The former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Ambassador Samantha Power, gave a speech on January 17, 2017 on the threat of Russia to the United States. There has been underlying tension between the U.S. and Russia for decades, but there was a period of cooperation between the two nations. Currently the tensions are rising again. The accusations of Russia interfering with the United States’ most recent election, along with other actions done by the Russian government, has put the U.S. on high alert again. The United States has shown signs of both the liberalist and realist state of minds when dealing with international relations and the dilemma Russian has put the United States in. Ambassador Power overwhelmingly uses the theory of liberalism …show more content…
Viewing Ambassador Power’s statements through both the lens of liberalism and realism allows one to better understand the policies and ideas which she presents throughout her speech. The theoretical tradition of liberalism, specifically the neoliberal framing of it, assists in clarifying why it is necessary, in Ambassador Power’s mind, that states both cooperate and create a shared understanding of expectations by abiding to rules which have previously been defined and outlined. Ambassador Power argument shows that it is imperative that states join and posture to prevent Russia from taking any further actions, specifically ones which may jeopardize the security of the United States. Realism explains how the pursuit of power dictates the behaviors of states and the policies which they push. Given that there is a net amount of power, the prevention of another state, in this instance Russia, from gaining power inherently increases the power of all other states while at the same time escalating the security of said states. Conflict resolution in the United States may be achieved by the cooperation of states, opening up proper channels for information to flow, and through the prevention of Russia taking any further action which may cause harm. While the institutions and rules put into place do not explicitly assist states in achieving their respective self-interests, through cooperation these states, such as the United States, increase their security and chance of
Samantha Power served as the United Nations Ambassador to the United States from 2013 to 2017, she is an author, diplomat, and an American academic. Through her excerpt, “A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide”, Power sets out to inform U.S. citizens, U.S. diplomats, and U.N. officials about the genocide that took place in Rwanda in order to show how this atrocious event could have been put to a halt. Power discusses that the problem with the killing in Rwanda was due to the United States not defining the acts as genocide. The importance of this is because as U.S diplomats did not characterize the slaughtering as genocide, it damp- ened public enthusiasm towards the issue. Power ultimately argues against the US not helping stop
Today’s world is rife with problems. With conflict in the Middle East, countries abroad becoming more aggressive, and protest over human rights violations taking place all over the country, America needs a strong leader to get through these times. One such leader would be Eleanor Roosevelt, the United State’s longest-serving and undoubtedly most active First Lady. Beyond her duties as the wife of the president, Eleanor Roosevelt took part in many movements and was one of the most unabashed spokespersons on issues of her time. Taking sometimes controversial stances on matters such as civil rights, welfare, global issues, Eleanor deviated from some of the more common view of her contemporaries; but in spite this, she was still one of the most
No journal, magazine, or media is without bias. Unfortunately, everyone is constantly exposed different forms of media, each feeding the people their own biased through subtle omission and manipulation through word choice. To better understand this, examining articles from both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal will show the stances and bias of both journals. The first article from the New York Times, John Kerry Rushes In Where Obama Will Not Tread, is written to show the difference between Secretary of State, John Kerry, and President Obama. While the President takes very reserved actions against the extremist groups, Kerry, continues to search for other options through constant dialogue with Russia and remains optimistic and aggressive.
The Cold War lasted not only multiple decades but also multiple U.S. Presidencies which resulted in a shift on foreign policy choices from administration to administration. Some of the foreign policy can be directly related to the Soviet advances during the Cold War, while others later in the fall of the Iron Curtain could be attributed to the post-global Cold War ideologies. From President Kennedy on through President George W. Bush, U.S. foreign policy has taken strategic stances in the Third World as well as international trade and economic assistance all in the name of fighting against the Soviets in multiple fronts in non-direct combat. In From Cold War to New World Order : The Foreign Policy of George Bush the authors take a direst stance
Constructivists believe ideological factors often have long-term goals and outcomes, and this is an advantage over the materialist theory (realism, liberalism). Therefore, the perception of the same phenomenon in international relations may vary depending on the conditions in which states are. Moreover, constructivists do not consider anarchy constant consistency in the international system, arguing extreme
Looking back over the development of the Security Studies field, there can be no doubt that the realist tradition has exercised enormous influence. Even the harshest of critics can acknowledge that with their focus on power, fear, and anarchy, realist theories have provided centrally important explanations for conflict and war (Williams, 2013). One interpretation of realism that is unbroken amongst most commentators of the theory is that realists are individuals that believe the State is the principle actor in international politics and that they are very concerned with the balance of power (Marsalis, 2013). They argue that all the State’s actions and choices are a reflection of the collective will of the people, which is also an argument put
Origins and Advocates Neoliberalism is rooted in transnational scholarship that emerged in response to globalization of the 1970s. Transnationalism, or sociological liberalism, emphasizes the impact of transnational networks between state and non-state actors. Transnationalists such as Rosenau and Burton believe that with increased interaction across borders, military force as a tool of statecraft is replaced by an interdependent human society among pluralistic actors. Neoliberal institutionalists of the 1980s and 1990s, notably Keohane, constituted a state-centric analytical confrontation with the neorealist arguments of Kenneth Waltz in particular. Other examples of Neoliberal institutionalists include Ney, Krasner, and Oye, among others.
In this thorough book “Neoclassical Realist Theory of International Politics” that was published in the United States of America (2016), the three authors Norrin M. Ripsman, Jeffrey W. Taliaferro and Steven E. Lobell show how their way of thinking on neoclassical realist theory has advanced over the preceding decades. Ripsman, Taliaferro and Lobell’s main claim is that neoclassical realism was a single (unique) theory then it has changed and grown beyond this idea. In addition, this contains competitions, hypotheses, theories and concepts as well as suggesting a new ideal type of methodology and research methods which most matched with neoclassical realism. This book has divided into seven chapters, but it has evolved around three major themes:
Liberalism also shares the idea with realism to use military power to get what they want or need, also military power can be used if other country threatening or bully on the own liberal state. But theoretically liberalism is the theory of peace and development and believes in measuring power through economy, liberal ideas such as freedom of religion, free markets, civil rights, democratic societies, gender equality, international cooperation, freedom of speech and press, when with the other hand realism believes in ideas such as conflicts, aggression, militaristic expansions and also they believe that state would act according to their own ideas and needs when liberals believe that state would act according to their populations needs and ideas. But both theories share the idea that without military power state can be destroyed or insulted by another country. I consider myself as a liberal and mostly liberalism is theory which makes me thinking about things that can be changed in aggressive world by liberalism such as equal rights regardless of sexual orientation or to have every woman the same rights as men, through liberalism I also believe in freedom and equal living wage. I have sympathies to liberalism because believe in government actions to achieve equal opportunity and
Constructivism: Wendt, Finnemore, Hopf Social constructivism primarily seeks to demonstrate how the core aspects of the international relations are contrary to the assumptions of Neorealism and Neoliberalism within the frame of social construction, taking up forms of ongoing processes of social practice and interaction. Wendt makes the following statement regarding the tenets of Constructivism: “The structures of human association are determined primarily by shared ideas rather than material forces and the identities and interests of purposive actors are constructed by these ideas, rather than given by nature”.
The fall of the Soviet Union had led to the fundamental changes in the international order. Bipolar system could no longer continue to operate, when one of the two superpowers did not exist anymore. However, the term “international order” is understood very differently by various academics and it is important to choose a definition to simplify the analysis. In accordance to Deborah Hanagan “international order refers to the structure, functioning, and nature of the international politics system and the term is useful for describing the broad pattern of interactions among states” (Hanagan, 2012, p. 123). For every international system, the main objective is to maintain peace throughout the globe.
The reason why realism can only really be used as an explanation for war is that the growth of another state’s power can only be perceived as threatening, even if it is done so defensively. States in this international system bound by the constructs of realism are unable to take a passive approach towards the balance of power, and are therefore encouraged to seize opportunistically what they can when the opportunity arises. Moreover, in the climate of the Cold War this system created powerful incentives for aggression . In 1951 Morgenthau stated that the United States and Russia were at a point where they “Can advance and meet in what is likely to be combat, or they can retreat and allow the other side to advance into what to them is precious ground.” Indeed this is what happened in Europe during the Cold War, deadlock and a status quo maintained a peace whereby war was avoided at all costs.
The most important and broad-reaching levels of security are those at the global, regional, and local levels. Each level of analysis requires its own interpretation of security risks, and each has complications that affect both few and many peoples. The elephant in the room when analyzing security strategy at each of these levels is that fact that there is no hierarchy between nations, and this state of anarchy means that inevitably, security concerns are subject to the unregulated cooperation of other nations. Uncertainty; leaving security to chance, is the most unfortunate consequence of the freedom provided by this system of nation-states. We cannot rely on other states whether friend or enemy to cooperate consistently nor as we anticipate.
The international relations schools of thought known as Realism and Idealism identify specific and similar characteristics of actors in the conceptual development of their theories. While many of these characteristics can be generalized as being synonymous with the two theories, both theories make a separate distinction in what specifically constitutes an actor. In Realism, the term “actor” refers directly and solely to the state: a combination of government, leaders, decision-makers, etc, that act as a unitary entity to promote the interests of the state. Idealists, however, expand on what constitutes an actor to include both the state and people. Not only do the principles of Idealism assert that the state and people should be considered actors, in fact, both they must be viewed as actors.
Discrimination is not the only reason for the lack of women advancing through international relations; Tickner argues that on top of that the field of international relations theory in itself is discriminatory. Tickner presents a feminist analysis of Hans Morgenthau's six principles of political realism, which, the author claims, exhibit a masculine bias. It argues that realism is not an inaccurate portrayal of the international system but an incomplete one that is a partial picture of reality. She specifically chose to focus on Morgenthau’s six principles because they are the core and most influential studies currently in international relations.