In the aftermath
of the Second World War, the prospect of a functional international institution,
as an improved version of the League, was enormously popular. The major powers
were determined not to repeat past mistakes; hence, they came together to set
up a net of international institutions to promote peace, prosperity, and
development.
Internationalism
actually came about largely in response to a concert at that time. Apart from
the formal powers, also thinkers and individuals agitated for a more just and
nonviolent world. The Zeitgeist characterized by willingness and desires to put
aside self-interests and meet common duties and obligations. The idea of
forming an international community that could interpret and generalize universal
norms of behavior was not only rebooted, but also the faith in it flourished
and, as a logic result, we saw in the years after the war a creation of numerous
international organizations.
A general
consequence of the war was the formation of the UN, officially founded
in October 1945 as a successor organization to the League of Nations. The
United Nations was committed to maintain international peace and security,
developing friendly relations among nations and promoting social progress,
better living standards, and human rights.
A year before,
1944, the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, formalized in the
Bretton Woods Agreement, established a system of rules, institutions and
procedures to regulate the international monetary system through a series of
currency stabilization programs and infrastructure loans. The creation of the International
Monetary Fund and the World Bank set the institutional basis to
promote a neo-liberal, free trade global economic system.
The General
Agreement on Tariff and Trade (World Trade Organization afterwards) was
also erected at the time to reduce the international trade barriers and promote
free trade and scrap protectionist measures.
However, over the
time, none of these organizations saved from the critics. Despite the UN
mandate to maintain global peace and security, the organization received
critics for several gross failures, such as the Rwandan genocide in 1994. On
the other hand, there was the UN Security Council and its particular system of
voting that enables the five permanent members to prevent the adoption of any
“substantive” draft Council resolution, regardless of the level of international
support.
As far as the IMF,
WB and WTO are concerned, heavy criticism, coming particularly from members of
the development community, highlighted the demanding economic policy changes
that, in many cases, increased the poverty and the un-payable debt burden of the
“beneficiary” developing countries. Although their main goal was rebuilding
European countries, during the 60s as many African countries gained
independence, they applied for membership of the IMF and the WB. This way these
institutions began to focus more on these newly formed countries and the
developing world. Similarly to the UN, critics have also pointed at the
inequality in their voting and decision making system; again the USA and the
European countries hold the majority of the voting rights, being accused of
protecting their own interests at the expense of the welfare of other
countries.
The general critic
about how the League of Nations and the UN ended up being mere tools of the
great powers, whose evidence is, for instance, in the League letting Italy
invade Ethiopia and Albania, and made no protest when Hitler annexed Austria,
or the UN acting in Korea only because Soviets boycotted at the Security
Council, explains Mazower’s assumption of the era shift.
We also cannot forget
that the Cold War ended with the establishment of the US as the “sole
superpower”, and the embrace by most people in the world of American values
with respect to democracy, human rights and economics. At this position, US
were not so keen to share its power in favor of a more multilateral world. The collapse
of the Soviet Union had left a general uncertainty motivating the raise of numerous
articles and books; some of the most influential were “Jihad vs. McWorld” (B.
Barber, 1996), “The End of History and the Last Man” (F. Fukuyama, 1992), and “The
Clash of Civilization” (S. Huntington, article -1993, book -1996) that received
most attention. Huntington believed that while the age of ideology had ended,
the world had only reverted to a normal state of affairs characterized by
cultural conflict, arguing that the primary axis of conflict in the future were
going to be along cultural and religious lines.
Moreover, the
September 11 terrorist bombings marked, for many, a watershed in International
Relations, and the end of a US unipolar moment, where the emerging countries were/are
also playing a key role in a world that is rather shaping into multipolarity. Following
9/11, other All-Qaeda attempts (Bali, Madrid, London…) reinforced Huntington´s
thesis and a new demand on the Constructivist trend in International Relations
theory. Today, we live in a world of intensive interconnectedness, and the post-World
War stage has yielded to a very different one. Scholars have become
increasingly interested in norms of behavior, culture, identity and other
social features of political life. Where International Relations theory had for
decades been dominated by Realist theories (which highlighted material power)
and Liberal theories (which emphasized institutions, domestic political systems
and rational exchange) the new challenge, posed by terrorist attacks and globalization,
aims at the importance of religious faith, non-state actors, and anti-Americanism
sentiments where the past faith on the idea of international institutions has
little space, and uncertainty finds a better breeding ground elsewhere.
