Australasian Political Studies Association Conference 2003
Hosted by the School of Government
University of Tasmania

International Politics Stream

Realism in International Politics: Before and After 9/11

Gonzalo Villalta Puig

Abstract:

Realism is back! It is back in the White House. It is back in Downing Street. It is back in the Lodge too. Realism has made a triumphant return to Western foreign policy ever since the terrorist attacks in the United States of 11 September 2001 set the tone of International Relations in the 21st century. Recent terrorist strikes in Bali, Moscow, and Kenya have seen Realism rise over International Relations like a phoenix from the ashes. Indeed, the most influential theory in the study of International Relations has been and, as Anglo-American forces reinstate peace, welfare, and good government in Iraq after toppling Saddam Hussein, still is Realism, a theory which posits a state-centric international system defined by structural anarchy and competition for national power and influence. Having risen to prominence in the late inter-war years of the 1930s as a devastating critique of the then prevailing Neo-Kantian paradigm, Realism became an unproblematic reality and monopolised academia and diplomacy everywhere during the height of the Cold War in the 1950s and 1960s only to fall from grace after the American debacle in the Vietnam War in the mid-1970s. This paper discusses the rise and fall of this theory, with particular reference to these historical periods, and hint at its resurgence in International Relations over the last few years under the guise of Neo-Realism despite the emergence of Neo-Liberal and non-traditional theoretical alternatives.

A member of the Australasian Political Studies Association, Gonzalo Villalta Puig BA/LLB(Hons) GradDipLegPrac(Merit) ANU LLM Canberra is a Barrister and Solicitor of the High Courts of Australia and New Zealand and a Solicitor of the Supreme Court of England and Wales. A scholar of International Relations and International Law, he is widely published and presents regularly, last appearing at APSA 50: the Jubilee Conference of the Australasian Political Studies Association held in Canberra, October 2002.