Chapter two discusses the complexities of American foreign policy in the South China Sea, focusing on the tensions arising from China's territorial claims and military expansion. The U.S. response has evolved, with notable events including military patrols and increased naval presence aimed at countering China's actions, while geopolitical interests surrounding shipping routes and energy reserves influence policy decisions. The chapter also outlines theoretical perspectives, such as realism, neoliberalism, and constructivism, which provide insights into understanding international relations and the interplay of power in defining foreign policy.

1. Chapter Two
American Foreign Policy
Glenn P. Hastedt
Dateline: The South China Sea
By definition, foreign policy is outward-looking and seeks to
promote the national interest. Disagreement exists over how
best to anticipate threats and recognize opportunities found
beyond state borders. Do we look at the structure of the
international system, changing relations between countries, or
specific events? Each of these focal points presents itself as the
United States formulates a foreign policy to respond to Chinese
actions in the South China Sea.1
Some 648,000 square nautical miles, the South China Sea is one
of the world’s largest semi-enclosed seas. Five countries (six if
Taiwan is counted) with a combined population of about 270
million are found along its borders: China, Vietnam, the
Philippines, Brunei, and Malaysia. All claim 28sovereignty over
some or all of it. China argues that these islands have been
Chinese territory “since antiquity.” At issue is control not only
over the waters and the airspace above it, but also over some
four hundred to six hundred rocks, reefs, atolls, and islands.
The two largest groupings of land in the South China Sea are
the Spratly and Paracel Islands. Both have been the focal point
of military-political conflicts involving competing claims made
by China, Vietnam, and the Philippines. The United States has
taken no official position on these conflicting territorial claims,
other than rejecting China’s claim to sovereignty over virtually
all of it.
Three geostrategic factors come together to frame the South
China Sea foreign policy problem facing the United States.

2. First, the South China Sea is a critical passageway for global
commercial shipping and naval operations linking the Middle
East and Africa to Asia. The amount of oil passing through its
waters is six times larger than that going through the Suez
Canal. Second, evidence points to the presence of potentially
significant natural energy reserves beneath the South China Sea
that the Chinese media refer to as “the second Persian Gulf.”
Third, the South China Sea is of great strategic importance to
China. It is often spoken of in terms comparable to the United
States’ traditional view of the Caribbean Sea. To a considerable
degree it was in recognition of China’s growing economic and
military power, along with the key role that the South China Sea
played in China’s foreign policy thinking, that President Obama
called for a “pivot” to Asia when he became president.
Tensions between the United States and China have grown
noticeably over the past decade. As China’s military and
economic power have increased, the U.S. has placed greater
emphasis on Asia in its foreign policy. In November 2013, after
China unilaterally claimed the right to police a contested
portion of the airspace over the South China Sea, the United
States sent two B-52 bombers into that zone without asking
permission. In May 2014, without notice, China unilaterally
placed a $1 billion deep water oil drilling rig on the shore of an
island claimed by both China and Vietnam. The move was
described in the press as a possible “game changer” because
expansion of the Chinese navy would be required to protect its
investment. Three months later, China rejected a U.S. call for a
freeze on “provocative acts” in the South China Sea, stating that
“as a responsible great power, China is ready to maintain
restraint but for unreasonable provocative activities, China is
bound to make a clear and firm reaction.”2
Matters escalated considerably in 2015, when China began to
build a “Great Wall of Sand” in the South China Sea; this effort
was defined by China as a “lawful and justified” land
reclamation project within its own borders. The project involves
the construction of coral reefs and rocks within the Spratly

3. Islands, along with harbors, piers, helipads, and possibly an
airstrip. State Department officials characterized it as an
unprecedented attempt to “militarize outposts on disputed land
features.” By early 2016, China had moved forward, placing
surface-to-air missiles with a range of 125 miles on a disputed
island. In a counter move, the United States.
29announced that it was on track to reposition 60 percent of the
navy to the Pacific by 2020. Later that year, the U.S. Navy sent
a destroyer near a contested island. The government claimed
that it was the first of what they defined as freedom of
navigation patrols, intended to challenge China’s “excessive
maritime claims” and demonstrate the U.S. commitment to free
maritime passage through the South China Sea. China countered
by carrying on military exercises in disputed waters. 2016 also
saw the International Court of Justice reject China’s claims of
historical rights to most of the South China Sea, a ruling that
China has not accepted.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump openly
criticized Obama for not responding forcefully enough to
China’s expansionist South China Sea policies. However, it was
only after nuclear talks with North Korea faltered, due to what
he saw as China’s reluctance to bring pressure on North Korea,
that Trump began to increase the U.S. presence in the South
China Sea through B-52 bomber and surveillance flyovers and
increased use of freedom of navigation patrols. The military
effectiveness of these actions is unclear. In 2018 Admiral Philip
Davidson, head of the US. Indo-Pacific Command, told
Congress that “China is now capable of controlling the South
China Sea in all scenarios short of war with the United States.”
Others note that the stepped-up U.S. naval presence also
increases the risk of accidents, which could escalate into
conflicts. For example, in 2018 a Chinese destroyer came within
45 yards of the USS Decatur, a guided missile destroyer.
This chapter lays the foundation for developing a deeper
understanding of the foreign policy problems facing the United
States today by presenting three broad international political

4. perspectives used to study world politics and then identifying
key structural features in world politics. Attention then turns to
the contemporary international system, examining three
important issues (terrorism, globalization, and American
hegemony) and comparing American and non-American views
of the world today.
President Obama’s “Asian Pivot” was not the first time that the
United States had come to recognize the potential importance of
Asia to its military and economic security. A first Asian Pivot
occurred more than a century ago when Commodore Matthew
Perry led four ships into Tokyo Bay on July 8, 1853 (see the
Historical Lesson).
Historical Lesson
The First Asian Pivot: Commodore Perry’s Opening of Japan
For some two centuries, Japan had managed to severely limit
the access by foreigners to its territory. Japanese leaders had
expelled missionaries, whom they had come to consider as
overly zealous, and foreign traders, whom they saw as taking
advantage of their people, in 1639. By the mid-1800s this policy
was becoming harder to maintain. In the 1830s, U.S. naval
vessels stationed in China had already made several voyages to
Japan in an effort to establish relations.
By the time Commodore Perry set sail to Japan, a combination
of factors had made the opening of Japan a high-priority foreign
policy issue. The annexation of California now provided the
United States with Pacific Ocean ports, raising the possibility of
expanding U.S. trade with China. Japan’s geographic location
and rumors of its large coal reserves made access to Japanese
ports an important part of any move to increase the U.S.
economic presence in Asia. American missionaries also lobbied
for access to Japan, convinced that Protestantism would be
accepted by the Japanese, who had earlier rejected Catholicism.
Stories of Japanese mistreatment of shipwrecked American
sailors gave rise to even more calls for opening Japan.
Perry presented Japanese leaders with a letter from President
Millard Fillmore outlining U.S. objectives. Before leaving, he

5. informed them that he would return the following year. After
his return, the Treaty of Kanagawa was signed on March 5,
1854; it was subsequently ratified unanimously by the Senate.
The Treaty provided the United States with two coaling stations
and protection for shipwrecked sailors but did not include
commercial concessions or the guarantee of trading rights. In
1858, a follow-on treaty gave the United States two additional
coaling stations and trading rights and established the principle
of extraterritoriality (American citizens arrested in Japan would
be tried by U.S. courts). Because this provision was common to
treaties between Western powers and Asian states at the time,
such agreements came to be known as unequal treaties.
Within a decade, Japan turned these agreements to their fullest
advantage, using them to spur reforms to its feudal political and
economic systems. The resulting Meiji Restoration transformed
Japan into an industrial and military power, as testified to by its
victories in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894 and the Russo-
Japanese War of 1904. The latter gave Japan control over
Taiwan and much of Manchuria, as well as a dominant position
in Korea. Theodore Roosevelt won the Nobel Peace Prize for
helping bring about an end to the Russo-Japanese war.
Over the next several decades, Japan’s growing power also set
the stage for a series of military and diplomatic interactions
with the United States that would steadily deepen America’s
involvement in Asian regional politics. One of the first points
of dispute was the U.S. annexation of Hawaii in 1898. The Taft-
Katsura Agreement of 1905 was designed to prevent future
disputes over areas of influence. In return for recognizing
American control over the Philippines, the United States
recognized Japan’s dominant role in Korea. This agreement was
followed in short order by an American show of military
strength and another agreement. In 1907, President Theodore
Roosevelt sent the entire American battle fleet of sixteen ships
on an around-the-world tour, and Japan was one of its most
important ports of call. At the time, the United States had the
world’s second largest navy and Japan’s was the fifth largest.

6. The next year both countries signed the Root-Takahira
Agreement, promising to respect the political- military status
quo in the Pacific, support the Open Door policy in China, and
honor China’s political independence and integrity. This
agreement failed to hold; during World War I Japan sought to
extend its dominance over China by issuing the 21 Points and
seizing control of Germany’s Asian colonial holdings.
Applying the Lesson
1. How do the foreign policy goals regarding Asia held by
recent administrations compare with those that motivated
Admiral Perry’s opening of Asia?
2. What lessons does Admiral Perry’s opening of Asia have for
current U.S. foreign policy toward China and Japan?
3. How would realists, neoliberals, and constructivists evaluate
U.S. foreign policy toward Japan as described here? How would
this assessment compare to their views on President Trump’s
Asia policy?
Thinking about the World
Disagreement about the causes and consequences of foreign
policy decisions are an enduring feature of the comme ntary on
American foreign policy. For example, some argue that Russia’s
2014 intervention into Ukraine was pushback provoked by
Western military and economic expansion toward its borders.
Others counter that full responsibility lies with Russia, and was
a product of Russian domestic politics, most notably Putin’s
declining popularity.3 A basic reason for disagreements over
such an important foreign policy issue is different theoretical
perspectives about the fundamental nature of world politics.
Three perspectives are particularly important for understanding
the larger debate over what American foreign policy should and
can be: realism, neoliberalism, and constructivism.
Realism
The first theoretical perspective is realism.4 For realists, world
politics involves a constant struggle for power carried out under
conditions that border on anarchy. There is little room for
embracing universal principles or taking on moral crusades. The

7. acknowledged founding voice of American realism was Hans
Morgenthau, who captured the essence of realism in stating that
leaders “think and act in terms of interests defined as power.”
For realists, peace—defined as the absence of war—is possible
only when states follow their own narrowly defined national
interests. Early realists stressed human nature as the central
driving force in world politics, but later realists focused
attention on the central role played by the structure of the
international system. Once in place, the international system
becomes a force that states cannot control; instead, it controls
the states.
Neoliberalism
A second theoretical perspective is neoliberalism.5 While
conceding that the international system is anarchic in many
respects, neoliberalism rejects the pessimistic realist conclusion
that world politics is essentially a conflictual process from
which there is no escape. Instead, neoliberalism sees world
politics as an arena in which all participants (states and nonstate
actors) can advance their own interests peacefully without
threatening others. This becomes possible by creating
conditions that allow the inherent rationality of individuals to
come to the forefront. Among the primary factors that promote
peaceful intercourse are democracy, respect for international
laws, participation in international organizations, restraints on
weapons, and free trade. Although many of his views are closer
to traditional liberalism, President Woodrow Wilson, who
championed the League of Nations after World War I, is the
American statesperson most associated today with
neoliberalism. Long dismissed by realists as idealistic,
Wilsonianism began to reassert itself as a powerful voice in
American foreign policy after the Vietnam War.
Constructivism
The third theoretical perspective relevant to American foreign
policy is constructivism.6 While realism and neoliberalism
differ in their interpretations of the essential features of world
politics, they both share the conviction that the nature of world

8. politics is fixed and that objective rules for conducting foreign
policy can be derived from it. Constructivists takes issue with
this idea, asserting that international politics is not shaped by
fixed underlying forces but by our perceptions. Ideas and
cultural and historical experience give meaning to what we see.
Free trade is not inherently a force for peace or a cause of war.
How it is evaluated depends on personal and societal
experiences with it.
Perceptions of the world change over time and as we interact
with others. An entire generation of Americans has grown up
after the end of the Cold War and sees American global
dominance as natural. As a result, many in the United States
have trouble understanding how revolutionary and unnatural
such dominance can appear to others.7 One year after it was
announced, a commentator noted that, from China’s perspective,
Obama’s Asian Pivot “was pulled right out of the old Cold War
playbook. . . . Washington is trying to inflame new tensions by
isolating it and emboldening the countries China has territorial
disputes with.”8 The administration soon quietly dropped the
phrase “Asian Pivot” and begin speaking about the U.S.
“rebalancing” to Asia.
International System: Structural Constants
This section and the following two present a survey of those
forces in the international system most often seen as driving
state behavior: structural constants, evolutionary trends, and the
dominant features of today’s 33international system. While
realists, neoliberals, and constructivists would disagree on how
to rank their relative importance, all would agree that an
effective U.S. foreign policy requires thinking critically about
each of them. Structural constants include decentralization, the
self-help nature of the international system, and stratification.
Decentralization
The first enduring feature of the international system
is decentralization. From the realist perspective, no central
political institutions exist to make laws or see to their
enforcement in the international arena. There is no common

9. political culture to anchor an agreed-on set of norms governing
the behavior of states. The result is a highly competitive
international system with a constant expectation of violence and
very little expectation that international law or appeals to moral
principles will greatly influence the resolution of an i ssue.
Decentralization does not mean anarchy. For realists, ordered
anarchy would be a more apt characterization. Enforceable laws
and common values may be absent, but there are rules limiting
permissible behavior and directions to follow in settling
disputes, lending a measure of predictability and certainty to
international transactions. Rules are less permanent than laws,
are more general in nature, and tend to be normative statements
rather than commands. They grow out of the basic principles of
self-help and decentralization and are rooted in the distribution
of power in the international system. As power distribution
changes, so will the rules.
Neoliberals hold a different interpretation. In their view, rules
are negotiated, voluntarily entered into, and obeyed by states
trying to advance their national interests. Once established,
rules often demonstrate a remarkably long lifespan that outlasts
the specific problem they were designed to address or the
identity and power of those who negotiated them into existence.
Constructivism takes exception to both realism and liberalism,
arguing that “anarchy is what states make of it.” To
constructivists, anarchy lacks a fixed definition. States may see
anarchy as requiring more power or requiring cooperation,
depending on the values they hold and their past experiences.
Self-Help System
The second structural constant in the international system grows
out of the first. According to realists the international system is
a self-help system. A state must rely on itself to accomplish its
foreign policy goals. To do otherwise runs the risk of
manipulation or betrayal at the hands of another state. It is
important to stress that Great Powers as well as smaller powers
both need to avoid excessive dependence on others.
The self-help principle challenges policy makers to bring goals

10. and power resources into balance. Pursuing more goals than the
available resources allow or squandering resources on
secondary objectives saps the vitality of the state and makes it
unable to respond effectively to future challenges. Many argue
that Vietnam is a classic example of the crippling consequences
of an inability to balance goals and resources. American policy
produced steady increases in the level of the U.S. commitment
to the war, but it did not bring the United States any closer to
victory. Instead, the reverse occurred: The longer the United
States remained in Vietnam and the greater its commitment, the
more elusive victory became.
Neoliberals reject the emphasis on self-help. From their
perspective, the ability of states and individuals to recognize
the costs and benefits of different strategies will allow them to
pursue cooperative, mutually beneficial solutions to problems
and avoid the use of force in settling disputes. Constructivis m
offers a cautionary perspective, suggesting that self-help can be
interpreted as taking risks or acting cautiously to keep goals and
resources in balance; it can mean acting alone or in cooperation
with others. The perspective adopted reflects societal norms,
values, and ideas; as those change, so will policy.
A Stratified System
The third structural constant in the international system is its
stratified nature. The equality of states embedded in the concept
of sovereignty is a legal myth. The principle of sovereignty
dates back to the Treaty of Westphalia and the beginnings of the
modern state system in 1648. It holds that no legal authority
exists above the state, except that which the state voluntarily
accepts. The reality of international politics is quite different;
sovereignty is a matter of degree rather than an absolute. States
are “born unequal.”9 The resources from which states draw their
power are distributed unequally across the globe. As such, the
ability of states to accomplish their foreign policy objectives
(and their very choice of objectives) varies from state to state.
The principle of stratification leaves opens the question of how
unevenly power is distributed. The three most commonly

11. discussed forms of stratification are unipolar, bipolar,
and multipolar. In a unipolar system, one state possesses more
power than any other. No other state or alliance of states can
match it. In a bipolar system, two relatively equal states have
more power than all others. Typically, permanent alliance
systems form around the two states. A multipolar system is
characterized by the presence of a core group of states that are
relatively equal in power; floating coalitions—rather than
permanent alliances—form as states join and leave to
accomplish goals and protect their interests.
Neoliberals would argue that this picture is overdrawn. Rather
than being organized around the global or regional distribution
of power, the 35international system should be seen as
organized around issue areas, or regimes, each of which is
organized around its own set of rules and norms. Here again,
enlightened self-interest is expected to produce regimes based
on accommodation rather than domination. As a perspective for
studying foreign policy and international politics,
constructivism urges caution in creating fixed power hierarchies
and classifying states and is reluctant to provide firm guidance
on which policy to adopt or how to define the global context in
which states act. This is seen by its advocates as a major
contribution to American foreign policy and by its detractors as
a major limitation.
International System: Evolutionary Trends
Although the basic structure of the international system has
endured over time, the system itself is not unchanging. Four
post–World War II trends are especially notable for their ability
to influence the conduct of U.S. foreign policy: diffusion of
power, issue proliferation, actor proliferation, and regional
diversity.
Diffusion of Power
Power, the ability to achieve objectives, is typically vi ewed as
something we possess—a commodity to be acquired, stored, and
manipulated. However, it must also be viewed as a relational
concept. Ultimately, it is not how much power a state has, but

12. how much power it has on a specific issue compared to those
with whom it is dealing.
The postwar era has seen a steady diffusion of power. The
causes for this are many. After examining the decline of
empires throughout history, Robert Gilpin asserts that a cycle of
hegemonic decline can be identified.10 As the cycle progresses,
the burdens of imperial leadership, increased emphasis on the
consumption of goods and services, and the international
diffusion of technology conspire to sap the strength of the
imperial state and bring about its decline.
Foreign policy success and failures can contribute to the
diffusion of power. The effect of foreign policy failures is
relatively easy to anticipate. In the wake of defeat, the search
for scapegoats, disillusionment with the task undertaken, and a
desire to avoid similar situations can be followed. The Vietnam
War is held by many to have been responsible for destroying the
postwar domestic consensus on the purpose of American power.
For example, economic sanctions directed against Fidel Castro
in Cuba in the 1960s failed to bring down his regime and only
made him more dependent on Soviet support.
American foreign policy successes have also hastened the
decline of U.S. dominance. The reconstructions of the Japanese
and Western European economies rank as two truly remarkable
achievements. In a 36sense, U.S. foreign policy has been
almost too successful. These economies are now major
economic rivals of the U.S. economy and often outperform it.
However, the Japanese case also illustrates that there is nothing
inevitable about the process of power diffusion. In the 1960s,
observers spoke of the Japanese economic miracle and the threat
it presented to U.S. economic power. In the 1990s, reference
was instead being made to Japan’s lost decade and the many
economic problems it faced.
Issue Proliferation
The second area of evolutionary change in the international
arena is issue proliferation. Not long ago, there was a relatively
clear-cut foreign affairs issue hierarchy. At the top were a

13. relatively small number of high-politics problems involving
questions of national security, territorial integrity, and political
independence. At the bottom were the numerically more
prevalent low-politics issues of commerce, energy,
environment, and so on. Although largely intuitive, the line
between high and low politics was well established and the
positions occupied by issues in this hierarchy were relatively
fixed, allowing policy makers to become familiar with the
issues before them and the options open to them. Today, this is
no longer the case.
The high-politics category has become crowded. Natural
resource scarcity moved from a low-politics to a high-politics
foreign policy problem after the 1973 OPEC oil embargo. In
2014, the Defense Department’s Quadrennial Defense Review
and other studies pointed to the growing national security threat
posed by global climate change. Issues may also change
position in the hierarchy for political reasons. Human rights,
which was a major concern for the United States when Jimmy
Carter was president, returned to a low-politics position when
Reagan took office. Its importance has continued to fluctuate
over time, most recently returning to a low-politics position
under Trump.
Accompanying the high-low politics division is a long-standing
distinction between foreign and domestic policy, which has
become increasingly difficult to maintain. How, for example, do
we classify attempts to fight international drug cartels? On one
level this is a foreign policy problem. The United States is
actively engaged with helping the Mexican government combat
the drug cartels operating out of that country. These
organizations realize more than $20 billion in profits from U.S.
sales alone. Yet this is also a matter of domestic policy, as some
states have legalized the recreational use of marij uana.
A term increasingly being used to characterize these and other
issues with significant domestic and international dimensions
is intermestic (inter from “international” and mestic from
“domestic”).11 Other examples of emerging intermestic policy

14. areas include food safety and the regulation of passenger
airplanes. Traditionally, food safety has been treated as a
domestic policy matter. This is no longer realistic, as food
production has become 37globalized. Between 2000 and 2006,
the value of U.S. food imports doubled, to $2.2 trillion; yet,
traditionally, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspects
less than 1 percent of the imported food products under its
jurisdiction. Airline safety became front page news in 2019
when two Boeing 737 Max 8 planes on international flights
crashed within months of each other. International airline safety
regulations are largely left in the hands of national regulators
such as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). As a U.S.
plane, the FAA had certified the safety of the Boeing 737 Max
8. The United States was virtually the last country to ground the
plane after the crashes. Following the tragedies, serious doubts
have arisen about its safety and FAA inspection policy.
Actor Proliferation
The third evolutionary feature of the international system is
actor proliferation. On the one hand, actor proliferation has
taken the form of an expansion in the number of states. Today,
there are 190 countries, compared to fifty-eight states in 1930.
The United States has diplomatic relations with all but three
(four if Taiwan is counted). This expansion in the number of
states has brought with it a corresponding expansion in the
number of views that can be found on any given problem.
Eighty-four states attended the first United Nations Conference
on the Law of the Sea in 1958. In contrast, 185 countries
attended the 2015 Paris Climate Summit conference; adding the
European Union and others brought the total number of
participants to 196. The vast number of states and the diversity
of views expressed in these global meetings now present great
obstacles to achieving an agreement.
Although the growth in the number of new states has slowed,
continued growth is taking place in a second area: nonstate
actors. While states have never been the only actors in world
politics, it is only comparatively recently that nonstate actors

15. have appeared in sufficient numbers and possessed control over
enough resources to be significant actors in world politics.
Three categories of nonstate actors may be identified:
intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), such as the United
Nations, NATO, and the Organization of American States;
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), such as General
Motors, the International Red Cross, the Catholic Church, and
the Palestine Liberation Organization; and subnational actors,
such as the U.S. Defense Department, New York City, and
Texas.
Statistically, the growth in the number of nonstate actors has
been explosive. On the eve of World War I, there were only 49
IGOs and 170 NGOs. By 1951 the numbers had grown to 123
IGOs and 832 NGOs. The 2015/2016 edition of the Yearbook of
International Organizations identified 273 conventional IGOs
and 3,189 conventional NGOs. Overall, the Yearbook lists
almost 70,000 international organizatio ns: 7,757 IGOs and
60,272 NGOs.12
Actor proliferation has altered the context in which American
foreign policy decisions are made in three ways. First, it has
changed the language used in thinking about foreign policy
problems. The state-centric language of the Cold War now
competes for the attention of policy makers with the imagery of
interdependence and globalization. Second, nonstate actors
often serve as potential instruments of foreign policy. By not
being identified as part of a state, their actions may be better
received by other actors. Third, nonstate actors often limit the
options open to policy makers. Their ability to resist and
frustrate state initiatives can necessitate consideration of
courses of action that states otherwise would likely reject,
including inaction. Two recent examples include the lack of a
credible pro-Western rebel group in Syria to support and the
inability to take quick action in Nigeria against the Boko Haram
Islamic militant group.
Regional Diversity
As a superpower, the United States is concerned not only with

16. the structure and operation of the international system as a
whole, but also with the operation of its subsystems, three of
which are especially important. Each presents different
management problems and thus require different
solutions.13 While the language used to describe them comes
out of the Cold War era, the differences they highlight remain
relevant to the way international politics is conducted and the
foreign problems that are considered important.
The first subsystem, the Western system, is made up of the
advanced industrial states of the United States, Canada, Western
Europe, and Japan. The principal problem in the Western system
is managing interdependence. At issue is the distribution of
costs and benefits. U.S. leadership and initiative in the realm of
national security policy, once so eagerly sought by its allies, is
now often resisted. Even before Trump became president, many
in the United States had begun to question the costs of
leadership and sought to have its allies pick up a larger share of
the defense burden. A similar situation holds for underwriting a
free trade system or accepting economic discrimination in the
name of alliance unity.
The second subsystem is the North-South system. Instead of
expectations of sharing and mutual gain, the South views
matters from a perspective rooted in the inequalities and
exploitation of colonialism. When NATO and U.S. forces
intervened in Libya and removed Muammar Qaddafi from power
in the name of Responsibility to Protect, many in the South saw
this humanitarian doctrine as nothing but a cover for another
instance of Western imperialism. In contrast to solutions to the
problems of interdependence, which lie in the fine-tuning of
existing international organizations and practices, solutions to
the problems of dependence and domination require
constructing a new system that the South is willing to accept as
legitimate and in which it is treated as an equal.
The third subsystem of concern to the United States is the
remnants of the Cold War East-West system. Its fundamental
management problem is reintegration. The Cold War divided the

17. East and West into two largely self-contained, competing
military and economic parts. In the 1970s, détente brought
about a limited reintegration of the East and West through arms
control and trade agreements. The opportunity for full-scale
integration of these states into the international system came
with the demise of communism and the collapse of the Soviet
Union, which has to some extent been realized. Russia became a
member of the Group of Eight (G8), and both China and Russia
joined the World Trade Organization (WTO). Still, the task of
reintegration is incomplete, as evidenced by Russia’s military
intervention into Ukraine to reclaim the Crimea, China’s
growing assertiveness in the South China Sea and its aggressive
overseas economic policies, and ongoing concerns about the
status of human rights in both countries.
Dominant Features Today
In many ways, the contemporary international system lacks a
defining identity. For some, it is the post–9/11 era. Others argue
that not much has changed in world politics since 9/11.14 Still
others see the current international system as being marked by
the resurgence of Great Power politics with the rise of Russia
and China. Regardless of how it is defined, it is clear that the
structure of the international system has become more complex.
It has become a three-dimensional chessboard, with different
problems and dynamics on each board. There is a traditional
hard-power-driven security chessboard, a soft-power-driven
economic chessboard, and a third chessboard dominated by the
activities of nonstate actors, where power is diffuse and hard to
define. Not only does each chessboard to the United States, but
disagreement exists over how to rank them in importance. Here,
one challenge on each chessboard is identified: terrorism,
globalization, and American hegemony.15
Terrorism
Terrorism dominates the third chessboard. Box 2.1 presents a
snapshot of the scope of the terrorism problem as it existed in

18. 2017, a point in time when many were speaking of the end of
the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in Syria, also referred
to as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Using the
term in its most value-free and politically neutral
sense, terrorism is violence for the purpose of political
intimidation.16 Terrorism is not a new phenomenon nor is it the
exclusive tool of any political ideology or political agenda. It
does not specify an organizational form. Governments as well as
nonstate actors may engage in terrorism.
Box 2.1
Snapshot of Global Terrorism
Terrorism Trends
Over 99 percent of all deaths from terrorism have occurred in
countries involved in a violent conflict or with high level of
political terror.
Every region of the world recorded a higher impact of
terrorism in 2017 than in 2002.
Right-wing terrorism is on the rise. The majority of the
attacks were carried out by lone wolves. Seventeen of the sixty-
six deaths were between 2013 and 2017, and 66 of the 113
attacks occurred in 2017.
Number of times since 2000 that a country has been ranked
among the top ten countries affected by terrorism:
1. Afghanistan 16
2. India 16
3. Pakistan 16
4. Iraq 15
5. Somalia 11
The five most frequent types of terrorist attacks, 2002–2017:
1. Bombing/explosion
2. Armed assault
3. Hostage taking
4. Assassination
5. Facility/Infrastructure attacks
Emerging Hot Spots of Terrorism:

19. 1. The Sahel and Maghreb
2. Southeast Asia
3. Nigeria
Terrorism in 2017
The total number of deaths from terrorism fell for the third
consecutive year after peaking in 2014.
Sixty-seven countries experienced at least one death from
terrorism in 2017. This is the second highest number since
2002.
The economic impact of terrorism in 2017 was $52 billion, 42
percent lower than in 2016.
Almost 20 percent of attempted terrorist attacks in 2017
failed.
Top 5 countries with regard to death by terrorism, 2017:
1. Afghanistan
2. Iraq
3. Nigeria
4. Somalia
5. Syria
Five largest increases in deaths from terrorism, 2016–2017:
1. Somalia
2. Egypt
3. Central African Republic
4. Myanmar
5. Mali
Four deadliest terrorist groups in 2017:
1. Islamic state of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)
2. Al-Shabaab
3. Taliban
4. Boko Haram
Source: Institute for Economics and Peace, Global Terrorism
Index, 2018
Today’s brand of terrorism, which dates from 1979, is the
fourth wave of terrorism that has arisen since the 1880s.17 The
preceding three waves each lasted a generation. If this pattern

20. holds, the current wave of terrorism will not lose its energy
until around 2025. The first, anarchist wave of terrorism began
in Russia and was set in motion by the political and economic
reform efforts of the czars. The second, anticolonial wave
of 41terrorism began in the 1920s and ended in the 1960s. The
third, New Left wave of terrorism was set in motion by the
Vietnam War. It was made up of Marxist groups such as the
Weather Underground and separatist groups that sought self-
determination for minority groups that felt trapped inside larger
states, such as the Palestine Liberation Organization.
The defining features of the current wave of terrorism are
twofold. The first is its religious base. Islamic extremism is at
its core. Its initial energy was drawn from three events in 1979:
the start of a new Muslim century, the ouster of the shah in
Iran, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The United States
is the special target of this religious wave of terrorism. Iranian
leaders have long referred to the United States as the “Great
Satan,” and the common goal shared by Islamic terrorist groups
has been to drive the United States out of the Middle East.
Before 9/11, this wave had produced a steady flow of terrorist
attacks on U.S. facilities. Marine barracks were attacked in
Lebanon in 1983, the World Trade Center was first bombed in
1993, American embassies were attacked in Kenya and Tanzania
in 1998, and the USS Cole was attacked in 2000. The second
defining attribute is the specter of mass casualties. Earlier
waves of terror focused on assassinating key individuals or the
symbolic killing of relatively small numbers of individuals, but
today we also see terrorist attacks resulting in large numbers of
deaths.
As recently as 2015, U.S. officials struggled with the question
of whether al-Qaeda or ISIS posed the greatest terrorist threat to
the U.S. homeland. The FBI, the Justice Department, and the
Department of Homeland Security rated ISIS as the higher
threat, while the Defense Department, the National
Counterterrorism Center, and intelligence agencies tended to
place al-Qaeda ahead of it. At the heart of this debate were two

21. questions: Which would be most able to strike U.S. targets?
Which could cause the greatest damage? As one member of
Congress put it before the 2015 Paris attacks, “ISIS is all about
the quantity of attacks, Al Qaeda . . . is about the quality of the
attack.”18
The ISIS caliphate ended in Syria in 2019, but that was not
necessarily the end of ISIS, as proclaimed by President Trump,
or the end of terrorism as a key feature of the contemporary
international system. General Joseph Votel, head of the U.S.
military central command, observed that “what we are seeing
now is not the surrender of ISIS as an organization but . . . a
calculated decision to preserve the safety of their families and
preservation of their capabilities. The ISIS population being
evacuated . . . largely remains unrepentant, unbroken, and
radicalized.”19 Observers estimate that ISIS has a war chest of
between $50 million and $300 million hidden away.
Looking at terrorism more broadly, what stands out is that
terrorist groups are highly adaptive organizations. Early
terrorist groups such as the Irish Republican Army and the
Palestine Liberation Organization were organized into small
groups of individuals who had little contact with one another in
order to protect their identities. Al-Qaeda embraced 42an
organizational structure based on concentric circles. At its core
was a central leadership group, surrounded by a ring of al -
Qaeda affiliates in different countries. The outer ring contained
al-Qaeda locals or lone wolves. ISIS operated as a pseudo-state,
controlling oil-producing operations in Iraq and Syria, engaging
in extortion, collecting taxes, and selling goods such as
abandoned U.S. weapons and antiques on the black
market. 20 Even before its defeat, ISIS began to decentralize its
decision-making structure. It delegated power to mid-level
military commanders in Iraq and Syria, sought out foreign
affiliates, and actively recruited and trained disenchanted
individuals and criminals to return to their home countries and
engage in terrorist attacks. Of special concern to the United
States has been the ability of ISIS and al-Qaeda to establish

22. affiliates in North and Central Africa. In one notable encounter
with ISIS in October 2018, fighters thought to be affiliated with
ISIS ambushed U.S. troops in Niger, killing four and wounding
two soldiers.
The question of how terrorist groups end is also important in
determining the significance of terrorism in the present and
future international system.21 Numerous possible endings
include the capture or killing of leaders, the loss of popular
support, the achievement of goals, the transition to legitimate
political organizations, and transformation into criminal
organizations.
Globalization
Globalization dominates the second chessboard. A central
problem in formulating a foreign policy based on globalization
is that it is a vaguely defined term often used interchangeably
with internationalization, Westerniza tion, and Americanization.
Most commentators define globalization as an economic process
centered on the speed of interactions among economies and the
intense and all-encompassing nature of those interactions.
Economies do not simply trade with one another ; they are
transformed by their interactions. Globalization’s supporters
claim that this transformation will lead to economic benefits
and prosperity.
Globalization, however, is much more than just an economic
process. It is a dynamic mix of economic, political, social, and
cultural forces that has the potential to bring about both positive
and negative changes within and among states. Globalization
may unleash the forces of democracy, but it may just as easily
unleash a fundamentalist and defensive cultural backlash by
those who feel threatened. Similarly, globalization accelerates
the diffusion of technology and knowledge among people,
which may help solve global health and environmental
problems, but it also allows terrorist groups to communicate
with one another, travel more efficiently, and gain access to
weapons of mass destruction.
Globalization did not arrive on the scene suddenly. It emerged

23. bit by bit over time. Although some commentators trace its
foundations back to 43the eighteenth century, most identify its
beginnings with the post–World War II era and the
establishment of the Bretton Woods monetary system and its
core institutions: the World Bank, the International Monetary
Fund, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).
Together, these institutions laid the foundation for an
international economic system that facilitated and encouraged
an ever-expanding and accelerating cross-border flow of money,
commodities, ideas, and people. This foundation set in motion a
chain reaction, producing what Thomas Friedman refers to as
the “flattening of the world.”22
The dominant perspective held that globalization was an
irreversible process. It was a reality and not a choice.23 The
problem facing the United States was not whether but how to
participate in a globalized economy. In addition, as with all
underlying structural aspects of the international system,
globalization places limits on state behavior—rewarding states
that embrace “correct” foreign and domestic policies and
punishing those that adopt inappropriate ones.
Events over the past decade have called this view into
question.24 References to the emergence of identity politics and
the triumph of nationalism over globalization point to a
weakening of globalization, if not a retreat from it.25 From this
perspective, as globalization grew stronger it created a divide
between groups at upper and lower socio-economic levels.
Where the rich saw globalization as beneficial, others saw the
accompanying job losses as threatening. The jobs that were once
a key part of their identity were lost to foreign competition, and
they came to feel that the political elites were not responding to
their fears and needs. The result was a rise in populist sentiment
and the reemergence of right-wing and authoritarian
governments. Note that doubts about the future of globalization
preceded the emergence of these trends. Writing in 2005, Niall
Ferguson raised the possibility that at some point globalization
may collapse and we may enter into a postglobalist era.26 He

24. saw economic and political parallels between the current period
of globalization and the one that existed prior to the outbreak of
World War I and the Great Depression of the 1930s.
It is also possible that globalization will not end but enter a new
phase. Ian Bremmer raises the possibility that globalization will
come to be dominated by state capitalism,27 in which
governments rather than private businesses are the driving force
behind investment decisions. The goal here is to increase state
power, not maximize profit. Prominent forms of state capitalism
include government-owned or -controlled natural resource
companies; national champions or firms that receive special tax
incentives and other benefits from the state; and state-controlled
sovereign wealth funds that invest in key firms and industries.
Bremmer warns that state capitalist firms are inherently
inefficient due to the role that politics plays in their operation,
and that their investment decisions could harm global economic
growth.
American Hegemony
American hegemony is the principal issue on the first
chessboard, the traditional hard-power security-dominated
chessboard. The term hegemony, which implies control,
dominance, or preeminence, was used to describe the United
States’ position after the end of the Cold War, when for all
practical purposes it was the last superpower left standing on
the chessboard. Part of the difficulty in making judgments about
the present condition of this first chessboard lies in the terms
commonly used to describe hegemonic power.
Some observers refer to the United States as an empire. Not
surprisingly, this characterization is controversial.28 In its most
neutral sense, an empire is a state with “a wide and supreme
domain.” The political, economic, and military reach of the
United States fits that criterion. However, the term also carries
very negative connotations of a state that imposes its will on
others and rules through force and domination. Military
occupation and the arbitrary use of military power typify an
empire’s foreign policies, charges that have frequently been

25. leveled at American foreign policy. Critics of the empire label
assert that the reach of American foreign policy, which is
imperial in the sense that it is global, is being confused with the
political ambition to control vast expanses of territory beyond
U.S. borders, which does not exist.
A quite different view holds that America’s unchallenged
dominance allows it to act as the functional equivalent of a
world government. It provides services needed for the effective
functioning of the international system, such as military
security, stewardship of the global economy, and emergency
humanitarian aid. If the United States did not carry out these
and other crucial tasks, the international system might cease to
function effectively, because no other state possesses the
resources to do so, and a true world government would not
likely come into existence. So American hegemony can be seen
as beneficial rather than exploitive. As one supporter of this
position noted, it is in the interests of both America and the
world that American primacy last as long as possible.29
Between these contrasting views of American hegemony lies a
third perspective that stresses the limits placed on U.S.
hegemony by global politics. One variant of this perspective
sees the United States has having sat atop a Unipolar Concert
for most of the post–Cold War era.30 The United States did not
dominate global politics singlehandedly; it did so with the
acquiescence of the next two major powers in the international
system (China and Russia). Both chose not to try and balance
the United States because they benefitted greatly from the
international system as it operated under U.S. leadership. Each
of these three perspectives finds itself challenged by two
questions: (1) How accurate a description is it today? and (2)
How much longer will it hold true?
For those who adopt the American empire perspective, the
historical reality is that empires come with expiration dates;
they do not last 45forever. In addition, today’s empires tend to
have much shorter life spans than ancient and early modern
ones. The average Roman Empire lasted 829 years. The British

26. Empire lasted 336 years. Twentieth-century empires on average
lasted only 57 years.31 Even prior to Trump’s “America first”
foreign policy agenda, the United States’ status as an empire
was easily questioned due to the rise in Chinese economic and
military power. Robert Kaplan asserts that we may have already
entered the postimperial moment, in which world disorder and
competition for power and space will grow. 32
For those who adopt the United-States-as-global-government
perspective, the principal challenges facing the United States
involve its ability to structure the “rules of the game” by which
international politics is played.33 These challenges take two
forms, both tied to the rising number and influence of
authoritarian governments and their rejection of the liberal
democratic values at the heart of the global system created by
the United States. The first challenge is altering the policies of
existing international organizations such as the United Nations
to bring them more in line with U.S. values. The second is to
create parallel international organizations to advance U.S.
interests, like China did by establishing the Asian Development
Bank and modeling its structure and functions on those of the
World Bank.
For those who stress the continuing importance of power
politics to U.S. dominance, the key longevity issue is the extent
to which credible challengers to U.S. power exist or will
surface. Some see the United States as being a remarkably
secure country. There are many foreign policy problems, but
individually and collectively they do not constitute security
threats.34 Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth argue that
such challenges will not materialize soon.35 While China’s rise
in power today is very real, they note that the distance that
China must travel from great power to superpower is far bigger
than successful challengers have faced in the past. Others take a
more pessimistic view, arguing that power balancing by Russia
and China is already under way to the point that the unipolar
concert has unraveled, bringing with it a series of regional
challenges to U.S. influence.36 See box 2.2 for the May 2019

27. report by the Office of the Secretary of Defense to Congress on
the military power of the Republic of China.
Box 2.2
Military Power Republic of China, 2019
Building a More Capable People’s Liberation Army
In support of the goal to establish a powerful and prosperous
China, China’s leaders are committed to developing military
power commensurate with that of a great power. Chinese
military strategy documents highlight the requirement for a
People’s Liberation Army (PLA) able to fight and win wars,
deter potential adversaries, and secure Chinese national
interests overseas, including a growing emphasis on the
importance of the maritime and information domains, offensive
air operations, long-distance mobility operations, and space and
cyber operations.
In 2018, the PLA published a new Outline of Training and
Evaluation that emphasized realistic and joint training across all
warfare domains and included missions and tasks aimed at
“strong military opponents.” Training focused on war
preparedness and improving the PLA’s capability to win wars
through realistic combat training, featuring multi-service
exercises, long-distance maneuvers and mobility operations, and
the increasing use of professional “blue force” opponents. The
CCP also continued vigorous efforts to root out corruption in
the armed forces.
The PLA also continues to implement the most comprehensive
restructure in its history to become a force capable of
conducting complex joint operations. The PLA strives to be
capable of fighting and winning “informatized local wars”—
regional conflicts defined by real-time, data-networked
command and control (C2) and precision strike. PLA
modernization includes command and force structure reforms to
improve operational flexibility and readiness for future
deployments. As China’s global footprint and international
interests have grown, its military modernization progress has
become more focused on investments and infrastructure to

28. support a range of missions beyond China’s periphery,
including power projection, sea lane security, counterpiracy,
peacekeeping, humanitarian assistance/disaster relief, and
noncombatant evacuation operations.
China’s military modernization also targets capabilities with the
potential to degrade core U.S. operational and technological
advantages. China uses a variety of methods to acquire foreign
military and dual-use technologies, including targeted foreign
direct investment, cyber theft, and exploitation of private
Chinese nationals’ access to these technologies, as well as
harnessing its intelligence services, computer intrusions, and
other illicit approaches. In 2018, Chinese efforts to acquire
sensitive, dual-use or military-grade equipment from the United
States included dynamic random-access memory, aviation
technologies, and anti-submarine warfare technologies.
Reorganizing for Operations along China’s Periphery
China continues to implement reforms associated with the
establishment of its five theater commands, each of which is
responsible for developing command strategies and joint
operational plans and capabilities relevant for specific threats,
as well as responding to crises and safeguarding territorial
sovereignty and stability. Taiwan persistently remains the
PLA’s main “strategic direction,” one of the geographic areas
the leadership identifies as having strategic importance. Other
strategic directions include the East China Sea, the South China
Sea, and China’s borders with India and North Korea.
Source: “Executive Summary,” Military Power of the Republic
of China, 2019, Annual Report to Congress, Office of the
Secretary of Defense, May 2019.
America and the World: Attitudes and Perceptions
As constructivists remind us, the global setting of American
foreign policy involves more than just a series of contemporary
problems and underlying structural features. It also consists of
attitudes and perceptions about the world. As evidenced by
responses to global public opinion polls conducted in the United

29. States and other countries it is increasingly obvious that
Americans and non-Americans do not always see the world the
same way.37 In 2014, 70 percent of Americans polled said that
the United States takes into account the interests of other
countries in making foreign policy decisions. Little agreement
on this point existed abroad. At one extreme, only 13 percent of
Pakistanis indicated that the United States considers their
country’s interest a great deal or a fair amount. At the other
extreme, 85 percent of Filipinos felt that the United States
considers their country’s interests.
Global public opinion polls also show differences in how
Americans and citizens of other countries view policy problems.
A 2018 survey showed that 59 percent of Americans identified
climate change as the top international threat.38 Compare this
to the global mean across twenty-three countries: 67 percent.
The global mean for identifying cyberattacks as the top threat
was 61 percent; in contrast, 74 percent of Americans identified
it as the top threat.
Widely different views also exist on the exercise of American
power. Of the individuals surveyed in these twenty-three
countries in 2018, 45 percent viewed U.S. power and influence
as a top threat, up from 25 percent in 2013. The polling data
showed a strong connection between negative feelings about
President Trump and concern regarding U.S. power and
influence. In seventeen countries, citizens who had little or no
confidence in Trump were most likely to see U.S. power as
threatening. Thirty-six percent of global respondents identified
Russian power and influence as a top threat, and 35 percent
identified Chinese power and influence as a top threat. In 2013,
a majority of people in twenty-three of thirty-nine countries felt
that China had already replaced the United States as the
dominant economic power or would soon do so.
Another politically significant indicator of differences in global
outlook is reflected by the periodic anti-American protests that
erupt around the world. In seeking to understand the
motivations and logic of such anti-American demonstrations,

30. observers have made distinctions among four different types of
anti-Americanism:39
1. Liberal anti-Americanism. Commonly found in other
advanced industrial societies, at its core is the charge that the
United States repeatedly fails to live up to its own ideals in
conducting its foreign policy.
2. Social anti-Americanism. Here, the complaint concerns the
United States’ attempt to impose its version of democracy and
its definition of rights on others while being insensitive to local
societal values and norms.
3. 48Sovereign anti-Americanism. This version focuses on the
threats the United States presents to the sovereignty and
cultural and political identity of another country. A nationalistic
backlash can occur regardless of whether the country is
powerful or weak.
4. Radical anti-Americanism. This version defines American
values as evil and subscribes to the notion that only by
destroying them can the world be made safe.
The world is not solidly anti-American. Pro-American views
tend to be most pronounced among those aged 60 and older, a
factor many attributes to American foreign policy initiatives
during the Cold War. Another group with solidly pro-American
sentiments is made up of young people identified
as aspirational (upwardly mobile or would like to be).40
Over the AHorizon: 2035
What, then, might the future hold? Periodically, the National
Intelligence Council (NIC) addresses this question. Its peeks
into the future are not meant to be taken as predications or
forecasts but as attempts to help policy makers focus on trends
and aspects of the international system that have the potential to
shape U.S. foreign policy—for better or worse.
According to the NIC’s Global Trends 2035 report, which was
produced in 2017, the coming years will test U.S. resilience and
require it, as well as all other states, to adapt to the changing
landscape of international politics.41 There will be a heightened
risk of interstate conflict and an expanding terrorist threat as

31. states, groups, and individuals will increase their ability to do
harm. The net result will be creation of greater amounts of
global disorder, raising questions about the rules, institutions,
and distribution of power in the international system. In
particular, the NIC expects U.S. competition with China and
Russia to increase as these states seek to change the rules
governing the international order and increase their influence
over neighboring regions.
Meeting the challenge of increased global disorder and rising
tensions will be difficult for three reasons. First, global
technological, economic, environmental, and political trends
will increase the number and complexity of issues that require
global cooperation. Second, this expanded set of issues will lead
to increased blurring of the line between peace and war. This
will make it harder for states to employ traditional tools of
foreign policy such as deterrence, economic coercion, and
covert operations, but engagement in cyber operations and
disinformation campaigns will become easier. Third, citizens
have become increasingly fragmented and divided in their views
of issues, making it difficult to facilitate global cooperation and
unity based on democratic concepts that formerly united them.
The bottom line is that traditional wars may become less
frequent; they will be replaced by more remote stand-off
military operations, which are more costly and less likely to
produce decisive results.
Looking further into the future, the NIC is somewhat less
pessimistic. Much hinges on government responses to economic
changes and alterations in public attitudes; emerging patterns of
cooperation and competition from the arena of international
politics; and the types of short-term and long-term deals that
countries are willing to make in addressing global issues. The
central puzzle that states must solve is how to blend
international, national, and community resources in a way that
yields sustainability, security, prosperity, and hope.

32. Critical Thinking Questions
1. Which of the three theoretical perspectives (realism,
neoliberalism, and constructivism) is best suited for guiding
thinking about U.S. foreign policy today, and why?
2. Which of the possible global futures is most likely? How
should the United States prepare for it?
3. Which features of the international system are most
influential in determining the success or failure of U.S. foreign
policies, and why?
4.
Key Terms
· bipolar, 34
· constructivism, 32
· globalization, 42
· hegemony, 44
· intermestic, 36
· multipolar, 34
· neoliberalism, 32
· realism, 31
· sovereignty, 34
· terrorism, 39
· unipolar, 34
Further Reading
Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth, “The Rise and Fall of
Great Powers in the Twenty-First Century,” International
Security 40 (Winter 2015), 7–53.
This article examines the rise of China as a challenger to U.S.
unipolarity. It concludes that while China’s rise in power is
real, the United States will likely long remain the only
superpower.
Chester Crocker, “The Strategic Dilemma of a World
Adrift,” Survival 57 (February 2015), 7–30.
The author argues that the international system is in a
rudderless transition. It is partially repolarized, creating a toxic
mix of normative issues and power dynamics. With no one in

33. charge of global order, the key question is how a player gains
and uses strategic leverage.
John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the End of the Cold
War: Implications, Reconsiderations and Provocations (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1992).
50
Authored by a leading diplomatic historian, this volume looks
back to the end of the Cold War for insight into both why it
ended and what that means for the future of American foreign
policy.
Ted Hopf, Reconstructing the Cold War (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2014).
This volume uses a social constructivist theoretical perspective
to examine the Cold War period with an eye toward explaining
the many abrupt changes in policy during its early years.
Anthony Richards, “Conceptualizing Terrorism,” Studies in
Conflict and Terrorism 37 (March 2014), 18–29.
This article presents a solid overview of the concept of
terrorism, which it defines as a method of political violence. It
then examines the implications of this definition for the debate
over how to think about terrorism in world politics.
Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International
Relations (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
Written by one of the founding scholars of the constructivist
school of international relations theorizing, this book introduces
readers to this approach and illustrates its utility through an
examination of key concepts in the study of international
relations and foreign policy.
Thomas Wright, All Measures Short of War (New Haven, CT:
Yale University
2
Understanding the Global Community -
Liberalism/Neoliberalism
So moving on to other forms of international relations theory,

34. let's look at liberalism and neoliberalism. Liberalism is actually
one of the earliest forms of international relations theories. It
was created shortly after the First World War, what was then
called the great war to prevent another, when scholars, thinkers
and decision-makers got together and decided to question, what
can we do to prevent another great war. So they started to focus
on issues like common interest. How can we emphasize common
interest among great powers, among global actors? How can we
perhaps promote democracy as a way to prevent war? This leads
us to a more contemporary notion that we call the democratic
peace. Today. Theorists suggest that democracies don't fight
one another. This is the closest we come to a law and
international relations. There are very few, if any, cases of
democracies actually going to war with one another. So why,
why does democracy matter? There are two factors that matter
when we talk about the democratic peace. Democratic
institutions like checks and balances, elections, separations of
power. Those types of factors help us prevent or mitigate
against decisions to go to war. Democracies can't just willy
nilly decide one day I'm going to go to war. They have to go
through a process. Elections elected leaders allow the electorate
who of course pays the cost of war and suffers the consequences
of war, allows the electorate to determine whether their leaders
are, are fit to make those decisions. Separations of power. The
fact that, that both the President and the Congress have to play
a role in decision-making when it comes to war with suggests
that they check and balance each other, right? So the separation
of power, a check and balance that comes with that, and the
ability to elect democratic leaders really all work against, or at
least mitigate in some way against decisions to go to war. That
doesn't mean that democracies are less war prone. It just means
they have to go through a process. It isn't as easy as non-
democracies or a non-democratic leader to choose to go to war.
The other factor that matters in the democratic peace or
Democrat, we call democratic norms, particularly the norm of a
peaceful resolution of conflict within democratic societies,

35. particularly stable democratic societies, we resolve our conflict
peacefully. What do we do? If we have a problem with our
neighbor? We have a problem with somebody that's that we
believe has harmed us in some way. We sue them, right? We use
our court system, will in the global community, that type of
process doesn't necessarily exist where it certainly isn't stable
enough to prevent war. So this democratic institution of the
peaceful resolution of conflict is something that works against
decisions to go to war. So these two factors working together,
democratic institutions like elections, checks and balances and
separation of powers, and democratic norms of the peaceful
resolution of conflict. Those really matter and are part of this
liberal international relations theory. Now, democratic peace
theory is not without its critics. As I mentioned before,
democracies are not necessarily less war prone. They're just less
war prone with each other. So there's this dyadic effect of
democratic peace. It usually means to democracies are more
than one democracy working together. Democracies and non-
democracies actually still do go to war together far too often.
So that's one criticism of the democratic peace theory. Other
suggests that the process of democratization is extremely
bloody. So democratic peace theory would lead us to a policy of
democratization. We would seek to, to establish democracy
around the world, suggesting that it'll be a more peaceful world.
The more democracies we have. Yet that process of
democratization transitioning from non-democracies to
democracy, as we've seen in far too many cases, is a very
difficult and bloody process. So democratic peace theory, it's
useful and it's used often to help us understand the global
community, but it's still fraught with challenges. So newer
forms of liberalism, what we might call neo-liberalism, emerged
as an indirect response as a critique of realist theory. Neoliberal
is believed that realists are actually too narrow in their focus.
They focus strictly on great powers and issues of power
relations. This to a neoliberal, misses a lot of international
relations. If we're going to understand the global community,

36. we need to understand more than just military security relations.
We need to understand social relations, economic relations,
scientific and technology exchange. There's a lot more going on
in the global community, according to a neoliberal scholar.
More specifically, neoliberal suggests that states often do
cooperate a lot more than a realist might suggest. We're realists
tend to focus on conflict and the global community. Neoliberal
tend to focus on cooperation and the ways in which states come
together to mutually resolve common problems. To do that
they'll develop international organizations, international laws,
international treaties. These mechanis ms allow states to
mutually address their common interests and their individual
self-interest through collective action. Now the rules and
regulations that emerge at the international level through this
process actually create expectations for behavior. They layout
standards of how states should operate. Think about treaties
regarding protecting the seas and pollution in the sea, or
pollution in the air, or any other kind of environmental
agreement, any other type of collective international agreement
that addresses a problem that transcends borders. This is a way
that states create expectations and constrain each other's
behavior. Now, of course, a realist response. What do you do if
somebody breaks the rules? How do you enforce these rules?
Therein lies the problem. Nonetheless, neoliberal are concerned
that we need to capture all of the global community when we
look at international relations and not just small aspects of it.
Not just power relations, not just military security, but larger
issues like economics, prosperity, science, technology, social
relations, environmental concerns. They are much more varied
in their agenda. States are much more varied in their agenda.
And neoliberal capture that. So as we've done before, now that
we've explored liberal, a neoliberal theory, put on those sets of
lenses and look at the global community and see how you view
issues like democracy promotion and Afghanistan. How would
you understand that if you are a liberal or a neoliberal and
wearing those sets of lenses, how might you view global

37. economic crisis or specifically economic crisis in Europe? If
you're a liberal or a neoliberal looking at it with those sets of
lenses. And then finally, how about piracy, maritime security?
How would you view the regulations and the various laws and
treaties that had been emerging in that issue area. If you're a
liberal or neoliberal, what do you think?
2
THEORIES THAT BEST ACCOUNTS FOR THE IRs TRENDS
1
THEORIES THAT BEST ACCOUNTS FOR THE IRs TRENDS
2
Comment by Adam: Hi, ZENESH, and welcome to the
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ex.cfm?PID=11954.

38. I hope these comments help!
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Student’s Name:
Theories That Best Accounts for The IRs Trend.
Professor’s Name:
Date. Comment by Adam: You have chosen a
Grammar/Mechanics targeted review, asking that your paper be
reviewed only for glaring errors in sentence structure, word
usage, spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and other grammar

39. issues. I will not be reviewing any other issues.
International relations can be described as the study of how
states relate to one another and with international organizations
as well as other subnational entities such as political parties. It
can be said that having a better understanding of international
relations helps people to gain more insights and in-depth
knowledge about global issues (Hay, 2016). The study of
international relations also helps people to understand important
subjects whose emphasis is placed on various aspects of human
life such as cultural elements, education, economic aspects,
political science, and the major influences such aspects have on
society. Comment by Adam: If a list contains more than two
items, they should be separated by commas (or semicolons if
longer or complex). If the list is an appositive, a colon is
used to introduce it; otherwise no punctuation is used in this
position. See GrammarBook.com for more information.
A conjunction is used before the final item in a list or
series. For example, instead of “For dinner, Barb wanted fish,
broccoli, sweet potatoes,” the correct alternative would be “For
dinner, Barb wanted fish, broccoli, and sweet potatoes.” See the
OWC’s resource on conjunctions
here: https://www.liberty.edu/casas/academic-success-
center/wp-content/uploads/sites/28/2019/04/Conjuctions.pdf.
Based on the questions and the readings provided among the key
features of international relations need to be considered before
selecting one of the theories that best accounts for its trends is
the origin of wars and attempts to restore peace, the nature of
power, and how nations exercise their people in relation to
promoting peace as well as changing charter of states and non-
state actors who take part in international decision making
(Erskine, 2020). With respect to the question, I think all the

40. three theories highlighted in the questions can be applied to
account for constant trends in the international systems.
Comment by Adam: A comma is used to separate an
introductory word, phrase, or clause from the rest of the
sentence. For example, instead of “Before class started Wayne
went to the office,” the correct alternative would be “Before
class started, Wayne went to the office.” There is an excellent
presentation on comma usage on the OWC’s
website: https://www.liberty.edu/casas/academic-success-
center/wp-content/uploads/sites/28/2019/04/Commas.pdf.
Comment by Adam: It feels like a word is missing here
See this helpful resource for more
information: https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/word-
choice/
APPLY THROUGHOUT Comment by Adam: Every sentence
requires a subject and a predicate. The subject is the noun
(person, place, or thing) performing the action or upon whom
the action is performed. Consider the following: “As reported
by Smith, declared that the tests were invalid.” This is a
fragment; it has no subject. “Smith” is apparently the intended
subject, but because it is part of a prepositional phrase, it
cannot be a subject. The correct alternative would be “Smith
declared that the tests were invalid,” or “As reported by Smith,
the test was invalid.” There is an excellent presentation on
sentence fragments on the OWC website
at: https://www.liberty.edu/casas/academic-success-center/wp-
content/uploads/sites/28/2019/04/Sentence-Fragments.pdf
APPLY THROUGHOUT
According to the realism theory with respect to international
relations and systems, it is assumed that states are the primary
actors of the international relation system, and there is nothing
like supernational international authority. As per realism
theory, many nations may be in constant conflict with each

41. other because they are acting in response to protect their own
interest and secure power for self-preservations. Such powers
will be used to defend the state's interest in politics, economic
and social life (Erskine, 202). Realism theory as an approach
attempting to explain the international relations system, its key
tenets value the role of nation-states with the assumptions that
nation-states are only motivated to react in accordance to their
national interest, which is disguised as their moral concerns.
Comment by Adam: You have used more words here than
necessary to make your point. Graduate level writing is to be
clear and concise. Consider revising. Please see the helpful
resource on the OWC website
at: https://www.liberty.edu/casas/academic-success-center/wp-
content/uploads/sites/28/2019/04/Wordiness.pdf Comment by
Adam:
The items in a series or list must be parallel in form and
structure. See GrammarBook.com for more information.
APPLY THROUGHOUT
Comment by Adam: A comma is used before the
conjunction preceding the last item in a list or series of three or
more items to give all items equal importance. For example,
instead of “In the baseball game, Sue got a walk, made a hit and
scored a run,” the correct alternative would be “In the baseball
game, Sue got a walk, made a hit, and scored a run.” There is an
excellent presentation on comma usage on the OWC’s
website: https://www.liberty.edu/casas/academic-success-
center/wp-content/uploads/sites/28/2019/04/Commas.pdf
On the other hand, neoliberalism theory holds that international
relation systems and institutions must be perceived as
agreements between or among actors that could be deployed to
reduce uncertainty. Many nations have adopted the concepts of
neoliberalism theory to try and bring to an end existing
diplomatic conflict among various nations of the world for the

42. wellbeing of respective citizens. Other than that, neoliberalism
principles assume that international cooperation is sustainable
and the contracts between actors may be employed to reduce
conflict, competition, reduce transaction cost as well as
facilitate collaborative problem solving (Barder, 2019).
Comment by Adam: Avoid beginning a paragraph with a
conjunction that should refer to the previous sentence. For
example, “Furthermore, …”, “However, …”, etc. There is an
excellent presentation on paragraph construction on the OWC
website at: https://www.liberty.edu/casas/academic-success-
center/wp-
content/uploads/sites/28/2019/04/Paragraph_Construction.pdf
Finally, constructivism theory may also be applied to accounts
on the IR system as it assumes that social norms form the basic
structure of international politics whose influence shapes
actors’ identities along with their interests (Barder, 2019). As
provided by constructivism theory, international relations are
only influenced by ideas, norms, and identity, which are
constructed around historical and social aspects of human life
and not material factors. As per my understanding of the
international theory, constructivism theory has greater value
and compatibility with the Christian worldview. Constructivism
theory is built around social and cultural anthropology, whose
principles are utilized to theorize secularism to elaborate on
how religious-based ideas and actors could be deployed to
reshape political and international relation system.
Comment by Adam: Thank you for allowing me to review
your assignment today. You have done good job organizing
ideas into paragraphs; however, some improvement is needed
in sentence construction. I recommend reviewing the linked
writing aids on sentences for healp learning to identify the
subject and verb. I recommend checking each sentence for a
clear subject and verb, which should greatly enhance your
writing. Please be sure to complete the Student Satisfaction

43. Survey located at the bottom of your completed request. If you
have any additional questions, please contact the OWC
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form. If you would like further assistance with this
assignment, schedule a live appointment here or contact us
using our live chat feature. Finally, you may avail yourself
of the many writing aids on the OWC website.
References
Barder, A. D. (2019). Social constructivism and actor-network
theory. Tactical Constructivism, Method, and International
Relations, 38-50. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315109039-4
Erskine, T. (2020). 13. Normative international relations
theory. International Relations Theories, 236-
262. https://doi.org/10.1093/hepl/9780198814443.003.0013
Hay, C. (2016). 15. International relations theory and
globalization. International Relations
Theories. https://doi.org/10.1093/hepl/9780198707561.003.0016
Jung, H. (2019). The evolution of social constructivism in
political science: Past to present. SAGE Open, 9(1),
215824401983270. https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244019832703
Theys, S. (2018, August 5). Introducing constructivism in
international relations theory. E-International
Relations. https://www.e-ir.info/2018/02/23/introducing-
constructivism-in-international-relations-theory/
Joseph Nye - On Soft Power
What power is the ability to get what you want from others?
And you can do three ways. You can do it with coercion. You
can do with payment, or you can do it with attraction,
persuasion, coercion, and payment, I call hard power, the ability
yet what you want through retraction persuasion is soft power.
Well, probably the greatest example would be the Cold War.
When the Berlin Wall went down. It did not go down under
artillery barrage of hard power that went down under people

44. wielding hammers and bulldozers. Mothers, their minds have
been changed. They've been attracted and persuaded. And that's
an example of soft power that was created by culture and values
ideas. People on the eastern side had lost their faith and
communism. And they basically were changed or those views or
change the retraction and persuasion. That's a good example of
soft power as you could want. Well, if a country has a culture
which is attractive to others, it may make other countries more
willing to hear its views or to sympathize with its views. And
countries spend a fair amount on that for the United States.
State Department, under Secretary for Public Policy with a
budget that supports people in different national capitals and
other parts of countries to get American culture and ideas
across. But probably the biggest source of soft power is not
what the government does. It's everything from Hollywood,
Harvard, It's American entertainment. The American
universities. Probably more to convey American culture than
anything else. Other countries like China are making major
efforts to increase their soft power. Hu Jintao told the 17th
Party Congress in 2007 that China had to invest more in its soft
power and they spent billions and billions of dollars on it. The
problem the Chinese have is they think the government create
soft power and they're not willing to let their civil society free
to basically act internationally the way that Western European,
or American civil societies able to do. And that sets limits on
their soft power. Well, there totalitarian societies do we'll self-
power. Adolf Hitler was a master of the propaganda cinema. So
it's not as though democracies alone, we'll talk power. But it's
true that in a world in which you have modern communications,
revolution and more openness. If you have societies that are
open, that may help in terms of increasing the numbers channels
of soft power. That's why when we talk about public diplomacy,
we're not talking about diplomacy between states to states.
We're talking about diplomacy in which you communicate the
public in another country. And it may not be that
communication from government one to the public and state

45. number two, it baby, communication between public and state
number 1 to the public and state number two, this is sometimes
called nowadays Twitter diplomacy. And it's a factor to
consider. It might members Soviets had a good deal of soft
power in 945. In Europe, for example, the Soviet Union was
regarded as very attractive because it stood up to the fascism.
Hitler had the fascism, mussolini. And when you had elections
in Italy and in France, communist one, very large numbers
coming close to majorities. And I think in that sense the Soviets
had a good deal of soft power. They lost that soft power with
time as people began to realize how repressive Soviet society
was internally. And as they saw the invasion of Hungary to
repress a popular revolt and hungry Soviet soft power began to
erode. And so by the time you got to the late sixties and early
seventies, ironically, Soviet hard power had increased the
number of missiles and the size of the armies and so forth. But
Soviets soft power was in severe decline. Not necessarily. Its
soft power is the ability who tracked. And you can make efforts
to make yourself attractive. But basically, if it rests, country's
culture, values and policies. Culture and values are long-term
propositions. Policies can change within an administration
where a leader, but culture and values tend to be longer in
duration. Well, remember he's soft power. Doesn't just here
enlarge country. Small countries can use soft power as well.
Norway. It is a country of only about 5 million people, and it's
not part of the European Union. But it is followed policies such
as being seen as a peacemaker, such as giving 1% of its gross
domestic product to overseas development assistance, which are
attractive to others. So Norway has indeed use policies to
enhance its soft power. Under addition to that, Norway is
regarded as a well-ordered society and attractive society the
way they implement their values at home. And that adds
Norway soft power. Well, you can see it in the invasion of Iraq.
The United States went into Iraq without the legitimacy of a
second the United Nations resolution. And when you look at
public opinion polls, you see that the US lost about 20 to 30

46. points of attractiveness on public opinion polls scales in
western Europe. But an even more dramatic example is
Indonesia, which is the largest Muslim country in the world. In
the year 2000, the United States was attractive to 75% of
Indonesians. After the invasion of Iraq, that drops to 15 percent.
15. That's a huge loss of soft power. No, it can be regained, for
example, when the United States helped or use the Navy ships
to help provide tsunami relief. After the 2000 45 tsunami. Then
you've got an appreciation of the attractive aspects of the
United States. And the poll show the United States going back
up into about 40% range and Indonesia. Yes, in fact, soft power
is not a zero-sum game. For example, if China's sets up a
Confucius Institute to make Chinese culture more attractive in
the United States. Presumably that can enhance China's soft
power. The US, they have US uses an exchange program to
make the United States more attractive inside China. That
increases American soft power inside China. If we're both
interested in avoiding conflict between the United States and
China, which I think we are, that increase in soft power
attractiveness of each country to each other is a win-win. Oh,
absolutely. If, if our culture is unattractive to others than a
given cultural artifact doesn't produce soft power. They produce
the opposite. They produce revulsion. So you take an American
TV program or American film in which women are shown
running around and bikinis and divorcing their husbands and
working. And you show that in Saudi Arabia or Iran, that's not
attractive to the religious conservatives who rule those
countries. But there is an interesting dimension to that. If you
ask, is they watch attractive to the Molas who run Iran. Clearly
not, doesn't create nice soft power. But if you ask, what do
young Iranian teenagers want? They want to see an American
video in the privacy of their homes. So you can attract some
people and repulse or repel others at the same time. Well, I
think a lot of the reputation of a country or its attractiveness
goes deeper. Cultural value issues that governments don't
control. But certainly if governments do things that are

47. unattractive, can, can counter veil those, those attractive
aspects. Take the 1950's, when Africa was becoming
independent. The United States culture was quite racist. Me we
had formal segregation in many states in the United States. And
at the same time we are trying to attract leaders. Of newly
independent African countries. And the ad, if they were going
to travel to the US and wanted to take a bus ride from
Washington DC, Richmond, Virginia, or Macon, Georgia. They
couldn't go into the same restaurants are the same recitations
that whites could. Well, that did not increase American
attractiveness of the newly independent states of Africa. And so
there's an example in which culture and policies undercut our
soft power. Like American diplomats who accurately project
American culture in general, are able to have a beneficial effect
that made some of the successful diplomats are ones who, who
have exhibitions of American films who bring but modern
American art and culture who range, who travel, who get
outside the embassy. Don't just talk to other government
officials, but meet people in different settings who express
something about the, the openness of American culture. Well,
Brazil is, is a very attractive, not just in South America, but in
lieu. So culture of the Portuguese language. So there are parts
of South America which you are Spanish-speaking, which are
not necessarily attracted by Brazil. But if you look at Angola,
Mozambique, or Portugal and so forth, you find that there's
strong ties there. And even within the Spanish-speaking parts of
Latin America, there's some rivalry between some Spanish
speaking countries like Argentina, Mexico, and Brazil. There
are many South America who admire Brazil and Brazil's culture
of football and carnival and so forth, are universal. They
tracked a lot of people in North America as well. Well, in the
Cold War, we not only had broadcasts like Voice of America, an
exchange programs that the government sponsored, but in
general, you found American popular groups, rock musicians,
for example, going to Russia. And in both the music and the
lyrics, you are able to express values of freedom which and

48. openness, which I think further eroded the belief and
communism and made America look attractive. So they
exchange programs, culture programs, so forth. These all help
in terms of promoting soft piRNA a, an active diplomacy has to
have this cultural diplomacy as part of its public diplomacy.
Well, if the Americans are wise in the way we pursue our
power, we realize that a smart power strategy combines hard
and soft power. And you can't accomplish everything with soft
power alone, which can accomplish everything with hard power
low, most effective policies are those which successfully have
hard and soft power reinforce each other. The example of a
failure there was, I think gives me mentioned earlier the
invasion of Iraq. Where do we relied on heartbeat harden it
undercut our soft power. But I think you can argue that a smart
power strategy for the United States in the future, before it
takes a step, we'll say, how do I make sure of that? Hard and
soft power reinforcing each other? Well as smart diplomat is
able to do vote for me. A diplomat is going to have to convey
messages from government to government. Sometimes it's very
high levels, very private, not at all public. But that same
diplomat who may have gone to call on the prime minister or
president at 11 AM ME that afternoon at four PM, have a
showing of an American film or may go to what's called an
American Corner where you have American books and culture
being displayed and a local library. So a good diplomat learns
to both. A successful diplomat is somebody who can represent
his or her country. And that means that they not only can be
inaccurate and faithful messenger and reporter and interpreter
of what's conveyed in these messages. But also an accurate
representative or faithful representative of the culture of their
country. So they want to be both a good messenger at the
highest levels, but also a good representative at the Broad and
pop your levels. Foreign Service, which is an admirable group
of people when I worked in the state part my highs and pressed
and how good they were and how hard they worked with the
amount of credit they got. I think the hard thing will be

49. adjusting to a modern communications revolution. To realize
that some of the traditional skills of being a good, accurate
messenger, reporter and analysts have to be supplemented by a
greater capacity to represent and communicate to broad
audiences.
2
The United States' Geographic Challenge
The United States of America encompasses territory spanning
from the Arctic Circle and Central Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico
and the North Atlantic. The greater Mississippi basin is the
United States has core and serves as the underpinning of its role
as a global superpower. The base and hosts an extensive
network of navigable rivers that overlay the world's largest
contiguous piece of arable land. This naturally interconnected
river system facilitated integration among settlers and allowed
for cheap transport of goods. Providing the United States with
the ability to feed itself efficiently and rapidly build up industry
and capital to expand west.
The Midwestern core gave early America strategic depth, while
an expanding US coastline naturally indented with deep harbors,
provided it's opening to the world. After reaching the Pacific
Coast in the mid-19th century, the US found itself insulated by
two oceans. On the continent itself. Geography again has
worked in the countries favor Lakes to the North and deserts to
the south. Insulate the United States as population centers. With
both Canada and Mexico facing too many natural constraints of
their own to seriously rival it.
This unparalleled level of wealth and protection gives the
United States options that no other country can claim. For one.
The United States has used its wealth and security to build the
world's largest Navy. Control of the world's major sea lanes
gives the United States the power to facilitate or deny trade to
allies or rivals of the day. The onus, therefore, is on the United
States to carefully manage its engagements abroad and buil d up

50. strategic allies to protect its overseas interests and preserve its
strength at home.
Stephen M. Walt: What Went Wrong with Liberalism?
Today, liberalism is under threat on multiple fronts. Roger cone
of the New York Times writes, the forces of disintegration are
on the march. The foundations of the post-war world are
trembling. The World Economic Forum says the liberal world
order is being challenged by powerful authoritarian movements
and anti-liberal fundamentalists. Democracy expert Larry
Diamond at Stanford points out that between 2000 and 2015,
democracy broke down in 27 countries. And many already
authoritarian regimes became even less open and or less
responsive to their citizens. Efforts to build stable democracies
in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Balkans mostly failed. The Arab
Spring quickly turned into an Arab Winter almost everywhere.
Britain has now voted to leave the EU, signaling
disenchantment with the most ambitious liberal project in
Europe, turkey, Poland, Hungary, Israel, all headed in illiberal
directions, or right-wing party in Germany beat Angela Merkel
coalition in local elections last week. And not to forget, the
Republican Party in the United States has nominated a
presidential candidate who openly disdains the tolerance that is
central to liberal societies, repeatedly expresses racist beliefs
and cottons to baseless conspiracy theories. So the question is
what went wrong between 93 and today? I blame this on several
interrelated factors. The first is that we over-promise what
liberalism could deliver. They argued, promoters of the liberal
experiment argued that spreading democracy, spreading human
rights, spreading open markets, and all of these things would
guarantee peace and prosperity everywhere and largely for
everyone. But of course, that turned out not to be the case. Just
thinking of how the spread of markets works, it creates winners,
often far more winners and losers, but it does create some
losers. People who do not do well, at least in the short-term. As
a result, the ladder are rarely happy about it, and the latter can

51. use the same institutions of democracy to make that discontent
known. To make matters worse, liberal elites in a number of
places made some serious policy blunders. My favorite list,
apart from the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the creation of the Euro
in Europe widely forecast to be a disaster and proven to be
indeed mismanaging the American economy, leading to the
financial crisis of 2008. And then especially in Europe,
overdoing the politics and the policies of austerity after 2008,
therefore, prolonging the economic crisis. Third, some liberal
states used non-liberal means to try and spread liberal values
with a predictable lack of success. And here are the classic
example is the Iraq war. But it's also true of the Western
interventions in Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, and elsewhere.
Mckee lesson to draw from that is that military force turns out
to be a terrible tool for spreading liberal values. Finally,
although liberals are generally supportive of the idea of national
self-determination, they failed to appreciate just how persistent
and powerful nationalism would be and how these local
identities of various kinds would remain even in the midst of
the liberal project, the European Union supposed to transcend
nationalism, create a new pan-European identity. Where
national identities would really only emerge, say, during the
European Soccer Cup or something like that. But it's clear, of
course, in 2016 that this did not happen. The United States
failed to appreciate that creating the formal institutions of
democracy was not enough to create a liberal society without
norms of tolerance and other imbedded social values. And
again, that's especially true if you try to do that with armed
force. Finally, it turns out that many people in many places care
as much about national identities, historical entities, territorial
symbols, traditional cultural values as they do about freedom, or
as they do about purely economic benefits. And that those
sentiments I think loom especially large when change is very
rapid and when mostly homogeneous societies are forced to
assimilate people whose backgrounds are different in a very
short span of time. Again, we, I think we know for American

52. History, which we always extol as the successful melting pot.
But we know that in fact, there have been many moments of
tension when new arrivals have experienced resistance. And that
blending cultures within a single polity has never been
particularly smoother simple when that happens and especially
when it's happening rapidly. It provides grist for populous
leaders who promise to defend traditional values or make the
country great. Again, nostalgia ain't what it used to be, but it is
still a very formidable political motivation. And then finally, I
would play some blame on ruling elites in a number of liberal
societies, especially the United States, where the operation of
money in our politics and special interests have created not to
be candid and essentially corrupt political class that is
increasingly out of touch with ordinary people interested in
enriching themselves and largely immune to accountability. The
sense, in short, that the game is rigged in favor of the 1%. It's
where a lot of this populist anger comes from. And I think is
reflected not just in the Trump campaign, but was also reflected
in surprising success of Bernie Sanders. On the other end.
Structural Realism: International Relations
Basically, what I am is a structural realist. I'm a person who
believes that it's the structure of the international system. It's
the architecture of the international system that explains in
large part how states behave. Another way to say that is, I do
not believe that domestic politics, I do not believe that the
composition or the makeup of individual states matters for very
much, for how those states behave on a day-to-day basis and
international politics. And to be a bit more specific about this, I
believe the fact that states live in what we call an anarchic
system. That's a system where there is no higher authority that
those states can turn to if they get into trouble. That fact,
coupled with the fact that states can never be certain that they
won't end up living next door to a really powerful state that has
malign intentions. All of that causes states to do everything
they can to be as powerful as possible. And again, the reason

53. that you want to be very powerful, that you want to pursue
power, that you want to dominate your region of the world is
because in that situation, there is no other state that is capable
of hurting you. If you're small and you're weak. In the
international system, that means you're vulnerable. You don't
have a lot of power. What happens is the big, powerful states in
a position where they can take advantage of you. And agai n,
because the system is anarchic, because there's no higher
authority that sits above States. There's nobody that you can
turn to. There's no night watchman that you can call, telephone
to come and help you. So you're in a very vulnerable situation.
And the way to avoid that is to be very powerful. And to give
you a good example that really highlights this, think about the
United States of America in the Western Hemisphere. The
United States is by far the most powerful country in the western
hemisphere. It has the Canadians on its northern border. It has
the Mexicans on its southern border. It has fish on its eastern
border and fish on its western border. No American ever goes to
bed at night worrying about another country attacking it. And
the reason is because the United States is so powerful. So the
ideal situation for any state in the international system is to be
as powerful as possible, because that's the best way to survive
in a system where there is no higher authority, no night
watchman, and where you can never be certain that you won't
end up living next door to another country that has malign
intentions. Now a lot of military power in the world, the
realism, there are basically two sets of theories there. What one
might call the human nature realist theories, structural realists
theories. The human nature realists and Hans Morgenthau, Of
course, would be the most prominent example of this school of
thought. Believe that human beings are hard wired with what
Morgenthau called an animist dominant undying. To put this in
slightly different terms, Morgenthau was saying that all human
beings are born with a type a personality. And when they get
into power, what they want to do is pursue power as an end in
itself. So in that story, it's human nature. It's the way human

54. beings are born that causes all this conflict in the international
system. That's a very different way of thinking about the world
than the structural realist argument. Structural realists like me
and like Ken Waltz believed that it is the structure of the
international system. It is the architecture of the system, not
human nature that causes states to behave aggressively. That's
what causes states to engage in security competition. It's the
fact that there's no higher authority above States. And that
states can never be certain that another state won't come after
them militarily somewhere down the road. That drives the states
to engage in security competition. So although both real as
schools of thought lead to the same form of behavior, which is a
rather aggressive kind of competition. The root causes are
different in the two stories. Again, on one side, you have the
human nature realists who focus on the way human beings are
hard wired. And on the other side you have the structural
realists who focus on the basic way that the system is
organized. My view is that. The most important questions in
international politics or what a theory should be concerned
with. And there are really only a few big questions out there
that matter. And these questions largely involve ward piece.
And I think one of the great advantages of realism is that it has
a lot to say, doesn't provide perfect answers, but it has a lot to
say about the big questions in international politics. And one of
the attractions of realism is that it is a parsimonious theory,
which is a sophisticated way of saying it's a simple theory.
Realism is easy to understand. The handful of factors are said to
describe why the world or to explain why the world works in
particular ways. Why you get these very important events like
World War One and World War two. And I think that that's the
most important thing the theory can do is to provide simple
explanations for very important events. This is not to say that
we shouldn't have theories that explain minor actions or minor
considerations or peripheral situations in the international
system. But the most important theories by definition, are going
to be those theories that deal with the big questions. The

55. theories that are going to matter the most. And I believe this is
why structural realism matter so much of those theories that are
nice and simple, that are parsimonious. I believe that if China
continues to rise economically, that it will translate that
economic me into military might, and that it will try to
dominate Asia, the way the United States dominates the Western
Hemisphere. I think that China, for good realist reasons, we'll
try to become a hegemon in Asia. Because I believe the Chinese
understand now and will certainly understand in the future that
the best way to survive in the international system is to be
really powerful. The Chinese understand full well what
happened to them between 850 and 950 when they were very
weak? They understand what the European great powers, the
United States and the Japanese did to them. And they want to
make sure in the future that they're going to be very powerful.
So I think they'll try to dominate Asia. The United States, on
the other hand, does not tolerate what we sometimes called peer
competitors. The United States does not want China to dominate
Asia. In the United States will go to enormous lengths to
prevent China from dominating Asia. And of course, China's
neighbors. This includes Japan, South Korea, Singapore,
Vietnam, India, and Russia will not want China to dominate
Asia. So, they will join with the United States to try to contain
China. Much the way our European and Asian allies joined
together with us during the Cold War to contain the Soviet
Union. The same thing I believe will happen with China. So you
will have this intense security competition between China,
which is trying to dominate Asia, and the United States and
China's neighbors, which are trying to prevent China from
dominating Asia. With regard to this question that lots of people
are talking about today, can China rise peacefully? My answer
is no. And my answer is based on my theory because there's no
way you can predict the future without a theory. Get more from
the university, check out the links on screen now.
https://youtu.be/RXllDh6rD18

56. 2
International Relations – Liberal Theory
Liberalism is a theory of international politics that believes the
fundamental force in world politics is globalization. And
globalization is interdependence between the interests of groups
in different societies. And those groups then go to their
governments and ask them to regulate globalization in different
ways. And those vary demands that come from groups in
different societies lead those governments to act in different
ways. So that leads to a world system that has states with quite
varied state preferences about what they want the ultimate
outcome of international politics to be. So you can think of
liberalism as a bottom up theory where globalization drives
different state preferences and those different state preferences
drive what states do. Liberal theories of international relations
start with individuals and groups. In society is the basic actors.
They represent their interests to states. Now you could think of
those states as cities, even tribes, empires, any kind of political
actors. Although in the modern world, most such political actors
are states, you believe is liberals do that the fundamental force
in international politics is the distribution of social and state
preferences. Then that leads you to look in a particular place for
the basic forces that drive state behavior. And there are three
kinds of liberal theory that helps you do that. The first is
commercial liberal theory, and it directs you to look at the
material interests of states, particularly their economic interest
in managing interdependence in a way that's profitable to the
dominant groups in a society at a given time. The second is
ideational, interdependent. Ideational liberalism that focuses
you on the ideals and beliefs of groups in society and their
effort to realize those ideals in international relations. And the
third is Republican Liberalism that focuses you on domestic
institutions. And domestic institutions help select which groups
it is in society whose interests and ideals are represented by the

57. state at any point in time, you put these three things together,
interests, ideas, and institutions. And you get a comprehensive
view of the different factors that influence what the preferences
of states are. And therefore, in the liberal view, what they want
and therefore what they do. Some people think that liberal
theory is on parsimonious. They say, you're trying to explain
preferences, then you've got these three types of preferences,
commercial, Republican, and ideational liberalism and then sub
theories within it. Isn't that very complicated. I'm sure my
friend John Mearsheimer, who talks about realism, we'll say,
I've just got five principles. I can do it much more simply. I
think a theory needs to be as simple or complicated as the
material it's trying to study. The world is a diverse place. We
need a theory that can handle that. The test of a good theory is
whether or not it generates particular mid-range claims at the
level of things like the democratic peace hypothesis or theories
of trade or explanations of how countries comply with
international organizations that are relatively simple and
relatively powerful based on that criterion. And the liberal
theory is a powerful and relatively simple theory. And that's the
criterion I think is most pragmatic useful. And so, when I use a
distinctive aspect of liberal theory is its ability to explain a
wide variation in outcomes that we actually see in the
international system. So liberal theories are extremely powerful
in explaining cooperative outcomes in the international system
because it can predict the conditions under which countries have
convergent interests. For example, in the post-war international
economic system, where countries had expanding interests in
mutually beneficial trade. We've seen the growth of
international organizations to manage international trade such
as the WTO, the World Trade Organization, and the European
Union to do that job. Also, able to explain, as I mentioned
before, are the democratic peace phenomena that democracies
tend to cooperate amongst each other and not go to war with
each other at the same time. It's capable of explaining in a very
differentiated way when states go to war to predict

58. circumstances under which they do, for example, liberals would
predict that democratic and non-democratic states are states
with opposed ideologies, say communist and noncommunist
states. Or states with different competing visions of religious
future for the world would be more likely to go to war and other
sorts of states. This is in contrast to a realist. Theory, if you
compare realism to liberalism, realism argues that the causes of
war and peace can be seen in the distribution of power. Realists
such as Hans Morgenthau and John Mearsheimer argue that the
causes of war and peace can be explained by the distribution of
coercive power. Notice that liberals are quite different. They
argue that the causes of state behavior lie in the distribution of
state preferences. This is something that realists affirmatively
deny. They argue that it really doesn't matter what motivation
states have, what intentions they have, what domestic regimes
they have, what in what ideologies they have, states will act the
same on the basis of what distribution of power exists in the
international system. That's quite a radical hypothesis. That
Stalin's Russia, Hitler's Germany and Franklin Roosevelt's
United States, and Churchill's Britain will all act the same,
given the same amount of power, liberals find this absurd. We
believe that in fact those domestic differences really matter, and
history does barris out. It's often thought that realists theories
are systemic theories and liberal theories are domestic theories.
This is a distinction that Kenneth Waltz introduced into the
literature. I disagree with this distinction. Both liberal theories
and realist theories or systemic theories in the sense that waltz
use the term, what is a systemic theory? It's a theory that says
that the causes of state behavior lie in the configuration of
characteristics of states. The only difference between realists’
theories and liberal theories in this regard is the, is the
particular characteristic that these theories choose to emphasize.
For realists theories that characteristic is coercive power. And
the distribution of coercive power across the international
system is what determines what each state does. For liberals,
the critical characteristic is the distribution of social

59. preferences and state preferences across the international
system. The critical difference is that one is about coercive
power and the other one is about social preferences. What might
think that US China relations, great power, superpower relations
is a last place we should look for liberal theory to be effective.
But in fact, I think it works very well in this case, if we look at
Western policy toward China, the first thing to note about it is
that the main line of Western policy, the major emphasis of it is
engagement. Our bet with regard to China in the United States
and in the Western world, that by trading with China, by
opening China up, we will make China Amore Pacific country, a
country that's easier to deal with because it will become richer,
more educated, and more agreeable in every regard. That's the
main line of Western policy. Now it's true that Western policy
also has certain elements that might be better explained by other
theories. For example, we do balanced China to a certain extent
than a realist. My point that out, we do try to integrate China
into international organizations and an institutionalist might
point that out. Do we even try to socialize Chinese officials into
thinking a different way about international relations? And a
constructivist might try to point that out. But the main wager
that we're placing with regard to China is that economic
development, domestic regime changes and changes in ideas,
fundamental ideas about legitimacy in China will make it a
country that we can deal with over the long-term. In fact, that's
how the whole process got started. We didn't really start dealing
with China as a partner that we could deal with across the full
range of policies until Mao was replaced by Deng Xiaoping.
And that was a domestic change in China, a fundamental change
in the purposes of that regime, which led to a change in our
relationship with it. I don't think realists or institutionalists, or
constructivists can really give a coherent account of that. But it
gives, it follows directly from liberal theory, which tells you
that when regimes fundamentally change their purposes, foreign
policy changes follow. Get moved from the city. Check out the
links on screen now.

60. 2
Realism vs Idealism
I want to say a few sentences about how I looked at the will.
Because in the American public discussion deaths, often the
argument, should one look at the world from a realistic point of
view or from an idealistic point of view. I think that is a false
dichotomy. One have to begin with an assessment of the
situation as it is. If one cannot do that, one cannot make any
predictions about the future. But one cannot rest on the
situation as it is. Because what happens, especially in times of
turmoil, it's the challenge of moving the world from where it is
debated heads, not GAAP. And that requires vision. And
idealism.
5 Most Influential Presidential Doctrines
Welcome to the history doctors top five presidential foreign
policy doctrines. What is a foreign policy doctrine by a
President? Presidential doctrine is just a statement of goals that
America has in its relationships with other countries. First, we'll
share a broad overview of the top five. And then we'll break
each one down. The number one most significant presidential
foreign policy doctrine in our history was the Monroe Doctrine
from 820 three, a 123 divided the world into Western and
Eastern hemispheres and told the Europeans, keep out of our, of
our neighborhood, of our backyard. So we divided the world
into East and West. The second one is the Roosevelt Corollary
to the Monroe Doctrine. President Theodore Roosevelt, that is,
at the turn of the last century, Roosevelt essentially announced
that America was going to be the policeman of Latin America
and South America. That America help for itself the right of
intervention in the, in the finances and political affair s of our
neighbors in Latin and South America. The third most important
foreign policy doctrine is the Truman Doctrine. That's 940
seven really was the benchmark of the policy of containment.

61. Let's forward out to number four. In 1969, President Richard
Nixon comes in with the Nixon Doctrine with the goal of
getting us out of the Vietnam War simultaneous to South
Vietnam, still standing as an anti-communist state. Lastly, we're
going to call it the Bush Doctrine of 2003. President Bush
declared war on the Axis of Evil and gave America the political
and moral authority to overthrow and regime change any nation
in the world that Harvard and supported terrorists. The top
number one foreign policy does the Monroe Doctrine. It was the
brainchild of Secretary of State John Quincy Adams. James
Monroe announced to European powers that no longer would the
Western Hemisphere be open ground, open opportunity for
European colonialism. Monroe declared that the Europeans were
to stay on their side of the world. And we would stay on our
side of the world. And this is something that persisted really for
hundreds of years. The Monroe Doctrine was invoked by later
presidents. For example, in 845, John Tyler invokes the Monroe
Doctrine as, as a reason for saying that Britain could not hold
any possessions or territory in Texas. John Kennedy invoked the
Monroe Doctrine in claiming that the Soviet Union could not
have any kind of military presence in Cuba out 1902, President
Theodore Roosevelt essentially declared that America would be
the policeman of Latin America and South America. President
Roosevelt gave America the authority, political and moral, to
police the financial and political affairs of all of our neighbors
to the south. Some nations in Latin and South America regard us
with great suspicion as the big, powerful ******* of the North.
Roosevelt Corollary did establish American dominance,
financial dominance. And many times, since 1902, American
marines were dispatched to some Latin or South American
nation to restore order there after some tumbled. President
Harry Truman's Truman Doctrine is the benchmark of
containment. Essentially, the Soviet Union was threatening
Greece and Turkey with internal revolts and insurgencies to
bring down the pro-Western government, governments in those
nations and install communist governments. Instead. The Soviet

62. Union has a bleep in the Black Sea. The only way out of the
Black Sea is through the Bosporus Strait and the Dardanelles,
control by Greece and Turkey. If America controls Greece and
Turkey or its friends do, then we can bottle up the Soviet Black
Sea fleet and it cannot reach the Mediterranean. And then the
Mediterranean will remain a place of American and NATO
dominance. So, we were President Truman that is trying to keep
the Soviet Navy out of the Mediterranean and enact policy. He
was successful. Greece and Turkey stood as anti-communist
States. And the policy of containment was established and
sustained for decades to come through the Truman Doctrine.
Number four is the Nixon Doctrine. America was embroiled in a
bitter and divisive war in Southeast Asia. The American people
wanted to bring the troops home. Nixon understood. If he
withdrew the American troops all at once overnight, South
Vietnam would collapse and North Vietnam would, would
succeed in conquering. So, the Nixon Doctrine is synonymous
with what we call Vietnam asean. The Nixon Doctrine
essentially succeeded. Another painful point I'd like to make
about the Nixon Doctrine. If you're at the dentist, the dentist
does not pull a tooth slowly. That would be agony for the
American troops in South Vietnam. If 50000 go home neck this
month, a soldier might say, well, I don't want to go out in the
field to fight today. My unit might get withdraw next month. So
understanding that we were no longer there to win meant we
were there just to bring our troops home. A lot of our troops
became demoralized. Under Nixon. They started using drugs to
pass the time. They started resisting more aggressive officers
that wanted to continue to fight the war. Who would want to be
the last man to die in Vietnam if there was the chance that your
unit was going home next month? The last foreign policy
doctrine number five, in its importance will called the Bush
Doctrine of 2003. The nation that Harvard and supported
terrorists would be subjected to pre-emptive American attack.
That would change the regime of that nation, would overthrow
its leaders, is an int declared that America was at war with not

63. just the nations in the states that did 9, 11, but w ith any Islamic
radical regime, we were at war with a kind of regime. So, the
Bush Doctrine led us to invade Iraq in 2003, evict its leaders,
evict its government, and occupy control the nation until a
stable government emerged. Today, we have the possibil ity of a
Trump doctrine. What would a trumpet doctrine look? What
might Donald Trump apply the Bush Doctrine to nation states
like North Korea or Iran? Might he actually attempt a regime
changing military effort in those states? As we all know, history
isn't done with us yet.
2
In addition to the presentations, required readings, and other
external sources consulted, consider chapter 2 sections on
Structural Constants, Evolutionary Trends, and Thinking About
the World.
· Which of these three theories (realism, neoliberalism, or
constructivism) best accounts for the constants and trends of the
international system? If each of them can account for at least
some features of the system, then explain how. Advice: Pay
close attention to behavioral assumptions behind the theories
before seeking to apply them to features of the international
system. Part II: Based on your understanding of IR theory,
comment on whether or to what degree a particular theory is
compatible with a CWV (Christian World View).
Criteria Ratings Points
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64. Advanced
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13 to >0.0 pts
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65. Posts are loosely related to or
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Posts show a clear bias, or do
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66. 15 to >12.0 pts
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67. Work is presented with
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Minimal errors (1-2)
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Posts contain fewer
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Total Points: 50
Discussion Grading Rubric | PPOG540_D01_202140
2
Hi, Welcome to Module One,
American foreign policy Problems and Contexts.
This week we want to examine the basic problems in contexts of
US foreign policy. This will be an important foundation moving
forward. So, take note of some basic questions concerns,
1. How do we define US foreign policy?
2. Is there even an objective way to do this too?
3. Do We make a list of friends and enemies and go from there
with the list be refined or qualify based on US capabilities,
geopolitical facts?
4. Or are we committed to certain allies and policy is
independent of costs, whether measured in financial material?
For human terms,
5. How much of US foreign policy is the result of pragmatic
compromise between ideals and interests are differently
between ideals and real or perceived necessity?
6. Is there a kind of American exceptionalism or a providential
hand allowing American policymakers to avoid the kinds of

69. moral trade offs that have plagued all great powers in history?
7. Or do we face the same hard choices that all past empires,
monarchies, or regional hegemon us have had to make, in short,
for Americans to get what they think they want?
Typically, through their representatives. They first must make
choices, calculate interests, and assess costs. Before deciding
matters of policy. You'll encounter the language of hard and
soft power. It's become standard fair to compare these as broad
categories of policy instruments. Hard power is the traditional
use of all national assets and capabilities, military and
economic, in the service of maintaining regime power and
survival. If not, continuity of government in a crisis.
Soft power is the use of non-coercive policy tools of persuasion,
whether in the form of diplomacy, foreign aid, humanitarian
assistance, cross-cultural exchanges, access to U.S educational
institutions and opportunities.
Exemplary ideals like democracy or religious liberty, or simply
other non-coercive means of attracting allies rather than
enemies?
The questions to begin asking here are critical.
1. Does soft power require a bedrock of hard power to make it
an attractive policy instrument?
Or differently,
2. does hard power use, Co, use of coercive means tend to
nullify the possibility or effectiveness of self-power appeal?
You will decide this even if some time along down the road. To
talk about hard and soft power is to speak of ways to achieve
some broader vision of grand strategy. Many of you have heard
from biblical verse that without vision, the people perish. This
is likely true of many things in life, including foreign policy.
While it's critical to have hard and soft power capabilities,
including an educated population. Without prioritizing the use
of these assets, they can be wasted if not lost altogether in a
failed policy. Not surprisingly, because so many assumptions
are, the decisions must be made in the process of envisioning
US grand strategy.

70. It's no surprise to say that policy makers often debate and
disagree with one another and deciding how and where to both
maintain and position us strategic assets and capabilities. While
no single course can resolve such issues. A good place to begin
is with the eminent historian John Lewis Gaddis is work on
grand strategy. One practical mirror into attempts at broader
strategic policy has come to us via presidential foreign policy
doctrines. Pay attention to these in terms of ideals. He's in
practices since they are statements signaling American friends
and enemies of qi, qi US strategic priorities and policy red
lines. As with most US foreign policy in history, whether they
work as intended or not is arguable. But there is seldom any
question of what the intent is in terms of both principle in
practice.
In these precedential policy statement, students who reflect on
the distinction between rhetoric and reality through the prism of
at least three critical questions.
1. Is the policy intellectually coherent?
2. How much of it was influenced by domestic politics rather
than any grand strategic vision?
3. . And has it been, or is it tailored to consistency of
application?
This week is also an important opportunity to examine at least
key theory, three key theories of international relations. In
particular, students will want to understand realism,
neoliberalism, and constructivism. Sir, theories pay close
attention to rhetoric and reality here as well. Since IR theory is
a very contentious field of study, not only in the way that
experts define and qualify the terms, but whether any of these
matters to application of the theory to the real-world of
policymaking. Consider a quote from a respected source and IR
theory. Quote. There are a great many different theories and
IRR. They can be classified in a number of ways. What we call
a main theoretical tradition is not an objective entity. If you put
four IR theorists in a room, easily get 10 different ways of
organizing theory. And there will also be disagreement about

71. which theories are relevant in the first place. End quote. That's
from Jackson and Sorenson introduction to international
relations, theories, and approaches.
Close, closely related to theory debates is the question of how
best to characterize the behavioral pattern of the international
system or the structural constants of system behavior. A good
course on international relations would help here. But for now,
we can only offer three broad features of system behavior.
Namely,
is it decentralized, mainly self-help in nature, and stratified in
power and capabilities?
Students will want to begin asking why realism has traditionally
been the default theory most used to explain system behavior.
And whether the system features mentioned can also be
accounted for by the other two theories, if not others. Many
believe that despite its popular default mode, realism is
inadequate to explain evolutionary trends of system behavior.
Like it's greater diffusion of power, the proliferation of issues.
Even great powers cannot control without empowering other
system actors. The proliferation of international actors beyond
the traditional focus of states. And finally, the fact of regional
diversity. A good course on global governance will help
elaborate on all of these evolutionary trends. But for now, pay
attention to how and whether these trends will challenge of
realism as the default theory explaining the international
system. Most believe US foreign policy will express its
aspirations and interests on a power spectrum somewhere
between American hegemony at one end and globalization on
the other. As always, you will find your way here as you invest
more time and experience. These issues. Finally, note the over
the horizon issues in each chapter Have a great week.
2
Interests vs Values in Foreign Policy
There are two poles to the American foreign policy debate. One

72. is values, essentially the quality of life within a country's
borders. And then there's interests. Interests, if you will, tend to
be matters of economic or security or diplomatic importance.
So, interests could be such things as investments. Interest can
be access to raw materials. Interests can be stability. When you
speak about values really runs arrange and it deals mainly
though with the quality of life, the degree of opportunity, the
degree of freedom. It can be the basic ability of people to
survive, say, against a tyrannical regime. But it can also affect
political freedom or religious freedom. Could also involves
things about economics, standard of living, certain types of
economic opportunity. This fault line of interest versus values
can really be traced back over a century ago, say Woodrow
Wilson in the aftermath of World War 1. How much again
should the United States focus on the right of so-called self-
determination as opposed to it where to draw lines and how to
keep countries from going to war. And if you look at so many of
the current debates about American foreign policy, you
deconstruct them. But you see someone essentially arguing, we
should focus more on interests or more values. In this period of
history, I would actually argue that it's one of the more
complex, that there's more countries that are neither, if you
will, permanent friend or permanent foe, that it places a real
premium on diplomacy in ways that we haven't seen, say, in our
earlier periods of history, which tended to be more fixed and
less dynamic. And foreign policy again, you can't choose, if you
will, what it is that's out there. The behavior of other countries,
the nature of other countries simply arrives in your inbox.
You've gotta decide what to do with him. Take Egypt today,
should the United States be focusing on the restoration or
movement towards full democracy in Egypt. But she'll be
concern ourselves most with how the Egyptian government acts
against terrorism, which willingness to embrace peace with
Israel. So, there is always, I would argue, something of
attention or tradeoff between interests and values.

73. Constructivist Theory
Realists and liberals share in common the idea that states are
rational egoists. The latter concept refers to the idea that actors
do not care much about the welfare of others as an end in itself.
Neoliberal is, as we have seen, take this assumption and argue
that it is not incompatible with long-term cooperation. But what
is left unsaid here is that if act as judge, that cooperation is no
longer serving their long-term interest, then they will have no
compunction from exiting the cooperative arrangement. In
short, irrational egoist view of the social world is a statement
about an identity that does not change through interaction,
communication, or institutions. So, our hunters in the stag hunt
enter the hunters, rational egoists, and they remain rational
egoists throughout the hand and all the others to follow. No
bonding occurs around the campfire. No shared values develop,
no common obligations of felt and no sense of friendship
emerges. The point of departure for constructivism. Our third
theoretical approach is that international politics, like stag hunt
or social constructs. By a social construct, they mean that there
is nothing natural given all inevitable about social practices.
The classic example that peoples use to explain this idea is the
idea of money. The bank notes we carry in our wallets, or at one
level, nothing more than bits of paper and ink. In this sense,
they have no intrinsic material value hasn't of themselves. So,
what makes the bits of paper and ink a commodity that we can
exchange for goods and services. It's the collective meanings
that we give to these bits of paper. And if we stopped acting on
this collectively agreed, albeit unspoken understanding than
money would cease to have value. Applying this understanding
of the social furniture we live with to international politics.
How we act at any time is shaped by the social practices in
which we are embedded, and which are actual and critically
produce and reproduce in the same way as we produce and
reproduce money every time, we go shopping. Actions don't
speak for themselves. And why some actions are taken and not
others on the global stage is critically dependent on the

74. identities of the actors, which in turn are bound up with the
roles and social practices in which actors find themselves. So, if
you are in a relationship of enmity with another actor, as with
the United States and Iran today, this cost you into a role which
both constraints and enables the possibilities of action.
Conversely, if you are the United States and the United
Kingdom, you are in a relationship of MIT or friendship. And
this opens up a very different menu of choices as to how you
act. The core claim of constructivism is that none of these
relationships are fixed in stone. Because identities are
changeable. Prove interaction and communication. And enemies
can become friends. Just as friends can become enemies. It is no
part of constructivism to argue that social practices will always
lead to cooperation. Gas chambers, cannibalism, and human
sacrifice. Or just as much social practices as cooperation, love,
and pace to bring our theoretical threads together. While
realism and liberalism can also explain the rise and fall of
cooperation between states. Given their fixed conception of
state identities as rational egoists, they would reduce
explanation solely to the level of material interests.
Constructivists would respond that realists and neoliberal was
only looking at the tip of the iceberg. It is identities
constructivists argue that shape how we think about our
interests. To finally we turn to the stag hunt. Constructivist
would say that if you're hunting party, include your best friends,
your spouse, or your parents, it is highly likely that as a result
of the positive identifications you would normally feel for them,
you will want to cooperate because of the shared values. This
type of bonding creates a very different set of identities and
hence collectively shared meanings for each of the hunters, than
is the case in Waltz's original story, where all the hunters are
assumed to be rational egoists.
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Hi, Welcome to Module One,

75. American foreign policy Problems and Contexts.
This week we want to examine the basic problems in contexts of
US foreign policy. This will be an important foundation moving
forward. So, take note of some basic questions concerns,
1. How do we define US foreign policy?
2. Is there even an objective way to do this too?
3. Do We make a list of friends and enemies and go from there
with the list be refined or qualify based on US capabilities,
geopolitical facts?
4. Or are we committed to certain allies and policy is
independent of costs, whether measured in financial material?
For human terms,
5. How much of US foreign policy is the result of pragmatic
compromise between ideals and interests are differently
between ideals and real or perceived necessity?
6. Is there a kind of American exceptionalism or a providential
hand allowing American policymakers to avoid the kinds of
moral trade offs that have plagued all great powers in history?
7. Or do we face the same hard choices that all past empires,
monarchies, or regional hegemon us have had to make, in short,
for Americans to get what they think they want?
Typically, through their representatives. They first must make
choices, calculate interests, and assess costs. Before deciding
matters of policy. You'll encounter the language of hard and
soft power. It's become standard fair to compare these as broad
categories of policy instruments. Hard power is the traditional
use of all national assets and capabilities, military and
economic, in the service of maintaining regime power and
survival. If not, continuity of government in a crisis.
Soft power is the use of non-coercive policy tools of persuasion,
whether in the form of diplomacy, foreign aid, humanitarian
assistance, cross-cultural exchanges, access to U.S educational
institutions and opportunities.
Exemplary ideals like democracy or religious liberty, or simply
other non-coercive means of attracting allies rather than
enemies?

76. The questions to begin asking here are critical.
1. Does soft power require a bedrock of hard power to make it
an attractive policy instrument?
Or differently,
2. does hard power use, Co, use of coercive means tend to
nullify the possibility or effectiveness of self-power appeal?
You will decide this even if some time along down the road. To
talk about hard and soft power is to speak of ways to achieve
some broader vision of grand strategy. Many of you have heard
from biblical verse that without vision, the people perish. This
is likely true of many things in life, including foreign policy.
While it's critical to have hard and soft power capabilities,
including an educated population. Without prioritizing the use
of these assets, they can be wasted if not lost altogether in a
failed policy. Not surprisingly, because so many assumptions
are, the decisions must be made in the process of envisioning
US grand strategy.
It's no surprise to say that policy makers often debate and
disagree with one another and deciding how and where to both
maintain and position us strategic assets and capabilities. While
no single course can resolve such issues. A good place to begin
is with the eminent historian John Lewis Gaddis is work on
grand strategy. One practical mirror into attempts at broader
strategic policy has come to us via presidential foreign policy
doctrines. Pay attention to these in terms of ideals. He's in
practices since they are statements signaling American friends
and enemies of qi, qi US strategic priorities and policy red
lines. As with most US foreign policy in history, whether they
work as intended or not is arguable. But there is seldom any
question of what the intent is in terms of both principle in
practice.
In these precedential policy statement, students who reflect on
the distinction between rhetoric and reality through the prism of
at least three critical questions.
1. Is the policy intellectually coherent?
2. How much of it was influenced by domestic politics rather

77. than any grand strategic vision?
3. . And has it been, or is it tailored to consistency of
application?
This week is also an important opportunity to examine at least
key theory, three key theories of international relations. In
particular, students will want to understand realism,
neoliberalism, and constructivism. Sir, theories pay close
attention to rhetoric and reality here as well. Since IR theory is
a very contentious field of study, not only in the way that
experts define and qualify the terms, but whether any of these
matters to application of the theory to the real-world of
policymaking. Consider a quote from a respected source and IR
theory. Quote. There are a great many different theories and
IRR. They can be classified in a number of ways. What we call
a main theoretical tradition is not an objective entity. If you put
four IR theorists in a room, easily get 10 different ways of
organizing theory. And there will also be disagreement about
which theories are relevant in the first place. End quote. That's
from Jackson and Sorenson introduction to international
relations, theories, and approaches.
Close, closely related to theory debates is the question of how
best to characterize the behavioral pattern of the international
system or the structural constants of system behavior. A good
course on international relations would help here. But for now,
we can only offer three broad features of system behavior.
Namely,
is it decentralized, mainly self-help in nature, and stratified in
power and capabilities?
Students will want to begin asking why realism has traditionally
been the default theory most used to explain system behavior.
And whether the system features mentioned can also be
accounted for by the other two theories, if not others. Many
believe that despite its popular default mode, realism is
inadequate to explain evolutionary trends of system behavior.
Like it's greater diffusion of power, the proliferation of issues.
Even great powers cannot control without empowering other

78. system actors. The proliferation of international actors beyond
the traditional focus of states. And finally, the fact of regional
diversity. A good course on global governance will help
elaborate on all of these evolutionary trends. But for now, pay
attention to how and whether these trends will challenge of
realism as the default theory explaining the international
system. Most believe US foreign policy will express its
aspirations and interests on a power spectrum somewhere
between American hegemony at one end and globalization on
the other. As always, you will find your way here as you invest
more time and experience. These issues. Finally, note the over
the horizon issues in each chapter Have a great week.
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