Introduction to International Relations (IR)

In the second half of this course, we will leave Comparative Politics behind and start our exploration of International Relations--that is, the relations between states.  Our consideration will be organized around the issue/case discussions in the Snow textbook.  Today's opening lecture on theory gives us a rubric by which we will understand each of the cases.  Be sure that each class day you are prepared to discuss the cases or we are going to have some pretty boring discussions.

We need to learn several basic schools of thought in international relations today.  These are comprehensive and influential approaches to understanding the world, man, his behavior, and how one should behave in the international realm.

I.  Realism

Austria's Metternich, realist par example of the early 1800s

Realism is the pessimism of IR Theory. (Learn the words in all caps and be able to understand how they contribute to the IR approach)

• It believes that the world view it presents represents the REALITY of international politics dating back at least to the time of the Greek historian Thucydides (5^th century BC).
• In realism, the principle actors are STATES, personified unitary rational actors whose behavior is determined by the structure of international ANARCHY (no government on top of states enforcing any kind of code of conduct or rules, anarchy/no ruler).
• Based on a very negative and unchanging conception of human nature (BAD HUMAN NATURE). Humans want to survive, will seek to accumulate wealth, force to enable them to survive.  Not a trace of good or altruism in people or states. Only act in their own self-interest.
• World politics is a SELF-HELP system; states have to do for themselves entirely in a harsh system state of nature (Hobbes: life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short").
• Politics involves a struggle for POWER between states in the pursuit of their NATIONAL INTERESTS.
• Power is needed in order to ensure SURVIVAL and protection of sovereignty, freedom of action.
• Diplomacy is one instrument for gaining a state's objectives, but ultimately the key instrument is military force/WAR.
• Key concept: BALANCE OF POWER.  Constantly calculating to balance.  Only time there is the absence of war is when there is a rough balance in the system.
• As it pertains to INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS, different realist thinkers might view these organizations slightly differently.  A basic view would be:  There is no authority higher than the individual state (definition of anarchy).  States can come together through international organizations to cooperate on issues of common interest.  But, international organizations cannot serve as a world government, do not constrain states’ behavior.  States still responsible for self-help, maintaining power, protecting national interests.  International organizations are, on the whole, marginal players in world politics, subject to the whims of the states, and particularly the powerful states which control them.  This is a somewhat more cynical approach to international organizations than we will see in other approach to international relations.
• Good illustration of a realist take on international organizations was the BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S HANDLING OF IRAQ/UN. 
•     Feeling threatened (as the case was put forward) by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and the idea that those weapons might be passed to terrorists, Bush asserted an absolute right on the part of the United States to protect itself (self-help). 
•     Bush was persuaded to take the issue to the United Nations in order to provide international cover/legitimacy for the operation.  For a realist, it’s okay to do this if:
•         1) do not give up right to do on your own, and
•         2) might even help improve your power position and protection of national interests to have international organizational, world public opinion in support. 
• In the end, when the United Nations Security Council refused to endorse a second resolution authorizing the US use of force, Bush did not even try to get a vote, put together a coalition of the willing and went in to Iraq anyway, self-help.  Other countries took a realist perspective in pushing own interests in Iraq (Russia/France commercial) as well as in hemming the US's power (Russia/France/China/Germany).
• Associated with terms like raison d'etat and realpolitik.
• Moral considerations secondary to power, national interest. 

Criticisms of realist theory?

• Vagueness of terms: power, national interest
• Descriptive or prescriptive. If everyone acts like this, WILL describe the world
• Accurate?  Is this how the world works?
• Do states only pursue their own power through international organizations (can international organizations change states)?
• Are we trapped by the past?
• Is war inevitable?
• Is there no room for morality in international politics (Nye, make these arguments, become part of international reality)?
• War because evil men OVERPREDICTS (why do some evil men launch war and others don’t).

Henry Kissinger, former US Secretary of State (1973-77) and National Security Advisor (1969-75)

There are traditional realist theories (see Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations), neo-realist theories (Waltz, Theory of International Politics), and soft (institutionalist) realist theories (Bull, The Anarchical Society). Other prominent realist exponents: George Kennan, Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger (picture above).

II.  Liberalism

Liberalism is the optimism of international relations theory (painting to the right is Immanuel Kant, 18th c. philosopher).

• Liberal international relations theories are based on the idea that humans are PERFECTABLE.  In contrast to the greedy man of realism or even the survival man of realism, liberal theories tend to see man as rational as well as learning, striving, and improving over time. Liberals believe in PROGRESS.
• State of nature more benign, humans can learn to COOPERATE to improve their lives (overcome prisoner's dilemma of just one interaction, cooperate in self-interest).  While world may be anarchical, there are contacts across borders, something like the germ of an international society.
• PEACE is seen as a preferred condition and therefore ways should be found to foster peace among states.  This allows man to focus on the substantive things that make up the good life: food, art, culture, literature, farming, families.  Everything but weapons and the fighting of war.
• War stems from INADEQUATE INSTITUTIONS OR MISUNDERSTANDINGS, so we prevent war by crafting better institutions and eliminating the possibility of misunderstanding through education and discussion.
• Liberal approaches often also see man as tied to fellow man by a COMMON HUMANITY.    Therefore, the limits imposed by state boundaries are artificial.  This leads to ideas such as the pursuit of human rights violators across state boundaries, seeking to engage in development assistance.
• League of Nations and UN Charters have strains of this type of liberal idealism: making peaceful settlement of disputes a new norm.  Overcome past international conflict through institutionalized collective security mechanisms.
• Some influential liberal ideas today: INTERDEPENDENCE and the rise of NON-STATE ACTORS.
• Interdependence: Economic linkages, communication technologies finally making possible one world with one common humanity.  All linked together, can’t go to war without causing hardship to all.  This has been developed further in the 1990s to a school of thought which sees globalization as rendering war among major powers as impossible, would impoverish everyone, no one has an incentive to rock the globalization boat.
• Rise of non-state actors: new non-state actors becoming more influential than the old states of realist international relations discourse: multinational companies many of which have greater annual turnover than developing countries’ GDPs, new cross-national issue groups: the Greens, Greenpeace, Amnesty International.  These corporations and organizations are breaking down the state, establishing common interests across borders.  Generally, foster peace.
• Also, recently re-in vogue in the liberal camp is the DEMOCRATIC PEACE THESIS, the idea that democracies do not fight one another.  Goes back to Immanuel Kant’s Perpetual Peace (1795), but backed up by some data that democracies may be no less belligerent than authoritarian regimes but they do not seem to fight each other.  Prescriptive element: make all countries democracies, promote world peace. Source of war here: bellicose authoritarian regimes.

• Liberal approaches have fostered much of the growth of INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS (neo-liberalism with emphasis on institutions). International organizations are seen as ways of mediating conflict among states, establishing bases of cooperation, establishing rational-legalistic codes of conduct under which all will be better off.

• Some liberal internationalists see the evolution of international organizations, the development of international law, the growth of cross-national civil society groups as evidence that the state is being transgressed, or at least having its capacity for war-generating action reduced.

• ANALOGY TO DOMESTIC STATE at international level.  As in the domestic state where the government provides some order to relations among citizens, so international organizations (while not a world government) can provide some stability, security, and predictability to inter-state interactions.  Can prevent states from being trapped in the SECURITY DILEMMA (need force to protect self, arms build up scares others into thinking you are going to attack, they build up their forces, they scare you, endless cycle of build-up ultimately leading to violence.  By making self more secure through arms, make self less secure by compelling arms acquisition on neighbor/rival), can foster and build on areas where cooperation helpful to solve mutual interests, cooperation reinforcing.  States can learn through international organizations/cooperation and change their preferences and behaviors.
• IRAQ WAR: Liberals would certainly see Saddam Hussein as a problem: authoritarian, had shown proclivity to invade others.  UN perhaps not enforcing resolutions properly. But, also, way to solve problem without going to war, craft better institutions, talk to improve understanding.

Woodrow Wilson, prominent idealist

Criticisms of liberalism?

• Tendency to idealism (especially as witnessed in pre-WWI period, evolving toward world government)
• Diverse set of theories with many different sources of conflict: domestic regime type, state insecurity, absence of higher authorities, inter-state resource differences
• Globalization not just positive for peace but also negative. Does interdependence stop war?
• Does Amnesty International make the world more peaceful?

Some texts: Relevant chapters in David A. Baldwin (ed), Neorealism and Neoliberalism: The Contemporary Debate, and C. Kegley (ed) Controversies in International Relations: Realism and the Neoliberal Challenge.  Other prominent liberal exponents: Locke, Montesquieu, Kant, Wilson. Contemporary thinkers: Joseph Nye, Robert Keohane.

III.  Other approaches:

Radical approaches:

• Marxist approaches give primacy to ECONOMICS in explaining IR outcomes. 

• Example: Powerful in the international system ACT IN OWN INTEREST, COUCH IN TERMS OF UNIVERSAL BENEFIT. So, US supports free trade because it's good for the US.  US says that free trade is a good in itself, but it is not a good in itself from this perspective. The statement that free trade is a universal good is a claim to power.  Some in the developing world threatened by the promotion of free trade, so we see a backlash, particularly in Latin America with the elections of Chavez in Venezuela, Correa in Ecuador, and Morales in Bolivia.  Rail against free trade, nationalize segments of economy.  Assumption that capitalist economic system is exploitative and bad.

• Radicals sometimes stress the importance of IMPERIALISM in establishing a hierarchical international system in which the rich benefit and the poor do not.  

• Developing countries are DEPENDENT on developed countries. Not able to build own industrial capacities to supplant the products of the developed world, lose by exporting primary products and having to import industrial goods and high-tech goods and services (with higher value-added).

• Iraq War: War about economics/imperialism. US said it was enforcing UN Security Council resolutions but it was really about protecting access to oil on which whole economic system depends.

Criticisms of radicalism?

• On free trade case, clear that some lose, but overall economies benefit.  Question of time horizon and wrenching changes that might have to be undergone to benefit from free trade.

• Not so good at explaining how some countries managed to escape dependent status and enter developed world.

Constructivist approach:

Arose as a result of perceived weaknesses of liberalism and realism.  Realism can’t explain change—unchanging.  Liberalism pushes toward assuming positive, peaceful change.  But, not entirely inconsistent with the other theories.

One of the main assumptions of a constructivist approach is that identities, norms, and culture play important roles in world politics. Identities and interests of states are not simply structurally determined, but are rather produced by interactions, institutions, norms, cultures (product of social activity and construction, "anarchy is what states make of it").  It is process, not structure, which determines the manner in which states interact.   Evolving identities and norms affect both the reality and the discourse about international politics.

Idea of a nation-state, just that an idea. An idea that we imbue with meaning, socially constructed. As an idea can change over time.

As to international organizations, constructivists see these organizations as locales in which learning can take place.  Norms of interaction are transferred to new members through interactions over time.

Two quick examples:

Learning to behave in the European Union (EU) manner (we will do our negotiation in this class).  Long processes of discussions and talking have created an EU consciousness among diplomats, a “we-feeling,” inclined to listen to, seek consensus with fellow members.

China in international organizations, engage, en-web China in international organizations to teach it how to behave. Does actually seem to be working. China at first aloof from many of the international organizations to which it is a party.  Now, engaging more actively, learning vocabulary of inter-state cooperation, and hopefully learning new norms of interaction.

See Alexander Wendt, "Anarchy is What States Make of It," International Organisation, 46/2, 1992.

Critiques of Constructivism:

• What is this learning, don’t states just go back to their interests in the end?

Look at Rainbow Fish and the Big Blue Whale.

Discuss: Is Spike a realist or a liberal? Why?

Is Rainbow Fish a realist or a liberal? Why?

Discuss President Obama's foreign policy. Is he a realist or a liberal? Have we seen enough to know?

Last updated: March 17, 2009

Author: tanp@uncw.edu

Return to Dr. Tan's homepage: http://people.uncw.edu/tanp/

Return to PLS 111 syllabus: http://people.uncw.edu/tanp/PLS111c.html