ABSTRACT OF “WHY IS THERE NO INTERNATIONAL THEORY”, BY MARTIN WRIGHT

ð The paper denies the existence of a theory of international relations on the two possible senses:

o Methodology of study of international relations

o Conceptual system which offers a unified explanation of international phenomena

ð Says that, in a first glance, the speculation of relations between states is already the scope of the political theory.

ð Arguments against the existence of a TIR:

1. If to be considered separate from Political Theory, than TIR will have no classical foundations and will necessarily have to build its base apart the pre-existent PT thinkers, like Machiavelli and Plato.

a. What TIR was before 1914 (That of Woodrow Wilson Cathedra creation, at Aberystworth Univerity in the Wales)?

ð One possible answer points to the speculation about the society of states, or family of nations, or the international community. Which, in all cases, tend to shape under the International Law.

ð International Law as the most prominent of the 4 types of reminiscences of TIR bases/ international community before 1914.

ð Those reminiscences can be labeled in 4 groups:

o Irenists (named by Nye): Erasmus, Sully, Campanella, Cruce, Pen, Abbé de Saint Pierre and Pierre-André Gargaz. Besides permanente peace agreements from the Truce of God to Kellog-Briand Pact and the prehistory of the League of Nations.

§ Wright criticizes them for saying more curiosity literature than text riches in ideas which, in the best case, just don’t deal with problem of securing common action between sovereign states.

§ Most rewarding source of IR Theory.

o Machiavellians: The succession of writers on raison d’etát. Clearly Meneck in the internationalist thought, besides others, whether philosophers or statesmen, like, Ranke and Treischke, Botero and Boccalini, Henri de Rohan and Gabriel Naudé, Courtilz de Sandras and Rousset.

§ Wright criticizes them for being a very unpopular literature, very dense and hardly read among international relations students, interested, and even not specialized scholars.

o The parega of political philosophers, philosophers and historians: Hume, Rousseau, Bentham, Burke, J. S. Mill.

§ Wright criticizes that only Burke created a theory fully interested in the relations between states and not a theory about states with marginal observations of their relations.

§ Wright points that they didn’t differentiate systematically the foreign and the domestic for the establishment and maintenance of state power.

§ 2^nd most rewarding source of IR Theory.

o Speeches, dispatches, memoirs and essays of statesmen and diplomats: Canning and his influenced generation in British, Bismarck in Prussia, and Lord Salisbury’s in the Quarterly Reviews.

§ Wright criticizes the scarcely, non-systematic and inaccessible aspect of this memories.

2. States that TIR is marked not only by paucity, but also by intellectual and moral poverty.

ð Highlights the special poverty regarding the “imposition of Sovereign State” and the “belief in progress”.

o Imposition of sovereign states

a. All should be explainable through the state explanation and jurisdiction (except piracy).

i. That’s a judicial expression of the belief in the Sovereign State as the end of political experience and activity which has marked Western political thought since the reformation.

ii. Curiosity that even the Pope requested this status to ensure his political power.

b. Baldwin describes International Politics as the untidy fringe of domestic politics.

c. Highlights that the only pure international relations theoretical contribution is the Balance of Power which, however, he adds, has inspired no great political writer to analysis and reflection.

i. Says that Balance of power is not a precise toll because sometimes it is a mean and sometimes it is a goal.

d. Practical problems of the International Relations are usually thought in terms of national states and remedies usually point to the building of better States.

e. Few political thinkers have made it their business to study the state-system, the diplomatic community itself.

f. Wright points that TIR could defend themselves of one such critique by maximizing the field of political theory by establishing a world state. However, they just don’t do that, even because any hegemonic history has gone that far.

i. He points that such hegemonic thesis grew in the 20^th century for the theoretical vacuum, but, still, didn’t established itself for the lack of feasible conditions that it could possibly happen.

g. Says that the three determining happenings to the international system couldn’t be explained by international theories, but only by domestic perspectives:

o Reform and Counter-Reformation concerned only Church and State

i. It is only when it begins to slide into casuistry of raison d’état that Calvinist international theory acquires richness.

o French Revolution concerned only State

ii. There is no Jacobin International Literature

iii. The idea of Human Rights was internally developed and internationally distributed depending on the sovereign reception and interest of the other states

o Communism and Fascism emergency concerned only State and Society.

§ Neither Marx, Lenin or Stalin made any systematic contribution to international theory.

§ Marx settled internationalism in a very dark obscure way, not understandable at least to students.

§ Lenin and Stalin made their statements in such an intricate political game that one needs to be a sovietologist to understand what they are really saying.

§ Wright points that this confusion is fruitful to Marxism propagation.

è Wright highlights that those ideas can be perceived, mostly by their defenders, as a universal church of true believers. In that case the realm of any diplomatic system would be irrelevant.

o Belief in progress

a. Says that international politics are less susceptible to progressivist behaviours than the national politics, however, its exactly the field most crowded of progressivist ideas.

§ International politics is the realm of recurrence and repetition; it is the field in which political action is most regularly necessitous.

§ International law seems to follow an inverse movement to that of international politics.

ð TIR can’t be produced through classical state theory and law languages because they are shaped to describe a world where revolution and civil war are the worst case and not the regular case, as happens to be the case in International Relations.

ð AS A FINAL CONCLUSION HE SAYS THAT THERE IS NO INTERNATIONAL THEORY EXEPT THE KIND OF RUMINATION ABOUT HUMAN DESTINY TO WHICH WE GIVE THE UNSATISFACTORY NAME OF PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY.