Lesson 3: A History of Global

Politics: Creating an
International Order
• The world is composed of many countries or states, all of them having
different forms of government.
• Some scholars of politics are interested in individual states and examine
the internal politics of these countries.
• For example, a scholar studying the politics of Japan may write about the
history of its bureaucracy.
• Other scholars are interested in the interactions between states rather
than their internal politics. These scholars look at trade deals between
states. They also study political, military, and other diplomatic
engagements between two or more countries. These scholars are
studying international relations.
• Moreover, when they explore the deepening of interactions between
states, they refer to the phenomenon of internationalization.
• Internationalization does not equal globalization, although it is a
major part of globalization.
• It is important to study international relations as a facet of
globalization because states/government are key drivers of global
processes.
• This lesson will begin with identifying the major attributes of
contemporary global politics and then proceed to ask: How did this
system emerge?
The Attributes of Today’s Global System
• World politics today has four key attributes.
• First, there are countries or states that are independent and govern
themselves.
• Second, these countries interact with each other through diplomacy.
• Third, there are international organizations, like the United Nations that
facilitate these interactions.
• Fourth, beyond simply facilitating meetings between states, international
organizations also take on lives of their. The United Nations, for example,
apart from being a meeting ground for presidents and other heads of states,
also has task-specific agencies like the World Health Organization (WHO) and
the International Labor Organization (ILO).
The Attributes of Today’s Global System
• What are the origins of this system? A good start is by unpacking what
one means when he/she says a “country” or what academics also call
the nation-state.
• The nation-state is a relatively modern phenomenon in human
history, and people did not always organize themselves as countries.
• At different parts in the history of humanity, people in various regions
of the world have identified exclusively with units as small as their
village or their tribe and at other times, they see themselves as
members of large political categories like “Christendom” (the entire
Christian world).
The Attributes of Today’s Global System
• The nation-state is composed of two non-interchangeable terms. Not all
states are nations and not all nations are states. The nation of Scotland,
for example, has its own flag and national culture, but still belongs to a
state called United Kingdom.
• Many commentators believe that the Bangsamoro is a separate nation
existing within the Philippines, but through their elites, recognizes the
authority of the Philippine state.
• Meanwhile, if there are states with multiple nations, there are also single
nations with multiple states. The nation of Korea is divided into North and
South Korea, whereas the “Chinese nation” may refer to People’s Republic
of China (the mainland) and Taiwan.
The Attributes of Today’s Global System
• What is the difference between nation and state?
• In layman’s terms, state refers to a country and its government i.e. the government of the
Philippines.
• A state has four attributes. First, it exercises authority over a specific population called
citizens.
• Second, it governs a specific territory. Third, a state has a structure of government that
crafts various rules that people (society) follow. Fourth and the most crucial, the state has
sovereignty over its territory. Sovereignty refers to internal and external authority.
Internally, no individuals or groups can operate in a given national territory by ignoring the
state. This means that groups like churches, civil society organizations, corporations and
other entities have to follow the laws of the state where they establish their parishes,
offices, or headquarters.
• Externally, sovereignty means that a state’s policies and procedures are independent of the
interventions of other states. Russia or China for example, cannot pass laws for the
Philippines.
The Attributes of Today’s Global System
• According to Benedict Anderson, nation is an imagined community. It is
limited because it does not go beyond a given “official boundary” and
because rights and responsibilities are mainly the privilege and concern of
the citizens of that nation.
• Being limited means that the nation has its boundaries. This characteristic
is in stark contrast to many religious imagined communities.
• Anyone, for example can become a Catholic if one chooses to. In fact,
Catholics want more people to join their community: their refer to it as
the call to discipleship. Nations often limit themselves to people who
have imbibed a particular culture, speak a common language and live in a
specific territory.
The Attributes of Today’s Global System
• The nation allows one to feel a connection with a community of people even if
he/she will never meet all of them in his lifetime. For example, when you cheer for
a Filipino athlete in the Olympics, it is not because you personally know that
athlete. Rather, you imagine your connection as both members of the same Filipino
community.
• Nation-builders can only feel a sense of fulfillment when that national ideal
assumes an organizational form whose authority and power are recognized and
accepted by the people.
• Moreover, if there are communities that are not states, they often seek some form
of autonomy within their “mother states”. This is why, for example, the nation of
Quebec though belonging to the state of Canada, has different laws about language
(they are French speaking and require French language competencies for their
citizens). It is also for this reason that Scotland, though part of the United Kingdom,
has a strong independence movement led by the Scottish Nationalist Party.
The Attributes of Today’s Global System
• Nation and state are closely related because it is nationalism that
facilitate state formation. In the modern and contemporary era, It has
been the nationalist movements that have allowed for the creation of
nation-states. States become independent and sovereign because of
nationalist sentiment that clamors for this independence.
• Sovereignty, is thus one of the fundamental principles of modern
state politics. Understanding how this became the case entails going
back as far as 400 years ago.
The Interstate System
• The origins of the present-day concept of sovereignty can be traced back to the Treaty of
Westphalia, which was a set of agreements signed in the 1648 to end the Thirty Years’ War between
the major continental powers of Europe.
• After a brutal religious War between Catholics and Protestants, the Holy Roman Empire, Spain,
France, Sweden, and the Dutch Republic designed a system that would avert wars in the future by
recognizing that the treaty signers exercise complete control over their domestic affairs and swear
not to meddle in each other’s affairs.
• The Westphalia system provided stability for the nations of Europe, until it faced its first major
challenge by Napoleon Bonaparte. Bonaparte believe in spreading the principles of the French
Revolution- liberty, equality ad fraternity- to the rest of Europe and thus challenged the powers of
Kings, nobility and religion in Europe.
• The Napoleonic Wars lasted from 1803-1815 with Napoleon and his armies marching all over much
of Europe. In every country they conquered, the French implemented the Napoleonic Code that
forbade birth privileges, encouraged freedom or religion, and promoted meritocracy in government
service. This system shocked the monarchies and the hereditary elites (dukes, duchesses, etc.) of
Europe, and they mustered their armies to push back against the French emperor.
The Interstate System
• Anglo and Prussian armies finally defeated Napoleon in the Battle of Waterloo in
1815, ending the latter’s mission to spread his liberal code across Europe.
• To prevent another war and to keep their systems of privilege, the royal powers
created a new system that, in effect, restored the Westphalian system. The
Concert of Europe was an alliance of “great powers” – the United Kingdom,
Austria, Russia and Prussia- that sought to restore the world of monarchial,
hereditary, and religious privileges of the time before the French Revolution and
the Napoleonic Wars. It was an alliance that sought to restore the sovereignty of
states.
• Under this Metternich system (named after the Austrian diplomat, Klemens von
Metternich, who was the system’s main architect), the Concert’s power and
authority lasted from 1815 to 1914 at the dawn of World War I.
The Interstate System
• Despite the challenge of Napoleon to the Westphalian system and the
eventual collapse of the Concert of Europe after World War I, present-
day international system still has traces of this history.
• Until now, states are considered sovereign and Napoleonic attempts
to violently impose systems of government in other countries are
frowned upon. Moreover, like the Concert system “great powers” still
hold a significant influence over world politics.
• For example, the most powerful grouping in the UN, the Security
Council has a core of five permanent members, all having veto powers
over the council’s decision-making process.
Internationalism
• The Westphalian and Concert systems divided the world into separate,
sovereign entities. Since the existence of this interstate system, there
have been attempts to transcend it.
• Some like Bonaparte directly challenged the system by infringing on
other state’s sovereignty, while others sought to imagine other systems
of governance that go beyond, but do not necessarily challenge
sovereignty.
• Still others imagine a system of heightened interaction between various
sovereign states, particularly the desire for greater cooperation and
unity among states and people. This desire is called internationalism.
Internationalism
• It may be divided into two broad categories: liberal internationalism and socialist
internationalism
• The first major thinker of liberal internationalism was the later 18th century
German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Kant likened states in a global system to
people living in a given territory. If people living together require a government
to prevent lawlessness, shouldn’t that the same principle be applied to states?
Without a form of World Government, he argued, the international system
would be chaotic.
• Therefore, states like citizens of countries, must give up some freedoms and
“establish a continuously growing state consisting of various nations which will
ultimately include the nations of the world. In short, Kant imagined a form of
global government.
Internationalism
• Writing in the late 18th century as well, British philosopher Jeremy
Bentham (who coined the word “international” in 1780) advocate the
creation of “international law” that would govern the inter-state
relations. Bentham believed objective global legislators should aim to
propose legislation that would crate “the greatest happiness of all
nations taken together”
• These proposals for global government and international law seemed
to represent challenges to states. Would not a world government
become supreme? And would not its laws overwhelm the sovereignty
of individual states?
Internationalism
• The first thinker to reconcile nationalism with liberal internationalism was the 19th
century Italian patriot Giuseppe Mazzini. Mazzini was both an advocate of the
unification of the various Italian-speaking mini-states and a major critic of the
Metternich system.
• He believed in a Republican government (without kings, queens, and hereditary
succession) and proposed a system of free nations that cooperated with each
other to create an international system.
• For Mazzini, free independent states would be the basis of an equally free,
cooperative international system. He argued that if the various Italian mini-states
could unify, one could scale up the system to create for example, a United States
of Europe. Mazzini was a nationalist internationalist, who believes that free,
unified nation-states should be the basis of global cooperation.
Internationalism
• Mazzini influenced the thinking of United States president (1913-1921) Woodrow
Wilson, who became one of the 20th century’s most prominent internationalist. Like
Mazzini, Wilson saw nationalism as a prerequisite for internationalism. Because of
his faith in nationalism, he forwarded the principle of self-determination- the belief
that the world’s nations had a right to a free and sovereign government.
• He hoped that these free nations would become democracies, because only by
being such would they be able to build a free system of international relations
based on international law and cooperation.
• Wilson in short, became the most notable advocate for the creation of the League
of Nations. At the end of World War I in 1918, he pushed to transform the League
into a venue for conciliation and arbitration to prevent another war.
• For his efforts, Wilson was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 1919.
Internationalism
• The League came into being that same year. Ironically, and unfortunately for Wilson, the
United States was not able to join the organization due to strong opposition from the
Senate. The League was also unable to hinder another war from breaking out. It was
practically helpless to prevent the onset and intensification of World War II.
• On one side of the war were the Axis Powers- Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, and
Hirohito’s Japan who were ultra-nationalists that had an instinctive disdain for
internationalism and preferred to violently impose their dominance over other nations.
• It was in the midst of this war between the Axis Powers and the Allied Powers
(composed of the United States, United Kingdom, France, Holland, and Belgium that
internationalism would be eclipsed.
• Despite its failure, the League gave birth to some of the more task-specific international
organizations that are still around until today, the most popular of which are the World
Health Organization (WHO) and International Labor Organization (ILO).
Internationalism
• More importantly, it would serve as the blueprint for future forms of international cooperation. In
this respect, despite its organizational dissolution, the League of Nations’ principles survived World
War II.
• The League was the concentration of the concepts of liberal internationalism. From Kant, it
emphasized the need to form common international principles. From Mazzini, it enshrined the
principles of cooperation and respect among nation-states. From Wilson, it called for democracy
and self-determination. These ideas would reassert themselves in the creation of the United
Nations in 1946.
• One of the Mazzini’s biggest critics was German socialist philosopher Karl Marx who was also an
internationalist, but who differed from the former because he did not believe in nationalism. He
believed that any true form of internationalism should deliberately reject nationalism, which rooted
people in domestic concerns instead of global ones. Instead, Marx placed a premium on economic
equality; he did not divide the world into countries but into classes.
• The capitalist class referred to the owners of factories, companies, and other “means of
production.” In contrast, the proletariat class included those who did not own the means of
production but instead worked for the capitalists.
Internationalism
• Marx and his co-author Friedrich Engels, believed that in a socialist revolution seeking to
overthrow the state and alter the economy, the proletariat “had no nation” Hence, their now
famous battle cry, “Workers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains. They
opposed nationalism because they believed it prevented the unification of the world’s workers.
Instead of identifying with other workers, nationalism could make workers in individual
countries identify with the capitalists of their countries.
• Marx died in 1883, but his followers soon sought to make his vision concrete by establishing
their international organization. The Socialist International (SI) was a union of European
socialist and labor parties established in Paris in 1889. Although short-lived, the SI’s
achievements included the declaration of May 1 as Labor Day and the creation of an
International Women’s Day. Most importantly, it initiated the successful campaign for an 8-
hour workday.
• The SI collapsed during World War I as the member parties refused or were unable to join the
internationalist efforts to fight for the war. Many of these sister parties even ended up fighting
each other. It was a confirmation of Marx’s warning: when workers and organizations take the
side of their countries instead of each other, their long term interests are compromised.
Internationalism
• As the SI collapsed, a more radical version emerged. In the so-called Russian Revolution of 1917, Czar
Nicholas II was overthrown and replaced by a revolutionary government led by the Bolshevik Party
and its leader, Vladimir Lenin. This new state was called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or
USSR.
• Unlike the majority of the member parties of the SI, the Bolsheviks did not believe in obtaining
power for the working class through elections. Rather, they exhorted the revolutionary “vanguard”
parties to lead the revolutions across the world, using methods of terror if necessary. Today, parties
like this are referred to as Communist parties.
• To encourage these socialist revolutions across the world, Lenin established the Communist
International (Comintern) in 1919. The Comintern served as the central body for directing
Communist parties all over the world. This International was not only more radical than the Socialist
International, it was also less democratic because it followed closely the top-down governance of
the Bolsheviks.
• Many of the world’s states feared the Comintern, believing that it was working in secret to stir up
revolutions in their countries (which was true). A problem arose during World War II, when the
Soviet Union joined the Allied Powers in 1941. The United States and the United Kingdom, would not
trust the Soviet Union in their fight against Hitler’s Germany. These countries wondered if the Soviet
Union was trying to promote revolutions in their backyards. To appease his allies, Lenin’s successor,
Joseph Stalin dissolved the Comintern in 1943.
Internationalism
• After the war, however, Stalin re-established the Comintern as the Communist
Information Bureau (Cominform). The Soviet Union took over the countries in Eastern
Europe when the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain divided the war-torn
Europe into their respective spheres of influence. The Cominform like Comintern, helped
direct the various communist parties that had taken power in Eastern Europe.
• With the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, whatever existing thoughts
about communist internationalism also practically disappeared. The SI managed to re-
establish itself in 1951 but its influence remained primarily confined to Europe, and has
never been considered a major player in international relations to this very day.
• For the postwar period, liberal internationalism would once again be ascendant. And the
best evidence of this is the rise of the United Nations as the center of global governance.
Conclusion
• This lessons examined the roots of the international system. In tracing
these roots, a short history of internationalism was provided.
Moreover, internationalism is but one window into the broader
phenomenon of globalization. Nevertheless, it is a very crucial aspect
of globalization since global interactions are heightened by the
increased interdependence of states. This increased interdependence
manifests itself not just through state-to-state relations. Increasingly,
international relations are also facilitated by international
organizations that promote global norms and policies. The most
prominent example of this organization is the United Nations.