One World Many Theories

International Relations, One World Many Theories was conceptualized by Stephen M. Waltz, he believes that theories make sense on the blizzards of information that bombards us daily and is that theories were used by everyone. You need to know a lot about real world in order to create theories. It was believed that no single approach could capture the complexity of Contemporary world politics, and it’s better to have many theories than a single theoretical orthodoxy.

Studying International Relations fallows to the study of different theories, Realism, Liberalism and Radical Traditions, there are protracted competitions between these three theories.

Realism highlights the continuing propensity for conflict between states, while liberalism believes that there are some ways to mitigate these conflicts, Radical Tradition explains the possibility of state relations to be transformed. There are three kinds of realist, one would be the “Classical Realist” who believes that states are like human being that has the desire to dominate others. The second one would be the “neo realist” who ignores human nature and focused on the effects of International System meaning seeking to survive. The third one would be the “defensive realist” who concentrates on the balancing alliances and defensive military postures.

Liberalism believes that economic interdependence would discourage war. Why? Because warfare could threatened each sides property. In this article Woodrow Wilson emphasize his belief on Democracy as the key to World Peace.

Radical Approaches like Marxism, The first thing that would come to your mind would be? What? “Class Struggle”. Yes Class Struggle. Marxist believes that there are different explanations for international conflict, Capitalism as this big possibility to result to war.

I am still unsure about the connection of realism to Relative and Absolute Gains. There are some interesting facts that I’ve learned in this session and that is the connection of these 3 main theories on International Relations to the End of Cold War. And as to why Realism and Liberalism failed to anticipate Cold War. More readings would answer my remaining questions about the theories and its relation to the history of International Relations. Because I believe that it’s hard to construct good policy without knowing the meaning of the “Real World”.