3 IR Theories, Compatible?

I don’t think we should do anything about the “incompatibility” between perspectives. Just like in politics, each side asserts that they are right. There is no clarity at all as to which side is really right, that is if either is right. The action that makes the most sense to make is to compromise that both sides can be correct. In international relations, countries can be said to utilize realism, liberalism, and constructivism. Because most countries’ actions aren’t controlled by one person, it is extremely difficult to appoint a single theory to a country’s actions.

Take the establishment of the U.S. currency as the de-facto world’s currency for example. The U.S. decided that the world should use the dollar as “international” currency. A realist could say the U.S. did this so other countries couldn’t just come in and say the world is using their currency, thereby asserting dominance. A liberal could say the U.S. did this so it could have an edge in trade and establish economic stability. A constructivist could say this happened because many countries wanted a common currency to make trade easier, and the U.S. currency was at the time the most prevalent. In actuality all three of these theories are probably true in some way. The U.S. interest and the world’s interest simply aligned. One theory can’t be said to be right and another to be wrong.