Kenneth Waltz

The USA is worldwide known for being the major liberal democratic country. However, on 20th march 2003, the USA invaded Iraq, which was the major and the most expensive military confrontation for the USA after Cold war (Lieberfeld, 2005). This action has been argued to be the breaking and rejecting the international law of non-intervention. But, the justification of such action was given by the president of the USA – George W. Bush as following: ‘Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward…

An Argument Against the First Image Political Realist in the Literary Example of Thucydides in The Peloponnesian War This international relations study will define the three images of war as theorized by Kenneth waltz to argue against the first image political realism of Thucydides in the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides was a general in the Athenian army that did not feel that a single leader or tyrant caused the war in the first image model, but in the clash of burgeoning nation states, such…

States are viewed to be incapable to corporate as the intrest of one’s state is more important that that of another state. Especially as the number of states increase, cooperation seems impossible. Kenneth Waltz, in his chapter on “Structural causes and economic effort” further explains this. We can view the world as anarchical before the emergence of the United Nation, globalization and economic dependency. The world before the United Nations was in…

The Political Cyber Warfare: Stuxnet It is no exaggeration to say that the development of the Internet leads the world in the twenty-first century. The Internet globalizes the world quickly by forming a network among countries. However, the advancement of cyberspace makes international information flow abnormally fast. As a result, governments cannot monitor and control what information is exchanged in their countries. The aspect of the difficulty regulating the network generates cyber-crimes…

Joseph Lemoine Professor Farrell Intro. to International Politics 10-9-2014 Memorandum: Realism, Constructivism, and Russian Aggression Overview: In recent months, Russia has invaded Ukraine and annexed the Crimean Peninsula. There are a variety of reasons as to why Russia took such bold actions in Ukraine, but the situation can best be interpreted through use the use of realism and constructivism. Although each of these theories will lead to different explanations and policy changes, it is…

balance of power; for states to have a firm standing in the balance of power of states they therefore must consider security measures a top priority. In fact, Waltz says “ states do not willingly place themselves in situations of increased independence…in a self-help system considerations of security subordinate economic gain to political gain (Waltz, p. 107). The challenge for realists in the refugee crisis is letting Syrians coming into Germany or Hungary for example poses a terrorism risk to…

ideas have been introduced by scholars who interpreted traditional philosophers and historians to generate some branches within realism such as classical realism (Thucydides, Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes), and neo-realism/ structural realism (Kenneth Waltz).However, there are four key assumptions that are similar within all branches of Realism and they are the following: 1- States are the principle or most important actors in an anarchic world lacking central legitimate governance. The study of…

World War I Through The Realist’s Lens World War I or The Great War was a global war that shook the world to its core originated in Europe which took place from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. In analysing the First World War especially on how it started, many events can be attributed to it but to understand how and why the war happened, perhaps it is best to start from the Concert of Europe which some would argue, is the first domino piece that started the sequence of events that led to the…

Waltz considers the international system to be anarchic hence states must follow the principle of self-help and ensure their own security. Defensive realism believes that any action taken by a state to increase its security, be it military or diplomatic…

If states were able to cooperate, would the world be a better place? What would be the likely hood of all of the state’s cooperating? In this essay, I will present two arguments, which will spell out the neorealist point of view and the neoliberal point of view of international cooperation. The neorealist believe that it would be difficult to have international cooperation because they are worried about having equal distribution of power within states, and being able to trust other states. The…