Being a morning person, I try my best not to take afternoon classes- unless I have to of course. So even though I had taken my courses a few months ago and didn’t remember the details of which classes I had registered for, being in a 2 o’clock class could only mean that this class was going to be a good one. However, I was a bit confused because I had been looking for the syllabus from a week before and there was no Poli 367 course on either canvas or connect. And to make the matters worse, when the professor walked in, he didn’t put a slide up to explain anything about the course. In fact, it took him 40 minutes to introduce himself and say his name. I found the first session extremely confusing and quite different from what I was used to. In fact, even in the next two classes we had, the class was conducted in a way that I could barely take notes. I left not being sure of what concrete subject matter was taught but I figured after reading the book that I had actually grasped the main idea much better than I would have in a classroom with lots of slides.

Having taken Poli 260 before, I knew the subject matter was going to be interesting. However, when studying different theories of IR in 260, I always tried to identify which one I associate myself with more, but I always ran into problems. I think more like a realist, but I never thought of myself as tough as a realist. I also strongly believed in cooperation and coalitions; Not always for the sake of helping others but solely to ensure my own success.

You see, I am an Iranian girl who is studying political science in Canada. I grew up with Iranian politics affecting every single aspect of my life. In Iran, you can’t ride a taxi without engaging in some sort of a political discussion and you can’t ignore the revolutionary propaganda and the shadow of the Iran-Iraq war that is still casting in Iran. Obama’s sanctions and Trump’s exit of the nuclear deal both affected my life directly; by our currency depreciating in value which directly affected my family’s income drastically, and by my grandmother struggling to find her eye drops in Iran as a direct result of medical sanctions. I grew up learning that Iran was alone in the international community and its allies themselves were the causes of its miseries. I’m referring to Russian planes that crash and kill hundreds of Iranian travelers every few months. Hence, it’s safe to say that the politics I’ve been exposed to, and my Iranian sense of nationalism have pushed me towards realism’s values of selfishness, maximization of power and survival.

On the other hand, another side of me was raised in the mosaic culture of Canada and was taught compassion, cooperation, mutual trust, and collective gains. I was raised in a city that didn’t check your SkyTrain tickets upon entering and I went to a school that for the first two years of my immigration was forgiving and helped me to learn the language and the culture as opposed to holding me at the same standards that it held its other students at.

Naturally, I grew up with countless opposing views and confusion about the world and theories of IR were another nominal category that didn’t quite fit me. However, as I read the text I began learning about different strands of realism. The third chapter of the book delves into structural realism and divides it into the two categories of defensive and offensive realism. I learned that defensive realism embodies all the liberal values that I hold as well as the underlying concept of power for survival. Defensive realism strongly opposes the pursuit of hegemony which satisfied my Iranian nationalism. For me, the absolute hegemony of either the US- or in an unrealistic world- Iran would mean that I would also have to change as an individual to embody either culture and values when I am neither as a whole.

Recently, with Tump’s political decisions, I am becoming more convinced as to how powerful the United States really is and how such imbalance of power is allowing the US to get away with its irrationality and bullying behavior. I would like to live in a world where a single country isn’t so powerful that a single term and a single Republican president elected by the Americans who make up only a small fraction of the world’s population, can cause such drastic changes all around the globe. However, it is also in my opinion that it’s naïve not to be powerful is such a power-hungry world. As helpful cooperation can be to other nations, such benefits are perks of a bigger picture which is to form such coalitions with the goal of increasing our own power and resources.