ABSTRACT
Kenneth Waltz had one brilliant idea: that the international system is something distinct from the nation-states that comprise it. A corporatist international system understands that the substance of most international relations is business relations, that most wars are financed or not by private business, and that international business interests are highly organized and often polarized. For Waltz, the international system is constituted by the distribution of power largely military among major states, known as the great powers. Liberals follow economists in arguing that international monetary systems may attain at most two of three desirable objectives. These are stable, fixed exchange rates; free convertibility of currencies; and national monetary autonomy to permit Keynesian macroeconomic stabilization. Understanding the prospects for peace within any international system requires knowing the roots of both cooperation and conflict, and not focusing one-sidedly on one or the other, as both realism and liberalism do.
