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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   31722 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 24, 2023

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Where are you getting your definition of "realists"? In the colloquial meaning of "realist"

I don’t mean to sound impatient, but why not spend two minutes googling realist school of IR before asking that? That is, after all, what I explicitly referred to. Not to the colloquial meaning. As for "I don't see why they would conclude that a country whose government has committed genocide would be less likely to intervene to stop another genocide," first, the difference I meant to highlight was not that Nazi Germany committed genocide but Sweden did not, but rather that they have different norms. See the topic sentence of the paragraph in question. Second, realists don’t make that prediction. Rather, they would think they are exactly equally likely, because realists don't consider norms at all when discussing state behavior.

do not see a reason why I'm not allowed to conclude that nuclear weapons in the hands of North Korea should elicit a different international response than nuclear weapons in the hands of Great Britain without the constructivist need to claim that the nature of the nuclear weapons is different between the two

Two points. First, previous IR schools like realism were unable to predict that the responses would be different. In contrast, constructism can. That’s what I meant when I said it had some useful insights. Second, constructivists do not say that the nature of the weapons is different, but rather that the meaning of the weapons is different (eg, one is a threat), and it is the meaning assigned thereto, not the inherent nature thereof, which determines how a state will respond.

I want to understand why there is any benefit for believing that social context changes the reality of objects, or that we're not allowed to consider any actor as different than any other actor without constructivism

Those are both strawmen. As I mentioned, in its non-extreme form, constructivists do not talk about the reality of objects, but the meaning attached to objects, and also to concepts. After all, important concepts in IR like "threat" and "ally" are not objects at all. As for whether we are not allowed to consider some actors as different from others without constructivism, no one said otherwise. There are other schools of IR which treat states as nonunitary actors whose behavior is a function of internal factors. Constructivism's contribution is re the role of norms, identity, and other ideas.

For anyone following along, some handy Wikipedia links:

I do not believe that Googling Constructivism, IR, or realist would have got me there within 2 minutes, but mea culpa. I should have tried harder to figure it out from context.

I don't care about the philosophy of international relations, so I can't claim an educated opinion on whether "previous IR schools like realism were unable to predict that the responses would be different." That sounds stupid to me as a layman. Other times I have heard that an entire field has failed to notice something obvious, the error has been with the person making the claim and not with the field itself. Gdanning, I appreciate your attempts to explain it to me, but I remain unconvinced that "The mainstream of constructvism has important insights in many fields". If I need to understand the history of the philosophy of international relations in order to see the important insights of Constructivism, then I'm comfortable dismissing its insights as "not actually important in the grand scheme of things", which I will file in the Constructivism folder in my mind next to "that stupid philosophy that people are referring to when they say 'reality is a social construct'".

Gdanning, I appreciate your attempts to explain it to me, but I remain unconvinced that "The mainstream of constructvism has important insights in many fields". If I need to understand the history of the philosophy of international relations in order to see the important insights of Constructivism, then I'm comfortable dismissing its insights as "not actually important in the grand scheme of things",

Thanks, but I confess I don’t understand why you think a better understanding of international relations, of all things, is "not actually important in the grand scheme of things." I have a hard time thinking of something that is clearly more important in the grand scheme of things. Equally important, perhaps, but not clearly more important.

I have lost all faith that the soft sciences, including the philosophy of international relations, actually lead to a better understanding of the world. "Not actually important in the grand scheme of things" because I do not believe that learning the philosophy of international relations would enable anyone (including people actively involved in international relations) to make better decisions or better predict the future. For what it's worth, I do have some ground-level experience with international relations: I was assigned to a US military base in a foreign country. I was fairly senior, and the OIC of my particular area. I dealt plenty with the US State Department, the host national government, and the large government-owned corporation that provided us some services. What mattered was people skills and common sense. Having read the above wikipedia pages, I can say that nobody ever talked about any aspects of those theories, or behaved in any way differently than could be predicted by people skills and common sense.

When there's a claim from academics (which you have relayed to me in this conversation; please don't misinterpret this as an attack on you!) that we would be unable to distinguish our response between British and North Korean nuclear weapons without Constructivism, I think the appropriate response is "Fuck you".

I can say that nobody ever talked about any aspects of those theories Why would you, at that level? IR seeks to explain why that foreign country was willing to host a US base in the first place, not how people on the ground should use their people skills and common sense to interact with their counterparts.

When there's a claim from academics (which you have relayed to me in this conversation; please don't misinterpret this as an attack on you!) that we would be unable to distinguish our response between British and North Korean nuclear weapons without Constructivism, I think the appropriate response is "Fuck you".

Again, you are misinterpreting the point. The point is not that "we would be unable to distinguish our response between British and North Korean nuclear weapons without Constructivism." It is that pre-Constructivist theories were not able to explain why the responses are different. More importantly, this is a very simply example; the broader point is that a theory that can explain that could have potential to explain other, less obvious phenomena.

BTW, look at foreign relations between Israel and various majority Muslim countries. For most of them, Iran poses a far greater threat than does Israel. Yet, few have alliances with Israel, despite it being in their security interests to do so. Why not? Well, Constructivists would probably argue that, for many of those countries (or really, the elites therein), part of their identity as good Muslims requires them to stand up for the Palestinians. That focus on how norms and identities shape state interests is one of the ways that Constructivism is valuable.

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