International Relations

1. The short answer is that current events are news regarding what is happening around the world. The study of international relations involves being "political historians" and "political philosophers”. It’s the study of the relations of states with each other and with international organizations and certain subnational entities (e.g., bureaucracies and political parties). It is related to a number of other academic disciplines, including political science, geography, history, economics, law, sociology, psychology, and philosophy. The field emerged at the beginning of the 20th century largely in the West and particularly in the U.S. as that country grew in power and influence. The study of international relations has always been heavily influenced by normative considerations, such as the goal of reducing armed conflict and increasing international cooperation. At the beginning of the 21st century, research focused on issues such as terrorism, religious and ethnic conflict, the emergence of substate and non-state entities, the spread of weapons of mass destruction and efforts to counter nuclear proliferation, and the development of international institutions.

2. Realism is considered the pessimistic view because of its focus on the self-interests of states. The name given to a particular theoretical approach to the study of international relations; According to its proponents, realism has been around for a very long time. Some scholars trace its intellectual origins all the way back to Thucydides, the chronicler of the Peloponnesian wars. Liberalism is considered the optimistic view due to its focus on cooperation in the international system. Liberal international is essentially a project to transform international relations so that they conform to models of peace, freedom, and prosperity allegedly enjoyed within constitutional liberal democracies such as the United States. Indeed, at least in terms of political rhetoric, the United States has been the leader in promoting liberal internationalism of one kind or another in the twentieth century.

3. A state is a political actor that has sovereignty and a number of characteristics, including territory, population, organization, and recognition. The most important political characteristic of a state is sovereignty, which means having supreme legal authority. Applied to states it means that they have the exclusive legal right to govern the territory and people within their borders and do not recognize the legal legitimacy of any outside authority. Sovereignty also denotes legal equality among state. One important application of this principle is evident in the UN General Assembly and many other international assemblies, where each member-state has one vote.
4. These characteristics, also referred as power capabilities, assure a great power the ability to exert its economic, military, political and social influence on a global scale. The distribution of power capabilities in the international system determines the number of the great powers and, consequently, the polarity of the international system. If the great powers are more than two, the system will be multi-polar; if they are two; it will be bipolar, while systems with only one great power are considered unipolar.

5. The U.S.-Pakistan divergence in constructivist principles coupled with only short-term realist harmony in stark contrast to the U.S.-India long-term convergence of both realist and constructivist ideals translates into the differential treatment meted out by the U.S. to India and Pakistan. This is not to say that there is no divergence between Indian and U.S. ideals embedded in both schools of thought or that there i`s absolutely no convergence in the U.S.-Pakistan case, but that, relatively, India fares better than Pakistan on both counts

References.
1. Smith, Steven. 2006. “Introduction to Political Philosophy | Lecture 24 - In Defense of Politics.” http://oyc.yale.edu/political-science/plsc-114/lecture-24.
2. Pease, Kelly-Kate S. 2010. International Organizations: Perspectives on Governance in the Twenty-first Century. 4th ed. New York: Longman.
3. Rourke, John T, and Mark A Boyer. 2010. International Politics on the World Stage. 8th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill Higher Education.