International order in the context of "Revolutionary Islamism"

Superpower describes a sovereign state or supranational union that holds a dominant position characterized by the ability to exert influence and project power on a global scale. This is done through the combined means of economic, military, technological, political, and cultural strength as well as diplomatic and soft power influence. Traditionally, superpowers are preeminent among the great powers. While a great power state is capable of exerting its influence globally, superpowers are states so influential that no significant action can be taken by the global community without first considering the positions of the superpowers on the issue.

In 1944, during World War II, the term was first applied to the British Empire, the Soviet Union, and the United States. During the Cold War, the British Empire dissolved, leaving the United States and the Soviet Union to dominate world affairs. At the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States became the world's sole superpower, a position sometimes referred to as that of a "hyperpower". Since the late 2010s and into the 2020s, China has increasingly been described as an emerging superpower or even an established one, as China represents the "biggest geopolitical test of the 21st century" to the United States, as it is "the only country with enough power to jeopardize the current global order".

Jihadism is a neologism for modern, armed militant Islamic movements that seek to establish states based on Islamic principles. In a narrower sense, it refers to the belief that armed confrontation is an efficient and theologically legitimate method of socio-political change towards an Islamic system of governance. The term "jihadism" has been applied to various Islamic extremist or Islamist individuals and organizations with militant ideologies based on the classical Islamic notion of lesser jihad.

Jihadism has its roots in the late 19th- and early 20th-century ideological developments of Islamic revivalism, which further developed into Qutbism and Salafi jihadism related ideologies during the 20th and 21st centuries. Jihadist ideologues envision jihad as a "revolutionary struggle" against the international order to unite the Muslim world under Islamic law.

Pope Pius XII (Italian: Pio XII; born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli; 2 March 1876 – 9 October 1958) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City from 2 March 1939 until his death on 9 October 1958. He is the most recent pope to take the pontifical name "Pius".

The papacy of Pius XII was long, even by modern standards; it lasted almost 20 years, and spanned a consequential fifth of the 20th century. Pius was a diplomat pope during the destruction wrought by the Second World War, the recovery and rebuilding which followed, the beginning of the Cold War, and the early building of a new international geopolitical order, which aimed to protect human rights and maintain global peace through the establishment of international rules and institutions (such as the United Nations). Born, raised, educated, ordained, and resident for most of his life in Rome, his work in the Roman Curia—as a priest, then bishop, then cardinal—was extensive. He served as secretary of the Vatican's diplomatic Department of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, papal nuncio to Germany, Camerlengo of the Apostolic Chamber, and Cardinal Secretary of State for the Holy See, in which capacity he worked to conclude treaties with various European and Latin American nations, including the Reichskonkordat treaty with Nazi Germany.

Relations between the Soviet Union and the United States were fully established in 1933 as the succeeding bilateral ties to those between the Russian Empire and the United States, which lasted from 1809 until 1917; they were also the predecessor to the current bilateral ties between the Russian Federation and the United States that began in 1992 after the end of the Cold War.

The relationship between the Soviet Union and the United States was largely defined by mistrust and hostility. The invasion of the Soviet Union by Germany as well as the attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor by Imperial Japan marked the Soviet and American entries into World War II on the side of the Allies in June and December 1941, respectively. As the Soviet–American alliance against the Axis came to an end following the Allied victory in 1945, the first signs of post-war mistrust and hostility began to immediately appear between the two countries, as the Soviet Union militarily occupied Eastern European countries and turned them into satellite states, forming the Eastern Bloc. These bilateral tensions escalated into the Cold War, a decades-long period of tense hostile relations with short phases of détente that ended after the collapse of the Soviet Union and emergence of the present-day Russian Federation at the end of 1991.

The global resources dividend (GRD) is a method of tackling global poverty advanced from 1994 onwards by the philosopher Thomas Pogge. He presents it as an alternative to the current global economic order. Under the scheme, nations would pay a dividend (tax) on any resources that they use or sell, resulting in a sort of "tax on consumption". Pogge's scheme is motivated by the positive duty to alleviate poverty, but relies especially on his view that the rich have a negative duty not to use institutions that perpetuate economic inequality. Pogge estimates that a dividend of just 1% could raise $300 billion each year; this would equal $250 for each individual in the world's poorest quintile.

Implementing some versions of the GRD entails not only discussions about practicality, but presumably, an affirmation of what is right. As Pogge puts it "Our task as philosophers requires that we try to imagine new, better political structures and different, better moral sentiments. We must be realistic, but not to the point of presenting to the parties in the original position the essentials of the status quo as unalterable facts."