Review: Evaluating Political Globalization

2. Review: Evaluating Political Globalization • Is political globalization good or bad? • A system of genuine cooperation? • Or a mask for domination (by the U.S., the West, the North, etc.)?

3. Review: Evaluation • There’s a huge rise in democratically organized cooperative forms, which to some extent level the playing field among nation-states. • But to some extent cooperative forms enhance the capacities of the dominant to dominate (by making domination cheaper and easier).

4. Review: Evaluation • Military spending remains wildly uneven, with the U.S. far ahead of rivals. • But maybe military spending is so high because the U.S. is losing its grip….

5. Application: Hotel Rwanda

6. Application: Hotel Rwanda • Day 1, we said a global polity is: -a global system to defend public goods – peace and security -a global system to advance public interests – economic and social development

7. Application: Hotel Rwanda • Movie suggests failure of global polity • At least 800,000 killed • Neither peace and security nor economic and social development

8. Application: Hotel Rwanda • Day 2, we stressed the defining features of our present-day global polity: • It is stateless (and thus powerless) • It is democratic • Its primary constituents are sovereign nation-states (political units consisting of autonomous states make up of peoples sharing a common culture, history, and/or language)

9. Application: Hotel Rwanda • Rwanda does not fit definition of “nation-state;” it was created by Belgian colonialists In 1959, three years before independence from Belgium, the majority ethnic group, the Hutus, overthrew the ruling Tutsi king. Over the next several years, thousands of Tutsis were killed, and some 150,000 driven into exile in neighboring countries. The children of these exiles later formed a rebel group, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), and began a civil war in 1990. The war, along with several political and economic upheavals, exacerbated ethnic tensions, culminating in April 1994 in the genocide of roughly 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. The Tutsi rebels defeated the Hutu regime and ended the killing in July 1994, but approximately 2 million Hutu refugees - many fearing Tutsi retribution - fled to neighboring Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zaire. (CIA World Factbook 2009)

10. Application: Hotel Rwanda • Even “Hutus” and “Tutsis” may be colonial/racial constructs (Tutsis lighter skinned, taller, with bigger skulls) • The ideas surrounding real and supposed ethnic groups in Rwanda have a very long and complicated history. The definitions of "Hutu" and "Tutsi" may have changed through time and location….When the Belgians colonists conducted their censuses, they desired to classify the people throughout Rwanda-Burundi with a single classification scheme. They merely defined "Tutsi" as anyone with more than ten cows or a long nose. (Wikipedia 2009)

11. Application: Hotel Rwanda • Nation-state sovereignty means world cannot/will not intervene in “internal affairs” • Was it civil war or genocide?

12. Application: Hotel Rwanda • Day 3, we discussed political globalization at the organizational level • International treaties, IGOs, INGOs • UN forces, not US forces • International Red Cross

13. Application: Hotel Rwanda • Day 3, we also discussed political globalization at the country level • What “nation-states” are, what they can do, and how they interrelate • Utterly conventional in form… • https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/rw.html

14. Application: Hotel Rwanda • Day 3, we also discussed political globalization at the personal level • The world affirms the citizenship status of all persons • The world imbues all persons with human rights: civil, political, social

15. Application: Hotel Rwanda • Day 4, we conducted an evaluation • Is the global polity a system of cooperation or a system of domination?