International Love

Make America Great Again has been popularized by President Donald Trump. But what is not great about America? The USA has been dominating the international market after the second world war. They took the role of international leadership and have one of the most powerful military. Even when non-believers think their power is declining, they are still leading the world with international institutions at their reach. Again, what is not great about America?

In Robert O. Keohane’s essay, Hegemony and After, he argued that global leadership is strengthened by multilateral institutions. His key assumptions include:

1. hegemonic state promotes international cooperation in solving collective problems
2. multilateral institutions enable states to cooperate and communicate with one another
3. sharing responsibilities with the leading state increases stability
4. political involvement of citizens in a democratic state is crucial especially with a hegemonic state such as the US
5. democracies are more stable than autocracies
6. only the US has the capabilities and willingness to exercise global leadership

While the US indeed leads international politics, I would argue that collective problems are defined and influenced by the hegemonic state and the hegemonic state’s democracy affects and is affected by international politics.

The US has great influenced through different mediums. They have control over the internet, entertainment, and news. This means that what we see and what we focus on is determined by what America thinks is relevant. For example, without fully knowing the narrative, Kavanaugh’s name has been all over the internet, from Facebook to Twitter.

US politics and their problems become universalized. Keohane claimed that leadership is necessary to solve global problems yet these problems are defined by the US or the hegemonic state. If the US believes that global warming isn’t real, solving this collective problem would be impossible since the leader itself does not believe that global warming is an important issue. Even when the rest of the world is cooperating, it would be more difficult since multilateral institutions that create and foster agreements are inevitably influenced by America.

During the 2016 US Presidential Elections, the whole world was waiting for the results. This is because whoever Americans elect affects international politics. Americans are not just deciding for their leader but for the leader of the world. The recent trade war between Canada and America has demonstrated this. Tariffs imposed by the Trump administration would affect Canadians and Americans alike.

The burden of voting for the leader of the world influences America’s democracy as well since as we saw from the last presidential election, it was intervened by Russia for its political interests. America’s democracy is unavoidably affected by international politics. Presidential campaigns were filled with advocacy of policies regarding international issues such as immigration and the refugee crises.

While having a hegemonic state has significantly decreased international competition, solving collective problems did not necessarily become as easy as Keohane suggested. At its best America’s interests benefits everyone. At its worst, collective problems are ignored for the benefit of American elites.

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The rapid rise of globalization and technological advancement have narrowed the borders between nations. This is the reason why I find it interesting to study the foundations of international relations in the modern era to the postmodern era.

My expectation of the class included simply differentiating the theories and looking at the relationship between nations from a variety of lenses. However, in the postmodern era, the essential truth of things is at the centre. Thus, international relations has been more complicated than before.

Internal relations as a subject began with realism as the core paradigm. Realists mainly focused on explaining the war whether it was caused by human drives, self-interests, cohension of the community, and balance of power.

Realists aimed at studying international relations as a natural science, so they used empirical methods and disregarded other theories that disagree with them. As we all know, international relations and state actors’ motivations are difficult to predict and study empirically. Furthermore, international relations can’t be a natural science because it is dynamic and it changes overtime unlike physics where the law of gravity never changes. It is no wonder that realism has been in decline especially in the era we are currently in.

Structural realism is even worse since it focused on the degree of power that states possess and ignored the differences between the states’ culture and regime. These differences are of course necessary when determining how states make their decisions in relation with other states and who makes these decisions. The regime type for instance influences how a state deals with military power. Structural realists assume that states are rational beings, ignoring other factors that are essential in analyzing state actors.

Structural realists also believe that a unipolar system would bring about peace or help maintain peace. As we see, while the US is one of the most powerful states, their decisions and response to international issues are not always rational or beneficial to majority of the states or sometimes even to its own state.

Structural realists’ assumptions are based on the balance of power, but because of the complications of the narrowing of borders and inevitable encounter between states in the 21st Century, there are many more factors to take into account other than military power and security.

Going forward with the course, I am interested to learn more about sovereignty of states in the postmodern era, the importance of NGOs, the limitation of international intervention, and the power relationship between first-world and third-world countries from theories that see international relations as more than a natural science.