Of the
readings, Alexander Wendt’s article stood out in particular. The concepts of
“intersubjective construction” and “identity formation” as being integral to
the structure of the international system are without question significant
ideas along with the concepts of neorealism and rationalism. Using these
concepts, Wendt’s work seems to argue fairly effectively that the perception of
state actors has been significant in forming the structures within the
international system as it exists today.
It also suggested that these views held by state actors were possibly
more malleable unlike some of the premises’ of the realist view point regarding
human nature. This would bode well for the possibility of being able to change
the international system as it suggests some features of the international
community seen as structural are really left more to the agency of the state
actors, even if the state actors are unaware of the degree to which they have
agency. On the other hand, Wendt also suggests that some of these features are
less malleable and more structural as a result of being institutionalized even
though they were born of intersubjective construction.
Focusing
on states and the idea of sovereignty served Wentz well in his argument for
those seeing states as still holding a majority of influence within the
international arena. Assuming this is true, their predominant influence would
suggest that states have the greatest potential to initiate and carry out
change within the international system. Following this logic, it is conceivable
that any form of a postmodernist world would have to be created by the actions
of sovereign state actors. With that, an understanding of sovereign state
actors would bring any analysis closer to answering the question of whether or
not the international system can be changed.
Furthermore,
Wendt’s work in some ways tried to explain how the international system could
come to be formed in a way that would seem to give credibility to the realist
or Hobbian views of the world. In other words, Wendt explains how such an
international system can develop irrelevant of the degree to which rationalists
are accurate in describing human nature. The concept of the “predator state”
brought up by Wendt did well to explain how a Hobbian world might develop even
if the Hobbian view of human nature wasn’t true. This also complimented the
concept of State actors focusing on their own security in their actions as
opposed to their own desire for power; a concept brought up in the reading by Kenneth Waltz.
It
seems that there is certainly something to be said for the intersubjective
construction of the international system by state actors based on their
perception of both themselves and the other actors. However, it also seems that
Wendt’s work fell somewhat short in not considering the degree to which real
environmental factors might limit the agency of state actors. These potential
factors include resource scarcity and other forms of physical adversity that
may be faced by state actors. The need to resort to aggression may be born out
of desperation as well as greed. It would also be important to consider in such
an analysis that the development of various technologies and societies would
limit these burdens on the state actors and give them more agency to form international
systems out of intersubjective construction. This transition may also be
facilitated by communication technology and many aspects of globalization which
allow Wendt’s “Ego and Alter” to have a clearer understanding of the
international community and reduce the chances of identities being constructed
based on the false assumptions or understandings of other state actors. These
issues are addressed in Wendt’s work but they seemed to be presented more as
disclaimers.
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