https://blogs.ubc.ca/cfrausto/2018/10/16/e-h-carr-beyond-realists-and-idealists/

E.H. Carr: Beyond realists and idealists

In 1939 Edward Hallet Carr published The Twenty Years’ Crisis 1919-1939. As the subtitle says, it was meant to be an introduction to the study of International Relations. Being an historian, he reflected on the past of International Relations and on the context that surrounded the scholars who tried to understand and modify the relations between nations. By the time Carr wrote war was a main concern. It acted as the gravitational center for thinkers on International Relations. But Carr realized that this was obviously not enough. Worrying about war and thinking of better days, was insufficient to avoid conflict.

E.H. Carr identifies the infancy of International Relations with the utopian stage of the discipline. Unverified assumptions about the behavior of humans were the main elements for thinking of International Relations. This led to the establishment of good wishes instead of true analysis. But, what does Carr mean by true analysis? In his view, trying to be objective can result on the sterility of thought. That is, an only-realist analysis would lead to comprehension of reality, but it can hardly help to act in solving world’s problems.

That is why Carr proposes a balance between a utopian and a realist way of thinking. It is important to clarify that Carr is not referring (or not only) to International Relations schools of thinking, but he talks about utopians and realists in a broader sense.  Despite this, Carr is usually regarded as a realist (from the school of IR) author. This could be mainly because of the criticism that he made on utopians or idealists. However, this does not automatically make him a realist. On the contrary, in his text, one can find several criticisms to realists as well.  Above the “taking sides” problem, Carr makes a call for balance. In my view, the combination of both elements can lead to a very interesting reflection: International Relations, in order to be useful, must entail a normative commitment. Describing phenomena is not useful without a normative standpoint. Thinking and action must come together (praxis). Acknowledging one’s normative dimension and political position, does not deny the possibility of creating a balance between realism and idealism, between practice and theory.

This way of thinking can also be found in other books by Carr such as What is history? In this book he reflects, among other topics, on why we select only certain moments (and not others) as historical facts. Historical facts are what we define as such, and we can only do this decision based on a normative standpoint. Among all the things that happen, we only select a bunch of them and take them into account for our “objective” analysis. The same thing happens with International Relations. In this sense, Carr is calling for a discipline that has political commitment, that cannot avoid having a political commitment. How we define reality, defines how we study it and what we judge as positive or negative for the world. This is why Carr ‘s proposal is to balance the (unavoidable) normative dimension with the description and understanding of reality. He sees theory and practice as interdependent, ethics and politics as inseparable.

Carr’s position, as it is enlightening, can also be problematic. What happens when the two elements become both interdependent and also contradictory? This possibility is specially noted when Carr does the identification between utopian/realist and theory/practice with left/right. Although this apparent oxymoron can be troubling when studying International Relations, I think these are precisely the moments when one has to decide between action or description(knowledge or action) recognizing that the highest possible degree of one process is sought in the other.

As we can see in much of the methodology textbooks in International Relations Theory and in social sciences, there is not much agreement on the fundamental elements of the discipline. There are even debates about the debates (metadebates?). International Relations scholars do not have a general agreement on what is the core topic of the discipline or how to study it and through which methods. But this disagreement and lack of homogeneity, I think, works in favor of some elements of Carr’s thinking: Because nothing is given, because facts are not self-evident elements, but instead selected and highlighted by researchers, there is always to be disagreement. This is not only the result of a debate over the discipline, but of an ontological debate on what is important and why. I may add that this is not only unavoidable, but it is healthy and must keep going, because when we lack debate and disagreement it is the time of totalitarianism, of one view imposed over the others. Doubts about what is important and how to understand it is what will allow the discipline to acknowledge new phenomena.

Claudio F.L

October 2018

https://blogs.ubc.ca/poli367yishen/

The concept of American hegemony has always been a topic of interest of mine. More specifically, I have always been interested in how hegemons initially gain power to usurp previous hegemons, and how they (attempt to) maintain power as resentful rival states compete for the hegemonic throne. In Robert O. Keohane’s Hegemony and After: What Can Be Said About the Future of American Global Leadership, Keohane explores the scholarly discourse on hegemony, weighing arguments from declinists such as Robert Kagan and Robert J. Lieber with his own counterarguments, routinely highlighting the flaws and holes in their fallacious arguments.

Firstly and most importantly, Keohane outlines the importance of hegemony in an anarchic world, and explains that Declinism is an American foreign policy view that has re-emerged in policy circles with the rising threat of China in relation to America’s relative decline. This perspective is connected to a book that I recently read by economic historian Niall Ferguson called The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die. He too, being a neorealist declinist, argues that the West is stagnating due to poor democratic, economic, legal and civil institutions, and points at globalization as the culprit of its descent. Furthermore, Keohane sheds light on the evidence supporting Hegemonic Stability Theory, and connects the scholarly discourse back to their roots with specific mention of E. H. Carr, Hans Morgenthau and Kenneth Waltz, all IR scholars who we discussed about in class. He reserves a healthy level of idealism while maintaining a neorealist perspective, pointing out that International Organizations such at the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO, while having been at the core of improving the lives of many vulnerable peoples around the world, have also been used to institutionalize American hegemonic power into the international order (or lack thereof) and that hegemony is costly and may not be sustainable, but argues that there is hope for the world to improve. He also clarifies that the lack of a central government coupled with a lack of trust between states results in the security dilemma, and argues that hegemony is essential for cooperation between states. Furthermore, he points out that the health of a state’s hegemony is dependent on if they often or rarely partake in wars; hegemonies can be maintained by keeping military budgets high, but are more difficult to maintain if American voters are more focused on welfare benefits and tax cuts instead of funding wars, explaining why the US has resisted the hegemonic throne for so long given its long history of isolationism. Before concluding, Keohane highlights a series of questions regarding the future of hegemony that are heavily debated by IR scholars today, and argues that while we cannot be certain of any argument’s validity today, IR scholars should think more like scientists who value systematic evidence and who are aware of their fallibility, harking back to the Positivist view of International Relations as a discipline.

On the other hand, I was disappointed to find out that Keohane does not outline (in this essay) what he believes to be the cause of hegemonic Declinism in the US. Surprisingly, he focuses so much of his efforts trying to point out the flaws in pessimistic arguments that he fails to explicitly mention the idealist exaggerations concerning hegemony and its impact on the world. Moreover, he mentions that powerful states encounter unsolvable problems, but does not elaborate on this important point any further in the essay. Similarly, he mentions but does not elaborate on the concepts of “hard” and “soft” power respectively, a concept that I find to be quite connected to hegemony having learned about it in one of my International Relations History courses. Finally, Keohane frequently brings up the rising number of democracies in the world as a consequence of American hegemony, but neglects to mention that while they may call themselves democracies, in reality they are more like polyarchies rather than true democracies, including the US.

Ultimately, I found the Keohane reading to be quite informative, resulting in me asking for a more in-depth analysis on the dimensions of hegemony as an International phenomenon by the end of the essay.

Hello! Here is my second blog post!

Views on the English School of Thought

https://blogs.ubc.ca/wows/

See my second blog post on E.H. Carr here:

https://blogs.ubc.ca/royworld/2018/10/15/an-account-of-the-origins-of-international-relations-blog-post-2/

My second blog post is here.

Here is also the link to my blog: https://blogs.ubc.ca/funfab4year/

The article “Why Iran should get the bomb: Nuclear balancing would mean stability” by Kenneth N. Waltz for our assigned readings in week three has stuck with me, and thus will be the article I will be discussing today. The premise of the article is the analysis of Iran’s plan for nuclear weapons, and if them possessing it is as dangerous as some believed, specifically the United States and Europe. These countries fear that with the Iran’s control of nuclear weaponry, it would be problematic and thus promote to remove their nuclear control, which would result in one of these three outcomes: implementation of extreme sanctions in hope to convince Iran to relinquish their weaponry, which is highly unlikely; the country switches from nuclear testing to developing a “sophisticated nuclear program without building an actual bomb” (pg.2), which is also unlikely due to the Iranian governments desires for real nuclear weaponry; or let them continue with their nuclear weapon plan and begin testing publicly, which is the best course of action for Iran while theoretically being the worst for the United States and Europe. However, what stood out was the closer examination of the latter result. Waltz makes an interesting remark about allowing Iran, and countries in particular, to in fact possess and test nuclear weaponry “produce[s] more regional and international stability, not less” (pg. 3). The article goes on to lay out why this is in fact true, and concludes that by allowing Iran to possess nuclear weapons it would in fact bring stability to the Middle Eastern region.

This article was a part of week three readings, which connected to that week’s topic: Stories without origin, world politics as “eternal recurrence.” After doing a detailed reading, I found that this article connected well with what we talked about in class on September 20^th; having Waltz describe the fears the United States and Europe have with Iran possessing nuclear weaponry, versus Waltz’s view on the situation reminded me of the ‘Frames versus lenses’ slides. What I took away from this topic was theories have for the most part the same frame, positivism, but change their lenses to fit with their specific perspective, such as being a realist, liberalist or Marxist. However, there are also cases where both the frames and lenses are different, post-modernists, or even completely removing the lenses and only having the positivistic frames, constructivism. Why this reading relates well to this part of the course I found that I could read this article with different frames and lenses because of the way Waltz presents it. For example, if you sided more with the United States/ European view, the article could be looked as focusing more on war prevention strategies and the importance of the state, ideas that are central to a realist theory. An argument could also be made that this view can fall under a constructivists standpoint because they focus solely on how to benefit their country and less on the benefits of others. Whereas, if you agree with Waltz’s view on Iran possess nuclear weapons, then you could read this in more of a liberalist view, with respect to the benefits this would have on the individual in regards to bringing stability to the region.

It is worth noting what was mentioned in this class in regards to theories and the real world; how in reality “there is always more than one story to tell” and this can be seen in this context as well. The way I related the readings to class could be viewed completely different by another student, and thus what I say might not resonate with everyone. This is one of the many reason why I love the political science field as it has such a variety of opinions and views. Nonetheless, I do hope that my connections add to this reading and I hope that another student blogs about this reading so that I can look at a new story.

Reference:

Kenneth Waltz (2012) “Why Iran should get the bomb,” Foreign Affairs, 91(4): 2-5.

I initially posted this before it was due as a comment to the post “JUST DO YOUR BEST AND DON’T WORRY,” but I haven’t heard back so here it is again in full:

When I took POLI 260 I found the section on international relations theory the most interesting because it addressed the why of international politics, not just the what. I like reading articles on The Economist and Foreign Affairs, but I got to the point where I wanted to think through more than just past events; I wanted to do theory and wrestle with why actors act and why events happen. I felt like before graduating from UBC, I needed to take a proper political theory class to justifiably be a graduate of international relations. This class is the class that I settled on.

My POLI 260 experience left me with the idea that theory was a toolkit or set of lenses that could be put on or taken off and applied to certain problems, but according to the one lecture we’ve had and the first chapter of our textbook this may or may not be the case. I’ve been challenged with respect to the concept of incommensurability of the competing theories because I prefer a world where I’m an objective actor. I prefer the idea that I apply different theories to different situations as needed, though I see how in some ways that’s a problematic idea. I’m not sure where I’ll land by the end of the course, but I think short term discomfort about not being able to put my views in a box will be beneficial to my long term understanding of international relations.

The material that I’ve found most interesting so far is the defensive realist section of the structural realism chapter. I’ve always been a big fan of Bismarck and German history and I naturally find myself drawn to a realist theory of international relations – knowing only the little bit of content from POLI 260. The textbook mentions that Bismarck’s genius was to grow the German Empire through the three German wars of unification while being mindful of the balance of power so as not to cause conflict by disrupting Britain’s dominant position. The Kaiser Wilhelm II-approach then arguably led to war because he advocated a Germany that was continually disruptive of the status quo and was expansionist. In my opinion, the distinction between domestic politics in these two eras of Germany is the reason for great power war at the beginning of the 20^thCentury. This defensive realist nuance allows for a more compelling assessment of conflict with its mutual recognition of domestic and international factors as opposed to accepting the solely state centric, zero-some, anarchic endless competition of offense realism.

Another idea I found compelling is the classical realist assessment of a ”tragic orientation” in politics according to Thucydides and Morgenthau’s writing. I find their comparison between domestic and international politics intriguing because it’s a difference only in degree and not in kind where people and therefore also states operate based on a tragic or broken conception of human nature. Justice and moral constraint in the form of intersubjective norms and institutions can create the basis for strong community, which in turn establishes order at either level of analysis, but that order is broken in periods of change. These periods of modernization are cyclical and inevitable because of the power-chasing nature of humans and states.