Two main titles ongoing for generations…Globalization and Hegemony…Perception of a fair and diplomatic system…Governments and undeniable hegemony formations laying back to 21st century from the past… International relations to international political literature have analyzed formations that lead to hegemonies by opening windows in the centuries…
Yesterday and today… Two clear curtains that ruled the history… They are one of the factors that wrote the literature of international relations… When we look, international relations were considered as a subcategory evaluated under a long political history or diplomacy history for a while. Therefore, history and international politics can’t be separated; they are a supplementary part of each other. Thus, it’s quite relevant to consider the two aspects as ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrow’ ‘today’ in the perspective of international relations. From this viewpoint, when we consider the topics affected by idea of international relations, it’s inevitable to examine certain kinds of milestones powerful enough to reform the ages as well…
A truth coming from the past which we must accept is the fact that wars that cover the hegemonic powers in certain historical periods usually form the milestones of the world history… When we look over the world, results of the wars affect economic, social and ideological structures deeply as well as international system. And these theoretical perspectives of the Middle East which were in question during 1st and 2nd World Wars and Cold War were internal conflict was observed display politics of hegemony powers between powers of world politics…
In the history of international relations, in this formation coinciding at the center of 21st century, as you may have guessed, hegemonies created by major powers that command the world play a role. Then what kind of dynamism was this concept containing that it could affect all literatures with the same power? Hegemony, meaning the political supremacy and pressure of a certain country over another country, came up as a basic concept on many new approaches in the international environment of 1970s. While hegemony in the context of “realism” that was the first paradigm of international relations was perceived as a government who is economically developed, whose martial power is high and who has the leader role, in the neorealist literature, hegemony concept was left in a complex.
On positivist approach, hegemony concept is used to identify the dominance of a government in a certain geographical or activity field on others. This dominance must be based on economic and/or martial resources, cultural dimensions or consent of the actors are not considered.
When the literatures established in the system are examined, the idea about the fact that the wars between the super powers are a recurring condition and the thing called world politics is the process of displacement of war and peace is accepted by many scientists. When we look, one of them, Arnold J. Toybee put forward on his works that history develops under rhythmic war and peace periods.
On the other hand, George Modeski identified the changes on the system as a circular movement and claimed that starting from the 15th century certain governments became the dominant power on the system for certain periods in the world history, and the period of this dominance is valid for approximately a period of a century. Therefore, according to him, right after a dominant power comes up, another power challenging it appears and new dominant power is determined as a result of struggle between them where other members of the system can participate. Thus, active power of the system is changing over the historical movement and another power takes the place of the power completed its period.
As the USA come up by affecting world balances in the 19th century and at the beginning of 20th century, it is guessed that USA hegemony structure, proceeding to be global super power also in 21st century, will change geopolitical balances and potential effects of this will affect the entire world. Therefore, the hegemonic cycle theory is a strong movement of hegemonies surrendered to cycles. This is a known truth, the idea based on “hegemonic cycle” approach was an idea based on the fact that at all periods of history certain major powers directing the system appear, but every time, as a result of “power shifts” in the system, with a new war, new balances appear. Then, how did this idea reflect on continents?
Warlike efforts causing the world other than Middle East to be disapproved at the expense of creating a strategy in the Middle East by the power mechanism applied by Israel is in the state of affairs… On the other hand, the insistence of Syria on nuclear weapons and the attitude of it in hegemony war that won’t give up in spite of warnings of the global power USA but disobey humanity values…
China is doubtlessly a new curtain in the view point of the world at the hegemony war… It isn’t hard to guess what could happen when China becomes powerful. At this point, it would be relevant to state that existing status quo won’t continue for decades and the total of powers creating hegemony will slip away from hands of USA in time.
In the last instance, economic power of the new focuses and the relative scarceness of the market and raw materials in their hands will create a contradiction and will reach a property of being an alternative solution for solving martial power problems (distribution of markets, taking raw material regions under supervision) that will be determinant for economic development. When we look in this way, picture is extremely similar to the things experienced in previous century! While China’s reaching a condition of hegemonic power is being evaluated on bourgeois media organs, references are made regarding the period where a sharing war come up and led humanity to two world wars a century ago…
And today, finally, on the table hegemonies put forward on the system, whole of political ideas we named as international relations are produced as an extension of power struggle in international system and draw a picture of ideological, political and economic demands of changing dominant powers on the historical continuum…
