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False Promise of Int. Inst., John Mearsheimer essays

False Promise of Int. Inst., John Mearsheimer essays In his article, The False Promise of International Institutions, John Mearsheimer argues that international institutions are unrelated to political stability, and do not have any major influence on issues of war and peace. In this essay, I will attempt to prove through historical evidence, that in fact international institutions have not become the international stabilizers they were designed to be, therefore they can not be expected to maintain sustainable peace and world order. Mearsheimer defines institutions as a set of rules that stipulate the ways in which states should cooperate and compete with each other (Mearsheimer, p8). In his essay, he refers to the three theories of institutionalism in order to illustrate his lack of confidence in the effectiveness of international institutions. The first, liberal institutionalism, emphasizes economic and environmental cooperation as a means to avoid war. The second, collective security, deals with preventing war by rejecting the use of force, by the immediate squashing of any threat of war, disallowing states to act out of self interest and by using the joint forces of states to combat antagonists. The third, critical theory, takes a revolutionary approach, and strives to change the structure of politics in order to make cooperation inevitable and create circumstances for lasting peace, (Mearsheimer, p14, 15). Mearsheimer disagrees with the competence of institutionalism because states, when dealing with international politics, cannot be divorced from their natural tendencies to follow the concepts of realism. According to realism states in the international system fear each other...aim to guarantee their own survival... and aim to maximize their relative power positions over other states, (Mearsheimer, p11). Mearsheimer claims that, although conditions for stability and cooperation have occurred, cooperation among state...