American International Relations Research Articles

The Cold War Origins of Global IR. The Rockefeller Foundation and Realist Theory in Latin America

This article questions and partially refutes three arguments about the history of international relations (IR) as a discipline. The first argument has been raised in the literature about global IR, which argues that the discipline mirrors the power gap that characterizes international politics. The second argument is that classical realist IR theory reached the zenith of its influence in the 1950s thanks to the support that Hans J. Morgenthau and his likes received from the Rockefeller Foundation. The third is that the history of the social sciences in Latin America can be told without considering foreign donors. This article shows that the patronage granted by the Rockefeller Foundation as the International Studies Center at the Colegio de México opened its doors in 1960 explains the division between IR and political science and its emphasis on realist IR theory and area studies. Two explanations account for the donor’s impact: the dexter use of conditionality and the legitimacy that those conditions had from in the recipient’s point of view. The donor changed Mexican and possibly Latin American IR.

US-China Rivalry in Trade and Economic Relations with Latin American Countries

This article is devoted to the analysis of trade and economic relations between the United States and China with Latin American countries. This region is a sphere of competitive confrontation between the two countries not only for foreign policy ties, but also for trade and economic ones. The authors in this article show the peculiarities of the bilateral relations between China and the United States with Latin America and describe the process of changing US policy towards Latin America after 2017, when it radically changed after the Trump administration came to power, and Beijing, taking advantage of this opportunity, began to compete with Washington in this region. Also, in this article, the authors provide a comparative analysis of the indicators of trade and economic relations between China and the United States with the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. The scientific novelty of this work lies in the fact that, using the example of the transition of leading positions towards China, the authors, within the framework of the theory of "power transit" (Power transition theory), describe the competitive struggle of states in this region in trade and economic terms, which is inextricably linked with political relations. The main conclusions are that the United States is still an external force that cannot be ignored in Latin American international relations, while China has every chance of gradually displacing the United States from the foreign market in Latin America thanks to its economic projects with the introduction of leading Latin American countries in the economic sphere. The United States of America, in turn, is trying to maintain its position in this region by easing its economic and financial constraints and, thereby, inclining the political leadership of Latin American countries to its side.

The Arctic from the perspective of the English school of international relations: a novel research agenda

ABSTRACT This article adopts the theoretical lens of the English School of International Relations (IR) to outline a new Arctic research agenda. In contrast to the more mechanistic approaches used in North American IR, the English School draws from a wider range of scholarship including historical, legal, philosophical, and sociological thinking about international relations, especially around the concepts of ‘international system,’ ‘international society,’ and ‘world society.’ The article introduces the key concepts and debates within the English School, contemplates how insights from the Arctic could advance the development of the English School theory, and demonstrates how a rigorous application of the English School concepts could contribute to a better understanding of international relations in the Arctic.

Global South Perspectives on International Relations: new frameworks for Transboundary Water Analysis

International Relations (IR) are an interdisciplinary field of study; however, mainstream IR possesses a Western and North-centric focus that neglects or unequivocally reflects Global South perspectives and realities. Global events, including those related to transboundary water relations, are told from a Western and North perspective. That does not provide enough knowledge to understand developments occurring in the Global South, understood here as less economically developed countries, comprising a variety of states with diverse levels of economic, cultural, and political influence in the international order. In this sense, the article exposes some Latin American IR thinking, to offer new contributions to the process of theorizing transboundary water relations and broaden the field of view within IR and transboundary water. Following a qualitative methodology, based on the bibliographic revision of authors from the Global South in IR and hydropolitics, the paper argues that it is necessary to incorporate non-Western and non-Northern actors and thinking to explore how different actors challenge, support, and shape global and regional hydropolitics. The paper calls for more attention to how the analytical framework on transboundary water interactions can include Global South perspectives. The paper concludes with some suggestions for future research and policy discussions.

Representations of Pre- and Post-9/11 New York City in Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin

Abstract The article sets out to investigate the way in which Colum McCann depicts New York City in his 2009 novel, Let the Great World Spin. While starting from the idea that the novel falls in the category of 9/11 fiction, the article will argue that it makes clever use of the technique of deterritorialization in order to look at the USA from an external point of view, interrogating in this way American international relations and extraterritorial citizenship, both before and after 9/11. The article will also argue that by starting from the trauma of 9/11, which is, however, circuitously tackled in the novel, McCann questions the myth of American exceptionalism, pointing at unresolved US domestic affairs, as well as harrowing external affairs, which have resulted in countless traumas.

The emergence and evolution of International Relations studies in postcolonial South Korea

AbstractThis study investigates how International Relations (IR) as an academic discipline emerged and evolved in South Korea, focusing on the country's peculiar colonial and postcolonial experiences. In the process, it examines why South Korean IR has been so state-centric and positivist (American-centric), while also disclosing the ways in which international history has shaped the current state of IR in South Korea, institutionally and intellectually. It is argued that IR intellectuals in South Korea have largely reflected the political arrangement of their time, rather than demonstrate academic independence or leadership for its government and/or civil society, as they have navigated difficult power structures in world politics. Related to this, it reveals South Korean IR's twisted postcoloniality, which is the absence – or weakness – of non-Western Japanese colonial legacies in its knowledge production/system, while its embracing the West/America as an ideal and better model of modernity for South Korea's security and development. It also reveals that South Korean IR's recent quest for building a Korean School of IR to overcome its Western dependency appears to be in operation within a colonial mentality towards mainstream American IR.

The Soviet Union and the Post-World War II Foreign Policy of Czechoslovakia as Assessed by American Diplomacy

This article examines how American diplomats and international relations experts perceived Czechoslovak foreign policy priorities between the end of World War II and the consolidation of communist power in the ČSR in 1948. The purpose of the work is to identify the Soviet factor in US policy towards Czechoslovakia, the peculiarities of the perception of the country in the general context of Soviet-American relations and the genesis of the Cold War. The research is based on documentary sources from different archives: the US National Archives, the Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, and the archive of Ambassador L. A. Steinhardt at the Library of Congress. Archival documents are supplemented by articles from the American press. The author concludes that during this period, the perception of Czechoslovakia by the Americans was ambivalent and controversial. On the one hand, the existence of a democratic multi-party system made it possible to consider the ČSR part of the West, but, on the other hand, its pro-Soviet foreign policy forced the Americans to regard it as being behind the Iron Curtain. The real foreign activities of the Czechoslovak government led by communist K. Gottwald directly demonstrated Czechoslovakia’s orientation toward close relations with the USSR and its loyalty to the Kremlin. Because of this, the degree of Prague’s dependence on Moscow was a subject of serious discussion and reflection among American experts in international relations. Some of them unconditionally placed the ČSR among the Soviet satellites, while others considered it the last outpost of democracy in Eastern Europe. A turning point in the perception of Czechoslovakia was its refusal to participate in the Marshall Plan under the direct pressure of the Soviet government. After that, Prague’s inability to resist Soviet pressure and its dependence on Moscow became apparent to the Americans.

Republican internationalism: the nineteenth-century roots of Latin American contributions to international order

Although Latin America plays a minimal role in debates on the ‘liberal international order’, scholars recognise the region’s influence on international law, norms, and institutions. We contend that these Latin American contributions to international order spring from a tradition of ‘republican internationalism’, rooted in the region’s domestic political traditions and practices. Republican principles such as the separation of power, association, and the rule of law had important corollaries in Latin American international relations, including sovereign equality, confederation and regional cooperation, and international law and arbitration. These republican internationalist ideas shaped Latin America’s diplomatic traditions and its contributions to international order in the nineteenth century and beyond. Attention to republican internationalism and Latin American contributions demonstrates how actors beyond the North Atlantic shaped the origins of international order. This study also advances debates on the sources of the liberal international order by demonstrating the distinctive influence of republican ideas and practices.

О попытке создания теории международных отношений в ИМЭМО в 1970-е годы

Received 11.12.2020. The article is dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the Academician N. N. Inozemtsev. The article provides an overview of the unpublished collective monograph “Foundations of the Theory of International Relations” – the fundamental work of a group of the IMEMO researchers, devised in the 1970s in the USSR. The process of creating a monograph is considered in the context of domestic and foreign policy conjuncture of that historical period, as well as the history of IMEMO. Among factors that slowed down the publication of this work were ideological transformations in the USSR, the divergence of political elite groups’ interests. The main provisions of the monograph, based on a systematic approach and works by representatives of Marxism and Marxism-Leninism, are given. Particular attention is paid to comparison with the American and Western European international relations theory concepts of that period. Self-sufficiency of the monograph as a full-fledged theoretical concept within the framework of the Marxist-Leninist theory of international relations is substantiated. The authors of the article prove the relevance of the monograph both as a historical source and as a milestone for modern scientific Marxist thought. Owing to the collapse of the world socialist system, the Marxist paradigm received an opportunity to reach its own realism, separated from ideology and based on the central idea of Marxism – the position of development as an objective quality of the socio-historical process. The publication of the collective monograph “Fundamentals of the Theory of International Relations” is planned for the end of 2021.

Hemispheric Integration: Materiality, Mobility, and the Making of Latin American Art by Niko Vicario

Reviewed by: Hemispheric Integration: Materiality, Mobility, and the Making of Latin American Art by Niko Vicario Álvaro Ramírez Vicario, Niko. Hemispheric Integration: Materiality, Mobility, and the Making of Latin American Art. U of California P, 2020. Pp. 312. ISBN 978-0-52031-002-5. In Hemispheric Integration: Materiality, Mobility, and the Making of Latin American Art, Niko Vicario demonstrates the process under which a new “geocultural category” called Latin American art came into existence toward the middle of the twentieth century. As was the case with their literary counterparts of the same era, Latin American painters were preoccupied with [End Page 310] establishing cultural and artistic singularity along with a market for their work beyond their national borders. However, the author reveals how the success of this endeavor was largely due to a political and cultural shift in which the United States gained international prominence and New York became the center of the art world. In the introduction, Vicario gives an overview of the sociocultural, political and economic terrain. He posits that prior to 1900, art was part of the import-export scheme that governed Latin American international relations where aesthetics came from abroad, mainly Europe. Influenced by José Enrique Rodó and José Martí, artists sought to break their cultural dependency by striving to create a mobile art, both national and Latin American, that could be exported and integrated in an international market. This shift occurred at the same time that the United States was displacing European domination and implementing the Good Neighbor policy that sought to integrate the hemisphere for strategic reasons, which included promoting closer intercultural relations. But even as they attempted to free themselves from the grasp of the West, Latin American artists were still in some way dependent on the metropolis for their existence, as the system retained the economic structure of import-export whereby art and painters substituted raw materials exported no longer to Europe but to the United States. The opening chapter meticulously traces the travels of David Alfaro Siqueiros throughout North and South America, as well as Cuba, as he innovates with new materials to modernize mural painting and leave behind what he calls “folk art for export.” Siqueiros becomes mobile and able to successfully create a geographically expansive art that encompasses more than the national. Vicario emphasizes how the muralist went from a collaborative phase imbued by revolutionary fervor critical of the connivance of fascism and capitalism to a more personalized work espousing a view increasingly in harmony with the economic and political interests of the United States. This change in Siqueiros’s politics appears to coincide with his collaboration with Nelson Rockefeller who also pursued a model of regional integration on behalf of the United States and MoMA. In the end, Siqueiros comes across as another “Millionaire’s painter,” something he had accused Diego Rivera of being. However, Vicario leaves us wondering to what degree Siqueiros was aware of the contradictions that ensued from his association with American capitalists. The second chapter focuses on Joaquín Torres-García, who after forty years of residing in Europe returned to his native country, Uruguay, to promote an alternative modern “morphological art” that stood in contrast not only to Europe but especially to Mexican muralism, as it downplayed politics and social realism. Torres-García likewise differed from the muralists in his attempt to produce art on an import substitution model that emphasized creating with resources at hand. This led to a mixture of primitivism and Constructivism posited as an autochthonous, modern, Latin American art, though Vicario rightly indicates its strong affinities with European artistic endeavors. The author highlights the importance of Torres-García’s work in shaping hemispheric integration underscoring the great influence he had on American artists, surpassing that of the muralists. His impact on Latin American painters was also remarkable yet in later years they rejected the “double aspect” of his art as retrograde. The third chapter is most illuminating as it explores Nelson Rockefeller’s role in constructing hemispheric integration. Vicario deftly delineates how the American industrialist weaved a network of commercial, political and artistic ties with Latin America much to the benefit of the United States...

Diplomacy Meets Migration: US Relations with Cuba during the Cold War by Hideaki Kami

Reviewed by: Diplomacy Meets Migration: US Relations with Cuba during the Cold War by Hideaki Kami Patrick Iber Hideaki Kami, Diplomacy Meets Migration: US Relations with Cuba during the Cold War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. In recent years, some of the most innovative work in the history of Latin American international relations has moved away from analysis of bipolar relationships between Washington and other actors, and toward a multipolar consideration of the exercise of power. Tanya Harmer's Allende's Chile and the Inter-American Cold War, for example, argues forcefully for the importance of Brazil's foreign policy in the Chilean transition from socialism to military dictatorship. Renata Keller's Mexico's Cold War considers the covert and overt aspects of the triangular relationship of Mexico, Cuba, and the United States. Hideaki Kami's Diplomacy Meets Migration takes a similar approach, but with something of a twist: the third player in his analysis (to go along with the United States and Cuba) is not another country, but Miami. It is a decision that makes a good deal of sense. As Kami puts it, "Because Cuban emigres in Miami intervened in international politics at critical moments, relations between Washington and Havana also intermingled with the political dynamics of the Cuban-American community" (5). After the Cuban Revolution, Miami became the center of many a counterrevolutionary effort, some aided by the Central Intelligence Agency, others independent of it. Who Miami's Cubans were, what they did, and who might join them were matters of ongoing dispute. And of course, there was (and is) the importance of Miami's Cubans to Republican politics in a crucial state. [End Page 310] The book begins with a chapter on the origins of the Cuban émigré community in Miami in the years after the revolution and proceeds chronologically through to the end of the George H. W. Bush administration, at which point the paper trail ends, presumably on shelves of classified boxes. Kami makes use of a wide range of sources; beyond the US presidential libraries and those located in Miami, he has consulted records from the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, and Mexico. Many of his most interesting discoveries come from Cuban diplomatic archives. The analysis here is unlikely to radically revise understandings of Cuban-US relations. Though full of sound judgments and based on prodigious research, parts of the book have a rather familiar feel. Perhaps one of the book's contributions is inherent in its methodology and borne out by its findings, which show all of the ways in which Cuban Miami was not identical to Washington in its interests or its actions. Émigrés were not puppets; they were frequently frustrating to various administrations in Washington. But nor were they, as US diplomat George Kennan wrote in 1977, a lobby capable of "bending us to their purposes." Consider, for example, the case of the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), founded in 1981 by Jorge Mas Canosa. Mas Canosa was able to bring Reagan to Miami in 1983 and help lobby for the creation of Radio Martí, and later for the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992. In the 1980s, CANF acted both like a lobby and like a government-in-exile, drawing up plans for a postcommunist Cuba with the assistance of right-wing free-market economists like Arthur Laffer and Manuel Ayau. But even with these ideological points of contact and the background of shared anticommunism, CANF and Reagan were sometimes at odds, especially over issues of migration. The Mariel boatlift had drawn much negative attention in the United States to the issue of Cuban migration. (A 1982 poll showed that Cubans, remarkably, were the least welcome migrants in US history, and popular culture in the 1980s, from Scarface to Miami Vice frequently associated Cubans with criminality.) Kami shows remarkable evidence of harebrained schemes the Reagan administration considered, but never carried out, to dump Cubans deemed criminal or insane back on the island. CANF, by contrast, deemed resistance to migration a betrayal of the cause of freedom. All in all, Kami portrays the triangular dynamic generated by Washington-Havana-Miami as a kind of a trap. Miami's Cubans, at least...

Algunos aportes teóricos y metodológicos de Amado Luiz Cervo al estudio de las relaciones internacionales de Brasil y América Latina

El artículo presenta la obra del profesor Amado Luiz Cervo, citando sus trabajos sobre metodología de investigación, historia de las relaciones internacionales de Brasil y América y Latina y sus aportes teórico-metodológicos para el estudio de las relaciones internacionales y la política exterior. Se pone atención preferencial y específica en los aportes del profesor al desarrollo de un pensamiento teórico y analítico original, que sea propio de América Latina, a través de la elaboración de paradigmas, conceptos y categorías. El trabajo del profesor Cervo sobre la formulación de un pensamiento regional y brasileño para estudiar la inserción internacional, junto a otros profesores latinoamericanos, ha contrapuesto la visión dominante del pensamiento anglosajón con la elaboración la región para comprender la especificidad de las relaciones internacionales de nuestra región a partir de las condiciones que derivan de las características histórico-estructurales de la inserción internacional de América Latina. Después de presentar su metodología de trabajo, el texto analiza algunos de los aportes conceptuales más importantes, entre ellos la formulación de paradigmas y conceptos, poniendo de relevancia su aplicación e influencia sobre otras comunidades de pensamiento en Sudamérica.

Revisitando a Escola Inglesa – da velha via média das Relações Internacionais à nova escola inglesa

Este artigo procura posicionar a Escola Inglesa na via intermédia entre o Realismo e o Idealismo, focando-se no pensamento de Hedley Bull e Martin Wight, e analisar a evolução da Escola Inglesa após o derrube do muro de Berlim, quando novas problemáticas foram agregadas ao estudo da sociedade internacional e das instituições internacionais. Pretende-se ainda demonstrar como a Escola Inglesa, fundada nas normas e nos padrões regulares de comportamento, é uma grande influência para a abordagem construtivista. Frente a estas realidades, surge a grande pergunta de partida: por que razão, apesar dos estudos de Hedley Bull e de Martin Wight sobre a sociedade internacional e as instituições internacionais, a Escola Inglesa se manteve, à época, marginalizada frente à Escola Norte-Americana de Relações Internacionais?, a qual origina objetivos, alguns dos quais já mencionados, e hipóteses de trabalho, que serão alcançados e comprovadas.

Russia’s Foreign Policy and Strategic Culture: A Dialogue with William Wohlforth about the Research Paradigm

This article contains a talk between Andrey Sushentsov, head of the MGIMO University Institute for International Studies and Professor William Wohlforth, a leading American international relations theorist and one of the founders of neoclassical realism. Having received his PhD in Yale, Wohlforth began his career as a specialist on Russia. One of his key works is the study of the driving forces behind the foreign policy of early USSR. His studies have also focused on the issue of the global balance of power and superpower dynamics. Overall, Wohlforth has authored or edited nine books and some 60 articles or chapters on a wide range of topics from US foreign policy strategy to the Cold War. Thus, the changes in Russian foreign policy and its global influence have always remained in the focus of Wohlforth’s attention. Wohlforth is currently a member of the Department of Government at Dartmouth College, mainly teaching and researching international security and foreign policy issues. Since 2018, he has been in charge of the Laboratory of International Trends Analysis at MGIMO which carries out applied research in the field of international issues. The talk considers issues concerning the strategic culture of Russian policy, focusing on the biographic and academic foundations of the scholar’s interest in Russia, and his collaboration with Russian specialists.

Paradox of Autonomy: explaining flaws in South American security regionalism

This article addresses the South American difficulties in the consolidation of regional security mechanisms, developing an analytical model called the “paradox of autonomy.” This model was developed through the application of inductive and deductive methodological criteria, based on the observation of recent historical reality, in order to attain generalizable lessons from a relevant case for South American international relations. Also using rational analytical approaches that allow their construction within the framework of rational action problems. From the observation on the emergence and performance of the South American Defense Council, it was identified that the allowing conditions for a novel mechanism of regional (collective) autonomy for security, paradoxically offered opportunities for the exercise of national (individual) autonomy. The article concludes that, although the conditions for the paradox of autonomy are difficult to overcome in cases of security regionalism initiatives, there are possibilities to do so. The key would be in less ambitious institutional designs that recognize the inherent difficulties for institutional regional security cooperation in South America.

Terminological Entrepreneurs and Discursive Shifts in International Relations: How a Discipline Invented the “International Regime”

AbstractThe disciplinary history of international relations (IR) is usually told as a succession of theories or “isms” that are connected to academic schools. Echoing the increasing criticism of this narrative, we present in this article a new perspective on the discipline. We introduce concepts from linguistics and its method of digital discourse analysis (DDA) to explore discursive shifts and terminological entrepreneurship in IR. DDA directs attention away from schools of thought and “heroic figures” who allegedly invented new theories. As we show exemplarily with the rise of “regime theory,” there were entire generations of IR scholars who (more or less consciously) developed new vocabularies to frame and address their common concerns. The terminological history of “international regime” starts in nineteenth century international law, in which French authors already used “régime” to describe transnational forms of governance that were more than a treaty but less than an international organization. Only in the 1980s, however, was an explicit definition of “international regime” forged in American IR, which combined textual elements already in use. We submit that such observations can change the way in which we understand, narrate, and teach the discipline of IR. DDA decenters IR theory from its traditional focus on schools and individuals and suggests unlearning established taxonomies of “isms.” The introduction of corpus linguistic methods to the study of academic IR can thus provide new epistemological directions for the field.

Osobennosti kul'turnoy diplomatii Italii na sovremennom etape

The article analyzes the cultural policy of Italy, which is one of the key soft power instruments of the country, along with public diplomacy, the Italian language, education and scientific activities, through the prism of the cultural strategy of the EU. Despite the presence of a large number of articles on soft power implementation, this issue remains insufficiently covered today, since the concept of soft power emerged at the end of the 20th century in the framework of the American international relations school (J. Nye) and the majority of academic foreign papers are still devoted to the American soft power model. It is revealed that scientific community paid not enough attention to the Italian soft power phenomenon. The author’s goal is to analyze the cultural model of Italy, used as one of soft power component. According to the results of the structural, comparative and institutional analysis, fundamental problems in the development of the Italian cultural model were identified, as well as the links between the successful adoption of cultural diplomacy and economic crisis. The governmental initiatives in Italy in realization of cultural diplomacy and the EU cultural strategy are thoroughly reviewed. The analysis of the activities of specialized government institutions responsible for the cultural promotion of the country and the Italian language abroad is carried out. The soft power rankings, reflecting the effectiveness of cultural policy, in particular, Anholt-GfK Nation Brands Index and The Soft Power 30 are being analyzed. Measures to ensure the efficient use of the soft power resources in Italy are proposed. They are mostly aimed at combining the activities of existing institutions and forming an integrated strategy for popularizing, financing and broadening soft power components both within the state and foreign policy strategy.

Backlash Politics: Introduction to a Symposium on Backlash Politics in Comparison

This is the framing paper for a special issue on backlash politics in comparison. Despite the widespread sense that backlash is an important feature of contemporary national and world politics, there is remarkably little scholarly work on the politics of backlash. This special issue conceptualizes backlash politics as a distinct from of contentious politics. Backlash politics include three necessary elements: 1) a retrograde objective of returning to a prior social condition, 2) extraordinary goals and tactics that challenge dominant scripts, and 3) a threshold condition of entering mainstream public discourse. When backlash politics combines with frequent companion accelerants– nostalgia, emotional appeals, taboo breaking and institutional reshaping– the results can be unpredictable, contagious, transformative and enduring. Contributions to this special issue engage this definition to advance our understanding of backlash politics. The special issue’s conclusion draws insights about the causes and dynamics of backlash politics that lead to three potential outcomes: a petering out of the politics, the construction of new cleavages, or a retrograde transformation. Creating a distinct category of backlash politics brings debates in American politics, comparative politics, and international relations together with studies of specific topics, facilitating comparisons across time, space and issue areas and generating new questions that can hopefully promote lesson drawing.

Things You Can See From There You Can't See From Here: Blind Spots in the American Perspective in IR and Their Effects

AbstractHow do the limitations of the American perspective in international relations (IR) affect the accuracy of theorizing? We show that assumptions about the relationship between domestic and international politics that underlie significant segments of American IR scholarship are unwarranted. Publics around the world do not respond to United Nations’ and other intergovernmental organizations’ criticism of their governments in the same way that Americans do. Publics are not universally poorly informed of their country's foreign policies, and they are not equally skeptical of the value of using force for resolving disputes with other states. We demonstrate the limitations of US-based scholarship using new and unique survey data from the United States and other countries. We then address how these US-centric assumptions skew certain IR literatures and limit important research agendas pursued by American scholars.

Policing Intellectual Boundaries? Émigré Scholars, the Council on Foreign Relations Study Group on International Theory, and American International Relations in the 1950s

During the 1950s, several intellectual endeavors on both sides of the Atlantic aimed to further theoretical principles of IR. One of these endeavors was the Council on Foreign Relations Study Group on International Theory that met between December 1953 and June 1954. It brought together scholars from across academic disciplines and professions, but particularly noteworthy is the involvement of émigré scholars. Tracing their contribution, this article takes a critical stance toward common historiographical accounts of the discipline in which émigrés’ involvement is characterized as a gambit to secure space for their alternative visions of scholarship in a hostile academic environment and that they had turned into critics of American liberal democracy due to their experiences with fascism in Europe. By contrast, this article calls for a reconsideration of the role of émigrés by arguing that their engagement in IR’s move to theorization was intended to help retain the discipline’s pluralism in an effort to bridge theory and practice. Getting involved in this interdisciplinary field constituted their attempt to sustain intellectual pluralism across American social sciences, as they believed that behavioralism could endanger American democracy by reducing the contingency, ephemerality, and relationality of human life to questions of social planning.