The Hurricane and Life in an International World

Hurricane Ike hit Friday the 12th with impressive force, making it's presence felt even in Ohio. It knocked out the power for over two million people and I personally am still without power. However, the cool front that spared a good portion of Galveston from looking like Boliver was also quite nice for the first week without power. The temperatures were low 80s in the highs and low 60s in the lows, quite comfortable. That being said, I've done quite a bit of reading these past days as school and work were both closed on Thursday afternoon until this past Monday the 22nd. Neat eh?

I was able to do a lot of handwritten work, but my assignments, I have to admit, have fallen behind because of my lack of electricity. I've almost caught up, however, and am happy as a clam that my work has power (even if our library was flooded).
When the storm hit I had a quarter tank of gas. I didn't get another chance to fill up until wednesday and only just, as I avoided the lines by going when it was still dark. That was also the first day we had ice.
No worries though, we never lost water and we have natural gas stoves and water heaters. Hot showers, hot food.
People who can't live without power crack me up, by the way. To see them twitch and fidget and not be able to be anything like content without the TV or the AC or the PC or what have you on is both entertaining and disheartening at once.
Sure, I was txting on my cell phone often, I could use the power to do my assignments, but meh, for the most part: I read.

I did quite a bit of that reading for my IR class (and what turns out, will inadvertently be the focus of my poli sci degree). Lots of reading, lots of note taking, lots of me musing about this paper that was due last Tuesday and is now due Thursday.

When asked to label myself either realist or liberal I find myself cringing. Why? Both have horrendous blind spots and neither seem to get human nature quite right. Both are rooted in their view of the individual but neither seem to get the full picture. Both claim that states act rationally yet neither seem to be able to account for the contradictory behavior that can be found in their theories.

For example, a realist would claim that self interested states are aggressive in nature because they have to be in order to maintain security. Therefore you come to the security dilemma where in order to be secure you must arm yourself against your rival or neighbor, but then in order to be secure your rival must arm themselves, so then you must arm yourself even more to be secure, and so on and so forth until it becomes an all out arms race.
It happens, to be sure, it's happened before, it will likely happen again.
Here's the thing--why is that the only road to security?

A liberal perspective would claim that the security dilemma can be avoided by cooperation, by economic openness, and by mitigated institutions. Collective security would prevent state A from attacking state B because of their friends C-Z and social norms that would shame any such aggression.
Problem with collective security is that if state A decides to attack anyway, you'd better hope that B-Z aren't totally disarmed and have an incentive to support a resistance.


What's the solution?
Prove that violence is irrational, that violent conflict is not in the nation's interest.
Problem: It can be. Often.

How can we overcome that? Well increased economic interdependence can possibly lower the incentive to go to war, to be aggressive. If country A has investments in countries C-Z, in the form of direct dollars, multi national cooperations, and so on, and they attack country B, then countries C-Z can punish country A economically and be effective. That is, if all those countries with investments within country A decide they can afford it.
The whole damn thing is rife with problems

And thus--I'm very reluctant to label myself, despite being asked to in general.

Aside from the two mainstream theories there are several 'radical' or alternative theories such as constructivism (which I find just as flawed but interesting none the less) and of course dependency and world systems theories. None of those I find particularly appealing.

I'm afraid she might get a nonanswer from me on this front.

ps I have a stomach ache.


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Listening to: Enya - From Where I Am
via FoxyTunes