Politically, because all states recognize that it is in their overriding self-interest to maximize their power, that’s what Waltz says they do. To do anything else is crazy because a state without enough power is a vulnerable state. And, anyway, it is too scary for states not to try to maximize their power. For instance as China continues to expand its military spending $91.5 billion in 2011,this only represents about one seventh of the total US defense budget(estimated to reach $663.8 bilion by the end of the year)according to China: USA FOCUS a non profit organization based in Hong-Kong.Hence this is what Waltz calls the “security dilemma( waltz,1979:123).” He argues that when one state sees another state trying to increase its power to increase its security, it gets scared, feelsthreatened, and recognizes that it too must increase its power. But, of course, thatscares the other states, and basically there is this mad spiral in which all states are
T rying to have more power than all other states. According to Waltz, this competition for power among states is not always as dangerous as it at first sounds.
In the international system, every state is sovereign and this implies that sovereign states are not answerable to any higher power. When one sovereign state intervenes in another sovereign state monitoring the domestic affairs of that certain country, it shows the aspect of political hegemony. One good example is that of America which has been intervening in various sovereign states under the disguise of protecting human rights. In doing so it seems like America is becoming a police man of the world. A realist scholar Hobbes (1952) postulates that the powerful will always do what they want and the weak will always comply.
In other respects politics and economy are said to have existed in two separate spheres and are not logically connected to one another. In the option of the Marxist and leftists writers on one hand politics and economics are intimately linked. The insatiable desire of capitalists for continuous accumulation has been the force behind the political endeavors in every capital economy state. According to the theory of hegemonic stability, as I am using it in this article, the creation and maintenance of an open and liberal world economy such as the one that has characterized most of the world economy since the end of World War II requires a powerful leader. This leader uses its power and influence to promote trade liberalisation and a stable international monetary system primarily in order to advance its own political and economic interests. The leader, however, can seldom coerce reluctant states to obey the rules of a liberal international economic order and must seek their co-operation. These other states co-operate with the hegemony because it is in their own economic and security interests to do so. For example, although the American hegemony played a crucial role in establishing and managing the world economy following World War 2, it did so with the strong co-operation of its Cold War.
Coercion involves the study of threats and demands that encourage the adversary to either reverse its action or stop what it has been doing. Unlike Deterrence, which stresses the prevention of an attack or the use of threats by state A to dissuade its enemy, state B, from attacking, coercion consists of the use of threats by state A, or the coercer (e.g. state hegemony,
NATO, UN), to reverse a n act of aggression by state B. To coerce a state, then, means to employ a range of diplomatic and military options. These may include economic/trade sanctions, blockades, embargoes, and precision air-strikes. The threat of exercising these options serves as either an inducement to the transgressor state to stop what it is doing, or as punishment for not taking the steps to comply with the coercer’s demands. Such options, therefore, reflect the costs and benefits of calculated threats, and are often referred to as ex ante demands. The ex ante mix of punishment and inducements, in this case, can either take the form of a carrot/stick or use for that approach. Yet, depending on the seriousness of the violation, the coercer will typically issue an ultimatum in order to place greater pressure on the coerced to comply with its.
H Bull The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (Macmillan London 1977). KN Waltz Theory of International Politics (Addison-Wesley Reading 1979)
. Hobbes, T. (1962) Leviathan, New York: Macmillan.
IAN KATEMA
FIDELIS MANGANA
OBERT ZHINDI
TATENDA MAPARA
MARSHAL MARUMISE
MUNYARADZI NYAMUTUKWA
CRISPEN J. SAIDI
TAPIWA MUTASA
NAGISTER V MUCHEMWA
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