Globalisation: Does it pose a threat to the system of states?
Uploaded by ar14 on Dec 12, 2001
“I am a citizen of the world ” Diognenes
I disagree globalisation poses a threat to the system of states. Furthermore, I believe globalisation is the next step in the development of the state. Globalisation is defined as, ‘the reduction of barriers to trans-world contacts. Through it people become more able physically, legally, culturally, and psychologically to engage with each other in “one world” .’ With the dissolution of the Soviet Union the end of the Cold War, there has been supremacy of liberal capitalism and with it the pace of globalisation has been accelerated. With that, states have become part of a much bigger picture, the global village . Being part of a global village has meant that the idea of a state being a totally sovereign entity has been questioned. Sovereignty is the ability of a government to have absolute authority over its own territory. Economic interdependence between states has meant that increasingly what happens somewhere in the world ultimately affects all the countries in the world . Thus, the role of politics has been overtaken by the role of economics. For example, multinational corporations are free (to a certain extent) to basically do what they like because there is no global government to oversee their actions. All these points will be discussed in further detail, throughout this essay.
During the cold war it was literally impossible for the whole world to unite culturally and economically for obvious reasons. The reasons included the fact that the world had been marked by East-West (US versus Soviet) Cold War rivalry that extended across the globe which led to a nuclear build-up that threatened to destroy the planet . With the fall of the Soviet Union and end of hostilities between East and West, a new ‘world order’ emerged . One aspect of this new ‘world order’ was clearly demonstrated during the 1990 Gulf War when the United States and Russia worked together and implemented collective security at the Security Council at the United Nations. Previously, it was very difficult to have the Security Council work together because both the United States and Soviet Union had a veto power and each would inevitably veto each other and nothing in the Security Council could ever be accomplished . Another aspect is the fact that as soon as the Cold War ended, Western states began doing business with former communist states (that was...