scholarly journals Anarchy Is What Explains the History of International Relations

2019 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-18
Author(s):  
William C. Wohlforth
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Political Realism ◽  
World War ◽  
National Interests ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Antecedents ◽  
The Great War

The article examines the major events of the two previous centuries of international relations through main concepts of political realism. The author argues that in order to understand the present dilemmas and challenges of international politics, we need to know the past. Every current major global problem has historical antecedents. History from the late 19th century constitutes the empirical foundation of much theoretical scholarship on international politics. The breakdown of the Concert of Europe and the outbreak of the devastating global conflagration of World War I are the events that sparked the modern study of international relations. The great war of 1914 to 1918 underlined the tragic wastefulness of the institution of war. It caused scholars to confront one of the most enduring puzzles of the study of international relations, why humans continue to resort to this self-destructive method of conflict resolution? The article shows that the main explanation is the anarchical system of international relations. It produces security dilemma, incentives to free ride and uncertainty of intentions among great powers making war a rational tool to secure their national interests.

scholarly journals Where’s the Diplomacy in Diplomacy? Using a Classic Board Game in “Introduction to International Relations”

2014 ◽  
Vol 48 (01) ◽  
pp. 162-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Arnold
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Board Game ◽  
World War ◽  
History Of

ABSTRACTOne of the challenges of teaching American undergraduates in an “Introduction to International Relations” course is finding a way to make topics and themes seem relevant to students. This article recounts the author’s experiences using the board game “Diplomacy” in his course. The game places students in the role of decision makers in the international arena and simulates the international politics of pre-World War I Europe. In addition to being a powerful simulation of the difficulties of international relations, the game teaches students about one of the most debated wars in the history of the discipline.

scholarly journals The hierarchical society: the politics of self-determination and the constitution of new states after 1919

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 372-396
Author(s):  
Maja Spanu
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Society ◽  
International System ◽  
World Politics ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
World War ◽  
New States ◽  
History Of

International Relations scholarship disconnects the history of the so-called expansion of international society from the presence of hierarchies within it. In contrast, this article argues that these developments may in fact be premised on hierarchical arrangements whereby new states are subject to international tutelage as the price of acceptance to international society. It shows that hierarchies within international society are deeply entrenched with the politics of self-determination as international society expands. I substantiate this argument with primary and secondary material on the Minority Treaty provisions imposed on the new states in Central, Eastern and Southern Europe admitted to the League of Nations after World War I. The implications of this claim for International Relations scholarship are twofold. First, my argument contributes to debates on the making of the international system of states by showing that the process of expansion of international society is premised on hierarchy, among and within states. Second, it speaks to the growing body of scholarship on hierarchy in world politics by historicising where hierarchies come from, examining how diverse hierarchies are nested and intersect, and revealing how different actors navigate these hierarchies.

Epilogue

2020 ◽  
pp. 206-214
Author(s):  
Michael Geheran
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Great War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
German Identity ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Great War

The book closes with a short glimpse into the history of Jewish veterans after 1945, as the survivors of the camps returned to Germany, outlining ruptures and continuities in comparison with the pre-Nazi period. Jewish veterans imposed different narratives on their experiences under National Socialism. As the past receded into the distance, it became a concern for the survivors to engage with the past, which they variously looked back on with nostalgia, disillusionment, or bitter anger. Although National Socialism threatened to erase everything that Jewish veterans of World War I had achieved and sacrificed, sought to destroy the identity they had constructed as soldiers in the service of the nation, as well as bonds with gentile Germans that had been forged under fire during the war, threatened to sever their connections to the status they had earned as soldiers of the Great War and defenders of the fatherland, their minds, their values and their character remained intact. Jewish veterans preserved their sense of German identity.

‘Where are we going?’ International Relations and the voice from below

1999 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTOPHER HILL
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Masses ◽  
The Great War ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Second World

They tell us that the Pharoahs built the pyramids. Well, the Pharoahs didn't lift their little fingers. The pyramids were built by thousands of anonymous slaves . . . and it's the same thing for the Second World War. There were masses of books on the subject. But what was the war like for those who lived it, who fought? I want to hear their stories.Writing about international relations is in part a history of writing about the people. The subject sprang from a desire to prevent the horrors of the Great War once again being visited upon the masses and since then some of its main themes have been international cooperation, decolonisation, poverty and development, and more recently issues of gender.

scholarly journals GERMANY THROUGH THE PRISM OF RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA POSTCARDS FROM WORLD WAR I

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (3/2) ◽  
pp. 42-53
Author(s):  
E. V. MIRONOVA
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Front Side ◽  
World War ◽  
The World ◽  
Current Events ◽  
Image Creation ◽  
Key Features ◽  
Visual Materials ◽  
The Great War

Our perception of the world and current events is formed through  diverse and often contradictory sources. It is always amended and  augmented throughout the unceasing process of information  consumption. Since the beginning of the XX century this process has  been more and more governed by images. That is why the  great powers drawn in the Great War were actively using visual  materials for propaganda purposes: to steer their people towards  confrontation and to create “the image of the enemy”. The issue “construction of an enemy” does not lose its relevance due to  the fact that today’s media wars propaganda principles and  techniques are still the same as they were one hundred years ago.  The article describes the milestones of the enemy image creation  and gives a thorough analysis of Russian propaganda postcards from the World War I in order to outline the key features of German  enemy figure. The emphasis is made on the idea that the image of  Germany is ambivalent: the country and its citizens were pictured  differently. The postcards serve as sources of the current study since they were one of the main means of communication during the war  time and one of the most effective propaganda tools: people used to  distribute the postcards themselves, thus creating an emotional  bond between the recipient and the image on the front side. The  novelty of the research is attributable to the fact that this issue has  not been considered through the prism of historical imagology. 

Peace and Security from a Feminist Perspective

2018 ◽  
pp. 14-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Ann Tickner
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Women Activists ◽  
Economic Security ◽  
Women's Activism ◽  
Feminist Scholarship ◽  
World War ◽  
Un Security Council ◽  
Peace And Security ◽  
History Of

Almost one hundred years ago women from both sides of World War I came together to design a postwar peace plan, the principles of which were remarkably similar to UN Security Council Resolution 1325. Since then, women activists have worked to place gender issues on the United Nations agenda. In the late 1980s, feminist international relations began to address peace and security from a gendered perspective. With this in mind, this chapter traces the history of the intersection between women’s activism and this emergent feminist scholarship. Feminists scholarship defines security as the physical and economic security of individuals as well as states. The scholars question the essentialist association of women and peace and advocate seeing women as agents in all aspects of peacemaking, positions that the international community is finally beginning to recognize. This chapter, as such, explores how feminist scholars have constructed knowledge that contributes to our understanding of the deeper reasons why women suffer particular physical and structural insecurities.

Colette française (et fille de zouave)

2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-128
Author(s):  
Kathleen Antonioli
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Women's Writing ◽  
Central Position ◽  
Great War ◽  
World War ◽  
Before And After ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Great War ◽  
Women’S Writing

This article argues that French novelist Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette occupies a central position in the canon of French women’s writing, and that from this position her reception was deeply influential in the development of the myth of French singularity. After World War I, a style of femininity associated with Colette (natural, instinctive, antirational) became more largely synonymous with good French women’s writing, and writers who did not correspond to the “genre Colette” were excluded from narratives of the history of French women’s writing. Characteristics associated with Colette’s writing did not shift drastically before and after the war, but, in the wake of the Great War, these characteristics were nationalized and became French.

The Practice of Socialist Internationalism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Talbot Imlay
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Politics ◽  
World War ◽  
National Politics ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
International Issues ◽  
State Actors ◽  
Post War ◽  
First World

The Practice of Socialist Internationalism examines the efforts of British, French, and German socialist parties to cooperate with one another on concrete international issues. Drawing on archival research in twelve countries, it spans the years from the First World War to the early 1960s, paying particular attention to the two post-war periods (1918 to the late 1920s and 1945 to the mid-1950s), during which national and international politics were recast. During these years, European socialists operated simultaneously in national and transnational spaces, and the book explores the ways in which these two spaces overlapped. In addition to highlighting a neglected dimension of twentieth-century European socialism, it provides novel perspectives on two related subjects: the history of internationalism and the history of international politics. Scholars of internationalism focus either on state or on non-state actors (INGOs), but socialist parties constituted something of a hybrid: rooted more firmly in national politics than most INGOs, they were also more self-consciously internationalist than state actors. Just as importantly, European socialists sought to forge a new practice of international relations, one that would emerge from their collective efforts to work out ‘socialist’ approaches to pressing issues of European politics such as post-war reconstruction, European integration, and decolonization. While the extent of their success is debatable, the efforts of European socialists to identify distinct approaches act as a spotlight, illuminating obscure yet vital aspects of an issue.

The New History of World War I and What It Means for International Relations Theory

2007 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keir A. Lieber
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
World War ◽  
Historical Case ◽  
European Continent ◽  
Core Concepts ◽  
History Of ◽  
Defensive Realism ◽  
Spiral Model

World War I looms large in international relations theory. The core concepts of defensive realism—the security dilemma, spiral model, and offense-defense balance—were largely inspired by this single historical case, and evidence from the war is frequently used to test explanations built on those concepts. The new historiography of World War I, however, challenges many of the long-held assumptions about the origins of the conflict. Newly available evidence strongly suggests that German leaders went to war in 1914 with eyes wide open. They provoked a war to achieve their goal of dominating the European continent, and did so aware that the coming conflict would almost certainly be long and bloody. Germany's leaders did not go to war with a bold operational blueprint for quick victory embodied in the Schlieffen Plan; they did not misjudge the nature of modern war; and they did not lose control of events on the eve of the conflict and attack out of fear that Germany's enemies would move first. In light of the new history, international relations scholars should reexamine their empirical understandings of this conflict, as well as their theoretical presuppositions about the causes of war.

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