The Tragedy Of Great Power Politics

Defensive theory asserts that aggressive expansion as promoted by offensive neorealists upsets the tendency of states to conform to the balance of power theory, thereby decreasing the primary objective of the state, which they argue is ensuring its security . It is very important to say that Mearsheimer is not satisfied with Waltz’s theory. Great powers are seek to maintain the security and thereby the status quo. The international system creates strong stimulus, forcing the great powers to look for opportunities to increase their own power at the expense of competitors. They are interested not only in imbalance of power, but also interested in the maximum weakening of their competitors. Every great power will seek to change the balance of forces in its

Realism is one of the most dominant international relations theories in the academic world. But within Realism, Realists are split on a number of issues. A perfect example of which being the rise of China. Over the past 30 years China has increased not only in population and power, but has also achieved one of the strongest economies in the world. The rise of China is seen as problematic by many realists. Since the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union, the US has enjoyed a position of hegemony in the unipolar power structure of the world. Many fear that the rise of China could upset the current balance of power. One such individual is a prominent realist scholar, John Mearsheimer. He believes that war with China is inevitable and “calls for the US to do whatever it can to slow China’s rise.” Another political theorist Jonathan Kirshner wrote this paper to counter many of Mearsheimer’s claims, stating that Mearsheimer’s offensive realism “is wrong, and dangerous”. Kirshner suggests that instead of using offensive realism we should look instead to the theories roots in classical realism to analyse the rise of China.

The history of the United States is short but complex. A young nation, the United States has already become a major power in the world theatre. Risen from humble colony, to independent nation, and finally a world leader, in little more than three hundred years. Many believe that the young nations isolation and independence have shaped it polices toward other nations. The United States following years of isolationist policy entered the world stage in force under the leadership of two powerful figures in United States history President Roosevelt and President Wilson. These Presidents held strong views of the relationship that the United States should have in the world’s political theatre. Wilson was the political idealist, he believed that the

Kang quotes scholars saying “…there appeared to be one race, and the West had strung the tape at the finish line for others to break…” and “… many of our international-relations theories … see East Asians as identical to Westerners in goals, attitudes, and beliefs.” However, Kang argues that East Asia had a different system, even the opposite, of the European “balance of powers”. Europe’s system created unavoidable war as the states fought to stay equal.

Realism has dominated international relations theory since emerging in the 1930’s. The era of state conflict lasting from the 1930’s to the end of the cold war in 1947, proved the perfect hostile environment to fit the largely pessimistic view of world politics. While many aspects of realism are still alive in International Relations today; including the dominant presence of states, intrinsic of war and the decentralised government. However, realism only reaches so far in explaining and creating a structure for international relations. Whilst the strengths of the theory lie in its pragmatic approach to power politics and conflict. However, the realist view is weakened by changes in the way that conflict is fought, the ineffectiveness of the balance of power model and the increasing global and interconnected world. Thus, using realism as a structure to explain international relations today is to some extent, a theory of the past.

Mearsheimer’s argument states that great powers are always in competition with each other to become a hegemon. There are five assumptions about the international system from which this statement comes from: that the international system is anarchic (there is no higher authority above the states), that great powers inherently possess some offensive military capability (they are potential threats to each other), that states can never be sure about other states’ intentions, that survival is the primary goal of great powers, and that great powers are rational actors (Krieger, 50-51). Individually, these five assumptions do not make one believe that great powers should act aggressively toward each other, but together, they give great powers strong incentives to do so. They also result in three behaviours: fear, self-help, and power maximization (Krieger, 51). Great powers do not trust each other and this creates fear amongst them that another state could attack at any moment. Due to this fear, states emphasize self-help. The cannot trust or depend on other states and must therefore always be prepared to help and lookout for themselves. States learn that the best way to survive is to be the strongest state, ideally a hegemon. This creates a strong deterrence in weaker states from attacking the stronger states. Mearsheimer’s claim is that it is the structure of the international system and not characteristics of states and their leaders that causes states to act aggressively

China’s military rising has led to China’s power in the East Asia region and concerns about China’s power in the Indo- Pacific region. Many scholars believe that when a state becomes powerful, it will defiantly seek greater regional political influence and consequently worldwide political influence. This influence will result in the change of the power structure in the region and eventually lead to a long term security danger. According to the power structure scholars, the history of international relations supports this argument. In the period between two World Wars, Germany became a powerful state and turned out to be the threat to the security of the West Atlantic region and finally caused the World War II. In addition, before the World War II Japan was a rising power and caused the Pacific war in the 1930s and 1940s (Jiangye2002,57). However, opponents claim that China as a rising power has not followed the examples of Germany and Japan because the international system has been changed. Opponents also believe that in the traditional international system the national interests of a rising power were to conflict and

Realism assumes that under a balance of power, the overriding aim of all states is to maximize power and become the only hegemony in the system. States only help themselves in the anarchic international system. Therefore, China’s rise is regarded as a disconcerting threat to the U.S.’s primacy of power in the present international stage. The power shift in East Asia is creating security dilemmas; the U.S. thus demands more security to its Asian allies including Philippines, Japan and South Korea. The rapidly-rising Chinese power would inevitably challenge the current international balance of power and appear aggressively in the eyes of weaker power such as the Philippines. Therefore it seeks help to its ally, the U.S., to counterbalance the power of China. China intends to gain more resources and to transform current international order to its favor according to its national interests. The 2010 Chinese White Paper on National Defence states that: “Contradictions continue to surface between developed and developing countries and between traditional

Since 1919, there is a common emphasis on the realism in world politics and this has caused the Realist Theory to become prominent for mostly all the matters of international relations as perceived from Carr (2014). The realism has been continued to be part of international relations since this time and it has still been under consideration with high dominance. The dominance of this theory was provided after the cold war and then it remained in power. The main focus of realism theory in the proposed study would remain in the delivery of the background study of the dispute that is a South China Sea dispute, in accordance with its evolution, conflict management, and resolution (Morgenthau 2014). This would help in understanding the nature acquired by the claimant nations

Snyder claims that realism failed to predict the Cold War. Given this, Mearsheimer states “China cannot rise peacefully.” Since realists describe the world as a self-help system, according to Posen, every country “must look to its own interests relative to those of others” and because “security is the preeminent issue in an anarchic world, the distribution of capabilities to attack and defend should matter.” Thus, because China’s strive for regional hegemony inevitably threatens the power dynamic of the global system, the U.S. will, according to Mearsheimer, take an offensive realist approach that will eventually lead to war. In addition, as seen in post-Cold War, economic stability greatly determines the distribution of power. Friedberg notes, that the projected “speed and magnitude of China’s growth in recent decades appears to be unprecedented” and as early as 2015, “China’s economy could overtake that of the United States.” Although the U.S. faces an unprecedented challenge to economic power, according to Ikenberry, China has signaled cooperation by “redoubling its participation in existing institutions, such as the ASEAN Regional Forum and the East Asia Summit or working with the other great powers in the region to build new ones.” Nevertheless, following the actions of the U.S. post WWII, China strategically makes “itself more predictable and approachable” to reduce “the incentives for other

Generally interstate politics is a permanent bargaining game over the distribution of power, thus it describes world politics as a state of war and a struggle of power, and is pessimistic about the prospects for eliminating conflicts and war. Therefore, the best description for world politics is the constant possibility of war, because the nature of humanity or structure of international order allows wars to occur. Realists recognize that states go to war for significant reasons, which makes it difficult to understand the exact causes of wars. Hence, there is no question that states often begin wars to acquire power over a rival stateand to enhance their security (Dunny, Kurki, & Smith 2016), such as during the Cold War. Mogenthau (1945) argues that human nature is the main cause of war. He maintains that everyone was born with power that drives them to dominate each other. Thus power is the currency of international politics, which is therefore important to have a substantial amount of power and ensure a balance of power (Dunny, Kurki, & Smith 2016). Waltz (1979) is practical in stating that the primary goal of states is not to maximinze power, but to achieve or minimize the security needed (p126). This means that improving a nation’s power is indeed only a means to another end, that end being less of a reliance on maintaining high security, since that nation will be holding the power. The case in point here is that when the U.S formed an alliance with Western Europe, this

The importance of cultural factors in Huntington’s theory of the “clash of civilizations” beholds a far more powerful influence than is typically assumed in the neoliberal materialism of the 21st century. China’s rise as a superpower has typically been defined through the context of economic, financial, and ideological forces that have historically been a threat to the United States. However, Huntington’s (1996) cultural theory of the “clash of civilizations” does represent the underlying presence of conflicts through the old nation-state system as a cultural barrier, yet he defines the cultural values of a “civilization” as a much older source of conflict: “Westerners tend to think of nation states as the principle actors in global affairs. They have been that, however, for only a few centuries. The broader reaches of human history have been the history of civilizations” (p.24). This aspect of culture is defined through the differing regions and cultural values of a “civilization”, which define a much broader source of conflict in the beliefs and values that create conflict. In this manner, Huntington (1996) provides important insight into the cultural values that are currently involved in the clash of civilizations between the U.S. and China in global affairs. This will be an important part of the underlying process of the war-like cultural differences between China and the U.S. that are a major part of global conflict in the 21st century. For

Realism is one of the main theories within International Relations. It provides the view that all actors within the international system act on their own self-interests to gain power. This essay intends to discuss its usefulness as a theory and the reasons for and against it being used to analyse world affairs. Firstly, it shall discuss how the theory is advantageous as it explains how shifts in the balance of power can lead to conflict however it is unable to explain why the distribution of power changes. Second, it will portray how it is useful because states do not need to be labelled as good or bad to fit the theory although it disregards the idea of Natural law and gives a cynical view of human morality. Finally, it will suggest that as the theory is very parsimonious, it can be applied to multiple situations within the world system. On the other hand, it will be said that it fails to look at individuals within a state and their influence on the actions of the state. These costs and benefits will be conveyed through the current tensions between the USA and North Korea to link the theory in with current world politics.

The goal of studying international politics is to create generalizable conclusions about the relationships at the international level. That is, there is a scientific method used to understand how the world works. The three main methods for understanding how the world works are realism, liberalism, and constructivism. The purpose of this paper is to explain the components of the main theories and apply them to the relationship between Taiwan and China, and the likelihood, or lack thereof, of another great power war. The dispute arose from the Chinese nationalists fleeing to the island of Taiwan after Mao Zedong and his communist revolution took over mainland China. The conflict here is whether or not the independence of Taiwan will be recognized or the People’s Republic of China will seek to invade Taiwan and assert its dominance over it, thus creating a possibility of war with the United States. Liberalism is the best theory in international relations because it best explains the situation in Taiwan and presents the best generalizable conclusion for how the relationships between states work.

Events throughout history have brought about changes in every aspect of life, especially in the realm of politics and international relations. In this regard, scholarly articles, recent events, and in class discussions have suggested that certain theories can no longer be applied to the study of international relations due to changes in the state system structure during the past half-century. One such example is the shift in thinking involving the realist balance of power theory. While some could argue that modified forms of balance of power theory can still be applied, I am a proponent of the opposite opinion. I believe the global interdependence that has formed over this half century is the main means by which balance of power theory has been rendered obsolete and therefore, is not useful in any region of the world for explaining state system structures. The qualities of interdependence such as the partial surrendering of sovereignty to international organizations and merging of economies can no longer permit the sort of state behavior used in balance of power theory. Three separate situations between the United States and Canada, the United States and China, and between key members of the Eurozone serve as examples of this idea that this realist theory is no longer applicable. While these examples are largely economic, other examples I will not discuss are physical and military as well. Before examining each example, it is necessary to define balance of power theory.