Coral Bell and the Classical Realist Tradition

Power and International relations: Essays in Honour of Coral Bell

“…10 These studies served Bell well, helping her to secure the position in the Department of External Affairs she held from 1945 to 1951. In turn, her government work provided invaluable-and, if her memoir is any guide, eye-opening 11 -experience of the making of foreign policy and the practice of diplomacy.…”

“…In surveying the history of the British-Australian relationship, for instance, she reaches back to the 1850s to an episode during the Crimean War which she argues highlights some of the central problems of the relationship which would culminate with Australia's 'turn to America' almost a century later. 13 Later in the book she again draws comparisons between the time at which she was writing and the world a hundred years previous: 'the diplomatic wheel seems to have turned full circle 11 over a century, Russia being a Pacific power in the 1990s as it had been in the 1890s. Then it was a putative adversary, to be succeeded by quite an assortment of other actual or putative adversaries'.…”

Power and International Relations: Essays in Honour of Coral Bell

“…10 Slightly earlier she notes her agreement with the argument that 'The propensity to conflict must be accepted as a continuing fact of human life, even though, among nations, the technical means for pursuing conflicts are now so monstrously efficient as to threaten the end of human life itself.' 11 And this dual fact-the ubiquity of war and the hazards of its most potent form-explained the point and purpose of crisis management. This was not an art designed to remove crises, let alone war in totality.…”

“…A concert of power, on the other hand, must always be a construction of conscious statecraft. 11 This passage brings out two key aspects of the 'concert of power' idea. First, there is the central question of the relationship between a concert of powers and a balance of power.…”

“…Coral turned her research into the book Negotiation from Strength: A Study in the Politics of Power 11. She continued to teach as a Lecturer in Government, remaining at the university until 1961 12.…”