Sydney Puckett
Government 200
In class we learned that there are three main forms of governmental strategy. These include realism, constructivism, and liberalism. In this blog post I shall discuss each one in brief and explain why I feel that realism is the best strategy out of the three.
Realism is a political way of thinking where you find that anyone at any time could turn against you. So alliances to a realist are pointless. In my opinion realists have the best way if thinking. They prepare for the worst. One critique of realism would be that some people believe that they cannot adapt to change. But I believe this to be untrue because a lot of things can change in the world but I believe human behavior and decisions will stay somewhat constant.
The next form is constructivism, this is one that I personally am not very fond of. This claims that aspects of our relations with other countries are socially constructed. Nothing can be inevitable. The problem with this is that constructivism has very few studies or experiments that could be done in its favor. So it makes it very hard to prove. In my opinion something that cannot be proofed by a sort of study or test is not worth implementing or even considering. Constructivism is also the newest form which makes it somewhat "new age". This to me is a disadvantage. This being because it doesn't have to be a new concept to be more accurate or correct.
The last form is liberalism, this is also another form that I am not very fond of. This form originated during the enlightenment. This form focus' on achieving worldwide peace. In my opinion I find this utterly ridiculous because I believe that worldwide peace is a unaccomplishable goal. IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN. So to have a form that focus' primarily on that seems like a big waste of time to me. In my opinion no matter how many theories you put into place like the "Democratic Peace Theory", in the end they will NOT work. This is because in real life the human society will always be struggling for power.
Human nature is to be the most powerful. Some have different means of accomplishing this but in the end they all have the same goal. Everyone wants to be the most powerful and they will accomplish it by any means. This is why realism to me makes more sense. Why try getting around what is in my opinion human nature? You can't. So you might as we'll be prepared for it, protect your own and be prepared for the next country, friend, person to backstabbing you and get ahead. Better to be prepared then to sit there and let them take you down because you were trying to "create peace" or find how itrelates to how we were "socially constructed". To me this is a waste of time. Be REAL, believe in REALism.
You offer some great arguments criticizing constructivism and liberalism which are hard to combat. However, I would argue that constructivism's young nature does not make it invalid, and it is understandable why little has been done to prove it considering it's relatively new. All in all, valid arguments and I lean more towards realism after reading.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree realism is the best strategy when handling international conflicts. However, I don't believe alliances are useless. As we said in discussion on Friday, no democratic nations have ever went to war against each other therefore alliances with them are safe. Alliances with irrational countries are more risky and a waste of time. It's always nice to know you have people willing to go to war for you which also makes the enemy hesitate before starting a conflict. Also, i agree world peace is a laughable goal at this point. There's too many different beliefs and systems for us to all be civil with each other.
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