On the Future of the International System

The author attempts to present an image of a likely development of the international system in the rest of this century. This is not a prediction in the same sense as in the natural sciences since trends existing today obviously may be counteracted. But the effort is made to see where the trends in the world today are most likely, according to the author, to lead the world. Some possible political initiatives that may arise to reinforce or stop some of these trends are also indicated. For this purpose a distinction is made between a society, which is held to be a self-sufficient unit that would remain essentially the same if the rest of the world were removed, and a nation-state which is a political unit based on geographical continuity. Four types of societies are distinguished: the primitive, traditional, modern, and neo-modern societies, differing in level of agricultural productivity and percentage of population working in the tertiary sector. The world is then divided into nation-states too small for the societies, and nation-states too big for the societies within them: a distinction similar to the distinction between developed and developing countries. The author predicts that the first type of nation will penetrate so deeply into each other that the nation-states will wither away and that national loyalty will be more and more superseded with sub-, cross-, trans- and supra-national identities. A tightly integrated region from Alaska to Japan is envisaged. For the second type of societies growing nationalism is predicted as the primitive and social segments become increasingly modern and coincide in size with the nation-state.For the relation between the two types of societies it is predicted that the neomodern nations will try to take them one at a time, and that this will be so much resented that the poorer nations will unite to form increasingly effective trade-unions of poor nations. Further, they will bargain with the rich nations for better prices for their commodities treatening with delivery strikes, and also bargain for welfare world policies with taxation of nations and redistribution. If this does not succeed, the possibility of major wars is seen as very likely.