The Importance of Africa to The World System After 9/11 Attacks: War on Terrorism or Integration for Sustainable Development

3.1 The Context and Content (connections and the complexity):

Realism is a theory assuming a particular view of the world, or a paradigm of state power politics relations, security is the key assumption with states making the Russian calculation to maximize their security interests and power. As a basic neo classical theory, it is define by the following assumptions; the international realm is anarchic and consists of independent political units called states; Concerned with balance power equilibrium, making war inevitable due to power shifts; That states are the key actors in world politics that is the injunction of taking politics seriously as a particular field of human endeavour ; that states can be treated as homogenous units acting on the basis of self interests that is the proposition that civil order is the sine qua non for every other political good; that analysis can proceed on the assumptions that states acts as if they were rational, that is the evaluations and comparisons of institutions and regime types not only principles; that international anarchy, is the absence of any legitimate authority in the international system means that, conflicts between self interested states entails the danger of war and the possibility of coercion, that is the call for a more complex moral and political psychology. Assuming to view the world as it is and not as it is supposed to be.

Therefore the principal authors of this theory are enrolled in the school of thinkers who develop a unique pessimistic vision of human relations. The origin of this classical theory could be traced to (Thucydide 471-400 BC) who in his works, stress the importance of forceful rivalry relations in negotiation between Athens and the little island of Melas, during the Peloponnesian war. As such is considered as one of the basic text which have inspired and summarized the realist thoughts. This period correspond to the politics of the world imperial system in which one government controls most of the world. This period was followed by the feudal system of international politics. The book entitled ‘’prince’’ of Machiavelli (1469-1527) stressed the importance of the security of the state. The ‘’Leviathans’’ of Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) develop the vision of the ‘’state of nature’’²² characterized by anarchy of man by man and necessitating the imposition of an order through a supreme sovereign political authority unit, of state centric realism in international affairs (Gilpin 2001:16). To Clausewitz (1780-1831) his works on war insist that war was another means to play politics, thus included among the sources of the 20^th century.

A third form of world politics in an anarchical system composed of state that are relatively coercive but with no higher government, for the modern scholars, such as (Hans Maugenthau 1904-1980) and author of politics among the nations. Structural realism or neo realism also known as systemic realism is a recent version of realist thought and is associated with (Kenneth Waltz 1924) innovative and influential Theory of International Politics 1979, (ibid 2001:16)(Henry Kissinger born 1923), (Raymond Aron1905-1983) all held eminent position under realism theory trying to understand the preoccupation of leaders of foreign policy culminated to what became known as neo-realism (Katzenstein et al, 1999). These authors have always preferred lucidity of action to a speculation judged to be idealist. The failure of Wilson’s ideas, the constraints of the Cold War, has essentially made realism a pragmatic theory of conflict rather than to be part of dissuasion, a characteristic reality of the classical theory or human realism associated with Maugenthau exposition in which the power pursuit propensity of states is derived from the basic nature of human beings as power maximise. This perspective holds that ideological as well as material factors, may constitute power for example power of public opinion with some social underpinnings. But who wants peace must make war (Caesarism)²³. The permanent risks of conflicts between states and the search for balance of power equilibrium, constitutes the central hypothesis of the realist theory that is made up of several contested standard variants. All realist share few fundamental ideas such as, the anarchic nature of the international system and the primacy of the state in international affairs. (ibid 2001:16).