International Relations after the Cold War

This article, based on Adam Roberts's valedictory lecture as Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at Oxford University, reconsiders the causes and consequences of the end of the Cold War. It argues that a key to understanding these developments is acceptance of pluralism—of theories, of political systems, of cultures, of methods of analysis, and of academic disciplines. Pluralism in at least some of these senses is a recognized strength of International Relations studies in the UK. The long tradition of acceptance of a plural international system, and a plural approach to understanding it, includes figures as varied as John Stuart Mill, Maxim Litvinoff, Alastair Buchan and Hedley Bull. The end of the Cold War was the result of a plural mix of factors: both force and diplomacy; both pressure and détente; both belief and disbelief in the reformability of communism; both civil resistance in some countries and guerrilla resistance in others; both elite action and street politics; both nuclear deterrence and the ideas of some of its critics; both threat and reassurance; both nationalism in the disparate parts of the Soviet empire and supranationalism in the European Community. Paradoxically, the specialists in politics and International Relations who came closest to foreseeing the end of the Cold War were those who made few if any claims to a ‘scientific’ approach, and whose idea of forecasting was based, at the very most, on Mill's modest concept of ‘a certain order of possible progress’. Since the end of the Cold War, simplistic interpretations of how it ended have contributed to narrow understandings of international order. The spirit of imposed universalism having fed from Moscow, has flourished as never before in its other favourite haunt, Washington DC. There is a need to recognize the plurality of perspectives that endure in the post‐Cold War world.     

International History and International Relations Theory: A Dialogue Beyond the Cold War

Until recently, there has been little 'real' dialogue in Cold War studies between International Relations theorists and international historians. In many ways this is not surprising. For the most part, International Relations theorists took the Cold War as an immutable feature of the international system. Historians did indeed seek to explain the outbreak of the Cold War and the historic features that had given rise to American hegemony and Soviet opposition, but they did so primarily by concentrating largely on archival and related research with only limited attention given to the bigger issues of the Cold War world. However, as the article demonstrates, a dialogue between historians and theorists over some key aspects of the Cold War, such as the role of ideology, is now timely. The evolution of both a broader conception of International History, as well as the partial opening of communist archives and a range of new developments in International Relations, means that it is now possible to 'rethink' the Cold War using both history and International Relations theory.     

Feminist International Relations: a contradiction in terms? Or: why women and gender are essential to understanding the world ‘we’ live in*

This article examines the argument that women and gender are essential to the study of International Relations. It explains why this understanding is based on ontological revisionism and examines key areas where feminist International Relations has explored this possibility: war, militarism and security; sovereignty and the state; and globalization.     

Between West and non-West: Latin American Contributions to International Thought

This article seeks to highlight the significant contribution of Latin American scholarship to the further promotion and understanding of more ‘global’ approaches to International Relations. It focuses on the immediate post-independence period and explores the internationalist perspective of Andres Bello, an enormously influential continental scholar, publicist, and political figure, whose work is little known outside South America. It argues that his contribution to International Relations broadly conceived, part of a wider regional contribution, cannot be neatly accommodated within either accounts of the expansion of international society or revisionist post-colonial thought. As such it is neither fully ‘Western’ nor ‘non-Western’. Analysing his contribution under three interrelated headings - international law, the problem of order and international co-operation - it argues that Bello's work needs to be examined on its own terms. Above all it provides an illustration of why we need to take more seriously Latin American thought as part of a wider movement to internationalise International Relations.     

II War of the worlds/invasion of the body snatchers

In this second commentary on Gillian Youngs' article, Terrell Carver turns from Youngs' image of the 'gulf between mainstream/malestream International Relations on the one hand, and feminist International Relations on the other, to that of 'war' and asks if critical feminist and mainstream/malestream scholars in IR are even in the same world. He senses a level of intellectual and professional conflict that amounts to a 'war of the worlds' and argues for new skills to be adopted and new ways of thinking introduced into the discipline transforming it so that gender no longer divides its practitioners methodologically and personally. Most men in IR still need to address the 'lived experience' that feminists have so far successfully tackled in mainstream IR.     

Philosophy and International Relations

In recent years, International Relations theorists have turned to philosophy in search of new ontological and epistemological foundations or to clarify their existing commitments. Scientific Realism and International Relations, edited by Jonathan Joseph and Colin Wight, is a good example of the former: editors and contributors make the case for Scientific Realism—a leading philosophy of science—in International Relations. Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, author of The conduct of inquiry in International Relations, is motivated by the latter concern, and devises a typology based on two key fissures among social scientists: the relationships between the knower and the known, and between knowledge and observation. The Joseph and Wight volume, while containing some thoughtful essays, does not convince the reviewer that assumptions that might apply in the physical world are relevant to its social counterpart. The Jackson book is an intellectual tour de force and a compelling plea for pluralism.     

From colonialism to theology: encounters with Martin Wight's international thought

Martin Wight's writings range far more widely than those of most leading historians and theorists of International Relations. His thought escapes from the parochialism of particular academic disciplines and departments. It also escapes from the provincialism of the present, our preoccupation with immediate issues of foreign policy, which is a preoccupation with ourselves and our society. He grappled with some of the great questions of his era, from colonialism to nuclear war. But in doing that he tried to get beyond his time, by recalling other times when similar questions were current. The mark of a leading thinker and writer is the heavy weight of his thought on his readers. Martin Wight's writings left me with a number of ideas and suggestions the accumulative effect of which is the view I hold of International Relations.     

The Gorbachev Interlude and International Relations Theory

Richard Ned Lebow and Thomas W. Risse–Kappen, eds. International Relations Theory and the End of the Cold War     

Women's International Thought in the Twentieth-Century Anglo-American Academy: Autobiographical Reflection,Oral History and Scholarly Habitus

Methodologies of textual and linguistic analysis have long held sway in Anglo-American practices of intellectual history. Such approaches tend to decouple the ideas being traced from the human subject, or scholar, producing the thought. Taking the lead from the rich theorising work done in feminist, gender, race and cultural histories, this article asks what changes in our understanding of intellectual histories of international thought when we connect the lived and bodily realities of the human subjects producing the ideas to the ideas themselves. In so doing, the article makes a case for the importance of fleshing out what the author calls ‘scholarly habitus’ and suggests the potential utility of oral history as a methodology for reconstructing ‘scholarly habitus’. The article will draw upon an oral history archive comprised of twenty interviews conducted with senior women International Relations scholars from the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom to flesh out this argument. The article argues that oral history, as a medium for autobiographical practice, can reveal aspects of how gender, race and class shaped the scholarly practice and career trajectories of these women, as well as shed light on the historical dynamics of the discipline of International Relations as a whole.     

Party executives: Age structure and family size

The Australian Political Handbook, International Public Relations Pty Ltd, Canberra, 1974, pp. 210, $15.60.     

Economic Regionalization of the Ukrainian SSR

The author, in a field trip through the Western Pamir, was struck by the paradox of widespread well-preserved traces of Pleistocene glaciation and the relative absence of glacial drift. He advances a hypothesis of the paleogeographic development of the Pamir, assigning an important role to direct evaporation of the ice and firn of the glacial mantle. The paper was read by the author in the form of an illustrated lecture at the International Geographic Congress in London.     

Advances and impasses in Fred Halliday's international historical sociology: a critical appraisal

How did Fred Halliday recast International Relations (IR) theory as international historical sociology? This article explores Halliday's intellectual trajectory across this terrain and suggests that the notion of ‘capitalist modernity’, derived from an amalgamation of neo‐Marxian and neo‐Weberian historical sociology, functioned as the strategic master‐category, which anchored his thought on International Relations throughout his work. This category was successively reconceived and complemented to generate four, partly contradictory, analytical frameworks at a lower level of abstraction: ‘global conjunctural analysis’; a neo‐Weberian ‘sociology of the inter‐state system’; ‘international society as homogeneity’ and ‘uneven and combined development’. The article identifies the advances and impasses in each intellectual move and exemplifies the limits of Halliday's approach in relation to his analysis of revolutions. It suggests that while Halliday was instrumental in reconnecting IR with historical sociology, providing crucial openings and correctives to mainstream IR theory, his theoretical emphases remained ultimately too syncretistic and additive to shift the debate on firmer ground. While this can be read as a failure, there is also evidence to understand this anti‐formalism as a deliberate intellectual choice. The article concludes by suggesting that the very term international historical sociology, predicated on a distinct modernist vocabulary, may itself preclude a full historicization of categories of analysis, restricting its use as a general framework for capturing the historicity and sociality of geopolitical practices across time and space.     

Richard Nixon and the Failed War Against the Trading World

Books reviewed:
Foreign Relations of the United States , 1969 – 1976, vol. 3: Foreign Economic Policy , 1969 – 1972; International Monetary Policy , 1969 – 1972.     

Book reviews

Books reviewed in this issue International Relations theory Ethical reasoning in international affairs: arguments from the middle ground. Edited by Cornelia Navari. Interpreting global security. Edited by Mark Bevir, Oliver Daddow and Ian Hall. After liberalism? The future of liberalism in International Relations. Edited by Rebekka Friedman, Kevork Oskanian and Ramon Pacheco Pardo. The end of conceit: western rationality after postcolonialism. By Patrick Chabal. Back to basics: state power in a contemporary world. Edited by Martha Finnemore and Judith Goldstein. International organization, law and ethics Justice among nations: a history of international law. By Stephen C. Neff. International responsibility and grave humanitarian crises: collective provision for human security. By Hannes Peltonen. Global justice, Kant and the Responsibility to Protect: a provisional duty. By Heather M. Roff. Liberty and security. By Conor Gearty. Conflict, security and defence 1 See also Hannes Peltonen, International responsibility and grave humanitarian crises: collective provision for human security; and Heather M. Roff, Global justice, Kant and the Responsibility to Protect: a provisional duty, both pp. 705–6.
Just and unjust military intervention: European thinkers from Vitoria to Mill. Edited by Stefano Recchia and Jennifer M. Welsh. Genocide and International Relations: changing patterns in the transitions of the late modern world. By Martin Shaw. Governance, civil society and cultural politics A history of Jewish‐Muslim relations: from the origins to the present day. Edited by Abdelwahab Meddeb and Benjamin Stora. Acts of union and disunion: what has held the UK together—and what is dividing it?. By Linda Colley. The confidence trap: a history of democracy in crisis from World War I to the present. By David Runciman. Political economy, economics and development Wrong: nine economic policy disasters and what we can learn from them. By Richard S. Grossman. Energy, environment and global health What's wrong with climate politics and how to fix it. By Paul G. Harris. A journey in the future of water. By Terje Tvedt. International history The bombing war: Europe 1939–1945. By Richard Overy. Europe The EU and military operations: a comparative analysis. By Katarina Engberg. Britain and Germany imagining the future of Europe: national identity, mass media and the public sphere. By Leonard Novy. Russia and Eurasia The readers of Novyi Mir: coming to terms with the Stalinist past. By Denis Kozlov. Believing in Russia: religious policy after communism. By Geraldine Fagan. Fragile empire: how Russia fell in and out of love with Vladimir Putin. By Ben Judah. Middle East and North Africa Armies and state‐building in the modern Middle East: politics, nationalism and military reform. By Stephanie Cronin. The wisdom of Syria's waiting game: foreign policy under the Assads. By Bente Scheller. South Asia Aspiration and ambivalence: strategies and realities of counterinsurgency and state building in Afghanistan. By Vanda Felbab‐Brown. Afghan lessons: culture, diplomacy, and counterinsurgency. By Fernando Gentilini. Translated by Angela Arnone. Remapping India: new states and their political origins. By Louise Tillin. East Asia and Pacific The struggle for order: hegemony, hierarchy, and transition in post‐Cold War East Asia. By Evelyn Goh. Transition scenarios: China and the United States in the twenty‐first century. By David P. Rapkin and William R. Thompson. Tyranny of the weak: North Korea and the world, 1950–1992. By Charles K. Armstrong. Tibet: an unfinished story. By Lezlee Brown Halper and Stefan Halper. North America Understanding American power: the changing world of US foreign policy. By Bryan Mabee. America's war on terror: the state of the 9/11 exception from Bush to Obama. By Jason Ralph. Latin America and Caribbean Cuba in a global context: international relations, internationalism, and transnationalism. Edited by Catherine Krull.     

Book reviews

Books reviewed in this issue. International Relations theory The evolution of International Security Studies. By Barry Buzan and Lene Hansen. International law and organization Escaping the self‐determination trap. By Marc Weller. Punishment, justice and international relations: ethics and order after the Cold War. By Anthony F. Lang Jr. Foreign policy Perceptions and policy in transatlantic relations: prospective visions from the US and Europe. Edited by Natividad Fernández Sola and Michael Smith. Avoiding trivia: the role of strategic planning in American foreign policy. Edited by Daniel W. Drezner. India and the United States in the 21st century: reinventing partnership. By Teresita C. Schaffer. Conflict, security and armed forces The new counterinsurgency era: transforming the US military for modern wars. By David H. Ucko. Under a mushroom cloud: Europe, Iran and the bomb. By Emanuele Ottolenghi. Old and new terrorism: late modernity, globalization and the transformation of political violence. By Peter R. Neumann. Terrorism: how to respond. By Richard English. The de‐radicalization of jihadists: transforming armed Islamist movements. By Omar Ashour. Crime, war and global trafficking: designing international cooperation. By Christine Jojarth. Security and the war on terror. Edited by Alex J. Bellamy, Roland Bleiker, Sara E. Davies and Richard Devetak. Politics, democracy and social affairs Facts are subversive: political writings from a decade without a name. By Timothy Garton Ash. Political economy, economics and development A failure of capitalism: the crisis of ′08 and the descent into depression. By Richard A. Posner. The future of the dollar. Edited by Eric Helleiner and Jonathan Kirshner. Discipline in the global economy? International finance and the end of liberalism. By Jakob Vestergaard. Ethnicity and cultural politics The crisis of Islamic civilization. By Ali A. Allawi. Islam and the secular state: negotiating the future of shari'a. By Abdullahi Ahmed an‐Na'im. The fall and rise of the Islamic state. By Noah Feldman. Energy and environment Emerging global scarcities and power shifts. Edited by Bernard Berendsen. China and the energy equation in Asia: the determinants of policy choice. By Jean A. Garrison. History The rise and fall of communism. By Archie Brown. The great Cold War: a journey through the hall of mirrors. By Gordon S. Barrass. Europe Europe old and new: transnationalism, belonging, xenophobia. By Ray Taras. Farmers on welfare: the making of Europe's Common Agricultural Policy. By Ann‐Christina L. Knudsen. European security governance: the European Union in a Westphalian world. Edited by Charlotte Wagnsson, James A. Sperling and Jan Hallenberg. Russia and Eurasia Russian Eurasianism: an ideology of empire. By Marlène Laruelle. Russian nationalism and the national reassertion of Russia. Edited by Marlène Laruelle. Middle East and North Africa Defeat: why they lost Iraq. By Jonathan Steele. Guardians of the revolution: Iran and the world in the age of the Ayatollahs. By Ray Takeyh. Sub‐Saharan Africa China's new role in Africa. By Ian Taylor. China's African challenges. By Sarah Raines. Asia and Pacific Whose ideas matter? Agency and power in Asian regionalism. By Amitav Acharya. Challenges to Chinese foreign policy: diplomacy, globalisation and the next world power. Edited by Yufan Hao, C. X. George Wei and Lowell Dittmer. Chinese security policy: structure, power and politics. By Robert R. Ross. North America Renegade: the making of Barack Obama. By Richard Wolffe. Latin America and Caribbean Cuban medical internationalism: origins, evolution, and goals. By John M. Kirk and H. Michael Erisman. Brazil as an economic superpower? Understanding Brazil's changing role in the global economy. Edited by Lael Brainard and Leonardo Martinez‐Diaz.     

The world turned upside down? Human rights and International Relations after 25 years

This article revisits the arguments of John Vincent's influential 1986 book, Human rights and International Relations and situates them against the context both of the debates of his own time and the debates of the early twenty‐first century. Vincent's arguments are assessed and evaluated in their own terms and compared and contrasted with dominant positions today. The arguments are then assessed in the light of two leading critical perspectives on human rights before considering a final criticism of the possibility and desirability of the current human rights regime in International Relations.     

World government and empire: the international historian as theorist

International history and International Relations have long been held separate, partly by misunderstanding and partly by mistrust. Three recent books, Marc Trachtenberg's Craft of international history , Paul Kennedy's The parliament of man and Niall Ferguson's The war of the world , suggest that the divide between history and theory is not as severe as it sometimes appears. This review article examines, through the histories of Kennedy and Ferguson, Trachtenberg's insistence that historians should be more attentive to the 'conceptual cores' of their work and that theorists should become better historians than they have been hitherto. It concludes by arguing that, in methodological terms at least, history and theory are not the distinct enterprises they are commonly taken to be.     

Commonwealth perspectives on International Relations

The parallel development of the inter‐ and non‐governmental Commonwealths on the one hand and the field of International Relations and its oldest journal, The Round Table, on the other, should not go unnoticed at the start of the second decade of the century. This article suggests that the Commonwealth nexus has always constituted a distinctive perspective and debate in both the metropole and the rest of the Commonwealth's expanding official and unofficial networks. The Commonwealth 'School’ both reinforces and contrasts with other non‐US and non‐hegemonic approaches presently animating the field.     

英国学派与世界历史研究

在英国学派研究方法中,历史占有重要地位,英国学派依托世界历史在研究方面取得了很大的成就,英国学派也成为历史学和国际关系学的桥梁。根据英国学派的核心概念"国际社会",提出了"首要制度"的概念,这个概念是英国学派对界定国际社会和阐释世界历史变迁标准的一个特殊贡献。首要制度是国际社会的深刻的、不断演化而来的社会结构,包括主权、外交、民族主义、殖民主义以及国际法等。次要制度与之不同,它是被国际关系学的自由主义(制度主义)者所研究的一种建构的、工具性的制度和国际组织。在定义首要制度及其如何产生、发展和消亡后,人们就可以进而关注由它们衍生出来的几种不同类型的国际社会。在此基础上,英国学派以首要制度的变迁为基准,对现代国际社会进行一个简明的世界历史意义上的叙述。最后,反思了全球国际社会的理念和更趋于核心—边缘的现实结构之间的张力,在这种核心—边缘结构中,西方核心和其他各种区域性的国际社会共享各种制度和存有各种分歧。     

“Where every breeze speaks of courage and liberty”: Offshore Humanism and Marine Xenology,or, Racism and the Problem of Critique at Sea Level

The 2015 Antipode RGS‐IBG Lecture was delivered by Prof. Paul Gilroy on 2 September at the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) Annual International Conference. Prof. Gilroy's lecture interrogates the contemporary attractions of post‐humanism and asks questions about what a “reparative humanism” might alternatively entail. He uses a brief engagement with the conference theme—“geographies of the Anthropocene”—to frame his remarks and try to explain why antiracist politics and ethics not only require consideration of nature and time but also promote a timely obligation to roam into humanism's forbidden zones.