...to make decisions. Realists think of anarchy when they hear the words international system. They think of the international system as the primary actor when they discuss amongst themselves the levels of analysis. Idealists have developed a theory of their own which they think explains what the international system is and how it functions. According to realists, an international system can be anarchy, society and the dependency that countries have on one another. The function of the international system is based on what states do and all of the organizations that exist within this system. Realists and Idealists believe that changes can be made to the international system; when changes have been made to a state’s government system. The statecraft world is best...
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...The Sanctions Debate and the Logic of Choice David A. Baldwin debate over whether economic sanctions "work" is mired in a scholarly limbo. One writer contends that recent international relations scholarship has promoted optimism about the utility of such measures and sets out to challenge this trend} while another notes the pessimism that "pervades the sanctions literature" and proceeds to argue that it is unjustified. 2 A third scholar cites the sanctions literature as an example of fruitless academic debate with little policy relevance.3 Such divergent readings of the scholarly literature are often explained by differences in ideology or fundamentally different theoretical orientations. This does not seem to be the case with respect to the sanctions debate. Under appropriate circumstances, it is quite possible for liberals, neoliberals, realists, neorealists, or globalists to argue in favor of using economic sanctions. If the sanctions debate is bogged down, the explanation does not seem to lie in the essentially contested nature of the subject matter. A second potential explanation is that scholars are talking past one another because they ask different questions, use different concepts, and set the discussion in different analytical contexts. In short, they are talking about different things. This article explores the second explanation. The basic paradox at the heart of the sanctions debate is that policymakers continue to use sanctions with increasing...
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...The Nation, the State, the art of Statecraft and Development The Global Policy Forum (2005) describes the nation as a large group of people with strong bonds of identity. There are a number of things that groups can share that help develop a national identity. For example, a language, a race, a religion etc. As the great liberal thinker John Stuart Mill further describes in Considerations on Representative Government, that national identity is a “…feeling of nationality may have been generated by various causes. Sometimes it is the effect of identity of race and descent. Community of language, and community of religion, greatly contribute to it. Geographical limits are one of its causes. But the strongest of all is identity of political antecedents; the possession of a national history, and consequent community of recollections; collective pride and humiliation, pleasure and regret, connected with the same incidents in the past. (Mill, 1861, p. 546)”...
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...is necessary to maintain public favor to retain power.Which favor or support is advised to be maintained using limited generosity , appearing religious ,not persecuting citizens and decisiveness.In the Discourses, Machiavelli extolls the virtues of a republic.The theme of Discourses is that popular rule is always better than that of princes.Emphasizing a strong role for the populace, Machiavelli suggests that political debate and conflict with the appropriate balance of power can actually serve to strengthen a state. As with the Prince he maintains a pragmatic approach to ethics and politics. The word Machiavellian is seen at present date to mean anyone who employs cunning and duplicity in statecraft or in general conduct. Which is again a connotation of politics in two realms: statecraft equivalent to Republicanism and general conduct of self to a single ruler such as a Prince.Machiavelli thus gave definition to the word ‘realpolitiks’ which dictionarily means politics or diplomacy based primarily on power and practical and material factors and considerations , rather than explicit ideological notions or moral or ethical premises. Thesis: Machiavelli’s writing displays the extraordinarily high value he attaches to political stability and in both the books he strives to put this forward as the main goal.My belief is that the two texts of Machiavelli complement each other as two halfs of a whole to give one complete political advice.I find it be a relationship of opposites with...
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...Britain, and Russia took part in each settlement. Meanwhile, Germany and Austria, major players at Vienna, were excluded from the Versailles talks, as punishment for being the defeated and supposedly responsible party. Similarly, the United States was a major force in shaping the Versailles settlement, while a century before, it had stayed out of the Napoleonic conflict, and besides did not have enough power at that time to merit a major role at the table even if it had become involved. Nonetheless, the inherent similarity remains; both the Vienna and Versailles treaties were attempts by the major western powers to realign and redraw large portions of the world map in order to create a lasting peace. Both treaties were concerned with statecraft, either consolidating old entities into new ones, or breaking apart empires ostensibly in the name of nationalism, on a scale which no other treaty has attempted before or since. All this was done, in both cases, to hopefully create a lasting peace, a stable order. The Vienna Settlement created nearly a century without major conflict in Europe, a feat completely unprecedented in that continent’s history. By contrast, Versailles’ settlement didn’t even last a full twenty years before the world was embroiled in a war even more disastrous than the one the diplomats who came to...
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...the 5th century, but World War 1 brought about the first portable flamethrower. The weapon brought extreme fear to opposition at the beginning of the war as it was something that had never been seen before. The first to use this terrifying method were the Germans, but by the end of the war flamethrowers had even been added to tanks. (Lenhardt). Another form of warfare that was reinvented, or revived during this war was Chemical warfare. This refers to the use of biological, organic and inorganic, agents to cause maiming and/or death. Some of the earliest mentions of chemical warfare is in the Indian epics Ramayana and Mahabharata. The "Laws of Manu," a Hindu treatise on statecraft (c. 400 BC) forbids the use of poison and fire arrows, but advises poisoning food and water. Kautilya's "Arthashastra", a statecraft manual of the same era, contains hundreds of recipes for creating poison weapons, toxic smokes, and other chemical weapons. Ancient Greek historians recount that Alexander the Great encountered poison arrows and fire incendiaries in India at the Indus basin in the 4th century BC. Some of the most common agents used were chlorine gas, mustard gas and phosgene. And despite international laws prohibiting the use of these chemicals, them being The Hague Declaration of 1899 and The Hague Convention of 1907, they were still widely used on both sides. Chlorine Gas, invented around 1630, was first used by the Germans in 1915. This gas caused burning in the throat and fluid buildup...
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...traditional ethnic practices and values. A huge part of current modernization is globalization, which pose an even greater challenge (Handelman, 2011). Globalized culture can create a backlash and increase tensions between neighboring communities as not everyone can ethically identify with each other. It may be argued that the spread of western world brands will eventually reduce or eliminate the differences of dress, food, and customs that currently separate different ethnic groups. (Handelman, 2011) What are some reasons that might explain why major civil strife related to ethnicity has declined in the last 10-15 years? Some reasons that might explain why major civil strife related to ethnicity has declined in the last 10-15 years are statecraft, constitutional arrangements and external intervention (Handelman,...
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...Different between knowledge and opinion according to plato –…According to Plato "Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance." ……It is amazing to me that some people can sense the scale of knowledge so easiliy and to them it is second nature. Yet there are others who may actually be a majority who insist on defending opinions with their last breath while remaining closed to this scale of knowledge………"Opinion is between the knowing of the true idea and the ignorance of the unreal"(Plato -Republic). ………Plato's perspective is beyond the senses, thus the question of 'can sense' is not applicable. Re Plato's Forms, the best one can do is to speculate them as pseudo-rational concepts via pure reason (not via the empirical senses)………In order to make sense and turn what is speculated to knowledge, i.e. as matter of facts, empirical sensual proofs are needed. One good example of this knowledge is a proven scientific hypothesis……….The idea of a soul that survives physical death is one that is speculated and has no empirical basis. According to Kant, they are transcendental illusions based on fallacious thinking, but nevertheless useful in some sense (psychological)…….2. Rousseau examine link between ‘force’ and ‘right’ –…….According to Rousseau, force cannot be the foundation for legitimate political authority. People obey those stronger than themselves out of necessity, not by choice. Thus, the right of the strongest cannot create the sense of a duty that is necessary to establishing...
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...In chapters twelve, eighteen, and nineteen, Machiavelli uses the metaphor of the fox and the lion to explain the cunning and strength a prince must possess in order to maintain control of his state. He stresses that it is imperative that the prince learn to mimic both the fox and the lion so that he may draw on the necessary attributes of these "beasts" when circumstances demand it. Again, this notion of comparing man to beast is radical shift during its time as man is being portrayed as a thing of beauty. As a fox, the prince must use its cunning nature to influence statecraft and diplomacy to sidestep traps and other pitfalls posed against the state. As a lion, the prince must employ brute physical force in order to maintain his power over...
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...Giovanni Botero •Giovanni Botero was born around 1544, nobody know exactly the time he was born. And he died in 1617. He was an Italian thinker, priest, poet and diplomat. •Botero was sent to the Jesuit college in Palermo at age of 15 and had chances to teach philosophy and rhetoric in many place in Europe such as France, Italia, Spanish during 1559-1580) à The Jesuit educational program had on Botero in both the political and economic spheres. •Botero rounded out the eighties in Rome in the employ of Federico Borromeo as a personal assistant and secretary à This was Botero's most productive stage, seeing the completion of his three most important works: •The Greatness of Cities (1588), The Reason of State (1589), and Universal Relations (1591) WORK AND THOUGH The most important work of Botero is The reason of state. By this work, he showed the main ideas about the mercatilism in 17th century. •Jean Bodin's “Six Books of the Republic” was an important influence on Botero's writing of the Reason of State •But, Botero's overall conception of political economy is more 'liberal' than that of Bodin. • The primary end of mercantilist policies was to produce for one's state a favourable balance of trade in relation to other states, thereby giving them power over those states. - In argument about the participation by kings in the economy of the country, Bodin cautioned kings only against trading with their own subjects; all other economic activity was allowed. - Botero, on...
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...Machiavellianism is "the employment of cunning and duplicity in statecraft or in general conduct".[1] The word comes from the Italian Renaissance diplomat and writer Niccolò Machiavelli, who wrote Il Principe (The Prince), among other works. In modern psychology, Machiavellianism is one of the dark triad personalities, characterized by a duplicitous interpersonal style, a cynical disregard for morality and a focus on self-interest and personal gain. Political thought In the 16th century, immediately following the publication of The Prince, Machiavellianism was seen as a foreign plague infecting northern European politics, originating in Italy, and having first infected France. It was in this context that the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572 in Paris came to be seen as a product of Machiavellianism, a view greatly influenced by the Huguenot Innocent Gentillet, who published his Discours contre Machievel in 1576, which was printed in ten editions in three languages over the next four years.[3] Gentillet held, quite wrongly according to Sydney Anglo, that Machiavelli's "books [were] held most dear and precious by our Italian and Italionized [sic] courtiers" in France (in the words of his first English translation), and so (in Anglo's paraphrase) "at the root of France's present degradation, which has culminated not only in the St Bartholemew massacre but the glee of its perverted admirers".[4] In fact there is little trace of Machiavelli in French writings before the...
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...Corporate Machiavellianism. It is an interesting story as to how the Machiavellian analogy to “deceiving, self-centered, ends justify the means” came in to general use. Or as the Oxford English Dictionary defines, “the employment of cunning and duplicity in statecraft or in general conduct". Niccolò Machiavelli was an Italian historian, diplomat, philosopher, politician and a humanist writer based in Florence during Renaissance. He was Secretary to the Second Chancery of the Republic of Florence from 1498 to 1512, during which the Medici were out of power. Before which he was responsible for the diplomatic and military affairs in the Florentine Republic. He penned the greatest work of his life; “The Price” after the Medici had regained power and, held no obligatory responsibilities towards the Florentine Republic. In this seminal work he elaborated an ideology, which has been often interpreted as, “Ends justify the means”. Machiavelli prosed to the prince- the ruler of the state, that the prince has to always focus on achieving the objectives towards the welfare of the state (has to be result driven, for the output any action can be justified), even to the extent of suspending the rights, liberties of its populace. In the current context, this seems to be the hidden agenda of some of major corporations. Like the example of a major American burger franchisee which did not hesitate to include a highly carcinogenic ingredient in their products. Or like a few corporations...
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...crumbling. Therefore, to answer these concerns the authors focus throughout half of the book on what distinguished the Western governments’ models from the rest of the world using the spectrum of Thomas Hobbes, John Stuart Mill, Beatrice Webb, and Milton Friedman – respectively describing the nation-state, the liberal state, and the welfare state. The first revolution saw its birth in the 17th century, when Europe monarchs started centralizing their states. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) published in 1651, Leviathan – “the modern concept of the nation-state was born.” (p.29) based on Niccolo Machiavelli’s (1469-1527) work. Consequently, dramatically changing the face of European’s political thought, and bringing to life a novel approach to statecraft. Hobbes was the first political theorist to claim that “society was the result of a social contract.” (p. 42) Europe thrived putting in place a system of “ever-improving government,” which allowed nation-states to “became trading empires” and then “entrepreneurial liberal democracies.” A very different Britain laid eyes on John Stuart Mill’s (1806-1873) liberal state argument. Mill was a meritocratic system enthusiast, an utilitarian, and was “looking forward to the great and salutary moral revolution.” (p. 53) He became a prominent advocate for small government and of free-trade. Furthermore, Mill’s One Liberty (1859) claims that the “only justification for interfering in other people’s lives…was to prevent them from doing harm.” (p...
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...The Buddhist Crisis as a Turning Point in the Vietnam War Anonymous March 24, 2013 There were several events during the Vietnam War that can be considered “turning points”, which can be described as the occurrence of an event that changed the course of history. One such event was the Buddhist crisis in 1963. The Buddhists of South Vietnam had experienced decades of religious persecution during French colonialism that continued with the Catholic government, which was backed by the United States (Toong, 2008). The demonstrations, protests and self-immolations that followed as a result of this religious persecution and the media coverage it generated encouraged the Kennedy administration to back a coup d’état against Ngo Dinh Diem, the leader of South Vietnam, which was a major turning point in the war. This paper will examine why the Buddhist crisis was a turning point in the Vietnam War, as well as why the events leading up to the Buddhist riots in 1963 were essential in preparing for the turning point and what subsequent events were dependent on the action of the turning point. Buddhists in South Vietnam began gaining the world’s attention for their plight of religious persecution through the distribution of literature, as well as through hunger strikes and peaceful demonstrations (Toong, 2008). As these demonstrations became more dramatic, including acts of self-immolation, public opinion around the world began to turn against Ngo Dinh Diem, the...
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...opinion, familial relationships are extremely important for statehood. Families are the building blocks of society. Your parents are your first and most influential teachers, so how they impact you impacts how you effect society. This being said, however, I don’t believe in emulating one’s parents. I think it is good to stay true to their values and beliefs, but sometimes change is good and one might not want to behave like their parents. When one’s parents do not behave in a virtuous manner, one may strive to change their family ideals. Overall, though, I agree with the Confucian thinkers in that familial relationships are critical for society to function. Confucius and his followers emphasize the importance of familial relationships in statecraft. They emphasize this because familial relationships act as the training grounds for relationships between rulers and their subjects. In the eyes of Confucius, Mencius, and Zhuangzi familial relationships should teach children to respect and trust their superiors. These children then grow into adults, and if taught properly, never rebel against their leader. In other words, proper families lead to strong states, which Mencius, Confucius, and Zhuangzi strive to achieve. ...
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