IP NOTES 10/4

fucking A
Nuclear one-worldism-
-we have to have world government, the only thing thats in question is HOW you get there
-world government is not a novel idea- whereever we have intense violence interdependence and Anarchy, we get insecurity which leads to government
-World governments are UNIQUE in that they don't need to have a foreign policy (barring colonization of space and other bullshit like that)
-this means that the degree of hierarchy could be orders of magnitude less than in other societies (hierarchy is driven by external threats)
-the unprecedented thing would to be living in anarchy and insecurity and NO world government to form

Geopolitics III: Global Geopolitics

Proto-Global: Europe, Seapower, and Empire
GB controls 1/4 of the world's surface, as well as 7 chokepoints ('keys to the world')
starting to become global
The Global Era
Agreement
CLOSURE- theres no more frontier
-basically, theres nowhere left to expand to
-this means that the world has become a zero-sum game
-leads to much much more conflict
SIZE OF ACTORS- technology allows actors (polities) to expand in size
-this was basically US and Russia
-new technology allowed them to make themselves HUGE, orders of magnitude bigger than european nation-states
-britain was a question mark here, because the question remained whether it could EFFECTIVELY govern itself
NON-EUROPEAN POWERS- US and Russia (as well as Japan, eventually)
-non europeans start to overtake europe
INTERNAL TRANSFORMATION OF EUROPE- fragmentation of power
-balance of power is shattered
-europe has to unite, or else it gets dominated by either russia or US
-how do you consolidate? 2 models
-Germany tried EMPIRE, conquering into hierarchical society
-now they're trying UNION, more 'concentric' (what?)
BRITISH EMPIRE'S VULNERABILITY- britain is overextended
-britain will fall ('weary titan')
-there would be a 'war of british successsion' where british colonies, etc start to die off
Disagreements
WORLD STATE?- remember that the european anarchy is an ANOMALY
-there's no reason to believe that the anomaly will be repeated in scale with anarchic world situation
NUMBER OF POWERS- there arent as many any more, only really 2-3
NEW TYPE OF ACTOR?- HG Wells believes that there will evolve a new type entirely of actor
Anatomizing Global Geopolitics
Axial Region
An axial reason is a PLACE that can utterly dominate the system
Integral Tendency
is there a tendency for this region to consolidate into a single system

basically- is there a place which both has the tendency and ability to consolidate into an integrated government?
first ask question- is there an Axial Region
-if no, then only size and scale of actors matters
-if yes, then ask if there's an integral tendency
-if no, then a balance of power or multipolar system makes sense
-if yes, then a world state is more likely exist

Mackinder & Heartland (HL)
Tripartite Division
part 1
Eurasia is the 'world island'
-outside the world island are various places, separated by barriers
-Mackinder argues that if the WORLD ISLAND is under the control of one person, then a world govt is inevitable
-basically, the outlying islands are pretty much useless
part 2
The interior of the world island was the heartland, the rest is the rimland
-take the heartland, and the rimland will fall

HL Argument
Spykman & Rimland
spykman takes the tripartite divison and argues that the heartland isnt siberia, for christ's sake
-argues that the rimland is the actual axial region (europe, india, china, etc)
-this made sense in 1942, because the axis powers (japan and germany) are both on the rimland
easy to argue against-
sure, it might be an Axial region, but it DOESNT have any integral tendency to organize
Haushofer & Panregions
pushed the idea of the 'pan-region'
has no concepts of AR or IT, was bascially just scale
-all it needs is sufficient size and resources and diversity to become a world power on the global scale
he says there are basically 4 pan-regions, each with one industrial region in the interior, and a periphery (a zone for resource extraction and exploitation)
-most developed region is the pan-american region
-everyone's envious of it, monroe doctrine developed US, gave it huge resource exploitation zones
-there's also russia
-pan-eurpoean region extends through europe, as well as controlling africa
-last one is SE asian, with japan as its industrial interior
Had WWII ended in a stalemate, Haushofer would have been completely right
-if hitler hadn't invaded russia (a completely consolidated region) and declared war on the US, he would have been good
J Burnham develops this idea, Orwell writes 1984 with this philosophy at its core
-orwell has eternal war as an external sustaining force
Wells & Greater Synthesis
HG Wells writes a book- Anticipations (in 1900)
-basically says that the power model that we have from germany, etc is on its way out
-says that we're moving towards a GREATER SYNTHESIS
-headquartered in North America, which will subsume european conquest
-says germans will try to conquer europe, fail, and europe will consolidate into a swiss-style confederacy
also follows nuclear physics, belives in the HYPERTROPHY OF VIOLENCE
-believes that eventually, war is gonna become obsolete, because its too destructive to be effective
-complexity is going to become so great that hierarchy will become obsolete
-believes that the ascendent form of organization is a technocracy, where skills rule
Aero/Astro

Assessment
german/japanese system failed
we moved into a bipolar system
there's a significant disadvantage for late consolidators, because they have to fight already consolidated powers
key point- the period is cut short
-the period during which these models may have made sense was so short that the theories weren't completely tested