Understanding International Relations, Third Edition

Chapter 4
The State and Foreign Policy
Introduction
In this and the next two chapters, the realist agenda will be examined – which
is to say that these chapters will be concerned with the state, foreign policy,
power, security, conflict and war. This is the ‘realist’ agenda in the sense that
these are the topics identified by realism and neorealism as the important
topics for the study of international relations, but, of course, there is no reason
to be limited to saying realist things about this agenda; on the contrary, some
of the conclusions drawn here will not be those that realism would draw – the
aim is a critical engagement with these topics. Whether this realist agenda
ought still to be the primary focus for the study of IR is, of course, a contro-
versial issue, but there are good reasons for at least starting with this agenda –
it is, after all, how the subject has been defined for most of the last century
and even if the aim is to develop a different agenda there is much to be said
for starting with the familiar before moving to the unfamiliar.