E.H. Carr's 'The Twenty Years' Crisis' (1939) is chiefly remembered as a critique of:

Idealism's naive faith in cooperation and institutions

Neorealism's structural determinism

Constructivism's social construction of anarchy

Feminism's critique of gendered IR concepts

Kenneth Waltz's neorealism locates the cause of international conflict in:

The anarchic structure of the international system

The core's exploitation of the periphery

Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye's 'complex interdependence' argues that, even under anarchy:

International institutions can foster cooperation and reduce transaction costs

States' identities and interests are socially constructed

Anarchy is a discursive construct with no real existence

Military force remains the primary instrument in every issue-area

Robert Cox's dictum 'theory is always for someone and for some purpose' underlies:

Critical international theory's denial of any neutral IR theory

The Westphalian concept of sovereignty

Sovereignty in its classical Westphalian sense (from 1648) means:

A human person's economic and food security

Mutually assured destruction between nuclear powers

The absence of structural violence

Mutually assured destruction (MAD) stabilises nuclear peace precisely because:

Using the weapons would be irrational for both sides, given guaranteed retaliation

It abolishes weapons of mass destruction entirely

It transforms the structural causes of conflict

It is enforced by the International Criminal Court

Galtung's 'positive peace', as distinct from 'negative peace', means:

The absence of structural and cultural violence, with genuine justice and equity

Merely the absence of direct, physical violence

A treaty banning weapons of mass destruction

International Relations I: Approaches, State-Sovereignty-Security, and Conflict and Peace

Unit 5 opens IR the way Unit 4 opened comparative politics: with its own competing schools of thought, before moving to the vocabulary (state, sovereignty, security) and the hard cases (war, WMDs, deterrence, conflict resolution) those schools disagree about how to read.

1. Idealism, realism and neorealism

Three foundational approaches
Approach	Claim
Idealism (Woodrow Wilson)	International conflict can be reduced through collective security, international law, and institutions (the League of Nations) built on cooperation and morality rather than power alone; dismissed by realists after 1930s appeasement's failure as naive utopianism (E.H. Carr's 'The Twenty Years' Crisis', 1939).
Classical realism (Hans Morgenthau)	States, in an anarchic international system with no higher authority above them, pursue their own national interest defined in terms of power; human nature's own lust for power (animus dominandi) is the ultimate driver, making conflict a permanent, tragic feature of international politics rather than a solvable problem.
Neorealism / structural realism (Kenneth Waltz)	Locates the cause of conflict not in human nature but in the anarchic STRUCTURE of the international system itself — with no world government, every state must rely on 'self-help' for its own security, producing conflict as a systemic condition regardless of any individual leader's or state's character (Theory of International Politics, 1979).

2. Structural Marxism, neoliberalism, constructivism, critical theory, feminism, postmodernism

Structural Marxism / world-systems in IR — extends Wallerstein's core-periphery analysis (Unit 4) to international relations directly: the international system itself is structured by capitalist exploitation of the periphery by the core, so inter-state conflict and cooperation are both ultimately about class and economic structure, not merely state power.
Neoliberalism / liberal institutionalism (Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye) — 'complex interdependence' (Power and Interdependence, 1977): states are linked by multiple channels (not only diplomats), military force is not the only or even primary instrument of policy in many issue-areas, and international institutions/regimes can foster cooperation and reduce transaction costs even under anarchy — accepting realism's anarchy premise while denying its pessimistic conclusion.
Social constructivism (Alexander Wendt) — 'anarchy is what states make of it' (1992): anarchy is not a fixed structural fact but a social condition whose meaning is constructed through states' shared ideas, identities and norms — the same anarchic structure can produce a Hobbesian (enemy), Lockean (rival) or Kantian (friend) culture depending on what states believe about each other, so interests and identities are not fixed but change through interaction.
Critical international theory (Robert Cox) — 'theory is always for someone and for some purpose': all IR theory, including realism, implicitly serves either to keep an existing world order running smoothly ('problem-solving theory') or to question and seek to transform it ('critical theory') — there is no neutral, view-from-nowhere account of international politics.
Feminism in IR (J. Ann Tickner) — mainstream IR's core concepts (power, security, the rational unitary state) are themselves gendered, built on a masculinised notion of autonomy and military strength while marginalising women's security experiences (structural violence, domestic/economic insecurity); postmodernism in IR (Richard Ashley, James Der Derian) — deconstructs the 'sovereign state' and 'anarchy' themselves as discursive constructs rather than natural, pre-given facts, denying any single, foundational reading of international politics.

⚠️ Constructivism is not neoliberalism

Both accept that cooperation is possible under anarchy, but for different reasons: neoliberalism (Keohane and Nye) still treats state interests as fixed/given and shows how institutions let states cooperate to pursue those fixed interests more efficiently; constructivism (Wendt) instead argues the interests and identities THEMSELVES are socially constructed and can change — anarchy's meaning is made, not given.

3. Concepts — state, sovereignty and security

Sovereignty in its classical, Westphalian form (from the 1648 Peace of Westphalia) means supreme, final authority within a territory and formal equality among states regardless of size, with no legitimate external authority above the state — the basic organising fiction of the modern state system. This is increasingly contested by non-state actors (multinational corporations, terrorist and insurgent networks, international NGOs, intergovernmental organisations) that exercise real cross-border influence without themselves being sovereign states, and by globalisation's erosion of states' practical control over capital flows, information and even security threats that do not respect borders.

Traditional versus non-traditional security
Type	Focus
Traditional (military/state-centric) security	The state as referent object; threats are chiefly military — invasion, war between states, the balance of power — and security is pursued through armed force, alliances and deterrence.
Non-traditional / human security	The individual/human person, not only the state, as referent object (UNDP's 1994 Human Development Report's 'human security'); covers economic, food, health, environmental, personal, community and political security — threats like climate change, pandemics, poverty and internal repression that a purely military lens misses entirely.

4. Conflict and peace

Changing nature of warfare — from conventional inter-state war between uniformed armies toward hybrid warfare (blending conventional, irregular and cyber tactics), asymmetric warfare (a strong state against a much weaker non-state actor, or vice versa in tactics), and cyber warfare (attacking infrastructure, information systems and elections directly, often without attributable state responsibility).
Weapons of mass destruction (WMD) — nuclear, chemical (banned by the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention) and biological (1972 Biological Weapons Convention) weapons, capable of mass casualties far beyond conventional arms, at the centre of arms-control diplomacy (NPT 1968, CTBT).
Deterrence — dissuading an adversary from attacking by threatening unacceptable retaliatory costs; nuclear deterrence's own logic of 'mutually assured destruction' (MAD) between two second-strike-capable powers is deterrence's starkest form, where the very irrationality of using the weapons is what stabilises the peace.
Conflict resolution versus conflict transformation (Johan Galtung) — conflict resolution seeks a negotiated settlement of the immediate, visible dispute (often leaving underlying structural grievances untouched); Galtung's conflict transformation aims deeper, at transforming the structural and cultural conditions (structural violence — poverty, exclusion, built into social arrangements themselves — and cultural violence that legitimises it) that generated the conflict in the first place, so a lasting 'positive peace' (not merely the absence of war, 'negative peace') can take hold.

🎯 Negative peace vs positive peace is Galtung's own coinage

A question naming 'mere absence of direct violence' is negative peace; 'absence of structural and cultural violence, with justice and genuine equity' is positive peace — the pairing is Galtung's own and is what conflict transformation, unlike conflict resolution, aims at.

Key takeaways

Idealism (Wilson) trusts cooperation and institutions; classical realism (Morgenthau) blames human nature's power-lust; neorealism (Waltz) instead locates conflict in the international system's own anarchic structure.
Neoliberalism's complex interdependence (Keohane and Nye) accepts anarchy but shows institutions enable cooperation on fixed interests; constructivism (Wendt) argues interests and anarchy's own meaning are socially constructed; Cox's critical theory denies any neutral IR theory; feminism (Tickner) and postmodernism (Ashley) both interrogate IR's core concepts as gendered or discursively constructed.
Westphalian sovereignty (supreme territorial authority, formal equality) is increasingly contested by non-state actors and globalisation; traditional security is state/military-centric while non-traditional/human security (UNDP 1994) centres the individual across economic, food, health and other dimensions.
Warfare has shifted toward hybrid, asymmetric and cyber forms; WMDs (nuclear, chemical, biological) sit at the centre of arms control; nuclear deterrence's MAD logic stabilises peace through the very irrationality of use.
Conflict resolution settles the visible dispute; Galtung's conflict transformation aims at structural and cultural violence to achieve lasting 'positive peace' beyond mere 'negative peace'.

Practice questions (10)

Attempt each one before opening the answer. Every explanation names the tempting wrong option as well as the right one, because that is where marks are lost.

E.H. Carr's 'The Twenty Years' Crisis' (1939) is chiefly remembered as a critique of:
1. Idealism's naive faith in cooperation and institutions
2. Neorealism's structural determinism
3. Constructivism's social construction of anarchy
4. Feminism's critique of gendered IR concepts
Show answer
Answer: A — Idealism's naive faith in cooperation and institutions
Carr's book is realism's own founding critique of interwar idealism's failure, published on the eve of WWII.
Kenneth Waltz's neorealism locates the cause of international conflict in:
1. The anarchic structure of the international system
2. Human nature's lust for power
3. Gendered concepts of security
4. The core's exploitation of the periphery
Show answer
Answer: A — The anarchic structure of the international system
Waltz's structural account is distinct from Morgenthau's human-nature account (classical realism), Tickner's feminist critique, and structural Marxism's core-periphery claim.
Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye's 'complex interdependence' argues that, even under anarchy:
1. International institutions can foster cooperation and reduce transaction costs
2. States' identities and interests are socially constructed
3. Anarchy is a discursive construct with no real existence
4. Military force remains the primary instrument in every issue-area
Show answer
Answer: A — International institutions can foster cooperation and reduce transaction costs
Keohane and Nye's neoliberal institutionalism accepts anarchy but shows cooperation is still possible via institutions; the constructivist and postmodern claims belong to Wendt and Ashley, and the last option is what complex interdependence explicitly denies.
Alexander Wendt's famous phrase 'anarchy is what states make of it' expresses the core claim of:
1. Social constructivism
2. Classical realism
3. Structural Marxism
4. Idealism
Show answer
Answer: A — Social constructivism
This is Wendt's own 1992 formulation of constructivism's core claim — that anarchy's meaning, and states' interests within it, are socially constructed rather than structurally fixed.
Robert Cox's dictum 'theory is always for someone and for some purpose' underlies:
1. Critical international theory's denial of any neutral IR theory
2. Deterrence theory
3. The Westphalian concept of sovereignty
4. The human security framework
Show answer
Answer: A — Critical international theory's denial of any neutral IR theory
Cox's own distinction between 'problem-solving' and 'critical' theory rests on exactly this dictum; the others are unrelated concepts from later in this chapter.
Sovereignty in its classical Westphalian sense (from 1648) means:
1. Supreme, final authority within a territory and formal equality among states
2. A human person's economic and food security
3. Mutually assured destruction between nuclear powers
4. The absence of structural violence
Show answer
Answer: A — Supreme, final authority within a territory and formal equality among states
This is sovereignty's own classical definition; the other options describe human security, deterrence and Galtung's positive peace respectively.
The UNDP's 1994 Human Development Report's concept of 'human security' shifts the referent object of security from the state to:
1. The individual/human person
2. The corporate power elite
3. The semi-periphery
4. The Westphalian sovereign
Show answer
Answer: A — The individual/human person
Human security's defining move is exactly this shift to the individual across economic, food, health and other dimensions, unlike traditional state/military-centric security.
Mutually assured destruction (MAD) stabilises nuclear peace precisely because:
1. Using the weapons would be irrational for both sides, given guaranteed retaliation
2. It abolishes weapons of mass destruction entirely
3. It transforms the structural causes of conflict
4. It is enforced by the International Criminal Court
Show answer
Answer: A — Using the weapons would be irrational for both sides, given guaranteed retaliation
MAD's logic is deterrence through guaranteed catastrophic retaliation, not disarmament, structural transformation, or judicial enforcement.
Johan Galtung's 'conflict transformation', unlike conflict resolution, aims to address:
1. The structural and cultural violence that generated the conflict
2. Only the immediate, visible dispute
3. The core-periphery relationship alone
4. Deterrence between nuclear powers
Show answer
Answer: A — The structural and cultural violence that generated the conflict
Conflict resolution settles the visible dispute; Galtung's conflict transformation goes deeper, to structural and cultural violence, aiming at lasting positive peace.
Galtung's 'positive peace', as distinct from 'negative peace', means:
1. The absence of structural and cultural violence, with genuine justice and equity
2. Merely the absence of direct, physical violence
3. A treaty banning weapons of mass destruction
4. Mutually assured destruction
Show answer
Answer: A — The absence of structural and cultural violence, with genuine justice and equity
Negative peace is merely the absence of direct violence; positive peace, Galtung's own further concept, requires the absence of structural and cultural violence as well.