THE DEVELOPMENT OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

International relations is an art and a field of intellectual endeavour. As an art, international relations refers to the totality of relations that exists among states or nation states in the international system. It is an all-embracing  concept which covers all spheres of relations  ranging  from  commercial transactions,  tourism, cultural  exchanges, religious affiliations and other relations among nation states. As an art, international relations concerns itself with the activities of governments  or states in relation to one another. It is an instrument for the realization of governmental objectives and aspirations.⁶ International relations as a field of intellectual endeavour is the systematic study of the

relations that exist  among nation states in the international system.

As  an art it could be said to have started when nations began to organize themselves into political entities, claiming  sovereignty over recognizable portions of land on which  they  exercised their authority. International relations as a field of  intellectual pursuit did not begin  until 1914. Before this  period, international relations was  the exclusive preserve of  professional diplomats and statesmen.

The  first World War with its attendant horror and destruction altered international relations.  World War 1 was  blamed partly on secret diplomacy conducted by professional diplomats and statesmen. At the end of the war in 1918, efforts aimed at preventing future re-occurrence were pursued. The conduct  of relations among nations began to gain popular and academic recognition.  Henceforth,  international relations enjoyed the attention of scholarly-minded individuals  from  various fields ranging form history,  law,  economics, sociology,  geography, etc. each  of these disciplines has its won way of seeing the world. In like  manner, at  the  1919  Versailles treaty which ended World  War 1,  the veteran French Prime  Minister, George  Clemenceau persuaded the world to believe  that war is  too  serious a business to be left  to soldiers  alone.

Before 1914, there was no autonomous discipline called international relations.⁷ On the contrary, the various segments of international relations were studied under different but  traditional disciplines like  political science,  diplomatic history among others. It was in  1914  that these  aspects of international relations were  synthesized  into a  single discipline known as international  relations. it is  important to state that the traditional  disciplines were  not  totally divorced from international relations.  Up till the present period, international relations is still studied under law, history, economics, diplomacy among others. 1914, therefore, marked a watershed in the history of international relations. Henceforth, historians and lawyers began to make deliberate efforts to study the modalities for the conduct of international relations.

The study of international relations assumed both historical and legalistic approaches. In the  historical approach, the  conduct of relations between states  was studied  with a view to  knowing whether or not the outbreak  of World War1  could be blamed on the acts of omission  or commission on the art of diplomats or statesmen. Scholarship also aimed at surveying the possibility of guarding against the recurrence of a conflict of the magnitude of World War 1.  In the legalistic approach. The framework for the conduct of relations among states was studied. Jurists sought to see if international or quasi-international institutions that existed before 1914 were responsible for the outbreak of World War 1.

The development of international relations is associated with approaches which captured thinking about the discipline.  Idealism was the dominant theme in the early years of  the discipline.⁸ The  reason  is due largely to the circumstances that led to the establishment of the subject  (World War 1). There are two key points which illuminate our thinking in this direction. First, there was a wide spread view that the overwhelming lesson of the war was that military force could no longer achieve its objectives. Public perception of the war in Europe was that of a senseless war which claimed millions of lives as a result of insignificant portion of territory. The war achieved marginal results for the combatants. Secondly, the lack of real reward for either side after the heavy losses was compounded by the fact that it was seen as a war that no one had actually wanted.  The war had resulted from the separate acts of various leaders none of whom wanted war as the outcome. But these acts reinforced mutual fears and suspicion that war became totally unavoidable.

The implication after all was that the massive deaths had all been in vain. The casualties recorded and  lack of  any real  reward  even to the victorious countries was worsened  by  the realization that Europe  had fought war which no one  had  really wanted.  The lessons of the war was useful both for politicians and academics studying the phenomena of international relations.  Four major lessons were drawn. First, the war was simply a senseless act.  Second, the First World War was as a result of leaders who were caught up in a peculiar process they could not control. Third, the causes of   the war were the misunderstanding between
leaders and failure to practice democratic accountability in the countries involved, and fourth, the tension which had made the war inevitable could have been removed by the spread of democratic ideas and granting independence to colonized people.

The discipline of international relations grew out of this intellectual and political setting and ever since, it bore the birth marks of its origins.

International relations originated in two countries which were victorious power in the war. These powers, USA /Britain were more or less essentially satisfied with the results of the war. They wanted to maintain the status quo and disallow a change in the new international order.

International relations encountered some problems especially in the inter-war years. It was generally regarded as discipline that does not subscribe to changes no matter how little. Second, due to the wholesale destruction and loss of life, those who survived cannot  forget it in a hurry. They wished the war and had been a war to end all wars. Therefore, international relations had to be concerned with how to prevent such a war from occurring again.

Third, the basic assumptions of international relations were utterly shattered by the very outbreak of the Second World War.  The outbreak of the war left a heavy burden on International Relations. The practitioners had to reflect the concerns of the previous generations. It was generally believed the war erupted largely due to misunderstanding amongst leaders. So international relations devised ways of   reducing such misunderstanding in future.

Approach is some kind of simplifying devise that allows one to decide which facts matter and which do not. According  to Baylis and Mith⁹(1997), a good analogy is sunglasses with different coloured lenses; put on the red pair  and the world  looks red;  put on the yellow pair and it looks  yellow. It is a way of deciding which of the numerous possible facts matter most.