[gha] ideas of key thinkers
- From: Wadlowz@xxxxxxx
- To: gha@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, dbrohawn@xxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 7 Jun 2013 03:54:44 -0400 (EDT)
Dear Prof Crane,
I was interested in reading your note to Dawn in the GHA exchanges
about a list you had made in 1964 about the premises of leading thinkers. If
you still have a copy of the list, I would be glad to read it as I tend to
write up ideas around personalities; I post below a recent article published
in Ovi (a Finland-based on-line site) along these lines.
Best wishes, Rene Wadlow
(http://www.ovimagazine.com/lang/de)
(http://www.ovimagazine.com/lang/el) (http://www.ovimagazine.com/lang/en) (
http://www.ovimagazine.com/lang/es) (http://www.ovimagazine.com/lang/fi)
(http://www.ovimagazine.com/lang/fr) (http://www.ovimagazine.com/static/6)
(http://www.ovimagazine.com/lang/pt) (http://www.ovimagazine.com/static/6)
Kenneth Waltz : The
Passing of the Second Generation of the Realists
by Rene Wadlow
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The death of Professor Kenneth Waltz on 12 May 2013 in New York City at
the age of 88 marks the start of the passing of the second generation of the
realist school in the study of international relations. The first
generation was a trio marked by the politics of Europe between the two world
wars:
E.H. Carr (1), Frederick L. Schuman (2) and Hans Morgenthau (3). The second
generation, also a trio, is marked by the start of the Cold War and a
bi-polar balance-of-power: Kenneth Waltz (4), Henry Kissinger (5), and Stanley
Hoffmann(6).
Waltz was often referred to as a “neorealist” to distinguish him from the
writers of the first generation, especially from Hans Morgenthau , but the
difference was more a question of age and formative experience than a real
difference of approach, although Waltz was critical of Morgenthau’s ‘
Germanic’ emphasis on ‘the will to power’ which motivates everyone but
especially those in control of state policy.
Waltz called himself a “structural realist” — a better term for his
emphasis on the behaviour of states as determined by the structures of the
world society rather than by domestic motivations or the personality of state
leaders. Waltz attacks “reductionist theories” which explain the foreign
policy behaviour of states exclusively in terms of causes at the national
level of analysis, for example, Lenin’s theory of imperialism because it
explains expansionist behaviour in terms of the accumulation dynamics of
national capitalism.
Because structures change slowly and impose limits to choice international
relations are characterized by continuity. As he notes in the
introduction to his Man, The State, and War “Social scientists, realizing from
their
studies how firmly the present is tied to the past and how intimately the
parts of a system depend upon each other, are inclined to be conservative in
estimating the possibilities of achieving a radically better world.” By ‘
social scientists’ he was referring particularly to himself. He was
critical of those who were arguing that international relations were
undergoing
a radical transformation because of the growing interdependence of the
international economy or the fear of a nuclear war. He maintained that states
operate under severe constraints created by the position of a small number
of “Great Powers” and thus a balance-of-power system.
Unlike his second generation colleagues, Henry Kissinger who became an
active political actor and Stanley Hoffmann who wrote extensively on current
political events, Waltz was nearly exclusively concerned with working on the
theoretical implications of the distribution of power and of the resulting
balance-of-power. Waltz was critical of those who saw Soviet policy as
motivated by Communist ideology or by the personality of its leaders. Waltz
stressed that the requirements of state action are imposed by the
circumstances in which all states exist. “A theory of international politics
can
leave aside variations in the composition of states and in the resources and
technology they command because the logic of anarchy does not vary with its
content.”
Nevertheless, Waltz held that world institutions and institutionalized
methods of altering and adjusting interests are important. He placed an
emphasis on the skills of diplomats, their ability to analyse situations and
to
propose adjustments.
For those like myself whose emphasis is on the emerging world society and
a world citizen ideology, Waltz’s approach is a constant reminder of the
importance of structures which determine processes, world politics as a “
self-sustaining system.” I think that we are moving beyond the realpolitik
so often linked to a balance-of-power approach. I believe that he
underestimated the role of ideas and ideology in world politics and thus
largely
failed to see the importance of the growth of a cosmopolitan spirit as
expressed by world citizens. Nevertheless Waltz was an important voice
during the
Cold War years in which US policy makers too often became the ideological
mirrors of the Soviets, stressing the need to expand ‘democracy’ and ‘the
free world’ as opposed to the Soviet’s ‘socialism’.
Notes
1) E.H. Carr’s most influential work is The Twenty Years’ Crisis (1939).
For a good biography of Carr, his approach and also his later work on the
history of the Soviet Union, see Charles Jones E.H. Carr and International
Relations (1998)
2) Frederick L. Schuman International Politics, first published in 1933,
with many later editions, constantly revised to take in current events,
especially the start of World War II. For his analysis of the world
citizen/world federalist movement see his The Commonwealth of Man.
3) Hans J. Morgenthau Politics Among Nations, first published in 1948 also
was revised to highlight events but the basic analysis remained the same.
For a good biography with an emphasis on his early years in Germany and
Switzerland before World War II, see Christoph Frei Hans J. Morgenthau: An
Intellectual Biography (2001)
4) Kenneth Waltz’s two major theoretical works, written 20 years apart are
Man, The State and War (1959) and Theory of International Politics (1979)
5) Henry Kissinger’s theoretical writings are overshadowed by his
political activities which he sets out in White House Years (1979) and Years
of
Upheaval (1982). For a combination of theory and analysis of then current
world events, it would be worth reading the editorials in the 1950s that he
wrote in Confluence published by Harvard University. It was as editor of
Confluence that we exchanged correspondence. I have always thought that he
was a first-rate editor.
6) Stanley Hoffmann’s most theoretical work is The State of War (1965).
For his combination of theory and analysis of current policies see Gulliver’
s Trouble or The Setting of American Foreign Policy (1968) and Dead Ends:
American Foreign Policy in the New Cold War (1983)
********************************************************
Rene Wadlow, President, Association of World Citizens
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