Global Studies

It was Nietzsche, habitually prophetic, who proclaimed in Beyond Good and Evil [date?][1886] that "[t]he time for petty politics is over; the very next century will bring the fight for the domination of the earth—the compulsion to large-scale politics." Perhaps, as suggestive as the arresting prophesy,[unclear] was Nietzsche's error in thinking that the geopolitical shift would come in the 20th century. True, there were two momentous wars in that century, called `world wars' by historians and statesmen, but these are better understood as intra-regional struggles for the control of Europe (though admittedly with wider global implications, especially for the colonial dimension of international relations). The labeling of these struggles as 'world' wars was mainly expressive of the reigning Eurocentric worldview.