Introduction

This Introduction begins by outlining what is meant by international relations. It then tells the story of how and why the academic study of international relations emerged when it did in the early twentieth century. Knowing something about the discipline's origins does not tell us everything we need to know about international relations today, but it will help us to understand the legacy left by the discipline's original purpose and by older traditions of thought. Following that, it considers the need to ‘globalise’ the study of international relations, to make it an academic discipline more open to non-Western perspectives and forms of knowledge. It then sketches the contours of the changing agenda of international relations – a shift some scholars describe as a transition from international relations to world politics, or from the ‘traditional’ to the ‘new’ agenda. Although there can be little doubt that new theoretical and conceptual tools have become necessary as political reality has changed, we should not assume that the myriad changes to our world have rendered the ‘traditional’ agenda and its theories obsolete. Far from it: the ‘new’ agenda, as we shall see, supplements but does not supplant the ‘traditional’ agenda. It is now more important than ever to consider the relationships between ‘traditional’ and ‘new’ agendas, and to globalise international relations.

What are international relations?

Every day, the global news media carry stories of events involving foreign governments and their populations. Usually featured under the heading of ‘international affairs’ or ‘world news’, these stories all too frequently tell of political violence, lives and livelihoods lost, human rights violated, infrastructure damaged and hopes for the restoration of peace and prosperity dashed. War, terrorism, civil war and political upheaval rather than peace make the news headlines – and understandably so, because the violent conflict of war so visibly ravages human societies. ‘If it bleeds, it leads’, as the cynical media adage goes.

For over 2000 years of recorded history, humans have been fascinated and frustrated by war and its consequences, so we should not be surprised by its continuing preeminence. But human societies are harmed by so much more than war. Chronic under-development, poverty, political repression, racism and other human rights violations, environmental degradation and climate change are no less harmful, albeit less visible.

Introduction

This chapter introduces a new research program for understanding the politics of religion and secularism. It argues that a focus on the politics of religion and secularism offers a productive port of entry into the study of international politics. Following a brief introduction to religion and International Relations (IR), it offers a basic historical introduction to the concept of secularism (see Box 24.1), explains why the politics of secularism is significant to the study of global politics, and concludes with two short case studies of the politics of secularism in the Middle East and North Africa.

Religion and International Relations

The study of the global dimensions and implications of religion and secularism is relatively new to the discipline of IR (Falk 2001; Hurd 2008; Katzenstein and Byrnes 2006; Petito and Hatzopoulos 2003; Thomas 2005). The authority of different forms of secularism and the force they command in many parts of the world, within and between nation-states, has received little attention. There are a number of reasons for this lack of attention.

First and most significantly, questions of religion have been marginalised due to the sheer power and authority of secularism to define the terms of the debate in such a way that religion is understood (at best) as irrelevant to politics and (at worst) as an existential threat to rational public order. Although this consensus has begun to shift in recent years (Hurd 2015), it has been so powerful in IR and in the world that for many years even questioning it was considered nonsensical. The conviction that religion should be privatised – and that particular religions may threaten this process more than others – cuts to the core of modern political thought and practice. The privatisation of religion is ‘mandated ideologically by liberal categories of thought which permeate not only political ideologies and constitutional theories but the entire structure of modern Western thought’ (Casanova 1994: 215). As a foundational principle of modern politics, secularisation is often seen as having contributed to democratisation and liberalisation.

Introduction

This chapter examines a number of feminist approaches to the study and practice of international relations. It highlights the similarities between these approaches, but also the differences. First, it traces the interventions made by feminists into international relations and the creation of a distinctly feminist agenda. Second, it uses the ‘gender lens’ to demonstrate and analyse how experiences and understandings in international relations can be ‘gendered’. Finally, it explains and examines the critiques of the different feminist approaches to international relations.

Feminist interventions into international relations

On a global level, significant inequality remains between women and men. This is evident in many areas of politics, including political participation in governments and political decision-making realms, ownership of wealth and resources, and access to human rights and justice. The goal of feminist IR is to highlight, understand and address this inequality. It also seeks to encourage the discipline of IR to recognise and better understand the role of gender politics in shaping how we think about the world and the people and institutions in it. Consequently, like international relations generally, feminist IR is a broad and diverse field of study, rich with debate, controversy, cutting-edge research and challenging new methodological approaches. Feminist IR scholars are often necessarily interdisciplinary, synthesising IR with gender, cultural and post-colonial studies as well as history, sociology, international law and political theory. Feminist scholars have made important contributions to all areas of international relations, including theory, security studies, peace and conflict studies, foreign policy analysis, the international political economy and global governance.

While feminist international relations encompasses numerous feminisms based on distinct theoretical approaches, feminist IR scholars have a common commitment: to highlight and address the discrimination and disadvantage that women in particular experience in international politics. Thus feminist IR scholars are concerned primarily with how the study and practice of international politics discriminates against women and leads to disadvantage (see Box 5.1).

Introduction

This chapter introduces students to an idea that has enjoyed a remarkable, if hotly contested, development in the post-Cold War era: humanitarian intervention. Based on a commitment to principles of humanity, such intervention seeks to alleviate the unnecessary human suffering caused by violent conflict by intervening in another state with force under certain limited conditions. The chapter first outlines the origins of humanitarianism; it then sketches a short history of humanitarian intervention before discussing the shift from humanitarian intervention to responsibility to protect (R2P). As the context of world politics becomes ever more complex, debate about global responsibilities to protect suffering strangers will continue to shape the theory and practice of international relations.

For the last quarter-century, humanitarian organisations have careened from one major disaster to another. The end of the Cold War unleashed a pent-up demand for acute humanitarian action – that is, protecting and assisting individuals caught in war zones. Analyses of this period typically highlight three defining trends that explain this expansion, as well as second thoughts about the overall direction (Barnett and Weiss 2011). The first is the growing willingness and ability of outsiders to help those at risk. Radical improvements in information technology and logistical capacities, growing international support for coming to the rescue of victims, multiplying numbers of relief organisations and substantial increases in available resources promised an enhanced collective capacity to provide relief, rescue and reconstruction. The second trend reflects the mounting dangers that aid workers confront in war zones where access is difficult, where they are often perceived as a threat or as a resource to be captured, where their own physical safety is in doubt and where civilian populations are the intended victims (Duffield 2001; Kaldor 1999). In addition, the deployment of military force in such arenas for human protection purposes has raised new kinds of questions about the ability of aid workers to remain faithful to their principles (Hoffman and Weiss 2017; Weiss 2013a).

This chapter focuses on the peculiar dynamics of what until recently was called ‘humanitarian intervention’ (forcefully coming to the rescue of civilians without the consent of political authorities in the territories where victims are located), but is now more commonly called ‘R2P’: the emerging norm of the responsibility to protect.

Introduction

This chapter presents the outlines of a constructivist understanding of world politics. We begin with a discussion of state identity, a fundamental concept of constructivism applied to international affairs, and explore the ways in which identity defines and bounds state actions. To illustrate this concept, we address a number of issues central to the study of world politics: change, governance and security. Overall, our goal is to present a thickly textured, layered understanding of the international realm based on a notion taken for granted in much of IR theory: meaning.

Constructivism is the newest but perhaps the most dynamic of the main theories of international relations. The important works heralding the constructivist approach to the study of global politics – articles by Alexander Wendt (1987, 1992) and books by Nicholas Onuf (1989) and Friedrich Kratochwil (1989) – are only about two and a half decades old, even though the intellectual traditions on which they draw have long histories in other academic fields. Unlike liberalism and realism (see Chapters 2 and 3), which have taken their bearings from developments in economic and political theory, constructivism – like critical theory (see Chapter 4) – is rooted in insights from social theory (e.g. Berger and Luckmann 1967; Giddens 1984) and the philosophy of knowledge (Golinski 2005; Hacking 1999; Searle 1995). Perhaps in consequence, constructivism does not predict outcomes, or offer definitive advice on how a state should act in the international arena. Instead, constructivism is best understood as a set of wagers about the way that social life is put together – wagers that centrally revolve around the fundamental importance of meaning to social action: ‘people act toward objects, including each other, on the basis of the meanings those objects have for them’ (Wendt 1999: 140). Constructivist IR theory is an application of that basic analytical commitment to the study of global politics, focusing in the first instance on state identity.

What does constructivism do? Identity and international institutions

So what exactly are the basic tenets of constructivist IR? This is a very hard question to answer because, as a relatively new theory, there has not been as much time for people to work out in detail what the most central propositions of the constructivist way of doing things are.

Introduction

This chapter will delineate the field of global environmental politics, and track the emergence and rapid acceleration of global environmental problems since the end of World War II. It will also introduce the key global environmental discourses of limits to growth, sustainable development, ecological security, environmental justice and the concept of planetary boundaries, together with the proposed new geological epoch called ‘the Anthropocene’. It will then explore how environmental scholars working in the major theoretical traditions of International Relations (IR) – realism, liberalism and critical theory – have approached and responded to a fundamental puzzle of global environmental politics: why is it that, despite a rapid increase in public environmental concern and environmental legislation and environmental treaties at the national and international levels, the most serious and irreversible global environmental problems facing the international community have continued to worsen? Finally, the chapter turns to contemporary challenges, focusing on the shifting role of the United States in tackling the most serious global environmental problem of all: climate change.

The study of global environmental politics has emerged as a problem-oriented and multidisciplinary field of inquiry that seeks to understand: (1) how and why global ecological problems arise and persist; (2) how ecological risks are distributed through space and time; and (3) how the global community (encompassing states and nonstate actors) has responded, or ought to respond. These three basic questions frame the field of inquiry of global environmental politics. They also signal the enormous political challenges facing international and transnational collective efforts to protect the earth's ecosystems and climate in a world of nearly 200 sovereign states with vast disparities in capacity, resource endowments, population, cultures and levels of economic development.

Global environmental politics is a sprawling field of study in terms of both the sheer breadth of the object of study and the variety of disciplinary frames that are relevant to global eco-political problems. While the primary object of study is political responses to global and trans-boundary environmental problems, the distinction between global and trans-boundary, and national and local, environmental problems is hard to maintain. All global ecological problems produce different local effects, and many local and transnational practices contribute to global ecological problems.

Introduction

This chapter explains the way international society emerged and was globalised. Its main purpose is to explore how the European sovereign state system expanded across the globe to become the truly international order of sovereign states (often called the states-system) that we see today. The first part of the chapter examines how the expansion of the states-system came about and how it has been analysed. The second part provides a critical discussion of the way in which the spread of the states-system has been understood in IR, with the aim of provoking your thinking about the enduring Eurocentrism that continues to bedevil our theorising of international politics.

International relations is often presented as a world of sovereign states, with each claiming exclusive jurisdiction within clearly demarcated territorial borders. From our vantage point in the early twenty-first century, this may seem like an enduring or even permanent and natural feature of international relations. But nothing could be further from the truth.

While the international order of sovereign states has indeed spread throughout the world, this is a distinctly modern phenomenon that only happened in the late nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. Prior to this, many areas of the globe organised their polities in different ways, and often had their own distinctive international/regional orders that were very different from those of Europe, where the sovereign states-system originated. Diplomatic relations between the European and the non-European worlds were not based on the exchange of ambassadors or equality among states, as they are today (Suzuki 2009; Zhang 2001). In fact, many of the non- European polities were often much more powerful than the European powers, and this meant that the Europeans had to follow the former's rules and norms if they were to trade or enter into some form of diplomatic relations (Suzuki, Zhang and Quirk 2014).

The spread of the sovereign states system that we see today happened primarily as a result of the imperialist expansion of the West (Europe and the United States). The nineteenth century brought about the Industrial Revolution and a significant increase in the military power of the West.

Introduction

This chapter discusses the role of international law in world politics. It begins with a discussion of the content of international law, explaining the sources of law and how we identify them. Where does law come from, and where are legal problems solved at the international level? It then addresses the question of why the study of international law is foundational to the study of international relations. The chapter offers two answers to this question, which it explores in turn. First, one of the central debates in international relations theory – whether or not states pursue their national interest unchecked by rules, is at its heart a debate about international law. Realist theories of international relations have dismissed international law as having no real influence on state behaviour, arguing instead that ‘might equals right’: states will follow the law when it is in their interests, and will disregard it in all other cases. Other theories of international relations dispute this position, and argue that law is at the very least central to international activity, if not foundational to it. Second, the study of international law is also important because law is at the heart of many international disputes today. The chapter concludes by considering two examples of ‘law in action’: the legal decision regarding Chinese activities in the South China Sea and the contemporary debate over membership in the International Criminal Court.

What is international law?

When we speak of international law, to what are referring? Hedley Bull (1977: 122) defines international law as ‘a body of rules which binds states and other agents in world politics in their relations with one another and is considered to have the status of law’. When international law makes the news, it is often because of a major political crisis or event, such as the use of chemical weapons, the presence of war crimes or the invasion of one state by another without UN authorisation. However, as Bull's definition reveals, international law governs almost every facet of international life, from the mundane to the complex.

Introduction

This chapter begins by discussing what arms control is and why it has featured so prominently in world politics, even since the end of the Cold War. After a discussion of the various weapons that are covered by arms-control processes, and the legal regimes that accompany these, the chapter outlines some of the ways in which arms control can be conceptualised and how various schools of thought in International Relations (IR) can be related to arms-control practices. We then look at the specific case of the nuclear weapons regime, as more states acquire nuclear weapons, and as calls increase for the elimination of these particular weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

What is arms control?

Arms control can be described simply as any arrangement made to limit the weapons that might be used in warfare. It can be conducted as a formal process involving treaties, or as an informal practice between states. These processes or steps can be unilateral, bilateral or multilateral; the most essential element is a willingness to cooperate with other states to achieve security interests. These interests could be ‘exclusively those of the cooperating states themselves’ or interests that are ‘more widely shared’ in the international community (Bull 1961: 2).

Arms control has been applied to both WMDs and to conventional weapons, although it has been related most heavily to WMDs. These are nuclear, radiological, chemical and biological weapons, and are categorised as WMDs because of their enormous potential for causing mass casualties. (These are nevertheless very different types of weapon systems, and their lethality and damage potential vary greatly.) While WMDs are rightly abhorred for their capacity for destruction, so-called conventional weapons – that is, weapons that are not WMDs – have received less attention, largely because of the implied right of sovereign states to possess a normal or ‘conventional’ weapons capability. Although the focus for arms control continues to be on WMDs, certain kinds of conventional weapons are also now being considered as appropriate for restriction or elimination.

Introduction

This chapter examines the politics of global poverty, inequality and development. The first section provides the background for our analysis of global poverty and inequality. Any meaningful discussion of poverty and inequality necessarily has to be in relation to development – which, as we show, is itself contested in theory and practice (McMichael 2010). The second section provides a basic outline of a relational perspective of global development. The final section focuses on the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) initiative and the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We conclude with some critical observations about the relationship between development, poverty and inequality.

Global poverty and inequality in development

Concerns about global poverty have been high on the agenda in world politics at least since the start of the new millennium. For example, the MDG initiative was conceived as part of the United Nations Millennium Declaration (2000), and followed by the declaration on the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (2015). This high-level focus on development and poverty is not surprising, as not only is the worldwide gap between the rich and the poor growing, but there has also been an unprecedented rise in insecurities and vulnerability in the everyday lived experiences of many people, particularly those experiencing poverty. Two highly visible issues can be drawn upon to illustrate the growth of inequality and poverty in global development. These are the growth of slum-dweller and/or squatter communities (see Cattaneo and Martinez 2014), and the rise of food insecurities for many across the globe. For example, in Planet of Slums, Mike Davis (2006) documents the rise and expansion of slum dwellings globally, and draws attention to the rapid increases in precarious living conditions in urban and peri-urban areas. The expansion of slum dwellings occurs in direct relation to development processes, including industralisation and urbanisation. In the case of food insecurities, the rise in the incidence of food riots globally since the 1980s has also been taking place in the midst of high technology-oriented, high massscale production of food for the global market (Patel 2008; Walton and Seddon 1994). Activists, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), policy-makers, politicians and scholars are all engaged in rigorous debates about the scale and character of global poverty and inequality, and have embarked on various campaigns to ‘make poverty history’.

Introduction

This chapter offers an historical grounding in inter-war international relations. It tracks and analyses the progress of international relations in the period between World War I (1914–118) and World War II (1939–45), both of which are rightly seen as two major and formative conflicts in international history – and indeed for the study of International Relations (IR). It is sometimes assumed that the two World Wars were primarily European affairs, at least in their origins, and reflected the persistence of European predominance in a fast-changing world. Yet these were truly global and globalising wars, as reflected in their causes, courses and consequences, the technologies they employed and the ideas they helped to generate. This period foreshadowed European decline, witnessing the rise of the United States, the challenge of the Soviet Union, of the Far East and, more gradually, of peoples around the world subject to imperial rule. It saw the establishment of new borders for parts of Europe and the region that became the Middle East, giving rise to regional conflicts that persist today. It also saw the emergence of new international organisations, notably the League of Nations, the forefather of the United Nations, which sought to regulate the relations between states in novel ways. In short, the inter-war period provided the foundations for the international system that developed over the following decades. Many of its contours are still visible today.

International history and the study of International Relations

While offering an overview of some of the most important developments and events of the period between the wars (see Box 9.1), the chapter is also informed by the major IR theories and approaches introduced elsewhere in this volume. It demonstrates how the study of IR theory requires a parallel understanding of international history. Although it might seem obvious to state that good IR requires a good understanding of history, international history is not seen by all today as an essential accompaniment to the study of IR. Indeed, it has increasingly been neglected by the search for more parsimonious theoretical explanations and the use of new social science research methods, which sideline history or use historical evidence selectively (Schroeder 1997).

Introduction

This chapter provides a brief introduction to the ethics and laws of war in three parts. The first part outlines what international law and the ‘just war’ tradition have to say about recourse to force, the second section explores the conduct of war and the final section explores two recent issues as examples of moral and legal debate: the legitimacy of pre-emptive self-defence and the use of suicide car bombs.

War is an almost ubiquitous part of human history. For as long as there have been distinctive human groups, there has been organised violence – war – between them (Gat 2006). But because endemic violence between communities had detrimental effects on whole civilisations – inhibiting demographic growth, for example – many developed rules and customs to limit and control the extent of violence and determine the victors. As Ian Clark (2016), Stephen Neff and others have pointed out, ‘war’ is not just the practice of organized violence but a particular form of organized violence ordered by customs, ethics and – more recently – legal rules. Thus, although some realists argue that there is no place for morality in war – reflecting the views of the Union Army's General Sherman who, during the US Civil War, maintained that ‘war is all hell’ and the only moral course was to do everything possible to succeed – the fact is that the concept of war itself is deeply imbued with moral and legal arguments. Indeed, Sherman's argument is itself a moral argument about war. Others would go further. Those that Martin Ceadel (1987) described as ‘warists’ – among them nineteenthcentury nationalists, twentieth-century fascists and twenty-first-century jihadists – see war itself as a moral good.

Today, questions about when it is legitimate to go to war and how war must be conducted are central to public and political debates, and play a significant role in policy-making and military decision-making. Indeed, it is war's character as a rulegoverned activity that demarcates it from other forms of violence, such as raiding and terrorism. Decisions to invade countries like Iraq or Afghanistan, intervene – or not – in major civil wars such as those in Libya and Syria, participate in wars such as Vietnam and World War I, or send peacekeepers to South Sudan or Mali are only partly strategic choices.

Introduction

This chapter offers an account of postmodernism. It begins by drawing a distinction between two broad approaches to the postmodern: one that outlines the contours of a new historical period (postmodernity) and another that places emphasis on finding new ways of understanding modern practices of knowledge and politics (postmodernism). The second part of the chapter examines how postmodern ideas entered IR scholarship, and how ensuing contributions continue to reveal important insights up to today.

Defining postmodernism is no easy task. Postmodern scholarship is characterised more by diversity than by a common set of beliefs. Add to this the fact that ‘postmodern’ has become a very contentious label, which is used less by its advocates and more by polemical critics who fear that embracing postmodern values would throw us into a dangerous nihilist void. But while the contours of the postmodern will always remain elusive and contested, the substantial issues that the respective debates have brought to the fore are important enough to warrant attention.

Postmodernity as a new historical period

The postmodern has become a stretched, widely used and highly controversial term. It first achieved prominence in literary criticism and architecture, but eventually spread into virtually all realms, including international relations. What the postmodern actually means is highly disputed. The increasing sense of confusion in the proliferation of the postmodern led Gianni Vattimo (1992: 1) to note that this term is so omnipresent and faddish that it has become almost obligatory to distance oneself from it. But Vattimo, and many others, nevertheless held on. He, alongside such diverse authors as Jean-François Lyotard (1979), Jean Baudrillard (1983), David Harvey (1989) and Fredric Jameson (1984), viewed the postmodern as both a changing attitude and a fundamentally novel historical condition. They focused on the cultural transformations that have taken place in the Western world and assumed, as Andreas Huyssen (1984: 8) summarises, that we are witnessing ‘a noticeable shift in sensibility, practices and discourse formations which distinguishes a postmodern set of assumptions, experiences and propositions from that of a preceding period’. Such shifts are recognised in various globalising tendencies, such as the rapid evolution and global reach of mass media and other information and communication tools.