Commentary: Martians and Venutians in the new world order

One of the most significant results of 9/11 has been to provoke the most serious crisis in the transatlantic relationship—the subject of Robert Kagan's influential and provocative treatise. Lauded by some as one of the more important contributions to the study of world politics in recent years and attacked by others as possibly the most misguided analysis of European—American relations ever, Kagan sets forth in stark, realist terms why the rift is serious, long-term and unlikely to be overcome by neat diplomatic footwork. However, as this commentary seeks to show, if Kagan is right there is little chance of constructing anything like a 'new world order'. Moreover, if the clash continues, far from enhancing American power in the world, it is more likely to weaken it.     

Europe and the new balance of global order

The European Union has become an important shaping factor in international relations, but how and under what conditions it can exercise influence and contribute constructively to global order are still not well analysed. In fact, the EU's contribution may resemble more that of a force in physics than of a great power in the traditional sense of international relations (which the EU is not, and will not become in the near future), and its influence depends probably more on what the EU represents and how well it manages its own realm, rather than on what it can do externally. In this sense, European influence in international relations presently benefits from past achievements, and may therefore have peaked if the twin challenges of enlargement and national structural deficiencies are not addressed effectively. But even if the European Union does master those challenges successfully, and thus manages to sustain and perhaps even enhance its influence as a force in international relations, it will still have to proceed cautiously and clearly focus its attempts on shaping its external environment and contributing to a ‘concrete’ or ‘civilized’ global order. In a global setting that, despite appearances to the contrary, seems characterized by a diffusion rather than a concentration of power and by strong tendencies towards entropy rather than order, the EU can and will probably not remain America's principal ally in sustaining Pax Americana. Nor does it seem likely to become an equal partner in a constructive, balanced transatlantic relationship, let alone a great power capable of challenging, perhaps together with others, America's apparent pre‐eminence. The most plausible assumption for the EU's future role in the new balance of global order is that of a ‘civilian force’ with a regional focus. It may best be able to contribute to global order by managing its own realm well, promoting the normative and institutional infrastructure for civilized international relations, not least in the sense of functioning statehood, and working towards effective multilateralism.     

How Japan matters in the evolving East Asian security order

This article argues that Japan matters crucially in the evolving East Asian security order because it is embedded both in the structural transition and the ongoing regional strategies to manage it. The post‐Cold War East Asian order transition centres on the disintegration of the post‐Second World War Great Power bargain that saw Japan subjecting itself to extraordinary strategic constraint under the US alliance, leaving the conundrum of how to negotiate a new bargain that would keep the peace between Japan and China. To manage the uncertainties of this transition, East Asian states have adopted a three‐pronged strategy of: maintaining US military preponderance; socializing China as a responsible regional great power; and cultivating regionalism as the basis for a long‐term East Asian security community. Japan provides essential public goods for each of these three elements: it keeps the US anchored in East Asia with its security treaty; it is the one major regional power that can and has helped to constrain the potential excesses of growing Chinese power while at the same time crucially engaging with and helping to socialize China; and its economic and political participation is critical for meaningful regionalism and regional integration. It does not need to be a fully fledged, ‘normal’ Great Power in order to carry out these roles. As the region tries to mediate the growing security dilemma among the three great powers, Japan's importance to regional security will only grow.     

Photographic Uncertainties: Between Evidence and Reassurance

This paper examines the mid-nineteenth century photographic collecting practices in the Colonial Office (CO) in London. Following methodologies laid down by Stoler and Joyce, the paper excavates the epistemic procedures through which photography and its role in colonial governance operated between the late 1860s and 1875. I focus my analysis on the production of, and response to, two CO despatches, which were circulated in November 1869 requesting photographs. But what was the work expected of these photographs, what were they meant “to do”? What was their relationship with anthropology and geography? The paper argues that in the praxis of central government, the role of photographic evidence was more uncertain and confused than instrumental interpretative models have assumed. I shall argue that in many cases photographs were not “evidence” in any dynamic sense in information provision, but rather functioned as tools of reassurance.     

The Gulf war and the new world order: Economic dimensions of a problematic relationship

This paper investigates the durability of the economic underpinnings of the ‘new world order’ allegedly conceived in the Gulf war. Four substantive arguments are advanced: that the mechanism for allied burden‐sharing born in the Gulf war is inferior to its antecedents and inherently more political; that the historically acute economic vulnerability of America's allies to higher oil prices no longer exists; that the prospects for stable and low oil prices through the long run have not been enhanced; and that significant political opportunities for stability in the oil market are evaporating.     

The effect of the telegraph on law and order,war, diplomacy,and power politics

Abstract

Until the invention of the electric telegraph in the 1830s, transferring messages at speeds greater than that of a galloping horse was on the whole an unreliable process and one that could produce ambiguous results. The electric telegraph was pioneered on the Continent, but commercialisation was left to the Englishmen Charles Wheatstone and William Fothergill Cooke, who built the first public line in 1839. From that date until well after the end of the First World War, the British dominance of worldwide telegraph cable production and ownership was overwhelming. This article traces some of the more significant effects of the telegraph in general, and of the British telegraphic hegemony in particular, in the spheres of politics, international diplomacy, and law and order.     

Femininity and the Right: From moral order to moral order

This article highlights the complexities of conservative, anti-feminist discourses. It underscores the cross-cutting of religious, class and political cleavages and goes some way toward illustrating the resulting multivocality of anti-feminism. Three case studies of the Right in the 1870s, the 1930s and the 1980-1990s demonstrate both the resilience of the French Right's anti-feminism and its imperative of a moral order as well as its relative ineffectiveness in subordinating conservative women. The final picture is one in which conservative women have both accepted and rebelled against the Right's conventional idea of femininity.     

Role conceptions,order transition and institutional balancing in the Asia-Pacific: a new theoretical framework

The dawn of the twenty-first century witnessed a new wave of multilateral initiatives in the Asia-Pacific. By integrating institutional balancing theory and role theory, the author proposes a new theoretical framework—‘balance of roles’—to explain the variations in institutional strategies by different states. It is argued that a state’s role conception will shape its institutional balancing strategies in an order transition period. An order defender, like the USA, is more likely to adopt exclusive institutional balancing to exclude its target from its dominated institutions. An order challenger, such as China, will choose both inclusive and exclusive institutional balancing to maximise its own power and legitimacy in a new international order. As a kingmaker, a proactive second-tier state is more likely to pick an inter-institutional balancing strategy to initiate new institutions for competing for influence with existing institutions. An institutionalised order transition might be more peaceful than widely perceived.