In this week I have learned a little more about realism and liberalism and on how these two define themselves. Both these theories compete with each other and I have learned that both liberalism and realism views are opposite from each other. One of the main point would be on how liberalism hates the idea of going to war while realism sees it as the only way and gains its perspective from war. people who are realist all believe that power is the way to go in achieving their goals. It is also interesting how they think that realism is what shapes the world and its politics through human nature. At the same time realism tries to maintain the balance of power in every state trying to be equal. The way they do this is by having all states at an equal level because if one state ends up growing more and expanding with power the other states may fear that state, and a war might break out. The comparison that the text relates it to is in the 1930s with the Nazi German and the allied states trying to stop them just to balance the power again. I also wanted to point out that in realism they believe that the heavy action just like going to war is essential and that strong power holders should use this kind of action if it brings them political interests.

As for liberalism it views it in a different way. This group requires actions in a peaceful way without going to war. People who believe in liberalism say that the people are the the controller of the state. This means that they want the people to have the freedom and laws to protect them in the state. In liberalism I also learned that in the states they try to increase military’s strengths to fight off other states but at the same time they try to hold that power so they don’t turn on their citizen’s, so they try to have the citizens control the military’s power. Anything that goes with expanding to a new territory by force is something this theory doesn’t like. To what I understand so far is that their is a democratic theory that goes with liberalism and what they mostly try to accomplish is a way to protect themselves from the wars of other states without taking the liberty of its citizen’s.

In international relations it is so far interesting with the amount of theories that is involved. So far I have noticed even through through the chapter it states that IR revolves around Realism and Liberalism. Even in the reading it talks how it has to reword its wording and phrases because most of its terms have different meanings for other subjects. The example for this would be the term Realism being different in IR to the term Realism of a subject on art. The Theories that are presented in IR is Liberalism, Realism, Constructivism, Critical, Marxism, and Post colonialism. Each with their own meaning and own ideas that is viewed through the world. For starters on liberalism it was followed by Immanuel Kant and he believed that states shouldn’t be going to war if they all believed in that theory. As for the reason for that it was because in Liberalism it was the idea that the citizen ruled the country and not the the ruler, and so was the league of nations was created. The peace and theory of Liberalism didn’t last long till the beginning of WW2 that this theory fell and then Realism was created. I was amazed on how the theories just compete with on another so as one fails other ideas rise to replace that idea, and because of that our world is surrounded with these theories that we try to improve in.

Also to include in this is that in the reading I learned a little about the other theories. An example would be Constructivism and on how the strong individuals control the state and that they view anarchy differently from what realism views it. Then we have Critical Theory and that it is a complete opposite from everything else in that it it hold the presumption of IR in its field. This theory will identify points that were ignored by IR. Then we have Marxism and Postcolonialism in which Marxism is ideas from Karl Marx in that we are divided by business and working classes. A for postcolonialism we are in a inequality between the nations and regions, it also has most views on the western perspective. Finally it was interesting to know that their is sovereignty and that states in IR are completely different from the states we know and learned from school. For the most part a state in IR mostly refers to a country.

International relations was a confusing topic and after i had finished watching the video i slowly understood a little about what the class was about. in the video of the introducing of International relation: an introduction and it talks about what we study in IR and how we became interested in this. During the video they spoke how poeple barely studied IR and how towards the end of WW2 many people finally decided to take up IR and find what it truly is and what they are studing about. To begin i learned so far that many people have a different view on this subject and it makes it interesting for them to hear what others have to say, and at the same time the subject of IR has multiple subjects in it. Internation Relation so far is a study of multiple subjects like war related events, laws, problems a country faces to even disasters. All these usually fall under the same term being violence and power, and these is what IR usually focuses on.

Their is also race that plays a part in International Relations, that throughout history race has shaped our view on the subject with what it impacts. I have learned based on reading “Why Race Matters in International Relations” that years ago not many people would add race in their topic lesson. At the same time they would maybe at race and racisms in IR but towards the end of their lesson or even a day and week later. The lesson in IR teaches how each country and or state reacts to war or conflict and how they approach it before or right after its done.

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