This course presents the factors approach for the analysis of “global human dynamics.”  The term “global human dynamics” replaces “international relations.” 

 Instead of dealing with global human dynamics from the vantage point of actors, the course breaks down and dissects the factors which cause and shape the encounters between different human entities with different identities.  "Factor" is used here to denote "that which brings about events and produces results".  “Entity” is used as a term to cover a broad spectrum of actors whatever their identity maybe, from tribes and ethnicities to nations and sovereign nation-states, and through to global corporations and religious orders.

 The course cuts across, and goes beyond, the mainstream literature of the traditional international relations discipline 

A. RELATION FACTORS:

A.1   Radius of Identity: The prerequisite for the study of inter-entity dynamics is the existence of more than one entity with its own particular radius of identity.  We need at least two entities with different radii of identity.  And we need their encounter.

A.2   If the encountering entities merge or overrun each other to the point of non-identifiability of distinct entities, the ensuing phenomenon will turn into one entity – one polity – and no longer be a subject of global human dynamics – international relations – discipline.  It will become a subject of study for other disciplines such as political science, anthropology, economics, social psychology, etc.  However, the possibilities of overrunning and merger – but also of splinter – of entities underscores the need in the study of inter-entity relations – global human dynamics – to be attuned to other sciences which observe, examine and analyse the systemics of entities.  By the same token, the potentials for splinter within one entity highlights the importance of observation by other disciplines of global human dynamics. Beyond a certain stage of mitosis the ensuing entities may no longer follow common patterns of behaviour. 

A.3  Point of Exhaustion: The existence of more than one entity implies that the encountering entities, if they attempted to overrun and absorb each other, would reach their point of exhaustion before achieving the total merger or absorption of the other.

A.4   Ordinarily Manageable Economy: That entities reach their point of exhaustion implies material limits to their capacity to advance beyond a certain point.  How far they can go will depend on their level of technological, economic and organizational development.  In its primitive sense, it is the case of an entity which depends on a fixed source of water and thereby has a limited range of activities; compared to another entity which has already invented a canteen to carry the water farther and thus has increased its range.  Ordinarily manageable economy changes with the development of new modes of production and control: from flint to electronics.

A.5   Understanding/Misunderstanding—Agreement/Disagreement: While failure to overrun and absorb another entity points to the limitations in material potentials, the improbability of merger implies that there are discrepancies in the radii of identity of the encountering entities.  That leads to the assumption that there are areas of understanding/ misunderstanding and agreement/disagreement which distinguish the entities from each other.

A.6   Élan: Observation of historical facts reveals instances when extraordinary dispositions within an entity have created an élan and permitted the entity to expand far beyond its ordinarily manageable economy.  These instances account for the overwhelming potentials of certain empires which, in their ebbs and flows, created networks encompassing and linking a large number of entities with different radii of identity.

A.7   Legal, Moral and Ethical Depression / Attraction:  Areas of misunderstanding and disagreement imply that each entity will perceive a relative level of depression – non-existence of legal, moral and ethical pressure on behaviour and conduct – on the other side of the border.  That depression may also be conducive to the attractiveness of riches which may be perceived on the other side of the frontier.  Attraction can also be fuelled by such drives as curiosity or sense of adventure.

A.8   Circumstances and Conjunctures: Encounters between entities do not take place in a vacuum but in the context of what surrounds and influences them in time and space: circumstances; and what lays on their course: conjunctures.

A.9   Actors as Factors: From the factors perspective, actors are undeniably crucial components of global human dynamics.  As factors, actors are moulded by and mould other factors.  But who are the actors?  Entities or the "decision makers"?  Does the entity concoct decision makers or do the decision makers drag the entity into a given direction?  It is in the complexity of factors as they flow, their flux, that we should look for answers.

(For an elaborate treatment of section A please click on Articles and Chapters and see Global Human Dynamics, Chapter 2, The Factors.)

B.  ACTOR FACTORS:

B.1   The Concept of the State:  At this stage of our course we are not limiting our concept of the state to the sovereign nation-state as is the case in standard treatments of international relations.  We are dealing here with the fact of "being": status. Where the encountering entities cannot overrun or absorb each other, the existence of each becomes a reality for the others: they are -- a state.  The reality of an entity's existence may, at some point, not even be territorial -- it may be an "incipient state" (see C. 2).

B.2   The polis:  Being implies some degree of cohesion for the entity.  That cohesion engenders the entity's radius of identity (see A.1 above).  Systemically, that cohesion implies the development of legal, ethical and moral norms within a polis – the term is used here in its broader sense – not necessarily a walled city-state.

B.3   While polis – polity – is the proper domain of political science, the state is the basic ingredient of global human dynamics. It is in its encounter with another entity that a polity becomes conscious of its being -- its "statehood" -- its status.

B.4   However, fermentations and dynamics within the entity – the polis – affect its encounter with other entities; and to the extent they do, they need to be examined for the understanding of inter-entity encounters.  Notable among the systemics of an entity are the differentiations and stratifications which take place within it producing different social segments and strata (see B.18) which shape its radius of identity; and the concomitant interests and values which emerge and mould the legal, moral and ethical norms of the entity.

B.5   Interests and Values:  Within the entity, as differentiations and stratifications give rise to diverse and oftentimes conflicting interests, values develop to justify the differences and strata.  There is a synergy between interests which are more palpable, concrete, material and based on rationalized needs, and values which are abstract, intrinsically deep-rooted and non-rational.  Values give direction to interests and by serving as rudders for interests make the activities and behaviours of strata, segments and members of the entity socially predictable and acceptable. (See "The Concept of Values: A Sociophenomenological Approach" in The Journal of Value Inquiry, Vol. VIII, No. 1, 1974)

B.6    The interest/value synergy within each entity varies depending on the evolution of its segments and strata (see B. 18).  An agrarian absolute monarchy is likely to have a different set of norms than an industrial free enterprise democracy.

B.7   Norms: But certain norms which are more species-specific may be traced in all entities, even though they may have different forms. Such are, for example, norms for coping with the fear and search of the unknown which develop into religious beliefs, superstitions and myths and eventually provide value systems for social organization; and norms established for the distribution, exploitation and exchange of labour and its products. 

B.8   In the encounters between entities, differences in these norms may become cause for conflict; or their similarity, in comparison with the norms of other contesting entities, may result in co-operation.

B.9   Motivation:  The species-specific norms mentioned above – those of fear and search of the unknown and the drive to exploit and exchange – are also the primal motivations for inter-entity encounters – limited by point of exhaustion (see A.2).  It is reasonable to assume that the early motivations would be exploration of the environment, curiosity, adventure, challenge, and gain. 

B.10   Once encounter materializes, it engenders the possibility of overrunning and absorption of one entity by another, which develops in each entity the motivation for security and defence. Security and defence against the elements and the wild beasts would have, of course, existed before the encounter between human entities; but after the encounter it will be extended to the conspecies (see E. 12).  Self affirmation as a “state” of being becomes corollary to security, notably for incipient states (see B.1) with an emerging consciousness of identity, even where an overrunning has occurred but the overrun entity has not been absorbed.

B.11   As encounters become more involved, they seep into the social realities of each entity and affect, and are affected by, the fermentations and dynamics within each entity (see B.4-8). 

B.12   The controlling strata of the entity may occasionally use conflict with other entities as a cohesive tool for deflection of internal problems. 

B.13   Conflict with other entities may also become a built-in element of the value system of an entity making conflict an end in itself.

B.14   Differences in religious beliefs as sources of misunderstanding and perception of lack of ethical and moral norms on the other side of the border can motivate missionary conversion campaigns.

B.15   Similarly, differences in methods of social organization, exchange and distribution may be perceived as threat to the way of life, the value system and radius of identity of the entity and instigate ideological indoctrination drives.

B.16   As encounters multiply, the combination of the motivations so far developed generate new ones inherent in human dynamics.  The drive for diversity may lead to acquired tastes for exotic products and cultures; or conflicts and competitions may result in encounters motivated by rivalry, pride, honour, grudge, enmity, or revenge.

B.17   Some of the motivations listed above, such as the pursuit of gain, deflection of internal problems or acquired tastes for exotic products and cultures may manifest "interest" characteristics, while others listed in B.13 to 15 would have greater value attributes (see B.5). 

B.18    Segments and Strata:  What motivations will shape the relations between encountering entities will depend on the nature of the strata and segments within the entities (see B.4).  Of particular interest to our study will be two complexes: 1. the systemic dynamics of the strata and segments within an entity and their effect on the entity's relations with the outside; and 2. the relationships between strata and segments of encountering entities across the boarder.

B.19   1. Social organizations and regimes of different entities may be more or less compatible or conflicting.  Hierarchical strata are not always easily discernible and comparable from one entity to another.  Social segments like the media, the business, the educational system or different bureaucracies, each with further extensions, cannot be easily placed on similar hierarchical scales in different entities. Hierarchies within some entities may reflect earlier overrunning and absorption of one entity by another (see A.2). The degree of conscious involvement of different strata and segments in inter-entity Dynamics will be different from one entity to another.

B.20   The diversity of strata and segments implies diversity of interests and values and the existence of different pressure groups.  Particular strata and segments involved in inter-entity relations may have different understanding of other entities or have a different sense of security than the rest of their own entity.  Their sense of security may cover both that of their own position and interests and those of the whole entity.  There can be pulls and pushes in different directions within the entity in its relations with other entities.  The degree to which the policies of those controlling the relations with other entities will prevail or are influenced by other strata and segments within the entity will depend on the nature of the regime and the porous ness of its inter-entity relations.

B.21   2. This leads us to the relationships between the strata and the segments across the border.  Compatible and comparable segments and strata may find affinities with each other across the border, compromising their belonging to the radius of identity of their own respective entity.  Medical doctors may find medical doctors across the border more compatible than the farmers within their own entity.  Inversely, rivalries and grudges between comparable but competing segments or strata may handicap relations between the entities.  Farmers engaging in trade wars across the border may pressure the ruling strata to adopt adversarial stands against each other which they would not have done otherwise. 

B.22   As a whole, inter-entity relations may present more or less coherent attitudinal patterns in different entities.  An authoritarian regime will probably be better able to control and present a monolithic pattern than a pluralistic democracy.

B.23   Interacting Motivations:  In the complex of their inter-entity relations, entities may evaluate each others' interests and values on a spectrum going from opposing and conflicting, through diverging and converging, to parallel and common.  The spectrum may reflect interests and values more or less distinctly.  We can thus conceive of a sliding scale with different possible combinations: opposing interests and values; common interests and opposing values; etc.

B.24   Depending on the compatibility of the segments and strata across the border, community of interests and values and the duration of relations, a synergy of interests and values may develop in inter-entity relations.  We can thus see develop such frameworks for intercourse as international law, economic community or confederation.  These frameworks, however, remain subject to the factors so far examined, i.e., entities’ values may overshadow their particular interests as they move closer in terms of radius of identity, but will become weaker as their radii of identity move farther apart, leaving freer reign to their interests and making them less bound by legal, ethical and moral norms (see A.6).
 

C. SOURCES AND RESOURCES

C. 1   Sources and Resources: In the dynamics of encounter the existence and survival of an entity depends on its sources and resources.  Sources and resources reflect and condition factors mentioned earlier.  Points of exhaustion and ordinarily manageable economies are dependant on available natural resources, means of production and the skills of the population.  Potential sources and resources may exist but remain untapped within an entity's domain if the skills required for their exploitation are not available.  When they are tapped and flow into the ordinarily manageable economy of an entity they may trigger an élan.  Attraction of sources and resources on the other side of the border, and perception of normative depression there may also be pointing to an entity's awareness of potential resources.

C. 2   Population: In general, the major source of an entity's existence is its people: a population of a critical mass conscious of its radius of identity and the cohesion of the entity.  If that population is dispersed, it may no longer be in control of other sources, but if conscious of its identity, it may become an "incipient state".  It may exist within another "state" as a minority or a segment and have an effect on that state. 

C. 3   Beyond cohesive consciousness, the important characteristics of population are its size, composition, distribution, the proportion of its able-bodied youth, birth rate, life expectancy, health, the male-female ratio and the level of education and skills.

C. 4   Territory: The source that is classically attributed to "statehood" is territory: its geographical location, size, climatic conditions, natural resources, and neighbourhood. 

C. 5   Population and territory are not enough indices for understanding the evolution of segments and strata among the entities in their relations.  Among other variables we need to take into account the factors we have so far covered, notably circumstances and conjunctures (see A.8), but more importantly, the image entities have of themselves and the others, and the role they are expected to play.

C. 6   Image and role: While, in the long run, image and role should have their roots in reality; it is the discrepancy between them and reality that makes them a subject of study.  While élan can be due to particular dynamics within an entity, the image of that élan can enhance its effects.  The image of fierce fighters preceded the Huns and made their conquests easier.

C. 7  An entity may develop an image of itself at variance with the image others have of it and may, counting on that image, miscalculate in its behaviour towards the others.  Germans in W.W.II overestimated the impact of their Blitzkrieg image on the British and assumed easy victory at the beginning.

C. 8  While image is perception; role is an expectation and assumption of responsibility.  The U.S. after W.W.II assumed and was expected by some to play the role of the leader of the free world.  In that role the U.S. fought communism in Korea and Vietnam and led the cold war.

C. 9   By complementing the other factors so far covered, image and role contribute to the development of segments and strata among entities.  Assumptions and expectations of roles may vary among entities and under different circumstances and conjunctures.  Since the end of the cold war, the nature of U.S. leadership has changed.  Not all that are expected to be led accept leadership.  Beyond other potentials, that has to do with the "national characteristics" of entities.

C. 10  National Characteristics: National Characteristics are the general perceptions of an entity's radius of identity represented by a modal personality.  When Margaret Thatcher, referring to François Mitterrand, said: "only a Frenchman can do such a thing!” she had in mind a stereotyped modal personality. We are not dealing here necessarily with nation-states.  Bretons and Savoyards have their "national characteristics" distinct from each other and from France.  Although, when entities -- including nation-states -- hang together for a long period of time, some broad cultural and behavioural patterns develop.  National characteristic is a point of reference which, to the extent it is formed in the minds of decision-makers, influences their decisions and behaviour.  The concept of "characteristics"  is a typology which can also apply to cross-border affinities of segments and strata (see B.21) producing common characteristics for multinational corporate executives or members of a universal religious order. 

C. 11   Characteristics evolve, both within the entities and in the eyes of others.  Within Germany and Japan, for example, the military -- and its uniform -- represented a particular status in the past which also tainted their national characteristics, quite different from their present image.

C. 12   The confluence of factors so far covered provide us with perspectives which permit us to better understand the patterns which, through the ages, have shaped global human dynamics.

D. THE FLUX

D.1   Looking at world history through the prism of our factors we can discern five broadly intertwined currents which have shaped inter-entity relations.  These are: 1. Ethnicity and nationhood, 2. Imperium, 3. Religion, 4. Ideology, and 5. Emporium and international finance. These currents reflect the global aspects such basic human drives as belonging, dominating, believing, reasoning and explaining, and exchanging.  From the beginning of encounters between human entities all these currents have flown together.  Although under different circumstances and conjunctures some currents may become predominant, there is no clear-cut precedence of one over the others.  By their nature, however, some of these currents have greater potentials for hierarchical control while others play cohesive roles for the maintenance of the other currents. 

D.2   Ethnicity and nationhood:  Ethnicity and nationhood are manifestations of radius of identity. As patterns for global human dynamics they are used as contexts for control.  Ethnicity has the germs of tribalism and can develop authoritarian hierarchies which can be used for domination of other entities in certain types of imperia (see D.5&6).

D.3   Nationhood relies on common history, tradition, language and culture, and provides the base for the unity of entities with different ethnic backgrounds.  The more basic feelings of patria and patriotism which are tribal are amplified through myths and lores and are turned into nationhood and nationalism.  Nationhood engendered nation-states to a large extent due to the development of the bourgeoisie and its need for a political framework securing markets corresponding to its means and methods of production and distribution.

D.4 Imperium: Imperium is characterized by the hegemony of one entity over a number of others.  Broadly speaking, it implies more overt exercise of power than the other patterns.  Empires may have different natures and goals. 

D.5   Earlier empires were often tax-collecting empires, with a hegemonic entity imposing itself on other entities and demanding submission and tributes. 

D.6   Farther along that line, an empire would become extractory, developing and exploiting the natural resources of the entities under its hegemony. 

D.7   An empire, aiming at greater absorption, may move parts of its own population into its domains and, combined with its extractory character, evolve into a colonial power. 

D.8   In a more involved situation, the hegemon may become a patronizing and integrative empire, attempting to develop and assimilate its dominion -- "the white man's burden" or "la culture civilisatrice française".  Or, it may claim a commonwealth under its own leadership. 

D.9   An empire most likely expands due to an early élan (see A.7) and, where religious or ideological patterns do not exist (see C.14-19), holds its sway over its dominion through military, administrative and bureaucratic complexes.

D.10   An empire generally serves as an inseminator of cultures.  During its imperium, and depending on its nature and its intensity, an empire may provide for its components broad access to each other within the imperial network permitting them to adopt aspects of each other's culture.

D.11   The concept of empire, of course, implies that while the imperial power has overrun the entities within its hegemony, it has not absorbed them.  The empire maintains itself as long as it is capable to impose its imperial power and to the extent the order it imposes --its pax -- is acquiesced by those within its hegemony.

D.12   When, either due to challenges of the entities within, such as the Gandhi movement in India against the British Empire; and/or circumstances and conjunctures, such as W.W.I and the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, combined with the turgescence of the imperial institutions, the empire loses control over its domain; its component entities will tend to revert back to their own radius of identity -- more or less modified by their association with the empire.

D.13   as the former component entities of an empire gain greater autonomy, they may have to adjust to new ordinarily manageable economies (see A.4) with residual effects of the disintegrating empire.  The economic upheavals, combined with the weakening imperial norms, may lead the former component entities to perceive legal, ethical and moral depression beyond their own radius of identity, causing conflict among them (see A.6).  Or, their former imperial association may have left them common interests and values permitting them to develop new association. 

C.14   The aura of an empire may inspire the entities within it and those outside its domain, which observe its might, to imitate and adopt its culture and institutions.  The Persian concept of absolute monarchy was imitated by Persian Empire's vassals and even influenced the Byzantine institutions.  Presently, the American way of life and institutions are being imitated by a number of other countries.

D.14   Religion:  In contradistinction to imperium's overt military, administrative and bureaucratic controls, religion serves as the cohesive component for those controls.  It can provide bases for value systems and is sought and imposed by controlling entities and strata on their dominion to buttress their interests and claims to power (see B.8-10). 

D.16   Besides its potential to be the spiritual source of an élan projecting an entity into empire building, because of its strong cohesive content, religion has the propensity to become a pattern of control in its own right, as has been the case, over the centuries, of the Catholic church and Islam.

D.17   Ideology: Ideology  is distinct from religion in that it does not base itself on "the beyond".  It attempts to impose its precepts by rationalization and indoctrination.  Whether it has the potency for control similar to religion is open to debate.  The communist ideology which buttressed Soviet imperium for three generations did not succeed to hold together.  Not having a beyond to evoke, ideologies cannot deflect their own contradictions. 

D.18   Religion has a supernatural patron to build on; ideology needs a context.  That context should correspond to the rationalizations of the ideology.  If communism collapsed, it was because of the inherent contradiction of realizing the goal of proletarian power through political regimes -- as was the case in Eastern Europe -- and its tendency to corrupt into trade unionism -- as it did in the West. 

D.19   Yet capitalism, which as an ideology has been broadly identified with the West and more closely with the Anglo-Saxon imperia, has gained global credence despite the fact that western imperia have been challenged.  It is because the true context of capitalism was not any particular political imperium but the old age patterns of emporium, trade and finance. 

D.20   Emporium and International Finance:  Beyond the early conflicts, pillages, overrunnings, and absorptions of entities by each other, records of inter-entity relations suggest that commerce was an important aspect of contacts between autonomous entities as early as seven thousand years ago, long before the emergence of empires. 

D.21   Emporium was probably the cause of early empires.  Trade and knowledge about the goods of others trigger attraction and the perception of normative depression in foreign lands (see A.6).  But empires and nation-states did not always manage to rein in and fully control emporium because their relationships were symbiotic. 

D.22   Indeed, as the means of production and distribution developed, empires became vehicles called for and used by industrial, commercial and economic segments for the expansion of their markets. 

D.23   As the military and bureaucratic means of imperial control became contested and obsolete, economic power through trade and international finance became the current for international power.  Germany and Japan, after trying over a century to build empires through military power, have now managed to expand successfully through their multinational corporations and financial power, although, the controls and domains of their multinational corporations are not always under the national control (see D.17-18).  At the Seville World Trade Fair in 1992, 20 multinational corporations, including Siemens and Sony, had their own multinational pavilions independent of their national pavilions.

E. CHANNELS AND METHODS OF RELATIONS:

E.1   Through the ages the flux of relations has been conducted through such channels as diplomacy, propaganda, intelligence, economic and financial measures and the military. These channels correspond to such broad concepts of human interactions as negotiation, bargaining, compromise, persuasion, dissuasion, coercion, subversion, threat and violence.  At the inter-entity level however, these concepts are conditioned by the factors and the flux we have so far covered and it is from those perspectives that we shall take a look at channels and methods of global human dynamics.

E.2   Diplomacy:  In encounters between entities, the perception of depression of legal, ethical and moral norms on the other side of the border (see A.6) calls for guarantees for the safety of elements of one entity peacefully going into the other entity.  Hostages were exchanged.  Then, for their own long-term interests (see B.24), the entities developed among themselves one of the first international norms, namely, that of safe conduct, leading eventually to diplomatic immunity.  The vicissitudes of that norm underscore the particular characteristics of diplomacy and its need for tactfulness whether it is cajoling or threatening.

E.3   How diplomacy is conducted depends on the nature of the entities involved and circumstances and conjunctures.  That it took years to organize the Peace of Westphalia (1648), because the parties could not agree on the protocol, reflects the radii of identity of the time (see A.1) and the clashes of the expanding points of exhaustion (see A.2).  Indeed, those clashes caused the elimination of some of the entities and set the stage for the evolution of diplomacy toward the Congress of Vienna (1815). Again, from that Congress to the League of Nations and beyond to the United Nations, the evolution of diplomacy, and notably that of conference and open diplomacy, can be understood in the light of the dynamics of the industrial revolution (see A.4), the growth of nation-states and empires (see C.2-9), and changes in segments and strata due to the advent of democracy.

E.4   But even in a democracy the controlling stratum and its diplomatic bureaucracy may wish to negotiate in secret as did the absolute monarchs.  Secret diplomacy permits the interlocutors to make concessions and agree to compromises which they would or could not have done otherwise without losing face, dissension or getting in conflict with other entities.  That, of course, implies that secret diplomacy can be detrimental to the interests and values of certain segments and strata within; and also unfavourable to other entities, causing disequilibrium among them.

E.5   Democracies, therefore, tend to hold their diplomatic bureaucrats and political leaders accountable.  A fact which has greatly contributed to the move towards open diplomacy.  In the long run, open diplomacy can also contribute to balance of power by permitting other entities to evaluate its consequences and engage in balancing acts.

E.6   Diplomacy has undergone important changes due to improvements in transportation and communication.  There was a time when diplomats posted abroad assumed a lot of responsibility.  Today, the central bureaucracy at home can directly intervene.  But the improvement of communications has also shifted some of the attributes of diplomacy to the media, notably that of reporting on current affairs and taking the pulse of foreign powers; to the point of, at times, dictating the direction of some policies.

E.7   Propaganda: The development of the media as an active segment in global human dynamics has also enhanced and modified the role and control of propaganda.  Before the expansion of mass media, image making (see B.30) as a support for an entity's encounters was limited to the word of mouth and, to some extent, to the written word.  Some entities such as the religious orders had more structured patterns for propaganda fide. 

E.8   Since the beginning of the twentieth century, and particularly with the invention of radio and loudspeakers, propaganda has become a channel consciously used for image making.  Its use, of course, changes from regime to regime.  It was a significant component of the short-lived Nazi élan (see A.7) and the agit-prop component of communism.  But the American dominance in telecommunications has influenced the direction of mass media's expansion.  Had those means developed on the international scale under totalitarian or authoritarian regimes, they may have been controlled differently.  CNN had fertile grounds for development in the U.S.; although, the power of clandestine zamisdats and Khomeyni's tapes should not be ignored.

E.9   Intelligence: The development of means of communication has also had significant effect on intelligence.  Beyond its cloak and dagger image, intelligence is an understandable and legitimate aspect of global human dynamics.  The fear and search of the unknown, the need for security (see B.9-10), attraction and normative depression on the other side of the border (see A.6) are among the factors which call for intelligence.  One should not be intelligent only about one's foes.  To turn misunderstanding into understanding and disagreement into agreement (see A.5) knowledge about friends is just as important.  Besides, the relativity of interests and values (see B.24) dictates vigilance in all cases.  Above all, proper intelligence, just as propaganda, facilitates and reduces the costs of other channels. 

E.10   The role of intelligence has evolved due to a combination of ideological conflicts and industrial competition.  The intelligence apparatus of states in control of their military-industrial complex, such as the former USSR, engage in intensive industrial espionage in order to keep their military edge.  Within the free market economies some industries develop intelligence capabilities to learn about the R & D of their competitors.

E.11   Even before the advent of spy satellites, the bulk of intelligence was gathered by the analysis of data and information publicly available (85%, according to CIA).  While satellites and electronic technologies have further reduced the need of some entities for human direct intervention in intelligence gathering in certain domains, new dynamics have made the human factor crucial.  While satellites can well locate the tanks of a conventional army, they cannot evaluate the growing consciousness of an ideologically motivated or ethnic entity about its radius of identity, its guerilla and partisan warfare resolve and its incipient state potentials, like Vietnam or Bosnian Serbs (see B.1 & 27).   Electronic devices can eavesdrop on terrorists, but human intelligence is needed to analyse and deal with their motivational context (see B.14 &15).

E.12   Military: One of the more salient features of the factors and the flux we have been studying is the potentials for confrontation, contest, conflict and violence between encountering entities.  Like intelligence, developing defensive and aggressive forces are understandable and natural endeavours for an entity.  They are as natural as the shell of a snail and the sting of a bee.  In that light the concept covers the range of milites (soldiery) whether it is the use of violence to enforce the norms of conduct within the society or the defence of an entity against another.  It thus includes the militia, the partisan, the guerrilla or the terrorist and the range of activities from covert subversion, influencing civil unrest, supply of arms to terrorists to the different variations of conventional warfare, from short, local, regional or limited to prolonged, total, world wars.

E.13   Because of its close correlation with inter-entity encounters, the military power can reflect the evolution of the factors and the flux.  But its sporadic nature creates discrepancies in that correlation.  A military conquest may change the ordinarily manageable economy (see A.4) and the social arrangements of the segments and strata of an entity. 

E.14   The nature and potentials of an entity's military power can change from conflict to conflict due to the evolutions within and among the entities.  While the actual military power of the United States before the two world wars was limited, the U.S. could rapidly turn into a major military power because of its human, natural, industrial and technological resources.  While the U.S. remained a major and victorious power after W.W.II, it was not able to win the Vietnam war because of the discrepancies that had occurred between its military might and its social evolution -- doubts of the Americans about the validity of the cause, indecision of the controlling segments and strata and concern about human and financial loses.  More importantly, however, were the discrepancies between the American and Vietnamese methods, interest/value perceptions and commitments. 

E.15   These discrepancies, all along history, have created situations altering global human dynamics. Where the discrepancies within and between entities are not great, military violence stays, more or less, within norms acquiesced to by the entities involved.  As the spread grows bigger, the potentials for crises and change increase.  The first Arab Moslems who invaded the Roman and Persian empires did not abide by the rules of warfare those two empires had set among themselves.

E.16   Presently, the discrepancies between some of the antagonistic entities are of crisis proportions.  The cold war, in fact, had its own rules of conduct which are actually in greater jeopardy now that the military power of the former Soviet Union is dispersed in the new entities.  The newer chaotic discrepancies can be dramatized by evoking the case of U.S. training and arming of Moslem fundamentalists to fight USSR in Afghanistan and having them now as terrorists and subversives attacking U.S. interests around the world and destabilizing U.S. friendly regimes.

E.17   Economic and Financial Constraints:  The modern crises in military violence are further compounded by the new developments in emporium (see C.15).  More and more of world's productive assets are held and dispersed by multinational corporations in different parts of the globe.  The transformation from international trade exchanges to global industrial implantations have weakened the control of the countries of origin on multinational corporations. Yet, due to the financial muscle of those corporations and their capacity to bankroll and lobby politics, the inverse is not true.

E.18   National interests of "sovereign nation-states" largely coincide with those of "their" multinational corporations, and in case of international conflict national armies try to make their smart bombs avoid “their” multinationals' properties. As for the multinationals’ interests, however, they have ways of skirting economic blockades and economic policies of their country of origin which do not correspond to their interests.  The globalization of finances has further eroded nation-states' control of their own currencies.

The complex of these new developments provides new dimensions for the application of our factors approach; not only to the financial and industrial networks of multinational corporations on the one hand and the emergence of ethnic consciousnesses for autonomy on the other hand, but also to such related phenomena as international trade in arms and drugs, terrorism, and the growing role of non-governmental organizations as substitutes for global public opinion.

Factors and flux perspectives in the context of global human dynamics give the discipline of “international relations” the parameters for the analysis of the intertwining currents beyond the framework of sovereign nation-states and permit us to understand the new emerging patterns of global human dynamics.

 Syllabus proposal for
“International Relations” Course 
LSE, 1993-4 Michaelmas

© A. Khoshkish
New York, September 1992