Lecture 12b:Beyond the unipolar world

Into the 21st century

• The world since the 1990s has thrown up new challenges, but not necessarily the ones that Fukuyama and Huntington predicted

• Both visions of the future have been dismissed as simplistic and irrelevant to the reality of the 21st century

• Instead, recent years have shown the limits of unipolarity and the beginnings of a shift towards nonpolarity or even a new bipolarity

Unipolarity undermined

• The United States remains the world’s only military superpower – a position that will not be challenged for many decades

• The USA continues to maintain a huge international military commitment

The limits of American power

• Despite its overwhelming military power, the USA has seen its prestige damaged as a result of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

• Military power has not proved sufficient to achieve a satisfactory political settlement

China: the new superpower?

• After 20 years of sustained economic growth, China has the ability to translate its considerable economic power into real military power

• How will it use this power?

China’s first aircraft carrier

• In September 2012, China commissioned its first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning

• The ship gives China the ability to project its power beyond the country’s borders

The Liaoning

Projecting power

• China’s new ability to project its power into the surrounding seas has caused anxiety in the region

• China claims a large area of the South and East China seas as its sovereign territory

• Chinese claims conflict with those of its neighbours

A disputed region

The Senkaku-Diaoyutai dispute

• China, Taiwan and Japan claim the uninhabited Pinnacle Islands (Senkaku or Diaoyu) in the East China Sea

• It is likely that the area contains oil deposits

• The dispute has led to angry protests in the PRC and Japan

The Paracel Islands

• The PRC, Taiwan and Vietnam claim sovereignty over the Paracel Island group

• The PRC took the islands from South Vietnam after a naval skirmish in 1974

The Spratly Islands

• The most complicated dispute involves the Spratly Islands

• The PRC, Taiwan, Brunei, Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia all claim parts of the group

• The area is likely to hold significant deposits of oil and gas, contains rich fishing grounds and is crossed by major shipping lanes

China and the wider international system

• It is uncertain how a more powerful China will fit into the wider international system

• Will China use its power to become a rival to the United States?

• Will Chinese power see the emergence of a new Cold War?

• Liberals believe that a more assertive China can be accommodated within the current international system

• Realists expect that growing Chinese power will lead to confrontation with the United States