OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

The periods from 1789 to 1939 and from 1945 to the present can be considered as containing distinct international systems. Although both have retained some of the features of the eighteenth century, several developments in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have caused fundamental changes in the structure and processes of international politics.

Rise of Nationalism

. The first was the rise of nationalism—development of strong emotional attach­ments to the central state (adding to the traditional loyalties to provinces or towns) and involvement of the average citizen or subject in his government's political life. This has had several important consequences. During the eighteenth century, statesmen and dynasts had been able to trade European and colonial territories with considerable ease, using ancient titles to lands and strategic

⁴ See George Liska, "Continuity and Change in International Systems," World Politics, 16(1963), 118-36.

61 The European and Contemporary State Systems

and economic considerations as the predominant criteria for determining fron­tiers. In the succeeding century, nationalist leaders held that the only legitimate basis for political organization was a distinct ethnic or linguistic group; the state should be based, therefore, on nationality. The results of this doctrine -were the rise of nationalist movements in the areas of Europe where the state did not correspond to ethnic distinctions, and the subsequent collapse of such multinational states as Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Sweden-Norway under the pressure of war and nationalist insurrection. A new type of European political phenomenon—movements for national independence—arose during the nine- V teenth century to supplement the more traditional concerns over which states­men quarreled.

A second consequence of nationalism was that mass public involvement could be used by governments as a military and diplomatic bargaining capability. By invoking the theme of "sacred national honor," governments in the nine­teenth century could mobilize their populations to support their diplomacy or wars, whereas, previously, dynasts had found it difficult to generate popular enthusiasm for objectives not rooted deeply in social and economic aspirations. Armies in the eighteenth century—taking personal oaths of loyalty to the king, queen, or prince—had numbered between 10,000 and 70,000; but, during the wars of the French Revolution, they were counted by the hundreds of thousands; and, during World War I, by the millions. The symbolic break from the eigh­teenth-century tradition of dynastic diplomacy came in 1791 when the French » revolutionary regime instituted the levee en masse, a system of nationwide conscrip- * tion designed to build a citizens' army to replace the older professional armed forces of the Bourbons. This army was sent abroad to "liberate" Europe from dynasticism and to conquer Belgian, German, and Italian territory for the greater glory of the French nation, not for the prestige of the French king.

Modern governments can create national fervor for their causes, but the greater involvement of the average citizen or subject also imposes restrictions on the policy makers' freedom of action. Foreign relations in the eighteenth century were never as simple as a game of checkers, even though dynasts and their advisers were relatively free to shift policies, objectives, and alliance part­ners without worrying about domestic reactions.⁵ By the late nineteenth century, however, even the more autocratic regimes had to anticipate public reactions to their diplomatic maneuvers, while others had to accommodate pestering oppo­sition parties in parliaments or worry about embarrassing newspaper editorials.

Technological Warfare

The second development of the nineteenth century with important consequences for international politics was the application of scientific and industrial technol­ogy to the conduct of warfare. Public enthusiasm over diplomatic and military

⁵ In England, however, Parliament in the eighteenth century did impose important controls over the king's prerogatives in the conduct of foreign relations.

62 The European and Contemporary State Systems

questions enabled governments to conscript large armies, and improvements in military technology enabled them to prosecute their military plans more quickly and violently. Starting with the wars of the French Revolution, armed conflicts tended to become increasingly wars of annihilation, in which violence could not be confined to military targets. Rising casualty figures, military and civilian, indicate the revolutionary developments in the art of warfare. In France, for instance, casualty rates in wars between 1630 and the outbreak of the revolu­tion in 1789 fluctuated between one out of every 1,000 population and one

^J out of every 200. During the wars of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic period, approximately one of every seventy-five French citizens was a victim of fighting.⁶ In World War I, about one of every eighteen Frenchmen was either killed or wounded as a result of the conflict; and, in World War II, one out of

^ every ten Russians suffered injury or loss of life. If international systems can be distinguished from each other, in part, by major changes in the processes of interaction and methods of resolving conflicts, then the nineteenth and twenti­eth centuries are markedly different from the eighteenth century in this one aspect alone: Major wars have become great social undertakings involving exten­sive civilian mobilization and destruction, fought for the purpose of annihilating the enemy and imposing political and social institutions upon the defeated na­tion.

The development of nuclear weapons has been the most revolutionary contribution of science and technology to war. In the past, some strategists argued that the invention of the machine gun, tank, or airplane made war "obso­lete"; but the perfection of fission and fusion weapons has, indeed, made total war irrational, even if nuclear weapons could be used in a limited fashion for specific ends. No bank of heavy artillery or wing of airplanes can crush a nation's economy. Even the massive Allied incendiary strategic raids on Germany during World War II could not destroy Germany's capacity to produce war materiel. Strategic nuclear weapons, on the other hand, can quickly destroy the economic capacity of a nation (if it is reasonably concentrated in large urban centers) and most of its population, as well as endanger the lives and health of citizens in countries not directly involved in the nuclear salvo. Although there are means to reduce nuclear destruction, the only safety mechanism strategists have yet devised is the deterrent—the threat to retaliate instantly in case of a first strike. As Robert Oppenheimer has pointed out, the nuclear giants are analogous to v two scorpions in a bottle; if one attacks the other, it can do so only at the price of its own destruction.⁷ Nuclear weapons have thus added a new characteris­tic of vulnerability to international politics. Whatever protection could be af­forded in the past by national frontiers or territorial fortresses, such contrivances

⁶ Similar figures are cited in Hans Morgenthau, Politics among Motions (New York: Knopf, 1950), p. 293.

⁷ "Atomic Weapons and American Policy," Foreign Affairs, 51 (1953), 529. Even optimistic military planners in NATO argue that a nuclear war in Europe would be over in 30 days at the most.

63 The European and Contemporary State Systems

are of no significance today if war fought with nuclear weapons should break out in Europe or directly between the Soviet Union and the United States. As a unit of protection, the modern nation-state is as vulnerable to nuclear destruc­tion as was the walled city or moated castle to the modern cannon.⁸

Ideological Conflicts

The third development in the nineteenth century with major consequences on the structure and processes of the European state system was the rise of ideologi­cal principles and political doctrines as a major motive or guide to foreign-policy behavior. Even though the wars of the French Revolution had territorial objectives, they were undertaken in the name of the universal principles of "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity." Similarly, those who led the grand coalition against the French revolutionary and Napoleonic armies were partly motivated by a desire to safeguard the principles of royal legitimacy against radical French doctrines. Thus, many of the conflicts within Europe during the nineteenth century were fought in a context of the incompatible values represented by French revolutionary republicanism and royal legitimacy and conservatism. In this century, different and incompatible images of a world order have derived from the doctrines of Nazism, communism, and liberal democracy.

The international politics of the nineteenth century were thus uniquely affected by the growth of ideological issues, the increasing destructiveness of warfare, and the rise of nationalism and popular involvement in foreign relations. A development with equally great consequence on the structure and processes of international politics occurred in the latter part of the century, and all its implications are becoming clear only today. This was the extension of the Euro­pean state system into the rest of the world and the subsequent rise of more than ninety new political units, mostly former colonial territories, as actors in the modern international system. The European continent was the primary arena for international politics during the nineteenth century; and, aside from the weak Latin American republics and several feudal leftovers, there were only about twenty important states that interacted regularly. Today there are more than 150 independent states, all conducting transactions through unprecedented levels of trade, diplomatic communication, travel, and occasional subversion and warfare. Contentious issues no longer arise predominantly in Europe, but appear most frequently in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. They no longer involve the major powers of the nineteenth century—Great Britain, France, Prussia, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey—but attract instead the involvement of extra-European powers, primarily the United States, the Soviet Union, and China. In short, the geographical boundaries of the nine­teenth-century and contemporary systems have been extended from the Euro-

⁸ This is the thesis argued by John Herz in his International Politics in the Atomic Age (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), Intro, and Chap. 8. For further discussion of the effects of nuclear weapons on contemporary international politics, see Chapters 4 and 11, this volume.

64 The European and Contemporary State Systems

pean continent to the whole world, and the number of political units in these systems has trebled in the last fifty years. Today we have a truly global state system.

Поиск по сайту: