Understanding International Relations

Aims of this course This course aims to: explore the evolution of the discipline of IR over the past century by examining our changing understandings of order within the anarchic international system consider the impact of major historical events on the evolution of academic IR, including the ongoing impact of globalization introduce you to a range of theoretical tools that will help you to examine the behavior of international actors and the nature of international systems define and discuss some of the main concepts within the discipline, including war, peace, the state and power critically assess challenges facing contemporary international society, including security, global governance and the rise of East Asian actors.

The subject area what exactly is IR? What distinguishes it from history or law, economics or political science? When did IR emerge as an academic subject? How has it changed over time? What does IR contribute to the sum of human knowledge? And why has it become one of the most popular twenty-first century social sciences?

Definition of international relations what are ‘international relations’? A survey of the field suggests that a number of different definitions are employed For some, international relations means the diplomatic– strategic relations of states, and the characteristic focus of IR is on issues of war and peace, conflict and cooperation. Others see international relations as being about cross- border transactions of all kinds, political, economic and social, and IR is as likely to study trade negotiations or the operation of non-state institutions such as Amnesty International as it is conventional peace talks or the workings of the United Nations (UN).

Definition of international relations with increasing frequency in the twenty-first century, some focus on: globalization, studying, for example, world communication, transport and financial systems, global business corporations and the putative emergence of a global society

Definition of international relations The reason definitions matter in this way is because ‘international relations’ do not have some kind of essential existence in the real world of the sort that could define an academic discipline. Instead there is a continual interplay between the ‘real world’ and the world of knowledge

Development of international relations IRs is the period associated with the development of the territorial, sovereign state. is traditionally dated from 1648 and the ‘Peace of Westphalia’, the collective term for the peace treaties that drew an end to the Thirty Years War in Europe and heralded the formal beginning of the modern European states system.

Development of international relations the principles and instruments of international law, and the generation of international governmental organizations, from the ad hoc Congress of Vienna (1815), to the League of Nations (1919) and the UN (1945), are all important aspects of the modern period.

Development of international relations The academic study of International Relations, existed before the First World War. In the second half of the nineteenth century when the social sciences as we know them today began to be differentiated, when ‘Economics’ emerged out of Political Economy as an allegedly scientific field of study, and when ‘Sociology’ and ‘Politics’ and ‘Social Theory’ came to be seen as addressing different agendas – a position that would have surprised Jean- Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith or Immanuel Kant – ‘International Relations’ remained unidentified as a discrete focus for study

Development of international relations After World war first, there was something about the system of international relations that was culpable, and a variety of different thinkers, politicians and philanthropists gave thought as to how to change the system to prevent a recurrence. Most of these individuals were American or British

Development of international relations the new thinking that was produced in Britain and America is conveniently summarized as ‘liberal internationalism’ – the adaptation of broadly liberal political principles to the management of the international system.

Development of international relations In Britain, liberal internationalist ideas were developed by Fabians and radical liberals through bodies such as the Union for Democratic Control Their account of what went wrong in 1914 stressed the failure of diplomacy, and in particular the slowness of the great powers in mobilizing an international conference on the problems of the Balkans, rather than any systemic failure

Development of international relations in the United States the ideas of British liberal were espoused by the President himself, Woodrow Wilson, set out in the Fourteen Points speech of January 1918, in which America’s war aims were specified.

Development of international relations There was no mechanism in 1914 to prevent war, except for the ‘balance of power’ – a notion which was associated with unprincipled power politics. What was deemed necessary was the establishment of new principles of international relations, such as ‘open covenants openly arrived at’, but, most of all, a new institutional structure for international relations – a League of Nations.

Development of international relations The aim of a League of Nations would be to provide the security that nations attempted, unsuccessfully, to find under the old, balance of power, system

Development of international relations the League would provide public assurances of security backed by the collective will of all nations – hence the term ‘collective security’ The basic principle would be ‘one for all and all for one’ Each country would guarantee the security of every other country, and thus there would be no need for nations to resort to expedients such as military alliances or the balance of power

Development of international relations The principle of national self-determination was promoted, but only in Europe – and even there it was rather too frequently abused when it was the rights of Germans or Hungarians that were in question.

Development of international relations the 1930s saw economic collapse, the rise of the dictators, a series of acts of aggression in Asia, Africa and Europe, an inability of the League powers led by Britain and France to develop a coherent policy in response to these events, and, finally, the global war that the peace settlement of 1919 had been designed to prevent