IR: Lesson 2
Course Stuff
Reading responses:
Questions are rhetorical to challenge and question what an expert is.
Responses should be clear and precise, focusing on why something is important rather than just stating its importance.
Include a topic sentence that takes a position and a concluding sentence that summarizes that position.
It's better to have a position than try to define. Definitions are efforts to be apolitical
Cases at the end of each chapter are essay topics.
Case Studies
Case study 2.1:
Chapter 2.
Topic: Regulating nuclear weapons.
Question: Does the possession of nuclear weapons facilitate arms control negotiations and foster strategic stability, or does it impede disarmament efforts and exacerbate global tensions?
Required academic source: Fuhrmann, Matthew, and Yonatan Lupu. "Do arms control treaties work? Assessing the effectiveness of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty." International Studies Quarterly 60.3 (2016): 530-539.
Approach: Realist (e.g., Rosato, Sebastian, and John Schuessler. "A realist foreign policy for the United States." Perspectives on Politics 9.4 (2011): 803-819.).
Case study 2.2:
Chapter 2.
Topic: Human rights and sovereignty.
Question: In what ways can the memory of the Holocaust contribute to the ongoing fight against racism, discrimination, and other forms of human rights abuses in contemporary society?
Required Source: Miles, William FS. "Third World views of the Holocaust." Journal of Genocide Research 6.3 (2004): 371-393.
Approach: Liberal internationalism (e.g., Jackson, Van. "Left of liberal internationalism: Grand strategies within progressive foreign policy thought." Security Studies 31.4 (2022): 553-592.).
Review
The global system.
Conscious and unconscious ideologies.
Three purported actors: nation-states, international organizations, individuals.
IR and the global system: academic study is not practice per se.
Starting assumptions impact analysis.
Unipolar, bipolar, tripolar, multipolar systems = perceived outcomes.
Indigenous and third world critiques of absent information.
Ignorance is a choice of theory, not the absence of data.
Key Terms: Levels of Analysis
The system level:
Comprises the global system in its entirety.
Looks at issues like the distribution of political power, the economic system, global governance (international organisations, laws and norms) and the diffusion of technology.
Considers how these factors create conditions that impose themselves structurally on the other levels.
The state level:
Looks at nation-states as actors in a set of particular external conditions.
Actors with particular internal characteristics (such as whether they are democracies or whether they are large or small).
Considers their strategic and economic positions.
The group level:
Looks at actors within their social, organisational, professional and bureaucratic context.
Points to the way in which they interact with their surroundings.
Examples: political decision-makers in the context of governmental structures like political parties, non-governmental organisations and interest groups acting at the intersection between governments and societies.
The individual level:
Looks at the behaviour and decisions of people both in governmental and non-governmental roles.
Examining their beliefs, fears and their personalities.
Discovery, Conquest and Colonialism
Enduring question: If the age of colonialism is over, why do we still need to discuss it?
About the Author (Robbie Shilliam)
Rastafari, Professor of International Relations, Political Science, Johns Hopkins University.
Other texts:
Shilliam, Robbie, ed. International relations and non-Western thought: Imperialism, colonialism and investigations of global modernity. Routledge, 2010.
Shilliam, Robbie. The black Pacific: Anti-colonial struggles and oceanic connections. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015.
Shilliam, Robbie. "Hegemony and the Unfashionable Problematic of Primitive Accumulation'." Millennium 33.1 (2004): 59-88.
Key Terminology
Competing departure points for International Relations.
Relating prior images of ‘sovereignty’(1648) with ‘discovery’ (1492).
Colonialism, conquest and slavery of Africans and Indigenous Peoples.
Seeing 1492 as a ‘map of the present’ to detect continuing legacies of each of the above.
Religion - and the cartographic reasoning of religious-inspired scholars and rulers in Europe.
To what extent is education a form of conversion?
The 1492 Map of the World
Columbus sailed west from the Canary Islands and landed in the Bahamas. This was the start of the European Empire and rise of ‘the West’.
Treaty of Tordesillas granted jurisdiction over Americas to Portugal and Castile, highlighting a pre-existing logic of European imperialism and colonialism.
500 years of colonial rule shaped political, social, economic and cultural dimensions of the current system.
How should we conceptualize the ‘doctrine of discovery’?
Is property state power?
The Vatican repudiates 'Doctrine of Discovery'
The Vatican formally repudiated the "Doctrine of Discovery."
The theory is backed by 15th century papal decrees that legitimized the colonial-era seizure of Native lands and form the basis of some property laws today.
Comparing Images of 1648 and 1492
Does hierarchy or equity better explain the International System?
Which one is more realistic?
The 1492 Map of the World (cont.)
Compare 1492 to 1648:
Imperialism vs. rise of nation-states.
Humanity divided by religious authority vs. diplomacy amongst Christian rulers.
Hierarchy of different entities vs. strong and weak sovereign states as a similar unit.
Power is reflected in the knowledge that we understand as given.
Do human rights come from practices that we accept as just? Does that mean those without justice are less human?
The 1492 Map of the World (cont.)
Cartography - the art of map making
Deciding what's at the centre, what should be counted, what should be omitted
Inherently tided to belief – ‘world-making’
What explains the reemergence of flat earthers?
Decolonial Atlas
Examples from 2021-2022 include:
Lands returned to Indigenous care.
Residential school graves identified.
Worker cooperative employment.
Music of the African Diaspora.
Open border agreements.
Black history museums.
Island populations.
Interstate and international US migrants.
Maps of Brittany in Breton.
Mapped: Placenames Containing Slur for Indigenous Women
800+ placenames containing the racial slur, squ*w.
US Changes Names of Nearly 650 Places with Racist Native American Women Term
U.S. Removing Indigenous Racial Slur from Place Names, But Word Remains in Some Canadian Locations
Slur officially deemed derogatory by U.S. Department of the Interior.
The 1492 Map of the World (cont.)
The 1492 map focuses on non-European islands and landmasses. It considers conquest as an organising principle rather than non- intervention.
‘Discovery’ during the Columbus era meant to uncover land known to exist.
Greeks accorded themselves exclusive ability to govern themselves and rule over people from ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ nations.
Whose perspective do we imagine the map is from?
Racism
The 1492 Map of the World (cont.)
Five zone model of Parmendes
Two frigid zones
Two temperate zones
One torrid zone
Harder climates = fierce but unwise people
Hot climates = wise but tame people
Temperate zone (European and Mediterranean ) = well balanced (wise and spirited)
How much do we still perceive nationality through broad characterization of similarity?
The constant rewriting of faith
Medieval scholars take the Greek map and translated into biblical lore
Mapping the celestial with an uncorruptible heaven
mapping the terrestrial world of fallen humans
Noah's sons (Shem, Japeth and Ham)
‘Curse of ham (hot)’ = natural slaves /subhuman
Does our ignorance make us feel innocent?
Conquest and Conversion
Christian map of the world justified discovery and conquest
Expansionary warfare = crusades
Encomienda system – Transfer of land from Muslim owners or rulers – extraction of labour from the defeated populations
How should you treat those who were willing to kill you before they surrendered?
Is enslavement a justification of force or reason?
Is genocide a reflection of the distinction between human and non-human?
Key Terms: The Crusades
In 1095, Pope Urban II proclaimed a Crusade to clear the 'holy lands' around Jerusalem of Muslim rule.
Urban II offered Christian men absolution (forgiveness) of their sins in exchange for fighting the 'Saracens'.
'Holy war' justified, albeit in particular circumstances, the forceful taking of lands belonging to non-Christians and the placing of non-Christians into bondage.
The Crusades ran for several centuries, ending in 1492 with the surrender of Muhammad XII of Granada.
Conquest and Conversion
Treaty of Alcáçovas (1479) was the first treaty between European leaders for dividing land not within their spheres of influence
Origins of reciprocity and sovereignty
Equity from hierarchy
Spain and Portugal competing for resources
Canary Islands = first treaty that divides up lands outside of their homeland as a sphere of influence
Should the US care if China puts nuclear weapons in Cuba?
Is Canada obligated to intervene in Haiti?
Who is responsible if China interferes in Canadian elections?
Conquest and Conversion
Conquests and reconquests were justified by Papal decrees of Holy War (1452).
Crusade against Islam justifies the enslavement of Africans (not all Muslims) and removal of lands
Settler colonialism emerges from the doctrine of discovery
Conquest and Conversion
Canary Islands presents a problem
Not Europeans (but in their zone), not Muslims (from islands), had not yet rejected Christianity (indigenous)
Papacy believes they can be converted
Spanish are granted the ability to tax (tithe) à colonialism becomes the foundation for greater riches for the sovereign
The distinctions between religious and secular authority = extractivism
Why do we have a right to unlimited extraction of North American resources? What gives humans domain over the natural world? Hierarchy or Equity?
Discovery and the Apocalypse
Religious justification of political power was contrary to Peace of Westphalia. Divinely mandated vs. Cuius regio eius religio ('whose realm, his religion')
Should the 'Holy See' continue to be recognized alongside states in the International System? Should other religious sites be recognized as Sovereign to minimize political influence over their affairs? Mecca?
Thought to be in apocalyptic times, the Spanish monarchy protected Columbus’ conquests to bring Christianity to the heathen world.
Discovery and the Apocalypse
The Requerimiento, demanded native ‘Indios’ accept conquistador’s dominion as well as the right to preach and convert.
Discovery and conquest were animated by an apocalyptic vision. New world mapping relied on old world cartographies.
Should everyone be forced to believe in the same things? Does the notion of the public require it?
What is the difference between a group chat and a public discussion?
Discovery and the Apocalypse
Columbus petitions Spanish monarchy for voyage
believes the earth is predominantly land
Therefore, he thought he encountered the Indies
In Canadian law it is still called the Indian Act to this day
Columbus discovers what we now call Haiti, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Grenada
What is Columbus Day in the US?
Discovery and the Apocalypse
Columbus accused of heresy
Apocalypse = ‘final revelation of divine mystery’
Monarchy as a divine religious force
The discovery was a ‘new heaven and earth’ = ‘the new world’
Columbus believed that the tropics were uninhabitable
The people in the Western Indies were heathens, their existence wasn't recorded in the Bible = force them into Christianity
Discovery and the Apocalypse
150 years later 10% of indigenous population remained
triangle trade = blackness as the erasure of families, lineage, ethnicity, culture, identity
whiteness as reflection of a hierarchy between Christians
W. E. B. Du Bois introduced the concept of a "psychological wage" for white laborers, leading low-wage white workers to feel superior to low-wage black workers.
Key Insights: Black Lives Matter
Black Lives Matter refers to the legacies of slavery in the Americas wherein Black peoples were legally, culturally, economically and politically valued as less than fully human.
The movement began in 2013 as a hashtag in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman who had been on trial for the fatal shooting of an African American teenager, Trayvon Martin.
The wider movement, which is largely decentralised, takes issue at the debilitating effects of over-policing and disproportionate criminalisation of Black communities such that even with conferment of citizenship after abolition, Black peoples have yet to enjoy a full and equal humanity vis-à-vis white citizens.
1492 as a Map of the Present
1492 as a departure point helps us think through global expansive hierarchies of humanity which even today justify violence, oppression and inequality.
Distribution of international power
Extraction and control of resources
Hierarchy of bodies globally
1492 as a Map of the Present
1648 as ‘family of nations’
European, Christian, whiteness, maleness reflected in structures
Erasure of religious foundation of secular authority
1648 as ‘civilized nations’ = sources of knowledge, identity, culture
active erasure of ideas and concepts that challenge abstract sovereign authority of idealized autonomous individual
Why does the concept of an Anglosphere make intuitive sense?
Conclusion
1648 and 1492 provide different maps of the same world.
They require us to pursue different cartographic investigations concerning the arrangement and animation of the actors of global politics.
Colonialism in IR needs to be discussed because of its relevance to the foundation of today’s global system.
Towards Global Order
Enduring question: What would a non-Western view add to how we think of, and locate, aspects of the global system?
Non-Western IR
Two Developments Conducive to Global IR
Key Terminology
Freedom of the Seas:
Economic interdependence requires nation-states to be free to navigate beyond territorial waters (UN Convention on the Law of the Sea).
Non-intervention:
Norm of non-intervention in the internal affairs of other states (UN Charter).
ASEAN and Global South adhere while Western countries have deviated.
Exceptionalism:
Presents characteristics of a social group as homogeneous, collectively unique, and superior to others.
Multiplexity:
Culturally and politically diverse; economically interconnected; peace, security, and welfare are transnational challenges.
Unpacking Western-Dominated Understandings of IR
’Foundational’ understandings of IR are of, by, and for the West.
Disciplinary concern about the teaching of IR because it's what makes the world (self-interest à conflict)
1648 remains dominated by Western experiences (though events often happen in the non-West, i.e. Vietnam)
What did the branding of the University of Western Ontario into ‘Western’, do?
World Order
Unpacking Western-Dominated Understandings of IR
IR emerges from Aberystwyth quickly becomes American - empire and imperial foundations
How pedantic should IR be towards ‘the rest’?
Examinations of India-Pakistan use concepts of animosity developed from the conflictual relations of European states
no effort to think the colonial impact and the cultural commonalities
common heritage as a bond building and basis of cooperation
Anglosphere in the West (‘Five Eyes’ à UK, US, Canada, Australia, NZ)
Does the assumption of conflict between states come from a specific cultural history? The English school? Do fights always result in the use of physical Force?
Key Insights: Bretton Woods Institutions
In 1944, the United States hosted an international conference at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire to discuss the post-war international economic order.
The conference led to the creation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, together known as the Bretton Woods institutions.
The final design of the Bretton Woods institutions gave much higher vote shares to the Western industrialised countries, on the basis of their economic and financial strength, compared to the countries in what was then referred to as the "Third World."
Bretton Woods
Global regulatory system of the post war era
Pegs US dollar to gold (defacto global currency)
International Monetary Fund (IMF) to enforce exchange rate regime
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) – World Bank for low interest development
GATT/WTO – Global liberal trade regime
All new states must follow this regime by default
IMF conditionality = devastating impacts in places like Ghana, Jamaica, Haiti
Should the genocide convention be mandatory for the recognition of sovereignty? (Sri Lanka)
The International Relations of Southern Civilisations
Anarchic systems and ‘great powers club’:
Sumerian civilisation of Mesopotamia
Also, a system of city states prior to Greece
monarch with politically independent cities, cities could remove and replace the monarch = collective hegemony
Warring States circa 475-221. Seven Chinese states engaged in a quest for power and territory for 250 years
System of anarchy, diplomacy, power balancing – never referenced
Why is secularism so insular when it claims to be knowledge based? Is knowledge just a reflection of power?
The International Relations of Southern Civilisations
Anarchic systems and ‘great powers club’:
Amarna system Between Babylon, Hatti, Egypt, Mitanni, Assyria
characterized by ‘dialogues’ between rulers
Communication, bargaining, signaling, persuasion and pressure tactics
interactions framed in polite terms
family as symbolism but political calculations behind messages
What is the role of politeness in policing behavior? Does politeness reinforce power?
Key Terms: Freedom of the Seas
International trade is central to modern ideas of globalisation and the international economic order.
These ideas are rooted in the concept of the 'freedom of the high seas' that all states are free to navigate the ocean beyond territorial waters and should not fight wars in the high seas.
Dutch philosopher and jurist Hugo Grotius, who wrote about the idea of mare liberum (or 'freedom of the seas') and whose 1609 book by the same name became the basis for international law on the high seas, likely derived his concepts from his familiarity with the maritime rules and commercial practice in Asia
The International Relations of Southern Civilisations
Islamic civilisation helped preserve and spread Eastern and Greek texts and ideas to Europe.
Muslim Spain spread ideas in eastern texts and revive ancient Greece through Arabic
‘carrier civilization’ – spread of morals and ideas
Indian emperor Ashoka
conflict leads to destruction of the Kingdom
Ashoka converts to Buddhism and proselytizes
missionaries spread to China, Japan, Korea, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Thailand
Why do we couch colonial relationships in the Western frame?
Key Terms: Non-Intervention
The norm of non-intervention in the internal affairs of other states is now present in the UN Charter, but it can be superseded by the Security Council.
This norm was affirmed in a more absolute form in a 1954 treaty between China and India.
The countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are staunch adherents to this norm.
Although Westphalian in origin, this norm eroded in the West with increasing intervention from the United Nations and Western countries.
The International Relations of Southern Civilisations
Chinese tributary system 2000 years
Hierarchical rather than anarchical system
China as ‘Middle Kingdom’, superior, central
Chinese View of IR
Qin, Yaqing. "Why is there no Chinese international relations theory?." International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 7.3 (2007): 313-340.
the world is composed of complex relations – instead of focusing on independent individual actors, relationality focuses on relations between individuals
self-existence is simultaneous with coexistence
Zhongyong dialectics and matter relationship between yin and yang
Not rational calculations of self-interest , actors base actions on relationships
Power= coempower vs force
Chinese View of IR
Examples:
learning through translation
feminist translations = new world
erasure of queer bodies
research programs
development of ideas for policy implementation domestically
John Saul in Africa, Chinese IR, Schools of thought
Tianxia as tributary system
recognition of inequality à goal of harmony, need for order
Reformism of Deng Xiaoping
whatever the hell Chinese capitalism is
Is capitalism in China different? Is capitalism different in Canada?
Chinese View of IR
Yan Xuetong – moral relativism and striving for achievement
Chinese national rejuvenation versus previous keeping a low profile
moral realism allows China to make more friends by letting others benefit from its growth
China’s ‘humane authority strategy’
‘no rejection of those who have come to learn, never go out and lecture others’ vs liberalism
Credibility is a prerequisite for a rising power to establish world power status
is the West losing credibility to the east?
Chinese View of IR
Tianxia – ‘all under heaven’ (‘All the people’, ‘world institution’)
Solution to the world's chaos - All inclusive way of looking at things to allow for equitable solutions
Dan Note – classic wholistic anthropocentric vision – possible? whole vs sum of parts?
nation states governed by anarchy vs. Utopian cosmological order where all relations (levels of analysis) is presented as inclusive of all, world sovereignty where harmony prevails over sameness (world as single political unit)
South-South Knowledge Production
In a relational logic, power is about enabling a coempowering process where all the actors involved are empowered.
Callahan questions the extent to which the Chinese vision of world order really leads to a "harmonious world" and a "post-hegemonic ideal" and instead argues that deployment of these concepts is better understood as a "new hegemony"
South-South Knowledge Production
China critiques US hegemony at length
not much self reflection
rejection of western theories as inapplicable
creating the space for a new hegemony
studies on Africa in China were largely pragmatic until 1977
Why do we spend so little time thinking about how others think?
Towards a Global International Relations
How to instill a more global approach in IR:
Think about universalism beyond the West
less abstraction more examples from the world (remember week 1?)
The idea of human rights beyond the charter
French, American and Haitian revolutions
The role of the Haitian revolution in the construction of political blackness - the first black Republic as symbol to others
Blackness as a category of political emancipation from French Colonial enslavement - all free citizens are black, Blackness as symbol of Freedom, resistance and self-government
Ostracized by the International Community, France demands indemnity of 150 million Francs (), payment through 1947 (Haiti GDP 8-9B today)
Towards a Global International Relations
How to instill a more global approach in IR:
Examine the ideas common institutions and intellectual perspectives of both western and non- western societies
Dependency theory originates from the economic relationship to Latin America
Towards a Global International Relations
How to instill a more global approach in IR:
Global IR should subsume rather than supplant existing knowledge
Don't reject western perspectives, supplement them and contextualize them
Examine the epistemological assumptions that allowed for the exclusion of nonwestern experiences
resituate the West alongside other societies
Towards a Global International Relations
How to instill a more global approach in IR:
Regional analysis should be more central to IR
often seen as an impediment to global cooperation but increasingly the norm
NAFTA, EU, AU, ECOWAS, ECOMIL
Is the future of IR regions?
Towards a Global International Relations
How to instill a more global approach in IR:
Reject the idea of cultural exceptionalism
Chinese IR returning to the tributary system?
Belt and road initiative (BRI)
Does the rise of China necessarily mean the decline of the West?
Towards a Global International Relations
How to instill a more global approach in IR:
Global IR should adopt a much broader view of ‘agency’
individuals, states or other groups
based on material (physical resources) or ideational (based on the power of ideas)
Latin American countries foreshadowing universal human rights
South Asian economists challenging western notions of economic progress (GDP vs HDI)
can we see Saudi Arabia as a Middle Eastern middle power?
Towards a Global International Relations
How to instill a more global approach in IR:
Reconceptualize globalization
political, cultural and social aspects of interconnectedness
shared ideas and experiences (Covid-19)
Common issues and concerns (global climate change)
do we think that crises in the future will bring us together or drive us apart?
Key Terms: Multiplexity
A multiplex world order is not anchored by a hegemon.
It is culturally and politically diverse yet economically interconnected, where challenges to peace, security and welfare are increasingly transnational.
It involves a dispersal of power and influence amongst both established and emerging powers, small states, global and regional bodies and non-state actors.
A Multiplex World Order
Established powers continue to dominate some aspects of global governance; emerging and established powers collaborate on some issues; emerging powers compete with established powers on other issues.
Non-state actors and activists (good and bad) placed in lead roles (e.g., Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, terrorists, cartels, traffickers.)
A multiplex world order sees states and non-state actors provide leadership in different issue areas.
Dispersed leadership - no single actor can dominate concerns
Shifting to a multiplex vision of the world order requires greater acceptance of the role of non-Western countries and Southern ideas and institutions that were previously marginal.
Conclusion
A non-Western view of how we think of, and locate, aspects of the global system reveal a multiplicity of actors from all parts of the world.
IR institutions are slowly shifting beyond the West as proven by a diffusion of global governance, and the rise of non-Western groupings and initiatives.
Benefits of diffusion: 1) it shows IR is not composed solely of elites making decisions without cultural and societal considerations; 2) Appreciates unique positions and historical experiences that shape nation -state outlooks.