Pub Date : 2022-10-07DOI: 10.1177/00471178221128187
Columba Peoples
This article analyses and critically reflects on how the concept of ‘crisis’ has tended to feature within prominent debates on ‘Crisis of the Liberal International Order’. Within such scholarship, the article argues, the concept of crisis most often functions as a technology of crisis management in itself: rather than disrupting narratives and assumptions of liberal progress and order, invocations of crisis within Liberal International Order scholarship tend to recapitulate those same narratives and assumptions. To make this case, the article undertakes an immanent critique of how crisis has been understood within debates on the Liberal International Order, drawing on wider critical and social theoretic reflections on ‘crisis talk’ as the basis for a more critical engagement. Doing so, it seeks to highlight the ways in which Crisis of the Liberal International Order debates constitute a particular way of understanding the relationship between crisis, liberalism and modernity.
{"title":"The Liberal International Ordering of crisis","authors":"Columba Peoples","doi":"10.1177/00471178221128187","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178221128187","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyses and critically reflects on how the concept of ‘crisis’ has tended to feature within prominent debates on ‘Crisis of the Liberal International Order’. Within such scholarship, the article argues, the concept of crisis most often functions as a technology of crisis management in itself: rather than disrupting narratives and assumptions of liberal progress and order, invocations of crisis within Liberal International Order scholarship tend to recapitulate those same narratives and assumptions. To make this case, the article undertakes an immanent critique of how crisis has been understood within debates on the Liberal International Order, drawing on wider critical and social theoretic reflections on ‘crisis talk’ as the basis for a more critical engagement. Doing so, it seeks to highlight the ways in which Crisis of the Liberal International Order debates constitute a particular way of understanding the relationship between crisis, liberalism and modernity.","PeriodicalId":47031,"journal":{"name":"International Relations","volume":"77 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2022-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91112114","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-05DOI: 10.1177/00471178221128196
C. McIntosh
For nearly two decades, the United States has chosen to narrate its response to terrorism through what Judith Butler refers to as the ‘frame of war’. Despite this, victory in that country’s longest war remains largely unimaginable. In some ways this is a problem of time – it is not that victory or an end to the conflict is literally unimaginable, it’s that from our political present, an end appears radically discontinuous. This article builds on recent work using temporality and the political present as a lens and conceptual framework to better understand how temporal assumptions and frames shape the practice of war and political violence. In this article, I show how time and timing play a significant role in justifying the violence of the war on terrorism and in making it intelligible as war. I examine the past three administrations and focus on three areas – the borders of wartime, temporal continuity, and the vision of a post-war future – to show important differences in administrative approaches. To more concretely understand the practice of political violence going forward, attention to the temporal dynamics of politics must be front and center, particularly one possessing ambivalent frames. Doing so reveals the implications these dynamics have for the conduct and permissibility of violence.
{"title":"A ‘continuing, imminent’ threat: the temporal frameworks enabling the US war on terrorism","authors":"C. McIntosh","doi":"10.1177/00471178221128196","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178221128196","url":null,"abstract":"For nearly two decades, the United States has chosen to narrate its response to terrorism through what Judith Butler refers to as the ‘frame of war’. Despite this, victory in that country’s longest war remains largely unimaginable. In some ways this is a problem of time – it is not that victory or an end to the conflict is literally unimaginable, it’s that from our political present, an end appears radically discontinuous. This article builds on recent work using temporality and the political present as a lens and conceptual framework to better understand how temporal assumptions and frames shape the practice of war and political violence. In this article, I show how time and timing play a significant role in justifying the violence of the war on terrorism and in making it intelligible as war. I examine the past three administrations and focus on three areas – the borders of wartime, temporal continuity, and the vision of a post-war future – to show important differences in administrative approaches. To more concretely understand the practice of political violence going forward, attention to the temporal dynamics of politics must be front and center, particularly one possessing ambivalent frames. Doing so reveals the implications these dynamics have for the conduct and permissibility of violence.","PeriodicalId":47031,"journal":{"name":"International Relations","volume":"81 2 1","pages":"568 - 590"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2022-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88011902","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-28DOI: 10.1177/00471178221122959
Nick Ritchie
The global politics of nuclear disarmament has become deeply contested over the past decade, particularly around the negotiation of the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Different explanations are offered, but these tend to centre on the geopolitics of the ‘security environment’ conceived in realist terms. This article makes sense of the TPNW and the global politics of nuclear disarmament by examining its underlying discourse and contestation within a wider framework of nuclear hegemony and resistances to it, drawing on Robert Cox’s theory of hegemony. It argues that the politics of nuclear disarmament has hardened into a contestation between two broadly incommensurable nuclear worldviews, or nuclear ontologies: hegemonic nuclearism and subaltern anti-nuclearism. These are not just different perspectives, but fundamentally different ways of understanding global nuclear politics that have important implications for the nuclear disarmament movement. Three conclusions emerge from this: that intersectionality is vital to understanding subaltern anti-nuclearism within wider processes of resistance in global politics; that contestation between hegemonic nuclearism and subaltern anti-nuclearism is agonistic; and that ‘bridge building’ approaches to find a middle ground generally deny this agonism and thereby close down debate, and that this explains why they often fail to gain traction. The article builds on the critical scholarship on nuclear hegemony, discourse and resistance and develops an original framework of hegemonic and subaltern nuclearism and anti-nuclearism.
{"title":"A contestation of nuclear ontologies: resisting nuclearism and reimagining the politics of nuclear disarmament","authors":"Nick Ritchie","doi":"10.1177/00471178221122959","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178221122959","url":null,"abstract":"The global politics of nuclear disarmament has become deeply contested over the past decade, particularly around the negotiation of the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Different explanations are offered, but these tend to centre on the geopolitics of the ‘security environment’ conceived in realist terms. This article makes sense of the TPNW and the global politics of nuclear disarmament by examining its underlying discourse and contestation within a wider framework of nuclear hegemony and resistances to it, drawing on Robert Cox’s theory of hegemony. It argues that the politics of nuclear disarmament has hardened into a contestation between two broadly incommensurable nuclear worldviews, or nuclear ontologies: hegemonic nuclearism and subaltern anti-nuclearism. These are not just different perspectives, but fundamentally different ways of understanding global nuclear politics that have important implications for the nuclear disarmament movement. Three conclusions emerge from this: that intersectionality is vital to understanding subaltern anti-nuclearism within wider processes of resistance in global politics; that contestation between hegemonic nuclearism and subaltern anti-nuclearism is agonistic; and that ‘bridge building’ approaches to find a middle ground generally deny this agonism and thereby close down debate, and that this explains why they often fail to gain traction. The article builds on the critical scholarship on nuclear hegemony, discourse and resistance and develops an original framework of hegemonic and subaltern nuclearism and anti-nuclearism.","PeriodicalId":47031,"journal":{"name":"International Relations","volume":"97 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2022-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79249130","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-27DOI: 10.1177/00471178221122968
K. Fisher
The 2018 United States (US) National Military Strategy claimed that professional military education (PME) in the US had ‘stagnated’. Since then the 2020 US Joint Chiefs of Staff publication Developing Today’s Joint Officer’s for Tomorrow’s Ways of War can be seen as a direct response to such stagnation. The associated temporal positionings of war from stagnation, to today’s officers, to tomorrow’s ways of war, reinforce the significance of wartime in how professional military education is framed. In this paper I ask: To what extent do professional military education mission statements rely on frames of wartime for a construction of purpose, what are the implications of such framings for goals of minimizing violence and suffering, and how may such potential limitations be addressed in the classroom? A focus on wartime can help us draw out significant strategic and ethical challenges of conflict termination alongside ‘forever wars’, the normalization of exceptional security practices and violence, and the way in which prioritizations of either doing war ‘better’ or minimizing the likelihood of war are in seemingly direct epistemological competition. Given a goal of less insecurity, in an era in which fewer and fewer wars actually ‘end’ or ‘end’ with a sense of victory, I assess the extent to which engaging critical approaches in PME may help or hinder the need to challenge self-propagating dynamics of wartime that may be limiting efforts at lessening violence.
{"title":"Wartime, professional military education, and politics","authors":"K. Fisher","doi":"10.1177/00471178221122968","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178221122968","url":null,"abstract":"The 2018 United States (US) National Military Strategy claimed that professional military education (PME) in the US had ‘stagnated’. Since then the 2020 US Joint Chiefs of Staff publication Developing Today’s Joint Officer’s for Tomorrow’s Ways of War can be seen as a direct response to such stagnation. The associated temporal positionings of war from stagnation, to today’s officers, to tomorrow’s ways of war, reinforce the significance of wartime in how professional military education is framed. In this paper I ask: To what extent do professional military education mission statements rely on frames of wartime for a construction of purpose, what are the implications of such framings for goals of minimizing violence and suffering, and how may such potential limitations be addressed in the classroom? A focus on wartime can help us draw out significant strategic and ethical challenges of conflict termination alongside ‘forever wars’, the normalization of exceptional security practices and violence, and the way in which prioritizations of either doing war ‘better’ or minimizing the likelihood of war are in seemingly direct epistemological competition. Given a goal of less insecurity, in an era in which fewer and fewer wars actually ‘end’ or ‘end’ with a sense of victory, I assess the extent to which engaging critical approaches in PME may help or hinder the need to challenge self-propagating dynamics of wartime that may be limiting efforts at lessening violence.","PeriodicalId":47031,"journal":{"name":"International Relations","volume":"274 1","pages":"658 - 681"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2022-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75782475","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-23DOI: 10.1177/00471178221123506
Vincent Dubé-Senécal
This article re-examines the aid-to-couture plans enacted by France at the end of the 1960s from both historical and diplomatic perspectives. In so doing, it assesses the decision-making process of French public authorities, couturiers and textile manufacturers by cross-referencing archives from multi-stakeholder meetings with diplomatic archives. By building on the current literature in Fashion Studies that stands at the confluence of cultural and business perspectives, this article adds to it a diplomatic perspective to re-evaluate the role of fashion for diplomacy. It argues that contrary to the traditional narrative on the role of fashion in favour of textile exports, haute couture and fashion instead became a fixture of France’s post-war prestige-based commercial diplomacy through a mix of nation branding avant la lettre and export branding.
{"title":"Fashion’s diplomatic role: an instrument of French prestige-based commercial diplomacy, 1960s–1970s","authors":"Vincent Dubé-Senécal","doi":"10.1177/00471178221123506","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178221123506","url":null,"abstract":"This article re-examines the aid-to-couture plans enacted by France at the end of the 1960s from both historical and diplomatic perspectives. In so doing, it assesses the decision-making process of French public authorities, couturiers and textile manufacturers by cross-referencing archives from multi-stakeholder meetings with diplomatic archives. By building on the current literature in Fashion Studies that stands at the confluence of cultural and business perspectives, this article adds to it a diplomatic perspective to re-evaluate the role of fashion for diplomacy. It argues that contrary to the traditional narrative on the role of fashion in favour of textile exports, haute couture and fashion instead became a fixture of France’s post-war prestige-based commercial diplomacy through a mix of nation branding avant la lettre and export branding.","PeriodicalId":47031,"journal":{"name":"International Relations","volume":"84 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2022-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90670653","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-21DOI: 10.1177/00471178221122962
Johnson Singh Chandam
The rise of populism in Western democracies creates presumed threats on liberal international order. Although a number of scholarly works are dedicated to the populist challenge on liberal democracy, the analysis of populism’s implications on the liberal order is limited. This paper deliberates on a concise review of the consequences of populism on the Western liberal order. In order to delineate the study, the article is devoted to the Western populism and its implications on liberal order. The paper, while analyzing the components of liberal international order by drawing on the analytical framework of structural liberalism, intends to claim that populism has adverse consequences on certain elements of the order than others. However, the implication is not an inflection point for the Western liberal order. Furthermore, this paper also provides some explanations behind the limitations of the populist threats to the Western liberal order. The main argument to highlight is that populism is detrimental more to liberal democracy than to the liberal order itself, and the Western liberal order has the capacity to withstand the tide of populism.
{"title":"Western populism and liberal order: a reflection on ‘structural liberalism’ and the resilience of Western liberal order","authors":"Johnson Singh Chandam","doi":"10.1177/00471178221122962","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178221122962","url":null,"abstract":"The rise of populism in Western democracies creates presumed threats on liberal international order. Although a number of scholarly works are dedicated to the populist challenge on liberal democracy, the analysis of populism’s implications on the liberal order is limited. This paper deliberates on a concise review of the consequences of populism on the Western liberal order. In order to delineate the study, the article is devoted to the Western populism and its implications on liberal order. The paper, while analyzing the components of liberal international order by drawing on the analytical framework of structural liberalism, intends to claim that populism has adverse consequences on certain elements of the order than others. However, the implication is not an inflection point for the Western liberal order. Furthermore, this paper also provides some explanations behind the limitations of the populist threats to the Western liberal order. The main argument to highlight is that populism is detrimental more to liberal democracy than to the liberal order itself, and the Western liberal order has the capacity to withstand the tide of populism.","PeriodicalId":47031,"journal":{"name":"International Relations","volume":"77 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2022-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84655796","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-07DOI: 10.1177/00471178221122954
deRaismes Combes
Counterinsurgencies mostly fail, as the 2021 allied withdrawal from Afghanistan illustrates. Still, confronting insurgencies remains a central component in ongoing counterterror efforts around the world. The crux of counterinsurgency (COIN) centers on winning the ‘hearts and minds’ of noncombatants in order to cut militants off from a needed source of material and psychological support. In practice, however, COIN has failed to leverage a pacified civilian population into a military victory and has instead led to protracted engagements with unclear and contradictory goals. I argue that this policy failure can be explained by rehabilitating the doctrine’s colonial heritage to its contemporary deployment. I do so by tracing the doctrinal origins of COIN to American-led pacification programs in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Using time as a conceptual anchor, I draw on postcolonialism and social theory to unearth how embedded imperialist notions of Self/Other in the doctrine help explain this ongoing failure. A temporal lens augments an analysis of COIN in three respects. First, it illustrates the longevity of counterinsurgency as a geopolitical practice of pacifying ‘disruptive Others’. Second, it reveals a paradox in a doctrine that intimates an end state marked by the absence of those disruptive Others but is designed to constantly seek out disruption. Finally, it lays bare differing motivations for the imperial Self to endure the encounter with the Other in the first place. I conclude by reflecting on the potentially harmful consequences both at home and abroad should the underlying assumptions of COIN remain unexamined.
{"title":"Counterinsurgency in (un)changing times? Colonialism, hearts and minds, and the war on terror","authors":"deRaismes Combes","doi":"10.1177/00471178221122954","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178221122954","url":null,"abstract":"Counterinsurgencies mostly fail, as the 2021 allied withdrawal from Afghanistan illustrates. Still, confronting insurgencies remains a central component in ongoing counterterror efforts around the world. The crux of counterinsurgency (COIN) centers on winning the ‘hearts and minds’ of noncombatants in order to cut militants off from a needed source of material and psychological support. In practice, however, COIN has failed to leverage a pacified civilian population into a military victory and has instead led to protracted engagements with unclear and contradictory goals. I argue that this policy failure can be explained by rehabilitating the doctrine’s colonial heritage to its contemporary deployment. I do so by tracing the doctrinal origins of COIN to American-led pacification programs in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Using time as a conceptual anchor, I draw on postcolonialism and social theory to unearth how embedded imperialist notions of Self/Other in the doctrine help explain this ongoing failure. A temporal lens augments an analysis of COIN in three respects. First, it illustrates the longevity of counterinsurgency as a geopolitical practice of pacifying ‘disruptive Others’. Second, it reveals a paradox in a doctrine that intimates an end state marked by the absence of those disruptive Others but is designed to constantly seek out disruption. Finally, it lays bare differing motivations for the imperial Self to endure the encounter with the Other in the first place. I conclude by reflecting on the potentially harmful consequences both at home and abroad should the underlying assumptions of COIN remain unexamined.","PeriodicalId":47031,"journal":{"name":"International Relations","volume":"9 1","pages":"547 - 567"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2022-09-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72954208","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-12DOI: 10.1177/00471178221104344
Sidita Kushi
Why are some violent intrastate crises more likely to prompt humanitarian military interventions than others? States appear to intervene robustly in reaction to some internal conflicts, such as Kosovo, but withhold similar options in more intense conflict, as in Darfur. Much of the research on this ‘selectivity gap’ focuses on universal norms or geopolitical interests. I, however, argue that the selectivity of these interventions is a product of regional variations interacting with conflict perceptions. This paper introduces a dataset of almost 1000 observations of intrastate armed conflict between 1989 and 2014, paired with international military responses and non-responses, as well as an Intervention Index that accounts for the intensity of military interventions. I find that once a threshold of human suffering is met via the existence of an internal armed conflict, powerful states will intervene depending on whether the conflict occurs in the Western sphere of influence and whether it is denoted as an identity war. A Western region coupled with no perceptions of identity-based civil war prompts the greatest odds of humanitarian military intervention. Such conclusions carry implications on the role of norms and interests in international politics, as biased by region, and for military intervention as a policy choice.
{"title":"Selective humanitarians: how region and conflict perception drive military interventions in intrastate crises","authors":"Sidita Kushi","doi":"10.1177/00471178221104344","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178221104344","url":null,"abstract":"Why are some violent intrastate crises more likely to prompt humanitarian military interventions than others? States appear to intervene robustly in reaction to some internal conflicts, such as Kosovo, but withhold similar options in more intense conflict, as in Darfur. Much of the research on this ‘selectivity gap’ focuses on universal norms or geopolitical interests. I, however, argue that the selectivity of these interventions is a product of regional variations interacting with conflict perceptions. This paper introduces a dataset of almost 1000 observations of intrastate armed conflict between 1989 and 2014, paired with international military responses and non-responses, as well as an Intervention Index that accounts for the intensity of military interventions. I find that once a threshold of human suffering is met via the existence of an internal armed conflict, powerful states will intervene depending on whether the conflict occurs in the Western sphere of influence and whether it is denoted as an identity war. A Western region coupled with no perceptions of identity-based civil war prompts the greatest odds of humanitarian military intervention. Such conclusions carry implications on the role of norms and interests in international politics, as biased by region, and for military intervention as a policy choice.","PeriodicalId":47031,"journal":{"name":"International Relations","volume":"365 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2022-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86875445","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-04DOI: 10.1177/00471178221116015
Jan Selby
If international relations can be theorised as ‘inter-textual’, then why not also – or indeed better – as ‘inter-carbonic’? For, not only is the modern history of carbon to a large degree international; in addition, many of the key historical junctures and defining features of modern international politics are grounded in carbon or, more precisely, in the various socio-ecological practices and processes through which carbon has been exploited and deposited, mobilised and represented, recycled and transformed. In what follows I seek to make this case, arguing that carbon and international relations have been mutually constitutive ever since the dawn of modernity in 1492, and that they will inevitably remain so well into the future, as the global economy’s dependence on fossil carbon continues unabated and the planet inexorably warms. Will climate change generate widespread conflict, or even civilisational collapse? How are contemporary power dynamics limiting responses to climate change? And how, conversely, might 21st-century world order be transformed by processes of decarbonisation? Building on research in political ecology, I argue that a dialectical sensitivity to ‘inter-carbonic relations’ is required to properly answer these questions. Scholars and students of International Relations (IR), I suggest, need to approach climate change by positioning the element C at the very centre of their analyses.
{"title":"International/inter-carbonic relations","authors":"Jan Selby","doi":"10.1177/00471178221116015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178221116015","url":null,"abstract":"If international relations can be theorised as ‘inter-textual’, then why not also – or indeed better – as ‘inter-carbonic’? For, not only is the modern history of carbon to a large degree international; in addition, many of the key historical junctures and defining features of modern international politics are grounded in carbon or, more precisely, in the various socio-ecological practices and processes through which carbon has been exploited and deposited, mobilised and represented, recycled and transformed. In what follows I seek to make this case, arguing that carbon and international relations have been mutually constitutive ever since the dawn of modernity in 1492, and that they will inevitably remain so well into the future, as the global economy’s dependence on fossil carbon continues unabated and the planet inexorably warms. Will climate change generate widespread conflict, or even civilisational collapse? How are contemporary power dynamics limiting responses to climate change? And how, conversely, might 21st-century world order be transformed by processes of decarbonisation? Building on research in political ecology, I argue that a dialectical sensitivity to ‘inter-carbonic relations’ is required to properly answer these questions. Scholars and students of International Relations (IR), I suggest, need to approach climate change by positioning the element C at the very centre of their analyses.","PeriodicalId":47031,"journal":{"name":"International Relations","volume":"74 1","pages":"329 - 357"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2022-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88027945","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-22DOI: 10.1177/00471178221112480
T. Greene
As European radical right parties grow in influence, and as foreign and security policy becomes more politicised, these parties have increasing potential to shape national debates on international affairs. This paper shows how radical right opposition parties seek to exploit policy dilemmas surrounding military intervention according to the nature of the political opportunity these dilemmas present in specific national settings. Its findings are based on qualitative comparative case studies of Front National, AfD and UKIP responses to intervention debates surrounding the Syrian civil war in France, Germany and the UK. I find that non-intervention is not an absolute value for radical right parties. Whilst liberal-humanitarian interventions are uniformly rejected, interventions on national security grounds, whether to combat Jihadist threats or prevent uncontrolled migration, prompt a range of responses shaped by the domestic political context. Yet even where these parties back intervention in votes, their discourse focuses on fitting the issue to the populist dimensions of their political agenda, especially attacking mainstream rivals for incompetence, duplicity or incoherence, and failing to protect the sovereignty and ethnic integrity of the nation.
{"title":"Fitting national interests with populist opportunities: intervention politics on the European radical right","authors":"T. Greene","doi":"10.1177/00471178221112480","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178221112480","url":null,"abstract":"As European radical right parties grow in influence, and as foreign and security policy becomes more politicised, these parties have increasing potential to shape national debates on international affairs. This paper shows how radical right opposition parties seek to exploit policy dilemmas surrounding military intervention according to the nature of the political opportunity these dilemmas present in specific national settings. Its findings are based on qualitative comparative case studies of Front National, AfD and UKIP responses to intervention debates surrounding the Syrian civil war in France, Germany and the UK. I find that non-intervention is not an absolute value for radical right parties. Whilst liberal-humanitarian interventions are uniformly rejected, interventions on national security grounds, whether to combat Jihadist threats or prevent uncontrolled migration, prompt a range of responses shaped by the domestic political context. Yet even where these parties back intervention in votes, their discourse focuses on fitting the issue to the populist dimensions of their political agenda, especially attacking mainstream rivals for incompetence, duplicity or incoherence, and failing to protect the sovereignty and ethnic integrity of the nation.","PeriodicalId":47031,"journal":{"name":"International Relations","volume":"18 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2022-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76718634","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}