Explain the key features of the liberal approach to global politics. (15 Marks)

The liberal approach to global politics involves a belief in cooperation between nation-states in order to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes. In contrast to realist and neo-realist theory, liberal theorists focus on absolute - rather than relative - gains, which would imply that nations care more for beneficial outcomes than their place in the international sphere; for liberals, international politics is not necessarily a zero-sum game. This has best been illustrated by the liberal vision of the UN, allowing nations to cooperate without focusing on violent solutions to global problems. This aspect of liberalism was promoted in an early form by Immanuel Kant, who theorised a cosmopolitan world in which countries could cooperate to reduce international divisions.

The liberal approach to global politics also focuses on the individual in two ways; their sovereignty and their non-aggressive human nature. Liberal philosopher John Locke was a heavy proponent of individual sovereignty, even above that on the state: "every man has a Property in his own Person". This has been seen in more modern times in the emergence of human rights and globalisation eroding national sovereignty in favour of the rights and sovereignty of the individual. The liberal approach to human nature, similarly, is more optimistic than that of realist theorists. Unlike Thomas Hobbes's pessimistic view that the state of nature is "nasty, brutish and short", liberals focus on the fact that we may cooperate naturally and that - when translated to the international sphere - nations are not in a constant 'state of war'. This has been seen most prominently perhaps in the Cuban Missile Crisis, where two diametrically opposed superpowers avoided nuclear war, despite having no common ground. As such, liberal theorists insist that war is not inevitable, and that a peaceful human nature may prevent many such conflicts from arising.