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Toward a Theory of International Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Kenneth W. Thompson
Kenneth W. Thompson
Affiliation:
Northwestern University
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Extract

Recently a group of scholars, analysts, and diplomatists met for a weekend conference on theoretical approaches to international politics. Their discussion was inspired by the widespread and growing interest in conceptual and theoretical problems illustrated by parallel efforts in the study of politics, economics, law, and human relations. In the field of foreign relations the impulse toward theory comes from practitioners as well as philosophers. Indeed a former Secretary of State maintains that our most urgent need is for “an applicable body of theory in foreign policy.” Practical men with first-hand diplomatic experience point to the need for rational generalizations and intellectual structures to extract meaning from the jet stream of contemporary events. The intellectual processes by which practical judgments are made along a moving front of events clearly demand inquiry and analysis. Theory in the study of international politics perhaps derserves a special priority because of the urgency of the problem and the stridency of the debate generated by competing approaches each claiming to have preempted the field. Perhaps what is called for is a sorting out and assessment of the intellectual factors that go into diverse theories of international politics at varying levels of abstraction and generality. This sorting out was one of the objectives of the conferees. Similarly this paper seeks to review the nature and purpose of theory, its limitations, and the characteristics of the chief types of theory in international politics.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 49 , Issue 3 , September 1955 , pp. 733 - 746
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1955

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References

1 Robert Bowie, Dorothy Fosdick, William T. R. Fox, Walter Lippmann, Hans J. Morgenthau, Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul H. Nitze, Don K. Price, James B. Reston, Dean Rusk, Kenneth W. Thompson, and Arnold Wolfers. George F. Kennan was not in attendance but submitted a paper.

2 Hans J. Morgenthau, unpublished paper, “The Theoretical and Practical Importance of the Theory of International Relations,” p. 1.

3 Ibid., p. 2.

4 Paul H. Nitze, unpublished paper, “The Implications of Theory for Practice in the Conduct of Foreign Affairs,” p. 4.

5 Wolfers, Arnold, unpublished paper, “Theory of International Politics: Its Merits and Advancement,” p. 1Google Scholar.

6 Ibid., p. 5.

7 Fox, William T. R., unpublished paper, “International Relations Theory and Areas of Choice in Foreign Policy,” p. 3Google Scholar.

8 Morgenthau, p. 5.

9 Ibid., p. 6.

10 Nitze, p. 2.

11 Fox, pp. 1–2.

12 Morgenthau, p. 4.

13 Nitze, p. 1.

14 Fox, p. 5.

15 Nitze, p. 4.

16 Transcript of Conference, p. 5.

17 Niebuhr, Reinhold, unpublished paper, “The Moral Issue in International Relations,” p. 1Google Scholar.

18 Ibid., p. 4.

19 Ibid., p. 5.

20 “One could make similar comparisons between the inevitable pretensions involved in our failure to realize the ‘American Dream’ in our race relations, so poignantly described in Myrdal's American Dilemma, and the consistent realism and unhyprocritical cruelty of the South African approach to this problem.” Ibid., p. 5.

21 Ibid., p. 2.

22 Ibid., p. 7. Paul Nitze in a recent address to the National Council of Churches puts the moral issue in a new and original setting. Mr. Nitze concedes that the immediate object of our foreign policy must be the fostering and elaboration of an international environment in which nations organized as we are can prosper and survive. The means to this end must be the development of the influence and power of ourselves and our friends and the reduction of the power of our enemies. Yet the men in the Kremlin hold precisely the same aim. Mr. Nitze notes: “The basic moral issue would seem to arise from the question of the ends to which power is dedicated, the means with which it is pursued and the attitude informing the entire endeavor.” He quotes John Adams who enunciated a system of values hierarchically arranged as constituting the American spirit of patriotism. The highest level he reserved for piety, or the love and fear of God, and a general benevolence to mankind. The second level he assigned to the attachment to country and a zeal to promote, reform, and improve it. The third involved the prejudices and wishes of individuals or parties. Nitze concludes: “It is the absence of consideration for the first or highest level in Leninist-Stalinist doctrine and the substitution therefor of the third level in the form of absolute claims of a particular party, which underlies our confidence that it is possible to make moral distinctions between our attitude and that of the Communists.” The lines of convergence between national interest and the welfare of mankind are not always clear. It is necessary always to pay heed to the context of decisions. For instance, we are asked how we reconcile our position against colonialism with support of the French in Indo-China and North Africa. How reconcile our fight against fascism with military talks with Franco? Or hatred of communism with support of Tito? Or encouragement of the enslaved peoples of Central Europe with the refusal to go to war to liberate them? Are we sacrificing a higher principle to a lower or more immediate end in each of these instances? If one looks at each problem in its context it is difficult to see “the long-term higher principle or end which could be served by increasing Ho Chi Min's sway in South-east Asia, in driving Tito into the arms of the Kremlin, in isolating Spain or in going into a general war to liberate the oppressed peoples of Central Europe.” This is a practitioner's concept of normative theory.

23 Wolfers, p. 4.

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