State-Centrism is Holding Us Back
So I was reading through some other people’s blogs to find out what hot topics emerged from our discussion. I was interested to see that IPCR came up in class(considering how it is now a weekly event to slam IC in class, it’s interesting to even see other fields mentioned), and that there are posts up about peaceful conflict resolution.
Holly brings up, in her post the idea that politics is defined only within the current state-centric system, and so politics cannot be self-replacing like science (in terms of a model, it is set up with many scientists holding different constants as true which means no one science could replace another.) Considering this idea politics is merely a cog in each individual state. Without consistency between all the states, no one state’s learnings or understandings can be transferred as advice or with force onto another state. The fact that all (or most) states are somewhat free to chose their government structure and policies makes each state’s issues impossible to directly map onto other states.
This flaw in communication contributes to conflict (consider the Mars Orbiter and its failure because of the use of two different units). A vocation in politics could be achieved, idealistically, by all who felt called to such vocations understanding fully the entire political structure of the world (or more easily, the world unifying its political structure). It could also be achieved by an understanding that situations and issues do not map directly from state to state as Carr poked fun at with a card-file of strategic solutions (Carr, p.30). From this, the vocatees would be those “called” to politics, who believed in it and saw the changes necessary to better the status quo in the state.
In terms of IPCR stuff, by taking a constructivist standpoint, the USIP six-pronged approach is a good idea, but, as Miss A. S. If mentions, in complete avoidance those who give the governments in question their power. As we have read many a time, power is given to the powerful by those under the power (for reasons of either support of submission). In order to bring everyone under this power (in the situation of international conflict, I am unsure who would be this power and where their legitimacy would lie, and whether their absolute truth was the right one), there would need to be some kind of unification of ideals – this is a brilliant place to bring in propaganda and the work of the bosses Weber introduced. However, is this kind of homogenization good? If the world were not in the state centric structure but rather a uniform state structure, would there not be less place for conflict? Is Kant’s trend toward uniformity and universal truth still the (utopian) way to conflictless peace, or are violence and power stuck with us and our state-centric system?
Holly brings up, in her post the idea that politics is defined only within the current state-centric system, and so politics cannot be self-replacing like science (in terms of a model, it is set up with many scientists holding different constants as true which means no one science could replace another.) Considering this idea politics is merely a cog in each individual state. Without consistency between all the states, no one state’s learnings or understandings can be transferred as advice or with force onto another state. The fact that all (or most) states are somewhat free to chose their government structure and policies makes each state’s issues impossible to directly map onto other states.
This flaw in communication contributes to conflict (consider the Mars Orbiter and its failure because of the use of two different units). A vocation in politics could be achieved, idealistically, by all who felt called to such vocations understanding fully the entire political structure of the world (or more easily, the world unifying its political structure). It could also be achieved by an understanding that situations and issues do not map directly from state to state as Carr poked fun at with a card-file of strategic solutions (Carr, p.30). From this, the vocatees would be those “called” to politics, who believed in it and saw the changes necessary to better the status quo in the state.
In terms of IPCR stuff, by taking a constructivist standpoint, the USIP six-pronged approach is a good idea, but, as Miss A. S. If mentions, in complete avoidance those who give the governments in question their power. As we have read many a time, power is given to the powerful by those under the power (for reasons of either support of submission). In order to bring everyone under this power (in the situation of international conflict, I am unsure who would be this power and where their legitimacy would lie, and whether their absolute truth was the right one), there would need to be some kind of unification of ideals – this is a brilliant place to bring in propaganda and the work of the bosses Weber introduced. However, is this kind of homogenization good? If the world were not in the state centric structure but rather a uniform state structure, would there not be less place for conflict? Is Kant’s trend toward uniformity and universal truth still the (utopian) way to conflictless peace, or are violence and power stuck with us and our state-centric system?
posted by Rebecca at 10:29 PM
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