First Post

I decided to take Matthew Yglesias's advice and start writing for free. Not that I expect anyone to actually read what I write here. This is primarily just a place for me to put my own thoughts on "paper" without the necessity of keeping a journal (which I've always found to be a bit teenage-girlish).

For anyone who might actually read this, though, my posts will primarily be about international relations and U.S. foreign relations and foreign policy. While not everyone considers those three categories to be entirely separate, I do. International relations deals with the nature of state-to-state relations (i.e., the way that things like the structure of the world system and human behavior affect the way in which states interact). Foreign policy is what a state wants from other states and the process by which it comes to that decision. Foreign relations is how states go about getting what they want; it's where the rubber meets the road. For example, what the U.S. wanted from Afghanistan on September 12, 2001 was to stop being a haven for al-Qa'ida. That was the U.S.'s foreign policy for Afghanistan. How the U.S. went about getting it was to initiate a war against Afghanistan that sought to topple the Taliban government and capture al-Qa'ida's leaders in Afghanistan. That was the U.S.'s foreign relations with Afghanistan.

Some might see this distinction as artificial, but I do think it helps distinguish between ends and means when it comes to the international arena. Not every country in the U.S.'s shoes could have gone the route of waging war to achieve the goal of clearing Afghanistan of al-Qa'ida, and those limitations of the means of achieving an end have ramifications for what the state will want as its end. For example, states that don't have the military means that the U.S. does will more likely than not have more pacific foreign relations with other states than the U.S. does even in exactly similar circumstances. If Peru had been the target of al-Qa'ida on 9/11, then Peru likely would have instituted a foreign policy of altering its foreign relations in such a way as reduce the likelihood of it being targeted again. This is so not because Peru is inherently more pacifist than the U.S., but because Peru simply doesn't have the means of clearing Afghanistan of al-Qa'ida forces.

I don't anticipate posting more than twice a week here, so this one should hold me over until at least Tuesday.