Theories and Research in Global Politics, International Politics Essay

Theories and Research in Global Politics, International Politics - Essay Example In addition to the direct economic costs associated with terrorism and the threat of further terrorism, 9/11 also had important political ramifications. Importantly, political scientists have been wracking their brains trying to make sense the horrific violence undertaken the morning of 9/11 and further violence inspired by global jihadists bent on taking over the world. Psychologists sought to explore the psychological factors leading people to kill in the name of Allah, domestic-level theorists explored the domestic antecedents to terror including extreme poverty, a lack of education and political repression. System-level theorists however were at a loss to explain the attacks of September 11th and the ensuing War on Terror (Bram and Rapaport 55). The War on Terror represents a total American foreign policy shift which advocates the concept of unilateralism and unilateral military action in the face of a global terrorist threat. This is American hegemony par excellence. Seeking to address this dramatic change in US foreign policy, this essay asks the following questions: How has the international order changed in the face of US hegemony and what are the global ramifications of this new foreign policy of unilateralism? Can international relations theory explain the War on Terror and global American hegemony? If so, which explanatory theory best explains American unilateralism and the New World Order? This essay will argue that realism, as an explanatory theory of international relations, is the theory most applicable to the present international order in which a hegemonic United States remains at the helm of the international system. Accordingly, realism provides perhaps the most concise and strongest definition of what consti tutes state interest, behavior and the establishment of the international order with the United States as a hegemonic actor. Realists argue that