After taking a class of International Relations Theory in College, this video puts a smile on my face. I love hearing one my favorite fictional universes analyzed through challenging political theories. Subscribed!
I'd be interested to see an expanded video on the politics of the MMO, but I recognise there's a thousand and 1 reasons why it'd be a tough nut to crack. Either way, fantastic video. Such a concise and effective explanation of the topic. Definitely hope to see more like it.
Just the amount of information in codex entries is massive. And that’s not even including all the little items scattered around tables that you can hover your mouse over that tells you things but that don’t get saved into the chat log anywhere. Or all the dialogue. Or the branching paths. If anyone is able to do it then I salute them and the sacrifice they had to go through. And this is from someone who enjoys the game lol
So in Star Wars, effectively only one major power rules the galaxy and any given moment, and most bipolar relationships, Sith-Old Republic Cold War and post 2GCW era, are more like blips in the timeline. For the 2GCW, I think a major reason why multipolarity occurs is resources are finally broken off effectively. For most of history, the Core is mostly united or at least supportive of the main Core power. The Corellian Confederation changed that, splitting the Core. Also the Imperial Remnant/Fel Empire has been trying to make their area of space more powerful, and using EotH tech definitely helped out there as well. Also, the Jedi aren't tied to the GA either. The Old Republic, Republic post Ruusan, New Republic somewhat in the early days at least and the Empire all relied on the Jedi to help make them seem legitimate. The Empire was by saying they turned evil and tried to destroy them, and the New Republic seems to kind of parade Luke around as a Jedi supporting them to gain more support. The Jedi made peace in the 2GCW and established the Corellian Confederation as separate from the GA. The idea that the heroes of the galaxy no longer view the holder of Coruscant as the legitimate unipolar power, might've made people more ambitious in their power grabbing and building as well.
I love these sorts of videos! I wish there had been more novels that focused on the New Republic balancing its relations in a multi-polar order while the Warlords were at their zenith. We rarely see the New Republic focused on more than 1 major threat at a time; it is usually the villain of the week faction being presented as the biggest power at that time to threaten the NR, with little to no mention of the other major factions that co-exist in that time period. I suppose the closest you ever get to that is the unofficial cooperation between the NR and the Empire against Zsinj when Admiral Teren Rogriss and the Hapans both contribute to the destruction of the Iron Fist. I wish we got to see more events like that; it adds a lot more depth to the universe.
I think one could make the argument that the unipolar system being so ingrained into society being related to the Force and light/dark side. Like, because of the influence of the Force, society evolves a certain way. That's also my head canon for why there are so many humanoid species - because the Force guided it.
I've always found the Confederation to be one of the most fascinating parts of the EU because they're set up to be a CIS type government from the outside, but at it's core the Confed is full of usually pretty strict New or Old Republic loyalists like Bothan Space, Commenor, Fondor, Bespin, Corellia, Bimmisaari, and Rothana. Aside from the CSA and the Hutts joining them the most interesting member of the Confederation are Eriadu, Adumar, and Jabiim. Because of their Tarkin fanboyism and the Eriadu Authority I know a lot of people assume they are Imperial loyalists, but no they join the galactic power that wants looser, less strict, and overall decentralized government. Jabiim is notable to me because they were originally big CIS supporters who thought the Republic didn't care about them. A fact that I always found interesting is that the CIS aligned Nationalists embraced the Empire while the Republic Loyalists ended up trying to fight for independence. The Rebels tried to get them to join and while we don't know how they fared under the New Republic; they are once again supporting the decentralized government again. Adumar was courted by the New Republic and Imperial Remnant (before joining the NR) and helped the Galactic Alliance fight the Vong, but now they're supporting the Confederation.
Starfighters of Adumaar is a super interesting book because as far as I know it’s the only story that involves multiple nation states on a single planet
the astropolitics between the core and the northern sectors have always fascinated me. It's like every time a big part of the galaxy breaks from the core, the northern parts are a central player of the breakaway. perhaps because it was one of the later colonised areas (not counting the far southern sectors)? maybe a coincidence, since most of these breakaways were sith-influenced and korriban was in the neighbourhood? maybe it's something in the space-water...
9:20 the Legacy comics ruined the possibility of exploring the multipolar order and instead gave us another old overused Sith takeover and resulting rebellion (and the sequels would do it again for the gigallionth time). I'm pretty convinced they will do the same in any future content because thus far the new canon hasn't given us anything geopolitically interesting except in very limited form. For the new Jedi Order movies they probably will give us another story of good guys vs bad guys or quite possibly will not even focus much or at all on states and politics in general
Awesome video! I never really considered how strange it is that the galaxy throughout history seems to be almost exclusively unipolar, often rapidly ricocheting to a new (or more often, old) unipolar system as soon as the current one falls. It's definitely a shame we never got the stories of how I founded the Imperial Knights, what the hard-won multipolar system looked like, and how it all went wrong yet again and the galaxy returned to that familiar state. Here's hoping they take this direction for the canon New Jedi Order film(s) with Rey and Finn, and we all get to see something essentially brand new to SW, full of compelling story possibilities💜
Loved this video! Would love to see your take on a Star Wars lens for Waltz's "Man, the State, and War" on the reasons for war. I imagine the force as an operative of narrative pressures ends up being the crucial decider if that book was written in a galaxy far, far away.
A true multipolar system post-TROS with an independent jedi order trying to operate in all without being subject to any would make for some awesome stories
The longer Bi-Polar (Or sorta IMPLIED Multi-Polar since there are mentions of "Third Parties" who enforced the Treaty of Coruscant Cold War by threatening to jump in on whoever broke it, but in the end never really did step in) period would be SWTOR's wars. Or the New Sith Wars though the opposite pole of the Republic in that era wasn't always the same batch of Sith in the same place, and there did seem to be more Multipolar powers like a Mandalorian Resurgence.
I always enjoy these more serious explorations of the implications behind the events that happen within these stories. I also hope that there is some deeper exploration of galactic governance in the new Rey movies, I would hate for there to just be a New New Republic without explanation.
There is an interesting and probably unintentional parallel between the trend towards centralism in the GFFA and dynastic China. Once the effort was made to standardize language and systems were made, the infrastructure built, and the ruling myth of the Mandate of Heaven accepted, the disparate regions and peoples of that part of the world had a template of what a government should look like to achieve maximal power and control, if not efficiency, and all subsequent rulers would try to reach that style of governance and scope of influence again.
Was just making the same comparison. The irony is that the Old Republic/Empire are clearly inspired by Rome, and yet Rome was the only state to ever centralize power over that region, it was not unified before or after. The EU authors in creating a constant succession of unipolar powers before and after the Old Republic turned it from Rome to China through their lack of creativity.
@@kennethferland5579 I wanted to throw in a bit about how Star Wars writers since the start of the EU after RotJ were living in the unipole during the so-called "end of history" era and how that demographic would have a strong bias towards a particular perspective of international politics and therefore the content that they wrote. Slap on the usual "fiction writers have no sense of scale" and that just about explains the entirety of GFFA history. BUT Corey specifically torpedoed meta-explanations for it so I decided against including it in the post.
I've usually assumed that the proliferation of unipolar powers in star wars is just that for the vast majority of worlds who their government pays taxes to doesn't really matter all that much. As a result as long as the power in question isn't antagonistic to them they are more likely to just shrug and go about their business as usual. Only wealthy worlds that have significant off world interests would be interested in who is running the show and because so many of the core worlds, despite their unique cultures, more or less agree about the same issues any power that takes the core just becomes the superpower.
Speaking of neo cons and foreign policy. I remember a wonderful scene in Oliver Stones ( W ) Bush movie. Richard dreyfuss , as duck Cheney, breaking down the Middle East / Afghanistan. Issues and plan. Incredible 5 or 10 minutes scene. In the situation room .
Interestingly this analysis of politics of star wars mirrors Chinese history. For most of the thousands of years long history of China since the victory of the Qin and the establishment of Imperial Rule in 221 BC there has been one dynasty that is the undisputed monopole of power in the region and during the time where there were multiple polities they acted with the goal of consolidating power to become the hegemon again.
At some point between 45ABY and 127ABY it becomes Bipolar. The Galactic Alliance, the Galactic Empire, then a handful of smaller powers that either ally with one or the other, or try to remain neutral. And on the side the Jedi Order and the Lost Tribe Sith and One Sith Order.
Hey do you read Bounding Power by Daniel Deudney? He theorize Republic as "Negarchy", a system between the extremes of Hierarchy and Anarchy. Interesting book, I recommend. Good theory to apply on Star Wars politics.
The cancellation of The Sword of the Jedi trilogy- and the EU as a whole- is, for me, the single worst atrocity committed by Disney during their ownership of Star Wars.
OG trilogy fanboys criticism of sequels be like: "It's all just light saber duels and space battles! It's just made for little kids!" and "Why do they talk about politics? This is supposed to be for little kids!"
I'm not particularly well-versed in political theory, so this might be a crock of horseshit, but I feel like the unipolarity is kinda ending? like, the arrangement of the galaxy for the past however many millenia has been "the Core sets itself up as the most important part, and uses that to siphon wealth from the rim", whether through economic disparity in the republic or explicit force in the empire, but both of those modes of extraction suffered major rebellions in a relatively short timespan. It feels like some kind of breaking point where the rim cannot or will not subsidise the core anymore, but what the new political order will be is still amorphous, and the various wars going on are symptoms of that underlying shift. Which is a cool place to make stories from! It's just a shame we didn't get to see them all.
That actually gets close to World Systems Theory which I'll be getting too soon, though it doesn't necessarily mean the end of unipolar power distributions even if it may mean some changes within the state.
0:55 which is pretty self-evident about how much of a narrow lens that is. I can't imagine how sterile and static geopolitics would be if this was the truth of it
If there's one thing in Star Wars that I'm not convinced with, it's the lack of long-lasting and all-powerful shadow governments complete with darker than black, Force sensitive, spec-ops task forces (think an army of Kyle Katarns/Mara Jades/Jaden Korrs, simply put), and I don't mean just Palpatine-ish manipulative bastardry. Also, I don't count the TOR MMO. That game has so many things that should easily define it as a Infinities set of storylines.
If we look at Chinese history, and see China as a micro-cosmos, there's mostly been unipolarity as the default status within China, in the form of various imperial dynasties. Geography forms the basis for unipolarity, or multipolarity. If the Earth just consisted of one giant continent, and humans or some other intelligent species evolved, it's likely we would have seen one singular land power emerge.
Maybe just maybe if we make enough fuss they might do these three books as a one off continuation like they did with the anniversary marvel comic or that one about the stupid green rabbit
I have been reading an interesting book on the history of Christianity and it touches heavily on this phenomenon of smaller groups waiting to see which competing potential hegemon would win out. In the 8th century the nascent western church abandoned the weakening Byzantines and sided with the growing Carolingians for exactly this reason.
One of the issues in Star Wars is that the unipolar galactic state is almost always weaker and less in control than it may first appear, and its ability to impose its will over all the territory it claims is also limited. Indeed, it's Palpatine's attempt to reify the theoretical legal control that the Republic held over the systems that leads to this Empire's political downfall. The Galaxy may prefer a unipolar system, but it also prefers a relatively weak unipolar power. My theory is that the Galactic order is a persistently Federalist order that prefers a nominal but weak central authority to discourage local attempts at conquest, but which by the sheer impossibility of managing a bureaucracy that spans a whole galaxy inevitably leads to systems and sectors seeing themselves as functionally sovereign and with a right to govern their own affairs, and attempts to assert total control over the local systems and sectors invariably collapses until it stabilizes in another weak hegemonic power. The only thing that tends to drive this apart is the long running conflict between the Jedi and Sith, where occasionally they can't reform into a single hegemonic power because they have such sharp differences in ideology. The Galaxy as a whole is largely pretty tired of this driving force of conflict and has done it's best over time to defang both religious groups.
I cannot agree on the idea that New Republic ever achieved unipolar status before being dismembered by the Wong invasion. The mere fact that the Empire was allowed to exist is a proof of that. Yes the Empire lost the exclusive status of unipolar status, but a) the new republic either doesn't have the will or resources to finish their ideological rival b) if you are even using example of multipolar system by pointing at pre world war period then you have the British Empire which was the hegemon of the world for a good while. It was possible to challenge it, but it was undoubtedly the major player in international politics until the time of splendid isolationism. While the French, Russians and Germans were playing for the second place. Which much closely resembles the situation between the Wong war and end of Civil War
The answer to a though is "yes, they didn't want to destroy them." They had no ability to challenge the New Republic, which is why *they* were the ones that called for peace when Pellaeon convinced the Moffs they couldn't possibly expect they could ever stand up to the New Republic, which had basically been the case since Shadow Hand but took them a few years to accept. And then there were 8 years before the YVW. The Empire at that point was nowhere near comparable to the other imperial powers relative to the British.
Star Wars Episode X: the Last Skywalker The Galaxy has died, and it is the end of history. All living things have become Force ghosts that follow around the last descendant of the Skywalkers. Driven to insanity, he seeks another power that can challenge the comfort of his solitary rule, rather than to face his ultimate unipolar destiny.
In writing my own story, I was unintentionally setting up a post Galactic Civil War with a multipolar system. The NR, the Imperial Remnant, and the Triumvirate (my own original idea). Maybe a fourth or fifth depending on how I chose to go.
I am doing something similar. I think a good fourth government would be a revived Confederacy of Independent Systems that tries to restore the original ideals of the Separatists before they strayed from them during the Clone Wars. Maybe call it like the United Confederacy or the Confederate Union, or the Separatist Federation. Idk something like that
i think the star wars galaxy is in some ways comparable to china and its history. For most of chinas history it has been a single state excepts for civil war periods which could last quite long or be split for extendet periods of time while all parties still see themselves as rightfull rulers of all of china. both taiwan and the peoples republic of china see themselves as rightfull sucessor to the previous republic which is the succesor to the last chinese empire.
Krauts video on realism is so good, imagine formulating international theory for decades only for it to be thrown out the window by fundamentalist islam
I really wish more people were more familiar with this interview Lucas did in 1999 for the New York Times titled, "George Lucas: 'I'm a Cynic Who Has Hope for the Human Race'". I feel like we'd all have a better understanding of why Star Wars always seems to feature despots and, as this political theory calls it, often has unipolarity (though I generally refer to it as hierarchy as I follow an anarchist lens of international politics). George Lucas is (or at least was) a big fan of despotism. I'll just quote a bit of it here: "The United States, especially the media, is eating its own tail. The media has a way of leveling everything in its path, which is not good for a society. There's no respect for the office of the Presidency. Not that we need a king, but there's a reason why kings built large palaces, sat on thrones and wore rubies all over. There's a whole social need for that, not to oppress the masses, but to impress the masses and make them proud and allow them to feel good about their culture, their government and their ruler so that they are left feeling that a ruler has the right to rule over them, so that they feel good rather than disgusted about being ruled. In the past, the media basically worked for the state and was there to build the culture. Now, obviously, in some cases it got used in a wrong way and you ended up with the whole balance of power out of whack. But there's probably no better form of government than a good despot." He then goes on to talk about trying to be the despot at his studio, the infallible leader who nobody must speak ill of (tear down) being core to his idea of ruling. The man basically admits to controlling his public image as much as he could. So I have a hard time seeing interviews where he is going on about the rebellious plot in the films as his genuine opinions and not just him appealing to the masses and giving them what they want to hear.
"SCHELL. But let's say you have a leader who's only pretty good and does some shady things. Do you think that the media should be more discreet about investigating and looking into what he is doing? Basically, do you think certain things should be off limits in order to maintain the heroism of a leader? LUCAS. Yeah, I do. I think that the media should look at the situation in the larger sense -- at what is necessary for the culture as a whole rather than exposing and tearing everything down all the time. That will not bode well for people's confidence in the institution. After all, a society only works on faith. If you lose that faith, then your society will crumble and it will be hard to get a consensus on anything. SCHELL. But isn't that a slippery slope, one that quickly leads to what we have seen in countries like the Soviet Union and China, where in the name of positive role models it becomes unacceptable to criticize the leaders or the country? LUCAS. That's sort of why I say a benevolent despot is the ideal ruler. He can actually get things done. The idea that power corrupts is very true and it's a big human who can get past that." For some more from the interview.
Sometimes I think the Rebels should have held off on destroying the Death Star. Reason being that, if it existed long enough, Tarkin probably would have used it on Nal Hutta
The in universe justification for the repetetive uni-polar nature of the SW galaxy is the centrality of Corrusant and the hyperlane network and the lack of any defensible barriers in the galaxy. Much like Rome to the Roman empire Corrusant is the nerve center of everything, what ever authority controls it will be made dominant by that fact alone. In contrast on Earth multi-polarity has always been the result of geophysical partitioning, as in pre WW1 Europe where defensible barriers like mountains and oceans seperated England, France, Italy, Spain etc. Or the modern world in which continental landmasses largely dilineate the superpowers (Imagine if US and Soviets had a land border, no way would the cold war have remained cold). A real world area which resembles StarWars is China, which has long periods of unipolar stability punctuated by brief warring states periods which war amoungst themselves for primacy. Beijing emerging as the center of administration over many cycles to the point that no other capitol is concivable. China's core area is remarkably free of geographic barriers and thus makes it easy for a growing power to keep growing until it is a hegemon.
The problem is , that the Republic is not a state, but a federal supra-national state. It is more like a state UN, it is essentially a sci-fi staple but Lucas did not care much for in depth lore building for the audience, he knew that as soon as it is mentioned in the movies that its "Rebels to restore the Republic" and "Empire" , that the audience should immediately see the parallel beatween the USA vs the Soviet Union. The passage from Clone Wars to empire , is Lucas saying the Cold War and Nixons and Kissingers policies will inevitably lead to the USA as newfound superpower will lead it into an authoritarian empire. This was always on Lucas mind and he never hid that Star Wars was influenced by the Nixon years and the Vietnam war, and because everyone assumed that the "evil empire" was the Soviet Union (in Lucas mind however it was CIS of star wars) he made the prequels to show that a republic can be easily corrupted and be transformed into empires. In history you have for example is Rome with Caesar , the French Revolution leading to Napoleon, Athens with Alciabes and the Pelloponisian war. Republics that function as oligarchies for the moneyd elites tend to become imperialist states. This is why there is no multipolarism in Star Wars, it reflects the political anxieties of his time in a child like Flash Gordon manner. This is a very conscious choice by Lucas, NOT to make Star Wars like Star Trek which does have the intergalctic politics and diplomacy you mentioned. However many think Lucas politics are simplistic, which is not the case, Lucas thinks that revolutionaries and a small cadre of democrats should act and take hostile action against such monolithic systems. Its a very American idea, that reflects the ideals of the American Revolution. So its not random that Jedi= Democracy, Sith = authoritarian anarchy.
Nice video! But I disagree somewhat with your analysis. Prior to "Attack of the Clones" the Republic has no military and as a result rather than viewing it as "the hegemon in a unipolar world" the Republic is much more "the system of interplanetary cooperation". The Republic pre-AOTC is closer to the UN, or the EU, than to a single domineering super-power. In AOTC it is made quite clear that the CIS is set-up as an alternative system of interplanetary cooperation. It is the militarisation of both that leads to them establishing themselves as hegemons who start forcing other, entirely independent systems such as Mandalore and it's suite of associated worlds, into a binary choice of 'joining' the Republic or the CIS. The New Republic has a military, and asserts itself as a budding hegemon, from day one, as it absorbs parts of the Imperial military and parts of the Rebel Alliance military. The tragedy of the Sequels, from a story-telling perspective is that they shied away from exploring a New Republic that would be slowly returning to a format of a new system of interplanetary cooperation and instead simply decided to treat it as Empire 2.0 unwilling to engage with Empire 2.1 (1st Order) without providing any historical specifics as to how we got there, only to literally state in the final instalment that "somehow" Palpatine, i.e. Empire 1.0, had survived.
It was still a system of interplanetary cooperation which had far, far more control over what happened on any of its worlds, or what was allowed between member states (including that *they* weren't allowed much of a military), than the UN or even EU. There's also not necessarily a hard dividing line on what starts or stops being a state in that sense, which I also talk more about in my video on Federalism in Star Wars. The New Republic actually did have at least a bit of a military between the Clone Wars and the Ruusan Reformations, even if they weren't huge. It still tended to be bigger and more pwoerful than any individual sector force, and could leverage the use of those sector forces with far more authority than UN peacekeeping missions could. That was also 1/25th of the Republic's history, and not a particularly story-rich one.
Okay, so you've made videos discussing historiography and now structural realism within Star Wars; are you me? A good portion of the philosophical/theoretical base of much of my research comes out of the Constructivist turn in political science and democratic theory (I worked with Audie Klotz in grad school), and while I find these areas to be more rich and nuanced in looking at the real world, I'm not sure how feasible it would be to scale up to a galactic level, much less depict in a fictional setting. For the sake of story-writing, it's completely understandable to set up a large, obvious hegemon with dalliances into bipolar or multipolar equilibriums as various actors and situations wax and wane. Wookipedia estimates roughly 1 billion star systems populated by sentient beings, so it wouldn't seem unreasonable to expect a multi-polar balance of power consisting of, literally, several million states/confederacies/empires/whatever. That being said, it has always irked me that every era of Star Wars has, more or less, the same hegemonic distribution of power. The details of each story may be distinct, with interpersonal dramas and intrigue, but the macro environment providing the context rarely changes enough to catch my interest anymore.
Yeah the nature of the storytelling that they want to do does make it a bit easier to apply certain frameworks than others for analysis, but I definitely want to eventually try to do an "Anarchy is What the Empire Makes of It" video or something with constructivism. In certain cases the lack of relevant info can be worth analysing in itself, or different period where stories had different assumptions about where the galaxy might go, and applying a different lense to that.
'Political Realism' was not introduced by Morgenthau, but first described by Athenian exile *Thukydides* , chronicling the Peloponnesian War and it's underlying human nature... The concept of 'Realpolitik' (coined by Ludwig von Rochau in 1853) itself is familiar to every ruler in every age or civilization ('Art of War', 'Artashastra') - think of the history of the Persian Empire, Alexander the Great and the subsequent Diadochoi Wars or a Roman Republic after the Punic Wars - *_a cycle of political centralization ('opression') and fragmentation (civil war)_* , adressed e.g. in Hebrew stories of several exodus from _urban 'high culture'_ into a 'frontier' wilderness or catacombs (Abraham, Moses, Jesus) - only in modern times the Western 'enlightened' political myth of a 'rules-based-order' has been propagated, especially in the aftermath of the Bretton Woods conferences in the 1940s - when US historical _revisionism_ - like Morgenthau's plagiarism - and a Transatlantic 'political science' (that regularly fails to predict major events) had been institutionalized on a global scale within the Atlantic Charta of 1941. Apart from the 'NORAD centric bias' in this video essay, to look at a story of 'galactic civil war' along political theory and history is _commendable_ as *fiction enables men to speak of conflict without being personally entangled* , offering insight into reality in a playful way - _the same way, man learns to walk and to talk_ . When Lucas began his worldbuilding - with often contrived and _inconclusive, ecclectic_ writing - he was interested in -pod- car racing and visual effects - in contrast to seasoned, professional writers. One of the best elements of his world, however - one can call it 'the American genius' - is *_the outlook_** unto **_a balanced political process_** when entrenched identities (see **_'constructivism'_** within international relations) are respected as such and common interests are sought across these differences* - as depicted on screen with the resolution in the 'Return of the Jedi' (a popular *_trope_* at the end of a stiffling Cold War) - or whenever 'expanded universe/legends' stories, had a New Republic _to cooperate_ with Imperial Remnants (after 'the witch' is dead), ending a perpetual constructed 'othering' within a 'borderline personality' political psychology ('black and white', 'Puritan and Catholic', 'Mason and Jesuit', 'Union and Confederacy', 'Aryans and Jews', 'Democrats and Republicans', 'West and East'). Once we have experienced *a concept of a balanced stance* and have explored it's outcome within our imagination, we can look for clues of such a fate in our personal lives - the purpose of all storytelling. This has also implications in novel media as game development when 'becoming the only piece on the board' as the sole 'victory condition', requiring days of an _attritional grind_ has little incentive of 'replayability' or educational value of practicing a vital skill... we may learn something about a coming transition of our modern, industrial warfare by exploring other approaches (e.g. the Napoleonic Wars and WW I had forced a modernization not only in equipment design and mass production, but also of management and *_pragmatic_** politics* ). Considering current US politics, an exploration of conceptual themes of multi-polar international relations - or federalism and state rights, domestically - the 'Just World Order' of _Sino-Russian Joint Statements_ that now openly defy all _Western, 'Whig' allusions of a 'good', _*_liberal imperialism_* - is beyond a 'Disney' corporation - unless it's majority shares are taken over... ('Blue Monday' by voordeel) th-cam.com/video/b-dfCIjYs0s/w-d-xo.html ('Purpose of Conflict' DuduFilm) th-cam.com/video/_YuCvOxDgOE/w-d-xo.html
This is about realism in IR theory, not "political realism" in general, hence what I say being, "this conception of international relations was introduced by Hans Morgenthau in his 1948 book, Politics Among Nations" rather than "political realism was invented by Hans Morgenthau." You'll also notice from the disclaimer at the start and the mention of critiques of in the middle, this video is not an endorsement of. Part of political theory analysis is being able to say what a specific analytical framework would say about a specific topic, even if you think that framework is limited. And realism is definitely a limited and biased perspective. As a 10 minute Star Wars video related specifically to polarity, the discussion of realism here is not meant to be a full deep dive on the historical roots to realism before development of IR theory around it. A full discussion of realism, even just as it relates to an analysis of Star Wars, would be a much longer and very different video (though it's one I still want to make at some point, which is why I didn'tlabel this videeo as that).
@@CoreysDatapad "This is about (...)" You are _an apologetic_ in everything, You do Correy. Take the one sentence about the topic being _commendable_ at heart and proceed... Looking forward to Your views on federalism - biased or not...
SW got me into politics. I’m now a political junkie 40 some off years later. I appreciated the “Direct Democracy” episode in Mando season 3, showing the dystopian side of Direct Democracy (tyranny of the plurocracy , aka mob rule). In contrast, Republics, like “The New Republic” and the Constitutional Republic of the United States protect the minority from the majority, therefore averting tyranny.
Yeah, Republic and NR were really successful at averting tyranny 😂 It seems more like the movies make a case against democracies at this point. They never show one working properly.
@@Hello-bi1pm they were both sabotaged by an authoritarian socialist dictator, in conjunction with corporate corruption (trade federation). When socialist dictators control private business and use armed military to enforce their mandates, that’s called Joe Biden, I mean Fascism.
Realism is the best International Relations Theory, Liberal IR is pie in the sky, constructionist makes several conceptual errors, and radical being just dumb
Counter theorem: the Republic was a mask for a tripolar-Astropolitical balance of power between Corusceant, Alsaccan and Correllia.
Even though Star wars is surrounded by action it's the politics that really grips me.
Great video mate.
Corey it's not boring at all!! It's so heartwarming to be a listener on academically qualified political theory content! Very happy, Corey the best❤
After taking a class of International Relations Theory in College, this video puts a smile on my face. I love hearing one my favorite fictional universes analyzed through challenging political theories. Subscribed!
I'd be interested to see an expanded video on the politics of the MMO, but I recognise there's a thousand and 1 reasons why it'd be a tough nut to crack. Either way, fantastic video. Such a concise and effective explanation of the topic. Definitely hope to see more like it.
Just the amount of information in codex entries is massive. And that’s not even including all the little items scattered around tables that you can hover your mouse over that tells you things but that don’t get saved into the chat log anywhere. Or all the dialogue. Or the branching paths. If anyone is able to do it then I salute them and the sacrifice they had to go through. And this is from someone who enjoys the game lol
I always thought that a cold war scenario where the New Republic and Imperial Remnant compete for the sympathy of the galaxy would be interesting.
So in Star Wars, effectively only one major power rules the galaxy and any given moment, and most bipolar relationships, Sith-Old Republic Cold War and post 2GCW era, are more like blips in the timeline. For the 2GCW, I think a major reason why multipolarity occurs is resources are finally broken off effectively. For most of history, the Core is mostly united or at least supportive of the main Core power. The Corellian Confederation changed that, splitting the Core. Also the Imperial Remnant/Fel Empire has been trying to make their area of space more powerful, and using EotH tech definitely helped out there as well.
Also, the Jedi aren't tied to the GA either. The Old Republic, Republic post Ruusan, New Republic somewhat in the early days at least and the Empire all relied on the Jedi to help make them seem legitimate. The Empire was by saying they turned evil and tried to destroy them, and the New Republic seems to kind of parade Luke around as a Jedi supporting them to gain more support. The Jedi made peace in the 2GCW and established the Corellian Confederation as separate from the GA. The idea that the heroes of the galaxy no longer view the holder of Coruscant as the legitimate unipolar power, might've made people more ambitious in their power grabbing and building as well.
I love these sorts of videos!
I wish there had been more novels that focused on the New Republic balancing its relations in a multi-polar order while the Warlords were at their zenith. We rarely see the New Republic focused on more than 1 major threat at a time; it is usually the villain of the week faction being presented as the biggest power at that time to threaten the NR, with little to no mention of the other major factions that co-exist in that time period.
I suppose the closest you ever get to that is the unofficial cooperation between the NR and the Empire against Zsinj when Admiral Teren Rogriss and the Hapans both contribute to the destruction of the Iron Fist. I wish we got to see more events like that; it adds a lot more depth to the universe.
I think one could make the argument that the unipolar system being so ingrained into society being related to the Force and light/dark side. Like, because of the influence of the Force, society evolves a certain way. That's also my head canon for why there are so many humanoid species - because the Force guided it.
I've always found the Confederation to be one of the most fascinating parts of the EU because they're set up to be a CIS type government from the outside, but at it's core the Confed is full of usually pretty strict New or Old Republic loyalists like Bothan Space, Commenor, Fondor, Bespin, Corellia, Bimmisaari, and Rothana. Aside from the CSA and the Hutts joining them the most interesting member of the Confederation are Eriadu, Adumar, and Jabiim.
Because of their Tarkin fanboyism and the Eriadu Authority I know a lot of people assume they are Imperial loyalists, but no they join the galactic power that wants looser, less strict, and overall decentralized government. Jabiim is notable to me because they were originally big CIS supporters who thought the Republic didn't care about them. A fact that I always found interesting is that the CIS aligned Nationalists embraced the Empire while the Republic Loyalists ended up trying to fight for independence. The Rebels tried to get them to join and while we don't know how they fared under the New Republic; they are once again supporting the decentralized government again. Adumar was courted by the New Republic and Imperial Remnant (before joining the NR) and helped the Galactic Alliance fight the Vong, but now they're supporting the Confederation.
Starfighters of Adumaar is a super interesting book because as far as I know it’s the only story that involves multiple nation states on a single planet
This channel uses my political science degree more than my actual job
Corey continuing to be the most powerful Star Wars TH-camr 😛
Some would say he has Unlimited Power
the astropolitics between the core and the northern sectors have always fascinated me. It's like every time a big part of the galaxy breaks from the core, the northern parts are a central player of the breakaway. perhaps because it was one of the later colonised areas (not counting the far southern sectors)? maybe a coincidence, since most of these breakaways were sith-influenced and korriban was in the neighbourhood? maybe it's something in the space-water...
These are the type of videos I subbed for!
9:20 the Legacy comics ruined the possibility of exploring the multipolar order and instead gave us another old overused Sith takeover and resulting rebellion (and the sequels would do it again for the gigallionth time).
I'm pretty convinced they will do the same in any future content because thus far the new canon hasn't given us anything geopolitically interesting except in very limited form. For the new Jedi Order movies they probably will give us another story of good guys vs bad guys or quite possibly will not even focus much or at all on states and politics in general
Awesome video! I never really considered how strange it is that the galaxy throughout history seems to be almost exclusively unipolar, often rapidly ricocheting to a new (or more often, old) unipolar system as soon as the current one falls.
It's definitely a shame we never got the stories of how I founded the Imperial Knights, what the hard-won multipolar system looked like, and how it all went wrong yet again and the galaxy returned to that familiar state.
Here's hoping they take this direction for the canon New Jedi Order film(s) with Rey and Finn, and we all get to see something essentially brand new to SW, full of compelling story possibilities💜
Always love these videos where you leverage your poli sci skills!
Really well done video, Ive always enjoyed the politics of Star Wars
Loved this video! Would love to see your take on a Star Wars lens for Waltz's "Man, the State, and War" on the reasons for war.
I imagine the force as an operative of narrative pressures ends up being the crucial decider if that book was written in a galaxy far, far away.
You forgot the Gree and Kwa who were in charge between Celestial and Rakattan.
A true multipolar system post-TROS with an independent jedi order trying to operate in all without being subject to any would make for some awesome stories
This was great. You’re political theory videos are the best!
The longer Bi-Polar (Or sorta IMPLIED Multi-Polar since there are mentions of "Third Parties" who enforced the Treaty of Coruscant Cold War by threatening to jump in on whoever broke it, but in the end never really did step in) period would be SWTOR's wars. Or the New Sith Wars though the opposite pole of the Republic in that era wasn't always the same batch of Sith in the same place, and there did seem to be more Multipolar powers like a Mandalorian Resurgence.
Corey just stop now, that is the zenith of Star Wars TH-cam videos. Seriously I loved it, great stuff 🙂 keep it up!
I always enjoy these more serious explorations of the implications behind the events that happen within these stories. I also hope that there is some deeper exploration of galactic governance in the new Rey movies, I would hate for there to just be a New New Republic without explanation.
There is an interesting and probably unintentional parallel between the trend towards centralism in the GFFA and dynastic China. Once the effort was made to standardize language and systems were made, the infrastructure built, and the ruling myth of the Mandate of Heaven accepted, the disparate regions and peoples of that part of the world had a template of what a government should look like to achieve maximal power and control, if not efficiency, and all subsequent rulers would try to reach that style of governance and scope of influence again.
Was just making the same comparison. The irony is that the Old Republic/Empire are clearly inspired by Rome, and yet Rome was the only state to ever centralize power over that region, it was not unified before or after. The EU authors in creating a constant succession of unipolar powers before and after the Old Republic turned it from Rome to China through their lack of creativity.
@@kennethferland5579 I wanted to throw in a bit about how Star Wars writers since the start of the EU after RotJ were living in the unipole during the so-called "end of history" era and how that demographic would have a strong bias towards a particular perspective of international politics and therefore the content that they wrote. Slap on the usual "fiction writers have no sense of scale" and that just about explains the entirety of GFFA history.
BUT Corey specifically torpedoed meta-explanations for it so I decided against including it in the post.
At least the GFFA is created with benevolence. The modern Chinese have lost that chance when they were first seduced by Communists by Mao Zedong.
The Yuuzhan Vong held about half the galaxy for a few years. That was an interstate and also intercivilizational conflict.
As someone with a MA in International Relations, I appreciate your analysis. 😅
I've been thinking about exactly this topic a lot recently! Great video!
1:36 a funny and concise explanation of Realism/Neorealism
As a politics student- highly interesting approach! Thank you very much!
Thank you for always making amazing videos Corey!
Really intersting talking about realism in the star wars universe, i looking forwart to more political analysis videos from you!
I've usually assumed that the proliferation of unipolar powers in star wars is just that for the vast majority of worlds who their government pays taxes to doesn't really matter all that much. As a result as long as the power in question isn't antagonistic to them they are more likely to just shrug and go about their business as usual. Only wealthy worlds that have significant off world interests would be interested in who is running the show and because so many of the core worlds, despite their unique cultures, more or less agree about the same issues any power that takes the core just becomes the superpower.
Love these kinds of videos so much! Keep it up, Corey!
Thank you for all that you do with regards to TR and this channel. You've resparked my interest in the old EU
It's a parable about the struggle between good and evil, but people still act like people in the foreground.
This is so illuminating for my own world-building. Great video ❤
As someone going to school for international who also loves sci-fi this is video is everything I want.
The galaxy is like a combination of the dynamics that characterize internal politics with those that characterize international ones
Speaking of neo cons and foreign policy. I remember a wonderful scene in Oliver Stones ( W ) Bush movie. Richard dreyfuss , as duck Cheney, breaking down the Middle East / Afghanistan. Issues and plan. Incredible 5 or 10 minutes scene. In the situation room .
Interestingly this analysis of politics of star wars mirrors Chinese history. For most of the thousands of years long history of China since the victory of the Qin and the establishment of Imperial Rule in 221 BC there has been one dynasty that is the undisputed monopole of power in the region and during the time where there were multiple polities they acted with the goal of consolidating power to become the hegemon again.
As someone with a degree in international affairs and being a Star Wars superfan, I find this video absolutely fascinating
At some point between 45ABY and 127ABY it becomes Bipolar. The Galactic Alliance, the Galactic Empire, then a handful of smaller powers that either ally with one or the other, or try to remain neutral. And on the side the Jedi Order and the Lost Tribe Sith and One Sith Order.
Hey do you read Bounding Power by Daniel Deudney? He theorize Republic as "Negarchy", a system between the extremes of Hierarchy and Anarchy. Interesting book, I recommend. Good theory to apply on Star Wars politics.
This is great and please do more. I mean there are mountains of late republic capitalism content to mine.
The cancellation of The Sword of the Jedi trilogy- and the EU as a whole- is, for me, the single worst atrocity committed by Disney during their ownership of Star Wars.
That wasn't Disney actually. This was already in the works even before they bought it
@@whateverwhatever4476 Yeah, The Clone Wars was the start of the retcon
@@Dexter037S4 yeah, that's where it started
I love the animation in this video. Great job.
Applying Realist IR theory to Star Wars on Henry Kissinger’s birthday is great😂
100th Birthday
OG trilogy fanboys criticism of sequels be like:
"It's all just light saber duels and space battles! It's just made for little kids!"
and
"Why do they talk about politics? This is supposed to be for little kids!"
I don't know that I've seen a more inviting video title in my life
The force is strong with this one!
Ah yes finally making use of IR to explain the politics and order of the Star Wars universe. This delights me greatly.
I want to see a Core based New Republic trying to expand outwards like they did 25k years ago for more resources, only for the Outer Rim to resist
I'm not particularly well-versed in political theory, so this might be a crock of horseshit, but I feel like the unipolarity is kinda ending? like, the arrangement of the galaxy for the past however many millenia has been "the Core sets itself up as the most important part, and uses that to siphon wealth from the rim", whether through economic disparity in the republic or explicit force in the empire, but both of those modes of extraction suffered major rebellions in a relatively short timespan.
It feels like some kind of breaking point where the rim cannot or will not subsidise the core anymore, but what the new political order will be is still amorphous, and the various wars going on are symptoms of that underlying shift. Which is a cool place to make stories from! It's just a shame we didn't get to see them all.
That actually gets close to World Systems Theory which I'll be getting too soon, though it doesn't necessarily mean the end of unipolar power distributions even if it may mean some changes within the state.
0:55 which is pretty self-evident about how much of a narrow lens that is. I can't imagine how sterile and static geopolitics would be if this was the truth of it
If there's one thing in Star Wars that I'm not convinced with, it's the lack of long-lasting and all-powerful shadow governments complete with darker than black, Force sensitive, spec-ops task forces (think an army of Kyle Katarns/Mara Jades/Jaden Korrs, simply put), and I don't mean just Palpatine-ish manipulative bastardry.
Also, I don't count the TOR MMO. That game has so many things that should easily define it as a Infinities set of storylines.
If we look at Chinese history, and see China as a micro-cosmos, there's mostly been unipolarity as the default status within China, in the form of various imperial dynasties. Geography forms the basis for unipolarity, or multipolarity. If the Earth just consisted of one giant continent, and humans or some other intelligent species evolved, it's likely we would have seen one singular land power emerge.
awesome video! need more
Maybe just maybe if we make enough fuss they might do these three books as a one off continuation like they did with the anniversary marvel comic or that one about the stupid green rabbit
Excellent work
I have been reading an interesting book on the history of Christianity and it touches heavily on this phenomenon of smaller groups waiting to see which competing potential hegemon would win out. In the 8th century the nascent western church abandoned the weakening Byzantines and sided with the growing Carolingians for exactly this reason.
Given the carousel of major powers and wars to overturn them, it's a wonder anyone in this galaxy ever knows a single day of peace and quiet 😟
Someone should make a channel dedicated to Star Wars Legends. I bet it would be a huge hit.
damn there was a huge missed opportunity to explore liberalism in The Phantom Menace so sad
Uni Polar world is coming to a end. Multi polar world is the world norm.
One of the issues in Star Wars is that the unipolar galactic state is almost always weaker and less in control than it may first appear, and its ability to impose its will over all the territory it claims is also limited. Indeed, it's Palpatine's attempt to reify the theoretical legal control that the Republic held over the systems that leads to this Empire's political downfall. The Galaxy may prefer a unipolar system, but it also prefers a relatively weak unipolar power.
My theory is that the Galactic order is a persistently Federalist order that prefers a nominal but weak central authority to discourage local attempts at conquest, but which by the sheer impossibility of managing a bureaucracy that spans a whole galaxy inevitably leads to systems and sectors seeing themselves as functionally sovereign and with a right to govern their own affairs, and attempts to assert total control over the local systems and sectors invariably collapses until it stabilizes in another weak hegemonic power.
The only thing that tends to drive this apart is the long running conflict between the Jedi and Sith, where occasionally they can't reform into a single hegemonic power because they have such sharp differences in ideology. The Galaxy as a whole is largely pretty tired of this driving force of conflict and has done it's best over time to defang both religious groups.
Amazingly Corey, Political Science Major, Datapadsworth III (sauce)
I cannot agree on the idea that New Republic ever achieved unipolar status before being dismembered by the Wong invasion. The mere fact that the Empire was allowed to exist is a proof of that. Yes the Empire lost the exclusive status of unipolar status, but
a) the new republic either doesn't have the will or resources to finish their ideological rival
b) if you are even using example of multipolar system by pointing at pre world war period then you have the British Empire which was the hegemon of the world for a good while. It was possible to challenge it, but it was undoubtedly the major player in international politics until the time of splendid isolationism. While the French, Russians and Germans were playing for the second place. Which much closely resembles the situation between the Wong war and end of Civil War
The answer to a though is "yes, they didn't want to destroy them." They had no ability to challenge the New Republic, which is why *they* were the ones that called for peace when Pellaeon convinced the Moffs they couldn't possibly expect they could ever stand up to the New Republic, which had basically been the case since Shadow Hand but took them a few years to accept. And then there were 8 years before the YVW. The Empire at that point was nowhere near comparable to the other imperial powers relative to the British.
Star Wars Episode X: the Last Skywalker
The Galaxy has died, and it is the end of history. All living things have become Force ghosts that follow around the last descendant of the Skywalkers. Driven to insanity, he seeks another power that can challenge the comfort of his solitary rule, rather than to face his ultimate unipolar destiny.
In writing my own story, I was unintentionally setting up a post Galactic Civil War with a multipolar system. The NR, the Imperial Remnant, and the Triumvirate (my own original idea). Maybe a fourth or fifth depending on how I chose to go.
I am doing something similar. I think a good fourth government would be a revived Confederacy of Independent Systems that tries to restore the original ideals of the Separatists before they strayed from them during the Clone Wars. Maybe call it like the United Confederacy or the Confederate Union, or the Separatist Federation. Idk something like that
Did the title get retconned or am I losing my mind?
From time to time you need to kill a title to encourage the others.
I would watch the hell out of a Star wars House of Cards/West Wing/Borgen
God I love this channel
i think the star wars galaxy is in some ways comparable to china and its history. For most of chinas history it has been a single state excepts for civil war periods which could last quite long or be split for extendet periods of time while all parties still see themselves as rightfull rulers of all of china.
both taiwan and the peoples republic of china see themselves as rightfull sucessor to the previous republic which is the succesor to the last chinese empire.
Do liberal IR theory next!
Krauts video on realism is so good, imagine formulating international theory for decades only for it to be thrown out the window by fundamentalist islam
I just had an IR exam yesterday lol
Love it!
I really wish more people were more familiar with this interview Lucas did in 1999 for the New York Times titled, "George Lucas: 'I'm a Cynic Who Has Hope for the Human Race'". I feel like we'd all have a better understanding of why Star Wars always seems to feature despots and, as this political theory calls it, often has unipolarity (though I generally refer to it as hierarchy as I follow an anarchist lens of international politics). George Lucas is (or at least was) a big fan of despotism. I'll just quote a bit of it here:
"The United States, especially the media, is eating its own tail. The media has a way of leveling everything in its path, which is not good for a society. There's no respect for the office of the Presidency. Not that we need a king, but there's a reason why kings built large palaces, sat on thrones and wore rubies all over. There's a whole social need for that, not to oppress the masses, but to impress the masses and make them proud and allow them to feel good about their culture, their government and their ruler so that they are left feeling that a ruler has the right to rule over them, so that they feel good rather than disgusted about being ruled. In the past, the media basically worked for the state and was there to build the culture. Now, obviously, in some cases it got used in a wrong way and you ended up with the whole balance of power out of whack. But there's probably no better form of government than a good despot."
He then goes on to talk about trying to be the despot at his studio, the infallible leader who nobody must speak ill of (tear down) being core to his idea of ruling. The man basically admits to controlling his public image as much as he could. So I have a hard time seeing interviews where he is going on about the rebellious plot in the films as his genuine opinions and not just him appealing to the masses and giving them what they want to hear.
"SCHELL. But let's say you have a leader who's only pretty good and does some shady things. Do you think that the media should be more discreet about investigating and looking into what he is doing? Basically, do you think certain things should be off limits in order to maintain the heroism of a leader?
LUCAS. Yeah, I do. I think that the media should look at the situation in the larger sense -- at what is necessary for the culture as a whole rather than exposing and tearing everything down all the time. That will not bode well for people's confidence in the institution. After all, a society only works on faith. If you lose that faith, then your society will crumble and it will be hard to get a consensus on anything.
SCHELL. But isn't that a slippery slope, one that quickly leads to what we have seen in countries like the Soviet Union and China, where in the name of positive role models it becomes unacceptable to criticize the leaders or the country?
LUCAS. That's sort of why I say a benevolent despot is the ideal ruler. He can actually get things done. The idea that power corrupts is very true and it's a big human who can get past that."
For some more from the interview.
Sometimes I think the Rebels should have held off on destroying the Death Star. Reason being that, if it existed long enough, Tarkin probably would have used it on Nal Hutta
The in universe justification for the repetetive uni-polar nature of the SW galaxy is the centrality of Corrusant and the hyperlane network and the lack of any defensible barriers in the galaxy. Much like Rome to the Roman empire Corrusant is the nerve center of everything, what ever authority controls it will be made dominant by that fact alone. In contrast on Earth multi-polarity has always been the result of geophysical partitioning, as in pre WW1 Europe where defensible barriers like mountains and oceans seperated England, France, Italy, Spain etc. Or the modern world in which continental landmasses largely dilineate the superpowers (Imagine if US and Soviets had a land border, no way would the cold war have remained cold). A real world area which resembles StarWars is China, which has long periods of unipolar stability punctuated by brief warring states periods which war amoungst themselves for primacy. Beijing emerging as the center of administration over many cycles to the point that no other capitol is concivable. China's core area is remarkably free of geographic barriers and thus makes it easy for a growing power to keep growing until it is a hegemon.
That's true for part of it, but it arises quite quickly and doesn't apply for earlier periods, which used different hyperspace methods.
Beijing is very much not a repeated capital. There was Nanjing, other capitals over time. But otherwise yeah.
stranger than fiction.
STAR WARS "Legends" give a better view of the politics of the Galaxy. Unlike Disney "canon".
Geopolitics in star wars I love it. But I'm not really a fan of the realist school.
The fact that they were able to get away with calling their school of thought "Realism" is quite annoying.
Ayyy shoutout Botswana
The problem is , that the Republic is not a state, but a federal supra-national state. It is more like a state UN, it is essentially a sci-fi staple but Lucas did not care much for in depth lore building for the audience, he knew that as soon as it is mentioned in the movies that its "Rebels to restore the Republic" and "Empire" , that the audience should immediately see the parallel beatween the USA vs the Soviet Union. The passage from Clone Wars to empire , is Lucas saying the Cold War and Nixons and Kissingers policies will inevitably lead to the USA as newfound superpower will lead it into an authoritarian empire. This was always on Lucas mind and he never hid that Star Wars was influenced by the Nixon years and the Vietnam war, and because everyone assumed that the "evil empire" was the Soviet Union (in Lucas mind however it was CIS of star wars) he made the prequels to show that a republic can be easily corrupted and be transformed into empires. In history you have for example is Rome with Caesar , the French Revolution leading to Napoleon, Athens with Alciabes and the Pelloponisian war. Republics that function as oligarchies for the moneyd elites tend to become imperialist states. This is why there is no multipolarism in Star Wars, it reflects the political anxieties of his time in a child like Flash Gordon manner. This is a very conscious choice by Lucas, NOT to make Star Wars like Star Trek which does have the intergalctic politics and diplomacy you mentioned. However many think Lucas politics are simplistic, which is not the case, Lucas thinks that revolutionaries and a small cadre of democrats should act and take hostile action against such monolithic systems. Its a very American idea, that reflects the ideals of the American Revolution. So its not random that Jedi= Democracy, Sith = authoritarian anarchy.
Star Wars politics (especially in the current crop of material) are basically childishly simplistic, boomer-era retelling of WW2.
Nice video! But I disagree somewhat with your analysis. Prior to "Attack of the Clones" the Republic has no military and as a result rather than viewing it as "the hegemon in a unipolar world" the Republic is much more "the system of interplanetary cooperation". The Republic pre-AOTC is closer to the UN, or the EU, than to a single domineering super-power. In AOTC it is made quite clear that the CIS is set-up as an alternative system of interplanetary cooperation. It is the militarisation of both that leads to them establishing themselves as hegemons who start forcing other, entirely independent systems such as Mandalore and it's suite of associated worlds, into a binary choice of 'joining' the Republic or the CIS.
The New Republic has a military, and asserts itself as a budding hegemon, from day one, as it absorbs parts of the Imperial military and parts of the Rebel Alliance military. The tragedy of the Sequels, from a story-telling perspective is that they shied away from exploring a New Republic that would be slowly returning to a format of a new system of interplanetary cooperation and instead simply decided to treat it as Empire 2.0 unwilling to engage with Empire 2.1 (1st Order) without providing any historical specifics as to how we got there, only to literally state in the final instalment that "somehow" Palpatine, i.e. Empire 1.0, had survived.
It was still a system of interplanetary cooperation which had far, far more control over what happened on any of its worlds, or what was allowed between member states (including that *they* weren't allowed much of a military), than the UN or even EU. There's also not necessarily a hard dividing line on what starts or stops being a state in that sense, which I also talk more about in my video on Federalism in Star Wars. The New Republic actually did have at least a bit of a military between the Clone Wars and the Ruusan Reformations, even if they weren't huge. It still tended to be bigger and more pwoerful than any individual sector force, and could leverage the use of those sector forces with far more authority than UN peacekeeping missions could. That was also 1/25th of the Republic's history, and not a particularly story-rich one.
Okay, so you've made videos discussing historiography and now structural realism within Star Wars; are you me?
A good portion of the philosophical/theoretical base of much of my research comes out of the Constructivist turn in political science and democratic theory (I worked with Audie Klotz in grad school), and while I find these areas to be more rich and nuanced in looking at the real world, I'm not sure how feasible it would be to scale up to a galactic level, much less depict in a fictional setting. For the sake of story-writing, it's completely understandable to set up a large, obvious hegemon with dalliances into bipolar or multipolar equilibriums as various actors and situations wax and wane. Wookipedia estimates roughly 1 billion star systems populated by sentient beings, so it wouldn't seem unreasonable to expect a multi-polar balance of power consisting of, literally, several million states/confederacies/empires/whatever.
That being said, it has always irked me that every era of Star Wars has, more or less, the same hegemonic distribution of power. The details of each story may be distinct, with interpersonal dramas and intrigue, but the macro environment providing the context rarely changes enough to catch my interest anymore.
Yeah the nature of the storytelling that they want to do does make it a bit easier to apply certain frameworks than others for analysis, but I definitely want to eventually try to do an "Anarchy is What the Empire Makes of It" video or something with constructivism. In certain cases the lack of relevant info can be worth analysing in itself, or different period where stories had different assumptions about where the galaxy might go, and applying a different lense to that.
sigh
'Political Realism' was not introduced by Morgenthau, but first described by Athenian exile *Thukydides* , chronicling the Peloponnesian War and it's underlying human nature...
The concept of 'Realpolitik' (coined by Ludwig von Rochau in 1853) itself is familiar to every ruler in every age or civilization ('Art of War', 'Artashastra') - think of the history of the Persian Empire, Alexander the Great and the subsequent Diadochoi Wars or a Roman Republic after the Punic Wars - *_a cycle of political centralization ('opression') and fragmentation (civil war)_* , adressed e.g. in Hebrew stories of several exodus from _urban 'high culture'_ into a 'frontier' wilderness or catacombs (Abraham, Moses, Jesus) - only in modern times the Western 'enlightened' political myth of a 'rules-based-order' has been propagated, especially in the aftermath of the Bretton Woods conferences in the 1940s - when US historical _revisionism_ - like Morgenthau's plagiarism - and a Transatlantic 'political science' (that regularly fails to predict major events) had been institutionalized on a global scale within the Atlantic Charta of 1941.
Apart from the 'NORAD centric bias' in this video essay, to look at a story of 'galactic civil war' along political theory and history is _commendable_ as *fiction enables men to speak of conflict without being personally entangled* , offering insight into reality in a playful way - _the same way, man learns to walk and to talk_ .
When Lucas began his worldbuilding - with often contrived and _inconclusive, ecclectic_ writing - he was interested in -pod- car racing and visual effects - in contrast to seasoned, professional writers.
One of the best elements of his world, however - one can call it 'the American genius' - is *_the outlook_** unto **_a balanced political process_** when entrenched identities (see **_'constructivism'_** within international relations) are respected as such and common interests are sought across these differences* - as depicted on screen with the resolution in the 'Return of the Jedi' (a popular *_trope_* at the end of a stiffling Cold War) - or whenever 'expanded universe/legends' stories, had a New Republic _to cooperate_ with Imperial Remnants (after 'the witch' is dead), ending a perpetual constructed 'othering' within a 'borderline personality' political psychology ('black and white', 'Puritan and Catholic', 'Mason and Jesuit', 'Union and Confederacy', 'Aryans and Jews', 'Democrats and Republicans', 'West and East').
Once we have experienced *a concept of a balanced stance* and have explored it's outcome within our imagination, we can look for clues of such a fate in our personal lives - the purpose of all storytelling.
This has also implications in novel media as game development when 'becoming the only piece on the board' as the sole 'victory condition', requiring days of an _attritional grind_ has little incentive of 'replayability' or educational value of practicing a vital skill... we may learn something about a coming transition of our modern, industrial warfare by exploring other approaches (e.g. the Napoleonic Wars and WW I had forced a modernization not only in equipment design and mass production, but also of management and *_pragmatic_** politics* ).
Considering current US politics, an exploration of conceptual themes of multi-polar international relations - or federalism and state rights, domestically - the 'Just World Order' of _Sino-Russian Joint Statements_ that now openly defy all _Western, 'Whig' allusions of a 'good', _*_liberal imperialism_* - is beyond a 'Disney' corporation - unless it's majority shares are taken over...
('Blue Monday' by voordeel)
th-cam.com/video/b-dfCIjYs0s/w-d-xo.html
('Purpose of Conflict' DuduFilm)
th-cam.com/video/_YuCvOxDgOE/w-d-xo.html
This is about realism in IR theory, not "political realism" in general, hence what I say being, "this conception of international relations was introduced by Hans Morgenthau in his 1948 book, Politics Among Nations" rather than "political realism was invented by Hans Morgenthau." You'll also notice from the disclaimer at the start and the mention of critiques of in the middle, this video is not an endorsement of. Part of political theory analysis is being able to say what a specific analytical framework would say about a specific topic, even if you think that framework is limited. And realism is definitely a limited and biased perspective. As a 10 minute Star Wars video related specifically to polarity, the discussion of realism here is not meant to be a full deep dive on the historical roots to realism before development of IR theory around it. A full discussion of realism, even just as it relates to an analysis of Star Wars, would be a much longer and very different video (though it's one I still want to make at some point, which is why I didn'tlabel this videeo as that).
@@CoreysDatapad
"This is about (...)"
You are _an apologetic_ in everything, You do Correy.
Take the one sentence about the topic being _commendable_ at heart and proceed...
Looking forward to Your views on federalism - biased or not...
All fun and games but your theory seems to lack a key component, the economic one
Based modder
The missed opportunity was leaving Darth Kennedy’s relentless need to push her self insert ideology.
Fel Empire best Empire
SW got me into politics. I’m now a political junkie 40 some off years later.
I appreciated the “Direct Democracy” episode in Mando season 3, showing the dystopian side of Direct Democracy (tyranny of the plurocracy , aka mob rule).
In contrast, Republics, like “The New Republic” and the Constitutional Republic of the United States protect the minority from the majority, therefore averting tyranny.
Yeah, Republic and NR were really successful at averting tyranny 😂 It seems more like the movies make a case against democracies at this point. They never show one working properly.
@@Hello-bi1pm they were both sabotaged by an authoritarian socialist dictator, in conjunction with corporate corruption (trade federation). When socialist dictators control private business and use armed military to enforce their mandates, that’s called Joe Biden, I mean Fascism.
@@KinseiSenseihow was it socialist
@@tibbygaycat are you talking about Palpatine or Biden?
Realism is the best International Relations Theory, Liberal IR is pie in the sky, constructionist makes several conceptual errors, and radical being just dumb