Thucydides Legacy

Origins of Classic Tradition

International relations theory is both very young and very old discipline. It is a very young because the
first chair of international relations theory was established nearly 100 years ago after the first world war.
Why it is very old? Because the very origins of classical realist tradition we find in the work of the
Thucydides, the ancient Greek historian, philosopher and general, author of a History of Peloponnesian
War. Thucydides himself was fighting on the side of the Athens in this war. He was the Athenian general.
But later, he retired and he had a chance to conceptualize, to think about the reasons of this war, about
why this ancient Greek states started this war between them, which finally destroyed their greatness. And
he managed to make the first conclusions, the first general observations about the reasons and causality
in their international relations and regarding the most important problems such as problem of the actress,
who is the main actor, that's a problem of the reasons for war and reasons for peace and many others.
Unlike Herodotus and another great ancient Greek and many other historians of that time, Thucydides
aimed to study fundamental laws of history and politics rather than just describe the past as the others
did. So when we look at his work, the History of Peloponnesian War, we will find that it consists of the
two major sections. The first content of this work, he is describing the sequence of the events of the
Peloponnesian war. And the other, are his own editorials, are his explanations of why the things happen
in a certain way and don't happen in another way. So, his essential task and the most important purpose
of his work, first of all was to understand origins of war. Thucydides said, history is philosophy teaching
by examples. And this quotation we can still use as one of the main characteristic of our discipline. We
never say that theory of international relations is disconnected with the practice. Theory of international
relations is one of the most connected to the practice disciplines as it has started by Thucydides. But first
of all, let us say several words about the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides was not young when
Peloponnesian war started. We all know from history that for many years, the ancient Greek democracies
have been fighting for their liberty against their invasions from Persia. We all, many of us seen the movies
about the 300 Spartans and the continuation movies. We all know how difficult and how cruel this war.
But finally, Greeks won the war, and two major powers emerge in the ancient Greece. One power was
their naval union led by the Athens. And the other one was a land-based union led by Sparta. And so,
Peloponnesian war occurred between two major powers of the ancient Greece, Athens and Sparta, both
leading broad coalitions of city states. By that time ancient Greece didn't know these states in our modern
contemporary understanding. That time it was divided to the small, the time was very very tiny. City states
based either on the islands or on the continent. So the international system of Peloponnesian peninsula
and ancient Greece before the war and during the war, represented a model of bipolar order, and
Thucydides was the first to describe the patterns, driven, such international structure and reasons why
the two major parts of this bipolar order finally ended into the cruel war between them. Peloponnesian
war was a very very big conflict. Many people has been fighting many people died, and the outcome of
the conflict reshaped the ancient Greek war entirely. Athens, the strongest city-state in Greece prior to
the war, whereas beginning, lost its power, while Sparta became the leading power of Greece. Therefore,
a bipolar system was transformed into the unipolar one. But we should not also forget that soon after the
end of the Peloponnesian war, the Macedonian invaders came from the north and they have taken over
both the Sparta and Athens. So, the final consequence of this war was the weakening of both fighting
parties and taking them over by the third party. Well, we can find many other examples in the human
history when the stupidity of the war leads us to these sorts of consequences. So, the Peloponnesian war,
as we can see on the map, was the most grand scale and devastating conflict between Greek city-states
of that time, emphasized necessity of understanding the nature of war and peace. Main purpose of the
work of Thucydides was to explain the war. And he explained in the perfect way which seems very well
known and used. And his explanation is used by their theories and called, Thucydides trap. We can vote
for Thucydides. He wrote, the real cause I consider to be one which was formerly most kept out of sight.
The growth of the power of Athens and the alarm which this inspired in Sparta made war inevitable.
According to Thucydides, beginning of the war was driven by fear associated with a shift in the balance of
power. Sparta was afraid of losing its pre-eminent role in the Hellenic world. Thus, took counter measures
to build up its military strength. We can see that Thucydides trap can be applied to the many situations in
the history of international relations. And he points out that the main reason for war is fear because we
never know the intentions of our partners, he wrotes. We always assume that our partner is getting
stronger not because of any other reason but because he is going to attack us, and we always fear. And
fear, according to Thucydides, is a main driving force which brings nations to the war. Thucydides
emphasizes the limited room for maneuver available to the statesmen. When leaders perceive the balance
of power is shifting to their disfavor, they have to control it, and they have no other options. They cannot
respond to this shift in the balance of power by decreasing their strength. They can only respond by
increasing their strength. But when they do it, the other countries perceived that these measures are of
offensive nature. And they also start to increase their strength and that drives nations to the conflict.
Therefore, concludes Thucydides, international politics, politics between the states, is driven not by
individuals but by laws of history. And this is a very important observation because many times you can
see in the newspapers that a certain conflict seldom were emerges because somebody is guilty, because
somebody is pushing a policy which is bad but not always like this more, never like this. International
policy is driven not by individuals but by laws of history and on many examples in the future, in the many
many other works of which belongs to the classical and realist tradition of international relations theory,
we will see the examples and the useful explanations of this. Fear, concludes Thucydides, makes states
suspect others of betrayal and power themselves for self-defense. Whenever power ourselves for offence,
we always think about self-defense but consequently it brings us to the conflict. That is the driving pattern
of international politics which also explains emergence of an alliance-based bipolar system before the
war.
Decline of Classic Tradition

So, reading his work, we see that Thucydides has been one who found the reasons for war, first among all
schools of international relations. But besides addressing to the question of reasons of war, Thucydides
also explored some other important issues which deal directly with the theory of international relations,
even nowadays. First of all, he addressed the question of morals and international politics. He is
explaining, and he is addressing and studying the question of morals in the international politics, by the
example of the collision which has happened between Athens and the small island Melos, which is led by
its party union. Athens invaded Melos back in 416 BC, and demanded that Melians, the people who lived
there, surrender and pay tribute to Athens and join their alliance or face annihilation. The proud Melians
refused, and after the siege, the Athenians captured the city and slaughtered most of the population. The
Melian Dialogue, the negotiations between the two sides before the battle, which we can find in the book
of Thucydides, represents one of the most ancient icons of the morals and power in international politics.
Melian dialogue is a discussion between the delegations of Athens and Melos. People from Athens insist
on their right to do what they want, and demand that Melos surrenders. People from Melos said that they
are not going to fight against Athens, they want to keep a certain neutrality, but the Athenians are very
very persistent. Athenian perspective on the issue of morals is the following, the Athenians say, right as
the world goes is only in question between equals and power, while the strong do what they can, and the
weak suffer what they must. So we see that according to the first statements or the classical religious
tradition, their moral and their right and the justice, can exist only between equals and power. But when
we deal with the relationship between the stronger countries and the weak countries, according to the
realist tradition, we do not speak any more about justice and about morals. According to Thucydides, the
standards of justice depends on the equality of power, and we will find the same ideas in many works of
those scholars who belong to the realist tradition even much later on. For example, in the work of Edward
Hallet Carr, which has been written back in 1939, we find the same idea. Edward Hallet Carr writes that,
morality and politics is not derived from the normal morality of the relationship between people, the
morality in politics is a very special morality which is typical only for this very special sort of relationships.
But after the greatest findings of Thucydides, the classical tradition experienced its decline. The decline
has several reasons. First, and the most important reason, was the rise of the Roman Empire which
brought the idea of universal state civilization, Pax Romana. Roman empire developed itself from the very
small republic on the West Coast of Italian Peninsula, to the huge empire which basically embarrassed all
contemporary Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, stretched from the British islands to the
Palestine, and from the Morocco to the German forests. It was a superpower of that period. Another
superpower was the Chinese empire in the east. But those two countries have never interacted, and the
history doesn't have any experience of the relationships between the two first superpowers. Pax Romana
did not leave a place for the balance of power concept, as there were no any other states to challenge
their own. Relationships with Barbarians and the Romans called everybody who surrounded them,
Barbarians, were never considered by the Romans as an interaction of equals. It was an eternal war
between the civilized world and uncivilized periphery. What made the Romans viewed this relationships
as a moral conflict of the two societies where one had a more advanced domestic order, while the second
put a threat towards it. The same situation by the way, we find in the east, where the Chinese Empire has
never considered its neighbors as equals. And this is the reason why the theory of international relations
has never developed in China. And today our, Chinese colleagues need to accept the international
relations theory, which has been developed in Europe, where other nations for many centuries
experienced the relationships between the equals, after Roman Empire collapsed. The other reason for
the decline of classical tradition, was the emergence of Christian Universalism. After the Roman empire
collapse,a new idea came from the Middle East, the idea of Christian religion. It emerged and dominated
in Europe till the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Christianity suggested that a new idealistic
interpretation of history, which hardly correlated with the classic tradition. While Thucydides considered
international system as a static system, christian doctrine viewed history as a permanent transformation
from one condition to another. Final destination of the man kind is the End of History, Kingdom of
Heavens. The return of classical tradition appeared only in the end of the fifteenth, beginning of the
sixteenth century. Renaissance returned the classic tradition of international relations in the center of
intellectual life. It was partly driven by emerging interest in the Ancient legacy, in Literature and
philosophy. However, more importantly, the Renaissance became a birth time for the first centralized
states, which formed the first post-feudal balance of power in Europe and especially, in the Eponym
peninsula, during the Italian Wars of 1494-1559. So, exactly in the end of the fifteenth century and
beginning of the sixteenth century, the first states emerged, and those states started to treat each other
as equals, and that's why they needed again the ideas about how to treat each other. And that's why the
thinkers of that age started to develop the new general approach to the theory of international relations,
and one of the most important authors here, is Niccolo Machiavelli.
Renaissance and return of Classic tradition

Machiavelli and Hobbes

Well, before we talk about Niccolo Machiavelli, let us look at the map of Italy during the Italian wars. We
see that the two major European powers have been present, Kingdom of France, and Spanish Empire.
Those empires have been related to is a very close links, but at the same time they are very, very strong
rivalries and their arrival was mainly about Italy. In one of his letters, actually the emperor of the Holy
Roman empire Charles V wrote, "The interest of myself and of my cousin French king Francois Premier,
are basically the same, we both want Northern Italy." And this quotation gives us a perfect example of
how the political thoughts of the Renaissance supports us to understand the causes of the conflict. The
conflict emerges not when the interests are different, but when the two powers want the same. Like now,
many countries want their own, their same neighbors to be friendly nations, but it means for everybody
different. Besides two great countries, France and Spanish Empire and Holy Roman Empire, we see that
their territory of Italy consists of the several small states, among them the Holy state, Papal state, is only
one. The other important factor of the emergence of this unique international system was the decline of
the authority of the Roman Pope. The states and the food of, the lords of the newly emerging little states,
they did not have any respect to the Rome which it has deserved for many, many centuries before. And
this disrespect and the emergent equality of the relationships becomes one of the most inspiring reasons
for their political thought of the Renaissance. And among those thinkers, Machiavelli is definitely one of
the brightest. Classical tradition during Italian Wars was developed in his book "The Prince" - an influential
political ecce, written by Niccolo Machiavelli for Lorenzo de Medici in 1513. It was first published however,
only in 1532, because the Roman church did not like it very much. The Roman church thought and said
that "The Prince" represents the very immoral, non-Christian unfortunately international relations. Why?
Because basically Niccolo Machiavelli addressed to the very beginnings of classical tradition, nearly for the
Fukudidas and other predecessors. He brought the ideas from the ancient Greece, from the previous
thinkings, and he adopted these ideas to his time, and he used these ideas as an advise for political
practice. So, what Machiavelli wrote and why it is important for the understanding of international
relations? Let us take several quotations, the first, the Machiavelli writes, "War should be the only study
of a prince". By saying this, Machiavelli defines what is the main form of interaction between the states.
For him, as for any classic realist, the war is the normal condition, not the peace. Why? Because the states
are always competing, because the states can never get in terms, they can be never a final solution. Every
solution, every victory, or every compromise is only the preparation of another conflict, of another war.
And that's why war should be the only study of a prince. The other quotations, "The promise given was a
necessity of the past: the world broken is a necessity of the present." This sounds very cynical indeed. But
for Machiavelli, it was obvious that any politician, any prince responsible for his country, for his state,
must give any promises to the other countries and has no moral responsibility with regard to the others,
he has only one more responsibility is to protect his power, and is to protect the people who live in his
country. And in the works of Machiavelli, we find the another maximum. Machiavelli writes that the prince
who is favorable to theirs those who live in the other states is unfavorable and is moral towards his own
subordinates. The other quotation, "Politics have no relation to morals", is a very, very straightforward,
and it is also related to what Fukudida said many 100 years before Machiavelli and nearly 2000 years
before Machiavelli. And what will be said by the classics and by the others of offers of realist tradition in
international relations. But to understand that better, we should not look at the ideas of Machiavelli very
primitively. Machiavelli was not a simple cynical offer by saying politics have no relation to morals. He
wanted to say only one thing that the politics are so important that one cannot approach politics with a
normal human attitude to the questions like morals, justice, humanism, and the other important things
which exist between the people within the society. So, in work of Machiavelli, we find one of the most
important concepts of the international relations and the approach to the international relations from the
school of classical realism, the straight division between the internal and international, what is
permittable, what is possible internationally, does not exist inside of the society, and what is a normal
inside of the society like morals or justice, does not exist in international relations where as Fukudida
wrote 2000 years before Machiavelli that only strength matters. Machiavelli understanding of politics was
based on the three major ideas, one has been already mentioned, "War should be the only study of
prince". The main responsibility of the rulers is always to defend the interests of the state and ensure its
survival. "The promise given was in the necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the
present." So, if necessary others have said already, a ruler must be ruthless and deceptive while defending
self-interest. So, in today's politics we see many times when countries complain that they were not
explained before what are intentions of their partners. But we should also understand that it is always the
work or the maximum explained by Machiavelli several 100 years ago. And the third one, "Politics have
no relation to morals". A responsible ruler should not follow Christian ethics, if states follow these values,
they will disappear in the end. Thus, for Machiavelli and the likes, the morality and ethics is an indicator
of that a certain ruler is irresponsible with regard to his power, his legitimacy, and people whom he is
governing. Another great representative of the classic realist tradition was a British philosopher, Thomas
Hobbes which lived in the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th, and the middle of the 17th century.
It was a very, very difficult time for Europe. The wars happened here and there. The great 30 years war
was taking place in the very, very heart of Europe around the Holy Roman Empire. The other wars happen
on periphery, Russia arrived to the European politics with invasion of the Baltics by the wars of the Ivan
the Terrible. So, Thomas Hobbes, based on this intellectual and practical background offered a justification
of states by envisaging a state-less state of nature. In this state human beings lived in the condition of
"war everyone against everyone". For Thomas Hobbes, this condition was the very initial and was
threatening the very existence of humans. And according to that Thomas Hobbes people seek to escape
the state of nature to achieve personal security and to find a solution, and the solution is to establish
state. In order to escape from this situation, Hobbes suggested placing old power to a certain sovereign
state, which he calls Leviathan, a state authority or supreme ruler, that would maintain order and end
anarchy. Without order, no economic development, art, knowledge is possible. It leads to establishment
of a social contract. However unlike a liberal tradition, Hobbes supposes that such contract was conducted
not between individuals, but between individuals and the government. And this is a very important
difference between liberal and realist tradition. For the realist, the most important unit is the state under
the government, for the liberals, this is the individual.
Clash of Leviathans- First Thirty Year War

In his work, Thomas Hobbes deals directly with one of the most important problems, one of most
important paradox and dilemmas in international relations. The dilemma between internal order and
international anarchy. And according to the Thomas Hobbes, these two are related between them. The
internal order is the reason for international anarchy. And international anarchy is a consequence of the
states able and the people able to establish this internal order. Thomas Hobbes writes in his work, in all
times kings, and persons of sovereign authority, because of their independence, are in continued
jealousies, and in the state and posture of gladiators, having their weapons pointing, and their eyes fixed
on one another. That their forts, garrisons, and guns upon the frontiers of their kingdoms, and continual
spies upon their neighbors, which is a posture of war. So according to the Thomas Hobbes, as we can see
in this quotation, one of the main reasons of rivalry and competition between the states is their
independence. More the states are independent, more they are capable to compete with the others. The
other reason of the conflict is a continual jealousness. The states are jealous towards each other, and
they're always in the state of posture of gladiators. The ancient Roman fighters who have entertained rich
people fighting with swords and other means in the theaters and on the other arenas. So and for the
state's own instruments, which they have in their disposal, are applied in order to compete, and in order
to threat, and in order to, potentially, fight the other states. So we see that already in the works of Thomas
Hobbes, the main reason and the main purpose of the state policy, according to the realist tradition, is
survival, because the states are the gladiators. They need to survive, and they need to use all means in
order to survive. How Leviathan, the biggest work of Thomas Hobbes, explains the international politics?
But, first of all, let us ask the question, what is a Leviathan? Leviathan is a Bible beast, a beast from the
Bible, the biggest book of the Christian tradition. And Leviathan, his particularity, is that Leviathan is the
strongest. There is nobody, no any other beast which can beat Leviathan, which is stronger than Leviathan.
And it was important for Thomas Hobbes to choose exactly this definition for the state. Because for him,
the Leviathan, the state, is the highest authority, which can be never beaten by the other more strong
authority. So, according to the Thomas Hobbes, achievement of personal security and domestic security
for the creation of a state leads to international insecurity, which is rooted in the anarchy of the state
system. Leviathans are doomed to fight a war with everyone against everyone, as people have been doing
before, because they feel of insecurity, and eager for power, wealth, and glory. So their relationships,
which are, fortunately, not anymore exist on the internal level within the society, this fight more of
everyone against everyone. They automatically transfer to the relationships between the state. And
according to the Thomas Hobbes, it is impossible to establish a Leviathan over Leviathans. States will never
give up their sovereignty. Therefore, anarchy is a normal and eternal state of the international system.
But there is another reason for their eternal anarchy in international systems. Leviathan over Leviathans,
or the war of the government, cannot be established, because the ordinary people, like me and you, we
give up our rights in order to achieve security and safety to the state. We cannot give our freedoms to the
world government. We can give our freedoms only to the national government, which we elect and which
we legitimize by our own decision. We want our security, that's why we create the state. And if this state,
which we create between us, according to the realist tradition, we'll, together with the other states,
established a certain world government, or the world state. It will not be any more elected by us, thus it
will not be legitimate in our eyes. Thus the relationships between the people will come back to the very
beginnings, to the original nature of war of everyone against everyone. Do we want this situation? I don't
think so. The work of Thomas Hobbes was inspired by the tragic events, which has happened in Europe in
the first half of the 17th century, the Thirty-year War, which lasted from 1618 to 1644. The House of
Habsburg was one of the most important royal houses of Europe, and is best known for being an origin of
all the formally elected Holy Roman Emperors between 1438 and 1740, as well as rulers of the Austrian
and Spanish domains and several other countries. The Habsburg family represented the idea of
universalism, unification of the whole world, at that time, Europe, under one Christian ruler. The
alternative was represented by the emerging national states. In Germany, but not only the France, which
was a Catholic country, was a national state as well. So the Thirty-years War was not just a war about the
religion. It was a war against the Habsburg hegemony, rather than a religious conflict caused by the
religious means. The most illustrative example, participation of Catholic France in the Anti-Habsburg
coalition. The Thirty-years War was unique by the number of the countries and the states involved. The
Habsburgs and their allies were composed by the Holy Roman Empire, so-called Catholic League of the
small German states, Spain, Hungary, Kingdom of Croatia, Denmark-Norway for a certain time, but also
Poland. Anti-Habsburg Coalition was much wider. The France was one of the main participants, United
Provinces, Sweden, Spain, Denmark-Norway, Saxony, England, the Palatinate, and Germany, Prussia,
Brunswick-Luneburg, and some other teeny German states were fighting on the sides of their Anti-
Hasburg Coalition. The First World War, though it was fought only on the European grounds, this war has
taken lots of victims. The population of many European countries decreased significantly, especially in
Germany, which suffered most. But as every war, this war ended, and it is ended with the Peace of
Westphalia, so far the biggest achievement of international diplomacy and the main foundation of the
international law. So what is a uniqueness of Peace of Westphalia? We are going to deal with and talk
about in our next episode.
Westphalian Peace

As it has been already said, one of the most important characteristics of the Thirty Years' War was its
extreme brutality. Not only armies have been fighting each other, but also the numerous gangs of the
mercenaries, former soldiers, and other illegal individuals have been crowding the roads of Europe and
have been destroying European cities and towns, mainly in Germany. But what was the biggest shock for
the people is that all parties who have been fighting this war, they were Christians. The brutality is known
in European history. For example, European crusaders have been extremely brutal when they traveled to
the Middle East during the crusades. The fight with the Ottoman Empire was a very cruel fight. But during
the Thirty Years' War, was the first after the beginning of Renaissance case when the Christian nations
have been fighting each other and destroying the population of another states almost completely. Thus,
the people of that age, as Thomas Hobbes and many others, started to think of what can be the substantial
replacement for the Christian morality which has been dominating the international politics before the
Reformation in Germany and before the Thirty Years' War. The war was also very exhausting. European
nations have been fighting 30 years. They lost so many human lives. So, they were prepared to any
decision just to end it. Here, we can use the quotation from the book, "World Politics", of one of the most
famous, nowadays, practitioners and intellectuals in international relations, the former American
Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. Henry Kissinger writes in his book, "Paradoxically, these genuine
exhaustion and cynicism allow the participants of the Westphalian Congress to transform the practical
means of ending a particular war into general concepts of world order." There was no Peace of Westphalia
or Westphalian Congress as a one event. There were several negotiations conducted in two German cities.
One of basically populated by the Catholics, another one by the Protestants. Entirely, the participants of
these negotiations have mounted up in numbers up to the 400, 450. None of them was as most important
was the state leader or the king because all of them have been lawyers and representatives of the
communities. They were bureaucrats, and this is particularity over the Westphalian order and
Westphalian peace. It is not a decision of the heads of the states. It is a decision of lawyers. That's why it
is so important, and this is why the Westphalian system and Westphalian order continues nowadays. But
let us look at the three principle of Westphalian sovereignty. The Westphalian Treaty gave a birth to three
essential principles, which became a foundation of Westphalian sovereignty and Westphalian order on
the relationships between the states. So, nowadays, when we use a word "order", when we speak
international relations, we always, and first of all, were effort of the Westphalian order which was
established after the brutal Thirty Years' War. The first principle is, "Whose realm, his religion." A
sovereign defines religion in a certain area. It was very important to say that days after Europe has been
fighting the religious war for almost nearly a century. So, with the Westphalian peace, the European
nations managed to come to the conclusion that their religion must be exclusively internal affairs of each
of them and the wars, what is most important, should not be fought because of the religious reasons. So,
fighting for religion, fighting for values, not interests, was forbidden by the Westphalian peace. The other
principle is not less simple. "Every king is the emperor in his own kingdom", all states are independent
and equal to each other. So, by this principle with the Westphalian peace, the sovereign equality of the
states was introduced. And now, if you look to the United Nations Charter, we see that these principles
exist there. The United Nations Charter says that every nation, every state is equal and independent to
each other. The third principle says that no one can be stronger than others, and this principle represents
the one of the most important principles of the European politics for several centuries after, balance of
power as the key principle of international politics. If we look at the international relations during the
several centuries after the Westphalian peace was concluded back in 1648, we will find that these
principles were rarely damaged or abused by the European states only at times. And we can see that most
of the big European wars were fought because one European country tried to become stronger than the
others. The Napoleonic Wars, the First World War, the Second World War was provoked by one nation
trying to dominate the others. And if we look at the international relations nowadays after the end of the
Cold War, we will find that when one nation tried to become stronger and become dominant over the
others, the others resisted. And the reason for the anarchy in international relations, the reason of the
decrease of the order in international relations is exactly because of the conflict around the terms of one
power to become the strongest and dominant and resistance of the others. So, by the Westphalian order,
the new international order, the new international way of doing things, of organizing the relationships
between the states emerges. Here, we can quote Henry Kissinger again. He writes, "The genius of the
system, Westphalian system, and the reason it spread across the world, was that its provisions were
procedural, not substantive. If a state would accept these basic requirements, it could be recognized as
an international citizen able to maintain its own culture, politics, religion, and internal policies, shielded
by the international system from outside intervention." I think this is a very genius observation. So, first
of all, it points out that the difference between Westphalian system and any other international
arrangement is that Westphalian arrangement was not about the substance. It was not about which
territory belongs to each state. It was not about which sovereign is the stronger and more important than
the other sovereigns. It is about the procedure. It is about how the states should treat each other. It is
about the rules. It is about the order, and it is about, after all, law. The three principles of Westphalian
systems are the basic three principles of international communication between the states even nowadays.
And Henry Kissinger else underlines that if a state would accept these basic requirements, it will be
recognized as an international citizen. So, the basic requirement for the state to be treated as equal and
to be treated as a reliable member of international community is to accept these basic requirements. Do
not intervene into the internal affairs of others. Do not impose your views, do not impose your values, do
not impose your culture, politics, religion on the others. Not trying to become the strongest. Not trying to
dominate the others. Not trying to limit the sovereign rights and the quality of the others. These are
requirements for one state to become a reliable part of the international community. With having said
that, we end our section about the classic realist theory. And further, you can find some readings which
can help you to understand these basics of our theory. Next time, we go to the antagonist of the realist
approach. We go to the liberal tradition in the theory of international relations, and we start with a
Christian tradition. Thank you.