International Anarchy Research Articles

Helsinki Syndrome: The Parachronistic Renaissance of Finlandization in International Politics

The ongoing conflict in Ukraine has produced a number of commentaries that have tried to grasp the crisis through the comforting lens of historical analogies. One of the most perplexing of these has been the revival of Finlandization, or the idea of the “Finnish model” as a possible solution to the Ukraine crisis. In this article I interrogate these arguments, firstly, by historicising the original process of Finlandization during the Cold War. Secondly, I argue that the renaissance of Finlandization is based on parachronistic reasoning. In other words, the Finlandization analogy has been applied to modern-day Ukraine in such a way that the alien elements of the past context are, to paraphrase Quentin Skinner, “dissolved into an apparent but misleading familiarity” in the present re-appropriation of the idea and its contextual prerequisites. Indeed, the reappearance of Finlandization in the context of the Ukraine crisis reinforces the idea that the real drivers of international affairs can be reduced to the axioms derived from the transhistorical logic of international anarchy and the iron laws of great power politics. Thus, this article makes a novel contribution to the theoretical discussion on the role of analogies and myths in International Relations.

Beijing’s Quest for Stability in its Neighborhood: China’s Relations with Russia in Central Asia

ABSTRACTUsing the English school arguments that inter-state regulation ameliorates the consequences of the power politics of international anarchy, I analyze to what extent China pursues a strategic partnership with Russia in Central Asia. I investigate if China has compatible policies with Russia on the use of force, on international legitimacy, and on institutional frameworks for security management. As China is increasingly asserting its security, economic, and institutional interests in Central Asia, similarities and differences have become apparent in relations with Russia. Increased mutual concern for continued regional stability has encouraged Beijing and Moscow to coordinate their policies across a wide range of issue areas. Stability allows them to focus attention and resources on each of their different geostrategic priorities.

Sovereignty at the Extremes: Micro-States in World Politics

Micro-states illustrate deep changes in the international system obscured by scholars’ traditional focus on great powers. Logically, the nature and systemic effects of international anarchy should be most apparent in relation to the smallest and weakest states, and least apparent in relation to great powers. Focusing on micro-states suggests a permissive contemporary international system facilitating the proliferation and survival of states independent of their military and functional capacities. Micro-states’ lack of great power allies illustrates the irrelevance of military threats under anarchy, while the presence of an international economic safety net attenuates problems of economic viability. The lack of association between smallness and delegating sovereignty questions functional explanations of hierarchy. Instead, varying micro-states strategies of à la carte hierarchy and selling sovereign prerogatives demonstrate that the current international system presents even its smallest and weakest members with choices rather than imperatives.

International Anarchy in Perpetuity? A Re-Examination Based on the Perspectives of Classical Political Thinkers and Ancient Historical Experience

Structural realists, notably Waltz and Mearsheimer, have argued for the persistence of an anarchic international political system characterized by the absence of any centralized authority positioned above individual states. Mearsheimer has further suggested that a Sino-U.S. conflict is likely to occur in the future under conditions of anarchy. Based on the perspectives of classical realism, Chinese traditions, and relevant historical experience, we interrogate Mearsheimer’s contention, arguing that hierarchies can thrive under conditions of international anarchy. Thus, international anarchy does not endure in perpetuity.

Recognition: A Short History

During the past decade there has been a resurgence of interest in the concept of recognition in international theory. Once the narrow concern of social theorists, the concept of recognition is nowadays invoked in at least three different senses in order to explain three different things. First, it is commonly used to explain how states and their identities are shaped by interaction, and how the modern international system has emerged as a cumulated consequence of such patterns of interaction. In this context, the concept of recognition is used to explain how states are individuated and differentiated from each other, how the international system thereby becomes stratified along status lines, as well as why conflicts over status are possible or even inevitable. Second, although the concept of recognition has long enjoyed wide currency within international legal theory, where it is used to account for what makes states legal persons and equal members of international society, recent scholarship has done much to complicate this view by pointing out how practices of inclusion often have gone hand in hand with practices of exclusion, and how this has led to an informal stratification of international society. Third, the concept has most recently been invoked to suggest how the undesirable consequences of international anarchy can be mitigated or even avoided through mutual recognition between political communities.

The Exploration of Paradox and Chance of International Cooperation under Global Environmental Governance

AbstractThe Industrial Revolution has unveiled the development of global capitalism. States, corporations and individuals are accumulating capital for desire. While consuming resource on earth, it is confirmed by IPCC in the 4th evaluation report that human activities are the main reason for global warming. In the past decades, global warming has become the main important issue in international society. It reflects that the globe is undertaking a revolution, which takes low-carbon development as the core under the challenge climate risk and the security of resource. The states are confronting the decision paradox of the state's individual interest and the global public interest. Despite the fact that the state plays the main role in international anarchy society, it is obstructed by the lack of supra-nation organization to force the states to obey international regime. Therefore, it is difficult to solve the problem of collective action problem, free rider problem and dilemma of common aversions…etc. Those things will influence the result of environmental regime. The state or non-state actor reaches good outcome with systematic collaboration or cooperation. However, the governance trend of international systematic collaboration has usually ignored or weakened the aspect of power. During the process of global environmental governance, power may represent in multiple or sequent operational ways, or jump out of the role, which take nation as the main and traditional role to exercise power. Because the regime has compulsory problem, deviation, privilege of regime and unfair confined actions, studying multiple aspects of power operation during governance could help us understand the paradox of international cooperation in order to explore the chance of international cooperation.

The Islamic Realism of Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi (1926–) and Sayyid Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah (1935–2010)

The article sheds light on the core realist assumptions—regarding international anarchy, the centrality of power to international relations and human nature—that underpin the international relations perspectives of two leading contemporary Islamist thinkers, Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi (1926–) and the late Sayyid Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah (1935–2010). It further asserts that the law of mutual restraining—which Qaradawi and Fadlallah derive from the Qur’an—bears a major affinity to realism’s balance of power principle. It argues that Qaradawi and Fadlallah articulate a non-western variant of realism that this article refers to as Islamic realism. After defining Islamic realism, the article compares it to four strands of realism: structural, neoclassical, classical and Christian realism. The conclusion suggests that realism should not be viewed as exclusively a product of European experiences and western ‘secular’ thought, but as a mode of theorizing about international relations that transcends cultural boundaries. In addition, it underscores the links between religion and realism, calling for research into the likely sources of realism in the three Abrahamic religions.

In-between anarchy and interdependence: from state death to fragile and failing states

International relations scholars concede a vital role for anarchy in structuring state behaviour towards survival. Anarchy provides strong incentives for power-maximising behaviour, since states that do not act accordingly risk death by conquest. This assumption raises an important question: if international anarchy is pervasive, leading to processes where only the fit survive, how do we explain the survival of fragile and failing states? Under conditions of self-help such states should be tempting targets, yet these vulnerable states avoid death by conquest. Fragile and failing states survive because international order is based on a sovereignty regime backed by major powers. International order is more salient than anarchy and provides better vantage points to understand the absence of state death. Elements of international order, like the relational hierarchies between dominant and subordinate states, no longer tolerate state death. This largely explains the survival of fragile and failing states.

Thomas Hobbes as a Theorist of Anarchy: A Theological Interpretation

SummaryScholars of international relations generally invoke Hobbes as the quintessential theorist of international anarchy. David Armitage challenges this characterisation, arguing that Hobbes is regarded as a foundational figure in international relations theory in spite of as much as because of what he wrote on the subject. Thus, for Armitage, Hobbes is not the theorist of anarchy that he is made out to be. This article agrees with the general thrust of Armitage's critique while maintaining that it is still possible to imagine Hobbes as a theorist of anarchy. Hobbes is a theorist of anarchy, not in a political sense, but in a metaphysical sense. This conception of anarchy is a reflection of a comprehensive theological account of reality that is grounded in an omnipotent God. Any historical inquiry into the foundations of modern international thought must take account of theology, because theology defines the ultimate coordinates of reality in terms of which the concepts of international thought are intelligible.

A history of international thought: from the origins of the modern state to academic international relations

1 Introduction Part I International Relations Before the Study of International Relations 2. The origins of the modern state and the creation of international relations . . . by mistake 3. Reaction and reform: patriarchal order and the Enlightenment response 4. A new global political economy? Part II The Emergence of the Discipline of INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND the Great Crisis of Humanity 5. The geopolitics of empire and the international anarchy, 1880-1918 6. The new world: international government and peaceful change, 1919-1935 7. Collapse and war: continuity and change in IR theory, 1936-1945 Part III Conclusion: INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS in Living Memory AND Lessons for the Future 8. A new IR for a new world? The growth of an academic field since 1945

The Twin Self-Delusions of IR: Why ‘Hierarchy’ and Not ‘Anarchy’ is the Core Concept of IR

This article deconstructs the twin ‘self-delusions’ of IR to reveal, first, the conventional axiom that the discipline enquires into juridically-equal sovereign state relations under international anarchy masks the dark hierarchical face of IR which promotes, defends and reifies, analytically and/or normatively, Western civilisation over non-Western states, and, second, the conventional axiom that IR operationalises a positivist and/or value-free cultural pluralism masks the dark face of Eurocentric monism that constitutes the core ideological foundation of the vast majority of IR theory. These emerge from IR theory’s deployment of the twin concepts of Eurocentric hierarchy and the Eurocentric ‘standard of civilisation’, which yield the twin conceptions of ‘formal (imperialist) hierarchy’ and ‘informal (anti-imperialist) hierarchy’ alongside the notion of ‘gradated sovereignties’ in world politics. To illustrate this, the ‘formal-hierarchical’ conception is traced in classical English School pluralism and neorealist hegemonic stability, while the ‘informal-hierarchical’ conception is traced in neo-Marxism and classical English School pluralism.

Grand Strategy and Nuclear Weapons: A Historical and Political Perspective Under the Concepts of Arms Control and Disarmament

A historical analysis of nuclear weapons as opposed to the efforts to impose an arms control regime of impose disarmament clearly illustrates the links between national security and the political aims of acquiring weapons. Arms control efforts have faced the descriptive realities of international anarchy, while disarmament falls within a prescriptive, utopian goal. The article looks into aspects of nuclear weapons possession through a systemic approach, system polarity and threats through a number of basic tenets of Political Realism and the complexity of inter-state politics.

The costs of coercion: modern Southeast Asia in comparative perspective

Violent conflict tends to be costly overall, but can, under some conditions, yield net gains for the initiators of violence, thus creating incentives for coercion. This article explores the economic incentives for coercion across three different arenas and types of conflict: international conflict among states, organized political violence within the state, and relatively unorganized domestic conflicts over property rights. Although these conflicts are normally studied in separate scholarly traditions (respectively, international relations, domestic security studies and political economy), drawing from these different traditions can help explain the comparative incidence of coercive force in different conflict arenas by identifying conditions that create incentives for violence. Using cases from Southeast Asia, the article offers an explanation for the empirical pattern of violence in the region being more prevalent currently at the domestic, rather than the international, level and most pervasive in apparently low-level and unorganized forms. At least in part, this pattern is a consequence of the relative stability and consistent protection of what may be thought of as international property rights claims, compared with the greater uncertainty and inconsistency in the enforcement of domestic rights claims. While intuitively paradoxical when viewed through Westphalian lenses, which assume international anarchy and domestic hierarchy, greater contention over domestic rights claims is consistent with the relative asymmetries in coercive capabilities and institutions for dealing with rights claims at the domestic level, compared with the international arena.

The International System in Europe: Westphalian Anarchy or Medieval Chaos?

Outbursts of nationalism and partisan squabbles generated by the current economic and migration crisis in Europe suggest an unraveling of the integration project and a resurgence of the international anarchy associated with the Westphalian system. However, this article will show that the evolving system bears a closer resemblance to the Europe of the Middle Ages than to the Europe that followed the Treaties of Westphalia. In contemporary Europe we have overlapping authority, multiple loyalties and fuzzy borders. Conflicts are primarily about exclusion from the European core and abuse of agreed procedures rather than borders and territorial gains. Institutional forms of collective bargaining have replaced balance of power politics. Order is maintained not by the sword, but by norms cultivated by two imperial powers, the EU and the US. This medieval system is neither conflict free nor stable, but generates a pattern of international relations fundamentally different from the old Westphalian anarchy. This article will try to comprehend the evolving pattern of cooperation and conflict in Europe and assess its implications.

Asymmetry and China's Tributary System

In his article, ‘Equilibrium Analysis of the Tributary System’, Zhou Fangyin presents an important and stimulating application of the game theory of patterns of interaction to China’s traditional diplomacy with its neighbors. 1 His analysis contradicts the realist expectation that the larger power would simply dominate smaller powers in the context of international anarchy. However, his explanation of the tributary system does not rely on a cultural explanation based on Confucian morality, but rather on processes of conflictual interaction that lead to mutual accommodation between China and its neighbors. Zhou rightly emphasizes the two-way character of the tributary system and the centrality of its basic idea for Chinese diplomacy. In contrast to John Fairbank, he argues that it is more than a diplomatic cover for a trade relationship. In contrast to the general assumption that tribute is a form of booty that a larger power requires from a smaller power, he emphasizes China’s primary interest in stabilizing its relationships with neighbors through concessions. Indeed, it appears from Zhou’s narration that China is at the disadvantaged side of tributary relationships: frustrated in conflicts and conceding to neighbors in order to pacify its borders. By providing a clear and plausible model for interaction and interesting, complex cases of processes through which to arrive at equilibrium, Zhou has, indeed, made a contribution to both theory and history. Perhaps, further progress can be made by separating the necessarily unique case of China from the general theory of relationships between large and small neighbors. It is certainly useful to view China’s diplomatic history from the perspective of an analytic model, but the necessary simplification may lose features of the Chinese situation that are unique but no less

Neutrality - A Survivor?

Nicolas Politis argued in 1935 that the law of neutrality was obsolete, a product of the international anarchy of the times, doomed to be replaced by a new centralized international community. His vision of the League of Nations ended in the fire of World War II but his prediction proved to be mostly true. In the collective security system created by the UN Charter and its prohibition of the use of force, the traditional rules of neutrality do not find scope of application. Yet, transposed into fundamental principles of humanitarian law, they continue to rule over peace-keeping and humanitarian operations. In addition, they complement the existing rules for military action mandated by the UN Security Council, especially during operations at sea. He was essentially right: the institution had to change and it has changed.

Constructing Global Order with Chinese Characteristics: Yan Xuetong and the Pre-Qin Response to International Anarchy

China’s rise as a great power has promoted a great deal of soul searching among Chinese scholars, and concern about whether China’s contribution to the world of International Relations scholarship lags behind its rise as an important shaper of the international system. There is a common understanding that China cannot escape addressing the role of theoretical discourse in directing Chinese foreign policy and framing its understanding of China’s role in the world. A perception of China as suffering from a dependent relationship to International Relations (IR) theory, and a desire to transform the role of Chinese scholars from consumers of theory to its producers inspires a debate over the formation of a distinctive ‘Chinese school’. The leading figures in China’s IR were mostly schooled in other fields and came to IR scholarship after completing their undergraduate education. Some, like Yan Xuetong and Qin Yaqing, took postgraduate programmes in the West before entering China’s academia. Others switched from fields like ideology, philosophy, or history, including diplomatic history. Others still worked as practitioners and diplomats before taking up a life of scholarship, and may never have been exposed to systematic training in modern international relations theory. The emergent generation of Chinese-trained international relations specialists possesses varying degrees of linguistic competence in Western languages. Their overall coherence to the debate is shaped by the perceived need for China to project onto the world stage a vision of the contours of its preferred world order, and to adequately engage foreign scholars and diplomats over the impact of China’s growing material power within the international system. General Secretary Hu Jintao’s call

Anarchism and cosmopolitanism

Until recently, the relationship between theories of international anarchy and anarchism has been ignored. Very recent work has started to bridge the gap between International Relations theory and the usefulness of anarchism and anarchist theory for the understanding of global politics. This article takes this discussion one step further by examining the relationship between classical anarchism (1860s–1940s), cosmopolitanism, post-anarchism and the global justice movement. It then investigates the linkages between the works of the 19th- and 20th-century anarchists, Rudolf Rocker and Gustav Landauer, and contemporary examinations of the linkages between cultural nationalism, cosmopolitanism and the classical and post-anarchist projects.

A Tale of Two Realisms in Chinese Foreign Policy

In a seminal article published a decade and a half ago, Thomas Christensen unambiguously asserted that China might be the high church of realpolitik in the post-Cold War world, a qualification that, translated in more theoretical terms, meant that [Chinese] analysts certainly think more like traditional balance-of-power theorists than do most contemporary Western leaders and policy analysts. (1) Based on this observation, the evolution of China's foreign policy over the last two decades could have best been analysed through the use of the realist prism. However, decades of restatement and renewal in the realist research programme have made such analysis much more complicated. (2) More precisely, given the increasing complexity of the realist research programme, the question might not be so much Chinese foreign policy conforms with realism, but rather, which of the different branches of realism provides the most consistent analysis of China's policy in the contemporary international system. This article examines how the two competitive branches of structural realism--offensive and defensive realisms--perform in explaining China's rise. After outlining the main differences between the two, a comparison is made on their respective hypotheses with China's posture towards three different types of actors: the extra-regional superpower--the United States; the potential regional great powers--Japan and India; and the lesser states of Southeast Asia. Rivalling Theories: Offensive and Defensive Realisms Among several fault lines that run through the realist research programme, one of the most significant evolutions since the end of the Cold War has been the schism within the branch of structural realist. (3) While Fareed Zakaria and Randall Schweller clearly identified what they considered as defensive realism's status quo bias, (4) the offensive turn of structural realism was fully completed by John Mearsheimer. (5) Offensive realism has, however, not simply overtaken defensive realism, and both theories continue to offer competing views on the constraints produced by the international system and on the strategies great powers are likely to adopt. Defensive and offensive realisms share a set of basic assumptions about the international system. Among them are axioms concerning the centrality of the state and the rationality of international actors. More significantly, both branches of structural realism consider international anarchy to be the pivotal principle of international relations. (6) And because any state may at any time use force, all states must constantly be ready either to counter force with force or pay the cost of weakness. (7) This constant state of pervasive wariness creates the conditions for what John Herz famously termed the dilemma. Placed in an anarchic system where no supranational authority can serve as a security guarantor, states that are striving to attain security from [an] attack, are driven to acquire more and more power in order to escape the impact of the power of others. This, in turn, renders the others more insecure and compels them to prepare for the worst. (8) While sharing this generally grim view of international politics, offensive and defensive realists, however, part company over the severity of the security dilemma, which means that they diverge over the level of security that international systems are likely to produce, and over the best strategy a state might adopt to ensure its security. From a defensive realist perspective, anarchy and security dilemma might not lead states to live at daggers drawn at each other. First, under some conditions, the security dilemma might be partially or totally solved. Robert Jervis developed the offence-defence balance (ODB) concept and pointed out that the severity of the dilemma depends upon whether defensive weapons and policies can be distinguished from offensive ones, and the defence or the offence has the advantage. …

Feminism, War and the Prospects for Peace

It is generally accepted in IR that before the 1980s there was little or no feminist theory in IR. Yet, there were feminists in IR prior to the 1940s who had their own particular take on global politics. This article seeks to reassess the ideas and impact of IR's first-wave feminism by concentrating on the works of one particular writer: Helena Swanwick. While not the only feminist writing on international affairs in the period, Swanwick is interesting both because of her earlier involvement in the feminist and suffragette movements, and because she constructed a clear analysis of the problems of security that was based on her suffragette experience. In the 1920s she gave sound reasons for opposing ‘League wars’ against aggressor states, but in the late 1930s this led her to support appeasement. Despite this, her criticisms of both collective security and the pre-1914 international anarchy are an interesting corrective to both the realist approach that emerged after the 1940s and the supporters of a tighter League system in the 1920s and early 1930s. It is also an indication of the extent to which a feminist agenda had been part of mainstream IR before 1939.