Understanding International Conflicts: An introduction to theory and history
by Joseph S. Nye, Jr. Harvard University, 2007
A great overview of international relations, useful as a textbook in IR classes. Nye has a neat, facile, and tidy style of writing that is easily comprehensible to anyone.
Stanley Hoffmann's Foreword:
"His sense of reality never amounts--even in the study of those cold monsters, the states--to a cynical rejection of ethics, and in the study of power it is not surprising that he attaches grat importance to what he has called soft power: not the power to coerce, bully, browbeat, and bribe, but the power to attract, to persuade, to influence through wisdom, example, and attentiveness."
"It is also wise because of the impeccable mix of humanity, common sense, prudence, and integrity that characterizes a personality so richly successful in writing, in teaching, in reflecting on the variety of human experiences, and in acting as an imaginative, farsighted, and dynamic academic entrepreneur. I admire his balance and his gifts, and I like him as a fine and good man whose friendship I deelpy appreciate./end/"
Chapter 1: Is There an Enduring Logic of Conflict in World Politics?
/start by/ "The world is shinking."
"The Mayflower took three months to cross the Atlantic. In 1924, Charles Lindbergh's flight took 33 hours. Fifty years later, the Concorde did it in three hours. Ballistic missiles can do it in 30 minutes." p.1
"Yet some other things about international politics have remained the same over the ages.
Thucydides's account of Sparta and Athens fighting the Peloponnesian War 2,500 years ago reveals eerie resemblances to the Arab-Israeli conflict after 1947."
"Alliances, balances of power, and choices in policy between war and compromise have remained similar over the millennia."
p.2
--> Universality of the humankind!(인류의 보편성)
"On the other hand, Thucydides never had to worry about muclear weapons, HIV/AIDS, or global warming."
--> Yes, Thucydides didn't have to, but there were traditional--but new--weapons, diseases, and rough terrain(environment).
Quote
"Most wars today are civil or ethnic wars.
Between the end of the Cold War in 1989 and the end of the twentieth century, 111 armed conflicts occurred in 74 locations around the world. Seven were interstate wars and nine were intrastate wars with foreign intervention. In fact, the bloodiest wars of the nineteenth centry were not among the quarreling states of Europe but the Taiping rebellion in China and the American Civil War."
p.2
"Constructivism is an approach rather than a theory,
but it provides both a useful critique and an important supplement to the main theories of realism and liberalism."
p.8
"Actors, goals, and instruments are three concepts that are basic to theorizing about international politics."
p. 8
--> frame in IR!
"Like a pebble that begins an avalanche, this event triggered a series of reactions that led ultimately to the Peloponnesian War."
p.13
"Why do people kill over small differences? Most often they do not. Humans always differentiate themselves into groups, and sometimes the differences are accompanied by prejucice and hatred. But such differences rarely lead to large-scale violence."
-.161, Chapter 6 Intervention, Institutions, and Regional and Ethnic Conflicts
