IR 203 Current issues in international relations (5)

Bezen Balamir Coskunoffice: 417

bezencoskun@zirve.edu.trbezenbalamir@gmail.com

What do you remember of last week’s lecture?

•Turning Points are lasting changes in world history

•1929, 1945 and 1989 and 9/11 were turning points in international relations

•Most of the turning points are marked by a dramatic event

Area of Focus Cycles

Domestic Politics Liberal/Conservative

Foreign Policy MoodsIntroverted/Extraverted

Cultural Themes Material/Spiritual

Warfare War/Peace

World LeadershipHegemony/

De-concentration

Economic Growth Expansion/Contraction

• In the past, world systems theorists say hegemonic powers have dominated for approximately 100 year cycles

•But England had two cycles

•By this clock, the United States should be ending a period of hegemony

•The U.S.’ main rivals, Japan and the Soviet Union have retreated

•The US may have a second 100 year cycle

•The 9/11 attacks were intended to end America’s global hegemony

•The Islamic global empire would be the presumed successor

•It seems more likely that American hegemony will continue for another century but there exist strong challengers to this hegemony

• There is statistical evidence that there have been fifty year economic cycles over the last several hundred years

• These are only roughly predictable, with a 25 year upwave and a 25 year downwave

• But the Kondratieff downwave due in the last half of the twentieth century was averted

• If the long waves resume on schedule, we should expect a fifth upwave in the first quarter of the 21st century

Nikolai Dmitrijewitsch

Kondratieff

•Neither the 1987 stock market crash nor the 9/11 attacks provoked the expected global downwave

•The historical long waves were caused by population, global hegemony and warfare cycles, and these are over

•Technological progress is linear or exponential, not cyclical

• It will continue, driven by generational conflict

• We are entering a crisis period equivalent to the 1930s

• Rising labor unrest, but without an increase in crime or drugs

• Rising top tax rates and other liberal economic policies

• A more recessionary economy

• A successful conclusion to the War on Terrorism

Michael Alexander

•American military hegemony is strong

•The stock market recovered from its initial shock

•America is firmly in an extraverted foreign policy mood

•And Western “sensate” popular culture seems irresistible

9/11 and after

•War between a radicalized islam and the modern West

•Post-Cold war era came to an end

•The rise of Islam since 1970s, Instability in the Middle east, 1993 attacks to World Trade Center

•Threat to civilized world

•War on terror after 9/11 - Afghanistan, Axis of evil: Iran, Iraq, north Korea

9/11 and after

• Either with the US or against it, no other way in the war on terror

• Target IRAQ

• notion of enemies, concept of interests

• Results: 1) alienate Muslims 2) International opinion turned against the US 3) trapped into the Middle east

• world as a less stable place

• an intense debate as to whether the US was in the process of becoming a new kind of empire

Some concepts to know

• Axis of Evil

• 11 September

• War on terror

• hegemony

• US decline

• 11 September 2001 marked the end of the post-Cold War era

• Two key factors shaping world politics since 9/11: Islamic terrorism and the US-led war on terror

• US foreign policy has come under attack after it decided to go war against Iraq

• The world is now a less stable place than it was before 9/11

New Wars

• Today the international security environment is far more complex than it was in the Cold war era of bipolarity. The radically diminished threat of a world war has been replaced by the reality of intra-state conflicts which undermine stability and security at the domestic and regional levels. A serious challenge for the international system is the increasing number of weak even failed states and their inability to control developments on their own territory (Rotfeld 1998)

Jihad

• For over seven years the US has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian peninsula. Despite the great devastations inflicted on the Iraqı people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, the Americans are once again trying repeat the horrific massacres...(Declaration of the World Islamic Front for Jihad against the Jews and Crusaders 1998)

War on Terror

• In defending the peace, we face a threat with no precedent. Enemies in the past needed great armies and great industrial capabilities to endanger the American people and our nation. All of the chaos and suffering they caused came at much less than the cost of a single tank. The dangers have not passed. The government and the American people are on the watch, we are ready, because we know the terrorists have more money, and more men and more plans (Bush Speech 1 June 2001)