In four books from 1997 to 2008 Zbigniew Brzezinski outlined a comprehensive American foreign posture around the geopolitical grail of Central Asia. Since 1945 the United States has been largely defined as the first non-Eurasian thalassocracy to prevail in the Great Game, yet for how long?
Although the race for nuclear weapons created a very tense atmosphere during the Cold War, it was also an effective means to maintain stability because both superpowers had the incentive to avoid using their weapons knowing it would lead to their mutual destruction. Such conditions and incentives do not exist in either unipolar or multipolar systems. Bipolarity is therefore stable thanks to the balance of military power that exists between two superpowers.
Many international relations commentators are heralding the Western bombing of Libya as marking a return to the 1990s era of humanitarian intervention. The debate is largely over whether this return is to be welcomed or regretted. But a return of the moral or ethical understandings of the humanitarian interventionist 1990s is not a possibility.
The Libyan Crisis is in some respects a turning point in the ‘history’ of the responsibility to protect doctrine (RtoP). The case suggests that the international community is beginning to mobilize against rulers who conquer or purchase statehood to gain impunity.
In his book ‘Paradise and Power’, Robert Kagan states that since the falling of Soviet Russia, the apparent cracks between American and European psyches have become more apparent. As such, questions have been raised as to whether US-EU ideals were ever on the same axis.
Within the antagonism between capitalist and communist ideas in the period of the cold war the Sino-US rapprochement appears as a very out of character phenomenon, culminating in the spectacular visit of president Richard Nixon in 1972, as the first president to enter Chinese Communist soil.
There is an understandable desire in international relations, as in so many other areas of life, to be able to see into the future, to know what it is that is coming down the track towards us and whether the light at the end of the tunnel is indeed the sunlight of a better future or just an indication that the tunnel is on fire. In recent weeks, in Ivory Coast and Libya, the tunnel has been well and truly alight. This troubled engagement between humanitarian action and the precautionary principle has been discernable since the practice leapt to prominence.
Terrorism has existed for centuries as a way of creating disruption and fear. Yet, to declare a war against it has created numerous questions as to how to fight this multifaceted idea. Individual groups do indeed hold ideological stances, just as legitimate political parties do, but to brand all terrorism and terrorists as the same would be incorrect.
It can’t be that everyone once considered political theory relevant and now finds it irrelevant, based on mysterious facts about today’s world. Practical men and women have always favoured action over thought. Long ago, Aristotle said that political activists find philosophers contemptible. So these questions are hardly innocent: they put political theory on the defensive. How should political theorists respond?
The real world is too complicated to be explained by absolute or relative gains alone. Both theories treat states as rational and unitary actors. Due to the diversity of interests, it is not easy to define a unitary national interest in some issues. Consequently, gains per se sometimes cannot be clearly stated.
Before you download your free e-book, please consider donating to support open access publishing.
E-IR is an independent non-profit publisher run by an all volunteer team. Your donations allow us to invest in new open access titles and pay our bandwidth bills to ensure we keep our existing titles free to view. Any amount, in any currency, is appreciated. Many thanks!
Donations are voluntary and not required to download the e-book - your link to download is below.