In the context of international relations, the signal of the transition from a world order based on consensus between nation-states to a world based on coercion practiced by a single superpower took place in June 2002, when President George W. Bush Jr. made public its new policy on national security. For most Americans, September 11, 2001 the world had changed irrevocably: Bush fueled this belief when, in his State of the Union February 2002, stated that in the face of an enemy state without the United States could no longer rely on traditional tools of deterrence to prevent attacks against its own people and their territory.
After the end of the Cold War
The United States would therefore have to predict where those attacks could be prepared and take preventive action to prevent the implementation of the attacks themselves. But a closer examination of how foreign policy has evolved and the American military after the Cold War demonstrates how the shift from interventions to defend the system of nation-states to actions aimed at undermining the system has started a long time before.
The triggering event was the end of the Cold War in 1989. In the next fifteen years, what began as a series of attempted military intervention aiming to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries turned into a frontal assault on the institution of the nation-state and Westphalian order. The first military intervention of the post-Cold War, aimed at reorganizing the nation-state through a decisive intervention in its internal political affairs, have been implemented in Bosnia, in Somalia and Haiti between 1992 and 1994, and were actions involving minors from 3000 to 25,000 units of U.S. ground troops. All these operations were carried out under the mandate of the UN Security Council. An irreversible change
Then there took less than a decade because the United States, backed by the United Kingdom, go to unprovoked invasion of Iraq with 200,000 men, despite strong public opposition to the world without the authorization of the Security Council of the United Nations and with the explicit objective of killing the messianic regime of Saddam Hussein and subsequent establishment of a friendly government of the United States, the West and Israel, and transformation of Iraq into a democracy model and an example to the rest of the Arab world.
Therefore, it is difficult not to conclude that something has changed irreversibly from the end of the Cold War, a change that has exerted relentless pressure on hegemonic power pushing the implementation of interventions becoming more common and more frequent and more intrusive in the internal affairs of member states of the United Nations. This pressure was making it increasingly difficult to maintain the Westphalian system configured by the charter of the United Nations. That
irreversible change was the advent of global capitalism, which since the seventies began to undermine the economic foundations of the nation state in order to create a single global system of trade and production. In the nineties, this process began to reshape the political system and the international order to conform to their own purposes. In an essay written in the early nineties, Jürgen Habermas has pointed out that since democracy was established to support the goals of nation-states, its survival could be put in serious danger in case of collapse of these institutions.
Fears of Habermas proved well founded. The first victim of the attack on democracy was the system of nation-states created by the Treaty of Westphalia and the Congress of Vienna, and consecrated, in its most recent expression in the Charter of the United Nations. The Treaty of Westphalia was signed in 1648 by France and its allies with King Ferdinand II of Spain, to end the Thirty Years' War that had devastated Europe. To achieve this goal, the treaty legitimized the existing governments, rearranged their territorial disputes, and established the ground rules for future mutual relations between states. This process stabilized the frontiers and gave birth to the concept of national sovereignty, the two essential attributes of the modern European state.
-the principles that govern relations between states emerged from the Treaty of Westphalia were later formalized by the Congress of Vienna. Although the boundaries set by these treaties have been altered several times by the hegemonic ambitions of either European power, the fundamental principles that had inspired them were invariably reaffirmed, and the order of Treaty of Westphalia restored, whenever peace is reaffirmed. Those principles were respect for sovereignty and national borders and the refusal to intervene in the internal affairs of another sovereign state, because any such intervention would be regarded as a hostile act.
The means by which the new order was maintained were diplomacy and military strategy. The purpose of diplomacy was to maintain a balance of power within the community of nations, while the military strategy was acting as a deterrent against attack. In practice, the Westphalian system was unable to prevent wars in the seventeenth and eighteenth century the major European nations fought 60-70 conflicts with each other during each century. However, he managed to instill in all nations a deep aversion to the disruptive actions of the status quo, while the disapproval of the unprovoked aggression by one country against another. The Westphalian order reached the peak of its effectiveness during the hundred years of peace between 1815 and 1914. After Germany's defeat in World War II, the Westphalian order picked up again and then getting a final consecration in the Constituent Charter of the United Nations. Article 1 The limited participation only to sovereign states. The Article 2 (4) requires states to "refrain in international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or otherwise from any activity inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations. " The Article 2 (7) forbade not only member states but the United Nations as a whole to intervene in the internal affairs of other states, "Nothing in this statute may authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters essentially attributable the domestic jurisdiction of any state. " Enhanced by the threat of "mutual assured destruction ', which emerged with the development of nuclear weapons, the United Nations system prevented the outbreak of war in large fifty years of the Cold War. Only when the advent of global capitalism began to subvert the very nation-states, the system began to be subjected to serious tensions. As hegemon of the twentieth century - the so-called "short century" - intent to extend its hegemony in the era of global capitalism, the United States led the attack on the system of nation-states and the Westphalian international order. Critics of U.S. expansionism liberal area exclude the possibility of rapid change and believe that the end of the Cold War has made a resurgence imperialist tendency in U.S. foreign policy dating back to the Monroe Doctrine. (...)
The victory in the Cold War and the subsequent "revolution of military affairs" in fact only removed the last obstacle to the consolidation of the American empire. The weakness of this hypothesis lies in its presumption of continuity. Undoubtedly, the creation of a network of military bases and the acquisition of territory on which to build has been an ongoing process. The first steps were made in the decade following the English-American War of 1896, when the American military bases installed in places as far apart as Guam, Hawaii, the Philippines, the Panama Canal, Puerto Rico and Cuba, but were World War II and Then the Cold War to allow the U.S. to expand their network of bases in Western Europe, Okinawa, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand. The expansion of military presence in the United States continued after the end of the Cold War. After the first Gulf War, new U.S. bases were built in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Egypt and Djibouti. The disintegration of Yugoslavia became the pretext for the establishment of bases in Bosnia and Kosovo and the Soviet Union led to the creation of bases in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan. After 11 September, the United States forced the Pakistan, in fact, with the threat of arms, to join the new global war on terrorism: Pakistan gave the U.S. the use of airbases in Jacobabad, Pasni and Quetta. Finally, after the Afghan war, the United States has acquired three additional air bases in Afghanistan at Bagram, near Kabul, Mazar-i-Sharif, north of the Hindu Kush and Kandahar in the south of the country. But this continuity
mask, and thus prevents recognize one very important difference in how the bases were created. Some of them were through coercion, and that is an invasion or threat to invade a territory belonging to another sovereign state. The remaining, and it is still the most part, were created with the full consent of the nations concerned. Moreover, the choice of method used to expand the power and the American sphere of influence was not random.
cycles of capitalism
Member United resorted to coercion to acquire territory or the base into two distinct periods: the first in the last decade of the nineteenth and first decade of the twentieth century, the second after the Cold War, and particularly after September 11. At the turn of the two periods, with rare exceptions, the expansion of military power and influence of the United States has been tolerated or even welcomed by the nations concerned. The reason for this difference must be sought in the expansion capital cycle. The first use of force coincided with the advent of systemic chaos that marked the end of the third cycle of expansion and, consequently, of British hegemony. The second use of force is a response to systemic chaos was triggered by the end of the fourth round of expansion of capitalism and the advent of the fifth, namely globalization. This is a reflection of the American attempt to forge a new world order and to establish its hegemony over it. The extensive common ground and expand the network of American bases between these two periods, reflects the consolidation of American hegemony in the fourth round of expansion of capitalism.
arrivals worldwide
The process was made easier by the assumption of the role of the United States was a friend and protector during the Second World War and the Cold War, and the fact that the expansion of capitalism which triggered the growth of United States took place in the framework of the Westphalian system of nation-states. In contrast, the expansion of American power after the Sept. 11, particularly in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, reveals the blatant disregard for national sovereignty and underscores the intent to replace the Westphalian system with an American empire built on military supremacy and the constant threat of force. This has triggered an alarm around the world and forced the countries that previously had agreed to host the U.S. bases and military hegemony to reconsider the opportunity to continue to house them. He also already pushed Saudi Arabia to ask the U.S. to close the bases in its territory and convinced France Germany and Belgium to revive the proposal for the creation of a European defense force outside the NATO umbrella. It has also alarmed American liberals not only because they find repugnant the idea of \u200b\u200ban American empire, but also because this strategy is destroying the hegemony created so largely peaceful during the 'American Century'.
After the end of the Cold War
The United States would therefore have to predict where those attacks could be prepared and take preventive action to prevent the implementation of the attacks themselves. But a closer examination of how foreign policy has evolved and the American military after the Cold War demonstrates how the shift from interventions to defend the system of nation-states to actions aimed at undermining the system has started a long time before.
The triggering event was the end of the Cold War in 1989. In the next fifteen years, what began as a series of attempted military intervention aiming to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries turned into a frontal assault on the institution of the nation-state and Westphalian order. The first military intervention of the post-Cold War, aimed at reorganizing the nation-state through a decisive intervention in its internal political affairs, have been implemented in Bosnia, in Somalia and Haiti between 1992 and 1994, and were actions involving minors from 3000 to 25,000 units of U.S. ground troops. All these operations were carried out under the mandate of the UN Security Council. An irreversible change
Then there took less than a decade because the United States, backed by the United Kingdom, go to unprovoked invasion of Iraq with 200,000 men, despite strong public opposition to the world without the authorization of the Security Council of the United Nations and with the explicit objective of killing the messianic regime of Saddam Hussein and subsequent establishment of a friendly government of the United States, the West and Israel, and transformation of Iraq into a democracy model and an example to the rest of the Arab world.
Therefore, it is difficult not to conclude that something has changed irreversibly from the end of the Cold War, a change that has exerted relentless pressure on hegemonic power pushing the implementation of interventions becoming more common and more frequent and more intrusive in the internal affairs of member states of the United Nations. This pressure was making it increasingly difficult to maintain the Westphalian system configured by the charter of the United Nations. That
irreversible change was the advent of global capitalism, which since the seventies began to undermine the economic foundations of the nation state in order to create a single global system of trade and production. In the nineties, this process began to reshape the political system and the international order to conform to their own purposes. In an essay written in the early nineties, Jürgen Habermas has pointed out that since democracy was established to support the goals of nation-states, its survival could be put in serious danger in case of collapse of these institutions.
Fears of Habermas proved well founded. The first victim of the attack on democracy was the system of nation-states created by the Treaty of Westphalia and the Congress of Vienna, and consecrated, in its most recent expression in the Charter of the United Nations. The Treaty of Westphalia was signed in 1648 by France and its allies with King Ferdinand II of Spain, to end the Thirty Years' War that had devastated Europe. To achieve this goal, the treaty legitimized the existing governments, rearranged their territorial disputes, and established the ground rules for future mutual relations between states. This process stabilized the frontiers and gave birth to the concept of national sovereignty, the two essential attributes of the modern European state.
-the principles that govern relations between states emerged from the Treaty of Westphalia were later formalized by the Congress of Vienna. Although the boundaries set by these treaties have been altered several times by the hegemonic ambitions of either European power, the fundamental principles that had inspired them were invariably reaffirmed, and the order of Treaty of Westphalia restored, whenever peace is reaffirmed. Those principles were respect for sovereignty and national borders and the refusal to intervene in the internal affairs of another sovereign state, because any such intervention would be regarded as a hostile act.
The means by which the new order was maintained were diplomacy and military strategy. The purpose of diplomacy was to maintain a balance of power within the community of nations, while the military strategy was acting as a deterrent against attack. In practice, the Westphalian system was unable to prevent wars in the seventeenth and eighteenth century the major European nations fought 60-70 conflicts with each other during each century. However, he managed to instill in all nations a deep aversion to the disruptive actions of the status quo, while the disapproval of the unprovoked aggression by one country against another. The Westphalian order reached the peak of its effectiveness during the hundred years of peace between 1815 and 1914. After Germany's defeat in World War II, the Westphalian order picked up again and then getting a final consecration in the Constituent Charter of the United Nations. Article 1 The limited participation only to sovereign states. The Article 2 (4) requires states to "refrain in international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or otherwise from any activity inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations. " The Article 2 (7) forbade not only member states but the United Nations as a whole to intervene in the internal affairs of other states, "Nothing in this statute may authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters essentially attributable the domestic jurisdiction of any state. " Enhanced by the threat of "mutual assured destruction ', which emerged with the development of nuclear weapons, the United Nations system prevented the outbreak of war in large fifty years of the Cold War. Only when the advent of global capitalism began to subvert the very nation-states, the system began to be subjected to serious tensions. As hegemon of the twentieth century - the so-called "short century" - intent to extend its hegemony in the era of global capitalism, the United States led the attack on the system of nation-states and the Westphalian international order. Critics of U.S. expansionism liberal area exclude the possibility of rapid change and believe that the end of the Cold War has made a resurgence imperialist tendency in U.S. foreign policy dating back to the Monroe Doctrine. (...)
The victory in the Cold War and the subsequent "revolution of military affairs" in fact only removed the last obstacle to the consolidation of the American empire. The weakness of this hypothesis lies in its presumption of continuity. Undoubtedly, the creation of a network of military bases and the acquisition of territory on which to build has been an ongoing process. The first steps were made in the decade following the English-American War of 1896, when the American military bases installed in places as far apart as Guam, Hawaii, the Philippines, the Panama Canal, Puerto Rico and Cuba, but were World War II and Then the Cold War to allow the U.S. to expand their network of bases in Western Europe, Okinawa, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand. The expansion of military presence in the United States continued after the end of the Cold War. After the first Gulf War, new U.S. bases were built in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Egypt and Djibouti. The disintegration of Yugoslavia became the pretext for the establishment of bases in Bosnia and Kosovo and the Soviet Union led to the creation of bases in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan. After 11 September, the United States forced the Pakistan, in fact, with the threat of arms, to join the new global war on terrorism: Pakistan gave the U.S. the use of airbases in Jacobabad, Pasni and Quetta. Finally, after the Afghan war, the United States has acquired three additional air bases in Afghanistan at Bagram, near Kabul, Mazar-i-Sharif, north of the Hindu Kush and Kandahar in the south of the country. But this continuity
mask, and thus prevents recognize one very important difference in how the bases were created. Some of them were through coercion, and that is an invasion or threat to invade a territory belonging to another sovereign state. The remaining, and it is still the most part, were created with the full consent of the nations concerned. Moreover, the choice of method used to expand the power and the American sphere of influence was not random.
cycles of capitalism
Member United resorted to coercion to acquire territory or the base into two distinct periods: the first in the last decade of the nineteenth and first decade of the twentieth century, the second after the Cold War, and particularly after September 11. At the turn of the two periods, with rare exceptions, the expansion of military power and influence of the United States has been tolerated or even welcomed by the nations concerned. The reason for this difference must be sought in the expansion capital cycle. The first use of force coincided with the advent of systemic chaos that marked the end of the third cycle of expansion and, consequently, of British hegemony. The second use of force is a response to systemic chaos was triggered by the end of the fourth round of expansion of capitalism and the advent of the fifth, namely globalization. This is a reflection of the American attempt to forge a new world order and to establish its hegemony over it. The extensive common ground and expand the network of American bases between these two periods, reflects the consolidation of American hegemony in the fourth round of expansion of capitalism.
arrivals worldwide
The process was made easier by the assumption of the role of the United States was a friend and protector during the Second World War and the Cold War, and the fact that the expansion of capitalism which triggered the growth of United States took place in the framework of the Westphalian system of nation-states. In contrast, the expansion of American power after the Sept. 11, particularly in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, reveals the blatant disregard for national sovereignty and underscores the intent to replace the Westphalian system with an American empire built on military supremacy and the constant threat of force. This has triggered an alarm around the world and forced the countries that previously had agreed to host the U.S. bases and military hegemony to reconsider the opportunity to continue to house them. He also already pushed Saudi Arabia to ask the U.S. to close the bases in its territory and convinced France Germany and Belgium to revive the proposal for the creation of a European defense force outside the NATO umbrella. It has also alarmed American liberals not only because they find repugnant the idea of \u200b\u200ban American empire, but also because this strategy is destroying the hegemony created so largely peaceful during the 'American Century'.
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