Understanding social, economic, military, and global political power structures is the distinctive task of international relation theory. Realism is a perspective in IR that argues that states are the primary actors in international relations and that the key to understanding international politics is to focus on the behaviour of states. Critics of realism argue that it overemphasizes state power and ignores the role of non-state actors, as well as the impact of factors such as ideology and economic conditions on state behaviour. Others maintain that realism still has value in…