Next steps

Passing my comprehensive exam was one step of several that remain for me to complete before I leave graduate school and go back to the "real world." An essay of distinction (what we call a Master's thesis around here) is also in the works - about half-written right now - as well as an internship in Washington D.C. this fall. I had an orientation program last week for the internship to outline the written assignments that are a part of the course requirements, and their recommendation that all interns keep a journal suggests another possible use for this blog. An internship journal would also likely prove much more interesting reading than posting pieces of my thesis as I continue to write and revise it. Perhaps if I find extra time I will do both (writing the weekly postings of the past three months obviously helped my comprehensive exam performance by quite a bit), but that may be an empty threat since job applications and apartment/neighborhood reconnaissance ought to fill any extra time that I find on my hands while in the D.C. area.

The envelope, please

Well, I met with the chair of the Political Science Department this morning to get the results of my comprehensive exam. His administrative assistant had hinted earlier in the week that the results were good (to which I replied: "Well, of course! The only question is how good!").

To avoid sounding ego-centric or self-serving I won't go into detail about the chair's comments, but needless to say the result was passing, and with Distinction.

T-minus two days

For those of you who have stumbled upon this blog and can read between the lines (in particular my mention of "my own practical purposes" a few posts ago), I can admit now that my previous posts have in fact been summaries of course notes from my past year of studies in a Master's Degree program in International Relations.

As part of this program, I am taking a comprehensive final exam in two days on Friday, August 12th, which also happens to be my 29th birthday. These posts have been a great way for me to prepare for the exam, and keeping up with weekly posts has prevented me from falling behind in my review efforts. The two most recent posts - in particular the huge one posted yesterday - were in fact drafted in anticipation of two key essay questions that are likely to appear on the exam.

I'll see you on the other side, and I'll post my results when they come in.

Characterizing future international systems

As discussed in a previous post, scenario building is a practice that has value in suggesting possible alternate futures for the purposes of planning and resource allocation in the present. Often this practice is devoted to specific policy problems, but it can also be devoted to the continuing evolution of the entire international system or even of IR theory itself. The purpose of this posting is to discuss in broad terms the IR variables that will be important for state leaders and policy-makers to consider and their likely evolution in the near future.

IR theory directs itself at describing, explaining and predicting state behavior. Most of its analysis is spent on history, but future international systems can be outlined in broad terms based on IR theories' own broader variables. Samuel P. Huntington of Harvard University is renowned for his broad strokes of paradigmatic theory, two of which will be used in this exercise.

The trend of democratization is a broad trend that is found in the world's political history. Huntington describes these trends as "waves" that are also subject to reversal. The US, UK and Europe states were part of a long first wave, the second wave was primarily in Latin America and several Caribbean islands, and the third wave occurred in Central America and some African nations. Huntington's book "The Third Wave" was written at the end of this third wave, and the current democratization of Indonesia could be considered the extension of the third wave or the beginnings of a fourth wave that may eventually include China and the Middle East. Therefore, the success of the third wave and the beginning of a fourth wave of democratization will be the first possible component of future international systems, while the reversal of the third wave and the decay of modern democracy is its complimentary alternate value.

More recently in his book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Huntington suggests that culture is quickly becoming the dividing line that will separate allies and enemies in the future, replacing the ideological dichotomy that fueled the Cold War. With the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Huntington's paradigm quickly replaced Francis Fukuyama's End of History paradigm that suggested the ultimate ideological and political victory of Western culture. Ethnic identity had previously been explored by political scientists under the term "nationalism," as small ethnic groups began demanding their own autonomy and statehood in the 1990's (for example, Chechnya or the many fragments that emerged from the former Yugoslavia) Although Huntington's characterization of future international order has been challenged and hotly debated (as most Huntington hypotheses are), much value has been assigned to this portrayal of future international systems, if only due to the strength it draws from its simplicity and face validity. Therefore, the increase or decrease of ethnic "nationalism" or identification among states will be the second independent variable of this scenario building exercise.

These two independent variables are particularly appropriate based on the current US foreign policy goals to spread democracy and liberal economic models abroad. Both of these goals are in attunement with the "waves of democracy" historical trend, and its primary obstacle may very well be the resistant political culture found in "Asian values" and the Islamic Resurgence described in Huntington's Clash of Civilizations.

Placing these two primary independent variables on continua, four futures can be produced and described. Within these four worlds, trends of international relations and state behavior can be discussed to suggest the future environment within which state actors will be acting. This exercise can be of use to US policy planners to prepare for what likely challenges they will face and to identify issues that they should give attention and devote resources towards now in the present.

In order to fully develop each world into a dynamic model, Richard Rosecrance's systems model presented in his book Action and Reaction in World Politics will be used to characterize each outcome. Both Rosecrance and Robert Gilpin have produced dynamic models to describe and forecast the evolution of international systems, but Rosecrance's incorporates a greater number of domestic variables into his model. Because the two independent variables of this scenario building exercise concern themselves so much with domestic variables, Rosecrance's model is a more appropriate choice of model here. Gilpin's model would at least suggest that American hegemony is nearing an end as Chinese size and economic momentum raise it to international predominance. Within each model, critical issues such as WMD proliferation, natural resource access, openness to trade, AIDS and environmental policies, and the use of international institutions will be discussed.

In a world where democracy has spread successfully but ethnic identity increases in importance, Huntington's "democratic paradox" is realized. Politically empowered and ethnically-attentive populations in China and the Middle East are likely to challenge the current international order in a revisionist direction. International institutions are likely to be replaced by federal ethnic alliances, which will share resources (both economic and military) amongst themselves but will exclude any ethnic "others." The US and Europe will likely seek to maintain their advantageous positions, but the Asian Affirmation and Islamic Resurgence, invigorated and empowered by democracy and economic liberalism will reorder the international system drastically.

In a world where democracy has suffered a reversal and ethnic identity increases in importance, an even fuller "Clash of Civilizations" results, where a revisionist and rising China is likely to reorder the international system. A balance of power mechanism, acting as a system regulator, might be able to contain system disturbances felt in the US, Europe, and the Middle East, but Chinese demand for natural resources and economic assets amidst increasing scarcity are likely to produce a radical system transformation.

In a world where democracy has suffered a reversal and ethnic identity decreases in importance, cross-ethnic alliances may preserve the system's balance, but China's continued revisionist position may still be too much for the system to bear. As democratic decay sets in, state elites in the US, Europe, and the Middle East may be able to preserve the status quo through collaboration, but with a tripolar distribution of power based on military strength, economic capabilities, and control of natural resources between the US, the Middle East, and China, state loyalties will be difficult to predict. This obstacle of unpredictability itself implies a system instability as China may choose to join the US in its domination of Middle East state governments to fully exploit its resources, or it may align with Middle East leaders to destroy American hegemony.

In a world where democracy has spread successfully and ethnic identity decreases in importance, Fukuyama's "End of History" again appears to become feasible. A universal culture acts as a system regulator and reinvigorates international institutions like the UN. State leaders are much more likely to be cooperative while at the same time their power is checked by democratic institutions and dense webs of economic interactions between their nations. Controlling WMD proliferation and addressing the global problems of the environment and AIDS also become possible in this future.

China's role is an obvious common issue amongst these possible worlds, and only its democratization permits greater openness and cooperation in any future international system. Upcoming scarcities following the "oil peak" that has reportedly been reached during this decade will make cooperation and non-zero sum approaches in state behavior much more difficult, and a China that remains directed by authoritarian elites or by its own population but invigorated by ethnic identity will play similar and aggressive roles as it becomes the predominant world power. This power is by nature of its size, resources, and status as a nuclear power, and its economic momentum may only be derailed by its acceptance of a more accommodating and pacific political culture (though the assumption that democratic societies are indeed more pacific is a tenuous one at best).

China is assumed to be secure in each scenario, which may also be contested. It is the degree of control and legitimacy of its elites that will vary as democratization or ethnic identity prevail in influencing its billions of citizens. In addition, several other nations are not addressed in these models, such as Russia and the 'Stans, as well as the nuclear-equipped and democratic state of India. Additional variables such as technological innovation and leadership might also alter the reality of natural resource scarcities and political approaches in dealing with them.

What this means is that China is where the most policy attention should be paid no win the present. The people of China in particular matter the most, and the promotion of a universal and open political culture over divisive ethnic identity should be a policy priority for the US. If China is in fact less secure than assumed in these models, China's threat to US hegemony could be derailed preemptively, though the possibility of another nuclear superpower fragmented and fostering greater systemic instability and unpredictability might be considered an even more troubling future to some.

What is at stake?

In the course of studying international relations (IR) theory, it is appropriate to ask what is truly at stake in its theoretical and rather academic debates.

It could be stated that foreign policy became an academic field only as recently as the mid-twentieth century, when the first and second World Wars demonstrated the tragic results of allowing it to be merely a professional pursuit solely in the hands of generals and state leaders.

It is not surprising, then, to find that early IR theorists had clear normative goals embedded in their research. They sought not just to be "right" in their theory construction, but they sought accuracy and clarity in their concepts for a specific reason: to reduce the incidence of inter-state war by influencing the thinking and practices of policy-makers (those who would be war-makers).

Initial IR inquiries were indeed utopian in nature, describing idealized international systems akin to the idealized state imagined in Plato’s Republic (where it was the philosophers who were in charge). Quite quickly, IR theorists found this approach empirically lacking and unsustainable, and certainly of little use to foreign policy practitioners (though US President Woodrow Wilson, himself an academic, could be accused of blind idealism in his devotion to his League of Nations). Therefore, early realist theorists such as Hans Morgenthau introduced a more pragmatic approach to explaining "power politics." Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War and Machiavelli's The Prince are considered the classical antecedents of this school of thought.

In their attempts to describe, explain, and predict state behavior, both of the main schools of IR theory share certain assumptions. These include nation-states as the appropriate unit of analysis and the characterization of the international system as anarchic. While Kenneth Waltz added the environmental concept of self-help to considerations about state behavior, the two main schools of IR theory assign and analyze state preferences in distinctly different ways. A liberal scholar sees states as pursuing absolute gains and open to cooperation with other states while a realist would insist that relative gains are of greater concern and free-riding is the dominant state strategy.

Over time, as these two schools developed into the traditions of neorealism and neoliberal institutionalism, they have begun to debate new concepts and variables such as the autonomous nature and effectiveness of non-state actors (regimes, international institutions like the United Nations, etc.). Using their own variables to explain history, these schools continue to have normative ends in mind: what kind of international order can be created, on what bases will it stand, and what ends can it truly achieve - stability, general welfare and prosperity, security, peace?

Theories flourish or survive based on their applicability and conformity to reality -namely, evidence. During the 1950's through the 1980's, Marxist theory, with its economic focus, was the third option for IR scholars to pursue in explaining state behavior. As valid as some of its arguments may have been and continue to be, the fall of the USSR marked the end of any serious viability of this theory. Currently, the third option for IR theorists to pursue is now constructivism, which follows from the idealist tradition and suggests that peace and cooperation are mind-sets that can be encouraged amidst state leaders and decision-makers through mechanisms such as Alexander Wendt's "collective identity." To constructivists like Wendt, "anarchy is what states make of it," and their arguments are more intersubjective than empirical.

As IR paradigms, realism, liberalism, and constructivism delimit what is appropriate and should be discussed, and suggest what is unimportant and not worth devoting resources and efforts towards. Who wins this debate will shape policy priorities, state leaders’ preferences, and resource allocation. These are not insignificant spoils. For example, if realists win the IR theory debate, international institutions will likely be abandoned except as a means to exploit one's own national interests, and realist theorists’ pessimism about the value of cooperation will become the pessimism of state leaders, affecting their behavior in negotiations, diplomacy, alliance-formation, and war-making.

As is the case with many academic fields, IR theorists seek to characterize their times descriptively, but they also wish to be more than just "reporters." They seek to influence the world around them by helping others see it in the way that they do. This is why their respective optimism or pessimism are both "fraught with ought," containing their own normative preferences and seeking to convince their readers of their truth of their own paradigm.

The line between theorist and policy-maker is in fact becoming quite blurred within the US. A Colin Powell profile in a PBS documentary that described his academic approach to foreign policy referenced his readings of Thucydides; Madeleine Albright received a PhD in International Relations from Columbia University and taught at Georgetown University between her policy-making roles in the Carter and Clinton administrations; Condolezza Rice, with PhD from the University of Denver, taught at Stanford University before becoming an early adviser to George W. Bush and later his National Security Advisor and Secretary of State.

Under current President Bush and Secretary Rice, US foreign policy has taken on the spread of democracy and economic liberalism as its primary goal. Its practical goals and tactics in pursuing these goals are clearly a blend of idealist/liberal ends with the means of realism’s power politics. As today's policy-makers and state leaders continue to make history, there can be little doubt that the paradigms of IR theory will continue their debate and their influence on policy-makers, making their contest of ideas important to us all.

For an excellent description of early IR theorizing, see the first chapter of E.H. Carr's The Twenty Years' Crisis. For an excellent summary of the competing paradigms of IR theory, see Stephen Walt's article One World, Competing Theories in issue 131 of Foreign Policy magazine.

Site meter added

As I've commented several times before, I am quite sure that few people - if any - are actually reading this blog (though at the moment I am using it mostly for my own practical purposes than to attract a following of readers anyway).

Of course, the subtitle above sounds a bit interesting, but my posts' contents read much more like academic theory reviews than anything terribly topical at the present moment.

Therefore, one might very well treat the site meter that has just been added to the bottom of this page as a count of my own personal visits to my own blog as I update and add posts - though anyone who has stumbled upon this blog and would like to comment is of course free and welcome to do so.