Unit 1: From Conceptualization to Transformation into Global Politics

Introduction

Since globalization is relatively a new concept it is important to define it. It is considered as a concept that shrinks the distances among the continents a wider geographic sense of vulnerability, and a worldwide interconnectedness of important aspects of human life, including religion, migration, war, finance, trade, diseases, drugs, and music. Globalization implies a significant and obvious blurring of distinctions between the internal and external affairs of countries and the weakening of differences among countries. Moreover, it is also defined as being essentially the historical transformation of the world especially visible in social, political, economic and cultural terms. Globalization is thus used to describe transformations proliferating all kinds of communication among people living in many different regions of the world.

Primary Phases of Globalization: Trade Routes, Empires, Religions

State as we know it today is a new concept. In early periods, human communities lived in stateless societies. State has been an apparatus that came into being with the spread of communal life, in general, civilization. As agricultural revolution became widespread, the need for stable residences, properties, and protection of these properties such as keeping the harvest intact emerged. However, as a result, this new way of life has caused some disputes. The idea of an institution to design, protect, and manage this new lifestyle has shaped the state itself. Through the following years, with the help of culture, invasions and religion, it spread all around the world.

Moreover, the oceanic breakthrough led to an age of discovery and new states emerged afterwords. Also The bourgeoisie, as a new class, has slowly become the carrier of new form of wealth accumulation. This class has become the most important threat to challenge monarchies while increasing its economic and political influence gradually. However the bourgeoisie preferred to move as closely as possible with the monarchies till they reached a certain degree of influence. Thus, they jointly succeeded to eliminate the secular power of the Catholic Church on politics, economy, and society though it was the main figure of European politics throughout the Middle Age. French Revolution has made a great impact over world politics. Not only demolishing the Ancien Régime, but also the French Revolution has shaped the forthcoming centuries even decades by replacing value sets of politics, economics and culture.

Expansion of Europe: European Problems and Solutions Becoming Global

The General Napoléon Bonaparte became “First Consul” in 1799; first decade of post-revolutionary France was not politically stable in essence. Napoléon then changed his title and became the emperor of France in 1804. It took a decade to be overthrown. That decade was famous with the Napoléonic Wars. France waged wars against great powers of Europe, such as Austria, Prussia, Russia, and Britain. At the Congress of Vienna (November 1814 – June 1815), after the defeat of France, the future of Europe and the order of post-war period were negotiated.

Participants ignored may be the most important issue - which is newly emerging values of the continent- and organized congress on problems of whole Europe and bringing them a solution jointly.

The concept of “border” as mentioned earlier, new social classes, the idea of nationalism, and the decline of the Ancien Régime overlapped with each other. The resulting synthesis was a new mass that could reflect its choices and will: the Nation. With the French revolution, the concept has had a new formation: the Nation-State.

The nation-state was the last link in the chain of new mindset of the modern Western political order -still in charge although it has been questioned more and more in time. The earlier steps of industrialization caused the need for wider cooperation between cities in need of standardization in language and dialects as well as commercial elements. Thus, with the economic partnership of the nearby cities, the evolution of the peoples into a national identity developed simultaneously.

In this regard, 1830 and 1848 can be accepted as symbolic dates of the end of Ancien Régime throughout the European continent.

Nations consolidated in terms of some important events in the history. Firstly, enrichment of Europe and technological improvements led to the Industrial Revolution. This new type of production accelerated labor markets, augmented industrial city life, and also increased military expenditures with the newly emerging heavy military technology. Thanks to the abolition of slavery and the earlier slave trade through the Atlantic world in 19th century revealed the need for labor. Parallel with new labor order, a new social class, proletariat, emerged. It is such a class that works with low wage, lives in unhealthy conditions, and “have nothing to lose but their chains.”

Secondly, the French Revolution created the “citizen” who voted, elected, bore arms, and paid taxes. When military service became an obligation of citizenship, governments began saving some of the financing to build an army. Thus, with the mobilization of a large number of citizens, the nation-states were able to form great armies easier than the earlier empires. The financing for the mercenaries could be devoted to war technology. As a result of the Industrial Revolution, a rapid and intensive armament race had already begun among the nations.

With the effect of the World War I, which lasted more than four years, had two opposing forces. Ironically, regional or national politics turned into global issues through a world war at the first hand. The Allied Powers won the WWI. The period between 1919-1939 was named as “the inter-war period”. The eminently rising nationalism was the main characteristic of the period especially for Germany, the most suffered nation of postWWI regulations.

Also during the WW1, in the year 1917; Bolsheviks took the Czar down and started to establish a communist regime. In 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was founded. The early 20th century witnessed the decline of liberalism in Europe. As Hobsbawm noted “Of all the developments in the Age of Catastrophe, survivors from the nineteenth century were perhaps most shocked by the collapse of the values and institutions of the liberal civilization whose progress their century had taken for granted, at any rate in ‘advanced’ and ‘advancing’ parts of the world.”. On the other hand, ideologies such as Fascism, Nazism, Marxism, and Communism have arisen.

The extremist Europe faced with a crisis in the midst of 1930s. Germany asked to get rid of the chains of the Treaty of Versailles (1919) to become an honourable member of the continent.

Besides, Italy wanted to expand its influence on colonial territories. The quite aggressive stance of these two countries nerved the other nations to stop Germany gently through the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement policy to overcome Hitler employing diplomatic methods but not threats or sanctions.

United Nations System

United Nations was founded in 1945. But during WW2, Allied Big Four (China, USA, USSR, UK) accepted the document of Declaration by United Nations in 1942. The principle of gathering conferences was still valid even during war period. They declared to share the same values, stated in declaration

League of Nations was another organization, founded in 1920, after WW1. But USA’s withdrawal, made it dysfunctional before its foundation.

The UN based on criteria of international assembly. Each nation had a chair in UN

General Assembly. Although Security Council, composed of fifteen members five of whom have permanent seats to generate a problematic issue about democracy of the Council; UN is still the most inclusive organization.

Globalization in the Cold War Period and Thereafter

Bipolar system dominated world politics from 1945 to 1991, until fall of USSR. Western and Eastern blocs had a leader country in front, USA and USSR, keeping financial, ideological, and political domination in their hands, balancing each other. Other countries clustered behind major powers and maximized their own interests by bandwagoning. Blocs have founded their own security and economic cooperation organizations, such North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) (1949), and Warsaw Pact (1955), The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) (1949), Organisation for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) (1948).

Cold War was a period interestingly with no armed conflict happened between major powers.USA and USSR. Instead, various peripheral territories faced with proxy wars several times. Thus, states that had lethal nuclear weapons, managed to avoid such military actions. Negative outputs of two world wars taught the importance of interconnection and diplomacy among nations. UN is a unifying, easy connecting, and negotiating platform among governments with their permanent representatives that help nations to deal with international contemporary issues.

“Proxy wars” is a concept used for Cold War conflicts in which peripheral states or groups clashed with each other in peripheral regions with support from the leaders of the blocs.

Another aspect of UN system was adaptation of new nations to the international order. Some victor nations of the WW2 were given responsibility on colonial territories to fulfill their criteria to become independent under UN Trusteeship Council.

In 1970s, the world was getting too closer and global with improving communication technologies. There were not only positive elements, but also crises were getting global. 1979 was a year of many critical developments in the world with Iranian Revolution, downfall of Sandinista government in Nicaragua, and Afghanistan invasion of USSR. Bloc politics and conflicts intensified. All these developments started the so called Second Cold War period since USA and USSR started another armament period, after the Détente lasted almost 15 years following the talks of limiting nuclear and conventional weapons of both nations. USA started another phase of Cold War to weaken USSR and to get an absolute victory.

Global Problems Need Glaobal Solutions

When Fukuyama (1992) mentioned about the end of history, Huntington (1993) defended the opinion of new conflicts will built upon not ideologies but civilizations. That was true that USA had promoted democratic and liberal values over the world in 1990s. But, also 11 September 2001 was a date of chaos in USA. Terrorist attacks hit Pentagon and World Trade Centre. Al Qaeda undertook the attacks, and Afghanistan intervention of USA started a couple of days later.

War against terrorism was the motto of the new era, and USA regarded itself responsible to fight against terrorist groups all over the world. Terrorism notion has been as a global issue, which cannot be dealt by any particular nation.

Trans-boundary movement of people, money, and guns across states cause the problem to be solved with a global initiative of nations. It requires coordination and joint mechanisms to struggle with terrorist networks. The other issue is immigration and refugee problem. Humanitarian crises generate series of humanitarian tragedies, such as forced migration and internally displaced people. Globalisation has set the stage for debates whether nation state is declining over the world or not. First of all, neoliberal transformation in 1970s made developmental state dysfunctional with recessive economic parameters. In addition, the value set of liberal school of thought predicted a national and modern developmental state model to lead welfare economies also for the newly independent states, but post-1970 period did not verify it. Global problems need global solutions and that situation causes states to evolve into post-Westphalian style of politics.