CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 1
Introduction
Outline
- Course objectives and organization
- Course structure
- How to read
- The exam
- Introduction: The Pendulum
- Chapter 1: Progress
Course objectives and organization
Course objectives
1. Knowledge: familiarize you with important events, personalities, thinkers, organizations
2. Perspective: approach world history from different viewpoints
3. Insight: to identify, relations, patterns, and changes
4. Oversight: to master large bodies of information
5. Perseverance: make you handle time pressure > notes
6. Personal opinion and critical thinking
BA2S1 History of international relations
BA2S2 Theory of international relations
BA3S1 Contemporary international relations
Master European and International Governance
Textbook, lectures, slides, extra texts
60h Reading and processing of the textbook and other materials
40h Class and activities
10h Portfolio
40h Preparation exams
,The portfolio
- Two summaries of maximum 400 words of off-campus lectures, debates, conferences and so
forth
- One multiple book review (comparing two books on a comparable subject) of 800-900 words
- Ten annotated newspaper reports in English or French: underline, comments
- Course notes, schemes per chapter and per theme, summaries
Course structure
The textbook
- More opinionating and thought-provoking than A political history of the world
- 11 chapters: setting the scene
o Act 1: the rise of Western power after the fall of the SU
o Act 2: the high age of globalization
o Act 3: contested globalization
- 8 themes
- Shifting geographic focus
- Multidisciplinary
How to read
Make your own exploration, deal with complexity
- Reading speed: 350-400 wpm
- A full read at the start to obtain a bird’s view: 1 or 2 days to read the full book
- A detailed read of a chapter each week. Make notes (see HIR)
- Try to establish patterns and relations
- Make schemes per chapter, per theme (see HIR)
,CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 12
The Exam
1) Specific questions: ALL the names, concepts, dates, organizations
For example: Chinese presidents, American presidents since the 90s; the key Indian Prime
Minister names like Narendra Modi, Manmohan Singh; GATT; EP3 incident; Hu Jintao
2) Open questions: one of the themes of the classes
1. Different tales of harmony
2. Power shift
3. Decadence trap
4. Growing authoritarianism strong
5. Hubris
A central theme is this chapter is “hubris”. What does this mean? How was it visible
in terms of military interventions, international finance, and trade? What were the
consequences? How do you explain such hubris in the different domains.
6. Negative socialization: the school of strife
7. The evolving nature of power
8. The limits of learning
For example: discuss in 5 or 6 arguments how the West grew authoritarianism strong,
questions that encourage you to collect information throughout the book.
For example: Discuss the evolution of economic global governance
Structure your answer: main observation, building blocks with concrete examples, a conclusion
with a personal take
3) Opinion but your opinion must be substantiated with enough examples
Statement 1: "The pragmatic politician who stressed the need for openness and to defend the
moral high ground of democracy, free trade, and tolerance, the mainstream politician who
could still ignore the extreme parties as a marginal affair; that politician was often a polite
coward. He merely acted against the forces that undermined the market, like financial
speculation, the consumerism that put quantity before quality, and the multinationals that
sourced from state capitalist countries like China while evading taxes at home. He did not act
either against the decline of civic engagement and the persistent neglect of civic education. At
the same time, his rival, the self-proclaimed patriotic politician refused to confront his
followers with the inconvenient fact that identity and prosperity were undermined by their
, own behavior. Rightist politicians vowed to defend Western civilization with a rude political
style akin to barbarism. Centre politics and nationalists engaged in shadowboxing: a waste of
energy."
Statement 2: "The external debt created a false sense of wealth. "
Statement 3: "Fewer Americans also knew what the flag stood for."
Statement 4: "The benefits of openness that the mobile elite enjoyed, were much more
modest in other segments of the society, parts of the society that were more exposed to the
downside of openness, like the influx of cheap migrant workers. "
Statement 5: explain the imbalances of in the Eurozone.
4) One question related to the portfolio
, CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 1
05/10/2021
Introduction: The Pendulum
Chapter 1: Progress
This course is about 30 years of world politics since the Cold War.
Its main question is “How the West waisted important moments to show leadership in the world and
how the world moved from the idea of openness and globalization to the idea of growing
protectionism, conflict and tension”
Essential for this course is personal understanding, critical thinking, and a mature opinion
Introduction: The Pendulum
Point of departure of this book is 09/11/1989 THE FALL OF THE BERLIN WALL:
The world underwent a fundamental change: turning point in world politics
The idea of barriers, walls and ideological divides would make place
for the idea of openness, a world community instead of a world of states and empires
PICTURES The fall of the Berlin Wall, 09/11/1989
People gather near a part of the Berlin Wall that has been broken down after the communist German
Democratic Republic’s (GDR) decision to open borders between East and West Berlin.
The collapse of the Berlin Wall already started way before its formal collapse.
VIDEO Berlin, Germany: Downfall of the Berlin Wall 11/1989
You can sense the electricity, the sense that something fundamentally changed in world politics.
,But then, 30 years after the downfall of the Berlin Wall, we saw the erection of a new barrier in US:
On the border between US and Mexico, the wall of President Trump.
VIDEO Trump at the US Mexican border
The Pendulum: from one extreme to another
Essentially these 30 years were “a movement from wall to wall”
1. Reclusiveness, closure in global politics: Berlin Wall, SU
2. GLOBALIZATION: Openness, the high age of globalization, borders made way for trade and
investment capital, free movement of citizens
3. DEGLOBALIZATION: Period of closure, new physical barriers were erected like the Wall of
President Trump; combined with a period of economic protection with invisible barriers
against trade, resentment against refugees and migration
History of a lost momentum
In the 90s it seemed like we had it all: dictatorship of the SU being defeated, the Western world
centered on democracy and free market at the heart of the economic order and yet it FAILED.
FAILURE OF THE WEST TO LEAD, to consolidate on its position and make its society better and to
preserve its legitimacy and influence in world politics.
- Increasingly contested from the inside: the poor resented the inequality and the state of the
democracy
- Increasingly challenged from the outside by countries like China, Russia and authoritarian
leadership in other places, and by the radical terrorists
,The pendulum: 8 important layers that contributed to the pendulum swinging back from globalization
towards enclosure, that explain why we saw this movement of deglobalization
1. Harmony contested
o Contestation from outside: Even when in the 90s we believed that globalization would
bring harmony and fairness to all, many looked at this high age of globalization as
being a period of abuse and injustice and arrogance of the West
o Contestation from inside: Inside the West, in the 90s already we see growing doubt
about the state of democracy, the state of the economy and the whole argument that
growth was good for all (the reality was growing inequality)
2. Power shift from West to East (China as the main beneficent)
o The last 30 years were marked by the FAILURE of the West to harness its own power
o Complacency and decadence prevented us from building upon what we had; we lost
an opportunity to make our own society better
o This coincided with a transfer of technology and capital to our main competitors:
China, Russia
o Global South (Africa and Latin-America) also went through a period of growth but
much less, much more disappointing
3. Decadence trap
o Decadence prevented us from making our society better: instead of reinventing our
own economy and making it more sustainable, investing more in people than just
profit; what we did was
▪ Massively outsourcing the productivity to countries that turned social and
environmental dumping in a competitive advantage
▪ Internally shift from manufacturing towards services in the financial sector,
real estate sector…
o Overconsumption: massive imports didn’t coincide with sufficient imports, which gave
way to dept finance consumption
,4. Making authoritarianism strong
o Western liberalism made dictatorship and authoritarianism extremely strong
o Due to our consumption of manufactured goods from China, energy from the Gulf
States and the Middle East and from Russia, that we allowed them to gain strength
and rebuild their sphere of influence and to challenge Western liberalism
5. Hubris: overconfidence
o Especially in the military domain: ill-prepared interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq
o Humanitarian interventions that did not have a very humanitarian effect
6. The School of Strife
o By displaying our military force in Iraq in 1990 and 2003, we taught our adversaries
how to use military power (negative learning process)
o China and other powers learned that if they wanted to stop the US, they wanted to go
high-tech
o The pushback that the Western world experiences today is due to this School of Strife
7. The changing nature of power
o Economic growth became driven by capital and technology, which leads to distribution
problems: those who hold capital often hold technology and often generate massive
disproportionate financial gains
o Growing decoupling of the gains between material wealth in GDP and the well-being
of citizens
8. The limits of learning
o The last 30 years will be the best documented tragedy in world politics
o Often, we knew about the challenges and intentions and resentments of our
competitors, we knew that our economic models were deeply flawed, we knew that
our own citizens were being lost along the way
o Despite of all these scientific insights, surprisingly little happened in countering them;
what we see is window dressing: the PRETENTION of change but not backed up by
genuine change
,Chapter 1: Progress
During these 30 years, there was indeed the return of conflict
But the world also became a much better place in terms of
- Poverty for instance we see that much less people now are being inflicted by severe poverty
- Trade: unprecedented interconnectivity between countries
- Combating of disease: children and families are now less infected by diseases
THE WORLD ADVANCED, very rapidly
The last 30 years in that regard are truly exceptional
- Physical transformation of entire cities: skyscrapers, apartment blocks, container ports,
bridges
- Unprecedented deepening of trade networks: trade of goods increased (huge containerships)
- Massive increase in capital connectivity, trade in services, exchanges in intellectual property
Globalization was real and did create an economic network that we’ve never seen before
Many optimistic intellectuals are rights, but there are limitations to their arguments
- The World is Flat: The globalization age flattened out certain borders and made it more difficult
for states to influence and steer the trade flows, idea that states are powerless in contrast to
multinationals
- Factfulness: plenty of evidence that the world has advanced
- Enlightenment Now: the idea of liberty has become widespread (the idea of liberty will never
fully disappear)
- Homo Deus: the sheer material and technological progress could be an ideal moment of
becoming a god-like human to really live life very intensively, to develop our needs and senses,
to become more fulfilled as human beings. The reality lays far away from this idea,
the potential for human advancement is there but it’s not used.
, GRAPH Growth
Changing nature of economic growth.
Since 1990 economic growth GDP has increased spectacularly, with moments of crisis.
Trade moved even faster.
The number of extremely poor people decreased and evolved positively.
All these positive changes were true. But there are important side marks to be made.
Increase of growth coincided with a loss of power in the West.
OVERVIEW Power shift
By and large, the West lost a lot of ground.
The share of the West in the world population decreased.
It’s share in GDP and manufacturing decreased.
Position of the West in the world has eroded. This power shift leads to nervousness in Western
societies. This evolution made it easier for other countries to challenge Western power.
