session 6 "is idealism a good alternative for realism" John Herz

John Herz in his write up" idealist internationalism and security dilemma" expresses his views on  the idealist approach along with the reflection over realist view to explain the security dilemma. As a part of realism, an anarchic situation is described by him which supports the arguments made by theorist of realist school. In this situation, all groups are interconnected in political life without having an absolute higher authority. Similarly in the international system, anarchic systems prevails.through this analogy, security dilemma originates. This means that if one of the interconnected group grows stronger without an absolute power managing the balance of power, the other groups would feel threatened and this would cause a competition of power among groups. The more the power one group acquires the more the other group is threatened and the more power other group acquires for  its defence, the more threatened the powerful will feel and so never ending vicious cycle continues. However basis of security dilemma is the pessimistic view of human nature and therefore be refuted. Idealist ignore the the factual phenomena of political ideals and thereby portray much positive human nature and argues that the power can be channelled, diffused and used in a positive way for a common good. They also contend that security dilemma could be eliminated by building good intergroup relations. John Herz also argues that security issue is merely raised from the individual level to higher level therefore all the individuals can solve this problem by maintaining good relations with individuals on other side  to avoid something which is dangerous for either side.

However in my view, I think realism is backed my strong arguments and realist approach could be related to the past because we have quiet a lot of empirical evidences in support of it. the evidences include world wars, arms race among Pakistan-India and US- Russia cold war in late 20th century

                                                                                                                                      

                                                                                                                                    ~Uzair Mujeeb