Why Study IR? Sørensen - Chapter 1 PDF

CHAPTER 1 Why Study IR? 1.1 1.2 1.3 International Relations in Everyday Life Brief Historical Sketch of the Modern State System Globalization and the State System 1.4 4 1.5 11 20 IR and the Changing Contemporary World of States Conclusion KEY POINTS QUESTIONS GUIDE TO FURTHER READING 22 29 30...

CHAPTER 1 Why Study IR? 1.1 1.2 1.3 International Relations in Everyday Life Brief Historical Sketch of the Modern State System Globalization and the State System 1.4 4 1.5 11 20 IR and the Changing Contemporary World of States Conclusion KEY POINTS QUESTIONS GUIDE TO FURTHER READING 22 29 30 31 31 Summary This chapter answers the question ‘why study IR?’ It begins by introducing the historical and social basis of international relations, or IR. The aim of the chapter is to emphasize the practical reality of international relations in our everyday lives and to connect that practical reality with the academic study of international relations. The chapter makes that connection by focusing on the core historical subject matter of IR: modern sovereign states and the international relations of the state system. Why do states and the state system exist? Three main topics are discussed: the significance of international relations in everyday life and the main values that states exist to foster; the historical evolution of the state system and world economy in brief outline; and the changing contemporary world of states. 4 STUDYING IR 1.1 International Relations in Everyday Life IR is the shorthand name for the academic subject of international relations. It can be defined as the study of relationships and interactions between countries, including the activities and policies of national governments, international organizations (IOs), nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and multinational corporations (MNCs). It can be both a theoretical subject and a practical or policy subject, and academic approaches to it can be either empirical or normative or both. It is often considered a branch of political science, but it is also a subject studied by historians (international or diplomatic history), and economists (international economics). It is also a field of legal studies (public international law) and an area of philosophy (international ethics). From that broader perspective, IR clearly is an interdisciplinary inquiry. Aspects of international relations, and in particular war and diplomacy, have been scrutinized and remarked upon at least since the time of the ancient Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu and the ancient Greek historian Thucydides, but IR only became a proper academic discipline in the early twentieth century. The main reason why we should study IR is the fact that the entire population of the world is divided into separate political communities or independent countries, nationstates, which profoundly affect the way people think and live. Nation-states are involved with us, and we are involved with them. In highly successful nation-states, most of the population identify, often quite strongly, with the country of which they are citizens. They are proud of their country’s flag. They sing the national anthem. They do not sing the anthems of other countries. They see the world’s population as divided and organized in terms of separate nation-states. ‘I’m American, you’re French, he’s German, she’s Japanese, the man over there is from Brazil, the woman is from South Africa, the other fellow is Russian . . . ’ And so it goes right around the world. As a practical matter it is difficult and probably impossible for most people to escape from the various effects of nation-states on their daily lives, even if they wanted to. The state is involved in protecting them and providing for their security, both personal and national, in promoting their economic prosperity and social welfare, in taxing them, in educating them, in licensing and regulating them, in keeping them healthy, in building and maintaining public infrastructure (roads, bridges, harbours, airports, etc.), and much else besides. That involvement of people and states is often taken entirely for granted. But the relationship is profound. People’s lives are shaped, very significantly, by that reality. IR focuses on the various activities of nation-states in their external relations. To pave the way for this, some basic concepts are required. An independent nation or state may be defined as a bordered territory, with a permanent population, under the jurisdiction of a supreme government that is constitutionally separate—i.e., independent—from all foreign governments: a sovereign state. Together, those states form an international state system that is global in extent. At the present time, there are almost 200 independent states (see Figure 1.4). With very few isolated exceptions, everybody on Earth not only lives in one of those countries but is also a citizen of one of them and very rarely of more than one, although that possibility is increasing as the world becomes ever more WHY STUDY IR? interdependent. So virtually every man, woman, and child on Earth is connected to a particular state, and via that state to the state system which affects their lives in important and even profound ways, including some of which they may not be fully aware of. States are independent of each other, at least legally: they have sovereignty. But that does not mean they are isolated or insulated from each other. On the contrary, they adjoin each other and affect each other and must therefore somehow find ways to coexist and to deal with each other. In other words, they form an international state system, which is a core subject of IR. Furthermore, states are almost always involved with international markets that affect the economic policies of governments and the wealth and welfare of citizens. This requires that states enter into relations with each other. Complete isolation is usually not an option. When states are isolated and cut off from the state system, either by their own government or by foreign powers, people usually suffer as a result. That has been the situation at various times recently with regard to Myanmar, Libya, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, and Syria. Like most other social systems, the state system can have both advantages and disadvantages for the states involved as well as their people. IR is the study of the nature and consequences of these international relations. The state system is a distinctive way of organizing political life on Earth and has deep historical roots. There have been state systems at different times and places in different parts of the world, in, for example, ancient China, ancient Greece, and Renaissance Italy (Watson 1992; Kaufman et al. 2007). However, the subject of IR conventionally dates back to the early modern era in Europe, when sovereign states based on adjacent territories were initially established. One of the prominent ideas in IR, namely that interstate relations should be kept in a form of ‘balance’, first seems to have been formulated by the Florentine statesman Lorenzo de’ Medici in the late fifteenth century (Watson 1992: 161). In the sixteenth century, it gained a more general traction in learned circles in Europe as a reaction against the hegemony aspirations of the Spanish Habsburg rulers Charles V and his son Philip II (Boucoyannis 2007: 713). Ever since the eighteenth century, relations between independent states have been labelled ‘international relations’. Initially, the state system was European. With the emergence of the United States in the late eighteenth century, it became Western. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however, the state system expanded to encompass the entire territory of the Earth— east and west, north and south (Buzan and Lawson 2015). Today, IR is the study of the global state system from various scholarly perspectives, the most important of which will be discussed in this book. The world of states is basically a territorial world. People must live somewhere on the planet, and those places must relate to each other in some way or other. The state system is a way of politically organizing populated territory, a distinctive kind of territorial political organization, based on numerous national governments that are legally independent of each other. To understand the significance of IR, it is necessary to grasp what living in states basically involves. What does it imply? How important is it? How should we think about it? This book is centrally concerned with these questions and especially with the last one. The chapters that follow deal with various answers to that fundamental question. This chapter examines the core historical subject matter of IR: 5 6 STUDYING IR FIGURE 1.1 Five basic social values Freedom Security Order Basic social values Welfare Justice the evolution of the state system and the changing contemporary world of states. History is important because states and the state system had to come into existence, had to be a practical reality, before they could be studied theoretically. It is also important because it shows us that IR as a discipline largely generalizes from the European state system that eventually became the first global state system in history (Buzan and Lawson 2015; see Chapter 11). Why study IR? To begin to respond to that question, it may be helpful to examine our everyday life as citizens of particular states to see what we generally expect from a state. There are at least five basic social values that states are usually expected to uphold: security, freedom, order, justice, and welfare (see Figure 1.1). These are social values that are so fundamental to human well-being that they must be protected or ensured in some way. That could be by social organizations other than the state, e.g., by families, clans, ethnic or religious organizations, villages, or cities. In the modern era, however, the state has usually been the leading institution in that regard: it is expected to ensure these basic values. For example, people generally assume the state should underwrite the value of security, which involves the protection of individual citizens and the people as a whole from internal and external threats. That is a fundamental concern or interest of states. However, the very existence of independent states affects the value of security; we live in a world of many states, almost all of which are armed at least to some degree and some of which are major military powers. Thus, states can both defend and threaten people’s security. That paradox of the state system is usually referred to as the ‘security dilemma’. In other words, just like any other human organization, states present problems as well as provide solutions. Most states are likely to be cooperative, non-threatening, and peace-loving most of the time. But some states may be hostile and aggressive at times and there is no world government to constrain them. That poses a basic and age-old problem of state systems: national security. To respond to that problem, most states possess armed forces. Military power is usually considered a necessity so that states can coexist and deal with each other without being intimidated or subjugated. Today there exist a number of countries without armed forces (including microstates such as Andorra, island states such as Samoa, and Central American states such as Costa Rica and Panama), so military power is not a defining attribute of a state. But unarmed states are extremely rare in the history of the state system. That is a basic fact of the state system of which we should never WHY STUDY IR? lose sight. Many states also enter into alliances or defence organizations with other states to increase their national security. NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) is by far the most important example of a military alliance in recent history. To ensure that no great power succeeds in achieving a hegemonic position of overall domination, based on intimidation, coercion, or the outright use of force, history indicates it may be necessary to construct and maintain a balance of power. This approach to the study of world politics is typical of realist theories of IR (Morgenthau 1960). It operates on the assumption that relations of states can best be characterized as a world in which armed states are competing rivals and periodically go to war with each other. The second basic value that states are usually expected to uphold is freedom, both personal freedom and national freedom or independence. A fundamental reason for having states and putting up with the burdens that governments place on citizens, such as taxes or obligations of military service, is the condition of national freedom or independence that states exist to foster. We cannot be free unless our country is free too: that was made very clear to millions of Czech, Polish, Danish, Norwegian, Belgian, Dutch, and French citizens, as well as citizens of other countries which were invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Even if our country is free, we may still not be free personally, but at least then the problem of our freedom is in our own hands. War threatens and sometimes destroys freedom. Peace fosters freedom. Peace also makes progressive international change possible, that is, the creation of a better world. War might also pave the way for progress but it normally does so by destroying established institutions, not by peaceful reforms. Peace and progressive change are obviously among the most fundamental values of international relations. That approach to the study of world politics is typical of liberal theories of IR (see Chapter 4). It operates on the assumption that international relations can best be characterized as a world in which states cooperate with each other to maintain peace and freedom and to pursue progressive change. The third and fourth basic values that states are usually expected to uphold are order and justice. States have a common interest in establishing and maintaining international order so that they can coexist and interact on a basis of stability, certainty, and predictability. To that end, states are expected to uphold international law: to keep their treaty commitments and to observe the rules, conventions, and customs of the international legal order. This is the principle of pacta sunt servanda (‘agreements must be kept’), which lies at the very core of international law. They are also expected to follow accepted practices of diplomacy and to support international organizations. International law, diplomatic relations, and international organizations can only exist and operate successfully if these expectations are generally met by most states most of the time. States are also expected to uphold human rights. Today, there is an elaborate international legal framework of human rights—civil, political, social, and economic— which has been developed since the end of the Second World War. Order and just ice are obviously among the most fundamental values of international relations. That approach to the study of world politics is typical of the International Society theories of IR (Bull 1995). It operates on the assumption that international relations can best be 7 8 STUDYING IR characterized as a world in which states are socially responsible actors and have a common interest in preserving international order and promoting international justice. The final basic value that states are usually expected to uphold is the population’s socioeconomic wealth and welfare. People expect their government to adopt appropriate policies to encourage high employment, low inflation, steady investment, the uninterrupted flow of trade and commerce, and so forth. Because national economies are rarely isolated from each other, most people also expect that the state will respond to the international economic system in such a way as to enhance or at least defend and maintain the national standard of living. Most states nowadays try to frame and implement economic policies that can maintain the stability of the international economy upon which they are all increasingly dependent. This usually involves economic policies that can deal adequately with international markets, with the economic policies of other states, with foreign investment, with foreign exchange rates, with keeping banks solvent, with international trade, with international transportation and communications, and with other international economic relations and conditions that affect national wealth and welfare. Economic interdependence, meaning a high degree of mutual economic dependence among countries, is a striking feature of the contemporary state system. Some people consider this to be a good thing because it may increase overall freedom and wealth by expanding economic globalization, thereby increasing participation, specialization, efficiency, and productivity. Other people consider it to be a bad thing because it may promote overall inequality by allowing rich and powerful countries, or countries with financial or technological advantages, to dominate poor and weak countries which lack those advantages. Still others consider national protectionism as preferable to economic interdependence as the best way to respond to financial and economic crises which periodically disrupt the world economy. But either way, wealth and welfare obviously are among the most fundamental values of international relations. That approach to the study of world politics is typical of IPE (International Political Economy) theories of IR (Gilpin 2001). It operates on the assumption that international relations can best be characterized as a fundamentally socioeconomic world and not merely a political and military world. Most people usually take these basic values (security, freedom, order and justice, and welfare) for granted. They only become aware of them when something goes wrong—for example, during a war, a depression or a pandemic, when things begin to get beyond the control of individual states. On those acute learning occasions, people wake up to the larger circumstances of their lives which in normal times are a silent or invisible background. They become conscious of what they take for granted, and of how important these values really are in their everyday lives. We become aware of national security when a foreign power becomes belligerent, or when international terrorists engage in hostile actions against our country or one of our allies. We become aware of national independence and our freedom as citizens when peace is no longer guaranteed. We become aware of international order and justice when some states, especially major powers, threaten or attack others with armed force, or when they abuse, exploit, denounce, or disregard international law, or trample on human rights. We become WHY STUDY IR? aware of national welfare and our own personal socioeconomic well-being when foreign countries or international investors use their economic clout to jeopardize our standard of living or when economic crisis spreads within the international system. There were significant moments of heightened awareness of these major values during the twentieth century. The First World War made it dreadfully clear to most people just how devastatingly destructive of lives and living conditions modern mechanized warfare between major powers can be, and just how important it is to reduce the risk of war between great powers. That led to the first major developments of IR thought which tried to find effective legal institutions—such as the Covenant of the League of Nations— to prevent great-power war. Those efforts were not as successful as was hoped. But IR remains important because it seeks to understand as fully as possible the different ways that international relations can enhance but also undermine the quality of life in different countries around the world. The Second World War not only underlined the reality of the dangers of great-power war; it also revealed how important it is to prevent any great power from getting out of control and how unwise it can be to pursue a policy of appeasement against a regime bent on expansion—which was adopted by Britain and France with regard to Nazi Germany just prior to the war, with disastrous consequences for everybody, including the German people. The Great Depression (1929–33) brought home to many people around the world how their economic livelihood could be adversely affected, in some cases destroyed, by collapsing market conditions, not only at home but also in foreign countries. The global inflation of the 1970s and early 1980s, caused by a sudden dramatic increase in oil prices by the OPEC cartel of oil-exporting countries, was a reminder of how the interconnectedness of the global economy can be a threat to national and personal welfare anywhere in the world. For example, the oil shock of the 1970s made it abundantly clear to countless American, European, and Japanese motorists—among others—that the economic policies of the Middle East and other major oil-producing countries could suddenly raise the price of gas or petrol at the pump and lower their standard of living. The global financial crisis of 2008–9 recalled the lessons of the Great Depression; both crises were addressed and overcome by massive state intervention in the economic system, particularly the financial and banking sectors. Most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 has made it painstakingly clear that we live in an interconnected world where diseases leapfrog borders and where the global economic consequences of health measures in the form of lockdowns and quarantines can be severe. Furthermore, a larger, global threat to humanity, looms in the background: climate change is now a major issue on a par with the traditional issues of security and global economics. An increasing number of observers argue that climate change and environmental degradation are the most important, and acute, threat facing the international community, and that they are likely to reshape international relations in important ways (see Chapter 11). For a long time, there has been a basic assumption that life inside properly organized and well-managed states is better than life outside states or without states at all. This was the fundamental insight of the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan. The late American political scientist Samuel P. Huntington (1968: 8) once expressed it 9 10 STUDYING IR in the following way: ‘Men may, of course, have order without liberty, but they cannot have liberty without order.’ History reminds us of that fact. For example, the Jewish people spent well over half a century—or more than 2,000 years depending on what we emphasize—trying to get a state of their own, Israel, in which they could be secure. They finally succeeded in 1948. The Palestinian people are seeking their own state for the same reasons: they want to be masters of their own fate. As long as states and the state system manage to maintain the core values listed above, that assumption holds. That has generally been the case for developed countries, especially the states of Western Europe, North America, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and a few others. That gives rise to more conventional IR theories which regard the state system as a valuable core institution of modern life. The traditional IR theories discussed in this book tend to adopt that positive view (see Table 1.1). But if states are not successful in that regard, the state system turns its ugly face: no longer upholding basic social conditions and values, but rather undermining them. More than a few states fail to ensure any of them. That is the case with regard to many states in the non-Western world, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. The conditions inside some of these countries are so bad, so adverse to human wellbeing, that people are driven to flee to neighbouring countries to find safety. They are forced to become refugees. The plight of such people, whose numbers now run into the millions, questions the credibility and perhaps even the legitimacy of the state system. It indicates that the international system fosters or at least tolerates human suffering, and that the system should be changed so that people everywhere can flourish, and not just those in the developed or advanced countries of the world. That gives rise to more TABLE 1.1 IR (theories and focus) THEORIES FOCUS • Realism • Security power politics, conflict, and war • Liberalism • Freedom cooperation, peace, and progress • International Society • Order and justice shared interests, rules, and institutions • IPE theories • Welfare wealth, poverty, and equality • Social constructivism • Ideational factors ideas, norms, and intersubjective awareness • Post-positivist approaches • The way the world is represented power, emancipation, identity, and speech acts WHY STUDY IR? TABLE 1.2 Views of the state TRADITIONAL VIEW RADICAL OR REVISIONIST VIEW States are valuable and necessary institutions: they provide security, freedom, order, justice, and welfare States and the state system are social choices that create more problems than they solve People benefit from the state system The majority of the world’s people suffer more than they benefit from the state system critical IR theories which regard the state and the state system as a less beneficial and more problematic institution. The post-positivist or radical IR theories discussed later in this book (see particularly Chapter 8) tend to adopt that critical stance (see Table 1.2). To sum up thus far: states and the system of states are territory-based social organizations which exist primarily to establish, maintain, and defend basic social conditions and values, particularly, security, freedom, order, justice, and welfare. These are the main reasons for having states. Many states, and certainly all developed countries, uphold these conditions and values at least to minimal standards and often at a much higher level. Indeed, those countries have been so successful in promoting those values over the past several centuries that standards of living have steadily increased and are now higher than ever. These countries set the international standard for the entire world. But many states fail to meet even minimal standards, and as a consequence their presence in the contemporary state system raises serious questions, not only about those states, but also about the state system of which they are an important part. The state system may be criticized, at a minimum, for tolerating adverse and harmful socioeconomic conditions in some countries. At a maximum, it has been condemned for producing those conditions. One claim is that colonialism and imperialism have led to problems of dominance and underdevelopment in postcolonial countries that continue to this day (see Chapter 8). That has provoked a debate in IR between traditional theorists who by and large view the existing state system in positive terms, and radical theorists who by and large view it in negative terms. 1.2 Brief Historical Sketch of the Modern State System States and the state system are such basic features of modern political life that it is easy to assume that they are permanent features: that they have always been and always will be present. That assumption is false. It is important to emphasize that the state system is a historical invention. It has been fashioned by certain people at a certain time: it is a social organization. Like all social organizations, the state system has advantages and disadvantages which change over time. There is nothing about the state system that is necessary to human existence. The following sketch of international history underlines that fact. 11 12 STUDYING IR People have not always lived in sovereign states. For most of human history, they have organized their political lives in different ways, the most common being those of bands, tribes, or chiefdoms on a smaller scale (Diamond 1997), and that of political empire on a larger scale, such as the Roman Empire or the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire (see Box 1.1). In the future, the world may not be organized into a state system either. People may eventually give up on sovereign statehood. People throughout history have abandoned many other ways of organizing their political lives, including chiefdoms, city-states, empires, and colonialism, to mention a few. It is not unreasonable to suppose that a form of global political organization which is better or more advanced than states and the state system will eventually be adopted. Some IR scholars discussed in later chapters believe that such an international transformation, connected with growing interdependence among states (i.e., globalization), is already well under way. But the state system has been a central institution of world politics for a very long time, and still remains so. Even though world politics is always in flux, states and the state system have managed to adapt to significant historical change. Nobody can be sure that that will continue to be the case in the future, yet fundamental changes are difficult to fathom in the short to medium run. This issue of present and future international change is discussed later in the chapter. There were no clearly recognizable sovereign states before the sixteenth century, when they first began to be instituted in Western Europe. But for the past three or four centuries, states and the system of states have structured the political lives of an everincreasing number of people around the world. They have become universally popular. Today, the system is global in extent. The state and state system are the main points of reference in people’s lives. The era of the sovereign state coincides with the modern age of expanding power, prosperity, knowledge, science, technology, literacy, urbanization, citizenship, freedom, equality, rights, and so on. This could be a coincidence, but that is not very likely when we remember how important states and the state system have been in shaping the five fundamental human values discussed earlier. In fact, the state system and modernity are completely coexistent historically; the system of adjoining BOX 1.1 Key Developments: The Roman Empire Rome began as a city state in central Italy . . . Over several centuries the city expanded its authority and adapted its methods of government to bring first Italy, then the western Mediterranean and finally almost the whole of the Hellenistic world into an empire larger than any which had existed in that area before . . . This unique and astonishing achievement, and the cultural transformation which it brought about, laid the foundations of European civilization . . . Rome helped to shape European and contemporary practice and opinion about the state, about international law and especially about empire and the nature of imperial authority. Watson (1992: 94) WHY STUDY IR? territorial states arose in Europe at the start of the modern era. And the state system has been a central if not defining feature of modernity ever since. Although the sovereign state emerged in Europe, it extended to North America in the late eighteenth century and to South America in the early nineteenth century. As modernity spread around the world, the state system spread with it. The reverse was also the case: the state system spread modernity because it was itself modern. Only slowly did it expand to cover the entire globe. Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, remained isolated from the expanding Western state system until the late nineteenth century, and it only became a regional state system after the middle of the twentieth century. Moreover, in the European overseas colonies the arrival of modernity did not mean the good life for all; it was also connected to hierarchy, dominance, and underdevelopment. According to critical scholarship, these structures have been reproduced after decolonization (see Chapter 8). Of course, there is evidence of political systems that resembled sovereign states long before the modern age. They obviously had relations of some sort with each other. The historical origin of international relations in that more general sense lies deep in history and can only be a matter of speculation. But, speaking conceptually, it was a time when people began to settle down on the land and form themselves into separate territory-based political communities. This process has been described as ‘caging’, that is, agriculture made people settle down, cooperate, and develop new complex forms of social organization, hence the metaphor of a ‘cage’ (Mann 1986: 39–42). This caging did not create the modern states we know today but more primitive forerunners which lacked sophisticated political and bureaucratic institutions. The first examples of that occurred in the Middle East and date back more than 5,000 years (see Table 1.3), and the first relatively clear historical manifestation of a state system can be found in the Middle East in the third and second centuries bce (Kaufman 1997). The relations between independent political groups make up the core problem of international relations. They are built on a fundamental distinction between our collective TABLE 1.3 City-states and empires 550 BCE–330 BCE Persian Empire 500 BCE–100 BCE Greek city-states system (Hellas) 330 BCE–31 BCE Hellenistic states: Antigonid, Seleucid, and Ptolemaic Empires 200 BCE–AD Roman Empire 500 306–1453 Orthodox Christianity: Eastern Empire, Constantinople 800–1806 Catholic Christendom: Western Empire 1299–1923 Ottoman (Turkish) Empire, Istanbul (Constantinople) Other historical empires Persia, India (Mogul), China 13 14 STUDYING IR selves and other collective selves in a finite territorial world of many such separate collective selves in contact with each other. Here we arrive at a preliminary definition of a state system: it stands for relations between separate human groupings which occupy distinctive territories, are not under any higher authority or power, and enjoy and exercise a measure of independence from each other. International relations are primarily relations between such independent groups. A good historical example is ancient China in the aptly named Warring States Period from 480 bce to 221 bce. Here we find scores of independent states, complete with many of the administrative institutions that came to characterize the modern state, fighting it out in a life and death environment strikingly similar to the later European experience (Parker 1996 [1988]: 2–4). We return to these earlier instances of multistate systems in Chapter 11. Here, we concentrate on the lineages of the European state system, which in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries became the first global state system. The first state system in Western history is that of ancient Greece (500–100 bce), then known as ‘Hellas’. Ancient Greece did not make up a system of nation-states as we know them today. Rather, it was a system of city-states, far smaller in population and territory than most modern states and governed directly by the citizens (Wight 1977; Watson 1992). Athens was the largest and most famous, but there were numerous other citystates, such as Sparta, Thebes, and Corinth. Greek intercity relations involved distinctive traditions and practices, but they lacked the institution of diplomacy, and there was nothing comparable to international law and international organization. The state system of Hellas was based on a shared language and a common religion—Greek culture— more than anything else. The ancient Greek state system was eventually destroyed by more powerful neighbouring empires, and in due course the Greeks became subjects of the Roman Empire, which occupied most of Europe and a large part of the Middle East and North Africa. Rome’s two main successors in Europe were also empires: in Western Europe, the Frankish empire of Charlemagne, which was succeeded by the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (the Western empire for short); in Eastern Europe and the near east, the Byzantine (Eastern) Empire centred on Constantinople or what is today Istanbul (Byzantium). The Byzantine Empire claimed to be the continuation of the Christianized Roman Empire. There were other political systems and empires further afield. North Africa and the Middle East formed a world of Islamic civilization which originated in the Arabian peninsula in the early years of the seventh century. There were empires in what are today China, Iran, and India. Across the land mass of Eurasia, the Middle Ages (500–1500) were thus an era of empire and the relations and conflicts of different empires. But contact between empires was intermittent at best; communications were slow and transportation was difficult. Consequently, most empires at that time were a world unto themselves. Can we speak of ‘international relations’ in Western Europe during the medieval era? Not in the modern sense. States existed, often in the form of kingdoms, but they were not independent or sovereign in the modern meaning of these words. There were no clearly defined territories with delineated borders. The medieval world was not a geographical patchwork of sharply differentiated colours representing different independent WHY STUDY IR? FIGURE 1.2 The Christian commonwealth of medieval Europe in the early eleventh century RELIGIOUS HIERARCHY POLITICAL HIERARCHY Pope Emperor Archbishops, bishops, and other leading clergy Kings and other semi-independent national rulers Priests and other common clergy Barons and other semi-independent local rulers Ordinary Christians Common people of numerous local communities countries (see Figure 1.2). On the contrary, it was a complicated and confusing intermingling of overlapping territories of varying shades and hues. Power and authority were organized on both a religious and political basis: in Latin Christendom, the Pope headed a parallel but connected hierarchy centred on the Roman Church. Kings were not fully independent. And much of the time, local rulers were more or less free from the rule of kings: they were semi-autonomous but they were not fully independent either. The territorial political independence we know today was only beginning to appear in medieval Europe (see Figure 1.3). There was therefore no clear distinction between civil war and international war. Medieval wars were more likely to be fought over issues of rights and wrongs: wars to FIGURE 1.3 Medieval and modern authority Dispersed medieval authority (no sovereignty) Pope Centralized modern authority (sovereignty) Emperor Government Archbishop King Bishop Baron Priest Knight People People 15 16 STUDYING IR defend the faith, wars sparked by perceived transgressions of traditional liberties of elite groups, wars to resolve conflicts over dynastic inheritance, wars to punish outlaws, wars to collect debts, and so on (Howard 1976: Ch. 1). Wars were less likely to be fought over the exclusive control of territory or over state or national interests (Sharma 2017). In medieval Europe, there was no exclusively controlled territory, only a chequerboard of divided authority, and no clear conception of the nation or the national interest. The values connected with sovereign statehood were arranged differently in medieval times. The key to that difference is the fact that no one political organization, such as the sovereign state, catered for all these values. That high degree of political and legal integration of territorial societies had yet to occur. What did the political change from medieval to modern basically involve? The short answer is: it eventually consolidated the provision of these values within the single framework of one unified and independent social organization: the sovereign state. Though the transition to the modern state system occurred late in the day, the beginnings of this process must be traced deep into the Middle Ages. Paradoxically, the eleventh-century divide between secular and religious rulers helped pave the way. This split began in earnest in 1075 when Pope Gregory VII challenged the right of monarchs and princes to appoint clergy, most importantly, bishops (see Box 1.2). The result was the emancipation of the Church from the Western empire during what has been termed the ‘Papal Revolution of 1075–1122’ (Berman 1983: 19). The conflict between the church and the emperor bolstered the state system by ensuring that the later nation-states would be competitors. To weaken the emperor, the Church recognized the maxim that kings were ‘emperors’ in their own realms (Rex in regno suo imperator). This was the first important step in the direction of ‘the modern doctrine of the equality of states in international law’ (Oakley 2012: 3) and hence towards the emergence of sovereign states (Spruyt 2017). Medieval popes did their utmost to avoid a scenario where any secular ruler in Western Europe gained pre-eminence over the others (Møller 2020). But the secular rulers struck back. In the early modern era, European rulers liberated themselves from the overarching religious–political authority of Christendom. They BOX 1.2 Key Developments: Henry IV’s ‘walk to Canossa’ In December 1075, Gregory made known the contents of his Papal Manifesto, as it might be called today, in a letter to Emperor Henry IV in which he demanded the subordination of the emperor and of the imperial bishops to Rome. Henry replied, as did twenty-six of his bishops, in letters of January 24, 1076. Henry’s letter begins: ‘Henry, king not through usurpation but through the holy ordination of God, to Hildebrand, at present not pope but false monk . . .’ In response, Gregory excommunicated and deposed Henry, who in January 1077 journeyed as a humble penitent to the pope in Canossa where, tradition has it, he waited three days to present himself barefoot in the snow and to confess his sins and declare his contrition. Berman (1983: 96–7) WHY STUDY IR? also freed themselves from their dependence on the military power of barons and other local feudal leaders. The kings subordinated the barons and defied the pope, as they had earlier defied the emperor. They became defenders of their own sovereignty against internal disorder and external threat. Their sovereignty later evolved into state sovereignty. Peasants began their long journey to escape from their dependence on local feudal rulers to become the direct subjects of the king: they eventually became ‘the people’ upon whom sovereignty came to rest: popular sovereignty. In short, power and authority were concentrated at one point: the king and his government. The king now ruled a territory with borders which were defended against outside interference. The king became the supreme authority over all the people in the country, and no longer had to operate via intermediate authorities and rulers. That fundamental political transformation marks the advent of the modern era (see Box 1.3). One of the major effects of the rise of the modern state was its monopoly of the means of warfare within its area of control (see Box 1.4). The king first created order at home and became the sole centre of power within the country. Knights and barons who had formerly controlled their own armies now took orders from the king. Many kings then looked outward with an ambition to expand their territories or out of fear that a neighbouring ruler would invade and conquer them. As a result, international rivalries developed which often resulted in wars and the enlargement of some countries at the expense of others. Spain, France, Austria, England, Denmark, Sweden, Holland, Prussia, Poland, Russia, and other states of the new European state system were frequently at war. War became a key institution for resolving conflicts between sovereign states and enforcing international law. BOX 1.3 Key Developments: The Advent of the Modern State [F]irst, politics came to be regarded as a discrete realm, independent of theology; secondly, the supreme authority in any polity came to be regarded as independent of any international agency such as the papacy or Holy Roman Empire; and thirdly, that authority also claimed a monopoly of legislation and allegiance within its borders. Blanning (2007: 287) BOX 1.4 Key Developments: The Thirty Years War (1618–48) Starting initially in Bohemia as an uprising of the Protestant aristocracy against Spanish authority, the war escalated rapidly, eventually incorporating all sorts of issues . . . Questions of religious toleration were at the root of the conflict . . . But by the 1630s, the war involved a jumble of conflicting states, with all sorts of cross-cutting dynastic, religious, and state interests involved . . . Europe was fighting its first continental war. Holsti (1991: 26–8) 17 18 STUDYING IR In the traditional view, the political change from medieval to modern thus basically involved the construction of independent territorial states with extensive administrative institutions across Europe. The state captured its territory and turned it into state property, and it captured the population of that territory and turned them into subjects and later citizens. One is again reminded of the metaphor of ‘caging’ populations. In the modern international system, territory is consolidated, unified, and centralized under a sovereign government. The population of the territory owe allegiance to that government and have a duty to obey its laws. All institutions are now subordinate to state authority and public law. The familiar territorial patchwork map is in place, in which each patch is under the exclusive jurisdiction of a particular state. All of the territory of Europe and eventually that of the entire planet, except Antarctica, became partitioned by independent governments. The historical end point of the medieval era and the starting point of the modern international system, speaking very generally, is usually identified with the Thirty Years War (1618–48, see Box 1.4) and the Peace of Westphalia which brought it to an end (see Box 1.5). From the middle of the seventeenth century, states were seen as the only legitimate political systems of Europe, based on their own separate territories, their own independent governments, and their own political subjects. The emergent state system had several prominent characteristics, which can be summarized. First, it consisted of adjoining states whose legitimacy and independence were mutually recognized. Second, that recognition of states did not extend outside of the European state system. Non-European political systems were not members of the state system. They were usually regarded as alien and politically inferior and most of them were eventually subordinated to European imperial rule. Third, the relations of European states were subject to international law and diplomatic practices. In other words, they were expected BOX 1.5 Key Concepts: The Peace of Westphalia (1648) The Westphalian settlement legitimized a commonwealth of sovereign states. It marked the triumph of the stato [the state], in control of its internal affairs and independent externally. This was the aspiration of princes [rulers] in general—and especially of the German princes, both Protestant and Catholic, in relation to the [Holy Roman or Habsburg] empire. The Westphalian treaties stated many of the rules and political principles of the new society of states . . . The settlement was held to provide a fundamental and comprehensive charter for all Europe. Watson (1992: 186) . . . the essentially secular basis of the new state system was strongly reaffirmed when the principle, Cujus regio, ejus religio (Such government in a state, such religion in a state) first enunciated at Augsburg in 1555, was enshrined in the Peace of Westphalia and extended to cover Calvinism in addition to Lutheranism. Wilkinson (2007: 15) WHY STUDY IR? to observe the rules of the international game. Fourth, there was a balance of power between member states which was intended to prevent any one state from getting out of control and making a successful bid for hegemony, which would in effect re-establish an empire over the continent. There were several major attempts by different powers to impose their political hegemony on the continent. The Habsburg Empire (Austria) made the attempt during the reigns of Charles V in the sixteenth century and again during the Thirty Years War (1618–48), and was blocked by different coalitions which included states such as the Netherlands, France, Sweden, and even (though more informally) the Ottoman Empire. France made the attempt under King Louis XIV (1661–1714) and was eventually blocked by an English–Dutch–Austrian alliance. Napoleon (1795–1815) made the attempt and was blocked by Britain, Russia, Prussia, and Austria. A post-Napoleonic balance of power among the great powers (the Concert of Europe) held for most of the period between 1815 and 1914. Germany made the attempt under Hitler (1939–45), and was blocked by the United States, the Soviet Union, and Britain. For the past 350 years—or for 1,000 years if we include the opposition against the hegemony of Western emperors in the Middle Ages—the European state system has managed to resist the main political tendency of world history, which is the attempt by strong powers to bend weaker powers to their political will and thereby establish an empire (see Chapter 11). As the Cold War came to an end, it was debated whether the sole remaining superpower, the United States, had become a global hegemon in this meaning of the term. The rise of China and the reassertion of Russian military power cast serious doubt on that assertion. Instead, it suggests that the international system is again establishing a bipolar or multipolar world of great powers. This traditional or classical view has been questioned. In Carvalho et al.’s (2011) revisionist interpretation, the story of Westphalia is a historical myth invented by IR scholars who wanted to create a foundational basis in history for their realist or International Society theories (see also Osiander 2001). The revisionists argue that there is no solid basis in the historical evidence for the traditional claim that the modern, post-medieval system or society of states emerged out of the Peace of Westphalia and successive episodes, such as the Congress of Vienna (1815) or the Peace of Paris (1919). They argue that historical scholarship has ‘demolished these myths’, but they note that traditional or classical IR scholarship nevertheless persists in reiterating them. The revisionists argue that realist or international society scholars do not wish to lose their predominant position in the discipline and so they perpetuate the Westphalian myth in their textbooks used in teaching future IR scholars. These conflicting interpretations are not merely different points of view or selections of evidence. Rather, they are based on different methodological or even philosophical assumptions and approaches. The traditionalists are historicists and empiricists, in the sense that they see existential evidence of the birth of modern statehood in the Westphalian episode. For them, it is the historical occasion when the sovereign state and the anarchic state system came into existence as the dominant political feature of the European world: state sovereignty, state-controlled military power, diplomatic interaction and negotiation, peace settlement, treaties, etc. The revisionists, on the other hand, are constructivists and 19 20 STUDYING IR critical theorists. They view Westphalia as a conception or construction of IR scholars that promotes their theoretical biases. For them, the historical reality, the actual Westphalia, was an ambiguous world of contradictory and confusing ideas and beliefs, and was far from a sharp and defining historical break with the past. Methodological issues such as these are examined in Part 2. Suffice it here to say that our historical overview shows that the development of the European state system proceeded in a more gradual way than implied by the story centred on 1648. We can speak of a nascent state system deep into the high Middle Ages (1000–1300) and if we were to identify its roots, the eleventh-century split between religious and secular rulers deserves to be highlighted. 1.3 Globalization and the State System While creating a state system in Europe, the Europeans also constructed vast overseas empires and a world economy by which they controlled most political communities in the rest of the world. The Western states that could not dominate each other succeeded in dominating much of the rest of the world both politically and economically (see Box 1.6). That outward control of the non-European world by Europeans began at the start of the early modern era in the sixteenth century. It accelerated in the nineteenth century and lasted until the middle of the twentieth century, when the non-Western peoples finally broke free of Western colonialism and acquired political independence. The fact that no single Western state was able to completely dominate the European state system but that the Western states were capable of imposing European sovereignty and control on almost everybody elsewhere has been crucially important in shaping the modern international system. The global ascendancy and supremacy of the West are vital for understanding IR even today (Buzan and Lawson 2015). Whether that may now be changing with the rise of China, the resurgence of Russia, and—to a lesser extent— the emergence of India and Brazil is a question that can be asked and is being asked both inside and outside the West. BOX 1.6 Key Quotes: President McKinley on American imperialism in the Philippines (1899) When I realized that the Philippines [a Spanish colony] had dropped into our laps [as a result of America’s military defeat of Spain] . . . I did not know what to do . . . one night late it came to me this way . . . (1) that we could not give them back to Spain— that would be cowardly and dishonourable; (2) that we could not turn them over to France or Germany—our commercial rivals in the Orient—that would be bad business and discreditable; (3) that we could not leave them to themselves—they were unfit for self-government—and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain’s was; and (4) that there was nothing left for us to do but take them . . . [and] put the Philippines on the map of the United States. Bridges et al. (1969: 184) WHY STUDY IR? The first stage of the globalization of the state system was the transplantation of Western states to the Americas; the second stage occurred via the incorporation of non-Western states that could not be colonized (see Box 1.7). Not every non-Western country fell under the political control of a Western imperial state; but countries that escaped colonization were still obliged to accept the rules of the Western state system. This occurred in the nineteenth century when the Western countries developed the ability to project power globally. This meant that previously isolated regional state systems such as the European and the East Asian ones coalesced into a global state system (Buzan and Lawson 2015: 2). The Ottoman Empire (Turkey) is one example: it was forced to accept the Western rules by the Treaty of Paris in 1854. Japan is another example: it acquiesced to them later in the nineteenth century. Japan rapidly acquired the organizational substance and constitutional shape of a modern state. By the early twentieth century, it had become a great power—as demonstrated by its military defeat of an existing great power, Russia, on the battlefield: the Russo–Japanese war of 1904–5. China was obliged to accept the rules of the Western state system during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. China was not acknowledged and fully recognized as a great power until 1945. Some recent scholarship has argued forcefully that international relations in its present form were created during the ‘long nineteenth century’ (1789–1914) and that we today live ‘in a world defined predominantly by the downstream consequences of the nineteenth-century global transformation’ (Buzan and Lawson 2015: 5). The third stage of the globalization of the state system was brought about via anti-colonialism by the colonial subjects of Western empires. In that struggle, indigenous political leaders made claims for decolonization and independence based on European and American ideas of self-determination. That ‘revolt against the West’, as Hedley Bull put it, was the main vehicle by which the state system expanded dramatically after the Second World War (Bull and Watson 1984). In the short period of some twenty years, beginning BOX 1.7 Key Quotes: President Ho Chi Minh’s 1945 declaration of independence of the Republic of Vietnam All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness . . . All the peoples on the earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, be happy and free . . . We members of the provisional Government, representing the whole population of Vietnam, have declared and renew here our declaration that we break off all relations with the French people and abolish all the special rights the French have unlawfully acquired in our Fatherland . . . We are convinced that the Allied nations which have acknowledged at Teheran and San Francisco the principles of self-determination and equality of status will not refuse to acknowledge the independence of Vietnam . . . For these reasons we . . . declare to the world that Vietnam has the right to be free and independent. Bridges et al. (1969: 311–12) 21 22 STUDYING IR BOX 1.8 Key Developments: Global expansion of the state system 1200s Latin Christendom (nascent European system) 1600s + Russia (European system) 1700s + North America (Western system) 1800s + South America, Ottoman Empire, Japan (globalizing system) 1900s + Asia, Africa, Caribbean, Pacific (global system) with the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947, most colonies in Asia and Africa became independent states and members of the United Nations (UN) (see Box 1.8). European decolonization in the developing (or postcolonial) world more than tripled the membership of the UN from about fifty states in 1945 to more than 160 states by 1970. About 70 per cent of the world’s population were citizens or subjects of independent states in 1945 and were thus represented in the state system; by 1995, that figure had increased to virtually 100 per cent. The spread of European political and economic control beyond Europe thus eventually proved to be an expansion of the state system which became completely global in the second half of the twentieth century. The final stage of the globalization of the state system was the dissolution of the Soviet Union, together with the simultaneous break-up of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia at the end of the Cold War (see Figure 1.4). UN membership reached almost 200 states by the end of the twentieth century. Today, the state system is a global institution that affects the lives of virtually everybody on Earth, whether they realize it or not. That means that IR is now more than ever a universal academic subject. It also means that world politics at the start of the twenty-first century must accommodate a range and variety of states that are far more diverse—in terms of their cultures, religions, languages, ideologies, forms of government, military capacity, te