Land Mines, 206 International Court of Justice (IJC), 137, 178, 321322 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 338339 International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, 338339 International Criminal Court (ICC), 164, 169, 178, 322323 International Criminal Tribunal, 362 International Finance Corporation, 394 internationalization, 1011 international law applicability of, 324 European Court of Justice in, 187, 190 humanitarian, 339 limitations of, 323324 nongovernmental organizations and, 204205 political geography and, 242243
on states, 70 supranational organizations and, 168 violence and, 318325 war and, 321324 on women, 355356 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 178179 classication of states by, 72 denition of, 370 idealism and, 36 monetary system management by, 392393, 394396 neoliberalism and, 50 in political economy, 374 political economy and, 370 poverty-reduction strategies of, 332 international relations. See also foreign policy ecological paradigm on, 3841, 5054 feminist theories in, 5758 feminist theories on, 347354 foreign policy and, 148151 gender bias in, 349354 idealism on, 3638 realism on, 3436 theories/paradigms in, 3133 understanding, 8992 international system denition of, 67 development of states and, 6770 lead actors in, 73 relations between actors in, 7577 system level analysis and, 7177 wars and, 298299 International Telegraph Union, 163 International Whaling Commission, 209, 224, 226228 Internet, 1820 citizen activism and, 25 foreign policy and, 142 globalization and, 259 power shift and, 103 social justice movements and, 352353 Interpol, 315 Iran citizen activism in, 25 foreign policy of, 138139 hostages in, 323 women in, 331 Iraq beheadings in, 103, 134 civil war in, 150, 424 creation of, 421 ethnic conict in, 240241 Kuwait invasion by, 294 oil in, 234, 235 state sovereignty and, 6667 UN intervention in, 173, 181 Iraq War, 1011, 16, 5960 Bush Doctrine and, 153155, 297298 collective security and, 125 conict over, 132 foreign-policy decision making and, 146147 oil and, 234, 235 as preventive war, 9798 terrorism and, 153, 316 the UN and, 14 weapons of mass destruction and, 118 Ireland, 83, 311, 313314 irrendentism, 82 Islam. See also al Qaeda; religion Afghanistan and, 9091 civilization clashes with, 255 foreign policy goals of, 138139 fundamentalism in, 2425 identity and, 255256 ideological wars and, 295296 nationalism and, 272, 283284 political thought in, 427428 religious conict and, 2425, 8384 socialism and, 143 womens rights and, 345 Israel Bush Doctrine and, 155 human rights violations by, 220 nuclear weapons in, 325 Palestinian conict with, 2324, 84, 423
I4
InDEX
Israel (continued) preemptive war by, 98 terrorism in, 311 wall built by, 137, 323 Ivory Coast, 363, 364 Janis, Irving, 86 Japan foreign policy in, 142143, 150 national morale in, 112 whaling in, 208209, 226227 womens rights in, 345 Jefferson, Thomas, 334 Jervis, Robert, 8586 jihad, 296 Jubilee 2000, 206, 215 justice Amnesty International and, 209210 as due process, 335336 ecojustice, 5354 as equal shares, 335 as fairness, 336, 338 global, 335336 women and, 343, 352353 Karzai, Hamid, 20, 150151 Kautilya, 34 Kennedy, John F., 8586, 145146 Kennedy, Paul, 121 Keohane, Robert, 168 Khomeini, Ayatollah, 138 Khrushchev, Nikita, 145146 kinetic power, 100 kleptocracies, 413 Korean War, 295 Kosovo, 84, 135, 216, 363 Kuhn, Thomas, 32 Kurdistan, 280 Kurds, 82, 254, 424 Kyoto Protocol, 54, 131132, 208, 458 459, 463 labor issues, 386387 landlocked states, 108, 250 land mines, 206, 305307 language, 69, 8283 Lansing, Robert, 273 laser weapons, 304 Lasswell, Harold, 5, 6, 7 Latin America development in, 425426 foreign policy in, 148149 political geography and, 252 socialism in, 143 Law of the Sea, 242 leadership typologies, 86 League of Nations, 10, 36, 124125, 171 Lederer, William, 155 legitimacy, 65, 81, 193, 422 nationalism and, 283284, 285 Lenin, Vladimir Ilych, 4647, 70, 415 less developed countries (LDCs), 402 liberalism, 4850 economic, 371, 372, 374376, 412413 feminist theory and, 348 feminist theory on, 351352 as idealism, 36, 45 Libya, weapons of mass destruction in, 102, 103, 131132 Lieven, Anaton, 265 life expectancy, 401, 405 literacy, 79, 357, 401, 404, 405, 409 living standards, 51, 408, 444. See also development Locke, John, 334 Lugar, Richard, 303 Maathai, Wangari, 456 MacDonald, Mia, 453 Machiavelli, Niccol, 34 MacKinder, Halford, 42 macroinvestment, 357360 Mafart, Alain, 217 Magna Carta, 333334 Mahan, Alfred, 42 majority voting, 172, 191 Malaysia, 284 Mallaby, Sebastian, 216
Malthus, Thomas, 343, 450 managed trade, 414 Mao Zedong, 218, 350 maps, 256257 maquiladora, 382 Marcuse, Herbert, 56 market imperfections, 413 markets, 372. See also political economy Marshall Plan, 185 Martens, Kerstin, 215 Marx, Karl, 5, 36, 45, 338, 343344, 414 415 Marxism, 4547 denition of, 45 diplomacy and, 135 as idealism, 36, 45 neo-, 371, 372 nongovernmental organizations and, 205 in peace movements, 37 Mearsheimer, John, 44, 236 media critical theory and, 56 information revolution and, 1820 Islamic, 142 nationalism and, 267268, 271 nongovernmental organizations and, 206 as non-state actor, 25, 75 mediation, 322 medical research, 448450 Medicis, 34 megacities, 453454 Meloy, Francis C., 297 mercantilism, 377, 413 mergers, 397 messianism, 274 Mexico illegal immigration from, 148149 NAFTA and, 163164 nationalism in, 284, 285 outsourcing in, 382 microcredit, 26, 357360 Middle East, foreign policy in, 150 migration, 21, 75, 442, 449450 military elites, 424 military power, 9899, 100, 105106 balance of power and, 118 Chinese, 127, 128 foreign policy and, 134 human rights and, 362364 technology and, 103 United Nations, 171175, 174, 181182 Millennium Development Goals, 404, 427 Milosevic, Slobodan, 114115, 216, 283, 296 misperception, 8586, 296297 modernization school, 412 monetary systems, 373375, 385, 388396 Montreal Protocol, 37, 463 Moon, Ban Ki, 178 Moore, Patrick, 217 morale, 112113 Morgenthau, Hans, 35, 101, 114 most-favored-nation (MFN) principle, 385 Mubarak, Hosni, 150 Mukhtaran, Bibi, 351 multiethnic states, 6566, 273 multilateral agreements, 384 Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, 394 multinational corporations (MNCs), 25, 201 development and, 418 economic power of, 213, 214 impact of, 224 inuence of, 211214 other nongovernmental organizations and, 220222 political economy and, 397 multinational states, 6566 conict in, 254 denition of, 24 multi-state nations vs., 280 nationalism and, 275 multipolar systems, 7576, 77, 118, 119, 123, 299 multi-state nations, 24, 280
mutually assured destruction (MAD), 3536, 320 Myanmar, 220, 222 Naess, Arne, 52 NAFTA. See North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) national champions, 397 national culture, 112 national interests, 136, 139 nationalism, 262289 denition of, 266 development and, 428 economic, 48, 413, 414 ethnic, 17, 2225, 125, 279281 foreign policy and, 142143, 283286 liberal, 274 location and, 276282 national identity and, 264267 pros and cons of, 273275 psychology of, 267268 religious, 16, 2225, 281282 self-determination movements and, 285 states and, 6770 national self-determination, 268269, 273 nations, 24, 240. See also states states vs., 240, 263264 nation-states, 65. See also states Native Americans, 84, 334 NATO. See North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) natural disasters, 3940, 249, 447, 458 natural resources, 39 foreign policy and, 142 nonrenewable, 439441 political geography and, 234, 246247 as power, 108109 renewable, 438439 sustainable development and, 438441 nature, state of, 334 natures capital, 39 Nazis, 270 neoliberal institutionalists, 49 neoliberalism, 4950, 413414 neo-Marxism, 371, 372, 413, 414417 neo-mercantilism, 371, 372, 377378, 379, 414, 418 neorealism, 44, 236 New International Economic Order (NIEO), 416, 417, 418 newly industrializing countries (NICs), 185, 411 NGOs. See nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) Nigeria, 221, 222, 283 nondiscrimination, 385 Nongovernmental International Business Leaders Forum, 220221 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), 2526 complaints against, 215220 corporate, 211214 denition of, 25 economic factors and, 205 foreign policy and, 142 goals, strategies, tactics of, 207211 IGOs compared with, 162 inuence of, 201203 political climate and, 204205 political geography and, 242243 political opposition to, 220222 regional, 7778 rise of, 203206 states relationships with, 215225 technology and, 206 types of, 7475 Nonproliferation Treaty, 301 nonrenewable energy sources, 460462 non-state actors (NSAs), 7475, 200229 citizen activism and, 2526 corporate, 211214 denition of, 6 global civil society and, 9293 rise of, 12 sovereignty and, 7677 supranational, 168
nontariff barriers (NTBs), 381382 North, the, 177 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 148149, 163166 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 10, 77, 162 benets of membership in, 166167 Bosnia and, 57 human rights violations by, 219 Kosovo and, 216 North-South axes, 244245 Norway, 226227, 353 NSAs. See non-state actors (NSAs) Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, 37 nuclear power, 109, 197, 460 environmental impact of, 437 Greenpeace and, 208209 Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 316 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, 309 nuclear testing, 217, 223 nuclear weapons, 300302, 305, 307308 balance of power and, 117 deterrence and, 319321 dropped on Japan, 37 mutually assured destruction and, 3536 proliferation of, 325326 structural arms control and, 307309 terrorism and, 124, 316, 317 war and, 291292 in zero-sum game, 3536 Nye, Joseph, 122 oceans, 251 offensive realism, 44, 236 oil, 441, 461462 nationalization of, 416 political geography and, 238 as power, 108109 oil companies, 221 operational arms control, 309 opium, 150151 organizational perspective of decision making, 146147 Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, 167 Organization of American States, 162 Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), 162, 417418 organized crime, 74, 105 Ottaway, Marina, 222 Our Global Neighborhood, 2728 Outer Space Treaty, 242243 outsourcing, 382 Oxfam America, 221 ozone layer, 209, 458, 459, 463 Pakistan boundary clashes in, 82 ethnic/religious conict in, 24 foreign policy in, 150 human rights violations by, 220 military elites in, 424426 nuclear weapons in, 118, 320, 325 Wahhabi Islam in, 139 paleoclimatology, 457 Palestine Bush Doctrine and, 155 Israeli conict with, 2324, 84, 423 national morale in, 113 terrorism in, 311 PAL International, 397 Panama Canal, 252 Pandoras box effect, 451 paradigms, 3133, 32 paramilitary groups, 74 patriarchy, 57 Paul, Ron, 196 peace, 3738, 4245, 4849 peace building, 172173 peacekeeping, 172173, 182183 The Peloponnesian Wars (Thucydides), 34 perceptions denition of, 253 maps and, 256257 nationalism and, 269 political geography and, 235236, 253258
InDEX
I5
perceptions (continued) power and, 102103 wars and, 295298 Perez de Cuellar, Javier, 217 perforated states, 248, 249 periphery, 415416 Persian Gulf Wars, 108, 293, 296297 pesticides and herbicides, 437438, 466 Peterson, V. Spike, 348 Pew Global Attitudes Project, 155 physical barriers to trade, 381 Pirages, Dennis, 38, 39 Polar Bear Treaty, 49 polio, 197 political development, 407 political economy, 368399 denition of, 370373 free trade and, 373377 monetary system and, 388396 multinational corporations and, 397 protectionism and, 377384 trading blocs and, 382 World Trade Organization and, 384387 political geography, 230261 absolute location in, 232233 denition of, 234 foreign policy and, 142 issues and perspectives in, 234238 maps and, 256257 nationalism and, 276282 perceptions and, 253258 players in, 239243 as power, 108, 244249 relative location in, 232233 security and, 249252 political inuence, 165166 political psychology, 8586 politics actors in, 67 as allocation of values, 58 current trends in, 1012 denition of, 5, 97 high vs. low, 347, 349350 interactions among actors in, 67 nongovernmental organizations and, 204205 non-Western thought on, 427428 patterns in, 1517 pollution air, 459462 from cars, 445446 ecojustice and, 5354 international responses to, 459464 technology and, 444447 as transnational problem, 2021 water, 466 popular sovereignty, 273 population aging, 110, 128, 442 development and, 401402 environment and, 441443 health and, 450454 Malthus on, 343 as power, 109111 in state level analysis, 79 populism, 425426 positive-sum game, 376 postcolonialism feminist theory, 348349 postindustrial technologies, 18 postmodern feminism, 349 poverty, 404406 ecojustice and, 5354 reducing, 394 violence and, 403 women and, 332 Powell, Colin, 154 power, 96129 culture as, 112 denition of, 98101 dynamics of, 101104 elements of, 105116 foreign policy and, 133135, 141 foreign relations as, 114115 geography as, 108, 233, 235, 244249 government and stability as, 113114 hard, 100 of individual actors, 8588 infrastructure as, 107
kinetic, 100 military, 105106 morale as, 112113 natural resources as, 108109 nature of, 99101 neorealism on, 44 perceptions and, 253 in politics, 58 population as, 109111 realism on, 3436 relationship patterns and, 116126 relativity of, 103104 shifts/realignments in, 121124 situational, 104 soft, 100101 states and, 79 struggle for, 67, 8, 910 subjective, 111115 Power, Samantha, 182 predictions, 32 preemptive war, 98, 297298 presidential character, 147 prestige, 79 preventive war, 9798, 297298 Prieur, Dominique, 217 printing press, 68, 271 prisoners of conscience, 209210, 218 prisoners of war, 339 producer services, 385 proliferation, 307 property rights, 356, 385 protectionism, 370, 377384, 414 protruded states, 248, 249 psychology of group identity, 266268 psychology of war, 296 public choice. See rational choice purchasing power parities, 357, 402 Putin, Vladimir, 131132, 138, 142, 277 278, 285, 431 Qadda, Muammar al-, 132 qualied majority voting (QMV), 191192 quotas, 381 quota subscriptions, 392 race denition of, 24 ecojustice and, 5354 substate conict and, 8283 radiological bombs, 301, 316 Rainbow Warrior, 217, 223 Rand Corporation, 173 rape, 351, 352 rational-actor perspective, 145146 rational choice, 48, 371372, 378380 Reagan, Ronald, 115 realism, 7, 3436 balance of power and, 4243 defensive, 44 denition of, 33 feminist theory on, 349350, 351352 hegemonic stability theory and, 43 offensive, 44, 236 power relationships and, 117121 self-interest and, 5960 realms, 232 realpolitik, 35, 4243 reason, 5657 reciprocity, 169, 321, 385 refugees, 21, 254255, 330331 conventions on, 329 international law on, 243 rights of, 336 regimes, 463 denition of, 38 idealism and, 3738 regime theory, 49, 463 regional hegemony, 237 regional identity, 255 regionalization, 204 regional level analysis, 7778 Regional Seas Programs, 466467 regional trading blocs, 382 relative location, 232233, 234, 249250 religion colonialism and, 421 development and, 428 extremism and, 16
foreign policy and, 143 identity and, 255256 nationalism and, 16, 2225, 68, 281 282 nongovernmental organizations and, 202 as non-state actor, 12 as social/cultural resource, 8 substate conict and, 8384 war and, 298 women in, 347 remote sensing, 256257 renewable energy sources, 462 The Report of the 9/11 Commission of the U.S. Senate and New Forces Shaping the Planet, 5, 133 reputation, 309 resources. See also natural resources allocation of in politics, 58 conict over, 451452 denition of, 7 economic, 78 energy, 8 foreign policy and, 141 political, 7 renewable, 438439, 462 scarce, 7 social and cultural, 8 Ricardo, David, 376 Rice, Condoleezza, 135, 146, 153, 154 right of interference, 215216 rivers, 109 Robinson, Leonard C., 295 rogue states, 124 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 334 Rosenau, James, 67, 75 Rostow, W. W., 51, 412 Runyan, Anne Sisson, 348 Russia chemical/biological weapons in, 303 ecojustice in, 53, 54 economic development in, 430431 foreign policy in, 137138, 141 national identity in, 277278 nationalism in, 285 natural resources in, 440 power of, 142 womens rights in, 344 Rwanda genocide in, 125, 330, 362 resources in, 451452 United Nations in, 321, 361 weapons in, 304, 306 sabotage, 134, 313 Sachs, Jeffrey, 432 Sagan, Scott, D., 325 sanitation, 448, 449 satellites, 256257 Saudi Arabia, 108 Save the Children, 218 Schrder, Gerhard, 132 scientic organizations, 202 scientic revolution, sustainable development and, 443454 Scott, Shirley, 205 second-strike capability, 319 Second World, 410 Secretariat, UN, 178, 180 secretariats, 168 secretary-general, UN, 178 secular, 143 security collective, 10, 49, 124125 economic, 39 environmental, 353354, 467 European Union, 184 gender bias in, 349352 health and, 110111 international organization membership and, 166167 neorealism on, 44 political geography and, 249252 realism on, 3436, 4245 territorial, 135136, 139 wars for, 294 Security Council, UN, 171175, 179, 181 182
security dilemma, 44 self-determination, 82, 268269, 273, 274, 285 separation of powers, 16 separatist movements, 272273 Serbs, 255256, 283 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), 3, 449 in China, 128 sex, 349 sex trade, 21, 331 Sharia, 2425, 150 shatter belt, 238 Shell, 221, 222 Shiva, Vandana, 353, 456 smallpox, 448 Smith, Adam, 343, 412 Smith, Anthony D., 266 social and cultural development, 407 social capital, 39 socialism, 47, 143, 348. See also Marxism social justice movements, 352353 social overhead capital, 420 social resources, 8 social status, 342343, 421 social sustainability, 52 soft power, 100101 solar power, 462 Somalia, UN intervention in, 173 South, the, 177 sovereignty, 45 conventions and, 341 denition of, 4 European Union and, 193 feminist theory on, 350351 globalization and, 156158 intergovernmental groups and, 169 international law on, 70 nongovernmental organizations and, 215216, 225 non-state actors and, 7677, 202 popular, 273 of states, 65 substate actors and, 81 United Nations and, 174175 weakening of, 6667 Soviet Union Afghanistan and, 90 collapse of, 123124 Cuban missile crisis, 8586, 145146 imperialism and, 4647 nationalism in, 267 sustainable development in, 39 Spain ethnic nationalism in, 280281 terrorism in, 12, 101102, 320 Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), 392 sports, nationalism and, 268 Sri Lanka, 24, 39, 345 stability, 113114, 197 Stalin, Joseph, 143 Stanton, Elizabeth Dacy, 343 Starbucks, 221 state level analysis, 7879, 90, 142143 state of nature, 334 states in analysis of the international system, 6471 characteristics of, 6467 core objectives of, 135137 decline of, 259260 denition of, 24, 65 failed, 66 globalization and, 156158 inability of to solve problems, 2122 interdependence of, 67 markets and, 372 multinational, 6566 nation-, 65 nations vs., 240, 263264 nongovernmental organizations and, 215225 origins and development of, 6770 political geography and, 239242 primacy of, 116 realism on, 3536 in system level analysis, 7177 vulnerability of, 6667
I6
InDEX
statism, 414 status, 79 Stoessinger, John, 296 Strait of Hormuz, 252, 256 Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), 308 Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START), 308 Streeten, Paul, 51 structural adjustment programs, 394 395 structural arms control, 307309 struggle for power, 67, 8, 910 subjective approaches, 5560 substate level analysis, 8084, 90 Sudanese civil war, 164, 219, 254255, 282, 363, 452 suffrage movement, 343344 suicide bombings, 316 superpowers, 70, 73, 126128 supply and demand, 306307 supranationality, 167169 supranational organizations, 168 surprise, environmental, 446, 447 sustainable development, 3839, 5152, 409, 438443 challenges in, 443456 denition of, 435 as transnational problem, 21 symbiosis, 52 system level analysis, 7177, 9091, 141 142, 144147 Szasz, Andrew, 54 Taliban, 138139, 150 tariff-rate quotas (TRQs), 381 tariffs, 380381 technical barriers to trade, 381 technological monocultures, 445446 technology critical theory and, 56 environmental impact of, 437 green, 459 nationalism and, 6869 natural resources and, 439441 nongovernmental organizations and, 206 sustainable development and, 443454 temperate zone, 108 temperate zone theory, 245246 territoriality, 235 territorial waters, 242 terrorism, 3, 310318 balance of power and, 117 Bush Doctrine and, 153156 centralization/decentralization and, 17 denition of, 10 deterrence and, 320321 domestic, 311 feminist theory on, 352 foreign policy and, 152156 future threats in, 316 goals and tactics of, 311313 information technology and, 1819 international, 311 international efforts against, 315316 as power, 101102 preventive measures against, 314 religious fundamentalism and, 2425 rise of, 124 struggle for power and, 10 as transnational problem, 21 types of, 310311 understanding, 14 war on, 1011, 152156, 236 support for, 155 weapons of mass destruction and, 304 terrorists, 6, 66, 74, 224225 Thatcher, Margaret, 298 Third World, 410. See also developing countries Thirty Years War, 9, 64 Thoreau, Henry, 20 Thucydides, 34
Tibet, 218, 222 Tickner, J. Ann, 350, 352 timing of action, 6 TNCs. See transnational corporations (TNCs) topography, political geography and, 234, 247 torture, 209, 218, 223, 339 trade decits, 380 trade surpluses, 380 trading blocs, 382 transit states, 250 transnational corporations (TNCs), 20, 212214 economic imperialism and, 47 multinational corporations vs., 212 213 as non-state actors, 7475 transnational issues, 2021 denition of, 20 environmental, 54 the state and, 2122 transparency, 215, 216 transportation, 252 treaties Bush Doctrine and, 155 denition of, 4 idealism and, 3738 multinational, 37 Treehuggers, 353 tribalism, 90, 150151, 279 Triple Alliance, 6970 Triple Entente, 70 Truman, Harry, 143 tsunamis, 39 tuberculosis, 359, 448449 Tudjman, Franjo, 283, 296 Turkey, 266, 272 Ukraine, 325, 330 unanimity voting, 172, 191 UNICEF, 197 unipolar systems, 7677, 119, 237, 299 United Kingdom, 132, 152153, 275 United Nations, 170183 authority of, 1011 benets of membership in, 166 Bill of Rights, 338339 budget of, 105106, 179180 bureaucracy in, 180181, 196 Bush Doctrine and, 155 collective security and, 125 Commission on Global Governance, 2728 convention adoption in, 339 Declaration of Human Rights, 209 Development Programme, 197, 427 diplomacy and, 135 economic/social issues and, 175179 effectiveness of, 182183 formation of, 10, 170171 General Assembly, 175, 177178 health programs of, 222 High Commission for Refugees, 331 human rights and, 360364 idealism and, 36 as intergovernmental organization, 162 International Monetary Fund and, 178179 international system and, 70 Kyoto protocol, 54 limitations of, 174175 military forces of, 137, 172174 NGO standing in, 26, 77 peacekeeping by, 172173 pros and cons of, 196197 Regional Seas Programs, 466467 Register of Conventional Arms, 309 Secretariat, 178 secretary-general of, 178 Security Council, 171175, 181182 substates in, 80 voting in, 171172
war and, 321324 women and, 176, 202 World Bank and, 178179 World Commission on Environment and Development, 51 as world government, 2728 United States Bush Doctrine, 153156, 236, 265, 297298 core objectives of, 135136 Cuban missile crisis, 8586, 145146 decision making in, 146147 decline of, 42 diplomacy in, 135 due process in, 335336 European Union trade with, 383 human rights violations in, 219 Hurricane Katrina in, 39 illegal immigration in, 148149 imperialism and, 47 international perceptions of, 155156 Marshall Plan, 185 military power of, 105106 NAFTA and, 163164 national identity in, 278279 nationalism in, 269, 287288 nuclear weapons in, 326 political geography and, 237 presidential character and, 147 resentment of, 122123 soft power of, 100101 as superpower, 70 United Nations and, 179, 180, 196197 Vietnam War and, 112113 war in Iraq, 1011, 16, 5960, 132 war on terrorism and, 9899, 152153 Universal Declaration on Human Rights, 323, 329, 334335, 337, 361362 on justice, 335336 womens rights and, 345, 346 urbanization, 453454 Uruguay Round, 385 utopianism, 36, 45, 50 values development and, 425426 national culture and, 112 politics as allocation of, 58 Western, 427 variability, 446447 Versailles Peace Conference, 10 Vieira de Mello, Sergio, 125 Vietnam War, 112113, 297 violence, 290327. See also terrorism controlling, 318325 deterrence and, 318319 development and, 423426 idealism and, 38 poverty and, 403 Volcker, Paul, 181 volunteerism, 88 voting rules, 168, 171172, 190192 Wahhabi fundamentalism, 139 Wal-Mart, 213, 214 Waltz, Kenneth N., 44, 67 war causes of, 291300 child soldiers in, 330 diversionary theory of, 295 energy-based, 462463 environmental, 451452 failed/failing states and, 294295 liberalism on, 48, 49 nationalism and, 269 over water, 466 perceptions and ideas in, 295298 preemptive, 98, 297298 preventive, 9798, 297298 realism on, 35, 4245 structural causes of, 298299 weapons of, 300310 war crimes, 322323 Warkentin, Craig, 224
water, 405, 464467 agriculture and, 437, 464466 health and, 449 as power, 109 as security, 250 stopping power of, 237238 water stress, 439, 464 wealth, 79 inequality in, 405406, 421422 as power, 107 weapons, 306310 weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), 102, 103, 300302, 319321. See also nuclear weapons Weber, Max, 5, 65 weighted voting, 172, 392393 Westernization, 312313, 427 Westphalia, Treaty of, 4, 9, 6465 whaling, 208209, 224, 226228 White, Theodore, 87 Wilson, Woodrow, 36, 124, 171, 273 wind power, 462 Wohlforth, William C., 237 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 57 women development and, 410 environmental issues and, 456457 feminist theory and, 5758 international law on, 243 international response on, 355360 Marxism and, 338 in Pakistan, 220 rape and, 351, 352 rights of, 331, 342346, 365366, 410 United Nations and, 176, 202 womens movement, 343344 Wood, Denis, 257 Wordsworth, William, 20 World Bank, 50, 178179, 370, 393396 world government, 11, 15, 2728, 3061 World Health Organization (WHO), 175, 359 world politics analysis tools in, 3341 analyzing, 6295 denition of, 58 importance of, 229 intermestic issues and, 16 new forces in, 1826 overview of, 810 power and, 96129 reasons to study, 1317 subjective approaches to, 5560 World Trade Organization (WTO), 178 179, 374, 384387 Doha Round, 382383, 386, 417 economic benets of, 166 neoliberalism and, 50 protests against, 25, 417 worldviews, 138 World War I balance of power after, 910 causes of, 293 European states and, 70 League of Nations and, 171 nationalism and, 272 World War II, 10 causes of, 293 crimes during, 361 European Union and, 185 idealism and, 36 nationalism in, 270 World Wildlife Fund, 222, 227, 386 WTO. See World Trade Organization (WTO) xenophobia, 270, 274 Yeltsin, Boris, 277 Young, Oran, 38 Yugoslavia, 114115, 283, 361 Yunus, Muhammad, 26, 358359 zero-sum game, 3536, 376
Hey, You!
Yes, you.
Not your professor, not your roommate, but you. How many textbooks do you actually find that are written for you? One? Two? Perhaps none? So why read them? But what if a textbook was written for you? Would you read it then? OK, youd probably wait for a professor to assign it so you HAD to. But still, wouldnt it be more fun? Thats the idea behind the Student Choice Edition of World Politics in the 21st Century. Its a book written with input from students like you. I know, youre thinking
(big deal)
but take a look:
What Students [You?] Wanted
Over the past two years students in focus groups from across the country were asked what they wanted in a textbook. Maybe you werent in those groups, but the consensus was overwhelming. What was it students wanted? A book that Reads the way you study Is quick, concise, and easy to understand (shorter chapters!) Reinforces key concepts Offers a truly usable website for online testing and study help HELPS YOU GET A BETTER GRADE!
What Happened
So what happened next? Well, the authors took all this information and created the first book that fully reflects what students want. How did they do this? Well, they created a book that Presents more concepts in quick, bulleted points (like these) Uses highlighting and bolding to make key concepts stand out Puts information in smaller, easier-to-manage chunks Constantly reinforces information so you arent flipping back and forth
A Complete Instructor and Student Support Package

For Instructors
Online Instructors Manual. Written by the authors and based on their extensive classroom experience, each chapter contains a wealth of active and collaborative learning techniques, Internet projects, home assignments, and case study teaching techniques. HMTesting Instructor CD. This CD-ROM contains electronic Test Bank items. Through a partnership with the Brownstone Research Group, HMTestingpowered by Diploma provides instructors with all the tools they need to create, write/edit, customize, and deliver multiple types of tests. Instructors can import questions directly from the Test Bank, create their own questions, or edit existing questions, all within Diplomas powerful electronic platform. Instructor Website. This website offers valuable resources for course preparation and presentation, including downloadable Instructors Manual les and classroom response system (clicker) slides. A news feed provided by the Associated Press provides a steady stream of current events for classroom discussion. Visit the Instructor Website at college.hmco.com/pic/duncanWP. BetweenNations.org. This website is an online learning tool designed specically to engage students in the international political process through a variety of media, including original videos, short-form documentaries, writing excerpts, and additional resources. Students are asked to answer a series of questions in the online Notebook, which records their answers and allows you to keep a record of the assignment. Correlated to the Table of Contents in the text, the site offers instructors two to ve quality homework assignments per chapter and content that engages students and invigorates class discussions. In addition, to keep your students current with world affairs there are news feeds from BBC World News and top stories from the United Nations News Centre.
For Students
BetweenNations.org. Each copy of this book includes passkey access to the valuable resources of BetweenNations.org, a dynamic and user-friendly website providing an array of multi media content and web-based assignments for students. With a narrative approach featuring real people in real-world political environments, the sites video clips and interactive resources bring concepts to life and directly complement the textbook chapters. Students complete assignments on the website and submit their work to instructors with the click of a button. Students will also have access to ashcards to check their comprehension of key terms, practice tests, audio concept study tools for download, and the news feeds from BBC World News and the United Nations.

World Politics in The 21st Century

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

World Politics in The 21st Century

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

World Politics in The 21st Century

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Includes a website with online quizzes, assessment of key concepts, video documentaries and interviews, and news feeds

website: www.Between Nations.org/

Some Last Things

--> -> Before the Fun Begins

This page intentionally left blank

World Politics in the 21st Century

This page intentionally left blank

World Politics in the 21st Century

Houghton Mifin Harcourt Publishing Company

Part 2 Driving Forces in World Politics

Part 3 Significant Issues in 21st Century World Politics

Chapter 1 The Importance of World Politics 2

What Are the Subjective Approaches to c World Politics? 55

Why Study World Politics? c

Relating International Affairs to Your Life 13 Interconnections and Patterns in Politics 15

What New Forces Are Shaping the Planet? c

Chapter 3 Analyzing World Politics 62

What Are the Levels of Analysis? c

Chapter 2 Approaches to World Politics 30

Applying the Levels of Analysis to Understand c 33 International Relations 89

What Theories of World Politics Flow from the c Paradigms? 41

Chapter 4 Power in World Politics 96

Chapter 6 Intergovernmental Actors 160

What Are the Major Elements of Power? c

Why Do Countries Join Intergovernmental c Organizations? 165

Objective (Tangible) Sources of Power 105 Subjective Power Factors 111

What Patterns of Power Relationships Exist c among States? 116

What Is the United Nations, and How Does It Work? c

What Is the European Union, and How Does It Work? c

Chapter 5 Foreign-policy Formation and Execution 130

How Is Foreign Policy Formulated? c

Chapter 7 Non-state Actors 200

What Are the Foreign-policy Repercussions of 9/11? c

What Are the Goals, Strategies, and Tactics of NGOs? c

World Politics in the 21st Century

How Do History and Location Shape Twenty-rst Century c Nationalism? 276

What Is the Relationship between States and NGOs? c

How Do Leaders Use Nationalism in Foreign Policy? c

Chapter 8 Political Geography 230

Chapter 10 Global Violence: Wars, Weapons, Terrorism 290

How Does Geography Impact a States Power and c Security? 244

How Does Geography Shape Human Perceptions? c

What Is Terrorism, and What Can Be Done about It? c

Chapter 9 Nationalisms Power in World Politics 262

How Can Global Violence Be Controlled? c

What Are Free Trade and Protectionism? c

Chapter 11 Human Rights, Women, and Global Justice 328

How Does the Global Financial System Work? c

Why Are Womens Rights Human Rights? c

Chapter 13 The Politics of Development 400

How Do Feminist Theories of International Relations c Address Human Rights? 347

What Theories Explain Rich and Poor Countries? c

What Factors Affect the Politics of Development? c

Chapter 12 International Political Economy and Developed Countries 368

World Politics in the 21st Century

Chapter 14 The Global Environment 434

Endnotes A1 Photo Credits A11

Answers to Test Preppers A12 Name and Subject Index I1

What Are the Challenges to Sustainable c Development? 443