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Power Shift: the Decline of the West, the Rise of the Brics, and World Order In POWER SHIFT: THE DECLINE OF THE WEST, THE RISE OF THE BRICS, AND WORLD ORDER IN A NEW ASIAN CENTURY (IR201) Course duration: 54 hours lecture and class time (Over three weeks) Summer School Programme Area: International Relations, Government and Society LSE Teaching Department: Department of International Relations Lead Faculty: Professor Michael Cox (Dept. of International Relations) Pre-requisites: At least one introductory course in either social science (e.g. political science, international relations, sociology, economics), history, law or any other cognate subject in the Arts or Humanities. Course Outline: At the beginning of the 21st century the world stood on the cusp of what most experts assumed would be a golden age of international peace and global prosperity guaranteed by American power and underwritten by an ever-expanding world market dominated by the West. But 9/11 and the financial crisis of 2008 followed, leaving – or so many pundits insisted - the United States in decline, Europe in tatters, and the balance of power rapidly shifting southwards towards the ‘rest’ and eastwards towards Asia and China, or more generally towards the BRICS. A very different kind of world now beckoned – one more balanced and fair perhaps, according to Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs, who coined the term BRICs to characterise the emerging order; but 1 less under the control of the West. Many pundits even began to talk of a new world disorder in the making. Certainly, with tensions increasing between Russia and the West, ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, an apparently insoluble crisis in Europe, and new uncertainties arising from BREXIT in the UK and the election of Donald Trump in the United States, it did appear as if the international system was fast becoming a much less stable place. Some even wondered whether the liberal order itself was now under threat. But how have all these major changes come about? What has been their impact on international affairs? And where is the world heading? These are at least three of the big questions we will be seeking to answer in this intensive three-week programme. The course is designed with several different audiences in mind: undergraduate students looking for an expert guide through contemporary international issues; policy-makers at all levels seeking an in-depth survey of the main challenges facing the world today; those from any of the major social science disciplines who take the ‘global’ seriously; members of international organisations and NGOs; and anybody with a keen interest in international affairs who wishes to deepen his or her understanding of world issues. Course content is subject to change. Last updated: December 2017 Instruction will comprise daily lectures and seminars. There will be five lectures in week one, five lectures in week two, and two lectures in week three. There will be a revision day in the third week. Professor Michael Cox is joined by guest lectures from noted LSE experts, including Professor Margot Light, Dr Nicholas Kitchen, and Dr Luca Tardelli. Course Overview - Session 1: Global War and the Crisis of the 20th Century - Session 2: Revolution in the making of the 20th Century: the rise and fall of the USSR - Session 3: The New American Empire: from Clinton to Trump - Session 4: Europe: from superpower to global irrelevance? - Session 5: Globalisation under threat? After the 2008 Crisis - Session 6: The West under threat? Towards an Asian Century - Session 7: The West under threat? Towards a BRIC world? - Session 8: BRIC I: Will China rule the World? - Session 9: BRIC II: India: An Emerging Superpower? - Session 10: BRIC III: A New Cold War? Putin’s Russia and the West (Margot Light) - Session 11: Zone of Turmoil: The Middle East – From Arab Spring to the Rise of ISIS (Luca Tardelli) - Session 12: The End of Power? Diffusion, Resistance, and a World Without Superpowers (Nicholas Kitchen) 2 Course Texts - J. Baylis, S. Smith & P. Owens (eds), The Globalisation of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations, 6th edition, OUP (2013). Course Structure: Lecture: 36 hours Classes: 18 hours Assessment - Formative Essay-planning exercise (in class Week 1; unassessed) - Assessed Mid-Session Essay (worth 50% of overall grade). Due Friday of week 2, results returned on Monday of week 3. - Assessed Final Exam (worth 50% of overall grade). Friday of week 3 (time and location to be confirmed during week 2), final overall results will be reported within a week of the exam. The precise time and location of the exam will be circulated during the programme. Course content is subject to change. Last updated: December 2017 Session 1: Global War and the Crisis of the 20th Century In his classic study, ‘War and Change in World Politics’, Robert Gilpin drew our attention to the simple but important fact that when states develop the power to change the system according to their interests they will strive to do so – and have more often than not done so through war. This has been especially true in the 20th century when not one, but three, great ‘wars’ have not only led to an enormous loss of life – well over 100 million – but to massive power shifts and changes in the balance of power too. Required reading - Jay Winter, ‘How the Great War shaped the World’. The Atlantic. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/08/how-the-great-war-shaped-the- world/373468/ - Ian Kershaw, ‘War and Political Violence in Twentieth-Century Europe’. Contemporary European History, 14, 1 (2005), pp. 107-123. http://users.clas.ufl.edu/gesenwei/violence20thcentury.pdf - Drew Gilpin Faust, ‘Two Wars and the Long Twentieth Century’, The New Yorker, March 13, 2015 http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/two-wars-and-the-long-twentieth-century Videos - MAP: BBC World War One: The global conflict that defined a century: http://www.bbc.co.uk/timelines/zqbhn39 - The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century. BBC. 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=- 3 bb-xWX0qlk - THE COLD WAR – PART 1: From World War to Cold War. 2009. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpYCplyBknI Session 2: Revolution in the making of the 20th Century: the rise and fall of the USSR In his book ‘Revolution and World Politics: The Rise and Fall of the Sixth Great Power’, Fred Halliday makes the important point that IR as a discipline has been less interested in the subject of revolutions than either history or sociology. But if we are to understand the twentieth century it is not only war we have to look at. We also have to examine the extraordinary impact which revolutions have had – most notably the Russian revolution and the Soviet state which emerged as a result of that upheaval in 1917. Regarded as a major threat to the West for seventy years, in the late 1980s the Soviet system of power began to crumble, finally collapsing completely in 1991. And with its unexpected collapse a very new kind of world order beckoned. But what caused this massive change to happen? Why did we not predict it? Which IR theory explains it best? Required reading - Michael Cox, ‘Why Did We Get the End of the Cold War Wrong?’, The British Journal of Politics & International Relations 11, No. 2 (May 1, 2009): pp. 161-176. - Michael Cox, ‘Ronald Reagan and the End of the Cold War: The Debate Continues’. Course content is subject to change. Last updated: December 2017 https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/age-reagan/essays/ronald-reagan-and-end-cold-war- debate-continues - Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, ‘Power Globalization, and the End of the Cold War: Re- evaluating a Landmark Case for Ideas’, International Security, 25 (3) 2000-2001, 5-53. - Robert D. English, ‘Power, Ideas and New Evidence on the Cold War’s End: a reply to Brooks and Wohlforth’, International Security, 26 (4) 2002, 70-92. Videos - People’s Century – The end of the Cold War. 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqyPrTaCiag - Collapse of USSR – Three days that shook the world in August 1991. 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAPk7z5Yzrw - A New Look Back: Reagan and the End of the Cold War. Youtube. (1 hour 22 minutes). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJPLhVQSnTY - Communism The Collapse. Youtube (51 minutes). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZ2NiWvk3pY - ABC – 1990 News reports on the collapse of communism. Youtube. (1 hour 19 minutes). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBZ2i2m3ai0 4 Session 3: The New American Empire: from Clinton to Trump The collapse of the only remaining superpower competitor to the United States by 1991 created structural unipolarity which many assumed would be temporary, though others saw as representing the consolidation of a new global ‘empire’. But what did the overwhelming dominance of the United States mean for the rest of the world; has this dominance endured into the 21st Century; why do many writers today claim the US is in decline? Required reading - Cox, Michael Cox (2007) ‘Still the American Empire’, Political Studies Review, 2007, Vol 5, 1-10. http://raider.mountunion.edu/~GROSSMMO/POL%20270/articles/still%20the%20american%20empire .pdf - Robert S. Singh (2008) ‘The exceptional empire: why the United States will not decline – again’. International Politics 45 (5), pp. 571-593. http://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/2166/ - Kupchan, Charles A. ‘Why America Must Prepare for the End of Dominance’. March 20, 2012, Atlantic Magazine. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/the-decline-of-the-west-why- america-must-prepare-for-the-end-of-dominance/254779/ - Patrick Porter, ‘Was Paul Kennedy Right? American Decline 30 Years On’. June 17, 2015.
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