International Relations can be put as “the study of the interactions among the various actors that participate in international politics, including states, international organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and individuals. It is the study of the behaviors of these actors as they participate individually and together in international political processes.” Within this field of political science, there are numerous ways in which this topic can be studied. Our first example can be seen through the 4 main theoretical perspectives of Liberalism, Realism, Radicalism, and Constructivism, in which we can see how these contending theoretical perspectives can synthesize to spur subsequent refinements, while revealing flaws in the conventional wisdom in International Relations. Another example we can use to study International Relations is the notion of History. Through historical research we can study individual or multiple cases which can or could have affected the state of the world and how we view global order and peace. A third method of studying International Relations can be Philosophy. In studying various works dealing with the international order, states, and their leaders, we can develop rationales from the analytical thinking realized through reading such core texts from authors such as Aristotle and Plato, giving us insight into why leaders do what they do. Our fourth method to study this field is using aspects of behaviorism to comprehend why individuals, both alone, and in groups, act in patterned ways. Through various systematic and empirical tests regarding the patterned action of for example a world leader, we can predict or in fact uncover future behavior, giving us more leeway into what we can expect later on. Our fifth and final method we can utilize is simply the Alternative. Using the notion of tearing apart major concepts, such as sovereignty, and discourse analysis to build coagulated description, we discover that digging below the surface can lead to more detailed, insightful, and accurate facts and answers.
Looking back at these methods, we can now relate a real world example to justify some of the perspectives of International Relations explained in the former. Such an example could be the Nuremberg Trials. The Nuremburg Trials were basically trials established and facilitated by the four allied powers (France, UK, USA, and Russia) after World War II in order to prosecute Nazi war criminals for their crimes against humanity. The trials were set up in such a way that reflected liberalism in the way in which Russia and France cooperated and compromised the fate of the accused. Philosophy in incorporating the peaceful nature of German philosopher Immanuel Kant’s works in the negotiations and in the almost unbiased procedure that the trial was carried out in and finally historical, obviously using knowledge from this event to establish relevant treaties and laws to run a more efficient as well as neutral trial as well as to prevent future assaults on humanity.
The independence of a state
The Russian delegation wanted nothing more that to simply execute them systematically outside the trial complex, while the French favoured greater leniency and clemency.
