International Relations Theories and Summaries

Summary Review: Sorry, America, the New World Order is Dead | Eric A. Posner (2014)

2016-09-12T22:44:00.000-04:00

This article was originally written in Foreign Policy Magazine, May 6, 2014.

Let's start by describing how the article defines the New World Order:

The New World Order, a term coined by George H.W. Bush, formed after the fall of the Soviet Union
The New World Order constituted the peaceful settlement of disputes between states that would have otherwise led to war

These disputes were settled through international courts, universal human rights, international criminal justice, and free trade and investment

The article starts by addressing President Obama's assertion concerning Russia's president, Vladimir Putin's annexation of Crimea and behaving as an imperialist is an inappropriate way for a state to behave in the 20th century. The author retorts that Russia's behavior is an effect of America's decreasing influence and deteriorating global hegemony that was in place in 1991.

Why the New World Order is Dead

1. The international courts are not effective
The international courts, including the International Court of Justice (ICJ), World Trade Organization (WTO), and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, are not effective at resolving disputes that might lead to war. International law tends to favor the status quo, and when powerful countries disagree with the courts' judgment, just as the United States did over a 1986 Nicaragua dispute, they disregard the judgment and deny that the court has jurisdiction.

(Remember: international law is technically unenforceable.)

Russia and China, states that seek to increase their influence over foreign powers, have major conflicts with their neighbors, but have never submited those conflicts to the international courts because the courts favor status quo and sovereignty.

2. Human rights commitments are often ignored and/or violated
The New World Order included the recognition and respect for the human rights of a country's citizens. While it was agreed that interpretation of human rights would differ depending on a country's religious beliefs, traditions, and practices, the New World Order envisioned human rights by the basic terms of liberal democracy -- problematic for states that are not liberal democracies.

Many countries disregard their human rights commitments and most developing countries cannot implement them. Russia is an autocracy, China has not liberalized, and the West faces the problem of having to choose between ignoring human rights violations, thereby violating its commitment by default, or launching a military intervention, a violation of its commitment to peaceful resolutions. Only the UN Security Council has the legal authority to launch war on countries that violate human rights obligations.

The UN as a human rights enforcer has only been effective a handful of times:

1991 military intervention in Iraq for Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait
1999 military intervention in Kosovo
2003 military intervention in Iraq
2011 military intervention in Libya

Russia and China abstained from the resolution regarding military force in Libya and later accused the West of using their authority to overthrow the Libyan government rather than protect the civilians. The article states that now both Russia and China adamantly oppose intervention in Syria.

3. The International Criminal Court (ICC) is not fair and is only feared by "weak African countries."
A few trials have been held to try people accused of committing atrocities such as torture and genocide, but the court almost exclusively focuses on those weak African countries.

"The ICC has come to be seen as a tool of imperialists."

The court depends on strong countries to support it, and will never try Russians, Americans, or Chinese because their governments never ratified the treaty. "It cannot risk offending them," Posner says.

4. The World Trade Organization is still functioning, but countries have started to disregard adverse judgments from arbitration panels.

Why states obey international law

Posner goes on to ponder what would make countries obey international law:

Leaders had internalized the law

Leaders were bound by cooperative networks of judges an beauraucrats from different countries

Domestic and international NGOs put pressure on violators

Countries had become interdependent

Because it was fair

Posner says the real reason countries obey international law is because the United States and West makes them. Countries feared that if they didn't follow international law, they would be hit with sanctions or refused aid, investments, or trade opportunities, or be threatened with military force.

Why the system functions

Posner explains that international trade is the only exception to the collapse of the New World Order and the system functions because several countries enforce it in fear of mutual retaliation.

The New World Order had states believing all nations were equal, which was false; the US had no equal . Today, a small group of powerful nations determines how they will interact with each other and compete with each other for client relationships" with smaller countries.

The major challenge is to ensure that competition does not lead to full scale war.

Conclusion

Human rights and international justice will only prevail in the West, but trade and investment will flourish. Posner goes on to explain how states are self-interested and their actions reflect their best interests (something tells me Posner is a realist). He challenges theory (America?) to catch up to the times.

What are your thoughts on this article? It's probably one of my favorites. I, personally find it interesting that the author claims Russia and China were adamantly against intervention in Syria (the article was written in 2014), but Russia certainly later intervened. Posner also repeatedly claims that US power has been diminishing for some time but doesn't give any examples. I look forward to researching and finding out what he means by that.

Alliances: Balancing and Bandwagoning Summary by Stephen M. Walt

2014-10-03T22:19:00.001-04:00

When faced with a security threat, states will join forces with each other to contain the threat (BALANCING) or join forces with the threat, mainly to increase their own power (BANDWAGONING).

Balance of Power Theory- protection against states with superior resources that could pose a threat

Why do states choose to balance?

to contain the threat before it becomes too powerful
to increase the new member's influence within the alliance

It's safer to join with less dominant powers than the dominant powers because the influence will be greater.

Joining the weaker side should be the preferred choice.

Why do states choose to bandwagon?

balancing is the alliance with the weaker side-- bandwagoning is the alliance with the stronger side. States tend to form an alliance with or against the foreign power that poses the greatest threat.

Historically, states tend to bandwagon more than balance. It is used to justify international involvements or increased military budgets. But balancing is the dominant theory in international politics.

Consequences of Balancing and Bandwagoning

In balancing, credibility is less important-- the fear of allies defecting will decline.
In balancing, aggression is not common because those who ponder it will expect retaliation.
In bandwagoning, there is more of a competitive state. The decline of one side results in the rise of the other.

If leaders balance in a bandwagoning world, their allies may be more inclined to defect because of their perceived weakness.

If leaders bandwagon in a balancing world, they can encourage others to resist and oppose more aggressively.

When should Balancing or Bandwagoning be used?

Balancing should be used for uncertainties-- states mistrust one another and cannot be completely sure what the other will do.

It is safer to balance against potential threats rather than go on thinking that state will remain peaceful with you.

The weaker the state, the more likely it is to bandwagon because weak states add little strength and strong states can turn a losing state into a winning one. This could be rewarding for the weak state.

Weak states will likely balance when threatened by states with similar capabilities,

States will bandwagon when there are no allies available to balance with.

Although strong neighbors of strong states are likely to balance, small and weak neighbors of the great powers may be more inclined to bandwagon.

States are more likely to balance in peacetime or in the early stages of a war. As the outcome becomes certain, allies will be tempted to defect.

During peacetime, the winning side is likely to dismantle.

Anarchy and the Struggle for Power by John Mearsheimer

2014-04-08T10:34:00.001-04:00

Please note these are excerpts directly from the article

The basis of the paper is to argue that the hegemony is the ultimate goal of great powers.

The logic explaining why states seek to gain as much power as possible over their rivals will be
explained.

Coming Soon- Wendt’s Anarchy is What States Make of It & Mearshiemer’s Anarchy and the Struggle for Power

2013-09-03T20:36:00.000-04:00

Stay tuned!

Coming Soon- Alexander Wendt’s Anarchy is What States Make of It & John Mearshiemer’s Anarchy and the Struggle for Power

Follow the blog and subscribe for updates!

One World, Rival Theories Summary- Jack Snyder

2013-08-14T23:10:00.000-04:00

Good evening,

I have just finished this powerpoint. The article itself is only 12 pages. I have tried my best to condense the most pertinent information in a (roughly) 5-minute powerpoint. Have at it!

One World, Many Theories- Stephen M. Walt Summary

2013-06-17T20:38:00.001-04:00

This chart found in the article is a great synopsis of what the article entails. Walt examines each paradigm and explains why we should not take one approach as the almighty approach. There is something to be learned from each.

"Classical" realists such as Hans Morgenthau and Reinhold Niebuhr believed that states, like human beings, had an innate desire to dominate others, which led them to fight wars. Morgenthau also stressed the virtues of the classical, multipolar, balance-of-power system

"Neorealist" theory, advanced by Kenneth Waltz ignored human nature and focused on the effects of the international system; anarchy would lead weaker states to balancing against more powerful rivals. And contrary to Morgenthau, he claimed that bipolarity was more stable than multipolarity.

Offense-defense theory (Jervis, Quester, Van Evera):

War was more likely when states could conquer each other easily

When defense was easier than offense, security was more plentiful ,incentives to expand declined, and cooperation could blossom

If defense had the advantage, and states could distinguish between offensive and defensive weapons, then states could acquire the means to defend themselves without threatening others

One strand of liberal thought argued that economic inter-dependence would discourage states from using force against each other because warfare would not threaten each side's prosperity.

A second strand, often associated with President Woodrow Wilson, saw the spread of democracy as the key to world peace, based on the claim that democratic states were inherently more peaceful than authoritarian states.

A third, more recent theory argued that international institutions such as the International Energy Agency and the Inter-national Monetary Fund could help overcome selfish state behavior, mainly by encouraging states to forego immediate gains for the greater benefits of enduring cooperation.

Marxism offered both a different explanation for international conflict and a blueprint for fundamentally transforming the existing international order

Orthodox Marxist theory saw capitalism as the central cause of international conflict. Neomarxist "dependency" theory focused on relations between advanced capitalist powers and less developed state. Both of these theories were largely discredited before the Cold War even ended.

The "deconstructionist" approach was openly skeptical of the effort to devise general or universal theories such as realism or liberalism. Proponents emphasized the importance of language and discourse in shaping social outcomes.

Democratic peace theory is a refinement of the earlier claim that democracies were inherently more peaceful than autocratic states

Institutions are now said to facilitate cooperation when it is in each state's interest to do so, but it is widely agreed that they cannot force states to behave in ways that are contrary to the states' own selfish interests

A number of scholars have recently suggested that the "globalization" of world markets, the rise of transnational networks and nongovernmental organizations, and the rapid spread of global communications technology are undermining the power of states and shifting attention away from military security toward economics and social welfare

Constructivists regard the interests and identities of states as a highly malleable product of specific historical processes; constructivism is especially attentive to the sources of change.

Think Again, Sovereignty by Stephen D. Krasner

2013-06-16T14:39:00.003-04:00

Article Summary
Think Again: Sovereignty
By Stephen D. Krasner

Sovereignty is not Dead

For strong and weak states, sovereignty remains attractive.

National borders and the erosion of national borders are the most concerning consequence of globalization

What does Sovereignty Actually Mean?

Hobbes and Bodin believed it was law and were concerned with maintaining domestic order

In the modern world, sovereignty refers to independent and autonomous states

States can choose their own form of government within their borders

Non-intervention: States should not intervene in the internal affairs of another state

Technological change has made border control very difficult

Political leaders can enter into international agreements they find attractive

Treaties, as long as they are not coerced, are legitimate.

The Modern Sovereign State

1648 Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years War against the Holy Roman Empire

Introduced balance of power ideas

Was a new charter for the Holy Roman Empire

Established rules for religious tolerance

Major political leaders in Europe concluded that it was better to contain religious conflicts rather that repress differences

Challenges to Sovereignty

After WWII, human rights became the focus of attention

UN Charter endorses human rights issues but is nearly unenforceable and ineffective.

Globalization & Sovereignty

States are better equipped today to control the flow of ideas, information and goods than they were in the past.

State control has increased in some areas and decreased in others

Religious tolerance, monetary policy, national citizenship- Decline in state control

Overall government activity has increased among the most advanced states

NGOs and Sovereignty

The number of transnational NGOs has grown immensely from the 1900s

200 in 1909 to 17,000+ today

Technology has made it easier for NGOs to influence public policy and international law

Their ability to affect domestic affairs is limited

Sovereignty and Conflict Resolution

Conventional sovereignty rules make it harder to solve some problems

Israelis & Palestinians
China & Tibet
Hong Kong

The European Union

Is inconsistent with conventional sovereignty rules

Member states are intimately linked with one another

Member states have created institutions that can make decisions opposed by some member states

The EU is a product of state sovereignty because it was created by voluntary agreements among its member states but inherently contradicts the concept of sovereignty by undermining the individual sovereignty of its member states

Conversations with History: Sovereignty with Stephen D. Krasner
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yapoX2hhRK4
UCTV: http://www.uctv.tv/shows/Sovereignty-with-Stephen-D-Krasner-Conversations-with-History-7882
Link to article: Think Again, Sovereignty

Redefining Security by Jessica Tuchman Mathews (1989) Summary

2013-01-04T21:45:00.002-05:00

Please note these are excerpts directly from the article.

The line between foreign and domestic policy is blurred

Economic growth requires more energy, more emissions and wastes, more land converted from its natural state, and more need for the products of natural systems

Individuals and governments are beginning to feel the cost of substituting for the goods and services once freely provided by healthy ecosystems

For the first time in history, man is rapidly and inadvertently altering the basic physiology of the planet

Population growth lies at the core of most environmental trends

Policies, technologies, and institutions determine the impact of population growth; more importantly is the rate of growth

For many developing countries, continued growth at the current rates means that available capital is swallowed up in meeting the daily needs of people, rather than invested in resource conservation and job creation; such policies lay the foundation of a bleak future

Nonrenewable resources, such as coal, oil, and minerals, are inexhaustible; renewable resources can be finite; there are threshold effects for renewable resources that contradict the name given to them, with unfortunate consequences for policy

The most serious form of renewable resources decline is the deforestation taking place throughout the tropics; it impoverishes about a billion people (Central America, Sub-Saharan Africa, much of Asia, and South America)

Species are being lost in the tropical forests 1,000-10,000 times faster than the natural rate of extinction; as many as 20% of all the species now living may be lost by the year 2000; The loss will be felt aesthetically, scientifically, and economically

These genetic resources are an important source of food, materials for energy and construction, chemicals for pharmaceuticals and industry, vehicles for health and safety testing, natural pest controls and dozens of other uses

Soil degradation is another major concern; a cause and consequence of poverty; it is causing declining agricultural productivity on nearly two billion hectares

The causes are over-cultivation, over-grazing, erosion, salinization, and waterlogging due to poorly managed irrigation

Patterns of land tenure have an immense environmental impact; the great mass of the rural population is pushed onto the most damage-prone land, usually dry or erodible slopes, and into the forests

Environmental decline occasionally leads directly to conflict, especially when scarce water resources must be shared; its impact on national security is felt in declining economic performance and, therefore, on political stability.

The underlying cause of turmoil is often ignored; instead governments address the poverty and instability that are its results.

The resulting economic decline leads to frustration, resentment, domestic unrest or even civil war

Human suffering and turmoil make countries vulnerable for authoritarian governments or external subversion.

Resource mismanagement, religious and ethnic conflicts, political repression cause mass movements of environmental refugees

Mankind is altering both the carbon and nitrogen cycles, having increased the natural carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere by 25 percent.

The production of commercial fertilizer has doubled the amount of nitrogen nature makes available to living things

Chlorofluorocarbons, has punched a continent-sized "hole" in the ozone layer at the top of the stratosphere over Antarctica, and caused a smaller, but growing loss of ozone all around the planet.

As emissions of greenhouse gases increase, the planet is warmed unnaturally.

Carbon dioxide produced from the combustion of fossil fuels and by deforestation is responsible for about half of the greenhouse effect. A number of other gases, notably methane (natural gas), nitrous oxide, ozone (in the lower atmosphere, as distinguished from the protective ozone layer in the stratosphere) and the man-made chlorofluorocarbons are responsible for the other half.

The increased ultraviolet radiation resulting from losses in that protective layer will cause an increase in skin cancers and eye damage.

Achieving sustainable economic growth will require the remodeling of agriculture, energy use and industrial production after nature's example -- their reinvention, in fact.

A vital first step, one that can and should be taken in the very near term, would be to reinvent the national income accounts by which gross national product is measured. GNP is the foundation on which national

economic policies are built, yet its calculation does not take into account resource depletion. A second step would be to invent a set of indicators by which global environmental health could be measured

Development assistance also requires new tools. Bilateral and multilateral donors have found that project success rates climb when nongovernmental organizations distribute funds and direct programs. Such projects are more decentralized, more attuned to local needs and desires, and have a much higher degree of local participation in project planning.

Better ways must also be found to turn the scientific and engineering strengths of the industrialized world to the solution of the developing world's problems.

On the political front, the need for a new diplomacy and for new institutions and regulatory regimes to cope with the world's growing environmental interdependence

The developing countries especially will need to pool their efforts in the search for solutions

It will be necessary to reduce the dominance of the superpower relationship which so often encourages other countries to adopt a wait-and-see attitude

Among these new approaches, perhaps the most difficult to achieve will be ways to negotiate successfully in the presence of substantial scientific uncertainty

The new model will have to be fluid, allowing a rolling process of intermediate or self-adjusting agreements that respond quickly to growing scientific understanding, will require new economic methods for assessing risk, especially where the possible outcomes are irreversible, and may need to forge a more involved and constructive role for the private sector.

Future arrangements will require provisions for monitoring, enforcement and compensation, even when damage cannot be assigned a precise monetary value.

These are all areas where international law has traditionally been weak.

Four steps are most important:

prompt revision of the Montreal Treaty, to eliminate completely the production of chlorofluorocarbons no later than the year 2000;
full support for and implementation of the global Tropical Forestry Action Plan developed by the World Bank, the U.N.'s Development Programme, the Food and Agricultural Organization, and the World Resources Institute;
sufficient support for family planning programs to ensure that all who want contraceptives have affordable access to them at least by the end of the decade;
and, for the United States, a ten-year energy policy with the goal of increasing the energy productivity of our economy (i.e., reducing the amount of energy required to produce a dollar of GNP) by about three percent each year.

The False Promise of International Institutions Summary by John Mearsheimer (1994-95)

2012-09-17T15:14:00.003-04:00

The post cold war world rejects balance of power politics via international institutions based on the belief that institutions are a key means of promoting world peace...

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The Resource Curse: Are Civil Wars Driven by Rapacity or Paucity? (Summary) by Indra de Soysa

2012-08-29T17:07:00.000-04:00

Contained below are excerpts from the reading I found important enough to outline the concept of the paper.

A high dependence on primary goods exports is significantly and robustly related to the incidence of civil war

This position is based on the premise that the availability of natural resources spawns violent conflict because it provides incentives for rebel groups to form on the basis of capturing loot, which also sustains the activity of these groups; mineral resources are also easily captured

War is detrimental to society but small, organized groups stand to “do well out of war.” This logic explains why conflict appears and reappears frequently despite the deleterious effects of wanton destruction in civil war situations

From the environmental security perspective, ecological transformation alters the sociopolitical fabric of society, disrupting productive relationships and ultimately adversely affecting established constraints on and mechanisms of social peace

The argument is that poor countries stay poor and suffer armed conflict because resource scarcity acts to prevent socioeconomic innovation

Greed-motivated rebellion will be proxied by the lootable income inherent in natural resources, especially subsoil assets

Security-motivated rebellion is proxied by the availability of renewable resources

Ethnicity and democracy proxy the social bases of potential grievance-motivated rebellion. Economic growth and the openness of the economy also proxy grievance-based explanations

An abundance of subsoil assets has a direct positive effect on intrastate armed conflict, not of variables controlling for economic, political, and social factors

An abundance of natural capital that is purely renewable, such as agricultural and timber assets, has a weak negative effect on conflict, net of variables

How can a country escape from resource dependence and manage to innovate? Economic growth through developmental assistance

Countries have far brighter longer-term economic prospects if they are not dependent on resources, especially mineral wealth

Rapacity (aggressive greed) encouraged by an abundance of natural resources tends to fuel civil conflict

Paucity (scarcity) of natural resources does not seem to be such a strong factor in determining the likelihood of civil strife, despite the recent upsurge in environmental degradation and scarcity as a source of conflict

Economic progress has much to do with the incentives that motivate innovation

Resource availability may have little to do with economic innovation, compared with other social and political factors

Environmental degradation is possibly part of a vicious cycle of poor governance, underdevelopment, and conflict

Conflict also leads to environmental degradation when farmers abandon land in search of cool ground and become refugees elsewhere

Doing Well Out of War: An Economic Perspective by Paul Collier (Summary)

2012-08-22T16:09:00.000-04:00

The information presented below are excerpts directly from the reading. Enjoy!

Economic agendas appear to be central to understanding why civil wars start; conflicts are far more likely to be caused by economic opportunities than by grievance

If economic agendas are driving conflict, then it is likely that some groups are benefiting from conflict and that these groups have some interest in initiating and sustaining it

A useful conceptual distinction in understanding the motivation for civil war is that between greed and grievance

Successful rebel organizations place considerable emphasis on good public relations with the international community

Narratives of grievance play much better with the international community than narratives of greed; by playing upon a sense of grievance, the organization may be able to get new recruits more cheaply

Even where the rationale at the top of the organization is essentially greed, the actual discourse may be entirely dominated by grievance

Primary commodity exports are likely to be a goof proxy for the availability of lootable resources; it can also be highly profitable because it is based on the exploitation of idiosyncratic natural endowments rather than more competitive levels of manufacturing: production can survive predatory taxation

Rebel narratives of grievance are focused on one or more of four factors: 1) raw ethnic or religious hatred, economic inequality, a lack of political rights, government economic incompetence

The presence of primary commodity exports massively increases the risks of civil conflict; a country heavily dependent on primary commodity exports with a quarter of its national income coming from them, has a risk of conflict four times greater than one without primary commodity exports

A country with large natural resources, many young men, and little education is very much more at risk of conflict than one with opposite characteristics

The true cause of civil war is not the loud discourse of grievance but the silent force of greed

Civil wars create some opportunity for profit that are not available during times of peace: 1) life during civil war tends to be less predictable 2) there is likely to be an increase in criminality; governments reduce expenditure on the police during conflict as the increase spending on the military. As a result, the risks of punishment for criminal behavior decline 3) markets during civil war become disrupted 4) the scope for rent-seeking predation on trade increases for rebels and may even increase for government officials as their actions become less open to scrutiny

The rebels will do well through predation on primary commodity exports, traders will do well through widened margins on goods they sell to consumers, criminals will do well through theft, and opportunistic businessmen will do well at the expense of those businesses that are constrained to honest conduct

If some people do well out of civil war, they may not be particularly concerned to restore peace

Reducing the incentives for conflict

To the extent that is possible to curtail the sales of primary commodities that are financing conflict the prospects for peace are increased

A further way in which the international community can reduce the risks generated by primary commodity exports is to assist in the diversification of the economics of those societies that are most at risk—developmental assistance is the instrument for this

Substantial developmental assistance is only available during peacetime conditions so that its role is preventative, whereas the control of marketing channels may also be able to influence the incentives for settling current conflicts

Policy should be focused on making markets as competitive as possible; competition will reduce profits to normal levels and reduce the attraction of conflict for wartime traders

Crime thrives on low detection and poor justice systems. The rehabilitation of the police and the courts is thus a post-conflict priority, partly to ease problems of contract enforcement.

The causes of conflict points to economic factors as the main drivers of conflict

The combination of large exports of primary commodities, low education, a high proportion of young men, and economic decline drastically increases risks; greed seems more important than grievance

Effective policy should reduce both the economic incentives for rebellion and the economic power of the groups that tend to gain from the continuation of social disorder

The restriction of access to international commodity markets for illegitimate exports from countries in conflict, and the targeting of development assistance to high-risk countries not currently in conflict, are both feasible strategies for the international community

The Fact of Democratic Peace Summary: From Grasping the Democratic Peace by Bruce Russett

2012-08-06T17:37:00.002-04:00

Chapter 1: The Fact of Democratic Peace

Democracies almost never fight because they have other means of resolving conflicts between them and therefore do not need to fight each other

The more democracies there are in the world, the fewer potential adversaries democracies will have and the wider the zone of peace

The feeling of common liberal and democratic values played its part in moderating power conflicts between the US, and Britain and Britain and France.

Since relatively few democracies bordered each other in the 1920s and 1930s they generally avoided war with each other

Most states or great powers with “global reach” could exert power only against contiguous states or near neighboring states

The willingness of states to fight each other depend on conflicts of interests such as territorial disputes over borders or rights of ethnic groups, which is rare in the absence of proximity

Democratic political systems operate under restraints that make them more peaceful in their relations with other democracies; democracies are not necessarily peaceful in their relations with other political systems

Democracies are less likely to use lethal violence toward other democracies that toward autocracies or autocracies toward each other

There are no clear cases of sovereign stable democracies waging war with each other in the modern international system

The relationship of relative peace among democracies is a result of some features of democracies rather than geopolitical or economic characteristics related with democracies

Interstate war: war between sovereign states internationally recognized by other states including major powers whose recognition of a government confers de facto statehood

Democracy is usually identified with a voting franchise for a substantial fraction of citizens, a government brought to power in contested elections, and an executive either popularly elected or responsible to an elected legislature, often also with requirements for civil liberties such as free speech

As twentieth century politics unfold, the phenomenon of war between democracies becomes impossible or almost impossible to find

Even the kind of crisis bargaining that uses military force in a threatening manner becomes rare between democracies, even if not quite absent; if there is a crisis bargaining, it does not escalate to the point of war

Positivism and Beyond by Steve Smith- Summary

2012-07-31T19:24:00.000-04:00

International Relations has been dominated by positivism in the last 40 years

The discipline has tended to accept implicitly a rather simple and crucially an uncontested set of positivist assumptions which have fundamentally stifled debate over both what the world is like and how we might explain it

There are three main chronological variants of positivism in the history of the social sciences, with the third of these being the most relevant for international relations

The first variant, developed by Auguste Comte is based on the methods of the natural sciences, namely observation. Its aim was to reveal the evolutionary casual laws that explained observable phenomena

Positive science was a distinct third stage in the development of knowledge which progressed first from theological to metaphysical knowledge and then to positivist knowledge.

What Can I do with my Degree??

2012-07-26T11:34:00.000-04:00

Hello everyone. I am adding a new page to this blog entitled "What Can I Do With My Degree?"

This was prompted because as a graduating senior, I could not, for the life of me find anything to help me. All I had was Google! And I'd like to try and make life a little bit easier for everyone.

Bear with me as I periodically update the page which you can access here or by clicking the link above.

Politics among Nations Summary- Hans J. Morgenthau (Chapter 1: A Realist Theory of International Relations)

2012-06-24T22:56:00.000-04:00

Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace- Hans J Morgenthau

Chapter 1 Summary: A Realist Theory of International Relations

Modern political thought has two schools:

1. A rational moral and political order can be achieved here and now; human nature is good and infinitely malleable. The failure of social order is a consequence of lack of knowledge and understanding, outdated social institutions, or the immorality of certain isolated individuals or groups. Solutions to remedy these effects include education, reform, and the sporadic use of force.

2. The world is imperfect because of forces inherent in human nature; moral principles can never be fully realized. Historic precedents trump abstract principles; concerned with the realization of the lesser evil rather than the absolute good. This is called realism.

Six Principles of Political Realism:

1.      Politics is governed by objective laws that have their roots in human nature. Human nature has not changed.

2.      International politics is the concept of interests defined in terms of power separate from other spheres of action such as economics, ethics, religion, etc. Without this separation, we could not distinguish between political and nonpolitical facts/issues nor bring a measure of systematic order to the political sphere.
     a.       It is futile and deceptive to search for clues to foreign policy exclusively in the motives of statesmen; history shows no exact and necessary correlation between quality of motives and quality of foreign policy in both moral and political terms.
     b.      A realist theory avoids equating foreign policy with ideological preferences. Political realism requires a sharp distinction between what is desirable everywhere and at all times and what is possible under concrete circumstances of time and place.
     c.       Political realism considers a rational foreign policy a good foreign policy; a perfect balance of power policy will scarcely be found in reality.

3.      The idea of interest is the essence of politics and is unaffected by the circumstances of time and place.
     a.       The kind of interest determining political action in a particular period of history depends on the political and cultural context within which foreign policy is formulated; the same goes for the concept of power: its content and the manner of its use are determined by the political and cultural environment
     b.      Realism does not assume that existing conditions under which foreign policy operates cannot be changed
     c.       The nation state is the ultimate point of reference of contemporary foreign policy.
     d.      The transformation of the contemporary world can be achieved only through the manipulation of the recurrent forces that have shaped the past as they will the future

4.      Universal moral principles cannot be applied to the actions of states in their abstract universal formulation, but must be filtered through the concrete circumstances of time and place. Prudence, the weighing of the consequences of alternative political actions, is the supreme virtue in politics.

5.      Realism refuses to identify the moral ambitions of a particular nation with the moral laws that govern the universe
     a.       We are able to judge other nations as we judge our own, and having judged them in this fashion, we are capable of pursuing policies that respect the interests of other nations while protecting and promoting our own.
     b.      Moderation in policy cannot fail to reflect the moderation of moral judgment.

6.      The difference between realism and other schools of thought is profound. The political realist maintains autonomy of the political sphere, but recognizes different facets of human nature exist.

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The Demand for International Regimes- Robert O. Keohane (1982)

2012-06-21T17:42:00.001-04:00

The paper addresses the question as to why self-interested actors establish international regimes through mutual agreement

International regimes are like contracts that facilitate the making of agreements among actors (states) with long-term objectives by providing rules, norms principles, and procedures that help actors overcome barriers to agreements and realize their interests collectively.

Since actors operate in a self-help system, the rules of international regimes lack binding authority. The facilitation of agreements between actors is to prevent a “war of all against all”.

Public goods give rise to the demand for international regimes which can improve problems of transactions costs and information imperfections that obstruct effective decentralized responses to problems of providing public goods.

Increased issue concentration will lead to increased demand for international regimes

The demand for international regimes will be a function of the effectiveness of the regimes in developing standard generalized commitments and providing high-quality information to policymakers

We can better understand trans-governmental relations and the lags observed between structural change and regime change

Past patterns of institutionalized cooperation may be able to compensate for increasing fragmentation of power; hegemony is not necessarily a precondition for stable international regimes under all circumstances

Determining the difference between control-oriented international regimes and insurance regimes may help us understand emerging adaptations of advanced industrialized countries to a global situation where their capacity for control over events is much less than it was during the postwar quarter century.

International regimes do not necessarily increase levels of welfare; there will always be the possibility of conflict

And Now This: Lessons from the Old Era for the New One by John Lewis Gaddis

2012-04-18T16:53:00.000-04:00

· -The post cold war era began with the collapse of the Berlin Wall and ended with the collapse of the World Trade Center’s twin towers

· -Would anyone claim in the aftermath of Sept 11 that the US can continue the policies it was following with respect to its national defense or toward the world before Sept 11?

· -We need a reconsideration of how the US has managed its responsibilities in the decade since the Cold War for the purpose of determining where we go from here

· -The geographical position and the military power of the US are no longer sufficient to ensure its security

· -The 20^th century eroded that sense of safety as a result of a larger role the US had assigned itself in world affairs, together with ominous shifts in the European balance of power

· -The cold war made the American homeland seem less secure in two ways: when spies working on behalf of the Soviet Union were shown to have betrayed the country; and as the prospect arose that Soviet long-range bombers and later intercontinental ballistic missiles might soon be capable of reaching American soil

· -The very term “national security” invented during WWII and put to such frequent use during the cold war always implied that both threats and vulnerabilities lay outside the country

· -Americans have entered a new stage in their history in which they can no longer take security for granted

· -Given the opportunity to rerun the sequence, what would we want to change, and what would we want to keep the same? Unilateralism:

o American ideas, institutions, and culture remained as attractive as ever throughout much of the world, but American policies began to come across as overbearing, self-indulgent, and insensitive to the interests of others

o We neglected the cultivation of great power relationships. We seemed to have assumed that we no longer needed the cooperation of others to promote our interests

o We failed to sustain creating a situation in which our adversaries feared one another more than they feared us

§ This happened chiefly as a result of a third characteristic of our post-cold war foreign policy, which was a preference for justice at the expense of order

o A fourth aspect of our post-cold war foreign policy was the inconsistency with which we pursued regional justice

§ By applying universal principles on a less than universal basis, Washington opened itself to the charge of hypocrisy (Somalia, Rwanda)

§ Meanwhile in the Middle East, we tolerated the continuing Israeli dispossession of Palestinians even as we were seeking to secure the rights of Palestinians;

§ We did nothing to adjust policy in response to the fact that Iran was moving toward free elections and a parliamentary system even as old allies like Saudi Arabia were shunning such innovations

§ There was, in short, a gap between our principles and our practices

o A fifth problem was our tendency to regard our economic system as a model to be applied throughout the rest of the world without regard to differences in local conditions and with little sense of the effects it would have in generating inequality

§ Capitalism would have expanded after the cold war regardless of what the US did

§ By linking that expansion with our foreign policy objectives, we associated ourselves with something abroad that we would never tolerate at home: an unregulated market devoid of a social safety net

· -The US emphasized the advantages while neglecting the dangers of globalization

o It was made to be a good thing that capital, commodities, ideas and people could move freely across boundaries

o There was little talk that danger might move across just as freely

o That’s the major lesson of Sept 11: the very instruments of the new world order- airplanes, liberal policies on immigration, and money transfers, multiculturalism itself- can be turned horribly against it

· -What connects these shortcomings is a failure of strategic vision: the ability to see how the parts of one’s policy combine to form the whole

· -Conclusion: our power exceeded our wisdom

· -What must we do differently?

o Maintain coalitions which will require tolerating diversity within it

o If global coalition against terrorism is to survive, it will demand even greater flexibility on the part of Americans than our cold war coalition did; we must relinquish the unilateralism we indulged in during the post-cold war period

o We must define our allies more in terms of shared interests and less in terms of shared values

o We must compromise more than we would like in promoting human rights, open markets, and the spread of democracy

o We must concentrate more on getting whatever help we can in the war against terrorism wherever we can find it; our concerns with regional justice may suffer as a result

o We must address the grievances that fuel terrorism in the first place

-The era we have just entered is bound to be more painful than the one we’ve just left

· -The anti-terrorist coalition is sure to undergo strains as its priorities shift from recovery to retaliation

The Contributions of feminist theory to international relations by Christine Sylvester

2012-04-18T10:53:00.000-04:00

Click here to get a hard copy of these notes.

Bad Neighbors, Bad Neighborhoods by Myron Weiner

2012-03-07T16:17:00.000-05:00

1.       Global television has made us all witnesses to events that in the past might have gone unnoticed

2.     National self-interests are at stake if there is reason to expect a large influx of refugees and asylum seekers, or if there is a high probability that the internal conflict will result in a wider regional war

3.     Steps taken by a government to provide for its security may be construed by others as hostile, thereby provoking a response that leaves both sides less secure

4.     There are two new security dilemmas in addressing conflicts within states

a. steps taken by the government of a refugee-receiving country to change the conditions within a refugee-generating country may provoke the latter government (or its opponents) to respond in ways that further increase the insecurity of the former

b. intervention in another country's conflicts may become a highly divisive and destabilizing domestic political issue

i. because it is often uncertain whether there is a threat

ii. because the costs of intervention may be high and unpredictable

iii. because it is usually unclear whether the government can have any influence over the conflict

Military Responses to Refugee Flows by Barry Posen

2012-03-07T15:51:00.002-05:00

1. Causes of refugee flows

a. Genocide/politicide

i. Toughest to address with military power

ii. A coercive bombing strategy may work in rare cases

iii. Safe zones/safe havens may be employed if refugees are in a concentrated area

iv. Only complete invasion and occupation is likely to stop the crime

v. Killing of innocents can occur

b. Ethnic cleansing

i. Safe havens/zones a pragmatic approach

c. Repressive conquerors/repressive regimes

d. The dangerous environment of war

e. Impoverishment caused by primitive armies that live off the land

2. Military remedies for refugee problems

a. Strategic bombing

b. Safe zones

i. When demographic, ecological, and geopolitical factors are favorable, safe zones an appealing remedy

ii. The threatened population may be organized into lightly armed ground forces

iii. Political problem: sovereignty

1. De facto secession by outside powers

c. Safe havens

i. Analytically distinct from safe zones

ii. Primarily refuges, not places of normal existence

iii. Adopted only in the most dire circumstances

d. Enforced peace

e. Full scale war against assailant groups or states

i. The best military answer to refugees produced by cruel occupations or highly repressive indigenous regimes

Perpetual Peace by Immanuel Kant

2012-02-07T21:07:00.000-05:00

-The natural state is one of war. A state of peace must be therefore be established

· -Unless this security is pledged to each by his neighbor, each may treat his neighbor from whom he demands this security as an enemy

· -The civil constitution of every state should be republican

· -The republican constitution gives a favorable prospect for perpetual peace

· -A declaration of war in a republican constitution is very hard to decide on because of the required personal and financial costs. In a constitution that is not republican, a declaration of war is easy because the ruler makes no sacrifices and may declare war for trivial reasons

· -The law of nations shall be founded on a federation of free states

· -People/states should, for their own security, demand that others enter with it into a constitution similar to the civil construction to avoid violent state of nature

· -“Law” cannot have the least legal force in war because states as such do not stand under a common external power

· -It is the prerogative which nature has given the strong, that the weak should obey him

· -States do not plead their cause before a tribunal; war alone is their way of bringing suit

· -The obligation which men in a lawless condition have under natural law that requires them to abandon the state of nature does not apply to states because they already have a constitution and have outgrown the need to submit to a more extended, lawful constitution according to their ideas of right

-There must be a league of peace which would be distinguished from a treaty of peace by the fact that the latter terminates war while the former seeks to make an end of all wars forever

· -This idea of federation should gradually spread to all states and thus lead to perpetual peace

· -States must give up their savage (lawless) freedom, like individual man, and adjust themselves to the constraints of public law to establish a continuously growing state consisting of various nations, which will ultimately include all the nations of the world

· -The guarantee of perpetual peace is nature. As nature saw to it, men could live everywhere in world.

· -War requires no special motive but appears to be engrafted in human nature. Often war is waged only in order to show valor

· -The problem of organizing a state is requiring laws for presentation of states which secretly want to exempt himself from them. To establish a constitution so that although private institutions conflict, they check each other with the result that their public conduct is the same as if they had no such intentions

· -A state of peace is established in which laws have force

· -Nature unavoidably wills that the right should finally triumph; what we neglect to do comes about by itself, though with great inconvenience

· -Nature employs two means to separate people and prevent them from mixing languages and religions. These differences have a tendency to involve mutual hatred and pretexts for war, but the progress of civilization and man’s gradual approach to greater harmony in their principles finally leads to peaceful agreement

· -Nations which could not have secured themselves against violence and war by means of the law unite because of mutual interest.

· -The spirit of commerce, which is incompatible with war, sooner or later gains the upper hand in every state. The power of money is perhaps the most dependable of all the powers

· -States are forced to promote honorable peace and by meditation to prevent war whenever it threatens to break out

The Clash of Civilizations by Samuel Huntington

2011-11-29T14:14:00.000-05:00

The Clash of Civilizations

Accords more importance to motives and values as sources of conflicts...

Why We Will Soon Miss The Cold War- John Mearsheimer

2011-11-08T13:41:00.000-05:00

We will lament the loss of order the Cold War gave to anarchy of international relations

Untamed anarchy is a prime cause of armed conflict

The prospect of major crises and wars in Europe is likely to increase dramatically now that the Cold War is receding through history

Distribution and character of military power among states are the root causes of war and peace.

The peace in Europe since 1945 is due to:

1. The bipolar distribution of military power on the continent

2. The rough military equality between the polar powers the US and USSR

3. The ritualistically deplored fact that each of these superpowers is armed with a large nuclear arsenal

The new Europe will involve multi-polar distribution of power which was plagued with war from the founding of the European State system

Post-war era more peaceful due to the multi-polar distribution of power in Europe and the imbalance of strength that often developed among the great powers as they jostled for supremacy or advantage

A bipolar system is more peaceful because they demand allegiance from minor powers which are secure from each other as well as from the attack by the rival great power

Deterrence is difficult to maintain in a multi-polar state system because when power asymmetries develop, the strong become hard to deter. A major power might simply bully a weaker power in a one on one encounter which is unknown in a bipolar state. The resolve of opposing states and the size and strength of opposing coalitions are hard to calculate because the shape of international order to remain in flux. The aggressors can coerce others by bluffing war.

The size of the gap in military power between two leading states in the system is a key determinant of stability. Small gaps foster peace, large gaps promote war.

Nuclear weapons are a powerful force for peace. States that possess nuclear deterrents can stand up to one another

The single greatest domestic threat to peace is hypernationalism

Bipolarity, an equal balance of military power and nukes, are the key to elements for the long peace.

Without nukes, Europe would have crisis, tension, and possibly war. USSR and unified Germany would be the most powerful states. Europe would be disturbed by hypernationalism.

A scenario in which current ownership continues without proliferation seems very unlikely. The Germans will eventually look to nuclear weapons as the surest means of security.

The most probable scenario is further nuclear proliferation in Europe. Well-managed proliferation could help bolster peace. By increasing the number of fingers on the nuclear trigger, proliferation would increase the risk that nuclear weapons would be fired by accident or captured by terrorists or used by madmen

The best time for nuclear proliferation to occur would be during a time of relative international calm

Obsolescence of war theory posits that modern conventional war had become do deadly by 1945 as to be unthinkable as an instrument of state craft. The fact that WWII occurred casts doubts on this theory. The key flaw is the assumption that all conventional wars will be long and bloody wars of attrition.

There is no systematic evidence that Europeans believe war is obsolete.

Prosperity will make for peace (unified European Market). This scenario is based on economic liberalism which assumes that states are primarily motivated by the desire to achieve prosperity and that leaders place the material welfare of their publics above all other considerations including security. Stability flows from creation of a liberal economic order

A liberal economic order requires significant political cooperation to make states richer. It fosters economic interdependence. When interdependence is high, there is less temptation to cheat or behave aggressively toward other states because all states can retaliate economically.

This theory has one grave flaw: states operate in both an international political and international economic environment and the former dominates the latter when the two systems come into conflict

When security is scarce, states become more concerned with relative than absolute gains

In times of crisis or war, states that depend on others for economic critical supplies will fear cutoff or blackmail. They may respond by trying to seize the source of supply by force of arms

The cold war was the prime cause of cooperation among western democracies and the main reason intra-EC relations have flourished

Without a common soviet threat or an American night watchman, western European states will look upon one another with abiding suspicion

War is avoided under the peace-loving democracies theory because liberal democracies simply do not fight one another. In a democracy, the citizens are more hesitant to start trouble because it is they who must pay the price. Citizens of a liberal democracy respect popular democratic rights and democratic governments are viewed as or legitimate than others

The west has an interest in maintaining the cold war order and has an interest in continuing the cold war confrontation

The fate of the cold war is mainly in the hands of the Soviet Union

How to maintain peace in a multi-polar Europe:

1) US should encourage the limited and carefully managed proliferation of nuclear weapons in Europe.

2) Britain and the US and continental state will have to counter any emerging aggressor actively and efficiently in order to offset the hanging up and bullying that are sure to arise in post-cold war Europe. Both states must maintain military forces that can be deployed against continental states that threaten to start a war.

3) A concerted effort should be made to keep hypernationalism at bay. States that teach a dishonestly self-exculpating or self-glorifying history should be publicly (punished?) and sanctioned.

The End of History by Francis Fukuyama

2011-11-02T22:45:00.000-04:00

The developed world has evolved toward a liberal consensus that is effectively close to ending the basis for violent contention of the past

Western liberal democracy returning to unabashed victory of economic and political liberalism

End of history: the endpoint of mankind’s ideological evolution and universalization of western liberal democracy as the final form of human government

End of history idea from Karl Marx who borrowed from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Alexander Kojeve

The progress of history must lead toward the establishment of a universal homogenous state incorporating elements of liberal or social democracy

History= an evolutionary process

Events still occur at the end of history

Man is unable to control technology therefore his future is bleak

End of history- liberal democracy will become the only form of government for all states and will be the last form of government

A world dominated by economic concerns in which there are no ideological grounds for major conflicts between nations, and in which consequently, the use of military force becomes less legitimate

the struggle for recognition, the willingness to risk one's life for a purely abstract goal, the worldwide ideological struggle that called forth daring, courage, imagination, and idealism, will be replaced by economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems, environmental concerns, and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands.

Read the whole paper here