El hombre, el Estado y la guerra

Capítulos de “Introducción” y “Conclusión” extraídos de WALTZ, Kenneth N. El hombre, el Estado y la guerra, Editorial Nova, Buenos Aires, 1959. La obra original, Man, the Sate and War, fue publicada por Columbia University Press en 1954En la filosofía política se pueden buscar respuestas a la cuestión: ¿dónde se encuentran las principales causas de la guerra? La amplia variedad de respuestas quedan en esta obra ordenadas y clasificadas en tres grupos: a) en la naturaleza humana, b) en el interior de los estados y c) en la estructura del sistema internacional. Desde estas diferentes aproximaciones a las causas de la guerra – llamadas aquí “las tres imágenes de las relaciones internacionales” -, se derivan diferentes formas de abordar la cuestión de cómo lograr una mayor paz en el mundo. Así, el principal objetivo que se propone este libro no es construir un modelo para la paz, sino examinar los presupuestos que subyacen a las tres imágenes sobre las cuales se basan dichos modelos. La principal conclusión es que será necesaria una combinación de las tres imágenes, más que sólo una de ellas, para comprender mejor las relaciones internacionales. La tercera imagen describe el marco de la política mundial pero sin la primera y la segunda imagen, no pueden conocerse las fuerzas que determinan la política; las dos primeras imágenes describen las fuerzas de la política mundial pero sin la tercera, es imposible evaluar su importancia o predecir su resultadoOne may seek in political philosophy answers to the question: Where are the major causes of war to be found? The wide variety of answers is here ordered under the following three headings: within man, within the states and within the structure of the international system. From following these different approaches to the causes of war - categorized here as the three images of international relations - different paths lie ahead as to how to achieve greater peace in the world. The main goal of this book is not to construct a model for peace, but rather to examine the analytical terms of the images over which these models for peace are built upon. The main conclusion is that to understand international relations, a combination of the three images, more than just one of them, is required. The third image describes the framework for world politics but without the first and second images there can be no knowledge of the forces that determine politics; the first and second images describe the forces in world politics, but with the third image amiss, it is not possible to evaluate their importance or to predict their resul

Discussions and Reviews : Theorizing about theory in international politics

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/66906/2/10.1177_002200276000400405.pd

Convergence towards a European strategic culture? A constructivist framework for explaining changing norms.

The article contributes to the debate about the emergence of a European strategic culture to underpin a European Security and Defence Policy. Noting both conceptual and empirical weaknesses in the literature, the article disaggregates the concept of strategic culture and focuses on four types of norms concerning the means and ends for the use of force. The study argues that national strategic cultures are less resistant to change than commonly thought and that they have been subject to three types of learning pressures since 1989: changing threat perceptions, institutional socialization, and mediatized crisis learning. The combined effect of these mechanisms would be a process of convergence with regard to strategic norms prevalent in current EU countries. If the outlined hypotheses can be substantiated by further research the implications for ESDP are positive, especially if the EU acts cautiously in those cases which involve norms that are not yet sufficiently shared across countries

Content analysis of elite articulations

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/67140/2/10.1177_002200276400800406.pd