Role Of Superpowers Research Articles

Teaching history in a global age

Researchers in the teaching of modern global history generally focus on historical issues that have reshaped our world, including decolonization, social democracies, revolutions, terrorism, religions, competition in labour markets and the role of superpowers. This article attempts to explore global study through which young people may understand both the outside world and themselves. The aim is to reframe the way in which history is taught in schools, seeing it as part of the whole curriculum that makes a contribution to both the values of personal development and to citizenship with a focus on the world's history. History needs to develop a political intelligence through teaching global history. Based upon the paper's theoretical framework, curriculum developers can create global history syllabuses and pedagogies.

European Security: New, Old and Borrowed

A conceptual distinction is made between the Cold War and the Cold War system. The former lasted from 1946-47 until about 1963, when the political freeze of East-West relations began to melt. However, the structural features of the system remained until 1989: the role of superpowers and politico-military blocs, the high peacetime level of military confrontation in Central Europe. This Cold War system was based on perceiving the risk of a major European war as both a problem (conflict escalation) and a solution (deterrence). However, over the years the dominant role of the superpowers and the alliances contributed to the management of tension reduction, and provided a framework for organizing negotiations. The system itself contributed to its own disappearance. Today, the organizational framework created during the years of the Cold War system plays a central role in managing the transformation towards increasing security dependence. Eventually, a comprehensive European security regime may emerge. Preparations for such a combined political and security order would seem to include developments on three dimensions: all-European security, military cooperation and politico-economic integration. Rather than systemic stability, the immediate objective should be predictability of change. In this situation, developing formal organizations is of secondary importance. What is urgent is to create a network of institutionalized rules for internal and international state behaviour.

The Interaction of Regional Subsystems: Some Preliminary Notes on Recurrent Patterns and the Role of Superpowers

Agap seems to exist between present theory of international regional integration and political reality. The theory explains, generalizes about, or predicts regional integration almost exclusively on the basis of processes and factors internal to the region under consideration. When theory considers phenomena outside the region, they usually appear as residual categories which are left insufficiently examined and about which we know little. Moreover, theory has remained relatively silent about the role of the superpowers.