Afin d’expliquer comment la mondialisation reconstruit les politiques publiques et les comportements sociaux nous étudions les échanges et interactions entre les acteurs politiques, économiques et sociaux -publics et privés, individuels et collectifs- et la façon dont ils redessinent les relations internationales. Ce cours prend sa source dans les approches sociologique et historique françaises des relations internationales. This course is also available in english version: www.coursera.org/learn/global-studies
L’impuissance de la puissance
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Espace mondial, une vision française des global studies
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De la lección
La puissance
La puissance a-t-elle encore un sens et une efficacité ?
Conoce a los instructores
Bertrand BadieProfessor
Marie-Françoise DurandProfessor
Is power still powerful?
That’s the question.
If we take into account our present world,
economic crisis,
difficulties to define good solutions
and efficient solutions to the economic crisis…
Is power powerful?
American defeat in Vietnam,
chaos in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya…
is power powerful?
Deadlocks in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict,
is power powerful?
All these issues are clearly demonstrating
that power is not really adapted
to our present world,
or more exactly the traditional vision of power
is no more adapted to the new conditions
of a global order.
We have to admit that power experienced
many transformations
and has to face new adaptations
which were rather difficult.
Let’s have a look on our recent history.
States were joined
in the international arena
by peoples and societies.
Societies, social actors
are more and more present
in the international arena.
Is power powerful when it has to face societies
as it was when it had to face only other states?
The traditional vision of power
is perfectly adapted
to an interstate competition,
but is it adapted to competition
between states and societies,
between state actors and non-state actors?
Second transformation,
the rising role of culture.
The traditional international arena
during the 19th century but also
the major part of the 20th century
was a monocultural arena
in which all the main actors
were sharing the same culture.
What about this new international arena
in which different actors coming
from different cultures are competing?
Is then the traditional power
so fruitful and so efficient,
so powerful that it was previously?
Now third transformation
the proliferation of states.
When the UN was created in 1945
it was created by 51 states,
now there are 193 states in UN.
Is it possible to use power
when such a proliferation created microstates
for which the competition
didn’t have the same meaning.
Is power now working
when bipolarity has collapsed?
Bipolarity was supporting
the traditional vision of power,
bipolarity was structured
around two major powers,
two super powers: the US and USSR.
Now bipolarity is over,
we are in a post bipolar world,
and in this post bipolar world it is very hard,
difficult first to find a new hierarchy of powers,
but also to define the rules
of a clear competition
between states which are so different.
And overall,
power had to face the globalization
as a new world order
and globalization is directly questioning
the traditional concept of power.
First because globalization
introduced interdependence.
Interdependence is playing a major role
in international relations
and is even the substitute to sovereignty.
Sovereignty was holding
the very clear power competition,
but what about interdependence?
When states are more and more interdependent
at the economic level but also
at the cultural level but also at the social level,
what power is able to do? That’s the question.
What is the status of power
in a world of interdependence?
Is power still acting when states
are so interplaying with such a density?
Is power still powerful
when sovereignty is decreasing?
Is power still powerful
when coercion is less and less efficient?
As we can observe for instance
about the sanctions,
when sanctions are taken
by powerful states
these sanctions are playing against those
who are deciding them.
What about power when we have to face
an increasing number of actors?
The status of power is clear when you have
a small number of competing actors,
but what about now when we have
not only 193 state actors,
but when we have potentially
7 billion of individuals playing
on the international arena.
Is power powerful when it has to face
individuals and social actors?
And what about power facing
the new way of communication,
the new instrument of communication,
the new technology,
in which individuals are able
to get in touch with each other,
and so are able to structure a new kind
of social and international social relations.
Power is probably not adapted
in its traditional version
to face this new kind of situation,
and the real question is what about power
in a world in which states
have no more the monopoly
of the international functions?
Ladies and Gentlemen,
four consequences of these very high
but underestimated transformations.
First military power
is more and more powerless.
We could observe that
during the decolonization war,
when France was defeated
by the small Vietnamese army in Dien Bien Phu.
But US experience the same
when the US was defeated in 1975 in Vietnam,
but the same for Somalia, Afghanistan,
Iraq and so on, the same for Libya.
Is military power adapted
to these new conditions?
Probably not.
The second question is:
is soft power a clear and efficient substitute?
When the US was defeated in Vietnam
some American scholars like
Joseph Nye and Robert Keohane
elaborated the concept of soft power
and established the hypothesis
that when hard power is no more working,
soft power can be considered as a substitute.
Soft power is a strong power, probably,
for diffusing the dominant culture,
the cultural hegemony of the super power.
But the question is:
if you drink Coca Cola or if you wear blue jeans,
do you, for this reason,
support the American foreign policy?
The reality is that there is no transitivity
between the support you give to soft power
and the support which is expected
in the field of diplomacy and foreign policy.
The third question
is what about power in a world
in which protest is playing
more and more a central and major role?
There are in our present world
so many new protest diplomacies
or deviant diplomacies,
in which protesting against an hegemony
is much more important that proposing
a new international order.
Is the traditional vision of power able to face
this new culture of international protest?
It’s quite clear that it couldn’t.
And so the real problem
in our present interdependent and global world
is what hegemony now does mean?
Robert Gilpin and Charles Kindleberger
elaborated the concept of hegemonic stability
which they put that hegemony
was the only way for ordering
an interdependent world.
That was probably true during the 20th century,
but is it so clear and obvious by now?
That’s the problem,
is hegemony now a stabilizer
or is hegemony destabilizing the world?
That's to say, first hegemony
is not able to work and it is failing,
but the second point is that when hegemony
is too much evident, is too much visible,
the risk is high that this hegemony
creates instability, protests, conflicts, tensions,
anti-Americanism and war.
That is why the Obama administration
moved to another concept,
the famous concept of smart power,
in which hard power is considered
to be restricted, to be limited and to be mixed
with a very cautious use of soft power.
This concept of smart power
leads to the idea of a light footprint,
the superpower is supposed now
to leave only a light footprint
on the international order
and to the concept of leadership
from behind, leading from behind,
that’s to say to be much less ambitious
in the definition of the new international order.
This is clearly a revising conception of hegemony
in which hegemony is lessened,
in which hegemony is questioned,
in which hegemony is challenged
and in which we have to reconsider
the real capacities of power.
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