Just Wars? (to be completed...)

(after retrieving my unhappily lost book with all of my notes in it...)

Initially encountering this text, I thought how it was very interesting how Waltzer divides actors in wars:

p. 33
If you...
start war - you are wrong and to blame (and you have the option to end it)
resist war - you are right
join war unwillingly - you are blameless (but in hell)
join war willingly - you are not in hell, but you're also not particularly useful.

This early in the book, his view of morality surrounding wars is curious - if you don't want war, you are obviously in the right.

Intervention, however, is treated a little bit differently. Although joining war willingly is dumb and starting war is wrong, there are situations when not intervening is worse than intervening. However, these are only really truly just when it is a requested action from the inside of a country that will be intervened. (see page 105 for a great example of humanitarian intervention - the Bengalis called for it, and the Indians were in and out really quickly. Basically, this is the shining star).

I think it is interesting, though, how he seems to conclude his thoughts on interventions by making clear that there should be rules about them...because if they are completely outlawed, they will be ungovernable, but if they are regulated, then there is a kind of allowance for them to happen…

The REAL realism?

Waltzer – Substantive

I have been studying IR theory for a few years now and this is the first substantial book on the role of morality in war that I have read or heard of.  Of course, Thomas Aquinas is often referenced to the theory of just war as are many secular proponents, but Waltzer’s method just seems different.  Mr. Waltzer is not attempting a completely detached theory or justice from the reality of war, idealism, he seems to be intermixing normative and practical approaches.  What he seems to claim at the beginning of the book is that realism is not a true account of what life is really like, or perhaps the view of realism is not quite accurate in its undertaking.  On the Melian Dialogue, Waltzer says:  “For all its realism, however, it fails to get at the realities of that experience or to explain its character” (11).  Realism without morality just isn’t real, it is a view of life that is distanced from actual perception.  He calls this view the “moral reality of war…all those experiences of which moral language is descriptive or within which it is necessarily employed” (15).

Mr. Waltzer uses lots of examples that people would not immediately choose to further an argument of justice.  The reason for doing so would be to show that war may not only be just from the side of the victor.  For example, he gives several incidents of justice shown on the part of the axis powers, especially Germany.  He is also successful in turning the six days war, carried out by the Israeli army, normally considered to be a preventive attack into a justifiable attack in the course of a war that had already existed (82).  Mr. Waltzer likes to keep us on our toes, perhaps to not accept what is readily acceptable and to question the moral foundation of every decision we make and every decision that is made, either by ourselves or from above.  Not to move off the topic but I was watching a program on PBS this weekend which was filmed in the late 70’s, roughly about the time of this book that seemed to follow it in pretty good detail.  In any case, the narrator pointed out the fact that Stalin was totally against the war crimes tribunal of Nuremberg.  He just couldn’t understand why we allowed for the Nazi ringleaders to explain their actions.  He suggested that they be lined up and executed at one time to which Harry Truman thought was a joke and laughed.

So is realism in it’s current view really realism, considering that it acknowledges morality on a limited basis only to mask true reasons?  And even if morality were used as a façade of true perceptions then why do people feel the need to mask their true reasons?  Why does mankind restrain actions, hide perceptions, and feel the need to justify actions?

Bull's Pandemic

Bull – Reflective

What kind of event would change the international system?  Chris pointed out the infamous alien invasion in class and how the inter-state system would transform into a world government alignment.  I, however, would like to discuss the possibility of  a dissolution of the international states system, an event that would catalyze the inward concentration of the states.  This event would be an international health pandemic, on a scale that we have not known.  This pandemic would force the world to become disconnected and shut off.  Transnational contact would limit itself to virtual interactions, etc.  But would this cause the end of international society?  After all, as I have just noted, virtual interaction would not cause to the spread of the pandemic and perhaps it would even help states cooperate to overcome the pandemic.  

Well, lets just take a step back and see exactly what Bull means by the decline of the states system:  “that it has ceased or is ceasing to be capable of fulfilling the basic ends of goals of man on earth” (272).  Bull acknowledges three primary reasons that contribute to this view, including the disability of the state’s system to provide for peace and security; the inability to provide for more ambitious goals of econ and social justice; and state’s system as an obstacle to ecological harmony between man and his environment (272-273).  And to remind us what these basic elementary ends are, lets look back on page 4:  some measure of security of life against death; keeping of promises; and the stable possession of property.

I don’t know if the actual course of the international system, emanating from the preceding events of a pandemic of this sort can be foretold, life is not and should not be viewed as fatalistic because several courses of action are likely to occur, and even those that we have not thought of, like Deutsch acknowledges.  Just as ideas in correspondence to the Alien invasion were uncertain in the direction of the state’s system, the possibility of a pandemic follows a similar suit.  So will there be a total break down and dissolution of the states system or a world order, or perhaps something in between?

Why all the writing, Bull?

After reading Blink’s post [see below], I started thinking about why political scientists and philosophers write everything down. In the fine field of math, you write everything down so when you’re wrong, you can go back and find where you went wrong so you don’t have to start over entirely fresh from the start. However, when you write a theorem, you have tailor those steps down to the simplest, most elegant path from beginning to end. Why does Bull take so many pages to tell us that yes, states are good and no, we can’t really see into the future?

Straying a bit from the point of the course, I see that there are two ways to pass on information from person to person and from generation to generation, when it is acknowledged that mortality is the simplest way for knowledge to cease to exist. One is by teaching and leading by example. Kings learned to be kings by shadowing their fathers. Cobblers took terms of apprenticeship to learn everything that had been taught to their master. However, this is not particularly effective if you are a) a closed society (establishment, non-transparent institution, etc), b) too busy being really good at what you do to train a youngster to follow in your steps with the completeness you feel necessary, c) don’t know if there is some youngster to whom you wish to impart your life’s work/don’t know where he(/she) is, or d) publication is the hip thing to do (and you think your thoughts warrant immortality). In these cases, publication is the way that your contribution to human knowledge is carried on and remembered with some amount of permanence.

In essence, the point of books that make one little point after 300 some pages are not so much there to convey the particular thought but to fill the gaps in knowledge that the author has considered. By writing them and publishing them (and them ending up in our course literature), anyone who cares to find out will know what these scholars(/philosophers/writers/political theorists) have considered and why. Though they may not be a direct contribution to the final ‘theorem,’ the thought process and record thereof provides materials for other thinkers to consider, discard, contest, or build upon.

It seems that many of the thinkers we have encountered in this course are looking for the finite answer, the elegant theorem that applies to human nature, social relations, and international structure and relations. Bull, by presenting investigations of new thoughts and ideas to be gleaned from history does not seem to be working on the theorem directly but rather, seems to be acknowledging that there are many things to be considered and weighed and thought about before such a theorem is really possible. It is almost humble of him to not put forth the final answer – he instead presents an exploration of his ideas and analyses as wisdom and insight, not a solution.

Lenses and Forms

I did a little googling for other people’s thoughts on Bull, and had a small fit of laughter when one website commented that you should “switch to something else when it gets boring.” Man, Bull, you have a lot of ideas and observations, and sometimes it just takes too long to get to the point of your statements. It’s like you’re German or something. (the same site says “Bull seems consciously intent on forming a classic-to-be from the very start.” How entertaining that ProfPTJ put him in this course (think the VERY first class))

I wanted to respond to Teresa’s post and to the parts of the lecture last week that made me REALLY excited about Bull. It bothers me that International Relations is a political science and not a history. I chatted with many friends over the course of the last week (all political science/sociology/theology/English academics) and was informed many times that with my background in history, of course political science looks weird. I’m supposed to have spent all this time just memorizing names and dates, while they completely disregarded the specifics and only examined generalities. Perhaps I am a historian at heart: when ProfPTJ said that Bull’s school was of looking for insight, not of quantitative methodology for determining behavior on the international relations level, I got really hyped for something that wasn’t going to look for an answer.

Bull was perfect for that. His comparisons and definitions of various forms of order (system of states vs. society of states – pp. 9, 13) and examples/comparisons (primitive anarchical societies vs. international society as anarchical society – p. 57) had nuances that, though not quantitative or necessarily generalized, give one a lens to look through at state relations. This is unlike the quantitative “form” previous texts have created (look for specific things, categorize events in specific ways, bam, you have a solution.) (my definitions: LENS – a piece of glass that helps an observer to focus/clarify their observee. FORM – a chart with certain parts to fill in certain characteristics in order to generalize the observee into various categories.)

Many other posts have emphasized how Bull’s “prescription” (which really isn’t) starts with society as it currently (in 1977) stands. He doesn’t create a mythical state of nature (though he uses everyone else’s state of nature to explain society) upon which an international society could form. Like Weber, his conclusions are based on existing precedents not on possibilities. Of the state system, he says “it is within this system that the search for consensus has to begin.” (the oft quoted p. 285) The fact that he doesn’t have specifically quantitative findings (or a hypothesis) doesn’t make his work any less useful – rather, for me at least, it makes it MORE accurate in its flexibility.

Though not a prescription for order (and subsequent kind of peace), Bull’s discussion provides something to work and gain wisdom from, rather than situations to emulate (ahem, Deutsch), lofty inevitable ends (ahem, Kant), kind of unachievable world governance (ahem, Waltz) or really scary alternatives (ahem, Hobbes).

Context and Connection

Bull – Substantive

Why were you so boring? Yeah, I know that you don’t believe that you can prove your point with quantitative analysis but did you have to write like you were coding your whole book in math? Well I do admit that the end was much more interesting than the beginning. Despite the immense rhetorical sentiment that drenches the pages of this book I did find some parts extremely interesting.

I remember we discussed Bull’s methodology last week and how many have boasted that The Anarchical Society is out-dated. Yes, I do admit to skipping around a little when Bull reiterates the power struggle between the US and the USSR but I do not side with the critics of this work. I believe that book remains an important piece of literature on the subject of international relations as do the authors that we have become intimate with throughout the course of this semester. If we were to date a masterwork on the concept of being out-dated then why not throw the whole lot of our books on that pile? The Peloponnesian War doesn’t have any more relevance than does the Cold War in modern IR.

At the end of Chapter 12, Mr. Bull reflects upon a story of a man who was lost and asked for directions and the farmer answering the man’s question replied: “Oh sir, if I were you I wouldn’t start from here!” Bull concludes this chapter and this paragraph by exclaiming “The fact is that the form of universal political organization which actually prevails in the world is that of the state system, and it is within this system that the search for consensus has to begin (285). This caught my attention because my reflective post by Weber was of a similar nature. Both authors recognize that you cannot hypothesize about changes if you do not acknowledge the current “here and now” sentiment of life. You can’t talk about the practice of politics if you don’t recognize what politics at this point in time consists of and you can’t change the international system or offer up methods of peace if you do not recognize the starting point, the state system.

Maybe you were onto something, Deutsch...

In response to Holly’s post (and Chris’s statement in class), I think that perhaps Deutsch was doing an ok thing, only using a small selection of cases, and having them only from a small segment of the world. In addition to Holly’s argument, I’d like to mention that he originally set out to try to make a North Atlantic security community, and I guess I hadn’t thought fully about why only looking at North Atlantic security communities wasn’t a good idea. In fact, the purpose served is that he is looking at cultures that naturally interact with each other and are mostly structured in the same way (a lot were historically either colonies of each other, or parts of the same empire). In this way, there was already something upon which to build security community, a somewhat common history. Also, with similar government structures, amalgamation would be much simpler, and pluralist government structures would be more likely to mutually understand each other.

I think it is also interesting to read this against Rousseau’s government structures – that the bigger they get, the weaker they end up being. After reading Deutsch, I’d respond that Rousseau was really writing for a different time, a time in which the world was not inextricably interconnected financially and in terms of communication. I thought that Rousseau had it right, but now I wonder if we(the world) haven’t outgrown his social contract.

The North Atlantic Minus Everyone Else

I would like to go back to the discussion in class about the exclusion of 2/3 of the world in Deutsch’s hypothesized security community.  As well as being discussed at length in class it has also reappeared in blog entries by Miss A.F from A Bookish Affair, and Tully from Fight Blog, to name a few.   Well, yes, he does exclude a large portion of the world but lets look back at the context of the time that Deutsch was writing, 1957.  This is not too long after WWII and the “heating” up of the Cold War.  The trendy new word “globalization” had not made its appearance and the advent of the world wide web was far off.  So what’s my point?  Well, here we are in the year 2005, almost 2006 and the world still can’t unanimously concrete decision about anything.  We can’t even think of a world wide security community now, never mind then.  A security community should be rooted in a sense of “we-ness”, not small “wee” but shared values, in addition to other things, “we.”  “But we have the UN” you may say and subsequent other universal doctrines and commonalities.  This is true but these are just instances of representatives of countries put into a room, this doesn’t make them more likely to have a sense of commonality, even though it does offer the opportunity to collaborate it is still nothing concrete.  

Look at all the criticism Deutsch is receiving for his focus on just the North Atlantic, now imagine Deutsch had written on a global security community.  Would this make his idea more applicable and representative?  Sure it would represent more countries, in theory but in all practicality it wouldn’t be very likely.  At least with NATO, Deutsch had an existing organization with members who shared a common heritage and the similarity of western values.  Basically, the North Atlantic was what Deutsch knew so it’s what he wrote about.

Analyzing the causes of war and conflict and inaction

Admittedly, I put this one off for awhile. Perhaps waiting for inspiration, perhaps for some kind of divine intervention that would give me some insight into what Waltz’s purpose really was.

I understand his purpose in giving the forces in international conflict a structure – the method of looking at human behavior and intrastate behavior to understand interstate conflict seems so rudimentary I’m surprised it wasn’t so clearly delineated before this book.

I suppose the most interesting thing that the class discussion inspired me to consider was the Geneva Convention. I edited a paper for a friend on it last semester, and the conflicts she identified accurately reflected Waltz’s analysis, but not in the ways the Geneva Convention was discussed in class.

Image one: The president, press, general public opinion thought that the genocide convention was a good idea, especially considering that the holocaust had just happened.

Image two: The internal politics and structure of the US government allowed the convention to get held up in the Senate: the legal ramifications of the convention on the US. Under it, states could be held responsible for acts of genocide, including “mental harm,” which was a case being argued by minority groups. By ratifying the convention, it would supersede state laws and national laws…and members of the senate didn’t want to expose themselves to this scrutiny from US dominant organizations. The senate exercised political power over the president by threatening a constitutional amendment that would limit the president’s rights to make treaties, and this threat was what stopped the convention.

Image three: Even though it was a good idea and much of the rest of the world participated, the US did not enter into the Geneva Convention for FOUR decades (it was finally ratified in 1986).

Without image 2, the idea of image 1 leading to image 3 makes very little sense. The US fear in the ratification of the Geneva Convention was that they would be allowing a world police to moderate their state behavior – something that would not only violate sovereignty but might also put the US in a defensive role against a worldwide “force.” Just as fear of the Soviet Union’s power and ability to vaporize parts of earth unified nations during the cold war, the overarching power of the Convention could unify nations AGAINST the US.

Waltz’s breakdown and forced examination of all parts of the issue is a good tool for understanding these conflict and potential conflict situations…and will warrant a rereading at the end of the course.

Deutsch Welle - instantaneous access to world communication?

I am still not sure how to consider Deutsch’s study: everything from Quant is telling me that a sample of sixteen combined with relatively small numerical dominance of one decisive trait of integration/amalgamation/pluralism just isn’t very convincing. That aside, Deutsch’s analysis would be interesting to repeat in the context of modern communication.

I saw in several other blogs mention of what Deutsch would do with the internet and the possibilities in communication that it allows. On page 201, Deutsch concludes that “The most promising general method for moving toward these goals seems to be more and better communication.” His measurements of communication, collaboration, and government consulting were based on physical mail flux and acknowledgement of amalgamated institutions. In a world where corporations live in multinational terrain and bandwidth is the limit on communication, where communication across town or across the globe is nearly instantaneous, and where we are used to CNN having correspondents in the farthest reaches of the earth, the idea that “modern life…tends to be more international than life in past decades or centuries, and hence more conducive to the growth of international or supranational institutions” (22) is an unfounded belief just isn’t the case anymore.

Would he see MNCs as amalgamated institutions? Would he find any benefit to the fact that even “lower classes” have immediate access to the world through their television screens, computer monitors, and Hondas?

With our current conflict situation, threats of terrorism, and importance of national security, the US-Canada pluralistic integration would not be a center for a security community – but Europe seems to have become his solution.

Is it then possible for there to be trans-oceanic amalgamated (or pleuralistic – because he definitely suggests they are far more stable and easier to achieve) security-community? Though there can be promises of support, the physical transport/mobility of people and material goods may be too slow for the speeds at which we now communicate.

What do you say now Deutsch

Deutsch – Substantive

Well, me being in a hurry to read Deutsch, I never happened to look at the publishing date of this book (stack of papers on my part) but book nonetheless.  I finally did look at the publishing date when I began to write up this little inquisition into The Political Community and the North Atlantic and it was 1957.  Wow, I was taken aback, albeit some of Deutsch’s ideas are out of date, especially the parts directed toward the Soviet Union, but that doesn’t make this work any less relevant.  The question I want to ask to the group/class is:  if Deutsch were writing this today, what would he write about and what would he change about his analysis?  It seems surprising but he is the first author that we have approached that has attempted to quantitatively operationalize part of his study.  But doesn’t it seem odd that when studying integration theory you would use mail as one of your variables?  But this idea kept making spontaneous appearances throughout the text, a common postal service throughout the North Atlantic.  But let me remind you that this was 1957 and the mail was still an important way of communication.  That leads me to another question about what would Deutsch write about today.  Aren’t we living in the digital age of communication, i.e. the internet?  Could you ask for a better, faster, easier way of communication?  Albeit, one has to take information from the internet with a grain of salt, but it does serve a function.  It serves to bring people, their ideas, and their cultures closer together.  

Also, would Deutsch change his focus away from a North-Atlantic integration, essentially a strengthening of NATO, toward the blossoming Euro zone?  He does mention the European Coal and Steel community in a few instances but this “experiment” has proved successful with leaps and bounds.  Meanwhile NATO, not so much.  After the collapse of the Soviet Union, like Deutsch had predicted, NATO was an organization without purpose, an organization in peril.  NATO never made any movement toward further integration. It staunchly remained a military organization for determent.  The EU was not created for military purposes and through functionalism it has gained greater and greater authority in the socio-political realm.

War?

Ok, so we have established that Waltz believes that an “effective” world government would lead to the cessation of war. But obviously an international government of perfection does not exist in or time or maybe it never will. So why bother writing a book on something that could never be achieved; or that could only be achieved by way of an alien invasion http://academictryst.blogspot.com/2005/11/alien-invasion.html. Well, perhaps the answer lies within the question. Perhaps Waltz knows that no such thing as an effective world government so planning for one would be a fallacy. War exists because there is nothing to stop it. So could anything ever stop it, probably not or at least not at this moment in time? So the reasoning is cyclic but the point is still there; war would cease with an effective world government but an effective world government doesn’t exist. Well, lets solve this problem of anarchy then…remove the anarchy then we can remove war. Yeah, for some reason that doesn’t seem to be quite so simple a task.

Another point that I wanted to touch on was this whole idea of war vs. conflict. I think the only difference is that war is fought between states and conflict between people and groups. Yeah, they may not be the same in theory but they can both be just as devastating. It’s true that not all conflicts are actually fought but some are, and that’s the point. Killing is still killing and there’s no philosophy or theory that can change that. Perhaps I’m Hobbesian in this instance. A person can make war on another person, and if that person is killed, what difference does it make it they were sent to die by an indifferent government or by their best friend who shoots them in the head. Who on earth does this person have to appeal to then, once they're dead. But not many people want to take it to a level this personal.

Ok, so then lets look at war vs conflict by distancing ourselves away from this personal level. Is there even any such thing as war anymore? Governments are now more logical or illogical, whatever way you take it, in fighting. Battles are no longer clear cut fighting out in the open. The enemy is no longer even recognizable in many cases. A country now can fight a particular group of people, say Al Queda, or even an ideology…hmm lets take terrorism, or even drugs. To avoid going to war governments, or agencies within that government also create covert operations to handle “minor” international disruptions in national policy. For example if a foreign President doesn’t seem to be supporting the United States in certain policies then why not send in the CIA to ruffle a few feathers and while we’re there why not just take out the root of the problem and get rid of that President. So, governments don’t really fight governments, per se, any more. They fight loose transnational social groups or idealogies. Now when I have mentioned “governments,” I have been speaking about particular parts or sects of the government and not the country as a whole because, as in America, these "conflicts" have not been ratified by the democratic process. I don’t remember voting on sending my fellow citizens to fight in Iraq? Can we then say that we have eliminated war? Sure, why not? So now that we have effectively eliminated war the world is sure to be much more peaceful and safer.

Chasing the Rabbit (around and around and around....)

To begin with my current “philosophical state,” last week I was pummeled with questions (or rather, I pummeled others with the questions that came at a tremendously vicious pace). Most were dichotomous: I want it to be that nobody on earth is starving, but the people with the means don’t seem to. And what if there were 25,000 more people surviving every day? In 10 years, that would be another 600 million people on earth (not factoring in the potential for more reproduction). Would Earth survive that strain? Would everyone be happy?

There’s also the tiny little part where I couldn’t do it alone. I couldn’t even do it with my group of friends, or with the extensive network of people I’ve known over the years. There is no power as an individual until there are people of means supporting it. And even then, there’s the problem of getting other people of means in on the cause too. It ultimately becomes the fox-hunt situation that everyone has been blogging about – I want to think that everyone will go along with it, but part of me thinks that the biggest supporter will just grab the rabbit. People of means seem to be used to getting the easiest, most efficient end.

This (quite obviously and surprisingly as I read) relates to Waltz’s images. As an individuals, humans are flawed and don’t trust each other until there is some pervasive reason to do so (Image 1) (ahem, a big stick). The rich guy will always make sure he will survive before he considers collaboration (and on airplanes, you are always instructed to put the oxygen mask on yourself before helping someone else).

What of this humanitarian dilemma? Well, there is the next level, this Image 2. Internally good states do good things (unless they don’t) and internally bad states do bad things. Generally, being a socialist democracy is best, but attaining this without considering Image 1 and it’s problems is too idealistic to ever be possible. Note that this is all internal – the problems are not with necessarily trying to collaborate with other nations, rather the international difficulties (disunities? Problems?) stem from the internal problems of the state itself.

Image 3, as Marisa mentions, is most important to Waltz. It is that of the way nations relate to each other. Some work towards unity (for economic reasons, but again, the same stag hunt analogy rings true), some don’t. This is dependent on the various nations’ willingness to use force to get what they want. The overall state, then, is not determined by the “nature of things” but by the behavior of the relationships between states.

Holly was explaining to me the various schools of thought (because most everything beyond realism and idealism was kind of over my head). Waltz seems to me not too much of a realist – yes, he acknowledges the problems he observes in society (real!), but he notes that all of this changes because of what the states (/coalitions) see as the end or perceive as the actions of other states/the world as a whole (p. 205 – “If some states act on this rule, or are expected to act on it, other states must adjust their theories accordingly”).

He suggests that by using force to make parties change, the idea of peace can be more readily accepted as a real goal. This reminded me in many ways of a strategy Prof, Rossiter brought up in SIS-600, that one general would make sure his men were fighting with their backs to a deep, rushing river or a cliff so that they could not physically retreat at all (in order to get them to keep to the order “don’t retreat”). If the option of the rabbit was removed from the stag equation, everyone would either have to work together and divide evenly, but that is not saying that if one man was injured in the chase and lost his value to the others before the division occurred that he would get his share.

Again, to the hunger problem – where best to focus efforts? Is it just a lot of game theory? Should we wait to find out whether life is sustainable with SO much potential population growth? Is it worth it? Should it be worth it?

To Be or Not to Be a Realist...

Waltz – Substantive

Is Waltz the actually big daddy of realism, as fellow colleagues of mine would good-humouredly joke? Well, I used to accept this position but am not quite so certain anymore. I’ve gone through and read a couple of Blog posts for Waltz that are up and it seems that these posters are pretty certain of Waltz’s realist position. Our resident Sir Francis Bacon from "A Bookish Affair", for example, is quite staunch on his approach of Waltz's realist assumptions" http://academictryst.blogspot.com/2005/11/stunning-and-still-relevant-book.html

Now, I’m not 100% certain about the all the particulars of IR theories, primarily because of the length that I’ve been away from the actual study of IR theory. But Waltz is looking a lot less like a realist and more of a social constructivist in his thinking. Take one of the first questions the author poses: “Does man make society in his image or does his society make him” (4)? I mean seriously, Waltz doesn’t actually take too many stands on issues but kind of interprets the pre-existing philosophies on the causes of war, the images of presumed principal causes of international political outcomes. There are many instances of Waltz referencing the existence of the current system of international relations in perception. Isn’t realism based on the reality of the situation and the centrality of state interest?

An example of questioning the realist presumptions of this theorist can be seen in Waltz’s view of state survival. “The ideal strategy in international politics may, in terms of the other games the state is playing, cost too much. To say, then, that international politics is a game the general rules of which are disregarded at the peril of the player’s very existence DOES NOT necessarily mean that every state must bend all its efforts toward securing its own survival” (206). Waltz himself is downplaying the primacy of self interest and state survival.

Another example is in the view of balance of power. Waltz believes that a balance of power is not inevitable; if the condition that created it disappeared then the object, the balance of power, would not exist. “A balance of power may exist because some countries consciously make it the end of their policies, or it may exist because of the quasi-automatic reactions of some states to the drive for ascendancy of other states” (208).

So does observation of the social structure that Waltz is writing in automatically qualify him as a realist? If an idealist were to acknowledge that a system exists in which states acted in their own self interest on occasion, would that idealist be a realist? Would the idealist even acknowledge an alternate point of view?

One last question, does anybody else agree/disagree with my analysis of Waltz’s political philosophy? (also what are the page #’s where he references the existence of the state structure in a social context)?

Stag Hunt Question

Ok, just for fun and a little psycological anaysis of this group:

Personally and individually, in the context of the stag hunt what what you do? (p.167).

Would you go for the first little hare that came along, would you wait out the hunt for the big-game prize and feast, or would you have a totally different approach?

Here is a helpful? link
<http://www.gametheory.net/dictionary/Games/StagHunt.html>

More on the care and keeping of trackbacks

For clarification, this is the most simple way I can describe trackbacks:

If a citation in document A tells a reader that you're referencing something from document B, a trackback tells the reader of document B that document B is either cited or otherwise referred to in document A.

Also, if you are posting a link to the blog you trackbacked, post the static link, not the trackback link. I went through and fixed a couple (apparently I have full access to edit everyone's blog). If you want to do nifty HTML to hide your links, use this format: (you need to replace the brackets with <'s and >'s)

This (when you change the brackets to <'s and >'s)
{a href="http://masterworktheory.blogspot.com"}Evening Erudition{/a}

looks like this:
Evening Erudition

Looks much prettier, so give it a try. :)

Blogmaster Comments

* I'm working on fixing our sidebar of links. For now, you can find links to other blogs at the very bottom of the blog page (like, ABSOLUTELY at the bottom)

* With the trackback stuff, here are directions, and you need the following to log in:
Username: dramaembodied
Password: [what we do with books in this class, verb, four letters, starts with an r, ends with a d, has an ea in the middle] (sorry, I've been welltrained to not just put passwords out there)

That's it! Have fun :)

State-Centrism is Holding Us Back

So I was reading through some other people’s blogs to find out what hot topics emerged from our discussion. I was interested to see that IPCR came up in class(considering how it is now a weekly event to slam IC in class, it’s interesting to even see other fields mentioned), and that there are posts up about peaceful conflict resolution.

Holly brings up, in her post the idea that politics is defined only within the current state-centric system, and so politics cannot be self-replacing like science (in terms of a model, it is set up with many scientists holding different constants as true which means no one science could replace another.) Considering this idea politics is merely a cog in each individual state. Without consistency between all the states, no one state’s learnings or understandings can be transferred as advice or with force onto another state. The fact that all (or most) states are somewhat free to chose their government structure and policies makes each state’s issues impossible to directly map onto other states.

This flaw in communication contributes to conflict (consider the Mars Orbiter and its failure because of the use of two different units). A vocation in politics could be achieved, idealistically, by all who felt called to such vocations understanding fully the entire political structure of the world (or more easily, the world unifying its political structure). It could also be achieved by an understanding that situations and issues do not map directly from state to state as Carr poked fun at with a card-file of strategic solutions (Carr, p.30). From this, the vocatees would be those “called” to politics, who believed in it and saw the changes necessary to better the status quo in the state.

In terms of IPCR stuff, by taking a constructivist standpoint, the USIP six-pronged approach is a good idea, but, as Miss A. S. If mentions, in complete avoidance those who give the governments in question their power. As we have read many a time, power is given to the powerful by those under the power (for reasons of either support of submission). In order to bring everyone under this power (in the situation of international conflict, I am unsure who would be this power and where their legitimacy would lie, and whether their absolute truth was the right one), there would need to be some kind of unification of ideals – this is a brilliant place to bring in propaganda and the work of the bosses Weber introduced. However, is this kind of homogenization good? If the world were not in the state centric structure but rather a uniform state structure, would there not be less place for conflict? Is Kant’s trend toward uniformity and universal truth still the (utopian) way to conflictless peace, or are violence and power stuck with us and our state-centric system?

The Fatality of Context

Weber – Reflective

Wow, first of all, I would like to thank the presenters this week for their great questions and observations of the text.  It really elaborated some important points that Weber was trying to make and pointed out some important questions that the text disregarded.  

So what was the whole point of the historical account of development of the state in the beginning of “Politics as a Vocation”?  Why doesn’t M. Weber just say, “Politics is about force”?  Even though we acknowledged these questions in class, I don’t think that we really addressed this in our discussion.  Well good thing I like to avoid quantitative analysis by doing extra readings in this class, i.e. reading Kant in one night and reading the 40-page introduction to Weber.  Well, David Owen and Tracy Strong, the people who wrote the introduction, can help us figure out this point.  They point out “the historical context sets the terms of our fate and cannot be avoided” (xl) and that “Weber is exceptionally conscious…that is understanding must take into account and speak from his own historical situations” (xlvi).  This attributes to the question at hand, the first part of Weber’s procession in “Politics as a vocation”, the elaboration of the “realities and conditions of the world as the political personage encounters it” (xlix).  By discussing the present lay-out of the present scene and division of politics, the nation-state, Weber proceeds to set the scene.  Why talk of political vocation in terms of a Greek polity, a pre-Westphalia system, or of political vocation in terms of an international political vocation, one that just doesn’t exist?  Because that’s not how the world is operating in this period of politics.  It could however transform and replace itself with a new-improved version, like science is constantly doing, like Blink points out here.  Weber notes, “If there existed only societies in which violence was unknown as a means, then the concept of the “state” would disappear” (33).  But fatalistically, we are in a state centric political environment.  Thus a political vocation must be based on these terms.  “For what is specific to the present is that all other organizations or individuals can assert the right to use physical violence only insofar as the state permits them to do so” (33).  

Politics is thus spoken of in uniform terms and holds the same significance in meaning.  “That is that the interests involved in the distribution or preservation of power, or shift in power, play a decisive role in resolving that question, or in influencing that decision or defining the sphere of activity of the official concerned”(33).  The person(s) who strive for a vocation in politics must acknowledge this foundation of power and work within the existing framework.

So what happens if/when the framework changes?  Does the foundation of power also change with it?  How then can a vocation in politics be achieved?

Journalists are either true politicians or just good at PR. (it's silly that they both mean the same thing)

I am in love with Max Weber. LOVE. Come Christmas break, he and I are spending lots of time together.

Ok. Done with the gush. Let me address journalists and power for two reasons: I actually know something about it and I currently work for a “boss.”

I was surprised at how much Weber really speaks to the present. If I hadn’t been warned that he was dead, I would have considered this book as a more modern text. Universal, yes, surprisingly. I found myself writing current events in the margins:

“Around one hundred thousand offices are no longer objects for booty after each election but are pensionable and dependent upon a candidate’s qualifications. (72)” This reminded me of the few offices left that are theoretically not dependent specifically on qualifications but rather on nominations. The Miers drama of the past few weeks, and the latest admonitions of the new nominee, is what Weber (what a god) seems to be talking about. I was surprised how fast the media was the first to point out her complete lack of qualifications. I was also surprised at how a dear friend of mine told me that he had only voted for Bush because he wanted a Supreme Court justice who would overthrow Roe v. Wade. The residuals of the monarchical system that have turned bureaucratic, in the US have left us with one leader who still has a little of the nomination/appointment power. Though the machine runs the system, he can put whosoever he wishes up for this appointment – and I was almost floored that my friend (a bright kid) voted for him only because of this particular power. People seem to know that the government and political machine are run by careerists who take the side they’re given, or who just work to make things work – the concepts on page 47 about what makes the American political system different from England’s still hold true (VERY true) today.

Back to my theme. I’m currently interning for a polling/strategic research firm. In my menial labor (which is actually really cool), I watch how the mastermind (the “boss,” or what have you), tries out nuances of language to figure out what works…not what works to promote his particular ideals, but what works to get the audience to agree with what his advisee wants them to agree with. It is almost disquieting to watch a non-politician (an advisor) hone exactly what will make people who didn’t initially agree with a point agree with it…without telling untruths. While I was reading, “The boss has no firm political “principles”; he is completely without convictions and is interested only in how to attract votes,” I couldn’t help but think about my internship. Crazy.

Finally, and briefly, I am still boggled that Weber wasn’t there for Hitler’s propaganda and for the terrible turn of the word propaganda. That he sees and states these fundamentals of modern media that are still so prevalent today. The universality of the Politics as a Vocation lecture apply directly to the likes of Joe Alsop (my favorite establishment columnist) and the propaganda war that would happen throughout the 50s, 60s and 70s, even after propaganda was so “taboo.” He really puts his finger on the role of journalists – not as the bearers of necessary truth, but as people who will tell it like the highest buyer wants it to be heard.