Great Power Rivalry and Foreign Policy (1815-2010)

Copyright © 2010 by Chester B. Cabalza. All Rights Reserved.

The stories and facts below make it easy to slip into assumption that the world has evolved into a fairly uniform system of Westphalian-type states differentiated from each other principally by the degree of power, the geographical location, and cultural backgrounds. But it is all too clear that the state level itself contains variables that play a major role in conditioning the how and why of security dynamics in any given region.

The broad-brush account suggests three significant dimensions of differentiations: a) a few states are great powers while most others are not; b) many states underwent colonial occupation while a smaller number of others either did not or were the colonizers themselves; and c) some states have been established for a long time and have deep roots while others are recent constructions of decolonization.

A. Concert of Europe/Congress of Vienna (1815)

In my discussion, following the exile of Napoleon Bonaparte to Elba, the victorious Allied powers began a series of committee sessions in Vienna to sort out the problems of Europe.

The Big Four were Britain, Austria, Prussia, and Russia, although the newly royalist France was invited to join later. The key thing in the minds of the Allies was to organize a peace that would bring stability to Europe and contain, but not punish, France.

In a bid to improve the status of Louis XVIII, the Allies decided to avoid imposing damaging reparations on France and allowed her to keep her former colonies. Within Europe, she was forced back to her 1792 borders, which effectively meant the loss of only the Low Countries.

While a workable peace was the ultimate objective, the Allies also wanted to restore the legitimate rulers of Europe to their pre-1792 thrones, but not at the expense of disrupting the balance of power within the continent. The issue of minor nationalities being able to decide their own fate was also an important consideration.

France's representative at the Congress was at his politically savvy best during the meetings and brilliantly worked on the distrust the Allies had for each other. His task was made easier by Prussia and Russia's plans for Saxony, which basically meant the former annexing the country in exchange for Russia, gaining three-quarters of the Duchy of Warsaw. Austria would be thrown the remainder.

This, of course, made Austria nervous of a far stronger Russia and so Vienna sought a secret military alliance with Britain and France while mobilizing its troops. The specter of renewed war in Europe, particularly between former allies, was enough to bring sense to the negotiations and they resolved the issues with more open minds.

Saxony was to remain independent under its formerly pro-Bonapartist King Frederick Augustus, although he had to give Prussia one third of his territories. The obvious distaste felt by the Saxon king can be realized in that it took three months for him to agree to the ceding of the lands. The Duchy of Warsaw became a subject kingdom under the Russian Tsar, Holland was created and incorporated Belgium, while Austria regained control of various Italian territories.

The return of Bonaparte and his triumphal move on Paris sped up the Congress's progress, although the final document was only signed nine days before the battle of Waterloo. While it dealt with the restoration of what was hoped would be stabilizing monarchies, by not dealing with the issues of nationalism, the Congress sowed the seeds of a new revolutionary period. And much of the Prussian distrust towards Britain in the 100 Days’ Campaign stems from London's secret alliance with France and Austria.

However, during this half-millennium, the first global scale of international system comes into being, and the European-style sovereign, territorial state becomes the dominant political form (Bull and Watson 1984; Buzan and Little 2000).

The European international system expanded until it became global. The new European national states reached out economically, politically, and militarily, creating both formal and informal empires in all quarters of the globe.

European settlers created overseas extensions of European powers, which, in turn eventually became entirely new states along European lines. In most of Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, European power eventually dominated and occupied the existing social and international systems.

Europe during this period as a regional security complex, being composed largely of great powers, and being, in effect, the only one, it was of a very special kind. For the European imperial powers, the world was their region.

B. Treaty of Versailles (1918)

In my research, the Treaty of Versailles was the peace settlement signed after WWI that ended in 1918 and in the shadow of the Russian Revolution and other events in Russia. The treaty was signed at the vast Versailles Palace, near Paris, between Germany and the Allies. The three most important politicians present that era were David Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau, and Woodrow Wilson. The Versailles Palace was considered the most appropriate venue simply because of its size where hundreds of people involved in the process and the final signing ceremony in the Hall of Mirrors could accommodate hundreds of dignitaries. Many wanted Germany, now led by Friedrich Ebert, smashed; others, like Lloyd George, were privately more cautious.

The Treaty of Versailles was divided into a number of sections: territorial, military, financial, and general.

In the territorial section, several territories were taken away from Germany, such as the following: Alsace-Lorraine was given to France; Eupen and Malmedy became part of Belgium; Northern Schleswig was taken away by Denmark; Hultschin was given to Czechoslovakia; and West Prussia, Posen, and Upper Silesia were turned over to Poland.

The Saar, Danzig, and Memel were put under the control of the League of Nations and the people of these regions would be allowed to vote to stay in Germany or not in a future referendum. The League of Nations also took control of Germany's overseas colonies.

Germany had to return to Russia land taken in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Part of this land was made into new states like Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia. An enlarged Poland also received part of this land.

Unfortunately, Germany’s army was reduced to 100,000 men; the army was not allowed tanks. Germany was not allowed an airforce but was allowed only 6 capital naval ships and no submarines. The west of the Rhineland and 50 kms east of the River Rhine was made into a demilitarized zone (DMZ). No German soldier or weapon was allowed into this zone. The Allies were to keep an army of occupation on the west bank of the Rhine for 15 years.

Financially, the loss of vital industrial territory was a severe blow to any attempts by Germany to rebuild her economy after the WWI. Coal from the Saar and Upper Silesia, in particular, was a vital economic loss. Combined with the financial penalties linked to reparations, it seemed clear to Germany that the Allies wanted nothing else but to bankrupt her. Germany was also forbidden to unite with Austria to form one superstate, in an attempt to keep her economic potential to a minimum.
In general, there are three vital clauses suffered by Germany in retribution:

Firstly, Germany had to admit full responsibility for starting the war, stipulated in Clause 231 which was the infamous "War Guilt Clause".

Secondly, Germany was responsible for starting the war as stated in clause 231 and, therefore, responsible for all the war damage caused by the First World War. It had to pay reparations, the bulk of which would go to France and Belgium to pay for the damage done to the infrastructure of both countries by the war. Quite literally, reparations would be used to pay for the damage to be repaired. Payment was in kind or cash. The figure was not set at Versailles, however, it was determined later.

Thirdly, a League of Nations was set up to keep world peace.

C. Cold War and Decolonization (1945-1989)

During the second stage, from 1945-1989, the Cold War and decolonization created contradictory effects. On the other hand, the tidal wave of decolonization rolled back imperial power, created dozens of new states, and allowed regional security dynamics to start operating among these newly independent actors in most of Africa, the Middles East, and South and Southeast Asia.

The bipolarity of the United States and the Soviet Union subordinated most of Europe and Northeast Asia and penetrated heavily into most of the newly liberated regions. The two superpowers that dominated world politics after 1945 were both, for very different ideological reasons, opposed to the European and Japanese empires.

The Soviet Union saw them as extension of capitalism and, therefore, as targets for socialist revolution. The United States saw them as extension of European neomercantalism and wanted them opened up to free trade and self-determination. Both superpowers quite quickly came to see that the third world was an important arena for their military and ideological rivalry.

Neorealists see this period primarily through the lens of the shift from multipolarity to bipolarity after 1945.

In Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, decolonization replaced a world of empires and unequal political relations with one of the national states, sovereign equality, and at least the legal acceptance of all peoples and races as possessing equal human rights. In effect, decolonization completed the remaking of the global political system into European (Westphalian) form of sovereign territorial states that had begun with the revolutions in the Americas.

Hence, the ending of the Cold War had three major impacts:

a)It lifted the superpower overlay from Europe and radically changed the pattern of superpower penetration in Northeast Asia. While the implosion of Soviet Union in 1991 brought new states and new regional security complex, into the game;

b)By removing ideological confrontation and Soviet power from the equation, it greatly changed both the nature and the intensity of global power penetration into third world countries.

c)The ending of the Cold War exposed and reinforced the shift in the nature of the security agenda to include a range of non-military issues and actors, which had been visible since the 1970s.

D. Post-Cold War Period (since 1990)

One-way of capturing an overview of the post-Cold War world is through the emerging neorealist consensus that the post-Cold War structure is unipolar (Kapstein and Mastanduno 1999). How this unipolarity is to be understood is still contested.

A strong version of US hegemony would, in many ways, run parallel to a globalist analysis in terms of favoring the dominance of the system level and the weaker version of unipolarity leaves room for the regionalist view hat the ending of the Cold War created more autonomy for regional level security dynamics.

Another influential interpretation of the post-Cold War world has been the idea that the international system has divided into two worlds: a zone of peace and a zone of conflict (Buzan 991; Goldgeier and Mcfaul 1992; Singer and Wildavsky 1993).

A relatively uniform picture of military-political security dynamics dominated by state actors gives way to multisectoral conceptions of security, a wider variety of actors, and sets of conditions and dynamics that differ sharply from one region to another.

Decolonization opened the space for regional military-political dynamics, and the ending of the Cold War enabled these dynamics to operate with much more freedom from high-levels of rival superpower military-political intrusion.

E. Emergence of Non-Traditional Security and Non-State Actors (21st century)

Financial Crises

The term financial crisis is applied broadly to a variety of situations in which some financial institutions or assets suddenly lose a large part of their value. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many financial crises were associated with banking panics, and many recessions coincided with these panics. Other situations that are often called financial crises include stock market crashes and the bursting of other financial bubbles, currency crises, and sovereign defaults.
Contagion refers to the idea that financial crises may spread from one institution to another, as when a bank run spreads from a few banks to many others, or from one country to another, as when currency crises, sovereign defaults, or stock market crashes spread across countries. When the failure of one particular financial institution threatens the stability of many other institutions, this is called systemic risk.

One widely-cited example of contagion was the spread of the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997, which started in Thailand, and the 2008 Global Financial Crisis in 2008 which originated in the United States. However, economists often debate whether observing crises in many countries around the same time is truly caused by contagion from one market to another, or whether it is, instead, caused by similar underlying problems that would have affected each country individually even in the absence of international linkages.

Persistent Poverty

Professor Peter War of the Poverty Research Center deems that, over the last three decades, considerable progress has been made in reducing poverty but, in most countries of the region, it remains a central social problem. Efforts to reduce poverty have attracted increasing attention, both from domestic governments and from international institutions. Further, around 2/3 of the world’s poor or 720 million are in South Asia and Southeast Asia, earning less than $1 a day.

Energy Crisis

From the mid-1980s to September 2003, the inflation adjusted price of a barrel of crude oil was generally under $25/barrel. Then during 2003, the price rose above $30, reached $60 by August 11, 2005, and peaked at $147.30 in July 2008. Commentators attributed the price increases of this period to a confluence of factors, including reports showing a decline in petroleum reserves of industrialized countries, Middle East tension, and over oil price speculation.

For a time, certain geo-political events and natural disasters not directly related to the global oil market had strong short term effects on oil prices, such as North Korean missile tests, the 2006 conflict between Israel and Lebanon, worries over Iranian nuclear power plants in 2006, Hurricane Katrina, global recession, and various other factors.

Drug Trafficking

Illicit drug trafficking is another source of human insecurity haunting the Asia-Pacific region. The production and consumption of narcotic substances has a long history in East Asia (Opium War). But several disturbing new developments have forced narcotics trafficking onto the regional security agenda for the first time (Dupont 1999). Drug dependency in countries with no record of drug addiction in recent decades has been alarming. Hence, narcotics trafficking in the region is a new multibillion-dollar business; it was probably the only enterprise not affected by the recent economic crisis. Drug money is distorting regional economies and exacerbating corruption and political instability.

Piracy

Piracy is a war-like act committed by a non-state actor, especially robbery or criminal violence committed at sea, on water, or sometimes on shore. It does not normally include crimes on board a vessel among passengers or crew. The term has been used to refer to raids across land borders by non-state actors.

More so, maritime piracy, according to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) of 1982, consists of any criminal acts of violence, detention, or depredation committed for private ends by the crew or the passengers of a private ship or aircraft that is directed on the high seas against another ship, aircraft, or against persons or property on board a ship or aircraft.

Piracy can also be committed against a ship, aircraft, persons, or property in a place outside the jurisdiction of any state. In fact piracy has been the first example of universal jurisdiction. Nevertheless, today the international community is facing many problems in bringing pirates to justice.

Non-State Actors

Non-state actors, in international relations, are actors on the international level which are not states. The admission of non-state actors into international relations theory is inherently a rebuke to the assumptions of realism and other "black box" theories of international relations, which argue that interactions between states are the main relationships of interest in studying international events, however they exist, and are influential in the international system.

Examples of non-state actors are Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) which are typically considered a part of the civil society; Multinational Corporations (MNCs) which are for - profit organizations that operate in more sovereign states; the international media; violent non-state actors, such as rebel opposition forces, militias and warlords, terrorist organizations, and criminal organizations. Religious groups, transnational diaspora communities, and certain charismatic individuals.