Bizim İşimiz, Sizin Geleceğiniz

Introduction to
International Relations
Second Grade
2024/2025 Academic Year
• Epistemology: ways and means by which we come to know something
about the world.
• Empricisim vs constructivism
• Methodology: modes of research and analysis or a set of rules for the
actual practice of investigating IR.
• Quantitative or qualitative
• Scientific method generally refers to positivism (what is observable,
emprical and measurable)
• Ontology: how each of us views the world. Worldview
• International system=is it material, physical, tangible or shared ideas,
beliefs are they abstract
What is International Relations?
• International politics is used as a • World or global politics: Insofar as
synonym for international relations. new actors, issues, structures and
It does, however, have the processes are thought to have
advantage of highlighting the emerged in recent decades as a
political dimension of relations that result of globalization, rendering the
are international. traditional state focused agenda
incomplete, some scholars prefer
‘world’ or ‘global politics’ to
‘international relations.
• This has prompted some scholars to
talk of an historic shift from
‘international relations’ to ‘world
politics’ or ‘global society’
International Relations
• Narrowly defined, the field of international relations (IR) concerns the relationships among the
world’s governments. But these relationships cannot be understood in isolation. They are closely
connected with other actors (such as international organizations, multinational corporations, and
individuals), with other social structures and processes (including economics, culture, and domestic
politics), and with geographical and historical influences. These elements together power the
central trend in IR today—globalization
IR As a Field of Study
• IR as a field of study deals with decisions that are made within a country that have implications for
relationships outside the borders of that country. It deals with the international system as a whole, that is,
the countries, organizations made up of those countries (like the United Nations), and the interactions
between and among them.
• Who makes those decisions? Why? How are they made? Who is affected by them?
• And what are the likely responses to those decisions? What makes the study of
• IR especially complex is the range of actors who could be involved with answering
• any and all aspects of these questions.
• The main point made thus far is that by simplifying an otherwise complex
• situation, we can start finding answers to these often difficult and challenging
• questions. That is why the study of IR is such an important part of understanding
• our world today.
• It provides a theoretical framework that allows us to simplify
• the complexity by breaking the component pieces apart, identifying the
• relevant actors, understanding their approaches, and drawing conclusions that
• help us answer these questions. And it also helps us understand what assumptions
• we need to make about the behavior of individuals, groups, and nations in
• order to answer those questions.
• The field itself really emerged after World War I, when sovereign nation-states eclipsed monarchies and
empires as the primary actors.
• Thus, the approach tends to be very state-centric, assuming that the traditional nation-state is—and will
be—the primary actor.
• But nonstate actors have emerged as major players in the international system in the twentieth and certainly
the twenty-first century. To some extent, the emergence of nonstate actors has changed the field.
• The traditional model has little room for anything other than nation-states, the societies that make up those
states, and the people and governments who lead them.
• They can still help guide our approaches both to asking questions and answering them. But now we need to
do so with an awareness of the limitations of those same theoretical approaches and models.
• Rather than looking at the specific political processes within nation-states (such as the study of American
government) or across different political systems (which is comparative politics), IR looks at the ways in which
• decisions made within a country affect that country’s relationships with other
• countries or nation-states.
• The focus remains on the interaction between countries or among countries and other actors in the international
system, including nonstate actors such as multinational corporations (MNCs), international organizations, and
nongovernmental organizations.
• It also looks at the impact of these macrolevel decisions on the various actors who exist within the nationstate
• and how they in turn affect these major decisions.
• Hence, IR looks at who makes the decisions (from the role of the government to the individual decision
• maker) and how those decisions then affect the people, society, culture, or even individuals within the nation-state
or other nation-states. In short, IR looks at
• “big picture” questions.
• Often, international relations is portrayed as a distant and abstract ritual conducted by a small
• group of people such as presidents, generals, and diplomats.
• Although leaders do play a major role in international affairs, many other people participate.
College students and other citizens participate in international relations every time they vote in
• an election or work on a political campaign, buy a product or service traded on world markets, and
watch the news. The choices we make in our daily lives ultimately affect the world we live in.
Through those choices, every person makes a unique contribution, however small, to the world of
international relations.
• As part of political science, IR is about international politics—the decisions of governments
• about foreign actors, especially other governments. To some extent, however,
• the field is interdisciplinary, relating international politics to economics, history,
• sociology, and other disciplines. Some universities offer separate degrees or departments
• for IR. Most, however, teach IR in political science classes, in which the focus is
• on the politics of economic relationships or the politics of environmental management,
• to take two examples. (The domestic politics of foreign countries, although overlapping
• with IR, generally make up the separate field of comparative politics.)
 Research Approaches

Traditional Approaches:
1. Historical Approach
2. Social Scientific Approach
Modern Approach:
Constructivist Approach
 Research Approaches

1. Historical Approach:
To understand a particular decision or
event and create a throrough description
or narrative that helps to understand
decisions that key actors made.
2. Social Scientific Approach:
Precision and certainity of natural
sciences to the social world.
 • A framework designed to organize and assist in
systematic thinking about IR.
• The causes of wars?
Levels of • 1950s Kenneth N. Waltz: Man, State and War (1959)
• Individual level: humans are aggressive innately (human
Analysis nature)
• Natures of states and societies (are some states more
aggressive?)
• The nature of international system (anarchical structure)
• 1961 David Singer: Different levels tend to identify different actors,
structures and processes.
Levels of analysis

Individual

Unit

Global/Systemic
 Levels of analysis
• Individuals are members of collective groups like states.
• States are units of global politics.
• In turn collectively constitute the global system.
• Events on the system level affect units
• and individuals.
• Similarly, individuals and units act in ways that may affect the
entire global system.
• At the individual level of analysis, scholars examine
• the characteristics of leaders or citizens,
• such as personality traits, ways of reaching decisions,
• and beliefs.
 Levels of analysis
• At the individual level of analysis, scholars examine
• the characteristics of leaders or citizens, such as personality traits,
ways of reaching decisions, and beliefs.
• At the unit level of analysis, researchers focus on actors’ foreign
policies. They examine governments or agencies that determine
how units like states behave and their societies.
• At the global level of analysis, researchers focus on structural
factors such as distributions of power, wealth, and attitudes of the
world as a whole. It takes account of interactions among all actors
on the global stage and, thus, is the “whole” of which units and
individuals are “parts.”
patterns of aggregate events and behavior globally.
 Levels of analysis
• Individuals are members of collective groups like states.
• States are units of global politics.
• In turn collectively constitute the global system.
• Events on the system level affect units
• and individuals.
• Similarly, individuals and units act in ways that may affect the
entire global system.
• At the individual level of analysis, scholars examine
• the characteristics of leaders or citizens,
• such as personality traits, ways of reaching decisions,
• and beliefs.
LoA

Individuals
Nation-states:
Governments, norms,
values, society, culture
International System: Nation-
states, MNCs, NSAs, NGOs
LoA
• Describe what happened
• Explain why things happened as they did
• Draw lessons about what that might mean for similar events in the
future
Graham Allison

1.Why did the Soviet Union decide to place

offensive missiles in Cuba?
2.Why did the United States respond to the
missile deployment with a blockade?
3.Why did the Soviet Union withdraw the
missiles?
 • Model 1. The state acts as a unitary rational actor to make “decisions.”
• Governments are treated as the primary actor.

The • The government examines a set of goals, evaluates them according to their
utility, then picks the one that has the highest "payoff."
• Under this theory, Allison explains the crisis like this:
"Rational 1. John F. Kennedy, in 1961, revealed that the Soviet Union, despite rhetoric,
had far fewer ICBMs than it claimed. In response, Nikita
Actor" Khrushchev ordered nuclear missiles with shorter ranges installed in Cuba.
In one move, the Soviets bridged the "missile gap" while scoring points in
the Cold War. Based on Kennedy's failure to back up the Bay of Pigs
Model Invasion, they believed the U.S. wouldn't respond harshly.
2. Kennedy and his advisors (EXCOMM) evaluated a number of options,
ranging from doing nothing to a full invasion of Cuba. A blockade of Cuba
was chosen because it wouldn't necessarily escalate into war, and because
it forced the Soviets to make the next move.
3. Because of mutually assured destruction by a nuclear war, the Soviets had
no choice but to bow to U.S. demands and remove the weapons.
 • Model 2. The sub-units of the state act according to pre-determined procedures to produce
an “output.” The state is still essentially a unitary actor, but the analogy is now a quarterback,
not a chess player. Just as a quarterback calls certain (pre-planned) plays, the government
can only dictate policy options that are already in the standard operating procedures (SOPs).
Under this theory, the crisis is explained thus:
1. Because the Soviets never established nuclear missile bases outside of their country at
the time, they assigned the tasks to established departments, which in turn followed their
own set procedures. However, their procedures were not adapted to Cuban conditions,
and as a result, mistakes were made that allowed the U.S. to quite easily learn of the
program's existence. Such mistakes included such gaffes as supposedly undercover
Soviet troops decorating their barracks with Red Army Stars viewable from above.
The Alternatively, the secrecy may have been the gaffe, stoking American fears
unnecessarily.
"Organizational 2. Kennedy and his advisors never really considered any other options besides a blockade
or air strikes, and initially, were almost unanimously in favor of the air strikes. However,
Process" Model such attacks created massive uncertainty because the U.S. Air Force couldn't guarantee
it would disable all the nuclear missiles. Additionally, although Kennedy wanted a
"surgical" air strike that would destroy the missiles without inflicting extensive damage,
the existing Air Force plan required extensive bombing that would have created
more collateral damage than Kennedy desired. Because the U.S. Navy already had
considerable strength in the field, because there was a pre-existing plan in place for a
blockade, and because Kennedy was able to communicate directly with the fleet's
captains, members fell back on the blockade as the only safe option.
3. The Soviets simply did not have a plan to follow if the U.S. took decisive action against
their missiles. Khrushchev's communications indicated a high degree of desperation.
Without any back-up plan, the Soviets had to withdraw.
 Model 3. In this model, “where you stand depends on where you sit.” Those in charge of various state
responsibilities (Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, etc.) make predictable arguments based on their
present position. Policy “outcomes” are the result of negotiations among these leaders. This model dispenses
fully with the “unitary” government idea. “The decisions and actions of governments are essentially intra-
national political outcomes: outcomes in the sense that what happens is not chosen as a solution to a problem
but rather results from compromise, coalition, competition, and confusion among government officials who see
different faces of an issue; political in the sense that the activity from which the outcomes emerge is best
characterized as bargaining.”

1. Khrushchev came under increasing fire from the Presidium because of Kennedy's revelation of the Soviet
The lack of ICBMs, as well as American successes in the Berlin Airlift. Also, the Soviet economy was being
stretched, and military leaders were unhappy with Khrushchev's decision to cut the size of the Red Army.
Placing missiles in Cuba was a cheap and quick way for him to secure his political base.
"Bureaucratic 2. Because of the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion, Republicans in the Congress made Cuban policy into
a major issue for the upcoming congressional elections later in 1962. Therefore, Kennedy immediately
Politics" decided on a strong response rather than a diplomatic one. Although a majority of EXCOMM initially
favored air strikes, those closest to the president - such as his brother and Attorney General, Robert F.
Kennedy, and special counsel Theodore Sorensen - favored the blockade. At the same time, Kennedy
Model got into arguments with proponents of the air strikes, such as Air Force General Curtis LeMay. After the
Bay of Pigs Invasion fiasco, Kennedy also distrusted the CIA and its advice. In order to avoid appearing
weak to the hawkish members of EXCOMM, Kennedy rejected the purely diplomatic proposals of United
States Ambassador to the United Nations Adlai Stevenson. This combination of push and pull led to a
consensus for the implication of a blockade.
3. With his plans thwarted, Khrushchev tried to save face by pointing to American missiles in Turkey, a
position similar to the Cuban missiles. While Kennedy refused to move these missiles "under duress," he
allowed Robert Kennedy to reach a deal with Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, in which the Turkish
missiles would be quietly removed several months later. Publicly, Kennedy also agreed never to invade
Cuba.
The State in IR

• Max Weber (1864-1920)

• «The state as an organization with a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence in a
fixed territory.»
• Three key ideas:
• 1. Territory and monoloply: A state governs a specific, identifiable portion of Earth’s
surface. Territory permanently fixed.
• 2. Control of violence: state power is built on use of violence
• 3. Monopoly of legitimate violence: police and military forces.
The Origins of State

• From the ancient world to the 1600s: Empires, not clear fixed territory or systematic rules for
their territories.
• Entity composed of separate units, all of which are under the domination of one single power,
centralised power
• Ottoman Empire, Roman Empire, Chinese Empire..
• Feudalism, a social system of obligations in which people provide labor, produce, or service to
a lord in return for land and protection.
• Organized all levels of society in a hierarchy of ties of loyalty between families or groups of
people.
• Complex, multilevel and messy
• Economic developments: City-states, relatively small populations, limited territory, behind city
walls.
• Delian League, Sparta, Athens
• Venice, Genoa: had enough resources to govern themsleves and hire mercenaries for defense.
• Feudalism: overlapping system of local, regional and continental
authorities. Individual’s loyalty was divided among many masters.
• For example, 15th cc. A peasent=local lord (Elector of Saxony)
• =Holy Roman Emperor
• =the Pope

• Today citizens owe political allegiance to only their state of

citizenship.
Major changes

• 1. Rise of loyal power over the local power of minor lords.

• Process of centralization
• 2. Separation of spritual power centers and external systems of power created
autonomous political communities centered on the person of monarchç
• King Henry VIII’s rejection of papal authority in 1534 Act of Supremacy. This made the
English king rather than the pope supreme head of Church in England.
• 3. ‘What the king wills, the law wills.’ the court became equal to state’s institution of
justice.
• 4. Centralised bureacracies and decision-making processes=raise revenue and credit
needed to fight.
Rise of State
• Charles Tilly:
• «War made the state, and the state made war.»

• Religious change, warfare, trade

• Catholic Church’s claims over Christendom
• 1517 Martin Luther and John Calvin own Christian denominations.
• Shifts in military technology: larger forces and disciplined troops
helped major lords to consolidate territory.
• Economic developments to fund larger armies.
• In France and Britain kings manages to strike deals with Merchant
class.
The Peace of Westphalia

• 1618-1648 European Religion Wars Thirty Years’ Wars

• Peace of Westphalia=sovereignty was formally established as an institution of international
society.
• Marked the end of major religious wars.
• Established nation-state as the primary actor in the international system.
• Importance of Peace of Westphalia:
• 1. Cuius regio, euis religio.
• Reinforced a principle first enshrined in the Peace of Augsburg (1555) that the religion of
sovereign would also be the religion of his or her subjects.
• 2. Declared the legal equality of all sovereign political communities.
• 3. Enshrined its provisions in a pair of multilateral treaties that received the consent of all
major Powers of Europe.
• Enshrined principle of non-intervention in the domestic affairs of sovereign states.
Sovereignty
• Defining principle of statehood. The principle that one organization
holds supreme authority over a territory. Absolute right to govern.
• In traditional monarchies, kings/queen are soverign, in democracies
people hold soverignty and delegate government to thier eleceted
representatives.
• Consists of two main characters:
• 1. the idea that the state should not be subject to any foreign power.
• 2. the idea that the state is the supreme authority within its territorial
jurisdiction.
• Internally each state governs its own affairs
• Externally states recognize the sovereignty of other states.
Nations
• Nation: a group of people who share a crucial identity and think of
themselves as a unit that deserves to govern itself.
• A group of people with a common history ,background ,and values
who in theory accept the primacy of state.
• Nation-state: a political model in which inhabitants of a sovereign
state share a crucial identity.
• States can create nations
• Nations can create states
• States may be imposed over nations.
• States can create nations: France, Britain
• France, in the late 1800s only half of people living in French
territory spoke French.
• Nations can create states. Modern day Germany, Italy ,Japan
• States imposed over nations. Colonialism and decolonialism
• Nigeria, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iraq
• Legitimacy:
• John Locke: the political leader derives his or her power from «the
consent of the governed» which became part of social contract.
• This grants legitimacy to government.
Non-state Actors
• States have the power to raise taxes, issue passports, print Money,
pass laws, wage war, put citizens in prison, make foreign policy.
• Only legitimate respresentatives of territories and populations on
the global stage.
• Deliver public goods such as security and education.
• Transnational Corporations (TNCs): PWC, Apple
• Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs): Amnesty International,
Red Cross, Kızılay
War
• War, understood as organised violence carried on by political
units against each other, is a central topic in the study of IR.
• «The sport of kings» fought for the interests of monarchs and
emperors
• «Racket» fought to make profits for industrialists and financiers
• «Politics by other means»a necessary part of a statecraft
• War is an uncomfortable reality in IR
 • Profit:
• Material gains in terms of additional
territory acquired or
• Access to potentially profitable markets
Wars in (Opium wars waged by Western states to
pry open China during the 19th century)
Particular • Access to vital commodities and
resources
• Nazi Germany and imperial Japan even
had economic motives in the 1930s and
1940s
 • Europe’s war of religion in the 16th and
17th cc
• Cold War’s ideological struggle
• Wars fought for faith and identity ar most
Faith and often fought between members of the
Identity same faith or identity group, although
these can spill over into conflicts with
other nations.
• Samuel Huntington «Clash of
Civilisations»
The Clash of
Civilizations

cultural religious identities

Cold War

Samuel P. Huntington
 • «It is my hypothesis that the fundamental
source of conflict in this new world will not
be primarily ideological or primarily
economic. The great divisions among
humankind and the dominating source of
Foreign conflict will be cultural. Nation states will
remain the most powerful actors in world
Affairs article affairs, but the principal conflicts of global
1993 politics will occur between nations and
groups of different civilizations. The clash
of civilizations will dominate global
politics. The fault lines between
civilizations will be the battle lines of the
future.»
1. Sinic: the common culture of China and Chinese communities in
Southeast Asia. Includes Vietnam and Korea.
2. Japanese: Japanese culture as distinctively different from the
rest of Asia.
3. Hindu: identified as the core Indian civilization.
4. Islamic: Originating on the Arabian Peninsula, spread across
North Africa, Iberian Peninsula and Central Asia. Arab, Turkic,
Persian and Malay are among the many distinct subdivisions
within Islam.
5. Orthodox: centered in Russia. Separate from Western
Christendom.
6. Western: centered in Europe and North America.
7. Latin American: Central and South American countries with a
past of a corporatist, authoritarian culture. Majority of countries
are of a Catholic majority.
8. Africa: while the continent lacks a sense of a pan-African
identity, Huntington claims that Africans are also increasingly
developing a sense of African Identity.
• Huntington predicts and describes the great clashes that will
occur among civilizations. First, he anticipates a coalition or
cooperation between Islamic and Sinic cultures to work against
a common enemy, the West. Three issues that separate the
West from the rest are identified by Huntington as:
1. The West's ability to maintain military superiority through the
nonproliferation of emerging powers.
2. The promotion of Western political values such as human rights
and democracy.
3. The Restriction of non-Western immigrants and refugees into
Western societies.
• Non-Western countries see all three aspects as the Western
countries attempt to enforce and maintain their status as the
cultural hegemony.
• Huntington predicts the conflict between Islam and the West to
be a "small, fault line war," and the conflict between the America
and China having the potential to be an "intercivilizational war of
core states".
Revolution

• The French Revolution

• Concerned that revolution in France would spark similar uprisings
across Europe, Habsburg Austria invaded France in 1792. This
convinced French government that its security depended upon
forceful destruction, a cause that saw France to develop its first
modern citizen army.
• Nationalism, Napoleon Bonaparte, in 1815 defeated.
• Revolutionary ideas, upsetted the status quo, sparked conflicts
from Greeece to Belgium to Poland.
• Another example October Revolution of 1917 after a çivil war
1918-1921
• Revolutionary wars aim to transform or overthrow existing
structure of international system, supporting Clausewitz’s
description of war as a rational political tool.
War
• War is organized violence among groups; it changes with historical and social context; and, in the
• minds of those who wage it, it is fought for some purpose, according to some strategy or plan.
• War is organized violence between political entities. A political entity in this context is any kind of
group capable of waging war. Such a group has a leadership and it has resources—the human and
material means—to organize violence. To organize violence means to assemble an armed group,
one capable of fighting other armed groups. War happens when such groups actually fight each
other.
• War varies greatly because fighting takes so many different forms. War is shaped by the kinds of
societies that fight it, by the prevailing level of technology, by culture, by economic
circumstances, and by many other factors. War always has an underlying similarity—violence
between groups—but this shifts and changes depending on when and where it is fought, and
between whom is it fought. This changing character of war can be captured through the idea of
war and society: society shapes war, and war shapes society.
War
• When a political entity fights a war, its leadership has in mind a purpose for the violence.
They have some idea of what they might gain, or protect, by going to war. This
determines how a political entity plans and prepares for war, and the moves it makes
once it goes to war.
• Thinking about the purposes pursued in war, and the planning and preparation involved,
is the subject of strategy. Political and military leaders try to make war serve as an
instrument, a means to an end they are trying to achieve. They think strategically, trying
to connect the means—war, violence—to some purpose, such as defending their
homeland; seizing a piece of territory; gaining independence; or pursuing an ideological
goal, such as spreading communism or Islam, or making the world safe for democracy or
from terror. In contrast to strategy, tactics are the techniques employed by armed forces
to fight other armed forces, to win the combats or battles that make up a war
 • From the national–international perspective, there are two
types of war: civil war within a state, and international
• war between two or more states.
• A civil war happens when internal groups battle over control
of a sovereign state, or when a group or groups within a state
want to secede and form their own state. In the Spanish Civil
War (1936–9), republicans and fascists fought over who was
to govern Spain. The American Civil War (1861–5) started
when southern states organized a confederacy and tried to
secede from the United States.
• An international war occurs when two or more sovereign

Types of War
states fight each other. An example is the Iran–Iraq War
• (1980–8), which began when Iraq invaded Iran.
• International and civil wars comprise an important tradition
in the study of war. However, war is both
• older than the sovereign state and likely to endure into any
globalized future. This suggests that we should
• think also about war outside of the sovereign state system.
• Until the 1960s, much of the world was made up of empires
and colonies. The way in which these empires
• broke up set the stage for many of the conflicts that followed.
Carl von
Clausewitz
• Carl von Clausewitz (1780–
1831) was a Prussian officer in
the French Revolutionary Wars
(1792–1802) and the
Napoleonic Wars (1803–15).
Carl von Clausewitz on War

• According to Clausewitz, war has three dominating tendencies—passion, chance, and reason—
which come together in varying combinations in any given historical instance of war.
• War always involves passion, in the motives for fighting and in the enmities that inspire and
sustain killing in war. War is also a sphere of radical contingency, of sheer chance. Anything can
happen. All the different elements involved in military operations, from human error to the
weather, created infinite, unpredictable combinations that shape the outcomes of wars and the
fates of peoples.
• Finally, as in the notion of strategy, war involves reason. Political leaders and military staffs seek
to achieve objectives through war. In doing so, they subject the use of violence to rationality;
they try to contain and direct the violence to particular military and political purposes.
• Fundamentally, Clausewitz believed that war consists of various combinations of passion,
chance, and reason.
• Clausewitz went on to connect this primary Trinity to a second one, associating each of the three tendencies
• with a component of a political entity.
• The realm of passion he connected to the people, their feelings and beliefs about a war, and their will—or
lack thereof—to wage it.
• Chance he gave to the armed forces, who have to test their abilities against the trials and fortunes of war.
• Reason he attributed to leadership, to the political authorities who decide on the war and set its ultimate
aims, and to the generals and other military leaders who have to translate these aims into reality.
• Like the primary trinity of passion, chance, and reason, the elements of this second trinity come together in
variable configurations in any actual instance of war. The character of the combatant peoples, the qualities
of their armed forces, and the abilities of their leaders determine the course of wars.
• One is that there are broadly two types of war: limited and total. A limited war is fought
• for a lesser goal than political existence, for example a war over a disputed territory or access to markets.
The Falklands/Malvinas War (1982) was a limited war for both Argentina and the United Kingdom; whatever
happened to the islands it was fought over, both states would exist after the war. They never planned to
invade each other’s home territories.
• A total war occurrs when a state or other political entity is fighting for its existence.
• In the Second World War, the Allies demanded unconditional surrender from Nazi Germany. The
• war ended Adolf Hitler’s regime, the Third Reich.
• Note that a war can be limited for one participant, and total for another. During the First Indochina War
• (1946–54), Vietnamese forces fought for liberation from the French empire. The war was total for the
Vietnamese—about the possibility of independence—while France would continue as a state with or
without its empire in Indochina. The war was a
• limited one for France.
• The distinction between limited and total wars is connected to another distinction: between real, or
• actual, war, on the one hand, and the true, or absolute, nature of war on the other. Real wars, wars that
historically
• happened, were always limited by certain factors.
• Human beings could only do so much violence to one another (Clausewitz was writing before nuclear and
• biological weapons). Things always conspired to limit, to some degree, the amount of violence that might
• occur in war.
• One limiting force Clausewitz called friction. Friction was like a Murphy’s Law of war: everything
• that can go wrong, will go wrong. Clausewitz thought that another limiting force was policy, the
• strategy a political entity was following. Leaders would try to keep the war on track, to achieve its purpose.
• When this was accomplished, or when it was no longer possible, the war would be drawn to a close.
• However, in contrast to these limiting factors of real war, the true or absolute nature of war was escalatory.
• Clausewitz thought that war has an inherent tendency to extremes, to ever more violence. Each
• side is tempted to increase the amount of force it is using to try to defeat the enemy, to compel surrender.
• War tries to draw into its cauldron ever more human and material resources. Left to its own devices, in the
• absence of policy and friction, war would escalate in scale; become more violent; go on longer; and extend
• over more space.
• As Clausewitz (1976: 77) noted, war is an act of force and there is no logical limit to an act
• of force. Each move is checked by a stronger countermove until one of the combatants is exhausted. This
• inherent tendency of war to escalate is moderated by the real human limits on the use of force.
• War is aform of political and socail behavior.
• Nature and character of war have different propoerties.
• Nature: constant, universal, inherent qualities like violnce, cahnce
and uncertainity.
• Character: circumstantial and adaptable
• New Wars
• Globalization
• Contemporary wars more actors included, the advance of
technology, socail media
New Wars
• Since 1990s New types of wars related to the disintegration and
collapse of states other than the state-formation preocesses.
• The feccets of globalization
• 95% of conflicts have taken place within states in the last decade.
• Poor economic performance= decrease in tax revenues and power of
states
• Corruption and criminalization
• Access to weapons become more privatized and ability to resort to
violence become more accessible
• Paramilitary forces, organized crime= collapse of political legitimacy
• The Napoleonic Wars followed in 1803 and continued until 1815,
absorbing some 37 countries, its battles touching on five oceans and
at least four continents, including North America, where they helped
fuel the War of 1812.
• The term “First World War” wasn’t widely adopted in reference to the
1914-1918 conflict until after WW II because it was “the world’s first
industrialised ‘total’ war.”
• The First World War consolidated mass-conscripted armies, rapid
transportation, telegraph and wireless communications—along with
total war, a concept first advocated by German general and military
theorist Erich Ludendorff.
• It called for the complete mobilization and subordination of all
resources, including policy and social systems, to the German war
effort. It has come to mean waging warfare with absolute
ruthlessness, its most identifiable legacy the reintroduction of
civilians and civilian infrastructure as targets.
• The First World War brought on the wide-scale use of rifled infantry
weapons—including machine guns—capable of unprecedented
accuracy and rates of fire. Cannons all but disappeared in favour of
mobile, more accurate high-velocity, breech-loading artillery guns.
Then there were chemical weapons; tanks and armoured vehicles;
steel warships; submarines and the airplane.
• The Great War and its WW II successor did redraw maps in far corners of
the globe, notably Eastern Europe, Persia and the Middle East, along with
the Korean peninsula—which contributed to ethnic tensions, instability and
war for the rest of the 20th century into the 21st.
• But it was the outcomes of the big wars of the 18th and 19th centuries and
subsequent colonial ties that drew many third-party countries into the
great conflicts of the 20th—including dominions of the British Empire such
as Canada, Australia and South Africa.
• At least 70 million people died in the Second World War, almost twice as
many as in the First. This compares to the pre-industrial deaths of some
six million soldiers, sailors and civilians in the Napoleonic Wars and about
a million in the Seven Years’ War, both of which lasted longer than either
of the acknowledged world wars. Their tallies were limited by the
relatively crude weapons they employed.
Peace in IR
• Peace is often defined as the absence of armed conflict between
political units.
• Others see peace as an absence of structural violence, meaning
that war may be necessary to create a more just society and
therefore a more sustaniable peace.
Peace in IR
• The modern world has undoubtedly shaped by war and it has also
been shaped by peace.
• Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr.
• Milosevic
Peace Studies in IR
• Peace studies connects war and peace with individual responsibility, economic inequality, gender
relations, cross-cultural understanding, and other aspects of social relationships. Peace studies also
seeks peace not in the transactions of state leaders but in the transformation of entire societies
(through social revolution) and in transnational communities (bypassing states and ignoring
• borders to connect people and groups globally).
• Another way in which peace studies seeks to broaden the focus of inquiry is to reject the supposed
objectivity of traditional (realist and liberal) approaches.
Johan Galtung and Peace Studies
• Johan Galtung, in his view, peace is more than the absence of
overt personal violence.
• It implies far more active.
• Galtung includes positive measures undertaken by states,
individuals and civil society groups to create a culture of peace
that not only excludes war, but also ends forms of structural
violence that limit an individual’s ability to fulfil their potential.
• Galtung, peace is a basic, not a derived concept. Thus, it cannot be defined through the
concept of war. According to this, he distinguishes two types of peace.
• Negative peace is the absence of war, and positive peace implies the integration of
human society. Two different types of peace are possible, excluding one another.
• There is an analogy between peace in social science and health in medicine. Health is not
only the absence of disease, but the ability of the body to stay healthy. The study of
peace is actually an appliedscience, similar to medicine, which rests on the paradigm:
diagnosis-prognosis-therapy. Therapy should not be conducted through the process of
reducing violence (war), but through the process of improving life.
• Violence is present when human beings are under an influence that makes their actual
somatic and mental realizations lower than their potential. Violence is not exclusively
direct violence, but also includes indirect forms, i.e., structural violence. Positive peace
includes the absence of structural violence, such as hunger, racism or some other form
ofsocial discrimination, and negative peace exclusively implies the absence of direct
violence, of which war is the most severe form.
• Peace then requires not only an absence of war (negative peace),
but also an absence of the social injustice caused by structural
violence (positive peace)
• At the most simplistic level, the term peace can be defined in the negative—that is, the absence of war.
However, in order to get a full understanding of the term, we need to broaden the definition considerably.
• Peace can be achieved through peacemaking, which can be defined as “the process of diplomacy, mediation,
negotiation or other forms of peaceful settlement that arranges an end to a dispute and resolves the issues
that led to conflict.”
This definition obviously involves two separate but interrelated pieces.
• First is ending the dispute, and one of the important points, is that negotiations to end a war should be
under way during the war. But the second part, which in many ways is the more critical, pertains to resolving
the issues that contributed to the conflict in the first place. It is in the latter case that the role of women
becomes most important. While men often look at peacemaking as ending the fighting, including disarming
the belligerents, women strive for addressing the underlying issues that contributed to the conflict initially,
also known as “structural violence
• The point that Galtung is making is that as long as there is an unequal distribution of resources and unequal access
to the power that distributes those resources, then there will always be an element of conflict within the society.
So although the society might not exist in a situation of armed violence or conflict, it is really not “at peace.” As a
result of this structural violence, in general, when working for peace, women see it as an opportunity to address
those inequalities that will help remove some of the factors that contributed to the conflict in the first place.
• In addition to peacemaking, we can look at a number of other concepts directly related that pertain to finding ways
to make sure that peace is maintained and future conflict avoided. Here we have two more concepts. One is peace
building, which pertains to “postconflict actions, predominantly diplomatic and economic, that strengthen and
rebuild governmental infrastructure and institutions in order to avoid renewed recourse to armed conflict.”
• The third concept that is important to understand is that of peacekeeping, which involves active efforts by third
parties, such as the United Nations, to keep the warring parties apart so that they do not resort to hostilities.
Often, peacekeeping forces can be inserted during the process of negotiating an end to a conflict. However, the
danger here is that once they are in place, if an agreement cannot be reached, the forces remain. The United
Nations is currently involved with twelve peacekeeping operations around the world. But having a peacekeeping
• operation in place is no guarantee that there will continue to be peace
Conflict Resolution
• The development and implementation of peaceful strategies for settling conflicts—
• using alternatives to violent forms of leverage—are known by the general term
• conflict resolution. These methods are at work, competing with violent methods, in
• almost all international conflicts. Recently, the use of conflict resolution has been
• increasing, becoming more sophisticated, and succeeding more often.
• Most conflict resolution uses a third party whose role is mediation between two conflicting parties.
• Most of today’s international conflicts have one or more mediating parties working regularly to
resolve the conflict short of violence. No hard-and-fast rule states what kinds of third parties
mediate what kinds of conflicts.
• The UN is the most important mediator on the world scene. Some regional conflicts are mediated
through regional organizations, single states, or even private individuals.
• The involvement of the mediator can vary. Some mediation is strictly technical—a mediator may
take an active but strictly neutral role in channeling communication between two states that lack
other channels of communication. For example, Pakistan secretly passed messages between China
and the United States before the breakthrough in U.S.-Chinese relations in 1971. Such a role is
sometimes referred to as offering the mediator’s good offices to a negotiating process. In facilitating
communication, a mediator listens to each side’s ideas and presents them in a way the other side
can hear. The mediator works to change each side’s view of difficult issues. In these roles,
• the mediator is like the translator between the two sides, or a therapist helping them work out
psychological problems in their relationship. Travel and discussion by private individuals and
groups can serve as citizen diplomacy to ease tensions as well.
• If both sides agree in advance to abide by a solution devised by a mediator, the process is called
arbitration. In that case, both sides present their arguments to the arbitrator, who decides on a “fair”
solution. For example, when Serbian and Bosnian negotiators could not agree on who should get
the city of Brcko, they turned the issue over to arbitration rather than hold up the entire 1995
Dayton Agreement. Arbitration often uses a panel of three people, one chosen by each side
unilaterally and a third on whom both sides agree.
• Conflicting parties (and mediators) can also use confidence-building measures to gradually
• increase trust. By contrast, linkage lumps together diverse issues so that compromises
• on one can be traded off against another in a
• grand deal. This was the case, for instance, in the Yalta negotiations of 1945 among the
• United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union.
• On the table simultaneously were matters such as the terms of occupation of Germany,
• the Soviet presence in Eastern Europe, the strategy for defeating Japan, and the creation
• of the United Nations
 A political process in which political
conflicts are resolved through non-violent
negotiation.

Peace
Processes They operate at several different levels and
involve a mixture of diplomacy, persuasion,
negotiation, confidence-building measures,
mediation and lengthy dialogue between
the various parties, sometimes official but
often off the record.
• Peace processes normally strech over many years.
• Third-party negotiators and external actors in helping to push
peace processes along. The role of honest broker.
• Peacekeeping aims to control behaviour, to stop or limit violence that is occurring in a particular place and
time, without addressing its causes. So, peacekeeping temporarily controls violent barriers to democratic
justice.
• Peacemaking and peacebuilding are efforts to understand and resolve the problems motivating violent
episodes, in ways that take care of the concerns, needs, and relationships of various parties.
• Peacemaking works to resolve escalated conflicts after they erupt, through mutual dialogue and
deliberation to jointly make fair decisions. Peacemaking dialogue is a necessary (though not sufficient)
aspect of comprehensive peacebuilding.
• Peacebuilding means co-developing healthy inclusive relationships and democratically negotiating fair
processes, agreements, and institutions to repair and transform fundamental social-systemic
injustices. Peacebuilding citizenship is participation in processes for making peace (resolving conflicts) and
building peace (transforming social relationships).
• Often, a peace effort may address each of these peace goals in sequence (peace-keeping, peace-making,
then peace-building), or on multiple tracks in overlapping time frames. Temporary safety (through
peacekeeping containment) may enable parties to negotiate a solution to a dispute episode (through
peacemaking dialogue). Successful resolution of conflicts together can build confidence, creativity, and
democratic systems for further conflict transformation toward just peace that heals and alleviates the causes
of harm.
• Peacebuilding aims to reduce the risk of lapsing or relapsing
into conflict by strengthening national capacities at all levels for
conflict management, and to lay the foundation for sustainable
peace and development. It is a complex, long-term process of
creating the necessary conditions for sustainable peace.
Peacebuilding measures address core issues that effect the
functioning of society and the State, and seek to enhance the
capacity of the State to effectively and legitimately carry out its
core functions
• Peacemaking generally includes measures to address conflicts
in progress and usually involves diplomatic action to bring
hostile parties to a negotiated agreement.
• The UN Secretary-General may exercise his or her “good
offices” to facilitate the resolution of the conflict. Peacemakers
may also be envoys, governments, groups of states, regional
organizations or the United Nations. Peacemaking efforts may
also be undertaken by unofficial and non-governmental groups,
or by a prominent personality working independently.