CHAPTER 4: THE GLOBAL INTERSTATE SYSTEM

A. Attributed of Today’s Global System

Claudio and Abinales stated that the world politics today has 4 key attributes:
1. There are countries or states that are independent and govern themselves.
2. These countries interact with each other through diplomacy.
3. There are international organizations, like the United Nations (UN), that facilitate these interactions.
4. Beyond simply facilitating meetings between states, international organizations also take on lives of their
own.

B. Defining Nation-State
Nation-state – Is composed of 2 non-interchangeable terms. Not all states are nations and not all nations are
states.
State – Refers to a country and its government.

Elements of the State:

Population – The state exercises authority over a specific population called citizens.
Territory – A specific place where the state governs.
Government – A state has a structure of government that crafts various rules that people (society) follow.
Sovereignty – The state has sovereignty (supreme power/authority) over its territory. Sovereignty refers to;
a. Internal Sovereignty – No individuals or groups can operate in a given national territory by ignoring the
state. Groups (ex. Churches, Civil Society Organizations, Corporations) and other entities have to follow
the laws of the state where they establish their parishes, offices, or headquarters.
b. External Sovereignty – A state’s policies and procedures are independent of the interventions of other
states (ex. Russia or China cannot pass laws for the Philippines and vice versa).

Nation – Is an “imagined community.” It is limited because it does not go beyond a given “official boundary”
ad because rights and responsibilities are mainly the privilege and concern of the citizens of that nation.
Nations often limit themselves to people who have imbibed a particular culture, spoke a common language,
and live in a specific territory.

“Imagined” – The nation allows one to feel a connection with a community of people even if he/she will
never meet all of them in his or her lifetime.

Most nations strive to become states – “If there are communities that are not states, they often seek some
form of autonomy with their “mother states.”

Single nations with multiple states – The nation of Korea is divided into North and South Korea, whereas the
“Chinese nation” may refer to both the People’s Republic of China (the mainland) and Taiwan.

States with multiple nations – The nation of Scotland, has its own flag and national culture but still belongs
to a state called the United Kingdom.

Nationalist Movements – Have allowed for the creation of nation-states. Nation and state are closely related
because it is nationalism that facilitates state formation.

Sovereignty – One of the fundamental principles of modern politics.

C. The Interstate System

Treaty of Westphalia – A set of agreements signed in 1648 to end the;
Thirty Years’ War – A war between the major continental powers of Europe. After a brutal religious war
between Catholics and Protestants, the Holy Roman Empire, Spain, France, Sweden, and the Dutch Republic
 designed a system that would avert wars in the future by recognizing that the treaty signers exercise
complete control over their domestic affairs and swear not to meddle in each other's affairs.
Napoleon Bonaparte – First major challenge of the Westphalian System. He believed in spreading the
principles of the French Revolution –liberty, equality, and fraternity– to the rest of Europe and thus
challenged the power of kings, nobility, and religion in Europe.
Napoleonic Code – In every country they conquered, the French implemented the Napoleonic Code that
forbade birth privileges, encouraged freedom or religion, and promoted meritocracy in government service.
This system shocked the monarchies and the hereditary elites (dukes, duchesses, etc.) of Europe, and they
mustered their armies to push back against the French emperor.
Battle of Waterloo – Anglo and Prussian armies defeated Napoleon in 1815, ending the latter’s mission to
spread his liberal code across Europe.
Concert of Europe – An alliance of “great powers” –the United Kingdom, Austria, Russia, and Prussia– that
sought to restore the world of monarchical, hereditary, and religious privileges of the time before the French
Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. More importantly, it was an alliance that sought to restore the
sovereignty of states.
Metternich System/Congress System – A series of meetings called among the great powers of Europe to
discuss problems and attempt to resolve issues without violence. Many of the participants found themselves
in open war with one another.
Klemens von Metternich – He initiated the Congress system. He viewed disputes between the great powers
of Europe as dangerous, ones that could lead to war or revolution if they were not dealt with in a diplomatic
manner.

D. Internationalism
- A system of heightened interaction between various sovereign states, particularly the desire for greater
cooperation and unity among states and peoples.

Liberal Internationalism

Immanuel Kant – The first major thinker of liberal internationalism. He argued that without a form of world
government, the international system would be chaotic. Therefore, states must give up some freedoms and
“establish a continuously growing state consisting of various nations which will ultimately include the nations
of the world.” In short, Kant imagined a form of global government.

Jeremy Bentham – Coined the word “international”, advocated the creation of international law that would
govern the interstate relations.

Giuseppe Mazzini – The first thinker to reconcile nationalism with liberal internationalism. He believed in a
Republican government (without kings, queens, and hereditary succession) and proposed a custom of free
nations that cooperated with each other to create an international system. For Mazzini, free, independent
states would be the basis of an equally free, cooperative international system. Mazzini was a nationalist
internationalist, who believes that free, unified nation-states should be the basis of global cooperation.

Woodrow Wilson – (US President 1913-1921) Wilson saw nationalism as a prerequisite for internationalism.
Because of his faith in nationalism, he forwarded the principle of self-determination – the belief that the
world's nations had a right to a free, and sovereign government. Wilson became the most notable advocate
for the creation of the;

League of Nations – At the end of the WW1 in 1918, he pushed to transform the league into a venue for
conciliation and arbitration to prevent another war.

Axis Powers – Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini's Italy, and Hirohito’s Japan – who were ultra-nationalists that had
an instinctive disdain for internationalism and preferred to violently impose their dominance over other
nations. It was in the midst of this war between the Axis Powers and the Allied Powers (composed of United
States, United Kingdom, France, Holland, and Belgium) that internationalism would be eclipsed.
WHO and the International Labor Org. – The League gave birth to some of the more task-specific
international organizations. It would serve as the blueprint for future forms of international cooperation.

The League was the concretization of the concepts of liberal internationalism. From Kant – international
principles, from Mazzini – principles of cooperation and respect among nation-states, from Wilson –
democracy and self-determination. These ideas would re-assert themselves in the creation of the United
Nations in 1946.

Socialist Internationalism

Karl Marx – One of Mazzini’s biggest critics. He did not divide the world into countries but into classes. The
capitalist class referred to the owners of factories, companies, and other means of production. In contrast,
the proletariat class are those who did not own the means of production but instead worked for the
capitalists.

Friedrich Engles – Believed that in a socialist revolution seeking to overthrow the state and alter the
economy, the proletariat “had no nation.” They opposed nationalism because they believed it prevented the
unification of the world's workers. Instead of identifying with other workers, nationalism could make workers
in individual countries identify with the capitalists of their countries.

Socialist International (SI) – A union of European socialist and labor parties established in Paris in

1889. Although short-lived, the SI's achievements included the declaration of May 1 as Labor Day and the
creation of an International Women's Day. Most importantly, it initiated the successful campaign for an 8-
hour workday.

The SI collapsed during World War I as the member parties refused or were unable to join the
internationalist efforts to fight for the war. As the SI collapsed, a more radical version emerged. In the so-
called Russian Revolution of 1917, Czar Nicholas II was overthrown and replaced by a revolutionary
government led by the Bolshevik Party and its leader, Vladimir Lenin. This new state was called the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics or the USSR. The Bolsheviks did not believe in obtaining power for the working
class through elections. Rather, they exhorted the revolutionary “vanguard” parties to lead the revolutions
across the world, using methods of terror if necessary. Today, parties like this are referred to as communist
parties.

Russian Revolution – A period of political and social revolution across the territory of the Russian Empire,
commencing with the abolition of the monarchy in 1917 and concluding in 1923 with the Bolshevik
establishment of the Soviet Union at the end of the Civil War.

Communist International (Comintern) – Lenin established the Comintern to encourage these socialist
revolutions across the world. It served as the central body for directing Communist parties all over the world.
This international was not only more radical than the Socialist International, it was also less democratic
because it followed closely the top-down governance of the Bolsheviks.

Joseph Stalin – Dissolved the Comintern in 1943.

Communist Information Bureau (Cominform) – After the war, Stalin re-established the Comintern. The
Soviet Union took over the countries in Eastern Europe when the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great
Britain divided the war – torn Europe into their respective spheres of influence. The Cominform helped direct
the various communist parties that had taken power in Eastern Europe.

With the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, whatever existing thoughts about communist
internationalism also practically disappeared. For the postwar period, however, liberal internationalism
would once again be ascendant. And the best evidence of this is the rise of the United Nations as the center
of global governance.