Book Review: Jane Mayer's "Dark Money"

In 2010, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in a highly controversial case raising the question of if corporations and their union counterparts had First Amendment rights equal to that of individuals under the Constitution. This case, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, had the potential to overturn Progressive era limitations on corporations' and unions' political contributions to candidates of their choice. When the 5-4 ruling in favor of Citizens United came down the news pipeline, it shocked the American political system. Why? Virtually unlimited spending was now allowed by wealthy groups on each side of the political spectrum as long as political contributions were given to groups not directly affiliated with candidates (i.e. political action committees or PACs). How did this come to be? Jane Mayer uncovers the story behind the Citizens United case and its embedded context within a hugely polarized political system in her 2016 book Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right.

{I'll begin with a disclaimer on my summary and analysis of Mayer's book by saying that while both Republicans and Democrats have hugely wealthy donors at their disposal ready to influence election outcomes, the Republicans have used their wealth more to their advantage.}

The story of Citizens United goes back at least a half century. Mayer traces the historical development of a sophisticated network of organizations and institutions largely financed by ultraconservative and ultra-rich donors like the infamous Koch brothers that injected previously fringe libertarian ideas concerning the need for government whose only function would be to provide for the protection of property rights into mainstream discourse at the scholarly and everyday levels. This complex network was largely a mix of charitable foundations and  501(c)4 and 501(c)6 organizations (social welfare groups and business leagues, respectively) that allowed donors both anonymity and tax deductions in their contributions (often from foundations) to these ostensibly nonpartisan groups that pervaded national discussions with previously fringe ideologies.

The peddling of a comprehensive strategy of ultimately stripping government of its power to tax and regulate business (i.e. environmental protection measures like the Clean Air Act to minimize industrial sources of pollution) was disguised as a freedom crusade, given credibility by cloaking these self-serving ideals in a mantle of patriotism. While money is definitely a huge force in politics these days since the watershed Citizens United case, Mayer shows that ideology is more formidable in its ability to affect citizens' thinking (read: voting) on critical issues like business regulation in the long-term. The synergy behind money and ideas thus serves as an amplifier for ideology, allowing it to reach larger audiences, critical in any campaign to change public thinking and thus put into place representatives more likely to contribute toward favorable short and long-term legislative outcomes. For industrial giants like Koch Industries, this includes legislation that limits government's ability to mitigate the effects of everything from dangerous speculative practices in the financial sector to fighting industrial greenhouse gas emissions contributing to climate change.

Outside of the scary implications Citizens United has for the democratic process in the United States, Mayer's book is doubly scary in her showing that the rich could (and at least with the Republicans, did) supplant traditional political party structures with their own monetary and other political infrastructure (and making it look like their ideology and preferred legislative outcomes are backed by the public). The fact that these ultra-rich (or 1%) could create their own de facto political parties to drown out the voices of traditional parties (which largely are supposed to represent the interests of the little guy) should give people, no matter their party or ideological affiliation, pause.

While it would be interesting to see a similar investigation into like networks on the left as well as the right, Mayer's book is illuminating and thought provoking overall, forcing readers to ask tough questions about the current state of our democracy. Can it still be called a democracy? Or has the U.S. begun to slide towards a plutocracy (i.e. government by the rich and for the rich)? Mayer leaves these questions up to the reader to decide, but ultimately makes a convincing argument for the fact that all is not lost if citizens fight back and can rekindle a flagging sense of civic duty and participation in governmental affairs.



Works Cited:

Mayer, Jane. (2016). Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. New York: Penguin Random House LLC.

Book Review: Graham Allison's "Destined for War"

While many books covering China these days are focused on the future of the international system, Graham Allison's Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap? goes a step further in a lucid and down-to-earth examination of the issue in its utilization of the conceptual framework of Thucydides's Trap. This concept highlights the increasingly conflictual dynamics between a rising power (the Greek city-state of Athens being the earliest example) and an established (but possibly declining) power (with Sparta being the earliest example). Allison concisely explains these high-stress Thucydidean dynamics in which even "ordinary flashpoints of foreign affairs...can trigger large-scale conflict" between the two powers during a time when the balance of power seems to be in flux and the established power fears what the ascendance of the rising power means for their interests (p. 29).

After an introduction of one of the cornerstone concepts in international relations, Allison provides a detailed study of the first case of Thucydides's Trap in the devastating war between Athens and Sparta. It is not until later chapters that Allison addresses the more contemporary case of a potential Thucydides's Trap in the maneuverings of China (a rising power) and the United States (an established power). Raising the stakes in a potential conflict between China and the United States are the size of the populations involved in both countries (and in countries around the world who are allies or foes to these powers), the size of their respective economies, the speed of China's economic rise, the scale of worldwide trade (especially the traffic in shipping lanes in the disputed South China Sea) and the fact that militarized conflicts these days involve cyber-warfare and nuclear weapons (as an incredibly destructive last resort).

Allison illustrates these higher stakes in a series of (frighteningly realistic) potential small spats that manage to escalate to hot war when the cost for both sides engaging in diplomacy or otherwise backing out increases concurrently with the need to de-escalate even as the time to de-escalate decreases as each side makes its move. Some of the more worryingly realistic examples Allison highlights relates to a collapse of the regime of Chinese ally North Korea, a Taiwanese move for independence from the mainland, and a trade spat (i.e. the labeling of China as currency-manipulators, economic sanctions, cyber-warfare, etc.) in the light of a bombastic Trump administration. While not naming the hypothetical presidential administration that an escalating trade war between China and the U.S., Allison probably is alluding to Trump's campaign rhetoric of promising to label China a currency manipulator and demanding a reduction in the trade deficit in his larger fight against the international economic establishment.

While these hypothetical scenarios of how China and the U.S. might enter into a potentially world-ending conflict seem frighteningly mundane at the outset, Allison reassures readers that there are ways to avoid the Thucydides's Trap that makes war more likely between two countries. Among some of the more salient proscriptions are accommodation and a renegotiation of the relationship between the two powers. While accommodation is a bitter, nasty word in today's politics (implying total submission to another's desires), this option proves much more realistic because it entails not submission to each other's national interests in totality, but the reaching of a compromise that preserves both powers' interests. Details within such a potential compromise include recognizing the other's respective spheres of influence (i.e. the Western hemisphere versus the contentious South China Sea region) and even arms reductions talks similar to those negotiated between the former Soviet Union and the U.S. Further cementing this relationship, in Allison's eyes, should be the four "mega-threats" of "nuclear Armageddon, nuclear anarchy, global terrorism...and climate change" (p. 228) that are the most likely to prove the most severe threat to each country's very existence (let alone interests).

While 4 out 16 cases of the Thucydides Trap in the last 500 years not ending in a war don't seem like terribly good odds (especially because of domestic pressures adding fuel to the fire), Allison's core message of the book is that war is not unavoidable. If both sides can negotiate pacts that give advantages to both parties while reducing the size of the other's nuclear arsenals (potential domestic political costs for both leaders be damned) and recognizing the greater threats to humanity out there, I believe that we have a chance. However, it does not look good when the publics and leaders of both sides are ratcheting up their rhetoric.


Works Cited:

Allison, Graham T. (2017). Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap? (1st ed.). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: New York.

Book Review: David Priess's "The President's Book of Secrets"

Ever been curious about how presidents get their daily dose of intelligence and how that might then influence their decisions in the international arena? David Priess, in his book The President's Book of Secrets: The Untold Story of Intelligence Briefings to America's Presidents takes a look at the evolution of what today is known as the President's Daily Briefings (PDB) in the backdrop of various presidential administrations, from Lyndon Johnson to Barack Obama.

While not revealing the details of classified intelligence in his analysis, Priess traces the development of a distilled collection of classified intelligence from various agencies (the CIA, FBI, Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), Director of National Intelligence (DNI), etc.) to the administration of Lyndon Johnson in 1964. This organization and distillation of intelligence targeted exclusively to the president and other close advisers came in order to try and overcome a complicated workflow between intelligence agencies and a backlog of lengthy intelligence reports that were not getting through to the policymakers that needed them. Back in 1964 (during the Cold War) the first attempt at conveying critical information to the president was known as the Daily Summary, a step taken in order to meet increasing demand for information concerning the Soviet Union's military and economic capabilities.

However, this Daily Summary was not very comprehensive and largely focused on the Soviet Union. Sporadic attention was given to other countries in the Eurasian region, let alone other countries outside of that region. Gradually, as the United States began to realize its position as a world power, with increasing social, political and economic clout, so too did the demand for more and diverse content come into play from administration to administration. This included a need for more regional and country-based intelligence as well as (in some cases) analysis included with the presented facts to provide a much needed context within what evolved into the PDB. Concurrent with more analysis, certain issues began to take increasing prominence within the PDB, especially intelligence relating to terrorism. Examples of the need for this can be seen in the increased attention the Middle East and Asia have been given in American foreign policy, as well as the 9/11 attacks. After 9/11, domestic sources of intelligence (mostly from the FBI) began to be included within the PDB's mix of extensive foreign sources to help bolster counter-terrorism efforts against groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS.

Moreover, as technology improved, the hardcover/bound PDB has been presented in more digital forms. For example, President Obama received his PDBs on a specially secured iPad. Priess goes on to speculate that the PDB will evolve fully from paper to digital forms once technological advances such as quantum computing are realized, with future presidents receiving their PDBs as futuristic holograms providing 3D graphics. But, as always, technology has its limits when it comes to the PDB. How a president chooses to receive their daily information about relevant domestic and foreign affairs will always be the predominant factor shaping the scope and method of PDB presentation, from more hands-on formats to more in-depth reports with less graphical aids.

While Priess was not allowed to reveal the specifics of the classified intelligence that shaped each administration's Lyndon Johnson to President Obama or provide a robust critique concerning intelligence gathering practices for the PDB, his book nevertheless provides an intriguing narrative about each president's (and their administration's) personalities and interactions with the PDB (and larger intelligence community). It makes one wonder about the current president's interaction with the PDB and its relationship with the resulting domestic and foreign policy decisions considering the noted animosity and indifference the Trump administration has shown the intelligence community. If this uneasiness persists between presidents and the intelligence community, it would portend a concerning dynamic of administrations making critical policy and other decisions without adequate information. And that's just at the domestic level, excluding the intelligence relationships the U.S. has with its allies.

Sources Cited:

Priess, D. (2017). The President's Book of Secrets: The Untold Story of Intelligence Briefings to America's Presidents from Kennedy to Obama. (1st ed.). New York: PublicAffairs.

On First Ladies and Their International Roles

Often, when one thinks of the First Lady of the United States (FLOTUS), the images that most commonly come to mind are those of her as hostess when a foreign leader or representative comes to the White House. Or hosting their counterparts in luncheons while their husbands may be in meetings discussing at length foreign affairs. If abroad, often we see her on the arm of her husband on trips abroad (as we have seen recently with Melania Trump). To some degree then, FLOTUS has become a very visible international figure. However, domestic rather than international affairs are often associated with FLOTUS, for various reasons I briefly introduce below.

Arguably, while modern first ladies have achieved considerable agency in their informal position as partner of the president, all first ladies have struggled within the constraints of gender stereotyping, traditional gender roles, and (to some extent) the Constitution itself (which is silent on the official role a presidential spouse may play). This produces a dynamic in which the First Lady can be notably restrained when trying to have formal policy influence while still seen as a feminist icon. Extrapolated to the domain of international affairs, this complicated dynamic becomes more readily visible. For example, how does one define international influence? Is it formal or informal, through advocation of policy or taking on social causes?

In the video below, I briefly explore the history of FLOTUS as an international figure and then go on to focus on three first ladies with varying degrees of influence on international affairs or foreign policy: Eleanor Roosevelt, Hillary Clinton, and Michelle Obama.

Book Review: Martin Jacque's "When China Rules the World"

Coming on the heels of the United States withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accords, many scholars and prominent figures in politics and journalism saw this as just another sign of the decline of the West (at the very least, another abdication of global leadership by the United States in favor of rising nation-states like China). Many drew this conclusion coming off of the news breaking not long after President Trump would withdraw the United States from the Accords, which his administration viewed as unduly limiting economic development, that China would assume de facto leadership of the global fight against climate change. This all is part of a larger discussion concerning the future of the international order and whether developing countries like China and India, the latter looking more economically dynamic coming off of the 2006-2008 financial crisis, will become the new great powers in the international system. Martin Jacques, in his 2012 book When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order, makes a similar case in which he sees China likely to overtake the West as the preeminent power of the international system within half a century.

Like Charles Kupchan in No One's World, Jacques sees the coming of a global order that, if not dominated by China will at least be heavily influenced by many new power centers of the East and the developing world, such as India, based upon various statistics illustrating the growth of these economies in comparison to those of the West. This rising economic power is the critical ingredient to a projected future power because nation-states like the United States have translated economic power into the development of both soft power (diplomatic) and hard power (military) mechanisms in order to better shape and maintain the international order that the super-power ultimately relies upon to maintain this power. Also not unlike Kupchan, Jacques broadly highlights broad historical trends and recent developments which portend the peaking and ultimate decline of Western hegemony, in which the process of globalization has bound the world closer together, having boosted the developing world but hurting established economic sectors in the West, such as manufacturing, through increased competition. This decline in economic power ultimately has allowed developing countries like China to push for membership in and reform of major international institutions like the World Trade Organization (WTO) as developed countries like the United States gradually give ground mainly due to economic stagnation that has reduced the resources available to maintain Western hegemony (such as resources that go towards maintaining overseas military bases). 

However, unlike other books focusing on the coming transition in the international system which have largely treated the China question superficially, Jacques situates these broad trends within a larger historical view of China itself, going in depth about early Chinese civilization and how it would affect how it might behave as a global power. To sum up a very lengthy argument towards this end, Jacques sees China behaving both like and unlike the great powers of the past, with China acquiring and maintaining its power mostly through economic dynamism (see above) like other powers. While China is likely to acquire its status through similar means (and already seems to be doing so presently), Jacques would argue that Chinese culture and history should not be discounted in trying to predict China's future behavior. Moreover, he sees Chinese ascendancy as returning a form of what Jacques terms the "tributary state system" in which other nations acknowledge the superiority of Chinese civilization and maintain a beneficial relationship with it (almost in a sense of being informal satellite states of China) in return for considerable autonomy (unlike the Western version of colonialism). Jacques sees this primarily within Asia in the formation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and their almost European Union-like economic and political integration, but allows that this neo-tributary state system could become a global phenomenon if China becomes the sole power of the international system, especially in Africa where considerable Chinese investment and settlement has taken place. 

Overall, I thought that Jacques presents a sound argument based upon solid evidence concerning the big message of the book that the West needs to learn from the rising powers in the East as much as the East has learned from the West if the international system is allowed to reconfigure itself peacefully (i.e. without a military conflict between China and the United States). This reconfiguration of the international system will be something to watch going forward as the developing world continues to modernize rapidly. Lastly, as this book is somewhat outdated (having been published in 2012), it would be interesting to see a more timely update on China (and India) in light of recent events (the Paris Accords, the increasingly tense South China Sea conflict, etc.) showing the developing world increasingly asserting itself on the global stage the West has largely dominated for the past two centuries. Notwithstanding the latter points and the lengthiness of the book, Jacques presents an intriguing narrative that I think is especially instructive for not only international relations scholars, but for anyone that is curious about China as the China question continues to be more and more salient.

Sources Cited:

Jacques, M. (2012). When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order. New York: Penguin Books.

On Security Theory: A Feminist Perspective

Many scholars of international studies today have come to depend upon three main assumptions about the nature of the international system: that it is anarchic, composed of territorially-defined states that constitute the more legitimate actors on the world stage, and that states have incentives to look after their own interests and security (Tickner, 2001). These fundamental aspects of the international system derive mainly from the realist school of international relations (IR) theory (Tickner, 2001). Realism’s dominance in explaining matters of state security and military conflict has its roots in the Cold War, where many of the key tenets of the theory were best able to explain the security competition between the United States and Russia (Ashworth, 2011; Tickner, 2001). In turn, the Cold War and the American-centered nature of much IR scholarship crowded out many other theoretical alternatives, such as feminist IR perspectives (Ashworth, 2011). However, with the rise of international institutions post-WWII and their growing numbers after the Cold War, competing perspectives arose that sought to explain the growing cooperation among states (especially in the realm of state security), including feminist perspectives (Ashworth, 2011; Blanchard, 2003; Sjoberg, 2011; Tickner, 2001). Thus, this week we will explore the ways in which feminist security perspectives have challenged realist perspectives in IR and seek to redefine the traditional definitions and understandings of state security. 


To achieve the latter, I will first briefly examine the history of feminist theory in IR and outline the various methodological differences between the positivist (empirical/scientific) approaches such as realism and “post-positivist” critical approaches like feminist security theory (FST) (Tickner, 2001, p. 35). Secondly, I survey the literature to give an overview of the debates within the FST field and with closely related critical theory (Tickner, 2001). Thirdly, in addition to providing context to the scholarly debates within the maturing field of FST studies, within this paper I also give an overview of the FST literature in application to the diverse state security threats that exist today. To conclude, I will reflect on the relevance and applicability of FST today in understanding increasingly complex matters of state security in the twenty-first century and potential solutions the FST literature ascribes to military and non-military sources of insecurity.

Despite realism achieving a status as a theoretical cornerstone of modern IR studies, feminist perspectives were part of the IR mainstream prior to the 1940s in what was known as the “first wave” of feminist theory development in the 1920s-1940s concurrent with the suffragette and peace movements (Ashworth, 2011, p. 25). These first-wave perspectives would prove to be the theoretical precursors and foundations for the feminist perspectives that arose starting in the 1980s by voicing the first critiques to the dominant realist balance of power ideas that serve to legitimize “physical force as a basis of society” and the resulting subordination of women as largely reproductive vessels that serve to regenerate the population after violent conflicts (Ashworth, 2011, p. 30, 38). The increasing interdependence of states in the international system more apparent after the Cold War that meant that “military-centered definitions of national security” were flawed in such a context as security threats today are often “not amenable to statist [unilateral] solutions” like humanitarian or environmental crises by way of defining and operationalizing security policy via realism (Nuruzzaman, 2006, p. 299; Tickner, 2001, p. 43). Thus, feminist perspectives have gained new prominence in mainstream IR as well as accompanying criticisms from realist theoreticians who challenge the validity, generalizability, and overall scientific nature of FST tenets (Tickner, 2001, p. 43).

One of the first charges aimed at feminist theory in general by those who espouse traditional “positivist” empirical approaches like realism is that feminist IR’s quest to redefine state security to include economic, social, and environmental aspects to its primarily military-political definition is that such changes will seriously harm the “intellectual coherence” of the IR field in general (Tickner, 2001, p. 43). Other elements of feminist theory generally adopted by FST that are seen to threaten the “intellectual coherence” of security studies is its diminishing of the state’s importance in security in favor of examining individuals and nonstate actors (especially women) and their responses to the world as “objects of security” embedded into “broader structures of violence and oppression” (Tickner, 2001, p. 43, 46-47). These larger socially-constructed frameworks evident in the international system today include gender in that the very concepts of “war and peace” are constructed to devalue the perceived utopianism and non-attainability of the feminine ideal of peace and to normalize more masculine “realistic” realities of militarized conflict in the international system (Charlesworth, 2008; Sjoberg & Via, 2010, p. 43, 236-238; Tickner, 1999, p. 4; Tickner, 2001, p. 37). Aside from concerns over the definition of security and also contributing to a marginalization of the discipline from the mainstream is its overwhelming preference for more sociological qualitative versus quantitative strategies for data-collection and analysis (Sa’ar et al., 2011, p. 53, 63).

Implicit in FST studies then are challenges to how “masculine knowledges” generated by positivist theories such as realism have served to construct and legitimate our masculine-centric present and historical understandings of the anarchic, state-centered nature of the international system today as well as questioning assumptions that link women with peace and men with war and the idea that wars are fought to protect “vulnerable” groups like women and children (Blanchard, 2003, p. 1290; Charlesworth, 2008; Tickner, 1999, p. 3; Tickner, 2001; Sjoberg & Via, 2010). Rather, FST carries on a critical theoretical tradition in critiquing realism as a “patriarchal discourse” that “relegates women to a space outside politics” in the international system and seeks to recover and reintegrate the perspectives of women and other marginalized groups into the broader IR security discourse (Blanchard, 2003, p. 1290, 1293; Tickner, 2001). Tying the critical nature of feminist IR discourse together is the overall utilization of multiple disciplines and a “bottom-up” focus of human agency within these global social structures that dictate how states and individuals relate more akin to sociology than political science (Tickner, 2001, p. 132). Feminist IR theorists generally reject the determinism of structural-based theories in favor of individual agency within the international system that challenges the “reality” of militarized conflict on the international stage and the subordination of women and other marginalized groups that results from this justification of conflict (Sjoberg & Via, 2010, p. 43, 236-238; Tickner, 1999; Tickner, 2001).

Because of the uncertain and transdisciplinary nature of feminist IR and FST, it is not surprising that the discipline has come into conflict with other post-positivist perspectives as well as traditional positivist perspectives in its attempts to elucidate and challenge socially-constructed global power relations that generate security for some at the expense of other groups (Blanchard, 2003; Tickner, 2001). This has been the case in the struggle over reconciling state security and human security between the FST and human security perspectives (Nuruzzaman, 2006). Even though human security and feminist IR perspectives share many tenets in dropping a state-centered focus on security and broadening the definition of security to include “non-military sources of insecurity,” human security discourses are found to have retained many of the basic theoretical tenets of realism, including its “scientific” methodology and implicit support of the “global and national status quo” in the advocation of incremental reforms to the current system to address increasingly prevalent non-military sources of insecurity (Marhia, 2013; Nuruzzaman, 2006, p. 299). Therefore, FST is less likely to see incremental reforms of the status quo system as a panacea for the continued global inequalities that consistently maintain various forms of continued insecurity and institutionalized power structures (Marhia, 2013; Nuruzzaman, 2006, p. 299; Sjoberg, 2011; Tickner, 2001).
To a lesser degree, there are similar debates within FST that challenge feminist perspectives that retain the state as a unit of analysis in their explorations of non-military sources of insecurity, which are seen by some feminists in postcolonial contexts in the Global South as seeking to sustain the global order of the “socially powerful” who are more likely to benefit from military policies and interventions by powerful countries in developing countries (Marhia, 2013; Nuruzzaman, 2006, p. 299; Sjoberg, 2001; Sjoberg, 2011; Sjoberg & Via, 2010; Tickner, 2001).

Moreover, these postcolonial feminists have critiqued the way in which military policies and resources are deployed disproportionately in the developing world on the part of developed countries because they are often based on the assumed “universal applicability” of Western cultural ideas, practices, and feminist perspectives concerned primarily with realizing human rights based on “individualist rights based discourses” (Pierce, 1998, p. 298). These approaches that involve the imposition of Western conceptions of human security and feminism in other countries are often ineffective because they fail to consider sociocultural variations in regards to the “tension between individual rights and collective obligations” in terms of how people construct their identities and concurrently perceive problems and needs (Pierce, 1998, p. 298). In the erasure of differences among cultures and peoples and their degree of access to resources within the international system, these policies unintentionally deny women and men their agency by failing to acknowledge and address their context-specific needs (Pierce, 1998, p. 298). Ann Tickner (2001) notes that because militarized conflicts have been “removed to the peripheries of the system” in the process of more powerful states pursuing universalistic notions of “systemic security” abroad that this has served to produce a deceiving stable (“domestic”) peace within the territorially defined borders of states in the Global North versus a disordered insecurity in the Global South (p. 41). Thus, the conduct of powerful states’ security policies serve to reinforce the socially-constructed “dualism between first and third world” that reveal the “connected inequalities…in the pathways of global exploitation” of the South by the North in many dimensions aside from national security (Pierce, 1999, p. 298). Essentially, this means that security for some is pursued at the expense of chronic insecurity for others, a chronic insecurity FST wishes to understand and remedy (Blanchard, 2003; Nuruzzaman, 2006; Tickner, 2001). Similarly, some FST perspectives problematically emphasize the special role of women as critical agents in promulgating peace in a masculinized world, such as in their participation in brokering ceasefires or in peace movements (Ticker, 2001). This tends to reinforce essentialist notions of women as peace-makers and men as war-makers (Tickner, 2001).

While perspectives with a primary focus on the state versus the individual or groups of people and women as agents of peace have produced significant fault lines within the FST epistemic community, all FST perspectives share an “emancipatory” project of investigating and correcting the inequalities generated by state security policies by “contesting the privilege attributed to ‘high politics’ and instead focusing on international relations in everyday lives” (Blanchard, 2003, p. 1298; Innes, 2014, p. 566). Moreover, as we will see later, attempts have been made within the FST community to bridge the methodological and other pedagogical gaps between feminist IR and traditional IR and to utilize the best of both qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection and analysis to provide grounding for a deeper analysis of the context-specific insecurities tied to one’s position in the international system (Sa’ar et al., 2011).

With the theoretical context established, we will now turn to the ways in which FST has approached state security in the 21st century, through a survey of literature on military conflicts, the international fight against terrorism, private military contractors (PMCs), country-specific contexts and asylum-seekers. However, before delving further into the current FST literature, a brief word is in order to establish the psychological dimensions of the international context introduced above. Undergirding these case studies is the concept of the militarization of society in which “military practices are extended into the civilian arena” and thus infiltrate the everyday political conduct of states by becoming embedded within the “specific institutions of social control that maintain patriarchal social and political orders” (Sjoberg & Via, 2010, p. 7, 43; True, 2015). This fusion and operationalization of patriarchal ideas in a state’s social, political, and economic apparatus is known as “hegemonic masculinity,” which in turn constitutes a “security state” in which citizens are subject to “ad hoc surveillance, search or detention” and which “repress criticism of such arbitrary power” by justifying these measures as necessary to fulfill the primary protective function of the state (Sjoberg & Via, 2010, p. 43; True, 2015; Young, 2003, p. 8). A central component of militarization and hegemonic masculinity is the protection of a weaker “feminized other” (often women and children, sometimes victimized men as well) in service to one’s nation-state, even though conflicts disproportionately produce casualties among the groups nation-states are claiming to protect with their security policies (Sjoberg & Via, 2010, p. 45; Tickner, 2001).

Often, these protectors are men who fit the archetypical ideal of a brave, patriotic soldier protecting defenseless women and children “back home” in serving in military campaigns overseas (Sjoberg & Via, 2010, p. 214; Young, 2003). Thus, militarization and the mindset it engenders serve as powerful psychological tools during peacetime and war which the state can use to “transform and control populations” both at home and abroad in the name of security to engender compliance on the homefront for international military campaigns (Marhia, 2013; Sjoberg & Via, 2010, p. 246). Naturally, it is this manipulation of various populations by states in the exploitation of a militaristic or “masculinist protection” mindset that produces a chronic state of insecurity for many in the world and in domestic contexts also serves to subordinate citizens on the homefront like “women in the patriarchal household” in order to protect the citizens from “the enemy outside” or “others” beyond state borders (Marhia, 2013; Sjoberg & Via, 2010; Tickner, 2001; Young, 2003, p. 1-2, 8). The danger lies in the fact that this logic introduces a harmful “us versus them” mindset that not only engenders fear and state dependence but serves as further justification for military actions against other countries or groups (especially “other” men) that are seen as “aggressive” and “unsocialized in the ways of mature democracies” (Hansen, 2000; Sjoberg & Via, 2010; Tickner, 1999, p. 6-7; Tickner, 2001; Tickner, 2002). This implies that there is not “violence inside states” but only outside and this violence is generated by groups that aren’t as civilized or as “human” as the citizens within the state borders (Marhia, 2013; Tickner, 1999, p. 7).

We will now proceed into our exploration of how FST has analyzed security and chronic insecurity around the world and uncovered its gendered and racialized coding, starting with the “War on Terror” (Tickner, 2001; Tickner, 2002; Young, 2003, p. 11). The latter has provided one of the best examples of FST demonstrating how a “security state” that utilizes a militaristic mindset operationalizes its foreign policy and military objectives abroad (Marhia, 2013; Tickner, 2002; Young, 2003, p. 2). Like other militaristic interventions abroad, the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were framed in such a way by the West in the name of protecting and liberating “other” women and “oppressed groups” from “backward” religions and cultures associated with Islam as much as it was about combating the menace of nonstate terrorism abroad threatening Western lifestyles (Marhia, 2013, p. 30; Sjoberg & Via, 2010, p. 28; Ticker, 2002, p. 344; Young, 2003). As Marhia (2013) notes, “raising the (not-yet-Human) inhabitants of certain unruly spaces of the global South up to the level of the Human, then was cast as helping to secure our (Western, modern) way of life against external threats, and terrorism in particular” (p. 31). Furthermore, the predominant gendered imagery used after 9/11 in the United States has been a “male hero…presenting a beefy front of strength to a nation seeking steadiness and emotional grounding,” which is a common manifestation of the “ideal-type” soldier (Sjoberg & Via, 2010, p. 216; Tickner, 2002, p. 335). As aforementioned, these male heroes were dispatched to rescue the women of Iraq and Afghanistan (Tickner, 1999; Tickner, 2002). This reliance on the part of developed countries as portraying the countries being intervened in as needing intervention only serves to reinforce certain gender and racial hierarchies on the global stage as well as deprive groups of their agency by denoting certain groups as victims, such as the women of Afghanistan (Hansen, 2000; Sjoberg & Via, 2010, p. 28; Ticker, 2001).

In Afghanistan, the above logic of “masculinist protection” was deployed even though Afghan women had been conducting grassroots mobilization since 1977, primarily in the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) organization (Tickner, 2000, p. 341; Young, 2003). RAWA works towards its vision of a democratic, secular polity by helping to provide education and healthcare to women as well as training women to be politically active (Tickner, 2000, p. 341-342). Instead of Afghan women being portrayed as having agency, women’s oppression in Afghanistan became synonymous with the burqa in much of the news coverage leading up to and during the Afghan invasion, despite some regarding the burqa issue as part of their identities rather than as a symbol of gender oppression in Islamic societies (Tickner, 2002, p. 340-343). More often, these women point to the chronic insecurity generated by the Taliban and Afghan government forces in the Afghani civil war of 1992-1996, the 1979 invasion by the Soviets, the Western-sponsored invasion in 2001, and the aftermath of those conflicts as the more pressing issues to be addressed (Tickner, 2002, p. 340-343). This denial of agency on the part of the US and its allies in the invasion of Afghanistan and the provision of developmental assistance to promote security was thus disproved by the agency demonstrated by groups like RAWA in developing country contexts supposedly incapable of their own defense or development (Marhia, 2013; Tickner, 2002).

Like with the post-9/11 anti-terrorism campaigns, a similar situation of gender and racial coding in Bosnia during the 1990s played in to justifying intervention by NATO in the former Yugoslavian province of Kosovo in 1995 (Hansen, 2001). In this context, the gendered and racialized coding involved competing explanations as to whether “wartime rape should be understood as an individual risk or a collective security problem…and whether it should be defined in national or in gendered terms” after a United Nations investigation into a mass rape of an estimated 20,000 Bosnian women (Hansen, 2001, p. 55). In other words, the article embodied the realist and feminist debate about including “gender-based insecurity” as part of national security rather than ignoring individual insecurity in favor of state security (Blanchard, 2003; Hansen, 2001, p. 56-57; Tickner, 2001). Three competing interpretational dichotomies arose, mirroring this long-term debate between realists and feminist theorists: “rape as normal/Balkan warfare,” “rape as exceptional/Serbian warfare,” and “Balkan patriarchy” which all had different perspectives on whether international intervention was warranted in the Kosovo context (Hansen, 2001, p. 57). The former perspectives embodied traditional realist perspectives in the sense that the rape in war was recognized as not being a priority and even as a “normal” product of war and thus generally advising against NATO forces intervening in Kosovo (Hansen, 2001, p. 55-57).

However, FST scholars took the latter perspective (“Balkan patriarchy”) and noted how the mass rape was used as a tool of war by Serbia to “constitute the entire Bosnian nation as humiliated, inferior, weak, and feminine” as the Bosnian men had failed to defend “their” women and ultimately fulfill their masculine protector role (Hansen, 2001, p. 56; Tickner, 2001). More importantly, FST perspectives highlighted the theoretical biases of realist understandings of state security where the “domestic” sphere is separated from realist understandings of what constitutes the state in its distinguishing between rape as a “individual risk” or “international security problem” when it threatens the collective security of a nation-state (Hansen, 2001, p. 65). The latter definition of rape as a security problem involves the thorny ethical question of when does rape reach critical mass and be constituted by outside powers as “mass rape” that then constitutes a national security problem and a subsequent justification for intervention on the part of the West to protect Balkan (or other) women (Hansen, 2001, p. 65-69). Instead, this perspective argues for emphasizing the gendered insecurities of women on both the Serbian and Bosnian sides of the conflict against “patriarchal nationalistic leaderships,” but was ambivalent on whether the 1995 intervention by NATO helped address gendered insecurity or rather contributed to this insecurity by reinforcing the image of Bosnian or Serbian women as victims (Hansen, 2001, p. 55, 67-69). Ultimately, the international community combined the perspectives of the “rape as normal” and “rape as exceptional” in relation to the Balkan context, while going on to prosecute various Balkan nationalist leaders in the International Crime Tribunal (ICT) with war crimes related to the mass rapes (Hansen, 2001). It remains unclear as to the extent to which non-prioritized “domestic” sources of insecurity remained invisible despite the international attention in the Bosnia case (Hansen, 2001, p. 56).

As with the case of Bosnia, more FST scholars have focused their attention on emphasizing chronic gendered insecurity and its possible “invisibility” by focusing on the case of Israel in the context of its ongoing occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip territories (Sa’ar et al., 2011, p. 50). Sa’ar et al. (2011) took an intersectional approach to expose these “invisible” insecurities produced by armed conflict by analyzing how one’s social, political, and economic position in society was impacted by the ongoing military conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians and as a methodological proof of bridging the gap between largely qualitative FST approaches and more quantitative ones within the IR discipline (p. 50, 63). As in other cases of armed conflict, women were disproportionately affected by ongoing armed conflict, because in many cases, women had the double burden of domestic and public sphere labor (Sa’ar et al., 2011, p. 60-62). However, the degree and prominent type of suffering was different based off one’s socioeconomic background and sociopolitical position within society, with Palestinian women more often in economic distress versus their Israeli counterparts who emphasized emotional and physical distress generally and in terms of gender-based violence (Sa’ar et al., 2011, p. 62). The latter reflects a general trend that in times of conflict, while many groups suffer overall, the impacts of armed conflict are “particularly grave among women from low social classes, ethnic and national minorities, and women who were victims of gender-based violence” (Sa’ar et al., 2011, p. 62).

Expanding the examination of insecurities produced by military conflict and broader power structures within the international system and their impact on both women and men is Laura Sjoberg & Sandra Via’s (2010) and Amanda Chisholm and Saskia Stachowitsch’s (2016) analyses of the salience of private military contractors (PMCs) today in national and international security. PMCs and the private security industry have emerged concurrent with globalization and increasing state outsourcing of security functions to the emerging security commodities market to provide the perceived “unique strategic and tactical responses” needed to address transnational security threats such as terrorism in “international and intrastate security” contexts (Sjoberg & Via, 2010, p. 47). While PMCs like Blackwater, DynCorp, and Triple Canopy have shown evolution in the type of “hegemonic masculinity” adopted in their public relations and operational strategies, both sets of scholars have recognized PMCs as complicit in maintaining “gendered and racialized” power structures that privilege certain groups over others in the provision of security services (Chisholm & Stachowitsch, 2016, p. 815; Sjoberg & Via, p. 47, 52). Focusing specifically on Nepalese Gurkhas working for Western PMCs, Chisholm and Stachowitsch (2016) examine how these PMCs recruit labor for their multinational operations and contribute to “racialized and gendered migration patterns” of peoples like the Gurkhas which tend to maintain the institutional remnants of colonization that perpetuate inequalities in the Global South (p. 815).

While the Gurkhas have achieved significant socioeconomic privilege with their 200-year-plus interactions with the West, primarily with the British Army and now with PMCs, the authors maintain that this relationship is nevertheless one of exploitation and subordination by the West’s recruitment of labor from the “Global South” (Chisholm & Stachowitsch, 2016, p. 816). This is primarily because PMCs are drawing upon gendered and racialized notions of Gurkhas and other men from the Global South as “martial” or as “natural warriors” who exhibit a strong loyalty to Western military and security operations (Chisholm & Stachowitsch, 2016, p. 819-820). In the end, this labor recruitment process was found to reinforce global gendered and racialized power structures in and outside of the security industry, as PMC preference for Gurkha men have inhibited access to the profitable security industry for economically disadvantaged Gurkha men and women and make many countries like Nepal overly dependent on remittance income generated by this industry (Chisholm & Stachowitsch, 2016).

While the cases investigated so far have emphasized how the conduct of states and closely associated private actors have produced chronic and differing forms of insecurity for diverse and often marginalized populations, Alexandria Innes (2014) focused on how individuals like asylum seekers attain security absent the state in a case study of a UK migrant and asylum seeker (p. 565-566). This assertion challenges both the structural determinism and state-centric methodologies of realist approaches to national security by focusing on human agency and calling into question the state’s primacy and willingness to adequately secure people when compared with nonstate actors like NGOs and other civil society groups that are usually ignored in most realist IR perspectives (Blanchard, 2003; Innes, 2014; Sa’ar et al., 2011; Tickner, 2001). In the case of migration, migrants are forced to work through nonstate channels to achieve security because they are constituted as a “threat to the [security of a] state” for their ability to cross borders and claim multiple, inherently conflicting citizenships that clash with sovereign norms of citizenship generated by individual states (Innes, 2014, p. 570). The result is that the act of escaping insecurity in one context tends to produce insecurity in another context when a migrant or group of migrants to a sanctuary state are denied asylum and the accompanying security that comes from citizenship rights (Innes, 2014). However, a migrant asserts power and regains security in challenging their state-imposed marginalization by seeking shelter with nonstate groups outside the established state channels, despite occupying precarious positions like that of the legal limbo of an unauthorized immigrant (Innes, 2014, p. 570). Through this study and others explored in this paper then, one can see how FST has consistently challenged, reconstituted, and expanded the definition of security to argue that the social, economic, political, and military security of individuals or groups does matter to a state’s overall security (Innes, 2014).

As we’ve seen in this paper, FST and the broader IR feminist discipline has challenged fundamental theoretical tenets of IR perspectives like realism that establish the state as the central actor in securing itself from the various problems present on the international system, primarily of a military-political nature (Ashworth, 2011; Blanchard, 2003; Charlesworth, 2008; Tickner, 2001; Sjoberg & Via, 2010; Shepherd, 2013; Tickner, 2002; Young, 2003). FST argues for an expansion of state security to encompass the social, economic, and environmental dimensions in addition to the traditional military dimension (Ashworth, 2011; Blanchard, 2003; Marhia, 2013; Tickner, 2001). Why is FST relevant for our understandings of the international system today? Has FST elaborated on any solutions to the increased range of state security problems today? I will briefly touch on these questions to conclude this survey of FST literature.

While for the most part ambivalent about the exact path of change the international system would have to take to address the power structures that perpetuate insecurity for some at the expense of others outside of whole-scale system-wide change, some FST scholars have approached military conflict from the angle of gender equality (Caprioli & Boyer, 2001; Tickner, 2001; True, 2015). Domestic levels of gender equality have been hypothesized to be a tentative predictor of a state’s international behavior and its willingness to use violence as a means of conflict settlement (Caprioli & Boyer, 2001). The crux of the argument is that “states with higher levels of domestic gender equality are less likely to use violence during interstate conflict than states with lower levels of domestic gender equality” (Caprioli & Boyer, 2001, p. 503). Caprioli and Boyer’s (2001) study measured gender equality in terms of women’s representation in legislatures and ultimately confirmed the gender equality hypothesis raised by other scholars, with the caveat that the severity of violence in conflicts was reduced, but not eliminated in the use of force by states internationally (Caprioli & Boyer, 2001). Therefore, this suggests that state security policy could be potentially changed as institutional barriers to gender equality are reduced and both genders are allowed more equitable access to the state’s social, economic, political, and military apparatus (Caprioli & Boyer, 2001; Sjoberg & Via, 2010; True, 2013). If so, addressing institutional barriers to gender inequality internationally and at the state level suggests broad implications for realizing a more peaceful world on the part of FST (Caprioli & Boyer, 2001).

FST studies and its parent discipline, feminist IR, remain relatively new in mainstream IR studies; because the discipline is currently in the process of maturation, it has yet to find broad acceptance as a serious field of study in both academia and within the policymaking apparatus of states (Sjoberg & Via, 2010; Tickner, 2001). Despite these growing pains, the wide-reaching impacts of FST, including the broadening of the security agenda to address the increasingly interdependent nature of problems in the international system today make it a discipline worthy of following as the world grapples with the new and diverse security problems of the twenty-first century that may require resources and solutions that state actors alone cannot provide (Caprioli & Boyer, 2001; Tickner, 2001; True, 2013).

 
Works Cited:

Ashworth, L. (2011). Feminism, War and the Prospects for Peace. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 13(1), 25-43.

Blanchard, E. (2003). Gender, International Relations, and the Development of Feminist Security Theory. Signs, 28(4), 1289-1312.

Caprioli, Mary, & Boyer, Mark A. (2001). Gender, Violence, and International Crisis. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 45(4), 503-518.

Charlesworth, H. (2008). Are Women Peaceful? Reflections on the Role of Women in Peace-Building. Feminist Legal Studies, 16(3), 347-361.

Chisholm, A., & Stachowitsch, S. (2016). Everyday Matters in Global Private Security Supply Chains: A Feminist Global Political Economy Perspective on Gurkhas in Private Security. Globalizations, 13(6), 815-829.

Hansen, L. (2000). Gender, Nation, Rape: Bosnia and the Construction of Security. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 3(1), 55-75.

Innes, A. (2014). Performing Security Absent the State: Encounters with a Failed Asylum Seeker in the UK. Security Dialogue, 45(6), 565-581.

Marhia, N. (2013). Some Humans are More Human than Others: Troubling the ‘Human’ in Human Security from a Critical Feminist Perspective. Security Dialogue, 44(1), 19-35.

Nuruzzaman, M. (2006). Paradigms in Conflict: The Contested Claims of Human Security, Critical Theory and Feminism. Cooperation and Conflict, 41(3), 285-303.

Pierce, J. (1999). Chilla Bulbeck, Re-Orienting Western Feminisms: Women's Diversity in a Postcolonial World, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 560. International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 40(2), 297-299.

Sa'ar, A., Sachs, D., & Aharoni, S. (2011). Between a Gender and a Feminist Analysis: The Case of Security Studies in Israel. International Sociology, 26(1), 50-73.

Shepherd, L. (2013). The State of Feminist Security Studies: Continuing the Conversation. International Studies Perspectives, 14(4), 436-439.

Sjoberg, L. (2011). Gender, the State, and War Redux: Feminist International Relations Across the 'Levels of Analysis'. International Relations, 25(1), 108-134.

Sjoberg, L., & Via, Sandra. (2010). Gender, War, and Militarism: Feminist Perspectives. Westport, CT: Praeger Security International.

Tickner, J. (2001). Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War Era. Columbia, NY: Columbia University Press.

Tickner, J. (2002). Feminist Perspectives on 9/11. International Studies Perspectives, 3(4), 333-350.

True, J. (2015). A Tale of Two Feminisms in International Relations? Feminist Political Economy and the Women, Peace and Security Agenda. Politics & Gender, 11(2), 419-424.

Young, I. (2003). The Logic of Masculinist Protection: Reflections on the Current Security State. Signs, 29(1), 1-25.

Book Review: Charles Kupchan's "No One's World"

China. Its rise on the international stage has stirred a measure of controversy. The more prominent reaction to the rising economic and political power of China has been to worry about the decline of United States and the international system it has built in the wake of WWII. While Ikenberry acknowledges the growing clout of China on the international stage, he sees China as no threat to the existing international order as established. Rather, in his view, China's growing clout is precisely because of its increased buy-in to the United State's world order. 

But can the US-led order last forever? Charles A. Kupchan believes that the order of the United States and the West is on the decline, not necessarily towards a China-led system, but to a multi-polar system where no state is all-powerful in the international system.  

See below for my take on Kupchan's argument in No One's World. 


In No One’s World, Charles Kupchan provides the reader with a vision of a multipolar world order, extrapolating off trends that show developing states like China and India are poised to overtake the West. In his vision of the “coming global turn” towards multipolarity, in which no country or region is the hegemon of the international system, Kupchan sees the “rising rest” as modernizing on paths divergent to that of the West because of the impact of country-specific socioeconomic, historical and cultural factors on the method and pace of development (Kupchan, 2012, p. 3, 46, 88-89). Whereas the West rose primarily ahead of their competitors in the pre-modern era due to the emergence of a democratizing and economically invigorating force in a middle class able to challenge hierarchical forms of government in a less interdependent world and its later ability to export Western institutions and ordering principles abroad, the “rest” have tended to staved off similar regime challenges in this interdependent world forged by the West by coopting their potentially regime-challenging middle classes as standards of living improve (Kupchan, 2012, p. 46, 88). A consequence of this order Kupchan envisions is that there will be a diverse set of multiple power centers with differing socioeconomic development patterns, political systems and worldviews needing to find some way to retain multilateral cooperation despite an emerging “global dissensus” (Kupchan, 2012, p. 145). This challenge of retaining multilateral cooperation is the lens used to argue for a new consensus (Kupchan, 2012, p. 145).

Utilizing the conceptual lenses of the “problem condition,” “cognitive condition,” and “hegemonic condition” introduced by Ritterberger et al.’s (2011) text International Organization to explain the thresholds that need to be met to form international organizations, I will elucidate and evaluate Kupchan’s main argument in favor of finding a new set of organizing values and institutions for a multipolar world order that are not primarily based upon the Western values of “liberal democracy, industrial capitalism, and secular nationalism” (p. 7, 35). Ultimately, Kupchan’s argument takes a similar mostly institutionalist perspective on how international peace and security will be preserved in a multipolar world. Briefly, the main actors serving as focal points for Kupchan’s analysis are the West (primarily represented by the United States and the European Union) and rising powers or developing country actors (primarily China, India, Brazil, Russia and South Africa).

Starting with the “problem condition” in need of addressing, Kupchan recognizes the increased interdependencies yet concurrent diversity in rising world powers as the main issue presenting simultaneously an obstacle and an imperative for increased cooperation (Ritterberger et al., 2011, p. 35). Moreover, Kupchan highlights the growing awareness among Western countries towards this problem of diverse rising powers (“cognitive condition”) and the need to closely incorporate them into the existing international system (Ritterberger et al., 2011, p. 35). This acknowledgment on the part of the Western powers is important as powers like China and India are poised to close the gap in terms of military, economic and political power by the end of the twenty-first century, with their GDPs predicted to eclipse that of the United States and Europe and providing a means for growing military strength (Kupchan, 2012, p. 84). Thus, the “hegemonic condition” of the international system in transition, as Kupchan sees it, hinges on the West’s willingness and ability to peacefully shepherd the world into multipolarity where all will share “ideological tolerance coupled with economic dynamism” (Kupchan, 2012, p. 189). Ultimately, the West must bear the costs of domestic fallout as “responsible governance” (i.e. embracing a diversity of political systems if they promote citizen welfare) becomes the new ordering principle of the international system (Kupchan, 2012, p. 189). These hegemonic costs are magnified by the disunity of the West produced by domestic political polarization as in the United States or the trend towards “renationalization” of politics that threatens to harm unity and the ability of the European Union to effectively use their combined capabilities abroad (Kupchan, 2012, p. 158, 165).

While there is no doubt that the West’s power has plateaued and that the need to incorporate the rising powers into the Western-built international order as well as for the West to regain its economic vitality and cohesion going into this transition are imperatives, Kupchan’s argument in favor of an accompanying ordering principle of “responsible governance” superseding the West’s historical delegitimization of autocratic regimes is problematic in multiple respects (Kupchan, 2012, p. 189). For one, as Kupchan pointed out, the current international order is undergirded by “European conceptions of sovereignty, administration, law, diplomacy, and commerce” exported via Western imperialism (Kupchan, 2012, p. 65). As G. John Ikenberry pointed out in Liberal Leviathan, institutions are hard to change due to their ability to produce and reinforce certain organizational principles and values, meaning that the existing Western-established institutions have firmly entrenched the above Western values of consensus and multilateralism within the international order via their operation (Ikenberry, 2011). Moreover, the rise of powers of like China and India are due more likely to the benefits provided to them from joining the international club of prestigious organizations like the World Trade Organization (WTO) (Ikenberry, 2011). This dynamic produces a powerful incentive to not overturn the ordering principles of this order lest the benefits of increased economic, political, and military stature diminish (Ikenberry, 2011). Therefore, the international order has shown a remarkable ability to, per the model of “global governance” espoused by Ritterberger et al. (2011), to flexibly facilitate the “horizontal coordination” among diverse actors without the need for a supranational authority and provides hope that a transition to a multipolar order would not be as destabilizing as Kupchan posits (p. 269, 275).

This latter fact exposes the contradictory nature of Kupchan’s argument to save the international system from the destruction possible during a power transition: to save the international order, the West must undercut its own exported multilateral principles most likely to facilitate multilateral cooperation to more closely accommodate the rising powers (Kupchan, 2012, p. 192). Ultimately, Kupchan’s approach is flawed, as the Western-modeled international system already has the ordering principles of “compromise, tolerance and pluralism” built-in to the international organizations that provide arenas to peacefully settle disputes between developed and developing nation-states, while solving transnational problems multilaterally by effectively utilizing the combined resources invested in those organizations by their member states (Kupchan, 2012, p. 192). While delegitimizing nondemocratic regimes, the West still has a history of working together with these same regimes to solve pressing international issues within the confines of the current order.  Effectively, the proposed principle of “responsible governance” is rendered moot if the West can simply expand on already existing principles of cooperation by further incorporating these rising powers into the international system, creating a higher stake for all in the system’s overall preservation (Ikenberry, 2011; Kupchan, 2012, p. 189).

Moreover, aside from the need for a critical mass of actors and a common perception of the nature of the problem and its solutions, institutional change would be very difficult to undertake even for future hegemons due to the path dependency of international organizations reflecting a different consensus reached at a specific historical juncture that can only be overridden by achieving a new consensus (which requires considerable expenditures of social, political, economic, and diplomatic capital and resources). In other words, the institutional structure as it exists is not overly dependent on the fluctuations or perceived credibility of Western power and to some degree is self-perpetuating (Ikenberry, 2011; Ritterberger et al., 2011). Therefore, the inclusion of a new “responsible governance” standard may not be necessary; to some extent, it has always existed within the current order (Kupchan, 2012, p. 189). Thus, the existing Western-built order has successfully accommodated rising powers to date and provides a solution to the “problem, cognitive, and hegemonic” conditions both Ikenberry and Kupchan have recognized in their narratives about the future of the international order (Ritterberger, et al., 2011, p. 35).

In conclusion, while it is an engaging read, Kupchan’s No One’s World nevertheless poses contradictory arguments in his thesis that the coming multipolar world order will require the West to undercut its own order in favor of embracing a largely redundant principle of “responsible governance” to more closely accommodate the political diversity of the rising powers along with a similar economic revitalization to regain its capacity to shepherd the coming transition (Kupchan, 2012, p. 189). For the latter reason, readers may find the book to be hard to follow because of its internal contradictions, despite its well-written introduction providing the context for his later arguments in concisely cataloging the rise of the Western powers over their counterparts in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East and the concurrent trends predicting the plateauing of Western power. Nevertheless, despite the contradictory (and redundant) nature of Kupchan’s arguments in providing solutions to peacefully transition to a more multipolar world, Kupchan’s No One’s World presents an intriguing narrative that forces readers to not discount the challenges posed to the flexibility of the international system in terms of rising powers’ political and cultural diversity. 


Works Cited:

Ikenberry, G. J. (2011). Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Kupchan, C. A. (2012). No One’s World: The West, the Rising Rest, and the Coming Global Turn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ritterberger, V., Zangl, B., & Kruck, A. (2011). International Organization (2nd ed.). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.