Kenneth Waltz Structural Realism After the Cold War
In his article Structural Realism after the Cold War Kenneth Waltz, Kenneth Waltz makes the debate that examining interstate politics through the humanist point-of-view is still both feasible and detailed as a theoretical method. Printed almost ten years after the Soviet Union collapsed and the conclusion of the Cold War itself, Kenneth Waltz's article makes the case that a realist method for examining interstate activity remains valid. The principal and possibly most noticeable point Waltz suggests is that balance of power theory still has a significance despite the fact the United States won the Cold War and achieved rank as the world's lasting global force. The present time phase, where the United States likes its "unipolar instant," is but short-lived. In the future, as preceding sole powers have faced, the United States will experience inner over-spending of resources for ever growing external duties, while a new global rival comes on, reestablishing the balance of power in the global system.
Methodology for Developing the Argument
It is actually straightforward, the way Waltz uses the methodology. Once the brief introduction is done, he refutes that three main parts display that "political affairs is being altered and realism [as a practicable concept] is being decided outdated" in the world. However, the first three topic parts, covering interdependence, and democracies institutions are critiqued in expressions of how they are alleged to support the notion of a having peace that will last, in the idealist custom. In every one of these parts, the author shows the typical debate made by the idealists, those that are subscribers of liberal theory. Waltz then goes onto display how the clarification of present trends and events by the idealists is not as healthy-looking as they see them. In its place, he states the case why the realist theorists' perspective is still, and in some cases, more valid than that of the institutionalist or idealists. It appears that Waltz reserves the last part of his article for an apologia of realist theory on the whole, and an argument of the approaching defeat of unipolarity in the worldwide system.
An Analysis of the Theoretical Method
These first three key themes of the article, interdependence, institutions, and democracies are really the props that support the idealists' dispute for a global system of nations, and successively, in their outlook, a peaceful global system of supremacy. Concerning democracies, Waltz reviews the Kantian viewpoint that democracies are not the ones that are waging war against each other, and then expresses empirically that, in truth, this is exactly what they are doing. The examples Waltz provides are the democracies of a number of types that battled each other during World War I, and the United States proceedings towards the Latin American, representatively adopted governments in the Chile and in the Dominican Republic and in the last period. Interesting enough, the author was able to leave the reader with the understanding that democracies mainly do not attack their kind as much, even though it is possible, but will attack non-democracies apparently whenever they feel like it.
When it comes to the second theme, which centers on the interdependence of nations, influences both liberal idealist theories and the realist. As Waltz makes the point "interdependence encourages war in addition to peace," on the other hand, the interconnectedness gives to commercial interaction. This marketplace joining means that nations now have the understanding that if they begin some kind of a conflict, or one begins outside of their effect, their national ability to gain and uphold admission to resources may turn out to be limited, if not shortened. Waltz makes the suggestion that in spite of this connectivity, the actual strings of interdependence in regards to commercial context are not as strong, and will be ruined purposely, if and when the need ascends for an alliance or nation. However, this is absolute realist theory in use; Kenneth Waltz...
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