Is Realism Passé? a Realist Rejoinder: The Case of Ethiopia/Eritrea

Abstract

Questions of norms, culture and ethnicity pose the principal challenge to realism in the present day, finding articulation in constructivism (which, in itself, is abroad category), the idea of the “security community”, and a growing pool of research on Third World internal wars. In the first section, we shall concentrate primarily on the ideas of Peter Katzenstein, Michael Barnett, Kaveji Holsti and Steven David to understand the charges leveled against realism, and to bring to light its many perceived inadequacies. The second section shall attempt to offer a defence of realism, positing answers to the questions and claims surveyed in the first section. We shall primarily explore the works of Kenneth Waltz, Michael Desch and Barry R. Posen in this section. The third and final section shall focus on a case study of the Ethiopia/Eritrea conflict, in trying to clinch the importance of realism as an explanatory theory of international relations (IR) — by laying out the narrative of the Eritrean secessionist movement and the puzzling balancing behaviour exhibited by the Ethiopian state, and consequently explaining the same in realist terms.