San Jose City College International Relations Questions 1. Let North Korea have nuclear weapons, or not? What would a Realist claim?2. What is Krasner’s un

San Jose City College International Relations Questions 1. Let North Korea have nuclear weapons, or not? What would a Realist claim?2. What is Krasner’s understanding of hegemony? According to him, why was the interwar period unstable?3. Does democracy matter for peace? Discuss what a Realist would say and a Liberal. Short answers to these questions Realism and Hegemony
Power
• What is it?
• How to measure it?
Mearsheimer and Power
• Two kinds: Potential and Actual
• Potential = size of population, wealth
• Actual = army, air force, navy
• What’s left out?
• Ideas, mobilization (people, movements), domestic anything…
Things Realists think about: Land and Water
• “…when great powers are separated by large bodies of water, they usually do not have much
offensive capability against each other, regardless of the relative size of their armies. Large bodies
of water are formidable obstacles that cause significant power-projection problems for attacking
armies… (44).”
• Geopolitics
• Explain it
• Critique it
Balance of Power
• “The configuration of world order that is the unintended consequence of greatpower security competition (49)”
•
•
•
•
Power (latent, actual)
Strategy
Efficiency
Kinds of military
Eg Russia’s Decline
Eg Russia’s Decline (1800s-1900s)
Wealth and Military
Check out each country
• Read that table from the past slide and compare changes over time. What trends do
you see?
• Realists note that Russia experiences decline over time before WW1. Why is that
important? Well, if one state gets weaker, it cannot balance others, and so others
may take advantage of it, and its alliances, which may also get weaker
• This is a realist account for the cause of WW1
Decline and war
• “Not surprisingly, Russia’s war economy could not support its army’s needs
(70).”
• “Needs” – self-defense
• Relative gains? What’s the connection to BOP here?
What keeps order in an anarchic world?
• MAD? (Bipolarity! Cold War) – remember last class
• BOP? That strong states, form alliances, they balance one another (scared of
‘rocking the boat’ and do not do anything. Or they do, but only when the balance
breaks down
• And there is hegemony! What’s this?
What’s hegemony?
• Mearsheimer
• “A hegemon is a state that is so powerful that it dominates all the other states in the
system. No other state has the military wherewithal to put up a serious fight against
it.”
• “Hegemony means domination of the system; which is usually interpreted to mean
the entire world. It is possible, however, to apply the concept of a system more
narrowly and use it to describe particular regions…”
It’s hard to be a hegemon
• “Dominate?”
• Force? Coercion? – What else?
• Fear!
• What about ideas? “Soft power?” Culture?
US Power?
China?
What’s going on with China?
• Its been a long-standing debate (well, not that long, maybe over the last
twenty years) if China is a threat to US power (however you chose to define
US power). Another, sometimes connected point, is if US power overall is
in decline. Did the 2008 economic crisis weaken the US’s image around the
world? Is Trump weakening international agreements, and therefore,
weakening the ability of the US to conduct policy around the world?
Questions for you to consider…
Are wars going away, or are they changing?
Krasner
• Hegemonic Stability Theory (HST): that a strong, dominant state provide for
international agreements to be maintained. A dominant state creates the order then
policies it
• Kranser’s article documents this with free trade.
• The question for you is: does HST apply to other areas in IR, like, for every
international organization (eg the UN, or the WTO) or issue area (eg security or
human rights)
Krasner’s ‘test’
• Locate in his article the different time periods that he analyzes.
• Identify the different hegemons for each period
• Think about how the presence, or absence of a hegemon, impacted free
trade
Krasner’s ‘test,’ cont…
• Krasner draws attention particularly to the interwar period (1919-1939). The
idea is that there was no dominant hegemon. And what do we see? Intl rules
break down and war even results!
• Think about it – no dominant ‘police’ power to put states in line, and war
results.
Mearsheimer: End of Cold War, Prediction?
• “My argument is that the prospect of major crises, even wars, in Europe is
likely to increase dramatically now that the Cold War is receding into history.
The next forty-five years in Europe are not likely to be so violent as the
forty-five years before the Cold War, but they are likely to be substantially
more violent than the past forty-five years, the era that we may someday look
back upon not as the Cold War but as the Long Peace, in John Lewis
Gaddis’s phrase.”
What to make of this prediction?
• Was Mearsheimer wrong?
• Did he get anything right?
State Power and the Structure of International Trade
Stephen D. Krasner
World Politics, Vol. 28, No. 3. (Apr., 1976), pp. 317-347.
Stable URL:
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Tue Jan 9 17:07:39 2007
? … the continuation of politics by other means” (Clausewitz)
? What does this mean?
? Continuum, tactics, politics = war, collective struggle
And contest/conflict
? “Old wars were fought by the regular arm ed forces of states. New wars are fought by
varying com binations of networks of state and non-state actors – regular armed
forces, private security contractors, mercenaries, jihadists, warlords, paramilitaries, etc”
? “Old wars were fought for geopolitical interests or for ideology (democracy or
socialism). New wars are fought in the name of identity (ethnic, religious or tribal).”
? “In old wars, battle was the decisive encounter…In new wars, battles are rare and
territory is captured through political m eans, through control of the population.”
? Also, very destructive and unlimited
? – The virtual disappearance of wars between states
? – The decline of all high intensity wars, involving more than a thousand battle
deaths
? – The decline in the deadliness of war measured in terms of battle deaths
? – The increase in the duration and/or recurrence of wars
? – The risk factor of proximity to other wars.
? https://ucdp.uu.se/
? Check this site out
? The last time the US declared war was in World War 2. Vietnam, yes, is called a war.
But officially, the US government never declared war on North Vietnam. In fact, the
Vietnam ‘conflict’ has been called a ‘police action’ instead of an actual war.
? This is an ongoing debate in US politics – congress has the authority to declare war,
according to the Constitution.
? What is the key actor for Realism?
? The State
? What is this state?
? Black box, after survival/relative gains, anarchy, material power and stuff…
? Terrorism
? Guerrilla warfare
? Low-intensity
? Asymmetrical
? What do you think? New era, or just same as old?

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