As the common refrain of our course states, International Relations is a discipline which has privileged many births. During the fourth week the assigned reading includes The Continuity of Classic Tradition within which Holsti muddles the origins of IR as an area of “social inquiry.” From the anachronistic-realist Thucydides to the positivists of U of M, Holsti makes the case for proto-IR being a fusion of philosophy and game theory. While unintentional, this Eurocentric framing of IR comes as no surprise to any novice poli-sci student. IR at its bedrock is an elitist enterprise—I don’t feel thats a value judgement but merely an observation of the reality. Whether anchored by the triumvirate of Hobbes, Kant, and Rousseau, the diplomatic corps of pre-World War 1, or the American privitzation post-World War 2, IR has and continues to be a profession and study for those not prone to manual labor. That being said, whether Pelopennesian, Thirty Years, or Global, the motivation throughout human history for IR has been singular: war.
The maturation of this singular focus reflects the growing complexity of both the academic field and, in this author’s view, the state of the world. Holsti walks the audience through Kantian individualist models of human frailty to Rousseaun game theory as tabled theories for why states pursue war. This historical framing prime the reader not just philosophically, but also give insight into the kind of individuals that were crafting IR, not exactly salt of the earth types. Not to belabor the point, it is merely my own rude awakening that beyond the rarified professional corps, I’m disappointed to find IR even as an academic discipline is one predicated on Eurocentric ivory towers. And this is where Holsti’s history of IR succeeds, it did what all advocates are supposed to do: create an anxiety relievable by buying-in.
I’m a veteran. I wore a uniform and supported war efforts—albeit from behind displays and desks, ASCII and analysis. Like many before me who have let loose by crys of havoc, I want badly to mitigate what I would otherwise call “world suck.” International Relations for want of a windmill to tilt is my chosen study. But even in this I am hilariously and hopelessly outgunned. Holsti, in his concluding unit of the reading, holds that IR is an amalgamous field, one with the trappings of classical philosophy and postivist research, one trapped for want of an agreed unit of measure, and one which only seeks to resolve questions like the bedrock motives for war and reliable pathways to peace.
So—did Holsti help me better understand IR as a Modern Academic Discipline?
Yes, in that the historic wellspring is one as mired in fugue as the discipline is currently. The added benefit is that at least now I can better appreciate how the discipline found itself in the fugue it is at present.
I can only hope that the next generation of IR academics might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-realists, true-blue observers who dare to invest themselves in what they observe, a cadre with the naive gall to endorse and pursue peace for peace sake while galvanizing themselves for the potentials of conflict. Who treat of the myriad unsexy and unappealing human difficulties both a duty towards and a reverence for amicable solution. A group that defies ironic hand-washing as being “the way it is.” These sincere pragmatists would seem ancient before even being deputized into authority. Ineffectual, bad for ratings, soft, clearly provincial, apologists. And maybe that’s the whole point of this human endeavor. To defy the stag hunt, protect the commons, and bootstrap everyone equitably. Insurgents against ideologues and rhetoric, risking bankruptcy in a gamed global economy, irrelevance within a flatter global narrative, exploitation via exponentially complex interconnectivity, the opposition party to overkill and detatchment. One can only hope.