William Rooke

Innocents Abroad?

Innocents abroad? Photo: IowaPolitics.com/flickr

The next American presidential election is only 13 months away, and the campaign season is getting close to full-swing.  Last night in Hanover, New Hampshire, the candidates for the Republican nomination met for what is already their seventh debate, and there are signs, in his energetic push for the Jobs Bill, that  ‘campaign Obama’ may be about to emerge from his presidential shell.   At this stage, all eyes are understandably focused on the economy, as it is widely believed that the election will be decided by what happens with unemployment.  In September, the economy created 103,000 non-farm jobs, edging the official rate up to 9.1 percent.  Looming ever more ominously on the horizon, however, is the much bigger problem of the national debt.  At last count, total outstanding public debt is now at 99 pct of GDP, the highest level since the heyday of the Marshall Plan.

As  James Traub, for Foreign Policy, has pointed out, this focus on economic matters has meant less direct attention to foreign affairs, particularly by the Republican candidates. 

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Great IR Thinkers: Kenneth Waltz


Man, the State and War: an IR classic. Image: Bookworship.com

“Since war begins in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed.”

Introduction

In June of 2009, the journal International Relations devoted an entire issue (in two parts) to a man it described as “The King of Thought.” The occasion was the 30th anniversary of the publication of Theory of International Politics and the 50th anniversary of Man, the State and War. As Ken Booth wrote in the issue’s introductory essay: “…the justification for a project to celebrate and re-examine these classic books needs little elaboration.  Nor is the stature of their author in any doubt, as is testified by the following recent endorsements by leading figures in the field: ‘Kenneth Waltz is the most important international relations theorist of the past half century’ (John J Mearsheimer); ‘Kenneth Waltz is the pre-eminent international relations theorist of the post-World War II era’ (Stephen M Walt); and ‘Kenneth N Waltz is the pre-eminent theorist of international politics of his generation’ (Robert O Keohane).”  “Intellectually speaking,”  Booth continues, “we are all Waltz’s subjects, whether we be loyal disciples, friendly critics, or rebellious opponents: the discipline defines itself in relation to the authority of his work.”

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Black Swans and Security Curves

A black swan, making waves. Photo: Aziem Hassan/flickr

These days it seems like everyone knows about ‘black swans.’  Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis aside, Nassim Nicholas Taleb used it as the title for his 2007 book about “low probability, high impact” events to which, he argued, the human mind is especially vulnerable.  But ‘black swans’ have an older role in debates about the philosophy of science (as Taleb, a self-described epistemologist, certainly knew) and, thus, relevance for International Relations, a discipline that often aspires to (social) scientific status.

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Islands and the Changing Face of Sovereignty

A scenic view of Lombok Island, a site of offshore detention
A scenic view of Lombok Island, Indonesia, a site of offshore detention.  Photo courtesy of vizzitor/flickr

When the history of the first decades of the 21st century is written, the US military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba is likely to feature prominently.  In the end, ‘Gitmo’ will always be synonymous with humanitarian abuses and allegations of American war crimes perpetrated as part of the ‘war on terror.’

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The End of European Exceptionalism?

The historical expansion of the EU
The historical expansion of the EU. Image: Ssolbergj/Wikipedia

Ten years ago, people were going long on Europe.  In 2002, an influential article in Policy Review described Europe as “entering a post-historical paradise of peace and relative prosperity,” even “the realization of Kant’s Perpetual Peace.”  Those familiar with that article, Robert Kagan’s “Power and Weakness,” know that this was praise of a certain kind.  What made this Europe possible, according to Kagan was, actually: “the United States… mired in history, exercising power [out] in the anarchic, Hobbesian world.”  Though Kagan clearly did not believe that Europe circa 2002 was an illustration of Kant’s vision of human progress in history — in which the working out of our “unsocial sociability” would eventually lead to a global alliance of peaceful republics — it was the image he used.  And it was a compelling one.

When that article was written, the idea of Europe as paradise was plausible. The Euro had just entered circulation, membership of the EU was about to reach for the first time behind the old iron curtain, and people were getting used to the prospect of Europe as a second superpower alongside the United States. Perhaps Kagan’s article was so influential because it suggested what few at the time believed: that what Europe had achieved in preceding decades would not easily or inevitably be repeated elsewhere in the decades to come, that European advances were themselves contingent and fragile.  That power was not obsolete.

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