Security in international society: A comment on Alex J. Bellamy and Matt McDonald

Although English School (ES) theorists have played a significant and explicit role in security studies, Bellamy and McDonald claim that this has not been the case. However, they fail to show how they have arrived at their conclusion. Moreover, Bellamy and McDonald conflate solidarism with cosmopolitanism, with the result that they wrongly claim that some theorists are ‘weak’ while others are ‘deep’ solidarists. In addition, their attempt to view human security as a reflection of solidarist trends in the ES is welcome, but their method risks undermining the ES. I propose that an ES perspective on security needs to incorporate elements from three streams of thought: pluralism, solidarism and cosmopolitanism. I contend that security ought to be viewed as people centred and that it should be embedded within international society's norms, rules and institutions.     

世界历史、英国学派与国际关系理论

针对当前西方国际关系理论在解释现实和预测未来上的混乱和无力,作者提出理解过去成为重构国际关系研究的前提;并且在介绍和评论沃尔兹、吉尔平等为代表的现实主义世界史观和沃勒斯坦世界史观的联系与区别之后,对世界历史中国际力量的结构提出了新的证据,尤其着重介绍了英国学派国际体系和国际社会概念的缘起、演化及理论家们的批判。虽然本文作者即是当前英国学派的代表人物之一,但他并不避讳英国学派在理论上的缺憾,指出巴里·布赞构建在没有共同文化的条件下国际体系也可以转化为国际社会理论框架同时,关闭了一个布尔曾经试图打开的空间。作者认为在解读国际社会的世界历史方面还有很多课题需要深入探讨。     

State‐Community Relations in Yemen: Soqotra’s Historical Formation as a Sub‐National Polity

Soqotra Island, the remote border outpost of the Yemeni state in the Indian Ocean, is a community of mixed ethnic composition with a non‐Arabic mother tongue. It offers an ideal socio‐political context for the study of state–community relations in terms of polity formation as part of a political incorporation process. This focus provides a corrective to the still dominant segmentary society paradigm and its tribes‐driven state politics in the anthropological discourse on Yemen. Polity formation in Soqotra occurred through a series of acts of political incorporation by a succession of political regimes from the late nineteenth century to the present. The study of this process is pursued through a historical narrative of the state’s politics of administration. This narrative is aptly described as a mesography, as its analytical focus is on the meso‐level institutional web of four different political regimes with their distinctive modes of polity regimentation and their structuring effects on Soqotrans’ communal life.     

Culture and international society

This article investigates a hypothesis drawn from Martin Wight, that a society of states lacking a shared culture, as a result of expansion beyond its original base, will be unstable. This instability hypothesis has been influential in how the English School has presented the history of the expansion of European international society to a global scale. The article starts by offering two models of how a global international society could have come about since the late classical era: a multicultural encounter among several expanding civilizations (polycentric), or the takeover of the system by one centre (monocentric). Using these models as a backdrop, two accounts of the expansion story are developed. The Vanguardist account emphasizes the exceptionalism of European culture, posits a 500‐year period of western domination, sees multiculturalism and the decline of western power as problematic, and tends to pessimism about the future of international society. The Syncretist account emphasizes the permanence of cross‐cultural exchange, posits only a 200‐year period of western dominance, sees culture and international society as evolving together, and is not pessimistic about the stability of international society. These two models and two accounts are then used to assess the possible future of international society. The article argues that culture is less of a problem for international society than Wight, and much of the English School, suppose. The evidence for the substantial success of syncretism is strong and provides considerable stability to most of the likely outcomes. The key problem is not culture, but socio‐political structure. How can what North et al. call natural states and open access orders find shared practices and institutions that do not destabilize international society?     

Australian Foreign Policy under the Abbott Government: Foreign Policy as Domestic Politics?

While foreign policy featured prominently on the Australian political agenda in late 2014, the manner of Australia's engagement with the world challenges the idea of a ‘pivot’ from domestic politics to foreign policy. In particular, the government demonstrated a tendency to prioritise domestic political considerations, in particular public opinion, in its dealings with the outside world. This was evident across a range of issue areas: from the ‘internationalist’ agenda of asylum, climate change and aid to more traditional concerns such as bilateral relations with Indonesia and international security. This article explores these dynamics and asks what implications this has for both Australian foreign policy and theoretical accounts of the role and desirability of public engagement with foreign policy in international relations thought.     

Contesting danger: a new agenda for policy and scholarship on Central Asia

Western geopolitical discourse misrepresents and constructs Central Asia as an inherently and essentially dangerous place. This pervasive ‘discourse of danger’ obscures knowledge of the region, deforms scholarship and, because it has policy implications, actually endangers Central Asia. This article identifies how the region is made knowable to a US–UK audience through three mutually reinforcing dimensions of endangerment: Central Asia as obscure, oriental, and fractious. This is evidenced in the writings of conflict resolution and security analysts, the practices of governments, the activities of international aid agencies and numerous lurid films, documentaries and novels. The article first establishes the tradition of inscribing danger to Central Asia, in both academic and policy discourse, from the colonial experience of the nineteenth century through to the post‐Soviet transition and subsequent considerations of the region in terms of the war on terror. It considers several examples of this discourse of danger including the popular US TV drama about presidential politics, The West Wing, the policy texts of ‘Washingtonian security analysis’ and accounts of danger, insecurity and urban violence in the Ferghana Valley. It is argued that popular policy and academic texts are relatively consistent across the three dimensions of endangerment. This argument is demonstrated through a discussion of how policy‐making and practice is informed by this discourse of danger and of how the discourse of danger is contested within the region. The example of urban violence in Osh, Kyrgyzstan and Jalalabad, Afghanistan in 2010 demonstrates how opportunities to mitigate conflict may have been lost due to the distortions of this discourse of danger. It concludes by raising the challenge to policy‐makers, journalists and academics to contest this western geopolitical discourse and provide better accounts of how danger is experienced by Central Asians.     

International relations and foreign policy in the Australian Journal of Political Science: A review

The Australian Journal of Political Science (AJPS) has evolved from a publication that deliberately relegated articles in international relations (IR) to a secondary status to one that has defined and encouraged leading-edge contributions to that field. This development can be attributed to successive AJPS editorial teams’ realisation that contemporary political problems are increasingly interconnected and that emerging approaches to IR reflect this condition. Several recent and key IR debates that have emerged within the journal’s pages are assigned special attention here: the linking of Australia’s domestic politics to that country’s foreign policy interests and behaviour; in-depth discussions that relate to ongoing trends in the international political economy; critical analysis of national defence and regional security postures; and diverse theoretical perspectives that are increasingly shaping the IR field’s paradigmatic identity. It is concluded that the AJPS is now a leading source of IR thought and discourse.     

Anxiety geopolitics: Hybrid warfare,civilisational geopolitics,and the Janus-faced politics of anxiety

Working at the intersection of political geography and international relations, this article does two things. First, it theorises the relationship between geopolitics and anxiety. Second, it uses this conceptual lens to analyse and critique the discourse of ‘hybrid warfare’. The conceptual part draws on Lacanian political theory and contributes to critical geopolitics, ontological security studies, and the literature on politics of anxiety. It is built around the notion of anxiety geopolitics, which denotes a discourse that promises to deal with social anxiety by providing geopolitical fixes to it, yet also ultimately fails in doing so. We then move to argue that ‘hybrid warfare’ is a prime case of such discourse. Using examples from the Czech Republic, we show how the discourse of ‘hybrid warfare’ successfully connects different sorts of anxieties together and creates a sense of ontological security by linking them to familiar East/West civilisational geopolitics that points to Russia as the ultimate culprit. Yet, at the same time, the discourse simultaneously subverts itself by portraying ‘hybrid threats’ as too insidious, invisible and constantly shifting to be ever possibly durably resolved. We conclude that this makes ‘hybrid warfare’ self-defeating, normatively problematic, and strategically impractical.     

Sovereignty for security?: the discourse of sovereignty in Estonia

This investigation of the construction and operationalisation of state sovereignty in Estonia specifies how international integration is constituted in the Estonian sovereignty discourse, particularly how the inside and the outside of the state are demarcated in that discourse. The focus on this post-Soviet European Union applicant state is significant because if we understand sovereignty as a discourse, its political functions are inseparable from the specific context in which the inside and the outside of the state are constructed. Broadening the empirical scope of the constructivist international relations and critical geopolitics research on sovereignty therefore also enables me to substantiate and elaborate arguments made in that research.The Estonian sovereignty discourse hinges on the question as to whether or not international integration strengthens Estonia’s national security against the Russian threat. Different assumptions and positions on that issue make possible a highly selective deployment of pro- and contra-EU arguments that promulgate Estonia as European while minimising the influence of foreign institutions on Estonia’s citizenship and minority rights policies. While eagerly pursuing EU and NATO memberships, Estonia is not passively adopting but selectively appropriating political rhetoric and practices from these organisations. Concerns about the loss of sovereignty in Estonia are not examples of mere ignorance or irrational fear of changes, as is conventionally assumed, but are integral to, and reinforced by, the ways in which international integration is framed in political debates.     

An Exceptional Response? Security,Development and Civil Society in Spanish Policy after 11‐M

This article considers the ways in which Spanish state institutions responded to the Madrid bombings of 11 March 2004 in the context of the global ‘War on Terror’. It examines three inter‐related arenas of Spanish policy after 9/11 in which security and civil society are invoked in ways that impact upon the country's development agenda toward its southern Mediterranean partners. The first relates to Spain's external relations with its North African neighbours, and in particular the place of migration in shaping these relations over the last decade. The second concerns Spain's political relations with the representative organizations of its own Muslim populations. A third area of analysis pertains to the juridical‐institutional reactions of the state to the 11 March attacks: how have public authorities and civil society been affected and refashioned in the face of jihadist terrorism on the peninsula? The author argues that in each of these domains, the post‐9/11 context generally, and the 11 March attacks in particular, have elicited a securitization of civil society, which has in turn been associated with the country's international relations and domestic politics. Such securitization, however, has only been partially successful, thus vindicating the continuation of ‘politics as usual’ among Spain's state officials and its civil society.     

The international political thought of Martin Wight

The different responses in Great Britain and the United States to Martin Wight as a thinker of international relations reveal something about the contrasting academic cultures of the two countries. Wight was pre‐eminently an ‘arts’ man, regarding history and philosophy as essential prerequisites for understanding the world. Above all he was concerned with the moral dimension in politics, whether domestic or international. His pacifism in the Second World War, curiously linked to his profound sense of realism, reflected deep religious convictions; indeed theology, and particularly eschatology, underlay much of his thinking. His career centres upon first Chatham House and Nuffield College, Oxford, then the London School of Economics and Political Science, and finally the University of Sussex. His lectures at the LSE on international theory achieved legendary fame, but he did not publish much in his lifetime. The appearance since 1977 of four notable posthumous works has enhanced his already high reputation, as has the increasing scholarly interest in the ‘English School’, of which he is now seen as a founding father. Ian Hall's book is a brilliant piece of analysis in which Wight's theological world view—which was not obtrusive in his teaching and writing—is investigated with a sureness that is probably rare among scholars in the international relations field.     

The Australian National University's Department of International Relations: the early years

This article is a contribution to the re-evaluation of the formative years of the emergent international relations discipline. Work on this topic, extensive over the past decade and a half, has overturned a number of the foundational myths of the global discipline, especially regarding the period between the two world wars. The literature on international relations in Australia, slow to reflect this re-evaluation, generally still locates the first important developments in the 1960s, and characterises the scholarship that emerged as predominantly ‘realist’. This study both pushes back the boundaries and challenges the theoretical perspectives used to categorise thinking in Australia at that time. A student of C. A. W. Manning and thus conversant with British ideas of ‘international society’, George Modelski's early exposure to theoretical work in the USA and his endeavours to give his department a strongly regional focus gave his work a richness and multifaceted character not easily captured by the ‘realist–rationalist’ dichotomy. Modelski went on from the Australian National University to become a major figure in international relations in the USA, contributing to the original debates on globalisation and best known for his work on ‘long cycles’ in world politics.     

From Pristina to Tskhinvali: the legacy of Operation Allied Force in Russia's relations with the West

This article reviews the main developments in the Kosovo crisis in the context of relations between Russia and NATO/the West. For Moscow, Operation Allied Force constituted a flagrant breach of international law, a threat to post-Cold War European security governance and a challenge to Russia's status in the international order. Official Russian interpretations, heavily influenced by domestic politics, reflect a perception among Russia's political elite that, rather than upholding liberal democratic values, NATO's intervention constituted a selective defence of the interests of the leading western powers.
Such views have influenced Moscow's position on the thorny question of Kosovo's independence and Russia's more assertive foreign and security policy in the recent period, not least in the conflict over South Ossetia in August 2008. Ultimately, Operation Allied Force resulted in the Russian governing elite reassessing its views on statehood, the international order and the norms underpinning international society.     

One world? Many worlds? The place of regions in the study of international society

This article is a revised version of the 2006 Martin Wight Memorial Lecture and examines the placeof regional states‐systems or regional international societies within understandings of contemporary international society as whole. It addresses the relationship between the one world and the many worlds‐on one side, the one world of globalizing capitalism, of global security dynamics, of a global political system that, for many, revolves a single hegemonic power, of global institutions and global governance, and of the drive to develop and embed a global cosmopolitan ethic; and, on the other side, the extent to which regions and the regional level of practice and of analysis havebecome more firmly established as important elements of the architecture of world politics; and the extent to which a multiregional system of international relations may be emerging. The first section considers explanations of the place of regionalism in contemporary international society and the various ways in which the one world aff ects the many. The second section deals with how regionalism might best be studied. The final section analyses four ways in which regionalism may contribute to international order and global governance.     

The International Character of a Trimmer: Interest,Reason of State,and Balance of Power in Halifax's Political Thought

This article argues that George Savile's thought casts light on international relations in the seventeenth century. Halifax's life and works concern not only England's domestic politics, but also its foreign affairs. Indeed, he develops a clear vision of international politics. This article analyses Halifax's international thought, in particular three concepts that are closely related to one another: ‘interest’, ‘reason of state’, and ‘balance of power’. Through the study of these ideas, this article will try to point out both the novelty of Halifax's thought compared with that of his contemporaries, and to reverse the stereotypical understanding of his intellectual legacy and political behaviour. The ‘trimmer’ contrasts with Louis XIV's attempt to establish a universal monarchy across Europe, outlining a doctrine of moderation that seeks to ensure liberty, security, and restraint in international relations.     

Trust in world politics: converting ‘identity’ into a source of security through trust-learning

In the discipline of international relations, the concept of trust has been theorised in two ways: the ‘rationalist’ approach and the ‘normative’ approach. This article aims to show that these approaches do not adequately reflect how trust operates in world politics and that trust provides a new way of understanding the identity–security nexus in international relations. It is argued that as actors learn to trust each other, this trust-learning process has a transformative effect on their definition of self-interests and identities. The elaborated understanding of trust in the security dilemma is operationalised in terms of the immigration security dilemma.     

Beyond an Imperial Foreign Policy?: India at the League of Nations, 1919–1946

ABSTRACT

This article argues that India’s role as the only non-self-governing member of the League of Nations provides a largely unexamined entry point into understanding the nature of Indian nationalism and public discourse during the first half of the twentieth century. Using previously unexplored archival documentation of India’s relationship to the League of Nations throughout the duration of the League’s existence, this article exposes the varied and contradictory perspectives through which imperial officials and Indian political figures engaged with international society within the framework of the British Empire. Through the distribution of League publications and the circulation of petitions seeking redress for imperial abuses, a wide range of Indians actively sought to stage India as a clearly defined nation at the level of the international in a way that was not possible within the subcontinent itself.     

Territory,sovereignty and entitlement: Diplomatic discourses in the United Nations Security Council

This paper builds upon feminist approaches within political science, international relations and geography that study how bodies haunt global politics, by exploring how entitlement to power connects through the scale of the body to that of the state. In a context of rising populism and political bluster, as well as post-#metoo discussions of personal entitlement displayed by well-known political figures, there is a need to take seriously how discourses of statehood within security crises are gendered in specific ways. This paper argues that the concept of entitlement offers potential for geographic enquiry by opening up new perspectives on masculinist framings of territory and state in critical geopolitics and in critical international relations. It considers specifically how diplomatic discourses ground and naturalize claims to territory by showing how states’ entitlement to territory and masculinist forms of personal entitlement are connected. Drawing upon feminist approaches to language, discourse and power, this paper studies diplomatic interventions at the United Nations Security Council in New York in 2014–2017 on the crisis in Ukraine. Methodologically, it analyses diplomatic speeches through the concept of entitlement to show how territorial claims are naturalized through rhetorical devices grounded in hegemonic forms of masculinity. It argues that a clearer understanding of the connections between discourses of personal entitlement and state territorial sovereignty can further our understanding of territory.     

Book reviews

Book reviewed in this issue. International Relations theory A cultural theory of International Relations. By Richard Ned Lebow. Peace in International Relations. By Oliver P. Richmond. Theorising international society: English School methods. Edited by Cornelia Navari. Political thought and international relations: variations on a realist theme. Edited by Duncan Bell. Human rights and ethics Contemporary human rights ideas. By Bertrand G. Ramcharan. Resentment's virtue: Jean Améry and the refusal to forgive. By Thomas Brudholm. Unsettling accounts: neither truth nor reconciliation in confessions of state violence. By Leigh A. Payne. International law and organization Chasing the flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the fight to save the world. By Samantha Power. Civil war and the rule of law: security, development, human rights. Edited by Agnès Hurwitz with Reyko Huang. Foreign policy The crisis of American foreign policy: Wilsonianism in the twenty‐first century. By G. John Ikenberry, Thomas J. Knock, Anne‐Marie Slaughter and Tony Smith. To lead the world: American strategy after the Bush doctrine. Edited by Melvyn P. Leffler and Jeffrey W. Legro. The foreign policy of the European Union. By Stephan Keukeleire and Jennifer MacNaughtan. Conflict, security and armed forces The security dilemma: fear, cooperation and trust in world politics. By Ken Booth and Nicholas J. Wheeler. The politics of ethnic cleansing: nation‐state building and provision of in/security in twentieth‐century Balkans. By Klejda Mulaj. Thinking about nuclear weapons: principles, problems, prospects. By Michael Quinlan. Just and unjust warriors: the moral and legal status of soldiers. Edited by David Rodin and Henry Shue. Dimensions of counter‐insurgency: applying experience to practice. Edited by Tim Benbow and Rod Thornton. Counter‐insurgency in modern warfare. Edited by Daniel Marston and Carter Malkasian. The politics of space security: strategic restraint and the pursuit of national interests. By James Clay Moltz. Politics, democracy and social affairs The Al Jazeera effect: how the new global media are reshaping world politics. By Philip Seib. To keep or to change first past the post?: the politics of electoral reform. Edited by André Blais. Political economy, economics and development Dead aid: why aid is not working and how there is another way for Africa. By Dambisa Moyo. The new global trading order: the evolving state and the future of trade. By Dennis Patterson and Ari Afilalo. Governing agrobiodiversity: plant genetics and developing countries. By Regine Andersen. Ethnicity and cultural politics The new frontiers of jihad: radical Islam in Europe. By Alison Pargeter. The politics of secularism in International Relations. By Elizabeth Shakman Hurd. Pariah politics: understanding western radical Islamism and what should be done. By Shamit Saggar. Energy and environment Biosecurity interventions: global health and security in question. Edited by Andrew Lakoff and Stephen J. Collier. History Berlin in the Cold War, 1948–1990: documents on British policy overseas, series III, volume V. Edited by Keith Hamilton, Patrick Salmon and Stephen Twigge. Nixon, Kissinger, and U.S. foreign policy making: the machinery of crisis. By Asaf Siniver. Reagan, Bush, Gorbachev: revisiting the end of the Cold War. By Norman A. Graebner, Richard Dean Burns and Joseph M. Siracusa. Europe Europe: the state of the union. By Anand Menon. Europe's last frontier? Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine between Russia and the European Union. Edited by Oliver Schmidtke and Serhy Yekelchyk. Russia and Eurasia Russie: l'envers du pouvoir. By Marie Mendras. Russia and the Balkans: foreign policy from Yeltsin to Putin. By James Headley. Middle East and North Africa Saharan conflict: towards territorial autonomy as a right to democratic self‐determination. By Abdelhamid El Ouali. A choice of enemies: America confronts the Middle East. By Lawrence Freedman. Power and succession in Arab monarchies: a reference guide. By Joseph A. Kéchichian. Sub‐Saharan Africa Do bicycles equal development in Mozambique? By Joseph Hanlon and Teresa Smart. Asia and Pacific The clash within: democracy, religious violence, and India's future. By Martha C. Nussbaum. Partisans of Allah: jihad in South Asia. By Ayesha Jalal. Organizations at war in Afghanistan and beyond. By Abdulkader H. Sinno. ‘More than an ally’? Contemporary Australia–US relations. By Maryanne Kelton. The rise of China and international security: America and Asia respond. Edited by Kevin J. Cooney and Yoichiro Sato. North America American power and the prospects for international order. By Simon Bromley. Latin America and Caribbean The Cambridge history of Latin America: Volume IX, Brazil since 1930. Edited by Leslie Bethell. Radical democracy in the Andes. By Donna Lee van Cott. The United States and Latin America after the Cold War. By Russell C. Crandall.     

Urban atmospheres of terror

This essay advances an affective agenda in urban geopolitics that studies the everyday felt experience of urban terrorism. It takes as examples the relations between the spatial politics and affective atmospheres of Place de la République (Paris) and Place de la Bourse/Beursplein (Brussels) in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 2015 and 2016. Intersecting feminist geopolitics and non-representational geographies, the essay bridges geographical studies of experience and affective atmospheres with experiential accounts in urban geopolitics. It argues for a renewed conceptual engagement and scholarly focus on the affective dimensions of urban geopolitics and security, that highlights the contested and unequal topographies of everyday experience in the aftermath of terrorism in urban Europe.