Читать книгу Globalization - George Ritzer - Страница 42

While heavily influenced by economic globalization, political globalization cannot be reduced to economics alone. For example, US wars against Iraq in 1991 and 2003 certainly had an economic motivation (for example, protecting the supply of Middle East oil, perhaps even gaining more control over Iraq’s oil), but there were many other factors (misguided fears of “weapons of mass destruction” and of al-Qaeda in Iraq, demonization of Islam, and so on).

Those who study political globalization tend to think in terms of international relations. However, the key contribution of globalization studies in this domain is to encompass, but look beyond, international relations to other kinds of political relations that exist at a global level (So 2012). Examples include those involving global organizations, especially the United Nations (UN), relations between regions and cities that bypass the nation-states in which they exist, and more specific phenomena such as terrorist organizations (e.g. al-Qaeda and ISIS) that are not based in, or associated with, any particular nation-state; they are “state-less.” Indeed, statelessness and the increasing problems associated with it (e.g. in the tribal territories of Pakistan, Syria, in several countries in Africa [e.g. Somalia, Congo] which seem to have a government in name only) are of increasing global interest and concern.