A tale of two worlds: core and periphery in the post-cold war era

1992 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 467-491 ◽  
Author(s):  
James M. Goldgeier ◽  
Michael McFaul

As the world moves away from the familiar bipolar cold war era, many international relations theorists have renewed an old debate about which is more stable: a world with two great powers or a world with many great powers. Based on the chief assumptions of structural realism—namely, that the international system is characterized by anarchy and that states are unitary actors seeking to survive in this anarchic system—some security analysts are predicting that a world of several great powers will lead to a return to the shifting alliances and instabilities of the multipolar era that existed prior to World War II. For instance, John Mearsheimer argues that “prediction[s] of peace in a multipolar Europe [are] flawed.” Thomas Christensen and Jack Snyder argue that states in a multipolar world can follow either the pre-World War I or the pre-World War II alliance pattern, thus implying that a third course is improbable. They further assert that “the fundamental, invariant structural feature, international anarchy, generally selects and socializes states to form balancing alignments in order to survive in the face of threats from aggressive competitors.” The realist argument predicts that great powers in a self-help international system will balance one another through arms races and alliance formations.

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimia Zare ◽  
Habibollah Saeeidinia

Iran and Russia have common interests, especially in political terms, because of the common borders and territorial neighborhood. This has led to a specific sensitivity to how the two countries are approaching each other. Despite the importance of the two countries' relations, it is observed that in the history of the relations between Iran and Russia, various issues and issues have always been hindered by the close relations between the two countries. The beginning of Iran-Soviet relations during the Second Pahlavi era was accompanied by issues such as World War II and subsequent events. The relations between the two countries were influenced by the factors and system variables of the international system, such as the Cold War, the US-Soviet rivalry, the Second World War and the entry of the Allies into Iran, the deconstruction of the relations between the two post-Cold War superpowers, and so on.The main question of the current research is that the political relations between Iran and Russia influenced by the second Pahlavi period?To answer this question, the hypothesis was that Iran's political economic relations were fluctuating in the second Pahlavi era and influenced by the changing system theory of the international system with the Soviet Union. The findings suggest that various variables such as the structure of the international system and international events, including World War II, the arrival of controversial forces in Iran, the Cold War, the post-Cold War, the US and Soviet policies, and the variables such as the issue of oil Azerbaijan's autonomy, Tudeh's actions in Iran, the issue of fisheries and borders. Also, the policies adopted by Iranian politicians, including negative balance policy, positive nationalism and independent national policy, have affected Iran-Soviet relations. In a general conclusion, from 1320 (1942) to 1357 (1979), the relationship between Iran and Russia has been an upward trend towards peaceful coexistence. But expansion of further relations in the economic, technical and cultural fields has been political rather than political.


Art History ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evonne Levy

The rise of the propaganda production in World War I coincided with art history’s consolidation as a discipline. Immediately, the modern category “propaganda” was taken up to describe the relations between art, politics (sacred and secular), and power. After World War II, and in the Cold War, the use of the word “propaganda” shifted and many North American and European art historians resisted the categorization of “art” (associated with freedom) and propaganda (associated with fascist instrumentalization), although historians were less troubled by its use for “images.” The end of the Cold War loosened the prohibition on the term, though many art historians still prefer cognate terms, “persuasion” or “rhetorical,” when pointing to the key element of audience and effectiveness; similarly, many speak of “power,” “politics,” or “ideology” when pointing to institutions and their messages. Because there are alternatives for “propaganda,” the emphasis here is on the literature that have engaged the term itself and the problems it poses to art history, including its ongoing toxicity. Because propaganda arts are so closely associated with the modern regimes that perfected their use (communist Russia, fascist Italy, Nazi Germany), one of the major questions in the art historical literature is the appropriateness of the concept before the 20th century and for nonautocratic regimes. While some periods have attracted the term more than others, since Foucault and post–Cold War, there has been at once an understanding of all institutions, sacred and secular, as imbricated in power relations and on the other, a relaxation of rigid definitions of propaganda as “deceptive” or “manipulative.” These factors have opened scholars in art history considerably to a use of the term, although a reductive understanding of propaganda as inherently deceptive still persists. Three main criteria were used in compiling this article: periods of political upheaval or change in government that have attracted the term in particularly dense ways and generated dialogue over these issues; works that explicitly frame the study of objects as propaganda or substitute terms, rhetoric, persuasion, and ideology; and works by historians of images that explicitly engage with the category of propaganda (excluding, with a few exceptions, popular forms like posters as well as film, television, and digital media). Whenever possible, propaganda’s specificity is insisted on here in relation to art, for art poses special problems to the use of the word propaganda, and its invocation in art history often makes an explicit point.


2020 ◽  
pp. 208-227
Author(s):  
Kyle M. Lascurettes

While the previous chapter chronicled the origins of the Cold War, chapter 8 (“Consolidating the Liberal International Order”) considers its ending. It focuses in particular on the principal security component of Western order during the Cold War’s endgame, NATO. In contrast to the extraordinary transformations after World War II, the pivotal changes in international power and influence that took place between the 1989 and 1991 did not correspond with matching changes in American order preferences or, more importantly, in order outcomes. Instead, US leaders ultimately chose to stick with existing principles, maintaining continuity of the Western order in the transition from the Cold War to a post–Cold War international system. We can account for this continuity, this chapter argues, by assessing American perceptions of the lack of new any new threatening entities or forces during this critical period.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Golub

How can we create a more inclusive Pacific anthropology? This article argues that contemporary anthropology’s disciplinary norms are based in the Cold War period. These norms are inappropriate given anthropology’s current situation. This article argues that interwar anthropology (the anthropology practiced between World War I and World War II) provides us a better set of imaginative resources to create a more common ethnography. Interwar anthropology was more welcoming of amateur scholars and less concerned with rigid norms of professionalism. Reframing a common ethnography in terms of ‘amateurs’ and ‘professionals’ may give us new ways of imagining a discipline that is increasingly moving outside the academy.


2015 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 94-106
Author(s):  
Билјана [Biljana] Ристовска-Јосифовска [Ristovska-Josifovska]

The Balkan wars and the projections about Macedonia (Macedonian view) The main focus of this paper is the time just before and during the Balkan Wars (1912– 1913), analyzed through the public writings of the Macedonian emigrants in Russia. We focus on their attitude, opinions and interpretations of the political events, as well as the reactions to the decisions of the great powers – as an expression of the Macedonian view to the Balkan Wars and the projections about Macedonia. In this context it is interesting to see whether they concern the national question and how they articulate the opinions on reception of the results of the Balkan Wars.The attention of the Macedonians was pointed almost exclusively to the national problem and the Balkan Wars, even after the beginning of the World War I. They were engaged in find­ing a solution for the Macedonian national question and the realization of the idea for national state. At the same time they were displaying in the Russian public their understanding of the political events and their attitude: warning about the possible partition, demanding a support for foundation of a Macedonian state and protesting against the partition.But, besides the organized intellectuals in emigration, the Macedonian national question remained at the margins of the interests of the great powers of Europe or has been used as a tool for solving other political questions. The appeals of the Macedonian intellectuals were not enough influential and Macedonia entered in World War I with all the consequences: the confirmation of the borders from the separation and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. This very difficult and complicated period lasted up to the foundation of the national state in World War II at the territory of today’s Republic of Macedonia. Wojny bałkańskie i wizje Macedonii (perspektywa macedońska) W artykule – na podstawie analizy publicznych wystąpień macedońskich emigrantów w Rosji, ich poglądów politycznych, opinii i interpretacji wydarzeń politycznych, jak również reakcji na decyzje wielkich mocarstw – podjęto zagadnienia związane z okresem wojen bał­kańskich 1912–1913 i ukazano macedońską perspektywę kwestii macedońskiej. Zaprezento­wano też ważne problemy odnoszące się do sposobu traktowania spraw narodowych i sposobu artykułowania stanowisk wobec następstw tych wojen.Uwaga Macedończyków, nawet po wybuchu I wojny światowej, kierowała się niemal wyłącznie na kwestie narodowe i wojny bałkańskie. Ich zaangażowanie sprowadzało się do poszukiwania rozwiązań spraw narodu macedońskiego i prób urzeczywistnienia idei wła­snego państwa. Środowiska emigrantów prezentowały przed rosyjską opinią publiczną swoje rozumienie zachodzących wydarzeń politycznych, by zapobiec podziałowi terytorium, a jed­nocześnie poszukiwać wsparcia dla koncepcji utworzenia państwa macedońskiego.Macedońska kwestia narodowa, podejmowana przez pozostającą na emigracji inteligencję macedońską, pozostawała na marginesie zainteresowań wielkich mocarstw europejskich lub była wykorzystywana instrumentalnie do rozwiązywania innych problemów politycznych. Apele intelektualistów macedońskich nie wywarły wpływu na sytuację międzynarodową. Macedończycy przystąpili do I wojny światowej z wszystkimi tego konsekwencjami – za­twierdzonymi granicami podzielonego terytorium. Ten trudny i skomplikowany okres trwał aż do utworzenia państwa narodowego w czasie II wojny światowej na obszarze obecnej Re­publiki Macedonii.


Author(s):  
Burim Mexhuani

Neorealists say that a country's Foreign Affairs is based on its power or position as the power that has a state in the international system. Field of International Relations based on international legal policies and norms; It can be defined by different political perspectives and phenomena, depending on certain theories. Theories are the best determinant of defining policies in the International System. For a long time, in the international system have dominated realistic, liberal and radical theories; After the Second World War for the purposes of explaining or defining international policies, other theories, including neo-realism, were listed. As a structured theory versus reality that defined the theory of alignment for defining political theories in the international system. In International Relations there is no central authority or world government, the state and the international environment is in a state of anarchy, which pushes the states to create the conditions to create an environment where they can survive. Special studies of International Relations theory were spurred especially after World War I and World War II. The neorealistic theory itself contains some elements that differ from other theories and that as its base takes the strength or position of power of states in the international system. Responses to the framework of action, the theories are directed as perimeters to solve the problems of the international system. The international relations system may be positioned in other circumstances when a power is not balanced, depending on the different circumstances of politics and politicians


Author(s):  
Taylor B. Seybolt

Humanitarian intervention is the use of military intervention in a state to achieve socioeconomic objectives, such as keeping people alive and communities functioning by providing basic necessities, without the approval of its authorities. There are three eras of humanitarian intervention: the entire time up to the end of World War II, the Cold War, and the post-Cold War period. These three eras are distinguished by differences in the structure of the international system. Ultimately, the Western intellectual tradition of just war is the foundation for contemporary international law governing armed conflict. It is grounded in natural law, which recognizes the right of sovereigns to use force to uphold the good of the human community, particularly in cases where unjust injury is inflicted on innocents. Eventually, a diverse body of literature on humanitarian intervention has developed. The contemporary debate focuses on the long-standing disagreement between positive law and natural law about coercive intervention. Political scientists use realist and constructivist paradigms to analyze the motives of intervening states and to argue for or against the practice. Proponents favor humanitarian intervention on the basis of legitimacy and the consequences of nonintervention. Opponents argue against intervention on the basis of illegitimacy, practical constraints, and negative consequences. Meanwhile, skeptics sympathize with the humanitarian impulse to help civilians but are troubled about methods and consequences.


Author(s):  
Dale C. Copeland

This chapter explores the origins of three of the four most important wars of the first half of the twentieth century: the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5, World War I, and World War II in Europe. These three wars had more than just a chronological connection to one another. The Russo-Japanese War helped solidify the diplomatic and economic alignments of the great powers in the decade before 1914, while the disaster of the First World War clearly set the stage for the rise of Nazism and the outbreak of yet another global war a generation later. This chapter focuses on providing a fairly comprehensive account of the causes of the Russo-Japanese War, confining the discussion of the world wars to the economic determinants of those conflicts.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document