“Verum Est Ipsum Factum” – True is What Has Been Made as Such

Abstract

Abstract In traditional International Relations theory (IR), states have been approached from empiricist perspective by using methods and terminologies that consider states as homogeneous ‘speaking billiard balls’, which compete for power, prestige and so forth with each other. This article does not argue that traditional paradigms of IR (such as Classical Realism or Neorealism) would not count any more, vice versa, but what this article argues is that for being able to understand more deeply such topical social phenomena as terrorism, strategic communities, spread of nuclear weapons, nuclear policies, world order, NATO-enlargement, EU-integration, threat scenarios, enemy images an so forth, one has to adopt a more holistic, Constructivist social theoretical, approach than traditional IR offers. In this context Constructivism necessitates at least three things. Firstly, one has to explicitly clear out his/her ontological and epistemological points of departure for being able to operate with Constructivist social theory. In some occasions it may e.g. be necessary to deal with God’s and religions’ ontological and epistemological statuses as signifiers of interests, or as ‘root causes’ of behaviour of many social groups, communities and nations. Secondly, the state should be considered as a ‘decentred subject’ consisting of individuals, many sub-groups, organizational structure, institutions and especially identity structure, which has been purposefully constructed throughout the history (the endogenous perspective), and which is under constant reconstruction through domestic and international discursive interactions (the interactionist perspective). Thirdly, one should take into account that human communities and societies tend to habituate themselves into certain beliefs, values and modes of action that change very slowly over the course of history (the cultural perspective), despite increasing interactions.