Using Realism: Can China Rise Peacefully?

Key Terms

Hegemony: Leadership or dominance of one state over others (in a region or globally)

Security Competition: usually refers to the buildup of military (and other) capabilities to keep a state secure; one state's development of new weapons or equipment can often lead to a rival state taking the same steps, or attempting to go further, which is why this is called security "competition." A common defensive realist view of this is the "security dilemma," which argues that increased security competition by rising powers makes conflict more and more likely as time goes on.

Balance of Power: "The balance of power theory in international relations suggests that national security is enhanced when power is distributed so that no individual state is strong enough to dominate all others. In order to prevent this, states 'balance' with each other in order to prevent the rise of a hegemon."

Group Up - Your choice!

There need to be... 2-4 people in each group

A mix of HL and SL students in each group

People who don't annoy Tr. Larry in each group (impossible to achieve, so don't worry about this one)

Your Task

Explore Realist interpretations of China's rise to power, using both the Defensive Realist and Offensive Realist perspectives. The documents below contain brief overviews of how these perspectives view China's rise.

Together with your partners, you should...

1. Bullet-point outline the arguments of Offensive and Defensive Realists regarding whether China can rise to power peacefully.

2. Discuss which perspective is more convincing to your group - bear in mind that you are just looking at the Realist view(s); there are other perspectives out there as well, but for today we are trying to understand Realism and Realism alone 😇

In the last ten minutes of class, we'll go over the two perspectives and end with a discussion about which view the class tends to favor -- remember that "other people and their differences can also be right" (IB Mission and Vision Statement.)

The class PPT is also embedded at the bottom of this page :)

Offensive Structural Realism - Perspective #1

Defensive Structural Realism - Perspective #2

Class PPT (if it helps you out)

HOMEWORK for Wednesday (Happy Moon Festival!)

Textbook pp. 6-12 (types of Power, theory of Realism, theory of Liberalism -- we'll introduce this after the holiday)

One ten-minute John Mearsheimer video - available on ManageBac

One OPTIONAL video about the rise of China - perspectives by John Mearsheimer (the leading Realist) and Joseph Nye (a leader proponent of Liberalism) - available on ManageBac