International Relations

International Relations

Two approaches to IR: descriptive vs normative

Should we study it as it is, or in a transformative way? What is IR? It is a discipline which studies the interaction between countries, including the activities and policies of national governments, International Organizations (inter-state), NGOs, and multinational corporations (MNCs). People live within states and the space of domestic boundaries, which are sovereign with respect to one another. States are considered by Weber as the legitimate holder of monopoly on coercion, and legitimate is conceived as the sole rightful holder. Sovereignty is when no one recognized as another entity as superior, as states acknowledge other states as formerly equal. The concept of anarchy is applied to the international system: the formal equality of every state with respect to the other one is possible because the international system is anarchic, as there is no global authority, legislator, and judge.

Key social values and theories in IR

• Security in power politics troubles, security from conflict and war → Realism
• Freedom, through cooperation between states and individuals, peace, material progress, growth, and development → Liberalism
• Order and justice, shared interests, pursuit of ordered relations through norms and rules, given by institutions → International Society (English School)
• Welfare, interaction between politics and economy, the inability to provide an equal order, and wants to pursue a more equal society → IPE Theories
• Ideational factors, intersubjective awareness performed through civic society movement as conventions on the ban of certain weapons norms, mobilization of citizens against agreements on trade among mega-regional agreements, among countries very different from each other → Social Constructivism
• Issues from different perspectives, where reality is perceived as the product of discourses practices, reality framed as we want to and not as it actually is, identity, power asymmetries, emancipation among themes → Post-Positivist Approaches (e.g., Feminism, post-colonials)

Social Constructivism and Post-Positivist Approaches have turned upside down the idea that the state is the provider of order and justice, freedom, welfare, mostly issued by realists; states are perceived as the origin of war and disturbances, not freedom producers, but coercion, injustice, and disorder enforcers. IPE believes that states are just a puppet in the hands of the bourgeoisie and are providers of inequality. Global North and Global South relations are performed in a way that benefits the North. Reality is a social construction; it depends on the way the observer frames it.

Power structures and power organization in the past have framed our world; the inter-state system is very modern (post-Westphalian peace 1648). Whereas the international system was not anarchical in the past for the most part, it was ruled by non-state entities, e.g., the Roman Empire, the Empire of Alexander the Great, Mongol Empire, etc., where kingdoms and empires were the rule, and hierarchy predominated over anarchy. Anarchical order has existed also but limited in time and characterized by entities different from sovereign states, rather were city-states, principalities, or Warring states: ancient Greece, Renaissance Italy, pre-imperial China. So, the current international anarchical system is an exception that has similarities in the past, but in neither of those cases had the same form of states as today.

Evolution of the European State System

Peculiar organization during the Middle Ages: a dual form of authority, one exercised by the Pope controlling religious hierarchies, in particular the clergy, and the other one controlled by the emperor, percolating down over different kings and barons. At the end, the ordinary individual, who was not really a citizen but a subject, would have to be loyal to two authorities, a spiritual one and a political one. The wars and clashes between these two authorities, given the ambitions of the spiritual authority and the fact that for a very long time, the political authority had the right to appoint bishops (overlap of the spheres of authority, different types of loyalties as serfdom). At the end of the religious wars fought in Europe for a very long period, a wide series of founding principles came up, for example, the separation from the religious and the political authority in a way that was unprecedented and by leaving the new political entity created, the state, the right to pursue its aims more efficiently for its centralized nature, not more diffused.

The Peace of Westphalia 1648 had an impact on the nascent European state system, as it stands as a convention date for the beginning of the modern state system. This was when the limits of the political entity controlled by the emperor, the empire, reached its maximum extension. Rising challenger: Charles V, who succeeded Philip II, had to deal with the failures of the precedent ruler, several antagonists, and myopic management of finances, inability to incorporate demands from the aristocracy in a way that was beneficial for the empire. He overtaxed the colonies and lost wars (among others, the one against Elizabeth I of England), and the empire reached its limits.

Major changes post-Westphalia

• Separation between politics and religion: two different spheres (secularization of politics). During such a period, Europe had experienced many wars, which brought several independencies. Spain became weaker while other powers emerged and strengthened their basis with innovations, most of them derived from the conquest of the new world. The politics of the religious wars brought a major innovation: the idea that the religious creed over specific people should conform to the faith of the ruler—people living within certain states could not claim religious autonomy and political power over the land they controlled based on a different faith compared to the one the king who rules over that territory affirmed. This emerged from the principle “Cuius regio eius religio” during the Peace of Augusta 1555.
• State as 'optimal' unit and sovereignty principle: The second major innovation brought by the Peace of Westphalia and the end of religious wars was the emergence of the state as the optimum unit in organizing political control over a territory and a population and defences over external attacks, based on the sovereignty principle, as we know it nowadays. The idea was: a much smaller unit than an empire, which was costly to defend and overstretched, but bigger than a city-state or a principality so that it could defend itself. States such as England, France, and the United Provinces (the Netherlands) were able to set themselves independent from the emperor, as Philip II was not able to keep the empire together.
• War politics and warfare techniques: Before the modern age, war was mostly a matter between kings and princes and their private army, was fought by aristocratic families (as the War of the Roses between Yorks and Lancaster). After the Thirty Years War and all others religious wars, war becomes a national-state matter, something which has to do with the defence of a much wider territory than a county or barony, but the entire state, for trade rights in the Atlantic Ocean, for example. It was fought with different means given important innovations, above all, gun powder, but also others in navigation techniques (Philip II’s Spain lost against Elizabeth I’s England in a naval battle, for example) as colonial powers that owned very powerful fleets were able to conquer the new world and wage war against one another.
• The European state system becomes global: Rulers such as Isabel of Castille, Charles V, and Elizabeth I were able to send fleets to unknown parts of the world, to explore them. The resources they conquered were powerful engines of power. Why were Europeans successful in exporting the state system globally? Europeans had long fought between each other’s and such competition made them boost for progress and innovations, especially in technology and war techniques. Populations such as Egyptians, Babylonians, and Sumerians had created steel swords, while Europeans refined weapons with Chinese gun powder. Indigenous people in America didn’t often fight between one another but were mainly isolated from each other’s, while Europeans have always fought during the Middle Ages as constantly threatened on borders, developing efficient war techniques, which was effective to state-making process. Charles Tilly: “War made the state, state made the war.” Those qualities were necessary and helpful to boost the conquest of overseas territories, as well as the fact that states were optimal units able to control territories and populations and defend their borders efficiently. Europeans and Eurasians were also highly immunized after millennia of contact with major germs, living near animals which were carriers of diseases and plagues, and were very strong physically, while indigenous had no contact with such germs and were eventually exterminated by the diseases brought by the conquistadores. Horses were also unknown to the pre-Columbian empire.

Radical and post-colonial International Relations: Westphalia and its impact are a myth

Few major powers and many colonies (formal hierarchy), at the time of the French Revolution, 1689, there were slightly more than 40 sovereign nation-states, while in 2019 we count 200 of them. The majority has emerged during the 1900s, many experiencing decolonization. From few major powers and a global formal hierarchy in 1600, to very heterogeneous (in respect to their ability to control their internal territory and external defense) sovereign states (no colonies) in 2000, with a substantial hierarchy even a formal anarchy.

On sovereignty, ‘superiorem non recognoscens’:

• Internal sovereignty: legitimate monopoly over the coercion and militarized forces (Weber), which means the ability to control through a government the territory and the people who live over that territory.
• External sovereignty: this can have two dimensions: empirical (factual statehood) and juridical (legal statehood). Some states are both factually and juridically able to control a given territory, monopolizing the use of force and being recognized sovereign externally. But there are cases of states that are such only at the formal level, factually very weak, and not able to control the whole territory and population who live there (quasi-states, mostly concentrated in the Global South). Other cases such as Quebec and Taiwan, not formally sovereign states but factually speaking it governs itself and has control over the population and territory. In some cases, some territories are neither factual nor formally recognized as sovereign.

IR as a state-centred discipline (1990)

States are the main actors of the international relation discipline and system, as they are mostly the ones who make wars. States are formally all sovereign in an anarchic way as they should not question the sovereignty of other states and power inequalities between states imply a substantial hierarchy. States are formally equal but substantially different: there are very sharp inequalities in respect to power endowments and factual hierarchy among more powerful and less powerful states. According to this hierarchy, we have probably one global power, both economically and militarily, the USA, as China is not yet able to claim military superiority globally but only at a regional level. Criteria can also be possession of nuclear resources and substantial economic power, but there could be different combinations: for example, North Korea is a major nuclear power but economically poor, Germany pursues a policy of demilitarization, Russia is a major military power but doesn’t have the economic resources to do it, but it has to solve a number of problems in terms of economic stability.

A state-centred approach to International Relations:

• loses sight of many relevant non-state actors and dynamics: MNCs, private entities who urge to maximize profits, even if it is often claimed that they can also be tools in the hands of states, used as control devices for economic interests; NGOs and other Civil Society organizations which have different goals, some of them progressive – as environmental and development engine NGOs, to pursue goals which sometimes states aren’t able to achieve-, or regressive - terrorist groups, acting through the use of violence-.
• may underplay the importance of interdependence, supra, inter and trans-national dynamics: negative, as human traffic smuggling for example, which have major impacts on politics, and positive, as the Black Lives Matter movement or the civic society support and involvement for Sustainable Development Goals in the context of the agenda 2030. The European Union, embodying a civic society divided into different nationalities within its own conscience, is a non-state actor, despite acting as a single entity in multiple competencies, but not in security and military matters; despite in critical times, EU member states are able to put aside their divergences on delegated sovereignty in military matters, even if this could be just sending military aid, not a unified army.
• prizes states’ autonomy and sovereignty to analyze inter-national processes: states and boundaries matter, as well as national identities, in processes of against self-subrogation, in the case of exiting supranational orders (example: Brexit, in which a sovereign state has decided to recede from a previously agreed supranational organization).

A state-centred approach applied to post-Covid responses (as national lockdown policies) in health diplomacy unveils national (and regional), not global dynamics (even though there have been global initiatives and goals). However, it would be difficult to fully understand such phenomena as transnational terrorism and civil wars. Critical theories, constructivists, globalists, Marxists envisage a world where states may disappear.

The concept of war in International Relations

Different trends on wars through time: inter-state wars have mostly been close to zero, while from the so-called Arab Spring, the number of civil wars has increased, especially those against non-state actors and separatist movements. States are still key actors in international politics, and war remains today the most dramatic event that may happen among states, peculiar to international politics, in a way that it is not the same as on the national level. In the context of actual or potential war, it is important to regard the relations among states, of war, its causes, and effects. Is the state the cause of war or the solution to build states? (Remember Charles Tilly’s quote!)

Why does war occur? How can we avoid wars?

War is necessary for peace, to understand it. What are the origins of wars? IR as a discipline was born in the hope that war would never occur again, in the interwar period in the last century. The great war left major marks in the lives of millions of people and ideas of no more wars ever again, motivating the creation of IR as a discipline.

What is war? Ideas before the 20th century

Enlightened idea: we can have peace on earth by building institutions, human-made artifacts, norms, and laws, we can build peace and progress. Before this, from the Middle Ages to the end of the 18th century, war was God’s punishment for human beings’ sins and was perceived as a divine punishment, which could be avoided, and kings were seen as intermediaries between gods and human beings. Ancient kingdoms would justify their actions as justified by god’s will. The idea that war and peace had to deal with human interaction is pretty modern and has its origins in the enlightenment and its philosophy, and also roots of building institutions that can solve the problem of conflicts and can build peace and progress.

Immanuel Kant’s “On perpetual peace” of 1798, was important for the development of IR, introducing the idea that peace could be built on earth, not waiting for heaven, and possible if human beings would do something about the rule which prevailed at the domestic level and the relation among states. In the roots of the liberal school, different views developed: revolutionist, by fighting absolutisms; or rationalist through gradual and slow but constantly improving reforms.

States and war, two concepts

States in the perspective of realist and rationalist IR scholars, are producers of borders, and provide solutions to the problem of war, who negotiate peace vs. states as war-makers, as they are the ones who wage war. Kenneth Waltz was the father of Structural realism: became prominent for “Man, the state and war” 1959, in which he detailed his structuralist theory of international politics and where the origins of war are allocated; another important book was “Theory of International politics” 1979. In his book “Man, the state and war” we can group three major families or images/levels of analysis, for which war erupts because of decisions taken by:

• Individuals, and elements which are own of human nature;
• Domestic politics and political regimes and their nature, not their leaders, according to which there are certain of them that are more peaceful and others more prominent to wage war;
• Structure and logic of the international system itself and pressures exercised on states,

Explanation of the behavior of Germany and its belligerent approach in the two world wars:

1. According to the first level, the explanation of its aggressiveness was because of its leaders, Otto von Bismarck, Stresemann, Hitler, the propensity to wage war at the end of the 19th century and in the first 20th century was motivated by German leaders.
2. Germany and its domestic regimes: we can compare the different personalities and German leaders, there are many differences about them. What is important to consider is the internal domestic regime, which raised power concentration in the hands of the executive or the Kaiser, it was never a democracy even before Nazism, and it outlawed Catholics and communists at the end of the 19th century, by definition non-democratic regimes tend to be more belligerent.
3. Germany’s position on the map: what made it so prone to expand itself so aggressively was given to its position on the map. It was surrounded by two expanding empires, France and the Russian Empire, it was a matter of preparation and readiness.