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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Offensive Realism And Central & Eastern Europe After The Cold War, Dylan Kissane
Offensive Realism And Central & Eastern Europe After The Cold War, Dylan Kissane
Dylan Kissane
At the end of the Cold War, John Mearsheimer published the article, “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War”. The widely-cited piece included four predictions for the post-Cold War European geopolitical landscape founded on the theory of offensive realism, the realpolitik approach that Mearsheimer had established and developed over more than a decade of scholarship. However, the emergence of a post-Cold War and pan-continental peace suggests that something was wrong with Mearsheimer’s predictions and, by implication, the theory that informed them. This article argues that Mearsheimer’s mistake was to rely on a theory that assumed the …
A Chaotic Theory Of International Relations? The Possibility For Theoretical Revolution In International Politics, Dylan Kissane
A Chaotic Theory Of International Relations? The Possibility For Theoretical Revolution In International Politics, Dylan Kissane
Dylan Kissane
In describing the nature of the international system contemporary international relations theorists frequently divide themselves into two groups: neorealists and neoliberalists. The neorealists emphasise an anarchical structure, drawing implications from this anarchy to explain the order and disorder that greets the analyst of international affairs. Conversely, neoliberalists favour an explanation that focuses on the interdependence of international actors. Yet the international system of the twenty-first century is not one that can be so simply described as either ‘anarchical’ or ‘interdependent’. Instead, the features of the system can best be described in terms reminiscent of other systems from the biological and …