Abstract
Taking into account the turbulent sociopolitical events of the first half of 2020, this discussion piece evaluates the theory of restraint presented in Brent Steele’s 2019 book, Restraint in International Politics. A conversation between Steele and Christopher Peys about the ‘politics of restraint’, this article examines the socio-psychological ‘complexes’ of actionism and restraint, and addresses a series of queries about both the limitations and possibilities of restraint, before examining Steele’s theory in the emerging context of our world’s recent race-related events, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the international community’s inability to confront the threat of widespread, human-induced environmental degradation.
Highlights
I hope in the years to come everyone will be able to take pride in how they responded to this challenge
I think it is important to appropriate Cortright’s notion of ‘pragmatic pacifism’ – as such an alignment provides us with an instrumental means of avoiding the conceptual pitfalls associated with principle-based theories of non-violence – but, I wonder, what is nonviolence? And how should we understand the relationship between violence and non-violence? If restraint is akin to a form of ‘nonviolent resistance’, and if ‘almost any conflict, tension, dilemma or anxiety in global politics [...] has its origins in the politics of restraint’, it would follow – at least in some sense – that the ‘struggles we find in global politics are really struggles over [non-violence]’
Your question here is understandable but I think as a statement, one that sells the powerful impact of non-violent protest as restraint just a bit short: if the police, for instance, continue to act in the mode of what Randall Collins describes as a ‘forward panic’ – which is a highly charged emotional state that corresponds with a ‘violence that for the time being is unstoppable’ – is the ‘nonviolent resistance’ of restraint enough to change an unjust status quo?
Summary
I hope in the years to come everyone will be able to take pride in how they responded to this challenge.
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