University of the West Indies, Mona

Department of Government

GT12A Introduction to International Relations

Lecturer: Ms. Diana Thorburn

Lecture One

Topics: Introduction to the Course; Key IR concepts and terms

Objectives

By the end of this lecture, students should:

1.      Have a clear idea of what this course is about

2.      Be familiar with some key IR terms and concepts

 What this course is about

  • Understanding the many definitions and possible meanings of "international relations"
  • IR can be anything from an arms pact between Russia and China to a collaboration between Haitian, Dominican and English-speaking Caribbean universities
  • IR, as we will study it, is primarily more about the first type of interaction, but increasingly, as we shall see, very much about the latter
  • The Penguin Dictionary of International Relations defines IR as:
  • "all interactions between state-based actors across state boundaries"
  • However, particularly in today’s world, IR has come to encompass more than only the relations between state-based actors
  • Increasingly, IR, particularly in its subfields of international law, international political economy, security studies and international politics, involves interactions between state AND non-state based actors
  • The defining characteristic, remains, however, that such interactions take place across the borders of sovereign states

 

 

  1. Some key IR terms and concepts

Nation-State

  • Strictly speaking, a nation-state is comprised of a defined land mass with borders, a population and a government that is recognized both by its people and by the international community; the most common form of representation of a member state in the international community is membership in the United Nations
  • Primary unit of international relations and the most dominant political actor in international relations—though this is debated more and more in the post-Cold War era

Sovereignty

  • Basic principle of international relations—all states are equal on the world stage insofar as no one state has the right or the power to tell the other what to do, whether domestically or with regard to its foreign policy – e.g. Cuba and the US before and after the revolution
  • Each state that is a member of the global community has authority to manage its own internal affairs and foreign relations – e.g. East Timor—elections last week—under Indonesian occupation for 25 years after the 400 year old Portuguese colonial empire collapsed because of internal political changes in Portugal itself
  • Under international law: the status of states as equals in that they are within their territory, and subject to no higher external authority – e.g. Shiprider as a breach of our sovereignty because it gave US government agents jurisdiction in our territorial waters
    • Who decides if a state is sovereign or not? Is Afghanistan today a sovereign state? Taiwan? Issues of international law that this course will touch on but not delve deeply into.

International system or arena

  • Generally speaking, this comprises the structure and dynamics of interactions between nation-states and other international actors

Actor

  • The participants in the international system—nation-states, international organizations, including multilateral corporations and organizations like UN agencies, non-governmental organizations such as Amnesty International, nonstate nations such as the PLO, and even terrorist groups, such as that led by Osama Bin Laden.

International security

  • Preserving international security is the purpose of nation-states participating in the international system.
  • International security differs widely from one country to another, and from one era of world politics to another.
  • E.g. international security for the Caribbean today often centres around drug trafficking, economic development and environmental issues; international security for Israel means defending itself from Palestinians within its borders, and other potentially hostile, some abutting, Middle Eastern states; for the US, according to its current defense policy, it is to arm itself against attack from "rogue states" (Iraq, Libya, North Korea)

Treaty

  • A written contract or agreement between two or more parties, usually nation-states, that is considered binding in international law (Penguin definition).
  • Because there is no supra-national body to enforce treaties, many treaties have arbitration considerations factored into them—e.g. the WTO treaty, or NAFTA all have mechanisms to deal with disputes between their members.
  • e.g. One of the main arguments for the Caribbean Court of Justice is that it will serve as a binding judgement on breaches of the CARICOM treaty, particularly in trade disputes
    • Again, in-depth treatment of treaties is covered in more detailed examinations of international law

The Cold War (and the "post-Cold War era")

  • Broadly speaking, the period between the end of World War II, and the collapse of the USSR – the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics – in 1991, though others time the end to the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989
  • Characterized by the "East-West" Divide—the East being Eastern Europe over to Russia, and the West being Western Europe, the US—and the quest for "containment" of the communist threat (or spreading the Union, for example by way of COMECON, which Cuba was a member of) by gaining and maintaining allies, often by any means necessary
  • The post-Cold War era, almost in a similar fashion to the post-Thirty Years War era fundamentally changed the structure and dynamics of the international system—a great deal of this course will be about this change, an understanding of which is essential to understanding international relations and the world we live in