Status: First draft of everything I know (not a lot). (I will get flamed for this notebook I’m sure)

Disclaimer: I don’t know much about international politics or history, so it’s tough for me to judge the theories.

Is IR a science?

This is maybe a cruel take, and I’d be happy to be wrong, but I don’t really see this as much of a science. Perhaps a soft science? The theories don’t seem to hold up very long, and perhaps most damning, I’m not sure how much explanatory power they are meant to have.

A key pillar of philosophy of science is that things have to be falsifiable, and in a sense, an IR theory is impossible to falsify. Sure, you can have it explain the past, but a lot of different theories can explain the past. How the future unfolds is directly reliant on what leaders believe. If leaders believe in Democratic Peace Theory, Realism, or some other theory, they will act in ways consistent with it, but this doesn’t show whether one is more true than another.

Perhaps this is just some general beef with the soft sciences and how their theories can feedback and influence future results. A curious thing that maybe I’ll have to come back to. (TODO: <– Read this and expand on this!)

Mearsheimer

The only IR book I’ve read so far is “The Tragedy of Great Power Politics”. His own shtick is “realist theory” where he tries to reduce international politics down to a physics level of precision.

His rules are:

• The international stage is anarchy
• States are rational
• States cannot be certain of what others will do
• Their primary objective is survival

Looking at this, then it’s a clear prisoner’s dilemma where everyone must continually build power (whether latent in terms of economic or military) because you cannot trust the other states around you. Even if they are friendly today, if they hold more power, then they could become rogue powers and turn on you at any moment.

It’s quite a bleak outlook of the world.

Some personal notes:

• He places a lot of emphasis on water and how the US was able to become a regional hegemony because we had water separating us from any other great powers at the time!
• Interesting focus on land troops since at the end of the day, land troops are the only way to conquer an enemy
  • Is this still true in the nuclear age?

Democratic peace theory

TODO: One day I will get around to reading this, I promise. In the meantime, I’ll bask in the glory of every IR major hating me for only having read realist theorists and being thoroughly convinced. Rationally irrational :)