ON MODERN GEOPOLITICAL PLURALISM OR ONE-NATION HEGEMONISM
Abstract
The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the bipolar system of international relations, so many people believed, opened up unprecedented opportunities for restructuring the world on the basis of general human values and interests. The world community has, it would seem, received a unique historical chance for the formation of a new international order on just legal principles, and to enter the new century and millennium free from the past legacy of confrontation. The threats of a new order of international relations have replaced the threats and contradictions of the bipolar world, dominated by Soviets and Americans. In fact, threats to security may even be accentuated in the condition of greater interdependence of states. The stability of many countries and whole regions is shaken by conflicts connected with interethnic and interconfessional tensions, religious extremism, and aggressive separatism. The danger of proliferation of nuclear and other types of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery is particularly menacing. The gap between the poor and the rich countries does not shrink. Whilst the ecological and climatic equilibrium of the planet is being violated, the U.S. withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol can make this international initiative less effective. The narcotics trade has grown, as has organized crime, which has increasingly crossed national frontiers and assumed truly global proportions.
The course of international developments was indeed greatly impacted by the end of the “bipolar system.” States not only found themselves less well protected against the old “diseases,” but faced the new ones too. Crucially, adequate mechanisms to ensure international stability in the face of these new changes were not created.
This essay will explain geopolitical dynamics in Eurasia, assess whether Mackinder’s Heart-land thesis can be used to shed light on them, and ask what lessons foreign policy planners in the Central Asian region can derive from this.
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References
See: A National Strategy for a New Century, The White House, Washington, D.C., May 1997, October 1998, De-cember 1999.
A National Strategy for a New Century, December 1999, p. 2.
Ibid., p. 3.
See, for example: America’s National Interests, A Report from the Commission on America’s National Interests,
Center for Science and International Affairs, Cambridge; John Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, July 1996, pp. 2-4, 21, 22; July 2000, p. 6.
H.J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 4th edition, New York, 1967, p. 5.
In this sense let us make reference to the collection of topical articles prepared by a group of well-known political scientists and economists under the common and pretentious title Natsional’naia doktrina Rossii (problemy i prioritety)
Russia’s National Doctrine (Problems and Priorities)), The Obozrevatel agency, Moscow, 1994. Judging by everything, it remained undesirable, just like other such works.
Zb. Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, Basic Books, New York, 1997, p. 31.
Ibidem.
Zb. Brzezinski, op. cit., p. 38.
N. Kosolapov, “Rossia v mezhdunarodnoi sisteme nachala XXI veka: vyzov globalizatsii,” in: Rossiiskaia vnesh-niaia politika na rubezhe vekov: preemstvennost, izmeneniia, perspektivy, IMEMO RAN, Moscow, 2000, pp. 180-181.
Zb. Brzezinski, op. cit., p. 198.
Ibidem.
Ibid., p. 148.
See, for example: C. Gershman, “Freedom Remains the Touchstone,” The National Interest, No. 19, Spring 1990, 83.
W. Churchill, The Second World War, Vol. 1, Boston, 1948, pp. 207-208.
K. Waltz, “International Structure and the Balance of Power,” in: International Politics and Foreign Policy. A Reader in Research and Theory, ed. by J. Rosenau, New York, 1969, p. 312.
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