Portal:International relations

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International relations are relationships between countries, including the roles of States, inter-governmental organizations (IGOs), international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multinational corporations (MNCs). International relations are both an academic and public policy field, and can be either positive or normative, as international relations seek to analyze as well as to formulate the foreign policy of particular States. The study of international relations is often considered a branch of political science (especially after 1988 UNESCO nomenclature), but an important sector of academia prefer to treat it as an interdisciplinary field of study. Aspects of international relations have been studied for thousands of years, since the time of Thucydides, but international relations became a separate and definable discipline in the early 20th century.

Apart from political science, international relations draw upon such diverse fields as economics, history, international law, philosophy, geography, social work, sociology, anthropology, criminology, psychology, gender studies, and cultural studies / culturology. International relations involve a diverse range of issues, including, but not limited to: globalization, state sovereignty, international security, ecological sustainability, nuclear proliferation, nationalism, economic development, global finance, terrorism, organized crime, human security, foreign interventionism, human rights.

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League of Nations Anachronous Map.PNG

The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. Its primary goals, as stated in its Covenant, included preventing wars through collective security and disarmament, and settling international disputes through negotiation and arbitration. The diplomatic philosophy behind the League represented a fundamental shift from the preceding hundred years. The League lacked an armed force of its own and so depended on the Great Powers to enforce its resolutions, which they were often very reluctant to do. The League ultimately proved incapable of preventing aggression by the fascist powers in 1930s. The onset of the Second World War made it clear that the League had failed in its primary purpose—to avoid any future world war. The United Nations effectively replaced it after World War II and inherited a number of agencies and organisations founded by the League. (more...)

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Alexander Wendt (born 1958 in Mainz, West Germany) is a political scientist who is one of the core social constructivist scholars in the field of international relations. Wendt and scholars such as Nicholas Onuf, Peter J. Katzenstein, Emanuel Adler, Michael Barnett, Kathryn Sikkink, John Ruggie, Martha Finnemore, and others have, within a relatively short period, established constructivism as one of the major schools of thought in the field. A 2006 survey of American and Canadian International Relations scholars ranks Wendt as first among scholars who have "been doing the most interesting work in international relations in recent years." Alexander Wendt was born in 1958 in Mainz in West Germany, and studied political science and philosophy at Macalester College before receiving his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Minnesota in 1989, studying under Raymond "Bud" Duvall. Wendt taught at Yale University from 1989 to 1997, at Dartmouth College from 1997 to 1999, at the University of Chicago from 1999 to 2004, and is currently the Ralph D. Mershon Professor of International Security at the Ohio State University. He is married to Jennifer Mitzen, also a member of the Ohio State political science faculty. He is currently working on two projects: arguing for the inevitability of a world state, and investigating the possible implications of quantum mechanics for social science. Wendt's most widely cited work to date is Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge University Press, 1999), which builds on and goes beyond his 1992 article "Anarchy is What States Make of It". Social Theory of International Politics places itself as a response to Kenneth Waltz's 1979 work, Theory of International Politics, the canonical text of the neorealist school.

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The Macartney Embassy
The Macartney Embassy was a British mission to China in 1793. It is named for the first envoy of Great Britain to China, George Macartney, who led the endeavour. The goal of the embassy was to convince the Qianlong Emperor of China to ease restrictions on trade between Great Britain and China by allowing Great Britain to have a permanent embassy in Beijing, and reduced tariffs on traders in Guangzhou.

Photo credit:"A study of History", Arnold Toynbee

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