scholarly journals Is International Relations Part of the Problem or Part of the Solution?

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 17
Author(s):  
Yiquan Wang
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Democratic Peace ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Nuclear Program ◽  
The World ◽  
United States Intervention ◽  
Regional Problems

Whether international relations are a solution to the problem or a way to provoke war is worth discussing. The Democratic Peace Theory under Liberalism holds that all democracies (or, more accurately, all liberal democracies) will not or rarely go to war with another. This theory is further explored in depth the link between democracy and peace. This paper analyzes the situation in Afghanistan, North Korea’s nuclear program and the United States intervention in the world. Finally, it is concluded that international relations theory can solve regional problems and lead to conflict and war. In other words, international relations are both parts of the problem and part of the solution to the issues in international affairs.

scholarly journals Abazi, Enika, & Albert Doja (2016) "International Representations of Balkan Wars: A Socio-Anthropological Account in International Relations Perspective" Cambridge Review of International Affairs

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Enika Abazi ◽  
Albert Doja
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Society ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Southeast Europe ◽  
The West ◽  
Balkan Wars ◽  
The World ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

This article introduces the socio-anthropological concept of international representations to examine the relationship between a civilizational rhetoric, the West European and the international politics of otherization and containment of Southeast Europe, and an essentialist and timeless bias in international relations theory, including both radical and constructivist trends. We first explore the different narrative perspectives on the Balkan wars from the beginning to the end of twentieth century. Their subsequent problematization is aimed at challenging the way how they have constructed commonplace and time-worn representations, which international society shares with different consequences in international affairs. This is a limited conception since international representations as a socio-anthropological concept are always socially, culturally and politically constructed, contested and negotiated. They do not neutrally refer to a reality in the world; they create a reality of their own. Moreover, this limited conception ignores the fact that how, by whom and in whose interest international representations are constructed is itself a form of power in international relations. Therefore, the way international representations are constructed can be problematized as an example of political and ideological projects that operate in the West as well as in the Southeast European countries that are the object of Western foreign policy.

Kantian Project of Perpetual Peace in the Context of Modern Ethical and Political Concepts of War

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-100
Author(s):  
Arseniy D. Kumankov
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Democratic Peace ◽  
Peace Treaty ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Democratic Peace Theory ◽  
Perpetual Peace

The article considers the modern meaning of Kant’s doctrine of war. The author examines the context and content of the key provisions of Kant’s concept of perpetual peace. The author also reviews the ideological affinity between Kant and previous authors who proposed to build alliances of states as a means of preventing wars. It is noted that the French revolution and the wars caused by it, the peace treaty between France and Prussia served as the historical background for the conceptualization of Kant’s project. In the second half of the 20th century, there is a growing attention to Kant’s ethical and political philosophy. Theorists of a wide variety of political and ethical schools, (cosmopolitanism, internationalism, and liberalism) pay attention to Kant’s legacy and relate their own concepts to it. Kant’s idea of war is reconsidered by Michael Doyle, Jürgen Habermas, Ulrich Beck, Mary Kaldor, Brian Orend. Thus, Doyle tracks democratic peace theory back to Kant’s idea of the spread of republicanism. According to democratic peace theory, liberal democracies do not solve conflict among themselves by non-military methods. Habermas, Beck, Kaldor appreciate Kant as a key proponent of cosmopolitanism. For them, Kant’s project is important due to notion of supranational forms of cooperation. They share an understanding that peace will be promoted by an allied authority, which will be “governing without government” and will take responsibility for the functioning of the principles of pacification of international relations. Orend’s proves that Kant should be considered as a proponent of the just war theory. In addition, Orend develops a new area in just war theory – the concept of ius post bellum – and justifies regime change as the goal of just war.

Sovereignty at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonard V. Smith
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International System ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Great Power ◽  
World War ◽  
Treaty Of Versailles ◽  
The World ◽  
Paris Peace Conference

We have long known that the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 “failed” in the sense that it did not prevent the outbreak of World War II. This book investigates not whether the conference succeeded or failed, but the historically specific international system it created. It explores the rules under which that system operated, and the kinds of states and empires that inhabited it. Deepening the dialogue between history and international relations theory makes it possible to think about sovereignty at the conference in new ways. Sovereignty in 1919 was about remaking “the world”—not just determining of answers demarcating the international system, but also the questions. Most histories of the Paris Peace Conference stop with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles with Germany on June 28, 1919. This book considers all five treaties produced by the conference as well as the Treaty of Lausanne with Turkey in 1923. It is organized not chronologically or geographically, but according to specific problems of sovereignty. A peace based on “justice” produced a criminalized Great Power in Germany, and a template problematically applied in the other treaties. The conference as sovereign sought to “unmix” lands and peoples in the defeated multinational empires by drawing boundaries and defining ethnicities. It sought less to oppose revolution than to instrumentalize it. The League of Nations, so often taken as the supreme symbol of the conference’s failure, is better considered as a continuation of the laboratory of sovereignty established in Paris.

scholarly journals O potrzebie rekonstrukcji przestrzeni badawczej w nauce o stosunkach międzynarodowych. Refleksje natury polityczno-normatywnej, systemowej i metaforycznej

2018 ◽  
pp. 25-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teresa ŁOŚ-NOWAK
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Internal State ◽  
Current Theory ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
International Environment ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
New Institutions ◽  
The Relationship

The world of the 21st century provides an intriguing space for academic reflection, offering new challenges and stimulating new concepts of international relations. In this context there emerges the significant question of the essence and direction of these concepts. They may entail deconstruction followed by a reconstruction of the research space in this field. Astrategy of resetting cannot be excluded here, either. Assuming that reconstruction is the appropriate solution there are significant issues of its scope and direction. If a total reset is considered rational we need to address the issue of what it should involve. This is a difficult question for researchers into international relations because it would mean that the hitherto achievements of this subject are being questioned. The post-positivist approach of numerous researchers, which manifests their response to the positivist methodology in the field of international relations, has not so far produced a unified methodological formula or a relatively coherent theory of international relations. Questions concerning the function of science, the nature of the social world (ontology) and the relationship between knowledge and the world (epistemology) remain open. Therefore, it may be worth going back to M. Wight’s provocative thesis that it is impossible to construct a reasonable theory of international relations, mainly owing to the dichotomy of the two fields of research that – in his opinion – cannot be overcome, namely the dichotomy of the ‘international’ (the realm of external affairs of states) and ‘internal’ (the realm of internal affairs within state), which are mutually exclusive because of their specificity; and once again ask the questions of how sensible the thesis of the dichotomy of both these environments is in a world that is strongly conditioned by the cross-border actors, interdependence and globalization. While the separateness of the ‘internal’ and ‘external’ state environments was, for Wight, an important obstacle, making it impossible to construct an academic theory explaining international relations, at the same time the current theory regarding their exclusivity in the context of the internalization of international affairs and the externalization of conditions inside states seems unsustainable. This phenomenon currently allows us to explain the imperative for combining these two environments, overlapping them …breaking down the old, established orders as a result of the now clearly visible phenomena and processes of the ‘internal state’ merging into the ‘international environment’ and vice versa, the disappearance of the traditional functions of borders, the weakening of old institutions and structures for steering the international environment as well as replacing them with entirely new institutions and structures.

scholarly journals United States Intervention Against Terrorism in Iraq

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Ida Susilowati ◽  
Nur Rohim Yunus ◽  
Muhammad Sholeh
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World Trade ◽  
World Trade Center ◽  
The United States ◽  
September 11 ◽  
Al Qaeda ◽  
The World ◽  
Trade Center ◽  
United States Intervention

Abstract: Terrorism is a crime committed by a group of people to frighten, terrorize, intimidate a country's government. In the case of the September 11, 2001 terror that occurred at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the United States accused the al-Qaeda group of being behind the attack. Furthermore, the United States attacked Afghanistan and Iraq. America considers the attacks carried out are legitimate because they are carried out to reduce world terrorism crimes. Whereas behind that there is another motive for controlling the oil in the country that it attacked.Keywords: Terrorism, Intervention, United States. Abstrak:Terorisme merupakan kejahatan yang dilakukan oleh sekelompok orang guna menakuti, meneror, mengintimidasi pemerintahan suatu negara. Dalam kasus teror 11 September 2001 yang terjadi pada World Trade Center dan Pentagon, Amerika Serikat menuduh kelompok al-qaidah di balik serangan tersebut. Selanjutnya Amerika Serikat melakukan penyerangan terhadap Afghanistan dan Iraq. Amerika menganggap serangan yang dilakukan adalah sah karena dilakukan untuk meredam kejahatan terorisme dunia. Padahal di balik itu ada motif lain untuk menguasai minyak yang ada di negara yang diserangnya.Kata Kunci: Terrorisme, Intervensi, Amerika Serikat

scholarly journals O Debate Contemporâneo Sobre o Princípio de Soberania na Literatura Ocidental de Relações Internacionais l The Contemporary Debate on the Principle of Sovereignty in the Western Literature of International Relations

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. e58704
Author(s):  
Alice Castelani de Oliveira
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
Western Literature ◽  
Production Of Knowledge ◽  
The World ◽  
American Authors ◽  
Contemporary Context

A soberania representa uma das articulações políticas mais importantes da Modernidade, a qual convencionou a separação entre as políticas interna e externa. Posto isso, entendemos que para compreender o mundo em que vivemos é necessário pensar essa categoria à luz do contexto contemporâneo, então, com o objetivo de contribuir para o estudo desse conceito, no presente artigo apresentaremos uma revisão do debate atual sobre a categoria de soberania. Para esse fim, nos apoiaremos em um exame da literatura ocidental de Relações Internacionais (RI), com foco em autores americanos, considerando que a produção de conhecimento dos Estados Unidos (EUA) é preponderante dentro deste campo. Esclarecemos que o debate na esfera destacada pode ser dividido em duas linhas de pesquisa que serão exploradas neste texto. A primeira aborda o aprofundamento da globalização e os efeitos desse processo sobre soberania e a segunda discute como são socialmente construídos os discursos sobre essa categoria.Palavras-Chave: Teoria; Relações Internacionais; Soberania.ABSTRACTSovereignty represents one of the most important political articulations of Modernity, which established the separation between internal and external policies. That said, we understand that in order to understand the world in which we live, it is necessary to think about this category in the light of the contemporary context, so, in order to contribute to the study of this concept, in this article we’ll present a review of the current debate on the category of sovereignty. To that end, we’ll rely on an examination of the Western International Relations (IR) literature, focusing on American authors, considering that the production of knowledge from the United States (USA) is predominant within this field. We clarify that the debate in the highlighted sphere can be divided into two lines of research that will be explored in this text. The first addresses the deepening of globalization and the effects of this process on sovereignty and the second discusses how the speeches about this category are socially constructed.Keywords: Theory; International Relations; Sovereignty. Recebido em: 27/03/2021 | Aceito em: 18/05/2021. 

The Noble American Science of Imperial Relations and Its Laws of Race Development

2020 ◽  
pp. 3-42
Author(s):  
Robert Vitalis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Historical Sociology ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
American Science ◽  
The Way

We now know that the ‘birth of the discipline’ of international relations in the United States is a story about empire. The foundations of early international relations theory are set in not just international law and historical sociology but evolutionary biology and racial anthropology. The problem is the way in which scholars today deal with the place of race in the thought of John Hobson, Paul Reinsch, and virtually all other social scientists of the era. The strand of thought that still resonates in our own time about empire, states, and the like is raised up and depicted as the scientific or theoretical core in the scholars’ work, while the strand that involves now archaic racial constructs is downgraded and treated instead as mere ‘language’, ‘metaphors’, and ‘prejudices’ of the era. To undo this error and recover in full the ideas of early international relations theorists it is necessary to bring the work of historians of conservative and reform Darwinism to bear on the first specialists and foundational texts in international relations.

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