“A History of Global Politics: Creating an International Order”

The world is composed of many countries or

states, all of them having different forms of government.
Scholar’s study political, military, and other diplomatic
engagements between two countries known as
international relations. Moreover, when they explore the
deepening of interactions between states, they refer to the
phenomenon of internationalization.

Internationalization does not equal globalization,

although it is a major part of globalization – which
encompasses a multitude of connections and interactions
that cannot be reduced to the ties between governments.

The Attributes of Today’s Global System

1. Sovereignty
2. Diplomacy
3. International Organizations
4. IOs take on lives of their own

Nation-State

Not all states are nations and not all nations are states.

State refers to a country and its government which has four attributes:

1. Sovereignty
2. Citizens
3. Territory
4. Government

Nation, according to Benedict Anderson, is an “imagined community” or the

people who have imbibed a particular culture, speak a common language, and live in a
specific territory. 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/her lifetime.

The Interstate System

The origins of the present-day concept of sovereignty can be traced back to the
Treaty of Westphalia, which was a set of agreements signed in 1648 to end the Thirty
Year’s 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.

However, the treaty faced its first major challenge by Napoleon Bonaparte who
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. The Napoleonic Wars lasted from 1803-1815 and they implemented
the Napoleonic Code that forbade birth privileges, encouraged freedom or religion, and
promoted meritocracy in government service.

Anglo and Prussian armies finally defeated Napoleon in the Battle of Waterloo in
1815. The Concert of Europe was an alliance of the “great powers” – the United
Kingdom, Austria, and Prussia – that sought to restore the world of monarchial,
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. Under this Metternich System (named after the Austrian diplomat,
Klemens von Metternich, who was the system’s main architect), the Concert’s power
and authority lasted from 1815 to 1914, at the dawn of World War I.

Internationalism

Internationalism is a desire for greater cooperation and unity among states and people.

Two categories of Internationalism:

1. Liberal Internationalism
2. Socialist Internationalism

Liberal Internationalism

Immanuel Kant - German philosopher who is the first major thinker of liberal
internationalism in the 18th Century and imagined a form of global government.

Jeremy Bentham - British Utilitarian philosopher who coined the term

“international” in 1780 and advocated the creation of “international law” that would
govern the inter-state relations.

Giuseppe Mazzini - Italian patriot who was the first thinker to reconcile
nationalism with liberal internationalism in the 19th century and was both an advocate of
the unification of various Italian-speaking mini-states and a major critic of the Metternich
system. He also believed that free, unified nation-states should be the basis of global
cooperation.

Woodrow Wilson - was a US President from 1913-1921 who became one of the
20th century’s most prominent internationalists. He forwarded the principle of
self-determination (belief that the world’s nations had a right to a free and sovereign
government).

Socialist Internationalism

Karl Marx - German socialist and internationalist philosopher who believed that
any true form of internationalism should deliberately reject nationalism.
Classes in Society = Capitalist vs Proletariat

Friedrich Engels - supported Karl Marx in a socialist revolution seeking to

overthrow the state and alter the economy.

Socialist International - was a union of European socialist and labor parties

established in Paris in 1889. Their achievements included: May 1 as Labor Day, 8-hr
workday, and International Women’s Day.

Vlademir Lenin - leader of the Bolshevik Party during the Russian Revolution in
1917 who overthrown Czar Nicholas II and replaced Russia with a revolutionary
government (beginnings of Communist parties).

Communist International (Cominterm) - served as the central body for directing

Communist parties all over the world in 1919.

Joseph Stalin - successor of Vlademir Lenin who appeased the Allied forces by
dissolving the Cominterm in 1943 but re-established the Communist Information Bureau
(Cominform) after WWII.

References:

▪ Claudio and Abinales (2018) The Contemporary World

▪ https://opus.lib.uts.edu.au/bitstream/10453/3289/1/2006006060.pdf