Military power and international order

'"Military power … remains an instrument with which no state has yet found it possible completely to dispense". So writes Michael Howard in discussing military power and international order'. In a time when abstracts did not precede articles in International Afairs , this was how the then Editor, N. P. MacDonald, introduced Michael Howard's article, 'Military power and international order', originally published in volume 40: 3, July 1964 and reprinted in this anniversary issue. It has been chosen because, 45 years later, it still retains astonishing freshness and relevance. Now in 2009, states, and especially the new US administration, will need to assess the emphasis they put on military means to achieve their foreign policy ends, while attempting to deal effectively with, for example, the confects in the Middle East and Afghanistan, and the threat of international terrorism. Michael Howard was not concerned at the same time with terrorism, or transnational actors, but there remain enduring lessons in his 1964 article about the role of the military instrument to advance states' interests.     

Enlightenment and nuclear order

Applying the method of enlightenment correctly to the area of nuclear non‐proliferation would require a major effort to critically evaluate ideologies. Liberal arms control—despite its many successes and merits—has devised over the years a whole set of ideological tenets and attitudes. Some of them have been transformed into beliefs that could be termed myths. The most prominent ideological myth of the liberal arms control school is the notion that the Nuclear Non‐proliferation Treaty of 1968 (NPT) was in essence a disarmament agreement, not a non‐proliferation treaty. To depict the negotiations as a premeditated effort of enlightenment, where the governments of this world came together to solemnly decide that some of them would be allowed to have some nuclear weapons for an interim period while the others would renounce their possession immediately, is pure. It would be equally wrong to qualify the ‘grand bargain’ as one between the nuclear haves and the nuclear have‐nots. Another myth of the liberal arms control school is the notion that—in order to gain support for the NPT—the superpowers had altered their nuclear weapons strategy in the 1960s. Again, this contention is not borne out by the development of nuclear strategies and doctrines. The third myth is the contention that there was an abrupt shift in US non‐proliferation policy as George W. Bush came into power. The major changes in US non‐proliferation policy had already started during the Clinton administration and some of them can be traced back to the tenure of President George W. H. Bush senior. They all reflected the changed international environment and represented necessary adjustments of the non‐proliferation strategy. The Clinton administration left some of the traditional paths of arms control and rightly undertook some changes that were necessary because traditional instruments of arms control were no longer adequate. The Bush administration continued that policy, but in a more radical way.     

International nuclear order: a rejoinder

The article‘Nuclear enlightenment and counter‐enlightenment by William Walker opened the special issue of International Affairs which was published in May 2007. In it, he claimed that the United States departed in the late 1990s and early 2000s, at the height of its hegemonic influence, from a conception of international nuclear order that it had held to, with few interruptions, over several decades. By so doing, it contributed substantially to the order's currently perceived demise. In responding to criticisms from other participants in the special issue, William Walker defends his arguments while acknowledging the enlightenment trope's fragility; reemphasizes the essential contractual nature of the Nuclear Non‐Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which some critics denied; stresses the order's reliance on a judicious balancing (which has temporarily been lost) of realist and constitutional strategies; rejects assertions that the NPT is not a disarmament treaty; argues that the‘muddling through’advocated by some authors cannot suffice; and offers reasons why the despondency of several among them may have been overplayed, and why a new phase of consolidation of order might (just might) lie ahead, not least because of the reconsideration of US international strategies that has begun and the widely perceived urgency of preventing further proliferation and avoiding a resumption of arms racing.     

Bringing hegemony back in: the United States and international order

Hegemony suffers from a bad press. It is currently used to refer simply to United States primacy. Thus presented, the US is considered to have been hegemonic since 1945, or at least since 1990. Instead, hegemony is presented here as a legitimate institution of international society in which special rights and responsibilities are conferred on the hegemon. No such hegemony exists at present. However, given today's constellation of power, a circumscribed US hegemony potentially has a distinctive contribution to make to contemporary international order. To map out such a hegemonic institution, this article reviews some historical precedents. It finds that, rather than uniform, these have taken a variety of forms, especially with respect to the scope of the legitimacy and constituency within which they have operated. A scheme of hegemonies—singular, collective and coalitional—is set out as a more realistic way of thinking about hegemony's present potential.     

Destination unknown: Rokkasho and the international future of nuclear reprocessing

The much discussed expansion of investment in nuclear power in response to global warming and energy scarcity depends on solutions being found to the management and disposal of spent reactor fuels. The reprocessing route, involving the separation from radioactive waste of plutonium and uranium and their subsequent recycling, has long been advocated. However, experience shows that it suffers from chronic problems of coordination, usually resulting in mismatches of supply and demand and large stockpiles of plutonium. Just as the UK is withdrawing, Japan is embarking on large-scale reprocessing with the opening of the facility at Rokkasho which seems destined to produce large surpluses of plutonium against a background of heightened concerns over nuclear proliferation. In the meantime, the Bush administration has ended the United States'blanket opposition to reprocessing and is proposing a controversial new discrimination between'fuel-cycle'and'non-fuel-cycle'states. Confusion reigns.     

Analysing Women's Movements

Women's movements, understood as variant forms of collective action in pursuit of common goals, have been analysed in both feminist political theory and development studies. This article aims to combine these two discussions to provide a theoretical account of the emergence and character of such movements through the identification of three different forms of collective action, termed ‘independent’, ‘associative’ and ‘directed’. The article considers the relation of such movements to projects of general political import, be these of an authoritarian or democratic character, and returns to the debate over the usefulness or otherwise of conceptualizing women's interests. It concludes with an assessment of the place of women's movements in the contemporary politics of citizenship.     

The Secret Policemen's Ball: the United States, Russia and the international order after 11 September

In this article, Anatol Lieven argues that the collapse of the Soviet and communist threats and the triumph of capitalism and bourgeois values gave the United States an unprecedented chance to act as a status quo hegemon, dominating the world with the consent of other major powers. The United States threw up this chance by acting instead as a 'dissatisfied' and even revolutionary power, creating a sense of menace and resentment across much of the world. After the 11 September attacks, the near-global threat of Sunni Islamist terrorism and revolution gives the United States another opportunity to rally much of the world behind it, in a kind of new 'Holy Alliance' of states against threats from below. But by mixing up the struggle against terrorism with a very different effort at preventing nuclear proliferation, and by refusing to take the interests of other states into account, the US risks missing this opportunity for a second time, and endangering itself and its closest allies such as Britain.     

Analysing recent events in Burma

Bertil Lintner. Outrage. Burma's Struggle for Democracy. London and Bangkok: White Lotus, 1990. 208 pp. £12.50 (paper).

Bertil Lintner. Land of Jade. A Journey through Insurgent Burma. Edinburgh: Kiscadale Publishers and Bangkok: White Lotus, 1990. xvii +315 pp. £12.50 (paper).

Bertil Lintner. The Rise and Fall of the Communist Party of Burma (CPB). Ithaca: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, 1990. xii + 111 pp. $US10.00 (paper).

Bertil Lintner. Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma's Unfinished Renaissance. Clayton: Monash University, Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Working Paper 64, 1990. 28 pp. $A6.00.

Josef Silverstein (ed.). Independent Burma at Forty Years: Six Assessments. Ithaca: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, 1989. 112 pp. $US 10.00 (paper).

U Maung Maung. Burmese Nationalist Movements 1940–1948. Edinburgh: Kiscadale Publications, 1990. xvii + 395 pp. £36.00 (cloth), £15.50 (paper).

Andrew Selth. Death of a Hero: the U Thant Disturbances in Burma, December 1974. Nathan: Griffith University, Centre for the Study of Australia‐Asia Relations, Australia‐Asia Paper 49, 1989. 32 pp. $A4.00.

Maya Than and Joseph L.H. Tan (eds.). Myanmar Dilemmas and Options. The Challenge of Economic Transition in the 1990s. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1990. 300 pp. $S49.50 (cloth), $S39.50 (paper).