BIBLIOGRAFIA OBLIGATORIA DEL CURSO:
1. Kaplan, Moron. The new great debate: Traditionalism vs Science
in International Relations en World Politics Vol. 19,
no. 1 (Oct. 1966) pp. 1-20.
2. Kaplan, Morton. Sistemas y proceso de la política internacional
en Hoffman, Stanley. Teorías contemporáneas de las Relaciones
Internacionales (Madrid: Tecnos, 1979) pp. 141-161
3. Snyder, Robert C., H.W. Bruck y Burton Sapin. La génesis de las
decisiones como enfoque de estudio de la política
internacional en ibid pp. 191-208.
4. Keohane, Robert. After hegemony en Vásquez, J.A. Relaciones
Internacionales. El pensamiento de los clásicos (México: Limusa,
2002) pp. 397-407.
5. Kenneth, Waltz. 5. Estructuras políticas y 7. Causas
estructurales y efectos económicos en Teoría de la política
internacional en Teoría de la política
internacional (Buenos Aires: GEL, 1988) pp. 119-150 y
191-236.
6. Gilpin, Robert. War and change pp. 1.49
7. Tomassini, Luciano. La política internacional en un mundo
posmoderno (Buenos Aires: RIAL, 1991) pp. 61-92
8. Smith, Steve. Singing Our World into Existence:
International Relations
Theory and September 11 en International Studies
Quarterly (2004) No. 48, 499–515.
9. Ianni, OctavioTeorías de la globalización (México:
Siglo XXI, 2001)
2
11.Laïdi, Zaki. Introducción: el divorcio del sentido y del poder
en Un mundo sin sentido (México: FCE, 1997) pp. 23-4
12. ---------------El vinculo social mundial I y II en ibidem pp.
144-175
13.Biel, Robert. Realidades ignoradas: trabajo femenino y
naturaleza en El nuevo imperialismo. Crisis y contradicciones
en las relaciones Norte-Sur (México: Siglo XXI, 2007)
pp. 188 a 219
14.Guzzini, Stefano. A reconstruction of constructivism in
International Relations en European Journal of International
Relations , Vol. 6 No. 2, 2000 pp. 147-182.
The New Great Debate: Traditionalism vs. Science in International
Relations
Author(s): Morton A. Kaplan
Source: World Politics, Vol. 19, No. 1, (Oct., 1966), pp.
1-20
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Journal of Contemporary China (2001), 10(26),
75–88
China and the Globalisation of IR Theory: discussion of ‘Building
International Relations Theory with Chinese Characteristics’
WILLIAM A. CALLAHAN*
This essay examines current developments in International Relations
theory in China. First
it comments on Song Xinning’s essay, agreeing that IR theory in
China is limited by
ideology, the dominance of policy-oriented research, and the state.
But rather than seeing
culture (‘IR theory with Chinese characteristics’) as a problem
that can be solved by a
more scientic approach to IR theory, the essay argues that the
scientism of realism and
IPE has similar problems. Thus the essay switches from the
universals of science to the
contingency of interpretation to understand global politics,
drawing on recent books which
combine IPE with historical and cultural studies. The concept of
sovereignty is decon-
structed to show how it is not universal, but is bound up in
knowledge practices in both the
West and China. The essay concludes by suggesting that we broaden
both the concepts and
the resources of IR research to consider the transnational
economic–cultural relations of
Greater China. In this way China can be part of the globalization
of IR theory, for such
concepts exemplify current theoretical debates about the meaning of
globalization. This
approach moves from territorial notions of sovereignty where power
is based on an
expansion of economic and political relations—which reify
borders—to popular notions of
sovereignty where power is measured by movements of people across
borders in a
qualitative struggle of cultures and knowledge.
Professor Song Xinning’s paper presents a rich overview of the
history, develop- ment, and contradictions involved in the study of
International Relations (IR) theory in China. He feels that the eld
is backward but is hopeful for progress. There is increasing
interest in IR theory in China. This can be seen in the
quantitative increase of students studying IR through the
compulsory course in
* William A. Callahan is a S enior Lecturer at the Politics
Department of the University of Durham, England. His
publications include Imagining Democracy: Reading the Events
of May in Thailand (1998), Pollwatching,
Elections,
and Civil Society in Southeast Asia (forthcoming 2000), as
well as numerous articles in international relations, critical
theory, and Asian studies journals. At present, he is working on a
book examining the links between Chinese foreign
policy and Chinese identity.
policy and Chinese identity.
WILLIAM A. CALLAHAN
‘Contemporary World Politics, Economics, and International
Relations’, which has in turn produced over 100 different
textbooks. 1 But Song is concerned that these textbooks are not
engaging in genuine theory-building and worries that though the
number of high-quality academic monographs on IR theory is
increasing, the eld is still too small.
Basically, his analysis argues that the eld of IR theory in China
is very narrow because it is constrained by three interrelated
factors: ideology, the dominance of policy-oriented research,
and the state.
These three factors are seen as part of the historical development
of IR theory in China. Song relates how IR is a very young
eld—starting at People’s University in the early 1950s, but really
dating from the 1980s as an academic discipline on a national
scale. IR has been ideologically driven for the simple reason that
until the 1980s all of academia was ideologically driven. Song
concludes that the development of ‘IR theory with Chinese
characteristics’ in the 1980s is an extension of the politicization
of the eld.
IR research has been policy-driven because of the close
relationship between the Party, the state, and academics; academic
departments were rst established as ‘departments of foreign
affairs’, while others were founded by the Foreign Ministry to
‘justify government policies’. IR research has been state-centric
due to the above reasons, as well as dominant realist modes of
understanding IR around the world. The state’s positive interest in
IR has provided it with new resources and after 1989 with political
cover, but the ip side of increased state attention to IR theory is
an increase in surveillance, which risks restricting the scope of
thought and activity. This can be seen in the participation of
well-known political leaders in academic conferences. For example,
the International Confucian Studies Association’s 1994 Conference
in Beijing was introduced by Vice Premier Li Lanqing and former
Minister Gu Mu, and was concluded by Jiang Zemin and Li Ruihuan. If
a Confucian philosophy association is pressured to make its
research policy-rel- evant—‘the practical value of
Confucianism’2—how much more d oes IR theory have to meet these
demands?
One of the main critical targets of Song’s essay is ‘IR theory with
Chinese characteristics’. This trend is part of the response of
Chinese academics to Deng Xiaoping’s declaration of the need to
‘build socialism with Chinese characteristics’. This statement came
in the early 1980s,3 as a way of negotiating the challenges to
socialism and Chinese identity that the economic reforms posed.
These challenges
1. References to Song’s article in this issue will not be listed.
2. Li Lanqing, ‘Talks at the conference commemorating the 2545th
birthday of Confucius’, in Ruxue yu Ershiyi
Shiji [Confucian Studies and the 21st Century: Proceedings
of the International Confucian Studies Association’s
Conference to Commemorate the 2545th Birthday of Confucius ], Vol.
I (Beijing: Huaxia Press, 1996), p. 3. This event, and its intimate
relation to power, was replayed in 1999 with the second conference
of the International Confucian
Studies Association which was opened in the Great Hall of the
People by a former minister. 3. See Deng Xiaoping, Jianshe
You Zhongguo Tesede Shihuizhuyi [ Building Socialism
with Chinese
Characteristics], revised and enlarged edition (Beijing: People’s
Press, 1987), pp. 51–56. On 1 September 1982, Deng
traced it back to Mao and New Democracy in 1945 ( Ibid .,
p. 2). Others point to Mao’s ‘The role of the Communist Party in
the national war, October 1938’, which discusses the necessity of
using ‘the fresh lively style and spirit which the common people of
China love’ in applying Marxism [in Lowell Dittmer and Samuel S.
Kim, eds, China’s Quest
for National Identity (London: Cornell University
Press, 1993), p. 254]. This negotiation addresses the perceived
contradiction between a nationalist revolution and an
internationalist ideology.
76
76
DISCUSSION
were seen as coming from the West, primarily the United States as
part of a strategy of ‘peaceful evolution’ to undermine CCP rule in
China. This trend was also seen in the ‘Spiritual Pollution’
campaign of 1983–84, antibourgeois liberalism movements of 1986–87,
as well as the aftermath of 4 June 1989.
As Song points out, it has never been quite clear to what ‘Chinese
characteris- tics’ refers. He quotes Zhang Mingqian, a high-ranking
ofcial, giving an oppositional and tautological account of IR
theory with Chinese characteristics:
It is not the Soviet theory, nor the American theory, nor even the
theory that could be
accepted by the whole world. It must be Chinese opinions of
international affairs and the culmination of Chinese understandings
of the laws of development of the inter-
national community.
Basically, the theory must come from ‘us’ Chinese, not ‘them’
foreigners, without examining just what these self/other relations
entail. It often begs the question of what is ‘China’ and what is
the ‘West’. The theory takes various forms, but a common theme is
that it arose after 1949 and consists of quotes from Chinese
leaders supporting the PRC’s national interest. Hence, this notion
of IR theory with Chinese characteristics does not get us very far
theoretically. Many scholars are therefore justiably sceptical of
‘IR theory with Chinese characteristics’. Song deconstructs this
theory to show how it is restricted by ideology, deployed as a tool
of governance, and thus useful only to a very narrow concept of
politics, national identity, and IR.
Other scholars look to Chinese tradition and premodern, often
Confucian, methods of understanding contemporary world politics
(more below). For example, on the one hand, a retired US admiral,
who became the ambassador to Beijing in 1999, has been reading the
Chinese classics to understand the PRC’s military strategy;4 while
on the other hand, Chinese think-tanks and the PLA itself argue
that China is not a threat because of ‘the Peaceful Orientation of
Chinese Civilization’.5 Each of these arguments is backed by more
in-depth, scholarly studies which look to cultural realism6 on the
one hand and Oriental pacism on the other.7
Such approaches to Chinese tradition show how Chinese scholars are
looking for what Song calls a ‘clear and comprehensive
understanding of the denition of Chinese characteristics’.
This search for clarity and comprehensiveness is also indicative of
the solutions to the problem of IR theory in China that Song
proposes. To battle the pernicious inuence of ideology and culture
in IR theory, Song appeals to science: ‘As part of social sciences
and general theory, IR theory should
4. Richard Halloran, ‘Reading Beijing: US strategist turns to
history to understand China’, Far Eastern Economic
Review (25 February 1999), p. 28. 5. Li Shaojun, ‘Lun
Zhongguo Wenmingde Heping Neihan: cong chuantong dao xianshi: dui
“Zhongguo weixie”
lun de huida’ [‘The peaceful orientation of Chinese civilization:
from tradition to reality: a response to “China threat”
theory’], Guoji Jingji Pinglun [ Review of
International Economy ] 19, (January–February 1999), pp. 30–33. 6.
Alastain Iain Johnston, Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture
and Grand Strategy in Chinese History (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1995).
7. Although he does not usually use the phrase ‘Oriental pacicism’
[ Dongfang Heping Zhuyi], Yan Xuetong is noted for such
arguments. See Yan Xuetong, Zhongguo Guojia Liyi
Fenxi [ An Analysis of China’s National Interest ]
(Tianjin: Renmin Publishers, 1995); and Yan Xuetong, ‘Zhongguo
Lengzhanhoude Anquan Zhanlei’ [‘China’s post
Cold War security strategy’], in Yan Xuetong, ed., Zhongguo yu
Yatai Anquan [China and Asia–Pacic Security ] (Beijing:
Shishi Publishers, 1999), pp. 49–53.
77
77
WILLIAM A. CALLAHAN
seek for universality, generality, and content, rather than
speciality, individuality, and form’.8 In addition to being
universal, theory should be neutral and stable. While Chinese IR
theory is seen as restricted by ‘tradition’—regardless of whether
that tradition is Marxist–Leninist or Confucian—Song looks abroad
to the West, and specically to the United States, for science. IR
theory then should be modernized as part of the modernization of
science and technology. This sentiment is echoed in many quarters,
including the introduction to Deng and Wang’s In the
Eyes of the Dragon: China Views the World , where Garver
laments the ‘theoretical gap between China and the US’, while
lauding the ‘rigorous training [of Chinese scholars] in social
sciences at American universities’ as a way to bridge it.9 Song
particularly promotes the scientic study of international political
economy as part of IR theory.
The way to solve the problem of IR theory in China, then, is to
send graduate students abroad to pick up the necessary techniques,
attitudes, and degrees. The young generation not only returns to
China to teach, but also can professionally translate Western texts
into Chinese for a broader audience. This prescription also cures
the other ill of IR studies in China: older professors who—for
understandable reasons of patriotism and survival—appeal to
ideology, are sceptical of foreign theories, and cannot read
foreign texts. But because of mandatory retirement policies, they
are leaving the scene: 80% of the Ph.D. advisors are due to retire
soon. Thus the problems of IR theory in China will be solved
through an historical process of development and opening.
Critique
Song and I have the same aims and understandings—we are both
pushing for more plurality and space for critical approaches to IR
theory. But I get to this goal in a different way: through the
contingency of interpretation rather than the universals of
science. Indeed, some of the hottest new writings on IR, and
specically international politics in Asia, combine international
political economy with histori- cal and cultural studies.10
Such books are addressing similar problems in the West: ideology,
dominance of policymaking, and the state. The ideology is not
socialism or even liberal capital- ism so much as the ‘scientism’
of rational choice in political science and realism in IR theory.
Though space is opening up for critical IR theory, the eld is still
dominated by policy-relevant research. This can be seen in the
allocation of
8. In addition to Song’s article see Wang Jisi, ‘International
relations theory and the study of Chinese foreign policy: a Chinese
perspective’, in Thomas W. Robinson and David Shambaugh,
eds, Chinese Foreign Policy (Oxford:
Clarendon Paperbacks, 1995), 482 ff. 9. John W. Garver, ‘Foreword’
, in Yong Deng and Fei-Ling Wang, eds, In the Eyes of the
Dragon: China Views
the World (New York: Rowman & Littleeld Publishers,
1999), pp. viii, vii.
10. Bruce Cumings, Parallax Visions: Making Sense of
American–East Asian Relations at the End of the Century
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999); Benedict
Anderson, The Spectre of Comparison: Nationalism,
Southeast
Asia and the World (London: Verso, 1998); Ong
Aihwa, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of
Transnationality
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999); and Arif Dirlik,
ed., What is in a Rim? Critical Perspectives on the
Pacic Rim Idea, 2nd edition (Oxford: Rowman and Littleeld,
1998).
78
78
DISCUSSION
research grants.11 Again, the causes and effects in China and the
United States are quite similar: academics in close proximity to
the centre of government in Beijing or Washington, DC tend to focus
their research on policy concerns. A simple solution for Chinese
academics who wish to engage in more critical research would be to
move to Shanghai, where most agree that there is more academic
space.
Thus I would argue that Song’s scientic revolution of IR theory for
China not only liberates scholars from old shackles but also risks
creating new ones. This relation between problems and solutions is
characteristic of modernity. Though ‘generation theory’ can be
powerful in explaining rapid social and political transformation,
12 the problem of IR theory in China will not be solved by retiring
the old cadres. The scientism that Song and others advocate will
just create a new hegemon: realism.
It is important to take a critical view of the science of realism
for practical as well as theoretical reasons. It did not explain or
predict the major events of the era: the end of the Cold War and
the break up of the Soviet Union. 13 Yet despite ‘the embarrassment
at the end of the Cold War to scholars of international relations
and national security’, which one scholar likened to ‘the effects
of the sinking of the Titanic had on the profession of naval
engineers … there has been remarkably little rethinking of [the]
categories of analysis’.14 Indeed, rather than rethinking realism,
scholars have been busy nding new areas to apply realist theory.
Asia is one of the key regions targeted for the export of
realism; the theory’s focus on the balance of power and the
instabilities of multipolarity once again neglects questions
of domestic politics and transnational relations. Thus
Katzenstein concludes that ‘A style of analysis that had proven to
be inadequate in Europe was not refurbished but, implausibly,
simply reapplied in Asia’.15 Indeed, this is one of the key
problems of the popular discourse of ‘realism with Chinese
characteristics’.16
Song wishes to broaden the eld of IR theory in China, to include
more Western theory in general, and IPE in particular. I would
encourage Song and his colleagues to broaden the eld of IR theory
even more by looking at theoretical sources outside standard IR
theory both at home and abroad: Chinese culture and critical IR
theory. Thus I am not suggesting a simple switch from East to West;
or even a nativist switch from West back to East. Rather I am
switching from organising
11. Policy used to be geared to the state, but now it is
increasingly seen as political–economic policy, which i s geared to
business. Thus while IPE is new and exciting in China, it is
hegemonic in East Asian IR in North America.
Bruce Cumings recently made the ‘modest proposal’ that we all
should become political-economists to ght the twin evils of
rational choice theory and cultural studies. Cumings, among others,
also notes that research is actually more restricted (in both time
and topic) when it is funded from business rather than from the
state organs of
military/intelligence. 12. Peace studies scholar Johan Galtung
reasons that it takes 40 years for meaningful political reform to
take place:
the passing of a generation of combatants from civil wars and
revolutions. The next generation can be more pragmatic
because it is not as attached to memories of the horrors of war.
13. Peter J. Katzenstein, ‘Conclusion: national security in a
changing world’, in Peter J. Katzenstein, ed., The
Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1996),
p. 499. 14. Peter J. Katzenstein, ‘Preface’, in Ibid .,
p. xi. 15. Ibid ., p. xii.
16. See Yong Deng, ‘Conception of national interests: realpolitick,
liberal dilemma, and the possibility of change’, in Yong Deng and
Fei-Ling Wang, eds, In the Eyes of the Dragon: China Views
the World , pp. 48–53.
79
79
WILLIAM A. CALLAHAN
IR in terms of space (East/West, nation-states) to considering IR
in terms of time: tradition and modernity.
All of the theories thus far discussed— Marxist, realist, IPE, and
even ‘with Chinese characteristics’ —can be characterized as
artefacts of modernity. They all involve a logic of science and
stability, the urge toward a master narrative that will answer all
the questions. They all script a series of laws, e.g. the iron law
of IR. In a sense, the Marxists, Confucians, and realists share a
Hegelian dialectic which motivates them to resolve contradictions
(thesis–antithesis) with a synthesis. Chinese language seems to
encourage this since wenti means both ‘question’ and
‘problem’. Rather than questions being seen as an opportunity for
new understand- ings of world politics, questions are gured as
problems that need to be solved. One era must be overcome for the
next era to be founded. As Thomas Kuhn famously wrote about
scientic revolutions, ‘Revolutions close with the total victory for
one of the two opposing camps’.17 What used to be true, must now be
false. This urge to synthesize can be seen in the search for a
single general theory grounded in universal laws of nature and
society. This notion of progressive history leads to a ‘catch-up’
mentality.
Again, the Confucian studies group provides an example of synthesis
for IR: Confucianism provides the ‘inheritance’ and ‘spiritual
resources’ for spiritual civilization which needs to combine with
material civilization (i.e. economic development) for a socialist
spiritual civilization: ‘It is an important source for our
construction of socialist spiritual civilization with Chinese
characteristics’.18 Like- wise, Li Shaojun concludes that while
China seeks advanced science and technology from the West, ‘At the
same time, China should strive to enlighten the rest of the world
with its traditional concept of harmony and to promote peace in the
international arena … [recognizing] the rise of Chinese culture and
the increas- ing inuence of eastern [sic] cosmopolitanism, due to
their special characteristics …’. The task is to get the right
synthesis: ‘Future globalization will integrate contributions from
both the East and the West’.19 The discourse of ‘realism with
Chinese characteristics’ works along these same ti-yong
lines.20
I see this style of research as one of the main ideological effects
in China, a dialectical inuence that persists far beyond the waning
of Marxist–Leninist ideology. Rather than broadening the scope of
IR theory research, it tends to restrict it—albeit in different
ways than what Chinese academics now face.
New directions
There are many ways to critically engage modernity which are not
‘antimodern’ but seek to question our understanding of IR theory in
terms of the metanarratives of science and progress which
rely on the radical binary oppositions of East/West,
tradition/modernity, domestic/foreign, science/ideology,
inside/outside, and self/
17. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientic Revolutions
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), p. 166.
18. Li, ‘Talks at the conference commemorating the 2545th birthday
of Confucius’, p. 3; also see Deng, Jianshe
You Zhongguo Tesede Shihuizhuyi , p. 15. 19. Li, ‘Lun Zhongguo
Wenmingde Heping Neihan: cong chuantong dao xianshi: dui “Zhongguo
weixie” lun de
huida’, p. 33. 20. Deng, ‘Conception of national interests:
realpolitick, liberal dilemma, and the possibility of change’, pp.
48–53.
80
80
DISCUSSION
other.21 As we have seen, none of these categories is as stable as
its promoters’ attest. Does ‘East’ refer to socialist countries as
in the Cold War or to Asian countries as in the previous imperial
period and the post-Cold War? Does ‘tradition’ refer to the older
generation of Marxist–Leninist scholars or to Confu- cian doctrine?
Is ‘science’ Western or modern?
Critical theory and Chinese philosophy lead us away from the
necessity of answering such questions—resolving the
contradictions, looking for ‘trends … along this path of
evolution’—to see how these contradictions can help us understand
space and time in different ways. As Donna Haraway writes, we need
to regure contradictions into an ironic understanding: ‘Irony is
about contradictions that do not resolve themselves into larger
wholes, even dialectically, about the tension of holding
incompatible things together because both or all are necessary and
true’.22 As Zhuangzi said, this involves ‘Letting both courses
of action proceed’. Thus we cannot so easily separate out the
pairs of terms that Song mentions in his conclusion and write a
progressive history of transformation from, for example, isolation
to openness and Sinocentrism to Westernization and global- ization.
Nor can we write a simple plan for China to overcome the Century
of National Humiliation [ Bainian Guochi] and become a
great power.
Both Zhuangzi and Haraway take history and truth to be contingent,
rather than stable, objective, and universal. Rather than taking
‘tradition’ or ‘science’ as an ‘answer’ to political questions we
can problematize both; frame ‘tradition’ and ‘science’ as questions
rather than answers.23 Thus, we can turn wenti-questions
from being problems into opportunities to understand international
politics in new ways, many new ways. We cannot divorce politics
from our inquiry, as science aims with its objectivity, because
that merely serves to obscure and mystify the politics of
knowledge, the culture of scientism. The discourse of science is a
powerful political tool in the arsenal of the modern state.24 While
I fully agree with Song that IR theory needs to be separate from
and critical of the state (in all countries, not just China), I
would argue that we need to broaden our view of politics to
account for activities beyond state actions. A scientic study of
IPE is one route; using critical IR theory for IPE and cultural
economics is another. A new generation of IR textbooks and
monographs takes up these themes.25
21. R.B.J. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as
Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1993).
22. Donna Haraway, ‘A manifesto for cyborgs: science, technology
and socialist feminism in the 1980s’, Socialist
Review 15(2), (1985), p. 65. 23. See Walker,
Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory , p.
37. 24. A book entitled Civilization and Barbarism
argues that civilization no longer refers just to Chinese
culture
and Confucian values, but to ‘the ardent love of science’. This
book itself is an example of how science and culture are used by
the state to govern the populace. See Zhang Guolong et al.,
Wenming yu Yeman [Civilization and
Barbarism] (Beijing: Social Science Materials Press, 1998),
pp. 15–27.
25. Duke University Press has recently published many interesting
books on critical approaches to East Asia. The University of
Minnesota Press and Cambridge University Press each publish
important series in Critical IR Theory. The following books are
noteworthy: Jim George, Discourses of Global Politics: A
Critical (Re)Introduction to
International Relations (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner,
1994); Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations
as
Political Theory ; John Tomlinson, Globalization and Culture
(London: Sage, 1999); David Campbell, Writing
Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity
, 2nd edition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1998); David Campbell, National Deconstruction:
Violence, Identity and Justice in Bosnia (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1998); Michael J. Shapiro and
Hayward R. Alker, eds,Challenging Boundaries: Global
81
81
WILLIAM A. CALLAHAN
The best way to consider new directions is to examine how IR theory
has engaged the policy-relevant concept of ‘sovereignty’ from both
Chinese tradition and critical IR theory. Though IR theory in China
and most English-language publications on Chinese foreign policy
both stress China’s ‘absolute sovereignty’— a Western concept, or a
modern concept—the most interesting IR theory today questions
sovereignty. Indeed, international relations theory has been ripe
with fascinating publications which seek to problematize the very
notion of sovereignty and its Westphalian roots. This has attended
a renewed interest in regionalism and the theoretical questions
posed by supranational organizations like the European Union, on
the one hand, and the devolution of state power to Northern
Ireland, Scotland, and Wales in the United Kingdom, on the other.
In East Asia, there has been much talk of Greater China and the
Chinese diaspora. Thus, the question of sovereignty has
expanded from its realist territorial roots to consider broader
notions of order, community, security, and identity.
This consideration generally does not discard sovereignty for
globalization or a new form of imperialism, so much as consider how
useful ‘sovereignty’ is in describing and accounting for trends and
events. Katzenstein argues that though the logic of sovereignty is
taken for granted in realism, it never triumphed in a pure form:
‘It is not a natural fact of international life. Instead it is
politically contested and has variable political effects’.26
Though sovereignty is the ‘main question of politics’, it is hardly
a stable concept.27 Rather, ‘sovereignty’s main function is to
frame objects of inquiry by telling us what they are not’.28 Rather
than taking sovereignty as an empirical ‘scientic’ question—of
looking at the map for natural borders or to treaties for
international law—Bartelson shows how sovereignty is bound up in
knowledge practices. He writes a genealogical history of
sovereignty in Europe, and we could also argue that concepts of
‘sovereignty’ vary over space as well as time. Just as the Western
concept of ‘liberalism’ has changed from ‘individual rights’ to
‘states rights’ in its transmigration to China,29 it is important
to see how concepts of ‘sovereignty’ have been constructed in
China.30
It turns out that sovereignty, as a concept, is no more stable in
Chinese than in European languages. Zhuquan, the
modern Chinese word for sovereignty, has a strange pedigree. It was
rst introduced through a US missionary’s translation of an
international law textbook for the Chinese court. Martin, the
missionary in question, thought that translating international law
was the best way to spread
Footnote 25 continued
Revisioning World Politics (London: Routledge, 1998);
Jonathan Friedman, Cultural Identity & Global Process
(London: Sage, 1994); Arif Dirlik, The Postcolonial Aura:
Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism
(Boulder, CO: Westview, 1997); John Tomlinson, Cultural
Imperialism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1991). 26. Katzenstein, ‘Conclusion: national security i n a
changing world’, p. 515. 27. Jens Bartelson, A Genealogy of
Sovereignty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995),
pp. 1–11.
28. Ibid ., p. 51. 29. Christopher Hughes, ‘China and
liberalism globalized’ , Millennium 24(3), (1995), p.
430. 30. Thomas J. Biersteker and Cynthia Weber, ‘The social
construction of state sovereignty’, in Thomas J. Biersteker
and Cynthia Weber, eds, State Sovereignty as Social
Construct (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996),
pp. 1–21.
82
82
DISCUSSION
‘Christian civilization’ to the Chinese elite.31 Zhuquan
is actually one of the few international law neologisms
crafted by Martin that has endured. Therefore, modern Chinese
dictionary denitions of sovereignty are quite familiar. They appeal
to a distinction between internal and external spheres, where a
sovereign state must be united domestically, and thus able to
defend itself against external forces. ‘Equal sovereignty’, the
dictionary tells us, is the basis of international law.32 Exemplary
sentences characteristically use ‘state sovereignty’ and
‘territorial sovereignty’. It seems that Martin was able to convert
the Qing court (and thus Chinese foreign policy) to international
law, if not to Christianity in its more spiritual forms.
Indeed, Chinese diplomacy uses the language of liberalism;
quan is the modern word for rights. Renquan
is human rights; likewise, international law basically
codies the rights and obligations of states to each other. But the
other senses of zhuquan come out when zhu
is added. Zhu does not mean state, but ruler. In
this way it harkens back to a premodern concept of sovereignty,
where sovereign means king. If we trace the word back two
millennia, the classical legalist text Guanzi uses
zhuquan to describe the power and authority of the
sovereign. But zhu’s more common meaning is ‘owner’ or
‘master’ in the sense of control over slaves or animals.
Zhuquan thus are the rights of the master.
Deconstructing quan also shows less than liberal roots:
the second denition of quan is opportunism. Thus
zhuquan is often more about arbitrary power and
authority rather than about transcendent moral categories of
rights. Reading classical and nineteenth-century sources, Roger T.
Ames writes: “‘Quan”, or rights, has generally denoted “power”, not
in the positive sense of legitimated authority but as a provisional
advantage that derives from exceptional circumstances’.33 So in the
end, zhuquan can range from familiar senses of
‘territorial sovereignty’, to ‘rights of the master’, to the more
problematic ‘opportunism of the master’. Sovereignty deconstructs
itself via its Chinese translation.
Still, even though Chinese texts are dotted with references to
various forms of sovereignty—state sovereignty, territorial
sovereignty, maritime sovereignty, econ- omic sovereignty,
ideological sovereignty, and cultural sovereignty—it is not clear
what this term means in practice. If Bartelson is right, and
sovereignty is intimately interwoven with knowledge practices, then
we must consider how it has operated within Chinese knowledge
practices. This leads us back in history to other norms of power
and authority, other world orders, and thus away from geopolitics
to cultural epistemology: ‘The primary issue is not politics and
diplomacy; it is the cultural epistemology that informs certain
forms of interaction’.34 In traditional China, these forms of
interaction were guided by hierarchy and unication rather than
sovereignty’s equality and differentiation. 35 While the
Westphalian model uses
31. Immanuel C. Hsu, China’s Entrance into the Family of
Nations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960), pp.
126, 130.
32. See, for example, the Ci Hai.
33. Roger T. Ames, ‘Rights as rites: the Confucian alternative’ ,
in Leroy S. Rouner, ed., Human Rights and the
World’s Religions (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1988), p. 203. 34. D.R. Howland, Borders of Chinese
Civilization: Geography and History at Empire’s
End (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 1996), p. 2. 35. Ibid ., p. 11.
83
83
WILLIAM A. CALLAHAN
the formula ‘one system, many states’,36 Chinese leaders (and some
theorists) are using a model of world order which is the opposite:
‘one country, many systems’.
There have been some interesting examples of the study of culture
and IR in East Asia in the past decade. Dittmer and Kim’s edited
volume, China’s Quest for National Identity,
provides an interesting start for the role of culture and identity
in IR. Indeed, as their preface tells us, ‘We conceived the idea of
a study of Chinese national identity while we were engaged in
our respective investigations of Chinese foreign policy. The
need for a central reference point became clear to both of us—a
reference point that incorporated not only “national interest” but
recurring cultural themes’.37 But in the end they conne their
investigations to the state and a search for core values.38 In this
way, much of the early research on culture and IR simply used
culture to elaborate on realist themes: clashes are now between
civilizations, but still led by core-states.39 Others look to
history and identity to understand strategic culture via cultural
realism,40 or Oriental pacism.41 As we have seen, even when they
use culture and civilization, many are restricted to state-centric
views of international relations which address questions of
national security, war, and peace—often to the exclusion of all
other topics. For example, the Ministry of National Defense in its
1998 National Defense White Paper declared:
The defensive nature of China’s national defense policy also
springs from the
country’s historical and cultural traditions. China is a country
with 5000 years of
civilization, and a peace-loving tradition. Ancient Chinese
thinkers advocated ‘associ-
ating with benevolent gentlemen and befriending good neighbors’,
which shows that
throughout history the Chinese people have longed for peace in the
world and for
relations of friendship with the people of other countries.42
The other risk of appealing to culture and civilization is that it
gives rise to nativism which reies conceptual borders of self and
other. A d ominant trend in cultural studies in China,
Guoxue, deconstructs universals of science and progress, but
then ‘insist[s] nevertheless on marking Chinese postmodernity as
something authentically Chinese’.43 Rather than contesting the
metanarrative of modernity, they thus replace it with another
metanarrative of Chineseness. They go ‘from modernity to
Chineseness’ through an ‘unlikely union of Western theories and
Chinese concerns’ which ‘mixes xenophobia, polemical rhetoric, and
nationalist
36. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as
Political Theory , p. 176. 37. Dittmer and Kim, China’s Quest
for National Identity , p. xii. 38. Ibid ., p.
17.
39. Samuel P . Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the
Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1996).
40. Johnston, Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand
Strategy in Chinese History .
41. Yan, ‘Zhongguo Lengzhanhoude Anquan Zhanlei’; Yan,
Zhongguo Guojia Liyi Fenxi; Li, ‘Lun Zhongguo Wenmingde Heping
Neihan: cong chuantong dao xianshi: dui “Zhongguo weixie” lun de
huida’.
42. Information Ofce of the State Council, White Paper on
China’s National Defense (Beijing: Xinhua, 27 July
1998). See FBIS–China Daily Report (27 July 1998). 43. Arif Dirlik
and Zhang Xudong, ‘Introduction: postmodernism and
China’, Boundary 2 24(3), (1997, special
issue: Postmodernism and China , Arif Dirlik and Zhang
Xudong, eds.), pp. 1–18; Wang Ning, ed., Quanqiuhua
yu
Houzhimin Piping [Globalization and Post-Colonial
Criticism ] (Beijing: Central Translation and Documentation Press,
1998).
84
84
DISCUSSION
sentiment into a deant third-world or postcolonial approach
confronting Western cultural hegemony’.44 There are similar trends
in South Korea where a group of scholars uses postmodern
tools to deconstruct Western hegemony, but does not consider Korean
structures of power. Rather they argue that Confucianism is the
‘authentic’ Korean (national) culture.45 Thus, ironically, the road
to modernity for many Chinese and East Asians passes through
tradition, but this nativism is a response to the pressures of
globalization that restricts action to the state and scripts an
essential identity. While Song comments that those who promote ‘IR
theory with Chinese characteristics’ are older conservatives, the
young are not exclusively more open or liberal. There is also an
active young conservative movement in China: the Guoxuepai
[Nativists], which needs to be differentiated from the
Guocuipai [National Essence Group], although they often
overlap.
Other groups of scholars resist the urge to simply ‘expand the old
register of hazards to incorporate what are perceived as the
newly emergent dangers …’.46
Rather, they consider how Chinese culture and critical IR theory
can help us re-imagine world politics, yielding a different set of
problems and solutions. Perhaps parallel to the Chinese who have
studied IR in the United States, another cohort has been studying
critical theory, often through literature and cultural studies
programs. They take a critical view toward nativism, without
discarding Chinese characteristics for science. Though this is not
an obvious place to look for IR theory, I would suggest that this
group of texts is useful for addressing the issues of modernity and
globalization. 47
Beyond state-to-state relations, they consider transnational
social, economic, and cultural ows. For example, Tu Wei-ming’s
concept of ‘Cultural China’ seeks to see what possibilities a
transnational identity can provide:
It is true that Cultural China has implications of territory,
nationality, race and
language, but its essential dening characteristic is that it
exceeds the particularities of
territory, nationality, race and language. … Notwithstanding the
rise of Cultural
China’s narrow-minded nationalism and racism, this does not have
the tendency to
dominate the [Cultural China] discourse.48
Thus a broader historical and cultural perspective beyond modern
Europe shows ‘sovereignty’s’ problems, for different civilizations
organize power differently. Like many others, Katzenstein looks to
imperial China for different models and norms of world politics
that do not involve sovereignty:
What was true of ancient China is also true of contemporary world
politics. Sover-
eignty is not the basic dening characteristic of an international
anarchy. Instead there
44. Ben Xu, “‘From modernity to Chineseness”: the rise of nativist
culture theory in post-1989 China’, Positions:
East Asian Cultural Critique 6(1), (Spring 1998), p.
204.
45. William A. Callahan, ‘Negotiating cultural boundaries:
Confucianism and trans/national identity in Korea’, Cultural Values
3(3), (July 1999), pp. 329–364.
46. Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy
and the Politics of Identity , p. ix.
47. Dirlik, What is in a Rim? Critical Perspectives on the
Pacic Rim Idea ; Dirlik and Zhang, Postmodernism
and
China; Tang Xiaobing and Stephen Snyder, eds, In Pursuit of
East Asian Culture (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1996); Xu, “‘From
modernity to Chineseness”: the rise of nativist culture theory in
post-1989 China’.
48. Tu Weiming, ‘Wenhua Zhongguo: Chutan’ [‘Cultural China:
preliminary explorations’], Jiushi Niandai
Yuekan [The Nineties Monthly] 6, (June 1990), p. 60.
85
85
WILLIAM A. CALLAHAN
are numerous examples of various types of sovereignty, which
suggests that sover-
eignty is not an unquestioned foundational institution of
international politics that can
be assumed or analyzed at the level of international system …
Contemporary conicts
in the Russian Federation, for example, offer a telling example …
The Russian
Federation Treaty signed in March 1992 creates three types of units
with various types
of sovereignty inside Russia: sovereign republics, other
administrative units of varying
size and autonomy, and the cities of Moscow and St.
Petersburg.49
He concludes by stating that ‘A fragmented Russia, which hangs
together on some level and not on others, seems perfectly in tune
with the times’.50 While the Russian example represents a negative
model to most Chinese scholars, its questioning of mainstream views
of sovereignty is instructive. We could suggest that the formation
of Greater China is an example of the same trend in the opposite
direction: the informal coming together of a people
outside/alongside formal notions of state sovereignty. 51 Thus
rather than using Chinese concepts to argue for a ‘Chinese
perspective’ or ‘IR theory with Chinese characteristics’, we can
use them as part of the globalization of IR theory. Aihwa Ong’s
book Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of
Transnationality is indicative of this type of
research. Even though the book is set in Greater China, Ong does
not want to be limited by area studies: neither ‘China’ nor ‘Asia’
is mentioned in her title.
The idea of ‘Greater China’ has certainly been exaggerated as
either a threat (to Western security) or an opportunity (for global
capitalism). Beyond the hype that characterized the early 1990s,
Greater China is interesting because it allows for a different set
of IR concepts, a transnational grammar of power and inuence:
civilization, harmony, ‘one country, two systems’, national
humiliation, diaspora, and Cultural China. Beyond the peculiarities
of East Asia, these concepts exemplify current theoretical debates
about the meaning of globalization in how they move from
territorial notions of sovereignty where power is based on an
expansion of economic and political relations—reifying
borders—to popular notions of sover- eignty where power is measured
by movements of people across borders in a qualitative struggle of
cultures and knowledge. Rather than the choice being between
state-centric realism and a world government of idealism, many
theorists are looking for other ways of understanding world order,
in a cosmopolitics that involves such transnational ows.52 This
better describes the nuts and bolts, the day-to-day workings of
transnational politics, moving from nation-state to civiliza- tion
state to transnational economic-culture.
Thus, we can critically use such Chinese concepts (both traditional
and contem- porary) to explain not just Chinese actions; in
addition to general trends in world politics such as
‘globalization’, they can help us reconsider specic articulations
of power. Indeed, the Chinese vocabulary can help us make
sense of the United
49. Katzenstein, The Culture of National Security: Norms and
Identity in World Politics , p. 516.
50. John Slocum in Ibid ., p. 517. 51. See Harry Harding,
‘The concept of “Greater China”: themes, variations and
reservations’, in David
Shambaugh, ed., Greater China: The Next Superpower?
(Oxford: Clarendon Paperbacks, 1995), pp. 8–34.
52. Pheng Cheah and Bruce Robbins, eds, Cosmopolitics:
Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1998).
86
86
DISCUSSION
State’s relationship with Latin America on the one hand, and on the
other, it is useful in explaining the current methods used to
resolve the enduring conict in Northern Ireland with its context in
the Irish diaspora. The ‘Good Friday Agree- ment’ (April 1998) is
fascinating because it evades a simple inside/outside notion of
territorial sovereignty and switches to overlapping notions of
popular sover- eignty: there is a devolution of power to a local
assembly in Northern Ireland, cross-border institutions with the
Republic of Ireland (the North–South Ministerial Council), and a
British–Irish Council consisting of representatives from the
British and Irish governments, as well as from devolved
institutions in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, the Isle of
Man, and the Channel Islands.53 And all of this takes place within
the context of the European Union. This has interesting parallels
with Greater China, albeit in a much more formal way.
Song asks how Chinese scholars could carry out meaningful dialogues
with their counterparts in the outside world if they pay too much
attention to ‘Chinese characteristics’. My answer is that to have a
meaningful conversation, there must be different points of view;54
and Americans love ‘exotic’ things. There are many sources outside
international studies institutions— Confucian studies, literature,
anthropology, public opinion—that talk about the same issues as IR
theorists: peace and war, tradition and/or/in modernity,
localism/nationalism/globalization.
Rather than framing China’s foreign policy predicament as a
question of either joining or resisting the West, critical IR
theory helps us ask a different set of questions. Certainly,
many intellectuals in both China and the United States are
concerned about the re-emergence of China, asking whether it is a
responsible or renegade power. One can use critical IR theory to
deconstruct such issues and question just how we lend coherence to
ideas of ‘China’ and ‘the West’, and whether we can really
attribute some ‘intentionality’ to their actions. Critical security
studies, for example, uses postmodern tools to deconstruct military
rhetoric and policy.
More interestingly, looking at Greater China in terms of
transnational ows yields a different set of questions: the relation
between identity and politics, between culture and economics. This
decentres analysis and helps us gure a different sort of
transnational political economy that is an important element in
both state planning and the neoliberal activities of the overseas
Chinese tycoons. Rather than making policy for states, such
analysis considers politics in other, often more informal, arenas:
business plans, popular culture, and the culture of stock markets
and real estate development.55 The contest is not between some
‘American’ or ‘Chinese’ governments located in Washington and
Beijing, and facing each other on opposite sides of the Pacic.
Rather, this transnational politics involves ows of capital,
people, and knowledge through a network of nodes, multiple centres
of
53. The Good Friday Agreement can be read on the website of
the Irish Times, www.Ireland.com.
54. In discussing harmony, the classical Chinese text the Guo
Yu concludes: ‘A single note is not pleasing to the ear; a
single object is not rich in design; a single avor is not
satisfying to the palate; a single opinion about things does not
make a conversation’ (SPTK 16/Zheng Yu).
55. See, for example, Ackbar Abbas, Hong Kong: Culture and
the Politics of Disappearance (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1997).
87
87
power: Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore, Taipei, Beijing, Los
Angeles, Guangzhou, New York, Tianjin, Shenzhen, Vancouver, and
Bangkok.
Conclusion
Song’s essay is interesting because one can engage with it in a
rousing conver- sation: agreeing, disagreeing, qualifying,
asserting. Each of us is looking across the ocean at the other,
intrigued with a different set of concepts. Both of us take a
critical view of our own ‘tradition’, and our pair of essays
consists of mutual warnings, as well as mutual encouragement. Song
warns us not to romanticize Chinese concepts and risk being drawn
up into the power game of ‘with Chinese characteristics’. I warn
him of the serious intellectual and political problems that
scientism entails. More to the point, we are each speaking less
from our identity as ‘citizens’ representing nation-states, and
more from a theoretical identity: Song promotes scientic IPE, while
I promote critical IR theory and transnational cultural-economics.
That signicantly alters the basis of our conversation, shifting it
to a different, and I would say, more productive space.
88
88
129
Chapter
8
194
Appendix
211
Bibliography
223
Index
241
1
book
with three a ims in mind: f ir st , to examine theories
of
inter
some claim to
pol
of
required preliminary to
the
accom
plishment of these tasks is to say what theories are and to state
the requirements
for testing them.
I
Students of international polit ics use the term theory
freely, often to cover any
work tha t
departs from mere description and seldom to refer only to work
that
meets philosophy-of-science
standards. The
aims I intend to pursue require that
definitions of the key terms theory and law be carefully chosen.
Whereas two
definitions of
theory
vie for accep tance, a s imple def in it ion o f l aw is
widely
accepted. Laws establish relat ions between variables, variables
being concepts
t ha t c an take different values. If a, then b, where a stands
for
one
or more
independent variables
and b stands for the dependent variable: Inform, this is the
statement
is invariant, the law is
abso
lute. If the relation is highly constant, though no t invariant,
the
law
would read
l ike this: If a, then b with probability x. A law is based not
simply
on
one that
has been found repeatedly. Repetition gives
rise to the expectation that if I f ind a in the future, then with
specified probability
I wil l a lso f ind b
In the
imputation of necessity. In the social sciences to ay
that persons of specified
income
vote
Democratic with a certain probability is t o make a law-like
state
ment.
The
word
like implies a lesser sense of necessity. Still, the
statement
would
not be at a ll l ike a law unless the relation
hadso often and
Among the depressing features of international-political studies is
the small gain
in explanatory power
from the large amount of work done i n
recent decades. Nothing seems to accumulate, not even criticism.
Instead, the
same sorts of
and the same sorts of errors
are repeated. Rather
veys available, I shall concentrate
attention
a few theories illustrating different approaches. Doing so will
incline
ou r thoughts
more toward the possibilities limitations of different types of
theory and less
toward the strengths and weaknesses of particular theorists.
I
Theories of international politics can be sor ted out in a number
of ways. Else
where I have distinguished explanations of international politics,
and especially
efforts to locate the causesof
wa r and to define theconditions
of peace, according
to the level at
which causes are located-whether in man, the state, or the
state
system (1954, 1959). A sti ll s impler may
be made,
theories according to whether they are reductionist or systemic.
Theories of inter
national politics that concentrate causes at the individual
or
the
intemationallevel
as
on reductionist theories.
With a reductionist approach, the whole is understood by knowing
the
attributes and the interactions of its parts.
The effort to explain the behavior of a
group
as
international politics
by studying
the once widespread
and
Reductionist Theories 19
the reductionist approach, then, is that the whole shall be known
through
the
study
happens that the reductionist finds himself using
the methods
subject matter. A
priori, one cannot say whether reduction will suffice. The question
of adequacy
has to be answered through examining the matter to be explained
and
by observ
ing the results achieved.
The one time r age for r educ ti on among biologists may have
been
unfor
tunate.
chemistry made the reductionist path enticing. In our field,
the
reductionist
work done at
the inter
national-political level t han f rom the successes of o ther
possibly
pertinent
dis
ciplines.
Many have t ried to explain international-political event s i n t
erms of
psychological factors or
social-psychological phenomena or
least some o f these cases, the possibly ger
mane factors are explained by
theories of somewhat more power
than
theories of
international politics have been able to generate. In no case,
however, are those
nonpolitical theories strong enough to provide reliable
explanations or predic
tions.
politics
the
prominent. This urge can
be further explaIned by adding
a pract ical reason to the theoretical reason jus t g iven . I t
must
often seem that
national decisions
and actions account for mos t of wha t happerrs in t he
world.
How can
major
power's
answers to
such questions as these: Should it spend more or less on
defense? Should it make nuclearw eapons or not? Should it
stand
fast an fight or
retreat and seek peace? National decisions an d activities seem
to
b e o f over
whelming importance. This practical condition, together with the
fai lu re of
international-political theories to provide either convincing
explanations
or
ser
temptation
of imperialism developed by Hobson and Lenin is the
best of such approaches. t By best I mean no t
necessarily correct
bu t
incorporating
only a few e lements , it c la ims to explain the mos t impor tant
o f
international-political events-not merely imperialism bu t also
most, if no t all,
modern wars-and even to ind icate the condi tions tha t
would
unlike
and Lenin's theories are
no t identical, bu t they are highly similar and largely
compatible.
of systems theory
might serve better. Explaining international politics in
nonpo
litical terms does no t require reducing international to national
politics. One must
carefully distinguish between reduction from system to unit level
and explanation
of political outcomes, whether national
or international, by reference to some
other system. Karl Marx tried to
explain the politics of nations
by their eco
by the effects the
capitalistworld-economy has on them
(September 1974). One
useful point is thereby suggested, although it is a point that
Wallerstein strongly
rejects: namely, that different national and international systems
coexist and
interact . The interstate system is
not
conceive of. Wallerstein
shows in many interesting ways how the world eco
nomic system affects national and international politics. But
claiming that eco
nomics affects politics isno denial of the claim that
politicsaffects economics and
that some political outcomes have political causes.
Wallersteinargues that Jlin
the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries there has been only one
world-system in exis
tence, the capitalist world-economy (p. 390). The argument confuses
theory
with reality and identifies a model of a theory
with
the real world, errors identi
f ied in Chapter 1. An international-political theory serves
primari ly to explain
international-political
outcomes. It also tells us something about the foreign poli
cies of states and about their economic and
other interactions. But saying that a
theory about international economics tells us something about
politics,
and
about international politics tells us something about economi.cs,
does not
mean that one such theory can subst i tu te for the other. In tel
ling us something
about livingbeings, chemistry does
structed? Alan C. I saak argues that political science
has
Systemic Approaches and Theories
and social theories, theories that
claim to explain political outcomes without the use of political
concepts
or
vari
ables. If capitalism,
then imperialism is a purported economic l aw o f politics, a
law that various economic
theories to explain them1 Those who have
essayed systems theories of
international politics implicitly claim tha t we can , for
a theory of international politics is systemic only i f i t f inds
par t of the explanation
of
outcomes at the international-political level.
This chapter examines approaches to international politics t ha t a
re both
political and
question is to compare analytic with systemic approaches.
Th e
physics an d because of it s immense
success
often thought of as the method of science, requires reducing the
enti ty to i ts dis
crete parts
and examining thei properties an d connections. The whole is
under
stood
by
by observing th e
relat ions between them. By controlled experiments, the relation
between each
pai r of variables is separately examined. After similarly
examining
other
pairs,
an equation
statement
of
a causal law. Th e elements, disjoined and understood i n t he ir s
im
plicity, are
or aggregated to remake the whole, with times and masses
added as scalars and the relations among their distances and forces
added accord
ing to the vector laws of
addition (see,
Horvath 1959).
This is t he analytic method. It works, and works wonderfully,
where rela
tions among several factors c an be
resolved
and where the assumption
that perturbing not included in the variables are small.
analy
tic
procedure
is simpler, i t i s preferred to a systems
approach.
But analysis is no t
always sufficient. It will be sufficient only where systems-level
effects are absent
or
are weak enough to be ignored . It will be insufficient, and a
systems approach
will
only
nections of variables bu t also by the wa y
in
which
they are organized.
If the organization of units affects their behavior and their
interactions, then
one
cannot predict outcomes or understand them merely by knowing the
charac
teristics, purposes, and interactions of the system's units. The
failure of the reduc
tionist theories
considered in Chapter 2 gives us some reason to believe that a
sys
tems approach is needed. Where similarity of outcomes prevails
despite changes
in
the agents that seem to
p roduce t hem, one is l ed to suspect that analytic
approaches
on the agents or is inter
posed between them and the outcomes their actions contr ibute to.
In interna
tional politics, systems-level forces seem to
be at
Chapters 2 and 3 are
highly crit ical . Crit icism is a negative task that is
supposed
to hav positive payoffs.
To gain them, I sha ll in thi s chapter first reflect on the
theoretical defects revealed in previous pages and then saywhat a
systems theory
of internationalpolitics comprises and what it can and
cannot
accomplish.
I
In one way another, theories of international politics, whether
reductionist
systemic, deal with events at all levels, from thesubnational to
thesupranational.
Theories are reductionist or systemic,
not
bu t
according to how they arrange their materials. Reductionist th
eories explain
international outcomes through elements and combinations of
elements located
at national or subnationallevels. That internal forces produce
external outcomes
is the claim of such theories.
N X
is their pattern. The international sys
tem, if conceivedofa t all, is t aken tobe merely an
outcome.
about the behavior of parts . Once the
theory that explains the behavior of the par ts is fashioned, no
further effort is
required. According to the theor ies of imperialism examined in
Chapter 2, for
example, international outcomes
produced by
the separate states, and the behavior of each of them is explained
through its
internal characteristics. Hobson's theory, taken
as a general one, is a theory
about the workings of national economies. Giyen certain conditions,
it explains
why demand slackens, why production falls, and
why resources are under
employed. From a knowledge of how capitalist economies work,
Hobson
believed he could infer the external behavior of capitalist states.
He made the
error of predicting outcomes from attributes. To t ry to
do
looking the differencebetween these two statements: He is a
troublemaker.
He
makes trouble. The second statement does not follow f rom the first
one if the
Reductionist and Systemic Theories 61
attributes of actor s do
no t
uniquely determine outcomes. Just as peacemakers
may fai l to make peace, so troublemakers may fail to make trouble.
From attri
butes one cannot predict outcomes if outcomes depend on the
situations of the
actors as well as on their attributes.
Few, i t seems , can consistently escape from the belief that
intemational
political
like. Hobson's error has been made
by almost everyone, at least f rom the n ine
teenth century onward. In
politics, all
of the states were monarchies, an d most of them absolute
ones. Was the power
because authoritarian states
national
began to take place in Europe and America most
strikingly in 1789. For some, democracy became the form of the
state that would
make the world a peaceful one; for others,
later , i t was socialism that would turn
the trick. Not simply wa r an d peace, moreover, bu t
international
politics in gen
states
transnational actors whose behav
Political scientists,
systems by reducing
to their interacting parts. For two reasons, the lumping
of historically minded tradit ionalists and scientifically oriented
modernists
together may seem odd. First, the difference in the methods they
use obscures the
similarity of their methodology, that is,
of
Second, their different
the
Tradi
politics, a distinction that
on
the
difference between politics conducted in a condition of settled
rules an politics
conducted in a condition
dis
tinctive quality of international poli tics in lithe absence of
a
tribunal
the plurality
war
(1967,
p.
192).
David
explanatory,
of
analysis:
the
nationaland the international (1961). In his examination, he fails
even to mention
the
contextual
overlooked or
denied, then the qualitative difference of internal an d external
politics disappears
or neverwas. And that is indeed the conclusion that modernists
reach. The differ
ence
absolute control: These different causes produce identical results.
From unifor
mity of outcomes onecannot infer that the attributes and the
interactions of the
par ts of a sys tem have remained constant . Structure
may
determine outcomes
aside from changes at the level of the units and aside from the
disappearance of
some of them and the emergence of others. Different causes
may
produce the
have different consequences. Unless one
knows how
The effect of
the
interactions of the elements within it. A system that is
independent of initial con
ditions is said to display equifinali ty. If i t does, lithe system
is then its own best
explanation, and the study
meth
odology (Watzlawick, et al., 1967, p. 129; cf. p. 32) Ifstructure
influences with
out determining, then one must
ask
of a
realm accounts for outcomes a nd how and to what extent the units
account for
outcomes. Structure has t o be studied
in its own right as do units. To claim t o be
following a systems approach or to
be constructing a systems theory requires one
to show
how system and unit levels can be distinctly defined. Failure to
mark and
preserve the distinction between structure, on the one
hand,
and units and pro
cesses, on the other, makes it impossible to disentangle causes of
different sorts
an d to distinguish between causes and effects. Blurring the
distinction between
the different levels of a system has, I believe, been the major
impediment t o t he
development of theories about international politics. The next
chapter shows
how to define political structures in a way
that makes the construction of a sys
tems theory possible.
that international-political outcomes
be
approaches mingle
and confuse systems-level with unit-level causes. on
theories that follow the general-systems model,
we
concluded at once that Inter
national politics does no t
fit the model closely enough to make the model usefu l
and
be
understood.
To
has to show
c an be
conceived of as a domain dist inct from the economic, social,
other
international domains t ha t one may conceive of. To mark
international-political
systems off from
political structures are
how
they affect, and are affected by, the uni ts of the system. How
can
we
conceive of international politics as a distinct system1 What is i
t
that intervenes
To answer these questions, this chapter first examines
the concept of SOCIal struc
ture an d then defines structure
as a concept appropriate for national and for
inter
system-wide component that
The
IS
attributes
behavior,
an d their interactions. Why must those obviously
important be omitted1 They mus t be omitted so tha t we can
distinquish
between variables at the level
of the units and variables at the level
of the system.
Anarchic Structures nd
Balances of Power
Two tasks remain: f irst , to examine the characterist ics of
anarchy and the
expectations about
outcomes associated with anarchic rea lms; s econd, to
examine the ways in which expectationsvary as the structure of an
anarchic sys
tem changes through changes in the distribution
of capabilities across nations.
The second task, undertaken in 7, 8, and 9, requires comparing
differ
ent international systems. The first, which I now
turn to, is best accomplished
by
and outcomes in anarchic
1. VIOLENCE AT HOME AND ABROAD
The state among states, i t is often said, conducts i ts a ffa irs
in the brooding
shadow of violence. Because some states may at any t ime use force,
a ll s ta tes
must be prepared
mercy of their militarily more
vigorous
neighbors. Among states, the stateof nature is a state of
war. This is meant
but
in the sense that,
with each state deciding
for itself whether o r not to use force, war may a t any time break
out. Whether in
the family , th e community, or the wor ld a t large, contact
without a t least
occasional conflict is inconceivable;
an agent
to manage
or
to
manipulate confl icting part ies the use of force will always
be
avoided canno t be realistically entertained.
Among
men as among states,
anarchy, or the absence of government, is associated with the
occurrence of
violence.
The threat of violence and the recurrent use of force are said to
distinguish
international from national affai rs . But in the history
of the world surely most
rulers have had to
bear
i n m ind tha t their subjects might use force to resist
or
Anarchic Orders and Balances of Power 103
overthrow them. If the absence of government is associated with t
he t hr ea t o f
violence, so a lso is i ts presence. A haphazard list of
national tragedies illustrates
the point all too well. The most destructive wars of the
hundred
years
following
the defeat of Napoleon took place not among states bu t within
them. Estimates of
deaths in China's Taiping Rebellion, which began in 1851 and las
ted 13 years,
range as high as 20 mill ion. In the American Civil War some 600
thousand people
lost their l ives. In more recent history, forced collectivization
and Stalin's purges
eliminated five million Russians,
some Latin American countries, coups d'etats
and rebellions have been normal
features of national l ife. Between 1948
and
civil strife. In the middle 19705 most inhabitants of Idi
Amin's Uganda
must have fel t their l ives becoming nasty, brutish,
and
short,
nature.
If such cases constitute aberrations,
t hey a re uncomfortably common one s. We easily lose sight of the
fact
that
power,
kind
of justice within states, may be bloodier than wars among
them.
If anarchy is identified with
chaos, destruction, and death, then
the
distinc
tion between anarchy and government does not tel l us much. Which
is more pre
carious: the life of a state among states, or
of a government in relation to its sub
jects?
some times,
the actual or expected occurrenceof violence is low. Within some
states
at
some
or
expected occurrence of violence is high. The use of force, or
the constant fear of i ts use, are no t sufficient grounds for
distinguishing inter
national
from
an d the actual use of force mark
both
national an d international orders, then no durable distinction
between the
two realms can
be
drawn in terms of the use or the nonuse of force . No human
order is proof
must
look
distinction
between international an d national realms of politics is not found
in
the use
or
the
nonuse of force bu t in their different structures. But the
dangers o f being
violently attacked are greater , say, in taking an evening stroll
through
downtown
are in picnicking along the French and
German border,
practical difference does the difference of s truc ture make?
Nationally
as
internationally,
contact
Th e dif
ference between national and international politics lies not in the
use of force bu t
in the different modes of
organization for doing something
of legitimacy, arrogates to itself the right to use
force-that is, to
apply a variety
by
its
government
has
on
128 Chapter 6
tude was well expressed by Tro tsky , who , when a sked wha t he
would do as
foreign minister, replied, I wil l issue
some revolutionary proclamations to
joint (quoted
235). In a com
petitive arena, however, one party may need the assistance of
others. Refusal to
play the political game may risk one's own destruction. The
pressures of competi
tion were rapidly felt and reflected in the Soviet Union's
diplomacy. Thus Lenin,
sending foreign minister Chicherin to the Genoa Conference of 1922,
bade him
farewell with this caution: Avoid big words (quoted in Moore
1950, p. 204).
Chicherin, who personified the carefully tailored traditional
diplomat
rather
than
was to refrain from inflammatory rhetoric
f or t he sake of working deals. These he successfully completed
with that other
pariah
power and ideological enemy, Germany.
The close juxtaposition of states promotes their sameness through
the disad
vantages that arise from a f ai lu re t o conform to success fu l p
ract ices . I t is thi s
sameness, an effect of the system, that is so often
attributed to the acceptance of
so-called rules of state behavior. Chiliastic rulers occasionally
come to power. In
power, most of them quickly
change their ways. They can refuse to do so , and
yet hope to survive, only if they rule countries little affected by
the
competition
of states. The socialization of nonconformist states proceeds at a
pac e that i s set
by
the extent of their involvement in the sys tem. And tha t is
another testable
statement.
leads to many expectations about behaviors and outcomes. From
the theory, one predicts that states will engage in balancing
behavior, whether or
not
balanced
tendency
toward balance in the system. The expectation is not tha t a
balance,
once achieved, wil l be maintained, bu t that a balance , once
disrupted, will be
restored in one way o r another. Balances of power recurrently
form. S ince the
theory depicts international politics as a competitive
system,
one
namely, that they will imitate each other
and become socialized to their system.
In this chapter, I have suggested ways of making these propositions
more specific
and concreteso as to test them. In remaining chapters, as the
theory
systems and
showed how
behav
ior and outcomes vary from one system to another. Chapter 7, 8, and
9 compare
different international systems and show how behavior
and
outcomes vary in
systems whose ordering principles endure bu t whose structures vary
through
changes in the distribution of capabilities across states. The
question posed in this
chapter is whether we should
prefer larger or smaller numbers of great
powers.
I
How
should we count poles, a nd how can we measure power? These
questions
must be answered in order to identify variations of structure.
Almost everyone
agrees that
the was bipolar.
Few seem believe
that i t remains so. For years Walter Lippmann wrote of the bipolar
worldas being
perpetually i n t he process of rapidly passing away (e.g., 1950
and 1963). Many
others now carry on the t radi tion he so firmly established. To
reach the conclu
sion that bipolarity is passing, or 'past, requires some odd
counting. The inclina
tion to count infunny ways is rooted in the desire to arrive at a
particular answer.
Scholars feel a strong affection for the balance-of-power world of
Metternich an d
Bismarck, on which many of their theoretical notions rest.
That
maneuvered for
advantage. Great
Stu
a t o ther conditions. The ability
or inability of states to solve problems is said to raise
or
the next one were written as a study of interdependence
for the Department of State, whose views
may
160 Chapter 7
compared to those of chess. Neither game can be successfully played
unless the
So fa r I have
shown that smaller are better than larger numbers, at least
for
those states at the top. Defining the concept, and examining the
economics, of
interdependence didnot establish just which small number is best
ofal l. We could
not answer that question because economic interdependence
varieswith the size
of great powers
and their size does not correlate perfectly with their number.
In
the next chapter, examination of mil it ary interdependence leads
to an exact
answer.
8
Structural
Causes
nd
say tha t few are better
than many is
not to sa y th at two is b est o f all. The
stabili ty of pairs-of corporations,
of
polit ical part ies, of marriage partners-has often been
appreciated. Although
most students of international politics probably bel ieve tha t sys
tems of many
great powerswould be unstable, they resist the widespread
notion
that
two is the
best of small numbers. Are they right t o do so? For the sake
ofstabili ty, peace, or
whatever, should we prefer a wor ld of two great powers
or a world of several or
more? Chapter
8 will show why two is t he bes t o f small numbers. We
reached
some conclusions,
by
considering economic interdependence.
Problems of national security in multi- and bipolar worlds do
clearly show the
advantages of having two great powers, an d
only
of dif
was
no t
by having two, three, four, or
more principal parties in a system. We must do so
now. By what criteria do we determine t ha t a n system
changes,
and
conversely,
Political scientists often
stability. I did
this in 1964
effective management of international affairs, which are the
respective concerns
of this chapter and the next one. I t is important, I now
believe,
to keep different
Anarchic systems are transformed
by changes in organizing principle
and by consequential changes in the number of their principal
parties. To saytha t
an international-political system is stable means
two things: first,
International ffairs
If power does not reliably bring control , what does it do for you?
Four things,
primarily. First, power
wield. Second, greater power permits wider ranges of
action, while leaving the outcomes of action uncertain. These two
advantages we
have discussed. The next two require elaboration.
Third, the more powerful enjoy
wider margins of safety in dealing
with
the
less
will be played and
Schnore
have defined power in eco logica l t erms as lithe ability of
one cluster of activities or niches to set the conditions under
which others must
function (1959,
independent
ones, bu t the latter have more effect on the former. The weak lead
perilous lives.
As Chrysler's chairman, John Riccardo, remarked: We've got to be
right. The
smaller you are , the more right you've got to be
(Salpukas,
March 7,
1976, III,
p. 1). General Motors can lose money on this model o r t ha t one,
or on all of
them, for qui te a long time. Chrysler, if i t d oe s so, goe s
bankrupt. they cor
porations
or states, those who ar e wea k a nd hard pressed have to be
careful.
Thus with the following words Nguyen Van Thieu rejected the
agreement for
ending the wa r in Vietnam that Kissinger, the ally, and Le
Duc
Tho,
of 1972:
You are a giant, Dr. Kissinger. So you can probably afford
theluxuryof being
easy in this agreement. I cannot. A bad agreement means nothing to
you. What
is the loss of South Vietnam if
you look at the world's map1 Just a speck. The
loss of South Vietnam may even be good for you. It may be good to
contain
China, good for
your world strategy. Buta little Vietnamesedoesn't playwith a
strategic map of the world. For us, i t i sn 't a questionof
choosing between Mos
cow
and Peking. It is a question of choosing between lifeand death
(quoted in
Stoessinger
Weak states operate on
mistimed moves
strong states can
More sensibly, they can react slowly and
wait to see
apparently
threatening act s o f o thers a re t ru ly so. They can be
indifferent
to
most
threats
because only a few threats, if carried through, can damage them
gravely. They
can hold
moment for effective action will
be lost.
Fourth, great power gives i ts possessors a big stake in their
system
and
the
ability t o a ct for i ts sake. For them management becomes both
worthwhile and
possible. To
why managerial tasks
are performed internationally
is the subject of this chapter. In self-help systems, as we know
competing parties
consider relat ive gains more importan t
than
become more important as competition lessens. conditions make it
possible
for the United States and the Soviet Union to be concerned
less
with scoring rela
tive gains and
more
with making absolute ones. Th f ir s is the stability of
two
second-s