Complex Interdependence

• Introduced by Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye in the 1970s as a neoliberal critique of realism.
• Three features → multiple channels between societies; absence of a hierarchy of issues (no automatic primacy of military matters); decline of military force as a usable instrument.
• Implication → less use of force and more interdependence raise the probability of cooperation, and elevate transnational non-state actors.
• John Burton’s cobweb model similarly recognises transnational actors.
• Criticism → questionable in the post-colonial world; it assumes growth is intrinsic to all states; it still treats states as rational; it downplays military issues. Mearsheimer → institutions merely reflect the distribution of power.

Transnational Actors

Markus Thiel Political, social, cultural and economic agents with trans-societal relations across borders, pursuing goals somewhat independently of governments.

• Types → MNCs and TNCs; NGOs; terrorist and criminal organisations; religious groups; diasporas; ethnic groups; IOs (World Bank, IMF, UNESCO); advocacy networks; epistemic communities.
• Mechanism → strategic engagement with domestic actors to build “winning coalitions” for new norms. Functions → norm development, agenda-setting, policy implementation, rule enforcement, conferring legitimacy.
• J.A. Scholte → they have forced states into post-sovereign governance (the Basel Committee, OECD frameworks, FATF) to fill the regulatory void.
• Robert Cooper → in Europe, states have become “postmodern states” within security communities.
• Formal inclusion → the ILO and the EU as exceptional cases; the Cardoso Report and the Global Compact (Kofi Annan) deepening engagement.
• Contemporary examples → the Taliban and Hamas gaining recognition; NGOs (Doctors Without Borders, Amnesty International) in Syria, Myanmar and Ukraine; MNCs (Google, Amazon, Apple) shaping tax and labour policy.
• The democratic claim → they speak for those affected by global decisions who otherwise lack a voice.

“We cannot even start theorizing about the contemporary world system without taking their influence into account.”

Thomas Risse

Multinational Corporations

• Origins → the colonial trading companies (the East India Company); a strong modern presence propelled by globalisation. UNCTAD 2010 → about 82,000 MNCs / TNCs, up from around 7,000 in the 1970s; roughly 90% based in the developed world.

• Joseph Nye (“MNCs: The Game and the Rule”) → MNCs exert direct, indirect and unintended pressure on governments; states lose control over currency and foreign trade; transfer mispricing, trade misinvoicing and treaty shopping produce extraterritoriality.
• Joseph Stiglitz (Globalization and Its Discontents) → MNCs limit the political sovereignty of developing states; Immanuel Wallerstein’s core–periphery; Edward Said (Orientalism) on Northern cultural hegemony eroding indigenous identity — against which Arjun Appadurai sets cultural hybridisation, or glocalisation.
• Governance response → post-sovereign governance and global re-regulation (Basel, OECD). Stiglitz’s own conclusion → a fairer globalisation, and reform of the democratic deficit in the World Bank and the WTO.

Non-Governmental Organisations

• Voluntary, independent, democratically structured bodies operating across sectors.
• P.J. Simmons (“Learning to Live with NGOs”) → NGOs shape domestic and foreign policy by setting agendas, negotiating outcomes and conferring legitimacy — and are sometimes seen by China, Russia and India as agents of Western governments; aid agencies bypass governments.
• Roles → social change, education for marginalised groups, gender equality and women’s empowerment (SEWA, Sathin, Eklavya, Disha); humanitarian work (Doctors Without Borders, Amnesty International).

The Crisis of the Nation-State

• Nation-states are squeezed by subnational, transnational and supranational forces.
• Internal → militancy, secession, non-recognition of identity, regional discrimination — the breakup of Yugoslavia.
• External → globalisation and regionalisation make issues multinational; MNCs (Joseph Nye) and NGOs (P.J. Simmons) apply pressure; states are forced to collaborate to re-regulate climate, terrorism and finance. Terrorist groups create a security dilemma and distort domestic policy — attacks deter FDI.
• Hyperglobalists question the state’s relevance altogether.
• Counterpoint → Barry Buzan: despite a reduced economic role, the state remains the principal security provider — the only organisation with both the capacity to act and the authority to define a security threat. The realist rejoinder → the state is still the only true apparatus against terrorism and violence.
• Verdict → the modern state is transformed and constrained, reshaped rather than dissolved.

Views of the Schools

Noam Chomsky* criticised the USA as promoting terrorist organisations. John Lewis Gaddis* likened the end of the Cold War to “killing a python and giving rise to many poisonous snakes.”

Collective Security — Meaning, Elements, Origins

The principle A system in which the security of one is the concern of all → “security of one is security of all”; “one for all and all for one.” Aggression is checked by overwhelming force, not by mere equilibrium

cooperative, not competitive.

• Three elements → an agreed decision-making procedure (a treaty); explicit renunciation of war except in self-defence; a pledge to support any victim of attack.
• An “institutionalised form of balance of power” → for liberals, better than the balance of power.
• Definitions → Morgenthau (“one for all and all for one is the watchword”); Georg Schwarzenberger (“a machinery for joint action… against any attack against an established international order”); F.H. Hartmann (“a mutual insurance plan against aggression anywhere and everywhere”); Palmer and Perkins.
• Origins → Cardinal Richelieu’s 1629 scheme; Immanuel Kant’s Perpetual Peace (1795) — a league of nations to control conflict; the Concert of Europe after the Napoleonic Wars; the first Geneva (1864) and Hague (1899, 1907) Conventions; Article 10 of the League Covenant.

The League, and the United Nations

• League of Nations → the first experiment; only vaguely institutionalised, because the victors disagreed. Failures → Japan’s invasion of Manchuria (1931–32) and Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia (1935–36). Causes → idealistic assumptions; the absence of the USA; the inexperience of Britain and France, who preferred the balance of power; appeasement of the fascist powers.
• United Nations → the Charter mentions “international peace and security” 32 times; Article 1 makes it the UN’s primary purpose.

Unlike the League, where each member judged aggression for itself, the Charter vests that authority in the Security Council. Korea stands as a partial success; the 1991 Gulf War and the Uniting for Peace route show what great-power rivalry does to the model.

Collective Defence — Alliance, Not Universe

Two ways of organising security — and the argument between them

Net assessment → alliances reinforce when nested within UN purposes; they undermine when bloc politics crowds out rules-based action.

• Theoretical contrast → realist alliances (Morgenthau on managing power; Stephen Walt on balancing threats) against liberal universal cooperation. The universal model’s own weakness → great-power rivalry blocks consensus.
• India → opposes military blocs and pacts but supports collective security and a strengthened UN — consistent with non-alignment. USA → built military alliances and treats collective defence as the practical route to collective security, stressing the right of self-defence.

Collective Security and the Balance of Power

• Similarities → both are defensive; both manipulate power to deter or defeat aggression; both assume sovereign states coordinating against aggression; both are threatened by an extreme concentration of power.

Responsibility to Protect

• Articulated in the 2005 World Summit Outcome → states must protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity — the atrocity crimes.
• Three pillars → (1) the protection responsibilities of the state; (2) international assistance and capacity-building; (3) timely and decisive collective response through the UN.
• Against collective security → scope — collective security is state-to-state, R2P pierces sovereignty to protect individuals. Method — collective security relies on overwhelming force against an aggressor; R2P prioritises peaceful means, with coercion as a last resort.
• Shared limit → both depend on Security Council consensus and falter under the veto (Syria). The two are complementary but distinct.

Criticism, and the Contemporary Record

• A “relative utopia” (Karl Mannheim) → realistic in aim but retaining elements of fantasy.
• Sovereignty is indivisible → states will not give unconditional, ironclad commitments to a future war; the larger powers always keep an escape hatch and refuse a standing international army.
• The aggressor is hard to identify → aggressors plead self-defence; defining aggression failed for decades in both the League and the UN.
• It freezes the status quo → guaranteeing existing, often unjust, frontiers condemns a dynamic world to immobility. The redundancy argument → where enough unity exists to agree on aggression, the system is hardly needed. Morgenthau → freezing a particular status quo is doomed where politics is a struggle for power.
• The basic dilemma → waging war to prevent war.

Is the Liberal International Order ‘Security-Friendly’?

• The Liberal International Order → post-1945 cooperation through institutions (the UN, the WTO), rule of law, human rights and free markets, championed by the USA.
• For → Joseph Nye: interdependence and peaceful dispute resolution reduce the need for drastic security measures. Francis Fukuyama: democratic accountability lowers the risk of inter-state war. Institutions stabilise the system — the UN through dialogue, peacekeeping and norm-setting; the WTO through trade liberalisation and dispute settlement.
• Evolution → Cold War deterrence of the USSR gave way to the post-Cold War promotion of democracy and markets. Then 9/11 → a return to traditional national security — the Patriot Act, “enemy combatant” detentions, profiling — and the liberty-versus-security tension.
• Against → Immanuel Wallerstein (core–periphery exploitation); John Mearsheimer (cooperation is naive); the order struggles with cyber, pandemics and climate. Contemporary strain → China’s rise, an assertive Russia, Western economic decline.
• Verdict → security-friendly in principle — but only if it addresses the concerns of weaker and non-Western actors.

Non-state actors in international relations

Non-state actors reshape power, policy space and rule-making across borders.

• IMF and World Bank: shape macro-policy through governance and loan design. Quota-based voting gives the US an effective veto, and conditionality (austerity, liberalisation, privatisation) narrows recipients’ choices. Joseph Stiglitz links the one-size-fits-all approach to worse outcomes in the South and to the 1997 Asian crisis.
• European Union: the model of supranational integration. The Single European Act set the single-market objective and the four freedoms; the Lisbon Treaty gave the EU legal personality; binding EU law supersedes national law in agreed domains, and the Union takes common foreign-policy stances (joint sanctions on Russia). This pooling of sovereignty is what distinguishes it.
• MNCs and global finance: erode domestic autonomy as key economic drivers move beyond national borders; MNC-led production can drive a “race to the bottom” in wages and conditions. Marxist scholars read globalisation as the latest phase of global capitalism. Robert Cox: global governance limits the autonomy of nation-states. Immanuel Wallerstein: core–periphery divides persist.