Unsettled Century : Understanding State, Powers And International System In The 21St Century

Since the Cold War has ended in a sudden and unexpected way, we have been living on uncertainties. The 1990s were thought to be a gate into the next chapter of the history and for a wider liberalization of world including the former communist societies. This dream has realized in Eastern Europe but not elsewhere. Meanwhile, the Western societies have enjoyed their victory over the oppressive regimes, namely the Soviet Union and the communist world. In that regard the 1990s were a historic period and very promising for improving and expanding liberal democratic values, civil liberties, human rights and so on. However, the shocking terror attacks on September 11 and the War on Terror have reversed the course of the history from the very beginnings of the new century and the third Millennium A.D... The US has entered to the post-Cold War era as the sole superpower with somehow hegemonic capabilities. However, for the US, the rise of other powers since then such as Russia, China and the European Union pose a great challenge for the coming decades. The future of international system is not something that can be easily predicted. As the time goes on more conflicts and more crises are escalating around the world and the hotspots of global politics and global economy attract great power intervention and sometimes create global hegemonic rivalry into alarming levels. Therefore, the future of international system is open to great uncertainties... Like the interwar period of 1919-1939 had brought a relative and temporary peace into the international system at the beginning, then recorded both the worst economic crisis of the 1929 and the early 1930s, and the worst internal and international political developments into another major war, the post-Cold Era interestingly repeating it. We had a relatively peaceful period during the 1990s, then we have gone through a big economic crisis. Now we are experiencing interesting regimes and leadership in Europe and America which is not as bad as the Nazis, but it is certainly frightening. This leaves the question of 'what is next' into more uncertainties... Since the beginning of the present century we have all experienced or recorded that terror and anti-terror measures have changed our daily life dramatically. What is worse can be traced in those war-torn societies which have been a battle ground in the war on terror. With the atmosphere and a security agenda were at hand, states have used this opportunity to regain extensive authority over civil societies. Therefore we are now more or less back to the pre-1990s world.

• | Author: Ahmet Ozturk
• | Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
• | Publication Date: Dec 22, 2017
• | Number of Pages: 172 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback
• | ISBN-10: 1979364877
• | ISBN-13: 9781979364874