Polarity in International Relations - Case Study Example

Polarity in International Relations Introduction: Polarity, Distribution of power and World Peace The history of human civilization provides numerous explicit proofs in support of the observation that man’s quest to earn power and tendency to dominate over his fellow counterparts have been reflected in several ways, namely, in terms of brutal aggression, or attaining complete control over political and economic systems, or by influencing culture and tradition of other nations. In the ancient times, kings and emperors used to wage war over other states in order to prove their supremacy and capitalize over economical as well as cultural resources of the conquered states to assert their respective supremacy over others. Time changed but the mentality of aggressive dominance of superiors or more powerful over their weaker counterparts did not cease; consequently, the superior nations started to attack the weaker nations and developed colonies so that the strong nations can assert their respective positions as potential rulers of the entire international political and economic system. During inception of the 20th century, while a slow but gradual decline was observed among powerful nations across the globe in the context of reflecting their respective approach towards colonialism, an overview of the entire international political scenario provides a picture where several nations have already emerged as potential rulers of the entire globe. Each of those powers, separately, produced their respective claims in the context of governing international politics, argued in favor of their respective status of regarding control of international trade, business affairs and in every such situation that prevented each of those powerful nations to attain their benefits to the best extent possible, they adopted quite an uncompromising approach to solve the issue. Clearly, emergence of the several powers within the domain of international political scenario, especially during the pre-World War II period resulted in continuous conflict of power and multipolar standard was followed till the end of Great War II. However, conflict of power and multipolar political structure gradually reveled only two powers, namely the United States and Soviet Union that were capacitated to continue their influence over international politics, irrespective of the cultural, political and economic crisis that they encountered during the World War II: “In the multipolar era, twelve great powers appeared on the scene at one time or another. At the beginning of World War II, seven remained; at its conclusion, two. Always before, as some states sank, others rose to take their place. World War II broke the pattern; for the first time in a world of sovereign state, bipolarity prevailed.”1 It has been widely acknowledged by scholars from different disciplines that World War II is one of the major factors to change several conventional perceptions. In the context of international politics and peace, distribution of power, significance of the Great War II was recognized as it clearly pointed out that issues related to polarity are highly important and unless the disputes can be solved, stability at the international political standards or improvement in international relations cannot be attained. While the multipolar political structure offered a situation that reflects tremendous power conflict and later on, bipolar and current unipolar structures, respectively, provided undercurrent political tensions added with relative peace and arbitrary actions from the supreme power in the name of controlling international affairs, it has become a spontaneous issue of pondering for political scientists that to which extent issues related to polarity are capable of affecting international stability and what are the possible solutions for this problem. It has also been realized that as the factor of international peace needs to be secured for a better existence of the entire humankind, immediate choice regarding adoption of polarity should be made. Thesis Statement: A bipolar world, such as the Cold War period, through a process of balancing between the two states, creates a more stable international environment as opposed to pre-WWI multipolarity and current unipolarity. How does the independent variable (bipolar world) lead to dependant variable (stability in international relations)? Comparing the situations of international relation during the multipolar and unipolar system with that of the bipolar structure, several scholars have argued in favor of the observation that adoption of the bipolar model is the best possible solution in the context of finding the best possible outlet in retaining world peace and international stability. Aftermath the World War II, the United States and Soviet Union emerged as two most powerful nations in the international political scenario. Despite the fact that there was no explicit waging of war between these two superpowers, however, there was a tremendous undercurrent of political tension out the struggle to prove their respective supremacy in the international scenario, resulting in the Cold War; consequently, the power struggle also impacted international political stability especially among the developing nations. However, decline of the Soviet authority in the global political scenario not only ended Cold War but also established the United States as the supreme position, which according to the current observation is known as unipolarity. Irrespective of the fact that in support of the unipolarity there has been argument that due to concentration of power within hand of a nation, other nations would fear to rebel against the authority, and the supreme one would also feel reluctant to exercise its aggression, it has been found that US has not really oriented its international policies according to this observation; rather in order to assert its supremacy it has gone for exaggerating its financial and military powers. Thus, it can be said, each of the political structures regarding polarity has its own drawbacks and advantages and in order to determine whether the bipolar structure that was prevalent during Cold War is mostly suitable to ensure stability at international level, receiving an overview of political situations during multipolar (prior to the Great War II), bipolar (during Cold War) and current unipolar system, becomes important. Multipolar structure (Pre Great War II period): Kenneth N. Waltz is of opinion that “Throughout the history of man’s speculation on political problems have run two partially contradictory thoughts on the relation between the structures of states and the types of warfare they wage.”2 The global level political problems that finally resulted in the Great War I and II, find a close semblance with the observation. Structure of the states and adoption of international political structure through multipolarity contradicted with the ideal relation. Finally, such contradictions and deterioration in mutual relation found their solutions through the Great Wars. While, some of the nations within the multipolar structure favored capitalist approach, others, empowered with their socialist approach condemned it with the justification that encouraging capitalism would encourage dominance over others and would automatically lead to war.3 The multipolar system, thus, gave birth to different observation and various approaches towards looking at a particular incident; interestingly, those are most of the time contradicting with each other. However, such contradictions can be solved with proper empathy towards the situation and with a benevolent will to solve the issues of disputes in order to secure a bright future for mutual cohabitation. Unfortunately, during the pre World War II multipolar system this benevolence and tolerant approach was entirely missing; the nations were busy to prove their respective supremacy in terms of power that worsened the entire situation, leading to great devastations in the history of humankind: “Many historians … have claimed that World War I was caused by interaction of two opposed and closely balanced coalitions. But then many have claimed that World War II was caused by the failure of some states to combine forces in an effort to right an imbalance of power created by existing alliance.”4 This observation clearly suggests that contradiction of opinions among powerful nations, irrespective of the fact whether they are within an alliance or individual, is the main reason that led to World Wars; rather than their striving for a healthy and harmonious peaceful existence, in a multipolar political system the nations always tend to prove their respective supremacy and encourage international political imbalance. Bipolar Structure (During the Cold War): The search for stability in the international relations and attempts to ensure a tranquil existence placed political scientists before the question whether “a bipolar world system more or less stable than a multipolar one.”5 Irrespective of the fact that several models and experimental attempts have been made in order to find a possible solution of this dispute, the conflict remained a major issue of reflection for political scientists. Compared to the multipolar structure, though the bipolar model is less fragile, in the context of attaining world peace and international political stability, most of the political scholars have opted for bipolarity: “The multipolar world was highly stable, but all too war-prone. The bipolar world has been highly peaceful, but unfortunately less stable than its predecessor.”6 End of the World War II, helped in identification of the two superpowers, namely, the US and the Soviet Union, having the capacity to control the nature of international politics. During the War, alliance of these two powers helped in ending Nazi aggression but such alliance ceased to exist as they were looking for the scope to establish themselves respectively as sole governor of the global political system. Clearly the situation was indicating towards the development of unipolarity so that either of the nations could receive complete supremacy over international politics and able to orient the state of international affairs in a way so that it could add to their respective benefits from political-economic perspective. While the United States was searching for an opportunity to “wage nuclear war and the willingness to strike first”7, evolution of humanist movements and fear of losing support of other nations prevented it from going to that extent: “Neither the United States nor the Soviet Union has to seek the approval of other states, but each has to cope with the other.”8 While mutual collaboration and benevolence to ensure global peace from these two nations could have ensured stability in the domain of international relation, both nations, due to their advantage seeking approach by making the other responsible for global political instability, made the dream of peaceful existence a distant reach: “In a two-power competition, a loss for one is easily taken to be a gain for the other. As a result, the powers in a bipolar world promptly respond to unsettling events.”9 The basic lessons of ensuring peace in a democratic situation state that the desired situation can only be attained if “democracies do not fight democracies.”10 However, in a bipolar situation when it was expected that “democracies constitute a zone of peace [that] rests on a perceived high correlation between governmental form of international outcome”11, the struggle for greater political power between these two superior democracies proved all expectations from the situation, futile. Current Unipolar System: Unpolarity, quite contrast to the multipolar and bipolar structure, affirms supremacy of a particular nation in the international political scenario. According to Robert Jervis’ observation, “There are two obvious related definitions of unipolarity. ...a system in which one state has significantly more capabilities than any other. Another is a system in which the unipole’s security and perhaps other values cannot be threatened by others....”12 Thus, the twofold definition of unipolarity provides such a supreme status to a particular nation that its power or hold over international system remains unquestioned and if the nation wishes, then it is capable of exaggerating its will within much care of the other nations. While during the bipolar system the United States and Soviet Union, irrespective of their conflicts at a deeper level, never really received the scope to execute their respective wills and that retained world peace, in the unipolar system, after decline of the Soviet Union while US reached to the top of power structure, it received the scope to exercise its dominating will over other nations, and proved itself a threat for all those democracies that would refuse to pertain with its policies. Randall L. Schweller, while reflecting over the connection between polarity and unipolar system that how polarity can reveal functioning and outcome of unipolar system, comments: “The upshot is that polarity does not tell us much about how a unipolar system will operate. What may be more important than polarity is the increase in the number and kinds of state and nonstate actors that can affect the system’s outcome.”13 Under light of this observation, if the current situation of the US and its functioning as the head of the unipolar system is interpreted, it would be found that the system’s outcome is quite negative compared to the expected level of international stability. If the US would have indulged into empathetic and cooperative policy making then there would have been stability and an ambiance of peace. However, in the quest to assert its power over less powerful nation, US ultimately has produced several “state and nonstate actors” that aim at reducing the supremacy that the nation is enjoying and in that process these forces are going to the extent of violating world peace, even by committing heinous crimes that they feel, would curtail the power of the United States. Conclusion: While each of the systems, multipolar, bipolar and unipolar system, has its respective benefit and detriment, there is no denial of the fact that if empowered with benevolent purpose and empathy for common people, the situation of expected global peace and stabilized international relation can be secured. Compared to the unipolarity and multipolarity, bipolarity offers, ideally, a more stable system, as it provides less scope to a nation to impose its arbitrary will and the scope also becomes limited due to presence of an equally powerful opposition; in a bipolar situation there also exists lesser scope of conflicting opinion because the number of parties are less compared to a multipolar existence. However, the bipolar system also fails to provide the desired international peace because the nations would not cooperate with each other; rather they would search for flaws on either part so that support for the other party can be lessened. Thus, in such a dynamic and radically changing international political scenario, despite the fact that bipolar model could have been the best option for ensuring a stable international standard, attempts to solve the issues of dispute from a flexible perspective and shifting to different layers of polarity keeping in mind requirement of the situation, would be the most prudent approach. Works Cited Jervis, Robert. UNIPOLARITY: A Structural Perspective”. World Politics 61, no. 1 ( January 2009), 188–213. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Saperstein, Alvin M. “The Long Peace: Result of a Bipolar Competitive World?”. Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 35 No. 1, March 1991 68-79. London: Sage Publication, Inc. 1991. Schweller, Randall L. “Entropy and the trajectory of world politics: why polarity has become less meaningful” Cambridge Review of International Affairs. 23: 1, 145-163. London: Routledge. Waltz, Kenneth N. “Structural Realism after the Cold War”. America unrivaled: the future of the balance of power. New York: Cornell University Press. 2002. Waltz, Kenneth N. “The Origins of War in Neorealist Theory”. The Origin and prevention of major wars. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1989. Waltz, Kenneth N. “The Emerging Structure of International Politics”. The international system after the collapse of the east-west order. Boston: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. 1994. Waltz, Kenneth N. Man, the state, and war: a theoretical analysis. 2nd Ed. West Sussex: Columbia University Press. 2001. Read More