Transcript Document

Classes 8-11: Theories of Security
and International Relations
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Class 8: Realism and Neorealism
Class 9: Classical Liberalism
Class 10: Institutional Liberalism
Class 11: Marxism
Class 12: General Discussion and TakeHome Examinations Turned in
Procedure
• Identify key assumptions of each school of security theory
• Evaluate and critique each school with respect to its
capacity
– to explain why and how state actors use force or coercive threats
– or decide to use non-coercive means to achieve their aims, interests
and values
– or some mix of these two options
• We will then evaluate the capacity of each position to
explain why the Cold War began and why it ended so
abruptly with the implosion of the Soviet Union
Organization of the Presentation
of Realism
• Principal assumptions of classical realism
• Pessimistic school of realism: neorealism
and Kenneth Waltz
• Optimistic school of realism: Hedley Bull
and the English School and Robert Axelrod
• Evaluation of Realism to explain the Cold
War
The Founder of Classical
Realism
• Classical realist theory is drawn from Hobbes
– Realism is consistent with the Clausewitz’ On War
– And Thucydides account of the Peloponnesian War and,
specifically, his recounting of the Melian Dialogue
• Principal Assumption: The aims, interests, and
values of states do not convergence
– Conflict between states is inherent in the interdependent relations
of states
– Conflicts over aims, interests, and values are ultimately resolved,
when all other means to arrive at consensus or accord fail, by force
and coercion
– Force and coercive threats are embedded in all state relations
Principal Assumptions of
Classical Realism Today
• The state is the principal actor in international
relations and global politics
• Why? Because only the state, given its claim to
sovereignty, possesses the monopoly of legitimate
force to resolve conflicts
– Between individuals and groups over which it rules
with a defined territorial space
– Between itself and other states and international actors
Other Properties of States as the
Principal Actor in International Relations
• Only states can recognize other states and
enter into relations with them
• Contemporary International Law and Moral
Norms acknowledge the special or
privileged status and authority of states
• International organizations, notably the
United Nations, are subordinate to the states
that create them
Failed States (Paradoxically)
Bolster Realist Theory
• A Failed State -- A state which is unable to
perform its domestic and international security
obligations do not undermine realist theory:
– Failure and the state’s dependence on other states
evidences the centrality of authority and power of the
state
– Note that communities that do not yet form a state,
strive for this status -- Kurds, Palestinians, Chechnyans,
The Principal Aim of States:
Power
• To ensure their security and survival, states must
pursue power
– They must always be concerned about their relative
position other states
– Power is the essential means or instruments to realize
state preferences -- for material gain, status, support for
the interests of their people, etc.
– The most important form of power is military force
Hans Morgenthau, Politics
among States
• States Morgenthau:
“We assume that statesmen think and act in
terms of interest defined as power, and the
evidence of history bears that assumption
out”
How Can States Achieve Power?
• By the state’s own means
– Population
– Industrialization
– Science and Technology, etc
• By alliances
– All alliances are conditional: they apply only if they remain in the
power interests of the state
– A shared ideology is no guarantee that an alliance will be reliable
• Francis I of France allied with a Muslim ruler against his neighboring
Christian states
• Democratic India aligned with Communist Soviet Union against
democratic United States, while an authoritarian Pakistan, the rival of
India, aligned with the United States
What Is the Outcome of Alliances
• In seeking to maintain its relative power
vis-à-vis other states, a shifting Balance of
Power emerges
• All states, according to realists, are then
obliged (that is, constrained) to pursue a
balance of power strategy
The History of the European States
Illustrates the Balance of Power
• 18th Century: Principal states were English,
France, Austria, Prussia, and Russia which often
changed sides to preserve the balance
• Napoleonic France (1789-1815) attempted to
destroy the European balance and establish French
hegemony only to be defeated by a European
coalition
• The Concert of Europe (1815-1914) maintained
peace through flexible and overlapping alliances
to ensure a balance of power as a deterrent to war
The 20th Century and Balances
of Power
• The rigidity of the balance of power in the decade before World War I
partially explains the world war
– The Triple Entente of two democratic states with authoritarian Russia vs. the
Central Powers of semi-democratic/autocratic Germany and Austria-Hungary
• World War II pitted two internally contradictory coalitions against each
other
– Racist Nazi Germany and Japan vs. democratic American and Britain and
Communist Soviet Union
• The Cold War produced a bipolar balance led by a democratic America
vs. Communist Soviet Union
– The coalitions were each ideological flawed in favor of each state’s
estimate of its gain in power by belonging to one or the other of these
coalitions
– Or, remaining neutral to avoid subordination to one or both of the
superpowers
Pessimistic Realism: Neorealism
and Kenneth Waltz
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The central determining cause of state behavior is the SYSTEM of nationstates
– This anarchical system imposes an imperative of security and survival on each state
– International relations “theory” is reduced to the system-state relation
– States seek their survival, not power, nor is state behavior explained by the
countless aims and interests it might pursue
– States that ignore their relative power of power to other states will be selected out
of the system or be subordinated to other states
– The system is a self-help system; no other state can be relied upon to defend
another state at the risk of its own power
– Neorealist claim that their conception of international relations achieves the level
of a scientific proposition
• The anarchical system, defined by the distribution of coercive capabilities across states,
cannot be surmounted
• The bipolar system is allegedly more stable than a multi-polar system since the power
balance between the superpowers can be more accurately and reliably calculated
• Given the enormous military power of the United States and the Soviet Union, neorealist
theory assumed that the Cold War would last indefinitely
How Well Does Realism and Neorealism Explain the
Rise and Demise of the Cold War?
• Realism explains the emergence of the Cold War
– The United States and Soviet Union sought to impose
their power and preferences on other states and the
global system
– Both developed global systems of alliances and
alignments
– These were in no small part defined by power balances
and not ideology
• The United States was allied with non-democratic regimes
around the globe
• The Soviet Union was allied with many non-Communist states,
including democratic India
Both Superpowers Pursued
Hegemonic Military Policies
• At a nuclear level, each side possessed (and still possesses)
sufficient nuclear striking power to destroy each other and
large segments of the planet and its population
• Both created enormous conventional military power and
these systems were largely pitted against each other in
Europe as a deterrent to war or expansion
• Both superpowers created a global network of military
partners and dominated global arms markets throughout
the Cold War
Then Why Did the Soviet Union
Implode and the Cold War End?
• Two other challenges of power were not addressed
by the Soviet Union
– First, a centralized, state-bureaucratic economic system
increasingly fell behind the economic growth of the
Western market states
– Both Communist China (earlier in 1979) and the Soviet
Union later (in the 1980s) attempted to adapt their
economic systems to the Western model
– Only Communist China succeeded in adapting to the
global, capitalistic market system without undermining
the Communist Regime
The Soviet Union vs.
Nationalism
• The second principal explanation, and arguably
the most important, was the internal weakness of
the Soviet Union’s social composition
– The Soviet Union was unable to control the national
demands for independence of the Soviet Republic and
those of the states of the Warsaw Pact
– The key stake of the Cold War -- Germany -- was
united under West European direction.
The Central Defects of Realist
and Especially Neorealist Theory
• The Soviet state imploded -- what states are not predicted
to do, notably so-called superpowers
• The techno-economic power of the liberal Western market
states were too great an attractive force and the attempted
adaptation of the Soviet Union to the West’s non-military
power produced a crisis and contributed to the collapse of
the Soviet state
• This process of self-destruction was accelerated by the
“soft” power not only of subject populations but also, and
ironically, by the Russian people who abandoned the
pursuit of hegemony and world power