Political theories accounting for war

•

The prevailing logic of classical realism within the international community regulates the behavior of “aggressor” states who seek power, not security.

•

These states feel they have a legitimate right to exercise a defensive position against other states who pose both a military and expansionist threat.

•

The absence of a central governmental authority to monitor state aggression sanctions states to operate in a “self – help” world where protecting themselves against external forces is their priority not people.

•

In national security, state interests surmount individual interests in the pursuit of protecting against interstate (state to state) conflict.

•

Based on the concept of classical realism, national security perceives the international community as being in a constant state of anarchy where cooperation between states is temporary, the possibility of war is a likely occurrence, and genuine peace, or a world where states do not compete for power is not viable for states who are concerned with their own vested interests.

•

Include the term realpolitik, power politics coined by Otto von Bismarck.

•

Realpolitik holds that countries should practice balance-of-power politics

•

Define Realism – the view that world politics is driven by competitive self – interest.

•

Realists believe that the decisive dynamic among states is a struggle for power in an effort by each state to preserve or, preferably, improve its military security and economic welfare in competition with other states.

•

Realists also see the struggle for power as a zero – sum game, one in which a gain for one country is inevitably a loss for others.

•

Neorealists portray politics as a struggle for power where the cause of conflict in the international system is its anarchic (unregulated) structure.

•

Fareed Zakaria (neorealist) believes the international system is based on sovereign actors (states), which answer to no higher authority, is “anarchic, with no overarching authority providing security and order.”

•

Realists base their foreign policy on the existence of what they see as a Darwinian world in which power is the key to the national survival of the fittest.

•

Realists believe that countries must be armed because the world is dangerous; however, realists also advise that a country should neither waste its power on peripheral goals nor pursue goals that it does not have the power to achieve. For example, Morgenthau criticized U.S. involvement in Vietnam as a waste of resources in a tangential area.

•

Neoliberals agree with neorealists in the view that competition among sovereign states in an anarchical world system causes conflict.

•

However, neoliberals do not agree to the extent that the anarchical world is the ultimate cause of conflict since the international system is marked by “complex interdependence.” Complex interdependence promotes the increased use of international law and the creation of more and stronger international organizations and in turn, these progressive actions reduce anarchy, and therefore, conflict in the system.

•

Liberals argue foreign policy should be and sometimes is formulated according to the standards of cooperation and even altruism.

•

But, almost all liberals are willing to use military force or other forms of coercion in self – defense or in response to overt international aggression. Many liberals would also use force, especially, if authorized by the UN, to prevent or halt genocide and other gross violations of human rights.

•

Both realism and neoliberalism focus almost exclusively on the state though liberals emphasize the UN and other IGOs as both evidence and promoters of greater cooperation.