Thoughts on Realism, Liberalism, and Progressivism

This essay is a general discussion on three images of international relations--realism, liberalism, and progressivism--as discussed in class sessions and in assigned readings for International Relations 310, “U.S. Foreign Policy,” as well as additional readings (principally from International Relations 308, “Fundamentals of International Relations: Theory and Issues”). The assignment for this paper was to take “a general position... on the arguments reviewed throughout the semester, explaining which position [is] most plausible and why.” This essay discusses how each of the three images plausibly describes specified classes of topics in international relations.