Page 32 - Global Political Economy_Understanding The International Economic Order

THE NEW GL OBAL E CONOM IC ORD ER
tional system, to use Kenneth Waltz’s apt expression, states must con-
stantly guard against actual or potential threats to their political and
economic independence. Concern with security means that power—
military, economic, and/or psychological—will be vitally important
in international affairs; states must be continually attentive to changes
in power relations and the consequences for their own national inter-
ests of shifts in the international balance of power. Although, as Rich-
ard Rosecrance correctly argues, the “trading state” has become a
much more prominent feature of international affairs, it is important
to recognize that successful development of the international econ-
omy since 1945 has been made possible by the security system pro-
vided by the alliances between the United States and its allies in Eu-
rope and Asia. Tradingstates like Japan and (West) Germany
emerged and grew while protected by American military power;
moreover, toward the end of the twentieth century they established
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and began to maintain an independent military option. Indeed, these
tradingstates now possess substantial defensive military forces and
defense industries as an insurance policy; even Japan, with its “peace”
constitution, has become one of the world’s foremost military
powers.
One of the most important contemporary critiques of realism is
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“constructivism.” Accordingto this increasingly influential position,
international politics is “socially constructed” rather than constitut-
ingan objective reality. As defined by Alexander Wendt, the two ba-
sic tenets of constructivism are that (1) human structures are deter-
mined mainly by shared ideas rather than material forces, and (2) the
identities and interests of human beings are constructed or are the
product of these shared ideas rather than beingproducts of nature. If
valid, these ideas undermine not only realism, Marxism, and liberal-
ism but also neoclassical economics and much of political science.
Although constructivism is an important corrective to some strands
of realism and the individualist rational-choice methodology of neo-
classical economics, the implicit assumption of constructivism that we
should abandon our knowledge of international politics and start

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Richard N. Rosecrance, The Rise of the Trading State: Commerce and Conquest
in the Modern World (New York: Basic Books, 1986); Rosecrance, The Rise of the
Virtual State: Wealth and Power in the Coming Century (New York: Basic Books,
1999).
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Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1999); and Peter. J. Katzenstein, ed., The Culture of National Secu-
rity: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press,
1996).
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