Historia relaciones internacionales

Pontificia Universidad Javeriana
Ciencias Económicas y Administrativas
International Relations – Mauricio Bayona
May 21st 2010

1a.Which structure do you think reveals more the actual international system? , is there a balance of power established in the international system?, if so, which are the main powers that exert this hegemonic stability, or which is the core and which the peripheryand based in which sources of power.

During the 30s the realism was the structure that ruled in the world seeing it in terms of history when the state was saw as a supreme entity of valuable relevance, then after the second war the structuralism with economic powers was imposed on the system but today structuralism is less popular than post-structuralism because structuralism is still based inthe old state, nevertheless, structuralism is still the structure that the world is following, the world is entering in a new era maybe just based on words where the old ideas are coming out of the system, structuralism rejects the circular system where poor countries remain poor and the gap with the devel oped countries becomes larger, As a result of this, structuralism argues that developedcountries should become active states, with economic policies that boost industrialization, to reach a situation of self-development, it is supposed to be happening now with the agreements between big and small countries but I think this is a thing of power, this should be reviewed from other viewpoints not only structural

1b.Do you think this will be an stable system or are we in a transitionalperiod towards other structure?. Define, the system, the states or countries that are part of this system and the sources of stability or unstability. As well, if the which international organization if existing is one or the ones that define this rule of law.

As I said before there’s a transition between structuralism and post structuralism because the big forces are falling and loosing theirpower, we can see this every day in the news, the idea of post-structuralism is to identify and question the

hierarchies implicit in the identification of binary oppositions that characterize not only to structuralism but Western behavior in general, for example the case of US and the two big blocks during and after the second world war.

The post-structuralism wants to reform that oldstructure and this is evident in the process of countries like China, or looking a smaller scale in South America as Brazil but it is unavoidable keep talking in terms of interdependence of states, This is an ideological position based on economic groups and social classes that control the institutions and represent the political hegemony of the internationalization of capital, that’s how the systemstill works.

2a.In United States – Latin American Relations, do you think the dependency theory exemplifies in the right way the new structure of all relationships. Or is it a more interdependent complex relation that includes mixed factors that go beyond frontiers and influence in the national security of both nations?

The power of the United States is evaluated in terms of its capabilitiesrelative to the capabilities of other states, in this case, between US and Latin America where almost all countries are underdeveloped, that power is viewed as the capacity to influence the behavior of others in accordance with one’s own ends, if one understands power as being equivalent to capabilities, one looks for some way to measure military, economic, and other component elements, so in thecase of Colombia for example there’s no interdependence, and US is just behind with a hegemonic power caused by anti-imperialist forces such as Venezuela with Chavez in charge stopping the order of the system that harms the North American power, that’s why they “help” us.

2b. in the colonial period power relations were based on resources for this power and Latin America had many of these...