Chapter 2: The Historical Evolution of the International System

The Emergence of the Modern International System: The Peace of Westphalia

A “system” is either a whole or a network consisting of multiple units that interact within the framework of defined rules. According to K. J. Holsti, the international system is “any collection of independent political entities - - tribes, city states, nations or empires -- that interact with considerable frequency and according to regularized processes”

• a system requires multiple units or actors.
• independent political units interact at the international level.
• these interactions in the international system must take place within the framework of de ned rules.

The primary goal of International Relations is to understand the complex structure of political, economic, social, and military interactions between states. The most significant feature of the international system is its changing nature: its boundaries, political units or actors, defined rules, and unit interactions are all subject to constant change and evolution.

The Anglo-Saxon School of International Relations, founded in the aftermath of World War II, refers to the Peace of Westphalia ending the Thirty Years’ War in 1648 as the founding moment of the international system.

The Westphalian System and Its Structure

An international system has three defining characteristics:

• First, it requires the presence of multiple sovereign states.
• Second, regular relations and interactions of these states must exist as a part of a system.
• Third, these states must act while being bound by shared rules and norms that bring them together.

The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 constituted the starting point of the international system: Europe adopted a specific kind of sovereignty and regular interactions among mutually-recognized sovereign states emerged. The Peace of Westphalia incorporated the treaties of Münster and Osnabrück that officially ended the Thirty Years’ War in 1648. The feudal period existed prior to the Westphalian system; then, political authority was fragmented and decentralized among kings, princes, and nobles, all under the supreme authority of the Roman Catholic Pope.

The International System in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

The most remarkable characteristics of the international system that emerged after the year 1648 were:

• its limited geography,
• similar political units, and
• a developing pattern of relationships based on the dynamics of conflict and cooperation between these units.

At the earlier stages of the Westphalian system the boundaries of the international system only covered political units that acknowledged sovereign equality of each other. The Westphalian system was anarchical due to existence of sovereign and equal states free of control of any supreme authority.

In this anarchical international system taxes played an important role. The abilities of states to raise taxes varied. States with bigger territories collected more taxes. Because of their limited tax resources, armies of some states had limited power so they discovered cooperation to maximize their interests: the result was diplomacy.

All states in Europe was governed by a monarch and power was centralized. Relations between monarchies were personalized and diplomacy developed as a communication channel between officials and bureaucrats representing monarchs. Diplomacy was not costly and it changed the meaning of war. Coalitions among states could be established or dissolved. As a result, none of the states fully trusted each other. Wars ended with diplomatic negotiations rather than in destructive conquests.

In these centuries only if diplomacy failed did a state enter a war to impose its demands on another state. Though, wars were not as destructive as former conflicts. The major conflicts were succession wars. Between 1648 and 1789, each succession war was concluded with a peace settlement. Both winner and losers of wars had a role to play in the construction of peace.

The French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars: 1789-1815

The international system functioned perfectly until the end of the 18th century. However, the French revolutionary process, which started with the French Revolution in 1789. With the proclamation of the French Republic in 1793, the modern international system was under a serious threat.

In the late 18th century, two significant developments in Europe had great impact on world politics: (1) Great Britain was the setting for Industrial Revolution, (2) Political revolution in France – France became the center for new ideas, especially liberty, citizenship, equality, fraternity, and patriotism. One significant result of the French Revolution was the spread of the concepts of nationalism and nation-states. The French Revolution had effects on the Westphalian system:

• it created an anomaly at the heart of the international system.
• The proclamation of the Republic of France undermined the political homogeneity of states within the international system
• The new regime in France interrupted the interdynastic relations (diplomacy)
• War was inevitable as France had not been recognized as a legitimate political unit by other states

The French Revolutionary Wars were between France and a coalition of other states (1793-1799). France achieved military success and was first recognized when Prussia signed the Treaty of Basel with France in 1795.

As a result of the revolutionary ideas European political system was affected. France created republican regimes in countries it occupied (the Netherlands, Switzerland, parts of Italy). Another innovation was the formation of citizenarmy.

European monarchies were unsuccessful in their attempt to prevent revolutionary ideas and with its growing military power France was able to break up enemy coalitions and sign peace agreements with each monarch.

Upon Napoleon Bonaparte’s crowning himself the emperor of France in 1804, the Napoleonic Wars began (1804-1815). Napoleonic wars, differed from Revolutionary wars as the aim was to establish French dominance over Europe.

Challenges represented by the Napoleonic Wars to the Westphalian system were considerable.

• Napoleon imposed peace settlements on the European monarchies that he defeated, abolishing their sovereignty.
• Napoleon transformed European states into satellite states.
• Napoleon also created his own inter-dynastic relations.
• Napoleon altered the territorial arrangements and political structure of the Westphalian system.
• Napoleon pushed Great Britain and Russia out of the Westphalian system.

The successes of France heralded the end of the Westphalian system and the beginning of a new Napoleonic system. Firm and united resistance was crucial for preventing Napoleon from permanently altering the Westphalian system. So, at the Treaty of Chaumont in March 1814, the four old, great monarchical European powers — Austria, Britain, Prussia, and Russia — decided on the principle that none of them would make a separate agreement until the end of Napoleonic rule in France. It was the first time the great powers had entered an alliance in the history of the Westphalian system.

The International System in the Nineteenth Century

After the defeat of France in 1814, the Napoleonic Wars ended with the Treaty of Paris. The four great powers had envisaged holding a congress in Vienna to shape the postNapoleonic international system. Then came the second Treaty of Paris after Napoleon’s was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo.

The Congress of Vienna and the Concert of Europe: Every European state attended the Congress of Vienna but final decisions were made by the four major powers. The post1815 era was called the Restoration Period. The Congress of Vienna made significant arrangements for the restructuring of the international system. Measures against the potential threats were taken. The international system after 1815 was called the Concert of Europe, which also named the Congress System. The Concert of Europe promoted Christian values and diplomacy was an important instrument for resolving conflicts between great powers.

The Metternich System (1815-1848): The struggle between conservative monarchies and revolutionary movements had a profound impact on the nature of the European politics in the 19th century. Members of the Concert cooperated against internal threats from liberal and nationalist movements. The great powers kept France in check. Austria became the chief reactionary player in putting down nationalist and liberal movements in the system. The conservative Austrian Foreign Minister and Chancellor, Klemens von Metternich, was happy to intervene militarily in European state when liberal and nationalist rebellions broke out throughout the 1820s and 1830s. ın the wake of 1848 revolutions Metternich fell from power.

The Congress of Paris, which ended the Crimean war in 1856, was the first international meeting since 1815. Selfinterests were prioritized and a great power, Russia, was punished.

The Bismarckian System: Through Bismarck’s successful policy German Unification was accomplished in 1871. After defeating Denmark, Austria and France Bismarck secured the consent of Britain and Russia to German unification.

The consequences of Bismarck’s foreign policy:

• Bismarck conducted a policy that isolated Napoleon III
• He successfully unified Germany under the leadership of Prussia
• Germany replaced Austria as the key power in central Europe
• The Concert of Europe was reconstructed. So, after 1871 the European system was named the Bismarckian System.
• Bismarck devised the Three Emperor’s League between Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Russia. Austria-Hungary and Germany formed a dual alliance. Germany and Russia signed another secret agreement. Also, Bismarck brought İtaly to the dual alliance. All these showed that Bismarck used diplomacy very successfully. Bismarck’s diplomacy was one of the reasons for the absence of war in Europe from 1871 to 1914.

Bismarckian system had some weaknesses: It was dependent on Bismarck himself. His foreign policy drove Russia and France into imperialistic competition for colonies outside Europe. Hence, the world witnessed British and France rivalry in Africa and British Russian rivalry in the Near East and Central Asia. German Kaiser, Wilhelm II dismissed Bismarck from the chancellor’s position in 1890. Wilhelm II also joined imperialistic competition in Africa, unlike Bismarck who had kept Germany out of this competition.

After the Spanish-American War in 1898, the US secured its position as an Asia-Pacific power. And Japan had become a dominant power in the Far East. Then, between 1905 and 1914 European diplomacy was shaken and the World War I started. It started as a European conflict but ended as a world war.

The International System in the 20th Century

By the end of the World War I, the old European system had lost its main organizing mechanisms. European diplomatic values and mechanisms had proved inadequate to prevent major wars. As a result, a non-European power, The United States, attempted to end the war when the President Woodrow Wilson outlined his principles in a speech on war aims to the US Congress that came to be known as the “Fourteen Principles”, which formed the basis for future peace and restoration and renovation of the pre-war international system.

The outcomes of the Paris Peace Conference, convened to negotiate peace agreements are as follows:

• Mainly the Treaty of Versailles ended the great power model of the Concert of Europe. Now Britain and France were more dominant.
• European dominance in the international system ended and non-European powers (the US and Japan) emerged.
• The League of Nations was designed to serve as a forum where member states could work on a new model of open diplomacy toward solving their disputes.
• The new system would be based on a collective security and states would voluntarily employ diplomacy for conflict resolution.

The League of Nations had fatal flows. The US did not become a member. Neither the defeated states nor the newly formed Union of Soviet Socialist Republics were accepted as members. The League only represented about one-third of the actors in the international system. Also, the method of voting made action difficult.

After the war a strong economic dimension was added to the politics of the international system. Moreover, Bolshevik revolution added and ideological dimension.

Serious problems emerged, however. German economy was about to collapse. Also, revolutionary upheavals broke out in defeated states. Later, in 1929, Great Depression affected the economies of central European states and Japan. As a result, in the 1930s fascism rose. Supporters of fascism and Nazism were eager to strengthen their position. Britain, France, and the US failed to follow a common policy on Japan’s invading Manchuria in 1931 and Italy’s occupying Abyssinia in 1935. The league of Nations proved ineffective. When Germany attacked Poland in 1939, France and Britain declared war on Germany. Japan attacked the US; Germany declared war on the US and the World War II had taken an ideological shape in 1943.

The pre-war system was not effective. The outcome was the creation of the United Nations organization. The World War II was a victory over fascism; Germany and Japan were defeated. The United Nations was like the League of Nations but the five victorious allies (the US, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Britain, France, and the Republic of China) were given veto power in the Security Council.

Some important developments about the post-war ideological confrontation are the TRUMAN Doctrine (1947), the Marshall Plan (1948), North Atlantic Treaty Organization (1949), the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (1949), the Warsaw Pact (1952). The liberal and communist blocs confronted each other both ideologically and militarily, which was called the Cold War. The leaders on both sides were determined to keep their bloc under control.

Even though an equilibrium was reached in the distribution of power between the confronting blocs, the existing balance of terror did not mean that international crises came to a complete stop. On the contrary! One instance almost triggered a nuclear war. This was the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. It brought the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war and served as a wake-up call for both the bloc leaders and their allies. The major powers started negotiations to limit their nuclear capabilities and to prevent other states from developing nuclear weapons. Between 1963 and 1968, a series of agreements led to a final treaty in 1968, the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The Post-Cold War System

The end of Cold War was a sign of a new system. The United States proved to be an effective leader when Iraq invaded Kuwait. The system had a unipolar character with this new role of the US. However, after the breakout of civil wars in Somalia, Bosnia, and Rwanda the prestige of the US declined. New confrontations were likely to occur between the US and China and Russian Federation.

It became clear that the structure of the new international system had shifted back toward multi-polarity. Most International Relations scholars point out that, relative to a bipolar system, multi-polarity is potentially less stable. However, it is debatable whether we are living today in a multi-polar or a unipolar system.

The discussion of the new international system rests upon a serious historical incident. After 9/11 George W. Bush declared America the leader of a new campaign against terrorism. The United States did not seek consent but rather put its plans into action either alone or with a coalition of states in such theatres as Afghanistan and Iraq.

At the sub-systemic level, the international system has the potential to shift toward multi-polarity. is has led to great concerns within International Relations academic circles — so much so that some fear the beginning of a new Cold War. What matters most, then, is the intention of states and leaders. Against all odds, if international cooperation remains as an option, peace may prevail in the world.