I.

The State and the Nation

 For an entity to be considered a state, four fundamental conditions must be met

(although these legal criteria are not absolute):
o A state must have a territorial base.
o A stable population must reside within its borders,.
o There should be a government to which this population owes allegiance.
o A state has to be recognized diplomatically by other states.
 A nation is a group of people who share a set of characteristics. At the core of the
concept of a nation is the notion that people having commonalities owe their
allegiance to the nation and to its legal representative, the state.
o The recognition of commonalities among people spread with new technologies
and education. With improved methods of transportation and invention of the
printing press, people could travel, witnessing firsthand similarities and
differences among peoples.
 Some nations, liked Denmark and Italy, formed their own states.
 This coincidence between state and nation, the nation-state, is the foundation for
national self-determination, the idea that peoples sharing nationhood have a right to
determine how and under what conditions they should live.
 Other nations are spread among several states; in these cases, the state and the nation
do not coincide.
o It may be a state with several nations, like South Africa and India.
o In the case of the United States and Canada, the state and nation do not
coincide, yet a common identity and nationality is forged over time, even in
the absence of religious, ethnic, or cultural similarity.
o In the United States, national values reflecting commonly held ideas are
expressed in public rituals.
 Not all ethnonationalists aspire to the same goals.
o Some want recognition of unique status
o Some seek solutions in federal arrangements
o A few prefer irredentism: joining with fellow ethnonationalists in other states
to create a new state
 Disputes over state territories and the desires of nations to form their own states have
been major sources of instability and even conflict.
o Of these territorial conflicts, none has been more intractable as the conflict
between the Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs, who each claim the same
territory.
o Five interstate wars have been fought and two uprisings by the Palestinian
people within the territory occupied by Israel have occurred since the
formation of the state of Israel in 1948.
o Should Israel and Palestinian territories be divided into two separate,
independent states?

II. Contending Conceptualizations of the State

 The Realist View of the State

o Realists hold a state-centric view: the state is an autonomous actor constrained
only by the structural anarchy of the international system.
 o As a sovereign entity, the state has a consistent set of goals—that is, a national
interest—defined in terms of power. Once the state acts, it does so as an
autonomous, unitary actor.
 The Liberal View of the State
o The state enjoys sovereignty but is not an autonomous actor. The state is a
pluralist arena whose function is to maintain the basic rules of the game.
o There is no explicit or consistent national interest; there are many. These
interests often change and compete against each other within a pluralistic
framework.
 The Radical View of the State
o The instrumental Marxist view sees the state as the executing agent of the
bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie reacts to direct societal pressures, especially to
pressures from the capitalist class.
o The structural Marxist view sees the state as operating within the structure of
the capitalist system. Within that system, the state is driven to expand, because
of the imperatives of the capitalist system.
o In neither view is there a national interest or real sovereignty, as the state is
continually reacting to external capitalist pressures.
 The Constructivist View of the State
o National interests are neither material nor given. They are ideational and
continually changing and evolving, both in response to domestic factors and in
response to international norms and ideas.
o States have multiple identities, including a shared understanding of national
identity, which also changes, altering state preferences and hence state
behavior.
 Contrasting the Various Views of the State: The Example of Oil
o A realist interpretation posits a uniform national interest that is articulated by
the state. Oil is vital for national security; thus, the state desires stability in
oil’s availability and price.
o Liberals believe that multiple national interests influence state actions:
consumer groups, manufacturers, and producers. The state itself has no
consistent viewpoint about the oil; its task is to ensure that the playing field is
level and the rules are the same for all players. There is also no single or
consistent national interest.
o In the radical perspective, oil policy reflects the interests of the owner
capitalist class aligned with the bourgeoisie and reflects the structure of the
international capitalist system. The negotiating process is exploitative for the
advancement of capitalist states.
o Constructivists may try to tease out how the identities of states are constructed
around having a valuable resource.

III. The Nature of State Power

 States are critical actors because they have power, which is the ability not only to
influence others but to control outcomes so as to produce results that would not have
occurred naturally.
 Power itself is multi-dimensional; there are different kinds of power.
 Natural Sources of Power
 o Whether power is effective at influencing outcomes depends on the power
potential of each party. A state’s power potential depends on its natural
sources of power. The three most important natural sources of power are:
1. Geographic size and position: a large geographic expanse gives a state
automatic power, although long borders must be defended and may be
a weakness.
 Alfred Mahan (1840-1914) argued that the state that controls
the ocean routes controls the world.
 Sir Halford Mackinder (1861-1947) argued that the state that
had the most power was the one that controlled the heartland.
2. Natural resources: Petroleum-exporting states like Kuwait and Qatar,
which are geographically small but have greater power than their sizes
would suggest.
 Having a sought-after resource may prove a liability making
states targets for aggressive actions.
 The absence of natural resources does not mean that a state has
no power potential; Japan is not rich in resources but is still an
economic powerhouse.
3. Population: sizable populations give power potential and great power
status to a state. However, states with small, highly educated, skilled
populations such as Switzerland can fill large political and economic
niches.
 Tangible Sources of Power
o Industrial development: with advanced industrial capacity (such as air travel),
the advantages and disadvantages of geography diminish.
o With industrialization, the importance of population is modified: large but
poorly equipped armies are no match for small armies with advanced
equipment.
o Radicals believe that differences in who has access to the source of tangible
power lead to the creation of different classes, some more powerful than
others.
 Intangible Sources of Power
o National image: people within states have images of their state’s power
potential—images that translate into an intangible power ingredient.
o Public support: a state’s power is magnified when there appears to be
unprecedented public support. For example, China’s power was magnified
under Mao Zedong because there was unprecedented public support for the
communist leadership.
o Leadership: visionaries and charismatic leaders such as Mohandas Gandhi and
Franklin Roosevelt were able to augment the power potential of their states by
taking bold initiatives. Likewise, poor leaders diminish the state’s power
capacity.
o Joseph S. Nye has labeled intangible power soft power: the ability to attract
others because of the legitimacy of the state’s values or policies.
o Liberals would more than likely place greater importance on these intangible
ingredients, since several are characteristics of domestic processes.
o Constructivists argue that power includes not only the tangible and intangible
sources but also the power of ideas and language. It is through the power of
ideas and norms that state identities and nationalism are forged and changed.
IV. The Exercise of State Power

 The Art of Diplomacy

o Traditional diplomacy entails states trying to influence the behavior of other
actors by negotiating.
o Diplomacy usually begins with bargaining through direct and indirect
communication in an attempt to reach agreement on an issue.
o For bargaining to be successful, each party needs to be credible. Well-
intentioned parties have a higher probability of successful negotiations.
Although states seldom enter diplomatic bargaining as equals, each has
information and goals of its own. The outcome is almost always mutually
beneficial, but the outcome may not please each of the parties equally.
o Bargaining and negotiations are complicated by at least two factors:
1. Most states carry out two levels of bargaining simultaneously:
bargaining between and among states and the bargaining that must
occur between the state’s negotiators and its various domestic
constituencies, both to negotiate and to ratify the agreement. Robert
Putnam refers to this as a two-level game. Trade negotiations with the
World Trade Organization are often conducted as two-level games.
2. Bargaining and negotiating are a culture-bound activity. Approaches to
bargaining vary across cultures. Two styles of negotiations have been
identified:
 Deductive style: from general principles to particular
applications. The South argued in this style during the New
International Economic Order (NIEO) negotiations,
 Pragmatic style: addressing concrete problems and resolving
specific issues before broader principles. The North argued in
this style during NIEO negotiations, leading to a stalemate
between North and South.
o The use of public diplomacy is an increasingly popular technique. It involves
targeting both foreign publics and elites, attempting to create an overall image
that enhances a country’s ability to achieve its objectives. It was used before
and during the 2003 Iraq war.
o Diplomacy may need to include more than negotiations, making other forms
of diplomacy necessary.
o Some states may choose niche diplomacy, concentrating their efforts on in a
few areas.
 Economic Statecraft
o States may use both positive and negative economic sanctions to try to
influence other states.
o Positive sanctions involve offering a carrot, enticing the target state to act in
the desired way by rewarding moves made in the desired direction.
o Negative sanctions may be more the norm: threatening to act or actually taking
actions that punish the target state for moves made in the direction not desired.
o A state’s ability to use these instruments of economic statecraft depends on its
power potential.
o While radicals deny it, liberals argue that developing states do have some
leverage in economic statecraft if they control a key resource of which there is
limited production.
 o In general, economic sanctions have not been very successful. They appear to
work in the short term, but in the long term, it is difficult to maintain
international cohesion because states imposing the sanctions find it more
advantageous to bust the sanctions to gain economically.
o Since the mid-1990s, states have imposed so-called smart sanctions, including
freezing assets of governments and/or individuals and imposing commodities
sanctions. The international community has tried to affect specific individuals
and avoid the high humanitarian costs of general sanctions.
 The Use of Force
o Force may be used either to get a target state to do something or to undo
something it has done—called compellence—or to keep an adversary from
doing something—called deterrence.
o Compellence was used in the prelude to the 1991 Gulf War as the international
community tried to get Saddam Hussein to change his actions. During each
step of the compellent strategy of escalation, one message was communicated
to Iraq: withdraw from Kuwait or more coercive actions will follow.
o Compellence was also used when the Western alliance sought to get Serbia to
stop abusing the human rights of Kosovar Albanians, and before the 2003 Iraq
war.
o With deterrence, states commit themselves to punishing a target state if the
target state takes an undesired action. Threats of actual war are used to
dissuade a state from pursuing certain courses of action.
o Deterrence has taken on a special meaning since the advent of nuclear
weapons in 1945. States that recognize the destructive capability of nuclear
weapons and know that others have a second-strike capability—the ability to
retaliate even after an attack has been launched by an opponent—will refrain
from taking aggressive action, using its first-strike capability. Deterrence is
then successful.
o For either compellence or deterrence to be effective, states must clearly and
openly communicate their objectives and capabilities, be willing to make good
on the threats, and have the credibility to follow through with their
commitments.
o Compellence and deterrence can fail. Even if states go to war, they have
choices. They choose the type of weaponry, the kind of targets, the geographic
locus, and to respond in kind, to escalate, or de-escalate.
 Democracy and Foreign Policy
o Is the foreign policy behavior of democratic states any different from the
behavior of nondemocratic or authoritarian states?
o In Perpetual Peace (1795), Immanuel Kant argued that the spread of
democracy would change international politics by eliminating war. The public
would be very cautious in supporting war since they are apt to suffer the most
devastating effects.
o Other explanations have been added to the democratic peace hypothesis.
Perhaps some are more satisfied with the status quo or more likely to be allies
of each other since they share similar values.
o Despite a plethora of studies by political scientists, the evidence is not that
clear-cut and explanations are partial. Even within a single research program,
there may be serious differences in conclusions based on the assumptions
made and methods used.
 o Yet the basic finding is that democracies do not engage in militarized disputes
against each other. Democracies are not more pacific than nondemocracies;
democracies just do not fight each other.

V. Models of Foreign Policy Decision Making

 The Rational Model

o Foreign policy is conceived of as actions chosen by the national government
that maximize its strategic goals and objectives.
o In times of crisis, when decision makers are confronted by a threatening event
and have only a short time to make a decision about how to respond, then
using the rational model as a way to assess the other side’s behavior is an
appropriate choice.
o Most U.S. assessments of decisions taken by the Soviet Union during the Cold
War were based on a rational model.
 The Bureaucratic/Organizational Model
o Organizational politics emphasizes the standard operating procedures and
processes of an organization. Decisions depend heavily on precedents; major
changes in policy are unlikely.
o Bureaucratic politics occurs among members of the bureaucracy representing
different interests. Decisions flow from the tug-of-war among these
departments and individuals.
o Noncrisis situations, such as trade policy, provide a ripe area to see this model
of decision making at work. When time is no real constraint, informal groups
and departments have time to mobilize.
o The decisions arrived at are not always the most rational ones; rather they are
the decisions that satisfice—satisfy the most different constituents without
ostracizing any.
o Liberals especially turn to this model of decision-making behavior in their
analyses. The model is relevant in large, democratic countries, where
responsibility it divided among a number of different units.
 The Pluralist Model
o The pluralist model attributes decisions to bargaining conducted among
domestic sources—the public, interest groups, and multinational corporations
(MNCs).
o In noncrisis situations, especially economic ones, societal groups may play
very important roles. Societal groups have a variety of ways of forcing
decisions in their favor or constraining decisions. The movement to ban land
mines in the 1990s is an example of a pluralist foreign policy decision.

VI. Challenges to the State

 Globalization
o Externally, the state is buffeted by globalization, growing integration of the
world in terms of politics, economics, communications, and culture. It is a
process that undermines traditional state sovereignty.
o Politically, the state is confronted by globalizing issues—environmental
degradation and disease—which governments cannot manage alone and that
which requires cooperative action.
 o Economically, states and financial markets are tied inextricably together. The
internationalization of production and consumption make it ever more difficult
for states to regulate their own economic policies.
o Culturally, new and intrusive technologies—e-mail, fax machines, worldwide
TV networks—increasingly undermine the state’s control over information
and hence its control over its citizenry.
 Transnational Crime
o Transnational crime has led to the accelerating movement of illegal drugs,
counterfeit goods, smuggled weapons, laundered money, and trafficking in
poor and exploited people.
o It has created new businesses while distorting national and regional
economies. States and government are incapable of responding because of
rigid bureaucracies and corrupt officials undermine the states’ efforts.
 Transnational Movements
o Transnational movements, particularly religious and ideological movements,
are now political forces that have challenged the state.
o In Christendom, these movements reject secularism and attempt to turn
political, social, and individual loyalties away from the state and toward
religious ideas.
o Believers in Islamic fundamentalism are united by wanting to change states
and societies by basing them on the ideas contained in the texts of Islam. They
see a long-standing discrepancy between the political and economic
aspirations of states and the actual conditions of corrupt rule and economic
inequality.
o Not all transnational movements pose a threat to the state; many develop
around progressive goals such as the environment, human rights, and
development.
 Ethnonational Movements
o Ethnonational movements identify more with a particular culture than with a
state. Having experienced discrimination or persecution, many of these groups
are now taking collective action in support of national self-determination.
o Kashmir is one of the more complex ethnonational movement; Kashmiris are
overwhelmingly Muslim but have been ruled by Hindus. It is also tied to the
larger conflict between India and Pakistan.
o Some ethnonational challenges lead to civil conflict and war, as the Kashmir
case illustrates.
o Ethnonationalist movements can pose a challenge even to the strongest of
states. For example, China has been confronted by Uighur uprisings.