Transnationalism: The Most Important Foreign Policy Intellectual In The United States

World politics in the later twentieth century is mainly characterized by an immense degree of transnationalism. Transnationalism recognizes a trend in world politics. Transnationalism thrives in the modern world in which transport and communication have begun to play a qualitatively different role in world politics than in the past. Transnationalism in itself does not constitute a theory. It is not just a phenomenon of non-state action that accompanies international relations, but is also a pervasive and politically salient phenomenon most likely to develop rapidly under conditions created by modern communications. Transnationalism, says Huntingon, is the American mode of expansion. It is nearly impossible to avoid the question of whether
Huntington was the most important foreign policy intellectual in the United States during the 1990's. Huntington saw that despite the economic and cultural globalization, forceful resistance remained. Divisions among people tend to be predominantly cultural. Principal conflicts of global politics occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. According to Huntington, the clash of civilizations will dominate global politics, where civilizations will inevitably clash—mainly due to cultural differences. I tend to disagree with Huntington due to the following characteristics of transnationalism. First, the role and function of the nation-state in international politics has changed dramatically over the years. New groups have emerged, such as terrorist groups, multinational corporations or hijackers. Even non-military and non-security issues have emerged—population, dependency of Third World countries on the developed, pollution and depletion of certain natural
After creating nation states and beginning the French Revolution, conflicts occurred between nations instead of emperors—"The wars of kings were over; the wars of peoples had begun" (R. R. Palmer, 1793). This pattern continued until the end of World War I. Once the Russian Revolution ended, the conflict of nations was transformed into the conflict of ideologies—communism, fascism and liberal democracy. The world became divided into the First, Second and Third Worlds during the cold war. Recently, countries are grouped in terms of their cultures and civilization—a cultural identity. The culture of a village in southern Germany may be different from that of a village in another region in Germany, but both share a general common German culture that distinguishes them from villages in other countries. European communities will share general cultural features that will also distinguish them from Asian communities. Europeans, Asians, Arabs and other cultural entities constitute civilizations. Civilizations are the broadest level of cultural identity that distinguishes humans from other various