ABSTRACT
The traditional image of international relations, with its emphasis on sovereign and independent states, delicate calculations of, and a constant struggle for, power, and an overall distribution of resources that permitted and promoted a measure of security through some balancing of capabilities, is as uninstructive as it is inaccurate in describing the contemporary era. Traditional writing on international relations presented us with a fairly straightforward model. A few assumptions, collectively constituting the realist perspective, are integral to this model. The globalist, or interdependent, image offers very different answers to the problems of order and the relations between states. The interdependence image offers a more sophisticated picture of international relations. Patron-client relations may range from Europe’s one-sided relations with its former colonies in the nineteenth century, or the Soviet Union’s relations with its Eastern European neighbours, to the more informal and balanced relations between the United States and Israel or the Soviet Union and Syria.
