A review of this 1959 text by Kenneth Waltz is presented in eleven pages in which the continued relevance of the theories contained within is also assessed. Five sources are cited in the bibliography.
Name of Research Paper File: D0_MTwaltzs.rtf
Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
this - man is basically an animal, and the animal kingdom is rife with conflict over territories, mating rituals and other factors. Humans, it seems, just continued to carry over
the conflict as the species became more developed. Yet according to neorealist such as Kenneth Waltz, conflict resulting in war isnt necessarily
the fault of the individual. The last thing an individual wants to do is to pick a fight with someone else. Rather, war is a result of a flaws international
system, a system that has no mediation factors, but rather, which leaves countries to decide for themselves when the time is right to fight or not.
This essay examines Waltzs views through his 1959 book "Man, The State and War." Once we have reviewed the book, we undertake to determine how Waltzs
theories hold up to todays post-Cold War scenario. Overview of the Book The main these of Waltzs book was that war
is an inevitable condition among the nations of today, simply by the very nature of how the international system is set up and being operated (University of Washington) -- (or
at least, among nations during the late 1950s, but as well see, a lot of Waltzs theories are still in consideration, even close to 40 years later).
The main problem, he contends, is that with so many sovereign states, ". . . with no system of law enforceable among them," each state
judges "its grievances and ambitions according to the dictates of its own reason or desire" (University of Washington). Such desires, Waltz continues, ultimately creates conflict and conflict leads to war