Tai Lieu Chat Luong International Relations: A Very Short Introduction VERY SHORT INTRODUCTIONS are for anyone wanting a stimulating and accessible way in to a new subject. They are written by experts, and have been published in more than 25 languages worldwide. The series began in 1995, and now represents a wide variety of topics in history, philosophy, religion, science, and the humanities. Over the next few years it will grow to a library of around 200 volumes – a Very Short Introduction to everything from ancient Egypt and Indian philosophy to conceptual art and cosmology.
Very Short Introduction available now: AFRICAN HISTORY BUDDHA Michael Carrithers John Parker and Richard Rathbone BUDDHISM Damien Keown ANARCHISM Colin Ward BUDDHIST ETHICS ANCIENT EGYPT Ian Shaw Damien Keown ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY CAPITALISM James Fulcher Julia Annas THE CELTS Barry Cunliffe ANCIENT WARFARE CHAOS Leonard Smith Harry Sidebottom CHOICE THEORY ANGLICANISM Mark Chapman Michael Allingham THE ANGLO-SAXON AGE CHRISTIAN ART John Blair Beth Williamson ANIMAL RIGHTS David DeGrazia CHRISTIANITY Linda Woodhead ARCHAEOLOGY Paul Bahn CLASSICS ARCHITECTURE Mary Beard and John Henderson Andrew Ballantyne CLAUSEWITZ Michael Howard ARISTOTLE Jonathan Barnes THE COLD WAR ART HISTORY Dana Arnold Robert McMahon ART THEORY Cynthia Freeland CONSCIOUSNESS THE HISTORY OF Susan Blackmore ASTRONOMY Michael Hoskin CONTEMPORARY ART ATHEISM Julian Baggini Julian Stallabrass AUGUSTINE Henry Chadwick CONTINENTAL BARTHES Jonathan Culler PHILOSOPHY THE BIBLE John Riches Simon Critchley THE BRAIN Michael O’Shea COSMOLOGY Peter Coles BRITISH POLITICS THE CRUSADES Anthony Wright Christopher Tyerman CRYPTOGRAPHY FUNDAMENTALISM Fred Piper and Sean Murphy Malise Ruthven DADA AND SURREALISM GALILEO Stillman Drake David Hopkins GANDHI Bhikhu Parekh DARWIN Jonathan Howard GLOBAL CATASTROPHES THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS Bill McGuire Timothy Lim GLOBALIZATION DEMOCRACY Bernard Crick Manfred Steger DESCARTES Tom Sorell GLOBAL WARMING DESIGN John Heskett Mark Maslin DINOSAURS David Norman HABERMAS DREAMING J. Allan Hobson James Gordon Finlayson DRUGS Leslie Iversen HEGEL Peter Singer THE EARTH Martin Redfern HEIDEGGER Michael Inwood ECONOMICS Partha Dasgupta HIEROGLYPHS Penelope Wilson EGYPTIAN MYTH HINDUISM Kim Knott Geraldine Pinch HISTORY John H. Arnold EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY HOBBES Richard Tuck BRITAIN Paul Langford HUMAN EVOLUTION THE ELEMENTS Philip Ball Bernard Wood EMOTION Dylan Evans HUMAN RIGHTS EMPIRE Stephen Howe Andrew Clapham ENGELS Terrell Carver HUME A. Ayer ETHICS Simon Blackburn IDEOLOGY Michael Freeden THE EUROPEAN UNION INDIAN PHILOSOPHY John Pinder Sue Hamilton EVOLUTION INTELLIGENCE Ian J.
Deary Brian and Deborah Charlesworth INTERNATIONAL EXISTENTIALISM Thomas Flynn MIGRATION Khalid Koser FASCISM Kevin Passmore INTERNATIONAL FEMINISM Margaret Walters RELATIONS Paul Wilkinson THE FIRST WORLD WAR ISLAM Malise Ruthven Michael Howard JOURNALISM Ian Hargreaves FOSSILS Keith Thomson JUDAISM Norman Solomon FOUCAULT Gary Gutting JUNG Anthony Stevens THE FRENCH REVOLUTION KAFKA Ritchie Robertson William Doyle KANT Roger Scruton FREE WILL Thomas Pink KIERKEGAARD Patrick Gardiner FREUD Anthony Storr THE KORAN Michael Cook LINGUISTICS Peter Matthews POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY LITERARY THEORY David Miller Jonathan Culler POSTCOLONIALISM LOCKE John Dunn Robert Young LOGIC Graham Priest POSTMODERNISM MACHIAVELLI Quentin Skinner Christopher Butler THE MARQUIS DE SADE POSTSTRUCTURALISM John Phillips Catherine Belsey MARX Peter Singer PREHISTORY Chris Gosden MATHEMATICS Timothy Gowers PRESOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY MEDICAL ETHICS Tony Hope Catherine Osborne MEDIEVAL BRITAIN PSYCHOLOGY John Gillingham and Gillian Butler and Freda McManus Ralph A. Griffiths PSYCHIATRY Tom Burns MODERN ART David Cottington QUANTUM THEORY MODERN IRELAND John Polkinghorne Senia Pašeta RACISM Ali Rattansi MOLECULES Philip Ball THE RENAISSANCE MUSIC Nicholas Cook Jerry Brotton MYTH Robert A. Segal RENAISSANCE ART NATIONALISM Steven Grosby Geraldine A. Johnson NEWTON Robert Iliffe ROMAN BRITAIN Peter Salway NIETZSCHE Michael Tanner THE ROMAN EMPIRE NINETEENTH-CENTURY Christopher Kelly BRITAIN ROUSSEAU Robert Wokler Christopher Harvie RUSSELL A.
Matthew RUSSIAN LITERATURE NORTHERN IRELAND Catriona Kelly Marc Mulholland THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION PARTICLE PHYSICS Frank Close S. Sanders SCHIZOPHRENIA PHILOSOPHY Edward Craig Chris Frith and Eve Johnstone PHILOSOPHY OF LAW SCHOPENHAUER Raymond Wacks Christopher Janaway PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE SHAKESPEARE Germaine Greer Samir Okasha SIKHISM Eleanor Nesbitt PHOTOGRAPHY Steve Edwards SOCIAL AND CULTURAL PLATO Julia Annas ANTHROPOLOGY POLITICS Kenneth Minogue John Monaghan and Peter Just SOCIALISM Michael Newman TRAGEDY Adrian Poole SOCIOLOGY Steve Bruce THE TUDORS John Guy SOCRATES C. Taylor TWENTIETH-CENTURY THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR BRITAIN Kenneth O. Morgan Helen Graham THE VIKINGS Julian Richards SPINOZA Roger Scruton WITTGENSTEIN A.
Grayling STUART BRITAIN John Morrill WORLD MUSIC TERRORISM Charles Townshend Philip Bohlman THEOLOGY David F. Ford THE WORLD TRADE THE HISTORY OF TIME ORGANIZATION Leofranc Holford-Strevens Amrita Narlikar Available Soon: ANTISEMITISM GAME THEORY Ken Binmore Steven Beller GEOGRAPHY John Matthews and BESTSELLERS John Sutherland David Herbert CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY GEOPOLITICS Klaus Dodds Helen Morales GERMAN LITERATURE DOCUMENTARY FILM Nicholas Boyle Patricia Aufderheide MEMORY Jonathan Foster THE EUROPEAN UNION MODERN CHINA Rana Mitter (NEW EDITION) John Pinder QUAKERISM Pink Dandelion and Simon Usherwood SCIENCE AND RELIGION EXPRESSIONISM Thomas Dixon Katerina Reed-Tsocha SEXUALITY Véronique Mottier For more information visit our website www.uk/general/vsi/ This page intentionally left blank Paul Wilkinson International Relations A Very Short Introduction 1 1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York Paul Wilkinson 2007 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published as a Very Short Introduction 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization.
Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available ISBN 978–0–19–280157–9 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain by Ashford Colour Press Ltd, Gosport, Hampshire For my grandchildren: James, Rebecca, Molly, Amy, Jack, Lola, Lois and Nell This page intentionally left blank Contents List of illustrations xiii Introduction 1 1 States 12 2 Non-states 58 3 Intergovernmental organizations 79 4 Problems and challenges 105 Conclusion 135 Further reading 138 Index 140 This page intentionally left blank List of illustrations 1 Niccolo Machiavelli 7 Trench warfare, notably (1469–1527), political in the 1914–18 war, led philosopher 3 to slaughter on a massive © 2006 Topfoto.uk scale 56 Imperial War Museum (Q 5100) 2 President George W. Bush declared a ‘War on Terror’ 8 Pope John Paul II after 9/11 23 (1920–2005) 60 © Getty Images © 2006 Topfoto.uk 3 Ayatollah Khomeini 9 The Paris Peace Conference (1900–89) led the Iranian redrew the map of revolution (1979) 37 Europe after the © 2006 Topfoto.uk First World War 63 © Time Life Pictures/Getty 4 Skulls of victims of Pol Pot’s Images policy of mass murder in Cambodia in the 1970s 41 10 Vladimir Ilyich Lenin © Tom Wagner/Corbis SABA (1870–1924) 71 Ann Ronan Picture Library/© 2006 Topfoto.uk 5 Prince Otto von Bismarck (1815–98), Prime Minister of 11 The twin towers of Prussia (1862–90) 53 New York’s World Trade © Time Life Pictures/Getty Images Center on 11 September 2001 75 6 The Congress of Vienna © Rommel Pecson/2006 (1814–15) 55 Topfoto.uk © Bettmann/Corbis 12 Relief workers delivering 15 The bombing of Baghdad in humanitarian aid after the March 2003 during Operation tsunami on 26 December Shock and Awe 123 2004 76 © Olivier Coret/In Visu/Corbis © Dermot Tallow/Panos Pictures 16 Victims of the Holocaust 124 13 The UN Security Council in © Bettmann/Corbis session 91 © UN Photo/Evan Schneider 17 Guantanamo Bay, a US base in Cuba used as a prison 128 14 Hiroshima after the © Ron Sachs/Corbis Allies dropped an atomic bomb on the city (6 August 1945) 112 © Hulton Archive/Getty Images The publisher and the author apologize for any errors or omissions in the above list. If contacted they will be pleased to rectify these at the earliest opportunity. Introduction What is this book about? International relations is a very broad concept.
In modern usage it includes not only relations between states but also between states and non-state organizations such as churches, humanitarian relief organizations and multinational corporations, and between states and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), such as the UN and the EU. In this very brief introduction I shall be using this broad concept of the subject. The subject of international relations is taught in many universities, often in combination with, or as part of, the curriculum of political science. But in my view the attempt by political scientists to exert some kind of monopoly over the subject of international relations is neither practicable nor sustainable.
The serious student of international relations needs to have some knowledge of international history, law, and economics as well as foreign policy and international politics. It is the complex and multidisciplinary nature of the subject that has made the search for an effective general theory of international relations ‘mission impossible’. This is not to say that valuable partial or limited theories applicable to certain 1 aspects of the subject do not exist. But the main schools of general theory of international relations are not proven in any scientific sense: rather they constitute ways of perceiving international relations, metaphors or models which appeal to their adherents because that is the way they prefer to view the world.
It could be argued that if a particular approach to interpreting international relations becomes sufficiently widely held it could become self-fulfilling. A good example of this is realist theory of international relations, still arguably the most influential school of thought in international relations on both sides of the Atlantic. Realist theory The true precursors of the modern realist school of thought in International Relations international relations were Niccolo Machiavelli, author of The Prince (1532), and Thomas Hobbes, who wrote The Leviathan (1651), for both of these political philosophers assumed that human beings were fundamentally motivated by their own self-interests and appetites and that the most widespread and potentially dangerous of all these appetites is their lust for power. In their view, the sovereign who rules the state is the true and only guarantor of internal peace because he alone has power to enforce the peace.
However, in the wider world of international politics the law of the jungle applied. In their view, international politics was a constant struggle for power, not necessarily resulting in constant open warfare, but always necessitating a readiness to go to war. In this continual state of anarchy the only prudent course for the prince was to accumulate as much power as possible and to use that power to defend and pursue their national interest. For this purpose military power was the key requirement: wealth from commerce and industry were seen mainly as a means to acquiring the necessary military power.
Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527), secretary to the War Council of the Republic of Forence (1498–1512) and political philosopher. In The Prince (1532) he provided a candid and amoral guide on how to seize and maintain power over a state. Modern realists accept, explicitly or implicitly, these underlying assumptions, and stress the continuing necessity of alliance-building, the role of the state as key political actor, the maintenance of a favourable balance of power, and a firm refusal 3 to entrust security to international organizations and agreements, as essential components of an effective national security policy.