Matt Zeitlin: Impetuous Young Whippersnapper

When I put out my call for “someone who knows something about IR theory,”  I was actually thinking of my east coast doppelgänger Minipundit. And responded he did.  While you can go try to find it in the comments, it was about as complete a response as one could want, so I’ll just post it right here:

I honestly and truly despise semantical debates like this. Look, classical liberals like Norman Angell made a set of arguments back in the day, those arguments inspired those of contemporary neoliberals like Robert Keohane, who wrote in response to neorealists like Kenneth Waltz, who built off of classical realists like Hans Morgenthau and E.H. Carr, who were responding to Angell, and so the circle continues. Now, is Waltz similar to Angell? I’d say no; Angell was almost Panglossian in his optimism about the pacifying effects of globalization, whereas Waltz doesn’t think economic affairs matter much at all. Indeed, Keohane’s critique of Waltz was built around the potential for economic relations to lead to cooperation in an anarchic international system. But regardless, this isn’t what matters. I don’t care if Waltz is a closet liberal; I care if Waltz is right. Same goes for Angell, Keohane, and all the rest of them. While it may be an interesting parlor game to go around accusing people of incorrectly labeling themselves (though the piece Carpenter quotes seems to not understand that liberalism in political theory and IR theory are two completely different things), the labels aren’t the important element here. The theories are.