Question

Choose an international incident or event (i.e. Iraq War)

- 2-3 sentences, in your own words (!), summarizing the incident or event

- 2-3 sentences discussing how realists would explain this incident or event

- 2-3 sentences discussing how liberalists would explain this incident or event

Answer 1

The Iraq war is considered as a protracted armed conflict which initiated in the year 2003 when the United States led coalition armed force invaded Saddam Husain led Iraq and finally dethroned the dictator who was having his cruel regime in the country for more than four decades. This conflict continued to occur in the next decade too due to the opposition of insurances against the invasion of coalition forces and the post-invasion Iraqi government.

In the views of realist critics, the war of Iraq was more of a result of post-Cold War liberal expansionism due to which the United States used military intervention in many places and propagated increasingly ruthless goals of promoting the democracy and changing the long regimes of dictators. In their opinions, American foreign policy under the purview of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of unipolarity does not have any external restraints and therefore attempts were made to understand long-standing Wilsonian liberal agendas for the transformation of oppressive regimes and the prevailing international system.

Liberalist supported the war reluctantly and their support was based on a combination of some concerns which were more related to the concepts of with interdependence realism than with the idealist version of Wilsonianism. Most importantly, liberal internationalists hold a diagnosis of security vulnerability that emphasizes violence interdependence. the realist-interdependence approach was avoided by the liberal internationalists and, advancing international arms control and security-regime building in comparison to opposing and stopping the war and hegemonic rule.