BPSC 134 Solved Guess Paper 2026 with Answers for IGNOU BAG Introduction to International Relations

National Power and National Interest

Question: Explain the concept of National Power and National Interest and discuss their elements.

Meaning of national power and national interest. Morgenthau describes power as a psychological relation between those who exercise it and those over whom it is exercised, giving the former control over certain actions of the latter through influence over the latter's mind. National interest, in his words, is survival, the protection of physical, political and cultural identity against encroachment by other nation-states.

V.V. Dyke widens the definition, calling national interest the values, desires and interests that states seek to protect or achieve in relation to each other.

Elements of national power. Broadly, these include:

1. Geography, the most stable, tangible and natural determinant, covering size, location, climate, topography and boundaries.
2. Natural resources, since self-sufficiency in raw materials and food strengthens agriculture, industry and military might.
3. Population, because a strong, healthy, literate and skilled population facilitates national development.
4. Economic development, a means of building military power and welfare and of using aid, loans and trade.
5. Industrial capacity, which gives a nation the potential to become a superpower.
6. Technology, where information, nuclear, space and missile capability are major sources of influence.
7. Military preparedness, where advanced weapons and disciplined forces strengthen foreign policy success.
8. Ideology, leadership, organisation and quality of government, national character and morale, and diplomacy, the chief intangible determinants that convert resources into strength.

Elements of national interest. National interest has two components, vital or necessary and variable or non-vital. Thomas W. Robinson classifies it into six types.

These are primary interests, which secure political, cultural and physical identity and are never compromised; secondary interests, covering citizens abroad and diplomatic immunities; and permanent interests, the long-term interests of the state.

The remaining three are variable interests, dependent on circumstances; general interests, which apply to many nations such as peace and environmental protection; and specific interests, which suit particular nations alone.

Methods of securing national interest. States use five chief methods: diplomacy through negotiation, bargaining and compromise; propaganda, affecting the minds and actions of a group for a public purpose; economic means such as aid, loans and trade; alliances and treaties creating legal obligations toward common goals, as with NATO; and coercive measures including intervention, embargoes and sanctions short of war.

Conclusion. States enhance national power through these tangible and intangible elements and then use that power to secure their national interest. Both sit at the very core of international relations.

Constructivism

Question: Explain the philosophical foundations and salient features of Constructivism.

Meaning of constructivism. Constructivism holds that developments in international relations are constructed through social processes in accordance with ideational factors such as identity, norms and rules. The term was coined for the discipline by Nicholas Greenwood Onuf in World of Our Making, 1989, and popularised by Alexander Wendt's 1992 article Anarchy Is What States Make of It and his 1999 book Social Theory of International Politics.

Philosophical foundations. Its genesis is traced to several thinkers:

1. Immanuel Kant, 1724 to 1804, heralded a constructivist turn by holding that knowledge is influenced by consciousness.
2. Wilhelm Dilthey, Edmund Husserl, Max Weber and Friedrich Nietzsche argued for a separate method for the human sciences, captured in Weber's verstehen.
3. Alfred Schutz held that our knowledge of people and things is shaped by perceptions and interactions.
4. Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann introduced the social construction of reality in their 1966 book.
5. Emile Durkheim, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida established the primacy of ideational factors, discourse and deconstruction.

Major assumptions or salient features. Constructivism rests on four assumptions. The first is the social construction of reality, where reality is a project under constant construction derived from inter-subjective or shared knowledge.

The second is the influence of ideational factors, where identity, norms and rules rather than material capabilities alone shape state behaviour. The third is the mutual constitution of agents and structure, where each constructs the other. The fourth is international anarchy, which in Wendt's words is what states make of it.

Versions of constructivism. The theory has four versions: modernist; modernist linguistic or rule-oriented; radical; and critical.

Conclusion. Constructivism enlarged the scope of the discipline by showing that states, alliances and institutions are social constructions shaped by shared ideas, identity and norms rather than by material factors alone.

Origins and Phases of the Cold War

Question: Discuss the origins and phases of the Cold War.

Meaning of the Cold War. The Cold War was more than a rivalry between two superpowers. It continued for more than four decades as the two sides formed political and military blocs, a feature known as bloc politics. Fought between the blocs led by the United States and the Soviet Union between 1945 and 1990, it was called cold because the two superpowers never fought each other directly, engaging instead in proxy wars and an arms race.

Origins of the Cold War. There are two main explanations:

1. The geopolitical explanation. From 1945 the USA and the USSR saw themselves as the two most powerful nations, with incompatible expansionist aspirations and a lack of mutual trust.
2. The ideological explanation. This goes back to the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution inspired by Marx, since the success of a workers' revolution under Lenin was viewed with hostility by the capitalist West.
3. Churchill's 1946 iron curtain speech and the American atom bombs on Japan sharpened the ideological rivalry further.

Phases of the Cold War. The Cold War is studied in three phases:

1. Beginning and rising hostilities, marked by the Yalta and Potsdam conferences of 1945, the Truman Doctrine of 1947 to contain communism, the Marshall Plan of 1948, NATO in 1949 and the Warsaw Pact in 1955, peaking in the Cuban Missile Crisis.
2. Detente, a period of reduced tension and arms control running from the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963 to the late 1970s, including the SALT agreement of 1972 and the Helsinki Final Act of 1975.
3. Rebirth and end, with renewed tension in the early 1980s followed by the INF Treaty of 1987, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the dissolution of the USSR in 1991.

Conclusion. Arising from both power rivalry and ideological antagonism, the Cold War moved through rising hostility, detente and final collapse, leaving the United States as the sole superpower.

United Nations, Role, Functions and Reform

Question: Discuss the role and functions of the United Nations and the need for reform of the Security Council.

Purposes of the United Nations. The organisation exists to maintain international peace and security, to develop friendly relations among nations, to cooperate in solving international economic, social, cultural and humanitarian problems, and to be a centre for harmonising the actions of nations.

It acts on the principles of sovereign equality, good-faith fulfilment of Charter obligations, peaceful settlement of disputes, refraining from the use of force, and non-interference in domestic matters.

Six principal organs. The United Nations works through six main organs:

1. General Assembly, the main deliberative body where every member has one vote.
2. Security Council, holding primary responsibility for peace and security, with 15 members including the P5 of China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, who hold the veto.
3. Economic and Social Council, with 54 members coordinating economic and social work and the specialised agencies.
4. Trusteeship Council, which supervised trust territories until they attained independence by 1994.
5. International Court of Justice, with 15 judges resolving legal disputes and interpreting treaties.
6. Secretariat, headed by the Secretary-General, running day-to-day administration.

Reforming the Security Council. A global debate on reform began in 1992 to make the body more democratic. One suggestion is to expand the Council from 15 to 23 or 25 members, adding permanent seats for industrial powers such as Japan and Germany and for large developing states such as Brazil, India and Nigeria.

The present Council reflects 1940s geopolitics while new powers have since risen. India presses its claim through the G-4 grouping with Japan, Germany and Brazil, on grounds of its democracy, economic strength, responsible nuclear status and one-fifth of the world's population. Despite more than 25 years of debate, no consensus has emerged among the P5.

Conclusion. The United Nations remains an indispensable organisation that has prevented another world war, but its Security Council must be reformed and democratised to reflect contemporary geopolitics.

Collective Security

Question: Write a short note on Collective Security.

Meaning. Collective security is an arrangement among states in which all promise that, if any member of the system engages in certain prohibited acts such as war and aggression against another member, they will come to the latter's assistance.

Chief features. The arrangement rests on the principle that aggression against one is aggression against all. Its chief features are these: it is an instrument of power management to preserve international peace at the time of war; it acknowledges the universality of aggression; nations commit to ending aggression by pooling resources; it prevents war, since an aggressor knows it will face collective defence; and war rather than the state is treated as the enemy.

Collective security under the United Nations. Chapter VII of the Charter contains 13 Articles, numbered 39 to 51, providing a collective system to secure peace. The Security Council determines acts of aggression and may impose sanctions or authorise military action. The mechanism was first used in the Korean crisis of 1950 and again in the Suez crisis of 1956.

Conclusion. Though idealistic and dependent on correctly identifying the aggressor, collective security remains a device of crisis management to secure world peace and prevent war.