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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".
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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