🔻 BOOK DATA
Title:Understanding Global Conflict and Cooperation: An Introduction to Theory and History
Author: Joseph Samuel Nye Jr. (born January 19, 1937) and, David A. Welch
ISBN: 978-0134403168
Language: English
Publisher: Pearson College Division
(10th edition; January 18, 2016)
🔻 Understanding Global Conflict and Cooperation
Joseph Nye is not only a Japan handler, but he is also a mentor to the official "opposition" of Japan and beyond. I read the 2016 edition of his excellent book (originally published in 2012).
It's well organized in order and categories - realist, liberal, structuralist, Marxist - of international-domestic-transnational issues of today since 1) the pre-Westphalian era of the formation of Just War Theory and Thucydides Trap, Prisoner's Dilemma, unipolar, bipolar, multipolar, hegemony theories developed from the Peloponnesian War narrative; 2) the realist-neorealist theory of balance/distribution of power and the Hobbesian anarchy state system and nation-state definition established in 17th century Europe since the Treaty of Westphalia(1648); 3) the failure of the balance of power theory and its replacement by the collective security theory of the UN, NATO, Warsaw Pact in the nuclear balanced bipolar world of the Cold War; 4) the era of the information revolution based on transnational non-state, substate actors penetrating vague boundaries of the state, less than 10% of which are ethnically homogeneous nations. In which nuclear balance, economic interdependence, and transnational actors dynamically contribute to both stability and instability. And we are amid the AI industrial revolution while suffering from the neoliberal industrial mode of the late twentieth century.
The so-called transnational and international difference lie in the nature of the actors. States and non-state actors crossing borders. The latter is called transnational.
This book also points out implications for today's U.S.-China conflicts by refuting the 2015 cliché, the Thucydides Trap.
Moreover, it's intellectually shameful that Japanese "experts" and "masu comi" massively peddled the centuries-old theory of collective security as the new one during Abe's Anpo constitutional "reform" in 2015. They should have read this book carefully.
a. The U.S. is not a hegemon in the strict sense if it can't solve transnational problems alone and is deeply involved in global economic interdependence. Here, the so-called hegemon is seen as the sole actor, like a super-sovereign in the Hobbesian system of anarchy, where there is no super-state authority. Thus, the U.S. is portrayed here as a non-hegemon, but it is affirmed as a superstate. In this, Nye admits that the present world politics is in a multipolar world like the US, China, Russia and the rising powers of the South. The weak point of this book seems to be its defensive position of US foreign policy to refute its hegemonic role.
b. The U.S.-Japan trade dispute in the 1990s in this book is surprisingly objective and comprehensive for the Japanese side, while Nye points out that the main internal cause of the U.S. trade deficit was the U.S. budget deficit itself. And some consumer advocacy groups and supermarket investors in Japan demanded that the U.S. pressure the Japanese government to open its market to U.S. sub-state actors. The US-China trade war is repeating the same scenario, but the narrative about the main cause of the trade deficit is divorced from the cosmic number of US budget constraints.
c. The Thucydides trap of the inevitability of the hegemonic war between the rising state and the hegemonic state is still not in the case of the bipolar disorder between the US and China. It's even completely refuted by the Cold War, while there was no hot war between the Soviet Union and the United States. This warmongering theory has a strong market for budgetary considerations of defense industries and departments, but Athens failed like the Soviets due to its internal corruption in the war, which was not based purely on power politics. However, conflicts, asymmetrical, transnational, proxy wars are real without a direct hegemonic military hot war between the two.
d. Accompanying the growing transnational actors and penetration between states, the mode of intervention is justified in the theory of R2P (Responsibility to Protect) the human rights of peoples as part of the designated liberal state responsibility. In this theory, the failure of a state to fulfill its obligation is subject to international intervention, such as the Libyan civil war in 2011. While a realist is based on his national territorial boundary, a liberal is in consideration of the global society. Thus, the so-called humanitarian intervention is seen as a liberal intervention. From this point of view, it's understandable that the US and Europe intervened in China. However, the obligation to respect a state's national territorial boundary and R2P are still in irreconcilable contradiction.
I highly recommend this book as a political text, as a guide to understanding today. It's the best!
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