Afin d’expliquer comment la mondialisation reconstruit les politiques publiques et les comportements sociaux nous étudions les échanges et interactions entre les acteurs politiques, économiques et sociaux -publics et privés, individuels et collectifs- et la façon dont ils redessinent les relations internationales. Ce cours prend sa source dans les approches sociologique et historique françaises des relations internationales. This course is also available in english version: www.coursera.org/learn/global-studies
De la polarité à l’apolarité
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En provenance du cours de Sciences Po
Espace mondial, une vision française des global studies
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À partir de la leçon
Le système international
La polarisation et le multilatéralisme sont les nouvelles caractéristiques du système international après 1945. La première est probablement dépassée et la seconde contestée.
Rencontrer les enseignants
Bertrand BadieProfessor
Marie-Françoise DurandProfessor
How is the international system structured?
Generally, people speak of polarization,
polarization is now the key concept
for comparing international systems
and for considering its transformations,
but I’m not sure that it’s the good key concept,
for a very clear reason that is that world
has not been ever polarized.
Polarization in the history of the world
is covering a very short period,
from 1947 up to 1989,
and the evidence of that
is to be fund in the fact that now
we are speaking of a post bipolar system.
We are supposed to be in a post bipolar system,
but what does it mean?
What is a post bipolar system?
Through this concept we know that
we were in a bipolar system,
but in which kind of international system we are?
The problem of this difficulty
is related to the concept of polarity,
which is not really covering the diversity
of the international system.
What is a pole? First of all what is a pole?
A pole is an attractive power,
an attractive force which is able
to organize and structure a coalition,
it is not evident that in all the periods
we can find a real attractive power
in the international system.
If we go back to 1947, at this time,
we had several factors
which were pushing to this polarization.
First of all, nuclear weapons.
Nuclear weapons created a new order
in the international arena,
that’s to say if you are not protected
by a nuclear power,
you are really and strongly threatened
by the nuclear powers.
That’s to say, in a nuclear moment,
camps are organized under the umbrella,
under the protection of a super power,
nuclear power was the main active factor
for creating the conditions of the bipolarity.
The evidence is to be fund
in the fact that NATO was created in 1949,
that’s to say the year when
USRR was equipped in nuclear capacity,
has its nuclear bomb.
But nuclear weapon is not the only reason
for triggering this polarization of the world.
The second one is to be fund in ideology.
For the first time in the human history,
ideology after the Second World War
was structuring,
was shaping the international arena.
Before, we can’t find ideological cleavages
in the international system,
and after 1989 it is not really clear
that we have a real ideological fracture
in our international order.
And the third factor
is connected to the second one,
that’s to say the differentiation
between two kinds of social structures,
with its own opponents and its own dissidents,
that’s to say dissidence in the Eastern Europe
who were looking to the Western camp
and expecting to transform
the soviet social structure into a liberal one
when the working class in western countries
were looking into the socialist camp
for expecting a new redistribution.
And even with these three factors
bipolarity was not perfect,
even during the worst moment of the cold war.
If we take into account the eastern camp,
we have to observe the dissidence of China,
and the cleavage between Beijing and Moscow,
which was initiated around the 1960 and 1961,
also after the dissidence of Romania,
and also independence of Vietnam.
Vietnam during the war
was not really following the decision
taken in Moscow nor in Beijing,
and in the western camp, we have to consider
the national independency policy
of general de Gaulle
who got out of the NATO in 1966.
But however, bipolarity was really shaping
our world between 47 up to 89.
First, bipolarity was really mapping the world,
that’s to say developing countries,
what we called at this time third world,
which plain to be independent,
which claim to be sovereign,
which claim to be independent
from this west-east cleavage,
however had to join either the western camp
or the eastern camp.
Gamal abd el Nasser in Egypt,
Nkrumah in Ghana,
or Sukarno and even Nehru,
Sukarno in Indonesia and Nehru in India
were joining the USSR camp
in the international relations,
when Iran or Morocco or Thailand
were joining the western camp,
and even the two superpowers
were successfully containing the conflicts,
and especially monitoring
the southern countries conflictuality,
even if they were not really able
to decide instead of themselves.
The second point,
which is very clear about bipolarity
is the kind of condominium,
which progressively took place
inside the international arena.
We have for instance to take into account NPT,
that’s to say this non-proliferation regime
which was really decided
by the two leaders of the blocs,
or the SALT agreement,
or even the Berlin agreement about the status
of the formal capital of Germany.
But what about today?
When we say that we are now
in a post bipolar world,
we are in a post bipolar world
for very obvious and clear reasons.
First of all there it’s no more two opposing blocs
inside the international arena.
Second, as we observed, wars have changed,
don’t have now the same meaning,
and instead of inter state wars,
we are observing more and more intra state wars,
and instead of being the main battlefield of the world,
Europe now is almost in peace,
when wars and conflicts take place in the South.
Third difference: interdependence decided,
provoked by globalization.
What does competition mean
in an interdependent world?
What does polarity mean in an interdependent,
interplaying, interconnected world?
Fourth difference:
the decreasing influence of ideology.
Some of the most distinguished scholars
have spoken of the end of ideology.
I don’t know if there is really
an end of ideology,
but it’s quite clear that ideologies
are no more mapping the world,
are no more structuring
the main international cleavages,
and the same for social structures.
Another question is
about hegemony as we observed.
Is hegemony a relevant concept
in a global world?
Is there is now a clear hegemony,
if hegemony is challenged
how polarization would be possible?
And the paradox is that
even if sovereignty is decreasing,
even if states have to interplay,
however states pretend to be
more and more autonomous,
and especially among the weakest ones,
especially among developing countries
which are less and less controlled
by the traditional powers and superpowers.
This growing autonomy
in this world of interdependence
is triggering something very new,
that’s to say poles are no more attracting followers
as it was the case during the bipolarity.
That’s why, Ladies and Gentlemen,
we are now in a very strange world
that I would call apolarity.
What is apolarity?
First, apolarity is not unipolarity.
We could observe in Afghanistan, in Iraq
and in so many countries
that the unipolar capacity of US is now over.
But apolarity is not multipolarity,
many middle powers were dreaming
on a world of multipolarity in which
they could be a pole among others.
But what is the real attractive capacity
of middle powers? of France, of UK and so on,
of Germany, of Japan…
Apolarity is not inter-regionalism,
that would be a scenario,
that would be a possibility,
that’s to say a world
which would be regionally integrated
and which would be
a kind of competition among
three, four, five regional blocs,
but now regional blocs are collapsing
and don’t have any more
the real capacity of attracting their members
in a real integrated bloc.
So inter-regionalism is less and less obvious.
We are however in this very fragmented world
in which there is no pole,
but in which the main actors
try to work together,
in a more or less successful way.
This is what we call the club diplomacy,
or the conniving diplomacy,
or even this oligarchic diplomacy through P5,
through G8, through G7, or through G20.
G7 was created in 1975
when US faced the first crisis of its hegemony,
and it is now going on with rather weak results.
But this conniving oligarchic diplomacy,
is a kind of diplomacy of immobilism,
that’s to say this apolar world
is a world which is mainly structured
by this conniving attend,
with poor results and strong immobilism.
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