Part 1: NationalismPart 2: International

OrganizationsPart 3: What should be the role of

the United Nations and other international organizations?

Theme: The effect of globalization on the power of the nation-state

Lesson 12

Part 1: Nationalism

Lesson 12

Thirty Years’ War (We talked about this in Lesson 3)

• From 1618-1648, Spanish, French, Dutch, German, Swedish, Danish, Polish, Bohemian, and Russian forces fought the Thirty Years’ War over political, economic, and, especially, religious differences– It was the most destructive European conflict before

the 20th Century– One-third of the German population was killed

• In order to avoid tearing their society apart, European states ended the war with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648

Peace of Westphalia (1648)

• Laid the foundation for a system of independent, sovereign states

• All states agreed to regard each other as sovereign and equal

• They mutually recognized their rights to organize their own domestic affairs, including religious affairs

• States would conduct their own political and diplomatic affairs according to their own interests

Detail from a painting of the oathtaking of the Peace of

Westphalia by Gerard Terborch (1617-1681)

Nation-state

• “A political unit consisting of an autonomous state inhabited predominantly by a people sharing a common culture, history, and language.”

• Sometimes called “Westphalian states”

Tension of Globalization

• Governments still operate on the basis of the territorially delineated state as proclaimed by the Peace of Westphalia, but, as the world’s nations and people become increasingly interdependent, nations are being pressured to surrender portions of their sovereignty

Decline of the Nation State

• “Erosion from above”– International problems and the grow of international

organizations that try to solve them– The global economy

• “Erosion from below”– Internal ethnic, racial, cultural, and linguistic tensions– Exacerbated by weak national economies

• The result is that “national governments spend more and more of their time, energy, and money simply reacting; reacting to problems or crises, to challenges both from above and below, and to agendas set by others.”– Olin Robinson, Vermont Public Radio

Part 2: Non-governmental and International Organizations

Lesson 12

Tension of Globalization

• Traditional nation-states have difficulties handling problems of a global magnitude

• A plethora of nongovernmental international organizations that do not respect territorial boundaries and are beyond the reach of national governments have sprung up to try to tackle the problem

Some IGOs/NGOs and their Agendas

• Red Cross– Relieve

suffering to wounded soldiers and prisoners of war

• Greenpeace– Preserve the

earth’s natural resources and animal and plant life

Some IGOs/NGOs and their Agendas

• United Nations– Maintain

international peace and security

• Amnesty International– Ensure human

rights

NGOs and the “New Diplomacy”

• With the end of the Cold War, the US became the world’s only superpower– “But a funny thing happened on the way to American supremacy.

No sooner had the United States won the bipolar superpower game than the rules of international law and politics began to change.”

• Thousands of NGOs have succeeded in getting their issues to the top of the diplomatic agenda and taken advantage of technology and communications improvements to change the methods by which international decisions are made

• “The mantle of international leadership is no longer conferred by economic and military power alone; instead, the power of ideas, and how they are communicated and marketed, has come to the fore.”

• David Davenport, “The New Diplomacy”

Case Study: The Ottawa Convention

• Throughout the 1990s, concern mounted over the use of land mines

• Land mines left in place after fighting stopped in Cambodia, Afghanistan, Angola, Nicaragua, Bosnia, and elsewhere were continuing to claim victims, many of which were children

Cambodia land mine victim

Case Study: The Ottawa Convention

• Traditionally such an agenda was handling by international arms control and disarmament experts– The U.N. Convention on Certain Conventional

Weapons and the U.N. Conference on Disarmament in Geneva were working toward international agreements limiting land mines

• Some thought the traditional process was going too slowly and a new NGO, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) decided a new approach was needed

Case Study: The Ottawa Convention

• The ICBL acted as the “master NGO” for a group of over 1,000 NGOs from more than 60 countries

• A small core group of states, led by Canada, provided the necessary element of state leadership– Canadian Foreign Minister

Lloyd Axworthy told the delegates in Ottawa the goal was to have a treaty in 15 months

Lloyd Axworthy

Case Study: The Ottawa Convention

• Usually international negotiations seek consensus, if not unanimity

• The ICBL and its cohorts felt this would be destined to accepting the lowest common denominator and they felt too passionately about the subject to settle for that

• Instead these negotiations required a 2/3 majority vote rather than consensus– Less national participation would be accepted in order

to keep the central content of the proposals intact

Case Study: The Ottawa Convention

• The NGOs waged what Axworthy called “the mobilization of shame” using faxes, email, cell phones, and displays to strengthen their message and ridicule opposition

• The US was left on the sidelines and by the time it recovered the momentum was strongly with the NGOs

• US reservations to the treaty were never seriously considered and the US, along with China and Russia, had no choice but to not sign the treaty

American Jody Williams and the ICBL shared the 1997 Nobel

Peace Prize for their efforts to ban anti-personnel land mines

Case Study: Kosovo

• Serbian military and police forces were systematically cleansing Kosovo of its ethnic Albanian population

Camp Stenkovich II in Macedonia held

approximately 20,000 refugees.

Case Study: Kosovo

• On 24 March 1999, NATO initiated Operation Allied Force in order to– Stop the Serb offensive in

Kosovo, – Force a withdrawal of Serb

troops from Kosovo, – Allow democratic self-

government in Kosovo,– Allow a NATO-led

international peacekeeping force into Kosovo, and

– Allow the safe and peaceful return of Kosovar Albanian refugees.

Case Study: Kosovo

• On June 9, 1999, Serbia agreed to a Military Technical Agreement ended the 11-week war

• One June 12, KFOR entered Kosovo

• On February 12, 2002 former Serbian President Milosevic went on trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. – He died before a

verdict was reached.

Case Study: Kosovo

• From an international law perspective, OAF got mixed reviews– It violated traditional

principles of nonintervention and nonaggression

– It could set a precedent for using military force for humanitarian reasons

– It represented the use of force by a regional organization (NATO) without UN Security Council authorization

Part 3: What should be the role of the United Nations and other international organizations?

Lesson 12

Why?…

• “Why should international institutions exist at all in a world dominated by sovereign states?”– Rhetorical question posed by Robert Keohane

Because….

• “Global problems require global solutions. We fall together or we succeed together.”– Joseph Deiss, Minister of Economic Affairs of

Switzerland

The Role of the Nation-State

• “Although the nation-state as an institution will not die out in the foreseeable future, its monopoly of power has been considerably weakened, and its hold on populations has been greatly reduced.  The nation-state has become just one of several world organizational structures.  Sovereignty - presuming such a thing ever really existed - may well be consigned to the history of the late Industrial Age, a mere picturesque oddity on the pathway of humanity's journey.”– Gary Dean

The Reduction of Sovereignty

• “Under the WTO, member countries cannot tax or limit imports made under unfair or unsafe labor conditions. The same can be said for those imports that significantly harm the global environment during production. National sovereignty is what is at stake, since countries do not retain the ability to choose for themselves.”– David Carstens, “Bringing Environmental and

Economic Internationalism into US Strategy”

Role of the UN

• “The United Nations is the preeminent institution of multinationalism. It provides a forum where sovereign states can come together to share burdens, address common problems, and seize common opportunities. The UN helps establish the norms that many countries– including the United States– would like everyone to live by.”– Shashi Tharoor

US and the UN• “A United Nations that focuses on helping sovereign

states work together is worth keeping; a United Nations that insists on trying to impose a utopian vision on America and the world will collapse under its own weight. If the United Nations respects the sovereign rights of the American people and serves them as an effective tool of diplomacy, it will earn and deserve their respect and support. But a United Nations that seeks to impose its presumed authority on the American people without their consent begs for confrontation and, I want to be candid, eventual US withdrawal.”– Senator Jesse Helms

Unilateralism

• “I can assure you that, if he (Saddam Hussein) doesn't comply this time, we'll ask the U.N. to give authorization for all necessary means, and if the U.N. is not willing to do that, the United States, with like-minded nations, will go and disarm him forcefully.” – Colin Powell

The Legitimacy of Intervention

• “Is there some threshold at which human rights violations become unacceptable and a state's sovereignty no longer precludes intervention? Is it the 500th slain ethnic citizen or the next refugee after 10,000 have been forced to leave home that triggers intervention or makes it legitimate?”– Robert Tomes

Accountability

• “Yet, the greatest challenges created by the growing influence of NGOs are not in the field but in the arena of public opinion and the corridors of power. Today, in a phenomenon that one environmental activist bemoaned as the ‘rise of the global idiots,’ any group with a fax machine and a modem has the potential to distort public debate…”– P. J. Simmons

Clash of Civilizations

• “Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate world politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.”– Samuel Huntington

Unequal Playing Field

• “Al Qaeda’s members have passports and nationalities– and often more than one– but they are truly stateless. Their allegiance is to their cause, not to any nation. The same is also true of the criminal networks engaged in (illegal trade in drugs, arms, intellectual property, people, and money) The same, however, is patently not true of government employees– police officers, customs agents and judges– who fight them. This asymmetry is a crippling disadvantage for governments waging these wars.”– Moises Naim

Next

• Subjective Quiz and Writing Assignment Preparation– If you want me to review your thesis and

introduction, bring it to class