The Contemporary World

Instructor: Mr. Richard C. Garcia

2nd Semester AY: 2019-2020

THE GLOBAL INTERSTATE SYSTEM

- The world is compose of many states with different forms of government.

- Studying of political, military, and other diplomatic engagements between two or more
countries is called International relations; Moreover, when they are going to explore
deepening of interaction between states is referred to the phenomenon of
Internationalism.
- According to scholars, decrease in the power of the state and that other actors are
actually becoming powerful.
- This manifests efforts of countries and governments in the world to cooperate and
collaborate together;
- MNCs and NGOs such as Amnesty International, are significant organizations that put into
question the strength of the national economy and global politics.
- Nevertheless, it is important to study international relations as a facet of globalization,
because states/ governments are key drivers of global processes.

GLOBAL GOVERNANCE IN THE 21ST CENTURY

- THE FACTORS BEHIND GLOBAL GOVERNANCE

 The declining power of nation-states

 The flow of digital information of all sorts through the internet;
 Mass migration of people and their entry, often illegally into various nation-states;
 Nation-states have long struggle to problems that deals with interstate system.
- The flow of criminal elements such as drugs, laundered money, sex trafficking is
the strong factors in the call for global politics.

THE ATTRIBUTES OF TODAY’S GLOBAL SYSTEM

- World politics today has four key attributes:

1. There are countries or states that independent and govern themselves;
2. Countries interact with each other through diplomacy;
3. There are International organizations like UN that facilitate these interactions.
4. Facilitating meetings between states, International Organizations also take on the
lives of their own.
- UN task specific agencies like WHO and ILO

- What are the origin of this system?

o The nation-state is relatively a modern phenomenon in human history, and people
did not always organize themselves as countries.

- What then is the difference between nation and state?

o State
 refers to the community of persons permanently occupying a definite portion
of territory, independent form external control, and possessing an organized
government to which greater body of inhabitants renders habitual obedience.
 The state is a political and legal concept.
 It is not subject to external control.
 A single state may consist of one or more nations or people.
  State refers to a country and its government; a state as four attributes:
 Population – called the citizens
 Territory – it governs a specific territory
 Government – crafts various rules that people follow
 Sovereignty – refers to internal and external authority
 Internal no individuals or groups can operate in a given national territory by
ignoring the state.
 External sovereignty means that a state’s policies and procedures are
independent of the interventions of other states.
o Nation
 is an “imagined community”; limited for it has boundaries;
 is a cultural or ethnic concept, which may consist of one or more states.
 is a large group of people who are bound together, and recognize a similarity
among themselves, because of a common culture; in particular, a common
language seems important in creating nationhood.
 a single nation may be made up of several states.

- Interstate System
o The origins of the present-day concept of sovereignty can be traced back with the
Treaty of Westphalia, which was a set of agreements signed in 1648 to end the
“Thirty Years Wars” between the major continental powers of Europe.
o Westphalian system provided stability for the nations of Europe until it faced its
first major challenge by Napoleon Bonaparte – believed in spreading the principles
of the French Revolution – liberty, equality and fraternity.
o Anglo and Prussian armies finally defeated Napoleon in the Battle of Waterloo in
1815;
o To prevent another war, the new system created by the Royal Powers- “The
Concert of Europe,” an alliance of Great powers (United Kingdom, Austria, Russia,
and Prussia restoring the world of monarchical, hereditary, and religious privileges
of time before the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars).
o This system is called, the Metternich system named after the Austrian diplomat,
Klemens von Metternich;
o The Concert’s power and authority lasted form 1815 to 1914 at the dawn of World
War I.

- Internationalism
o A system heightened interaction between various sovereign states with the desire
for a greater cooperation and unity among states and people.
o Divided into broad principles: liberal internationalism and socialist
internationalism.
o The major thinker of Internationalism in the 18th century was Immanuel Kant –
believed that people living together require a government to prevent lawlessness,
without form of world government, international system will be chaotic.
o Kant imagined a form of global government.
o Another British philosopher Jeremy Bentham coined the word “international”
in 1780;
o Advocated the creation of “international law” that would govern the inter-state
relations;
o Believed that objective global legislators should aim to propose legislation that
would create “the greatest happiness of all nations taken together.”
 o Another thinker (19th) that reconcile nationalism with liberal internationalism was an
Italian Patriot Giuseppe Mazzini; believed in a Republican government and
proposed a system of free nations that cooperated with each other to create an
international system.
o A free, independent states would be the basis of an equally free, cooperative
international system .
o Another internationalist in the 20th century was US President Woodrow Wilson –
saw nationalism as a prerequisite for internationalism; forwarded the principle of
“self-determination” that the world’s nation had a right to free, and sovereign
government.
o Became the strong advocate of the League of Nations at the end of WWI in 1919.
o He hoped that these free nations would become democracies able to build a free
system of international system of international relations based on international law
and cooperation; Wilson became the most notable advocate for the creation of the
league of nations.

- League of Nations
o Came into being that same year (1919);
o US was not able to join due to the strong opposition from the senate;
o unable to hinder another war for breaking out and helpless to prevent the onset of
WWII;

- Axis Powers
o Hitler of Germany
o Mussolini of Italy
o Hirohito of Japan
o Who were ultra-nationalists and had an instinctive disdain for internationalism and
preferred violently impose their dominance over nations.

- Allied Powers
o Composed of US, UK, France, Holland, and Belgium

- Failure of the League

o Gave birth to some of the more specific international organizations that are still
around until today.
o The most popular are: WHO, ILO which serve as the blueprint for future forms of
international cooperation.

- Karl Marx
o A German socialist philosopher who was one of the critics of Mazzini; an
internationalist who differ with the latter who did not believed in nationalism;
o He placed a premium on economic equality; did not divide the world into countries
but classes.
o Believed with Engels that in a socialist revolution seeking to overthrow the state
and alter the economy, the “proletariat had no nation.”
o After he died in 1883, his followers soon sought to make his vision concrete by
establishing their international organization, the Socialist International (SI)- a union
of European socialist and labor parties established in Paris in 1889; Achievement:
May 1 as Labor Day and International Women’s Day; and successful 8-hour
work day.
o SI collapsed during WWI
- Russian Revolution of 1917
o After the collapsed of Socialist International, a more radical version emerged.
o Czar Nicolas II was overthrown and replaced by a revolutionary government led by
the Bolshevik Party and its leader, Vlademir Lenin and the new state was called
Union Soviet Socialist Republics or USSR.

- Communist International (Comintern)

o Established by Lenin in 1919 to encourage socialist revolutions across the world.
o Served as the central body directing communist parties over the world.
o Dissolved by Stalin in 1943
- Communist Information Bureau (Cominform)
o Like comintern, it helped direct the various communist parties that had taken power
in Eastern Europe;
o the collapsed of USSR in 1991, communist internationalism also disappeared.

- Conclusion
o Examined the roots of the international system;
o Internationalism is but one window into the broader phenomenon of globalization;
o Increasingly international relations are also facilitated by international organizations
that promote global norms and policies. The most prominent example is the United
Nations.