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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
International relations emerged as a distinct academic discipline in the early twentieth century, but its philosophic foundations draw on centuries of thinking about human nature, power and authority, justice and injustice, the idea of sovereignty and the implications for relations within and between political communities. The historic sources of these ideas appear to draw largely on European or Western experiences but, as this book shows, influences have emanated from much further afield, while contemporary thought is becoming more open to insights from non-Western sources. In this fully updated and expanded fourth edition of her popular text, Stephanie Lawson retains a broad world historical and contextual approach to the central themes and theoretical perspectives in IR, while also addressing the most pressing issues facing the world today. Topics covered include the emergence of states and empires, theories ranging from classical realism and liberalism to postcolonial and green theory, twentieth-century international history, security and insecurity, global governance and world order, international political economy and the prospects for a 'post-international' world in an era that has seen both deepening globalization and accompanying challenges to the sovereign state, as well as the reassertion of nationalist ideas around the world. With a range of additional pedagogical features to assist learning and class discussion, this lively and accessible text is an ideal primer for beginner and intermediate students alike.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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Table of Contents
Cover
Dedication
Title Page
Copyright Page
Detailed Contents
Boxes
Case Studies
Key Concepts
About the Author
Preface to the Fourth Edition
Acknowledgements
1 Introducing International Relations
1.1 Eras in World Politics
The Post-Cold War Era, Hegemony and Globalization
The Post-9/11 Period
The Phenomenon of Modernity
Key Points
1.2 The Domain of International Relations
The Scope of IR
Humanitarian Concerns
Identity Politics
The Agenda for IR in the Twenty-First Century
Key Points
1.3 Defining the International
The ‘International’ Sphere
State and Nation
Mapping the International
Key Points
1.4 Internationalizing the State System
Sovereign Statehood in the Postcolonial World
Regional Integration
Key Points
1.5 Towards a ‘Global IR’
Non-Western Sources of IR
The Value of Diversity in IR
Key Points
1.6 Conclusion
Questions for Discussion
Guide to Further Reading
2 States in World History
2.1 States and Empires in the Pre-Modern World
The State and Political Community
The Origins of States
The Legacy of Empires
The Idea of Civilization
Key Points
2.2 Political Community and Human Nature
Early Religious Themes
The Cosmopolis
Key Points
2.3 Modernity and the Sovereign State System
The Rise of Secularism
The Sovereign State and State System
Sovereignty and the State of Nature
Key Points
2.4 The Modern Colonial Empires
Modern European Imperialism
Key Points
2.5 The Rise of Nationalism and the Nation-State
Culture and Nationalism
Anti-Colonial Nationalism
Key Points
2.6 Empire and Hegemony in the Contemporary International System
Key Points
2.7 Conclusion
Questions for Discussion
Guide to Further Reading
3 Theorizing International Relations: Methods and Traditional Approaches
3.1 Theory and Method, Knowledge and Truth
Epistemology
Ontology
Evidence and Probabilities
A Post-Truth World?
Key Points
3.2 Liberalism and the Quest for Peace
The Democratic Peace Thesis
The Liberal View of Human Nature
Soft Power and Smart Power
Key Points
3.3 The Case for Classical Realism
The Realist Critique of ‘Liberal Idealism’
The Struggle for Power and the Subordination of Morality
Key Points
3.4 The English School and International Society
Pluralism
Solidarism
Key Points
3.5 Neorealism and Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism
Neorealism
Levels of Analysis
The Security Dilemma and the Balance of Power
Offensive and Defensive Realism
The Critique of Liberal Moralism
Key Points
3.6 Neoclassical Realism and Moral Realism
Moral Realism
Key Points
3.7 Conclusion
Questions for Discussion
Guide to Further Reading
4 Theorizing International Relations: Critical Approaches
4.1 Marxism and Critical Theory
The Socialist Tradition
Marx and Marxism
World-System Theory
Gramsci and Hegemony
Contemporary Critical Theory
Key Points
4.2 Constructivism
Constructivist IR
Key Points
4.3 Feminism, Gender Theory and Sexuality
Feminism
Feminism in IR
Gender and Sexuality
Gender and Political/Sexual Violence
Gender and Peace
Key Points
4.4 Postmodernism
Postmodernism and the Status of Truth
Key Points
4.5 Postcolonialism
Orientalism and Occidentalism
Decolonial Theory
The West/non-West Divide
4.6 Green Theory
Key Points
4.7 Normative International Theory
Communitarianism and Cosmopolitanism
Key Points
4.8 Conclusion
Questions for Discussion
Guide to Further Reading
5 International Relations in the Twentieth Century
5.1 The World at War
The Descent Into War
An Experiment in World Governance
From ‘Peace in our Time’ to the Return of Total War
The Rise of Japan
Key Points
5.2 The Changing Structure of World Politics, 1945–1989
The Cold War
Key Points
5.3 From the End of History to a New World Order
Identity Politics and the ‘Clash of Civilizations’
5.4 Culture, Democracy and Human Rights in the Post-Cold War World
Key Points
5.5 Conclusion
Questions for Discussion
Guide to Further Reading
6 Security and Insecurity in the Contemporary World
6.1 Conventional Approaches to Security
From Bipolarity to Hegemony in the Post-Cold War Era?
Collective/Cooperative Security
Environmental, Biosecurity and Health Threats
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
The Liberal-Institutional Security Scenario Versus Realist Approaches
Key Points
6.2 Critical Security Approaches
Constructivism
Feminist and Gender Approaches
Critical Theory
Postmodern Approaches
Key Points
6.3 Securitization Theory
Key Points
6.4 Human Security vs State Security
Key Points
6.5 Humanitarian Intervention and the ‘Responsibility to Protect’
Normative Considerations and the Problem of Interests
6.6 War and Terror in the Twenty-First Century
Terrorism After ‘9/11’
Unconventional Enemies
The Sources of Terrorism
6.7 Environmental Security and the Green Agenda
Climate Change Denial
6.8 Conclusion
Questions for Discussion
Guide to Further Reading
7 Global Governance and World Order
7.1 Introduction
Key Points
7.2 Global Governance and the United Nations
The Purpose and Scope of the UN
Human Rights at the UN
The UN and the Sovereign State System
Key Points
7.3 Global Civil Society and Social Movements
Civil Society Organizations
Social Movements
The Anti-Globalization Phenomenon
Key Points
7.4 Regionalization and World Order
Regionalization in Comparative Perspective
Inter-Regionalization
Key Points
7.5 Fragmentation and World Disorder
Ethnic Conflict and Secessionism
Fragile/Failing States
Key Points
7.6 The West/non-West Divide
Key Points
7.7 Conclusion
Questions for Discussion
Guide to Further Reading
8 International Political Economy
8.1 Introduction
8.2 The Emergence of Capitalism
Key Points
8.3 Theorizing International Political Economy
The Rise of Liberal Economics
Neomercantilism
Marxist Economic Theory
Key Points
8.4 The Institutions of Global Economic Governance
The Bretton Woods Institutions
Neoliberalism
The G7 and G20
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
BRICS
Key Points
8.5 Wealth, Poverty and the North/South Divide
Key Points
8.6 Crises in the Global Financial System
Key Points
8.7 Conclusion
Questions for Discussion
Guide to Further Reading
9 Conclusion: International Relations in a Changing World
9.1 The Future of the Sovereign State
Globalization vs the State
Communitarians and Cosmopolitan Perspectives
A Post-International World?
Key Points
9.2 The Challenge of Nationalism and Authoritarianism
Key Points
9.3 IR in a ‘Post-Truth’ World
Time for a Reality Check?
Key Points
9.4 Conclusion
Questions for Discussion
Guide to Further Reading
References
Index
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
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Dedication
For James, Richard, Katharine and Elizabeth
International Relations
Fourth Edition
STEPHANIE LAWSON
polity
Copyright Page
Copyright © Stephanie Lawson 2023
The right of Stephanie Lawson to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2023 by Polity Press
Polity Press
65 Bridge Street
Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press
111 River Street
Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-5624-3 (hardback)
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-5625-0 (paperback)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022949334
by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NL
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com
Detailed Contents
Boxes
About the Author
Preface to the Fourth Edition
Acknowledgements
1 Introducing International Relations
1.1 Eras in World Politics
1.2 The Domain of International Relations
1.3 Defining the International
1.4 Internationalizing the State System
1.5 Towards a ‘Global IR’
1.6 Conclusion
2 States in World History
2.1 States and Empires in the Pre-Modern World
2.2 Political Community and Human Nature
2.3 Modernity and the Sovereign State System
2.4 The Modern Colonial Empires
2.5 The Rise of Nationalism and the Nation-State
2.6 Empire and Hegemony in the Contemporary International System
2.7 Conclusion
3 Theorizing International Relations: Methods and Traditional Approaches
3.1 Theory and Method, Knowledge and Truth
3.2 Liberalism and the Quest for Peace
3.3 The Case for Classical Realism
3.4 The English School and International Society
3.5 Neorealism and Neoliberalism
3.6 Neoclassical Realism and Moral Realism
3.7 Conclusion
4 Theorizing International Relations: Critical Approaches
4.1 Marxism and Critical Theory
4.2 Constructivism
4.3 Feminism, Gender Theory and Sexuality
4.4 Postmodernism
4.5 Postcolonialism
4.6 Green Theory
4.7 Normative International Theory
4.8 Conclusion
5 International Relations in the Twentieth Century
5.1 The World at War
5.2 The Changing Structure of World Politics, 1945–1989
5.3 From the End of History to a New World Order
5.4 Culture, Democracy and Human Rights in the Post-Cold War World
5.5 Conclusion
6 Security and Insecurity in the Contemporary World
6.1 Conventional Approaches to Security
6.2 Critical Security Approaches
6.3 Securitization Theory
6.4 Human Security vs State Security
6.5 Humanitarian Intervention and the ‘Responsibility to Protect’
6.6 War and Terror in the Twenty-First Century
6.7 Environmental Security and the Green Agenda
6.8 Conclusion
7 Global Governance and World Order
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Global Governance and the United Nations
7.3 Global Civil Society and Social Movements
7.4 Regionalization and World Order
7.5 Fragmentation and World Disorder
7.6 The West/non-West Divide
7.7 Conclusion
8 International Political Economy
8.1 Introduction
8.2 The Emergence of Capitalism
8.3 Theorizing International Political Economy
8.4 The Institutions of Global Economic Governance
8.5 Wealth, Poverty and the North/South Divide
8.6 Crises in the Global Financial System
8.7 Conclusion
9 Conclusion: International Relations in a Changing World
9.1 The Future of the Sovereign State
9.2 The Challenge of Nationalism and Authoritarianism
9.3 IR in a ‘Post-Truth’ World
9.4 Conclusion
References
Index
Boxes
Case Studies
The ‘Westphalian State’
The Limits of Self-Determination in the Former Colonial World
‘Reality’ in the Russia/Ukraine Conflict
Theory and Practice in the Iraq War
Shifting State Identities
War and Sexual Violence
Evidence and Interpretation in the Science and Politics of Climate Change
The League of Nations
‘Asian Values’ versus ‘Western Values’
NATO
The Arab Spring
The 2008 Global Financial Crisis
Key Concepts
Hegemony
Globalization and Globalism
The Rules-Based International Order
The Anthropocene
Humanitarian Intervention
Identity Politics
Nationalism
Sovereignty
Eurocentricity
Imperialism and Colonialism
Civilization
Human Nature
Cosmopolitanism
The Hobbesian State of Nature
Natural Law, Natural Rights and International Law
Soft Power
Complex Interdependence
Humane Authority
The Naturalization of Power
The Social Construction of Reality
Patriarchy
Orientalism
Ecocentrism
Cold War
Containment
Ethnicity
The Security Dilemma
Security Community
Securitization
The ‘Responsibility to Protect’
Governance
Civil Society
Regionalization and Regionalism
Secessionism
Fragile States
Capitalism
Mercantilism
The Invisible Hand of the Market
Keynesianism
Spontaneous Order
Structural Adjustment
Anti-Politics
Post-International Politics
Democratic Backsliding
Anti-Science
About the Author
Stephanie Lawson held the Chair of Politics and International Relations in the Department of Modern History, Politics and International Relations at Macquarie University from 2006 to 2018, where she remains an honorary professor. She is also Honorary Professor in Pacific Affairs at the Australian National University and Senior Research Associate, Faculty of Humanities, University of Johannesburg. She has previously held teaching and research positions at the University of New England, the Australian National University, the University of East Anglia and the University of Birmingham.
Her first book, The Failure of Democratic Politics in Fiji (Oxford, 1991), was awarded the Crisp Medal by the Australian Political Studies Association. She has written or edited twelve further books, as well as numerous articles and book chapters on issues ranging from the politics of culture in Asia and the Pacific, to global security developments in the post-Cold War era, and more general issues in international relations and political theory. She is a former Editor of the Australian Journal of International Affairs and currently serves on the editorial or advisory boards of five other international journals. Professor Lawson is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, a past President of the Australian Political Studies Association and, currently, President of the Pacific Islands Political Studies Association.
Preface to the Fourth Edition
As with the previous editions, this book covers a selection of key themes in the study of International Relations, together with explanations of various theoretical approaches. These are presented in a way that provides the reader with a historical and contextual understanding of the subject, from the development of states in world history, through the emergence of varying theoretical approaches, to contemporary issues such as security, world order, international political economy, the phenomenon of globalization and the challenges presented by nationalism and the apparent rise of authoritarianism in the contemporary period. The narrative style, along with a historical component outlining the emergence of ideas and practices through time and across space, enables readers with little or no prior knowledge of IR, or the more general field of political studies, to grasp essential points and ideas more readily.
The fourth edition also maintains an emphasis on the profoundly normative orientation of the IR discipline; the fact that there is nothing fixed or eternal about any particular political formation; the social nature of all political relations and institutions, including those of the international sphere; and the problematic nature of the domestic/international divide. There is a particular emphasis on the extent to which the idea of what is ‘natural’ in social life finds its way into political theories and worldviews. ‘Naturalized’ hierarchies based on race, gender or class, for example, have been prominent in various systems of thought. Other important issues that have gained a higher profile in recent years concern the status of knowledge in the so-called ‘post-truth’ era.
Another theme that is further developed in this new edition is the contribution of non-Western insights and sources of knowledge to the study of IR. These contributions are now more widely accepted as essential to a discipline that seeks to move away from its largely Eurocentric foundations and become more truly ‘global’ in its purview. The dominance of Eurocentric worldviews, however, is likely to remain for some time in IR as in other fields, given that the production of knowledge still takes place largely in the West. But this is changing as new centres of power, influence and learning are emerging around the globe and, in time, will eventually re-shape or at least re-orient all the disciplines in the humanities and social sciences.
Apart from highlighting these broad themes, the book does not champion any particular theoretical approach but rather invites readers to consider what each of the different approaches has to offer. Having said that, the text does take issue with certain viewpoints, especially those supporting racism and sexism as well as those emanating from a broadly ‘anti-science’ perspective.
The fourth edition has been thoroughly updated to account for important developments over the last five years or so since the third edition was published. It nonetheless remains a text that focuses not simply on the here and now but rather on what historian Fernand Braudel called the longue durée. This reflects my view that the present must be understood as the product not just of an immediate past, but of the much longer span of human history. Even so, the coverage of areas such as the history of political thought, the theorization of international relations and the complexities of international political economy, among others, is necessarily limited. This is in the nature of an introductory text to any complex subject. I have, however, included many references to the relevant literature as well a guide to further reading at the end of each chapter to indicate where more detailed information and analyses may be found. Each chapter begins with a reader’s guide to indicate the main themes covered. Also included are more detailed explanations of key concepts as well as case studies focusing on particular issues along with a summary of key points at the end of the chapter sections. In addition, there are questions for discussion at the end of each chapter, designed to help students think through the matters raised in the discussion.
Acknowledgements
The first edition of this text was written during my time at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, from 1998 to 2006, and I must acknowledge once again the benefits I gained from intellectual interactions with colleagues and students there in a number of disciplines in addition to my own, including philosophy, economics, history and sociology. Since then, I have been located primarily in Politics and International Relations at Macquarie University, Sydney, where once again I have been fortunate to find supportive colleagues as well as enthusiastic and engaged students, who have made the task of producing subsequent editions so much easier. A short stint at the University of Birmingham, and honorary positions with the Australian National University and the University of Johannesburg, have further widened the scope of issues explored in this text and other writings. Feedback from both students and teachers who have used previous editions of this text has also been invaluable.
A special thanks is due to all the staff at Polity who have been involved in the production of each edition, for their professionalism and support, and especially to Louise Knight, who first suggested I write a short introduction to IR that was accessible and engaging but without oversimplifying the field. This has been a difficult task, but it has remained a very rewarding one. Polity’s assistant editor Inès Boxman has been a pleasure to work with.
Finally, I must add a formal acknowledgement of the traditional custodians of the land on which most of this book has been written – primarily the land occupied by Macquarie University as well as the land on which I reside in Sydney – the custodians of which are the Wallumattagal clan of the Dharug nation. Having spent the entire winter of 2022 in Queensland’s Fraser Coast region, escaping the relative chill of Sydney to complete the work on this text, I must also acknowledge the Butchulla/Batjala people. I pay my respects to the Elders, past, present and future, of these communities and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of Australia.
SL, Sydney, Australia
1Introducing International Relations
1.1 Eras in World Politics
1.2 The Domain of International Relations
1.3 Defining the International
1.4 Internationalizing the State System
1.5 Towards a ‘Global IR’
1.6 Conclusion
Reader’s Guide
This chapter begins by looking at how certain key events and developments have provided frameworks for thinking about historic shifts and changes in world politics from the beginning of the twentieth century through to the present – developments that have taken place against the more general background provided by ‘modernity’. The sections that follow consider the scope of International Relations as a social science and introduce some of the controversies surrounding the traditional focus of the discipline on sovereign states and the international system of states, including issues of definition, conceptualization and theorization. An important point to be noted in mapping the current distribution of sovereign state entities around the world is that these entities, and the system in which they are organized internationally, are not the outcome of ‘natural’ processes but are rather the product of human agency and remain subject to change over time. We then move to an overview of the phenomenon of globalization as manifest in a complex mix of economic, political, social and cultural processes. The final section introduces certain critical themes concerning the extent to which the discipline of IR has, to date, been limited by a largely Eurocentric vision of how the world works and how this may be remedied through a more expansive ‘Global IR’ approach.
1.1 Eras in World Politics
Reflections on world politics tend to be shaped by defining events precipitating significant change, especially those associated with episodes of large-scale violence. The twentieth century is still widely regarded as the bloodiest yet in terms of lives lost in violent conflict – possibly up to 190 million. The ‘Great War’ from 1914 to 1918, now commonly referred to as the First World War, saw around 20 million deaths and as many wounded. The years from 1918 to 1939 are known as the ‘interwar’ period, although there were still many violent conflicts on a smaller scale throughout that time. The Second World War resulted in about 80 million deaths and, although its epicentre was again in Europe, it drew in substantial parts of the wider world. In both world wars, the majority of casualties were civilians.
The era from 1945 until the end of the Cold War was generally referred to as the ‘postwar’ period, followed by the ‘post-Cold War’ era although, again, many smaller scale conflicts producing significant loss of life in various parts of the world were evident throughout both periods. Another development of great significance in the twentieth century, especially in the postwar period, was the transition from a world of empires, in which millions of people around the globe were subjects of one or other of the European colonial powers, to a world in which most became citizens of independent sovereign states.
The Post-Cold War Era, Hegemony and Globalization
At least until recently, there was still a sense in which we seemed to occupy a ‘post-Cold War period’. The collapse of the bipolar world order at the beginning of the 1990s – an order defined by the balance of power between the Western alliance led by the US and those allied with the Soviet Union led by Russia – culminated in the emergence of the US as a hegemonic power. Hegemony is a concept that crops up regularly in analyses of power, control and leadership in the international sphere but with varying emphases according to the issues under consideration.
KEY CONCEPT Hegemony
‘Hegemony’ refers to leadership and/or domination. In international politics it characterizes a situation where one country possesses sufficient power and resources to dominate others. While elements of coercion may be involved, a significant degree of consent is also present and hegemony is therefore usually seen as legitimate. Hegemony also describes social, political and economic relations within states where a dominant class or power elite maintains its position through a mixture of consent and coercion.
In the present period, US hegemony is seen as increasingly challenged by the growing strength of China and the overt aggression of Russia vis-à-vis the West in general, creating tensions at least as tangible as those of the Cold War period, especially since the major protagonists all possess nuclear weapons. According to some lines of analysis, this produces a deterrence effect, meaning that there is a greater reluctance to resort directly to violence. After all, conventional wisdom holds that nobody would win a nuclear war, given its enormously destructive potential. This has led some to describe the Cold War era as a period of ‘long peace’ because the hostility between the two superpowers involved never broke out into direct, violent confrontation. This remains a factor in the present period, although the nuclear deterrence effect is by no means guaranteed.
Another way of conceptualizing the post-Cold War period is by reference to the process of globalization. Although this phenomenon has been in evidence for decades, if not centuries, it has captured the public imagination in ways unmatched in any previous period. This may be partly explained by the fact that the end of the Cold War left a considerable conceptual vacuum to be filled. The idea of globalization, which can be interpreted in many different ways, was an obvious candidate for filling much of that vacuum. The economic aspects of globalization, in particular, were given a huge boost by the apparent triumph of capitalism, while it was widely assumed that liberal democracy had at last become the only legitimate form of government.
The idea of globalization was further boosted by the rapid development in the 1990s of electronic communications, including the internet and the world wide web, which, like many of the economic aspects of globalization, seemed to render borders, and therefore the distinction between the domestic and the international, increasingly meaningless. Advances in electronic technology have made access to vast stores of information (as well as misinformation and disinformation) almost instantaneous.
KEY CONCEPTS Globalization and Globalism
Globalization is generally understood as a process in which the world is becoming ever more interconnected. Although often described as a largely economic phenomenon underpinned by advanced technologies in communications and logistics, it is better understood as multidimensional with social, political, cultural and environment dimensions as well, all interacting in complex ways.
Globalism refers primarily to an ideological position that celebrates the processes of globalization as undermining the role of the state and applauds the increased role of non-state actors. In its narrowest form, it focuses almost exclusively on the economic benefits of free markets and deregulation and is therefore known as ‘market globalism’.
The Post-9/11 Period
Conceptions of world politics in the early twenty-first century have shifted to some extent from a post-Cold War period to a ‘post-9/11 period’, signifying the major repercussions of the terrorist attacks on landmark targets in New York and Washington DC in September 2001. These attacks, orchestrated by Islamic extremists, triggered the war in Afghanistan, which dragged on for two decades, and also underscored the rationale for the invasion of Iraq by the US and some of its allies in 2003. The longer-term effects of the ‘war on terror’ are still playing out in the Middle East, North Africa and beyond, and will no doubt continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
More recently, other forms of ideological extremism as expressed, for example, in the phenomenon of ‘white supremacism’, have become a major security concern in some Western countries. While violence associated with this particular phenomenon has been confined largely to national contexts, global interconnections between some groups are a growing concern, along with the rise of populism and the reinvigoration of nationalism around the globe. Most of these also have religious, racial, ethnic and cultural dimensions.
While the spectre of terrorism and related issues in Middle East politics dominated much of the discourse on security over the first two decades of the twenty-first century, the rise of an assertive China and its ever-growing global reach, as well as the dangers posed by Russia to peace and security in eastern Europe in particular, have increasingly taken centre stage. Viewed through a Western lens, these are seen as a major threat not just to global security as such, but to the values embodied in liberal democratic politics at both national and international levels. These values are expressed in the concept of a rules-based international order, otherwise known as the ‘liberal’ international order, and which is regarded as a product of the early post-Cold War period, when the norms and rules for the conduct of international politics seemed to have solid support among the major powers.
Contemporary Russian and Chinese perspectives, however, are informed by an authoritarian worldview. Under the leadership of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping respectively, both have come to regard liberal democratic values, as espoused by Western democracies, as posing a threat to their own sense of order. It is noteworthy that the perception (or misperception) of threat plays a significant role in the precipitation of violent conflict. This has played out at the domestic level, which has seen a tightening of authoritarian control in both countries, and at an international level where Russia, in particular, has so blatantly transgressed the rules-based order with its invasion of Ukraine.
KEY CONCEPT The Rules-Based International Order
The current rules-based international order was developed in the aftermath of the Second World War, initially by Western liberal democracies but with the active participation of many other countries in the years following. It is based on a set of norms and principles relating to global security, the economy, and governance. Its principal elements are:
A set of rules for cooperative behaviour among states consistent with liberal values.Formal institutional bodies such as the United Nations, the World Trade Organization and various other treaty organizations that serve to legitimize and uphold these rules and provide a forum to settle disputes at both regional and global levels.A central role for powerful democratic states in preserving and defending the system, with significant support from other countries. (Cimmino and Kroenig, 2020)In terms of security, the rules-based order is characterized by formal alliances, especially in Europe and Asia. This is in addition to rules designed to protect state sovereignty and territorial integrity and limit the use of military force and the spread of weapons of mass destruction. In the economic domain, it promotes an interconnected global economy based on free markets and open trade and finance. In the realm of governance, it promotes democratic values and human rights. The order has evolved over time, undergoing periods of adaptation and expansion at the end of the Second World War and during the decolonization period, and at the end of the Cold War (ibid.).
The Phenomenon of Modernity
Another, broader defining condition of our time – one that has extended for several centuries – is modernity. Further aspects of this concept are discussed in Chapter 2.3 but it is important briefly to introduce here its role in providing the foundations for contemporary world order. For students of IR, the beginnings of modernity are frequently traced to seventeenth-century Europe, when the idea of the sovereign state began to take shape. Modernity is also linked inextricably to technological and scientific development and the rise of industrialization. From a wider historical perspective, however, the beginnings of modernity are often located in the Renaissance period in Europe and linked to the emergence of humanist thought and the gradual emancipation of thinking from the strictures of the medieval Church. But modernity is most closely associated with the Enlightenment, a European intellectual movement that rose to prominence in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Modernity found practical expression in various revolutions against established authorities in Europe and in the US in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This also entailed challenging the nexus between religious and political authority and the establishment of secularism as a basic principle of political organization – a principle that equates not with atheism, as is so often wrongly assumed – but rather with freedom both of religious belief and non-belief. The US was founded partly on the principle of religious freedom which is why there has been constitutional separation of Church and state from its foundation.
Since modernity is progressive in character and embraces a positive vision of human emancipation from the grip of the past, it also has a normative dimension. Above all, modernity promotes the idea of universal human rationality and therefore feeds directly into the contemporary globalist project at both a technical and a humanist level. Indeed, globalization may be seen as representing an advanced stage of modernity. For some, all this is a good thing. It means that we are at a stage in the progressive history of humankind where it is advancing towards a higher stage of existence. Others see the broader social, economic and political environment being threatened by a stultifying globalized modernity destructive of diverse local cultures, values and lifestyles. The conception of modernity and its historic trajectory, as depicted above, is also seen as a highly Eurocentric way of viewing world history, a direct result of European (and more recently US) dominance in world affairs over the past few centuries.
Then there is the impact of modern human industrial activity on the natural environment, another product of modernity, which has ushered in the Anthropocene. This term was first popularized by Paul J. Crutzen, who proposed that data retrieved from ice cores from the late eighteenth century showed elevated levels in atmospheric concentrations of what we now call greenhouse gases (Crutzen and Stoermer, 2000). While it remains the case that the obliteration of humankind and life on the planet more generally through nuclear warfare, whether by immediate annihilation or through the longer-term effects, remains a distinct possibility, the environmental threats posed by this and other forms of warfare (chemical and biological) have been overshadowed by the emphasis placed on climate change produced through long-term, large-scale carbon emissions, together with other significant changes in the earth’s mineral and water cycles wrought by modern industrialization.
Having introduced modernity at this early stage we should also briefly consider certain ideas associated with ‘postmodernity’, which have had a significant impact in recent years. Postmodernism is an intellectual movement that rejects the rational certainties of modernity, and especially the ‘grand narratives’ of Western culture that claim the status of universal truths. From a postmodern perspective, all singular truths, founts of authority and political and social norms should be treated with scepticism and their foundations critically questioned (Sim, 2005, p. 3). Moreover, rather than accepting globalization as a massive unifying, homogenizing or integrative force that is moulding the world in the image of the modern West, a postmodern disposition sees (and indeed hopes for) a longer-term decline of Western dominance, an increasing fragmentation of the global system and the establishment of multiple centres of authority. This is therefore a very different view of how the world might develop in the twenty-first century and beyond.
KEY CONCEPT The Anthropocene
The Anthropocene – from the Greek ‘anthropos’ (human) and ‘cene’ (new) – designates an era in which human industrial activity has impacted so deeply on all of the earth’s systems that proponents of the term argue that it is time to move on from the geological conception of the Holocene, even though that label literally translates as ‘entirely recent’ and therefore has no real use-by date. Although the Anthropocene may be dated from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the past six decades – dubbed the ‘Great Acceleration’ – have seen an unprecedented increase in natural resource extraction, fossil-fuel consumption, pollution, species extinction and environmental destruction generally, much of which is irreversible. The adoption of the Anthropocene in contemporary terminology indicates a political as well as scientific concern about the dangers of unmitigated industrial activity for all life on the planet.
Key Points
Conceptualizations of world politics are often configured around defining events including episodes of large-scale violence, major shifts in the geopolitical landscape, movements such as decolonization and the trajectories of globalization.
Globalization is often conceived simply in terms of economic forces and communication technologies but it also involves a complex range of social, cultural and political forces.
Both globalization and the rules-based international order appear to be under serious challenge in the present period by changing economic and strategic dynamics.
Modernity, another broad defining condition of our time, has a historical trajectory reaching back over centuries and incorporating numerous intellectual, scientific and technical aspects, which have fed in turn into major social, political and economic developments.
The deleterious effects of modern industrialization on the environment, and which are now evident on an extensive global scale, have also given rise to a new conceptualization of ‘earth time’ known as the Anthropocene.
1.2 The Domain of International Relations
The term ‘international relations’ is not altogether straightforward. When capitalized, as International Relations, and reduced to the acronym ‘IR’, it denotes a field of academic study. It is broadly encompassed within political studies – often being referred to as ‘international politics’, ‘world politics’ or ‘global politics’ – and is generally classified, along with economics, sociology, human geography, social psychology, history, linguistics and anthropology, as a social science. It also draws from legal studies and philosophy and engages with multidisciplinary fields such as environmental studies, gender studies, peace studies and so on. While the focus of IR is therefore attuned to the political, and especially to the dynamics of power, it stands at the intersection of varying intellectual and disciplinary strands of study both contributing to, as well as drawing from, knowledge produced in all of them.
The Scope of IR
Turning now to what, exactly, IR is supposed to study, this is not completely straightforward either. In its narrowest sense, it is taken to denote the study of relations between states (that is, nation-states or sovereign states as distinct from states that make up a federal system). More broadly, it denotes interactions across state boundaries, which include a variety of non-state actors and organizations as well. An intimately related concern is the international state system as a whole, which has been widely regarded as providing the essential foundation for international order. Whether one adopts the narrower or broader understanding, the central institution is still the state. Indeed, it could be said that the entire edifice of traditional IR is founded on the modern sovereign state as well as the distinction between the domestic and the international spheres of politics.
This may seem straightforward enough, but there are not only many disputes about the proper objects of study, there is disagreement as well about the terminology used in even naming the subject. This is in addition to disputes over such matters as the nature of sovereignty, the meaning of security, the notion of world order, the role of norms and values in the international sphere, the function of international institutions, the idea of humanity, the possibility of effective international law, what issues count as matters of ‘international’ concern, how ‘war’ and ‘peace’ are defined, the relative importance of structures and agents in world politics, the problem of ethnocentrism (or more especially Eurocentrism), and so on. This raises the further question of what, exactly, is the purpose of the discipline or, as one set of authors put it, what is the point of IR? (Dyvik, Selby and Wilkinson (eds), 2017). And, again, there is more than one way of answering this question.
One standard IR text takes as its starting point the structuring of the world into states: ‘The main reason why we should study IR is the fact that the entire population of the world is divided into separate political communities, or independent states, which profoundly affect the way people live’ (Jackson and Sørensen, 2007, p. 2). This is a straightforwardly descriptive statement of the way the world is organized rather than a statement about how people ought to live. In the same book, however, a more specifically normative purpose is expressed: ‘There are at least five basic social values that states are usually expected to uphold: security, freedom, order, welfare and justice’ (ibid., p. 3).
The first statement assumes the absolute centrality of the state, and of the international system of states, to the discipline of IR and therefore reflects a very traditional approach. The broad normative concerns articulated in the second statement, however, are very much in tune with the so-called new agenda for IR developed in the latter stages of the Cold War period and which moves well beyond the strong focus on interstate warfare (and its prevention) that characterized earlier work in IR (see, generally, Lawson, 2002). If we look at an IR textbook written in the Cold War period – a period when the threat of catastrophic nuclear warfare on a global scale was more prominent in perceptions of world politics – this focus is much more in evidence:
[A] Third World War, fought with nuclear weapons, would involve us all and destroy at least large areas on every continent. Policy planners as well as military strategists have never left any doubts about the seriousness of their deadly intentions … The study of international relations is, therefore, hardly just an academic exercise – it is an investigation of the chances for our physical survival … (Krippendorff, 1982, p. vii)
IR’s ‘new agenda’ now embraces policy issues encompassing global environmental concerns (which include nuclear issues); global health issues such as the containment and treatment of deadly viral infections; legal and illegal migration, incorporating refugee movements; the gap between the Global North and South in terms of wealth and poverty; democratization and the full range of human rights, from civil and political rights to the right to development and the rights of women and children, indigenous communities and various vulnerable minority groups; reform of the United Nations and its agencies; the extension of international law and the prosecution of crimes against humanity; terrorism; religious fundamentalism and various forms of political extremism; and international organized criminal activities, ranging from drug production and trafficking to money laundering and the smuggling of all kinds of goods, from endangered species, diamonds and illicit drugs to weapons and people. However, both interstate and intrastate warfare remain central concerns.
Humanitarian Concerns
Violent conflicts are seen as having significant humanitarian dimensions for which the ‘international community’ has a moral responsibility. Cynical observers may contend that the international community usually acts only when television cameras are around to convey images of human suffering to a global audience. This was illustrated by the tragic image of the body of a small Syrian boy who drowned off a beach in Turkey in September 2015 when his family attempted to reach Greece by boat, provoking a palpable emotional reaction around the globe in support of a more concerted humanitarian effort to assist asylum seekers. More recently, images of thousands of refugees fleeing battle zones in Ukraine, not to mention the scenes of devastation within the country that include footage of dead civilians – men, women and children – have elicited a similar response. This is known as ‘the CNN effect’, a phrase encapsulating the idea that real-time communications technology can ‘provoke major responses from domestic audiences and political elites to global events’ (Robinson, 1999, p. 301; see also Benabid, 2021). It has been further enhanced by social media, through which such stories and their accompanying images can ‘go viral’ on a global scale almost instantly and contribute to humanitarian impulses at various levels.
Humanitarian intervention, however, is also a banner under which war itself can be prosecuted. NATO’s military intervention against Serb forces in the Kosovo war of 1998–9 is one clear example. So too was the UN Security Council’s authorization of intervention in Libya in March 2011 for the purpose of protecting civilians in rebel areas under attack from Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi’s forces, but which turned into a concerted effort to bring about regime change through the ousting of Gaddafi altogether. Russia also has a long history of justifying its interventions abroad by reference to the need to protect certain minority groups, especially Russian-speaking ones or those with some other kind of affiliation with Russia. Justification for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 combined the rhetoric of both ‘humanitarian intervention’ to protect Russian-speakers in Ukraine’s eastern regions from an alleged threat of ‘genocide’ along with the purported need to exercise a right to self-defence against some vaguely perceived, future threat from the NATO alliance. Such claims, however, are entirely specious (Green, Henderson and Ruys, 2022).
The US-led intervention in Iraq in 2003 has also been widely criticized as lacking any legitimacy in international law. It was initially justified on the grounds that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and, under the rogue leadership of Saddam Hussain, therefore constituted an existential threat to international peace and security. This justification was replaced by a humanitarian one when, after the invasion, it became clear that Iraq possessed no such weapons. In addition, the attack on Iraq was not authorized by the UN Security Council. It is tempting to conclude that, if international law on the use of force by the world’s greatest military power cannot be enforced, international law is useless. But, as one scholar points out, this does not mean that the world would be better off without a body of law that provides a ‘normative benchmark against which to measure the validity of US actions’ (Scott, 2010, p. 113). It also provides the benchmark for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which is clearly contrary to international law. Despite such cases, as far as the broad application of international law demonstrates over the last seventy years or so, the record shows that most states, and other relevant actors, follow most of the rules most of the time (see, generally, Sandholtz and Whytock (eds, 2017).
KEY CONCEPT Humanitarian Intervention
Action taken, usually by one or more states, in response to extensive suffering and threats to life of civilian populations within the borders of another state. The term ‘intervention’ implies that it is not necessarily invited by the state in question and may therefore be seen as a hostile action, especially given that it often involves military action. Whether invited or not, it is always regarded as an extraordinary action taken in dire circumstances. It differs from the more regular delivery of humanitarian aid when natural disasters strike.
Identity Politics
Civil wars or internal conflicts often involve a strong element of ‘identity politics’ in which religious, ethnic, linguistic or other cultural factors are seen as having a prime role to play in both instigating conflicts and maintaining their momentum. In the last few decades, conflicts in various parts of the world from Israel/Palestine to Rwanda, Sudan, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, the Solomon Islands and many other locations have displayed distinct characteristics of identity politics. The violence involved has ranged from rioting, looting and a relatively small number of deaths in the case of the Solomon Islands in the Pacific to genocidal massacres in Rwanda and the Darfur region of Sudan. Some conflicts involve claims to self-determination by minorities, sometimes in the form of greater autonomy for a group within the state, but just as often in the form of secession from an existing state in order to create a new one.
Others may be based on a notion that one particular group has superior claims to control of an existing state. In all these instances, the state takes centre stage as a prize to be won or a goal to be achieved. The possibility of ‘culture wars’ on a regional or global scale has also been much discussed following Samuel Huntington’s provocative article on the ‘clash of civilizations’, published shortly after the end of the Cold War. This ‘clash’ was conceived as a successor to the great clash of ideologies of the Cold War period (Huntington, 1993). Both the Cold War and the speculations that followed its end are dealt with in more detail in Chapter 5.4.
KEY CONCEPT Identity Politics
Identity politics generally involves the promotion of a political agenda by groups or sectors within a population who perceive themselves to be marginalized or discriminated against and who demand recognition of their rights to social justice or a form of self-determination. It is often an important element in civil wars where opposing ‘identities’ assert the right to control the state or, in some cases, to create a new state. In the international sphere, it can apply to national or state identities (for example, states can identify as liberal democracies, which in turn informs their foreign policy choices) as well as to organized groups operating under the banner of a particular religion and on a transnational basis (for example, militant Islamist groups). More generally, identity politics is a complex phenomenon that requires an understanding of how identities are generated, how they are deployed in any given context, and how they relate to cause and effect in either domestic or international politics.
While acknowledging that identity politics does indeed underlie many recent conflicts, this does not mean that more conventional analyses of state interests or ideologies are no longer relevant. Nor does it mean that manifestations of identity politics are devoid of an ‘ideological’ dimension. Culture, ethnicity, religion, gender, nationality, perceptions of race and other such identifiers often inform a worldview consistent with an ideological position, the latter consisting in a set of ideas and beliefs, often shared within and between groups, and giving rise to particular positions on a range of political issues as well as shaping action-oriented agendas. A prominent form of identity politics consists in nationalism, discussed in the next section.
The Agenda for IR in the Twenty-First Century
Many of the concerns touched on above, from the problems of environmental degradation to ethnic conflict, have been around for decades, if not longer. But the difference now is that they have become more widely recognized as matters relevant to IR and the international policy community and therefore constitute an extensive agenda for IR. Anthropogenic environmental change has been generating at least as much concern as the possibility of large-scale interstate warfare. For many places in Africa, threats to individuals and communities come not only from civil wars but also from disease. HIV/AIDS, the Ebola virus and COVID-19 have been among the most publicized of these in recent years, but even more deadly in terms of loss of life in some areas are mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria. A salutary reminder of how disease can impact human well-being on a global scale is the fact that more people perished in the influenza pandemic of 1918/19 than in the whole of the First World War.
Key Points
Although IR stands at the intersection of varying intellectual and disciplinary strands of study, and covers a very wide range of issues, its focus is primarily
political
and it is especially attuned to the dynamics of power in its many forms.
Conventional approaches in IR have been oriented mainly to relations between sovereign states, and the actions of state-based actors, and generally make a clear distinction between the domestic and the international spheres of politics.
Conflicts, whether interstate or internal, have significant humanitarian dimensions for which the ‘international community’ has a moral responsibility and which raise issues of humanitarian intervention.
Increasing attention has been paid to identity politics – a complex phenomenon requiring an understanding of how identities are generated and deployed in any given context, and how they relate to cause and effect in the overlapping spheres of domestic and international politics.
1.3 Defining the International
There has been a trend in recent years to replace the term ‘international relations’ with various substitutes – ‘world politics’, ‘global politics’ or sometimes the more amorphous ‘international studies’. These are often regarded as encompassing a wider range of issues more appropriate to the contemporary period. Although this book retains the more traditional name of the discipline in its title, the analysis is nonetheless informed by a recognition that the field does indeed consist of much more than simply relations between states, as already indicated in the foregoing discussion, and so the terms ‘world politics’ or ‘global politics’ are also used when indicating the general subject matter of contemporary IR. The term ‘international studies’ is more explicitly interdisciplinary. In some understandings it is not based on any one discipline at all but encompasses insights from virtually any of the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences without necessarily assimilating these to a specifically political study of the world, or any particular part of it.
International studies often incorporate area studies (Southeast Asian Studies, Pacific Studies, Latin American Studies, African Studies or European Studies, etc.), which may include the study of languages, cultural practices, cross-cultural relations, history, geography, natural resources and so on. These obviously have much relevance for contemporary IR, but the latter is distinctive for its focus on international or world political concerns.
The ‘International’ Sphere
Given that IR has been grounded in a sphere called the ‘international’, it is worth looking at the meaning of this term in more detail. The English legal and political theorist Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) first coined the word ‘international’ in 1780 as an equivalent for the Latin phrase ius gentium (Suganami, 1978). While this translates more or less as ‘the law of nations’, Bentham was looking for something that captured more fully the dynamics associated with law as it operated between states rather than within states. In coining the word, and applying it to the sphere both outside and between states, Bentham reinforced the legal status of the sovereign nation-state as well as consolidating a political-legal distinction between the domestic affairs of a state, on the one hand, and its relations with other states in a distinct sphere outside of the domestic, on the other. When this occurred, the sovereign state itself could be fully conceptualized as the defining political unit for both the ‘national’ and the ‘international’.
This distinction between national/international, inside/outside, was accepted for many years as a reasonably accurate reflection of how world order is configured. But it has been criticized in more recent times for masking much more complex realities. Political, social and economic interactions taking place around the globe – beyond the sphere of the domestic – clearly involve much more than state-to-state relations. In international business, including finance, trade, manufacturing and so on, this seems obvious. In politics and at a social level, it may at first be less obvious, but there is nonetheless a great deal of activity that does not involve the state per se. NGOs are thriving as international actors in their own right. Among these are organizations involved in charitable aid, environmental issues, human rights, religious activities and peace advocacy. There are, however, other organized non-state groups devoted to less worthy ends, such as migration racketeering, money laundering, arms smuggling, the illicit drug trade, the illegal dumping of hazardous waste, terrorism and so on.
State and Nation
The word ‘international’ has also attracted criticism for conveying the impression that ‘nations’ rather than ‘states’ actually do the interacting. Although frequently conflated, the terms ‘nation’ and ‘state’ denote two quite different entities. The former refers more or less to ‘a people’, which may be defined as ‘a named community occupying a homeland, and having common myths and a shared history, a common public culture, a single economy and common rights and duties for all members’ (Smith, 2001, p. 13). The concept of the state, in contrast, is defined in legal/institutional terms as ‘a set of autonomous institutions, differentiated from other institutions, possessing a legitimate monopoly of coercion and extraction in a given territory’ (ibid., p. 12). The state as an entity in the international system is further defined in the next section.
The combined term ‘nation-state’ reflects an ideal that has been at the heart of much theorizing about world order, at least as far as conventional IR is concerned. The ideal is that ‘a nation’ (understood as ‘a people’) should be matched to ‘a state’. Despite the presence of ethnic minorities and immigrant communities in almost every country, a simple way of seeing the world is in terms of equating states with a singular, undifferentiated people – for example, Russia with ‘Russians’, Indonesia with ‘Indonesians’, Egypt with ‘Egyptians’, Brazil with ‘Brazilians’, and so on. Nationalism itself is an ideology of the state insofar as it identifies peoples with states. In a student atlas of world politics, the very first map, entitled ‘Current World Political Boundaries’, is introduced in terms which, not surprisingly, reflect this conventional approach:
The international system includes states (countries) as the most important component. The boundaries of countries are the primary source of political division in the world, and for most people nationalism is the strongest source of political identification. (Allen, 2000)
