Abstract
The ascendancy of structural neorealist theory in international relations that coincided with the 1979 publication of Kenneth Waltz’s Theory of International Politics1 gave rise to expectations across the discipline. It was believed that by discovering recurrent trends that seemed to be at a divorce from specific national attributes such as language, history, and culture, Waltz had found a way to generate elegant, parsimonious, and predictive theory on the basis of a scant number of variables. If true, it was felt that this development would allow the discipline of international relations to shift toward economics with its more robust predictive abilities and putative scientific neutrality and away from its mangled legacy as a mongrelized version of political science, philosophy, and diplomatic history.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addi-son-Wesley, 1979).
Kenneth N. Waltz, “Anarchic Orders and Balances of Power,” in Neo-realism and Its Critics, Robert O. Keohane, ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 120–21.
Steven R. David, “Explaining Third World Alignment,” World Politics 43, no. 2 (January 1991): 234.
See Joseph S. Nye, Jr. “Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics,” Foreign Affairs 83, no. 3 (May–June 2004): 136–37. See also The Paradox of American Power: Why the World’s Only Superpower Can’t Go It Alone (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
See, for example, Robert Jervis, The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution: Statecraft and the Prospect of Armageddon (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989)
John Lewis Gaddis, The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).
E.H. Carr, The Twenty Tears’ Crisis 1919–1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations (London: Papermac, 1939/1991), Chapter 4.
Hans J. Morgenthau, Scientific Man versus Power Politics (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1946), chap. 3.
Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York: Knopf, 1985), 3.
Kenneth N. Waltz, “Political Structures,” in Neorealism and Its Critics, Robert O. Keohane, ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 81.
On the difficulty of making predicatively relevant theory in international relations, see Hans J. Morgenthau, Truth and Power (New York: Praeger, 1970), 253–58.
Thomas Christensen and Jack Snyder, “Chain Gangs and Passed Bucks: Predicting Alliance Patterns in Multipolarity,” International Organization. 44, no. 2 (Spring 1990): 137–38.
One expansion of structural neorealism that will not be addressed because it falls outside of the scope of interest of this project but that readers are strongly encouraged to familiarize themselves with is Robert Gilpin’s War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). This book should be viewed as a necessary companion piece to Waltz’s because it explains systemic change within a structuralist paradigm.
See, for example, Henry Kissinger, A World Restored: Metternich, Cas-tlereagh and the Problems of Peace, 1812–1822 (Boston: Houghton Mif-flin, 1957/1973).
Stephen M. Walt, “Alliance Formation and the Balance of World Power,” International Security 9, no. 4 (Spring 1985): 8.
There is an entire universe of extremely complex literature on this subject of calculating the “power” of states, generally known as “net assessment.” For an illustration of some of the difficulties involved, see William W. Kaufmann, Assessing the Base Force: How Much Is Too Much? (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1992).
Stephen Biddle, Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).
This question ties into the ancient one framed by Thucydides that has come to be referred to as the “security dilemma” in which the actions taken in defense by one state are not perceived that way by an adversary who then counters them, purely defensively. This action is perceived by the first state as being hostile and so it takes further measures to counter them and so on and so forth. For a good overview on the security dilemma, see John H. Herz, International Politics in the Modern Age (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), 231–35. The question became increasingly important during the Cold War in terms of nuclear weapons doctrine with “defensive” weapons, like ballistic missile shields being “bad” and “offensive” weapons, like the virtually undetectable submarine-launched ballistic missiles being “good.” To sum up the general argument, however, few weapons are either clearly offensive or defensive. For most weapon systems, the question is how they are employed that makes the difference. Other than Herz, the canonical statement on the security dilemma comes from.
Robert Jervis, “Cooperation under the Security Dilemma,” World Politics 30 (January, 1978): 167–214.
In fact, as Alexander Wendt has recently pointed out, even Waltz has significant ideational elements that lie at the root of his theory, although he is not explicit about them, a point for which Wendt takes him sternly to task. See Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 103–9.
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Ralph Manheim, trans. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1943/1971), 3.
Very few scholars take issue with the suggestion that Hitler both intended and sought war. Perhaps the most notable detractor from that thesis is A.J.P. Taylor. Taylor’s book, The Origins of the Second World War (London: Penguin Books, 1961, 1991), makes the argument that Hitler never intended to go to war, certainly not with France and England at least. Taylor makes the case that more than Hitler having defined foreign policy aims, he took advantage of opportunities as they presented themselves. Thus, for example, Taylor argues that the union with Austria as well as the issue of the Sudeten Germans were foisted upon him and were not rather occurring under his direction. To that end, Taylor suggests that Hitler had no reason to suspect that war would erupt over Poland any more than it had over similar issues and using similar methods as he had with Austria and Czechoslovakia. Even if one accepts that argument that Taylor makes, all he really proves is that the specific events that occurred were not directed by Hitler. He does not, critically, prove that Hitler would not have done something about them sooner or later anyway. The fact remains, as mentioned above, that Hitler makes very plain his ambitions in Mein Kampf and that both the union with Austria and the repatriation of all ethnic Germans to the Reich was a necessary step. The great strength of Taylor’s argument is not in the detail but, rather, in the theme, which may be simplistically summarized as “What do you expect?” This means that after nearly a full decade of giving Hitler what he wanted, why should Hitler have expected that the issue over which war ultimately was declared would be so treated? It was, after all, no different than any of the others.
Tami D. Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 102–10.
The only reference that suggests a form of buck-passing to Russia on record is a comment made by Stanley Baldwin to a deputation of Conservative MPs, in which he suggests, “If there is any fighting in Europe to be done, I should like to see the Bolshies and the Nazis doing it.” Philip Williamson and Edward Baldwin, eds., Baldwin Papers: A Conservative Statesman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 379.
Randall L. Schweller, Deadly Imbalances: Tripolarity and Hitler’s Strategy of World Conquest (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 73.
Neville Chamberlain noted in a letter to his sister Hilda that although the treaty had annoyed the French, the British would be able to show the French that “the Treaty is good not only for us but for them.” Robert C. Self, The Neville Chamberlain Diary Letters, Vol. 4 (London Ashgate, 2004), 141. By reducing Britain’s naval anxieties, the treaty would allow Britain to marshal more of its resources into other arms that would be part and parcel of the British contribution to the limited liability scheme, which will be discussed later.
Randall L. Schweller, “Tripolarity and the Second World War,” International Studies Quarterly 37, no. 1 (March 1993): 87.
A.J.P. Taylor, English History: 1914–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), 416.
Randall L. Schweller, Unanswered Threats: Political Constraints on the Balance of Power (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006).
Copyright information
© 2010 Ariel Ilan Roth
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Roth, A.I. (2010). Structural Neorealism and the British Case. In: Leadership in International Relations. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230113534_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230113534_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-29036-9
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-11353-4
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)