Pol 2 theories and case studies

Restall 2003

Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest

• Conquistadors were free agents and not an organised state army

• Centralization of the Spanish state only began in 17th century

• Racial identities and solidarities are a modern construct

• Local rivalries took precedence over rivalries with Europe

• Key example: Tlaxacalans allied with Spanish to destroy Mexica City; ratio of 200,000 Tlaxacalans to 6000 Spanish

Clulow 2014

Dutch and Tokugawa Japan

• Dutch East Indies Company (VOC) behaved like a supplicant towards the Tokugawa Shogunate

• Had to adhere to local diplomatic customs

• Genocides and violence on the “spice islands” of South East Asia

• 1627- Dutch embassy landed in Edo+ fled 1 month later- without seeing the shogun

• Periods of violence+ European technological advancement- not the overall picture of these centuries

• When Dutch’s “rights” to sovereignty and diplomacy were asserted, conflicts resulted, ended in VOC withdrawal

• European status and legitimacy questioned

Lockhart 1999

Of the Indies

• Impact of Spanish and Portugese colonisation in South America- how it was uneven

• Sedentary, well resourced societies- attacked more and resisted less; non sedentary groups were less predictable

• Mobile societies were more likely to be enslaved

• Many people did not have direct contact with the Spanish- relatively small force

• Indigenous factionalism+ conflicts continued under early Spanish rule

Zhang 2014

• Europeans as Chinese supplicants- 1513- 1793

• Often narrated deterministically- as backstory to Opium Wars

• 3 centuries before 1842- China was the dominant partner

• Europe wanted to integrate China into the international order for their own benefit; China was less dependent- 16th century

• 1400-1700- China had more advanced military, invented, cannons and gunpowder

• Europe had to adopt Chinese norms to trade with them

• Key examples- the British Macartney Embassy 1793- rejected by Emperor Qianlong, 1540s-50s Jesuit missionaries- had to learn to speak+ write local languages to get access+ confront China’s “intellectually sophisticated” culture

Quirk and Richardson 2013

• Europe and Africa- 1450-1850

• 4 centuries of trade, including slave trade

• Traders and African rulers traded with Europeans, including in people, on relatively even terms

• Europeans relied on local guides to navigate difficult terrains and unfamiliar diseases
  

French 2021

• Covers 1471-WW2

• Slavery existed pre the transatlantic slave trade, but the the chattel model based on the black/white binary race hierarchy was a newer construction

• Black African was made into a prominent identity in IR

• Portugal+ Spain’s 1600s “takeoff” was enabled by a precious metals mining boom in South America

• This depended on African slave labour (e.g. Brazil)

• Sugar plantations then replaced silver mining as the “boom” of 17-1800s

• Africa was advantageously resourced and located for the “triangular boom” of sugar+ cotton production through chattel slavery

Benton 2014

• Sovereignty, law and European Empires from 1400-1900

• Sovereignty+ the enforcement of boundaries- more porous

• Borders and laws were often created due to intraimperial competition

• Empires functioned on the discrepancy of law between colonies and metropoles

• People often look back to early stages of empire+ look for continuities/early signs of modern state sovereignty

• Uneven delegation of authority + degree of law across colonial territories

• Key example- 19th century India- princely states, never directly controlled, but swore alliegance; princes were key in helping the British to crush 1857 rebellions- unevenness of colonial law+ administration

What type of scholar is Kenneth Waltz?

He is a neorealist/ defensive realist

Waltz 1979

• The international system is anarchic, Hobbesian, risk of large scale violence

• How the system conditions states takes priority over individual behaviour

• States are rational actors who seek to maximise their own security

• Model based on the balance of power between states

• Self help system- influenced by state competition in market- microeconomics

• Interdependency creates vulnerability- often subordinate economic gain to political interest

What type of theorist is Mearsheimer?

Neorealist/offensive realist

Mearsheimer 2001

• Great power always seek to maximise their power over other states

• This leads to security dilemmas

• Anarchic system promotes aggressive rather than cautious behaviour

• Military strength are a dominant source of power

• States are rational actors who are strategic about their survival

• Balancing leads to collective action problems+ free riding- states rely on others states’ efforts over challenging a stronger power

• Key example- Pearl Harbour 1941- US let Europe deal with the Nazis+ Imperial Japan until it couldn’t be avoided

• Net zero/green energy transition- no state wants to be first to make radical changes+ lose fossil fuel revenue to states who move later

How does classical realism differ from neorealism?

• Rejects the rational actor assumption and realpolitik

• Focusses on tragic qualities+ fallibility of people and power politics

• Thucydides- tragedies of character e.g. hubris, overcommitment to values, tragic decision making (Covid lockdown- economy vs life), competition between value commitments

• Tony Blair Iraq- clash of ideals, loyalties, hubris

Morgenthau 1948

• Politics Among Nations

• Predates Waltz and Mearsheimer

• Rejects rationalism- inherent tragic forces of human nature

• Combines 3 images- human nature, anarchic regime type+ structural constraints

• States pursue power, even when it leads to tragedy

• Ideological justifications are often made up to cloak power motives

• Key example- Cold War (alliance in WW2- shift in power relations then ideologically justified), Vietnam War- tragic result of power politics

• System must account for human nature- diplomacy+ balance of power

What type of scholar is Morgenthau?

Classical realist

What are the key tenets of liberal internationalism?

• 2nd and 3rd image explanation- how domestic regime interacts with international system

• Commerce and international law as engines of peace

• Free trade increases interdependency which reduces the likelihood of conflict

• Emphasis on building international institutions and encouraging countries to take on liberal norms and values

Doyle 1986

• Democratic peace theory

• Argues it is empirically accurate that democracies are less likely to go to war with each other

• The voter accountability of democracy and the trade impacts of war make war unappealing

• Other theorists have questioned whether causality can be tied back to democracy- rather than power of the US as hegemon, geopolitical considerations

Keohane 1984

• (Neo)liberal institutionalism

• Liberal rational actor assumption+ emphasise of anarchic structure of IR

• States want to maximise wealth and compete like firms in a market

• Building institutions improves the flow of information, allows trade+ cooperation, increases predictability of partners

• States are self interested, but institutions can create institutions that positively harness this motivation

What are key points of constructivism/ Ruggie 1998

• Reject “neo-utilitarianism” of rational actor theories+ economic/power maximization logic

• Draw on social norms, ideologies, psychology and identities

• State identities are formed intersubjectively- a state is not recognised as a state/great power until other states recognise it as one

• Sovereignty is especially intersubjective

• IR system is “social space”

• Relationship histories inform how states behave- e.g. why the USA might have a realist attitude toward North Korea, but not UK, which also has a sizeable nuclear arsenal

Wendt 1992

• Constructivism

• State friendships trump conditions of anarchy- states that trust each other will risk greater dependency

• Intersubjective character of IR

• Key example- NATO makes Europe hugely reliant on America, but European states took this risk based on their trust+ history with America as an ally

What is Mitzen’s (2006) theoretical position and key contribution?

• Constructivist work

• Ontological security- the idea that states will move to secure their identities

• Keep a “stable cognitive environment” is what allows states to exercise agency

• Habitual routinised interactions help states build relationship where they can rely on and trust each other

• States will take risks for identities and ideological reasons

Key examples- Cold War, Russia Ukraine, Oslo Accords (both Israelis and Palestinians saw themselves as security seekers but couldn’t be sure of each other- prevented them from using their agency to rationally secure peace/ curb aggression

• Led to Israeli settlers exploting loopholes+ Palestinian authority not cracking down on terror groups/militants

What are vertical and horizontal enforcement and which one is present in IR?

Vertical enforcement= enforcement from above, the state+ the police, army, prison system, impose authority over citizens

Horizontal enforcement= enforcement among citizens, or in this case states- includes diplomacy, international law, treaties and alliances

How do vertical and horizontal enforcement work in terms of human rights?

• Human rights do not have a centralized enforcement mechanism

• Vertical enforcement to some extent at the level of the state- international human rights are written into national law

• Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International- NGOS which use shame+ reputational incentives to try and get state to adhere

• States who adopt HRs cynically will then face pressure from activists based on having signed it

What are the 3 key components of regulating the use of force?

1. Jus ad bellum (meeting the conditions necessary to use force)

2. Jus in bello (regulating the actions of conflicting parties/ proportionate use of force)

3. Decline of war thesis

Why does Fazal (2012) argue that states no longer declare war?

• Norm of jus in bello has made declarations of war far more costly- framework for legal action, citizens’ protest

• Challenge- anti-war movements still respond when war isn’t formally declared- see Iraq, Vietnam wars

• Complicates prosecution- atrocities at Abu Ghraib

• Public declarations in terms of declaring state’s law- declined as normal behaviour

What argument does Zacher (2001) make about the territorial integrity norm?

• Liberal leaning argument

• Written in the context of rising democracies, EU expansion

• Traces the development of the territorial integrity norm

• Emergence after WW1, development between 1945-1976, institutionalization post 1976

• Conditions which allowed TIN to flourish:

  1. Stability of Western democracies that pushed in in 20th century

  2. Fear of major war in Cold War

  3. Declining economic importance of land/territory

How does Altman 2020 argue that the decline in territorial conquest has been misinterpreted?

• Altman looks at data from 151 conquest attempts from 1918 to 2018

• He argues that attempts to conquer small territories such as provinces persisted

• One state has attempted to absorb another 4 times since 1945

• Brute force replaced by “fait accompli”- imposing limited gains without permissions in the hope adversaries will relent

• 22 non violent conquest attempts over last century

• Significant interventions/use of force by international community to back up TIN have been uncommon

• Key example- Russia Crimea- territory was taken without a full scale conquest

• Contrasts- Zacher’s rise of TIN reading

How does Kinsella (2024) expose the coloniality of the 1863 General Orders 100?

• 1863 General Orders 100, based on the laws of war as formulated by Francis Lieber

• Lieber believed in American settler colonialism

• Distinction between revenge and retaliation, encoded “savage”- influenced later laws that governed war

• Uneven application- American government was not held to its own humanitarian conventions during the dispossession of the Native Americans

• Uneven enforcement of sovereignty- Native American sovereignty was not respected

• Continuity- Israeli settlers, US government supporting Israel- uneven enforcement of humanitarian principles, humanitarian rights violations by settler colonialism in West Bank

What are St Thomas Aquinas’ 3 principles of a just war? (Medieval history of use of force)

1. It should be waged by a sovereign authority

2. It must have just cause (punishing wrongdoing/wrongdoers)

3. A just cause must be accompanied by the right intention

History of regulating the use of force

• Post WW1, League of Nations- 1928 Kellogg-Briand pact- article committing to “condemn recourse to war” and to “renounce it as an instrument of national policy”

• End of WW2- UN Charter- enshrined the territorial integrity norm, sovereignty, banning the use of force

• Force allowed- when authorised by the UN Security Council, self defence, this self defence must be proportional

What are areas of complexity regarding the UN Security Council’s rules on the just use of force?

• When can states lawfully use force against nonstate actors

  Key example- post 9/11 UN Security Council issued a resolution suggesting a strong mandate to allow the use of force against terrorist groups

  The Bush administration security strategy was based around the right to pre-emptive self defence

• This contradicts the rule of force as a last resort

• Can states engage in preemptive self defence

What are 2 examples of the Bush administration and the American army suspending the humanitarian laws of war?

Abu Ghraib Prison Iraq

• 2003- early stages of the invasion of Iraq

• Department of Justice authorised “enhanced interrogation techniques”- torture, rape, sexual humiliation, sleep deprivation, use of hoods, playing loud music, dogs

  Bagram Prison Afghanistan 2002

• Civilian prisoners put in chains and beaten, leading to several deaths

• Culture of impunity among the United States forces- part of War on Terror

What is the case of the Srebrenica massacre and what principles of international humanitarian law is it connected to?

• 1995 genocide of 8000 Bosnian men and boys of Muslim origin

• Serbia claimed it was retaliation for violence by the Bosnian army against Bosnian Serb civilians

• ICJ found it to be genocide

• 1995- NATO intervened militarily, which brought the conflict to a quicker end

• 60,000 US and NATO troops stayed to enforce peace

• Successful intervention for US led LIO in 1990s

How does Mearsheimer (2019) diagnose the fall of the LIO?

• Trump is a symptom of the LIO crumbling, not the cause

• Inherent tension of sovereignty vs delegating decision-making to international institutions (e.g. EU migration)

• Globalisation+ free markets have led to labour leaving the West- backlash from lower and middle classes

• The rise of China- undermines the unipolarity of the LIO, which is the only way it can survive

What does European support for Ukraine in the war show about the LIO?

• Several large European states still support the territorial integrity norm (France, United Kingdom, Poland etc)

• LIO under pressure- Germany with AfD, illiberal leaders like Fico, Orban

• Support not backed by military means, or America

• Given Putin more bargaining power, as he has more military power, younger average age of conscripts

What do Alder Nissen and Zarakol argue with regards to the LIO?

• Paper from 2021

• Merging of different discontents with the system

• Hollowing out from within- Western voters, illiberal actors within like Orban

• Accelerated by digital social media+ decline of global ideologies since Cold War

• LIO seen as a bureaucracy that “did not exist” in better economic times for majoritarian ethnic groups, working classes

• Resentment among Global South states of LIO “status community” and hypocrisy, which has prevented true equality between members

• Russia can play the middle man effectively- destabilises international institutions from within+ runs interference in Western liberal democracies, Kremlin finances far right in Hungary and Turkey

Lawson and Zarakol 2023- what do they say about hypocrisy and the LIO?

• The hypocrisy charge is a common one

• As a unipolar order, with the USA as hegemon, it has broken norms and international law and not lost its standing in the inner circle

• Taiwan’s democracy has strengthened, whilst the USA’s has weakened, but Taiwan has not been let into the core of the LIO

• CEE countries seen as “queue jumping” when the Cold War ended AND have not been punished for democratic backsliding

• LIO challenged from left wing, postcolonial critiques+ illiberal actors simultaneously