Historical and
Geographical Context
POL3: Intro to IR
Question to ask yourself
 How useful is historical analysis to understand current
international politics?
I. Peace of Westphalia
 Treaties of Westphalia (1648) ended Thirty Years War
 Created modern international system
1) Established sovereignty
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Sovereignty: absolute and perpetual power vested in the state
Internal: sovereign has exclusive rights within its territory
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e.g. in regards to domestic policies, government type, and region
External: principle of noninterference
2) Established professional national militaries
3) Formed new set of Great Powers
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Austria, England, France, Netherlands, Prussia, Russia
Centralization leads to growth of military power and states
Europe post-Westphalia
II. Revolutions
 American (1776) and French (1789) revolutions
wrought changes
1) Legitimacy of rule
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consent and social contract (Locke)
2) Nationalism
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e.g. Napoleonic Wars and the Grande Armee
Europe, 1815
III.
th
19
Century Europe
 Concert of Europe: five powers
 Austria, England, France, Prussia, Russia
 Colonization and European “rule” of world
 Motivations: economic, political, cultural
 Congress of Berlin (1885)
 Balance of power
 Bismarck and diplomacy
 “alliances of convenience” and the fear of hegemony
 Logic of balance: increase costs of war
African Colonization
World Colonization, 1914
Breakdown
 Erosion of the Concert of Europe
1) Solidification of alliances
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German unification
Triple Alliance and Dual Alliance
Britain no longer “balancer”
2) Russo-Japanese War (1905)
European alliances prior to WWI
IV. WWI and Interwar Years
 WWI (1914-1918)
 Total war, unconventional weapons, new technologies
 Russian Revolution (1917)
 Peace of Versailles
 Breakup of empires
 Austria-Hungary, Ottoman, Germany
 Interwar Years (1919-1939)
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League of Nations
Soviet Union
U.S. isolationism
Unchallenged conquests
 Japan in Manchuria/China (1931/37) and Italy in Ethiopia (1935)
International aggression and US isolationism
V. World War II
1939-1945
 Uneasy alliance: West and USSR
 Warfare
 Total war and industrialization
 Strategic and unrestricted bombing
 Civilians and genocide
 End of war
 A-bomb
 Redistribution of power
 Territorial changes
 Creation of United Nations
Deaths inWWII
Mushroom cloud over Hiroshima, 1945
VI. Cold War
1945-1989
 Two superpowers: USA and USSR
 Bipolar international system
 Decline of Europe as epicenter
 Incompatibilities between superpowers
1) Geopolitics
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
Each had their sphere of influence
System of alliances: NATO vs. Warsaw Pact
2) Ideologies

Democratic liberalism vs. Communism
 US policy of containment
 Decolonization
A New Balance of Power
Cold War
 Communist advances (1949)
 Nuclear armed USSR
 Mao-led victory in China
 US fears communist spread (i.e. “domino effect”)
 Sino-Soviet split (1960)
 Arms race
 weapons/bomber/missile gap, and MAD
 Globalization of conflict through proxy wars
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Korea (1950-53)
Cuban Missile Crisis (1962)
Vietnam (1965-1975)
Middle East (1967, 1973)
Afghanistan (1979)
Moments from the Cold War
Khrushchev visits the U.S.
Time exposure of 8 multiple independently
retargeted re-entry vehicles (MIRV)
Cold War
 Détente
 Nixon visits China (1972)
 Summits (e.g. SALT)
 End of Cold War
 Glasnost and perestroika
 Fall of Berlin Wall (1989)
 A long “peace”
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Deterrence
Balance of power
Economic hegemony of U.S.
Economic liberalism
Kissinger with Zhou Enlai and Mao
Zedong.
Sadat, Carter, and Begin
Richard Nixon with Leonid Brezhnev
Taking down the BerlinWall
VII. post-Cold War
 Unipolar international system
 1991 Gulf War
 Multilateral engagement
 Chinese reforms
 Civil and ethnic conflict
 e.g. Rwanda (1994)
 New role for NATO?
 Development of EU
Russian economic performance
VIII. 21st Century
 War on Terrorism
 9/11 and Afghanistan
 2003 Iraq War
 Nuclear North Korea (2006)
 2008 Financial Crisis
 Arab Spring
 Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Bahrain
 Eastern Europe: EU v. Russia spheres of influence
 Pacific: Chinese v. American spheres of influence
IX. Non-Western Views
 Chinese hegemony (pre-19th Century)
 Sino-centric system of hierarchy
 Physical and moral tribute to gain legitimacy
 Westphalia vs. Sino-centric systems
 Sovereignty and equality of states
 Hierarchy and “non-interference”
 19th Century responses in Asia
 Chinese v. Japanese responses (Krasner 2001)
Small group discussion
 With a small group (2-3 students):
 Does historical analysis lead to false comparisons and poor
policies, or does it illuminate the causes of important features of
contemporary international relations?
 If the former, can you give examples of this?
 If the latter, how useful might foreign policies based on historical
knowledge and comparison be?
X. Regions of IR
 Global IR vs. Regional IR
 North-South Gap: difference between industrialized
countries of the North and relatively poor countries of
the South
 Developed vs. developing/LDCs
 First/Second world vs. “third world”
 Major regions:
 States have global and regional priorities and relationships
 Weight varies by state
North-South Gap
Major Regions
U.S. Areas of Responsibility
*Taken from US Department of State website, January 4, 2015