OBJECTIVES:

Students will :

• Analyze the forces that are likely to shape international relations in the 21st century.
• Identify the values and assumptions integral to the debate about the evolution of the international system.
• Clarify their own views on the future of international relations.

REQUIRED BACKGROUND

Because this lesson ( conducted over two or three days) is a t a relatively sophisticated level, it will be assumed that the teacher will have provided some basis for the lesson by reviewing with students the changing nature of the international scene between 1900 and the advert of the Cold War in the post- WW II era/ Particular attention should be paid to: the increasing role of the US in those relations ; the rise and decline of alternate international systems such as socialism and communism; the notions of "developed" "developing" and "undeveloped" nations; the east-west, and north-south axes of relationships; the increasing development of internationalism vs. nationalism, and such other ideas governing the relationships between and among nations in the 20th Century. Needed for this exercise are copies of the handout," Rethinking International Relations- Perspectives."

IN THE CLASSROOM

Dependent on previous work accomplished in international relations:

1. Rethinking the 20th Century
Based on the previous learning and background discussions and readings, ask students to identify the most important political and economic forces shaping international relations in the 20th century. Which forces were unique to the 20th century? Which forces remain most significant today? In a century from now what will historians see as the most significant developments of the 20th century?

2. Surveying Perspectives
Distribute "Rethinking International Relations - Perspectives" to each student and review the introduction with the class. Note that the selections have defined the parameters of public discourse on the evolution of the international system. Have students read each selection, and invite them to answer the four questions in the introduction.

3. Identifying Values and Assumptions
Emphasize that each author brings a distinct set of values and assumptions to the subject of international relations. For example, ask students to compare Fukuyama's view of human nature to that of Kaplan. How do Nye and Huntington differ in their outlook on America's international position? Explain also that each author has a unique vision of the world awaiting us at the halfway point of the 21st century. For example, what forces does Barber imagine will have the greatest impact in the coming decades?

4. Clarifying Opinions
Call on students to identify which arguments in the selections they found most convincing. Which of the world views most closely matches their own? Which forces do they foresee as having the most influence on the direction of the international system in the 21st century? Ask students to write down their own opinions on the subject. Suggest that they use the four questions in the introduction of the handout as a guide to organizing their thoughts.

RETHINKING INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS - PERSPECTIVES

Introduction

As you learned in the background discussion, the end of the Cold War has led Americans to rethink international relations. The collapse of the Soviet Union shattered many of our fundamental assumptions about the way the world works and sparked a far- reaching debate that continues today. Below, you will read selections from articles and books that have been particularly influential in shaping the discussion.

The selections presented are intended to present a range of opinions about the direction of the international system and the US role in the world. As you read each of them, consider the following questions:

1. According to the author, what will be the most important forces shaping the 21st century?
2. According to the author, how will the international system of the 21st century differ from that of the 20th century?
3. What is the author's general view of human nature?
4. According to the author, what will be the main foreign policy challenges facing the United States in the 21st century?

After you have read each of the five selections and discussed them with classmates, you will be asked to develop your own ideas about the direction of the international system. Use the questions above to organize your thoughts.

"The End of History?"
by Francis Fukuyama,
The National Interest, Summer 1989

The passing of Marxism Leninism [communism], first from China and then from the Soviet Union, will mean its death as a living ideology of world historical significance. For while there may be some isolated true believers left... the fact that there is not a single large state in which it is a going concern underlines completely its pretensions to being in the vanguard of human history. And the death of this ideology means the growing "Common Marketization" of international relations, and the diminution of the likelihood of large- scale conflict between states.

This does not by any means imply the end of international conflict per se... But large-scale conflict must involve large states still caught in the grip of history, and they are what appear to be passing from the scene.

The end of history will be a very sad time. The struggle for recognition, the willingness to risk one's life for a purely abstract goal, the worldwide ideological struggle that called forth daring courage, imagination and idealism, will be replaced by economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems, environmental concerns and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands.

Bound to Lead.
The Changing Nature of American Power
by Joseph S. Nye, Jr., 1990

As has happened many times in the past, the mix of resources that produce international power is changing. What may be unprecedented is that the cycle of hegemonic conflict with its attendant world wars may not repeat itself The United States today retains more traditional hard power resources than any other country. It also has the soft ideological and institutional resources to retain its leading place in the new domains of transnational interdependence ... The problem for U.S. power in the 21st century will not be new challenges for hegemony but the new challenges of transnational interdependence.

The critical question is whether it [the United States] will have the political leadership and strategic vision to convert these power resources into real influence in a transitional period of world politics. The implications for stability in the nuclear era are immense. A strategy for managing the transition to complex interdependence over the next decades will require the United States to invest its resources in the maintenance of the geopolitical balance, in an open attitude to the rest of the world, in the development of new international institutions, and in major reforms to restore the domestic sources of US strength. The twin dangers that Americans face are complacency about the domestic agenda and an unwillingness to invest in order to maintain confidence in their capacity for international leadership. Neither is warranted. The United States remains the largest and richest power with the greatest capacity to shape the future.

"Jihad vs. McWorld"
by Benjamin R. Barber,
The Atlantic Monthly, March 1992

Just beyond the horizon of current events lie two possible political futures-both bleak, neither democratic. The first is a retribalization of large swaths of humankind by war and bloodshed: a threatened Lebanonization of national states in which culture is pitted against culture, people against people, tribe against tribes- a Jihad [holy war] in the name of a hundred narrowly conceived faiths against every kind of interdependence, every kind of artificial social cooperation and civic mutuality. The second is being borne in on us by the onrush of economic and ecological forces that demand integration and uniformity and that mesmerize the world with fast music, fast computers, and fast food -with MTV, Macintosh, and McDonald's, pressing nations into one commercially homogenous global network: one McWorld tied together by technology, ecology, communications, and commerce. The planet is falling precipitantly apart AND coming reluctantly together at the very same moment...

The tendencies of what I am here calling the forces of Jihad and the forces of McWorld operate with equal strength in opposite directions, the one driven by parochial hatreds, the other by universalizing markets, the one re-creating ancient subnational and ethnic borders from within, the other making national borders porous from without.

"The Clash of Civilizations?"
by Samuel P. Huntington,
Foreign Affairs, Summer 1993

It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.

A civilization is ... defined both by common objective elements, such as language, history, religion, customs, institutions, and by the subjective self- identification of people.

Civilization identity will be increasingly important in the future, and the world will be shaped in large measure by the interactions among seven or eight major civilizations. These include Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American and possibly African civilization. The most important conflicts of the future will occur along the cultural fault lines separating these civilizations from one another.

"The Coming Anarchy'
by Robert D. Kaplan,
The Atlantic Monthly, February 1994

It is time to understand "the environment" for what it is: the national-security issue of the early 21st century. The political and strategic impact of surging populations, spreading disease, deforestation and soil erosion, water depletion, air pollution, and, possibly, rising sea levels in critical, overcrowded regions like the Nile Delta and Bangladesh-- developments that will prompt mass migrations and, in turn, incite group conflicts-will be the core foreign- policy challenge from which most others will ultimately emanate...

While a minority of the human population will be, as Francis Fukuyana would put it, sufficiently sheltered so as to enter a "post- historical" realm, living in cities and suburbs in which the environment has been mastered and ethnic animosities have been quelled by bourgeois prosperity, an increasingly large number of people will be stuck in history, living in shantytowns where attempts to rise above poverty, cultural dysfunction, and ethnic strife will be doomed by a lack of water to drink, soil to till, and space to survive in. In the developing world environmental stress will present people with a choice that is increasingly among totalitarianism (as in-, Iraq), fascisttending mini-states (as in Serb-held Bosnia), and road- warrior cultures (as in Somalia).

The Lexus and the Olive Tree
by Thomas Friedman,
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999

The globalization system, unlike the Cold War system, is not static, but a dynamic ongoing process: globalization involves the inexorable integration of markets, nation-states and technologies to a degree never witnessed before-in a way that is enabling individuals, corporations and nation-states to reach around the world farther, faster, deeper and cheaper than ever before, and in a way that is also producing a powerful backlash from those brutalized or left behind by this new system... The driving idea behind globalization is free-market capitalism-the more you let market forces rule and the more you open your economy to free trade and competition, the more efficient and flourishing your economy will be. Globalization also has its own set of economic rule-rules that revolve around opening, deregulating and privatizing your economy.. globalization has its own dominant culture, which is why it tends to be homogenizing... Culturally speaking, globalization is largely, though not entirely, the spread of Americanization-from Big Macs to iMacs to Mickey Mouse-on a global scale.

(Friedman) dramatizes the conflict of "the Lexus and the olive tree"the tension between globalization systems and ancient forces of culture, geography, tradition and community.. find the proper balance between the Lexus and the olive tree is the great drama of the globalization era...