It is often said that IR has become a complex and diverse field of study. With this expansion has come unclear limits as to what does, or does not, fall within the parameters of the field.
As a new year dawns, Canada should accept that the strategies and doctrines of the last 20 years do not apply to the current global context. Relying on outdated concerns makes little sense in 2013 and beyond.
Between 2006 and 2011, Stephen Harper’s “Restrained Pragmatism” was a shift towards a realist foreign policy strategy, but now he appears lost and this poses risks for Canada in the international state system.
Although it is assumed that individual leaders create and implement their own foreign policies, foreign policy is not nearly as leader-centric as observers tend to believe.
Unless there is some sort of extraordinary aggression taken by the Assad regime towards Turkey, NATO’s role should remain focused on harshly worded joint statements and nothing more. Article V invocation would be an overreaction.
China’s dedication to securing its own naval power has now entered a totally new realm, and those of us who measure capabilities must now reevaluate China’s place in the international system.
On the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, we must remember those innocent victims who lost their lives on that day and reflect on the much larger numbers of civilians and soldiers that have perished in the reactions to it.
To some, the Arctic represents the unknown, new opportunities, and the future; to others, the Arctic represents little more than a barren and frozen region that matters little in the grand scheme of world affairs.
The biggest shortcoming of IR students is their lack of historical background. If this problem was corrected, it would greatly help their efforts at understanding the world around them.
The collapse of the USSR ushered in the unipolar moment of IR and meant that traditional approaches to understanding the world immediately became antiquated, or did it?
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