Session 22 - War and Peace

My first reaction after reading the first line of Levy’s article was: ‘Oh no, not again!’ Just when I thought that we were done with Thucydides, Waltz, war, peace, realism and liberalism and moving towards different and more interesting perspectives like feminism and social constructivism, Levy’s article pulled me back into the firm hand of realism and liberalism. I don’t think I ever want to study realist or liberalist theories and the never ending debate between them, ever again – at least not for a few months. However, given the nature of my major (Pol Sci), I will eventually have to face them again.

Just as I was writing this post, I complained to my friend who was sitting next to me: “I’ve been writing about realism and liberalism all semester and now I have to do it again because of this one article!”

My friend (an Econ major) replied saying, “Inn logon ne dunya ka dimagh kharab kar diya hai. These people (the theorists) have made things complicated. They are the reason why there is war in the world. For example, USA and USSR – capitalism vs communism made the world crazy. And now there’s realism and liberalism. There’s no one ideology that covers everything”.

I immediately got defensive and told her not to say anything negative regarding the theorists whose works I had spent an entire semester reading and writing about. I went on to say, “It is not the theorists who have ruined the world, it is us, humans, who have made the world a war – ridden place. These theorists are just trying to explain why war occurs. Everything is about power and money and that’s what everybody wants.” After saying this, I realised I had just made a very realist statement. Yaay realism!

My friend went on to argue, “Why can’t there just be one common theory to explain everything? Why can’t everybody just agree on one thing?”

I simply replied by saying, “That’s exactly what the author talks about in this article. He believes that a multi method approach has significant benefits. But maybe it’s just our ego which does not allow us to agree with others and formulate a single, commonly believed, universal theory”. And with this, I remembered how in the reading for Session 19, the author had argued that there are people out there who are despaired by the lack of “shared conviction about the nature and destination of social theory”.  I also remember thinking that this idea seemed absurd because lack of finality in social theory does not cage us. Rather, it allows us to be creative and open to possibilities. But I guess there are some people who are genuinely frustrated by all this talk of realism, liberalism, communism, capitalism, feminism etc.

Anyway, on a concluding note, Levy’s article was a comprehensive summary of whatever we have studied so far in this course. On a side note, I don’t know which school of thought I feel inclined towards the most, but I know for sure that liberalism is not it.  Realism may be pessimistic but it’s ‘realistic’. Social constructivism maintains an optimism view of the world – a much needed perspective in a war ridden world. Finally, feminism uncovers whatever is left untouched (only theoretically) by other IR theories. Therefore, a multi method approach does seem like the best way to go.