The Study of International Relations: A Crash Course

International relations, or IR, is the study of interactions between the entities of the world—usually sovereign states. As a subject, it involves several schools of thought, some more well-known than others. If you’ve been through high school social studies, you’ve probably heard of a few. But this semester, I’ve been taking a course on international relations, and it’s actually clarified a lot of things which I wasn’t quite clear on before. So here I am to share my knowledge; without further ado, here’s a breakdown of two of the most well-known IR theories and what they mean.

Liberalism, aka “Can’t We All Just Get Along?”

I’m convinced that most high school students (current or former) will have at least a basic grasp of this one. But there’s actually a bit more to this theory than most of us were taught, at least in the context of international relations.

Liberalism is the theory of international politics which sees the fundamental driving force behind world politics as globalization (Social Studies 10 throwback!). Globalization, as you may be aware, is the process of the world becoming increasingly interconnected. The Silk Road or the Internet are obvious examples. And this interconnectedness leads to something else, something key to liberalism: interdependence.

Liberalists believe that states have varied preferences (i.e. a national interest), which are influenced by various factors. These preferences can align with those of other states or entities like religious groups and corporations, creating a harmony of interests. Liberalism believes that this harmony should be a goal for states to work towards as an alternative to war—it’s all about community and cooperation.

That said, liberalism also has an ideational aspect to it, saying that states have a responsibility to intervene when something unconscionable occurs. This sounds moral (there’s the autonomy/sovereignty debate, but that’s a discussion for another time), but part of ideational liberalism is the inherent desire of entities to impost their ideas on others aka the tolerance paradox. Liberalism also believes that while the potential for good exists in the world, there is just as much potential for evil.

Realism, aka “Don’t Come Near Me; I Have A Knife”

A little known fact is that liberalism actually came as a response to another school of thought known as realism. Liberalism is a bit of a “yes, but,” an optimistic shift in ideas stemming from the relatively optimistic decade which was the 90s. So what’s realism all about?

Realism has some fairly old roots—when we studied it, we looked at the Melian Dialogue by Thucydides, a general from the fifth century BCE, as an example. Realism is fundamentally a theory about power and security, and believes that the only entities with the power to create change on the world stage are states. Everyone except these states don’t matter. Individuals don’t matter—including individuals within states. According to realism, your favourite corporations are powerless. Religious orders are powerless. The secret underground societies we always see in the movies who have been secretly pulling the strings on the world all this time have no power. I mean in theory if those societies existed none of these theories would because the concept of the international system would be rendered somewhat… useless. But I digress.

If liberalism is about community and cooperation, realism is exactly the opposite. With realists, life is all about anarchy, conflict, and the honourable pursuit of killing anyone who stands in your way (well, haha not really… unless?). Think back to Thomas Hobbes: life in the state of nature is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Ignore the fact that Hobbes is a liberalist and the fact that a lot of these classifications can get very confusing very fast; the nasty/brutish/short part is the spirit you want to take away here. Realists posit that we exist in a world where the strong lead and the weak bleed, and that states are programmed to pursue their own interests and seek power relentlessly.

States are thus prone to betrayal, and should in turn trust no one; your friend of today may be your mortal enemy tomorrow. In this world, there is no such thing as utopia and there is no such thing as a natural harmony of interests. And everyone in the world simply has to suck it up and deal with it. Fun!

I probably go on for a little while longer, but I’m running out of word count here, so that’s as far as we’re going to do today. This has been your daily (read: twice monthly) dose of Lara’s Blog Posts On Cool People Things (Trademarked. Registered, copyrighted, etc. It’s mine, don’t steal it or else.) Next up in this series—I just decided that it’s a series—is crowd favourite Marxism, aka “Hey Guys? I Think We’re Being Exploited Question Mark? We Should Probably Do Something About That Question Mark? Gee I Sure Hope We Don’t Do Something Drastic.” as well as a couple of others. Ciao!