Visual By by Dan Beard.
This column asserts that the recent shift in political philosophy towards idealism is not the best way to work in international relations. The traditional realist paradigm that focuses on the fight for power depicts the way that international relations have worked historically and continue to work today–therefore, realism is a more pragmatic way to look at international relations.
The United States of America has often taken what should be considered a very idealistic view of the world, particularly when one considers the can-do attitude that persists despite economic troubles or war. This outlook was seen clearly through President Barack Obama’s electoral campaign and his focus on belief, hope, and change. However, this idealism—while it persists in people’s thoughts and hopes—has not always followed through in their actions. Looking back through history, interactions between people are not easily explained just by looking at their beliefs—questions arise regarding motivation. Why do some conflicts lead to war but not others? Has the growing focus on human rights throughout the world affected the ways that countries interact with one another? Historians and scholars have looked at such interactions and formed paradigms on how the world works and why. Over the past few centuries, the prominent view has been realism, focusing on national security and interests as the driving forces behind countries’ actions. However, in more recent years the Idealist view has become more popular. Yet while the approaches and angles that states take to pursue their goals have changed, the goals themselves remain the same. Realism is not the most optimistic view of the world to take, but despite the hopes of individuals it remains the most pragmatic way of depicting states’ behaviors and motivations.
The heart of realism says that, given the absence of a higher power, the national security and interests are what motivate a nation’s actions when it is competing with other states for resources. As a result, in efforts to attain greater security, many states seek power through militarization, diplomacy, or economic dominance. Most of the time, these aims spark conflict with other states, where one nation’s efforts to attain security are seen as a threat by another. In such situations, security dilemmas emerge where these two nations seek to overpower the other and remove the threat—in such cases, like the Cold War, the motivations of each state don’t necessarily matter anymore. The arms’ race between the US and USSR was propelled not by certain knowledge that the Russians were going to use their weapons against America, but the fear that they would decide to do so and America would be unprepared. The outcome of this arms race was not necessarily positive, but in the policy decisions this didn’t matter—whatever the outcome, preserving America’s security was of paramount importance. War or conflict, whether direct or not, will result with another state when differences in goals appear.
However, despite the long-term acceptance of realism, other perspectives on world affairs have been gaining support in recent years. Two of the most popular are the liberal and constructivist viewpoints. The liberal view is based largely on what is called the Kantian triangle—economic interdependency, cooperation through organization, and the spread of democracy. Liberals believe that promoting the Kantian triangle will eventually result in a world where peace can be established because war would be unproductive. The constructivists take a differing view, where past interactions play a large role in defining current and future interactions. Thus, states have the ability to change the way that they react to things based on their past interactions and beliefs. “Self help and power politics are institutions, not essential features of anarchy. Anarchy is what states make of it” [1]. Thus, anarchy allows states to play by a system based on the search for greater power, but it does not mean that this is the only option. Thus the constructivists would argue that the Cold War came to an end because the United States and USSR decided to actively pursue different options in their relations. Changing the ideas about relations between countries can change the relations themselves.
A major point in both the liberal and constructivist viewpoints is the United Nations’ role in international affairs. However, to consider this view, one must consider the actual effect of the UN on global relations. The United Nations often passes resolutions and gives opinions on such issues as human rights or nuclear weapons, but the true judgment on its effectiveness lies in whether or not such declarations are obeyed by the individual countries. “Since the end of the Cold War,…America’s power relative to that of other countries has only increased. But instead of hastening to reassure weaker states… the United States is coupling its explicit drive for primacy with an equally explicit disdain for a whole range of treaties. Consider the current U.S. opposition virtually all arms-control treaties—land mines, small arms, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty—and to efforts to strengthen existing treaties on biological and chemical warfare” [2]. Clearly, while there are agreements and treaties coming to fruition under the guidance of the U.N., they are not joined by all countries. If a country feels that a certain agreement is to its detriment, then it will not sign—and the United Nations is not strong enough to force participation.
This lack of power is clear on things such as human rights—when a country feels that allowing freedom of speech or freedom of religion threatens its sovereignty, it will often limit those rights. This happens even in countries that have already committed to respect such freedoms. Iran is party to the Convention on Civil and Political Rights [3]; Saudi Arabia signed the Convention on Elimination of Discrimination [4]. Both Iran and Saudi Arabia’s actions have shown that they are not committed to supporting these conventions, and are in fact examples of countries who disregard such rights on a regular basis. Even a country such as the United States, which considers itself the protector of human rights, fails to take up the duties accepted via international treaties. The United States did commit to the Genocide Convention in, and yet it refused to interfere in Rwanda during the 1990’s and has not yet acted to stop genocide from occurring in the Darfur region of Somalia [5]. Despite the United Nations’ existence, a country’s actions are still determined more by national security and national interests than by international agreements and ideas of ethics.
Thus the growth and spread of international organizations are not responsible for changing the way that states interact in any significant manner. When an issue is of national security or threatens national interests, the individual state’s considerations will almost always come first. Similarly, the spread of democracy has indeed occurred over the past century, but it has not stopped warfare. “In the last two decades, some 80 countries have joined the democratic column…. Theorists at least as far back as Immanuel Kant have posited that democratic societies would be much less likely to make war than other kinds of states. So far, this has proved true: Democracy-against-democracy fighting has been extremely rare” [6]. However, this only says that war among democracy will not occur—and while this may have been true recently, most democracies have little compunction about going to war with countries whose governments are dictatorships. Countries still resort to warfare when they feel that their best peaceful options have been tried.
The most recent example of this is the United States’ reaction to the terrorist attack in 2001. The Bush administration counterattacked the terrorists in Afghanistan because they had infiltrated and continued to threaten America’s national security. The United States sought legitimacy through international support—the then-Secretary of State Colin Powell particularly emphasized the necessity of getting United Nations’ aid in their attack, as well as allies and support for the invasion [7]. However, the decision was made that the United States would attack with or without support from the United Nations, proving that while international organizations give legitimacy to a decision, the decision does not rest on such support.
Thus, while the liberal view does make many thought-provoking points about change in the international community, these changes are largely superficial and have not affected states’ deeper motivations or goals. Americans like to look at the future and say that their country defends democracy, and it does—but only sometimes. While their ideals may be to live in a country that supports human rights and participate in organizations that do so, this is not always the reality. The spread of democracy and the growth of international groups and organizations have made certain options more open to countries—they may seek diplomatic or economic sanctions before engaging in military action. But despite these changes, when the other venues do not work, states will resort to military action. The norm of behavior has only been superficially altered. Thus, realism is not the most optimistic view of the world, but it is still the closest perspective on world politics that exists today.
Works Cited
[4] “Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.” Division for the Advancement of Women. 1 Jan. 2008. 31 Aug. 2009.< http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/states.htm>.
[6] Easterbrook, Gregg. “The End of War?” The New Republic. 30 May 2005. 30 Aug.2009. <http://www.tnr.com/article/the-end-war>.
[7] Glennon, Michael J. “Why the Security Council Failed.” YaleGlobal Online. 1 May2003. 31 August 2009. <http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/why-security-council-failed>.
[3] “Signatures to the United Nations Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.” Human Rights Web. 25 Jan. 1997. 31 Aug. 2009. <http://www.hrweb.org/legal/cprsigs.html>.
[2] Slaughter, Anne-Marie. “Leading Through Law.” The Wilson Quarterly Autumn 2003: 37-44. (Online: http://www.princeton.edu/~slaughtr/Articles/LeadingLaw.pdf)
[5] United Nations. United Nations Treaty Collection. 31 August 2009. <http://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=IV-1&chapter=4&lang=en>.
[1] Wendt, Alexander. “Anarchy is what States Make of it: The Social Construction of Power Politics.” International Organization Vol 46, No. 2: 391-425. (Online: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2706858?seq=5)
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