The defining characteristic of the state is the ability to wield power. The use of power, both inside and outside of one’s border, directly speaks to the sovereignty of the nation. If a nation is incapable of disciplining or punishing its citizens it will invariably become a failed state. Moreover if a country isn’t recognized as powerful in the global political arena, that country stands a very good chance of being dominated by a nation who has the capacity to enforce its own will. The use, or at least the perception, of power is so fundamental in nationhood that those who wield the most power can easily dictate world events.
Geopolitics is the study of the effects of geography on politics and international relations. In early 20th century, geopolitics was a form of power or knowledge concerned with promoting states expansionism and securing empires. Geopolitics had a major effect on Napoleon's invasion of Russia and African imperialism.
In today’s world, most of the nations’ borders are clearly defined and travelling between national borders will lead to from one culture to a different one. These national borders that are such an integral part of the today’s society were implemented less than a century ago. Nationalism, the feeling of love for one’s country, united people to repel imperialist influences from their nation. However, it was also nationalism that drove Europeans to engage in their imperialistic practices to gain necessary resources for their industrialization. As a reaction towards imperialism, people became anti-imperialists to fight against the imperialist ideals of the West and their desire to exploit other regions through their use of violence. One of the ways anti-imperialists united against the Imperialists was through the feeling of nationalism. Therefore, nationalism is a double-edged sword; it can be expressed as a form of anti-imperialism and imperialism. However, not all forms of anti-imperialism are directly expressed as nationalism, there were forms of anti-imperialism such as Pan-Asianism, and Pan-Islam that ultimately evolved into a nationalistic movement, but they were not nationalistic movements to begin with.
The foreign, military and economic policies of states, the intersections of these policies in areas of change or dispute, and the general structure of relations which they create, are all analysed in terms of aspirations to achieve national and/or international security. Security is most commonly associated with the alleviation of threats to cherished values (Williams; 2008). However this is a definition that is undesirably vague and a reflection of the inherent nature of security as an ‘essentially contested concept’ (Gallie; 1962). Security in the modern day context has many key concepts associated with it: uncertainty, war, terrorism, genocide and mass killing, ethnic conflict, coercion,
The era of globalization has witnessed the growing influence of a number of unconventional international actors, from non-governmental organizations, to multi-national corporations, to global political movements. Traditional, state-centric definitions of foreign policy
The year is 2015 and every state is trying to define borderless border as the world is becoming smaller due to positive and negative progress in the different habits of society, markets, technologies, economies, and politics. Advances concerns the international relation realms body is this new era of the “age of globalization” as the world becomes flatter, actively horizontal, with their inter-state policies aimed in the global-economics more than ever constitutes the inverse role from individual to state opposite to the presumed assumption of state-individual structure relation. However, divisions are still harshly marked within groups made up by the same individuals composing
- Geopolitics: the study of the relationships of physical geography and human geography on international politics and/or relations.
A country’s national border is one of the most important aspect of any country. It defines the extent of that country’s rule and which people will be under its influence. Despite the importance of national borders, they have not always been as steadfast as they are in North America in the present day. National borders have changed, expanded, and shifted with the rise and fall of different empires through the ages (Kardboardking, 2014). Even in recent history, borders have changed due to wars and changes in government. Because of this, learning about the history of a country’s borders can reveal much about its history and citizens.
Conflict between nations over territories raises red flags in maps, as maps can “tell a lie”. Maps are sometimes made in a way to make the viewer believe in something else, a side of a story rather than the accurate exhibition of the true state of territories. There are many disputed grounds between nations. China had claimed some of India, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Taiwan’s territories in its 2012 passports which displayed a map of the country. But, maps like those are usually made with intention of showing what a country wants or what it believes it rightfully possesses. In doing this, there is a way to secure the physical implications that a country’s government governs farther out, therefore fabricating its reach of power farther outwards. Although, when the intention is to show possible future implications of near conflict, things change.
Five points can be made by Faulks, to support this argument but only highlighted are the ones that explain President Trump’s immigration order. In the state-centric society, the state possesses a number of resources of power, particularly those relating to its surveillance capabilities over its citizens, which gives it the capacity to penetrate and influence civil society. The state cannot be understood in isolation, but exists within a states system (Faulks, 2000). In the context of mutual suspicion between states, the importance of the state’s military capacity is crucial. The state is not just there as a mediator between the interests of the population, or as an economic manager, but as a symbol and defender of the ‘imagined community’ that forms the dominant cultural identity of any particular state-civil society relationship (Faulks, 2000). This close relationship between the state and nationalism gives the state an invaluable communicative power to unify disparate elements of civil society, particularly in times of war or during other crises that might face the state (Faulks, 2000). These points all help to further explain President Trump’s immigration order better by using the lenses of someone with a state-centric
Therefore, each state's basis of existence is always too small. Now here is the reason why states always turn to the outside world: the growth that the state promotes has a border in the reach of its own power. The state always promotes growth policies, but the country's borders then present a limited market, a limited availability of raw materials and resources, a limited potential labor force; The power that licenses capital, which creates the economic system in the first place, is itself a limit to its growth within its limited range. Under capitalist states, a relationship of mutual recognition comes into existence so that one state can use the other, because the other state calculates the same way, only vice versa. Two states pay their mutual respects and engage in civilized relations because what they want is totally
As Ezra and Rowden argues, the “key to transnationalism is the recognition of the decline of national sovereignty as a regulatory force in global coexistence. The impossibility of assigning a fixed national
As a result globalisation has also undone some important cultural and psychological underpinnings of sovereignty. However, it is imperative to note that the effect of globalisation on different nation states will not be the same, because states differ domestically, historically, politically and socio-culturally. Therefore, states will make different policy choices in response to the same global phenomena (Held 1989, 237).
The rise of terrorist organizations post 9/11 has challenged nation-state borders and their sovereignty. The presence of insurgencies and terrorist organizations has begun to affect the legitimacy of governments externally and their internal sovereignty.
This essay will describe the characteristics of the modern nation-state, explain how the United States fits the criteria of and functions as a modern nation-state, discuss the European Union as a transnational entity, analyze how nation-states and transnational entities engage on foreign policy to achieve their interests, and the consequences of this interaction for international politics.