scholarly journals THE PROBLEM OF WORLD ORDER IN WESTERN IR STUDIES

Author(s):  
M. V. Soljanova

The article "Problem of world order in modern Western studies" is the study of one of the most debated issues in the science of international relations - world order. Discussion of the structure of world order is underway in various countries, both at the state level and in the expert community. Some researchers insist on the fact that after the end of the cold war, the collapse of the bipolar model of international relations, the world has become unipolar. Others argue that the increase in the number of centers of power and the need for a multilateral approach to solving global problems (terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, environmental and climate issues) talking about the formation of multipolarity. However, it should be recognized that currently no widely accepted theoretical and conceptual apparatus, which complicates not only the study of the world order, but makes it impossible to search for common approaches of the international community in solving the problems associated with global development, new challenges and threats. The author of this article seeks to research and analyze the various theoretical paradigms (neo-realism, neo-liberalism, institutionalism, neo-marxism, etc.) and concepts to form a coherent picture of the structure of the world system, its main features and to offer readers the vision of the concept of "world order". Thus, the article notes that the multidimensional structure of the modern system of international relations established after the end of the cold war is so complex that none of the concepts can claim to accurate interpretation of the world order. The modern system differs from systems of the past centuries. Characteristics inherent in it (on the one hand, the increasing global processes in economy, politics, culture, etc., on the other, the attraction to return to the concept of "nation state", the closure of borders, the disintegration), require new approaches to the study of world order, factors of its formation and its components. The world system is dynamic and none of the previously existing concepts of world order are not able to accurately describe the processes occurring in the world today. For example, a bipolar model is formed based on the principle of "balance of power", a unipolar system exists on the basis of the dictates of the powers, and a multipolar - subject to the availability of the political equilibrium. It becomes obvious that the constantly changing conditions in the global arena require a whole new approach to the formation of a genuine world order. While each country will be guided by their own ideas of the world development plan focused on their interests, often in conflict with the global balance of power, to speak of a stable, efficient, safe development is impossible.

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 52-79
Author(s):  
V. T. Yungblud

The Yalta-Potsdam system of international relations, established by culmination of World War II, was created to maintain the security and cooperation of states in the post-war world. Leaders of the Big Three, who ensured the Victory over the fascist-militarist bloc in 1945, made decisive contribution to its creation. This system cemented the world order during the Cold War years until the collapse of the USSR in 1991 and the destruction of the bipolar structure of the organization of international relations. Post-Cold War changes stimulated the search for new structures of the international order. Article purpose is to characterize circumstances of foundations formation of postwar world and to show how the historical decisions made by the leaders of the anti-Hitler coalition powers in 1945 are projected onto modern political processes. Study focuses on interrelated questions: what was the post-war world order and how integral it was? How did the political decisions of 1945 affect the origins of the Cold War? Does the American-centrist international order, that prevailed at the end of the 20th century, genetically linked to the Atlantic Charter and the goals of the anti- Hitler coalition in the war, have a future?Many elements of the Yalta-Potsdam system of international relations in the 1990s survived and proved their viability. The end of the Cold War and globalization created conditions for widespread democracy in the world. The liberal system of international relations, which expanded in the late XX - early XXI century, is currently experiencing a crisis. It will be necessary to strengthen existing international institutions that ensure stability and security, primarily to create barriers to the spread of national egoism, radicalism and international terrorism, for have a chance to continue the liberal principles based world order (not necessarily within a unipolar system). Prerequisite for promoting idea of a liberal system of international relations is the adjustment of liberalism as such, refusal to unilaterally impose its principles on peoples with a different set of values. This will also require that all main participants in modern in-ternational life be able to develop a unilateral agenda for common problems and interstate relations, interact in a dialogue mode, delving into the arguments of opponents and taking into account their vital interests.


1997 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 526-551 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael N. Barnett

The end of the cold war and the attendant security vacuum unleashed aflurryof intellectual activity and international commissions that reflected on the world that was being left behind and the world that should be created in its place. The reports under review are among the best and most influential of the lot. This article focuses on three issues raised by these reports. First, the portrait of the new international order offered by these reports is a liberal international order. Second, the concept of legitimacy appears in various guises, and the UN is considered the site for the legitimation of a particular order. Few international orders are ever founded or sustained by force alone, something well understood by the policymakers who drafted these reports and wisely heeded by international relations theorists who attempt to understand their actions and the international orders that they construct and sustain. Third, these reports envision the UN as an agent of normative integration. As such, it contributes to the development and maintenance of a liberal international order by increasing the number of actors who identify with and uphold its values.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12(48) (4) ◽  
pp. 69-85
Author(s):  
Alla Kyrydon ◽  
Sergiy Troyan

Conceptual approaches to understanding the current stage of the evolution of international relations were put in place during the destruction of the bipolar world of the Cold War and the formation of new foundations of the world and international order. The distinctiveness of this process is that the collapse of the postwar system took place in peaceful conditions. Most often, two terms are used to describe the interconnectedness and interdependence of world politics after the fall of the Iron Curtain: the post-bipolar (post-westphalian) international system or international relations after the end of the Cold War. Two terms, post-bipolar international system and international relations after the end of the Cold War, have common features, which usually allows them to be used as synonyms and makes them the most popular when choosing a common comprehensive definition for the modern international relations. The collapse of the Soviet bloc and the global bipolar system put on the agenda issues that cannot be resolved within the traditional terms “poles,” “balance of power,” “configuration of the balance of power” etc. The world has entered a period of uncertainty and growing risks. the global international system is experiencing profound shocks associated with the transformation of its structure, changes in its interaction with the environment, which accordingly affects its regional and peripheral dimensions. In modern post-bipolar relations of shaky equilibrium, there is an obvious focus on the transformation of the world international order into a “post-American world” with the critical dynamics of relations between old and new actors at the global level. The question of the further evolution of the entire system of international relations in the post-bipolar world and the tendency of its transformation from a confrontational to a system of cooperation remains open.


Author(s):  
Jenny Andersson

Chapter 8 explores the making of futures studies as a counter reaction to futurology and protest against the Cold War world order. Taking as its focus the World Futures Studies Federation, created by the West German journalist and peace activist Robert Jungk and the philosopher and international relations theorist Johan Galtung, the chapter returns to futurism as an interrogation into the nature of humanity, and to the future as a fundamental utopian category. Futures studies were an example of a kind of neo-utopianism, which not only claimed that alternative worlds were possible but also tried to construct new ways of envisioning and realizing such worlds. Futures studies were constructed as a kind of militancy that straddled the boundaries of social science and politics, and mixed in religious and eschatological notions too. Crucial to this enterprise was the willingness to transcend the Cold War world order and create a united Mankind.


Author(s):  
E. A. Repeshko

The modern system of international relations more often faces the conflicts of different tension which appear in different regions of the world. Conflicts of the beginning of XXI century are determined by different political, economic, national and confessional reasons. The system of international relations faced the crisis. This system had existed for many centuries and was adopted in the Westphalia Peace. The ending of the Cold War made the world see the new conditions whose distinctive feature was an increasing quantitative index of clashes. A number of political changes at the beginning of the current decade have resulted in changes of political regimes in these countries. On the whole, the process of peaceful political transformation was characteristic of the events of the so-called «Arabic spring». However, similar changes in Libya proved to have a different character causing military changes and NATO's military intervention. If the process of social uprising turned into protest-street disturbances in Egypt and Tunis, in Libya there was an armed overthrow of the authorities by the opposition supported by foreign states. The author touches upon the events of the Arabic spring which resulted in overthrowing Gaddafi's regime. NATO' policy was criticized in the course of military actions in Libya. The author considers NATO's views, particularly, that of the USA, France and Great Britain in terms of the Libyan crisis and its solutions. The study of the conflict mechanism, its nature will allow to estimate taken by the world measures influencing the modern system of international relations.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 120-130
Author(s):  
Coline Covington

The Berlin Wall came down on 9 November 1989 and marked the end of the Cold War. As old antagonisms thawed a new landscape emerged of unification and tolerance. Censorship was no longer the principal means of ensuring group solidarity. The crumbling bricks brought not only freedom of movement but freedom of thought. Now, nearly thirty years later, globalisation has created a new balance of power, disrupting borders and economies across the world. The groups that thought they were in power no longer have much of a say and are anxious about their future. As protest grows, we are beginning to see that the old antagonisms have not disappeared but are, in fact, resurfacing. This article will start by looking at the dissembling of a marriage in which the wall that had peacefully maintained coexistence disintegrates and leads to a psychic development that uncannily mirrors that of populism today. The individual vignette leads to a broader psychological understanding of the totalitarian dynamic that underlies populism and threatens once again to imprison us within its walls.


Author(s):  
Beate Jahn

Since the end of the Cold War, peacebuilding operations have become an integral part of world politics—despite their continuing failures. This chapter provides an account of peacebuilding operations in practice and identifies cycles of failure and reform, namely the successful integration of peacebuilding into the fabric of the world order despite its continuing failures. It traces these dynamics back to the internal contradictions of liberalism and argues that the main function of peacebuilding operations lies in managing the tensions and contradictions inherent in a liberal world order. Peacebuilding—in one form or another—is therefore likely to persist for the duration of a liberal world order.


Author(s):  
Celso Amorim

In the last years of the twentieth century, after the end of the Cold War, the world has evolved into a mixed structure, which preserves the characteristics of unipolarity at the same time that approaches to a multipolar world in some ways. In an international reality marked by its fluid nature, the emergence of new actors and the so-called "asymmetric threats" has not eliminated the former agents in the world order. And the conflict between the States has not disappeared from the horizon. In this context, diplomacy must have the permanent support of defense policy. Therefore, in the Brazilian case, the paper presents that the country should adopt a grand strategy that combines foreign policy and defense policy, in which soft power will be enhanced by hard power.


1999 ◽  
Vol 25 (5) ◽  
pp. 145-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
GEOFFREY HAWTHORN

Many expected that after the Cold War, there would be peace, order, increasing prosperity in expanding markets and the extension and eventual consolidation of civil and political rights. There would be a new world order, and it would in these ways be liberal. In international politics, the United States would be supreme. It would through security treaties command the peace in western Europe and east Asia; through its economic power command it in eastern Europe and Russia; through clients and its own domination command it in the Middle East; through tacit understanding command it in Latin America; and, in so far as any state could, command it in Africa also. It could choose whether to cooperate in the United Nations, and if it did not wish to do so, be confident that it would not be disablingly opposed by illiberal states. In the international markets, it would be able to maintain holdings of its bonds. In the international financial institutions, it would continue to be decisive in the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank; it would be an important influence in the regional development banks; and it would be powerful in what it was to insist in 1994 should be called the World (rather than Multinational) Trade Organisation. Other transactions in the markets, it is true, would be beyond the control of any state. But they would not be likely to conflict with the interests of the United States (and western Europe) in finance, investment and trade, and would discipline other governments.


2008 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell Buchan

AbstractThis paper will suggest that since the end of the Cold War liberal states have instituted a new regime of international relations and of international peace and security in particular. Historically, legitimate statehood could be situated virtually exclusively within international society; in their international relations all states subscribed to a common normative standard which regarded all states qua states as legitimate sovereign equals irrespective of the political constitution that they endorsed. With the end of the Cold War, however, an international community of liberal states has formed within international society which considers only those states that respect the liberal values of democracy, human rights and the rule of law as legitimate. Non-liberal states are not only denigrated as illegitimate but more significantly they are stripped of their previously held sovereign status where international community, motivated by the theory that international peace and security can only be achieved in a world composed of exclusively liberal states, campaigns for their liberal transformation. Finally, it will be suggested that despite the disagreement between liberal states over the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 international community survives, and thus its (antagonistic) relationship with non-liberal states continues to provide a useful method for theorising international peace and security in the contemporary world order.


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