On The Legitimacy Of The Post-cold War International System Since The Foundation

When we look into the history of international relations, there are so many wars and conflicts so that people in the world suffered a lot thousands of years. Countless of politicians and political scientists have studied how to solve the problem: How to keep the human being away from the war and enjoy peace. Because of the anarchy state, the conflicts among the nations are apparent. Although conflicts exist, the intercourse of the nations unite the world after all. The enough intercourse and contact is the premise of a international system. How to make the international systems more stable ? We must control conflicts to maintain the community of mankind. How to control? Power. In world history, we can see all international systems are founded by power. For example: Vienna system, Washington system. There are two kinds of power: legal power and forced power, so the international system based on the forced power is to collapse in the end. And the dominant branch must build the international system upon the legal power to remain it stable.The thesis make the core concept "Legitimacy" as the cutting in point, try to have a thorough discussion on the existence , development and evolution of the international systems since the Cold War. On this foundation ,it will investigate the basic factors which make a international system stable. The thesis is divided into three parts:The first part is about the Power of a international system and it's Legitimacy foundation. The international system is a collectivity where independent international political units or action body have mutual contact and influence according to certain rules. And the most important character is it reflects international rule order based on the pattern of Power distribution. Now the nations don't like to use or show off its force to display its Power. In fact they try to gain legal Power in the world. Talking about Legitimacy, Jurgeh Habermas conbined the concept with criterion andexperienced creed, emphasized a kind of support and loyalty according with value criterion. To gain legal Power relation must have some basements in the international politics . The dominant nations in the international system( big nations)must make their Power follow certain rules if they want to gain legal Power relations. Further more, they should make the world accept these rules-"legal rules.The second part is about the international system in the Cold War. We must study it excessively because it is a very special system. It is the first peaceful system transition in the human history. The crises of Legitimacy rules (idea identify, process identify, validity identify) in the eastern group are very serious, so in a short time, the system collapsed from inside. While the western group adopted innovation so it formed and strengthened the rules of Legitimacy. And it escaped the failure of collapse.The third part is about the contemporary international system. Now US is the only super power in the world. It has the power to be the hegemony branch and it has been working hard to maintain its status. Though it attach importance to force and military strength like other hegemony powers, it push new stratagem differ from them. US try to build the international system under his lead based on the three rules of Legitimacy. In fact it want to push monopolar hegemony stratagem, and his Legitimacy has big crisis. Where will the international system go ? Its answer has a big influence on the people in the world. No matter what is the form and what is the fate, I think the leading branch should build the new century international system based on the rules of Legitimacy.