I'm terribly annoyed right now, so this will be a very pessimistic post.


A theory is a theory, because it cannot be proven as a fact. It applies generally to the area, but can be contradicted with ideas from other theories. IR theory just can't be proven as fact.

For instance, if I had a theory that left-handed people are more likely to favor the color yellow than right-handed people, I could isolate subjects and collect data. There would be statistics to back my theory. We can't isolate countries and enact certain scenarios in order to determine how they are likely to react. We can try to use historical references to justify IR theory, but there are too many variables.

The theories we study are closest to fact we can get. They are general enough to apply to almost all situations, but they're still impossible to test.