Intoduction to International Relations
Grieco, Ikbenberry, Mastanduno
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO): A defense pact formed in 1949 between the
US, the UK, and several other western European states. It has since expanded and is still very
active today.
Iron curtain: A term coined by Winston Churchill to capture the profound political and
human divisions separating the western and eastern parts of Europe.
Berlin wall: The wall that divided Soviet East Berlin from American, French, and British
West Berlin during the Cold War, until its fall in 1989.
International governmental organizations (IGOs): Organizations that states join to further
their political or economic interests.
State: A political entity with two key features: a piece of territory with reasonably well-
defined borders, and political authorities who enjoy sovereignty.
Sovereignty: The effective and recognized capacity to govern residents within a given
territory and an ability to establish relationships with governments that control other states.
Nation: collections of people who share a common culture, history, or language.
Nation-state: A political unit inhabited by people sharing common culture, history, or
language.
Non-state actors: Actors other than states that operate within or across state borders with
important consequences for IR.
Civil-society: Collections of non-state actors that operate outside the sphere of government or
business control.
States promote or defend an interest by the development and implementation of a strategy. A
strategy connects means to an end.
Policy instruments: Tool used by a state’s government to attain its interests. Come in many
forms, divided into persuasive and coercive forms. Examples: propaganda, economic
incentives, diplomacy, low levels of military force, etc.
Statecraft: The use of policy instruments.
Theories help us understand why something occurred in international relations, and the
likelihood it will happen again. Theories designed to explain IR are usually grouped within
broad schools of thought such as realism, liberalism, Marxism, and constructivism. None of
these theories is a clear winner in explaining the world of IR. Each has its strengths and
weaknesses. Theories do not need to be completely correct to be useful.
,Imperialism: A state strategy in which one country conquers foreign lands to turn them into
colonies. Lenin argued that large banks and corporations in EU and US at the end of the 19th
century needed new markets to maintain their economic profits, as profits at home declined.
They looked abroad where investments were more profitable conquer territories. British
banks and corporations got their government to take similar steps, as the American, French,
and other capitalist powers did. Lenin thereby explains the scramble for Africa.
- Scramble for Africa: carving up of the continent by colonial powers after 1870, as a
function of the need of various capitalist countries to expand.
- When all the existing territory was taken, capitalist countries had no choice but to fight
each other in order to redistribute the territory. This is how Lenin explained WWI.
- Lenin also argued that capitalist countries would keep fighting each other until they
exhausted themselves, allowing nation-states with economies that were less profit-
driven (socialist states) to take over.
Security dilemma: A situation in which a state takes actions to become more secure yet ends
up becoming less secure due to the reaction it provokes in other states. (Cold War)
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Empire: A political entity that contains a substantial geographical space, often many different
peoples, and over which a single powerful rule governs. For example:
- China: In 1500 possessed a population of about 300 million, and the largest, most
advanced economy on earth. Relatively coherent empire by 1500 and ruled by a
succession of imperial dynasties.
- Japan: had a population of about 15 million in 1500, and while it had an emperor, the
country was fragmented into small political entities, led by local military leaders.
Changed in the early 1600s: a warlord, Tokugawa Ieyasu, attained control over most
of Japan. The Tokugawa Shogunate governed Japan until 1868.
- India: In 1500 was home to culturally and economically advanced population of about
110 million. During the first half of the 1500s, successive members of the Mughal
dynasty conquered and politically unified most of India, and continued to rule much of
the Indian subcontinent until the early 1700s.
- Ottoman Empire: Began when Muslim Turkish tribes entered Asia Minor (modern day
Turkey) in the eleventh century. By the 1600s, the Ottoman Empire included all of
Asia Minor, the Balkans region, a good part of central Europe, the Middle East, and
North Africa.
- Sub-Saharan Africa: In 1500 was home to around 38 million people. Enjoyed
substantial economic activity. To the west, the Mali Empire was the largest African
political community during the 1300s and the 1400s; it was replaced by the Songhai
Empire during the 1500s.
- Europe: In 1500 consisted of perhaps 82 million people in Western Europe, Eastern
Europe, and what is today western Russia. Dynastic families (Tudors, Habsburgs,
Valois) governed these early European states, which we call dynastic states. Dynastic
states did not develop in all the main parts of WE during this period. Italian city-states
remained independent of one another, and some 300 independent political entities,
such as duchies populated German-speaking lands in central Europe.
- The Americas: in 1500 was most populated in today’s Mexico, Peru, and Brazil,
another 2 million lived in what are now the US and Canada, with additional
populations on the Caribbean islands. Two main empires were in existence around
1500: The Aztec Empire, in the central part of today’s Mexico, and the Incan Empire,
stretching some 2,500 miles along the Andes mountain range in the western part of
South America.
The formation of the international political system, 1500-1900
A state system, or a group of competing states, gradually came into being in Europe from
1400s to the 1600s. Emerged from two sources:
1. Feudalism: a system in which individuals acted as ‘vassals’ and received land in
exchange for swearing loyalty to specific high-ranking leaders and, at the apex of the
system, the king.
2. In German-speaking areas in Central Europe, a loose and largely symbolic association
termed the Holy Roman Empire was controlled by the Habsburg dynasty by the early
1500s.
The formation of the European state system was the unintended consequence of a succession
of failed efforts over 300 years by powerful European leaders to use war to establish control
and create an imperial order over the European continent. Those leaders with imperial
, ambition catalyzed the historical process by which independent, interacting, and often
competing states were created in Europe. The resulting states became entrenched, producing
the nucleus for today’s global system of states. The imperial efforts were made by:
1. Habsburg Emperor Charles V (1519-1556)
2. His son Philip II (late 1500s)
3. Austrian and Spanish Habsburgs during the 30 years war (1618-48)
4. France’ King Louis XIV (1667-1715)
5. France again between 1789-1815, specifically Napoleon Bonaparte (seized power in
1799, made himself emperor in 1804)
6. Germany under Adolf Hitler (1933-1945)
Other European states formed alliances and a balance of power to counter these efforts, which
ultimately defeated each bid for empire.
The 30 years’ war was concluded in 1648 by a series of agreements that have come to be
known as the Peace of Westphalia. These treaties divided Europe into sovereign states
independent of higher authorities, this is also called a Westphalian state system.
The European state system was not launched in full by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The
initial interstate system arguably came into being as early as 1555, with the Peace of
Augsburg. German princes who fought Holy Roman Emperor Charles V compelled in this
settlement that princes, not the emperor, decide the religion of their subjects.
In reaction to the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, Britain, Prussia, Austria, and
Russia agreed in 1814-15 to establish a Concert of Europe. It consisted of an agreement
among these powers to meet in what were called congresses, to discuss possible threats to the
European status quo and where feasible, to act in concert to maintain peace and order within
Europe. They sought: an international order; a period of sustained peace and cooperation
among the great powers.
Successes of the Concert of Europe:
- 1818: great powers agreed to a withdrawal of foreign military forces from France and
recognize France as a member of the community of European great powers.
- 1820: Austria, Russia, and Prussia met as a congress and accepted an Austrian plan to
use military force to suppress a liberal (antimonarchical) rebellion in Naples.
- 1822: Congress in Verona, all major powers except Britain agreed not to support a
Greek independence movement as well as to authorize a French military campaign in
Spain to suppress antimonarchical insurrection.
Failures of the Concert of Europe:
- Britain and ultimately France became alienated from and less active in the Concert
- The Concert system failed to resolve a profound diplomatic dispute between France
and Britain on the one hand and Russia on the other, involving Russia’s movement
against a progressively weaker Ottoman Empire.
o This dispute ended in the Crimean War of 1854-56 between Russia and a
coalition of Britain, France, the Ottomans, and the Kingdom of Sardinia-
Piedmont.
- The Concert played no role in managing the outbreak or suppression of attempted
liberal rebellions in 1848 in France, Germany, Hungary, and several Austrian-
controlled parts of Italy.
