Historical Dictionary of
International Relations
Peter Lamb and Fiona Robertson-Snape
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD
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Names: Lamb, Peter, 1960– author. | Robertson-Snape, Fiona, author.
Title: Historical dictionary of international relations / Peter Lamb and Fiona Robertson-Snape.
Description: Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield, [2016] | Series: Historical dictionaries of international
organizations | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016049700 (print) | LCCN 2016054864 (ebook) | ISBN 9781538101681 (hard-
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CLASSICAL REALISM • 69
See also AMERICAN PRIMACY; BRITISH HEGEMONY.
CLASSICAL REALISM. The term “classical realism” is employed to refer
to theories that were described simply as “realist” before the emergence, led
by the International Relations (IR) theorist Kenneth Waltz, of neorealism in
the 1970s. Since then, “realism” has been used as a generic term covering
classical realism, neorealism, and even a variant known as neoclassical real-
ism. Although classical realism is now considered to include theorists from
earlier centuries, such as Thucydides, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Thomas
Hobbes, it emerged in its modern form in the 1930s in the work of Reinhold
Niebuhr and E. H. Carr, who criticized liberal internationalist (sometimes
called idealist) arguments that international relations could be transformed
into more cooperative, peaceful arrangements on the basis of a harmony of
interests. The exchange of realist and liberal internationalist ideas in the
decades between World War I and World War II is known as the first of
the great debates in the discipline of IR.
Classical realism assumed that power is ubiquitous in international rela-
tions. The pursuit of power and conflict between states to maintain or en-
hance such power were considered to be inescapable features of the relations
between states. This was considered to stem from human nature, which was
fundamentally flawed. The flaws in human nature were transmitted to the
behavior of states. States themselves were deemed to be the key sovereign
units of the international system, while nonstate units are seen, to varying
degrees among realists, to be of lesser significance. The liberal idea that
universal moral principles exist was treated with great skepticism, and states
that sacrificed their own national interests on the basis of such principles in
attempts to realize harmony were considered to be courting danger. Indeed,
survival was considered the most fundamental aim of states, which should,
cautiously, seek to maintain their own power to safeguard against the actions
of other states, which may consider that their own security is endangered.
Classical realists, not unlike the later neorealists, believed that the most like-
ly means to peace between states was to engineer or preserve a balance of
power. Attempts to build international organizations that would maintain
peace on the basis of collective security were criticized on the basis of the
flawed nature of humanity. Because of this flawed nature, cooperation—
which was more likely in instances where the states had a sense of commu-
nity between them—could never be guaranteed. The League of Nations was
the most prominent example in this respect.
After World War II, classical realism became the most prominent Interna-
tional Relations theory until the 1970s. A theorist who was hugely influen-
tial during this period was Hans J. Morgenthau, whose 1948 book Politics
among Nations became the standard work of realism. He argued that politics
was governed by objective laws that have their roots in human nature. These
70 • CLAUSEWITZ, CARL PHILIPP GOTTLIEB VON (1780–1831)
laws thus derived from the biological drives of human beings. The laws
determined that people will be power seeking, and in turn so would states.
The central feature of international relations, for Morgenthau, was the com-
petition of states concerned with defending their interests defined in terms of
power.
In the 1970s, neorealism challenged the classical realist concern with hu-
man nature. The neorealists argued that a better understanding of internation-
al relations could be gained by focusing exclusively on the structure of the
Westphalian system of states and ignoring what went on inside states. In
the 1990s, however, some theorists (including Fareed Zakaria and Randall
Schweller) argued that neorealism was too parsimonious and that a concern
with individuals and states needed to be brought back into realist theories, in
addition to the structural factors. This version of realism, which became
known as neoclassical realism, was thus concerned with variations at differ-
ent levels of analysis. For example, leaders with their different views, per-
ceptions, and motivations constituted one variable. Another variable was the
strength of the states, which was considered to reflect more than simply
capabilities, as the type of state was relevant. For example, some states were
concerned with maintaining the status quo while others were revisionist. This
bears affinities to Carr’s classical realist view in the 1930s that some states,
such as Germany under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, could be described as
“have-nots” while the established states were “haves.”
See also ALLIANCES.
CLAUSEWITZ, CARL PHILIPP GOTTLIEB VON (1780–1831). Carl
von Clausewitz was born in Burg bei Magdeburg, Prussia (now Germany), to
a middle-class family. At the age of 12, he followed his father into the
Prussian army and fought against revolutionary France from 1793 to 1795. In
1801, he entered the Institute for Young Officers in Berlin. He fought in the
battle of Jena in 1806 and was captured by Napoleon Bonaparte’s victorious
French army. Upon his release in 1807, he sought, unsuccessfully, to reform
the Prussian army. In the Napoleonic Wars, France invaded Russia in 1812
and ordered the Prussian army to participate. Clausewitz refused, joined the
Russian war effort, and helped persuade the Prussians to change sides and
fight against Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. He became a
general before being appointed head of the military academy in 1818, where
he wrote On War (Vom Kriege), published posthumously in 1832.
Clausewitz argued that war should be a political instrument used in a
controlled and rational way—a continuation of politics by other means. The
armed forces must be under political control. The political is one of three
aspects (sometimes known as his trinity) that should not interfere with one
another. The political aspect is the responsibility of the government, which
sets the aims and objectives of the war but does not get involved with the
LIBERAL INTERNATIONALISM • 189
LIBERAL INTERNATIONALISM. In the aftermath of World War I, the
desire for peace found expression in liberal internationalism, an approach
that dominated the early years of the academic discipline of International
Relations. Evolving as it did from the broader liberal tradition of political
thought, liberal internationalism had begun to be developed several years
before the outbreak of war by Norman Angell and during the conflict by
President of the United States Thomas Woodrow Wilson. Angell became
one of the prominent liberal internationalist thinkers alongside others such as
Alfred Zimmern and Philip Noel-Baker, who in the interwar years sought
to formulate a program of reform. Liberal internationalism assumed that
through the application of reason, solutions could be found to human prob-
lems. War, as one of the greatest of those problems, was not beyond the
possibility of rational resolution. What was needed was a recipe for peace,
and that is what liberal internationalism in the postwar period sought to
develop. The ending of war was its primary focus because other liberal goals,
such as freedom, equality, human rights, and prosperity, were seen as in-
compatible with war preparation and war fighting. War, it was argued, sub-
verts and distorts the liberal political process and undermines the ability of
people to achieve their particular ends. Humans therefore share an interest in
peace and will cooperate to achieve it. These ideas were dismissed by the
political realists, such as Reinhold Niebuhr and E. H. Carr, as utopian and
idealist, and liberal internationalism is frequently referred to in the literature
of international relations theory as utopianism or idealism.
Liberal internationalism is heavily influenced by the writings of Imma-
nuel Kant. Kant argued that humans learn the hard way that they have to
cooperate: it is only when conditions become unbearable that they find a way
to improve their lot through cooperation, not only at the individual and state
levels but at the international level as well. Given the horrors of World War I,
the postwar period was seen therefore to offer the opportunity for the devel-
opment of a new form of international relations, one no longer driven by
raison d’état but by a shared interest in peaceful cooperation and harmoni-
ous coexistence. Central to the project was to be the regulation of world
affairs by international law and the setting up of international institutions.
Indeed, international law was so central to liberal internationalist thought that
it is also sometimes known as “the peace through law approach.” From this
perspective, war and violence appear to be endemic in the system because of
a lack of strong international laws. Indeed, the key proposal of the “peace
through law approach” was that the legal right of states to go to war must be
restricted—and, indeed, in 1928 the Kellogg–Briand Pact did outlaw war.
Liberal internationalists recognized that a legal restriction requires some
sort of enforcement mechanism. In the context of international anarchy,
therefore, international law would need to be supported by the setting up of
strong international organizations with the power to impose sanctions,
190 • LIBERAL INTERNATIONALISM
both economic and military. In the absence of world government, interna-
tional law would be enforced through collective use of sanctions. The
League of Nations can be seen as the embodiment of liberal internationalist
ideas; as an organization, it made serious attempts to put into practice some
of its fundamental principles, though often without success. In particular, the
League was based on the principle of collective security in an attempt to
change the dynamic from a self-help system, in which states had to continu-
ally prepare for war, to a system in which states could feel more confident of
their security and invest instead in peace. This in turn would enable disarma-
ment, ending the continuous production of arms that for the liberal interna-
tionalists was a source of insecurity because it gave powerful arms industries
an economic interest in the use of violence and war.
Supporting the collective security system was the principle of the peaceful
resolution of international disputes through diplomacy and arbitration. The
Permanent Court of International Justice (forerunner of the International
Court of Justice) was set up as the court of the League, charged with
providing a dispute resolution service to states. The idea that a court could
resolve international disputes was a central plank of liberal internationalism
and a key target for its critics. From the perspective of political realism, the
liberal internationalist faith in law, institutions, and collective action was
naïve because it misunderstood both the nature of power and of politics, and
was therefore potentially dangerous because it left states ill prepared to de-
fend themselves against an abuse of power. Its assumption that all people
have a common interest in peace was also seen as fatally flawed. Although
states in a position of dominance in the international system might indeed
have an interest in the peaceful continuation of the status quo, revisionist
powers might well see it in their interest to fight to enhance their internation-
al standing; the political will and economic commitment required of states in
an effective collective security action might not be forthcoming.
The dominance of idealist thinking began to be replaced in the early 1930s
onward as the League of Nations manifestly failed to prevent international
aggression. The outbreak of World War II confirmed the end of liberal
internationalist optimism. Influential critiques from realist writers further
sealed the fate of liberal internationalism as its ideas became more and more
marginalized. There was a brief moment at the end of World War II where
liberal internationalist ideals led to a wave of institution building, but the
Cold War quickly reasserted realism’s influence. Liberal thought has since
contributed to International Relations in different forms such as complex
interdependence and neoliberal institutionalism. Moreover, liberal inter-
nationalism has itself gained in influence in the post–Cold War period and is
seen in the literature on democratic or liberal peace; it is also possible to see
a direct line of connection from the liberal internationalists of the interwar
LIBERAL PEACE • 191
years to contemporary theorists of global governance. The prescriptive na-
ture of liberal internationalism and its quest to find solutions to the world’s
problems is also evident in normative theory.
See also ARMS CONTROL AND DISARMAMENT; BRAILSFORD,
HENRY NOEL (1873–1958); CLASSICAL REALISM; DEMOCRACY;
ECONOMIC SANCTIONS; PARIS PEACE CONFERENCE.
LIBERAL PEACE. Two main strands of liberal international relations
theory have something to say on how to secure peace. The first set of
theories look to trade, commerce, and economic interdependence as the key
to peaceful relations between states and is known as commercial pacifism.
The second is the democratic peace hypothesis, which looks to the internal
constitutions of states. The two are as closely connected as liberalism and
democracy, and each has a long history.
It is a long-standing liberal notion that the benefits of trade can only be
enjoyed under conditions of peace. Commerce therefore also promotes peace
because for commercial manufacturing societies war simply does not pay. In
Rights of Man (1791), Thomas Paine wrote, “If commerce were permitted to
act to the universal extent it is capable, it would extirpate the system of war.”
Paine saw war as a socially produced phenomenon undertaken only after a
rational calculation of its advantages and disadvantages. Rational, commer-
cial human beings would make that calculation and recognize that the costs
of war outweigh its advantages. It is in this way that war is eliminated from
human relations. Norman Angell in his most famous work, The Great Illu-
sion, similarly made the argument that no state gains commercial advantage
from the use of military power in its international relations, or enriches itself
by subjugating other countries. Furthermore, war disrupts trade and diverts
finances, which could be better invested elsewhere, to armaments. The as-
sumption of commercial pacifism can also be seen in the setting up of the
post–World War II liberal economic order at Bretton Woods and also in
the integration of Europe’s economies, which sought to lock Germany into a
system of tight economic relationships to ensure against future war. It is also
evident in Karl Deutsche’s idea of a security community and in more con-
temporary liberal theory. Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye in Power and
Interdependence (1977), for example, demonstrate that in a situation of com-
plex interdependence, the use of military force is no longer a viable instru-
ment of state policy.
The argument that a world of democratic states would be one in which war
could be eliminated is articulated by Immanuel Kant in Perpetual Peace: A
Philosophical Sketch (1795). Kant saw peace as vital to human progress
because without it, any moral progress we make as individuals or as mem-
bers of a state will be incomplete. Perpetual peace, however, can only be
achieved between states that are republican, or roughly equivalent to a mod-
214 • NEOREALISM
and 1970s. Furthermore, the complex interdependence writings of Robert
Keohane and Joseph Nye in the 1970s and 1980s were hugely influential.
Keohane was an important pioneering theorist of neoliberalism, especially in
his seminal book After Hegemony, published in 1984.
Although they consider the roles of actors other than states to be far more
significant than is appreciated by neorealism, neoliberals share with neoreal-
ists the view that states are unitary actors that seek to protect and promote
their own interests. They also concur with neorealists that the organizing
principle of the Westphalian system of states is anarchy, in the sense that
there is no overarching authority to enforce rules or laws among those states.
Neoliberals, however, consider that the opportunities for cooperation that
will facilitate promotion of the interests of each state that is involved are far
greater than the neorealists recognize. Neorealism, indeed, considers that
states tend and need to pursue relative gains, while neoliberalism believes
that often states pursue absolute gains and that it is possible for them to do so
more often because it is in their best interests to do so. Furthermore, while
neorealists consider that the main factor in the relative strengths of states is
that of capabilities, neoliberals argue that intentions and preferences are far
more significant. Neoliberalism considers that international organizations,
including intergovernmental organizations, have an important role to play.
These organizations are created by the states, which remain the key units in
the system. The organizations contribute to institutions, which in turn, with
various degrees of conscious instigation, help form international regimes.
As they make foreign policy, states are thus enabled to take opportunities for
cooperation that mitigate the effects of anarchy and manage the processes of
globalization. Neorealists argue that neoliberals exaggerate the impact of
institutions and regimes.
See also HEGEMONIC STABILITY THEORY; INTERNATIONAL IN-
STITUTIONS.
NEOREALISM. From the 1970s until the present day, some of the most
prominent International Relations (IR) theories have been those in the
category of neorealism, which is sometimes known as structural realism.
Neorealism is the response of a number of influential IR scholars to the
critique of realism, especially classical realism, which was presented by
equally influential liberal theorists in the 1960s and 1970s. Stung by the
challenge mounted by the likes of Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye and the
effectiveness of some of their arguments, Kenneth Waltz led the neorealist
response. This was based on a reconceptualization of realism of such signifi-
cance that soon the label “neorealism” was being applied widely to argu-
ments inspired by, or bearing similarities to, those of Waltz.
NEOREALISM • 215
Neorealism transposes realism to the level of the system. It is an attempt to
transform realism into scientific theory; the result is a theory at a high level
of abstraction, focusing on the nature of the international system and on the
way that states pursue power within that system. It is therefore concerned
with structures (hence the term “structural realism”) and removes all forms of
human agency from its analyses. For example, the classical realist emphasis
on human nature is not considered relevant. A structural approach is based on
the idea that the behavior of units within a system or structure cannot be
understood independently of the structure. The interaction of states creates an
international system or structure that has definite and enduring characteristics
independent of the states that created it. Neorealists say that this system has
anarchy as an ordering principle. This is not to suggest that the system is in
chaos. It means, rather, that there is no centralized or ultimate arbiter stand-
ing above the states, which are the key units of the system.
Waltz and other neorealists argue that very different states behave in simi-
lar ways because their behavior is determined by the structure. Nevertheless,
the argument continues, the international political system is formed by the
actions of states, directed at various ends. States, it is argued, cannot know
for sure the intentions of the other states, and thus, as rational actors, states
will have some offensive military capability, even if only for self-defense in
this environment of uncertainty. It is recognized that this capability is not
equal: some states will be more successful than others in achieving those
ends. Crucial to success are their capabilities.
As was the case in classical realism, the balance of power is a key con-
cern for neorealism. Whether the balance in question is regional or global,
neorealists believe that states do not want that balance to swing out of their
favor. This might require states to ally together to enhance their power in
order to balance an existing or emerging “great power,” as very powerful
states are known. The distribution of capabilities is thus crucial to a state’s
place in the system and balance. Because of the need to maintain the balance
and swing the balance in their favor either marginally or radically, states,
according to neorealism, will tend to seek relative gains rather than absolute
gains. Neoliberal institutionalism, by way of contrast, assumes that, espe-
cially in contemporary conditions of interdependence, states are more likely
to seek absolute gains, or in other words gains that improve their position
irrespective of gains of other states.
Some significant variations of the broader neorealist approach emerged.
The question whether states will seek to swing the balance of power margi-
nally in their favor or, if they have the capabilities, radically, is crucial to a
distinction that John J. Mearsheimer draws between two such variants.
These variants are, he suggests, defensive realism and offensive realism.
Neorealists all assume that all states want to survive and will act accordingly.
Defensive and offensive realism hold different views on what those actions
216 • NEW INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ORDER
will tend to be. As the names of these variants indicate, offensive realism
considers that states will tend to be more forceful and attempt to achieve
hegemony if they consider they have the capabilities to do so. Discussing the
merits of these two conflicting variants, Mearsheimer argues that offensive
realism is the more persuasive. Defensive neorealists, of course, recognize
that some states engage in offensive activity. Offensive realists likewise
understand that some states act defensively. Their disagreement concerns
whether offensive action or defensive action is most likely in the long run to
preserve power and ensure survival.
See also GLOBAL POWER SHIFTS; HEGEMONIC STABILITY THE-
ORY.
NEW INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ORDER. Demands from the
third world for a New International Economic Order (NIEO) were an at-
tempt to end the marginalization of developing states within the global econ-
omy. This marginalization had led to the growth of solidarity among third-
world states demonstrated by the establishment of the Non-Aligned Move-
ment (NAM) and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Develop-
ment (UNCTAD). The callers for an NIEO had a goal of building upon this
solidarity and of changing the rules of the game. Informed by key thinkers
such as Raúl Prebisch and André Gunder Frank, the demand for a pro-
gram of change was made in United Nations (UN) Resolution 3201 on 1
May 1974 and sought to challenge the existing system, which advantaged
those states that had economic power. The program had 10 sections that
dealt with various aspects of raw materials, technology, and the control of
transnational corporations. Trade reform was the top priority, with Sec-
tion I addressing the “fundamental problems of raw materials and primary
commodities” as related to trade and economic development. Demands
were made for price stability for commodities, the creation of buffer stocks,
access to markets in developed countries, and protection for infant industries
and markets in the developing world. The demands challenged the principles
on which the Bretton Woods system was based, as did the demands on the
financing of development and on the international monetary system. The
demand for an increased role for the UN, an institution within which devel-
oping states have a majority, sought to balance the power of the United
States and Europe within the World Bank and International Monetary
Fund (IMF).
Although the passing of the NIEO resolutions reflected the relative
strength of developing states within the UN, enhanced by the successful use
of commodity power by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Coun-
tries, the attempt was not a success. Concrete concessions were not won and
the debt crisis that engulfed the developing world in the 1980s further weak-
ened poorer states. The crisis also gave an enlarged role to the Bretton
