Hello, and welcome to join the course on International Relations Theory,

Understanding of the International Relations Theory. I am Timofey Bordachev, I

teach International Relations Theory in the National Research University, Higher
School of Economics. And I'm very happy to offer you this course, together with my
friend and colleague, Professor Dmitry Suslov. Hello. My name is Dmitry Suslov. I'm
also a professor of the National Research University, Higher School of Economics. I
teach several courses there. My major specialization is the United States and US-
Russia relations. However, it is impossible to understand it. And it is impossible
to grasp the whole diversity of international relations, without a deep knowledge
of International Relations Theory. This is why I was very happy and privileged to
join Dr. Bordachev in teaching this course. But before you join this course, one
can actually ask the question, why does one need a theory? So, for many centuries,
theory on philosophy on international relations remained the business of the
elites, but not anymore. Nowadays, the world wars during the twentieth century made
international politics close to everybody. And everybody needs to understand why
certain developments happen in international relations. So, the Theory of
International Relations offers you the methodology, the instruments to understand
why the states behave in a certain way, and why the states engage into conflicts
under some conditions, and why these things are capable to cooperate under the
conditions. Our course grasps the whole diversity of International Relations
Science, and tracks its evolution throughout history. There are two major groups of
International Relations Theories, the Classical Theories which provide us the
general picture of the world, and include realism, liberalism and Marxism, and the
so-called Critical Theories, which do not provide us the general picture, but still
they are very valuable because they address the major flaws of the classical
theories. And in our course, we don't just provide you the general overview of the
major theories and concepts of international relations, but in order to allow you
to understand international relations better, we also provide you the analysis of
the major actors that participate in international relations, and the key notions
of IR such as power. And finally, in our course, we put the theoretical framework
of the international relations on the rich empirical material. And we show how
international relations actually works, and how the knowledge that you get from
this course, helps you to understand the international relations in their diversity
and complexity. So, these are going to be the main topics of our discipline and our
goals. And we very much anticipate you joining and enjoying this course on
Coursera. Thank you.