POL326Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Comparative Politics, Dependent And Independent Variables, Kenneth Waltz
21 Sep 2017
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Realists see ir as anarchy vs anarchy anarchic. Sept. 11th, 2017: he looked at what caused war. Three different images that explained war: 1. War was the result of individuals: came to the conclusion that war could not be explained by just individuals, 2. Spent an enormous amount of military hardware on vietnam than in ww2 combined yet ultimately lost the war. The reason they went to vietnam never worked in the end (domino theory) Post-cold war environment, the us faced no real threat thus faced no need to get involved in war/ conflict: ex: iraq invention lacks a real justification, created more chaos and threats. In the absence of threat, policy becomes capricious: it is not the nature of states that makes states rational but it is the international system that forces states to be rational. Reality was us faced no threats, and with no threats, they wanted to advance us dominance.
