Ever since Thucydides, scholars from a lot of disciplines have been studying war in the hope of facilitating efforts to prevent its occurrence or reduce its frequency. Even in this reading, Jack S. Levy has tried to understand why wars occur and in what ways can it be reduced, and for this he has focused on two major theories of IR; Realism and Liberalism.
The Realist school of thought originated through the work of Thomas Hobbes and it is centred upon four main propositions; the international system is anarchic, then it states that states are the most important actors, all states systems are unitary and rational actors and the primary concern of states is survival. Because of concern like survival, states act in a way to maximize their power before any other state does for their survival in the anarchic international system.
Then, Levy moves onto Liberalism. The central issue that liberalism seeks to address is that of achieving peace and cooperation in the international arena and the different ways through which this can happen. It claims that the world is a harsh and dangerous place, using military power has more consequences than the benefits. Then, it claims that military is not the only form of power, there is economic and social power as well and exercising economic power has been more useful than military power.
After reading Levy's piece, I can say that we are back where we started from. In the beginning, we started studying this course with understanding the concepts of war and peace through different schools of thought in IR. It clearly tells us that war and peace is one of the main concerns in the field of IR. Levy has provided a good explanation of both the schools of IR; liberalism and realism. He has given us a combined explanation and approach of how to study war and its different dynamics which is helpful for us as concepts like war which are too vague can not be understood using one approach and we need to look at them from various perspectives.
The Realist school of thought originated through the work of Thomas Hobbes and it is centred upon four main propositions; the international system is anarchic, then it states that states are the most important actors, all states systems are unitary and rational actors and the primary concern of states is survival. Because of concern like survival, states act in a way to maximize their power before any other state does for their survival in the anarchic international system.
Then, Levy moves onto Liberalism. The central issue that liberalism seeks to address is that of achieving peace and cooperation in the international arena and the different ways through which this can happen. It claims that the world is a harsh and dangerous place, using military power has more consequences than the benefits. Then, it claims that military is not the only form of power, there is economic and social power as well and exercising economic power has been more useful than military power.
After reading Levy's piece, I can say that we are back where we started from. In the beginning, we started studying this course with understanding the concepts of war and peace through different schools of thought in IR. It clearly tells us that war and peace is one of the main concerns in the field of IR. Levy has provided a good explanation of both the schools of IR; liberalism and realism. He has given us a combined explanation and approach of how to study war and its different dynamics which is helpful for us as concepts like war which are too vague can not be understood using one approach and we need to look at them from various perspectives.
I agree with your realist argument where there is always anarchy and without an over arching authority to dictate actions, war cannot truly be eradicated. The understanding of war, as you claim, is central to the study of IR because there are a plethora of reasons behind the start of war, and it interesting to dissect these problems.
ReplyDeleteGood post and you're right, this piece was meant to bring us back to the beginning. After having studied so many different theoretical and methodological approaches, it appears that a multi-method and mult-theoretical approach is the only way to study IR. The methods and theories have to fit the questions asked!
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