INTERNATIONAL POLITICS AND SECURITY IN POST-COLD WAR ERA

Devania Anesya/ 070810535

devania.annesya@gmail.com

 

F

ollowing the end of the Cold War, many analysts expected that regional security would become separate from global security (Lake and Morgan,1997), especially from the concerns of the great powers. This was because the great powers were no longer involved in an intense competition in all parts of the globe, as was the case during the Cold War. The events of 9/11 show, however, that there is a tight relationship between global security, US national security, transnational terrorism, failed states, and issues of regional conflict (such as the relations among Afghanistan, its neighbors, and trans-border ethnic groups; the Pakistan-India conflict over Kashmir; Iraq, Iran, and Gulf security; the Arab-Israeli conflict; and challenges to the stability of Arab regimes and other weak states).

The US 9/11 Commission, set up by the US Congress to investigate the events leading up to the 9/11 terror attacks, agrees. Among its conclusions: “In the twentieth century, strategists focused on the world’s great industrial heartlands. In the twenty-first, the focus is in the opposite direction, towards remote regions and failing states” (Quoted in Financial Times, July 23, 2004). Thus, regional conflicts and their resolution should be addressed not only for their intrinsic importance, but also in order to advance the cause of international security and stability.

Indeed, one major reason why questions of regional war and peace have assumed added importance in the post-Cold War era is the growing salience of regional conflicts as a result of the end of the superpower rivalry, and the potential consequences of regional conflicts for international stability (Miller and Kagan, 1997: 52). Militarily, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery to different regions may eventually pose a threat, if they do not already, not only to regional security, but to global security as well. Regional conflicts can place access to markets and resources at risk – Middle Eastern oil is a good example.

Some argue that the process of globalization has intensified with the end of the Cold War, and that this process leads to greater global uniformity which diminishes regional differences (Clark, 1997). Others, however, point out that the end of the Cold War produced increasing regional variations, especially in the area of security (Friedberg, 1993/4: 5). Indeed, the end of the Cold War has brought to the surface even greater variations among regions with respect to war and peace. In contrast to post-1945 international norms and practice (Zacher, 2001), Iraq, a state with revisionist aspirations, annexed a sovereign neighboring state, Kuwait, in summer 1990. The Iraqi action led to a major US intervention and to the First Gulf War in 1991. Following the 9/11 attacks, the United States came to see the Middle East, particularly Iraq, as a major source of terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. This brought about the Second Gulf War, in which the United States invaded and occupied Iraq in Spring 2003. This time the United States had a wider agenda, one which called for bringing democracy to Iraq and, coupled with other US diplomatic initiatives, to the Middle East as a whole. Another example is the Balkans where– after forty-five years of relative calm–the collapse of the USSR led to an eruption of violence which eventually brought about US-led NATO interventions in Bosnia in 1995 and Kosovo in 1999. Violent eruptions also took place in other areas of the collapsing Soviet empire (for example, the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan), although they did not bring out Western military interventions.

 

Reviewed from:

Miller, Benjamin. 2007. States, Nations, and Great Powers: The Sources of Regional War and Peace. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

 

INTERNATIONAL POLITICS AND SECURITY IN COLD WAR ERA

Devania Anesya/ 070810535

devania.annesya@gmail.com

 

T

he evolution of the rise and collapse of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union from the end of World War II in 1945 to the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991 has several properties that recommend it as a test of currently contending security theories. First, the struggle for global dominance between these two superpowers and their allies, clients, and satellites generated incentives for the development of state military capabilities unprecedented in human history. Moscow and Washington constructed three mutually reinforcing military systems. Central was what Herman Kahn darkly characterized as two superpower nuclear Doomsday Machines, each capable of annihilating its rival in less than a hour–and of potentially destroying much of human life on the planet (Kahn, 1960 and Rees, 2003). Linked to these Doomsday Machines was the creation of enormous conventional and regional nuclear forces in the center of Europe, where Western democratic armies met those of the Soviet Union to defeat Nazi Germany. These two competitors for hegemony, much like Athens and Sparta in their struggle for leadership of the Greek peninsula, also enlisted or coercively induced other states and peoples into their global alliance structures. These superpower military systems, if unleashed in a spasm, would have moved rapidly toward the Clausewitz notion of pure war. These three, interdependent military responses to their global struggle were rationalized by both states as mutually reinforcing to support their defense, deterrent, and war-fighting strategies. Dominance at each level of armed conflict was conceived as mutually contingent to produce overall strategic superiority; the synergism was widely believed by decision-makers on both sides to be indispensable to win or prevail in the global competition.

Second, the scientific knowledge, technological innovation, and economic resources mobilized to sustain these superpower systems exposed the shortcomings of classic models of security. Third, the Cold War went well beyond the material dimensions sketched in these security and welfare imperatives. It was also a struggle over legitimacy before the courts of national and world public opinion. Legitimacy as a Cold War imperative compelled the superpowers to justify their conflicting solutions to global security and welfare imperatives and their self-assumed roles as leaders of their competing coalitions. They also had to validate the principles of legitimacy that purportedly conferred on them the authority to rule other peoples and their own populations. Joseph Stalin, the Soviet leader duringWorldWar II, told Milovan Djilas in 1945: “This war is not as in the past; whoever occupies a territory also imposes on it his own social system. Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach. It cannot be otherwise” (Keylor, 2003).

Fourth, the Cold War was truly global, even more extensive in reach and impact than World Wars I and II. Engaged and ensnared were all humans, whether by choice or necessity. This was the first instance in the evolution of the species, since its emergence out of Africa over a million years ago (Diamond, 1992), that all the populations of the world had been drawn into the vortex of a global struggle. For the first time, too, the conflict put into question the very future of the human species, quite apart from the localized national, ethnic, communal interests of the peoples and states striving for ascendancy. The scope of the Cold War engaged all of the actors and principal factors identified (albeit differentially) by the security theories to be evaluated in succeeding chapters. States, the system of state relations, global markets, multinational corporations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), and most of the world’s populations–all were implicated by choice or necessity in the Cold War struggle. The Cold War, if viewed as a set of all conceivable interactions between and among relevant actors engaged in security relations in international relations, offers a sufficiently inclusive set of data to test the security claims of contending schools of thought.

 

Reviewed from:

Kolodziej, Edward A. 2005. Security and International Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

 

INTERNATIONAL ORDER AND SECURITY REGIME

 

Devania Anesya/ 070810535

 

S

ecurity regime, in the words of Robert Jervis, as ‘those principles, rules, and norms that permit nations to be restrained in their behavior in the belief that others will reciprocate.’ Some regimes can have a ‘formal’ structure, organized for collective defense against an outside party, such as NATO. A security regime can also be a collective security organization in which the members agree that they will respond to an act of aggression by one member against another.

The study of security in the global context is a sub-discipline of the wider subject usually still referred to as International Relations.  The main paradigms of International Relations offer alternative conceptual frameworks for comprehending the complexity that emerges from attempting to study the huge volume of interactions between actors that makes up the contemporary global system.

Realists are the traditionalists in International Relations and Security Studies and theirs is still the dominant paradigm, both academically and in terms of the ‘real world’ as the approach favoured by governments in conducting their foreign policies. The ‘actors’ were states. A state’s security is achieved by it pursuing the maximization of its own power is that all states cannot simultaneously follow this prescription. The balance of power keeps a sense of order to the ‘anarchical society’  of states through the mutual interest of the most powerful among them to work together and preserve the status quo (Bull 1977). Realists warn that no regional security system can be developed except through a common calculation of interest and threat perception.

Pluralism emerged as a paradigm of International Relations from the 1960s, Pluralists, as the term implies, consider that a plurality of actors, rather than just states, exert influence on the world stage. State dominance of international relations was being eroded.

From a Marxist (or Structuralist) perspective inter-state competition is a side show to the ‘competition’ between the wealthy peoples of the world (most of the developed world and a small fraction of elites in the less-developed world) and the poor, in which there is consistently only one winner. Security Studies, as it has evolved, is superfluous since human and global security can only evercome through global, structural change. Military strategy serves global economic interests rather than national security interests.

In the 1990s dissatisfaction with the three main paradigms of International Relations, produced a range of theoretical challenges which known as Social Constructivism. It began to be argued that maybe the actors on the world stage do not really follow any kind of rational script, be it written in the language of self-interest, mutual interest or dictated by economic circumstance. Perhaps, at least some of the time, foreign policy reflects parochial ideological or moral guidelines rather than objective gains.  (Ruggie 1998: 1–39).

 

Reviewed from:

Alagappa, Muthiah. 1999. The Study of International Order. The Australian National University

Jervis, Robert. 2009. Security Regime. Cambridge: Jstor

Maoz, Ze et al. Building Regional Security in The Middle East. London: Frank Cass Publishers

 

 

WAR IS THE END OF CONFLICT

 

Devania Anesya/ 070810535

Ayu Rachmania/ 070810203

Alathea Amanda Sumanti/ 070710205

 

W

ar is direct, somatic violence between states as the actors of International Relations. War occurs when states in situation of social conflicts and opposition find that the pursuit of incompatible or exclusive goals cannot be confined to non-violent modes (Evan and Newnham 1998). As a form of direct violence, war occurs in different form within social system. Gang war, range war, class war, civil or internal war are distinguishable typologies. Meanwhile others said that war is nothing but a duel on a larger scale, thus an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will (Clausewitz 1993).

War  is the use of force–because force is very influential in defeating the enemy and indirectly stop the opponent to threat or whatever it is–to make the enemy follow our will. War is thus an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will. That force is, phisycal force, for moral force has no existence save as expressed in the state and the law–is thus the means of war; to impose our will from on–the enemy is its object. We object to secure. That must render the enemy powerless; and that in the theory, is the true aim of warfare. Aim takes the place of the object, discarding it as something not Actually part of war Itself.

Force means power, to finished a conflict need some states that have power to involved. More greater power of state can make force more effectively. So theres condition that some big wars involved some big state to have reconcillation, therefore when force came from small state that have low political influence, force became uneffective.

Let’s understand the chronology of war—about how it is happen. First, we must know that war is begun by conflict. Conflict is a situation when interests between two or more countries collide. This conflict, mostly, will not end, before the state actors achieve their interests (national scale interests). In the political world, interests are the fundamental and essential things ever exist. Interests will always be the beginning and the ending motive/ trigger for political actors in doing their (political) actions. Interests determine whether the actors will use the non-violence actions and steps, or otherwise. That image of war pattern is the main point we’re talking about in this writing. Begins with collide of interests between two or more countries, which then continued into the state level conflict. Then, that conflict advanced to the next level, the state level war. Those continuation and advancing levels from collide of interests to conflicts and then to war. That is caused by the reason of the effort in pursuing interests. In conclusion, war is the end of the conflicts.

Influence can also be classified as war, such as embargo in economic influence, a political pressure in resolution to Iran from UN in political influences. It means that war is the end a conflict, it’s a tool to end a conflict war also judged as most effective solution, saving more time rather than negotiation and diplomacy.

Realist argued war should not necessarily be regarded as dysfunctional. War in the international system is not necessarily like disease in the biological system. The fears of war or conflicts have often be used to integrate states. In such circumstance, the search of for enemies assists in maintaining or increasing group solidarity. Violence can be used to create states. For instead in the First World War, Napoleon war was brought United Kingdom, Russia, Prussia, Sweden, Austria, the Netherlands and a number of German states together against France as one coalition.

 

Analysis

Neo-realists, Kenneth Waltz argue that instead of looking to “natural” causes of conflict, we need to look to “social” ones instead. Following Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Waltz argues that the organization of social relations rather than the nature of man is what determines whether or not we have war. Why? Because good men behave badly in bad social organizations, and bad men can be stopped from behaving badly if they are in good social organizations. States go to war, then, because they are in a bad social organization. And Waltz calls that bad social organization international anarchy. “International anarchy is the permissive cause of war.” So, realists and neo-realists differ on how they conceptualize international anarchy. For realists, it is just the environment in which sovereign nation-states act. For neo-realists, international anarchy describes the social relations among sovereign nation-states that causally explain why wars occur. So every state has a right to go to war if there any unresolved conflict. But if a state goes to war, who’ll be assured that the conflict will end and nothing left to fight of?

 

Reviewed from:

Evans, Graham & Newnham, Jeffrey. 1998. Dictionary of International Relations. London: Penguin Books

Mingst, Karen A. 2008. ‘Contending Perspective: How to Think about International relations Theoritically’ dalam Essentials of International Relation. New York: W. W. Norton & Company

Clausewite, Carl V. 1993. On War (ed & Michael haward and pete, paret), New York : Alferd A Knopf, pp 83-101, 731-737.

Art, Robert J. 2009. International Politics. Enduring Concepts & Contemporary Issues 9^th Edition. Pearson Education, Inc US

 

 

 

ANARCHY

 

Devania Anesya/ 070810535

 

Guiding questions:

-          Anarchy is a result of a system or disorder?

-          Is anarchy still exists until now?

 

A

narchy is a crucial highly contentious concept in international relation. Its literal meaning is ‘absence of government’ but it is often used as a synonym for disorder, disarray, confusion or chaos (Evan and Newnham 1998). In its formal sense, it designates the lack of a central authority and anarchy does happen in which international occur. In this sense it has neither positive nor negative conditions. It is descriptive rather than prescriptive, a general condition rather than a distinct structure. It considered to be ‘the starting point’ of thinking of international relations.

In the classical era, many of the philosophers of relevance to international relations focused on the notion of the basic characteristics of man and how those characteristics might influence the character of international society. Thomas Hobbes the English philosopher (1588-1679), in Leviathan, imagined a state of nature as a world without government authority or civil order, where men rule by passions, living with the constant uncertainty of their own security. Extrapolating to the international level, in the absence of international authority, society is in a ‘state of nature’ or what we identify as anarchy. State left in this anarchic condition act as man does in the state of nature. The solution of the dilemma is a unitary state – a Leviathan – where power is centrally and absolutely controlled.

Rousseau (1712-78) saw a different solution, he described the state of nature/ anarchy as an egocentric world, with man’s primary concern being self-preservation. Rousseau’s solution to the dilemma is to create smaller communities in which the ‘general will’ could be attained. General will can direct the forces of the state according to the purpose for which instituted, which is the common good.

 

 

Anarchy does not imply that violence is common in the international system but rather that the threat of violence is ever present. Anarchy means that the international system is one of self-help. Nevertheless, Waltz sees virtues in anarchy–principally that the high costs of organization in a hierarchic order are avoided and that states can preserve their autonomy.

Analysis

The anarchical condition exist because sovereign states as the most important player in world politics are autonomous and independent. Thus, international politics, each state presumably will behave by their own interests. And states behaviour in pursuing their own interests and their relations to other states respectively shape international politics. State are presumed to act rationally in terms of perception of the national interest but they are not entirely unconcerned with the rules and norms. That’s why conflict and cooperation can and do co-exist within the same social milieu.

Reviewed from:

Evans, Graham & Newnham, Jeffrey. 1998. Dictionary of International Relations. London: Penguin Books

Hobes, Thomas. 1968. Leviathan. Eng: Penguin

Jervis, Robert. 2009. Enduring concepts & Cotemporary Issues 9^th edition. Pearson Education, Inc

Mingst, Karen A. 2008. ‘Contending Perspective: How to Think about International relations Theoritically’ dalam Essentials of International Relation. New York: W. W. Norton & Company

 

 

INTRODUCTION OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY

Devania Annesya

devania.annesya@gmail.com

Over the past thirty years, the study of international political economy underwent a remarkable reappearance. It is virtually nonexistent before 1970 as a field of study, international political economy is now a popular area of specialization for both undergraduates and graduate students, as well as the source of much innovative and influential scholarship.

Karen A. Mingst (2008), Essential of International Relations, international political economy is the study of the interrelationship between politics and economics and between states and market. It also examines how politics can be used to achieve economics goals, and how economic instruments are utilized for political purposes.

Nature of Political Economy

Until a century ago, almost all thinkers concerned with understanding human society wrote about political economy. For individuals as diverse as Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and Karl Marx, the economy was extremely political and politics was obviously tied to economic phenomena. Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations (1776), political economy was a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator and a guide to the prudent management of the national economy, or as John Stuart Mill, the last major economist, commented that political economy was the science that teaches a nation how to become rich. These thinkers emphasized the wealth of nations and the term of political was the significant as the term “economy”.

In the late nineteenth century, this broad definition of what economist study was narrowed considerably. Alfred Marshall in Principles of Economics (1890) substituted the term “economics” for “political economy”. In modern terminology economics is defined by economist as a universal science of decision-making under conditions of constraint and scarcity.

Around the turn of the century, however, professional studies of economics and politics became increasingly divorced from one another. Economic investigation began to focus on understanding more fully the operation of specific markets and their interaction; the development of new mathematical techniques permitted the formalization of, for example, laws of supply and demand. By the time of World War I, an economics profession was in existence and its attention was focused on understanding the operation of economic activities in and of themselves. At the same time, other scholars were looking increasingly at the political realm in isolation from the economy. The rise of modern representative political institutions, mass political parties, more politically informed populations, and modern bureaucracies all seemed to justify the study of politics as an activity that had a logic of its own.

With the exception of a few isolated individuals and rise of interest during the politically and economically troubled Depression years, the twentieth century saw an increasing separation of the study of economics from that of politics. Economists developed ever more elaborate and sophisticated models of how economies work, and similarly, political scientists elaborate ever more complex theories of political development and activity.

Study of Political Economy

The increasing importance of international political economy stems from several trends. First, economic transactions among states, including trade, investment, and lending have been rising dramatically. The number of interactions among states has grown both in absolute term and as a share of total economy activity. Second, there has been increasing expectations about the responsibilities of national governments for economic policies.

A state must fulfill several social, economics, and political functions to preserve the loyalty of its citizens. James Mayall in Nationalism and International Society (1990) emphasized “the new economics nationalism”, economic welfare has become intimately joined to national citizenship in the modern world.

This last fact—the impact of policy and politics on economic trends—is the most visible, and the most important, reason to look beyond market-based, purely economic explanations of social behavior. Indeed, many market-oriented economists are continually surprised by the ability of governments or of powerful groups pressuring governments to disobey economic tendencies. When OPEC first raised oil prices in December 1973, some market-minded pundits, and even a few naive economists, predicted that such naked manipulation of the forces of supply and demand could last only a matter of months.

Three Alternatives of International Political Economy

In addition to the perspectives already mentioned, some scholars attempt to classify interpretations of global political and economic developments in a somewhat different manner. Many theories of international political economy can also be categorized into one of three perspectives: Liberalism, Marxism, and Realism.

The Liberal emphasizes how both the market and politics are environments in which all parties can benefit by entering into voluntary exchanges with others. Marxism perhaps the severest critic of capitalism and its Liberal supporters. Marx saw capitalism and the market as creating extremes of wealth for capitalists and poverty for workers. Marxists see the political economy as necessarily conflictual, since the relationship between capitalists and workers is essentially antagonistic. Meanwhile realists believe all actors must be subordinate to it. Realists assert that the basis for this interaction is legislated by the nation-state. Thus, where Liberals focus on individuals and Marxists on classes, Realists concentrate on nation-states.

Analysis

As Frieden and Lake commented in International Political Economy (2000) International political economy is the study of the interaction of economics and politics in the world arena, I thought in the most general sense, the economy can be defined as the system of producing, distributing, and using wealth. Politics is the set of institutions and rules by which social and economic interactions are governed. It means which political economy has a variety of meanings. For some, it refers primarily to the study of the political basis of economic actions, the ways in which government policies affect market operations. For others, the principal preoccupation is the economic basis of political action, the ways in which economic forces mold government policies. The two focuses are, in a sense, complementary, for politics and markets are in a constant state of mutual interaction.

The study of political economy is now very much in vogue among historians, economist, and scientist. This interest reflects a growing appreciation that the worlds of politics and economics, once thought to be separate (at least as fields of academic inquiry), do in fact importantly affect one another.

References

Whynes, David K. 1984. What Is Political Economy?: Eight Prespectives. Oxford: Basil  Blackwell

Gilpin, Robert. 2001. “The Nature of Political Economy” dalam Global Political Economy: Understanding the International Economic Order. Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 25-45

Gilpin, Robert. 2001. “The Study of International Political Economy”, dalam Global Political Economy: Understanding rhe International Economic Order. Princeton: Princeton University

Frieden, Jeffry A & Lake, David A. 2000. International Political Economy: Perspectives on Global Power and Wealth. Routledge: Bedford/St. Martin’s