Systemic Level of Analysis. The international systemic level-of-analysis approach underlines the importance of environmental factors as the major determinants of a state’s foreign policy. This approach embraces the notion that, unlike in a domestic power structure whereby power relations are hierarchic, in international politics the relations among states are anarchic in the sense that though they are not chaotic there is no higher power that can prevent states from e.g. attacking each other. Hence, states must have enough power to defend themselves. But how much power is needed by states to survive? There are two fundamentally different perspectives to this issue. The first is espoused by Xxxxx (1959; 1979), and such perspective essentially states that states ought to pursue power but should be careful as to not become dominant for by becoming so other states will retaliate or form alliances to counter this dominant state. Therefore, according to this perspective, a state that obtains more power does not necessarily accumulate greater security. This perspective entails a number of components. The first concept is the existence of an organizing principle by which states are ordered on the basis of their capabilities (Keene 2005, 198). States are structured in this manner by virtue of their propensity to constrain and limit each other (Waltz 1979, 100). The second concept is the notion that the international environment is anarchic (Waltz 1959). Does anarchy imply total chaos? Not necessarily. Bull (1977, 45-47) espoused that due to the absence of a central authority that is able to interpret and enforce the law, individual members of the international society must judge and enforce the law; hence leading to justice that exists despite being ‘crude and uncertain.’ Another perspective regards anarchy in this context as simply reflected in a world where states are all equal to each other in the sense that in the absence of an all-encompassing authority no state can command others and no state can be compelled to obey others (Waltz 1979, 88). Such a situation induces states to develop their own capabilities to engage in self-help with the rationale that ‘in the absence of a supreme authority, there is the constant possibility that conflicts will be settled by force’ (Waltz 1959, 188). What does this self-help system entail? Xxxxx (1979, 118) illustrates it with the following: A self-help is one in which those who do not help themselves, or who do so less effectively than others, will fai...
