BF2S Forums What factor has the greatest effect on the International System

no one wants to help you with your homework

I'm thinking about this one, just being careful since the options are all tangled with each other

kr@cker wrote:

no one wants to help you with your homework

QFE

Would recommend to do your own thinking rather than letting the internet do it for you.

I have to conduct a poll as part of the paper. Which is why I'm doing this, I already have my part of the paper mapped out. Its a political science international relations class, and we're doing a case study on 9/11, the middle east, and Iraq. For the poll section I have to poll the student body and I have to do one other poll, so I thought I'd throw one up here.

Well to be perfectly honest all of the categories bellow state interest....well fall under state interest in some shape or form.


What exactly is being studied in the case study, cause by the looks of it that sounds like an entire course in itself.

jonsimon wrote:

. . . Economics is the persuit of one's own interests and it encompasses politics. As such, economics explains the motivation for all human actions. Economics is the study of motivations and the workings of systems.

In the international arena, I'd say economics, too.

Well, this is sort of a comprehensive to the course. It teaches the 4 different viewpoints of IR.

Realist Perspective which believes that states are the force behind the International System.

Liberal Perspective which believes that International Organizations are the force behind the International System.

Radical Perspective which believes that economics is the driving force behind the International System.

and finally

Constructivist Perspective which believes that social forces, cultural Identity, religion, nationalism, and other philosophies drive the International System.

OpsChief wrote:

I am pretty sure ideology isn't limited to religion, nationalism and cultural areas

I was just giving examples. Earlier, we covered WWII and the explanation from each perspective, and this is what constructivist listed as the causes.

Nationalism, Isolationism, Communism, and Fascism.

I just read part of "The Clash of Civilizations" by Huntington.  It had some interesting thoughts on this topic, although the analysis and predictions were a bit dated (early '90s).  Give it a glance and make your own opinions.

Economics. If people realized how the economic system has been structured since the end of the Bretton Woods system in the mid 1970s, they would not accept it. The system has been so skewed in favor of the rich investor class and has abandoned the old idea of a social good. Here in Canada, and things are similar in most western nations, instead of getting money from our central bank at almost no interest like we did under Bretton Woods, we now borrow from private investors like the IMF, or Canadian private banks like the Royal Bank or CIBC. As a result, the government now pays a high interest charge for the right to print its own money, something it should be able to do for free. In Canada 95% of all money is bank created as opposed government created, with the inherent interest charges attached. As a result our debt, which since confederation to 1970 never went above 30 billion, has peaked at over 500 billion. I believe it is now around 440 billion. No one in the country understands this, and as a result no one understands why we don't have enough money to finance healthcare, or schools or our military. Everyone just assumes the country doesn't have enough money and that we should privatize our social services, when nothing could be further from the truth. Again, the situation is similar in all western nations except Sweden. So my response is definitely the financial architecture our system is based on is the most important factor. If people could just understand how it does not benefit the majority of us, I believe we would be a long way to a much better world.

See, what I like about this topic is a that the first 2 choices have a much more direct impact on the system, but they are more narrow in scope, while the second 2 are more passive in how they affect they system, but they are much more broad in terms of scope.