Wendt, Alexander. "Constructing International Politics". International Security, Vol.20, No.1 (1995): 71-81.

Wendt, Alexander. "Constructing International Politics". International Security, Vol.20, No.1 (1995): 71-81.

• This article is in a large part written as a response to a book by prominent Realist scholar Dr. John Mearsheimer, in which he makes several claims about Constructivism and Critical Theory which Dr. Wendt disagrees with.
• A source mine for key scholars and pieces on various elements of critical theory, including feminism, post-modernism, constructivism, and Neo-Marxism, is available on page 71.
• What connects the disparate fields of critical theory is a belief that world politics is socially constructed. This means that the basic structures of politics have a social rather than material basis, and that these social constructs shape the identities and interests of actors (71-72).
• Constructivism shares all five of the 'realist' assumptions created by Dr. John Mearsheimer: that international politics is anarchic, states have offensive capability, cannot be sure about the intentions of other states, wish to prolong their survival, and behave as rational actors (72).
• Constructivists also share two other characteristics with the Realist school. Both groups focus on politics at the state-level, and both are committed to analyzing structural factors influencing behavior (72).
• The primary distinction between Realism and Constructivism as schools of thought is that Realism assumes that political structures emerge from material realities like geography or levels of technology, whereas Constructivism assumes that structures are primarily socially constructed (73).
• Social structures are defined by shared expectations, knowledge, and understanding of a scenario. The ideas between communities construct the relationships between the communities, meaning the difference between a security community and a security dilemma is a social construction of trust (73).
• Constructivism also claims that material factors -- like mineral wealth or weaponry -- is only meaningful inside of its social context. In this way, 5 North Korean nuclear weapons pose a larger threat than 500 British nuclear weapons, because the 'threat' and meaning of the weapons is socially constructed within our understanding of politics (73).
• Social structures are imbedded in practices of international relations between states. These are recorded in patterns of behavior and institutional practice, which then affect the way international relations occurs (74).
• All fields of critical theory at the time of publication agree on objectivity in ontology, meaning that even though some structures are socially constructed, they still exist. Schools do diverge, however, on epistemology, with post-modernists claimed that objective reality cannot be known because the observer is immersed in social constructs (75).
• The creation of social constructs is partially enforced by agency and partially by structure. How agents -- states -- behave affects the social structure in which they interact by changing the expectations of other states. In turn, the range of agency and the reactions to states are determined by the structure in which an action takes place, primarily through the historical expectations of other states (77).
• The author claims that Realism cannot provide a compelling counter-argument to this assertion. From the author's description, Realism should dictate that states always behave the same given equal material situations, which they clearly do not (78). 
• Unfortunately, understanding that politics and international relations are dictated by social constructs does not mean that these patterns can necessarily be changed. While policy-makers do have a moral responsibility to destroy harmful patterns of political behavior if they can, this is not always a possibility -- As it would not be in a world of realpolitik (80).
• Neorealism and realpolitik are self-fulfilling prophesies, because states behaving on realpolitik assumptions create an atmosphere of distrust and conflict requiring the application of realpolitik. The only way out of the anarchic and dangerous world of Neorealism is the rejection of policies based on those assumptions (80-81).