Questioning the Obvious

Abstract

The articles in this issue are joined by their insistence in pushing past common assumptions or truisms in global security. As they do, each analysis demonstrates new insights that should elicit debate and future research. The issue begins with an analysis that asks whether the internet requires hegemonic governance, rather than assuming that it does. Joshua Rovner and Tyler Moore examine the technical and political fallout from Stuxnet and the Snowden leaks to suggest that the internet may be more resilient and less reliant on leadership for governance than we think. In so doing, they also outline mechanisms by which we might assess internet resilience. While their analysis is preliminary and many scholars are likely to reassert the need for internet governance, Rovner and Moore open an important conversation about how we should examine the risks that a lack of governance poses. Joseph O’Mahoney puzzles over why states refuse to recognize the spoils of war. Looking closely at one instance during the Manchurian crisis, he demonstrates that the United State’s nonrecognition of Manchukuo was neither a failed attempt at coercion nor posturing for a domestic audience. Instead, he argues that nonrecognition is a means of creating and recreating common knowledge about what international behavior should be. When the international community is unable to stop an aggressor’s violation of existing rules, it is especially important to reassert that the community nonetheless still values these rules; nonrecognition can be a means to this end.