1.
Discuss power as a concept of national interest with relation to survival of states
National Interests is defined as claims, objectives, goals, demands and interests which a nation
always tries to preserve, protect, defend and secure in relations with other nations. There are a
number of concepts of national interest with relation to survival of states such as power,
diplomacy, propaganda, economics means etc. In this instance I will analyze power as a vital
concept of national interest and its significance with regards to survival of states. The role of
power in international relations is a recognized fact. It is an unwritten law of international
interaction that nations can use force for securing their national interests. International Law also
recognizes coercive means short of war as the methods that can be used by states for fulfilling
their desired goals and objectives. Intervention, Non-intercourse, embargoes, boycotts, reprisals,
retortion, retaliation, severance of relations and pacific biocides are the popular coercive means
which can be used by a nation to force others to accept a particular course of behavior or to
refrain from a course which is considered harmful by the nation using power.
War and Aggression have been declared illegal means, yet these continue to be used by the states
in actual course of international relations. Today, nations fully realize the importance of peaceful
means of conflict-resolution like negotiations, and diplomacy as the ideal methods for promoting
their national interests. Yet at the same time these continue to use coercive means, whenever
they find it expedient and necessary. Military power is still regarded as a major part of national
power and is often used by a nation for securing its desired goals and objectives. The use of
military power against international terrorism now stands universally accepted as a natural and
just means for fighting the menace. Today world public opinion accepts the use of war and other
forcible means for the elimination of international terrorism. All these means are used by all the
nations for securing their national interests. Nations have the right and duty to secure their
national interests and they have the freedom to choose the requisite means for this purpose. They
can use peaceful or coercive means as and when they may desire or deem essential.
2. Foreign policy defines a nation’s relationship with the rest of the world. Discuss this
with reference to during the Corona pandemic.
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected international relations and caused diplomatic tensions.
Some scholars have argued that the pandemic necessitates a significant rethinking of existing
approaches to international relations, with a greater focus on issues such as health
diplomacy, the politics of crisis and border politics. Others have argued that the pandemic is
unlikely to lead to significant changes in the international system. Diplomatic relations have
been affected due to tensions around trade and transport of medicines, diagnostic
tests, vaccines and hospital equipment related to mitigating the impact of COVID-19.
Leaders of some countries have accused others of not containing the disease or responding
effectively. In 2020 COVID-19 affected almost all countries and more than 50 million people
around the world. It has governments operating in a context of radical uncertainty, and faced
with difficult trade-offs given the health, economic and social challenges it raises. By spring
2020, more than half of the world’s population had experienced a lockdown with strong
containment measures. Beyond the health and human tragedy of the coronavirus, it is now
widely recognized that the pandemic triggered the most serious economic crisis since World
War II. Many economies will not recover their 2019 output levels until 2022 at the
earliest (OECD, 2020). A rebound of the epidemic in autumn 2020 is increasing the
uncertainty. The nature of the crisis is unprecedented: beyond the short-term repeated health
and economic shocks, the long-term effects on human capital, productivity and behavior may
be long-lasting. The COVID crisis has massively accelerated some pre-existing trends, in
particular digitalization. It has shaken the world, setting in motion waves of change with a
wide range of possible trajectories (OECD, 2020).
3. Discuss the international systems theory
Systems theories of international relations (IR) focus on the structure of the international
system to explain the behavior and interactions of the system’s units. Morton Kaplan after
1955 explain the theory in more systematic manner. In simpler words, a system refers to a set
of elements interacting with each other. This theory assumes that there is a system in
international relations and the states are its components. In the international system, states
interact with one another, and are dependent on one another. States are involved in constant
interaction with ‘the whole’ or the international environment which is in the form of world
politics. The system is used as a tool of analysis and focus is upon arrangement of actors,
interaction of actors or recurring pattern of the behavior of the actors. International system is
a pattern of relations between the basic units of world politics which is characterized by the
scope of the objectives pursued by these units and of the tasks performed among them.
A system is an integrated one where all elements work to make the system survive. In the
international system, the nation‐states, knowingly or unknowingly, help the system to survive
and progress.
Despite crises, the international system has survived and progressed. Systems theory of IR
strongly sends the message that by adapting itself to changes, the international system would
become an efficient system where the nations‐states would be more engaged in cooperation
and mutual development.
4. A nation in crisis appreciates the value of the state. Discuss instances when a
country realizes the value of the state.
My political vocabulary deploys the term 'nation' in a sense that presupposes certain
articulations between this true or supposed reality and other realities the state, the world
system of states, the economy and social classes. I inherit these concepts and their
articulation in a system of various social theories developed out of the historical experience
of 19th century Europe, in the shape of bourgeois nationalist theories or historical Marxism.
Two theoretical entities have been produced in this framework, in counterpoint to one
another. Marxism and the theory of class struggle on the one hand, nationalism and the
theory of integration of classes into the bourgeois democratic nation-state on the other. Both
take into account numerous aspects of the immediate reality, characterized at one and the
same time by social struggles going as far as revolution and by struggles between nation-
states going as far as war. The one and the other purport to be effective instruments to inspire
strategies of action by the protagonists who are the subjects of history and see themselves as
such (Bruff,2014).
The real effectiveness of political strategies nevertheless depends on a specific conjuncture
defined by a correlation - that seems to us now to have been limited in time and space -
between the following elements: first, correlation between the state and another social reality,
the nation; second, the dominant position of the bourgeois national states thus constituted in
the world capitalist system, their 'central' (as opposed to peripheral) character in our
conceptual scheme; third, a certain level of worldwide expansion of the capitalist system that
makes 'auto centric' economic units, interdependent but enjoying a high degree of autonomy
with respect to one another, central partners.
It can be seen why this conjuncture gives the policies inspired by the theories under
consideration a real effectiveness. First, there is a possible field of action for 'national'
economic policy, that is applied to a given territory, delineated by frontiers and governed by
a single state power. The instruments of this policy-centralized national monetary system,
customs regulations, network of physical infrastructure of transport and communications,
unifying education around a 'national' language, unified system of administration, and so
forth have a certain autonomy in relation to the 'constraints' of the worldwide economy. The
relations of class - however conflictive - are regulated within and by the national state. There
is in this sense an average price for national labour power, determined by history and internal
class relations, a national system of prices that reflect the decisive social relations. In this
sense to the 'law of value' has a national dimension. Nations and classes - workers, bourgeois,
peasants - are the effective subjects of history. It is clearly understood that there is no Wall of
China to cut these national systems off from the world system they constitute. Internal social
relations depend in part on the positions held by the national states in question in the world
hierarchy. All of them are 'central' capitalist economies although unequally competitive. But
they can improve this by coherent national policies, if social relations permit.
Actual history has therefore led us through this rapid overview to challenge the ideology of
the nation, whether in its bourgeois version (the nation is a pre-existing reality, the ideal state
- the nation-state - is founded on it and reveals its potential) or its vulgar Marxist version
(capitalism creates nations and generalizes the nation-state form to the entire world). Actual
history suggests rather that the state is the active subject that sometimes creates the nation,
sometimes 'regenerates' it, but often fails to do either. As actual history further suggests, the
significance of the nation-state ideology is that it does not always manifest itself as a
progressive active agent in capitalist development but as a deviant influencing its
development in a negative direction or slowing down its rate.
The nation-state ideology is, however, so powerful that when, in the aftermath of the Second
World War, all the countries of the world were bidding for independence, they constituted a
system of would-be nation-states. But at the very moment when the nation-state was being
proclaimed everywhere, it was entering a crisis everywhere, even at its centers of origin, a
crisis from which there seems no escape.
References
Bruff, I. (2014). The rise of authoritarian neoliberalism. Rethinking marxism, 26(1), 113-129.
Ghani, A., & Lockhart, C. (2009). Fixing failed states: A framework for rebuilding a fractured
world. Oxford University Press.
OECD (2020), COVID-19 and fiscal relations across levels of government (upadted 31 July
2020), https://www.oecd.org/coronavirus/policy-responses/covid-19-and-fiscal-relations-
across-levels-of-government-ab438b9f/#p-d1e2184.
OECD (2020), Covid-19 and intergovernmental Fiscal Relations: Early responses and main lessons
from the Financial Crisis.
OECD (2020), Covid-19: SME Policy Responses (as of 16 March
2020), https://www.oecd.org/cfe/leed/COVID-19-Italian-regions-SME-policy-responses.pdf.
