Second PowerPoint US CHINA RUSSIA

February 14, 2022

International Relations

How do we measure power?

Antonio was telling us about the system. Polarity. Its how power is distributed among the
countries. Unipolar you have just one strong country, bi polar 2, multi many countries.

Hard realism

What constitutes a system is an open question. But it shows us how the forces shape countries
into action.

Why is polar important at an international level? We often express power because of the
influence it has.

Within each country there is an institutional framework that constraints the actions of each
actor.

We have a set of rules that are pre-ordained.

Power matters so much because the international system is very anarchic. It doesn’t have an
anarchy apart from the power distribution of states. It doesn’t have somebody acting as a world
police sanctioning bad countries.

Each country then because of this has to fend for themselves. However some orders can
emerge from alliances.

THIS BELIEVE OF POWER AND MILITARY IS HARD REALISM

There are three tways to interpret the reality of the system. REALISM AND LIBERALISM.
EU would be at 40-50

China is now equal to the US almost. And Soviet Union is very weak.

The economic might of the Soviet Union was not that strong.
In the liberalism perspective, maybe a country is as strong as it can show to other how
successful they are. This shows how well we live overall. The EU is around the level of Japan. A
bit below maybe.

Liberalists accept the concept of Realism. They understand it but they think there is more to
power than just realism. They believe that diplomacy is still very important.

Liberalism is a set of things that try to mention that are not so hard power.

The power of the EU or the US is diminishing\

China has been spending money with much less strings attached. When the EU gives money
they ask where the money is going. China doesn’t care where the money goes too much. This
started not to pay off. The small countries are not so tied to China anymore.

No strings attached to money. China is seen as a much more stable government. China is a
single country. EU and US are multiple countries with different political entities, multiple
security forces.

What happened to the US.

If Russia invades and its just some minor territory. Biden said that. He isn’t very good
diplomatically.
In the 90s the US was the Police and ruler of the world.

In 1994 UN peacekeepers intervened very late in the Rwanda Genocide. This might not happen
today.

Kosovo was the last time an invasion worked for the US

They also invaded in 2003 in Iraq which was very negatively seen. Afghanistan was a disaster.

Its not that the superpower is alone. Its that its becoming angrier. You cannot do foreign policy
if you do not have a special place in the world.

Hegemon: Only big power in the system

You have many options in foreign policy when you are the Hegemon

The problems with Isolationism is that other countries eventually grow to compete with you.

Primacy strategy is being active, rapidly expand alliances.

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Continuing with
Obama’s Foreign Policy Strategy

Obama had some goals:

1. We want to end bush’s war. He said too much blood was spilt. Before leaving Iraq he
wanted a military surge. Crush the opposition to democratic opposition. It seemed to be
successful for a time. Obama said we don’t need this war which is so expensive and
brings no benefits.

2. We don’t want any new wars. In Libya it was a quick intervation, they killed Gaddafi and
left.

3. Guidelines

a. Pivot to Asia: The actual cold war was never fought in Europe. The fear of the US
and Russia was that if the Cold War was fought in Europe it would spark a
nuclear war. Obama started thinking we need to change to Asia. But now
Ukraine is a problem and its calling again attention to Moscow.

i. But then the Arab Spring happened and Autocratic government started
being sparked again. ISIS started to emerge as well. 2 years of focusing
and fighting ISIS instead of looking at China.

4. Multilateralism: Bush initiated many wars. They went into Afghanistan with no support
from the UN, but Bush also wanted to invade Iraq. But Obama also wanted to restore
the vision as an Multilateral power.

a. He managed to create the Iran nuclear deal in 2015. Basically they could still
produce uranium enough for research or possibly creating nuclear power, but
not more than that. In exchange US would remove sanctions

b. He also managed the climate change deal in a multilateral sense.

TRUMP: THE ECONOMY

He said American first and was adopting a protectionism policy. He believed

His economy was being improved but this could’ve simply been because the US was recovering
from 2008 yet or Obama policies. So we would not focus on the economy as much.
Unemployment was the lowest since the 70s, DowJones reached a record high in wall street,
GDP increased around 3%in 2018 and 2019.

TRUMP: PANDEMIC

Trump didn’t protect jobs, European countries tried to fix jobs into place. Trump however
helped the jobless. Initially the unemployment rate soared, and then dropped. Economically
people lose their jobs at first in sectors like tourism but then find jobs elsewhere because other
places are still being economically motivated.

Unemployment rate is not the complete picture because it doesn’t take into consideration the
unmotivated.

During Trump and Obama we had high deficit due to crisis. Obama tried to limit it.

US doesn’t have to worry that much because they have low interest rates and they have the
dollar which everyone wants.

Italy has a higher interest rate of like 3.5% so they need to pay that much each year together
with inflation just so that it doesn’t grow.

TRUMP’S FOREIGN POLICY

Trump still believed America first, but not alone.

He believed bilateral was better and this caused many allies and world leaders to start despising
him.
Before being elected Trump said that NATO is obsolete.

He recognized Jerusalem

Trump withdrew to Iran deal and went back to sanctions. He never explained why, but his own
administration said that it was not enough for Iran to deescalate. But they should stop Uranium
all together, and the way that they were monitoring wasnt hard enough and Iran could still be
hiding the making of Nuclear weapons

Trump also negotiated with Kim Jun Un (North Korea), he met him two times trying to convince
him to stop with missiles. But NK continued testing missiles in the pacific to show they could hit
their enemies

Trump also withdrew from the Paris deal with the justification of protecting their coal workers.

He also stated that both China and Russia are enemies of the US. The first time in years that an
explicit mention of adversaries in the National Security Strategy.

Trump wanted trade wars with other countries.

He denied the pandemic. He wanted to leave the WHO.

He did not manage to withdraw Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria.

Is it really back into the world. America might be back in talking with partners but there is a lot
of continuity with Trump. He wanted to end Bush wars. They were even more rapid with their
withdrawal even with the Taliban approaching. It showed that the they did not care about
Afghanistan.

He said DIPLOMACY IS BACK

When he wants to talk to someone he does a summit a lot of times. But those summits are
alone most of times. In a way similar to trump. The question is not “is diplomacy back?” the
question is “IS IT WORKING?” with Ukraine it looks like it isn’t, with China we don’t know. They
all go alone to talk with Putin. Its not an united front.

He invited many countries to the summit of democracy. But many of those countries were not
democracies.

He also said that multilateralism is back, he returned to the Paris Climate agreement, he went
back to the WHO. Its better to be inside the organization than outside

Not even the majority of americans have a positive opinion on Biden.

Biden is raising debt. So this is screwing emerging countries because there is more capital going
into the US. Its more convenient for investors to buy US debt.