INS 3003 Midterm Exam

Classical realism

Power and security. hard power

State

A political unit with defined territory, a permanent population, a governing authority, and sovereignty recognized by others.

Nation

A group of people with shared culture/identity who believe they have a right to govern their own territory (self-determination).

Country

The territorial part of a state.

Nigeria (state vs nation)

A state but not a nation. It has 200+ ethnic groups, so it is a multinational state.

Civic nation

A nation based on shared citizenship, not ethnicity (example: the US).

Nationalism

Pursuing rights for a nation, at minimum control over its territory. It sets who belongs and what land is "ours."

Patriotism

Loyalty to or pride in your existing state. This is NOT the same as nationalism.

State-building

Creating the legal-political parts of a state: territory, government, sovereignty.

Nation-building

Creating a shared identity: culture, language, history, myth.

Montevideo Convention

Lists what a state needs: territory, population, effective government, and recognition by other states.

Sovereignty

A state has the final say inside its own borders, and other states agree not to override it.

Bodin (1576)

Defined sovereignty as "absolute and perpetual power vested in a commonwealth."

Anarchy (IR)

No authority above states. It does not mean chaos.

Thirty Years' War

1618-1648 Catholic vs. Protestant war in the Holy Roman Empire that led to the Peace of Westphalia.

Peace of Westphalia (1648)

Ended the Thirty Years' War and is linked to the start of the system of sovereign, equal states.

State sovereignty

Claim based on territory: "We control this land."

National sovereignty

Claim based on population: "These are our people."

Sovereignty claims by era

Westphalia, Vienna, and 1945 UN Charter favored the state. Versailles 1919 and the end of the Cold War favored the nation.

Recognition

Other states accepting your claim of sovereignty. It turns a claim into reality.

ISIS (the state that wasn't)

Had territory, people, and government services but was never recognized by any state, so it was not a state.

Sovereignty today

Conditional, not absolute. Non-state actors, cross-border flows, and shared sovereignty (WTO, climate deals) limit it.

Fragile States Index

Fund for Peace ranking of state fragility (0-120). A higher score means more fragile.

Most vs. least fragile (FSI 2024)

Somalia is most fragile. Norway is least fragile.

Somalia and Al-Shabaab

Drought and weak government made Somalia fragile. Al-Shabaab provides services the state can't, which hurts government legitimacy.

Threat multiplier

Something (like climate change) that makes existing problems, such as conflict, worse.

"A World Adrift" (FSI)

The US-led rules-based order is weakening. Shocks fuel populism and authoritarianism, which cause more instability.

Rules-based order

Post-WWII system built on multilateralism, norms, collective security, and trade interdependence.

Power (capability view)

Power is what you have: military, economy, population, resources.

Power (relational view, Dahl)

Power is getting someone to do what they otherwise wouldn't.

Nye's three ways to get what you want

Coercion (stick), payment (carrot), attraction.

Hard power

Coercion plus payment.

Soft power

Getting others to want what you want through attraction.

Three sources of soft power

Culture (when attractive), values (attractive and consistently practiced), policies (seen as legitimate and inclusive).

Smart power

Combining hard and soft power wisely. Coined by Nye in 2003.

Contextual intelligence

The skill of knowing which tool (hard or soft) fits the situation.

Three-dimensional chess (Nye)

Top: military (unipolar). Middle: economic (multipolar). Bottom: transnational issues, with power spread out.

Limits of soft power (Nye)

Hollywood didn't change North Korea's nukes, and the Taliban needed hard power in 2001.

Cold War smart power

Military deterred the USSR while ideas, consumer goods, and VOA radio weakened it from inside.

Peace Corps

Kennedy-era program (1961) to send Americans abroad to build understanding. Seen as soft power.

USAID

US aid agency founded in 1961. Closed July 1, 2025 and folded into the State Department.

Fulbright Program

Exchange program started in 1946. 160+ countries have taken part.

Hallyu (Korean Wave)

South Korea's government-backed cultural export strategy (K-pop, K-dramas) since 1998.

US soft power model

Ideological (liberal democracy) and driven by private culture (Hollywood, brands). Weakness: values vs. practice gap.

China soft power model

Pragmatic and economic: Confucius Institutes, state media, scholarships, visible infrastructure.

Where China's soft power works

Works in the Global South. Weak in the West because of authoritarian image and "Wolf Warrior" diplomacy.

Transactionalism

A relationship based only on benefits received. China's risk: appeal disappears if the benefits stop.

Soft-power coexistence (Repnikova)

US and China aren't in a zero-sum contest. Many countries see both as appealing.

Mazarr's main claim

Great powers win long-term through societal strengths, not just military or economic might.

Mazarr's seven traits

Ambition, shared opportunity, national identity, active state, effective institutions, learning/adaptation, diversity/pluralism.

Balance (Mazarr)

The traits must stay balanced. Too much of any one can become a weakness (example: too much ambition leads to overreach).

Foucauldian power

Power is produced and works through everyday life. It is "capillary," not just held by states.

Panopticon

Foucault's idea: being watched makes people police themselves.

Juridical model of power

The "king's story": power as sovereign authority. Foucault says it's incomplete.

Foucault's state-level examples

IAEA inspections, treaty monitoring, credit ratings, election observers.

Hard, soft, smart in one line

Hard gets compliance, soft gets agreement, smart knows which to use.

Explanatory theory

Explains what causes what in the world as it is.

Constitutive theory

Argues theory helps create reality. Our categories shape the world.

Global IR critique (Acharya and Buzan)

IR was built by Europeans to explain European events but treated as universal.

Chinese tributary system

A hierarchical (not anarchic) order with one center and subordinate states paying tribute.

Aberystwyth chair (1919)

First IR academic chair (Woodrow Wilson Chair). Zimmern was first holder, E.H. Carr the fourth.

Congress of Vienna (1815)

Post-Napoleon settlement creating a multipolar balance among five great powers. Metternich was the architect.

Symmetrical vs. asymmetrical balance

Symmetrical: roughly equal rivals, so war is risky. Asymmetrical: one side stronger, so weaker states ally.

Imperialism vs. colonialism

Imperialism: annexing distant territory by force. Colonialism: settling your own people there.

Berlin Conference (1884-85)

European powers divided Africa without African representatives.

Treaty of Versailles (1919)

Ended WWI. Germany was excluded, blamed (Article 231), owed 132 billion gold marks, and had its military capped.

League of Nations

Post-WWI organization with no enforcement power. Failed to stop aggression.

UN Charter (1945)

Signed June 26, 1945 by 50 nations. Great powers got a Security Council veto.

NATO vs. Warsaw Pact

NATO (1949): Western alliance led by the US. Warsaw Pact (1955): Soviet-led response.

MAD

Mutually Assured Destruction. Both sides had nukes, so using them meant mutual destruction.

Belavezha Accords (1991)

Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus dissolved the USSR.

Hegemonic stability theory

One dominant power can make the system more stable by enforcing the rules.

Classical realism

Theory that states seek power and security because human nature is fixed and anarchy has no higher authority.

Four realist assumptions

State is the main actor, unitary, rational, and focused on security.

Thucydides

Athenian general-historian who wrote about the Peloponnesian War. Believed human nature stays the same.

Melian Dialogue

416 BC: Athens demands neutral Melos submit. Athens argues justice only exists between equals. Melos refuses and is destroyed.

"The strong do what they can..."

"...and the weak suffer what they must." Classic realist idea from the Melian Dialogue.

Realist vs. critical reading of Melos

Realist: Athens speaks for Thucydides. Critical: Thucydides shows Athenian arrogance leading to the Sicilian disaster.

Hobbes (Leviathan)

Without government, life is "nasty, brutish, and short." No world Leviathan exists, so states stay in anarchy.

Hobbes's three causes of conflict

Gain (competition), diffidence (fear/distrust), glory (reputation).

Morgenthau

Classical realist. Politics is shaped by unchanging human nature, and interest is defined as power.

Morgenthau's key principle

Interest defined as power. Power is the measuring stick for foreign policy.

Relative gains

How much you gain compared to others. Realists care about this most.

Absolute gains

How much you gain, period. Liberals focus on this.

Security dilemma

One state's effort to be safe makes others feel less safe, so everyone arms up even if nobody wants war.

John Herz

Coined the term "security dilemma" in 1950.

Jervis (security dilemma)

The dilemma is worse when offense has the advantage and defensive and offensive weapons look alike.

Glaser: greedy vs. insecure state

Greedy state wants more than security (deterrence works). Insecure state only wants safety but looks aggressive (deterrence alone can backfire).

Waltz (neorealism)

Explains state behavior by the structure of the international system, not by leaders or human nature.

Reductionist theory (Waltz)

Explaining outcomes by looking inside states (leaders, human nature) instead of the system.

Waltz's three parts of structure

Ordering principle (anarchy), character of units (all alike), distribution of capabilities (the part that changes).

Self-help

With no authority to protect them, states rely on themselves for survival.

Internal vs. external balancing

Internal: build your own military. External: form alliances.

Bandwagoning

Joining the stronger or threatening state instead of opposing it.

Defensive vs. offensive realism

Defensive: seek enough power for security; restraint is wise. Offensive: seek more relative power; restraint is naive.

Polarity

How power is distributed. Unipolar (1 power), bipolar (2), multipolar (3+).

Waltz on polarity

Bipolarity is the most stable system.

Gilpin's hegemonic decline

Hegemons decline because empire costs outgrow benefits and the order creates challengers.

Brooks and Wohlforth main claim

Today is "partial unipolarity." The US is still far ahead, so "multipolarity" is a myth.

Partial unipolarity

US is still the top power, but less dominant than right after the Cold War.