welcome back everyone to a-level politics we're continuing looking at global politics in this video focusing on the impact of specifically political global globalization so we're going to be focusing on both the actual impacts that we can describe using a number of different examples from the last few years and then we'll talk about the limits of political globalization to what extent has it not been as impactful as we might think or first suggest now this is going to carry on and pick up where we left off from the last lesson which we did on the impact and the limitations of economic globalization so we looked at the impact of economic globalization now we're looking at the impact of political globalization so as we know already political globalization has challenged the nature of sovereignty and a number of core concepts that relate to the nature of the nation-state we know that the traditional understanding of the nation state places the concept of the state at the center of the regulation within international law and with international relations when we think about international law even today even though we have seen um the growth the ever-growing uh creation of new international institutions regardless even today international law is still a very state-centric um body of work a body of authority and while the nation-state still remains the central figure within international law we have to reconcile the fact that there are now growing numbers of international organizations such as for example the um and that they have all had an increasing role to play as globalization has taken shape and as political globalization specifically has taken shape within geopolitics now there is a lot of influence that can be exerted by organizations such as i've named three here but there are plenty of others that we can think about so we have the united nations which is actually the united nations is responsible for the creation of other sub uh so other sub-institutions or other organizations but you also have institutions such as the world trade organization as well as from the perspective of criminal justice the international criminal court now since 2005 increasingly it has been the case that united nations has um made the claim that sovereignty of the nation state is actually conditional on the ensuring that that state does not commit human rights abuses and this is really where we can begin when we talk about the impact of political globalization because we can take a very specific area of political globalization that is the the the international aspects of mass human rights abuses and we can think about the extent to which there is actually political sovereignty and international sovereignty for the nation state when they commit mass human rights abuses and we can see with various examples that this quote here from the united nations responsibility to protect is actually relatively true or it is at least valid in some in some instances for example we have the nato bombings of kosovo in 1999 in response to the growing impetus of the people being threatened with the concept of ethnic cleansing this says something similar that happened in albania and all of this sort of forms part of the pretenses of a very long and very complicated history uh in the region when it comes to the yugoslav wars the collapse of the yugoslavia uh the the the civil wars that takes place within bosnia herzegovina and other countries as well like montenegro and kosovo as an example and the and the obvious uh mass human rights abuses that takes place in international crimes that are committed in that period as well which we'll talk about in a second but arguably um as a way to prevent the serb forces from committing any more acts of ethnic cleansing in kosovo nato intervened with a series of bombing campaigns in 1999. now generally speaking the consensus that we have on this particular incident is that within international law the nato bombings were actually illegal they did not have a u.n mandate and it was not acting in self-defense on the part of nato but it was still nevertheless morally justified in the sense that they could have or potentially prevented the loss of of thousands of lives and the uh displacement of millions of people so there's sort of a dichotomy here between the actual legal implications on the international law and the use of force with the actual moral implications of intervening in a situation that was clearly something that was going to devolve into really problematic instances of mass human rights abuses so you can really see the dichotomy there with the nato bombings of kosovo and it's a very good case study to talk about also within this region we have the u.n security council establishing the international criminal tribunal for the former yugoslavia the icty now what the icty did was um try anybody who was found to be charged with war crimes crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide uh within the bosnian conflicts in the civil war and the yugoslav wars that devolved into that the same thing happened a few years later with the international criminal tribunal for rwanda the ictr again this was in response to the civil war in rwanda and the subsequent genocide that took place there so we can see that even though the nation-state and nation-state sovereignty is something that is supposedly central and key to the to the general corpus of international law when it comes to the committing of mass international human rights abuses such as genocide or crimes against humanity or war crimes you can see here that the international community does seem to intervene in certain regards with the u.n security council establishing these what they call ad hoc tribunals we can also see a number of examples of regional institutions having increasing authority as well so for example the european union has an increasing amount of authority in the political processes that take place within europe and the um the general justification for this is for there to be economic union and for there to be economic union across europe there ought to also have to be a certain amount of political union as well and so the european union has developed an increasingly large body of case law an increasingly large body of legislation and law itself that has been able to regulate a number of different aspects of economics and politics at the european level at what we call the supranational level so this includes things like the single market the european single market which regulates the free movement of goods people services establishment and capital we also have things like competition law that is regulated at the eu level the way in which the eu is related to other third parties external parties in terms of eu external relations is very interesting so the european union is an increasingly um authoritative institution similarly within asia you have the association of south east asian nations or ancient or asean and again asean is beginning to take shape in such a way as to begin to be quite reminiscent of that of the european union and we'll see because some of these uh you'll know institutions are actually relatively new you will see that their their growth and development within international law is something that is going to take place over the next few decades a little bit more uh from a a much smaller perspective and one that is not necessarily in force at the moment because there is a lot of complications regarding a uh the the creation and the uh the re-establishment of nafta in america but you do have the north atlantic free trade agreement because the north atlantic free trade agreement despite the fact it was simply a multilateral trade agreement it did regulate a number of different things and it did establish a number of principles in regards to the conference of disputes to an arbitration for example as well as the regulation of both trade and investment regulation too so nafta is quite an interesting one that you can examine not necessarily a regional institution as in having its own legislature or anything like that but you can see that a number of different things were taken out of the hands of the sovereign nation state and placed into the hands of the the the the the the the group as a whole if you will you then also have a very new institution or at least a a very quickly developing institution this being the african union again trying to be reminiscent of the european union we have the union of african states as well so those were examples of how we can say that institutions and global institutions have had an impact on the process of political globalization what about non-governmental institutions what about organizations that are global in nature that also have an impact on political globalization well there are a number of different examples that we can use because the fact is that a non-government institution is quite a broad concept so for example leaders of large multinational corporations such as jeff bezos and elon musk have very large impacts on the political processes you only have to look at the kind of things that elon musk tweets about on online that we see the kind of impact that he has not only on the political process but also on on financial markets more broadly and then when we talk about globe institutions and organizations more more specifically we can talk about things like human rights watch you talk about greenpeace to an extent you have the international committee for the red cross and red crescent which you could really place into any category you could place it into an organization or you could argue that it is an international institution to a certain extent i would place it more within an organization so therefore in this category rather than the latter category however you could still make a claim with that with regards to the icrc they all have the ability to influence political processes in certain regions and also to push their own political messages and their own political agendas that they want to push in certain regions of the world so those were examples of the impacts of political globalization but what about instances where there we have seen political globalization being quite limited to what extent can nation states exert political of influence over international organizations and in that regard to what extent is the nation-state still a formidable force within geopolitics well there are ways in which we can examine this for example we can talk about the fact that the principal judicial organ of the united nations the international court of justice not having any uh valid or any legal enforcement mechanisms so for example if we look in a domestic court for example we look at like a magistrates court in the uk or in england and wales if you are found guilty of a crime for example the enforcement is done by the state you're in for you will then be sent to prison or you'll be given a fine or whatever it is that you've done if a country has been found to have been in violation of international law in one way or another by the international court of justice there is no enforcement mechanism there's no remedy that can be enforced by the international court of justice the international court of justice relies on the good will of nation-states to accept the terms and policies of that particular institution and for the most part this generally takes place there is generally a quite a high level of respect for international law uh globally but there have been instances where there have been countries that have rejected the rulings of the international court of justice because it didn't go their way so for example there was a case of the united states and iran quite recently that if you want to examine that you can research that one further but the fact remains that because they have no enforcement mechanisms these kinds of things are possible it's possible for a country to just reject any kind of ruling by the icj and so when we talk about um other instances of the limits on political globalization we can talk about the challenges that have been presented by countries like the united states like china and like israel over the jurisdiction of the international criminal court so the international criminal court if you remember from a previous video has jurisdiction in two main regards technically three main regards but we'll talk about the third one in a second so in in one regard it has jurisdiction over crimes that have taken place in the region in which the crime has taken place so for example if the crime has taken place in the united kingdom and because the united kingdom is a member of the icc then the icc would have jurisdiction in that regard it will also have jurisdiction when it comes to people from that country committing crimes in other jurisdictions so they're the two main kinds of jurisdiction and then the final kind of jurisdiction is that you can we can see the uh deference of a case to the international criminal court if they pass a u.n security council resolution so for example if there's a country that has committed genocide or something or although there's been war crimes committed and that country is not a part of the international criminal court then the international community even though there's no jurisdiction technically at that point but the international community community could pass a u.n security council resolution to defer the icc prosecutor to that particular incident and so therefore would have jurisdiction um and we have seen in this sense that the united states and israel have challenged the jurisdiction of the international criminal court the united states challenged it with regard to investigations into war crimes committed by u.s soldiers in afghanistan the u.s is not a part of the icc afghanistan is therefore the international criminal court has jurisdiction over us over u.s troops committing crimes in afghanistan that's how it works similarly with israel there is uh the challenge that was presented when it came to crimes that were alleged to have taken place in 2014 with a number of flare-ups between israel and palestine now the general rule that was uh had was uh that israel argued that palestine is not a state and so therefore it cannot have uh it cannot be a member of the international criminal court the international criminal court disagreed they said that um while they are not making a determination of statehood for palestine for the purposes of the international criminal court it is a state and it can be part of the jurisdiction of the icc so you have a challenge there in israel there's also challenges that will i believe continue to be levied when it comes to the ongoing conflict in russia or sorry in ukraine by the russian federation ukraine is not a formal member of the icc but it has deferred jurisdiction it has consented to having jurisdiction ever since the um illegal annexation of crimea in 2014 so therefore the icc does have jurisdiction over war crimes committed by russian soldiers in the country of ukraine and i can imagine and you should probably follow the news as this carries on that as this unfolds as this uh conflict unfolds and this case unfolds the russian federation will be increasingly becoming more and more hostile to the icc when examining regional institutions such as the european union we can see limits of political globalization here as well with a rise of nationalism within the european union as well as euro skepticism in 2016 the uk voted to leave the european union and we have since done so with 2020 and then leaving the single market in 2021. similar ideas have been presented in italy and most notably in poland and hungary along with more and more nationalist and far-right ideas in fact in poland and hungary multiple states have also challenged the legitimacy of another european institution that being the council of europe and the subsequent european convention on human rights so you should remember that the council of europe is different to the european union so for those studying global politics a level in the uk we are not a member of the european union we are still a member of the council of europe um for now uh touchwood we'll see how we'll see how the next few years go but we still are a member of the council of europe and therefore the european convention on human rights there have been conversations in the uk about leaving we've also seen russia the russian federation leave the council of europe and the echr firstly being suspended from voting from the council of europe in 2014 with their illegal annexation of crimea and then the full invasion of ukraine in 2022 got them kicked out essentially they were kicked out the council of europe for the gross human rights violations and violations of the chr we also saw that in the i believe the 1960s or 1970s greece momentarily left the echr and the council of europe but then rejoined so if you want a bit more information about that then that's there as well so overall we can see that there is quite a lot we can talk about for the impact of political globalization now we're going to continue talking about the impact of globalization but not necessarily the broad types of globalization but mainly the impact of globalization on specific international issues so for example armed conflict human rights protection of the environment and i believe there's one more as well that we'll do as well so all of these things are to come in the next few weeks