IR: The New World of International Relations

Book Description
This introduction to international relations employs an exceptionally readable style that avoids jargon and abstract theory by blending basic concepts and vocabulary with a substantial amount of historical background and examples from current events. This readable style combined with new pedagogy allows readers to better understand how International Relations can and does affect them and their own lives. Topics of analysis include the Cold War power and systems in transformation, America's changing national interests, from Russia to the Soviet Union and back to Russia, the global south, national security, nuclear politics, the economic blocs and the politics of a new world. For individuals interested in understanding international relations in an historical and contemporary context.


The publisher, Prentice-Hall Humanities/Social Science
Using an exceptionally readable style that avoids jargon and abstract theory, this introduction to international relations captures the excitement of political conflict and conflict management. It carefully blends the basic concepts and vocabulary of international relations with a substantial amount of historical background and examples from current and ongoing events.


From the Back Cover
This introduction to international relations employs an exceptionally readable style that avoids jargon and abstract theory by blending basic concepts and vocabulary with a substantial amount of historical background and examples from current events. This readable style combined with new pedagogy allows readers to better understand how International Relations can and does affect them and their own lives. Topics of analysis include the Cold War power and systems in transformation, America's changing national interests, from Russia to the Soviet Union and back to Russia, the global south, national security, nuclear politics, the economic blocs and the politics of a new world. For individuals interested in understanding international relations in an historical and contemporary context.


Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Most young people now enter college with little or no background in twentieth-century history. Ask students questions about major events of the twentieth century and you are likely to see some blank faces. It is all news to them. But they cannot be blamed; they don't know it because they have never been taught. Accordingly, we take it as our task to do considerable backfilling in recent history, which we arrange largely by geographic area and use to illustrate one or more concepts of international relations. Many instructors have thanked us for this approach. Some new texts in international relations pay relatively little attention to history, leaping instead into the future. These are the "world-order" texts that, we think, implicitly argue the following: "The twentieth century was a horrible century that showed the worst that humans can do to each other. But it was only an episode in the maturation of humankind and has little to teach us. The twenty-first century, a time of global cooperation, ecology, and equality, is upon us. We must concentrate on it and not on the unhappy past." We find "world-order" approaches unjustified, or at least grossly premature. The world became more complex after the Cold War, which kept numerous problems suppressed or frozen. And the mechanisms to deal with these problems still depend on sovereign nations deciding if and when they want to participate. When people are determined to fight for what they believe is justly theirs, UN "peacekeeping" forces are useless. War—"contending by force," in Grotius's classic words—remains a part of international relations and cannot be wished away. Although we argue in the concluding chapter that war is losing its effectiveness in settling disputes, conflict is still the "stuff" of international politics. If world order does break out, rest assured we will be among the first to write a textbook on it. We begin in Chapter 1 with system change and an overview of the international systems that have marked modern history. The post-Cold War system still defies easy characterization. Multipolar is perhaps too general a term; we consider stratified, globalized, clash of civilizations, and other models, most of them with major economic components. The chapter also introduces the concepts of power, state, and sovereignty, which we believe are still fundamental to international relations. System change has touched almost everything in international affairs, not just the obvious—the end of Cold War bipolarity between the superpowers. In the Persian Gulf, a tyrannical ruler strives to expand his realm and acquire weapons of mass destruction because his previous superpower patron no longer has the means to restrain him. Elsewhere in the Middle East, guerrillas start talking with a regime they hate just as the Soviet Union goes into retreat and collapse, and the guerrillas realize they have lost their chief backer. Economic relations among the major industrial blocs—Europe, the Pacific Rim, America—grow testier; fear of the Soviets no longer holds them together under a U.S. strategic umbrella. Proliferation of nuclear weapons, a minor issue a decade ago, has become major. The United Nations, previously little more than a talk shop, has developed as a crisis stabilizer. We discuss these and other spinoffs of system change in this book. We believe that, because system change is occurring before our very eyes, International Relations (IR) is more exciting and relevant than ever. In this new world there are new threats to guard against and new opportunities to take advantage of. As in earlier editions, we are trying to awaken young newcomers to the field to its fascinating and sometimes dramatic qualities, as well as acquaint them with its basic concepts and vocabulary. Toward this end we include feature boxes titled "Concepts" and "Classic Thought," as well as "Economic Background" and "Historical Background" boxes. We also include "Reflections" boxes, which recall the authors' personal experiences or ponder issues that affect students personally, to show that IR is not a distant abstraction. SUPPLEMENTS COMPANION WEBSITE www.prenhall.com/roskin. This website brings an online study guide to students and a valuable tool to professors. When students log on, they will find a wealth of study and research resources. Chapter outlines and summaries with special features from the book, true/false tests, fill-in-the-blank tests, and multiplechoice questions, all with immediate feedback and chapter page numbers, give students ample opportunity to review the information. The site also includes a large variety of links to sites pertaining to material covered in each chapter of the text. For professors, there is a faculty resource section that includes links to helpful sites, graphics to download from the book, and textual PowerPoint slides to use in presentations. INSTRUCTORS MANUAL AND TEST ITEM FILES An instructor's manual with test item files on diskette are available to instructors from their Prentice Hall representative. PRENTICE HALL CUSTOM TEST Prentice Hall's testing software program permits instructors to edit any or all items in the Test Item File and add their own questions. Other special features of this program, which is available for Windows and Macintosh, include random generation of an item set, creation of alternative versions of the same test, scrambling question sequence, and test preview before printing. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We owe a great deal of thanks to specialists who read and commented on our chapters and saved us from foolish misstatements. Ambassador Theresa A. Healy and Charles Ahlgren of the State Department made valuable suggestions on the Diplomacy chapter. Dr. Ed Dew of Fairfield University perceptively reviewed our Africa and Latin America chapters. Thanks also go to Janet Berry, who compiled the index. Responsibility, of course, lies with the authors, who are happy to receive your comments directly for incorporation into possible future editions. Michael G. Roskin roskin@lycoming.edu Nicholas O. Berry nberry@cdi.org


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This introduction to international relations employs an exceptionally readable style that avoids jargon and abstract theory by blending basic concepts and vocabulary with a substantial amount of historical background and examples from current events. This readable style combined with new pedagogy allows readers to better understand how International Relations can and does affect them and their own lives. Topics of analysis include the Cold War power and systems in transformation, America's changing national interests, from Russia to the Soviet Union and back to Russia, the global south, national security, nuclear politics, the economic blocs and the politics of a new world. For individuals interested in understanding international relations in an historical and contemporary context.


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