School of International Studies
Jawaharlal Nehru University
Problems of International Relations (IS 452N)
Course: M.A.
Course No: (IS 452N)
Course Title: Problems of International Relations
Course Type: Core
Semester: Winter 2024
Course Teacher & Contact Details: Name: Sandip Kumar Singh
Room No.: #318, SIS-II
Email: sandipksingh@[Link]
Tel. No.: (O): 26704349Name:
Prasanta Sahoo
Room No.: #309, SIS-II
Email: prasantasahoo@[Link]
Tel. No.: (O): 26704349
Credits: 4
Contact Hours: 4 hours/week
Class Schedule & Room Number Room No. 229
Tutorial (for difficulties & discussion)
Course Description & Objectives
This course follows the introductory course on international relations theory in the previous semester
and is designed as a companion course. Now that you have learned the basics of IR theory, in this
course, we will look at how IR theory is employed to understand international politics and foreign
policy from different perspectives. So, we will discuss some key contemporary debates in
international politics from opposing theoretical perspectives. While some of these debates are general
in nature, others are particularly relevant to Indian foreign policy and the Indian situation in global
politics. We will start with the debates around the changing global power structure. We will then look
at the debate about the future of the Liberal International Order and the emerging US-China
competition (a new Cold War?). The subsequent section will consider the role of regions and whether
regional powers matter in international politics. The last few sections will consider issues such as
whether Asian international politics are or will be different from previous, European-dominated
international politics and how we might understand Indian foreign policy from a theoretical
perspective.
Evaluation Methods
The course assessment will be as follows: There will be a mid-term exam and an end-semester
exam. The mid-term will account for 50% of the total grade and the end-sem 50%.
• Mid-semester evaluation (50%)
• End-Semester Evaluation (50%)
--End-Semester Examination (50%)
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• The SIS Research Manual should be used as a guide for written assignments.
Available at: [Link]
• Students must maintain a high degree of academic integrity, which includes but is not
limited to abstaining from copying and plagiarism. For details on plagiarism and
research ethics, refer to the SIS Research Manual.
Course Content & Readings
I. The Global Structural Context: Measuring the Power Balance
• Essential Readings
Barry Posen, “Command of the Commons: The Military Foundations of U.S. Hegemony,”
International Security 28:1 (Summer 2003): 5-46; Michael Beckley, “The Power of Nations:
Measuring What Really Matters,” International Security 43:2 (Fall 2018): 7-44; Joshua R.
Itzkowitz Shifrinson, Michael Beckley, “Correspondence: Debating China’s Rise and U.S.
Decline,” International Security 37:3 (Winter 2012/13): 172- 81.
Recommended Additional Reading: Ashley Tellis et al, Measuring National Power in the
Postindustrial Age: An Analysts Handbook (Santa Monica: RAND, 2000); Stephen G.
Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers in the 21st
Century: China’s Rise and the Fate of America’s Global Position,” International Security,
40:3 (Winter 2015/16): 7-53; Michael Beckley, “China’s Century? Why America’s Edge
Will Endure,” International Security 36:3 (Winter 2011/12): 41-78;
II. A New Great Power Competition?
• Essential Readings
Aaron L. Friedberg, “The Future of U.S.-China Relations: Is Conflict Inevitable?”
International Security 30:2 (Fall 2005): 7-45; Barry R. Posen, “Emerging Multipolarity: Why
Should We Care?” Current History, November 2009, 347-52; Graham Allison, “The
Thucydides Trap”, Foreign Policy, [Link]
trap/#; [Link]
thucydides-trap/406756/
Recommended Additional Reading: Daniel H. Nexon, “Against Great Power Competition,”
Foreign Affairs, February 2021; Joshua Shifrinson, “The rise of China, balance of power
theory and US national security: Reasons for optimism? Journal of Strategic Studies, (2018),
[Link] Carla Norrlof, “The Dollar Still
Dominates: American Financial Power in the Age of Great Power Competition,” Foreign
Affairs, February 21, 2023, [Link]
dominates.
III. What Does the US and China Want?
• Essential Readings
Patrick Porter, “Why America’s Grand Strategy Has Not Changed: Power, Habit, and the
U.S. Foreign Policy Establishment,” International Security 42:4 (Spring 2018): 9-46; John J.
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Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, “The Case for Offshore Balancing,” Foreign Affairs
(July/August 2016): 70-83; Yan Xuetong, “Becoming Strong: The New Chinese Foreign
Policy,” Foreign Affairs, 100:4 (July-August 2021): 40-47; Barry R. Posen, “The Rise of
Illiberal Hegemony: Trump’s Surprising Grand Strategy,” Foreign Affairs Vol. 97, No. 2
(March/April 2018), pp. 20-27.
Recommended Additional Readings: Josef Joffe, “‘Bismarck’ or ‘Britain’? Toward an
American Grand Strategy after Bipolarity,” International Security 19:4 (Spring 1995): 94-
117; Stephen G. Brooks, G. John Ikenberry, and William C. Wohlforth, “Don’t Come Home
America: The Case Against Retrenchment,” International Security, 37:3 (Winter 2012/13):
7- 51; Hal Brands, “Fools Rush Out? The Flawed Logic of Offshore Balancing” The
Washington Quarterly, 38:2 (2015): 7-28; Stephen M. Walt, The Hell of Good Intentions:
America’s Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy (New York: Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, 2018); Barry Posen, Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014); Michael C. Desch, “America’s Liberal Illiberalism:
The Ideological Origins of Overreaction in U.S. Foreign Policy,” International Security, 32:3
(Winter 2007/08): 7-43.
IV. The Liberal International Order Debate
• Essential Readings
Gideon Rose, “The Fourth Founding: The United States and the Liberal Order,” Foreign
Affairs, December 11, 2018; Paul Staniland, “Misreading the ‘Liberal Order’: Why We Need
New Thinking in American Foreign Policy,” lawfareblog, July 29, 2018; Yan Xuetong, “The
Age of Uneasy Peace: Chinese Power in a Divided World,” Foreign Affairs, December 11,
2018.
Recommended Additional Reading: Jake Sullivan, “What Donald Trump and Dick Cheney
Got Wrong About America,” The Atlantic, January-February 2019,
[Link]
world/576427/; John J. Mearsheimer, The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International
Realities (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018) chapter 1,5,6; Daniel Deudney and G.
John Ikenberry, “Misplaced Restraint: The Quincy Coalition Versus Liberal
Internationalism,” Survival, 63:4 (2021): 7-32; Alastair Iain Johnston, “China in a World of
Orders: Rethinking Compliance and Challenge in Beijing’s International Relations,”
International Security, 44:2 (Fall 2019): 9-60.
V. Regional Powers and Regional Security: Do They Matter?
• Essential Readings
Andrew Hurrell, “One World, Many Worlds? The Place of Regions in the Study of
International Politics,” International Affairs 83:1 (2007): 151-66; Barry Buzan and Ole
Waever, Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2003): 27-127; Amitav Acharya, “The Emerging Regional
Architecture of World Politics,” World Politics 59 (July 2007): 629-52.
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Recommended Additional Readings: Andrew Hurrell, “Hegemony, Liberalism and Global
Order: What Space for Would-Be Great Powers?” International Affairs 82:1 (2006): 1-19;
Daniel Flemes, Conceptualising Regional Powers in International Relations: Lessons from
the South African Case, GIGA Working Papers No. 53 (June 2007) at [Link]
[Link]/dl/[Link]?d=/content/publikationen/pdf/wp53_flemes.pdf
VI. Asia Future – Europe’s Past?
• Essential Readings
Robert S. Ross, “Balance of Power Politics and the Rise of China: Accommodation and
Balancing in East Asia,” Security Studies 15:3 (July-September 2006): 355-95; Jeff M.
Smith, “China’s Rise and (Under?) Balancing in the Indo-Pacific: Putting Realist Theory to
the Test,” [Link], January 8, 2019; C. Raja Mohan, “India and the Balance of
Power,” Foreign Affairs 85:4 (July- Aug 2006), pp. 17-32; Kate Sullivan de Estrada, India
and order transition in the Indo-Pacific: resisting the Quad as a ‘security community’, The
Pacific Review, Vol. 36, no. 2, 2023, 378-405.
Recommended Additional Readings: Adam P. Liff and G. John Ikenberry, “Racing Towards
Tragedy?: China’s Rise, Military Competition in the Asia-Pacific and the Security
Dilemma,” International Security 39:2 (Fall 2014): 52-91. Steve Chan, “An Odd Thing
Happened on the Way to Balancing: East Asian States’ Reaction to China’s Rise,”
International Studies Review 12 (2010): 387-412; Darren J. Lim and Zack Cooper,
“Reassessing Hedging: The Logic of Alignment in East Asia,” Security Studies, 24:4 (2015):
696-727; Aaron L. Friedberg, “Ripe for Rivalry: Prospects for Peace in a Multipolar Asia,”
International Security 18:3 (Winter 1993-1994): 5-33; David C. Kang, “Getting Asia Wrong:
The Need for New Analytical Frameworks,” International Security 27:4 (Spring 2003): 57-
85;
VII. Postcolonial Theory and Indian Foreign Policy
• Essential Readings
Sanjay Seth, “Postcolonial Theory and the Critique of International Relations” Millenium
(August 2011), pp. 167- 83; Itty Abraham, The Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb: Science,
Secrecy and the Postcolonial State (London: Zed Books, 1998) chapter 1, pp. 6-33; Geeta
Chowdry and Sheila Nair (eds), Power, Postcolonialism, and International Relations:
Reading Race, Gender and Class (London: Routledge, 2002); Ian Hall, “Narendra Modi and
India’s Normative Power,” International Affairs 93:1 (2017): 113-31.
Recommended Additional Readings: Priya Chacko, “The Search for a Scientific Temper:
Nuclear Technology and the Ambivalence of India’s Postcolonial Modernity,” Review of
International Studies; Sankaran Krishna, Postcolonial Insecurities: India, Sri Lanka and the
Question of Nationhood; Robert S. Ross, “Balance of Power Politics and the Rise of China:
Accommodation and Balancing in East Asia,” Security Studies 15:3 (July September 2006):
355-95 at [Link]
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VIII. Asian International Relations Theory
• Essential Readings
All essays in the Special Issue of International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 7 (2007), “Why
is There No Non-Western International Relations Theory?” editors Amitav Acharya and
Barry Buzan; Benoy Kumar Sarkar, Hindu Theory of International Relations, The American
Political Science Review, (Aug., 1919), Vol. 13(3): pp. 400-414; Siddharth Mallavarapu,
“Development of International Relations Theory in India: Traditions, Contemporary
Perspectives and Trajectories,” International Studies 46 (January-April 2009): 165-83.
Recommended Additional Reading: Amitav Acharya, “Will Asia’s Past Be Its Future?” and
David C. Kang, “Hierarchy, Balancing and Empirical Puzzles in Asian International
Relations,” International Security 28:3 (Winter 2003-2004): 149-80; Peter J. Katzenstein and
Nobuo Okawara, “Japan, Asian-Pacific Security and the Case for Analytical Eclecticism,”
International Security 26:3 (Winter 2001/2002): 153-85; David Martin Jones and Michael
L.R. Smith, “Making Process, Not Progress: ASEAN and the Evolving East Asian Regional
Order,” International Security 32:1 (Summer 2007): 148-84; David C. Kang, “Hierarchy and
Stability in Asian International Relations,” in G. John Ikenberry and Michael Mastanduno
eds., International Relations Theory and the Asia-Pacific (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2003): 163-90.
