history of international relations

History of international relations

US world order

There are different questions on the origin, development and features of the US world order. From 1945, the US emerged particularly. The United States has been the main world power through the 20th and early 21st century, the so-called "unipolar moment" of the United States. Nowadays, there is a multipolar world though.

US world power (US hegemony, Pax Americana...)

• US were the world main power throughout the 20th and most of the 21st century, exerting a degree of influence without comparison on world politics and even on the rules.
• The capacity of US to exert its influence and power in recent years has gone subject to a growing number of challenges (Russia and China, for example, but even the EU and the same US administrations have been taken as challengers).

Does that exist? In what terms can we speak of it? What are its features? Unchanged or have they changed in time (if yes, when and how)? Challenges: are a thing of the present or rooted in the past/past challenges? Has this been the result of a project or has it just happened?

From 1945 (after the end of WWII)

Emerging as a world-leading power, this did not occur completely in every part of the world, especially in the URSS (and its satellites) and the People’s Republic of China, BUT this did not mean not being influenced by the US. The US world order underwent several different challenges during the years. The 1970s were years of redefinition of it: relations with the Soviet Union and China were changed during those years. In the 90s, we can locate a further change with the dissolution of the S.U., called the "unipolar moment of the US," a paradoxical situation of a world with only one pole, not true but a reflection of the situation of power during those years and what has happened nowadays (multipolar world).

Map of the world in 1900

The year 1900 came with a set of expectations for the turn of the century that gave a particular meaning for a lot of people around the world (e.g., someone would say that the collapse of the Titanic ship would anticipate how those expectations would go). As we can see from the 1900 map, there are big chunks of the world painted in the same color. In fact, some parts of America, Oceania, Asia, and Africa have the same color as some European countries. This is because, at the turn of the century, some European powers dominated economically, financially, and politically the world, the age of Imperialism: it was exported with gunboats and it is connected with a powerful wave of exchanges, that is to say, Globalization.

In the map, a huge part of Africa and Indochina are colored like France; Canada, Australia, India, Eastern Africa and even Ireland are colored like the UK; The current Democratic Republic of Congo is colored like Belgium; Eritrea, Somalia, Libya (and Ethiopia later) are colored like Italy; Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea are colored like Portugal; Indonesia is colored like the Netherlands; Nigeria, Tanganyika, and a set of archipelagos in the Pacific Ocean are colored like the German empire.

Moreover, we have to consider two spin-offs of European politics: US, which has the same color as the Philippines, and Russia, which does not have overseas possession but that, as the US, has a colonial empire on its own. Besides Europe and its spin-offs, there is another country which has, in the early 20th century, expansionary imperial ambition: Japan (the island of Taiwan and Korea have the same color as Japan).

However, not all the countries of the world had the color of some European country, but they had to take into account the influence/interference of European powers in their domestic and international affairs: most of Latin America, Persia, Central Arabia, and China.

In this context, it is important to mention the Ottoman Empire (which is today Turkey, part of the Balkans, Arabia, and Libya) that since the early 19th century is seen as the sick man of Europe and the Great Powers. Politicians in the 19th century asked themselves "What should we do with the Ottoman Empire?"

The world financial, commercial, informational integration

That took place in the 19th century did not turn into a more peaceful world, not simply because that went along with conquests in the colonial lands, but also because these processes of integration went along throughout with a consolidation of deep links between political, financial, commercial elites in the imperial countries and with the constant development of rivalries between the foreign policies of the imperial countries. Those rivalries were managed diplomatically with the Conference of Berlin (the capital of the new German empire) in 1884. During this conference, a map of Africa was put on the table, starting the so-called "Scramble for Africa".

Even though these rivalries were managed diplomatically, part of the industrialization process and part of the imperialistic process insisted on the rise of military expenditures, huge armies, and military fleets accompanied the creation of the "more integrated world". At the beginning of the 20th century, a set of crises and rivalries took place in the non-European world (e.g., Balkan crises, Moroccan crises, the Fashoda incident).

Ideologically, the greatest integration of the world went along with the steep rise of the new ideology of nationalism.

The Great War (1914-1918)

Eventually, the liberal belle-epoque of the early 20th century imploded in 1914 with the declaration of war by the Austrian empire to the kingdom of Serbia, beginning of the first world war, in which the life of 9 million young men was taken. It has a virtually global landscape. It was global geographically because of the colonial dimension of the parties, it was global because all EU armies mobilized their colonial subjects to fight in the war. Moreover, it was a war of total mobilization: the entire society was put to work.

The second important thing about the first world war are the coalitions: the main powers on one side are the so-called "Central empires" (German empire, Austria-Hungarian empire, and the Ottoman empire) and on the other side, we have the coalition of the so-called "the Allies" (it originally started as a coalition among the UK, France, and Russia coming from the triple entente, but followed by the entry of the kingdom of Italy in 1915 after being part of the triple alliance - a defensive alliance - with the German empire and Austria-Hungarian empire up until that date).

In April 1917, this coalition added the US (considered the largest economy) on its side. In March 1918, Russia withdrew from the Allies signing a separate peace treaty with the Central empires. All of this occurred after the first revolution brought down the czar in February 1917, and the Bolshevik revolution (the majority faction of the social democratic party of Russia) turned Russia into the first aiming at building communism of the world.

The first world war ended with the victory of the Allies, but it's not a crushing victory on the field. Politically speaking, it ended with an armistice. In Germany, the Kaiser abdicated, and an armistice was asked. Institutionally speaking, it is not simply the Kaiser that abdicated, but we also have the dismantling of the Austro-Hungarian empire and the Ottoman empire. The German empire extended itself up to present-day Baltic republics and Poland and was reduced in size. New states are born in the eastern part of it: Poland. The Austro-Hungarian empire sees the birth of the republic of Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, kingdom of Yugoslavia. In the Ottoman empire, the sultan lost his power and is replaced in Istanbul by the Turkish republic. Its African and Arabian possessions out of present-day Turkey were given as mandates for the administration of UK and France. In theory, the regime of the mandates should have been a step towards independence, but in reality, it was not.

The biggest institutional change took place in Russia: loss of the territory to the west of the Empire (Poland was created also in the up until then territory of the Russian empire).

One of the persons that was most keenly concerned with revolution in Russia was the president of the US: Wilson. Wilson brought the US into war soon added a new rhetorical device which had to do with the national self-determination, which was a response to the Bolshevik appeal. Wilson, backed by the strength and powers of the American army and fleets, by the power of his propaganda effort, by the power of having the US in favor of the Allies coalition, by the very expectation that somebody coming from out of Europe would change the traditional power place, was the first American president to visit Europe. He took part in the works of the Paris peace conference that went on from the end of 1918 to 1919.

Of course, self-determination did not apply immediately to the colonized territories and populations. Most importantly, president Wilson came with a practical proposal to turn his rhetoric into politics. His practical proposal was to create the League of Nations, a permanent organization charged with the task of maintaining peace in the world. Wilson was able to sell the League of Nations to Europe, but not to the US. They did not take part in it, and it became an instrument in the hands of the French and British politicians.

Outside Europe: Japan and China

Outside Europe, it is important to stress the role of Japan and China. Both countries during the 19th century had been subject to European-originated imperialism. In 1853, the US black ships expedition of commodore Perry opened Japan to foreign influence and trade. The aim of the expedition was to give an ultimatum to Japan (either you accept US conditions to open your trade with US, or US ships may fire), that is the opening of Japan. The opening of Japan was a step in making the Meiji Restoration, that is to say, an institutional change in which the emperor retook power in Japan and in which Japan would move on a path of European-style modernization in industry, technology, and military technology.

Japan, in the first part of the 20th century, is part of the imperialistic context; in the first world war, it is on the Allies' side; in 1905, the Japanese fleets defeat the Russian fleets.

A very different condition is the condition of China. Up until the late 18th century, it was described by commentators as the most advanced and richest country in the world. However, at the end of the 18th century, China entered an institutional crisis that progressed throughout the early 19th century and that had an international manifestation in 1839 when China was defeated in the first Opium war (UK imposed on China the commerce of Opium that was produced in India by a British company). China was never conquered as a colony, but from the second half of the 19th century to the first half of the 20th century, it was largely subjected to the interference and economic domination of the European powers, the RU, and the US. 1839-1949: century of humiliation, which was ended with the communist revolution.

In 1911, the last emperor of China abdicated, and the Republic of China was born with a very complicated story of conflicts and the clear influence of Japan that would soon turn into colonization in the 1930s.

The Soviet Union

As regards to Russia, the newborn Soviet Union, officially called "the Union of the Soviet socialist republic" after 1922, was not a main active player on the international scene but had a symbolical role and influence (myth). Its government focused on the building of socialism in a single country and in the 1930s focused on forcing industrialization and collectivization in the countryside. The double role of the Soviet Union has been contextualized in the 1920s and 1930s:

• The 1920s and 1930s did not bring the end of international conflicts as expected. The peace that was imposed on Germany and the Central empires was called "a Carthaginian peace"; the punitive peace imposed on Germany is seen as creating the conditions for World War Two (nationalism).
• On the winning side, the imperialism did not come to an end. The story of the British and French mandates went further, and that coupled with the expectations raised in the colonial territories by URSS and US appeals to revolutionary self-determination against colonialism led to a set of revolutionary challenges (that will emerge after WW2) to the UK and FR.
• The years until 1923-1924 and 1929-1939 were economically critical, especially in the European context; the great depression became soon a global phenomenon.

World War II

It started in Europe in September 1939 with Hitler's invasion of Poland and the British and French declaration of war on Germany. It has a very complex set of developments and changes in the composition of who was fighting whom. Simplifying at the very most, there was one main coalition, "the Nazi-fascist coalition or Axis", made of Germany, Italy, and imperial Japan originally fighting against the UK and France. Then, after 1940, France was defeated and the UK remained on the ground. After 1941, they were fighting against the UK, URSS, and US (Allies or United Nations); the war is globalized progressively:

• Germany's invasion of the URSS makes URSS an ally of the UK.
• Japan's attack on the US in Pearl Harbor (1941) turns the coalition of the UK and the URSS into a three main actors coalition, that is to say, UK, URSS, and US.
• In the days after Pearl Harbor, likely expecting that Japan would do the same, Hitler and Mussolini declared war on the US.
• The URSS and Japan entered into war against each other only in August 1945, after the war ended in Western Europe. In fact, Italy withdrew in September 1943, Germany was squeezed in 1945, Japan surrendered after the URSS invasion and the dropping of two atomic bombs by US on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945).
• The military story ends in 1945 with the complete victory of the Allies, symbolized also by the suicide of Hitler in April and by the obliteration of the two cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August 1945 by the US atomic bombs.

After WWII: Focus on two periods 1945-1991 / 1991-2008

Then there is the political aspect: the two coalitions (Axis and Allies) were not easy coalitions. The coalition between UK, US, URSS, we can say that it was an uneasy coalition for political, ideological, and historical reasons.

From the ideological point of view, we can find:

• "White man's burden" - British notion of white race, (piece of poetry by Roger Kipling) to bring civilization to the uncivilized people of the world, even killing them in case, prevalent ideology of the British empire.
• "Manifest destiny" - In US the prevailing tendency in the 1840s was: "a to spread the blessings of liberty to the entire world".
• "World revolution" - URSS: promotion of the against capitalists.

All of this was part of the cultural background of the populations of these countries and all the foreign policies' elites of those countries did not necessarily determine policies. The very fact that they cooperated during the war shows us that ideologies can be put aside, recalibrated depending on a constellation of considerations. Indeed, the ideological discourse within the three countries, with their differences, had these conflicting elements. Plus, the two capitalist countries, in particular, US (that was the most dynamic one), incorporated inherently expansionist logic, an expansive logic connecting to the capitalist economy itself. The capitalist economy needs to find markets where to sell the products so that capitalists can make profits. The centralist plan, socialist economy of the Soviet Union did not have a similar logic embedded into it.

Never to say:

• US and URSS did not divide the world into two spheres or part for their own dominations (non si spartirono il mondo). This never happened.
• After WWII, the US and URSS struggled for world domination, this didn’t happen neither. They had their own objectives. This implies a vision of the world coherent with what each of the two sides defined as their own interests. Indeed, they had several periods of tension with each other after WWII. Neither US nor the URSS had ever declared that they were about to do nor have ever declared they were doing was to seek the world domination (as Mussolini and Hitler).

SO, there was a potential for political conflict between US, British, and Soviet Union. This potential for political conflict became, during 1945-50, real political conflict. Not all that has happened was expected, not all the plans always turned out exactly as we expected. From the standpoint of 1991, the potential for political conflict between US and Soviet Union turned into a political conflict. But what we cannot say is that things played out as the players involved expected nor as the players involved desired.

So, what did the players involved desire? At the end of the war the alliances broke down and the US-URSS developed a tense period of mutual political hostility. Asymmetric situations among the allies. Given that the British wanted to recover economically and to hold on to their colonial empire, accepting to open the empire to US commerce, in exchange for the much-needed loans of the world. Provided this, among the other two big players, the Soviet Union elites did not have much time to organize what to do after the war was over. Dramatic affair: it suffered 27 million dead, 54 million dead, in total, provoked by the war (Soviet citizens above all). The entire territory from the Polish border of the Soviet Union to Moscow had been turned into the "terra bruciata", everything was destroyed (industries, farms, factories). Stalin planned the survival for the Soviet Union, and then a plan for the security of his country for the post-war.

Something very different occurred to US. US country has not been touched directly by the war; plan to recover thanks to the world production. The American GDP after the WWII was half of the world’s GDP. Then the US administration had a clear plan to reorganize the international system to reform the international capitalism (Roosevelt g