IRD5203 International Relations and Diplomacy — Unit 1: Introduction to International Relations — Concept, Definition and Scope; International Relations since 1945; Recent Trends; Power, Elements of National Power, Soft, Hard and Smart Power; Balance of Power

Unit 1: Introduction to International Relations — Concept, Definition and Scope; International Relations since 1945; Recent Trends; Power, Elements of National Power, Soft, Hard and Smart Power; Balance of Power

1. Concept, Definition and Scope of International Relations

International Relations (IR) is the study of interactions across national boundaries — among states, and between states and non-state actors (international organizations, multinational corporations, NGOs, media, even individuals) — in the arenas of politics, security, economics, law and culture. The discipline was born as a self-conscious field after the First World War (the first chair of International Politics was established at Aberystwyth in 1919), tasked with understanding war and how to prevent it.

Definitions:

• In the classical, state-centric view, IR is “the relations among sovereign states” — Palmer and Perkins described it as the study of the world community in transition (from the loose Westphalian society of states toward an organized world community).
• In the modern, pluralist view, IR embraces all transnational interactions: Stanley Hoffmann’s formulation that IR is the study of “the factors and activities which affect the external policies and the power of the basic units into which the world is divided.”

The distinction to state early: international relations (the actual interactions — lowercase) vs. International Relations (the academic discipline that studies them). The discipline asks three master questions: What explains war and peace? What is (international) power and how is it used? And can/should there be order and justice beyond the state?

Scope of IR (the checklist for the “scope” question):

1. State behaviour — foreign policy, diplomacy, war, alliance, neutrality;
2. International security — balance of power, deterrence, arms control, terrorism, peacekeeping;
3. International political economy — trade, finance, investment, development, globalization;
4. International law and organization — the UN family, regional bodies (SAARC, BIMSTEC, EU, ASEAN), treaties and their politics;
5. Transnational issues — climate change, migration, pandemics, human rights, cyberspace;
6. Actors beyond the state — MNCs, NGOs, terrorist networks, diasporas, media;
7. Theories of IR (Unit 2) and methods of study.

Why IR matters for a Nepali law student: Nepal’s life as a state — treaties (1950 India, 1960 China), UN membership, trade-and-transit negotiations, federal foreign relations, even the law of the landlocked — is lived inside this system. International law (LAW5205, this semester) is the legal superstructure; IR is the political reality it regulates. A lawyer who knows only the law and not the relations misreads both.

2. International Relations since 1945

2.1 The Second World War and the birth of the postwar order (1945)

The war (1939–45) destroyed the European-centred world order and produced the institutional architecture of the modern era: the United Nations (1945) with its Charter’s prohibition on the use of force (Article 2(4)) and the Security Council system; the Bretton Woods institutions (IMF and World Bank, 1944) for monetary and developmental order; the GATT (1947) for trade; and the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals, fathering modern international criminal law. Bipolarity replaced multipolarity: the USA and USSR emerged as superpowers.

2.2 The Cold War (c. 1947–1991)

A global struggle between the US-led Western bloc and the Soviet-led communist bloc — war short of direct great-power war, fought through:

• Crises and wars by proxy: Berlin blockade (1948–49), Korean War (1950–53), Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), Vietnam (1955–75), Soviet-Afghan war (1979–89), African and Latin American proxy conflicts;
• Alliances and blocs: NATO (1949) vs. Warsaw Pact (1955); economic orders — Marshall Plan (1948) vs. Comecon;
• The nuclear revolution: mutual assured destruction producing a “long peace” between the superpowers and an arms-control regime (Limited Test Ban 1963, NPT 1968, SALT I 1972, ABM 1972);
• The Third World and non-alignment: decolonization created a swarm of new states; the Non-Aligned Movement (founded 1961, Belgrade) refused bloc membership — Nepal was a founding participant, making non-alignment a permanent plank of its foreign policy; the 1955 Bandung Afro-Asian Conference was the precursor (Nepal attended);
• Détente and decline: 1970s relaxation (Helsinki 1975), the “Second Cold War” of the early 1980s, then Gorbachev’s reforms, the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) and the dissolution of the USSR (1991).

Nepal in the Cold War: the era defined Nepal’s opening to the world — UN membership (1955), aid from both blocs, the 1950 India treaty and 1960 China treaty, the Zone of Peace proposal (1975) — Nepal learned to survive great-power rivalry by balancing (Unit 4 develops this).

2.3 The post-Cold War interlude and the War on Terror (1991–2010s)

The “unipolar moment”: US primacy, liberal optimism (“end of history”), a wave of democratization and humanitarian intervention — the Gulf War (1991, UN-authorized), Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo (1999, NATO without UN authorization — the humanitarian-intervention debate of Unit 3), Rwanda’s genocide (1994, the failure that reshaped atrocity policy). Globalization accelerated (WTO 1995 — Nepal a member since 23 April 2004). Then 9/11 (2001) and the War on Terror: the Afghanistan war (2001–2021), the Iraq war (2003), the securitization of world politics, drone warfare and Guantanamo-era law debates that reshaped international humanitarian law.

2.4 The contemporary system (2010s–present)

The return of great-power rivalry — a rising China (Belt and Road since 2013; strategic competition over technology, trade and the South China Sea), an assertive Russia (annexation of Crimea 2014; full-scale invasion of Ukraine 2022), and a world moving from unipolarity toward multipolarity; the Indo-Pacific strategic frame drawing Nepal’s neighbours and partners into regional contestation. The pandemic (COVID-19) and supply-chain shocks spurred “de-risking” and industrial policy; war returned to Europe; and the Global South’s organizations (BRICS expansion, G20’s African Union admission) signal a redistributing world order.

3. Recent Trends in Contemporary International Relations

1. Multipolarization and great-power competition — the US–China rivalry as the organizing axis; middle powers (India, Japan, EU, Turkey, Gulf states) hedging;
2. The return of war in Europe and the challenge to the UN Charter order — Ukraine (2022– ) testing collective security, sanctions and neutrality;
3. Weaponized interdependence — sanctions, export controls, curbs on technology and finance; economic security replacing pure efficiency;
4. Regionalism’s rise — ASEAN, the African Union, the Gulf, BIMSTEC’s reactivation, SAARC’s stasis (contrasts worth learning — Unit 4);
5. Climate and green transition politics — climate finance, loss and damage, energy geopolitics;
6. Digital and technology domains — cyber conflict, AI competition, data governance; “cyber sovereignty” debates;
7. Migration and demography — South–South and South–North flows (a Nepali core interest given its labour migration economy);
8. Non-state and sub-state agency — MNCs, cities, diasporas, transnational activism;
9. The crisis of multilateralism — WTO paralysis, Security Council gridlock, reform debates; minilateral alternatives (QUAD, I2U2, etc.);
10. Human security’s mainstreaming — pandemics, climate and food insecurity reframing security itself (Unit 3).

4. Power, Elements of National Power, Soft, Hard and Smart Power

4.1 Concept of power

Power in IR is the ability to affect others’ behaviour to obtain desired outcomes — the capacity to make others do what they would not otherwise do (and prevent them doing what they wish). Robert Dahl’s classic formula: A has power over B to the extent A can get B to do something B would not otherwise do. Power has faces: (i) the power to compel (force/sanctions); (ii) the power to set agendas; (iii) the power to shape preferences (the deepest — making others want what you want).

4.2 Elements of national power (Morgenthau’s catalogue — memorize in groups)

1. Geography — location, size, terrain (Nepal’s Himalayan geography: defence asset, trade liability, landlockedness — Unit 6);
2. Natural resources — energy, minerals, water (Nepal’s hydropower endowment as latent power);
3. Population — numbers (manpower, market), but also quality (education, health);
4. Economic capacity — industrial base, technology, finance, trade;
5. Military capability — armed forces, weapons, logistics, nuclear capability (hard power’s core);
6. National character and morale — the social glue, will, identity (Nepal’s Gurkha military reputation as reputation-power);
7. Diplomacy — “the intelligence of power” — skill in converting capability into outcomes;
8. Government and leadership — institutional quality, strategic culture, political stability (a Nepali sensitivity, given governance volatility).

Analytical caution (a mark-winning line): national power is relational (power over whom?) and situational (effective where?); a capability inventory measures potential, not usable power. Small states maximize power through coalitions, institutions (UN, NAM), law and skilled diplomacy — the Nepali strategy.

4.3 Hard, soft and smart power (Joseph Nye’s triad)

• Hard power — coercion through military force and economic pressure (sanctions, aid conditionality); “sticks and carrots.”
• Soft power — attraction and persuasion: a country’s culture, political values and foreign policies when they are legitimate and attractive (Nye: getting others to want what you want). Examples: US universities and pop culture, Japan’s aesthetics, India’s Bollywood/yoga/diaspora, China’s Confucius Institutes and “BRI attraction.” Nepal’s soft power assets: its brand as the birthplace of the Buddha (Lumbini), Everest and the Himalaya, tourism and trekking culture, Gurkha valour, peacekeeping reputation, and its spiritual-cultural exports.
• Smart power — the strategic combination: hard and soft resources blended to legitimate ends and means; Nye coined it for the US post-Iraq debate, and it now defines how even middle and small states design policy (military competence plus attraction — e.g., Nepal’s peacekeeping: a hard-power contribution delivered in a soft-power idiom).

5. Concept and Technique of Balance of Power

5.1 Concept

The balance of power is both a policy and a system: the notion that national security is preserved when power among states is so distributed that no single state (or coalition) can dominate the rest — each state’s pursuit of safety produces a counter-balancing equilibrium. Morgenthau: the balance is “a universal principle of operation” of state systems; Kenneth Waltz: balances form whether states intend them or not (the structural logic of anarchy).

Two orientations: the balance proper (equal or appropriately proportioned distribution) and the counterweight/compensation logic (if A grows, others align against A — “the main purpose of the balance is not to preserve peace but to preserve the system itself,” in Morgenthau’s sober line).

5.2 Techniques of balancing (the list the examiner wants)

1. Armament and rearmament — internal balancing (build your own capability);
2. Alliances — external balancing (nato, Warsaw Pact; and counterweight alliances such as the US-Japan and AUKUS arrangements today); the flip side: balancing vs. bandwagoning (join the stronger vs. oppose the stronger — small states’ classic dilemma);
3. Compensation/repartition — compensating a rival’s gain elsewhere (19th-century Congress diplomacy’s territorial trades);
4. Divide and rule — weakening rivals by fomenting their internal divisions (the dark art);
5. Buffer states — maintaining weak states between rivals (Nepal’s classical function between India and China — the very reason its independence survived; Belgium in Europe the textbook case);
6. Intervention — armed interference to restore equilibrium;
7. Disarmament and arms control — structured reductions to stabilize the balance (NPT-era);
8. Neutralization — guaranteeing a state’s non-alignment by great-power agreement (Nepal’s Zone of Peace proposal, 1975, was an attempted self-neutralization; Austria’s 1955 constitutional neutrality the European example);
9. Holding the balance / offshore balancing — a state remaining uncommitted to tip the scales (Britain’s historic role in Europe).

5.3 Balance of power and Nepal (the compulsory Nepali paragraph)

Nepal is the living laboratory of balance-of-power doctrine: Prithvi Narayan Shah’s counsel — Nepal as “a yam between two boulders,” requiring friendship with both empires north and south and vigilance toward each — is the indigenous statement of the balancing imperative; Sugauli (1816) taught the cost of imbalance; the Rana-era British patronage, the 1950/1960 twin treaties, non-aligned membership, the 1975 Zone of Peace proposal, post-2015 diversification of trade and transit (China, Bangladesh) and calibrated engagement of the Indo-Pacific competition are successive chapters of one policy: survival by balance. For the essay: balance of power is not merely a great-power game; for a buffer state, being balanced is existence.

Model Questions

1. Define International Relations. Discuss its nature and scope in the twenty-first century. (10)
2. Trace the evolution of international relations since 1945, marking the Cold War, the post-Cold War and the current phases. How did each phase engage Nepal? (15)
3. What is national power? Explain its elements, distinguishing stable from volatile elements. (10)
4. Explain soft, hard and smart power with examples. Assess Nepal’s soft power assets. (10)
5. What is the balance of power? Explain its principal techniques, with special reference to Nepal’s historical experience as a buffer state. (15)
6. Short notes: (a) Non-Aligned Movement; (b) Unipolar moment; (c) Buffer state; (d) Balancing vs. bandwagoning. (4×5)