LESSON III

A History of Global Politics: Creating an International Order

Learning Outcomes:

At the end of this lesson, you should be able to:

1. Identify key events in the development of international relations;

2. Differentiate internationalization from globalization;
3. Define the state and the nation;
4. Distinguish between the competing conceptions of internationalism; and
5. Discuss the historical evolution of international politics.

Introduction

The world is composed of many countries or states, all of them having different forms
of government. Some scholars of politics are interested in individual states and examine the
internal politics of these countries. For example, a scholar studying the politics of Japan may
write about the history of its bureaucracy. Other scholars are more interested in the
interactions between states rather than their internal politics. These scholars look at trade
deals between states. They also study political, military, and other diplomatic engagements
between two or more countries. These scholars are studying international relations.
Moreover, when they explore the deepening of interactions between states, they refer to the
phenomenon of internationalization.

 INTERNATIONALIZATION does not equal GLOBALIZATION, although it is a

major part of globalization.
 GLOBALIZATION encompasses a multitude of connections and interactions that
cannot be reduced to the ties between governments.
 It is important to study international relations as a facet of globalization, because
states/governments are key drivers of global processes.

The Attributes of Today’s Global System

World politics today has four (4) key attributes, namely:

1. There are countries or states that are independent and govern themselves.
2. These countries interact with each other through diplomacy.
3. There are international organizations, like the United Nations (UN), that facilitate
these interactions.
4. Beyond simply facilitating meetings between states, international organizations
also take on lives of their own.

The UN, for example, apart from being a meeting ground for presidents and other
heads of state, also has task-specific agencies like the World Health Organization (WHO) and
the International Labor Organization (ILO).

What are the origins of this system? A good start is by unpacking what one means
when he/she says a “country,” or what academics also call the nation-state. This concept is

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not as simple as it seems. The nation-state is a relatively modern phenomenon in human
history, and people did not always organize themselves as countries. At different parts in the
history of humanity, people in various regions of the world have identified exclusively with
units as small as their village or their tribe, and at other times, they see themselves as
members of larger political categories like “Christendom” (the entire Christian world).

 The nation-state is composed of two non-interchangeable terms. NOT ALL STATES

ARE NATIONS AND NOT ALL NATIONS ARE STATES.

Example:
The nation of Scotland, for example, has its own flag and national culture, but still
belongs to a state called the United Kingdom. Closer to home, many commentators
believe that the Bangsamoro is a separate nation existing within the Philippines but,
through their elites, recognizes the authority of the Philippine state. Meanwhile, if
there are states with multiple nations, there are also single nations with multiple
states. The nation of KOREA is divided into North and South Korea, whereas the
“Chinese nation” may refer to both the People’s Republic of China (the mainland) and
Taiwan.

 What is the difference between NATION and STATE?

In layman’s terms, STATE refers to a country and its government, i.e., the
government of the Philippines. A state has four (4) attributes, namely:

1. It exercises authority over a specific population, called its citizens.

2. It governs a specific territory.
3. It has a structure of government that crafts various rules that people (society)
follow.
4. The state has sovereignty over its territory.

 SOUVEREIGNTY refers to internal and external authority. Internally, no

individuals or groups can operate in a given national territory by ignoring the state.
This means that groups that groups like churches, civil society organizations,
corporations, and other entities have to follow the laws of the state where they
establish their parishes, offices, or headquarters. EXTERNALLY, sovereignty
means that a state’s policies and procedures are independent of the interventions of
other states. RUSSIA or CHINA, for example, cannot pass laws for the Philippines
and vice versa.

 NATION, according to Benedict Anderson, is an “imagined community.” It is

limited because it does not go beyond a given “official boundary,” and because rights
and responsibilities are mainly the privilege and concern of the citizens of that nation.

 Being LIMITED means that the nation has its boundaries. This characteristic is in
stark contrast to many religious imagined communities. Anyone, for example, can
become a Catholic if one chooses to. In fact, Catholics want more people to join their
community; they refer to it as the call to discipleship. But not everyone can simply
become a Filipino. An American cannot simply go the Philippine Embassy and

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 “convert” into a Philippine citizen. Nations often limit themselves to people who
have imbibed a particular culture, spoke a common language, and live in a specific
territory.

 Calling it “imagined” does not mean that the nation is made up. Rather, the nation
allows one to feel a connection with a community of people even if he/she will never
meet all of them in his/her lifetime. When you cheer for a Filipino athlete in the
Olympics, for example, it is not because you personally know that athlete. Rather,
you imagine your connection as both members of the same Filipino community. In a
given national territory like the Philippine archipelago, you rest in the comfort that the
majority of people living in it are also Filipinos. Finally, most nations strive to
become states. Nation-builders can only feel a sense of fulfillment when that national
ideal assumes an organizational form whose authority and power are recognized and
accepted by “the people.” Moreover, if there are communities that are not states, they
often seek some form of autonomy within their “mother states.” This is why, for
example, the nation of Quebec, though belonging to the state of Canada, has different
laws about language (they are French-speaking and require French language
competencies for their citizens). It is also for this reason that Scotland, though part of
the United Kingdom, has a strong independence movement led by the Scottish
Nationalist Party.

 NATION and STATE are closely related because it is nationalism that facilitates
states formation. In the modern and contemporary era, it has been the nationalist
movements that have allowed for the creation of nation-states. STATES become
independent and sovereign because of nationalist sentiment that clamors for this
independence.

 SOVEREIGNTY is, thus, one of the fundamental principles of modern state politics.

THE INTERSTATE SYSTEM

 The origins of the present-day concept of sovereignty can be traced back to the Treaty
of Westphalia, which was a set of agreements signed in 1648 to end the Thirty Years’
War between the major continental powers of Europe. After a brutal religious war
between Catholics and Protestants, the Holy Roman Empire, Spain, France, Sweden,
and the Dutch Republic designed a system that would avert wars in the future by
recognizing that the treaty signers exercise complete control over their domestic
affairs and swear not to meddle in each other’s affairs.
 The Westphalian system provided stability for the nations of Europe, until it faced its
first major challenge by Napoleon Bonaparte. Bonaparte believed in spreading the
principles of the French Revolution – liberty, equality, and fraternity – to the rest of
Europe and thus challenged the power of kings, nobility, and religion in Europe. The
Napoleonic Wars lasted from 1803-1815 with Napoleon and his armies marching all
over much of Europe. In every country the conquered, the French implemented the
Napoleonic Code that forbade birth privileges, encouraged freedom or religion, and
promoted meritocracy in government service. This system shocked the monarchies
and the hereditary elites (dukes, duchesses, etc.) of Europe, and they mustered their
armies to push back against the French emperor.

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  Anglo and Prussian armies finally defeated Napoleon in the Battle of Waterloo in
1815, ending the latter’s mission to spread his liberal code across Europe. To prevent
another war and to keep their systems of privilege, the royal powers created a new
system that, in effect, restored the Westphalian system. The Concert of Europe was
an alliance of “great powers” – the United Kingdom, Austria, Russia, and Prussia –
that sought to restore the world of monarchical, hereditary, and religious privileges of
the time before the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. More importantly, it
was an alliance that sought to restore the sovereignty of states. Under this Metternich
system (named after the Australian diplomat, Klemens von Metternich, who was the
system’s main architect), the Concert’s power and authority lasted from 1815 to 1914,
at the dawn of World War I.
 Despite the challenge of Napoleon to the Westphalian system and the eventual
collapse of the Concert of Europe after World War I, present-day international system
still has traces of this history. Until now, states are considered sovereign, and
Napoleonic attempts to violently impose systems of government in other countries are
frowned upon. Moreover, like the Concert system, “great powers” still hold
significant influence over world politics. For example, the most powerful grouping in
the UN, the Security Council, has a core of five permanent members, all having veto
powers over the council’s decision-making process.

INTERNATIONALISM

 The Westphalian and Concert systems divided the world into separate, sovereign
entities. Since the existence of this interstate system, there have been attempts to
transcend it. Some, like Bonaparte, directly challenged the system by infringing on
other states’ sovereignty, while others sought to imagine other systems of governance
that go beyond, but do not necessarily challenge, sovereignty. Still, others imagine a
system of heightened interaction between various sovereign states, particularly the
desire for greater cooperation and unity among states and peoples. This desire is
called INTERNATIONALISM.

 Internationalism comes in different forms, but the principle may be divided into two
broad categories: liberal internationalism and socialist internationalism.

 The first major thinker of liberal internationalism was the late 18 th century German
philosopher Immanuel Kant.

 Kent likened states in a global system to people living in a given territory. If people
living together require a government to prevent lawlessness, shouldn’t that same
principle be applied to states? Without a form of world government, he argued, the
international system would be chaotic. Therefore, states, like citizens of countries,
must give up some freedoms and “establish a continuously growing state consisting of
various nations which will ultimately include the nations of the world.” In short, Kant
imagined a form of global government.

 Writing in the late 18th century as well, British philosopher JEREMY BENTHAM
(who coined the word “international” in 1780), advocated the creation of
“international law” that would govern the inter-state relations. Bentham believed that
objective global legislators should aim to propose legislation that would create “the
greatest happiness of all nations taken together.”

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 To many, these proposals for global government and international law seemed to
represent challenges to states. Would not a world government, in effect, become
supreme? And would not its laws overwhelm the sovereignty of individual states?

 The first thinker to reconcile nationalism with liberal internationalism was the 19 th
century Italian patriot GIUSEPPE MAZZINI.

 Mazzini was both an advocate of the unification of the various Italian-speaking mini-
states and a major critic of the Metternich system. He believed in a Republican
government (without kings, queens, and hereditary succession) and proposed a system
of free nations that cooperated with each other to create an international system. For
Mazzini, free, independent states would be the basis of an equally free, cooperative
international system. He argued that if the various Italian mini-states could unify, one
could scale up the system to create, for example, a United States of Europe.

 Mazzini was a nationalist internationalist, who believes that free, unified nation-states
should be the basis of global cooperation.

 Mazzini influenced the thinking of United States president (1913-1921) Woodrow

Wilson, who became one the 20th century’s most prominent internationalist. Like
Mazzini, Wilson saw nationalism, he forwarded the principle of self-determination –
the belief that the world’s nations had a right to a free, and sovereign government. He
hoped that these free nations would become democracies, because only by being such
would they be able to build a free system of international relations based on
international law and cooperation. Wilson, in short, became the most notable
advocate for the creation of the League of Nations. At the end of World War I in
1918, he pushed to transform the League into a venue for conciliation and arbitration
to prevent another war. For his efforts, Wilson was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
in 1919.

 The League came into being that same year. Ironically and unfortunately for Wilson,
the United States was not able to join the organization due to strong opposition from
the Senate. The League was also unable to hinder another war from breaking out. It
was practically helpless to prevent the onset and intensification of World War II. On
one side of the war were the Axis Powers – Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, and
Hirohito’s Japan – who were ultra-nationalists that had an instinctive disdain for
internationalism and preferred to violently impose their dominance over other nations.
It was in the midst of this war between the Axis Powers and the Allied Powers
(composed of the United States, United Kingdom, France, Holland, and Belgium) that
internationalism would be eclipsed.

 Despite its failure, the League gave birth to some of the more task-specific
international organizations that are still around until today, the most popular of which
are the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Labor Organization
(ILO). More importantly, it would serve as the blueprint for future forms of

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 international cooperation. In this respect, despite its organizational dissolution, the
League of Nations’ principles survived World War II.

 The League was the concretization of the concepts of liberal internationalism. From
Kant, it emphasized the need to form common international principles. From
Mazzini, it enshrined the principles of cooperation and respect among nation-states.
From Wilson, it called for democracy and self-determination. These ideas would re-
assert themselves in the creation of the United Nations in 1946.

 KARL MARX, German socialist, is one of Mazzini’s biggest critics who was also an
internationalist, but who differed from the former because he did not believe in
nationalism. He believed that any true form of internationalism should deliberately
reject nationalism, which rooted people in domestic concerns instead of global ones.
Instead, Marx placed a premium on economic equality; he did not divide the world
into countries, but into classes. The capitalist class referred to the owners of factories,
companies, and other “means of production.” In contrast, the proletariat class
included those who did not own the means of production, but instead, worked for the
capitalists.

 MARX and his co-author, Friedrich Engels, believed that in a socialist revolution
seeking to overthrow the state and alter the economy, the proletariat “had no nation.”
Hence, their now-famous battle cry, “Workers of the world, unite! You have
nothing to lose but your chains.” They opposed nationalism because they believed
it prevented the unification of the world’s workers. Instead of identifying with other
workers, nationalism could make workers in individual countries identify with the
capitalists of their countries.

 MARX died in 1883, but his followers soon sought to make his vision concrete by
establishing their international organization. The SOCIALIST INTERNATIONAL
(SI) was a union of European socialist and labor parties established in Paris in 1889.
Although short-lived, the SI’s achievements included the declaration of May 1 as
Labor Day and the creation of an International Women’s Day. Most importantly, it
initiated the successful campaign for an 8-hour workday.

 As the SI collapsed, a more radical version emerged. In the so-called Russian

Revolution of 1917, Czar Nicholas II was overthrown and replaced by a
revolutionary government led by the Bolshevik Party and its leader, VLADIMIR
LENIN. This new state was called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or
USSR. Unlike the majority of the member parties of the SI, the Bolsheviks did not
believe in obtaining power for the working class through elections. Rather, they
exhorted the revolutionary “vanguard” parties lead the revolutions across the world,
using methods of terror if necessary. Today, parties like this are referred to as
Communist parties.

 To encourage these socialist revolutions across the world, Lenin established the
Communist International (Comintern) in 1919. The Comintern served as the central

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 body for directing Communist parties all over the world. This International was not
only more radical than the Socialist International, it was also less democratic because
if followed closely the top-down governance of the Bolsheviks.

 Many of the world’s states feared the Comintern, believing that it was working in
secret to stir up revolutions in their countries (which was true). A problem arose
during World War II when the Soviet Union joined for Allied Powers in 1941. The
United States and the United Kingdom would, of course, not trust the Soviet Union in
their flight against Hitler’s Germany. These countries wondered if the Soviet Union
was trying to promote revolutions in their backyards. To appease his allies, Lenin’s
successor, Joseph Stalin, dissolved the Comintern in 1943.

 After the war, however, Stalin re-established the Comintern as the Communist
Information Bureau (Cominform). The Soviet Union took over the countries in
Eastern Europe when the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain divided
the war-torn Europe into their respective spheres of influence. The Cominform, like
the Comintern before it, helped direct the various communist parties that had taken
power in Eastern Europe.

 With the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, whatever existing thoughts
about communist internationalism also practically disappeared. The SI managed to
re-establish itself in 1951, but its influence remained primarily confined to Europe,
and has never been considered a major player in international relations to this very
day.

 For the postwar period, however, liberal internationalism would once again be
ascendant. And the best evidence of this is the rise of the United Nations as the center
of global governance.

Guide Questions:

1. What remnants of the Westphalian system can still be felt at this day and age? In
what sense has the world gone beyond the Westphalian system?
2. What are the differences between liberal and socialist internationalism? What are their
strengths and weaknesses?
3. Do you think internationalization erodes the sovereignty of states?

Learning Activity:

Further research/read on Giuseppe Mazzini, Woodrow Wilson, Karl Marx, or

Vladimir Lenin. Conduct an imaginary interview with one of them. In this interview, have
your selected figure answer the following questions:

1. What do you think of nationalism?

2. What is necessary for the development of an international order?
3. What do you think of the League of Nations?
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4. What is the role of revolution in internationalism?