Nuclear learning and U.S.–Soviet security regimes

1987 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 371-402 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph S. Nye
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
Arms Race ◽  
Liberal Theory ◽  
Control Problems ◽  
Realist Theory ◽  
Force Structure ◽  
Security Relationship ◽  
The U.S

The concepts of regimes and learning have been developed in the Liberal theory of international relations, but their application has been mostly in the area of international political economy. U.S.–Soviet relations are generally explained solely in terms of Realist theory. The dichotomy is unfortunate because both strands of theory have something to contribute. Although the injunctions of an overall regime do not govern the U.S.–Soviet security relationship, it is possible to identify the injunctions and constraining effects of regimes in subissues of the security relationship. In five areas of the nuclear relationship (destructive power, control problems, proliferation, arms race stability, and deterrent force structure), it is possible to identify different degrees of learning and to see how such learning affects and is affected by the development of regimes. Looking at the U.S.–Soviet security relationship in terms of learning and regimes raises new questions and opens a research agenda which helps us to think more broadly about the processes of political change in this area.

scholarly journals Entering “neomahanean” world: Contemporary maritime rivalry of China and the United States

2020 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-60
Author(s):  
Vladimir Trapara
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Arms Race ◽  
New Era ◽  
Main Thesis ◽  
Sea Power ◽  
Power Concept ◽  
The U.S

The author uses Mahan?s sea power concept in order to determine its contemporary geopolitical significance compared to land power. The main thesis of the paper is that international relations - after a century long dominance of land power - are entering a new era of primary significance of sea power, due a rivalry of China and the United States, which is predestined to be mostly maritime. This is the consequence of contemporary globalization, which made biggest world economies dependent on uninterrupted sea commerce, as well as of the unique geopolitical position of China, which neither faces important land challenges, nor can pose them. Arms race and changes in maritime strategies show that the competition at sea between the U.S. and China has already started. Which direction and tempo it shall take depends on whether the U.S. abandons its hegemonic policy in favour of a defensive one, and adequately uses sea power in service of the latter.

The Janus Face of the Liberal International Information Order: When Global Institutions Are Self-Undermining

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Henry Farrell ◽  
Abraham L. Newman
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Global Information ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Feedback Effects ◽  
Global Institutions ◽  
Information Order ◽  
Information Governance ◽  
Political Conditions

Abstract Scholars and policymakers long believed that norms of global information openness and private-sector governance helped to sustain and promote liberalism. These norms are being increasingly contested within liberal democracies. In this article, we argue that a key source of debate over the Liberal International Information Order (LIIO), a sub-order of the Liberal International Order (LIO), is generated internally by “self-undermining feedback effects,” that is, mechanisms through which institutional arrangements undermine their own political conditions of survival over time. Empirically, we demonstrate how global governance of the Internet, transnational disinformation campaigns, and domestic information governance interact to sow the seeds of this contention. In particular, illiberal states converted norms of openness into a vector of attack, unsettling political bargains in liberal states concerning the LIIO. More generally, we set out a broader research agenda to show how the international relations discipline might better understand institutional change as well as the informational aspects of the current crisis in the LIO.

Exploring a 21st-Century Japan-Philippine Security Relationship: Linking Two Spokes Together?

Asian Survey ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 691-715 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renato Cruz De Castro
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
The Face ◽  
Security Relationship ◽  
The U.S

The article examines Tokyo's efforts to link the Philippine and the Japanese security spokes in the face of Beijing's moves to widen the cleavage between both countries' alliances with the U.S. and render them irrelevant. The article concludes that Manila and Tokyo must first reconfigure a defense relationship that is not merely a military aggregation but a political apparatus enabling them to constructively engage an emergent China.

scholarly journals Historical materialism and international studies: theorising the politics of struggle in the everyday world

2021 ◽  
pp. 004711782199161
Author(s):  
Cemal Burak Tansel
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
Historical Materialism ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
International Studies ◽  
Historical Materialist ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Everyday World ◽  
Global War ◽  
Materialist Feminist

This forum brings together critical engagements with Andreas Bieler and Adam David Morton’s Global Capitalism, Global War, Global Crisis to assess the prospects and limits of historical materialism in International Studies. The authors’ call for a ‘necessarily historical materialist moment’ in International Studies is interrogated by scholars working with historical materialist, feminist and decolonial frameworks in and beyond International Relations (IR)/International Political Economy (IPE). This introductory essay situates the book in relation to the wider concerns of historical materialist IR/IPE and outlines how the contributors assess the viability of Bieler and Morton’s historical materialist project.

Trade Expectations and Great Power Conflict—A Review Essay

2016 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 179-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack Snyder
Keyword(s):  
Review Essay ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Theoretical Development ◽  
Liberal Theory ◽  
Economic Interdependence ◽  
Realist Theory ◽  
Considerable Evidence ◽  
Self Sufficiency

Whether economic interdependence is a cause of war or peace constitutes a central debate in international politics. Two major approaches advance diametrically opposed claims: liberal theory holds that interdependence between states promotes peace by increasing the costs of war; realist theory argues that interdependence is just another word for vulnerability, a condition that states may try to escape by seizing the resources and markets they need for self-sufficiency. Considerable evidence supports both of these claims. In Economic Interdependence and War, Dale Copeland proposes to resolve this stalemate by showing that interdependence promotes peace when states expect mutually beneficial trade to continue, but creates incentives for war when at least one of the states expects that trade trends will leave it dangerously vulnerable. Notwithstanding this book's major theoretical contributions and its impressive historical research, it leaves open several important questions about how to move forward with its agenda of theoretical development and testing.

Dueling Realisms

1997 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 445-477 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen G. Brooks
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
State Behavior ◽  
Realist Theory ◽  
Common Features

International relations scholars have tended to focus on realism's common features rather than exploring potential differences. Realists do share certain assumptions and are often treated as a group, but such a broad grouping obscures systematic divisions within realist theory. Recently, some analysts have argued that it is necessary to differentiate within realism. This article builds on this line of argument. The potential, and need, to divide realism on the basis of divergent assumptions has so far been overlooked. In this article I argue that realism can be split into two competing branches by revealing latent divisions regarding a series of assumptions about state behavior. The first branch is Kenneth Waltz's well-known neorealist theory; a second branch, termed here “postclassical realism,” has yet to be delineated as a major alternative but corresponds with a number of realist analyses that cohere with one another and are incompatible with Waltzian neorealism.

From the Colonial to Feminist IR: Feminist IR Studies, the Wider FSS/GPE Research Agenda, and the Questions of Value, Valuation, Security, and Violence

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (04) ◽  
pp. 739-746 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna M. Agathangelou
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Global Political Economy ◽  
Personal Lives ◽  
Ir Studies ◽  
The World ◽  
Forms Of Violence

International relations (IR) feminists have significantly impacted the way we analyze the world and power. However, as Cynthia Enloe points out, “there are now signs—worrisome signs—that feminist analysts of international politics might be forgetting what they have shared” and are “making bricks to construct new intellectual barriers. That is not progress” (2015, 436). I agree. The project/process that has led to the separation/specialization of feminist security studies (FSS) and feminist global political economy (FGPE) does not constitute progress but instead ends up embodying forms of violence that erase the materialist bases of our intellectual labor's divisions (Agathangelou 1997), the historical and social constitution of our formations as intellectuals and subjects. This amnesiac approach evades our personal lives and colludes with those forces that allow for the violence that comes with abstraction. These “worrisome signs” should be explained if we are to move FSS and FGPE beyond a “merger” (Allison 2015) that speaks only to some issues and some humans in the global theater.

Alternative Futures for Forest-Based Nanomaterials

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 197-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
David N. Bengston ◽  
Jim Dator ◽  
Michael J. Dockry ◽  
Aubrey Yee
Keyword(s):  
Forest Management ◽  
Collaborative Research ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Forest Products ◽  
The United States ◽  
Solar Panels ◽  
Alternative Futures ◽  
Environmental Consequences ◽  
History Of ◽  
The U.S

Forestry and forest products research has entered into a robust research agenda focused on creating nano-sized particles and nanoproducts from wood. As wood-based materials can be sustainably produced, the potential of these renewable products could be limitless and include high-end compostable electronics, paint-on solar panels, and lightweight materials for airplanes and cars. Others warn about potential serious negative health and environmental consequences. Either way, wood-based nanomaterials could disrupt forestry as we know it. This article is a summary and analysis of a collaborative research project exploring the futures of wood-based nanomaterials within the context of the futures of forests and forest management within the United States. We start by describing the history of forestry through the lens of the U.S. Forest Service, then describe nanotechnology in general and wood-based nanocellulose specifically. Next, we outline the Manoa School alternative futures method, and how we used it to design and carry out a “complete futures of x” project. Following the Manoa School approach, we describe four alternative futures for forestry and forest management. We conclude with implications for the future of forestry, forests, and forest-based nanomaterials, as well as a discussion on the implementation of a complete “futures of x” project.

The Study of International Relations in Great Britain: Further Connections

1986 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 626-645 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gene M. Lyons
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
World War I ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Studies ◽  
Security Issues ◽  
Political Experience

Aside from language, students of international relations in the United States and Great Britain have several things in common: parallel developments in the emergence of international relations as a field of study after World War I, and more recent efforts to broaden the field by drawing security issues and changes in the international political economy under the broad umbrella of “international studies.” But a review of four recent books edited by British scholars demonstrates that there is also a “distance” between British and American scholarship. Compared with dominant trends in the United States, the former, though hardly monolithic and producing a rich and varied literature, is still very much attached to historical analysis and the concept of an “international society” that derives from the period in modern history in which Britain played a more prominent role in international politics. Because trends in scholarship do, in fact, reflect national political experience, the need continues for transnational cooperation among scholars in the quest for strong theories in international relations.

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