Paper Review

Stephen M. Walt (1998) International Relations: One World, Many Theories

By Bright Mhango (M2013071)

Submitted to: Ma Rong Jiu (Foreign Policy Analysis)

It is hard not to agree with Stephen Walt from the outset in his 1998 paper; International Relations: One World, Many Theories, in which he argues that despite their sometimes lack of popularity among policy makers and the array of competing theories in the discipline of International Relations, the world, including the skeptic policy makers, need the variety as it provides a wide toolkit with which to explain various phenomena in international relations. Where We Are Coming From Walt starts by tracing the evolution on IR theories and pins it down to the three schools which he labels as Realist, Liberal and Radical. Realism He sums up Realism as it is best known: The constant battle for power among self-centric states who happen to be pessimists in terms of world peace attainment. These he divides into two groups, the Classical Realists who believe that nations have an inborn desire to dominate others. The other realists, he terms, the Neorealists who point to the effects of international system and describe it as a number of great nations striving to survive. Walt describes the third and last group of Realists as the Defensive Realists who purport that all that states live for is to survive and offer security via military strategies and alliances. Liberalism He then expounds Liberalism which he explains as the school of thought that believes that economic interdependence can prevent conflict among states. Some Liberals, like the erstwhile American president Bill Clinton believe that the spread of the democracy is key to world peace arguing that from history democratic states tend to be more peaceful than autocratic ones. The economic interdependence among nations, says Walt, encourages states to forgo immediate gains for greater benefits of long term cooperation. Radical Approaches The third school of thought for Walt is Radicalism/ Marxism. He divides this theory into three one being the Orthodox Marxists who blame conflict on the greedy nature of capitalism; the Neo-Marxists who employ the dependency theory and say big capitalist states connive

with elites in the developing world to exploit the masses therein and the much weaker Deconstructionists who zero in on language and discourse as important. Domestic Politics Walt also takes time to give salience to the role of Domestic politics as an area that has been important in the journey International Relations theories have taken. He says for example that The democratic strand of liberal theory fits under this heading, as do the efforts of scholars such as Graham Allison and John Steinbruner to use organization theory and bureaucratic politics to explain foreign policy behavior, and those of Jervis, Irving Janis, and others, which applied social and cognitive psychology. But he quickly pointed out that the Domestic Politics theorists should not be viewed like Realists or Liberals but rather as compliment the three main paradigms. New Wrinkles in Old Paradigms Walt then zooms in on the paradigms he introduced to offer new issues affecting them, he ultimately goes on to point to Realism as the best framework for the years ahead but also mentions the good in the other paradigms too. He gets in the water to save realism which he said many thought would be filed under Obsolete after the Cold War. He says Realism as expounded by names like Grieco and Krasner have helped in responding to the institutionalists' claim that international institutions would enable states to forego short-term advantages for the sake of greater longterm gains, by arguing that anarchy forces states to worry about both the absolute gains from cooperation and the way that gains are distributed among participants. Walt concludes that: The logic is straightforward: If one state reaps larger gains than its partners, it will gradually become stronger, and its partners will eventually become more vulnerable, a bold gesture in his rooting for Realism. He also points out that Realism is still relevant and has been instrumental in explaining issues of ethnic conflict in Europe, in providing commentary on

NATO as a possible cause of conflict with Russia and in explaining US foreign policy and still predominantly realist.

New Life for Liberalism

Walt then takes a swipe at the popular belief in liberalism as the way to go after the Cold War. He puts a hush to the excited giggles among liberals by critiquing the Democratic peace theory which says democracies rarely fight each other and yet in some new

democracies, states are more prone to war, which leads one to conclude that promoting democracy might actually promote instability. Constructivist Theories Constructivist approaches emphasize the impact of ideas. Instead of taking the state for granted and assuming that it simply seeks to survive, constructivists regard the interests and identities of states as a highly malleable product of specific historical processes, says Walt. He gives the example of Mikhail Gorbachevs embracing of the common security motif. Critique For Walt, he explicitly roots for Realism as the go to framework, he thus gives it more salience and defeats liberalism clean by arguing against its weaknesses, but in a world that is fast Globalizing and where economic interdependence is opening up hard states like Russia and international organisations and multi-national corporations wields more power, it is a bit unfair to ignore Liberalism as the more relevant conceptual framework. Yes, interdependence will breed more conflict in the future and trade links cannot stop conflict, but still more the world seems to be buying it and citizens are more becoming concerned of global issues and nationalism is dying as regional blocks like the European Union keep rising, can Germany ever invade Poland again with Brussels so powerful? The answer is hard to imagine away from no. Conclusion Just like Walt in his opening words, theory is important to academic and policy maker alike and he says: It is hard to make good policy if one's basic organizing principles are flawed, just as it is hard to construct good theories without knowing a lot about the real world. But more important is his warning that we should not be narrow minded in looking at the theories, he says: each of these competing perspectives captures important aspects of world politics. Our understanding would be impoverished were our thinking confined to only one of them. The "compleat diplomat" of the future should remain cognizant of realism's emphasis on the inescapable role of power, keep liberalism's awareness of domestic forces in

mind, and occasionally reflect on constructivism's vision of change. It is hard to add more to this conclusion.