Mr. Toynbee and World Politics: War and National Security

1956 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 374-391 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth W. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
National Security ◽  
International Society ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
World Politics ◽  
The Other ◽  
Modern War

IHE problem of war and national security, at one time conceived of as the province of almost anyone but the peace-minded international relationist, has come increasingly to occupy scholars and researchers. Arnold J. Toynbee, whose major concern is the philosophy of history, preserves a lively interest in international politics and particularly in the problem of war, the principles of foreign policy, and the quest for an applicable body of theory concerning international society. With the publication of the last four volumes of his famed A Study of History, it may be appropriate to call attention to the other side of his work, especially as he brings to the discussion a clarity, simplicity, and concreteness refreshing by contrast with the pompous tautologies of much of modern scholarship. This article reviews Mr. Toynbee's contribution to knowledge on the first of the problems mentioned, namely, war and national security. It seeks to present his conception of the crisis in modern war, social factors underlying the transformation of warfare, and prevailing theories on the nature and inevitability of war.

Of Friends and Foes

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Crescenzi
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Conflict ◽  
World Politics ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cycle Of Violence ◽  
Conflict And Cooperation ◽  
Security Challenges ◽  
War And Conflict ◽  
Global Arena ◽  
Over Time

Reputations abound in world politics, but we know little about how reputations form and evolve: namely, how do countries form reputations? Do these reputations affect interstate politics in the global arena? In this book, Crescenzi develops a theory of reputation dynamics to help identify when reputations form in ways that affect world politics, both in the realms of international conflict and cooperation. A reputation for honoring one’s obligations in a treaty, for example, canmake a state a more attractive ally; on the other hand, a reputation for war and conflict can triggermore of the same, leading to a cycle of violence that exacerbates security challenges. These processes of cooperation and conflict are linked by a common use of the information held in each state’s reputation. In each case, states use reputational information in an attempt to resolve the uncertainty they face when crafting foreign policy decisions. Crescenzi usesablendof historical andempirical analysis to show how reputations matter in world politics, demonstrating that over time and across the globe, reputations for conflict exacerbate crises, while reputations for cooperation and reliability make future cooperation more likely.

scholarly journals Images, emotions, and international politics: the death of Alan Kurdi

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Adler-Nissen ◽  
Katrine Emilie Andersen ◽  
Lene Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Emotional Responses ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
Open Door ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Syrian Refugee Crisis

AbstractHow are images, emotions, and international politics connected? This article develops a theoretical framework contributing to visuality and emotions research in International Relations. Correcting the understanding that images cause particular emotional responses, this article claims that emotionally laden responses to images should be seen as performed in foreign policy discourses. We theorise images as objects of interpretation and contestation, and emotions as socially constituted rather than as individual ‘inner states’. Emotional bundling – the coupling of different emotions in discourse – helps constitute political subjectivities that both politicise and depoliticise. Through emotional bundling political leaders express their experiences of feelings shared by all humans, and simultaneously articulate themselves in authoritative and gendered subject positions such as ‘the father’. We illustrate the value of our framework by analysing the photographs of Alan Kurdi, a three-year-old Syrian-Kurdish boy who drowned in September 2015. ‘Kurdi’ became an instant global icon of the Syrian refugee crisis. World leaders expressed their personal grief and determination to act, but within a year, policies adopted with direct reference to Kurdi's tragic death changed from an open-door approach to attempts to stop refugees from arriving. A discursive-performative approach opens up new avenues for research on visuality, emotionality, and world politics.

scholarly journals From Embargo to Blockade: An Evaluation of the United States Sanctions against Iran in the Context of the Use of Economic Impact Tools in Foreign Poli

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nuri Gökhan Toprak
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
National Security ◽  
Economic Impact ◽  
International Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Qualitative Assessment ◽  
Executive Orders ◽  
Bilateral Relations ◽  
The Us

The concept of influence can be defined as a tool of international actors, a form of power, the ability to overcome obstacles in order to achieve different purposes or the desired result in the process of power relations established between actors in international politics. According to the approach that aims to reach the concept of influence as the desired result, in the process of setting up influence states try to influence each other through different methods and tools in which can be used through states’ own capacities. In addition to political and military tools, economic impact tools related to the field of foreign trade and finance are frequently used today. Economic impact tools, such as external aid, which may be positive or rewarding, may also be negative or punitive in a range from the boycott to the blockade. The study aims to provide a qualitative assessment of the United States' (US) economic sanctions against Iran in the context of the use of economic impact tools in international politics. In order to achieve this aim, 12 executive orders issued by the US on the grounds that Iran poses a threat to its national security, foreign policy and economy will be examined. In the conclusion of the study, the assumption that the US sanctions against Iran almost for 40 years has become a multilateral structure such as commercial and financial blockade from a structure related to bilateral relations such as boycott and embargo will be tested.

Metaphorical incarnations of the “other” and Iranian International Relations discourses

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 748-771
Author(s):  
Heidarali Masoudi
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
World Politics ◽  
The Other ◽  
Metaphor Analysis ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Academic Texts ◽  
Nodal Points ◽  
The Us ◽  
Arab States

Iranian International Relations academics have impacted both the official and public discourses on foreign policy issues, and vice versa. More specifically, how the “other” is constructed in Iranian International Relations discourses has an important role in determining how Iran acts in world politics. Assuming that International Relations discourses in Iran are inextricably intertwined with the construction of the “other,” this article aims to investigate how Iranian International Relations scholars use metaphors as linguistic tools for the representation of the “other.” Specifically, this article analyzes the metaphorical construction of the “other” in Iranian International Relations academic texts. Applying metaphor analysis, instances of the “other” have been selected and analyzed. The hypothesis was that there are two different categories of metaphors representing the “other”: first, there are context-oriented metaphorical incarnations that attempt to construct Iran’s “relationship” with others in foreign arenas, considering internal and external opportunities and limitations; and, second, there are essentialist metaphorical incarnations of particular actors, such as the US, Israel and Arab states as the “other.” The analysis shows that body and religion can be regarded as nodal points around which context-oriented and essentialist International Relations metaphorical discourses, respectively, have been articulated. The context-oriented discourse is inspired by realist insights into home-grown Iranian International Relations while the essentialist discourse is influenced by official foreign policy rhetoric and Iranian historical culturalism.

Forum Introduction: Is the state a person? Why should we care?

2004 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Thaddeus Jackson
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Empirical Analysis ◽  
International Society ◽  
World Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Precise Role

In 1959, Arnold Wolfers published an essay entitled ‘The Actors In World Politics’ in which he suggested that the importance of the state as an actor, although undeniable, needed to be submitted to ‘empirical analysis’ and clearer theorisation if its precise role was to be ascertained. Unfortunately, almost no one seems to have heeded his advice, and the question about what we might call the person-hood of the state virtually vanished from the agenda of mainstream International Relations (IR) theory. Realists, neorealists, neoliberal institutionalists, theorists of international society, and even many Marxists were content to treat states as, in effect, big people, endowed with perceptions, desires, emotions, and the other attributes of person-hood. Significantly, they persisted in these practices even though they often admitted that – in Robert Gilpin's words – ‘strictly speaking . . . only individuals and individuals joined together into various types of coalitions can be said to have interests’ and therefore really be actors.

Qatar and the Arab Spring: down the foreign policy slope

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 226-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammed Nuruzzaman
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
National Security ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Arab Spring ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Military Interventions ◽  
High Profile ◽  
The Arab Spring ◽  
Proactive Role

Qatar, a backwater state in regional and international politics until 1995, has in recent years pursued a high-profile foreign policy in the areas of dispute mediations, maintaining balanced relations with allies and adversaries alike, adept use of soft power tools, and even military interventions in fellow Arab states, Libya in particular, to aid the Arab pro-democracy forces. This high-profile foreign policy has aimed at strengthening Qatar's national security in the Gulf neighbourhood and playing a more proactive role in the Arab world. This article examines Qatar's activist foreign policy role in the Arab Spring and probes whether such a role is sustainable in future in view of the constraints Qatar faces at home, in the Gulf neighbourhood and beyond. It concludes that Qatar, as a tiny state, has little choice other than to strike a balance between its oversized foreign policy role and the imperatives of regional and international realities.

New Realist Research on Alliances: Refining, Not Refuting, Waltz's Balancing Proposition

1997 ◽  
Vol 91 (4) ◽  
pp. 927-930 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randall L. Schweller
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Research Program ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Unit Level ◽  
Scientific Research Program

Realism is both a scientific research program and, more traditionally, a political philosophy. All realists share a pessimistic worldview that posits perpetual struggle among groups for security, prestige, and power and that denies the capacity of human reason to create a world of peace and harmony. Recent research by so-called neotraditional realists does not disconfirm Waltz's balancing proposition. Instead, these works have tended to add unit-level variables in order to transform Waltz's theory of international politics into one of foreign policy. The question is not whether states balance or bandwagon—history clearly shows that they do both—but rather under what conditions states choose one strategy or the other.

scholarly journals Constructing civilisations: Embedding and reproducing the ‘Muslim world’ in American foreign policy practices and institutions since 9/11

2014 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 575-600 ◽  
Author(s):  
GREGORIO BETTIZA
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Society ◽  
International Politics ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Policy Changes ◽  
Social Fact ◽  
The World

AbstractSince 11 September 2001, the ‘Muslim world’ has become a novel religio-culturally defined civilisational frame of reference around which American foreign policy has been partly reoriented and reorganised. In parallel, the ‘Muslim world’, is increasingly becoming, at this historical juncture, a civilisational social fact in international politics by being progressively embedded in, and enacted onto the world by, American foreign policy discourses, institutions, practices, and processes of self-other recognition. This article theoretically understands and explains the causes and consequences of these changes through an engagement with the emerging post-essentialist civilisational analysis turn in International Relations (IR). In particular, the article furthers a constructivist civilisational politics approach that is theoretically, empirically, and methodologically oriented towards recovering and explaining how actors are interpreting, constructing, and reproducing – in this case through particular American foreign policy changes – an international society where intra- and inter-civilisational relations ‘matter’.

Realism in the Study of World Politics

1998 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 971-991 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Jervis
Keyword(s):  
New World ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
World Politics ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Preferences ◽  
Alternative Approaches

The popularity of alternative approaches to international politics cannot be explained entirely by their scholarly virtues. Among the other factors at work are fashions and normative and political preferences. This in part explains the increasing role of rationalism and constructivism. Important as they are, these approaches are necessarily less complete than liberalism, Marxism, and realism. Indeed, they fit better with the latter than is often realized. Realism, then, continues to play a major role in IR scholarship. It can elucidate the conditions and strategies that are conducive to cooperation and can account for significant international change, including a greatly decreased tolerance for force among developed countries, which appears to be currently the case. But neither it nor other approaches have as yet proved to be reliable guides to this new world.

scholarly journals National Security Strategy Geopolitical Threats and Risks "Libya as an example"

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Ehab NAAS
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
National Security ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Security Strategy ◽  
The Core ◽  
National Security Strategy ◽  
Foreign Intervention ◽  
The World ◽  
National Reality

National security is one of the most important components of the state’s entity to preserve its role and position and ensure its progress. Therefore, it is noted that most countries of the world give priority to issues related to national security. On the other hand, it can be said that Libyan national security has not received sufficient attention at the practical and academic levels, and this may be due to more than reason; The political data were not aware of the importance of the matter intentionally or unintentionally, and with the succession of events and developments in Libya in recent years, the issue began to take serious dimensions affecting the Libyan national security in its broad sense at the core, which requires concerted official, informal and academic efforts to address and address this. Topic. Libya is going through conditions and events that are not appropriate for stability and national security cohesion. Indeed, Libya is now living in a vacuum and a national reality characterized by many indicators of disintegration, conflict and violence. This is evident in the criticism of citizens, but in phenomena and events that negatively affect the coherence of national security, and this situation will inevitably lead to Citizens' lack of confidence in their state, but rather to the dissolution and disintegration of the structure of society, and the transformation of this building into groups, tribes, or regions in conflict and even warring with weapons, and this conflict will increase the disintegration of national cohesion and create a national political vacuum that helps foreign intervention in the Libyan affairs under the pretext of helping to maintain security and stability. This intervention may conceal foreign interests and agendas, and lead the country to the unknown and all the possibilities and political and security scenes whose far-reaching goals Libyans are ignorant of. Therefore, everyone in Libya is walking on a road that they do not know its end, and this requires thinking, planning and action to preserve national security and increase the degree of cohesion of all its components, whether Be it tribes, groups, or political and ideological centers, all Libyans are in one boat sailing towards the shore of safety, and it may sink in a sea that does not know the end of its end, and in view of these considerations, we saw the need to address the problems and repel the greedy in the wealth of Libya, to preserve the Libyan national security and make recommendations to strengthen it And maintain it. With our knowledge of the broadening aspects of national security in its broadest sense, we can begin to root this issue by examining its foundations and the current challenges it faces. Keywords: National Security, Geopolitics, Strategy, Foreign Policy, Threats and Risks.

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