ABSTRACT
The next three chapters revisit IR theory from an ecological perspective. As indicated earlier, the exercise can be neither comprehensive nor definitive, considering the breadth of the literature and its many possible interpretations. We introduced “classical” and “structural” realism in Chapter 1. Here, we focus most explicitly on the philosophical roots of realism, and as such do not treat at great length the geopolitical tradition, concurring with Daniel Deudney, who asserts in an innovative article that “most of the contemporary public discourse of ‘geopolitics’ is more a thematic and rhetorical dimension of American state-centered realism and strategic studies than a distinctive or articulated theory” (Deudney 1997:97).
