A SYNOPSIS OF THREE PRIMERS ON INTERNATIONAL THEORIES
"I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all any conscious entity can do" (HAL)

    This lecture is a synopsis or executive summary of three (3) other lectures.  The reader is encouraged to read the originals: (1) A Primer on Peace Studies and Humanitarianism; (2) A Primer on International Relations Theory; and (3) A Primer on National Security Theory.  However, since they are all primers which contain fundamental or elementary information, the most important-to-know elements are reproduced here.  Please be aware that for the sake of space, the material has been condensed into abbreviated form.

from #1: PEACE AND HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION
     The absence of conflict is not peace.  Positive peace requires things like justice, tranquility, balance, and harmony.  The field of peace studies, defined as "an applied science directed toward preventing, diminishing, or curing violence," (Barash 1991) is a field with some decidedly subjectivist and ideological "leftist" slants, just as many antiwar movements are not true peace movements but someone's hidden political agenda.  In global studies, we are concerned with what might be called the more conservative, "idealpolitik" (Kober 1990; 2000) approach which tries to achieve two goals at the same time -- human security and national security -- the virtuous goal of risking of life and limb to protect the helpless AND protecting yourself at the same time.

    Departments of peace studies were established around 1948 in the U.S. and have been around overseas for much longer.  Probably the most well-known is the Notre Dame peace studies program, which is well-funded by the philanthropist Joan Kroc, third wife of McDonald's CEO Ray Kroc.  However, numerous, small private schools also have peace studies or justice studies programs (Quaker, Wesleyan, and Catholic schools in particular).  Although diversity in approach is the norm, it can be said one of the dominant paradigms in the field is the justice and reconciliation approach.  It is best explained by Hamre & Sullivan (2003:176), as follows:

    The justice and reconciliation approach is somewhat heavily informed by the ideas of peace researcher and scholar Johan Galtung (1996; 2002) who started PRIO (the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo) and developed the Transcend Method for training peace activists.  Other significant contributors and/or areas of contribution include: Desmond Tutu; developmental sociology (see Center for Global Development); economic overseas humanitarian assistance (see Overseas Development Institute); transitional democracy projects (see International Center for Transitional Justice); and numerous civil-military organizations.  There are also about 20 or so Truth and Reconciliation Commissions around the world which practice the principles of justice and reconciliation on a daily basis.

    One of the tenets of the justice and reconciliation approach is that in world affairs, at some points, strong "intervention" is needed, and the sequencing and phasing (as well as type) of such  intervention is important, if only for strategic reasons.  Some interventions will have a clear American national interest at stake; others may involve the US in less than a lead role; and still others may simply be "other people's messes."  Various U.S. presidents have variously interpreted the tradeoff involved here between American isolationism and American exceptionalism.  In actual practice, Flournoy & Pan (2003), say there are four types of interventions:

    Problems are widespread.  To name two major one, there is always a shortage of qualified personnel with the range of linguist and CIVPOL skills needed, as well as no adequate mechanism for summoning and deploying such personnel.  Presidential Directive 71 spells out US policy in this regard, but it has not lived up to its lofty goal of creating a permanent US postconflict stability or expeditionary force.  Likewise, U.S. partnerships with IGOs and NGOs are in vast need of improvement (Aall et al. 2000).  There is also a need to coordinate economic aid via a system of "peace conditionalities" (Boyce 2002) which rewards states financially for keeping their peace agreements, but again, this may be only a dream. 

    Humanitarian intervention is the general term for common interventions.  It can be defined as the coercive intrusion into the internal affairs of another nation to do something about large-scale human rights violations (Evans & Newnham 1998), or better defined as "the justifiable use of force for the purpose of protecting the inhabitants of another state from treatment so arbitrary and persistently abusive as to exceed the limits within which the sovereign is presumed to act with reason and justice" (Fonteyne 1974).  It's often the only form of military-assisted action condoned by peace activists and/or just war theorists.  Although no article of the UN Charter specifically mentions humanitarian intervention, there are three (3) UN conceptions of the term: (1) an enforcement action taken under chapter 7 of the Charter; (2) peacemaking, or the active involvement of outsiders to being about a peaceful settlement; and (3) post-conflict peace-building, which often occurs before the end of conflict to seek a lasting peace.  In practice, what passes for humanitarian intervention takes one of three forms: material assistance through relief, aid, or sanctions; coercive, but nonmilitary pressure to end abusive practices; and dispatch of military forces to remedy massive human atrocities.

    An important assumption and basis of much thinking over humanitarian intervention is whether there are specific crimes (against humanity) being committed.  One doesn't intervene in the affairs of another country simply because the leader can be called a "tyrant" or doesn't meet your liking of their leadership.  Prudence is the better part of valor, and no one-size-fits-all, utopian scheme exists for creating international order without salvaging some better parts of the Westphalian sovereignty system which have given us norms of restraint [Note: this position, or something like it, is the foundation for the so-called "English School" of international relations; see Bull 1977 or Jones 1981].  Humanitarian intervention can be carried out unilaterally (by one state) or by a group of states (collective intervention), with collective intervention almost always preferred.  There are complicated or paradoxical international law standards involved, but the main principle, as Ocran (2002) points out, is a "disinterestedness standard" which allows pretty much anything as long as neither colonial intent nor selfish political reasons exist.

from #2: A PRIMER ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS THEORY
     International relations (IR) is the study of how the system of states could be made to work more effectively to enhance the power of law, peacefully manage interstate affairs, preserve order and minimize the prospects of war.  The field is closely tied, administratively if not academically, to political science departments (and in some cases, history or law departments, from which IR can be said to have originated, particularly from the subfields of diplomatic history and international law).  At various times, IR tries to become a "breakaway" discipline from political science.  Currently, there are about 25 or so top-ranked academic IR departments in the world, and they are all mostly at US ivy-league schools.  The field has about seven (7) different "Schools of Thought" which roughly follow one another chronologically and have some overlap:

    (1) Realism -- developed during WWII and holds six assumptions, which can be roughly summarized as follows: human nature cannot be trusted but nation-states can be trusted to be rational and short-term power maximizers when it comes to their national security (Examples: containment theory, nuclear deterrence, detente, hegemony theory) 
    (2) Behavioralism -- developed during the 1960s as a quantitative, systems theory approach to predicting political behavior (not to be confused with the psychological learning theory, behaviorism), and regarded by political scientists as what makes political science a science (because they do empirical, quantitative research on such things as balance of power theory and functionalism)
    (3) Neorealism -- developed in the late 1970s as a way to make realism more scientific by removing any assumptions about human nature and the nation-state system as rational. Instead, it argues the world is based on anarchy and all nations face a "security dilemma" where they must enter into arms races or seek alliances with stronger nations (Examples: Cold War theory, bipolarity, regime theory, balancing, bandwagoning)
    (4) Neoliberalism -- a 1980s response to neorealism which holds that even under conditions of anarchy, nations can cooperate thru building norms, regimes, and institutions, but they do not act coherently in this and most cooperation is tacit, unspoken, and unwritten (Examples: game theory, regime theory, hegemonic stability theory, interdependence theory)
    (5) World Systems Theory -- a 1980s neo-Marxist approach almost singularly associated with work by Immanuel Wallerstein, a New York sociology professor with a bit of a following for the idea that the world is divided into three classes of nations: the core, the periphery, and the semi-periphery (Examples: dependency theory, neocolonialism, anti-globalization; socialism)
    (6) Critical Theory -- a 1980s earlier and ongoing Left-wing project of analyzing and providing critique of other theories in terms of how such theories contain hidden, literary symbols, messages, or agendas (Examples: feminism, anti-globalization, hermeneutics, cultural studies, semiotics, and of course, anyone who would analyze the heck out of why I'm calling it a Left-wing project)
    (7) Postmodernism -- a 1980s earlier and ongoing Left-wing project where all things have multiple meanings and there are few, if any, central organizing principles (Examples: deconstruction, postcolonialism, anti-globalization, poststructuralism, identity politics)

    These are a lot of perspectives, to be sure, and depending upon which professor you talk to, you get a different answer as to which approaches are the most important or significant.  Those who toil in approaches #5, #6, and #7 tend to get stuck there, and approach #2 is often a case of dustbin empiricism.  When it comes down to bare-bones IR, the only two real contenders and dominant perspectives today are realism and neoliberalism.  There's no sufficient way to prove this, but suffice it to say that Gaddis (2003), among others (Evans & Newnham 1998), say this.  In terms of people who represent these two perspectives,  one could say that Kissinger (2001) is the most prominent "realist" and Nye (1999) is the most prominent "neoliberal." 

    These are vast oversimplifications, but realism is also called "power-politics" and goes by a variety of other names, such as "realpolitik."  Basically, realism believes in a strong military and the idea that nation-states in the world only understand raw power.  Neorealism exists as a variety of realism which softens down the emphasis on power and considers alliances or blocs of nations as capable of establishing some kind of soft balance of power.  Liberalism, among other things, is basically the idea that peace can be secured through the spread of democratic institutions on a world-wide basis.  Neoliberalism (sometimes called neoidealism) is the idea that states act on the basis of values such as concerns for mutually shared security threats and concerns for things like the environment.  There's more -- much more -- but these are the basics, and there's really no way to truly do justice to all the nuances in IR theory.  One really needs to take a whole survey course on the subject.

from #3: A PRIMER ON NATIONAL SECURITY THEORY
     National security theory is an emerging subfield of security studies.  It "borrows" from many disciplines, particularly sociology, anthropology, and social psychology, and due to it being found in diverse places within history and political science departments, it is best described as practice in search of a theory.  It is sometimes referred to as "strategic studies" or more precisely, grand strategy (which can be defined as the integration of military, political, and economic means to pursue states' ultimate objectives in the international system - Hart 1954; Kennedy 1991).  It is a somewhat legalistic field, often taking its cue from a government's officially published documents, such as the National Security Strategy of the United States.  Given a war on terror, national security theory would try to figure out the best strategy, be it total defeat, rollback, containment, balancing, binding, or any dozen of other new words that national security theorists come up with.  Some strategies overlap with those found in international relations (IR) theory.  Moore & Turner (2005) state that there are six (6) different national security theories:

    (1) Balance of Power
    (2) Collective Security
    (3) World Federalism
    (4) Functionalism
    (5) Democratic Peace Theory
    (6) Incentive Theory

    We're on treacherous ground here, because again, all that can be offered are vast oversimplifications, and we're dealing with an emerging field to boot.  However, for purposes of simplification, the balance of power approach pretty much adopts the same ideas as the realist and neorealist approaches found in IR theory.  The collective security approach is the basis for the organization known as the United Nations, which may have been (and is) a bit of an overreach for the theory, which in its simpler version is just the idea that a breach of peace for one is a breach of peace for all.  The world federalist approach is the basis behind organizations such as the international criminal court and a number of other organizations and movements interested in creating, one day, some kind of world government which would make and enforce good international law.  Functionalism is basically a similar approach to world governance or global order from the perspective of functions and needs, and looking at regions of the world rather than at nation-states.  A basic assumption of functionalism is that freedom and integration go hand-in-hand.  Democratic peace theory pretty much consists of classic liberalism's idea that the spread of democracy is the best way to ensure peace.  A basic assumption of democratic peace theory is that democracies never go to war with one another.  The incentive approach is just one among many, new, emerging theories which try to combine ideas from both realism and idealism to figure out ways to create incentives, pressures, sanctions, and strategies to get nations to abide by a common code of conduct.  There's more -- much more -- but these are the basics.                          

INTERNET RESOURCES
About USAID & The Foreign Assistance Act of 1961
Amazon Guide to International Relations Theory
American Grand Strategy after 9/11 (pdf)
Clinton Doctrine of Humanitarian Intervention
Foreign Policy Focus Brief on Humanitarian Military Intervention
International Relations: Theory and Practice
IR Theory Knowledge Base
Online Journal of Peace and Conflict Resolution
USAID Democracy and Governance Bureau
U.S. Institute of Peace
U.N. Dept. of Humanitarian Relief
U.N. Dept. of Peacekeeping Operations
U.N. Resources on Peace and Security

PRINTED RESOURCES
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Barash, D. (1991). An Introduction to Peace Studies. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. [author's homepage]
Booth, K. & Smith, S. (Eds.) (1995). International Relations Theory Today. Univ. Park: Penn St. Univ. Press.
Boyce, J. (2002). Investing in Peace: Aid and Conditionality After Civil Wars. NY: Oxford Univ. Press.
Bull, H. (1977). The Anarchical Society. London: Macmillan.
Evans, G. & Newnham, J. (1998). The Penguin Dictionary of International Relations. NY: Penguin.
Flournoy, M. & Pan, M. (2003). "Dealing with Demons: Justice and Reconciliation." Pp. 200-214 in A. Lennon (ed.) The Battle for Hearts and Minds: Using Soft Power to Undermine Terrorist Networks. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Fonteyne, J. (1974). "The Customary International Law Doctrine of Humanitarian Intervention: Its Current Validity Under the U.N. Charter." 4 California Western International Law Journal 4: 203, 204.
Gaddis, J. (2003). "Order versus Justice." Pp. 154-175 in Foot et al. (eds). Order and Justice in IR. NY: Oxford.
Galtung, J. (1996). Peace by Peaceful Means. Beverly Hills: Sage.
Galtung, J. et. al. (2002). Searching for Peace, 2e. NY: Pluto.
Griffiths, M. (1999). Fifty Key Thinkers in International Relations. London: Routledge.
Hamre, J. & Sullivan, G. (2003). "Toward Postconflict Resolution." Pp. 169-183 in A. Lennon (ed.) The Battle for Hearts and Minds: Using Soft Power to Undermine Terrorist Networks. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Hart, B. (1954/1991). Strategy. NY: Penguin.
Jones, R. (1981). "The English School of International Relations." Review of International Studies 7(1):1-14.
Kennedy, P. (Ed.) (1991). Grand Strategies in War and Peace. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press.
Kissinger, H. (2001). Does America Need a Foreign Policy? NY: Simon & Schuster.
Kober, S. (1990). "Idealpolitik." Foreign Policy 79(Summer): 11-13.
Kober, S. (2000). "Setting Dangerous International Precedents." Pp. 107-119 in T. Carpenter (eds.) Nato's Empty Victory: A Postmortem on the Balkan War. Washington DC: CATO.
Moore, J. (2005). "Newer Theories in Understanding War: From the Democratic Peace to Incentive Theory." Pp. 15-28 in Moore & Turner  National Security Law. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press.
Nye, J. (2004). Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. NY: PublicAffairs. [virtual book tour]
Ocran, M. (2002). "The Doctrine of Humanitarian Intervention in Light of Robust Peacekeeping." Boston College International & Comparative Law Review 25(1): 1-58. [available online]

Last updated: Sept. 19, 2007
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