Session 14: This match is for the WWE World Heavy Weight Championship!

Before I got myself enrolled in this course,I was under the impression that I would be taught how countries build relationships with others, what benefits are the countries seeking in building relations with others, what are the possible theories behind building strong relations and perhaps increasing trade with others etc. To be honest I thought I would be introduced with the methods or theories for establishing world peace, peace among nations. But this haven't been the case so far. All my predictions about this course drawing a picture of a beautiful park where kids are running around, flying kites, playing tags and on swings and having a picnic together etc... well guess what, they all proved to be wrong. What I have seen so far is that instead this course is actually drawing a picture of an unkempt park full of thorny bushes, where there are couple of big fat kids bullying and giving wedgies to the kids around them. The initial chapters were all about the debate between classical and scientific approach but the chapters that follow them are all mostly about realism, power, war, anarchy, insecurity prevailing in international stage, cautious about other international actors and so on. Although so far International Relations has introduced me to various interesting facts, concepts and topics pertaining to International Politics, there are two issues or topics that literally begged for more of my attention: Classical vs Scientific approach to studying international relations and the issue of gaining or maintaining power at the world stage.

Almost good four to five chapters are dedicated to debate about the best approach among the two. As Classical realism vs scientific approach lock horns with each other in international relations, same is the case in economics as there are two approaches or models to managing economy, classical or Keynesian model, battling each other to come on top. Unlike in economics, we do have a clear winner in international relations: classical approach. Almost all renowned scholars and political scientists have used and still prefer classical over scientific approach. Scientific approach has been abandoned for a very long time now. In economics today, in managing economy, both models or approaches are equally significant. Some countries or economists prefer classical model while some prefer Keynesian. It depends on the current scenario or time period through which an economy is going through.

Another topic which fascinated me so far was that of power. It was very exciting the way we were all introduced to the concepts and roles that anarchy and power played in international politics by various authors like Milner,Haas and Mearsheimer etc.. It is a desire of every state to increase or maintain its power, influence over the other states in international politics and thus involve themselves in many ways of achieving that hegemonic status. For instance USA, Russians annexation attempts on Ukraine province to establish it's hegemon in that part of Eastern Europe. Same Is the case of Iraq Iran war each of them sought to establish hegemony in middle East.  All of this does, as Mearsheimer rightly said in his The Tragedy of  Great Power Politics, show us how dangerous the international political game or business really is and "it is likely to remain that way" (Mearsheimer 2). 

For me, International relations is more like a wrestling ring where the WWE World Heavy Weight Champion is defending his tittle against the number one contender for the championship. The Champ wants to retain the title while the contender wants to deliver him a huge RKO, pin him 1 2 3 and become the New WWE World Heavy Weight Champion.