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Thread: Morgenthau and the three levels of analysis

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    Spajjder's Avatar Senator
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    Default Morgenthau and the three levels of analysis

    I'm reading this essay,

    http://www.e-ir.info/2009/07/23/comp...d-neo-realism/

    in it it says, According to Morgenthau, the struggle for power at the international level is largely the result of animus dominandi, the ‘political mans’ urge to dominate others, a concept influenced by Nietzsche’s metaphysics on the ‘will to power’ (Peterson, 1999: 100-101). However, Morgenthau goes beyond human nature and moves up to the second level of analysis. He regards the state as a collective reflection of political man’s lust for power and the unit which carries out its impulses at the international stage. The state is thus the referent object of Morgenthau’s theory and the agent pursuing power in international affairs, highlighting Morgenthau’s dependence on the unit-level.

    I can't really find a reference where Morgenthau regards the state as a "collective reflection of political man's lust for power".

    Could someone share any light on this? Although the book "politics among nations" is clearly about state-relations, nowhere in the book do I see how human nature leads to the creation of states?
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    hellheaven1987's Avatar Comes Domesticorum
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    Default Re: Morgenthau and the three levels of analysis

    What? Is he a Chinese?
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    Ace_General's Avatar Praeses
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    Default Re: Morgenthau and the three levels of analysis

    I dont know, seems too read into psychology a bit to much. I find more convincing the viewpoint of defensive realism set forth by people like Henry Kissenger and Stepan walts were regardless of their motivations, nations seek not to dominate their powers out of paranoia or some murky psychological motivations, but instead to seek security for their nations against their likely rivals and further their interests in a logical manner.

    For example, Russia did not annex the Crimea and is contemplating moving into Eastern Ukraine not because they have a lust for power or seek to dominate their neighbors, but because they feel threatened by the expansion of NATO and the EU and with the failure of a politically acceptable situation in ukraine, instead seek to attain a measure of security through military measures and territorial annexation

    Also, I would say the development of "Anti-Access Warfare" and modernization of the Chinese military goes along similar lines of the Chinese wishing to be secure against a US intervention and to be able to control what they view as their national interest in controlling the area off their coasts

    And to go against the grain of US policymaking, I would say that the Iranian Regime is developing Nuclear weapons because their scared to death of Regime change like happened in Iraq and Libya and the abortive attempt in Syria and the generation long saber rattling Western Militaries have done towards Iran
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    Spajjder's Avatar Senator
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    Default Re: Morgenthau and the three levels of analysis

    Quote Originally Posted by Ace_General View Post
    I dont know, seems too read into psychology a bit to much. I find more convincing the viewpoint of defensive realism set forth by people like Henry Kissenger and Stepan walts were regardless of their motivations, nations seek not to dominate their powers out of paranoia or some murky psychological motivations, but instead to seek security for their nations against their likely rivals and further their interests in a logical manner.

    For example, Russia did not annex the Crimea and is contemplating moving into Eastern Ukraine not because they have a lust for power or seek to dominate their neighbors, but because they feel threatened by the expansion of NATO and the EU and with the failure of a politically acceptable situation in ukraine, instead seek to attain a measure of security through military measures and territorial annexation
    Russia annexing Crimea is exactly what I'm writing about!
    I'm looking at it from classical realism, neorealism and constructuvism
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    Default Re: Morgenthau and the three levels of analysis

    Quote Originally Posted by Spajjder View Post
    Russia annexing Crimea is exactly what I'm writing about!
    I'm looking at it from classical realism, neorealism and constructuvism

    Well from each viewpoint could I get a quick summery, and What exactly is the constructivist theory of IR

    Edit: Wait is constructivism the idea that its social constructs and culture that influence everything. Like in the Crimea case it was Russian history and culture and perception that made them want to invade Crimea?

    To that line of thought, I would say that is just an echo of history and the logic of their strategic postion and how that made them adopt views that reinforced prudent strategic choices given their situation .
    Last edited by Ace_General; April 21, 2014 at 06:16 PM.
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    Ludicus's Avatar Comes Limitis
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    Default Re: Morgenthau and the three levels of analysis

    Quote Originally Posted by Spajjder View Post
    in it it says, According to Morgenthau, the struggle for power at the international level is largely the result of animus dominandi, the ‘political mans’ urge to dominate others
    As Dean Rusk said "United States cannot be secure until the total international environment is ideologically safe". Hans Morgenthau believed that "the democratic selection and responsibility of government officials destroyed international morality as an effective system of restraint" (sic)
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    Default Re: Morgenthau and the three levels of analysis

    Quote Originally Posted by Ludicus View Post
    As Dean Rusk said "United States cannot be secure until the total international environment is ideologically safe". Hans Morgenthau believed that "the democratic selection and responsibility of government officials destroyed international morality as an effective system of restraint" (sic)
    Despite what they told my dad in the cold war, in my view as an american, our foreign policy since WWI has been driven more so by ideological considerations and our morality then by the Balence of power or any real logic of strategy(well except maybe for when Kissenger was running the show, and Calvin Coolidge)
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    Default Re: Morgenthau and the three levels of analysis

    Quote Originally Posted by Ludicus View Post
    As Dean Rusk said "United States cannot be secure until the total international environment is ideologically safe". Hans Morgenthau believed that "the democratic selection and responsibility of government officials destroyed international morality as an effective system of restraint" (sic)
    Despite what they told my dad in the cold war, in my view as an american, our foreign policy since WWI has been driven more so by ideological considerations and our morality then by the Balence of power or any real logic of strategy(well except maybe for when Kissenger was running the show, and Calvin Coolidge)

    Thats sorta why I took up more libertarian views on foreign policy growing up because I was sick of Politicians invading countries and wasting resources and alienating and threatening nations based on our high-falutin moral principals and instead had our leaders shut the hell up and get back to the process that made our country great, namely making and selling things like Iphones, Model-T's Blue Jeans Fast food etc etc..(Also, from the civil war on down, many of the people in my family caught bullets and did the actual fighting for east coast elites moral crusades)
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    Ludicus's Avatar Comes Limitis
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    Default Re: Morgenthau and the three levels of analysis

    Quote Originally Posted by Ace_General View Post
    , our foreign policy since WWI has been driven more so by ideological considerations and our morality
    Well, crusaders go to war for righteous causes, which they define for themselves and try to impose on others.

    Recommended reading: Structural Realism after the Cold War - Columbia Univ

    One is often reminded that the United States is not just the dominant power in the world but that it is a liberal dominant power. True, the motivations of the artiŽcers of expansion—President Clinton, National Security Adviser Anthony Lake, and others—were to nurture democracy in young, fragile, long-suffering countries. One may wonder, however, why this should be an American rather than a European task and why a military rather than a political-economic organization should be seen as the appropriate means for carrying it out. The task of building democracy is not a military one
    -------

    Btw, food for thought,
    Degrees of Latitude: Can US, Latin America Find Common Harvard University
    "For more than 40 years, from 1948 to the early 1990s, the United States used its power and resources to make sure that Latin Americans had governments more conservative (and thus anticommunist) than Latin American voters were willing to elect. The human cost of this effort was immense. Between 1960, after the Soviets had dismantled most of their gulags, and the Soviet collapse in 1990, the number of political prisoners, torture victims, and executions of nonviolent dissenters in Latin America vastly exceeded that of the Soviet Union and its East European satellites"
    John H. Coatsworth , professor of Latin American affairs, director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, and a member of the Executive Committee of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University.
    Last edited by Ludicus; April 23, 2014 at 01:25 PM.
    Il y a quelque chose de pire que d'avoir une âme perverse. C’est d'avoir une âme habituée
    Charles Péguy

    Every human society must justify its inequalities: reasons must be found because, without them, the whole political and social edifice is in danger of collapsing”.
    Thomas Piketty

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