Author: Juan Martin González Cabañas – 27/11/2020
The latest book by Charles Pennaforte, “Movimentos Antissistêmicos e Relações Internacionais” (Anti-Systemic Movements and International Relations), seeks to draw a panoramic view of the major issues in international relations through the analysis of World-Systems, theoretical approach elaborated among others by Immanuel Wallerstein (1930-2019) and Giovanni Arrighi (1937-2009).
In this work the present actuality of the international system is analyzed since the relative decline of the North-American primacy and the emergence of antisystemic poles led, for example, by China and Russia. The actions carried out by the Trump administration against China on the issue of 5G would reflect one of the signs of the US geopolitical, economic and ideological decline.
Free version of the book available in Portuguese
The work is divided into four chapters:
- Understanding the present world scenario: a theoretical perspective
- The decline of North American primacy
- Anti-systemic movements in the world system
- BRICS: antisystemic action
In the first chapter, “Understanding the present world scenario: a theoretical perspective”, the book presents a historical-theoretical approach based on the contributions of the World-System Analysis to interpret the dynamics in which the capitalism in the World Economy operates under the competitive hegemony of the United States of America (USA).
In the second chapter, “The decline of the North American primacy”, the author initially explores the process of competitive hegemony of USA in relation to the power in descendant, England, in the end nineteenth century, to then bring a deep analysis of the hegemonic decline American from the last two quarters of the 20th century, through a debate direct with the systematized theoretical framework of World-System analysis. This chapter contains the process of North American relative decline based on important facts in the capitalist dynamics, such as: the Ford crisis of the 1970s, the emergence of Post-Fordism as a response to this crisis; the emergence of Asia as an important systemic competitor to since the 1980s; the factors that led to the loss of primacy by the USA and, finally, the economic crisis of 2008, which had as its epicenter Wall Street and continues with its effects structural problems to this day. This economic and ideological weakening framework would facilitate the emergence of “challengers” to the traditional status quo preached by Washington.
In the third chapter, “Anti-systemic movements in the World-System”, the book discusses the notion of counter-hegemonic or anti-systemic movements and illustrates their emergence and diffusion since the second half of the 19th century, characterized both by national dynamics, vertically constituted by certain National States and by social dynamics, shaped horizontally by the organized action of different actors, institutions and social movements. The chapter marks a historical retrospective of the emergence of anti-systemic movements based on the emergence of the term created by Immanuel Wallerstein to classify political and social movements in Europe, and their idiosyncrasies that originated in the 19th century, and reached the period of collision in the bipolar world. With the collapse of bipolarity in the early 1990s, such movements underwent constitutional changes since 1999 within the anti-globalization dynamic according to Wallerstein.
In the fourth chapter, “The BRICS: anti-systemic action”, the discussion presents the emerging role of a group of formers semi-peripheral countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) building a timid anti-systemic action against the USA, although still linked and dependent on hegemon, since rivalry actions increasingly arise, mainly due to an active international role on the part of China and Russia in political, economic and international security agendas, as well as a passive institutional crisis of multilateralism as a regime functional to American hegemony.
Movimentos Antissistêmicos e Relações Internacionais
ISBN-13: 978-6586-44031-7 /978-6586-44031-0 (e-Book)
Publisher: Universidade Federal de Pelotas (novembro 2020)
About the author
Charles Pennaforte: PhD in international relations (University of La Plata, Argentina); Professor of International Relations at the Institute of Philosophy, Sociology and Politics (IFISP) of the University of Pelotas (Brazil); Director at the Geopolitics and Mercosur Research Group (GeoMercosul) and the Laboratory of Geopolitics, International Relations and Antisystemic Movements (LabGRIMA); also member of the Centro Studi Strategici Carlo de Cristoforis (CESTUDEC).
Book Review by Juan Martin Gonzalez Cabañas
Juan Martin Gonzalez Cabañas – Analyst at Vision & Global Trends. International Institute for Global Analyses
Other articles by Juan Martin González Cabañas published in Vision & Global Trends. International Institute for Global Analyses’ website:
- Vision & Global Trends presence at Latin American conference
- The world order after the US elections
- SAOCOM 1B: Italy and Argentina partners in outer space
- The slow decline of Catholicism in Latin America
- Latin America – Russia: An Agenda for Constructive Cooperation in the Post-COVID-19 Era
- Synthesis and analysis of the IEES Panorama of geopolitical trends Horizon 2040
- International Relations: a Critical Theory from the South American periphery
- Argentina in the Multipolar Order
- The War for the Web
- Old roads and new paradigms: on the last BRI Summit
- The second return of Marco Polo to Italy
- Huawei case: high tech war, strategic competition, geopolitical tension
- The South American and Venezuelan Uncertain Horizon