Introduction to International Relations

• These notes cover an introduction to international relations, key concepts, nationalism, international politics and managing military conflict.

International Relations as a Science

• International Relations (IR) studies the interactions between actors, structures, and processes in the international system.
• It aims to understand the relationships between people and states, including the reasons for cooperation and conflict.
• IR examines critical global issues such as war, peace, the global economy, inequality, and freedoms.
• Academic IR uses concepts, theories, and methods to study international politics, rather than focusing on current affairs alone.
• In this field, explanatory theories are developed to explain global outcomes, which are simplifications of complex realities.
• Explanatory theories differ from critical, normative, and constitutive ones, with varying theoretical objectives.
• Hypotheses from these theories are tested against empirical data gathered from real-world observations or experiments.
• The goal is to apply the scientific method to world politics, which is challenging due to the complexity of the phenomena and the difficulty of conducting experiments.
• IR aims to generate claims about factors that increase/decrease the likelihood of certain outcomes.
• Acquired knowledge informs policymaking at home and abroad, with progress already made in areas like deterrence, democratic peace, trade, war theories and open economy politics.
• Levels of analysis indicate where causes of international outcomes emerge, generally categorized into the international system, the state, and the individual.
• Different levels of analysis help clarify the types of questions asked and answered from varying perspectives, and emphasize the importance of agency versus structure.
• Agency refers to the capacity of humans and organizations to purposefully act and transform society.
• Structure refers to the conditions that influence actors' choices and opportunities.
• Structures reward certain behaviors and punish others, guiding actors toward common outcomes despite their differences.
• Actors and their social contexts mutually shape each other, described as "mutually constitutive."

Sovereignty and Anarchy

• Sovereignty is the expectation that states have supreme legal and political authority within their borders, a monopoly on force, territorial integrity, control over policies, etc.
• Anarchy in the international system means the absence of a central authority above states, due to state sovereignty.
• This implies no global government, and no legal authority to enforce binding contracts among states.
• Collective action problems arise when rational actors, pursuing self-interest, have incentives to cooperate but expect others to bear the costs.
• Public goods, which are non-excludable and non-rival, suffer from free riding, where entities benefit without contributing.

Institutions and Strategic Interaction

• Institutions establish rules that structure interactions and govern relations among actors, mitigating the uncertainty associated with anarchy.
• These institutions promote cooperation and peace by reducing decision-making costs, setting standards, reinforcing reciprocity, increasing transparency, verifying compliance, and decreasing uncertainty.
• Strategic interaction involves actors anticipating others' choices.
• Actors' actions are purposive and contingent, with cooperation and bargaining as key types of interaction.
• In game theory, actors have choices like cooperation or defection, with interests ranked by payoffs.
• Actors make simultaneous choices based on their own and others' preferences.
• Outcomes depend on the interaction of both actors, requiring strategies.
• A dominant strategy is the choice that makes sense for an actor regardless of the opponent's action.
• Equilibrium occurs when each side plays their best response strategy, creating a stable situation with no incentive for unilateral change.
• The Prisoner's Dilemma illustrates situations where individual rationality leads to suboptimal outcomes.
• Stag Hunt demonstrates cooperation dilemmas, and Chicken presents scenarios involving risk and reputation.

Nationalism and International Politics

• Nationalism is the political principle that the political and national unit should be congruent, with loyalty as a central political identity.
• Nationalism connects the nation to a territory and is a potent force in today's world.
• It drives individuals to align their self-interest with the nation.
• Group interests are defined by culture and history, with beliefs that the nation has a common destiny and is superior.
• Nationalists believe a state structure is needed for the group to survive.
• National self-determination asserts the right of national groups to become sovereign states.
• Secession involves leaving an existing state to form a new one, while irredentism involves uniting with another state.
• Perspectives include primordialists (national identities are natural), perennialists (identities built upon pre-existing ethnic/cultural elements), and modernists (nationalism as a product of modernization).

Origins of Nationalist Sentiment

• Industrialization required cultural homogeneity for labor and communication, achieved through mass education and standardized language.
• Print capitalism connected production and communication, creating imagined communities through language.
• Modern warfare fostered nationalism through mass education and propaganda to improve military capabilities.
• The spread of nationalism redefined the state, leading to the nation-state as the central international institution.
• The Westphalian system, from the mid-1600s, recognized sovereignty and non-intervention.

Implications of Nationalism

• Nationalism shifted how people identified themselves, their authority, and their affiliations.
• Opposition to empires and the French Revolution spurred the spread of nation-states.
• The global map was reorganized along nation-state lines through conflict and imitation.
• This included cases such as uniting separate states into one nation-state, and fragmenting an empire into many nation-states.
• Nationalist challenges arose in European empires, but were resisted by metropoles.
• Decolonization accelerated after WWII, creating new nation-states in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.
• The Soviet Union's collapse led to nationalist movements and more nation-states.

Modern manifestations of nationalism

• Some nations emerged peacefully, such as Czechoslovakia dividing into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
• Other new nations only emerged after violent confrontations, where elites triggered ethno-nationalist violence to gain power.
• Nation-states generally emerge when an old regime weakens.
• A resurgence of nationalism defending the nation-state is occurring in Europe, opposing supra-national politics and globalization.

Managing Military Conflict

• Wars between states are costly, involve combat and civilian deaths, displacement, destruction, and financial burdens.
• Civil wars devastate societies through mass killing, victimization, forced migration, long-term economic costs, and lasting effects.
• Alliances are institutions that facilitate military cooperation when war happens, establishing sets of rules and expectations.
• Alliances form when states have compatible interests against a certain adversary.
• They can be defensive, offensive, or both, codifying bargains regarding contributions and responses in the event of conflict.
• Alliances can be symmetric (equal commitments) or asymmetric (unequal commitments), and can serve as the basis for deals like security assistance for basing rights.
• They often form when common interests exist in security and fear of domination, creating a balance of power to prevent any one state or coalition from dominating.

Limitations of Alliances

• Alliances entail the commitment of resources for the defense of another state, limits freedom due to required consultation before action, and a risk of entrapment.
• Bandwagoning is when weaker states join stronger ones to share in conquest spoils.
• Defensive alliances deter attacks, while offensive alliances embolden states to initiate militarized actions.
• Collective security organizations promote peace among a broad membership.
• Examples: The UN and the League of Nations.
• Collective security organizations prevent war, and ensure the security of any member is a concern of everyone, regardless of who is the victim/aggressor.
• These organizations forbid military force by members against each other, and are intended to resolve conflicts peacefully.
• This mechanism deters attacks and responds with sanctions or intervention.
• These can support mediators/peacekeepers for mutually beneficial agreements and monitoring.

Challenges to Collective Security

• These can fail due to states prioritizing self interest, over paying the costs of cooperation.
• Each state has an incentive to "free ride" and not contribute.
• Diverse membership can cause conflicting interests.
• Difficulty agreeing what to do with an "aggressor".
• The UN's Security Council has the authority to identify threats.
• This decides on the organizational response, which can include economic and and/or military sanctions.
• The P5 members: The United States, Great Britain, France, Russia, and China.
• The non permanent members hold seats on a rotating basis by geographic region for a 2 year term.
• Each of the P5 enjoy veto power, and only require 9 of the 15 members to vote for a resolution to pass. This helps reduce the potential for internal issues within the members, allowing the security council to carry on with its function.
• Criticisms include: uneven power, difficulty to achieve, and leading to paralysis.
• The United Nations can authorize 2 military operation categories:
  • Peacekeeping monitors.
  • Peace Enforcement.

Responsibility to Protect

• R2P is Responsibility to Protect from violence and persecution, including genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity.
• States have a responsibility to protect their citizens from these crimes, but when they prove unable or unwilling, the responsibility transfers to the international community.
• R2P rests on three pillars:
  • The sovereign state should not let such crimes happen.
  • International community helps the sovereign manage the responsibility.
  • International community steps in to protect populations.
• The most controversial idea being the 3rd pillar.
• Actions must be "good guys" vs "bad guys".
• This involves opportunity costs and calculations.

Norms and International Law

• Norms act as a standard of appropriate behavior for actors.
• They shape and constrain behavior.
• Norms have a "taken-for-granted" quality when internalized vs "logic of consequences”.
• Rules often imply social standards.
• Three norm types are:
  • Constitutive.
  • Procedural.
  • Regulative.
• International law should be followed as often as possible.

Explore international relations: interactions, structures, and key concepts such as nationalism and conflict management. Understand war, peace, global economy, and inequality. Academic study uses theories and methods to examine global politics.