Understanding Global Politics

Actors and Themes in International Affairs

Klaus Larres, Ruth Wittlinger, Klaus Larres, Ruth Wittlinger

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781134818679
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Contemporary international affairs are largely shaped by widely differing thematic issues and actors, such as nation states, international institutions, NGOs and multinational companies. Obtaining a deeper understanding of these multifaceted themes and actors is crucial for developing a genuine understanding of contemporary international affairs. This book provides undergraduate and postgraduate students of global politics and international relations with the necessary knowledge of the forces that shape and dominate our global political, economic and social/cultural environment. The book significantly enhances our understanding of the essentials of contemporary international affairs.

Understanding Global Politics takes a pragmatic approach to international relations, with each chapter being written by an expert in their respective field:

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• Part I provides the historical background that has led to the current state of world affairs. It also provides clear outlines of the major yet often complex theories of international relations.

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• Part II is dedicated to the main actors in global politics. It discusses actors such as the most important nation states, the UN, EU, international organizations, NGOs and multinational companies.

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• Part III considers important contemporary themes and challenges in global politics, including non-state centered challenges. Chapters focus on international terrorism, energy and climate change issues, religious fundamentalism and demographic changes.

The comprehensive structure of this book makes it particularly viable to students who wish to pursue careers in international organizations, diplomacy, consultancy, the think tank world and the media.

Part I
Background

History and theory

Chapter 1

Global politics since 1945

Klaus Larres

It has been quite a rollercoaster. Global politics since 1945 have never been boring though the post–World War II era has constituted a highly dangerous and deeply divided era. There was a short moment of unity and talk about a constructive new world order in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and the disintegration of the Soviet Union in late 1991 (Bush and Scowcroft, 1998; Hurst, 1999; Engel, 2018). Altogether, however, the post–Cold War years have been quite unsettling. While East–West divisions have been overcome in geographical and strictly ideological ways, thinking along lines of ‘us’ and ‘them’ is alive and kicking. The world is still deeply divided. In terms of politics, religion, race, ethnicity as well as prosperity, demographic trends and, not least, questions of migration and immigration, an unbridgeable gulf seems to exist in many parts of the globe.

Figure 1.1National flags at the entrance to the UN office in Geneva, Switzerland

The 21st century is also turning increasingly nationalistic. The world has become much more inward looking and self-focused than was the case in the preceding half-century (McCormick, 1995). The forces of globalisation and integration have been on the defensive since at least the second decade of the 21st century. The memory of the violent and destructive consequences of the irresponsibly nationalistic 1930s and 1940s seem to have faded away (Ullrich, 2016). Yet, it was the violence, genocide and wholesale destruction wielded during those dark days that led to the global orientation of the years since 1945.

In our multifaceted and diverse world it is almost impossible to find some overarching developments that are characteristic for the entire era since 1945. Still, a number of long-term features can be identified, some negative and quite disturbing ones as well as several much more positive and visionary factors. The former include the potential of sudden annihilation by nuclear weapons and the ongoing step-by-step environmental destruction of the world as we know it. Other decisive forces of destruction with a long-term legacy have been transnational terrorism, the Iraq War of 2003 and the ‘Great Recession’ a few years later. Fortunately the post-1945 era has also been characterised by at least two crucial positive aspects: the rise of relative stability and integration in formerly deeply divided regions and the growing and beneficial importance of the rule of law and international institutions in global politics. This chapter elaborates on these aspects before then also outlining some likely trajectories for the future of global politics in the 21st century.

Forces of destruction and annihilation

It was only less than 80 years ago that two atomic bombs destroyed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Ever since the nuclear threat, and thus the destruction of the entire planet, has been the ever-present danger that has accompanied world politics since the end of World War II (Rhodes, 1996). Not only the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis (Fursenko and Naftali, 1998) but also quite a few other accidents and miscommunications brought the world close to a nuclear holocaust. An unexploded nuclear bomb is still buried deep in a field near the small town of Faro in the US state of North Carolina. The B-52 that was carrying two 3- or 4-megaton H-bombs broke up in mid-air and dropped its payload, almost leading to the detonation of the bombs. Only one of the bombs has been recovered (Dobson, 2013; Burr, 2014). Many similar nuclear accidents in the US and elsewhere have become known to the wider public, not least due to the investigative work of journalists and political historians (Schlosser, 2014).

With the growing number of nuclear powers during the Cold War and since, it has become increasingly likely that something might go wrong, be it for political-military or technical reasons or for reasons of miscommunication. In September 1983, for instance, at a time when superpower relations had hit rock bottom, the alarm went off at the secret command centre in Moscow that monitored the country’s early warning satellite system. It appeared that the US had launched five nuclear missiles that would hit the Soviet Union within 25 minutes. Duty officer Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov should have immediately informed his superiors who would have passed on the information to Soviet leader Yuri Andropov and his top military advisers. If he had done so, the Kremlin leaders may well have immediately launched a retaliatory strike, causing a nuclear holocaust in the process (Anthony, 2015).

Petrov hesitated, however. His gut feeling and a number of inexplicable unusual satellite images made him think that this might be a false alarm. Although being in two minds about it, he reported a system malfunction to his superiors rather than an incoming imminent nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. He was right. It later turned out that the satellite system had mistaken the reflection of the sun off the top of clouds as the launch of a number of missiles. With his caution and hesitation based on his gut instinct, Petrov had virtually saved the world, and certainly the US, from nuclear annihilation. ‘I was just at the right place at the right time’, he later modestly explained. Essentially it had been sheer good luck that a nuclear war between the superpowers had been averted (Chan, 2017).

The UK, France and China developed their nuclear arsenals in the 1950s and 1960s. Israel, which does not admit to having nuclear weapons, managed to obtain its nuclear capacity in late 1966. At present it probably has approximately 80 nuclear bombs (ACA, 2018). Developing countries such as India and Pakistan, as well as North Korea, are the world’s latest nuclear armed countries. Already by the late 1990s both India and Pakistan possessed a significant number of powerful ‘nukes’. At present they have approximately 130 and 140 nuclear devices, respectively. North Korea managed to achieve nuclear status only recently; by early 2018 it was estimated to have between 15 and 50 atomic bombs (ACA, 2018). The country also claims to have successfully tested for the first time an intercontinental strategic missile in late November 2017; such a missile is essential for its nuclear warheads to reach the continental US (McCurry and Borger, 2017). Whether or not this is correct and whether or not the country already has a warhead that after its launch into space can actually re-enter the earth’s atmosphere and then target an American city is anyone’s guess. Pyongyang may well need another couple of years to develop such a warhead (Sanger and Broad, 2018a). Iran has serious nuclear ambitions that, however, have been curtailed by the April 2015 framework treaty and a subsequent Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (Ritter, 2018).¹

It remains an open question whether in particular Pakistan and North Korea possess the political stability or have the security provisions in place that makes their nuclear deterrent secure and safe. Some of Pakistan’s nuclear knowhow, for example, clandestinely found its way to North Korea and contributed to Pyongyang’s controversial development of its atomic arsenal. There is some evidence that North Korea has sold chemical weapons to the Syrian government and it cannot be excluded that Pyongyang would also be ready to sell its nuclear knowhow for hard currency (Harris, 2018). There is justified concern that the nuclear proliferation threshold is decreasing. Eventually some of the world’s growing number of autocratic and failing states as well as ill-intentioned terror organisations may obtain a real nuclear bomb or perhaps a so-called dirty bomb – one which combines conventional explosives with radioactive material as an ‘area denial’ weapon against civilians. In the 1970s and early 1980s, however, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina as well as Taiwan, South Korea and Algeria gave up on their fledging nuclear programs (as had Sweden in the 1960s), and Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Belarus disposed of the Soviet nuclear bombs on their territories in the 1990s. Libya agreed to dismantle its nuclear program in 2003–4.

Despite this positive development, there are a number of countries with nuclear ambitions, including perhaps Japan. In the volatile Middle East above all Saudi Arabia, but perhaps also Egypt, is seriously pondering going nuclear (Editorial Board, 2018). Still, the world’s largest nuclear arsenals continue to be held by the US and Russia. Washington is estimated to have 6800 nuclear bombs and Moscow is believed to have 7000 nuclear devices, followed by France, China and the UK with 300, 270 and 215 atomic bombs respectively (ACA, 2018). Even more disconcerting is the development of a new nuclear arms race between Russia and the US. Both countries are rapidly modernising their nuclear arsenals (MacFarquhar and Sanger, 2018; Sanger and Broad, 2018b; Hille and Foy, 2018) and have given up on the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, one of the last remaining nuclear arms control agreements of the Cold War era. A more recent phenomenon is the growing importance of cybersecurity and its underlying infrastructure. Having the technical knowhow to fend off growing and increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks on military and civilian computer systems has become essential. Cyberwars with nations such as Russia and China but also North Korea, Iran, Pakistan and many others are a growing possibility (Clarke and Knake, 2010; Kaplan, 2016).

In the years since the end of World War II, the major powers have been involved in a significant number of proxy wars and other military conflicts. They have, however, mostly refrained from large-scale wars with other major powers. The danger of nuclear escalation has simply been too great. Some scholars have even spoken of a ‘long peace’ (Gaddis, 1986, 1989), though in view of the various vicious wars in Asia, the Middle East and elsewhere, the notion of something like a protracted situation of peace only makes sense with regard to Europe. Many analysts believe that the outbreak of World War III has been prevented (so far) precisely because of the existence of the nuclear threat. This led John Mueller to conclude (tongue-in-cheek) that all countries ought to possess the atomic bomb as this was likely preserving peace on earth (Mueller, 1988, 2009).

Regarding North Korea the opposite is true, however. The escalating rhetoric over Pyongyang’s nuclear program during Donald Trump’s first year as US president showed perhaps that the horror of a nuclear war and its consequences in terms of radiation and environmental destruction were gradually being downplayed and underestimated. Talk such as ‘my [nuclear] button is bigger than yours’ was highly irresponsible rhetoric that in connection with the nuclear deterrent had never been used before by the leader of the world’s only remaining superpower (Baker and Tackett, 2018). This, too, was a rather disconcerting development, though subsequently the Trump administration had second thoughts and embarked on a more constructive summit and negotiation process with North Korea.

While nuclear war, so far, has been avoided, the world since 1945 has been a ruthless battlefield in many other respects. One of its major victims has been the global environment. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) was among the first accounts that drew attention to the need for protecting our environment. A wider environmental movement emerged in many parts of the world in the course of the 1960s and 1970s. Politically it became identified with the Green Party (Shabecoff, 2003; Doyle, 2005; Doyle et al., 2016). Wars, such as the major ones in Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia, as well as in Afghanistan and Iraq, but also the many smaller civil wars and intra-ethnic conflicts in Africa and Latin America, have also contributed to the devastation of many natural habitats. War has led to the wholesale destruction of vegetation, harvests, prime forests and jungles and the killing of an ever-larger number of wild animals, be it as a consequence of warfare and eroding habitation or as a result of ruthless poaching (Closmann, 2009; Smith, 2017). This sad state of affairs has become a fundamental global problem; it represents a serious challenge for anyone dealing with global affairs in a professional way.

In the early to mid-1970s the Club of Rome warned that natural resources, in particular energy resources – coal, oil and gas – as well as vital living resources such as clean water would soon become very scarce (Meadows et al., 1974). It was right, and in many parts of the world the battle for water, heating material and protection from difficult weather and climate conditions dominate political life and the daily struggle for survival (Sengupta, 2018). In coastal areas, ever-rising water levels, often caused by the melting of glaciers in the Arctic, have turned into a growing problem during the last few decades. Climate change and man-made global warming, as well as the rapid disappearance of animal species, have become a very real fact of life in 21st-century global politics. Only a few decades ago this was merely a niche subject area and largely ignored by mainstream political parties and the wider population (Lynas, 2008; Gore, 2006; Klein, 2015; Sachs, 2015).

The 2015 Paris Climate Change Treaty so far is the most concerted effort to do something about these dangerous developments that threaten the survival as well as the safety and security of almost half of the globe’s population. With the notable exception of US President Trump, who in May 2017 withdrew his country from the pact, the important Paris Climate Change Treaty has been signed by all other nations on earth, including war-torn Syria (Allitt, 2014; Klein et al., 2017).

Contrary to what the Club of Rome expected in the 1970s, a revolution in energy production in the US and other Western countries has led to an abundance rather than to the predicted scarcity of oil and gas for industrial and private consumption. The extraction of shale oil, commonly referred to as fracking, has made the US almost energy independent within the last decade (Gold, 2014; Levant, 2014). Energy consumption as such, however, is still growing, despite many attempts to reduce the usage of fossil energy sources by means of the development of solar power and electric and battery powered automobiles. At present an overwhelming number of cars, trucks and of course aeroplanes are still moved by engines fed with fossil fuel (Yergin, 1992; Nye, 1998). The air pollution and the warming of the earth’s atmosphere that have accompanied the world’s rising use of carbon fuel energy sources, therefore, continues to bedevil both the developed and the developing world. In particular in populous threshold countries, such as China and India, air pollution well exceeds on an almost daily basis the maximum level regarded as safe for people’s health (Jacobson, 2012).

The almost near-total dependency of the West on oil from ...