ULUSLARARASI POLİTİKA - Deneme Sınavı - 14

Three levels of analysis in foreign policy: Kenneth Waltz was the first scholar to use the three-level analysis methodology in foreign policy analysis. He has defined the three levels as images. According to his classification, foreign policy can be analyzed at three levels: the system referring to the structure and the interaction of the states, the state referring to the internal affairs of the states
and the individual referring to the foreign policy decison makers (Waltz, 1959).

Culture, civilization and religion are among the factors that contribute to the formation of identity.

Cultural Diversity: “Cultural diversity” refers to the manifold ways in which the cultures of groups and societies find expression.

Following the World War II, the world was theoretically seperated into two ideological camps named as the Western Bloc led by the United States of America (US) and the Eastern Bloc led by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). However, another classification in terms of their economic development divided the countries in the world into three groups: First World (Developed Western countries), Second World (Communist countries), Third World.
Within this context and under the shade of the harsh rivalry between the US and the USSR, it had become extremely important that which ideological camp the Third World countries would choose to be associated with.

While the vertical division line of the iron curtain symbolized the ideological differences between the West and the East, the horizontal division line
between the North and the South symbolized the differences in the level of development.

-Numerous examples of repressive identity politics can be given as they were implied in the Second World during the Cold War such as the USSR under the presidency of Stalin.

-Specific projects to construct a national culture based on repressive policies were implemented in China, under the name of Cultural Revolution, and in Cambodia. 

-Another specific example of the repression of the religious and ethnic identities from the 20th century involves the repression of the Turkish identity in Bulgaria during the 1980s.

A striking example of such an identity war based on strong religious, sectarian and cultural differences was the armed conflicts that emerged following the dissolution of Yugoslavia. The armed conflict between the Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats and Muslim Bosnians started in 1992 and came to an end in 1995 with the signing of the Dayton Agreement. During the period of conflict, Serbian forces employed systematic genocidal actions against the Muslim and Croat population including mass killings, rape and siege in order to clear the future independent state of Bosnia mainly from its Muslim population and gain authority on a larger territory.

-The main unit of analysis in the discipline of IR is the nation state which first emerged in Europe during the 17th century and was disseminated to the other parts of the world as a role model since then. IR has emerged as a discipline in social sciences mainly in the early 20th century.

-The mainstream IR theories, namely Liberalism and Realism, have regarded the religion as a private issue that should be dealt at the individual level. 

- IR itself is based on “areligous” assumptions and (the issue of) ethics might not be relevant to it (Laustsen, Wæver, 2003, p. 170).

Civil Society Organizations: As a non-governmental organization (NGO) refers to the organizations which are not established or coordinated by a government or any public institution, a civil society organization (CSO) is also an NGO. However, a CSO is also expected not to be attached to interest groups in the society which gather to secure or promote financial interests, e.g., business organizations. Consequently, NGOs with religious and cultural orientations or philanthrophic activites belong to the category of CSOs (Stivachtis, 2007, p. 15).

A second and widely discussed thesis belongs to Huntington, who claims that the history has not ended with a triumph of a particular civilization; and indeed the future conflicts are expected to occur between civilizations and would be the last chain of conflicts in modern history. Huntington categorizes the civilizations of the world into eight as Western, Sinic, Japanese, Hindu, Islam, Orthodox, Latin-American and African civilizations.

Globalization can be described, in its narrow definition, in terms of economics as “an increasing internationalisation of markets for goods and services, the means of production, financial systems, competition, corporations, technology and industries” (UNSTATS, 2002, p. 170).

The Thirty Years’ War started as a conflict between Protestant and Catholic principalities

The Concert of Europe was established in the post-Vienna congress era to maintain peace and security in Europe. It did not take place regularly and was not an international organization. It ended with the Crimean War.

Economic integration requires legally binding arrangements, including commitment to national resource allocation.

The European Union is a regional political organization.

The United Nations (UN) outlined, in its Report of the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change in 2004, six clusters of global security threats that the world has now faced and will face in years ahead. These are economic and social threats, inter-state conflicts,internal conflicts, weapons of mass destructions, terrorism, and transnational organized crimes.