Russification

Russification

World politics is in continual change. Modernity had the nation-state as the forerunning actor of international politics. By globalization and post-modernization, we saw international companies, nongovernmental organizations and ironically, terrorist groups becoming new role players in the “Great Chess Game.” These new players can be grouped as centrifugal forces. They are “anti” everything that made the 20th century what it was. They are anti-systemic. They overrun the borders of nation-states, challenge national sovereignties, fight against quotas, customs, taxes and all other forms of legal structures that are a “centralizing power” in the hands of nation-states (Pyoli, 1998).

Centripetal forces, on the other hand, are systemic solutions produced by central powers against the uncontrollability and unpredictability of human nature. Nation states, kingdoms, political parties, armies, bureaucracies, international bodies, the United Nations and the European Union are all examples of centripetal forces. The 19th and 20th centuries experienced conflicting centripetal forces struggling to create and control the center. Colonization, the breaking apart of empires, the creation of a bipolar and lately unipolar world system, the UN, the World Bank and the IMF were all projections of this struggle (Pyoli, 1998). The 21st century is already showing strong signs of a fight between centripetal and centrifugal forces: nation-states fighting against terrorist organizations; international companies signing agreements with heads of nation-states; media empires creating their own ideologies; Hollywood engaging in politics.

The irony in this equilibrium of centripetal and centrifugal forces is that the “pole of power,” the guardian of the unipolar world system, actually corresponds to centrifugal tendencies. Thus said Russian President Vladimir V. Putin on Saturday, accusing the United States of provoking a new nuclear arms race by developing ballistic missile defenses, undermining international institutions, making the Middle East more unstable through its clumsy handling of the Iraq war and trying to divide modern ...