Evolution of International System

“International System” is a widely used term among students of International Relations. Scholars tried defining this term in various ways throughout the history. Scholors such as Morton Kaaplan Hugo Grotius, Karl Deutsch, Charles Mc Cleland, J. David Singer, Kenneth Boulding, David Easton and Anatole Rapport, have contributed to theorize the concept of international system.

Starting with Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), the eminent legal philosopher, depicted ‘great society of states’ as the foundation of international order. Joseph Frankel described International System is “a collection of independent political unites, which interact with some regularity.”[1]

Kaplan is considered as one of the most well-known believers of the International System. While insisting on the balance of power which maintains the order within the system, Kaplan defines a System as a “set points related in some way so that changing or removing any one thing in the set will make a difference to other things in the system”[2]. Accordingly the states do not allow one state to become ‘over-dominant’ or a state to be totally rejected by the others.

For structural realists such as John Mearsheimer the International System is taken with key assumptions as below;

·         International System is anarchic with no higher authority

·         all states possess some offensive military capability; state has the power to inflict some harm on its neighbor

·         States can never be certain about the intentions of other states

·         Main goal of states is survival

·         States are rational actors

However, It is not easy to give a precise definition of International System. However, such a system is believed to be existing since 1648. 

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[1] Prof. George A. Cooray, INR 1101, Introduction to International relations

[2] Prof. George A. Cooray, INR 1101, Introduction to International relations

When analyzing the evolution of International political system, some scholars believe that it began in the seventeenth century with the signing of the Peace accord of Westphalia in 1648. Since this period to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, the International System has undergone five evolutionary periods. All of these phases have different and characteristic features of each period based on the Balance of power and the major events occurred during these periods. Accordingly it was a particular fact that the first three phases in the evolution of the international system; that is from the peace of Westphalia era in 1648 to the end of World War 11 in 1945 were based on Multi-polar system. However, the main features such as Euro-centralism, Imperialism, rise nationalism and new powers as well as the ideological division affected mostly throughout the evolution of the system within these three phases. These features will be discussed separately in below sections.      

1.  Classical Period (1648-1815)

The first phase of the international system begins with the Peace of Westphalia (1648) to the congress of Vienna (1815). The Westphalia Treaty  was signed after religious wars in Europe known as the ‘Thirty Years’ war, between Catholics and Protestant states and the modern state system was developed.

This concluded a long war among European states for religious reasons, and ended Pope’s authority as the religious leader in Europe. Subsequently, the concept of sovereign state and modern states emerged. Consequently, nation-states learned the need of their active relationship between other states of the international system, most importantly the Balance of Power, which is being maintained by such sovereign entities in the system.

This can be fairly considered as the commencement of the international system. From this stage, the international system is created with relations among the nation-states and created the political foundation for state relations. 

This period is also remarkable for socio- political revolution such as industrial revolution and French revolution. Socio- political impact of these revolutions on state relations was significant. Industrial revolution changed the international system with new technologies for fast transportation and trade.

The industrial revolution which changed the economic structure and created the rise of capitalism in the world, then led to imperialism. The Imperialist expansion changed all aspects of the entire international system, by creating the world wars.

During the classical period, France, Russia, Britain, Austria, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, the Netherlands and Prussia were the most powerful states on multi-polar power system where the international system was mainly Euro-centric.

Multi-polarization was defined as “the balance of power or the equilibrium within the system was dependent upon a number of powers”[1]

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[1] Prof. George A. Cooray, INR 1101, Introduction to International relations

2.  The Post-classical Period (1815-1914)

The Post-classical period remained a century from the Congress of Vienna (1815) to the beginning of World War I in 1914. Even during this period the major features of Classical period remained unchanged; Europe was considered as the powerful centre of the world, balance of the power system was Multi-polar, and major units of the International System were European States although the United States of America (USA) was emerging as a world power. However the significant and new features, which we can highlight during this period was the rise of Nationalism in Europe, which emerged as a strong force to allow states to grow more and more powerful.

And also the Imperialism heightened the conflict of interest among European powers. European powers behaved in a manner towards their interest in overseas expansion. During the period from 1870 to 1914, European nations and the U.S. and Japan went on a colonization drive.

This nationalisms and the imperialism among the stated increased the hunger for additional territory and pushed the “strongest to survive” and to dominate the weak.

This imperialism drove the European states to get divided and then the outbreak of World War 1.

3.   Transitional Period (1914-1945)

Transnational period is a complex one with many events with the beginning of the First World War to the end of Second World War.  The massive destruction experienced from the first world war encouraged scholars and statesmen to focus on the international system with seeking for solutions for such conflicts. Many of them were influenced by the idealists such as Kant, Rousseau and Hugo Grotius and influenced by them, the then US president Woodrow Wilson pioneered to established the League of Nations. However, this later failed to fulfill the objectives and the collapse. This crisis period also created the arms competition among great powers, formation of power blocs, secret treaties and various aggressive campaigns, which ultimately led to the Second World War with the use of nuclear weapons.

During this transnational period, the structure of the International System was likely changing. Although the balance of power still remained Multi-polar, the United State of America and Soviet Union were emerging as the main two Super Powers, which was likely to changing the existing balance of power. This changing of power structure added new states to the international system.

Some significances of this period can be listed as the transformation of old Russia to new Soviet union, creation of modern Japan, the rise of militarism most notably the developing of nuclear weapons and bombs. Ideological division between democracy, fascism and communism was another change.

However, when analyzing the evolution of international system upto world war II, it was clearly seen that the balance of power remained as multipolar order. This was then transferred to bipolar with the two blocs led by United States and the Russia.

 All the historic changes occurred during these periods under multipolar world and as Kenneth Waltz described such international system is decentralized and anarchic. He stressed that the competition in multipolar system is more complicated. Waltz emphasized “In the old multipolar world, the core of an alliance consisted of a small number of states of comparable capability. Their contributions to one another's security were of crucial importance because they were of similar size”.[1]   Waltz argued that a bipolar structure dominated by two great powers is more stable than a multipolar structure dominated by three or more great powers. Under multipolarity, states rely on alliances to maintain their security. This is inherently unstable, since ‘there are too many powers to permit any of them to draw clear and fixed lines between allies and adversaries’[2]

According to the Thomas Hobbes Realism, there are two ordering principles namely, anarchy and hierarchy.  He considered that the unipolar world as a hierarchy, while also characterizing multipolar and bipolar systems as anarchical. Scholars debated on the balance of power several assumptions.

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[1] Structural Realism after the Cold war, Kenneth  n. Waltz

[2] The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May Better, Kenneth Waltz

George Kennan was deeply regretting about the evolution of international system from a European-centred multipolar system to a bipolar system based on the dominance of two nuclear superpowers. In late 1940s Kennan agreed that the stability of the international system depends on the multipolar world order, which was dismissed after the world wars. He believed that the United States should use its economic power to restore Europe and Japan as great powers, so that the Soviet threat could be shared.

When supporting the multipolar world order, Karl Deutch said that the international system consisted with at least five great powers such as during above mentioned phases, is historically more stable

After the destructive world wars till today, the international system again went through two other significant periods;

4. The Cold War Period (1945-1989)

Cold war period right after the Second World War was a real transformation in the international system.  This period lasted till the collapse of the former Soviet Union, when the alliance with the west was ended.  Following the defeat of Germany, Italy and Japan after the World War II, the war partners into two blocs: Western democratic camp led by the United States and the Socialist camp led by the Soviet Union. The strange relationship between two camps was called the Cold War. This relationship was named by Joseph Frankel as “a war fought without firing a single shot”. During this period two blocs had Ideological conflicts with Intense arms race, both conventional and nuclear, Even proxy wars like the Vietnam War and the Korean War were also remained. Since there were two blocs, the balance of power was a Bi-polar one with two Super-Powers.   Began with a tight balance, but later it became loose.

5.   The Contemporary Period (1989 onwards)

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Super Power that balanced power in the contemporary international system was the United States.  This transformation was caused by the economically weak Soviet Union and with the Globalization. The global economic and cultural forces have made the ‘relations’ or affairs more global than international. While many scholars call this is a uni-polar world, some remained doubtful to call so. since early 1990s, US had initiated to spread their primary ambition as to expand their supremacy, power and hegemony. This US hegemony had two advantages at the early era in both military and economic dominance as well as there was no other great power emerged to challenge the U.S.after Soviet Union’s collapse.However, the developments occurred in the international agenda during the past few years, we can see a certain changes in the international system from the uni-polar system.  The next answer is to support this transformation of the international system to a multi-polar one.