@Gracee,
Gracee;135843 wrote:I'm currently reading this book, and i think its brilliant with regards to globalisation in terms of business and economics, but not so much in politics. This claim was also the basis of Fukuyama's book 'The End of History', however his hypothesis has been proven quite flawed. It is true that in the West we have found peace and stability among ourselves, and that the liklihood of war breaking out again in Europe is next to nothing. But the fact is, that countries such as China and Russia have managed to integrate an open market capitalist system into a closed political system, with thoroughly different values to the West. Though the West may have renounced the power politics of the 19th and 20th centuries, the new great powers - China and Russia - have yet to do so. Therefore there is always the possibility of war with China and/or Russia arising from a 21st century Sarajevo.
I challenge that claim. The western powers no longer play power politics against
one another - because one of the western powers (Britain + U.S.) has triumphed and become the hegemon which directs the energies of all the western nations for its own purposes - but the west as a whole, led from New York/London definately plays power politics in competition with non-western powers: e.g. Russia and China.
Quote:And then there is Africa; which seems to be moving further and further away form capitalism and democracy in some places, and in which war is still a part of day to day life. This huge continent is so often forgotten in our analysis of world politics, and although it may not have much power, it is still a huge land mass with a large proportion of the global population.
Overall, I think it would be wise to save the unrestrained optimism about the future for centuries in which democracy and capitalism have taken hold in almost every state, and all of the most powerful ones. Until then, though we can still have hope for a better future, focus should still be on managing the minefield which is 21st century power politics.
I agree absolutely with your rejection of Fukuyama's bold thesis. History is far from over. However, one might say that
western history was concluded when the last non-english great power was broken and sublimated into the anglo-american world order in 1945. Since then, history has consisted of the western power block consolidating its power in the former colonial regions: Africa, S. America, Asia, etc. Russia was gradually bled out through two world wars and a long war, and is now a shadow of its former self. China is rising in importance, but has yet to shake itself free of dependence on western economies. Either those last bastions of non-western power will succumb to anglo-american soft power, or fate has in store for humanity another world war.
I think the West is virtually assured of victory over these rivals, unless 1) China manages, in cooperation with Russia, to create overland energy corridors to the M.E. that eliminate dependence on imports by sea, or 2) China manages to create a blue water navy that would be able to challenge Anglo-American naval supremacy and ensure the continued flow of those same resources by sea, even in the event of general war.
As Niel Ferguson has astutely pointed out, these tensions very much resemble those which held between Germany and Britain in the early 20th century. It became neccessary for rapidly industrializing Germany to find for itself a secure source of oil that couldn't be affected by British naval supremacy (the Berlin-Baghdad railway) in the event of war, or to build a blue water navy that could challenge that supremacy.
The series of wars in the Balkans that preceeded the Great War were arguabley instigated by Britain to prevent Germany from completing that stretch of the rail line. The epic failure of Galipoli and the massive diversion of resources (over 1 million men) to fight the relatively weak and insignificant Ottoman Empire were largely motivated by a desire to seize the rail line and ensure that it would never rise again; the post-war division of the middle east into British and French protectorates ensured exclusive access for the Anglo-American powers to that newly important region of the world, which privilage has been maintained up to this day.
Zbigniew Brzezinksi - in his 1997 book
The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives - labelled Transcaucasia/C. Asia the 'global balkans,' a region of unparalelled strategic importance, which could well serve as the source of the next global war, as the European Balkans did with the Great War. What has occured since 1997? The U.S. has conquered and installed puppet regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, while moving toward much closer and/or more formal alliance with Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Turkmenistan, Uzebekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikstan, and Kyrgyzstan. The U.S. and its allies are building several energy corridors through those newly conquered or pacified territories, while simulteineously building military alliances with the former soviet states of Europe (Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Romania, Ukraine, etc.) and arming Taiwan. Iran is the great remaining obstacle to western energy security, while also the linchpin for Chinese energy security.
:lol:dated by constituency ?