Politics Among Nations: The World's Theory Of The World

Thomas Hobbes, and English Philosopher, made a bold claim in his work, the Leviathan, that humans are selfish, narcissistic, and motivated by the prospect of greater power and influence. In 1948, Hans Morgenthau, often dubbed the first realist political theorist, published Politics Among Nations in which he adapted a Hobbesian view of individuals to states, arguing that states, just like humans, are selfishly motivated and will act in their own best interest. Since Morgenthau 's seminal work, realist thinkers have expanded on his theory and have attempted to explain almost every instance of international relations through a realist lens. One of the overarching similarities between realist thinkers is the belief that the anarchical world structure

Constructivists may look to the vast ideological differences between the US and the Soviet Union as a reason as to why the cold war began. However, as Gaddis points out, the tension between the USSR and the US was imminent with the power vacuum that was created after the fall of central Europe (Gaddis: The Long Peace). No other states could rival the US or USSR’s political or military power so it was only natural that in an anarchic system each would work to achieve hegemony, and this is exactly what they did. Constructivists like Ikenberry may see America’s postwar economic recuperation plan as a means to spur economic growth in a devastated Eastern Europe, but it was also a means to limit the domination of Russia and stop their spreading influence. A similar attempt at securing influence occurred when Russia was attempting to enter the US’s war against Japan. Russia knew that if the US won the war they would have a strong presence in east Asia, and Russia wanted to mitigate this by joining the fight, possibly holding a part of a new Japanese government. Observing the relationships between the US and the USSR we see how the allure of a hegemonic system led states to engage in tenuous relationships and work to achieve a greater global dominance than their

withdrawal from the region” (Rosato: Europe’s Troubles, 59). Rosato explains other instances of European economic integration with the same logic, and discusses how European leaders, such as Charles de Gaulle, vouched for, “a single system” as the only way to deter the possibility of hegemony. This idea that Europe needed to resemble a “multinational, continental” state as the only way to “save Europe’s economy and its freedom” was spreading across Europe during the post-war period (Ibid). This shows that leaders did not seek integration solely to reap the benefits of cooperation, but instead to retain freedoms and balance against an impending hegemonic threat. Adenauer of Germany sums up the European balancing strategy well when he says that Europe had been, “outstripped both economically and militarily by two great powers formed by the amalgamation of great land-masses,” and that the only way to combat this was for the European states to integrate and balance against the US and USSR (Ibid, 61). The situation in post-war Europe is ironic because