Realism and power: The Latin American debt crisis of 1982

Realism as a theory of international relations has a long and varied history. Beginning with Thucydides, realism has sought to explain and predict the behavior of states and state-like entities in the global political arena by focusing on the role of power. The scholar who most represents the realist paradigm is Hans Morgenthau. His explanations of realist doctrine have been faulted for many shortcomings, to include his failure to recognize the growing role of International Governmental Organizations (IGOs) in world politics. The most important criticisms of Morgenthau and the Realist school have come from scholars of the Liberal Internationalism school who believe that international institutions, international law, and international economic linkages, and nonstate actors have replaced states as the primary actors in global political and economic relations, and have replaced power politics with interdependency.; I argue that Morgenthau's reformulation of classical Realism still has great explanatory power. This dissertation is an attempt to further refine Morgenthau's Realism so that the actions and importance of IGOs and nonstate actors can be explained in a global political context. This reformulation presents a "New Realism" in which the soft elements of power alluded to but not quantified by Morgenthau are shown to provide the key to understanding the actions of most global political actors in matters of importance.; The explanatory power of a reformulated realism is demonstrated by applying it to the resolution of the Latin American Debt Crisis of 1982. In the conclusion, I discuss the policy implications for international relations of an updated realist theory.