Despite the fact that conventional International Relations theory has generally dismissed or trivialised the role of gender identity in international politics, gender is present in the structuring of the small, day to-day administration of institutions that are instrumental in the international, and also of the interstate system structure as a whole. A critical feminist perspective in IR can provide an analysis of what gender is and how it is ideological, how our understanding of gender guides military policy (and how military policy in turn reproduces gender), and how the international system structure, the nation, and war are all gendered.

This essay will argue that there are large differences between the social relations of wars fought before and after the end of the cold war era, which are termed “old wars” and “new wars” respectively. The changing character of organised violence is reflected in the shifting aims of actors from ideologically-driven to identity-driven, the different social organisation of actors and how they finance themselves, who the new targets of violence are, and whether the actors use these acts of violence to ultimately compel their opponent to their will.

1. Who offers a more convincing stance on the role of morality in international politics? Liberals or realists?

Realism offers a more convincing stance on the role of morals within international politics as it recognises that the anarchical state of international politics is immutable as long as sovereign states exist. Maintaining the balance of power, which may involve concessions or gains in the form of limited conflict in peripheries, is perhaps even more moral when observed holistically.

and the European Union

Interest-based theories of International Relations view the European Union as a functional supranational body and an actor in Global Politics. According to the interest-based view, through the institution of certain procedures and standards such as in many laws, and cooperation throughout a multitude of areas such as the economy, environment and security, international organisations like the European Union can help bring prosperity to countries and help advance their mutual interests. Many different liberal institutionalist theories of International Relations provide different explanations of how and why countries cooperate. Interest-based theories argue that as countries aim to make decisions which advance many interests, not just power, those same countries will be drawn to cooperate as that is more beneficial.

With reference to the French Revolution

French disciples of the Dublin-born British political thinker, Edmund Burke, were the first to coin the word “conservative” in the aftermath of the French Revolution (Hamilton, 2020). It originally referred to those ideas which Burke had espoused in his Reflections on the Revolution in France and was also associated with general anti-revolutionary sentiment throughout Europe in the 19th century. However, today, the word has taken a much broader meaning that has come to refer to a myriad of political ideologies, many of them which lack the essence of conservatism, such as Thatcherism or neoliberalism, monarchism and even radically theocratic ideas of the Iranian Revolution. While elements of conservatism can be identified within these doctrines and creeds, they are not representative of what the term conservative ought to describe, which cannot be an ideology itself but is rather a disposition which tends to oppose it yet can also lend itself to an ideology if there are common, traditional values.