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21. Evilization in liberal discourse: From Kant's 'unjust enemy' to today's 'rogue state'

Author:
Harald Muller
Publication Date:
07-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
Liberal discourse should have a hard time looking for 'evil' in international relations. Standing on the pillar of rationalism and humanitarianism, there seems to be little space for the morally and emotionally charged notion of evil to enter considerations. Yet, the liberal belief in the freedom of will implies that humans are capable of turning against the advice of reason and opt for evil behavior and underlying principles. This possibility is epitomized by Kant's construction of the 'evil enemy'. Since 'evil' appears sporadically in international relations, with Hitler's Germany as prototype, its existence in the real world of international relations cannot be ruled out a priori. Designating an 'other' as evil is thus a discursive possibility. The practice to turn this possibility into reality is conceptualized here as 'evilization' in analogy to 'securitization'. There is strong variance among liberal democracies in applying this practice, ranging from 'pacifism' to 'militancy', which often leads to dire consequences. Deriving the principles of fallibility and prudence from liberal reasoning, this article concludes with the proposition that 'liberal pacifism' is the preferable option in most conceivable circumstances, but that the possibility of confronting political evil is rare, but existing.
Topic:
International Relations and Politics
Political Geography:
Germany and Cameroon

22. Appointing evil in international relations

Author:
Mona K. Sheikh
Publication Date:
07-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
This article examines how evil has been conceptualised in the discipline of international relations and contributes to a body of critical literature that treats evil as a legitimacy bestowing label. By drawing on securitisation theory, it suggests developing a performative approach to evil as an alternative to descriptive and normative approaches. It is argued that such an approach would not only be valuable for understanding the effects of naming and grading evil, but also fulfils three additional functions. First, it facilitates a shift away from applying intention as the primary measure for determining matters of guilt and condemnation. Second, it challenges the privileged position of the powerful when appointing particular phenomena/adversaries as evil. Finally, it provides an analytical starting point for understanding conflict constellations where different parameters of legitimacy seem to clash. This last function requires particular sensitivity towards the audience and the cultural context of 'evilising' moves.
Topic:
International Relations

23. Collective evil and individual pathology: The depoliticization of violence against Afghan civilians

Author:
Harmonie Toros and Luca Mavelli
Publication Date:
07-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
This article explores how the violence against Afghan civilians carried out by the Taliban and US 'rogue' soldiers has been accounted for as the product of, respectively, collective evil and individual pathology. These two seemingly contending explanations, it is argued, are part of the same strategy of depoliticization, which aims to provide support and legitimacy for the US-led war in Afghanistan. The article discusses how the genealogy of the discourse of collective evil surrounding the Taliban can be traced to an Orientalist political theodicy, which frames the Taliban as 'children of a lesser God' – that is, as fanatical puppets at the mercy of a violent God – and how the discourse of individual pathology surrounding the unsanctioned violence of US soldiers is instrumental to exempt military and civilian leadership from collusion and responsibility. The article challenges this latter narrative of individual blame by discussing how killing, torture and desecration of bodies are at the heart of warfare. Hence, it is concluded, the language of collective evil and individual pathology are part of the same strategy of depoliticization, which aims to silence political contestation and conceal the dehumanizing aspect of war, its structural production of violence, and the complex and dispersed nature of responsibility.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, and Taliban

24. Challenging 'evil': Continuity and change in the drug prohibition regime

Author:
Christopher Hobson
Publication Date:
07-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
The 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs is unique among UN conventions for the appearance of the term 'evil' in the document. Among all the possible wrongdoing and bad things that exist in the world, it is slightly counterintuitive that drugs are the only one to be labelled as 'evil' in international law. Adopting a 'conceptual politics' approach, the article will examine how drugs came to be identified in this manner, with a specific focus on the drafting of the 1961 Single Convention. The latter part of the article focuses on the contemporary relevance of this framing, considering how it contributes towards a much more restrictive environment in which serious change to the drug prohibition regime has proven to be a very difficult task. For those seeking reform it is not enough to demonstrate that the system does not work, they also must successfully challenge the idea of drugs as something evil and a threat to humanity. In concluding it is suggested that by returning to the Single Convention, one finds not only the language of 'evil', but also a more flexible position that allowed for revising the way drugs are dealt with. To bring about change in drugs prohibition regime, reformers will need to recover this more open and balanced approach to understanding drugs.
Topic:
Environment, International Law, Politics, and United Nations

25. Conceptual relics, mutual assured evilness and the struggle over Israeli public commonsense

Author:
Piki Ish-Shalom
Publication Date:
07-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
Iran's imminent rise to nuclear power status raises reasonable fears about the Middle East stability. Having examined the discursive exchange of Mutual Assured Evilness (MAE) by Iran and Israel, some political commentators and decision makers express doubts over the workability of nuclear stability. That is because they question whether these countries can overcome their mutual hatred and find the requisite instrumental rationality for nuclear stability. Their fears are exacerbated when they regard Iran as a religious country and hence supposedly incapable of rational behavior. However, the discourse of evil is not only indicative of hatred. Evil it seems is a conceptual relic encased in religious metaphysics. It is a datum that enables us to expose the religious layers that exist alongside secularism. Israel's hyperbolic use of the term evil resonates as strongly as it does because of the religious metaphysics that coexists with Israel's supposedly secular belief system. Therefore, in some ways, Israeli society may be closer to Iranian society than Israelis generally allow themselves to believe and all the while the two societies are locked in a dance of hatred and fear, fueled, among other things, by MAE.
Topic:
Politics
Political Geography:
Iran, Middle East, and Israel

26. Escaping a security dilemma: Anarchy, certainty and embedded norms

Author:
Alan Collins
Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
This article is a response to a significant development in the security dilemma literature contained in the work of Ken Booth and Nicholas Wheeler; their re-conceptualisation of the security dilemma. They correctly identify that what many writers call the security dilemma is actually a paradox and they seek to disentangle the dilemma from the paradox. This enables them to argue, without contradiction, that it is possible to transcend the security dilemma but not escape it. Indeed, they argue it is inescapable. The inescapable claim is based on uncertainty in state relations being omnipresent and uncertainty being the defining feature of a security dilemma. In this article I argue that certainty, in some cases misplaced, more accurately explains state interaction. Where that certainty is grounded in deeply embedded norms and beliefs about the other, and their relationship, the security dilemma has been escaped.
Topic:
Security

27. The Air-Sea Battle 'concept': A critique

Author:
Amitai Etzioni
Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
In May 2013 the Pentagon released an unclassified summary of the top-secret Air-Sea Battle (ASB) Concept. ASB serves to focus the Pentagon's efforts to organize, train and equip the armed forces against advanced weapons systems that threaten the US military's unfettered freedom of access and action in the global commons. While officials claim ASB is merely improve service interoperability and could be applied in any number of conflict situations, this article argues that in fact the doctrine represents the Pentagon's plan for confronting China's increasingly capable and confident military. This raises two urgent questions: how does ASB fit into an overall US foreign policy toward China – and, if a military confrontation cannot be avoided, are there less risky alternatives, such a maritime blockade, that can achieve the same ends as ASB?
Topic:
Foreign Policy
Political Geography:
China

28. Constructing great powers: China's status in a socially constructed plurality

Author:
Catherine Jones
Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
As a rising power, increasing attention is focused on what China does on the world stage. The growing number of books and articles on China's rise, whether it is sustainable, whether it is a model for other developing states, and most importantly whether it is likely to change the current international order, highlights the level of interest in this phenomenon. This article suggests that focusing on China alone is not enough; instead it is essential to view the rise of China exemplifying the relationship between international order, great powers' status, and the shaping of the roles and responsibilities of great powers. It argues that when seen as a part of the construction of international order, great powers are also constructs within international order; as a result, China as a 'great power' does not exist apart from the international order it is rising into. This perspective broadens the range of possible questions that can be asked in relation to China (and other rising powers).
Political Geography:
China

29. International relations between war and revolution: Wilsonian diplomacy and the making of the Treaty of Versailles

Author:
Alexander Anievas
Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
The Peace Treaties of 1919 retain a prominent place within the study of International Relations (IR).The theoretical significance of Versailles for IR can hardly be overstated. For much rests on the question of whether the post-war settlement was problematic due to its liberal nature or in spite of it. Yet, explanations as to why Versailles diplomacy was so problematic vary significantly. What were the central factors affecting policymaking at Versailles? And what does Paris Peace diplomacy tell IR theory about modern foreign policymaking processes? This article provides a critique of standard IR interpretations of Wilsonian diplomacy at Versailles, illustrating how realist and liberals' uncritical acceptance of Wilson as the quintessential 'idealist-liberal' statesman glosses over a core contradiction at the heart of Wilsonian diplomacy: the wielding of power politics to transcend power politics. In doing so, it examines the effects of the Bolshevik revolution as a paradigm-rupturing event transforming the nature and dynamics of the First World War and the post-war settlement. This traces the unique sociological patterns of uneven and combined development thrown up by the war and the geopolitical problems this created for Wilson and the Allies in forging a new international order.
Topic:
Diplomacy and War

30. Why the crime of aggression will not reduce the practice of aggression

Author:
Davis Brown
Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
The new crime of aggression in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court poses a puzzle for constructivism. Although the norm against aggression has the support of a critical mass of states for it to cascade, the crime against aggression is predicted to have no significant effect. The reason is that the crime is overbroad; it makes no provision for humanitarian intervention and other quasi-legal but arguably legitimate operations. Despite the intent of the crime\'s drafters, the statutory safeguards that prevent prosecutions for such operations are actually illusory. The crime as codified chills such quasi-legal but necessary operations, therefore it will not garner the support of a critical mass of frequent users of force that would be necessary for this norm to cascade also. Furthermore, the history of double-standards in other UN political and judicial bodies erodes confidence in the crime\'s impartial application.
Topic:
Humanitarian Aid

31. Kenneth Waltz, Adam Smith and the Limits of Science: Hard choices for neoclassical realism

Author:
Adam Quinn
Publication Date:
03-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
This article argues that neoclassical realism (NCR), though it presents one of the most intuitively attractive frameworks for understanding states' actions, continues to struggle with a central conceptual tension. Some have argued that NCR is compatible with a structural realist approach, even that it is a 'logical extension' of it. Yet in seeking to identify law-like patterns of state behaviour arising from the varied features of states themselves, NCR appears to breach the outer limits of what Kenneth Waltz, the founding father of structural International Relations theory, thought tolerable in a theory of international politics. Thus, NCR arguably faces a fork in the road as to its future agenda and theoretical identity: should it limit itself essentially to chronicling anomalous occurrences within a fundamentally Waltzian paradigm, or try to map new rules of state behaviour on a scale that ultimately calls the primacy of Waltz's 'systemic imperatives' into question?
Topic:
International Relations

32. Kenneth Waltz and Leon Trotsky: Anarchy in the mirror of uneven and combined development

Author:
Justin Rosenberg
Publication Date:
03-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
Waltz's neorealist theory has been charged with falsely separating geopolitical from social and economic processes. Yet Waltz's critics themselves have failed to show how sociological and geopolitical phenomena can be explained in a unified international theory. Such a theory, says Waltz, would have to pass three tests. It must delimit a field of specifically international phenomena. It must identify structured (and hence theorizable) effects within this field. And it must furnish 'a brilliant intuition', which reveals the causal relations that explain these effects. This article argues that the idea of 'uneven and combined development' (U) can pass these tests. The article delimits 'the international' as those phenomena arising from the interactive multiplicity of societies. Next, it uses Gerschenkron's theory of backwardness to identify internationally structured effects arising from societal multiplicity. And finally, by considering the debate on the First World War, it explores how the causal mechanisms identified by U can be used to construct a unified sociological and geopolitical explanation.
Topic:
Economics

33. The 'knowledge politics' of democratic peace theory

Author:
Inderjeet Parmar
Publication Date:
03-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
How do academic ideas influence US foreign policy, under what conditions and with what consequences? This article traces the rise, 'securitisation' and political consequences of democratic peace theory (DPT) in the United States by exploring the work of Doyle, Diamond and Fukuyama. Ideas influence US foreign policy under different circumstances, but are most likely to do either during and after crises when the policy environment permits 'new thinking', or when these ideas have been developed through state-connected elite knowledge networks, or when they are (or appear paradigmatically congenial to) foreign policymakers' mindsets, or, finally, when they become institutionally-embedded. The appropriation of DPT by foreign policymakers has categorised the world into antagonistic blocs – democratic/non-democratic zones of peace/turmoil – as the corollary to a renewed American mission to make the world 'safer' through 'democracy' promotion. The roles of networked organic intellectuals – in universities and think tanks, for instance – were particularly important in elevating DPT from the academy to national security managers.
Topic:
Economics
Political Geography:
United States

34. The 'Concert of Democracies': Why some states are more equal than others

Author:
Anna Geis
Publication Date:
03-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
This article engages with a discourse emerging from international political theory, international law and political science on awarding privileges to democracies in crucial issues of global governance. Proposals that a 'Concert of Democracies' should be legally entitled to take decisions in case the United Nations Security Council is unable or unwilling to act are amongst the most prominent expression of this vision of the stratification of the international society into first-class and second-class regimes. The article reconstructs central tenets of this discourse on the inclusion and exclusion of regime types and shows that this kind of differentiation of states has been very much inspired by readings and appropriations of 'democratic peace' scholarship in International Relations. The article critiques the underlying problematic theoretical assumptions and the practical implications of democratic peace theory and policy proposals inferred from it.
Topic:
International Law and United Nations

35. Explaining US unilateral military intervention in civil conflicts: A review of the literature

Author:
Amber Aubone
Publication Date:
03-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
Recent third-party use of force in hastening the exit of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi illustrates that third-party military intervention is one foreign policy tool among many that leaders may use to achieve desired ends. Numerous works from international relations and foreign policy scholars explain third-party intervention using a variety of approaches and methods, and examining multiple levels of analysis. The survey of the literature provided here contributes to our understanding of US unilateral intervention by examining this phenomenon using both general theories of third-party intervention, as well as more refined foreign policy theories explaining US intervention in particular. As such, the survey includes works employing various approaches and levels of analysis, and thus serves two purposes: (a) to assist in the cumulation of knowledge pertaining to US unilateral intervention through consolidation of theory and empirical findings; (b) to serve as a source from which scholars can identify contradictions and future avenues of research pertaining to third-party intervention.
Topic:
International Law
Political Geography:
United States and Libya

36. On getting hit by traffic coming in both directions: A response to Dr Karen Devine's 'epistemology matters'

Author:
David Houghton
Publication Date:
03-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
This reply to Dr Karen Devine restates my claim, originally published in International Politics, that our epistemological assumptions do not affect our substantive (or ontological) claims about international relations (IR) as much as we commonly think. Even if we restrict ourselves purely to deconstructing the arguments others have made, and to analyzing the discourses of IR, it is very difficult in practice to be genuinely postmodernist in a way that makes a real difference to empirical research. We always end up saying that reality is the way it is, no matter how hard we try to hedge it around with disclaimers of various sorts.
Topic:
International Political Economy

37. The politics of liberal internationalism

Author:
Tim Dunne and Matt McDonald
Publication Date:
01-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
How is it that internationalism has become the dominant form of statecraft pursued by liberal states and by international organisations, and yet it has received relatively scant attention in International Relations (IR) both historically and conceptually? It is time that the field addressed the paucity of writings on an institutionalised idea that has shaped order-building for more than two centuries. The article opens with a consideration of internationalism and its status in political theory and IR, arguing that a variety of different configurations have taken hold in different historical moments. We then consider the coexistence of internationalism and imperialism as an illustration of how the ambiguities and tensions in liberal statecraft can be manifested. The article closes with a consideration of the international normative order-building that has taken place after 1945 and the critical issue of the resilience of liberal internationalism given the 'crisis' identified with it. For all its dangers and dilemmas, we make the case for engaging the politics of liberal internationalism as a site in which normative and practical concerns of global politics meet, and in which the calls to protect the interests of national communities are mediated by the imperative of 'purposes beyond ourselves'.
Topic:
International Political Economy

38. The 'Good State' debate in international relations

Author:
Peter Lawler
Publication Date:
01-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
The idea of the State as embodying moral virtue has a long, mostly inwardly focussed history. In international relations thought, sporadic Liberal explorations of the state as a 'good international citizen' have been vulnerable to Realist scepticism or dismissal. The Cold War's end saw a revival of Liberal enthusiasm for the Good State, but the translation of this into the foreign policies of key Western states generated new lines of critique focussing on the underlying universalism. Drawing upon aspects of much less-discussed Scandinavian internationalist discourse, the possibility of a more modest, open and thus sustainable understanding of the Good State is explored.
Topic:
International Relations

39. Liberal internationalism, the practice of special responsibilities and evolving politics of the security council

Author:
Christian Reus-Smit and Ian Clark
Publication Date:
01-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
Liberal internationalism represents a package of evolving and contending commitments, and this article traces the development within it of one practice with a longer history, namely the allocation of special responsibilities. Responsibilities are those things for which actors are held accountable and, internationally, these have negotiated between sovereign equality and material inequality, in search of a means of more effectively dealing with global problems. The definition of these responsibilities generates an intense politics and these are reviewed through the remit of the Security Council. The article considers the basis for the allocation of traditional special responsibilities for security to the Council and then tracks their extension in recent years to the issue of humanitarian protection. The vehicle for this has been the transformation of a practice about the use of the veto, towards one that calls for its non-use in humanitarian cases. This analysis of special responsibilities unsettles the separation between order and justice, and points to the challenges currently facing liberal internationalism.
Topic:
International Relations

40. The good state, from a cosmic point of view

Author:
Anthony Burke
Publication Date:
01-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
This article considers the question of the good state - and its normative model of foreign policy, internationalism - from a cosmopolitan perspective. This cosmopolitan worldview pushes beyond anthropocentrism to anchor its account in the vulnerability of humanity both to the political dangers it poses to itself and to the cosmic arrangement of chance that enables complex life on earth. The essay first critiques both academic and policy defences of internationalism as a 'middle-ground' between realism and cosmopolitanism by putting its statist ontology into question - that is, its fundamental account of human existence as bounded and determined by the nation-state. The perseverance of this underlying statist ontology creates tensions within academic defences of good international citizenship, which profess strongly cosmopolitan norms but whose moral philosophy, in accepting some practices of Realpolitik, is ethically insufficient. It then asserts an alternative ontology of (interdependent) human existence across borders and ecosystems, one that incorporates an ethically transformed state as a legal principle and an important means of cosmopolitan world order.