Kenneth Waltz (1924-2013) passed away last night. For those unfamiliar with this name, you are not a student or scholar of International Relations, nor have you spent time around serious scholars of International Relations, nor have you ever taken an introductory course in International Relations (or at least a course that was properly taught). I can say these things without hesitancy or feeling smug about knowing something arcane, mysterious, or utterly useless, because Ken Waltz was a giant in the discipline of International Relations.
I have sat in the room as Ken Waltz lectured on three occasions, I cannot say that I knew him well, but I know his major works well--I have read Man, The State, and War as well as Theory of International Politics and re-read them on occasion. In these pages, clear, lucid detail explains how people, governments, and systems of governments can be understood to function. Waltz is the godfather of neo-structural realism or Neorealism as we understand this theory to work in contemporary study of International Relations. In each undergraduate introductory course in International Relations I have taught, I have required my students to read Waltz's Man, The State, and War.
So in tribute to Waltz, a few lines from Man, the State, and War (1959):
"Others argue that wars occur because men expect war; to abolish war, the expectations of men must be changed" (1959, 57)
"To understand war and peace political analysis must be used to supplement and order the findings of psychology and sociology. What kind of political analysis is needed? For possible explanations of the occurrence or nonoccurrence of war, one can look to international politics (since war occurs among states), or one can look to the states themselves (since it is in the name of the state that the fighting is actually done)."
(1959, 81)
My humble two-cents is that we who still linger and carry on the scholarship of International Relations have lost a theoretic giant.
I have sat in the room as Ken Waltz lectured on three occasions, I cannot say that I knew him well, but I know his major works well--I have read Man, The State, and War as well as Theory of International Politics and re-read them on occasion. In these pages, clear, lucid detail explains how people, governments, and systems of governments can be understood to function. Waltz is the godfather of neo-structural realism or Neorealism as we understand this theory to work in contemporary study of International Relations. In each undergraduate introductory course in International Relations I have taught, I have required my students to read Waltz's Man, The State, and War.
So in tribute to Waltz, a few lines from Man, the State, and War (1959):
"Others argue that wars occur because men expect war; to abolish war, the expectations of men must be changed" (1959, 57)
"To understand war and peace political analysis must be used to supplement and order the findings of psychology and sociology. What kind of political analysis is needed? For possible explanations of the occurrence or nonoccurrence of war, one can look to international politics (since war occurs among states), or one can look to the states themselves (since it is in the name of the state that the fighting is actually done)."
(1959, 81)
My humble two-cents is that we who still linger and carry on the scholarship of International Relations have lost a theoretic giant.
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