1 Understanding International Relations

What we consider today to be ‘international relations’ can be traced back at least 2,500
years. During the fifth century BCE, the relevant political groups were Greek city-states
(for example, Athens, Sparta and Corinth) rather than modern nation-states like Russia,
China, the United States, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. International relations in that period in
some ways looks similar to what it is today: city-states traded with each other, participated
in cross-border sports competitions, practiced diplomacy, formed alliances and fought
wars against each other as enemies and alongside each other as allies against the Persian
Empire. Of course, the modern international system also looks very different in many ways.
We define international relations as the political, economic, social and cultural relations
between two countries or among many countries. We also include relations countries have
with other important actors, such as global corporations or international organizations.
Today’s nation-states operate in a global system of interaction. Goods, technology and
money change hands with the click of a mouse rather than with the launch of a sailing ship.
People move across state borders temporarily or permanently. States still fight wars, but the
destructive capacity of modern weapons, especially nuclear weapons, introduces a strong
element of caution into how states resolve conflicts with each other. Non-state actors,
such as global corporations, environmental advocacy groups and criminal and terrorist
networks operate across borders and share the stage with countries and their governments.
This book introduces you to the fascinating and complex world of international relations.
The best way to begin to acquire a solid knowledge of this field is to master some basic
terms and concepts that are used to describe international relations and foreign policy and
to learn how to employ the levels-of-analysis framework for organizing and understanding
arguments and ideas about international relations. Second and most importantly, we believe
you can begin to master the complexity of international relations by exploring what we call
enduring questions. These are questions that have engaged and challenged generations of
international relations scholars and students – large, challenging questions that have stood
the test of time. Finally, we believe it is critically important that you can make connections
about international relations that relate the past to the present, theory to practice, and
aspiration to reality. You should also be comfortable viewing world politics from multiple
perspectives. We will explain what we mean by each of these defining features of our book
as we introduce you in this chapter to the field of international relations.

HOW DOES INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AFFECT US?

If you happen to be one of the many people who own an iPhone (by the end of 2020, over
2 billion had been sold worldwide), you are familiar with Apple, the famous American
computer company. Although the iPhone was designed and marketed by Apple in
California, its components are produced all over the world. A South Korean company,
Samsung, and a Chinese company, Sunwoda Electric, manufacture the battery. The camera
and flash memory come from Japan and South Korea. The touchscreen is made by a US
company, Broadcom, with factories in one dozen locations including Israel, the United
Kingdom, India and Brazil. The various components are sent to Taiwan, where companies
named Foxconn and Pegatron assemble and ship phones to customers around the globe
(Costello 2017; Xing and Detert 2010). As a consumer, you benefit directly from this global
network of trade: the mobile phone you buy and the service you receive are more affordable
than if your phone had been built and serviced all in one country. Some East Asian, Middle
Eastern, European and American workers share in the benefits of this trade as well, since
the more phones that are sold, the more US-, European- and Asian-based jobs are created
to produce and service them.
The stakes in international relations sometimes involve conflict and war rather than,
or alongside, trade and mutual economic benefit. One dramatic moment occurred on

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11 September 2001, when members of the Al Qaeda transnational terrorist organization

hijacked a number of airliners and crashed two of them into the Twin Towers of the World
Trade Center in New York City, and a third into the Pentagon (the headquarters of the
US Department of Defense) in the nation’s capital. In total, over 3,000 people died during
the September 11 attacks, including several hundred police and fire workers who tried to
save the initial victims in the Twin Towers. These attacks prompted a US-led invasion of
Afghanistan, whose Taliban government had been giving refuge to Al Qaeda and served
as one justification for a second and far more controversial US-led war, against Iraq, in
2003.
The events of September 11 gave rise to a longer-term war against terrorism, which
has been a prominent part of America’s recent engagement with international relations.
But taking a longer view, we should recognize that in relative terms Americans have been
among the peoples of the world least affected by foreign wars. In the Vietnam War, one
of the longest and costliest wars fought by the United States, 58,000 Americans were
killed and about 300,000 were wounded. However, in 1995, the Vietnamese government
estimated that 2 million civilians in the North and another 2 million in the South also
died during the war. Vietnamese casualties represented a shocking 13 percent of the total
population of that country.
The citizens of France and Germany treated each other as adversaries for almost 100
years. These two countries fought a major war against each other in 1870 and were the
principal combatants in two devastating world wars, between 1914 and 1918 and again
between 1939 and 1945. It is not surprising that, for many decades, the French and German
people regarded each other with suspicion and resentment and considered each other
mortal enemies. But, since 1945, the French and German governments have cooperated
with each other politically and economically in what is today called the European Union European Union
(EU) – a group of twenty-seven European countries that abide by common laws and A group of twenty-seven
European countries that
practices – and militarily in an alliance called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization abide by common laws
(NATO), which requires the United States and its European partners to come to the and practices.
defense of each other in the event of a military attack against one of them. Today, war North Atlantic Treaty
between France and Germany is almost unthinkable, and in 2012 the European Union Organization (NATO)
was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of its historic accomplishments. A defense pact formed
in 1949 between North
French and German citizens freely cross each other’s borders and work in each other’s American and West
factories and offices. The Germans and French even gave up their long-standing national European states. Today
NATO includes thirty
currencies, the Deutschmark and the French franc in 2002; they now share, along with member states.
seventeen other European Union members, a common currency called the euro. Today,
Euro
members of the European Union worry very little about war with each other and very The common currency
much about political instability, the consequences of climate change and threats to the of the eurozone.
health of their citizens.
International relations involve not just war and the movement of goods and money
across borders, but also the ability of people themselves to move across those borders. If you
are not a citizen, national governments require you to have special permission (for example,
in Australia an employer-sponsored 457 visa, or in the United States, an identification
document commonly known as a green card) before you may legally work in their country.
Even visiting different countries simply as a tourist often requires you to request permission
in the form of a visa from the respective governments of those countries. The citizens of
some countries have an easier time crossing borders than do the citizens of others; in 2020,
for example, citizens of Japan, Singapore and Finland could enter 188 other countries
without needing a visa, while Chinese citizens could only enter seventy-two countries and
Syrian citizens only twenty-nine countries visa-free (Henley Passport Index 2020). But even
these opportunities would have been a luxury compared to what international relations
imposed on people living in Eastern Europe between the late 1940s and late 1980s. During

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Iron Curtain that time an Iron Curtain, a term coined by British leader Winston Churchill to capture the
A term coined by British profound political and human divisions, separated the western and eastern parts of Europe.
leader Winston Churchill The communist governments of Eastern European countries tried to prevent their citizens
to capture the profound from traveling to the West because they feared people would find freedom so attractive that
political and human they would not return home. The eastern and western parts of today’s German capital city,
divisions separating the
western and eastern parts
Berlin, were divided by the Berlin Wall. East Berliners trying to escape across the wall to
of Europe. West Berlin were routinely shot by East German guards.
The ability to move across borders is critical to people in many parts of the world,
Berlin Wall
The wall that divided helping refugees to escape violence, migrants to gain employment and improve their
Soviet East Berlin from life chances, and tourists to experience and understand different cultures. The Central
American, French and African Republic has experienced violence among armed groups since 2013, forcing some
British West Berlin 1.5 million of its citizens to cross borders in search of safety. Many have ended up in the
during the Cold War,
neighboring countries of Chad, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (see Map
until its fall in 1989.
1.3). The similarly tragic civil war in Syria, which began in 2011, displaced about 12 million
Syrians, with many crossing into Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Germany. As of 2020,
roughly 1 million Honduran citizens crossed several borders to end up in the United States,
in the hope of improving economic prospects for themselves and their children. We discuss
the phenomenon of ‘people on the move’ more fully in Chapter 12.
Sometimes cross-border movements can have devastating consequences, even when
war is not involved. Late in 2019, a highly contagious virus emerged in China and eventually
spread a disease (coronavirus disease 2019, or COVID-19) around the world, carried by
people moving within and across international borders. Unlike people, viruses don’t need
passports to cross borders. By the end of 2020, almost 100 million people were known to be
infected globally and about 2 million had died from COVID-19.
International relations powerfully affect our everyday lives. There are 196 countries
in the world today (that includes Taiwan, which operates as a country but which is also

Photo 1.1 Angela Merkel at the 30th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall
German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrives to place a candle at a memorial to the
Berlin Wall at Bernauer Strasse on 9 November 2019, following a ceremony to
celebrate the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in Berlin, Germany.

Source: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

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 1 Understanding International Relations

claimed by the People’s Republic of China as a part of its own country) and they interact with
each other over a wide variety of political, economic, social, cultural and scientific issues.
They also interact with an array of international governmental organizations (IGOs) International
– organizations that states join to further their political or economic interests – such as governmental
organizations (IGOs)
the United Nations (UN), International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Health Organization Organizations that states
(WHO), World Trade Organization (WTO) and Organization of Petroleum Exporting join to advance their
Countries (OPEC). Countries also deal regularly with profit-seeking organizations interests.
whose activities cross borders, such as the US-based conglomerate General Electric and
the Chinese-based computer company Lenovo, and nongovernmental organizations Nongovernmental
(NGOs) – non-profit groups that operate independently of governments and typically organizations (NGOs)
Non-profit groups that
address political or social issues, such as the international health crisis response team work across borders on
Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), and transnational political and political or social issues.
social movements such as Greenpeace and the World Social Forum. Your task is to gain
an understanding of those relationships, and so we begin by laying some of the necessary
foundations.

WHO IS INVOLVED IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS?

The initial step is to identify the fundamental actors in international relations. While the
question of which actors in international relations are most important is controversial and
will be taken up in many of the chapters that follow, for now we can identify at least three
important classes of key actors in international relations.
First, we are interested in individual national leaders. These are individuals, like the National leaders
President of the United States, the Prime Minister of Pakistan or the Chancellor of Germany, Individual office-holders
who make foreign policy
who hold executive offices as a result of which they are entitled to make foreign policy and and military decisions
military decisions on behalf of their countries. We also include those individuals, such as on behalf of their
the Russian Defense Minister or the Brazilian Minister of Agriculture, who as a result of countries.
the offices they hold give counsel to and implement the decisions of their respective core
executive leaders, like the Russian or Brazilian President.
Second, we are interested in states. In international relations we often say ‘India’ has State
this or that foreign policy interest, or that ‘China’ has this or that strategy toward ‘Russia’ or A political entity with
territorial borders and
that ‘Venezuela’ is making use of this or that foreign policy instrument to attain some goal. political authorities who
India, China, Russia and Venezuela are among the 196 states in the current international enjoy sovereignty.
system. But what, in general, is a state? It is a political entity with two key features: a piece
of territory with reasonably well-defined borders, and political authorities who enjoy
sovereignty, that is, they have an effective and recognized capacity to govern residents Sovereignty
within the territory and an ability to establish relationships with governments that control The capacity to govern
residents within a given
other states. territory to establish
The state should be distinguished from another key international relations actor, relationships with
the nation. States are political units, while nations are collections of people who share governments that
control other states.
a common culture, history or language. The term nation-state refers to a political unit
inhabited by people sharing common culture, history or language. Although nation-state Nation
is used frequently in international relations literature, often as a synonym for country, pure Collections of people
who share a common
nation-states are rare: possible examples might include Albania, where over 95 percent of culture, history or
the population consists of ethnic Albanians, or Iceland, which has a language and culture language.
found only on that island. Nations often transcend the boundary of any single state;
Nation-state
members of the Chinese nation, for example, are found in mainland China and in Taiwan, A political unit inhabited
but also in Singapore, Malaysia and other parts of Southeast Asia. by people sharing
common culture, history
Similarly, states often contain more than one nation. The former Soviet Union included or language.
not only Russians but Armenians, Ukrainians, Georgians, Latvians and Lithuanians,
among others. Many African countries were created from former colonies whose borders
were not drawn along national lines. Kenya, for example, contains numerous ethnic groups,

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Photo 1.2 Protests in Catalonia, 2017

In October 2017, the Parliament of Catalonia, a region of Spain with some political
autonomy, held a referendum on independence which the central government in
Madrid declared illegal.

Source: Guillaume Pinon/NurPhoto/Getty Images

including the Kikuyu and Luo, with their own languages, cultures and traditions. Scotland
is a distinctive nation that is part of the United Kingdom (Great Britain), and Catalonia
is a distinctive nation that is part of Spain. Both Scotland and Catalonia, with their own
cultures and languages and long histories of political autonomy, have recently contemplated
breaking away from their multinational states and creating their own independent nation-
states. It is not surprising that one of the fiercest rivalries in global sports is between the
football clubs FC Barcelona (based in Catalonia) and Real Madrid (based in the capital
of Spain).
Non-state actors Third, to understand international relations we need to analyze non-state actors. These
Consequential actors are actors other than states that operate within or across state borders with important
other than states that
operate within or across consequences for international relations. Multinational enterprises such as the US-based soft
state borders. drink company Coca Cola, the Netherlands-based electronics firm Philips and the Japan-
based conglomerate Mitsubishi are non-state actors with important business operations
across the globe. The Catholic Church and the Muslim Brotherhood are active regionally
and globally and are thus important non-state actors; and, with radically different aims and
methods, several criminal groups, such as mafias and drug cartels, and terrorist organizations
such as Boko Haram (a Nigerian group that forbids Muslims from participating in Western-
style social or educational activities) are consequential non-state actors. ISIS (the Islamic
State of Iraq and Syria), a terrorist group that grew out of Al Qaeda, gained global attention
in 2014 when it captured large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria and claimed to create
a transnational Islamic State, or caliphate. By 2017 ISIS lost much of its claimed territory,
including its stronghold of Mosul, Iraq, yet remains a formidable non-state actor.
As the example of ISIS demonstrates, individual non-state actors may become more or
less influential at different times. As we show in Chapter 12, giant companies like Google,

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Facebook and China-based Alibaba have become more prominent as the world economy
has become more data-intensive. As noted in Chapters 5 and 9, IGOs like the World
Health Organization and the WTO were prominent during the 1990s but have come under
pressure today as great-power competition has intensified. Nevertheless, non-state actors
are a persistent and important feature of the international landscape.
Finally, you will encounter the term civil society, which refers to communities of Civil society
private citizens, linked by common interests, that organize and operate outside the Communities of private
citizens that operate
control of government or business. Examples might include charities, groups of citizens outside the sphere of
demonstrating for political change and volunteer organizations working to assist victims of government or business
natural disasters. To the extent they operate across borders, members of civil society may control.
have a meaningful impact on foreign policy and international relations.

What Do Actors Want and How Do They Get it in International

Relations?
What do these actors want and how do they get what they want in international relations?
Here it is useful to distinguish interests (or objectives), strategies and policy instruments.
When we say that a state (or nation-state) has an interest, we mean that the state’s goal Interest
or objective is either to maintain or attain some ongoing condition of the world that is Some condition of
the world sufficiently
sufficiently important to it that it is willing to pay meaningful costs. For example, in recent important that a
years, the Chinese government has revealed that it has an interest in attaining sovereignty state is willing to pay
over the South China Sea, perhaps because that area may be rich in oil and natural gas. meaningful costs to
attain or maintain it.
In making that claim it has come into conflict with numerous neighboring states such
as Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam, which also claim sovereignty over
parts of that sea space (see Map 1.1). Not surprisingly, the South China Sea has become a
potential focal point for conflict in world politics.
How do states promote or defend an interest? They do so by the development and Strategy
implementation of a strategy. A strategy essentially connects means to an end. If China’s The connection by
state leaders of means,
ultimate interest or objective is to attain sovereignty over the South China Sea, part of its or policy instruments,
strategy might be to induce such countries as Vietnam and the Philippines to renounce to ends, or policy
their own claims over the South China Sea, and to recognize Chinese sovereignty over the objectives.
area. China will rely on policy instruments to help it obtain that goal. Policy instruments Policy instrument
can take a variety of forms, which we will examine in detail in Chapter 4. In the South A tool used by a state’s
government to attain
China Sea case, China thus far has used multiple policy instruments including diplomacy, its interests. Policy
propaganda, economic incentives and low levels of military force to persuade or coerce instruments come in
other states to recognize its claim. The term statecraft is often used to refer to the use of many forms, divided into
persuasive and coercive
policy instruments by state leaders to achieve foreign policy objectives. forms.
Statecraft
The use of policy
instruments, including
military, diplomatic and
economic, to achieve
foreign policy objectives.

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