ABSTRACT
Having faced down the critics and potential challenges to the use of a Gramscian-based approach to International Relations, it is incumbent upon this author to go that one step beyond the critiquing of other traditions as well as the conventional wisdom regarding the process of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) enlargement. Russian-American relations began to sour with respect to the situation in the Balkans and the prospect of NATO airstrikes. NATO expansion eastwards may be smooth and unhindered by problems such as those encountered by West German politicians and bureaucrats after unification occurred. A Gramscian analysis of international politics seeks to be not only critical of existing world orders, but search for alternatives ones based upon a different relationships between ideas, institutions and material capabilities than present in the order. In his seminal 'Rationalism in Politics' essay, Oakeshott contends that the study of politics and those who engage in this discipline cannot escape from a certain degree of rationalism.
