International Relations

Asad Raza Talpur

Sukkur IBA University
Liberalism
 Liberalism is widely viewed as the
strongest theoretical challenger to
realism, and it is even argued by some
that “there is ample evidence that
liberal theory surpassed realism some
time ago and now occupies the ‘best in
the show’ position”.
 Like realism, it has a
distinguished pedigree, with
philosophical roots extending
back to the political thought of
John Locke, Immanuel Kant, and
Adam Smith.
Liberalism warrants our attention because it
speaks to issues realism disregards, including
the impact of domestic politics on state
behavior, the implications of economic
interdependence, and the role of global
norms and institutions in promoting
international cooperation.
What Is Liberalism’s
Worldview?
 Liberals differ from realists in
several important ways. At the core
of liberalism is a belief in
reason and the possibility of
progress.
Liberals view the individual as
the seat of moral value
and assert that human beings
should be treated as ends
rather than means.
 Whereas realists counsel decision
makers to seek the lesser evil rather
than the absolute good, liberals
emphasize ethical principle over the
pursuit of power, and institutions
over military capabilities
 Politics at the global level, then,
becomes more a struggle for
consensus and mutual gain than
a struggle for power and prestige.
Several corollary ideas give
definition to liberal theory.
These include:
 An emphasis on the unity of
humankind rather than
parochial national loyalties to
independent sovereign states.
 The importance of individuals—their
essential dignity and fundamental
equality—and the analogous need to
place the protection and promotion of
human rights and freedom ahead of
national interests and state autonomy.
The use of the power of
ideas through education
to arouse world public
opinion against warfare.
The conditions under which people
live, rather than an inherent lust for
power, as an underlying source of
international conflict. Reforming
those conditions, liberals argue, will
enhance the prospects for peace.
 Another element common to various strands of
liberal thought is an emphasis on undertaking
political reforms to establish stable democracies.
Based on tolerance, compromise, and
civil liberties, democratic political cultures are said
to shun lethal force as a means of settling
disagreements.
 Woodrow Wilson, for example, proclaimed
that “democratic government will make wars
less likely.” Franklin Roosevelt later agreed,
asserting “the continued maintenance and
improvement of democracy constitute the
most important guarantee of international
peace.”
In place of force, diplomacy provides
a means for achieving mutually
acceptable solutions to a common
problem, and enables leaders to
negotiate and compromise with
each other in a peaceful manner.
 Disputes between democratic
governments rarely escalate to war
because each side accepts the
other’s legitimacy and expects it to
rely on peaceful means of conflict
resolution.
 A second command strand in liberal
theorizing is an emphasis on free trade.
The idea that commerce can reduce
conflict has roots in the work of
Immanuel Kant, Adam Smith, Jean-
Jacque Rousseau, and various
Enlightenment thinkers.
 “Nothing is more favorable to the
rise of politeness and learning,”
noted liberal philosopher David
Hume, “than a number of
neighboring and independent states,
connected by commerce.”
 Today, some studies contend
that economic
interconnectedness is an even
more important factor than
democracy in fostering peace.
 The doctrine that unfettered
trade helps prevent disputes
from escalating to wars rests on
several propositions.
 First, commercial intercourse
creates a material incentive to
resolve disputes peacefully: war
reduces profits by interrupting
vital economic exchanges.
 Second, cosmopolitan business elites
who benefit most from these exchanges
comprise a powerful transnational
interest group with a stake in promoting
amicable solutions to festering
disagreements.
 Finally, the web of trade between
countries increases communication,
erodes national selfishness, and
encourages both sides to avoid ruinous
clashes.
Finally, the third commonality in liberalism is
an advocacy of global institutions. Liberals
recommend replacing cutthroat, balance-of-
power politics with organizations based on
the principle that a threat to peace
anywhere is a common threat to everyone.
The Evolution of
Liberalism
In the wake of World
War I, contemporary
liberal theory rose to
prominence.
 For liberals such as U.S. President
Woodrow Wilson, World War I was
“the war to end all wars.” Believing
that another horrific war would
erupt if states resumed practicing
power politics, liberals set out to
reform the global system.
 These “idealists,” as they
were sometimes
called by realists, generally
fell into one of three groups.
 The first group advocated
creating global institutions to
contain the raw struggle for
power between self-serving,
mutually suspicious states.
 The League of Nations was the
embodiment of this strain of liberal
thought. Its founders hoped to prevent
future wars by organizing a system of
collective security that would mobilize
the entire international community
against would-be aggressors.
A second group called for the use of legal
procedures to adjudicate disputes before
they escalated to armed conflict.
Immediately after the war, several
governments drafted a statute to
establish a Permanent Court of
International Justice (PCIJ).
 A third group of liberal thinkers followed the
biblical ideal that states should beat their
swords into plowshares and sought
disarmament as a means of avoiding war. The
ultimate goal of this group was to reduce
international tensions by promoting general
disarmament, which led them to convene the
1932 Geneva Disarmament Conference.
The League of Nations failed to prevent
the Japanese invasion of Manchuria
(1931) or the Italian invasion of Ethiopia
(1935); major disputes were rarely
submitted to the PCIJ; and the 1932
Geneva Disarmament Conference ended
in failure.
 The next surge in liberal
theorizing arose decades
later in response to
realism’s neglect of
transnational relations.
 Although realists continued to focus
on the state, the events surrounding the
1973 oil crisis revealed that non-state
actors could affect the course of
international events and occasionally
compete with states.
This insight led to the realization that
complex interdependence sometimes
offered a better description of world
politics than realism, especially on
international economic and
environmental matters.
 Rather than contacts between
countries being limited to high-
level governmental officials,
multiple communication channels
connect societies.
 In short, the realist preoccupation with
government-to-government relations ignored the
complex network of public and private exchanges
crisscrossing state boundaries. States were
becoming increasingly interdependent; that is,
they were mutually dependent on, sensitive
about, and vulnerable to one another in ways that
were not captured by realist theory.
Although interdependence was not
new, its growth during the last
quarter of the twentieth century led
many liberal theorists to challenge
the realist conception of anarchy.
 Although they agreed that the global system
was anarchic, they also argued that it was
more properly conceptualized as an
“ordered” anarchy because most states
followed commonly acknowledged normative
standards, even in the absence of hierarchical
enforcement.
 When a body of norms
fosters shared expectations that
guide a regularized pattern of
cooperation on a specific issue,
we call it an international regime.
Fueled by the recent history suggesting
that international relations can change
and that increased interdependence
can lead to higher levels of
cooperation, neoliberalism emerged in
the last decade of the twentieth
century to challenge realism and
neorealism.
 Neoliberalism focuses on the ways in
which influences such as democratic
governance, liberal commercial
enterprise, international law and
organization, collective security, and
ethically inspired statecraft can improve
life on our planet.
The Limitations of
Liberalism
Realists charge that just like
the League of Nations and
the PCIJ, institutions today
exert minimal influence on
state behavior.
Critics of liberalism further contend that
most studies supportive of international
institutions appear in the arena of
commercial, financial, and
environmental affairs, not in the arena
of national defense.
 On security issues, conclude
realists, states will trust in their
own power, not in the promises
of supranational institutions.
 A final complaint lodged against
liberalism is an alleged tendency to turn
foreign policy into a moral crusade.
Whereas realists claim that heads of
state are driven by strategic necessities,
many liberals believe moral imperatives
can guide and constrain leaders.
 Consider the 1999 war in Kosovo, which pitted
the NATO against the Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia. Pointing to Yugoslav leader Slobodan
Milosevic’s repression of ethnic Albanians living
in the province of Kosovo, NATO Secretary
General Javier Solana, British Prime Minister
Tony Blair, and U.S. President Bill Clinton all
argued that humanitarian intervention was a
moral necessity.
 Although nonintervention into the internal
affairs of other states has long been a
cardinal principle of international law, they
saw military action against Yugoslavia as a
duty because human rights are an
international entitlement and governments
that violate them forfeit the protection of
international law.
According to many liberal thinkers, the
international community has a
responsibility to protect vulnerable
populations and an obligation to use
armed force to stop flagrant violations
of human rights.
 In accounting for U.S. military intervention
in Libya in March 2011, these sentiments were
reflected in President Barack Obama’s
declaration that the United States had a
responsibility and moral obligation to respond
to the violence perpetuated by Muammar al-
Qaddafi’s troops.
“Some nations may be able to turn a
blind eye to atrocities in other
countries,” proclaimed Obama. “The
United States of America is different.
And as president, I refused to wait for
the images of slaughter and mass
graves before taking action.”
 To sum up, realists remain skeptical
about liberal claims of moral necessity
and contend that “internal abuses by
states—including the slaughter of
civilians—do not automatically
qualify as ‘international’ threats”.
As former U.S. diplomat and celebrated
realist scholar George Kennan (1985)
once put it, the primary obligation of
government “is to the interests of the
national society it represents, not to the
moral impulses that individual elements
of that society may experience.”
Questions/Comments