POLITICS OF PEACE IN THE NUCLEAR AGE

MMXXII : WAR OR PEACE, 2022

This article provides an analytical discussion on post-Cold War developments and the emerging world order in that era. In this regard, some of the main characteristics of the international system, basic trends, and new threats in international relations are addressed, in that order. It is argued that while classical interstate wars tend to decrease in the post-Cold War era, there are many other serious threats to international peace beyond the full control of nation-states, most notably ethnic conflicts, religious militancy, terrorism, North-South conflict, and unfair economic competition. The future of the world is stressed to depend on whether major powers are able to, and willing to, work on these threats in a cooperative manner.

In reflecting on the form of a rules-based international order that is appropriate for the present era, one must clarify the purposes of such an order, the structural and systemic characteristics that will enable realisation of those purposes, and the means by which the order may be brought into existence.

Nomura Center for Lifelong Integrated Education, 2006

Review of International Studies, 2001

Andrew Williams, Failed Imagination? New World Orders of the Twentieth Century (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1998)International relations (IR) has had an opportunistic relationship with history. IR scholars have used the past, as Conal Condren has written of political theorists, as ‘a quarry ... [as a] ... source of useable facts; of entries to, and illustrations of, theoretical issues’. The result was an IR canon, of the ‘Plato to Nato’ variety, which was substantially anachronistic. Its dismantling over the last twenty years has much to do with efforts in the area of conceptual history. Despite this, and the keenness of post-positivist IR theorists to display an historical consciousness, IR and history maintain an uneasy association. Where the past is approached in contemporary IR writings, there is a tendency to build out of historical materials, or more worryingly commentaries on them, conceptual superstructures which are then accorded a determining force. Notions li...

Introduction Major power shifts always trigger debate. And the same is true in international relations while analyzing the post-cold war world order. The structure of the international politics remained multipolar for three centuries but in the 20th century it has changed three times. It was multipolar at the outset, it became bipolar after the World War-II, unipolar immediately after the disintegration of the Soviet Union and as the new millennium dawns it is gradually taking a unique kind of shape which is yet to be settled (Waltz, 2001: 1). Even after the two and half decades of the end of the cold war, the international system is still in a flux. The current constellation of global forces and alliances is much less clear than it was in the two previous stages of the post war international system. Scholars of international relations are not unanimous about the nature of world order in post cold war era. Accordingly, they have defined this changed global order in different ways. The present world seems neither completely unipolar nor multipolar. Rather, according to few, growing political and economic interdependence is witnessing a non polar world which is more akin to the prevailing realities (Yadav, 2009: 25). In fact, world order which seems multi-polar and unipolar at the same time is taking shape. It amounts to an a la carte menu which makes room for both old and new

We need a method if we are to investigate the truth of things." DESCARTES Post-Cold War period is a breakpoint in the world history not only because it is the end of Soviet Union, but also it must be seen as the beginning of the new world order and fragmented relations between states in terms of diplomacy in international era. U.S. took the domination after the Cold War and the bipolar world has transformed into a multilateral global order where the market and states has been completely open in terms of economical and democratic policies. Though capitalist system had its own obstacles and

2020

Kent, Canterbury, United Kingdom. E-mail: [email protected]. 2 This paper draws on my paper: Sakwa, 2019. Abstract: The end of the Cold War in 1989 opened the door to the potential transformation of European international politics. In the event, Cold War patterns of behaviour were reproduced in new forms. These include a revived confrontation between the Atlantic powers and Russia, accompanied by the new division of Europe. This geopolitical confrontation is accompanied by renewed ideological divisions, with liberal democratic states apparently ranged against authoritarian systems. However, matters cannot be simply folded into new binaries. Four types of world order contend for hegemony today: the liberal international order; transformative (revolutionary) internationalism; mercantilist nationalism; and conservative (or sovereign) internationalism, each with its own logic and principles. The international system can be considered the hardware, while these four models of world order...

Cold War History, 2015

2020

This article examines the prospects for the UN at its 75 th anniversary. First, it questions the conflation of "universalism"the founding principle of the UN, with "Liberal International Order" (LIO), which is conventionally credited to the US and its Western allies. Second, it opens up unrecognized and forgotten voices, especially of women and non-Western advocates, behind the making of the UN and its key normative principles. Third, the article looks at the changing nature of "world order" resulting from a variety of forces, such as the shift in power, constraints on global hegemony, proliferation of consequential actors, the changing nature of interdependence and globalization, the devolution, fragmentation and pluralization of global governance, and the multiple ideational and ideological undercurrents of world politics. Against this backdrop, the final part of the article selectively looks at some of the key areas of UN reform that might render the organization closer to its original ideal of universalism while also adapting it the realities of the 21 st century. Universalism Versus the Liberal International Order (LIO) Gambia is very, very poor... they are kept down because of exploitation….[we need to be] against the exploitation of the poor by the richby governments as well as individuals. I think we can get somewhere if we keep that idea of being against… exploitation everywhere. It will be an awfully good thing for all of us." (Franklin D. Roosevelt, US President, in 1944) 1 As the war has developed and the danger of a possible victory of the fascist powers has receded, there has been a progressive hardening and a greater conservatism in the leaders of the United Nations. The four freedoms and the Atlantic charter, vague as they were and limited in scope, have faded into the background, and the future has been envisaged more and more as a retention of the past…the hundreds of millions of Asia and Africa…have become increasingly conscious of themselves and their destiny…They welcome all attempts at world cooperation and the establishment of an international order, but they wonder and suspect if this may not be another device for continuing the old domination. (Jawaharlal Nehru, Indian anticolonial leader and future Prime Minister, in 1944) 1 Roosevelt 1944a. See also Roosevelt 1944b.