Search results

Thucydides is considered to be the founder of political realism. Even in those times he determined the basic premises of realism - security and survival. He made an impact on subsequent development of realism embodied in the works of Machiavelli, Hobbes, Morgenthau, Car, Niebuhr, Aaron, Waltz etc. They will call the system of international relations as anarchical one since there is no supreme arbitrator which will force states to adequate behaviour. His views of realism were given in the volume 'The Peloponnesian War' where he had determined the anarchy of the relationships among states. Such system did not rely on justice and morale, but force and power were the predominant facts. He also introduces the category of just wars by claiming that Sparta led a just war against the increased power of Athens, and observed morale principles. Nevertheless, Thucydides faces contradictory, since Sparta itself as the largest land force of that time had to use force in order to beat Athens. He went ahead since he considered force and power as a necessary condition to achieve other objectives, which was later on adopted by Raymond Aaron. Following the example of the war between Athens and Sparta, he successfully analysed bipolar system of balance of power in which the conflict between the leading members of the two opposite blocks was possible in the end, while beforehand there should have been conflicts among weaker members of both blocks. Thucydides explained the manifestation of force and power using example of the Melian dialogue between the envoys of Athens and Melos. It was about the pure politics of force of Athens regardless of the fact that Melos had its independence.

United States participation in international politics during the period between the two world wars, come not only from the general and often declarative interest in peace, but was also a consequence of extremely rapid expansion of their foreign trade and overseas capital investments. It was a period of intense financial diplomacy, when efforts to maintain the gold standard, to determine the amount of reparations and the manner of payment of war debts, brought confusion not only in relations between victors and vanquished, but also in relations between the United States and its former European allies. Abandonment of the gold standard and the creation of the tripartite agreement between the United States, Britain and France, in the 1936, was a milestone in the development of international monetary cooperation and the role of United States in international economic relations. .