A study on the basic contribution of constructivists on strategic/military studies.
This paper analyzes the view of constructivism on the military and strategic trends in the world today. It is structured around Christian Reus-Smit’s proposition, that state military behaviors are characterized by its normative structures, identity and the mutually constitutive relationship between agents and structures.
For roughly the last two decades, the studies of international relations have evolved around two great debates. One is between neorealism and neoliberalism, the successors of the longer debate between realism and liberalism. Both make up the rationalist theories, believing that states are still the most important actor that seeks to maximize their gains, and ignoring moral questions. By focusing on actors that are seen to interact with each other carrying a fixed set of preferences, rationalist theories have engaged in a narrow debate.