Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew R. Hom ◽  
Cian O’Driscoll ◽  
Kurt Mills
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Just War ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Traditional Notion ◽  
Use Of Time ◽  
Moral Context ◽  
Just War Tradition ◽  
Temporal Dimensions ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Do So

Despite the numerous issues with victory identified in this book, a traditional notion of victory still holds sway today. Therefore, this conclusion extracts shared themes, emerging tensions, and further avenues of inquiry running through the book as a whole. To do so, it highlights the normative, political, and temporal dimensions of moral victory. Normative includes the importance of moral context for thinking about victory and efforts to reinterpret such thinking in more ethical terms. Political pertains to the relationship between dramatized notions of victory, (relaxed) limits on fighting, and an opposite interest in restraint. And temporal concerns whether victories actually mark clean and durable endings to war as well as the creative use of time to negotiate victory differently. These issues also connect the volume to International Relations and Security Studies literatures. We close by proposing how these reflections on victory might help reconstruct the just war tradition.

Interlinking the Domestic with the International: Carl Schmitt on Democracy and International Relations

2006 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTOPH BURCHARD
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Just War ◽  
State System ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
The Political ◽  
Just War Tradition

Carl Schmitt's Der Nomos der Erde allows us to rethink his interlinked proposals for the organization of the Weimar Republic, namely his theory of ‘democratic dictatorship’ and the ‘concept of the political’. Connecting the domestic homogeneity of an empowered people with the pluralism of the Westphalian state system, Schmitt seeks to humanize war; he objects to the renaissance of the ‘just war’ tradition, which is premised on a discriminating concept of war. Schmitt's objections are valid today, yet their Eurocentric foundations are also partially outdated. We are thus to argue with Schmitt against Schmitt to reflect on possibilities for the humanization of war.

scholarly journals Scarred souls, weary warriors, and military intervention: the emergence of the subject in the just war writings of Jean Bethke Elshtain

2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 859-880 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER LEE
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Just War ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
Military Force ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Just War Tradition ◽  
A Site

AbstractOver the past three decades Jean Bethke Elshtain has used her critique and application of just war as a means of engaging with multiple overlapping aspects of identity. Though Elshtain ostensibly writes about war and the justice, or lack of justice, therein, she also uses just war a site of analysis within which different strands of subjectivity are investigated and articulated as part of her broader political theory. This article explores the proposition that Elshtain's most important contribution to the just war tradition is not be found in her provision of codes or her analysis of ad bellum or in bello criteria, conformity to which adjudges war or military intervention to be just or otherwise. Rather, that she enriches just war debate because of the unique and sometimes provocative perspective she brings as political theorist and International Relations scholar who adopts, adapts, and deploys familiar but, for some, uncomfortable discursive artefacts from the history of the Christian West: suffused with her own Christian faith and theology. In so doing she continually reminds us that human lives, with all their attendant political, social, and religious complexities, should be the focus when military force is used, or even proposed, for political ends.

9. Postcolonialism

2018 ◽  
pp. 126-143
Author(s):  
Mark Laffey ◽  
Suthaharan Nadarajah
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Constitutive Relations ◽  
World History ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Standard Account ◽  
Subaltern Studies ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines postcolonialism, a recent and increasingly influential set of positions and perspectives within the wider discipline of International Relations, and its implications for Security Studies. It first considers the genealogies of postcolonialism, tracing its emergence in a set of transnational debates about the mutually constitutive relations between knowledge and imperialism. It then discusses the standard account of world history as organized around Westphalian sovereignty which informs Security Studies and shows how postcolonialism puts it in question. It also explores the relationship between culture and imperialism according to postcolonialism; Subaltern Studies and its significance to postcolonialism; the concepts of Orientalism and Occidentalism; and how contrapuntal analysis enables a postcolonial critique of Security Studies. The chapter concludes by asking what it might mean to decolonize Security Studies and whether there can be a postcolonial Security Studies.

13. Normative International Relations Theory

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toni Erskine
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Iraq War ◽  
Just War ◽  
Ethical Reasoning ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Just War Tradition

This chapter deals with normative international relations theory, a field of study that relies on a variety of approaches and theories to explore moral expectations, decisions, and dilemmas in world politics. Normative IR theory has adopted — and adapted — conceptual categories such as communitarianism and cosmopolitanism from political theory. It also borrows from moral philosophy to designate different types of ethical reasoning, such as deontology and consequentialism. The chapter begins with an overview of the history, influences, and some of the categories that normative IR theory brings to the study of international relations. It then examines the ways in which normative IR theory engages with the hidden ethical assumptions of a range of IR approaches. It also considers the case of civilian deaths during the 2003 Iraq war in relation to the the just war tradition, and more specifically to the idea that soldiers have duties to exercise restraint in war.

Continuing the Conversation … Some Reflections

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (04) ◽  
pp. 747-751
Author(s):  
Juanita Elias
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Security ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
Feminist Perspective ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Security Governance ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Governance Institutions ◽  
The Relationship

The diverse collection of short reflections included in this Critical Perspectives section looks to continue a conversation—a conversation that played out in the pages of this journal (Elias 2015) regarding the relationship between two strands of feminist international relations scholarship: feminist security studies (FSS) and feminist international political economy (IPE). In this forum, the contributors return to some of the same ground, but in doing so, they bring in new concerns and agendas. New empirical sites of thinking through the nexus between security and political economy from a feminist perspective are explored: war, women's lives in postconflict societies, and international security governance institutions and practices.

9. Postcolonialism

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Laffey ◽  
Suthaharan Nadarajah
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Constitutive Relations ◽  
World History ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Standard Account ◽  
Subaltern Studies ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines postcolonialism, a recent and increasingly influential set of positions and perspectives within the wider discipline of International Relations, and its implications for Security Studies. It first considers the genealogies of postcolonialism, tracing its emergence in a set of transnational debates about the mutually constitutive relations between knowledge and imperialism. It then discusses the standard account of world history as organized around Westphalian sovereignty which informs Security Studies and shows how postcolonialism puts it in question. It also explores the relationship between culture and imperialism according to postcolonialism; Subaltern Studies and its significance to postcolonialism; the concepts of Orientalism and Occidentalism; and how contrapuntal analysis enables a postcolonial critique of Security Studies. The chapter concludes by asking what it might mean to decolonize Security Studies and whether there can be a postcolonial Security Studies.

The Security Problematic of the Third World

1991 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammed Ayoob
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Third World ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Systemic Factors ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Third World ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

This article reviews some recently published volumes on the subject of Third World security and, in the light of the analyses presented in these books, attempts to discuss a series of major issues in the field of Third World security studies. These include (1) the applicability of the concept of security as traditionally defined in the Western literature on international relations to Third World contexts; (2) the domestic variables affecting the security of Third World states; (3) the impact of international systemic factors on Third World security; (4) the effect of late-twentieth-century weapons technology on the security of Third World states; and (5) the relationship between the security and developmental concerns of Third World states. The author concludes that while international and technological factors have important effects on the security of Third World states, the major variables determining the degree of security enjoyed by such states at both the intrastate and interstate levels are related to the twin processes of state making and nation building that are at work simultaneously within Third World polities.

God and War: An Exploration

2013 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-46
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Eberle
Keyword(s):  
Just War ◽  
Holy War ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Religious Wars ◽  
Military Violence ◽  
Just War Tradition ◽  
Normative Relation ◽  
Morality Of War ◽  
Secular Terms ◽  
Do So

In this article, I intend to explore the normative relation(s) between “God” and “war.” A bit more precisely, I intend to explore the normative relevance of theistic conviction to the proper employment of military violence. Even more precisely, I intend to explore the relevance of theistic conviction to the proper employment of military violence as judged by the so-called Just War Tradition (JWT). Properly interpreted, I take the JWT to provide the best available account of the morality of war. The JWT is not perfect and is bedeviled by serious problems, but it is the best available nonetheless. So, when I reflect on the morality of war, and thus on the normative relation(s) between religion and war, I do so from the perspective of the JWT.Now this might seem to portend a very brief discussion. As we will see in detail, contemporary adherents typically construe the JWT in resolutely secular terms. Perhaps in order to compensate for its religious prehistory, most insist that the JWT has outgrown its religious provenance and may not be used to legitimate a crusade, ajihad, a holy war, or anything of the sort. In so doing, they align the JWT with the commonplace, endemic to contemporary liberal democracies, that religious wars and religious justifications for war lay far, far beyond the moral pale.

Anxiety, fear, and ontological security in world politics

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 238-239
Author(s):  
Catarina Kinnvall ◽  
Jennifer Mitzen
Keyword(s):  
World Politics ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Ontological Security ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Existential Anxiety ◽  
Anthony Giddens ◽  
Existentialist Philosophy ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Do So

AbstractThis symposium addresses the role of anxiety, fear, and ontological (in)security in world politics. Proceeding from the recognition of the scholarly interest and multitude of approaches that characterize the field of ontological (in)security studies, the Symposium homes in on the relationship between anxiety and fear, and between anxiety, subjectivity, and agency. The Introduction critically engages with Anthony Giddens' understandings of ontological (in)security, in an effort to spur the revisiting, questioning, and, in some cases, leaving behind Giddens' assumptions in order to develop a more dynamic conception. In response, the first three contributions draw on resources in existentialist philosophy, especially Heidegger, Tillich, and Kierkegaard, to further unpack the relationship between anxiety and ontological (in)security. They do so by returning to the experiential moment of confronting existential anxiety, a moment that Giddens quickly closes down, to better grasp how existential anxiety resolves into an orientation to action. The final two essays, in comparison, bring anxiety ‘back in’ to locales where Giddens' theory occludes it: the unconscious and the international, thus arguing that emotional configurations other than fear are always possible.

Race and the Imagined Community

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Tahir Abbas
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Personal History ◽  
Imagined Community ◽  
Politics And Religion ◽  
Global North ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Opening Section

This opening section of the book explores a set of overarching themes relating to matters of ethnicity, politics and religion that impact on discussions relating to the nature of the relationship between the concepts of Islamophobia and radicalization. It provides personal history by way of an introduction to the author and includes a summary of the key perspectives from which the issues at hand are considered in the book, which includes history, politics, sociology, culture, security studies and international relations. The overall argument made here suggests that Islamophobia is an identifiable form of racism and hostility to an actual and perceived ‘other’. This Islamophobia has the effect of radicalizing young Muslims in the Global North, which leads to further instances of Islamophobia, creating a perpetual cycle.

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