ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that through the dynamic of colonization-decolonization the interstate system has expanded from its original base in Europe to become world-wide and that this global system of states remains as important today as the transnational capitalist economy. It has been argued that in the age of air power and nuclear weapons the strategic significance of the configuration of land and sea on the planet, that classical geopolitics had highlighted, is no longer pertinent. To understand the part played by the dynamic of European colonization-decolonization in the globalization of the international political system, it is necessary to distinguish between two kinds of colonies settler colonies and non-settler colonies. The Indian Ocean as a body of sea-water is a part of the global ocean that has been dominated by the West since the Age of Discoveries; and it remains so today more than ever with the United States as the only superpower in the global political system.
