Possibilities for peace in the international system: realism versus liberalism - Essay Example

? Possibilities for Peace in the International System: Realism versus Liberalism What sort of possibilities for peace in the international system do realist and liberal theories offer? Critically assess the claims and foundations for their arguments. Introduction Walt writes that policy-making - or making a sound policy to be precise - would be a really tough task in the present-day welter of information if one missed the organising effect of a valid theory upon his own ideas and basic principles about how the world works (1998). It rings equally true for both policymakers who disregard the very concept of ‘theory’ in the real world of politics and those practitioners who conduct foreign policy, more often than not dismissing – whether with good reason or not - the academic theorists as a whole (Walt, 1998). On the other hand, as Walt further specifies, it’s just as hard to construct well-founded theories without an explicit and sufficient knowledge of the real world (1988). Therefore, relation between the abstract theoretical world and the real world of policy appears the unavoidable corollary of their clash; being more or less modified - either eased or aggravated – by the myriad of competing ideas, principles, and approaches that are endeavouring to capture the complexity of contemporary global politics (Walt, 1998). Other authors, like Brown (1997, 2001) for instance, point out that this is not a one-way relationship, or in Brown’s own words, “how we understand and interpret the world is partly dependant on how we define the world we are trying to understand and interpret” (Brown, 2001). Three theoretical traditions appear dominant over time – realism, liberalism and radical approaches, whose boundaries are described as rather fuzzy (Walt, 1998). Two of them are particularly examined for the purposes of this paper – realism, which, broadly speaking, is seen to emphasize the enduring tendency for conflict between states, and liberalism, which is generally identified with ways of mitigating the propensity for conflict. Having originated in different social and political realities, and experienced important refinements, both traditions, along with the radical one, or rather, the debates within and between them are thought to have shaped the study of international relations (Walt, 1998). Liberalism and Neoliberalism – Tenets, Concepts of Peace and Applicability According to Panke and Risse, all classical theories of international relations are founded upon the core principle that domestic structures or actors powerfully influence the foreign-policy interests of states, and therefore, their actual behaviour in the field of international relations (2007). From liberal theorists’ point of view, domestic properties – institutions, actors, or practices – are considered crucial explanatory, or independent, variables. If Waltz’s ‘three-images’, or ‘level-of-analysis’ terminology is applied to International relations, liberal theories of International Relations are seen to be second- image approaches (Waltz, 1959), which means that explanations of international processes and outcomes are located at the state level (Panke and Risse, 2007). The vast range of liberal approaches include such that regard domestic actors, or rather, their interactions in the societal, political and economic spheres, as the most important explanatory factors (variables), as well as other, predominantly focused on political constitutions, economic systems or dominant ideologies as domestic structures (Panke and Risse, 2007). Second-image approaches are also seen to comprise different dependant variables, namely foreign-policy decisions of single states and the dynamics of interactions between states; hence, there would be discerned two dimensions, as suggested by Panke and Risse, to which the differing liberal theories could be attributed – theories of action and interaction, and the choice between structures and agents (2007). According to this classification, the first dimension appears to distinguish between rationalism and constructivism, which are seen as meta-theories resting upon different assumptions about the nature and constitution of actors, rather than being substantial theories of international relations (Wendt, 1999; Panke and Risse, 2007); with rationalism based on methodological individualism, where the actor is prior and actor’s interests are conceptualised as exogenously defined, and fixed during interactions, presuming that human beings act according to a strategic rationality (Tsebelis, 1990, as cited in Panke and Risse, 2007), whereas social constructivism is grounded in the assumption that actor is not the ontological prior, but agent and structure are “mutually constitutive” (Wendt, 1999). Within the conception of constructivism, the institutions are regarded as constitutive in nature, but not regulative, as well as influencing actor’s identities and policy interests (Panke and Risse, 2007). The second dimension distinguishes actor-centred liberal theories, which emphasise domestic politics, and structure-centred liberal approaches with much more emphasis on what is designated as ‘polity’ – while the former conceptualise the relevance of domestic actors for states’ foreign policy, the latter assumed that a state’s conduct within interactions with other states is not guided by the structure of international system per se, but it’s influenced by domestic structures, namely their social, political and economic institutions (Panke and Risse, 2007). Thus, states are considered the most important actors in international relations, which by no means behave similarly in response to international pressures and opportunities, but rather they differ due to properties of their polity (Panke and Risse, 2007). Within the domestic polity, however, Panke and Risse distinguish three structural dimensions – the political structure, as well as economic and social structures, which are considered commonly shared convictions on truth, appropriateness, and rightness (2007). The liberal actor-centred rationalist theories consider domestic actors as influencing the way states define their foreign-policy interests and behave in the international arena (Moravcsik, 1993b; Putnam, 1988); and therefore depict the process as comprised of two phases – the formation of states’ interest, where policy interests are shaped by domestic groups as strategic rational actors, and states’ behaviour on the international level, where external constraints faced by state negotiators influence the calculations of states and facilitate behavioural adaptations (Panke and Risse, 2007). Both Moravcsik’s intergovernmentalism and Putnam’s two-level- game approach, as stated by Panke and Risse, are seen as notable examples of actor-centred rationalist liberalism (2007). The actor-centred constructivist approaches emphasise the significance of ideas, norms and views for actors’ identities and interests, along with the importance of domestic process of social learning and norm diffusion in shaping the perceptions, identities and interests of decision-makers (Surel, 2000, as cited in Panke and Risse, 2007), where social learning is the mechanism by which new substantial policy interests are acquired (Checkel, 1999). Having started from polity variables and highlighted how a democratic constitution prevents rational decision-makers from going to war, the rationalist democratic peace and independence theories probably appeared the most significant and politically influential version of liberalism in international relations (Panke and Risse, 2007). The assumption that democratic states keep the peace between each other, which is considered the most prominent contribution of classical liberalism to International relations, could be traced back at least to the eighteenth century and Immanuel Kant, whose ideas about ‘perpetual peace’ (1795) are amongst the ones that set the pattern for liberal thinking. According to Kant, the decision on whether being waged war or maintained peace rests with domestic structures rather than emanates from pressures in the international level, which is formulated in the first definitive article in his conditions of Perpetual Peace – “the consent of the citizens as members of the State is required to determine at any time the question, ‘Whether there shall be war or not?”; thus, in liberal republics where elected policy- and decision-makers are held responsible for their decisions by their electorate, and given citizens’ implicit aversion to the costs and risks of war, the possibility of electoral sanctions would prevent republican governments from easily going to war (Panke and Risse, 2007). In a nutshell, according to Panke and Risse, it’s the institution of free and fair elections that prevents democratic governments from waging war on other democracies (2007). On the other hand, being based on the presumption of the depravity of human nature as directly projected onto the unrestrained relations between nations, the second definitive article within Kant’s conditions of ‘a perpetual peace’ provides for creation of ‘an International Federation of the People’ that appears the basis upon which ‘the Right of Nations’ would be founded and secured (Kant, 1795). This premise was the one which what is now called the democratic peace was grounded in. The constructivist democratic peace theories, in turn, argue that democracies do not go to war against each other because they perceive one another as friendly, rather than hostile, which may rest on the assumption that democratic norms facilitate a peaceful resolution to conflicts in the domestic realm; at the same time, however, assuming that autocratic regimes are just as aggressive on the international arena as they are towards their own citizens, democracies are naturally thought to be aggressive towards authoritarian regimes or systems (Doyle, 1986, as cited in Panke and Risse, 2007). Another approach adding a causal mechanism of how the perceptions of friends and foes develop and become institutionalised is thought to take the abovementioned argumentation a step further; it assumes that the existence of transnational communication streams – being induced both domestically and on the international level by the public debate and democratic policy-making in democratic regimes - facilitates a pattern of co-operative interaction, which in the longer run results in a common identity of democracies as ‘in-group’, quite distinct from the authoritarian regimes’ ‘out-group’, and which in turn leads to democracies’ mutual perception as peaceful, as well as to a vicious circle of self-reinforcing hostile perceptions when democracies face authoritarian regimes (Panke and Risse, 2007). The constructivist version of democratic peace theories are also thought to offer an explanation of one more phenomenon which don’t exactly fit the broader concept of democratic peace – the case of democratic transitions, where the likelihood of military conflicts increases mainly due to yet undeveloped mechanisms for perception of ‘in-group’ identity between newly democratising states and their neighbours (Mansfield and Snyder, 2002; Panke and Risse, 2007). The liberal theories, along with the ideas of liberal economic theory treating the trade and economic interdependence’s contribution to peace, had been put to test during World War One; the insufficient number of democracies, and international organisations as well, might just as well account for the failure of the League of Nations in the inter-war period, which, in turn, led to disregard for the liberal approaches to peace amongst democracies or liberal economies, being considered utopian and denounced as ‘idealist’ by scholars, like Carr, contrasting them to realism as more proper way to theorise about the international system (Carr, 1946, as cited in Panke and Risse, 2007). Due to the apparent trend towards democratisation that followed the end of the Second World War, resuscitation of the liberal ideas on peace between democratic republics was widely expected; which might have partly come true, to the extent that second-image assumptions had always been included in foreign policy analyses; the work of James N. Rosenau is particularly deemed to have adopted many liberal themes (Rosenau, 1967, 1969, as cited in Panke and Risse, 2007). However, the Cold War presented quite an altered fabric of world realities where international relations were overwhelmingly conceptualised as responding to pressures from the power rivalry between the two opposing ideological blocs – the Communist East and the Capitalist West, and the more or less anarchic international system (Panke and Risse, 2007). Panke and Risse point out that the period of relative improvement in the relations between the East and the West, in the 1970s, along with the rise of the European Community as a supranational organisation of liberal states, had made possible the renaissance of liberal thinking (2007). That, according to some authors, inspired scholars to theorise the emergence of actual international co-operation within international organisations and the increasing importance of non-state actors on the international level (Keohane and Nye, 1971; Panke and Risse, 2007). The main developments representative of this period, namely the spread of international organisations and international co-operation, the increase in economic interdependence, and the continued trend towards democratisation, appear to facilitate the achievement of perpetual peace according to Kant’s hypothesis (Kant, 1795), and various research programmes took democratic peace approaches as their integral parts (Panke and Risse, 2007). Jack Levy, in the 1980s, described the democratic peace thesis as “the closest thing we have to empirical law in international politics (Levy, 1988, as cited in Dunne, 2009); Putnam’s two-level game metaphor reintroduced a research programme which brought back domestic politics into the study of international negotiations (Putnam, 1988, as cited in Panke and Risse, 2007). Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and even before that time, according to Walt, the debate on ‘democratic peace’ became more lively and influential as the number of states and societies that embraced democracy, and its essential attributes, have significantly increased (1998). There was also a variety of new issues that have been placed high on the scholarship and policy-makers’ agenda, such as ethnic conflict, religiously motivated terrorism, environment, etc. The combination of these factors is deemed to have necessitated a more recent liberal theoretical approach, known as neoliberalism, which is attributed to third-image approaches in Waltz’ terminology (Waltz, 1959), and focused on the role of international organisations as moderators of selfish state behaviour (Walt, 1998; Panke and Risse, 2007). Even though liberalism as a whole had suffered major decline during the Cold War years, it various ramifications, like actor-centred rationalist liberalism for instance, not only experienced significant revival, but also proved its relevance to the real world of politics since there is an active framework of international institutions nowadays, topped by the UN Security Council, which provides actual basis for resolving international disputes. The background of the 2003 Iraq War is also deemed to present compelling evidence of the relevance of liberal theories to practice, insofar as explains the US decision to go to war against Iraq, along with the German Government opposition to that decision (Panke and Risse, 2007). In regard to the United States’ position, the so-called by Moravcsik ‘commercial liberalism’ (1997) would argue that a strong domestic coalition comprised of US Republican party conservatives and backed by the military-industrial complex and other business interests (oil), produced the result of decision-making in favour of war; whereas in Germany, Chancellor Schroder was facing general elections and exploited the anti-war sentiment for electoral purposes. The domestic win-sets of the two opposing parties were merely too far apart to compromise at international level (the UN Council) – the second phase in liberal actor-centred rationalist approach (Moravcsik, 1993b; Putnam, 1988) – and therefore the US and its allies waged war without international backing (Panke and Risse, 2007). The strengths of Liberalism might be sought inter alia in liberal theories’ ability to be analytically reinforcing, as stated by Moravcsik, and in the possibility anomalies within one variant of liberal theory to be resolved by considering other variants (1997), From a practitioner’s point of view, however, the main strength, and hence one of the biggest pros of liberal theories might just as well consists in their range per se, insofar as choosing a theoretical platform from the vast family of liberalism, which to aptly apply to, or present a plausible explanation of a particular case from the real world of politics, seems not that difficult indeed. In fact, as pointed by Panke and Risse, three out of the four categories of liberal approaches offer plausible accounts of the US and German policy-makers’ decisions in regard to the 2003 Iraqi war (2007). The multitude of liberal theories, however, may also produce, as seen from the Iraqi war example above, a major lack of co-ordination on the international level, readily presenting convenient theoretical justification for particular decisions or policy-making, which, in turn, would jeopardise the mechanisms of international co-operation and hence, quite ironically, the third-level approach to achievement of ‘democratic peace’. The actual inability of international organisations to impose co-operation – for example, in the cases of South Korea, Iran, Lebanon, etc. – is seen as definite weakness of the neoliberal, or third-level approaches. Realism and Neorealism – Tenets, Concepts of Peace and Applicability Lebow writes that classical realism could be said to have displayed a fundamental unity of thought throughout a span of over two millennia, while the works of its principal proponents, like Niccolo Machiavelli, Carl von Clausewitz and Hans Morgenthau, are seen as inextricably concerned with questions of order, change, and justice at domestic, regional and international levels (2007). The holistic understanding of politics that stress the similarities, rather than the differences between domestic and international levels, along with the role of ethics and community in promoting stability in both domains, is seen as prominent feature of classical realism, whose adherents tend to regard history as cyclical, in terms of attempting to build order and escape from fear-driven worlds (Lebow, 2007). In regard to the order issue, according to Lebow, most realists see a straightforward solution in the existence of effective central authority, which, besides defending the borders, enforcing laws and protecting citizens, makes domestic politics rather peaceful and qualitatively different from international politics, whereas the international arena remains an anarchical self-help system (2007). Therefore, as stated by Waltz (1979), survival depends exclusively on states’ own capabilities and their alliances with other states. Morgenthau, however, don’t make this kind of generic distinction between domestic and international politics; as for classical realists, which stress the variation of order and stability within domestic and international systems, rather than between them, either politics are an expression of the same human drives, therefore subjected to social cohesion - whether being domestic or international – and the ritualised channels into which it directs human drives (Lebow, 2007). In Morgenthau’s view, the struggle for power at domestic level – as ubiquitous human drive and therefore the essence of all politics – is directed into the aforementioned ritualised and socially acceptable channels via laws, norms and institutions; whereas on the international level, it is not that easily tameable (1948a). Morgenthau exemplifies this observations, pointing that in the 1930s, four major powers – the Soviet Union, Japan, Germany and Italy – rejected the premises of international order, and in contrast to strong societies, like Britain and the United States, where laws and institutions muted the power struggle, their weak societies experienced violent and unconstrained politics, and quite logically broke down (1948a). Thus, for Morgenthau, communities are the most crucial determinants of order, both at home and abroad, via the identities and norms communities themselves help to create and sustain (Lebow, 2007). Given the premise that balance of power is “a general social phenomenon to be found on all levels of social interaction” (Morgenthau, 1958, as cited in Lebow, 2007), contemporary realists’ predilection for military capability and alliances between states is anything but surprise. At the international level, balance of power is seen as possible means of deterring war if states demonstrate their strong determination to go to war in order to defend the status quo; therefore, balance of power is considered contradictory in regard to international peace (Lebow, 2007). Nevertheless, Morgenthau argued that even if balance of power failed to prevent war, it might limit the war consequences as well as preserve the existence of states, whether small or large, which constitute the political system (1948a). He also attributed the success of the balance-of-power system during the better part of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the existence and strength of the international society (community) which is thought to have bound together most important actors in the international system; and consequently saw the bipolar rivalry between the Soviet Union and the United States as especially dangerous (Morgenthau, 1948a; Walt, 1998). Thus, having provided simple but powerful explanation for war, alliances, imperialism and other international phenomena, and, even more importantly, due to its emphasis on competition which was consistent with the central features of the American-Soviet rivalry, Realism became the dominant theoretical approach during the Cold War (Walt, 1998). By contrast, Kenneth Waltz’s ideas, as exposed in his 1979 book, Theory of International Politics, present an example of strong structural realism, aka neorealism, which is rather focused on the functioning of international political structures, as well as on states’ behaviour within these structures (Donnelly, 2000). Having regarded political structures as defined and distinguished first by their ordering principle, e.g. the lack of hierarchical relations of authority and subordination, Waltz argued that international relations represent a domain of anarchic, or non-hierarchic, political structures, where order is not imposed by higher authority, but rather arises from the interactions between formally equal political partners (1979). Waltz also argues that in such anarchic orders, each state is an autonomous, separate, and formally equal political unit, which must count on its own resources in order to realise its interests (Donnelly, 2000); or in Waltz words “each unit’s incentive is to put itself in a position to be able to take care of itself since no one else can be counted on to do so” (1979, p. 107). Inasmuch as all important functions thus have to be performed autonomously by each state, there is no sharp differentiation of functions between them; therefore, the principle differences between states are of capability, but not function, meaning that states differ not that much in what they seek to achieve, but in their capabilities to achieve what they seek (Waltz, 1979). Another defining feature of political structures is considered the distribution of capabilities amongst its units; hence, the political structures could be distinguished from one another merely by the distribution of capabilities amongst actors (Donnelly, 2000). In the historical context, this, according to Waltz, means that international political structures (international orders) are defined by the changing fates of great powers, or more abstractly by the number of great powers (Waltz, 1979). Thus, emphasising the difference between bipolar or multipolar systems, being dominated by two or more great powers respectively, Waltz argues that wherever two dominant powers face each other, each represents the only threat to the other; hence, they couldn’t be enemies (Donnelly, 2000). This version might have accounted for Waltz’s preference for bipolarity, rather than multipolarity, as being much more stable (Walt, 1998). Finally, the central conclusion of balance-of-power theory, as formulated by Waltz, is that in anarchical international orders, weaker states would seek “to balance against, rather than bandwagon with”, more powerful rivals since the power of others, and especially great powers, is not a lure but a threat (1979; Walt, 1998), whereas in hierarchic political orders actors tend to “jump on the bandwagon” of a leading power because “losing does not place their security in jeopardy” (Waltz, 1979, p.126 as cited in Donnelly, 2000). Another significant refinement of realism, according to Walt, is the offence-defence theory, which is defined by Robert Jervis, George Quester and Van Evera, based on the premise that war is more likely when states could easily conquer each other (1998). However, given that defence is easier than offence, the states could acquire the means to defend themselves without threatening the others, thus weakening the effects of anarchy; within this ‘defensive’ theory, states are seen as merely seeking to survive alongside great powers that, in turn, are able to guarantee their security via forming alliances and choosing defensive military postures (Walt, 1998). Given the aforesaid, many neorealists believed that the United States security was guaranteed during the Cold War, only fearing the possibility of adoption of too aggressive foreign policy that would squander this favourable position (Walt, 1998). The developments after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the communist bloc, offered significantly altered fabric of world politics, which, in turn, presented a variety of novel issues to scholars to embark upon. Realist were seen as having been quick to explore those issues, like Barry Posen’s explanation for ethnic conflict for example, and realists concerns over NATO’s expansion eastwards; along with the most interesting conceptual development within the realist paradigm – the emerging split between ‘offensive’ and ‘defensive’ strands of thought (Walt, 1998). The premises of realism per se, as set forth by classical realists – from Thucydides and Hobbes to Reinhold Niebuhr and Hans Morgenthau – explicitly demonstrate their authors’ doubts about the very possibility of peace, or rather, the prospects of eliminating conflict and war in the international affairs. Being the oldest school of thought in the field of international politics, realism, in contrast to liberalism, is seen to provide simple explanations for international phenomena, rather than go into more abstract models. From Morgenthau’s succinct principle stating that “the main signpost that helps realism to find its way through the landscape of international politics is the concept of interest defined in terms of power” (1954, p.5, as cited in Donnelly, 2000) to Williams’s notion of the international political order as a constructed realm where power and insecurity mix with the search for consent, legitimacy, and the restrained exercise of power (2005), realism and realists ultimately stress the exclusivity of power as a modifier of the cyclical course of history. Which, by definition, depict peace as possible, yet not very likely corollary, but not a purpose, since the primary one is states’ survival. The strands and refinements of realism such as neorealism of Waltz, offensive-defensive theory of Jervis, Quester, and Van Evera, etc. are thought to have further advanced this notion of state behaviour. Yet another strand of realism, the so-called critical realism, which is considered one of the most common forms of post-positivism, launches the idea that different perspectives, experiences and cultures can never understand each other, thus conforming to the general concept of realism as consisted of theories of conflict. Conclusion There is no such a thing as an impeccable theory, and both liberalism and realism are not an exception of this rule. Having stemmed from the greatly different views of their proponents on the human nature and the world realities, both theoretical approaches treat accordingly the complexities surrounding those issues. While liberalism is widely associated with a concern about societal sources of state preferences and a belief in institutions, compiled as advocacy of international law and organisation, and suggesting an optimistic, ameliorative trend in modern world (Moravcsik, 1997), realism is seen as the genuine article of a strictly pragmatic way of dealing with the enormous complexity of that very world, being practiced by political theorists and scholars in the field of international relations, like Hans Morgenthau, Kenneth Waltz, etc. The long and eventful history of world politics has presented extremely fertile ground for both theoretical traditions to expose their strengths and weaknesses, while revealing flaws in conventional wisdom (Walt, 1998). Neither liberalism, nor realism should be readily embraced or ignored, let alone vilified, since each and every one of them is deemed to capture important aspects of world politics; therefore studying and distinguishing between their inventiveness and inadequacies would significantly enrich any valid analysis of the contemporary system of international relations. References Brown, Chris, 1997, 2001, Understanding International Relations, 2nd ed., Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave [online] Available at [Accessed 29 November 2011] Checkel, J. T., 1999, Social Construction and Integration, Journal of European Public Policy, 6:4 Special issue 1999: 545:60 [online] Available at < http://www.scribd.com/doc/47621453/Checkel-Social-Construction-and-Integration> [Accessed 9 December 2011] Doyle, M. W., December 1986, Liberalism and World Politics, American Political ScienceReview, 80 (4). Doyle, M. W., 1997, Ways of War and Peace, New York: Norton. Print. Donnelly, J., 2000, Realism and International Relations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [online] Available at < http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam032/99053676.pdf> [Accessed 10 December 2011] Dunne, T., 2009, Liberalism, International Terrorism and Democratic Wars, International Relations, Vol 23(1) pp. 107–114 Kant, Emmanuel, 1795, Perpetual Peace. A Philosophical Essay. Kant’s Principles of Politics, including his essay on Perpetual Peace. A Contribution to Political Science. Translated by W. Hastie., 1891. Edinburgh: Clark. The Online Library of Liberty [online] Available at [Accessed 4 December 2011] Keohane, R. O. and Nye, J. S., 1971, Transnational Relations and World Politics, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Print. Lebow, R. N., 2007, Classical realism. In T. Dunne, M. Kurki and St. Smith, eds. 2007. International Relations Theories: Discipline and Diversity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Print. Levy, J. S., 1988, ‘Domestic Politics and War’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 4, pp. 653–73. Mansfield, E. D. and Snyder, J., 2002, Democratic Transitions, Institutional Strength, and War. International Organization - Volume 56, Number 2, pp. 297-337 Morgenthau, H. J., 1948a, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 1st ed., New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Print. Moravcsik, A., 1993, Preferences and power in the European Community: A liberal intergovernmentalist approach. Journal of Common Market Studies 31 (4): 473–524 Moravcsik, A., 1997, Taking Preferences Seriously: A Liberal Theory of International Politics. International Organisation 51(4), pp. 513-53 [online] Available at [Accessed 11 December 2011] Panke, D. and Risse, T., 2007, Liberalism. In T. Dunne, M. Kurki and St. Smith, eds. 2007. International Relations Theories: Discipline and Diversity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Print. Putnam, R. D., 1988, Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games. International Organization. 42 (Summer 1988): 427-460 Walt, Stephen M., 1998, International Relations: One world, many theories, Foreign Policy, July 24, 2000, Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Spring 1998 [online] Available at [Accessed 29 November 2011] Wendt, A., 1999, Social Theory of International Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Print Waltz, Kenneth N., 1959, Man, The State and War, NY: Columbia University Press [online] Available at [Accessed 6 December 2011] Waltz, Kenneth N., 1979, Theory of International Politics, 1st ed., New York: McGraw-Hill Inc. [online] Available at [Accessed 3 December 2011] Williams, M. C., 2005, The Realist Tradition and the Limits of International Relations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Print. Read More