How does Realism help us to understand international relations?

Résumé du document

The study of International Relations regroups a large range of theorists who have different opinions about the way international politics are organised. Among these theorists, you can generally distinguish three main schools of thoughts, the liberals, the Marxists and the realists. They all help to seize different features of the interactions on the international level but what is noteworthy is that Realism tends to be in the dominant position in the study of international relations.

Realism is based on some key assumptions such as the fact that the nation state remains the key actor in the international system and that international politics is essentially conflictual. The international system according to realists is anarchical, which means that there are no supra-bodies above the nation states because the latter are sovereign. The concept of sovereignty refers to the ultimate source of authority in a society; the sovereign is the highest and final decision maker within a community (Hague, Harrop, 2007, 16). Consequently, here the nation state is the highest and final decision maker and according to realists, there are no international institutions questioning its sovereignty. Unlike liberals, realists are pessimistic concerning the establishment of moral principles that justify that the nation state surrenders a part of its sovereignty to a superior body.

Extraits

[...] The realists argue that their theory is the best one to explain the state behavior, its motivations and the organization of the international system. They also offer a range of solutions designed to maximize the interest of the state in a hostile context. Sometimes deemed as a pessimistic theory, its advocates argue that it simply wants to look at the way the world is and not how it should be. Consequently we can wonder to what extent the concepts lying in Realism help us to get a better overview of international relations and what its contribution to this discipline is. [...]

[...] This issue is becoming a growing concern of the World Trade Organization (Abdelal, Segal, 2008), but it is something expectable according to the Realists. We can also notice the same thing happening in Europe, where France for example, adopted a plan to save the car industry that is primarily made to save French jobs and that may lead to the closure of factories in Eastern Europe or the reluctance from European Countries to financially help Eastern European countries (Charter, 2008). On the other hand, Realism is not perfect and it has gone through several criticisms. [...]

[...] (2008) The Globalization of World Politics Oxford University Press -Charter, D. (2008) “Iron Curtain will split EU's rich and poor” The Times (Available online at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article5828323.ece ) -Donnelly J. (200) Realism and International Relations, Cambridge University Press -Dougherty J.E., (1997) Contending theories of International Relations, Longman -Frankel B. (1996) Roots of Realism Frank Cass & CO. Ltd. -Hague R., Harrop M. (2007) Comparative Government and Politics, an Introduction, Palgrave Macmillan -Smith S., Booth K., Zalewski M. [...]

[...] He is famous for his analysis of the Peloponnesian War, a war which saw Athena and Sparta fighting each other. Thucydides explains that “What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta” (Frankel 18). Noticing that the Athenians started to gain more and more power, the Spartans decided to challenge it to preserve their own. Here, we find one of the classical realist assumptions that competition between states is viewed in ‘zero-sum terms, more for one actor means less for another' (Baylis, Smith, Owens 100). [...]

[...] To conclude, Realism is a school of thought that helps to understand many of the major issues happening on the international level. Its key concepts such as the importance of the state sovereignty or the states leaders' quest for more power and influence over the other states often explain the reasons behind the main conflicts that the world has encountered, such as the two world wars and the Cold War. It also explains partly the failures of institutions such as the League of Nations after World War explaining that we have to be careful with ideals like world cooperation. [...]