What are the main challenges to Realism?

Since the end of the Second World War, Realism has been the dominant theory in discussion of the international system. It attempts to understand global politics by making the following statements:

• States are the principle actors in international relations. Other actors are secondary.
• States are sovereign. There is no higher authority that can compel them to act.
• States act in their own national interest, which is to prevent any other state having power over them, which in turn enables them to maintain their sovereignty.
• War is a natural state of international politics and is the most important instrument of foreign policy a state may possess.

The Realist thinkers of the twenties century arrived at these conclusions from their observations of the early twentieth century, which was characterised by one violent conflict after another, and of the Cold War which was characterised by the quest for a balance of power in a bipolar world. That’s not to say, however, that it’s not gone unchallenged. Liberalism, The English School and Constructivism are the mainstream alternatives to Realism, while Poststructuralism, Postcolonialism and Marxism propose a less mainstream way of understanding global politics. This essay will examine Realist theory before studying each of these mainstream alternatives theories in turn by considering: the origin of the theory; the assumptions it makes about the actors and the system they inhabit; and how this compares to Realism. Some time will be given to the three less mainstream alternatives, but not to the same extent as the mainstream theories.

Realist thinkers believe that the distribution of power throughout the international system is what compels states to act, and that a balance of this power is what maintains order. They see the international system as a Hobbesian war of all against all, where a state with power over another will inevitably exercise that power in it’s own national interest, regardless of the effect of the action on the weaker state. To prevent this happening, states constantly seek to ensure no other has power over them, so they seek to increase their military strength, and a balance of this military strength between neighbours, with the threat of a protracted war they might loose, being the key factor preventing states attacking one another.

Liberal theory, on the other hand, proposes that institutions are the principle actors in the international system, and while states still play an important role, they are not the most important actors. The core of liberal thinking is that interdependence is what compels states to act in a particular manner. States that are economically dependent on one another are less likely to engage in a costly military conflict for fear of damaging their own economies. Actors like Inter-Governmental Organisations (IGOs), Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), Multinational Corporations and Transnational Organisations like terrorist networks play the leading roles in international politics.

Where Realism sees international relations as confrontational, and Liberalism see it as cooperative, another theory called The English School, leaves the question open. English School thought shares much with Realism, including it’s assumptions that states are the principle actors and the importance of war in foreign policy, but not on the free-for-all nature of global politics. During the Cold War, the USSR and USA regularly cooperated on many issues, most notably the Cuban Missile Crisis as the USSR sought to reign in Cuban aggression towards the US. Realism cannot explain why these two nations, who were ideologically opposed to one another, worked so hard to prevent war between them. English School described international relations in terms of an international society bound together by international institutions. For example, it proposes the European Union as the reason Europe as gone from one of the most war-torn regions in the world to one of it’s most peaceful in 50 years.

The biggest shakeup in international relations thinking came between 1989 and 1991, when the Cold War came to an end. Up until this time, Realist though fell into one of two camps: that the Cold War would continue indefinitely; and that the Cold War would heat up, escalating to armed conflict. In fact, neither of these scenarios came to pass and instead the change in Soviet foreign policy thinking lead to the disintegration of the USSR and the end of the Cold War. Realism was strongly criticised from many angles for it’s spectacular failure to predict such a monumental event, with some critics accusing Realists being so fixated on the stability of the bipolar system, that they couldn’t comprehend it coming to an end. In response to the inability of the theories of the day to explain the end of the Cold War, Constructivism arose to provide a new way of understanding international politics.

Constructivists believe that nothing in international relations is static, as the other major theories believe. Instead, they believe that human agency has the potential to reshape not only the rules of the international system, but even the structure of it. They place enormous emphasis on the role ideas play in shaping the international world, and point to new ideas in Mikhail Gorbachev’s foreign policy as the primary reason for the end of the Cold War. In Constructivist thought, the United Kingdom only exists because everyone thinks that it should. If everyone woke up one morning and decided that the UK should no longer exist, then it simply wouldn’t, and that’s what happened with the USSR between 1989 and 1991. People started waking up and thinking that the USSR no longer needed to exist, and eventually it stopped existing. The rules and structure of international relations are historically and socially constructed, and not the inevitable consequence of human nature or essential characterises of the international system as Realists believe.

Marxism arose in response to the injustices Karl Marx observed in the world and that he attributed to global capitalism. Marxism divides the world into two classes: the workers and the capitalists, and all international relations are described in terms of classes forces. Marxism downplays the importance of sovereignty in the international system, seeing is as a legal/political construct, and thus less important that economic factors, in particular the economic autonomy of the state within the global capitalist economy.

Postcolonialism arose as a response to the accusation that other theories of international relations originated in Europe to European problems, and are thus ill-equipped to describe global politics. In fact, these other theories, as postcolonialists maintain, continue to justify the subjugation of the Gobal South to Western interests, since they are not neutral to issues of class, race, etc.

Poststructuralism rejects the claim of all the other theories to have uncovered some fundamental truth about the functioning of global politics with which it can explain the international system. Poststructuralist though states that knowledge is not immune from power, and that knowledge helps to reinforce the existing power structures of the thinker from whom it originated.

Realism, having spent nearly the entirety of the twentieth century dominating international relations discussion, now faces competition from many corners, with Constructivism becoming the most popular alternative (behind Liberalism) after the end of the Cold War. That said, Realist thinkers still enjoy a disproportionately loud voice in the study of international relations, so Realism does not seem to be diminishing much any time soon.