Understanding Global Political Earthquake Study of Post Cold War International Systemic Transition and Indo US Relations 1st Edition Manoj Soni

Understanding Global Political
Earthquake Study of Post Cold War

International Systemic Transition and
Indo US Relations 1st Edition Manoj
Soni
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmeta.com/product/understanding-global-political-earthquake-study-of-po
st-cold-war-international-systemic-transition-and-indo-us-relations-1st-edition-manoj-s
oni/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...
The US Role in NATO s Survival After the Cold War

Palgrave Studies in International Relations Garey Julie
https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-us-role-in-nato-s-survival-
after-the-cold-war-palgrave-studies-in-international-relations-
garey-julie-2/
The US Role in NATO s Survival After the Cold War

Palgrave Studies in International Relations Garey Julie
https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-us-role-in-nato-s-survival-
after-the-cold-war-palgrave-studies-in-international-relations-
garey-julie/
Rise and Decline of the Post Cold War International

Order Hanns W Maull Editor
https://ebookmeta.com/product/rise-and-decline-of-the-post-cold-
war-international-order-hanns-w-maull-editor/
Financial Cold War A View of Sino US Relations from the

Financial Markets 1st Edition Fok James A
https://ebookmeta.com/product/financial-cold-war-a-view-of-sino-
us-relations-from-the-financial-markets-1st-edition-fok-james-a/
Indo US Relations Steering through the Changing World
Order 1st Edition Shveta Dhaliwal
https://ebookmeta.com/product/indo-us-relations-steering-through-
the-changing-world-order-1st-edition-shveta-dhaliwal/
The Post Cold War World 1st Edition Bailey Maxim
https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-post-cold-war-world-1st-
edition-bailey-maxim/
The Time of Global Politics International Relations as

Study of the Present 1st Edition Christopher Mcintosh.
https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-time-of-global-politics-
international-relations-as-study-of-the-present-1st-edition-
christopher-mcintosh/
Post Cold War Anglo American Military Intervention A

Study of the Dynamics of Legality and Legitimacy 1st
Edition James F D Fiddes
https://ebookmeta.com/product/post-cold-war-anglo-american-
military-intervention-a-study-of-the-dynamics-of-legality-and-
legitimacy-1st-edition-james-f-d-fiddes/
International Law And The Cold War Matthew Craven
https://ebookmeta.com/product/international-law-and-the-cold-war-
matthew-craven/
UNDERSTANDING THE GLOBAL POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE
d!
U O 5 5 0 | q .S cilJ h i u
0LU ^ L j($ n £ > ^ OL|/X\
■ dl d V
c l0 L j0 1 ^ 0 d . h UJ
P U lL jS ^ & jZ n c in ^ j fl LU 5 V p 0 ^ C O Ip 0 Q
Understanding the Global
Political Earthquake
A study o f post-Cold War international systemic
transition and Indo-US relations
MANOJ SONI
Sardar Patel University
Ashgate
Aldershot • Brookfield USA • Singapore • Sydney
First published 1998 by Ashgate Publishing
Reissued 2018 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OXl 4 4RN
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright © Manoj Soni 1998
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are
used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Publisher's Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but
points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.
Disclaimer
The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and welcomes
correspondence from those they have been unable to contact.
A Library of Congress record exists under LC control number:
ISBN 13: 978-1-138-36007-5 (hbk)

ISBN 13: 978-1-138-36012-9 (pbk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-429-43227-9 (ebk)
Contents
List o f Figures vi
List o f Tables vii
Acknowledgements viii
1 Introduction 1
2 International Systemic Transition : A Theoretical
Framework for Analysis 6
3 The Post-Cold War International Systemic Transition 16
4 Understanding a Nation’s Relational Patterns : A Framework
for Analysis 48
5 United States and India After the Cold War 64
6 From Cold War to Hot Peace ? 82
A Note on Appendices 89
Appendix A 90
Appendix B 103
Appendix C 105
Appendix D 116
Bibliography 126
v
List of Figures
Figure 2.1 Determinants of Systemic Transition 14

Figure 4.1 Determinants of Foreign Policy - an Integrated
Conceptual Framework 53
VI
List of Tables
Table 2.1 Mechanisms of Control 9

Table 2.2 Types of International Transitions 12
Table 3.1 Exports inBillionsofU.S. Dollars 38
Table 5.1 India's Export Growth (US $ million) 71
Table 5.2 India's Foreign Trade Data 71
Table 5.3 Potential US Force Levels Under DoD and Aspin Plans 76
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to my distinguished colleague, Dr Harbans Patel, for his co

operation and open-minded guidance during the course of this study.
The American Studies Research Centre(ASRC), Hyderabad, has been
a stimulating and enriching academic resource. I am deeply indebted for all
the assistance that the ASRC so readily and cheerfully extended to facilitate
this research. I am particularly thankful to Dr M Glen Johnson, Dr Issac
Sequeira, Dr B Ramesh Babu, Dr Kausar Azam, Dr Joseph Plakkoottam
and Ms Srinidhi Iyengar. My sincere thanks are also due to Mr Vishwanathan
of the United States Information Service and the American Centre Librarary,
Bombay (now Mumbai) for making some of the most useful journal articles
and books accessible through their extremely efficient mail service.
The colleagues in my University have always shown appreciative
concern about the progress of this study and have thus often activated my
research pursuits. I acknowledge their encouraging and thoughtful concern
and am thankful to all of them and most particularly to Dr Javed Khan for
his crucial, memorable and timely help.
Information Technology Centre, Mogri, has been extremely co-operative
in offering its excellent data processing technology in a serene and inspiring
work environment. I am grateful to the entire team of the Centre and
particularly to Mr Divyesh Sanghani, the Deputy Director, Mr Manoj Patel
and Mr Taranjeet Singh for their unflinching help.
The silent prayers of my guru Shantibhai and my mother Jayshreeben
have been the greatest source of strength throughout this project as well as
my life. My caring and loving wife Prutha has, as always, encouraged my
pursuit with her gentle and soothing support.
With a sense of pride and humbleness of scholarship, I own the
responsibility for this study, for which I thank God.
vm
1 Introduction
A Summary Overview
Imagine that an American has been lying for almost 50 years on a

Procrustean bed. A big gun is fully loaded and ready under his pillow to
shoot any Soviet intruder who might burst in through a window of his
room.
Today, as he is getting up from that bed, he discovers a Soviet in the
room, smiling with an olive branch. He also notices that there are many
other people around him; that his gun is of little use in the crowd; and that
the setting in the room is being re-arranged. Astonished, he congratulates
himself on having apparently deterred any hostile break-in by the Soviet.
His painful bedsores stinging, he is too puzzled to make sense of the changes
and the bustle around him. Gradually, he begins boasting of his ‘victory’
and sets-out to chart a selective policing role for himself in the anarchical
community outside his home.
This metaphorical sketch, in essence, picturizes the vicissitudes of
contemporary international systemic transition as well as American response
and role in the era beginning with the end of the Cold War.
What follows in the succeeding pages is an attempt to understand the
causal dynamics of this systemic transition and its inter-influence with the
relational patterns between India and the United States. This inquiry is to
be aided by theoretical frameworks of comparative natures, specially
developed for the purpose of this study.
Boundaries of the Inquiry
In the wake of the end of the Cold War and disintegration of its bipolar
structure, a protracted debate has been seriously intensified about the
emergent international systemic transition.
For forty years, students and practitioners of international relations
thought and acted in terms of a highly simplified but very useful picture of
world affairs, the Cold War paradigm. Under the guiding constructs of this
1
2 Understanding Global Political Earthquake
paradigm, the world was divided between one group of relatively prosperous
and largely democratic societies, led by the United States engaged in a
highly pervasive and multi-faceted rivalry with another group of relatively
poor, communist societies led by the Soviet Union. Much of this rivalry
resulted into conflicts, most of which occurred in the Third World composed
of countries which were often poor, politically unstable, recently independent
and a large number of them claimed to be nonaligned under the leadership of
India.
The Cold War paradigm could not account for everything that went on
in world politics. There were many anomalies (Huntington 1993), to use
Kuhn’s term and, at times, the paradigm blinded scholars and statesmen to
major developments of global significance. Yet, as a simple model of global
politics, it accounted far more than any of its rivals, as it became an
indispensable starting point for thinking about international relations. So
overarching was its influence that it came to be accepted almost universally
and shaped the thinking about world politics for nearly two generations.
All this appeared to be changing rapidly and, at times, astonishingly so
after 1989. Since then, a number of dramatic events culminating in the
disintegration of the Soviet Union and its ‘empire’, made the Cold War
paradigm intellectual history. There is clearly a need today for a new model
that would help us to order and to understand the resultant central
developments of international systemic transition, understood most basically
in its structural sense, and the causal dynamics that has actually brought it
on.
The present study attempts to reach that understanding by making a
systematic analysis using a theoretical framework. I believe that a theoretical
framework is the most essential tool, not only for understanding the causal
dynamics of contemporary events but also for predicting and pre-empting
the future course of events to a certain degree.
The probable consequences of the current systemic transition are not
merely abstract academic puzzles, of interest only to theoreticians. The
prospects of international order under different distribution of national
capabilities will affect the ways in which policymakers visualize the “menu
of choices” (Russet and Starr 1989) opened by the advent of a system of
depolarized global power. Crucially related to this depolarization of
international power configuration is the prospect of Indian and American
capability to act in and influence bilateral and international relations in a
changing global scenario through the twenty-first century. A systematized
inquiry - systematized by a theoretical framework - into the emergent
prospects of Indo-US relations with reference to the international systemic
Introduction 3
transition is a timely one, in as much as most observers (for example,

Eagleburger 1989, House 1989) now predict that a truly multipolar system
is on the horizon. This system is fraught with great challenges that threaten
to end the longest period of great-power peace since the modem interstate
system was created by the treaty of Westphalia in 1648. What John Gaddis
(1991) calls the “long peace” is a propitious but a largely unanticipated outcome
whose preservation may be contingent on an adequate understanding of the
relationship between system structure and stability (Kegley, Jr.,and Raymond
1992). This study attempts at a systematized inquiry with the help of a
conceptual framework into the emergent prospects of Indo-US relations in
the context of the present systemic transition.
Significance of Theorization
The study of international relations, like some other social sciences, does
not yet resemble the hard sciences (Mearsheimer 1990). Our stock of
theories is spotty and often poorly tested. The condition required for the
operation of established theories are often poorly understood. Moreover, as
political phenomena are highly complex, precise political predictions are
impossible without very powerful theoretical tools. Nevertheless, I believe
that social sciences should offer predictions on the occurrence of momentous
and fluid events like those unfolding at present times.
Princes have always sought the wisdom of soothsayers for the purpose
of learning what the future holds for them and their kingdoms. The
foretellings, on the whole, have been disappointing. Surprise remains one
of the few things which the assiduous efforts of soothsayers have failed to
ward off.
Surprise is still very much with us. The abmpt end of the cold war and
the sudden disintegration of the Soviet Union astonished almost everyone,
whether in government, academic life, the media, think tanks, or the citizens
in general. Although there was nothing inherently implausible about these
events, the cold war had to end sometime, and since communism’s failures
had been obvious for years, the fact that these phenomenal events arose
unexpectedly and rapidly suggests that deficiencies persist in the means by
which modem day princes and their soothsayers seek to discern the course
of world affairs (Gaddis 1992/93).
No modem soothsayer, would of course, aspire to total clairvoyance.
Truly, we do not have as yet an equivalent of Isaac Asimov’s (1951)
famous character, the mathematician Hari Seldon, whose predictive powers
were so great that he was able to leave precise holographic instructions for
his followers, which were to be consulted at successive intervals, decades
after his death. However, historians political scientists, economists,
psychologists, strategists and even mathematicians can claim to have the
power of detecting patterns in the behaviour of nations and the individuals
who lead them. An awareness of these, they have assured us, will better
equip statesmen and states to deal with the dynamics of world politics. The
following pages contain a cogitative and systematic attempt to realize that
claim.
The end of the cold war and the beginning of the international systemic
transition, which is still progressing presents an opportunity and, perhaps,
even the indispensability of realizing those claims. This event is of such
importance that no approach to the study of international relations, claiming
both foresight and competence, should have failed to see it coming. None
actually did so. And this fact ought to raise questions about the tools and
methods we have developed for trying to understand political dynamics of
the world.
This study advances two theoretical frameworks with a view to
understanding and possibly predicting international systemic transition and
the determinants of foreign policy and bilateral relations between India and
the United States as well as between each of them individually and others. I
advance these frameworks with humility and admit that the wise soothsayers
in future will undoubtedly improve on this work with wisdom of hindsight
and the courage of foresight.
References
Asimov, Isaac. (1951), Foundations, Ballantine Books, New York.
Eagleburger, Lawrence S. (1989), ‘The 21st century: American Foreign Policy
Challenges’, in Edward K. Hamilton (ed), America's Global Interests: A New
Agenda, Norton, New York, pp. 242-60.
Gaddis, John Lewis. (1991), Great Illusions. ‘The long peace, and the Future ofthe
International System,’ in Charles W. Kegley (ed), The Long Post War Peace,
Harper Collins, New York, pp 25-55.
Gaddis, John Lewis. (1992/93), ‘International Relations Theory and the End ofthe
Cold War’, International security 17, pp. 5-58.
House, Karen Eliot. (1989), ‘As Power is Dispersed Among Nations, Need for
Leadership Grows’, Wall Street Journals ebruary 21, pp. A l, A10.
Huntington, Samuel. (1993), ‘The Clash of Civilizations’, Foreign Affairs.
Kegley, Jr. Charles W., and Gregory A. Raymond. (1992), ‘Must We Fear A Post-
Introduction 5
Cold War Multipolar System ?’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 36, pp. 573-
585.
Mearsheimer, John J. (1990), ‘Back to the Future : Instability in Europe After the
Cold VJdiC, International Security 15, pp. 5-56.
Russett, Bruce M., and Harvey Starr. (1989), World Politics: The Menufor choice,
Freeman, New York.
2 International Systemic
Transition : A Theoretical
Framework for Analysis
Rationale for a Framework
What does it mean to have a working knowledge of word politics, an ability

to comprehend new and unexpected events and place them in a larger
perspective that encompasses past trends, present developments and future
possibilities? The most obvious answer is that comprehension requires
familiarity with the facts. Such an answer, however, has little utility because
it is equally obvious that the facts do not speak for themselves; and that the
observer must structure them and interpret them in terms of a certain
framework, thereby infusing meaning into some facts and dismissing the
others as irrelevant.
A framework refers to such an organization of data and inter-influencing
variables that try to explain and help in attempting a prediction. A prime
purpose of a theoretical framework is to help create understanding by
ordering facts and concepts into some meaningful pattern. Gathering of
facts and description of events create understanding of these facts and events.
These have little broader application otherwise. Only when these facts
and events are fitted against some theoretical framework of concepts, can
they be seen essentially as illustrations of general and recurring process in
international politics. There are in short, no self-evident facts : no facts
that are so absolute that they will be interpreted by all observers in the
same way. Instead, facts acquire meaning because the observer gives
them meaning through some theoretical framework.
The need for a better understanding of political transition, especially
international political transition, was well set forth by Wilbert Moore in the
International Encyclopedia o f the Social Sciences : “Paradoxically, as
the rate of social change has accelerated in the real world of experience,
the scientific disciplines dealing with man’s actions and products have tended
to emphasize orderly interdependence and static continuity” (Moore 1968).
The natural development of any science is from static analysis to dynamic
6
International Systemic Transition: A Theoretical Frameworkfo r Analysis 7
analysis. Static theory is simpler, and its proposition are easier to prove.
Unfortunately, until the static of a field of inquiry are sufficiently well
developed and one has a good grasp of repetitive processes and recurrent
phenomena, it is difficult to proceed to the study of dynamics. From this
perspective, systematic study of international relations is a fairly recent
field. The question whether or not our current understanding of these static
aspects is sufficiently well advanced to aid in the development of a dynamic
theory poses a serious challenge to the present enterprise.
In the present study I take a very different stance, a stance based on
the assumption that the fundamental nature of international relations has
not changed over a millennia. International relations continue to be a
recurring struggle for power and wealth among independent actors in an
anarchic society. The classic history of Thucydides is as meaningful a guide
to the behaviour of states today as it was when it was written in the fifth
century B.C. Yet important changes have taken place.
The purpose of this study is to explore these changes, especially in the
post-cold War era. In this endeavour I shall seek to develop an understanding
of the causal dynamics of international systemic transition. I do not pretend
to develop a general theory of international relations that will provide an
overarching explanatory statement. Instead, my attempt is to provide a
framework for thinking about international systemic transition and its causal
determinants. This theoretical-intellectual framework is intended to be an
analytical device that will help to order and explain the present developments
as well as be a guiding construct of analysis and foresight of the past and
future respectively. However, it does not constitute a rigorous scientific
explanation of systemic transition at the international level. The ideas on
this transition presented in this study are based on observations of historical
experience rather than a set of hypotheses that have been tested
scientifically by historical evidence; they are proposed as a plausible account
of how international systemic transition occurs.1
The Nature of the International System

The term “international system” has a number of ambiguities. It can cover
a range of phenomena from sporadic contacts among states to the tightly
interlocked relationships of the late nineteenth century Europe. Until the
dawn of the modem era, there was no single international system, but rather
several international systems, with little or no contact one with the other.
Thus, except for the modern world, one cannot really speak of the
international system.
In this study the term “international system” is used to refer to the

compartmentalized systems of the past, as well as the worldwide system in
evidence in the present. The definition of international system as used
here is adapted from the definition used by Robert Mundell and Alexander
Swoboda(1969): “A system is an aggregation of diverse entities united by
regular interaction according to a form of control !” According to this
formulation, an international system has three primary aspects. In the first
place, there are the “diverse entities”, which may be processes, structures,
actors, or even attributes of actors. Second, the system is characterized by
“regular interaction”, which can vary on a continuum from infrequent
contacts to intense interdependence of states, with a number of vicissitudes
in-between. Third, there is some “form of control” that regulates behaviour
and may range from informal rules of the system to formal institutions.
Furthermore, the system, by implication, must have boundaries that set it
apart from other systems and its larger environment. Let us consider each
of these aspects in little more detail.
Diverse Entities
As noted earlier, the principal entities or actors are states, although other
actors of transnational nature may also play important roles under certain
sets of circumstances. But these roles, in the ultimate analysis, can be
explained only in the terms of the mechanisms of subtle state control. The
nature of state itself also changes over time, and the character of the
international system is largely determined by the type of state-actor: city-
states, empires, nation-states, etc.
Regular Interactions
Every international system is characterized by various types of interactions

among its constituent elements. The nature, regularity, and intensity of
these interactions vary greatly for different international systems with
different influential determinants. The interactions among the actors in the
system may range from intermittent armed conflict to the high levels of
economic, political, strategic and cultural interdependence obtainable in the
modem world. All these and many other aspects of interactions and
relationships constitute the functioning of the international system.
In the modem world, these interactions among states have become
increasingly intense and organized, principally because of the revolutionary
International Systemic Transition: A Theoretical Framework fo r Analysis 9
advances in transportation and communication which tend to transform the

world into a global-town. International transactions and relationships are
governed, by and large, through formally agreed norms and rules, or
conventions and customs. In particular, economic interdependence, or what
may be called the pattern of international distribution of global resources,
has evolved as one of the most important features of the international system
in the contemporary world. The evolution and functioning of the patterns
of international distribution of global resources have become critical aspects
of the process of the international systemic transition.
Form of Control
Undoubtedly, the most controversial aspect of the definition of the term

“international system” as used in this study is the notion of control over the
system. A view prevalent among many scholars of international relations
is that the essence of international relations is precisely the absence of
control. International politics, in contrast with domestic politics, is said to
take place in a condition of anarchy. There is no authority or control over
the behaviour of the actors, and many writers believe that it is a contradiction
in terms to speak of control over the international system. Because of the
importance of this issue as one of the central themes of the argument in
this study, it requires a little more of an extended treatment than the other
aspects of the international system.
Although the international system is one of anarchy (i.e., absence of
formal governmental authority), the relationships among states have a high
degree of order and the system does exercise an element of control over
behaviour of states (Bull 1977, Young 1978). However, the nature and
extent of this control differs from the nature and extent of the control that
domestic societies exercise over the behaviour of individuals. The following
table shows the control mechanisms in domestic and international systems.
Table 2.1 Mechanisms of Control

Domestic International
Government Dominance of great powers
Authority Hierarchy of prestige
Property rights Division of territory
Law Rules of the system
Domestic economy International economy
When we speak of “control” over the international system, the term

“control” must be understood to be a reference to “relative control” or
“seeking to control”, or at the least “seeking to influence”. No state or
empire has ever completely controlled an international system; for that
matter, no domestic government, not even the most totalitarian, has
completely controlled the domestic society. The degree of control obviously
differs also in various aspects of international relations and over time
(Keohane and Nye 1977). If a state or a group of states were completely
in control of a domestic or international society, change would not take
place. Indeed, it is precisely because a number of varied forces escape the
control of dominant groups and states that a transition —be it domestic or
international —really takes place.
Control or influence over the international system is the resultant fallout
of three factors. In the first place, governance of the system rests on the
distribution of power among political coalitions. In domestic societies these
coalitions are primarily classes, strata, or interest groups, and the distribution
of power among these entities is a principal aspect of the governance of
domestic societies. In the international society, the configuration of power
among states determines who governs the international system, how and for
what purpose.
The second component in the control of an international system is the
hierarchy of prestige among states. In international relations, prestige is
the functional equivalent of the role of authority in domestic politics. Like
the concept of authority, prestige is closely linked to the concept of power
but is distinct from it. As defined by Max Weber, power is the capability of
an actor within a social relationship to carry out his own will despite
resistance, and regardless of the basis on which his capability rests. Authority
(or prestige) is the “probability that a command with a given specific content
will be obeyed by a given group of persons” (Dahrendrof 1959). Thus,
both power and prestige function to ensure that the lesser states in the
system will obey the commands of or be influenced by the dominant state
or states.
Prestige, rather than power, is the everyday currency of international
relations, much as authority is the central ordering feature of a domestic
society. As E.H. Carr put it, “prestige is enormously important,” because
“if your strength is recognized, you can generally achieve your aims without
having to use it” (Quoted in Wight 1979, p.98). It is for this reason that in
the conduct of diplomacy and the resolution of conflicts among states, there
is relatively little use of overt force in actual terms. Rather, the bargaining
among states and the outcomes of negotiations are determined principally
by the relative prestige of the parties involved. However, behind such

negotiations there is the implicit mutual recognition that deadlock at the
bargaining table could lead to a decision on the battlefield, not necessarily
physical but even psychological (Kissinger 1961).
In addition to the configuration of power and the hierarchy of prestige,
the third component of the governance of an international system is a set of
rights and rules that govern, or atleast influence, the interactions among the
states (Hoffman 1965).
As far back as our knowledge extends, states have recognized certain
rules of the system. These rules have ranged from simple understanding
regarding the spheres of influence, the conduct of diplomacy and commerce
to the elaborate codification of international law in our own era.
Every system of human interaction requires a minimum set of rules and
the mutual recognition of rights. The need for rules and rights arises from
the basic human condition of scarcity of material resources and the need for
order in human affairs. In order to minimize conflict over the distribution
of scarce goods and to facilitate fruitful interactions among individuals,
every social system creates rules and laws for governing behaviour. This
is as true of international system as for domestic political system (Bull
1977).
Types of International Transitions
It is obvious that international transitions can be and are of varying

degrees of magnitude and that individuals may place quite different weights
on their significance. For example, throughout the history of European
diplomacy, there was a continuous succession of differing configurations
of power, a variety of actors, and changing memberships of political
alliances. As these transitions were of differing magnitudes, theorists have
had the task of classifying them before formulating a theory to explain
them. Thus, whereas Arthur Bums (1968) regarded many of these
transitions, such as the emergence of revolutionary France and the
unification of Germany in 1871, as merely modifications within the European
State System, Richard Rosecrance (1963) classified them as transition of
the international system itself.
Although a typology of transitions is largely an arbitrary matter, the
classification used must be a function of one’s theory of transition and of
one’s own definition of the entity that changes. Thus, in this study, I draw
on my earlier definition of an international system to distinguish three broad
types of transition characteristic of international system as presented in the

following Table.
Table 2.2 Types of International Transitions
Type Factors that change

1. Interaction Transition Interstate Processes
2. System Transition Nature of Actors
3. Systemic Transition Governance of System
The first type of transition that may take place is in the form of a
change in the form of regular interactions or processes among the entities in
an international system and this type of transition may be called Interaction
Transition. The second type of transition is a transition in the nature of the
actors and/or diverse entities that compose an international system, which
may be called System Transition. The third type of transition is a
transition in the form of control or governance of an international system
that may be called Systemic Transition. The following elaboration should
make the distinction between these transitions more clear.
Interaction Transition
By interaction transition, we mean modifications in the political, economic

and other interactions or processes among actors in the international system.
Whereas this type of transition does not involve a change in the overall
hierarchy of power and prestige in the system, it usually does entail changes
in the rights and rules embodied in an international system. However, it
should be noted that interaction transitions do frequently result from the
efforts of states or other actors to accelerate or forestall more fundamental
changes in an international system (Keohane and Nye 1977).
System Transition
System transition involves a major change in the character of the international

system itself. The character of the system, is a reference primarily to the
nature of the principal actors or diverse entities composing the system.
The character of international system is identified by its most prominent
entities: empires, nation states or multinational corporations. The rise and
decline of the various types of entities and state systems must, of necessity,
be a fundamental concern of a comprehensive theory of international
transition. The study of such transitions properly and systematically would
necessitate a truly comparative study of international relations and systems.
Systemic Transition
It is with this type of transition that we are fundamentally concerned in the
present study.
Systemic transition involves a change in the governance of an
international system. That is to say, it is a change within the system rather
than a change o f the system itself. It entails three fundamental changes in
the international system: change in the international configuration of power,
change in the capability of major international actors, and change in the
pattern of international resource and wealth distribution. Thus, whereas
the focus of system transition is the rise and decline of state systems, the
focus of systemic transition is the rise and decline of the determining
constructs that govern the particular international system.
The theoretical framework developed here in order to understand
international systemic transition, rests on the assumption that the history of
international system is the history of systemic conflict among the dominant
actors, waged under determining influence of the three constructs, spelt
earlier, that govern the particular international system and provide order
and stability as an equilibrium attained out of systemic conflict. I shall
argue that the evolution of any system has been characterized by these
three determining constructs governing the system and shaping the patterns
of international interactions by establishing the rules of the system. Thus,
the essence of international systemic transition involves a change in the
determining constructs that govern the system and its conflict to reach a
new state of equilibruim for attaining order in the international system.
Although scholars of international relations, and diplomatic historians
have devoted considerable attention to this type of transition, seldom have
they addressed the problem of systemic transition in a systematic,
comparative or theoretical vein. Most of these studies have rather tended
to be historical or descriptive.
There is a need for a comparative study of international systems that
concentrates on systemic transition in different types of international systems.
The diagram on the next page shows the structure and interrelationship
of determining constructs of systemic environment vis-a-vis systemic order.
Chapter 3 presents an analysis of the post- cold War international systemic
transition using the determinants shown in the diagram. Basically, the diagram
attempts to show the inter-influence between amd amongst the three
determinants viz., international power configuration, capability of major actors
in the international system and the pattern of international wealth and
resource distribution. It is as result of the equilibrium attained out of the
inter-influence of these three determinants that systemic order is achieved.
Figure 2.1 Determinants of Systemic Transition
: Influence
Such a comparative examination is obviously beyond the scope of this

study. At best, this study may succeed in presenting a better understanding
of the nature and process of the post-Cold War international systemic
transition as a historical process and point the way to empirical studies of
transition on a comparative scale. If this can be achieved, then the purpose
of this humble endeavour will have been fulfilled.
Note
1. However, in principle these ideas are translatable into specific testable
hypotheses. I would argue that this is possible at least for a substantial
fraction of them.
References
Bull, Hedley. (1977), The A narchical Society - A stud y o f order in w o rld Politics,
New York: Columbia University Press.
Bums, Arthur Lee.( 1968), O f P ow ers a n d their politics-A C ritique o f Theoretical
Approaches, N .J.: Prentice-Hall.
Dahrendorf, Ralf.(1959), Class a nd Class C onflict in In d u stria l Society. Stanford:
Stanford university Press.
Hoffman, Stanley. (1985), ‘International Systems and International Law’, in The
State o f War - E ssays on Theory a n d P ractice o f In tern a tio n a l Politics.
(ed),88-122. New York : Praeger.
Keohane, Robert 0.,andNye, Joseph S. (1977), P ow er an d Interdependence-W orld
P olitics in Transition, Boston : Little, Brown.
Kissinger, Henry A. (1961), The N ecessity F or Choice P rospects o f A m erican
F oreign Policy, New York : Harper & Row.
Moore, Wilbert E. (1968), Social Change. In D a v id Sills (ed), In tern a tio n a l
Encyclopedia o f the Social Sciences, Vol.14,365-75, New York: Crowell Collier
and Macmillan.
Mundell, Robert A., and Swoboda, A K. (1969), (eds), M onetary P roblem s o f
In ternational Economy, Chicago : University of Chicago Press.
R osecrance, R ichard. (1963), A c tio n a n d R e a c tio n in W o rld P o litic s -
In ternational System s in Perspectives, Boston : Little, Brown.
Wight, Martin. (1977), Systems o f States, edited by Hedley Bull. Leicester: Leicester
University Press.
Young, Oran. (1978), ‘Anarchy and Social Choice : Reflections on International
polity’, World Politics. 30 : 241-63.
3 The Post-Cold War
International Systemic
Transition
The Transformations in History : A Broad Sketch
Every few hundred years in Western history, there occurs a sharp

transformation. Within a few short decades, society rearranges itself in
terms of its world view, its basic values, its social and political structures,
its arts, its key institutions etc. Fifty years later, there is a new world. And
the people born then cannot even imagine the world in which their
grandparents lived and into which their own parents were bom. We are
currently living through such a transformation, triggered by the post-Cold
War international systemic transition.
One such transformation occurred in the thirteenth century, when the
Western world suddenly became centered on the new city. There was the
emergence of the city guilds as the new dominant social class; the revival of
long distance trade; the appearance of the Gothic, an eminently urban new
architecture; the new painting of the Sienese; the shift to Aristotle from
theology as the foundation of new wisdom; the new urban universities
replacing the monastries in their rural isolation as the centres of culture;
the new urban religious orders, the Dominicans and the Franciscans, the
carriers of religion, of learning, of spirituality; and within a few decades the
shift from Latin to the vernacular took place, with Dante creating a European
literature.
Two hundred years later, the next transformation came about. It
happened in the sixty years between Gutenberg’s invention of printing with
movable type and with it the printed book in 1455, and Luther’s Protestant
Reformation in 1517. These were the years of the blossoming of the
Renaissance; of the rediscovery of Antiquity; of the discovery of America;
of the first standing army (the Spanish Infantry) since the Roman Legions;
of the reinvention of the study of anatomy and with it scientific inquiry in
general; and of the widespread adoption of Arabic numerals in the West
16
The Post-Cold War International Systemic Transition 17
(which originally is an Indian contribution) providing new ease in computation.

And again, no one living in the 1520s could easily have imagined the world
in which his grandparents had lived and into which his parents had been
bom.
The next transformation began in 1776, the year of the American
Revolution, of Watt’s perfected steam engine, and of Adam Smith’s Wealth
o f Nations. It came to a conclusion forty years later, at Waterloo during
which almost all of the modem “isms” were bom. During these years,
capitalism, communism and industrial revolution emerged. These forty years
produced, in effect, a new European civilization. Again, no one living in the
1820s could easily imagine the world in which his grandparents had lived
and into which his parents had been bom. One had to read novels to learn
about that world.
Our time, about 200 years later, is again such a period of transformation.
Only this time it is not confined to Western society and Western history.
Indeed, one of the fundamental changes is that there is no longer a “Western”
history or a “Western” civilization. There is only world history and world
civilization — the creation, to be sure, of Western history and Western
civilization. We are indeed still in the middle of this transformation and, if
history is any guide, it will not be completed until 2010 or 2020. But it has
already changed the political, economic and moral landscape of the world.
Again, no one bom in the 1990s will easily imagine the world in which his
grandparents grew up, or the world into which his own parents (i.e. my
generation) were bom.
Understanding the Post-World War II International System

At the end of the World War II, everyone’s expectations of post-war
international politics were influenced by the experience of World War I.
Most people assumed that, as before, the war would be followed by complex
negotiations that would lead to a peace treaty with the defeated countries
and a reconstruction of the international system. Nearly a decade elapsed
before it became clear that such a settlement would not take place, but
soon after the end of the war, it was apparent that disagreements between
the US and the soviet governments about its provisions were much greater
than had been anticipated. The term “Cold War” was coined by Walter
Lippmann( 1972) to describe that initial confusing period of conflict between
the United States and the Soviet Union over the post-war world order.
This was a time of considerable debate in the United States over who was
responsible for those disagreements and how serious they were. It was a
debate that was ended by the Korean War and reopened by the war in
Vietnam ( Wagner 1993 ).
The phrase “the Cold War” eventually came to stand for a vague,
undifferentiated relationship of hostility between the United States and the
Soviet Union. Karl Von Clausewitz had defined war as the continuation of
diplomacy by other means. By extension, the Cold War can be defined as
warfare by other (non-lethal) means (Brzezinski 1992 ). Nonetheless,
warfare it was! And the stakes were monumental. Geopolitically, the
struggle, in the first instance, was for control over the Eurasian landmass
and, eventually, even for global preponderance. Each side understood that
either the successful ejection of the one from the western and eastern
fringes of Eurasia or the effective containment of the other would ultimately
determine the geostrategic outcome of the conflicting and ideologically-
motivated conceptions of social organization and even of the human being
itself. Not only geopolitics but also philosophy in the deepest sense of the
self-definition of mankind were very much at stake.
However, the main points of dispute between the United States and the
Soviet Union continued to be centered around issues about ending the second
World War. The most important of these issues concerned the future of
Germany and Japan. The German question proved the more intractable of
the two because Soviet troops controlled part of Germany at the end of the
war, and there were no Soviet troops in Japan (Wagner 1980). Thus, as
Lippmann argued in his articles on the Cold War, the future of Germany
became the main issue between the United States and the Soviet Union:
Until a settlement which results in (Russian) withdrawal is reached,

the Red Army at the centre of Europe will control eastern Europe
and will threaten western Europe. In these circumstances American
power must be available... to hold the whole Russian military machine
in check, and to exert mounting pressure in support of a diplomatic
policy which has as its concrete objective a settlement that means
withdrawal (Lippmann 1972/
It took longer to achieve that objective than most people anticipated at the
time when Lippmann wrote those words in a series of newspaper articles.
Indeed, by the time it was achieved recently, most people across the world
had come to assume that it would never happen. The Cold War nevertheless
can be best understood as a prolonged substitute for the post World War II
peace conference that never took place. The partial European settlement
that led to the Helsinki accords did not end the Cold War because it did not
alter the situation Lippmann described. The Cold war did end, however,
when Soviet control over eastern Europe collapsed and the Soviet military
threat to western Europe ceased to be such a pressing concern.
Accompanying the appearance of the Cold War was the division of the
world into two hostile camps separated by an ideological divide. To many
people, this was an ominous development, since it implied not only that the
interests of these two blocs were in conflict but also that the conflict was
not mitigated by any other cleavages cutting across the line dividing the
two blocs. Thus the conflict was severe, and the use of shifting alliances
to redress imbalances of power between coalitions was no longer possible.
Some people used the term “bipolarity” to characterize the situation (Wagner
1993).
From the very beginning, the term “bipolarity” has been used in two
very different ways : (1) as a shorthand for “polarization” of the world into
two hostile camps as a result of the Cold War, and (2) as a description of
the distribution of power among individual states (Waltz 1964). This can
easily lead to confusion between two different theses about the relation
between bipolarity and the Cold War. According to the first meaning,
bipolarity was the result of the Cold War in that the extension of the Soviet
influence led to the organization of an opposing bloc. It is not surprising,
then, that bipolarity should have ended when the Cold War did. According
to the second meaning, the Cold War was the result of bipolarity, since the
positions of the United states and the Soviet Union in the international
system meant that each saw the other as its principal adversary. Thus it
would not be surprising if the end of bipolarity should lead to the end of the
Cold War.
Be it as it may, the fact today is that after some forty years of political
combat, including some secondary military skirmishes, the Cold War did
indeed come to a final end.
Today we have advanced far enough into the new post-capitalist/post
Cold War society —for the post-industrial/post-bipolar society is really that
—to review and revise the social, economic and political history of the age
of capitalism and of the nation-state. To foresee what the post-capitalist /
post-Cold War world would itself look like is, however, still very risky.
What new questions will arise, and where the big new issue will lie, we
believe, we can already discover with a high degree of probability. We can
also, in many areas, describe what will not work. It is another matter that
answers are, in most cases, still hidden in the future. One thing we can be
sure of is that the world that is emerging out of the present transition process,
which includes rearrangement of values, of beliefs, of social and economic
structures, of political concepts and systems, of world views, will be different

from anything anyone imagined. In some areas —especially in society and
its structure —basic shifts have already occurred. That the new world will
be a non-socialist and a post-capitalist world seems to be practically certain.
In politics, we have already shifted from the 400 years of the sovereign
nation-state to a pluralism in which the nation-state will be one rather than
the unit of political integration in international system. It will be a component,
though still a key component in what Peter Drucker calls a “post-capitalist
polity”, a system in which transitional, regional, nation-state and local, indeed
ethnic, structures compete and coexist (Drucker 1993). It is to the ‘whys’
and ‘hows’ of the emergence of this “post-capitalist polity”, under the post-
Cold War international systemic transition, that we may now turn our
analytical focus of attention.
The Shifting of International Political Landscape
A metaphor popular among analysts thinking about the current reshaping of

the world is that of “tectonic motion”, or the movement of the giant “plates”
that make up the earth’s rocky crust (Gaddis 1992). Like the tectonic forces
that move continents around on the surface of the earth, the end of the Cold
War suggests a massive shift in the historic tectonics of human civilization.
Because tectonic movements can reshape continents and alter climates
sometimes cataclysmically through the earthquakes and volcanoes these
produces, it serves as an apt analogy for the end of the Cold War and the
ensuing of international systemic transition.
Systemic transition is not a new phenomenon. In fact, if viewed
microscopically, transition is visible as a continuum rather than being
incidental. This continuum, however, is mostly peripheral and therefore its
influence on the core structure of the system is either negligible or absorbed
in course, thereby neutralizing its impact.
As elaborated in the earlier Chapter (Chapter 2), systemic transition
may be understood as a resultant process of substantial changes in the
determinants of the structure of the system, leading to changes in the nature
and scope of inter-influence among these determinants as constituent
elements of the system. Looked at from this perspective, the present
progression of international systemic transition is fundamental in nature and
comprehensive in scope. It is leading the world into a new era of extremely
complex network of economic and political interdependence with far-
reaching transformations in the organizing constructs of international order.
My basic assumption in analyzing international systemic transition in

this study is that the organizing construct of any system is a dynamic order
attained as a resultant of an equilibrium reached in an overarching systemic
conflict whose nature and structure are determined by three determinants :
international power configuration, number and capability of major systemic
actors and the pattern of international resource and wealth distribution.
These three factors, in turn, inter-influence each other in an international
systemic environment.
The Logic of Conflict
A conflict situation is usually said to arise between parties who perceive

that they possess mutually incompatible objectives. The more valuable the
objectives, the more intense the conflict. The more numerous the objectives,
the greater is the scope. The more the number of parties in conflict, the
larger its domain; the more stratified the power configuration, the more
unstable the nature; and the more unequal the resource and wealth distribution
among conflicting parties, the more prolonged the conflict. These are the
main dimensions of conflict.
Conflict is always about change. It is about change in social structure
and institutions, in the distribution of power and resources, and in relations
at many levels -human, societal, national or international. It may be about
who is to play or who is to win the game, about the prizes they play for, or
about the rules of the game itself! Those who promote one form of change
enter into conflict with those who resist all change. At the same time,
however, each contestant seeks to pass the burden of adaptation to change
onto the others. There are, therefore, always likely to be two sets of issues
in any conflict: what changes shall occur and at whose expense.
In a simple view, realistic conflict can only be concluded when one side
gains its objectives at the expense of the other. If the parties are evenly
matched or become exhausted by dispute so much so that neither side can
win outright, they may agree to compromise wherein each gets a fraction
of the loaf he wanted, which is proverbially better than no bread at all.
So universally is this thought to be the inescapable logic of conflict that
enemies develop a characteristic mentality whereby a loss or a gain to one
is experienced as a loss or gain by the other. Indeed, it is this feature of
conflict which distinguishes it from competition or games. Competitors in a
market or in a sport co-operate to engage in a ritual conflict. At the level of
win or lose, their interests are opposed; and at a higher level, they share the
superordinate goal of competing for its own sake. Even so, enemies are
debarred from co-operating by their zero-sum conception of their relationship.
In the light of this, we may now attempt to analyze the Cold War conflict
which remained as the overarching international systemic conflict until
recently.
After World War II, there were only two nation-states motivated and
able to provide hegemonic leadership : the United States and the Soviet
Union. During the post-war period, each superpower organized a hegemony
which differed substantially from that of the other in the nature and extent
of its internal integration due to the profound differences between the two
hegem on’s political and econom ic systems and psycho-cultural
characteristics. These differences also meant that the interactions between
the two hegemonies constituted a balance-of-power or a balance-of-terror
system, with the degree of integration between them very much less than
that within them (Geiger 1988).
Well before the end of World War II, U S policymakers had outlined
the kind of political and economic order they believed should be established
once victory was achieved. It would be a worldwide system of independent
nation-states willing and able to respect one another’s freedom, to settle
disputes by peaceful means, and to carry on economic relations with only
moderate, if any, barriers to the flow of goods, services and financial
resources between them. Such a system, it was confidently expected,
would foster the development of pluralistic democratic societies, high rates
of economic growth and rising employment and living standard in all
countries.
When, during the immediate post-war years, the Soviet Union rejected
the U S design and advanced its own conception of a desirable economic
and political order, the U S policymakers shifted their focus onto the notion
of “free world”, that is the nations outside the then rapidly-forming soviet
hegemony. Hence the U S objectives also came to include the organization
of the “free world” for “collective security” against possible internal
communist subversion and external Soviet aggression.
Naturally, the international system constructed with these ideas was
intended to serve the conceptions of the political and economic interests
of the US that predominated within that country. Moreover, the United
States on certain occasions used its power to secure advantages for itself
at the expense of other members. But I believe that, on balance, the other
nations that were willing or inadvertent participants in the system obtained
greater benefits and incurred lower costs than they would have from any
other design for world political and economic order that would have been
possible within the limits of the conditions of the postwar period.

In its fully developed form, the US hegemony consisted of several groups
of nation-states differentiated by the degree of their economic and political
integration with the United States and with one another. The most tightly-
integrated, both economically and politically, was the core group comprising
the nations of Western Europe, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.
They were, and continue to be, members of the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD) and of either the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) or, as in the case of Japan, of a bilateral mutual
defence treaty with the United States. Less integrated with the US and
with one another were the Latin American nations associated with the
United States (OAS) and the Rio Pact, a multilateral mutual defense treaty.
Finally, there was a large, more heterogenous outer ring of the old and new
Asian and African nations, some with formal or informal defense
arrangements with the United States, but all dependent on the world market
economy and hence, on the integrated economic system constructed under
the leadership of the United States.
Political, economic and defense co-ordination at organizational or informal
level between these countries and the United States contributed to the high
growth rates, rise in employment and improvement in living standards in
these countries. O f fundamental importance was the fact that such
coordination helped the United States to preserve an international
environment in which the independence of nation-states was reasonably
assured. In turn, the high degree of international security and calculability
gave people the confidence to take advantage of the opportunities to engage
in business transactions across national borders. Without such confidence
in the peacefulness and orderliness of the system, it is unlikely that
international trade and investment would have grown to the levels reached
by the end of the Cold War period. In sum, this positive-sum relationship
between international integration and economic growth depended not only
on the rational interests of the members in obtaining the resulting benefits,
but also on the power and influence of the United States and its willingness
as well as ability to bear a disproportionate share of the costs involved.
In contrast to the US hegemony, political control and defense co
ordination were the major bonds within the Soviet hegemony and economic
integration was of much less importance.
The design of the world order toward which the Soviet Union was
working even before the beginning of World War II was of an international
system of socialist states with state-controlled economies and an authoritarian
political system controlled by their communist parties. Among them the
Soviet Union would play the dominant role, co-ordinating protection against
outside enemies, expanding the membership as the opportunities arose and
by any other means that did not put its own survival at risk. Thus, the goal
of the Soviet Union was to assure the safety of the Soviet Union and to
achieve hegemonic position of world paramountcy to which its ruling elites
have been convinced that its historical destiny as the “Third Rome” under
the Czars and the “Socialist Fatherland” under the communists - entitled it.
In its fully developed form, the Soviet hegemony has consisted of a
group of core states in eastern Europe and Asia contiguous to the Soviet
Union and a group of widely scattered states, some (such as Cuba and
Vietnam and its dependencies) firmly under communist party control and
the others (such as Angola, Ethiopia, Mozambique and South Yemen) in
which communist rule has not yet been fully and securely established. In
the early postwar years China, Yugoslavia and Albania were members but
then seceded at different times to escape Soviet control over their internal
affairs. All of the core states became members of the Soviet hegemony
owing to their occupation by the Red Army during or after World War II
(or after World War I in the case of Mongolia), and the others as a result of
internal revolutions supported by the Soviet Union and their subsequent
dependence on its continued assistance.
The principal instrument of Soviet control over the core members of
the hegemony whose loyalty and security it regards as essential to its own
protection and the stability of its communist regime — had been the
subordination of their communist parties to the Soviet party. This enabled
the Soviet communist party to ensure “the leading position” of the core
member’s parties, that is, their unchallenged ability to direct all of their
major institutional and cultural elements of their societies and to prevent the
emergence of any organizations or group that might question, let alone
threaten, their right and capacity to rule. Nor had the Soviet Union hesitated
to intervene by force to make certain that the core members’ parties would
carry out their responsibilities, as it did in Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia
in 1968 and nearly had to do in Poland in 1981.
In addition to these direct means of political control, the Soviet Union
established intergovernmental organization for defense co-ordination and
economic co-operation similar to those of the US hegemony.
For defense purpose, the east European states were bound to the Soviet
Union by the Warsaw Pact, which provided for a common command, military
doctrine and strategic and tactical plans, interdependent services of supply
and communication and much more standardization of armament and other
military equipment than in NATO. As part of these arrangements, large
Soviet Military forces were permanently stationed on the territories of the

member states contiguous to the NATO countries —much bigger than the
counterpart US military forces —and their presence had also facilitated
Soviet control over these territories.
For economic purpose, the council for Mutual Economic Co-operation
(COMECON) was established, charged with planning and overseeing
balanced trade and payments relations among the non - market economies
of the member states. However, it aimed to achieve these goals not by
lowering or removing barriers to the flows of goods, services and financial
resources as in the world market economy. Instead, its function was to
ensure that only those exports and imports took place that were in
accordance with the centrally directed production, investment and
consumption plans of the Soviet Union and other members. By their nature,
centrally directed non - market economies tend to become autarchic. The
economic integration of these COMECON nations with the rest of the
world was even less significant.
Thus, economic co-ordination rather than integration more accurately
characterized the relations among the non - market economies. For the six
east European client states, it was the economic assistance they were
obtaining from the Soviet Union, rather than the degree of their integration
with it, that was important. By the 1960s, the Soviet Union was increasingly
subsidizing its trade with them as well as with the noncontagious client
states - not only by granting them low-cost export credits, but also by charging
them less than the world market price for some of its exports to them and
paying them more than the world market price for some of its imports from
them (Geiger 1988).
In sum, the Soviet Union had relied mainly upon its power and influence
to hold its hegemony together. True, the Soviet Union had borne heavy
costs, principally for its large military establishment and the aid provided to
its client states. However, these costs had been for the purpose of
maintaining the hegemony and not for the purpose of attaining a high
degree of economic integration.
In their interactions, which essentially constituted the overarching
systemic conflict, the two hegemonies adopted themselves to a bipolar system
of nuclear balance-of-power. The form of such a system imposed certain
required capacities and actions on the two hegemons if they were to maintain
the balance between them. First, each protagonist had always to support a
military establishment adequate to prevent its defeat by the other. However,
unlike all previous balance-of-power systems, in which war was recognized
and often used as a means of keeping the balance, the US- Soviet system
had been precluded from restoring to it, because a nuclear war could result
in mutual destruction. Second, as the protagonist of a two party system,
both superpowers’ conceptions of their requirement for preserving the
balance inclined them to attach as many other nations to themselves as
possible, and this tendency had been powerfully reinforced by their sense
of world - transforming mission and their ideological antipathy to each other.
Third, any initiative by either superpower or any development within either
hegemony that was perceived by the other superpower as likely to upset the
balance, sooner or later, had to be countered by an appropriate action.
These patterns of inter-hegemony relationship is termed as the Cold War
which formulated the core and overarching international systemic conflict
after the end of the World War II and until about 1989. How did the Cold
War die ?
Since the advent of the Cold War, policy makers and diplomatic historians
have sought, unsuccessfully, to arrive at a consensus regarding its origins
and determinants of its evolutionary course. Now that, to the surprise of
everyone, the Cold War has abruptly ended, debate has shifted from
animated disputes about the cause of its death. Presented here is a
typologized summary of various postulation and propositions on the cause
of Communism’s collapse and the end of the Cold War.
A Typolozied Summary of the Cause of the End of the Cold War
Cause Proposition
Economic Factors
1. Economic mismanagement “No other (than the Soviet Union)
industrialized state in the world for so long spent so much of its national
wealth on armaments and military forces. Soviet militarism, in harness
with communism, destroyed the Soviet economy and thus hastened the
self destruction of the Soviet empire.” -Fred Charles Ikle (1991 -9228)
2. The economic burden o f hegemonic competition “G orbachev’s
co-operative initiatives toward the United States came at a time when
it was riding the wave of an inevitable communist triumph in its
competition w ith the West and when the current and potential
costs of that competition were weighing heavily on a struggling Soviet
economy.” - Martin Patchen (1990 : 30)
3. A detente com pelled by relative econom ic d e c lin e ^ lh e
metamorphosis in the US - Soviet relationship was the result of two
interconnected factors: a formal recognition by the Soviet Union that to

tackle its extraordinary economic difficulties it had to seek a permanent
settlement with the capitalist world, and a recognition in Washington
that to keep the world stable while it addressed its own economic
problems (some of the results of Reagan’s policies) a deal with the
Soviet Union would be highly desirable.” - Michael Cox(1990 : 35)
Reform and Rethinking

1 4Glasnost and perestroika’ “The Gorbachev - era - earthquake had
fundamental political causes, which were its sine qua non.(But) political
factors do not tell the whole story. For, while the major mile posts of
Soviet reform may have been initiated from above, they received crucial
support... from below. The soviet intelligentsia... embraced (‘glasnost
and perestroika’) enthusiastically and proceeded to push the boundaries
of the permissible.”- Francis Fukuyama (1993 : 10-11)
2 Rival Ideological Inspiration“Mzny of the demonstrators... who sought
to reject communist rule looked to the American system for inspiration.
But the source of that inspiration was America’s reputation as a heaven
for the values of limited government, not Washington’s $ 300 billion-a-
year military budget and its network of global military bases.” - Ted
Galen Carpenter (1991 : 37-38)
3 Reformers in Russia “Russia did not lose the Cold War. The Communists
did... A Democratic Russia deserves credit for delivering the knockout
blow to communism in its motherland.”- Richard M. Nixon(1993 :A17)
Leadership’s Idiosyncrasies
1 Gorbachev and his vision “In ju st less than seven years, M ikhail
Gorbachev transformed the world. He turned his own country
upside dow n...H e tossed away the Soviet em pire in eastern
Europe with no more than a fare-thee-w ell. He ended the Cold
War that dominated world politics and consumed the wealth of
nations for nearly half a century..The most obvious ‘thing that
ju st doesn’t happen’ in the Gorbachev revolution was Gorbachev
him self.” -Robert G. Kaiser (1992:11,13)
“The end of the Cold War was possible primarily because of one man
Mikhail Gorbachev. The transformations we are dealing with now would
not have begun were it not for him. His place in history is secure.”
- Former. Secretary of State, James A. Baker (in Oberdoifer, 1991 :A33)
“The Soviet Union, while manifestly in trouble as many observed, was

not poised for a collapse, nor was it even in acute crisis. The Soviet
Union was viable and probably could have lasted another decade or
two, with good fortune and a good bit longer; but deeply flawed, it was
vulnerable to adverse chance events...That the invalid did not live, but
died at the hands of an unlikely doctor employing untried medicine
owed much to chance.” - Myron Rush(1993:19)
International Environment
1 Facilitating Political Suicide “The hard international environment
of the early 1980s obliged the Soviet leadership to consider change,
but tough Western policies could not finish the job. Reagan, Thatcher,
Bush and other Western leaders who dealt with Gorbachev had only
limited leverages over him. What they did, in effect, was hand him a
gun and suggest that he do the honourable thing. As is often true of
such situations, the victim-to-be is more likely to accept the advice if it
is offered in the gentlest possible way and if he concludes that his
friends family and colleagues will in the end think better of him for
going through with it. For Soviet communism, the international
environment of the late 1980s was a relaxed setting in which, after
much anguished reflection, to turn the gun on itself.”- Stephen
Sestanovich (1993 : 30 - 31)
Centrifugal Tendencies
Within the Soviet empire “The acute phase of the fall of communism
started outside the Soviet Union and then spread to the Union itself.
By 1987, Gorbachev made it clear that he would not interfere with
internal experiments in Soviet bloc countries. As it turned out, this was
a vast blunder... If Poland could become independent, why not Lithuania
and Georgia? Once communism fell in eastern Europe, the alternative
in the Soviet Union became Civil War or dissolution. The collapse of
the Soviet Union might well be called the revenge of the colonies.” -
Daniel Klenbort( 1993:107)
Domestic Environment
1 Introspective Repercussions “It was the moral reassessment of the

seventy-odd years of this socialist experiment that shook the nation, not
Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars.” - Vladimir Benevolenski and Andrei
Kortunov (1993:100)
2 Internal pressure “Some conservatives argue that the Reagan defense
buildup forced Gorbachev to change his policies. And, clearly, the Soviets
were concerned about having to compete with US technological
superiority. But it seems likely that internal pressures played as much,
if not more, of a role in convincing the Soviet leader to agree to measures
that cut his country’s firepower more than they cut US Strength.”- Carl
P.Leubsdorf(1991:D3)
3 Grassroot movement “The changes wrought by the thousands of people
serving in the trenches (were) essential to events in recent years and
atleast partially responsible for (ending the Cold War).” - David Cortright
(1993 : Forth coming)
4 Nationalistic aspirations “In less than two years, communism collapsed
everywhere...The causes (were) the national communities, not social
groups or individuals.” - Helene C d’Encausse (1993:270)
In the analysis of the Cold War’s death, thus, we confront generically the
difficulties associated with the well-known “level of analysis problem” ( Singer
1961, Waltz 1954). The need exits, therefore, to trace the systemic conflict
not only to factors operative at the systemic level but also to changes produced
by actors and their activities at their respective levels through an integrated
theoretical framework. The Cold War’s expiration is not just a story of
“how America changed the world”(Haig and McCarry 1993). If we open
up the black-boxed factors, we can more piercingly investigate the ensuing
international systemic transition. With the help of the framework presented
in Chapter two, we may now proceed to accomplish this task.
International Power Configuration
As argued while presenting the theoretical framework, international power

configuration is the first and foremost among the determinants of an
international systemic transition. The consequences of polarity configurations
are not merely abstract academic cogitations. The global configuration of
power actually determines the way policymakers visualize their relative
national capabilities and workout the “menu of choices”(Russett and Starr

1989).
For almost half a century it seemed that World War II was truly “the
war to end wars” among the great and major powers of the world. The
longest peace yet known rested on two pillars:bipolarity and nuclear
weapons. During the war, Nicholas Spykman foresaw a postwar
international order no different “from the old”, with international society
continuing “to operate w ithin the same fundam ental pow er
pattems”(Spykman 1942). Realists generally shared his expectation. The
behaviours of states, the patterns of their interactions, and the outcomes
their interactions produced had been repeated again and again through the
centuries despite profound changes in the internal composition of states.
Spykman's expectations were historically well grounded and in part borne
out. States have continued to compete in economic, military and all other
ways worth of competition. The use of force has been threatened, and
numerous wars have been fought on the peripheries. Yet, despite deep
ideological and other differences, peace prevailed at the centre of
international politics. Changes in structure,and in the weaponry available
to some of the states, have combined to perpetuate a troubled peace (Waltz
1981). As the bipolar era has drawn to a close, we must ask two questions:
What structural changes are in prospect ? What effects may they have ?
Rooted in the postwar structure of international politics, the cold war
for more than four decades stubbornly refused to evolve into a warm peace.
The cold war could not end until the structure that sustained it began to
erode. Bipolarity worked against detente in the 1970s. The changing
structure of international politics worked for detente in the 1980s.
Structural changes begin in a system’s unit, and then unit-level and
structural causes interact. We know from structural theory that States
strive to maintain their positions in the system. Thus, in their twilight years
great powers try to arrest or reverse their decline. For examples, in 1914,
Austria-Hungary preferred to fight an uncompromising war rather than the
internal disintegration that a greater Serbia would threaten; Britain and
France continued to act as though they were great powers, and struggled
to bear the expense of doing so, well in to the 1950s (The Economist
1990; 101); at the end of that decade, when many Americans thought that
they were losing to the Soviets, John F Kennedy appealed to his nation with
the slogan “Lets get the country moving again”. And defense secretary
Dick Cheney resisted a 50 percent cut in American defense spending
throughout the 1990s with the argument that this “would give us the defense
budget for a second-class power, the budget o f an A m erica in
decline”(Gordon 1990).
The political and economic reconstruction attempted by the Soviet Union
followed in part from external causes. Gorbachev’s express wish to see
the Soviet Union “enter the new millennium as a great and flourishing State”
(Gorbachev 1985) suggests this. Brezhnev’s successors, notably Andropov
and Gorbachev, realized that the Soviet Union could no longer support a
first-rate military establishment on the basis of third-rate military economy.
Economic reorganization, and the reduction of imperial burdens, became an
externally imposed necessity, which in turn required internal reforms. For a
combination of internal and external reasons, Soviet leaders tried to reverse
their country’s precipitous fall in international standing, but did not succeed.
In the fairly near future, say ten to twenty years, three political units
may raise to great power rank : Germany, Japan and China. In a shorter
time, the Soviet Union fell from the ranks, making the international power
configuration hard to define in the present and difficult to discern in the
future.
The international power configuration is changing not because the United
States suffered a serious decline, but because the Soviet Union did, while
Japan,China and western Europe continued to progress impressively. For
some years to come and for better or worse, the United States will be the
leading country economically as well as militarily.
Changes spawn uncertainties and create difficulties when the changes
are structural ones. Germany, Japan and Russia will have to relearn their
old great-power roles, and the United States will have to learn a role it has
never played before : namely, to co-exist and interact with other great
powers. The U nited States once reflexively isolationist, became
interventionist after 1945, calling that doctrine as “internationalism” in
euphemism. Whether isolationist or interventionist, however, American
policies have been unilaterally made. Even when that country’s involvement
became global, yet most of the decisions to act abroad were made without
much prior consultation with other countries. This was entirely natural.
Decisions are made collectively only among near equals. But watching the
Germans directing western policy toward the Soviet Union in the summer
of 1990, representative Lee Hamilton remarked that “this is an example of
the new multi-polar world that’s going to make (Americans) learn a new
meaning for the word ‘consult’. These days it doesn’t mean (Americans)
going to Europe and telling them what to do” (Apple 1990).
Because one of the two main foundations of postwar peace —nuclear
weapons —will remain and the other —bipolarity —has disappeared in the
post-Cold War era, we need to compare the problems of balancing the
power in conventional and nuclear worlds. In a bipolar conventional world,

a state has to estimate its strength only in relation to one another. In a
multi-polar conventional world, difficulties multiply because a state has to
compare its strength with a number of others and also has to estimate the
strength of actual and potential coalitions. Moreover, in a conventional
world, no one category of weapon dominates. States have to weigh their
effectiveness of present weapons, while wondering about the effects that
technological change may bring, and they have to prepare to cope with
different strategies. “To be sure”, George Simmle (1904) remarked, “the
most effective —presupposition for preventing struggle, the exact knowledge
of the comparative strength of the two parties, is very often only to be
obtained by the actual fighting out of the conflict.” In a conventional world,
miscalculation is hard to avoid.
In a nuclear world, one category of weapons dominate. Comparing the
strategic strength of nations is automatically accomplished once all of them
have second strike forces. Even, should some states have larger and more
varied strategic forces than another, all would effectively be at parity. The
only way to move beyond second-strike forces is to create a first-strike
capability or to put up an effective strategic defense. Since no one will fail
to notice another state performing either of these near-miracles, war through
miscalculation is practically ruled out. Since no one has been able to figure
out how to use strategic nuclear weapons other than as a deterrent, nuclear
weapons eliminate the thorny problems of estimating the present and future
strengths of competing states and of trying to anticipate their strategies.
And since nuclear states easily generate second-strike forces, they do not
need one another’s help at the strategic level. Strategically, nuclear weapons
make alliances obsolete, just as General de Gaulle used to claim (Waltz
1990).
In a multipolar world, the United States as the strongest power will
often find other states edging away from i t : Germany moving toward eastern
Europe and Russia and Russia moving toward Germany and Japan (Fisher
1993). Yet despite the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of
the Warsaw Pact, American policy continues to bank on NATO’s continued
cohesion and influence. Former US Secretary of State James Baker asserted
that, NATO “provides one of the indispensable foundations for a stable
European security environment”(Baker 1991). But we may wonder how
long NATO will last as an effective organization. Alliances are organized
against a perceived threat. We know from balance of power theory as
well as from history that war-winning coalitions collapse on the morrow of
victory, the more surely if it is a decisive one.
As the Soviet Union began to unravel, Josef Joffe, an astute observer

of American and European affairs, saw that the United States would soon
be “set to go home”(Joffe 1989/90). Europe and Russia may for a time
look on NATO and on America’s presence in western Europe as a stabilizing
force in a time of rapid changes. In an interim period, the continuation of
NATO makes sense. In the long run, it does not. The presence of American
forces at higher than token levels will be irritating to European states, when
their security is not threatened.
How can an alliance endure in the absence of a worthy opponent?
Ironically, the decline of the Soviet Union in eastern Europe entailed the
decline of the United States in the West. Without a shared perception of a
severe threat from Soviets, NATO would have never been bom. The Soviet
Union “created” NATO, and the demise of the Soviet threat ‘freed’ Europe,
west as well as east. And freedom entails self-reliance. In this sense, both
parts of Europe are now setting forth on the exhilarating but treacherous
paths of freedom. In the not -very-long run they will have to leam to take
care of themselves or suffer the consequences. Possibly and justifiably,
American withdrawal from Europe will be slower than that of the Soviet
Union. America with its vast and varied capabilities, can still be useful to
NATO members, who may be willing to avail themselves o f such
advantages. Some hope that NATO will serve as an instrument for
constraining Germany. But once the new Germany finds it feet, it will no
more want to be constrained by the United States acting through NATO
than by any other state. So, if not days, surely NATO’s years are numbered.
Peace is sometimes linked to the presence of hegemonic power,
sometimes to a balance among powers. To ask which view is right misses
the point. It does so for this reason : the response of other countries to one
among them seeking or gaining preponderant power is to try to balance
against it. Hegemony leads to balance, which is easy to see theoretically.
That is now happening. But it is happening haltingly because the United
States still has benefits to offer and many other countries have become
accustomed to their easy lives with the United States bearing many of their
burdens.
What is new in the proclaimed new world order is that the limitations
and restraints now apply weakly to the United States. Yet since foreign
policy behaviour can be explained only by a conjunction of external and
internal conditions, one may hope that America’s internal preoccupations
will produce not an isolationist policy, which has become impossible, but a
forbearance that will give other countries at long last a chance to deal with
their own problems and to learn from the consequences of their own
m istakes. But given A m erican tem ptations for adventures in

chaos(Macdonald 1992), hardly anyone would bet on i t !
Capability of Major Actors
Related intrinsically to and shaped substantially by the international power

configuration is the second determinant of the nature and structure of
systemic conflict. In contrast to all the past situations our new situation is
highly fluid in the sense that many of the stabilizing actors of international
order during the past four decades are either gone or are undergoing rapid
transformations.
In effect, the US designed post-war system largely made possible the
changes that have been transforming it. For its core and associate members,
the system provided a quarter of a century of secure, orderly and calculable
international conditions. The system was free of major wars and strongly
conducive to high rates of economic growth and rising living standards, and
it fostered the sense of national identity and self-confidence in both old and
new nations. This favourable environment was essential in bringing about
the developments in the motivations and capabilities of the members of the
system that, in turn, have been changing their relative positions and the
ways in which they interact.
This section deals broadly with the major alterations in the capabilities
of major international actors that have become increasingly apparent.
The Soviet power has indeed mellowed. The external Soviet empire in
eastern and central Europe has collapsed. The newly independent republics
of the earstwhile Soviet Union are being transformed as a result of political,
ethnic and national conflicts and economic distress. The Baltic republics
have already declared their independence and the rest of the republics are
slowly moving to a degree of autonomy within the framework of
Commonwealth of Independent States(CIS), headquarters in Minsk. No
one can confidently predict if or how long CIS will survive as an effective
force —internally as well as externally. It is obvious that as an inheritor of
a mega state, the Russian republic is emerging as a dominant political
force among these newly created republics.
The Soviet Union had, and Russia continuous to have, impressive military
capabilities. But great powers do not gain and retain their rank by excelling
in one way or another. Their rank depends on how they score on the
combination of the following items : management of international and
domestic environments, creation and consistent enhancement of multifaceted
national capabilities, reasonable and practical conception of national

objectives and relevant and capable strategy. The Soviet Union, like czarist
Russia before it, was a lopsided superpower; compensating for economic
weakness with political discipline, military strength and a rich territorial
endowment.
In the new world, we may presume that the years during which Russia,
with its many weakness, will count as a great power are numbered, and
that the numbers are pretty small. Although Russia has more than enough
military capability, technology is advancing very rapidly and Russia simply
cannot keep pace with advancement.
The collapse of the Soviet empire has enhanced China’s capability in
world affairs. China is rapidly becoming a great power in almost every
dimension: internal economy, external trade and military capability.
From 1965 to 1980, China’s annual economic growth rate averaged
6.8 percent and from 1980 to 1990, 9.5 percent. Western economists
estimate that China can sustain growth rates between 6 and 9 percent
without serious inflammatory problems. An economy that grows 8 percent
yearly, doubles in size every nine years. The World Bank estimated that
China’s GDP in 1990 was $364,900 million (1992). If China manages to
maintain effective government and a measure of economic freedom for its
industrious people, within a decade it can be in the great-power ranks. But
the western antagonism resulting from the Tiananmen Square crackdown
and subsequent Chinese disregard for human rights and suppression of
democratic movement in China, poses a dilemma for China’s communist
leaders as to where should they apply China’s weight on the global scales
of power ? The communist leaders need western technology and know
how to modernize their economy, but they may also need to repress
democratic forces in China to maintain total power. Whatever China may
ultimately decide, her immense population, almost virgin investment ground,
large and expanding military with substantial stockpile of nuclear weapons
make China a formidable international actor.
Although most Japanese now shy away from the thought that their
country will once again be a world power, most Chinese do not (Waltz
1993). Balance of power politics in one way or another characterize all
self-help systems. Nations have to make choices. They can always choose
not to develop counterweights to the dominant power, presently the United
States, or not to balance against a rapidly growing one, such as China,
India, Pakistan, Argentina, South Africa, North Korea and may be a few
more perhaps wield nuclear military force like China, capable of deterring
others from threatening their vital interests. Increasingly Japan, will be
pressed to follow suit and also to increase its conventional abilities to protect
its interests abroad. The United States, with the reduction of its forces, a
Cold War weary people, and numerous neglected problems at home, can
not hope to contain the growing economic and military might of a country of
some 1.2 billion people, while attending to other security interests. Unless
Japan responds to the growing power of China, China will dominate its
region and become increasingly influential beyond it.
The rise of Japan has been an almost continuous process since the
proclamation of the “Japanese Miracle” in the early 1960s. In the decade
of the eighties that began with the publication o f 4Japan as Number One’
(Vogel 1979), Japan’s economic march has expanded into the high technology
industrial sector and international finance —an expansion that fundamentally
changed its bilateral relationship with the United States.
Much in Japan’s institutions and behaviour supports the proposition that
Japan will once again take its place among the great powers. In most of
the century, since winning its Chinese War of 1894-95, Japan has pressed
for pre-eminence in Asia, if not beyond. From 1970 onward Japan’s
productivity and technology have extended its influence worldwide.
Mercantilist policies enhance the role of the state, and Japan’s policies have
certainly been mercantilist. Miyohei Shinohara (1982), former head of the
economics section of the Japanese Economic Planning Agency, has
succinctly explained Japan’s policy : “The problem of classical thinking
undeniably lies in the fact that it is essentially “static” and does not take into
account the possibility of a dynamic change in the comparative advantage
or disadvantage of industries over a coming 10-20 years period. To take
the place of such a traditional theory, a new policy concept needs to be
developed to deal with the possibility of intertemporal dynamic development”.
In a dynamic world, “competition tends to become brutal”, and theories
“framed in a hypothetical world when Adam Smith and David Ricardo
were predominant are no longer applicable” (Shinohara 1982). Whether
culturally ingrained or rooted in the structure of government, Japan’s
economic policy is not likely to take any new direction, even under American
pressure. The United States may accuse Japan of unfair trade practices,
or the United States may instead, as Bruce Scott (1985) suggests, recognize
that Japan has a strategy of “creating advantages rather than accepting the
status quo”, simply put, its “approach may be more competitive than (that
of the US.)”.
Japan’s successful management of its economy is being followed by
the building of a regional economic bastion. Quite a few Japanese talk and
write as though this represents their future. Other leading states have
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
carelessly discovered a resemblance between the said starved poet and your
humble servant, the consequence of which was that your humble servant
bought up, at no inconsiderable expense, all the copies of the said print, and
committed them to the flames. And now, if I were to see my own features
prefixed to my own writings; if I were to imagine to myself your curiosity,
my public, criticizing expression of countenance as well as expression of
thought, and lines of face as well as lines of metre, I could not endure it—I
should faint! Yes, I should positively faint.
I have another reason; another very momentous one. I once heard a lady
criticizing the “Lines to——.” How beautiful were the criticisms; and how
beautiful was the critic! I would have given the riches of Mexico for such a
review, and such a reviewer. But to proceed with my story—thus were the
remarks wound up:—“Now do, Mr. Courtenay, tell me who is the author?
What an interesting looking man he must be!”
From that moment I have been enwrapt in most delightful day-dreams. I
have constantly said to myself, “Peregrine, perhaps at this moment bright
eyes are looking on your effusion; and sweet voices are saying, ‘What a
pretty young man Mr. Courtenay must be!’” And shall I publish my picture,
and give them the lie? Oh, no! I will preserve to them the charity of their
conjectures, and to myself the comfort of their opinion.
And now what rests for me but to express my gratitude to all who have
assisted me by their advice or their support, and to beg, that if, in
discharging my part to the best of my abilities, it has been my misfortune to
give offence to any one of them, he will believe that I sinned not
intentionally, and forgive me as well as he can.
I have also to return thanks to many gentlemen who have honoured me
by marks of individual kindness. It would be painful for me to leave this
spot without assuring them, that in all places, and under all circumstances, I
shall have a lively recollection of the attention they have shown me, and the
interest they have expressed in my success.
But most of all, I have to speak my feelings to him who, at my earnest
solicitations, undertook to bear an equal portion of my fatigues and my
responsibility—to him who has performed so diligently the labours which
he entered upon so reluctantly—to him who has been the constant
companion of my hopes and fears, my good and ill fortune—to him who, by
the assiduity of his own attention, and the genius of the contributors whose
good offices he secured, has ensured the success of the Etonian.
I began this letter in a light and jesting vein, but I find that I cannot keep
it up. My departure from Eton and the Etonian is really too serious a
business for a jest or a gibe. I have felt my spirits sinking by little and little,
until I have become downright melancholy. I shall make haste, therefore, to
come to a conclusion. I have done, and I subscribe myself (for the last
time),
My dear Public,
Your obliged and devoted servant,
Peregrine Courtenay.
ABDICATION OF THE KING OF CLUBS.
We, Peregrine, by Our own choice, and the public favour, King of Clubs,
and editor of the Etonian, in the ninth month of Our reign, being this day in
possession of Our full and unimpaired faculties both of mind and body, do,
by these presents, address Ourselves to all Our loving subjects, whether
holding place and profit under Us, or not.
Inasmuch as We are sensible that We must shortly be removed from this
state of trial, and translated to another life, leaving behind Us all the
trappings of royalty, all the duties of government, all the concerns of this
condition of being, it does seem good to Us, before We are withdrawn from
the eyes of Our dearly beloved friends and subjects, to abdicate and divest
Ourselves of all the ensigns of power and authority which We have hitherto
borne; and We do hereby willingly abdicate and divest Ourselves of the
same.
And be it, by all whom it may concern, remembered, that the cares and
labours of Peregrine, sometime King of Clubs, are henceforth directed to
another world; and that if any one shall assume the sceptre and the style of
Peregrine, the first King of Clubs, such person is a liar and usurper.
Howbeit, If it shall please Our trusty subjects and counsellors to set upon
Our Throne a rightful and legitimate successor, We will that the allegiance
of Our people be transferred to him; and that he be accounted supreme over
serious and comic, verse and prose; and that the treasury of Our Kingdom,
with all that it shall at such time contain, song, and sonnet, and epigram,
and epic, and descriptions, and nondescripts, shall be made over forthwith
to his charge and keeping.
And for all acts, and writings, made and done during the period of Our
reign, to wit, from the twentieth day of October, anno Domini eighteen
hundred and twenty, to the twenty-eighth day of July, eighteen hundred and
twenty-one, inclusive, we commit them to the memory of men, for the
entertainment of our friends and the instruction of posterity.
Further, If any one shall take upon himself the office of commenting
upon any of the deeds and transactions which have taken place under Our
administration, whether such comment shall go forth in plain drab or in
gaudier saffron and blue, We recommend to such person charity and
forbearance, and in their spirit let him say forth his say.
And be it hereby known, that for all that has been said or done against
Us, during the above-mentioned period, whether by open hostility or secret
dislike, We do this day publish a general and hearty Amnesty: And We will
that all such offences be from henceforth committed to oblivion, and that no
person shall presume to recall to Our recollection such sins and treasons.
And We also entreat that if, in the course of a long and arduous
administration, it has been Our lot to inflict wounds in self-defence, or to
wound, unknowingly, those who were unconnected with Us, the forgiveness
which We extend to others will be extended by others to Us.
And We do, from this day, release from all bond, duty, and obligation
those who have assisted Us by their counsel and support; leaving it to all
such persons to transfer their services to any other master, as seemeth to
them best.
We decree that Our punchbowl be henceforth consecrated to Our lonely
hours and our pleasant recollections; that no one do henceforth apply his
lips to its margin; and that all future potentates in this state of Eton do
submit to assemble their privy council around a coffee-pot or an urn.
And We most earnestly recommend to those dear friends, whom We
must perforce leave behind Us, that in all places and conditions they
continue to perform their duties in a worshipful manner, always
endeavouring to be a credit to the Prince whom they have so long honoured
by their service.
And now, as Our predecessor, Charles of Germany, in the meridian of his
glory, laid down the reins of empire, exchanging the court for the cloister,
and the crown for the cowl—even so do We, Peregrine of Clubs, lay down
the pen and the paper, exchanging celebrity for obscurity, punch for algebra,
the printing-office for Trinity College. And We entreat all those who have
Our welfare at heart to remember Us sometimes in their orisons. And so We
depart.
Peregrine.
Given in our Club-room, this twenty-eighth
day of July, A.D. 1821.
THE UNION CLUB.
A.D. 1823.
The Union Club, of rhetorical fame,

Was held at the Red Lion Inn,[9]
And there never was Lion so perfectly tame,
Or who made such a musical din.
’Tis pleasant to snore, at a quarter before,
When the Chairman does nothing in state,
But ’tis heaven, ’tis heaven, to waken at seven,
And pray for a noisy debate!
“What’s the question?”—“Reform.” “What! the old story!”—“Yes, the old

story; the common good against the Commons’ House; speechifying versus
starvation!” “Oh, but you’re a red-hot Radical?”—“Yes, that’s my key;
every man is red-hot who is deep read!” “Reform in Parliament?”—“Yes,
the only thing men are agreed upon; for the Outs can’t carry it, and the Ins
can’t bear it.” “Infamous! split me!”—“Order, order! Gentlemen will be so
good as to take their seats. The question for this evening’s debate is: ‘Would
Reform in Parliament have been conducive to the welfare of the country at
any period previous to the year 1800?’ To be opened by Mr. Pattison of St.
John’s.”
And the honourable opener immediately mounts his hobby, and proceeds
at a rapid rate over a level road, panting and blowing like a courier. Off he
goes! Mounts at Magna Charta, breakfasts with the Long Parliament, dines
with William and Anne, and finds himself comfortably at home in the state
of the nation.
[10]“We have heard of a time, Mr. President, when England was the envy
and the terror of the whole world; we have heard of a time when commerce
flourished, and the quartern loaf was sold for a penny-halfpenny; but these
things are now altered; bread has risen, as stocks have fallen; we lose time
in debates, and we lose men in battle; and are not all these things owing to
Mr. Pitt? Unfortunate man! he had it in his power to make his country
happy, and he has left it miserable; all of it encumbered with penury and
taxation, and half of it fettered by a damnable religious restriction. Yes, Mr.
President, from the fear of rebellion and revolution, the Protestants are
wretched and spied upon; and from the dread of the Holy Alliance, the
Pope, the Pretender, the Arch-Fiend Napoleon, and the Devil, the Catholics
are oppressed and persecuted.”
Here the honourable member is jerked from his hobby by an orthodox
hiss from the corner, and he sits down among the comments of the crowd.
“What do you think of the opener?”—“Why, I think he’s all
Public debts,
Epithets,
Foul and filthy, good and great,
Glorious wars,
British tars,
Beat and bruise
Parlez-vous,
Frenzy, frown,
Commons, Crown,
Ass and pannier,
Rule Britannia!—
How I love a loud debate!”
Then the Church shakes her rattle, and sends forth to battle
The terror of Papist and sinner,
Who loves to be seen as the modern Mæcenas,
And asks all the poets to dinner.
[11]“Mr. President,—I rise to express my dissent from the honourable

opener with regard to the Catholics. With respect to the question of debate,
my sentiments are entirely those of the late Charles James Fox. He was a
man adorned by every manly virtue that can adorn and dignify a man—
Propria quæ maribus tribuuntur, mascula dicas. But with regard to the
Catholics, when I remember the times of the Bloody Queen Mary, when I
call to mind the horrible massacres she perpetrated—the helpless old
women that were depopulated—I cannot sufficiently restrain my feelings to
hear the Catholics commended without expressing my dissent.”
Then the gentleman Attic, with tales Asiatic
And body that bends with a grace,
The maker of jeers that led us for years,
The prime Staple-Ton of the place.
[12]“Mr. President,—From the look of virtuous indignation with which

the honourable gentleman arose from his seat, I expected to have heard
something worthy of a Blair or a Benson, a Confucius or a
Nebuchadnezzar; but lo! when my hopes were wrought up to the highest
pitch, the honourable gentleman has suddenly reseated himself, and I do not
even understand the purport of his sudden ebullition. Once upon a time a
sudden darkness overspread the town of Ching-Chong-Foo; the sun and the
moon and the stars were hidden, all business was suspended, all hearts were
astounded. The mathematician Sing-Su said it was an eclipse; the Bishop
Chit-Quong said it was the Devil; and the Chancellor Hum-lum said that he
doubted: when suddenly there flew down from the skies, extending his
wings over all the city, a stupendous cock; he soared majestically down—
sullenly—slowly; and when they expected from him the voice of Azrael the
Destroyer, or the Mandate of Mahomet the Prophet, he said—nothing, Mr.
President, but Cock-a-doodle-doo!”
“Why the devil do you laugh?”—“Laugh! why because it’s all
Indian Stories,
Damn the Tories,
None but he can rule the State,
Wise magicians,
Politicians,
Foreign lands,
Kings and wands,
Fiends and fairies,
Dromedaries,
Laugh at Boodle’s,
Cock-a-doodles—
Then up gets a youth with a visage of truth,
An omen of good to our islands,
Who promises health and abundance of wealth
To our Oatlands, and Wheatlands, and Ryelands.
[13]“Mr. President,—I had not intended to address you on the present

question; but some observations which have been made on the character of
George the Third prevent me from remaining silent. If I use any strong
expressions, I trust they will be attributed to the violence of my feelings.”
(Refers to a paper.) “When I remember, Sir, that in the reign of George the
Third the purest blessings of Heaven were shed upon us, and that Mr. Pitt
was Prime Minister; that the powers of darkness were scattered before us,
and that the combined fleets of France and Spain were defeated—above all,
when I reflect that all the nine Muses migrated from Pindus to England, and
that Mr. Southey was the Poet Laureate—I cannot help saying that George
the Third, who reigned so gloriously, and lived to an advanced period of
life, was very wise, very prudent, and very triumphant. In short, Sir, I do not
fear to affirm that he was very good.”
And the honourable gentleman halts as systematically as a posthorse
knocked up or a timepiece run down. “Very perfect in his lesson!”—“Oh,
very! but it’s all
Sigh and simper,

Whine and whimper,
Kings and princes, Church and State;
Cut and dried,
Ill applied,
Nightly taper,
Pen and paper,
Audience dozing,
How composing!
Would ’twere shorter!
Milk and water!—
But the favourite comes, with his trumpets and drums,
And his arms and his metaphors crossed;
And the audience—Ο dear!—vociferate “Hear!”
Till they’re half of them deaf as a post.
And the honourable gentleman, after making the grand tour in a hand
canter, touching cursorily upon Rome, Constantinople, Amsterdam,
Philadelphia, and the Red Sea; with two quotations, two or three hundred
similes, and two or three hundred thousand metaphors, proceeds to the tune
of
[14]“We, Mr. President, have indeed awful examples to direct us or deter.
Have we not seen the arms of the mighty overpowered, and the counsels of
the wise confounded? Have not the swords of licentious conquest, and the
fasces of perverted law, covered Europe with blood, and tears, and
mourning? Have not priests and princes and nobles been driven in beggary
and exile to implore the protection of rival thrones and hostile altars?
Where is the sacred magnificence of Rome? Where the wealth and
independence of Holland? Where the proud titles of the German Cæsars?
Where the mighty dynasty of Bourbon? But is there yet one nation which
has retained unimpaired its moral and political strength? One nation, whose
shores have ever been accessible to a suppliant, and never to an enemy?
One nation which, while the banners of her foes have been carried in
triumph to half the capitals of the world, has seen them only suspended over
her shrines as trophies? One nation, which, while so many cities have been
a prey to hostile fires, has never seen her streets lighted up but with the
blaze of victorious illumination? History and posterity will reply, ‘That
country was England.’ Let them not talk to us of their philosophy and their
philanthropy, their reason and their rights! We know too well the oratory of
their Smithfield meetings, and the orgies of their midnight clubs! We have
seen the weapons which arm, and the spirit which nerves them. We have
heard the hyæna howl, till the raving which excited dismay provokes
nothing but disgust. Amid the railings of disappointed ambition, and the
curses of factious hate; amid the machinations of the foully wicked, and the
sophistries of the would-be wise, we will cling to our fathers’ banner—we
will rally round our native rock. Mr. President, that banner is the Charta of
our rights—that Rock is the British Constitution!”
“Bravo!” “Can’t say I quite caught the line of argument.” “Argument!
Fiddlestick! Quite gone out except for opponencies; and then for the
language, and the feeling, and the style, and all that sort of thing—oh!
nobody can deny that it was all
Oratoric,
Metaphoric,
Similes of wondrous length;
Illustration,
Conflagration,
Ancient Romans,
House of Commons,
Clever Uriel
And Ithuriel,
Good old king,
Everything!—
With his sayings and saws, his hems and his haws,
Another comes up to the scratch;
While Deacon and Law unite in a yaw! [Yawning.
And the President looks at his watch.
And the honourable gentleman, after making a long journey and

plunging up to his knees in dirt, bog, and quagmire; after taking up many
strong positions and much valuable time, after bruising the Bishops and the
table, and twisting his argument and his sleeve in twenty different ways,
proceeds to wake the members with a joke.
[15]“Mr. President,—I am out of all patience when I hear the poor abused
because they wish to reform the Constitution. Why, when you have taken
from them all they have got, and all they hope to get, what can they do?
Why, they complain, to be sure; and as soon as they complain, like the poor
fellow who was tried for stealing a pair of leather breeches, and found
guilty of manslaughter, the unfortunate rabble—though why they are called
rabble the Attorney-General only knows, I’m sure I don’t—but, as I said
before, the unfortunate rabble are prosecuted upon ex officio informations,
or persecuted by a Bridge Street gang, which I look upon as a combination
of fiends against our Constitution—that is, what we’ve got left of it, which
to be sure is but little, whatever the honourable gentlemen opposite may
think, who seem to be very much amused at the idea—but as I said before,
the unfortunate rabble, like the poor fellow who was tried for stealing a pair
of leather breeches and found guilty of manslaughter, is tried for high
treason and found guilty of being ragged, and so is hung, fined, imprisoned,
or sent to Botany Bay, or Australasia as the Vice-Chancellor calls it,
according to the will and pleasure of His Majesty’s Attorney and Solicitor-
General. But the honourable gentleman would let the poor starve, while the
rich take coffee and snuff, talk religion, and buy into the stocks; provided
my Lord this and my Lord that may keep their mistresses and their
boroughs, all the scum, all the canaille may be cut down by the dozen. The
honourable gentleman cares no more for the poor than the country
gentleman did—a good, honest, well-meaning man—who lost so many
turnips that he wanted to make turnip-stealing a capital offence. The
country gentleman and the honourable gentleman argue on the same ground
—they are on the same bench—there they are!”
“Bravo!” “Bravo!” “Pray, Sir, how long has that young gentleman been
on his legs?”—“Really I can’t tell, 1 was so much amused at his
Admirable,
Bang the table,
‘Sir, although its getting late,’
Opposition,
Repetition,
Endless speeches,
Leather breeches,
Taxes, hops,
Turnip-tops,
Leather ’em, lather ’em,
Omnium-gatherum—
Mr. Punnett, whose vows are put up for the House

As if he was born to the trade,
Would chafe if we close with the ayes and the noes,
And break up before we have—prayed!
And accordingly, after the honourable gentleman has abused, ad libitum,

all persons not freeholders who wish to have votes, and told us, “as for such
people, now we have got ’em down, keep ’em down;” he is succeeded by
the laureate jester of the society. The honourable gentleman plunges into a
sea of puns, passes a few modest strictures on the freedom of the press,
likens Frederick the Great to a thief, and Mr. Bartholomew to the devil; and
at last betakes himself, like all poets, to abusing his friends.
[16]“Not being disposed, Mr. President, to pun it in a decidedly personal
manner through any more of the honourable gentleman’s speech, I proceed
to say a few words in reply to my honourable friend who preceded him. But
I conceive, Mr. President, when I see how much the table of the House has
suffered from the fist of the honourable gentleman, I may be somewhat
afraid of the knock-down arguments of my honourable friend. Let him not
commit violence on our persons or our property; let him not frighten the
freshman or annihilate the Soph. He is already the Ord of this House, let
him not make himself the Lord of it; we give him an inch, let him not take
an ‘L.’ But I conceive, Sir, that my honourable friend will attend to no
suggestion of mine. He is a Republican, a Radical, a Revolutionist, a Fury, a
Firebrand; but, however hot may be the doctrines he now advocates, I
would whisper in his ear: ‘You were once something far more reasonable;
yes, though you may now be a rioter or a regicide, yet, as the poet says, You
were a Whig, and thereby hangs a tale!’ I have detained the House too long,
and will make haste to conclude. I have been censured for mixing too much
of the ludicrous with the debates of the House. It has been said of me that
the thread of my argument is drawn from the tassel of my cap, that the point
of my jokes is drawn from the belles of Barnwell. Mr. President, I plead
guilty to the charges, and the House must be well aware that the insignia of
my profession were never anything but the cap and bells!”
Quite divine
Peregrine,
Never shall we see his mate;
Fun and flams,
Epigrams,
Leering, lying,
Versifying,
Nodding, noting,
Quibbling, quoting,
‘Thief!’ and ‘Bore!’
‘Lie!’ no more—
Then up gets the glory of us and our story,
Who does all by logic and rule,
Who can tell the true diff’rence ’twixt twopence and threepence,
And prove Adam Smith quite a fool.
[17]“Mr. President,—I had intended to have addressed the meeting at

considerable length, but as the ground I meant to occupy has been entirely
and successfully anticipated by my honourable friends, I shall not dwell
upon the crying and terrible demand there is for Parliamentary Reform, but
shall confine my observations to the existing aggression of France upon
Spain. For it is not so much the question whether France or Spain shall be
victorious; it is not so much the question whether that ‘alter Achilles,’ the
Duke d’Angoulême, with his miserable and half-starved myrmidons, or
General Mina and his patriots, shall be vanquished; the question is, whether
the nefarious and accursed principles of foreign aggression and tyranny, the
principles of despotism and usurpation, shall triumph eternally over the
principles of freedom; whether worse than Scythian ignorance and
barbarism shall crush the progress of science and enlightened
understanding; whether that holy knot of confederated despots (who I trust
in heaven will ere long meet their well-earned reward of the halter)—
whether they are to dictate laws and constitutions to the rest of mankind;
whether that hellish power which has crushed the freedom and trampled on
the genius of Italy shall crush the freedom and trample on the genius of the
rest of the world; whether we, who boast ourselves freeborn Englishmen,
shall tamely look on and see the rights of nations and the rights of man
assaulted and violated; whether we are to listen with submission and
humility to the insolent decrees of the Autocrat of the Russias; whether we
are to cringe and subscribe to the proclamation of a semi-barbarian who
dares to issue his mandate to the world—a mandate which is nothing but an
ignorant tissue of Syrio-Calmuc jargon and cacophony.”
But Lord! Sir, you ask a more difficult task

That aught in the son-shop of Burchill,
If you ask me to dish up, like many a Bishop,
The eminent words of the Church-ill!
[18]“Mr. President,—The honourable opener of this debate called Mr.
Pitt an unfortunate man; now I think him a very fortunate man. He went
about, like Jeremy Diddler, borrowing sixpence from every one who was
fool enough to lend him, and died before he was called on to refund. We
have heard the prosperous state of the country referred to. Now, Sir,
everybody that can pay for his passage is going to the Cape; for though a
man likes his bed, he leaves it when he finds it full of fleas. The distresses
of England have also been alluded to. Now, Sir, with regard to Lord George
Gordon’s riots, they were like Tom Thumb’s giants—the Minister made the
riots first, and then he quelled them.”
“Does any other honourable gentleman wish to address the House? I
shall proceed to put the question. It is carried that Parliamentary Reform
would not be beneficial, by a majority of 77 to 13. (Hear! hear! hear!) There
is a motion on the boards, ‘That an adequate supply of chairs for the
reading-room be provided—proposed by Mr. Moore, of Caius.’”
[19]“Mr. President,—It is not often that I rise to address this society; nor
should I on the present occasion, but that I see so strong a necessity for
interference, that I should deem it a dereliction of my duty were I to remain
silent. In those things which regard our intellectual and moral improvement,
this society should be more especially attentive to its interests; but I have
observed with regret and concern that there is by no means an adequate
supply of chairs in our reading-room, and I therefore move that a fit supply
be immediately procured.”
[20]“Mr. President,—I have observed with great satisfaction the interest
which the honourable gentleman takes in the welfare of this society; but as
in an inn, where there are nine beds, and ten travellers to sleep in them, one
bed must carry double or one traveller must go without; so, in the present
case, if upon any occasion the honourable gentleman should find ten chairs
in the reading-room occupied by ten individuals, I should recommend him
to make them determine by lot which of them shall hold him on his knees!”
“Well, Sir, what do you think of the Union?”—“Why, Sir, I think it’s all
Bow, wow,
What a row,
Money lost, and laurels earned;
Constitution,
Elocution,
Whig and Tory,
Oratory,
Hauling, bawling,
‘Order’ calling,
Headache, dizziness,
No more business—
Sirs, the meeting is adjourned.”
MY FIRST FOLLY.
“L’imagination grossit souvent les plus petits objets par une estimation
fantastique jusqu’à remplir notre âme.”—Pensées de Pascal.
“I have spent all my golden time,

In writing many a loving rime:
I have consumed all my youth
In vowing of my faith and trueth;
Ο willow, willow, willow tree,
Yet can I not beleeved bee.”—Old Ballad.
“Do you take trifle?” said Lady Olivia to my poor friend Halloran.
“No, Ma’am, I am reading philosophy,” said Halloran; waking from a fit
of abstraction, with about as much consciousness and perception as exists in
a petrified oyster, or an alderman dying of a surfeit. Halloran is a fool.
A trifle is the one good thing, the sole and surpassing enjoyment. He
only is happy who can fix his thoughts, and his hopes, and his feelings, and
his affections, upon those fickle and fading pleasures, which are tenderly
cherished and easily forgotten, alike acute in their excitement and brief in
their regret. Trifles constitute my summum bonum. Sages may crush them
with the heavy train of argument and syllogism; schoolboys may assail
them with the light artillery of essay and of theme; Members of Parliament
may loathe, doctors of divinity may contemn—bag wigs and big wigs, blue
devils and blue stockings, sophistry and sermons, reasonings and wrinkles,
Solon, Thales, Newton’s “Principia,” Mr. Walker’s “Eidouranion,” the
King’s Bench, the bench of Bishops—all these are serious antagonists; very
serious! But I care not; I defy them; I dote upon trifles; my name is Vyvyan
Joyeuse, and my motto is “Vive la Bagatelle!”
There are many persons who, while they have a tolerable taste for the
frivolous, yet profess remorse and penitence for their indulgence of it; and
continually court and embrace new day-dreams, while they shrink from the
retrospect of those which have already faded. Peace be to their everlasting
laments and their ever-broken resolutions! Your true trifler, meaning your
humble servant, is a being of a very different order. The luxury which I
renew in the recollection of the past is equal to that which I feel in the
enjoyment of the present, or create in the anticipation of the future. I love to
count and recount every treasure I have flung away, every bubble I have
broken; I love to dream again the dreams of my boyhood, and to see the
visions of departed pleasures flitting, like Ossian’s ghosts, around me, “with
stars dim twinkling through their forms.” I look back with delight to a youth
which has been idled away, to tastes which have been perverted, to talents
which have been misemployed; and while in imagination I wander back
through the haunts of my old idlesse, for all the learning of a Greek
professor, for all the morality of Sir John Sewell, I would not lose one
single point of that which has been ridiculous and grotesque, nor one single
tint of that which has been beautiful and beloved.
Moralists and misanthropists, maidens with starched morals and matrons
with starched frills, ancient adorers of Bohea and scandal, venerable
votaries of whispering and of whist, learned professors of the
compassionate sneer and the innocent innuendo, eternal pillars of gravity
and good order, of stupidity and decorum—come not near me with your
spare and spectacled features, your candid and considerate criticism. In you
I have no hope, in me you have no interest. I am to speak of stories you will
not believe, of beings you cannot love; of foibles for which you have no
compassion, of feelings in which you have no share.
Fortunate and unfortunate couples, belles in silks and beaux in
sentimentals, ye who have wept and sighed, ye who have been wept for and
sighed for, victims of vapours and coiners of vows, makers and marrers of
intrigue, readers and writers of songs—come to me with your attention and
your salts, your sympathy and your cambric; your griefs, your raptures,
your anxieties, all have been mine; I know your blushing and your paleness,
your self-deceiving and your self-tormenting.
so com’è inconstanta e vaga

Timida, ardita vita degli amanti,
Ch’un poco dolce molto amaro appoggia;
Ε so i costumi, e i lor sospiri, e i canti
E’l parlar rotto, e’l subito silenzio,
E’l brevissimo riso, e i lunghi pianti;
E qual è ’l mel temprato con l’assenzio.
All these things are so beautiful in Italian! But I need not have borrowed
a syllable from Petrarch, for shapes of shadowy beauty, smiles of cherished
loveliness, glances of reviving lustre, are coming in the mist of memory
around me! I am writing “an ower true tale!”
I never fell seriously in love till I was seventeen. Long before that period
I had learned to talk nonsense and tell lies, and had established the
important points that a delicate figure is equivalent to a thousand pounds, a
pretty mouth better than the Bank of England, and a pair of bright eyes
worth all Mexico. But at seventeen a more intricate branch of study awaited
me.
I was lounging away my June at a pretty village in Kent, with little
occupation beyond my own meditations, and no company but my horse and
dogs. My sisters were both in the South of France; and my uncle, at whose
seat I had pitched my camp, was attending to the interests of his
constituents and the wishes of his patron in Parliament. I began after the
lapse of a week to be immensely bored; I felt a considerable dislike of an
agricultural life, and an incipient inclination for laudanum. I took to playing
backgammon with the rector. He was more than a match for me, and used to
grow most unclerically hot when the dice, as was their duty, befriended the
weaker side. At last, at the conclusion of a very long hit, which had kept
Mrs. Penn’s tea waiting full an hour, my worthy and wigged friend flung
deuce-ace three times in succession, put the board in the fire, overturned
Mrs. Penn’s best china, and hurried to his study to compose a sermon on
patience.
Then I took up reading. My uncle had a delightful library, where a
reasonable man might have lived and died. But I confess I never could
endure a long hour of lonely reading. It is a very pretty thing to take down a
volume of Tasso or Racine, and study accent and cadence for the benefit of
half a dozen listening belles, all dividing their attention between the work
and the work-basket, their feelings and their flounces, their tears and their
trimmings, with becoming and laudable perseverance. It is a far prettier
thing to read Petrarch or Rousseau with a single companion, in some
sheltered spot so full of passion and of beauty that you may sit whole days
in its fragrance and dream of Laura and Julie. If these are out of the way, it
is endurable to be tied down to the moth-eaten marvels of antiquity, poring
to-day that you may pore again to-morrow, and labouring for the nine days’
wonder of some temporary distinction, with an ambition which is almost
frenzy, and an emulation which speaks the language of animosity. But to sit
down to a novel or a philosopher, with no companion to participate in the
enjoyment and no object to reward the toil, this indeed—oh! I never could
endure a long hour of lonely reading; and so I deserted Sir Roger’s library,
and left his Marmontel and his Aristotle to the slumbers from which I had
unthinkingly awakened them.
At last I was roused from a state of most Persian torpor by a note from
an old lady, whose hall, for so an indifferent country-house was by courtesy
denominated, stood at the distance of a few miles. She was about to give a
ball. Such a thing had not been seen for ten years within ten miles of us.
From the sensation produced by the intimation you might have deemed the
world at an end. Prayers and entreaties were offered up to all the guardians
and all the milliners; and the old gentlemen rose in a passion, and the old
lace rose in price. Everything was everywhere in a flurry; kitchen, and
parlour, and boudoir and garret—Babel all! Ackermann’s Fashionable
Repository, the Ladies’ Magazine , the New Pocket-book—all these, and all
other publications whose frontispieces presented the “fashions for 1817,”
personified in a thin lady with kid gloves and a formidable obliquity of
vision, were in earnest and immediate requisition. Needles and pins were
flying right and left; dinner was ill-dressed that dancers might be well-
dressed; mutton was marred that misses might be married. There was not a
schoolboy who did not cut Homer and capers; nor a boarding-school beauty
who did not try on a score of dancing shoes, and talk for a fortnight of
Angiolini. Every occupation was laid down, every carpet was taken up;
every combination of hands-across and down the middle was committed
most laudably to memory; and nothing was talked, nothing was meditated,
nothing was dreamed, but love and romance, fiddles and flirtation, warm
negus and handsome partners, dyed feathers and chalked floors.
In all the pride and condescension of an inmate of Grosvenor Square, I
looked upon Lady Motley’s “At Home.” “Yes,” I said, flinging away the
card with a tragedy twist of the fingers, “yes: I will be there. For one
evening I will encounter the tedium and the taste of a village ball. For one
evening I will doom myself to figures that are out of date, and fiddles that
are out of tune; dowagers who make embroidery by wholesale, and
demoiselles who make conquests by profession: for one evening I will
endure the inquiries about Almack’s and St. Paul’s, the tales of the
weddings that have been and the weddings that are to be, the round of
courtesies in the ball-room and the round of beef at the supper-table: for one
evening I will not complain of the everlasting hostess and the everlasting
Boulanger, of the double duty and the double bass, of the great heiress and
the great plum-pudding:
Come one, come all,

Come dance in Sir Roger’s great hall.”
And thus, by dint of civility, indolence, quotation, and antithesis, I bent

up each corporal agent to the terrible feat, and “would have the honour of
waiting upon her ladyship,”—in due form.
I went: turned my uncle’s one-horse chaise into the long old avenue
about an hour after the time specified, and perceived by the lights flashing
from all the windows, and the crash of chairs and carriages returning from
the door, that the room was most punctually full, and the performers most
pastorally impatient. The first face I encountered on my entrance was that
of my old friend Villars; I was delighted to meet him, and expressed my
astonishment at finding him in a situation for which his inclination, one
would have supposed, was so little adapted.
“By Mercury,” he exclaimed, “I am metamorphosed—fairly
metamorphosed, my good Vyvyan; I have been detained here three months
by a fall from Sir Peter, and have amused myself most indefatigably by
humming tunes and reading newspapers, winding silk and guessing
conundrums. I have made myself the admiration, the adoration, the very
worship of all the coteries in the place; am reckoned very clever at cross
purposes, and very apt at ‘What’s my thought like?’ The squires have
discovered I can carve, and the matrons hold me indispensable at loo.
Come! I am of little service to-night, but my popularity may be of use to
you. You don’t know a soul! I thought so—read it in your face the moment
you came in. Never saw such a—— There, Vyvyan, look there! I will
introduce you.” And so saying my companion half limped, half danced with
me up to Miss Amelia Mesnil, and presented me in due form.
When I look back to any particular scene of my existence, I can never
keep the stage clear of second-rate characters. I never think of Mr. Kean’s
Othello without an intrusive reflection upon the subject of Mr. Cooper’s
Cassio; I never call to mind a gorgeous scattering forth of roses from Mr.
Canning, without a painful idea of some contemporary effusion of poppies

Understanding Global Political Earthquake Study of Post Cold War International Systemic Transition and Indo US Relations 1st Edition Manoj Soni

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

Understanding Global Political Earthquake Study of Post Cold War International Systemic Transition and Indo US Relations 1st Edition Manoj Soni

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Understanding Global Political

Earthquake Study of Post Cold War

The US Role in NATO s Survival After the Cold War

The US Role in NATO s Survival After the Cold War

Rise and Decline of the Post Cold War International

Financial Cold War A View of Sino US Relations from the

The Post Cold War World 1st Edition Bailey Maxim

The Time of Global Politics International Relations as

Post Cold War Anglo American Military Intervention A

International Law And The Cold War Matthew Craven

Reissued 2018 by Routledge

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright © Manoj Soni 1998

A Library of Congress record exists under LC control number:

ISBN 13: 978-1-138-36007-5 (hbk)

Figure 2.1 Determinants of Systemic Transition 14

Table 2.1 Mechanisms of Control 9

I am grateful to my distinguished colleague, Dr Harbans Patel, for his co­

Imagine that an American has been lying for almost 50 years on a

Boundaries of the Inquiry

transition is a timely one, in as much as most observers (for example,

Rationale for a Framework

What does it mean to have a working knowledge of word politics, an ability

The Nature of the International System

In this study the term “international system” is used to refer to the

Every international system is characterized by various types of interactions

advances in transportation and communication which tend to transform the

Undoubtedly, the most controversial aspect of the definition of the term

Table 2.1 Mechanisms of Control

When we speak of “control” over the international system, the term

by the relative prestige of the parties involved. However, behind such

Types of International Transitions

It is obvious that international transitions can be and are of varying

types of transition characteristic of international system as presented in the

Table 2.2 Types of International Transitions

Type Factors that change

By interaction transition, we mean modifications in the political, economic

System transition involves a major change in the character of the international

Figure 2.1 Determinants of Systemic Transition

Such a comparative examination is obviously beyond the scope of this

The Transformations in History : A Broad Sketch

Every few hundred years in Western history, there occurs a sharp

(which originally is an Indian contribution) providing new ease in computation.

Understanding the Post-World War II International System

Until a settlement which results in (Russian) withdrawal is reached,

structures, of political concepts and systems, of world views, will be different

The Shifting of International Political Landscape

A metaphor popular among analysts thinking about the current reshaping of

My basic assumption in analyzing international systemic transition in

The Logic of Conflict

A conflict situation is usually said to arise between parties who perceive

possible within the limits of the conditions of the postwar period.

Soviet Military forces were permanently stationed on the territories of the

A Typolozied Summary of the Cause of the End of the Cold War

interconnected factors: a formal recognition by the Soviet Union that to

Reform and Rethinking

“The Soviet Union, while manifestly in trouble as many observed, was

1 Introspective Repercussions “It was the moral reassessment of the

International Power Configuration

As argued while presenting the theoretical framework, international power

national capabilities and workout the “menu of choices”(Russett and Starr

power in conventional and nuclear worlds. In a bipolar conventional world,

As the Soviet Union began to unravel, Josef Joffe, an astute observer

I am grateful to my distinguished colleague, Dr Harbans Patel, for his co