IRLS - Week-3 Discussion Question
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Feb 20, 2024
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Week-3 Discussion Question
In the week three discussion, we are required to analyze whether cultural/ideational factors affect
how the United States interacts with other nation-states. In the World of international relations, culture is embedded in every aspect of world politics. International relations suffer from underspecified treatments of culture that risk reifying, essentializing, or ignoring the effects of cultural differences in state relationships (Jones 2021, 22). One needs to only look at how the rise
of non-Western powers, the return of ethnonationalism, violent extremism in the name of religious identification, and the ideology of white resistance impact how international actors align their interests. For example, one can look at the influence of the Spanish language and Catholicism on Latin American countries (Vlahos 1991,59).
One of the significant obstacles to cultural research in international relations is that there needs to be a precise overlap between cultural groups and states. The concept of nationality confuses this differentiation when applied to the idea of the nation-state because decisions are made based on multiple factors such as political, cultural, geographical, and even religious (Jones 2021, 22). The United States is a melting pot of multiple cultures: Asians, Africans, Europeans, and many more; all these different ethnicities impact policy implementation.
Hypothetically, the United States' cultural multiplicity has enhanced how foreign policy applies to trade agreements, international aid, treaties, and indoctrination into intergovernmental originations. The United States is one of the most influential players in world politics, allowing it
a unique distinction regarding its demography and policy impact on the rest of the World. No nation is better at advertising its political ideology like the United States; by spreading its political ideology in capitalism, individual freedoms, and human progress, it is the core of how the United States has been able to spread democracy to the rest of the World. The United States has taken on the role of morality, especially concerning religion, the spread of Christian principles, and democracy. The most recent tradition of the US spreading democratic ideology has been fostered through Woodrow Wilson's 'universal moral objective' to make the World safe for democracy; a commitment to liberal democratic internationalism is vital to American interests (Moss 1995, 192).
In order to properly test this hypothesis, one needs to look into how foreign nations manage relations with the United States, how aid is disbursed, types of treaty agreements in regard to trade, and even environmental issues. The best way to measure this research would be to look at published case studies on the influence of the United States' relationship with specific geographic
locations and to measure how different variables affect the outcome. Certain limitations exist in managing such research because more than culture alone is needed to control how foreign policy is implemented, and many more factors contribute to the outcome of policymaking.
Finally, one needs to note that all cultures are not the same, and at the end of the day, it is not a one-size-fits-all method; culture is the source of people's reality and is more significant than any country (Vlahos 1991, 59).
Bibliography
Jones, Stephen W., "Identification of Cultural Differences and Their Effects on International Relations: A Novel Approach" (2021). Dissertations. 1899.
Moss, Todd J. “US Policy and Democratization in Africa: The Limits of Liberal Universalism.”
The Journal of Modern African Studies
33, no. 2 (1995): 189–209. http://www.jstor.org/stable/161452.
Vlahos, Michael. “Culture and Foreign Policy.”
Foreign Policy
, no. 82 (1991): 59–78. https://doi.org/10.2307/1148641
.
Reus-Smit, Christian. “International Relations Theory Doesn’t Understand Culture.” https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/03/21/international-relations-theory-doesnt-understand-culture/
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