- 4. International Relations as a Social-Historical Phenomenon

Lecture

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regional politics, finance, trade, production, etc. These states
act actively beyond their own borders and have a decisive influence on all other states

located within their sphere of influence. By geographic sphere of influence, superpowers
can be divided into global and regional.
Global superpowers have no substantial restrictions on their own foreign
activity, except those they voluntarily accept or are forced to observe
taking into account the policies of other global superpowers. The influence of the international environment on
their foreign and domestic policy can be interpreted as insignificant, especially in the
case where they have no equal rivals.

Regional superpowers dominate among a group of states, predominantly located
in their region (with the exception of superpowers that retain influence in their former colonies,
while in the regions where they are located they yield to others); their activity in international
relations is largely determined by the geographic boundaries of the regions of their
location or historically conditioned dominance.

II. States occupy the second rung in the hierarchy of international systems. The sum
of their potential capabilities allows them to guarantee their own sovereignty and territorial
integrity, as well as to influence social processes in their immediate surroundings or in
the adjacent territories of neighboring states. Their sphere of influence does not exceed the boundaries of a part
of the region (that is, a subregion) in which they are located, and usually they only fully and
effectively control their own state territory.

III. Dependent states are internally and externally weak, quite often unable to
effectively control their own territory, and depend not only on more powerful
states, but in some cases also on other subjects of international relations (for example, TNCs). Their
influence on international relations can be considered insignificant, but the international environment
affects them quite strongly. Regarding this category of countries, R. Jackson and G. Sorensen
use the outline of "quasi-states" and believe that they are distinguished by "poverty"
and, as a consequence, insignificant investment, weak infrastructure (roads, schools,
hospitals, etc.)* the absence of modern technologies, a lack of trained and educated personnel,
and other socioeconomic achievements. A feature of humanity's political organization was
the steady growth in the number of sovereign and independent countries. If in 1900 there
were almost 30 of them, then by 1945 – over 60, and in 2000 – 192. Significant stages
in the creation of new states in the 20th century were the collapse of the British and French colonial
empires, the USSR, and the SFRY. According to some forecasts, centrifugal processes in many contemporary
states of the world may lead to the number of sovereign
states reaching 300 by the middle of the 21st century.

However, at the start of the 21st century the world still has 623 colonial possessions and
dependent territories.

International organizations are a collective participant in international relations, because
the institutions and bodies arising within them ensure the realization of the interests of the states,
individuals, or public groups that created them.

The French scholar P. I. Zorgbibe noted that international organizations
are characterized, first, by a political will for cooperation fixed in
founding documents; second, by the presence of a permanent apparatus guaranteeing
continuity in the organization's development; and third, by the autonomy of their competences and decisions.
The legal basis for the creation and activity of international organizations is a charter, which
regulates matters of membership and the duties and rights of participants. In contemporary scholarship there are
sharp disputes over the legal nature of the charters of international
organizations. The substance of the debate on the international legal capacity of international
organizations comes down to the question of interpreting the legal nature of their charters.
Two opposing schools of thought have formed in contemporary international law
regarding this understanding, which can be conditionally distinguished as:
1. Constitutionalism insists on a qualitative difference between charters and international
treaties, since, in the view of S.A. Rosett, E.V. H. Arechaga, W. Friedmann, and others, they
are distinguished by flexibility, which gives them the features of a constitution.
2. The treaty-based approach holds that from a classical standpoint, the charter of an international
organization is an international treaty, which, however, is fairly specific,
since it is distinguished by the flexibility of its provisions and their applicability to particular situations.
A conclusion drawn from constitutionalist theories may be the thesis that international
organizations are a certain new supra-state entity which, by virtue of the functioning of its own
constitution, is an independent subject of international law, at least equal in status to a
state.

International organizations are usually divided into intergovernmental and non-governmental, depending
on who founded them.

Intergovernmental organizations, whose members are governments or other state institutions,
are created on the initiative of states and act within international relations as expressers of
their collective interest. The legal basis for the activity of intergovernmental organizations is
the agreement establishing them and a charter that sets out in detail the structure of the intergovernmental
institutions, their rights and duties, the procedure for membership in the organization, and other matters. The charter
may also contain regulatory provisions concerning the order of relations among the
member states of the organization, as, for example, the Covenant of the League of Nations once did, and now
the UN Charter does. Intergovernmental organizations include the UN, UNESCO, the IAEA, NATO,
the European Union, the Council of Europe, the European Free Trade Association, the World
Trade Organization, the IMF, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the League of Arab
States, the CIS, and many others.

Non-governmental organizations, created by individuals, public
groups, and their organizational structures, reflect in international relations
the common personal or group interests of the members of the organizations. Non-governmental organizations
are transnational in character and operate on the basis of the national law of the state in which
their headquarters is located; their activity is independent and carried out without
the mediation of governmental structures. This type of organization includes, among others,
the Socialist International, the International Olympic Committee, international
sports federations, the International Federation of Trade Unions, the World Council of Churches,
and the Union of European Federalists. International movements are similar in character to non-governmental
organizations but differ from them in having a considerably lower level of institutionalization and
lacking clear organizational structures. Well known among them are the Group of 77,
Greenpeace, Amnesty International, the Pugwash Movement, the Islamic Conference, etc.
International movements attempt to exert pressure on the governments of nation-states by forming and
mobilizing world public opinion. They consist of national non-governmental
organizations that seek, with their help, to defend their rights and change the policies
of their governments, but not to become part of them. Some non-governmental organizations and international movements
interact closely with the UN and other intergovernmental organizations, receiving from them
consultative status, enshrined in Articles 58 and 71 of the Charter of the United Nations. International
organizations are traditionally distinguished by criteria of functional type and geographic
scope of activity.
The criterion of functional type refers to the sphere of international relations in which
the international organization operates; its geographic scope of activity is the part of
geographic space in which the organization's activity is manifested
N. Lomagin believes that international organizations perform three key functions:
1) they serve as a means for states to realize national interests, achieved
by some of them establishing effective control over the activity of the governing bodies
of international organizations;
2) they serve as an arena for discussion and comparison of states' positions within the framework of their permanent
diplomatic representation in the activity of individual bodies;
3) they are an active subject of international relations, since many of them possess
fairly extensive and independent institutions whose staff do not always
associate their activity with the policy of their own home states.
While in the early 1980s the world had more than 3,000 international
organizations, of which almost 300 were intergovernmental, by the mid-1990s these figures had risen to 4,500
and 400 respectively.

The process of growth in the number of international organizations, as V.A.
Baranovsky believes, is "a manifestation of the acceleration of the globalization of the world system, with a clearly expressed
growth in diverse transnational (more precisely, cross-border) interactions."
The interests and goals of the activity of participants in international relations
The problems associated with defining and interpreting the concept of "interest" are extremely
important, which is explained by its being perceived as the defining basis on which
the logic of the actions of participants in international relations is built.
The German philosopher G. Hegel spoke even more categorically, asserting that "the actions
of people arise from their needs, their passions, their characters and abilities, that
the driving motives in this drama are only these needs, passions, and interests, and only they
play the leading role."

Since the activity of any organized human communities in the theory of
international relations is fairly often compared to human activity, it is quite appropriate to
assert that they, too, are guided by certain interests that compel them to enter
into various interactions within the international environment.

G. Morgenthau emphasized that the study of the interests
of states is central, because "this concept links the observer's judgment with the
phenomena of international politics."

D. Feldman classically formulated the thesis that interest is a
recognized need, though not all researchers agree with this.
Y. Kukulka links the goals that guide the participants in international relations
directly to their objective needs. The needs of a state consist, above all, in
ensuring its own existence, political independence, conditions for social development,
and the achievement and maintenance of prestige. In his interpretation, determining the directions of activity
in the international environment is a linking of an objective need with a subjectively
formulated goal:
He in fact substitutes the concept of "goal" for the concept of "interest," since he considers the latter
the final result of a logical transition from the objective sphere of reality into the subjective
sphere of its perception as a basis for guiding action. It is quite difficult to distinguish between the concepts of "interest" and "goal of activity" in
the international environment, and in some cases they are even
identified with one another.

P. Tsygankov defines a goal as the expected (desired) result of an action, which is its cause
(motive). I. Popyuk-Rysinska believes that interest links the undesirable and the desired
situation for a subject of international relations, while a goal is a certain standard of the state of affairs
toward which it strives. The concept of "interest," in her interpretation, is the desired states of international relations
sought by the participants. These interests are always directed outward, beyond
the internal system, and in practice their addressees are always other participants in international
relations.

In actual international relations, interests are made concrete in the goals of activity, which
direct the functional activity of a participant in international relations. If it is not
able to satisfy its own needs, a situation arises that suggests drawing in other
participants in international relations. The result of a specific interaction, that is, the degree of
goal achievement, is the criterion for the correctness of the choice of partner (or object) or the adequacy
of actions taken toward it.

Any participant in international relations tries to realize interests that
are linked to three fundamental goals:
1. Existential, understood as maintaining its normal functioning
through a set of measures to ensure the minimally necessary level of existence.
2. Evolutionary, aimed at ensuring internal and external conditions for
its own development and prosperity.
3. Dominant, connected with its attempts to transform the international
environment in a direction favorable to itself.
The goals of activity follow from one another, since ensuring one's own existence
logically entails development, which leads to a striving to determine those phenomena and processes
that affect the participant in international relations.

In the theory of international relations, the main attention has traditionally been devoted to the study
of national interest, understood as the interest of the state. This concept has been in scholarly
circulation only recently, since it was only in 1935 that it was introduced into the Encyclopedia of the Social
Sciences at Oxford. Priority in the study of the problem of national interest is attributed to R.
Niebuhr and C. Beard, who were the first to put forward the idea of studying states' policies through
the prism of their interests.

All the ideas and concepts related to the study of interest can be divided into two
main schools of thought, which, according to their understanding of its nature, are called the psychological
(subjectivist) and the objectivist.

1. The psychological approach unites the views of scholars who define interest as
a subjective phenomenon connected with people's consciousness. That is, it concerns the perception by persons
making political decisions of information about reality. Interest, given this, is
rather their position, their understanding, which is directed at external objects.
2. The objectivist approach derives interest from actual need and gives both
concepts an objective character. It is defined as a derivative of a perceived need,
understood as a lack (insufficiency) of something essential to the existence and development of a given
participant in international relations. Interest as an objective category can be conscious
or remain outside people's awareness. It is treated as a phenomenon independent of the
reflection of persons making political (or any other) decisions. The objectivist
approach derives from the views of K. Marx and F. Engels, who derived interest from the actual
situation (for example, from economic position) and understood it as a necessity. In their
theories, Marxists distinguished between conscious and unconscious interests.
In its classical form the theory of national interest is set out in the works of G. Morgenthau,
who considered this concept the central one in international relations. He argued that
the foreign policy of states must be built solely and purely on the foundation of their national
interests, since "a foreign policy guided by universal moral
principles and relegating national interest to the background is, under the conditions of contemporary politics
and warfare, a policy of national suicide – actual or
potential." According to G. Morgenthau, national interest is always founded on political
interest, built on the pursuit of a certain level of power that allows a state to realize
any of its own interests, achieve prestige, and exert influence on international
relations.

National interest, as he sees it, contains two elements – a central (stable) one
and a secondary (changeable) one. While the latter changes under the influence of circumstances, the former is
fundamental and is determined by three factors: the nature of the interest, the political
environment in which the interest is realized, and the rational necessity of its realization.
Given this, one of the most important problems of the theory of international relations is the
classification of the interests of participants in international relations. It consists in grouping them by
a number of criteria related to their content, which makes it possible to understand the nature and direction of the
interest as the basis from which the active activity of participants in international relations arises.
A fairly widespread scheme is one according to which interests are divided into egoistic,
altruistic, and existential (i.e., aimed at self-preservation). Such a classification
in general, as well as a characterization of the individual groups of interests it distinguishes, can be found in the works of
A. Wolfers, M. Kaplan, W. van Dyck, R. Wendell, K. Deutsch, and others.

Proceeding from this scheme, A. Wolfers identified three groups of foreign policy goals
of a national state:
1) national expansion (self-extension), consisting in the pursuit of a change to its status
quo in the international environment;
2) national security (self-preservation), that is, attempts to preserve the existing status
quo;
3) national self-abnegation (self-abnegation), understood as a refusal to
realize national interests in favor of the universal interests of the international
community.

K. Holsti classifies foreign policy goals in a similar way, distinguishing
principal ones (linked to self-preservation), expansive ones, and universal ones.
He distinguishes the following goals:
1) existential, consisting in the effort to guarantee oneself territorial
integrity, security, identity, conditions for sustainable development, and adaptation to the processes and
phenomena of the international environment;
2) coexistential, presupposing interaction with other states, coexistence
and cooperation, mutual lending and benefit, and the normativization of their relations;
3) functional, consisting in the pursuit of efficiency and flexibility, the capacity
for change and innovation in actions.

It is obvious that classifications built on a single synthetic criterion are quite
complex, since each of the identified groups requires refinement due to the isolation of narrower
groups of interests.
More convenient, in our view, is a classification based on a group of criteria, according
to which interests are defined more simply and clearly.
An example of this type is the scheme of T. Robinson and K. Holsti, who among all interests distinguish
primary and secondary, material and abstract, general and conflicting, common
and specific, constant and variable, identical and complementary.
Other important criteria by which interests are distinguished are the type
of participant in international relations, the functional content of its interest, its significance, and the time
of realization.

1. By the criterion of the type of participant in international relations, interests are divided into
universal, national, group, and personal.
These correlate with interests distinguished by the criteria of significance, content, and time.
2. By the criterion of significance, interests are divided into existential, operational,
tactical, and strategic.
Existential interests are linked to ensuring the minimally necessary level of
functioning of participants in international relations. Without their realization, a participant cannot
exist at all, which compels any of them to act guided above all by these interests.
Operational interests are linked to direct action or interaction in the
international environment. They are predominantly short-term, determined by narrow
goals of intermediate significance for achieving the underlying interests.
Tactical interests, in content, are closely related to operational ones, but they are somewhat
broader, since, on the one hand, they are elements of strategic interests, being regarded as an
intermediate stage in their realization, while on the other hand they are always tied to the international realities
of the environment that determine their character and content.
They may coincide with needs but be optimal only under certain conditions.
Strategic interests are regarded as the most important of all the others; they
determine the overarching goals set before participants in international relations, which they
strive to achieve.

The first and last of the interests distinguished by the criterion of importance are sometimes called
"core" or "fundamental" interests, and are regarded as long-term (constant), without
whose realization the existence and development of a participant in international relations is impossible.
Comparing the interests defined above, J. Pietras concluded that participants in
international relations attempt to:
"a) realize many other interests through a single action;
b) act simultaneously in different planes and different geographic directions, attempting to
create side effects in other planes and areas of activity;
c) when necessary, reinterpret their own interests: operational ones in favor of tactical ones,
tactical ones in favor of strategic ones, and all in favor of existential ones.»
A national (or any other) interest is unstable and is filled with real
content depending on the specific situation, the state of the international system, and so on.
3. By functional content, interests are traditionally divided into political,
economic, military, cultural, and others. Functional interests are directly related to particular
types of international relations and reflect their specificity.

they are defined as interests of security, the maintenance of normal functioning,
the creation of conditions for sustainable development and flourishing, and the provision of a diverse identity,
spheres of influence, and so on. Interests linked to functioning are inherent to any participant
in international relations, manifesting themselves across all time frames and possessing every degree of significance.
4. By the criterion of time, interests in international relations can be divided into
short-term, medium-term, and long-term.
The point is not to draw precise time boundaries for interests, but rather to show the most general division of interests
according to the time limits of their duration:
— short-term interests are linked to a specific action in international
relations and are limited to the time of its execution;
— medium-term interests are linked to actions whose content forms a logical whole and
leads to the realization of the parties' most important interests;
— long-term interests cover a fairly significant period, linked to a sequence of
actions aimed at realizing the most important interests of a participant in international
relations.

Interests in international relations, as Y. Stefanovych noted, can be
declarative or real in character.
Some are set out in political and legal documents (constitutions, declarations, charters of international
organizations, etc.), while others may be latent in character; they may be concealed, not
precisely defined, and not publicly stated.
J. B. Duroselle remarked on this: "It would, of course, be good if it were
possible to objectively determine national interest."
It is possible to study international relations by comparing the content of national interest that
leaders present with the objective national interest.'" The problem of studying
the content of the interests of participants in international relations remains, in contemporary theory of international relations,
one of the most difficult, since their study is still based more on
the intuitive judgments of scholars than on indisputable and demonstrable arguments.

Self-study questions:

1. Reveal the essence of international relations.
2. Identify the most important features of international relations.
3. Describe the participants in international relations.
4. Characterize the typology and functional features of the subjects of international
relations.
5. Analyze the interests and goals of the activity of participants in international relations.
6. Use examples to trace the interconnection between the interests and goals of the subjects of international
relations.
7. Determine the relationship between the concepts of «actor» and «subject» of international relations.
Whether a participant is a subject in international relations.
8. Determine the relationship between the concepts of «subject of international relations» and «subject
of international law».