No One's World Summary

In summary, the author, James Rosenau, suggests that the world has changed from the previous Cold War era. There is no longer a threat of nuclear holocaust that was so prevalent in previous years. Rosenau suggests, “the global economy may have replaced the battlefield as the site of competition among international actors…the emergent global order will be relatively free of strategic underpinnings.” Governance for Rosenau is supposed to be more informal, varied, and elaborate than that of the Cold War period. People have become smarter, technology has spread, and there is a greater involvement of citizens. As shown through the absence of a hegemon, and centralizing- decentralizing tensions, power is shifting in international affairs. Issues

Huntington’s initial article argued that in the post-Cold War era the fundamental source of conflict would not be ideological or economic, but cultural. He continues by arguing that nation states will continue to be the most powerful actors in global affairs, but the conflicts of global politics that are to occur in the future will happen between

The East, the land of cotton, fine silks, and rich coffee, was the land of three of the most powerful empires to ever grace the surface of the earth. The Mughal, Safavid, and Ottoman Empires were known as the gunpowder empires, and they were feared throughout Europe because of their horsemanship, their power, and their armies. They dominated the stage for centuries, but, as with all things, history moves on. It stops for no man, and all goods things eventually come to an end. So it was with the powers of the East. As Europe prospered from exploration and improved though revolution, the Middle East suffered from poor weather, internal dissent, and a currency crisis that sucked the rulers in like quicksand. And so it was that the epicenter of the world shifted; Europe took the title of midpoint between East and West (Lecture, 09.09.).

Along with Globalization, the rest of the world could see more nations compete to be the most powerful nation in the world. Fareed Zakaria The Rise of the Rest addresses how other nation of power are emerging. America is the world's most powerful nation but it doesn't mean it would last forever. If we take a look at how nation in the past rise and fall we can conclude that power don't last forever. For example, the Roman Empire rules the western scene for hundreds,

In the past 100 years, the world has shifted enormously. Once, a world that only communicated when one nation was trying to take control of another, is now connected more than ever. This transformation began with the Industrial Revolution in a period from around 1760 to 1840. Thinking back to that time, we can easily think of noticeable differences between how the world was and how it is today. The United States was a small, developing country, still trying to overcome the effects of a costly revolution. Across the ocean, once the United States’ major rival, Great Britain, was still the greatest power in the world. And around the world, China and Japan were nowhere near the economic leaders they are today. However, the biggest changes weren’t the countries with the greatest power and size.

Kupchan, Charles A. No One’s World: The West, The Rising Rest, and the Coming Global Turn. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.

In the time since the Middle Ages, the West has experienced a number of radical shifts, both politically and ideologically. Each of these shifts has “broken the previous pattern” of cultural norms. But while some have been beneficial, others have caused injustices and suffering. Either way, each of these events has had a dramatic effect on world history, and will likely never be forgotten.

For more than 50 years, the cold war grabbed the attention of many of the world’s nations. This happened due to the evident rising powers of the United States and the Soviet Union. Both of them wanted an upper hand on the power influence and hence half the century was spent under conflict and unsettled disputes. Later the Soviet Union broke down and divided into separate republics, giving freedom to the West. But this liberation led to uncertainties for the West’s future leadership. Many issues arose questioning whether the change will decrease the danger or will the West be able to maintain the position in world’s affairs during the millennium? Will the twenty-first century be more peaceful and have productive outcomes than the twentieth

West summarizes his writings by discussing the best ways for people to understand the west, and says to do so, one must navigate thru the labyrinth of interconnection factors surrounding western development history such as “people, institutions, weather, ambitions,… and perceptions” to name a few of the ones cited by West. If all of these are therefore considered and the stories they form are analyzed, the results are neither simple nor concise, yet they are very important to peoples understanding of how they relate to the big picture of the west. West concluded this chapter by saying “if we are to find our way to the West, they are the ones we have to listen to. West is referring of course to stories in this quote, and therein lies that final power of the story, for without the story, we will not be able to understand who we were, are becoming, and how those questions affect our relations to those around us as

In a brief 2012 interview with PBS Newshour, Zbigniew Brzezinski offered his opinion on how the United States will need to act during the ongoing changes in the world’s power structure: the rising influence of China and the East, the decline in power of the United States and the West, and a shift in state interactions to focus on global issues. Brzezinski suggests that, in response to these issues, “America ought to strive to create some sort of balance, global equilibrium, so that we can all collectively address the problems that the world faces ” (PBS Newshour, 2012). There are three main components of his argument: first, that America needs to expand the West to include Russia and Turkey as future allies. Next, America needs to re-evaluate

Stuart Hall’s The West and the Rest and Edward Said’s Orientalism both explore notions of power and discourse with regard to the dynamics of the Western world and the non-Western world. The works engage with the concept of a worldwide binary of two unequal sides, and how certain discourses, namely that of “the West and the Rest”, and Orientalism, have both stemmed from this idea and worked to maintain it. While Hall engages with the idea of “the West and the Rest” – the Western world and how it has been defined in opposition to the non-Western – Said analyses the relationship between “the Orient and the Occident” (2). Said’s work reflects in a more concrete way what Hall proposes in his, using the example of “the Orient” as part of “the Rest” against which the Western world positions itself. Both pieces convey significant ideas about how power informs perceptions of difference between societies, and in turn how discourse forms and maintains global hegemonic power.

In his article, “The Future of the Liberal World Order”, John Inkenberry discusses what he sees as a global shift in power, from the Western and Northern powers such as the United States and Great Britain to the more Eastern and Southern developing states like China, India and Brazil. This potential shift in power has sparked a fear in many people. This fear, as the global power switches from West to East and North to South, stems from the thinking that these new nations that are coming to power will abolish the liberal world order that we all know. I however believe that instead of challenging the United States for power and changing the world order to more reflect their ideologies, these emerging nations will instead seek a greater position of leadership in the already existing world order. Firstly, I will provide an argument of Inkenberry’s main arguments and why realists’ have started to worry. Second, I will show how China is rising to threaten the United States superpower position in today’s world order, and finally I will illustrate ways which show that China is not challenging the Liberal World Order and why.

Samuel Huntington sees an emerging world organized on the basis of "civilizations". Societies that share cultural affinities cooperate with each other and the efforts to force a society into another civilization will fail; countries gather around the leading States of their civilization. This description of the process of new structures of international relations that Huntington sees developing, leads him to consider that the greatest risks of violence and confrontation lie in the Westerns’ claims to universality, which are leading them to increasingly get into conflict with other civilizations, particularly Islam and China; local conflicts, especially between Muslims and non-Muslims, generate new alliances and lead to an escalation of violence, which will usually lead the dominant states to make an attempt to stop them.

What’s Not? (And So What?)’ article has a liberalist view, they both describe the state or sovereign state as being the main structure within the world, and political power being the ultimate strength. Yet R.O.keohane and J.S.Nye Jr have a slightly different overview, they argue that all the other factors, are gradually become stronger, and through the increase of globalism concept interdependence is become evident. Kenneth N. Waltz has a more pessimistic description; he believes that there is a huge inequality between the politics of states, with America at the top, but that this will change. He believes that other states will take this power, as there will always be a struggle for power or at least the struggle for the balance of power

International change takes place when great powers rise and fall and followed by the shift in the balance of power (Jackson and Sorensen, 2003).