MA in Contemporary European Studies
Unit 4: International Security

To what extent is realist theory an adequate tool to help us 
understand international relations in the unipolar 
post-Cold War world?

by

Vanessa Buth

Introduction 2

Realism as a theory 4

From classical realism to neo-realism 6

Realism and its Critics 8

An empirical example: Iraq War 2003 10

Conclusion 12

References 14

Introduction

There was going to be a "new partnership of nations" emphasized president Bush of the United States on the 11th of September 1990, and declared the "new world order". With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, the 40 year long Cold War period of a bipolar world divided into the States with its Western allies and the Soviets with its Eastern allies ended. Only one global superpower, the United States, was left. Michael E. Brown (2003: 2) argues the leading powers did not form a new partnership of nations. He regards the international system still as anarchic, referring to international responses to war, slaughter and starvation in Bosnia and Somalia and in Rwanda 1994. Waltz responds that only "changes of the system" would be able to modify the international political system, but not "changes in the system" (Waltz 2000: 5). It has been argued that the terrorism attacks in the U.S. of 9/11 2001 have changed the way how the global system works. High Bush administration officials described them as worldview changing and world changing. (Crawford, 2004: 685 - 703). What it did was changing the - public - perception of international security. At NBC′s "Meet the Press" on September 14, 2003, Dick Cheney explained that "9/11 changed everything. It changed the way we think about threats to the United States. It changed about our recognition of our vulnerabilities. It changed in terms of the kind of national security strategy we need to pursue." There had never been an attack against the United States on U.S. territorial and performed by a non-state actor before. But international terrorism was already known and national security plans aiming at this problem had been worked out under Clinton. The focus within national and international security might have changed towards international terrorism, but the way the international system worked before 9/11, as well as it is working after, is still anarchic and belonging to the post-Cold War era.

International Relations theorists have been analysing as well as formulizing the foreign policy of states of this new unipolar constellation within the international system. One dominating theory is realism, the ′power politics′ school of thought. Its main assumptions are that nation-states are the only important actor in the international system, that states are pursuing power as a means of achieving security and that the international system is anarchic (Carr, Morgenthau, Waltz, Mearsheimer).

International Relations are characterized by the structure of the international system. In the post Cold-War world it is determined by a single global superpower, which is the United States, and an ever faster globalization, enhancing technical and military capabilities and thereby the abilities of states to generate power.

In this essay to what degree realism is an adequate theory to help us understand the international relations in the unipolar post-Cold War world will be explored. First, the complex realism theory is being described. Special attention is being drawn to the relevance of realism, and especially neo-realism as a more developed form to understand the dynamics and forces driving the post-Cold War unipolar world. In the third part criticism of neo-realism will be addressed. the neo-institutionalist theory, as the most popular alternative among scholars, emphasizes the increasing power of international institutions in a globalizing world. In the last part a neo realist approach is applied to the case of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and highlights the causes and consequences of the US unilateral action. The extent to which the relative power of the US declined as a result of its strategy of a coalition of the willing is pointed out. Finally, in conclusion, it is argued that the realist theory has been able to evolve and adapt to the changes that occurred in the World since the End of the Cold War.

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