1. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Michael Howard and Peter Paret, eds. and trans., Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni-versity Press, 1984, p. 578.
2. This chapter follows the classification used in American scholarship. For an alternative classification more typical of European scholarship see: Martin Wight, International Theory: The Three Traditions, London, UK: Leicester University Press, 1994. The primary difference between European and American scholarship is that the former draws heavily on classical political philosophy as its foundation while the latter draws on social science. Consequently, European scholarship tends to emphasize the normative implications of various theories while American scholarship tends implicitly to focus on the policy implications of international relations theory. Within each strand of American theory, there are various subgroupings, some of which use other labels to describe their work. For sake of clarity we will confine our discussion to the three main groups and retain one set of labels for each. I have selected particular scholars to represent each school because I believe their work provides the best example of each.
3. Robert J. Lieber, No Common Power: Understanding International Relations, New York: Harper Collins College Publishers, 1995, pp. 256-260.
4. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Rex Warner, trans., London, UK: Penguin Books, pp. 1954, 402.
5. For further analysis that disassociates Thucydides from the realist tradition, see David A. Welch, “Why Interna-tional Relations Theorists Should Stop Reading Thucydides,” Review of InternaInterna-tional Studies, Vol. 29, 2003, pp. 301-319.
6. Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince and Discourses, New York: The Modern Library, 1940, pp. 263, 265.
7. For a comprehensive discussion of the tensions and ambiguity in Machiavelli’s work, see Sheldon S. Wolin, Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1960, pp.
195-238.
8. Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 3rd Ed., New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961, p. 5. In fact, Morgenthau excludes state actions (legal, economic, and humanitarian) from the discipline of inter-national politics because he does not believe they affect the power of a state and are not political. See particularly pp.
27-28.
9. Ibid., p. 6.
10. Ibid., pp. 11.
11. Hans Morgenthau, “We Are Deluding Ourselves in Vietnam,” The New York Times Magazine, April 18, 1965.
The logic of Morgenthau’s analysis is very suggestive for the current U.S. policy in Iraq.
12. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, p. 11.
13. Ibid., pp. 163, 221.
14. Ibid., p. 256. Henry Kissinger, a scholar and practitioner of a realist persuasion, echoes Morgenthau’s views and broadens it to apply to a foreign policy motivated by any ideology. Thus, he was critical of American containment policy as expressed in NSC-68 because it equated vital interests with moral principles. See Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994, p. 462.
15. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1979.
For just two of the many explicit statements that illustrate Waltz’s application of economic theory to international politics, see pp. 118, 173.
16. Ibid., pp. 5-6.
17. The fact that Waltz rejects human nature as a causal force may well be one reason that American scholars found his version of realism preferable to Morgenthau’s whose pessimistic view of human nature runs counter to the pervasive liberalism in American scholarship. See Keith L. Shimko, “Realism, Neorealism, and American Liberalism,”
The Review of Politics, Vol. 54, Spring 1992, pp. 281-301.
18. Thomas A. Bailey, A Diplomatic History of the American People, New York: Appleton-Century Crofts, 1964.
19. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, p. 169.
20. Ibid., p. 128.
21. Ibid., p. 66.
22. Kenneth N. Waltz, “Structural Realism After the Cold War,” International Security, Vol. 25, Summer 2000, p. 13.
23. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, p. 118. Waltz emphasizes that the requirements of a theory of interna-tional politics are different from the requirements for a theory of foreign policy. Therefore, the criticism that balance of power theory fails to explain particular policies is no more valid than to expect the theory of universal gravitation to explain the wayward path of a falling leaf, p. 121. Waltz would also challenge liberal and constructivist analysis on the grounds that what they really seek is a theory of foreign policy, not a theory of international politics. Morgenthau makes a similar point when he notes that realism’s presentation of a theoretical construct of rational foreign policy will never be achieved completely in practice. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, 8.
24. Waltz, “Structural Realism After the Cold War,” p. 28.
25. E. H. Carr, The Twenty Year’s Crisis, 1919-1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations, New York:
Harper & Row Publishers, 1939, pp. 235-236.
26. See: Jack S. Levy, “Domestic Politics and War,” Robert I. Rotberg and Theodore K. Rabb, eds., The Origin and Prevention of Major Wars, Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp. 79-99.
27. A. F. K. Organski and Jack Kugler, The War Ledger, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1980. The descrip-tion of power transidescrip-tion theory contained in this book more heavily focuses on the one variable of power to account for war. Therefore, our discussion of power transition theory relies on the analysis provided by Douglas Lemke, “The Continuation of History: Power Transition Theory and the End of the Cold War,” Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 34, February 1997, pp. 23-26.
28. G. John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order After Major Wars, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001, p. 10.
29. Ibid., p. 29.
30. Ibid., p. 57. Ikenberry goes on to underscore a point based on the logic of path dependence: once institutions are in place, the sunk costs make creating new arrangements prohibitively high. This factor means institutions are likely to remain even though the power distribution that gave rise to them no longer exists.
31. Ibid., pp. 75, 78.
32. Ronald L. Jepperson, Alexander Wendt, and Peter J. Katzenstein, “Norms, Identity and Culture in National Security,” Peter J. Katzenstein, ed., The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics, New York:
Columbia University Press, 1996, p. 34. All the essays in this volume apply a constructivist understanding to interna-tional politics and to the nainterna-tional security policies of specific countries. The focus on particular nainterna-tional security poli-cies means the authors are less concerned with a theory of international politics and more concerned with theorizing about foreign policy.
33. Alexander Wendt, “Anarchy is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics,” International Organization, Vol. 46, Spring 1992, pp. 396-397.
34. Dale C. Copeland, “The Constructivist Challenge to Structural Realism, A Review Essay,” International Secu-rity, Vol. 25, Fall 200, p. 198.
35. Wendt, p. 400.
36. K. J. Holsti, Taming the Sovereigns: Institutional Change in International Politics, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 302.
37. Wendt, p. 411.
38. Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History, New York: Long-man, 2003, p. 80.
39. Jepperson et al., p. 43.
40. Ibid., p. 59.
41. Ibid., p. 60.
42. The case analysis in this discussion can be found in: Thomas Berger, “Norms, Identity, and National Security in Germany and Japan,” Peter J. Katzenstein, ed., The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics, New York: Columbia University Press, 1996, pp. 317-356.
43. Christopher Caldwell, “Where Every Generation is First Generation,” The New York Times Magazine, May 27, 2007, p. 47.
44. Berger, p. 37.
45. The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, Washington, DC: March 2006, p. 1.
46. Waltz, “Structural Realism After the Cold War,” p. 24.
47. See Thom Shanker and Mark Landler, “Putin Says U.S. Is Undermining Global Stability,” The New York Times, February 11, 2007, and Andrew E. Kramer, “Putin Is Said to Compare U.S. Policies to Third Reich,” The New York Times, May 10, 2007.
48. Ikenberry, pp. 270-271.
49. Wendt, p. 397.
50. Quoted in Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, p. 163.
CHAPTER 12
MULTILATERALISM AND UNILATERALISM