Bizim İşimiz, Sizin Geleceğiniz

Introduction to
International Relations
Second Grade
2024/2025 Academic Year
After Midterm
Power in IR
• Power is one of the most important concepts in political science. In fact, some political scientists see it
as a defining element of the discipline.
• Power affects how resources are distributed, how countries interact, whether peace or war prevails,
and how groups and individuals pursue their interests; that is, power affects the myriad of topics
studied by political scientists. Ironically, however, power is one of the most difficult concepts to define.
• Power has many meanings in social sciences, including the ability to prevail over another actor, the
quantitative capacity to force another actor to submit to your will and the ability to benefit from another
actor’s losses.
• If sovereignty defines what states are in the international system, power determines what they are
capable of doing.
• There are many ways to think about power.
• At its most fundamental level, power can be defined as an ability to influence
• an event or outcome that allows the agent to achieve an objective and/or to
influence another agent to act in a manner in which the second agent, on its own,
would not choose to act.
• In terms of the first meaning, an interest group, for example, could be said to
have power if it succeeded in reaching its policy goals. The interest group, in this
case, would have achieved its objective if its policy preferences were enacted.
• Significantly, this type of power may or may not involve exercising power over
another agent. However, in regard to the second meaning, having power means
having power over another agent.
• For example, one country can be viewed as exercising power over another if it
can influence the second country to act in a manner favored by the fi rst country
but not favored by the second country.
• These meanings become clearer when you recognize that the word power stems from the older Latin term
potere, defined as an ability to affect something else.
• Thus, for example, a person was said to possess potere if that person had some attribute
• allowing him or her to cause an effect on someone else. The word power, with its
• present spelling, has been in use since the fourteenth century. In our two examples,
• agents (an interest group and a country) have acted to bring about effects; thus, both
• agents have wielded potere/power, with the interest group affecting policy outcomes
• and the country affecting a second country.
• A closer examination of power reveals that its exercise by an agent involves volition (will or choice). In terms
of power as the achievement of an objective, clearly the objective attained must be one that the agent wills
or desires; otherwise, the agent is not said to possess power. If, for example, an interest group obtains a
benefit but has not sought out this benefit, we would not attribute attaining benefit to the interest group’s
power. We might attribute it to chance. Volition is also central to the second meaning of power, as influence
over another agent. For instance, we would not view an interest group as exercising power over a politician
if the interest group does not compel the politician to act contrary to the politician’s own volition or desire.
Similarly, if one country ordered another country to perform an act the second country wanted to do
anyway, this would not represent an act of power because the first country has not actually influenced the
second country.
• Power can either be held in reserve or deployed. That is, it can be latent (inactive) or manifest (active). You
can imagine how the possession of latent power by one agent can be highly effective in producing changes
in a second agent. In such cases, the mere possibility that the first agent will activate power can be feared by
the second agent and elicit changes in the second agent’s actions.
• Indeed, this is the idea behind military deterrence: A country’s stockpile of weapons may be enough to
preclude aggression by its enemies, who know that the weapons can be changed from a latent power to a
manifest power at any time.
• Political scientists have often tried to sort out the many different forms power can assume. This is useful in
allowing us to analyze the implications of using one type of power rather than another. However, in actual
political relationships one type of power is rarely found in isolation from other types. In practice, power
generally possesses a blended quality, with one type of power blending into and being used simultaneously
with another.
• At its simplest, power in interstate relations may be defined as a state’s ability to control, or at least
influence, other states or the outcome of events. Two dimensions are important, internal and external. The
internal dimension corresponds to the dictionary definition of power as a capacity for action. A state is
powerful to the extent that it is insulated from outside influence or coercion in the formulation and
implementation of policy. A common synonym for the internal dimension of power is autonomy. The
external dimension corresponds to the dictionary definition of power as a capacity to control the behaviour
of others, to enforce compliance. Such influence need not be actively exercised; it need only be
acknowledged by others, implicitly or explicitly, to be effective. It also need not be exercised with conscious
intent; the behaviour of others can be influenced simply as a by-product of powerful acts (or potential acts).
• Most scholars focus on power as a means, the strength or capacity that provides the ability to influence the
behaviour of other actors in accordance with one’s own objectives. At the national level, this influence is
based on relations between state A and another actor B with A seeking to influence B to act in A’s interest by
doing x, by continuing to do x, or by not doing x. Some governments may seek power for its own sake. But
for most, power, like money, is instrumental, to be used primarily for achieving or defending other goals,
which could include prestige, territory, or security. To achieve these ends, state A can use various techniques
of influence, ranging from persuasion or the offering of rewards to threats or the actual use of force.
• From this standpoint, the use of a state’s power is a simple relational exercise. However, there are subtle
characteristics of power that render its use more art than science. Moreover, relationships among the
elements of national power as well as the context in which they are to
be used to further a
state’s national interests are seldom clear-cut propositions. All this
means that in the end, power defies any attempts at rigorous,
scientific assessment.
• National power is contextual in that it can be evaluated only in terms of all the power ‘elements’ (such as
military capability, economic resources, and population size) and only in relation to another player or players
and the situation in which power is being exercised. A state may appear powerful because it possesses many
military assets, but the assets may be inadequate against those of a potential enemy or inappropriate to the
nature of the conflict. The question should always be: power over whom, and with respect to what?
• Power is historically linked with military capacity. Nevertheless, one element of power alone cannot
determine national power. Part of the problem stems from the fact that the term power has taken on the
meaning of both the capacity to do something and the actual exercise of the capacity. And yet a state’s
ability to convert potential power into operational power is based on many considerations, not the least of
which is the political and psychological interrelationship of such factors as government effectiveness and
national unity. In this context, the elements of national power, no matter how defined, can be separated
only artificially. Together, they constitute the resources for the attainment of national objectives and goals.
• Closely allied to all this is the fact that national power is dynamic, not static. No particular power factor or
relationship is immune to change. Over the last century, in particular, rapid changes in military technologies
have accelerated this dynamism. The United States’ explosion of a nuclear device instantly transformed its
power position, the nature of war, and the very conduct of international relations. A war or revolution can
have an equally sudden effect on power. The two world wars devastated Europe, facilitated the rise of the
United States and the Soviet Union, and set the developing world on a road to decolonisation, thereby
dismantling in less than 50 years a system that had been in existence for over three centuries. Economic
growth can also quickly change a state’s power position, as was the case with Japan and Germany after
1945. In addition, the discovery of new resources, or their depletion, can alter the balance of power.
Certainly, OPEC’s control over a diminishing supply of oil, coupled with its effectiveness as a cartel, caused a
dramatic shift in power relations after 1973.
• Such shifts are not always so immediately discernible. Power is what people believe it is until it is exercised.
Reputation for power, in other words, confers power regardless of whether that power is real or not. At the
same time, there are examples throughout history of states that
• continued to trade on past reputations, only to see them shattered by a single event.
• Evaluation of national power is difficult. The basic problem, as we have seen, is that all the elements of
power are often interrelated. In other words, like all strategic endeavours, more art than science is involved
in the evaluation of where one state stands in relation to the power of other regional and global actors.
• In addition to thinking about power as a relationship between actors, one should also bear in mind an
important distinction between relative power and structural power. The latter confers the power to decide
how things will be done, the power to shape frameworks within which states relate to one another, relate to
people, or relate to corporate enterprises. The relative power of each party in a relationship is more, or less,
if one party is also determining the surrounding structure of the relationship. Analytically, one can
distinguish between four separate but related structures of power in international relations:
• The knowledge structure refers to the power to influence the ideas of others.
• • The financial structure refers to the power to restrict or facilitate their access to credit.
• • The security structure shapes their prospects for security.
• • The production structure affects their chances of a better life as producers and as consumers.
• In relative power, any increase or decrease in the power of one
actor will affect the increase or decrease in power of the other
actor.
• In studying power as a relationship between states and other actors, it is
important to bear in mind the role of structural power in shaping the terms of the
relationship itself. For example, many scholars have argued that although the
power of the United States appeared to be declining relative to other states
during the second half of the twentieth century, it possesses vast resources of
structural power that continue to sustain its hegemonic position in the
international system. Soft notions of power, or what Joseph Nye calls ‘soft power’,
reflect a pragmatic, diplomatic approach to power, in which the state uses its
‘assets’ to encourage or provide incentives for other states to cooperate. In rather
stark contrast, postmodernists draw on Michel Foucault’s concept of ‘biopower’
to deconstruct the operations of state power, revealing how the state employs
techniques to subjugate and discipline peoples and populations.
• In the end, measuring power has proved more challenging today, in a world
where states spread their power and influence across multiple channels and issue
areas.
Power and Authority
• Authority refers to an actor’s legal right to behave in a particular
way.
• Murderer and executioner
TYPES OF POWER

• Force is the exercise of power by physical means. Force can include acts of physical violence and acts of
physical obstruction. For example, one agent can use force over another by restraining, assaulting, raping,
assassinating, impeding access to an object, or other types of physical actions. Force can include physical
sabotage of resources, as well as conducting war.
• It can be carried out in the form of embargoes and boycotts (which deny physical access to resources),
blockades and barricades (which deny physical access to a place), or revolutions and riots (which physically
mobilize groups in support of or opposition to a government or policy). It can involve physically blocking
access to a courthouse, voting booth, public school, or abortion facility. It can entail physically incapacitating
a machine or, by introducing steel spikes, physically rendering a tree too dangerous to cut down. It can
involve no violence (a boycott) or extreme levels of violence (a bombing). In sum, whenever people use
physical means to pursue power, force is the term that designates this display of power.
Persuasion
• Persuasion is a nonphysical type of power in which the agent using power makes its intentions and desires
known to the agent over whom power is exercised.
• Person A persuades B by explaining A’s desires, choices, and will and then produces a change in B in
conformity with A’s desires, choices, and will. B is altered from his or her preferred course (that is, power has
been exercised over B), but B has not been acted on physically (restrained, assaulted, picketed, boycotted,
and so on). B has been presented with A’s will and has responded by consenting to follow A’s will.
• Persuasion is a major part of politics. Lobbying, speechmaking, debating, writing letters, issuing position
papers, and making proclamations in the form of court decisions, executive orders, laws, and policies are
examples of persuasion.
• In each instance, an agent spells out its will with the intention of producing a response in compliance with
that will from other agents. Given its potential impact, political leaders are continuously seeking means to
use persuasive appeals more effectively.
Manipulation
• Manipulation is the nonphysical use of power in which the agent exercising power over a second agent
conceals the aims and intentions motivating the exercise of power. When manipulation is successful, the
agent over whom power is exercised generally is unaware that power has even been used. If you are
• persuaded, you feel it; if you are manipulated, you do not feel it because you do not know anything has
happened. The implication is disturbing: How can you resist something if you do not know it exists?
Generally, social scientists who study power relations note that manipulation power is very difficult to
oppose because of its cloaked quality
Exchange
• Exchange is a type of power involving incentives, in which one agent gives another agent an item in return
for another item. One agent can obtain an objective or exercise power over another agent by giving the
second agent the incentive to concur with the first agent’s will; if the second agent knows he/she will be
rewarded, the second agent has an incentive to concur. Power has been exercised, insofar as the second
agent concurred with the fi rst agent’s wishes as a result of having been infl uenced by the incentive. If a
government wishes to steer its citizens toward buying fuel-effi cient cars and offers them a monetary
incentive to do so, and if citizens respond favorably to this incentive and act as the government had hoped,
Exchange has occurred.
SECURITY

• Security is the condition of being safe from (usually physical) harm; it therefore consists in being free from
threat, intimidation and violence.
• However, a distinction is commonly drawn between the maintenance of security in the domestic sphere and
its maintenance in the international sphere. In a domestic context, security refers to the state’s capacity to
uphold order within its own borders, using the instruments of the coercive state, the police and, at times,
the military.
• In an international context, security refers to the capacity of the state to provide protection against threats
from beyond its borders, especially the ability of its armed forces to fight wars and resist military attack.
• Security is a core fundamental value of human life. To be secure is
to be untroubled by danger or fear.
• Thomas Hobbes: Without security «there is no place for
industry…no arts, no letters, no society; and which is worst of all,
continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man,
solitary, poor, nasty, brutish ,and short»
Four Assumptions of Security
• There are four key assumptions underlying the idea of security:
security in (or of) what, from what, for what, and by what means?
• Security in (or of) what?
• This assumption notices the vulnerability of humans who live in
social circumstances. An isolated individual is inviolable from
attack by other people.
• Safety is a condition of human relations. Safety is order and
predictability in our relations with other people.
Robinson Crusoe
• Robinson Crusoe (1719) is one of the first
English novels and still one of the best.
Marooned alone on an island, Crusoe must
create a new life of security and self-
sufficiency from local resources and the items
he’s able to rescue from the ship.
• Daniel Defoe's fascinating account of the
survival—and eventual triumph--of Robinson
Crusoe represents how a lone human builds a
new life in the wilderness: finding a secure
home, obtaining and storing food, making
clothing, keeping fire alive, marking time, and
establishing a spiritual life.
Security from What?
• Hobbes ‘War of all against all.’
• No complete trust and mutual security between human beings.
• Human nature is flawed that perfect security cannot exist in any
human society.
Security by means of what?
• The opposite of safety is vulnerability-being exposed to danger, in
peril, at risk etc.
• Safety requires only that everybody else’s freedom and leave them
alone.
• Security is achieved whereever and whenever men and women do
not threaten or harm one another.
• Security can be achieved in two ways: through deterrence or
diffidence.
• Providing security is all about instilling fear in the mind of a would-
be attacker with a view to preventing an attack.
Diffidence
• Diffidence, as Hobbes used the term, refers to the
uneasiness or anxiety that all individuals, including and
especially law-abiding ones, have about their own
security and standing vis-à-vis one another. This
uneasiness is itself a product of human individuality, and
it may be aggravated in societies that seek to foster and
protect individual liberty and political equality
Security for what?
• So that people can enjoy the advantages of living in a society with
others while limiting the risks.
Three Paradigms of Security
• 1. National Security:
• State-centered approach.
• The proponents of this paradigm assume that we live in a world
where states both are the main sources of security and the main
security threats.
• Anarchical world view.
• National security policies are directed at creating and maintaining
armed forces for national defence and deterrence.
• Cold War
2. International Security
• The proponents of this paradigm see a world characterised by a
mixture of conflict and cooperation.
• Although they believe that there is no single source of authority or
government, IR are reasonably orderly and purposeful, and
subject to mutual regulations and constraints fro mshared
interests of survival and coexistence.
• Insecurity is consequent on the action of other members of
international society but also can be created by non-state actora.
3. Human Security
• The proponents consider personal security to be a fundamental
problem of IR and not merely a matter for the domestic politics of
the state concerned.
• The security of the person, the security of the state and the
security of the society of states are fundamentally
interconnected.
• You cannot have one without the others.
• Chain effects
 Why do we need
theories?
Theory is a reflective thought.
«A theory is a kind of simplifying device that
allows you to decide which facts matter and
which do not»
Reflection, abstract thought, in-depth
thinking
19th Century, phenomenon of war
States go to war for gain or self-defence
Benefits and costs
Rational and legitimate choice
• There are four major classical theoretical traditions in IR: realism,
liberalism, International Society, and IPE.
• In addition, there is a more diverse group of alternative
approaches which have gained prominence in recent decades.
The most important of these are social constructivism and post-
positivist approaches, an umbrella term for several different
strands of theory.
Major Debates in IR
• There have been three major debates since IR became an academic
subject at the end of the First World War, and we are now well into a
fourth.
• The first major debate was between utopian liberalism and realism;
the second between traditional approaches and behaviouralism; the
third between neorealism/neoliberalism and neo-Marxism. The
fourth debate is between established traditions and post-positivist
alternatives.
• They provide us with a map of the way the academic subject of IR has
developed over the past century. We need to become familiar with that
map in order to comprehend IR as a dynamic academic subject that
continues to evolve, and to see the directions of that continuing
evolution of IR thought.
• The decisive push to set up a separate academic subject of IR was
occasioned by the First World War (1914–18), which brought
millions of casualties, large-scale physical destruction of large
areas of continental Europe, and numerous political and military
upheavals even after the main fighting had ended in November
1918.
• It was driven by a widely felt determination never to allow human
suffering on such a scale to happen again.
First World War
«Millions are being killed. Europe is mad.
The world is mad.»
Reactions:
• Germany was blamed for the
responsibility of the war.
• How to change the international system
to prevent reoccurance.
• Versailles Peace Treaty 1919
 Liberal Internationalism

First World War

New thinking in Britain and United States
«Liberal Internationalism»
Broadly liberal political principles to the
management of international system.
• While Germany might bear a greater responsibility than some other countries, there was something about
the system of international relations that was culpable, and a variety of different thinkers, politicians and
philanthropists gave thought to ways of changing the system to prevent a recurrence.
• Liberal internationalism’ – the adaptation of broadly liberal political principles to the management of the
international system.
• Britain’s account of what went wrong in 1914 stressed the failure of diplomacy and, in particular, the
slowness of the great powers in mobilizing an international conference on the problems of the Balkans,
rather than any systemic failure.
• However, if British liberal internationalism was largely unofficial, in the USA these ideas were espoused by
the president himself, Woodrow Wilson, and set out in the Fourteen Points speech of January 1918, in
which America’s war aims were specified. The Wilsonian version of liberal internationalism offered a two-
part diagnosis of what went wrong in 1914, and a corresponding two-part prescription for avoiding similar
disasters in the future.
 Liberal Internationalism
US: Woodrow Wilson Fourteen Points speech of January 1918
UK: more traditional approach
Liberal Internationalism:
1. Domestic politics.
People don’t want war. Democratic
political systems
2. Pre-1914 international institutional structures.
Balance of power (private commitments) vs League of Nations
(collective security)
Law would replace war!
Rule of law
Constitutional government
Harmony of interests, national interests are reconcilable
• The first element of this diagnosis and prescription concerned domestic politics. A firm liberal belief was that
the ‘people’ do not want war; war comes about because the people are led into it by militarists or autocrats,
or because their legitimate aspirations to nationhood are blocked by undemocratic, multinational or imperial
systems. An obvious answer here is to promote democratic political systems; that is, liberal democratic,
constitutional regimes, and the principle of national self-determination.
• The rationale is that, if all regimes were national and liberal democratic, there would be no wars. This belief
links to the second component of liberal internationalism – its critique of pre-1914 international
institutional structures.
• The basic thesis here was that the anarchic pre-1914 system of international relations undermined the
prospects for peace. Secret diplomacy led to an alliance system that committed nations to courses of action
that had not been sanctioned by parliaments or assemblies (hence the title of the Union for Democratic
Control).
• There was no mechanism in 1914 to prevent war, apart from the ‘balance of power’ – a notion associated
with unprincipled power politics. What was deemed necessary was the establishment of new principles of
international relations, such as ‘open covenants openly arrived at’, but, most of all, a new institutional
structure for international relations – a League of Nations.
• The aim of a League of Nations would be to provide the security that nations attempted, unsuccessfully, to
find under the old, balance of power system. The balance of power was based on private commitments of
assistance made by specific parties; the League of Nations would provide public assurances of security
• backed by the collective will of all nations – hence the term ‘collective security’.
• The basic principle would be ‘one for all and all for one’. Each country would guarantee the security of every
other country, and thus there would be no need for nations to resort to expedients such as military alliances
or the balance of power.
• Law would replace war as the underlying principle of the system.
 Liberal Internationalism

US: Woodrow Wilson Fourteen Points

speech of January 1918
End to secret diplomacy
Freedom of navigation on the seas
Barriers to trade should be removed.
Self-determination
League of Nations
• From the liberal view, international politics are no more based on a ‘zero-sum’ game than are international
economics; national interests are always reconcilable.
• The liberal belief in a natural harmony of interests led as a matter of course to a belief in the value of
education. Education was a means of combating the ignorance that is the main cause of a failure to see
interests as harmonious, and thereby can be found one of the origins of IR as an academic discipline.
• Thus, in Britain, philanthropists such as David Davies, founder of the Woodrow Wilson
• Chair of International Politics at University College Wales, Aberystwyth – the first such chair to be
established in the world – and Montague Burton, whose eponymous chairs of International Relations are to
be found at Oxford and the London School of Economics, believed that by promoting the study of
international relations they would also be promoting the cause of peace.
• The systematic study of international relations would lead to increased support for international law and the
League of Nations. Thus it was that liberal internationalism became the first orthodoxy of the new discipline,
but, even then, by no means all scholars of IR subscribed to it – international historians, for example, were
particularly sceptical.
• For liberal thinkers, the First World War was in no small measure
attributable to the egoistic and short-sighted calculations and
miscalculations of autocratic leaders in the heavily militarized
countries involved, especially Germany and Austria. Unrestrained
by democratic institutions and under pressure from their generals,
these leaders were inclined to take the fatal decisions that led
their countries into war.
• Two major points in Wilson’s ideas for a more peaceful world deserve special
emphasis.
• The first concerns his promotion of democracy and selfdetermination.
Behind this point is the liberal conviction that democratic governments do
not and will not go to war against each other. It was Wilson’s hope that the
growth of liberal democracy in Europe would put an end to autocratic and
warlike leaders and put peaceful governments in their place. Liberal
democracy should therefore be strongly encouraged.
• The second major point in Wilson’s program concerned the creation of an
international organization that would put relations between states on a firmer
institutional foundation than in the past. In essence, that was Wilson’s
concept of the League of Nations, which was instituted by the Paris Peace
Conference in 1919. The idea that international institutions can promote
peaceful cooperation among states is a basic element of liberal thinking; so
is the notion about a relationship between liberal democracy and peace.
• Wilsonian idealism can be summarized as follows.
• It is the conviction that, through a rational and intelligently
designed international organization, it should be possible to put
an end to war and to achieve more or less permanent peace. The
claim is not that it will be possible to do away with states and
states people, foreign ministries, armed forces, and other agents
and instruments of international conflict.
• Rather, the claim is that it is possible to tame states and states
people by subjecting them to the appropriate international
organizations, institutions, and laws. The argument liberal
idealists make is that traditional
• power politics—so-called ‘Realpolitik’—is a ‘jungle’, so to speak,
where dangerous beasts roam and the strong and cunning rule;
whereas under the League of Nations the beasts are put into
cages reinforced by the restraints of international organization;
i.e., into a kind of ‘zoo’.
• Wilson’s liberal faith that an international organization could be
created that would guarantee permanent peace is clearly
reminiscent of the thought of the most famous classical liberal IR
theorist: Immanuel Kant in his pamphlet Perpetual Peace (1795)
Illusion?
Norman Angell
The Great Illusion (1919)
War would be no longer
profitable.
Economic and moral Fotoğraf
conditions bu alana
yerleştirile
Territorial conquest is bilir
expensive and politically
divisive.
Economic interdependence
• Norman Angell is another prominent liberal idealist of the same era.
• In 1909, Angell published a book entitled The Great Illusion. Angell argues that in modern
times territorial conquest is extremely expensive and politically divisive because it severely
disrupts international commerce; war therefore no longer serves profitable purposes.
• The general argument set forth by Angell is a forerunner of later liberal thinking about
modernization and economic interdependence.
• Modernization demands that states have a growing need of things ‘from “outside”—credit, or
inventions, or markets or materials not contained in sufficient quantity in the country itself’ .
Rising interdependence, in turn, effects a change in relations between states.
• War and the use of force become of decreasing importance, and international law develops
in response to the need for a framework to regulate high levels of interdependence.
• In sum, modernization and interdependence involve a process of change and progress
which renders war and the use of force increasingly obsolete.
• The peace settlement of 1919 represented a partial embodiment of liberal internationalist thinking. The principle
of national self-determination was promoted, but only in Europe and certainly not in the colonial empires of Britain
and France – and even there it was abused rather too frequently when it was the rights of Germans or Hungarians
that were in question.
• The Versailles Treaty was dictated to the Germans, rather than negotiated with them, even though the Kaiser had
been overthrown at the end of the war and a liberal democratic republic established in Germany. Germany was
held to be responsible for the war and deemed liable to meet its costs, which was probably inevitable, given the
devastation wreaked on the German-occupied parts of Belgium and northern France.
• A League of Nations was established, incorporating the principle of collective security, but it was tied to the
Versailles Treaty and thus associated with what the Germans regarded as an unjust status quo.
• The US Senate refused to join the League of Nations as constituted by the Versailles Treaty, and, initially, neither
Germany nor Russia was allowed to join. The unfortunate truth was that liberal internationalist ideas were not
dominant in the minds of any statesmen other than Wilson and even there they were accompanied by his
commitment to the American national interest.
• Wilson was unable to sell these ideas to his fellow countrymen, partly because he had allowed opposition leaders
of the Senate no part in the negotiation of the peace. This, incidentally, was a mistake that Franklin Roosevelt
learned from and did not repeat a generation later.
 Liberal Internationalism

1930s crises /Great Depression 1929

Japanese militarism but Hitler’s Germany
and Mussolini’s Italy not traditional
military autocracies
Popularly supported regimes and glorified
war. Law could be maintained by war.
League of Nations never became strong
• The thinking of Wilson and Angell is based on a liberal view of human
beings and human society: human beings are rational, and when they
apply reason to international relations, they can set up organizations
for the benefit of all. Public opinion is a constructive force; removing
secret diplomacy in dealings between states and, instead, opening
diplomacy to public scrutiny ensures that agreements will be sensible
and fair. These ideas had some success in the 1920s; the League of
Nations was indeed established and the great powers took some
further steps to assure each other of their peaceful intentions. The high
point of these efforts came with the Kellogg–Briand Pact of 1928, which
practically all countries signed. The pact was an international
agreement to abolish war; only in extreme cases of self-defence could
war be justified. In short, liberal ideas dominated in the first phase of
academic IR
• The 1930s saw economic collapse; the rise of dictators; a series of acts of aggression in Asia, Africa and
Europe; an inability of the League powers led by Britain and France to develop a coherent policy in response
to these events; and, finally, the global war that the 1919 peace settlement had been designed to prevent.
Clearly, these events were catastrophic in the ‘real world’, but they were equally damaging in the world of
ideas. Indeed, the two worlds, as always, were interwoven – it was the inability of decision-makers and
intellectuals to think sensibly about these events that, at least in part, explained their inability to produce
effective policy. The apparent inability of liberal internationalists to cope with these events suggested the
need for a new conceptual apparatus, or perhaps for the rediscovery of some older ideas.
• Liberal democracy suffered hard blows with the growth of fascist
dictatorship in Italy and Spain, and Nazism in Germany.
Authoritarianism also increased in many of the new states of
Central and Eastern Europe—for example, Poland, Hungary,
Romania, and Yugoslavia—that were brought into existence as a
result of the First World War and the Paris Peace Conference and
were supposed to become democracies. Thus, Wilson’s hopes for
the spread of democratic civilization were shattered. In many
cases, what actually happened was the spread of the very sort of
state that he believed provoked war: autocratic, authoritarian, and
militaristic states.
• The League of Nations never became the strong international organization that liberals
hoped would restrain powerful and aggressively disposed states. Germany and Russia
initially failed to sign the Versailles Peace Treaty, and their relationship to the League was
always strained. Germany joined the League in 1926 but left in 1933.
• Japan also left at that time, while embarking on war in Manchuria. Russia finally joined in
1934, but was expelled in 1940 because of the war with Finland. By that time the League was
effectively dead.
• Although Britain and France were members from the start, they never regarded the League
as an important institution and refused to shape their foreign policies with League criteria in
mind.
• Most devastating, however, was the refusal of the United States Senate to ratify the covenant
of the League. Isolationism had a long tradition in US foreign policy, and many American
politicians were isolationists even if President Wilson was not; they did not want to involve
their country in the murky affairs of Europe. So, much to Wilson’s chagrin, the strongest state
in the international system—his own—did not join the League. With a number of states
outside the League, including the most important, and with the two major powers inside the
organization lacking any real commitment to it, the League never achieved the central
position marked out for it in Wilson’s blueprint.
• Norman Angell’s high hopes for a smooth process of modernization and
interdependence also foundered on the harsh realities of the 1930s.
• The Wall Street crash of October 1929 marked the beginning of a severe
economic crisis in Western countries that would last until the Second World
War and would involve hard measures of economic protectionism.
• World trade shrank dramatically, and industrial production in developed
countries declined rapidly. In July 1932—at the trough of the Great
Depression—American production of pig iron reached its lowest level since
1896.
• In ironic contrast to Angell’s vision, it was each country for itself, each
country trying as best it could to look after its own interests, if necessary to
the detriment of others—the ‘jungle’ rather than the ‘zoo’. The historical stage
was being set for a less hopeful and more pessimistic understanding of
international relations
The ‘realist’ critique of liberal internationalism

• Returning to the root ideas of liberal internationalism, it is easy to identify the

problems this approach faced in the 1930s. In 1919, liberal internationalists
believed that ‘the people’ had a real interest in and desire for peace, and that
democratic regimes would, if given the chance, allow these interests and desires
to dominate. The enemy of peace, on this account, was the kind of militarist,
authoritarian, autocratic, anti-democratic regime that had, allegedly, dominated
Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia in 1914. Now, some of the crises of the
1930s were caused by this kind of regime – Japanese militarism in Manchuria and
China, and ‘Francoism’ in the Spanish Civil War fit the bill quite well – but
• most were not. Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy were not traditional
autocracies; rather, they were regimes that had come to power by quasi-
democratic means and remained in power by the mobilization of popular
support. There were no free elections in Germany after 1933, but what evidence
exists suggests that the National Socialists had clear majority support well into
the war, perhaps even to its very end.
• Academic IR began to speak the classical realist language of
Thucydides, Machiavelli and Hobbes.
Edward Hallet Carr
• The most comprehensive and penetrating critique of liberal idealism was that of E. H. Carr, a British IR
scholar. In The Twenty Years’ Crisis [1939]) Carr argued that liberal IR thinkers profoundly misread the facts of
history and misunderstood the nature of international relations. They erroneously believed that such
relations could be based on a harmony of interest between countries and people. According to Carr, the
correct starting point is the opposite one: we should assume that there are profound conflicts of interest
both between countries and between people.
• Some people and some countries are better off than others. They will attempt to preserve and defend their
privileged position. The underdogs, the ‘have-nots’, will struggle to change that situation. International
relations is, in a basic sense, about the struggle between such conflicting interests and desires. That is why IR
is far more about conflict than about cooperation.
• Carr astutely labelled the liberal position ‘utopian’ as a contrast to his own position, which he labelled
‘realist’, thus implying that his approach was the more sober and correct analysis of international
relations.
The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919–1939: An Introduction to the Study
of International Relations

• «The blame for the secret treaties

should have been imputed, not to
the wickedness of the governments,
but to the indifference of the
peoples. Everybody knew that such
treaties were concluded.
• But before the war of 1914 few
people felt any curiosity about them
or thought them objectionable. The
agitation against them was, however,
a fact of immense importance. It
was the first symptom of the
demand for the popularisation of
international politics and heralded
the birth of a new science.»
• Carr argues that sound political thought must be based on elements of both utopia (i.e., values) and reality
(i.e., power).
• Where utopianism has become a “hollow and intolerable sham,” serving merely as a disguise for the
privileged, the realist provides a service in exposing it. Pure realism, on the other hand, can offer nothing but
“a naked struggle for power which makes any kind of international society impossible.” Hence, for Carr,
politics is made up of two elements, inextricably intertwined: utopia and reality—values and power.
• Carr’s central point is that the liberal doctrine of the harmony of interests glosses over the real conflict
• that is to be found in international relations, which is between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’.
• A central feature of the world is scarcity – there are not enough of the good things of life to go around.
Those who have them want to keep them and therefore promote ‘law and order’ policies, attempting to
outlaw the use of violence.
• The ‘have-nots’, on the other hand, have no such respect for the law and neither is it reasonable that they
should, because it is the law that keeps them where they are, which is under the thumb of the ‘haves’.
• Politics has to be based on an understanding of this situation. It is utopian to suggest that the have-nots can
be brought to realize that they ought to behave legally and morally. It is realistic to recognize that the
essential conflict between haves and have-nots must be managed rather than wished away. It is utopian to
imagine that international bodies such as the League of Nations can have real power. Realists work with the
world as it really is, utopians as they wish it to be.
• After 1945, realism became the dominant theory of International Relations, offering a conception of the
world that seemed to define the ‘common sense’ of the subject. Most practising diplomats had always held
views on international relations that were more or less realist; they were now joined by academics, as the
• discipline of IR expanded on broadly realist lines, and by opinion-makers more generally, as the leader
writers and columnists of influential newspapers and journals came increasingly to work from the same
general perspective. To a striking extent, realism remains to this day the dominant theory of IR.
Hans J. Morgenthau
• The other significant realist statement from this period was produced by a German scholar who fled to the
United States in the 1930s to escape from the Nazi regime in Germany: Hans J. Morgenthau. More than any
other European émigré scholar, Morgenthau brought realism to the US, and with great success.
• His Politics among Nations:The Struggle for Power and Peace, first published in 1948, was for several
decades the most influential American book on IR (Morgenthau 1960).
• For Morgenthau, human nature was at the base of international relations. And humans were self-interested
and power-seeking and that could easily result in aggression.
• In the late 1930s, it was not difficult to find evidence to support such a view. Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s
Italy, and Imperial Japan pursued blatantly aggressive foreign policies aimed at conflict, not cooperation.
Armed struggle for the creation of Lebensraum, of a larger and stronger Germany, was at the core of Hitler’s
political program.
• Furthermore, and ironically from a liberal perspective, both Hitler and Mussolini enjoyed widespread
popular support, despite the fact that they were autocratic and even tyrannical leaders.
 Hans J.Morgenthau
1. The state is the key actor in IR
2. Stress on interests: States have
interests, state interests dominate
state behaviour.
3. States seek power in order to achieve
other goals. Self-help system.
4. Power as capability
• According to Morgenthau, the state is the key actor in international relations. Other bodies, such as international organizations
(governmental and nongovernmental), economic enterprises, pressure groups, even individuals, may, in certain circumstances,
exercise influence and act independently of states, but the state is the key actor because the state is the institution through
which all these other bodies operate, the institution that regulates these other bodies and decides the terms under which they
can act.
• The claim is not that the state is the only actor but that it is the most significant actor; it is important not to ‘win’ arguments
against realism by burning straw people.
• Stress on interests conveys two notions: first, that states have interests, and, second, that state interests dominate state behaviour.
The idea that states (nations) have interests could be problematic: Can an institution rather than a person have interests in any
meaningful sense? The realist position is that states are like ‘persons’, capable of possessing interests, and thus the ‘national
interest’ is not simply a shorthand term for the interests of whatever group controls the administrative structure of the state.
States behave in accordance with these interests and not in response to abstract principles (such as collective security) or a desire
to act altruistically. States never sacrifice themselves; they are essentially egoists.

• Whatever else states seek, they seek power in order to achieve other goals. The
need for power stems from the anarchical nature of the international system.
There is no authoritative system of decision-making in international relations;
states are obliged to look after themselves in what has become known as a ‘self-
help’ system.
Morgenthau
• According to Morgenthau (1965), men and women are by nature political animals: they are born to pursue
power and to enjoy the spoils of power. Morgenthau speaks of the animus dominandi: the human ‘lust’ for
power.
• The craving for power dictates a search not only for relative advantage but also for a secure political space—
i.e., territory—to maintain oneself and to enjoy oneself free from the political dictates of others.
• The ultimate political space within which security can be arranged and enjoyed is, of course, the
independent state. Security beyond the state and between states is impossible.
• That creates the condition of power politics which is at the heart of Morgenthau’s Realism.
Hans Morgenthau
Animus dominandi,
the human ‘lust’ for power
Conflict due to animus domandi
The condition of power politics which is at the heart of
Morgenthau’s realism
‘Politics is a struggle for power over men, and whatever
its ultimate aim may be, power is its immediate goal and
the modes of acquiring, maintaining, and demonstrating
it determine the technique of political action’.
Powerful states
The anarchical system of states invites international
conflict which ultimately takes the form of war.
there is one morality for the private sphere and another
and very different morality for the public sphere.
Political ethics allows some actions that would not be
tolerated by private morality.
«Iron Laws» of Politics
1. Politics is rooted in a permanent and unchanging human nature which is basically self-centred, self-
regarding, and self-interested.
2. Politics is ‘an autonomous sphere of action’ and cannot therefore be reduced to morals (as Kantian or liberal
theorists are prone to do).
3. Self-interest is a basic fact of the human condition. International politics is an arena of conflicting state
interests.
4. The ethics of international relations is a political or situational ethics which is very different from private
morality. In exercising political responsibility, a political leader may have to violate private morality to defend
national security. Not only would that be justifiable, it may be absolutely necessary.
5. Realists are opposed to the idea that particular nations can impose their ideologies (e.g., democracy) on
other nations. It is fundamentally unwise as, ultimately, it could backfire and threaten the crusading country.
6. Statecraft is a sober and uninspiring activity that involves a profound awareness of human limitations and
human imperfections.