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Soviet analyst Andrei Kortunov once said that the U.S. intellectual framework for understanding international relations is like a bottle with a very narrow neck into which world affairs are poured from a large pail: a little bit gets inside the bottle, but a lot gets spilled. During the cold war, superpower bipolarity helped to mop up much of the spillage. Now, in the aftermath of 11 September, we are knee-high in spillage. This article is about International Political Theology, an approach to international relations which integrates into theory major aspects of world affairs that would otherwise be ignored by mainstream intellectual IR frameworks.
Modernization and International Relations
The state of the world can generally be characterized as late modern. Late modernity is the culmination of a several-centuries long crusade on the part of the West to modernize the rest of the world. Historically speaking, this is the greatest and most successful attempt at universalization of any particular societal model. But it has encountered serious obstacles.
Modernization has meant challenging and eventually overcoming traditional ways of life in highly stratified, allegedly unenlightened societies. From a so-called modern perspective, traditional societies are gripped by religious dogmas that make them incapable of creating a just society or advancing on the path of modernity toward the installation of democracy and capitalism. Of relevance to IR scholars and teachers is the key role IR played in this process: modernization has proceeded hand in hand with the expansion of the states system worldwide. The Westphalian peace legitimated the states system created in a small area of Europe, and the...
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