The Oxford Handbook of Peaceful Change in International Relations 9780190097356, 9780190097363, 9780190097387, 9780190097370, 0190097353

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T h e Ox f o r d H a n d b o o k o f

PE AC E F U L C H A NGE I N I N T E R NAT IONA L R E L AT IONS

The Oxford Handbook of

PEACEFUL CHANGE IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Edited by

T. V. PAUL, DEBORAH WELCH LARSON, HAROLD A. TRINKUNAS, ANDERS WIVEL, and

RALF EMMERS

1

1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2022 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Names: Paul, T. V., editor. Title: The Oxford handbook of peaceful change in international relations / edited by T.V. Paul, Deborah Welch Larson, Harold A. Trinkunas, Anders Wivel, and Ralf Emmers. Other titles: Handbook of peaceful change in international relations Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2021008570 (print) | LCCN 2021008571 (ebook) | ISBN 9780190097356 (hardback) | ISBN 9780190097363 (ebook) | ISBN 9780190097387 (epub) | ISBN 9780190097370 (ebook other) Subjects: LCSH: Peaceful change (International relations)—History— 20th century. | Peaceful change (International relations)—History— 21st century. | World politics—20th century. | World politics—21st century. Classification: LCC JZ5560.O84 2021 (print) | LCC JZ5560 (ebook) | DDC 327.1/72—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021008570 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021008571 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America.

Contents

About the Editorsix Contributorsxi Acknowledgmentsxv

PA RT I   I N T RODU C T ION 1. The Study of Peaceful Change in World Politics T. V. Paul

3

PA RT I I   H I STOR IC A L P E R SP E C T I V E S 2. Peaceful Change: The Interwar Era and the Disciplinary Context Torbjørn L. Knutsen

29

3. Peaceful Change after the World Wars Peter Marcus Kristensen

47

4. Peaceful Change: The Post–Cold War Evolution Jeffrey W. Taliaferro

67

PA RT I I I   T H E OR E T IC A L P E R SP E C T I V E S 5. Realism and Peaceful Change: A Structural and Neoclassical Realist First-­Cut Joshua Shifrinson

89

6. Liberalism and Peaceful Change Alexandra Gheciu

111

7. International Institutions and Peaceful Change Frédéric Mérand and Vincent Pouliot

129

8. Economic Interdependence, Globalization, and Peaceful Change John Ravenhill

147

vi   contents

9. Constructivism and Peaceful Change Erna Burai and Stephanie C. Hofmann 10. Peaceful Change in English School Theory: Great Power Management and Regional Order Cornelia Navari

169

191

11. Critical Theories and Change in International Relations Annette Freyberg-­Inan

205

12. Gender and Peaceful Change Karin Aggestam and Annika Bergman Rosamond

221

13. Civilization, Religion, and Peaceful and Non-­Peaceful Change in Asia Victoria Tin-­bor Hui 14. Evolutionary Theorization of Peaceful International Changes Shiping Tang

239 261

PA RT I V   T H E S OU RC E S OF C HA N G E 15. International Law and Peaceful Change Jennifer M. Welsh

281

16. Nuclear Weapons and Peaceful Change Michal Smetana

301

17. The Political Economy of Peaceful Change Lars S. Skålnes

319

18. Climate Change, Collective Action, and Peaceful Change Ashok Swain

337

19. Democracy, Global Governance, and Peaceful Change Thomas Davies

351

20. Status Quest and Peaceful Change Xiaoyu Pu

369

21. Science, Technology, and Peaceful Change in World Politics Anne L. Clunan

385

22. Transnational Social Movements and Peaceful Change Alejandro Milcíades Peña

407

contents   vii

PA RT V   G R E AT P OW E R S , R I SI N G P OW E R S , A N D P E AC E F U L C HA N G E 23. Peaceful Change in US Foreign Policy Deborah Welch Larson

429

24. China’s Peaceful Rise: From Narrative to Practice Kai He and Feng Liu

445

25. Russia and Peaceful Change: From Gorbachev to Putin Andrej Krickovic

463

26. Germany and Peaceful Change Klaus Brummer

481

27. Japan and Peaceful Change in the International System: The Persistent Peace Nation Thomas U. Berger

501

28. India and Peaceful Change Manjeet S. Pardesi

515

29. South Africa and the Idea of Peaceful Change Peter Vale

535

30. Indonesia’s Contributions to Peaceful Change in International Affairs551 Dewi Fortuna Anwar

PA RT V I   R E G IONA L P E R SP E C T I V E S 31. Peaceful Change in Western Europe: From Balance of Power to Political Community? Anders Wivel 32. Origins and Evolution of the North American Stable Peace David G. Haglund 33. Latin America’s Evolving Contribution to Peaceful Change in the International System: A Stony Road Harold A. Trinkunas 34. Peaceful Change in Africa Markus Kornprobst

569 587

603 621

viii   contents

35. Peaceful Change in Southeast Asia: The Historical and Institutional Bases Ralf Emmers and Mely Caballero-­Anthony 36. South Asia’s Limited Progress toward Peaceful Change Rajesh Basrur and Kate Sullivan de Estrada 37. Peaceful Change in Northeast Asia: Maintaining the “Minimal Peace” Bhubhindar Singh

643 663

683

38. The Middle East and Peaceful Change Arie M. Kacowicz and Galia Press-­Barnathan

703

39. Explaining Peaceful Change in Central and Eastern Europe Alexander Tabachnik and Benjamin Miller

721

40. Central Asia: A Decolonial Perspective on Peaceful Change Timur Dadabaev and John Heathershaw

745

PA RT V I I   C ON C LU SION S 41. A Research Agenda for the Study of Peaceful Change in World Politics Deborah Welch Larson, T. V. Paul, Harold A. Trinkunas, Anders Wivel, and Ralf Emmers Index

763

779

About the Editors

T. V. Paul is the James McGill Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science at McGill University, Montreal, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He served as the president of the International Studies Association (ISA) from 2016 to 2017. He is also the founding director of the Global Research Network on Peaceful Change (GRENPEC). Paul has published twenty-­one books and over seventy-­ five scholarly articles and book chapters in the fields of international relations, international security, and South Asia. His most recent book is Restraining Great Powers: Soft Balancing from Empires to the Global Era (Yale University Press, 2018). Deborah Welch Larson is professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, with a research interest in international security and political psychology. Her publications include Quest for Status: Chinese and Russian Foreign Policy (Yale University Press, 2019; with Alexei Shevchenko); Origins of Containment: A Psychological Explanation (Princeton University Press, 1985); and Anatomy of Mistrust: US–Soviet Relations during the Cold War (Cornell University Press, 1997). Harold A. Trinkunas is the deputy director of and a senior research scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. Prior to arriving at Stanford, Trinkunas served as the Charles  W.  Robinson Chair and senior fellow and director of the Latin America Initiative in the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. Trinkunas has also previously served as an associate professor and chair of the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He has authored or edited eight books, the most recent of which is Three Tweets to Midnight: Effects of the Global Information Ecosystem on the Risk of Nuclear Conflict (Hoover Institution Press, 2020). Anders Wivel is professor of international relations in the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen. His research interests include foreign policy, in particular the foreign policies of small states, and international relations theory, in particular the realist tradition. His work has been published in academic journals including Cooperation and Conflict, International Studies Review, Journal of Common Market Studies, and European Security, among others. His recent books include International Institutions and Power Politics: Bridging the Divide (Georgetown University Press, 2019; coedited with T. V. Paul) and Handbook on the Politics of Small States (Edward Elgar, 2020; coedited with Godfrey Baldacchino).

x   about the editors Ralf Emmers is professor of international relations and dean at the S.  Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. His research interests cover security studies, international institutions in the Asia Pacific, and the security and international politics of Southeast Asia. Emmers is the author and editor of eleven books and has published numerous scholarly articles and book chapters on Asian security. His books include Cooperative Security and the Balance of Power in ASEAN and the ARF (RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), Geopolitics and Maritime Territorial Disputes in East Asia (Routledge, 2010), and Security Strategies of Middle Powers in the Asia Pacific (Melbourne University Press, 2018; with Sarah Teo).

Contributors

Karin Aggestam is professor of political science at Lund University. Dewi Fortuna Anwar  is research professor at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) Center for Political Studies. Rajesh Basrur  is senior fellow at the S.  Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Thomas U. Berger is professor of international relations at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. Annika Bergman Rosamond is associate professor in political science and international relations at Lund University. Klaus Brummer  is professor of international relations at Catholic University Eichstätt-­Ingolstadt. Erna Burai  is postdoctoral researcher at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva. Mely Caballero-­Anthony  is professor and head of the Centre for Non-­Traditional Security Studies at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Anne L. Clunan is associate professor of national security at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), Monterey, California. Timur Dadabaev is professor of international relations and the director of the Special Program for Japanese and Eurasian Studies at the Graduate School of Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Tsukuba, Japan. Thomas Davies  is senior lecturer in international politics at the City University of London. Ralf Emmers  is professor of international relations and dean at the S.  Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. Annette Freyberg-­Inan  is professor of international relations at the University of Amsterdam. Alexandra Gheciu  is professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs and associate director of the Centre for International Policy Studies at the University of Ottawa.

xii   contributors David  G.  Haglund  is professor in the Department of Political Studies at Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario. Kai He is professor of international relations and Director of the Centre for Governance and Public Policy at Griffith University, Australia. John Heathershaw is professor of politics at the University of Exeter. Stephanie C. Hofmann is professor in the Department of International Relations and Political Science at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva. Victoria Tin-bor Hui  is associate professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame. Arie  M.  Kacowicz  is professor in the Department of International Relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Torbjørn L. Knutsen is professor in the Department of Sociology and Political Science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Markus Kornprobst  is professor of international relations at the Vienna School of International Studies. Andrej Krickovic  is associate professor in the Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow. Peter Marcus Kristensen is associate professor of political science at the University of Copenhagen. Deborah Welch Larson is professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles. Feng Liu professor of international relations at the School of Social Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. Frédéric Mérand is professor of political science and scientific director of the Centre for International Studies (CÉRIUM) at the University of Montréal. Benjamin Miller is full professor of international relations at the University of Haifa. Cornelia Navari  is Visiting Professor of International Affairs at the University of Buckingham. Manjeet S. Pardesi is senior lecturer in the Political Science and International Relations Programme at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. T. V. Paul is the James McGill Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science at McGill University, Montreal, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

contributors   xiii Alejandro Milcíades Peña  is senior lecturer in the Department of Politics at the University of York. Vincent Pouliot is James McGill Professor of Political Science at McGill University. Galia Press-­Barnathan is professor in the Department of International Relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Xiaoyu Pu is associate professor of political science at the University of Nevada, Reno. John Ravenhill is professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Waterloo. Joshua Shifrinson is assistant professor of international relations at Boston University. Bhubhindar Singh is associate professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. Lars S. Skålnes is associate professor of political science at the University of Oregon. Michal Smetana  is research fellow and assistant professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University, Prague. Kate Sullivan de Estrada is associate professor in the international relations of South Asia in the Department of Politics and International Relations, and director of South Asian Studies, at the University of Oxford. Ashok Swain is professor of peace and conflict research, UNESCO Chair of International Water Cooperation, at Uppsala University. Alexander Tabachnik is research fellow at the Center for Cyber, Law and Policy (CCLP) at the University of Haifa. Jeffrey W. Taliaferro is professor of political science at Tufts University. Shiping Tang  is Fudan Distinguished Professor and the Dr. Seaker Chan Chair Professor at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs at Fudan University, Shanghai. Harold A. Trinkunas is deputy director of and senior research scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. Peter Vale is Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship at the University of Pretoria, and Nelson Mandela Professor of Politics Emeritus, Rhodes University, South Africa. Jennifer M. Welsh is professor of international relations, Canada 150 Research Chair in Global Governance and Security, and director of the Centre for International Peace and Security Studies (CIPSS) at McGill University. Anders Wivel  is professor of international relations in the Department of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen.

Acknowledgments

This Handbook is a major collaborative endeavor initiated by the Global Research Network on Peaceful Change (GRENPEC), which was inaugurated in March 2019 at the International Studies Association (ISA) Annual Convention in Toronto. The network consists of numerous scholars and institutions from various parts of the world who share an interest in furthering research and scholarship in the subject area of peaceful transformation. GRENPEC originated from the 2017 ISA annual conference theme “Change in World Politics” during the presidency of T. V. Paul and a realization among collaborators that there was a dearth of studies on peaceful change in IR. Accordingly, we have tried to reinvigorate research on this subject through this Handbook and several other collaborative projects currently underway. We want to thank our contributors, who despite the extraordinary challenges posed by the Covid-­19 pandemic crisis produced excellent chapters. We thank Alice Chessé for her outstanding work in copyediting and formatting the chapters. We appreciate the interest of Oxford University Press in the Handbook and the enthusiastic support extended by the editors Molly Balikov and Alyssa Callan as well as the editorial work of Preethi Krishnan, P. Jayaprakash and their team. We acknowledge the financial support of Fonds de recherche sur la société et la culture (FRQSC) Québec, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Canada (SSHRC), James McGill Chair at McGill University, Centre for Advanced Security Theory (CAST) at the University of Copenhagen, and the Minerva Research Initiative (OUSD(R&E)). Last but not least, we thank our respective families for their support and patience in these difficult times. Our hope is that the Handbook will encourage more scholarship and policy interest in a subject area of much importance in these rapidly changing times when war and peace are back in the forefront of international politics. T. V. Paul Deborah Welch Larson Harold A. Trinkunas Anders Wivel Ralf Emmers October 2020

pa rt I

I N T RODUC T ION

chapter 1

The Stu dy of Pe acefu l Ch a nge i n Wor ld Politics T. V. Paul

The contours of international politics in the past half a millennium have been heavily determined by war and conflict, in particular among the great powers. During the past two centuries, many efforts have been made to obtain peaceful change and reconciliation of warring states. This is largely due to the prominence of liberal ideas in international relations (IR), originally generated by the European Enlightenment thinkers, who called for rational analysis in every walk of social and political life including IR. Liberal scholarship has been increasingly focused on the three pillars inherent in Immanuel Kant’s philosophy—democracy, economic interdependence, and international institutions— as mechanisms for peace and peaceful change. The Concert of Europe (1815–1854) contained elements of conference diplomacy to deal with conflicts of the day, although it was primarily aimed at maintaining the dominance of the monarchies among the five great powers and at protecting them from revolutionary forces engulfing Europe. In 1919, in the aftermath of World War I, US president Woodrow Wilson proposed fourteen points to deal with international conflict that included national self-­determination and the institutional mechanism of the League of Nations for settling disputes. The idealism-­realism debate that occurred in the 1930s and 1940s, but more prominently in the aftermath of World War II, focused on the possibility or impossibility of peaceful change in IR. Yet mainstream scholarly efforts still lag behind in unraveling the causes, sources, and mechanisms of peaceful change or their consequences. This is not to deny the fact that the contending IR perspectives offer differing viewpoints on patterns of change and persistence of international politics as their key markers of differentiation. This Handbook, consisting of forty-­one chapters, aims at giving the existing scholarship in this subject area of peaceful change the prominence it deserves while developing new pathways for future research agendas.

4   T. V. Paul

Defining Peaceful Change The first task is to define peaceful change as it pertains to IR. Definitions vary along a continuum, from minimalist conceptions stressing international change and transformation without the use of military force and war to maximalist notions that entail not only the absence of war but also the achievement of sustained nonviolent cooperation for creating a more just world order.1 For the purposes of this project, a minimalist definition of peaceful change would be change in international relations and foreign policies of states, including territorial or sovereignty agreements that take place without violence or coercive use of force. We offer a maximalist definition: transformational change that takes place non-­violently at the global, regional, interstate, and societal levels due to various material, normative and institutional factors, leading to deep peace among states, higher levels of prosperity and justice for all irrespective of nationality, race or gender. In addition, we adopt an in-­between category, or a mini-­max definition as offered by Karl Deutsch and collaborators: “the resolution of social problems mutually by institutionalized procedures without resort to largescale physical force” (Deutsch 1957, 5). This definition emphasizes the role of institutions as agents of peaceful change. It should be noted that peaceful resolution of a conflict need not be equal to peaceful change, as change could be short-term or could be reversed at some point. Maximalist versions of peaceful change focus on the sustainability of the process by which change is carried forward to obtain greater collective goods, emphasizing both process and outcome. The logic of peacekeeping versus peacebuilding in societies plagued by divisions and conflicts is also derived from these conceptions. We also note that not all peaceful changes lead to desirable outcomes in world politics. First, we turn our attention to systemic perspectives on change. Many IR perspectives tend to privilege systemic over societal level changes, although they carry maximalist implications in some sense, except for the justice and collective goods dimensions. A key assumption here is that changes in the distribution of power and status ranking of the most powerful states matter more than anything else for international peace and security, including regional orders. Looking through the prism of the international system, the core element of peaceful change involves power transitions among major powers, an umbrella framework among a variety of scholars who focus on power transitions, power cycle, and world systems (Organski and Kugler  1980; Gilpin 1981; Modelski 1987; Kennedy 1987; Mearsheimer 2000; Allison 2017; Doran 1971; Modelski and Thompson 1989; Wallerstein 1974). The concepts of “system change” and “systemic change” as delineated by Gilpin (1981, 39–40) are useful here to understand power transitions. Accordingly, system change involves an alteration in the fundamental actors of the international system (e.g., empires to nation-­states), while systemic change comprises change in the governance of the system, a process largely generated by the changing distribution of power. To Gilpin, systemic change “is a change within the system rather than a change of the system itself. It entails changes in the international distribution

The Study of Peaceful Change in World Politics   5 of power, the hierarchy of prestige, and the rules and rights embodied in the system, although these changes seldom, if ever, occur simultaneously” (1981, 41). A third category in Gilpin’s theory is called “interaction change,” that is, “at the level of interstate interactions (viz., formation of diplomatic alliances or major shifts in the locations of economic activities) may be the prelude to systemic change and eventually systems change” (Gilpin 1981, 41). Peaceful interaction changes may be observed as expectations of nonviolence in specific relationships, as evidenced in popular attitudes, elite opinion, and military planning of states (Rock 1989, 22). Change in the nature of the system as it is organized versus change in systemic leadership roles are the two dimensions that have often commanded attention in IR theory (Thompson 2009). In a minimalist view of systemic leadership change, peaceful transition occurs when a rising power achieves a dominant power position among the hierarchy of states without substantial violence and no great power contests the subsequent order with revisionist strategies. In a more maximalist understanding, peaceful transition involves effective mechanisms for dispute resolution; recognition of legitimacy of states, in particular great powers and other pivotal states; and the presence of institutional arenas where states can participate and find solutions to collective action problems on a sustainable basis. The assumption here is that due to long-­term changes in technological, economic, military, and demographic capacities, power capabilities will alter in the international system, and actors with the highest material indices need to be  peacefully accorded their deserving systemic leadership roles and accompanying international status. From a systemic perspective of a minimalist variety, peaceful change occurs when new great powers are accommodated without violence. More concretely, as I have discussed in a previous work, great power accommodation “involves mutual adaptation and acceptance by established and rising powers, and the elimination or substantial reduction in hostility between them. . . . It involves status adjustment, the sharing of leadership roles through the accordance of institutional memberships and privileges and acceptance of spheres of influence. . . . Although some view ‘deep peace’ or ‘sustained peace’ as necessary for accommodation, partial accommodations, region-­specific, or even acceptance of the legitimacy of rival great power states as important stakeholders in the international decision-­making process are also possible” (Paul 2016, 6–7). Realists in general see systemic changes involving the peaceful accommodation of a rising power as a highly improbable occurrence (Mearsheimer 2000). According to Graham Allison’s estimation, only four out of the sixteen power transition cases since the late fifteenth century occurred without war (Allison 2017). What the skeptics often ignore are the changing conditions, including the presence of nuclear weapons, and economic and normative restraints and incentives that make conquest of territory and the sustaining of power grabbed illegitimately difficult for rising powers as well as established powers who would have considered preventive wars in the past, a possibility that Allison ­considers in his work. Moreover, alternate institutional and economic mechanisms for the rising and established powers to adjust their power relations probably did not exist in many of the historical instances that the skeptics highlight.

6   T. V. Paul More idealistic versions by scholars in the maximalist-­globalist traditions go beyond the great powers for obtaining peaceful change. Proponents of maximalist peaceful change would argue that temporary adjustments among great powers are not sufficient for obtaining such a transformational change. Genuine peaceful change demands that states and societies coexist in a harmonious manner in which disputes are settled via institutional and diplomatic means, and joint solutions to collective action problems such as global inequality, poverty, internal violence, arms races, climate change, cybersecurity, and pandemic diseases are obtained. The creation of just societies in which individuals can prosper irrespective of differences in race, gender, or national origins is necessary for enduring peace. Change here is perceived as not episodic or limited but deep rooted, transformational, and multifaceted. From maximalist global perspectives, peaceful change implies transformation of a conflict-­ridden system into a peaceful one wherein change is possible through democratic and humane governance and proper institutional mechanisms whereby nations and nonstate actors strive for the creation of a just world order (Falk 1995, 241–255; Richmond 2005, 70; Davies 2019). The achievement of genuine justice and the avoidance of perceptions of injustice are critical for obtaining the objectives of a just world order. Since international level peaceful change may affect regional or subsystemic level changes, the latter needs a definition as well. At a minimum, peaceful regional change implies a condition in which states in a region coexist, accepting the rights and responsibilities of each other, and resort to institutional and diplomatic mechanisms for dispute resolution, thereby avoiding war to settle their differences (Paul 2012). Peaceful territorial change is a crucial dimension that encompasses both interstate and regional changes. A maximalist understanding of peaceful change in a region would imply the existence of a highly pluralistic security community in which war is not even thought of as an option and change within this order is the result of institution-­based dialogue and compromises among states and nonstate actors. Beyond the systemic and regional subsystemic levels, many peaceful changes can occur at the domestic level that may affect the former. At the domestic or nation-­state level, peaceful foreign policy change occurs when countries adopt strategies to achieve their foreign policy goals without violence and resort to institutional and diplomatic mechanisms to resolve disputes with other states, especially their neighbors. It also implies domestic power holders pursuing and seeking peaceful strategies, especially in territorial disputes, while those in favor of hard-­line positions are restrained and contained. For minimalists, this will entail a foreign policy by diplomacy and soft power rather than through coercive use of force; for the maximalists, it will demand a moral and humane foreign policy, promoting the greater good of domestic and international society rather than a narrow pursuit of national interests. From a maximalist perspective, countries would reduce their armed forces and defense spending to the bare minimum required for self-­defense rather than preparing for offensive operations. Security policies will be based on “most-­probable threat assessments” as opposed to “worst case assumptions,” which dominate the policies of hard-­line states. These differing conceptions mirror the practicality of obtaining peaceful change in an international

The Study of Peaceful Change in World Politics   7 system characterized by anarchy and self-­help, even when some question the veracity of the claims on anarchy itself. They also reflect the differing temporal and spatial logics of peace as a concept, as well as its sources and durability. It should be noted that we do not assume all peaceful changes are good by definition; some may produce unwanted outcomes or even intense conflicts later on. This topic could receive more attention in future research.

The Study of Peaceful Change in Historical Perspective The study of peaceful change has largely been conducted in Europe during certain periods of the evolution of the modern international system. These periods involved great debates about war and peace as the Continent teetered toward cataclysmic wars in the first half of the twentieth century (Kristensen 2019; Knutsen 2016). It must be recognized that in the nineteenth century the Concert of Europe, for a period of time, attempted to create normative and institutional mechanisms for curtailing “the power political ambitions and warlike dispositions of the great powers of the day and to restrain revolutionary movements” (Wivel and Paul 2019, 5). This does not mean other societies and cultures do not offer ideas for peaceful change, but in the discipline of IR, they barely find a place. Mohandas Gandhi’s peaceful resistance and its global impact on other movements for peaceful change, such as that of Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States, Nelson Mandela in South Africa, Lech Walesa in Poland, or Vaclav Havel in Czechoslovakia, are yet to gain their due place in IR discourses.2 This absence of serious discussion of contributions of non-­Western societies remains a major drawback of the IR discipline, which is heavily European centered (Acharya and Buzan 2019). The many chapters in this Handbook attempt to partially rectify this situation by discussing ideas generated by key regions, states and civilizations on peaceful change and coexistence.

The Interwar Period Debate The big debate between idealists and realists, as some call it, took place in interwar Europe. The major event was the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, which redrew the map of the world; selectively recognized many nationalities in the previous European imperial orders by giving them statehood; and made efforts to restructure the world ­economic and military order, also by imposing retribution and isolation on the losers of World War I (Kunz 1998; Eichengreen 2019). Faced with the rise of Hitler’s Germany and the possibility of an impending war, many argued for accommodation of the challengers in a peaceful manner, led by E. H. Carr (1939) in his influential book The Twenty Years’

8   T. V. Paul Crisis. From Carr’s perspective, similar to strategies of accommodation that offer peaceful outcomes in domestic societies, peaceful change at the international level requires reasonable accommodation by established powers of the demands of challengers (1939, 168). The status quo powers, as beneficiaries of the system, have a moral responsibility to make reasonable accommodations, while the rising power should have the ability to pressure the former for meaningful change without war, something both Britain and Germany, respectively, lacked (Gilpin 1981, 206). Thus, to Carr finding an equilibrium between considerations of power and morality was pivotal to achieving lasting peace. Carr was critical of theories that posited harmony of interests among states as propagated by idealists. Carr concurred that power alone cannot bring about peaceful change, but legitimacy and a sense of community are essential (Miall 2007, 6). Subsequently, critics questioned accommodation as appeasement and kept raising as an example British prime minister Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement policy toward Hitler’s Gemany in Munich in 1938 (Morgenthau, 1948). Today, as China rapidly makes material advancements, this question of accommodation versus appeasement has returned to prominence. For our purposes, accommodation may be defined as partial or full acceptance of the changed material power position of pivotal states and accordance of institutionalized status to reflect that position. Appeasement may be defined as the tacit acceptance of the aggressive policies of a challenging power, especially its territorial expansion. Even though Carr and others made much sense on accommodation as opposed to war, a question that is difficult to answer is when accommodation becomes appeasement, even if it is necessary to avoid war. It is also important to know the conditions under which the appetite of the challenger increases with every accommodation that is made. Moreover, it is difficult to predict the pace of the growth of material capabilities of the challenger and at some point, limited accommodation is of little value for the challenger, as it can obtain dominant status from the established power if it achieves overwhelming superiority. That process itself could be hampered by violent conflicts. The larger question is whether war avoidance is better than partial adjustment, and whether evolutionary acceptance of changing power positions is better than revolutionary change through cataclysmic warfare, which need not guarantee the survival of the established powers or the rising power even if the latter wins the war.

The Cold War Era Efforts The Cold War (1949–1989) was an intense global rivalry involving two superpowers and their allies. Peaceful change was not something the superpowers considered in their strategic competition, although minimal coexistence appeared episodically in their foreign policies. The chief US approach was premised on deterrence theory and containment, based on the idea that a challenger with an expansionist ideology like the Soviet Union could not be appeased or accommodated and that deterrence, relying on active threats of retaliation and denial, would be essential to prevent war. The question

The Study of Peaceful Change in World Politics   9 of peaceful change was ignored, as the assumption was that change was unlikely and concessions would not work. However, within the West, the United States pursued a largely liberal, peaceful change strategy focused on building institutions and strengthening liberal democracy and trade relations, especially with Western European states and close allies such as Japan and Korea (Lundestad 1998), even though the larger motivation was fighting Communism. The US track record in the developing world for those efforts was mixed, as Washington supported many authoritarian regimes and engaged in forceful regime change largely for geopolitical reasons. The contending superpowers were more focused on achieving strategic stability and geopolitical influence than peaceful change. However, during the Cold War, multiple efforts at minimal peaceful change were made at different locations by diverse states and nonstate actors. Following the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, the superpowers themselves had initiated policies of detente and arms control as management mechanisms to regulate their relations, although few efforts were made to change the relations on a sustainable basis until the late 1980s. The European Union (EU; formerly known as the European Economic Community) was the most significant institutional effort to create a peaceful order in Western Europe among erstwhile enemies that may be termed a maximalist regional effort. The global peace movement against nuclear weapons was active in creating a tradition or taboo against the use of nuclear weapons (Tannenwald 2007; Paul 2009; Smetana 2020). Many such movements pressured for arms control as a mechanism for regulating behavior among the superpowers. Some European states made attempts at peaceful change individually and collectively. The smaller Nordic states made many contributions to peaceful transformation. The Helsinki process, which created the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) and its successor, the Organization of Security and Co-­ operation in Europe (OSCE), were concrete examples. The Ostpolitik of Germany had a bearing on peaceful change possibilities. However, it was the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev who profoundly crystallized the peaceful change strategy, through his glasnost and perestroika policies, initiated in the 1980s. This led to the dismantlement of the Warsaw Pact, the liberation of Eastern European states and some fifteen republics within the Soviet Union, and the subsequent ending of the Cold War rivalry, all of which took place with very limited violence. The Gorbachev reforms were rooted in a conscious peaceful change strategy, adopting the notion of common security as opposed to alliance-­based security to manage superpower relations, abandoning the dogma of irreconcilable struggle between socialism and capitalism, and delegitimizing the use of force as an efficacious or desirable method to deal with the internal freedom of republics as well as the choices of erstwhile regional allies to exit the Soviet hegemonic system (Möller 2007, 109–110; MccGwire 1991). Beyond the superpower level, the most significant global level peaceful change that has occurred since 1945 has been the decolonization process (Jansen and Osterhammel 2017; Getachew 2019). Although there were pockets where violence took place, this process had been largely peaceful considering the magnitude of change that was brought about by the independence of some 150 new states. Yet the issues of justice and reconciliation

10   T. V. Paul remained as crucial challenges to this process (Lu 2017). The newly emerging states also attempted in their own way to create a peaceful order, first through the Bandung process in 1955 and later through the Non-­aligned movement in 1961 (Luthi 2020; Rajan 1990). The largely peaceful dismantlement of the colonial empires and the efforts by newly emerging countries to achieve a new equitable world order received only limited attention in IR, partially due to the intense focus of Western scholars, who have been the main source of IR theory, on the Cold War and the biases or absence of knowledge among them on this subject.

The Post–Cold War Era The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 ushered in many changes internationally and regionally. The European landscape changed as many Eastern European states joined the EU and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and Russia for a while peacefully accepted the substantial shrinking of its sphere of influence, it came to question the status depreciation it suffered (Clunan 2009; Pouliot 2010). The efforts by Vladimir Putin to resurrect Russian nationalism and elevate Russia’s international status through aggressive postures put a dent in peaceful change at the great power level (Krickovic, 2016; Larson and Shevchenko 2019). The proliferation of international institutions also helped the rising powers, although the debate on the two-­way relationship between institutions and power politics remains inconclusive (Wivel and Paul 2019). China, in the meantime, under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping and his successors Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, came out with a “peaceful rise” strategy. This was later christened as “peaceful development.” It specifically called for the rise of China as a global power through institutional and economic means and not via military confrontation with established powers (Pu 2019; He 2016). The entrance on the scene of Xi Jinping in 2012 changed this dynamic, as he began to push for China to rise at a faster pace and engaged in some aggressive moves in the South China Sea and restive territories such as Xinjiang and Hong Kong. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in some sense is a strategy for expansion and global domination through economic means, but it also is helping China’s rise with minimal resistance to it. The absence of intense hard balancing coalitions against China provides empirical support for this argument (Han and Paul 2020). Affected states tend to follow a hedging strategy involving soft balancing, limited hard balancing, and diplomatic engagement (Paul 2018). Up until 2020, China has not militarized the trading network in a substantial manner, unlike the previous European East India trading companies, which brought their navies and armies along with them. There is no guarantee though that this state of affairs will continue. Beijing seeks to engage in a wedge strategy as Chinese interests expand, interfering in the domestic affairs of countries and creating dependencies as well as weakening possible coalitions of resistance. Potential resistance could develop among affected states, especially the great power ­contenders and regional stakeholders such as Japan, India, and Australia (Feng and He  2020). The greater possibility is the emergence of a rivalry or a new Cold War

The Study of Peaceful Change in World Politics   11 between China and the United States as the Chinese perceive the need to break the ­latter’s hegemony in the Pacific and the Indian Ocean if they ever want to obtain global dominance and the United States takes preventive military and economic actions to arrest this development. The post–Cold War era has been characterized by the major economic changes brought about by economic globalization (Friedman 2005; Held 1999; Ravenhill 2017; Ripsman and Paul  2010). Although globalization has political, social, technological, ecological, and many other dimensions, economic globalization is the most palpable area in which changes have taken place with ramifications for domestic and international level peaceful changes. In the post–Cold War era, especially after the world financial crisis of 2008–2009, the rising powers have been engaging in their own institution building for changing the international order peacefully. BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) and the G-­20 are the most significant venues for such changes, while other subgroupings such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) have been in operation for some time. Since 2016, the blowback effects of globalization are visible, as the emergence of winners and losers of economic globalization among societal groups has generated the rise of populist leaders in key countries, especially the United States.

Theoretical Perspectives and Their Challenges Michael Wesley (2015) offers a useful characterization of the divisions over change in IR theory. He characterizes the contending approaches to change as teleological, cyclical, and episodic. Those who adhere to teleological change believe in human agency’s ability to change as well as in the linear nature of change due to the operation and eventual victory of rationality. Cyclical scholars are the most critical of the idea of fundamental change, as they see international politics as one cycle after another based on the same principles of conflict and dominance by one or another empire or great power. Episodic approaches view change as happening in bits and pieces, but not in a teleological or linear fashion. Each of these perspectives arises out of differing assumptions about and conceptions of human nature; the role of conflict and cooperation in social and political life; and the shifting nature of ideas and material forces, especially technology and factors of production, in causing and sustaining change. Among the IR paradigms, realism is perhaps the most adamant about cyclical perspectives and the absence of linear change in IR. Most realists see only a limited role for peaceful change as a strategy or outcome for promoting change and achieving peace without the direct use of military force, with only modest implications for transforming the power politics of IR. Stable orders will remain the outcome of a proper balance of power, in particular among great powers (Morgenthau 1973; Kissinger 1994; Waltz 1979;

12   T. V. Paul Mearsheimer 2000). But no state of balance of power is permanent, as material fortunes change among states. Peaceful change is not the usual outcome of radical shifts in the material—economic, technological, and demographic—strengths of countries, although in rare cases rising powers have engaged in supportive policies toward declining powers for strategic or economic reasons (Shifrinson 2018). Neoclassical realism may have a better handle on peaceful change, although some such scholars contest the desirability of peaceful change under some circumstances (Ripsman, Taliaferro, and Lobell 2016; Taliaferro, Lobell, and Ripsman 2018). However, the subject is yet to receive sufficient attention by the adherents of this perspective. Liberals focus on change more concretely, as they believe in the essentially peaceful nature of humans and the possibility of improving the human condition through proper education and rationality, by bringing about harmony of interests through free international trade, democratic principles, and institutional mechanisms of cooperation (Smith 1776; Bentham 1780; Locke 1764; Kant 1795). The liberal tradition goes back to the European Enlightenment era and is associated with modernity, while at the same time it also had an unsavory association with racism and empire (Ikenberry 2020). The nineteenth century saw not only liberalism but nationalism, socialism, and “scientific racism” coming to the fore (Buzan and Lawson 2015). More concretely, the three mech­ an­isms aimed at perpetual peace in the Kantian conception—widespread availability of international institutions, deep economic interdependence, and proper liberal democratic order—are expected to bring enduring peace despite efforts to thwart it by illiberal forces (Kant 1795; Doyle 1986; Russett and Oneal 2001). While these mechanisms seem prevalent in regions where liberal practices hold sway, their impact globally, especially on states that are not internally liberal, needs further elaboration. Liberal interventions are a crucial part of liberal efforts at peace, from regime change to the protection of individuals affected by wars, natural disasters, communal violence, and above all state failures. Many such interventions have produced violent outcomes in regions such as the Middle East, as liberal states fail to offer proper mechanisms for the societal transformation of deeply divided societies or are unable to devise proper exit strategies (Sørensen 2011). Liberal institutionalism has been a key component of the liberal approach to peaceful change. Scholarly and policy focus has been on devising institutional and legal mech­an­ isms such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), the International Criminal Court of Justice, the UN Arms Trade Treaty, and the Mine Ban Treaty. These have attracted much attention among both liberal and constructivist scholars. To some, the United Nations and its affiliated institutions, such as the WHO, UNESCO, UNHCR, FAO, UNDP, UNEP, World Food Program, UNODC, UNIDIR, WTO, IMF, World Bank, ILO, and IAEA, have been arenas for peaceful change. Examples of peaceful change in the security sphere include the permanent extension of the nuclear Non-­Proliferation Treaty (NPT); conclusion and operation of various nuclear-­free zones; and efforts by nonnuclear states to ban nuclear use, including the 2017 Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty, the Chemical and Biological Weapons Conventions, and associated regimes. The adoption of human security as part of national foreign

The Study of Peaceful Change in World Politics   13 policies has been a major change in the landscape on approaches to security. There has also been increased focus on the relationship between security and development in many countries. In the most recent IR paradigm, constructivist approaches to change highlight social learning, socialization, and social norms, as well as social identities (Checkel  2001; Katzenstein  1996; Wendt  1999; Finnemore and Sikkink  1998; Kubalkova, Onuf, and Kowert 2008; Kornprobst 2017). Some such accounts consider peaceful order equivalent to the establishment of pluralistic security communities, wherein war is not considered an option and states and societies are deeply enmeshed with collective norms, identities, and ideas. Globalists would go beyond the nation-­state and envision the creation of a just and peaceful world order in which all nations and societies prosper simultaneously while war, both internal and external, is eliminated through powerful institutional mechanisms and democratic processes (Hoffmann 1970). English school perspectives have discussed peaceful change more concretely than others (Navari 2009; Dunne 2007). Marxist, neo-­Marxist, and Gramscian theories also view peaceful change as improbable and not desirable if it reinforces the dominance of powerful states and social classes (Cox 1981; Freyberg-­Inan 2019). Feminist discourses challenge masculine and patriarchal values and their embodiment in power structures within and among nation-­ states as not conducive to peaceful change (Tickner  1997; Aggestam and Towns 2019). Strategies such as “naming” and “shaming” may be necessary to obtain change. International law perspectives point at increasing “lawyerization” (Nuñez-­ Mietz  2018) in the legitimation of force and its impact in constraining violent and unlawful behavior of states. Although the preceding discussion shows some theoretical advancement, the big and small transitions that have occurred peacefully as well as violently throughout the past millennium call for IR theory to adopt better foundational approaches and tools to understand change. One can notice considerable weaknesses in the IR discipline in capturing transformational change, especially the manner in which the Cold War ended and the subsequent pace of change ushered in by intensified economic globalization. The economic fortunes of countries such as China and India—due to their insertion into economic globalization and the adoption of crucial technologies as well as their becoming active trading states—have propelled a momentum somewhat unparalleled in terms of speed, intensity, and global consequences. These in-­progress changes will produce far-­reaching effects on power transitions as well as global governance patterns in the years to come. The technological revolutions—especially in the information and cyber arenas, generated by social media as the tool of dissemination—have created further challenges to capturing or understanding change of the peaceful and not-­so peaceful varieties through disinformation campaigns. Climate change (Swain and Öjendal 2018) is fast approaching as a fundamental challenge to humanity’s existence as a species on the planet, and the implications are yet to be understood. Much of realism is ill-­equipped to capture change, as persistent and recurring patterns hold sway in the approach. Liberal approaches have the most to offer on peaceful change, but many of these arguments are relevant largely to Western liberal states and

14   T. V. Paul the mechanisms inherent in the Kantian tripod. Further, nondemocracies and populist democracies can use some of the liberal elements like international institutions and economic interdependence to further their interests vis-­à-­vis liberal states, as China is doing today. Democratic elections can be exploited by illiberal forces to gain power. Constructivists have made many contributions to understanding change, although even here the efforts at theorizing change are not as prominent as one would expect. The liberal/Western biases of constructivism are major impediments to understanding ideational changes taking place in the non-­Western world. A premium is placed on “good norms” and their evolution, and there is a tendency to equate those with Western liberal norms as opposed to universal civilizational norms.

Perspectives beyond Paradigms Scholars who do not subscribe to a specific IR paradigm have probably been more vocal about peace and peaceful change of the normative varieties. Johan Galtung (1964), for instance, who popularized the concepts of “structural violence” and “structural aggression,” has also offered many ideas on “positive” and “negative peace.” Kenneth Boulding (1978) discusses “deep peace” versus “shallow peace.” In a similar vein, Charles Kupchan (2010), Benjamin Miller (2007), and Arie Kacowicz (2000) offer distinctions between “cold peace,” “cold war,” “hot war,” and “stable peace.” These variations suggest that change from one form of peace to another would require considerable attitudinal and procedural alterations. Change that seems to have occurred can reverse, as Jennifer Welsh (2016) warns: “The reappearance of trends and practices many believed had been erased: arbitrary executions, attempts to annihilate ethnic and religious minorities, the starvation of besieged populations, invasion and annexation of territory, and the mass movement of refugees and displaced persons” seem to be happening periodically. Thus, sustaining peaceful change even after desirable change has occurred is a big concern, as change in the positive direction is rarely linear but rather curvilinear. Among the linear, teleological accounts, John Mueller’s Retreat from Doomsday: The Obsolescence of Major War (1989) stands out, as it provided a powerful account of the abandonment of war among the advanced countries as having become obsolete over a period of time, similar to social institutions such as slavery and dueling. Francis Fukuyama’s (1992) optimistic rendition of liberal democracies defeating authoritarian forms of governing systems such as Communism and dictatorships falls within this teleological approach, although twenty-­five years later the premise is being challenged, as many liberal democracies are falling short of achieving greater equality, justice, or efficiency in governance. Neta Crawford (2002) has identified nuanced arguments, such as reasoning and persuasion based on practical as well as scientific logic, and their relationship to beliefs translated into practical action as a major source of change. The examples of slavery and colonialism are discussed as cases in which powerful arguments made the difference in their formal abolition. A question that deserves

The Study of Peaceful Change in World Politics   15 more attention is why some arguments win while others do not, or why change did not happen even when persuasive arguments existed. Most recently, Steven Pinker offered two key works (2011, 2018) in the teleological tradition on the progressive achievement of peaceful change and the conditions that allowed for greater human prosperity and reduction in suffering. To him, the progressive reduction in violence of all forms occurred due to the presence of improved governments, increased literacy, ideas of cosmopolitanism, increased empathy, and the decline of toxic ideologies that preach violence (Pinker 2011). Pinker, however, calls for the adoption of Enlightenment principles of scientific reasoning and humanism for preserving and expanding the peaceful changes that have come about (Pinker  2018). Shiping Tang’s work (2013) is another example of an evolutionary perspective on global change and the different trajectories it took in different regions and the global system itself. These scholarly efforts suggest that peaceful change as a subject matter demands an understanding of both structure and agency, the latter including individual leaders as champions of change-­generating ideas. Policy entrepreneurs can often provoke change, sometimes differently than they originally envisaged. However, we need a proper understanding of different structural changes that can be caused by macro mechanisms such as the distribution of power, technological innovations, economic capabilities, economic globalization, ecological changes, and the spread of big ideas and ideologies that capture the global imagination. A crucial challenge is figuring out if and when change is taking place, as in-­process change is often not understood until clear manifestations occur in power positions, governance structures, or normative articulations. The processes and manner through which change takes place are often as important as eventual change itself. Sources of change matter, and in this context figuring out the motivations for change in state policies would help us understand which of the sources mattered the most. Technological changes need to be incorporated to understand the practices of peaceful change at both the structural and nation-­state levels. Analysis of agent level change would explain when and how domestic level policy shifts affect global and regional changes. Agents can be transnational movements or actors who successfully campaign for change. The most recent examples are the #MeToo movement spearheaded by women’s groups across the world; the young campaigners advocating for improving climate change policies, led by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg; and the Black Lives Matter campaign by a variety of groups in different countries, addressing systemic racism and police brutality. Individual level sources would focus on statecraft, especially the grand strategies of change initiated by leaders for smaller level changes in foreign policy that can sustain or create new opportunities for peaceful change within and between conflict-­ridden societies. The role of deft diplomacy in obtaining peaceful change among former rivals has been a focus of Charles Kupchan (2010), who argues that reconciliation can start as unilateral accommodation, producing reciprocal restraints, followed by societal integration and the generation of new narratives and identities. These causal pathways to peaceful change can produce “rapprochement,” “security

16   T. V. Paul community,” and “union.” A challenge to this theory is the potential for disruption and the absence of linear progression in the identified patterns. Further, other hybrid forms can emerge even when conditions are ripe for progress in the desired direction. The upsurge of populism in different democracies such as the United States; some members of the European Union; and countries such as India, Brazil, and Turkey is difficult to explain using teleological approaches. Changing structural conditions such as deep inequalities generated by globalization or migratory pressures can produce virulent nationalisms, often affecting peaceful change that was achieved by previous generations. More attention is needed to ecological changes such as global warming and their impact on IR and state capacity itself. Incorporating these nontraditional areas in IR theory, without losing sight of traditional interstate issues, has been a continuing challenge for the discipline.

Incremental versus Revolutionary: Macro versus Micro, Episodic versus Deep Change The extent of the scope of change has always been a topic of contention in IR theory. As Gilpin (1981, 47) rightly points out, system change and systemic change can take place through hegemonic wars, similar to how revolutions can change domestic systems. Incremental change can take place through diplomatic bargaining and limited adjustments to governance structures, somewhat similar to domestic adjustments through negotiations among different political groups. Some key notions that Kal Holsti (2004, 13–17) has offered, such as change as “replacement,” “addition,” “dialectical,” “transformation,” “reversal,” and “obsolescence,” are useful for capturing different types and levels of change. A good example of transformational change is the distinction Holsti (2004, 26–27) makes between change in the foundational institutions of the state system, such as sovereignty, territoriality, and international law, and change in the procedural institutions, such as diplomacy, trade, colonialism, war, market, and the international monetary system. However, these changes sometimes occur cumulatively, and distinguishing one from the other may be more difficult than is argued here. The rise of the nation-­state in Europe itself occurred through war and postwar settlements and legitimation strategies used by states relying on civic or ethnic nationalism (Tilly  1975). However, war-making is no longer considered the most effective mech­an­ism for building nation-­states. Developmental and welfare states have replaced much of the role war played in the past in creating strong states. The changing attitude toward territorial revisionism through force is another example of peaceful change that has occurred in international politics since 1945. This aversion to territorial revisionism has produced a territorial integrity norm despite some exceptions since 1945 (Zacher 2001). Further, territorial accommodations without war have been some of the most important examples of peaceful change at the regional and interactive levels. More importantly, many cases of decolonization occurred through peaceful means (Kacowicz 1994).

The Study of Peaceful Change in World Politics   17

Great Powers, Rising Powers, and Peaceful Change As the major agents of systemic change in the modern international system, great power relations and distributions of power matter tremendously in determining peace, order versus instability, and war in any given period. Great powers are also the foremost sources of violence and coercion in the international system. Changes taking place within the societies of great powers can have major implications for the world order and whether relations among them will remain hot or cold, as great powers are both agents and detractors of peaceful change. They can help transitions, but their wars and rivalries have major consequences for international peace in any given era. Their policies toward various regions are also important in determining whether conflictual relations change to peaceful outcomes. Great ­power interventions have generated many changes in the regions, but some such interventions have produced violent outcomes, as we witness in the Middle East today. When great power rapprochement occurs or a “Concert” system develops, they can affect peace in different regions and states. As custodians of peace in international institutions, great powers often have major responsibilities, which they can misuse or divert for their narrow interests. Moreover, the internal changes within great powers and the emergence of domestic coalitions of interest groups that favor peace versus expansion or aggrandizement deserve more attention.

Peaceful Change in the Regions Just as significant to understanding change globally, it is important to know change regionally, as these two are intimately connected. Change in regional orders from conflict to cooperation and the possibilities of producing security communities in which stable peace exists and member states do not envision or prepare for war to settle disputes among themselves (e.g., Deutsch  1957; Adler and Barnett  1998; Gheciu  2008) deserve our increased attention. This is partly because in the key region where a security community arose—that is, Europe—we see some reversals taking place (Wivel and Wæver 2018). Is regional transformation a linear process, or is it possible to achieve a semblance of order only to return to disorder at different points in time? Some regions are mired in perpetual conflicts or enduring rivalries, although over time these conflicts could assume new societal dimensions (Paul 2012, 3). Other regions have made significant progress toward gradual peaceful change. Some regional orders even model alternative solutions to major international cooperation issues that are distinct from those that prevail in the global international order. Peaceful territorial compromises are a big part of any regional transformation, without which the potential for violence persists.

18   T. V. Paul Beyond Europe, many regions have made their own efforts and produced ideas to obtain peaceful change (Kulnazarova and Popovski 2019). The ten-­nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is the most successful among these regional efforts (Emmers 2012; Caballero-­Anthony 2018). The African Union (AU) and its predecessor, the Organization of African Unity (OAU), have been credited with the absence of territorial revisionism in the region, although some violations have taken place. In Latin America, peaceful change has been occurring among states even when internal violence has been prevalent in many states (Kacowicz 1994). The contributions of many subregional organizations such as Mercosur need to be acknowledged here. Peaceful co­ex­ist­ence is a theme that regional states have embraced, ranging from India (Basrur and de Estrada 2017; Pardesi 2015) and China during the 1950s, to Indonesia’s Pancasila (Anwar 1994), Brazil’s soft power approaches (Mares and Trinkunas 2016; Abdenur 2014), and South Africa’s ubuntu (Tiky 2019; Vale 2003). Japan’s and Germany’s postwar anti-­militarism (Berger  1998) also deserve our attention. Why some regions remain nonviolent and resort to peaceful change strategies more than others demands better understanding. Eclectic explanations for regional transformations may be useful here. Such an approach is captured by Norrin Ripsman (2016), who contends that peace usually breaks out from the top when principal policy makers make the move for rapprochement. However, over the long term peace can only be sustained at the societal level. Regional approaches would require explorations of civilizational peace (Katzenstein 2009) and conceptions arising from religious traditions. The problem with religion is its dual nature when it comes to social transformations, as it can be an agent of both peaceful and violent change (Appleby 2000). IR theory has been reluctant to incorporate civilizational peace ideas inherent in major religions of the world, partly because of the dominance of liberal/secular traditions and the separation of the church and the state in much of the West. This weakness of IR theory may be partly to blame for the lack of understanding of peaceful change or of the persistence of violence in the Middle East and South Asia, where civilizational/religious ideas hold sway in state behavior. Political religion as a source of peace or conflict or as an agent of change is yet to be properly assessed in world politics.

The Chapters The Handbook is divided into seven substantive parts. Part I covers this introductory chapter. In part II, three chapters address the historical origins of peaceful change as an IR subject in particular in the interwar, Cold War, and post–Cold War eras. The reasons for the “highs” and “lows” in the study of peaceful change in the IR discipline are discussed. Some questions that the papers explore are: (1) What motivated scholars and policy makers to address the questions of peaceful change? (2) What were the logics of their arguments? (3) In what sense were these ideas for peaceful change? (4) What were the mechanisms they proposed? (5) Why did their efforts fail? (6) Did they leave a

The Study of Peaceful Change in World Politics   19 lasting legacy on the formation and evolution of the IR theoretical and foreign policy perspectives in future years? Torbjørn L.  Knutsen discusses the interwar origins of peaceful change ideas in the context of the rise of Germany, Japan, and Italy as violent system-­challenging actors. Peter Marcus Kristensen offers an analysis of post–World War II evolution of peaceful change theories and policies and their marginalization due to the intense Cold War conflict. Jeffrey W. Taliaferro engages the key transformations that took place during the post–Cold War era in terms of rising power and globalization phenomena and their unintended consequences. In part III, the chapters turn their attention to each of the IR theoretical traditions and paradigms that have distinct views on peaceful change. Ten chapters address theories ranging from realism, liberalism, and constructivism to critical perspectives and their different variations. While realists in general reject the feasibility of maximalist peaceful changes, liberals are optimistic about them, provided proper liberal strategies are implemented. The key questions discussed are: (1) What assumptions do the theories hold about international politics and the role of peaceful change within them? (2) Why do some perspectives favor peaceful changes while others are neutral or noncommittal? (3) What do the theoretical perspectives have to say about the big questions of war and peace as they pertain to change? (4) What are the mechanisms of change and the alternate explanations they offer? Joshua Shifrinson offers a contrarian analysis of realism, especially the structural and neoclassical varieties, by arguing that despite their focus on conflict, several elements of peaceful change can be explained by these perspectives. Alexandra Gheciu provides a historical take on liberalism, in particular the postwar liberal international order. Frédéric Mérand and Vincent Pouliot offer a sober analysis of the role that international institutions play in peaceful change as well as nonpeaceful outcomes, while John Ravenhill explains the role and challenges of economic interdependence, especially generated by globalization, in understanding peaceful change. The constructivist paradigm’s ideational insights on nonviolent and possibly violent change are explored in Erna Burai and Stephanie C. Hofmann’s chapter, while Cornelia Navari brings forth the English school and its approaches toward peaceful change in both great power and regional contexts. While Annette Freyberg-­Inan offers a succinct discussion of critical theories and their perspectives on both revolutionary and peaceful change to unseat entrenched power structures, Karin Aggestam and Annika Bergman Rosamond in their chapter provide a discourse on the transformative role gender has played in IR. Victoria Tin-­bor Hui’s analysis focuses on civilization and religion as sources of both nonviolent and violent changes in Asia, while Shiping Tang offers a social evolution paradigm for understanding change, including peaceful variations. In part IV, eight chapters address the key material and ideational sources from which change originates. These vary from international law to political economy, ideas of democracy, status quest, and transnational social movements. The key questions are: (1) Do military, economic, and technological factors determine whether international change will be peaceful or violent? (2) What role do ideas and identities play in obtaining or reversing peaceful change? (3) Do social movements play any significant role as entrepreneurs of peaceful change and if so, how? In her chapter, Jennifer  M.  Welsh

20   T. V. Paul explores the role international law has played in bringing forth peaceful change in some key practices and patterns of interstate relations, while Michal Smetana explores the myriad roles nuclear weapons have played in developing a cold peace among great powers in particular. Lars S. Skålnes looks at the political economy sources, especially economic statecraft and economic interdependence, in bringing about peaceful change, and Ashok Swain examines the effects of climate change on international conflict and cooperation. Thomas Davies analyzes the role and limitations of democracy in national, transnational, and global governance arenas in bringing about peaceful change, while Xiaoyu Pu offers an analysis of status quest as a source of nonviolent as well as violent transformation in world politics. Anne L. Clunan explores the different ways in which science and technology contribute to peaceful change in IR. Alejandro Milcíades Peña illuminates the role of transnational social movements in bringing about both peaceful and nonpeaceful change in IR. In part V, eight chapters explore selected pivotal states in the world today and their perspectives and contributions to peaceful change, realizing that many of them have violent pasts or tend not to pursue peaceful policies consistently. These include three permanent members of the UN Security Council and some key regional states. The central questions are: (1) What policies did they propose for peaceful change and for what reasons, domestic or international, did they subsequently alter them, if they did so? (2) Was it material weakness or the need for systemic adaptation that led to the proposed policy for peaceful change? (3) Did they expect reciprocity from other significant states, and if so, in what form? (4) Do individual leaders, their supporting domestic coalitions, and their ideas play a larger role in the peaceful change strategies and their perusal or reversal vis-­à-­vis systemic factors? In her chapter, Deborah Welch Larson explores the peaceful change contributions of the United States largely through liberal mechanisms. Kai He and Feng Liu examine the role of peaceful rise in China’s ascendancy, the reasons for developing such a strategy, and the challenges Beijing will face in the future. Andrej Krickovic offers an examination of the bold experiments of the Soviet Union and Russia with peaceful change, from Gorbachev’s revolutionary transformations to Putin’s retraction of many such strategies as a result of unfulfilled expectations. Klaus Brummer offers a discussion of postwar Germany’s multipronged contributions to peaceful change. Thomas U. Berger discusses Japan’s efforts at peace and peaceful change in the postwar era and the challenges it has faced, both domestic and international, in translating the original lofty goals to national policies. Manjeet S. Pardesi examines India’s key efforts at peaceful change during various historical phases and their outcomes. Peter Vale discusses the successes and failures of South Africa’s efforts at peaceful change, while the nexus between domestic and regional peaceful change is the focus of Dewi Fortuna Anwar’s chapter on Indonesia. We realize the cases we include comprise only a sample of countries that have made contributions to peaceful change, and much work is needed to examine the ­nonviolent strategies of all states, both large and small, on all continents of the world. In part VI, ten chapters evaluate peaceful change in the world’s key regions, explaining the variations in outcomes. The major questions they address are: (1) Have the regional states maintained or reversed their peaceful trajectories, and what are the

The Study of Peaceful Change in World Politics   21 causes of such changes? (2) What is the role of systemic and subsystemic causes of regional transformation? (3) What is the role of domestic factors in contributing to or inhibiting peaceful change internationally? (4) What part do ideational and institutional factors play in regional transformations? In his chapter, Anders Wivel discusses Western Europe’s transformation as a pluralistic security community and the explanations for it based on realist, liberal, and constructivist factors. David G. Haglund offers an account of North America’s transition to a stable region forming a security community, while Harold A. Trinkunas examines South America’s limited but significant progression toward a region of “negative peace” despite the lack of deep economic integration, effective institutions, or a security community. Markus Kornprobst offers an assessment of the notions of peace and change in Africa and the institutionalization efforts there, while Ralf Emmers and Mely Caballero-­Anthony discuss Southeast Asia’s historical and institutional evolution as a quasi-­security community and the emerging challenges the region faces. Rajesh Basrur and Kate Sullivan de Estrada analyze the causes for South Asia’s scant progress toward peaceful regional order, while Bhubhindar Singh analyzes Northeast Asia’s minimal successes in peaceful change caused by realist and liberal factors. Arie M. Kacowicz and Galia Press-­Barnathan examine examples of limited peaceful change in the Middle Eastern region at international, regional, interactive, and domestic levels. Alexander Tabachnik and Benjamin Miller explain variations in Central and Eastern Europe’s regional orders and their causes, while Timur Dadabaev and John Heathershaw offer a postcolonial framework on change in Central Asia emanating from regional ideas and practices conditioned by intensified globalization. Finally, in part VII the editors offer a concluding chapter that explores the areas in which future research can be conducted effectively while emphasizing the need and significance of re-­establishing peaceful change as a legitimate domain of enquiry in IR.

Notes 1. The definitional part has been helped by input from the other four editors of the Handbook. I also thank Arie Kacowicz, Galia Press-­Barnathan, and Annette Freyberg-­Inan for their useful comments on an earlier version. For the historical evolution of the concept of peaceful change, see also Kristensen (2019). 2. Some exceptions exist, such as Chenoweth and Stephan (2011) on the not so insignificant success rates of nonviolent resistance compared to violent resistance. However, the names “Gandhi” and “King” appear only in passing reference in this otherwise excellent work.

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Pa rt I I

H ISTOR IC A L PE R SPE C T I V E S

chapter 2

Peacefu l Ch a nge The Interwar Era and the Disciplinary Context Torbjørn L. Knutsen

“Peaceful change” is the key issue of our times, said Albert Sarraut, the French ­minister of state, in June 1937, as he opened the 10th International Studies Conference (ISC) in Paris. The concept had been introduced to the vocabulary of political scholarship two years earlier at the ISC conference in London, which discussed the international impact of Germany, Italy, and Japan withdrawing from the League of Nations. Why did these countries withdraw? What would be the consequences of their withdrawals for the League’s ability to play a stabilizing role in the international system? How could its stabilizing policy of collective security best be adjusted and fine-­tuned? The answer to the last question seemed to be by way of “peaceful change.” This first debate on peaceful change was a reaction among international relations (IR) scholars of the Atlantic states to Germany’s, Italy’s, and Japan’s withdrawals from the League. It was also a way to express worries about the diminishing role and declining authority of the League in an increasingly unruly world and to find remedies to deal with the consequences. The debate took place in three main sites of interwar IR discourse: institutions of education, foreign policy research institutes, and the IR conference system sponsored by the League of Nations. The latter was decisively important. The ISC was the primary site of IR conversations during the 1930s. It brought IR teachers and researchers together in annual meetings, encouraged cooperation, and coordinated activities. A closer examination of the first discussion of peaceful change is also an examination of a formative phase in the evolution of the scholarly study of IR. The first part of this chapter sets the stage: it briefly sketches how the ISC emerged as an important node in a growing IR network. The second part discusses how the concept of peaceful change was introduced, explored, and made the subject of a thorough discussion at the 1937 ISC meeting in Paris. The chapter then places this discussion in a

30   Torbjørn L. Knutsen larger IR context and makes an assessment of the nature and contribution of the ISC discussions of peaceful change. It identifies key contributors to the discussion, notes tensions among them, and briefly assesses their arguments in light of the philosophy of science of the era.

The Institutional Context: The League and Its Commissions The central site of the interwar discussion of peaceful change was the ISC. Its origin lay in an initiative taken by Léon Bourgeois in August 1922. Bourgeois was a veteran peace activist, a socialist, a senior French politician with broad ministerial experience, and chair of the League Council. He admired the work of the International Labour Organization (ILO) and argued that a similar organ should be created for “the knowledge workers” of the world. The Council enthusiastically supported Bourgeois’s argument and agreed to establish the International Commission for Intellectual Cooperation (ICIC). Some of the best, brightest, and most famous intellectuals and scientists of the world were invited to run it. Among them were Christine Bonnevie, Béla Bártok, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann, and Gilbert Murray. The ICIC in turn established a permanent secretariat, the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation (IIIC). The Radical-­Socialist government of France volunteered to fund the IIIC and to provide office space in Paris. Budgets were tight, and the French initiative was generally considered a generous offer. After a few years of preparations, the IIIC invited scholars from League member states to a Conference of Institutions for the Scientific Study of International Relations (or CISSIR). It took place in Berlin in 1928 and was attended by delegates from six countries. The participants discussed ways in which the IIIC could coordinate the work of scholars from various states. This discussion continued in a second meeting in London in 1929 and a third in Paris in 1930. Results were mixed. On the one hand, there was optimism among the delegates, triggered by reports on the establishment of new professorships in IR and of new institutions of research and education. On the other hand, there was a sense of bewilderment, of not quite knowing what to do. The discussions about international cooperation on research and dissemination of knowledge were abstract and vague. At the 1930 CISSIR meeting Alfred Zimmern, Arnold Toynbee, and others proposed to shift the focus of the conference and change its procedures. Frustrated by the lack of progress, they proposed to end discussions on methods of intellectual cooperation and instead discuss concrete international issues. They also proposed that members or­gan­ ize in working groups and prepare papers or reports (Pemberton 2019). This proposal was eagerly embraced. At the next year’s meeting, which took place in Copenhagen, the delegates agreed to adopt the new conference model. They dissolved CISSIR, thereby ending the abstract

The Interwar Era and the Disciplinary Context   31 discussions about the pacific effects of intellectual cooperation. Then they established the ISC in its stead and initiated a series of new, substantial discussions about world order and the stability of international society. During the next few years, the ISC found its form. Its Executive Committee would announce a topic or theme. The various national committees would debate this theme internally and then prepare for discussions at the international conference. The procedure was so complex and time consuming that it required two years to complete. At the end of this two-­year cycle, the IIIC would publish a report on the proceedings—and the ISC Executive Committee would announce a new theme. The first theme was announced at the Copenhagen meeting in 1931: the influence of the economic crisis on international politics. The theme addressed the economic recession that was washing across the industrial states of the West. The first ISC meeting cycle began in Milan in 1932 and continued in London in 1933. The first ISC report was issued later that year, under the title The State and Economic Life (IIIC 1933). The Executive Committee chose “collective security” as the theme for the ISC meetings in 1934–1935. The choice was inspired by announcements by the Italian and German governments that they were withdrawing from the League of Nations. “Peaceful change” was the theme for the 1936–1937 cycle. It was explored in the shadow of Japan’s operations in Manchuria, Italy’s occupation of Ethiopia, and Nazi Germany’s insistent demands for revision of the Versailles Treaty (1919). The ISC arranged twelve meetings in all, discussed four themes, and produced three reports.1 Table 2.1, below, lists the twelve CISSIR/ISC meetings and their four biannual themes. Table 2.1  The CISSIR/ISC Meetings (1928–1939) Year/Host City

Rapporteur

Conference theme

1932 Milan

M. J. Bonn, H. Dalton

“The State and Economic Life”

1933 London

Arnold Wolfers

“The State and Economic Life”

1934 Paris

Maurice Bourquin

“Collective Security”

1928 Berlin 1929 London 1930 Paris 1931 Copenhagen

1935 London

Maurice Bourquin

“Collective Security”

1936 Madrid

Maurice Bourquin

“Peaceful Change”

1937 Paris

Maurice Bourquin

“Peaceful Change”

1938 Prague

J. B. Condliffe

“Economic Policies and World Peace”

1939 Bergen

J. B. Condliffe

“Economic Policies and World Peace”

Source: Knutsen (2018)

32   Torbjørn L. Knutsen

Preparing for Paris: Introducing Peaceful Change The concept of peaceful change was introduced at the ICS’s conference in London in 1935. The concept was considered so important that it was selected as the conference theme for the 1936 and 1937 meetings. The selection was justified by the increasing tension in world affairs. Japan had broken international law by invading Manchuria and establishing the puppet state of Manchukuo in 1934; Italy had invaded Ethiopia in 1935; and Germany was remilitarizing the Rhineland in clear violation of the Versailles Treaty and was beginning to demand that its old colonies be returned. Germany, Italy, and Japan were dissatisfied powers. They argued that the international order was unjust, that it prevented their access to raw materials, blocked their entry to international markets, and denied them relief from growing population pressures at home. Germany’s National Socialist government was particularly insistent in its arguments. It denounced the Versailles Treaty upon which the extant order was founded and demanded changes in the status quo. How should the League respond? How should the great powers—primarily France and Great Britain—tackle the demands of the dissatisfied powers? This was the question that the delegates to the 10th ISC had come to Paris to discuss. The ISC Executive Committee prepared these conferences carefully. It actively encouraged discussions within the various national committees. In addition, it or­gan­ ized international study groups and facilitated cooperation of scholars from different countries. These activities introduced the concept of “peaceful change” into the political vocabulary with a big bang.2 This is indicated by figure 2.1, which shows a clear spike in the use of the term in books and articles during the late 1930s. The figure also shows that the concept was actively used for the next half century, before a decline in usage set in during the late 1980s. Members at the 1935 ISC meeting had connected peaceful change with collective security. The 1936 and 1937 conferences consolidated that connection. Delegates argued that a “peaceful solution of certain international problems” was a precondition for collective security (IIIC 1938, 12). Some of them pointed out that states like Japan, Italy, and Germany were dissatisfied with the Versailles Treaty (Dunn 1937, 3); that their governments thought the treaty unjust (e.g., Webster 1937, 10; Mair 1937, 83) and demanded changes in it and in the security arrangements that were implied in it. The ISC meeting in 1936 was hosted by Spain. When the ISC scholars assembled in Madrid in July, they found the Spanish capital boiling hot in more senses than one. A  radical popular front alliance had narrowly won Spain’s national elections four months earlier. The country’s political situation was tense. There were rumors that military officers would stage a coup to prevent the left-­wing alliance from taking power.

The Interwar Era and the Disciplinary Context   33 0.0000450% 0.0000400% 0.0000350% 0.0000300% 0.0000250% 0.0000200% 0.0000150% 0.0000100% 0.0000050% 0.0000000%

1920

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Figure 2.1  Frequency of the use of the term “peaceful change” (English-­language Google books, 1919–2019). Source: Google ngram.

The ISC leaders had chosen Madrid as a venue to make a point. They wanted to draw attention to the confrontation between the ideals of democracy and the revisionism of  the fascist powers. They held that the ideals of democracy were protected by the Versailles Treaty and the international law that flowed from it. But they also acknowledged that the treaty of 1919 favored some powers and disfavored others, that some powers were dissatisfied with the status quo, and that their demands had to be taken seriously. After Madrid, as the national committees began to prepare for the 1937 ISC meeting, there was no doubt that change brought about by violence and war was not peaceful. But the situation also illustrated the related point that change was not necessarily peaceful just because it was bloodless; change enforced by a threat of overwhelming force could not be described as peaceful either (Cruttwell 1937, 1). The British and Americans were particularly preoccupied with peaceful change. In  New York, the Council of Foreign Relations established a special study group. In London, Chatham House and the London School of Economics (LSE) arranged a lecture series and a symposium on peaceful change. At the London symposium, Toynbee argued that when law is simply upheld and enforced, pressure will be built up against it. He noted that the problem was not how to preserve the status quo by preventing change, but rather to ensure that change could occur in ways that would avoid the use of threats and violence and that would maintain justice, peace, and international order. International lawyers like Hersh Lauterpacht agreed. But they also demonstrated how difficult this was. Lauterpacht pointed out that international law alone could not produce change. The law could not just change itself, he continued. To change the law, it was necessary to establish an international legislative assembly. Only such an assembly could change international law peacefully. And in order to institutionalize peaceful change, this assembly would have to be permanent. This was “the only proper meaning of peaceful change as an effective legal institution of the international society,” argued Lauterpacht (1937, 141).

34   Torbjørn L. Knutsen This was the proposed approach. Several participants at the London symposium noted that this argument was complex, abstract, and general. Besides, the great powers of the world might see in Lauterpacht’s permanent international legislature a superstate or the contours of a world government and might find it hard to accept. In the real world, states are neither just nor generous. Yet they all tend to appeal to justice and fairness when they argue for change. Germany, for example, demanded its old colonies back, and its politicians justified the claim by arguing that the country had a problem with excess population at home and the international system was denying it access to necessary raw materials and markets abroad. The participants at the London symposium discussed the German arguments carefully. They generally concluded that these were disingenuous (Robbins 1937; Gregory 1937). Charles A. W. Manning (1937) delivered the concluding lecture at the London symposium. In his effort to summarize and systematize the presentations, he observed that the presenters could be divided into two groups. On the one hand were those who invoked justice and law and relied on voluntary state action within formal international institutions to ensure peaceful change. On the other were those who saw states as self-­ interested actors and their behavior as driven by national interest, power, and security. He singled out Lauterpacht as representative of the first group. By criticizing him, Manning indicated that he himself belonged to the second group.

Discussing Peaceful Change I: Tensions in the Discourse When ISC delegates met in Paris at the end of June 1937, the participants were well prepared. The rapporteur of the conference, Maurice Bourquin, who had read the working groups’ reports, praised their scholarly quality. Then he noted that he saw a tension in them. On the one hand, there were arguments that treated peaceful change in abstract terms and constructed “attractive systems which would perhaps correspond to the true ideal.” On the other, there were approaches that proceeded “from the world as it is” and which explored “the possibilities of the times in which we live.” This was an echo of the tension that Manning had noted in London a few months earlier. The discussions that followed Bourquin’s opening lecture were not affected by this tension. The delegates paid little or no attention to it. They did not deepen it, and at no point were the two approaches presented as contradictory in the sense that one approach would exclude the other. Rather, on the few occasions when Bourquin referred to them, he presented them as complementary. At one point he commented that both were important, that it was necessary to have one’s eyes fixed on an ideal goal but also to keep one’s feet on the ground. “We are all, I think, agreed on the actual principle of peaceful change,” Bourquin began, and concluded by saying that “[r]ealism must be the law of true idealists” (IIIC 1938, 260).

The Interwar Era and the Disciplinary Context   35 Two years later, Edward H. Carr elaborated on the distinction in Twenty-­Years’ Crisis ([1939] 2001). He was inspired by Karl Mannheim’s (1936) sociology of science, echoed a distinction that Halford Mackinder (1919) had made twenty years earlier, and called Toynbee and Lauterpacht “utopians.” He distinguished them from “realists,” with whom Carr expressed more sympathy. Carr presented the two approaches as complementary but as relating to each other as a thesis relates to an antithesis. He thus introduced the impression that the scholarly study of IR had developed through an internally driven dialectic. During the years that followed, much was made of Carr’s distinction between “utopians” and “realists.” After the Second World War, the relationship between the two would be referred to as “the First Great Debate,” and it marked the entire scholarly field of IR for a generation, if not two (Knutsen 2016).

Discussing Peaceful Change II: Assumptions of Scholarship and Science “Scholarship” and “science” were commonly used words at the CISSIR/ISC meetings: when Bourquin opened the 10th ISC conference, he praised the scholarly qualities of the conference reports; when Carr discussed the emergence of IR as a scholarly field, he referred to it as the “science of international politics.” Scientific analysis had long been one of the driving concerns of the teachers, researchers, and champions of IR. But what did they mean by “science”? How did the ISC delegates understand the term? They were all obviously aware of the necessity for scientific tools: precise definitions, special concepts, analytical distance, and logical rules of procedure. However, they discussed none of these tools in any depth. Neither did they engage in any general discussions of the philosophy of science. There are therefore few sources from the ISC meetings that can help answer the question of what its participants meant by “science” and by “scientific research.” However, it should be possible to infer an answer by examining their practice and usage. The three component branches of the field of philosophy of science serve here as a guide: methodology, ontology, and epistemology. The first (methodology) involves concepts, tools, and procedures; the second (ontology) deals with visions of the nature of the world; and the third (epistemology) discusses our access to knowledge about that world (Moses and Knutsen 2019, 4).

Methodological Assumptions At the first CISSIR/ISC meetings there was much talk about “method.” However, the concept was used in a curious way. It referred neither to research techniques nor to questions of human knowledge; rather, it concerned pedagogical arrangements. It referred to forms of academic coordination and cooperation. When the CISSIR ­delegates discussed “methods,” they referred to structures of institutes, procedures of

36   Torbjørn L. Knutsen conferences, and other ways of organizing and coordinating activities of scholars from different countries. The discussions of CISSIR were premised on the notion that scientific research was all about finding facts and using reason. It was assumed that those two activities had a useful output—that they produced impartial knowledge. It was also assumed that the activities involved a useful process—that sustained scientific cooperation produced understanding, consensus, solidarity, and harmony among scientists. The dissolution of CISSIR and the establishment of ISC in 1931 involved a change in conference purpose. The focus switched from process to output: whereas CISSIR had been predicated on the idea that the scientific process would increase understanding and solidarity among intellectuals and thus contribute to a harmonious world, ISC was based on the idea that science would produce knowledge—which in turn could be used by political decisionmakers to create a more orderly and stable world. This also reflected a change in outlook: a move away from the 1922 proposal of Léon Bourgeois and his French, rationalist orientation based on reason and solidarity toward an Anglo-­American empiricism preoccupied with IR events and issues. This change was not attended by any debate on methodologies and methods. The CISSIR/ISC delegates rarely, if ever, discussed the nature of “science” or “the scientific method.” They did not discuss how IR scholars could acquire accurate information about international politics. If we find few clues to the methodology of early IR in the conference debates, we may instead find them in the scholars’ practice. What kind of understanding of “science” is suggested by their scholarly practice? It largely reflected an understanding of science as investigative procedures such as those used by historians and lawyers. The reports from the ISC working groups reflected the source criticism commonly used by historians. Oral presentations and debates were respectful and polite and governed by formal rules, reminiscent of the formal rules of address used during court trials or debates in legislative assemblies. Great emphasis was placed on impartial presentations. Much attention was paid to relevance of content, precision in language, and clarity in style. The debates were marked by formal procedures and linguistic precision that later methodologists would refer to as “effective semantics” (Næss 1966) and that German philosophers might call Sachlichkeit. Three study groups submitted reports with hints of quantitative evidence to the 1937 ISC meeting. The group that examined population pressures presented demographic statistics for various countries: rates of population growth, immigration statistics, assessments of overpopulation and underpopulation, and so forth. The study groups on raw materials, trade, and markets, and on colonies, presented production figures and numbers on the movement of people and goods. It would, however, be an exaggeration to characterize this use of numbers as statistical analysis. There were no tables or charts in the reports. There was no bivariate analysis, no systematic effort to separate de­pend­ ent from independent variables and to measure covariations. Numbers were simply inserted in sentences and used as indications of quantity or instruments of precision. Numbers would at most be used as simple, univariate descriptions and were not submitted to any statistical techniques. Throughout the 1930s, IR had a limited toolkit of social

The Interwar Era and the Disciplinary Context   37 science methods at its disposal. The field was obviously in an early stage of methodological awareness.

Ontological Assumptions The discussions at the ISC meetings were marked by an ontological consensus. It was commonly accepted that it was meaningful to talk about an international system and that the basic units of that system were sovereign states. It was also commonly accepted that some states—the great powers—were more important than others. Finally, it was accepted that norms of behavior and international law were important because they restrained the behavior of the great powers and added order to the system. This state-­focused and materialist ontology was undoubtedly a product of the Great War (1914–1918), which had been an unmitigated catastrophe. The Versailles Treaty and the League of Nations were predicated on the intention to prevent such a catastrophe from ever happening again. The ultimate purpose of ISC was to achieve that goal by providing statesmen and civil servants with factual information and accurate knowledge about world affairs. Academic discussions about international change were generally predicated on the notion of a mismatch between traditional practices of statecraft and a new political reality to which the old practices were not properly attuned. Among the key elements of that new reality were industrialism and interdependence. Industrialism accounted for much of the enormous destruction of life and property wrought by the Great War, because it had brought forth new weapons systems of unprecedented power. Interdependence, too, accounted for much of the destruction, but indirectly. The Great War had disrupted international trade and finance, upon which all industrial economies depended. Thus, to the direct destruction of armed battle was added that of institutions of trade and finance that underpinned the well-­being of entire societies. The Great War had, in effect, destroyed states as well as their interrelations and caused the old international system to collapse. This was not a novel argument. It was essentially the argument presented by Norman Angell (1910) in his runaway bestseller, The Great Illusion. After the Great War, Angell’s argument was generally accepted: that the established ways in which the statesmen and soldiers had made their decisions were unsuitable for a world that was based on industrialism and interdependence. Angell’s basic ontology echoed throughout the ISC debates. It was based on the premise that humans were ra­tional creatures who could observe and learn. Through reason and experience humans would understand that war was neither profitable nor sensible anymore, and consequently they would change their international behavior. Human nature, in other words, was malleable. It would adapt to historically changing circumstances. Human ­societies would leave their old belligerent behavior behind and adapt to a new age of in­ter­de­pend­ence, in which contest, competition, and conflict would be replaced by a new diplomacy based on cooperation and mutual aid. At the London symposium, Karl Mannheim was the sole voice to dispute this simple argument. Addressing the question of human nature explicitly, he first expressed agreement with the claim by noting that there is “a great plasticity in man” (Mannheim 1937, 102). But then he qualified that statement. Human behavior is not exclusively driven by

38   Torbjørn L. Knutsen reason, he argued. First, humans, like other animals, are equipped with basic biological drives and instincts. Second, unlike other animals, humans are symbolic creatures. They construct societies and institutions of government that are informed by values, myths, and meaning. Human beings are “living in a community whose reaction is not based simply on instinct but on symbols of his own creation” (114). Under certain circumstances, such symbols and symbolic activities may serve as substitutes for real activities, ­overriding reason. During a period of change and insecurity, for example, when routine behavior is disrupted and desired objects are withdrawn from them, people may be seized by symbolic goals, which become “the new driving force for new forms of spontaneous group integration” (116). Mannheim’s assumption about the rational properties of humans dovetailed nicely with the optimistic (or “utopian”) arguments in the debate about peaceful change; since human beings were rational and malleable, it would be possible to alter the fundamental behavior and attitudes of citizens by reforming and reorganizing the ordering ­institutions of society. However, since human behavior was, according to Mannheim, also affected by instincts and symbols, reform would be difficult. Anthropologist Lucy Mair (1937) entertained similar ideas. But it is unclear how much the other ­participants at the London symposium took on board Mannheim’s arguments ­concerning the instinctive and symbolic limits of human reason. At the Paris ISC meeting there was not a trace of any such limits. Indeed, the Paris discussion of peaceful change was itself limited; the arguments of the Paris conference were expressed within the mainstream, Western—largely Anglo-­American—reason-­based assumptions of the times. The ISC discussion did not reflect the full spectrum of IR arguments of the age. An important reason for this was limited conference participation. The scholars came from League of Nations member states only. By 1937, Germany, Italy, and Japan had withdrawn from the League; their nationalist, fascist, or geopolitical perspectives were not represented. The USSR was a League member (it had joined in 1934), but Stalin’s dictatorial regime sent no representatives to conferences to discuss with bourgeois academics. Consequently, the conference lacked voices from both the illiberal right and the radical left of the political spectrum. The same ontological limits characterized the whole scholarly field of IR. Early IR curricula excluded approaches such as Marxism (Bukharin [1915]  1973; Lenin [1917] 1975) and geopolitics (Kjellén  1916; Mackinder  1919; Haushofer  1928). This had ­epistemological consequences, limiting the debates that were conducted and the understanding and knowledge that they produced.

Epistemological Assumptions The ISC meetings discussed neither method nor methodology. But they tended to rely implicitly on a philosophy of science that was informed by the epistemology of British empiricism. This is apparent in the way the discussants framed the two basic objects of their discussions on peaceful change: the sovereign nation-­state and the international system. Their definition of the “state” was simple and straightforward: a

The Interwar Era and the Disciplinary Context   39 territory with a permanent population and a government with the capacity to enter into relations with other states.3 The definition of “international system” was less clear. The concept was used by some, but by no means all, of the ISC participants. It was employed in a matter-­of-­fact fashion and without any explicit definition, and in two different ways. The first (and dominant) usage was derived from international law and was used interchangeably with “international society.” This is how it was used by Bourquin, who in his opening lecture to the 1937 meeting made a distinction between the international legal system (by which he meant the norms and rules that govern the actions and interactions of states) and the real world—the international society (which was composed of actually interacting states) (IIIC 1938, 18ff.). The second usage of “system” relied on a more naturalist or mechanical understanding of the world. Toynbee (1937) provided an example as he tried to grasp the core issue of peaceful change in historical rather than legal terms. If we are to have a system of collective security that avoids war, Toynbee began, then we need to make sure that the system is just. He continued: In a changing society (such as human society is . . .), two things have to be secured if justice is to reign. There must be constitutional means of reconsidering and revision of the law, as well as constitutional means of upholding and enforcing it. In a changing society, a law which is simply enforced as it stands, without any possibility of altering it in consonance with changing facts and changing needs, will degenerate sooner or later into an inequitable and lawless régime of force; and in the end, such force inevitably evokes a stronger counter-­force to overthrow it. Collective security without peaceful change would be like a boiler without a safety-­valve. In preventing perpetual escapes of steam it would merely be boiling up for a final shattering explosion.  (Toynbee 1936, 27)

Toynbee’s usage dovetailed nicely with a British notion that was developed by Isaac Newton and later applied to human relations by authors like David Hume and Adam Smith, for whom a system is simply an entity composed of units (in this case, sovereign states) and of relations among those units. However, there were also scholars who relied not on mechanical images alone but included elements of human agency, who saw peaceful change as an outcome of interactions among human beings moved by self-­interest, will, and tactical reason. This was the approach of many international lawyers. They operated on a domestic analogy and preferred “international society” to the concept “international system.” They noted that the ordering principles of society were provided by social norms, rules, and international institutes or institutions. These institutions, they averred, were created by people—by statesmen and diplomats—through interaction and negotiation. In other words, the ordering institutions of international society were the products not of states but of human beings—of rational, interacting humans who come to mutually advantageous agreements about the basic principles of interaction and who impose these principles upon the world. Through human interaction, state behavior is regulated and a semblance of order is created in the international society of states.

40   Torbjørn L. Knutsen This was also the approach of Fredrick Dunn (1937). He observed that Germany and Italy were dissatisfied powers which complained about having been treated unfairly. They demanded international change and justified their demands by invoking common conceptions of fairness and justice. In reality, Dunn remarked, these countries were driven by national interest and a quest for greater influence and power. Germany and Italy were not unique in this respect, Dunn continued. All states ultimately pursue national interest and power. For Dunn (1937, 9) the international system was “based in large measure upon the notion of ‘self-­help,’ which means that the individual member of the community must eventually rely upon their own strength to defend their rights and possessions or to obtain what they want.” Dunn agreed with the lawyers who claimed that international law provided order to interstate relations. However, Dunn believed that in a self-­help system, order was provided by another mechanism as well: by the formation and ­dissolution of alliances. In other words, by a shifting balance of power among states. For Dunn, the problem with Germany and Italy was not that they were driven by concerns for power and self-­interest; all states were. Rather, the problem was that Germany and Italy were informed by norms and ideals that were out of tune with the modern world. The demands of the dissatisfied powers, Dunn averred, were driven by archaic ideals of autocratic and self-­sufficient states. Italy and Germany were oblivious to the fact that in the modern world, no state could be self-­sufficient. They did not understand that although a single state might lack a full supply of raw materials at home, all kinds of materials were constantly available for purchase on the world market. The problem with Germany was that its government wanted to possess resources and raw materials and to control access to them. This way of thinking flew in the face of all economic theories of a modern, interdependent world. Besides, it paid no attention to the will and rights of the native populations who lived on the territories that Germany wanted to colonize. If a modern, industrial state wants to develop its economy and maintain its wealth, it is dependent upon substantial trade with other states. Countries like Germany and Japan reject this modern idea, Dunn argued. These states industrialize but at the same time insist on retaining the archaic ideals of self-­sufficiency and territorial control. As a result, they will starve their economies, create scarcities, and deprive their peoples of wealth and development. To remedy their economic stagnation, they will adopt an expansionist, even aggressive, foreign policy. In the modern world, industrial states are interdependent, Dunn concluded. And since interdependence makes war very costly, it makes industrial states more risk averse and careful, less prone to act with aggression. Germany and Japan do not accept the interdependence argument. They counteract it by trying to become self-­sufficient. As a result, they increase the likelihood of conflict and war in the system. Their demand for self-­sufficiency, then, not only increases opportunity costs for themselves; it also destabilizes the international system as a whole. Finally, there was Karl Mannheim, the only lecturer at the London symposium who formulated social constructivist arguments and invoked the Marxist concept of social “superstructure.” Mannheim was preoccupied with how the ideas, attitudes, and political

The Interwar Era and the Disciplinary Context   41 culture of nations shape human reason. Culture, he argued, was affected by the history and geography of the individual state. The collective experiences of a nation shape its common outlook, its political culture, and its social-­psychological nature, he argued. Mannheim’s argument is notable in itself. In the context of the 1930s, however, the interesting thing is that he seems to have been the only scholar to invoke biological and constructivist theories in the early debates about peaceful change. This reflects a telling aspect of these debates: they did not reflect the full spectrum of the IR arguments of the age. The discussions were conducted among scholars from League of Nations member states and were marked by scholarly consensus. Radical left-­wing governments, like that of the Soviet Union, sent no delegates to the ISC meetings. Radical right-­wing governments, like those of Germany, Italy, and Japan, had withdrawn from the League by 1937. In other words, the conference lacked voices from both the extreme left and the extreme right. The ISC debates reflected a moderate, pro-­League consensus. Yet there was room within the latter for a variety of outlooks and viewpoints. Maurice Bourquin commented on this. On the one hand, he found members who argued that international change could come about through international law adjusted by reason. On the other hand, he saw members who perceived international change “as won by force” (IIIC 1936, 13). Similar observations were made by Manning (1937) and Dunn (1937) and later developed by Carr ([1939] 2001), who participated in ISC’s Paris meeting in 1937.

Conclusions “Peaceful change” was the topic of the times, Albert Sarraut said as he opened the 10th ISC meeting in the summer of 1937 and spoke on behalf of the French hosts. Christian Lange, speaking on behalf of the foreign guests, used even bigger words: “Peaceful change,” he said, “is at the heart of the preoccupation of every man and every woman who cares about the future of humanity” (IIIC 1938, 595). His opinion was echoed by the French Foreign Office a few hours later when it hosted a reception for the conference participants at Quai d’Orsay. The importance of peaceful change was echoed during lunch, which was arranged by the French Ministry of National Education. The French hosts emphasized the importance of the conference theme and made the ISC delegates—teachers and researchers from many countries—feel welcome and significant. Figure 2.1 shows how the usage of the term “peaceful change” spiked during the second half of the 1930s and indicates that the theme was the question of the times. But it also suggests that it was neither the question of all times nor the defining question of IR. The figure shows that after having been introduced with a bang in 1935, the term’s use peaked during the next handful of years, before its frequency substantially declined. After the Second World War it stabilized for the next half century, until, after a brief revival in the mid-1980s, it dropped off toward the end of the Cold War.4

42   Torbjørn L. Knutsen This chapter has examined three institutional sites of IR discourse that emerged during the interwar era: education, foreign policy research, and League-­sponsored conferences. A first concluding point concerns the importance of the latter site. This was where the early discussions of collective security and peaceful change were initiated and coordinated. The conference site was also decisive for the evolution of the scholarly study of IR, because it brought international scholars together. It encouraged cooperation and coordinated activities among teachers and researchers. A second concluding point concerns the importance of the conference organizers and key participants. Recent literature has paid increasing attention to individuals like Lionel Curtis, Alfred Zimmern, and Arnold Toynbee and to the institutions to which they belonged: the British Round-­Table group and Chatham House (Quigley  1981; Thakur, Davis, and Vale  2017; Grandjean  2018; Pemberton  2019). The importance of continental participants, on the other hand, has been neglected. Léon Bourgeois, for example, who had already proposed a League of Nations before the Great War (Bourgeois 1910) and who initiated the League-­sponsored conference system, has been overlooked in the English-­language literature. The same may be said of Maurice Bourquin, who was an important figure during the discussions of both collective security and peaceful change. Bourquin was rapporteur for the ISC meetings from 1935 to 1938 and left formative marks on all four conferences. Through his introductory lectures, he defined the conceptual framework for the discussions on both collective security and peaceful change. He participated actively in the meetings, keeping the discussions on track. After the conferences he edited the reports (IIIC 1936, 1938). Yet he remains virtually unknown. This neglect indicates a third concluding point: that continental inputs declined over time, whereas Anglo-­American scholarship had an increasing impact and came to dominate, first, the site of League-­sponsored conferences and later, the scholarly field of IR as a whole. What were the reasons for this increasing impact? What drove this Anglo-­ American rise toward disciplinary hegemony? One likely answer lies in the realms of ideas and institutions: partly in the early failure of CISSIR to establish an international elite of cooperating intellectuals along lines drawn up by Léon Bourgeois and partly in the success of ISC, which explored the big, interstate questions of the age. Another likely answer is material concerns about the financing of sites and institutions, especially during the early 1930s, when the world economy was in a recession and academic funds were cut. Teachers and researchers from Britain and the United States rose to dominance because the institutions to which they belonged were sponsored by large, wealthy, private organizations. British and Americans sites of teaching and research successfully solicited funds from philanthropic organizations such as the Carnegie Memorial Trust and the Rockefeller Foundation (1936, 243ff.). The French, by contrast, were reluctant to accept such support. A fourth concluding point concerns the consequences of this Anglo-­American rise to prominence in the ISC and, eventually, in the field of IR. It meant a shift toward an Anglo-­American view of a “science of international relations.” Its purpose was to build a solid base of robust and factual knowledge, which the statesmen of the world could draw

The Interwar Era and the Disciplinary Context   43 on to make informed decisions. The idea was to replace myth, ideology, and ob­scu­rant­ ism with accurate information and scholarly knowledge derived from systematic observation of states and state relations. Although many participating scholars sought to derive lessons from history (Toynbee 1937), the concrete application was to the current international situation. As a consequence, IR discussions were driven by current events. This is quite apparent in the case of the conference site; the themes discussed at the ISC were always selected on the basis of contemporary events. The conferences in 1934–1935 were informed by the Great Depression, and those of 1936–1937 and 1938–1939 by Germany’s actions in Europe, Italy’s in North Africa, and Japan’s in China. This suggests a fifth concluding point about the interwar debate on peaceful change. It was a reaction on the part of status quo, pro-­League powers to challenges posed by the unlawful acts of dissatisfied powers. The debate was conducted within a liberal, centrist discourse. It confronted illiberal arguments that existed outside the Atlantic community. It represented moderate, pro-­League viewpoints and lacked voices from the extreme left and the extreme right. Theories of imperialism (Bukharin [1915] 1973; Lenin [1917] 1975) and geopolitics (Kjellén 1916) were excluded from the ISC debates. Indeed, such approaches were excluded from the entire field of IR. Finally, although interwar IR was dominated by an Anglo-­American philosophy of science, different approaches existed. These gave rise to different understandings of the concept of “peaceful change.” However, they were encased in a broad, common understanding that was well expressed by Maurice Bourquin. The “actual principle of peaceful change,” he said, was that “the international order, like internal order, needs to adapt itself to changing conditions of social life, and . . . it is desirable that this adaptation should take place by regular and peaceful procedures” (IIIC 1938, 260). This definition represented the attitudes of the status quo powers. It reflected a conservative project designed to introduce to the world order some principles or means of change in order to preserve the international order that was drawn up at Versailles in 1919.

Notes 1. No report was published from the 1938/1939 meetings on “Economic Policies and World Peace” due to the outbreak of World War II. 2. Discussions within the ISC network stimulated discussions outside it as well. The American Society of International Law, for example, devoted its 1936 conference to “peaceful change.” Cf. the special issue of the Proceedings of the American Society of International Law 1936, with articles by, for example, Quincy Wright, which suggests that nestors in IR and members of ISC may also contribute to other fields. 3. This definition was adopted by the League as recently as 1936. It was an outcome of the 7th International Conference of American States that met in Montevideo in late December 1933. It was later registered with the League of Nations and has since been the standard definition in international law (cf. League of Nations 1936). The introductory chapter in Dunn (1937) cleaves faithfully to the definition in this so-­called Montevideo declaration. 4. It is tempting to speculate that the post–Second World War employment of the term varied with the shifting temperature of the Cold War and that the usage of the term increased

44   Torbjørn L. Knutsen during the tensions that followed the Korean War (early 1950s), decolonization, the Vietnam War (1960s), and the “second Cold War” (1975–1985). The frequency of use fell steadily after the breakup of the Eastern bloc and the USSR.

References Angell, Norman. 1910. The Great Illusion. London: Heineman. Bourgeois, Léon. 1910. Pour la société des nations. Paris: E. Fasquelle. Bukharin, Nikolai. (1915) 1973. Imperialism and World Economy. New York: Monthly Review Press. Carr, Edward H. (1939) 2001. The Twenty-Years’ Crisis: 1919–1939. London: Palgrave. Cruttwell, C. R. M. F. 1937. A History of Peaceful Change in the Modern World. London: Oxford University Press. Dunn, Frederick. 1937. Peaceful Change. New York: CFR. Grandjean, Martin. 2018. “Les réseaux de la coopération intellectuelle: La Société des Nations comme actrice des échanges scientifiques et culturels dans l’entre-deux-guerres.” PhD thesis, Université de Lausanne. Gregory, T.  E. 1937. “The Economic Bases of Revisionism.” In Peaceful Change, edited by Charles Manning, 63–81. London: Macmillan. Haushofer, Karl. 1928. Bausteine zur Geopolitik. Berlin: Vowinkel IIIC. 1933. The State and Economic Life. Paris: IIIC IIIC. 1936. Collective Security: A Record of the Seventh and Eighth International Studies Conferences. Paris: IIIC. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.66102/page/n3/mode/2up. IIIC. 1938. Peaceful Change: Proceedings of the Tenth International Studies Conference. Paris: IIIC. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.275473/mode/2up https://archive.org/ stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.275473/2015.275473.Peaceful-Change_djvu.txt. Kjellén, Rudolf. 1916. Staten som Lifsform. Stockholm: Hugo Gerbers förlag. Knutsen, Torbjørn. 2016. A History of International Relations Theory. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Knutsen, Torbjørn. 2018. “The Origins of IR: Idealists, Administrators and the Institutionalization of a New Science.” In SAGE Handbook of the History, Philosophy and Sociology of International Relations, edited by Andreas Gofas, Inanna Hamati, and Nicholas Onuf, 193–207. Los Angeles: Sage. Lauterpacht, Hersh. 1937. “The Legal Aspect.” In Peaceful Change, edited by C. Manning, 135–168. London: Macmillan. League of Nations. 1936. “Convention on Rights and Duties of States.” League of Nations Treaty Series 165, no. 3802: 20–43. Lenin, V. I. (1917) 1975. “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism.” In The Lenin Anthology, edited by R. C. Tucker, 204–275. New York: W. W. Norton. Mackinder, Halford J. 1919. Democratic Ideals and Reality. New York: Holt. Mair, Lucy. 1937. “Colonial Policy and Peaceful Change.” In Peaceful Change, edited by C. Manning, 81–100. London: Macmillan. Mannheim, Karl. (1926) 1936. Ideology and Utopia. London: Routledge. Mannheim, Karl. 1937. “The Psychological Aspect.” In Peaceful Change, edited by C. Manning, 101–134. London: Macmillan. Manning, Charles, ed. 1937. Peaceful Change. London: Macmillan.

The Interwar Era and the Disciplinary Context   45 Moses, Jonathon W., and Torbjørn L. Knutsen. 2019. Ways of Knowing. London: Palgrave. Næss, Arne. 1966. Communication and Argument: Element of Applied Semantics. London: Allen & Unwin. Pemberton, Jo-Ann. 2019. Cold-Blooded Idealists: The Story of International Relations, Part I. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Quigley, Carrol. 1981. The Anglo-American Establishment. New York: Books in Focus. Robbins, Lionel. 1937. “The Economics of Territorial Sovereignty.” In Peaceful Change, edited by C. Manning, 41–62. London: Macmillan. Rockefeller Foundation. 1936. Annual Report 1936. https://assets.rockefellerfoundation.org/ app/uploads/20150530122125/Annual-Report-1936.pdf. Thakur, Vineet, Alexander E. Davis, and Peter Vale. 2017. “Imperial Mission, Scientific Method: An Alternative Account of the Origins of IR.” Millennium 46, no. 1: 3–23. Toynbee, Arnold. 1936. “Peaceful Change or War?” International Affairs 15, no. 1: 26–56. Toynbee, Arnold. 1937. “The Lessons of History.” In Peaceful Change, edited by C. Manning, 27–40. London: Macmillan. Webster, Charles  K. 1937. “What is the Problem of Peaceful Change?” In Peaceful Change, edited by C. Manning, 3–26. London: Macmillan.

Chapter 3

Peacefu l Ch a nge a fter the Wor ld Wa rs Peter Marcus Kristensen

“Peaceful change” is a fundamental problem in International Relations (IR) and was subject to intense debate as the discipline institutionalized in the interwar period. The argument, advanced by some realists (e.g., Carr 1939; Gilpin 1981), that peaceful change is a “perennial” problem is somewhat deceptive, however. Concepts are not part of a timeless canon but are always embedded and embodied in specific historical contexts. “Peaceful change” was in important ways an interwar concept and debate (Kristensen 2019), and this chapter aims to trace and explain the diachronic life of the concept of “peaceful change” in the IR discipline after the world wars. It contends that what appears to be the same concept (“peaceful change”) recurring over time may in fact be different conceptions deployed differently in different contexts to address different problems. “Peaceful change” did not mean the same in the 1950s or 1970s as it did in the 1930s. The chapter traces these conceptual changes, as well as how the concept generally retreated into a more marginal space in the postwar discipline. The explanation for its postwar travelogue—and marginalization in particular—is to be found in various factors, including (1) a changing postwar geopolitical and technological context, (2) a changing view of appeasement and (3) colonialism, (4) institutional and disciplinary changes, and (5) intellectual currents disavowing “interwar idealism” but endorsing a postwar realist version of peaceful change. The final two sections trace two ostensibly “idealist” lineages in (6) international law discourse and (7) (neo)functionalism.

48   Peter Marcus Kristensen

Geopolitical and Technological Developments: From Peaceful Change to Peaceful Coexistence The flourishing interwar debate on peaceful change was deeply influenced by its geopolitical context and “reflected the main trends in contemporary international relations,” specifically the mounting calls for treaty revision, growing aggression by the so-­called imperial have-­nots, and the looming threat of war (Antola 1984, 229, 233). When the delegates met in Paris for the 1937 conference on peaceful change, Japan had already invaded Manchuria, Italy had occupied Ethiopia, and Germany had remilitarized the Rhineland. Although contributors from many countries participated, it has been argued that the peaceful change agenda reflected “Anglo-­American ideas of peaceful international relations” (Antola 1984, 229) in that it interwove the British debate about collective security versus appeasement with the American debate about intervention versus abstention (Ashworth 2002, 34). This geopolitical context changed dramatically after the Second World War and provides part of the explanation for the postwar demise of peaceful change. One of the curiosities of the early Cold War order was that, unlike at Versailles, a status quo had not yet been established after the Second World War due to the East-­West conflict between the victors of the war. As Thompson pointed out, “the question of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the status quo” at the core of peaceful change was therefore “superseded by an earlier and prior question” of simply working out a practical arrangement on which a postwar status quo acceptable to both the Soviet Union and the United States could be founded (1953, 758–759). As the bipolar Cold War structure crystallized and the threat of nuclear war loomed, the concern was more with settling and stabilizing, than changing, the postwar order. The main problem for early Cold War IR, Neal and Hamlett argued, was “peaceful coexistence” involving acceptance, rather than change, of the status quo balance of power (Neal and Hamlett 1969, 301). This conservatism is exemplified by Butterfield, who saw IR as a “science for the preservation of a civilized order” and “the maintenance of a general status quo” (Butterfield 1951, 416). Cold War IR was focused on maintaining (European) order and stability rather than pursuing change and justice (Bull 1977). Apart from the bipolar rivalry, the advent of nuclear deterrence also put the problem in a different light, although scholars disagreed on whether this made the problem of peaceful change redundant or more pertinent. As an example of the former, Hedley Bull contended that the problem of peaceful change had “lost its urgency” in the Cold War (Bull 1969, 633). In the 1930s, Bull argued, war was still seen as the main historic agent of change, and thus the maintenance of peace required another method of change in order to avoid the confrontation between states demanding change and states opposed to it. In the bipolar post–World War II world, he held, the two top

Peaceful Change after the World Wars   49 powers were both winners of the last great war and thus mainly concerned with conserving the status quo and their position in it. Moreover, they both possessed nuclear weapons, which meant that peace, understood as the avoidance of great power war, became so “supreme” an objective of both “that it cannot be supposed that it depends on the satisfaction of the demands they have for change” (Bull 1969, 634). Peaceful change thus had relevance only in minor conflicts that did not involve the superpowers (Bull 1969, 634). Other scholars argued exactly the opposite: in a nuclear world, changes of the international order must be peaceful because the alternative to peaceful change is not violent change, but cataclysmic change. Both liberals and realists argued that innovations in technologies of destruction made peaceful change both more difficult and more urgent for the preservation of peace because nuclear weapons had vastly increased the costs of pursuing political change in the status quo through force (Bloomfield 1957, 1; Dunn 1959, 278–285; Herz 1959, 181; Gilpin 1981, 217; Keohane 1986, 197–198). Quincy Wright (1946, 882) argued that the postwar balance of power, with fewer great powers whose relative superiority over others had increased, combined with more destructive war technologies, made the need for continuous change more urgent. John Herz, too, stressed that nuclear weapons made the problem of finding alternative and peaceful means of change more pertinent because nuclear deterrence rendered the “resort to nuclear or even conventional war no longer possible.” But if war, or the threat thereof, which had been a classical tool of diplomacy, was no longer available, how could nations protect the status quo or change it (Herz 1959, 181)? Frederick Dunn, a central scholar of peaceful change in the interwar period, also noted that the Cold War, “with its sharp rivalry between the two polar blocs,” made it more difficult to develop procedures of peaceful change, yet pressures for change remained “as strong as before,” voluntary change as difficult to achieve as ever, and the advent of nuclear weapons had “restricted the use of military power as an instrument for bringing about political change in the international system, and increased the use of  non-­violent means of seeking change” (Dunn 1959, 285). Dunn had written the introduction to The Absolute Weapon (Dunn et al. 1946), which argued that nuclear weapons had made war redundant and contended that the bomb affected peaceful change in two ways. First, nuclear weapons limit the use of force for great powers seeking or blocking change of the status quo, which enables smaller powers to present faits accomplis otherwise not compatible with their relative power. Second, nuclear weapons alter the calculus of the great powers because they change the strategic value of certain territories that would previously have been subject to claims for change (Dunn 1959, 284). Compared to the pre-­nuclear age, when diplomats could resolve disputes and find compromise because the alternative was a “decision on the battlefield,” Robert Gilpin (1981, 217) argued two decades later, the advent of nuclear weapons was a serious impediment to diplomacy and the “goal of instituting a mechanism of peaceful change, yet one that made the problem of peaceful change as pertinent as ever.” In sum, while most of these postwar scholars acknowledged that peaceful change was increasingly difficult in a nuclear and bipolar world, they still considered it to be

50   Peter Marcus Kristensen an, if not the most, important problem in international relations. The geopolitical and technological context alone is therefore an insufficient explanation of the marginalization of peaceful change.

Peaceful Change and the Postwar Politics of Appeasement and Containment Another explanation for the demise of peaceful change was that it was increasingly viewed as providing the rationale for appeasement policies, which had little currency in the post-­Hitler and burgeoning Cold War era. This is not entirely unfounded. Some interwar articulations of peaceful change, notably Carr’s, conceptualized it as a way to avoid war by appeasing the “have-­nots” threatening war with territorial redistribution, and these views were later (rightly) discredited as justifying appeasement. During the war, Carr (1946) himself even decided to revise his argument that Munich was a case of peaceful change for the second edition of The Twenty Years’ Crisis. Others continued to advocate for peaceful change as appeasement, for instance Charles Manning, who during the war advanced the (at that point very politically incorrect) argument that peaceful change should come about through an “institutionalized Munich” (Manning cited in Long  2012, 80). But equating peaceful change per se with appeasement is misleading and ignores the nonrealist and nonappeasing conceptualizations of peaceful change. Many interwar scholars explicitly objected to the equation of peaceful change with appeasement. In any case, the experiences of Munich and appeasement ‘filtered through’ the concept, discrediting peaceful change after the Second World War. Martin Wight’s critique in Power Politics was that the interwar argument about peaceful change suffered from two “radical vices”: it was begun too late, after change was conceded, and it was conducted “not by the strong to the weak on grounds of justice, but by the comfortable to the violent because of alarm.” For the Nazis therefore peaceful change “acquired the appearance of sacrificing small powers to the aggressor” (Wight [1946]  1995, 212). Peaceful change in the appeasement mode depended on the premise that the dissatisfied have limited and satisfiable aims—an idea that was severely challenged post-­Hitler and in the context of the Cold War (Bloomfield 1957, 18). Postwar critics who read peaceful change mainly through Carr dismissed it simply as a cynical and amoral policy of “prudent yielding” and “give and take” that could come about only in response to a “threat of force” rather than through arbitration, judicial settlement, and an element of morality (Bull 1969, 626–627; Fox 1985, 5–7). Peaceful change, in Carr’s version, was a ruthful standing by and letting go in order to, by all means, avoid war. For a contrast, W. T. R. Fox argued that Frederick Dunn’s (1937) Peaceful Change not only anticipated

Peaceful Change after the World Wars   51 The Twenty Years’ Crisis, but importantly also did not prescribe appeasement to the same extent (Fox 1962, 13). That peaceful change need not amount to appeasement is also evident in Gilpin’s later treatment of the topic. Gilpin did not equate peaceful change with appeasement understood as simply nonviolent changes that preserve the peace. Gilpin, like many interwar scholars of peaceful change, emphasized that rather than simply maintaining peace, changes had to be consistent with morality and values: “In the absence of shared values and interests, the mechanism of peaceful change has little chance of success” (Gilpin  1981, 209). But during the Cold War, shared values and interests were few. Consequently, the combination of the experience with an unappeasable Hitler and growing anticommunist sentiment, particularly in the United States, made the times hard for peaceful change. The ‘lesson learned,’ from a Cold War perspective, was that in the face of structural change, one should not succumb to the demands of rising powers, but rather stand firm and be prepared to fight them in a hegemonic war. In Fox’s view, the realism of the 1950s provided “a rationale for not appeasing the presumably unappeasable and therefore for cold war” (Fox 1985, 7). A related reason that the peaceful change agenda faded, at least in Anglo-­American IR, had to do with the specific “have-­not.’ ” Like Hitler’s Germany, many scholars and policy makers saw the Soviet Union as a revolutionist, expansionist, and ideological power rather than a normal dissatisfied or revisionist one. An illustrative example is John Foster Dulles, a long-­term advocate of peaceful change, who was even dubbed the “hero of peaceful change” by Life magazine (Life 1959, 32). During and after the Second World War, Dulles restated that a durable peace “can be achieved only by a world order which will permit of peaceful change” (Dulles 1941, 498; 1957, 38). However, there was a change in the scope and moral underpinnings of his conception of peaceful change during the Cold War. Dulles increasingly based his postwar arguments about the possibility for peaceful change on religious grounds and moral law—and contrasted this view with the “atheistic and materialistic” Marxian communism, which views law as a mere reflection of those in power (Dulles 1959, 15). The coercive and terrorizing practices that follow from the “methods of communism are incompatible with peaceful change,” Dulles argued (Dulles in Sohn 1948, 1126; Dulles 1959, 18). Demands for peaceful change were therefore increasingly seen in the light of the Soviet threat and not viewed in terms of their justice but whether or not they were in favor of communism (Dulles 1957, 41). President Dwight D. Eisenhower also subscribed to a vision of peaceful change: “We must not think of peace as a static condition in world affairs. That is not true peace, nor in fact can any kind of peace be preserved that way. Change is the law of life, and unless there is peaceful change, there is bound to be violent change” (Eisenhower 1955, 1006). But his conception of peaceful change was also coupled to a liberal, antitotalitarian project encouraging only peaceful changes toward the goals of freedom, justice, and human rights (Eisenhower 1955, 1007). Peaceful change simply became more difficult in a political climate that viewed all concessions and any type of rapprochement as appeasement and giving in to communism,

52   Peter Marcus Kristensen as was the case at the height of the Cold War. Only with détente did peaceful change vis-­à-­vis the Eastern bloc and in the territorial status quo in Europe become a topic. Particularly the European debate in the 1960s and 1970s was more attuned to the peaceful change agenda. Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik can be read as a “quest for peaceful change” (Niedhart 2016). The Helsinki Final Act (1975) committed itself (at least ­rhetorically) to the defense of the status quo, mainly territorial, and the inviolability of borders, but at the same time was open to subtle and peaceful change. The West particularly emphasized the document’s “dynamic potential, insisting on the possibility of a peaceful change of frontiers or least their greater permeability” (Niedhart 2017).

From Colonial to Anticolonial Peaceful Change The interwar discourse on peaceful change was conducted largely by Euro-­American (and male) scholars and was markedly Eurocentric, colonial, and imperialist. The main problem was how to effect peaceful changes so as to avoid war in Europe, and the only demands for change that were taken seriously were those of European powers threatening war. The 1937 Peaceful Change conference was subtitled “procedures, population, raw materials, colonies,” and substantial parts of it discussed whether a peaceful redistribution of Europe’s colonial possessions could satisfy the imperial “have-­nots” and their alleged need for raw materials and population outlets (Lebensraum). Colonial subjects were not represented at the conference, but were for the most part treated as objects to be exchanged for a new equilibrium of peace in Europe, even though some participants objected against treating colonies as pawns to sacrifice and called for decolonization (Kristensen 2019, forthcoming). The political context clearly changed as decolonization proceeded. Although colonialism persisted in various forms in the 1970s, as Chadwick Alger (1972, 14) noted in the reissue of the Peaceful Change volume, “[I]t is not thinkable that a conference in the 1970s would include the following items that were on the agenda of the Colonial Study Group as possible ‘solutions’ to colonial problems: Participation of nationals of non-­colonial Powers in the colonial administration. International cooperation in the exploitation of colonial resources. International cooperation with regard to cultural penetration. Transfer of territory from a colonial Power to another national sovereignty.” Yet the colonial character of the interwar debates on peaceful change did not necessarily imply that peaceful change was redundant in a decolonizing world. Decolonization and the move from a European imperialist to a global international society raised the question of a peaceful revision of the international political, economic, and legal order. Soon after the Second World War it was realized that national movements for self-­determination also required mechanisms for peaceful change of treaties and the territorial status quo (Catlin 1947, 79). Even though some at the Bandung Conference

Peaceful Change after the World Wars   53 saw the United Nations (UN) as inadequate for “peoples seeking peaceful change and development” (Wright 1956, 150), others argued that “the United Nations is able to channel such movements into processes of peaceful change” toward decolonization and self-­determination (Wright 1955, 164; Ward 1957, 331; Bloomfield 1957; Dunn 1959, 279) and even that nonviolent decolonization had been the “most impressive showing” of peaceful change (Dunn 1959, 279). Apart from the very process of decolonization, which was certainly not always peaceful, the problem also became relevant at the level of change in the global order. Although post-­ war studies of peaceful change remained dominated by Euro-­ American scholars, the concept of peaceful change was also used by proponents of postcolonial or Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) to argue for the revision of the colonial and imperialist system of international law. Several “TWAIL I scholars,” such as Georges Abi-­Saab, F.  Garcia-­Amador, R.  P.  Anand, Mohammed Bedjaoui, Taslim Elias, and J.  J.  G.  Syatauw, discussed peaceful change in the 1960s (Anghie and Chimni  2003, 79). The paradox for postcolonial states, Abi-­Saab (1962, 100) argued, was that the “international law that they are now asked to abide by, sanctioned their previous subjugation and exploitation and stood as a bar to their emancipation.” In sanctioning and justifying the creation of colonial empires before the Second World War, “traditional international law” has been a hindrance rather than a help for colonies aspiring for independence, Syatauw (1961, 230) argued, and “has not given enough attention to the creation of ways to peaceful change.” Therefore, there were numerous calls for revision of international rules by postcolonial states that were not involved in their shaping. The “new” countries, R. P. Anand stated, “want to change the status quo, and are striving to restructure their societies and the international society to reach a more equitable situation in which they can share the blessings of modern civilization on an equal footing” (Anand 1962, 390). The challenge for international law, as for any “legal system which does not keep up with the fundamental changes in its social environment,” in Abi-­Saab’s words, is to develop or fade into disregard: “The obvious answer to the dilemma is the doctrine of ‘peaceful change.’ It implies the adoption in international law of means to judge the claims for change and to affect them in a peaceful and institutionalized way.” There are vehicles for change in international law and organization (Article 19 of the League of Nations Covenant and Article 14 of the UN Charter). However, they have never been used, Abi-­Saab argued, at least partly because revision in the interwar period and afterward was regarded “as a dirty word, an excuse for the aggressors to grab what they can lay their hands on.” But “the situation is now radically different,” he continued. “Revision is needed not to redistribute colonies and spheres of influence between a few big powers, but to redress the balance of centuries of domination and exploitation by these big powers of the newly independent states” (Abi-­Saab 1962, 119). These calls for peaceful change—which not incidentally coincided with the call for a New International Economic Order (NIEO)—are not so much about the peacefulness of decolonization per se as they are about the subsequent renegotiation of a more just postcolonial world order.

54   Peter Marcus Kristensen

Disciplinary and Institutional Changes: International Politics and Law A fourth factor affecting the postwar fate of peaceful change in IR has less to do with its intellectual or geopolitical relevance after the war than with the changing institutional and disciplinary context, particularly the postwar split between international politics and international law. The interwar debate on peaceful change primarily took place under the auspices of the multidisciplinary International Studies Conference (ISC), initiated in 1928 by the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation of the League of Nations, which received necessary funding from American foundations, particularly Rockefeller. However, the ISC, under which the peaceful change debate had taken place, became marginalized after the war due to its affiliation with the League, its multidisciplinary nature, and its “less realistic and more academic” approach (Rietzler 2008, 27; Long 2006, 619). It bears noting that the Rockefeller Foundation later entered into a “de facto alliance with Hans Morgenthau” and organized the 1954 “conference on international politics,” at which leading scholars such as Hans Morgenthau, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Arnold Wolfers begun the pursuit of (realist) IR theory and advocated the subsumption of IR under political science (Guilhot 2008, 290, 295). This stood in contrast to the interdisciplinary ISC, which Morgenthau directly described as “an incoherent collection of fragmentary knowledge ranging the whole gamut of academic disciplines” (Morgenthau 1952, 648). The postwar disciplinarization of IR under political science is important in this context, because the interwar discourse on peaceful change was essentially interdisciplinary and had a particular relation to international law. The postwar boundary struggles in the attempt to constitute IR as a separate discipline (or subdiscipline to political science) changed the field and resulted in the loss of much of the interdisciplinary richness of the 1930s (Kahler 1997, 29). The growing postwar skepticism toward peaceful change was therefore also connected to the wider disciplinary move against interwar IR as idealistic, utopian, normative, legalistic, and not least overly interdisciplinary. Fox’s survey of interwar IR described it as not only interdisciplinary, including everything that involved more than one country as “international,” but also emotional and missionary, arising out of the peace movement and international law (Fox 1949, 67–68). Fox also notes, and commends the fact, that international law became more marginal and that the multidisciplinary field of international studies (e.g., in ISC) became the narrower “international politics,” a subfield of political science: “International politics is moved to the focus and other subjects are related to it” (Fox 1949, 79). The postwar split between international law and international relations meant that peaceful change essentially continued on separate tracks: the realist version of peaceful change and the international law discourse on peaceful change (dismissed by some interwar scholars as “idealist” peaceful change). Peaceful change continued to receive consistent attention in international law during and after the Second World War. In the early years of the war, Hersch Lauterpacht noted,

Peaceful Change after the World Wars   55 “many” believed that the League had failed because it did not provide effective means for peaceful change. Lauterpacht argued that the problem of peaceful change could only be solved through legislation and a “super-­state” with effective authority to impose decrees—and criticized the “flippancy of the realist” who reduces peaceful change to a question of power, threats, and pressure short of war (Lauterpacht 1941, 131–132). The problem of how to institute a legal mechanism for peaceful change—so as to displace war as a mechanism for change—therefore continued to play a role in wartime discussions about the coming postwar settlement, including at the Dumbarton Oaks and San Francisco conferences, leading up to the peaceful change provision in the UN Charter (Wright 1958, 846). Franklin D. Roosevelt and the US State Department specifically recognized the need for “an international organization both strong enough to preserve the peace against aggressors and flexible enough to relax pressures on boundaries by an orderly process of peaceful change” (Campbell 1947, 196). If one accepts that change is a constant, the legal argument went, then the coming peace settlement would become outdated, too, and the organization of peace would thus depend on the possibility of peaceful change (Hamilton 1942, 547; Kunz 1944, 361; Whitton 1944, 436). The “old friend” of peaceful change, Dunn argued at the American Society of International Law, was sure “to trouble the sleep of the peacemakers after the present war” (Dunn 1944, 60). One of the central lessons learned from the failed attempts at peaceful change in the interwar years was that the coming peace should not be equated with a status quo but institutionally organized around ordered change and must “develop law and procedures for peaceful change” (Jessup 1947; Borchard 1943, 51; 1944; Kunz 1944). The more general interwar lesson was to separate the organization of peace (the League) from the specific status quo settled in peace treaties (Versailles), thus allowing for change in the latter without necessarily changing the former (Wilcox  1948, 175). Lincoln Bloomfield, a scholar of peaceful territorial change and the UN, argued that the UN challenged traditional thinking about law and politics, that is, the League, which had been “an agency for inflexible support of the status quo” and “maximum rigidity.” The UN legal order was not synonymous with the political status quo, but instead had a “machinery available for peaceful change,” and a “genuinely new bias exists toward change and away from the status quo, for example, in the realm of colonialism” (Bloomfield 1960, 72; 1957, 2, 14). Quincy Wright, in his review of Bloomfield, believed this was overemphasizing differences but conceded that the UN was more guided by principles and justice in its peaceful change, even though the veto prevented its full realization (Wright 1958, 847). Despite the continuing interest in peaceful change, a growing number of international lawyers became increasingly skeptical of its importance. What was needed was stability, order, and conservation. Although “we hear much about peaceful change,” as one skeptical observer argued during the war, “the world needs stability for a little while” (Chafee 1942, 42). Brierly directly argued that “we have heard too much of the problem of peaceful change,” which was no longer “a very urgent problem,” and that most wars could not be prevented by an international organization providing reasoned and just peaceful changes. What was needed was order (imposed through power) as the basic condition for law, he further argued, and the acceptance that law is “by its nature a

56   Peter Marcus Kristensen conservative force” that introduces a “strong bias” in favor of the status quo (Brierly 1946, 357–358; Lauterpacht 1955, 12; Brierly 1942 cited in Cheng 1959, 561). Lauterpacht later commended Brierly’s relegation of peaceful change (Lauterpacht 1955, 13). Lauterpacht’s biographer noted the immense shift, largely resulting from the war, from “virtual unanimity” among interwar international lawyers in regarding peaceful change as the central problem of international law to a Cold War generation of lawyers seeking “a minimum of stability and continuity in a world with an unprecedented rate of change” (Jenks 1960, 34–35). Especially as the political foundations of the UN gradually crystallized into the East-­West divide in the early Cold War, international lawyers became skeptical about the prospect for peaceful changes, or any change at all, through law (Wilcox 1948, 183). Yet the problem resurfaced in discussions about revision of the Charter. According to some lawyers, “the problem of ‘peaceful change’ at the international level [became] increasingly acute” because of the East-­West conflict and decolonization. The “new forces” could not be satisfied through the application of existing rules of international law, and accordingly the political structure of the United Nations had to adapt itself to this unexpected situation in order to endure (Black 1955, 56–57; Wright 1955, 157). The broader question about the adaptability of international law, not just the UN Charter, to changing social realities was a key arena for postwar discussion of peaceful change, which cannot be fully elaborated here. Suffice it to say that the international law literature conceptualizes the problem of peaceful change quite differently from the realist power transition literature, as one of how to accommodate a legal order to changed circumstances. It focuses especially on treaties, rights, and laws in the light of changed circumstances, often taking on a specialized technical-­legal character revolving around the tension between pacta sunt servanda (agreements must be kept) and rebus sic stantibus (as things stand, i.e., as long as the circumstances remain basically the same) (Lissitzyn 1967; Stein and Cabreau 1968). Although it has been somewhat marginalized in IR, the specialized legal concept “peaceful change” retains separate dictionary entries in international law to this day (Owada 2007).

Intellectual Developments: A Swing from Idealist to Realist Peaceful Change? A fifth possible explanation for the postwar demise of peaceful change is that the violent changes of the Second World War itself revealed the idealism of peaceful change and thus exposed its postwar irrelevance. This argument was made by several postwar scholars, who read the attempt to refine and perfect methods of peaceful change as part of the idealist interwar spirit, the League, and its focus on “good” things (Fox  1949,

Peaceful Change after the World Wars   57 67–75; Bull 1972, 35; Smith 1987, 191). This is misleading, however. Despite the pacifist and progressivist connotations, peaceful change was never an exclusively “idealist” or “interwar” concept but central to classical realism and neorealism, as the chapters by  Reichwein (this volume) and Shifrinson (this volume) elaborate. Entire chapters of  Carr’s (1939) The Twenty Years’ Crisis, Schwarzenberger’s (1941) Power Politics, Morgenthau’s (1948) Politics among Nations, and Gilpin’s (1981) War and Change were devoted to peaceful change. Moreover, Manning, who edited the 1937 volume Peaceful Change, has been described as “more realist and rather less constructivist” than some biographers acknowledge (Long 2012, 84), and Dunn’s (1937) Peaceful Change has been claimed for realism too (Kenneth Waltz borrowed the notion of “self-­help” from the book). Contra the legal literature outlined earlier, the focus here is on diplomatic mechanisms of change and specifically on change in the underlying political and economic foundations, rather than on the legal-­institutional order, which stands upon those foundations. Postwar realists were generally sympathetic to the idea that peaceful changes can be necessary to maintain peace, but they also argued that such changes will not necessarily be legal and just and cannot be enforced through international law and in an international system of collective security. To these authors, only concert diplomacy guided by force, power politics, and a pragmatic willingness to accommodate and compromise on issues that are not vital were viable routes to peaceful change. Schwarzenberger (1941, 231) directly argued that “it would be untrue to think that peaceful change and power politics are incompatible” and contended that peaceful changes had historically come about either through agreement between the great powers or unilaterally through faits accomplis—but rarely on the basis of justice or legal principles (Schwarzenberger  1941, 231–232). Nicholas Spykman also argued that the problem of peaceful change, which the League and its collective security system had failed to solve, was more successful in the Concert of Europe, where force played a larger role both in stabilizing and in effecting “necessary and just changes” in the status quo (Spykman  1942, 463). Kenneth Thompson also saw the nineteenth-­century Concert system as more conducive to peaceful change than the twentieth century experiments with collective security, which had ignored political realities, obscuring them in “constitutional verbiage and formal legalistic arguments,” and in essence was “probably incompatible with peaceful change” because it reinforced a rigid status quo (Thompson 1953, 757–759). John Herz commended Thompson’s analysis. He argued that the best solution to the problem would be peaceful, not necessarily just, changes through diplomatic bargaining resting on the threat of force: “All we can aim at is its ‘peacefulness,’ and it would not seem utopian to believe that such solutions could be had even where states no longer rely on the threat of individual force as ultima ratio; that is, to expect that even after a successful outlawry of force a status quo might be modified through the timehonored means of diplomacy which comprise pressures, compromise, accommodation, etc.” (Herz 1959, 89–90). Morgenthau also saw peaceful change as “one of the most important problems upon  whose solution the preservation of international order and the maintenance

58   Peter Marcus Kristensen of international peace depend” (Morgenthau 1948a, 494–495). The problem could be solved domestically by competition through established political and legal institutions. However, the international realm lacks the moral consensus, the authority, and the universal legal-­institutional mechanism to support peaceful change in politics among nations where challenges to the status quo are likely to divide the international community “into two hostile camps” and be decided by “the preponderance of power” (Morgenthau 1948b, 412–417; see also Thompson 1953, 768–770). Legal mechanisms and international organization cannot lead to significant peaceful changes in the distribution of power. They will either be superfluous if all agree or resisted if a powerful party disagrees. Consequently, to Morgenthau the problem of peaceful change was “intimately tied up with the over-­all social structure of the international community” and required “a fundamental change of that structure” for its solution (Morgenthau 1948a, 496; 1948b, 417–419). Classical balance-­of-­power realists thus continued to discuss peaceful change in the decades after the Second World War. They maintained that major changes, particularly constitutional changes, were brought about by war, but that a peaceful restructuring of the status quo was possible via statesmanship. The 1980s also saw a resurgent realist interest in change, often theorized from a neorealist viewpoint, which treated the question of peaceful change mainly in relation to global power transitions (Modelski 1978; Holsti, Siverson, and George 1980; Buzan and Jones 1981; Gilpin 1981). In Gilpin’s words, “to substitute methods of peaceful change for the historical recourse to war as the principal means of making the fundamental adjustments in the system necessitated by the differential growth of power among states” (Gilpin 1981, 206). But structural realism or neorealism generally has less room for statecraft and sees significant changes as the product of war, rather than of peaceful changes. Critics of neorealism have also not failed to single out its inability to explain peaceful change. As Keohane argued in Neorealism and Its Critics, “the problem of peaceful change is fundamental to world politics,” but realism “fails to answer” it, and “what we need to do now is to understand peaceful change by combining multidimensional scholarly analysis with more visionary ways of seeing the future” (Keohane 1986, 199–200). The birth and rise to prominence of structural realism within IR was therefore another intellectual factor that affected the demise of peaceful change. Although Gilpin’s War and Change reaffirms the fundamental importance of the problem of peaceful change, it explicitly studied “the role of war in the process of international political change” (Gilpin 1981, 7). The theoretical argument is that uneven growth rates constantly redistribute power in the international system. If the distribution of privileges and prestige remains static, this leads to a discrepancy between the social system and the growing forces for change which, if unsatisfied, eventually results in a hegemonic war between a hegemon(ic alliance) and a challenger(s) over the fundamentals of international order, values, and power (Gilpin 1981, 33). Major changes of the international system therefore usually come about via political violence and war, whereas peaceful changes in systems, such as redistributions of power, are possible (Gilpin 1981, 44, 208). To summarize, classical realists and neorealists continued to treat peaceful change as an important problem, even if sporadically and with growing skepticism, but the

Peaceful Change after the World Wars   59 argument that peaceful change per se is somehow idealist is untenable. Yet (neo)realism has a problem in explaining major peaceful change of international systems. Although it falls somewhat outside the temporal scope of this chapter, Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost policy and the end of the Cold War have been widely read as such an example of major peaceful change in international politics, and indeed, one realism fails to explain convincingly (Genest 1994).

Peaceful Change in Functionalist and Neofunctionalist IR The final postwar trace of peaceful change that I will pursue here stems from David Mitrany’s functionalist theory of peace and international organization, and from subsequent postwar developments in neofunctionalism, theories on regional integration, and security communities. Like the international lawyers mentioned previously, Mitrany (1943, 5–6) argued that the League failed because “it could not further that process of continuous adjustment and settlement which students of international affairs call ‘peaceful change.’ ” Consequently, the problematique remained relevant in the organization of A Working Peace System: “We shall have to speak of this again, but what peaceful change should mean, what the modern world, so closely interrelated, must have for its peaceful deve1opment, is some system that would make possible automatic and continuous social action, continually adapted to changing needs and conditions” (Mitrany 1943, 6). Compared to most of the interwar literature, and indeed to most realist conceptualizations, Mitrany rejected the excessive focus on changing borders, that is, peaceful territorial change. If the cause of war is the “division of the world into detached and competing political units,” simply redrawing their boundaries will not remove the causes of war. On the contrary, it is likely to disturb the social life of the groups concerned: “The purpose of peaceful change can only be to prevent such disturbance; one might say indeed that the true task of peaceful change is to remove the need and the wish for changes of frontiers” (Mitrany 1943, 6, 26). Turning the problem on its head, Mitrany saw the world not in territorial, but functional, terms—as economic and social activities—thus stressing cooperative over conflictual relations. Peaceful change, in this conceptualization, is not about getting states to yield territory, but rather about lessening the extent to which borders frustrate functional cooperation and thus reduce the demand for redrawing them. The absence of war is not enough for peaceful change, which requires the gradual dissolution of boundaries and the formation of a world community. To reach this goal, Mitrany advocated a pragmatic functionalist approach to peaceful change in which the function of international government is not to solve the problem of war and peaceful change directly, once and for all, but indirectly and gradually, by meeting the practical and technical needs of cooperation in specific task areas. Put differently, a working peace system is based on continuous peaceful

60   Peter Marcus Kristensen change. It envisions a pragmatic and elastic order arising from “active organic development” of cooperation and integration in certain functional areas rather than from a formal “written act of faith” with “fixed and final” rigid rules of the negative, “thou shall not” type of international organization that aims to protect states from each other—such as that perfected by the League (Mitrany 1943). Mitrany’s functional approach to peaceful change left traces on subsequent developments in neofunctionalism, regional integration, and security communities. (Neo)functionalist peaceful change is less about the major “constitutional” changes in international society and more about how certain regions start settling interstate disputes peacefully, start integrating in certain functional areas, and eventually develop “dependable expectations of peaceful change.” Peaceful change thus played a central, if somewhat neglected, role in Cold War debates about European integration, the formation of the European Community/Union, and the European security order. As noted in the introductory chapter (Paul, this volume), the European Community/Union could be read as one of the primary Cold War attempts to institutionalize peaceful change. It is notable that Ernst Haas (1961) put peaceful change at the center of the definition of international integration: “[P]olitical community exists when there is likelihood of internal peaceful change in a setting of contending groups with mutually antagonistic claims” (Haas 1961, 366). Cold War scholarship on the formation of security communities was also particularly interested in the conditions of permanent peace and social processes of peaceful change, “defined as an institutionalized, continuous, adaptive resolution of social problems without the use of violence.” A security community is a group of people or countries that agree their common problems must be resolved by “peaceful change” and can dependably expect that if controversies should arise in the future, they will be handled peacefully. Indeed, Deutsch defined a security community as a group of people who have become integrated, where integration is taken to mean a “sense of community and institutions and practices strong enough and widespread enough to assure for a ‘long’ time, dependable expectations of ‘peaceful change’ among its population” (Deutsch 1957, 5). Deutsch’s argument was that regional integration processes characterized by transaction flows and shared values and understandings will gradually evolve into more institutionalized interaction and eventually into stable expectations of peaceful change, wherein states believe that other members of the security community will not resort to force for dispute resolution. Contra realism, the security community invocation of “dependable expectations of peaceful change” implies more than a “no-­war” or negative peace community. It is a community with a common identity in which war is entirely unimaginable and peace is defined by a “we-­feeling” (Deutsch 1957, 36; Adler 1998, 171). Peaceful change is conceptualized as (inter)subjective: elites in the region expect peaceful change. Functionalist peaceful change is thus neither a system wherein great powers make one-­off bargains to avoid war nor a legal mechanism as in the international law discourse, but a “continuous learning process” that gradually evolves into institutionalized interaction, shared understandings, “mutually compatible self-­images,” and eventually stable expectations of peaceful change (Deutsch 1957, 130; Haas 1958, 443). This connects to the more con-

Peaceful Change after the World Wars   61 structivist literature on peaceful change and security communities, in which war is unthinkable and peaceful change is expected due to a sense of “we-­ness” (Adler and Barnett 1998; Kupchan et al. 2001; Patomäki and Wæver 1995; Möller 2007). The (neo) functionalist perspective thus provides an alternative to both realist and international law perspectives on peaceful change. But where Mitrany’s original focus was on global peaceful change, post-­war (neo)functionalist and constructivist work focused less on creating an elastic global order adaptive to changing needs and conditions than on regional integration and the formation of regional security communities, especially in  Europe and the transatlantic but also in other regions (Goodspeed  1959). The regional (particularly European) focus may explain why this post-­war strand gradually disconnected from the other two lines of research.

Conclusion This Handbook itself is evidence that peaceful change seems to be emerging, once again, as a central problem in IR. As the concept resurfaces, it is important to be aware of its conceptual history. Peaceful change clearly emerged in the tumultuous 1930s and has a troubled legacy associated with appeasement, colonialism, and the particular political and disciplinary context of the interwar period. But as this chapter has shown, there were traces of peaceful change scattered throughout Cold War IR, with the negative concept of peaceful change continuing in the realist lineage and the more positive concept in international law and (neo)functionalism. The reappropriation of previous debates on ‘peaceful change’—and indeed the use of the concept itself—for present debates on power and order transitions requires a historically reflexive approach. As outlined in this chapter, the political and intellectual context has changed immensely over the past century, and ‘the problem of peaceful change’ has taken different forms. Present attempts to resuscitate the concept of peaceful change require a deeper understanding of its conceptual history, its institutional embeddedness, the different ways scholars have historically deployed it in debate, and how it has interacted with other ideas and the world of international policy. There are obvious contextual differences from the multipolar system prevalent in the interwar period, through the bipolar and nuclear Cold War system, to today’s more diffuse global and regional power structures.

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Chapter 4

Peacefu l Ch a nge The Post–Cold War Evolution Jeffrey W. Taliaferro

This chapter traces the evolution of thinking about peaceful change at the systemic (or global) and regional levels during the post–Cold War era. The sudden end of the Cold War in late 1989, followed by the dissolution of the Soviet Union itself in 1991, left the United States as the lone superpower (or the unipole). Unipolarity, the (liberal) he­gem­ony of the United States, and the acceleration of economic globalization were just some of the independent variables that various scholars argued might facilitate peaceful change at the systemic (or global) and/or regional levels (Buzan and Wæver  2003; Paul 2012; Ripsman 2016; Taliaferro 2019). Each has yielded unintended consequences, including, but not limited to, the overreach of the United States during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and its subsequent retreat from global leadership, the emergence of China as a peer competitor to the United States and its increasingly assertive posture in East Asia, Russia’s efforts to undermine the United States and its allies through hybrid interference, and the uneven impact of globalization on the security strategies of different types of states across several regions. In sum, the effects of unipolarity, US liberal hegemony, and economic globalization on peaceful change at the systemic and regional levels during the post–Cold War era have been decidedly mixed. Before continuing, a few caveats are in order. First, unlike the chapters by Knutsen and Kristensen on peaceful change during the interwar and Cold War eras, this ­chapter deals with an era that is ongoing. One could argue that certain events over the past two decades—the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001; the Great Recession in 2008; China’s launch of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013; Russia’s hybrid interference to sway the 2016 US presidential election; or the novel coronavirus (COVID-­19) pandemic of 2020 and the geopolitical disruptions resulting from it— constitute what Robert Gilpin calls an “interaction change,” that is, change “at the level of interstate interactions (viz., formation of diplomatic alliances or major shifts in the locations of economic activities) [that] may be the prelude to systemic change and eventually systems change” (Gilpin 1981, 41).

68   Jeffrey W. Taliaferro Conceivably, these events might even be harbingers of what Gilpin calls systemic change, namely “changes in the international distribution of power, the hierarchy of prestige, and the rules and rights embodied in the system” (Gilpin 1981, 41). There is consensus that a US-­China power transition is now underway, but less agreement over the pace of that transition and the strategic implications for the United States, China, and other states (Friedberg 2011; Brooks and Wohlforth 2016; G. T. Allison 2017; Beckley 2018; Ikenberry 2018; Pu and Wang 2018; Foot 2020). However, there is no consensus over whether the post–Cold War era has ended, and if it has, when the exact transition point was or how we should characterize the new (or current) era in international politics. Second, any discussion of peaceful change in the post–Cold War era should begin with acknowledgment of the overall decline in the incidence of interstate warfare since the late 1980s. This decline, however, is overdetermined; it cannot be fully attributed to unipolarity, US liberal hegemony, or economic globalization. Nuclear weapons, the norms of territorial integrity and national self-­determination, advances in conventional weapons systems, the maturation of pluralistic security communities in particular regions of the globe (e.g., Western Europe), and a host of other variables might explain the so-­called New Peace (Mueller 1989; Zacher 2001; Jervis 2002; Fazal 2007; Ripsman and Paul 2010; Pinker 2011; Fettweis 2017). Furthermore, explaining the non-­occurrence of a nuclear war between the United States and Russia or between any other pair of nuclear-­armed adversaries (e.g., India and Pakistan) raises a host of methodological and epistemological conundrums. As the historian Francis  J.  Gavin observes, “[t]he problem is that we are trying to understand something that never happened, and we hope will never happen—a thermonuclear war” (Gavin 2020, 6). In the introductory chapter to this volume, T.  V.  Paul writes that conceptions of peaceful change vary along a continuum. As Paul states, a minimalist conception might be defined as “change in international relations and foreign policies of states, including territorial or sovereignty agreements that take place without violence or coercive use of force.” A maximalist conception would entail “transformational change that takes place non-­violently at the global, regional, interstate, and societal levels due to various material, normative and institutional factors, leading to deep peace among states, higher levels of prosperity and justice for all irrespective of nationality, race, or gender.” (Paul this ­volume, 4). Such peaceful change can occur at the systemic, regional, and/or national levels. This chapter takes as its starting point the “in-­between” definition of peaceful change first articulated by Karl Deutsch, which Paul this volume, 4 endorses: “[t]he ­resolution of social problems mutually by institutionalized procedures without resort to large-­scale physical force (Deutsch 1957, 5).” Elsewhere, Paul argues that peaceful change at the systemic and regional levels requires some degree of great power accommodation, which he defines as “mutual adaptation and acceptance by established and rising powers, and the elimination or substantial reduction in hostility between them.” The process of accommodation is complex, since it entails “status adjustment, the sharing of leadership roles through the accordance of institutional membership and privileges, and acceptance of spheres of influence: something established powers rarely offer to newcomers” (Paul 2016, 6–7).

Peaceful Change: The Post–Cold War Evolution   69 The operative question is whether any of the above-­mentioned variables—unipolarity, US liberal hegemony, and the acceleration of economic globalization—have had any effect on the ability of the United States and other major powers to resolve social problems, particularly in the areas of global and regional security, mutually by institutionalized procedures without recourse to large-­scale armed force. The remainder of this chapter is organized as follows: the first section considers the extent to which unipolarity, in and of itself, has been a mechanism for peaceful change in the post–Cold War era. The second section examines the related, yet distinct, impact of US liberal hegemony on the prospects for peaceful change at the regional and systemic levels. The third section considers the hypothesized effects of economic glob­al­i­za­tion on peaceful change at the systemic and regional levels. The conclusion summarizes the argument.

Unipolarity and Peaceful Change Has unipolarity itself been a mechanism for peaceful change at the systemic or regional levels of analysis? A unipolar international system has three defining features. First, as Robert Jervis notes, “[u]nipolarity implies the existence of many juridically equal nation-­states, something that an empire denies” (Jervis 2009, 190–191). Second, a unipolar system has only one great power (the unipole), a single state whose relative share of material power—especially its extant military and economic capabilities—is too great to be counterbalanced in the near-­term by any other state or possible combination of states (Brooks and Wohlforth 2008, 2016). Third, the unipole’s power preponderance does not give it complete control over the external behavior of all other states (Monteiro 2011). However, the systemic constraints on the unipole are considerably less than systemic constraints on the two great powers in a bipolar system or the ­several great powers in a multipolar system (Walt 2005; Ikenberry, Mastanduno, and Wohlforth 2009; Ripsman, Taliaferro, and Lobell 2016). For better or worse, r­ elatively weak systemic constraints and the availability of opportunities to further improve its strategic position afford the unipole a wide latitude in the pursuit of foreign and defense policies (Taliaferro, Lobell, and Ripsman 2009, 2018; Ripsman, Taliaferro, and Lobell 2016). While much of the debate among structural realists centered on the likely duration of the post–Cold War unipolar system and the near-­term likelihood of balancing—whether of the hard or soft varieties—by major powers against the United States (Waltz 1993, 2002; Layne 1993, 2006, 2012; Brooks and Wohlforth 2005; Pape 2005; Paul 2005, 2018; Wivel and Paul 2019b; Lieber and Alexander 2005), William C. Wohlforth advanced the bold proposition that unipolarity itself is prone to peace: “The raw power advantage of the United States means that an important source of conflict in previous systems is absent: hegemonic rivalry over leadership of the international system. No other major power is in a position to follow any policy that depends for its success on prevailing against the

70   Jeffrey W. Taliaferro United States in a war or an extended rivalry” (Wohlforth 1999, 5). Unipolarity minimizes security competition among the other major powers because the unipole would have an incentive to “maintain key security institutions in order to ease local security conflicts and limit expensive competition among [them].” Other major powers would have an incentive to jump on the bandwagon with the United States, since the expected costs of balancing are prohibitive (Wohlforth 1999, 6). Wohlforth further argues that an unambiguous status hierarchy reinforces the peaceful nature of unipolarity. In a bipolar or multipolar system, the intensity of status competition between the great powers varies depending upon the symmetry of the distribution of key capabilities. Those capabilities are themselves tangible status markers. But under unipolarity, only one state has an “unambiguous preponderance in all relevant dimensions” of capabilities (Wohlforth 2009, 41). Therefore, “while second-­tier states would be expected to seek favorable comparisons with the unipole, they would also be expected to reconcile themselves to a relatively clear status ordering or to engage in strategies of social creativity” (Wohlforth 2009, 41). Nuclear weapons do make the expected costs of war between the unipole and the major powers prohibitive. But unipolarity has not necessarily led to peaceful change at the systemic or regional levels. On the contrary, Nuno Monteiro contends, “[u]nipolarity will generate abundant opportunities for war between the unipole and recalcitrant minor powers that do not have the capabilities or allies necessary to deter it.” In a bipolar or multipolar system, the great powers have an incentive to restrain their weaker allies and to mitigate the risks of entrapment or entanglement (Snyder 1997; Kim 2011). But in a unipolar system, in which great power allies are not available, conflicts among minor powers and between those minor powers and the unipole become more likely. As a result, Monteiro argues, “unipolarity will be prone to produce asymmetric and peripheral conflicts” (Monteiro 2014, 5). The fact that the United States has continually been at war with a succession of recalcitrant minor powers—Serbia, Iraq, and Afghanistan—and various nonstate actors operating within the borders of failed states—the Taliban, al-­Qaeda, the Islamic State (or ISIS), and their respective offshoots—over the past thirty years calls into question the argument that unipolarity is more conducive to peace than bipolarity or multipolarity. Monteiro’s (structural realist) theory of unipolar politics holds that recalcitrant, yet vulnerable, minor powers, like Iraq, North Korea, and Iran, actually have an incentive to actively balance against the unipole. Major powers like China and Russia have a far greater margin of security against the unipole because they possess nuclear weapons (Monteiro 2014). The US military’s command of the global commons—defined as the oceans beyond fifteen nautical miles from shore, outer space, and airspace above fifteen thousand feet, along with its network of forward military bases (Posen  2003)—enables the United States to project force and conduct sustained military operations in the Middle East and South Asia, two regions it had contested with the Soviet Union during the Cold War (Montgomery 2016; Taliaferro 2019). The other major powers lack the military capabilities to deter the unipole from plunging into “wars of choice” against minor powers and

Peaceful Change: The Post–Cold War Evolution   71 nonstate actors in those regions. They also lack the means to coerce the unipole into withdrawing from such conflicts. US command of the commons has also had unintended consequences. Barry Posen observes that “[m]ost of the adversaries that the United States has encountered since 1990 have come to understand US military strengths and have worked to neutralize them” (Posen 2003, 23). Minor power and major power adversaries have done this by pursuing asymmetric strategies such as luring US forces into fighting in the contested zones of the globe, for example the littorals, urban environments, and air below fifteen thousand feet (Posen 2003), or by developing and deploying conventional weapons platforms to support anti-­access/area denial (A2/AD) (Montgomery 2014; Biddle and Oelrich 2016; Erickson et al. 2017). Hybrid interference, defined as “the synchronized use of multiple non-­military means of interference tailored to heighten divisions within target societies,” is another asymmetric strategy that Russia, and to a lesser extent China, employ against the United States and its allies (Wigell  2019, 262). Mikael Wigell notes that hybrid interference employs a variety of state-­controlled but non-­kinetic tools “that are concealed to provide the divider with official deniability and manipulate targeted actors without elevating threat perceptions” (Wigell 2019, 256). These tools include clandestine diplomacy (e.g., covert assistance to opposition groups, criminal organizations, or insurgents), geoeconomics (e.g., the use of economic inducements and threats with select members within the target community), and disinformation (e.g., the introduction of false or misleading information into the communication stream of the target state). To date, the most famous (or infamous) use of hybrid interference has been Russia’s two-­year-­long campaign of cyberespionage and disinformation to sway the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election (Wigell 2019; Jensen, Valeriano, and Maness 2019; Dawson and Innes 2019). China has also utilized the BRI, the technology firm Huawei’s dominance of the market in 5G network infrastructure, and disinformation campaigns on social media to drive wedges between the United States and various allies in Western Europe, South Asia, and East Asia (Zhou and Esteban 2018). Russia and China employ a variety of asymmetric strategies, some of which utilize non-­kinetic tools of statecraft, to offset American conventional military preponderance, but without risking escalation to war. The prolonged US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq actually worked to the advantage of Russia and China, as well as recalcitrant minor powers like Iran, in the following ways. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 and that state’s subsequent descent into sectarian civil war created a power vacuum in the heart of the Middle East. By backing various Shiite militias and political parties, Iran became a major power broker in the region in the 2000s (Juneau 2015; Ostovar 2019). When the 2011 Arab Spring unrest spread to Syria, it soon metastasized into a civil war to oust Syrian president Bashar al Assad. President Barak Obama’s administration, which had just extricated US combat troops from Iraq in late 2011, was reluctant to intervene in Syria. Russia and Iran responded by dispatching their air forces and militant clients (Lebanese Hezbollah), respectively, to bolster Assad’s forces, thus turning the tide of the Syrian civil war (Ostovar 2019; Korolev 2018). For a

72   Jeffrey W. Taliaferro minimal investment, Russian president Vladimir Putin preserved his one Middle Eastern ally and demonstrated Russia was capable of projecting military force beyond the former Soviet region. China was also a beneficiary of the US “forever wars” in the Middle East and South Asia, exploiting the opportunity to assert maritime claims and augment its naval presence in the East China and South China Seas. The construction and fortification of artificial islands in the South China Sea accelerated after President Xi Jinping came to power in 2013. The Obama administration publicly announced its “pivot to [East] Asia” strategy in late 2011, but it was the George W. Bush administration that actually started this diplomatic, military, and economic reorientation toward that region in response to China’s rise. The preservation of the existing distribution of power in East Asia, which favors the United States, was the core objective. According to Nina Silove, the means toward that end included “regularizing, expanding, and elevating US diplomatic engagement with China and balancing against China’s rise both internally and externally” (Silove 2016, 46). If unipolarity, in and of itself, may not be a mechanism for peaceful change at the systemic or regional levels, then what about the impact of US hegemony and the acceleration of economic globalization? The following sections consider those variables in turn.

US Liberal Hegemony and Peaceful Change Has the US liberal hegemony been a mechanism for peaceful change at the systemic or regional levels in the post–Cold War era? The terms unipole and hegemon have numerous, overlapping, and sometimes conflicting definitions in international relations literature. Nonetheless, they are two distinct concepts. Unipolarity refers to an international system with only a single great power (the unipole), regardless of its grand strategy or the specific foreign policies it pursues. By contrast, hegemony refers to an active effort by a powerful state (the hegemon) to establish and maintain a set of international rules and institutions (Wilkinson 1999). As Christopher Fettweis puts it, “[u]nipolarity is a fact; hegemony is (or is not) a goal.” He further notes that while in principle “unipolarity can be distinct from hegemony, in practice it is difficult to imagine the former unaccompanied by some form of the latter, since central to the very definition of polarity is the willingness to exert power” (Fettweis 2017, 433). Even realists in the hegemonic or power preponderance tradition recognize that a hegemon cannot simply use military force to preserve its privileged position at all times and in all places; the costs would be prohibitive. Gilpin writes that “[a]lthough the rights and rules governing interstate behavior are to varying degrees based on consensus and mutual interest, the primary foundation of rights and rules is the power and interests of

Peaceful Change: The Post–Cold War Evolution   73 the dominate group or states in a social system” (Gilpin 1981, 35). Hegemonic states create international orders, which are defined as “settled arrangements that define and guide relations between states. . . . States operate according to a set of organizational principles that define roles and the terms of interaction” (Ikenberry 2014, 85). International institutions, defined as “associational clusters among states with some bureaucratic structures that create and maintain self-­imposed and other imposed constraints on state policies and behaviors,” are key components of such orders (Wivel and Paul 2019a, 8). However, hegemony necessitates voluntary compliance. Weaker states should not only be cognizant of the power differential, they should also accept the hegemon’s higher status and the legitimacy of the rules and institutions the hegemon creates and maintains. Therefore, it behooves the hegemon to preserve the legitimacy of those rules and institutions. Liberal institutionalism links US hegemony, or more precisely, the liberal international order, and the prospects for peaceful change. John Ikenberry traces the origins of this order to a bargain reached in the decade following World War II: other states agreed to live within an American-­dominated international order. In exchange, the United States agreed to voluntary restraints on the unilateral exercise of its economic and military capabilities. While the creation of this postwar order was driven in part by American economic interests, “it also reflected a set of calculations about virtues of a durable and legitimate international order that provide a long-­term flow of economic and security benefits not just for the United States but to the wider world” (Ikenberry 2011, 333–334). Ikenberry posits crucial roles for shared liberal democratic governance and economic openness and US acceptance of voluntary restraints through international institutions, such as the United Nations (UN), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). “So although the United States ran the liberal order and projected power, it did so within a system of rules and institutions—of commitments and restraints. It underwrote order in various regions of the world. It provided public goods related to stability and openness, and it engaged in bargaining and reciprocity with its allies and partners” (Ikenberry 2011, 334). While some of these rules and institutions clearly reflected the interests of the hegemon, most resulted from negotiated agreements, whether between the hegemon and other states or among those other states themselves. The formal institutions, as well as more informal forums (e.g., the G7), “cut across diverse realms, including security and arms control, the world economy, the environment and global commons, human rights, and political relations” (Ikenberry 2018, 20). During the Cold War, the center of gravity of this liberal order was the “West”: the industrialized states of North America, Western Europe, and Japan. After the Cold War, the liberal order expanded to include much of the globe. Even as the Soviet Union teetered in 1990–1991, the George H. W. Bush administration moved rapidly not only to secure the inclusion of a reunified Germany in NATO, but also to suppress any Soviet or Western European alternatives to a post–Cold War security architecture on the continent (Ikenberry 2011; Shifrinson 2018, 2020).

74   Jeffrey W. Taliaferro President Bill Clinton’s administration pushed NATO to admit former Soviet satellite states, beginning with Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic in 1999, despite objections from Russian president Boris Yeltsin. Successive rounds of NATO expansion continued into the 2010s. With the accession of North Macedonia in 2020, the alliance now has thirty members. Whether NATO enlargement achieved its stated objective of consolidating liberal democratic governance and free market reforms in Central and Eastern Europe is debatable (Poast and Chinchilla 2020). Clinton attempted to mollify Yeltsin by including Russia in the Group of 7 leading industrialized states, which became the G8 (until Russia’s expulsion from that gathering during the 2008 Russo-­Georgian War). The net effect of NATO’s preservation and eastward expansion was to perpetuate the US role as the security guarantor of Europe, but at the cost of exacerbating the alliance’s burden-­sharing problems and alienating Russia (Shifrinson  2020; Menon and Ruger 2020; Sushentsov and Wohlforth 2020; Marten 2020; Kay 2020). When Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, President George  H.  W.  Bush and Secretary of State James Baker went to great lengths to obtain UN Security Council resolutions imposing economic sanctions and later authorizing the use of force to liberate Kuwait. Bush and Baker did so not only to overcome domestic opposition (especially among Democrats in the US Senate) to war, but also to persuade other states to join a US-­led coalition against Iraq. But eight years later, when the threat of veto by Russia or China precluded a Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force against Serbia, the Clinton administration chose to prosecute the Kosovo War under the auspices of NATO. Finally, at the urging of British prime minister Tony Blair, the George W. Bush administration tried unsuccessfully to secure a UN Security Council mandate for war in early 2003, which it launched ostensibly to dismantle Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s chemical and biological weapons programs (Ripsman 2019). The George H. W. Bush administration negotiated the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico, as well as closer economic ties with South America. The Asia-­Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) was established in 1989 as a mechanism to institutionalize cooperation among Pacific-­rim states, ensure that Asian regionalism developed in a trans-­Pacific direction, and demonstrate US commitment to the region (Ikenberry  2011). The chapter by Skålnes in this Handbook examines in greater depth the impact of these and other preferential trade agreements (PTAs) and regional trade agreements on peaceful change. But these “post–Cold War regional trade initiatives,” as Ikenberry notes, “were envisaged as steps that would reinforce the expansion, liberalization, and continued openness of the world economy” (Ikenberry  2011, 233). Of particular significance were the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to supersede the GATT in 1995 and the efforts by the Clinton and George  W.  Bush administrations to facilitate China’s accession to the WTO. By adjudicating international trade disputes, the WTO would serve as a cornerstone of a neoliberal “Washington consensus” favoring deregulation and market integration (Ikenberry 2011). China’s accession to the WTO would not only accelerate the economic reforms the Chinese vice premier (and paramount leader) Deng Xiaoping initiated in the late 1970s, but also encourage this rising power to be a “responsible stakeholder”

Peaceful Change: The Post–Cold War Evolution   75 within the existing international order. Engagement through international trade and investment would empower a reform-­minded Chinese middle class, and eventually the Chinese political system would evolve into something approximating a liberal democracy (Friedberg 2018; Friedberg and Boustany 2020). As Norrin Ripsman notes, states, including hegemons, invest in security institutions for several reasons: (1) to conserve their own military capabilities over the long term by sharing the short-­term cost of military operations with other states; (2) to overcome domestic mobilization hurdles to participation through appeals to international legitimacy and claims that the burden will be shared with allies and partners; (3) to leverage the legitimacy of institutions to generate domestic pressure on other states for their participation; and (4) to assist in signaling intent to adversaries, which might prevent unnecessary wars in the first place (Ripsman 2019, 45–50). Over the past thirty years, the United States has variously used the UN Security Council and/or NATO for each of these four reasons. At times, NATO had a marginal impact on the manner in which the United States used force. For example, at the outset of the Kosovo conflict in March 1999, German and French opposition to a possible NATO invasion of Serbia and Kosovo led Clinton to publicly rule out the deployment of ground troops and to restrict military operations to air strikes. By doing so, however, he ceded escalation dominance to Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, who ordered the displacement of 435,000 Kosovar civilians, precipitating an international refugee crisis. It was only when Clinton took “the ground option” off the table by deploying US airborne units to the Balkans, and Russia let it be known that it lacked the military capabilities to stop a NATO invasion in May 1999, that Milosevic capitulated (Posen  2000; Kay  2020). In the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld deliberately excluded NATO from offensive military operations against al-­Qaeda and the Taliban. However, the Bush administration would later call upon the NATO allies to contribute troops to peacekeeping missions in Afghanistan (Posen 2014). Neither the UN Security Council nor NATO could restrain the United States from  invading Iraq and toppling Saddam’s regime in 2003. But the failure to obtain a UN  or NATO mandate for the invasion had broader consequences for the liberal international order. First, the United States undermined its legitimacy as a liberal hegemon. “The contradiction in the Bush foreign policy is that it offered the world a system in which America rules the world but does not abide by rules,” Ikenberry writes, adding that this hypocrisy was “both unsustainable at home and unacceptable abroad” (Ikenberry 2011, 266). By denying UN Security Council mandates for the Iraq war, Russia and China effectively delegitimated US behavior in the eyes of third parties (Wivel and Paul 2019a). Second, the prolonged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with perennial complaints about burden sharing within NATO, fed into a narrative that maintaining the liberal international order was not worth the cost to the American taxpayer. During the 2016 presidential election, Republican nominee Donald J. Trump rallied his base in part by accusing longtime allies of taking advantage of the United States economically and

76   Jeffrey W. Taliaferro promising to bring American troops home. As Mira Rapp-­Hooper notes, “the foreign policy positions that Trump staked out as a candidate and has pursued as president arise from basic doubts about the US role in the world” (Rapp-­Hooper 2020, 156). As president, Trump withdrew from the 2015 Joint Cooperative Plan of Action (the JCPOA, popularly known as the Iran nuclear deal), the 2016 Paris Climate Agreement, and the 2016 Trans-­Pacific Partnership (TPP)—all multilateral agreements that the Obama administration negotiated. Trump’s hostility toward NATO and the other institutions underpinning the liberal order; the deference he shows toward Putin, Xi, and other autocratic leaders; and his administration’s erratic foreign policy alienated longtime allies and further diminished US global leadership. Meanwhile, Germany, France, South Africa, and Australia, as well as smaller states like the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, have tried to preserve existing institutions like the UN and NATO because, at present, they see no other alternatives for promoting peaceful change (Abrahamsen, Andersen, and Sending 2019; Andersen, 2019; Wivel and Crandall 2019). Third, the Kosovo and Iraq wars, and later the Obama administration’s backing for NATO air operations to assist rebels fighting to oust Libyan leader Col. Muammar al-­Gaddafi in 2012, emboldened Russia and China to engage in their own legal and territorial revisionism vis-­à-­vis former Soviet republics—Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014—and by asserting territorial claims in the East China Sea and the South China Sea, respectively (R.  Allison  2017; Heritage and Lee  2020). Russia and China also exploited the crisis in the US-­led liberal international order by creating rival international institutions, such as the Eurasian Union, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), and the BRI. By investing billions of dollars in telecommunications and transportation infrastructure projects throughout South Asia, Central Asia, and sub-­Saharan Africa, China is establishing a quasi-­tributary system in these regions (Boni  2019; Khurana 2019; Nouwens 2019; Alden and Lu 2019). By 2010, China surpassed Japan as the world’s second largest economy behind the United States. However, China’s accession to the WTO did not transform it into a “responsible stakeholder” within the existing liberal international order, let alone nudge the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in a more democratic direction. In retrospect, the expectation that WTO membership would have such a transformative impact on China’s external behavior and domestic politics seems naïve, bordering on delusional. For its part, the United States has chosen not to resolve its trade disputes with China through the WTO but rather bilaterally. Since coming into office in January 2017, the Trump administration has pursued a dual strategy of raising tariffs on an increasing number of Chinese imports to the United States and demanding structural reform, while concurrently imposing additional restrictions on the procurement of Chinese-­ made information technology (IT) equipment by the US government and private firms and limiting Chinese investments in US industries deemed critically important (Friedberg and Boustany 2020). Like the Bush and Obama administrations, the Trump administration showed no willingness to acknowledge a Chinese sphere of influence in the South China Sea.

Peaceful Change: The Post–Cold War Evolution   77 NATO’s enlargement was not the sole cause of the overall downturn in US-­Russian relations. The alliance posed no serious threat to Russia’s physical security and territorial integrity. But as Kimberly Martin writes, “NATO enlargement was a marker for Russia’s declining status and the growing influence of the USA in the world; it reflected, rather than caused, a shift in the relative global power balance” (Marten 2020, 403). Also notable is the steadfast refusal of four US presidential administrations—H. W. Bush, Clinton, W.  Bush, and Obama—to acknowledge a Russian sphere of influence in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics. President Donald Trump, however, expressed disdain for long time NATO allies and was obsequious in his dealings with Putin. In all, the record of US liberal hegemony in facilitating peaceful change at the systemic and regional levels during the post–Cold War era has been mixed. The expansion of the liberal order stabilized Central and Eastern Europe, but at the cost of alienating Russia. China’s membership in the WTO neither nudged its domestic political system in a more democratic direction nor made it a responsible stakeholder within the existing liberal order. Finally, the United States has repeatedly undermined the legitimacy of the very rules and international institutions it created. The next section considers the effects of globalization on peaceful change.

Globalization and Peaceful Change Has globalization been a mechanism for peaceful change at the systemic or regional levels during the post–Cold War era? More precisely, has the acceleration of globalization over the past thirty years shaped the way that different categories of states seek security? Like the terms unipolarity and hegemony, the term globalization has multiple definitions and connotations. And like the liberal international order, globalization actually predates the end of the Cold War. For example, the globalization of production of advanced conventional weapons systems and information technology contributed to the Soviet Union’s steep relative decline in the late 1970s and 1980s (Brooks  2005). For the purposes of this analysis, I am referring to the acceleration of globalization after the Soviet collapse in 1991. Although globalization has political, cultural, and social dimensions, I restrict the discussion to economic globalization, which comprises two parallel phenomena: economic interdependence and transnationalism. Interdependence “refers to the interconnectedness of the world economy, such that a change in the economic conditions of one country would bring about changes in the economy of others.” Consequently, “a disruption of mutual economic relations would impose costs upon multiple states” (Ripsman and Paul 2010, 6). Transnationalism refers to the extent to which goods, services, and business entities can move across state borders and through the global commons due to rapid advances in transportation and communications technologies (Frieden and Rogowski  1996). Globalization, therefore, is a

78   Jeffrey W. Taliaferro multidimensional phenomenon that occurs both within and outside state borders and involves a variety of state and nonstate actors, individual consumers, private firms, social groups, international institutions, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). In the 1990s and early 2000s, various scholars and pundits argued that the forces of globalization were so pervasive that all states, regardless of their geographic locale or relative power, would fundamentally alter the ways they pursue security. At the systemic level, globalization would lead to a sustained reduction in military spending and a proliferation of international institutions and NGOs operating in the security arena. At the regional level, globalization would alter the types of security threats that states face and the types of strategies that states use to redress those threats, and even challenge the monopoly of the state as a security provider. Consequently, across various regions states would dramatically reduce their military spending and force levels, reorient their military doctrines away from fighting traditional interstate wars and toward participation in humanitarian interventions and counterterrorism operations, and eschew unilateralism in favor of a greater reliance on regional security institutions. Globalization would make peaceful change more likely among the major powers at the systemic level as well as among the minor powers and other states at the regional level (Ōmae 1990, 1995, 2005; O’Brien 1992; Shaw 2000; Scholte 2000; Friedman 2005). Norrin Ripsman and T.  V.  Paul subject these hypotheses to empirical scrutiny, because “most of the writings on globalization and security operate in the realm of theory, rather than rigorous empirical analysis” (Ripsman and Paul 2010, 161). They conclude that globalization has had an uneven impact on the prospects for peaceful change across different geographic regions and different types of states. States in stable regions, such as Western Europe, have embraced globalization to the greatest extent because they face no real existential threats. Consequently, these states have expanded their conception of security to include a range of nontraditional threats, such as the environment and the economy. They also have adopted defensive military postures, largely avoided hard balancing, and become increasingly reliant on regional institutions, such as NATO and, to a lesser extent, the European Union (EU). States in regions of enduring conflict, such as the Middle East and South Asia, have been less affected by globalization. Since war remains a real possibility, states like Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia, India, and Pakistan maintain large and well-­funded militaries; engage in hard balancing toward their adversaries; and generally eschew relying on regional security arrangements, private security firms, or NGOs (Ripsman and Paul 2010). Globalization has had a major effect on the security behavior of weak or failed states, despite the fact that these states have received few economic benefits. For example, weak and failed states in sub-­Saharan Africa looked to private security firms, NGOs, and international institutions (e.g., the African Union) to provide their security. But, Ripsman and Paul caution, “we cannot blame globalization for the collapse of sub-­ Saharan Africa’s national security establishments. State failure, rather than glob­al­i­za­ tion, is the principal cause of crisis of the national security state in Africa” (Ripsman and Paul 2010, 168).

Peaceful Change: The Post–Cold War Evolution   79 The impact of globalization on the security strategies of the United States, China, and Russia between 1990 and 2008 was mixed. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, all three adopted counterterrorism as one of the primary missions for their national security establishments. That said, there was variation in their degree of conformity with the glob­al­i­za­tion hypothesis. The United States tended to rely on multilateral alliances and institutions in pursuit of its security interests to a far greater extent than China or Russia. Nevertheless, as noted above, the United States has been willing to act independently if it cannot get its way in those institutions and multilateral alliances. While claiming to uphold institutions like the UN, Russia and China nonetheless used counterterrorism as a subterfuge to violently suppress ethnic minorities within their borders or to engage in hybrid interference against neighboring states (Greitens, Lee, and Yazici 2020; Lutz, Lutz, and Lutz 2019; Wigell 2019). As Ripsman and Paul observe, “[a] major weakness of the globalization literature is its inattention to considerations of power competition among major powers in the international arena. Globalization is itself largely a product of American hegemony and cooperative major power relations in the wake of the Cold War and could be further shaped by major powers for their own interests” (Ripsman and Paul 2010, 175). Instead of facilitating peaceful change among the major powers and other states, the uneven wealth distribution resulting from globalization can generate conflict within and among the major powers. For example, the six crises that shook the EU in the 2010s—Brexit, the Eurozone, North African and Middle East refugees, the rise of internal protectionism, Russia’s revanchism vis-­à-­vis Ukraine, and the rise of nationalist populism—are all unintended consequences of globalization (Hall and Mérand 2019). Indeed, much of the backlash against globalization has organized along ethnonationalist lines, rather than around economic class (Snyder 2019; Wimmer 2019).

Conclusions This chapter traced the evolution of thinking about peaceful change at the systemic (or global) and regional levels during the post–Cold War era. Unipolarity, the US-­led liberal international order, and the acceleration of economic globalization were just some of the variables that scholars and pundits argued might facilitate such peaceful change. The operative question was whether any of these three variables had any effect on the ability of the United States and other major powers to resolve social problems mutually by institutionalized procedures without recourse to large-­scale armed force. Unipolarity is not necessarily conducive to peaceful change at the systemic or regional levels. In the 1990s and 2000s, the United States enjoyed overwhelming preponderance in all categories of material capabilities, and its military had command of the global commons. But unipolarity did not eliminate security competition between the unipole and major powers or prevent the unipole from using force against recalcitrant minor powers and nonstate actors. Furthermore, the extreme imbalance of power created an

80   Jeffrey W. Taliaferro incentive for US adversaries—major powers, recalcitrant minor powers, and nonstate actors—to pursue a variety of asymmetric strategies. Russia’s use of hybrid interference targeting the United States and its European allies and China’s deployment of A2/AD capabilities in the East and South China Seas are examples of such asymmetric strategies. US liberal hegemony has not necessarily been a mechanism for peaceful change at the systemic or regional levels. The liberal international order established after World War II was predicated on a bargain: weaker states agreed to live within an American-­ dominated order, and in exchange the United States agreed to voluntary restraints on the unilateral use of its military and economic power, through international institutions. This order, which had been largely confined to the West during the Cold War, spread to encompass much of the globe in the 1990s. NATO not only persisted after the Soviet Union’s collapse but expanded to include most Eastern European states, despite Russian objections. The WTO superseded the GATT. US officials hoped that China’s accession to the WTO would transform it into a “responsible stakeholder” on the international stage and facilitate its evolution from a one-­party state to something approximating a liberal democracy at home. The United States set up a variety of new institutions and agreements dealing with regional trade, climate change, and nuclear nonproliferation. However, in the post–Cold War era, the United States was not about to be restrained by the very economic and security institutions it had created. Most notably, neither the absence of a UN Security Council mandate nor opposition by close NATO allies restrained the United States from invading Iraq in 2003. The Iraq war and its aftermath laid bare the various fissures and contradictions in the liberal order. Finally, the effects of economic globalization on the prospects for peaceful change at the systemic and regional levels during the post–Cold War era have been uneven. Ironically, globalization appears to have had a profound impact on the security behavior of weak and failed states in sub-­Saharan Africa: the states that derived few economic benefits from globalization were precisely those more likely to rely on private military firms, NGOs, and regional security institutions. States in stable regions, like Western Europe, have tended to focus on nontraditional security issues, such as climate change, and to rely on regional security institutions, whereas states in conflict-­prone regions, like the Middle East and South Asia, maintain large and well-­funded militaries, prioritize traditional security issues, and eschew nascent regional security institutions. But while the United States, China, and Russia all updated their military doctrines to prioritize counterterrorism after the 9/11 attacks, globalization has done little to mitigate competition among them.

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Pa rt I I I

T H E OR ET IC A L PE R SPE C T I V E S

chapter 5

R ea lism a n d Pe acefu l Ch a nge A Structural and Neoclassical Realist First-Cut Joshua Shifrinson

Is peaceful change in interstate relations possible? As the Introduction to this Handbook underscores, what constitutes “peaceful change” in international relations (IR) is ill-­ defined, referring variously to the peaceful accommodation of new state roles amid shifts in the distribution of power, or to the transformation of international relations toward something like a pluralistic security community. Despite the ambiguity, however, prominent arguments—often in the liberal and constructivist IR traditions—flag peaceful change’s feasibility if only states embraced some combination of international institutions, good domestic governance, norms conducive to international accommodation, and/or economic exchange. Though not a unified approach, the underlying premise seems to be that peaceful change is viable if states are simultaneously disincentivized to use force and have avenues to resolve the conflicts of interest that inevitably erupt in a competitive international system. That these approaches enjoy purchase in policy discussions (especially in the United States and Europe) reinforces the point, highlighting that hope springs eternal for peaceful change through wise state decisions and individual agency. In contrast, the primary sticks in the mud are said to be realists (and realpolitik practitioners). Indeed, with realism’s emphasis on power, competition, and (in)security, the view that realist approaches are antithetical to peaceful change is widespread—and especially so when discussing the possibility of peaceful change today vis-­à-­vis a rising China. John Ikenberry, for one, contends that “[r]ealist scholars [. . .] in some sense offer the most dramatic and troubling arguments” by ostensibly suggesting that managing a power shift “can be quite difficult. It can be quite threatening and you can expect a lot of conflict” (Ikenberry 2014; also Morini 2011, 93). Likewise, Thomas Wright argues realists ignore the potential for economic interdependence to assuage international tensions (Wright 2013), just as Barry Buzan charges that “realists [. . .] take the view that China’s rise will inevitably lead at minimum to a rivalry and tension, and at maximum to a major

90   Joshua Shifrinson confrontation” (Buzan 2010, 23). And, in an apt summary, Richard Rosecrance lambasts realism for overpredicting states’ tendency to compete as power shifts and for underappreciating how global supply chains and the diminishing value of territory constrain conflict (Rosecrance 2006). Interestingly, however, realist scholars do not universally make the pessimistic ­predictions that critics allege. Of course, “offensive realist” arguments suggest that change in the distribution of power tends to promote conflict between rising and declining states (Mearsheimer  2010). Still, this view is far from ubiquitous. Thus, Charles Glaser finds that there is “no general tendency for intense security competition between a rising power and a declining power” (Glaser 2010a, 272). Similarly, Kenneth Waltz— the father of modern realist theory—claims nuclear weapons tend to “keep the peace among those who enjoy their protection” and dampen “the tensions and conflicts that intensify when profound changes in world politics take place” (Waltz  2000, 36; also Waltz 1981). Along similar lines, Barry Posen argues geography and the limited scope of US interests create room in contemporary Asia for the United States to accommodate a rising China (Posen 2014, 93). From a “neoclassical realist” perspective, meanwhile, Randall Schweller contends shifting power can create incentives for incumbent powers to turn inward, allowing other states to peacefully expand (Schweller  2018). Other realist research echoes these findings in suggesting that states facing an adverse shift in power often retrench and so help new powers to arise (MacDonald and Parent  2018); that cooperation depends on states’ time horizons (Edelstein  2017); that expectations of future threats can dampen competition (Itzkowitz Shifrinson  2018); and that rising states often avoid escalating tensions with incumbent powers (Priebe 2014). Not all realists, it seems, are sold that all forms of peaceful change are impossible. Which view is correct? Does realism mean pessimism when it comes to peaceful change, or are there grounds for some degree of optimism? No single chapter can address the broad range of realist theories, and other chapters in this volume aptly engage with classical and hegemonic stability realist insights on these questions. Still, a review of structural realism (including its “offensive” and “defensive” variants) and neoclassical realism highlights that critics overstate the case. Peaceful transformation of the international system as a whole is difficult, but peaceful change between states and for portions of the international system is possible. To be sure, structural and neoclassical realist arguments acknowledge that international politics remains competitive, but they are not the caricatures of internecine international conflict that critics suggest. Core variables central to realist theories individually and collectively identify conditions under which peaceful change is possible. The remainder of this chapter proceeds in several sections. Following this preamble, I build on the introduction to this volume (see Paul, this volume) to define two distinct varieties of peaceful change in world politics. Next, I review the core tenets of structural and neoclassical realism, alongside the variables conditioning their operation. I subsequently use this framework to identify the prospects for and conditions under which either variety of peaceful change might be possible. Along the way, I apply and

Realism and Peaceful Change   91 illustrate these arguments using cases of peaceful and nonpeaceful change in world politics. Finally, I conclude by discussing avenues for future research and policy implications.

What Is Peaceful Change? As the Introduction showcases, “peaceful change” carries a variety of meanings. To avoid unduly narrowing the analytic aperture, as well as showcasing the range of arguments modern realism provides to explain the phenomenon, I first delineate two distinct forms of peaceful change: change between and among two or more great powers, and change in the fundamental operating principles of international relations itself.1 Subsequent sections then discuss what structural and neoclassical realisms would expect for each outcome.

Type I Peaceful Change The first type of peaceful change-what I refer to as Type I peaceful change-refers to the peaceful adjustment of relations between states as the distribution of power shifts. The most studied form of shifting power occurs during a power transition, when one major state overtakes another in net material capabilities (Organski  1968; Gilpin  1981; Davidson and Sucharov 2001; Allison 2017). More common, however, are power shifts that, even if not inducing a power transition, still affect different actors’ relative strength (Itzkowitz Shifrinson 2018; MacDonald and Parent 2018). This relative shift can influence the degree of security different states enjoy, as well as their options for addressing external threats and pursuing nonsecurity interests (Morrow 1993). Power shifts of this kind prime international politics for conflict in two ways. First, they generate uncertainty over the distribution of power, leading states to misjudge the attractiveness of using force (Fearon 1995) and miscalculate what they can obtain at the bargaining table rather than the battlefield (Blainey 1988). Second, shifting power can lead relatively rising states to seek more influence, authority, and security, just as relatively declining states look to hold on to the influence, security, and authority they presently enjoy (Levy 1987; Copeland 2000, chap. 1; Legro 2007). Conflict can then emerge because one or more parties use force to either obtain new ends or hold on to an established position. Peaceful change in these circumstances refers to the accommodation of shifting power relations between two or more states without resort to sustained force. In context, this means that rising and declining states successfully avoid war as the distribution of power changes. Note that the emphasis on war and the sustained use of force is critical. This approach to peaceful change does not assume power shifts are free of tensions or even competition: given that world politics regularly sees states at odds even when enjoying durable peace, treating peaceful change as tension-­free change is a bridge too far.

92   Joshua Shifrinson The Anglo-­American rapprochement in the nineteenth century, for instance—perhaps the canonical example of Type I peaceful change—saw the United States supplant Britain as the dominant actor in much of the Atlantic world. This transition was peaceful, but nevertheless saw regular crises and near-­conflicts as American power grew (Kupchan 2010; Priebe 2014; Zeran and Hall 2016; Schake 2017). A similar dynamic occurred more recently when the decline and fall of the Soviet Union saw the world peacefully shift from bipolarity to unipolarity without a World War III (Wohlforth 1994; Wilson 2014) despite severe geopolitical tensions. Both are episodes of peaceful change: tensions were present, but force was not. In contrast, the rise of Prussia and decline of Austria and France in the mid-­nineteenth century on the back of the German Wars of Unification is the opposite of peaceful change: violence predominated (Mosse 1958; Clark 2006).

Type II Peaceful Change Type I peaceful change concerns whether relations between two or more states can be adjusted without warfare. In contrast, Type II peaceful change is broader, referring to whether interstate relations can be transformed to significantly reduce—if not eliminate—the shadow of violence in IR. This approach would minimally involve regularized mechanisms to adjudicate international disputes (Ikenberry et al. 2009); at maximum, it would allow for “transformational change” in international politics and movement away from anarchy as the central organizing principle of world politics—actors (not necessarily including states) would interact based on norms and principles of justice without the threat of force entering the equation (Deutsch 1957). This approach, as the Introduction to this volume highlights, has some of its origins in idealist thinking during the interwar period. It garnered renewed attention after World War II when theorists such as Karl Deutsch discussed the creation of pluralistic security communities in which war would virtually be off the table. Extending this work, some scholars argue that most of Europe—if not the entirety of the transatlantic area—is now part of such a community (Risse-­Kappen  1995; Williams and Neumann  2000; Adler 2008); building on this notional development, others propose emulating the institutions, norms, and conflict resolution mechanisms undergirding Europe/transatlantic relations in other areas (Acharya 2014). If successful, such steps would progressively create regions in which peaceful change prevailed—potentially and progressively changing the fundamental operating principles of the international system.

Realism: Review and Reprise As others observe, much of the thinking behind peaceful change comes from liberal and constructivist approaches to IR. Realist theories can therefore suggest both useful critical perspectives on the likelihood of such outcomes (Wivel  2017) and highlight

Realism and Peaceful Change   93 alternate pathways to similar ends. To engage the specific implications of structural and neoclassical realism—the focus of this chapter—for either form of peaceful change, it thus helps to review the basic tenets of each approach. “Realism,” after all, is not a unified theory, so much as a family of paradigms sharing certain core assumptions yet also differing in profound ways (Brooks  1997). This is especially true surrounding what we can call “modern” realist approaches—those arguments and theories emerging after Waltz’s theoretical interventions in the 1960s and 1970s—of which structural (Waltz 1979) and neoclassical realism (Ripsman, Taliaferro, and Lobell 2016) are among the leading types. Both structural and neoclassical approaches start from the premise that international politics is primarily—absent a global hegemon—an anarchic environment in which states are the principal actors. Notably, this logic differs from classical realism, which assumed the individual’s animus to power was the core driver of international competition, and hegemonic stability realism, which presumes hierarchy and hegemony rather than anarchy is the default position in IR. In turn, states in structural and neoclassical realist theories are assumed to minimally wish to survive as sovereign units, and they are differentiated from one another in terms of their material power defined primarily by economic and military resources (and the political aptitude to generate it) (Waltz 1979, 129–131; Mearsheimer 2001, chap. 3). This situation induces a baseline competitiveness into the international system. Without a sovereign to adjudicate disputes, states eager to safeguard their well-­being are pushed by dint of calculation and socialization to remain on guard against the potential threat posed by other actors (on what constitues a threat, see Walt 1987; Levy 2004). Hence, faced with powerful external actors, states tend to balance by acquiring and aggregating economic and military capabilities. Although, critically, balancing may fail at any given moment, the tendency for balances of power to form over time perpetuates anarchy by generally denying any single state permanent hegemony, and it sustains a system in which a baseline level of competition is both regularized and accepted.

Structural Defensive Realism From here, however, structural and neoclassical realism diverge. Structural realism is composed of two subtypes. The first, defensive realism, is associated with Robert Jervis (e.g., Jervis 1978), Stephen Van Evera (e.g., Van Evera 1984, 1999), Charles Glaser (e.g., Glaser 1992, 1996, 2010b), Stephen Walt (Walt 1987, 1996), Thomas Christensen and Jack Snyder (e.g., Christensen and Snyder 1990), Barry Posen (e.g., Posen 1984, 2006), Waltz himself (Waltz 1979, e.g., 2000) and others (e.g., Grieco 1996; Fiammenghi 2011). This branch builds on the idea that survival is states’ irreducible goal, such that states primarily seek security in IR. What security means is sometimes opaque (Wolfers 1952), but generally refers to whether states can operate broadly free of coercion and threats of violence visited upon them by other states. Security and power are therefore not identical: because acquiring more power can trigger counterbalancing, states are expected to be cautious and risk-averse.

94   Joshua Shifrinson Still, this situation is probabilistic, and heavily conditional on whether actors can avoid (or overcome) security dilemmas that can prompt competition even among security-­seeking actors (in addition to Glaser and Jervis, see Kydd 1997; Montgomery 2012). In turn, security dilemmas are influenced by “structural modifiers” (Snyder 1996), including geography and military technology—which encompasses nuclear weapons (Waltz 1981; Jervis 1989; Glaser 1990)—that affect the ease with which states can threaten others’ security and their ability to signal their nonaggressive nature (Lynn-­Jones 1995; Van Evera 1999). Although there have been situations where g­ eography and technology allow security dilemmas to erupt and escalate, defensive realist arguments suggest most situations enable security-­seeking states to step back from the brink (Schweller 1996). Competition may be endemic due to ­anarchy,  but states’ risk-­averse nature and the mutability of security dilemmas cap violence itself.

Structural Offensive Realism The other branch of structural realism is offensive realism (Labs  1997; Zakaria  1998; Copeland 2000; Mearsheimer 2001; Layne 2002; Lieber 2005; Rosato 2014), which differs from defensive realism on several dimensions. First, it assumes states are inherently uncertain over others’ intentions; there is no way for even security-­seeking actors to indicate their benign goals (Rosato  2014). Second, states—unless separated by large bodies of water—always have some ability to harm one another through force. Thus, where defensive realism allows that geography and technology influence states’ ability to engage in meaningful aggression, offensive realism argues that the system nearly always allows for war (Mearsheimer 2001, 44; Layne 2002).2 Third, in conjunction with anarchy, these dynamics mean that power and security are functionally identical: security hinges on maximizing power to keep threats in check (Mearsheimer 1990, 53; 2001, 32–34; Labs 1997). Hence, all actors end up seeking power as the surest route to security and survival (Mearsheimer 2001, 37). This does not mean offensive realism predicts wars of all against all. For one thing, power-­hungry states focused on relative gains must first hold on to the power they have rather than gamble it in contests that may harm their position (Shifrinson 2018, chap. 1). Moreover, even exceedingly powerful states do not have unlimited capacity to expand. In particular, large water barriers (‘the stopping power of water’) limit outright aggression by impeding military power projection, though states can still use other tools— including political subversion and alliances—to compete. Competition is thus strategic, proceeding to the point where a state has attained regional hegemony, and carefully attuned to costs and benefits along the way.

Neoclassical Realism Both offensive and defensive structural realist arguments treat competition as a product of the structure of the international system and the distribution of capabilities within it.

Realism and Peaceful Change   95 Neoclassical realism, in contrast, incorporates the particular characteristics of different states and leaders alongside structural variables (Rose  1998; Lobell, Ripsman, and Taliaferro 2009; Paul 2016). Like structural realism, scholars here allow that anarchy is pervasive and generates broad uncertainty over others’ intentions; akin to defensive realism, the approach also assumes there can be meaningful limits on international aggression (Ripsman, Taliaferro, and Lobell 2016). Breaking with structural realism’s claim that state behavior often flows from systemic and structural forces, however, neoclassical realism argues this tendency is less prevalent than one might anticipate. Because which states pose the greatest threats and the timeframe over which threats manifest may both be uncertain, states often have significant latitude in the policies they adopt. Unless threats are clear and the international environment restrictive, there is no a priori reason to expect state behavior to follow from systemic forces. Instead, a range of unit- and individual-­level variables can shape when and how states compete or cooperate with other actors (Onea 2012; Sears 2017). These variables include leaders’ political attitudes and coalitional preferences (Lobell 2003; Schweller 2006; Narizny 2007), strategic culture and ideology (Dueck 2006; Green 2012; Schweller  2018), state–society relations, and domestic institutions (Taliaferro  2006). The result can be a more contingent approach to international politics than structural realism allows.

Prospects for Type I Peaceful Change: Arguments and Illustrations Though the specific implications remain to be unpacked, it should be obvious from the preceding discussion that each of the realist approaches covered creates some room for optimism that peaceful change in some form is possible (Table 5.1). In this section, I use the basic parameters of each argument to theorize circumstances under which peace can hold between leading states as power changes hands (Type I change) while illustrating with suggestive historical examples; the subsequent section covers more fundamental transformations (Type II change).

Defensive Structural Realism Of the three approaches, defensive realism is the most optimistic surrounding the possibility of Type I change. Because defensive realism assumes states seek security rather than power, the approach contains what Schweller terms a “status quo bias,” whereby states are primed to value the security they enjoy and fret losing it (Schweller 1996). This has implications for peaceful change. When considering war, for instance, rising or declining states are likely to ask not only what they might gain from a contest but also to consider the security they might lose; this can act as a brake to conflict.

96   Joshua Shifrinson Table 5.1  Summary of Conditions for Type I and II Change Theory

Key Elements

Conditions for Type I Change Conditions for Type II Change

Defensive Realism

Anarchy drives states to seek security; structural modifiers (geographic barriers to conquest; military technology) affect intensity of international competition

Type I change may be possible if geography and military technology create “defense dominant” systems that enable even relatively weak states to obtain security

Offensive Realism

Anarchy drives states to seek relative power and, ultimately, regional hegemony; large water barriers are primary impediment to conquest

Type I change may be possible if states (1) confront a common adversary; (2) face several opponents; (3) are insular powers that can buck pass to other actors; and/or (4) obtain regional hegemony

Neoclassical Realism

Similar to defensive realism, with domestic politics and mobilization capacity conditioning state responses to systemic conditions

Type I change may be possible if (1) elites are divided; (2) states are particularly advantaged or disadvantaged at mobilizing resources; or (3) national ideas/identity militate against the use of force

Type II change may be possible if states (1) face overwhelming external threats that require political integration, and/ or (2) attain regional hegemony (enabling hegemons to suppress competition, or socialize clients away from the use of force)

The same holds for miscalculation: even if states misjudge the distribution of power or end up in an insecurity spiral, the prospect of compromising their existing security ought to predispose them to rectify the miscalculation. Still, these are general tendencies. Whether they hold stems heavily from the aforementioned structural modifiers, with geography and military technology at the top of the list. In terms of geography, states that are separated from one another by large distances or defense-­friendly barriers (e.g., oceans, mountains) ought to have an easier time accommodating shifts in power than those that are closer together or lack natural defenses. After all, distance and defensive barriers make it comparatively difficult for states to attack one another while also reinforcing the level of security they enjoy (Walt 1987; Taliaferro 2000). This may have the effect of (1) increasing states’ valuation of the status quo, (2) leaving war—because of the difficulty of using force—a less attractive tool of statecraft than other means, and (3) decreasing the immediacy of external threats, thereby limiting the intensity of insecurity spirals. Conversely, states without defensible borders or existing near one another are more vulnerable to aggression, have greater

Realism and Peaceful Change   97 capacity to use violence, and—owing to the immediacy of threats—can be subject to more intense security dilemmas. The result can make peaceful change more difficult. Britain’s contrasting approaches to the rise of Germany and the United States might illustrate these dynamics at work. Separated from one another by the Atlantic Ocean—so this argument might go—British leaders could acquiesce (albeit not without tension) to American dominance in the Western Hemisphere, reasonably confident that America’s rise would not threaten Britain’s survival (Kennedy 1976; Friedberg 1988). In contrast, geography primed the Anglo-­German relationship for conflict. Not only did proximity render Germany’s naval aspirations threatening to Britain, but it allowed German leaders to contemplate wresting naval mastery from Britain—just as British leaders could and did envision strangling the German economy from the sea (Kennedy 1980; Osborne 2004; Lambert  2012). Though not the immediate cause, the resulting Anglo-­Germany rivalry played a role in triggering World War I. A parallel dynamic applies to military technology. Technology is not stagnant. Across time and space, some technological discoveries may aid international aggression; others facilitate defense. Of course, there is rarely a single technology that decisively allows for either offense or defense (nuclear weapons may be an exception). Instead, the question is whether the sum of military technology at a given time generally makes it advantageous for states to attack others or defend themselves when seeking security (Jervis 1978). When the offense is advantaged, attacking becomes attractive as states look for opportunities to strike knockout blows, and suffer through especially intensive security dilemmas (Christensen and Snyder 1990; Van Evera 1999). Peaceful change would thus be difficult as states are primed to use force when the balance of power changes. The opposite occurs in defense-­dominant systems. When defending is comparatively easier than attacking, even relatively weak states can gain security against strong challengers (Van Evera 1999). This bodes well for peaceful change by muting the effects of power shifts, dampening security dilemmas, and enabling status quo states time and opportunities to clarify their intentions toward other actors. Nuclear weapons fit neatly into this category. Although capable of subsidizing a state’s foreign policy (Bell 2015), nuclear devices are primarily devices to threaten retaliation; they are defensive weapons par excellence (Jervis 1989; Posen 1991). Hence, states with robust nuclear arsenals can watch changes in the distribution of power with confidence in their own survival, just as even very strong actors confronting a nuclear-­armed state are strongly incentivized to think twice before challenging the latter’s vital interests. Though not dispositive, this particular defensive realist argument might account for the peaceful end of the Cold War. Many factors drove the events that led to the peaceful end of the US-­Soviet rivalry. Still, that both the Soviet Union and United States were armed with large nuclear arsenals may have contributed to this situation. With nuclear weapons, Soviet leaders did not need to fear that decline would threaten the USSR’s very survival. By the same token, American leaders—recognizing the risks of provoking the Soviet Union—may have held back in attempting to exploit Soviet problems or, at the least, did so to a lesser degree than if conventional weapons alone had been present.

98   Joshua Shifrinson Nuclear weapons, in short, may have helped American and Soviet leaders to successfully negotiate the Cold War’s denouement (Deudney and Ikenberry 1991; Oye 1995).

Offensive Structural Realism At first glance, offensive structural realism augurs poorly for peaceful change. With its focus on uncertain intentions, power-­seeking states, and the pervasive possibility of attack, one state’s rise would seem to be another’s fall—setting the stage for both aggrandizement and preventive conflict. Under such conditions, there might look to be little room for states to peacefully manage shifting power without risking their own security and survival. Nevertheless, and though anarchy and uncertainty would continue, peaceful change may still be possible. Four circumstances stand out. First, states may be able to peacefully manage changing power relations if the states experiencing growth or reduction in their relative position confront a common adversary. This may give both parties reasons to see the utility of the other as a partner or ally (Shifrinson 2018). Even if a relatively rising state would like to see another wane in relative terms, and even if a declining state worries about shifting power, they may then nevertheless mute bilateral competition given an external threat. Relatedly—second—a rising or declining state might be deterred from war as power shifts by the prospect of needing to fight several great powers to bolster its position; in this scenario, the costs would again exceed the benefits even for power-­hungry states (Copeland 2000). Both of these drivers may have been on display in the several decades following German reunification. To be clear, unification itself was a violent affair as a surging Prussia attacked Denmark (1864), Austria (1866), and France (1870–1871) (Goddard 2018). For the next four decades, however, Germany’s rise proceeded peacefully: not only did other wars not erupt, but Germany formed a durable alliance with Austria-­ Hungary. Much of this quiescence, it seems, stemmed from German leaders’ recognition that (1) Germany and Austria in particular faced a common potential threat in Russia; and (2) that further German aggrandizement could trigger an overwhelming counterbalancing coalition (Glosny 2012). On the other side of the pre-­1914 European schism, meanwhile, Britain’s acceptance of Russia’s ascendance in the early 1900s may have similarly been driven by the need to counter the German-­Austrian coalition (Williams 1966). Third, peaceful change may be possible if insular great powers—major states ­surrounded by large bodies of water—are the ones confronting shifting power. Though invasion is always a potentiality, insular powers in offensive realism enjoy significantly more security than their continental counterparts. All things being equal, they are thus able to stand aside when facing continental threats—they can buckpass in expectation that continental powers handle the problem (Mearsheimer 2001; Elman 2004). For sure, this may be problematic for the continental powers and, if balancing fails, require an

Realism and Peaceful Change   99 insular power to act against a still more ­powerful threat. In the interim, however, the insular power can maintain peaceful relations with a rising challenger, just as water barriers enable it to survive even if continental balancing falters; the result might be a tense standoff between an insular power and empowered continental challenger, but peace may still hold. This approach would provide an offensive realist account of the divergence in the Anglo-­American and Anglo-­German power shifts before 1914. Finally, peaceful change may occur if one or more of the parties is already a regional hegemon—a state which dominates a geographically bounded area. To be clear, prominent offensive realists such as John Mearsheimer argue the rise and fall of regional hegemons create conditions ripe for conflict as extant hegemons seek to extend their influence abroad and/or try to prevent rival hegemons from emerging (Mearsheimer  2010). Nevertheless, the logic of offensive realism can support the opposite position. Separated from other regions by large bodies of water and dominant in their own neighborhoods, regional hegemons ought to recognize that power projection abroad is neither advantageous nor necessary for their security.3 As such, although the emergence or growth of another hegemon abroad is not necessarily to be welcomed, it can nonetheless be tolerated. Again, international relations might become tense and fractious, but war itself might be avoidable. Insofar as regional hegemons are exceedingly rare, it is difficult to illustrate this argument in action. Still, suggestive evidence comes from the response of the United States—the modern world’s only true regional hegemon—to the respective rises of Japan and China in East Asia. Secure in North America, American strategists could view Japan’s rise in East Asia in the interwar period with some degree of equanimity: though concerned with Japanese ambitions, US strategists were nevertheless disinclined to go to war for the privilege of stopping Japan’s ascent. Indeed, as Marc Trachtenberg compellingly shows, war only erupted in 1941 because US policy makers sought a “backdoor” into war with Nazi Germany; eliminate the German factor, and a case can be made that the United States might have hung back from East Asian imbroglios (Trachtenberg 2009; Schuessler 2015). Nor was this an isolated incident. Half a century later, US strategists not only allowed China to grow, but abetted China’s post-­Cold War ascendance; despite growing Chinese-­American tensions today, among the most striking features of US strategy after the Cold War has been the calm with which a regionally hegemonic United States greeted the rise of another power in a distant region (Campbell and Ratner 2018).

Neoclassical Realism Compared to defensive and offensive realism, the range of variables central to neoclassical realism makes it difficult to hypothesize when the approach predicts Type I peaceful change (for some sketching, see Taliaferro, Lobell, and Ripsman  2018). Given its ontological links to defensive realism, many of the conditions discussed earlier might

100   Joshua Shifrinson apply. With, however, neoclassical realist theory emphasizing the influence of domestic politics in mediating systemic pressures, it is worth considering what some of these domestic elements might entail and how they might induce peaceful change. One issue concerns the unity of national elites (Schweller 2006). The more divided elites are over the nature of international threats—a situation that may, for example, stem from, distinct economic interests (Narizny  2007) or ideological preferences (Haas 2005)—the less a state can muster the focus and mobilize resources in response to international events (Miller 2016). Even if some policy makers seek to use force given shifting power, the resulting divide can hinder their doing so—sustaining peace as a byproduct (Taliaferro, Lobell, and Ripsman  2018). Thus, one factor contributing to China’s peaceful rise to date may be division among American elites over whether China presents a threat to American interests; absent such cohesion, hardline policies that might block China’s ascendance and risk confrontation are proportionally more difficult (Friedberg 2005; Edelstein 2017). Another factor concerns mobilization capacity (Taliaferro  2006). Not all states are equally adept at extracting resources from their domestic base and converting them into capabilities useful for international purposes. This can affect peaceful change in two directions. First, lack of mobilization capacity may inhibit states from using force by precluding options for rolling the iron dice; by extension, it can further compel states to turn to diplomatic channels for addressing international tensions. By this logic, Austria’s reconciliation with Germany after 1866—which, again, facilitated European peace as power continued shifting after the events of 1864–1871—may have stemmed from the reality that the Austrian state could not readily match the might of its continental neighbors, and so incentivized it to accept German patronage (Taylor  1976; for a contrary view, see Judson 2016). Second, and paradoxically however, the opposite trend can also occur: if one party to a power shift has an especially efficient ability to generate power from its domestic base, it may conclude that it has no need to use force—it can use other tools to obtain security. This applies as much to a rising state, which may defer challenges to a declining state, as to a declining state, which faces reduced preventive war incentives. The result could give parties to a power shift more time to adjudicate conflicts of interest. A final element might concern the effects of what I will term “national purpose”: the content of a state’s nationalism, ideology, or political culture. National purpose can also facilitate peaceful change in two ways. On one level, national purpose might prescribe certain international behaviors weighing against the use of force. Several analysts, for instance, argue the liberal tradition in the United States long militated against a militarized foreign policy against other great powers (Friedberg 2000; Green 2012); similarly, others propose that certain types of nationalism can induce a more or less aggressive foreign policy (Schweller 2018). As neoclassical realism is ultimately about the primacy of international factors and the conditioning effects of domestic forces, national purpose is unlikely to cause peaceful change alone. Still, it may reinforce the conditions under which peaceful change is likely or, under other situations, push against incentives for the use of force.

Realism and Peaceful Change   101

Type II Change: Arguments and Illustrations In sum, each realist approach here suggests conditions under which Type I change is possible. Type II peaceful change, on the other hand, faces a less sanguine situation. The reason is simple. Structural and neoclassical realism build on the idea that anarchy is pervasive and generates enduring uncertainty, mistrust, and relative gains concerns (Grieco 1988). As a result, there is an ingrained pessimism baked into these approaches over whether the shadow of violence in IR can be eliminated. Still, this does not mean that modern realism views Type II change as an impossibility. In fact, there are at least two possible conditions where a shallow version of Type II peaceful change—whereby states would find institutionalized mechanisms to resolve disputes and significantly reduce the threat of force—might be possible. Neither is particularly common; indeed, one has never occurred and remains largely theoretical. Nevertheless, both are worth discussing. The first situation is one in which relatively weaker states confront a clear, long-­lasting, and near-­overwhelming external threat. Under such conditions, actors seeking to ensure their own security face reasons to set aside past disputes—militating against the use of force among them. Seeking, moreover, to balance a common adversary, they need to pool resources and coordinate their foreign and defense policies. Indeed, the longer-­lasting the threat is, the greater the reason to find efficiencies in combating the external threat through coordinated and deep cooperation; logically, participants may even need to develop mechanisms to avoid major disputes among themselves in order to avoid disrupting counterbalancing efforts. Sustained over time, the net effect can be a de facto subsystem in which the use of force among members of the counterbalancing coalition is significantly reduced both due to a common external threat and the intermingled nature of state policy. Of course, this system may only endure so long as its members confront a sustained threat—reduce the threat, and anarchy is poised to reap its effects. This situation is reflected in realist accounts of the origins of the United States and European Union. In this telling, the formation of the United States and the formation of the European Union were not primarily domestic affairs. Rather, sovereign states in North America and Europe (respectively) set aside existing disputes in the face of sustained and near-­overwhelming pressures from external actors (Britain and other European empires in the US case, the Soviet Union for the EU case) (Parent  2011; Rosato  2011b,  2011a). Looking to balance, states pooled their economic and political livelihoods in an extreme form of external balancing one expects states to undertake in the face of external challenges—creating an environment in which Type II change largely prevailed. Once, however, external threats waned, some degree of political stagnation took hold: the depth and scope of EU integration have fluctuated since the

102   Joshua Shifrinson end of the Cold War, just as the United States faced several major domestic crises that challenged the foundation of the union itself throughout the nineteenth century. A second scenario involves a situation where one state attains hegemony at either the regional or, especially, global level. For sure, the process of gaining hegemony is unlikely to itself be peaceful as, at root, emerging hegemons must find ways of overcoming counter-balancing.4 If and when hegemony is attained, however, hegemons are by definition sufficiently strong that other states lack effective ways to counter the hegemon’s sheer capabilities. In a narrow sense, the use of force is banished not because states transcend violence, but because of hegemonic domination. States operating in the hegemon’s shadow must then find ways of resolving conflicts of interest with the hegemon without resort to force. The crudest form of doing so would simply be to accede to the hegemon’s demands—a form of peaceful change, but perhaps not a benevolent one. They may also attempt to regularize and bind the hegemon to patterns of international behavior that give them whatever opportunities they can have to advance their interests in the face of hegemonic might. The result is a form of peaceful change, albeit one whose quality (again) depends on the hegemon’s own preferences (Grieco 1995). The operation of the American and Soviet spheres of influence during the Cold War provides some evidence of these dynamics. Neither the USSR nor the United States was a global hegemon. Within their respective camps, however, they dominated as each developed tools to limit the use of force among their respective member states, regulated—sometimes coercively (e.g., Suez 1956) the behavior of clients, and delivered club goods to members of NATO and the Warsaw Pact/COMECON, respectively (Trachtenberg 1999; Mastny and Byrne 2005). Clients, in turn, often bargained hard with patrons to obtain different security, economic, and diplomatic benefits (Heiss and Papacosma 2008). The consequences were dramatic: where Europe was previously the scene of internecine conflict, no conflicts erupted within the American or Soviet spheres in the 1945–1991 period (unless sanctioned by the pseudo-­hegemons) despite substantial changes in the distribution of power, domestic politics, and economic relationships within and among the spheres (Gaddis 1986). That said, the collapse of the Soviet bloc and concerns over the effects of an American withdrawal from Europe underlines that a key issue again concerns the durability of this kind of change. From one perspective, hegemonic-­induced peaceful change is unlikely to prove resilient. Even supremely powerful states do not last forever. Decline eventually takes hold, creating fresh opportunities for states that were once in the hegemon’s shadow to counterbalance and/or escape the (former) hegemon’s influence. Freed of hegemonic domination, one might expect the problems of anarchy to resume. The peaceful change fostered by hegemony would then fall into the dustbin of history.5 Still, there is some possibility that hegemony can produce more durable peaceful change via socialization—an understudied aspect of structural realism. In principle, socialization under hegemony might condition states to prefer conflict resolution and cooperation to competition and balancing. To do so, the hegemon would presumably

Realism and Peaceful Change   103 need to ensure its clients regularly gained from peaceful interactions and all states recognize as much. Moreover, this situation might need to last for a significant period to supplant prior understandings. Still, hegemony that fostered such an environment might establish a durable sort of peaceful change in a portion of world politics.

Conclusion: Toward a Research Agenda To summarize, this chapter has argued that structural and neoclassical realist approaches suggest conditions under which different kinds of peaceful change in international ­relations might be possible. This challenges a widespread claim that realism as a whole is broadly pessimistic on the prospects for peaceful international transformations. Future research might expand on these themes. One issue concerns the relative effect of the conditions identified in this chapter. The preceding analysis was not intended to decide whether and which of the possible conditions for peaceful change best explained the empirical record for either Type I or Type II change. Additional research might therefore fruitfully extend this study by identifying the relevant universe of cases and assessing which of the arguments carries the greatest explanatory weight. In the process, researchers would also be well-­served elaborating upon the particular set of realist factors contributing to peaceful transformations and the mechanisms by which they operate. Along the way, it could be fruitful to further compare these dynamics to those contained in other, nonstructural or neoclassical realist arguments such as Robert Gilpin’s (Gilpin 1981). A second issue concerns whether and how the structural factors at the heart of the preceding are reflected in state decision-making. Waltz famously drew a distinction between theories of international relations and those of foreign policy (Elman 1996). Although it may be possible for the structural forces discussed in this chapter to abet peaceful change irrespective of whether policy makers are aware of the trends, it seems likely that policy makers eventually become aware of the systemic incentives for peaceful change and consciously adapt their policies accordingly. One therefore wants to know: under what conditions and how do state leaders recognize shifting international conditions and adapt policy given such pressures? This work would not only contribute to ongoing scholarship connecting realist theories of international relations with theories of foreign policy but would also showcase how the dynamics of peaceful change shape domestic deliberations over state strategy. Finally, additional work might apply the above arguments to understand prospects for peaceful change in the contemporary world. To reiterate, many analysts today suggest that realist arguments make some of the more pessimistic predictions surrounding the future of world politics. Yet, although some realist elements, under some circumstances, predict competition between rising and declining states and/or diminishing opportunities for international transformation, the above analysis underscores that realist accounts are by no means universally foreboding. Scholars might therefore explore whether and how the

104   Joshua Shifrinson preceding arguments map onto contemporary discussions surrounding, for example, China’s rise and the collapse of US unipolarity, and the resulting implications for IR theory. Ultimately, understanding the dynamics of peaceful change is central to engaging the drivers of international politics more generally. Here, structural and neoclassical realism offer a useful corrective to constructivist and liberal approaches by directing attention to the critical roles of uncertainty, power, and security concerns in shaping the prospects of peaceful change. In doing so, a strong argument can be made that, despite its popular portrayal, realism need not mean pessimism—cooperation and change remain possible even under anarchy.

Notes 1. Regional dimensions of peaceful change are covered in other chapters. 2. To unpack this point, offensive realism proposes states can always attack. Defensive realists would not dispute this point, but they counter that geography and technology limit the salience of the act: one state may attack another with sticks and rocks, but, if the target is in a favorable geographic or military position (e.g., defended by machine guns and tanks), the attack should matter little for the target’s security. 3. Of course, distant regional hegemons might become rivals. Still, whether that results in conflict and undermines prospects for peaceful change is less clear: if distance and water truly limit power projection, it is theoretically possible for states to be rivals, yet peace continues. 4. Structural and neoclassical realisms do not predict that balances of power will form at any particular moment—only that (1) states will attempt to balance threats; and (2) balances of power will eventually emerge. In the interim, there may be periods of unbalanced power— including the potential for hegemony. 5. This parallels the difficulty of peaceful change suggested in Gilpin’s work, where the ascendance of a challenger threatens to upend the international order created by a hegemon. Unless bilateral tensions are addressed, peaceful change of both types may prove impossible.

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Chapter 6

Liber a lism a n d Peacefu l Ch a nge Alexandra Gheciu

In recent years the discipline of international relations (IR) has experienced a growing chorus of voices lamenting the crisis of the post-­1945 international order and casting doubt on attempts to promote liberal projects in the twenty-­first century. While some analysts, particularly in the realist camp, regard this crisis as the inevitable consequence of the decline of US power, others—mostly liberal scholars and practitioners—remain more optimistic and seek to identify policies and practices that would enable the liberal order to endure. For the latter analysts, the liberal order has brought unprecedented peace and prosperity to large numbers of people around the world. In particular, over the course of the twentieth century, visions that once seemed naively optimistic—of stable peace in Europe, a world free of formal empires, low interstate conflict, and high economic interdependence among most countries—became reality (Owen  2018). It stands to reason, according to this logic, that the liberal order deserves to be protected against forces and actors that threaten it—be they illiberal states or political movements that seek to undermine liberalism from within the domestic arenas of liberal states. In the context of intense debates among IR scholars on the question of what the twenty-­first century might bring for world politics, it is useful to reflect on the nature and source of liberal ideas of peaceful change, their institutionalization in the course of the twentieth century, and some of the key contemporary challenges to those ideas and institutions. That is precisely what this chapter attempts to do.

Liberal Ideas about International Order and Peace As T. V. Paul explains in his introduction to this volume, “During the past two centuries, many efforts have been made to obtain peaceful change and reconciliation of warring states. This is largely due to the prominence of liberal ideas in international relations

112   Alexandra Gheciu (IR), originally generated by the European Enlightenment thinkers, who called for rational analysis in every walk of social and political life including IR (Paul in this volume, 3).” Of all IR theories, liberalism is arguably the most optimistic about the possibility of peaceful change; consequently, liberal scholars and practitioners have long placed a strong emphasis on developing strategies for achieving it. The liberal tradition is particularly rich and complex, and it would be impossible to do it justice in this brief chapter. Instead, in the following pages I highlight a few core propositions that are generally recognized as characteristic of this broad tradition, before moving on to explore the ideas developed by arguably the most influential liberal philosopher, Immanuel Kant. As we shall see, Kant’s conception of international peace continues to have a profound impact on thinking about—and practices of—international politics. In IR circles, it has become customary to position liberalism in stark contrast to realism. It is true, on the surface at least, that there are some sharp differences between these influential schools of thought. Realism is associated with the view that humanity is trapped in a world in which “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must” (Thucydides in Strassler and Crawley 1998, 352), insecurity is pervasive, and the best that one can hope for is a stable distribution of power (Owen 2018, 102). This view has led a host of scholars associated with the realist school of thought to reject liberalism as naive. In Stanley Hoffmann’s famous words, “international affairs have been the nemesis of Liberalism.” This is because “the essence of Liberalism is self-­restraint, moderation, compromise and peace,” whereas “the essence of international politics is exactly the opposite: troubled peace, at best, or the state of war” (1987, 396). Liberals, for their part, find those propositions unnecessarily pessimistic and insist that progress is possible and that some types of behavior and institutions can help address the problems highlighted by realists. Power politics may be real, but it does not have to represent the perpetual condition of humanity. Crucially, the ideas and actions that give rise to the type of international politics depicted by realists can change, and lasting peace and security can be achieved—provided the right institutions are in place. It should be noted that the security that concerns liberals is first that of the individual, particularly his or her person and property; in this view, national and international security “are instrumental to individual security” (Owen 2018, 101; 2010). To understand liberal views on international politics, we need to shed light—if only briefly—on some core liberal ideas about individuals and the proper ways of governing them. Liberalism is based on the argument that ensuring the right of individuals to life, liberty, and property is central to the role of government. Consequently, liberals emphasize the well-­being of individuals—regarded as perfectible given their capacity for reason and education—as the fundamental building block of a just polity. For early liberals like John Locke, Jeremy Bentham, Immanuel Kant, and John Stuart Mill, and for many others who came after them, perfectibility meant the possibility of substantial individual improvement and social progress—provided the right institutions were in place (Mill 1828; Kant [1795] 1970; Bentham 1974; Locke in Pangle and Burns 2014). In an often-­cited piece, Michael Doyle defined liberalism along four dimensions (Doyle 1997, 207). To begin with, all citizens are juridically equal and possess certain

Liberalism and Peaceful Change   113 basic rights. Hence, liberal societies must be built on institutions that respect those rights. Second, and linked to the first, the legislative assembly of the state has only the authority vested in it by the people, whose rights it is not allowed to abuse. Third, a fundamental dimension of the liberty of the individual is the right to possess property. In addition, liberals claim that the most effective system of economic exchange is one that is primarily market-driven. While these provisions seem to concern primarily the relationship between individuals and arrangements in the domestic arena, liberal scholars do not draw a sharp dividing line between the realm of “inside” politics and the world “outside.” What happens in the “outside” realm is shaped by, and in turn has a profound effect on, the world “inside.” One of the key assumptions underpinning liberal approaches to IR is that states, similar to individuals, have different characteristics, and these have a tangible effect on their behavior both domestically and internationally. It is only fair to acknowledge that under a liberal logic, even though the character of states may vary, all states deserve to be accorded certain “natural rights,” such as the right to noninterference in domestic affairs (Dunne 2014, 114). However, there are limits to those rights—and in some cases the liberty of certain states can and should be limited in the name of peace and security. To understand this—and more broadly, to shed light on connections between domestic and international politics—I now turn to the writings of a leading Enlightenment philosopher, Immanuel Kant, whose ideas have had a profound impact not only on liberal IR theory but also on political practices that continue to this day. Writing in a context in which, as he argued in his Metaphysics of Morals, “in their external relationships with one another, states, like lawless savages, exist in a condition devoid of right,” Kant became famous, among other things, for his vision of perpetual peace (Kant [1797] 1991, 102). For him, the imperative to achieve perpetual peace—going far beyond the fragile security provided by arrangements such as the balance of power—imposed the transformation of individual consciousness, the promotion of republican constitutionalism within states, and a federal contract between states to abolish war. In a nutshell, Kant advocated the construction of virtuous polities—based on principles and institutions that today would be identified as liberal democratic—claiming that such states are pacific in their interactions with one another. The Kantian vision of perpetual peace involves a very ambitious project of ­transforming—in an intrinsically interlinked manner—both domestic life and international politics. As I have argued elsewhere, Kantian philosophy—and liberal projects that rely on that philosophy—involves a shift from an “outside” to an “inside” approach to the pursuit of peace, order, and security in the modern international system (Gheciu  2005). In contrast to the “outside” solution, which emphasizes geostrategic arrangements among sovereign units operating in an arena, the “inside” approach focuses on the idea that it is possible to achieve orderly, peaceful interactions among particular states by (re)shaping entities so that they become predictable, peaceful, trustworthy participants in international interactions. The tension between a universal system and entities endowed with particular wills would thus be resolved by having those particular entities internalize a universally valid (liberal-­democratic) set of norms and

114   Alexandra Gheciu establish institutions based on those norms, at both the domestic and international levels. As scholars writing in the Kantian tradition have explained, peace among liberal-­ democratic states is based on three complementary influences. First, republican constitutions eliminate “autocratic caprice in waging war.” Second, “an understanding of the legitimate rights of all citizens and of all republics comes into play” as a result of the spread of democracy. This creates a moral basis for the liberal peace, upon which “eventually an edifice of international law can be built.” Finally, economic interdependence “reinforces constitutional constraints and liberal norms” by creating transnational ties and institutional arrangements that facilitate and encourage accommodation rather than violent conflict (Oneal et al. 1996, 12; also Doyle 1986; Russett and Oneal 2001). It would be wrong, however, to assume that Kant naively envisaged the evolution toward perpetual peace as a simple, straightforward process, or that he cast his vision of international politics in opposition to arguments about power. On the contrary, as Michael C. Williams has argued, Kant’s political philosophy is filled with arguments about power (Williams 2007; also Oren 1995). These arguments are linked to a series of reflections on the production of liberal selves—the kinds of selves needed for the establishment and success of liberal-­democratic institutions—and the mutual recognition among such selves (Williams 2007, 48). Kantian liberalism relies on liberal selves as actors who are committed to the struggle to discipline the irrational, violent side of themselves and to govern their lives in ac­cord­ ance with the universal moral precepts revealed by reason. Self-­discipline, from this liberal perspective, is the basis of respect and admiration of self and others, as well as a central element in the processes of identity definition. From the point of view of liberal-­ democratic polities, only those self-­disciplined communities who live according to the same moral precepts—embodied in liberal-­democratic norms and institutions—are entitled to full respect and to be recognized as trustworthy, like-­minded polities. As such, they are to be included in relations of community (Kant [1797] 1991; Williams 2007, 55–59). Key to this liberal definition of subjectivity is a refusal of essentialist determinism; by virtue of their capacity for reason, all humans are seen as capable of grasping the moral law and hence have the potential to evolve into the kind of actors who understand and accept the self-­disciplinary duties of “correct” subjectivity. Within international relations practice, this view of subjectivity translates into the argument that even the people of deviant (antiliberal) polities can, through the use of reason and education, come to accept the responsibility of learning to conform to liberal-­democratic norms. In other words, all polities embody the potential to evolve into rational and ethical communities, entitled to the full respect and benefits accorded to liberal democracies in international society. The view of changeable, fluid human nature renders practices of socialization reasonable, for it entails the idea that even citizens of previously antiliberal polities can learn the norms and institutions of liberalism. The same idea also translates into a series of obligations and legitimizes the use of power by those who have accepted the responsibility to act according to liberal norms. Self-­discipline, as the fundamental basis of respect for both oneself and others, also functions as an element of identity and identification with others—and as a reason for exclusion of those who fail to exercise it. Liberals only grant full respect to, identify with,

Liberalism and Peaceful Change   115 and recognize as full members of their community those individuals who exercise the self-­discipline of commitment to the moral law that liberal individuals and communities claim to have achieved (Kant [1797] 1991). According to the Kantian logic, this disciplinary structure functions not only within the moral community but also outside of it, where liberals only grant full recognition to like-­minded, self-­disciplined actors. Those who refuse or are unable to live up to the demands of liberal subjectivity may be tolerated, but this toleration has limits. Thus, the expectation is that those who seek full respect must learn to exercise self-­discipline and adopt the liberal norm; if non-­liberals fail to do so they may be tolerated, but only to the extent that they do not threaten liberal societies and their mode of life. Nonliberal communities are therefore always subject to being depicted as threats, to being excluded from liberal relations of community and full respect, and potentially to being subject to coercion by liberals if they are deemed a threat to liberal societies and their mode of life. Consequently, part of the “power of liberalism lies in the fact that this can be presented as a disinterested process of toleration, self-­limitation, neutrality and respect: all persons have a right to choose their own ways of living. But this hides the fact that this basic recognition can also imply a powerfully normalizing and disciplining set of judgements, an equally powerful process of communal inclusion and exclusion, and an implicit threat of coercive action” (Williams 2007, 53). In Kant’s analysis of the relationship between the liberal pacific federation and nonliberal states outside of it, communities who continue to exist “in the state of nature” could be coerced to join the pacific federation even if they do not actively threaten its members. This is because the mere existence of nonliberal, undisciplined subjects can legitimately be regarded as a potential threat by liberals (Kant [1797] 1991). It is important to keep in mind these aspects of the Kantian vision of peace and of the practices of “pacific federations,” for they have come to inform in tangible—and arguably very problematic—ways liberal practices enacted in the name of national and international security. As a series of scholars have noted, while a Kantian approach predicts and prescribes peaceful interactions among liberal democracies that recognize each other as such, the relations between liberal states and communities regarded as nonliberal can be expected to be difficult and potentially violent (Owen 1994; Oren 1995; Risse-­Kappen 1995). In foreign policy practice, this approach to respect and recognition has often served to legitimize coercive actions by liberal states against polities and peoples regarded as nonliberal and thus considered to be a potential threat to liberal communities.

Implementing Liberal Ideas in International Politics Over the past two centuries, Kant’s vision of a “pacific federation” designed to “end all wars for good” and, more broadly, his—and other liberals’—prescriptions for both domestic politics and the international arena, have had a powerful impact on world

116   Alexandra Gheciu politics. While a full survey of that impact is well beyond the scope of this chapter, it is worthwhile to highlight some of the most remarkable accomplishments. Kantian ideas became one of the key currents in the stream of European thought and political practice and were reflected in the policies of a number of influential political actors in the nineteenth century. These included, among others, Lord Palmerston, one of the most powerful yet controversial British politicians during the reign of Queen Victoria. His belligerent actions as foreign secretary could be considered prototypes of the future practices of liberal interventionism. More broadly, the most important expressions of Kantian ideas about international politics emerged in the twentieth century. Consider in particular the vision of international order put forward by President Woodrow Wilson in the aftermath of the First World War. For Wilson, lasting peace required the establishment of an international organization to regulate anarchy and outlaw war. In his famous “Fourteen Points” speech of 1918, he outlined a vision of peace and security that had clear Kantian echoes (Wilson 1918). In his quest to transcend a history of secret bilateral diplomatic deals and a strong reliance on the balance of power, President Wilson called for the creation of a general association of nations, the League of Nations, to deter aggression and, if necessary, be able to use a preponderance of power to enforce peace. The key principle behind the League was collective security, wherein “each state in the system accepts that the security of one is the concern of all, and agrees to join in a collective response to aggression” (Roberts and Kingsbury 1993, 30). According to the League’s covenant, in the event of war all member states were required to cease normal relations with the offending state, impose sanctions upon recommendations issued by the League Council, and support one another in the implementation of actions deemed necessary to protect the principles of the covenant. For its part, the League Council was expected “to recommend to the several Governments concerned what effective military, naval or air force the Members of the League shall severally contribute to the armed forces to be used to protect the covenants of the League” (Covenant of the League of Nations 1919, art. 16). Conventional wisdom about international politics holds that the experience of the League was a disaster (Dunne 2014, 118). It is true that, in part due to the US Congress’s decision not to join the very institution championed by President Wilson, the League did not have the power needed to prevent or effectively respond to the acts of aggression carried out by Germany, Italy, and Japan in the 1930s. Therefore, it was unable to prevent the outbreak of the Second World War. Nevertheless, it would be too simplistic to depict the League as a complete failure. Despite its limitations, that Kantian-­inspired institution was able to find peaceful solutions to a number of regional conflicts, including those between Finland and Sweden over the Aaland Islands in 1921, between Germany and Poland in Upper Silesia (also in 1921), and between Greece and Bulgaria in 1925. Furthermore, the League helped to promote liberal norms both in the domestic arenas of states and on the international stage via initiatives such as the Slavery Convention (1926) and measures designed to protect prisoners of war and refugees.

Liberalism and Peaceful Change   117 Most notably, the principle of collective security survived, despite the inability of the League to prevent the Second World War. After that war, the principle found expression in the charter of the United Nations. However, in an attempt to protect the new ­organization from the weaknesses that had plagued the League, the UN’s founders acknowledged the need for a consensus among the great powers in order for enforcement action to be taken. This found expression in the veto system, which allows any of the five permanent members of the Security Council to block UN actions. While that provision was designed to protect the new collective security system, in the context of the ideological polarity of the Cold War, which started just a few years after the founding of the UN, it translated into virtual paralysis of the Security Council. The UN was still able to play a constructive role in the peaceful settlement of a series of disputes, most notably via the peacekeeping system created as a compromise solution in response to the constraints associated with the Cold War. But it was only following the end of the Cold War that cooperation among the great powers was strong enough for collective security to be implemented, as was evident in the response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in the summer of 1990. The principle of collective security was arguably the most important liberal principle that found institutional expression in the international order created in 1945. But the impetus to (re)organize international politics on the basis of liberal principles and norms—and on this basis to try to make “the world safe for democracy”—did not stop there. Indeed, the world that emerged from the ashes of the Second World War had a powerful liberal imprint. One of the most comprehensive analyses of the influence of liberal ideas on the international order over the past century can be found in the works of G. John Ikenberry. According to Ikenberry, in 1945 the United States embarked on an ambitious campaign to construct a comprehensive liberal order by embedding certain liberal principles in the institutions of international society (Ikenberry 2018, 14). The institutions of the transatlantic security community created after the Second World War were aimed at protecting liberal-­democratic norms from a variety of domestic and international, military, and nonmilitary threats and challenges. One of the most visible examples of successful promotion of liberal principles was the institutionalization of the Euro-­Atlantic pluralistic security community. That community, which defined itself around liberal-­democratic norms and values, reconciled historical enemies and embedded them in a set of institutional structures—most notably the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Community (EC)/European Union (EU)—designed to make another war among those polities impossible. Thus, in sharp contrast to centuries of violence, the guiding principle that emerged among Euro-­ Atlantic allies after 1945 was that of dependable expectations for peaceful interactions and change (Deutsch 1957; Risse-­Kappen 1995; Adler and Barnett 1998). For liberal scholars and practitioners, a new era of hope and progress appeared to be born with the end of communism and the collapse of the Soviet Union. At the start of the 1990s, leading Western politicians hailed a “new world order,” as the appeal of communist ideas and practices appeared to have been irrevocably defeated, and international institutions such as the Security Council were finally able to operate as envisaged by the

118   Alexandra Gheciu founders of the UN back in 1945. In parallel to those developments, globalization and economic integration reached unprecedented levels, former rivals including Russia and China appeared to move closer to liberal principles, and the institutions of the Euro-­Atlantic security community embarked on ambitious processes of enlargement. Reflecting a widespread wave of optimism, then British prime minister Tony Blair declared in the 1990s that “we are all internationalists now” (Blair 1999). A similar sense of optimism was reflected in a series of academic works. According to Ikenberry, for instance, the end of the Cold War made possible the worldwide expansion of the liberal order created after 1945: “The early postwar western liberal order was primarily an Atlantic regional community, while the post-­Cold War liberal system has had a wider global reach” (2018, 12). In the early years of the post–Cold War era, as both scholars and practitioners in the West rushed to reaffirm Kantian principles, there seemed to be no limit to the possibilities for promoting liberal-­democratic principles on the international stage (Russett 1993; Owen 1997; Cederman and Gleditsch 2004). A new era seemed to have dawned for the Kantian-­inspired “inside” approach to international security—designed, as previously noted, to enhance both national and international security and peace by turning polities into “virtuous” liberal democracies. For example, in the Euro-­Atlantic world both NATO and the EU launched processes of enlargement designed to fundamentally reshape polities emerging from the former communist bloc, to integrate them into the institutions of the transatlantic security community, and thus to turn them into a source of security and lasting peace both for their citizens and for the international community (Schimmelfennig 1998; Flockhart 2004; Gheciu 2005). A new commitment to (re)shape polities on the basis of liberal-­democratic norms and institutions also found expression, after 1989, in the UN-­sponsored peacebuilding missions. Under the label “robust peacebuilding,” the UN authorized a series of missions that departed in significant ways from the principles of impartiality and minimal involvement that had characterized Cold War–era peacekeeping operations. The new missions involved massive international involvement in the reconstruction of societies emerging from conflict (Ford and Oppenheim 2008; Paris and Sisk 2009). In places ranging from the Balkans (Bosnia and Kosovo) to East Timor and Cambodia, this translated into the establishment of ambitious arrangements—including within the framework of international administrations—that assumed many of the functions of governance traditionally associated with the sovereign state and set out to rebuild societies in the aftermath of war. The notion behind those arrangements was that only through a systematic reconstruction of post-­conflict polities, conducted with the assistance and under the supervision of international experts, could peace operations lead not only to a cessation of violence but also to the establishment of the kinds of structures and institutions needed for long-­lasting peace. However, as T.V. Paul explains in the introduction to this volume, many of the interventions that constituted “a crucial part of the liberal peace” have “produced violent outcomes,” as “liberal states fail to offer proper mechanisms for the societal transformation of deeply divided societies (this volume, 12).” Those interventions seem to have resolved the dilemma between a liberalism of restraint—which

Liberalism and Peaceful Change   119 accepts a pluralist international society with diverse societal models—and a liberalism of imposition—which seeks, sometimes by coercive, nonliberal means, to disseminate liberalism around the world—in favor of the latter (Sørensen, 2006). The post–Cold War political climate also facilitated the evolution of the global normative fabric in the direction of a stronger, liberal-­inspired focus on human security. In contrast to the traditional focus on state-­centric definitions and practices of war/ peace, human security approaches take the individual as the key referent of security (Acharya 2001; MacFarlane and Khong 2006). Some of the most potent expressions of this evolution were the adoption of the responsibility to protect (R2P) norm and, linked to this, the creation of special international courts, most notably the International Criminal Court (ICC), designed to bring to justice individuals responsible for egregious human rights violations. The R2P norm, which was unanimously endorsed by 150 heads of state and government at the 2005 UN World Summit, stipulates that when a state or a government is unable or unwilling to protect its population from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity, the international community must take action (Bellamy and Dunne 2016). At the heart of R2P lies the (liberal) principle of conditional sovereignty: each sovereign state is responsible for protecting its own population from massive human rights violations. And if a state is unable or unwilling to do so, then the international community will do it instead—by force if necessary, if/when all other means fail. Since its adoption, R2P has been invoked by the UN Security Council dozens of times, to remind states of their responsibility and, on occasion, to authorize military actions aimed at protecting civilian populations at risk. One of the best known but also controversial uses of R2P was the crisis in Libya in 2011, when a NATO military operation was authorized with the aim of protecting the large numbers of civilians whom Muammar Gaddafi had threatened to kill. Linked to this normative evolution, the ICC was established in 2002 as a permanent institution, in contrast to temporary tribunals such as those for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. Designed as a “court of last resort,” the ICC was invested with “the power to exercise its jurisdiction over persons for the most serious crimes of international concern: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression” (Cassese, Gaeta, and Jones 2002). The ICC and the regional war crimes tribunals have been involved in the indictment and prosecution of a series of high-­level individuals in places as different as the former Yugoslavia, Liberia, and Congo. All these initiatives illustrate the success of liberal ideas on a number of fronts, but that success should not be taken to mean an unproblematic, power-­free triumph of some natural harmony of interests operating at the global level. In foreign policy practice, even the most ardent defenders of the liberal order navigated in a gray zone between liberal ideals and pragmatism, which often translated into deviations from those ideals (Abrahamsen, Andersen, and Sending  2019). Furthermore, the practices associated with each of the previously mentioned developments were filled with complex forms of coercive and/or noncoercive power, reminiscent of Kant’s views of the relationship between the “peaceful federation” of liberal democracies and polities that are not (yet) recognized as liberal democratic. In many instances, policies that followed the logic of

120   Alexandra Gheciu that relationship gave rise to systematic forms of contestation and opposition to ­liberalism. For example, the expansion of the transatlantic security community via the processes of EU and NATO enlargement involved what could be seen as Kantian-­ inspired disciplining practices aimed at producing liberal selves. Those translated into complex processes of socialization of acceding states into the Western-­prescribed norms of liberal democracy. At the heart of that socialization were extensive processes of education, legal reformation, and institutional transformation that were filled with power: the power to define and shape ‘correct’ subjectivities and to delegitimize political discourses, practices, and institutions that may have been popular among significant domestic constituencies but were regarded by Western experts as incompatible with the liberal-­ democratic model of good governance (Gheciu  2005; Williams  2007; Epstein  2008). Western disciplining practices conducted in the name of producing responsible liberal selves and polities in the context of NATO and especially EU accession generated resentment among key constituencies in Central/Eastern Europe. In recent years that resentment has been effectively mobilized by illiberal leaders like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán to justify their attacks on liberal norms and institutions (Tóth 2014). For their part, the ‘robust practices of peacebuilding’ frequently involved situations in which the international community replaced local officials, vetoed legislation, and dismantled/reconstructed institutional arrangements that enjoyed at least a certain degree of support in their societies but were deemed inappropriate or inefficient by international officials. These, among other power-­filled interventions, led a series of critical scholars to portray post–Cold War forms of peacebuilding as unacceptable forms of neocolonialism (Chandler 2006; Ford and Oppenheim 2008). In a similar vein, developments linked to the human security agenda have often been criticized as normatively problematic Western actions. For instance, the 2011 NATO-­led intervention in Libya clearly revealed the deep divisions, resentment, and opposition generated by Western leadership (Welsh 2018). Shortly after the launch of the intervention, Russia and China argued that the Western permanent members of the Security Council had illegitimately shifted the mandate from one of protecting civilians to regime change (Dunne 2014, 121). This raises serious doubts about the extent to which, in the future, Western and non-­Western members of the Security Council might be able to agree to work together in promoting the R2P norm or, if necessary, to implement the norm of collective security. In recent years the Security Council’s inability to address a series of crises, most notably in Syria—despite massive evidence of human rights atrocities as well as widespread concerns regarding the impact of that conflict on an already unstable region—should alarm all those who wish to ensure that the Security Council will have some meaningful role to play in promoting international security in the twenty-­first century. In a similar vein, the ICC, the institution that was supposed to advance universal human rights principles, has been heavily criticized, particularly by states in the Global South. Many of them have accused the ICC of systematic bias against the ‘South’; consequently, several states have either refused to accede to the ICC’s Rome Statute or, as in the cases of

Liberalism and Peaceful Change   121 Burundi and the Philippines, have withdrawn from the ICC (Ralph and Gallagher 2015). Furthermore, the US-­led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which were legitimized at least in part by liberal arguments about promoting democracy, have been widely criticized for repeated violations of liberal-­democratic principles and have come to be seen by some as expressions of a “frustrated empire” (Ryan 2007). Such operations have undermined trust in liberal internationalism both at home and abroad and have made it increasingly difficult to defend claims about the moral superiority of actors and polities that claim to act on behalf of liberal norms. In essence, even a cursory analysis of the post–Cold War world reveals that the optimism that prevailed among liberals after 1989 was not exactly justified. While the merits and relative success of each of these developments may be debatable, what cannot be contested is that the project of ‘making the world safe for [liberal] democracy’ has turned out to be more complicated and controversial than liberal leaders and scholars had anticipated. From the perspective of many, the practices of Western states and international institutions employed in the name of promoting liberal peaceful change have been profoundly unequal and often violent.

The Crisis of Liberalism? Contemporary Challenges to the Liberal Order The euphoria that characterized the liberals’ response to the end of the Cold War appears to have vanished. In the eyes of many scholars and practitioners, the liberal order constructed after 1945 is in deep crisis, on many fronts. As Duncombe and Dunne have recently argued, “What mainstream and critical theories share is a perspective that the liberal world order is being challenged in fundamental ways: first, through a crisis of authority, and second, through ‘the rise of the rest’ ” (2018, 27). Even liberal scholars acknowledge that liberalism faces a number of significant challenges (Hopgood 2013; Owen 2018, 102–109). According to Ikenberry, for instance, part of the problem is a crisis of authority generated by the behavior of the global liberal hegemon, the United States (Ikenberry 2015, 451). According to this logic, when the United States, as the key international actor responsible for establishing and shaping the international order, is moving away from a commitment to liberal values in its discourse and practices, the leadership of that order is bound to be called into question. A series of recent illiberal policies and practices enacted by the United States, including the post-­9/11 “war on terror,” can thus be regarded as powerful illustrations of a retreat from liberal values and norms. To make matters worse, this type of behavior has also been copied by several states that once played a significant role in institutionalizing human rights internationally and, more broadly, in supporting the liberal order (Rampton and Nadarajah 2017). Increasingly, critics around the world—including in established liberal democracies— are articulating vocal attacks on liberalism, highlighting its unwillingness or inability to

122   Alexandra Gheciu acknowledge and address the limits of its political and economic models. For many, what is particularly problematic is that, contrary to the liberal discourse, the post-­1945 order led by a global class of liberal elites has benefited only some groups while generating large categories of victims. The ‘losers’ of liberal globalization often see themselves as victims not only in material terms, wherein they face systematic income disparities due to economic liberalization, but also in the political and cultural arenas. In their eyes, the political values and cultural traditions cherished by large societal segments have been systematically marginalized and undermined by unaccountable national and transnational liberal elites (Abrahamsen et al. 2020). In the face of the liberal inability to effectively address problems ranging from humanitarian crises to poverty, cultural/ political alienation, and climate change, it is not surprising to see growing and increasingly open contestations of liberal principles and foundational norms of the liberal order around the world. In this context, the concern expressed in liberal circles is that the world that could be emerging in the twenty-­first century is going to be not only less American but also less liberal (Abrahamsen, Andersen, and Sending  2019; Andersen  2019; Gheciu  2019; Græger 2019). The liberal fear is that “the hallmarks of liberal internationalism—openness and rule-­based relations enshrined in multilateral institutions such as the United Nations and norms such as multilateralism—could give way to a more contested and fragmented system of blocs, spheres of influence, mercantilist networks, and regional rivalries” (Ikenberry 2011, 56). The contemporary challenges to the liberal world order are numerous and multifaceted. They emerge not only from the growing assertiveness of China, the aggressive and subversive policies of Russia, and increased discontent in the Global South, but also from within Western states that have witnessed the rise of right-­wing populism and nationalism fueled by the previously mentioned sense of economic marginalization and cultural/political alienation. While most scholars and practitioners agree that the liberal order built after 1945 is in crisis, or at least facing unprecedented challenges, they are sharply divided over the question of how these challenges might be addressed. One argument that has been put forward within the liberal camp is that the solution to current challenges is more, not less, liberalism. According to this logic, the norms and institutions established after 1945 still provide sufficient benefits to motivate key international actors to defend them. This is because—according to the liberal logic—defending liberal-­democratic norms and protecting multilateral institutions, as the bedrock of liberal internationalism, still offers the best hope for accommodating differences, deepening interdependence, generating incentives and opportunities for international cooperation, and thus facilitating the peaceful resolution of conflicts. In short, “The best news for liberal internationalism is probably the simple fact that more people will be harmed by the end of some sort of global liberal international order than will gain” (Ikenberry 2018, 23). Yet this can only be good news for the defenders of liberalism if there is sufficient international determination to protect progressive liberal norms, while also recognizing and finding more effective ways of addressing the problems and abuses associated with some of the practices conducted in the name of liberalism. In recent years, however,

Liberalism and Peaceful Change   123 even optimistic liberal scholars have hardened their assessments of the difficulty involved in securing support for the defense of liberalism. Thus, “the future of this liberal order hinges on the ability of the United States and Europe—and increasingly a wider array of liberal democracies—to lead and support it” (Ikenberry 2018, 22). This in turn depends on the ability of leading liberal democracies to build new coalitions of allies among developing democracies and to find effective solutions to twenty-­first-­ century problems. More profoundly, it requires that liberal democracies “remain stable, well functioning and internationalist. Can these states recover their stability and bearings as liberal democracies?” (Ikenberry 2018, 22–23). At the time of writing this chapter, it is far from clear that leading liberal democracies can perform the role prescribed by Ikenberry and other liberals. The situation with the United States, the leader of the liberal world, is particularly alarming. This is due in no small part to the rise of an aggressive type of conservatism and—most recently and spectacularly under President Donald Trump—its assault on liberal institutions and principles both at home and abroad (Drolet and Williams  2019). While it might be tempting to dismiss Trump’s policies as a passing problem on the US political stage, one needs to acknowledge that his legacy will likely have lasting implications (Drolet and Williams 2019; Abrahamsen et al. 2020). Whether one considers the attack on liberal institutions at home, dismantling arms control regimes, attacking established alliances and multilateral institutions, undermining trust in the United States as an ally, or attacks on the human security front via his ‘immigration control’ policies, the damage to the US ability to play a leading role in supporting the liberal order is substantial and will take a long time to heal—if, indeed, a full healing is even possible. It is also important to note that the United States is not alone in experiencing the rise of political forces with aggressive antiliberal political platforms. Indeed, in recent years there has been a substantial increase in right-­wing populism and authoritarianism around the world (Abrahamsen et al. 2020). In many instances, right-­wing movements have forged alliances across borders, learning from and supporting one another in challenging liberal visions of domestic politics and international orders. For instance, the actions of right-­ wing governments in countries like Poland and Hungary and the growing support for illiberal ideas in many other European states have undermined the EU’s efforts to protect and promote liberal norms both in Europe and abroad and have raised doubts about the future ability of the transatlantic security community to act as a defender of liberalism (Gheciu 2019). Meanwhile, the growing influence of right-­wing political forces in countries like Brazil, Turkey, India, Israel, and the Philippines, in conjunction with the growing assertiveness of Russia and China, has translated into unprecedented attacks on liberal-­ democratic norms and institutions. To further compound the problem, there has been growing criticism of liberal economic institutions like the IMF and the World Bank. Many scholars and practitioners have accused them of perpetuating inequality and poverty, particularly in the Global South, rather than promoting a type of interdependence that benefits everyone (Brown 1997; Harrigan and El-­Said 2009). Yet, it would be premature to conclude that all is lost for liberals and liberalism. In key European countries, including France, Germany, and the Nordic states, as well as in

124   Alexandra Gheciu Canada, the governments have restated their commitment to the liberal order. Moreover, recent research on the ideational foundation of Western hegemony indicates that support for some liberal norms is reasonably solid in emerging powers (Allan, Vucetic, and Hopf 2018). This suggests that new global alliances in support of liberalism might be possible. But attempts to protect support for liberal norms—against populist, nationalist voices—in Western states, and to forge new global alliances in defense of liberal internationalism, will require a more sustained effort to acknowledge and deal with the discontent, alienation, inequalities, and violence produced by practices conducted in the name of liberalism. In a situation in which Kantian-­inspired politics of recognition and the “liberalism of imposition” have become so unpopular around the world, liberals should reflect carefully on the ways they might be able to build new relations based on respect—even vis-­à-­vis some polities that are not recognized as established liberal democracies. More broadly, defenders of the liberal order will need to pay closer attention to the powerful critiques articulated by those who regard themselves as the losers in liberal globalization. The defenders will have to engage in a critical analysis to identify—and formulate strategies for implementing—reforms aimed at changing liberal institutions, both domestic and international, so as to minimize the danger of producing harm and to better embody and enact the principles preached by liberalism. Writing in 2018, John Owen argued that if a century ago liberals wanted to “overturn the existing global order,” today they want to “retain and extend it” (2018, 100). Liberalism’s conservatism, Owen continued, is a tribute to its “hard-­won success over the past century.” It is true that the twentieth century was one of substantial—though not uncontroversial—gains for liberal ideas and institutions, and those gains have had a profound impact on world politics. In the first decades of the twenty-­first century, however, the domestic and international landscapes that liberals have to navigate are more complicated. If liberals are to be “conservative” in the sense of acting to protect liberal norms and institutions, they will have to be far more innovative in finding solutions to liberalism’s inequalities and harmful effects. It remains to be seen if those who champion liberalism will be able to rise to this challenge in the coming decades.

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Liberalism and Peaceful Change   125 Andersen, Louise Riis. 2019. “Curb Your Enthusiasm: Middle-Power Liberal Internationalism and the Future of the United Nations.” International Journal 74, no. 1 (March): 47–64. Bellamy, Alex J., and Tim Dunne. 2016. “R2P in Theory and Practice.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Responsibility to Protect, edited by Alex  J.  Bellamy and Tim Dunne, 3–18. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bentham, Jeremy. 1974. Ten Critical Essays. Edited by Bhikhu Parekh. London: Routledge. Blair, Tony. 1999. “Doctrine on the International Community.” Speech delivered in Chicago, IL, April 22, 1999. https://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/154/26026 .html. Brown, Michael. 1997. Africa’s Choices. New York: Routledge. Cassese, Antonio, Paola Gaeta, and John  R.  W.  D.  Jones. 2002. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court a Commentary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cederman, Lars-Erik, and Kristian Skrede Gleditsch. 2004. “Conquest and Regime Change: An Evolutionary Model of the Spread of Democracy and Peace.” International Studies Quarterly 48, no. 3 (September): 603–629. Chandler, David. 2006. Empire in Denial: The Politics of State-Building. London: Pluto Press. Covenant of the League of Nations. 1919. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1919Parisv13/ch10subch1. Deutsch, Karl  W. [Karl Wolfgang]. 1957. Political Community and the North Atlantic Area: International Organization in the Light of Historical Experience. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Doyle, Michael W. 1986. “Liberalism and World Politics.” American Political Science Review 80 (December): 1151–1169. Doyle, Michael W. 1997. Ways of War and Peace: Realism, Liberalism, and Socialism. New York: Norton. Drolet, Jean-Francois, and Michael Williams. 2019. “The View from MARS: US Paleoconservatism and Ideological Challenges to the Liberal World Order.” International Journal 74, no. 1 (March): 15–31. Duncombe, Constance, and Tim Dunne. 2018. “After Liberal World Order.” International Affairs 94, no. 1 (January): 25–42. Dunne, Tim. 2014. “Liberalism.” In The Globalization of World Politics, edited by John Baylis, Steve Smith, and Patricia Owens, 113–125. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Epstein, Rachel A. 2008. In Pursuit of Liberalism?: International Institutions in Postcommunist Europe. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Flockhart, Trine. 2004. “ ‘Masters and Novices’: Socialization and Social Learning through the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.” International Relations 18, no. 3 (September): 361–380. Ford, Christian, and Ben Oppenheim. 2008. “Neotrusteeship or Mistrusteeship? The ‘Authority Creep’ Dilemma in United Nations Transitional Administration.” Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law 41, no. 1: 55–105. Gheciu, Alexandra. 2005. NATO in the “New Europe”: The Politics of International Socialization after the Cold War. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Gheciu, Alexandra. 2019. “NATO, Liberal Internationalism, and the Politics of Imagining the Western Security Community.” International Journal 74, no. 1 (March): 32–46. Græger, Nina. 2019. “Illiberalism, Geopolitics, and Middle Power Security: Lessons from the Norwegian Case.” International Journal 74, no. 1 (March): 84–102. Harrigan, Jane, and Hamed El-Said. 2009. Aid and Power in the Arab World: IMF and World Bank Policy-Based Lending in the Middle East and North Africa. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

126   Alexandra Gheciu Hoffmann, Stanley. 1987. Janus and Minerva: Essays in the Theory and Practice of International Politics. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Hopgood, Stephen. 2013. The Endtimes of Human Rights. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Ikenberry, G. John. 2015. “The Future of Liberal World Order.” Japanese Journal of Political Science 16, no. 3 (September): 450–455. Ikenberry, G. John. 2018. “The End of Liberal International Order?” International Affairs 94, no. 1 (January): 7–23. Ikenberry, G.  John. 2011. “The Future of the Liberal World Order: Internationalism after America.” Foreign Affairs 90, no. 3 (May 1): 56–68. Kant, Immanuel. (1795) 1970. “Perpetual Peace.” In Kant’s Political Writings, edited by H. Reiss. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Kant, Immanuel. (1797) 1991. Political Writings. Edited by H. Reiss. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. MacFarlane, S. Neil, and Yuen Foong Khong. 2006. Human Security and the UN: A Critical History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Mill, John Stuart. 1828. “Speech on Perfectibility.” https://www.utilitarian.org/texts/perfectibility .html. Oneal, John, et al. 1996. “The Liberal Peace: Interdependence, Democracy, and International Conflict, 1950–85.” Journal of Peace Research 33, no. 1: 11–28. Oren, Ido. 1995. “The Subjectivity of the ‘Democratic’ Peace: Changing  U.S.  Perceptions of Imperial Germany.” International Security 20, no. 2 (October): 147–184. Owen, John. 1994. “How Liberalism Produces Democratic Peace.” International Security 19, no. 2 (October): 87–125. Owen, John. 2010. “Liberalism and Security.” In The International Studies Encyclopedia, edited by Robert Denemark, 4920–4939. Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Owen, John. 2018. “Liberal Approaches.” In The Oxford Handbook of International Security, edited by Alexandra Gheciu and William Wohlforth, 100–115. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Owen, John M. 1997. Liberal Peace, Liberal War: American Politics and International Security. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Pangle, Thomas, and Timothy Burns. 2014. “Locke’s Second Treatise of Government.” In The Key Texts of Political Philosophy: An Introduction, 276–306. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Paris, Roland, and Timothy  D.  Sisk. 2009. The Dilemmas of Statebuilding: Confronting the Contradictions of Postwar Peace Operations. London: Routledge. Ralph, Jason, and A.  Gallagher. 2015. “Legitimacy Faultlines in International Society: The Responsibility to Protect and Prosecute after Libya.” Review of International Studies 41, no. 3 (July): 553–573. Rampton, David, and Suthaharan Nadarajah. 2017. “A Long View of Liberal Peace and Its Crisis.” European Journal of International Relations 23, no. 2 (June): 441–465. Risse-Kappen, Thomas. 1995. “Democratic Peace—Warlike Democracies? A Social Constructivist Interpretation of the Liberal Argument.” European Journal of International Relations 1, no. 4 (December): 491–517. Roberts, Adam, and Benedict Kingsbury. 1993. United Nations, Divided World: The UN’s Roles in International Relations. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Russett, Bruce M. 1993. Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-Cold War World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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Chapter 7

I n ter nationa l I nstitu tions a n d Peacefu l Ch a nge Frédéric Mérand and Vincent Pouliot

Since the development of the organized peace movement in the second part of the nineteenth century, the quest for universal peace has been premised on the creation of international institutions. Although most such institutions, from the Universal Postal Union to the Summit of G20 Leaders pursue functional ends, several have established peace as their primary objective. The first international institution with a political ambition, the Inter-­Parliamentary Union, was founded by a group of French, British, and a few other self-­declared pacifists in 1889. Three decades later, the preamble of the League of Nations Covenant sought “to achieve international peace and security” (League of Nations 1924). In its opening sentence, the successor United Nations Charter explicitly aims at “sav[ing] successive generations from the scourge of war” (United Nations 1945). There is a deep, positive connection between international institutions and peaceful change in international relations (IR) practice and scholarship. As T. V. Paul explains in the introduction, international institutions are seen as one of the three pillars of peaceful change in world politics, along with democracy and economic interdependence. In the first part of this chapter we explore how international institutions constrain state behavior, foster norms, promote interdependence and trust, and encourage social interaction and the development of collective identities. All of these mechanisms may lead to a reduction in violent international conflict. Aiming for peace is not the same as aiming for peaceful change, however. If one defines peaceful change as the “resolution of problems . . . by institutionalized [emphasis added] procedures,” like Karl Deutsch (1957: 4), the presence of institutions and the prospect of peace become, to some extent, tautological. But as shown in the second part of this chapter, there can also be a negative connection between international institutions and the possibility that change will be peaceful. When institutions lock in an unjust

130   Frédéric Mérand and Vincent Pouliot status quo, produce exclusion, or generate grievances that turn into struggles, they may in fact induce conflictual change. Overall, the chapter offers a reminder that, inherent to peaceful change as international institutions may be, this connection is worth renewed critical scrutiny by scholars and policy makers alike, if only to better identify the conditions under which the equation actually obtains.

How Institutions Promote Peaceful Change According to Wivel and Paul (2019, 8), international institutions are “associational clusters among states with some bureaucratic structures that create and manage self-­ imposed and other-­imposed constraints on state policies and behaviors.” At its most basic level, an institution is a stable set of rules. These rules can be more or less explicit, more or less binding, and more or less internalized by the actors. In IR, rational-­ choice scholars tend to focus on formal, constraining arrangements among states that affect their decision-­making calculus (Koremenos, Lipson, and Snidal,  2001). Constructivists, for their part, pay attention to intersubjective conventions, practices, and the possible transformation of identities that may also affect state behavior (Duffield 2007). In and of themselves, rules are not necessarily good or bad. To the extent that they prescribe nonviolent behavior, institutions can be considered to be vectors of peace. As the introductory chapter to this volume makes clear, peaceful change is about the resolution of social problems “without resort to largescale physical force” (Deutsch quoted in Paul, this volume, 4) Without a doubt, several international institutions were created precisely to serve the purpose of curtailing the use of organized violence. Think about the rule of noninterference, the delegation of authority to the Security Council, the provisions of humanitarian law, or even collective defense provisions such as Article 5 of the NATO agreement. In what follows, we focus on the international side of institutional dynamics, although clearly domestic politics also plays a role in explaining their effects (Putnam 1988).

Constraining State Behavior Some international rules are considered to be fairly binding. In theory, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is the highest guarantor of international law. Article 24 of the UN Charter gives the Security Council “primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security” on behalf of states, which “agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council in accordance with the present Charter” (United Nations 1945). If the UNSC passes a resolution under Chapter VII, all

International Institutions and Peaceful Change   131 UN members have to enforce it, including through armed force if they so will. No other institution enjoys such powers in the international system. Not all constraining international rules coalesce around the UNSC, however. Even before the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, it was expected that states would not imprison foreign diplomats. Since the signature of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), in 1947, member states cannot unilaterally and without cause increase trade tariffs. Even when there is little international law to back it up, there exist well-established international rules that states should not kill foreign leaders and repay their sovereign debt (Eichengreen and Lindert 1992; Thomas 2000; Melzer 2008). Of course, states break rules. Like criminals in well-­ordered societies, states default, kill, kidnap, and racketeer. When we say that a rule is binding, we do not mean that it is never broken. But whether ancient or recent, formal or informal, basic institutions like the 1958 New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards minimize causes for conflict because they force states to engage in self-­restraint. Parties may do so for fear of retaliation, for fear of being punished by markets, because they care about their reputation, or because they actually do not care much about the issue at hand. Still, most of the time, even powerful states comply with international institutions, and that is good for peace. This was not always the case. Up to the seventeenth century, it was customary for kings to kidnap foreign emissaries, expropriate indiscriminately, or perhaps more frequently, imprison their bankers. Wars were often initiated to take revenge on such acts, provoking endless cycles of retribution. In a world where state sovereignty was less secure, there were fewer international institutions, and leaders did not feel as obliged to follow rules—with the exception, perhaps, of the dynastic institution of marriage, which was used as a way to consolidate and make peace between realms (Teschke 2003). There is often confusion in IR between international institutions and organizations (Simmons and Martin 2001). Although some institutions, including treaties and conventions, float freely, they tend to be more effective when they are backed by resources, such as an organizational secretariat or a budget. They are then turned into formal organizations, with a leadership, staff, and resources. The International Atomic Energy Agency and the Nobel Prize–winning Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons exert their diplomatic engagement, political leverage, and technical expertise to ensure that “rules for the world” are applied in an impartial and constant manner (Barnett and Finnemore 2004). These organizations are often lasting, and to the extent that they succeed in accommodating rising powers, they should facilitate peaceful change. Some literature suggests that states that are densely connected in interorganizational networks may be less likely to engage in conflicts. Russett, Oneal, and Davis (1998) find for the 1950–1985 period that when two states belong to the same international organization, they are less likely to engage in a militarized dispute. For Boehmer, Gartzke, and Nordstrom (2004), this finding may only hold for “institutionally sophisticated” organizations that have security as their primary mandate. But in general, it makes sense to think that states that agree to sign on to an international organization are less likely to pick fights with other members.

132   Frédéric Mérand and Vincent Pouliot

Fostering Norms Although international law scholars treat most international treaties and conventions as if they were formally binding rules, these rarely are that constraining in practice. This does not mean they have no positive impact on peaceful change. Between the illusions of international lawyers and the cynicism of realist scholars, many international ­institutions shape behavior simply by making expectations converge around socially sanctioned ways of doing, which we call norms (Elster 1989). The stability of expectations brought about by these norms—or what legal scholars call soft law—is usually a factor of peace. Some norms are explicit rules that several states do not follow even though almost all states agree they should. One illustration is the 1968 Treaty on the Non-­Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which commits non-­nuclear-­weapon states to make civilian use of nuclear energy, and nuclear-­weapon states to progressively forego their weapons. In theory, it is an explicit, binding rule enshrined in international law, which 190 states have signed onto. The vast majority of these states do follow the treaty. But the fact that nuclear weapons states (the United States, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom) have been pushing back on their commitment for more than fifty years testifies that when a rule is systematically broken by a large or a powerful enough group of states, it should be considered no more than a norm. Perhaps the most foundational norm is that of sovereignty (Holsti 2004). Inviolable de jure since the Treaty of Westphalia and enshrined in the UN Charter, territorial sovereignty is in fact constantly interfered with. In Stephan Krasner’s (1999) famous phrase, it is an “organized hypocrisy.” Aren’t all norms hypocritical, in fact? Borrowing from Rebecca Adler-­Nissen and Thomas Gammeltoft-­Hansen (2008), we prefer to speak of “sovereignty games”: sovereignty is a norm that is constantly re-­enacted and reinterpreted by state players, who most often buy into some version of it—until they don’t. The norm is understood by everyone as something that should be aspired to, but it is also routinely broken and can be used as a rhetorical weapon. This is apparent in disputes over international interventions, in which the United States, Russia, and China accuse each other of double standards in their proclaimed respect for sovereignty. Other norms are nonexplicit rules that are nonetheless followed quite strictly, often to protect one’s reputation. When we see no deviation from the norm, or the norm is not challenged for a long time, it becomes akin to a tradition. The “no-­first-­use” of nuclear weapons, or nuclear taboo (Paul 2009; Tannenwald 2009), comes to mind as an example. This norm is not registered in any existing treaty or organization. Some countries have pledged to it; others have rejected it while implying they would follow it. As long as it is not broken, there is no way to know what would happen if a state decided to defect. But there is no doubt that the endurance of this norm is closely linked to peaceful change among nuclear states during and after the Cold War. Norms change. In some times and places, norms carry peace-­inducing content and are internalized or enforced. In others, they are not. The English school of IR has

International Institutions and Peaceful Change   133 identified a set of norms that make it possible to talk about an international society. These norms cover the conduct of war, the responsibilities of and deference to great powers, the practice of diplomacy, the balance of power, and adherence to basic principles of international law (Bull  1977). They provide an apt description of the Concert of Europe, the informal international institution that ushered in a relatively peaceful era in mid-­nineteenth-­century Europe. They are less appropriate for understanding the Great Lakes region in 1998 or the Middle East today, where a weakening norm of state sovereignty has led to complex civil and interstate conflict. In recent years there have been attempts to formally limit or reinterpret the norm of sovereignty as a means to lower domestic state violence. Discussions among state representatives within the International Commission on Human Rights and State Intervention produced the responsibility to protect (R2P), which stipulates new principles under which the “international community” may break the sovereignty norm to defend a purported higher order of norms pertaining to human rights. These principles were taken up by the UNSC, which endorsed and referred to R2P in resolutions authorizing the use of force, for example in Libya and Mali. These are rare cases, however, which could have been blocked by a single one of the five permanent Security Council members; so far, the norm of sovereignty has proved extraordinarily resilient (Welsh 2013).

Promoting Interdependence and Trust In Montesquieu’s doux commerce thesis, trade leads to peace. States tend to avoid war with a trading partner because they are reluctant to endanger the prosperity as well as the domestic vested interests that flow from economic interdependence. This argument receives significant support in the contemporary literature, under various names such as “commercial peace” or “capitalist peace” (Dorussen and Ward  2010; Schneider and Gleditsch  2010). Trade treaties, such as NAFTA (now United States-­Mexico-­Canada Agreement) and Mercosur, are important international institutions that regulate economic interdependence and thus make it in the self-­interest of states to choose peace over conflict. That was the rationale, for example, for including China in the World Trade Organization (WTO) even though its “market economy status” was disputable. Beyond trade, belonging to an international institution may increase one’s financial dependence and thus willingness to accept the peace imposed by others. For example, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank use conditional grants and loans to encourage liberal values among aid recipients (Babb and Carruthers  2008). The European Union has taken this logic of building interdependence a step further: a state that foments territorial disputes with its neighbors cannot join the EU, and if it tried to do so after it became a member, it could face the loss of voting rights and subsidies. Even if the possibility of backsliding remains, the effectiveness of this “conditionality” is one of the reasons the EU was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2012.

134   Frédéric Mérand and Vincent Pouliot Interdependence can also be based specifically on security considerations. NATO’s Article 5, for instance, commits allies to come to each other’s assistance because an “attack on one member state will be considered an attack on all” (NATO  1949). This is the famous Musketeers’ motto: one for all, and all for one. Here, the international institution is good for peace because it provides a security guarantee that minimizes incentives to attack any member of the alliance (Haftendorn, Keohane, and Wallander 1999). But as the case of NATO expansion into former Warsaw Pact countries illustrates, an alliance may also create conflicts with other alliances. That is why certain security organizations, such as the African Union, are based on nonexclusionary collective security. In addition to rational, cost-­benefit calculations, interdependence can be bolstered by the development, over time, of trust between potential belligerents. The resolution of conflicts often depends on the creation of confidence-­building mechanisms. In the midst of the Cold War, the United States, the USSR, and European nations created the Conference on Cooperation and Security in Europe (CSCE, now OSCE). The CSCE was never a strong institution. Its rules were vague, there was no real secretariat, and the Helsinki process did not lead to significantly increased interactions between the two camps. Yet in what Daniel Thomas (1998) calls the “Helsinki Effect,” the CSCE was an important force for building trust and lowering geopolitical tensions, at least in the years immediately before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989). A further step toward trust building is taken when formal institutions lock in credible commitments that secure their interdependence in the long term. International institutions such as the International Court of Justice or the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Body ensure that even when a rival state has lost interest in making good on its promises, there is a way to keep a predictable framework for dispute resolution in place. As current US opposition to the WTO illustrates, no commitment is eternal. One exceptionally durable exception, however, is the Court of Justice of the European Union, which was designed to make long lasting France and Germany’s economic bargain, one offering market access in exchange for the other’s agricultural subsidies (Moravcsik 1998).

Social Interaction and Collective Identities A final mechanism through which international institutions promote peaceful change is social interaction and, in some cases, the formation of collective identities. Thanks to international institutions, leaders and people socialize in two ways. First, they become acquainted with each other. Personal contact helps clarify misunderstandings that could have led to disputes. Second, they may come to shift their preferences and identity in a way that is conducive to peaceful change. Getting to know each other over drinks, food, or chitchat—the first meaning of socialization—is key to diplomacy, which state leaders have long considered to be the alternative to war (Aron 1966). Through a summit, a congress, or a peace conference, often held in a palace or a conference center over a period of several weeks or months, diplomats explore possibilities for a ceasefire, a settlement, or a peace treaty. From a

International Institutions and Peaceful Change   135 sociological perspective, summitry—the rules of etiquette, multilateralism, or caucusing among the like-­minded—is made up of patterns of collective behavior that, without being explicitly codified, are socially enforced (Sending, Pouliot, and Neumann 2015). These ritualistic practices provide a social context to address differences in a predictable and peaceful manner; although the deceptive 1938 Munich conference and various meetings between Donald Trump and Kim Jung-­un are often derided as diplomatic overtures that led to nothing, “jaw-­jaw” is, to quote British prime minister Harold Macmillan’s paraphrasing of his predecessor Winston Churchill, usually better than “war-­war.” While diplomatic interaction may be less scripted today than it was in the past, the rise of soft power as a means of influence has increased the importance of “being in the loop.” With its dense network of informal summits, speaking invitations, investment funds, and leaders’ groups, the “new diplomacy” of global governance is replete with opportunities to interact and reward state leaders who behave well, with prestige, influence, or funding. Although the literature on this topic is sparse, it is conceivable that the fear of being excluded or stigmatized on the global stage encourages leaders to refrain from overtly belligerent behavior, even when they may have domestic support for it. Even though there are many exceptions—for example, Vladimir Putin deciding to invade neighboring countries after Russia joined the G8 and hosted the Olympics— social interaction makes peace more likely because leaders tend to want to remain in others’ good graces. The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) is an interesting example of international socialization around weak mutual commitments but frequent—and highly ritualized—interactions (Martel 2017). At ASEAN, during infamous “skits,” leaders even sing and perform together. Even when two states are not interdependent, as is the case with the United States and North Korea or Iran, institutions such as regular summits or strategic dialogues “humanize” relations among officials, who get to know each other and smooth things over, just because that’s what humans do when they meet each other in person. Leaders of rising powers such as Xi Jinping or Narendra Modi are experts at that kind of socialization, which smoothens out relations with neighbors and potential rivals. In the long run, socialization may take on a deeper meaning. Under certain ­circumstances, institutions may shape preferences in a way that makes them more compatible, more peaceful, and perhaps even able to converge with each other. This is what Karl Deutsch calls a “security community,” in which leaders and peoples develop a sense of “we-­feeling” that is by nature conflict reducing (Adler and Barnett 1998). Although rational-­choice theorists argue that rules channel behavior, historically and sociologically minded scholars tend to believe that, over time, they shape preferences. The less you engage in violence, the less you want to do it; the more you attend summits, the more you believe that is the way to engage in international relations. Institutions also shape preferences because they simply take options off the table; colonialism, no longer thought to be an acceptable form of state behavior, is a case in point.

136   Frédéric Mérand and Vincent Pouliot Ultimately, strong international institutions are constitutive of the world that states live in. They shape collective identities. The democratic peace thesis, which suggests that democratic regimes are less likely to go to war with each other, is one of the strongest arguments in favor of joining democratic clubs, such as the European Union or NATO. At the societal level, establishing an agency for youth exchange or allowing foreign workers to move freely brings about several consequences that are positive for peaceful change: Today, there are 600,000 Chinese students in the United States. In a generation, many of them will have made friends, married, created businesses, or become involved in politics. As the world order changes in China’s favor, this makes it more likely—but never certain—that the transition will be peaceful.

How Institutions Inhibit Peaceful Change Very clearly, a great many international institutions are explicitly aimed at facilitating peaceful change. In this section we want to qualify this apparent fit. The notion that international institutions operate separately from or in parallel to power politics is misguided. On the contrary, institutions are deeply political, and they generate several effects that may inhibit the pursuit of peaceful change. Here we identify and discuss three such effects in turn: (1) international institutions lock in the status quo, (2) they produce exclusion, and (3) they generate new forms of political struggle.

Locking in the Status Quo Institutionalists of all stripes have long observed that international institutions tend to foster political stability, by framing expectations, circulating information, and monitoring compliance (Krasner 1982; Keohane 1984). In fact, the very act of institutional design is meant to guard against the shadow of the future. At a deeper level, then, institutions may be said to be inherently conservative, because they tend to freeze the existing distribution of power in time. Any rule, at the time of its promulgation, is likely to represent the interests of dominant players. Likewise, international organizations are generally structured so as to provide institutional advantages to their creators. Institutions become mechanisms that create privileges for some, especially at the level of decision-­ making, and possibly freeze the status quo. As Schattschneider (1960) once quipped, in that sense international institutions represent “the mobilization of bias.” As Ikenberry (2001) famously noted, this logic operates in all three major “constitutional moments” in the modern history of the global governance of international security. Upon victory, the winners of major wars gang up—in Vienna, Versailles, or Yalta—to decree a new institutional structure that puts them at the helm (Pouliot and

International Institutions and Peaceful Change   137 Thérien 2015). Within the United Nations, this takes the form of permanent seats (with attendant vetoes) on the Security Council. Several other forms of “informal governance” (Stone  2011) reinforce this position of influence in practice. By circumventing rules when they need to, the strong obtain from the weak the flexibility they want to meet their interests from inside the organization. As a result, concludes Stone (2013, 127), “informal governance serves the interests of powerful countries.” Combined, formal privileges and informal means of influence help lock in the status quo far beyond the conditions that presided over institutional design. In order to counter this status quo bias, several international institutions contain amendment procedures to adapt their structure to shifting conditions. For example, the UN Charter was amended in the 1960s to account for the explosion in membership, especially in the postcolonial world. Yet while an expanded Security Council does allow for more voices to be heard, it has not displaced the privileges that the permanent members acquired by winning the Second World War. Worse, after more than three decades of fierce debate in New York, there are no signs that any further Security Council enlargement will ever pass through the Charter’s amendment procedure, which requires a two-­thirds majority at the General Assembly (and attendant ratification including by the permanent members themselves). This means that international institutions often have a hard time responding to shifts in the balance of power. From both a realist and a critical perspective, international institutions are tools of power that the dominant players set up in order to establish their domination (Mearsheimer 2001; Murphy 2005). International law, for instance, is sometimes depicted as the brainchild of colonialism (Anghie  2007). What is more, once established by the winners, institutions entrench and create vested interests for incumbents. At the same time, they also generate new forms of dissatisfaction—and eventually of conflict—on the part of rising powers. For instance, the selective application of rules often structures the struggle between challengers and incumbents. Status competition ensues, and the system potentially becomes more unstable than it would be but for international institutions. Peaceful change is clearly hindered. The history of the League of Nations and of the United Nations provides telling lessons about this dynamic (Paul 2018, ch. 3). In the 1930s, a major power such as Germany preferred to leave the organization rather than suffer from rules that it thought were prejudiced against the country. In control of the organization, the winners of the First World War (especially Paris and London) used the League to enforce settlements and sanctions for their benefit. Beyond its failure to prevent the Second World War, then, one may ask whether the League’s very existence, which prolonged the privileges of a few through all kinds of institutional mechanisms, including sanctions and international inquiries, may not have exacerbated the root causes of the conflict by favoring the status quo so much. At the same time, though, it is doubtful that any international institution could have dealt with Axis aggression at the time. The United Nations has performed slightly better on this count, since its history contains no cases of “exit,” to borrow Hirschman’s term (Indonesia in the 1960s being a brief exception). During tense crises, dissatisfaction has so far been expressed through

138   Frédéric Mérand and Vincent Pouliot “voice”—even in the face of seemingly illegitimate privileges held by the Permanent Five. That said, the question is open of how much longer such dissatisfaction will remain institutionally jugulated. India, Brazil, Germany, Japan, and some African nations have been calling for new permanent seats for many years, yet their inclusion in the cenacle of power seems quite unlikely at this stage. It is not impossible that, should acute crises arise in the future, such states would prefer to defend their interests outside of existing institutions, to the extent that these are skewed against them. After all, precedents already exist in which even the most dominant actor in the system preferred to do so (e.g., Iraq in 2002). Indeed, the status quo bias of international institutions flows both ways. In this discussion, scholars generally focus on rising powers—and for good reasons. As we just saw, the lock-­in effect is particularly problematic when incumbents decline, relative to challengers, but remain at the helm thanks to institutions. And yet over time privileged actors may also become dissatisfied with the institutional status quo. The all-­out attacks on the UN and the WTO by the Trump administration offer a useful reminder that, even shielded by them, dominant states may still chastise international institutions for their apparent inability to contain the concerted rise of challengers. The role of domestic politics, especially nationalism, remains to be fully explored here. From a constitutional point of view, it is of course quite logical that international institutions have stringent amendment procedures. If founding documents were easy to change, we could see the opposite problem, in which incumbents would have no interest in staying in. At the same time, granting some countries a veto (as is the case in the UN Charter) could be a recipe for disaster over the long run. Institutions create vested interests, paving the way to a conservative political dynamic. Those who benefit will consequently be reluctant to make any changes. The status quo thereby entrenches to the point of creating frustrations and dissatisfactions among nonincumbents, which may severely inhibit the very possibility of peaceful change.

Producing Exclusion Modern international institutions are for the most part premised on multilateralism: “an institutional form which coordinates relations among three or more states on the basis of ‘generalized’ principles of conduct” (Ruggie 1992, 571). For many an IR theorist, the very nature of multilateral institutions makes them particularly inclusive, as “equalizing institutions” (Panke  2013) that rest on “rules rather than simple power” (Finnemore 2005, 195). In the conventional account, multilateral institutions provide the majority of members, usually small states, with more voice opportunities, while constraining the arbitrary use of power (Ikenberry 2001). This sanguine view of liberal international institutions should be qualified in significant ways; exclusionary effects also inhere in them. For one thing, inclusion and exclusion often are two sides of the same coin; institutions generally co-­opt certain actors at the expense of others. For example, during the Cold War regional organizations often served

International Institutions and Peaceful Change   139 the purpose of containing rivals out (e.g., NATO, the Warsaw Pact, the Organization of American States). Today, global conferences may indeed be more inclusive than intergovernmental meetings, but they nonetheless leave several actors on the margins due to arbitrary criteria and dynamics of normative homogeneity (Pouliot and Thérien 2018). Many nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) from the Global South, for instance, stay clear of (or are pushed aside from) major gatherings where corporations loom large, from Davos to sustainable development initiatives. Smaller states’ and organizations’ resources are also challenged by institutional overstretch. Finally, institutions inevitably rest on certain rules of access, participation, or membership, and there is an irreducible politics of exclusion involved. In some cases, institutions even function like clubs, in which any movement toward inclusion sparks new forms of exclusion to maintain privileges and prevent the dilution of membership (think of select intergovernmental summits such as G8/G20). In addition, international institutions often create costs for those uninvited or more simply uninterested in joining. In other words, outsiders suffer doubly from institutionalization, a dynamic generative of resistance and inconducive to peaceful change. This critical insight was pioneered by Gruber (2000, 7), looking at the European Union: “[I]nstitutionalized cooperation by one group of actors (the winners) can have the effect of restricting the options available to another group of actors (the losers), altering the rules of the game such that members of the latter group are better off playing by the new rules despite their strong preference of the original, pre-­cooperation status quo.” In this scheme, institutions hinder peaceful change not only by excluding some but also by transforming the playing field for everyone, outsiders included. More generally, international institutions are often flexible enough in their implementation that they open the door to their own capture by the powerful. For instance, formal institutional rules may be egalitarian in their letter but stratifying in practice. Procedures of committee chairmanship, for instance, are meant to ensure fair treatment, but they also lend themselves to the enforcement of the pecking order (Pouliot 2016). Even where formal privileges are granted, such as Security Council permanent membership, they are often compounded at the level of action. As Schia (2013, 149) explains: Delegates from permanent member-­states often serve longer, which gives them much better opportunities to learn, master, and define the game and the skills needed in the informal processes. The permanent members are in a favorable position not only because of their status with veto powers but also because their knowledge, cultural capital, network, and being permanent players of the game in the informal processes matter. These members have an informal power base not reflected in any formal structures of the Council. The exclusionary effects of permanent membership, then, run deeper than what Charter provisions say. By definition, rules are incomplete and such openness often benefits the powerful.

Finally, in broader terms, sociological institutionalism suggests that international institutions produce epistemic baselines, or taken-­for-­granted realities, that exclude certain actors or courses of action from the horizon of possibility. For example, organizational

140   Frédéric Mérand and Vincent Pouliot setup can reinforce status hierarchies. These effects run much deeper and often remain below the radar of calculation and reflection. Historical works show clearly that the ways in which we handle security problems today bear limited resemblance to previous eras (e.g., Reus-­Smit 1999). The dominance of international law, for instance, is a modern phenomenon; so is the Concert-­of-­Europe-­like management system that still dominates the global governance of security (Mitzen 2013). Things have worked differently in the past, and they will, too, in the future. By limiting the options on the table, prevalent institutions may inhibit functional roads toward peaceful change. One illustration of this dynamic may be found in the challenges of civil conflicts, which have yet to be fully met by existing international institutions. When the nature of warfare changed and the level of intrastate violence surged after the end of the Cold War, global governors resorted to existing rules, practices, and organizations to deal with a problem that none of them were created to handle. For instance, great power intergovernmentalism remains central to Security Council resolutions even though these politics are often deleterious to conflict dynamics on the ground. Peacekeeping, inherited from an era of ceasefire monitoring, is still mired in the painful process of adapting to new circumstances of state failure and humanitarian catastrophe. While these older institutions continue to structure the international response, more heterodox initiatives, such as well-­resourced prevention or large-­scale redistribution, are not even attempted. International institutions may therefore inhibit the kind of ‘outside-­of-­the-­box’ thinking that peaceful change often requires.

Generating New Forms of Struggle Intended to curtail the use of force as they may be, international institutions nonetheless create opportunities for power politics that otherwise would likely be absent from the global stage. This is particularly obvious in terms of the political resources that are generated endogenously, that is, from within the institutions. For instance, while it is true that international organizations produce information, thus benefiting all members in terms of monitoring and compliance, the distribution of such benefits is often unequal. Carson and Thompson (2019, 104) document the “specific ways in which information can create (dis)advantages for different actors,” depending on access to bureaucracy for example. What is more, international secretariats themselves play up their advantage by “creating information silos” (109) conducive to an unleveled playing field. For their part, Barkin and Weitsman (2019) observe that international institutions may reinforce other power inequalities, including a military advantage. Henke (2019) similarly documents the multiplying effects of international institutions on the deployment of force. All in all, it seems like institutions, through mechanisms such as the instrumentalization of international bureaucracy, can exacerbate existing disparities. In Stone’s (2011, 13) words: “A leading state . . . enjoys organizational advantages when it participates in decision-making within international organizations: superior information, better access to the key agents, and greater cooperation with its requests.” Despite

International Institutions and Peaceful Change   141 this tendency, it is worth pointing out that institutional effects can also flow in the opposite direction. Ambassadors from weaker parties, for instance, are often better situated to play a go-­between role given their limited substantive interests. Overall, though, the efficacy of institutions for peaceful change is far from automatic, as it depends on rather contingent practices. In addition, international institutions may inhibit peaceful change by creating new terrains for violent struggle (or struggle over violence). United Nations peace operations are a prime example of this dynamic. As Cunliffe (2009, 334) observes, peacekeeping “grants the tantalizing opportunity to exercise power and influence over the direction of international affairs in excess of what would otherwise be possible if they relied purely on their own will and capacities.” Not only are UN missions in the field driven by Security Council dynamics that often have little to do with the conflict itself, they often turn into political objects that local and regional actors use to further their own interests (Martin-­Brûlé, Pingeot, and Pouliot 2019). Going back to our previous point, it is clear that peace operations are not only sites but also tools of power politics. Great powers, troop contributors, regional actors, and host states make use of this core institution to advance their interests. The institutionalized setup of peace operations, in other words, becomes a toolbox at the disposal of a variety of actors. A similar logic informs international law, all the more so when it comes to the use of force. It is common criticism, for instance, that R2P has provided Western states with a new rationale for military intervention in the postcolonial world. Hurd (2016) similarly shows how the UN Charter’s ban on war actually has “permissive” consequences, opening new avenues for the (legalized) use of force on the international stage. The same can be said of arms control treaties, which have led to new forms of militarization (e.g., ‘mini-­nukes’). Once again, these political dynamics suggest that the link between international institutions and peaceful change is far from direct. In some cases, it may actually work in reverse order. Wight (2019, 189) goes so far as to conclude: “We have constructed institutions that attempt to control the use of violence at the global level, although paradoxically just as those institutions seem to declare old forms of war inadmissible, they supply us with new reasons to engage in war.” Colonial mandates and more recent international interventions in Kosovo and Libya illustrate how international rules sometimes provide rationales for the use of force that would otherwise not be available. Similarly, collective defense organizations such as NATO may be thought of as guardians of peace by its members but be felt as threatening by the rest of the world. As tools of “collective legitimization” (Claude 1966), international institutions will always be at risk of serving dominant actors and, by implication, the status quo. Yet the historical track record helps identify general features conducive to peaceful change: adaptable institutions able to uproot vested interests, provide equalizing voice opportunities, and facilitate flexible expressions of influence. The extent to which existing institutions can deliver these goods remains indeterminate. International law helps legitimize policies, but it is also a cheap way to buy consent. IOs provide arenas for consultation and deliberation but also for naming and shaming along normative standards

142   Frédéric Mérand and Vincent Pouliot whose legitimacy remains contested. Great power concerts facilitate leadership and ­collective action, yet they reinforce dominant positions in favor of the status quo. All in all, then, the association between institutionalization and peaceful change is a contingent and ambiguous one at best.

Conclusion This chapter has sought to take a sober look at the connections between peaceful change and international institutions. This is important because, at its core, the idea of peaceful change rests on institutionalized dispute resolution, as opposed to the use of force. Put differently, international institutions are implied by peaceful change. As we saw, this conceptual proximity also expresses itself in practice. Modern history is replete with various institutional forms devised precisely to avoid war and facilitate the nonviolent settlement of disputes. Nonetheless, we have argued here that there is nothing inherent to international institutions that inevitably fosters peaceful change. On the contrary, several of their political dynamics inhibit nonviolence and even generate new causes for conflict. Institutional effects can go either way, depending on the substance of rules, their evolution over time, and the political playing field that they create. As a generic social form, then, international institutions—including liberal ones such as multilateralism and international law—need to be closely scrutinized by scholars and policy makers alike. Their effects are far from always and automatically peace inducing. Yet their existence remains constitutive of the very possibility for nonviolence in world politics.

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144   Frédéric Mérand and Vincent Pouliot Martin-Brûlé, Sarah-Myriam, Lou Pingeot, and Vincent Pouliot. 2019. “The Power Politics of United Nations Peace Operations.” In International Institutions and Power Politics: Bridging the Divide, edited by Anders Wivel and T. V. Paul, 149–165. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Mearsheimer, John J. 2001. The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. New York: W. W. Norton. Melzer, Nils. 2008. Targeting Killing in International Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mitzen, Jennifer. 2013. Power in Concert: The Nineteenth-Century Origins of Global Governance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Moravcsik, Andrew. 1998. The Choice for Europe. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Murphy, Craig  N. 2005. Global Institutions, Marginalization, and Development. New York: Routledge. NATO. 1949. The North Atlantic Treaty. https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_ texts_17120.htm. Panke, Diana. 2013. Unequal Actors in Equalising Institutions: Negotiations in the United Nations General Assembly. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Paul, T.  V. 2009. The Tradition of Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Paul, T. V. 2018. Restraining Great Powers: Soft Balancing from Empires to the Global Era. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Pouliot, Vincent. 2016. International Pecking Orders: The Politics and Practice of Multilateral Diplomacy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Pouliot, Vincent, and Jean-Philippe Thérien. 2015. “The Politics of Inclusion: Changing Patterns in the Governance of International Security.” Review of International Studies 41, no. 2: 211–237. Pouliot, Vincent, and Jean-Philippe Thérien. 2018. “Global Governance in Practice.” Global Policy 9, no. 2: 163–172. Putnam, Robert. 1988. “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games.” International Organization 42, no. 3: 427–460. Reus-Smit, Christian. 1999. The Moral Purpose of the State: Culture, Social Identity, and Institutional Rationality in International Relations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Ruggie, John G. 1992. “Multilateralism: The Anatomy of an Institution.” International Organization 46, no. 3: 561–598. Russett, Bruce, John R. Oneal, and David Davis. 1998. “The Third Leg of the Kantian Tripod for Peace: Organizations and Militarized Disputes, 1950–1985.” International Organization 52, no. 3: 441–468. Schattschneider, Elmer E. 1960. The Semi-Sovereign People: A Realist’s View of Democracy in America. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Schia, Niels Nagelhus. 2013. “Being Part of the Parade: ‘Going Native’ in the United Nations Security Council.” Political and Legal Anthropology Review 36, no. 1: 138–156. Schneider, Gerald, and Nils Petter Gleditsch. 2010. “The Capitalist Peace: Origins and Prospects of a Liberal Idea.” International Interactions 36, no. 2: 107–114. Sending, Ole J. Vincent Pouliot, and Iver  B.  Neumann 2015. Diplomacy and the Making of World Politics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Simmons, Beth, and Lisa Martin. 2001. “International Organizations and Institutions.” In Handbook of International Relations, edited by Walter Carlsnaes, Thomas Risse, and Beth Simmons, 192–211. London: Sage.

International Institutions and Peaceful Change   145 Stone, Randall. 2011. Controlling Institutions: International Organizations and the Global Economy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Stone, Randall. 2013. “Informal Governance in International Organizations: Introduction to the Special Issue.” Review of International Studies 8, no. 2: 121–136. Tannenwald, Nina. 2009. The Nuclear Taboo: The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons since 1945. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Teschke, Benno. 2003. The Myth of 1648: Class, Geopolitics, and the Making of Modern International Relations. London: Verso. Thomas, Daniel. 1998. The Helsinki Effect: International Norms, Human Rights, and the Demise of Communism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Thomas, Ward. 2000. “Norms and Security: The Case of International Assassination.” International Security 25, no. 1: 105–133. United Nations. 1945. Charter of the United Nations. https://www.un.org/en/charter -united-nations/. Welsh, Jennifer. 2013. “Norm Contestation and the Responsibility to Protect.” Global Responsibility to Protect 5, no. 4: 365–396. Wight, Colin. 2019. “Violence in International Relations: The First and the Last World.” International Relations 33, no. 2: 172–194. Wivel Anders, and T. V. Paul. 2019. “Exploring International Institutions and Power Politics.” In International Institutions and Power Politics: Bridging the Divide, edited by Anders Wivel and T. V. Paul, 3–19. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

chapter 8

Economic I n ter depen dence , Gl oba liz ation, a n d Peacefu l Ch a nge John Ravenhill

We inhabit a world characterized by unprecedented levels of economic in­ter­de­pend­ence, intensified by globalization. It is also an era in which the incidence of interstate warfare has declined markedly (Human Security Report Project  2009; Pinker  2011). To the casual observer, the link between these two trends may seem obvious. Demonstrating a more robust relationship between economic interdependence and peaceful change has proved challenging, however—fraught with problems such as how best to define and measure the two concepts, endogeneity issues (What is the direction of causality? Does economic interdependence produce peaceful change, or does peaceful change ­foster economic interdependence?), and how to disentangle the independent effects of economic interdependence from a host of intervening (confounding) variables and their interactive effects. This chapter first examines the principal traditions that theorize the relationship between economic interdependence and peaceful change. It then reviews the challenges that have faced scholars who have sought through large-­N studies to demonstrate a statistically significant association between these concepts. Globalization has brought new linkages among countries that further complicate investigation of this relationship. Whether economic interdependence will bring peaceful change has divided scholars of international relations for more than three centuries. Legitimate concerns about the role of “isms” in the study of international relations notwithstanding (Lake 2011), the traditional distinction between liberalism, realism, and Marxism/neo-­Marxism generates three schools with internally consistent views on the relationship. To these three we add arguments derived from the literature on international conflict that focus on the role of signaling in mitigating the possibilities for conflict.

148   John Ravenhill

Economic Interdependence Enhances the Prospects for Peaceful Change The liberal tradition that sees economic interdependence as fostering peaceful interstate relations originated with Eméric Crucé (1972), whose The New Cyneas was published in 1623, during the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648). His central thesis was that humanity would benefit from engaging in trade and peaceful international relations rather than waging wars between countries, races, or religions. Crucé put forward several measures through which he believed trade and thus the prospects for peace could be enhanced (Reza 2015). The argument was taken up by numerous liberal writers over the next three centuries. In Montesquieu’s words, first published in 1748: “Peace is the natural effect of trade. Two nations who traffic with each other become reciprocally dependent; for if one has an interest in buying, the other has an interest in selling; and thus their union is founded on their mutual necessities” (quoted in Dorussen and Ward 2010, 31). Beginning with the work of Norman Angel (1910), the relationship between in­ter­de­ pend­ence and peaceful change typically became expressed in terms of “opportunity costs,” the benefits given up when one alternative is chosen over another. War was not a rational instrument for pursuing economic welfare because it would sacrifice the benefits from international trade. The potential gains from conflict (which itself would be costly to wage) could never offset the losses caused by disruption to trade (see also Polachek 1980). Rosecrance (1986) elaborated on Angel’s argument: modern economic development had fundamentally altered the balance between the potential gains from war and those from peace. The benefits from commercial relations had increased as technology reduced the transaction costs of international trade. Meanwhile the economic costs of war had also risen with contemporary industrialization. So, too, had the political costs. It was far more cost effective for governments to become “trading states” rather than warring states; the benefits of interdependence could be reaped through commerce and would far outweigh any net gains that could feasibly be achieved through territorial expansion. Somewhat paradoxically, given the customary liberal emphasis on competition among diverse groups in the political system being the driver of policies (Moravcsik 1997), some classical liberal writings on the relationship between in­ter­de­pend­ence and peaceful change portrayed the state as a unitary actor (e.g., the reference to “nations” in the quote from Montesquieu or John Stuart Mill’s argument that “commerce first taught nations to see with good will the wealth and prosperity of one another”; Mill 1884, 453). For the most part, however, liberal writings had at least an implicit theory of domestic political economy. The context in which classical liberals were writing is important. They strove to differentiate their arguments from various mercantilist proposals that equated national wealth with state power, strong armies, and overseas expansion through international conflict. For liberals, the commercial peace would come about because domestic groups

Economic Interdependence, Globalization & Peaceful Change   149 would appreciate the benefits of international trade, and (for some authors) pro-­trade elements would be strengthened politically by these economic benefits.1 Evident here is the expectation that the rising middle class would be able to constrain any warmongering by the sovereign and overcome a reactionary alliance between precapitalist elements: the landed aristocracy and the military. Commercial peace arguments consequently frequently spilled over into democratic peace propositions—because a democracy would more effectively enable domestic interests to constrain the sovereign (Cobden 1867; Schumpeter 1975). Disentangling the independent effects on peace of economic interdependence and democracy (or the interaction between these variables) consequently has posed a significant challenge to those seeking to test liberal arguments. The presence of international institutions that could help build confidence among states and potentially arbitrate disputes was another potentially confounding factor in the relationship between economic interdependence and peaceful change. Although it was best known as part of the mutually supportive Kantian trinity of democracy, economic interdependence, and international law and organization, Crucé had pioneered this argument, basing his plans for “universal peace” on the creation of a permanent assembly of ambassadors from all sovereign states (Fenet 2004). Contemporary studies have explored how a variety of economic and other international institutions (ranging from regional trade agreements—Mansfield, Pevehouse, and Bearce  1999–2000; Mansfield and Pevehouse 20002—to utilization of the International Court of Justice— Davis and Morse 2018—to intergovernmental organizations more generally—Russett, Oneal, and Davis  1998) can enhance the pacifying effects of commerce. Again, the ­challenge for those attempting to establish a causal relationship between interdependence and peace is how to estimate the influence of commerce independent from that of joint membership in international institutions.

The Bargaining Theory of Conflict A second literature that posits a positive relationship between economic in­ter­de­pend­ ence and peaceful change rests not on the opportunity costs of war but on the potentially positive impact that interdependence can have on the capacity to signal intentions to a potential adversary. The argument, sometimes referred to as the bargaining theory of conflict, builds on Blainey’s (1973) insight, formalized by Fearon (1994, 1995), that international conflict frequently results from parties’ misperceiving the intent of potential adversaries and consequently being unable to strike an appropriate bargain that would avoid war. Two propositions follow from this line of reasoning. The first is that economic in­ter­de­pend­ence, by fostering regular interaction among states and thus informational exchange, reduces the chance of misperception and is a confidence-­building exercise (the classic political argument, for example, for regional economic integration). The second is that economic interdependence affords states the opportunity to send “costly signals,” making it less likely that their intent will be misperceived (Morrow 2003).

150   John Ravenhill International crises, in Morrow’s (1999) terminology, are often a matter of “relative resolve”: if a state perceives another as lacking resolution, then it will be more likely to take the risk of escalating a crisis to seek concessions from the other party. Credibility in conveying resolve rests upon the sending of “costly signals”: the willingness of a state to incur a not-­insignificant cost to attain its goals. Higher levels of i­n­ter­de­pend­ence provide more options for sending costly signals; states can impose restrictions on trade or financial flows that hurt their domestic populations as well as the foreign target. A potentially aggressive state should be deterred by such effective signaling from escalating crises into all-­out war. In the original formulation of the bargaining theory of conflict, states were treated as unitary actors whose rationality is constrained by imperfect information. Further elaborations of the perspective, however, allowed for the possibility that the incentive structures for domestic actors to reach a negotiated settlement will vary according to their roles in the economy. If powerful domestic interests—and political leaders—do not benefit as much as others from economic interdependence, they will have less interest in sending the credible signals necessary to avoid conflict (Jackson and Morelli 2007; McDonald and Sweeney 2007; Chatagnier and Kavaklı 2017).

Alternatives to the Liberal Approach: Economic Interdependence Enhances the Prospects for Interstate Conflict Writers in the realist tradition dating back to Thucydides (1972) have perceived enhanced economic interdependence as a potential source of conflict. The starting point for the realist position is that interdependence is rarely symmetrical and can be manipulated by the stronger party (Waltz 1979, 141). Where the context is one of asymmetrical interdependence, a state is vulnerable to a disruption of relations and to the leverage this threat provides to the stronger party (as elaborated, for instance, in Hirschman’s 1945 study of relations between Eastern European countries and Nazi Germany). Trade can be a vehicle for exacerbating asymmetries and thus vulnerabilities. In an anarchical world, states will be concerned about relative gains issues and the possibility that disproportionate gains accruing to a potential adversary will be translated into enhanced military capabilities. They will therefore do what is required to reduce their sources of vulnerability, engaging in armed conflict if this is perceived to be necessary to protect their economic interests. E. H. Carr (1946, ch. 4) asserted that the liberal idea of a harmony of interests was as illusory at the international level as it was at the domestic. It was naïve for liberal economists to consider welfare in terms of the world as a whole. The availability of lands for new settlement may have suppressed economic nationalism in much of the nineteenth century, but uneven development soon exposed the underlying conflict of interest among countries. Realists assert that rather

Economic Interdependence, Globalization & Peaceful Change   151 than promoting confidence among partners, the increase in interactions associated with interdependence provides more opportunities for conflict to occur (Waltz 1979; Gartzke 2003). For realists, states can be regarded as unitary actors because political elites will take whatever action is necessary in the rational pursuit of national interests. Writers who studied late nineteenth-­century imperialism from other intellectual traditions also saw economic interdependence (in this instance defined in terms of competition over international markets) as leading to interstate conflict. The challenge to capitalism of domestic underconsumption, an argument originally developed from a social democratic perspective (Hobson 1902), fueled an expansionary logic that ultimately produced conflict among rival imperial powers. Subsequently, Marxist theorists of imperialism added two other reasons for capitalist adventures overseas and consequent conflict: the problem of finding outlets for ever-­increasing capital surpluses and the quest for less-­expensive raw materials (Lenin 1933; Bukharin 1929). Neo-­Marxist writers, such as those who examined US policies toward Central and South America, built on these arguments about the quest for security of supply of inexpensive raw materials; their focus, however, was primarily on conflict between the United States and less-­ developed economies rather than on how imperialism inflamed antagonisms among industrialized economies. Marxists and neo-­Marxists have a straightforward interpretation of domestic political economy in capitalist countries. The interests of the bourgeoisie dictate foreign policies. In the instrumental Marxist tradition (Miliband  1969), the influence of particular fractions of capital, pursuing their interests, will push countries into warfare even if it damages broader economic welfare (and possibly the interests of the bourgeoisie as a whole)—hence, for example, US military intervention in Guatemala in 1954 in support of the interests of the United Fruit Company. The theoretical approaches to understanding the relationship between economic interdependence and peaceful change rest largely on deductive reasoning. The next section reviews attempts to examine the relationship empirically.

Conceptualizing and Measuring the Independent Variable Examinations of the effects of interdependence on peaceful change have typically focused on trade as the measure of the independent variable. This might seem a straightforward relationship to examine but immediately encounters several challenges. The first is data availability. The time series on international trade produced by international agencies do not go back before 1945. Previous patterns of trading have to be pieced together from a variety of national sources. And even for the post–Second World War period, data for many pairs of countries are frequently missing—and as would be anticipated, missing data are not distributed randomly but are more common for countries

152   John Ravenhill that are the least democratic, have the smallest economies, and are the least developed and least powerful (Boehmer, Jungblut, and Stoll 2011). How to treat missing data (to avoid dropping a large number of dyads from their analysis, analysts frequently estimate the missing values) can bias the results and has been a major controversy in the literature (Barbieri, Keshk, and Pollins 2009; Gleditsch 2010; Barbieri and Keshk 2011). Controversy has also surrounded the issue of how to measure interdependence through trade. One problem is that dependence on trade typically varies with the size of the economy; as Waltz (1979, 145) reminded us, great powers typically are less de­pend­ent than others on international trade. Adjusting trade for the size of national income, however, introduces further complications regarding the measurement of economic size itself. A second issue is how to measure the importance of trade with a given partner: Should it be relative, for instance, to the country’s overall reliance on trade, or to the size of its economy? A third issue is how to incorporate asymmetries in interdependence within dyads—a key theme in realist writing being that asymmetries may encourage states to engage in conflict. A final issue is whether there should be some time lag introduced to allow for the possibility that changes in trade may take time to influence the likelihood of conflict—or for the possibility that conflict, in turn, will impact trade volumes. The choice of measures has had a profound impact on the conclusions that authors have reached about the relationship between economic interdependence and conflict. Some of the foundational work in the field found that trade either has no effect on conflict or is associated with more incidences of conflict (Barbieri 1996, 2002). In contrast, other pioneering researchers in the field, such as Oneal and Russett (1997, 1999), reached the opposite conclusion using different measures of trade interdependence; consistent with liberal arguments, they found that trade was negatively associated with incidence of conflicts. These contradictory results raise fundamental questions about conceptualizing the relationship between interdependence and conflict. The first is whether treating trade in the aggregate really addresses some of the important issues raised in the theoretical literature. The second, examined in the next part of this chapter, is whether trade itself is a sufficient measure of in­ter­de­pend­ence in an era of globalization. There are two dimensions to the liberal opportunity cost argument: the costs that would be imposed by conflict and the potential costs of the counterfactual, those that would be imposed by the pursuit of alternative policies. Measuring the costs of conflict is far from straightforward; radically different estimates reflect alternative methodologies—whether, for instance, the focus is solely on direct costs such as the replacement value of goods destroyed in conflict or whether it includes potential indirect costs such as the impact on education, health (including future costs of caring for veterans, etc.), inequality, and investment—and for how long in the postwar period these need to be measured (see Gardeazabal 2012; Brück and De Groot 2013). For the commercial peace argument, the key variable is the losses imposed by the disruption to international trade. Measurement complications notwithstanding, various studies provide strong evidence that war in general is costly (especially among major

Economic Interdependence, Globalization & Peaceful Change   153 powers) and has a particularly disruptive impact on international trade (for an overview see Barbieri and Levy 1999; Blomberg and Hess 2012 provide an alternative perspective). Although estimates of the costs of conflict among major powers would cause most reasonable observers to question whether they could conceivably be outweighed by any benefits, the same conclusion does not necessarily apply to specific conflicts, particularly those that involve parties of substantially unequal power. The US intervention in Central America in support of the United Fruit Company, for instance, imposed few direct costs on the US economy. Findlay and O’Rourke (2012) offer a variety of examples for which they argue that access to specific markets and resources, gained through the projection of military power, was crucial to the industrialization of Europe. Reference to raw materials suggests another complication. When considering ­vulnerability—that is, the costs of breaking a relationship and having to secure alternative sources of supply or new markets—some trade is more equal than others. Certain “strategic goods” are much more important for the military security of states (Reuveny and Kang 1998). Only a limited number of countries may be cost-­effective suppliers of essential resources, such as petroleum. The characteristics of the goods being traded therefore may impact the likelihood that the partners will enter into a militarized dispute (Dorussen 2006; Goenner 2010). While the aggregate trade between a country and the exporter of a coveted resource may be small relative to the importing country’s overall trade, it may be much more consequential in terms of vulnerability than larger volumes of trade in products for which substitutes are readily available. Treating trade in the aggregate consequently may lead to misleading conclusions about the relationship between interdependence and peaceful change; countries may be more inclined to undertake aggressive action against relatively small partners that supply what are regarded as critical resources. For some authors, the growing demand for a finite supply of natural resources increases the likelihood of interstate conflict (Klare  2001; Reuveny  2002). These may be as seemingly esoteric as fish stocks, the cause of the 1970s conflict between Iceland and the United Kingdom (Mitchell 1976). The COVID-­19 crisis illustrates how conceptions of “strategic” goods may be context specific. Moreover, the export profile of countries may make some of them more war prone; Colgan (2010, 2013) notes this is particularly the case for oil-­exporting countries (cf. Park, Abolfathi, and Ward 1976). The decision to wage war may also be easier to make because of the characteristics of the exporting countries. Ross and Voeten (2015), for example, find that oil producers are less likely to be members of intergovernmental organizations or to agree to compulsory third-­party jurisdiction of conflicts, attributes identified by several studies as reinforcing the relationship between economic in­ter­de­ pend­ence and peaceful change. If some varieties of trade are more likely to generate armed conflict among the partners, others (associated with contemporary globalization) may be more facilitative of peaceful change. Much of the literature treats economic interdependence as if we are still living in the 1950s, an era before intra-­industry trade became prominent and largely

154   John Ravenhill before the advent of global value chains (GVCs). Chatagnier and Kavaklı (2017), for instance, argue that countries that produce and export similar goods are “generally more likely to fight” than those that produce complementary goods. The study ignores how intra-­industry trade has affected the economic—and political—consequences of competition in international markets. Dating back to the pioneering study by Bela Balassa (1966), a substantial literature has noted how intra-­industry trade substantially reduces the adjustment costs (economic and political) associated with trade liberalization (Brülhart and Hine  1999; Alt et al.  1996). Moreover, horizontal ­intra-­industry trade, the dominant structure of trade among industrialized economies since the 1960s and now constituting three-­quarters of global commerce, is less likely to generate the concerns regarding potential vulnerability, prominent in realist ­analysis, that rest on the idea that interdependence will provide political leverage to a trading partner. For most political economists, the hypothesis put forward by Chatagnier and Kavaklı (2017, 1528) that “dyads that produce similar manufactured goods may be especially violent because they compete over a larger number of issues” has little relevance in a world of intra-­industry trade and GVCs. Peterson and Thies (2012) provide one of the few investigations of the impact of intra-­industry trade on conflict, finding that intra-­industry trade is associated with peace within dyads, whereas overall trade interaction has an ambiguous effect on conflict.

The Opportunity Costs of Not Going to War Much liberal theorizing appears to assume that the policy alternatives to armed conflict are relatively costless. That may not be so if maintenance of the status quo has the potential, for example, to deny access to critical raw materials. And the use of alternative policy instruments, such as economic sanctions, can impose significant welfare losses on the country imposing these policies. Costly signals can indeed be costly, particularly if they do not achieve their desired policy outcomes. Davis, Murphy, and Topel (2009) offer a rare comprehensive assessment of the possible opportunity costs that would have been incurred in the absence of one major militarized conflict: the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003. These include the direct costs associated with sustaining a military presence sufficient to implement a containment strategy against Iraq, including those required to compel Iraqi compliance with a rigorous inspections and disarmaments regime, as well as those associated with the possibility of future terrorist attacks. Their estimates are that the cost to the United States of a containment policy would have been of a magnitude similar to the initial cost associated with the 2003 military interventions. Inevitably, some would regard the assumptions underlying the modeling as a flight of imagination, but the study shows clearly that the opportunity costs of not going to war can be formidable (Stiglitz and Bilmes 2012 provide much higher estimates of the costs of US intervention in Iraq).

Economic Interdependence, Globalization & Peaceful Change   155

Interdependence Beyond Trade? Whether trade is the best measure of interdependence in an era of globalization is questionable, particularly when the focus is on the opportunity costs of breaking ties. Foreign direct investment can often be a substitute for trade, enabling local ­production of goods that might otherwise have been imported. Today, the annual value of the sales of the international subsidiaries of transnational corporations (which amounted to $27.3 trillion in 2018) substantially exceeds the annual value of global trade ($19.67 trillion merchandise trade plus $5.63 trillion in services) (UNCTAD  2019; WTO  2019). To fully gauge the significance of financial flows, ­however, a further $4.2 trillion in portfolio flows and bank lending (UNCTAD 2019) must be added to the annual flows of $2.3 trillion in foreign direct investment. Few  studies of the relationship between economic interdependence and peaceful change have attempted to factor in the role of international financial flows—Gartzke, Li, and Boehmer (2001), Rosecrance and Thompson (2003), Polachek, Seiglie, and Xiang (2007), and Polachek, Seiglie, and Xiang (2012) are rare exceptions; a much earlier study (Gasiorowski 1986) included a (largely incomplete) measure of financial flows. Even adding financial flows, however, still provides only a limited conceptualization of contemporary interdependence. Divergent interests in local, regional, or global “commons,” such as river basins or the atmosphere (or, as seen in the COVID-­19 ­pandemic, global health), have the potential to generate interstate conflict. Studies of the relationship between various environmental scarcities and conflict generally find that the relationship is indeterminate and contingent on a range of political and ­economic conditions as well as on the specific characteristics of the environmental issue (Bernauer, Bohmelt, and Koubi 2012; Gartzke 2012; Salehyan and Hendrix 2014; Zografos, Goulden, and Kallis 2014). It may also depend on the quality of institutions created to manage joint resources (Tir and Stinnett 2012) and on actor expectations (Bas and McLean 2020). Studies continue to echo the conclusion of Homer-­Dixon’s early work on shared river resources that “conflict and turmoil . . . are more often internal than international” (Homer-­Dixon 1994, 20).3 These conclusions raise an important question regarding how we conceptualize “peaceful change.” Most of the literature focuses on interstate conflict. The editors’ definition in their introductory essay for the present volume, however, goes far beyond this characterization in quoting Deutsch et al.’s (1957) identification of peaceful change with “the resolution of social problems mutually by institutionalized procedures without resort to largescale physical force” (quoted in Paul, in this volume, 4). Clearly the impact of economic interdependence on conflict within countries would be embraced by this definition. Civil wars would be the most extreme example (Collier et al. 2003), but the spectrum of nonpeaceful change also embraces violent protests; ethnic, class, and religion-­based conflicts; and crime (Rodrik  1999; Anderton and Carter  2019). Space constraints ­preclude going beyond acknowledging that another broad set of questions and large

156   John Ravenhill literature exist in relation to economic interdependence and peaceful change within countries. This acknowledgement does, however, provide a convenient segue into a discussion of the dependent variable.

The Dependent Variable Interstate wars are relatively rare and have become rarer over the last half century. Few commentators would lament this trend. For students of the relationship between ­economic interdependence and peaceful change, however, it does pose significant challenges. Writers in the liberal and realist traditions agree on one thing in examining the consequences of economic interdependence: it is all about vulnerability and the opportunity costs of breaking a relationship. For liberals, the argument is that warfare will lead to a complete disruption of economic relations with the other party/parties. The scope of this disruption will ensure that its costs, together with those of prosecuting the war, will inevitably outweigh any potential gains and will therefore constrain state behavior. If, for instance, the ‘conflict’ is merely a short-­lived exchange of shots across a border, the likely damage to economic relations would be of a significantly lesser magnitude. One of the pioneering studies of the factors associated with international conflict found that only 85 of the more than 200,000 dyad years in his study (just over 0.04 percent) were characterized by war (Bremer 1992). As another pioneering study (Oneal and Russett 1997, 273) noted, the relatively small number of wars renders unreliable statistical analysis that includes only that small population. Many analysts, accordingly, have focused on broader definitions of interstate conflict. Most frequently, they have used one of the data sets on militarized interstate disputes (MIDs) derived from the Correlates of War project. The authors of one of the original compilations of these data define ­militarized interstate disputes as “a set of interactions between or among states involving threats to use military force, displays of military force, or actual uses of military force. To be included, these acts must be explicit, overt, nonaccidental, and government sanctioned” (Gochman and Maoz 1984, 587). MIDs explicitly are not interstate wars. The literature specifically refers to them as “sub-­war” conflicts. They may be such relatively minor incidents as an increase in the military readiness of a state’s forces or the issuance of threats. Several problems are evident in using such data to test the arguments regarding economic interdependence and peaceful change. The first is whether many of the disputes would be likely to impose the magnitude of opportunity costs central to the theorizing. The severity of the disputes included in the data set varies significantly. In the Gochman and Maoz (1984, 587) study, for instance, the modal length of disputes (constituting 22 percent of the total) was a single day. If only the subset of MIDs that include a fatality is used, authors encounter the same issue as if the focus were on interstate war; Peterson

Economic Interdependence, Globalization & Peaceful Change   157 and Thies, who do include only fatal MIDs in their study, acknowledge that “our D[ependent] V[ariable] is an exceptionally rare event” (Peterson and Thies  2012, 757 n52). Problems are typically compounded by how the data are then manipulated. The usual procedure in the studies that use MIDs is to dichotomize the dependent ­variable: dyads are coded as either experiencing or not experiencing an MID. The problem here lies in aggregating very different types of incident and treating them in the same way. Many disputes would be unlikely to come close to generating the opportunity costs associated with war. Nonetheless, some analysts who employ the MIDs data frequently use the terms war, hostility, military conflict, and dispute interchangeably. As one example among many, Chatagnier and Kavaklı (2017) employ the terminology of “fighting” and “military combat.” And even those who are careful in referring only to “disputes” or “conflicts” nonetheless begin their studies with a recounting of the theoretical perspectives on economic interdependence and war (see, for instance, some of the most frequently cited studies, such as Polachek 1980 and Oneal and Russett 1997). The argument about relatively insignificant opportunity costs applies a fortiori to those studies that have used events data to enumerate conflicts among states. No one pretends that interdependence is costless. Conflicts will inevitably occur among economic partners over, for instance, the pricing of goods. But such frictions will rarely escalate to the point that there is any possibility of the relationship being severed. A second problem is one of interpretation. As Jones, Bremer, and Singer (1996, 170) note, “threats are verbal indications of hostile intent, and since these are expressed in diplomatic language, they are not always easy to interpret.” The compilers of the MIDs data sets utilize standard procedures to establish inter-­coder reliability. But subjectivity inevitably creeps in, which can lead to coding errors that, in turn, can generate misleading results. An examination of the coding of the MIDs data set through version 3.1 found that more than two-­thirds of the entries needed revision. Using the revised data, the authors found that in several studies that used the data set, the “interpretation of several key relationships depends wholly on improperly coded cases in the original data” (Gibler, Miller, and Little 2017, 720). Examining the relationship between economic interdependence and peaceful change using data on militarized disputes is equally problematic if the objective is to evaluate the bargaining theory of conflict. Many incidents coded as constituting a militarized dispute are exactly the type of “costly signal” that figures prominently in this theorizing. They are the independent variables rather than the dependent variable. If one treats war as the dependent variable, and MIDs as the independent, then exponents of the bargaining theory of war may find support for their arguments—insofar as very few militarized disputes actually lead to interstate war (in the third iteration of the MIDs database, only 4 percent of the total of slightly over two thousand disputes escalated into war; see Jones, Bremer, and Singer 1996, 197). The small numbers involved, however, again make it risky to draw any conclusions.

158   John Ravenhill

Interdependence and Peaceful Change in an Era of Globalization Classical liberal theorizing is ambiguous on whether the key relationships are among pairs of states or between a state and all its (major) partners in a global society of states. Several prominent liberal theorists can be quoted in support of the latter approach— notably Immanuel Kant, who repeatedly made reference to a “universal community” (see Kinne 2012, 309). Studies, however, have typically examined relationships between pairs of states. This approach has the advantage of being relatively easy to measure. It also maps neatly onto the major databases on international conflict, which focus on dyads. Whether such a method is appropriate, either as a test of the classical liberal propositions or as a measure of the opportunity costs of disruptions to trade in the contemporary era of GVCs, is questionable. An initial consideration is that a state may be deterred from engaging in conflict with a partner not because of the opportunity costs of breaking that specific relationship but because it may jeopardize economic relations with more significant third parties, which might either impose sanctions or break an economic relationship because of the country’s military adventurism. An illustration of the logic would be if Russia were deterred from military intervention in Ukraine not because of the direct or opportunity costs of that conflict with Ukraine itself but because this aggression would prompt sanctions from other countries. Peterson (2011), on the other hand, suggests that taking third parties into account may have an entirely different logic. Building on the relative gains concerns expressed in realist theorizing, he contends that trade between one member of a dyad and a third party risks shifting the balance of capabilities within the dyad sufficiently that the relatively disadvantaged state may be tempted to engage in conflict. He finds some support for this argument (again using MIDs data), but only in politically dissimilar dyads with relatively low levels of trade between the parties. Yet another alternative deductive argument regarding third parties is that because their own well-­being rests on trade between two members of a dyad, they will have an incentive to try to prevent any conflict between the two parties (Dorussen and Ward  2010, 29; see also Kleinberg, Robinson, and French 2012; Chen 2020). To date, no conclusive evidence is available to support one alternative rather than another. Including third parties goes only a small way toward accommodating the complexities of the contemporary global economy. Final goods are frequently assembled from hundreds of components sourced from multiple countries. The spread of vertically integrated intra-­industry trade within value chains has been a major motivation behind preferential trade agreements linking industrialized and less-­developed economies (Manger 2012). Moreover, the advent of GVCs has been associated with a nearly universal increase in the share of trade in countries’ gross domestic product (GDP). Consequently, the costs that would be imposed by a disruption in supply chains have

Economic Interdependence, Globalization & Peaceful Change   159 increased (Ravenhill 2009), and nowhere is this more evident than in the COVID-­19 outbreak. Studies have applied various forms of network analysis in attempting to address these new complexities (Maoz et al. 2006; Dorussen and Ward 2010; Kinne 2012; Lupu and Traag 2013; Jackson and Nei 2015; Maoz and Joyce 2016; Dorussen, Gartzke, and Westerwinter 2016; Amador and Cabral 2017). Authors, however, face formidable challenges in attempting to measure networked trading relations. One difficulty in examining a universe comprising all members of the global trading system is the sheer number of observations—as Maoz et al. (2006, 683) noted of their study, “Due to the exceedingly large ns, almost any correlation is statistically significant.” Disruptions to value chain trade can be particularly costly—and the complexities of inter-­firm and international trade within them make it difficult to predict how the costs of conflict will be distributed. US measures to restrict imports from China during the Trump presidency inevitably affected companies from US allies such as Japan and Korea that assembled goods in China. Moving the assembly point elsewhere (to Vietnam in this instance) reduces the impact on allies. But the location of plants is not arbitrary. They usually tie into specific infrastructure, concentrations of suppliers and expertise, and other factors that are not easily replicated elsewhere. Relatively few industries are genuinely footloose, at least in the short term. A fundamental problem not addressed in the literature is whether conventional national trade data are meaningful in a world of GVCs. Bernard and Ravenhill (1995) first pointed out how misleading national trade statistics can be by examining the example of a calculator, assembled in Thailand, which was classified for the purposes of trade statistics as a Thai export even though almost all its cost came from components imported from other countries. Subsequent studies, most notably of various Apple products (Linden, Kraemer, and Dedrick 2007; Kraemer, Linden, and Dedrick 2011; Xing and Detert 2011; Xing 2015), have reinforced the argument. Moreover, because components frequently cross international boundaries on multiple occasions before being assembled into a final product, conventional trade data substantially overstate the value of trade because multiple counting of intermediate goods and ­services occurs. International economic institutions have increasingly recognized the problems with conventional national trade statistics, launching a major project to measure trade on a value-­added (TVA) basis (see OECD and WTO 2011; Mattoo, Wang, and Wei 2013). While these data provide a far better understanding of the interdependencies (and potential vulnerabilities) among economies in contemporary global trade, they are far from complete; in the most recent release, data are available for only sixty-­four countries and for only thirty-­six industrial sectors (nonetheless, these provide potentially twenty-­eight quadrillion combinations; OECD 2019, 15). They are also only available for a handful of years.4 Although TVA data provide a much better estimate of networked trade than do conventional national trade data, the relatively small number of countries and years for which they are available would make it difficult to utilize them for assessing the relationship between globalization and peaceful change.

160   John Ravenhill

Conclusion Four decades on, and scores if not hundreds of large-­N studies later, we still lack definitive conclusions about the relationship between economic interdependence, globalization, and peaceful change. A majority of the studies do find that interdependence has a mitigating effect on the occurrence of interstate conflict. But this positive impact is frequently found to be contingent on other factors such as joint democracy (with some finding that the interaction between trade and democracy is a particularly powerful predictor; Gelpi and Grieco 2003), on the types of goods involved (manufactures versus natural resources), and/or on the expectations of actors regarding the future course of the relationship (Copeland 1996, 2015; Morrow 1999; Benson and Niou 2007). Difficulties in measuring the independent and dependent variables cast doubt on the usefulness of the findings of many of the studies. The sophistication of the statistical techniques employed is not matched by the quality of the data. Particularly problematic is the conceptualization of the dependent variable. Most studies have used the MIDs databases, often conflating different types of dispute and then dichotomizing the variable into dyads that have experienced “disputes” and those that have avoided them. If the dependent variable is peaceful change, particularly in the broadest interpretation of the concept discussed by this volume’s editors, then MIDs might be relevant. They are far less so for testing the propositions drawn from the theoretical literatures, which explicitly reference war as the dependent variable because of the magnitude of the opportunity costs it would generate. Peterson (2011, 190) argues that states are aware of the possible escalatory consequences of relatively low-­hostility acts like threatening or displaying force that are included in the MIDs data set. That may be so, but a threat, in itself, does not give rise to the opportunity costs associated with war. Moreover, the use of MIDs is unlikely to help in testing arguments derived from the bargaining theory of war because many of the MIDs may be exactly the “costly signals” that the theory suggests economic interdependence will facilitate, and which will act as a deterrent to full-­ scale conflict. Conceptualizing the independent variable is equally challenging. Even national trade statistics are problematic because of missing values. One study acknowledged that “far more work is needed to improve trade statistics, if we hope to use these data in meaningful ways in scientific research” (Barbieri and Keshk 2011, 171). More fundamentally, discussions of trade within GVCs have exposed how misleading national trade data can be. Yet trade in value added data are only available for a limited number of years. Moreover, the complexities of value chains make it very difficult to link TVA data to propositions derived from our theories of international cooperation and conflict. Trade (and the damage from a breaking of commercial relations) is central to liberal theorizing of the commercial peace. Adding other measures of economic interdependence, such as investment linkages, may seem appropriate in a globalized world. The challenge becomes how other measures can be combined with trade data. What respective weighting should be applied, for instance? And how do the two interact? While foreign direct

Economic Interdependence, Globalization & Peaceful Change   161 investment may be a substitute for trade where import substitution occurs, it may be complementary to trade in the operations of GVCs. As Copeland (2015, 54) reminds us, large-­N studies tell us nothing about individual cases of interdependence and conflict, which may fall well outside of the regression line (and be driven, for instance, by misperceptions by key actors, by power asymmetries that influence the opportunity costs of conflict, or by the nature of the particular commodities that dominate trade between the parties). In the absence of data that are accurate measures of the independent and dependent variables, case studies may be the most appropriate means going forward for exploring the relationship between in­ter­de­pend­ ence, globalization, and peaceful change. International institutions have frequently been identified as an important intervening variable in the relationship between interdependence and conflict. Contemporary challenges to the liberal international economic order—and its supporting institutions, most notably the World Trade Organization (WTO)—consequently will inevitably trigger alarm bells. Globalization rests on free flows of capital and goods. For almost all years between the end of the Second World War and the global financial crises of 2008 –2009, international trade grew more rapidly than global GDP. Domestic groups with an interest in trade consequently were strengthened in many countries, very much in accordance with classic liberal theorizing, and the assumption is that they had vested interests in avoiding international conflict. Moreover, trade was a central factor in lifting millions of people out of poverty in East Asia—thereby playing an important role in enhancing the prospects for peaceful change within these countries. Since 2009, the increase in global trade has barely kept pace with global GDP, and global trade actually fell in 2019 before the onset of the COVID-­19 pandemic. By 2020 the trade trajectory was already much lower than the trend before 2009; the shutdown of the global economy in response to the COVID pandemic was projected by the WTO in early 2020 to lead to a decline in global trade of between 13 and 32 percent, with trade within value chains expected to decline most steeply (WTO  2020). Globalization is reversible, which was all too evident in the interwar period (McGrew 2020). Even if a contemporary reversal does not precipitate interstate war, the risk is that it will produce frictions that will endanger peaceful change at both domestic and international levels.

Notes 1. Classical liberals paid little attention to the distributive effects of trade liberalization, in particular, that it would create losers (in Ricardo’s original formulation of comparative advantage, the cloth manufacturers in Portugal and the winemakers in England) as well as winners. The focus is on aggregate national welfare; the expectation in mainstream economics is that gains will exceed losses and that any losers from liberalization can be compensated from the aggregate gains. What this argument ignores is the possibility that the losers from actual or potential trade liberalization may wield disproportionate influence in the political system, with potential implications for interstate conflict (see McDonald and Sweeney 2007).

162   John Ravenhill 2. But cf. Peterson (2015), who argues that countries excluded from such arrangements may be more prone to hostile action. 3. For other work in this field see, for example, Hall and Hall (1998); Theisen, Holtermann, and Buhaug (1998); Diehl and Gleditsch (2001); Nelson (2010); and Bergholt and Lujala (2012). 4. For further discussion of the methodological challenges in constructing TVA databases, see Miroudot and Yamano (2013).

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chapter 9

Constructi v ism a n d Peacefu l Ch a nge Erna Burai and Stephanie C. Hofmann

System-­wide peaceful change gave birth to the mainstream constructivist international relations (IR) research agenda. The bipolar world, which most scholars working within the neorealist and neoliberal traditions predicted would be enduring and stable, collapsed at the beginning of the 1990s. While some realists expected such a systemic change to occur through hegemonic wars (Gilpin 1981, 1988), the bipolar order was dismantled without resort to large-­scale physical force between the United States and the USSR.1 Both the end of the Cold War and its largely peaceful nature constituted a puzzle for existing IR paradigms and theories. The lack of theoretical tools to explain this largely peaceful global change provided an opening to a more socially informed study of the world and an opportunity for the constructivist paradigm to become a cornerstone of IR theorizing. In this chapter we argue that scholars working in the constructivist tradition have emphasized three theoretical building blocks that explain peaceful change and how peaceful relations can be maintained in times of upheavals and transitions: factors (such as culture or identity), actors (such as norm entrepreneurs), and mechanisms (such as persuasion and socialization). These help us understand and explain peaceful change on the individual, social, and global levels. By showing how constructivist research on peaceful change is continuously expanding rather than refining existing explanations, we argue that there is no ‘core’ research program or approach but instead a kaleidoscope of theories that variably emphasize different factors, actors, or mechanisms. Consequently, while constructivist theorizing has contributed to our understanding of peaceful change, room for conversation between the different theories and approaches remains. We believe that such conversations are a fruitful engagement. First, given their historical momentum and proximity to liberal political thought in the 1990s, constructivist theories have implicitly focused on peaceful change and sidestepped the question of what scope conditions lead to violent or nonviolent outcomes. A second, related line of inquiry that needs more theoretical development is how

170   Erna Burai and Stephanie C. Hofmann the different factors, actors, and mechanisms of existing theories interact with one another. We know that norm entrepreneurs can work towards peaceful change and that socialization is as important a mechanism as norm diffusion. However, constructivist scholars could emphasize more how these factors can strengthen each other to lead to peaceful change by looking into how different levels of analysis are related. A third challenge, not particular to theories of peaceful change, is the question of how to demonstrate empirically the purchasing power of these theories. Constructivist scholars are still to find common definitions of such concepts as norms or culture. In this chapter, we first discuss constructivism’s rise to become a major IR paradigm and the epistemology on which theories of peaceful change rest by touching upon constructivism’s rich and variable research tradition, comprising conventional, critical, and postpositivist approaches. In a second step, we turn to constructivist ontologies and present the factors of change, the actors that drive change, and the mechanisms that can lead to peaceful change. Third, we discuss biases in the constructivist research agenda, such as the initial emphasis on “good,” “Western” norms, identities, and values, which left the conditions of violent versus peaceful change unexplored. We conclude with a discussion on understanding and explaining the prospect of peaceful change, especially as the potentially waning global predominance of the United States drives a renewed quest to define changes in the global order.

The Origins of Constructivism: Peaceful Change While the end of the Cold War gave birth to the mainstream constructivist research agenda, constructivist theorizing had developed before that. Critics of the dominant, ‘rationalist’ theories of IR, and of international regimes in particular, showed that sociological factors matter in defining behavior, beyond the material distribution of power (Kratochwil and Ruggie 1986). Actors follow rules as they simplify choices and provide templates for recurring social situations, thus facilitating overall coordination (Kratochwil 1984, 707). The role of institutions thus goes well beyond simply coordinating given interests; they constitute interests that cannot be defined independent of the context in which they are formed. This theoretical groundwork became more prominent across IR scholarship with the end of the Cold War. Koslowski and Kratochwil (1994) argued that the end of the bipolar world is not a result of a shift in exogenous variables such as the distribution of material capabilities, but a change in domestic and international practices, beliefs, and identities. The Soviet leadership conceding to German reunification and allowing national elites to liberalize their political systems across the former Communist bloc (Risse-­Kappen 1994) were significant changes in the constitutive rules of the Cold War. Such new ideas, ­however, were ‘not floating freely’; they were embedded in interlocking domestic and

Constructivism and Peaceful Change   171 international processes such as empowering liberal internationalist groups across Europe and the United States, and within the Soviet Union (Risse-­Kappen 1994, 195). Conventional constructivists showed that concepts such as identity, norms, and culture, long considered epiphenomenal to material variables (Keohane 1984; Mearsheimer 2003; Waltz 2010), can meaningfully influence actors’ behavior (Wendt 1992; Checkel 1999; Risse-­Kappen et al. 1999). Critical constructivists shifted the focus to how social phenomena are constituted in the first place (Hopf  1998; Finnemore  2004a). Postpositivist constructivist scholars, in turn, revealed the hegemonic nature of such constructs and the power relations they perpetuate, reminding us that we as scholars also need to situate ourselves first before we can understand the social fabric of the political (Laffey and Weldes 1997; Milliken 1999). Constructivist scholars emphasized not only a new ontology—akin to liberal scholars in this respect—but also a new epistemology that facilitated the study of change over time and across places.

Open to Change: The Power of Collective Meanings Explaining the end of the Cold War gave credit to the idea that social and political order is not solely the outcome of material factors. Material attributes such as economic and military preponderance have to be interpreted in their context. “Constructivism,” writes Stefano Guzzini, “does not deny the existence of a phenomenal world,” but it opposes the idea that “phenomena can constitute themselves as objects of knowledge independent of discursive practices” (2000, 159). “What makes the world hang together” (Ruggie 1998), “a world of our making” (Onuf 1989), and “what states make of it” (Wendt 1992), in other words, are the interpretive frames, ideas, identities, norms, rules, and culture that define the attributes of social phenomena. Social phenomena, constructivists argue, ultimately rest on social conventions. These social conventions, such as the value of money or the force of law, are ultimately created and re-­created based on people’s belief that they are part of social reality. Their endurance depends on conscious social actors behaving in a way that sustains that collective belief. Social phenomena are thus created in an “intersubjective” manner: in-­between, and through the interactions of, self-­reflexive social actors. In situations governed by collectively held meanings, actors acquire understandings about who they are and how they should behave. These identities, or “relatively stable, role-­specific understandings and expectations about self ” (Wendt 1992, 397), often define their reasons or possibilities for action. If social and political order is not the reflection of material capabilities alone, but of those collectively held meanings and feelings of belonging that social actors attribute to them, the conditions and pathways of change are different from those in an order defined purely by material factors.

172   Erna Burai and Stephanie C. Hofmann This makes constructivist scholars well placed to study change. Change happens through transforming collectively held social beliefs and meanings that sustain social institutions and conventions. If this transformation happens without resorting to force, or without leading to violence, we speak of peaceful change. Change is violent if the primary means of transforming ideational factors is force, or if their transformation results in violence. Constructivists show that both peaceful and violent changes may be legitimate if they are so defined by dominant social institutions, conventions and beliefs.

Peaceful Change: Concepts and Mechanisms The constructivist research agenda has expanded widely since the 1990s. It has opened up foundational concepts of IR to scrutiny, such as anarchy (Wendt  1992), power (Guzzini 2005), regimes (Ruggie 1992, 1993), preferences (Duffield 2003; Rathbun 2004; Hofmann 2013), sovereignty (Osiander 2001; Bartelson 2014), security (Baldwin 1997; Buzan et al. 1998; Huysmans 1998), and the state (Reus-­Smit 1999). It has shown that these categories are constructed both in the social world and in academic discourse, and that they are historically contingent. The study of peaceful change has benefited from these broader theoretical and conceptual contributions. We reconstruct the constructivist contributions to debates on peaceful change in three thematic groups: the factors that constructivist research prioritizes to reveal the social construction of the world and the ‘sites’ where change might happen; the actors that drive change; and the mechanisms through which change happens and which are conceptualized as the theoretical combination of actors and factors. We review these aspects by asking under what conditions they contribute to peaceful change rather than change per se. The review shows that, first, constructivist scholars mainly focus on ‘reasonable’ states and transnational ‘good’ actors that contribute to the spread of ‘good’ norms, such as human rights or democracy, as opposed to actors that openly challenge these norms. The implicit alignment with the liberal notions of progress and lack of engagement with the conditions of violence and war (Adler 1997, 346; Jackson 2008) initially formed a major blind spot in the constructivist research agenda that was only partly counterbalanced by critical constructivist contributions. Second, the constructivist research program remains in the phase of expansion rather than of consolidation when it comes to peaceful change. Through this evolving process, the paradigm accumulates more and more concepts and theories rather than solving conceptual tensions and relationships. Instead of prioritizing conceptual and theoretical comparison and working toward a ‘core’ of constructivist peaceful change research, constructivist scholarship presents a kaleidoscope of factors, actors, and mechanisms. This lack of consolidation is

Constructivism and Peaceful Change   173 exemplified, for instance, by constructivist writing being juxtaposed with other IR ­paradigms rather than with other constructivist approaches.

Factors of Change Some constructivist work primarily focuses on what we call factors, ideational and social concepts, based on which scholars explain or understand peaceful change. Of the several factors that have been introduced to the literature, we focus here on ideas, culture, norms, identities, discourses, practices, and visuals.2 Individually held ideas are one factor that constructivists have emphasized to understand peaceful transitions. Craig Parsons, for example, shows that peace on the European continent followed from a particular idea of European integration that transformed former enemies such as France and Germany into partners (Parsons  2002). Ideas can play the same role on the global level. The institutional shape of the post– Second World War international order, inspired by multilateralism, could be understood in terms of the effort to preserve peaceful international relations. Collectively held ideational factors can also help us in understanding and explaining peaceful change. One such factor is culture, understood by conventional constructivists as a “set of evaluative [and] cognitive standards that define what social actions exist in a system, how they operate, and how they relate to one another” (Katzenstein 1996, 6). Scholars have focused predominantly on national or organizational cultures. What prompts national security strategies and doctrine to be defensive rather than offensive, leading ultimately to a more peaceful national position? Kier (1997) answers by showing how the organizational cultures within militaries can explain whether they opt for an offensive or defensive posture. Focusing on national security cultures, the German domestic debates on whether to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO’s) operation in Kosovo (Hyde-­Price 2001) or the Japanese ones on whether to engage in peacekeeping (Singh 2011) attest to the resilience of national security cultures in defining defensive or offensive foreign policy. Another collectively held factor is norms. Norms, for conventional constructivists, are “collective expectations for the proper behavior of actors with a given identity” (Katzenstein 1996, 5; Finnemore and Sikkink 1998, 891). They supply understandings of what is appropriate behavior in a given situation, without determining the exact course of action (Kratochwil  2000). Peaceful change then follows when there are norms in place that rule out violence as a desirable or permissible course of action. Constructivist research has contributed widely to our understanding of how to generate norms that make violence less permissible or reasonable. The prohibition of certain weapons and the origins of violence-­constraining rules such as international humanitarian law are prominent examples (Finnemore 1999). The taboo against the use of nuclear weapons, for instance, was conditioned on the perception of American administrations that their use would generate global moral outrage (Tannenwald 1999). The prohibition against using chemical weapons, on the other hand, was built on the perception that they are

174   Erna Burai and Stephanie C. Hofmann uncivilized weapons. This contributed to an absolute moral prohibition against their use even if these characteristics did not single out chemical weapons from other weaponry (Price 1995). Yet another factor that contributes to understanding and explaining peaceful change is identity. Similar to culture, this can be held by different collectives such as nations or social groups. Identity may be the most studied factor in terms of both peaceful and violent relations and change. Scholars have shown that identity, or actors’ perceptions of who they are, can both facilitate and hinder peaceful change. The process of ‘othering,’ or creating the self through distinguishing it from non-­self, is as present on the international level as on the domestic one. Constructivists show how particular identity constructions legitimize oppressive foreign policy practices and international hierarchies between states, as well as how they create subaltern positions that are difficult to challenge peacefully (Doty 1993; Zarakol 2011; Morozov and Rumelili 2012). On the other hand, identity might be constructed so that it reduces perceived differences and facilitates cooperation. An example is that of former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, who framed the question of occupied territories in relation to Israeli identity in a way that opened the possibility of the Oslo peace process (Barnett 1999). While conventional constructivists understand norms, culture, and identity as collectively stable, coherent, and bounded social systems, critical and postpositivist scholars have challenged this view by showing that they are “strange multiplicities” (Tully 1995) of internally contested, loosely integrated, and overall heterogeneous social products (Lapid 1996; Laffey and Weldes 1997). Therefore, through three consecutive ‘turns,’ critical constructivists have focused on mediums of meaning making as factors of change: discourses, practices, and most recently, visuals. Conceptualizing language as a system of signification that is not merely descriptive but also constitutive of the reality it represents (Searle 1969; Austin 1975), constructivists understand discourses as “grids of intelligibility” that define social subjects, objects, and their relationship to each other (Milliken 1999, 230). Discourses, however, are essentially unstable and need to be reproduced time and again to sustain the social phenomena they constitute. The focus on discourses prompted constructivists to analyze language games (Fierke 1998), in which meaning is generated by the reliance on dominant metaphors that structure understanding. Peaceful change at the end of the Cold War, for instance, resulted from gradual changes in which the dominant metaphor of enmity was transformed into that of cooperation between the United States and the USSR (Fierke 1998). Another medium constructivists focused on as a site of reproducing collective meanings is practices, sets of situated knowledge (Adler-­Nissen and Pouliot 2014) that characterize professional communities. These sets of knowledge are habitually enacted as deep-­seated beliefs about what things are and how things are done. Practitioners thus inhabit and reproduce the social world based on such sets of situated knowledge that are the subject of constructivist theorizing (Neumann 2002; Adler and Pouliot 2011). The study of practices took constructivism in new directions (McCourt  2016), including theorizing peaceful change as a change either in the subjectivity of practitioners, the

Constructivism and Peaceful Change   175 practices themselves, or in the broader social orders they constitute (Adler and Pouliot 2011, 18). Studying the politics of representation outside the medium of language led to a so-­ called aesthetic or visual turn in critical constructivist scholarship (Bleiker 2001). Visual representation is often beyond the scope of discourse analytical methods, due to the idiosyncratic ways in which it generates meaning (Saugmann Andersen et al.  2014; Bleiker 2015). What becomes visible potentially generates a more powerful impact on spectators than words do. Security, war, and violence, which remain the main focus of studying visuals in IR, are often represented by images, which are destined not only to show, but also to exert strong emotional responses (Bleiker 2018). International icons, that is, internationally circulated, freestanding images, intervene in the course of international politics as they are appropriated in international discourses and change their meanings (Hansen 2015). The images from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, for instance, induced widespread condemnation and moral outrage over torture in American detention centers in the context of the war on terror, mobilizing toward a change in these practices. Finally, constructivist scholars turned the gaze of the discipline upon itself, showing that the analytical categories of IR are far from being neutral descriptions of an ‘objective’ reality (Guzzini 2000; Hamati-­Ataya 2012). The discipline is therefore also a factor of change, as it supplies the analytical vocabulary through which scholars and practitioners create the world. Feminist constructivist scholars, in particular, have shown that the emphasis of mainstream theories on deterrence, war, self-­help, survival, rule, and domination encapsulate a worldview in which violence and destruction is an ever-­ present occurrence (Cohn 1987; Tickner 1992). They point to alternative vocabularies and ontologies of IR, which, by looking at human resilience and the capacity to heal, are more conducive to peaceful change. Elina Penttinen, for instance, documents the female experience of war beyond suffering and advocates focusing not on “what is going wrong” but on “what is working” (Penttinen 2013, 14). By embracing such positive ontologies, IR and IR scholars themselves are potentially agents of peaceful change (Ingersoll 2016; Penttinen 2019; Choi et al. 2020).

Actors of Change If the factors of change responded to the question of what, in constructivist thinking, can be changed or contributes toward peace, it is also important to consider the kinds of actors that can elicit change in a peaceful direction. Constructivist ontology is open to a wide range of actors and identifies agency beyond and within the state, and most recently even in inanimate objects. Here we pay particular attention to norm entrepreneurs, epistemic communities, international bureaucracies, transnational and subnational actors, pivotal states, and images/objects. Agency is where social interaction creates and sustains politically influential ideas that potentially drive peaceful change.

176   Erna Burai and Stephanie C. Hofmann On the individual level, constructivists have introduced norm entrepreneurs (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998) as actors that can generate change toward peace. They can do so by developing policy proposals, mobilizing wide-­ranging support for such proposals, commissioning expert input, and disseminating knowledge (Ratner 1999). Constructivist accounts of the peaceful end of the Cold War included the role of Mikhail Gorbachev’s conviction of pursuing cooperation and the trust he developed with Ronald Reagan (Lebow 2010). This crucial role of individuals, however, is predicated upon the right context, which often means being surrounded by like-­minded individuals or institutional structures. The cessation of forcible sovereign debt collection in the early twentieth century is a case in point. What facilitated stopping the practice was not only Argentinian norm entrepreneurship but also the gradual replacement of military officials by international ­lawyers as representatives of the state at international negotiations. This epistemic community of international lawyers shared an understanding of the value and meaning of state sovereignty and of forcible debt collection as a practice breaching that sovereignty. In contrast to military professionals, lawyers were more predisposed to rule out force as a means of settling sovereign debt (Finnemore 2004b). Another example of epistemic communities inducing peaceful change is that of American defense intellectuals, who were instrumental in providing technical expertise and policy options for nuclear arms control. Institutionalizing these ideas in both policy and academic circles and thus strengthening their legitimacy, they created the conditions for nuclear arms control both domestically and internationally (Adler 1992). International bureaucracies share the constitutive function of epistemic communities in the sense of creating and institutionalizing discursive categories and practices that sustain social phenomena. The authority of bureaucracies derives from four main characteristics: they are hierarchical, they provide a continuity to the categories and activities they define, they generate expertise, and they impersonally represent the reality they create (Barnett and Finnemore 2004, 18). While this kind of organizational form displays its own pathologies (Barnett and Finnemore 1999), international bureaucracies can also push for peaceful change through creating a social environment in which differences are being tolerated and socialization is possible over time (Johnston 2001). International bureaucracies, for example, can foster peaceful change through three roles: as knowledge brokers, negotiation facilitators and capacity builders (Andler et al. 2009, 47–49). An achievement of constructivist scholarship is to have shown that nonstate actors, such as transnational nongovernmental organizations, have agency in international politics. Some have followed transnational civil society actors in fighting for a ban on antipersonnel land mines and cluster munitions or the regulation of small and light weapons (Price 1998; Petrova 2016). Price, for example, shows how an unlikely alliance of diverse groups managed to successfully convince decisionmakers that antipersonnel land mines are costly and indiscriminate weapons that do not advance military goals (Price 1998). More broadly, Keck and Sikkink, as well as Risse-­Kappen and his ­colleagues, show the instrumental role of transnational advocacy networks in eliciting compliance with

Constructivism and Peaceful Change   177 international norms (Keck and Sikkink  1998; Risse-­Kappen et  al. 1999). These ­scholars have demonstrated that transnational groups can achieve peaceful change even vis-­à-­vis powerful states by generating and disseminating information, organizing networks, fashioning their normative proposals in accordance with accepted normative standards, and forcing governmental actors to publicly account for their conduct. Constructivists have also shown that the constellation of subnational actors, such as the relationship between the civilian political elite and the military, can help us explain how war prone or offensive a state is (Kier  1997). Others, like Brian Rathbun and Stephanie Hofmann, have looked into the role of political parties and showed that depending on these actors’ value constellations—carried by the party but also constructed by party leadership—we can point to which party will be more interventionist in power (Rathbun 2004; Hofmann 2013, 2019). Many constructivists have pointed to pivotal states and their potential to change normative discourses. Canada and Norway played such a pivotal role in shaping the notion of human security (Paris  2001). Constructivists often emphasized that small states, which according to rational IR theories should not have much bargaining power on the international scene, contribute to the social construction of meaning, prompting other actors to rethink security (Ingebritsen 2002). The case of Sweden in promoting norms of conflict prevention through norm construction, agenda shaping, coalition building, and supporting institutionalization both at the United Nations (UN) and the European Union is such an example (Björkdahl 2013). Most recently, scholars of the visual turn have proposed to think about the materiality of the world as an actor in its own right. Moving away from both discourses and practices enacted by human actors, scholars have drawn our attention to the power of images and objects that in and of themselves can have agency and impact social interactions, because they structure what humans perceive as possible or permissible. Adler-­Nissen and Drieschova (2019) focus on the role of internet and communication technologies as structuring diplomatic documents; Anna Leander shows the inescapable questions drones pose for legal expertise (Leander 2013); and, drawing on psychological work, Jonathan Austin argues that prison cameras restrain prison guards (Austin 2019).

Mechanisms and Processes of Peaceful Change The actors and factors identified in the preceding discussion combine into mechanisms of change. We can distinguish among micro-, meso-, and macro-­level mechanisms. Many of these mechanisms have been analyzed in isolation, often through case studies, paying less attention to how they interact with each other across time and space. In the following we present a few of the most prominent mechanisms of peaceful change, with a particular emphasis on persuasion, norm life cycle and norm localization, norm contestation, socialization, systems change, and hegemonic transitions, eliciting the particular factors and actors they combine.

178   Erna Burai and Stephanie C. Hofmann The micro-­ level mechanisms that potentially elicit change in the behavior of i­ndividuals range from coercion through social influence to affective mechanisms (Finnemore 2004a). Among them, a peaceful mechanism that excludes not only violence, but also any form of coercion, is persuasion. What makes persuasion an outstanding mechanism of peaceful change is the conditions in which it unfolds. It is predicated upon a social setting in which participants—norm entrepreneurs, (pivotal) states, international or transnational organizations—come together as equals, irrespective of the differences in their relative power (Johnstone  2003; Ratner  2012). Having access to deliberation on an equal basis, they can all in principle put forward a better argument in order to change other participants’ ideas, norms, or those evaluative and cognitive standards that constitute their culture. Persuasive arguments often change underlying beliefs by being emotionally appealing, accounting for evidence better than competing arguments, or being articulated by persons of authority or expertise. Crawford demonstrates this empirically with the examples of decolonization and the abolition of slavery (Crawford 2002, 35). Constructivists are aware of the difficulty of empirically discerning genuine persuasion (Krebs and Jackson  2007), and they theoretically distinguish between persuasion (Checkel 2001; Payne 2001; Deitelhoff 2009) and strategic adjustment of behavior, such as rhetorical entrapment (Schimmelfennig  2001; Risse  2004; Petrova 2016). However, we can observe persuasion when states agree to an outcome at the end of the negotiation process that they opposed beforehand, a tangible example of which is the creation of the International Criminal Court (Deitelhoff 2009). Mechanisms that connect the micro to the meso level are the norm life cycle model and norm localization. Norm entrepreneurs can contribute with normative proposals for peaceful change. Once a sufficient proportion of a relevant audience, whether states, transnational actors, or international bureaucracies, accepts this new normative proposal, norms reach a tipping point and “cascade” (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998, 895). A different understanding of norm life cycles derives from the logic of adjusting generic rules to specific circumstances, then learning from specific cases and adjusting the generic rules accordingly (Sandholtz 2008). In this latter model, the relevant actors that shift normative understandings are major states, whose agreement is necessary for norm change. Norm localization concerns not the creation but the spread of normative standards among different contexts. Constructivists have shown the prominent role of transnational actors in this context. In the process, global standards are often reinterpreted to the extent of modifying their normative content (Acharya  2004; Kurowska  2014a; Zimmermann 2017a). Neither norm localization nor the mechanism of norm diffusion is, however, limited to transnational actors. Norm diffusion implies an actor, individual or collective, that actively promotes its normative standards, and other actors emulating norms on the receiving end (Börzel and Risse 2012, 5; Winston 2018). To problematize the concept of emulation at the receiver’s side, constructivist scholars showed that normative and cultural standards are re-­evaluated at every encounter between different actors. The research program on norm contestation theorizes this as the default mode of all norm application (Wiener  2018). For constructivists, the ­contestation involved in the previously mentioned mechanisms—persuasion, norm life

Constructivism and Peaceful Change   179 cycles, norm localization, and norm diffusion—is not an indicator of violent and illegitimate change. Instead, it is a process through which different socially stratified groups negotiate and interact with one another (Wiener 2018). For this to happen peacefully, contestation needs to unfold under certain conditions, through frequent and sustained interaction between participants and in an established institutional setting. This way, participants become aware of their normative baggage and can resolve their issues even under conditions of global diversity (Zimmermann 2017b). In other words, contestation has to be inclusive and regular enough to accommodate dissenting views. On the meso level, collectives such as international bureaucracies or epistemic communities can pass on their prevalent norms by socializing actors into their standards and practices. Socialization means that an actor—often a new member state in an international organization, or its officials joining an epistemic community or international bu­reauc­ racy—learns to comply with the dominant ideas, norms, cultural standards, discourses, and practices of a community and adopts them as the appropriate course of action in that social environment (Checkel 2005, 804). Institutions are primary sites of socialization, the site of generating peaceful change in the beliefs and/or in the behavior of old- and newcomers by initiating them into various roles and standards of behavior. For example, Alexandra Gheciu shows how former enemy countries were socialized into the Western understanding of civil-­military relations before entering NATO (Gheciu 2005). NATO is also an example of a particular kind of socialization that happens through the continuous articulation of security communities. Adler and Barnett (1998, 30) define a pluralistic security community as a “region of states whose people maintain dependable expectations of peaceful change.” Based on continuous interactions, for example in organizations, actors establish mutual trust and a collective identity over time, and security communities sustain themselves in changing structural conditions. This is why NATO persisted after the end of the Cold War, even if its primary raison d’être had vanished. Moving to the macro level, constructivist researchers distinguish between “systems change,” or the transition from one international system to the other, and “systemic change,” a shift in actors’ relative positions under the same organizing principle (Reus-­Smit 2013, 198–202)—as realist scholars such as Gilpin have done before them. Systems change is understood in terms of process rather than mechanism, because it unfolds over a longer time (Reus-­Smit 2013, 200; Nexon 2009), and involves interlacing mechanisms on different levels and multiple sites. Instead of an episodic and radical disruption, constructivist scholars view systems change as gradual and reconfigurative (Phillips 2016, 488). Within this multilayered process, however, they point to concrete mechanisms of peaceful change. One example is the transition from colonial empires to the community of sovereign states. Although decolonization was not peaceful on all levels, Reus-­Smit argues that the main mechanisms of bringing about this change were the radicalization of subject peoples’ elites to demand statehood instead of reforms, combined with the newly independent states’ rhetoric at the UN to frame self-­determination as the extension of individual civil and political rights (Reus-­Smit 2011, 234–235). Systems change can therefore be the result of subnational actors addressing legitimacy claims not only through armed conflicts and revolts but also through institutionalized forums.

180   Erna Burai and Stephanie C. Hofmann Elsewhere, and drawing on constructivist, English school, sociological, and anthropological insights, Reus-­Smit defines systems as “diversity regimes,” which legitimize certain units of political authority on the one hand and recognized categories of cultural difference on the other (Reus-­Smit 2017, 876). Just as in the case of decolonization, diversity regimes are challenged by grievances of unequal recognition. Change follows especially if an actor with sufficient material power sets out to have its cultural difference recognized, although we need more theorizing on when this unfolds peacefully. Challenging existing diversity regimes is a mechanism of systems change, which also involves transforming ideas, identity, norms, discourses, and practices of recognition within that regime. The challenge is more significant if the actor is materially powerful; in this mechanism, therefore, the key actors will be states, especially great powers. Constructivist scholars have also addressed existing realist and liberal theories such as hegemonic stability and transition theory. Allan, Vucetic, and Hopf have argued in favor of a thicker understanding of hegemony (Hopf 2013; Allan et al. 2018). They argue that the systemwide distribution of identity among great powers matters for our understanding of peaceful change. They combine identity with pivotal states (in this case great powers) as well as the mass public to formulate their mechanism of hegemonic transition and stability. They argue that we can expect peaceful relations when an emerging hegemonic ideology is consistent with the distribution of identity at both the elite and public levels among great powers. Should a rising state—in terms of material power—challenge the distribution of identity with a counterhegemonic discourse, it is unlikely to succeed. This theory, for example, can explain the peaceful change from Pax Britannica to Pax Americana. Kori Schake argues that the declining Great Britain and the rising United States came to perceive each other as being politically alike. While Allan et al. do not theorize how identities can change and accommodation occur, Schake demonstrates empirically nine political encounters over a century, in which Britain gradually became more democratic, while the United States became more imperial, and the resulting “unique sense of political sameness” played a role in avoiding a major conflict (Schake 2017, 271). Shake’s theory would thus foreclose the possibility of China’s accommodation in the current international order as long as it does not buy into its dominant ideological discourse. This is just one of the many examples in which an interaction and elaboration of scope conditions of several mechanisms—such as socialization and normative contestation—could benefit a broader picture of peaceful change.

Biases: Are All Changes Peaceful? Given the major impact of the end of the Cold War on the constructivist research agenda and that of the “golden” 1990s, in which some proclaimed the end of history (Fukuyama 2006) and heralded the international liberal order (Deudney and Ikenberry

Constructivism and Peaceful Change   181 1999), constructivist scholarship emphasized peaceful change over other dynamics and outcomes. This led to at least two analytical biases. The first is a focus on progressive, unidirectional change; the second, related bias is the initial focus on ‘good’ norms often associated with Western and supposedly universal values such as democracy or respect for the rule of law. The emphasis on progressive change is exemplified in the concept of norm cascade of Finnemore and Sikkink or in the focus of norm diffusion literature and socialization as a top-­down process, in which actors around the globe become more alike with time. Some scholars addressed these biases and introduced localization mechanisms (Acharya 2004; Lenz 2013) or postcolonial resistance (Anghie 1999; Anghie et al. 2003; Morozov 2013) to our understanding of change. As democratic movements accompanied the end of the Cold War and democratic transformations happened around the globe, constructivist scholars emphasized the liberal repertoire of norms and values that shaped identities and cultures. The research agenda then expanded to ‘good’ norms and values, such as conventional and nuclear disarmament; humanitarianism; and the abolition of slavery, colonialism, or apartheid. However, nothing in the constructivist research program forecloses the study of ‘bad’ norms and ‘bad’ actors. Indeed, the rise of populism or the cruelty in the conduct of extremist groups triggers more and more scholarly reflection on normative changes that move away from universally agreed upon standards (Welsh 2016). To correct the bias toward liberal values as global values, constructivists inquired about the violent implications of liberal practices (Geis and Wagner 2011; Zehfuss 2011) or showed that peaceful social standards are not unique to liberal ideologies but are also found in collectives whose priorities are different (Crawford 1994). A last potential bias that should be mentioned briefly here is methodological. Early on, many scholars criticized constructivist scholarship for being primarily conceptual and theoretical and for supporting their arguments with only qualitative methods, often focusing on a few and selective cases (Keohane  1988; Finnemore and Sikkink  2001; Chernoff 2008)—and this criticism arguably still lingers. While this might strike some as a problem, we argue that the use of crucial and hard cases as well as macro-­historical processes has significantly contributed to IR’s understanding of peaceful change. In addition, some constructivist work is built on large-­N studies (see, e.g., Allan et al. 2018), trying to combine interpretivist methods with large-­scale data collection. As Brigden and Gohdes (2020) have shown, it is possible to “study violence across methodological boundaries.” The same should be possible for studying peace. And if we focus on peace and violence, theories’ scope conditions will be refined in the process.

Conclusion As outlined in this chapter, one of the achievements of constructivism (i.e., conventional, critical, postpositivist approaches) has been to ‘denaturalize’ the discourses and

182   Erna Burai and Stephanie C. Hofmann practices that make up the world’s social fabric but arguably overemphasize the p ­ otential for peaceful change compared to violent change. Constructivism accords a genuine role to ideational actors and factors and acknowledges both the benefits of following them and the social costs of breaching them. Given also its epistemology, which embraces reflexivity both concerning the objects of study in IR and in knowledge production by practitioners of IR theory, it opens potential avenues for change, peaceful or not, in the world and in our scholarly communities. As constructivist scholarship is able to address traditional questions asked in liberal and realist schools of thought, postpositivist and critical constructivists can also help us understand how core-­periphery relations lead not only to change but to peaceful change that might not be universal. What does the constructivist paradigm say about the world of today and tomorrow? The preponderance of the United States is challenged by, among other factors, the rise of China and the Russian contestation of liberal practices and norms. Populist and nationalist ideas around the world challenge ideas of peaceful coexistence and change. With the change or demise of the so-­called liberal order (Ikenberry 2018; Eilstrup-­Sangiovanni and Hofmann 2019), many normative ‘advancements’ appear to be contested and reversible. The emerging research programs on normative contestation (Wiener  2018), regional specificities and interwoven global-­regional dynamics (Acharya 2017; Kurowska and Reshetnikov 2020), and cultural diversity (Reus-­Smit 2017; Phillips and Reus-­Smit 2020) enable constructivist researchers to make sense of these dynamics. Future theoretical developments could spell out more precisely the conditions of peaceful versus violent change. As constructivism is agnostic to units and levels of analysis, it exhibits a certain theoretical openness and flexibility that enriches our understanding of the cultural and normative diversity that unites and divides the globe. However, while scholars have identified various actors, factors, and mechanisms, they have paid less attention to how these interact with one another. It might well be that global changes are peaceful in some regions but less peaceful in others. Or changes might initially be violent but later consolidate into peaceful change. The constructivist research agenda on peaceful change is in full bloom; it has been host to many theories that variably emphasize factors, actors, and mechanisms that contribute to peaceful change. It is time to think about possible cross-­fertilization, as well as about specifying the exact scope of constructivism’s various branches.

Acknowledgments Erna Burai and Stephanie C. Hofmann’s research for this chapter was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant number #100017_172667).

Notes 1. This is not to say that no violence occurred. The disintegration of the USSR at first involved peaceful movements, but the tidal wave that followed was accompanied by civil wars, displacement, and ethnic cleansing (Beissinger 1993).

Constructivism and Peaceful Change   183 2. Power is omnipresent in these factors. Depending on the theory, these factors comprise structural, diffuse, or institutional power (Barnett and Duvall  2005; Katzenstein and Seybert 2018). Power can be, inter alia¸ institutional position, access to information, membership in an epistemic community, access to a set of situational knowledge, or the capacity to change language games or to organize an alliance to achieve a particular normative purpose. In these various reincarnations, power is primarily wielded in a peaceful manner.

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chapter 10

Peacefu l Ch a nge i n English School Theory Great Power Management and Regional Order Cornelia Navari

The first arguably substantive argument over ‘peaceful change’ took place in Britain in 1937, as storm clouds gathered over Europe, engaging Hersch Lauterpacht, E. H. Carr, and C.  A.  W.  Manning in what has been characterized as a first “great debate” (Kristensen n.d.; Long 2012). Initiated by the then International Studies Association,1 its  subject fed into the emerging political thought of both Martin Wight and C. A. W. Manning informing what subsequently became known as “English School” theory (Hadano 2014). Hedley Bull’s thesis on order and justice in international relations derived directly from Manning’s position in the debate over peaceful change. All these authors accepted that the international order had produced injustices for the ‘have-­not’ nations—the rising powers of the time. The question was how these injustices could be remedied without at the same time undercutting a fragile world order. It was about ethical possibilities and the amelioration of structural inequalities in an anarchical society requiring Great Power management (GPM) and institutional continuity. The answer for some would lie in the ‘club of powers,’ the concept of international responsibility and Great Power forbearance. Others would come to stress ‘successful institutionalization’ at the regional level and regional rules of the game.

The Men (and One Woman) of 1937 The debate was initiated by a symposium, organized by Manning at the London School of Economics early in 1937 preparatory to a general conference on the subject to be

192   Cornelia Navari held later that year. The legal problem around which the participants circled was the territorial settlement of the Versailles Treaty and Article 10, which guaranteed the territorial integrity of all members of the League of Nations. The larger issues involved the moral status of a victor’s peace, the apparent maintenance of colonialism through the façade of a trusteeship system, and the unequal access to resources attendant upon the closed imperial systems. Associated with such “complicated phenomena” were what Webster in his introduction to the symposium also called “complicated emotions” and which he summarized as, in effect, different political agendas. He identified them as (1) peaceful change to avoid war; (2) peaceful change to remedy justice; and (3) peaceful change to produce a world order better adapted to “material and mental processes” (Webster 1937, 5)—at the time the large power shifts occasioned by German rearmament and confirmed by the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, and the ideological confrontations of liberalism, fascism, and communism. It is scarcely surprising that, confronted with such a “vast and complicated subject,” the participants and eventual authors eschewed total solutions. The symposium was intended in any event as but the first stage in a broader study.2 But, guided by Manning, the participants—all senior professors—went fairly directly to the central issues: the economics of territorial sovereignty and the consequences of closed empires for territorial inequalities; colonialism and the trusteeship system; the social psychology of what we would currently call ‘populism’; and the constitutional and institutional changes that peaceful change would require. Lionel Robbins on “The Economics of Territorial Sovereignty” opened with a proposition that would dominate discussions in the Federal movement, would be taken up by the officials planning for the postwar settlement and, joined by others, would set the basic framework for “peace.” Peace was not a temporary absence of war but a permanent condition requiring a specific economic, political, and institutional structure. In economic terms, the existence of powers with exclusive and absolute sovereignty was not coherent with the needs of the modern industrial and financial system and led to unavoidable conflicts. Peace in economic terms required “federalism,” in which national states “learn to regard themselves as the function of international government” (Robbins 1941, 60). His colleague at the LSE, T. E. Gregory, supported the analysis with an account of the dysfunctions of a system of imperial closures in which many political formations (in effect colonies) were within imperial systems while others, accorded sovereignty, were not (Gregory 1937). Robbins moved inexorably over the next two years to “federalism” (more accurately confederation) in which the imperial systems would be replaced by general treaties setting the rules of economic exchange (Robbins 1941). Lucy Mair’s analysis of the colonial question was equally tough-­minded. An anthropologist and a specialist on Africa, she argued that restoration of Germany’s colonies would do little for either the colonial subjects or the German economy. The colonial question that so exercised the “have-­nots” was, she argued, largely a matter of prestige and social status (Mair 1937, 82–84), a view that was widely shared.3 The colonial subjects were (among themselves) in a relatively peaceful condition, and the best prospect of keeping them so lay in their new sovereign authorities’ respect for traditional African authority as

Peaceful Change in English School Theory   193 “the foundation for the adaptation to modern circumstances which must be made” (Mair 1937, 96). Mannheim’s analysis supported Mair’s on the relevance of prestige and sought for a theory as to how concern with individual and personal economic insecurity could become a collective drive for national enhancement and competition for power. Mervyn Jones’s review of 1938 for the Cambridge Law Journal accorded to Lauterpacht the toughest analysis and the one requiring the most intellectual honesty: that the demand for peaceful change in the society of states as then constructed required a revolution in both thought and practice. In thought it meant recognizing that Article 19 of the League was so dilatory and promised so little that it actually rendered war the more promising means of change. Without a legal mechanism for peaceful change, international law risked perpetuating in Lauterpacht’s words an “obnoxious status quo” that eventually leads to the conclusion that “a just war is better than an unjust peace” (Lauterpacht 1937, 6). Secondly, peaceful change required institutionalization, and not merely constitutionalizing, or setting general principles. It was necessary to create supranational authorities with some legislative powers. Nor could this be done via what Lauterpacht characterized as the “immoral doctrine of equality”—the notion that all states were equal and had equal rights and responsibilities. In “realistic terms” (in terms of what we might now call ‘structural facts’), it was only the Great Powers who could create such authorities. Accordingly, it was up to the Great Powers to initiate such a revolution and “assume in common the mission which in the past each has appropriated to himself.” Manning concluded the symposium (and the published volume) with what he considered to be the fundamental problem of peaceful change: the conflict between order and justice. Concrete proposals for peaceful change were never disinterested and were never based solely on reason or justice, but in the interest of those, satisfied powers, who benefited from peace, who wished to preserve a presently existing order and avoid “otherwise anticipated warlike change” (Manning 1937, 174). In the ideal international society, he argued, “the case for change is understood in terms not of abstract justice—or vested rights—but of realism, compromise, and common sense” (Manning 1937, 190). At the subsequent conference on the subject, the conflict between those supporting “order” and those supporting “justice” came out in full force. One lot, arguing that war was mainly a threat emanating from the leading powers, located peaceful change in what Kristensen has called “negative measures”—diplomatic adjustments that might require sacrifice on the part of lesser states and colonies. The other side, supporting “positive” peaceful change, advocated for justice, including justice for small states and colonies. Manning castigated those colleagues who insisted on not merely peaceful but also just change, for wishing for more than had been obtained in domestic politics (IIIC, 1938, 271). Reporting on the results, the rapporteur for the conference, Maurice Bourquin, noted unanimity on the need to replace violent with peaceful methods but disagreement on the procedures. Kristensen has summarized them in terms close to Webster’s original categories: One ‘school’ held that peaceful change must be solved through statecraft, ‘political constructions’ and ‘direct negotiations,’ implemented in the existing self-­help

194   Cornelia Navari s­ystem where each state provides its own security. Another school stressed that peaceful changes should be implemented by legal ‘imperative procedures’ and in a collective security system if they are to produce a lasting peace that guarantees the established order, the application of existing international law, and that modifications are just, consensual, and not implemented at the expense of weak states. A third position, ‘between’ the two, stressed mechanisms like persuasion, reason, information and community-­building.  (Kristensen n.d., drawing on IIIC 1938, 52–54)

Order and Justice after Manning In 1939, E. H. Carr joined the debate with his Twenty Years’ Crisis in which he both concurred with Manning and went further. He agreed that the clash between order and justice was a “direct clash of interests between conservative Powers satisfied with the status quo and revolutionary Powers determined to overthrow it” (see Carr 1942, xv). But his basic argument was the anti-­idealist and (at best) meliorist argument: there is no naturally occurring harmony of interests; consensus is achieved either through self­sacrifice or through the “realist consideration that it is in the interests of the individual to sacrifice voluntarily what would otherwise be taken from him by force” (Carr 1939, 168). In The Twenty Years Crisis, he advocated for a third position—a synthetic realist-­utopianist mechanism of peaceful change that could compromise between the utopian “common feeling of what is just and reasonable” and the realist “mechanism of adjustment to a changed equilibrium of power” (Carr 1939, 222). “Order” and “justice” were at either end of a thought experiment that disclosed the limits to what was ethically possible in a political order constituted by sovereign states. Hedley Bull set the problem within a structural context. It was not merely that justice was subjective and all too prone to be determined by interests; it was that in the decentralized international order, made up of a congeries of territorial jurisdictions, it was not possible to legislate justice (Bull 1977, 142–145). The same point is made by Terry Nardin (1983), who argues that international law is based on procedural norms, not on desirable end states; and Robert Jackson (2000), who argues that the only agreed-­upon justice in the international order is justice in the law. The basic dilemma was outlined in Andrew Linklater’s doctoral thesis, submitted to the University of London in 1978. Published as Men and Citizens in the Theory of International Relations, it argued a tension in the theory and practice of the modern state between “two concepts of obligation, two modes of moral experience.” The tension was between “the obligations which men may be said to acquire qua men and the obligations to which they are subject as citizens of particular associations” (Linklater 1982). In The Anarchical Society, Bull formalized the relationship of order to justice in terms of value pluralism, that is, contending values. Order is not merely an actual or possible condition or state of affairs in world politics; it is also very generally regarded as a value. But it is not the only value in relation to

Peaceful Change in English School Theory   195 which international conduct can be shaped, nor is it necessarily an overriding one.  At the present time, for example, it is often said that whereas the Western ­powers, in the justifications they offer of their policies, show themselves to be primarily concerned with order, the states of the Third World are primarily ­ ­concerned with the achievement of justice in the world community, even at the price of disorder.  (Bull 1977, 77)

He based his argument on the different ideas of justice evident in the public debate at the time—individual, interstate, and cosmopolitan justice, in a manner reminiscent of Isaiah Berlin in his essay on “Two Concepts of Liberty” (Berlin 1958). Historically and analytically, these were different ideas of justice, which were not capable of resolution in terms of one another. Ideas of interstate, individual, and cosmopolitan justice clashed, and there was no way in which they could be compromised. Accordingly, an order built on one must necessarily offend the others. Bull did not argue that justice was unachievable. In the Hagey lectures (Bull 1984), he argued that developing countries, and the Third World in general, had a just claim for redress; and that it could and should be honored. But he was arguing a situational ethic, based on what situationists call “relevant moral facts.” These were that the claim was widely recognized by both individuals and governments in the Western countries, that a good deal of the change had already been accomplished, and that the West had a case to answer. It was on such grounds that the West “should seek an accommodation” and “be prepared to make adjustments to their positions . . . of undue privilege” (Bull 1984, 244), not any abstract consideration of justice. Wheeler and Dunne (1996) applied Bull’s categories to thinking about the ethics of statecraft in the post–Cold War world, focusing on the responses of the society of states to humanitarian crises. They argued that “solidarist” sentiments had penetrated the consciousness of state leaders and that a more solidarist world order was, therefore, a conditional possibility. The limits to change is Order. The argument concerns both international and domestic order—in specific terms, the fragility and prone-­to-­be-­disturbed nature of the international order, and the threats to “unreformed” domestic orders posed by ill-­ considered liberal demands and liberal pressures. In the latter aspect, “order versus justice” is a critique of the liberal project. In relation to peaceful change, the corollary is the anti-­perfectionist argument and an argument to accept the ‘second best.’ In terms of Bull’s Hagey lectures, while it was possible to meet the contemporary demands of the Third World “in a context of order,” it was “foolish to imagine that this can always be done.” Some conceptions of justice would always threaten order and would necessarily place “peace and security in jeopardy,” and it was the “deeper wisdom” to recognize that “terrible choices have sometimes to be made” (Bull 1984, 227). Andrew Hurrell took Bull’s arguments forward without changing the fundamentals. Drawing on social constructivism, he argued, first, that power was a social construct involving notions of right, and that the theorists of international society “sought to understand order and cooperation in terms of both power and the operation of legal and moral norms” (Hurrell 2014, 146). Second, that at the “heart of politics lies the need to

196   Cornelia Navari turn the capacity for crude coercion into legitimate authority,” which created space for normative argument and debate (Hurrell 2014, 147). And third, that international law and international society provided for a “stable institutional framework within which substantive norms can be negotiated.” Given this framework, the “challenge” or critical questions were “moral accessibility, institutional stability, and effective political agency” (Hurrell 2014, 148). These should be the focus of any project on peaceful change.

The Club of Powers To the men (and one woman) of 1937 it was obvious that the problem of peaceful change was the problem of power shift and Great Power aspirations. Webster outlined these early and explicitly in his exegesis of the problem: Italy and Japan, each building capacity, who wanted to join the imperial game; Germany seeking to restore its prewar position. The ‘have-­nots’ of 1937 were aspiring ‘Great Powers’ and Great Powers who wanted redress. Hence, Lauterpacht’s conclusion, that peaceful change required an adjustment among the Great Powers. The argument for ‘GPM’ derives from an observation on the course of history and a posited structural determinant arising from the gross material and organizational inequalities among states. Historically, the idea that the Great Powers had a particular responsibility in relation to peace is a post-­Napoleonic notion, arising from the guarantor status that was attached to the Vienna Treaty—the four powers and France serving as the guarantors. The named powers “concerted” on revisions to the treaty, in the first instance in response to the 1830 collapse of the union between Belgium and Holland, whose separation, in contradiction to the Vienna settlement, had to be agreed by the guarantor powers. The idea of a permanent general responsibility for peaceful revision became evident only after the Crimean War, in the initiation of the laws of humanitarian warfare, and seems to have become solidified by the time of the Berlin Congress of 1878. The final declaration of St. Petersburg (November 29, 1868) stated that: The Contracting or Acceding Parties reserve to themselves to come hereafter to an understanding whenever a precise proposition shall be drawn up in view of future improvements which science may effect in the armament of troops, in order to maintain the principles which they have established, and to conciliate the necessities of war with the laws of humanity.  (Conventions and Declarations 1915, italics added)

The final act of the Berlin Congress, whose fifty articles settled the borders, freedoms, and statuses of the Ottoman Empire’s European possessions, drew on the 1856 Peace of Paris, by which the Sultanate joined the Concert powers and declared them uniformly “desirous to regulate, with a view to European order . . . the questions raised in the East

Peaceful Change in English School Theory   197 by the events of late years.” In the initial paragraphs, the Congress’s “unanimous opinion” was given as “the best means of facilitating an understanding” (Treaty 1878). “Concerting” or “management” by the Great Powers did not arise spontaneously. It was theorized and negotiated. Castlereagh, preparing for the Congress of Vienna, reported to Lord Liverpool that “the conduct of the business must practically rest with the leading powers” (Clark 2011, 87) and prepared the oft-­quoted memo for the Foreign Office as to how the business might be managed: The advantage of this mode of proceeding is that you treat Plenipotentiaries [of the lesser states] as a body with early and becoming respect. You keep the power by concert and management in your own hands, but without openly assuming authority to their exclusion. You obtain a sort of sanction from them for what you are determined at all events to do, which they cannot well withhold. . . . And you entitle yourselves, without disrespect to them, to meet together for dispatch of business for an indefinite time to their exclusion.  (Webster 1920)

Mark Jarret (2013) has sourced it in the British model of deferential parliamentary politics writ large. It became solidified as a legal responsibility in association with the League of Nations. The League Covenant established a Council made up of the “Principle Allied and Associated Powers” and gave it defined responsibilities for disarmament, maintenance of the peace, and adjudication of disputes. Manning placed much more weight on Great Power responsibility to defend and uphold the compact of international society, represented particularly by Article 11, than on deficiencies in the Covenant (Long  2012, 87–89). The structural case was first put forward by Carr in the chapter on “Peaceful Change” in The Twenty Year’s Crisis. An exegesis on the role of power in relationship to change, he argued that the rising or aspirant power had to be ready to use or threaten force in the interests of a desirable change. Peaceful change was possible if revisionist states had the ability to put pressure on the status quo powers and the latter were not only pushed to make adequate concessions but recognized the necessity of doing so (Carr 1939, 221–222). He blamed the interwar crisis mainly on the satisfied powers who had mistakenly equated peace with the maintenance of the status quo. But the question was also beyond history: unfairness was inevitable in a political system built on the accidents of territorial sovereignty. The present conflict between the haves and have-­nots was not a matter of particular circumstances but rather a structural inevitability in an international order of unequal states. This led him to argue that peaceful change required a permanent negotiating table, at which the rising powers presented the status quo powers with some fait accompli (such as, for example, “islands” in the South China Sea), and the satisfied powers came willing to make concessions (Carr 1939, 270–272). The theorist who pinned down the foundational conception is, again, Hedley Bull in the famous chapter 9 of The Anarchical Society. There he identified great powered-­ness, and an associated responsibility, as foundation institutions of international society.

198   Cornelia Navari Together the two were a central means of maintaining order. In Bull’s analysis, great powered-­ness had a role function in the international order: powers “play a part in determining issues that affect the peace and security of the international system as a whole” and are given a right to do so. To that right, Bull added a consequent duty: “to modify their policies in the light of the managerial responsibilities they bear” (Bull 1977, 202). As to their material ranking, Great Powers are in the “first rank of military strength,” which he defined as “comparable in military strength”; that is, they are to be compared to one another and not merely ranked in a general list. But comparable military power is not sufficient to being a Great Power. Powers that are not regarded by others or by their leaders as contributing to peace and security (Bull’s example was Nazi Germany) are not, properly speaking, Great Powers. In order to be what Ian Clark has denoted as “hegemons,” they had to demonstrate leadership, and a leadership that contributed to a common good (Clark 2007, 101–102). Clark’s Hegemony argued that international society, while being shaped by Great Powers, is also the condition of their very existence—as with the other “master” institutions, so that “the absence of a great power directorate entails the demise of international society altogether” (Clark 2011, 7). In other words, international society requires a leadership function—a directorate, which he termed “hegemony” and which he distinguished from the realist concept of “primacy.” It was the Great Powers that performed this function. There is a small literature on the science of GPM. Richard Little has demonstrated how, in the absence of the institutionalization of GPM, no stable balance of power can emerge or persist (Little 2006). Cui and Buzan (2016) observe that GPM is implicit in all of the big war-­settling congresses from 1648 onward. They suggest that the material factor by itself has “neither determined GPM in the past, nor defines its potential in the future,” that GPM can work “within any distribution of power,” and that ideological “multi-­polarity” is not a necessary obstacle to Great Powers working together. Most importantly, they have suggested that the widening of the security agenda to include human rights and ecology among a host of other issues has widened the scope of GPM and increased its legitimacy (see also Astrov 2013). It is noteworthy that the first set of meetings between America and China in respect of “concerting” was in July 2009 in response to the economic crisis, where they agreed to maintain the liberal trading order, to find ways to cooperate to stem global warming, and to address issues such as the proliferation of nuclear weapons and humanitarian crises. At the same time, history has shown that the Great Powers have often been responsible for the absence of peaceful change. Bull coined the term the “Great Irresponsibles,” citing the behavior of the United States and the Soviet Union in the late 1970s when competitive balancing began to destabilize world order (Bull 1980). The proposition that peaceful change is in the gift of wayward Great Powers has rendered the theory a journalistic truism and feeds the machine in the basement of social science theorizing, where conspiracy theories spew forth. It tells liberal institutionalists that they are looking at the wrong place to source peaceful change and negates their argument that enhancing organizational resources is the key to peace. In that part of the academy which still hankers after social engineering, the theory is positively

Peaceful Change in English School Theory   199 ­ oisonous, in that it consigns progressive developments to highly contingent historical p processes and brings into question the whole enterprise of ‘designing peace.’ For feminists, it is paternalism writ large; and in the salons of postcolonial studies, it is the past in the present. From the internal perspective of the theory itself, one could be forgiven for taking a more positive view, and even a mildly progressivist one. It is a historicist theory, after all, and what history tells us is that Great Powers learn. First, they have learned not to allow disagreement on one issue to interfere with the ability to work together on others. Second, as T. V. Paul (2018) has so elegantly argued, leading powers have engaged in “soft balancing,” which seeks to restrain threatening powers through the use of international institutions, informal alignments, and economic sanctions. These are learned techniques and they have been learned largely through the institutionalization of GPM in the Security Council. Knudsen and Navari (2019) have argued, fairly persuasively, that International Organizations are both the deposits of fundamental institutions and the locus of change within them. In respect of GPM, the Security Council has become a prime source of learning, as Tonny Brems Knudsen has demonstrated (Knudsen 2019; see also Suzuki 2009 and Kopra 2018).

Regional Rules of the Game The notion that regional international societies can be peacemakers is not unique to the English School. Karl Deutsch first proposed the idea in relation to the Atlantic community, where “there is real assurance that the members of that community will not fight each other physically but will settle their disputes in some other way” (Deutsch 1957, 5). What is unique to the English School is the idea that any region can be a form of international society with its own distinctive rules and adjudicative procedures, and that accordingly, any region is potentially able to become a “security community.” The ontological grounding was provided by Barry Buzan (1991, 186), who posited that, because of the increasing autonomy of regional relations that followed the end of the Cold War, regional systems could be themselves objects of analysis. The historical point has been supported by Fawcett and Hurrell (1995). Buzan initially defined a region as “a distinct and significant sub-­system of security relations that exists among a set of states whose fate is that they have been locked into geographical proximity with each other” (Buzan 1983, 105; Buzan 1991, 190; Buzan and Wæver 2003, 47). His regional security complex theory (RSCT) (Buzan and Wæver 2003) went further and identified world regions in a classification based on the degree of enmity and amity among sets of states. The theory was applied to South Asia and the Middle East (Buzan 1983), and then elaborated and applied in depth to the case of Southeast Asia (Buzan and Rizvi 1986) and Africa (Ayoob 1995, 1999). In 2004, he widened the concept of a region to include distinct sets of norms and practices, arguing that regions constituted differentiated “mini” international societies that “receive” the norms and practices of the global international

200   Cornelia Navari society but in different ways, adjusted to their own histories, identities, and interests (Buzan 2004). That some of these regions or security complexes might, additionally, be suitable frameworks for peaceful change was argued by Buzan and his then colleague at Copenhagen, Ole Wæver, in their 2003 volume (Buzan and Wæver 2003, 144–171). They distinguished between three forms of security complex: a system of “conflict formation,” where war possibilities are clearly in evidence; a security “regime”; and a security “community.” A security regime simply secures the status quo and is directed against a common enemy, whereas a security community obviates the use of force in the resolution of disputes among the members of the group. They related their classification system to Wendt’s (1999) socially constructed Hobbesian, Lockean, and Kantian “cultures of anarchy” theory, which focuses upon the manner in which system members view each other: as enemy, rival, or friend. Regional complexes are classed in terms of enmity, rivalry, or friendship essentially by the degree to which member states anticipate violent conflicts and the extent to which mutually agreed-­upon rules of conduct restrain the use of violence when disputes arise between members. In terms of such criteria, Western Europe could have been a security regime as early as 1949, but not yet a security community because of the nationalistic and border dispute in the Alto Adige between Italy and Germany. It could only become a security community with the full incorporation of West Germany into NATO in 1954 and the eventual signing of the Rome Treaty initiating the European community. By 2001, Southeast Asia had moved from “conflict formation” to security regime, but it was not properly yet a security community, given the still possible use of force between Singapore and Malaysia (and hence not yet in a position where peaceful change was the norm). Barnett and Adler’s Security Communities suggested that Mercosur in Latin America might also qualify. Outlining the requirements for a security community, Buzan and Wæver had ­stipulated “a strong shared view of the status quo, allied to a shared culture and/or well-­developed institutions” (2003, 173). They opined that democracy might not be a necessary condition for a security community to form but, “as suggested by the democracy and peace literature (and by the empirical cases to date), it is a huge asset” (Buzan and Weaver 2003, 173). Andrew Hurrell provided a more theoretical elaboration in his contribution to the Barnett and Adler volume on the subject (Barnett and Adler 1998; Hurrell 1998). Like Buzan and Wæver, he drew from constructivism’s “historically located interests and identities,” but he also referenced the English School’s insights on the requisites of Order, putting forward three requisites: ideological coherence, a common Other (which he called the “normative logic”), and domestic institutional constraints (which he called the “institutional logic”). Drawing on the society of states idea, he identified Buzan and Wæver’s security community as a “regional society of states which . . . conceived of themselves to be bound by a common set of rules and shared in the workings of common institutions,” directly quoting Bull on the nature of a society of states (Hurrell 1998, 229). Hurrell also went further than Buzan and Wæver to suggest causes and processes by which an antagonist relationship in a particular region might become the basis for a

Peaceful Change in English School Theory   201 “security community,” referencing the meaning Karl Deutsch first proposed in relation to the Atlantic community, where “there is real assurance that the members of that community will not fight each other physically but will settle their disputes in some other way” (Deutsch 1957, 5; Hurrell 1998, 229). The exemplar relationship was that between Brazil and Argentina, and the developing security community was the Mercosur, established in 1991 among Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay. The relevant processes were “norm externalization” (in the case of Brazil and Argentina led by the national leader) and the development of permanent international institutions with some adjudicative functions that were integrated into domestic institutions. The causal mechanisms he identified were a changing political economy, which favored “peace,” and a political leadership. “Externalization” is the psychological process by which an individual “projects” one’s own internal characteristics onto the outside world. In relation to the development of a security community, it refers to the process by which domestic norms become internationalized among a relevant group of states. The process has been considered central in the construction of the “democratic peace” and the end of the Cold War (Maoz and Russett 1993; Risse-­Kappen 1994). The carapace of Hurrell’s “normative and institutional structures within which state interests are constructed and redefined” (1998, 230) is a two-­level structure in the manner modelled by Knudsen and Navari (2019). It consists of fundamental institutions at one level, conceived as the basic norms and practices which have evolved in a particular region, or security community in the making (“economic development” in the case of Mercosur), and common organizations at a second level (the Integration and Cooperation Program and the Joint Declaration on a Common Nuclear Policy in the case of Mercosur). They are linked and sustained by the continuous interaction of leaders, diplomats, business organizations, and domestic interest groups who take their identities from them but who also introduce changes into them. They provide the locus for “identity shifts,” as agents undergo “learning” and experience “ideational forces” (Hurrell 1998, 230).

Conclusion Zhang recently has identified three “hierarchical institutional constructs” that currently cohabit in global international society. They are the legalized hegemony embodied in the United Nations Charter; the changing normative order of an emerging “solidarist and anti-­pluralist formation,” with its “deliberate creation of unequal sovereigns” (in the form of just and unjust states); and the liberal global governance order, which calls for leadership and responsible management on the part of Great Powers. He argues that China has achieved peaceful change and sustained a “resilient status quo” via three differentiated strategic approaches: namely, defending pluralism in the legalized hegemony of the UN order; contesting liberal cosmopolitan solidarism in the changing normative order; and promoting state-­centric solidarism among Great

202   Cornelia Navari Powers in constructing global governance (Zhang  2016). China’s road to peaceful change and its claim to be a responsible Great Power rests on the legal status of the Great Powers in the UN order and an accepted social order of GPM of the institutions of global governance. Barnett and Adler, from the constructivist stable, consider the emergence of regional security communities along three “tiers” of development. The first tier consists of precipitating factors that encourage states to orient themselves in each other’s direction and coordinate their policies. The second tier consists of the “structural” elements of power and ideas, and the “process” elements of transactions, international organizations, and social learning. The reciprocal relationship between these variables leads to a third, and for constructivism, the critical tier: the development of trust and collective identity formation (Barnett and Adler 1998). For the English School, it is not so much trust, much less the dubious category of a “collective identity” in the age of nationalism, that is the critical factor. It is structures and processes: foundation institutions and regional organizations at the structural level, and leadership and the redefinition of interests at the level of processes.

Notes 1. Formed in 1928, in association with the League of Nations, the International Studies Association was a group of historians, political scientists, and international lawyers with interests in international affairs (see Buzan 2019). It held annual conferences on those subjects considered by ‘public opinion’ to be the critical problems of the day. It had chosen the topic of peaceful change in 1936 for its next study. 2. The topic, entitled “The Peaceful Solution of Certain International Problems; Peaceful Change,” was divided into a number of different headings, of which the symposium, organized by Manning, was to begin the consideration of Part 1: Difficulties of the Problem and Solutions Suggested. Part II, The Procedures Applicable to the Peaceful Settlement of These Difficulties, never appeared. The rapporteur for the conference summarized the different approaches (see later discussion). 3. On prestige as a source of revisionism, see Kristensen (n.d.), 24, 27.

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chapter 11

Cr itica l Theor ies a n d Ch a nge i n I n ter nationa l R el ations Annette Freyberg-­I nan

The International Relations (IR) theory family we label “critical theories” is by d ­ efinition critical of the status quo. These theories all therefore consider change desirable. They further have in common that the sort of change they seek is fundamental; their aim is to reshape the underlying structures and processes of international politics, not merely their surface or outcomes. The most important contribution critical theories make to the analysis of international politics is to draw attention in various ways to the stubborn obstacles that exist to such desirable structural change. Often (loosely) following Marxist tradition, they draw attention to the distribution of socioeconomic power as a strong predictive force. The strong, in essence, get what they want, and the weak suffer. In this diagnosis, they align with Realists. However, they add two crucial observations that earn them the label “critical.” The first is the recognition of the fact that politics never begins from a level playing field. Power inequalities are always already stacking the game, so it is naïve to expect interest to prevail—as Liberals hope—unless it is the interest of the powerful. Unlike Realists, critical theorists tend to explicitly expose this unlevel playing field as normatively undesirable and ask for removal of entrenched inequalities. Second, critical theories recognize that, and explain how, material power works in tandem with ideational power. Ideas are not neutral. Instead, the way we think and in which we communicate our thoughts works through in the real world and becomes ammunition in struggles of power. While all theory may not be ideology, all can be used in the service of ideology, and IR theories themselves are no exception. Dominant IR theories reify and privilege existing orders. The implications of such a position for the possibility of peaceful change are twofold and potentially contradictory. On the one hand, the vision of change supported by

206   Annette Freyberg-Inan c­ ritical theories is drastic and requires disempowering the powerful, and the normative commitment of critical theorists to such change is strong. Evidently this can support a readiness to employ violence, and it is then also not uncommon for work written from such a theoretical perspective to be sympathetic to violent resistance or rebellion, such as in the context of indigenous uprisings, democratic revolutions, or wars of liberation. On the other hand, the attention paid by critical theories to the crucial role of ideational dimensions of power, or superstructures, also offers a possible pathway to peaceful change. If there is a possibility to rob the status quo of its mantle of common sense, if the emperor, in this sense, can be revealed to have no clothes, then power can find itself reduced to its material dimension. In this form, it is substantially weakened, more difficult to sustain over space and time. (Relatively) peaceful fundamental change might, then, not be impossible. In either case, an activist attitude is part of this theoretical position. This chapter begins by clarifying what critical theories in IR are and then explains why and how they problematize the notion of “peaceful change.” The changes desired by critical theories are fundamental and urgent, which imbues them with a level of radicalism that can justify violent means. At the same time, critical theories spotlight dimensions of power beyond the material on which material power vitally depends. This reveals possibilities for transformation by peaceful means.

What Are “Critical IR Theories”? Critical T/theory has both a narrow and a broader meaning. Both signal a normative task for scholarship, to be accomplished by uniting philosophy and science in social research (Bohman 2019). In its narrow sense, Critical Theory (capitalized) is synonymous with the Frankfurt School, which famously distinguished “critical” from “traditional” theory based on the theory’s purpose: critical theory serves the practical purpose of liberating human beings from various kinds of “enslavement” (Horkheimer  1972, 1993), while traditional theory essentially serves to naturalize the status quo. Critical is pitched against traditional theory through “immanent critique,” a methodology of identifying contradictions in reigning bodies of thought and practice that suggests openings for emancipatory social change. In its broader sense, critical theory (lowercased) denotes the many social theories that have since been formulated with the purpose of emancipating disadvantaged groups. They focus their diagnoses on a broad range of different dimensions of domination and oppression but are united by the normative aim of social empowerment and their critical take on the function of mainstream social theory. They include, among others, feminism, postcolonialism, and critical race theory. The discipline of IR knows its own set of critical theories, which are focused on interor transnational aspects of domination and oppression as well as on the role mainstream theories have played in supporting them (Ashley 1987). In a famous contribution in 1981, Robert Cox imported Horkheimer into IR by distinguishing critical from so-­called

Critical Theories and Change in International Relations   207 problem-­solving theory. The latter “takes the world as it finds it, with the prevailing social and power relationships and the institutions into which they are organised, as the given framework for action. The general aim of problem-­solving is to make these relationships and institutions work smoothly by dealing effectively with particular sources of trouble” (Cox 1981, 128–129). Critical theory, by contrast, “does not take institutions and social and power relations for granted but calls them into question by concerning itself with their origins and how and whether they might be in the process of changing” (Cox 1981, 129). Critical IR theories extend across the epistemological spectrum (i.e., can be more or less “positivist”) and include Marxist and neo-­Marxist approaches, neo-­Gramscian and other “critical” international political economy, postcolonialism, critical geopolitics, “critical” constructivist approaches (including a part of the English School), much of feminism, some of historical and international political sociology, and the so-­called new materialism (see, e.g., Hobden and Hobson 2002). This chapter explains what unites these diverse theories, as well as how they differ from the ‘mainstream’ approaches of realism and liberalism when it comes to their view of change in world affairs.1

Violence as Ubiquitous, Commitment to Peace as a Handicap Critical theories are critical of the status quo. They are also, to various degrees, radical. It is worthwhile to remind ourselves of the literal meaning of that term. The Latin noun radix means “root.” Radicalism denotes a commitment to get to the roots of a problem and to “root out” its causes to transform society, in the manner in which a gardener has to get to the roots of an intruder plant to successfully landscape her garden. Entailed here is a readiness to “uproot” society, to cause some turmoil. Order becomes something not to be preserved but to be challenged. This may entail violence. This Handbook is concerned with “peaceful change,” and the first thing a critical theorist must do with this notion is to question the bias it contains, as framed by the mainstream theories of IR. Realism prioritizes stability and is therefore wary of change; it is furthermore skeptical of the possibility of both fundamental transformation and achieving much of anything new by peaceful means. Liberalism prizes progress but insists that it should be peaceful and led by liberal states. The first attitude supports the status quo (Ashley 1984), the second incremental reformism. With both, critical theories have a fundamental problem. Not only do we need more fundamental change than that envisioned by Liberals, we also need to see the limitations of insisting on an abdication of violent means to reach our political aims. Here, a fundamentally realist insight is married to radical normative commitment: If we ask, as we do, for an end to domination and oppression, we are asking for a redistribution of power, and this the powerful are unlikely to simply let happen. We may need force.

208   Annette Freyberg-Inan This may sound shocking but isn’t if we realize that as long as power relations are unequal, violence is always already there anyway. Eschewing violent means to reach one’s goals thus means that this violence keeps working in favor of the powerful. One body of literature in which this idea has received expression is critical peace studies. Another is world systems analysis. Both are presented briefly here to illustrate how critical theories see world politics as prestructured by unequal and violent power relations, which require a radical departure from the status quo to make true on their normative commitments. Critical peace studies emerged in the 1970s as a result of dissatisfaction with existing instruments and definitions of traditional peace research, most prominently the definition of peace as the absence of war. Johan Galtung, the most prominent critical peace theorist, defined the absence of war as “negative peace”—and not all we should want. From his perspective, “positive peace” is what we should strive for, and it can only be achieved in the absence of structural, as opposed to merely direct, violence. Structural violence exists where social structures avoidably harm groups of human beings by preventing them from meeting their basic needs (Galtung 1990). It derives from exploitative and unjust social, political, and economic institutions, so it is closely related to inequality and to economic and social injustice. It can function in an indirect manner, because it is built into social structures and emerges as unequal power relations and unequal life chances (Galtung 1969). Via violations of the basic human needs of individuals and communities, it results in deficits in human growth and development, precarious living conditions, and even premature death (Christie 1997). The resulting human suffering and deterioration of communities feed further violence, in both its physical and structural manifestations. Breaking such a cyclical relationship demands addressing both direct and structural forms of violence, in a manner that provides human security (Schnabel 2008). The by now well-­worn concept of human security rose to prominence within a broader “critical turn” in IR at a time when post–Cold War complacency gave way to an increasing concern with the root causes of misery, instability, and violence around the world. It has helped draw attention to the fact that the range of political concerns with security implications is considerably broader than allowed for by a focus on military or state security. By prioritizing the human being as its unit of analysis, this approach revealed that the state could often be the biggest violator of security, instead of its guarantor. This reconceptualization shaped the policies of bodies such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP 1994) as well as national governments, for example in Canada (Moher 2012). The idea gained traction that ignoring the structural causes of violence leads to failure of efforts at establishing peace; according to critical peace studies, we should act upon that insight by seeing human security concerns as key causes of conflict and addressing human security concerns as key to conflict resolution. Yet critical peace studies remain relatively marginal. The agenda of peace research is still widely dominated by traditional and narrow conceptions of security threats relating to collective rivalries and fought out with military means—of state security (Diehl 2016). This is due to the dominance of mainstream IR theories, in particular realism, which support national security establishments in neglecting intrastate development in favor

Critical Theories and Change in International Relations   209 of interstate rivalry. We know that human rights violations, environmental degradation, economic deprivation, and social inequality all foster conflicts, but little research has been systematically based on these insights (or set out to question them). On the other hand, scholarship that focuses on human security concerns generally fails to connect these insights to national security problematics and rarely studies the relationship of such concerns to the evolution of conflicts or their possible resolution. We know that distributional grievances often lie at the heart of political conflict, inasmuch as politics is, by Lasswell’s well-­worn definition, about “who gets what, when, and how” (1936). And these grievances can align with national, ethnic, racial, gendered, or other identity-­ based cleavages, in which case conflict escalation becomes especially likely and resolution more complicated. Conflict arises over the distribution of material resources such as income, land, and water, but also over less immediately tangible benefits, such as opportunities for professional success, freedom of movement, or access to positions of power. Galtung’s concept of structural violence (1969) captures both material and immaterial distributional grievances and in this manner can usefully be linked to the concept of human security in the service of a fundamental transformation toward a meaningfully more peaceful world. Addressing structural violence and creating human security and positive peace evidently require a radical transformation of world politics as we know it. The desire for this transformation is driven by a normative agenda centered on social justice and a cosmopolitan humanism. We also see how enabling such a transformation requires scholars to reconceptualize their empirical referents, most importantly by redefining the core IR notion of security. All of this makes this school of thought a “critical” IR theory. For another example, consider world systems analysis. World systems analysis, associated with the work of Immanuel Wallerstein (1979, 2002a, 2002b), Giovanni Arrighi (2005, 2007), and Christopher Chase-Dunn (2014; see also Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997), among others, is a systems approach toward describing and explaining world history: it focuses not on nation-­states or other components of the system as its units of analysis, but rather on the system as a whole. Strongly inspired by Marxism and building on dependency theory (Gunder Frank 1967), which had emerged in opposition to the modernization school of development ­economics, it identifies an exploitative interregional and transnational division of labor in which wealth is constantly transferred from so-­called periphery and semiperiphery countries toward a core. The core is specialized on higher skill, capital-­intensive production, for which it exploits the low-­skill cheap labor and raw materials extracted from the rest of the world through unequal terms of trade. This system is characterized by structural inequality, but it is not static. Hegemonic powers have risen and fallen, leading to a succession of different world systems, while global capitalism has spread to the far corners of the earth and intensified through progressive commodification (Gill 1995). Most recently, the United States seems to be losing its previous hegemonic status, while China is emerging as its main competitor. World systems analysis has been widely applied to explain not only different trajectories of economic development, but also social unrest, political upheaval, conflict, and

210   Annette Freyberg-Inan war (see, e.g., Freyberg-­Inan 2005, 2013 on the Kosovo and Iraq wars, respectively). The inequality and ongoing exploitation that are structural to capitalist world systems are identified as root causes of manifold undesirable outcomes in world politics. World systems analysis emphasizes that in order to understand these structures and processes properly, they need to be studied over long stretches of time (in the longue durée),2 as well as in an interdisciplinary manner. What makes world systems analysis “critical” is not least its contradiction of disciplinary orthodoxies that separate economics, politics, history, sociology, and philosophy—and thereby perplex immanent critique of the legacy of liberalism, on which our world economy is based. This legacy of liberalism also links contemporary global capitalism to colonialism, which is thereby revealed as not ‘a thing of the past,’ for which Western liberal states bear no current responsibility, but rather a structural and very much still operational component of today’s political economy. As long as capitalism endures, colonial history is not over. Here, world systems analysis can link up with postcolonial approaches in IR (see, e.g., Krishna 2009; Chowdhry and Nair 2004). Both recognize that capitalism has been global ever since its emergence in (roughly) the sixteenth century. Within this system, inequality between rich and poor, between a “North” and a “South,” cannot be removed, because the system relies for its very survival upon this inequality and the dynamic of accumulation it enables. Today, we can see this inequality as further exacerbated by the fallout from anthropogenic climate change and increasing labor precarity, leading to a variety of reactions, from protectionist retrenchment to trade wars. The manner in which we should instead address this problem, according to the late Wallerstein, is through transnational class struggle—“where ‘class’ stands for an integrated fight against capitalism, racism, paternalism and neo-­colonialism” (Ypi 2019). The postcolonial school of thought in IR shares in much of this critique yet also deeply problematizes the notion of transnational class struggle. As a broader school of thought, postcolonialism emerged after the Second World War as a critique of colonial practices and their harmful legacies, with a focus on their sociocultural and psychological dimensions. In The Wretched of the Earth, psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon (1961) decried the harmful mental effects of colonialism on subjugated peoples, calling for violent rebellion in response (see also Nandy 1983). In Orientalism, Edward Said (1979) explained how Western Europe had divided the world into an “Occident” and an “Orient,” establishing a binary relation of mutual social construction with pernicious effects on both sides. In “Can the Subaltern Speak?,” Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1988) problematized the utter disempowerment resulting from the social construction of the colonized and popularized the use of the Gramscian term “subaltern” to designate colonial populations as discursively and materially excluded by the operation of hegemony (see also Ashley and Walker 1990). These and other key thinkers and texts have shaped postcolonial IR theory. Today, contributions to this body of thought continue to provide important new readings of colonial history (Getachew 2019), to draw attention to the persistence of colonial forms of power and racism in world politics (and in IR), and to challenge the Eurocentrism of IR and its insistence on the universal utility of Western Enlightenment thinking

Critical Theories and Change in International Relations   211 (Grovogui 2006). They are critical IR theories in that they draw attention to obstinate relations of structural inequality, with a focus on the inequalities created and maintained by colonialism and racism; in that they demand justice, in the form of recognition, repair, and redress; and in that they are actively engaged in a struggle to decolonize both world politics and the discipline of IR. Clearly this is calling for fundamental change. And the change envisioned seems compatible with that called for by the schools of thought discussed here. However, while the human security and positive peace agenda is driven by Enlightenment values and led by liberal institutions, and world systems analysis is based on a class analysis and looks to class struggle for change, postcolonial IR functions as an important reminder that more than half the world has had no chance to help make the agenda, that there are deep divisions within the global proletariat, and that we cannot fix global inequality without stopping to realize and recognize just how it has felt to those at the bottom. Wallerstein equivocated between a cyclical and an episodic vision of change (Wesley 2015). That perhaps explains why, shortly before his death in August 2019, he wrote that we have a “50-­50 chance that we’ll make it to transformatory change, but only 50-­50” (quoted in Ypi 2019). This is of course rather unsatisfactory and raises the question of what the success of non-­cyclical transformation depends on. So far, we have seen that radical commitment to fundamental change is required, as is a problematization of realist and liberal preoccupations with stability and the avoidance of violence, respectively. The next section of this chapter further develops critical theories’ take on the possibilities for peaceful fundamental change.

The Need for Fundamental Change, and Where It Might Come From As T. V. Paul points out in the introduction to this Handbook, “the contending IR perspectives offer differing viewpoints on patterns of change and persistence of international politics as their key markers of differentiation” (this volume, 1). In a nutshell, critical theorists demand fundamental change: unlike Realists, they believe that such change is possible; unlike Liberals, they see that it requires immanent critique of the (neo)liberal order in which we live, as well as radical changes to it. Critical theorists are skeptical of teleological visions of change (Wesley  2015), because the dominant ra­tion­al­ity structuring world affairs today is not emancipatory but governmental in nature (Foucault 2008). Instead, they tend to waver between the pessimism of cyclical views on progress and hopes for episodic change.3 There is no coherent vision uniting critical theories on how change can or will come about. However, it is clear that critical theories work not with a minimalist but with a maximalist vision of peaceful change. This has three linked reasons: the previously introduced problematization of the notion of “peaceful change” as bearing a status quo bias; an (often implicit) normative aversion

212   Annette Freyberg-Inan to violence; and the recognition of the relevance of ideational aspects of power, which provides some (sparse) hope of dislodging domination and oppression by nonviolent means. I address each aspect in turn. First, given the depth of critique entailed in the diagnoses of world affairs offered by critical theories, it is difficult to see how their plans for progress could embrace a minimalist definition of “peaceful change” as taking place “without violence or coercive use of force” (see introduction, 4). In other words, it is difficult to see how a fundamental change to power relations such as that demanded by critical theories could take place without violence. Indeed, as laid out earlier, it may well be overly self-­limiting to commit to peaceful means, given that the power structures to be replaced are built on violence and keep employing violence to defend themselves. How can we ever get anywhere if we do not do the same? Emphasizing that change must be peaceful benefits those who benefit from the status quo.4 That is why critical theorists typically do not go out of their way to demand that the change they desire must come about peacefully. That being said, and second, few critical theorists call for armed revolution, either. This is perhaps not only because doing so might cost them their jobs. Calling for social violence is normatively difficult to reconcile with the cosmopolitan humanism at the heart of critical theories’ emancipatory vision. Violence harms people, after all. Even if the goal is highly noble, making human lives the means to achieve such a goal is incompatible with the Enlightenment-­inspired morality that critical theorists ultimately share with Liberals (and with IR as a discipline more generally). Now we end up in a most uncomfortable position, realizing that peaceful fundamental change is probably impossible, but we don’t want to (ask others to) fight for it, either. When speaking about “class struggle” today, for example, the vision of a global army of peasants and workers armed with pitchforks storming stock exchanges and hedge fund headquarters is less inspiring than cynically humorous. We suspect that even if we could get such an attack off the ground, it would not get us very far. To be sure, we need force, because there will be significant resistance. But what sort of force, and how should it be applied? Is there another way to destabilize, perhaps dislodge, existing power structures? Here we must, third, turn to Antonio Gramsci, whose legacy, together with that of the Frankfurt School, forms the intellectual backbone of the critical theoretical tradition. Gramsci (1971) conceptualized hegemony as a form of domination that relies on a combination of force and consent and that integrates the state and civil society by being embodied in myriad political, cultural, and social practices. In this manner socioeconomic elites can rely on subordinated classes internalizing their values and interests as the “general interest.” The status quo becomes common sense, and dominant groups can frame their rule as legitimate, even inevitable. They obtain consent, which is vital to support their rule, as it would be impossible to uphold by sheer force alone. There have been several important research paths branching out from Gramsci’s original ideas. One, inspired by constructivist and post-­structuralist approaches, has placed especially strong emphasis on the relevance of discursive power. Here we find, for ­example, securitization theory, which focuses on how policy issues are discursively

Critical Theories and Change in International Relations   213 c­ onstructed as collective security concerns and thence become legitimized as targets for governmental control (e.g., Buzan et al. 1998). Another path, influenced more heavily by structuralism, has tended to emphasize the relevance of powerful states’ vying for military and economic dominance. An example is world systems analysis (see, e.g., Wallerstein 2002b, 357; Arrighi 2005). Both are important lines of inquiry, yet both tend to fail to cash in on what was arguably Gramsci’s key point: hegemony merges the material and ideational components of power, makes them inseparable, and reveals their intrinsic interdependence. As I have argued elsewhere (Scholl and Freyberg-­Inan 2013, 2018; see also Cox with Sinclair 1996, 151; Klein 2007), to understand possibilities for change in world affairs, it is useful to return to a more dogmatically Gramscian understanding of hegemony as linking state and civil society and as inherently comprising both material and ideational aspects of power. Gramsci’s work turned our attention to the complex of institutions that connect state and society and to the way in which consent is organized through organizations of civil society, including schools, churches, and unions, to name but a few. For Gramsci, civil society was the terrain upon which power relations came to be established, and thus it was also within civil society that opposition would need to be constructed. Given the combination of the evident structural and material power of capital and the expanding ideological hold and institutionalization of neoliberalism as a set of ideas and a discourse, neo-­Gramscian scholarship perceives the contemporary international political economy as characterized by neoliberal hegemony, or a neoliberal historic bloc (Cox 1986; Rupert 2003; Harvey 2007; Chomsky 1999).5 Following Gramsci, we can see this hegemony as produced not by powerful states so much as by a combination of nationally based as well as inter- and transnational, public and private actors—a diverse and transnational capitalist elite. By the same token, the construction of counterhegemony, working for change within the present hegemonic system, also does not depend on a single privileged agent, like a rival state or alliance, but rather has to emerge broadly across civil society. Gramsci argued that counterhegemonic forces should call into question the forms of power (both ideational and material) that perpetuate marginalization by “slowly build[ing] up the strength of the social foundations of a new state” through “creating alternative institutions and alternative intellectual resources within existing society” (Cox with Sinclair  1996, 128–129), in a process he described as “war of position” (Gramsci 1971, 229–239, 242–243).6 This requires a cultural shift, because culture shapes people’s “ability to imagine how [the world] might be changed, and whether they see such changes as feasible or desirable” (Crehan 2002, 71). What is needed are broad alliances in civil society that actively support real alternatives to the status quo. As a Marxist, Gramsci believed that leadership of this counterhegemonic struggle lay with the proletariat, but his vision called for alliances to be built that brought in all of the “subordinate classes.” An important role is also given to “organic intellectuals”: intellectual leaders who actively identify with the political struggle, as opposed to maintaining a position of scientific detachment (Birchfield and Freyberg-­Inan 2005). Counterhegemony,

214   Annette Freyberg-Inan in short, depends on a multiplicity of actors (Laclau and Mouffe  1984; Hardt and Negri 2004). For many, the emergence of the counterglobalization movements in the late 1990s and 2000s raised the hope that such a critical multiplicity was taking shape. Stephen Gill (2000, 140, 131), for example, in a famous essay on the Seattle WTO protests of 1999, suggested that the social movement protests of the time “may prove to be the most effective political form for giving coherence to an open-­ended, plural, inclusive, and flexible form of politics and thus create alternatives to neoliberal globalization” and a “global and universal politics of radical reconstruction.” Note the contrast to liberal IR theory. The introduction to this volume emphasizes the role of institutions as agents of peaceful change. That is a quintessentially liberal institutionalist vision. Critical theories object that before institutions can carry out an emancipatory mission, the superstructural basis on which they function has to come to reflect such a vision. Without fundamental cultural change, institutions will continue to work for the status quo by embedding and enacting preexisting power relations, aiding their legitimation, and stabilizing the current order (Freyberg-­Inan 2019). It is true that institutions can ‘embed’ realism in the sense of guiding states into trajectories of change. But this is unlikely to produce radical transformation. What we need is fundamental debate about the values our institutions should reflect and promote and about our institutions themselves. This debate has to come from civil society. To stimulate it, social movements play a crucial role. A vitally important insight of critical theories is that the battle for greater social justice, in economic but also broader social terms, is most fundamentally a struggle for hearts and minds. This does not mean that physical action is not required. But any such action must be sustained and guided by a societally based vision for change, without which force will be exerted in vain. To be transformative at the level of world politics, such a vision for change needs to be broadly shared across the globe and made actionable through innovative institutions and practices. This then makes clear why critical theories can do nothing with a minimalist definition of peaceful change or with the institutionalist compromise definition offered in this Handbook’s introduction. Instead, a critical theoretical definition of peaceful change has to be maximalist: “transformational change” has to take place “at the global, regional, interstate, and societal levels due to various material, normative and institutional factors, leading to deep peace among states, higher levels of prosperity and justice for all irrespective of nationality, race or gender” (Paul in this volume, 4). This is the form in which peaceful change comes closest to the ideals of critical theory. This also means that it has to be both foundational and procedural at the same time, obliterating the distinction made by Holsti (2004, 26–27), as discussed in the introduction to this volume. It could go without saying at this point that the change critical theories ask for is “system change,” in the terminology coined by Gilpin (1981, 39–40). As opposed to “systemic” change, which takes place within a system and entails “changes in the international distribution of power, the hierarchy of prestige, and[/or] the rules and rights embodied in the system” (1981, 41), system change “involves a change in the fundamental actors of the international system” and therefore constitutes a change of the

Critical Theories and Change in International Relations   215 system (introduction to this volume). To hark back to our earlier example of critical peace studies, a turn to human security, for example, is a reconceptualization of human beings rather than states as the fundamental actors for our theories of security.7

Conclusion The preceding discussion allows us to succinctly answer the questions raised in this book’s introduction. The assumptions critical theories hold about international politics and the role of peaceful change within them are that fundamental change is necessary and that peaceful fundamental change is desirable while difficult to accomplish. As Sorensen (2019: 57) has summarized Cox with Sinclair (1996), “order is founded on a fit between a power base […,] a common collective image of order expressed in values and norms, and an appropriate set of institutions.” It thus rests on material, ideational, and institutional resources operating together. To dislodge such an order to create fundamental change, this interplay has to be recognized and addressed. Let us consider rival IR theory families by comparison. Realism is characterized by a state-­centric ontology and predominantly material and relational conceptions of power (see also Freyberg-­Inan  2019). It expects dynamism in the international system to emerge primarily from material contestation. Ideas and institutions are epiphenomenal. Deep transformation, away from power politics, is in any case not possible. The best we can do is exchange overlords. Liberals, in comparison, emphasize the relevance of institutional change. They fail to take sufficiently into account (or take no issue with) the fact that without a cultural and material power shift, institutional progress will remain incrementally reformist and reversible. Post-­structuralists focus on ideational resources with near-­exclusivity, which makes it even more difficult to see where real change could ever come from. By contrast, following critical theories, we need to see power as both material and ideational, as drawing on “collective understandings and intersubjectivities” (Rosamond 2019; see also Strange 1996), and as structurally embedded in institutions and discourses. We need to address the inherent interplay between these different dimensions of power, if we truly want to change the world. Such agency naturally has to emerge within the existing system, but it cannot be expected from the institutions that maintain the status quo. The manner in which the current order operates to benefit its elites, and in which our common sense operates to support their rule, is best visible from the margins. It is to movements within civil society that critical theories look for the impetus for change (Rupert 2003). And indeed, if we look at progress on many fronts, with respect to race, gender, sexual rights, or apartheid—the abolition of slavery, in which religious groups, notably the Quakers, played an important role; women’s emancipation; the labor movement; debt relief for the poorest countries; environmentalism; and from Fridays for Future to Black Lives Matter—so many arguable improvements upon earlier times, and so many changes we are still

216   Annette Freyberg-Inan ­ itnessing today, have been carried by critical theories and their associated social w ­movements. Progress came from the margins. That it could succeed, to the extent that it did, is in part because other positions, notably liberalism, take on some of the insights generated by critical theories and mainstream them. But for all of this progress, we need the analytical sharpness, the strong normative commitment, and the radicalism of Critical Theory. And there is a long way to go.

Notes 1. I do not contrast critical theories with constructivism here because these bodies of thought partly overlap. Constructivism is “critical” where it weds critique of the status quo and normative commitment to emancipatory social change to its social constructivist ontology. It is not, where it does not. 2. World systems analysis employs this expression, coined by the French Annales school of historical writing. 3. For a discussion of this distinction by Wesley (2015), see the introductory chapter of this book. 4. This resonates with E. H. Carr’s (1940) critique of the liberal assumption of a harmony of interests. Realists and critical theorists share this critique. 5. Gramsci defined historic blocs as the stable, institutionalized relationships between socioeconomic structures and superstructures, wherein “the complex, contradictory and discordant ensemble of the superstructures is the reflection of the ensemble of the social relations of production” (Gramsci 1971, 366). Neoliberalism can be defined with Hay (2007, 54) as entailing “a defense of labour market flexibility and the promotion and nurturing of cost competitiveness; [. . .] and, more generally, [. . .] the allocative efficiency of market and quasi-­market mechanisms in the provision of public goods.” 6. Inspired by reflections on the Western Front in the Second World War, Gramsci distinguished two strategies to oppose hegemony: “war of manoeuvre” and “war of position.” “War of manoeuvre” aims to physically overwhelm the coercive apparatus of the state. But this is unlikely to succeed where elite authority is firmly rooted in civil society, such as in today’s liberal democracies. This grants priority to “war of position,” essentially an attempt to change the dominant culture. 7. Gilpin’s third category, “interaction change,” just like systemic change, may help work toward system change but does not get us where we want yet, according to critical theories (Gilpin 1981, 41).

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chapter 12

Gen der a n d Pe acefu l Ch a nge Karin Aggestam and Annika Bergman Rosamond

Diplomacy is a historical institution that manages peaceful relations between states. Women have a long-­standing track record of political engagement and global activism in the area of war and peace. Yet world politics has historically been the domain of men, while women’s participation has been marginalized by states and the international community. It was only in the twentieth century that women were allowed to partake in diplomatic practices when the formal and informal bans on their participation were lifted. Thus, diplomacy is a field of practice that historically has been defined by homosocial values, norms, and contexts. This remains the case, with 85 percent of all ambassadors in the world being men. In peace diplomacy, 97 percent of all mediators and 92 percent of all negotiators are men (Aggestam and Towns 2018, 2019). However, changes have taken place in recent decades, resulting in a range of initiatives that have enhanced women’s presence in global politics. The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action that were adopted in 1995 ensured the emergence of gender mainstreaming and the promotion of women’s rights, defined as human rights, as key norms in global politics.1 The quest for gender equality and rights figures large in the ambitions and agendas of a range of global institutions, expressed in the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 on Women Peace and Security (WPS) in 2000. Moreover, states such as Canada, Sweden, Norway, and France have integrated UNSCR 1325 into their foreign and security policies, adopting national action plans to further its goals (Aggestam and True  2020; Aggestam, Bergman Rosamond, and Kronsell 2019; Shepherd 2016; Hudson 2017). The promotion of gender mainstreaming, coupled with the emphasis placed on UNSCR 1325, has begun to transform global governance practices, providing a gender-­just context for peaceful transformations of diplomatic and foreign policy practice. Here, it is interesting to note that nearly all United Nations (UN) bodies and agencies now formally endorse gender mainstreaming as a methodology and a toolset for gender-­just and peaceful change in global politics.

222   Karin Aggestam and Annika Bergman Rosamond This shift has been widely studied within feminist-­informed international theory and peace and conflict studies. This work centers on the quest for peaceful and gender-­just change through new institutional frameworks (Aggestam and Bergman Rosamond 2019; Davies and True 2019; Shepherd 2016; True 2016a, 2016b; Jansson and Eduards 2016). Such scholarship reflects diverse theoretical perspectives, methodological approaches, and contexts, though sharing the aim to highlight how gender-­based injustices in global politics inhibit peaceful change. Feminist scholars, working within the broad tradition of peace studies, have also challenged traditional studies of war and peace by insisting that peaceful change cannot be fully understood without problematizing the gendered logics and everydayness of conflict and peace (Wibben et al. 2019). This involves recognizing the continuum between different forms of violence (Wibben et al.  2019) and reflecting on how gender (in)equalities and power structures determine the prospects for sustainable peace. Gender then is a major fault line in global politics (Inglehart and Norris 1992). Moreover, a number of studies identify a linkage between women’s sense of security and the prevalence of gender equality, justice, and security at the national and global levels. Here, Caprioli et al. (2009, 1) have analyzed data gathered within the Women Stats project, which is “a multidisciplinary creation of a central repository for cross-­national data and information on women available for use by academics, policy makers, journalists, and all others,” to track the correlation between gender equality and a state’s peacefulness (see also Hudson 2014; Melander 2005). Feminist international relations and peace scholars have also called for an expanded notion of peaceful change that is inclusive, transformative, and expansive (Duncanson 2015) and takes account of gender justice and norms (True 2016a, 2016b). This requires emphasis being placed on the roles that women (and other marginalized groups) play in violent conflicts and peace processes and ensuring that those roles are made more visible in times of peace, war, and violence (Alison 2007). Such an approach brings nuance to understandings of peace and puts gender and relations of power at the center of the analysis of peaceful change (Confortini 2006). It should also be noted that feminist scholarship has taken issue with conventional understandings of power grounded in violence and dominance, since there needs to be more recognition that power involves acquiring the “power to” transform inequalities and challenge gendered hierarchies, without acquiring “power over” another human being in the process (see Boulding 2000; Tickner 1992). The aim of this chapter is to explore the interplay between gender and peaceful change by drawing upon feminist scholarship on peace, conflict, and war. We elaborate on the ways in which the concept of peace is inherently gendered, disabling peaceful change in war and conflict. We also address the theory-­policy divide on gender and peaceful change, in particular by exposing the tendency among the international community and states to envisage women as more peaceful, without paying much attention to women’s and men’s varied experiences in war and peacemaking. Our study is located within theoretical feminist and gender-­based reasoning but also highlights key developments within policy practice, related to gender-­just peace. This involves considering the relevance of the UNSCR 1325 and the emergence of feminist foreign policy in furthering peaceful change.

Gender and Peaceful Change   223 The chapter is structured as follows. The first part introduces feminist scholarship on the intersections between gender, war, and conflict. Next we turn to the conceptualization and interplay between gender and peaceful change, considering the so-­called women-­peace hypothesis, which assumes a proximity between women’s peacefulness and their experiences of maternal care. We argue that such constructions need to be treated with caution because transformative peace requires deconstruction of that thesis, while staying attentive to women’s contributions to peacemaking. We also consider the relevance of debates on strategic essentialism and inclusive peace as well as notions of transformative peace and the deconstruction of gender in reaching deeper and more meaningful understandings of gender-­just peaceful change. The third part focuses on policy practice, with emphasis on the adoption of UNSCR 1325 in 2000 and the reorientation of Swedish foreign policy, as an illustration of its adoption of feminism as a platform for peaceful change (Aggestam and Bergman Rosamond 2019).

Gender, War, and Conflict Feminist security studies and feminist peace research (Confortini 2004; Shepherd 2011; Wibben et al.  2019) offer a range of opportunities to investigate the intersections between gender, war, and conflict. Gender here refers to “a relation of power, and something produced and reproduced in social processes” and “patriarchal power relations, and thus gender hierarchy” (Cockburn 2007, 6). Hence, a feminist approach to the study of peaceful change seeks to identify and unsettle gendered power hierarchies and relations, to highlight their impact on gender justice. It does so by critically exploring the structural and institutional dynamics of war and conflict as well as staying “attentive to lived experience” so as to “focus on what goes on during war and on individuals, both civilian and military, and how their lives are affected by conflict” (Shepherd 2011, 437). Unpacking such individual experiences entails disrupting the gendered attributes that historically have been assigned to men and women in war, in particular the protection myth that prevails in global politics (Alison 2007). That myth assigns bodily strength and rationality to men, charging them with the protection of vulnerable women and children in war, what Jean Bethke Elshtain (1987) famously defined as “just warriors.” Women, on the other hand, have throughout history been assigned the role of peaceful “beautiful souls” reproducing the nation through child bearing (Elshtain  1987). As Elshtain (1987, 44) noted, “we in the West are the heirs of a tradition that assumes an affinity between women and peace, between men and war, a tradition that consists of culturally constructed and transmitted myths and memories.” However, assigning ster­e­ o­typ­i­cal roles to men and women disregards the plurality of intersectional experiences and roles that men and women, and individuals with other sexual orientations, acquire in conflict and war. Meanwhile, women and girls are proportionally more exposed to violence and injustice in war, with a considerably higher number of women being ­sexually assaulted in conflict, or see their reproductive and human rights being

224   Karin Aggestam and Annika Bergman Rosamond c­ ompromised by brutal male leaders (Nicholas and Agius 2018). While “women and girls are the predominant victims of sexual violence and men and boys the predominant agents, we must also be able to account for the presence of male victims and female agents” (Alison 2007, 75; see also Sjoberg and Gentry 2007). More women are also joining national armed forces and taking part in international military operations (Bergman Rosamond and Kronsell 2018; Duncanson and Woodward 2017). A critical investigation of the co-­constitutive relationship between gender and peaceful change should therefore be grounded in an intersectional analysis and be committed to the uncovering of marginalized voices in conflict and post-­ conflict locations (Sjoberg 2008). Without such dialogue and the disruption of the gendered logics of war, peaceful change remains but a notional ideal, since a peace settlement that excludes the knowledge and experiences of marginalized groups will not be durable. We propose that a gender-­just driven approach to peaceful change requires open-­ended dialogue and recognition that many aspects of violent conflict persist beyond its formal ending. Here feminist peace research can provide a platform for critical analysis of the intersections between gender and conflict. Such research is grounded in a commitment to the analysis of both “spectacular instances of violence or peace” while nuancing “our analysis of the everydayness of reconciliatory measures and the mundaneness of both violence and peace” (Wibben et al.  2019, 86). This invites the analysis of war as experience, with Christine Sylvester (2013, 65) noting that “[t]o study war as experience requires that the human body come into focus as a unit that has agency in war and is also the target of war’s violence.” The study of personal narratives and embodied experiences is “essential because they are a primary way by which we make sense of the world around us, produce meanings, articulate intentions, and legitimate actions” (Wibben 2011, 2). That recognition is present in feminist thinking on just war, with Laura Sjoberg’s work (2006) being seminal here. Her aim is to disrupt the conceptual and empirical links between “the just war tradition” and “gendered notions of warfare” in an effort to identify and rethink “gendered nature not only of war ethics, but also of war justificatory narratives, war practices and war experiences.” This involves recognizing that war is an emotional experience (Sjoberg  2008, 8) located within the everydayness of war and conflict (Wibben et al. 2019). War is more than military power and dominance; it involves dealing with economic destruction, gendered oppression, and environmental concerns (Sjoberg 2008), what could be defined as “slow violence” (Nixon 2011). Sjoberg (2008, 8) also notes that “jus ad bellum and jus in bello rules should recognize [. . .] the human impacts ‘before’ and ‘after’ a war caused by the continual state of violence and conflict in international politics.” Along with a range of feminist scholars, we argue that scholarly engagements with peaceful change are served well by a feminist approach to notions of just war (Sjoberg 2008) since it allows for multiple voices to be accounted for and, as such, facilitates peaceful dialogues. This requires “empathetic cooperation,” which according to Sjoberg (2006, 2008) and Sylvester (1994) is an expression in care ethics. Such “an ethics of care recognizes war as an emotional experience, and the victims of war (soldiers and civilians) as human beings with dignity” (Sjoberg 2008, 8). By highlighting empathy, care, and dialogue as

Gender and Peaceful Change   225 well as individual experience, a feminist perspective on just war and post-­conflict can inspire peaceful transformations of war-­torn regions by disrupting gendered practices of militarism and violence, which sit at the heart of violent conflict. This involves adopting a wider conception of security that is not couched within militarism alone but includes the everydayness of war and conflict (Wibben 2011).

Gender, Feminism, and Peaceful Change Peaceful change is related to the remaking of societies in the aftermath of war and conflict. Johan Galtung’s (1964) distinction between negative and positive peace provides a common point of departure for assessing peace. Negative peace entails a minimalist understanding of the concept that centers on the absence of inter- or intrastate violence. Positive peace rests on an expansive definition, which includes the ending of structural violence, societal injustices, and gendered oppression. Feminist studies, broadly located within peace research, tend to focus on gender equality and women’s empowerment and participation in peace processes and as such resonate more with the notion of positive peace. A feminist perspective on positive peace rests on a forward-­looking approach, aiming at achieving a gender-­just peace that affords rights and participation to women and other marginalized groups while recognizing their everyday experiences (Wibben et al. 2019). For instance, Caprioli’s (2000) seminal work highlights the significance of domestic gender equality and its pacifying and peaceful effects on state behavior. Moreover, women’s equal right to participate in formal and informal institutions as well as peacemaking is central to the realization of gender-­just peacebuilding and peace itself (Björkdahl 2012). Yet the interplay between gender and peaceful change is contested, both within the academy and in practice, since there is a range of understandings of how this correlation actually works. We discuss in this chapter three distinct analytical approaches to this interplay, all centering on the links between gender and peaceful change: (1) the women-­peace hypothesis, (2) strategic essentialism and inclusion, and (3) transformative peace and the deconstruction of gender. Although we present them separately for analytical purposes, they are frequently overlapping in policy debates and academic conversations.

The Women-­Peace Hypothesis The women-­peace hypothesis focuses on women as a monolithic group, with peaceful qualities emerging from their experiences of maternal care (Reardon 1985). The argument centers on the assumption that women are fundamentally different from men, in particular by being more empathetic, caring, and cooperative (Maoz 2009). Men, on the other hand, are constituted as power oriented and competitive, though this is an argument that begs for unpacking. The construction of women as more peaceful and suited

226   Karin Aggestam and Annika Bergman Rosamond for care work within the confines of the home means that they historically have been marginalized and excluded from public life and peace diplomacy. However, there is more recognition that women’s distinct experiences and abilities enable them to bring new ideas and practices to peacemaking (Maoz 2009). Yet there is a tendency to populate peace processes and negotiations with warlords and military leaders, whose mindsets tend to be dominated by the logic of power politics and militarized solutions to conflict. We should be mindful of the assignment of distinct qualities to men and women in times of peace and war, while recognizing that women’s historical location within care work has equipped them with certain communicative skills that generally have been undervalued (Bergman Rosamond and Kronsell 2018; Aharoni 2016). Indeed, the women-­peace hypothesis has been key to mobilizing women’s activism and has undergirded historical struggles for gender equality and peaceful change. For instance, the suffragettes of the early twentieth century contended that ending women’s exclusion from peace diplomacy would have enhanced the prospects for peace and the ending of war (International Encyclopedia 2018). This thesis has continued to inform debates on women’s participation in solidarity movements, such as MeToo and the International Women’s Strike initiative, by enhancing the quality of the decision-­making process and as such contributing to peaceful and feminist change. The women-­peace hypothesis has been the subject of many critical engagements, in particular the essentialism inherent in its normative logics (Alison 2007). Sara Ruddick’s (1989) research on maternal care and peace is seminal here because she puts more emphasis on process and practice rather than women’s distinct nurturing qualities. Ruddick argues that maternal care, defined by compromise and fairness, is central to peaceful change. However, Ruddick (1989; see also Robinson  2011) does not equate maternal care with biological mothers alone; rather, she stresses that care work can be carried out by both men and women. Yet a number of scholars have sought to identify variations in the ways women and men negotiate and mediate within peace processes. Such scholarship holds that the skills required for successful peacemaking are usually more compatible with feminine rather than masculine characteristics (see, e.g., Florea et al. 2003). Those femininities are not the product of biological difference but gender identities, binaries, and assumptions about men’s and women’s aptness in various situations that are socially constructed and subject to change (Cockburn 2007; see also Bergman Rosamond 2013). While the portrayal of women as inherently more prone to peace and relational dialogue suffers from essentialism, their preference for problem-­solving dialogue in peacemaking and peace negotiations should be recognized, in particular since male negotiators often opt for a more confrontational mode of conflict resolution. Florea et al. (2003, 230) have noted that women bring a personalized component of empathy to peace negotiations, which is a skill undervalued in male-­dominated negotiating settings. Furthermore, masculine traits are frequently associated with a competitive transactional negotiation behavior, whereas feminine characteristics are linked to transformational problem-­ solving (Florea et al. 2003). These assumptions also prevail in policy practice pertaining to gender-­just peace, in particular within the WPS agenda and as a key component in

Gender and Peaceful Change   227 the making of feminist-­informed foreign policy. Next, we examine the significance of women’s inclusion in various stages of the peace process.

Strategic Essentialism and Inclusive Peace While a lot of recent work conducted by feminist theorists and gender scholars takes issue with the women-­peace hypothesis, there is recognition that women tend to hold different perspectives than men on questions of war and peace, given their distinct experiences (Wibben et al.  2019). Bringing such experiences into peacebuilding can enable the achievement of sustainable and peaceful change, in particular since women are assumed to employ more empathetic care in relation to their dialogical partners (Bergman Rosamond and Kronsell 2018), ensuring a more inclusive peace settlement. This position prevails in transnational women’s movements and within advocacy that centers on the enhancement of women’s participation in peace processes. For instance, transnational women’s advocacy groups laid the ground and lobbied intensively for UNSCR 1325. As such, the diffusion and empowerment of women’s peace organizations expanded swiftly and globally (Cockburn 2007; Garner 2010; True 2016a, 2016b). These efforts culminated in the adoption of UNSCR 1325, which made women much more visible in times of war and across conflicts. Recent empirically oriented approaches to women’s participation in peace processes have recognized that women remain marginalized and excluded from formal political decision-­making on security and peace. The UN and other bodies therefore advocate their inclusion in such processes, in particular by noting that women’s unique experiences should be considered alongside those of men (UN Women 2018). Hence, the overarching aim has been to make women more visible by probing the basic question “where are the women” in peacemaking (Enloe 2000). To this end, scholars have compiled data sets to examine the correlation between gender equality, empowerment, women’s participation, security, and peace. Some studies have indicated that states with poor records on gender inequality are more likely to be involved in intrastate conflicts (Caprioli 2000; Melander 2005). Such studies have often been cited in policy making processes and by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to promote gender mainstreaming and inclusion. Moreover, UNSCR 1325 was instrumental in providing a global framework for the promotion of gender mainstreaming in peacebuilding processes (Anderlini  2007; Cohn 2013a, 2013b; True 2016b). Indeed, contemporary policy discourses stress that women’s participation in peace processes increases the likelihood of gender-­specific provisions in peace agreements (UN Women 2018), which is a step toward peaceful change. This has been corroborated in several studies showing that since the adoption of UNSCR 1325, a growing number of peace agreements have contained gender provisions (Bell  2015). Moreover, in UN-­ sponsored peace processes, the WPS agenda plays an integral part in 67 percent of all peace agreements (Bell 2015). This pattern most likely reflects the growing practice of including members with gender expertise on negotiation teams. Paffenholz et al. (2016)

228   Karin Aggestam and Annika Bergman Rosamond found a positive correlation in those cases in which women had been able to exercise strong influence in the peace negotiations and the drafting of the subsequent peace agreements. The case of Liberia showed that women’s groups outside the formal negotiations were able to exert powerful pressure on the negotiating delegations. The Women in the Peacebuilding Network (WIPNET) successfully mobilized effective mass actions in parallel to the official peace negotiations, demanding that the parties should reach an agreement (O’Reilly et al. 2015). Yet Paffenholz et al.’s (2016) study does not confirm a correlation between greater representation of women and actual influence over the negotiation process and the peace agreement. The Paffenholz study concludes that rather than counting women, the focus should be on assessing their activities and the degree to which they can influence decision-­making bodies within the peace negotiation process. This involves exploring how much they are able to influence the commencement of the peace negotiations, set the negotiation agenda, add gender provisions to an agreement, and push for its signature. It includes assessing the extent to which a peace agreement is gender sensitive and just and if it addresses women’s rights in a meaningful way. In the context of peace agreements, it seems that women’s participation as witnesses, signatories, mediators, and negotiators has a positive impact on the transformative qualities of peace itself. According to Laurel Stone (2015), women’s participation in peacemaking and peacebuilding increases the prospects for peace agreements being kept over time by 20 to 35 percent. However, according to Christine Bell (2015, 1), this requires that gender-­sensitive peace agreements are fully implemented. References to women and gender issues tend to be infused with “constructive ambiguity” and “holistic interpretations” that often reflect the absence of shared understandings among the parties. In the next section we turn to transformative peace, a process that is central to peaceful change.

Transformative Peace and the Deconstruction of Gender Feminist scholars have raised concerns regarding the tendency to emphasize women’s and men’s distinct qualities and weaknesses on the basis of biological difference and sex categorizations. Women’s lack of agency in peace processes and participation in public life more broadly have been derived from assumptions about their biological sex and aptness for care work rather than official policy processes. Moreover, women tend to be treated as a monolithic group, associated with peacefulness and care, and as such their differences are disregarded (Elshtain 1987). Yet that tendency has also been used in a strategic fashion, what has been defined as strategic essentialism, to enhance women’s participation in peacemaking. This tendency has been criticized by feminist scholars, who have pointed to the danger of stereotypically assigning peacefulness and care to women (Duncanson 2015, 52; Cohn 1987). Such stereotypical identity constructions may reinforce gender-­based exclusion from power structures, since they fail to challenge gender(ed) hierarchies and power relations that obstruct women from being taken seriously as political actors.

Gender and Peaceful Change   229 To strengthen and further transformative notions and practices of peaceful change, we argue, requires challenging such gender hierarchies and taking account of their location within particular historical and sociopolitical contexts. Given that, and in line with our previous argument, it is central to conceptualize gender as a socially constructed analytical category and as a social relational process (Cockburn 2007). This entails a critical analysis of how masculinities and femininities are constructed in relation to war and peace. This renders visible the multiple roles that women and men play in war and peace and moves away from the commonplace construction of women as primarily nurturing mothers by also taking account of their roles in war and violence (Alison 2007). Moreover, by adopting an intersectional approach to the analysis of conflict and peace, it is possible to probe how gender intersects with class, geographical location, age, race, and sexuality. Gender identities are always interconnected and fluid across contexts and time, and that insight is central to the construction of durable and peaceful change. In the third part of the chapter we explore how the overarching goal of peaceful change is furthered within policy formulations pertaining to the WPS agenda and feminist-­ informed foreign policy.

Policy Formulations on Gender and Peaceful Change The WPS Agenda Here we unpack the normative commitment to peaceful change that prevails in the WPS agenda. UNSCR 1325 was adopted in 2000 to “further the international community’s broad commitment to the protection of women exposed to violence and repression, and to increase their representation within national armed forces and peace processes” (Aggestam and Bergman Rosamond 2019). The resolution has since then been bolstered by the adoption of eight additional resolutions. The contents, ethics, gender logics, and success of the WPS agenda have been extensively investigated, giving rise to many studies of its dual commitment to protection and participation (Davies and True 2019), as well as its location within gendered assumptions about women and men, militarism, securitization, and colonialism (Shepherd 2011; Basu 2016; Hudson 2009). Though we do not dismiss the agenda’s location within practices of militarism and gendering, we contend that it also provides arenas for collaboration between nonmilitary and military actors that challenge and contest the use of militaristic language and practice (Aggestam and Bergman Rosamond 2019, 35). The WPS agenda is firmly situated within a commitment to transformative change by seeking to reduce gendered violence and by enabling more women to actively and meaningfully participate in peace processes. Women are central to “the prevention and resolution of conflicts, peace negotiations, peace-­building, peacekeeping, humanitarian

230   Karin Aggestam and Annika Bergman Rosamond response and in post-­conflict reconstruction” (UN Security Council 2000). They should be allowed “equal participation and full involvement in all efforts for the maintenance and promotion of peace and security” (UN Security Council 2000). Participation alone is not sufficient in bringing about gender-­just peace; for that to happen the international community needs to protect “women and girls from gender-­based violence, particularly rape and other forms of sexual abuse, in situations of armed conflict” (UN Security Council 2000). While ethically commendable, UNSCR 1325 has not been able to end gender-­based violence in conflict or to ensure equity in women’s representation in peace processes. In that absence new resolutions were adopted, including UNSCR 1820 in 2008. By adopting the latter the UN Security Council recognized the lack of change within the WPS agenda: “Despite its repeated condemnation of violence against women and children in situations of armed conflict . . . and despite its calls addressed to all parties to armed conflict for the cessation of such acts with immediate effect, such acts continue to occur, and in some situations have become systematic and widespread, reaching appalling levels of brutality” (UN Security Council 2008). It was also recognized that more measures were needed to ensure women’s participation “in the prevention and resolution of conflicts and in peacebuilding” and the recognition of “women’s capacity and legitimacy to participate in post-­conflict public life and its impact this has on durable peace” (UN Security Council 2008). Two years later resolution 1060 was adopted, which further committed the world to the eradication of gendered violence by noting that “despite its repeated condemnation of violence against women and children in situations of armed conflict, including sexual violence such acts continue to occur and they have become systematic” (UN Security Council 2010). To address the lack of measurable results in the area of sexual violence, the UN established a new position, that of UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict. UNSCR resolution 2122, adopted in 2013, shifted the WPS agenda somewhat by identifying a strong connection between women’s empowerment, human rights, gender equality, participation in key decisions, and “efforts to maintain international peace and security.” While pushing for such emancipatory change, UNSCR 2122 also recognized that some “progress” and “good practice” have emerged in terms of both prevention and protection (UN Security Council  2013). However, the resolutions outlined here tend to equate gender with women and girls, and, as such showing little or no attention to male sexual violence in conflict or the vulnerability of young boys in war. UNSCR resolution 2467 on WPS: sexual violence in conflict, adopted in 2019, begins to address this silence. It states that “acts of sexual and gender-­based violence in conflict can be part of the strategic objectives and ideology of . . . armed conflict, including non-­state armed groups. The victims of such violence should have access to such things as health care, psychosocial care, safe shelter, livelihood support, and legal aid,” and there should be recognition that “men and boys . . . may have been victims of sexual violence in conflict” (UN Security Council 2019). The adoption of an intersectional position on gendered violence might serve to demilitarize and de-­gender the WPS agenda and in so doing enhance the prospects for peaceful change in the global security structure.

Gender and Peaceful Change   231 Having introduced the formulation of peaceful change within the WPS framework, we briefly reflect on some of its shortcomings. As noted previously, the UNSCR 1325 agenda is located within narrow conceptions of gender, pertaining to the protector-­ protected dichotomy that still prevails in global politics. In this context, Shepherd (2008) argues that “in 1325, I identify constructions of gender that assume it largely synonymous with biological sex and, further, reproduce logics of identity that characterized women as fragile, passive, and in need of protection and construction of security that locate the responsibility of protection firmly in the hands of elite political actors in the international system.” Such gendering practices risk embedding the gendered hierarchies and power relations that underpin war and conflict. A related point here is that the WPS agenda tends to frame sexual and gender-­based violence in conflict within racialized language by often constituting men in conflict-­affected areas as the only perpetrators of sexual and gender-­based violence, disregarding the prevalence of such violence in “peacetime” states or among peacekeepers (Heathcote  2018, 380). What is more, the WPS agenda is individual centric in many ways and as such does not address the systemic underpinnings of gendered violence (Heathcote 2018, 380) or women’s frequent absence from participation in conflict resolution and peacebuilding. Nonetheless, UNSCR 1325 constitutes a strong normative global framework and provides for arena shifting through its emphasis on inclusion and enhancement of women’s wider political participation in the field of peace and security (Aggestam and Bergman Rosamond 2019, 35).

Feminist Foreign Policy There has been a rise in the adoption of pro-­gender-­equality norms in foreign policy practice. Gender mainstreaming and a commitment to women’s participation in peacemaking and their entitlement to gender equality, justice, and bodily and reproductive integrity have become key features of a growing number of states’ foreign policies (Aggestam and True 2020). A key feature of this turn is the recognition that women’s security is increasingly linked to national and international security, which was a prominent feature of the “Hillary doctrine” pursued by Secretary of State Clinton while in office (Hudson and Leidl 2015). This is reflected in states’ promotion of women’s security and human rights as a priority in their international peace and security strategies. A large number of states have adopted national action plans (NAPs) in their quest to implement UNSCR 1325 and the wider WPS agenda within domestic and foreign policies. Indeed, the WPS agenda has become a key pillar of the foreign policies of a range of states, including Canada, Norway, Colombia, Sweden, and South Africa (Aggestam and True  2020). Through their foreign policies they promote gender equality in global affairs, framing the advancement of women’s representation and gender equality as “smart diplomacy and economics” (Clinton 2010). While progress has been made in advancing pro-­gender-­equality norms in various international fora, individual states’

232   Karin Aggestam and Annika Bergman Rosamond foreign policies vary in how much they include gender-­based justice in their foreign policy commitments. Next, we illustrate Sweden’s commitment to peaceful change as a central component of its feminist foreign policy platform. Gender justice and equality have risen to prominence in the making of Swedish foreign and security policy (Bergman Rosamond 2020). The Swedish Social Democrat-­ Green coalition government, in office since 2014, has adopted an overtly feminist foreign policy that seeks to “improve conditions for women and contribute to peace and development” (Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs 2015, 3). The Swedish government is a self-­proclaimed “feminist government,” which states “that gender equality is central to the Government’s priorities—in decision-­making and resource allocation. A feminist government ensures that a gender equality perspective is brought into policy making on a broad front, both nationally and internationally. Women and men must have the same power to shape society and their own lives. This is a human right and a matter of democracy and justice.” (Government Offices of Sweden n.d., 1) Feminist foreign policy is imbued with an explicit anti-­militaristic and de-­securitizing logic and a wish to involve women and other intersectional categories in all aspects of global peacebuilding (Aggestam and Bergman Rosamond 2019; Bergman Rosamond 2020). This commitment is linked to the country’s active engagement with the WPS agenda, having to date adopted three national action plans, among other things committing the country to furthering women’s human and reproductive rights and their active participation in peace operations and peace processes and ensuring their protection from sexual and gender-­based violence in conflict. Feminist foreign policy then is a platform for peaceful change and dialogical and relational foreign policy practice, though not without its inconsistencies. The Swedish government has been particularly active in terms of women’s inclusion and participation in peace processes and has formulated a range of proposals to achieve that goal. Those proposals are undergirded by a wish to redesign peace negotiations, locally and globally. Underpinning those initiatives is the question of how women’s organizations and individuals can be made part of peace processes. However, as we have noted, peace negotiations are dominated by masculine values and militarism and offer limited possibilities for women to participate in or make an active contribution to postwar reconstruction. Further complicating matters is the fact that peace negotiations are surrounded by secrecy and exclusion, making it even harder for women’s organizations to acquire access to the formal negotiation process (Aggestam 2019). Yet ensuring women’s presence at the negotiating table is a central component of Swedish feminist foreign policy. This objective rests on the assumption that the inclusion of more women in peace-­related decisions will strengthen the efficiency and design of peace diplomacy (Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs 2017). Peace mediation and women’s inclusion within it are viewed as central aspects of peaceful change, and part of this normative platform is to ensure that women chief mediators play a key part in peacemaking (Aggestam and Svensson 2018). Relevant to such change is the protection of vulnerable people in times of conflict and war and in their aftermath. This involves unpacking the damaging effects of patriarchy

Gender and Peaceful Change   233 and gendered power relations as well as militarized masculinity on women’s security and bodily integrity and rights (Local  2018). As a non-permanent member of the Security Council, Sweden promoted protection of women and girls from gender-­based violence as a weapon of war. The Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs has located that commitment within the global combat of “the gender-­related and sexual violence of terrorist groups by pushing these issues in international antiterrorism forums and by supporting actors, including civil society organisations, that are working to address violent extremism, radicalisation, recruitment and destructive masculinities” (Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs 2017, 6). So, key to feminist foreign policy is Sweden’s commitment to gender-­just peaceful change through the inclusion of women in more peace processes as well as pushing for their protection in conflict and post-­conflict locations. While few would dispute the significance of such initiatives, it is important to stay attentive to the Swedish tendency to equate gender with women and girls and in so doing employ essentialist strategies. That tendency also involves constructing women as natural born agents of peace, with the risk of reinforcing prevalent gender relations and damaging peacebuilding processes locally. Thus, in many ways Sweden employs a women-­peace hypothesis by idealizing certain forms of femininity and assuming that women’s inclusion in peace processes automatically leads to peaceful change. This risks reproducing broader depoliticized global strategies of simply “counting” women and “adding” them to peace processes, without questioning the militarized infrastructure and power dynamics that underpin peace negotiations (Aggestam and Bergman Rosamond 2019).

Conclusion This chapter has examined the interplay between gender and peaceful change. While women have a long history of global activism in the areas of war and peace, they have been marginalized and excluded in politics and diplomacy. However, in recent decades a number of important changes have taken place. We now see how the quest for gender equality and women’s rights figures large in the ambitions and agendas of a range of global institutions. The chapter has addressed some of these policy formulations on gender and peaceful change by focusing on the WPS agenda and the trend of adopting a feminist framing and platform for the conduct of foreign policy. In the chapter, we have assessed two dominant understandings of gender and peaceful change that are frequently used in advocacy, namely those of the women-­peace hypothesis and strategic essentialism. While they have been central in mobilizing women’s activism and historical struggles for gender equality and peaceful change, we argue that there is a danger of treating women as a monolithic group and as such assigning essentialist qualities to them, most pronouncedly those of peacefulness and care. Instead we argue that there is a need to strengthen a transformative notion of gender-­just peaceful change by focusing on gendered structures and hierarchies, which are located in particular historical and

234   Karin Aggestam and Annika Bergman Rosamond sociopolitical contexts. Here, gender is understood as a socially constructed analytical category and as a relational process, which highlights how masculinities and femininities are constructed in relation to war and peace. As such, it renders visible the multiple roles that women and men play in peaceful change.

Note 1. “Gender mainstreaming” refers to policies and strategies to resolve inequalities between men and women.

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chapter 13

Ci v iliz ation, R eligion, A N D Peacefu l a n d Non-Peacefu l Ch a nge i n Asi a Victoria Tin-­b or Hui

For scholars interested in peaceful change, the best laboratory is Asia. Asia should be ­geographically defined to include not just East Asia, but also Central Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East. Asia is home to multiple ancient civilizations—Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Jewish, nomadic, Turkic, Persian—and world religions—Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Islamic, Judaist, Shinto, Taoist, and more. Asia thus offers an ideal site to examine peaceful and non-­peaceful change in diverse civilizational and religious contexts. There is a general impression that while Abrahamic religions tend to justify violence, the Eastern traditions of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Confucianism are more conducive to peace. Jessica Stern, who studies Christian, Islamist, and Jewish terrorism, suggests that it is much harder for followers of monotheistic religions “to be pluralist . . . to recognize more than one ultimate principle or pathway to God—and to see these as equally valid” (2004, 137). Christopher Reuter even maintains, along Huntington’s oft-­quoted line that “Islam has bloody borders” (1993, 35), that Islam is “a well-­suited ideology for war” because the “mental image of Muhammad and his crowd of followers setting off on a conquest under the Prophet’s banner is easily conjured”; in contrast, “a group of Buddhists doing something similar is hard to picture” (Reuter 2004, 17). Asia has produced many Nobel Peace Prize winners: Eisaku Sato of Japan, the fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet, Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar, Bishop Carlos Belo and José Ramos-­Horta of East Timor, Kim Dae-­Jung of South Korea, Shirin Ebadi of Iran, Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh, Liu Xiaobo of China, Kailash Satyarthi of India, and Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan (Szczepanski 2019). Most of all, Asia claims the world’s most renowned advocate for peaceful change: Mahatma Gandhi.

240   Victoria Tin-bor Hui Yet Asia has also witnessed a wide range of violent means for change: rock throwing, self-­immolation, suicide terrorism, ethnic cleansing and genocide. How should analysts reconcile the most extreme forms of violence with the most pacifist religions? The first key to unlocking the puzzle is to unpack essentialized views of Asian ­civilizations and religions. Paradoxically, “the portrait of spirituality, asceticism, magic, transcendental wisdom” is the product of nineteenth-­century European orientalism (Frydenlund 2013, 110; Rudolph 2010, 141). Scott Appleby argues that all religions have the capacity to both “spiritualize militancy” and “channel energies toward nonviolent peacebuilding” (2015, 40). Buddhism and Hinduism have produced “anti-­secular, anti-­ modernist, absolutist, boundary-­setting, exclusionary, and often violent movements that bear startling resemblances to fundamentalism within the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic worlds” (Appleby and Marty 2009, 17). If all civilizations and religions contain both pro-­peace and pro-­violence elements, then the more relevant question is why advocates of peace triumph in some contexts while agents of violence win out in others. This volume defines peaceful change as “the resolution of social problems mutually by institutionalized procedures without resort to large-­scale physical force” (Deutsch 1957, 5). This chapter focuses on the domestic institutional landscape that tilts the balance between peaceful change and violent change. The next section examines Asia’s heterogeneity. It suggests that the plural nature of civilizations and religions is conducive to the construction of both peaceful and violent changes. The second section unpacks how canonical duality creates the same enabling environment. The third addresses how civilizational plurality and canonical ambiguity are translated into practices by advocates for peace and agents of violence competing for support in institutional contexts. The rest of this chapter then analyzes the cases of Islam in Afghanistan and Indonesia; Hinduism in India; Buddhism in Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Tibet; and Confucianism in China.

Clash of Civilizations in Plural and Pluralist Asia Ram Madhav, the general secretary of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), declared, “[f]rom now on, Asia will rule the world, and that changes everything because in Asia, we have civilizations rather than nations” (Macaes 2020). Such rhetoric echoes Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” idea (1993). Huntington defined civilization by “common objective elements, such as language, history, religion, customs, institutions” along with the “subjective self-­identification of people” at “the broadest level of identification” (1993, 24). In his view, different civilizations necessarily clash because civilization fault lines are “basic,” “more fundamental,” and “less mutable” than political and economic cleavages (1993, 25, 27). Huntington’s thesis has been extensively criticized. Amartya Sen argues that the partitioning of humanity into “distinct and discrete civilizations” ignores not just individuals’ “plural affiliation and social contexts” but also the “internal diversities

Peaceful and Non-Peaceful Change in Asia   241 within these civilizational categories” and the “connections and interdependence across civilizations” (2006, 1, 23, 58). Peter Katzenstein similarly highlights that civilizations should be understood as both internally “pluralist,” with multiple traditions, and externally “plural,” in coexistence with other civilizations (2010, 1). Nonetheless, Sen, who witnessed in his childhood the outbreak of violence during the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, understands that civilizational identity can “kill with abandon”—he recalls “the speed with which the broad human beings of January were suddenly transformed into the ruthless Hindus and fierce Muslims of July” (2006, 1–2). Sen attributes this horrific transformation to “the imposition of singular and belligerent identities” (2006, 2). Katzenstein agrees that “pluralism can give way to unity as political and discursive coalitions succeed in imposing a singular view and set of core values over alternatives” (2010, 1). How are plural and pluralist civilizations, which should be conducive to peaceful change, reduced to singular identities that are amenable to violent change? Patrick Jackson cautions against an “anti-­essentialist” position that “simply reject[s] civilizational essentialism” or wishes away clashes of civilizations (2010, 194). He offers instead a “post-­ essentialist” framework to understand how such clashes are “a consequence not of deep civilizational essences but of a set of ways of inscribing civilizational boundaries in practice” (Jackson 2010, 194). Katzenstein agrees that civilizations are “political, specifically rhetorical, practices” that construct “coherent narratives of civilizational destinies” and put up boundaries between such constructed identities (2010, 10). For instance, the term Islamic world is often used to refer to the Middle East, glossing over the fact that the world’s largest Muslim-­majority country is Indonesia (195 million, 88 percent of the population), and the second largest is India (Lawrence 2010, 159). “India” is defined as “Hindu civilization” by Hindu nationalists, even though it is also the birthplace of Buddhism and the home of 120 million Muslims (compared with 850 million Hindus) (Rudolph 2010, 153). “China” is taken to reflect an uncontested Confucian civilization, which implies that Tibetans, Muslims, and Mongols are ‘Others’ to be assimilated. A post-­essentialist framework suggests that peaceful change is possible if practices become more tolerant and inclusive. However, Jackson observes that “so long as civilizations are inscribed in the Huntingtonian way, the Huntingtonian consequences follow” (2010, 194). This is akin to Alexander Wendt’s argument that while “anarchy is what states make of it,” it is immensely difficult to unmake it once it is made (1992). Thus, once plural and pluralistic civilizations are essentialized into singular identities and inscribed in boundary-­drawing practices, violent clashes are likely.

Canonical Ambiguity, and Peaceful and Violent Change All religions promote peace and social justice in addition to devotion. Buddhism and Hinduism further cultivate self-­discipline through ascetic practices such as fasting and self-­imposed poverty (Appleby 2000, 12). Buddhism in addition maintains an absolute

242   Victoria Tin-bor Hui prohibition against killing any living beings (Victoria 2010, 125). How could these religions that champion the sanctity and dignity of human life be ever associated with extreme forms of violent change, including terrorism and genocide? Analysts tend to make a distinction between true religion and political religion. Scholars of Islam, in particular, argue that “Islam is a religion of peace” (Omar  2015; Smock 2002b, 3). Boroumand and Boroumand underscore that terrorism goes against Islam, and so the proper adjective for terror committed in the name of Islam is not “Islamic” but “Islamist” (2002, 6, 12). Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama have praised Islamic history and counseled Muslims to embrace a “true Islam” (Starr 2014). As for Buddhism, Brian Victoria similarly holds that actions that “purposefully inflict pain and suffering, let alone death” necessarily represent “hijacking,” “violation,” “denial,” and “betrayal” of “Buddhism’s fundamental tenets” (2010, 105, 116–117, 121, 123). However, another Buddhism scholar, Iselin Frydenlund, disagrees with the “degeneration theory,” which treats any support for violent change among Buddhist monks as “un-­Buddhist” (2013, 110–112). He argues that the “canonical ambiguity on violence” in Buddhism means that a “return to the canon” would not give unequivocal support for peace (Frydenlund 2013, 112). Appleby concurs that any presumption that there is true Islam or Buddhism or Hinduism or Christianity smacks of “reductionism” (2000, 10). This is because all religions take an “ambivalent attitude” toward “the utility of violence as an instrument of self-­defense and enforcement of religious norms” (Appleby  2000, 10–11). Once “just war” is sanctioned, it is “too often used to justify war” (Smock  2002a, xxxii, 8). For instance, Sri Lankan monks, who were accused of being “anti-­peace” by international mediators, claimed that they wanted peace but that the only way to achieve peace was through a military response to Tamil terrorism (Frydenlund 2013, 101). Indeed, if canonical heterogeneity offers justification for violence, the very pluralistic nature of civilizations and religions highlighted by Katzenstein and Sen is the source of violent as well as peaceful change. When “canonical ambiguity” is combined with “differential practices” that harden civilizational divides (Frydenlund 2013), Huntingtonian outcomes follow.

Change Agents, Institutional Weaknesses, and Peaceful and Violent Change Civilizations and religions should be unpacked into not only justifications for both peaceful and violent change, but also individuals who agitate for peace versus violence. Sen counsels analysts to examine individuals’ multiple affiliations and social contexts (2006, 23). Omar urges non-­Muslims to avoid seeing violence as “fundamental to Islam rather than committed by individuals” (2015).

Peaceful and Non-Peaceful Change in Asia   243 In discussions of political movements that have adopted violent methods for change, it is common to hear this question: “Where is this and that case’s Gandhi?” Such a question reflects highly essentialized assumptions. It supposes that a particular culture does not produce advocates for peaceful change. It also presumes that Gandhi’s nonviolence represents the totality of the Indian experience and glosses over other Indians’ recourse to violence. It is more productive to examine how advocates for peace and agents for violence compete in different institutional contexts. Individuals can achieve change by creating new institutions. They are also incentivized or disincentivized by preexisting institutions. If liberal institutions that promote free speech, tolerance, multiculturalism, citizen participation, and elite accountability empower forces for peace and marginalize those for violence, the weakness and even absence of such institutions may have the opposite impacts. Terrorism in the name of Islam, for instance, has “local and readily identifiable causes” (McGlinchey  2005, 342). Violence seems so prevalent in the Islamic world because Muslim-­majority countries host many personalized and military dictators who are not just repressive but also dysfunctional. Military strongmen deploy security forces to inflict daily injustices on their people and discrimination against minorities. At the same time, corrupt elites, who control valuable national resources, are unable and unwilling to provide for the basic needs of the population (Berman 2003, 266). This is a recipe for revolutionary movements. Confronted with popular grievances, the powerful try to hold onto power by enhancing their religious credentials. Acharya (2020) ­contends that self-­proclaimed civilization-­states are first and foremost motivated by regime security. The powerless are similarly tempted to summon religion to recruit supporters. Such processes of radicalization and politicization are not unique to Islam but also common to other religions. The rest of this chapter examines how cultural pluralism, canonical ambiguity, and institutional weaknesses have combined to shape identities and practices.

Islam in Afghanistan and Indonesia Asia hosts not just the world’s largest number of Muslims, but also a wide variety of Islam. Frederick Starr suggests that if one is searching for moderate Islam, “look to Central Asia” (2014). Central Asia along the Silk Road was where Europe, the Middle East, and Asia historically met for trade and cultural exchanges. Similarly, Southeast Asia along the ocean Silk Road was famed not just for the spice trade but also for its cultural and religious pluralism. Yet both regions have experienced the rise of religious terrorism. While Uzbekistan was historically the center of intellectual scholarship, Islam Abduganiyevich Karimov’s dictatorship gave rise to the radical Islamic movement of Uzbekistan, which first fought social injustice and then transformed itself into a jihad group (Chivers  2002; McGlinchey  2005, 338). In Southeast Asia, Abu Sayyaf of the Philippines pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (ISIS). Nevertheless, the rise of

244   Victoria Tin-bor Hui religious militancy is driven not by inherent civilizational traits but by institutional weaknesses, from the absence of security to democratic backsliding (Kurlantzick 2016, 231). Moderation has prevailed where political leaders allow some degree of opposition and deliver basic socioeconomic services (McGlinchey 2005, 336–337).

Afghanistan Long before Iraq and Syria became synonymous with Islam and ISIS, Afghanistan dominated news headlines as the shelter of Osama bin Laden. Two decades after September 11, 2000, the country is still mired in daily terrorist attacks. It is not Islam itself that has created bloody borders. Afghanistan’s Islam is moderate, like the rest of Central Asia’s. Indigenous religious scholars have sought to reclaim Islam from extremists and to leverage “traditional Islamic values” to construct “principled and permanent—rather than tacit and tactical—opposition to violence” (Bakhiet 2018). However, foreign intervention has created the radical ideational and institutional landscape. The proxy war between the Soviet Union and the United States facilitated the rise of the Taliban, which hosted al-­Qaeda. The arrival of Saudis, the most famous of which was bin Laden, brought radical Wahhabism as well as jihadists. The US involvement since 2000 has failed to provide security, which in turn has doomed efforts to run free and fair elections, form legitimate government, and provide basic services to the population as peace dividends (Kubba 2008; Worden 2010). The US-­Taliban peace deal signed behind the back of the Afghan government in early 2020 has only allowed Taliban warlords to grow stronger vis-­à-­vis government forces (Glinski 2020). Bakhiet notes that “the word Islam means peace” and wonders if “it can also create peace” (2018) in Afghanistan. The answer is negative but not because of Islam or the absence of peace-­makers.

Indonesia Indonesia offers a positive case for how agents of violence can be tamed by institutions. Indonesia is home to not just the largest Muslim population in the world but also “the most democratic” regime in Southeast Asia (Aspinall 2010, 29; Kurlantzick 2016, 231). This is not because Indonesia is a peaceful society by civilizational nature. After the Suharto dictatorship collapsed in 1998, radical forces agitated for an Islamic state and “stoked ethnic, religious, and separatist violence,” causing approximately nineteen thousand deaths (Aspinall 2010, 20, 25, 29). Terrorist groups launched church bombings on Christmas Eve in 2000, with more bombings in subsequent years. Yet a decade later, communal conflicts had receded, and extremist forces had been absorbed into mainstream politics (Aspinall 2010, 20). Indonesia remains a “flawed democracy” today (Bisara 2020), but it has two institutional features that are conducive to peaceful change. First, local parties that are more prone to

Peaceful and Non-Peaceful Change in Asia   245 mobilize on narrow ethnic interests are effectively excluded from national politics by the requirement that parties maintain a broad national presence, with functional branches in the majority of provinces and districts. Second, Indonesia introduced “big bang decentralization” to mollify local groups. Parties are similarly required to build cross-­ communal alliances to win local offices (Aspinall 2010, 26). Moreover, with democratic oversight, Detachment 88 enjoys a reputation for effective counterterrorism without committing massive abuses (Kurlantzick 2016, 228, 231). Indonesia offers instructive lessons for how other democracies with weak moderating institutional mechanisms have provided fertile ground for violent change. Elsewhere in Asia, Muslims have often been victims rather than perpetrators of violent change.

Hinduism, and Peaceful and Violent Change in India Contrary to Islam, which is often mentioned with violence in the same sentence, India’s Gandhi stands for peaceful change. Gandhi argued that Indians’ goal of national independence had to be achieved through satyagraha (nonviolence) because there was an “inviolable connection between the means and the end” (Dalton 1993, 9, 29). Nonviolence could work because all rulers were dependent on the cooperation of the ruled. The way to challenge the British Raj was not by attacking it but by refusing to cooperate with it. To put his ideas into practice, he mobilized mass civil disobedience campaigns, including a boycott of British textiles, resignation from official positions, and nonpayment of taxes (Dalton 1993, 7, 31, 66). The most famous campaign was the 1930 salt march, which called for the masses to make salt on beaches to defy the salt tax. The question “Where is the Gandhi of this or that movement?” presumes the above well-­known knowledge. However, India itself is not a case of untainted peaceful change even with Gandhi’s leadership. Gandhi’s core followers could always adhere to the instruction that “[y]ou will be beaten but you must not resist” (Ackerman and DuVall 2000, 90). Beyond his narrow circle, he complained that while “nonviolence is my creed,” it was merely “a policy” for the Indian National Congress (Dalton 1993, 42). It was even more difficult to enforce among the “dumb millions” (Dalton 1993, 32). At a demonstration meant to be part of a noncooperation civil disobedience campaign in Chauri Chaura in 1922, protesters responded to police brutality by setting fire to the local police station and killing all twenty-­two officers on duty (Dalton 1993, 47–48). The incident showed that “the more that civil disobedience sprang from local grievances rather than from national strategy, the more it was likely to stray from the nonviolent standard” (Ackerman and DuVall 2000, 101). Gandhi’s decades-­long campaigns made “scant progress toward either dominion ­status within the empire or outright independence” (Ackerman and DuVall 2000, 106).

246   Victoria Tin-bor Hui During the Second World War, Subhas Chandra Bose broke ranks with Gandhi. Arguing that “all means to Indian independence were permissible,” Bose formed the Indian National Army in 1943 by collecting British Indian prisoners of war from Germany and Japan, and participated in the Japanese invasion of India in 1944 (Borra  1975, 311; Gordon 2006, 104, 107). After Bose was killed in a plane crash, Gandhi declared that “his patriotism is second to none” and “his bravery shines through all his actions” (Gordon 2006, 103). Upon independence, India promulgated an unmistakably liberal constitution to secure “justice,” “liberty,” “equality,” and “fraternity” for all citizens (Bambrick 2020). Nevertheless, success in achieving independence was accompanied by unspeakable communal violence surrounding the partition. Hindu nationalists criticized Gandhi for giving too much to Muslims, while Muslims feared a Hindu raj worse than the British raj. Despite his godlike stature, Gandhi was killed by three shots fired by Nathuram Godse, an activist with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which viewed India as a Hindu civilization and non-­Hindus as “traitors and enemies” (Bhattacharjee 2019). This ideology has been institutionalized in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), whose leader, Narendra Modi, ran Gujarat in 2001–2014 and oversaw the pogrom against Muslims in 2002. In 2014, Modi defeated the secular Congress Party and became the prime minister. In 2019, he passed the discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Act, which could strip Muslims of citizenship (Human Rights Watch 2020). Gandhi’s “India” was plural and pluralistic. The fact that the world’s pioneering philosopher and activist for peaceful change could not prevent his fellow citizens from pursuing violent change illustrates the futility of the question “Where is the Gandhi of this or that movement?” It is more productive to follow Jackson’s (2010) approach to examine how “Indian civilization” can be transformed into “Hindu civilization” with periodic outbreaks of violent clashes. Indian democracy is often criticized for being majoritarian and lacking protection for minority rights. Nevertheless, the very possibility of peaceful change through the ballot box has helped to keep exclusive identities and practices somewhat in check.

Buddhism, and Peaceful and Violent Change in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Tibet Buddhism spans India, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Mongolia, Tibet, China, Korea, and Japan. It is generally seen to enjoy a “relative lack of violence” (DeVotta 2007, 1). Buddhism’s first ethical precept is the prohibition against killing any living beings, not just humans (Harris 1999, 7). As a polytheistic religion, Buddhism does not emphasize a monopoly of truth, which allows its adherents to be “among the most accommodating of people of other faiths” (DeVotta 2007, 1). The

Peaceful and Non-Peaceful Change in Asia   247 faithful should strive for personal enlightenment and karma by living a life full of love and compassion; abstaining from wrongful gratification of one’s senses; and resisting the unwholesome impulses of greed, envy, and anger, which provide the prime motives for violence (Payne and Nassar 2012, 41). Buddhism shares with other religions the same doctrinal ambiguity about violence. Buddhist ethics contains multiple moral theories rather than a single one (Frydenlund 2013, 112). The dual qualities of wisdom and compassion can come into conflict, depending on the context. While compassion dictates nonviolence, wisdom may sanction “expedient methods,” including the use of armed force if the “intention” is to “help ease the suffering of people, introduce them to the Dharma, or aid them in their quest for Nirvana” (Kent 2010, 146; Victoria 2010, 126, 128). Buddhism emphasizes “positive intention” and karma rather than justice; thus it does not have the same just war theory as Christianity. Nonetheless, Sinhalese monks such as Pannasiha, Bellanwila, and Rathana, who saw themselves as the “only true defenders of the nation and Buddhism,” developed a just war ideology (Bartholomeusz 2002; Frydenlund 2013, 103). When Buddhism is perceived to be in peril, whether real or imagined, nonviolence can be overruled (Frydenlund 2013, 102). Contradictory statements by Pannasiha are illustrative. On the one hand, “Buddhism, more than any other religion, has indeed contributed most towards promoting world peace. It is the teaching of tolerance and love” (Frydenlund 2013, 96). On the other hand, “it is the duty of the leader to protect the country. We can’t  tell the president to go to war, but we can tell her to protect the country” (Frydenlund 2013, 97). Buddhism also resembles other religions in its “ambiguous symbiosis” between the sangha (monastic order) and political power (Harris 1999, 19). In a relationship of “reciprocal protection” (Victoria  2010, 128–129), monks as ceremonial masters have lent legitimacy to state-­organized violence by bestowing spiritual protection on the army (Frydenlund 2013, 104, 106, 109). Frydenlund observes that the presumed pacifism of early Buddhists is as “questionable” as that of early Christians (Frydenlund 2013, 112). The Buddha himself was “reserved in advocating absolute pacifism vis-­a-­ vis kings” (Frydenlund  2013, 112). In more contested relationships, such as under antireligious communist and military rule, Buddhist orders have been targets of political repression, and monasteries have provided shelter to rebels and fugitives (Harris 1999, 2).

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka is a prominent example of how a “polyethnic heritage” has been remolded into an exclusivist ideology of Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism (DeVotta  2007, 2), with Huntingtonian outcomes. The Sri Lankan military’s final offensive to wipe out the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2010–2011 incurred forty thousand civilian deaths (Lynch 2011). The Tamil Tigers, who were well known for using suicide terrorism to agitate for minority rights, had their share of violations. Nonetheless, the United

248   Victoria Tin-bor Hui Nations judged that the Sri Lankan military should bear the primary responsibility for the “patterns of grave violations, including indiscriminate shelling, extrajudicial ­killings, enforced disappearances, harrowing accounts of torture and sexual ­violence, and recruitment of children” committed between 2002 and 2011 (2015). Support for the military solution was “the hegemonic position” within the sangha (Frydenlund 2013, 97, 99). How could the Buddhist Sinhalese justify seeking political change through war crimes and crimes against humanity? At the heart of Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist ideology is the conflation of “the land, the race and the faith” (Kent  2010, 162; McGowan 2012). The belief that “the country is Sihadipa (island of the Sinhalese) and Dhammadipa (the island ennobled to preserve and propagate Buddhism)” sets up the primacy of Sinhalese Buddhism and tells other ethnoreligious communities that they can live on the land “only due to Sinhalese Buddhist sufferance” (DeVotta 2007, vii). In 2002, leading monks petitioned against a ceasefire agreement, stating that the LTTE is not interested in peace but in the establishment of a powerful Tamil state within the territory of Sri Lanka. . . . [T]he failure to prevent [the ceasefire] will result in the subjugation of the majority race by the minority Tamils and the extermination of the Sinhala race and the Buddha Sasana from this island. (Frydenlund 2013, 98–99)

This civil war should be traced to institutional problems rather than civilizational characteristics. It originated from the British colonial policy of giving preference to the Tamil minority over the Sinhalese majority. Upon independence, leading monks championed the “restoration” of Buddhism by introducing discriminatory linguistic, educational, and economic policies against minorities (DeVotta 2007, vii). In response to Tamil protests, the Senanayake-­Chelvanayagam Pact of 1965 sought to grant protection to the Tamil language and Tamil land rights, but it was abandoned as a result of opposition from leading Buddhist monks (Frydenlund 2013, 97). The Tamils called for a separate state in the 1970s and began to kill soldiers in 1983 (DeVotta 2007, viii). India and Norway mediated rounds of peace talks and proposed devolution of autonomy to the Tamils. While international mediators viewed suppression of minorities as the root of the conflict, Sinhalese saw the Tamil demand for autonomy as a threat to national and territorial unity (Frydenlund  2013, 97–98). The Tamils’ escalation to suicide t­ errorism only reinforced the Sinhalese position that the “terrorists” should be eradicated by military means (Frydenlund  2013, 96–97, 101–102). In 2004, Buddhist monks formed the National Sinhala Heritage Party (Jathika Hela Urumaya, JHU) and won nine seats in the parliament on a “Buddhist revivalist and anti-­ negotiation ticket” (Frydenlund 2013, 99). In 2005, Mahinda Rajapaksa became the president on an ­antinegotiation platform (Frydenlund 2013, 100). The civil war intensified in 2006, and the government withdrew from peace talks in 2008, paving the way for the final solution in 2010–2011.

Peaceful and Non-Peaceful Change in Asia   249

Myanmar Myanmar is not just another example of Buddhist repression of Muslim minorities. It is also the mirror image of Indonesia, demonstrating how the absence of moderating institutions correlates with the rise of radicalism during democratic transition. What the Myanmar military called “clearance operations” began in August 2017 after the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army attacked police and security posts. In The Gambia v. Myanmar, filed at the International Court of Justice in 2019, the former stated that the “systematic destruction by fire” of villages, “often with inhabitants locked inside burning houses,” along with the “widespread and systematic killing of women and girls, the systematic selection of women and girls of reproductive ages for rape, attacks on pregnant women and on babies, the mutilation and other injuries to their reproductive organs,” marked a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing” and constituted “genocidal acts” to “destroy the Rohingya as a group, in whole or in part” (United Nations 2019). More than 700,000 people escaped to neighboring Bangladesh. Aung San Suu Kyi attended the hearing on behalf of Myanmar and denied “genocidal intent” (United Nations 2019). The same Aung San Suu Kyi once campaigned for regime change through peaceful ballots. Her father, Aung San, was not unlike India’s Bose in founding the Myanmar Armed Forces and collaborating with Japanese forces to oust the British. However, unlike India, where democracy has been the norm since independence, Myanmar has been subject to various forms of military rule. In 1988, longtime dictator Ne Win allowed elections but then declared martial law when the opposition won a landslide. Aung San Suu Kyi became the leader of the newborn democracy movement, both because of her father’s legacy and because of her own “model of courage” (Silverstein 1996, 200–201). Under house arrest, she eloquently articulated “freedom from fear” as “the sharpest weapon” against regime violence (Aung San Suu Kyi 1991, 20). Nevertheless, many were silenced by fear, and others were radicalized to take up arms. Between 1988 and 1990 more than ten thousand Burman students fled to border areas under the control of ethnic minority armies (Beer 1995, 76). Buddhist monks, outraged by mass shootings of unarmed Burmese students, joined the resistance. They went on strike by refusing to accept offerings from soldiers and their families or perform any religious rites for them, effectively excommunicating the military. In retaliation, the army did not hesitate to move against even the most respected segment of Burmese society (Lintner  2009, 35). Monasteries were raided. Monks were forced to disrobe, sent to hard labor camps, and used as porters at the front lines of the civil war in the ethnic border states (Lintner 2009, 35). In 2007, monks again marched in the streets in the “Saffron Revolution” and suffered another bloody crackdown (Human Rights Watch 2007). In the darkest years, Myanmar was spoken in the same breath as North Korea. In March 2011, another former general, Thein Sein, came to power. He released Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest and other political prisoners from jails, lifted press censorship,

250   Victoria Tin-bor Hui and opened peace talks with ethnic armies (Strangio 2020, 179). Most dramatically, he allowed elections in 2015, and Aung San Suu Kyi led the National League for Democracy (NLD) to a staggering victory. By 2015, however, a Buddhist nationalist movement that portrayed Islam as a religion of violence and Myanmar’s Muslims as foreigners in their own country was brewing. The Association for the Protection of Race and Religion, with ties to radical monks, succeeded in pressing the government to pass a series of laws on interfaith marriage, polygamy, family planning, and religious conversion. During the election campaigns, the NLD excluded Muslims from its candidate list in order to avoid criticism from Buddhist nationalists (Zin 2016, 122). While the elections were generally free, approximately half a million Rohingya Muslims, the national and religious ‘others,’ were disenfranchised (Walton 2017; Zin 2016, 124). Aung San Suu Kyi once argued that “it is not power that corrupts but fear”—the “fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it” (1991; 1980, 184). Now in power, she explained away anti-­Muslim discrimination and anti-­Rohingya violence as “rule-­of-­law deficiencies rather than taking a clear moral position against violence” (Zin 2016, 123). Sitagu Sayadaw, one of Myanmar’s most revered monks, who once resisted the military and went into exile in 1988, has made a more dramatic turn in openly agitating for military actions against Muslims. His sermons had a “chilling purpose: to provide a religious justification for the mass killing of non-­Buddhists,” telling soldiers that “those they kill are not fully human” (Walton 2017). The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army’s attacks on government targets in October 2016 and August 2017 further consolidated Burmans’ belief that Islam was inherently violent and posed an existential threat to Buddhism. Once all Rohingya came to be seen as “terrorists,” “genocidal acts” could be justified “in Buddhism’s name” (Walton 2017).

Tibet Tibet has similarly struggled for independence and autonomy. At issue is whether Tibet was historically independent, so that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) conquered it by force, as in the Tibetan narrative, or it was historically a part of China, so that the PLA arrived to “peacefully liberate” it, as in the Chinese account. According to the late Tibetologist Elliot Sperling, “Tibet was not ‘Chinese’ until Mao Zedong’s armies marched in” (Sperling 2008). The International Commission of Jurists concluded in the report “The Question of Tibet and the Rule of Law” that “Tibet [had] been to all intents and purposes an independent country and [had] enjoyed a large degree of sovereignty” (1959). It ruled that there was “a prima facie case of genocide against the People’s Republic of China,” which committed acts that were “intentionally directed towards the destruction of the Tibetan religion and the Tibetan nation” (International Commission of Jurists 1959). Beijing’s “violation” of the Seventeen Point Agreement of 1951, which promised autonomy to Tibet and religious and social rights to Tibetans, should be

Peaceful and Non-Peaceful Change in Asia   251 regarded as a release of the Tibetan government from its obligations (International Commission of Jurists 1959). Tibet long believed in the protection of isolation. The government maintained only a small contingent of troops, who were quickly overrun by the PLA. When monks and nuns, the most respected members of Tibetan culture, were violated, a well-­connected elite, Gompo Tashi, organized the Chushi-­Gangdruk armed resistance, with military training and weapons drops from the US Central Intelligence Agency (Dunham 2004, 191). In 1956–1959, thousands of monks “returned the vow” and joined Gompo Tashi. The youthful Dalai Lama formally appointed Gompo Tashi commander in chief before fleeing to India. The Dalai Lama has since stated that the guerrilla fighters followed Buddhism’s “right intention,” but armed resistance was doomed to fail because Tibetans were vastly outnumbered and outgunned by the PLA (The Dalai Lama  1990, 287; Dunham 2004, foreword, 149, 289, 411). Inside Tibet, Tibetans who have dared to wave Tibet’s national flag and called for the return of the Dalai Lama have been routinely crushed (Dorjee 2015). During a major uprising in 2008, Tibetans set fire to Chinese-­owned shops in Lhasa. The Dalai Lama announced that he would step down if Tibetans continued with any violent means of protest. Since then, monks and nuns have turned to self-­immolations, hurting themselves instead of Han Chinese (Shakya 2012). Even self-­immolations have been subject to collective punishment, with family members and fellow monks or nuns being subjected to years of imprisonment and torture. Tibetans also started Lhakar cultural re­sist­ance to speak in Tibetan and buy only at Tibetan-­owned shops to counter “cultural genocide” (Shakya 2012). Yet a Tibetan who tried to save the Tibetan language, as promised by the Chinese constitution, has been sentenced to five years in prison (Buckley 2018). Tibet shows that, in some cases, the regime is so repressive and competent that there are few, if any, options for change, peaceful or otherwise. As Pankaj Mishra puts it, “China’s repressive policies and an efficient network of spies have ensured that no Gandhi-­style mass movement emerges” (Mishra 2005).

Confucianism, Chinese Civilization, and Peaceful and Violent Change in China “Always remember that China is a civilization rather than a nation-­state,” Bruno Macaes recounts he was repeatedly told by Chinese officials and intellectuals (2020). The bleakness of Tibet offers a cautionary tale that the civilizational rhetoric could mean the opposite of what was intended. Mao Zedong famously declared that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun” (1938). Since being consolidated in power, the Communist Party has taken violent

252   Victoria Tin-bor Hui ­ easures not just to achieve political change but also to prevent bottom-­up regime m change. The newly born People’s Republic of China (PRC) championed “peaceful coexistence” but invaded Tibet in 1951–1959 and committed genocide against Tibetans. Against Han Chinese, the party persecuted all religions and launched multiple deadly campaigns. According to R. J. Rummel’s estimate, Mao killed 37.8 million noncombatants between 1923 and 1976 (1991, 8). Mao tops the list of “megamurderers” of the twentieth century, second only to Stalin’s 42.6 million and ahead of Hitler’s 21 million (Rummel 1991, 8). His predecessor, Chiang Kai-­shek of the Nationalist Party, was not far behind, ranking fourth, with 10.2 million deaths in half the time, from 1921 to 1948 (Rummel 1991, 8). Since the Tiananmen massacre of 1989 (Lim  2014), Chinese leaders seem to have adopted a minimalist understanding of “peace”—the absence of outright killing—to ward off regime change. The ruling party has turned to “stability maintenance” by deploying the tools of economic incentives, dismissal from employment, surveillance, arrest, imprisonment, and torture. Among Han Chinese, many have focused on improving their economic lot, so that only isolated dissidents have been subject to repression. In Tibet and Xinjiang, by comparison, the majorities have undergone waves of “strike hard” campaigns (Doyon  2019; Economist  2019). Tibetans and Uighurs in exile have accused Chinese leaders of “cultural genocide,” attempting to eliminate their identity by persecuting cultural leaders, transferring children away from their families, restricting the use of the native language, banning the display of religious identity, and more (Samphel et al. 2017).1 Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang have fared the worst. Similar to the authorities in Sri Lanka and Myanmar, Beijing has exploited the global “war on terror” against Muslims. Uighurs are banned from Islamic practices, including growing beards, wearing veils, and fasting during Ramadan (Cronin-­Furman 2018; Robertson 2020). Large portions of the adult population have been put in “reeducation camps” and forced labor facilities (Millward  2019). By 2020, even Hong Kong was falling to the fate of Xinjiang and Tibet. As the majority of Hong Kongers have developed a distinctive identity and staged sustained protests, Beijing has likewise labeled protesters “terrorists” and imposed a draconian national security law to make the once free city safe for the regime (Davis and Hui 2020). How should analysts make sense of Chinese leaders’ century-­long repression? Isn’t China’s civilization Confucian? Confucius shunned “matters of armies and campaigns” (Hui 2018, 150). Mencius decried those who claimed “I am skilled in making formations” or “I am skilled in making war” as “criminals” (Hui 2018, 150). He also called for peaceful change of international politics by unity under “the one who has no proclivity toward killing” (Hui 2018, 152). How can megamurder and genocide be squared with Confucianism? The answer is familiar by now: Huntingtonian outcomes follow when a plural and pluralist civilization is reduced to a singular Sinocentric nationalism. Henry Kissinger takes for granted “the singularity of China” and its “cultural cohesion” grounded in Confucianism (2012, 5, 19, 60). However, as Fudan University’s Ge Zhaoguang argues, “Chinese cultural tradition is plural, not singular” (Ge 2018, 95). Like India, “China” was not always politically “one” (Ge 2018, 120). The Chinese term for “China,” zhongguo, originally meant “central states” in the plural form, rather than

Peaceful and Non-Peaceful Change in Asia   253 “Middle Kingdom” in the singular form. Kissinger faithfully regurgitates the Chinese narrative that “[e]ach period of disunity was viewed as an aberration,” so that “[a]fter each collapse, the Chinese state reconstituted itself as if by some immutable law of nature” (2012, 6–7). Yet as historian Peter Lorge points out, “[h]owever compelling the idea of a unified empire was in the abstract,” competing central states “did not reflexively or ‘naturally’ condense into a large, territorially contiguous . . . state ­following a period of disunity” (2005, 27, 9). Ge Jianxiong, also of Fudan University, is the most blunt: “[U]nity—this sacred term—has been repeatedly associated with war” (Ge 1994, 184). China’s civilization was also ethnically plural and pluralist. The very notion of “Han Chinese” was forged out of an immense cultural and ethnic diversity in early China (Hui 2020). The Qin dynasty was built on “a mixed space that intermingled a wide variety of races, ideas, cultures, and regions” (Ge 2018, 101). Early Han emperors formed diplomatic marriages with the Xiongnu. The Xianbei Tuoba, who dominated Northern China in the fifth century, also cultivated marriage ties with fallen ruling houses (Graff 2002, 73). The Sui’s and the Tang’s early emperors emerged from this mixed-­blood elite and could claim the titles “the Sage Khan” and the “Great Khan” as well as the “Son of Heaven” (Ge  2018, 102–103). Nevertheless, the Sinocentric narrative of the Han Chinese as the civilized and foreigners as the barbarous, once constructed, was conducive to extermination and genocide (Hui forthcoming). David Kang argues that China maintained a “Confucian society” with Confucianized neighbors but a “parabellum society” with “nomads” (Kang  2010, 9). He omits the logical conclusion of this Huntingtonian rhetoric. The Han dynasty’s Emperor Wu (martial), while promoting Confucianism as the state doctrine, depicted the Xiongnu as “enem[ies] of virtue and humanity” to whom Confucian benevolence did not apply (Zhu and Wang 2008, 273). His campaigns killed or captured 489,500 Xiongnu from 133 to 91 BCE (Psarras 2003, 150). The Qing’s Emperor Qianlong even inflicted a “genocide,” a “final solution,” on Zunghar Mongols because they had “turned their back on civilization” (Perdue 2005, 155, 285, 431–432). The traditions of the Han Chinese were no less composed of “paradoxes and tensions” (Pines  2012, 4–5). It is erroneous to take Confucianism as all of China’s tradition. Confucianism was one among a “hundred [meaning many] schools of thought” born in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (770–221 BCE). It had to contest with a multitude of conflicting traditions, especially the legalist and military schools that explicitly advocated change by winning victories in war and maximizing state domination over society. Sun-­tzu’s Art of War reads in the very first line, “Warfare is the greatest affair of state, the basis of life and death, the Way to survival or extinction” (Sawyer 1994, ch. 1). The Sima fa (the Marshal’s Art of War) contends that “if one must kill men to give peace to the people, then killing is permissible” (Brooks and Brooks 2015, 116). As John Fairbank pointed out, Chinese emperors “took great pains to claim that their rule was based on the Confucian teachings of social order, even while they used the methods of the Legalists as the basis for their institutions and policy decisions” (1974, 11). All ensuing dynasties followed this policy of “Legalism with Confucian façade” (Hsiao 1977, 137).

254   Victoria Tin-bor Hui Confucianism itself is not unlike other world philosophical thoughts in that it contains both elements that support peace and those that justify war. Yan Xuetong contends that Confucianism should not be equated with pacifism, because Confucius and Mencius “support just wars” to “uphold the norms of benevolence and justice between states” (Yan 2011, 35, 41). However, the Qin state vanquished all other states through violence and cunning (Hui 2005, ch. 2). Indeed, Yan observes that Qin practiced not just territorial annexation but also population annihilation, because the survivors would otherwise “seek to restore their state and annex you in turn” (Yan and Huang 2011, 131). This is a crime against humanity that cannot be defined away as just war. Nonetheless, Qin’s First Emperor understood the need for legitimacy. He “declared himself Sage,” celebrated the success of “punitive expeditions” against “bandit rebels,” and claimed that he put “the black-­haired people . . . at peace” (Pines 2012, 20, 55). Shi Yinhong of People’s University observes that Qin pioneered a tradition of total conquest that was “more Napoleonic than Napoleon and more Clausewitzian than Clausewitz” (Shi 2011, 6). How, then, was China’s plural and pluralist civilization rendered singular? Ge Zhaoguang zooms in on the practice of narrating “one history” (Ge 2018, 25–26; Hui 2020). The Qin-­commissioned text Lushi chunqiu promoted the ideology that “there is no turmoil greater than the absence of the Son of Heaven; without the Son of Heaven, the strong overcome the weak, the many lord it over the few, they incessantly use arms to harm each other” (Pines 2012, 44). If disunity was defined as war by fiat while unity was defined as peace, then it followed that the very success of winning “all under Heaven” represented a virtue. After vanquishing other states and populations, Qin burned defeated states’ records to bury alternative histories. The ensuing Han dynasty appointed the Grand Historian, Sima Qian, to write the Historical Records (Shiji), the first effort to trace China’s origins to mythical times. After the Han, China would experience centuries of division and hybridization. Nevertheless, the Tang’s Emperor Taizong, of mixed descent, claimed Han lineage and ordered the writing of singular official histories for previous eras. His efforts established the tradition of “the continuity of the Way” ­(daotong), which further strengthened the construction of a singular civilization (Ge  2018, 19). Subsequent dynasties, whether established by Hans or “barbarians” or “semi-­barbarians,” would all claim that “they were ‘China’ ” (Ge 2018, 19). Katzenstein notes that today’s Chinese scholars readily take the notion of “­all-­embracing unity (dayitong)” as the uncontested, “profound and essential value deeply embedded in Chinese culture and history” (2010, 13). Some call China a “­civilizational state” (Zhang  2012) and the ruling party the “Chinese Civilization (rather than Communist) Party” (Mahbubani 2020). This essentialization of civilization may be intended to project “peaceful rise” but may send the opposite message. The civilizational rhetoric not only glosses over the long practice of genocide against minorities and neighbors but also gives fuel to the “fear” that “China is a ‘civilizational power’ that will seek to remake the international order in its own image” (Allison 2017; Reus-­Smit 2018, 223).

Peaceful and Non-Peaceful Change in Asia   255

Conclusion A post-­essentialist framework sheds light on why seemingly pacifist civilizations and religions have been associated with terrorism, communal violence, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Asia. All religions promote peaceful change but justify violent change. All civilizations have Gandhi-­like advocates for peaceful change but also leaders who agitate for violent change. Paradoxically, it is the very plural and pluralist nature of various religions and civilizations that has provided the fertile ground for the reduction to singular identities. The prevalence of conflicts and weakness of inclusive institutions have supplied the contexts for the politicization of religion. The important question is not “Where is the Gandhi of this or that movement?” but why the Gandhis have had a hard time converting their opposites in various societies. Although practices can theoretically be undone, they have tended to become hardened. Once violent clashes have started, it is immensely difficult for even committed peace advocates to redirect events toward peaceful change. The rise of self-­proclaimed civilization-­states and the global retreat of democracy in recent years have only exacerbated the surge of ethnonationalism (Macaes 2020).

Note 1. The adjective cultural is meant to highlight the absence of mass killing. However, the legal definition of genocide includes but is not restricted to killing (Rummel 1994, 33).

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chapter 14

Evolu tiona ry Theor iz ation of Peacefu l I n ter nationa l Ch a nges Shiping Tang

Ever since Charles Darwin (1859), social scientists have been attracted to evolutionary theorizing or thinking in social sciences (e.g., Donald Campbell, Alfred Marshall, George Herbert Mead, and Thorstein Veblen, to name just a few). Despite their various (mis-) understandings about biological and social evolution, these giants have shared a fundamental conviction with which I concur: the complex system called human society is an evolutionary system; consequently, social sciences must be evolutionary sciences. For these advocates of evolutionary social sciences, nothing in human society makes sense unless in the light of (social) evolution, to paraphrase Dobzhansky (1973). Unsurprisingly, after a brief hiatus after World War II due to our repulsion against social Darwinism (or more accurately, “social Spencerism”), evolutionary thinking and theorization has enjoyed a vigorous comeback in the social sciences (for a more detailed treatment, see Tang 2020), including international relations (IR). This essay examines evolutionary theorization of peaceful international changes.1 The rest of this essay is divided into four sections. After this brief introduction, the first section explains why an evolutionary approach is a powerful paradigm, perhaps the ultimate paradigm, for theorizing social changes. The second section clarifies several misunderstandings regarding evolution and then highlights a few key aspects of social evolution. The third section briefly summarizes several key studies of international relations (IR) with an evolutionary flavor. Section four singles out a few key directions for promising research. I conclude by highlighting the power of the social evolutionary approach and calling for more students of IR to embrace the approach when tackling peaceful international changes.

262   Shiping Tang A brief caveat is in order. Due to space constraints, I have kept references to the literature of evolutionary biology and social sciences to a minimum. Interested readers should refer to Tang (2020) for a more detailed discussion of a host of issues addressed here.

Why an Evolutionary Approach toward Human Society? Ever since Heraclitus uttered the words, “[N]o man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river, and he’s not the same man,” students of the natural and social worlds have appreciated that explaining continuity and change of the world around us, or more precisely, change with continuity, is the most fundamental challenge for all sciences. Broadly speaking, we can identify two types of change (i.e., nontransformational and transformational) and two levels of analysis (i.e., units and system). Once we differentiate the two types of change and the two levels of analysis, it becomes clear that in social sciences there are three positions regarding the challenge posed by change with continuity. The first position is to deny any change at both the unit level and the system level: only this position is genuinely static. Obviously, this position is untenable, and few, if any, social scientists take such a position. The second position has three variants: (1) admitting only nontransformational changes at both the unit level and the system level; (2) admitting transformational changes at the unit level but not at the system level; (3) admitting transformational changes at the system level but not at the unit level. The first and the third variants have been rare, and the closest thing might have been those schools that can only contemplate cyclical changes at the system level but admit no transformational changes at the unit level (e.g., Gilpin 1981; Modelski 1990). The second variant has been far more common, prominently represented by structural functionalism in sociology and structural realism in IR (e.g., Waltz 1979, 66; Mearsheimer 2001, 2). Crucially, all three variants within the second position can claim to be dynamic, to a various degree. None of them, however, can claim to be genuinely evolutionary. The third position is to admit both types of change at both levels and thus has the potential to be genuinely evolutionary. Obviously, in the long history of human society, both units (e.g., individuals, collectives), different human societies, and the whole humanity have undergone both nontransformational and transformational changes. It is this presence of both nontransformational and transformational change with continuity at both the unit level and the system level that demands all social sciences to acquire a genuinely evolutionary approach. This is because only a genuinely evolutionary approach is up to the task. So where does evolutionism’s power come from? Its power primarily rests on three fronts. Foremost, evolutionism is exceptional at explaining the wonders of life—the great diversity, the marvelous adaptation of organisms to their environment, the similarities

Evolutionary Theorization of Peaceful International Changes   263 and differences among organisms of the same species, and the similarities among different but related species—on Earth and other places in the universe; the same evolutionary central mechanism of variation-­selection-­inheritance (VSI) applies. No other theory or approach (i.e., nonevolutionary and partially evolutionary approaches) has ever come close.2 Second, evolutionism subsumes or unifies all other micro- or meso-­level mechanisms in biological evolution. Evolutionism, as Daniel Dennett (1995, 62) puts it, proves to be “a universal acid” that dissolves everything. Finally, evolutionism makes most exogenous (i.e., driven by external factors or force) explanations of life unsatisfactory and, more importantly, unnecessary.3 In sum, evolutionism is elegant, powerful, and endogenous: it triumphs over all other explanations for the wonder of life on (and very likely, beyond) Earth, and it is my contention that the evolutionary approach holds equally powerful potential for understanding the complexities, wonders, and tragedies of human society, including IR.

Evolution: From Biological to Social Although Darwin made his revolutionary theory known to the world over 150 years ago, and evolutionary biology has established the core facts of biological evolution beyond any reasonable doubt in the past half-­century, misunderstandings about evolution and the evolutionary paradigm abound (for a classic introduction, see Mayr 2001). Here, I  merely single out several common misunderstandings of (biological and social) evolution before I move on. 1. “Evolution means ‘survival of the fittest.’ ” This is perhaps the most prevailing misunderstanding about evolution and evolutionism. In truth, as Darwin recognized long ago (1859, 201–202, 472), biological evolution does not dictate survival of the fittest at all: biological evolution only means the survival of the fitter among individual organisms within the same species and the survival of the fitter species in a specific environment. As such, fitness in biological evolution is always relative but can never be absolute in any sense. In other words, biological evolution only dictates survival of the fitter in a specific environment, but never the survival of the fittest in an absolute sense. 2. Evolution means adaptation with will (or destiny). An organism’s adaptation to its environment is the outcome of evolution via natural selection. Adaptationism via will (or destiny) has no explanation for the origin of organisms’ will to adapt in the first place. 3. Evolution is essentially equivalent from development, or an unfolding of destiny or design in stages, progressively. This is due to Herbert Spencer’s equating evolution with development.

264   Shiping Tang 4. Biological evolution is purely neo-­Darwinian. Not anymore. Four discoveries, namely epigenetic inheritance, transmission of prion-­like diseases, niche construction, and parental effect, have all called for some admission of non-­neo-­Darwinian inheritance. These new discoveries imply that the transmission of instruction or information (with gene being only one form) and phenotype in biological evolution is far more complex than the gene-­centric and externalist Modern Synthesis has anticipated: evolutionary biology is now moving toward an Extended Synthesis (Danchin et al. 2011; Danchin 2013). As a result, labeling biological evolution as a whole as Darwinian, Lamarckian, and Spencerian has become increasingly unhelpful, if not counterproductive (Tang 2020, chap. 2, n.d.) Social evolution is even less neo-­Darwinian (Tang 2017b, n.d.). Although social evolution shares some key similarities with biological evolution, there are also fundamental differences between the two. All the differences between biological evolution and social evolution can be traced to the coming of a transformational new force—the ideational force—to social evolution. Ideas play a role in social evolution but not in biological evolution. Moreover, the coming of ideational forces does not mean that material forces no longer operate in social evolution. Rather, the two forces interact with each other to drive social evolution, thus making social evolution a phenomenon far more complex than biological evolution. Altogether, the central mechanism in the ideational dimension of social evolution can be both artificial variation-­selection-­ inheritance (VSI) and selection-­variation-­inheritance (SVI). Moreover, only theorization with the central mechanism of artificial VSI or SVI can be genuinely evolutionary.

Information and Expression/Phenotypes in Social Evolution In biological evolution, there is only one kind of information (or replicator, in a loose sense) and interactor (or phenotype, in a loose sense)—the material or biological kind. In social evolution, there are two broader types of replicator and interactor; in addition to the material kind, there is also an ideational kind. Moreover, in the ideational dimension of social evolution, there can be multiple pairs of replicator and interactor, depending on the level of analysis.

Mutations in Social Evolution: Random and Blind versus Nonrandom and Directed In biological evolution, mutations are generated essentially randomly by three major mechanisms: DNA damages/nucleotide changes, recombination or genetic material exchanges (e.g., chromosome transposition, genetic crossing-­over), and external invasion. More critically, these mutations are also generated blindly, in the absolute sense:

Evolutionary Theorization of Peaceful International Changes   265 organisms cannot know whether a mutation is advantageous or not. In the biological dimension of human evolution, these mechanisms and principles still hold. In social evolution, however, ideational variations (or mutations) can be random and blind but also nonrandom and directed. Yet just because ideas are not generated randomly and blindly does not mean that a phenotype expressed from an idea will always be ‘fit’ in a given social system: ideational phenotypes or expressions are still subjected to artificial selection.

Complex Multilevel Selection in Social Evolution Selection in social evolution is also far more complex. In biological evolution, there is only one source of selection pressure: the physical environment. In contrast, in social evolution, there are two sources of selection pressure: the physical environment and human beings themselves. These two sources of selection pressure interact with each other to drive social evolution. Furthermore, because of the coming of ideational forces in social evolution, there are also two different types of selection pressure: material and ideational. Three critical aspects of selection in social evolution are worth emphasizing. Most critically, artificial selection rather than natural selection dominates the ideational dimension of social evolution, although this artificial selection still has to operate within the constraints dictated by the physical environment. Moreover, within the ideational dimension, different forces of selection may operate at different levels, while at the same time the same force of selection may operate differently at different levels. Finally, because human beings are creatures with (high) consciousness, human agents are not only producers of ideational mutations, but equally importantly, agents of selection in the ideational evolution of social evolution. Meanwhile, from the interaction between material forces and ideational forces, there arises a critical selection force in social evolution: (social) power.

Evolutionary Theorization of International Relations: From Anti/Pseudo to Genuine Despite some evolutionary elements scattered around (which I cannot discuss here due to space constraints), much of mainstream IR theorization has been nonevolutionary and even anti-­evolutionary. Most prominently, by seeking to explain the whole history of international politics with a single grand theory, major IR theorists have been implicitly assuming that the fundamental nature of international politics has remained roughly the same or, more precisely, that human society has experienced a single phase of international politics (Tang 2013). As such, all major grand IR theories have been

266   Shiping Tang nonevolutionary theories. Waltz provided the clearest statement on this implicit assumption: “The texture of international politics remains highly constant, patterns recur, and events repeat themselves endlessly,” and he attributed the cause of this “striking sameness in the quality of international politics” to “the enduring anarchic character of international politics” (1979, 66, emphasis added; see also Gilpin 1981, 7; Mearsheimer 2001, 2). Modelski (1990) touted his “long cycle” of power shift as an evolutionary theory of IR. Yet his whole enterprise is metaphorically evolutionary at best, and pseudo-­evolutionary at worst. Modelski did not grasp the basics of biological or social evolution. Evolution, whether biological or social, does not go through cycles. More critically, the central mechanism of evolution—the mechanism of variation-­selection-­inheritance—has no role in his whole enterprise. Indeed, even his scheme of “long cycles” is merely an observation with dubious validity. Thayer (2004) advanced a theory on the origins of war and the necessity of offensive realism as states’ guiding theory in their pursuit of security, drawing exclusively from sociobiology. Unfortunately, the sociobiological approach toward the origin of war is inherently invalid (for detailed critique, see Tang 2013, chap. 2 and the citations there). Hendrik Spruyt’s (1994) explanation for the rise of the sovereign territorial state in the European international system between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries was a genuinely social evolutionary theory. Critically building upon Mann (1986), Tilly (1975, 1992), and many others, Spruyt emphasizes variation and selection as two crucial steps for understanding why and how a particular form of state (i.e., the sovereign territorial state) eventually came to dominate the system. Spruyt argues that the sovereign territorial state was more capable of protecting trade and extracting revenue and thus had a long-­term advantage in competing against the other two possible forms of gov­ern­ ance (i.e., city leagues, city state). His overall thesis represents a major step toward a more adequate explanation of the rise of the territorial state and sovereignty within the medieval to early modern European system. First appearing in an article and then a volume, Tang (2010, 2013) advanced the first systematic statement regarding the evolution of the international system from around 8000 bce to the present. Briefly, Tang first identified four “worlds” or epochs in human history: the peaceful paradise before the onset of war in different subsystems; the bloody offensive realist world after the onset of war in which states either conquered or were conquered; the defensive realist world after the rise of sovereignty and nationalism circa 1648–1945; and the more rule-­based system that is still unfolding today. Throughout, Tang deployed the central mechanism of artificial VSI/SVI for explaining the transformations from one world to the next. Tang’s social evolution paradigm (SEP)-based account of the grand transformations of the international system shows that the three grand theories of international politics are from and thus for different epochs of international politics. More specifically, offensive realism was right, but it is wrong and will be wrong: its policy prescriptions will produce disasters in today’s and tomorrow’s world. In contrast, defensive realism was wrong—its policy prescriptions would be suicidal in an offensive realist world—but it has been right and may remain right for a while. Finally, neoliberalism was wrong—its

Evolutionary Theorization of Peaceful International Changes   267 policy prescription, too, would be suicidal in an offensive realist world—but it might have become more right after World War II and may become more right in the future. Put differently, whereas offensive realism is a theory for the past, defensive realism is a theory for the present and a limited future, and neoliberalism is a theory for a limited present and more for the future. Tang’s SEP-­based account of the grand transformations of the international system thus has neatly dissolved the debates between the three grand theories. In two articles, Tang (2008) and Tang and Long (2012) also deployed SEP to explain changes and continuities in states’ security behavior. Tang (2008) sought to explain China’s shifting from a security strategy of offensive realism under Mao Tse-­tung to one of defensive realism under Deng Xiaoping. Briefly, China under Mao adopted an ideology of overthrowing all imperialist and “reactionary” regimes in Asia and the world at large. Thus, China under Mao, like the former Soviet Union, actively supported revolutions and insurgencies in many developing countries, thereby intentionally threatening those countries, which were identified as imperialists, or their lackeys and proxies. Moreover, as a staunch Marxist, Mao believed that conflicts in international politics are necessary and inevitable—to transform the world into a socialist world, struggles, including armed struggles, against imperialists and their proxies are inevitable and necessary. Furthermore, China under Mao largely believed that all of the People’s Republic’s security problems were due to other countries’ evil policies, rather than the interactions between China and other states. China under Mao thus had little understanding about the dynamics of the security dilemma (Tang 2009). After the launching of open-­and-­reform in 1978 by Deng Xiaoping, however, China has firmly settled into a defensive realism strategy. So what explained this profound change? Tang (2008) argued that the setbacks brought by Mao’s disastrous domestic and foreign policies made a fundamental rethinking of China’s domestic and foreign policies inevitable after Mao’s death. After Deng had wrestled power from Mao’s anointed successor, Deng renounced Mao’s disastrous policies and adopted a fundamentally new set of domestic and foreign policies that included open-­and-­reform and improving relations with both superpowers and China’s neighbors. This profound change has been an outcome of (negative) artificial selection via learning. Tang and Long (2012) deployed SEP to explain the continuity in post–World War II United States (US) military interventionism. After the US invasion of Iraq, there was a heated debate regarding this puzzle that often pitted ideas against material forces (especially US military power), with even many realists stressing the overwhelming power of ideas embodied in the minds of neoconservatives. Tang and Long (2012) contend that this one-­sided emphasis on the power of ideas is incomplete and misleading. Taking advantage of SEP’s synthesizing power, their explanation combines both ideas and material forces via the central mechanism of VSI/SVI. Specifically, they argue that US military interventionism cannot be understood as the product of ideational forces alone. Rather, two crucial material variables, namely ­geography and aggregate power amplified by superior technological prowess, are

268   Shiping Tang i­n­dis­pen­sa­ble for understanding the propensity for America to intervene militarily abroad. Briefly, due to America’s unique geographical location and enormous power advantage over other states, the majority of American elites and citizens have been shielded from the devastation of war. Compared to citizens in other major states, American citizens in general have consequently tended to be less repelled by the use of force as an instrument of statecraft. Likewise, American elites have tended to support the use of force abroad more enthusiastically than the elites of other major countries. Consequently, ideas that support military interventions abroad are more likely to win in the American marketplace of ideas, and thus America since World War II has been far more active in military interventions overseas than other major states.

Peaceful International Changes: Five Issue Domains By any measure, international politics has become more peaceful, measured by the number of both interstate and intrastate wars (Cederman et al. 2017). As such, we should expect more peaceful international changes than we are used to. So what useful lessons can we draw from SEP, regarding theorizing peaceful international changes? This section identifies five key issue domains. For the first three issue domains, I have some concrete ideas, whereas the last two are emerging new phenomena about which I can only offer some speculations.

The Future of a Rule-­Based International System: Power, Ideas, and Artificial Selection Judged by the total numbers of rules and the general tendency of states to obey some of the rules, the international system has become more rule-­based or institutionalized (Simmons  2000). A major driver behind this development has been the dramatic decrease in interstate war (Tang 2013, chap. 5). Moreover, there is a feedback mechanism between rule-­making and peaceful changes. Many international institutions (rules) and norms were made or established for the sake of preventing interstate (and then intrastate) violence, and a more peaceful international system has made and strengthened more rules and norms. Rule-­making in international politics thus represents a most fertile field for evolutionary theorization in IR. Institutions are simply codified ideas. Because there is diversity of knowledge among agents (i.e., there will always be more than one idea about how a future institutional arrangement should look), the process of institutional changes is essentially about how to turn a very limited few of those numerous ideas into institutions. As such, we can take ideas (for a particular institutional arrangement) as genes and institutional arrangements

Evolutionary Theorization of Peaceful International Changes   269 as phenotypes, and then apply SEP—with the mechanism of artificial VSI/SVI at its core—to institutional change. Based on this bedrock evolutionary take on institutions and institutional change, I have developed a SEP-­based general theory of institutional change (Tang 2011a). Here I introduce the general theory of institutional change and then underscore some of its most critical implications for understanding international institutions. First and foremost, the struggle for the power to make rules is at the heart of the matter. Institutions are often made by power (or under the shadow of power) and backed by overt or covert power. Most of the time, power and institutions are inseparable. Second, the process of institutional change consists of five distinct phases: (1) generation of ideas for specific institutional arrangements; (2) political mobilization by supporters of specific ideas; (3) struggle for power to design and dictate specific institutional arrangements (i.e., to set specific rules); (4) setting the rules; and (5) legitimatizing/stabilizing/ reproducing. These five phases correspond to the three phases of mutation (variation), selection (reduction in variation), and inheritance (stabilization) in evolution: generation of ideas corresponds to mutation; political mobilization and struggle for power to selection; and setting the rules and legitimatizing/stabilizing to inheritance. Third, the notion that institutions are usually welfare-­improving public goods is misleading, inspired by the invalid harmony approach toward institutions, exemplified by functionalism and a neoclassical economics-­inspired new institutional economics approach toward institutions. More often than not, institutions are private goods that serve private interests, and institutions that improve agents’ collective welfare are products of power struggle in a long haul rather than instant gratification from rational design (for details, see Tang 2011a, chap. 2). From the general theory and SEP, we can draw some explicit implications for understanding institutions and rule-­making in the international system. First and foremost, like institutional change in domestic politics, the heart of institutional change in international politics, too, is the struggle for the power to make rules, and this process almost inevitably needs power. In international politics, most of the time, it has been states (rather than individuals) that have created international institutions, and the state (as the ultimate hierarchical organization) itself symbolizes the monopoly of power. Hence, at the very beginning, international institutions have been instruments and products of statecraft. International institutions are also the product of power politics: most international institutions are backed by explicit or implicit power, just as most domestic institutions (Tang 2011a). Second, because power is the key for making and maintaining institutions (and thus order), an actor or a coalition of actors that won the struggle for power to impose rules will have more, sometimes decisive, effect over the exact nature of institutions. In international politics, this means that a hegemonic state or a coalition of states that won the last major war or major debate will have a more, sometimes decisive, effect over the exact nature of international institutions and thus order. This was indeed the case when it comes to sovereignty (Spruyt 1994), territorial integrity (Zacher 2001), decolonialization (Spruyt 2000), trade (Keohane 1984), abolition of slave trade and piracy (Clark 2007,

270   Shiping Tang chap. 2; de Nevers 2007), racial equality (Clark 2007, chap. 4), and perhaps the whole international law apparatus (Anghie 2004). Third and more relevant for our discussion here, now that the number of major interstate wars has greatly decreased, making new international rules may require a new mixture of power, most likely a mixture of economic, ideological, and political power (Mann 1986). In light of this new development, should we expect the making of international rules to be more based on controlling information and knowledge, despite the coming of the informational age?

Niche Construction of the International and Regional System and Order One of the most exciting progresses that extends the Modern Synthesis has been niche construction, first introduced by Lewontin (1983). Since then, niche construction has received significant theorization and elaboration (e.g., Odling-­Smee 2010; Odling-­Smee and Laland 2011). Briefly, niche construction theory (NCT) has four central components: niche, niche construction, ecological inheritance, and coevolution of organisms and niche. NCT starts with the self-­evident observation that organisms not only adapt to the environment in which they operate but also actively modify their environment. In other words, an organism’s environment is not externally independent from an organism’s life cycle. Rather, there is feedback from an organism’s life cycle to the environment and thus it entails possible “stable and directional changes in environmental conditions” in the long run, and constructed niches very often pass from one generation to the next, resulting in “ecological inheritance.” These modified niches therefore come back to shape the fitness of its offspring (and other organisms). In short, organisms and their environment coevolve. Hence, niche construction is a process and a mechanism just as VSI/SVI, even though the former is less central than the latter. By any measure, human beings have been the most powerful niche constructor as we know it (Odling-­Smee and Laland 2011). Humans impact their environment via their metabolism and activities either unintentionally and intentionally, just as other organisms. Far more impressively, however, human beings engineer both their physical and social environment, pervasively and profoundly. Take, for example, the coming of settled agriculture. When initiating settled agriculture, our ancestors had to clear underbrush to make fields, construct settled living spaces (e.g., pots, hamlets), and domesticate animals by keeping them alive and reproducing them rather than killing them for instant consumption. Besides settled agriculture, the Industrial Revolution, megacities, the Internet revolution, and global warming are just a few examples of the grand cultural and physical niche constructions by our species. Equally critical, humans create organizations and institutions, two of the most critical niches for our daily life. Hence, NCT is a potentially

Evolutionary Theorization of Peaceful International Changes   271 powerful theorization tool for understanding human society, especially for understanding the relationship between human agents and the social system (Tang 2020). Indeed, NCT may be an ideal tool for theorizing international relations, especially peaceful changes of international system and international order. More concretely: 1. States and other agents are organisms, whereas the international system is the environment. But their relationship is not entirely external. Human beings construct their niches (as aspects or pockets of the social system) all the time. A social niche construction approach calls for a figuration and relational construction perspective, as exemplified by Elias’s ([1939] 1994) majestic The Civilizing Process and then restated by Emirbayer (1997) and Emirbayer and Mische (1998). 2. A constructed environment impacts the agent itself but also other agents. Whether the constructed environment benefits the organism itself or other organisms depends on artificial selection within the new constructed system. Hence, SNC is not parallel, but secondary, to the central mechanism of social evolution (i.e., artificial VSI/SVI). 3. Agents, especially more powerful ones, do not merely adapt to the social system, but also actively seek to shape or modify it to suit them better. All else being equal, the more powerful the agent is, the larger the impact of its niche construction. 4. There are always multiple agents who can construct the niche, and they inevitably have different preferences over outcomes (as conflict of interest). Moreover, their attempts at niche construction interact with each other. 5. Agents pick a domain (or a niche) within a social system to modify. Agents deploy strategic behaviors to achieve the niche construction, but the exact outcomes include both intended and unintended ones. Agents also learn from their own and others’ experiences to draw lessons for constructing their environment. All the resources, whether material (e.g., wealth, number of allies and opponents) or ideational (e.g., religious, ideological, and cultural), can enter agents’ calculation of picking niches and specific strategies of construction (Elias [1939] 1994; Bourdieu 2005). 6. Most of the time, agents can only construct a niche that has been handed down to them from earlier rounds of construction, perhaps by other agents. In other words, an agent can only construct a niche within existing constraints. Thus, more often than not, the scope of niche construction is limited and gradual, even though the impact of the new niche can be quite significant, in the long run.

Changes of States’ Security Strategies: Beyond Epistemic Communities Evidently, SEP is well-­equipped for explaining states’ behavioral changes, including peaceful behavioral changes. From the two applications earlier (Tang 2008; Tang and Long 2012), several useful points can be summarized.

272   Shiping Tang First, the social evolutionary approach toward foreign policy changes synthesizes realism’s mostly material stance and constructivism’s mostly ideational stance toward state behavior and international politics in general. Material forces and ideational forces work together, rather than independently, to drive social changes. Hence, neither a purely materialistic position nor a purely ideationalistic position is tenable for understanding human society. The challenge for social scientists thus becomes how to bring material forces and ideational forces together to formulate a coherent understanding of human society. The social evolutionary approach is the ideal instrument for bringing the two forces together into a coherent understanding of international politics (as a domain of human society). Briefly, although ideational forces do come back to influence the evolution of the material world, material forces retain ontological priority (Tang  2011a), because the material world serves as the ultimate testing ground (or the source of selection pressure) of ideas. Ultimately, humans must anchor their ideas upon the material world, although at any given time our knowledge may not capture the objective material reality. As such, states’ security strategies tend to reflect the objective reality in the long run because states are punished, sometimes severely, if they persist in adopting wrong ideas. Second, (social) learning is an integral part of any theory of foreign policy changes, and human learning itself is an evolutionary process (Levy 1994; Tang 2013, chap. 5). Indeed, as Hayek (1978, 291) pointed out, the capability of learning gives social evolution a fundamental edge over natural evolution in terms of speed because acquired phenotypes can now be directly transmitted to the next generation through learning, and the next generation does not have to go through the same selection process. At the beginning, there are multiple ideas for a possible strategy, and states do not simply pick one idea and deploy it as a strategy. Instead, these ideas engage in a competition for the right to be adopted as the primary strategy through debates and political struggles in the marketplace of ideas. Eventually, some ideas will be selected out, and some ideas will emerge as winners, and only the ideas that win become part of a strategy (see also Tang 2011b). SEP thus easily subsumes subthemes such as epistemic community, securitization via speech act, and lobbying for policies as competition and selection (e.g., Adler 2005). As a result, SEP is widely applicable for explaining agents’ ideational and behavioral changes. Third, one of the major weaknesses of ideational explanation of social changes has been that even if one identifies an idea to be a major cause of social change, one still has to explain how the idea comes into existence and then matters in the first place. According to SEP, selection and learning (which includes rationality) work together in driving the evolution of the system.4 Hence, a conspicuous time for changing policies is when an agent realizes that his or her previous policies did not work, and the agent is suffering from the consequences of his or her failed policies. In other words, negative learning may be a more powerful force than positive learning in driving changes. Finally, a social evolutionary approach toward foreign policy changes can easily integrate many of the insights from realism, institutionalism, and constructivism, especially regarding how the international system impacts states as agents. According to SEP, any social system, with international system being one of them, impacts agents via six major

Evolutionary Theorization of Peaceful International Changes   273 channels (Tang 2016; 2020, chap. 3). The first channel is constraining and enabling by purely physical or material forces. The next four channels, learning, constraining/ enabling by the interplay of material and ideational forces, artificial selection, and constituting/constructing, make up of what we usually mean by “socialization,” broadly speaking. The sixth channel, which most IR theorists and social scientists do not recognize, is “anti-­socialization.”

The Future of State and State Building without Wars Tilly’s (1985) aphorism that states made wars and wars made states in history still rings true in some parts of the world (see also Elias [1939] 1994). Yet, as Jervis (2002) noted two decades ago and now supported with extensive data (Cederman et al. 2017), interstate wars have decreased significantly and even intrastate (especially ethnic) wars have decreased significantly (Tang 2017a). Yet weak states still abound today. So what does the diminishing prospect of war mean for the future of state and state building, especially for weak states? Intuitively, if territorial expansion or conquest has ceased (at least in some parts of the world), a major function of the state has also ceased. If so, how can elites justify certain measures (really, sacrifices) for national defense? This question has been a new phenomenon that has yet to receive much attention, partly because part of human history had been so bloody until quite recently. Again, the social evolutionary approach is well-­suited for tackling this problem. To begin with, states will have to select new means and rhetoric to justify certain measures for building a strong state now that the selection pressure via survival has gone. One possible option may be economic development, now that even mainstream economics have admitted the critical role of state in jump-­starting and sustaining economic development (Bardhan 2016). Yet, even with this justification, states may have to select and implement new measures for state building. Second, even for states that are in tense rivalries (e.g., Iran versus Saudi Arabia; India versus Pakistan), will their people continue to sacrifice their well-­being in the danger of war or will they try to wrestle more resources for social welfare? Finally, without existential external threat, states can actually afford to allocate more material and human resources to more productive activities (e.g., education, research). If this is what has been happening, what does this hold for the future of state building itself (Paul 2018)?

Nontraditional Security: Climate Change, Epidemics, and Artificial Intelligence Power Mainstream IR literature has been about traditional security issues. Yet the recent Covid-­19 epidemic must have alerted even the most hard-­core traditional IR to these looming nontraditional security challenges. With over a quarter of a million deaths and

274   Shiping Tang trillions (in US$) of economic loss, the Covid-­19 epidemic has caused more loss of life and economic damages than a region-­wide war. Unfortunately, the two leading economies (i.e., United States and China) have been throwing punches at each other rather than cooperating to combat the crisis. Moreover, even the European Union has failed to orchestrate a unified rapid strategy when the epidemic hit its member countries. What does the lack of cooperation and coordination when facing clear and present nontraditional danger mean for the future of international governance? The coming of global warming (or artificial climate and ecological change) presents one of the most pressing challenges facing humankind. After more than two centuries since the Industrial Revolution (c. 1780), the ecological impact of our modernity may have finally reached a threshold. In this sense, the coming of global warming is the archetypal manifestation of how social changes have induced profound changes to our natural environment and this artificial and natural environment has now forced us to invent new adaptations or face severe consequences. Understanding how different human groups have reacted to the coming of artificial climate and ecological changes and how they have fared is critical for us to take a fresh look at how we have engaged with nature. The coming of artificial intelligence (AI, including robots) and the coming of genuinely artificial (if not ‘alien’) organisms bring both exciting possibilities that can extend human beings’ capabilities beyond what has been conceivable but also pose some profound questions for the role and fate of our species. Although we do not want to exaggerate the possibility that our species may cease to exist in the hands of robots, the enormous implications of these new technological advancements for the evolution of human society are yet to be explicitly tackled head-­on. In this vast unchartered territory that needs our urgent, sustained, and deep attention, SEP may also provide us with powerful glimpses into our future. These emerging and growing challenges and even threats have not received adequate attention from the mainstream IR literature. Meanwhile, existing nontraditional security literature has generated more practical lessons than theoretical insight. Although I do not hold a crystal ball for how we may adequately understand these emerging challenges, SEP, due to its immanent capacities for explaining both unit-­level and system-­ level transformational changes, may be a powerful tool for understanding how these emerging challenges transform both units and the system (e.g., with the social niche construction approach mentioned earlier).

Conclusions A social evolutionary account of the transformation of the international system has shown that the international system has indeed evolved from an extremely violent system (or the offensive realist world) to a mostly peaceful system (or the defensive realist world) and perhaps to a more rule-­based system (Tang 2013). Because evolution does

Evolutionary Theorization of Peaceful International Changes   275 not go through cycles (i.e., there is no ‘back to the future’), the world we now live in will most likely see more peaceful changes than violent ones. If this is the case, the social evolutionary approach (or SEP) is destined to play a more significant role in explaining and anticipating the future of international politics. Moreover, when it comes to (peaceful) social changes, evolutionary theorizing triumphs over nonevolutionary theorizing on at least three fronts. First, evolutionary theorizing more effectively organizes and integrates a wider body of social facts (i.e., idea, behavior, and social outcome) than nonevolutionary theorizing. Second, evolutionary theorizing provides a more integrative, coherent, parsimonious, endogenous, and thus foundational explanation for a more diverse and often seemingly contradictory body of social facts than nonevolutionary theorizing. Third, evolutionary theorizing synthesizes many competing and often seemingly incompatible theoretical approaches, a feat that nonevolutionary theorizing is hard-­pressed to achieve. Evolutionary theorizing thus often transcends and even dissolves many prominent debates between different theoretical approaches in social sciences (Tang 2020). It is on these grounds that I hope more students of IR can embrace the social evolutionary approach when tackling existing and emerging phenomena and puzzles.

Notes 1. Some of the discussions and texts draw from my recent book, On Social Evolution: Phenomenon and Paradigm (New York: Routledge, 2020). 2. For instance, a creationist explanation of the diversity of the biological world must employ numerous designs and divine interventions to explain why birds have feathers and chameleons can camouflage themselves. 3. The most prominent external force and factor, of course, has been God or ‘the Creator.’ 4. In contrast, Waltz suggested that the selection of balancing behavior does not need ra­tion­ al­ity (i.e., learning), even though he explicitly stated that “if some do relatively well, others will emulate them or fall by the wayside” (Waltz  1979, 118) and emulation is a form of learning.

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276   Shiping Tang Danchin, Étienne. 2013. “Avatars of Information: Towards an Inclusive Evolutionary Synthesis.” Trends in Ecology & Evolution 28, no. 6: 351–358. Danchin, Étienne, Anne Charmantier, Frances A. Champagne, Alex Mesoudi, Nenoit Pujol, and Simon Blanchet. 2011. “Beyond DNA: Integrating Inclusive Inheritance into an Extended Theory of Evolution.” Nature Reviews Genetics 12, no. 7: 475–486. Darwin, Charles. 1859. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. London: John Murray. De Nevers, Renee. 2007. “Imposing International Norms: Great Powers and Norm Enforcement.” International Studies Review 9, no. 1: 53–80. Dennett, Daniel C. 1995. Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life. London: Allen Lane. Dobzhansky, Theodosius. 1973. “Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution.” The American Biology Teacher 35, no. 3: 125–129. Elias, Norbert. (1939) 1994. The Civilizing Process. Rev. ed. Oxford: Blackwell. Emirbayer, Mustafa. 1997. “Manifesto for a Relational Sociology.” The American Journal of Sociology 103, no. 2: 281–317. Emirbayer, Mustafa, and Ann Mische. 1998. “What Is Agency?” The American Journal of Sociology 103, no. 4: 962–1023. Gilpin, Robert. 1981. War and Change in World Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press. Hayek, Friedrich  A. 1978. New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Jervis, Robert. 2002. “Theories of War in an Era of Leading-Power Peace.” American Political Science Review 96, no. 1: 1–14. Keohane, Robert  O. 1984. After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Levy, Jack  S. 1994. “Learning and Foreign Policy: Sweeping a Conceptual Minefield.” International Organization 48, no. 2: 279–312. Lewontin, Richard C. 1983. “Gene, Organism, and Environment.” In Evolution from Molecules to Man, edited by D. S. Bendall, 273–285. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Mann, Michael. 1986. A History of Power from the Beginning to A. D. 1760, vol. 1 of The Sources of Social Power. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Mayr, Ernst. 2001. What Evolution Is. New York: Basic Books. Mearsheimer, John J. 2001. The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. New York: W. W. Norton. Modelski, George. 1990. “Is World Politics Evolutionary Learning?” International Organization 44, no. 1: 1–24. Odling-Smee, John. 2010. “Niche Inheritance.” In Evolution: The Extended Synthesis, edited by Massimo Pigliucci and Gerd B. Müller, 175–207. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Odling-Smee, John, and Kevin  N.  Laland. 2011. “Ecological Inheritance and Cultural Inheritance: What Are They and How Do They Differ.” Biological Theory 6, no. 3: 220–230. Paul, T. V. 2018. Restraining Great Powers: Soft Balancing from Empires to the Global Era. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Simmons. Beth A. 2000. “International Law and State Behavior: Commitment and Compliance in International Monetary Affairs.” American Political Science Review 94, no. 4: 819–835. Spruyt, Hendrik. 1994. The Sovereign State and Its Competitors: An Analysis of Systems Change. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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Pa rt I V

T H E S OU RC E S OF C H A NGE

chapter 15

I n ter nationa l L aw a n d Peacefu l Ch a nge Jennifer M. Welsh

One of the definitions of peaceful change provided by the editors of this volume, drawn from Karl Deutsch, emphasizes “the resolution of social problems mutually by institutionalized procedures without resort to largescale physical force” (Deutsch 1957, 5, quoted in Paul, this volume, 4). This particular framing already suggests that international law has a significant contribution to make to the phenomenon of peaceful change in international relations (IR), given that the body of rules acknowledged by states and international organizations to have the status of law is in large part aimed at facilitating just such a resolution. As a “foundational institution” of international society (Holsti 2004), international law specifies the nature and content of agreements among states and facilitates a host of peaceful interactions, whether on land, in the sea or skies, or even in outer space. It also provides a means by which “states can advertise their intentions” about core aspects of that interaction and reassure one another about future policies in relation to matters of joint concern (Bull 1977, 136). Deutsch’s definition also implies that the change to which law contributes need not always entail a fundamental transformation of the international system itself; instead, it can involve alterations in the practices and patterns of relations among the units of that system or an increase and decrease in the number of those units (Holsti 2004, 13–16). International law, as we shall see, has been part of both kinds of change, most notably through its prohibition on the use of force by states and its rules for the recognition of new states. Law has not only affected the behavior and discourse of actors within a given structure, but also helps to constitute that structure, particularly through the ways in which it interacts with states’ identities (Reus-­Smit 2004, 5). Nonetheless, this chapter ultimately argues that while international law has contributed to forms of peaceful change—through both its codification of changing social ideas and practices and its catalytic effect in setting out aspirational principles—it has also been profoundly implicated in the preservation of a system of sovereign states that assumes both the political and territorial legitimacy of those sovereign units. In short, law has also been a force for peaceful continuity that has, in some instances, perpetuated forms of injustice.

282   Jennifer M. Welsh

Understanding International Law Before turning to the specific question of law’s relationship to peaceful change, it is important to underscore the limitations of conceiving of and analyzing international law through the lens of either realist or neoliberal institutionalist approaches to IR.

Realist Perspectives The realist view of international politics as a struggle for material power between states usually relegates international law to an epiphenomenal role, whereby the law either rests on a particular balance of power and thus has no independent effect or merely furthers—but never challenges—the purposes of powerful states (Morgenthau and Thompson 1985; Carr 1946). Seen in this way, law can neither be decoupled from politics nor serve the advance of peace. Although some realist scholars do acknowledge the ways in which international law has helped to make power transitions less violent—particularly by adding to the incentive structure that works against the right of conquest and by limiting the justifications that can be forwarded in the contemporary international system for the use of force— these theorists still cannot fully account for the observable ways in which legal norms can constrain states from pursuing actions that cannot easily be legitimated (Wheeler 2004). The core problems with the realist perspective on international law are thus twofold. First, it assumes that violations of the law are proof that law has no impact on state behavior. But as many scholars have noted (Holsti 2004; Bull 1977; Franck 1990; Finnemore 2003; Reus-­Smit 2004), what matters is not that violations occur, or that there may at times be a lack of conformity between actual and prescribed behavior, but whether states continue to accept the validity and binding quality of legal obligations. Only “unreasoned disregard” (Bull 1977, 133) for the law, or the appeal to a completely different social principle, would stand as evidence that law has no impact on the actors making up international society.1 Second, as Ian Hurd argues, realism assesses legality as a potential (if ineffective) source of external judgment or constraint on states, rather than accepting the possibility that it can be derivative of state interests and enable states to do more effectively what they already want to do (Hurd 2016). In fact, far from being marginal or unimportant in day-­to-­day power politics, international law can actually enhance state power by providing new resources of legitimation. It is by recognizing what Hurd calls the frequent “merger of law and state interests” (Hurd 2016, 15) that we overcome the conceptual distinction between “following the law” and “following interests” that is so prominent in realist and positivist approaches that are fixated on measuring states’ compliance. Ultimately, the importance of international law “does not rest on the willingness of states to abide by its principles to the detriment of their interests, but in the fact that they so often judge it in their interests to conform to it” (Bull 1977, 134).

International Law and Peaceful Change   283

Neoliberal Institutionalist Perspectives The rationalist view of politics as a strategic game, adopted by neoliberals, accepts the possibility that states, in seeking to maximize their interests, will see the possibility of achieving greater security or prosperity through cooperation. Yet states also need institutions—defined as “persistent and connected sets of rules” that shape both behavior and expectations (Keohane 1989, 3)—to bring about such cooperation. When formally codified, these rules constitute law. The weakness of the neoliberal institutionalist perspective on law, however, is that it posits cooperation as a perennial problem and therefore cannot account for the “historical uniqueness” (Reus-­Smit 2004, 18) of our modern system of positive international law, which was consolidated in the nineteenth century. Furthermore, it limits the role of law to a functional or regulatory one, neglecting to acknowledge two realities: first, that states see the rules of international law not only as regulatory but also as binding upon them— largely as a function of their legitimacy; and second, that law plays a more fundamental role in both constituting the key units in international society and shaping their interests. This means that both the preferences and actions of states are more variable than what materialist explanations might predict. In the end, while the neoliberal institutionalist perspective helps to explain why we might find rules for cooperation in a particular issue area (Goldstein et al. 2001), it cannot explain why states would attach legitimacy to the larger international legal system, or indeed why, once a new entity is recognized as a sovereign state, it instantly takes on the entire body of rules and legal practices that apply to contemporary sovereign states (Holsti 2004). Nor does neoliberal institutionalism fully capture the phenomenon of custom as an authoritative source of law. In contrast to realism and liberal-­institutionalism, I follow Hedley Bull in defining international law as “a body of rules which binds states and other agents in world politics in their relations with one another and is considered to have the status of law” (Bull 1977, 122). This definition not only considers international law as a process of authoritative decision-­making (though this is one crucial aspect of what law is), but also recognizes the existence of a discernible set of “imperative propositions” comprising international law, which are logically connected and form part of a common structure. In addition, this definition does not require this set of rules, in order to have the status of law, to be backed by a centralized system of sanction or coercion; rather, it leaves open the possibility that reactions to or reprisals for violations of the law can take the form of self-­help or actions by some on behalf of others. What defines law is not the presence of coercive sanction, but rather the “union of primary and secondary rules” (Bull 1977, 127), whereby primary rules require actors to do or refrain from certain things, and secondary rules establish the procedural “rules about rules.”

A Constructivist Understanding of International Law In proposing this definition, I also adopt a specific constructivist understanding of law  that has three core elements. First, constructivism posits a close and symbiotic

284   Jennifer M. Welsh r­elationship, rather than a clear divide, between international law and international ­politics. More specifically, it regards politics as a form of discourse and action that is shaped not only by instrumental reason or strategic action, but also by forms of reason that “ordain certain actors with legitimacy, define certain preferences as socially acceptable, and license certain strategies over others” (Reus-­Smit 2004, 5). This means that institutions, such as international law, are not simply functional solutions to dilemmas of cooperation among states or tools of regulation but are also expressions of the conceptions of legitimate action that prevail in international society. International law thus plays a role in conditioning international politics—through its particular language, practices of justification, and multilateral form—but it is international politics, in turn, that gives international law its distinctive decentralized shape and content. Second, and relatedly, constructivism understands international law as having other important roles beyond regulative ones (Reus-­Smit 2004; Finnemore and Toope 2001; Hurd 2016). As noted previously, international law plays a crucial constitutive part in international society because it is the application of legal rules, particularly the rules of state recognition, that literally brings particular actors into being as sovereign states. But it is also the case that international law will empower some actors while disempowering others. In addition, international law plays a permissive role by creating legal categories that legitimize particular behaviors and outlaw others—often in ways that further the interests of sovereign states. As I show in this chapter, the United Nations (UN) Charter’s prohibition on the use of force has enabled states to justify more expansionist interpretations of the right of self-­defense while simultaneously delegitimizing the use of force for other purposes. Third, a constructivist perspective implies the need for attention to the historical contingency of our current, modern system of international law. As Reus-­Smit contends, if strategic rationality is assumed to drive the actions of states in all circumstances, and the anarchical structure of our system generates a recognizable spectrum of cooperation problems, it is difficult to account for the historical variation in types of institutional and legal formulations (Reus-­Smit 2004, 32). Our modern system of international law, which coalesced in the nineteenth century, established a particular “constitutional structure” for international society, based on the sovereign state, legitimated through popular sovereignty, as the key locus of political authority, as well as on “self-­legislation” and “non-­discrimination” as the key operating principles for that structure (Reus-­Smit  1999; Cohen  2012). As a consequence, the authoritative source of international law evolved from the dictates of God or natural law, to the explicit consent of nation-­states. These two shifts, which were inspired less by interstate war and more by the ideologies of the French and American Revolutions (Bukovansky 2002), led to the development of a large corpus of positive international law, including a legally-­based mechanism for conflict resolution (the Permanent Court of Arbitration) and a notable jump in the number of multilateral (as opposed to purely bilateral) treaties, on issues as diverse as the regulation of the slave trade, river navigation, the creation and maintenance of diplomatic relations, and the laws of war and neutrality. As Holsti reminds us, as important as the increase in interstate treaties and

International Law and Peaceful Change   285 agreements was to the development of international law, of equal significance was the growing practice of incorporating international legal principles and standards into domestic law. In the United States, for example, the Constitution states that international treaties constitute the “law of the land” and trump domestic law when conflicts of obligation arise (Holsti 2004, 171). It was also in the nineteenth century that states developed a distinctive language and practice of legal argumentation, which drew on the ideas of prominent international lawyers and was embraced by a growing cadre of legal professionals, including in the foreign ministries of states (Kratochwil 1989, 42). Henceforth, state representatives and international tribunals became increasingly engaged in the practice of “finding and interpreting” international law, thereby giving more content and form to the rules structuring IR. Finally, it is crucial to acknowledge the degree to which the particular body of rules that constitutes the foundation for modern international law was formed through the process of Europe’s engagement with the non-­European world. Although international lawyers in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries established the intellectual building blocks for a global international society based on the principle of sovereign equality, international relations until at least the mid-­twentieth century (and arguably beyond) were bifurcated into civilized and uncivilized zones. Positive international law often reinforced these distinctions by codifying principles to humanize relations among the states of Europe, while simultaneously loosening the restraints that earlier legal theorists had asserted should govern relations between Europe and the non-­European world (Keene 2002). This was evident, for example, in the development of the Hague Conventions, which, as Mark Mazower demonstrates, aspired to regulate warfare only between civilized powers and thus enabled massacres, bombings, and systematic detentions in conflicts in the non-­European lands “deemed to be beyond law’s sway” (Mazower 2012, 78). It is not an exaggeration to say that the content of modern international law—particularly the rights and responsibilities of sovereignty that had begun to be articulated by Hugo Grotius in the seventeenth century—was sharpened by, and asserted its authority through, the European imperial project (Anghie  2005; Bowden 2009). Moreover, several IR scholars have demonstrated how both de jure and de facto inequality have continued to underpin the formal infrastructure of global international society well into the contemporary period (Keene  2002; Simpson  2004; Zarakol 2011). The constructivist perspective on international law I propose here matters concretely for how we assess the relationship between law and peaceful change. More specifically, it proposes that we account for the ways in which international law—despite the principle of sovereign equality—continues to rest upon and promote elements of hierarchy. In addition, it reveals that while international law can contribute to important changes in state practice and, in some cases, offers weaker states resources with which to ‘tame’ the behavior of great powers, it has also privileged those powers in at least two ways: first, by enabling earlier practices of expansion and colonialism; and second, by contributing since 1945 to the reification of an existing political and territorial status quo.

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The Laws of War and Peaceful Change Legal reasoning and argumentation are a pervasive feature of contemporary international politics. We only need to cast our minds back to the autumn and early spring of 2002–2003, in the run-­up to the use of force against Iraq, when not only the British attorney general but also media pundits, peaceful protesters, and even London taxi drivers were all musing about the legality of using military means to counter Saddam Hussein’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction. Moreover, the notion that one can “do things with international law”—as a mode of justification—is becoming widespread within IR (Hurd 2018). The larger question, however, is what kind of meaningful effect such discourse has, or what it tells us about the role of international law and its relationship with international politics. It is particularly within the realm of the use of force that political actors themselves seem to want to depict international law as a distinct system apart from politics, with its own logic, rules, and language. Indeed, the embrace of legal argumentation has become one of the “staple features of state practice” (Kritsiotis 2004, 47). When states use military force today, they also use law—and increasingly, military lawyers (Nuñez-­Mietz 2018)—as a crucial resource to define, explain, and defend what they are doing. This reiterates the point that law is more than a set of rules applied to ‘situations of fact’; it is also a political process of argumentation over legitimate action. But it also suggests that law may have played some role in the delineation of legitimate and illegitimate behavior, and potentially (as I suggest later) in the decline of the incidence of interstate war itself. As the editors of this volume note, the literature features a broad consensus that one of the most dramatic transformations in IR over the past two centuries is the delegitimation of acts of conquest and aggression as acceptable means of changing the territorial and political status quo (Zacher  2001; Franck  2002; Finnemore  2003; Holsti  2004; Byers 2005; Hathaway and Shapiro 2017; O’Connell 2012). More broadly, some international lawyers and IR scholars have connected the system of rules on the causes and conduct of war (often referred to as jus ad bellum and jus in bello) to the very existence and preservation of international order (Bull  1977; Franck 2002; Ikenberry 2011). The value of law, from this perspective, lies in its ability to provide an alternative to the recourse to violence for actors in the international system. “In this sense,” writes Mary Ellen O’Connell, “all of international law is law of peace” (O’Connell 2012, 272). As I argue later, the evolution of international law in relation to the use of force over the past century has had mixed effects—particularly with respect to both systemic and domestic peaceful change. On the one hand, the cumulative effect of individual “norm entrepreneurship,” interwar state practice, and the agreements among states at the end of the Second World War transformed what Ian Brownlie has referred to as the “legal regime of indifference to the occasion for war” into a regime with substantial limitations on the competence of states to use military force to achieve their aims (Brownlie 1963, 424). But not all uses of force have been outlawed, as aspects of the

International Law and Peaceful Change   287 current legal regime permit wars of self-­defense and third-­party intervention. What is more, international law’s attempt at “self-­imposed isolation” (Fox 2015, 826) from the causes, conduct, and resolution of civil wars is not matched by the behavior of interested states, or even by the actions of the UN Security Council, and has often had the effect of favoring incumbent governments. Finally, while international criminal law has progressed to establish individual accountability for war crimes and acts such as genocide, the rules regulating the conduct of war are still widely permissive of actions that can be taken in the name of military necessity but expose civilian populations to significant suffering.

Jus ad Bellum: Prohibiting the Use of Force to Change Interstate Boundaries Until the early twentieth century, the right of conquest was both a legal right derived from sovereignty and an uncontroversial expression of the political logic of raison d’état (Holsti 2004, 163). The wresting of control, through force, over a territory and the proclamation of legal jurisdiction over its population was widely practiced by state leaders, giving rise to recognized changes in sovereignty. Stirrings of change came with the renunciation of the forcible acquisition of territory in the French Constitution in 1791, which was collectively modified by the European great powers at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. It took more than a century, however, for a more fundamental transformation to occur (Korman 1996). The first systematic step in the move toward the restriction of the resort to war was the elimination of the widespread practice of using military force to protect investments and collect debts owed to a state’s nationals by other states. The 1907 Hague Treaty’s abolition of this practice not only reflected a shift in “understandings . . . of the relationship between sovereignty and contractual obligation” (Finnemore 2003, 25) but also contributed to the growing argument that self-­defense was the only legitimate purpose for the use of military force. These arguments were reinforced and extended in the period after the First World War, generating a variety of proposals—forwarded by intellectuals and public figures as diverse as Leon Bourgeois, Norman Angell, Robert Cecil, and, toward the end of the war, both Vladimir Lenin and Woodrow Wilson—for alternative normative rules to replace the unrestricted compétence de guerre that had previously been accepted in international law. In the case of the latter two men, the motivating principle for the renunciation of conquest was self-­determination, which—in Wilson’s famous words—meant there no longer existed a right “to hand peoples about from sovereign to sovereign as if they were property” (Wilson 1917, in Holsti 2004, 164). The growth in nationalism over the course of the nineteenth century clearly worked against the continued legitimacy of annexation—outside of the colonial world—when it lacked the consent of a territory’s inhabitants and thus helped to transform the Great War into a “moral turning point” in attitudes toward the right of states to use force for territorial aggrandizement (Korman 1996, 93, 161).

288   Jennifer M. Welsh For others, the horrors of the First World War had confirmed that, in an age of interdependence and mechanized weaponry, states could no longer be allowed to engage in war as a “regular” extension of their objectives (Hathaway and Shapiro 2017). Article X of the League of Nations Covenant therefore attempted to qualify states’ individual exercise of the right to wage war, effectively terminating the old right of conquest and forwarding a new system of collective security and peaceful dispute resolution. The particular formulation of this article was too abstract and indeterminate, however, leaving it open to more than one interpretation—especially when read alongside other provisions that still acknowledged states’ legitimate right to use force (Kritsiotis 2004, 51).2 Interestingly, the Covenant did have an explicit provision for peaceful change and addressing dissatisfaction with the status quo through Article XIX, which was to allow for the correction of “inequities and errors” in the peace settlement. But the provision was not used for the first two decades of the Covenant’s existence—a fact that helped inspire E. H. Carr’s famous lament about the failure to peacefully accommodate “restless” states in the interwar period (Carr 1946). In the end, the Second World War was less about the failure to make use of Article XIX and more about the inadequacy of the machinery set out in Article X.3 The Kellogg-­Briand Pact of 1928 took the further step of explicitly placing the right to wage war beyond the legal capacity of states, thereby marking the emergence of a new jus contra bellum. But while this pact aimed to outlaw war “as an instrument of national policy” in states’ relations with one another, its two significant shortcomings soon became apparent. First, there were no particular sanctions envisaged in the case of a breach of the Pact. And second, the Pact specifically outlawed war and not the use of force in general, thereby creating a large loophole for states to exploit (Schrijver 2015). Kellogg-­Briand depended upon states’ explicitly engaging in war in the “technical sense” (Kritsiotis 2004, 52)—that is, instances of military force accompanied by formal declarations of war that terminate with a peace treaty—and thus still enabled uses of force short of formal war. In one of the most infamous cases of the interwar period, Japan’s intervention to take Manchuria in 1931, neither Japan nor China admitted the existence of a war—the latter out of fear that a formal state of war would have activated the international laws relating to neutrality, thereby jeopardizing its trading relationship with the United States (Brownlie 1963, 85). As a result, the incident was described euphemistically by one prominent international lawyer at the time as “hostilities on a considerable scale” (Brierly 1932, 312)—an example of the linguistic gymnastics that states have continued to employ up to the present day in their efforts to avoid the label “war” (Fazal 2018). The subsequent violations of Kellogg-­Briand and the outbreak of the Second World War exposed the unsustainability of a weak prohibition on warfare—thereby demonstrating how law’s capacity to contribute to peaceful change is partly dependent upon its determinacy and coherence but also on underlying political forces. In the context of the mid-­1940s, peaceful change had at least two meanings. First, it referred to the general procedure for bringing about change in the system of legally protected rights and interests of states without resort to war. But second, it encapsulated a broader theory about

International Law and Peaceful Change   289 how to get rid of war itself, based on assumptions tested but also revised in light of the painful lessons of the interwar period. As developments in the 1930s revealed, the successful application of that theory clearly depended upon all states accepting and participating in procedures designed to contribute to the peaceful resolution of disputes and to nonviolent revisions to the political and territorial order. As two scholars noted at the time, peaceful change was much like “pacifism, which in turn . . . is like fertilizer—it is no good unless evenly spread” (Dunn and Marshall Brown 1944, 61). It was therefore not the number of institutions or legal procedures that would ultimately matter, as much as the disposition to use such tools, particularly on the part of the Great Powers. Their full participation in the collective security system of the UN Charter was crucial to its success and would be ensured by careful delineation of the kinds of principles they could voluntarily adhere to (Luck 2006). This observation underscores two further points about law’s contribution to peaceful change. First, in the early part of the twentieth century, international law did not really ‘cause’ the delegitimation of the raison d’état justification for the resort to force; rather, it gave expression to a broader societal transformation in ideas about war and conquest. Although individual international lawyers played a significant part in leading diplomatic negotiations to develop formulations of the prohibition on the use of force (Hathaway and Shapiro 2017), the underlying political will for change was also (necessarily) present. In short, law was partly leading and partly following. Second, when attempting to account for the striking empirical phenomenon of the decline in interstate war in the decades following the Second World War (Pettersson and Wallensteen 2015), it is clear that law is only one of several factors inhibiting states from resorting to war— again making it difficult to assign law a clear causal role. Equally significant, according to scholars, has been the increased cost of major war, broadly conceived (Mueller 1989); the increase in the number of democracies (Brown, Lynn-­Jones, and Miller 1996); the particular impact of nuclear weapons (Waltz 1964; Jervis 1989); and states’ perceptions about the declining utility of war (Kaysen 1990). Despite the difficulty of making clear causal claims about a general decline in war between states, the particular prohibition on the use of force to alter the territory of member states of the United Nations, as set out in Article 2.4 of the Charter,4 has contributed to a more specific empirical trend: the notable reduction since 1945 in the proportion of conflicts that have resulted in territorial redistribution.5 Given the fact that interstate wars have so often involved territorial issues and, in the past, exchanges of territory (Vasquez 1993), this change is particularly noteworthy. Part of the strength of Article 2.4 is its location within a normatively ambitious but politically pragmatic system of collective security centered around the Great Powers. But its capacity to shape state behavior is also enhanced by the specificity and clarity of the text itself, when compared with earlier formulations: it sets out a clear prohibition on the use of force against the territorial integrity and political independence of members of the United Nations. As is clear from the drafting history of the Charter, the phrases “territorial integrity” and “political independence” were not inserted into the text in order to qualify the scope of Article 2.4, and thus leave an opening for other “purposes”

290   Jennifer M. Welsh for which force could be used, but rather to reinforce the prohibition in the eyes of small states that required additional reassurance that powerful states would not meddle in their domestic jurisdiction (Brownlie 1963). In addition, Article 2.4 “makes sense”—to borrow Thomas Franck’s formulation of legal coherence (Franck 1990, 75)—in light of the nature and strength of the commitment elsewhere in the UN Charter to prohibit force, most notably in the preamble’s call to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” Since then, only on very rare occasions have states attempted to justify their use of force by trying to show that it does not undermine territorial integrity or political independence.6 Instead, they have claimed that their actions conform to the legitimate exceptions to the Article 2.4 prohibition set out in the Charter: self-­defense under Article 51 or collective security actions authorized by the UN Security Council. While undoubtedly these legal exceptions have enabled states to continue to legitimate their use of force in some instances and thus speak to law’s permissive effects (Hurd 2016), the availability of exceptions has not “heralded an era of systematic violations” in which powerful states regularly “consume” territories in the name of self-­ defense (Kritsiotis 2004, 63). Finally, the prohibition on the use of force in Article 2.4 is reinforced by efforts to limit incidences of intervention—especially through Article 2.7, which seeks to protect states’ domestic jurisdiction from various forms of external interference. It is worth recalling that this article was initially designed to apply to “relations between the United Nations as an organization and its several members,” not primarily to relations between the members themselves (Vincent 1974, 235). But while the idea that states should refrain from intervening in each other’s affairs—or what we now understand as the principle of nonintervention between states—is not explicitly stated in the Charter’s text, it is clearly implicit in Article 2.1’s principle of sovereign equality, which gave legal expression to the growing political opposition to efforts by third-­party states to assist (through military force) populations struggling against “tyranny” (Chesterman 2001). In the early modern period, prominent international lawyers ranging from Alberico Gentili, to Hugo Grotius, to Emer de Vattel had all argued that taking up arms “on behalf of the oppressed” was a legitimate practice (Recchia and Welsh 2013), and during the nineteenth century European states had in certain instances used force to protect oppressed national minorities (Finnemore 2003). The signatories of the UN Charter, by contrast, were seeking to delegitimize intervention in the domestic jurisdiction of other states and thus indicated that they were, in John Vincent’s words, primarily concerned with “building an order between states not within them” (Vincent 1974, 236). Indeed, newly independent states—for whom the principle of nonintervention represented an important tool to shield the weak from the strong—embarked upon a sustained diplomatic effort to make the implicit noninterventionism of the Charter much more explicit through a series of important resolutions in the General Assembly.7 These resolutions, combined with Articles 2.4 and 2.7, also effectively closed the legal door to humanitarian intervention (Chesterman 2001; Welsh 2004).8 Although the legal debate on this issue was reignited following the 1999 North Atlantic Treaty Organization intervention in Kosovo, the weight of state discourse and practice continues to indicate

International Law and Peaceful Change   291 r­ eluctance to accept such a unilateral right of intervention for humanitarian purposes, outside of the procedures for collective security outlined in the Charter (Lowe and Tzanakopoulos 2012; Kress 2019). For our purposes here, the delegitimization of intervention could be interpreted as an indirect expression of support for domestic peaceful change, as it suggests that a violent attempt to change one’s own government is not a strategy that outside states have been willing to support—at least not outside the colonial context.9 At the same time, international law’s posture toward civil war can be seen as enabling more support for incumbent governments and presuming their legitimacy, rather than as circumscribing international intervention or ensuring a ‘level playing field.’ Even though the nineteenth-­century legal doctrine related to the recognition of belligerent status has largely fallen into disuse (Dinstein 2011, 110),10 many states—as well as the International Court of Justice (ICJ 1986)—still assert the legitimacy of “intervention by invitation” in civil war contexts when that invitation comes from a sitting government (Fox 2015). By enabling outside parties to legitimize action to support governments experiencing domestic challenges, international law could thus be viewed as indirectly affecting both the likelihood of and context for peaceful political change within states.

Jus in Bello: The Permissive Effects of the Laws of War International law’s role in promoting peaceful change in the twentieth century primarily consisted of a treaty-­based commitment to ensuring that any territorial acquisition resulting from the threat or use of force would be deemed illegal, coupled with a call for peaceful resolution of disputes. But this evolution in the laws of war did not delegitimize all uses of force. In fact, some provocatively suggest that, far from reducing the incidence of war, UN Charter rules merely changed the “politics of legitimation” around the use of force by making some forms of war, such as wars of self-­defense, more possible (Hurd 2016). Since 1945, and particularly during the post–September 11, 2001 “war on terror,” states have expanded the scope of the practice of self-­defense, both temporally— by legitimating action in response to a threat of force rather than an actual armed attack (Schachter  1989)—and spatially—by claiming that the protection of one’s nationals abroad and action against nonstate armed groups operating in the territory of another state are legitimate practices. This permissive effect of the laws of war extends to the rules regulating the conduct of war, which were also deepened and strengthened after 1945 in the Geneva Conventions (1949) and their Additional Protocols (1977). Contrary to the earlier suggestion that all international law is effectively the “law of peace,” jus in bello rules exist not primarily to make change peaceful, but rather to make the pursuit of change through war less barbaric by delineating who can be killed in war and by what means (Slim 2008). Ultimately, this body of rules can be viewed as straddling two views of suffering in war—that it is to be minimized at all cost or that it is to be balanced against the ultimate aims of a war (Witt  2014)—both of which find expression in the Geneva Conventions. As a

292   Jennifer M. Welsh c­ onsequence, while what has become known more recently as “international humanitarian law” (Alexander 2015) contains a principle requiring distinction between combatants and noncombatants, it also permits belligerents to engage in a number of practices that directly or indirectly harm civilians—including, for example, besieging cities11 or attacking so-­called dual-­use facilities—in the name of military necessity (Kinsella 2011; Shue and Wippman 2002; Crawford 2013). This delicate balance between military necessity and humanitarian considerations is even more challenging in the context of civil conflict, wherein warring parties are rarely symmetrical in strength and the power of mutual restraint is arguably weaker. In short, many civil wars are emphatically not civil in their conduct. Moreover, the legal frameworks regulating international and noninternational armed conflicts are not the same, with significantly more detailed legal protections applying in the former.12 These differences speak once more to international law’s posture toward those seeking to challenge incumbent governments. From its earliest exponents, the laws of war have sought to set boundaries around those who can legitimately fight by insisting that only sovereigns have the “right authority” to wage war (Vergerio 2017). It is therefore telling that it was not until the adoption of the Additional Protocols in 1977 that nonstate armed groups fighting in civil wars incurred obligations to comply with the Geneva Conventions—in large part a function of states’ reluctance to legitimize such entities as well as the larger project of challenging the domestic political status quo.

International Law and Systemic Change: The Creation of New States One of international law’s primary functions is to create or “constitute” an international society, by specifying the sovereign state as the universal form of political organization (Bull 1977, 135). One of the most striking systemic changes in modern IR is the growth in the number of these sovereign units over the past 150 years, through various waves of state creation. Some of these episodes followed large-­scale conflict, armed struggles for independence, or violent state breakdown and thus can hardly be called examples of “peaceful” change. But the expansion in the membership of international society, particularly after 1945, also occurred through the dissolution of empire—a structural transformation that was long overshadowed by the centrality of the Cold War to the discipline of IR. In all of these cases, international law played a constitutive role, through the development and application of rules of state recognition. As suggested earlier, nineteenth-­century international lawyers became key architects of a stratified international system, codifying a clear set of rules for peaceful coexistence within the European “core” and contrasting it with the anarchy, despotism, and backwardness of the “Oriental” world (Anghie 2005; Kayaoglu 2010). One key tool for operationalizing this discriminatory framework was the legal “standard of civilization,” which

International Law and Peaceful Change   293 regulated membership of the “family of nations” and assigned an inferior and non-­ sovereign juridical status to large parts of the non-­European world (Gong 1984). Migration from one world to the other—that is, formal recognition as a sovereign state—was based on the capacity and willingness of entities in the periphery to, inter alia, fulfill their obligations under international law; guarantee the basic rights and protection of foreign nationals and, in some cases, particular national minorities; maintain a system of courts, legal codes, and published laws; and develop institutions and an administrative structure for governance. In his examination of recognition practices in the nineteenth century, Miklaus Fabry finds that while in general terms an approach of de facto recognition was followed—whereby the basis of a new entity’s boundaries was to be the territory on which a people freed themselves from their former colonial master—there were frequently civilizational conditions attached to the legal reification of effective statehood (Fabry 2010). In the early twentieth century, the continuation of hierarchical practices was manifest in the particular ways in which self-­determination—the new standard of membership in international society—was applied to the crumbling Ottoman and Austro-­Hungarian Empires. First, it was clear that self-­determination would not, despite its promise, have universal implications; it would be limited to territories in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. Second, international recognition of new states was not only premised on the fulfillment of criteria that extended deeply into matters of domestic jurisdiction, as specified by the Minority Treaties, but also closely controlled and manipulated by the great powers (Jackson-­Preece 1998). Third, under the mandates system of the League of Nations, “advanced nations” were to administer those peoples “not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world.” Though in theory mandated territories were conceived as a way station on the road to independent statehood, those charged with implementing the mandates system were committed to ensuring that colonial control was maintained, and in some cases even enhanced, in a less overt form (Pedersen 2015). Despite some notable examples of continuity, including the creation of the trusteeship system, the United Nations gradually broke free from its close ties to the defense of empire. Through the process of decolonization, the prevailing view in international society was that the right to self-­determination—in most cases cashed out in terms of independent statehood—was no longer something that could be bestowed on a people by others based on their perceived capacity to meet a particular standard of development, but rather a universally recognized and unconditional right (Getachew  2019). While in the nineteenth century the notion of civilization had been used to justify hierarchy and the denial of sovereignty, now it was used to delegitimize colonialism and facilitate the globalization of the sovereign political form (O’Hagan 2017). In the process, however, self-­determination was also limited in its application and was wedded to the growing commitment to the norm of territorial integrity (Zacher 2001). Although the collective right of peoples to self-­government was repeatedly elevated in the declarations by Allied powers during the Second World War, the UN Charter’s drafters responded to state fears that such a right might legitimize intervention to support national minorities seeking independence and thereby foster civil strife and secessionist

294   Jennifer M. Welsh movements. This spoke to nationalism’s capacity to exert both pacifying and disruptive effects: on the one hand, the notion that territory belonged to a national group had contributed to the delegitimization of wars of conquest; yet on the other, the claim that nations were entitled to their own states could foster territorial irredentism and state fragmentation (Zacher 2001, 217). In light of this dual possibility, the committee crafting Article 1.2 insisted that the text only referred to “the right of self-­government of peoples and not the right of secession” (Glanville  2014, 142). Furthermore, the right of self-­ determination as independent statehood was clearly associated with the particular proc­ess of decolonization, not an ongoing right. Outside of the context of colonial territories, self-­determination would henceforth refer to the right of peoples to self-­ government within their existing juridical states, making it almost indistinguishable from the norm of democracy (Zacher 2001). In other words, the principle of sovereign equality would imply not only equal political legitimacy, but also equal territorial legitimacy (James 1992). The 1960 UN Declaration on Granting Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples thus boldly stated that “any attempt at the partial or total disruption of the national unity or territorial integrity of a country” was “incompatible with the purposes and principles” of the UN Charter.13 Recognition practices in the early post-­1945 period followed suit, conforming closely to a more classically Westphalian understanding of sovereignty as territorial control— or what Jackson refers to as “negative sovereignty” (Jackson 1990). These practices constituted not only new states but also a broader international society that valued “international civility”—that is, mutual respect for sovereignty among entities with equal legal status—while allowing for pockets of “internal incivility” (Jackson 2013). In addition, despite the ongoing power of nationalism as a legitimating force, for much of the Cold War sovereignty was vested primarily in a bordered territory, rather than in a distinctive people or nation. The failed Biafran bid for statehood in the late 1960s, which generated a bloody internal conflict and one of the most severe humanitarian crises of the postwar period, demonstrates the degree to which newly independent states of the Global South, and bodies such as the Organization for African Unity, were invested in a narrow application of self-­determination and a steadfast commitment to preserving territorial integrity (Mayall 1990). International law thus sanctified the existing territorial status quo, regardless of its potentially awkward fit with minority populations, through the principle of uti possidetis juris: “may you continue to possess such as you do possess.” Seen in this way, the legal regime for state creation after 1945 followed the “conservative” impulse of the earlier League of Nations Covenant (Jackson 2013, 85–86), which in Article X had pledged to protect and preserve “the territorial integrity and existing political independence of all Members.” This approach was also applied to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the breakup of the former Yugoslavia after 1990. In both cases, the vast majority of successor states have kept their former internal administration boundaries as their new international frontiers—even when these did not correspond to ethnographic realities or the aspiration of those living within them—in large part as a result of outside pressure in favor of stability (MacFarlane 1999). The International Court of Justice, in its various

International Law and Peaceful Change   295 adjudications of boundary disputes since 1975, has also based its decisions on uti possidetis (Prescott 1998). The post–Cold War period saw the rise of a particular liberal discourse that suggested that state recognition would (again) apply more substantive criteria to entities aspiring to statehood, along with claims in the academic literature that statehood should rest on the fulfilment of human rights (Buchanan 2003). Nonetheless, actual state practice— most notably the recognition of states of the former Yugoslavia (Caplan  2005; Hillgruber 1998) and of South Sudan, as well as the nonrecognition of entities such as South Ossetia—suggests that it is strategic and geopolitical considerations, not so much the application of legal rules, that shape how existing members of international society act collectively to open the door to new members. The ongoing commitment to territorial legitimacy has also perpetuated the existence of a particular political (as opposed to legal) entity—the “contested state”14—which includes Taiwan, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, Palestine, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Kosovo. These entities are not universally recognized as sovereign, yet in many cases they have high degrees of empirical statehood, including in some instances governmental structures responsible for conducting foreign policy. They also affect stability both within their regions and beyond, thus raising questions about the impact of legal principles and processes that leave aspirations for self-­determination unfulfilled.

Conclusion My examination of two branches of international law,15 relating to the use of force and the recognition of new states, has demonstrated how the modern legal regime largely works in the service of protecting a particular, post-­1945 peace, both politically and territorially. This is not unduly surprising, given that sovereign states are the creators and ‘enforcers’ of international law, and their interests are wrapped up in its form and content. But the discussion prompts two further questions about law and peaceful change. The first relates to the logic of the relationship: whether the object of international law is to promote peace or whether the object of the peace created by states is to create a space within which law can flourish. The second relates to the longevity of the postwar peace, which is being undermined, in different ways, by today’s dominant powers: one that is ‘on the rise’ (China), one that is struggling with its relative decline (the United States), and one that is clinging to its former status (Russia). All three states have challenged legal norms surrounding jus ad bellum and territorial integrity—the United States through its practice of targeted killing, Russia through its annexation of Crimea, and China through its rejection of international law in the South China Sea—thereby reminding us of the limitations of law in restraining the behavior of great powers. The respective approaches of these great powers to crucial norms of peaceful coexistence— including sovereignty itself (Paris 2020)—suggest an unsettled future for international law’s contribution to managing our contemporary systemic transition.

296   Jennifer M. Welsh

Notes 1. This argument does not imply that respect for the law is always the principal motive for compliance. States may obey international law out of habit or out of pressure from others and may view compliance as valuable and mandatory for non-­legal reasons—including a desire to bring about reciprocal action from other states. 2. For example, while the League Covenant hoped to prevent war through its famous three-­ month “cooling off ” period in Article XII, it did not prohibit recourse to force altogether. 3. The Interwar system of promoting peaceful change did have some success in facilitating compromises on status and boundary issues, including, for example, the Shantung Settlement. 4. The Charter’s prohibition has also been incorporated in various multilateral treaties since 1945, primarily in those establishing defense organizations such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Pact of the League of Arab States, the Inter-­American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, and the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty. 5. While approximately 80 percent of territorial wars led to redistribution of territory between 1645 and 1945, that proportion dropped to just below 30 percent after 1945 (Zacher 2001). 6. Two examples of this strategy—the United Kingdom in the 1949 Corfu Channel incident and Belgium in the 1999 NATO bombing of Kosovo—were unsuccessful in attracting support from other member states. 7. See, for example, the “Essentials of Peace Resolution” (1949) and the “Peace through Deeds Resolution” (1950). Intervention was further delegitimized through the 1965 Declaration on Inadmissibility of Intervention in Domestic Affairs of States and Protection of Their Independence and Sovereignty, and the 1970 Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Co-­operation among States. 8. Humanitarian intervention can be defined as “the use of force by a state (or group of states acting together) aimed at preventing or ending a humanitarian catastrophe affecting individuals other than its own citizens, without the permission of the state within whose territory force is applied” (Kress 2019). In this legal definition, humanitarian intervention is distinct from those instances in which the UN Security Council, acting under Chapter VII, authorizes the use of force for humanitarian purposes or civilian protection. 9. It is important to note that in the early post-­1945 period, there was widespread support for movements of national liberation to use “all available means” and “to seek international assistance” in their struggle against colonialism, alien occupation, and racist regimes. See, for example, UN document GA/3070 (November 30, 1973). 10. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries states generally delayed or refrained from granting belligerent status to an opposition group in the context of civil war until it had demonstrated a high degree of territorial control, thereby enabling incumbent governments to reassert their authority. Once belligerent status was granted, rebel or insurgent groups were granted jus in bello rights and obligations for third parties were activated— most notably the laws of neutrality. 11. While the laws of war do not expressly prohibit siege warfare, they do have provisions against the intentional targeting of civilian objects, starvation, and the prevention of civilian escape. 12. One of the biggest differences is the obligation relating to the treatment of prisoners of war.

International Law and Peaceful Change   297 13. This rejection of the “disruption” of territorial units has been repeated in other declarations and agreements, including the 1975 Helsinki Act, which insists that frontiers can only be changed “in accordance with international law, by peaceful means and by agreement.” 14. I borrow this term from Shpend Kursani. 15. This chapter has not engaged with other important elements of international law, such as international human rights law, which has been mobilized both domestically and internationally to bring about changes to the status quo.

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International Law and Peaceful Change   299 Keene, Edward. 2002. Beyond the Anarchical Society: Grotius, Colonialism and Order in World Politics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Keohane, Robert. 1989. International Institutions and State Power: Essays in International Relations Theory. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Kinsella, Helen. 2011. The Image before the Weapon: A Critical History of the Distinction between Combatant and Civilian. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Korman, Sharon. 1996. The Right of Conquest. Oxford: Oxford University Press/Clarendon Press. Kratochwil, Friedrich. 1989. Rules, Norms and Decisions. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Kress, Claus. 2019. “On the Principle of Non-Use of Force in Current International Law.” Just Security, September 30. https://www.justsecurity.org/66372/on-the-principle-of-non-use -of-force-in-current-international-law/. Kritsiotis, Dino. 2004. “When States Use Armed Force.” In The Politics of International Law, edited by Christian Reus-Smit, 45–79. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Lowe, Vaughan, and Antonios Tzanakopoulos. 2012. “Humanitarian Intervention.” In Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law, edited by Rudiger Wolfrum. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Luck, Edward C. 2006. UN Security Council: Practice and Promise. London: Routledge. MacFarlane, S.  Neil. 1999. Western Engagement in the Caucasus and Central Asia. London: Royal Institute of International Affairs. Mayall, James. 1990. Nationalism and International Society. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Mazower, Mark. 2012. Governing the World: The History of an Idea. New York: Penguin Press. Morgenthau, Hans J., and Kenneth W. Thompson. 1985. Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace. New York: Knopf. Mueller, Hans. 1989. Retreat from Doomsday: The Obsolescence of Major War. New York: Basic Books. Nuñez-Mietz, Fernando G. 2018. The Use of Force under International Law: Lawyerized States in a Legalized World. New York: Routledge. O’Connell, Mary Ellen. 2012. “Peace and War.” In The Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law, edited by Bardo Fassbender and Anne Peters, 272–293. Oxford: Oxford University Press. O’Hagan, Jacinta. 2017. “The Role of Civilization in the Globalization of International Society.” In The Globalization of International Society, edited by Timothy Dunne, and Christian Reus-Smit, 185–203. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Paris, Roland. 2020. “The Right to Dominate: How Old Ideas about Sovereignty Pose New Challenges for World Order.” International Organization 74, no. 3 (Summer): 453–489. Pedersen, Susan. 2015. The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pettersson, Therese, and Peter Wallensteen. 2015. “Armed Conflicts: 1946–2014.” Journal of Peace Research 52, no. 4 (July): 536–550. Prescott, Victor. 1998. “The Contribution of the United Nations to Solving Boundary and Territorial Disputes.” In The United Nations at Work, edited by Martin Ira. Glassner, 239–284. Westport, CT: Praeger. Recchia, Stefano, and Jennifer Welsh, eds. 2013. Just and Unjust Interventions: European Thinkers from Vitoria to Mill. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

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chapter 16

N uclea r W e a pons a n d Peacefu l Ch a nge Michal Smetana

In the wake of the August 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it soon became clear that the invention of nuclear weapons would have a major impact on many aspects of international peace and security. For some, nuclear weapons represent the proverbial sword of Damocles, constantly threatening to end human civilization as a consequence of their accidental, miscalculated, or deliberate use. For others, the unprecedentedly destructive character of nuclear technology in particular has led great powers to be more cautious in their conduct and prevented the Cold War from turning into a hot one. Either way, few would dispute the transformative effect of the introduction of nuclear weapons into world politics.1 The aim of this chapter is to discuss the key aspects of the nuclear revolution that have been pertinent to the problem of peaceful change in international affairs (see Paul 2017a and in this volume). In turn, I elaborate on five primary institutions of global nuclear order: nuclear deterrence, nuclear arms control, nuclear nonproliferation, nuclear nonuse, and nuclear disarmament.2 I conceptually unpack and discuss the contributions and limitations of these five institutions, mindful of the extraordinary violence nuclear war can cause and the underlying fear that prevents nuclear powers from engaging in reckless behavior. In the second part of the chapter I explore the linkages between the five institutions as well as their logical incompatibilities, which are relevant in the context of peaceful and violent change. I conclude by sketching possible avenues for future scholarly research in this area.

Nuclear Deterrence Shortly after the use of nuclear weapons against Japan in 1945, US strategists such as Bernard Brodie formulated the very first tenets that would inform the coming of the

302   Michal Smetana nuclear age. These early writings suggested that the nuclear weapon is not just a mere powerful addition to the US arsenal but the “absolute weapon” that completely alters the logic of military strategy: we should not be concerned anymore about winning but rather about preventing wars, as atomic bombs “can have almost no other useful purpose” (Brodie 1946, 46, cf. 1978; Steiner 1984).3 During the decades that followed, this idea was repeatedly contested in US strategic circles (see Gray and Payne 1980; Jervis 1984; Paul, Harknett, and Wirtz 1998); nevertheless, the logic of nuclear deterrence— employment of coercive threats to use nuclear weapons in order to dissuade military attacks against oneself or one’s allies—has become one of the main pillars of the global nuclear order (Freedman 2013; Tannenwald 2013). Except for Israel, which maintains a policy of nuclear opacity (Cohen 2010), all current possessors of nuclear weapons (as well as NATO as a nuclear alliance) have explicitly embraced the doctrine of nuclear deterrence and rely on nuclear weapons in their broader security and defense strategies. With respect to the possibility of peaceful change in international affairs, the institution of nuclear deterrence corresponds to the “minimalist conceptions” of peaceful power transformation taking place in the absence of war—or a peaceful change in its “weak sense” (see the chapter by Paul in this volume; Miall 2007, 12). Conceptually, this relationship is based on an ostensible paradox: by making a credible threat of unacceptable damage to our adversary, we accomplish our foreign policy goals without the need to resort to the actual use of direct military force. If this logic holds for both parties in a dyad, they become mutually deterred from attacking each other, and the possibility of a rational, calculated use of large-­scale force is ruled out within their mutual relationship.4 While a majority of nuclear weapons scholarship has focused on nuclear deterrence as a coercive strategy to maintain the status quo, there is an inherent logic in the concept of nuclear deterrence that is also conducive to major systemic change by peaceful means: the existence of mutual nuclear deterrence relationships not only prevents the violent change from taking place, it also allows for both gradual and rapid peaceful change even in situations when we would expect a turn to violence under other circumstances, such as hegemonic wars in the context of major power shifts (Gilpin 1983; Kennedy 1989). Perhaps the most prominent empirical example of such dynamics among great powers is the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Despite conflicting interests and numerous crises, more than four decades passed without either resorting to the direct use of military force between them, and the bipolar system underwent a profound yet essentially peaceful power transformation at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s. Although there are scholars who seriously question the relevance of nuclear deterrence in this regard (e.g., Wilson 2008; Mueller 2012), most academic literature on the subject suggests that it was the existence of secured second-­strike nuclear capabilities that introduced the “balance of terror” into the relationship between the two adversaries and significantly contributed to the strategic stability and increased caution in mutual interactions (Jervis 1989; Waltz 1990).

Nuclear Weapons and Peaceful Change   303 We may now be witnessing yet another case of power transition in the world order that is potentially perilous yet so far has occurred in the absence of armed conflict: the decline of American power and the simultaneous rise of China (Allison 2017). Whereas China is conventionally inferior to the United States, and its nuclear arsenal lags significantly behind the latter’s in absolute numbers (Kristensen and Korda  2019a,  2019b), Beijing has been rapidly modernizing its nuclear forces, expanding its stockpile, and significantly improving its capability for assured retaliation (Cunningham and Fravel 2015; Schreer 2015; Bojian 2018). The capability to deter both nuclear and conventional challenges from the United States could underpin the process of peaceful power transition as envisioned in the minimalist view of peaceful change, in which the rising power repositions itself in the international hierarchy without the need to resort to the use of military force and the declining power refrains from the use of military force to reverse this dynamic. Nevertheless, one needs to be mindful of the extent to which the modus operandi of the institution of nuclear deterrence relies on human emotions that are difficult to reconcile with the usual idea of ‘peace’—that is, an extreme anxiety connected with the ­possibility of nuclear war and the imagery of nuclear Armageddon, or what Frank Sauer described as “the collectively experienced fear of death en masse” (Sauer 2015, 174). In addition, while we often look at the Cold War as an era of relative stability in the nuclear domain, there is a growing recognition of accidents, miscalculations, and ‘close-­call’ events that easily could have spiraled out of control and escalated to the level of nuclear war; some new research into these events also highlights the extent to which nuclear use was prevented only through the mindful intervention of exceptionally prudent individuals (Lewis, Williams, and Pelopidas 2014). With respect to the rising powers, it is also important to note the extent to which ‘nuclear cover’ enables assertive territorial advances without an adequate response from the international community that are hardly reconcilable with the notion of a peaceful change—such as the case of China in the South China Sea and Russia in Ukraine. The institution of nuclear deterrence also faces some serious challenges in the twenty-­ first century—challenges that could, in the worst-­case scenario, negatively impact the process of peaceful change and enable violent change to take place in its stead. Technological advances in missile accuracy and remote sensing threaten to shatter one of the main pillars of successful mutual deterrence: survivability of second-­strike forces to respond to an attempted counterforce strike (Lieber and Press 2017). The advent of new hypersonic missiles—such as those envisioned for the US “Prompt Global Strike” program—threatens the foundations of strategic stability and paves the way for escalation to the nuclear level in response to strategic conventional strikes (Acton  2013; Gormley 2015; Naylor 2019). These technological developments, together with qualitative and quantitative expansion of missile defenses and advances in artificial intelligence and cyberweapons, make the tenets of Cold War–era deterrence theory ever more difficult to apply, bring about new layers of complexity in strategic interactions, and provide prospective tools for efforts to transcend nuclear deterrence and return to the offense-­ dominated world.

304   Michal Smetana

Nuclear Arms Control In the early 1960s, several pragmatically oriented scholars in the Western strategic ­community laid the conceptual foundations of the institution of bilateral strategic arms control (Brennan 1961; Bull 1961; Schelling and Halperin 1961). Unlike nuclear disarmament, considered by many of these scholars to be an essentially utopian project, the theory and practice of nuclear arms control has been philosophically fully compatible with the logic of nuclear deterrence (Mutimer 2011). Instead of the “maximalist conception” that would seek to achieve nuclear peace by global abolition of nuclear weapons, the “minimalist conception” primarily aimed at achieving nonviolent coexistence through strategic stability based on mutual vulnerability. The idea of mutual vulnerability as a path to national security has been both counterintuitive and controversial. Nevertheless, both the US and Soviet governments eventually accepted this logic as a “realistic” approach to limitation of their stockpiles (see Nye 1987; Adler 1992; Krause and Latham 1998). The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), which resulted in the signing of the 1972 SALT I interim agreement and antiballistic missile (ABM) treaty, represented the first major attempt to curb the nuclear arms race and formalize the practice of bilateral arms control as a basis for the US-­Soviet mutual deterrence relationship. As argued by Adler (1992, 104), the diffusion of the arms control idea “was not inconsequential for peaceful change. The outcome of a lack of such shared understanding might have been nuclear war, rather than the temporary demise of detente.” While the validity of arms control theory premises has been repeatedly contested in practice through the development of counterforce capabilities to “prevail” in a hypothetical nuclear war (Jervis  1984; Mlyn  1998), the process of arms control brought much-­ needed transparency to the strategic dialogue between the two nuclear superpowers. The gradual sedimentation of verification practices and their expansion to relatively intrusive on-­site inspections in the INF (1987) and START (1991) treaties served not only as a source of information about treaty compliance but also as a critically important confidence-­building measure. In consequence, the risk of miscalculation in the US-­Soviet strategic relationship was significantly decreased, and mutual deterrence was stabilized to the extent of preventing violent change and allowing peaceful change to take its course. Nevertheless, developments since the early 2000s highlight the fact that the existence of arms control as an enduring institution of global nuclear order should not be taken for granted. The George W. Bush administration’s ideological disregard of arms control practices led to the abolishment in 2002 of the ABM treaty and the formally unrestrained development of US missile defenses, in violation of the basic axioms of strategic arms control theory (Bohlen 2003). In addition, relevant actors have never managed to extend the practice of strategic arms control beyond Washington and Moscow to meaningfully involve other nuclear-­armed countries in the strategic dialogue (Smetana and

Nuclear Weapons and Peaceful Change   305 Ditrych 2015). The deterioration of the US-­Russian relationship and concerns about rising China contributed to the US withdrawal from the INF treaty in 2019. Finally, following this downhill path, the extension of the soon-­to-­expire New START, the last arms control treaty in force limiting nuclear arsenals of the United States and Russia, seems to remain an unlikely prospect at the time of the writing of this chapter.

Nuclear Nonproliferation In the 1960s, the growing pressures to facilitate global diffusion of civilian nuclear power brought about the need to find a multilateral solution to the “nonproliferation problem”: the uncontrolled spread of nuclear weapons among states in the international system (Walker 2012, 73). The United Nations (UN)–based process eventually culminated in the signing of the Nuclear Non-­Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1968.5 Together with the regional nuclear-­weapon-­free-­zone agreements, the NPT and its quinquennial review process laid normative foundations for the global nuclear nonproliferation regime. In spite of some academic accounts suggesting that a (gradual and selective) process of nuclear proliferation can prevent violent conflicts (Waltz 1981, 2012; Mearsheimer 1990, 1993), the NPT preamble expresses a clear cause and effect conviction that “proliferation of nuclear weapons would seriously enhance the danger of nuclear war” (UN Department for Disarmament Affairs 1968). According to this view, shared by a majority of scholars,6 security experts, international organizations, and governments, nuclear nonproliferation as one of the primary institutions of the global nuclear order contributes to global and regional stability as well as prevention of violent change. There is, however, a deeper strategic logic in nuclear nonproliferation arrangements that is conducive to peaceful change. For non-­nuclear-­weapon states, the NPT not only imposed a set of binding obligations but also established an increasingly complex and verifiable “system of restraint” (Horovitz 2015, 134). As many decisions to “go nuclear” would be driven by a security dilemma and a need to balance a (potential) nuclear rival (Sagan  1996), the NPT rules and the related verification system provided by the International Atomic Energy Agency gave the actors a (relatively) high level of confidence that while they were forgoing the nuclear weapons option, their rivals would do so as well (Bellany 1977; Nye 1985). Once adversaries jointly access the NPT and subject themselves to inspections that will verify their compliance with the treaty, the worry over a potential nuclear breakthrough by one of the parties is diminished, and a new path opens for a peaceful transformation of mutual relationships. This logic is particularly applicable on a regional level, where it is sometimes further strengthened by the establishment of regionally defined nuclear-­weapon-­free zones (Goldblat 1997; Thakur 1998). Nevertheless, the logic of nuclear nonproliferation has been somewhat problematic for the process of global peaceful change to the extent that nuclear weapons are broadly perceived as symbols of prestige and great power status (Sagan 1996). In the absence of

306   Michal Smetana war, there may be a need to resort to “status accommodation” of rising powers, as was the case in the 2005 US-­India nuclear deal (Paul 2017a). For New Delhi, an extra-­NPT agreement struck with Washington regarding mutual civilian collaboration not only paved the way for the normalization of India’s “deviant” status in the global nuclear order but also symbolically acknowledged its rising power status in the international order more broadly (Smetana 2018; see also Paul 2007; Kienzle 2014; Lantis 2015). This dynamic was further strengthened by the successful negotiation of the India-­specific waiver in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG)—the very export-­control group that was brought into existence in response to India’s 1974 nuclear test in the first place (Wastler 2010). As one Indian newspaper aptly noted, “If the Beijing Olympics was China’s coming-­out party, the NSG waiver was India’s” (Times of India  2008). Nevertheless, while the US-­India deal arguably succeeded as a status accommodation measure, it also represents a significant challenge to core nonproliferation norms based on the principle of universality, with a large part of the NPT’s membership objecting to the double standard and unequal treatment of India as an NPT nonmember in comparison with other states. Together with concerns about insufficient steps being taken toward nuclear disarmament, similar practices threaten the legitimacy of the global nonproliferation regime and make agreement on new joint initiatives increasingly difficult (Tannenwald 2013).

Nuclear Nonuse That nuclear weapons have not been used in a military conflict since 1945 remains one of the most intriguing puzzles in our field. As many cases of nuclear nonuse cannot be explained solely by deterrence, social constructivist scholars tend to ascribe such restraint to the effect of a powerful intersubjective international norm on nuclear nonuse: the “nuclear taboo” (Tannenwald 1999, 2005, 2006, 2007; see also Paul 1995; Gizewski 1996; Price and Tannenwald 1996; Herring 1997; Farrell and Lambert 2001; Quester 2006). Rationalist scholars then refer to the norm of nonuse as a prudent “tradition” that has gradually emerged in the strategic interaction among nuclear-­armed states (Sagan 2004; Paul 2009, 2010). Whatever the sources of the nuclear nonuse norm are, it has been arguably instrumental in preventing an ultimate violent change through nuclear war or the use of nuclear weapons against nonnuclear countries. It is likely that the hypothetical violation of the nonuse norm would have a major transformative effect on the global nuclear order and perhaps also the international order as such (Zuberi 2003, 45; Quester 2005; cf. Tannenwald 2007, 14–15). Nevertheless, by itself, the relevance of the nonuse norm as a driver of peaceful change has been rather limited. The normative barrier against the use of force on the nuclear level does not prevent the parties from engaging in a conventional conflict to achieve their goals. In fact, to the extent that the parties are convinced that the use of nuclear weapons would not be credible in a given situation, they would be

Nuclear Weapons and Peaceful Change   307 even more tempted to engage in a limited conventional challenge—a situation that has been aptly termed the stability-­instability paradox (Snyder 1961). In addition, there have been signs that the nuclear nonuse norm may be gradually weakening in the current political climate. The latest experimental research into public attitudes about nuclear weapons shows that, at least in Western countries, the public is more supportive of nuclear weapons use than previously thought (Press, Sagan, and Valentino 2013; Sagan and Valentino 2017b; Dill, Sagan, and Valentino 2019; Haworth, Sagan, and Valentino 2019). At the same time, the ongoing nuclear modernization programs and the changes in nuclear doctrines once again suggest an increasing role of nuclear weapons in national security of the major nuclear-­armed countries, while the populist leaders in these states often exhibit much more belligerent rhetoric and generally refrain from both the practices of restraint and the necessary “taboo talk” that would prevent the nonuse norm from further erosion (Tannenwald 2018a, 2018c).

Nuclear Disarmament The idea of the abolition of nuclear weapons appeared at the very beginning of the nuclear age. The first resolution of the UN General Assembly in 1946 called for the “the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons,” and the notion of “disarmament” was frequently summoned in political proclamations of both ideological blocs during the Cold War. As all the actual proposals, such as the Baruch plan, were short lived (Gerber 1982), the commitment to nuclear disarmament eventually found its way to the NPT. Nevertheless, among other commitments enshrined in the treaty, Article VI, on disarmament, received the shortest and simultaneously the most ambiguous text of all, and the battles over its correct interpretation are today at the core of the legitimacy crisis in the global nuclear order (Müller 2010; Tannenwald 2013; Smetana 2016; Müller and Wunderlich 2018). For many, the process and outcome of nuclear disarmament correspond to the “maximalist conception” of peaceful change, in the sense that the change would not only take place in the absence of war but would also contribute to the achievement of a world order that is more just than the one we currently live in (see the chapter by Paul in this volume). Such peaceful change in the “strong sense” (Miall 2007, 12) of the term would arguably require finding a solution to many contemporary issues that are linked to the logic of nuclear deterrence, such as the Indo-­Pakistani conflict over Kashmir (Kapur and Ganguly  2015; Ganguly et al.  2019), the protracted standoff between the United States and North Korea in East Asia (Ogilvie-­White 2010; Grzelczyk 2019), and the status of Israel in the Middle East (Cohen 2010). A satisfactory diplomatic resolution of these issues would bring about a profound transformation of regional conflict dynamics and thereby an unprecedented peaceful change in both regional and global contexts. From the perspective of most states without nuclear weapons, nuclear disarmament would also represent a peaceful transformation of the global nuclear order that has been

308   Michal Smetana envisaged in the NPT. In this view, the NPT was constructed merely as a temporary solution to the proliferation problem, with the end-­state being the world without nuclear weapons. As such, the very nature of the global nonproliferation regime would be transformative, eventually shifting from “micro-­justice” principles (Brickman et al. 1981) of prohibiting further spread of nuclear weapons to “macro-­justice” nuclear abolition. At this end point, the unequal distinction between nuclear “haves” and “have nots” introduced in the NPT would disappear, and all countries would share an equal nonnuclear status. The actual meaning of NPT Article VI, however, has been subject to vigorous contestation over the decades. At this point, the five nuclear-­weapons states under the NPT approach nuclear disarmament as a (very) long-­term goal akin to achieving world peace and reject any new binding commitments in this direction. At the same time, the remaining “nuclear holdouts” (Hagerty  2012)—India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea—do not participate in the NPT process and do not show any signs of disarming by themselves. To offset these dynamics, some states without nuclear weapons, with the support of pro-­disarmament civil society, have launched an extra-­NPT process inspired by the earlier campaigns to ban landmines and cluster ammunition, framing disarmament as a moral obligation of all states because of the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of the use of these weapons and of their incompatibility with the principles of international humanitarian law (Borrie 2014). The so-­called Humanitarian Initiative culminated in the adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in the UN General Assembly in July 2017, the first international agreement banning nuclear weapons and providing a framework for their elimination (Onderco  2017; Potter  2017; Sagan and Valentino 2017a; Ruff 2018; Williams 2018). However, as expected, none of the nuclear-­ armed countries or NATO-­allied states joined the treaty, and they continue to reject its validity and refuse to abide by its terms. In this sense, the rift between nuclear “haves” and “have nots” has gradually widened, and the prospects for meaningful reconciliation remain bleak at this point.

Key Linkages and Conflicts The five aforementioned primary institutions of global nuclear order—nuclear deterrence, arms control, nonproliferation, nonuse, and disarmament—do not exist in a normative vacuum but are mutually interconnected through various linkages. In this section, I discuss some of these linkages and their relevance for the processes of peaceful change. One such complex and, in fact, rather ambiguous linkage is the one between deterrence and nonproliferation. One the one hand, a “nuclear umbrella” provided to allies through US-­extended deterrence has been instrumental in many of their decisions not to acquire nuclear arsenals of their own—a choice that they may reconsider if these

Nuclear Weapons and Peaceful Change   309 extended deterrence guarantees are withdrawn (Smith  1987, 258; Krause  2007, 494; Freedman 2013, 97). On the other hand, the continued reliance on nuclear weapons for allied assurance reproduces the value of nuclear weapons in world politics and thereby contributes to the systemic pressures to acquire nuclear weapons. As such, in the context of global nonproliferation efforts, “a security-­oriented strategy of maintaining a major role for US nuclear guarantees to restrain proliferation among allies will eventually create strong tensions with a norm-­oriented strategy seeking to delegitimize nuclear weapons use and acquisition” (Sagan 1996, 86). As noted previously, the relationship between deterrence and arms control is principally complementary and jointly contributes to the prevention of violent change, while allowing peaceful change in the absence of nuclear war to take its course. The logics of deterrence and disarmament, however, are by their nature largely incompatible. The strategy of deterrence, implicitly or explicitly, is based on the acknowledgment of the value of nuclear weapons for security management; current strategies to promote nuclear disarmament nevertheless rely on deep devaluing of nuclear arms as legitimate tools of national, regional, or global security (Ritchie 2013, 2014). In the recent debates over the need for practical steps toward nuclear abolition, nuclear deterrence has increasingly been portrayed as a morally abhorrent practice (Ifft  2017; Tannenwald 2018b). At the same time, the opponents of nuclear abolition see a world without nuclear weapons as inherently unstable and more prone to violent change than the status quo (Glaser 1998; Schelling 2009). There is also a certain conceptual tension between the institution of nuclear deterrence and the norm of nuclear nonuse, as the credibility of the deterrent threats necessarily requires a belief that nuclear weapons would be used under certain circumstances. Tannenwald (2007, 19) argued that the “nuclear taboo” constitutes a “part of the practice of deterrence itself.” Later she added that “[t]he taboo reinforces mutual deterrence between nuclear powers while undermining the credibility of deterrent threats between nuclear and nonnuclear states” (Tannenwald 2018b, 16). The explanation for this difference lies in the (often implicit) conceptualization of the nonuse norm as a normative prohibition of the first use of nuclear weapons (implied in the strike against a nonnuclear country), while the retaliatory use against a nuclear opponent would not be subject to such prohibition (and thereby remain credible). However, the contemporary approach to deterrence in major nuclear-­armed states—including the development of lower-­yield, more ‘usable’ nuclear weapons—generally contributes to lowering the threshold for nuclear use in general, thereby weakening the nonuse norm. Other scholars also argue that “[a] taboo on the use of nuclear weapons can logically not co-­exist with the maintenance of nuclear deterrence as security doctrine [. . .]. Deterrence ideology, paradoxically, presumes the planning, preparing, and therefore thinking and speaking about nuclear use in order to avoid nuclear use” (Müller 2020; see also Sauer 2015; Sherrill 2018). Finally, strengthening of the nonuse norm to the extent that the employment of nuclear weapons would be truly ‘unthinkable’ is sometimes seen as a possible (or even necessary) path toward nuclear disarmament. This process would in principle represent a major peaceful change toward a qualitatively different world order than the one in

310   Michal Smetana which we live now. The Humanitarian Initiative, which underlies the movement that culminated in the adoption of the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, similarly views gradual stigmatization of nuclear weapons as a feasible disarmament strategy that would, in time, render nuclear weapons unusable and therefore politically dispensable (Hanson 2018; Considine 2019). Paradoxically, however, this strategy can also backfire. One of the current shortcomings of the campaigns for nuclear abolition is the fact that there is very low active support for nuclear disarmament among the general public—especially in comparison with the Cold War era, when the threat of nuclear war seemed pressing enough to bring large crowds in the West to protest against nuclear arms races and to demand nuclear disarmament. Efforts to downplay the role of nuclear weapons in world politics simultaneously reduce the public perception of the urgency to proceed to nuclear disarmament compared to other pressing issues of our time. The tragic and rather disturbing prospect is that the momentum that would likely move the world’s public to demand nuclear disarmament may only be possible once people see the horrifying impact of a nuclear strike in the news—that is, at the moment when the world experiences the brutality of violent change in consequence of the first military use of nuclear weapons after decades of restraint.

Conclusions In his seminal 1977 book The Anarchical Society, English school theorist Hedley Bull noted that “[t]he international order is notoriously lacking in mechanisms of peaceful change, notoriously dependent on war as the agent of just change” (Bull  1977, 183). Authors of this Handbook, however, suggest that not only is peaceful change in international relations possible, but the study of its mechanisms should be at the core of scholarly endeavors in our field (see also Paul 2017b). The aim of this particular chapter is to explore the intersection of nuclear weapons and peaceful change in world politics. To this end, I have identified five primary institutions of global nuclear order—nuclear deterrence, nuclear arms control, nuclear nonproliferation, nuclear nonuse, and nuclear disarmament—and their mutual linkages that have been conducive to peaceful change or at least instrumental in preventing violent change. While the first four would correspond to the “minimalist conception” of peaceful change—as a change taking place in absence of war—the logic of the fifth institution of global nuclear order, that is, nuclear disarmament, would conform to the “maximalist conception” of peaceful change, which would also contribute to the achievement of a world order that is more just than the one we currently live in. Nevertheless, throughout the chapter I also highlight the limits of these institutions and their inherent incompatibilities, as well as the ‘double-­edged’ nature of nuclear weapons, which threatens peaceful coexistence and carries the risk of violent change of an unprecedented character. In the context of contemporary developments, I particularly highlight the risks connected with technological developments and the gradual

Nuclear Weapons and Peaceful Change   311 disintegration of arms control institutions and other pillars of strategic stability. I also point to the miscalculations, accidents, and other ‘close calls’ that put our beliefs in the infallibility of nuclear deterrence in question and show that the extreme anxiety connected with the possible use of nuclear weapons not only stops great powers from openly attacking each other but also enables assertive territorial advances of rising powers without an adequate response from the international community that are hardly reconcilable with the notion of a peaceful change. The limited space of this chapter only allows me to provide a basic overview of the issue at hand, and there are several avenues that should be explored by future research in this area. First, scholars should employ a diverse range of methods to further examine the complexity of interconnectedness of institutions, norms, rules, and practices in global nuclear order and the implication of this interconnectedness for the mechanisms of peaceful change. Second, there should be new research on the linkages between nuclear and nonnuclear aspects of peaceful change and their mutual compatibilities and conflicts. Finally, drawing on the conceptual elaborations in this chapter and other relevant scholarly literature, scholars should develop specific policy-­oriented strategies of peaceful change that would be applicable in the current volatile state of international politics.

Notes 1. On the privileged position of nuclear weapons in international affairs and the notion of “nuclear exceptionalism,” see Hecht (2012). For the rare argumentation that nuclear weapons have been “essentially irrelevant” in world politics, see Mueller (2012). 2. The term institution here does not necessarily imply a formalized international organization or a regime but rather an institution in an understanding of the English school: a recognized set of fundamental practices that constitute actors’ identities and underpin the legitimacy of their interactions in a given social order (see Buzan  2004; Bull  1977). Global nuclear order is then a more general “bulk of norms, rules, and institutions that regulate the acquisition, possession, and use of nuclear technology in international politics” (Smetana 2019, 96; see also Walker 2000; 2012; Jasper 2016; Tannenwald 2018b). 3. On Bernard Brodie and the (in)contestability of nuclear weapons, see also Harknett (1998). 4. A detailed review of nuclear-­deterrence-­related literature is beyond the scope of this chapter. For a thorough conceptual discussion, see, for example, Schelling (1966), Morgan (1977), Jervis (1989), Freedman (1989), Powell (1990), or Kroenig (2018). For a comprehensive critique of rational deterrence literature, see Lebow and Stein (1989). 5. To date, only India, Pakistan, Israel, and South Sudan have not acceded to the NPT, while North Korea is so far the only country that has withdrawn from it, in 2003. For a more detailed discussion of the process of NPT negotiations, see Burns (1969), Epstein (1976), Unger (1976), Shaker (1980), Nye (1981), Müller et al. (1994, chap. 2), Bourantonis (1997), Paul (2003), Krause (2007), Bunn and Rhinelander (2008), Walker (2012, chap. 3), and Popp, Horovitz, and Wenger (2016). 6. For an overview of the proliferation of the “optimist–pessimist debate,” see Feaver (1993, 1995, 1997), Lavoy (1995), Knopf (2002), Karl (2011), Sagan and Waltz (2012), or Cohen (2016).

312   Michal Smetana

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chapter 17

The Politica l Econom y of Pe acefu l Ch a nge Lars S. Skålnes

At least since the end of the Cold War, policy makers and scholars alike have turned to foreign economic policies to promote peaceful change. Attempting to make former enemies into responsible stakeholders, the United States and its allies used membership in international institutions, particularly the World Trade Organization (WTO), to demonstrate the economic benefits of joining the international economic order created in the aftermath of Second World War. Although it was by no means universally accepted, the belief was that the economic benefits of economic interdependence would gradually transform autocratic regimes into democracies (see, e.g., Blackwill and Harris 2016, 225). Because democracies rarely, if ever, fight each other—another much-­debated proposition—liberal economic policies thus would become a major source of peaceful change. The rise of the BRICS1 powers, particularly China, to economic prominence and the perception that these powers are especially adept at using foreign economic policies for strategic ends have renewed interest among scholars and policy makers in the links between strategic considerations and such policies. Thus, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton argued in 2011 that “the economic is strategic and the strategic is economic” and that the “foreign and economic relations [of the United States] remain indivisible . . . at a time when power is more often . . . exercised in economic terms” (quoted in Scholvin and Wigell 2018, 73). More generally, the 2017 “National Security Strategy” of the United States asserts that “economic security is national security” (White House 2017, 17). The still considerable gap in military power between the United States and the other great powers, a gap that is likely to remain for the foreseeable future (Brooks and Wohlforth  2015/2016), may be a major reason why great power conflict has so far remained largely confined to the economic arena. Here, the power discrepancy is much smaller. While China still lags behind the United States on economic measures such as

320   Lars S. Skålnes gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, its GDP (measured in purchasing power terms) is already larger than that of the United States. The use of economic instruments for national security ends might significantly affect the prospects for peaceful change in international politics in the short to medium term. Because the imposition of, say, economic sanctions often appears less threatening than the use of military force, their use is sometimes thought to exacerbate international tensions less. This assumes that economic conflict does not escalate to military conflict, the likelihood of which should be lower in an economically interdependent world. The degree to which economic interdependence will serve to contain economic conflict and thus promote peaceful change is an important topic, to which I turn next. The second section discusses contributions to the analysis of economic statecraft in the literatures on geoeconomics and international political economy (IPE) as well as the potential for cross-­fertilization between these two literatures. Whether the use of the tools of economic statecraft will promote peaceful change is often unclear, and likely to vary depending on which specific tools states use. The chapter concludes by suggesting some possible directions for future research.

Economic Interdependence and Peaceful Change The possible positive effects of economic interdependence on conflict continue to be a topic of great interest in international relations. The core argument is that high levels of interdependence increase the costs of war, thereby making peace more likely. Space does not permit a full discussion of the extensive literature on this subject here.2 Instead, I focus on several relatively recent arguments with particular relevance for the question of how economic interdependence might affect the prospects for peaceful change. Copeland (1996, 2015) asserts that the liberal argument that economic in­ter­de­pend­ ence will reduce conflict and the realist argument to the contrary are both wrong. What matters are the expectations states have about whether the international economy will remain open to trade in the future. If states expect the international economy to close, security-­maximizing states will fear economic decline and adopt aggressive policies, which will increase conflict and possibly lead to war. The US trade war with China would seem to be exactly the kind of policy that would reduce China’s faith that the world economy will remain open in the future. Of course, the US domestic market is not the world market, and as Copeland (2015, 443) notes, China’s extensive trade ties with Europe and Asia would allow it to divert trade to these markets. This has indeed already happened; Chinese exports to Vietnam, Taiwan, and the Philippines, in particular, have increased significantly in the wake of the trade war (Economist 2019). The easier it is for Chinese producers to find substitutes for the American market, the less likely it is that

The Political Economy of Peaceful Change   321 the trade war will escalate to a military conflict. The ability to divert exports to other markets of course assumes that those markets remain open to Chinese exports. Copeland’s (2015, 35–36) discussion of trade relies on standard notions of specialization according to comparative advantage, which leads to inter-­industry trade. Others have argued that whether economic interdependence will promote conflict or cooperation will depend less on the level of trade and more on the composition of trade, more specifically on whether trade is inter-­industry or intra-­industry. Peterson and Thies (2012, 748) hold that only intra-­industry trade is associated with lower levels of dyadic conflict. The emergence of intra-­industry trade in the post-­1945 world economy stands in marked contrast to the inter-­industry trade that dominated the world economy in the decades leading up to the First World War. The greater specialization associated with inter-­industry trade leaves states more dependent on their trade partners, and in relations of asymmetric dependence, this can be exploited for political purposes (Peterson and Thies 2012, 751). In contrast, since intra-­industry trade involves the exchange of similar goods, domestic substitutes are readily available, and the potential for political leverage is limited. On the other hand, it should be noted that the availability of domestic substitutes in intra-­industry trade would also reduce mutual vulnerability, making conflict less costly and thus more likely. Intra-­industry trade tends to be particularly high for technologically advanced manufactured products and low for primary products. Thus, as countries develop, trade increasingly becomes intra-­industry. China’s trade with the rest of the world has followed this pattern (Grubel and Lloyd 2007). This implies that, as China develops, its trade with the United States (and other developed countries) should be less a source of conflict than it currently is. This is because intra-­industry trade does not lead to specialization and the considerable reallocation of labor and capital associated with it, nor, therefore, to clamors for protection against imports. Intra-­industry trade should reduce conflicts over trade and hence strengthen the prospects that the global economy will develop peacefully. This in turn should improve the prospects for peaceful change more generally. Still, caution is in order. While some argue that intra-­industry trade promotes trade liberalization (Manger 2015), others do not (Gilligan 1997; Kono 2009).3 Baccini, Dür, and Elsig (2018) find considerable cross-­country variation in the relationship between intra-­industry trade and trade liberalization and call for further research. Because intra-­industry trade is associated with economies of scale, such trade is closely related to lobbying for preferential trade agreements (PTAs), an increasingly salient feature of the world economy, particularly since 1990 (Johns and Peritz 2015, 349). The wide latitude given to the creation of PTAs in the WTO means that there are few international institutional constraints on their formation. By expanding the size of the market, PTAs allow firms in member countries to move further down the marginal and average cost curves, hence improving their competitiveness in markets not covered by the PTA as well (Peterson and Thies 2015, 186–187). Consequently, firms in nonmember states will face stiffer competition as a result of the PTA, something that might increase international tension and thus undermine the prospects for peaceful change.

322   Lars S. Skålnes Another, more recent feature of world trade that stands in marked contrast to the characteristics of trade in the period before the First World War is the existence of global value chains (GVCs) centered on trade in intermediate goods. Here there is scholarly agreement that GVCs foster trade in intermediate goods, which in turn promotes trade liberalization (Baccini, Dür, and Elsig 2018). China’s deep integration in GVCs should give it a stake in supporting an international economic order in which change happens peacefully. The existence of GVCs and the geographical fragmentation of production that they represent have served as a major impetus behind the creation of regional trade agreements (RTAs). Due to the demise of the multilateral Doha Round negotiations of the WTO, many countries have turned their attention to RTAs as a way of continuing and extending the work of the WTO and before that the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. RTAs are PTAs, but they go beyond many PTAs in that they are designed to promote “deep integration” or “positive integration” by focusing on so-­called behind-­the-­ border trade rules. These rules involve the harmonization and liberalization of domestic laws and regulations so that domestic and foreign firms are treated in a nondiscriminatory manner in national markets. Another objective is to create consistency of treatment across the markets of member states. Prominent examples of RTAs are the US-­Mexico part of the North American Free Trade Agreement, the European Union (EU), and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-­Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) (Kim 2015, 360–364, 366–367). To the extent that RTAs embody different rules regulating exchange, they will increase discrimination against nonmembers and also weaken the possibilities for multilateral cooperation. The significant differences between US and EU RTAs, especially with regard to legalization and enforceability, offer an example of the obstacles involved in multilateralizing the rules embodied in different RTAs. The danger is that instead of multilateralization, the global trading system will devolve into discriminatory hubs of governance centered on a leading economy (Kim 2015, 369–371). Although economic considerations primarily seem to motivate formation of RTAs (McDevitt 2015, 43–44), they also have undeniable security implications (discussed later in the chapter) and may even be motivated by such implications to some extent. This ambiguity points to a major difficulty in explaining what drives foreign economic policy, whether economic or strategic considerations. Such policies are often compatible with both interpretations, and indeed, they are likely often motivated by considerations of both power and plenty. Distinguishing empirically between these motivations or intentions is difficult, but it is also necessary. As Norris points out, to call a policy economic statecraft requires reference to a state’s intentions in adopting the policy in question (Norris 2016, 14). How RTAs affect the prospects for peaceful change is likely to depend at least to some extent on how nonmembers interpret the underlying motivations. The role the TPP was meant to play as part of the Obama administration’s so-­called pivot to Asia or rebalancing is one example of the ambiguity. Whereas President Barack Obama (2015) emphasized the economic importance of the TPP, then US secretary of defense Ashton Carter noted its implications for national security. In a speech Carter

The Political Economy of Peaceful Change   323 gave in April 2015, after addressing the TPP’s economic importance, he argued that the “TPP . . . makes strong strategic sense, and it is probably one of the most important parts of the rebalance.” “[I]n terms of our rebalance in the broadest sense,” he continued, “passing TPP is as important to me as another aircraft carrier” (Carter  2015). More broadly, he asserted that “[t]he rebalance is helping create the right incentives and conditions to encourage China to play by the rules of a principled international order.” More broadly still, as Campbell and Ratner (2014, 114) note, “In Asia, economics and security are inextricably linked, and the United States will not be able to sustain its leadership there through military might alone. That is why the successful conclusion of the TPP . . . is a cardinal priority.”4 Obviously the Trump administration thought differently, but it seems reasonable to assume that policy makers generally are aware of the security implications of RTAs. RTAs that exclude China, like the TPP and its successor, the CPTPP, or TPP-­11, provide a counterweight to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The BRI is a vast program designed to finance and build infrastructure in Asia, and it is, inter alia, likely to increase China’s foreign trade and promote the use of the renminbi (Cai 2018, 839). If fully realized, it will put China at the hub of an economic network of great geoeconomic and geopolitical significance (Beeson 2018). The more exclusionary and discriminatory initiatives like RTAs and the BRI are, the more they are likely to affect negatively the prospects for peaceful change. However, China’s willingness to open up the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank—a development bank also designed to increase Asian infrastructure investments—to non-­Asian countries should reduce the possible negative effects of the BRI. Moreover, a number of the countries that have joined the TPP-­11 are engaged in negotiations to conclude another RTA, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which will include China. A successful conclusion of these negotiations might also mitigate any negative effects of the TPP-­11 on the prospects for peaceful change. The TPP was motivated in large part by a sense that the world economy is changing and that the rules governing it are increasingly irrelevant to much international economic exchange. As President Obama put it in November 2015, “the rule book is up for grabs” (quoted in Calmes 2015). Because of its size, the TPP would have enabled its members to write the rules governing economic exchange in the future. To capture this notion that the world economy and the economic interdependence characterizing it are changing, scholars refer to the new globalized political economy as complex in­ter­de­pend­ence or the new interdependence. Although harking back to (some aspects of) Keohane and Nye’s (2001) work on complex interdependence in the 1970s, disputes over rules and principles, rule overlap, power asymmetries, hierarchies, and global economic networks characterize the new interdependence. These features of a globalized economy are the foci of theoretical developments such as the new interdependence approach and analyses of (the new) complex interdependence (Farrell and Newman 2016, 2019; Oatley 2019). The structure or topography of global economic networks—a type of social network—is described in terms of the nodes (actors or locations) and the number and strength of the ties connecting them. Due to preferential attachment, network effects,

324   Lars S. Skålnes and learning-­by-­doing effects, social networks are typically highly centralized and unequal. Rather than being flat or fragmented, such networks are self-­reinforcing, hub-­ and-­ spoke systems wherein exchange flows mainly through hubs (Farrell and Newman 2019, 49–51). The power asymmetries characterizing social networks give the states or actors occupying hub nodes the ability to coerce states occupying peripheral nodes into adopting desired policies (Farrell and Newman 2019, 45). The United States and the EU occupy central nodes in many of these networks, such as global financial networks. One example is their control of financial messaging services through the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), which they used to try to cripple Iran’s banking sector and thus strengthen the overall economic sanctions regime (Farrell and Newman 2019, 58–60, 65–70). Network effects mean that once established, networks are resistant to change. These effects also make it difficult, though not impossible, to establish alternative networks. Still, while states occupying central nodes may “weaponize interdependence,” the more they do so, the greater the incentive for states occupying peripheral nodes to try to establish networks of their own. This is what China has done by wresting control of parts of the internet (Farrell and Newman 2019, 51, 77–78) and by trying to increase the use of the renminbi in international trade. If such efforts are successful, globalization may give way to regionalization or the formation of several hub-­and-­spoke systems. While this possibility may limit the long-­term utility of networks as instruments of economic statecraft, networks nevertheless give the United States and the EU in particular a set of tools to try to alter the behavior of states that pose a challenge to the current international order in the short to medium term. Networks offer, in other words, a new set of tools the United States and the EU can use to pursue peaceful change. Farrell and Newman’s focus on the power asymmetries inherent in many economic networks characterizing our globalized world economy both resurrects and contextualizes the realist argument that interdependence means mutual dependence and that what matters in the end is the extent to which dependence is asymmetric and thus potentially a source of political leverage. In doing so, they underscore the link between the literatures on economic interdependence and economic statecraft.

Economic Statecraft Economic statecraft—the use of economic means to pursue foreign policy goals—often, if not typically, implies economic discrimination. Discrimination tends to weaken the role foreign economic policies can play in promoting peaceful change, as it focuses attention on the policies’ distributional consequences. In this view, the strategic use of foreign economic policies undermines the potential such policies have as tools for peaceful change. On the other hand, economic statecraft offers states policy instruments that can serve as substitutes for war (as in the use of economic sanctions to try to coerce

The Political Economy of Peaceful Change   325 a target to change its policies). The increasing use of foreign economic policies as ­strategic instruments may thus reduce the degree to which states turn to armed conflict to resolve their differences, and in this sense promote peaceful change. In short, economic statecraft has ambiguous effects on the prospects for peaceful change. Although interest in economic statecraft has picked up in the wake of China’s rise to economic prominence, much of the academic literature on economic statecraft was published before China’s rise became a major policy concern. As the Soviet Union faded away, leaving the United States supreme, Edward Luttwak argued, in what later became an influential essay, that the causes of international conflict and the “instruments of conflict” would be increasingly economic (1990, 21; see also Huntington 1993). The importance of military strength would be reduced as conflict shifted from the military to the economic arena. He termed this “admixture of the logic of conflict with the methods of commerce” geoeconomics (Luttwak  1990, 19). Relative power would continue to be important, but the means used in its pursuit would be economic rather than military. One might ask how Luttwak’s concept of geoeconomics differs from that of mercantilism, given that both focus on the zero-­sum or relative gains characteristics of international economic relations. Luttwak’s answer was that the losers in mercantilist competition could always resort to military force in an attempt to compensate for whatever economic losses they had suffered. In the current era, in contrast, the possession of nuclear weapons in particular has led dominant elites in the great powers to conclude that military force is no longer a useful instrument of statecraft (Luttwak 1990, 20–21; Scholvin and Wigell 2019, 10). Consequently, geoeconomic conflicts would have to be resolved using geoeconomic instruments. Concurrently, but independently, another literature emerged from within the subfield of IPE (see, e.g., Gowa  1989a,  1994; Brawley  1993; Mansfield  1994a,  1994b; Papayoanou  1996,  1997,  1999; Mansfield and Bronson  1997; Skålnes  1998,  2000; Blanchard, Mansfield, and Ripsman 2000; Newnham 2002; Lobell 2003).5 This literature emphasized the close connections between the study of national security and the study of foreign economic policy. Like the literature on geoeconomics, it was greatly inspired by Albert Hirschman’s National Power and the Structure of Foreign Trade ([1945] 1980) and David Baldwin’s Economic Statecraft (1985). It was less explicitly motivated by the end of the Cold War and more by dissatisfaction with various aspects of hegemonic stability theory, the debate around which consumed considerable intellectual power during the 1980s. While the theory was subject to a variety of criticisms, the one most relevant for our purposes was the theory’s neglect, as Gowa (1989b) noted, of security externalities. Freer trade leads to a more efficient allocation of resources and gains in income, which release resources that can be used for military purposes. Freer trade, that is, produces security externalities. Interest in the possible connections between (foreign) economic policy and national security strategy arguably faded in the first decade of the twenty-­first century as the IPE literature became dominated by the open economy politics perspective (Bates  1997; Lake 2009; Oatley 2011). This perspective remained firmly focused on domestic political factors, specifically on how domestic political institutions aggregate the deductively

326   Lars S. Skålnes derived economic policy preferences of domestic political actors (Rogowski  1989; Frieden 1991; Frieden and Rogowski 1996). For reasons perhaps less clear, interest in Luttwak’s geoeconomic perspective also waned. He insisted that conflict would remain and that the only thing that had changed with the demise of the Soviet Union was the shift from military to economic means in the struggle among states. In an era dominated by increasing economic integration and interdependence, however, this was not a message that resonated with either policy makers or academics (Scholvin and Wigell  2018, 75). While it inspired some more policy-­oriented work, it was ignored by scholars in IPE, who increasingly turned to analyzing how institutions, both domestic and international, could promote international cooperation. More recently, however, the rise of the BRICS powers has stimulated a large and growing literature on geoeconomics that draws inspiration from Luttwak’s geoeconomic perspective. Scholars and policy makers both are once again returning to the realist concern with the asymmetries and distributional issues inherent in economic exchange and economic bargaining (Scholvin and Wigell 2018, 75). As noted previously, IPE scholars as well are paying increasing attention to power asymmetries, focusing on how states may leverage the power asymmetries intrinsic to the global economic networks that have emerged in a world of complex interdependence (Farrell and Newman  2016,  2019; Oatley 2019). I discuss each of these literatures in turn, with their implications for the prospects for peaceful change in mind.

Geoeconomics Perhaps the main contribution of the geoeconomics literature is that it seeks to explore the implications of the rise of the BRICS powers for international relations. In so doing, it confronts two important problems. The first is one of definition: many scholars use the term geoeconomics without defining it clearly (Mattlin and Wigell 2016, 128; Scholvin and Wigell 2019, 4). While some use it loosely to refer to a “form of statecraft” or “economically oriented geopolitics” (Mattlin and Wigell 2016, 128–129), Scholvin and Wigell (2018, 80), following Wigell (2016, 137), offer a more precise and usable definition. They define geoeconomics as “the geostrategic use of economic power,” that is, “the application of economic means of power so as to realize strategic objectives.” The second, perhaps more important, problem has to do with the role geography plays in geoeconomics. It seems reasonable to think that the “geo-” prefix would refer to the role geographical factors or “place-­specific features” play in shaping both geoeconomic and geopolitical strategies (Scholvin and Wigell 2018, 77–78; 2019, 6, 9). Thus, Russia’s use of energy resources to put pressure on the EU or the creation of RTAs would both be topics for a geoeconomic analysis (Scholvin and Wigell 2018, 78; Wigell and Vihma 2016, 614–615). A perhaps even more obvious example is China’s BRI. In many applications of the concept of geoeconomics, however, the geographical dimension is absent, bringing the analysis very close to that IPE scholars offer.6 Blackwill

The Political Economy of Peaceful Change   327 and Harris’s study of “[t]oday’s leading geoeconomic instruments: trade policy, ­investment policy, economic and financial sanctions, cyber, aid, financial and monetary policy, and energy and commodities” (2016, 49), for instance, covers topics that put it squarely in the IPE subfield. More generally, without reference to place-­specific features, why talk of geoeconomics and not simply of economics (or, for that matter, geopolitics and not simply politics) (Scholvin and Wigell 2018, 74, 78, 81)? Scholars of geoeconomics, such as Vihma (2018, 14), have argued that to make geoeconomics more than something “akin to a point of view,” it needs to develop empirically testable hypotheses, explicitly suggesting drawing on insights from the work done in IPE on economic statecraft to do so. With Vihma’s proposal in mind, I turn next to a discussion of some of the similarities and differences between the geoeconomics and the IPE literature on economic statecraft and the possibilities for cross-­fertilization. With the exception of more recent contributions, the literature on economic statecraft has been ably reviewed by Michael Mastanduno (1998, 1999/2000). How it overlaps with and differs from the geoeconomics literature has, however, not yet adequately been addressed, nor, naturally, does his review cover some of the more recent contributions to the IPE literature on economic statecraft discussed in the following section.

IPE and Geoeconomics: Similarities and Differences Despite considerable overlap, the IPE literature on the integration of economic and security concerns departs in important ways from geoeconomics. Both literatures emphasize the importance of polarity in driving state behavior. The IPE literature, however, ignores geography, whereas the geoeconomics literature questions the role long-­ term economic engagement may play in promoting peaceful change, a role that IPE scholars evaluate more positively. In his reviews of the IPE literature, Mastanduno (1998, 1999/2000) discusses variation in the degree to which economic and security concerns are integrated in both policy making and scholarship. He argues that the structure of the international system—that is, polarity—plays an important role in influencing the degree of integration. In a multipolar system, interdependence tends to be high, military alliances are important for security, and the risk of defection from alliances is high. Managing alliance relations provides strong incentives for integrating economic and security considerations in an overall strategy. In bipolar systems, in contrast, interdependence between the two great powers is low, military alliances are less important, and the risk of defection is low. Thus, integration tends to be low. In unipolar systems, integration also tends to be high, although here integration reflects the desire on the part of the dominant state to retain its dominance. Adequately meeting challenges to its dominant position requires that the dominant state’s economic strategy support its national security strategy (Mastanduno 1998, 827). Above all, as the dominant power, the United States should take care not to appear threatening, which in the economic arena entails avoiding economic conflicts that might increase political tensions and thus make other powers less tolerant of US

328   Lars S. Skålnes predominance (Mastanduno 1998, 844–845). Still, Mastanduno (1998, 828, 853) argues that polarity, or more generally the “international distribution of military capabilities,” is underdetermining. American international competitiveness and how policy makers perceive the strategic environment they find themselves in also matter. Geoeconomics scholars also pay attention to structure, attributing the renewed interest in geoeconomics from both policy makers and scholars to the rise of China and other emerging powers to international economic prominence, which they see as creating a multipolar world (Vihma 2018, 2). Borrowing insights from Mastanduno, Vihma (2018, 13–14) argues that the need to rely on military alliances to realize their national security objectives in a multipolar world has increasingly led states to “use economic instruments for their geostrategic purposes.” Blackwill and Harris (2016, 21, 33) also attribute the increasing attention given to the use of economic instruments for strategic purposes to structural factors such as the rise of China and other emerging powers. The thrust of their argument, however, is that since the Nixon administration, US policy makers have paid insufficient attention to the links between geoeconomic instruments and security. During much of the Cold War since the 1970s, and during the post–Cold War period, the extensive use of economic sanctions and the simple and “abstract” belief that freer trade would promote political liberalization in China have constituted the main examples of the American use of geoeconomic instruments (Blackwill and Harris 2016, 174–176). This implies, of course, that in order to understand the lack of integration of economics and security in US statecraft, it is not enough to look at polarity. Whereas Mastanduno held that economics and security would be better integrated as the world moves from bipolarity to unipolarity, Blackwill and Harris see essentially no difference in the degree to which economic and military instruments are integrated in the two systems, at least as far as the United States is concerned. They argue that in the general lack of attention to geoeconomic instruments, the United States differs from its main rivals, Russia and China, in particular. This claim also marks a departure from structural factors (polarity), unless we argue that the current international system remains unipolar and that the dominant state, presumably the United States, faces different incentives than do Russia and China. If we instead consider the current system to be multipolar, we cannot use polarity to account for the variation in the degree to which economics and security are integrated in the strategies of the various great powers (see later in this chapter). Another, perhaps more fundamental, problem for the structural argument is that it is not obvious how one should characterize the current (or perhaps any) system. Those who favor the unipolar characterization tend to emphasize the great gap in military power between the United States and the other great powers (Brooks and Wohlforth 2015/2016). If we consider economic power, however measured, both scholars and policy makers, such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, have characterized the international economic system, or indeed the international system as such, as multipolar (Brooks and Wohlforth 2015/2016, 10–11; Vihma 2018, 2, 13–14). Moreover, it is not clear that the concept of polarity is useful in explaining (peaceful) change. Brooks and Wohlforth (2015/2016, 11), for instance, argue that the concept of

The Political Economy of Peaceful Change   329 polarity is too blunt and “particularly ill-­suited” to explain change—and by extension peaceful change—in the international system, and that a more “fine-­grained” approach to analyzing power is desirable. Thinking about change as change from one type of polarity to another involves thinking in terms of comparative statics (Brooks and Wohlforth 2015/2016, 11), where change is produced by variation in exogenous factors and thus outside the scope of analysis. A common solution to the difficulties involved in using polarity to explain variation in the degree to which economics and security are integrated in economic statecraft is to focus on domestic-­level variables. Such variables also play an important role in social network theory as applied to the global political economy. Domestic-­level variables, I argue next, give us greater insight into the relationship between economic statecraft and peaceful change.

Domestic Political Economy and Peaceful Change Both the geoeconomic and the IPE literatures on economic statecraft devote considerable attention to domestic political variables in explaining variation in the extent to which policy makers integrate economic and security considerations in statecraft. Luttwak, for instance, realized that the extent to which states might act “geoeconomically” would vary considerably, and that domestic politics would play an important role in determining this variation and hence the extent to which we would live in a geoeconomic world (Luttwak 1990, 19, 21–23; Vihma 2018, 2, 8). Blackwill and Harris (2016, 36) attribute the “modern resurgence of geoeconomics” partly to the increasing economic resources at the disposal of some states, particularly those committed to state capitalism such as Russia and China. Variation in the degree to which economics and security are integrated across state-­led and liberal economies is explained in terms of differences in the ability of states to mobilize economic resources for strategic objectives. State capitalist societies are better able to mobilize economic resources for national security ends, which gives them an advantage over liberal states in a struggle that is increasingly fought with economic weapons. Rather than promoting mutual dependence and peaceful change, foreign economic policies become a way to fight war by other means. While it may be true that the modern resurgence of geoeconomics is driven by great powers with state-­capitalist economies, one should be careful not to exaggerate the ability that these states have to formulate and implement economic policies designed to achieve political-­strategic objectives. Norris (2016), for instance, argues that the Chinese state’s capacity to engage in economic statecraft varies significantly and depends on its ability to control the behavior of Chinese firms. The Chinese state, he argues, uses Chinese businesses to pursue its strategic goals, but sometimes it fails to control their behavior. The implication is that taking domestic politics seriously requires that we move beyond overly simple models of domestic politics such as regime type. There is

330   Lars S. Skålnes simply too much institutional variation within these regimes for regime type to be an analytically useful category (Blanchard and Ripsman 2013, 16, 22–23). The role of domestic politics in Farrell and Newman’s social network theory reinforces this point. As Farrell and Newman recognize, network theory by itself cannot answer the question of whether networks will be “weaponized” in pursuit of peaceful change or some other strategic objective. The extent and types of weaponization will instead depend both on domestic institutional capacity and on the existence of a normative commitment to keeping networks open and independent of government control (Farrell and Newman 2019, 46). Focusing on regime type would also seem to divert attention from the possibility that long-­term economic engagement might alter the very nature of a regime. American strategy after the Cold War was to integrate China and Russia in the “new world order,” to use President George  H.  W.  Bush’s term, by promoting free markets and offering membership in the WTO. This strategy was based on the notion that economic liberalization could serve more than purely economic objectives. Liberalization could also strengthen domestic constituencies in countries that favored continued domestic economic and political reforms and thus foster democracy in these two states (Blackwill and Harris 2016, 174). The US commitment to an open internet was also motivated in part by the same idea (Farrell and Newman 2019, 71). Blackwill and Harris’s (2016, 174) dismissal of this strategy as founded on an “abstract belief ” stands in contrast to its treatment in the IPE literature. As Mastanduno (1999/2000, 306) notes, the IPE literature tried very consciously to take positive economic sanctions seriously. In doing so, it made a distinction between, in his terminology, specific positive sanctions and long-­term economic engagement. Whereas the former is intended to persuade policy makers in the target state to change their policies in return for an economic reward, in the latter strategy the “sanctioner provides a stream of economic benefits over time, and those benefits gradually transform domestic political interests in the target state.” As a result, the target will redefine what is in its national interest and thus change its policies. Representative of the specific sanctions view, Papayoanou and Kastner (1999/2000) argued that the success of economic inducements depends on the existing distribution of power among domestic coalitions in nondemocratic target states such as China. Where internationally oriented coalitions dominate, such policies might succeed. Alternatively, as emphasized in the long-­term engagement version, positive sanctions may succeed in altering domestic interests. The economic discrimination in favor of US military allies adopted during what Blackwill and Harris (2016, 162) refer to as the “golden age of American geoeconomics” was designed at least in part to transform domestic political interests in the allied states in favor of greater economic, and by extension political-­military, integration with the United States. In response, policy makers would redefine the national interest and adopt policies reflecting this redefinition (Hirschman [1945]  1980; Skålnes  1998,  2000; Abdelal and Kirshner  1999/2000).7 Moreover, as Papayoanou and Kastner (1999/2000, 163) note, policies designed to create

The Political Economy of Peaceful Change   331 vested interests in the target state can have a similar effect in the sanctioning state. Constrained by vested interests favoring continued economic and political relations with a target state, policy makers may find themselves unable to adopt policies that would sever those links in the future. This can be a significant problem in relations with nondemocracies such as China, but it might also promote greater cooperation and peaceful change. Positive sanctions may fail, of course. Indeed, the idea that strategies of long-­term economic engagement would succeed in altering the nature of the domestic regimes in Russia and China seems overly optimistic today. Although these countries differ in the degree to which the state intervenes in the economy, their increasingly authoritarian political regimes and still considerable reliance on state intervention make them formidable practitioners of geoeconomics or economic statecraft more broadly. Without the capability to take on the United States militarily, the economic resources at their disposal give state capitalist societies in particular means by which they can balance against the United States (Scholvin and Wigell  2019, 2). The hope that they would become “responsible stakeholders” seems increasingly forlorn. If the concept of responsible stakeholder is now little more than a desperate hope, how a declining United States might respond is of great interest. The Trump administration provided one answer by adopting increasingly nationalistic foreign economic policies. These policies would seem to mark the final abandonment of any notion that China can be made into a responsible stakeholder by pursuing policies of economic engagement. Economic nationalism might make sense as a reflection of the environment in which the declining hegemon, the United States, finds itself. Thus, Lobell (2003) argues that if a declining hegemon faces an environment populated by what he terms “imperial contenders,” this will strengthen the economic nationalist domestic coalition at the expense of the free-­trade coalition. Economic nationalists will lobby for punishment instead of cooperation, and the declining hegemon is likely to adopt a grand strategy reflective of their preferences. If this happens, we might be returning to a world in which foreign economic policies promote conflict instead of peaceful change.

Conclusions The rise of China and other emerging powers has renewed interest in economic statecraft among both policy makers and scholars. Because they increase international tensions, two aspects of such statecraft are of particular relevance to the prospects for peaceful change. One is the extent to which states will try to exploit the asymmetries inherent in much economic exchange for political leverage. The second is the extent to which economic statecraft will lead to international institutional arrangements that discriminate in favor of members. Both aspects tend to increase international tension and thus undermine the prospects for peaceful change.

332   Lars S. Skålnes The fact that the pursuit of economic statecraft takes place in a still globalized e­ conomy characterized by high levels of economic interdependence to some extent alleviates such concerns. For instance, whereas China could threaten to sell its considerable holdings of US Treasury bonds and thus damage the US economy, making good this threat would reduce the value of the bonds it continued to hold (Blackwill and Harris 2016, 144). An international economy that is expected to remain open to international trade in the future is likely to promote peaceful change. Several features of the international economy promote openness. To the extent that China and other emerging powers continue to develop, their trade is likely to move from inter-­industry to intra-­industry trade, which should promote trade liberalization and reduce the potential for economic conflict with developed countries. Trade in intermediate goods also fosters trade liberalization and an open international economy. More ambiguous are the effects of PTAs and particularly RTAs on the prospects for peaceful change. Whereas they reduce barriers to trade and harmonize rules affecting trade, their discriminatory nature has the potential to increase international tensions and thus undermine the prospects for peaceful change. The extent to which these features of the modern, globalized economy constrain the use of foreign economic policies for strategic purposes is a question that deserves more attention than it has so far received. The increasing popularity of using such policies for strategic purposes perhaps suggests that the constraints are loose. The geoeconomics literature that has emerged to analyze the geostrategic use of economic power could benefit from greater cross-­fertilization with the IPE literature on economic statecraft. One implication from the IPE literature is the need to take domestic politics more seriously. The work done on domestic politics and perhaps even long-­ term economic engagement might be of particular interest. Typically, that means moving beyond regime type, a category so broad that it hides important variation even within state-­led economies. While we might lump Russia and China together as examples of authoritarian regimes with state-­led economies, the different nature of their foreign trade deserves more attention. Whereas US trade with China is increasingly intra-­industry, for instance, US trade with Russia is almost wholly inter-­industry (“US-­ Russia Economic Relations”  2009). The IPE literature on intra-­industry trade previously discussed suggests that this should matter for how relations between the United States and China and Russia develop in the future. Moreover, China’s integration into and Russia’s exclusion from GVCs imply that China has much more of a stake in the peaceful evolution of the international (economic) order than does Russia. Conversely, IPE might benefit from taking geography more seriously, although the lack of attention to geographical variables in much of geoeconomics itself suggests that such variables are less important than one might think. The analytical tools social network theory provides would seem more relevant than geoeconomics to analyzing a globalized world. On the other hand, a world economy characterized by increasing regionalization would arguably make geographical variables and thus geoeconomics more relevant. Finally, both literatures would benefit from a better sense of how international politics and domestic politics interact in economic statecraft.

The Political Economy of Peaceful Change   333

Notes 1. That is, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. 2. For overviews, see Stein (1993) and, more recently, Gartzke and Zhang (2015). 3. Where electoral institutions favor narrow protectionist interests, intra-­industry trade can lead to higher protection (Kono 2009, 886). 4. Kurt Campbell served as US assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs from 2009 to 2013. 5. More recent contributions include Blanchard and Ripsman (2013) and Norris (2016). 6. This is also true of Luttwak’s use of the term (Luttwak 1990, 18–19; Scholvin and Wigell 2019, 9). 7. Positive sanctions can also be used to alter the target state’s preferences directly, that is, without altering the interests of domestic groups first (Mastanduno  1999/2000, 306; Newnham 2002).

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chapter 18

Clim ate Ch a nge , Collecti v e Action, a n d Peacefu l Ch a nge Ashok Swain

Climate change has become a serious global concern. Global climate fluctuates ­naturally due to climatic system and internal dynamics, but the fear is more about the changes taking place due to human interference, resulting in a massive build up of greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere. The controversy over the science of measuring global warming and the modus operandi of the United Nations (UN) Climate Science Panel in collecting data has not been able to undermine decades of scientific research confirming climate change. Doubts and denial by some have not stopped the international community envisaging the impact of climate change in the years to come. It has become almost an academic industry to project climate change as a conflict multiplier between and within countries, particularly by likely aggravating the scarcity of resources. Despite genuine fear and repeated warnings from security analysts and policy makers, the world has not witnessed countries going to war against one another over the sharing of scarce natural renewable resources or increasing cross-­border migration. Instead, countries and political leaders have not only come together to sign a binding agreement to thwart climate change by reducing their greenhouse gas emissions, but they are also creating various institutions and regimes at the global and regional levels to meet climate-­ change-­induced security threats. The availability of new knowledge on climate change and growing social movements demanding actions to cut greenhouse gases have somewhat forced political leaders to work for a sustainable future rather than to focus on short-­term economic gains. These collective actions have resulted in a series of “minimalist” changes through regional and international agreements and institutions, which have created hopeful signs of peaceful change. However, the success of these minimalist changes is not guaranteed, as it will depend upon long-­term commitments and sacrifices by the international community and its political leaders, as well as the ability of these collective actions to resolve climate-­change-­induced problems short of resorting to violence.

338   Ashok Swain

Climate Change and Insecurities Different countries and societies are responding to and will cope with climate change differently. Existing cultural norms and social practices play an important role in formulating their coping mechanisms. Some countries and societies are better at planning and implementing adaptation strategies regarding land and water-­use practices to meet the challenges posed by climate change. The effectiveness and coping abilities of existing domestic institutions also play a significant role. There is no doubt that the adverse impact of climate change has been and is going to be more severe for populations living in the poor and developing economies in the Global South, as they depend more on natural renewable resources for their livelihood and economy, and their segmented countries usually lack effective coping mechanisms and necessary adaptive capacity. Climate change can not only force more people back into poverty; it can also increase the possibility of more violent conflicts, particularly in societies and countries affected by poor governance, weak institutions, and low social capital (Swain 2012a). But scarcity does not necessarily lead to conflict; it can also move societies and countries to cooperate in order to meet the challenge. There is no doubt that the increasing temperatures, frequent droughts, sea-­level rise, and intense extreme weather events adversely affect billions of people across the world by bringing further volatility to global food prices, increasing competition for natural resources and making livelihoods less secure. Climate change also threatens to reverse the economic growth and development gains many countries have achieved over the past few decades and increasingly undermines social cohesion as well as the legitimacy of ruling regimes by creating additional demand for state services, particularly assistance in the aftermath of natural disasters (Sofuoğlu and Ay 2020). Climate change also has the potential to change the course of rivers and the size of glaciers, which can create new border conflicts (Lee and Tanaka 2016). Armed forces are also increasingly worried about the impacts of climate change on their bases, equipment, health, and even budgets. There are also pressures on armed forces to cut down their climate footprint, so they might need to spend more on research to develop climate-­friendly equipment (Scott and Khan 2016). Climate change not only affects the operational issues involving armed forces, but it has also started to bring the traditional military threat paradigm into the global security debate. Security challenges are being seriously discussed in terms of the access to, control of, and exploitation of shared spaces like the ocean, polar regions, and the at­mos­ phere and space, necessitating new approaches to future diplomacy, defense, and security strategies and policies. The immediate focus has been on the anticipated ice-­ free Arctic, and competition has already started over the chance to exploit Arctic oilfields and other natural resources (Klimenko 2019). The geopolitical dimensions and military security consequences of climate change pose serious security challenges to many states. While these new challenges bring the fear of more competition and conflicts, there are also various positive signs and concrete steps toward cooperation being

Climate Change, Collective Action, and Peaceful Change   339 taken by countries and societies through discussion, persuasion, and dissemination of knowledge. The following section discusses the type and nature of conflicts climate change can potentially cause and then outlines and analyzes the cooperative paths countries have taken to prepare themselves to meet those eventualities.

Climate Change and Fear of Conflicts The discussion regarding the causal relationship between climate change and organized conflicts has not produced a consensus among researchers. The German Advisory Council on Global Change (2007) emphasizes the multicausality of conflicts and argues that environmental degradation is only one of several complexly connected causes of conflict and is rarely the decisive factor. Taking into consideration the existing literature and the ongoing debate, it can be argued that climate change may not push countries or groups to engage in conflicts by itself, but it can, and in some cases already does, act as a ‘threat multiplier’; that is, it interacts with other factors to cause conflicts. Climate change is more likely to add pressures on countries and regions that are already fragile and conflict prone. The struggle for secure access to water is ancient, and in recent decades complicated political processes have been pursued, mixing cooperative and conflictual approaches. Most of the water-­sharing arrangements assume that river flows will remain the same and largely follow a historical pattern. Hence political approaches have focused on the allocation of water and aimed to distribute a fixed amount of water among parties through legally binding agreements (Swain 2004). This is likely to become an obsolete approach as climate change demands more flexible, hands-­on management by water professionals. In the upcoming situation, tensions are likely to increase among many water-­sharing riparian countries and regions, and the risk of violent water conflicts erupting is greater than ever. Moreover, the climate-­conflict debate, which has been evolving since the 1990s, often refers to population migration as one of the key connecting links between climate change and armed conflict. The predicted increase in the number of climate change migrants is likely to cause stress on receiving societies and countries and thus might eventually lead to new security problems through increased competition.

Climate Change and Possible Water Conflicts The world is already experiencing a serious global water crisis. More than 40 percent of the global population is suffering from water scarcity, and by 2050 an additional 2.3 billion people in Asia and Africa are expected to be living in serious water stress (Guppy and Anderson 2017). The origins of this water crisis are well known (Swain 2004) and are not limited to climate factors alone. The magnitude of people affected by the current water crisis emphasizes that it is growing into an issue of common global concern, and

340   Ashok Swain the situation is expected to get worse. Climate change is expected to seriously aggravate the water scarcity problem globally and regionally (Schewe et al. 2014). Moreover, the increase in global surface temperatures due to the greenhouse effect is expected to increase the “atmospheric water-­holding capacity” (Min et al. 2011) and to lead to changing patterns of precipitation “in the intensity, frequency, and duration of events.” This will result in floods and droughts being more frequent, due to more intense, heavier precipitation. Not only is this going to take place in the future, but recent studies have confirmed that climate change is already contributing to “more-­intense precipitation extremes” and the risk of floods (Pall et al. 2011). Sixty percent of all freshwater comes from 310 internationally shared river basins and an estimated 592 transboundary aquifers (Petersen-­Perlman et al.  2017). As climate change can potentially change water supply and demand patterns globally and regionally, the existing allocation of water resources of shared rivers and aquifer systems in the drier regions is likely to be challenged. Science has arrived at a clear understanding of how the hydrological cycle will change at the global level, but future predictions of water demand and supplies at the regional and basin levels are yet to reach a consensus. There is no doubt that the projected impacts of global climate change on freshwater may be huge and dramatic, but they may not be of the same intensity or follow a similar periodic pattern in each shared water basin. Even within one basin, the climate change effects, particularly precipitation and evaporation patterns, might vary from location to location. This leads to uncertainties and anxieties among the riparian countries over water availability in the shared systems. Thus, the climate-­change-­induced variations in the freshwater systems are fundamental to countries feeling insecure over their water supplies, because they are “likely to affect the volume and timing of river flows and groundwater recharge, and, thus, affect the numbers and distribution of people affected by water scarcity” (Arnell  1999, 31). As global climate change brings about long-­term changes in the water availability in shared freshwater basins, it is necessary to understand the vulnerability and inadequacies of existing water-­sharing agreements to address this challenge. While the importance of adjustment of flow variability in water sharing is crucial, the provisions within existing agreements are not adequate, as the water supply and demand change climate models project (Swain 2012b). Climate change is also likely to cause extreme weather events, changing sea levels or melting glaciers that can generate serious threats to existing river water management infrastructures that support the ongoing water-­sharing arrangements (Earle et al. 2015). It is not difficult to foresee that climate change might force comprehensive adjustments in the ongoing water management mechanisms of shared freshwater systems. The water-­sharing arrangements need to have the flexibility to adjust to uncertainties. The emerging unprecedented situation due to changes in climatic patterns requires basin countries to cooperate and act collectively. There is no doubt that climate change poses extreme challenges to water sharing in shared basins. Most of the basins lack enforcement and generally depend upon responsible riparian behavior in case of an eventuality. While this approach may overcome water deficits in the short term, climate change still poses the risk of long-­term flow reduction that would severely test existing provisions

Climate Change, Collective Action, and Peaceful Change   341 and riparian niceties. As the existing approach gradually becomes obsolete, climate change will require more flexible, hands-­on management, wherein the unexpected can be handled politically.

Climate Migration and Its Conflict Potential The loss of home and livelihood due to environmental stress could result in the mass migration of affected people. Environmentally induced population migration is not a new development. Floods, forest fires, and droughts have had a significant impact on human migrations in the past. In many ways, the history of humankind has been shaped by migration. However, global climate change has the potential to cause a kind of mass migration that the world has never witnessed before as a result of irreversible destruction of the environment. A large number of people are already migrating from their homes because life has become insupportable there. They are not only moving within their countries, mostly making long-­distance domestic moves, but also increasingly crossing national borders (Kaczan and Orgil-­Meyer 2020). Global warming leads to rising sea levels, which are taking away the living space and resources of millions of people. The UN Climate Change Science Panel says that the seas are now rising on an unprecedented scale. Between 2006 and 2016, the sea-­level rise was 2.5 times faster than it was for almost all of the twentieth century (IPCC 2019). The rising sea will force people to move from the low-­lying coastal areas of many countries and many small island countries. The sea is also warming much more than it used to, which can lead to an increased number of tropical storms and can enhance the risk of coastal flooding. Climate change can also contribute to increased flooding, drought, and soil erosion in tropical and arid regions of the world. There are many estimates regarding the size of the climate-­induced population migrations the world is going to witness in the future. In the past two to three decades several forecasts have been made, but there are no reliable estimates of climate-­change-­forced migration, as forecasts vary from 25 million to 1 billion by 2050. However, the most commonly given estimate is 200 million. According to a World Bank study, a sea-­level rise of one meter would affect 56 million people, and a rise of five meters would affect 245 million people in eighty-­four developing countries (Dasgupta et al. 2007). Not only is there a lack of agreement over the forecasted number of climate migrants, there is also no clarity regarding how many of them will move beyond their national borders. But there is no doubt that climate change will displace a large number of people and will force them to move to other countries in search of survival. Large-­scale transborder migration due to climate change can create conflict between the host and home countries in many ways. In some cases, the unwillingness of the host country or the transit country to allow migrants to enter its territory may complicate the relationship with the country of departure. The new location, geographical proximity, and some sort of security can provide an enabling environment for climate migrants to or­gan­ ize against the home country regime, which they may perceive as the cause of their

342   Ashok Swain ­ ardship. In some cases, climate migrants might be encouraged or persuaded to fight h against their home country by the host country because of existing political differences between the host and the sender states. Migrants are often used by the host country to fight its war against the home country, and climate migrants are also likely to play that part. In certain situations, climate migrants may create a serious law and order problem in the receiving country. Migration has already caused widespread xenophobia among the native populations in various parts of the world (Swain 2019). Any effort by the receiving state, in response to pressure from the society and law enforcement agencies, to repatriate the climate migrants back to their country of origin may damage the relationship between sender and receiver states and could even lead to conflicts. A large number of climate migrants may pose a structural threat to a host country by increasing demands on its scarce natural resources. Competition with the local population over the common property resources may create political problems for the regime of the receiving state. The receiving country may also feel threatened when the climate migrants try to enter its fragile domestic political process (Swain 2019). Climate change is having a tremendous impact on the livelihood of societies and poses challenges to national, regional, and global security. While climate change may not solely cause a water conflict or a migration conflict, it exacerbates these threats in different parts of the world. Social, economic, and political factors also contribute to the formation of conflicts over the sharing of limited resources. Countries already suffering from poverty, low levels of education, lack of necessary skills, weak institutions, limited infrastructure, unavailability of technology and information, limited access to healthcare, poor access to resources, and overexploitation of resources have less ability to cope with climate-­change-­related challenges and are more prone to experience conflicts. However, the world is not just waiting helplessly for climate change to worsen and conflicts to arise. Countries are coming together to create legally binding international regimes to mitigate climate change and adapt to climate-­change-­induced security challenges.

Collective Action Toward Limiting Climate Change Threats Since 1992, some countries have come together to form the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) with the objective of preventing alarming human interference with the global climate system. They signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, which came into effect in 2008 and ended in 2012, to reduce the onset of global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. After that, disagreements and differences among nation-­states over their contributions to this effort increased. Several large industrialized, as well as some developing, countries tried not to bind themselves to a legally enforceable commitment to minimize the use of coal and fossil fuel. Despite

Climate Change, Collective Action, and Peaceful Change   343 r­egular high-­ level summits and official meetings as well as years of diplomatic ­negotiations, a number of disagreements kept the countries of the world from agreeing on a global treaty. The primary contentions were over how much and how fast countries were going to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, and upon reaching an agreement, who would monitor compliance. However, to address global climate change, 196 countries finally reached an agreement at the Paris Climate Conference on December 12, 2015, which clearly demonstrates that peaceful change is possible. As well as adopting the Paris Agreement, industrialized countries have also promised to mobilize US$100 billion to support carbon emission cuts and climate adaptation. The Paris Agreement, which took nearly three years to negotiate, came into force on November 4, 2016. After ratification, all signatories committed to support the global response to climate change by working to limit global temperature rise well below 2 degrees Celsius and by pursuing efforts to limit the increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The Paris Agreement signals the turning point for the world on the path to a low-­carbon economy. It also brought hope of building a bridge between energy policies adopted today and achieving climate neutrality before the end of this century. The success of the international community in negotiating this extremely important agreement has to some extent been overshadowed by the US decision in 2017 to withdraw from the historic agreement. This decision may add an additional 0.3 degree Celsius to global warming by the end of this century. Moreover, the Paris Agreement is not only to cut global carbon emissions but also to provide financial and technological support to poor developing countries for climate mitigation. However, the withdrawal process took effect only from 2020 (Johnson 2019), and with the change in administration, the United States has returned to the agreement after a gap of 107 days. The decision of the United States’s withdrawal was based primarily on the argument that the Paris deal is not as tough on countries like India and China as it is on the United States. India and China have indeed negotiated to be treated differently from historical emitters like the United States. They refused to accept any emission cuts for their coal-­fired power plants. Moreover, both countries are exempted from paying into the global fund to support the most vulnerable countries and clean environment technologies for climate change mitigation, arguing that they themselves are the most-­affected countries. However, unlike the Kyoto Protocol, in which only rich nations had climate mitigation targets, the Paris agreement includes every nation, including China and India. Both China and India have also agreed to a review of their climate mitigation targets every five years. Both of these big economies are also rapidly transitioning to renewable energy production. The ratifying countries to the Paris Agreement enjoy independence in how to lower their carbon emissions, but it is binding on them to report their progress (Swain 2017). Even after the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement, the seriousness of the climate change challenges and growing global concern have persuaded the world’s two other biggest polluters, China and India, to reconfirm their commitments to it. Both these large Asian countries have come out openly in taking a forceful public stance against the threats posed by global climate change. This public posturing is

344   Ashok Swain s­ ignificant, as these two countries have traditionally been skeptical about the developed world’s call for emissions reduction. China is taking aggressive actions to reduce pollution at home and is investing heavily not only in renewable energy production but also in renewable technology. To honor the Paris commitment, India is also trying to move away significantly from its coal-­based power production to renewables and has significantly increased its new wind and solar capacity. Despite doubts, hesitations, and periodic setbacks, the world has adopted collective action, has come together under the Paris Agreement, and has started a process of guiding itself toward stabilizing greenhouse gas concentration at a level that would help mitigate climate change. If the countries can manage to achieve the targets they have agreed to, there is a real hope that the world, through this collective action, can significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions relative to baseline levels (Liu et al.  2019). While “minimalist” collective actions are being taken at the global level to meet the challenges posed by climate change, there are also endeavors to meet the specific national security threats posed by climate change, particularly in the context of sharing river water and managing large-­scale population migration.

Collective Actions to Avoid Water Conflicts Countries are increasingly coming together to play an active role in supporting the creation of necessary domestic and international legal and institutional mechanisms to improve shared river governance and the rivers’ expected resilience to climate change. The international community is providing funding and policy support for better domestic water management practices to limit the potential of conflicts arising due to climate-­ change-­induced water scarcity and variability. Helping to bring legitimate and effective water management practices to the local level while trying to prevent intergroup conflicts can also contribute to better transboundary cooperation by enabling national-­level institutions in terms of technical capacity and confidence to support cross-­border agreements. Climate-­change-­induced uncertainty over water supply and demand is gradually encouraging basin countries in the developing world to cooperate among themselves. As climate change intensifies constraints on water resources, the opportunity costs of not cooperating become clearer. Moreover, the necessity to adapt to impending deterioration in the supply and quality of freshwater also helps countries address current mismanagement of water resources (Tänzler, Carius, and Maas 2013). Climate change adaptation pressures are bringing positive spillovers, serving as an entry point for building trust, and encouraging engagement in collective action in politically problematic regions. In short, climate change has become not only a threat, but also a collective action multiplier over the sharing of water resources. Multilateral and bilateral financial and technical support has facilitated basin-­based cooperation among the riparian countries in many shared river systems and the establishment of river basin organizations in recent decades, particularly in the Mekong,

Climate Change, Collective Action, and Peaceful Change   345 Zambezi, Danube, and Nile basins. The rationale adopted by international organizations to support these collective actions is that preventing conflicts from arising in the first place is far more efficient than interventions at a later stage. Collective action strategies on shared water governance in the context of climate change comprise the need to facilitate the containment and resolution of conflicts in the short term, to manage water resources such that conflicts are avoided in the longer term, and to harness the water cooperation mechanisms for the purpose of stronger regional cooperation and development. There have been several endeavors to establish and strengthen international institutions for the better management of shared rivers in recent years. The World Water Council (WWC) and the Global Water Partnership (GWP) are two major international ‘water institutions,’ established in the 1990s, that have been strengthened in recent years to enable global governance mechanisms to meet the climate-­change-­forced water variability challenges. Besides increasing collective action for the management of shared rivers, there have also been successes in establishing a common legal framework for the sharing of international watercourses at the global level. Starting in the 1970s, the International Law Commission (ILC) took up the task of studying the law of the non-­navigational uses of international watercourses with a view toward its progressive development and codification. After twenty-­five years of deliberations, the ILC submitted its draft in 1996 for consideration by the UN General Assembly. The Convention on the Law of the Non-­ Navigational Uses of International Watercourses was adopted by the UN General Assembly on May 21, 1997. Though the Convention was adopted with overwhelming support from member states, the ratification process was very slow. The threat of climate change expedited the process of needed ratification, and in 2014 it finally came into force (Pohl and Swain 2017). Although this UN Convention is not sufficient alone to address the climate-­change-­induced water-­sharing challenges in different parts of the world, in addition to creating an established framework for water sharing, it also shows the gradual successes of collective action in facilitating peaceful change instead of remaining silent while water conflicts emerge.

Collective Actions to Manage Large-­Scale Population Migration The ongoing and potentially large-­scale population migrations due to climate change and sea-­level rise have already posed serious challenges to the peace, security, and bilateral and multilateral cooperation of many countries in most parts of the world. At the same time, there has been a growing realization among an increasing number of countries that it is almost impossible for a country to isolate itself. Attention is being focused on preventing the causes of forced population displacement rather than the use of force to stop people from escaping rising sea levels or recurring droughts. Moreover, due to

346   Ashok Swain increasing migration-­ related challenges, coordinated collective actions have been undertaken to get formal international cooperation on migration (Brown 2002). Due to collective efforts among countries of the world, multilateral institutions and several regional organizations like the European Union and African Union are strengthening themselves to provide powerful platforms to tackle global and local challenges that appear to grow in scale and complexity, particularly on migration (Modéer and Lemma 2019). Migration-­related challenges are not simple, and they are at the same time interlinked. Thus, without collective action involving governments, the private sector, and civil society, the aim of addressing migration issues and making it a win-­win proposition can never be achieved. In this context, international institutions are acting as coordinating units among governments but also with other actors in the global social space. There is an ongoing collective effort to address the burden sharing of forced migrants, which constrains countries to equally distribute the burden of protecting refugees who are on the territory of another state. This protection can be given by providing financial support or through a process of resettlement (Betts 2015). The Global Compact on Refugees was first introduced in 2016 by then UN Secretary-­ General Ban Ki-­moon, who advocated that the world should carry out a consultative process to develop the principle of burden sharing due to the increasing number of people facing forced migration. On December 17, 2018, the UN General Assembly affirmed the Global Compact on Refugees, which provides an outline for international organizations and other key stakeholders to support host countries and communities, help refugees to lead productive lives, and work for safe and dignified return of the refugees. The Global Compact is a major milestone in getting a broad global consensus on collective action on forced-­migration-­related challenges. By pursuing this Global Compact on Refugees, this multilateral approach can collaboratively work with nation-­states for a robust and fairer response model to the crisis arising out of forced migration. Like the Global Compact on Refugees at the international level, at the regional level several organizations are also working to develop a common policy framework on forced migration in particular and migration in general, which should be clear, transparent, humane, and sustainable. The increasing threat of climate-­induced, forced international migration is being taken seriously by international organizations. Numerous countries have realized that only a coordinated action can motivate and implement an effective approach to address the unavoidable climate refugees. Until now, the concept of “climate refugees” has not been included in the definition of a refugee as established by international law, which is the most widely used instrument for granting asylum to people in need of protection. Thus, there is a growing collective demand to review the conceptual fiat of “refugee” as soon as possible and to engage in a sincere and coordinated effort to make the necessary adjustments to include climate-­forced migrants in it. As the world is facing the certain prospect of large-­ scale population migration due to climate change, it is at the same time making various efforts collectively to address the challenge in a manner that will minimize the number of migration-­induced conflicts and will facilitate cooperation and peace.

Climate Change, Collective Action, and Peaceful Change   347

Climate Change Bringing Peaceful Change by Promoting Global Partnership Countries are not capable of solving alone many of the problems they are already facing and are going to face due to climate change. Likewise, individual countries cannot curb global greenhouse gas emissions by themselves. Thus, the challenges of climate change require nothing short of collective global action. The realization of this has persuaded many countries to take a number of collective actions at the global level. The past decades have witnessed the achievement of several international agreements related to climate change issues, spanning from limited bilateral agreements to an ambitious international regime like the Paris Agreement. This has been possible primarily due to a series of UN-­sponsored conferences to manage climate change since 1995. These annual UN Climate Change Conferences have put the issue of sustainable development on the global agenda forcefully and have been very successful in raising global awareness about climate change. Moreover, since the Paris Agreement, there is a concrete ongoing proc­ ess to establish international institutions to undertake concrete actions to address global climate change. International organizations are actively and successfully promoting global regimes to better manage climate change and achieve sustainable development. To be able to face the threats of climate change, there is a need for a strategic partnership between the developed and developing worlds. Global cooperation, not confrontation, is needed between the two groups of countries. Countries are moving slowly but steadily toward translating the common concern over climate change into greater global cooperation. The increasing awareness about climate change and growing popular demand for concrete actions against it have started pushing reluctant political leaders to come together to take effective and coordinated steps toward mitigating as well as adapting to climate change. Civil society movements are increasingly pushing to gain influence over global actions on climate change policies. With their increasing strength, sophistication, and networks, they have begun to play a significant role in influencing stronger international policies and programs on climate change. The young generation has been raising the climate change issue for years, but recently it has become louder, more coordinated, and global in nature, and its message is gaining ground (Marris 2019). The serious security threats posed by increasing global climate change make a strong case for coordinated global action in order to preserve peace and order in the world. There is no doubt that collective action at the global level, which has taken place and increased its pace in recent years, is working toward managing the threats of climate change. This process to maintain peace and avoid climate-­change-­induced conflicts has sometimes been less cohesive, and it regularly faces various hurdles, but overall it has moved forward. Climate change in general has brought the world together and has nudged countries and societies to cooperate. If climate change can multiply threats, it

348   Ashok Swain has also multiplied cooperation over scarce resources and helped bring peace as well. There is no doubt that countries have managed to achieve peaceful changes in the face of a serious climate crisis, but these changes are minimalist in nature. The real and sustainable success of these efforts will come if these minimalist changes catalyze transformational changes in countries and societies to rethink norms, beliefs, and values that underpin their governance structures and the path to policy making.

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Climate Change, Collective Action, and Peaceful Change   349 Petersen-Perlman, Jacob  D., Jennifer  C.  Veilleux, and Aaron  T.  Wolf, 2017. “International Water Conflict and Cooperation: Challenges and Opportunities.” Water International 42, no. 2: 105–120. Pohl, Benjamin, and Ashok Swain. 2017. “Leveraging Diplomacy for Resolving Transboundary Water Problems.” In Water Diplomacy in Action: Contingent Approaches to Managing Complex Water Problems, edited by Shafiqul Islam and Kaveh Madani, 19–36. London: Anthem Press. Schewe, Jacob, Jens Heinke, Dieter Gerten, Ingjerd Haddeland, Nigel  W.  Arnell, Douglas  B.  Clark, Rutger Dankers, Stephanie Eisner, Balázs M.  Fekete, Felipe  J.  ColónGonzález, Simon  N.  Gosling, Hyungjun Kim, Xingcai Liu, Yoshimitsu Masaki, Felix T. Portmann, Yusuke Satoh, Tobias Stacke, Qiuhong Tang, Yoshihide Wada, Dominik Wisser, Torsten Albrecht, Katja Frieler, Franziska Piontek, Lila Warszawski, and Pavel Kabat. 2014. “Multimodel Assessment of Water Scarcity under Climate Change.” PNAS 111, no. 9: 3245–3250. Scott, Shirley  V., and Shahedul Khan. 2016. “The Implications of Climate Change for the Military and for Conflict Prevention, Including through Peace Missions.” ASPJ Africa & Francophonie, 3rd Quarter. Sofuoğlu, E., and A.  Ay. 2020. “The Relationship Between Climate Change and Political Instability: The Case of MENA Countries (1985:01–2016:12).” Environmental Science Pollution Research 27: 14033–14043. Swain, Ashok. 2004. Managing Water Conflict: Asia, Africa and the Middle East. London. Routledge. Swain, Ashok. 2012a. Understanding Emerging Security Challenges: Threats and Opportunities. London. Routledge. Swain, Ashok. 2012b. “Global Climate Change and Challenges for International River Agreements.” International Journal on Sustainable Society 4, nos. 1/2: 72–87. Swain, Ashok. 2017. “Donald Trump Has Left the Paris Climate Accord, China and India Fail to Fill the Void.” Outlook, December 12. Swain, Ashok. 2019. “Increasing Migration Pressure and Rising Nationalism: Implications for Multilateralism and SDG Implementation.” Background paper prepared for the Development Policy Analysis Division of the United Nations, Department of Economics and Social Affairs, June. Tänzler, Dennis, Alexander Carius, and Achim Maas. 2013. “The Need for Conflict-Sensitive Adaptation to Climate Change.” In Backdraft: The Conflict Potential of Climate Change, 5–13. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center.

chapter 19

Democr acy, Gl oba l G ov er na nce , a n d Peacefu l Ch a nge Thomas Davies

In evaluating the relationship between democracy, global governance, and peaceful change, this chapter proceeds from state-­centric to transnationally oriented perspectives. It commences by considering the ways in which this relationship was addressed in early literature on peaceful change. The chapter then discusses the long-­standing debates with respect to the role of national democracy and democratization in facilitating peaceful change, before proceeding to explore the role in peaceful change of international institutions and processes of global governance and their democratization. Tensions between democratic practices at national and global levels are evaluated, as are the relations between democratic and nondemocratic actors. The analysis culminates in the consideration of the prospects for the facilitation of peaceful change in world politics through processes bypassing states and embedded in transnational institutions and democratic practices. The chapter not only outlines but also critiques the arguments put forward suggesting the facilitative role of democracy and global governance in peaceful change, and the conclusion delineates the ways in which democracy and global gov­ern­ance may serve as obstacles to peaceful change.

The Debate in Historical Perspective The prospective relationship between democracy, international institutions, and peaceful change has long been recognized. In one of the earliest English-­language volumes specifically on the subject of peaceful change, Charles K. Webster (1937, 4) highlighted the importance for driving interest in peaceful change of “world public opinion,” the role of which in world politics at the time was often conflated with international

352   Thomas Davies ­ emocracy (Zimmern 1928, 187). Moreover, as this chapter elucidates, national ­democracy d and democratic international governance may be interpreted as potentially facilitative of peaceful change in each of the conceptualizations Webster put forward, from narrow understandings centered on peaceful change to prevent war, to more expansive understandings emphasizing peaceful change in the pursuit of justice and “a world order better adapted to the changing material and mental processes today” (1937, 5). Among authors considering peaceful change in the interwar years, Alfred Zimmern (1930, 1936) was especially notable for emphasizing democratic practices not only at the national level but also internationally, in the institutions of the League of Nations and its liaison practices with nonstate actors (Davies 2012). In looking to the combination of national and international levels, Zimmern echoed earlier Kantian thought emphasizing the role of both republican forms of government and their voluntary federation in the facilitation of a more pacific international order (Markwell 1986, 287). However, critics such as Edward Hallett Carr (1936, 1939) highlighted the tensions at the time between satisfaction of democratic demands at national and international levels. In arguing that there was “no more urgent problem, if peace is to be preserved and democracy survive, than what is known as the problem of peaceful change” (Carr 1936, 860), he stressed the  problem of “mistakenly tying values such as democracy to the status quo” (Kristensen 2019, 19).

National Democracy and Peaceful Change Traditional understandings of democracy have emphasized institutional practices at the national level. Measured in terms of “institutionalized procedures for open, competitive, and deliberative political participation,” open and competitive chief executive selection procedures, and “checks and balances on the discretionary powers of the chief executive,” democracy at the national level is now understood to be evident in the majority of countries (Center for Systemic Peace 2017, 29–31). The apparent “transformation of the global system from a predominately autocratic to a predominately democratic system of states” (32) since the 1980s may be interpreted as having significant consequences for peaceful change in respect of both minimalist conceptualizations centered on war prevention and maximalist conceptualizations emphasizing the promotion of global justice and addressing common global challenges. With respect to minimalist conceptions of peaceful change for the facilitation of war avoidance, the spread of democratic regimes at the national level in multiple countries may be understood to have contributory potential in several aspects. Some of the most fundamental of these relate to the propositions that underpin the democratic peace hypothesis, which in its principal (dyadic) variant asserts that democratic states are less likely to go to war with one another than with other regime types on account of their

Democracy, Global Governance, and Peaceful Change   353 institutional and normative constraints (Russett 1993). Drawing on Kant’s assertion that polities where “the consent of the citizens is required . . . would be very cautious . . . [in] decreeing for themselves all the calamities of war,” it has been argued that constitutionally secure liberal democracies may be predisposed to alternative means of dispute settlement among one another rather than resorting to the use of force (Doyle 1983, 229). With the spread of democratic regime types, therefore, it has been asserted that there may be an expanding “zone of peace” consisting of liberal/democratic states with an “inherent disposition for peaceful settlement of their disputes” (Kacowicz 1994, 237). As for maximalist conceptions of peaceful change emphasizing the promotion of international justice and the development of common solutions to global problems, the spread of democratic regime types is also thought to be a significant contributory factor. In Kantian perspectives, pacific relations among republican states are understood to be facilitated not only by their domestic norms and institutions but also through their development of an international “pacific union” (Doyle 1983, 226). In practice, it may be argued that democracies have developed among themselves “pacific unions” at the regional level whereby diverse common problems are addressed and conceptions of international justice are pursued. The most prominent example is the institutional framework of the European Union, for which “stable institutions guaranteeing democracy” are a condition of participation (Brown  2014, 680). In the case of some other regional organizations, universal democratic membership is often a significant aspiration; for example, the African Union’s 2007 African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance promotes “adherence, by each State Party, to the universal values and principles of democracy and respect for human rights” (Engel 2019, 130). At the global level, many of the preeminent institutions of global governance for the management of global problems originated primarily in the policy initiatives of apparently democratic states, most notably the basic infrastructure of the United Nations (UN) organization; the first draft of the United Nations Charter was developed by the United States State Department in 1943 (Russell 1958). The foundation of its predecessor, the League of Nations, is also widely attributed to Woodrow Wilson’s proposal for a global organization and his emphasis on the “partnership of democratic nations” as the basis for a “steadfast concert for peace” (Smith 2017, 21). Although the League of Nations and the United Nations were also rooted in “great power” politics and continued some of the practices of the earlier Concert of Europe system (Rittberger, Zangl, Kruck and Dijkstra  2019, 31–35), the role of less powerful democratic states in initiating the development of institutions of global governance should not be underestimated: for instance, the process leading to the creation of the International Criminal Court was spearheaded by the prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Arthur Robinson, in 1989 (Schiff  2008, 37). In the present day, democratic emerging powers such as South Korea and Indonesia have become significant centers for international institutions addressing contemporary challenges; for example, the Green Climate Fund and the United Nations Office for Sustainable Development are headquartered in Incheon, and Jakarta serves as a hub for numerous Southeast Asian intergovernmental organizations.

354   Thomas Davies There are, however, numerous problems with the assumption that the spread of democratic national regime types may facilitate a world order in which disputes are settled by peaceful means and justice is promoted through shared institutions of international governance. One cluster of problems relates to the assumption that democratic regime types will continue to spread in an expanding “zone of peace.” In recent years it has been common to observe, in place of the spread of democratic regime types, a trend toward “democratic backsliding.” Freedom House observed in 2019 a “13th consecutive year of decline” and “democracy . . . in retreat,” with the share of “Not Free” countries rising to 26 percent (Freedom House 2019, 1). Although in many cases “democratic backsliding” refers to the rise of “illiberal democracy” rather than reversion to authoritarianism (Zakaria  1997; Plattner  2019), this is nevertheless significant, since the assumptions behind the “democratic peace” hypothesis tend to rest on the presence not only of democracy, but specifically of liberal democracy (Doyle 1983; Kacowicz 1994). In this context, it is significant that one of the principal instances of “democratic backsliding” is understood to be the United States under Donald Trump, with the United States having previously been considered by some “liberty’s clear champion” (Patrick 2020). A second cluster of problems relates to the processes by which states may transition from authoritarian to democratic regime types. In many cases, transitions to democratic regime types have taken place through largely peaceful processes of change. Numerous examples are provided by most of the transitions in Central and Eastern Europe from Soviet to democratic governance in the late twentieth century (Roberts 1991), as well as cases of civil resistance campaigns around the world, from the “people power” revolution in the Philippines in 1986 to the democratic transition in Tunisia following the 2011 uprising (Chenoweth 2014). Each of these may be interpreted as a successful example of peaceful change through “ ‘induction’—that is to say, assisting change through the magnetic power of example”; for instance, the Helsinki process and the appeal of European Union membership appear to have played significant roles in peaceful change to democratic regime types in Central and Eastern Europe (Roberts 2006). However, democratization processes are not always pacific, and it has been claimed that in the “transitional phase of democratization, countries become more aggressive and war-­prone” (Mansfield and Snyder 1995, 5). The most significant set of problems with assumptions concerning the relationship between the spread of democratic regime types and the prospects for peaceful change relates to the relationships between democratic states and those that fail to meet standards of democratic governance (commonly labeled “autocracies” or “anocracies”). It is widely acknowledged that democratic states have frequently engaged in armed conflict with nondemocratic states (Quackenbush and Rudy 2009), commonly including the use of preemptive force, such as that undertaken by the United States in relation to Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011, and Iran in 2020, in the second of these instances in conjunction with other democratic states (Manjikian 2016). Moreover, with respect to the prospects for peaceful change in terms of peaceful management of the rise of emerging powers, the democratic peace hypothesis has little to offer. Although Brazil, India, and South Africa—three of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia,

Democracy, Global Governance, and Peaceful Change   355 India, China, and South Africa) states are understood to meet criteria for consideration as “democratic” or “free” countries (Center for Systemic Peace 2017; Freedom House 2019), they are by far the least powerful of the five, especially in military terms (International Institute for Strategic Studies 2019), and in recent years Brazil and India have demonstrated “democratic backsliding” under Bolsonaro and Modi, respectively (Freedom House 2019). More significantly, China and Russia are widely considered to be “autocratic” and “anocratic” regime types, respectively (Center for Systemic Peace 2017), which in recent years have undertaken reforms exacerbating their already low status on indices of freedom (Freedom House 2019). The growing international position of China and Russia represents not only a rising counterweight to the purported “zone of peace” among apparently established democratic states, but also increasingly a challenge to the institutions of global governance that originated in democratic national contexts. Many of the most significant institutions of international governance in the twenty-­first century have their roots not in democratic regimes, but rather in authoritarian contexts, notably the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, established in 2001, and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, launched by China in 2015–2016, which has been viewed as a rival to the Bretton Woods institutions (Hameiri and Jones 2018). An increasingly popular notion is the claim that the “Washington Consensus” of the older international financial institutions is being superseded by a less liberal “Beijing Consensus” embedded in the newer institutions (He 2018, xvii). At the same time, purportedly established democracies such as the United States and Great Britain have undermined some of the older institutions of international gov­ern­ ance through the pursuit of unilateral initiatives such as the interventions in Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011, and Iran in 2020, and by withdrawing from international organizations such as UNESCO and the United Nations Human Rights Council (in the US case) and the European Union (in the British case). With the development of the 2020 COVID-­19 crisis, institutions of global governance became victims of struggles between democratic and undemocratic states—most notably that between the United States and China—with the United States withholding funds from the World Health Organization on April 14, 2020, on account of its alleged complicity in the initial suppression of information about the spread of the novel coronavirus within China (Hameiri 2020). Although some institutions of international governance through which peaceful change in the maximalist sense is pursued—especially at the regional level, such as those of the European Union—require democratic practices among their members, these tend to be exceptional. Even at the regional level, some of the intergovernmental institutions established among emerging powers have been criticized for their failure to address the democratic deficiencies of their members—a charge especially often leveled at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) (Poole 2016). Moreover, the European Union is increasingly coming under scrutiny for its failure effectively to address the democratic backsliding of member states such as Poland and Hungary (Baer 2020). A final set of problems associated with drawing implications for peaceful change from the apparent spread of democratic regime types at the national level concerns the

356   Thomas Davies limited scope of the conceptualization of democracy involved in predominant ­understandings of the democratic peace proposition. As the subsequent sections of this chapter outline, it is necessary in the context of contemporary globalized world politics to turn to conceptualizations of democracy that encompass political relations between and across states, not just within them.

Democratic Global Governance and Peaceful Change To conceive of democracy in contemporary world politics exclusively within the confines of national institutions is wholly inadequate in the context of a global political order in which few issues and decisions affecting the lives of ordinary people operate exclusively at the national level. This concern has long been recognized; in his pioneering work in the 1920s Alfred Zimmern observed that by aiming to address global problems with national institutions, states were effectively “attempting to do twentieth century work with eighteenth century instruments” (Zimmern 1929, 319). In place of nationally oriented conceptualizations of democracy, Zimmern urged instead understandings taking the global context into account, arguing that democracy is “an association, precarious yet ever renewed, between all the many and varied groups that make up the sum of the world’s public opinion” (368). In the post–Cold War era, very similar arguments were put forward among scholars of global governance, with Kaldor (2008, 35) highlighting the contrast between “formal” understandings of democracy embedded in national political institutions and “substantive” understandings that are better related to the context of globalization, which emphasize processes within and beyond the state level “for maximising the opportunities for all individuals to shape their own lives and to participate in and influence debates about public decisions that affect them.” As Zimmern (1930, 7) asked: “Must we cease to conceive of democracy as a participation by the ordinary citizen in the work of government and acquiesce in a definition under which it means no more than that the elector exercises a choice, at stated intervals, between two or more rival groups of rulers?” Democracy at the global level may be understood through a broad array of conceptualizations, varying from those with a narrow focus on the decision-making procedures of intergovernmental organizations to expansive understandings encompassing the practices of a wide range of public and private actors. In the thinnest conceptualizations, global-­level democratic processes might be assumed to operate in the decision-­making procedures of intergovernmental institutions, which offer all states—regardless of military or economic capability—an apparently equal voice in decision-making, such as the one ­member, one vote approaches of the General Assembly of the United Nations and the Ministerial Conference and the General Council of the World Trade Organization (Moore 2005). Such an approach, however, has little to offer in respect of understandings

Democracy, Global Governance, and Peaceful Change   357 of democracy in the “substantive” sense, overlooks the considerable variations in the size of populations represented by different states, and neglects the ways the operational practices of such organizations may marginalize the voices of developing countries and their populations (Joseph 2011). In the burgeoning literature on global governance of the post–Cold War years, more expansive understandings of global-­level democracy were put forward, often with an emphasis on mechanisms for ensuring the “democratic accountability” of intergovernmental organizations. For Keohane (2011, 101–103), this involves intergovernmental organizations upholding certain minimum standards of moral conduct, inclusiveness, integrity, and transparency, as well as being responsive and beneficial to stakeholders. Scholte (2004), on the other hand, emphasizes the roles of civil society organizations in facilitating the democratic accountability of intergovernmental bodies, such as through promoting transparency, monitoring policy, pursuing redress, and advancing formal accountability procedures. In the case of the boldest conceptualizations of democracy at the global level, authors such as Archibugi and Held (1995) have put forward models of global “cosmopolitan democracy” in which democratic practices are advanced at global, regional, national, and local levels on the basis of subsidiarity, involving the most appropriate public and private bodies in respect of any given issue, ensuring civil society participation, and avoiding singular hierarchies. The implications of democratic global governance for peaceful change might be assumed to be far reaching. In the most widely accepted definition of the term, global governance is understood to encompass “the sum of the many ways individuals and institutions, public and private, manage their common affairs . . . a continuing process through which conflicting or diverse interests may be accommodated and cooperative action may be taken . . . [that] includes formal institutions and regimes empowered to enforce compliance, as well as informal arrangements that people and institutions either have agreed to or perceive to be in their interest” (Commission on Global Governance 1995, 2). The concept of global governance may be considered inherently to assume the possibility of peaceful change in the maximalist sense, whereby global problems may be addressed, international justice pursued, and the social, cultural and economic foundations for pacific international relations laid through the cooperative endeavors of public and private bodies. The literature on global governance that has been produced over the last three decades has posited a diverse array of dynamics by which global governance is understood to facilitate peaceful change in this maximalist sense. The most traditional are rationalist approaches emphasizing how international institutions overcome collective action problems by providing a “shadow of the future,” enabling international cooperation on diverse problems around which actors’ interests converge (Abbott and Snidal 1998; Keohane and Martin 2005). More popular in the present day are constructivist perspectives that claim institutions of global governance involve the development and implementation of shared understandings of common solutions to common problems, with a prominent role ascribed to “norm entrepreneurs,” which are often nonstate actors (Finnemore and Sikkink  1998), and to the bureaucracies of international

358   Thomas Davies ­ rganizations (Barnett and Finnemore  2004). Significantly, the role of democracy o scarcely features in these arguments, although the literature on democracy in global governance tends to assume that the potential for global governance effectively to facilitate change in these ways is enhanced by ensuring legitimacy through claims to democratic accountability. In recent decades, peaceful change in the maximalist sense might be interpreted as having been facilitated by global governance institutions across a wide range of issue areas. In the field of global health, for instance, the combined efforts of a diverse set of public and private institutions, including UNAIDS, the World Bank, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, among others, may have contributed to the decline of global HIV infection and AIDS death rates since 2004 (UNAIDS 2019, 6). In the environmental sector, the diminishing gap in the ozone layer may be attributed to the coordinated efforts of businesses such as DuPont, governments, and intergovernmental organizations to develop the Montreal Protocol limiting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), wherein the dovetailing of public and private calculations of interests appears to have been particularly significant (Maxwell and Briscoe 1997). For those emphasizing the importance of nonstate “norm entrepreneurs” in the advancement of international change, a popular example has been the successful nongovernmental campaign for the establishment of the International Criminal Court, which is often considered to have revolutionized sovereignty and international law through the prosecution of individuals at the ­international level (Glasius 2006). On a broader scale, in 2015 the United Nations celebrated the work of its institutions in what it claimed was “the most successful anti-­ poverty movement in history,” the Millennium Development Goals, which it claimed “helped to lift more than one billion people out of extreme poverty, to make inroads against hunger, to enable more girls to attend school than ever before and to protect our planet” (Ban 2015a, 3). Despite apparent achievements such as these, global governance remains limited in scope. The most extensive and effective frameworks for multilateral cooperation on issues of common concern are regional rather than global, such as the institutions of the European Union. Moreover, many of the apparent successes of global governance may be attributable primarily to initiatives at the national rather than global levels; the global reduction in extreme poverty rates over the last two decades, for example, may be primarily the result of domestic economic growth in a limited number of countries, most notably China (Sundaram 2016). Furthermore, the apparent successes of global gov­ern­ ance in facilitating progressive change may be substantially outnumbered by the failures, even in respect to the Millennium Development Goals (Hickel  2016). In some areas—especially indicators of women’s equality—minimal progress appears to have been made; the twenty-­ year progress report on implementing the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action highlights that “overall progress . . . has been unacceptably slow, with stagnation and even regression in some contexts” (Ban 2015b, 5). With respect to narrower conceptions of peaceful change focused on procedures for war avoidance, the role of global governance may be similarly limited. The peaceful

Democracy, Global Governance, and Peaceful Change   359 change provisions in Chapter VI of the United Nations Charter are subject to the veto of the five permanent members of the Security Council, thereby limiting their applicability only to those without the veto (Tanaka 2018, 80). Through the privileges accorded to veto-­bearing states, the structure of the Security Council effectively embeds the status quo rather than facilitating peaceful change, and efforts for Security Council reform have made minimal progress. Even with respect to the management of disputes between non-­veto-­bearing states, the United Nations has tended to be more successful in short-­ term preventive diplomacy and peacekeeping rather than long-­term peacemaking and peacebuilding (Merrills 2017, 273). While acknowledging that global governance may facilitate limited peaceful change, the role of democracy in enabling peaceful change through processes of contemporary global governance is questionable. As noted in the previous section, many of the most significant recent global governance initiatives—such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank—have been developed and led by nondemocratic states. Even those institutions of global governance that have their roots in large part in democratic contexts are significantly lacking with respect to democratic representation at the global level, with permanent membership in the United Nations Security Council limited to just five states and voting in the Bretton Woods institutions weighted by financial contributions, thereby systematically marginalizing the voices of populations in developing countries, although these states have a greater say in other UN organs such as the General Assembly and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Leech and Leech 2006, 27). It would appear that there is a fundamental tension between democracy at the national level in countries such as the United States, Great Britain, and France, and democracy at the global level in the United Nations and the Bretton Woods institutions, where these states occupy privileged positions and are reluctant to facilitate reform, whether to accommodate rising powers or to facilitate greater voice for populations of less powerful nations. As Lake (2009, 139) has argued, institutions of international gov­ ern­ance may need to be understood as embedded within global hierarchies by which dominant states provide services to other states in exchange for their compliance. The democratic deficit in the United Nations Security Council and the Bretton Woods institutions is evident not only in the asymmetric voting procedures of these institutions, but also in their lack of responsiveness to civil society (Scholte 2011). Newer institutions of global governance such as the G20 may be considered better to reflect the changing distributions of power in the international system by giving a greater voice to “middle powers” such as South Korea and South Africa. However, the G20 also faces a democratic deficit given the exclusion of most countries from participation, and it has proven ineffectual in bringing about cooperation and change, for instance in response to COVID-­19 (Jain 2020). Given the limited democratic accountability and effectiveness of the principal intergovernmental institutions of global gov­ ern­ance, it is worthwhile to consider democracy beyond states in the transnational arena and its implications for peaceful change.

360   Thomas Davies

Transnational Democracy and Peaceful Change In the context of processes of globalization, the roles of states and intergovernmental bodies in managing global issues and facilitating change may be increasingly challenged by the roles of private international actors. Nearly a century ago, Zimmern (1929, 318–319) recognized this problem, highlighting that democracy had “a new Opposition to face” in the form of “private power,” which had developed the world economy into a “single unit”: “a great and widespread new system corresponding with some approximation to our modern economic needs” but operating “outside the constitution” and challenging the “eighteenth-­century instruments” of states. According to Zimmern (1931, 8; 1929, 342, 352), democracy in this context needed to be advanced through the work of “international voluntary societies” and “non-­ governmental experts” that would “recover control over private power” and “extend their influence right down to the common man and woman.” In the present day, varied democratic practices are understood to operate beyond states through the activities of private international associations, transnational social movements, and other voluntary initiatives. In the most conservative of these frameworks, democracy is understood to be facilitated through the engagement of multiple stakeholders in private regulatory regimes. “Stakeholder democracy” in the contemporary era has been considered to have been advanced in a diverse range of transnational governance initiatives bringing together business and civil society actors in overseeing global standards of good practice on issues such as labor conditions and environmental sustainability (Bäckstrand 2006). Besides engagement of stakeholders, there has been emphasis on the democratic accountability of international nongovernmental organizations and transnational businesses through their adherence to private international standards of accountability and transparency, such as those of the Global Reporting Initiative and Accountable Now (Crack 2018). More radical approaches to transnational democracy emphasize the practices of transnational social movements. Mobilizations such as the World Social Forum and Occupy are considered to have pioneered novel forms of participatory and deliberative democracy in their purportedly non-­hierarchical and noninstitutionalized approaches to self-­organization (Smith et al.  2014). The World Social Forum, first organized in Brazil in 2001, brought together civil society and social movement actors from around the world, and made much of its leaderless composition and horizontal approach to organization. Similarly, the later Occupy movements, which organized sit-­ins in public spaces around the world in 2011, claimed to function as “horizontal, mutualistic” spaces providing “a new way of participating” (Fuchs 2014, 64). In their elucidation of alternatives to contemporary modes of living, social movement mobilizations such as these have been understood to embody “radical” democratic ideals (Conway and Singh 2011). Social movement experiments in new approaches to decision-­making have also been

Democracy, Global Governance, and Peaceful Change   361 considered to constitute “prefigurative politics” with the potential to serve as models for more democratic forms of social and political organization in wider society (Van de Sande 2013). The repercussions of purportedly democratic practices beyond the state for peaceful change may be significant. It has been argued that these practices potentially address the democratic deficit that is otherwise evident at the global level: given the infeasibility of developing representative democratic institutions at the global level analogous to those within democratic states, these practices are thought to provide “a medium through which individuals can, in principle, participate in global public debates” and offer “the possibility for the voices of the victims of globalization to be heard if not the votes” (Kaldor 2003, 148). This, in turn, may help address some of the grievances that might otherwise spill over into armed conflict. Moreover, for some post–Cold War theorists, nonstate democratic practices contribute to the development of a “global civil society” with the potential to offer an “answer to war” through the substitution of state-­centric world politics—in which the principal actors still make claims to legitimate use of violence—with civil nonstate action (Kaldor  2003, 32). In this line of argumentation, peaceful change in the maximalist sense is facilitated through nonstate participatory democratic practices that address common problems across diverse issues in place of the practices of states that would traditionally handle them through legislation. An alternative approach to considering the role of transnational democracy and transnational governance in peaceful change is to draw attention to the role of institutions of transnational society in developing a parallel “transnational order” to the “international order” understood in English School literature to have been developed among states (Bull [1977] 2012). For example, it has been argued that just as states have developed institutions of mutual recognition, dispute resolution, authoritative communication, and standards of appropriate conduct that enable order in the international society of states, transnational actors have also developed institutions of mutual recognition, dispute resolution, authoritative communication, and standards of appropriate behavior that facilitate a parallel “transnational order” that enables nonstate actors to achieve their primary goals and to constitute and regulate transnational society (Davies 2019). Posited examples include the Global Reporting Initiative’s provision of common standards of conduct and mutual recognition among subscribing transnational corporations and nongovernmental organizations, as well as the private International Court of Commercial Arbitration’s settlement of disputes among nonstate actors (Mattli 2001). The development of institutions of “transnational order” has been claimed to be significant for peaceful change, since it is argued that—rather than posing a potentially disruptive challenge to state-­centric international order—the rise of transnational actors is being at least in part self-­managed by these actors through nonviolent processes embedded in the institutions of transnational society (Davies 2019, 287). Even if one rejects the notion that nonstate actors have developed “global civil society” or “transnational order,” it may at least be argued that transnational actors have developed procedures for facilitating change without violence that bypass states

362   Thomas Davies a­ ltogether. Wapner (1995), for example, has highlighted the role of consumer activist pressure in transforming the practices of corporations, the contributions of nongovernmental organizations’ initiatives to community empowerment, and the influence of social movements’ campaigns on public behavior, all of which have achieved change, in some instances without the use of violence and without the direct involvement of states or intergovernmental organizations. Examples Wapner cited include the role of consumer activist pressure in leading McDonalds to transform its packaging practices, and the adoption of recycling practices by private individuals in response to environmental activist pressure despite the absence of government legislation on the issue at the time. The limits to transnational democracy and its potential contributions to peaceful change are, however, considerable. For a start, the extent to which the transnational sector is characterized by democratic practices is extremely limited. Advocacy nongovernmental organizations, which are commonly credited with giving voice to marginalized populations, often have opaque and hierarchical structures of internal governance with significant deficiencies in the accountability of their leaderships to their members (Archer  2003), while humanitarian nongovernmental organizations have frequently been criticized for prioritizing accountability to donors (Banks, Hulme, and Edwards 2015). Even purportedly “horizontal” social movement mobilizations such as Occupy have been criticized for being dominated in practice by those holding privileged positions in facilitating communication (Kavada 2015). Transnational corporations, on the other hand, are widely criticized for their undemocratic nature, given their principal accountability to shareholders rather than to other stakeholders (Joo 2006). Besides the limited extent to which transnational actors and their institutions are democratic, there is also the problem of their limited reach and effectiveness. For example, the principal initiative for the accountability of international nongovernmental organizations—Accountable Now—provides a framework for just twenty-­six member organizations, a tiny fraction of the total population of such organizations (Accountable Now 2020). Although other frameworks are more universal—such as the standards of the Global Reporting Initiative, which have been adopted by 93 percent of the world’s top 250 transnational corporations (Global Reporting Initiative 2020)—these have been criticized for their light-­touch approach to corporate regulation (Levy, Szejnwald Brown, and de Jong 2010). In view of these limitations, the contributions of transnational democracy and transnational institutions to peaceful change are of questionable significance. With respect to maximalist understandings of peaceful change centered on the pursuit of international justice and the management of global issues, it is undeniable that transnational actors and regimes have had some role to play. However, it may be argued that rather than effectively recovering control over private power, frameworks such as the Global Reporting Initiative have served to enable private actors to preempt potentially more effective mechanisms of governmental regulation. With respect to minimalist understandings of peaceful change in terms of war prevention and the management of the rise of emerging powers, the transnational sphere’s contributions may be even more limited. On the one hand, transnational corporations and regimes have played a role in

Democracy, Global Governance, and Peaceful Change   363 e­nmeshing rising powers such as China in networks of interdependence that may ­constrain their ability to pursue their goals through the use of force. On the other hand, transnational actors and regimes lack the military capability of states to deter potential challengers to the status quo from the use of violence. Moreover, although the majority of transnational actors—whether profit-­making or nonprofit—are nonviolent and noncriminal, a substantial number of transnational actors—such as terrorist groups and organized criminal networks—fail to adhere to the pacific standards of conduct of transnational society. It should further be noted that transnational society is in large part dependent on states and international society to provide the legal and political contexts in which transnational regimes can function, such as through processes of registration of companies and associations. In recent years, space for the development of “global civil society” appears to be shrinking rather than expanding, with governments increasing the scope of their mechanisms for oversight of nonstate actors. Recently, CIVICUS (2019, 6) reported that “space for civil society—civic space—is now under serious attack in 111 of the world’s countries—well over half—and only four per cent of the world’s population live in countries where our fundamental civil society freedoms—of association, peaceful assembly and expression—are respected.” Even in countries thought to have developed significant civil society space since the 1980s have seen that space restricted more recently with the rise of populist regimes; Hungary under Viktor Orbán and the Philippines under Rodrigo Duterte are commonly cited examples. The need to respond to the COVID-­19 crisis has frequently been used as an excuse to impose further restrictions (Roth 2020).

Future Prospects Democracy in contemporary world politics faces challenges at every level of the global system. At the national level, the number of representative democracies appears to be shrinking, and even many purportedly “established” democracies are beset with increasingly populist and authoritarian governing political parties. A frequently cited trigger for the latter development has been the incapacity of national governments effectively to address the problems populations face that are caused by globalization (Cox 2017). As this chapter has outlined, institutions of global governance and transnational society— despite their pretensions to democratic accountability—have largely failed to fill the democratic deficit at the global level; the United Nations and Bretton Woods institutions are still dominated by veto-­holding and wealthy countries respectively, and transnational actors are commonly more accountable to donors or shareholders rather than to other stakeholders. Although this chapter has highlighted a diverse range of mechanisms for the advancement of peaceful change facilitated through institutions of global governance and transnational society, a striking feature is the limited connection between these institutions

364   Thomas Davies and democratic practices. The principal intergovernmental mechanisms for peaceful change in the narrow sense of war avoidance, such as those embedded in Chapter VI of the United Nations Charter, offer a privileged position to the permanent members of the Security Council. As for mechanisms of global governance and transnational society for advancing peaceful change in the maximalist sense of promoting global justice and management of global issues, the problem of the wealthiest actors’ greater voice in world politics is a recurring deficiency among these institutions. With respect to the population of the world as a whole, global politics has never been democratic. In earlier periods, when states could more comfortably claim to be the dominant actors, democratic practices within a handful of preeminent states were accompanied by the pursuit of empire by these states beyond the boundaries of international society. In the present day, preeminent democratic states retain an undemocratic privileged position in world order through their dominant positions in the principal institutions of global governance. Many developing countries that meet standards of negative liberty that enable them to be considered “free” still lack the ability to provide effectively for the positive liberty of their citizens, given their asymmetrical position in the global economy and in the global political order (Bond 2018). Traditionally it has been assumed that democracy and peaceful change are mutually supportive goals. However, given the democratic deficiencies of the principal institutions of global governance through which peaceful change has been facilitated, it may be argued that democracy is not a necessary condition for peaceful change. More radically, the pursuit of peaceful change may be considered an obstacle to democracy at the global level, by denying to the marginalized the legitimacy to pursue their liberation through whatever means may be necessary (Fanon 1965). From a critical perspective, to focus on the goal of peaceful change may serve to divert attention from the structural violence of the established institutions by which peaceful change may legitimately be pursued.

Acknowledgments The author is especially grateful to Professor Sir Adam Roberts for sharing with the author his lecture “Peaceful Change” from the “Elements of International Order” series delivered at the University of Oxford in 1998–2006; this lecture was very influential in shaping the author’s initial understanding of the topic.

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Chapter 20

Status Qu est a n d Peacefu l Ch a nge Xiaoyu Pu

As China is actively expanding its global agenda, the United States worries about China’s challenge to its global status. China expert Michael Pillsbury asserts that China has a “secret strategy” to replace the United States as the leading global power (Pillsbury 2015). In his book Destined for War, Harvard scholar Graham Allison argues that China and the United States are most likely heading toward confrontation due to “Thucydides’s Trap,” a deadly pattern that results when a rising power challenges a ruling one (Allison 2017). From these perspectives, it appears that the status competition between China and the United States will inevitably lead to tensions or even military conflicts. International relations scholars generally have such an alarmist tendency that most publications focus on conflict rather than peace or peaceful change. The Australian scholar Geoffrey Blainey once wrote, “For every thousand pages published on the causes of wars, there is less than one page directly on the causes of peace” (Blainey 1988, 3). This is especially true regarding the scholarly literature on status and international relations. The struggle for status is often viewed as a major source of international conflict. However, status seeking is more complicated than conventional wisdom assumes. There are several reasons why status quest among states can promote peaceful international change. To address this imbalance in the literature, this chapter focuses on how the quest for status can promote peaceful change. The first section reviews the traditional views on status quest and international conflict. The second section proposes that the quest for status can promote peace in international relations. The third and the fourth sections examine how the quest for status can promote minimalist and maximalist peaceful changes, respectively. The conclusion summarizes the argument.

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Status Quest and International Conflict In international relations, status can be defined as “collective beliefs about a given state’s ranking on valued attributes (wealth, coercive capabilities, culture, demographic position, sociopolitical organization, and diplomatic clout)” (Larson, Paul, and Wohlforth 2014, 7). The existing studies emphasize that the quest for status drives international conflict, and the major reasons for this are status scarcity, status discrepancy, and ­status dilemma. Status is often viewed as a scarce resource. People treat status both as a means to achieve other goals as well as an end in itself. In the social sciences it is widely recognized that status seeking is driven by human beings’ psychological need for self-­esteem, and people might be willing to trade off status recognition against rewards of material ­interests (Huberman, Loch, and Önçüler  2004, 103–114). In international relations, ­status politics is competitive, as status is often viewed as a positional good (Hirsch 1976, 27; Schweller 1999, 28–68). In many situations, people and nation-­states compete for what in the end must be a fixed number of favored positions in a hierarchical order. The competition focuses less on performance against absolute standards than on performance relative to one another. This is why status quest has been recognized as one of the major sources of conflict (Lebow  2008,  2010). In some contexts, status competition among great powers is even viewed as a zero-­sum game. Some scholars suggest that status quest sometimes plays a more significant role in shaping conflict and war than does the pursuit of power (Lebow 2010; Ward 2017). In some historical cases, status quest was undertaken seemingly even in ways that undermined the power and security of relevant states (Murray 2010, 656–688; Ward 2017). Rising powers often want to obtain higher status, and the established powers often refuse to recognize rising powers. Historically, rising powers that sought higher status would act assertively, and their struggle for higher status might have led to conflict during a power transition (DiCicco and Levy 1999, 675–704). Given that rising powers want to have higher status, the struggle for a change in position can lead to zero-­sum competitions, conflicts, and even wars (Dafoe, Renshon, and Huth 2014, 371–393). The gap between status aspirations and status recognition poses the problem of status discrepancy, which is the core issue in power transition. According to power transition theory, conflict between an established power and a rising power becomes more likely as the gap in relative strength between them narrows and as the latter’s grievances with the existing order move beyond any hope of peaceful resolution (DiCicco and Levy 1999, 675–704). Some rising powers are especially sensitive about their status. As they are ­psychologically insecure, these countries have a strong motive to show off their power and status. Richard Lebow categorizes these countries as “parvenu powers” (Lebow 2008).

Status Quest and Peaceful Change   371 For China and India, historical trauma and nationalism have constructed a postcolonial ideology that pushes them to strive for more power and status (Deng 2008; Miller 2013). When global power shifts, the key issue is whether the established powers can accommodate the rising powers. According to Steven Ward’s research, the status ambition of rising powers and status denial from the established powers could drive rising powers to pursue radical revisionist behaviors, even though the status quo might largely benefit these rising powers (Ward 2017). Status is not just treated as a motivation for state behavior; Ward treats status as “an international political force that influences domestic contests over the direction of foreign policy” (Ward 2017, 6). The Western powers’ denial of status to Japan contributed to the chain of events leading eventually to the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941 (Ward 2017). Drawing on multiple methods and rich empirical analysis, Renshon presents a theory of status dissatisfaction that explains how status is linked to international conflict more broadly (Renshon 2017). This recent scholarship on status recognition follows a long tradition of scholars seeking to understand conflict as a result of a state’s frustration due to its sense of status discrepancy (East 1972; Wallace 1973; Volgy and Mayhall 1995). Even if nation-­states have largely defensive reasons to preserve the status quo, ­miscommunication might exacerbate competitions and tensions. Sometimes international conflict could be driven by status dilemma. A status dilemma “occurs when two states would be satisfied with their status if they had perfect information about each other’s beliefs. But in the absence of such certainty, a state’s leadership may conclude that its status is under challenge even when it is not” (Wohlforth 2014, 118–119). International relations scholars have recently begun to use the concept of status dilemma to analyze various cases of international tensions and conflicts (Pu and Schweller 2014; Pu 2019; Wang 2019). The status dilemma is different from the security dilemma, which refers to a situation in which one country’s measures to increase its military capability might generate the vicious circle of an arms race and then decrease security for all relevant states (Jervis  1978). While the security dilemma focuses on the key concern of security as a driving factor of an arms race, the status dilemma focuses on the status concerns of nation-­states. When the stakes of status concerns are high, nation-­states may face pressures to make heavy investments that in the end turn out to be mutually offsetting. Measures that aim to enhance a country’s own status might potentially threaten the status of another country. If the other country responds by expending resources to increase its own status, the situation is more likely to return to the original status hierarchy instead of any country’s status being enhanced. Above all, the quest for status is traditionally viewed as a major source of international conflict. Status is often viewed as a scarce resource, and there is often a gap between the status aspirations of the rising powers and recognition from the established powers. Even when both nations are largely satisfied with the status quo, status dilemma and miscommunication can also drive tensions and conflict.

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Status Quest and Peaceful Change While the quest for status is traditionally viewed as a major factor of conflict, it can promote peaceful change in some circumstances. In the introductory chapter of this book, T. V. Paul provides a rich analysis of conceptualizations and a typology of peaceful change (see Paul in this volume). Following his framework, this section briefly discusses the relationship between status quest and various types of peaceful change. According to Paul, the idea of peaceful change varies along a continuum from minimalist conceptions stressing change and transformation without violence to maximalist notions that entail sustained nonviolent cooperation for a more just world order (see Paul in this volume). A minimalist definition of peaceful change is “change in international relations and foreign policies of states, including territorial or sovereignty agreements that take place without violence or coercive use of force” (see Paul in this volume, 4). A maximalist definition is “transformational change that takes place non-­ violently at the global, regional, interstate, and societal levels due to various material, normative and institutional factors, leading to deep peace among states, higher levels of prosperity and justice for all irrespective of nationality, race or gender” (see Paul in this volume, 4). Paul also suggests that peaceful change could be divided into systemic, regional, and national levels. How does status quest play a role in various types of peaceful change? At the systemic level, the shifting status of major powers plays a most significant role in shaping peaceful change in the international order. International relations scholars have studied this topic through the framework of power transitions, hegemonic realism, and so on (Gilpin 1981; Kennedy  1987; Modelski  1987). From a perspective of minimalist peaceful change, peaceful transition occurs when a rising power achieves a higher status without war. According to Paul’s previous work, a key factor in minimalist peaceful change is great power accommodation, which refers to “mutual adaptation and acceptance by established and rising powers, and the elimination or substantial reduction in hostility between them” (Paul 2016, 6–7). Status adjustment is an important component of the process of great power accommodation. From this perspective, peaceful power transition requires transparency of intentions, which allows the established power to accept the greater role played by the rising power. In a more maximalist understanding, peaceful change involves not only effective mechanisms for dispute resolution, but also a framework through which states can address collective action problems. From a perspective of status quest, this requires nation-­states (especially great powers) to fulfill the responsibilities associated with their status. In particular, great powers must accept greater responsibilities in the provision of international public goods. It also requires active collaboration between nation-­ states and nonstate actors. There is often a ­challenge in peaceful change: the increasing status aspiration of rising powers and the  unwillingness of the established powers to accommodate the rising powers (Renshon 2017; Ward 2017).

Status Quest and Peaceful Change   373 Peaceful change also occurs at the regional and national levels. At the regional level, a minimum peaceful regional change implies a condition of peaceful coexistence, and a maximalist understanding of peaceful change in a region implies the existence of a highly pluralistic security community in which war is unthinkable. Peaceful foreign policy change at the national level occurs when countries adopt strategies to achieve their foreign policy goals without violence (see Paul in this volume). At the regional and national levels, status quest promotes peaceful change in various ways. While seeking status on the world stage, nation-­states could rethink how they achieve status in the international society. Because there are different criteria to rank countries, nation-­states that seek to have a distinct positive national identity might choose different strategies to achieve status, including the strategies of competition, emulation, and creativity (Larson and Schevchenko 2010, 2019). In particular, nation-­ states could choose social creativity or international norms entrepreneurship to advance their status while avoiding confrontation with other countries. For instance, Brazil proposed the idea of responsibility while protecting (RwP) to reconcile the diverse views on the humanitarian norm of responsibility to protect (R2P) (Kenkel and Stefan 2016). As the criteria of status changes over time and across societies, status markers in the international society also vary. While traditionally great powers still regard military capabilities as a major tool for gaining status or international standing, there are many other status markers in the twenty-­first century (Johnston 2008, 87). Of course this does not mean that countries in all regions could easily abandon military capabilities such as nuclear weapons. For example, given the power asymmetry between India and Pakistan and the competitive regional context, Pakistan has to strengthen its military power as a cautious reaction to India (Paul  2006). In the relatively peaceful region of South America, Argentina and Brazil could successfully achieve denuclearization despite their power asymmetry (Paul 2000, 99–112). The next two sections discuss how status quest promotes peaceful change in detail, focusing on minimalist and maximalist conceptualizations of peaceful change.

Status Quest and Minimalist Peaceful Change While the international relations literature focuses on status as a driving factor for conflict, there are several reasons that conflict could be mitigated. Furthermore, status quest can promote minimalist peaceful change. In particular, it is possible to promote peaceful accommodation of rising powers through various mechanisms such as status recognition and institutional reconciliation (Paul 2016, 5–6). First of all, status is not always scarce. Sociologist Joe Best identifies an emerging phenomenon of status abundance in domestic society. While scholars often conflate

374   Xiaoyu Pu status with class or power, status is “more fluid, more easily changed than class or power” (Best 2011, 12). As status is primarily rooted in social interaction and social context, the standards of status are subject to change. At the domestic societal level, there are many social spheres with different status criteria. “Recognizing the way that new social worlds are constantly being created in our society forces us to rethink some of sociologists’ most basic assumptions about status. Their tendency to link status to the enduring edifice of social class ignores the relative ease with which status standards can be created and changed” (Best 2011, 11). As status indicators change over time and across societies, people do not always have to see status as a scarce resource. In domestic society, people see a proliferation of prizes in every corner, from “Best Neighborhood Pizza!” to “Best Karaoke Singer!” There are similar situations in international relations. On the global stage, while some international institutions such as the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) are highly privileged status clubs, there is a proliferation of international clubs such as the G20, BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), and the Asia-­Pacific Economic Forum (APEC). Rising powers play important roles in these multilateral platforms, and their status aspirations could be accommodated in a broader context. The social nature of status and the possibility of status abundance give nation-­states more flexibility to pursue status accommodation (Larson 2018). Second, even in a competitive context, status politics is not necessarily a zero-­sum game. If status is regarded as a scarce positional good in some absolute sense, status competition is a zero-­sum game (Hirsch 1976, 27). However, if status is viewed as a “club good,” status competition is not always a zero-­sum game (Sandler 1992). A club is “a voluntary collective that derives mutual benefits from sharing one or more of the following: production costs, the members’ characteristics, or an impure public good characterized by excludable benefits” (Sandler 1992, 63). Club goods are often partially competitive in their benefits owing to crowding, which means that one user’s utilization of the club good decreases the benefits or the quality of service still available to the remaining users. For instance, even though status politics has driven competition between India and China, the struggle for status between the two countries can be mitigated (Pu 2017a). Most competitions over status between China and India are not zero-­sum games, as they typically involve club goods rather than positional goods. While status as a club good could be competitive, more states joining a club does not make the existing member states lose their status, and thus it is not a zero-­sum game. India’s entry into the UNSC might impact the privileges of China as an existing member of this great power club, but India’s entry will not eliminate China’s privileges. Even if there are competitive elements in the bilateral relationship, China does not have to view India’s rise as a zero-­sum game. For this reason, China can partially accommodate India’s status aspirations. To some degree, China’s ambivalence toward India’s rise might be due to their substantial policy disputes rather than intrinsic status competitions (Pu  2017a). While China and the United States have an increasingly competitive relationship, it is not always a zero-­sum game. Since Nixon’s opening to China in the early 1970s, the United States has gradually and partially accommodated China’s great

Status Quest and Peaceful Change   375 power aspirations. The United States has accepted China’s entry into major international institutions, and China’s social interactions in international institutions have moved its behavior and preferences in a more cooperative direction (Johnston  2008). Some American strategists suggest US engagement with China might be largely a failure (Campbell and Ratner 2018). But the American hedging strategy of engagement and deterrence has achieved important success; despite its authoritarian domestic practice, China has transformed from a revolutionary power in the Mao era into a more powerful but yet more moderate actor in the international system (Johnston 2019; Zakaria 2020). Furthermore, status as a club good also plays a solidarity role in mitigating interstate competition. For instance, both India and China belong to the BRICS group. All BRICS countries have benefited from their membership; this BRICS club provides each member with a new rising power status while excluding others from benefiting from this status attribution (Pu 2017a). China and India have been active members of BRICS for many years, and the club dynamics within BRICS generate incentives between India and China to overcome their differences and to create opportunities for cooperation (Cooper and Farooq 2015, 32–44). Finally, rising powers do not always want to have higher status. While people and nation-­states typically struggle for higher status, they also consider the trade-­off between the instrumental value and expressive value of status. People sometimes refuse to take a high-­status position due to instrumental cost-­benefit analysis. Similarly, nation-­states may not necessarily want to maximize their status. For instance, while most studies assume China and India will always struggle for more recognition as a great power, both of these two large developing countries sometimes seem to complain about the over-­recognition of their rise in the international system (Miller 2013; Pu 2017b). The ambiguity of India’s status quest stems from its need to reconcile the aspiration for great power status with a desire to maintain solidarity with developing countries (Basrur and Sullivan de Estrada 2017). India increasingly seeks great power status, with its accompanying special rights and privileges, but it still claims to remain a champion of equality between states and is unwilling to abandon its long-­term efforts toward developing-­country solidarity. This also reflects India’s unwillingness or incapacity as an emerging power to take up collective burdens globally (Castañeda 2010). I have argued elsewhere that China has been projecting multiple images to multiple audiences (Pu 2019). China tends to highlight its great power status in front of domestic audiences. Internationally, China under the leadership of Xi Jinping does take a more active role in addressing global challenges such as climate change and global pandemics. But Chinese elites also worry about the over-­recognition of China’s status (Pu 2019). In particular, some policy and intellectual elites in China debate whether their country faces the problem of “strategic overstretch,” which might have generated increasing international backlashes (Pu and Wang 2018). As another example, Brazil tries to play a leadership role through organizing multilateral dialogues rather than through explicit coercion. As a leading power in South America, Brazil has often avoided being viewed as a hegemon. Brazilian officials try to describe Brazil’s position through the notion of “consensual hegemony” (Burges 2008, 65–84).

376   Xiaoyu Pu Above all, status is not always a scarce resource, as people can change the criteria for status symbols. While status politics is often competitive, it is still not always a zero-­sum game. Rising powers do not always want to have higher status. For these reasons, peaceful accommodation of rising power is often difficult but still possible.

Status Quest and Maximalist Peaceful Change Maximalist peaceful change envisions a more just world order in which states and nonstate actors can cooperate to address common challenges through diplomatic and institutional means. How could status quest shape this process? While nonstate actors and smaller countries can play an important role collectively, great powers or leading powers are still key players on the global stage. If we focus on the role of great powers or leading powers, Gilpin’s analysis might provide a useful framework. As Gilpin argues, there are three major sources of great power legitimacy in international politics: military victory, the provision of public goods, and a widely accepted ideology (Gilpin  1981, 34). Accordingly, three questions related to great powers are most important in shaping a maximalist peaceful change. First, could great powers abandon military power as the major symbol of status? Second, could great powers provide necessary public goods to address global challenges? Finally, could great powers win support by implementing a more humane and moral foreign policy? To fundamentally transform the international system into a more peaceful one, great powers must promote new norms and a new culture of status symbols in the international system. Traditionally, military power and military victory have been a major mark of status and prestige in international politics. However, status has not been derived from military strength alone; ideological appeal, economic growth, popular culture, and technological innovation can also be sources of international status (Schweller 1999, 43–47). One important question in the twenty-­first century is whether great powers still regard military power as a major tool for gaining status or standing (Lebow 2008). The standards of status change, and there are multiple status criteria in international society. Also, political actors at different times might regard different things as “status symbols” (Johnston 2008, 87). In this sense, the changing symbols of status will help us understand the emerging trends and processes of international change. Since the end of World War II, both Germany and Japan have emerged as two high-­status countries, and they have achieved international status primarily through their economic and technological success, not through military expansion (Berger 1998). Since the early 2000s, China has promoted the strategic idea of “peaceful rise” or “peaceful development” (Zheng 2005; Glaser and Medeiros 2007). The key is to seek great power status while maintaining a peaceful relationship with the established powers and neighboring countries. While it is debatable if China has successfully

Status Quest and Peaceful Change   377 implemented this strategy, the idea itself has important implications: if a rising power like China could seek and consolidate its great power status peacefully, that would have important implications for the peaceful transformation of the international system as a whole. Status quest is not necessarily always wasteful. In domestic society, people have a strong desire to belong to a group or a community. Status hierarchies can emerge in cooperative social interactions to achieve a common goal (Mark, Lovin, and Ridgeway 2009, 834). Billionaires can signal their status not only through conspicuous consumption of material goods, but also through charitable donations or “conspicuous giving” (Glazer and Konrad 1996, 1019–1028). People have different motives for donating to charity; however, the desire to socialize with individuals of the same or higher social status is an important driving factor of charitable giving in many circumstances. Compared with conspicuous consumption, conspicuous giving is often viewed much more positively in many societies. Conspicuous giving overlaps with the notion of public goods provision by a hegemonic power in international relations. Some international relations scholars conceptualize hegemonic powers’ specific behaviors of public goods provision, including custodianship and sponsorship (Reich and Leblow  2014, 7–8). Since providing public goods is an important source of leadership in international relations, both rising and established powers have rational reasons to provide public goods in international affairs. “Conspicuous giving” implies that projecting a particular image is one of the major motives behind these behaviors. However, “conspicuous giving” behaviors do not necessarily mean that the donors of foreign aid make no instrumental calculations. Sometimes these types of behavior might be motivated by social influences because political actors are pursuing social rewards and avoiding social sanctions (Johnston 2008, 88). For individuals, communal sharing could bring a variety of social rewards such as reputation and social status. For nation-­states, provision of public goods is an important part of statecraft that will enhance international status and image. There are different formats of conspicuous giving in international relations, such as foreign aid and humanitarian relief efforts during natural disasters. When a great power provides public goods, it might be driven by its ambition to take on a larger role in international affairs. As Gilpin emphasizes, “Empires and dominant states supply public goods that give other states an interest in following their lead” (Gilpin 1981, 30). When and why would a nation-­state provide public goods? Many rising powers such as China might be more eager to provide public goods within their own region rather than on the global stage (Pu 2018). This approach is partially shaped by their own sense of community belonging. At the individual level, conspicuous contributors have a strong sense of belonging to a community and a desire to demonstrate their usefulness in their community. With different understandings of social communities, people have various ideas about moral and communal obligations. Chinese sociologist Fei Xiaotong conceptualizes traditional Chinese society as a mode of Chaxugeju, which is a differential mode of association (Fei  1992). In this mode of social networking, each individual is surrounded by a series of concentric circles, and each circle spreads out

378   Xiaoyu Pu from the center, becoming more distant and more insignificant. As a result, people do not have a universal sense of responsibilities. Instead, they have a different sense of their moral and social responsibilities depending on their social networking (Fei 1992). It might be debatable whether Fei’s theory of a differential mode of association can only be applied to Chinese society or if it is a mode of social networking that has wider implications. But Fei’s mode can be applied in international relations (Qin 2010). This mode is composed of distinctive networks spreading out from each individual’s personal connections. Similarly, a country might view its relationship with other countries through the perspective of the differential mode of association. Accordingly, this country might have a different sense of obligation to different regions. Contemporary China has a different sense of belonging and membership in the Asian regional community than in the West. Since China has a strong sense of its belonging and membership in the Asian community, it is more willing to demonstrate its usefulness and status within that community. In this sense, provision of public goods at the regional level could be a useful approach to understanding the motives and mechanisms of regionalism and regional cooperation (Pu 2018). On the global stage, status quest could help overcome “the Kindleberger Trap,” a situation wherein a new global power’s failure to provide international public goods might cause international disaster and chaos (Nye 2017). Charles Kindleberger argued that the global disaster in the 1930s was caused by the US replacing Britain as the largest global power but failing to take on Britain’s role in providing global public goods (Kindleberger 1981, 1986). The American scholar Joseph Nye warns that there might be a similar problem in the current era (Nye 2017). Historically, the United States pursued a more expansive foreign policy long after it became the largest economy. This agenda was delayed by its executive branch’s weak institutional capacity (Zakaria  1988). Many scholars note a potential danger in the contemporary world: while the established powers might be unwilling to take leadership in many global issues, rising powers might not be willing to provide necessary public goods (Pu 2020). The leadership deficit might become a new challenge. To partially overcome this problem, it is crucial to attach status recognition to the actual contributions of rising powers. For the established powers, it is important to adjust elites and public opinions psychologically, making room to share leadership with the rising powers. To achieve international leadership, public goods provision is not enough, and in a more fundamental sense, a leading great power must ideally provide a more humane and moral leadership that will fundamentally transform the norms of the international system. At the individual level, people sometimes give to charity anonymously because they may be motivated by moral sentiments rather than self-­interested instrumental calculations (Frank 1988, 146–162). Leading powers on the world stage must be accepted by followers, and that followership depends on the inclusion of the interests or ideas of possible followers in the leadership project (Schirm 2010, 197–221; Yan 2019). Without an appealing ideology or ideas, international leadership at the regional or global levels would be very limited. For instance, rising powers such as Brazil and India increasingly express their desire for leadership in global governance. Their bids for permanent

Status Quest and Peaceful Change   379 membership in the UNSC face resistance and obstacles primarily at the regional level. These rising powers do not achieve their goals partly because they do not include the ideas and interests of potential followers in their leadership projects (Schirm 2010, 197–221). As China’s economy becomes larger and stronger, many people speculate that China could replace the United States to become a new global leader. However, China’s rising economic power does not automatically qualify China to be a global leader (Pu 2020). According to Chinese strategic thinker Yan Xuetong, a leading power must promote a more humane value and moral foreign policy that is attractive to other countries (Yan  2019). This requires consistency between a leading power’s domestic ideology and the political values it pursues abroad. “Unfortunately, the present Chinese government is conflicted in this regard, and thus the Chinese leadership of the next generation bears moral realist expectations” (Yan 2019, 53). Modi’s India faces a similar problem; while trying to project a positive international image to Western audiences, Modi has implemented some authoritarian and illiberal policies in the domestic context (Chacko 2018). In summary, there are many ways through which a rising power could signal a higher status, and some of these strategies can contribute to regional stability and cooperation. Focusing on leading powers on the world stage, a maximalist peaceful change would require leading powers to abandon military power as the major or only symbol of status, to provide public goods in addressing global or regional challenges, and to implement a more humane and moral foreign policy. This requires a fundamental reconstruction and rethinking of status and norms in the international system.

Conclusion While most studies of international status focus on how status drives international ­conflict, this chapter redresses this imbalance by focusing on how status quest could promote peaceful change in international relations. Status scarcity, status discrepancy, and status dilemma could drive international conflict. Status is often competitive because it is a scarce resource. Rising powers often want to have higher status, but the established powers often deny recognition of a rising power’s status. Conflict could also occur in a situation of status dilemma in which nations exaggerate the threat to their status from other countries. This chapter suggests that status quest can promote peaceful change in various ways. There are different types of peaceful change, and peaceful change could occur at the systemic, regional, and national levels. To achieve minimalist peaceful change, the key is peaceful accommodation of rising powers by the established powers. Status is not always a scarce resource, as people could reconstruct the criteria of status symbol. Even if status politics is often competitive, it is still not always a zero-­sum game. Rising powers do not always want to have higher status, as some of them are struggling with multiple

380   Xiaoyu Pu identities. The social nature of status gives nation-­states some flexibility to accommodate each other’s status aspirations. Rising powers could signal a higher status through many strategies, and some of these strategies can contribute to a maximalist peaceful change. Focusing on the role of leading powers on the world stage, a maximalist peaceful change would require leading powers to change their preferences and behavior in a fundamental way. While seeking status on the world stage, the rising and established powers should be incentivized to accept appropriate responsibilities to address global challenges. Status competition does not always mean a zero-­sum game. As status is ultimately social and cultural, nation-­ states could seek status through social creativity, which will help them avoid confrontation with other states. Status quest could also encourage states to pursue prosocial behaviors. If nation-­states (especially great powers) could seek higher status through provision of international public goods, their status quest could contribute to peaceful change in a fundamental sense.

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Chapter 21

Science , Tech nol ogy, a n d Peacefu l Ch a nge i n Wor ld Politics Anne L. Clunan

Understanding technology’s role in peaceful change in world politics requires ­making technology, and the scientific knowledge and philosophy that underpin it, a central part of reasoning about global processes and dynamics. Science and technology (S/T) in world politics are best conceptualized as nothing but change, in the form of a set of dynamic and socially constructed processes, practices, and material artifacts, as temporary settlements or truths rather than static or linear outcomes. These processes, practices, and artifacts may be temporarily dominant, but as with scientific knowledge, their meaning and role are subject to continuous scrutiny, contestation, and modification. Science, scientists, and technology are never truly value free. Nor are technologies inert objects given life by humans; they contain within themselves particular preferences and biases that shape not only their application but broader society. It is in these value-­laden ways that science and technology have enabled not only the instantiation of international orders since the sixteenth century but also the modern study of international relations. Change in world politics, peaceful and otherwise, is measured through the very scientific values and methods that help produce it. This chapter undertakes a three-­dimensional survey of the role of Western science and technology in peaceful change in world politics, as it has “bent the curve of human history” (Morris 2010, 48).1 It distinguishes between science as a system of knowledge and technology as the artifacts of such knowledge. One dimension is a sociology of knowledge on S/T and change in international relations (IR) and its influence on the subdisciplines of security studies, international organization, and international political economy (IPE). The second dimension is the manner in which S/T has shaped the emergence of actors, interests, material power, social purposes, and grammars of international order to produce our contemporary, late-­modern Anthropocene age. Woven through this survey is the third dimension, contestation over S/T and its effects—at the

386   Anne L. Clunan micro and meso levels of analysis—that create the dynamic, open-­ended movements and countermovements that brought humankind from the preindustrial age to the Anthropocene. Given space limitations, this chapter uses Polanyi’s concept of the double movement to sketch those micro- and meso-­level processes that have led to changes at the macro level of international order since the eighteenth century. The chapter considers next how IR can improve its theories of change and the prospects for this volume’s maximalist definition of peaceful change, beginning with some criteria for distinguishing what actually constitutes “peaceful” change. One of the most profound changes the world faces is rethinking both our paradigms and governance structures in light of climate change and the Fourth Industrial Revolution, as these will profoundly alter the actual workings of economies and societies, remaking global politics in the process.

S/T, Peaceful Change, and Security This volume seeks to rectify the dearth of thinking in IR, particularly security studies, regarding the sources of peaceful change in world politics. Nowhere is this more evident than in the area of S/T. S/T features prominently in security studies as the artifacts of weapons systems and the material and science needed to make them. It is widely treated as a sudden or external shock to a particular era, system, or distribution of power in international relations theory and the history of war. It is credited with causing revolutions in military affairs (Rogers 1995) and four hundred years of dominance by Europe and the United States in global affairs (White 1962; Krause 1995). It is said to be responsible for shifts in the global distribution of power and wealth and the dominance of one country over others in military, economic, and political contests (Gilpin  1981; Waltz 1979; Nye and Owens 1996; Buzan, Jones, and Little 1993) and the status hierarchies these shifts create (Paul, Larson, and Wohlforth 2014). The minimalist conception of S/T as artifacts that shape change pervades IR security studies. It generally refers to the physical objects or artifacts that are the product of basic and applied research in the service of the state or corporations. This is the everyday conceptualization of technology that evolves from gunpowder to nuclear weapons to killer robots and drones and from the printing press to telegraph and telephone to electronics, software, and the internet of things. In most IR treatments of technology, these artifacts exist outside of the analysis, hovering exogenously in the background environment; they have causal effects through their instrumental role as power resources that drive state behavior. In this view, technology is not the result of social and political practices, values, and institutions, but the driver of them. Yet this is not how the founders of modern realism viewed S/T. E. H. Carr and Hans Morgenthau, considered the founding fathers of modern Anglo-­American IR, focused in their analyses as much on the optimistic ideology of scientific rationality of the nineteenth century as on the consequences of technological artifacts. They drew explicitly on Karl Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge (Allan  2018b, 843) to challenge liberal

Science, Technology, and Peaceful Change in World Politics   387 rationalism. Enlightenment rationalism and the belief in the perfectibility of human nature through scientific discovery and liberal education, in their view, was a false ideology that masked the role of power. “Carr’s (1939: 22–30) diagnosis of the interwar crisis unfolds as a history of how scientific and rationalist knowledge shaped international politics” (Allan 2018b, 845). Morgenthau argued that scientific rationalism was merely an ideology that “served the interests of the rising bourgeois class in the 18th and 19th centuries,” who sought to remake international politics. Morgenthau excoriated liberals who thought that “[p]olitical maneuvering should be replaced by the scientific ‘plan,’ the political decision by the scientific ‘solution,’ the politician by the ‘expert,’ the statesmen by the ‘braintruster,’ the legislator by the ‘legal engineer’ ” (Morgenthau 1946, cited in Allan 2017, 845). Robert Gilpin (1962, 2000) followed in this tradition. Science and scientific rationality in this view were one more form of ideology that had come to dominate the study of international politics. This skepticism of Western rationalism disappeared as realists moved to make their theories more “scientific” (Steinbruner 1974). Kenneth Waltz drew explicitly on liberal economic theory of individual rationality to build his Theory of World Politics. Scientific rationality becomes the mode through which all actors make decisions. His and other neorealist and neoclassical realist approaches tend toward determinism in their depictions of technology’s role (Herrera 2006). No longer is science an ideology that obscures reality; rather, it now reveals reality. Carr’s and Morgenthau’s reflexive critique of the utility of these more “scientific” structural analyses of world politics disappeared from realism. Technology in contemporary realism is simply a means to achieving some end; realism’s unquestioned assumption holds that strategic rationality is the means of ­decision-making. Realism has therefore understood this Clausewitzian means-­end construct as universal and ahistorical. “Having defined strategy not only in terms of means-­ends rationality, but a certain type of means (national armed forces) and a ­certain type of ends (national interests), realists, and thus most of strategic studies, have closed themselves conceptually from rationalizing the rise of new technologies, doctrines and agents. Instead of using rationality to explain new phenomena, traditional strategic studies use rationality to explain why new phenomena are of little consequence” (Rasmussen 2006, 29). Technological change is merely a perennial driver of security dilemmas, arms races, and escalatory ladders. With the launch of the atomic age, much of security and strategic scholarship has focused on technology’s role in deterring and denying adversaries while reassuring allies (Knopf 2010, 2012), rather than on any deeper change in the nature of world politics. This is most evident in works such as Taliaferro et al. (2018) that deny nuclear weapons have any impact on changing decisionmakers’ calculations about going to war today. This reasoning well reflects the cyclical view of history held onto by realists. Yet “by focusing determinedly on the past as a blueprint for the future, realists are excluding the possibility that bad times may come in a new form. By insisting that any claim of change is a utopian claim of progress, Gray, Mearsheimer and other central

388   Anne L. Clunan realist figures in strategic studies have actually closed their eyes to the threat that is always the most dangerous: the unexpected” (Rasmussen 2006, 29). According to critics, while the rest of social science scholarship is busily using strategic rationality to examine how governments, businesses, and individuals are dealing with new technologies, social agents, and insecurity, security studies is stuck in the past (Windsor 2002). Only iconoclasts, such as John Mueller, Daniel Deudney, and Mary Kaldor, have dared declare that the end of great power war and the transformation of great power relations is a result of nuclear weapons. Realist IR, with some exceptions, has essentially ignored the notion that the war calculus has been fundamentally altered by technology, in favor of an international order marked by a nuclear peace. Deudney’s more sophisticated approach to the role of S/T in IR stems from the bellicist theory of state formation. This is also an exogenous view of technology, prevalent in the military history literature on state formation that made its way into political science via Charles Tilly (1975, 1992). Developments in military technology necessitated greater centralization, administration, and central revenue. This in turn necessitated internal mobilization and taxation, in other words, institutional innovations that created the modern nation-­state and modern international system (Roberts  1956; Parker  1979; McNeill  1982). Here again, technological change is an exogenous variable that ultimately changes the global system into a state system. Following in this tradition, Deudney (1993, 1995, 2019) argues that the underlying technological environments determine the nature of the institutions of security provision in international politics. In this bellicist tradition of wars making states, he argues that gunpowder, firearms, and conventional explosives generated the system of states, whereas nuclear weapons have created a post-­state system due to their potential destruction of the state. One of the most fundamental changes technology has wrought in the current era is accelerating incalculability and uncertainty. As Ulrich Beck notes, “new kinds of industrialized, decision-­produced incalculabilities and threats are spreading within the glob­al­i­za­tion of high-­risk industries, whether for warfare or welfare purposes. Max Weber’s concept of ‘rationalization’ no longer grasps this late modern reality, produced by successful rationalization. Along with the growing capacity of technical options [Zweckrationalität] grows the incalculability of their consequences” (Beck 1992, 22; emphasis in original). What matters most now for civilian decisionmakers in the advanced industrial world is a conceptual change from means-­ends rationality to managing and balancing risk (Rasmussen 2006, 33). Risk is now the central principle that guides late or “reflexive” modern societies (Beck 1992; Giddens 1990; Moskos 2000). Rasmussen (2006) draws from this epistemic and epistemological shift the conclusion that technological change is fundamentally altering warfare to make it both easier to wage but less legitimate as a form of state behavior. Such a shift would lead us past this volume’s minimalist definition of peaceful change toward more robust forms. More concretely, S/T has played three critical roles in the most recent peaceful change in the international security system: the end of the Cold War. The movement to weapons

Science, Technology, and Peaceful Change in World Politics   389 of mass destruction produced two dimensions of countermovement. Nuclear weapons and their destructive power created self-­restraint and mutual restraint on both sides (Nye 1987; Adler 1992). They also constituted peace and antinuclear countermovements that delegitimated superpower war and nuclear weapons use (Knopf 1998). The humble fax machine played the third role in ending the Cold War. It made possible the communicative and collective action that fueled the peaceful protests across central Eastern Europe and the USSR, leading to the largely nonviolent collapse of communist regimes and the implosion of the Soviet empire (personal communications with participants in these revolutions). The fax revolutions of 1989, their Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Tik-­Tok successors, and the destructive power of today’s weapons can combine to produce incremental and structural peaceful (and violent) change at the local, regional, and global levels. In earlier eras, the movement to deploy new weapons in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries generated both the countermovements of arms control and limitation and international humanitarian limitations on warfighting. Warfighting and weapons use are today highly legally regulated activities, and those regulatory institutions shape states’ behavior and legitimacy (Clunan 2009). A proper accounting of peaceful change in IR then needs to take into account such meta, meso, and micro levels of change in one theory to capture properly the causes and recursive processes of change in world order (Allan 2018a).

S/T, Peaceful Change, and International Organization Technology is credited with enabling international cooperation and collective action (Ostrom 1990; Keohane 1984) and remaking the international order from one of religious sovereign authority to multi-­actor governance (Rosenau  1990; Strange  1996; Cerny  1997), global society (Bull  1977; Buzan  2004; Barnett and Sikkink  2008), or a global city (Sassen  1991). Scientific knowledge and technology enable transnational groups to manage environmental degradation and promote human security, drive glob­ al­i­za­tion, derail crisis decision-­making (Trinkunas, Lin, and Loehrke 2020), undertake revolutions, and facilitate transnational activism more broadly (Castells 2015; Bennett and Toft 2008). In terms of basic human needs, S/T is central to international efforts to protect human and animal health from diseases such as polio, smallpox, rinderpest, malaria, HIV/AIDs, Covid-­19, and many others. The Green Revolution of the 1960s allowed for much greater, bioengineered grain yields and reduced the prospects of starvation for a growing global population in developing countries. Revolutions in shipping and transportation facilitated access to a wider variety of foods and goods at lower prices.

390   Anne L. Clunan S/T has been the source of equally important revolutions in thinking about world affairs, from the cosmology of scientific and secular progress (E.  Haas  1990b; Allan 2018a) and episteme of scientific rationalism (Ruggie 1993), to market capitalism, liberalism, and neoliberalism (Blyth 2002), Marxist dialectical materialism, arms control (Adler  1992), weapons taboos (Price  1998; Tannenwald  2007; Paul  2009; Obama 2009), peace movements, anti-­modernity movements (Phillips 2011), the obsolescence of great power war (Mueller 1990), the state system (Deudney 2019), and the rise of “new” (Kaldor 2012) and “hybrid” (Hoffman 2007) war. Enlightenment rationality spurred the displacement of religious authority and a revolution in sovereignty (Philpott  2001), transforming the international order in the process. Modernity and postmodernity, like the science that made them possible, are heavily Eurocentric in their origins. Most fundamentally, technology and its deployment have damaged the earth’s climate, biodiversity (Kolbert 2014), and atmosphere in a systematic fashion encapsulated in the designation of the post–Industrial Revolution epoch as the Anthropocene age (Crutzen 2002). The very existence of modernity and postmodernity is predicated on the scientific and technological revolutions that vastly improved human longevity and prosperity, societal complexity, and mass destruction, while altering the planet’s ecology. Ernst Haas was one of the very few IR scholars to focus on science and scientific knowledge. Haas showed his students how technologies were social as much as material. Rather than accepting IR as a scientific endeavor to uncover ahistorical constants and truths, Haas exposed his students to Mannheim’s concept of knowledge (and truth) as something temporary and historically bounded, subject to amendment or reversal as scientific consensus shifted. Haas continuously applied Mannheim’s dictum about reflexive objectivity to his scholarship and teaching. Haas was committed to understanding how progress in peaceful international organization and management of global problems could evolve through collective learning and the application of scientific knowledge and expertise. Science and scientific rationality, in Haas’s view, were one more form of ideology that had come to dominate the study of international politics. Unlike Carr and Morgenthau, Haas (1964) sought to scrape the utopian determinism off of liberalism and functionalism while salvaging what he viewed as the progressive role of scientific rationalism (Levine 2012; Allan 2018b). Haas’ life’s work was divided between furthering peaceful international change by analyzing how scientific rationality and pluralism might transcend nationalist rivalries and interests (Haas 1964, 1970, 1990a, 1997, 2000) and unveiling the many ways in which science and technocracy themselves became ideologies (1975, 1990a). From the standpoint of theories of peaceful change, Haas’s work foreshadowed the notion that science as knowledge had constitutive (Ruggie  1982,  1993) or productive (Allan 2018a) power of its own. Science was not simply an instrument that served the state (Skolnikoff 1994). For Haas, “science becomes a component of politics because the scientific way of grasping reality is used to define the interests that political actors artic-

Science, Technology, and Peaceful Change in World Politics   391 ulate and defend. The doings of actors can then be described by observers as an exercise in defining and realizing interests informed by changing scientific knowledge (1990a, 11).” Haas’s work “takes the form of a Mannheimian sociology of knowledge designed to trace the effects of experts and scientists on state interests” (Allan 2018b, 843). Those drawing from Haas highlight how scientific ideas and expert knowledge can help states realize what their interests are (Gilpin 1962; Haas 1992; Adler 1991, 1992, 2019). Equally important for understanding peaceful change is Haas’s conception of international relations as the recursive process of perceptions of reality rather than permanent truths. He focused on the importance of processes of incremental change (Haas 1990a, 241). For Haas, the role of scientific ideas in these processes was central to defining and explaining world politics. In the long view of the global economy, for example, Haas argued, “the intellectual commitments of the seventeenth-­century scientists and mathematicians penetrated the way political economists and their disciples in governments began to see the world” (Haas 1990a, 22). Later works in IPE would emphasize this role for scientific knowledge in shaping state policies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Blyth 2002, 2013). These themes of process, practices, and cognitive progress have driven Emanuel Adler’s research, culminating in his magnum opus on evolutionary change (2019). In the 1970s, Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye were examining how technologically facilitated interdependence was changing both the actors (Nye and Keohane 1971) and the anarchic nature of world politics (Keohane and Nye 1977). Changes in S/T are highlighted as a key exogenous cause of the new nature of world politics. The international environment was already characterized as increasingly “transnational,” in that nonstate actors were engaging in cross-­border interactions. These changes in turn were made possible by advances in information and communication and transportation technologies (Nye and Keohane 1971, 331–332) of the Second and Third Industrial Revolutions. Technologically induced complex interdependence increased demands for international organization and the establishment of institutions to manage them (Keohane and Nye 1977). Technology is treated exogenously as a causal force of change. Here is when we begin to see again studies of how scientists (Crane 1971) and experts could act across borders to promote collective action. John Ruggie (1975) introduced the concepts of episteme, epistemic communities, and international regimes to IR in a seminal article on managing S/T internationally. He argued that scientific and technical epistemic communities could produce peaceful institutionalization of S/T management in separate areas that were of low political concern. S/T as an episteme more broadly speaking, however, would always run into politics, particularly disagreements about the ends or political purposes of peaceful international change (558, 570–571). While it was still a fragmentary international phenomenon in the 1970s (Haas 1975), Ruggie argued that the “process of institutionalization is transformational; it channels behavior in one direction as opposed to all others that are theoretically and empirically possible” (1975, 574). Such peaceful transformation underpins the wide body of literature on international organization and international regimes (Krasner 1983) that range

392   Anne L. Clunan from scientific, technical, economic, and environmental to humanitarian in scope. Epistemic communities of scientists were pivotal in the establishment of nuclear restraint and arms control (Adler 1992), environmental protection (Haas 1990, 1992), and spreading the discourse and methods of science itself (Bartelson  1995; Drori et al., 2003). Their dominance in international organizations shaped the course of economic development globally (Rodrik  2007,  2015; Woods  2006; Allan  2018a). Their “knowledge practices” (Ashley 1989) governed the management of the ozone holes in the earth’s atmosphere (Litfin 1994). States set the frame in which scientists would study and govern the climate (Allan 2017). Scientific networks have organized (Organisation for Economic Co-­operation and Development 1998) to manage the risks of earthquakes (Comfort 2019) and respond to pandemics such as Covid-­19/SARS-­COV-­2. The spread of Western rationality and rationalization globally has generated alternate views of international organization and institutionalization. The premise of the World Polity School is that the uniform, isomorphic nature of modern states results in the global spread of Western rationality. Contrary to the bellicist tradition of state formation, Western rationalism is productive of the nature of the international state system, not technologies of war. It holds that the entire international system has come to resemble the West in terms of the types of states that constitute it (Meyer et al.  1997; Finnemore 1993). Institutionally, Western scientific rationality has therefore created a homogenous world, where all states look and act according to Weberian legal-­ bureaucratic rationality (Drori et al. 2003). Publics recognize states as legal-­rational, allowing corruption and fraud to become a potent source of political change, as the many “colored revolutions” of the twenty-­first century demonstrate. International institutions and other states recognize them as legally sovereign and equal, despite widespread variation in capacity and performance (Jackson 1990; Krasner 1999). Across the world, governments are held to the standard of Western rationalization (Clunan and Trinkunas 2010; Risse and Stollenwerk 2018). In contrast, neoliberal institutionalism, the dominant theory of international ­organization for the past four decades, focused not on how rationality constituted the actors and their interests in world politics and allowed for their change, but on their decisions to cooperate in international institutions without coercion. Keohane (1984) took inspiration from advances in organizational microeconomic theory to argue how technology, especially surveillance, information, and communication technologies, can reduce the transactions costs of states’ cooperation in international regimes and its enforcement. It is once again scholars working outside of the mainstream who more centrally examined the manner in which technology was undermining IR precepts about the nature and functions of the state system. For Rosenau (1990), technological change underlies each of the sources of turbulence and change in the current international system. Societal complexity has increased not only at the national but also the global level. The changes Rosenau describes are the shift to a postindustrial social order, the emergence of new global issues, the decline in state efficacy, the devolution of large institutions, and the emergence of multiple spheres of authority globally. These changes in turn

Science, Technology, and Peaceful Change in World Politics   393 were making possible a world in which there was governance without government (Rosenau, Czempiel, and Smith 1992). Others have focused on the shift to networks of transnational actors as changing the nature of international order to a disaggregated one (Slaughter  2004) or a globalized and fragmented one (Cerny and Prichard  2017). Western rationalism has also changed the underlying social purpose of international order over time, from being focused on scientifically managing the balance of power to the contemporary purpose of global economic growth (Allan 2018a).

S/T, Peaceful Change, and the Global Economy Science and technology have been central to the study of the global economy and glob­ al­i­za­tion, as the latter quite literally depends upon the former. While we can speak of international trade prior to the First Industrial Revolution, it is technologies of transportation and communication that have knit global commerce and societies together. Technology has also made possible the expansion of the Western concepts and institutions of rationality, modernity, and markets to encompass the globe. Technology is central to theories of economic development and competitiveness, whether neoclassical and exogenous or revisionist and endogenous (Gilpin 2000, 103). For others, technological change underpins all other sources of change in the current global system (Cerny 1997; Kobrin 2002, 2009). What is often lost in this discussion is how the scientific revolution that produced the ideas of science, liberalism, and utilitarianism was a necessary precursor for what Polanyi ([1944] 1957) deemed to be the Great Transformation: the centuries-­long change that produced for the first time in history a market economy that was freed from societal institutions and norms. The science of classical economics is the basis for Karl Marx’s theory of historical materialism, which became a core part of what Polanyi saw as the countermovement to the market economy. Part of this broader scientific change was the creation of the discipline of political economy, in which Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Max Weber, Marx, Vladimir Lenin, and Joseph Schumpeter set out to demonstrate scientifically the workings of markets, trade, capitalism, and world politics. Marx and Lenin saw war as the inevitable outcome of capitalism, while Schumpeter thought capitalism would induce peace through limitation of glory and conquest in favor of profit. Stephen Brooks (2011) has found Schumpeter’s hypothesis to hold true for the advanced industrial world, but not for those less developed nations. Both Marx and Schumpeter highlighted the central role of new technologies in allowing for the new abundance that society was experiencing. For Marx, this meant a future in which scientific planning could distribute this abundance equitably. For Schumpeter (1942), it meant that capitalism was a process of “creative destruction,” as new technologies would eliminate industries and jobs while creating new sectors and livelihoods. Today, S/T has

394   Anne L. Clunan allowed capitalism to be distributed in global value chains, creating countermovements to “glocalize” manufacturing again. These two “scientific” theories of capitalism and modernization of course have fundamentally shaped human history and world politics since 1917. It is impossible to properly understand the twentieth- and twenty-­first-­ century conflicts between East and West and North and South without grappling with the two contending sciences of political economy: historical materialism and economic liberalism. History has recently treated Schumpeter better than Marx and Lenin, but the Marxist emphasis on the economic foundations of conflict still animates world politics. For the followers of Smith and Ricardo, however, the neoclassical study of political economy was narrowed from consideration of nations to a universally applicable, value-­ free science of economics (Marshall [1890] 1961), in which attention was to “decision-­ making under conditions of constraint and scarcity” (Gilpin 2000, 26). This economic science entailed ever-­increasing attention to mathematically proving formal economic laws that applied regardless of historical or social context. This version of political economy is the one that has fundamentally shaped realist theories of cycles and the neoliberal institutionalist study of international regimes. We see here clearly the dominance of this universalizing conception of Western rationality playing out in the study of strategy (Schelling  1958) and international institutional design (Keohane  1984; Oye  1986; Goldstein et al. 2000; Sandler 2004). This form of “economic imperialism” (Gilpin 2000, 26) has come to dominate American IR, in which individual rationality is the given. As a result, rationalist IR has become a decision-­making science of choice under scarcity. This has had significant consequences for the study of peaceful change in IR. Neoclassical and neoliberal economic theory is static, containing no theory of change (or time or space) (Gilpin 2000, 105). Technology is often cited as a source of change in the neoliberal study of political economy, but it is treated as exogenous to the global economic system. The microeconomic foundation for the extensive rationalist literature on international institutions and collective action cannot explain change. More holistic approaches to international political economy are needed (Blyth and Matthijs 2017). In rationalist accounts, technologies are simply instruments or resources that can be used to facilitate collective action in international regimes. The origins of these technologies, however, are not addressed in neoliberal or liberal IR or economics. They are products of scientific ideas and epistemes that have their own impact on important international processes, including modernity and postmodernity (Ruggie, 1993). These include scientific reasoning and cost-­benefit calculation, collective learning, expertise, and production of the deepest structures of world politics, including the paradigms of liberalism, rationalism, modernity and postmodernity, and positivist analysis of IR. It has fallen to constructivist and critical IR theorists to demonstrate how these ideas and epistemes have changed the political economy. Polanyi employed anthropology to study the long process of the Great Transformation. Contrary to the writings of economic liberals, Polanyi argued that markets had always been embedded within social structures and served social purposes. Polanyi depicted how the success of the advocates of economic liberalism and scientifical rationalism allowed technologies of the Industrial Revolution to be developed in the service of indi-

Science, Technology, and Peaceful Change in World Politics   395 vidual profit rather than society—the first “movement” in the Great Transformation. However, Polanyi noted that this movement engendered backlash, often violent, from forces that favored restoring the primacy of societal norms. These manifested earliest as the machine-­wrecking Luddites. Later came unions and labor movements, whose efforts where often met with violence from state and commercial agents, be it on the Paris barricades of 1848 or in the Ludlow massacre of 1914. The ideologies of socialism, communism, and fascism all arose in response to the first movement that disembedded markets and economic rationality from society. Polanyi feared that if markets remained disembedded, democracy would die, and communism or fascism would triumph. Polanyi inspired John Gerard Ruggie’s (1982) seminal article on the creation of the post–World War II international economic order. The Bretton Woods system of international economic institutions and the institutional innovation of multilateralism (Ruggie 1992) constituted this new order. Ruggie argues that this order was built on the scientific ideas of economists and management experts that came to form the social purpose of “embedded liberalism.” This form of governance peacefully transformed the global economy from the neoclassical, “automatic” one in which states and international organizations played little role to a collectively managed, embedded-­liberal system, one that outperformed the classically liberal and neoliberal systems that pre- and postdated it. The concept of change in social purpose is central to Ruggie’s dynamic explanation of not only the fact of economic order (brought about through hegemonic power), but also the nature and content of that order. This allows Ruggie to outline the prospects for norm-­governed, peaceful change, rather than the pessimistic violent change expected when a declining hegemon faces a challenger (Gilpin 1981). The notion of such norm-­ governed change animates the work of liberals such as John Ikenberry (2011) and Daniel Deudney (Deudney and Ikenberry 2018), as well as constructivists. More recently, Mark Blyth (2002) has chronicled how changes in the science of economics have contributed to the “disembedding” of liberalism and the late-­twentieth-­century dominance of neoliberalism nationally and globally. The neoliberal prescription of austerity and efficiency generated a broad-­based backlash against both the Washington Consensus and neoliberal international institutions of trade and finance that encompasses environmentalists, human- and labor-­rights activists, and left- and right-­wing anti-­elitist and anti-­Western movements (Clunan 2018). Technology amplifies the catastrophic and global effects of scientific models of risk and allows financial crises to spread like wildfire (Blyth 2013). The combination of the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s and the Great Recession and Eurozone crisis of the 2000s has drastically weakened the West’s legitimacy as a model of capitalist progress. What remains to be seen is whether the preferred social purpose of rising economic powers, particularly China, will diverge significantly from the embedded or neoliberal purposes of the American international order. If not, peaceful power transition is possible, as it was in 1989–1991. Technology has also been central to critical approaches to peaceful change in the global economy. In 1994, Susan Strange wrote “Wake Up, Krasner! The World Has

396   Anne L. Clunan Changed,” calling out realists and neoliberal institutionalists for missing out on how technology had facilitated the enormous increase in the power of corporations and markets over governments in world politics (Strange 1988, 1996, 1998). Cerny (1997) argues that technology has shifted the function of the state from security provision to economic competition. Critical theorists have highlighted how these changes have eroded state capacity and will to provide governance (Cerny and Prichard  2017). Starting with the 1987 Brundtland Commission Report, others have stressed the rise of sustainable economic development as a response to industrialization’s impact on the world’s climate, leading to new subdisciplines of environmental economics and sustainable development (Daly 1974, 1990; Wanner 2015).

Conceptualizing Peaceful Change in World Politics As this chapter demonstrates, much attention has been paid in IR to the role of science and technology in producing societal, political, and economic transformations. How peaceful these transformations have been is a question of definition and object of analysis. S/T innovation produced both the initial movement (the First Industrial Revolution) and then the countermovements against its consequences (as well as three more industrial revolutions). Industrialization begat greater material abundance, but also increasing inequality, trans-­generational risks, environmental degradation, and the acceleration of human and geological time. The response was the rise of anti-­modernity, populist and labor movements, Marxism, fascism, Stalinism, and Maoism, in addition to social democracy. The violence perpetrated in the name of these movements occurred subnationally as well as internationally. This violence left scores of millions dead over the period 1848–1948. Change has occurred in world politics in the nature and number of the actors participating, as sovereigns shifted to rationalized states after the First and Second Industrial Revolutions of steam and mechanization, then electricity and mass production. Rationalized states were joined by corporations, international organizations, civil society actors, and violent and criminal nonstate actors. They are further empowered by the fruits of the Third Industrial Revolution of digital technologies and automation (Deibert 2000; Cronin 2019). There has also been change in the interests of states, from survival and security, to wealth and welfare, to avoiding the collective bads and ensuring the collective goods arising out of technological change and increasing societal ­complexity and interdependence. There have also been changes in material power and its destructiveness that have shaped the ease and likelihood of violent armed conflict in contradictory ways: a nuclear peace between nuclear weapons states accompanied by increasingly devastating

Science, Technology, and Peaceful Change in World Politics   397 ‘low-­intensity’ and disruptive cyber conflict. The current Fourth Industrial Revolution is undertaking the fusion of digital technologies, such as artificial intelligence and radio-­frequency identification, with neurocognitive, biological, and physical ones. It promises more abundance, health, choice, and wealth, as well as more destructive and disruptive capacity delivered kinetically or cybernetically through machines. This is a reality in which assassination or “targeted killing” takes the age-­old form of poison, drone, or hacking into one’s car or genes. It is a world where biotechnology allows for ending diseases and ending an entire race or species (Clunan 2015). The first three industrial revolutions have disaggregated the power of states (Slaughter 2004) and empowered private actors of all forms to create authoritative practices to manage ever more complex interactions (Cerny 1997; Cutler 2003). The social purpose of world order has shifted from glory and conquest, to using science and reason to balance power, to the post–World War II social purpose of economic growth (Allan 2018a). Some of the most promising work on transformation in world politics has sought to connect up these micro, meso, and macro levels of change in one grand theory (Allan  2018a; Adler  2019; Phillips  2011). These will be needed to understand the transformations arising out of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and climatic change. At the deepest ideational level, the grammatical structure of world politics, and of IR, remains unchanged or “ordered” (Adler 2019). That grammatical structure is Western scientific rationalism and rationality (Ruggie 1993). It structures all three versions of this volume’s definitions of peaceful change, as all three are thoroughly legal-­rational. Although utilized and institutionalized differently in different countries and disciplines, this deep grammar continues to structure human behavior and the IR discipline. It persists in shaping world politics despite shifts in material and ideological power. Parts of the IR discipline have moved from the nineteenth century means-­ends-­rationality understanding of world politics to the twenty-­first century’s balancing-­risks rationality (Comfort 2019). Anti-­modernist and anti-­Western challenges to the grammar of scientific rationality exist (Phillips 2011), but they remain marginal in the most populous and powerful countries on the planet. We need some common understanding of what world politics is ontologically if there is to be a baseline for understanding its change in a more peaceful direction. Clearly, given the above, the typical IR distinctions between low and high politics, inside/outside approaches, and ideational-­materialist divisions are ontologically problematic. In my view, world politics is a series of transnational processes and practices that temporarily organize violence, society, polity, economy, and human interaction with nature. World politics therefore is always dynamic. The post–Cold War era has been one of continuous and accelerating change, at the systemic, national, subnational, scientific, and climatic levels. Change does not take the form of linear progression, punctuated equilibria, or cycles; rather, it is an ongoing and open-­ended construction and contestation of sets of practices about ideas and the material world that shape interests and outcomes (including technological developments and nature) that in turn are contested.

398   Anne L. Clunan Change in the institutions that organize violence, society, polity, economy, and human interaction with the physical environment comes from actors’ challenges to their legitimacy and/or from divergent practices that erode the taken-­for-­grantedness of extant material and ideational structures. These changes are both the result of and causes of changes in science and technology and the material world. Here I take Deudney’s (2018, 226) dictum that “no serious analysis of international politics can occur without taking into account changes in the human interaction with nature and technology” to heart, but reject his insistence on materialism over ideas. New knowledge of the natural world—and the technologies and their material consequences that result from it—is an essential cause and result of human contestation and interaction with nature. The second cause is crisis, whether war; economic decline; technical, natural, or climatic disaster; plague; or famine. These together give rise to crises in the legitimacy or “naturalness” (Douglas 1986) of existing ways of doing things and to the reordering of world politics (Adler 2019). At the deepest material level, the planetary structure of global politics has changed. S/T has accelerated human interactions across borders, but also human interactions with the environment, which in turn have caused the earth’s climate to change, exponentially. How the process of climate change unfolds will have fundamental implications for political, economic, and technological dimensions of world politics. The Fourth Industrial Revolution, in which we are seeing the convergence of the physical, digital, cognitive, and biological worlds, is already requiring a rethinking of the ends of S/T and of governance. Technologists “are combining computational design, additive manufacturing, materials engineering, and synthetic biology to pioneer a symbiosis between microorganisms, our bodies, the products we consume, and even the buildings we inhabit” (World Economic Forum 2016). Half of human-­performed tasks can already be automated. This is a world without work, at least in the advanced industrial countries, and where globalization gives way to glocalization (Susskind 2019). This is also a world without privacy as humans are tracked by the internet of things at the geolocational, transactional, and soon, microbial levels. It is also a post-­truth world, where discerning fact and fiction on commercial and social media itself becomes a highly politicized struggle. These changes are occurring at a pace that leaves states and governments at all ­levels   desperately trying to catch up, let alone keep pace. “The speed of current ­breakthroughs has no historical precedent. When compared with previous industrial revolutions, the Fourth is evolving at an exponential rather than a linear pace. Moreover, it is disrupting almost every industry in every country. And the breadth and depth of these changes herald the transformation of entire systems of production, management, and gov­ern­ance” (World Economic Forum  2016). More governance forms and human ingenuity are needed to manage this world in which accelerating technological change is the norm, not the exception. The deep grammar of scientific rationalism will, however, continue to order the global processes of human response to these challenges.

Science, Technology, and Peaceful Change in World Politics   399

Meeting the Challenges of Climate Change and the Fourth Technological Revolution Climate change promises more conflict arising out of scarcity (Homer-­Dixon 1991, 1999), a familiar theme in IR. The Fourth Industrial Revolution, on the other hand, promises abundance—of resources, services, and goods—but even more societal and global complexity. The complex interdependence of the twenty-­first century, exemplified in the global Covid-­19 epidemic and climatic and economic crises, suggests that our understanding of peace must be broader than the definitions guiding this volume. Our concepts of peaceful change must take into account humans’ development of and interactions with technology in order to alter its development in a peace-­positive direction. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is touted as the end of scarcity and the era of abundance and leisure. It is being driven, however, by the market logic of efficiency and productivity (Brynjolfsson and McAfee 2012) rather than a logic of ecological sustainability and human dignity. It will increase the technological divide, yielding an advanced, customized, and rich world and an underdeveloped, ignored, and poor world, unless the intent of science and technologies is changed to enhance humanity, climate, and governance. If we want to understand peaceful change in world politics, then a time point of analysis is also needed. That time point will depend on what the researcher is studying. In geologic-­political time, future scholars of world politics might choose the 1930s as the right point, as that is when Guy Earl Callendar first suggested that doubling carbon dioxide emissions would lead to a 2°C warming of the earth. Or they might choose the summer of 1988, when the earth was the hottest ever recorded to that point, and NASA scientist James Hansen testified to the US Congress that climate change was upon us. Future scholars may use those time points to demonstrate how global cooperation and peaceful management of this global existential crisis was achieved through Fourth Industrial Revolution fixes and new practices developed in the late twenty-­first century (Shyam 2021). Or scholars may look back at the Fourth Industrial Revolution as when humanity left the planet behind entirely (Deudney 2020). My point in raising the issue of climate change and time is that the definitions of peaceful change put forward in this volume are insufficient to capture the most profound changes occurring on our planet, the human changes to its climate and technology. Peaceful change then must include change in humans’ relationship to the natural world, a change from nature as exploitable resource or instrument to achieve human ends of growth, security, and well-­being to the natural world as an end to be preserved and conserved for all species. This should be as important a normative goal as this volume’s maximalist definition of peace, as the latter is not possible without the former. Peaceful change in world politics therefore requires a new global social purpose, while

400   Anne L. Clunan holding onto the deep grammar of global rationalism. This new social purpose would entail some set of robust sustainability and transparency practices aimed at peaceful transformation of the Anthropocene.

Author’s Note The views expressed in this chapter are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of the US Navy, Department of Defense, or government.

Note 1. I adopt here Allan’s (2018a, 18–19) conceptualization of Western science as a cosmological belief system, what Mannheim would term an “ideology.” My focus is on post-­Enlightenment Western science, in full recognition that this science builds on Islamic and other scientific traditions and discoveries.

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Chapter 22

Tr a nsnationa l Soci a l Mov em en ts a n d Peacefu l Ch a nge Alejandro Milcíades Peña

As indicated in other chapters, the concept of peaceful change emerged in the first part of the nineteenth century as both a policy and an intellectual challenge to the rather intuitive Clausewitzian vision of foreign affairs, wherein war and coercion are the ultimate mechanisms to settle international disputes. Nonetheless, the enduring relevance of power politics, both throughout the Cold War and in its unipolar aftermath, and nowadays with a return to multipolar competition, has meant that peaceful change debates remain largely associated with a search for safeguards against the “Thucydides trap”, the dangers that emerge when a rising power challenges a ruling one (Allison 2014), and for ways out of what John Mearsheimer (2001) called “the tragedy of great power politics”, the never-­ending cycle of order, distrust, and conflict. As noted by T. V. Paul in the introductory chapter to this volume, this has meant that across these discussions lingered a state-­centric mindset, concerned primarily with systemic questions regarding power transitions and accommodation, and secondarily with regional or state-­level developments such as the creation of collective security schemes or the transformation of antagonistic state identities. Unfortunately, this treatment left little space to engage with social movements, given the scarce attention granted by mainstream international relations (IR) approaches to phenomena understood to be operating at the societal level. This disregard is notable as much as problematic, given that historians and sociologists have long linked social movements and collective mobilization not only to peaceful changes in domestic societies but also to major transformations in world politics, from the spread of nationalism, democracy, and human rights to the dissolution of empires and superpowers (Hobsbawn 2003; Tilly 2004a). Conveniently, a recent genealogy of the concept provides an alternative conceptualization that facilitates the reintroduction of social movements into these discussions. Looking at foundational debates during the interwar years, Kristensen (2019) distinguished

408   Alejandro Milcíades Peña the minimalist ‘negative’ position of peaceful change held by early realists, concerned with finding ways of managing revisionist powers and avoiding war, from more substantive ‘positive’ views, interested in the consensual, legal, and normative changes conducive not only to peace but also to justice and long-­term cultural progress. This position included representatives of what at the time was viewed as an emerging “science of internationalism,” in which international reform and peace would follow from the strengthening of “international bonding” via, for example, the organization of international congresses, the development of international scientific publications, and the promotion of interactions between private international groups (Davies 2017). Though these precursor internationalists held different ideologies, overall they supported a modernist vision of human and political progress in pursuit of what Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine called “the civilized community of all the world” (quoted in Davies 2017, 894)—a project represented at that time by the League of Nations.1 This ‘idealist’ internationalist vision, wherein war and conflict could be not only prevented but eradicated through the alignment of the right ideas, the right values, and the right institutions, would inform many subsequent even if indirect elaborations of positive and maximalist peaceful change within the broad church of IR constructivism, from the functionalist “Working Peace System” of David Mitrany and the societal solidarism of the English school, to the Kantian complementarities across IR liberal and liberal institutionalist arguments, to Habermasian models of global democratic gov­ern­ ance, to mention a few (Long 1993; Chandler 2004; Linklater 2005). Whether through international organization, hegemonic leadership, epistemic communities, socialization, or communicative action, these approaches accepted two major caveats in relation to change in world politics: that “the transformation of domestic and transnational social values, interests and institutions” shapes the sources of state insecurity (Moravcsik 1997, 547), meaning that realist traps and tragedies can be resolved at the societal level; and that the “convergence on knowledge, norms, and belief is a prelude to convergence on institutions and processes of governance” (Keohane 2002, 212), meaning that peaceful ordering mechanisms will work better the more certain ideas and values are shared. It should not be surprising then that the last two decades of the twentieth century constituted a propitious moment for the intellectual consolidation of positive conceptions of change in global politics (Kratochwil 1998). The negotiated end of the Cold War, the remarkably peaceful dissolution ‘from below’ of the Soviet bloc, and the ordered democratic transitions of many Latin American and Eastern European nations, legitimated internationalist visions of world ordering in which it was not simply a state that had come out victorious, but a system of (liberal) ideas as harbingers of the closing of history.2 This paradigmatic transition, wherein both war and peace were seen as cultural constructs, influenced IR’s theoretical and empirical interests for the actors and processes shaping the peaceful preferences and identities of states and individuals and steering systemic and unit-­level change in peaceful directions. It is as part of this transition that mentions of social movements started becoming more frequent—even if still rather oblique—in the IR literature as part of arguments on economic interdependence,

Transnational Social Movements and Peaceful Change   409 the retreat of the state, and the growing influence of transnational nonstate actors. While these arguments by liberal, constructivist, and critical scholars contributed to expanding the realist horizon of peace and change beyond balance of power, absolute gains, and regulatory regimes, they nonetheless maintained a normative perspectivism in which civil society actors, and particularly social movements, were peaceful agents by definition: a communitarian force underpinning cross-­border collaboration and deliberation, or resisting the encroachment of state power (or market rationality) on society, in both cases through peaceful contributions and modes of operation. This chapter considers that this internationalist perspectivism has clouded more nuanced considerations regarding the variegated values and aims social movements can support, as well as the different roles they can play in peaceful, and not so peaceful, change processes in world politics. To make this case, the chapter takes issue with a primordial consideration in the mind of early proponents of the notion, both in negative and positive variants, which became somewhat lost in subsequent discussions. In the context of the 1930s, peaceful change debates were not only preoccupied with alternatives to war and great power realpolitik, but also with preventing revolutions: rapid and violent change. The resulting conceptualization of peaceful change was therefore “inherently reformist—both anti-­conservative and anti-­revolutionary” (Kristensen 2019, 9), and cast in opposition to radical internationalist visions in Marxist, communist, and anticolonial thinking. IR’s late engagement with social movements, developed largely during a particular end-­of-­history moment “when the very possibility of revolution was rendered ideologically absurd” (Smith 2010, 51), somewhat accommodated to this conception, resulting in a treatment of transnational social movements as reformist, at most emancipatory, actors. However, by engaging with disciplines that followed a different intellectual path, it is possible to reveal a more open, dynamic, and relational perspective of social movements and their roles in processes of change and conflict. The chapter has two main sections. The first takes issue with the “idealistic versions by scholars in the maximalist-globalist traditions” (Paul in this volume, 6), in which social movements are seen as offering normative guidance across borders and sustaining a more civilized world society. The second section critiques and expands this optimistic treatment by drawing on literatures that unpack the dynamics of political contention, violence, and revolution, pointing out how social movements intersect with them.

Conveyor Belts, Emancipation, and Peace An initial difficulty that shaped IR’s engagement with social movements early on was a general ambiguity regarding what they are and how they operate. Charles Tilly (2004b, 7), one of social movements’ most influential researchers, apologized for the inflation

410   Alejandro Milcíades Peña of the term, which ranged from loose definitions referring to any form of popular ­collective action, to versions in which social movements are identified with specific civil society actors, to Tilly’s definition of these as the synthesis of authority-­oriented campaigning, claim-­making performances, and public displays of worthiness, unity, numbers, and commitment. Other sociologists saw movements as networks of collective ­recognition and shared identity, linked by patterns of sustained interaction that could be more or less centralized and more or less formal, and that oscillated over time (Diani 2003). This dynamic and networked character of social movements, with unclear boundaries, membership, and agency, presented a difficulty to the conventional actor-­oriented materialist epistemology of mainstream IR (Shaw 1994; Walker 1994), so that by the 1980s little attention was paid to transnational actors in general, and even less to transnational social movement actors (Huntington  1973; Charnovitz  1997; Davies  2007). Similarly, political sociology and political science scholarship understood social movements to be largely situated in the domestic realm, not only as contentious action was understood in terms of localized grievances and political opportunity structures, but also because basic mechanisms of resource mobilization and identity building were viewed as losing efficiency across large distances (Khagram, Riker, and Sikkink 2002). Analyses of environmental movements across the United States and Europe, particularly active during the late Cold War period, were often discussed in comparative terms (Meyer 1999), while longer historical views of international movements, such as antislavery, pacifist, and religious movements, were a matter for historians and specialists (Haynes 2001; Ceadel 1996). In this sense, the recognition of the role of transnational civil society actors in global change processes is mainly a post–Cold War development, linked to structural changes in world politics such as growing democratization, economic integration, converging values, and the proliferation of transnational institutions. In this context, much of the seminal constructivist work exploring the transnational actions of civil society actors saw these as emerging from and reinforcing positive peaceful change (Smith, Chatfield, and Pagnucco 1997; Simmons 1998). The role of transnational advocacy networks promoting principled causes, ideas, and values across the world—in realms such as human rights; democracy; environmental protection; the regulation of warfare; and the protection of women, children, and minorities—was viewed in tandem with peaceful mechanisms such as persuasion, social emulation, deliberation, and internalization, seeking “to change the utility functions of other players to reflect some new normative commitments” (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998, 914; Keck and Sikkink 1998) while “teaching governments what is appropriate in world politics” (Price 1998, 639).3 While these studies mentioned social movements, these appeared mainly as local groups seconding the actions of more institutionalized and resourceful international actors. Movements and local activist groups were part of the conveyor belt enacting the transnational diffusion of norms, upward and/or downward. As such, their role was summarized by Brysk (1993, 261):

Transnational Social Movements and Peaceful Change   411 Social movements that lack conventional power can turn their weakness into strength by projecting cognitive and affective information to form international alliances. This information resonates in issue-­specific international regimes that include non-­governmental organizations, and foreign governments and mobilizes ‘reference publics’ through diffuse channels (especially the media). Once mobilized, the international system gives social movements resources, protection and more information.

By the 2000s, references to civil society actors as more than links in transnational activist chains became more frequent, entangled now with debates about neoliberalization, liberal cosmopolitanism, and the consolidation of a global public domain facilitated by the new affordances of internet technologies. On the one side, the liberal-­constructivist scholarship pointed to a global civil society defined by peaceful discourses of “human rights, sustainable development, poverty alleviation, transparency, climate justice, green radicalism, and human security” (Dryzek 2012, 114), acting as the social partner in a new architecture of global governance with greater space for consensus- and truth-­seeking interactions and for the participation of less materially powerful actors (Risse 2000; Scholte 2002; Kaldor 2003; Ruggie 2004).4 At the same time, a more socialized view of the international system enabled more confident treatments of social movements as transnational actors in their own right. Admitting that this was “the most difficult and rare forms of transnational collective action” (Khagram, Riker, and Sikkink 2002, 8), scholars accepted that certain movements had somehow formalized into durable networks of social initiative identifying with global causes and discourses, capable of coordinating contentious campaigns across more than one country (Smith, Chatfield, and Pagnucco 1997; Batliwala 2002; Della Porta and Tarrow 2005). The anti-­nuclear-­proliferation movement, led initially by international networks of scientists and intellectuals, which mutated during the Cold War into a transnational peace and disarmament movement (often criticized in the West as dupes for the Soviet Union); the transnational feminist and environmental networks targeting UN and intergovernmental conferences during the 1990s; and a variety of state and nonstate actors constituting the global human rights movement, became examples of said transnational movements (Evangelista  1999; Moghadam  2009).5 In addition, a more critical literature of Marxist, feminist, and post-­structuralist inspiration argued that some social movements were transnational not because of the reach of their campaigns and networks, but because they contributed to transnational emancipatory and identity-­building processes, symbolically confronting “the ideological infrastructure of globalization” (Falk 1998, 102) and the underlying structures of the international system, “state sovereignty and the capitalist mode of production” (Colás 2002, 86). Here, the most salient case was the decentered networks of activists, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and grassroots movements, many from the Global South, integrating the global justice movement, which during the early 2000s targeted the summits of multilateral institutions with mass demonstrations and the organization of counter-­ summits such as the World Social Forum (Eschle  2001; Juris 2004; Smith 2008; Moghadam 2009).

412   Alejandro Milcíades Peña While there was some recognition that not all social movements were ‘good’ or pursued inclusive objectives, the dominant assumption was that most were peaceful change actors. Transnational social movements pursued change in positive terms and occasionally faced repression, but overall, they were not violent. This treatment has remained popular, extending to the anti-­austerity and anti-­elite movements that emerged after the 2008 economic crisis and to current climate change campaigns, such as the #FridaysForFuture, which beyond their political or policy impact are praised for forming “a new cohort of citizens who will be active participants in democracy” (Castells 2015; Fisher 2019). Even recent studies about the global Far Right, while concerned with the success of illiberal parties and the spread of “reactionary internationalism”, reckon that most of these groups operate via outrage mobilization, “soft” confrontational techniques, and electoral populism, not organized violence—though this could be debated (Bob 2012; Drolet and Williams 2018; De Orellana and Michelsen 2019).

The Divide of Civil Society To a large extent this sanitized view of social movements in IR traces back, on the one hand, to liberal conceptions in which both democratic politics and political peace rest on patterns of civility and habits of association that antecede the state, and on the other hand, to neo-Marxian views of civil society as an oppositional force resisting cultural institutions of state power. Thus, in Tocquevillian and Putnamian approaches, it is the prepolitical nature of civil society that contributes to infuse the demos into the political body, a view that libertarians and anarchists take to the extreme in their utopia of free (and peaceful) civil communities (Chambers and Kopstein 2001; Rucht 2011). In light of grassroots anticommunist movements in Eastern Europe, such as Solidarity in Poland and Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia, and human rights and pro-­democracy movements contesting right-­wing dictatorships in Latin America, this prepolitical conception mutated later into one in which popular forces were the basic democratic institution confronting state authoritarianism (Foley and Edwards 1998). This second view approximated to the Gramscian view that the more organized sectors of civil society functioned as instruments of ideological domination and state power, meaning that any civil counterhegemonic resistance would have to come from actors operating on the margins of the political system—a view more inclusive of anti-­imperial, radical, and antiglobalization movements with alternative conceptions of democracy or the economy, such as those often found in the Global South (Katz 2006). This sanitized view enabled distinguishing social movements in postindustrial societies—where with few exceptions (e.g., the Italian Brigatte Rose, the German Rote Armee Fraktion, and separatist organizations like the Basque ETA) by the 1980s the principal social movements were advocates of “nonviolent methods and social relations, adopting nonviolent action as a tactical choice and non-­violence as a framing element, and cultivating a social critique of violence, from domestic violence to

Transnational Social Movements and Peaceful Change   413 militarization and war” (Schock 2015, 6)—from movements in other parts of the world that still accepted the use of violence to pursue revolutionary ambitions. Schock (2015, 10–12) indicates that this divide resulted in two scholarly traditions studying social movements and political change. The first, concerned with nonviolent action, adopted a more agent-­centric, normative, and policy orientation, in which violence is considered as lacking both legitimacy and effectiveness to achieve political change. Thus, for Sharp (2005, 16), nonviolent struggles were behind many of the major political transformations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: Higher wages and improved conditions were won. Oppressive traditions and practices were abolished. Both men and women won the right to vote in several countries in party by using this technique. Government policies were changed, laws repealed, new legislation enacted, and governmental reforms instituted. Invaders were frustrated and armies defeated. An empire was paralyzed, coups d’états thwarted, and dictatorships disintegrated.

Similarly, Lawrence and Chenoweth (2010, 7) observe that “between 1900 and 2005, nonviolent resistance campaigns were nearly twice as likely to achieve full or partial success as their violent counterparts”. Even in struggles commonly linked with violence, such as anti-­regime, anti-­occupation, and self-­determination campaigns, nonviolent tactics were better at obtaining internal and external support and facilitated bargaining with authorities.6 The second tradition, more structural, contextual, and scholarly oriented, focused instead on revolutions and broader processes of change in which violence and nonviolence emerged as part of a continuum of interactions and outcomes.7 That IR has somehow aligned with the former rather than with the latter is certainly odd and something Halliday (2001, 694) considered “the great anomaly,” given the constitutive effects that revolutions have had on notions “of state, of security, and of the domestic-­international relationship, but also in regard to the relative impact of ideas in international politics,” as well as the centrality of violence for traditional concerns of the discipline. Halliday deplored both the scant consideration of revolutions by realists and “the banal revolutionary verities, evident in much contemporary Marxism and post-­ Seattle anti-­ globalization rhetoric” in relation to the treatment of social movement politics (699).8 After the events of September 11, 2001, the securitization of political violence further accentuated this anomalous exclusion of radical and violent change in IR, meaning that references to radical social movements and ideologies were treated from an expanded security and risk perspective and separated from mainstream discussions about global civil society and transnational movements (Beck 2002; Neumann 2003). As a result, IR’s engagement with social movements remained mired in two dis­ci­pli­ nary biases: a progressive conception of social movements as normative and benevolent internationalist actors, and a reformist and nonviolent understanding of their mode of operation. Thus, Keck and Sikkink’s work on advocacy networks in Latin America (1998), representative of liberal constructivism, pays significant attention to social

414   Alejandro Milcíades Peña movements such as Mothers and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo in Argentina, and to transnational solidarity networks denouncing state authoritarianism and terrorism. But scarce attention is given to radical left-­wing groups operating in the same context in the region—from the Peronist Montoneros in Argentina, to the Guevarist Tupamaros in Uruguay, and the Maoist Sendero Luminoso in Perú—against which much of the state repression of the time was directed. These groups were also social movements, partly with transnational origins and often with transnational links, pursuing visions of national and international change. Similarly, the critical scholarship, despite its emphasis on grassroots movements from the Global South, rarely discussed groups that pursued emancipation through violent means or that envisioned exclusive counterhegemonic goals, such as Islamic fundamentalists (Cox 1999; Evans 2011). In fact, the typical example of a Global South counterhegemonic movement is the Mexican Zapatistas, a group that even if it maintained guerrilla symbolism, moved away from its Maoist/Guevarist origins and adopted nonviolent tactics and a democratic agenda, since 2017 participating in electoral politics. Few works have tried to address these biases in the IR literature. With Tom Davies, a contributor to this handbook, we extended English school notions to claim that the reception of social movements in world politics follows from how their ideological programs interact with different world order structures (Peña and Davies 2021). The basic idea is that movements with “revolutionist” objectives, seeking to radically alter basic values in world society, would have more difficulty than “rationalist” movements seeking to operate within an international society largely structured around liberal and reformist institutions. Thus, movements operating on issues of global governance, human rights, peace, and so forth, and seeking to influence policy, can be expected to be granted more space than radical transnational movements (i.e., religious extremists, radical environmentalists, anarchists) that challenge state boundaries, cultural identities, and established international and world society principles—so it is not unexpected that groups like the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) have found little solidarity in the international community and have met with highly violent responses from states. Conservative “realist” movements, on the other hand, even if they reject cosmopolitan values, can find solidarity from kindred state actors and even collaborate with each other, on the basis of their defense of national sovereignty and their rejection of common external threats, as seen among Euroskeptic and Islamophobic movements across Europe and the United States (Hafez 2014). From this framework it is possible to envision wider patterns of conflict provoked by the intersection of world society and international society orders. For example, in medieval Europe the series of religious wars associated with the Protestant Reformation, a transnational revolutionist movement, occurred because (Catholic) Christianity was an ordering principle of European international system and society, as much as an identity in regional world society, enabling “pathways to conversion” from below as much as from above, and the conflation of civil society and state-­level conflict (Philpott 2000).9 In the next section, however, I draw insight from the revolution and political violence literature to center on the question of violence, seeking to relativize the treatment of

Transnational Social Movements and Peaceful Change   415 social movements as positive peaceful change actors by elaborating a more dynamic view of change processes wherein principled intentions coexist with the interests and values of other actors and with the vicissitudes of power and conflict.

Revolutions, Change, and Violence Long pointed out by realists, one of the problems of liberal idealism is that achieving the shared normative ground necessary for peaceful coexistence and reform is easier said than done. In his International Studies Association (ISA) presidential speech, Paul (2017, 5) mentioned some of the practical problems that liberal approaches left unattended on the way to a civilized world community: “[H]ow can liberal states encourage non-liberal states to adopt liberal ideas without violence? Conversely, how can liberal states learn to live with non-­liberal states while accepting they will remain illiberal? If integration efforts do not succeed, how can liberal states co-­exist with non-­liberal states?” These comments point to blind sides in progressive visions of internationalist reformism regarding how to treat those who refuse to learn the right values (or who learn them slowly)—reminiscent of the polemic statement by Rousseau that some may need to be forced to be free—as well as the challenges found when operating in complex environments populated by “instrumental actors relentlessly pursuing their interests, armed with a variety of sources of power” (Price 2008, 203), who may not be persuaded and could fight back. A brief and sweeping discussion of how the relationship between social movements and conflict is treated in the revolution and political violence literature sheds some light on these blind sides. First and foremost, in this literature there is a conspicuous recognition that social movements are integral components of revolutions—that is, rapid processes of political change—and that they can make a direct, even if reactive, contribution to the emergence of violence. Quoting Trotsky, Goodwin (2001, 9) mentions as one of the most defining features of a revolution “the direct interference of the masses” leading him to a definition of “irregular, extra-­constitutional, and sometimes violent changes in political regime and control of state power brought about by popular movements.” While there is a recognition that some social movements are revolutionary in terms of the magnitude of their goals and the means through which they seek to achieve them (Defronzo 2015, 10), over time the revolution literature came to accept that agent-­centric explanations, focused on the goals and ideologies of the actors, as well as purely structural ones, elaborating the conditions of emergence of revolutionary movements, were incomplete without a problematization of “the complex unintended intermeshing of the various motivated actions of the differentially situated groups which take part” and “the interrelations of societies within dynamic international fields” (Skocpol 2005, 112). Thus, revolutions are puzzling because they show dynamic ‘movement-­like’ qualities; some do not happen where they are expected, and others succeed where they are not. Moreover, the trajectory of revolutionary processes is hard to predict from initial

416   Alejandro Milcíades Peña conditions, evolving as dynamic and open processes in which localized events may acquire regime-­altering dimensions—as with the mobilizations leading to German unification or more recently, the Arab Spring protests in the early 2010s. Many eventual revolutionary coalitions, which include diverse elite and civil society actors, may start with limited demands and ambitions but adopt radical positions later on; it is worth remembering that the coalition that overthrew the Iranian Shah in the 1970s included business elites, Communist workers, anti-­imperialist students, and moderate intellectuals, with Ayatollah Khomeini initially stating that clerics should not occupy office (Goldstone 2009). Recent revolution scholarship has theorized the relationship between civil society, revolution movements, and violence as an emergent process wherein multiple actors interplay, mutate, and change their positions, composition, and objectives over time. Goldstone (1998) argued that social movements and revolutions originate in similar mobilization processes but evolve differently, depending on the broader social environment configuring the relationship between civil society and other social and political actors, as well as on the way the state and these groups behave following their initial contentions. Hence, in this literature the behavior of “actual existing social movements” (Evans 2008, 285) is seen as shaped by processes and mechanisms that differ quite starkly from the moderate discursive and associational activities mentioned in the first section of this chapter. The central behavior is radicalization, a process usually initiated by state repression that drives the increasing escalation of conflict due to the adoption of violent stances by contenders (Della Porta 2018). Authors have identified a number of factors contributing to violent escalation. On the more general side, the level of access to institutionalized politics and the level and type of state repression, including timing and targeting, are frequently mentioned as key contextual variables (Hafez and Wiktorowicz 2004). Lawrence and Chenoweth (2010) point to other contextual factors such as state weakness, elite manipulation, and the presence of marked ethnonational differences, arguing that sudden power shifts at domestic or international levels, such as changes in leadership or institutional guarantees, generate incentives for the adoption of aggressive strategies by competing social movements and elite groups—as happened within many African nations following the withdrawal of European powers and in multiethnic states like Yugoslavia following the death of Tito (Schmidt 2013). As noted by Foley and Edwards (1996, 48), the “paradox of civil society” is that for social actors to behave democratically (and peacefully), they require a democratic state, and a strong and responsive one; in other political environments, alternative civil society behaviors may materialize in which “even Putnam’s choral societies and bowling leagues—even nuns and bishops—may become ‘subversive.’ ” As radicalization advances, other escalation mechanisms can kick in, such as polarization, opportunity/threat spirals, and intramovement competition, which result in the distancing of contending positions, the sidelining of moderates within revolutionary coalitions, and organizational competition within social movement milieus and families, seeking to outbid each other for resources and support (Bosi, Demetriou, and Malthaner 2014; Della Porta 2018). In this context, activists find it easier to generate

Transnational Social Movements and Peaceful Change   417 injustice frames that legitimize violence, contributing to just war and arms-­race logics wherein “each side escalates its violent contention as a defensive measure while viewing opponent actions as offensive and provocative, thereby reinforcing perceptions about the need for continued violence” (Hafez and Wiktorowicz 2004, 71). This also increases the chances of further tensions within civil society and the eventual emergence of radicalized countermovements, as happened for example in Northern Ireland between Unionist and Loyalist groups; in Colombia between the FARC and the paramilitaries; and among the different sectarian militias in civil conflicts in countries like Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria (Della Porta 2008). Radicalization dynamics are mediated by cognitive, emotional, and “nonrelational diffusion” mechanisms that differ from the positive expectations and the collaborative and deliberative benefits associated with reformist civil society. For example, authors like Petersen (2011) demonstrate that social movement actors can use emotions strategically in pursuit of both nonviolent and violent aims. Much of his analysis of the conflict dynamics during the dissolution of Yugoslavia underlines how political entrepreneurs and social movement actors mobilized rooted feelings of resentment, stigma, and fear among local communities to stir up violent sentiments, induce the radicalization of militants, and legitimize the commitment of atrocities. Insurgent groups, such as Albanian rebels in South Serbia and Macedonia, escalated violence to encourage repression by Serbian forces, seeking to encourage (successfully) the intervention of Western countries in their support. Similarly, Weyland (2012) and Hale (2013) have argued that the rapid cascading of Arab Spring protests responded not so much to coordinated transnational activism but to heuristic shortcuts facilitated by the reach of social media—shortcuts that amplified demonstration effects and inspired emulation and that resulted in overconfidence and the minimization of risks by activists in countries as different as Tunisia and the Gulf monarchies. These examples also indicate that mass mobilization can perform indirect ‘signaling’ functions that may contribute to escalation. For example, violent disruption is often used by activist groups to lower the fear of participation among bystanders and reveal the limits of state power, confronting authorities with the “dictator’s dilemma” of whether to increase repression and face backlash or to moderate and look weak—which may also incentivize further contention and escalation (Francisco 2005; Johnston 2014). At the same time, the level of social turmoil, as well as the excessive use of repression, can signal to other elites (and external actors) the level of power or legitimacy of incumbent authorities, contributing to potential elite competition and defection (Trejo 2014). In turn, patterns of elite defection, polarization, and mass mobilization intersect to condition the direction revolutionary radicalization may take, particularly if relevant elites such as security forces defect, as well as whether the goals of the emerging revolutionary coalition remain narrow (i.e. the removal of the incumbent) or are broadened. At the same time, even if the toppling of an incumbent is achieved relatively early on, this power shift could incentivize additional violence, as “all kinds of behaviors that had been suppressed under the old regime may burst forth in the new air of freedom” (Goldstone 2009, 23). In this situation, variables such as the degree of difference among

418   Alejandro Milcíades Peña members of the revolutionary coalition, the chances of survival of the post-­revolutionary regime, and last but not least, the intervention of other states and foreign actors, can contribute to steering relatively peaceful contentious mobilizations into more problematic trajectories.10 The particular emphasis this literature puts on state intervention during social mobilization illuminates the darker side of the foreign patronage of transnational activism. As pointed out by Halliday (1999, 20), “revolutions are international, or they are nothing.” Many revolutionary movements, from pan-­Slavism and pan-­Arabism to Bolivarianism, al-­Qaeda, and the global justice movement, in addition to a myriad of nationalist ones, are transnational not only because they emerge as responses to transnational grievances but because they aspire to change patterns of international ordering and power, be they Ottoman rule, “Yanqui” imperialism, or Western neoliberal he­gem­ony. Subsequently, not only do revolutionary actors and regimes often attempt to export change, producing responses by other states and groups beyond their borders, but external state intervention is a primary variable conditioning different outcomes within a varied “postrevolutionary suite,” ranging from civil and international war to counterrevolution, revolutionary terror, and renewed radicalism (Goldstone 2009). Again, the evolution of Arab Spring protests in Egypt, Libya, Syria, and Yemen provide recent and ongoing examples of transnational escalation dynamics, with the former resulting in a counterrevolutionary coup after the election of a Muslim Brotherhood president and the latter three in complex hybrid civil/international war scenarios involving an array of state and nonstate actors. For this reason, Goldstone lists among the conditions for a peaceful color revolutionary movement the absence of external pressures associated with internal or external war (2009, 30). Hence, while up to the 2000s these transnational collaborations with social movements were often discussed under the peaceful mantle of democracy promotion, state building, and humanitarian intervention, the last two decades serve as a reminder that states can and do use social movements to promote their interests and prevent change (Risse and Babayan 2015). From the United States covertly supporting white groups during the Russian Civil War (and Mujahedeen fighters during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan), to International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War and Soviet (and Cuban) support for national liberation movements across the Third World, to the connections Iran and Russia maintain with movements such as Hezbollah or nationalist militias in the Donbass, states have a long history of sponsoring social movements as proxies during change processes. Not surprisingly, Western support for pro-­democracy and nationalist groups across the post-­communist world and the Middle East (McFaul 2007; McKoy and Miller 2012), whether direct or indirect, has contributed to the development of new “diffusion-­proofing” strategies by threatened regimes. These strategies operate by depriving movements from gaining mobilizing resources, for example by restricting foreign funding of local civil society or co-­opting influential constituencies (media owners, youth groups, business elites), or by convoluting the public domain by promoting pro-­regime countermovements,

Transnational Social Movements and Peaceful Change   419 such as the Russian Nashi and pro-­China groups in Hong Kong (Christensen and Weinstein 2013; Koesel and Bunce 2013; Yuen and Cheng 2017).11 Through this brief discussion, the relationship between social movements and change arises as less normative and optimistic, and indeed more uncertain, but more open in terms of the trajectories social movements may follow within social and political change processes. Social movements can indeed perform nonviolent reformist roles in ac­cord­ ance with maximalist expectations, contributing to civilizing society from below. But they may not, not only due to their ideological and strategic preferences, but also because the pursuit of change does not happen in a vacuum but in complex and often adversarial conditions, in which this pursuit is often challenged and opposed and may acquire violent features. It is interesting how the issues of violence and time relate to the distinction between reformist and revolutionary change, insofar as violence has been thought of as a way of accelerating (or reducing) the pace of change. The ‘peace of reformism’ can be thought to follow from a certain confidence that even if slowly, change will occur. For the Bolsheviks, confronting a highly repressive and entrenched system, this confidence was unreasonable, and the destruction of the state apparatus was necessary to guarantee change. On the other end, the organized nonviolent actions of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. eschewed violence in favor of stretching the temporal horizon of civil struggle, considering that change would come by the erosion of the ideas and values sustaining political authority. In contemporary “movement societies,” in which protesting has become the conventional repertoire by which social movements ask democratic authorities to bring about change, violence is generally the domain of small groups that reject the pace and rules of democratic politics (Goldstone 2004). It is then a curious feature of the mass protest movements appearing in the 2010s, digitally enabled, more horizontal, and less ideologically organized, such as the Occupy movement, anti-­elite demonstrations, or anti-­climate-­change groups such as Extinction Rebellion, that they seem to reject both the gradualism of institutionalized politics, demanding rapid change, and the revolutionary intent of accelerating change through violence (Bennett 2012; Krastev 2014). While skeptical observers like Krastev believe this ambivalence risks turning social movements into fleeting and even irresponsible eruptions of civil energy—in which “like elections, protests serve to keep revolutions, with its message of a radically different future, at an unbridgeable distance” (2014, 17)— more optimistic ones such as Rosanvallon (2008) envision a new role for them, not as moral or revolutionary agents but as “negative democracy” guardians who veto the direction and speed of change. Moreover, there is a growing concern regarding the unexpected effects of social media on patterns of social mobilization, political participation, and change. Initially hailed as a tool contributing to a more connected world community and positive peaceful change, social media’s communicational affordances—decentralizing the production and spread of information while facilitating the formation of diffused social networks—are now seen as reinforcing populist logics and amplifying the resonance of simple, flatter, movement-­like contentious frames, better mobilized by right-­wing and

420   Alejandro Milcíades Peña nativist forces (Bennett, Segerberg, and Knüpfer 2018; Gerbaudo 2018). Whether the emergence of more populist but less revolutionary movements represents a positive development in terms of the prospects of peaceful change remains to be seen, though it is certainly something not envisioned by earlier internationalists.12

Conclusion This chapter has examined the relationship between social movements and peaceful change from a perspective that takes issue with the narrow manner in which social movements have been discussed in the IR literature: as positive normative actors acting in collaboration with other groups engaged in the (re)education of society or as emancipatory vanguards challenging the institutional and symbolic structures of power. The basic claim has been that early peaceful change conceptualizations and much of IR’s constructivist and critical engagement with social movements share a similar aversion to violent and rapid change and a similar faith that gradual reformist mechanisms are more effective and sustainable than power politics in keeping change processes peaceful. Somewhat ironically, the aversion interwar thinkers had for revolution and its dangers, with events in Soviet Russia fresh in the background, and the liberal optimism of post–Cold War IR, when that very revolutionary project dissolved, compounded to turn a cautionary consideration favoring institutional reform and political education into an analytical definition that cast civil society as its main vehicle. This chapter has questioned this bifurcation in relation to political violence and revolutionary processes and brought forward a more relational and fluid understanding of social movements’ relationships with their context, one that considers in greater detail the wider suite of interactions and mechanisms surrounding social movement action and the variegated and often undesired trajectories these dynamic processes may follow.

Notes 1.  Otlet and La Fointaine were the founders of the Union of International Associations, the main repository of information on the work of global civil society. La Fontaine won the 1913 Nobel Peace Prize in recognition for his leadership in the European peace movement, while Otlet created the Universal Decimal Classification system adopted by libraries worldwide to classify knowledge fields. 2. One of the most outstanding promoters of peaceful change of the period, Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev, declared during an interview in 1986: “It won’t even take an unprecedented stupidity or criminality for civilization to destroy itself. All it would take is to continue acting as mankind has acted for thousands of years—to keep relying on arms and force to settle international disputes. It is this tradition that we must ruthlessly demolish” (cited in Taubman 2017, 264). 3. For these contributions, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, and one of its main activists, Jody Williams, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons received it in 2017.

Transnational Social Movements and Peaceful Change   421 4. Ruggie (2004, 519) considered this domain “an institutionalized arena of discourse, ­contestation, and action organized around the production of global public goods.” 5. The International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985, received by the organization’s cofounders, Bernard Lown from the United States and Yevgeniy Chazov from the Soviet Union, while in 1995 Joseph Rotblat and the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs did so. 6. Peaceful conceptions of the function of civil society have also informed an important literature on conflict resolution and peacebuilding, which sees grassroots activities as a major factor supporting the transition from negative to positive peace arrangements and for the durability of cooperative interactions, mutual acceptance, and enhanced feelings of security among former enemies (Gawerc 2006; Paffenholz 2010). 7. The study of political violence has become a subfield in its own right. See Della Porta (2008). 8. Adding that “amidst the diffuse invocation of ‘emancipatory’ movements in IR scant attention is paid to the communist case and the lessons, negative and positive, of this. Yet if communism was not a social movement, it is hard to see what it was” (Halliday 2001, 698). 9. As Philpott (2000) notes, that the Westphalian order emerged as a solution to the changes provoked by this transnational movement is evidence of the potential systemic impact social movements can have in world politics. 10. This is not restricted to states. Other civil society groups, such as diasporas, can support conflict in their home countries (Brinkerhoff 2011). For example, the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka depended on a considerable extent on money sent by the Tamil community abroad. 11. Between 2000 and 2012, the number of countries that passed restrictive NGO finance laws grew eightfold, from fewer than five to almost forty (Dupuy, Ron, and Prakash 2016, 301). 12. I paraphrase Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO, who claimed that “despite seeing more revolutionary movements, we’ll see fewer revolutionary outcomes—fully realized revolutions resulting in dramatic and progressive political turnover” (Schmidt and Cohen 2013, 127).

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Pa rt V

GR E AT P OW E R S , R ISI NG P OW E R S , A N D PE AC E F U L C H A NGE

Chapter 23

Peacefu l Ch a nge i n US For eign Policy Deborah Welch Larson

Various explanations have been proposed for the existence of peace in the US-­dominated system, including hegemony (Gilpin 1981; Organski 1968), the bipolar balance of power (Waltz 1979; Paul 2018), the liberal world order (Ikenberry 2001, 2011), and transactional hierarchy (Lake 2009). This chapter argues that the United States has contributed to peaceful change by acting as a liberal hegemon. In the nineteenth century, the United States asserted its hegemony over the Western Hemisphere through the Monroe Doctrine, the declaration of a sphere of influence. The transition from British to American leadership of the Western Hemisphere is one of the few peaceful power transitions in history. President Woodrow Wilson added liberal principles in the twentieth century with his advocacy of democracy, international organization, and collective security. Wilson’s ideas continue to be components of the liberal American approach to peaceful change. In the post–World War II peace settlement, the United States promoted democracy and multilateral cooperation by means of the Marshall Plan and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which contained communism and provided an umbrella of security in which US allies could develop peacefully. During the Cold War, President Richard Nixon and National Security Adviser/Secretary of State Henry Kissinger sought to manage the growing power of the Soviet Union and China and induce them to accept restraints through the détente strategy: traditional diplomacy, linkage, and a web of incentives. After the Cold War ended, the United States used its hegemony to promote democracy and multilateral institutions but failed to establish a solid foundation for democracy through military intervention in the Middle East. The first section of the chapter discusses the peaceful power transition between Great Britain and the United States in the Western Hemisphere at the turn of the twentieth century. The second section reviews Wilson’s Fourteen Points and advocacy of the League of Nations as well as the reasons the US Senate failed to ratify the Versailles Treaty after World War I. The third section analyzes the elements of the post–World War

430   Deborah Welch Larson II settlement, including Bretton Woods, the United Nations, and the Marshall Plan, as well as the Cold War order. The fourth section evaluates Nixon and Kissinger’s efforts to integrate the Soviet Union and China into the world order in the 1970s through linkage, triangular diplomacy, and a code of conduct. The fifth section considers US efforts to achieve peaceful change after the Cold War, including German reunification and China’s admission into the World Trade Organization (WTO). This section also covers US failures to achieve peaceful change in the Middle East. The conclusions review common elements in the US approach to promoting peaceful change: the use of hegemony to implement liberal ideals.

Anglo-­A merican Leadership Transition The transfer of leadership from Great Britain to the United States at the turn of the twentieth century is one of the few examples of a peaceful power transition. A study of power transitions found that out of sixteen interactions between a rising power and a dominant state, only four were resolved peacefully (Allison 2017). Explanations for this outcome include cultural and linguistic ties (Kupchan 2010), superior American power (Zeren and Hall  2016; Perkins  1968), British overextension (Friedberg  1988), Anglo-­ Saxonism and racial affinity (Anderson 1981), and trust building (Kupchan 2010). While these conditions may have eased the transition, US coercion and British overextension played the most important roles. In 1823, President James Monroe announced what would become known as the Monroe Doctrine, which protected Latin American countries from becoming the object of intra-­European quarrels. In addition to affirming US isolation from the quarrels of Europe, it stated that the Western Hemisphere would no longer be open to colonization or recolonization by the European powers (Smith 1994, 22–23; Burk 2007, 191). Monroe issued the statement in response to the risk that the Holy Alliance (Russia, Austria, and Prussia) might try to recolonize Spain’s former colonies in Latin America. The United States relied on the British Royal Navy to enforce the prohibition, since the British had recommended a joint statement. Recognizing that they had been outmaneuvered by the United States, the British enforced the doctrine to serve their own interest in keeping other European countries out of the Western Hemisphere (Campbell 2007, 122–124). But while the Monroe Doctrine for the most preserved the formal in­de­pend­ ence of Latin American countries, it did not inhibit the United States from carrying out thirty military interventions, mostly in Central America and Mexico, between 1898 and 1934 (Smith 2000, 50), an illustration of the double-­edged meaning of hegemony as a condition for peaceful change. The British did not formally recognize the Monroe Doctrine, as became apparent in the 1895–1896 border dispute between British Guiana and Venezuela (LaFeber  1963; Campbell 1974; Burk 2016). This boundary dispute was long-­standing, but gold had been discovered, and both sides claimed additional territory. Venezuela requested help

Peaceful Change in US Foreign Policy   431 from the United States in obtaining international arbitration (Smith  2000, 31; Campbell 2007, 188–189). The United States had an interest in gaining access to the Orinoco River in Venezuela, the trade artery for one-­ third of northern Latin America (Burk  2007, 397–198; LaFeber 1963, 253). In 1895 Secretary of State Richard Olney drafted a statement for the British invoking the Monroe Doctrine as the justification for US intervention and calling on Britain and Venezuela to seek outside arbitration (Burk 2007, 400–401). He claimed, “Today the United States is practically sovereign on this continent and its fiat is law upon the subjects to which it confines its interposition” (Burk 2007, 401). After four and a half months, British prime minister Lord Salisbury replied to President Grover Cleveland (1885–1889, 1893–1897) that the Monroe Doctrine had no legal standing and that the United States had no right to interfere in the border dispute (Campbell 2007, 189–190). This infuriated Cleveland, who replied that the United States would establish a commission to determine the boundary between British Guiana and Venezuela, and after it completed its work the United States would resist “by every means in its power” British appropriation of land that properly belonged to Venezuela (Perkins 1968, 16; Burk 2007, 404; Campbell 2007, 190). The British were not prepared for war with the United States, as they were simultaneously involved in a crisis with Germany over South Africa due to a botched raid by British colonialist Leander Starr Jameson into the South African state of Transvaal and a provocative public telegram issued by Kaiser Wilhelm II (Orde 1996, 11–12). Accordingly, the British cabinet decided to concede the principle of arbitration. The border with Venezuela was simply not that important (Burk 2007, 408–409; LaFeber 1963, 276). The final decision by the international commission, handed down in 1899, favored the British, with some minor adjustments for Venezuela (Burk 2007, 409–410). The British kept most of their territory, while Venezuela got the mouth of the Orinoco River. But the larger significance of this dispute is that Britain had implicitly recognized the Monroe Doctrine and US dominance in the Caribbean (LaFeber  1963, 278; Perkins  1968, 19; Campbell 1976, 221). The increasing US naval presence in the Caribbean was reinforced by the outcome of the Spanish-­American War (1898), which gave the United States a base in Cuba and dramatized the need for a canal so that the United States could transfer ships quickly between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. But the US desire to build a canal was obstructed by the Clayton-­Bulwer Treaty of 1850, in which the United States and Britain had pledged that neither would fortify or control any future canal in Central America (Burk 2007, 425–426; Perkins 1968, 174–175). British foreign secretary Lord Lansdowne decided to concede to the United States over this issue, since American public opinion was determined to build a canal, and the United States had sufficient naval power to control it (Grenville 1955, 67; Friedberg 1988, 172; Burk 2007, 427). The 1901 Hay-­Pauncefote Treaty superseded the Clayton-­Bulwer Treaty, allowing the United States to have full control over the canal and removing the ban on fortifications. While the British may not have intended to give up claims to North

432   Deborah Welch Larson America and the Caribbean in the Venezuela border dispute, through its approval of the canal Britain had in effect agreed to a US sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere (Grenville 1955, 69; Burk 2007, 427–428). The disagreement over Alaska’s border was the last major territorial dispute between the United States and Britain (Perkins 1968, 162–163; Orde 1996, 21). After gold was discovered in the Yukon in 1896, Canada requested British help in securing additional territory. The Americans rejected Canada’s request for arbitration (Burk 2007, 423–424). President Theodore Roosevelt lost patience with the Canadians and sent eight hundred cavalry to Alaska to demonstrate US resolve to the British (Perkins 1968, 167; Burk 2007, 424). The boundary commission set up in 1903 was supposed to include six “impartial jurists,” three chosen by the United States and three from the Canadian side (including one nominated by Britain), but Roosevelt chose three politicians with legal training from the United States and placed great pressure on the British juror Lord Alverstone, who eventually ruled in favor of the United States (Perkins 1968, 168–171). Starting in 1904, the British withdrew their naval fleets from the Western Hemisphere. First sea lord admiral Sir John Fisher (1904–1910) had never regarded the United States as a threat and redeployed British naval forces to counter Germany (Orde  1996, 34; Perkins 1968, 157–158; Friedberg 1988, 135–138, 192–195, 198–199; Burk 2007, 435). The British conceded because the United States had superior interests in the Western Hemisphere. British interests were global—maintaining trade routes and access to raw materials and markets—whereas the United States was concerned with expanding its influence and territory in North America for reasons of security, identity, and prestige. Consequently, the United States was more strongly motivated, an advantage in bargaining, although Britain had greater naval power (Perkins 1968, 184–185; Burk 2007, 428). While these territorial settlements were not entirely one-­sided, despite outrage expressed by the Canadians and Venezuelans, Britain did engage in status accommodation (Paul 2016), turning over leadership roles and sphere of influence to a rising power, the United States. To persuade Britain to accept change, however, the United States had to use the threat of unilateral action. The British cabinet believed that it would be preferable to concede to the United States gracefully rather than try to prevent change that was inevitable (May and Zhou 2009, 13). Peaceful change was possible because Britain took steps to resolve the underlying conflicts of interest and agreed to submit disputes to arbitration and negotiation. Britain gracefully ceded dominance in the Western Hemisphere because the costs of fighting would have exceeded any benefits. Britain was overextended militarily and wanted to retrench (Grenville 1955). Facilitating British concessions was the absence of any real threat to Britain’s global dominance. Britain was still the superior military power; US power was potential. The United States did not surpass Britain in military strength until World War II (Burk 2016, 356). According to Kupchan (2010), while British elites settled on a policy of unilateral accommodation due to “strategic necessity,” the United States showed “reciprocal restraint.” The problem with this explanation, however, is that the United States did not fully reciprocate British concessions, but rather took advantage of Britain’s distractions

Peaceful Change in US Foreign Policy   433 due to conflicts with Germany, France, and Russia to secure US superiority in the Western Hemisphere (Campbell 1976, 324–325). Economic interdependence heightened British and US reluctance to consider war between the two nations (Rock 1989, 42–45). Each was the other’s largest trading partner (Orde 1996, 35–36). On the other hand, economic interdependence was a background condition, not the precipitant of change in British or American policy. The key causal factor was the status of the United States as a rising power, asserting its hegemony over the Western Hemisphere, which encouraged the British to accommodate the power transition without war through skillful diplomacy. Nevertheless, despite its growth in aggregate power, the United States was still a regional power, wary of “entangling alliances” or involvement in European affairs. This would change with President Woodrow Wilson and US involvement in World War I.

Wilsonian Internationalism President Wilson (1913–1921) maintained the emphasis on arbitration found in the earlier rapprochement between Britain and the United States and publicized liberal principles of world order such as self-­determination, democracy, and international institutions. Wilson’s liberal ideology is still the dominant American approach to peaceful change. As early as January 1917, before the United States entered the war against Germany, Wilson articulated principles for the postwar settlement in his “Peace Without Victory” address to the US Senate. He called for establishment of a “community of nations” based on peaceful arbitration of disputes, general disarmament, self-­determination, and collective security. The institution for resolving disputes should be a “League of Peace” (Knock 1992, ix, 112–113). What Wilson had in mind, however, was a peace that would save “white civilization,” led by the United States as the morally superior power (Tooze 2014, 79, 85) Wilson’s famous Fourteen Points for the postwar peace settlement, proclaimed on January 8, 1918, inspired popular support around the world. The more general principles included open covenants openly arrived at and the abolition of secret treaties, freedom of the seas, removal of economic trade barriers, reduction of national armaments to the lowest level consistent with domestic safety, and the adjustment of colonial claims in accordance with the principles of self-­determination by ethnic groups and nations. In terms of settling colonial disputes, Wilson was concerned with avoiding destructive wars between the European powers. The oppressed peoples were not accorded the right of self-­determination (Tooze 2014, 151–152). The fourteenth point was considered by Wilson to be the most important: “A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike” (Knock 1992, 144).

434   Deborah Welch Larson Members of the League of Nations would promise to submit to binding international arbitration any disputes they might have with other member nations. The League would guarantee the territorial integrity and political independence of any state, large or small, while also recognizing the principle of self-­determination. Members would commit to impose economic sanctions, and if necessary use of military force, against external aggression. To prevent wars, all members must commit to disarmament (Knock 1992, 153, 232, 247; Ikenberry 2001, 145–146). The emphasis on arbitration in the League of Nations was designed to ensure that changes in boundaries or governments would conform to international norms such as self-­determination rather than being determined by balance of power considerations or relative power (Knock 1992, 207). Peaceful change would take place through establishment of an international institution. Although Wilson did not intend for self-­determination to apply to the people under the rule of European empires, his rhetoric would stimulate popular pressures for decolonization in Asia and Africa (Ambrosius 1991, 111–112). The final version of the League of Nations covenant agreed upon at the Paris Peace Conference on April 28, 1919 diverged in some respects from Wilson’s preferences. For example, the arbitration process was not compulsory. To ensure peace, Article 10 required that the members ensure the territorial integrity of any state if it were threatened by external aggression—the collective security provision (Knock 1992, 127, 232, 247, 206–207, 261–262). Domestic opposition in the United States to the League of Nations centered on its potential impact on sovereignty and the Monroe Doctrine, demonstrating the conflict between liberalism and hegemony. Supposedly, the League might interfere in Latin America against the wishes of the United States. Wilson knew that this was hypocritical, in that he had already intervened in the affairs of Nicaragua, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico. The Latin American countries were opposed to the Monroe Doctrine. For purposes of persuasion, Wilson contended that the League would extend the protections given to Latin American countries through the Monroe Doctrine to the entire world (Knock 1992, 8, 232, 258, 266–267; Smith 1994, 30–31). Nevertheless, the US Senate declined to ratify the Versailles Treaty, including the League of Nations Covenant (Knock  1992, 263–264), which increased the challenge of enforcing the guarantee of ­collective security. In addition to the nonmembership of the United States, an important flaw in the design of the organization was the exclusion of Germany and Russia—states that between them contained over half of Europe’s population and the greatest potential military power (Kissinger 1994, 231; Howard 2000, 62). Germany was admitted in 1926, but the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was not given membership until 1934 and was expelled in 1939. The League of Nations’s commitment to collective security lost all credibility after the organization failed to halt the Japanese establishment of a puppet state in Manchuria in 1932, the Italian annexation of Abyssinia in 1936, and the German annexation of Austria in 1938 (Dunabin 1993).

Peaceful Change in US Foreign Policy   435 Wilson’s pledge that the United States would fight a war against Germany “to make the world safe for democracy” (Knock  1992, 121) was not consistent with peaceful change. Even so, elements of Wilsonianism, including democracy and institutionalized procedures for resolving disputes, have endured as part of the American vision for peace and world order. According to Henry Kissinger, even Richard Nixon, who practiced balance of power politics, regarded himself as a Wilsonian internationalist and hung a portrait of Wilson in the cabinet room (Kissinger 2014, 268).

Post–World War II Settlement In 1945 Franklin  D.  Roosevelt (FDR), having learned from Wilson’s failures, invited Republican senator Arthur Vandenberg to the United Nations (UN) Conference on International Organization at San Francisco. In the UN Charter, a reference was made to the right of collective self-­defense and regional arrangements to reassure senators that US membership in the United Nations would not affect the Monroe Doctrine (Smith 1994, 41–55). The post–World War II settlement departed from liberal principles in other respects, with FDR’s Four Policemen (the United States, Great Britain, USSR, and China) becoming permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, who would have a veto over responses to threats to the peace (Knock 1992, 273). It was also understood that spheres of influence would continue to exist, consistent with the Monroe Doctrine. As part of the postwar settlement, the United States joined with other states to establish the Bretton Woods system, including the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (today part of the World Bank system) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to establish stable currencies and prevent competitive “beggar thy neighbor” devaluations (Herring 2008, 281). But the Soviet Union rejected the Bretton Woods system in 1945. By early 1947 it had become apparent to officials in the Harry Truman administration that loans from the IMF would not be sufficient to enable Europe to recover from the wartime devastation. The United States would have to provide grants so that the European countries could buy the necessary raw materials. The United States therefore developed the Marshall Plan (1948) of economic assistance to Western Europe and Britain. The Marshall Plan was a significant innovation for peaceful change, in that it required that the European countries cooperate to develop a plan for reconstruction and reduce trade barriers among themselves, laying the basis for the European Union (EU) (Herring 2008, 318; Steil 2018, 10–11, 91–92, 96, 112–113, 101). Soviet leader Joseph Stalin felt threatened by the Marshall Plan, perceiving it as an attempt to undermine Soviet control over Eastern Europe and to rebuild the western part of Germany while denying the Soviet Union any reparations. Stalin also opposed efforts by the United States, France, and Great Britain to establish a West German

436   Deborah Welch Larson government in their occupation zones of Germany. He responded by blockading s­ urface access to West Berlin in 1948–1949, which the United States countered with an airlift. To reassure France and Britain that the United States would defend them against Soviet aggression, the United States agreed to join NATO (1949) (Steil 2018, 115, 176, 253–254, 318–319, 321). Both the Marshall Plan and NATO were major components of the US contribution to peaceful change in Europe after World War II, because they encouraged cooperation and reassured the European states that they could spend their resources on economic development rather than a military buildup (Steil 2018, 91–92). As part of the postwar settlement, the United States helped establish democratic institutions in the defeated fascist powers, West Germany and Japan. American success in fostering democratic institutions in West Germany and Japan would serve as a model for US developmental assistance in the Third World. During the Cold War, US policy toward Asia, Africa, and Latin America was primarily motivated by the desire to contain communism. As a precondition for modernization, the United States intervened with military assistance and aid to defeat radical movements (Westad 2007, 24–25, 27, 32, 156). Liberal institutionalists maintain that the liberal international order entailed a bargain whereby the United States bound its own power through institutions in return for allied states’ deference to US leadership. John Ikenberry (2001) describes this order as “constitutional” in that it infused US hegemony with reciprocal interactions and rule-­ governed institutions. It is questionable, however, whether the United States was really “bound” by international institutions, which were often viewed as instruments of US foreign policy (Schweller 2001). During the Cold War, for example, the United States was not really constrained by the NATO alliance, for example, canceling the Skybolt missile promised to Great Britain (Neustadt 1970), intervening in Vietnam against the wishes of US allies (Logevall 1999), and abandoning the fixed exchange rates, thereby ending the Bretton Woods system (Zoeller 2019). Other explanations for peace among states in the US sphere include alliance structures (Johnson and Leeds 2011), the Cold War (Schweller 2001), democracy (Russett and Oneal  2001), and the existence of a security community among the European states (Adler and Barnett 1998). While the Western liberal international order may have been peaceful, the United States intervened militarily in Korea and Vietnam and sent military assistance to defeat leftist insurgencies in Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia (Westad 2007).

Nixon-­K issinger “Structure of Peace” Under President Nixon (1969–1974) and National Security Adviser Kissinger, the United States engaged in status accommodation of both China and Russia in order to achieve peaceful change. Nixon and Kissinger sought to manage the Soviet Union’s rising power

Peaceful Change in US Foreign Policy   437 and to prevent a military conflict between the USSR and China by cooperating with both states. The détente strategy was also intended to prevent military conflicts in the Third World by providing the Soviet Union with incentives for good behavior and establishing a code of conduct for superpower relations. Nixon and Kissinger succeeded in integrating the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Soviet Union into the international system. They failed at heading off US-­Soviet involvement in conflicts in the Third World because neither side was motivated enough to exercise restraint. The Soviet Union emphasized “peace” while promoting ideological change, while the United States regarded “change” in the ideological complexion of regimes as a threat to peace. When President Nixon took office, he perceived that the United States was in relative decline as a great power. While the United States was superior in overall political and economic power, the nuclear balance had altered to the advantage of the Soviet Union (Kissinger 1979, 196–97). In 1966, the USSR had around four hundred intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), less than half as many as the US missile force. By 1970, ­however, the Soviet Union had nearly fifteen hundred ICBMs, while the number of US missiles remained the same (Sargent 2015, 42–43, 60). Acknowledging that the United States could not recapture its strategic superiority, at least in the immediate future, Nixon accepted strategic parity. But Nixon believed that he could compensate for declining US military power by opening up relations with China and utilizing negotiation (Garthoff 1994, 28–29). In contrast to Wilson, Nixon and Kissinger sought to use geopolitics and traditional diplomacy as a tool to achieve peaceful change rather than working through institutions such as the United Nations or NATO. By entangling the Soviet Union in a web of agreements, providing incentives for continued good behavior and disincentives for aggression, Nixon and Kissinger hoped to create an equilibrium that would be a “structure of peace.” In his inaugural address, President Nixon announced that the United States would replace confrontation with an “era of negotiation” and cooperation to “strengthen the structure of peace” (Garthoff 1994, 30). Kissinger referred to the need to “manage the emergence of Soviet power” as “the preeminent problem” (Garthoff 1994, 33). Managing the rise of Soviet power meant not only accepting strategic parity but also finding some way to moderate Soviet foreign policy objectives and induce the Soviet Union to accept the existing world order. To accomplish this goal, Kissinger hoped to entangle the Soviet Union in a web of relationships that would provide incentives for continued cooperation with the United States to avoid losing benefits while discouraging confrontations that might disrupt these ties (Garthoff 1994, 33). In the short term, the United States would use linkage, requiring concessions on issues of interest to the United States in return for meeting Soviet requirements on various issues. Issues would therefore be interconnected, both as a bargaining chip and in reality. As Kissinger wrote to Nixon in a February 1969 memo, the Soviets “cannot expect to reap the benefits of cooperation in one area while seeking to take advantage of tension or confrontation elsewhere” (Gaddis 2005, 290). Nixon and Kissinger compensated for the relative decline in US power by opening up relations with the PRC and by practicing “triangular diplomacy.” They were presented

438   Deborah Welch Larson with an opportunity as a result of the Sino-­Soviet border clashes from March through September 1969 (Garthoff  1994, 230–231, 236–237). The United States would help to restrain Soviet expansion by maintaining the option of a tilt toward China (Kissinger 1979, 712). The president and Kissinger undermined peaceful change through their emphasis on geopolitical manipulation, as in the 1971 crisis over Pakistan’s violent suppression of East Pakistanis who sought independence. To appeal to China, the United States “tilted” toward Pakistan, sending an aircraft carrier task force into the Bay of Bengal, alienating India and much of world public opinion (Gaddis 2005, 298, 328). The climax of the détente policy occurred in 1972, when Nixon held summits first in Beijing in February and then in Moscow in May (Garthoff 1994, 266, 325–326). Through triangular diplomacy and summit meetings, Nixon accommodated the Soviet Union’s and China’s long-­standing aim to be recognized by the United States as great powers (Larson and Shevchenko 2019, 121–123, 126; Herring 2008, 477). At the 1972 Moscow summit, the United States and USSR agreed on two strategic arms limitation talks (SALT) accords and functional agreements on science and technology, medicine and public health, the environment, collaboration in space exploration, and avoidance of incidents at sea, creating a web of relationships (Garthoff 1994, 326). In addition to these functional agreements, Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev also signed the Basic Principles Agreement (BPA), an attempt to establish a code of conduct for détente to prevent crises and manage their competition. The first principle stated that the United States and the Soviet Union would undertake to develop “normal relations based on the principles of sovereignty, equality, non-­interference in internal affairs and mutual advantage.” The second principle affirmed that the United States and USSR would “exercise restraint in their mutual relations” and “be prepared to negotiate and settle differences by peaceful means.” The third principle stated that both sides recognized their “special responsibility. . . to do everything in their power so that conflicts or situations will not arise which would serve to increase international tensions” and to “promote conditions in which all countries will live in peace and security and will not be subject to outside interference in internal affairs.” Together, the three principles seemed to imply that the superpowers would refrain from seeking advantage in Third World countries and would try to resolve regional disputes by peaceful means through negotiation. Other principles included their intentions to expand cultural, scientific, and other exchanges; work for arms limitations and disarmament; establish joint commissions; expand economic and commercial ties; and exchange views at summit meetings (Garthoff 1994, 327). Less than two years after the Moscow summit, President Nixon resigned in disgrace. Détente was already under attack by domestic opponents in the United States on both the left and the right. Americans complained that Soviet military interventions, often through use of proxies, in Angola, Ethiopia, Cambodia, and Afghanistan violated the spirit of détente and the BPA. An important cause of the decline of US-­Soviet détente

Peaceful Change in US Foreign Policy   439 was failure to reach agreement on the meaning of a code of conduct or mutual restraint. As a result, there was a tendency by both sides to apply double standards to the competitive actions of the other (Garthoff 1994, 1131, 1134–1135). Neither the United States nor the Soviet Union made any effort to control their rivalry in Angola and Ethiopia through talks. Instead of “mutual restraint” there was “mutual rivalry” (Garthoff 1994, 589–593, 718–719, 756–757). The dispute over which side was violating the spirit of détente and the BPA reflected differing understandings of the meaning of détente. As stated above, Nixon sought to manage the Soviet Union’s emergence as a global superpower by engaging the country in a web of relations that would eventually reconcile the Soviets to fundamental aspects of the US-­dominated world order. The Soviets perceived that they were managing US acceptance of a relatively smaller political role, as the Soviet Union took on a more preeminent status. The Brezhnev leadership believed that recognition of strategic parity implied acceptance of their political equality with the United States. The Nixon administration accepted strategic equality as an unchangeable fact but did not recognize Soviet political equality with the United States, including prerogatives associated with that status, such as the right to overthrow other governments and to project power abroad globally (Garthoff 1994, 62–63, 1126–1127; Larson and Shevchenko 2019, 127–130). The détente strategy succeeded in accommodating the power transition to strategic parity by the Soviet Union and the entrance into international society by China. The Vietnam War was ended peacefully in 1975 without a humiliating unilateral US withdrawal. Détente did not promote peaceful settlements of regional disputes in Africa and the Middle East, a failure that ended up undermining the legitimacy of the central US-­ Soviet cooperative relationship. Americans reasoned that if the Soviets could not be trusted to observe agreements in peripheral areas, they could not be relied on for the central US-­Soviet relationship (Gaddis 2005, 316–317). Under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the United States would later follow the example of Nixon and Kissinger. Just as Nixon opened up relations with China to restrain the Soviet Union, so Bush pursued better relations with India to balance a rising China. A major obstacle to US-­Indian cooperation was India’s refusal to sign the Treaty on Non-­Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and to put its nuclear facilities under international supervision. In 2005, President Bush reached an understanding with Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh whereby India would put its civilian nuclear facilities under international safeguards, promise not to transfer enrichment and reprocessing technologies to states that did not already have them, and continue its moratorium on nuclear testing. In return, the United States would tacitly accept India’s status as a nuclear power by entering into a civil nuclear agreement. President Obama continued the effort to establish a partnership with India, exchanging state visits with Prime Minister Singh and publicly affirming US support for India’s accession to permanent membership status on the UN Security Council (Burns 2019, 257–258, 262–263).

440   Deborah Welch Larson

Post–Cold War Multilateralism In November 1989, after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, President George H. W. Bush and Secretary of State James Baker worked with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and European leaders to negotiate a multilateral solution to German reunification. Bush and Baker were trying to create a Europe that would be “whole and free” (Zelikow and Rice  2019, 142). They successfully negotiated Germany’s peaceful reunification and membership in NATO, believing that the Western alliance was better suited to maintain stability in Europe than the nascent Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (Zelikow and Rice 2019, 267–268, 282). But they lacked the imagination to develop a solution for Russia’s relationship to European security structures (Gates  2020, 275), which would have far-­reaching negative implications for peace in Europe. The potential problems for peace created by Russia’s exclusion from NATO were exacerbated by the Clinton administration’s fateful decision in the 1990s to enlarge the alliance to include states that were formerly members of the Warsaw Pact. President Bill Clinton decided to admit Eastern European states to NATO largely for domestic political reasons (Steil  2018, 389–396). While NATO provided an umbrella for peaceful change in Western Europe during the Cold War, its expansion despite the elimination of the threat posed by the Soviet Union has exacerbated Russian mistrust. An aggrieved Russia reacted by invading Georgia in 2008, annexing Crimea in 2014, and providing military assistance to a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine, thereby preventing either Georgia or Ukraine from joining NATO. In contrast, the Marshall Plan was successful in part because the United States accepted the Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe (Steil 2018, 397–398, 404). In 1999–2000, Clinton sponsored China’s admission into the WTO to ensure that the PRC would observe international trade rules and norms. To win public support, Clinton argued that increasing economic integration would create pressures for political openness that Beijing would not be able to control, a gamble that has not turned out as he hoped (Sanger  2000; Tucker  2002, 66–68; Davis and Wei  2020, 87–88, 93–94). Nevertheless, China’s membership in the WTO has increased world trade and economic interdependence, long-­term forces for peaceful change. The George W. Bush administration claimed the right to “preempt” terrorist attacks through regime change in Afghanistan and Iraq—the antithesis of peaceful change. Due to continuing US involvement in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the 2008 financial crisis, many observers believed that the United States was declining in power. President Barack Obama planned to be more selective about US intervention and to retrench from excessive commitments, especially in the Middle East, in favor of a rebalancing toward Asia, including renewed emphasis on US-­Asian alliances and participation in regional organizations. But his strategy to conserve US resources was upset by crises in Egypt, Libya, and Syria.

Peaceful Change in US Foreign Policy   441 When popular protests broke out in Tahrir Square in Egypt in 2011, Obama decided to ask longtime US ally Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak to leave, against the advice of his national security team. Obama wanted to support peaceful change, but the subsequent election put in power an Islamist party, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the United States ended up supporting the military rulers who took power in a coup (Burns 2019, 296–313). In response to similar protests in Libya, the United States intervened to prevent Muammar Qaddafi from killing civilians, but the mission morphed into regime change. The outcome was anything but peaceful change: an enduring civil war and the absence of a government. As a result of these experiences with the Arab Spring, the Obama administration did little to stop the bloodshed in Syria (Burns 2019, 315–318, 323–328). But continuing US intervention in the Middle East meant that the US rebalancing toward Asia was not fully implemented due to lack of resources (Green 2017, 530–531, 539–540). The Obama administration did not leave behind a legacy of new methods or techniques for peaceful change.

Conclusion The United States has contributed to peaceful change by acting as a liberal hegemon. American efforts to promote peaceful change have demonstrated a liberal predilection for legalism and advocacy of a rule-­governed system. The United States early on advocated arbitration as a means of settling disputes over borders and ensuring peaceful change. Despite the failure of the League of Nations to stop Hitler, the organization established a precedent for the United Nations, which was hamstrung by Soviet vetoes during the Cold War but has recently been more successful in resolving regional disputes. The Bretton Woods system entailed observance of rules for currency adjustment and trade. Despite their preference for geopolitical maneuvering, Nixon and Kissinger signed a code of conduct for US and Soviet behavior. The ‘hegemon’ component of the America approach to peaceful change sometimes motivates the United States to violate liberal rules. While insisting that European states refrain from recolonization of independent Latin American countries, the United States regarded the Monroe Doctrine as justification for US meddling in Latin American countries’ internal affairs and repeated military interventions. The United States has been loath to submit to any limits on its own sovereignty, a sticking point in the debate over whether to join the League of Nations. Although the United States helped to maintain peace in Western Europe during the Cold War, it used military force extensively in the Third World as part of its containment policy. In the post–Cold War world, the United States has advocated liberal principles for peaceful change but has used force in the Middle East.

442   Deborah Welch Larson

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Chapter 24

Chi na’s Peacefu l R ise From Narrative to Practice Kai He and Feng Liu

The rise of China is a miracle in world politics. Since the economic reform and opening up in 1978, China has maintained a spectacular economic growth rate, with an average real gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 9.9 percent between 1978 and 2008. In 2010, China became the second-­largest economy after the United States. In 2013, China surpassed the United States as the world’s largest trading nation in goods (National Bureau of Statistics of China  2019). More important, China’s rapid ­economic growth has boosted its political status and strategic importance in the world. Compared to other great powers’ ascent in history, China seems to have embarked on a unique rising trajectory of power and international status. China has not been involved in military conflicts with other great powers for more than four decades. Western states, especially the United States—the hegemon in the international system—have not yet formed a military containment against China, as they did toward the Soviet Union during the Cold War. One of the key reasons for China’s successful ascent on the world stage is its “peaceful rise/development” strategy, which was ­officially launched in 2003. What is China’s “peaceful rise” strategy? Why did China launch this strategy? What are the political practices it entails? How will it evolve in the future? This chapter intends to shed some light on these questions by unpacking the essence, rationale, and future development of China’s “peaceful rise” strategy. It argues that this strategy is not only a discursive response to the “China threat” theory of the 1990s but also a rational policy choice to further integrate China in international society. The future development of China’s “peaceful rise” strategy will depend on interactions between China and the outside world, particularly the United States, the dominant power in the current international system. China will shape the world as much as the world shapes it. China will play an important role in shaping the future international order (Maull  2018; Feng and

446   Kai He and Feng Liu He 2020). Understanding China’s “peaceful rise” strategy and its future development is therefore an imperative task for both scholars and policy makers around the world.

The Origin of China’s “Peaceful Rise” Strategy At the November 2003 Boao Forum in China, Zheng Bijian, then director of China’s Reform Forum, presented a speech entitled “A New Path for China’s Peaceful Rise and the Future of Asia” and proposed China’s “peaceful rise” thesis for the first time. Since Zheng used to be the vice president of the Central Party School of the Chinese Community Party (CCP), he is seen as a top policy adviser of the CCP and the government. Zheng emphasized that during its reform and opening up, China had followed a new path of “peaceful rise,” “which is to build Socialism with Chinese characteristics through the connection with economic globalization rather than through isolation from the world” (Zheng 2003, 2005). On December 10, 2003, in a speech presented at Harvard University, then Chinese premier Wen Jiabao highlighted that “China today is a country in reform and opening­up and a rising power dedicated to peace. . . . China tomorrow will continue to be a major country that loves peace and has a great deal to look forward to” (Wen 2003). Wen became the first Chinese leader to publicly endorse the narrative of “peaceful rise” on the world stage. However, some Chinese scholars and policy analysts expressed concerns that the word rise sounded too aggressive and even negative in the context of international affairs, which might inflict suspicion and apprehension among other states. Therefore, in order to soften the tone as well as address possible misunderstandings by the ­outside world, the Chinese government rephrased “peaceful rise” to “peaceful development” in its official discourse in early 2004 (Medeiros 2004; Zheng 2005; Glaser and Medeiros 2007). On April 24, 2004, then Chinese president Hu Jintao delivered a keynote speech at the Boao Forum, in which he used the phrase “peaceful development” instead of “peaceful rise” for the first time. Hu emphasized that China’s development cannot be separated from Asia’s, and Asia’s prosperity needs China. Therefore, “China will stick to the path of peaceful development, holding high the mottos of peace, development and cooperation, working with other Asian countries to reinvigorate Asia to a new phase, and work hard to contribute more to the noble cause of peace and development of the mankind” (Hu 2004). On December 22, 2005, the Chinese government issued a white paper entitled “China’s Peaceful Development Road,” articulating the meaning of the “peaceful development” concept (State Council Information Office 2005). Since then, “peaceful development” has become a popular narrative for Chinese leaders to communicate the goal of Chinese foreign policy at important international

China’s Peaceful Rise: From Narrative to Practice   447 conferences and meetings. On September 6, 2011, the Chinese government issued another white paper, entitled “China’s Peaceful Development,” which provided a more systematic and comprehensive explanation of what “peaceful development” entails. It suggested that China’s path of “peaceful development” can be summarized as (1) to realize self-­development through maintaining world peace, to realize world peace via self-­ development; (2) to insist on opening up and learning the merits of other countries, while emphasizing independent ­development through reform and innovation; and (3) to seek win-­win opportunities for mutual benefit in the process of globalization and work with the international community to push for durable peace and common prosperity for a harmonious world (State Council Information Office 2011). In essence, the “peaceful rise” strategy is rooted in Deng Xiaoping’s “keeping-­a-­low-­ profile” foreign policy principle. After Deng came to power, he emphasized that “peace and development are the two major themes of our time.” At the end of the 1980s and in the early 1990s, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the democratization of the Eastern European states, Deng Xiaoping put forward the famous foreign policy principle of “keeping-­a-­low-­profile and making-­some-­achievements” (taoguangyanghui, yousuozuowei). Deng emphasized that China needed to keep calm, avoid unnecessary problems, seek opportunities, and make great efforts toward economic development. Deng’s policy principle set a new direction for Chinese foreign policy after the Cold War, which also led to the birth of China’s “peaceful rise” strategy in the early 2000s (Wang 2011). Since Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, China’s foreign policy has become more assertive (Johnston 2013). According to some commentators, the country’s foreign policy has abandoned its “keeping-­ a-­ low-­ profile” policy principle, that is, Taoguang Yanghui (hiding strength and biding time), established by Deng Xiaoping (Yan 2014). Others suggest that China’s assertiveness in diplomacy is a natural policy change driven by its expanding national interests along with its rise in economic and military capabilities (He and Feng 2012). However, on several international occasions, President Xi has reiterated that “China is unswervingly committed to the path of peaceful development” (Xi 2013). Apparently the meaning of “peaceful development” under Xi is quite different than it was under Hu, who proposed this “peaceful development” concept in the first place. While Hu’s “peaceful development” idea focused more on economic development for domestic purposes, Xi expanded the development scope to the international order. On a number of occasions, especially in his Davos speech in December 2017 and his 19th Party Congress address, Xi Jinping has clearly expressed China’s intention to seek leadership in promoting globalization and protecting the existing international order (Xi 2017a, 2017b). Two caveats are worth noting. First, although the “peaceful rise” and “peaceful development” strategies sound like two different concepts, they are actually identical in content, pledging that China will not become a threat to the international community even with its fast economic development. Rather, China will become a positive force of world peace striving to promote common development for all countries. Although the Chinese government changed the official narrative from “peaceful rise” to “peaceful development,”

448   Kai He and Feng Liu some scholars still believe that “peaceful rise” would have been a better phrase for directing Chinese foreign policy and protecting Chinese national interests (Yan 2004). In addition, scholars and policy analysts normally ignore the “political correctness” to which the Chinese government has paid attention. Therefore, the phrases “peaceful rise” and “peaceful development” are interchangeable in academic research and even policy reports. Second, there is no official document in China that labels “peaceful rise” or “peaceful development” as a grand strategy. As mentioned previously, China released two white papers, but neither uses the expression “peaceful rise strategy.” Nor did Chinese officials coin “peaceful development” as a strategy, even though they reiterated the phrase in their speeches and statements. Therefore, according to Chinese official narrative, “peaceful rise” or “peaceful development” seems more like a political concept or theory, aiming to articulate China’s pledged determination to exhibit peaceful policy behavior in world affairs. However, this “peaceful rise” concept is more than an empty political slogan. It entails many concrete policy innovations and proposes new directions in international relations (IR). Examining the domestic and international conditions as well as China’s foreign policy orientations after 2003, we can confidently map out a clear blueprint of China’s grand strategy behind the “peaceful rise” narrative.

Why “Peaceful Rise”? Why did China launch this strategy in 2003? There are three rationales behind this ­policy consideration. First, it is a discursive response to the popular “China threat” theory of the 1990s. Due to its rapid economic growth after the reform and opening up, China gradually became the center of attention in world affairs, triggering the “China threat” theory around the world (Broomfield  2003; Goldstein  2005; Deng  2008). Roughly speaking, there are several arguments for China’s being a threat to the world. Some scholars argue that China will be an unstable factor for world peace when it becomes rich. Economic strength will eventually convert into military capability, which will lead China to pursue regional and even world dominance. The current US-­led international order will be overthrown by China’s rise (Mearsheimer 2006). Munro (1992) stated that “China is the biggest American enemy after the Cold War.” In addition, China’s rise will bring military conflicts to the region because it has many territorial and maritime disputes with its neighboring countries, such as over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands with Japan; over the South China Sea with four Southeast Asian states; and over land borders with India, Vietnam, Russia, and some Central Asian countries. Therefore, a rising China will behave aggressively to resolve these disputes (Friedberg 1993; Roy 1994). Here, the “China threat” theory focuses on Asian security, instead of on China’s direct challenge to the United States. However, as some scholars point out, it can and will “pose problems” for the United States by adopting asymmetrical strategies in dealing with the hegemon, even though China may not “catch up with the U.S.” anytime soon (Christensen 2001).

China’s Peaceful Rise: From Narrative to Practice   449 The last variation of the “China threat” theory stems from the ideological differences between China and the Western world. After the former Soviet Union collapsed on December 25, 1991, symbolizing the end of the Cold War, the United States became the only superpower in the international system. The world also entered the US-­dominated “unipolar moment” (Krauthammer 1990/1991). In the end-­of-­history triumphalism of Western liberal democracy, it is not a surprise that China’s communist political system and political values are seen as a major threat to the liberal world (Fukuyama 2006). In addition, China’s human rights record and harsh suppression of political dissent run contrary to the democratic tide of world politics. Although these versions of the “China threat” theory have different foci, they are connected to one another. The key factor linking them together is China’s rapid economic growth and the related increase in its military capabilities. Therefore, easing the outside world’s apprehension and suspicion became an imperative task for the Chinese leadership. The “peaceful rise” strategy, to a certain extent, is a direct discursive response to the “China threat” theory. On the one hand, China does not deny its potential for and confidence in economic and military strengths by acknowledging that it will rise on the world stage. On the other hand, it emphasizes that it will rise peacefully, not through military means. Besides responding to the “China threat” theory, the second rationale of the “peaceful rise” thesis is to create a conducive external environment for economic development. Domestically, China has made great achievements in boosting its comprehensive national power after reform and opening-­up, especially on the economic front. However, just as the increase in economic strength does not translate automatically into higher international status, so economic development does not guarantee China a better external environment. In order to sustain its economic development, China needs a peaceful external environment in the region. After China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, it became more actively involved in the world economy. However, as a latecomer to the international society, China needs more time to learn the rules and norms of the international institutions dominated by the West. Therefore, China’s “peaceful rise” strategy is rooted in its domestic needs for economic development that requires it to integrate further and more deeply into the international community. Last but not least, the third rationale of China’s “peaceful rise” narrative is to reflect its rational decision to live with the US in a unipolar world. Generally speaking, there are two paths for a great power’s rise: the conventional one is a conflictual way, which means that a rising state seeks to change the existing international order by using force because military victory can bring prestige and power in world politics (Gilpin 1981). That is why many rising powers, such as the United States, Germany, and Japan, in the 19th and 20th centuries adopted military means to pursue power and waged hegemonic wars with others in the international system. Apparently, there are both successful and failed cases in history. The second path for a great power to rise up is to go through a peaceful way. This refers to a peaceful approach for a rising state to seek power, influence, and eventually prestige and status in the international community through economic development.

450   Kai He and Feng Liu A peaceful path to great power status, however, is unusual in the international system. Rosecrance (1986) posits that, since the end of World War II, states have been able to improve their status through economic instruments instead of territorial expansion, mainly due to technological change. It is a lengthy process because economic wealth is neither automatically nor easily converted into military power or into international status in world politics. However, there are two reasons that it is a rational choice for China to choose this path rather than the first, confrontational one. Domestically, the Chinese government understands the huge power gap between China and the United States. After the Cold War, US economic and military power was far ahead of other states. Even after over forty years of rapid economic development, China has only been able to close up the gap in economic power with the United States, still lagging far behind in other domains. One example is the coercive US export restrictions on telecommunication technology and products during the Huawei 5G controversy. It is reported that the US export ban will hit Huawei’s revenue by $30 billion (Jiang 2019). This shows that the United States has many advantages over China in noneconomic domains, such as technology and the military. Additional evidence is China’s relatively disadvantageous position during the US-­China trade war that began in 2018. The Phase One agreement signed in early 2020 shows that China has compromised with many US demands by substantially purchasing US goods and dramatically adjusting its business practices. It is true that the United States has not gotten all it wanted from China, and there are many questions about the implementation of the Phase One agreement between the two nations. However, the mere fact that China has had to sign the agreement under President Donald Trump’s pressure reveals the weakness of China’s power vis-­à-­vis the United States. Therefore, given the huge power gap between China and the United States, the conflictual path for China’s rise is apparently irrational and unthinkable. The second reason that peaceful rise is a rational choice for China is that it has benefited tremendously from a relatively benign relationship with the United States since the rapprochement in the 1970s and its subsequent integration into the US-­dominated international order, especially the global economic system in the late twentieth and early twenty-­first centuries. As previously mentioned, China’s future economic success will not be possible without further integration into the international community. Therefore, as Ikenberry has pointed out, it is not rational for China to overthrow the current liberal order, in which it is one of the largest beneficiaries in terms of economic development (Ikenberry 2008). The key question is how China can challenge US hegemony without changing the existing liberal order. Some Chinese scholars argue that China should pursue “selective and incremental adjustments” of the current liberal order, which “overtime will lead to an order transition” (Wu 2018). However, the first thing China needs to do is to dispel US suspicions so that its rise will not be blocked by the United States through military or other means. To a certain extent, the main purpose of China’s “peaceful rise” narrative is to present China’s peaceful intentions and convince the United States and other states that its rise will not upend the existing international order in the foreseeable future.

China’s Peaceful Rise: From Narrative to Practice   451 Overall, China’s “peaceful rise” narrative has served both its domestic development purpose and its pursuit of international status. Until now, these domestic and international factors have functioned to confine China’s strategic direction. Although the United States was hard hit by the 2008 global financial crisis (GFC), the power gap, especially the military one, between the United States and China is still huge. It is true that the power transition in the international system seemingly accelerated after the GFC. It has triggered the United States to shift its strategic focus to China and the Indo-­Pacific region in general. More important, the United States has labeled China a strategic challenger for the first time, in Trump’s 2017 National Security Strategy. Therefore, China will face unprecedented international pressure from the United States as well as from US allies around the world. In this context, China’s rise will face many more difficulties and obstacles in the future. Whether China’s “peaceful rise” narrative and strategy can help sustain its ascending trajectory while avoiding a fall into the “Thucydides’s trap” will be a tough challenge for the Chinese leadership in the next decade or two (Allison 2017).

“Peaceful Rise” in Practice China’s “peaceful rise” narrative entails concrete policy practices, which constitute a grand strategy for China’s future development. In particular, China’s “peaceful rise” strategy is composed of two dimensions: a domestic national development strategy and a foreign policy strategy. On national development, the 2011 “China Peaceful Development” white paper has clearly stated that “the central goal of China’s diplomacy is to create a peaceful and stable international environment for its development,” and that China will “focus on scientific development and accelerate the shifting of model of growth in pursuing economic and social development” (State Council Information Office 2011). In a word, China makes “development” its priority in the “peaceful rise” or later “peaceful development” policy practices. It indicates that this strategy is mainly aiming at sustaining and furthering China’s domestic development, especially on the economic front, in the future. The second dimension of this strategy focuses on the word “peaceful,” which is mainly related to China’s foreign policy strategy. Four foreign policy priorities are worth exploring to understand China’s policy practices guided by this “peaceful rise” strategy: major powers, neighboring states, developing countries (especially newly emerging powers), and international institutions. First, China highlights its “key” foreign relations with major powers, including the United States, Russia, the European Union, and Japan. The international order is mainly built on and constituted by major power relations, and IR in essence is about foreign relations and interactions among major powers. As a major power in both political and geographical senses, how China can effectively manage its relationships with other major powers is the key factor in shaping the fate of its rise. In the current international order, the United States, Russia, the EU, and Japan are four key players, among which the United States has remained the leader or the most

452   Kai He and Feng Liu powerful state in the world since the end of the Cold War. Therefore, Chinese leaders view the China-­US bilateral relationship as the most important component of Chinese foreign policy. In the early 2000s, because the US strategic emphasis turned to antiterrorism, there was a positive trend in US-­China relations. According to some Chinese policy makers and scholars, the period since the events of September 11, 2001, can be seen as a “window of strategic opportunity” for China’s rise (Liu 2003; Swaine 2004; Goldstein 2005). Contrary to the realist expectation that secondary powers would balance against the hegemon, Beijing has firmly pursued and maintained a high level of economic interdependence with Washington as well as restrained itself in the security domain, only employing some soft-­balancing tactics through international institutions (He 2008; Paul 2018; Han and Paul 2020). In addition, China has worked hard to carefully manage bilateral relations with other great powers, such as Russia and India, so that there is no anti-­China alliance led by the hegemon in the international system. With the declining importance of counterterrorism in US strategic priorities, America gradually returned to realist thinking, refocusing on China as the rising threat during the second term of the Barack Obama administration. Consequently, the Obama administration launched a “pivot” or “rebalance” to Asia strategy around 2010, which was seen as a containment effort against China’s rise in the eyes of Chinese leaders (Lieberthal and Wang 2012). The security competition between the United States and China has intensified ever since. After Trump came to power in 2017, the United States replaced the pivot or rebalancing policy with an “Indo-­Pacific strategy,” which in essence still aims to countervail China’s rising influence in the region. Furthermore, Trump started a trade war with China in mid-­2018 that has further exacerbated US-­China relations and the security competition between the two nations. Chinese leaders are fully aware of the increasing strategic pressures from the United States. To some extent, China has worked hard to sustain its cooperative relationship with the United States, guided by the “peaceful rise” strategy. In June 2013, while meeting with Obama, Chinese president Xi Jinping proposed building a “new type of major power relations” (xinxing daguo guanxi) between the United States and China in order to avoid the conventional curse of conflict between the rising power and the hegemon. In November 2014, during Obama’s state visit to China, Xi further detailed the six key areas to build the “new type of major power relations” between the United States and China, emphasizing that the two countries should insist on the principles of no conflict, no confrontation, mutual respect, and win-­win cooperation. Obama’s response to China’s proposal for a “new type of great power relations” was lukewarm at best because the message underlying this “new type of major power relationship” is equal status between the United States and China on the world stage. In addition, the United States would also respect China’s “core interests,” including the Taiwan issue, under this new proposal. This is what the United States has tried hard to prevent. During the Trump administration, the Chinese call for building a “new type of great power relations” has fallen on deaf ears in the White House. However, during the all-­out trade war and intensified strategic competition between the two nations, China has continued to claim that it would like to seek “a US-­China relationship based on coordination,

China’s Peaceful Rise: From Narrative to Practice   453 cooperation and stability” (Wang  2019). Although China’s “peaceful rise” narrative might not be sufficient to convince the United States to alleviate its strategic pressure on China, it is clear that it is in China’s interest to manage its conflictual relations with the United States so that those strained bilateral relations will not damage its external environment or slow down its economic development. This, however, is a tough task to accomplish. Russia is another key player in Chinese foreign policy decision-­making. In 1994 the two countries established a new type of “constructive partnership.” In 1996 the two countries upgraded the bilateral relationship to a “strategic partnership” and continued with a “comprehensive strategic partnership,” which represents the highest level of strategic cooperation between China and the outside world. On June 5, 2019, Xi and President Vladimir Putin signed a joint statement on building a “comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era,” which moved the bilateral relations between China and Russia further and deeper in terms of strategic cooperation. There are some historical reasons that the China-­Russian relationship is vital; however what is more important is that the two states are facing similar systemic pressures from the United States in the international system. The United States has identified China and Russia as two strategic competitors, and a shared common threat perception of the United States has indeed pushed the two countries closer in strategic and economic collaboration. Although differences and frictions remain between China and Russia over certain issues, there is no denying that China needs to maintain a friendly relationship and sustain its cooperation with Russia because the strategic partnership will be a powerful countervailing force when China says no to US pressure in great power politics. Sino-­EU and Sino-­Japan relations are also important for China’s rise. As both the EU (before Brexit, and now Britain and EU) and Japan are US allies, China’s relations with them will be affected by its relations with the United States. However, these two bilateral relationships also have their own uniqueness. China is the largest developing country in the world. The EU is the largest developed country group (even after Brexit).1 This bilateral relationship has determining impacts on the future of world peace and development. In 2003 China and the EU established a comprehensive strategic partnership, which encouraged the two parties to conduct bilateral cooperation in a wide range of areas, including politics, security, economics (particularly trade), people exchange, antiterrorism efforts, science and technology, and so forth. In March 2014 Xi visited the EU headquarters, the first time a Chinese head of state had been there. It was reported that Xi’s visit added new strategic meanings to the partnership and provided new directions. Despite problems occasionally occurring over trade and human rights, the overall China-­EU relationship is perceived as positive and improving and is conducive to China’s peaceful rise in general. For historical reasons, the China-Japan relationship has been through ups and downs. The Chinese government believes that in the early 2000s then Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi’s repeated visits to the Yasukuni shrine and the Japanese history textbook issue were two major reasons for the deterioration of their bilateral

454   Kai He and Feng Liu relationship. In 2008 Japanese prime minister Yasuo Fukuda and then Chinese president Hu Jintao signed the “Joint Statement between China and Japan on Comprehensive Promotion of a ‘Mutually Beneficial Relationship Based on Common Strategic Interests,’ ” which symbolized a new normalization of the bilateral relationship between the two nations. However, after the 2012 Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute, the China-­ Japan relationship fell to another nadir. In late 2014 the two countries signed a “four-­ point agreement” to improve bilateral ties, which was to resume political, diplomatic, and security dialogues while acknowledging different positions on the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands. In 2018 China-­Japan relations further improved as a result of bilateral summit meetings between the top leaders of the two states. Strong bilateral economic ties have played an important role in stabilizing the bilateral relationship and restraining the escalation of territorial disputes. Given their geographical proximity, China’s peaceful rise will not be possible if its bilateral relationship with Japan is in trouble. As Buzan states, “whether China-­Japan relations can be resolved peacefully is key to China’s peaceful rise” (Buzan 2010). The historical grievances and unsettled territorial disputes are two obstacles for future China-­Japan relations. In addition, how Japan copes with the intensified US-­China competition and how China manages its relations with Japan will also pose tough challenges to China’s foreign policy in the future, especially if China still intends to rise “peacefully.” Regarding the second of the four foreign policy priorities, China aims to maintain a stable external environment through cooperation with neighboring states. China is facing a complex and sophisticated geographical environment, with about twenty-­eight neighboring countries on land and at sea, including major great powers, small, weak, developing countries, political friends, strategic partners with a high value for security cooperation, and strategic competitors with whom it has strained relations and frequent territorial and maritime disputes. To a certain extent, the complicated and mostly unfriendly geopolitical environment is one of the major obstacles and challenges for China’s economic development. Therefore, a stable and prosperous neighborhood is a strategic prerequisite for China’s sustainable development as well as its peaceful rise in the future. In its relations with neighbors, economic development and trade are always the key areas of cooperation. For example, since 2009 China has remained the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) number one trade partner. On January 1, 2010, the China-­ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (FTA) officially came into effect, adding new dynamics to bilateral economic and trade development. In addition, Chinese investment in ASEAN steadily increased, and bilateral financial cooperation intensified with the signing of a series of currency exchange agreements. On the other hand, the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has offered potential collaborative projects with neighboring states, especially in infrastructure building, which can help push forward ASEAN’s economic development and shift China’s overcapacity, a mutual gain for both parties. Compared to economic relations, there are challenges in political and security relations between China and neighboring states, such as the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute with Japan, the THADD issue with South Korea, border disputes with India,

China’s Peaceful Rise: From Narrative to Practice   455 and the South China Sea disputes between China and some ASEAN states. Although most of the disputes and problems are rooted in history, one of the direct causes for their reoccurrence now is China’s rise. According to the balance of threat theory in IR, geographic proximity and comprehensive power are the main sources of threat perception (Walt 1990). Based on this theory, it is not hard to understand the appeal of the “China threat” theory to China’s neighbors. To allay neighboring states’ fears, China has not only assured them of its peaceful intentions internationally but also has taken some concrete measures regionally. From 2008 to 2012, China promoted its relationship with five Southeast Asian states (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Burma, and Thailand) to “comprehensive cooperative strategic partnership,” the highest level among its partnerships, to attest that China is sincere about creating a peaceful, stable, cooperative, and win-­win environment. Further, with intensified US-­China security competition, China has actively increased its strategic assurances to neighbors. Specifically, Beijing has overtly committed to supporting ASEAN’s centrality in regional cooperation and accelerated economic engagement with most of its neighbors. China has also proactively responded to the cooperative signals of relevant states and taken concrete actions to assuage neighboring states’ security concerns. Although China’s diplomacy has become assertive, especially in the South China Sea, since 2012, its use of coercive measures has been highly specific, selective, and usually combined with accommodation and de-­escalation efforts (Liu 2016; Lai 2017). China’s development is grounded in the region; hence to realize its peaceful rise China has to stabilize its relations with neighbors and alleviate their fears. Regarding the third priority, China pays attention to South-­South cooperation with other developing countries, especially newly emerging economies such as Brazil, India, and South Africa. In particular, China views itself as a representative of newly emerging powers, emphasizing joint development with other developing states and fighting to adjust the international order in a more just and reasonable direction. As the largest developing country in the world, China always emphasizes that the developing world is at the basis of its foreign policy. China has shared with other developing countries a similar historical experience of national self-­determination, anticolonialism, and anti-­ hegemonism. In particular, China was only able to regain its United Nations (UN) seat with support from Third World countries. Therefore, South-­South cooperation has been a diplomatic priority in China’s foreign policy since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In the twenty-­first century, China’s cooperation with other developing countries has gradually changed gear, from political and diplomatic coordination to concrete economic development. Chinese investment has increased dramatically, especially in infrastructure-­building areas, directly contributing to the economic development of these countries. Although Western countries are calling China’s investment and aid in the developing world neo-­imperialism, there is no denying that China has helped promote the economic development and won the political support of many developing countries. Its assistance can be seen as a positive and peaceful contribution of China’s rise to the developing world.

456   Kai He and Feng Liu This is not to suggest that China’s actions are purely altruistic. Its economic support to developing countries can bring two valuable diplomatic benefits to China. On the one hand, China can win diplomatic and political support from the developing countries in its competition with the United States and other Western countries on some sensitive issues, such as human rights. On the other hand, leadership cannot be established without followers. If China intends to rise up on the world stage and acquire the prestige it deserves, it needs other developing countries as followers in order to exercise its leadership in international affairs. To a certain extent, winning the support of developing countries is a peaceful way for China to pursue international prestige. China’s peaceful rise, in turn, will also benefit other developing countries’ economic development. Finally, China is actively involved in international institutions, the fourth foreign policy priority, using multilateralism as a major means to promote its international status. The current liberal international order is based on the US-­led international institutions (Ikenberry 2001). Since the end of World War II, international institutions have become major actors in world politics, playing an ever-­increasing, positive role in promoting world peace and stability. Due to ideological differences, the newly founded PRC for quite some time held suspicious and negative views of US-­led international institutions. For example, during the Korean War in the 1950s, China fought directly with the UN-­led force on the Korean Peninsula. Since the economic reform and opening up in the late 1970s, China has gradually come to the realization that economic development is not possible without integrating and embracing the international community. This means that China needs to actively take part in international affairs and to play a constructive role in multilateral institutions. Many researchers use China’s active participation in multilateral institutions as an indicator to measure its foreign policy intentions to stay “status quo” or become “revisionist” in world politics (Johnston 2008, 2013; Chan, Hu, and He 2019). China has adopted a dual-­engagement strategy toward international institutions. On the one hand, it is actively involved in the activities and future development of the existing international institutions, such as the UN, International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and World Trade Organization. For example, China has contributed the most peacekeeping forces among the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. Moreover, China has actively promoted the structural reform of the IMF, along with support from other emerging economies. On the other hand, China has also started to build and lead new institutions, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), to address pressing issues in global governance. The SCO has played an important role in fighting terrorism and extremism in Central Asia. The AIIB is seen as a healthy complement to the World Bank and Asian Development Bank in helping infrastructure development in Asia. It is worth noting that China has actively engaged other emerging powers, especially other BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) countries, in multilateral diplomacy. Not only will China’s close cooperation with the BRICS countries enhance China’s bargaining leverage in existing institutions, such as the IMF and the World Bank, but it will also offer a new platform for China to create alternative institutional

China’s Peaceful Rise: From Narrative to Practice   457 arrangements outside the existing institutional order. For example, the New Development Bank, created by the BRICS countries, could be seen as a challenge by emerging powers to US-­led global financial governance. International institutions and multilateral diplomacy have become a major platform for China to establish the legitimacy of its “rise” and exercise its leadership in world politics (Yan 2019). This is why China has been trying to actively socialize in international society through international institutions since the end of the Cold War. To a certain extent, China’s strategic investment in multilateralism and institutions also reflects the rational, but more important, peaceful intentions of its “rise.” Therefore, even though China’s rise through international institutions and multilateralism may not avoid strategic competition with the United States, its institutional rise will be more peaceful than the popular “Thucydides’s trap” argument (Allison, 2017) has implied. In sum, China’s “peaceful rise” or “peaceful development” strategy entails two dimensions. Domestically, the strategy focuses on boosting economic development and achieving China’s rise through deepening integration with the outside world. In terms of foreign policy, the strategy emphasizes the importance of maintaining “peaceful” relations with four types of players on the world stage: major powers, neighboring states, developing countries, and international institutions. It is worth noting that these two dimensions of China’s “peaceful rise” strategy are not independent of each other. Instead, China has tried hard to link the domestic and international domains of the strategy. One example is the BRI, a massive infrastructure development and investment initiative launched by Xi in 2013. Through the BRI, China has not only created new economic opportunities for its own economic development, it has also improved bilateral relationships and partnerships with other states, especially its neighboring states and the developing world. It is true that some major powers, such as the United States, Australia, India, and Japan, have reservations about the BRI, for various reasons. However, it is difficult to deny that the BRI could become the public good that a rising China provides to the world if its projects can be successfully executed. As Han and Paul (2020) observe, the BRI could perform as a policy mechanism to prevent the emergence of hard-­ balancing coalitions against China. However, it would be an exaggeration to argue that the BRI is a new tributary system for China to establish its hegemony, regionally or globally. As some scholars wisely point out, China’s power and influence are still confined to some specific domains even in its own region (Shambaugh 2018; Liu and Liu 2019).

Conclusion: China’s Peaceful Rise in the Future? China’s “peaceful rise” narrative emerged in 2003, and it serves both normative and practical purposes in guiding Chinese foreign policy. On the one hand, it is a discursive response to the popular “China threat” theory of the 1990s, aiming to ease the suspicions

458   Kai He and Feng Liu of other countries about China’s rapid economic growth. On the other hand, it embodies a concrete grand strategy for China to sustain domestic economic development as well as further integrate into the international community. Will China abandon its “peaceful rise” strategy? How will this strategy evolve in the future? Although it is difficult to provide precise answers to these questions, two key challenges are worth highlighting to shed some light on China’s foreign policy in the future. The first challenge for China’s “peaceful rise” strategy is rooted in its domestic economic and political development. As mentioned previously, economic development, especially the outward-­oriented economic growth model, was one of the key reasons China launched its “peaceful rise” strategy, which mainly served to maintain a peaceful external environment conducive to China’s economic growth. If China changes its economic development model by embracing protectionism instead of opening up, then the foundation of its “peaceful rise” strategy will be shaken. In addition, it is still a debatable question what kind of international order China is envisioning (He and Feng 2012). If Chinese leaders decide to militarize the BRI by making it a new version of a tributary system, China’s “peaceful rise” will be challenged by the United States as well as other major powers in the region. Moreover, burgeoning ultranationalism could be another blow to China’s “peaceful rise” strategy because it will force the Chinese government to adopt more confrontational positions in territorial disputes with its neighbors. The last influence on Chinese foreign policy is the political legitimacy of the CCP. China’s foreign policy successes and achievements have served as a strong pillar of the CCP’s legitimacy for decades. How to continue with the “keeping-­a-­low-­profile” principle but still pursue the goal of “striving-­for-­achievement” will be a tough question for Chinese leaders in the future. The second challenge to China’s “peaceful rise” strategy stems from the outside world, especially the United States. Geographically, China is located in a dangerous area of the world. China is facing a wide range of security challenges every day, such as the North Korean nuclear crises, the South China Sea disputes, the Taiwan issue, the Diaoyu/ Senkaku disputes, environmental challenges, and pandemics. In addition, the United States under the Trump administration has increased both economic and security pressures on China, especially after the outbreak of the Covid-­19 pandemic. Due to the huge power gap between the two nations, China is in a disadvantageous situation for future US-­China competition. Given the worsening international environment and the intensified competition between China and the United States, China might have to adopt a more assertive or even aggressive approach to secure its national interests. Therefore, the key question is not whether China wants to continue with its “peaceful rise” strategy, but whether the outside world, especially the United States, will allow China to rise peacefully. In other words, China’s rise will change the world as much as the world will change China (Feng and He 2020). China’s peaceful rise on the world stage in particular, and the peaceful change of the international order in general, will not be determined by China or any country alone. Instead, these changes will be shaped by the interactions and joint efforts of the international community.

China’s Peaceful Rise: From Narrative to Practice   459

Note 1. China will negotiate with the EU and UK separately after Brexit. However, Europe overall continues to have top strategic significance in Chinese foreign policy.

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Chapter 25

Russi a a n d Pe acefu l Ch a nge From Gorbachev to Putin Andrej Krickovic

Over the last three decades, Russia has been at the center of major changes in international politics. Yet its role as an agent of change is often underappreciated in international relations (IR) scholarship (Krickovic and Weber  2018). Under Mikhail Gorbachev, the USSR embarked on a comprehensive restructuring of its foreign and domestic policies that would transform international politics, peacefully ending the Cold War and leading to the peaceful dissolution of one of the two superpowers and the effective end of the world communist movement. Gorbachev’s policies were inspired by a radical change in Soviet thinking about IR and politics in general, which in the USSR was known as Novoe Mishlenie or New Thinking (NT). Gorbachev’s NT enacted one of the most revolutionary policies of peaceful change in history. It conforms to the definition of “maximalist” peaceful change put forward by the editors of this volume, in that it tried to restructure IR to remove the root causes of conflict between states and establish “deep peace” (Paul, this volume). That a Great Power such as the Soviet Union would offer such extensive unilateral concessions to its long-­time rival, effectively ending the bitter bipolar struggle, and then peacefully acquiescing to its own dissolution, is simply unfathomable from the perspective of many IR theories (especially realism and liberalism), and it continues to be a cause of great debate within the discipline (Brooks and Wohlforth 2001). Post-­Soviet Russia has undergone far-­reaching social, political, and economic changes, and it has struggled to define its new place in the international order. In the grips of these changes, Russia’s foreign policy has alternated between periods where it has focused more on its domestic transformation to facilitate Russia’s integration into the existing international order and periods where it has shifted its attention to transforming the

464   Andrej Krickovic order to facilitate Russia’s integration into it. Under Yeltsin, Russia initially accepted the post–Cold War order and focused on transforming itself into a “normal” Western country and then shifted to transforming the international order by balancing US power when rapid domestic transformation and Western integration failed (Tsygankov 2016). However, Russia’s weaknesses and the chaotic nature of its transition away from communism prevented it from either integrating into the hegemonic West or balancing against it in a coherent or effective fashion (Lo 2002). Under Putin, Russia initially focused on domestic transformation and integration, though this time seeking closer relations with the United States and the West based on concrete mutual interests rather than on converging norms and values (Tsygankov 2016). Over time, however, the emphasis has gradually shifted toward transforming the international system to accommodate Russia’s interests and ambitions. The severe deterioration of Russia’s relations with the West since the Ukraine Crisis has put transformative “peaceful change” of the international system back at the top of Russia’s foreign policy agenda. Unlike Gorbachev and NT, Putin’s program is not a program of “maximalist” peaceful change. The focus is not on transforming IR to eliminate the root causes of competition and conflict between states, but on engineering a transition away from unipolarity and toward multipolarity, so that competition and conflict can be managed more effectively and cooperation based on concrete mutual interests can flourish. Though Russia forgoes war as an option and looks to avoid Great Power conflict in general, the means that Putin is willing to adopt to achieve these goals are not altogether peaceful, as he is ready to use hard balancing, the limited application of military force, and internal political meddling to push Russia’s transformational agenda forward. This chapter will trace the evolution of Russia’s approach to peaceful change over these periods, outlining the ideas and concepts that Russian experts and policy makers have put forward to transform the international system. It also considers the international and domestic political context in which this evolution has occurred, with a focus on the critical role that status aspirations and expectations of reciprocity have played in this process. Recent scholarship alerts us to the importance of status in IR (Paul, Larson, and Wohlforth  2014). It also plays a critical role in the process of peaceful change. Russia’s deep disappointment with what it has seen as the lack of Western reciprocity and the West’s unwillingness to confer to it the status it feels it is due pushed Russia away from the optimism and idealism of NT and toward a more skeptical and confrontational approach to IR. For their part, Soviet/Russian leaders failed to recognize that making concessions from a position of weakness created commitment problems which ­dissuaded Western leaders from reciprocating. Two lessons for future proponents of peaceful change can be drawn from the Soviet/Russian case. First, in order to attain reciprocity, states making concessions must find ways to make their commitments to follow through on concessions (or reverse them if they are not reciprocated) credible. Second, if peaceful change is to be sustained in the long run, states receiving concessions must be sensitive to the status concerns of conceding states and restrain their impulses to take advantage of the opportunities opened up by concessions.

Russia and Peaceful Change: From Gorbachev to Putin   465

Gorbachev’s Revolutionary New Thinking NT represented a radical conceptual revolution in the Soviet approach to foreign policy and national security. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the USSR followed an active policy of military expansion and geopolitical competition with the United States, with the goals of improving the USSR’s security and advancing the global cause of socialism by gradually shifting the balance of power (in Soviet parlance the “correlation of forces”) in the USSR’s favor (Kokoshin 1998). These policies enjoyed a good measure of success. The USSR was able to achieve military parity with the United States and force it to recognize its status as a superpower and coequal. However, by the 1980s, the USSR was struggling to keep up. Military and geopolitical competition with the United States became a huge burden on its relatively underdeveloped economy and the USSR’s aggressive policies awoke fears in other states, isolating it from global economic and technological trends. Soviet society itself lapsed into a deep moral and spiritual crisis as people grew disappointed with the system and lost faith in the official ideology (Brooks and Wohlforth 2001). Gorbachev and his fellow New Thinkers came to power determined to pull the country out of its malaise and revive the Soviet system (Herman 1996). They were not trying to replace Soviet socialism with Western-­style liberal democratic capitalism; rather, they remained committed to socialism and wanted to rejuvenate the system, preserving its accomplishments and reforming it so that it could live up to its ideals (Tsygankov 2016). Foreign policy reform was closely linked to their program for domestic reform or perestroika (restructuring). Perestroika would only succeed if the Cold War ended and the USSR emerged from its international isolation (Zubok 2009). NT turned many of the traditional ideas behind Soviet foreign policy on their head. It rejected the Marxist-­Leninist class-­based analysis of IR, which traced conflict in world politics to the inherent aggressiveness of capitalist states. Where old Marxist-­Leninist thinking saw the world divided into two irreconcilable systems, New Thinkers firmly believed in the growing interdependence of states in all spheres (Levesque  1997). Interdependence demanded cooperation, both to capitalize on the potential benefits of increased global connectivity and to address the existential problems that threatened humankind, such as nuclear war, the environment, and the growing economic divide between the North and the South. Capitalism and socialism would not only have to learn to coexist but also to learn from each other, ultimately achieving synthesis and establishing a new global community based on universal human values (Herman 1996). New Thinkers explicitly rejected power politics approaches to IR (Legvold  1989). Instead of class or even nationally based conception of interest, interests would be based on the promotion of universal values. Peace and security in the international system would be secured not through a “balance of power” or “correlation of forces” but by

466   Andrej Krickovic working toward a “balance of interest” that took the interests of all states into account (Petrovsky 1990). National security could not be divorced from the mutual and collective security of all of humanity. The most pressing security threat for the USSR was not from other states but from the Cold War rivalry itself, which threatened humanity’s annihilation and prevented it from addressing its common existential problems. According to Gorbachev, “[t]he nations of the world today resemble a group of mountain climbers hanging on the same rope. They can either climb to the summit together or plummet into the abyss together” (quoted in Levesque 1997, 30). Gorbachev and his fellow New Thinkers believed that the security dilemma,1 rather than irreconcilable differences between states, was the primary source of conflict in IR (Legvold 1989). In his writings and speeches, Gorbachev continually emphasized that security could only be collective and mutual and that no nation could achieve security at the expense of another (Gorbachev 1987). In order to avoid the security dilemma, strategies of reassurance had to replace strategies of deterrence. The USSR would eschew offensive military doctrine in favor of “defensive defense.” Rather than trying to overmatch the United States’ nuclear arsenal, the USSR would strive for “reasonable sufficiency,” that is, maintaining the smallest nuclear force capable of ensuring a retaliatory strike (Kokoshin 1998). Proponents of NT repudiated the use of force or threats of force, believing that neither was an effective or legitimate tool of statecraft. Force was counterproductive because it only deepened the security dilemma, a lesson that was driven home by the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and its deployment of medium-­range nuclear missiles in Europe (Bennett 2005). The use of force also went against the humane values espoused by NT. Gorbachev and New Thinkers refrained from using force to stop the overthrow of allied communist regimes in Eastern Europe. As Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze later explained, “[i]f we were to use force, then it would be the end of perestroika . . . the end of everything we’re trying to do, which is to create a new system based on humane values” (quoted in Herman 1996, fn 117). NT led to unprecedented concessions by the Soviet side, including massive unilateral cuts in Soviet conventional and nuclear arsenals, withdrawal from Afghanistan, abandoning its support for Marxist insurgencies in the Third World, and peacefully accepting the loss of its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. These policies went beyond retrenchment, that is, casting off burdens in order to be able to more successfully resume geopolitical competition in the future. They were designed to transform the very nature of international politics, ushering in a new era where geopolitical competition would be replaced by amicable cooperation (Sakwa 2017). Expectations of reciprocity were central to NT. Gorbachev and his fellow New Thinkers believed that their concessions would reassure Western leaders, who would respond with reciprocal concessions of their own, including economic aid to save the ailing Soviet economy (Tsygankov 2016, 53). These hopes went unrealized. Western economic aid, though forthcoming, was simply inadequate to stave off impending economic disaster (Sakwa 2017, 17–18). While willing to cooperate on arms control, Western leaders never really embraced Gorbachev and the New Thinkers’ vision of collective security

Russia and Peaceful Change: From Gorbachev to Putin   467 and comprehensive disarmament. They continued to adhere to the deterrence paradigm, seeing it as the most prudent strategy for dealing with the USSR and other potential threats (Levesque 1997). While there was a great deal of support for domestic reform and a general recognition that major changes to foreign policy needed to be instituted, over time, NT began to face stiff opposition from domestic political opponents—both conservative critics who saw them as a betrayal of socialism as well as liberals who believed that reforms did not go far enough and that the USSR should abandon socialism altogether. Lack of Western reciprocity exposed NT to further criticisms and undermined Gorbachev’s domestic political position. At the same time, domestic and foreign policy reforms let loose political processes that soon got out of Gorbachev and the reformers' control. The policy of glasnost (openness and transparency) exposed the severity of the regimes’ past and present human rights abuses, undermining the Soviet systems’ legitimacy. Poorly conceived and executed economic reforms imposed severe material deprivation on the population. NT’s “hands-­off approach” to Eastern Europe led to the fall of Soviet satellite regimes and Germany’s unification, unleashing the forces of nationalism and sep­a­ra­tism inside the USSR itself (Levesque 1997). NT led to the complete transformation of the international system. The Cold War struggle ended and a new era of peace and cooperation seemed to be on the horizon. However, these changes were a consequence of Gorbachev’s policies, rather than a product of cognitive evolution by both sides. NT found few converts in the West. There would be no synthesis between socialism and capitalism or new international order where the United States and USSR held joint custodianship. Instead, the USSR and its socialist ideology collapsed and the United States emerged as the dominant unipole in the international system, with its ideology of liberal democratic capitalism reigning supreme. Peaceful change ushered in because of the concessions made by one side and that side’s subsequent collapse, rather than through a reciprocal process in which both sides worked to achieve “deep peace.” The unexpected and peaceful end of the Cold War has been the subject of much debate in IR, with different paradigms advancing competing explanations (Krickovic and Weber 2018). Structural factors, the increasingly unfavorable balance of power, and the Soviet system’s inability to maintain economic and technological dynamism made the established foreign policy course untenable and pushed for some form of change to be adopted (Brooks and Wohlforth  2001). Yet structure alone does not explain why Soviet leaders chose such a radical policy course as NT over more conventional policies of retrenchment. Constructivist approaches stress that ideational changes, such as Soviet elites’ growing affinity with the West, their increasing willingness to question Marxist-­Leninist orthodoxies, and their loss of faith in the Soviet model of modernization and development, made Soviet elites more receptive to NT’s ideas (Lebow 1994; English 2000). While important, ideational changes still do not tell us how or why the most radical version of NT became official policy. Even among proponents of NT there was a plurality of views about how far the USSR should go in making concessions (Herman 1996). Gorbachev’s personal beliefs and his leadership style decisively shaped

468   Andrej Krickovic how NT was implemented. Absent Gorbachev’s optimism, commitment to compromise, and aversion to the use of force, as well as his naiveté and lack of foresight and aversion to planning, it is difficult to imagine that the Cold War would have ended in the peaceful manner in which it did (Zubok 2009). Ultimately, no single factor alone can adequately explain the end of the Cold War. It took a confluence of factors across different dimensions of analysis to produce NT and push peaceful change forward.

Yeltsin: From Domestic Transformation and Western Integration to Anti-­ Hegemonic (Soft) Balancing The liberal reformers who took over the new Russian government, led by President Boris Yeltsin and his Foreign Minister Andrey Kozyrev, accepted many of NT’s ideas about interdependence, universal human values, and collective/mutual security. However, they rejected the notion that Russia had indigenous “socialist” values and identities worth preserving. Western-­style liberal democratic capitalism was now the “only game in town” (Sakwa 2017). The emphasis shifted from peaceful change of the international system to Russia’s internal transformation into a “normal” and “civilized” liberal capitalist state that would integrate into the West. To further these goals, Russia’s liberals made huge concessions, instituting further unilateral arms reductions, accepting the independence of the post-­Soviet successor states and refraining from reasserting Russia’s influence over them, and lending support to Western intervention in the Middle East and Balkans. Russia downgraded its relations with non-­Western powers (such as China) and with the post-­Soviet successor states, lest these hinder its rapid integration into the West. “Russia was not only supposed to cooperate with the West on a broad range of international issues, as Gorbachev had planned, it was to become the West at the expense of its own historically developed identity” (Tsygankov 2016, 64). Like NT, the strategy of Western integration depended heavily on Western reciprocity. Russia’s pro-­Western liberals expected that the West would provide a “New Marshall plan” to aid Russia in its liberal transformation and immediately welcome democratic Russia into the Western institutional order, including core Western institutions such as NATO and the European Union (Tsygankov 2016, 23). Western aid, though substantial, fell short of these high expectations, and often came in the form of loans that were conditional on Russia’s adoption of unpopular liberal economic policies which nationalists and communists believed were designed to keep Russia weak and compliant (Lo 2002, 145). Russia’s entry into core Western institutions was never really seriously considered. Instead, NATO began the process of expanding the alliance eastward. Though they supported Yeltsin and liberal Westernizers, Western states were still skeptical about Russia’s ability to transform itself into a liberal democracy and feared that integrating Russia

Russia and Peaceful Change: From Gorbachev to Putin   469 into Western institutions prematurely would “lead to normative dilution, institutional incoherence, and the loss of American leadership” (Sakwa 2017, 15). The liberal Westernizers’ policies quickly grew unpopular and faced sustained opposition within the elite and across the ideological spectrum, from statist liberals who believed Russia should do more to maintain its Great Power status to communists and nationalists who saw them as outright treason. These criticisms were bolstered by the failures of the liberals’ domestic economic reforms, which further impoverished the country, ceded control of the economy to a handful of corrupt and politically connected oligarchs, and made Russia dependent on Western largesse for survival. As a result, Russian foreign policy changed course in 1995 when Kozyrev was replaced by Yevgeny Primakov, a seasoned veteran of the Soviet diplomatic corps and intelligence services, and one of the most vocal critics of the pro-­Western policy course. Primakov promoted a more traditional vision of Great Power politics, looking to establish Russia as an independent center of power in world politics (Lo 2002). While liberal Westernizers largely accepted the international system as it was, focusing instead on Russia’s domestic transformation, Primakov put changing the international system at the top of his foreign policy agenda. However, unlike Gorbachev and New Thinkers, Primakov was not trying to change the fundamental nature of IR. The old tried and tested rules of power politics would still hold. Primakov focused on changing the configuration of power in the international system. Unrestrained US hegemony was identified as the main threat to global peace and stability and Russia embraced the role of global power balancer, actively pursuing the goal of establishing a multipolar global order (Tsygankov 2016, 99–100). Russia would pursue these changes peacefully, mostly by employing soft balancing strategies against the United States. Unlike hard balancing, which confronts threatening powers directly through military buildups and alliances, soft balancing is more conducive to peaceful change, as it looks to restrain threatening states indirectly, through international institutions, concerted diplomacy, and economic sanctions (Paul 2018). Primakov used Russia’s veto power in the United Nations to stifle US efforts to exercise its power, pursued a trilateral balancing partnership with China and India, and worked to establish closer relations with regional powers hostile to the United States, such as Iran and Iraq (Lo 2002). Hard balancing tactics, including the maintenance of nuclear parity with the United States and bolstering Russia’s military presence in the post-­Soviet region, were also applied when needed. However, maintaining good relations with the West was still seen as key to Russia’s economic development and modernization, and it would only be used sparingly (Tsygankov 2016). These policies enjoyed strong domestic support across the political spectrum, as they were in line with Russia’s historical identity as a Great Power and Russians’ status expectations (Clunan 2009). Nevertheless, Russia was still too weak from its political and economic transition from communism and dependent on Western economic assistance to pursue a fully independent foreign policy line, much less to play the role of global balancer against US and Western power. Neither China nor India saw Russia as a credible balancing partner and were unprepared to spoil their relations with the West.

470   Andrej Krickovic Despite its vigorous diplomatic efforts, Russia was unable to stop NATO’s military intervention in Kosovo or to exert any real influence over the postconflict settlement. The Kosovo crisis further alienated Russia from the West, exposing the degree to which their identities and worldviews diverged (Lukin and Yakunin 2018). Russian leaders believed the West was merely using humanitarian concerns to advance its hegemonic ambitions and feared that Kosovo would become a precedent for interference in Russia’s own struggles with ethnic separatism (Tsygankov 2016, 112–113). The gulf between Russia’s ambitious goals and its actual capabilities was too wide for Primakov’s strategy of peaceful change through balancing to work. Russia’s futile efforts to balance exposed the depth of its weakness. The United States and its Western allies ignored Russia’s opposition and used Russia’s dependence on Western economic aid to bully Russia to accept their preferred policies. Rather than eliciting restraint, Primakov’s balancing aroused suspicions in the West, empowering hawks who believed that the West should hedge against Russian revanchism by expanding NATO further eastward (Brzezinski 1994), setting the stage for the reemergence of security competition between the two sides.

Putin: From Pragmatic Partnership to Reactionary Neorevisionism Under Putin, the emphasis initially shifted away from transforming the international system and back to Russia’s domestic transformation. However, unlike the liberal Westernizers, who saw transformation in terms of Russia’s adoption of Western liberal norms and values, Putin saw transformation in more concrete, material terms. The focus would be on developing international partnerships that would aid in Russia’s economic development and modernization, while preserving indigenous “Russian” values such as reverence for a strong centralized state (Tsygankov 2014, 103–114). Preserving Russia’s status as an independent great power and the transition from unipolarity to multipolarity remained important goals. However, Russia would pursue these goals by turning inward and strengthening itself rather than by looking for opportunities to counter or restrain US power, as Primakov had done (Lo 2002). In the parlance of realism, internal balancing would take precedence over external balancing. Recognizing the reality of US preponderance and Russia’s limited ability to restrain US power, Putin focused on ways in which Russia could develop closer relations with the United States. He seized on the terrorist attacks of 9/11 to try and develop a partnership against terrorism, even going so far as to acquiesce to US troop presence in Central Asia and to share sensitive intelligence (Lo 2002). Russia also tried to develop an energy partnership with the United States, offering up Russia as a more stable and dependable energy supplier than the volatile Middle East. Not wanting to jeopardize these “budding partnerships,” Putin restrained his criticism when NATO moved forward

Russia and Peaceful Change: From Gorbachev to Putin   471 with granting membership to the Baltic States and when the Bush administration announced its withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-­Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty (Tsygankov 2016). Developing closer relations on these issues would not only address Russia’s acute concerns about terrorism and help its economic development; it would also boost Russia’s international standing by establishing it as an “indispensable” partner to the only global superpower (Krickovic 2018). At the same time, Putin continued to pursue integration with Europe. However, this time, integration would be based on converging economic interests, rather than on converging values. Holding up the European Coal and Steel Community as its inspiration, Russian leaders looked to find ways to deepen economic in­ter­de­pend­ence between Russia and Europe, encouraging Russian firms to acquire stakes in European companies in strategic sectors such as energy, aerospace, and steel (Lukyanov 2008). Despite Putin’s efforts, the West was not ready to accept Russia as an equal partner (Tsygankov 2016). The United States began to lose interest in cooperation with Russia on the “Global War on Terror” (GWOT) after Russia made its initial concession in Central Asia, and the shale oil and gas revolutions in the United States made an energy partnership between the two redundant. Russia’s efforts to deepen economic in­ter­de­ pend­ence with the European Union were stymied by European politicians and regulators, who feared that Russia would use economic interdependence as a tool of geopolitical “blackmail” against the European Union (Lukyanov 2008). The Bush administration’s transformational foreign policy agenda (the so-­called Bush Doctrine) created new threats to Russia’s interests. Though Russia was able to forge a temporary anti-­war coalition with Germany and France, it was unable to stop the United States invasion of Iraq. Nor was it able to get NATO to abandon its plans to expand the alliance and include Ukraine and Georgia2 or to dissuade NATO from deploying ABM systems in Poland and the Czech Republic. Moscow saw a US hand in the “Rose” and “Orange” Revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine, which brought hostile, anti-­Russian forces to power in these countries, and Moscow feared this “revolutionary virus” would spread to other post-­Soviet successor states and even to Russia itself (Duncan 2012). Russian leaders adopted a harder line and looked for ways to push back against what they saw as the West’s deliberate and concerted efforts to weaken Russia. Russia began to soft balance more forcefully against the United States. Putin and other Russian officials vociferously spoke out against what they saw as the dangers of US domineering and unprincipled behavior (Putin  2007). Moscow strengthened relations with states that shared these concerns, including China and the BRICS, which generally accepted the global status quo, as well as those that were more openly anti-­Western such as Iran and Venezuela. Russia and China issued “joint statements” openly criticizing the United States’ promotion of “democratic regime change” and development of ABM and Moscow partnered with authoritarian regimes in the post-­Soviet space to inculcate them against the spread of “Color Revolutions.” Russia did not entirely abandon the pursuit of better relations with the United States and its Western allies, but calibrated its expectations about what could be achieved as long as the United States retained unipolar dominance (Sakwa 2017). Russia pursued a

472   Andrej Krickovic “reset” in relations with the United States after the 2008 Georgian War, negotiating a new START treaty and agreeing to aid the United States mission in Afghanistan. Ideas about collective security resurfaced as Medvedev pushed for a new European security treaty that would reorganize the continent’s security institutions based on the principle that no state could improve its security at the expense of another (Lukyanov 2009). The “reset” only made limited progress. Russia was unwilling to make further reductions in nuclear weapons until the United States fully and unconditionally abandoned NATO enlargement and compromised with Russia on ABM (Tsygankov 2016). Western leaders ignored Medvedev’s Security Treaty proposal, seeing it as a ploy to undermine NATO (Lukyanov 2009). Relations continued to deteriorate, culminating in the 2014 Ukraine crisis. The Ukraine crisis may have been the moment when the rubber hit the road, but relations were on a steady downward trajectory long before then. Russia’s negative experience in its interactions with the West since the end of the Cold War gave rise to feelings that it was being “boxed in” and marginalized. “Russia’s frustrations at what it perceived to be its strategic impasse provoked a constant rhetoric of resistance and challenge, which was inevitably seen by the members of the Atlantic community as the rumblings of an angry and potentially dangerous adversary” (Sakwa 2017, 327). Russia has become estranged from the West, and Russian leaders are much more pessimistic about the possibility of having constructive relations with the United States and its Western allies as long as the current distribution of power in the international system holds (Karaganov 2018). As a result, the peaceful transformation of the international system is once again at the forefront of Russia’s foreign policy agenda. Russia has redoubled its efforts to engineer a transition away from unipolarity and Western dominance and toward a multipolar world order where the United States and the West will have to share power with Russia and other “non-­Western” powers. Russian leaders remain hopeful that Russia will be able to reach a compromise with the West on these fundamental questions of world order. However, their experience in dealing with the West since the 1990s has made them wary of making concessions from a position of weakness (Suslov 2014). From their perspective, a more balanced multipolar distribution of power would make it easier to achieve peaceful compromises that are in both sides’ interests (Istomyn 2016). Russia is pursuing what can best be characterized as a form of “neo” (Sakwa 2017) or “reactionary” (Krickovic 2018) revisionism. It focuses on rolling back changes to the rules and norms of international society that have been upended by Western revisionism, such as the principles of sovereignty, noninterference, and the right of Great Power to maintain spheres of “special” interest in their home regions. This “neo” or “reactionary” revisionist strategy for transforming international politics has three broad features. First, Russia sees unrestrained US and Western power as the biggest obstacle to peaceful change and therefore tries to find creative ways to counter and restrain US and Western power and increase its own power and influence. Russian leaders recognize the power disparity between the United States and Russia and focus on developing low-­cost asymmetric responses to US threats (Tsygankov  2019). Instead of matching the US

Russia and Peaceful Change: From Gorbachev to Putin   473 weapons system, Russia focuses on developing a select group of “hyperpersonic” nuclear weapons that can penetrate US defenses (Tsygankov 2019). Moscow also looks to exploit opportunities created by US negligence or policy mistakes, as it has done with its intervention in Syria and its more active presence in the Middle East (Karaganov  2018). Mirroring what it sees as Western interference in Russian domestic politics, Moscow uses its cyber and intelligence capabilities to meddle in elections in the West. This is intended to weaken establishment politicians who are seen as being hostile to Russia and support populist outsiders who Moscow sees as being more sympathetic to its interests, but also to deter Western internal meddling by demonstrating Moscow’s ability to sow discord and instability inside Western polities (Tsygankov 2019, 165). Second, Russia seeks flexible partnerships with non-­Western powers that will help it restrain US power and tendencies toward unilateralism. Russia has developed a comprehensive partnership with China that includes military, economic, and soft balancing elements, though it falls short of constituting a formal alliance (Krickovic 2017). Russia also works with other emerging great powers to establish new global institutions to soft balance against US power, such as the BRICS and Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) (Paul 2018, 189–190). In other cases, most notably Russia’s relations with Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, Russia’s partnerships are ad hoc and focused on a few areas of mutual interests (e.g., stabilizing oil prices or managing the crisis in Syria). But they also have a “spoiler” effect of encouraging the emergence of other independent centers of power that work to constrain the United States (Suslov 2018). Third, Russia promotes the development of “Greater Eurasia” as an economic super-­ region. “Greater Eurasia” transcends regional economic integration and is world-­ historical in scope and ambition. The ultimate goal is to shift the world economy’s geographic center of gravity away from the Western-­dominated Atlantic and Pacific “rimland” and toward the Eurasian “heartland” (Diesen 2017). Such a titanic economic shift would both hasten the transition toward multipolarity and move Russia from the periphery to the center of the world economy. Russia cannot accomplish such a monumental feat alone, but partners with China and its Belt and Road Initiative as well as other Eurasian powers (India, Iran, the ASEAN states). Russia is prepared to accept growing Chinese economic influence in Central Asia, as long as it remains the region’s security hegemon while gaining access to much needed Chinese markets and finances to aid its own economic development (Bordachev 2018). Though it may not seem so to those states that find themselves on the frontlines of Russia’s bellicose behavior, such as the Baltics and Ukraine, Russia’s approach to change is generally peaceful. Russian leaders are not spoiling for a direct fight. They understand that a hegemonic war in the nuclear age should be avoided at all costs and acknowledge that even a protracted geopolitical struggle with the West would be prohibitively costly for Russia, given its relative weakness and the negative repercussions it would have for Russia’s modernization and economic development (Karaganov 2018). Russia primarily relies on soft balancing while waiting for larger historical trends, such as the shifting balance of economic power from the developed to the developing world, to play themselves out. Unlike Soviet-­era New Thinkers, Russia’s contemporary leaders still see force as an

474   Andrej Krickovic indispensable tool of statecraft. Russia is prepared to intervene militarily to protect what it sees as its core interests (as it did in Ukraine) and will exploit low-­risk opportunities to use limited applications of force to advance its transformational agenda (as was the case in Syria) (Suslov 2018). Moreover, Russia sees its robust military and cyber capabilities as a positive force for peace, as they deter the United States from acting unilaterally and irresponsibly.

Conclusions What general lessons can we learn from Russia’s experience with peaceful change? The Soviet/Russian case highlights the importance of reciprocity to the process of peaceful change and sheds light on some of the obstacles and dilemmas to reciprocity. Russian leaders from Gorbachev to Putin staked the success of their conciliatory policies on expectations of reciprocity from the West. They insisted that Russia’s integration into the West should be a give-­and-­take process of mutual transformation in which both sides would have to change to accommodate the other. The West rejected this “dialogical” vision and instead insisted on Russia’s unilateral transformation so that it could be absorbed more easily into the existing Western order (Sakwa 2017, 14). Soviet/Russian expectations of reciprocity extended to the West’s recognition of the USSR/Russia’s status. Soviet/Russian leaders believed concessions would not lead to a devaluation of status, but instead would help them maintain their country’s high status. For Gorbachev, NT was a kind of “shortcut to greatness” that would position the USSR as a global moral leader, allowing it to maintain superpower status without having to catch up economically and technologically with the West (Larson and Shevchenko 2003). Similarly, Russia’s post-­Soviet leaders believed Russia would be rewarded for its concessions and allowed to take a prominent place in the Western liberal order (Tsygankov 2016). When these expectations were not met, Russian leaders adopted more confrontational approaches for transforming the international system, first with Primakov’s turn toward overt balancing in the mid-­1990s, and then again with Putin’s reactionary neorevisionism after the Ukraine crisis. Over time, unmet expectations made Russian leaders more cynical about international politics and skeptical about the degree to which states can escape the restrictions of power politics. Russia would work to change the distribution of power to force the West to finally reciprocate and would assert its status by taking on the role of main “balancer” against American unipolar hegemony (Krickovic and Weber 2018). It would be easy to place all of the blame on Western leaders for not showing enough foresight to reciprocate the USSR/Russia’s concessions (Sakwa 2017). Yet one must also appreciate the dilemmas that concessions present to parties on the receiving end. Formal theories of war show that commitment problems generated by imperfect information and power asymmetries lead to bargaining breakdowns and war (Fearon 1995;

Russia and Peaceful Change: From Gorbachev to Putin   475 Powell 2006). Similar commitment problems also hinder reciprocity. States receiving concessions face uncertainties about the intentions of the states making concessions and may have doubts about the conceding party’s ability to deliver on their promises. Western leaders and experts were skeptical about the true intentions behind NT, suspecting that it was a tactical maneuver designed to give the USSR breathing room, or a ruse designed to sew dissension inside Western ranks (Tsygankov 2016). Even when they did accept the sincerity of Gorbachev’s (and later liberal Westernizers’) intentions, they still had doubts about whether they could stay in power long enough to implement their policies and feared that they would be replaced by hardliners who would reverse course (Ralph 1999, 723). While unilateral concessions convey goodwill and a readiness to compromise, they can also signal weakness. Far-­reaching, unilateral concessions (such as those offered by NT or Russia’s liberal reformers) inadvertently signal to the party receiving the concessions that the party making them has no choice but to give in and concede. Rather than exposing themselves to the uncertainties inherent in reciprocating, the party receiving concessions will be tempted to take advantage of these perceived weaknesses. Status is a positional good, and states only reluctantly confer status to other states. They rarely do so out of “fairness” or “goodwill.” Status seekers often have to coerce other states into recognizing their status claims (Renshon 2017). While Russians see the end of the Cold War as a product of the concessions that they made in pursuit of a safer and just world order, the West has treated it as a “quasi-­military victory” that affirms the superiority of its institutions and values (Matlock 2010, 3). Instead of reciprocating Soviet (and later Russian) concessions and recognizing the USSR/Russia’s high status within the post–Cold War order, Western leaders ignored Soviet/Russian status aspirations and exploited their immediate power advantage to transform the international system according to their narrow preferences, hoping that this would consolidate Western primacy and prevent Russian revanchism (Shifrinson 2018, 119–159). Soviet/Russian leaders did not pay adequate attention to the commitment problems engendered by their concessions. Western leaders were overly focused on Russia’s weakness and failed to foresee that their unwillingness to address Russia’s status aspirations would alienate Russia and create lasting grievances that Russia would act on as its power grew stronger. If they are to be successful, future strategies of peaceful change will have to find ways to address these issues of reciprocity and status, especially under circumstances where there are power asymmetries between the side making concessions and the side receiving them. States initiating concessions must devise strategies to signal that their commitments to implement their concessions are credible and that they will reverse them if they are not reciprocated. Classic conciliatory strategies such as Osgood’s (1962) Gradual Reciprocation in Tension Reductions (GRIT) and Axelrod’s (1984) TIT FOR TAT require initiators of concessions to punish the other side if it tries to exploit concessions by withholding cooperation. States receiving concessions should be sensitive to conceding states’ status concerns and be prepared to reward constructive and conciliatory behavior by accommodating some of their status aspirations—even if this means forgoing gains in the short run.

476   Andrej Krickovic Even when programs of peaceful change fall short of their transformative goals, they can still produce lasting ideational changes. Though most Russian leaders and experts see NT as a failure, important elements of NT persist in Russian foreign policy thinking. Putin and other Russian leaders acknowledge the benefits of interdependence, both in terms of the opportunities it offers for economic advancement as well as its role in mitigating conflict between states (Istomyn 2016). Nurturing economic interdependence was at the heart of Russia’s approach toward integration with Europe and it shapes Russia’s vision for a “Greater Eurasia.” Interdependence also factors into Russia’s critique of unipolarity. From the Russian point of view, US unipolarity impedes the development of deeper interdependence between states by artificially dividing the world into antagonistic blocs (those who accept US dominance and those who try to preserve their sovereignty and independence) (Suslov 2018). NT’s more radical ideas about collective security, in particular its arguments for unilateral nuclear disarmament, are dismissed by Russian leaders and experts as naïve (Karaganov 2018). Nevertheless, contemporary Russian leaders continue to argue that security must always be “mutual” and “indivisible,” that is, that no state can advance its security at the expense of others. This idea was the guiding principle behind Medvedev’s European Security Treaty and figures prominently in Russia’s critiques of NATO enlargement and missile defense (Lukyanov  2009). Russia’s more aggressive moves, such as its development of “hypersonic” weapons, its deployment of short-­range nuclear missiles in Kaliningrad, and its internal political meddling are not designed to tilt the “correlation of forces” in Russia’s favor. Russian leaders recognize that they are in no position to enter a new arms race or ideological/informational competition with the United States (Tsygankov 2019). Rather, Russia is trying to advance the principles of mutual and indivisible security and noninterference in domestic affairs in future bargaining with the United States by forcing the United States to acknowledge that policies such as NATO enlargement, ABM, and the promotion of democratic “regime change” threaten its security and have elicited a reaction that now threatens the United States (Karaganov 2018). Despite its negative experiences since the end of the Cold War, Russian leaders have not entirely abandoned hopes that the international system can be transformed to make relations between states less conflictual and more cooperative. However, they believe that the world is too diverse, both in terms of diverging values and of interests, for the kind of convergence of values envisioned by NT to occur (Lukin and Yakunin 2018). The transformation of international politics will only happen through the convergence of concrete interests as the process of globalization advances, and states become more interdependent (Suslov 2018). The end of overbearing US dominance and the transition to multipolarity are seen as necessary preconditions for this transition (Istomyn 2016). Even then, competition and conflict will continue to be present in international politics, though growing interdependence unfettered by unipolarity will allow states to pursue mutually beneficial goals and address the global problems confronting all of humanity (Karaganov, 2018). While it may not be as optimistic or inspiring as Gorbachev’s NT, this is still a progressive and hopeful vision for the future and one that may be more in tune with the harsh realities that continue to define world politics.

Russia and Peaceful Change: From Gorbachev to Putin   477

Notes 1. The Security Dilemma is the idea that no state can improve its security without decreasing the security of other states. See Jervis (1978) and Tang (2009). 2. Because of French and German opposition, the 2008 NATO Bucharest summit failed to agree on a Membership Action Plan for Ukraine and Georgia; however, there was a vague decision that the two countries would eventually become members (Tsygankov 2016, 194).

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478   Andrej Krickovic Krickovic, Andrej, and Yuval Weber. 2018. “What Can Russia Teach Us About Change?” International Studies Review 20, no. 2: 292–300. Larson, Deborah W., and Alexei Shevchenko. 2003. “Shortcut to Greatness: The New Thinking and the Revolution in Soviet Foreign Policy.” International Organization 57, no. 3: 77–109. Lebow, Richard N. 1994. “The Long Peace, the End of the Cold War, and the Failure of Realism.” International Organization 48, no. 2: 249–277. Legvold, Robert. 1989. “The Revolution in Soviet Foreign Policy.” Foreign Affairs 68, no.1 (January): 82–98. Levesque, Jacques. 1997. The Enigma of 1989: The USSR and the Liberation of Eastern Europe. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lo, Bobo. 2002. Russian Foreign Policy in the Post-Soviet Era: Reality, Illusion and Mythmaking. London: Springer. Lukin, Alexander, and Vladimir Yakunin. 2018. “Eurasian Integration and the Development of Asiatic Russia.” Journal of Eurasian Studies 9, no. 2: 100–113. Lukyanov, Fyodor. 2008. “Russia–EU: The Partnership That Went Astray.” Europe-Asia Studies 60, no. 6 (August): 1107–1119. Lukyanov, Fyodor. 2009. “Rethinking Security in “Greater Europe.” Russia in Global Affairs 3 (July–September). http://eng.globalaffairs.ru/number/n_13589. Matlock, Jack. 2010. Super-Power Illusions: How Myths and False Ideologies Led America Astray—And How to Return to Reality. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Osgood, Charles. 1962. An Alternative to War or Surrender. Champagne-Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Paul, T. V. 2018. Restraining Great Powers: Soft Balancing from Empires to the Global Era. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Paul, T.  V., Deborah W. Larson, and William Wohlforth. 2014. Status in World Politics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Petrovsky, Vladimir. 1990. “New Thinking: Questions and Answers.” PS: Political Science and Politics 23, no. 1 (March): 29–32. Powell, Robert. 2006. “War as a Commitment Problem.” International Organization 60, no. 1: 169–203. Putin, Vladimir. 2007. “Speech and the Following Discussion at the Munich Conference on Security Policy.” February 10. http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/24034. Ralph, Jason. 1999. “Security Dilemmas and the End of the Cold War [with reply].” Review of International Studies 25, no. 4: 721–729. Renshon, Jonathan. 2017. Fighting for Status: Hierarchy and Conflict in World Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Sakwa, Richard. 2017. Russia Against the Rest: The Post-Cold War Crisis of World Order. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Shifrinson, Joshua. 2018. Rising Titans, Falling Giants: How Great Powers Exploit Power Shifts. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Suslov, Dmitry. 2014. “For a Good Long While.” Russia in Global Affairs, December 18. https:// eng.globalaffairs.ru/number/For-a-Good-Long-While-17211. Suslov, Dmitry. 2018. “The Limits of Global Containment: How to Win in a New Cold War.” Valdai Discussion Club, March 13. https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/the-limits-of -global-containment/. Tang, Shiping. 2009. “The Security Dilemma: A Conceptual Analysis.” Security Studies 18, no. 3: 587–623.

Russia and Peaceful Change: From Gorbachev to Putin   479 Tsygankov, Andrei. 2014. The Strong State in Russia: Development and Crisis. New York: Oxford University Press. Tsygankov, Andrei. 2016. Russia’s Foreign Policy: Change and Continuity in National Identity. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Tsygankov, Andrei. 2019. Russia and America: The Asymmetric Rivalry. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Zubok, Vladislav. 2009. A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.

Chapter 26

Ger m a n y a n d Peacefu l Ch a nge Klaus Brummer

Postwar Germany has been the exemplar of a “civilian power” (Maull 1990, 2019). While not pacifist, civilian powers consider the use of force only as an option of last resort. When pursuing their national foreign policy goals, civilian powers employ diplomacy as their primary tool of statecraft, support institution building processes regionally and globally, and promote a norms- and rules-­based international order more generally. Further, they seek to strengthen multilateral cooperation, expand the judicialization of international relations, and advance freedom and democracy (Kirste and Maull 1996, 300–303). Consistent with the concept of civilian power, it comes as little surprise that the pursuit of peaceful change has characterized (Western) Germany’s foreign policy since its foundation in 1949.1 This multipronged policy has encompassed peaceful foreign policy change toward other countries (e.g., France, Israel, and several countries in the Eastern bloc), peaceful regional change (above all within the European Union and its predecessors), and peaceful global change (especially through the United Nations [UN]). In several instances, this policy of peaceful change has gone beyond the minimalist definition of the concept (i.e., ‘merely’ the absence of war) by accomplishing more “maximalist” goals through fundamentally transforming state-­to-­state interactions toward a deep peace.2 True, Germany’s efforts have not always produced peaceful ­outcomes, as can be witnessed these days for instance in the Sahel region or Afghanistan. However, in most instances these situations have been beyond Germany’s control, and they do not call into question the underlying impetus of Germany’s policy of ushering in peaceful change. Individual decisionmakers have been crucial to formulating, adopting, and pursuing Germany’s policy of peaceful change. Arguably the most prominent have been Konrad Adenauer, who championed Germany’s integration into the West (Westintegration); Willy Brandt, who implemented a new policy toward the East (Neue Ostpolitik); and Helmut Kohl, who successfully managed the international dimension of German

482   Klaus Brummer reunification. However, the country’s pursuit of peaceful change has not gone unchallenged domestically. This is particularly true with respect to horizontal contestation processes among the political elite, that is, within the government as well as within and between political parties (Cantir and Kaarbo 2016). Despite such contestation, the policy of peaceful change has prevailed over time, as has Germany’s adoption of the role of civilian power more generally (Brummer and Kießling  2019). National self-­interest has been a key driver for the pursuit of that policy. In the early years of the Federal Republic, building relationships with other countries, particularly from the West, was deemed crucial for regaining sovereignty and status as well as, in the long run, accomplishing reunification. Hence, ­reciprocity loomed large on German decisionmakers’ minds when pursuing policies of peaceful change. In addition, German policy has been driven from the outset by a distinct moral impetus. The country has tried to take responsibility for the atrocities of the Nazi period, from which several obligations and commitments toward other countries as well as limitations and restraints concerning the use of certain instruments of statecraft have emerged (Markovits and Reich 1997; Leithner 2009; Krotz 2015). The conclusions that were drawn from the past have changed over time. This holds particularly true for the Holocaust. For decades, it was used to make the case for military abstention. More recently, however, it has served as justification for military action in the pursuit of upholding universal norms and values.3 Either way, German foreign policy has been informed not only by material drivers but also by immaterial, normative ones. The latter have manifested themselves in regular efforts by the elite to exhibit repentance and provide financial compensation, among other things, and have produced over time favorable responses by those they are addressed to, not least in Israel. Seen from a temporal perspective, political and material weakness as well as moral obligations initially left the newly founded German state little choice but to pursue a policy of peaceful change. Later, when Germany had become a global economic force and also a political coleader of Western Europe, the continued restraining effect of its past, together with the political success of its policy of peaceful change, which culminated in almost full sovereignty by the mid-­1950s and reunification in 1990, led to the continuation of that policy. Today, the picture is essentially unchanged. Germany continues to pursue a multipronged policy of peaceful change, which is centered around bilateral reconciliation, regional integration, and a norms- and rules-­based international order. The policy of peaceful change has also been extended to rising powers, both democratic (e.g., India) and autocratic (e.g., China) ones. Arguably the most fundamental alteration in Germany’s foreign policy since reunification is the by now rather frequent foreign deployment of its military to a variety of theaters, ranging from the Balkans to Africa to Asia. However, those deployments have been driven first and foremost by a desire to restore or maintain peace in the respective countries or regions. Similarly, Germany’s more assertive behavior toward Russia in recent years, which has also included a military component, should be seen first and foremost as an effort at restoring peace (and territorial boundaries). Hence, while the

Germany and Peaceful Change   483 country’s toolbox has been expanded in recent decades and now increasingly includes the use of nonpeaceful means in the pursuit of peace, the underlying goals of German foreign policy have remained essentially unchanged.

Pursuing Peaceful Foreign Policy Change The United States acted as a key facilitator of the pursuit of Germany’s policy of peaceful change, especially during the Cold War. For starters, US engagement was crucial for establishing a democratic political system in Western Germany after World War II. Further, the United States not only offered military protection (including “nuclear sharing”) through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) but also, for the most part, political support for Germany’s multipronged pursuit of peaceful change on the bilateral, regional, and global levels (Hanrieder 1995). Similarly, some of Germany’s efforts were rendered possible by US policy, most notably during periods of détente with the Soviet Union. In accordance with the role conception of civilian power, Germany’s foreign policy has focused first and foremost on diplomacy and soft power. Thus, the absence of coercion and violence have characterized the country’s interaction with others. In some instances, though, German policy has moved beyond this minimalist understanding of peaceful foreign policy change toward more far-­reaching transformations of its relationships with other countries, in which institutions played a pivotal role. Examples of such “deep” relationships are the focus of this section.

France The reconciliation with France is one of the most striking examples of how quickly the nature of a bilateral relationship can change for the better. The two “archenemies” were at war with one another in 1870/1871 as well as during World War I and World War II. Yet a mere five years after the conclusion of World War II, Germany and France embarked on a remarkable journey through which they transformed from “hereditary enemies” to “hereditary friends” (Schwarz 1992). In the course of this reconciliation process, the two countries fundamentally transformed not only their bilateral relationship but the political sphere of (Western) Europe more broadly. Indeed, from the outset the bilateral process of reconciliation has been placed within regional structures of political integration (see also later in the chapter). The first major episode was the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). The proposal of the French minister of foreign affairs, Robert Schuman, to create such an institution was “a historic turning-­point” in the bilateral relationship, which was “now clearly moving

484   Klaus Brummer towards reconciliation and cooperation” (Bozo  2016, 20). For several reasons, West German chancellor Adenauer was quick to pick up on Schuman’s idea. The prospect of cross-­border cooperation, which eventually also included Italy and the Benelux countries, promised not only economic benefits but also an increase in the status and standing of the newly founded state (i.e., equal status with France and the other member states). In addition, Adenauer’s receptiveness to the French proposal was based on normative considerations. The ECSC promised to resolve the rivalry with France and to demonstrate that Germany no longer aspired to predominance on the continent more generally (Schwarz 1994a, 720–723). Building upon the success of the ECSC, Germany and France were equally instrumental in the deepening of the European integration process in subsequent decades, most notably with respect to the introduction of a common European currency and the pursuit of a political union from the early 1990s onward. In addition to placing the German-­Franco relationship within European structures, a plethora of bilateral institutions has been created over the years to underpin that relationship. Krotz and Schild (2013) have described this two-­level phenomenon as “embedded bilateralism.” The Elysée Treaty, which was signed by Adenauer and French president Charles de Gaulle in 1963, represented the “main frame” (Krotz and Schild 2013, 54) for the bilateral dimension. The treaty not only covered a variety of policy areas, ranging from foreign and security affairs to economic questions to cultural issues, but also introduced the institutional structures within which coordination and cooperation on the aforementioned topics would unfold (Baumann 2003, 27–89). A few years earlier, the two countries had managed to resolve the remaining territorial boundary issue with the conclusion of the Saar Treaty in 1956, based on which Saarland joined the Federal Republic the following year. Overall, then, institutions on both the regional and the bilateral levels have been essential for the politics of peaceful change between Germany and France. This is not to suggest that the reconciliation process has always run smoothly. Differences have emerged concerning the role of the state in the realm of the economy, the configuration of the European integration process (i.e., the level of supranationalism), and Europe’s role in the world (e.g., how close it should be to the United States). In addition, the lack of personal chemistry between certain pairs of leaders (e.g., between West German chancellor Ludwig Erhard and de Gaulle and initially also between West German chancellor Kohl and French president François Mitterrand) has led to distrust and political stalemate (Lappenküper  2019). However, when the personal chemistry worked out, as it did for instance between Adenauer and de Gaulle and more recently between Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, Germany and France were able to bridge their differences and also managed to rally other European countries behind the compromises that they had agreed upon bilaterally (Schild 2010). With the adoption of the Treaty of Aachen in 2019, which builds on as well as extends the Elysée Treaty, there is nothing to suggest that the policy of peaceful change between Germany and France will alter any time soon.

Germany and Peaceful Change   485

Israel Another key bilateral German relationship that has developed well beyond the minimalist understanding of peaceful change is with Israel. According to Oppermann and Hansel (2019, 99), this relationship is “among the most remarkable and unlikely achievements in post-­Second World War international politics.” More so than in the French case, Germany’s policy of peaceful change toward Israel has been driven first and foremost by normative considerations from which lasting obligations and commitments have emerged. Indeed, guaranteeing Israel’s security is perceived as being part of the German Staatsraison (reason of state), as German chancellor Merkel emphasized during a visit to Israel in 2018 (Merkel 2018). As the democratic successor state of Nazi Germany, the Federal Republic has sought from early on to live up to the special responsibility that emanates from history. Indeed, for West German chancellor Adenauer there existed an “inner obligation” to make restitution and reparation to Israel, the pursuit of which he considered decisive for Germany’s “status in the world” (Schwarz  1994b, 541–542). This encompassed both financial compensation and political support (Goschler 2005). However, implementing such a policy was anything but straightforward because the two countries had no official diplomatic relations until the mid-­1960s. Leadership by key individuals, such as Adenauer and Israeli prime minister David Ben-­Gurion (Witzthum 2016), as well as the conclusion of bilateral agreements, proved crucial for the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1965. Those treaties included the Luxemburger Abkommen (Reparations agreement) of 1952, in which Germany agreed to pay for the resettlement costs of Jewish refugees after World War II and to provide compensatory payments to individuals for material losses that they had suffered during the Nazi dictatorship. However, for both political reasons (e.g., Germany’s standing in the Arab world) and economic ones, this policy was at times heavily contested domestically, even within the governing parties. Most palpably, the aforementioned reparations agreement was ratified by the German Bundestag in 1953 only thanks to the support of the political opposition (i.e., the Social Democrats); Adenauer’s governing coalition would not have mustered a majority on its own (Jelinek 2004, 242–248). In the following decades, the special relationship and the politics of reconciliation that has underpinned it have unfolded in multiple dimensions, ranging from politics to military affairs to the economy to the realms of science, technology, and youth exchanges (Feldman 1984, 2012). Today Germany is among the key economic partners of Israel and maintains close ties in the realms of culture and education. Among other things, the latter has included a joint textbook commission (2011–2015), which examined the “depictions of the other country, its history and society, and their treatment of the Holocaust and its memory” (GEI 2020). Further, on the political level, since 2008 the governments of the two countries have convened on a regular basis for intergovernmental consultations. Last but not least, Germany has continued its provision of reparations, which so far have amounted to some 74 billion euros (Auswärtiges Amt 2019a).

486   Klaus Brummer Germany’s relationship with Israel has not been free of conflict over the years. Among the most notable examples is the conflict between West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin over a range of issues, including Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians and planned arms sales by Germany to Saudi Arabia (Weingardt 2000, 292–299). More recently, German decisionmakers have been rather critical about the Israeli settlement policy, with Israel refuting or simply ignoring their statements (Oppermann and Hansel 2019, 92–99). On a more general level, one could question whether Germany’s policy of peaceful change toward Israel has contributed to peaceful regional change in the Middle East more broadly or whether its stellar commitment to Israel and the ensuing trade-­offs in its relationships with other countries from the region have contributed to generating the opposite effect. Still, the normative obligations that have driven Germany’s foreign policy from the outset continue to guide its policy of peaceful change toward Israel. As a result, West German chancellor Brandt’s description of the bilateral relationship in the early 1970s as “normal relations with a special character” (Weingardt 2000, 223) still holds.

Eastern Europe Germany’s efforts to pursue peaceful foreign policy change have not been restricted to Western countries. Throughout the Cold War, it engaged in such policy toward countries from the Eastern bloc. However, contrary to the aforementioned activities related to France and Israel, the Federal Republic’s efforts vis-­à-­vis the Soviet Union and its allies were more limited in scope. Rather than seeking a fundamental transformation in the respective bilateral relationships, as a “maximalist” understanding of the concept would suggest, the Federal Republic aimed at concluding territorial and sovereignty agreements in the “minimalist” sense of peaceful change. A first important step in the country’s rapprochement with states from the Eastern bloc occurred under Chancellor Adenauer. During his visit to Moscow in 1955, he and Nikita Khrushchev agreed to the establishment of official diplomatic relations, as demanded by the Soviets, and the release of the remaining German prisoners of war, as demanded by the Federal Republic (Schwarz 1994b, 207–222). Another impulse came during the late 1960s under the first grand coalition government between the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and the Social Democrats (SPD) (1966–1969). During that period, the “Hallstein Doctrine,” which aimed at preventing other states from recognizing the German Democratic Republic (GDR) as a separate German state, declined in relevance, and the Federal Republic engaged in a more active policy toward the East, thus paving the way for a future normalization of relations (Dannenberg 2008, 67–130). Yet the most far-­reaching change in the Federal Republic’s policy toward the East was ushered in by the first Social Democrat–led government under Chancellor Brandt (1969–1974). Skillfully exploiting the room for maneuvering that the temporary détente between the two superpowers had opened up, Brandt implemented his “New Eastern

Germany and Peaceful Change   487 Policy” (Neue Ostpolitik), which centered around the logic of “change through ­rapprochement” (Wandel durch Annäherung)—a policy that was heavily contested by the conservative political opposition for both ideological and material reasons (Höhne 1974). Representing “a break with the old confrontational formulas” (Dannenberg 2008, 31), Brandt’s policy led to the conclusion of treaties with the Soviet Union, Poland, the GDR, and Czechoslovakia as well as to the Four Power Agreement on Berlin, among other things. In line with the minimalist understanding of peaceful change, those treaties addressed territorial issues (i.e., borders) and called for the renunciation of force in bilateral relations. As a result, the Neue Ostpolitik led to an accommodation with countries from the East at the bilateral level. This policy was complemented by a multilateral process that culminated in the Helsinki Final Act (see later in the chapter). However, the subsequent deterioration of the superpowers’ relationship placed limits on the further advancement of the Federal Republic’s relationship with the East beyond consolidating Brandt’s accomplishments (Pittmann 1992, 134–151). Since the end of the Cold War, Germany has continued to pursue its policy of peaceful change through diplomacy and soft power toward countries from the now former Eastern bloc. Many ideas have been floated in this context with respect to Germany’s conducting a somewhat different new eastern policy, which now revolves around the  integration of Western and Eastern Europe (e.g., Weidenfeld  1997; Spohr Readman 2004). In this regard, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (SPD) recently called for a “new European Eastern Policy” (Auswärtiges Amt 2019b). Of course, such proposals are in themselves signals of the fact that existing policies have not accomplished their objectives. Indeed, on balance, Germany’s policies of peaceful change toward the East since reunification have produced mixed results. Arguably Germany has been the least successful in its efforts toward Russia, which in recent years has emerged as a challenger to the security architecture of Europe by changing existing borders through the military annexation of Ukrainian territory. Germany has responded to those activities, for instance, by supporting Russia’s expulsion from the G-­8 and the adoption of sanctions by the European Union. In addition, it has recalibrated its military posture, which now places much greater emphasis on the need to deter Russia. This has entailed taking on a leading role in NATO’s Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF) and contributions to NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence, which covers the Baltic countries and Poland. At the same time, and more in line with at least a minimalist understanding of peaceful change, Germany still seeks to engage Russia diplomatically, for instance through the “Normandy Format,”4 which aims at finding a solution to the Ukraine conflict, and by the continuation of economic exchanges, particularly in oil and gas. On the other hand, Germany’s relations with the Baltic countries and the “Viségrad group”5 have been fundamentally transformed during the past decades and now align with a more maximalist understanding of peaceful change. This has resulted from the Baltic countries’ integration into European structures and their ensuing sustained interactions with Germany within those structures. In addition, Germany has deepened its bilateral ties with those countries. Especially in its relations with Poland and the Czech

488   Klaus Brummer Republic, Germany has sought to emulate its multidimensional policy of reconciliation, which has proven so successful in reversing its relationships with France and Israel (Feldman 2012).

Rising Powers Germany has recently extended its policy of peaceful foreign policy change to rising powers, as illustrated by its interactions with India and China. As in the previous examples, this policy evolved first and foremost around the creation of joint institutions. Further, the case of China indicates that Germany today does not restrict its pursuit of peaceful foreign policy change to democratic countries but extends it to nondemocratic countries as well. Contrary to the previous examples, however, from the 1990s onward Germany’s ­policies toward the two rising Asian powers have been driven first and foremost by economic motives rather than political ones (Heilmann 2007; Wagner 2007).6 This holds particularly true for China, which in 2018 was Germany’s number one trading partner in terms of exports and imports, amounting to around 200 billion euro (Statistisches Bundesamt 2019).7 However, more recently diplomatic and security aspects have gained greater attention in both bilateral relationships. Responding, above all, to China’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative as well as its increasingly assertive behavior in the South China Sea, Germany has started to perceive China as no longer only a “strategic partner” but also a “strategic competitor” (Bundesregierung  2019). Conversely, India is described not only as a “natural partner” (Auswärtiges Amt 2019c) of Germany but also, in the words of Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, as “the most important anchor of stability in South Asia,” and it is much closer to Germany’s own values and understanding of democracy than is China (Deutscher Bundestag 2019, 14,986). So whereas economic interaction runs much deeper in the German-­Chinese dyad, there is more overlap in the areas of diplomacy and security policy between Germany and India.8 Despite those differences, Germany has focused in both relationships on the creation of bilateral institutions as the key means to build and conduct its foreign policy. Most prominent among these institutions are joint sessions of cabinets (“intergovernmental consultations”), which Germany has conducted separately with China and India since 2011. In the case of China, the institutionalized dialogue is extended and deepened through some eighty additional “dialogue mechanisms,” which address a variety of issues, including the rule of law, human rights, trade, and the environment. In the case of India, some thirty such fora for dialogue and consultation exist (Auswärtiges Amt  2019c,  2019d,  2019e). Moreover, the relationships have been embedded within multilateral structures, including the G20 and dialogues between the EU on the one hand and China and India on the other. In addition, India is among the “participating countries” in the Alliance for Multilateralism, which Germany recently helped to create (Alliance for Multilateralism 2020), and it has also joined Germany as well as Japan and Brazil (“G4”) in their efforts to reform the UN Security Council (see also later in the chapter).

Germany and Peaceful Change   489 In short, Germany has sought to accommodate the rise of both democratic India and autocratic China peacefully through institution building and without resort to violence. Whereas the bilateral institutional web seems denser in the German-­Chinese relationship, the German-­Indian relationship is at least somewhat more entrenched in multilateral structures. However, in neither case have Germany’s efforts led to a transformation of bilateral interaction in the maximalist understanding of peaceful change, and there is nothing to suggest that this is about to alter.

Pursuing Peaceful Regional Change From the outset, Germany has pursued a policy of peaceful regional change through institution building as a complement to its bilateral undertakings. Indeed, its efforts toward reconciliation with the West, and France in particular, have been embedded from the outset in regional multilateral structures, most notably the European Union and its predecessors. Similarly, the Federal Republic’s policy of accommodation with several states from the Eastern bloc has been extended through multilateral structures, in the form of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) and more recently the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). While the latter efforts amounted to peaceful regional change in the minimalist understanding of the term (e.g., coexistence and peaceful settlement of conflicts), the former has led, in the maximalist understanding of the concept, to a fundamental transformation of state-­to-­state interactions in which war has become all but unthinkable.

European Integration The Federal Republic’s efforts to integrate itself into European structures begun shortly after its founding. The first step in this direction was the country’s accession to the Council of Europe, which was established in May 1949 and hence predates the ECSC. West German chancellor Adenauer’s motivations for taking his country into the Council of Europe were very similar to those that subsequently drove his support for the ECSC. Integration was perceived as an essential step toward normalizing the country’s status, in the sense of regaining sovereignty and becoming an equal member of the community of states. Adenauer expected reciprocity from the Western powers but was ready to take the first step by integrating the country into Western structures prior to regaining status and sovereignty. This policy was heavily contested not only by the political opposition but also within the cabinet. The Communist Party (KPD) categorically objected to Adenauer’s policy, instead calling for emulating the policy of the German Democratic Republic by de facto binding itself to the Soviet Union. The Social Democrats (SPD) wanted to receive concessions from the Western powers prior to accession to the Council of Europe. And even

490   Klaus Brummer within the cabinet, several ministers opposed the policy. The most prominent was the federal minister of the interior, Gustav Heinemann. His concerns with Adenauer’s policy ran so deep that he decided to leave not only the cabinet but also the CDU and to establish a new party, the All-­German People’s Party, which in the 1953 elections ran, albeit unsuccessfully, on a platform advocating a neutral position for Western Germany between the West and the East. Ultimately, this multifaceted opposition amounted to nothing, in that Adenauer moved forward with his preferred policy regardless (Brummer and Thies 2015). A similar logic of “integration in return for status and sovereignty” underpinned Adenauer’s subsequent decision to join the ECSC and shortly afterward the European Economic Community (EEC). These developments must be seen in the aforementioned context of the German-­French reconciliation process, which has been embedded in multilateral European structures from the outset. Similarly, the two countries proved crucial for the “deepening” (i.e., the further transfer of sovereignty to the supranational level) and “widening” (i.e., bringing in new member states) of the European integration process in subsequent decades. As a result, state-­to-­state interactions first among Western European countries and since the end of the Cold War also including a dozen countries from the former Eastern bloc and the Balkans have been fundamentally transformed. While acting jointly with France for the most part, Germany has been portrayed occasionally as the actual leader of the integration process. Such assessments have been based on its economic prowess, and after reunification also on factors such as population, size, and the country’s geographic location as a “central power” in Europe (Schwarz 1994c; Münkler 2015). However, Germany has never felt particularly comfortable in such an ascribed or actual leadership position. Not incidentally, Paterson (2011) referred to the country as Europe’s “reluctant hegemon.” Similarly, Germany has often been criticized for not providing enough leadership or at least guidance and vision to the integration process. In this sense, a Polish foreign minister once suggested that he “fears Germany’s power less than her inactivity” (Sikorski 2011). While Germany arguably has behaved more assertively in recent years, for instance during the Eurozone crisis and the “migration crisis” (Harnisch 2019), there is little to suggest that this amounts to an abandonment of its policy of peaceful regional change. In short, Germany has considered the European integration process the key mech­an­ism to pursue its policy of peaceful regional change, which revolves around the fostering, promotion, and expansion of norms, rules, and institutions. In this process, Germany has been willing to make significant concessions, for instance in terms of net financial transfers to other countries and, of most political as well as symbolic relevance, giving up its currency, the Deutsche Mark, in exchange for the euro. Having said that, this policy of peaceful regional change has certainly been in the national interests of Germany. Initially, it opened up the possibility of reclaiming status and sovereignty, thereby rendering the country “normal” again; later, it proved crucial for getting especially France’s consent to German unification, with the country remaining firmly embedded in European

Germany and Peaceful Change   491 structures after unification. Overall, then, in line with the maximalist understanding of peaceful regional change that renders war virtually unthinkable, Germany has made significant contributions to the creation of a security community in Europe that, following the criteria offered by Deutsch and colleagues (1957), not only contains all the elements of a “pluralistic” community but at least in part also those of an even more deeply integrated “amalgamated” one (Brummer 2013).

CSCE/OSCE In addition to establishing and fostering the (initially Western) European integration process, Germany has also played an important role in terms of institution building between the West and the East, both during and after the Cold War. During the former period, the CSCE (1973–1975), which culminated in the Helsinki Final Act (1975), ­represented the most important episode in this regard. In the Final Act, the signatories committed themselves to refrain from the threat or use of force and to respect the inviolability of frontiers, among other things. Though not in the driver’s seat of the proc­ess, the Federal Republic nonetheless made significant contributions to formulating the contents of the Final Act (Peter 2011, 18). A multilateral security conference for all of Europe—an idea that had been voiced by various actors from the East and the West from the mid-­1950s onward—offered another diplomacy-­focused avenue to pursue the Federal Republic’s policy of peaceful change toward the East. More specifically, the CSCE presented the opportunity to both embed and extend the country’s bilateral “New Eastern Policy,” which, as previously discussed, led to the conclusion of several treaties between the Federal Republic and countries from the East—a multilateral institutionalized framework (Hakkarainen  2011). As Romano (2009, 144–145) argues, “The whole approach and attitude of the FRG [Federal Republic of Germany] before, during and after the CSCE was tailored according to Ostpolitik goals, schedules and tactics.” In addition, the conference offered another forum for the Federal Republic to present itself as an equal actor on the international scene, like its membership in the United Nations, which came about at almost the same time, as outlined later in the chapter (Peter 2015, 85–86). Similar to other efforts in the pursuit of a policy of peaceful change before and after, the CSCE policy of the Social Democratic–led governments under Chancellors Brandt (until 1974) and Schmidt (1974–1982) was met by harsh criticism from the political opposition, albeit to no avail. Especially the conservatives, who were still trying to cope with the “trauma” that the New Eastern Policy had inflicted on them, feared that any panEuropean agreement would not only cement and legitimate the Soviet predominance over Eastern Europe but also lead to a “Finlandization” of their own country (Schaefer 2008; Peter 2015, 113–116). Rather than representing the conclusion of pan-­European exchanges on issues ranging from the military and security to the economy to humanitarian issues, the Final

492   Klaus Brummer Act contained provisions pertaining to a follow-­up process. The main goals of this process, during which major meetings were subsequently convened in Belgrade, Madrid, and Vienna, were to implement the agreements reached in Helsinki and to continue ­dialogue between East and West more generally. Those goals were shared by the Federal Republic, which considered the post-­Helsinki process the primary vehicle for continuing its policy of rapprochement with the East within a multilateral institutionalized framework using diplomatic means. The country placed particular emphasis on the humanitarian dimension, through which it hoped to create some relief for individual citizens and to contribute to a certain opening of communist societies more broadly (Peter 2011, 2015). Later, Germany advocated for a further strengthening and institutionalization of the CSCE, which was eventually brought about by the latter’s transformation into the OSCE in 1995. However, over the years the OSCE’s importance in German foreign policy has declined because the organization has become just one among several organizations tasked with the transformation and stabilization of the European political space broadly conceived, next to the Council of Europe and NATO’s “partnership for peace” program, and is subordinated to the EU (Roloff 2007). Still, Germany continues to value the OSCE’s contributions, particularly in the areas of conflict prevention and monitoring (e.g., in Ukraine). Consequently, it still uses the organization to contribute to peaceful regional change in Europe at least in the minimalist understanding of the term, which emphasizes the upholding of rights and obligations of countries and the diplomatic solution of conflicts within an institutionalized framework (e.g.,  Merkel 2015).

Pursuing Peaceful Global Change Finally, Germany has pursued a policy of peaceful global change. For a country that seeks to promote multilateralism, international institutions, and a norms- and rules-­based international order, this is hardly surprising. It is equally straightforward that Germany has placed particular emphasis on the UN in this regard. However, as the following discussion shows, the country’s policy toward as well as within the UN has also been influenced by more narrow self-­interest, not least with respect to status considerations. Similarly, it is also not to say that Germany has made major contributions to the realization of peaceful global change. Indeed, the limitations and constraints that Germany has had to cope with in the UN system have been evident from the outset. For more than two decades, the ‘logics’ of the Cold War prevented the very accession of the Federal Republic to the UN. It was not until the period of détente between the superpowers in the late 1960s and early 1970s— which also provided the background for Chancellor Brandt’s New Eastern Policy, discussed previously—that the Federal Republic (and the German Democratic Republic, for that matter) became a member of the UN, in 1973 (Wentker 2008). Having said that,

Germany and Peaceful Change   493 the country had already been active within the world organization before that date. Indeed, the country had been a “quasi-­member” (Blumenwitz  1981) or an “active non-member” (Rittberger 1990) since the early 1950s. The Federal Republic acceded to specialized agencies, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in 1950 and the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1951. On that basis, the country made manifold contributions to the UN, and it did so for reasons very similar to those that underpinned its ardent support for the European integration process, which ­commenced during the same period. Arguably most important is that the country’s participation within the UN system until 1973, even below the level of full membership, contributed to the “normalization” of its status within the international community of states. Further, the Federal Republic’s engagement was driven by concerns over its specific status vis-­à-­vis the GDR, whose accession to the United Nations had to be prevented at all costs since it would have run counter to the Federal Republic’s claim to be the sole legitimate representative of Germany (Alleinvertretungsanspruch) (Czempiel 1971). Last but not least, the country’s participation in the UN system opened up the opportunity to support and foster a norms- and rules-­based international order and to contribute to the provision of public goods more broadly. As a full member, the Federal Republic’s policy continued to be guided by those factors. Major accomplishments in status attainment were the country’s election to a nonpermanent seat on the UN Security Council twice, in 1977/1978 and 1987/1988. In substantive terms, the Federal Republic placed particular emphasis on issues such as human rights, disarmament and arms control, and the integration of countries from the developing world into the world market (Knapp 2007, 731–732). Since reunification, Germany’s pursuit of peaceful global change through the UN has continued. Arguably the most notable change is the country’s new take on foreign deployment of its armed forces, which has entailed contributions to not only UN-­ mandated operations conducted through NATO or the EU, but also UN peacekeeping operations (see the conclusion in this chapter). Germany has also become one of the main financial contributors to the UN. In 2019 it covered 6.1 percent of the regular ­budget, trailing only the United States, China, and Japan (United Nations Secretariat 2018). Further, the country has taken on responsibility during four additional stints as a nonpermanent member of the Security Council since reunification, most recently in 2019/2020. Germany has used these and other activities to push for formally enhancing its status within the organization, most prominently expressed in its, albeit so far unsuccessful, quest together with Japan, India, and Brazil (“G4”) for a permanent seat on the Security Council (Andreae 2002). In addition, the country continues to consider the UN the ­primary global institution for fostering a norms- and rules-­based international order. While its leverage is limited by structural factors, Germany keeps pursuing its policy of peaceful global change through the United Nations in the hope of thus contributing to “a durably peaceful, stable and just global order.”9

494   Klaus Brummer

Conclusion Since its foundation in 1949, (Western) Germany has pursued a multipronged policy of peaceful change that encompasses peaceful foreign policy change toward other countries, peaceful regional change on the European continent, and peaceful global change. In most instances, such policies have contributed to peaceful change in the minimalist understanding of the term: in the sense of promoting change without the use of the military while leaving the underlying foundation for state-­to-­state interactions unaltered, for instance vis-­à-­vis countries from the Eastern bloc during the Cold War. However, in a few instances Germany has managed to promote peaceful change in its maximalist understanding. Indeed, its pursuit of peaceful foreign policy change toward France and Israel, as well as its policy of peaceful regional change within the institutional framework that has become the EU, have contributed to a fundamental transformation of state interaction in which nonviolent cooperation has become the norm and recourse to war virtually unthinkable. While the preceding discussion portrays Germany as a role model for a country in pursuit of peaceful change, since reunification one development in particular has cast a shadow on this picture, at least at first glance. In the early 1990s, Germany started to deploy its military abroad, thus ending its “checkbook diplomacy.” While used hesitantly and based on unclear constitutional foundations at first (Krause  2013), the Bundeswehr has become a “normal” tool of statecraft. Over the last thirty years, Germany has deployed a total of some 425,000 soldiers abroad, incurring costs of around 20 billion euro (Deutscher Bundestag 2018). Hence, there is nothing sporadic or temporary about these deployments, some of which have lasted for some twenty years (Afghanistan, Kosovo). Having said that, several arguments can be made for why this particular alteration in Germany’s external behavior does not really contradict a policy of peaceful change. First, Germany always conducts its foreign deployments not only in collaboration with partner states but also within institutionalized frameworks (as opposed to ad hoc coalitions), above all NATO and the EU and, to a lesser degree, the UN. Second, these operations tend to be mandated by a resolution from the UN Security Council.10 Finally, Germany does not deploy its armed forces abroad in the pursuit of revisionist goals, such as altering borders and annexing territory. Instead, in accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter, its military operations seek to respond to challenges to international peace and security. Hence, the foreign deployments of the German military support other key dimensions of Germany’s external behavior, above all multilateral action within institutionalized frameworks in the pursuit of upholding international norms. And even though those deployments are obviously not peaceful as such since they are, after all, about the use of military force in the pursuit of political goals, those goals tend to center around conflict resolution and post-­conflict stabilization. This is not to say that these deployments

Germany and Peaceful Change   495 are entirely altruistic, because in most instances they are not; Germany benefits, for instance, from a stable regional milieu. However, a policy of peaceful change that is at least in part also motivated by a country’s national interests, as certainly has been the case for Germany, is still that: a policy of peaceful change. Put differently, whereas a focus on just the means would lead to calling into question Germany’s continued aspirations to pursue a policy of peaceful change, a focus on the ends points to a different conclusion, all the more so since foreign deployments represent but one part of the country’s external behavior. In short, then, Germany has pursued a policy of peaceful change for decades, and there is not much reason to suggest that even in the face of rising populism and anti-­Semitism at home (Steinmeier 2020), this is about to change anytime soon.

Notes 1. Throughout this chapter, “Germany” refers to the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). 2. For definitions, see the introduction to this Handbook by T. V. Paul. 3. Most prominently, Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer from the Green Party referred to both “Never again War” and “Never again Auschwitz” when making the case for Germany’s participation in the NATO-­led operation against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia over Kosovo in 1999. 4. The “Normandy Format” brings together Germany, France, Russia, and Ukraine. 5. This group comprises Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. 6. Prior to the end of the Cold War, neither China nor India played a prominent role in Germany’s external relations. 7. India occupied the twenty-­fifth place in this ranking with some 21 billion euro. 8. Whether this is about to change as a result of India’s more recent Hindu nationalist foreign policy (Hall 2017) remains to be seen. 9. This goal is stipulated in the “coalition agreement” of the grand coalition government under Chancellor Merkel that took office in 2018. 10. Germany’s participation in Operation Allied Force against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in defense of Kosovo is the exception to this rule, since it was conducted through NATO but not mandated by the UN Security Council, where there was no agreement among the veto powers.

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chapter 27

Ja pa n a n d Pe acefu l Ch a nge i n the I n ter nationa l System The Persistent Peace Nation Thomas U. Berger

No country in the world, and certainly no major power, is at least rhetorically as ­committed to the cause of peace and the peaceful evolution of the international system as Japan. The first paragraph of Article 9 of the Japanese constitution reads: “Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes.” The article goes on to say that to this end Japan will not maintain air, sea, or ground forces or warfighting material and that it does not recognize the right of the state to belligerency (Prime Minister’s Office n.d.). The Japanese defense debates are suffused with legalistic language referring back to the Japanese constitution, and Japanese political leaders repeatedly invoke both the constitution and the spirit of pacifism in their speeches. The notion of Japan as a “peace nation” (Heiwa Kokka) is foundational to the post-­1945 Japanese state and in the minds of ordinary Japanese is inextricably intertwined with the evolution of Japan’s postwar democracy and economic growth. Yet while professions of pacifism are commonplace in Japanese public discourse, there are many who are dubious about their sincerity or their efficacy, or both. Cynics on both the political left and the political right point out that reality is sharply at odds with the high-­minded ideals expressed in Article 9. After all, Japan has one of the largest military establishments in the world, with a defense budget of 5.3 trillion yen in 2020 (approximately $50 billion) and an authorized strength of 247,000 well-­trained troops equipped with advanced weapons systems, including F-­35 fifth-­generation jets, Apache helicopters, and advanced SM 3 antiballistic missile systems. Japan is the most important Asian regional ally of the

502   Thomas U. Berger United States and provides it with some of the largest military bases it has outside North America. During the Cold War the two countries worked closely to counter growing Soviet military power in the Far East, and today the two sides are once again further deepening their security relationship, this time in response to the emergence of a nuclear-­armed North Korea and the burgeoning power of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). For critics on the left, both inside and outside of Japan, this stark gap between rhetoric and reality makes a mockery of the ideals expressed by Article 9. The claims of loving peace by Japan’s political leadership is nothing more than an exercise in hypocrisy, designed to lull the Japanese people into a false sense of security while concealing the fact that Japan is in fact steadily moving toward becoming once more a highly militarized society (DiFilipo 2002). Not surprisingly, critics on the right have a very different take. Some US commentators and many US policy makers share the Left’s view that Japanese pacifism is a sham, or at least an increasingly thin pretext. However, they see the primary motivation for Japan’s expression of pacifism not so much as a sop to the Japanese public’s idealism but as a clever tool for Japan’s free riding—or at least ‘cheap riding’—on the US-­Japanese defense alliance. Since the 1950s, Japanese leaders have used Article 9 to evade US demands for greater burden sharing, holding defense spending to around 1 percent of GDP while studiously avoiding sending its troops in harm’s way. When Japan is pushed hard enough, however, or when circumstances suit it, it turns out that Article 9 is remarkably elastic, and the Japanese government can reinterpret it  to  do the minimum necessary at the lowest possible cost to Japan (Hook and McCormack 2001). While each of these criticisms contains elements of truth, as is so often the case, a close examination of the evidence suggests a more complex reality. While there is no small measure of hypocrisy in Japan’s defense debates, its pacifist reflexes have been very real and have had significant constraining effects on policy. At the same time, while Japanese idealism has been a factor in shaping Japanese discourse, it has altered and evolved over time, in response to changes in both Japanese politics and the changing geostrategic environment in the region and the world. The underlying DNA that has informed the Japanese thinking on defense, however, has not changed as much as is sometimes hoped or feared. Rather than drifting slowly and inexorably toward what one leading analyst has called a form of “Reluctant Realism” (Green 2003), Japanese defense policy continues to be characterized by a sort of “Lingering Liberalism,” one that for better or for worse tries to continue to push the international system toward increased cooperation and rejects the inevitability of conflict even while trying to ­pragmatically cope with an increasingly harsh security environment. While military defense has been an important component of Japanese foreign policy, there has been a strong tendency to subordinate military instruments to civilian ones such as diplomacy, trade, and foreign aid as ways of reshaping Japan’s international environment in ways that serve its interests.

Japan and Peaceful Change in the International System    503

The Genesis of Japan as a “Peace Nation” The concept of the Japanese peace nation is of course defined by experiences of the generation of the Second World War. One might well expect that the horrors of a war in which approximately three million Japanese citizens were killed and its major cities were reduced to rubble, followed by the nation’s being occupied for the very first time in its recorded history, would leave scars on the collective memory of a society (Berger 1998). In the aftermath of the war, Japanese politics became deeply divided between three groups. The first, which was initially favored by the American occupation, was the progressives. Supported by the labor unions—including most prominently the Teacher’s Union—and the left-­wing intelligentsia, the progressives were committed to a radical restructuring of Japanese politics and society along Marxist lines. In terms of foreign policy, mainstream progressives, represented politically by the Japan Socialist Party (JSP), favored a stance of complete, unarmed neutrality (hibusō chūritsu). Ironically, given their opposition to the alliance with the United States, they were powerful defenders of the American-­imposed constitution, and in particular of Article 9, which renounced the right to the use of war and promised that Japan would not maintain a military (Hellegers 2002). Arrayed against the progressive Left were the Japanese conservatives. A large and diverse group, the conservatives relied heavily on rural voters as well as small and medium-­sized businesses for electoral support. The conservatives favored joining the United States as part of the global alliance against Communism and rebuilding Japan as a major military power. Many conservative leaders were implicated in the prewar regime, most notably Kishi Nobusuke, prime minister between 1958 and 1960, who had been minister of munitions in the Tojo Hideki government and a signatory of the declaration of war on the United States. In the postwar period, Kishi and many other senior wartime officials were rehabilitated by the US Occupation authority, in large part because of their utility in countering the rise of the Left in Japan. Though now pro-­American, these archconservative figures were also committed to reviving Japanese nationalism and revising what they viewed to be the excesses of the Occupation, beginning with Article 9. Between the progressive and conservative camps were a large number of more centrist Japanese who had no particular ideological commitment but were primarily focused on rebuilding their lives. They were suspicious of the Marxist ideology of the progressives but were also opposed to anything that smacked of a return to militarism. On foreign policy, their preferred position was summed up by Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru: that Japan would rely on the United States for security while focusing on economic development.

504   Thomas U. Berger In the early post-­1945 period, domestic and international circumstances appeared to favor the progressive camp. The early emphasis by the US Occupation on the de­mil­i­ta­ri­ za­tion of Japan—including the purge of much of the wartime elite—weakened the conservatives. The extreme exhaustion of the Japanese public after the war and intense public anger over the enormous human suffering caused by the militarist government’s policies helped legitimate the Left’s pacifist policies (Dower  1999). Moreover, in the absence of a direct military threat, the average Japanese saw little reason for rearmament. To put it simply, pacifism was an easy sell in Japan after 1945. As the Cold War grew more tumultuous however, attitudes began to change. The US Occupation grew concerned with stemming the tide of Communism in Asia and looked to Japan as the key regional partner. After 1947, many of those who had been purged— including Kishi—were released from custody and allowed to reenter Japanese political life. The Japanese business community—aided by the United States—worked hard to overcome the differences between the more moderate centrists and the more nationalist conservatives. In 1955 these efforts led to the creation of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), an uneasy coalition between centrists and conservatives, but with the more nationalist right wing organized around Kishi holding the upper hand. Step by step the United States, working together with the conservatives, began to retreat from the pacifist stance that had marked the early Cold War years. After the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, Japan began to develop its own military, the Japan Self Defense Forces. In 1952 Japan signed a mutual security treaty, providing the United States with military bases in return for a US security guarantee. The Treaty of San Francisco ending the state of war between the Western powers and Japan critically did not include the Soviet Union, even though it was formally an Allied power. By the late 1950s, Japan had clearly placed itself with the Western side of the Cold War. Conservatives’ efforts to implement their preferred agenda, however, foundered on waves of popular opposition and dissent from centrists within the LDP. While Japan did rearm, its armed forces were restricted to a territorial defense role. And while Japan was aligned with the United States, the security relationship was a highly asymmetrical one. The United States committed to defending Japan if it were attacked, but the Japanese constitution was interpreted as specifically forbidding the reverse. In 1960, when the administration of Kishi Nobosuke appeared to push for Japan taking a more active role, the public backlash led centrists within the LDP and the Japanese political establishment to withdraw their support and force Kishi to resign. Kishi’s successor, the more centrist Ikeda Hayato, protégé of Yoshida Shigeru, declared a moratorium on security issues and turned to economic development instead. As this brief review makes clear, Japan’s stance on security never corresponded to a pure form of pacifism. Rather, it was based on the principle of a highly restrained approach to national security, which allowed for the maintenance of a relatively small defensive military and the creation of a highly asymmetrical strategic alliance in which Japan aligned with the United States on central diplomatic issues—such as the nonrecognition of the People’ s Republic of China—and provided the US military with bases in return for a broad US security guarantee. This approach arguably satisfied no one.

Japan and Peaceful Change in the International System    505 For Japanese progressives, the alliance with the United States and the existence of the Self Defense Force were the height of hypocrisy on the part of the conservatives, blatantly holding open the door to later militarization and the recreation of a more militarized and authoritarian political order. The Left constantly feared that Japan was one crisis away from an authoritarian takeover. For their part, the conservatives believed that the preservation of Article 9 and the imposition of various restrictions on Japan’s Self Defense Forces not only hampered Japanese self-­defense but were being used by the Left to gradually push Japan toward a neutralist stance that would give the Soviet Union and the PRC a free hand to consolidate their power over Asia as well as move Japan toward a socialist form of government. Both left-­wing progressives and right-­wing conservatives were convinced that the very fate of the nation hinged on preventing the other side from achieving its objectives. In the end, neither side won out, and a compromise position centered on Yoshida Shigeru’s low-­key approach focusing on economic development while relying primarily on the United States prevailed. Japan’s geostrategic environment provided powerful incentives for this type of an approach. Unlike in Europe at this time, the first half of the Cold War in Asia was highly unstable. In the wake of the collapse of the old colonial empires, Asia was a seething caldron of contending political forces seeking to establish control. Virtually every country outside of Japan, including China, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam, underwent violent internal conflicts, two of which—Korea and Vietnam—drew in the United States and turned into intense foci of the burgeoning US-­USSR strategic competition. Altogether well in excess of ten million people died in the conflicts between 1945 and 1975. At the same time, as an island nation separated from the chaos of the rest of Asia and protected by the overwhelming might of the US Occupation, Japan was in a relatively insulated position. As long as the United States could guarantee Japan’s continued access to international markets and resources, the Japanese people saw little reason to become involved in overseas conflicts. Given that the United States was both the world’s richest nation and determined to prevent the industrial resources of Japan from falling into the hands of its Communist adversaries, Japan’s leaders could have some confidence that the United States would continue to support them. To use the language of international relations theory, Japan had greater fear of being entrapped by the United States into conflicts in which it had no interest— such as Vietnam—than of being abandoned by the United States (Tsuchiyama 1995). Japan’s relatively passive stance on security issues was criticized both within and outside of Japan. For some—especially on the left—Japan’s support for US policy made it an accomplice to the enormous destructiveness of the Cold War in Asia. For others—typically on the right—while the US-­Japanese alliance helped stabilize Asia, it did so at the price of Japanese national autonomy. Regardless of whether one accepts these criticisms or not, it is indisputable that Japanese foreign policy won Japan the space it needed to rebuild itself without re-­emerging as a military threat to its neighbors. Moreover, the second half of the Cold War in Asia was far more peaceful than the first. The last major instance of interstate war was in 1979, when the PRC briefly invaded Vietnam. And while various interstate wars would simmer on—most notably in Cambodia and

506   Thomas U. Berger Myanmar/Burma—even these declined in intensity compared with the raging inferno of the early Cold War period (Alagappa 2002). The question that we next turn to is, to what extent did Japan contribute to this remarkable structural transformation of the region?

The Peace Nation in Practice: 1960 to 2012 In the decades following the end of the US Occupation, Japan underwent one of the most rapid economic expansions ever recorded. By the 1970s, Japan had overtaken the United States in many industrial sectors, including steel, consumer electronics, automobiles, and semiconductors. In the early 1990s, it became a common refrain that the Cold War was over, and Germany and Japan had won it. With its increased economic power came increased political stature and growing pressures on Japan to take on a larger international role. By the time the Cold War ended, Japan appeared poised to become one of the world’s leading powers. Yet even as the old East-­West conflict receded, in its wake came a host of new, more disparate, and more complex security threats, beginning with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990—threatening the Persian Gulf region, from which Japan imported over 60 percent of its energy supplies—­ followed soon thereafter by the first crisis over North Korean nuclear weapons, a potential conflict on Japan’s doorstep. In theory, Japan could have responded in a number of ways. It could have jettisoned the restrictions that its armed forces had operated under, increased its defense spending, and re-­emerged as a major military power. A rearmed, more confident Japan might have become a more reliable partner of the United States, following a path broadly similar to that of another island nation, Great Britain. This was the path that many on the Japanese right, as well as US government officials, hoped Japan would follow (Armitage and Nye  2000). Alternatively, it could have followed a more independent foreign policy, using its military to protect its interests on its own terms (Johnson 1995). Following either of those options would have represented a significant rupture with Japan’s postwar peace nation stance. Many in Japan hoped for an alternative vision, one in which Japan would decrease its dependence on the security alliance with the United States and manage its security environment through trade and diplomacy without increasing its military forces. Such a policy, had it been implemented, would have seen Japan move closer to the ideals of Article 9 (Higuchi 1994). In the end, the path that Japan chose hewed more closely to the one it had been following since 1960: a continued commitment to the rhetoric of the peace nation, a heavy reliance on trade and diplomacy to try to reshape its international environment while hedging against potential threats through the maintenance of the US-­Japan alliance, and a powerful but constrained Self Defense Force. A number of factors contributed to this outcome.

Japan and Peaceful Change in the International System    507 Domestically, Japan continued to be constrained by the fierce ideological battle between progressives and conservatives that had developed during the immediate postwar period. While the conservatives were able to dominate Japanese politics, they could do so only in coalition with centrists inside the LDP and minor opposition parties. Every effort to expand Japan’s military role was predictably met with fierce resistance from the progressive camp. If conservatives pressed too hard—as they did in 1960—centrist members of the governing coalition tended to defect, forcing the conservatives to either give up or accept relatively modest changes in Japan’s defense posture. In addition, the incredible improvement in their standard of living made ordinary Japanese reluctant to tamper with the status quo. By the late 1970s, opinion surveys showed that the overwhelming majority of respondents favored maintaining the alliance in its present form over either adopting unarmed neutrality (the option advocated by progressives) or becoming an independent military power (as promoted by the more nationalist conservatives) (Berger  1998, 67, 112–116, 151–155). Acceptance of the Self Defense Forces grew as well, though relatively few young Japanese were ready to join them. When asked whether they would fight if Japan went to war, surprising numbers said they would prefer to either flee, surrender, or engage in some other form of protest (Chief Cabinet Secretary’s Office 2019, chart 13). To be sure, there was an upsurge in Japanese self-­confidence and an increased willingness to challenge other countries. The primary outlet for this increased assertiveness, however, was in the economic sphere, as Japan finally seemed to achieve its century-­old dream of catching up to and overtaking the West, and the main focus of nationalist sentiment was trade. When the most outspoken nationalist politician of the era—LDP parliamentarian and later governor of Tokyo Ishihara Shintarō—wrote his best-­selling manifesto Towards a Japan That Can Say “No”—his main target was unfair US trade sanctions. Defense and military issues were decidedly de-­emphasized (Ishihara & Morita 1989). This emphasis on economics suited the new nationalism that had emerged in the postwar period. When people were asked on surveys what they were most proud of about Japan, the number one answer was Japan’s economic prowess and high standard of living. Emperor worship and militarism had been replaced with what one perceptive analyst of Japan’s ideological currents, Ōtake Hideo, called maihomushugi or “my home-­ism” (Ōtake 1983). Japanese defense and national security policy did evolve in ways that challenged Japan’s stance as a peace nation. These changes came in three major waves in response to key changes in Japan’s security environment. The first was in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the world witnessed a major intensification of the Cold War pressures and the Soviet Union deployed significant air and sea forces to East Asia, threatening Japan. The second was in the mid-­1990s with the end of the Cold War, when the continued viability of US alliances came into question and an array of new security threats emerged, including a nuclear-­armed North Korea and a more assertive PRC. And the third was after 2001, when Japan and other US allies came under intense pressure to assist the United States in its “war on terror.”

508   Thomas U. Berger Japan responded to these external challenges by intensifying its security cooperation with the United States. Beginning with the 1978 US-­Japan “Guidelines on Defense Cooperation,” Japan began joint training and planning with the United States for dealing with a military contingency involving the defense of Japan. The Japanese Self Defense Forces expanded their role in a number of critical areas, such as air defense, anti-­submarine warfare, and later ballistic missile defense, but generally eschewed developing offensive capabilities, which they left to the United States. In the 2000s Japan expanded its support for the alliance by providing logistical support for US operations overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan. Japanese forces also began to be deployed overseas, albeit in a limited capacity as peacekeepers operating under the aegis of the United Nations or to assist with nation building and reconstruction efforts in Iraq. At the same time, Japanese defense policy continued to operate under various constraints designed to limit the armed forces and its use of military operations except for the defense of Japan. One of the most important and enduring of these was the three nonnuclear principles, under which Japan promised it would not develop, deploy, or allow the transit of nuclear weapons on its territory. Another was the restriction of Japanese defense spending to approximately 1 percent of GDP, which was officially announced in 1976 and continued into the 2020s. While in every country there are budg­et­ary debates over the choice between “guns” (military spending) and “butter” (social welfare spending), what is remarkable is how consistently “butter” has won out over “guns” in Japan. Behind this continued anti-­military bias were a number of domestic political realities. One was that the Japanese public was remarkably unenthusiastic about military ventures of any sort. While there was general acceptance—or tolerance—of peacekeeping missions over time, in every instance opinion surveys showed clear majorities opposing fresh deployments (Midford 2011, 71, 84; Sakaki et al. 2019). Likewise, there was general opposition to increasing defense spending. In stark contrast to debates over national defense, there was strong support inside the Japanese system for policies that used nonmilitary instruments to enhance Japanese security and its prestige on the international stage. As the only country in the world to have suffered atomic attack, there was strong domestic political support for promoting nuclear disarmament, and Japan was one of the founding members of the International Atomic Energy Agency in 1958. In 1974 Prime Minister Satō Eiskau won the Nobel Peace Prize for his annunciation of the three nonnuclear principles in 1967, and in 1975 the Japanese government signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Japan also emerged as a major supplier of foreign aid. Early on foreign aid was an important tool in Japan’s campaign to normalize diplomatic relations with other countries in Asia that had suffered at the hands of imperial forces in the pre-­1945 period. The $800 million in foreign aid that it gave South Korea in 1965 was critical in winning Korean support for stabilizing what had been a particularly difficult relationship and played a major role in helping fund the Park Chung Hee government’s industrialization plans. Likewise, between 1978 and the early 2000s Japan gave between one and two billion dollars in overseas development assistance (ODA) to China, a significant sum considering that in 1978 Chinese GDP was under $100 billion.

Japan and Peaceful Change in the International System    509 In the late 1970s, ODA was given a new prominence in Japanese foreign policy by Prime Minister Fukuda Takeo, who in a landmark speech to the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) promised that Japan, as a country committed to peace, would massively increase its foreign aid programs as a way of building mutual trust and confidence with its Asian neighbors (Lam, 2013). By the mid-­1990s Japan was donating over $10 billion a year in bilateral ODA and had become the largest aid donor in the world, surpassing for a while even the United States. While early on foreign aid was largely geared to promoting Japanese commercial interests, by the 1990s Japanese Policymakers increasingly saw aid as an important tool for promoting regional peace and helping stabilize countries such as Myanmar-­Burma and East Timor (Arase 2005; Söderberg 2018). Closely linked to its aid policies were Japan’s efforts at promoting regional institutions, beginning with the establishment of the Asian Development Bank in 1966, followed by a series of other major initiatives, including the Pacific Basin Economic Council (PBEC) in 1967, as well as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in 1989. After the end of the Cold War, Japan took an active role in fostering institutions that more specifically focused on security issues, starting with Foreign Minister Nakayama Tarō’s promotion of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in 1991 (Ashizawa 2013). In the twenty-­first century these efforts intensified further, with active Japanese support of the East Asian Summit and Foreign Minister Okada Katsuya’s proposals in 2009 for the creation of an East Asian Community, which hoped to promote the coming together of East Asia in much the way the European integration process had been launched with the creation of the European Economic Community in 1957. While both ODA and regional institutions were primarily focused on promoting economic cooperation, in the minds of Japanese Policymakers, economics and security were inextricably interlinked, a position that had been annunciated already in the 1950s as part of the Basic Policy on National Defense advanced by the Kishi government. In the 1980s the principle of economics as security was updated under the rubric of “comprehensive national security,” which bundled together national defense, foreign aid, regional institution building, and the promotion of food and energy security in a single package (Chapman et al. 1982). To sum up, Japan’s identity as a peace nation had a major impact on the type of policies that it chose to pursue once it had re-­emerged on the global stage. If Japan had converted formidable economic resources—in the 1990s it still represented over 60 percent of the Asian region’s GDP—it could easily have re-­emerged as the dominant military power in the region, whether in combination with the United States or on its own. Instead, it chose to play a restrained if important supporting role for US military he­gem­ony in maritime Asia and focused its energies on promoting trade and regional cooperation instead. While critics of Japanese foreign policy often criticize the tensions between its civilian and military components, a good case can be made that serendipitously it had hit upon a happy combination. Japan’s military efforts fell short of what many, including its own security experts, felt was needed to adequately defend the nation. Certainly many in the

510   Thomas U. Berger United States felt that Japan was guilty of free riding at America’s expense. Nonetheless, what it did do proved enough to help sustain the existing security order that Japan had come to depend on and the United States remained committed to the region. There were no major military conflicts after the Sino-­Vietnamese War of 1978, and Japan itself remained at peace and reasonably secure. Similarly, Japan’s civilian efforts in the areas of trade and foreign policy were riddled with contradictions, and it ultimately failed in its ambitions to foster a genuinely liberal regional order. Yet its policies undoubtedly helped promote significant economic growth in the region and encouraged its neighbors to follow Japan’s lead and focus on economic development rather than military competition. Almost despite itself, the peace nation had managed to not only survive but also flourish into the twenty-­first century.

The Peace Nation in the Dragon’s Maw Today, Japan’s peace nation identity is being challenged as never before. In 2006 the PRC overtook Japan as the world’s second largest economy. By 2020 the Chinese economy was nearly five times the size of Japan’s. China’s defense budget has grown at a similarly blistering pace, and the quality of its forces has increased commensurately. To make matters worse, Chinese perceptions of Japan turned sharply negative, with major eruptions of anti-­Japanese protests focusing on historical and territorial issues. In 2012, Sino-­Japanese relations entered a new, potentially dangerous stage as tensions increased sharply when Chinese naval and coast guard ships began to regularly face off against their Japanese counterparts around the disputed and uninhabited Senkaku-­Diaoyu islands. Beyond the Senkaku-­Diaoyus, China has also been asserting its territorial claims in the South China Seas and intensifying its pressure on Taiwan, all of which lie astride Japan’s vital sea lanes. In addition to China, Tokyo has to reckon with the growing nuclear arsenal and missile capabilities of North Korea, a country whose propaganda has threatened with some regularity to turn Tokyo into a “sea of fire” and which often fires missiles over Japan in an effort to blackmail the United States and its allies into acceding to its demands. Perhaps worst of all, Japan has had to worry about the reliability of the United States, especially following the election of Donald Trump, who openly questioned the value of alliances in general and who has demanded enormous payments for the continued stationing of US troops. Once again, Japan has to contend with the fear that it might find itself abandoned by the ally upon which its security has become so dependent. Confronted with this dramatically worsened security environment, the Japanese public has reacted with considerable alarm. Opinion surveys showing the fear that Japan might become involved in a war have risen sharply to levels that exceed what they were at the height of the Cold War. Japanese opinion polls also show dramatically negative views of China and North Korea. Whereas in the 1980s surveys showed that close to 70 percent of Japanese had positive impressions of China, after 2012 only approximately 15 percent of the Japanese public continued to do so (Genron 2019). The Japanese

Japan and Peaceful Change in the International System    511 public’s view of North Korea was even more negative, reinforced by the enormous media focus on the fate of Japanese citizens who had been kidnapped in the 1970s and 1980s by Korean agents. But while Japan’s view of the outside world darkened considerably, the Japanese public remained remarkably unwilling to support increased defense efforts. Surveys revealed that majorities continued to oppose increasing defense spending, and willingness to serve in the armed forces hardly increased at all (Midford  2011). Significant changes did occur at the level of Japan’s political leadership. Following the onset of the confrontation over the Senkakus in 2012, Abe Shinzo, the grandson of Kishi Nobusuke, became the head of the LDP and prime minister. Abe was the most conservative Japanese prime minister since his grandfather’s time and though mild-­mannered in his demeanor espoused the full gamut of traditional right-­wing positions, including a strong national defense, revision of the Japanese constitution and Article 9, and the promotion of a more positive view of modern Japanese history. Although many in Japan, including in his own party, were critical of his conservative views, Abe proved remarkably successful and went on to become the longest-­serving prime minister in Japanese history. During his tenure, he introduced a remarkable string of new initiatives in the area of defense and national security. Most notably, Abe empowered the Self Defense Forces to help defend US forces even outside the territorial defense of Japan, as well as intensifying security with a broader range of partners, including Australia and India. With the creation of the Japanese National Security Council, Abe also streamlined and centralized Japanese security policy making (Liff 2021). Despite these dramatic developments, there was remarkable continuity as well. Government reforms were met with fierce opposition, most notably in connection with the 2015 national security legislation. Quite unexpectedly, large crowds numbering in the tens of thousands came out to protest the new legislation. In one dramatic incident a protestor set himself on fire in a crowded Japanese subway station. Japanese defense spending hardly budged and remained stubbornly at around 1 percent of GDP. Abe was forced by outside pressure—including most importantly from the United States—to water down his efforts to promote a more revisionist view of modern Japanese history. Perhaps most important is that Abe’s efforts to advance the cause of revising the constitution foundered on opposition from not only his Komeitō coalition partners but also unease within the ranks of the LDP. At the same time, although Japan has been forced to abandon its dreams of regional leadership, it has continued to play an important role in promoting regional institutions and engaging potential enemies. While Japan’s foreign aid budget decreased in both absolute and relative terms, it continues to be a major international donor. Astonishingly, it did not end its aid program to China until 2018. Japan has been active in promoting regional institutions, most notably preserving the ambitious Transpacific Partnership (TPP) trade program even after the United States withdrew in 2016. And it has continued to work closely with China, supporting the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) proposed by Beijing as an alternative to the TPP and working with China’s Belt and Road Initiative even as it sought to rechannel and dilute its influence (Ito 2019).

512   Thomas U. Berger In the last years of his administration, Abe cautiously reached out to China, making an official state visit in 2019 and agreeing on a reciprocal visit by Xi Jinping in 2020, which had to be delayed because of the COVID crisis. While the level of trust remains low, Japan’s political leaders believe that a policy of unmitigated hostility toward China will prove counterproductive and that in the long run it needs to find some way of coming to terms with its giant neighbor.

Conclusion The story that emerges from this review of the history of Japan’s efforts to establish itself as a peace nation is not one of steady disillusionment. Japan continues to cling to the hope of creating a more peaceful regional environment, one that is more akin to the conditions that prevail in Western Europe, where European integration has tamed the fierce historical rivalry between the major European nations and where the primary focus of international politics has been trying to build the institutional mechanisms for cooperating on economic development and raising the standard of living. Unfortunately for Japan, it finds itself in the much harsher, forbidding environment of East Asia, where competitive nationalism still dominates political discourse and the potential for large-­ scale military conflict is very real. In the past, Japan has managed to meet similar challenges through a combination of realpolitik with a small “r” and Liberalism with a large “L.” When forced to do so, Japan has proven quite capable of balancing potential threats, pragmatically improving its alliance with the United States and adjusting its military doctrine and force structures to meet new challenges. At the same time, it has stubbornly insisted on trying to minimize the military side of its engagement in order to pursue more Liberal internationalist policies of economic and political engagement that seek to reshape Japan’s regional milieu through peaceful means. While that combination has always been an uneasy one, beset with internal contradictions and open to charges of freeriding, it has proven on balance quite successful. There is good reason to believe that Japan will continue to pursue this type of policy in the future.

References Alagappa, Muthiah. 2002. “Introduction—Predictability and Stability Despite Challenges.” In Asian Security Order: Instrumental and Normative Features, edited by Muthiah Algappa. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Arase, David, ed. 2005. Japan’s Foreign Aid: Old Continuities and New Directions. Routledge. Armitage, Richard  L., and Joseph. N.  Nye. 2000. The United States and Japan: Advancing Toward a Mature Partnership. INSS Special Report. http://www.ndu.edu/inss/strforum/ SR_01/SFJAPAN.pdf. Ashizawa, Kuniko. 2013. Japan, the US and Regional Institution Building in the New Asia: When Identity Matters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Japan and Peaceful Change in the International System    513 Berger, Thomas U. 1998. Cultures of Antimilitarism: National Security in Germany and Japan. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Chapman, J. W. M., Reinhard Drifte, and I. T. M. Gow. 1982. Japan’s Quest for Comprehensive Security. New York: St. Martin’s. Chief Cabinet Secretary’s Public Information Office. 2019. Jieitai Bōeimondai ni Kan Suru Chōsa. Difilipo, Anthony. 2002. The Challenges of the US-Japan Military Arrangement: Competing Transitions in a Changing International Environment. New York: M. E. Sharpe. Dower, John  W. 1999. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. New York: W. W. Norton. Genron NPO. 2019. Japan-China Public Opinion Survey 2019. https://www.genron-npo.net/ en/archives/191024.pdf. Green, Michael  J. 2003. Japan’s Reluctant Realism: Foreign Policy Challenges in a Time of Uncertain Power. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Hellegers, Dale M. 2002. We the Japanese People: World War II and the Origins of the Japanese Constitution. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Higuchi, Kotarō (formally Bōeimondaikondankai). 1994. Nihon no Anzenhosho to Bōeiryoku no Aritkata—21 Seiki e mukete no Tenbō. Chief Cabinet Secretary’s Office, Security Office. https://worldjpn.grips.ac.jp/documents/texts/JPSC/19940812.O1J.html Hook, Glenn  D., and Gavan McCormack. 2001. Japan’s Contested Constitution: Documents and Analysis. New York: Routledge. Ishihara, Shintarō, and Akio Morita. 1989. No to ieru Nihon e: Shinnichibei Kankei no Hōsaku. Tokyo: Kobunsha, Kappa-Holm. Ito, Asei. 2019. “China’s Belt Road Initiative and Japan’s Response: From Non-participation to Conditional Engagement.” East Asia 36. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12140-019-09311-z. Johnson, Chalmers  A. 1995. “La Serenissima of the East.” In Who Governs? The Rise of the Developmental State, New York: W. W. Norton. Lam, Peng Er, ed., 2013. Japan’s Relations with Southeast Asia: The Fukuda Doctrine. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Liff, Adam P. 2021. “Japan’s Defense Reforms under Abe: Assessing Institutional and Policy Changes.” In The Political Economy of the Abe Government and Abenomics Reforms, edited by Takeo Hoshi and Phillip Lipscy, 479–510. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Midford, Paul. 2011. Rethinking Japanese Public Opinion and Security: From Pacifism to Realism? Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Ōtake, Hideo. 1983. Nihon no Bōei to Kokunai Seiji: Detanto kara Gunkaku e: San’ihi Shobō. Tōkyō: Sanʾichi Shobō. Prime Minister’s Office. n.d. https://japan.kantei.go.jp/constitution_and_government_of_ japan/constitution_e.html. Sakaki, Alexandra, et al. 2019. Reluctant Warriors: Germany, Japan and their U.S.  Alliance Dilemma. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Söderberg, Marie. 2018. “Japanese Development Assistance as a Multipurpose Political Tool.” In Routledge Handbook of Japanese Foreign Policy, edited by Mary M. McCarthy, 306–317. London: Routledge. Tsuchiyama, Jitsuo. 1995. “The End of Alliance? Dilemmas in the U.S.-Japan Relationship.” In United States-Japan Relations and International Institutions after the Cold War, edited by Peter Gourevitch, Takashi Inoguchi, and Courtney Purrington, 3–36. San Diego: Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, University of California.

Chapter 28

I n di a a n d Pe acefu l Ch a nge Manjeet S. Pardesi

India has the self-­conception of being a uniquely peaceful state and civilization. Indeed, India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was certain that India had a message of peace for the world because of Mahatma Gandhi’s nonviolent political thought and practice. According to Nehru, “Mahatma Gandhi [had] made an outstanding contribution not only to the freedom of India [that was achieved through non-­violent means] but to the cause of world peace” (Bhagavan 2013, 98). India’s current prime minister, Narendra Modi, has even suggested that India’s commitment to nonviolence is ingrained in the “DNA of Indian society” and is therefore “above any international treaty,” because India is the land of the Buddha (India Today 2014). For a country that sees itself as having a message of peace for the world, India has been involved in a number of wars and militarized crises (Garver 2001; Ganguly 2002; Paul 2005). In addition to wars and militarized crises with China and Pakistan, India’s relations with its immediate neighbors in South Asia and the Indian Ocean have periodically been less than peaceful, including overt military intervention in Sri Lanka (1987–1990). Although the idea of “a peace-­loving, non-­violent India” is the result of “a selectively constructed and assiduously cultivated national self-­image,” there has always been “a recognition of the tension between violence and nonviolence” in Indian political thought (Singh 2017, 479, 481). Indeed, the Indian leadership has genuinely aspired to the pursuit of peaceful change in international politics, the country’s involvement in numerous wars and crises notwithstanding. The aim of this chapter is to explain why India has pursued various peaceful strategies at different points in its modern history. Why were some of these strategies (partially) successful, and why did others fail? Can we form any general insights into the mechanisms of peaceful change from the Indian experience? In particular, I briefly analyze five strategies of peaceful change pursued by India: India’s decolonization and in­de­pend­ ence, which was achieved peacefully; the pursuit of the policy of Panchsheel or the Five

516   Manjeet S. Pardesi Principles of Peaceful Coexistence with China, which failed; the advocacy of nuclear disarmament, which thus far has been unsuccessful; India’s “Look/Act East” strategy, which has partially succeeded in enhancing India’s status as a rising power in Asia; and finally, region transformation through the idea of the “Indo-­Pacific,” through which there has been mutual, albeit partial, accommodation between a rising India and the United States. Following Gilpin, I define peaceful change to mean a change in the status quo in the absence of war or militarized crisis while maintaining “peace that secures one’s basic values” (Gilpin 1981, 209). While the five previously mentioned strategies are representative of such endeavors, they are hardly exhaustive of India’s attempts at peaceful change in international politics. Some of the other notable efforts include a “no war” pact with Pakistan in 1950 that was ultimately unsuccessful (Raghavan 2016) and India’s accommodation in the global nuclear order, which has been a partial success (Paul and Shankar 2014). Furthermore, I have not included “nonalignment” in my analysis in this chapter. Nonalignment has a complex legacy in independent India’s statecraft. As a strategy, nonalignment was not a policy of neutrality or isolationism. While Nehru certainly wanted to keep “away from the power politics of groups aligned one against the other” (Jones  1946b), he wanted India to “pull her full weight in world affairs” (Jones 1946a). More important, it was a strategy of avoiding war as far as possible, but in the final analysis Nehru was clear that India “would join the side which is to our [India’s] interest,” as opposed to automatically joining any war due to participation in alliance politics (New York Times  1947). In other words, nonalignment was not a strategy of “peaceful change” per se even though it had elements that sought to promote peace and avoid war (if possible). However, Nehru’s strategy of nonalignment metastasized into an ideology that often clashed with American interests during the Cold War (Thomas 1979). Given that nonalignment ultimately became a worldview as opposed to a strategy (whether grand or otherwise), it is not analyzed in this chapter. On the other hand, the five cases being analyzed here (see table 28.1) are attempts at peaceful change in a number of different areas and are representative of change in different Table 28.1  Strategies of Peaceful Change and Outcomes Strategy

Type of change

Domain/issue area

Outcome

Decolonization

Structural change Creation of new states

Panchsheel

Dyadic

Management of sovereignty and territorial issues Failure

Nuclear disarmament

Global normative change

Nuclear weapons

Ambiguous

Look/Act East

Status enhancement

Inclusion in the emerging strategic architecture

(Partial) success

Indo-­Pacific

Region transformation

Mutual accommodation between a rising power and the system leader

(Partial) success

Success

India and Peaceful Change   517 domains: decolonization as an example of structural change in international politics, Panchsheel as peaceful change in bilateral relations amid territorial disputes, nuclear disarmament as global normative change, “Look/Act East” as status enhancement, and Indo-­Pacific region transformation as mutual accommodation between a rising power and the system leader. Furthermore, not all of these attempts at peaceful change were successful. As such, the analysis of these five examples in the following sections offers enough variance across time to make cautious generalizations about India’s quest for peaceful change in international politics.

Decolonization There are two important facets of India’s decolonization related to peaceful change. First, India achieved its independence from Britain through peaceful means. This was in marked contrast to many other contemporaneous instances of decolonization and state making. For example, Indonesia’s independence from the Netherlands and Algeria’s independence from France were conflict-­ridden processes. In fact, Britain’s disengagement from many other parts of its empire, from Malaya to Kenya, was closely associated with war and conflict. Second, India and Britain parted on amicable terms, and the postcolonial Indo-­British relationship was not marked by strategic rivalry or resentment. Again, this was distinct from other such postcolonial relationships. For example, American independence from Britain in 1776 gave way to a long era of Anglo-­American rivalry that lasted at least until the beginning of the twentieth century. While the decolonization of Korea did not lead to Korean-­Japanese strategic rivalry, historical grievances have prevented the complete normalization of this relationship until the present. The absence of a strategic rivalry or bitterness over historical issues means that the peaceful change of India’s decolonization was not simply about the absence of war (or militarized tensions) with Britain; instead, it represented an instance of “sustainable and long-­lasting” peaceful change (Paul 2017, 3). But how did India’s peaceful decolonization come about, and how were rivalry and resentment avoided? Following Nehru (as noted previously), there is a tendency to credit the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi for the peacefulness of India’s decolonization. Under Gandhi’s leadership, the Indian nationalist movement had transformed into a mass movement after the First World War. In spite of a number of mass protests against British authorities and despite Gandhi’s incarceration during the Second World War, the Indian nationalist movement did not descend into violence with the British. Gandhi was an advocate of nonviolence and civil disobedience strategies that were ultimately rooted in his political philosophy of satyagraha (or the “quest for truth”). Contrary to popular belief, Gandhi was under no illusion that “non-­violence was the central theme of major Hindu scriptures” (Parekh  1991, 48). Indeed, warfare is one of the central themes of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, although these scriptures also discuss issues related to dharma (or ethics and righteousness). As such, Gandhi understood that

518   Manjeet S. Pardesi Indian tradition “cherished the ideal of non-­violence and gave it pride of place in its hierarchy of moral virtues” (Parekh 1991, 48). Consequently, Gandhi’s satyagraha was ultimately “a positive philosophy for the founding of political truths” (Kapila 2011, 435). Not only was Gandhi aware of the complicity of the Indians in the colonization of India by the British (Kapila 2011, 440); he was also educated in the West. In addition to Hindu scriptures, Gandhi’s political thought was also influenced by Western thinkers like Leo Tolstoy and John Ruskin. Therefore, Gandhi was not just an “Indian nationalist”; he was also an “internationalist” (Guha 2014). According to Kapila, we need to suspend the “binaries of East and West, nation and empire” to understand Gandhi (Kapila 2011, 439). Not surprisingly, Gandhi lacked “bitterness towards the ruling race” even as he worked to end India’s subjugation (Guha 2014). As Gandhi’s political protégé, Nehru (who was also educated in the West) also cultivated good personal relationships with the British leadership, including with imperialists like Winston Churchill, who once worried that Nehru’s India would be Britain’s “bitterest enemy” (Singh 1993, 43). However, India’s peaceful decolonization cannot be attributed just to Gandhi (and consequently to India). Analogous to the phenomenon of war, which is “the joint outcome of two or more actors” (Levy and Thompson 2010, 6), peaceful change also emerges out of such interactions. It is important to recognize that British power was deteriorating rapidly after the end of the Second World War. The rise of Indian nationalism meant that Britain could no longer rely on the British Indian army to maintain its authority on the subcontinent. Given the increase in Hindu-­Muslim violence in India and Britain’s postwar economic situation, it was understood in early 1946 that “additional British troops could not be dispatched to India” (Singh 1993, 16). Combined with the fact that Britain owed about a third of its wartime debts to India (which was Britain’s largest creditor at this time), it was clear that Britain no longer had the power to crush the Indian nationalist movement. Given that Britain’s empire lingered on in other parts of the world for a few more decades, and that Britain supported France and the Netherlands in their efforts to regain their imperial possessions in Southeast Asia after the end of the Second World War (through the use of the British Indian army), the peaceful nature of India’s decolonization must be attributed to a combination of Gandhi’s (inter)nationalist ideals and the relative decline in Britain’s power after the Second World War at a time when Hindu-­ Muslim tensions were rising on the subcontinent. In other words, it was a combination of ideational factors, relative loss of material power, and the political opportunity afforded by subcontinental politics (in the form of Hindu-­Muslim tensions) that explains the peacefulness of the British decolonization of India. Similarly, the absence of strategic rivalry or historical resentment after decolonization can be partially attributed to the warm personal relationships between the Indian and British elites after India’s peaceful decolonization. However, there are important power political factors behind the absence of postcolonial animosity between India and Britain too. Heimsath and Mansingh have argued that Indo-­British relations “became closer” after Indian independence in 1947 than they were in the preceding years

India and Peaceful Change   519 (Heimsath and Singh 1971, 45). Postwar Britain gave primacy to India in its Cold War strategy in Asia, especially in Southeast Asia. It was believed that Britain could maintain influence in Asian geopolitics only by maintaining close ties with India. Access to the Indian market was also supposed to help with Britain’s economic recovery, while keeping India in the Commonwealth was deemed important for the maintenance of Britain’s global prestige. According to Singh, Britain’s strategic elite widely believed that good relations with India were important for Britain’s position and identity as a great power, for India was viewed as the most important country after the United States for Britain’s global standing in the late 1940s (Singh 1993). In turn, even as India eschewed formal alliances, there remained “a tacit understanding” in New Delhi that “London would not be indifferent to the security of India,” especially if India maintained its membership in the Commonwealth (Heimsath and Singh 1971, 33). After all, India retained the services of three hundred senior British officers and instructors to train the Indian armed forces after independence. Furthermore, British officers led the Indian army, air force, and navy until 1949, 1954, and 1958, respectively, while an Indian officer was appointed as the chief of naval aviation only in 1962 (Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting 1948, 100–108; Kavic 1967, 103, 122). Britain also remained the main source of military hardware for India during these decades. According to Kavic, the “Indian government saw its Navy as an implicit part of a Commonwealth-­United States naval defence of the lines of communication passing through the Indian Ocean,” as the British and American navies controlled the choke points leading to the Indian Ocean (Kavic 1967, 123). Not surprisingly, Britain maintained “preponderant external influence” over India militarily and in the domain of intelligence well into the 1960s (McGarr 2013, 2, 11). None of this is to argue that there were no tensions in Indo-­British relations. However, the absence of strategic rivalry and historical resentment meant that such disagreements did not make a difference to their “mutual regard for each other” and their “mutual respect for each other’s bona fides,” in the words of Nehru (Heimsath and Singh 1971, 46).

Panchsheel On April 29, 1954, China and India signed an agreement on “trade and intercourse” related to Tibet. This agreement, commonly known as Panchsheel, included the so-­ called Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence in its preamble (Jain 1981, 61–64). The agreement was to remain in force for eight years and included provisions for extension. These five principles—mutual respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty, nonaggression, noninterference in internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence—were enunciated by Chinese premier Zhou Enlai, Burmese prime minister U Nu, and Nehru, but they were termed Panchsheel by President Sukarno of Indonesia. This Javanese term, derived from Sanskrit, which literally means “five principles,” was borrowed from the fourteenth-­century Javanese Buddhist poem Sutasoma

520   Manjeet S. Pardesi (Chandra 2008, 3). Although it was the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) who first articulated “the initial ideas” that came to be identified with the five principles during the Second World War (Richardson 2010, 7), they were readily accepted by other Asian states, including India, that were coming out of war and decolonization. China and India were motivated to sign this 1954 agreement on peaceful coexistence for different reasons. While this was not a border agreement per se, Nehru assumed that the Sino-­Indian border (which was more or less coterminous with the Tibet-­India border) was now confirmed as a result of the inclusion of the principle of mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. After the ratification of this agreement by both governments (on June 3, 1954), Nehru noted that India’s frontier “has been finalized not only by implication in this Agreement but the specific passes mentioned are direct recognition of our frontier there” (SWJN 2000, 482). On the other hand, the CCP leadership, including Mao Zedong, wanted to “liberate” Tibet by ending independent India’s extraterritorial and extrajudicial rights, which it had inherited from the British Indian government in 1947. However, they were aware that Tibet was culturally and economically oriented toward India (where it sent over 80 percent of its exports), and that the existing physical infrastructure also connected Tibet with India, not China. In fact, Zhang Jingwu, the first CCP administrator, was sent from China to Tibet not directly but via the “quicker” route through India (Goldstein 2007, 109). Therefore, for Mao the 1954 agreement was about seeking India’s recognition of Tibet as a part of China, and to “establish [Tibet’s] trade relations with India” in order to ensure Tibet’s complete integration with China (SWMT 1960, 74). While India withdrew its military escorts from Tibet within six months after signing this agreement, thereby ending all “unequal” relations with China, India’s recognition of Tibet as a part of China was premised on a tacitly understood “gentleman’s deal” between Nehru and Zhou that Tibet would maintain complete autonomy per the 17-­ Point Agreement between China and Tibet that was signed after the Chinese invasion and annexation of Tibet in 1951 (Norbu 1997, 1081). However, the CCP had reneged on this understanding and began implementing “communist reforms” in Tibet after 1956. These included land reforms, which were perceived by the Tibetans as an attack on Tibetan identity and Buddhism because Buddhist monasteries were the largest landowners in Tibet (Shakya 1999, 143). These CCP activities resulted in many small insurgencies and local revolts in Tibet, including the Kanding Rebellion in the Kham region of eastern Tibet. The CCP responded militarily in these regions, including the aerial bombing of prominent monasteries where large numbers of Tibetans had taken refuge (Fravel 2008, 75–76). This led to the displacement of significant numbers of Khampas, many of whom also fled to India and established contacts with the Tibetan refugee population there (Shakya  1999, 142). Not surprisingly, the CCP became suspicious about Indian involvement in these activities. As the situation in Tibet deteriorated, China asked India to “repress the subversive and disruptive activities against China’s Tibetan region carried out in Kalimpong” in India by Tibetan refugees and other foreign spies

India and Peaceful Change   521 in mid-­1958 (White Paper n.d.-a, 60–62). However, the general disaffection and small-­ scale Tibetan insurgencies against Chinese rule culminated in a large-­scale revolt against Chinese rule in Lhasa by March 10, 1959. This was “the single largest revolt against the CCP” since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, in which anywhere between twenty-­three and ninety thousand people participated (Fravel 2008, 71, 76). The Chinese were convinced that such an audacious rebellion against their authority could not have taken place without external support from India. While there is no evidence of Indian complicity in this revolt, China’s brutal repression in Tibet led to the escape of the Dalai Lama to India on March 30, 1959 (followed by thousands of Tibetan exiles). China’s military crackdown in Tibet ended the “autonomy” that Tibet had enjoyed since 1951, which was implicit in the 1954 agreement between India and China (at least from New Delhi’s point of view). The decision to grant asylum to the Dalai Lama was an executive one and was not discussed in the Indian parliament. It is reasonable to infer that Nehru granted refuge to the Dalai Lama to ensconce himself as an interlocutor between Tibet and China in order to secure India’s defense interests in any future agreement between them (Pardesi 2011). Subsequently, there were two significant military clashes between India and China in late 1959 along their frontier, which had not yet been marked in a formal legal sense. Their unmarked frontier became a significant military issue because China wanted to control the situation in Tibet (with its undefined frontiers with India, as seen from Beijing), while India sought to militarily assert its own position on the ground through the “forward policy” in what Nehru deemed to be Indian territory. In this deteriorating geopolitical environment, India accused China of violating the Panchsheel agreement “in letter and spirit” when the issue of extending this agreement emerged in 1962 (White Paper n.d.-b, 189–190). Consequently, the agreement lapsed, and China attacked India in October 1962, acting under the erroneous assumption that India was trying to re-­establish Tibet as a “buffer state” between India and China (Garver 2006). In other words, China and India’s lofty Panchsheel ideals about the peaceful management of their disagreements related to sovereignty (in Tibet) and their territorial dispute amounted to naught. Peaceful change did not obtain in this instance for two reasons. First, the Chinese and Indian leadership entered into this agreement with different cognitive assumptions, and (mis)perceptions matter in international politics (Jervis 2017). While China approached this agreement seeking Indian recognition of Chinese sovereignty in Tibet and to promote Tibet’s political integration with China (by supporting its economic development through commercial relations with India), India thought of it as a political agreement on the boundary that guaranteed Tibetan autonomy while recognizing India’s frontiers.1 Second, the 1954 Sino-­Indian Panchsheel agreement was a bilateral one with implications for a third party, Tibet. As such, this was not a two-­player game, because Tibet had independent political agency irrespective of its international legal status, and because political developments in Tibet had implications for Chinese sovereignty there and for the Sino-­Indian border dispute.

522   Manjeet S. Pardesi

Nuclear Disarmament Informed by Gandhian ideals, Nehru thought of nuclear weapons as morally repugnant. In the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Gandhi was of the opinion that “[u]nless the world now adopts non-­violence, it will spell certain suicide for mankind” (Borman 1986, 170). Not surprisingly, Nehru’s India was one of the world’s leading advocates of nuclear disarmament. In 1954, Nehru introduced the nuclear “standstill agreement” in the Indian parliament, which urged the United States and the Soviet Union to stop nuclear testing (Pant and Joshi  2018). Four years later, he instructed the compilation of the world’s first unclassified study on the effects of nuclear weapons, while referring to nuclear tests as “evil” and noting that the peaceful use of nuclear technology could only occur if it was “divorced from the idea of war” (Cohen 2001, 161). India’s advocacy of nuclear disarmament and peaceful coexistence between the Cold War superpower blocs was dismissed by the superpowers as moralistic preaching even as it enhanced Nehru’s (and India’s) international prestige. While Nehru’s repugnance for nuclear weapons was genuine, it should not be overlooked that India’s approach to nuclear disarmament “was also driven by pragmatic considerations,” because it allowed India to play a much larger role in international affairs despite being materially weak, and “since it [India] was far away from having a nuclear weapons capability” (Perkovich 1999). New Delhi’s own nuclear weapons debate can be traced back to the late 1940s, and India, which had one of the most advanced nuclear infrastructures in the non-­Western world at this time, consciously limited nuclear technology to nonmilitary purposes (Pant and Joshi 2018). India could keep its nuclear program limited to civilian and technological purposes not only because nuclear technology was costly, but also because India did not face a nuclear rival until China’s first nuclear test in 1964—and even then, it was not clear if the Chinese nuclear program was targeted at India (Pardesi 2014). As such, nuclear disarmament was firmly on India’s international agenda, and Nehru was “the originator of [the] idea behind a test ban and also its most emphatic public face” (Pant and Joshi  2018). Notably, India signed the 1963 Partial Nuclear-­Test-­Ban Treaty (PTBT), but China did not. India played a leading role in “stigmatizing the bomb” (Tannenwald 2007, 158) and may even have influenced America’s approach to the PTBT—and other proposals such as “Atoms for Peace” (Paul 2009). However, China’s 1964 nuclear test and the Sino-­Pakistani entente that became evident during the 1965 India-­Pakistan War, when China threatened to open a second front against India, changed India’s own approach to nuclear weapons (Pardesi 2014). First, India sought nuclear guarantees from the United States, Soviet Union, and Great Britain, albeit without thinking through the consequences for its own policy of nonalignment of seeking great power nuclear guarantees. In any case, these powers were not interested in extending nuclear guarantees to India. Consequently, India went down the path of developing indigenous nuclear capabilities. At the same time, the emergence of the Nuclear Non-­Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1968 complicated India’s nuclear debate. India was opposed to this treaty because of its

India and Peaceful Change   523 discriminatory clause that allowed the major powers to keep their nuclear weapons while prohibiting its spread to others, which many Indians perceived as a regime of “nuclear apartheid.” Indian nuclear strategy and diplomacy have since then been geared to reconciling the contradiction of seeking nuclear weapons while championing nuclear disarmament (even as India was one of the original proponents of the NPT without discrimination). Indeed, India dubbed its first nuclear test in 1974 a “peaceful nuclear explosion” but chose not to build nuclear weapons (Tellis 2000). However, China’s proliferation of nuclear technologies to Pakistan from the 1970s onward, which was ignored by the United States throughout the 1980s (as America sought Pakistan’s support after the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan), rekindled the Indian dilemma. Under Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, India made one last attempt to achieve its ideal of nuclear disarmament. In 1988 Gandhi presented a comprehensive twenty-­year disarmament program at the United Nations but but his ideas met with no enthusiasm from the superpowers. Consequently, India began the weaponization of its nuclear program in 1988–1989. However, India found an ingenious formula to reconcile the inherent contradiction in its nuclear policy: “India would acquire nuclear weapons in order to pressure the nuclear ‘haves’ to disarm and to protect itself against nuclear blackmail” (Cohen 2001, 169). Not surprisingly, after openly going nuclear in May 1998, India issued a draft nuclear doctrine that called for global disarmament. While the spirit of nuclear disarmament continues in Indian diplomacy, New Delhi’s own enthusiasm for championing disarmament has waned over the past two decades. There are multiple reasons for this change. Kapur and Ganguly have argued that “disarmament is an unrealistic goal” for India given that it has two nuclear-­armed adversaries (China and Pakistan), one of whom (China) does not recognize India as a nuclearweapon state and refuses to enter into a nuclear dialogue because India is not a signatory to the NPT (Kapur and Ganguly 2016, 269). Furthermore, China cannot be brought into a dialogue on nuclear disarmament without the participation of the United States and Russia. But the American and Russian cases are equally complicated, because nuclear weapons have assumed an enhanced significance in Russian security strategy in recent years, while America itself is undertaking a massive nuclear modernization program. Furthermore, even as America and Russia have decreased their nuclear stockpiles, ballistic missile defenses and advanced conventional weapons that blur the distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons are changing nuclear strategy (Twomey 2011). Consequently, India has not been a vocal participant in the recent public debates on nuclear disarmament (Schultz et al. 2007). The discourse on nuclear disarmament has become more widespread in recent years, while India’s voice in this discourse has shrunk (even as no concrete steps have been taken toward actual disarmament). According to Basrur, while India was one of the leading advocates of nuclear disarmament in the 1950s, “it is now just one among many myriad voices calling for the same end” (Basrur 2010, 69). In sum, while India was one of the “norm entrepreneurs” calling for disarmament, this was partially done for reputational purposes; furthermore, the political and material context for nuclear weapons has changed for New Delhi (and others) in recent years (Tannenwald 2007; Paul 2009).

524   Manjeet S. Pardesi

“Look/Act East” Strategy Prime Minister Narasimha Rao is usually credited with launching India’s “Look East” strategy in the early 1990s, which was upgraded to the “Act East” strategy by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014 (Pardesi 2019b). While scholars have identified various causes for India’s eastward orientation, which emphasize an economic rationale or the quest to balance China, among other factors (Saint-­Mézard 2006), one of the core features of India’s “Look/Act East” strategy has been to peacefully make India an integral part of the strategic architecture of Southeast Asia. This transformation of India’s status from a regional power in its home region in South Asia to a transregional Asian power recasts India as a great power in Asia (Pardesi 2015). Indeed, Buzan has recently argued that the ability to “operate in more than one region” is the hallmark of a great power in contemporary world politics (Buzan 2018). The rise of a new great power has traditionally been asserted through warfare in the modern international system. However, since the end of the Cold War, India has adopted a threefold approach that eschews warfare and strategic disruption, while ensconcing itself as a part of the emerging strategic architecture in Southeast Asia. These three elements include the articulation of security interests in Southeast Asia by India’s elite (from across the political spectrum), the development of the requisite capabilities to promote these interests, and the acceptance of India’s role in the strategic affairs of the region by Southeast Asian states as well as the great powers active in that region of the world (the United States, China, and Japan) (Pardesi 2015). Indeed, India has been partially successful in thus enhancing its status as a great power in Asia. First, the Indian leadership has openly articulated its desire to play a larger role in Southeast Asia (and by extension, in Asia at large). According to former prime minister Manmohan Singh (who was Prime Minister Rao’s finance minister when India launched its “Look East” strategy), the “Look East policy . . . was not merely an external economic policy, it was also a strategic shift in India’s vision of the world. . . . I have always viewed India’s destiny as being interlinked with that of Asia and more so [sic] South East Asia” (Singh 2005). Singh’s own defense minister even argued that India wanted to maintain an “equitable strategic balance” and to prevent “regional rivalries from destabilizing the region” by working closely with the Southeast Asian nations (Mukherjee  2005, 24). India’s main strategic interest is to prevent the domination of Southeast Asia by any single great power while fostering closer commercial links with the dynamic economies of this region. Given these interests, India is developing the capabilities to project military power into the region’s two most important strategic theaters: the Strait of Malacca and the South China Sea. India has been gradually upgrading its military facilities (including the creation of a tri-­service command) in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, located at the mouth of the Strait of Malacca. If deployed from these islands, India’s modern military hardware (including aircraft and missiles) will allow India to project power into the

India and Peaceful Change   525 South China Sea (Pardesi 2015). Unlike in the 1980s, when India’s naval modernization was viewed with some degree of alarm, the regional states have welcomed India’s growing strategic role. According to the then foreign minister of Singapore, George Yeo, “India has legitimate security interests in Southeast Asia such as the protection of air and sea lanes,” and Singapore sees “India’s presence as being a beneficial and beneficent one to all of us in South-­east Asia” (Baruah  2007). Indeed, in 2017 Singapore and India entered into a bilateral agreement that gives both countries access to each other’s naval facilities and mutual logistics support (Ganapathy 2017). Likewise, India and Indonesia are jointly developing a strategic port on the Indonesian island of Sabang that will have close links with India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands (Da Costa 2018). Similarly, India and Vietnam are developing close strategic relations, and the then prime minister of Vietnam, Nguyen Tan Dung, even asked for New Delhi’s “direct intervention” over the South China Sea territorial disputes with China (Straits Times 2013). Equally important is that no Southeast Asian country has opposed India’s involvement in regional ­strategic affairs. The great powers active in Southeast Asia are also encouraging India to play a larger regional role. In fact, as the US secretary of state in 2011, Hilary Clinton had urged India to “not just look East, but to engage East and act East,” a remark that was made a few years before India formally renamed its eastern strategy (Kandeval and Scaria 2011). In 2015, the United States and India noted their desire to safeguard regional security in the wider Asian region, and “especially in the South China Sea,” in a joint vision statement (White House  2015). Similarly, the Japan-­India relationship has acquired significant strategic momentum, and the two sides launched a bilateral dialogue on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 2014. These endorsements by Southeast Asian states and the great powers active in the region are significant because they legitimize India’s quest to play a larger regional role. Indeed, India is now a member of the most important regional institutions, including the ASEAN-­led East Asia Summit. However, India’s emergence as a great power in Southeast Asia, which has been achieved peacefully through bilateral and institutional means and endorsed in rhetoric, should only be viewed as a partial success, for two main reasons. First, the general view in Southeast Asia is that India needs to “do more” economically and militarily.2 For example, India-­ASEAN trade is a fraction of China-­ASEAN trade,3 and India has chosen not to join the ASEAN-­led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), at least for now. While it is to India’s credit that the region is demanding it play a greater regional role, thereby legitimizing its ambitions, New Delhi’s engagement with Southeast Asia continues to be relatively limited by its domestic and economic challenges. Second, China, the region’s other great power, remains less than enthusiastic about India’s growing clout in Southeast Asia. According to one of China’s leading India scholars, the aim of India’s “Look East” strategy is to “weaken Chinese influence, hinder China in its relations with other big powers, intensify competition in economic, trade and energy fields, take over China’s market share in some countries, and increase China’s

526   Manjeet S. Pardesi cost in the economic field, trade, and politics” (Ma 2008, 59). While it is likely that Sino-­Indian competition in Southeast Asia will intensify (especially if the Indian and Chinese economies continue to develop rapidly), India’s rise in Southeast Asia has thus far demonstrated that the rise of a new great power need not necessarily lead to a disruption of the extant regional order, as is normally assumed. Instead, a new great power can be seen as contributing to that order.

The Indo-­Pacific The United States is favorably disposed toward the rise of India (as noted in the previous section). Indeed, the most recent US “National Security Strategy” (NSS) notes that America “welcome[s] India’s emergence as a leading global power and stronger strategic and defense partner” (White House 2017). While India does not publish NSS-­style strategy documents, these sentiments are widely shared in New Delhi, too.4 According to India’s current foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, India and the United States “agree on a lot of things” and “have similar values and aspirations and organizational principles” (Trofimov 2020). Echoing this thought, India’s defense secretary, Ajay Kumar, noted that it was “critical for India to cooperate closely with the U.S.A.” in order to “ensure peace, security, and economic progress” (Trofimov 2020). Indeed, scholars and analysts have also made a strong case for US-­India partnership (Blackwill and Tellis 2019). International relations theoretical scholarship on the management of new great powers in the international system tends to focus on power-­sharing arrangements, institutional accommodation, and discursive mechanisms that enhance the status of the rising power (Schweller 2006; Paul 2016). Other scholars identify India as a “link power” that prefers to “find a seat at the [high] table” of world politics instead of initiating “conflict” to explain India’s partial and peaceful accommodation (Sinha 2016, 223). However, “region transformation” is another mechanism through which the incumbent system leader and the rising power try to peacefully accommodate both of their security and status-­related interests, and this mechanism has not received adequate attention by theorists. The transformation of the region from East Asia (or the Asia-­Pacific) to the Indo-­Pacific is a part of American and Indian strategies to accommodate both of their legitimate interests in the context of the changing power dynamics in Asia. The strategic interests of the United States and India did not align during the Cold War, when the two democracies were largely “estranged” from each other (Kux 2002). In fact, they also had moments of serious tension in the region. For example, the United States sent a carrier battle group to the Bay of Bengal during the 1971 Bangladesh War as a warning to India not to escalate the war in west Pakistan (Cohen 2001, 188). In turn, New Delhi was extremely uncomfortable with American military presence in Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean in the 1970s and 1980s. Cohen has even argued that “Diego Garcia could be hit by Indian missiles,” although such ideas were at the fringes of Indian

India and Peaceful Change   527 strategic thought (Cohen 2001, 188). However, there has been a dramatic transformation in US-­India relations in recent years. India now wants to keep the United States engaged in the South Asia/Indian Ocean region, and the two countries signed the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) in 2016, which gives them reciprocal access to their respective military bases for logistics, supplies, and fuel (Varghese 2016). Region transformation provides a partial explanation of America’s and India’s peaceful mutual accommodation. Since the end of the Second World War, the United States has tried to create a favorable regional distribution of power in East Asia (or the Western Pacific),5 while being agnostic about the regional distribution of power in the South Asian/Indian Ocean region (Montgomery 2016, 102–125). The primary security interest of the United States in the South Asian/Indian Ocean has been access to this region (when the need arises) and preventing its hegemonic domination by any regional or extraregional power. By combining East Asia/the Western Pacific and South Asia/the Indian Ocean into the Indo-­Pacific, the United States aims to maintain these interests while remaining the primus inter pares in the context of the rise of China and India. The rise of China has begun to challenge American primacy in East Asia. However, region transformation into the Indo-­Pacific allows the United States to dilute China’s power, because China now has a much larger region to dominate. Given the Sino-­Indian rivalry, India has its own interests (independent of the United States) to balance China’s power in the region. Furthermore, China will need to traverse the narrow Strait of Malacca to project power into the Indian Ocean, while the United States remains a resident power in this wider region. At the same time, the LEMOA is an Indian signal to the United States that a rising India will not try to deny America access to the Indian Ocean. Not surprisingly, the United States is broadly supportive of Indian “leadership” in the Indian Ocean (Wells 2018). In fact, the LEMOA will also give India access to American military bases in the Western Pacific (such as Guam), thereby allowing the United States to shape India’s “Act East” strategy. In other words, the combined power political result of this region transformation helps the United States constrain the rise of China and enable the rise of India, while maintaining a regional distribution of power that favors the United States. At the same time, the Indo-­Pacific also allows the United States and India to create a regional distribution of status that meets both their interests. While the Indo-­Pacific is named after the Indian and Pacific Oceans, popular discourse has often noted that the terminology emphasizes India’s emerging role. In particular, one of China’s leading scholars of India has noted that “the word Indo-­Pacific is of great geopolitical significance, promoting India from the periphery of the Asia-­Pacific region to the core of the Indo-­Pacific region” (Li 2018, 45). As such, the terminology itself enhances India’s status through discourse. At the same time, the terminology also allows the United States to maintain its status as the world’s leading great power (Pardesi 2019a). After all, India and China may be rising, but they are rising in just one region of the world—the Indo-­Pacific— where just one of America’s six military commands with a geographical focus is located. Not surprisingly, the United States renamed its largest military command, the Pacific Command, the Indo-­Pacific Command in mid-­2018.

528   Manjeet S. Pardesi In other words, region transformation is an important mechanism of peaceful accommodation. The United States and a rising India have been able to mutually accommodate their power- and status-­related interests through the strategic geography of the Indo-­Pacific. However, it is important to note that a combination of structural factors (the rise of China and India and the relative decline of the United States) and agential preferences (of successive governments from across party lines in both India and the United States) have created this emerging bonhomie between them. Nevertheless, I view the Indo-­Pacific region transformation as a partial success for the mutual accommodation of the United States and India because there are a number of outstanding bilateral issues in this relationship, including US-­Pakistan relations, India-­Russia relations, and other differences related to trade and market access.

Conclusion The Indian experience in the quest for peaceful change in international relations offers the hope that peaceful change is indeed possible even though it remains difficult. The Sino-­Indian quest for peaceful change through Panchsheel ended in failure due to cognitive and structural constraints. Similarly, India’s advocacy of nuclear disarmament has yielded ambiguous results by making the discourse of nuclear disarmament popular (due to the efforts of India and others). However, no serious steps have been taken toward reaching that goal, as the political goals of the great powers and India have made this an unrealistic option (at least for the time being). Although India’s “Look/Act East” strategy and the Indo-­Pacific region transformation have been partially successful, structural and domestic political constraints have prevented these strategies from realizing their full potential. The one truly successful peaceful change enabled by India and Britain was peaceful decolonization and the absence of a strategic rivalry in its aftermath. This was the combined outcome of fortuitous structural factors and conscious agential strategies in both India and Britain. Peaceful change in international affairs requires alignment of factors at all three levels of analysis (structural, domestic, and individual). However, two limited generalizations can be made based on the Indian experience. First, peaceful change must be understood as a process as opposed to an event. Depending on the type of peaceful change sought— whether in bilateral relations or at the systemic level—the target of such policies will also respond to peaceful endeavors (while pursuing its own goals in international affairs). Peaceful change will only emerge out of such interactions, and in fact it could emerge out of a conjunctural mix of factors. After all, India and Britain were pursuing their own distinct strategic goals after Indian independence. India needed access to British military hardware and manpower expertise, while Britain wanted to retain the trappings of a great power in the postwar world. It was a happy coincidence of these factors and the efforts of the Indian and British leadership to get along that prevented the emergence of a strategic rivalry. Second, the ‘time’ dimension is equally important in effecting

India and Peaceful Change   529 peaceful change. Not only is it important to maintain the momentum of the strategies of peaceful change through conscious policy choices, as China and India tried to do during the 1950s, but changing structural factors (at domestic and international levels due to the vexed status of Tibet) ended up derailing these efforts. Looking ahead, India’s ability to successfully manage its own rise peacefully will also be affected by domestic political developments within the country. The rise of Hindu nationalism is beginning to have a negative impact on India’s foreign relations. Heretofore, India’s functioning liberal democracy, which had peacefully accommodated its minorities through the Indian constitution, had enhanced India’s reputation as the world’s largest democracy. However, recent political developments in India, including the 2020 Hindu-­Muslim riots in Delhi, in which more than fifty people died in the “biggest” act of religious violence in the Indian capital since 1950, have tarnished India’s image (Varshney 2020). According to Tellis, one of the leading analysts of US-­India relations, not only is the United States looking at India differently now, but the “conviction that a good relationship with India [is] absolutely essential to our future . . . is beginning to break down” (Kazmin 2020). Although other factors, including US-­China and China-­ India relations, will also matter in dictating America’s approach to India, the links between India’s domestic politics and foreign policy will be crucial to the country’s global standing and its acceptance by other states.

Notes 1. Notably, China encouraged this Indian (mis)perception. As India started issuing maps after 1954 that removed references to any undemarcated territory with China, Beijing did not issue any protest. Nehru interpreted Chinese silence after 1954 as Chinese acquiescence to the Indian position. 2. This is the general theme in the literature on India’s Look/Act East strategy. 3. In 2018 China-­ASEAN trade was valued at $483.76 billion, while India-­ASEAN trade was $81.07 billion. See ASEANStatsDataPortal, https://data.aseanstats.org. 4. It is also noteworthy that with the notable exception of China and Pakistan, no other state views India’s rise with suspicion. 5. The US strategy of global primacy has traditionally focused on four regions: hegemony in the Western Hemisphere and a favorable balance of power in Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia (Mearsheimer 2001).

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CHAPTER 29

Sou th A fr ica a n d the Idea of Pe acefu l Ch a nge Peter Vale

South Africa is an instructive case for theorists and practitioners of peaceful change. The country’s experience suggests that understandings of peace are best learned through domestic struggle. But South Africa also demonstrates that the challenge of promoting peaceful change can be difficult, especially for those who live in “rough neighborhoods” (Crocker 1992). After ground clearing, this chapter traces the country’s pathway toward peace through its violent past to a political settlement. This journey—in which negotiation played a pivotal role—enabled the post-­apartheid state to use the social capital from its transition to articulate hopes for a more peaceful world. The narrative sketches the country’s emergence into the international community and suggests why—and how—it has been difficult for South Africa to live up to the high ideals it set for itself. In an age when issues of identity, race, and voice are playing a new (and invigorating) role in international relations (IR), the question of whose voice matters in deciding the issue of peaceful change is raised in four separate places. A brief concluding section points toward some of the issues that face the country domestically and draws some lessons for the idea of peaceful change. And so to clearing the ground. The global celebration over the ending of apartheid, in 1994, is easily understood: the specter of conflagration—especially between races—hovered over the country for close to a century but picked up pace after the Second World War as the cause of in­de­pend­ ence swept across the African continent. This mood darkened in the 1970s with whispers about the white-ruled state’s access to nuclear weapons. If anything, the vocabulary around its unfolding was pointed in its tone and message; violence and race were inseparable in South Africa and elsewhere, too. So it was no surprise when in 1980

536   Peter Vale the liberal American journalist David Halberstam, borrowing from the writer James Baldwin, published a piece entitled “The Fire to Come in South Africa” (1980). In this atmosphere, the idea that there might be peaceful change either within the country or in southern Africa seemed to be beyond the bounds of possibility. In 1974 a coup in Lisbon ended colonial rule in the neighboring states of Mozambique and Angola. This brought the three white-­ruled states—Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), South West Africa (now Namibia), and South Africa—face to face with a hostile continent. Wars of national liberation in all three countries intensified, as did the mobilization of international public opinion against minority white (and colonial) rule. However, the hope that armed struggle could deliver order and justice—which is the aim of peaceful change— seemed impossible to those who were charged with defending minority rule and, ironically, to those who were intent on overthrowing it. This was curious because the philosophy of satyagraha—passive resistance—was first articulated on South African soil on September 11, 1906. At the time Mohandas Gandhi, then living in the country, was a central figure in its nascent politics (Gandhi 1968). Following this example, in the late 1940s and into the 1950s white rule was passively resisted. For South Africa this ended in 1962 with the declaration of an ‘armed struggle’ to overthrow the minority government. The most important of the three separate campaigns in this struggle was waged by Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), whose leader was the then forty-­three-­year-­old Nelson Mandela.

Vocabulary It was not that the idea of ‘peace’ was unknown in the country. In May 1902 a treaty was agreed to formally end the South African War (1899–1902) (sometimes known as The Boer War), which was fought between the British Empire and two Boer republics. The Peace of Vereeniging—as it was called—was a key moment in the country’s history, but not for the reasons for which the signatories had hoped—namely, to deliver peace between the two ‘white races,’ the Boers and the British. It was pivotal because the price of the peace needed to create the state was conditional on the ­exclusion of the Black majority. So the construct called South Africa rested on this compromise: only whites could access the security that sovereign organization was destined to generate. This exclusion created a Janus-­faced relationship between Black bodies and the white-­ruled state. The settlement harnessed Black bodies as labor (from within and without its sovereign borders), and othered the same bodies as political subjects and enemies. From the outset, white power was embedded in militarized thinking. This determined the course of its international obligations, especially to the British Empire, and was at the heart of its domestic ordering. The country’s participation in the First and Second World Wars (see van der Waag 2015) was followed by a decades-­long nurturing of a security-­centered state (on this see Seegers 1996). The approach was buttressed by

South Africa and the Idea of Peaceful Change   537 the development of an impressive arms-­manufacturing industry and, in the 1970s, by the near universal conscription of young white men. Such moves were strengthened by tightening security legislation, which was policed by an intelligence apparatus that cooperated with the West (O’Brien 2011, 170). The latter enabled the white minority to indulge in the comforting Cold War lie that their country was essential to the West’s security. Perspectives like these were propagated by local professors of IR, who drew on Western realists and strategists like Andre Beaufre (French), Robert Thompson (British), Samuel P. Huntington, and J. J. McCuen (both American) (van der Waag 2015, 251–252). So the field of IR played an enabling role in developing white South Africa’s understanding of itself—and its ‘responsibilities’ to the West. The result was that the white-­rule state mobilized around a ‘total strategy’ in the face of a ‘total onslaught,’ which, it was argued, was aimed at destroying the country and its way of life. Three points need to be added to these background notes on the relevance of the discipline of IR to the issue of South Africa and peaceful change. First, within the country there was little systematic thinking about peace and its study. The recent publication of a bilingual dictionary of academic words confirms that the term “peace studies” was not in the lexicon of the once influential Afrikaans academic—and policy—discourse (Venter et al. 2017). Second, South African activist-­academic communities opposed to apartheid did embrace peace studies, even mobilizing young white men to resist the draft, but they operated on the fringes of both the academy and parliamentary politics (on this see Cock and Nathan 1989). Finally, the views of the Black majority were largely absent from the field of academic IR (Vale 1989).1 The latter is becoming an important issue, because who speaks on matters of peaceful change is likely to be an increasingly contested issue in the twenty-­first century. Scholarly work on South Africa and the region from the mid-­1970s onward highlighted the fact that apartheid’s war talk and war making increasingly targeted the majority-­ruled states in its near neighborhood. This corner of the minority’s fight for survival lasted for more than a decade and a half and visited untold misery on the region’s people, wrecking any hope for economic development in southern Africa. Apartheid’s approach toward each individual country differed, but taken together, it was probably the most violent period in southern Africa’s history, modern or other. A UN study estimated that between 1980 and 1988, the cumulative cost of South Africa’s “destabilization” campaign was more than US$60 billion and that 1.5 million people perished directly (or indirectly) as a result (Vale 2008, 1177). As ruin was visited on these states, those struggling to overthrow apartheid enjoyed sanctuary in the same places. In this way, the affairs of the subcontinent were held hostage by the region’s hegemon, South Africa. But the solidarity of these so-­called front-­line states was underpinned by the conviction that over the long term, white power was certain to collapse. Infamously on one occasion, the presidents of black-ruled Mozambique and apartheid South Africa signed a “nonaggression” pact. However, this exercise did not lend itself to the idea of peace: the “accord” was almost immediately violated by apartheid’s “securocrats,” as late-­apartheid bureaucrats with overlapping security and administrative responsibilities were famously called.

538   Peter Vale If the first tier of apartheid’s mistrust of the promised peaceful change was domestic, and the second its role as a regional actor, things were somewhat different at the third tier, the international. Over time the minority-­ruled government faced international hostility and isolation as the issue of white rule became a test not only of the efficacy of peaceful change in South Africa, but also of race relations across the globe. For those defending apartheid, the recourse to economic sanctions and boycotts was met by Cold War rhetoric. Ironically, those wanting to end the apartheid system shared this approach but from the other side—for them, international pressure was inextricably linked to the intensification of the armed struggle, which was supported by the Soviet Union and its allies. There were however voices that expressed the view that peaceful change was not only possible but was at hand—most notably among these was Desmond Tutu, the 1984 Nobel peace laureate and, at the time, the second of two Black South Africans to be so honored; the first was Albert Luthuli in 1960. The white minority’s response to these awards was dismissive, but undoubtedly Tutu’s many interventions shifted the debate toward the turn-­the-­other-­cheek optimism promised through Gandhian perspectives. Tutu’s championing of the notion of Ubuntu,2 which is South Africa’s only contribution to the lexicon of the idea of peaceful change, drew the prospect of reconciliation between the races closer to the hope that change could be non-violent. Was the idea of peaceful change crucial to ending apartheid? The answer is undoubtedly yes; indeed, it is arguable that the solidarity and the sacrifice of millions across the world to end apartheid might perhaps be viewed as a strain of Ubuntu. However, the coup de grace on apartheid was delivered by something that essentially lies outside the peaceful change literature, namely, international financial sanctions.

Placeholder If the terms “peace” and “peaceful change” were not in the vocabulary of the policy or the academic community, what was it that drew South Africans toward a political settlement in 1994? This question lies beyond the present exercise, but asking—and answering—it helps to shed light on the role that placeholder words can play in advancing debates on peaceful change. In South Africa’s case the keyword was “negotiation”: in both its theory and its practice, this idea helped to deliver South Africa from David Halberstam’s promised inferno. This was because the stabilization, first, and then the acceptance of the idea of negotiation, was a precondition for the country’s embrace of the notion of peaceful change. The idea of negotiation first took root within the country’s trade union movement in the mid- and late 1970s. At that time the unions were intent on advancing incremental, but peaceful, changes aimed at vulnerable pressure points in the apartheid system. This was especially so in economic relations, where racial segregation was increasingly unsustainable. As this spread countrywide, the business community began to take the possibility of

South Africa and the Idea of Peaceful Change   539 negotiations seriously as a way of settling shop-­floor disputes. Apartheid’s apparatchiks seemed blind to this promising development, however. The powerful security police continuously torpedoed efforts at negotiation between whites and Blacks, even in places that were out of the public eye. It seems that for them change—peaceful or other—was impossible unless they controlled its course and outcome (Cowell 1985). What faced the country, however, was larger than workplace disputes or local boycotts: what was at stake was the legitimacy of the incumbent regime and the rights of the majority. In these circumstances, political violence was an ever-­present fact of life, especially during the 1980s. Some granular detail on the extent of this illustrates the magnitude of the deepening crisis of white power. One estimate puts the monthly average of deaths by “political violence” at forty-­four persons in the mid-­1970s; by the mid-­1980s, this average had risen to eighty-­six (reported in Bradshaw 2008, 172). Faced with violence on the domestic front, a failing war in the region, and mounting international pressure, the idea of negotiation began to find wider acceptance in South Africa’s public space. This pivot away from war-talk toward talk-­talk opened a veritable tide of conversations between South Africans—Black and white—on the future of their country. Some of this took place outside the country, most famously in Dakar, Senegal, when dissenting whites met leading members of the exiled African National Congress (see du Preez 2010). But local activist groups encouraged negotiation between youth, women, business, church groups, and many others. Members of apartheid’s security establishment have recently claimed that they, too, were in talks with the exiled ANC (see Barnard 2015), but the veracity of these claims is difficult to corroborate. The cumulative effect of the talks, however, was to “strengthen support for the principle of negotiating . . . [which was] increasingly accepted as inevitable” (Welsh 2009, 354). The turn toward negotiation was confirmed in a speech to South Africa’s parliament by South Africa’s last white president, F. W. de Klerk on February 2, 1990. This speech unbanned the ANC (and other political movements) and pledged to release the imprisoned Nelson Mandela. Certainly theoretically, the white-­ruled state had embraced the idea of peaceful change, but the decision was made on a knife edge. Recent work suggests that De Klerk’s go-­betweens and Mandela were negotiating the conditions of his release on the very eve of the speech that was to end centuries of white rule (de Villiers and Stemmet 2020). On the regional front, apartheid South Africa had negotiated an end to its colonial involvement in Namibia. In a series of talks brokered by the United States, Cuban troops withdrew from Angola, the fractious quarrels between warring parties in that country were resolved, and South Africa (together with the United Nations) negotiated the country’s independence. Supported by the superpowers, the Namibian outcome was an example of the global swing toward peaceful change that would characterize the fall of the Berlin Wall. The tide of events that followed De Klerk’s speech is well documented (see Waldmeir 1988), but three interlinked issues stand out: deepening violence, the onset of formal negotiations, and the acceptance of the idea of peace. On the first issue, tragically, as momentum toward the ending of apartheid increased during the 1990s, deaths by

540   Peter Vale political violence rose to more than 250 per month (Bradshaw 2008). Mounting concern over this drove the players, especially the ruling National Party and the ANC, into accusations and counter accusations about who was responsible for the mounting death toll. In spite of the wrangling, it had been possible to create a Convention for a Democratic South Africa (known as CODESA) late in 1991. This multiparty forum provided the platform for the formal negotiations to end apartheid; unsurprisingly, these negotiations were testy and at one stage even broke down. The crucial shift from negotiation-talk to talk of peace came early in 1991 when an ecumenical movement called for the signing of a “national peace accord,” which aimed “to try inculcate a culture of peacemaking throughout the country” (Davenport 1998, 35). The importance of this development, for the present purposes, was that the term “peace” was registered as a frame of reference between all the protagonists as a way to end apartheid. Although the backdrop to what constituted peace was to be contested political space, talking about the future of the country through the vocabulary of peace was a major conceptual breakthrough for the country both domestically and internationally. The process of ending apartheid was called a “negotiated settlement,” which delivered a “negotiated transition” of power. Writing of this outcome, the late South African novelist Lewis Nkosi pointed out that the country was “[a]mbushed by history, deprived of moral and material support of the socialist camp by the fall of the Soviet Union . . . [and] negotiated peace, between a lame government and weary liberation movements . . . [this] was probably the next best thing” (Stiebel and Gunner 2005, 320).

Soft Power Such resignation was far removed from the elation with which the ending of apartheid was received across the world. Not only had a possible conflagration between the races been avoided but, in a far-­reaching proposal for everyday production of peace, a forum would be established to foster reconciliation at home. What was proposed was a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), aimed at restorative justice, which would be chaired by Desmond Tutu. All too soon it was predicted that South Africa was destined “to play a pivotal role in a vastly changing world” (Gwexe 1999, 112). Importantly, too, the country was keen to share its experience of negotiations, peacemaking, and transition to democracy with other global trouble spots. In this way, the South African ‘model’ of making peace and fostering reconciliation was not only canonized, it was also used to reposition the country in the world. And within the global “negotiation industry” the ending of apartheid was considered “an exemplar of successful transitions to democracy” (Thakur and Vale 2019, 57). Not a little of this enthusiasm was generated by Nelson Mandela, whose refusal to seek retribution appeared to set the tone for the post–Cold War world; in 1993, he shared

South Africa and the Idea of Peaceful Change   541 the Nobel Peace Prize with De Klerk. But governing the initially euphoric, but still deeply divided, country proved to be difficult—and sometimes impossible—and the quarrels between the parties, even the individuals in the negotiations, became the stuff of legend. It is claimed, for example, that the two laureates, Mandela and De Klerk, were not speaking at the time they visited Oslo to receive the Nobel Prize. This said, South Africa relished its international standing, which had been delivered by the country’s association with the idea of peace. How would “New South Africa” translate all this into foreign policy? In late 1993 the question was answered in an article published under Mandela’s name in the blue-­chip journal Foreign Affairs (Mandela 1993). Drafted by a reference group, which included this author, but cleared for publication by Mandela’s office, the piece committed the ANC—and with it, the country—to the notion that “[h]uman rights will be the light that guides our foreign affairs” (Mandela 1993, 88). Almost three decades later these words—and the spirit of the Mandela article—continue to reflect the embedded values of the country’s struggle for freedom in its international relationships and encapsulate its hopes for the idea of peaceful change on the continent and beyond. Anticipating the expanded agenda that marked post–Cold War international relations, Mandela argued that human rights “extend beyond the political, embracing the economic, social and environmental” (Mandela 1993, 87). This is the first of six “pillars” that commit the country to both the letter and the spirit of peaceful change. Indeed, one of these six pillars is almost a definition of the notion. It reads: “Peace is the goal for which all nations should strive, and where this breaks down, internationally agreed and nonviolent mechanisms, including effective arms-­control regimes, must be employed” (Mandela 1993, 87). The record suggests that—certainly, formally—post-­apartheid South Africa has been a strong proponent of these positions in multilateral forums, particularly in the United Nations, where it has served three times on the Security Council. But the country has had much difficulty in dealing with other issues; arms, and their control, is one. Months before power was formally transferred to Mandela’s government, apartheid’s leaders announced the destruction of the country’s nuclear weapons and signaled their intention to sign the Nuclear Non-­Proliferation Treaty (NPT) (see de Villiers, Jardine, and Reiss 1993). The decision was important to domestic and international audiences, and it certainly removed a stumbling block in the international community’s willingness to support the changes promised by the white government (see Barber 2004, 67–68). On coming to power, Mandela supported this position, and his government went on to broker an indefinite and unconditional extension of the NPT in May 1995. On this particular issue, however, there is a counterintuitive point on the issue of voice that requires revisiting. At the time the decision was made, it was suggested that the decision to renounce nuclear weapons was motivated by “a desire to prevent these . . . [nuclear weapons] from falling into the hands of a black government” (Keller 1993). This claim raises questions about whose register triumphs in thinking about peaceful change. The point is that mainstream IR continues to avoid a discussion

542   Peter Vale of the “African bomb,” which was introduced by the late Ali Mazrui in his 1979 BBC Reith Lectures (Mazrui 1980). The nuclear issue is but one example of South Africa’s involvement in issues of arms control. South Africa also chaired the Oslo Conference, which led to the 1997 Ottawa Treaty for the global ban on antipersonnel land mines. Three years later, Cyril Ramaphosa—then a businessman and now the country’s fourth democratically elected president—was involved in the decommissioning of Irish Republican Army weapons. Working with the former Finnish president, Martti Ahtisaari, his involvement helped to clear the way for the Good Friday Agreement. Complications over arms (and their control) has, however, tested post-­apartheid South Africa’s commitment to the idea of peaceful change on other issues. One of these is the sale of weapons by the country’s domestic arms industry and another the purchase of weapons by the post-­apartheid state. The latter was the root cause of the country’s reputation for corruption. The after effects of the Arms Deal—as the acquisition program was called—continue, as in the trial for corruption of a former president, Jacob Zuma, who is accused of benefiting from the US$5 billion weapons purchase by the post-­apartheid government (on this see Holden 2008; Human Rights Watch 2000). Monitoring the export of weapons manufactured in the country has been a different kind of worry. The issue came to light in 1994 when South African–manufactured arms found their way to the Balkans, which were then in flames. A commission of inquiry recommended the establishment of the National Conventional Arms Control Committee, which reports to the cabinet and is obligated to register arms sales with the United Nations (on this see Asmal 2011, 204–205). At the time of writing, it remains uncertain whether the accountability envisaged by the legislation is effective. Nevertheless, the intention suggests the ways in which the post-­apartheid state was prepared to establish oversight mechanisms to enforce its commitment to the idea of peaceful international change. Efforts to monitor arms exports highlight the link between democracy and the idea of peaceful change; this issue has returned again and again to trouble South African policy makers. Mandela’s 1993 article in Foreign Affairs was published when the ideal represented by liberal democracy was ringing in a kind of global echo chamber. Francis Fukuyama (1989) had famously suggested that history was at an end, and Mandela caught this mood in near-­exhortatory fashion by linking “just and lasting solutions . . . [of] the problems of humankind” with “the promotion of democracy worldwide” (Mandela 1993, 87). But as South Africa has had to learn, democracy may be a necessary but is not a sufficient condition for the promotion of peaceful change, especially in Africa. We will presently return to this issue. Mandela committed the country to “respect for international law [which, he says] . . . should guide the relations between nations” (Mandela 1993). This was linked to an undertaking to play a “vigorous role” in the debate on the reform of the United Nations (Mandela 1993, 89). The country chaired the G-­77 during the debates on UN reform in 2005, but if truth be told, it has been increasingly cautious on the issue. Not a little of this hesitation turns, perhaps, on its own ambitions as a potential candidate for a

South Africa and the Idea of Peaceful Change   543 permanent seat on the UN Security Council. The outcome of these hopes, if the structure of the UNSC changes, will depend on the ambitions of competing African countries, in particular Nigeria and Egypt. The negotiated settlement in South Africa, coupled with the global standing of Nelson Mandela, afforded the new government soft power, which the country had never previously experienced. Mandela’s hopes for a foreign policy supportive of peaceful change drew from the success of the negotiated settlement and from the optimism that characterized the ending of the Cold War. It was at this time that the Irish Nobel literature laureate Seamus Heaney wrote the now-­famous line that spoke of “hope and history” rhyming. This is what the South African experience seemed to offer the world. Put in another register, there was a rare confluence between the agency of leaders and their ideas and the structure of international affairs, both regional and global.

African Player The defining feature of Mandela’s vision, as set down in the pages of Foreign Affairs, is the claim that “the concerns and interests of the continent of Africa should be reflected in [the country’s] . . . foreign policy choices” (Mandela 1993, 87). On this issue the report card has been mixed. Mandela was upbeat that a democratic South Africa would help the then Organization of African Unity (OAU) to “achieve [continental] . . . unity and closer cooperation” (Mandela 1993, 90). Prior to the ending of apartheid, minority-­ruled South Africa and the OAU were effectively at war with each other. But the exiled groupings, particularly the ANC, had a long association with the OAU, and its leaders were recognized figures in continental forums. So what might have been a difficult re-­engagement proceeded with great dispatch. A fortnight after Mandela became its president, South Africa joined the continental body, with a strong commitment to foster peaceful change. Indeed, the urgency of this undertaking was amplified by the Rwandan crisis, which had foregrounded issue of genocide on the continent. Pursuant to the promotion of peace, Mandela was a participant in an OAU-­led effort to reach an understanding between the warring parties in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (known then as Zaire). Indeed, one set of talks on this issue took place on a South African naval vessel moored off the coast of west Africa. Although this particular engagement failed, it firmly secured South Africa’s commitment to the promotion of multilateralism in the cause of peace on the continent. But the country’s approach to the issue signaled an important departure from the norm; at South Africa’s insistence, talks always included all the parties involved in a conflict. This departure borrowed from South Africa’s own experience, viz that inclusivity of the competing factions to a dispute was the best guarantee of peace. Less happy was Mandela’s humiliating experience in November 1995 with the military regime in Nigeria then headed by Sani Abacha—and this returns us to the link between

544   Peter Vale democracy and the idea of peaceful change. After several visits by South African emissaries to encourage a transition away from authoritarianism in Nigeria, the Abacha government unexpectedly executed nine Oguni activists, including the writer, Ken Saro-­Wiwa. The killings took place while a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting was underway in New Zealand. Mandela immediately called for Nigeria’s suspension from the Commonwealth and the imposition of sanctions against the regime in Abuja. The first of these happened, but Mandela had overplayed his hand by withdrawing South Africa’s High Commission from the country and asking other countries to follow this example. He had also asked African states to impose diplomatic sanctions on Nigeria, but this totally failed. What was plain is that South Africa’s aspirations for peaceful change ran counter to the African norm of solidarity between leaders. Undeterred, he reiterated his call, prefiguring the “responsibility to protect” principle (Adebajo 2007, 20). But as one informed observer later reported, several African states were accusing South Africa “of pursuing a ‘Western’ project and, in fact, of being little more than the West’s lackey” (Landsberg 2000, 107). The question of South Africa’s early and quite distinctive engagement in interstate relations in Africa can be understood through the structure-­agency lens. Hoping to shift outside perceptions of the continent, the new South Africa seemed intent on exercising the agency offered by its social capital to shift international perceptions of the continent by moving the continent in the direction of democracy. But the structure and rituals of African interstate politics made this very difficult. Looking back on this, it seems clear that both South Africa and African states had learned something about compromise and about the limits of agency in the pursuit of peaceful change. Thabo Mbeki, Mandela’s successor, called for an African Renaissance (see Vale and Maseko 1998), which was intended to renew pan-­Africanism. This drew on the same strands of democracy and multilateralism as his predecessor had done. Mbeki used evocative language, and the international standing of South Africa, to recast multilateralism on the continent with the establishment of the African Union (AU) in July 2000. Strongly committed to the notion of finding African solutions to the continent’s problems, Mbeki believed that this could not be done without tackling economic reform, dealing with the issue of accountability, and exploring ways to make and keep the peace. Influenced by South Africa, “[t]he AU outlawed coups and gave its Peace and Security Council the power to authorize any action needed, including military operations, to stop genocide, crimes against humanity or other large-­scale human rights violations” (Verhoeven et al. 2014, 9). South Africa was to become an enthusiastic peacekeeper on the continent, with deployments in various multilateral missions in Lesotho (see below), Burundi, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Comoros, the Central African Republic, Ethiopia and Eritrea, Uganda, and Sudan (van der Waag 2015, 305). But faith in this approach has diminished; in 2018 the country’s military deployed the lowest number of peacekeeping troops since the heyday of Mbeki’s involvement in peace efforts on the continent.

South Africa and the Idea of Peaceful Change   545 Interestingly, the spirit of peaceful change of the continent has been carried forward by South African citizens who have exercised their rights under the country’s Constitution. A case in point was the action taken by nongovernmental organizations to compel the government to detain the Sudanese president, Omar al-­Bashir, when he visited the country on AU business in June 2015. At the time, the International Criminal Court had an arrest warrant out against al-­Bashir, and as a member of the ICC, South Africa was obligated to exercise the responsibilities this entailed. In the event, al-­Bashir left the country by the time the court’s judgment against the government could be delivered, so no arrest followed. But the fracas is suggestive of two issues. First, Section 231 of the Constitution allows South African citizens to challenge government decisions when it comes to international obligations that have become domestic law. Second, the South African government faces potential pressure from its own citizens when issues of domestic principle clash with the structural end of intra-­African politics. South Africa’s relations with its near neighbors remains the prisoner of geography and history. With apartheid over, a quick move toward deeper multilateralism in southern Africa drew the region’s people toward a common future. South Africa joined the revamped regional organization, which was renamed the Southern African Development Community (SADC), with the emphasis falling on the community-­centered nature of the association. But differing interpretations of democracy, the centuries-­old movement of people, and conflicts over regional leadership have stymied hopes that the subcontinent could become a “security community” (Deutsch et al. 1957), notwithstanding the creation of the Organ for Peace and Security within the SADC structure. South Africa’s economic weight complicates debates on multilateralism, as much as it does everyday life in the region. A central weakness of SADC is the lack of a subsidiarity mechanism to keep migrants from the regional periphery from moving toward the South African center. One outcome of this is the periodic—and often very violent— flare-­ups of anti-­immigrant xenophobia within the country. These do not help the everyday production of peace domestically and further strain relations between neighbors. Notwithstanding the persistence of authoritarian regimes and huge gaps in income between countries, southern Africa is at peace for the first time in living ­memory—undoubtedly, the ending of apartheid was the greatest contributing factor to this outcome. South Africa’s ‘bigism’ has created a series of complications at the bilateral level. This has been especially so with Zimbabwe, its largest neighbor. Here, the politics of envy— more than anything else—resulted in a series of standoffs between Zimbabwe’s longtime president, the late Robert Mugabe, and successive South African leaders. These have focused mainly on Zimbabwe’s failure to deliver governance—especially the staging of free and fair elections—and economic reform, including access to land. South African president Thabo Mbeki’s policy of “Quiet Diplomacy” (Adelmann 2004) on Zimbabwe was excoriated by critics both at home and abroad. However, his 2008 mediation, at the behest of the SADC, in the Zimbabwe crisis did draw the Mugabe government and the opposition into a short-­lived government of national unity. But the complications

546   Peter Vale between the region’s largest states have never really retreated, even after Mugabe was unseated as Zimbabwe’s president. In 2013 Mbeki, then out of office, disclosed that the British government had pressured South Africa to “invade” Zimbabwe in order to achieve “regime change” (Smith 1993). Expectedly, the allegation was denied, but it does suggest how easily colonial approaches to inter-­state relations continue to revisit the affairs of the subcontinent. The act of “invading” a neighbor in the cause of fostering democracy and promoting peace was, in fact, tried early on in the new South Africa—and a hard lesson was learned. In late September 1998, South African troops, ostensibly under a mandate from the SADC, crossed the border into the micro-­state Lesotho. The mission was to halt a military coup and create an environment in which the peaceful settlement of a local political crisis could take place. It proved to be a calamitous adventure. In its aftermath, a fierce debate took place over the appropriateness of the intervention in terms of international law and the theory and practice of African politics. For the states of the region, however, it was a reminder of the ever-­present danger that the hegemon, South Africa, presents to the region.

The Struggle Continues In the decades since the Mandela presidency, South Africa’s foreign policy has quietened, while its voice in international forums today seems to be that of “just another country” (Vale and Taylor 1999). Of course the world is different than it was in the halcyon days that characterized the ending of the Cold War, when—certainly in some Western ­circles—it was believed that history was at end, and when the ending of apartheid was emblematic of the hope that democracy would deliver peace worldwide. But there is another legacy of those years that is more immediate: the impact of that moment on South Africa’s domestic politics. One of the conditions for South Africa’s embrace of the end-­of-­history optimism was the decision to embrace the central ­tenants of neoliberal economics. The legacy of this has made it difficult to redirect concern for peaceful change domestically. Market-­centered economic policies have reinforced the structural pattern of white wealth and Black poverty bequeathed by centuries of colonial and apartheid rule. It is true there have been social transfers in education, health, and social welfare, but the magnitude of the divide between wealth and poverty—and therefore between the races—remains enormous. A reckoning surely awaits South Africa on the issue of wealth and its distribution; this will test the country’s commitment to social justice, which is the sine qua non for domestic peace. As in other places across the world, the redistribution-­poverty-­race nexus has lent itself to crime and corruption. This is undoubtedly a threat to the achievements the country has registered since apartheid ended. Crucially, however, the constitution remains robust, and the courts have shown themselves willing to defend democratic institutions and to check the excesses of government maladministration. And as we have recorded,

South Africa and the Idea of Peaceful Change   547 citizens confidently use the courts to hold the government to account on understandings of peaceful change both at home and abroad. The interests and issues of the African continent continue to lie at the heart of South Africa’s foreign policy. The country has reached a modus vivendi with the ways of intra-­African politics by critically engaging with established forms of continental multilateralism, especially on the issue of human rights. It has shifted its point of engagement with Africa from outward, Mandela-­style criticisms to less strident but more institutionally invested practices of self-­assessment and peer evaluation. Thus South Africa was involved in the formation of the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), which was stablished by the AU in 2002. Intriguingly, the notion of Ubuntu has been used as a descriptor for a revamped African policy, one that champions, “collaboration, cooperation and building partnership over conflict [by recognizing] . . . our interconnected and interdependency” (Maloka 2019, 82). More adventurous than this are the country’s efforts to contribute to the structuring of a world order free of Western domination. Here, an initial involvement with India and Brazil created IBSA (India, Brazil, and South Africa), which could be seen as a solidarity-­type multilateral forum that aimed to promote intercontinental understanding and foster development. This was a forerunner to the country joining the more ambitious BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) grouping of five emerging economies in 2011. Mandela’s Foreign Affairs article was in draft form when political violence in the country was at its worst and the CODESA talks seemed in danger of collapse. But despite—or perhaps because of—this, the promise offered by change shines through the text: negotiation would bridge divides between South Africa’s people, and this could heal southern Africa and allow the country to take up its rightful place in the world, especially on the continent. But the issue of an African voice setting out a global vision for peace was, perhaps, as important as the fact that apartheid was destined for the dustbin of history. At the time “Mandela mania,” as the phrase had it, across the world was on the rise and Mandela— president in waiting—understood the moment. In an almost textbook case of soft power, he used the platform offered by Foreign Affairs, the world’s leading policy journal, to make the case for far-­reaching peaceful change. All too soon, however, realists in the local IR community turned on Mandela’s words—and by implication—South Africa’s possible contribution to the idea of peaceful change. Rapidly called “idealistic” or “radical,” Mandela’s ideas, and his hopes, were subjected to withering criticism. His critics were especially irked by the failure to stress the issue of “national interest” in the making of foreign policy (see, for example, Spence 1998, 3). This issue needs some consideration because it reaches into the very heart of how IR thinks and writes about peaceful change in the world it constantly makes. Conservative in its intent, the notion of national interest has deep roots in IR, dating back to the diplomatic notion of raison d’état (Evans and Newnham  1998, 345). Its importance to contemporary writing—and indeed, policy making—is invariably justified by Lord Palmerston’s 1848 claim that “[w]e have no eternal allies, and we have not

548   Peter Vale perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.” Only a little thought suggests that this is not an analytical move but an ideological one. To view the new South Africa’s post-­apartheid national interest through the same lens as apartheid’s, as this move does, shows a misunderstanding of the historic moment faced by Mandela’s South Africa (on this see Vale 2003). The notion of the national interest, as used by those who disparaged Mandela’s commitment to the idea of peaceful change, failed to recognize the possibility that history presents at those rare moments when it rhymes with hope. So in the spirit of critical thinking, we must ask a final question about voice: Would Mandela’s musing about the possibilities of what South Africa offered the world have been different if the country’s new government had been white, and not Black, led? South Africa’s journey from uncontrollable violence to the embrace of peaceful change seems like no other country’s. It was made possible by the development of a vocabulary through which enabled interests can be shared; here, the placeholder word, negotiation, played a decisive role. Approaching the idea of peaceful change through the choice of words, as we have done in these pages, needs greater theoretical exploration among those interested in exploring and promoting the idea. Looking forward, the South African case also suggests that the issue of who speaks on—and to—the issues of peaceful change matters. These issues provide conceptual challenges to mainstream IR and especially to those working on the idea of peaceful change. South Africa’s recent engagement with the world has been timid, and the country’s contribution to big-­picture understandings of peaceful change, like those addressed by Mandela in 1993, has fallen off. The country remains a voice for negotiation and a force for peace on the continent, but the early agency shown by South Africa on these issues has been checked. There are, however, encouraging stirrings of renewed interest in reviving the engagement in international affairs that characterized both the Mandela and Mbeki years. A new generation of South African activists, academics, and ambassadors is increasingly determined that the country will become, first, a voice, and then a force for a “better world” in the non-­Western-­centered world that surely now beckons (Maloka 2019, ix–xxiv).

Acknowledgments The content of this chapter was considerably strengthened by exchanges with Dr. Vineet Thakur and Dr. Beth Vale.

Notes 1. The exception was the exiled South African Sam Nolutshungu, whose doctoral thesis was  published as “South Africa in Africa: A Study of Ideology and Foreign Policy” (Nolutshungu 1975). 2. What is Ubuntu? Although the origins of the idea are contested, its roots lie in African humanism, in which the idea of community and self-­assurance comes from the notion of belonging. So individuals’ ubuntu comes from being part of a greater whole (see Gade 2011).

South Africa and the Idea of Peaceful Change   549

References Adebajo, Adekeye. 2007. “Ten Prophets of Pax Africana.” Global Dialogue 12, no. 2: 18–23. Adelmann, Martin. 2004. “Quiet Diplomacy: The Reasons Behind Mbeki’s Zimbabwe Policy.” Africa Spectrum 39, no. 2: 249–276. Asmal, Kader. 2011. Politics in My Blood: A Memoir. Johannesburg: Jacana. Barber, James. 2004. Mandela’s World: The International Dimension of South Africa’s Political Revolution 1990–99. Oxford: James Currey. Barnard, Niel. 2015. Secret Revolution. Memoirs of a Spy Boss. Cape Town: Tafelberg. Bradshaw, Gavin. 2008. Conflict Management for South African Students: Theory and Application. Cape Town: New Voices. Cock, Jackie, and Laurie Nathan. 1989. War and Society: The Militarisation of South Africa. Cape Town: David Philip. Cowell, Alan. 1985. “South African Boycotts Bring Cautions Contacts.” New York Times, October 6, 1985, sec. 1, 18. Crocker, Chester A. 1992. High Noon in Southern Africa: Making Peace in a Rough Neighborhood. New York: W. W. Norton. Davenport, T. R. N. 1998. The Transfer of Power in South Africa. Cape Town: David Philip. de Villiers, J.  W., Roger Jardine, and Mitchell Reiss. 1993. “Why South Africa Gave Up the Bomb.” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 5: 98–109. de Villiers, R., and Jan-Ad Stemmet. 2020. Prisoner 913: The Release of Nelson Mandela; Revelations from the Archive of Apartheid Minister Kobie Coetsee. Cape Town: Tafelberg. Deutsch, Karl, et al. 1957. Political Community and the North Atlantic Area: International Organizations in the Light of Historical Experiences. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. du Preez, Max. 2010. “On Not Becoming a Useful Idiot.” In Van Zyl Slabbert—The Passion for Reason: Essays in Honour of an Afrikaner African, edited by Alfred LeMaitre and Michael Savage, 137–145. Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball. Evans, Graham., and Jeffrey Newnham. 1998. The Penguin Dictionary of International Relations. London: Penguin. Fukuyama, Francis. 1989. “The End of History.” National Interest, no. 16: 3–18. Gade, C.  B.  N. 2011. “The Historical Development of the Written Discourses on Ubuntu.” South African Journal of Philosophy 30, no. 3: 303–329. Gandhi, M. 1968. “The Advent of Satyagraha.” in Satyagraha in South Africa, vol. 2. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press. https://www.mkgandhi.org/satyagraha_safrica/12satyagraha.htm. Gwexe, S. G. 1999. “Prospects for African Conflict Resolution in the Next Millennium: South Africa’s View.” African Journal on Conflict Resolution 1, no. 1: 103–124. Holden, Paul. 2008. The Arms Deal in Your Pocket. Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball. Human Rights Watch. 2000. “South Africa: Question of Principle: Arms Trade and Human Rights.” Citation No. A1205. October, 1. https://www.hrw.org/report/2000/10/01/ question-principle-arms-trade-and-human-rights. Keller, Bill. 1993. “South Africa Says It Built 6 Atom Bombs.” New York Times, March 25, 1993, sec. 1, 1. Landsberg, Christopher. 2000. “Promoting Democracy: The Mandela-Mbeki Doctrine.” Journal of Democracy 11, no. 3: 107–121. Maloka, Eddy. 2019. When Foreign Becomes Domestic. Tswane: Ssali Publishing House. Mandela, Nelson. 1993. “South Africa’s Future Foreign Policy.” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 5: 86–97. Mazrui, Ali  A. 1980. The African Condition, a Political Diagnosis: The 1979 Reith Lectures. London: Heineman.

550   Peter Vale Nolutshungu, Sam. 1975. South Africa in Africa: A Study in Ideology and Foreign Policy. Manchester: Manchester University Press. O’Brien, Kevin A. 2011. The South African Intelligence Services: From Apartheid to Democracy. London: Routledge. Seegers, Annette. 1996. The Military in the Making of Modern South Africa. London: I. B. Taurus. Smith, David. 1993. “Tony Blair Plotted Military Intervention in Zimbabwe, Claims Thabo Mbeki”. London: The Guardian. 29 November. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/ nov/27/tony-blair-military-intervention-zimbabwe-claim Spence, Jack (J.  E.). 1998. “The New South African Foreign Policy: Moral Incentives and Political Constraints.” ISSUP Bulletin, Universiteit van Pretoria 1/98. Stiebel, Lindy, and Liz Gunner, eds. 2005. Still Beating the Drum: Critical Perspectives on Lewis Nkosi. New York: Rodopi. Thakur, Vineet, and Peter Vale. 2019. “From Expert to Expertise: Frederik van Zyl Slabbert’s Imaginary and Negotiations in South Africa.” In Assembling Exclusive Expertise: Knowledge, Ignorance and Conflict Resolution in the Global South, edited by Anna Leander and Ole Wæver, 57–73. New York: Routledge. Vale, Peter. 1989. “ ‘Whose World Is It Anyway?’ International Relations in South Africa.” In The Study of International Relations: The State of the Art, edited by H.  C.  Dyer and L. Mangasarian, 201–220. London: Macmillan in association with Millennium: Journal of International Studies. Vale, Peter. 2003. Security and Politics in South Africa: The Regional Dimension. London: Lynne Rienner. Vale, Peter. 2008.“South Africa’s Destabilization Campaign.” In Encyclopaedia of the Cold War: A Political, Social, and Military History, edited by Spencer  C.  Tucker, 1176–1177. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. Vale, Peter, and Sipho Maseko. 1998. “South Africa and the African Renaissance.” International Affairs 74, no. 2: 271–287. Vale, Peter, and Ian Taylor. 1999. “South Africa’s Post-Apartheid Foreign Policy Five Years On—From Pariah State to ‘Just Another Country?’ ” The Round Table 352: 629–634. Van der Waag. 2015. A Military History of Modern South Africa. Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball Publishers. Venter, Albert, Susan Botha, Louis du Plessis, and Mariëtta Alberts. 2017. Explanatory Dictionary of Politics: Bilingual Core Terms and Definitions in Political Science. Cape Town: Juta. Verhoeven, Harry, C.S.R.  Murthy, Ricardo Soares de Oliveira. 2014. “ ‘Our Identity Is Our Currency’: South Africa, the Responsibility to Protect and the Logic of African Intervention.” Conflict, Security and Development 14, no. 4: 509–534. https://doi.org/10.1080/1468802.2014 .930594. Waldmeir, Patti. 1988. Anatomy of a Miracle: The End of Apartheid and the Birth of the New South Africa. London: Rutgers University Press. Welsh, David. 2009. The Rise and Fall of Apartheid. Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball.

Chapter 30

I n don esi a’s Con tr ibu tionS to Peacefu l Ch a nge i n I n ter nationa l A ffa irs Dewi Fortuna Anwar

The preamble of the 1945 Constitution clearly stipulates that Indonesia must participate in the shaping of a world order based on freedom, abiding peace, and social justice. Thus, from the beginning there was a conviction that the newly independent Republic of Indonesia should not simply remain a passive bystander in the international order unfolding immediately after the Second World War that was dominated by bipolar Cold War politics, a strategic rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. The Constitution mandated that Indonesia should actively contribute to maintaining world peace and at the same time refrain from becoming a party to international conflicts. This constitutional stance was further strengthened by Indonesia’s “free and active” foreign policy doctrine enunciated in 1948, which prevented, and continues to restrict, Indonesia from joining any military alliances or becoming partisan in great power rivalries. Indonesia has been a proponent of the principle of peaceful coexistence since the 1955 Bandung Conference and was a founding member of the Non-­aligned movement (NAM) in 1961, which continues to be part of Indonesia’s foreign policy identity to the present day. The birth and early political development of the Republic of Indonesia was a far cry from peaceful change. Besides the new republic’s having to wage an armed struggle for independence against the returning Dutch colonial forces (1945–1949), its first two decades were also marked by violent conflicts between different national political forces, regional rebellions, social conflicts, and international confrontations. Indonesia’s internal instability and radical foreign policy under President Sukarno’s Guided Democracy (1959–1965) constituted a major threat to regional stability. The abortive alleged Communist coup of September 30, 1965, was followed by a violent counter-­coup led by

552   Dewi Fortuna Anwar the army, which led to the impeachment of President Sukarno; the banning of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI); and the mass killings, imprisonments, and a purge of PKI members and sympathizers (Feith  1968). Subsequently the virulently anti-­ Communist army dominated the New Order government under President Suharto and ruled Indonesia from 1966 until Suharto’s resignation in the midst of the Asian financial crisis in 1998. Despite the violence associated with the New Order, which governed through coercion and co-­optation, committing gross violations of human rights, particularly in the ­restive provinces of Aceh, Papua, and East Timor (forcibly annexed in 1975), Indonesia enjoyed over three decades of internal political stability and rapid economic development (Liddle  1985). The New Order government imposed order and stability and greatly improved the socioeconomic welfare of the people, transforming Indonesia from a fragile state to one of the economic miracles in Asia, until the onset of the Asian financial crisis in 1997. Suharto’s focus on stability and economic development led to Indonesia becoming a founder and leader of Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) regional cooperation. Both Indonesia’s internal stability and its commitment to ASEAN as the cornerstone of its foreign policy have helped transform Southeast Asia from a highly divided and unstable region to one that is becoming a security community. The collapse of the New Order government amid the Asian financial crisis has ushered in a new era of democracy in Indonesia, albeit a flawed one, with a commitment to resolving internal conflicts through peaceful means and ensuring economic development and social equity, as well as a continuing determination to maintain a peaceful regional order and positive engagement with the wider international community. Indonesia’s transition to democracy, while marked in the early years by violent social conflicts, has led to the peaceful resolution of many long-­standing internal conflicts. Although its aftermath was marred by large-­scale violence, the plebiscite that was carried out in East Timor under the direction of the Habibie government in 1999 paved the way for East Timor’s independence (Mizuno 2012). Indonesia has also achieved a peace settlement with the rebels who sought independence in Aceh in the wake of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami in the area (Aspinal 2005). Amitav Acharya, in Indonesia Matters: Asia’s Emerging Democratic Power (2015), argued that unlike other countries that usually rely on military and/or economic capabilities, Indonesia has shown a different pathway to emerging power status. According to Acharya, Indonesia has demonstrated “a positive, virtuous correlation among three factors—democracy, development and stability—while pursuing a foreign policy of restraint towards neighbours and active engagement with the world at large” (Acharya 2015, 2–3). This chapter looks at the nexus between Indonesian domestic politics and foreign policy and its contributions to peaceful change in international affairs, highlighting Indonesia’s contribution to the development of a peaceful regional order in Southeast Asia, its role as a middle power, and its promotion of moderate Islam and democracy as a new foreign policy agenda.

Indonesia’s Contributions to Peaceful Change   553

From Revolutionary Politics to Developmental Peace Indonesia’s political trajectory, which has greatly contributed to peaceful change in Southeast Asia, is very much in line with the conclusion drawn by Stein Tonneson in Explaining the East Asian Peace: A Research Story (Tonneson 2017). Tonneson argued that the sharp drop in the number of battle deaths in East Asia since the 1980s has mostly been due to the changing priority of the ruling elites. With economic development becoming the main goal of many East Asian countries, there has been a sharp decline in wars and violent conflicts due to the need for a peaceful and stable internal and external environment, resulting in the so-­called developmental peace. The primary hypothesis of developmental peace is that the more states prioritize economic development, the more likely they are to reduce or even resolve conflicts related to security interests (Wei 2020, 196). While East Asian countries are pursuing mainly peaceful interstate relations, however, the research shows that internally many of them impose repressive peace by cracking down on dissent (Eck 2015), which was certainly the case in Indonesia throughout the military-­dominated New Order period (1966–1998). The first twenty years of Indonesia’s history after it declared independence on August 17, 1945, was marked by violent conflicts and political instability, including conflicts over state ideology. At the birth of the Republic of Indonesia, Pancasila, or the Five Principles, was adopted as the state ideology, comprising belief in the One True God, a just and civilized humanity, national unity, representative democracy, and social justice. Pancasila was agreed upon as a compromise between the proponents of an Islamic state and a wholly secular state and primarily aimed at ensuring the active role of the state in protecting religious freedom and diversity in Indonesia, where the world’s largest Muslim majority lives side by side with sizable numbers of followers of Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, and traditional faiths. Pancasila, however, continued to be contested by both the left and the right, the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and the Islamist groups, which dominated political contestation in the first two decades of Indonesia’s independence. Indonesia’s first experiment with liberal democracy in the 1950s collapsed due to the numerous internal conflicts and instability of the multiparty parliamentary system, prompting President Sukarno to issue a presidential decree on July 5, 1959, to restore the 1945 Constitution, which provided for a strong presidential system (Feith  1962). Between 1959 and 1965 Indonesia was under the Guided Democracy, during which Sukarno tried to reconcile the forces of secular nationalism, religion, and Communism while presiding over an unstable power structure underpinned by two opposing groups, the anti-­Communist army and the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) (Feith 1963). Completing decolonization and maintaining revolutionary fervor acted as a rallying cry for Sukarno, for whom the struggle of colonized and newly independent countries

554   Dewi Fortuna Anwar against Western colonial and imperialist powers was of greater importance in defining international relations than the bipolar Cold War structure. Sukarno therefore departed from Indonesia’s “free and active” foreign policy doctrine by aligning the country with progressive international forces, notably the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Sukarno also thrived on revolutionary politics and adventurous foreign policy as a means of ensuring his political dominance over fractious political forces (Legge 1972). After the successful conclusion of the military campaign to force the Dutch to relinquish West Irian following years of failed negotiations, between 1963 and 1965 Indonesia launched a confrontation or Konfrontasi against the newly formed Malaysian Federation, which Jakarta regarded as a British plot to encircle Indonesia (Mackie 1974). The events of September 30, 1965, in which a number of army generals were killed as part of an alleged PKI plot supported by China, effectively ended the Guided Democracy power structure and made the anti-­ Communist army the undisputed master of Indonesia (Crouch 1978). The New Order government under President Suharto took Indonesia on a completely different trajectory from the earlier or “Old Order” period. To Suharto and the army, the primary national objective was to strengthen national resilience (Anwar 1996). Threats to national security were considered to be primarily internal in nature, particularly from contending ideologies from the left (Communism) and from the right (Islam), which sought to replace the national pluralist ideology, Pancasila. To safeguard the latter, the New Order government outlawed Communism and banned Islamist political movements. The Indonesian army believed that overcoming the threat of Communism could not be done through military alliances but by removing the root causes of Communist ideology, namely socioeconomic grievances. Thus, throughout its thirty-­two years of rule from 1966 to 1998, the New Order government focused on economic development, which went hand in hand with tight control of Indonesia’s political and social lives. While freezing diplomatic ties with China until the end of the Cold War, Indonesia developed close relations with the United States and other Western industrialized countries that could assist in Indonesia’s economic development. Equally important, Indonesia abandoned its confrontation with Malaysia and embarked on a policy of good neighborliness and regional cooperation to ensure regional peace and stability, thus freeing Jakarta to allocate its scarce resources to more productive pursuits such as accelerating economic growth and poverty alleviation. By prioritizing economic development, which has continued to be a priority in the post-­Suharto era, Indonesia has contributed to developmental peace in Southeast Asia. The establishment of ASEAN on August 8, 1967, by the five non-­Communist Southeast Asian countries—Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand—was the direct result of a reorientation of Indonesia’s domestic priorities and external outlook. Notwithstanding its many shortcomings ASEAN, which now encompasses all ten Southeast Asian countries, has directly contributed to regional peace, stability, and prosperity through the development of regional norms, institutions, and policies that promote dialogues, peaceful settlement of conflicts, cooperative security, and economic interdependence.

Indonesia’s Contributions to Peaceful Change   555

Indonesia’s Role as a Middle Power Following the emergence of the post–Second World War “traditional middle powers,” Australia and Canada, Indonesia is usually counted to be among the first wave of middle powers, based on both its capabilities and its hierarchical rank (between the great and small powers) and its foreign policy activism since the mid-­1950s (Holbraad 1984, 89). Holbraad (1984, 211) suggested that the greatest contribution middle powers can make is at the regional level, arguing that if “they found it possible to construct relations and pursue their interests with an eye to order and justice among the states of the region, they could make a valuable contribution to the pursuit of the basic goals of international society,” namely “to maintain stability, control conflict and uphold international law in their regions.” Holbraad further observed that a middle power “at the head of an association of states might pursue stability by maintaining a diplomatic concert.” How to define middle powers, however, is a question that has been hotly debated among scholars, with varying emphasis on capabilities, function, behavior, norms, or combinations of some or all of these factors. Thies and Sari (2018) propose a “role theory approach” to understanding middle powers, judging a country’s qualifications as a middle power by the yardstick of the roles that middle powers are traditionally expected to perform, which include being good international citizens, coalition builders, bridge builders, peacekeepers, third-­party conflict mediators, and supporters of multilateralism and the existing US-­led international order. According to Thies and Sari’s analysis, Indonesia qualified as a middle power under presidents Suharto, Megawati, Yudhoyono, and Jokowi, but not under presidents Sukarno, Habibie, and Abdurrahman Wahid. Indonesia has been a middle power, adopting normative strategies that include the promotion of norms and principles, building international institutions, and acting as a mediator or facilitator in regional conflicts. Emmers and Teo (2018), making some adjustments to the functional/behavior typology, use the terms “functional” and “normative” to distinguish the different security strategies of middle powers. “A functional strategy would be one in which the middle power targets its resources to address a specific security issue, while a normative strategy would see the middle power relying primarily on multilateralism and institutions to promote broad behavioural norms and rules, as well as all-­round positive inter-­state relations at the regional level” (Emmers and Teo 2018, 74). The different strategies are shaped by the middle power’s resource availability and strategic environment. A low-­threat strategic environment combined with a low level of resource availability would lead to a normative strategy, a high-­threat strategic environment combined with a high level of resource availability would lead to a functional strategy, and a low-­threat strategic environment combined with a high level of resource availability produces a mixed strategy. This study shows that Indonesia, with its still limited resource availability and relatively low-­level external threat, while pursuing a mixed strategy, has been much more successful in promoting a normative foreign policy agenda than a functional one.

556   Dewi Fortuna Anwar Here we look briefly at examples of Indonesia’s foreign policy activities as a middle power that can be categorized as efforts to promote peaceful change. These are, first, Indonesia’s consistent efforts to promote “peaceful coexistence” between contending forces; second, its steadfast commitment to ensuring regional harmony; third, its proactive role in mediating regional conflicts; and fourth, its long-­term support for UN peacekeeping operations. Indonesia’s “free and active” foreign policy principle was meant to act as a guideline for the country to chart its own course while trying to develop friendly relations with different sides, beyond simply avoiding partisanship in the Cold War bipolar divide. Indonesia hosted the first Asian-­African Conference in Bandung in 1955, together with India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Burma, the so-­called Colombo powers, and actively tried to bring together countries with different ideological backgrounds in an effort to promote mutual understanding and reduce tensions. A number of the participants in the Bandung Conference were members of US military alliances, some belonged to the Soviet-­led camp, and others were uncommitted. The Bandung Conference was the first international event to which the PRC was invited, in an effort to bring Beijing into the international fold after the Communist victory in 1949. The Bandung Conference has had a lasting legacy, particularly in its support for peaceful coexistence, international cooperation, and solidarity among developing countries, and acted as a precursor to the NAM (Acharya and Tan 2008). For Indonesia, the holding of the 1955 Bandung Conference is considered a high point and an ideal in its foreign policy conduct, and the “Bandung Spirit” has continued to inform Indonesian foreign policy thinking (Anwar 2008). The end of the Cold War has not led to an end of conflicts between major countries. In the spirit of supporting peaceful existence and nonalignment, Indonesia has consistently refused to take part in international conflicts, tried to engage all parties, and pushed for the development of more inclusive regionalism in the wider East Asia and Indo-­Pacific regions. While from a realist perspective this behavior can simply be described as hedging when confronted by great power competition, such as the growing competition between the United States and China in the Indo-­Pacific region, Indonesia’s comfort with living with differences may also be due to the national values of tolerance embodied in Pancasila and the motto “Unity in Diversity.” Within the Islamic world, Indonesia, as the largest Muslim majority country that is predominantly Sunni, has consistently maintained friendly ties with both Saudi Arabia and Iran. Throughout his presidency President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (2004–2014) emphasized Indonesia’s role as a bridge builder and its foreign policy of having “a million friends and zero enemies.” Indonesia has also continued its policy of playing a leadership role in promoting regional harmony and ASEAN centrality. Indonesia’s “free and active” foreign policy has increasingly been tied to its support for the development of regional resilience and ASEAN’s strategic autonomy, which both naturally depend on ASEAN’s cohesiveness. Unlike in many other regional organizations, where the largest member often tries to assert dominance, Indonesia in ASEAN has consciously adopted a non-­assertive role. As the largest member, and with the damaging impact of its past confrontational policy

Indonesia’s Contributions to Peaceful Change   557 never forgotten, Indonesia has mostly practiced the Javanese concept of Tut Wuri Handayani or “leading from behind” within ASEAN. Despite differences in outlook within ASEAN and amid rising criticisms of ASEAN’s slow progress in certain domestic quarters, the government has been steadfast in regarding ASEAN as the cornerstone of Indonesian foreign policy. ASEAN’s success has been attributed to a certain extent to Indonesia’s “big-­ heartedness” toward the organization. Kishore Mahbubani, a prominent retired diplomat and writer from Singapore, wrote recently that Southeast Asian regional stability has mostly been due to the presence of ASEAN, “for which we shouldn’t just thank God. We should also thank Indonesia. Why? Just look around the world and ask yourselves why many regional organizations, including the Organization of American States, Gulf Cooperation Council and South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation, are struggling. One answer is that the largest member of these organizations exercises too much dominance. Indonesia is, by far, the largest member of ASEAN. Of the 650 million people in Southeast Asia, 40 percent, or 260 million, live in Indonesia. Why then has the country not tried to dominate ASEAN? Quite honestly, this is a big mystery. This is abnormal behaviour” (Mahbubani 2018). The notion of hegemonic stability found in international relations theory (Keohane 1984) is considered to be neither desirable nor tenable in developing the ASEAN regional order. In the wake of Konfrontasi, any overt attempts by Indonesia to play a dominant role in ASEAN could be viewed with suspicion and resisted by the other members, which would be counterproductive for regional harmony. Equally important, as indicated by Emmers and Teo (2018), Indonesia is predisposed to pursue a normative security strategy focusing on the development of regional norms, principles, and institutions, which in ASEAN includes a strong adherence to the principles of respect for national sovereignty, noninterference in each other’s internal affairs, and decision-­ making by consensus. In recent years, however, with an enlarged ASEAN and greater diversity of interests between member states, the style of leading from behind is no ­longer considered effective. There have been calls for Indonesia to play a more vigorous leadership role within the consensus-­driven process, which could be characterized in Javanese parlance as ing madyo mangun karso, “from the middle we encourage the will” or leading from the middle. Beyond ASEAN, Indonesia has also taken the lead in promoting a more inclusive regional architecture that stresses the need to work toward cooperative security and common prosperity among the members. In line with its “free and active” foreign policy doctrine and support for peaceful coexistence, Indonesia has been a strong proponent of the development of regional constructs that bring together rival major powers. Past historical experiences of Japanese domination and China’s looming threat to Southeast Asia have also made Indonesia wary of a major Asian power dominating the region. Indonesia has therefore been a strong proponent and supporter of open and inclusive regional architectures that also include other non-­Asian regional stakeholders. Toward this end, Indonesia has thrown its support behind such open and inclusive regionalism as the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and ensured that the East Asia

558   Dewi Fortuna Anwar Summit (EAS), initially envisaged to be limited to ASEAN and its Plus Three partners (China, Japan, South Korea), was enlarged to include India, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and Russia, and thereby ensuring the development of a dynamic equilibrium between the contending major powers. Indonesia has also promoted the ASEAN outlook on the Indo-­Pacific, adopted by ASEAN in 2019, which emphasizes transparency and inclusiveness and eschews a zero-­sum mentality (Anwar 2020). Playing an active role in mediating or easing regional conflicts is another significant form of Indonesia’s contribution to peaceful change. Indonesia’s efforts in trying to bring warring Cambodian factions together through the so-­called cocktail parties and Jakarta Informal Meetings in the 1980s have been well documented. Indonesia and France cochaired the meeting that produced the Paris Peace Agreement of 1991, ending the Cambodian civil war. Before the issue was formally taken up by ASEAN, Indonesia had tried to ease tensions in the South China Sea by hosting a series of workshops on managing the potential conflicts there throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, chaired by senior diplomat Hasjim Djalal (Djalal 2001). Indonesia has also been one of the prime movers in ASEAN in getting the Declaration of Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea operationalized, as well as in pushing for a more binding code of conduct. When border skirmishes broke out between Cambodia and Thailand over the Temple of Preah Vihear in 2011, Indonesia, as chair of ASEAN, brokered talks between the two countries to end the first-­ever open clashes between ASEAN member states since the founding of the regional body (Natalegawa  2018). Indonesia also assisted in the peace negotiations between the Philippines government and the Muslim rebels in Mindanao. Recently, Indonesia has tried to widen its peace activism beyond the Southeast Asian region. When the bilateral relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran took a turn for the worse in early 2016, President Joko Widodo sent Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi to deliver his letters to both leaders in Teheran and in Riyadh, calling for restraint and Islamic solidarity, despite little expectation of success (Anwar 2019). Regularly contributing to UN peacekeeping operations (PKOs) can also be regarded as part of Indonesia’s contribution to peaceful change. Indonesia has been an active troop-­contributing country (TCC) to UN peacekeeping missions since 1957, when it first sent a sizable military contingent to Egypt. Indonesia’s support for the UN PKOs is seen as important in fulfilling its constitutional mandate to contribute to the maintenance of world order (Wirajuda 2007). Indonesia’s participation in UN PKOs has mostly been in the form of military contingents for noncombat missions under Chapter VI of the UN Charter, though lately more police personnel have been deployed to assist in law enforcement duties. Indonesia has not taken part in any peace enforcement operations as provided under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, since the country so far does not allow its military to fight on foreign territories. Recognizing the increasingly complex regional and global security challenges, Indonesia is now working toward increasing its national peacekeeping capacity, as well as supporting the development of an ASEAN peacekeeping capacity (Anwar 2014). Indonesia aims to be among the top ten TCCs, with the ability to simultaneously deploy four thousand peacekeepers, and has made increasing the number of female peacekeepers one of its priorities.

Indonesia’s Contributions to Peaceful Change   559

Promoting Moderate Islam and Democracy as a New Foreign Policy Agenda Since the onset of the reformasi era, promoting moderate Islam and democracy has become an important foreign policy agenda for Indonesia. As the country successfully undertook the transition from authoritarian rule to democracy in the wake of the Asian financial crisis and the fall of the New Order regime of President Suharto in 1998, Indonesians have justifiably been very proud of their country’s achievements. Indonesia’s relative success in building and consolidating its democracy—so that it is now recognized as the world’s third largest democracy and the largest democracy among Muslim-­majority countries—is worthy of note in light of the difficulties faced by many other countries undergoing similar experiences. As a new democracy, coupled with its foreign policy activism, Indonesia has become an enthusiastic proponent of democratic ideals and is keen to share its experiences with partners in ASEAN and beyond. In his first foreign policy speech, hosted by the Indonesian Council for World Affairs in 2005, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono outlined what he considered to be Indonesia’s “international identity,” comprising three key elements (Yudhoyono 2005): it is the world’s fourth most populous nation, it is home to the world’s largest Muslim population, and it is the world’s third largest democracy. Yudhoyono took pride in the fact that Indonesia is “also a country where democracy, Islam and modernity go hand-­ in-­hand.” The themes of Indonesia being the world’s largest Muslim nation and the third largest democracy, with a modern, outward-­looking society, have been emphasized over and over again as Indonesia projects itself onto the international stage, including in the G20, the grouping of the world’s largest economies, in which Indonesia is the only member from Southeast Asia. In his first annual press briefing in 2010, Indonesia’s then foreign minister Marty Natalegawa stated that “[a]s G 20 confirms its status as the premier forum on economic issues, Indonesia is challenged to carve a niche within the Group that is unique to itself as the world’s third largest democracy, the country with the world’s largest Muslim population and a voice of moderation” (Natalegawa 2010). Although the majority of Indonesians are Muslims, until recently Islam as a value has not played a significant role in informing Indonesian foreign policy, except in Indonesia’s strong support for the Palestinian struggle for an independent state and opposition to Zionism (Sukma 2003). The increase in religious tensions globally, however, particularly the emergence of Islamic extremism and terrorism misusing the name of Islam, which has led to rising Islamophobia in the West, has been of particular concern to Indonesia. Conflicts within the Islamic world as well as between Muslims and people of other faiths directly affect religious harmony in Indonesia’s multireligious and multiethnic society. The ongoing problems of international terrorism linked to extremist Islamic

560   Dewi Fortuna Anwar movements and the perceived clash of civilizations between Islam and the West have also drawn international interest to the new phenomenon of Indonesia, where democracy is taking root in the world’s largest Muslim nation. Indonesia has therefore been quick to seize the opportunity to project this new international identity and to capitalize on its unique position to try to act as a bridge between the Islamic world and the West. It has taken the lead in promoting interfaith dialogues internationally to enhance mutual understanding and respect between peoples of different religions. Of equal importance is Indonesia’s increasingly active role in trying to promote moderate Islam within the Islamic world amid Saudi Arabia’s well-­funded promotion of Wahabi Islam. Indonesia has also suffered from terrorist attacks by homegrown Islamic extremist groups linked to, or inspired by, transnational extremist movements such as al-­Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Indonesia’s much-­lauded social harmony, attributed to the inclusive national ideology Pancasila, has also been threatened by rising religious intolerance. While in earlier times Indonesia tended to defer to the Middle East as the natural center of the Islamic world, the endless conflicts and crises in the Middle East have pushed it to call for the true implementation of Islam as a religion of peace, as its name implies, highlighting the Indonesian experience. Since its transition to democracy, Indonesia has tried to promote its international image as a country where Islam, democracy, modernity, and empowerment of women can walk hand in hand. Among the activities undertaken by Indonesia to share the Indonesian experience are efforts to make the country into a new international center of Islamic learning, providing assistance to other Muslim countries when requested and revitalizing understandings about Wasatiyyat Islam. Indonesia is in the process of establishing the Indonesian International Islamic University near Jakarta, envisaged as a modern center of learning on Islamic civilization in the age of globalization. At the request of the Afghan government, Indonesia is building the Indonesian Islamic Centre in Kabul, while Nahdlatul Ulama, the largest Muslim mass organization in Indonesia and known for its religious tolerance, has also established branches in Afghanistan. In May 2018, Indonesia hosted a high-­level consultation of world Muslim scholars on and presented a proposal on the conception and implementation of Wasatiyyat Islam, defined as Islam of the middle path that avoids extreme positions and seeks a balance between the afterlife and the worldly life, and as a method “to contextualize Islam in the midst of global civilizations” (Anwar 2019). The most important impact of Indonesia’s political transformation on the substance of its foreign policy in the past decade, however, has been the mainstreaming of democracy and human rights issues in its foreign policy agenda, particularly in its policy toward ASEAN (Murphy 2012). Since its establishment, ASEAN has been regarded as the cornerstone of Indonesia’s foreign policy, and Jakarta has been a staunch supporter of the ASEAN Way, which includes noninterference in each other’s internal affairs, decision-­making by consensus, and a minimalist approach to regional integration. With the dramatic political transformation at home, however, the foreign policy establishment came under increasing pressure to align Indonesia’s external stance with its core

Indonesia’s Contributions to Peaceful Change   561 values at home, which now include respect for democracy and human rights. Indonesian pro-­democracy activists have become increasingly critical of ASEAN’s traditional noninterference policy, which prevented the association or its members from taking a critical stance when a fellow member committed gross violations of human rights. ASEAN is popularly perceived as an elitist regional organization with little relevance to the lives of the common people and the issues that matter to them most. The political situation in Myanmar, particularly the long imprisonment of democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who had won the general elections in 1990, had long been a focus of pro-­ democracy activists around the world, and lately also in Indonesia. The result is that the Indonesian government has been under considerable domestic pressure to push for the promotion of democracy and human rights as part of the key political agenda for ASEAN (Ruland 2017). When Indonesia took over the chairmanship of ASEAN in 2003, it proposed the establishment of the ASEAN Security Community (ASC)—later renamed the ASEAN Political-­ Security Community (APSC)—to complement the ASEAN Economic Community, which had been put forward by Singapore as one of the three pillars of the ASEAN Community. Besides re-­emphasizing the key treaties and agreements of ASEAN, which have governed interstate relations since the establishment of ASEAN in 1967, the APSC for the first time also talks about democracy and human rights as being parts of the core values of ASEAN as well as goals to which all members aspire. The third pillar, the Social-­Cultural Community, has been put forward by the Philippines. The Declaration of ASEAN Concord II (Bali Concord II) of 2003 formally agreed to the establishment of an ASEAN Community comprising the three pillars by 2020, later brought forward to 2015. The ASEAN Community initiative is envisioned as transforming the primarily intergovernmental regional organization into a more people-­oriented one. The correlation between Indonesia’s democratic transition and ASEAN’s move toward a more people-­oriented organization was highlighted by Foreign Minister Natalegawa in 2010 in a briefing that is worth quoting at length: “Almost mirroring Indonesia’s democratic transformation over the past decade, the period since 2003 when Indonesia last held the Chairmanship of ASEAN has witnessed ASEAN’s own evolution towards an ASEAN Community. This development has not been an accident. For Indonesia, the evolution of an ASEAN that is more alert to democratic principles and good governance is critical to ensure that there would not be a disconnect or divide between the transformation that has taken place in Indonesia and the regional milieu” (Natalegawa 2010). Unlike some Western democracies that often employ harsh open criticisms, sanctions, and even in certain cases military intervention in the agenda to promote democracy and human rights worldwide, Indonesia has adopted a much softer approach (Wirajuda 2014). As a country that has had to struggle for its independence from colonial rule, Indonesia, like many newly independent countries, tends to be nationalistic and guards its sovereignty jealously. It cannot be denied that within ASEAN the adoption of the new universal values of democracy and human rights as mandated in the ASEAN Charter must continue to take into account the well-­entrenched adherence to the noninterference

562   Dewi Fortuna Anwar principle. In order to overcome the taboo of discussing the domestic political problems of another ASEAN member within the regional fora, Indonesian foreign minister Hassan Wirajuda (2001–2009), who served under President Megawati Sukarnoputri and President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, took the initiative of regularly informing his ASEAN colleagues about Indonesia’s political development. This exercise of telling and sharing, including about the various challenges that Indonesia faced in its transition from authoritarian rule to democracy, was aimed at reducing ASEAN members’ reluctance to discuss their domestic problems, as well as to demonstrate that other ASEAN countries had a right to know about happenings in Indonesia that could also affect the region as a whole. In turn, it was hoped that the other ASEAN members would also be more forthcoming in discussing the internal challenges they face, particularly those that might have wider regional ramifications. Indonesia’s desire to promote democracy outside its borders has not been limited to the ASEAN region. As its democracy began to be consolidated, Indonesia felt that it was time to share its political experiences with countries in the wider Asian region, which led to the launching of the first Bali Democracy Forum (BDF) in December 2008. The BDF was purposely designed as an intergovernmental forum to discuss democracy and its many challenges in a collegial and nonconfrontational manner among Asian states. Well-­established democracies and those “aspiring to be democracies” were invited to attend, a few at the highest level of government and the rest at the ministerial level. Since its inaugural meeting the BDF has become an annual event and a priority on Indonesia’s public diplomacy agenda. Many outside commentators were quite skeptical of the BDF initiative at the beginning because it also invited nondemocratic states to participate, unlike other democracy forums, which usually limit their membership to recognized democracies. For Indonesia, however, which wished to promote democratic values within its immediate region and beyond as a means to enhance regional peace and stability, a more inclusive and engaging approach was deemed more appropriate. In a region where most political elites continue to view democracy with suspicion as a Western import and the principle of noninterference in each other’s domestic affairs holds sway, the establishment of the BDF was first and foremost aimed at enabling the participants to talk openly about their internal political development without fear of being put on the defensive. Through participation in the BDF, Indonesia hoped that government leaders in Asia would no longer be allergic to openly discussing democracy and related subjects. Despite the skepticism surrounding its launch, the BDF has attracted an increasingly large number of participating states and observers. The BDF has enabled top government leaders and senior officials to share best practices about democracy and have dialogues on various strategic topics such as the link between democracy and conflict resolution and peace. Through the annual BDF and the activities of the Institute of Peace and Democracy (IPD), which was established as a think tank to support the BDF and its follow-­up programs, Indonesia has been able to share its at times tumultuous democratic journey with other countries. Indonesia’s recent experience in managing its difficult political transition in the midst of a multidimensional crisis that included a devastating

Indonesia’s Contributions to Peaceful Change   563 economic crisis, widening communal conflicts, and secessionist movements is considered to be more relevant to other developing countries facing similar challenges than the experiences of more mature democracies.

Conclusion Notwithstanding its often turbulent domestic politics and many incidents of violent internal conflict, Indonesia has made positive contributions to peaceful change in international affairs in at least three ways. First it has successfully transformed its policy toward its nearest Southeast Asian neighbors from confrontation to close regional cooperation, which is in line with the theory of developmental peace. Second, since the early days of independence, with the exception of its confrontational policy during Sukarno’s Guided Democracy period, Indonesia has played an active role as a middle power by seeking to be a good international citizen and acting as a mediator in a number of conflicts and as a bridge builder between various competing parties. Third, as the world’s largest Muslim-­majority country and a new democracy, since the onset of reformasi Indonesia has tried to promote moderate Islam to counter extremist ideology. Indonesia has also tried to promote the ideals of democracy in the region and beyond through nonjudgmental, inclusive, and soft approaches. Nevertheless, while Indonesia has achieved great progress in consolidating its democracy, it is categorized as a flawed democracy and still has some way to go to become a full-­fledged democracy. In fact, in recent years there have been certain downward trends, particularly in the areas of civil liberties and the protection of minority rights (Power 2018), that may weaken Indonesia’s credibility in promoting democracy and moderate Islam as a foreign policy agenda. At the same time, the strategic environment has become much more challenging. The rise in China-­US competition may complicate Indonesia’s ability to act as a source of peaceful change in Southeast Asia. Jakarta is increasingly unable to influence the situation in the South China Sea due to rising great power competition. China’s increasing assertiveness in the South China Sea has also caused divisions within ASEAN. Despite Indonesia’s active role, ASEAN and China have still not been able to agree on the final draft of the more binding Code of Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea.

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pa rt V I

R E GIONA L PE R SPE C T I V E S

chapter 31

Peacefu l Ch a nge i n W ester n Eu rope From Balance of Power to Political Community? Anders Wivel

This chapter unpacks the nature of peaceful change in Western Europe. Acknowledging that “Western Europe” is in itself a contested and ambiguous concept, I pragmatically use it as shorthand for those states that were North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members and liberal democratic neutrals during the Cold War. The chapter discusses peaceful change among these states since the end of the Second World War as well as the expansion of Western European peaceful change to Central and Eastern Europe and beyond after the end of the Cold War. I argue that Western European “peaceful change” is a mixture of three ideal types on how to understand the nature and logics of peaceful change: Hobbesian, Lockean, and Kantian. The three ideal types correspond largely to a realist, a liberal, and a constructivist understanding of peaceful change. Furthermore, they mirror the three definitions of peaceful change identified by T. V. Paul in the introductory chapter to this volume (see Paul this volume, 4). Peaceful change in a Hobbesian understanding is “change in international relations and foreign policies of states, including territorial or sovereignty agreements that take place without violence or coercive use of force,” that is, minimalist peaceful change. Peaceful change in a Lockean understanding is “the resolution of social problems mutually by institutionalized procedures without resort to largescale physical force” (Deutsch, 1957, 5), that is, Paul’s in-­between category. Peaceful change in a Kantian understanding is “transformational change that takes place non-­violently at the global, regional, interstate, and societal levels due to various material, normative and institutional factors, leading to deep peace among states, higher levels of prosperity and justice for all irrespective of nationality, race or gender,” that is, Paul’s definition of maximalist peaceful change.

570   Anders Wivel The three ideal types are inspired by Alexander Wendt’s discussion of different “cultures of anarchy” in international relations (1999). My aim is not to prove Wendt right or wrong, but to use the three cultures as theoretically informed narratives about the nature and logics of peaceful change in Europe. In effect, Hobbesian, Lockean, and Kantian logics serve as “different coloured lenses: if you put one of them in front of your eyes, you will see things differently. Some aspects of the world will look the same in some lenses [. . .] but many other features [. . .] will look very differently, so different in fact that they seem to show alternative worlds” (Smith 2007, 11; Sterling-­Folker 2006). In sum, Hobbesian, Lockean, and Kantian Europe each have different focal points and blind spots, and by discussing and comparing them we can achieve a more complete and critically informed understanding of peaceful change in Western Europe as well as a fuller understanding of where peaceful change is heading in the region.

From the Epicenter of War to Pax Europaea War was for centuries an integral part of Western European politics. Wars transformed the organization of political authority and power in the region from a mixture of overlapping authorities, dynastic states, and empires to one of territorial states with de jure sovereignty and—for some time—varying degrees of overseas empires (Bull and Watson 1984; Watson 1992). As famously summed up by Charles Tilly, in Europe, “war made the state and the state made war” (Tilly 1975, 42). This was a process in the making for more than five hundred years, with historical accounts typically identifying the defining moment as somewhere between the Peace of Constance in 1153 and the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 (Navari 2007), and with 1648 conventionally seen as the birthdate of not only a (Western) European international system, but modern state-­based international relations globally (de Carvalho, Leira, and Hobson 2011). This process was intimately linked to developments in military technology as well as successes on the battlefield. In the fourteenth century, military developments started to favor large-­scale armies with infantry soldiers at the expense of cavalries with mounted knights. The introduction of gunpowder provoked construction of large-­scale fortifications. Mass armies and large defensive structures required both a more comprehensive administration and organization and a bigger revenue to pay standing armies, and state survival became dependent upon institutional innovation and battlefield effectiveness (Spruyt 2011, 4–5). In the following two hundred years great power politics was largely synonymous with war making, creating a Waltzian process of competition and selection in the European anarchy: states would either adapt to the most successful practices or “fall by the wayside” (Waltz 1979, 71). From 1618 to 1648, the Thirty Years’ War—a conflict between Catholic and Protestant states in the Holy Roman Empire, which gradually came to involve most great powers in

Peaceful Change in Western Europe   571 Europe—killed more than eight million soldiers in battle and hundreds of thousands through famine and the spread of typhus associated with the war. The ensuing Peace of Westphalia succeeded in establishing the authority and fixed boundaries of European nation-­states, but this was not through peaceful change. From 1648 to 1789 alone, European powers fought forty-­eight wars, some of them lasting several years and expanding to other continents (Sheehan 2009). Europe was not only a continent characterized and formed by war but also a major exporter of military conflicts as European international society expanded to other regions of the world in the nineteenth century though colonialism, where the great powers continued their struggle for power and influence in Africa and Asia. In the twentieth century, Europe was home to the First World War, in which forty million troops and civilians were killed, and the center of the Second World War, the deadliest military conflict in human history, which killed approximately seventy-­five million people in the world, including forty-­five to fifty million in Europe. What was remarkable was the changing interstate relations in the postwar period. During the Cold War, Western Europe was characterized by great power stability and peaceful institutional development despite high tensions between East and West and the ever-­looming threat of a nuclear war. The region was subject to only minor conflicts, such as the Greek Civil War (1946–1949) and the Turkish invasion of Cyprus (1974). Western Europe was free of any parallels to the Soviet invasions of Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968), although there were severe security incidents, including the 1961 crisis on the status of Berlin, involving a standoff between US and Soviet tanks. The United States allowed or supported a number of variations on the theme of liberal democratic capitalism, including the elaborate Scandinavian welfare states of NATO members Norway and Denmark (and to a lesser extent Iceland). Still, peaceful change took place in the shadow of a nuclear balance of terror and the conventional military threat from the Soviet Union and authoritarian regimes in Central and Eastern Europe. US hegemony allowed not only for Scandinavian welfare states under the NATO umbrella but also for dictatorships in NATO member countries Portugal and Greece. Although, the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 are typically viewed as examples of peaceful change, lifting the Cold War “overlay” on Europe allowed a number of historically rooted conflicts to surface (Buzan et al. 1990). The violent breakup of Yugoslavia, including the Bosnian War (1992–1995) and the Kosovo War (1998–1999), caused fear that instability could spread to Western Europe and proved the continued inability of Western European states to effectively meet hard security challenges without the support of the United States. Despite rhetorical overtures toward strategic independence from the United States, most Western European governments were eager to cash in peace dividends from the end of the Cold War and to continue free-­riding on the US security shelter. Moreover, for some Atlanticist Western European states such as the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway, keeping an active US presence in Europe was also a way of soft balancing France’s vision for greater European independence (Paul 2018, 110–115). Despite this history of destruction and violent change, political decisionmakers and academic observers (often from Europe!) argue that Europe’s regional order, in

572   Anders Wivel ­ articular Western Europe’s regional order, has been a role model for successful peaceful p change (Kaldor et al. 2016; Manners 2002; Murray 2010). This view is not without empirical backing. The relative peace among European states since 1945 has been characterized as Pax Europaea (e.g., Ash 2005), and in 2012 the European Union won the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of its diplomatic efforts to maintain peace among member states and bring peace to countries and regions outside Europe. The Global Peace Index ranks Europe as the most peaceful region in the world, with Western European countries such as Iceland, Portugal, Austria, and Denmark continuously scoring in the top ten for their peaceful domestic societies and ability to contribute to peace internationally (Institute for Economic & Peace 2019).

Hobbesian Europe: Containing Enmity in International Anarchy From a Hobbesian perspective, peaceful change in Western Europe is the unintended outcome of power politics in international anarchy. Consequently, peaceful change does not amount to a transformation of politics in the region, but to a historical peculiarity following from the response of (primarily) the United States and (secondarily) Western European states to the Soviet threat during the Cold War. It is the outcome of the simultaneous operation of two well-­known processes in international anarchy: balancing and hegemony (Wivel 2004, 10–11). According to this perspective, the main institutional framework for peaceful change in Western Europe is NATO, which continues to serve as an instrument for US hegemony and for balancing first the Soviet Union and now Russia. The Hobbesian perspective allows us to understand how power politics may transcend even the most successful examples of peaceful change. However, it tells us little about why states move beyond concerns for power and military security or why peaceful change is resilient to major changes in the balance of power. The Second World War left the Soviet Union as the only remaining great power in Europe. Despite massive Soviet casualties, the war increased the Soviet population by twenty-­five million and added 272,500 square miles of territory (Davies 1996, 1062). By the end of the war, “Soviet dominance of Eastern Europe was a military fact” (Walker 1993, 16), and in 1949 the Soviet Union ended the US nuclear monopoly. The United States and Western European states responded with a combination of military power and institutional innovation to counter the Soviet threat. After the war, France, the United Kingdom, and most small states in Western Europe feared not only the Soviet superpower but also a resurgence of German power, which had been the source of continent-­wide wars already twice in the twentieth century. Consequently, France and the United Kingdom signed the Treaty of Dunkirk in 1947, followed by the Treaty of Brussels in 1948, adding the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg to the list of signatories aiming to cooperate to contain both Germany and the Soviet Union.

Peaceful Change in Western Europe   573 The Treaty of Brussels was a means to hard balance Germany, but the postwar policies of the United States allowed Western European states to pursue a policy based on institutionalized cooperation combined with ad hoc soft balancing of German and French initiatives, while taking advantage of the US security shelter. The United States had initially been reluctant to commit to a permanent military presence in Europe after the war, but the Treaty of Brussels signatories’ lack of sufficient military capabilities soon led the US administration to change their minds. The inability of British forces, arguably the strongest forces of the signatory states, to control Communist guerrillas in the Greek Civil War and their formal request that the United States take over its role in the war, had been a triggering factor in the announcement of the Truman Doctrine in 1947. Other European defense initiatives at the time—like the prospective Scandinavian Defense Union of Sweden, Denmark, and Norway—promised to be even less effective. Only with US military backing would it be possible to contain the conventional military threat from the Soviet Union, and only with a formalization and institutionalization of the US commitment to the defense of Western Europe would it be possible for the United States to control the military policies of Western European states and to signal a credible deterrence for Western Europe. The Truman Doctrine committed the United States to containing the immediate threats in Greece and Turkey and more generally to “free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures” (Truman  1947). Linking economic recovery to political stability in Europe and both of these factors to US national security, the president created a strong rationale for the defense of Europe. Truman’s speech was followed up by the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty and the creation of NATO in 1949 by the United States and the Treaty of Brussels signatories, as well as Canada, Portugal, Italy, Denmark, Norway, and Iceland. Greece and Turkey joined in 1952, West Germany in 1955, and Spain in 1982; a series of post–Cold War enlargements later expanded the Western European alliance into Central and Eastern Europe by securing the accession of the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland (1999); Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia (2004); Albania and Croatia (2009); Montenegro (2017); and North Macedonia (2020), taking the alliance to thirty member states and transforming it from a Western European to an all-­European alliance. The rationale for NATO was threefold: (1) to deter Soviet aggression against member states, (2) to curb the revival of nationalist militarism in Europe, and (3) to encourage political integration among Western European states. A strong military presence of the United States—“Europe’s American pacifier” (Joffe  1984)—was to facilitate stability among NATO members and between NATO members and potential enemies. NATO was established as a response to the growing threat from the Soviet Union to Western Europe and formally connected the national security of the member states through the North Atlantic Treaty, most importantly the provision in Article 5 “that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all” (NATO 1949). This effectively put Western European signatories under the “nuclear umbrella” of the United States. To secure the ability of the signatories to honor the words of the treaty, Western European armed forces were rebuilt after the war,

574   Anders Wivel and the United States increased its number of troops in Europe from 120,000 in 1950 to 400,000 only half a decade later, with US troops making up approximately 10 percent of the European total for most of the Cold War (Enthoven 1975; Congressional Research Service 2020). More than 70,000 US troops remain in Europe (Congressional Research Service 2020; Bialik 2017). While these troops are now viewed as a safeguard against Russia in Eastern Europe and the Baltic States, in particular after the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, the purpose in the early Cold War was as much a safeguard against the resurgence of the military nationalism of the two world wars. Even today, the US (nuclear and conventional) commitment to European security allows NATO members to avoid difficult choices and costs of personnel-, procurement-, and defense-­related research and development, often to the frustration of the US administration, which urges increased European defense spending. In the words of John Mearsheimer, the United States remains Europe’s “night watchman” (Mearsheimer  2010, 388), effectively suspending the dynamics of international anarchy. This Euro-­Atlantic “night watchman state” was not a US empire by intervention and coercion, but an “empire by invitation” and integration. It had been called for first by French and British policy makers after the First World War and again after the Second World War (Lundestad 1999, 2005). A central tenet of this order was keeping Germany in check. The German Federal Republic was founded in 1949, but the country had no armed forces until 1955, the year of German accession to NATO. The German armed forces (the Bundeswehr) were allowed to grow to almost 500,000 military personnel and approximately 170,000 civilians during the Cold War and were generally regarded as a highly effective backbone of NATO’s conventional defense in Central Europe (Gaddis  2006, 220). However, Germany was at the same time the location of most of the US troops deployed in Western Europe. Today, Germany continues to spend well below the 2 percent of GDP on its national defense budget agreed by all NATO member states (NATO 2019). Despite a population in excess of eighty million and status as Europe’s economic hegemon, Germany comes in only sixth in military strength among NATO member states—after the United States, France, United Kingdom, Italy, and Turkey (Global Fire Power 2020). From the outset, NATO’s aim was not only balancing and containing external and internal threats to (Western) European stability and peace, but also creating incentives for the political integration of Western Europe. As noted by Peterson, “America sought a unified Europe as a central element in a ‘negotiated’ postwar international order, which itself featured a coherent and purposeful West as a central pillar” (Peterson 2004, 614). The European Recovery Program (ERP), or the Marshall Plan as it was commonly known, was launched in 1947, offering economic and financial aid to all European countries on the condition of closer European cooperation. The Soviet Union rejected the offer and persuaded the countries of the emerging Eastern bloc to do the same, even though Poland and Czechoslovakia had expressed their interest in taking part. Consequently, the ERP and its institutional framework, the Committee of European Economic Cooperation (CEEC), became a Western European endeavor with sixteen signatories, led by France and the United Kingdom.

Peaceful Change in Western Europe   575 The Western European states had a strong incentive to rebuild their economies after the war, because this was the only way they could prepare themselves to balance the Soviet Union, if the United States abandoned the continent sometime in the future. Economic integration was an effective means to growth, because it created a continent-­ wide market (Rosato 2011, 47). At the same time, US administrations from Truman to Kennedy, Nixon, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama saw political and economic integration in Western Europe—and since the early 1990s economic integration in all of Europe—as an important “milieu goal” serving US as well as European interests (Nielsen 2013; Peterson 2004, 614, 616). The stability of Europe’s institutional development, from the 1957 Treaty of Rome establishing the European Economic Community to the 1992 Maastricht Treaty establishing the European Union, reflects the stability of the balance of power (Rosato 2011, 47). By this logic, the collapse of the Soviet Union paradoxically posed the gravest danger to peaceful change in Western Europe since the end of the Second World War. Without a common enemy, there would be no need for Euro-­Atlantic balancing and little incentive for the invited and integrated “empire” following from US hegemony (Mearsheimer 1990; Walt 1998). However, recognizing their inability to meet the new security challenges of the post–Cold War period, EU member states eventually settled for a role as “junior partner” of the United States (Hansen, Toft, and Wivel 2008, 80). The Hobbesian perspective on peaceful change in Western Europe is effectively summed up by the words of Lord Ismay, NATO’s first secretary general, who found that NATO was created to “keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down” (NATO n.d.). Consequently, the continuous crises in transatlantic relations and European institutions since the end of the Cold War should be no surprise. They are not primarily caused by events such as the Iraq War, policies like “America First” of the Trump administration, or the unwillingness of European NATO members to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense, but rather by the loss of a common enemy, the Soviet Union. The spoils of peaceful change in Western Europe are no longer needed to balance the Soviet Union (Rosato 2011). Continued peaceful change depends on continued US willingness to maintain military hegemony in Western Europe, but the premium to be paid by Europeans has gone up (Mearsheimer 2010). Europeans are expected not only to increase annual defense spending, but also to supply troops to US- and NATO-­led military operations in the Middle East and elsewhere. The price of peaceful change at home is going to war abroad.

Lockean Europe: The Rational Response to Rivalry A Lockean perspective on peaceful change in Western Europe contends that the “kill or be killed logic of the Hobbesian state of nature has been replaced by the live and let live logic of the Lockean anarchical society” (Wendt 1999, 279). International relations is not

576   Anders Wivel a struggle for survival but a competition for maximizing interests. Peaceful change in Western Europe is the product of states in the region responding rationally to the challenges of international anarchy. They have responded to these challenges within the region by building institutions accelerating trade, facilitating conflict resolution, and restraining the ability of Western European states to go to war with each other. The primary institution for this is the European Union, which encompasses an ever more complex combination of “negative integration” (free movement of goods, capital, services, and people between member states) and “positive integration” (provision of common rules and mechanisms of compensation), that is, simultaneously increasing in­ter­de­ pend­ence and developing the political and administrative tools for managing in­ter­de­ pend­ence. The Lockean perspective views the absence of peaceful change as a collective action problem and shows how rational egoists may cooperate to solve it. It has less to say about popular resistance to these solutions or how concerns of security and power may hamper the implementation of good intentions. In Lockean Europe, Germany is a trading state avoiding political leadership to focus instead on export-­oriented growth and effective management of its economy (Rosecrance 1986). Consequently, the nature of Europe’s “German problem” has been transformed. German economic efficiency is the locomotive of the European economy, at times threatening the political and economic stability of the region when differences in growth rates, economic potential, and industrial structures leaves other states—in particular in the Mediterranean—vulnerable and having difficulties keeping up with the Germans (Armingeon and Baccaro 2015). Since the end of the Cold War, EU member states have increasingly promoted peaceful change outside Western Europe. To Western European policy makers, this has been a method for simultaneously expanding the market and increasing security. The EU has gradually expanded the number of member states from eleven Western European states by the end of the Cold War (all NATO members except Ireland) to twenty-­seven member states today, including nonaligned/neutral states and many former Communist Eastern bloc countries. A main condition for accession is acceptance of the so-­called acquis communautaire: all the treaties, legislation, and declarations of the EU as well as all international treaties concluded by the EU and between EU members regarding EU activities. In addition, prospective member states need to fulfill conditions of good governance and economic development. Taken together, these conditions are intended to secure the ability of the EU to continue its development toward maximalist peaceful change, while at the same time extending the space covered by this peace to still more countries. On the one hand this policy has been an unprecedented success. For the first time since Prussian minister president Otto von Bismarck’s unification of Germany into a nation-­state in 1871, a unified Germany is now a source of stability in Europe, and new Central and Eastern European member states have rapidly transformed their political and economic systems to Western-­style liberal democratic market economies. On the other hand, individual countries primarily have an incentive to change in the period leading up to accession. Once inside, their political action space is much wider, as it is virtually impossible to be thrown out of the EU once membership has been granted.

Peaceful Change in Western Europe   577 Thus, it should be no surprise that some new member states, most notably Poland and Hungary, have reversed their course toward transparency and democracy, while others such as Romania and Bulgaria continue to suffer from practices of corruption dating back to Communism. In effect, from a Lockean perspective enlargement has secured minimalist peaceful change by extending Western European institutions toward the East, but at the price of a ‘thinning’ or ‘shallowing’ of maximalist peaceful change inside the enlarged Union. The European Neighborhood Policy (ENP), aimed at countries in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and the Caucasus, seeks to extend the European zone of peace beyond the EU. In the words of former president of the European Commission Romano Prodi, the intention is to create a “ring of friends” around the EU (in practice to the south and the east of the Union), with states “sharing everything with the Union but institutions” (Prodi 2002). So-­called action plans agreed by the EU and the individual partnership country set goals for development in areas such as human rights, good governance, rule of law, democracy, and sustainable development, although “[a]mbitions for the relationship depend on the extent to which these values are shared” (European Commission n.d.). The official focus of the policy is on development in partnership countries, but it serves internal stability in the EU in various ways. The ENP has increasingly been used for securing EU energy supplies (Herranz-­Surrallés  2017). Fear of mass migration from war-­torn countries prompted by the 2015–2016 refugee crises, when 2.6 million asylum seekers entered the Union (Eurostat 2017), led to a reallocation of funds. More than half of the ENP budget was allocated to “migration-­related issues,” and EU policy makers were “struggling to find a balance” between preventive measures (supporting peace and development) and restrictive measures (stopping migrants from entering the EU and sending irregular migrants back to their countries of origin) (Trauner and Cassarino  2017, 396). Also, while some partnership countries view fulfillment of action plans as a road to EU membership, the Union has from the outset viewed the ENP as offering an alternative to membership. In sum, the policy suffers from a fundamental tension between extending the European zone of peace to more countries and preserving the EU core of this zone of peace by securing energy supplies and managing migration. Finally, the Treaty of the European Union gives the EU a “quasi-­constitutional mandate to strive for the peaceful settlement of international disputes in accordance with Article 33 of the UN Charter” (Hoffmeister 2012, 78). The EU has pursued this by taking the lead in settling conflicts between, for example, Russia and Georgia and Croatia and Slovenia, and in the Cyprus conflict, as well as in peaceful development of previously conflict-­ridden post-­Yugoslav states Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo. Through its Special Representative for the Middle East Peace Process, the EU seeks to promote a peaceful resolution of the Israel-­Palestine conflict by working for a two-­state solution. The success of these initiatives is mixed, with critics pointing to the Russian-­Georgian peace settlement as unbalanced in favor of Russia, and Israel becoming increasingly critical of the EU’s role in the Middle East. The institutional origins of Lockean peaceful change in Western Europe date back to the early Cold War. In 1950, French foreign minister Robert Schuman proposed to pool

578   Anders Wivel coal and steel production in a European Coal and Steal Community (ECSC) in order to make war between Germany and France “not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible” (Schuman 1950). The means to achieving this goal was threefold. First, according to Schuman “[t]he pooling of coal and steel production [. . .] will change the destinies of those regions which have long been devoted to the manufacture of munitions of war, of which they have been the most constant victims.” Thus, by introducing a supranational authority, a so-­called High Authority, to regulate the means of war making, the two European powers would effectively increase transparency and give up their sovereign right to decide on raw materials deemed decisive for success on the battlefield. Second, coal and steel were essential not only for making and winning wars, but also for industrial production in general. Thus, a second explicit goal was to raise living standards in Europe. The aim of the ECSC was not to curb the production of coal and steel in order to avoid war. In contrast, it aimed to modernize and rationalize production and to facilitate trade by creating common rules for production and trade. Schuman called for the abolishment of customs on steel and coal trade between signatories as well as compensatory mechanisms to facilitate change. This would create an economically strong Western Europe able to facilitate development and peace outside the region, in Africa in particular. Third, membership was to be “open to the participation of the other countries of Europe,” thereby from the outset aiming for gradual expansion of membership in order to facilitate wealth and peace among member states and in the world. The Treaty of Paris formally established the ECSC in 1951 and served as the point of departure for the Treaty of Rome in 1957, the foundational treaty of EU integration, which established the European Economic Community and the European Atomic Energy Community. Subsequent treaties included the Single European Act in 1986, which strengthened decision-­making mechanisms and market integration; and the Maastricht Treaty (officially Treaty on the European Union) in 1992, which established the European Union (EU) and significantly strengthened European integration in policy areas such as defense, migration, and monetary policy and paved the way for the expansion of the EU with former Communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe. In contrast to the Hobbesian perspective, which views Western European peaceful change as a historical coincidence, Lockean peaceful change is typically told as a story of rational decisions made by enlightened statesmen—and increasingly stateswomen— seeking to increase the security and prosperity of a region that previously dominated the world but now has much less influence on world politics than in the past. In contrast to the Hobbesian perspective on Western European peaceful change as a temporary exemption from the recurrence and repetition of international anarchy, Lockean peaceful change is resilient and progressive. It is viewed by its proponents as a rational, functionalist response to increased economic and security interdependence and to the lessons learned from the two world wars in the twentieth century. The process has sometimes been likened to riding a bicycle constantly moving forward in order not to crash (Ross 2011, 18–20). Finally, the expansion of Western European institutions into Central and Eastern Europe is viewed as an extension of Western Europe’s civil zone of peace to all of Europe (Chandler 2007). Again, this contrasts with a Hobbesian interpretation

Peaceful Change in Western Europe   579 emphasizing the unintended effect of provoking a violent Russian response and thereby threatening peaceful change rather than extending it.

Kantian Europe and Beyond: Widening and Deepening the Western European Security Community Kantians view Western European peaceful change as a result of a community of democratic states, which has since the end of the Cold War expanded into Central and Eastern Europe. The members of this community are neither enemies nor rivals but friends, basing their interactions on two shared rules for interaction: disputes are resolved without the threat or use of war, and in case of threats to the security or survival of members of the community, they resort to mutual aid to help community members (Wendt 1999, 298–299). In contrast to the threat- and interest-­based contractual relations between states in Hobbesian and Lockean peaceful change, Kantians see the potential for transcending and transforming relations among states into enduring security communities, rather than temporary marriages of convenience. According to Kant, “republican” (democratic) states can organize in a voluntary “league of nations” aiming to keep peace and respect human rights among themselves and toward strangers (Kant [1795] 2006). Kantian Western Europe is the closest we get to “maximalist peaceful change” in the real world. The central institution of Hobbesian Western European peaceful change is a military alliance, NATO, and in Lockean peaceful change the main institution is the EU, but in Kantian peaceful change the Euro-­Atlantic community itself is central. The core of this normative community remains Western Europe. Western European policy makers frequently articulate what they believe to be the “norms of appropriate behavior” within the community and reprimand Americans as well as Central and Eastern Europeans for undermining the standards of civilization by not living up to previously agreed norms on peacemaking and peacekeeping, international law, human rights, and democracy. To some policy makers, like French president Emmanuel Macron, this even amounts to a “ ‘civil war’ between liberal and illiberal forces in the West” (Gheciu 2019, 45). They occasionally extend this critique to “rising powers” and other states outside the Euro-­Atlantic community, although typically unaware of how “this mirrors a deep ethnocentric and imperialistic attitude in Europe to both the United States and non-­Western parts of the world” (Wæver 2018, 82). Kantians will notice that NATO’s strategic concept is based on a shared understanding of the alliance as a “a unique community of values committed to the principles of individual liberty, democracy, human rights and the rule of law,” and that its goals extend far beyond deterrence and providing military shelter for member states. They will emphasize that the founders of NATO viewed the dangers of Communist subversion within Western Europe as even more dangerous than the Soviet military threat and

580   Anders Wivel consequently engaged in liberal democratic security community building (Gheciu 2005). The Treaty on European Union adds a commitment to social rights to this fundamental commitment to liberal democracy (European Union 2012). The Schengen agreement abolishing passport control among twenty-­six European states, and the agreement in the Treaty on the European Union to establish an economic and monetary union with a common currency, now shared by nineteen EU member states plus four European microstates (Andorra, Monaco, San Marino, and Vatican City), can be interpreted as strong indications of trust, commitment, and a shared value base and maximalist peaceful change toward “ever closer Union among the peoples of Europe,” as stated in the Treaty of Rome (1957), the foundational treaty of EU integration since the early Cold War. Critics will notice that defense policy remains intergovernmental, and European security is still at the mercy of US policy makers. In addition, it can be argued that Kantian peaceful change is a luxury to be enjoyed only in the absence of crisis. Schengen was suspended and border control reinstated in the 2015–2016 migration crisis and again in the 2020 Covid-­19 crisis. Northern European EU member states, including Germany, refused Southern European proposals to issue joint bonds to relieve Mediterranean countries’ economic woes in the 2008–2013 economic crisis and again in the 2020 Covid-­19 crisis. In Kantian Western Europe, (West) Germany is neither a semisovereign squire of the United States, nor primarily a trading state, but a civilian power. A civilian power views cooperation as a necessary condition for pursuing international goals and accepts that cooperation sometimes needs to move from intergovernmentalism to supranationalism, if international management is to be effective and legitimate (Maull 1990, 92–93). Military means are only a last-­resort safeguard if everything else fails. Thirty years after German reunification, this Cold War security identity of the Federal Republic continues to dominate German strategic culture, as the main choice of German decisionmakers remains one between multilateralism and military restraint with little appetite for military leadership, even when called for by partners and allies (Koenig 2020). Germany is no longer a military threat to its neighbors, but “the moral centre of gravity of the NATO alliance” and the “ethical bellwether of Europe where using military force is concerned” (Schake 2019, 7–8). The concept of civilian power has also been used to describe the EU as a whole as has “normative power Europe” (Manners 2002; Whitman 2011), viewing the EU as an ideational actor influencing international society by diffusing its norms. Normative power Europe has been popular particularly among academics and policy makers seeking to understand EU’s external role. At least since the signing of the 1997 Treaty of Amsterdam, which took important steps toward strengthening the external role of the Union, normative power Europe has conveyed an “image of the EU as a ‘liberal force for good’[central to] its self-­image” (Rosamond 2014, 134). The normative content of this force for good includes sustainable peace and development, social freedom and solidarity, consensual democracy, human rights and equality, supranational rule of law, and good governance (Manners 2008). This understanding of the EU as a force for maximalist peaceful change fits with Ernst  Haas’s early Cold War prediction that the transfer of authority from states to

Peaceful Change in Western Europe   581 s­ upranational institutions in salient policy areas would be accelerated through a process of political “spill-­over,” eventually producing “political community” at the regional level (Haas 1958). It is also consistent with Adler and Barnett’s constructivist reinterpretation of Karl Deutsch’s concept of security community arguing that “states become integrated to the point that they have a sense of community, which in turn, creates the assurance that they will settle their differences short of war” (Adler and Barnett 1998, 3). Critics, on the other hand, have pointed to the culturally biased or even soft imperialist nature of EU’s external policy and Western European countries’ eagerness to point to their own practices as a useful template for other states and regions (Murray  2010; Wæver 2018). Others have argued that the days of the EU as a civilian power are long gone, with the Union exercising a combination of military and diplomatic power (Smith 2005), and that EU and NATO practices in out-­of-­area missions are closely intertwined, with personnel from the two organizations frequently interacting and learning from each other (Nissen 2018). The driver behind this combination of hard and soft power instruments, Adrian Hyde-­Price argues, is not a social liberal community of values but a post–Cold War combination of systemic unipolarity and regional multipolarity shaping the interest in collectively tackling international affairs (Hyde-­Price 2006).

Conclusions Each of the three analytical lenses applied in this chapter accentuates some characteristics of Western European peaceful change, while downplaying or even ignoring others. It is tempting to view the three perspectives as distilling the main characteristics in different phases of Western Europe’s post–Second World War peaceful change. The first phase was Hobbesian. In this phase a shared Western European and US interest in balancing the Soviet Union provoked a US hegemony in Western Europe, with the US providing security shelter and urging closer regional cooperation to balance the Soviet enemy. NATO was the primary institution of this phase. The second phase was Lockean. In this phase Western Europeans, motivated by potential economic gains and continued peacefulness, built strong European institutions facilitating market integration and enacted more activist policies for compensating both countries and citizens finding it difficult to compete. Following the end of the Cold War, institutional membership was expanded to Central and Eastern European states, and the external policies of the institutions were strengthened. The EU was the primary institution in this phase. The third phase is Kantian. In this phase of interactions, interdependence and political spillover between issue areas construct and reconstruct a Euro-­Atlantic community of appropriate behavior. This ‘force for good’ promotes a maximalist understanding of peaceful change among EU and NATO members and states to the south and east of the areas covered by the two organizations. This sequential understanding of Hobbesian, Lockean, and Kantian Europe is seductive in its neat ordering of history as a step-­by-­step development from power politics to

582   Anders Wivel political community. It also holds some truth. It is unlikely that the deep mistrust between Western European states would have been overcome was it not for the fortunate combination of a shared enemy and a regional hegemon located outside the European continent. Increasing interdependence through market integration helped not only to rebuild the war-­torn continent and bring unprecedented wealth to a number of Western European societies, but also to increase knowledge of other Western Europeans and build trust through cultural exchange, study-­abroad programs and a steep increase in intraregional tourism. At the same time, the sequential narrative is also deeply problematic. Power, preferences, and community coexisted throughout European history and have continued to do so after the Second World War. Western European states did not balance power but threat in the Cold War and after (Walt 1998; Wivel 2008). It was the proximity and conventional power of the Soviet Union, in combination with its expansionist Communist ideology, that made former great powers France and the United Kingdom accept US hegemony, and they dared make that bet because they shared a liberal democratic political culture and values with the US hegemon. The political and economic transformation of first the Federal Republic and later reunited Germany was facilitated by US hegemony and the incentive to recover economically, but the particular combination of economic competitiveness and civilian foreign policy was underpinned by shameful remembrance of the past in combination with “ordoliberalism,” a historically embedded German political-­economic culture seeing a strong role for the state and political institutions in securing market solutions that are both effective and socially balanced—and an inspiration for both economic and institutional development in Western Europe. Finally, the rise of nationalist populism in Western Europe since the 2008–2013 economic crisis has illustrated that adherence to Euro-­Atlantic—or more narrowly Western European—political community is often shallow and unevenly distributed. Consequently, it makes sense to understand (Western) European peaceful change as processes of continuous balancing and rebalancing power and preferences, and that the content and outcome of these processes continue to depend on both the willingness of the great powers to prioritize peaceful change and the extent to which their understandings of peaceful change are compatible (Wivel and Wæver 2018). From this perspective, Lockean peaceful change is facing the biggest challenges. Both the deepening and widening of EU institutions seem to have come to a standstill, and for the first time since the signing of the Treaty of Rome, a member state—the United Kingdom—has decided to leave the EU. There is little agreement on the future of the EU or NATO, and small states seem to coalesce around competing great power visions and initiatives in both political economy and military security (Wivel and Thorhallsson  2018). At the same time, Hobbesians may find comfort in the closely coordinated NATO response to Russian military resurgence since 2014. Western Europeans are increasing their defense budgets, and the United States has increased its number of troops on the continent. NATO members continue to disagree over how to respond to “softer” great power challenges such as US trade policy, Chinese human rights and technology policy, or Russian energy policy, but when it comes to an external military threat, they continue to balance to protect

Peaceful Change in Western Europe   583 peaceful change among themselves. The key to the future of European peaceful change then lies in the extent to which Western Europeans are able to move along the Kantian path toward a peaceful community. Developments in Western European politics since the end of the Second World War suggest that this is increasingly a history of overlapping communities rather than a step-­by-­step process. War between Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Spain, and Italy is now unthinkable, but so is extending the economic solidarity and social loyalties of national community to the regional level. What can other countries and regions learn from the Western European experience? One important lesson is to accommodate the main antagonist in the previous war in a way that allows for economic growth and political influence with checks and balances that will ease the fears of former enemies and reduce the risk of security spirals. A second important lesson is that a shared value base, combined with political pluralism, is a strong point of departure for peaceful change but no guarantee for continued success. Western European states are all liberal democratic welfare states, but economic and gender equality, civil liberties, and social models vary widely. Social liberal values serve as the basis for peaceful change and development, but specific goals and means are not the same across the region.

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chapter 32

Or igi ns a n d Evolu tion of the North A m er ica n Sta bl e Peace David G. Haglund

The story has it that as he was leaving the federal constitutional convention that had gathered in Philadelphia midway through 1787 to design a new political framework for the fledgling American republic, Benjamin Franklin was asked what he and the other delegates had brought into existence through their heated deliberations. Franklin’s cautionary response: “A republic—if you can keep it” (McHenry [1787] 1906, 618). So, too, might we conceptualize a challenge that has intermittently faced two North American countries upon which this chapter mainly concentrates, the United States and Canada. That challenge has been how to construct and maintain what, in the annals of peaceful change, has been a fairly new (i.e., twentieth-­century) dispensation, namely their regional security community, or “zone of peace.” If ever there has been a regional embodiment par excellence of the phenomenon of peaceful change in international relations, it has been the North American continent north of the Rio Grande, even if not too many scholars of international relations appear to realize this. Indeed, it is regularly assumed that the distinction of being first and foremost in the domain of peaceful change really ought to belong to a different region, Western Europe—an assumption reiterated in the Introduction to this volume, with its observation that Europe has indeed been the “key region where a security community arose” (Paul, this volume, 17). It is understandable why the Western European security community should have been, and remains, the focus of so much interest on the part of scholars exploring the processes of peaceful change, given that the dismal track record of what one author has suggestively labelled the “dark continent” is without historical parallel (Mazower 1999). Because for so long Europe, especially its westernmost reaches, was where the great powers ‘lived,’ it was also the region that, by definition, spawned so

588   David G. Haglund much great power war, with such hideous consequences for states and peoples near and distant. Anything that could be said to have put paid to this European pattern of deadly blood-­letting has to be considered to be a very big deal. And it is. But ‘continental’ Europe is really not where the modern, pluralistic, security community first arose, even if it is the place where logic and necessity suggest it should have first arisen. I emphasize continental Europe here, because there is a case for regarding Scandinavia as the site of the West’s first, even if not continuously operating (because of the Nazi conquest of Norway and Denmark), pluralistic security community (Ericson 2000). So from the point of view of theory, though probably not from that of practical policy consequences, Europe hardly deserves this pride of scholarly place. Notwithstanding that so many scholars like to find the rootage of the modern pluralistic security community in European soil following World War II, it has really been North America that has served as the nursery for stable peace theory. This latter notion is borrowed from Charles Kupchan. It is a useful means of capturing the stages of peaceful change. What Kupchan calls “stable peace theory” can be regarded to be both a derivative of democratic peace theory and an addendum to it. His ultimate aim, in developing this concept, is to show how animosity can become transmuted into friendship, through a three-­step process that depends upon (1) institutionalized restraint in diplomatic interactions; (2) the presence of compatible social orders as between the interacting states; and (3) cultural commonality among them. Of these three conditions, Kupchan considers only the latter two to be necessary, with the first, restraint, merely being a “favoring” one (Kupchan 2010, 6–8). Kupchan also proffers a second tripartite distinction, one identifying the trio of stages through which a developing irenic interstate relationship must proceed, in the process generating progressively more intense phases of “stable peace.” The first of these is rapprochement. The second is security community, understood as meaning that sovereign states abjure, as a means of settling whatever disputes may arise between them, the use of force or even the threat to use force (Deutsch et al. 1957; Adler and Barnett 1996). The third, and most intense, phase of stable peace Kupchan refers to as “union,” which as I employ it in this chapter, can be taken as synonymous with a certain species of deep and comprehensive security cooperation suggestive of tight military alliance. As Kupchan employs the same concept, union denotes the highest stage of stable peace, one in which the interacting states participate in the shaping of a new identity through the process of “narrative generation,” meaning that elites in one state can no longer quite see those in the other as being fundamentally different from themselves, in matters appertaining to the defense of North America. This is why he says that in a theoretical sense, the iterative construction of stable peace starts in realism (rapprochement engendered by restraint), goes through liberalism (security community), and finishes in constructivism (collective identity) (Kupchan 2010, 52). The two northernmost states of North America pioneered the frontier of this kind of peaceful change in international relations. Whether what they managed to accomplish could be replicated elsewhere in the international system has long been a question that has animated a great deal of policy discussion, especially upon the part of enthusiasts

Origins and Evolution of the North American Stable Peace   589 who saw in the ‘North American idea’ a promising remedy to interstate conflict in other, less fortunate, regions, at a time when a great power war loomed as the international system’s greatest recurring problem (Macdonald 1917). But even though the policy aspiration somehow to spread North America’s peaceful ways throughout the system came a cropper, there remains merit in assessing the rise and maintenance of the North American stable peace; for while the ‘lessons’ of peaceful change in North America may not be exportable, they do remain highly revelatory for a Handbook such as the present one. The chapter’s next section begins by recollecting what in recent time has mostly been forgotten, namely the lengthy period when North America resembled a “zone of war” much more than it did a zone of peace. Following this section’s exposition of the continent’s bleak (Hobbesian) past, we turn to its happier (Kantian) present, and see what it was about the processes of peaceful change that made North America such an apparent outlier from the ‘normal’ pattern of regional security interactions elsewhere as to lead so many analysts wrongly to conclude, that there was no interesting, or at least relevant, security ‘story’ to be told about North American peaceful change, given their belief that the big theoretical and policy innovations were, and had to be, of European provenance. In the fourth, concluding, section, the ambit of North American regional security is broadened geographically, to incorporate a brief discussion of Mexico. Even with this broadening, it cannot be maintained that this chapter provides comprehensive regional coverage, given that the North American continent geographically if not ideationally extends all the way down past the Panama Canal, thus including Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. Although limitations of space preclude any substantial weaving of Mexico into the chapter’s analytical fabric, bringing the third large North American country briefly into the story’s concluding section at least enables us better to grasp the important distinction drawn by this volume’s editors between the two variants of peaceful change. The first variant they identify is a “minimalist” one, whose primary defining quality is the existence of a norm of regional coexistence, accompanied by the elaboration of institutionalized mechanisms for nonviolent conflict resolution. Their second variant is a “maximalist” one in which conditions of stable peace are enhanced by the kind of strategic “union” associated with military alliance and deep, comprehensive security and defense cooperation. Both versions assume the existence of security community, but for the maximalist variant, something further is on offer—a high level of security integration between sovereign states, generating a security “narrative” that shapes the quality of their mutual relations in a manner not found in the minimalist variant. This is why, in the Canada–US context, one frequently encounters security and defense cooperation being conceptualized in terms of “binationalism” rather than merely “bilateralism” (Brister 2012). Thus, the US-­Mexican security community can be taken in the minimalist instantiation as evidence of peaceful change, in that the two states are thought most unlikely ever again to use force against each other, or even to threaten so to do. Yet—and this is the point to stress—they are not allies; thus, the quality of their defense and

590   David G. Haglund s­ ecurity cooperation remains far less robust than is the case of the US-­Canada security community.

The North American “Zone of War” From the perspective of scholars investigating the conditions of peaceful change in international relations, North America can bring to mind Gertrude Stein’s famous dissing of her quondam hometown of Oakland, California, as a place where “there’s no there, there” (Safire 1985). For those who think this way, Europe has been to North America what San Francisco is to Oakland—the much more exotic, thus more pertinent, locale across the water. Yet those who think this way, at least when attention strays to international peaceful change, think mistakenly. North America’s history resembles, albeit in miniature, what Europe’s once was, and if Europe has managed to attain the conditions of stable peace, North America did so before it. But before we see how peaceful change was achieved on the North American continent, it would be well to have some appreciation of how regional security relations used to look, when it was Hobbes rather than Kant who served as the go-­to referent on matters related to war and peace. It has only been in the past century or so that one could detect the onset of what would develop into the most fundamental aspect of the North American regional security order, built as it has been upon peaceful change. Over the years spanning the early 1900s and the present, Canada and the United States managed to develop a habit of relating to each other that was truly light-­years, and not merely one hundred years, removed from the previous quality of their existence as cohabitants of the Hobbesian jungle. As a result, for a long time now they have been residing in a Kantian ‘paradise’—so long a time that the memory of the even longer period during which they had cohabited a Hobbesian hell has been effaced from collective consciousness. Such a radical reversal of behavioral patterns begets an equally radical reversal in the words and symbols employed to capture the ‘essence’ of that altered security relationship, with zone of peace having emerged as the replacement trope for that other semantic construct, the zone of war. Nor is this all. The Canada–US security community is often said to be “idiot proof,” in that it is extremely hard for most observers to imagine how it might possibly unravel, notwithstanding whoever happens to be presiding over the respective states. But if the North Americans have somehow managed to find the secret of living peacefully together, it has only been a relatively new discovery. Because it is so often thought that ‘history’ for both the United States and Canada only began fairly recently as these matters go—1783 for the Americans, when independence from Britain was recognized, and 1867 for Canada, when today’s federation was established, albeit within the British Empire—it is easy to forget that the Old World was very much present in the New, such that the rivalries of the former were necessarily projected into the territory of the latter well before today’s United States and Canada emerged as states in their own right (Anderson and Cayton 2005). Thus, since Europe lived in a Hobbesian world, so too did

Origins and Evolution of the North American Stable Peace   591 the developing polities of the New World. During the first 150 years of European ex­ist­ ence on the continent, the northeasternmost portions of North America were the kind of setting where life could definitely be counted upon to be “nasty, brutish, and short.” In the well-­chosen words of one historian of the colonial era, “[W]ar was a fundamental part of life in early America. A man or woman who lived to adulthood in colonial times by definition lived through war” (Melvoin 1989, 12). Much the same has to be said of life in early Canada, to whose inhabitants the rifle was figuratively, and sometimes literally, attached to the plow, so ubiquitous was the warfare that stamped their collective psyche with a profoundly militaristic impress (Gravel 1974; Eccles 1990). Few remember them today, but four great power wars pockmarked the face of North America between 1689 and 1763, and though they occurred prior to the political ‘birth’ of today’s American and Canadian federal states, they certainly have to be considered conflicts between Americans and Canadians. These were the intercolonial wars, in Europe and elsewhere, pitting English against French, with each side backed by its aboriginal allies: the War of the League of Augsburg (1689–1697), brought to a close with the treaty of Ryswick, and known in North America as King William’s War; the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–1713), ending with the Treaty of Utrecht, called in North America Queen Anne’s War; the War of the Austrian Succession (1744–1748), ending with the Treaty of Aix-­la-­Chapelle, known in North America as King George’s War; and the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763), better remembered in North America as the French and Indian War, and terminated with the Treaty of Paris, ceding Canada to England (Peckham 1964; Steele 1969). Therefore, of conflict between Canadians and Americans during the foundational period of their not-­so-­peaceful coexistence, we can make three observations: (1) it was a frequent occurrence; (2) it was a bloody phenomenon, maybe not so much in terms of the absolute as in the per capita numbers of casualties, and certainly because of the brutal manner in which the slayings often occurred; and (3) it did result in territorial “cleansing” of ethnic groups, either via their mass transfer from territories in which they had already settled or because of their having been prevented from settling in the first place. King William’s War marked the onset of the intercolonial phase of ethnic conflict between the Canadians and the Americans. There had already been, it is true, instances of territorial cleansing and ethnic conflict in North America prior to 1689, but these did not directly pit Canadians (i.e., French) against Americans (i.e., English). These earlier episodes featured sanguinary struggles in which both French and English fought, separately, against their respective indigenous adversaries on their own side of the indeterminate geopolitical frontier. For the French, this meant the Iroquois, with whom a long conflict commenced in 1609 and reached its crescendo of brutality with the raid on Lachine eighty years later, in August 1689, costing more than one hundred French settlers their lives (Hunt 1960). For those Americans who were the most significant neighbors of the French on the continent, that is to say primarily the New Englanders, the fighting commenced with the short war of 1637 against the Pequots, only to reignite in the vastly more deadly King Philip’s War, of 1675–1676. This latter war, which ranged the

592   David G. Haglund New England colonies—Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island, and Connecticut—against an Algonquian coalition led by Philip (also known as Metacom, sometimes Metacomet) and his Wampanoags (Lepore 1998, xi–xiii), was noteworthy not only in foreshadowing the ethnic conflict that would lie ahead for the region but also for the brutality and high cost of the struggle, which for both sides could and did appear to be a fight to the finish, nothing short of a “war of extermination” (Leach 1958, 243; Drake 1999), whose outcome was to determine who would preside over, or even get to live in, the disputed territory (Webb 1984). On a per capita basis (i.e., rate of casualties suffered by the total population, combatant as well as noncombatant), this short war is generally remembered, when it is remembered at all, as having been the bloodiest in American history, not excluding even the Civil War. More than half of the English settlements (fifty-­two out of a total of ninety) were attacked during the year of fighting, with thirteen being destroyed, while some 10 percent of the combat-­eligible English males ended up as casualties. High though the rate of casualties may have been among the English, it paled in comparison with the losses sustained by their indigenous adversaries (both combatant and noncombatant): at the start of the war, Philip’s army counted 2,900 combatants, out of a total aboriginal population of 11,000; within a year, some 2,430 combatants and noncombatants had been killed or captured, and most of the Algonquian survivors had fled the region (Melvoin 1989, 80–81; Morone 2003, 80–81). The question as to who would dominate the region—English or Algonquian—looked, finally, to have been settled. Within less than a century, the question of who would dominate the northeastern portion of the continent—English or French—also would become decided. But the close of the epoch of intercolonial warfare in North America hardly gave rise to lasting visions of peaceful change, for a new dynamic of bellicosity set in, this time an interstate one that featured the fledgling United States against its former mother country, the United Kingdom. While Canadians (for the most part at that time, French Canadians) sat out the American independence war with England that broke out shortly after the last of the intercolonial wars ended, it did not take long for Americans and Canadians once more to be fighting it out with each other, most memorably in the War of 1812, the recent bicentenary of which was marked with much more enthusiasm on the Canadian than the American side, given that the war has been considered by many as having been foundational of the Canadian national identity—as well as a rather successful undertaking, to boot (Watts 1987; Taylor 2010; Marche 2012). Sometimes, though, this war gets eulogized for a different reason. Because it was the last occasion on which Canadians and Americans ever engaged in interstate armed conflict against each other, the War of 1812—or at least, its ending in early 1815—often gets taken as the starting date for the North American dynamic of peaceful change that led to what is heralded as the continent’s “long peace.” This chronology could not be more misleading, however. For at the time the Treaty of Ghent brought that war to a close, the construction of the North American regional security community (the Canada–US zone of peace) still lay many decades in the future. Let us see next how many decades in the future it lay, and why peaceful change was able

Origins and Evolution of the North American Stable Peace   593 to prevail as the dominant perspective in interstate relations for so much of North America.

The North American Zone of Peace Inquirers into the processes of peaceful change in North America must grapple with two fundamental questions. The first concerns timing: when did nonviolence become the default security option for the two countries? And the second concerns theory: why did it become such an option? On both scores, there has been much scholarly disputation, and each question is more complicated than it might seem at first glance. For reasons of space, I am only going in this section to address the why and not the when of North American peaceful change, even though the two questions are obviously interconnected. We can take it as a given that those who trace the North American “long peace” all the way back to Ghent in early 1815 do so in error. There were far too many instances during the post-­1815 decades, and even into the early years of the twentieth century, when it looked as if the use of force, by either state or, more commonly, by what one scholar calls “non-­state-­armed actors,” could hardly be ruled out (Davis  2009; Haglund  2015). Starting, though, in the latter part of the twentieth century’s first decade—a decade that two scholars have classified as the “slate-­cleaning” moment in Canada–US relations (Hillmer and Granatstein 1994, 39–40)—the pendulum shifted perceptibly away from the possibility of violent resolutions of conflict toward nonviolent ones, even though each country’s military continued, well into the interwar years, to draft contingency plans for operations against the other (Morton  1960; Eayrs  1964, 70–78, 323–328; Preston 1977). But while everyone may be in agreement about regional security undergoing a great transformation, there is much less agreement as to why it did so. Three basic theoretical and analytical divisions can be detected on this matter of causality. One school, let us call them the “exceptionalists,” holds that there really is nothing terribly complicated needing to be explained, because Canadians and Americans are just not the kind of folk who would think of solving their disputes by fighting things out. A second camp, call it the realist one, would argue that the structure decreed by the continental distribution of “relative capability” (styled by some as US “hegemony”) tells us all we need to know about the absence of fighting between Canada and the United States. The third school, somewhat like the first but decidedly unlike the second, would insist the answer to the question of peaceful change has to be found in Waltzian “second-­ image” qualities associated with the respective liberal-­democratic orders of the North American polities. Let us take them in reverse order, starting with this last-­named explanatory grouping. Among this grouping, no one has done more than Stéphane Roussel to focus our attention upon the second-­image, and liberal, source of continental peaceful change. Sounding almost like Gertrude Stein, save that he comes to praise Oakland not to

594   David G. Haglund ­ ispraise it, Roussel assures us that the theoretical basis of the North American zone of d peace is not to be found there, but rather in Europe; in short, from the standpoint of “exceptionalism,” there really was no there, there, in North America. For the answer to the question, why did war, or even threats of war, disappear from the northern half of North America, Roussel turns to democratic peace theory, as developed and refined by European thinkers, including though hardly restricted to Immanuel Kant himself. Not just the institutional constraints identified and touted by Kant ([1795] 1991; Doyle 1986; Waltz  1962), but even more importantly the normative ones that feature in so many liberal-­constructivist research initiatives in recent decades, combined to solve the riddle of continental peaceful change. To Roussel, it is the fundamental isomorphism of the two North American countries’ liberal-­democratic orders, coupled with growing economic interdependence, that has built their stable peace, for reasons that are not exceptional to North America. He explains, [T]he chief characteristic of the North American international order derives not from something unique to the Canadian-­American relationship, but rather from a quality equally on display in Western Europe in the postwar era, something broadly known as an international ‘liberal order.’ The particular North American aspect of this order has often been overlooked because, unlike various European international systems created after major conflicts, its elements are defined more by practices than by formal enunciations. . . . This order has, however, well and truly existed; it is apparent in the patterns of cooperation between the two states and comes most into focus when these patterns are viewed through the prism of their shared liberal values.  (Roussel 2004, 31; Patsias and Deschênes 2011)

Thus, while the North Americans might indeed possess an admirable set of political values, they have hardly been the only ones to enjoy such a set; in fact, they imported rather than developed those values, which stemmed from an older, transatlantic, political tradition. This view stands in contradistinction to both the (structural) realists’ and the exceptionalists’ accounts of the continent’s peaceful change, each of which stresses how different North America was from other regions. Although some scholars will highlight (wrongly) the “inability of realists to envision a peaceful transformation of international politics” (Matthews and Callaway 2017, 59), there actually is a realist version of this kind of transformation—in the bargain, even a structural-­realist one. This version of the North American peace would rely on asymmetries of power more than any other variable, such that its proponents would find unsurprising the absence of bellicosity in the bilateral Canadian–US relationship, for the good reason that the continental balance of power effectively precluded either country’s applying or threatening force as a “ra­tional” means of conflict resolution. Thus, for this telling of the peaceful change story in North America, the most important clue is to be uncovered through a forensic examination of the structural change that occurred in the relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom at the tail end of the nineteenth century, the moment of the two English-­speaking powers’ “great rapprochement” (Perkins 1968; Rock 1989).

Origins and Evolution of the North American Stable Peace   595 According to this version of events, peaceful change on the North American continent (north of the Rio Grande) required first and foremost a resolution of the long-­ running political contestations between the United Kingdom and the United States. Scholars continue to debate why and how Britain and the United States ceased to be such mutual antagonists on the North American continent (Vucetic  2011; Hitchens 2004). But that they managed to bury the hatchet, no one denies. And since Canada at this time remained, in matters appertaining to foreign policy, very much a component of the British state, it follows that one can claim the onset of peaceful change in North America to have been part and parcel of the British willingness to “accommodate,” for whatever reason(s), America’s rise to great power status (Schake 2017). Thus, the balance-­of-­power explanation, say many analysts, is ultimately the most satisfactory one, if we want to know how and why peaceful change ‘broke out’ in North America. Because, to those who think this way, any risk of another Anglo-­American war evaporated with the rapprochement, it followed that so too must the risk of any further Canada–US conflict have dissipated. A refinement of the realist explanation became necessary once it proved no longer possible, or even polite, to interpret Canada–US relations in the context of Anglo-­ American relations, say, sometime during the interwar period. Again, recourse has been had by the realist school to balance-­of-­power formulations, only this time what was being emphasized was a function much more of imbalance than of balance, properly considered, and the rationality in decision-making held to be derivative of such imbalance. The argument of the peace-­through-­imbalance school was a simple one: a war between the United States and Canada was precluded by the lopsided structure of the regional international system (Lennox 2009). Because the United States was so much more powerful than Canada, it made no sense for the former to think of waging war against the latter, as there could be no realistic threat to its physical security stemming from the north sufficiently grave to warrant violent response, therefore why waste time and resources worrying about a ‘threat’ from Canada? And because Canada was so much weaker than the United States, it would make no more sense for it to imagine preparing for an armed conflict with the neighbor to the south than it would for it to draft preparations to commit national suicide. Ultimately, the peace-­through-­imbalance version rested on reason prevailing whenever disputes needed to be settled, since in the American case ‘vital interests’ could scarcely be engaged, while in the Canadian case they could hardly be defended. Despite the aura that, like a gimcrack necklace purchased at a run-­down flea market, hangs so unfashionably upon Canadian academic discussions of realism (Haglund 2017), this structural-­realist account of the North American experiment with peaceful change can meld easily with the “exceptionalist”—and ur-idealistic—explanation of that same phenomenon, associated as it has been with the aforementioned “North American idea.” After all, and in contradistinction to the liberal-­constructivist version of the North American stable peace, both structural-­realist and idealistic accounts stress North American exceptionalism. Where they differ is on the basis of that exceptionalism.

596   David G. Haglund To say again, the heyday of North American exceptionalism, exemplified by the growing popularity of the North American idea, occurred during the second and third decades of the twentieth century. Its adherents refused to treat the phenomenon of peaceful change as the kind of ‘puzzle’ that needed a solution. North Americans, by the twentieth century, had simply become inoculated against regional strife as a result of changes in the behavior and the thinking of publics in both Canada and the United States. It was not that their liberal-­democratic institutions had made them better people; it was that they had become better people, and in so becoming had demanded a better bilateral relationship. To some of the ardent defenders of this irenic ‘idea’ of the continent, the North American neighbors were blessed to be living in a special part of the planet and in possession of a collective consciousness generative of a kind of geopolitical DNA that was theirs and theirs alone—of exceptional people living on an exceptional continent (Barry 1980). This was so, even before the rise of the Nazi threat by the late 1930s led to a further tightening of security bonds between the two countries. What Stéphane Roussel has represented for the liberal-­democracy explanation of the Canada–US stable peace, Oscar Douglas Skelton has represented for the exceptionalist one. Skelton, who abandoned an academic career at Queen’s University in 1925 to become the principal foreign-­affairs advisor to Canadian prime ministers, and especially to the long-­serving William Lyon Mackenzie King, was never slow to argue that Canada, despite its historic ties to Britain, was no longer the “European” entity it once had been, and henceforth should more properly be construed as a “North American” one. During those early decades of the twentieth century, this assertion could pack a powerful normative and epistemological punch in Canada, and not for nothing did one of the country’s leading historians reflect, as recently as the mid-­1990s, that “there was a time, not so many years ago, when to speak of Canada as a North American nation was viewed, at least in some quarters, as heresy” (Cook 1995, 174–175). As far as Skelton was concerned, Canada unquestionably was a North American country (Hillmer  2004–2005). As early as the mid-­1920s, during the debate over whether Canada should assume any obligations in connection with Britain’s signing of the Locarno treaties intended to guarantee key interstate borders in Europe—treaties raising in his mind the possibility of Canada’s being sucked into another war on that continent—Skelton ventured to ask, “Do we owe anything to Europe?” He did not just mean continental Europe, either, for his views on Canada’s obligations to Great Britain and imperial defense were marked by a conviction that the time was long past for Canada to stake out a posture of greater independence from what had only recently ceased to be regularly referred to as the British Empire, and had just begun to be called, with the Anglo-­Irish treaty of 1921, the British Commonwealth. Such a nationalist stance might have carried risks in an earlier period, but security matters had evolved so dramatically on the North American continent that Skelton could answer, with confidence, his own question: Canada lies side by side for three thousand miles with a neighbour fifteen times as powerful. . . . She knows that not a country on the Continent of Europe would lift its

Origins and Evolution of the North American Stable Peace   597 little finger to help if the United States were to attack her. Her security lies in her own reasonableness, the decency of her neighbour, and the steady development of friendly intercourse, common standards of conduct, and common points of view. Why not let Europe do likewise?  (Hillmer 1976, 76; Hillmer 2013)

It was at the tail end of this same interwar period that the third stage of the North American stable peace was effected, with the elaboration of a kind of “union” that can be taken, in the security and defense context, to be synonymous with alliance. Canada and the United States became allies prior to America’s entry into World War II—that is, at a time when America was still doctrinally “isolationist.” True, the two countries did not become allies as a result of any treaty (a mechanism whose employ would have to await 1949’s Washington Treaty, establishing NATO). Nonetheless, they became very much allied in political and institutional reality. In the case of the Canadian-­American alliance, the starting point is generally considered to have been an executive agreement, the “Ogdensburg Agreement,” reached by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Mackenzie King in the upstate New York town of that name, in mid-­August 1940 (Gibson and Rossie 1993). This accord led directly to the creation of the first of what would be a long line of binational defense arrangements, the Permanent Joint Board on Defense (PJBD), which set to work pla­ nning a series of measures to enhance continental security (Conliffe 1989). The line has extended down to the present, and it has embraced not only tight institutional cooperation between the two countries’ militaries but also other components of their security establishments, including intelligence and policing entities. Thus, quite apart from its status as America’s ‘oldest’ continuous ally, Canada’s alliance ties contribute to the robustness of the continent’s stable peace because of the overlap between “homeland security” and the normative core of the security community. It is not that these ties guarantee that relations between Canada and the United States will always be harmonious; the recent funk with which most of Canadian public opinion assessed the meaning of the Trump administration for Canadian interests testifies to the marked deterioration in attitudes toward America since the administration of the extremely popular (in Canada) Barack Obama. The point is rather that even though Trump’s America is only “worsted” in Canadian eyes by Xi Jinping’s China (Zilio 2019), the continued close cooperation between the Canadian and American militaries serves as a reinforcing, institutional buttress of the continental stable peace, putting into place a floor below which security relations between the two countries are unlikely ever to sink. The more strained Canada–US diplomatic relations become, the more important become these institutionalized security arrangements. The PJBD still exists, but it has long been supplemented, and often overshadowed, by subsequent institutional means of safeguarding North American defense and security cooperation, among the most important of these being the Military Cooperation Committee (MCC) of 1946, the North American Air (now Aerospace) Defense Command (NORAD) of 1958, and for a time the Binational Planning Group (BPG) of 2003 to 2006 (Mason 2005). To these

598   David G. Haglund must be added a thick network of other accords, committees, and arrangements appertaining to North American defense, whose numbers are no easy matter to keep count of, but which run into the hundreds (Bi-­National Planning Group 2006). Thus, in a manner distinctly different from most of America’s transatlantic relations, the United States and Canada were solidly allied (if not always in total agreement on perceiving and responding to threat) well before the formation of NATO, and they would almost certainly still be allied had the latter organization never come into existence. Moreover, it can be taken as a given that the strength of their commitment to the “common defense” of North America far exceeds the strength of the commitment of most NATO allies to the defense of the transatlantic area.

Conclusion: What’s Mexico Got to Do with It? How different things are when the focus shifts to US–Mexican relations. To reiterate, there is a “minimalist” sense of peaceful change embodied in this other dyadic relationship on the North American continent, but it falls short of what would be expected in the “maximalist” variant. This is because Mexico, no matter how often it may be called in the press an American (or even Canadian) “ally,” is not the kind of ally that Kupchan’s theory of stable peace envisions. It is not a robust security and defense partner, even if it remains economically interconnected with its two northern neighbors through the successor to NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), the USMCA (US-­Mexico-­ Canada Agreement). It is true that at one time Mexico used to be an American ally, even to the extent of sending a few combat units to the Pacific theater to support American military operations during World War II. But that time is no more, as Mexico severed its alliance bonds with Washington in September 2002, when it withdrew from the Inter-­American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (the “Rio Pact”). Mexico, therefore, is neither America’s nor Canada’s ally, meaning that it is institutionally enmeshed with no partners in pursuit of North American “collective defense,” while Canada is America’s most behaviorally “special” ally of all, because of the tight regional-­security bonds (Haglund 2012). Does this mean that the North American security community is imperiled? Not really, but it does suggest that to the extent Benjamin Franklin’s cautionary remarks of 1787 can find any echo in today’s North America, it will be on America’s southern, not its northern, border. For unlike the maximalist stable peace that prevails in the more northerly reaches of the continent, the Mexico–US minimalist version lacks the institutional security and defense backstopping that one sees, even if one does not always celebrate, in the Canada–US “union.”

Origins and Evolution of the North American Stable Peace   599

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Origins and Evolution of the North American Stable Peace   601 Preston, Richard A. 1977. The Defence of the Undefended Border: Planning for War in North America, 1867–1939. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Rock, Stephen  R. 1989. Why Peace Breaks Out: Great Power Rapprochement in Historical Perspective. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Roussel, Stéphane. 2004. The North American Democratic Peace: Absence of War and Security Institution-Building in Canada-US Relations, 1867–1958. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Safire, William. 1985. “There, There.” New York Times Magazine, May 19, p. 20. Schake, Kori. 2017. Safe Passage: The Transition from British to American Hegemony. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Steele, Ian K. 1969. Guerillas and Grenadiers: The Struggle for Canada, 1689–1760. Toronto: Ryerson Press. Taylor, Alan. 2010. The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies. New York: A. A. Knopf. Vucetic, Srdjan. 2011. “A Racialized Peace? How Britain and the US Made Their Relationship Special.” Foreign Policy Analysis 7, no. 4 (October): 403–421. Waltz, Kenneth N. 1962. “Kant, Liberalism, and War.” American Political Science Review 56, 2 (June): 331–340. Watts, Steven. 1987. The Republic Reborn: War and the Making of Liberal America, 1790–1820. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Webb, Stephen S. 1984. 1676: The End of American Independence. New York: A. A. Knopf. Zilio, Michelle. 2019. “Canadians More Positive about Ties with Europe Than with the U.S., China: Poll.” Globe and Mail (Toronto), May 3, p. A6.

Chapter 33

L ati n A m er ica’s Evolv i ng Con tr ibu tion to Peacefu l Ch a nge i n the I n ter nationa l System A Stony Road Harold A. Trinkunas

Latin America, here defined as the Spanish- and Portuguese-­speaking regions of the Western Hemisphere south of the US–Mexico border, has become progressively free of major interstate conflict since the mid-­twentieth century. The last interstate war occurred in 1995 (Ecuador–Peru), the last major international terrorist attack occurred in 1994 (Argentina), and the last overt use of military force that crossed state borders occurred in 2008—an air strike and raid on Colombian insurgents sheltered in Ecuador by the Colombian armed forces without Ecuadorean permission (Feinberg, Miller, and Trinkunas 2015). There has been a notable decline in the frequency of interstate war compared to the nineteenth century, when most Latin American states first gained their independence. Wars that changed territorial boundaries essentially ceased soon after initial state formation in the 1820s following independence from Spain and Portugal (Centeno 2002). In fact, the universal norm codified by the United Nations (UN) charter illegitimating territorial conquest took hold much earlier in Latin America, and the region became known for resolving the territorial disputes it inherited from the time of independence via negotiations and international arbitration. Brazil, for example, famously acquired territory from its neighbors larger in size than metropolitan France by the early twentieth century via peaceful international arbitration (Mares and Trinkunas 2016).

604   Harold A. Trinkunas Nearly every state in Latin America inherited territorial boundary disputes from the Spanish and Portuguese colonial period (Jaskoski, Sotomayor, and Trinkunas 2015), yet the region experiences few interstate wars. It is in fact host to a remarkable number of regional institutions that promote integration and the peaceful resolution of disputes: the Organization of American States, Union of South American Nations, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, the Andean Pact, the Latin American Parliament, the Central American Parliament, MERCOSUR, and the list goes on (Pevehouse 2002; Nolte 2018). Latin America has also frequently innovated ad hoc peaceful diplomatic solutions to global disputes involving the region, such as the Contadora Group of South American states that helped resolve the Cold War standoff between the Soviet Union and the United States in Central America in the 1980s (Barletta and Trinkunas 2004), and the Lima Group, comprising thirteen South American states and Canada, at work in 2020 to find a way for Venezuela to return peacefully to democracy (Taj 2018), a contentious issue between the United States, Russia, and China. This regional trend toward peace and the institutionalization of peaceful international dispute resolution has led some scholars to label Latin America, particularly South America, as a “zone of peace” (Kacowicz 1998). Others, such as David Mares, disagree, observing that states in the region frequently militarize disputes, even if these crises fall short of war, arguing that Latin American leaders see military force as one more tool for achieving their objectives. Moreover, because Latin American militarized conflicts in the twentieth and twenty-­first centuries have produced few battle deaths, they are frequently missed by standard measures of war in conflict databases (Mares 2001). Latin America is also a very large region with a relatively large number of states, and there is considerable within-­region variation, ranging from tense bilateral relations between Venezuela and Colombia, to an uneasy degree of economic integration between Mexico, Central America, and the United States, to a relatively advanced subregional integration effort in the Southern Cone. Overall, there is much historical evidence of states engaged in acts short of war to influence or coerce their neighbors, that is, through subversion, covert actions, or economic leverage (Barletta and Trinkunas 2004; Trinkunas  2011a; Trinkunas  2011b; Trinkunas  2015). While Latin America has become increasingly capable of enacting peaceful change, and it is the aspiration of many states in the region to make this the norm, the region has achieved at best a negative peace to date—that is to say, a peace that persists even as states continue to field significant military forces and in which few advances are made toward developing strong regional institutions. Observers of regional interstate relations have offered a number of explanations for the emergence of peaceful change. On the one hand, the region emerged from its wars of liberation in the nineteenth century as a collection of relatively weak and underdeveloped states entering an international system dominated by European great powers (Centeno 2002). Maintaining independence, let alone effective sovereignty, proved challenging as the relative increase in material capabilities of extraregional powers, particularly the United States, required states to move between strategies of counterbalancing,

LATIN AMERICA’S EVOLVING CONTRIBUTION TO PEACEFUL CHANGE    605 bandwagoning, and a pursuit of autonomy. The growing power of the United States essentially meant that Latin America faced unipolarity long before the rest of the world and had to innovate accordingly in its diplomacy (Friedman and Long 2015). In terms of Kant’s triangle of peace (Russett and Oneal 2001), Latin America appears to have come close on two dimensions—democracy and adherence to international law—but it has fallen short on advanced commercial integration despite historical ­aspirations to this end. Regional institutions have proliferated, yet states tend to avoid pooling sovereignty, burden sharing, or collective goods provision. There is little intraregional economic integration, with most trade in Central America and the Caribbean occurring with the United States while South America increasingly trades with China. Domestically, the spread of democratization region-­wide in the late twentieth century has proven to have an uneven impact on the prospects for peaceful change, despite what the Kantian triangle would suggest. Collective action to sustain democracy, a firm region-­wide aspiration consolidated during the 1990s and embedded in the Inter-­ American Democratic Charter in 2001, has proven very difficult to achieve in the face of recent backsliding in Nicaragua and Venezuela. Yet some of the most interesting interstate innovations emerging from the region fall in the area of norms entrepreneurship. In part because of their relative weakness, Latin American diplomats turned to international law to restrain the actions of great powers, including the regional hegemon, the United States. These norms in turn proliferated elsewhere in the world and have become embedded into international institutions such as the UN system. Yet Latin America is a zone characterized by peaceful change only if we look at ­interstate relations. The region experiences very high levels of intrastate violence. Latin America has one of the highest rates of homicide per capita in the world, and it is the only region where this rate is rising rather than falling. Much of this crime is perpetrated by actors that use force across state borders, such as transnational criminal organizations and insurgencies, and have thus far been largely ignored by international relations theories (Pion-­Berlin and Carreras 2017). The emergence of shadow foreign policies conducted by actors such as the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel (which is active in Colombia) and the Brazilian Primeiro Comando da Capital (with branches in Paraguay) raises the question of whether we are really examining the right range of actors in Latin America (Lessing 2015). On balance, even as the risk of war is declining in Latin America, the region still falls short of its members’ maximalist rhetoric favoring peaceful change. Yet when viewed in terms of minimalist understandings of peaceful change, Latin America compares very favorably to other regions where interstate conflict is more frequent. To better understand the evolution of Latin America, this chapter will first contrast realist, liberal, and constructivist explanations. It will then examine systemic and subsystemic factors that have contributed to peaceful change, as well as some that have slowed this progress. It will then delve further into the domestic sources for a region-­wide preference for peaceful change in the international system, before concluding with a look at the region’s future trajectory in the international system and implications for international relations theory.

606   Harold A. Trinkunas

Realism, Neorealism, and Latin America Latin American states were among the first ‘new states’ to join the modern interstate system that originated in Europe. Liberated from Spain and Portugal, states in the region have a common legacy in terms of a shared language and culture (in Spanish America), legal systems, and a constitutional preference for a republican form of government ­patterned on the US presidential model. They also faced the common threat of an international system dominated by great powers, initially European, and the risk that the region might be recolonized. This was not far-­fetched, as evidenced by French intervention in Mexico in the 1860s, repeated US intervention in Central America and the Caribbean, and the continued presence of minor French, Dutch, English, and Spanish colonies. These new states also faced the problem of being recognized as fully sovereign and legitimate states by European powers, who frequently arrogated to themselves a right to intervene abroad to protect their investments and their interests during the nineteenth century (Tourinho 2015). Latin American statesmen long recognized the importance of the balance of power, in particular the asymmetry of power vis-­à-­vis the great powers. This led to at least two views on how to address extraregional threats. As early as the 1810s, Simón Bolívar, liberator of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, recognized the rise of the United States as a long-­term threat to the autonomy of Latin America. He advocated regional integration in his famous “Letter from Jamaica” (1815) and later organized the Amphictyonic Panama Congress (from which Brazil and the United States were excluded) in 1826 to advance this idea (Castro-­Klaren  2003). In addition, Bolívar believed that Latin America needed extrahemispheric allies to balance against the United States, ideally Great Britain. Brazil was frequently viewed as a potential threat by the Spanish-­speaking republics. Whereas the provinces and captaincies general of the Spanish Empire had devolved into independent republics, Brazil’s independence had been achieved with the consent of the Portuguese monarchy, which produced a united empire. Even though it was underdeveloped economically during the nineteenth century, its vast size relative to its neighbors highlighted its latent threat. Also, Brazil’s status as an empire rather than a republic (until 1889) raised fears that it would serve as a stepping-­stone for European imperialism in the Western Hemisphere (Bethell 2010a). Brazilian diplomats have thus traditionally been careful to underutilize Brazil’s relative power in regional affairs, preferring diplomacy over conflict (Mares and Trinkunas 2016). Nevertheless, geopolitical rivalry did exist between Argentina and Brazil until the late 1970s, when both states shifted toward more collaborative arrangements beginning with shared hydropower generation at the Itaipú dam on their mutual border with Paraguay and foreswearing nuclear proliferation (Barletta 1998). Counter to this has been a view that Latin American states would do well to bandwagon with the United States. In part this was driven by the idea that the Americas were

LATIN AMERICA’S EVOLVING CONTRIBUTION TO PEACEFUL CHANGE    607 part of a “New World” that positively contrasted with the “Old World” of Europe. Brazil was particularly a proponent of this approach, seeking to establish itself as a reliable partner of the United States in regional diplomacy up through World War II.1 The United States fostered this perspective in certain times and places, initially proclaiming the Monroe Doctrine in 1822 aimed at foreclosing the possibility of Europe recolonizing the Americas (Gilderhus 2006). Some suggest the growing power differential between the United States and Latin America may explain a progressively peaceful region. In other words, Latin America has become more peaceful because the United States wishes it so (Smith  2013). Certainly, the United States has participated in ‘peace making,’ for example helping to settle each of the 1941, 1981, and 1995 Peru-­Ecuador wars. On the other hand, the United States was not able to stop the Bolivia-­Paraguay Chaco War (1932–1935), repeatedly used military force in Mexico and Central America in the first third of the twentieth century, encouraged military coups against democratic governments during the Cold War, supported the United Kingdom against Argentina during the Falklands/Malvinas War (1982), and dragged the region into global crises such as the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) and the Central American wars of the 1980s (Smith  2013; Schenoni and Mainwaring 2019). A counterinterpretation may be that US hegemony actually contributed to the emergence of hostile revolutionary regimes in Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Bolivia. Evidence that US hegemony contributes to peaceful inter-­American relations is thus at best mixed. Regional perspectives on how to deal with US hegemony oscillated between counterbalancing in pursuit of autonomy (Vigevani 2009; Hurrell 2013) and bandwagoning. Perhaps the most fully articulated version of the latter was authored in 1995 by Argentine political scientist Carlos Escudé, known as peripheral realism. This approach argued that the cost of resisting US unipolarity after the Cold War was simply too great. Escudé argued that security was not the principal national interest in the periphery, but rather development. He also discounted the neorealist description of the international system as anarchic, arguing that for peripheral states the system looked very hierarchical. Thus, he argued for a political rapprochement between Latin America and the United States (Schenoni and Escudé 2016) to contribute to national peace and prosperity. Other scholars of the region have argued that asymmetry does not need to lead to abject submission, and that even under conditions of unipolarity, peripheral states can engage in “soft balancing” to constrain the behavior of dominant states. Friedman and Long show how between 1899 and 1936, Latin American states were able to persuade the United States through a combination of diplomacy, international law, institution building, and moral suasion to abandon its interventionist tendencies in the Western Hemisphere (Friedman and Long  2015). In the 1860s, Argentine jurist Carlos Calvo advocated against the use of force to collect international debts, instead arguing that creditors needed to seek redress through national judicial institutions, which came to be known as the Calvo Doctrine. Argentina also took advantage of the early Pan-­American congresses organized by the United States beginning in 1889 to press for a ban on military intervention, a particularly salient issue after the US occupation of Cuba and Puerto

608   Harold A. Trinkunas Rico following the Spanish-­American War. This became known as the Drago Doctrine (after Argentine Foreign Minister Drago), and Calvo widely campaigned across Europe in favor of its adoption, enlisting a number of noted international jurists to support this cause. By the time of the 1907 Second Hague Peace Conference, Argentina convinced even the United States and Great Britain to endorse this principle, albeit with a major caveat—mandatory international arbitration in cases of disputed debts. Increasingly, the Calvo and Drago doctrines became codified into domestic law across the region and into international bond agreements. By the 1933 Montevideo conference of American states, the assembled (even the United States with some reservations) adopted the principle that “no state has the right to intervene in the internal or external affairs of another” (Friedman and Long 2015, 151). By somewhat constraining US interventionism, “soft balancing” by Latin American states contributed to peaceful change in the hemisphere. The rise of China after 2000 has generated more options to limit US influence. Since 2000, China’s trade with South America has increased rapidly, and for regional economies dominated by commodity exports, China has by and large replaced the United States as a destination. Chinese foreign direct investment in the region has also grown rapidly, initially focused on commodity production but more recently transitioning into services. In addition, Chinese policy banks have become substantial lenders to the region, an important alternative to international capital markets and the World Bank (Dussel Peters  2015). This has led to fears in Washington that China is deliberately undermining US influence (Ellis 2014). Yet it is only countries that are locked out of international capital markets and are unable to access World Bank funding that are vulnerable. In the early twenty-­first century, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Argentina were at various times in default of their international financial obligations or had made policy decisions not to engage with traditional sources of foreign capital (Trinkunas  2016). Moreover, for those actively opposed to US foreign policy—Bolivia under Evo Morales, Ecuador under Rafael Correa, Nicaragua under Daniel Ortega, and Venezuela under Hugo Chávez—China has been an important source of support. In a sense, the retreat of American power and the rise of China has made possible Bolívar’s dream of finding a counterbalance to the “colossus of the North.”

Liberalism, Liberal Institutionalism, and the Americas Latin America has a surfeit of regional institutions. In fact, one might describe Latin America, tongue in cheek, as a ‘museum of institutions,’ since new ones are constantly created but older institutions are rarely shuttered. Debates over regional organizations have often revolved around whether the United States should be included or excluded. The most prominent of the US-­inclusive institutions is the Organization of American States (OAS), founded in 1948. It has the most functional secretariat of all the regional

LATIN AMERICA’S EVOLVING CONTRIBUTION TO PEACEFUL CHANGE    609 organizations, enabling the institution to play a role in day-­to-­day politics of Latin America, such as electoral observation. This is in part because the United States and Canada provide a great deal of the organization’s budget. This does not mean that other member states are uninfluential, and in particular OAS voting rules (every state has one equal vote) have served to constrain US diplomacy (Shaw 2003). It is also one of the few institutions that have been able to generate some sovereignty pooling in theory, most notably through the drafting and signing of the Inter-­American Democratic Charter on September 11, 2001, which established democracy as the only acceptable regime type for member states. In practice, the need to find consensus to take action has meant the OAS is not adept at crisis resolution (Shaw 2003). For example, despite the support of countries representing over 90 percent of the region’s population in 2018, the OAS has been unable to act effectively on the Venezuela case due to smaller states in the Caribbean blocking action. This highlights the limits of the organization’s effect on peaceful change (Merke, Feldmann, and Stuenkel 2016). However, the OAS does embody, practice, and provide legal grounding for shared regional norms of nonintervention and peaceful resolution of disputes. Regional organizations that exclude the United States have had a more limited impact, although there have been many more of them. Dabène identifies at least four waves, beginning in the 1950s with a focus on overcoming economic development bottlenecks, followed by subsequent waves in the 1970s, 1990s, and 2000s in response to shifts in regional economic outcomes and the end of the Cold War. Although these organizations exist de jure, they often have a limited impact because they lack consistent funding or strong institutionalized secretariats. In recent years, only Venezuela has spent significant funds to support such regional organizations, particularly the Alliance of the Bolivarian Peoples of the Americas (ALBA), a group of states critical of the United States; Petrosur, which provides subsidized financing for Central American and Caribbean states to buy Venezuelan oil; and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), which excludes Central America and Mexico as too subject to US influence. However, all three organizations faded away into near irrelevance once Venezuela entered crisis in 2013 and became the target of international pressure due to its democratic backsliding. In practice, organizations such as UNASUR and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) have mostly served as venues for presidential summitry (Dabène  2016). For example, following a cross-­border attack by Colombian armed forces on rebels based in Ecuador in 2008, Venezuela threatened military mobilization. UNASUR quickly convened member-­state presidents to negotiate de-­escalation (Burges and Bastos  2016). However, the operating mechanism for restoring peace in the region was not UNASUR’s underlying organizational structure or civil servants contributing to information sharing, burden sharing, collective security or collective goods, or other similar arguments put forth by liberal institutionalists. Rather, it was just a rubric for regional leaders to negotiate among themselves directly to achieve a peaceful resolution (Baracaldo Orjuela and Chenou 2019). International organizations, such as the UN and the International Court of Justice (ICJ), have had a more significant impact on shaping the course of peaceful change in

610   Harold A. Trinkunas Latin America. The UN has long assisted in the implementation of peace agreements, for example supervising the end of Central American conflicts of the 1980s and more recently, the 2016 peace agreement with rebel groups in Colombia. The ICJ has become particularly important for peaceful change in Latin America because of the trend toward judicializing international disputes over borders. The ICJ has recently become the preferred venue for dispute settlement, and even long-­standing conflicts such as over Bolivia’s access to the sea, lost to Chile in the War of the Pacific (1879–1884), have ended up in front of the ICJ. The preference for judicialization over militarization is one more way in which Latin America’s leaders and diplomats have contributed toward making peaceful change possible. By giving preference to lawyers and diplomats over soldiers, Latin American leaders also undercut the national security rationale for large standing armies. After all, for most, overthrow by their own army has been a bigger risk historically than invasion by their neighbors (Sotomayor Velázquez 2008). Finally, one of the most important liberal explanations for the prevalence of peaceful change in Latin America is the rise of democracy, although there are important reasons to be skeptical of this trend’s impact. Although the region is well known for repeated waves of authoritarianism, widespread democratization took hold in the 1980s and has persisted despite occasional backsliding into dictatorship by Peru (1992–1999), Nicaragua (2015–), and Venezuela (2013–). Democratization contributed to consolidating an end to Argentine-­Brazilian geopolitical competition, including the development of an innovative verification mechanism to ensure peaceful uses of nuclear power, ABACC (in English, the Argentine-­Brazilian Agency for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials), and a functional economic integration agreement, MERCOSUR (Steves 2001). Democratic peace theory would suggest that Latin America today should have a low propensity for interstate conflict. And in fact, many regional wars of the twentieth century have been among authoritarian regimes or between dictatorships and democracies. However, serious scholars of the region have raised doubts about whether democratic peace is really a good description for a region which does experience militarized conflicts—which admittedly rarely result in actual wars (Hurrell 1998; Mares  2001)—and the frequent use of other interstate coercive tactics short of war (Downes and Lilley 2010; Trinkunas 2015). But in spite of a mixed track record, Latin America has achieved some important successes for peaceful change. Perhaps the most notable of these is the Treaty of Tlatelolco, negotiated during the 1960s, which committed signatories to a Latin American Nuclear Weapons Free Zone. Eventually even countries with advanced nuclear programs, Argentina and Brazil, also committed to the treaty and established the ABACC mutual inspection regime as their own institutional innovation for regional peace. However, Latin America’s interstate relations, which meet minimalist definitions for a region of peaceful change, have not translated over time into arrangements that match more maximalist historical aspirations, including long-­lasting regional economic integration, effective collective security, or the development of epistemic security communities (Kacowicz 1998).

LATIN AMERICA’S EVOLVING CONTRIBUTION TO PEACEFUL CHANGE    611

Constructivist Approaches to Peaceful Change in Latin America Both realist and liberal approaches provide explanations for peaceful change in Latin America, and for its limits. But it is impossible to ignore the constructivist underpinnings of regional diplomatic discourse and practices. For example, the earlier discussed Calvo and Drago doctrines are not just efforts to “soft balance” against the United States; they are carefully crafted appeals to a particular normative international order based on sovereignty and sovereign equality, grounded in a shared “Western” interpretation of international law that appealed to European jurists. This logic of appropriateness prevails in much of the discourse among government leaders in the Americas, based in part on the thinking of Simón Bolívar on regional integration, in parallel with speech aimed at the rest of the world seeking a just international system based on nonintervention and mutual respect (Castro-­Klaren 2003). References to a brotherhood of states among Latin American diplomats and leaders build on the region’s common heritage as Spanish and Portuguese colonies. This sense of regional identity is reinforced by shared language and history during the wars of independence, at least in the case of Spanish America (Mignolo  2005). In addition, Latin America’s elites have a sense that they are part of the “West,” based on an inherited intellectual tradition rooted in the ideals of the Enlightenment and in constitutional and legal orders inspired by the French and US revolutions (Rouquié 1996; Bethell 2010b). Historically, Latin American norms entrepreneurship has made important contributions to international law. The development and espousal of the principle of uti possidetis juris within the region (the only legitimate basis for territorial borders are those inherited from the colonial period) contributed to making the judicialization of interstate territorial disputes possible (Sotomayor Velázquez 2008). This principle has also been applied in West Africa, as Kacowicz demonstrates (Kacowicz 1998). Similarly, while the Calvo and Drago doctrines eventually became embedded in international institutions such as the OAS and United Nations, they began as efforts to propagate new norms in international law to constrain and delegitimize aggression by great powers. Additionally, the norm of sovereign equality, now widely recognized and institutionalized, received an important initial push from Latin American states, particularly in the Second Hague Convention of 1907 (Friedman and Long 2015). There are two prominent intellectual traditions that emerged in Latin America to explain what its proper relationship should be to the rest of the world. “PanAmericanism” interprets the Western Hemisphere and the states that comprise it as standing for a new and different approach to governance, politics, and international relations. In addition to drawing support from some Latin American elites, the United States also advocated for this policy to keep extrahemispheric powers out of the region and to maintain US preponderance. At times, this policy fostered good North–South

612   Harold A. Trinkunas relations based on mutual respect, not only during the Good Neighbor period before World War II but also during the 1960s Alliance for Progress, designed to foster economic cooperation between the United States and Latin America. It is also echoed in the policies of the Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama administrations after the end of the Cold War, all of which promoted peaceful change and democratization in the region (by and large). By contrast, there has been a strand of thinking about Latin America which views the Anglo-­Saxon world as a threat, known as “Arielismo” after the famous book Ariel by Uruguayan writer José Enrique Rodó, published in 1900. Written in the wake of the Spanish-­American War, Rodó’s book idealized Latin culture (in which he included Spain and France as well) as more spiritual and noble, contrasting it with Anglo-­Saxon gross materialism and commercialism. He believed in the cultural unity of Latin America, a mode of thinking influential with regional intellectuals which provided a rationale for opposition to the United States. But it also provided an argument favoring closer regional integration and peace, at least on a cultural level, within South America, although in practice commitment by individual states and even leaders has ebbed and flowed over time. These two strands of thinking about Latin America’s role explain some of the logic underpinning the region’s norms entrepreneurship.

The Role of Systemic and Subsystemic Factors on Regional Transformation By far the most important systemic factor affecting the prospects for peaceful change in Latin America has been shifts in the polarity of the international system, propelled by the rise of the United States, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the waning of post–Cold War unipolarity. A collateral subsystemic factor in South America has been Brazil’s policy foreswearing the use of force to settle interstate disputes. This was even true during Brazil’s military dictatorship (1964–1985), which is paradoxically the period during which a rapprochement with Argentina (also ruled by the military at the time) in the late 1970s translated into the end of a geopolitical rivalry, remarkable progress on nuclear nonproliferation, and economic interdependence, all later consolidated as both countries democratized. In Spanish America, prolonged wars of independence caused heavy damage to economies and governance systems, producing weak states. As Miguel Angel Centeno has argued, a Tilly-­esque cycle in which “states make war, and wars make states” never really took place in Latin America. Local elites, frequently owners of extractive industries or plantations oriented toward exports to European markets, were able to finance the region’s conflicts via access to international capital markets rather than through internal taxation. The result was a set of low-­capacity states that were vulnerable to international coercion, and in fact experienced it as the British attempt to invade the Province of

LATIN AMERICA’S EVOLVING CONTRIBUTION TO PEACEFUL CHANGE    613 Buenos Aires in 1806, US invasion of Mexico in 1848, French intervention in Mexico in 1862, and German threats against Venezuela in 1902 suggest (Centeno 2002). However, multipolarity did offer opportunities for pursuing balancing and bandwagoning strategies. For example, Brazil chose to bandwagon with the United States through World War II. Argentina and Chile were particularly open to British investments. France had historic ties to Brazil, particularly in the military sector. Others relied on the United States and the Monroe Doctrine to protect against European powers. For example, German threats to Venezuela were put to rest under the threat of US military action (Morris 2002). But the rise of the United States led to what was effectively a unipolar system within the Americas by the late nineteenth century which resulted in soft balancing by many countries against the hemispheric hegemon (Friedman and Long 2015). The shift to a bipolar international system after World War II was not really experienced as such by Latin America. The overwhelming diplomatic, economic, military, and covert power of the United States in the hemisphere meant that only a few states, Cuba (1959–) and Nicaragua (1979–1990), were able to successfully secure external assistance from the Soviet Union. But they did so at tremendous human and material cost for their peoples, and arguably at a considerable loss of the very international autonomy their revolutions had sought. The unipolar moment that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 caught Latin America at a particularly vulnerable time. Still recovering from the regional debt crisis of the 1980s, it was at its weakest in terms of international autonomy. As such, the United States’ latest iteration of a Pan-­American agenda gained considerable traction, including the promotion of democracy, free markets, and human rights across the hemisphere. Regularly scheduled presidential Summits of the Americas and negotiations for a Free Trade Area of the Americas all began during the 1990s (Feinberg, Miller, and Trinkunas 2015). However, even with the United States at the crest of its global power, Latin American states managed to preserve some autonomy. For example, the Contadora Group of South American states successfully intervened in the Cold War standoff in Central America to help negotiate the 1987 Esquipulas Peace Agreement that finally ended conflict in the region (Barletta and Trinkunas 2004). Brazil, which sought to preserve an autonomous space for independent foreign policy action, successfully sabotaged the negotiation of the FTAA. Chile and Mexico were quite uncooperative with US efforts to seek a UN Security Council resolution in favor of the invasion of Iraq in 2002 and 2003. So even the relatively weak states of the region found ways to resist or dilute policies pursued by the hegemon. At the subsystemic level, the evolution of Brazilian foreign policy since the nineteenth century to largely emphasize peaceful settlement of interstate disputes and support for sovereign equality and nonintervention has been an important contributor to the dominance of peaceful change in the region. Quite conscious of the risk of triggering counterbalancing should Brazil act too aggressively, Brazilian diplomats have instead preferred diplomatic solutions to regional crises. The decline of Argentina as a rival in

614   Harold A. Trinkunas the late twentieth century further contributed to minimizing the risk of war in the region. Moreover, Brazilian diplomats realized that any militarized crisis in South America risked attracting undesirable attention from great powers, particularly the United States (Mares and Trinkunas 2016).

Latin America’s Past and Future Trajectories in the Domains of Peace and Order Hard realist accounts of the region’s trajectory may not be enough to explain peaceful change. They miss some of the most interesting aspects of interstate relations in Latin America. First, there is the importance of soft balancing in the face of US unipolarity. Second, the failure to develop stronger collective institutions in a region with historic aspirations to do so remains an interesting puzzle. Third, the role of domestic institutions, particularly democratization, in contributing to peaceful change is still under debate, and the return of polarization (but not yet militarization) to the region calls its effect into question. Fourth, there is the importance of norms entrepreneurship and its consequences for regional behavior, from uti possidetis juris to sovereign equality to nonintervention and thus the importance of international institutions, law, and courts for the region. There are, of course, limits to peaceful change in the region (Hurrell 1998; Mares 2001). If we are to examine the region from the perspective of the Kantian triangle, advanced economic interdependence is missing, and even progress on democracy is increasingly shaky. And if we also look outside of traditional interstate relations, we would see a region with much more violence and much less peace. Indigenous people of the Americas have suffered greatly since contact with Europe, including mass decimation due to disease and almost complete dispossession of traditional lands. Only in recent decades have indigenous communities been able to organize sufficiently to pressure national majority populations, governments, and international investors for redress and representation (Brysk 1994; Yashar 1998). Other minorities across the region, particularly those of African descent, have also experienced a history of violence, including as enslaved persons. In some parts of the Spanish Empire, the wars of independence descended into what were essentially race wars, while in Brazil, traditional plantation slavery continued until the birth of the Republic in 1889 (Blanchard 2008). Persons of African descent continue to experience racism and discrimination (Dulitzky 2005; Dijk, Barquin, and Hibbett 2009). Women have been a particular target of violence by patriarchal cultures for most of Latin America’s history, and even today levels of gender violence are particularly high in a region already experiencing surging criminal violence (Rios and Olivera 2010; Wilson 2014). This is also true for members of the LGBTQ com-

LATIN AMERICA’S EVOLVING CONTRIBUTION TO PEACEFUL CHANGE    615 munity which still experience severe legal and social discrimination in many countries. However, across all these discriminated groups, the past two decades have witnessed positive change, and many of the authors cited here examine how subnational politics, emergent civil society, transnational civil society, particularly in the context of intergovernmental organizations and through the use of new information and communication technology (ICT), have made change possible. In particular, Friedman shows how the articulation of civil society across borders in the region has been made possible by the Internet, drawing on experiences of feminist and queer civil society activists and organizations (Friedman 2017). Already resting on contested conceptual and historical grounds, Latin America’s commitment to peaceful change is being increasingly tested in the twenty-­first century. First, the future of the liberal international order appears in doubt due to the rise of China and the increasingly illiberal and erratic behavior of the United States. While a number of Latin American states have been critical of the great powers and their limited willingness to bind themselves to the constraints of the liberal international order, a rules-­based system which bans aggressive war, international terrorism, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and promotes sovereign equality and multilateral development is, on the balance, good for the region. Moreover, it is an order in which the region has had to invest little beyond support for international norms. An international order characterized by great power rivalry, including an increasingly transactional United States, Russian land grabs and interventions abroad, and heavy-­ handed Chinese behavior, is exactly the kind of order that Latin America has been working against. This may mean a return to an emphasis on counterbalancing and bandwagoning strategies to play the great powers off each other rather than a focus on international institutions and international law. The impact of Chinese and US policies on Latin America’s economies highlights the continuing limits to regional autonomy. China’s voracious appetite for Latin American commodities during the 2000s powered a region-­wide surge in economic growth, a reduction in inequality, and an expansion of the middle class. Yet this growth proved precarious since it was concentrated among commodity-­exporting states, and these were not well positioned to mitigate the impact of declining commodity prices due to  slowing Chinese economic growth. In addition, Chinese competition with Latin America’s manufacturers and the reprimarization of many South American economies contributed to the region’s vulnerability to international trade shocks. Chinese nontariff barriers and the US withdrawal from the Trans-­Pacific Partnership have limited outlets abroad for Latin America’s industries (Trinkunas  2016; Dollar  2017). While the US– China trade war of 2017–2019 temporarily benefited agricultural producers such as Argentina and Brazil, the region as a whole loses when international trade is hampered by great power rivalry. A third negative trend for Latin America has been a return of political polarization among regional states reminiscent of the Cold War. Divisions between right- and left-­wing governments over how the region should address democratic backsliding in countries

616   Harold A. Trinkunas such as Nicaragua and Venezuela have led to near paralysis in regional institutions. Instead, ad hoc coalitions of like-­minded states have emerged such as the Lima Group, which favors a return to democracy in Venezuela. Yet membership in these coalitions is unstable, as changes of governments from right to left and vice versa lead to international realignments. Moreover, the exodus of over 5 million migrants from Venezuela (nearly 20 percent of the population) in the face of economic collapse (over 50 percent GDP decline between 2015 and 2019) has strained the capacity of regional states to respond to crises and given rise to xenophobia and accentuated nationalism across South America (Bahar, Piccone, and Trinkunas 2018). Latin America has always been a fiction. Subregional groupings have been important in the past, and they may become so again. De facto, three tiers of states may be emerging. On the one hand, there is a group of relatively prosperous democracies that aspire to an international order based on maximalist approaches to peaceful change: a rules-­ based system; respect for human rights and democracy; nonintervention and sovereign equality; some subregional integration; and limited contributions to international order through peacekeeping, which might include Chile, Peru, Argentina, Colombia, Uruguay and, in the future, Brazil. On the other hand, adjacent to this core order may be other countries facing greater difficulties at home, less willing to invest in regional orders, more nationalist and xenophobic, which favor a negative peace in their neighborhood and a minimalist approach to peaceful change, such as Mexico, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and under President Bolsonaro, perhaps Brazil. And mixed among them may be near-­failed states that generate security externalities for the region, but that because of weakened regional norms and institutions and a lack of neighborly solidarity receive little or no assistance for resolving their problems, such as Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. From the perspective of international relations theories of peaceful change, Latin America’s experience offers three potential contributions that are worth examining in greater depth. The first is the role of regional hegemons and the choices they make. Brazil’s tradition of underutilizing its power relative to its neighbors to avoid inducing counterbalancing is not what traditional realist theories of international relations would necessarily predict, and it would be useful to compare this to the behavior of other regional hegemons, such as South Africa, Nigeria, Iran, and India. Second, the importance of “soft balancing” for states in the Global South as they dealt with the Cold War, followed by US hegemony, followed today by a return of great power rivalry, requires further work. As early decolonized states, Latin America had more experience of this practice than most other states in the Global South. The third area that would benefit from additional theorizing is that of norm entrepreneurship in international law. Latin American diplomats helped to pioneer important concepts such as sovereign equality, and even provided alternative models to approach important questions such as nuclear nonproliferation via the Treaty of Tlatelolco. When and how new norms emerge and are adopted by states in the international community is a rich area for further international relations research.

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Acknowledgments Work on this chapter was funded in part by the Minerva Research Initiative (OUSD(R&E)) and the Army Research Office/Army Research Laboratory via grant #W911-­NF-­17-­1-­0569 to George Mason University. Any errors and opinions are not those of the U.S. Department of Defense and are attributable solely to the author.

Note 1. Much like the United Kingdom, Brazil felt betrayed by the United States after World War II, believing that the US government was better disposed to helping its former adversaries, Germany and Japan, than its wartime allies (Mares and Trinkunas 2016). This led it to seek greater autonomy in its foreign policy, whether under democratic or military regimes (Vigevani 2009).

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618   Harold A. Trinkunas Dabène, Olivier. 2016. “Multilayered Summitry and Agenda Interaction in South America.” In Summits and Regional Governance: The Americas in Comparative Perspective, edited by Sabine Saurugger and Fabien Terpan, 117–135. New York, NY: Routledge. Dijk, Teun A. van, Elisa Barquin, and Alexandra Hibbett, eds. 2009. Racism and Discourse in Latin America. Perspectives on a Multiracial America Series. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Dollar, David. 2017. “China’s Investment in Latin America.” Geoeconomics and Global Issues 4. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Downes, Alexander  B., and Mary Lauren Lilley. 2010. “Overt Peace, Covert War?: Covert Intervention and the Democratic Peace.” Security Studies 19, no. 2: 266–306. https://doi .org/10.1080/09636411003795756. Dulitzky, Ariel  E. 2005. “A Region in Denial: Racial Discrimination and Racism in Latin America.” In Neither Enemies nor Friends, edited by Anani Dzidzienyo and Suzanne Oboler, 39–59. New York, NY: Springer. Dussel Peters, Enrique. 2015. “China’s Evolving Role in Latin America: Can It Be a Win-Win?” Washington, DC: Atlantic Council. Ellis, R. Evan. 2014. China on the Ground in Latin America. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. http://link.springer.com/10.1057/9781137439772. Feinberg, Richard  E., Emily Miller, and Harold Trinkunas. 2015. “Better Than You Think: Reframing Inter-American Relations.” Latin America Initiative Policy Brief. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. Friedman, Elisabeth J. 2017. Interpreting the Internet: Feminist and Queer Counterpublics in Latin America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Friedman, Max P., and Tom Long. 2015. “Soft Balancing in the Americas: Latin American Opposition to U.S.  Intervention, 1898–1936.” International Security 40, no. 1: 120–156. https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00212. Gilderhus, Mark T. 2006. “The Monroe Doctrine: Meanings and Implications.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 36, no. 1: 5–16. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-5705.2006.00282.x. Hurrell, Andrew. 1998. “Security in Latin America.” International Affairs 74, no. 3: 529–546. Hurrell, Andrew. 2013. The Quest For Autonomy: The Evolution of Brazil’s Role in the International System, 1964–1985. Coleção Política Externa Brasileira. Brasilia, Brasil: Fundação Alexandre de Gusmão. Jaskoski, Maiah, Arturo C. Sotomayor, and Harold A. Trinkunas, eds. 2015. American Crossings: Border Politics in the Western Hemisphere. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Kacowicz, Arie M. 1998. Zones of Peace in the Third World: South America and West Africa in Comparative Perspective. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Lessing, Benjamin. 2015. “Logics of Violence in Criminal War.” Edited by David Shirk and Joel Wallman. Journal of Conflict Resolution 59, no. 8: 1486–1516. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/0022002715587100. Mares, David R. 2001. Violent Peace: Militarized Interstate Bargaining in Latin America. New York: Columbia University Press. Mares, David R., and Harold A. Trinkunas. 2016. Aspirational Power: Brazil on the Long Road to Global Influence. Geopolitics in the 21st Century. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Merke, Federico, Andreas E. Feldmann, and Oliver Della Costa Stuenkel. 2016. “Venezuela on the Edge: Can the Region Help?” Carnegie Rising Democracies Network. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

LATIN AMERICA’S EVOLVING CONTRIBUTION TO PEACEFUL CHANGE    619 Mignolo, Walter. 2005. The Idea of Latin America. Blackwell Manifestos. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Morris, Edmund. 2002. “ ‘A Matter of Extreme Urgency’: Theodore Roosevelt, Wilhelm II, and the Venezuela Crisis of 1902.” Naval War College Review 55, no. 2: 15. Nolte, Detlef. 2018. “Costs and Benefits of Overlapping Regional Organizations in Latin America: The Case of the OAS and UNASUR.” Latin American Politics and Society 60, no. 1: 128–153. Pevehouse, Jon C. 2002. “With a Little Help from My Friends? Regional Organizations and the Consolidation of Democracy.” American Journal of Political Science 46, no. 3: 611–626. Pion-Berlin, David, and Miguel Carreras. 2017. “Armed Forces, Police and Crime-Fighting in Latin America.” Journal of Politics in Latin America 9, no. 3: 3–26. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1866802X1700900301. Rios, Marcela Lagarde y de los, and Mercedes Olivera. 2010. Terrorizing Women: Feminicide in the Americas. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Rouquié, Alain. 1996. América Latina: introducción al extremo occidente. 3rd. ed. Sociología y política. México, D.F: Siglo Veintiuno Ed. Russett, Bruce M., and John R. Oneal. 2001. Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations. New York: Norton. Schenoni, Luis, and Carlos Escudé. 2016. “Peripheral Realism Revisited.” Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional 59, no. 1. https://doi.org/10.1590/0034-7329201600102. Schenoni, Luis L., and Scott Mainwaring. 2019. “US Hegemony and Regime Change in Latin America.” Democratization 26, no. 2: 269–287. https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2018.1516754. Shaw, Carolyn  M. 2003. “Limits to Hegemonic Influence in the Organization of American States.” Latin American Politics and Society 45, no. 3: 59–92. Smith, Peter H. 2013. Talons of the Eagle: Latin America, the United States, and the World. 4th ed. New York: Oxford University Press. Sotomayor Velázquez, Arturo  C. 2008. “Nos Vemos En La Corte! El Arreglo Judicial de Disputas En América Latina y Sus Implicaciones Para El Sistema Interamericano.” Foreign Affairs: Latinoamérica 8, no. 3: 42–51. Steves, F. 2001. “Regional Integration and Democratic Consolidation in the Southern Cone of Latin America.” Democratization 8, no. 3: 75–100. https://doi.org/10.1080/714000210. Taj, Mitra. 2018. “Lima Group Says Does Not Recognize Venezuela’s Election.” Reuters, May 21. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-election-limagroup/lima-group-says-does -not-recognize-venezuelas-election-idUSKCN1IM19G. Tourinho, Marcos. 2015. “For Liberalism without Hegemony: Brazil and the Rule of NonIntervention.” In Brazil on the Global Stage: Power, Ideas, and the Liberal International Order, edited by Oliver Stuenkel and Matthew MacLeod Taylor, 79–94. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Trinkunas, Harold A. 2011a. “International Bolivarianism and Its Influence.” Western Hemisphere Security Analysis Center, Florida International University. Trinkunas, Harold A. 2016. “Renminbi Diplomacy? The Limits of China’s Influence on Latin America’s Domestic Politics.” Geoeconomics and Global Issues 3. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Trinkunas, Harold  A. 2011b. “The Logic of Venezuelan Foreign Policy during the Chávez Period.” In Venezuela’s Petro-Diplomacy: Hugo Chávez’s Foreign Policy, edited by Ralph S. Clem and Anthony P. Maingot, 16–30. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.

620   Harold A. Trinkunas Trinkunas, Harold A. 2015. “Rivalry, Trade and Restraint on the Colombia-Venezuela Border.” In American Crossings: Border Politics in the Western Hemisphere, 109–129. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Vigevani, Tullo. 2009. Brazilian Foreign Policy in Changing Times: The Quest for Autonomy from Sarney to Lula. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Wilson, Tamar D. 2014. “Violence against Women in Latin America.” Latin American Perspectives 41, no. 1: 3–18. https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X13492143. Yashar, Deborah J. 1998. “Contesting Citizenship: Indigenous Movements and Democracy in Latin America.” Comparative Politics 31, no. 1: 23–42.

chapter 34

Peacefu l Ch a nge i n A fr ica Markus Kornprobst

Few authors writing on Africa use the concept of peaceful change explicitly. If they do so, some deal with aspects of peaceful change that echo long-­standing definitions of the term in international relations theory. There is research on dispute settlement mechanisms (Franke  2008; Nathan  2010), management of territorial disputes (Kacowicz  1997; Kornprobst 2002), and mediation (Bush 1983; Martin 1989). There is also one study on relations among Africa’s major powers (Schoeman 2000). Most authors writing explicitly on peaceful change in Africa, however, deal with an aspect of peaceful change that is not easily found in international relations theory. They write about democratization, that is, a form of peaceful change within states rather than among them (Vosloo  1976,  1979; Sullivan 1983; Preston and Armstrong 1991; Wiseman 1993; Kiai 1998; Fomunyoh 2001; Clapham and Wiseman 2002; Wiseman 2002; Peterson 2002; Herbst 2003; Badza 2008; Sturman 2011). This chapter digs deeper. How do Africans interpret peace and change on their continent? How have contending interpretations shaped the continent’s political institutions? And finally, judging by African interpretations and institutions, how successful are African actors at pursuing peaceful change? The timeline of my analysis starts in 1957, with the independence of Ghana, and extends to the present. In order to allude to philosophical precursors of political ideas that I identify in this time period, at times I go back further, to colonial and precolonial times. In addressing the questions just posed, I develop a threefold argument. First, I contend that prevailing African interpretations of peace and change are constituted of five key dimensions: liberty, unity, development, pacific settlement of disputes, and democracy. These are frequently found in African political theory and political visions for the future of the continent, albeit at times interpreted rather differently. Second, the five dimensions have critically shaped African institutions. They were foundational for the Charter of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the Constitutive Act of the African

622   Markus Kornprobst Union (AU), and an array of institutions set up by these organizations. Third, the continent’s track record is checkered. On the one hand, African actors have been remarkably successful in managing power transitions on the continent, and even more so in managing interstate disputes. On the other hand, African states struggle to move toward the kind of horizontal relations with the world that they seek to establish, a significant number of them engage in intrastate wars by proxy, and the continent still struggles to overcome enduring problems of development and democratization. The chapter is organized into six sections. The first addresses contending ideas on liberty and discusses how they have left a mark on African institutions. The second section moves on to unity, the third to development, the fourth to conflict management, and the fifth to democratization. The sixth section deals with the implementation record. Finally, I summarize my main points and sketch an agenda for further research.

Liberty: Peaceful Change as Establishing Horizontal Relations with the World At its most fundamental level, peaceful change in Africa is about liberating the continent from various forms of colonialism. Perhaps the most concise summary of this facet of peaceful change is Ali Mazrui’s concept of the Pax Africana. Peace (Pax) is to be an African (Africana) peace. Africa has to find peace for itself. This ought not—and cannot—be imposed from the outside (Mazrui 1967). There are many variations on this theme in today’s debates, but the concern with horizontal as opposed to vertical relations with the rest of the world (Bodomo 2019a) is still very prevalent. African “decolonial imaginists” (Ndlovu-­Gatsheni 2015, 211), such as Edward Wilmot Blyden in Liberia, Cheikh Anta Diop, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Steve Biko, Albert Luthuli, and Nelson Mandela, embraced at times very different ideals for how to move Africa forward. Yet for all their differences, they shared a vision of a genuinely liberated Africa.1 Some of these liberation ideas have proven to be very powerful across time. In the early 1960s, for instance, Diop published a book entitled Towards the African Renaissance (Diop and Modum 1996). More than thirty years later, the book’s content and title inspired Thabo Mbeki to launch his initiative for an African renaissance. At the heart of this is a question to be answered that, when in office as deputy president, he formulated as follows: “What is it which makes up . . . genuine liberation?” (Mbeki 1998). African politicians and intellectuals explore this question quite comprehensively. There are arguments cautioning against letting the world’s powerful nations export their polities to Africa, allowing them to have their policies prevail and have their vertical

Peaceful Change in Africa   623 politics force themselves upon African affairs. A large body of literature discussing the African state argues that it superimposed “an apparatus of violence” (Ndlovu-­ Gatsheni 2012a, 77) onto Africa that was bound to struggle to take root in African societies (Young 1992; Lumumba-­Kasongo 1994; Mamdani 1996). There has been plenty of criticism against outside influences on Africa’s economic policies. Much of it has focused on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (Mkandawire 2001, 2003). Most arguments address politics, broadly speaking, and reinvoke colonial experiences. Criticisms of neocolonialism2—capitalist expansion and exploitation of Africa, accompanied by a divide-­and-­rule strategy—were frequently found in political debates in the 1960s (Fanon [1961] 1963, [1964] 1969; Nkrumah 1965; Cabral  1967). More recent literature often zooms in on hidden forms of power and oppression. Ndlovu-­Gatsheni’s concept of the “coloniality of power” (2012b, 1) and Mbembe’s “postcolony” (2001, 2019), for example, trace subjugation back to colonialism and the imaginabilities that it produced and that continue to be reproduced. Hardly ever do philosophical ideas translate directly into political institutions, but sometimes they shape them profoundly. From the 1945 Manchester Congress Declaration of the Colonial Peoples of the World to the first All-­African Peoples’ Conference in Accra in 1958, where Nkrumah and also Fanon featured prominently, liberation was the leitmotif. The same applied to the second All-­African Peoples’ Conference in Addis Ababa in 1960, although disagreements among participants came to surface about how to achieve liberation. Adopted in 1963, the OAU Charter found a compromise. It vowed to “eradicate all forms of colonialism from Africa” but “all forms” tended to be interpreted narrowly, that is, as getting rid of colonial and white-­minority rule (as opposed to countering what Nkrumah had called neocolonialism as well). In order to do so, the OAU created the African Liberation Committee (ALC). Holding its first meeting a mere week after the creation of the OAU, the ALC issued a communiqué (quoted in Ansprenger 1975, 40) that vowed to “use all means at  its disposal to help the oppressed people to achieve speedy and effective independence.” While Červenka (1969, 13) exaggerates when he characterizes the OAU Charter “as a common weapon for the liberation of Africa,” freeing the continent from all forms of colonialism really was a key purpose of the newly created organization. Although formed almost four decades later and thus at a time when even Portugal had long withdrawn and white minority rule in Southern Africa had come to an end, the AU, too, takes the liberation discourse very seriously. The preamble of its Constitutive Act celebrates “the heroic struggles waged by our peoples and our countries for political independence, human dignity and economic emancipation” and clarifies that “the liberation of the continent” and “the affirmation of a common identity” are two sides of the same coin. The AU’s determination to “enable the continent to play its rightful role in the global economy and in international negotiations,” as opposed to being merely on the receiving end of global institutional arrangements, is codified in Article 3(i).

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Unity: Peaceful Change as Standing Together The title of Nyerere’s often discussed book Freedom and Unity (1966) is paradigmatic of a powerful strand in African political thought. Establishing horizontal relations with the rest of the world requires Africans to stand together instead of letting outside powers divide them and rule the continent. The strand also includes the imagination for how to do so: pan-­Africanism. Pan-­Africanism is a social ontology that first turned into a political force when the African Association, soon to be renamed Pan-­African Association, formed in London in the late nineteenth century. The movement gained momentum in the early twentieth century, postulating solidarity among Africans and people of African descent and calling for an end to racial discrimination (Legum 1965; Mkandawire 2005; Lubin 2014). Political advocacy has always been accompanied by pan-­Africanism in the arts, such as music, dance, films, fictional literature, painting, and sculpture (Warren 1990; Ki-­Zerbo 2005; Campbell 2006; Nyamnjoh and Shoro 2011). There are many different interpretations of pan-­Africanism. For Nkrumah (1963), for example, it was the only hope for creating an integrated African polity to struggle against persistent forms of (neo-)colonialism. Nyerere (1968) linked it to an African version of socialism (ujamaa) and Kaunda to African humanism (Eleojo  2014, 297). Multiple interpretations persist today, with some strong versions connecting it to calls for creating a united African polity and others striking a balance between national (at times also regional) and continental identifications and political systems (Tieku 2019a). These debates underpinned the processes that led to the making of the OAU. Nkrumah’s powerful language swayed many leaders of Africa’s newly independent states. Gathering in the Casablanca Group, they rejected the application of the nation-­ state system to Africa. Instead, they advocated for an integrated African polity. The Monrovia Group, by contrast, argued for establishing an African states system and then moving gradually toward integration. Senghor was especially vocal about this. For as difficult as the debates across the schism were, pan-­Africanism itself was not subject to discussion. It was very much taken for granted (Farmer 2012). Pan-­Africanist ideals were equally important for transforming the OAU into the AU (Adejo 2001; Akokpari, Ndinga-­Muvumba, and Murithi 2008). In its preamble, the AU Constitutive Act acknowledges this genealogy explicitly and links it to the determination to cooperate and integrate. Pan-­Africanism lent its name to a number of institutions, ranging from the Pan-­African Parliament to the Pan-­African University. The AU Constitutive Act mentions the word integration five times. It does so in the preamble when listing the purposes of the institution and when outlining the organs of the organization. This makes it a key term in the Constitutive Act. Within the AU, discussions about creating a United States of Africa occur (Okhonmina 2009), although daring joint

Peaceful Change in Africa   625 statements such as the ones disseminated at the 9th African Union Summit in July 2007 are few and far between. It is also noteworthy that despite factionalism, interregional cleavages, and rivalries among African powers playing out within the AU, AU member states tend to stand together on the global diplomatic stage (Tieku 2019b). If a state breaks away from a consensus on an important international issue, it runs the risk of being heavily criticized by the others. This peer pressure may have played a role when South Africa, after breaking ranks with its fellow AU members and voting in favor of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 (2011) to authorize an intervention in Libya, soon changed course and joined the AU choir in criticizing the intervention.

Development: Peaceful Change as Progressing Economically African ideas for peaceful change are not only about grand visions of liberty and unity but also about more concrete, substantive issues. Development, interpreted differently by writers, activists, and decisionmakers over time, is certainly an important one. A Basotho proverb (cited in Mokitimi 1997, 36) puts this quite succinctly: “Khotso ken ala” (“peace is prosperity”). In postcolonial imaginations of the 1960s, liberty, unity, and development were closely intertwined. Often freedom and unity were understood as preconditions for development. Mazrui (1967, 1969) was adamant about this. Nyerere (1966, 170) wrote that a unity that would fail to secure “the development of Africa” was “pointless.” Even Nkrumah, despite his strong emphasis on freedom, pan-­Africanism, and continental unity, saw these as stepping stones to economic development (cited in Adejumobi and Olukoshi 2008, 3). The freedom-­unity-­development nexus persisted in various shapes and forms. The African Renaissance became an important interpretation of the nexus in the late 1990s. During his paradigmatic 1998 speech at the United Nations University and the question-­ and-­answer session thereafter, Mbeki mentioned the terms develop/development forty-­ three times. In contrast, he confined use of the word security to two instances and democratic/democracy to eight, although they were also key concerns for him. Yet development, often framed as sustainable development (van Amerom and Büscher 2005), was in the front of his mind (Shaw and Nyang’oro 2000; Ajulu 2001; Zeleza 2009). Other African leaders, perhaps most importantly Nigeria’s president Olusegun Obasanjo, supported Mbeki’s ideas on the African Renaissance (Okumu 2002, 159). His 1999 inaugural speech, outlining a vision for Nigeria and Africa, makes use of the concept (Obasanjo 1999). Abdoulaye Wade, when in power as president in Senegal, ordered the construction of a colossal—and very controversial—sculpture supposedly symbolizing the African Renaissance, outside Dakar.

626   Markus Kornprobst In the OAU Charter, developmental concerns—although put in different words and phrases, such as progress and “better life for the peoples of Africa”—already featured prominently. These included Article 2, which formulated the purposes of the organization. In the AU framework, development features even more prominently. Not only does the AU Constitutive Act emphasize development; since the creation of the AU, its Assembly of Heads of State and Government has created several mechanisms to strengthen developmental cooperation. The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), a compromise package containing proposed elements from Mbeki, Obasanjo, and Wade, is at the core of these mechanisms. NEPAD links up with a host of other instruments. At least two of these are worth mentioning. First, the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) was established in 2003. Its base document (AHG/235 [XXXVIII] Annex II) defines the “primary purpose” of the institution as establishing “policies, standards and practices that lead to political stability, high economic growth, sustainable development and . . . economic integration.” The vehicle for doing so is a peer review mechanism that allows for sharing experiences, discussing best practices, and reflecting upon “needs for capacity building” (NEPAD Secretariat 2002).3 The recently formed African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), aiming to create a single continental market, may very well turn out to be an important tool for moving closer to NEPAD’s development goals. It also further underlines plans to move state sovereignty. Second, the Agenda 2063 is a visionary document that spells out how gradual peaceful change is to happen over a span of fifty years. Celebrating the fiftieth birthday of the OAU in 2013, African leaders decided to put forward this vision for the next fifty years. The Agenda links development very closely to peace, which it mentions no fewer than twenty-­five times. Peace is intertwined with integration and prosperity (Article 4), there is determination for Africa “to realize her full potential in development, culture and peace” (Article 8), UNESCO’s broad concept of “culture of peace” is linked to development and conflict resolution (Article 32), and there is repeated emphasis on the development and peace not only of states but also of communities and societies within states (Articles 8, 33, 36, 72). The document therefore is not just about formulating rather concrete—and ambitious—goals for an African state system. Rather, it is a vision for an African polity that takes continental unity, local communities, and human beings seriously.4 To be sure, there are many critical voices. The 2002 Accra Declaration on Africa’s Development Challenges, written by scholars and activists, is among them. The increasing involvement of China in various parts of the continent has changed development dynamics in Africa significantly over the last two decades, and there are various controversies about it (Manji and Marks 2007; Mlambo 2019). But despite all this contestation and flux, there is little doubt of the intricate link between peace and working toward fulfilling Africa’s economic potential.

Peaceful Change in Africa   627

Pacific Settlement of Disputes: Managing Conflicts by Agreement Pacific settlement of disputes, in contrast to traditional understandings of the term in international law, is just one dimension of prevailing African representations of peaceful change. Yet there is a plethora of ideas and mechanisms, ranging from continental to local, to prevent, manage, and resolve disputes. When Léopold Sédar Senghor became Senegal’s first president, his inaugural speech celebrated the patrie (fatherland) and emphasized the need to respect existing borders in Africa (Senghor  1960). In a similar vein, Mali’s first president, Modibo Keïta, an African socialist in some ways not all that different from Nyerere, stressed the need to respect existing borders: “We must take Africa as it is, and we must renounce any territorial claims, if we do not wish to introduce what we might call black imperialism” (quoted in Touval 1967, 104). In legal language, uti possidetis ought to prevail. This is best understood as a preventive measure not to open pandora’s box. Given the artificiality of Africa’s state borders, there is plenty of potential for irredentism and secessionism, which have haunted other parts of the world, including Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. While Africa’s independence leaders anticipated intrastate disputes—and soon had to react to some of them (more about this later in the chapter)—settling internal conflicts was not the focus of their thoughts about how to move Africa forward. There is a whole array of practices with roots dating back to precolonial times, however, that is applicable to disputes among communities within a state. To mention but a few, there is the gacaca tradition in the Banyarwenda community in Rwanda, which revolves around dialogue, reconciliation, and reparation. Gacaca courts are constituted of detailed proceedings involving plaintiffs, defendants, and witnesses (Albert 2008, 41). In Somaliland, intra-­clan disputes are addressed by a shir, that is, a Council of Elders. Inter-­clan conflicts are dealt with by guurti. When Mohamed Egal came to power in (internationally unrecognized) Somaliland, he institutionalized a national guurti as the upper house of parliament. The jir approach to mediation, practiced among the Tiv of Nigeria, is used to help intra- or inter-­communal disputes through what Murithi (2008, 19) characterizes as a large “discursive assembly,” in which all sides are represented. Mato Oput in northern Uganda is a dispute settlement mechanism in which perpetrators are encouraged to acknowledge guilt, show remorse, ask for forgiveness, and pay reparation. Victims are encouraged to grant forgiveness (Murithi 2008, 24). This practice is already quite close to ubuntu, which—due to its frequent invocation in the transitions from white minority rule to majority rule first in Zimbabwe and then in South Africa—is perhaps the best known and most widely researched endogenous dispute settlement mechanism in Africa. It is both a political philosophy postulating that human relations make human beings and a reconciliation approach, interpreted differently depending on where and when it has been practiced (Southern, Central and

628   Markus Kornprobst East Africa). Gade (2011, 310) shows that ubuntu became a major political concept in the early 1980s. Samkange and Samkange (1980) invoke it in their vision for Zimbabwe,5 just after the Lancaster House Agreement that put an end to Rhodesia’s white minority rule. Almost fifteen years later, it appeared in South Africa’s 1993 Interim Constitution and several rulings by the Constitutional Court. Moreover, it served as the underlying set of principles for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Tutu 1999; Gade 2011, 312; Murithi 2012, 202–207). The institution of a truth commission in itself, of course, is not an African invention. South Africa drew from experiences in El Salvador and Chile (Vasallo 2002), and since then truth commissions have appeared in many parts of the world (Ben-­ Josef Hirsch 2014). But South Africa’s interpretation of it was certainly shaped by ubuntu, and other African interpretations of the institution, such as that in Sierra Leone (Dougherty 2004), also feature endogenous elements.6 At the same time, it remains a matter of debate whether the institution was sufficiently localized into African contexts. There has been criticism, for example, that the institution is too individualistic and insufficiently community based (Mamdani 2002). All of these ideas—and contestation—about peaceful change as dispute settlement left a mark on Africa’s order. Article 3(3) of the OAU Charter enshrined the territorial integrity norm. Additionally, AHG/Res. 16(1), adopted at the OAU’s First Ordinary Session of Heads of State and Government in 1964, formulated the territorial status quo norm, against the background of secessionist conflicts in the Congo (Katanga) and Nigeria (Biafra). African states shall “respect the borders existing on their achievement of national independence.” The AU Constitutive Act includes both norms as key principles that African states ought to abide by. These principles commit to sovereign equality (Article 4a), the peaceful resolution of conflicts (Article 4e), and the prohibition of the use of force (4f). The formulation of the territorial status quo norm (Article 4b) borrows heavily from the 1964 resolution: “respect of borders existing on achievement of independence.” Additionally, the AU created the African Union Border Programme (AUBP), which helps delimit and demarcate borders. The African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) focuses not only on addressing interstate but, even more so, intrastate conflicts. According to a detailed study by Desmidt and Hauck (2017, ii), APSA dealt with 89 percent of all wars and 56 percent of all violent conflicts on the continent. The increasing prevalence of African peacekeeping and peacebuilding has attracted plenty of scholarly attention in recent years (Jonah 2010; Knight 2010; Coleman 2011; Murithi 2017; Coleman and Tieku 2018). APSA has various instruments at its disposal, including the African Standby Force (ASF) to deploy peace missions7 and the Panel of the Wise (PoW) to mediate among (potential) adversaries. A number of legal instruments and stipulations underline how far-­reaching the ambitions to settle disputes are. The responsibility to protect is written into the AU Constitutive Act. “[T]he right of the Union to intervene in a Member State pursuant to a decision of the Assembly in respect of grave circumstances, namely: war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity” is a principle of the AU (Article 4h).8 The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights includes the right to peace: “All peoples shall

Peaceful Change in Africa   629 have the right to national and international peace and security” (Article 23(2)). The Protocol Relating to the Establishment of the Peace and Security Council of the African Union mentions the word peace 186 times. The term encompasses multiple dimensions, ranging from nonviolent interstate relations to intrastate peacebuilding, from environmental to health aspects of the concept, and from linkages between peace and development to acting against international crime. The African Union Non-­Aggression and Common Defence Pact is not only about nonaggression among states but also, as the title suggests, about establishing a common defense.

Democracy: Peaceful Change as Rule by the People Democracy is the fifth and final constitutive element of prevalent African understandings of peaceful change. It is linked to all other elements: to liberation and unity in more abstract fashion as well as to development and peaceful settlement of disputes in more concrete ways. Gebrewold (2008, 150) has a point when he states that many African visions about the future of the continent have included notions of democracy. This applies, say, to Nkrumah and Diop as much as to Kaunda and Senghor. They passionately argued that Africans, as Nyerere (1966, 170) put it, do not have to be “taught” about democracy. Non-­individualist but communal interpretations of democracy are endogenous to the continent (Senghor 1965, 96; Mbiti 1972, 205). Over the last two decades, more and more research has been published that identifies some of these interpretations empirically and argues about how to make use of them (Ayoade 1986; Kabongo 1986; Molutsi 2004; Kimosop 2011; Neocosmos 2017). Perhaps the most important concept is palaver democracy. Palavra is Portuguese for “word” or “speech.” Colonizers tended to dismiss the large gatherings of Africans who discussed their communal affairs under the shade of a big tree such as the baobab. In the vernacular, palaver, therefore, acquired a very negative connotation that still prevails today. Palaver democracy, however, is an endogenous African interpretation of democratic procedures.9 Ernest Wamba-­dia-­Wamba (1992) called upon Africans to draw upon these local procedures in order to democratize African states. Even more, he attempted to practice some of this when trying to put an end to the civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). These attempts failed for various reasons, but the idea to take palaver democracy seriously is very much alive and well among intellectuals in Africa (Depelchin  1993; Mamdani and Wamba-­ dia-­ Wamba  1995; Mangu 2006; Okeja 2019). A more recent innovation of democratic transition in Africa has been the national conferences in Francophone Africa (Bodomo 2019b). They share a certain degree of inclusiveness with palaver democracy, but on a very different scale. There is no meeting

630   Markus Kornprobst in order to discuss local affairs. The purpose is to reconstitutionalize an entire state. Benin organized the first national conference in February 1990. Seeking to include “toutes les forces vives de la nation” (“all strands of the nation”), the conference declared itself sovereign and after a mere ten days agreed upon how to democratize the state (Robinson 1994, 575). About a year and a half later, national conferences gathered in Gabon, Congo (Brazzaville), Mali, Togo, Niger, and Zaire. Elsewhere in Francophone Africa, including the Central African Republic, Cameroon, Madagascar, Burkina Faso, and Mauritania, civil society and opposition groups pressured longtime leaders to follow suit (Robinson  1994, 581). The president of Niger’s national conference, André Salifou (cited in Robinson 1994, 586), had a point when he likened Benin’s experience to a paradigm (“le schéma Béninois”) or school of thought (“le Bénin fait l’école”) for democratic change. Although interpreted in various ways, the national conference constituted a novel way of looking at remaking African states. The OAU Charter did not explicitly mention the word democracy. Instead, it put strong emphasis on the sovereignty of African states (Article II, 1c), which it qualified in the case of white minority rule (Article II, 1d) but not for other forms of nondemocratic government. The AU Constitutive Act reads very differently. The preamble stresses the determination “to promote and protect human and peoples’ rights, consolidate democratic institutions and culture, and to ensure good governance and the rule of law.” Democracy also features very prominently in the principles to which AU members subscribe, such as “popular participation” and “good governance” (Article 3g) as well as “human rights, the rule of law and good governance” (Article 3m). A number of documents, especially the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance, elaborate on the principles of democracy and democratization. Perhaps most notably, there is not only a strong emphasis on rejecting “unconstitutional change of government” and “holding free and fair elections” (Article 2) but also a sanctioning mechanism if this does not happen. An entire chapter is dedicated to this mechanism, which encompasses, as ultima ratio, the suspension of rights to participate in the activities of the AU (Article 25). Stipulations clearly compatible with palaver democracy are not easily found in the document. Article 27 lays down that “popular participation and partnership with civil society” is to be sought and that “the democratic values of the traditional institutions” ought to be harnessed. For the most part, however, the Charter clarifies rights and obligations of states and the AU (to a lesser extent also regional organizations). The local level is less present. AU organs have been regularly involved in efforts to facilitate democratization. Most notably, the Peace and Security Council (PSC) put the sanctioning mechanism to use against Sudan in 2019. Following a coup d’état in April, the PSC issued a stern warning against the military to initiate a transfer back to civilian power without any delay. When this did not happen and violence escalated, the PSC decided to suspend Sudan on June 6 (African Union,  2019). The PoW has been involved in a number of disputes arising before, during, and after elections, including in Guinea (2010), Egypt and Tunisia (early 2000), DRC (2011), Senegal (2012), Sierra Leone (2012), Ghana (2012), and Kenya (2013) (Gerenge 2015, 3).

Peaceful Change in Africa   631

Challenges: The Elusiveness of Peaceful Change If one were to apply markers widely used in international relations as evidence of peaceful change in Africa, the record would look very promising. The occurrence of interstate wars is a major exception. Only one region within Africa has experienced more than one interstate war. In the Horn of Africa, first Ethiopia and Somalia and then Eritrea and Ethiopia fought one another. Border disputes, elsewhere in the world often a major destabilizing force, tend to be settled peacefully. In her study, Sone (2017) lists twenty-­ five border disputes. Of these only one—the disagreement between Gabon and Equatorial Guinea over the islands of Mbanie, Cocotiers, and Congas—still persists. All others were settled either through bilateral negotiations, regional mediation, or arbitration by the International Court of Justice. A previous study (Ikome 2012), listing border disputes between 1950 and 2000, concludes that only one dispute is still active, the one between Eritrea and Ethiopia. Even this one seems to have been settled peacefully. Furthermore, power transitions within Africa tend to be peaceful. In the early 1970s, Ethiopia was still regarded as a major player in Africa and even the world.10 Yet its relative decline in power amid domestic upheavals and quarrels with Somalia did not trigger a violent battle of repositioning by other African states. Post-­apartheid South Africa’s rise in the ranks of continental powers was at times accompanied by discord within the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and, especially under the presidency of Zuma, within the AU. But this discord was nowhere near triggering the kind of interstate violence that applications of power transition theory (Organski  1958; Tammen 2000) to Africa might suggest. None of this is to claim, however, that peaceful change in Africa is easily accomplished. Far from it: if we apply the convergence on African interpretations of peaceful change in liberty, unity, development, peaceful dispute settlement, and democracy identified previously, the record looks much less favorable. Liberation has been an elusive ideal. Relations between newly independent states and their former colonial masters were asymmetrical. The constitutions of many former British colonies echoed the wishes of London. Former French colonies did not have full sovereignty over their monetary policies and even struggled to assert themselves in the areas of defense and foreign policy (Ndlovu-­Gatsheni 2012a, 2012b). From the 1960s to the late 1980s, the African states system was embroiled in the superpower rivalry of the Cold War (Makinda 1982; Laïdi 1990). Strings attached to loans from the World Bank and the IMF curtailed political room to maneuver (Mkandawire 2001). Currently, great power influence seems to be increasing again. China, in particular, is asserting itself (Alden  2005; Bodomo  2009; Edoho  2011). The European Union exerts considerable influence on the institutions and policy making of the AU, and the permanent members of the UN Security Council make sure that their interests are not violated when it comes to Africa (Murithi  2018). Several non-­African states have sought to influence the

632   Markus Kornprobst ­ utcome of the armed conflict in Libya. This ranges from great powers such as Russia o and the United States to regional players including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates. Horizontal relations with nongovernmental global political actors are at times also difficult to establish. There is a great variety of these actors, ranging from multinational corporations (Ya’u  2004; Asiedu and Gyimah-­Brempong  2008) via private military companies (Aning, Jaye, and Atuobi 2008; Marten 2019) to transnational terrorist networks (Forest 2011; Harun and Joseph 2018). The presence of great powers and the latter two categories of nongovernmental actors is often related. The United States and Russia use private military companies to fight transnational terrorism. Unity, too, has proven to be difficult to achieve. On the one hand, AU institutions, compared to the OAU, amount to a leap forward in terms of prospects for more unity and integration in various policy fields. The tendency of African states to rarely push for very different positions in international fora has been mentioned (Tieku 2019a, 2019b). On the other hand, principles and provisions agreed upon to move toward more unity and integration often remain dead letters. Inadequate funding, in particular, remains a major problem (Akokpari 2016, 35; Murithi 2018, 4). Worse, wars by proxy continue to haunt Africa. Most intrastate armed conflicts encompass internal and external dimensions. The latter often fuel the former. Nowhere has this caused more casualties than in the DRC. The so-­called Second Congo War (1998–2003) alone killed more than five million people (Bowers 2006; Prunier 2008). The immense human costs were intricately linked to multiple interventions by numerous African states, including Namibia, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zimbabwe (Clark  2002; Maringira  2019). Non-­African states such as France joined the list of intervenors, too (Gegout 2009). There are still situations in which alliance formations pit African states, siding with states from the outside, against one another, especially in the Horn of Africa. This problem of wars by proxy underlines another key obstacle for Africa in its efforts to move toward peaceful change. While African states have been very successful in settling interstate disputes, including territorial ones, they have struggled to settle intrastate conflicts. Data gathered by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) speak volumes about these problems. In 2018 there were armed conflicts in no fewer than eleven states: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic (CAR), DRC, Ethiopia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, and Sudan. The Sahel and the Lake Chad Basin are particularly affected by armed conflict. Many of these cases are related to terrorism and counterterrorism. Election-­related violence, too, is on the rise (SIPRI 2019, 3). Although the AU has many more instruments at its disposal to address armed conflicts than the OAU did—the ASF comes to mind, for example—it continues to struggle to make peace. Patterns of development continue to vary significantly across states and regions in Africa. The Human Development Report (UNDP  2019) is very revealing about this issue. The report distinguishes four categories—very high, high, medium, and low human development—of states. One state (Seychelles) is in the very high category, and seven are classified as high. With the exception of Gabon, these states are located in

Peaceful Change in Africa   633 either the AU’s North (Northern Africa) or South (Southern Africa) regions. Twelve states appear in the medium categories, coming from all AU regions. Thirty-­one are classified as low.11 While every region except for the North is represented in this category, almost half the states situated in the Central region (Burundi, CAR, Chad, and the DRC) are found near the bottom of the ranking of states. Needless to say, the human development ranking correlates with statistics on global health. According to the latest available data, the mortality rate of children under the age of five years is highest in Sierra Leone, Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, Guinea, Burkina Faso, and Burundi (IGME 2015, 42). According to another World Health Organization (WHO) study, there are twenty-­six million people living with HIV in Africa. The second most affected WHO region is Southeast Asia, with four million (World Health Organization 2019).12 According to democracy rankings by the Economist Intelligence Unit (2019, 27, 32), Africa as a whole lags behind on every indicator—electoral process and pluralism, functioning of government, political participation, political culture, and civil liberties— although it comes close to the average on political culture. Nineteen of the forty-­six analyzed African states make it into the top one hundred, whereas twenty-­seven are below this benchmark. These data show not only that, overall, other parts of the world do better in these rankings, but also that there is significant variation in Africa. Progress toward democracy varies not only from state to state but also across time for many states. From 1998 to 2008, for example, there was noticeable progress in Nigeria, Kenya, Liberia, Burundi, Ghana, Niger, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Guinea-­Bissau, Libya, Angola, Congo, and Rwanda, according to data compiled for Polity IV (Kaufmann, Kraay, and Mastruzzi 2009). According to yet another data set, the democracy improvement ranking, six out of the top seven improvers from 2011 to 2015 were African states: Côte d’Ivoire, Tunisia, Madagascar, Senegal, Togo, and Burkina Faso. The only non-­ African state (ranked fifth) was Nepal. By the same token, among the three states that plummeted the most in the ranking, two were African ones, Libya and Egypt (with Turkey in between) (Campbell, Pölzbauer, and Barth 2017).

Conclusion To sum up, this chapter develops a threefold argument. First, African interpretations of peaceful change overlap only partly with those we find in prevailing accounts of the concept in international relations. Although these interpretations vary considerably, there is a convergence on a nexus of five elements: liberty, unity, development, pacific settlement of disputes, and democracy. Second, this nexus profoundly shaped continental institutions, most importantly the OAU and the AU. Third, the implementation record is mixed. By widely used international relations standards—power transitions and peaceful settlement of interstate disputes—it is actually very good. By African interpretations of peaceful change, however, there are severe recurring problems in implementing every element of the nexus.

634   Markus Kornprobst Much more research on peaceful change in Africa is warranted. Several issues come to mind immediately. More fine-­grained research into African interpretations of peace is desirable. This chapter has fleshed out much more what Cortright (2008, 13), in a comprehensive overview of different conceptions of peace across different international actors, has already emphasized: in Africa, peace is understood as much more than negative peace. But more nuanced studies are warranted that, among other things, will highlight regional differences and contestation—of which there are plenty—among various actors. Detailed empirical research is required on how conceptual elements of peaceful change hang together and what other explanatory forces shape them. My hunch is that such explanations ought to carefully balance structure and agency as well as dependency and autonomy from outside influences (Coleman, Kornprobst, and Seegers 2020). In international relations theory, the most cited work addressing Africa remains Jackson and Rosberg (1982). Seeking to explain the near absence of interstate war in Africa, the authors do not address African interpretations of peaceful change at all. Relying on overgeneralizations about the structure of African states, they neglect a host of local, national, regional, and continental structural forces and sideline agency (and with it prospects for change). Forty years later, and with a movement toward global international relations (Paul 2009; Acharya 2014) gaining momentum, I believe that we can do better than this and perhaps even find considerable interest for doing so in the field of international relations. Finally, there is the demanding empirical question of how ideals succeed or fail to change situations for people on the ground. How do ideals “trickle” down, say from a UN document via an AU institution and perhaps a regional organization to a local context? Since the 1990s, a number of such ideals have made it into UN as well as AU documents, including peacebuilding, the culture of peace, and the right to peace. It is now time to do research on the processes through which these global and continental ways of thinking about peace have succeeded or failed in making a difference for the people. And when we do so, we should remind decisionmakers—African or not—to keep their promises!

Notes 1. Doing so, they partly drew from ideas introduced by intellectuals from outside of Africa who strongly identified with Africa, including Marcus Garvey, William Du Bois, and Aimé Césaire. 2. The term appears to have been coined originally by Jean-Paul Sartre ([1964] 2005). 3. To date, thirty-­eight states are members of the APRM. 4. The list of development-­related instruments could be extended much further. Note that development features so prominently that it amounts to an important consideration in a broad range of matters. The Treaty of Pelindaba, for example, which created the African Nuclear Weapons Free Zone, is not just about banning nuclear weapons and tests from the continent but also about furthering development through the peaceful use of nuclear energy (Kornprobst 2020a, 2020b).

Peaceful Change in Africa   635 5. Given one of the key concerns of this vision—that is, to come up with a vision that would unite Shona and Ndebele communities—the title of the book was Hunhuism or Ubuntuism. The former is the Shona translation of ubuntu. The latter is a word shared by several Nguni languages, such as Xhosa, Zulu, Swazi, and Ndebele. 6. There are plenty of debates about ubuntu, with some scholars defending it as highly promising political theory and practice (Bewaji, Isola and Ramose 2003; Metz 2014) and others criticizing it as mere ideology (Van Binsbergen  2001; Matolino and Kwindingwi  2013; Matolino 2015). 7. The Standby Force features regional brigades. Generally speaking, capacities for peace missions vary greatly across Africa. Over the last few decades, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has been the most active regional organization engaging in peacekeeping, by a considerable margin. 8. Note that African states were supportive in setting up corresponding global institutions as well, such as the World Summit Outcome’s R2P principle and the Rome Statute setting up the International Criminal Court. Yet since these institutions started operating, many African states have criticized them for singling out African cases and turning a blind eye to others. 9. Yet note that the tradition is, of course, anything but free of hierarchies and exclusions (Mandela 1994, 21). 10. A study by Holsti (1970, 287) put Ethiopia in the same group of influential countries as West Germany. 11. Only five states in this category are located outside of Africa. 12. WHO, https://www.who.int/hiv/data/en/

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Chapter 35

Peacefu l Ch a nge i n Sou theast Asi a The Historical and Institutional Bases Ralf Emmers and Mely Caballero-­A nthony

Southeast Asia has been regarded as one of the most peaceful regions in the world. Over the past fifty years of its postcolonial history, Southeast Asia has gone through ­significant periods of peaceful change, transforming its image from being the ­so-­called Balkans of the East to becoming one of the “zones of peace” in the international arena (Ullman 1990). At its best, Southeast Asia has now become one of the fastest growing and most competitive economic regions globally. More significantly, within the context of peaceful change, Southeast Asia, through the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), has been one of the first movers in building regional multilateral institutions in Asia that promote peace, cooperative security, and economic prosperity. The regional states of Southeast Asia have come a long way, from dealing with their turbulent histories of nation-­building and working toward regional reconciliation amid interstate conflicts to reaping the benefits of the peace dividend achieved over decades of managing intramural disputes. Against the dynamic changes in the global/regional security environment, how has Southeast Asia managed peaceful change? Further, amid the slew of increasingly complex security challenges confronting the region today, how might ASEAN continue to keep and maintain sustainable peace? In addressing these questions, the chapter is structured as follows. The first part begins with a broad overview of the historical perspective of how ASEAN and its member states have worked toward achieving peaceful change during periods of crises and uncertainties. The section then proceeds to provide theoretical insights that help explain how the region has managed peaceful change. It reviews how the discourse on peace and security in

644   Ralf Emmers and Mely Caballero-Anthony Southeast Asia have mostly been analyzed through realism, liberalism, and constructivism. The second part examines the changing nature of regional security challenges and how ASEAN has been responding to these threats. It analyzes some of the new modalities in attaining peaceful change and concludes by looking at the implications of the evolving strategies for managing regional security and maintaining sustainable peace.

Historical Perspectives: From Building a “Zone of Peace” to Navigating Great Power Competition The history of peaceful change in Southeast Asia can be viewed from the consequential developments that took place at the regional and international levels from the mid-­ 1960s through the post–Cold War era. At the outset, a key observation about the region’s rich experience with peaceful change is the thoughtful calibration of approaches that ASEAN states have adopted in managing the dynamic confluence of endogenous and external factors that continue to define the security environment of Southeast Asia. At the regional level, resolving regional interstate conflicts, notably between Malaysia and Indonesia and Malaysia and the Philippines, was achieved with the establishment of ASEAN in 1967. Its member states spent the first decade of peaceful transformation agreeing to end bilateral disputes and working toward regional reconciliation. As noted by scholars like Michael Leifer, the creation of ASEAN provided its member states with a regional mechanism to prevent and manage intramural conflicts (Leifer 1989). Through ASEAN, member states generated a set of regional norms and practices that defined the nature of interstate relations initially within the grouping1 but then also extended to neighboring states that were not members of ASEAN (Alagappa 1995; Acharya 2001; Caballero-­Anthony  2010). ASEAN adopted the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, which encapsulated a set of regional norms to manage interstate relations and regional conflicts.2 To enable ASEAN to cope with the ideological divide of the Cold War strategic environment, member states also adopted the Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality (ZOPFAN) Declaration in 1971. ZOPFAN was essentially an iteration of the fundamental ideals and aspirations of ASEAN, centered around the noninterference of external powers in the domestic and regional affairs of Southeast Asia (Hanggi 1991; Emmers 2018). The interstate peace that prevailed during the formative years of ASEAN was rudely interrupted by Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia in December 1978. Relations between Hanoi and the Khmer Rouge regime led by Pol Pot had worsened between 1975 and 1978 due to traditional feelings of animosity, border disputes, and ideological competition. The Vietnamese invasion led to the collapse of the Khmer Rouge regime and revealed the full extent of its genocidal policies; the regime is estimated to have killed between 1.5 and 2 million people. While putting an end to the Pol Pot regime, the Vietnamese invasion and later occupation of Cambodia were condemned internationally as a violation of

Peaceful Change in Southeast Asia   645 Cambodian sovereignty. At that time, both states were not members of ASEAN. The Vietnamese intervention altered the strategic environment in mainland Southeast Asia and posed a diplomatic and security challenge to the ASEAN members. On the one hand, the occupation by Vietnam’s forces in Cambodia violated ASEAN’s sacrosanct norms of non-use of force and respect of state sovereignty. On the other hand, there was concern in ASEAN that the Cambodian conflict was another arena of major power competition between the Soviet Union and China, given their respective support for Vietnam and Cambodia, and that the region would be drawn into the conflict and become once again a site of major-­power rivalry. While ASEAN had not reacted to the actions of the Pol Pot regime, its members actively worked to end the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia by adopting a two-­ pronged strategy. First, was internationalizing the Cambodian conflict by sponsoring an annual resolution at the United Nations Security Council and the UN General Assembly to ask Vietnam to withdraw from Cambodia and end the conflict; second, was its “shuttle diplomacy,” led by Indonesia bringing warring Cambodian factions together with Vietnam with the hope of reaching a comprehensive political settlement of the conflict. Notable during this period of diplomatic engagement was the holding of the Jakarta Informal Meetings (JIM) 1 and 2, which took place between 1988 and 1989. Despite the active role of ASEAN in finding a durable solution to the conflict, the resolution of the Cambodian conflict (1978–1991) eventually came with the end of the Cold War, which resulted in the transformation of power distribution at the international level. The coming to power of Mikhail Gorbachev led to Soviet attempts to reach détente and the ending of the USSR’s rivalries with the United States and China. The restoration of diplomatic ties with Beijing was dependent, among other issues, on the cessation of Soviet support for Vietnam’s occupation of Cambodia. No longer able to rely on external assistance, Vietnam withdrew its troops from Cambodia in September 1989. The peace settlement was signed on October 23, 1991, at the International Conference on Cambodia held in Paris. The 1991 Paris Peace Accords formalized Vietnam’s withdrawal from Cambodia, marking the end of a major interstate war in Southeast Asia and ushering in a long period of peaceful transition in interstate relations in the region. In 1995, Vietnam became a member of ASEAN, followed by Laos, Myanmar, and Cambodia in 1997–1998. Indonesia’s invasion and annexation of East Timor in December 1975 was another case of interstate conflict in Southeast Asia during the Cold War (Leifer  1983; Dunn 1996). Jakarta intervened militarily due to the fear of an independent East Timor under the control of the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (Fretilin) and communist influence in the territory. Most Western states, including the United States and Australia, tacitly accepted the Indonesian action, which was regarded as having eliminated a possible threat of communist intervention. Indonesia’s annexation of East Timor was in fact a denial of self-­determination and a violation of international law. East Timor was formally incorporated in July 1976 as the twenty-­seventh province of the Republic of Indonesia. The annexation had negative international repercussions for Indonesia, especially within the UN. Ongoing resistance in East Timor to Indonesia’s

646   Ralf Emmers and Mely Caballero-Anthony occupation also led over the next twenty-­four years to a constant policy of repression and severe violations of human rights. Indonesia only renounced its sovereignty over East Timor in 1999, after Indonesian president B. J. Habibie announced unexpectedly in January that year the holding of a referendum in East Timor on the future of the territory. The UN organized a referendum in East Timor in August 1999 that led to an overwhelming vote in favor of independence. Following these results, anti-­independence militias, orchestrated by the Indonesian military, perpetrated killings and massive destruction throughout East Timor. These dramatic events led to the formation of a humanitarian intervention, the International Force for East Timor (INTERFET), followed by the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET), which managed the territory until it gained its independence in May 2002. Since the resolution of the Cambodian and Timor conflicts, there have been no major outbreaks of interstate war within the region, aside from the border disputes between Cambodia and Thailand that turned violent in 2008 and 2011 (ALCED 2019). In these cases, fighting was quickly contained each time clashes occurred. Occasionally, border tensions have contributed to strained bilateral ties between Southeast Asian states, but they have not led to another open interstate conflict in the region.

Managing the Power Vacuum While the end of the Cold War provided a conducive environment for maintaining regional peace and stability, the Southeast Asian states nonetheless had to manage the impact of the structural changes that unfolded in the international strategic environment. Although the cessation of the Soviet-­US and Sino-­Soviet rivalries contributed to a sense of relief and optimism, there was a sense of strategic uncertainty in Southeast Asia (Acharya 1993; Alagappa 1998). The disintegration of the Soviet Union in December 1991 dramatically limited Russia’s regional role and influence (Dibb 1995). The reduction in regional influence was less significant in the case of the United States, but budgetary constraints still led to a significant reduction of US forces in the Asia-­Pacific. In addition, the Philippine Senate denied a new base treaty with the United States in September 1991, leading to a complete American withdrawal by November 1992. Most ASEAN members still wanted the United States to remain militarily engaged in the region to promote peace and stability and contain China’s rising power. China became the primary beneficiary of the changing strategic context (Vatikiotis 2003, 66). Some Southeast Asian states, Singapore being the major example, feared that a US military disengagement in East Asia might encourage China or even Japan to fill “the power vacuum” left by retreating external powers (Buszynski 1996, 121). In the new strategic context, the problem of the overlapping claims in the South China Sea became a security issue that complicated relations between China and the Southeast Asian claimant states.3 The salient developments that occurred during the end of the Cold War period prompted ASEAN to rethink its security approaches and marked its significant turn  to multilateralism. Post-­1990, the region saw a remarkable increase in regional

Peaceful Change in Southeast Asia   647 multilateralism efforts that extended beyond security cooperation. A renewed level of uncertainty led to the search for new security arrangements that were broader in scope and able to address a series of emerging challenges. For example, the ASEAN states took the diplomatic initiative and established the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in 1994 to expand to the wider Asia-­Pacific region its own model of cooperative security, which focuses on confidence building, an informal process of dialogue, and a mode of conflict avoidance. The creation of the Forum was regarded by ASEAN as a diplomatic instrument to promote continuing US involvement in the region, thus avoiding the need for an independent Japanese security role, and to encourage China in habits of good international behavior (Leifer 1996, 19). By concentrating on security cooperation, the ARF was expected to complement the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, which had been created in Canberra in November 1989. Other ASEAN-­led multilateral frameworks were also established: the ASEAN Plus Three (1999), which brought together the ten ASEAN states with China, Japan, and South Korea, and the East Asia Summit (2005), which comprises the ten ASEAN states and the eight dialogue partners: China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, India, the United States, and Russia. The increase in regional multilateral institutions was not limited to the politico-­security realm but also included economic and sociocultural cooperation. This flurry of efforts resulted in the development of a dense web of ASEAN-­led regional frameworks, which now largely make up the regional security architecture.

Dealing with Transnational Security Challenges The post–Cold War period presented a new set of security challenges to Southeast Asia that had an important bearing not only on interstate relations, but more significantly also on the nature of the region’s domestic politics (Emmers 2008, 181–213). Among these were the 1997 Asian financial crises; the threat of terrorism post September 11; the SARS health crisis in 2003; and more recently the growing number of catastrophic natural disasters brought on by climate change, that come with their own set of challenges, including massive population displacement, refugees, and economic uncertainties. The kinds of challenges that emerged in post–Cold War Southeast Asia were particularly noteworthy in that these threats did not stem from major power competition or interstate conflict. These threats are nonmilitary in nature, but their consequences threaten the survival and security of states and communities. They could emanate from human-­induced disturbances to the environment, or as consequences of globalization’s closer integration of economies and easier movement of people. Most distinctly, these threats have transnational impacts that defy unilateral actions/responses from states. They are now labeled nontraditional security (NTS) threats and have since become part of the security agenda of states in the region and beyond (Caballero-­Anthony, Emmers, and Acharya 2006; Caballero-­Anthony 2016). The impacts of these kinds of issues are described briefly here.

648   Ralf Emmers and Mely Caballero-Anthony The Asian financial crisis that began in July 1997 did not threaten interstate peace in Southeast Asia but instead transformed domestic political systems in various regional states. Beyond its direct economic consequences, the crisis swiftly escalated into a political and security crisis that resulted in violent demonstrations and bloodshed in several cities in Indonesia. The spiraling crisis triggered demands for Reformasi and eventually led to the downfall of Indonesia’s longest serving president, Suharto, in May 1998 (Anwar 2010). One of the severe consequences of the financial crisis was the massive job displacement that affected Indonesian migrant workers in Malaysia, who had to be sent back home, resulting in bilateral tensions between the two states. In short, while not triggering cases of full-­blown interstate conflict, the financial crisis triggered bilateral tensions, threatened ASEAN’s unity, and destabilized the peace and security of the region. To be sure, the financial crisis was a rude reminder to ASEAN states about what regional security entailed, underscoring the fact that the region’s conception of comprehensive security had always regarded economic security as an integral component of national security (Alagappa 1986; Anwar 1994; Caballero-­Anthony 2005). The terror attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001, and the bombings in Bali on October 12, 2002, were additional shocks that affected Southeast Asia’s security relations but did not trigger new cases of interstate conflict. Instead, the attacks increased the fear of transnational terrorism in Southeast Asia, which was often associated with religious extremist groups, and overshadowed other sources of regional instability. The responses of the individual Southeast Asian countries to the terrorist threat varied according to their own threat assessments, domestic political concerns, and sensitivities. With regard to existing institutions, the aftermath of 9/11 saw a strategic re-­engagement of the United States with its traditional allies and security partners in the region, as indicated by closer military ties with the Philippines and Thailand as well as Singapore. Thailand is an example of the terror attacks leading to a watershed package of mutual cooperation with a formal ally. Thailand signed onto the Container Security Initiative (CSI) in June 2003 and was considered by the US Congress as a major non-­ NATO ally in October 2003 (Pongsudhirak  2016). At the multilateral level, ASEAN quickly adopted the ASEAN Declaration on Joint Action to Counter Terrorism, which aimed at enhancing intelligence sharing and developing regional capacity-­building programs (Pushpanathan 2003).

Steering Power Rivalry After nearly three decades of interstate peace in Southeast Asia, the escalating tension between the United States and China has once again caused rising concern in the region and narrowed room for diplomatic initiatives. The United States has become increasingly concerned about China’s growing military capabilities, while Beijing has been critical of the US alliance system in the region. Great power competition is not, per se, a negative development for Southeast Asia, as it can provide the ASEAN states with room for maneuver and flexibility. For example, most Southeast Asian countries have

Peaceful Change in Southeast Asia   649 traditionally relied on a hedging strategy by leveraging on Sino-­US competition (Kausikan 2017). An engaged United States in Southeast Asia has been observed through deepening economic interdependence, a strong US military presence, and its participation in ASEAN summits, while China’s rising trading figures and its willingness to engage its neighbors and to participate in regional cooperative bodies have integrated China into the Southeast Asian community. Still, while relations between the great powers have become more competitive, ASEAN has also found it harder to restrict their involvement and interference in Southeast Asian affairs. This is perhaps most challenging in the context of the South China Sea dispute, where China, Taiwan, and four Southeast Asian states (Brunei, Malaysia, Philippines, and Vietnam) have overlapping claims to the territorial waters and maritime boundaries. The South China Sea dispute is at the center of competing territorial, economic, and strategic interests. The claimants expect that their control of disputed features will give them exclusive jurisdictional rights over the surrounding waters and seabed as well as over their living and nonliving resources. Furthermore, the South China Sea dispute has a strategic dimension, as control of the maritime communication routes that cross the disputed waters could endanger the interests of the United States, Japan, and other user states. ASEAN, as a body, has sought to preserve its neutrality on the sovereignty dispute and to negotiate with China a binding Code of Conduct (CoC) for the South China Sea. Yet the negotiation of a CoC for the South China Sea with Beijing has, in part, been complicated by increasing Sino-­US competition (Fravel 2011; Valencia 2012; Storey 2013). Furthermore, the Southeast Asian states have themselves been split over the South China Sea issue due to China’s deepening economic and diplomatic ties with some individual member states, which have become more inclined to endorse Beijing’s preferences. In sum, efforts to deal with intra-­ASEAN disputes and major-­power competition and to address the wider regional security challenges brought on by the post–Cold War structural changes have generated a set of regional strategies and multilateral cooperative frameworks established by ASEAN. One finds that the range and the mix of formal and informal frameworks developed by ASEAN were all geared not only to manage regional conflicts but also to facilitate peaceful change in a rapidly evolving security environment.

Theoretical Perspectives Different schools of thought highlight various factors to explain the absence of interstate conflict in Southeast Asia since the end of the Cold War. Most of the discourses on peace and security in the region since the 1990s have been analyzed through the prism of the three major schools of thought in international relations: realism, liberalism, and constructivism. Realists focus on the great powers and the reliance on alliances and defense arrangements to promote peace and stability. Governments are expected to enter military

650   Ralf Emmers and Mely Caballero-Anthony alliances and defense arrangements so as to enhance their power positions and to react to rising hegemonies in the international system. Realists therefore view the San Francisco system that links the United States to its regional allies in the Asia-­Pacific as the main source of stability in the wider region. Thailand and the Philippines have been the two traditional allies of the United States in Southeast Asia since the 1950s. Both countries signed the Manila Pact, a collective defense treaty, in 1954, and they have historically been dependent on their links with Washington to ensure their security in light of the threat of the Vietnam War during the Cold War period and a rising China since the early 1990s (Prasirtsuk 2017). That said, Thailand and the Philippines have recalibrated their relations with the great powers in recent years, moving relatively away from the United States and closer to China (Emmers 2019). In addition, while not a formal ally of the United States, Singapore has considered continued US strategic involvement in Southeast Asia essential to its security. The United States has been perceived as a benign hegemon and as an external balancer capable of preserving a stable distribution of power in Southeast Asia and the wider Asian region. The main function of the US security ties with Singapore has been to enhance the city-­state’s external defense in a changing regional security environment (Emmers 2015). To a lesser degree, most Southeast Asian states have maintained some form of military ties with the United States and preferred that the United States remain committed to regional peace and stability. The nexus between bilateral and multilateral ties should also be noted. For example, US efforts to enhance relations with ASEAN as a regional institution have been to some extent influenced by its bilateral relations with Southeast Asian states (Limaye 2010). Realists view the significance of regional institutions as limited and ultimately restricted to basic instruments available to states to take part in the play of power politics. The realist interpretation of regional multilateralism therefore focuses on power politics and tends to minimize the importance of norms and principles and the possible long-­term convergence of interests. Cooperative arrangements between states are expected to survive only for as long as the great powers consider them to be in their interest (Mearsheimer 1995). Hence, realists who have studied Southeast Asian affairs view the role of ASEAN as a reflection of its members’ calculations of their respective national interests and therefore remain skeptical about ASEAN’s role in formulating and sustaining peace in the region (Leifer 1999; Beeson 2009).4 Realists now observe a return of Cold War geopolitics in Asia, driven by the rise of China and its ability to challenge American preponderance in the region. For realists, it seems inevitable that Chinese leaders will abandon Deng Xiao Ping’s guiding principles to “bide time and shun international leadership” and seek a hegemonic position in Asia. The realists therefore predict that China will attempt to assert coercive influence on its Southeast Asian neighbors. Furthermore, military and economic competition have mostly been separate policy areas in Southeast Asia since the end of the Cold War. Yet there is a growing concern in Southeast Asia that the Donald Trump–Xi Jinping era has given rise to a new paradigm in which geopolitics and geoeconomics can no longer be separated from each other.

Peaceful Change in Southeast Asia   651 China is now an established economic power, expanding its influence at the regional level. Since President Xi Jinping took office in 2012, China has presented Southeast Asia with a series of initiatives for multilateral cooperation, such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Tow contends that “peace” will not be achieved in Southeast Asia, as China is challenging America’s economic presence in the region and replacing the US-­led architecture with its BRI (Tow 2016; CNA 2019). President Donald Trump’s administration not only started a “trade war” with China but also accused some of its Southeast Asian partners of unfair trade practices. With the rising uncertainties in the strategic landscape today, realists highlight the relevance of managing major-­power competition in Southeast Asia and its impact on peace and stability in the region. While recognizing the realist emphasis on competition for material power and state interests, liberalism offers a more positive view of how material factors that define interstate relations can be managed. Following the Kantian theory of peace, liberalism is founded on three pillars that allow for a more optimistic view of international relations. First is the importance of international trade, which generates economic in­ter­de­pend­ ence among states and makes conflicts or wars costly. Second is the presence of liberal democratic political systems, which minimize the incidence of conflicts given that democracies are much less likely to go to war against each other. And third is the development of international institutions and rules, which constitute regulatory regimes that manage interstate disputes and allow for the peaceful settlement of conflicts (Rosecrance 1986; Keohane and Martin 1995; Russett and Oneal 2001). Realists reject the democratic peace argument. They argue that the absence of war can best be explained through the forces of deterrence and balance of power politics rather than by liberal forces associated with democratic peace theory such as democracy, in­ter­ de­pend­ence, and international institutions. Moreover, while realists acknowledge that some degree of peace may characterize relationships among mature democracies, they argue that the process of transition from authoritarian rule to democracy, known as democratization, engenders instability and disorder (Mansfield and Snyder 1995). When applying liberalism to Southeast Asia, the argument that liberal democracies never go to war or seldom fight has been given little credence, since even in the post–Cold War era, most of the governments in ASEAN are not liberal democracies. Yet despite this fact, the incidence of interstate conflicts has been minimal. One could also argue that ASEAN’s successful record in preventing conflicts since its inception in 1967 and the development of regional norms and structures to prevent conflict evolved despite the paucity of liberal democratic regimes in the region (Caballero-­Anthony 2010). However, compared with the realist perspective, the liberal emphasis on the importance of international institutions may offer a better approach to understanding peaceful change in Southeast Asia as it helps explain the politics of cooperation, especially in the area of international trade. Analysts who study Southeast Asian regionalism note, for example, the benefits of increased economic cooperation through the development of the ASEAN Free Trade Arrangement (AFTA) and a push toward the creation of an

652   Ralf Emmers and Mely Caballero-Anthony ASEAN Economic Community (Nesadurai 2003; Chia and Plummer 2015). Yet the central liberal argument that economic incentives bring about deeper economic integration, which eventually spills over to closer political cooperation, seems rather unconvincing in the context of Southeast Asia. Indeed, liberalism provides limited insights in explaining the slow implementation of the ASEAN Economic Community and its low level of institutionalization overall (Basu Das et al. 2013). In spite of their official commitment to lowering trade and investment barriers, the ASEAN countries continue to impose high levels of nontariff barriers, and the regional body is still far from achieving its goals of establishing a single market and a common production base. Moreover, the spillover argument of economic interdependence leading to regulatory regimes, norms, and institutions for peaceful change has not yet materialized in the ASEAN context. Instead, ASEAN’s progress in developing strong structures for conflict management and peacebuilding continues to be hampered by its strong adherence to the principle of noninterference and the lack of mechanisms to enforce the implementation of and compliance with regional commitments (Stubbs 2000; Sukma 2014). In contrast to realism and liberalism and their primary focus on material factors, constructivists argue that the distribution of power and other material factors like trade and investment have had only a minimal impact on Southeast Asian states and their ability to maintain peace and stability in the region (Wendt 1992; Hopf 1998).5 Instead, they attribute the attainment of peace in Southeast Asia to rising state legitimacy, economic development, and state capacity combined with the declining utility of war as an instrument of state policy (Alagappa 2014; Acharya 2019). For constructivists, ASEAN and its exercise of conflict avoidance is generally credited with the absence of sustained interstate conflict. ASEAN is viewed as a successful instrument to avoid the recurrence of conflict and improve the climate of interstate relations in Southeast Asia. Constructivists highlight ASEAN’s reliance on dialogue and consultation, the practice of consensus and self-­restraint, the peaceful resolution of disputes, and the principles of national sovereignty and noninterference in the domestic affairs of other states to prevent interstate disputes from escalating into open conflict. Although mistrust still exists between the ASEAN states, a significant number of meetings are held annually, with agendas ranging from economic to environmental issues in the region (ASEAN Secretariat 2018). Such a regular pattern of interaction brings greater stability and the removal of potential misperceptions that could otherwise generate conflicts. Constructivists have also discussed ASEAN’s attempts to find regional solutions to regional problems. Based on the so-­called ASEAN way, members have managed to build at least an informal agreement on the status quo, despite sources of bilateral tensions plaguing the region. For example, the peaceful settlement of the Malaysia-­ Indonesia territorial dispute over Sipadan and Ligitan in 2002 constitutes a success. An ongoing debate among constructivist scholars is whether ASEAN constitutes an example of a security community. For example, Acharya has noted repeatedly that ASEAN’s approach to community building is markedly different from the path described by Karl Deutsch in Political Community at the International Level (1953). In the case of ASEAN, Acharya argues that “regional cooperation was undertaken in the

Peaceful Change in Southeast Asia   653 absence of high levels of functional interdependence or interaction” and that the regional institution had evolved as “a sort of an ‘imagined community,’ despite low initial levels of interactions and transactions, and the existence of substantial political and situational differences among its members” (Acharya 2001, 254–255). The idea of community is therefore said to have preceded rather than resulted from a process of in­ter­de­pend­ence. Others have disagreed with this overall assessment, however (Peou 2009).6 The academic debate over whether ASEAN is a constructivist security community continues, although a consensus has emerged that it is not a security community in the Deutschian sense of the term (Adler and Barnett 1998; Bellamy 2004).7 Ba contends that there are different kinds of security communities, ranging from “looser” to “tighter” variations, and that they possess varying purposes and capacities (Ba 2005). Overall, constructivists have provided insights into understanding the evolving peaceful order in Southeast Asia since the end of the Cold War period by focusing on how states have construed the issue of anarchy through regionalism and cooperation. Constructivism has helped explain the evolution of ASEAN since its establishment in 1967 by identifying and paying close attention to the role of norms such as noninterference in the affairs of other states and collective identities of modern statehood (Acharya 2001). Constructivists have emphasized the positive aspects of the ASEAN way and placed emphasis on its normative constraints on Southeast Asian states (Caballero-­Anthony 2005; Glas 2017). Regional relations are regulated by the routine of cooperation and a policy of accommodation, engagement, and consensus decision-­ making (Haacke 2003). In short, Tan notes that despite the disparity in geographical size, economic power, and influence that has existed between ASEAN members, the ASEAN model of cooperation has worked until now to promote peace and stability in Southeast Asia (Tan 2011). Nevertheless, there are shortcomings and limitations. The constructivist literature on Southeast Asia is often criticized for underestimating the problem of anarchy and the importance of relative gains and the distribution of power when discussing ASEAN and the shared sense of belonging to a community. Insufficient attention is given to the role of the great powers and the risk of war in Southeast Asia, for example over the territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Constructivists provide limited insights into managing great power relations in the region and addressing the risk of power transition conflicts driven by the rise of China and its competitive relations with the United States. Likewise, constructivists are said to pay insufficient attention to ongoing sources of mistrust and conflict that continue to linger between the ASEAN members and that may still lead to conflict, as well as the changing nature of politics in the region brought on by political transitions in the Southeast Asian states. Related to this point, constructivists are often criticized for overestimating the notion of regional identity in Southeast Asia while exploring ASEAN at the expense of enduring national identities and the notion of nationalism. The latter framed in opposition to other states can severely undermine the creation of a security community despite repeated attempts at interstate cooperation. As a result, constructivist analysis may too often adopt a “glass half full” approach and fail to demonstrate how much “the sense of community” has indeed been developed in Southeast Asia (Garofano 2002).

654   Ralf Emmers and Mely Caballero-Anthony

Dealing with Change Two key observations can be made when further analyzing the history of peaceful change in Southeast Asia and the theoretical perspectives that explain regional approaches and practices. First, peaceful change has been both revolutionary and incremental. What was revolutionary was the decision by conflicting regional states in Southeast Asia to end bilateral disputes, establish ASEAN in 1967 as a mechanism for regional reconciliation, and build from it a set of regional norms that would define interstate relations. Since then, and despite intermittent episodes of bilateral tension over fifty years, it is now almost unthinkable for Southeast Asian states to go to war. Yet peaceful change has also been incremental, as in spite of ASEAN’s goal since 2003 of building an ASEAN Political and Security Community (APSC), the big C project is still very much a work in progress and beset by a number of challenges, including the changing nature of domestic politics in member states. Second, peaceful change has evolved and been maintained by the Southeast Asian states by adopting strategies that combine the realist, liberalist, and constructivist approaches to international relations and security. Arguably, the regional states have thoughtfully adopted an eclectic approach to maintaining regional order and engendering peaceful change. As pointed out by security analysts like Alagappa, it has not been easy to pin down which of the strategies is preferred by the Southeast Asian states, since both balancing and engagement behavior can coexist and have coexisted. Hence, approaches to peaceful change in Southeast Asia can be depicted as somewhere between balance of power and regional community building, with the relevant institutional and normative attributes.8 With regard to the former, it is important to note that most of the Southeast Asian states are not members of the US-­led military alliances, yet most if not all the ASEAN states participate in US-­led military training exercises related to counterterrorism, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR), and maritime security (Caballero-­Anthony 2018). Aside from stepping up efforts to advance its vision of an ASEAN Economic Community, the regional body is also increasing its trade relations with its dialogue partners in East Asia. This includes joining the China-­led BRI, which promises greater economic opportunities through deeper connectivity in trade, investments, infrastructure, and people-­to-­people exchanges. Furthermore, with the increasing number of transborder NTS threats facing the region, as well as the emergence of new drivers of conflict like digital technology and artificial intelligence, it is not surprising that the policy choices of the Southeast Asian states in managing security are outside the theoretical paradigms often used by scholars to explain state behavior. In this current environment, there are compelling reasons to expand our theoretical lenses and explore alternative and/or complementary ideas that explain peaceful change. Within the context of ASEAN’s ambitious goal to establish an APSC, one notes that the regional body has often used phrases like “inclusive, people-­centered and resilient”

Peaceful Change in Southeast Asia   655 community, where “people enjoy human rights, ­fundamental freedoms and social ­justice, live in a safe and secure environment with enhanced capacity to respond effectively to emerging challenges.”9 From this framing, one can argue that the current thinking on achieving peaceful change in Southeast Asia goes beyond the constructivists’ notions of security community and regional identity, which have largely been state-­centric. Instead, it has become more expansive and more comprehensive in approach. And while many states in Southeast Asia are nondemocratic states (something almost sine qua non with Deutsch’s security community), the idea of integrating inclusiveness, social justice, and resilience with regional security practices has gone beyond the realists’ preoccupation with major-­power competition and anarchy and the constructivists’ emphasis on identity and norms. To be sure, ASEAN’s strategies for peaceful change amid new transnational challenges would necessarily be comprehensive and inclusive, requiring the participation not only of states but also of a range of nonstate actors. Containing the spread of deadly pandemics like SARS and the COVID-­19 virus, as well as other highly virulent diseases, requires vigilance, timely reporting, and rapid action. While regional and international cooperation is clearly important in generating coordinated approaches to stem the spread, equally critical is the involvement of civil society groups, expert groups, and pharmaceutical companies working in tandem with state authorities to fight these infectious diseases and mitigate their impact. Similarly, while militaries in the region can work together to provide immediate assistance in disaster relief and search-­and-­rescue operations in affected states, dealing with the aftermath of catastrophic disasters, such as providing shelter to internally displaced populations and refugees, entails much more work and commitment from other sectors of societies as well as the assistance of the wider international community (Caballero-­Anthony 2018; Cook and Yogendran 2019). This agenda is particularly critical to ASEAN because it is one of the most vulnerable regions in the world. Between 2004 and 2014, more than half of the total global disaster mortality occurred in Southeast Asia—that is, 354,000 of the 700,000 total death in disasters worldwide (Caballero-­Anthony 2017). It is also estimated that about 191 million people have been displaced and rendered homeless (either temporarily or permanently) as a result of disasters, affecting a total of 193 million people. This means that one in three to four people in the region had experienced various types of loss of property and life (ADB 2013). Also imperative in ASEAN’s strategies for peaceful change is the need to deal with domestic challenges of inclusiveness and social justice, if member states that have had to deal with longtime internal conflicts are to keep the peace and find peaceful solutions to problems of separatism and religious/ethnic conflicts (Callahan  2003; Hsueh  2016; Oishi 2016). In spite of the peaceful interstate environment in Southeast Asia, countries like Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Myanmar have been plagued with decades-­long internal conflicts. In the Philippines, for example, some of the Muslim separatist groups have been reported to have links with terrorist groups like al-­Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Moreover, the Rohingya refugee crisis that unfolded in 2015 and 2017 after the military operations in Myanmar’s Rakhine state illustrated

656   Ralf Emmers and Mely Caballero-Anthony how an internal conflict rooted in issues of discrimination, poverty, and inequality fuels resentment that could rapidly escalate into a bigger issue that causes regional tensions and threatens regional security (Kramer 2010). The consequences of these internal conflicts in Southeast Asia are constant reminders to regional states to adopt a comprehensive approach to security if peaceful change is to be achieved. The impact of internal conflicts also underscores the point that peaceful societies are integral to peaceful change (Fry and Kemp 2004). In this regard, the goal of peaceful change is as much about working toward the absence of violence (negative peace) as it is about achieving social justice (positive peace) (Galtung 1969).

Conclusion Southeast Asia continues to be driven by external interference and geopolitical transformations that in recent years have intensified tensions, especially in the context of the South China Sea dispute. Military alliances and the changing distribution of power remain crucial features of security politics in Southeast Asia. Yet the goal of achieving peaceful change in Southeast Asia is no longer just about preventing the outbreak of interstate war and peacebuilding. While major-­power rivalry and hegemonic ambitions continue to be key security concerns in the region, so too are the threats from a wide range of nontraditional security challenges. In that sense, the Southeast Asian experience in working toward peaceful change is instructive, as it reflects multiple pathways to peace that include, but are not limited to, the approaches defined by the narrow confines of the traditional IR theories. For developing states in Southeast Asia, peaceful change must achieve sustainable peace. This thinking is illustrated by ASEAN’s community-­ building approach, which draws close linkages between peace, security, and development to be achieved in tandem and not sequentially. Arguably, such an approach in itself presents a theory of peaceful change, reflecting a transformative framework that recognizes the foundations of sustainable peace: inclusive communities, economic progress, people-­centered security, and social justice.10 While such an approach is more comprehensive and responsive to contemporary security threats, the goal of achieving sustainable peaceful change in Southeast Asia is fraught with challenges. Already ASEAN’s record in dealing with the Rohingya crisis has been disappointing, particularly in its inability to persuade Myanmar to respond to protection issues and to craft a comprehensive political settlement to the problem. The lack of decisive regional action to resolve this long-­drawn-­out internal conflict will remain a major hindrance to sustainable peace in Southeast Asia. Moreover, the long-­running internal conflicts in Thailand and Indonesia that need resolution, as well as the task of maintaining the fragile peace in the Philippines after the establishment of the autonomous Muslim region in the South, continue to be formidable agendas for sustainable peace in the region. In short, Southeast Asia’s history of peaceful change reflects an interesting story of carefully crafted strategies of managing interstate conflicts and navigating major power

Peaceful Change in Southeast Asia   657 competition. Yet as regional states move toward fully realizing their goal of an ASEAN political and security community, peaceful transformations are no longer enough. Peace attained must be sustainable if Southeast Asia is to continue to be a zone of peace, security, and stability.

Notes 1. The five original members of ASEAN when it was established in 1967 were the noncommunist states of Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. Brunei joined in 1984 after gaining its independence, and Vietnam in 1995 after the resolution of the Cambodian conflict in 1992. Laos and Myanmar were admitted in 1997 and Cambodia in 1998, which extended the membership of ASEAN to ten states. Timor Leste, which declared its independence from Indonesia in 1999 through a referendum, holds observer status in ASEAN. 2. The Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, signed in 1976, outlined key regional norms of ASEAN, such as respect for state sovereignty, noninterference in domestic affairs, non-use of force, and peaceful resolution of disputes. See Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (ASEAN Secretariat 2016). 3. Singh (1993) provides an outline of the challenges faced by Southeast Asia in the post– Cold War era. 4. Leifer (1999) and Beeson (2009) both account for their skepticism based on ASEAN’s limited achievements. Beeson (2009) highlights the flaws of the “ASEAN Way,” differences in priorities among ASEAN members, and ASEAN’s limited capacity to manage and adapt to changes. Leifer (1999, 26) questions ASEAN’s capability to sustain a peace proc­ ess, indicating that “although ASEAN has acted as a diplomatic community with a collective voice  .  .  .  the association has never been effectively responsible for regional peace-­making as opposed to helping keep the peace through exercising benign influence on the overall climate of regional relations.” 5. See Wendt (1992); also, Hopf (1998) illustrates “anarchy as an imagined community.” 6. For a review see Peou (2009). 7. See Adler and Barnett (1998) for an overview of realist and constructivist debates. Bellamy (2004) differentiates between “tightly and loosely coupled” security communities. 8. Cited in Tan (2008). 9. See ASEAN Secretariat (2015, 19) for the ASEAN Political-­Security Blueprint 2025. 10. The USIP presents a theory of peaceful change that assumes the absence of violent conflict alone is not sufficient to ensure peace. It highlights the need to work within a transformative framework that recognizes conditions necessary for sustainable peace: inclusive societies and political processes, economic opportunity, citizen security, and access to justice. See https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/USIP-­Strategic-­Plan-­2020-­2022.pdf.

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chapter 36

Sou th Asi a’s Li mited Progr ess towa r d Peacefu l Ch a nge Rajesh Basrur and Kate Sullivan de Estrada

Conflict at both the domestic and interstate levels has loomed large in South Asia’s postindependent history (Buzan 2002; Paul 2010). The region is characterized by contested borders and nationalisms that are in major part a legacy of colonialism; significant geographic, demographic, economic, and military asymmetries; and an enduring bilateral conflict between India and Pakistan. The states of South Asia—Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka—also face enormous developmental challenges. South Asia’s share of the global poor increased from 27.3 percent to 33.4 percent between 1990 and 2013, and the region is one of the world’s most susceptible to the threats posed by climate change (IPCC  2013; Finnigan  2019). South Asia’s record of regional integration has been lackluster. The design of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), the central regional institutional arrangement, is intended to circumvent regional tensions rather than to mitigate them. Economically, South Asia is the least-­integrated region in the world, with intraregional trade comprising just over 5 percent of the region’s total trade (Kathuria 2018, 28). Taken together, this picture suggests that mutual securitization (leading to fear and hostility) among the states of South Asia has seriously hampered desecuritization (leading to cooperation and peace) and will continue to do so into the future. In this chapter, given the region’s history, we take a modest perspective on “peaceful change” that accords with the minimalist definition stated in the Introduction to this volume: “change in international relations and foreign policies of states, including territorial or sovereignty agreements, that take place without violence or coercive use of force (Paul, this volume, 4).” In our view, this encompasses the overall degree of tension or lack of it between regional states and hence their capacity to act together for the collective good. We examine the prospects for peaceful change in South Asia by mapping the key sources of interstate tensions over time, and the extent to which the three dimensions of the “Kantian tripod” (see the chapter by Paul in this volume)—democracy, economic

664   Rajesh Basrur and Kate Sullivan de Estrada in­ter­de­pend­ence, and institutions—have been able to mitigate conflict. While we do not anticipate imminent peaceful transformation in South Asia, our analysis signals some degree of optimism. None of the three pillars of the Kantian tripod has shown sufficient overarching progress to merit high expectations of peaceful change, and yet there is evidence of significant partial transformation. The old pattern of tensions caused by the imbalance in power between India and most, though not all, of its neighbors has subsided to a considerable degree. But in the absence of Indian and Pakistani political will and an open trading relationship, major regional cooperation initiatives will continue to demonstrate only minimal gains, while subregional and extraregional alternatives will be strengthened. Besides, China’s economic penetration of the region has generated a greater external linkage that reduces the scope for intraregional integration.

Regional Interstate Dynamics In this section, we examine the nature of interstate relations in South Asia as defined earlier. Our study divides the period from the 1940s onward into two: the postdecolonization period, which coincided with the Cold War and, thereafter, the post–Cold War era, which saw greater integration of the region with the global economy and the significant (though not uniform) changes in its intrastate political dynamics. Analytically, we find in the latter a notable shift away from relations marked primarily by the relative distribution of material power between states to a more diverse pattern of relationships. During the first period, the regional dynamic was largely characterized by interstate tensions produced by both the effects of the region’s structure (that is, the distribution of material power among the region’s states) and its domestic politics. Both of these led to considerable friction. Very few mitigating factors were present. The peculiar cartographic reality of South Asia’s eight states has made the region’s strategic politics in many ways Indo-­centric. First, only Afghanistan and the Maldives have no land border with India, so there is a natural Indo-­centric quality to the region’s dynamics. Second, India is by far the preponderant state, with over 75 percent of the region’s gross domestic product (GDP) (International Institute of Strategic Studies 2019). Large and dominant states with hegemonic dispositions and small powers tend to adopt policies that are diametrically opposed (Mandelbaum 1988). First, large states are able to apply military or economic pressure on small ones to win disputes. The latter seek to bolster their positions by means of external linkages. Second, large powers prefer to resolve differences with their smaller neighbors through bilateral means, whereas the latter tend to ‘multilateralize’ them by obtaining international support from regional and extraregional states and interstate organizations. Consequently, large states stress regional autonomy and try to keep extraregional powers from playing a role in the region, while small ones welcome the involvement of ‘outsiders’ to balance their bigger neighbors. And third, larger states usually favor closer economic and cultural

South Asia’s Limited Progress toward Peaceful Change   665 r­ elationships with their neighbors, while the latter try and keep a distance as they worry about being overwhelmed. Confounding imbalances of material power in the region, identity formation can also produce negative effects. South Asia has been constructed in divergent and sometimes oppositional ways by the states of the region. Indian constructions of the region have often subsumed South Asia into an Indo-­centric and even Hinduism-­centric civilizational space (Singh 2001). Meanwhile, India has been a central reference point for national identity construction and self-­differentiation for Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka as each gained independence, albeit for divergent reasons (Krishna  1999; Ollapally 2008, 8–9). Intrastate politics tend to have at least two kinds of effects on interstate relationships. One of the biggest difficulties faced by postcolonial states is that of a poor fit between territorial borders and national identity, which often produces tensions with neighbors. A second challenge is the persistence of internal turbulence within them, mainly caused by intergroup competition and sometimes violent conflict over a share of the small economic pie. Both tend to generate interstate tension and undermine prospects for peaceful coexistence. Weak states are often hobbled by both types of difficulties, and this has been characteristic of South Asia (Paul 2010).

Postcolonial South Asia: The Cold War Era India’s preponderant position in South Asia is evident from a comparison of the main economic and military indicators for the region’s states in the year 1995, shortly after the end of this period. For instance, India’s gross domestic product (GDP) of $339 billion constituted 80.5 percent of the region’s GDP, tiny Bhutan and the Maldives excepted. Similarly, India’s military expenditure was 66.46 percent of the region’s military spending (International Institute of Strategic Studies 1997/1998). Unsurprisingly, power asymmetries between India and most of its neighbors had powerful effects on the region in this period, and these tended largely (though not entirely) to be tension-inducing (Khatri 1987). India was able to exert its power from time to time with most of its neighbors. From the early postcolonial years, India asserted its dominance over the weakest states, Bhutan and Nepal, both of which were landlocked and dependent on New Delhi to give them access to the Indian Ocean. Both countries were compelled to sign unequal treaties—Bhutan in 1949, Nepal in 1950—that allowed India to exercise a dominant “consultative” role, which Kathmandu resented and others viewed with concern. India’s intrusive role in the region was proactive during this period. In 1971, Indian military intervention led to the bifurcation of Pakistan and the emergence of the new state of Bangladesh. In 1981, when a dispute broke out between India and Bangladesh

666   Rajesh Basrur and Kate Sullivan de Estrada over the tiny New Moore Island (also known as South Talpatty) in the Bay of Bengal, India sent gunboats to back the planting of its flag on the island (Magnier 2010). In 1987, against Colombo’s wishes, India imposed a peacekeeping mission in Sri Lanka with the aim of ending a civil war in that country. In 1989, in response to a Nepalese drive to buy arms from China, India closed virtually all of Nepal’s access points to the Indian Ocean, which created a serious domestic political crisis in that country. Such actions generated considerable tension between India and its neighbors, prompting them to seek international intervention from time to time. Pakistan repeatedly sought the involvement of the United States (among others) and the United Nations to intervene in its dispute over Kashmir with India, which hardened the latter’s stand. Bangladesh called for the Bay of Bengal to be a “pocket of peace,” while Nepal and the Maldives backed a proposal to create a UN mechanism to protect small states (Basrur and Sullivan de Estrada 2017, 70). Notably, while behaving like a big power in the region, India tended to behave like a weak one in the global context, employing the kind of rhetoric about noninterference and respect for sovereignty notably absent in its dealings with its smaller neighbors. This meant a constant effort to resist big power encroachment and to establish a separate strategic space for itself through a combination of nonalignment and autarkic economic policies (Basrur 2000; Sullivan 2015). The structural politics of the global system intensified the tensions within the regional system. Pakistan joined US-­sponsored alliances—the South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) and the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) in 1954 and 1955 respectively—and cultivated friendly military relations with China from the 1960s. To counter China’s entry into the region, India drew closer to the Soviet Union, with which it signed a Treaty of Friendship (which contained a barely disguised military support clause) in 1971. These developments exacerbated existing tensions, especially between India and Pakistan. To try and moderate India’s influence and improve their bargaining potential, the smaller states, led by Bangladesh, established SAARC. Initially reluctant, India agreed to qualify its preference for bilateralism because the organization gave it potential for regional leadership while allowing it to retain (negative) control over its agenda (Cohen 2001, 241–242; 2009; see also Reza 2016). In striking contrast with India’s other smaller neighbors, Bhutan, fearing Chinese power, leaned on India and was acquiescent in allowing India a dominant role in its foreign policy (Holsti 1982, 35–36). Domestic politics intensified tensions. The struggle to build viable states pervaded the region in the decades following decolonization (Rajagopalan  2001). Afghanistan was weak and deeply divided on the basis of ethnicity between the Pashtun majority and minority groups and between conflicting tribal groups (Bizhan 2018; Loyn 2019). This made it vulnerable to Pakistani dominance, which intensified with the US-­funded proxy war against occupying Soviet forces during the 1980s. Bangladesh was caught between identity claims based on language and religion as the weak state was unable to sustain democracy and fell under authoritarian rule and later into intense competition that allowed the religious Right to lay claim to building an Islamic state (Riaz and Fair 2011; Hossain 2012; Griffiths and Hasan 2015). The othering of India as a “hegemonic” power was in part the consequence of this internal political competition.

South Asia’s Limited Progress toward Peaceful Change   667 India was buffeted by class conflict between poor rural groups and the ruling elites and ethnically driven violence between restive tribal groups in the northeast and the state (Harrison 1960). The notion of a secular national identity, underlying India’s claim to Muslim-­majority Kashmir, was challenged not only by Pakistan but also by periodic outbursts of communal violence pitting the Hindu right against religious minorities. The consequence was a tendency to treat uneasy external relationships with intolerance and a proclivity for the projection of force. The Maldives, under the dominant Maumoon Abdul Gayoom (1978–2008), chose to build a friendly relationship with India (Bhim 2019, 253–258). This was underscored by an Indian military intervention on Gayoom’s behalf when he was briefly overthrown by a coup d’état in 1988. Nepal was troubled by conflicts among contesting elites and between dominant hill and plains people. With India intervening regularly in the elite contests to try and ensure stability in a state viewed as an important buffer to China, it acquired the reputation of an aggressive and dominant power interested only in its own gains. Pakistan, turbulent from the beginning, became a pretorian state in which the army enjoyed at minimum de facto veto power and sought to maintain its ascendancy by underlining the India threat (Cohen 2004; Abbas 2005). This was exacerbated by India’s role in the creation of Bangladesh, though that denouement was the result of a refusal on the part of the elite in western Pakistan to share power with the eastern Bengali minority. Sri Lanka, caught in perennial ethnic tension between the majority Sinhalese and minority Tamils, was another weak state open to Indian intervention, which was driven by the fear that, were it to be overly unstable, Indian and Sri Lankan Tamils might someday join hands (Dixit 1998). India–Sri Lanka relations fluctuated and were often uneasy throughout this period. Unlike the emergence of the European Union (EU) and of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), both products of the Cold War, South Asia was not propelled into coming together by the possibility of a common threat. For most of India’s neighbors, it was India that constituted the main threat. And with India, the dominant regional player, espousing nonalignment and keeping out of the Cold War, this option was never really in the cards. From a liberal perspective, there was little potential for more peaceful relations. One possible perspective—the notion of a “democratic peace”—was scarcely applicable to South Asia’s nascent and unstable democratic formations: democratizing states may actually be prone to conflict arising from domestic pressures (Mansfield and Snyder 2005). Economic interdependence, which could have incentivized cooperation, was not much in evidence either. India, though carrying much potential, was a stagnant economy unable to generate rapid growth because of its autarkic policies. As the data for this period show, the levels of trade between India and its neighbors as late as the end of this timeframe remained low. Trade with India and South Asia was significant only for Bhutan at 38.98 percent and 39.9 percent, respectively, and marginal for others, for example, 4.16 and 6.58 percent for Bangladesh (calculated from International Monetary Fund, n.d.).

668   Rajesh Basrur and Kate Sullivan de Estrada The region was more ‘vertically’ connected with the global economy than within itself. Overall, there were few avenues for peaceful change in the uneasy relationships that prevailed in this period.

The Post–Cold War Era: Changing Patterns In this period, there are some interesting variations. The most notable development is the strengthening of India’s material power owing to its substantial growth. By 2018, its GDP had risen to 78.55 percent of that of the region and its military spending to 75.68 percent of the region’s (International Institute of Strategic Studies 2019). Yet India has in important respects begun to behave less like the big power of old in South Asia. This is in considerable part because it has been less insecure in the global context, opening up its economy and linking itself with major powers through a “multialignment” strategy (Hall 2016; Ahuja and Kapur 2018). India’s strategic behavior has changed in important ways. First, it has shown a new willingness to renegotiate its unequal treaty relations with Bhutan in 2006 (Sherpa 2013), which has cemented the warmth between them, and Nepal (still pending). Second, India’s proclivity for military intervention has actually decreased in inverse proportion to its economic and military strengthening: it has not intervened militarily overseas since the late 1980s. Third, India has made an effort to negotiate old problems with its neighbors, a process initiated under the Gujral Doctrine, named after Inder Kumar Gujral, who was External Affairs Minister and Prime Minister in the latter half of the 1990s, and continued by his successors. For instance, the India–Bangladesh maritime boundary was settled through arbitration in 2014; a long-­pending boundary redefinition agreement between the two states was accomplished in 2015; and the more difficult task of deciding on water sharing was taken up. Even as it has come to be labeled a “rising power” influencing the fundamental power relationships of world politics (Blank 2007), and even as its military capacity has grown rapidly, India has been restrained in its use of force. Indeed, it has declined invitations to intervene militarily in Iraq (by the United States in 2003) and in Sri Lanka (by Colombo in 2006–2009). It has debated, but refrained from, interventions in Afghanistan and the Maldives, both enmeshed in internal turmoil. The only use or threat of use of force has occurred on occasions where India has been challenged on its borders with respect to Pakistan (from the Kargil conflict in 1999 to the Balakot air strikes in 2019) and China (notably at Doklam in 2017). Minor exceptions are the case of Nepal, where the internal blocking of overland trade in 2015 received informal support from the Indian government, and India’s 2015 counterterrorist raid into Myanmar (with that country’s assent) (Parameswaran 2015; Pokharel 2015). The rise of China and its increasing reach into South Asia has given the smaller states of the region the opportunity to gain advantages from Sino-­Indian strategic competition

South Asia’s Limited Progress toward Peaceful Change   669 (Paul  2019). But India’s reaction has been more measured than in the past. Actions viewed in New Delhi as pro-­China by governments in the Maldives and Sri Lanka have been met with expressions of Indian dissatisfaction, but not significant pressure. Possibly, given India’s rapid rise as an economic and military power, governments in these and other countries recognize that treading on its strategic toes would, beyond a point, be asking for trouble, as an apex-­level Sri Lankan leader told one of us in an informal conversation in the spring of 2017. Besides, India’s strengthening relationship with the United States has raised its stature. Also noticeable is a significant change of attitude in some of India’s neighbors. India’s shift to a liberalized economy and its faster growth rate have led them to view it as an opportunity for trade and a source of investment rather than as a threat. Despite its unhappy experience with India’s military intervention in the late 1980s, Sri Lanka soon reversed its stance and fostered a closer relationship with it, which led to the signing of the India-­Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in 1998. Bangladesh, too, abandoned the fear of economic domination and embraced Indian investment under Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed. Notwithstanding India’s failure to deliver on the sharing of Teesta River waters owing to domestic pressures, the relationship has remained cordial. The one key relationship that remains unchanged, apart from a brief warming in the mid-­2000s, is the India–Pakistan one, where deep political differences continue to thwart mutual accommodation (Paul 2005). As a subsystem of global politics, South Asia has certainly seen changes, yet regional conditions remain similar to those which prevailed earlier. US–Soviet rivalry has been replaced by US–China competition and this, too, has impacted the region (Paul and Underwood 2019). China supports Pakistan, and the United States has developed close strategic links with India, as has Japan. As a result, the India–Pakistan rivalry has acquired a sharper edge (Paul 2005; Ganguly 2016). Moreover, China has invested heavily in South Asia through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which has caused considerable concern in India over what is seen as Beijing’s “string of pearls” strategy (Brewster 2014; Khorana and Choukroune 2016; Chakma  2019). India has pointedly refused to participate in the BRI (although it is a major recipient of credit from the China-­led Asian Infrastrucure Investment Bank). In addition, strategic tension has grown as China has, in New Delhi’s view, encroached on India’s traditional maritime domain by enhancing its naval presence in the Indian Ocean. Another aspect of continuity is Pakistan’s dominance over Afghanistan (Paliwal  2016). India certainly has a strategic interest in the latter, but it has been a “reluctant partner” (Destradi 2014) owing, among other things, to a lack of direct physical access to the landlocked country. Internal problems have produced considerable tension within South Asian states and between them (Gordon 2014, 43–77). But the pattern is not uniform. There is a significant correlation between changes in domestic politics and foreign policy variations. In India–Sri Lanka relations, for instance, changes of government in Colombo brought shifts in strategy from balancing to bandwagoning with the accession of Chandrika Kumaratunga to the country’s presidency (Amarasingam 2016; Gamage 2017). The new government was keen on building a strong relationship with India and pushed

670   Rajesh Basrur and Kate Sullivan de Estrada s­uccessfully for the FTA. Subsequently, when Mahinda Rajapaksa succeeded Kumaratunga as president, he looked to China for large-­scale investment, which in turn enabled the latter to test the strategic waters by means of submarine visits to Colombo. The relationship thus shifted from bandwagoning to balancing, and tensions with New Delhi spiked. Following Rajapaksa’s electoral defeat in 2015, Sri Lankan policy has been more even-­handed. Similarly, India–Maldives relations, which had long been close, soured with the election of Abdullah Yameen as president in 2013 (Robinson 2015). Again, the China factor was at play and there was rapid growth in Chinese investment, which brought unprecedented tensions in the New Delhi–Malé relationship. Following Yameen’s defeat in the 2018 elections, relations under the new president, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, warmed up. Similarly, India–Bangladesh relations were relatively cool under Bangladeshi Prime Minister Khaleda Zia (1991–1996, 2001–2006), but have been far more friendly under Sheikh Hasina Wazed (1996–2001, 2009–) (Srinivasan and Datta 2015). In other cases, changes in domestic politics have not necessarily produced changes in foreign relations. Indian politics went through a phase in which the splintering of political power and the onset of an era of weak central coalitions led to a period of “soft sovereignty” and uncertain foreign policy (Plagemann and Destradi 2015). But the advent of majority governments under Narendra Modi of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) did not usher in a new strategic paradigm, and broad policies remained the same, though sometimes more implementable (Basrur 2017). Pakistan has seen different parties in power as well as an episode of military rule from 2001 to 2008, but continuity in foreign policy— primarily, hostility toward India—not least because the military has remained the final arbiter of foreign and domestic policies. Democratic politics has not produced stable governments in Nepal (Raghavan 2011; Paudel 2016). Its frequently changing leaders (ten prime ministers since 2002) have conformed to an old pattern of depending on India—inevitable since it is landlocked—but also trying with limited success to balance Indian power by tilting toward China (Upadhya 2012). This has given rise to periodic tensions, a pattern that has continued in the current period, but a modicum of accommodation and stability has been established of late (Verma 2017; Bhattarai 2018). Finally, on a positive note, Bhutan’s conversion in 2008 from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy with an elected parliament (Barman 2009) has not produced any change in its foreign policy, and the country remains closely tied to India. Afghanistan is the one state exhibiting domestic political continuity, though in a negative sense, as it is deeply divided on sectarian and factional lines (Bizhan  2018; Loyn 2019). It remains weak and under the dominant influence of external powers: the United States, China, Pakistan, and Iran, though none has been able to stabilize it, not least because of their conflicting interests. With regard to mitigating factors, the democratic peace remains a distant prospect despite growth in economic relations (though not between India and Pakistan). Trade between each of the smaller states and India as well as the rest of the region has not been  significant, with the exception of Bhutan and Nepal, both of which are in a

South Asia’s Limited Progress toward Peaceful Change   671 t­rade-­dependent relationship with India as they have no other access to the sea. For instance, Bangladesh’s trade with India in 2018 was only 10.68 percent of its total trade; and with South Asia as a whole just 11.68 percent of its total trade. The proportions were high only for landlocked Bhutan (90.04 and 90.24 percent) and Nepal (66.10 and 66.82 percent). India’s trade with all of South Asia was a paltry 3.04 percent of its total trade (calculated from International Monetary Fund, n.d.). Consequently, there is little scope for high levels of economic interaction to alleviate the conflicts in the region, as the following section shows. One source of restraint (not necessarily peace) is the onset of strategic in­ter­de­pend­ ence between India and Pakistan, owing to their emergence as overt nuclear-­armed states in 1998. As in the Cold War, the presence of nuclear weapons has produced crises rather than war. Pakistan, long a revisionist state seeking to detach the portion of the disputed state of Kashmir held by India, has sought to leverage its nuclear capability by generating crises to try and coerce India to compromise (Ganguly and Hagerty 2005). In the wake of two major confrontations in 1999 and 2001–2002, the two did establish a détente of sorts. Their “composite dialogue,” which encompassed seven different issues ranging from Kashmir to nuclear weapons, made considerable progress in connecting their respectively held portions of Kashmir through enhanced trade and tourism (Ghosh 2009). But the effort was short-­lived and soon lapsed into intense competition. The key takeaways from our analysis of the region in the two time periods are as follows: First, South Asia has shifted from a region of largely tense relationships—sometimes overtly, but always with an undercurrent of uneasiness—to one that presents a mixed picture of both tension and accommodation. Second, the slow appearance of peaceful change has been marked by India’s turn to a more relaxed strategic outlook and its willingness to tolerate differences with its smaller neighbors (though relations with Pakistan remain fraught) and, with some reservations, the effects of China’s inroads into its neighborhood. Third, leadership initiatives such as Kumaratunga’s decision to bandwagon with India do not reflect material changes and can only be explained as reconstructive ideationally driven decisions. Similarly, Sheikh Hasina’s willingness to sustain close relations with India in spite of disappointment over a failure to agree on water sharing and concerns over Modi’s policies toward minorities—both politically sensitive issues in Bangladesh—is an ideational rather than a material source of sustaining peaceful change. Fourth, the distribution of power has not directly produced consistent patterns: post– Cold War, India’s dominance has produced cooperation (with Afghanistan and Bhutan); variations in tension and cooperation (Bangladesh, the Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka), and continuing tension (India–Pakistan and Afghanistan–Pakistan). Fifth, domestic politics appears to have had stronger effects. The reduction in or absence of identity problems has had an effect on relations with two of India’s neighbors. The subsidence of Bangladesh’s tussle between Islamic and Bengali identities has led to accommodative relations since 2009. Notwithstanding some internal tensions over its

672   Rajesh Basrur and Kate Sullivan de Estrada Nepali-­speaking population, Bhutan’s relations with India and Nepal have remained relaxed throughout. Domestic political conflict has produced increased tension arising from greater balancing efforts (the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka) or dominance (Pakistan vis-­à-­vis Afghanistan). Domestic tension in India (the BJP’s Hindutva [= Hindu-­ness] agenda and its tightening of control over India’s portion of Kashmir) has generated tensions with neighbors, primarily Pakistan. It appears from this analysis that peaceful change in South Asia will depend on domestic politics rather than on the effects of power distribution. But even more than this, the reconstruction of India’s post–Cold War worldview toward greater accommodation and the Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan decisions to move closer to India (assuming continuity) indicate that ideationally driven change is very much a possibility.

Institutions and Peaceful Change in South Asia If institutions are the central agents of peaceful change (see chapter by Paul, this volume), what has been the record in South Asia? While the previous section underscored how two dimensions of the “Kantian tripod”—democracy and economic in­ter­de­pend­ ence—have been insufficient to mitigate regional tensions, here we examine the third dimension: institutions. South Asia’s central regional institutional arrangement is the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). SAARC is an intergovernmental regional body founded in 1985 comprising Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and, formally since 2008, Afghanistan. While the idea of forming a regional association was discussed in the late 1940s and in the 1950s, Indian wariness at the formation of regional blocs and groupings was one major barrier to progress (Tyabji 1988, 325; Gopal 1989, 407; Saez 2012, 10–11). It was not until the late 1970s that Bangladesh President Ziaur Rahman spearheaded discussions among South Asian countries for regional integration (Saez 2012, 11). Three and a half decades after SAARC’s establishment, the pace of regionalism in South Asia remains slow. According to one scholar, SAARC “does not affect the security politics of the region in any way” (Buzan 2002, 3). Yet evaluating SAARC’s capacity to achieve regional integration and hence peaceful change is complicated. Most assessments of SAARC have suffered from what Amitav Acharya (2016, 109) has labeled EU-­ centrism: “the tendency to view the EU as a ‘model’ of regionalism with the expectation that other regionalisms should follow that model in order to be judged successful.” Regional organizations are at least the partial result of the diffusion of institutional models and policies—or “global scripts” of legitimate institutions (Risse 2016). Thanks to the implicit or explicit comparison of SAARC with such scripts—which frame regionalism as a teleological development from intergovernmentalism to supranationalism​, or from

South Asia’s Limited Progress toward Peaceful Change   673 a low to a high degree of pooling of authority—SAARC appears predestined to fall short (Lenz and Marks  2016). Acharya (2016, 115) notes that the European Economic Community—the institutional formation that preceded the EU—“was basically conceived as a project to tame nationalism and constrain state sovereignty.” By contrast, he notes, “non-­Western regionalisms were inspired by exactly the opposite motivations, to advance nationalism and preserve sovereignty after centuries of colonial rule” (Acharya 2016, 115). In SAARC’s case, divergence in origin has clearly led to divergence in destination. Few, if any, studies have engaged seriously with the normative underpinnings of SAARC. Lawrence Saez’s (2012, 8–116) narration of SAARC’s foundation story reveals both common aspirations and mutual suspicions among the founding Member States. Dilip Bobb’s (1983) colorful account of an initial meeting of seven South Asian foreign ministers finds a “contagious atmosphere of bonhomie and comradeship.” Ayoob (1985, 443) identifies an early “ingrained feeling among the ruling elite and opinion makers in the Indian subcontinent that there is an inherent geographic and cultural unity in South Asia.” Yet it is the SAARC Charter itself that crystallizes a common set of South Asian aspirations and identities. Article I of the SAARC Charter sets out the Association’s core objectives.1 Rather than pooling and delegating sovereignty, Article II underscores the signatories’ respect for sovereignty, noninterference, and territorial integrity (SAARC 2020). Article X commits Member States to unanimity as the bar for decision-making, and it underscores that “Bilateral and contentious issues shall be excluded from the deliberations” (SAARC 2020). This article in particular shields SAARC from interstate tensions in the region, even as it forecloses any explicit steps toward peace. SAARC is therefore both a product of the aspirational pull of regional organizations as beacons of cooperation and a pragmatic response to a set of contested regional identities centred on anti-­colonialism, anti-­hegemony, and experiences of economic underdevelopment. By this measure, the SAARC Charter’s single most significant achievement is that it presents a formula for cooperation at all. Measured, most simply, by the number of annual summits at head of state/head of government level, SAARC has delivered far less in substance than in aspiration, however. In thirty-­five years, only eighteen summits have taken place. Episodes of both domestic and interstate conflict explain this stop-­start trajectory (Mohan 2003). Indeed, most recently, the 19th Summit planned in Islamabad in 2016 was shelved due to growing India–Pakistan tensions following terror attacks within India that allegedly emanated from Pakistani territory (Zahra-­Malik 2016). As of 2020, SAARC confronts its longest hiatus in head of state/ head of government summitry to date: six years’, although a virtual summit of leaders was convened via videoconference on 15 March 2020 in order to share assessments of the COVID-19 pandemic and identify potential avenues for cooperation. At the same time, meetings of other SAARC organs have been far more regular. The Council of Ministers, comprising the Ministers of Foreign/External Affairs of SAARC Member States, has continued to convene informally on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session in New York each year. Seven additional ministerial meetings were convened between 2017 and 2020 (Pyakurel 2020). Lower-­ranking projects and agreements in areas such as health, education, agriculture, and energy have continued apace

674   Rajesh Basrur and Kate Sullivan de Estrada (Pyakurel 2020). The success of informal over formal meetings and low-­political over high-­political cooperation indicates that SAARC Member States cooperate more successfully in a less politicized context, away from media scrutiny, and that the cancellation or postponement of SAARC summits can be a means for South Asian leaders to score domestic political points. Away from politics, the wider SAARC architecture has fostered people-­ to-­ people contact in the region, too. The SAARC Chamber of Commerce and Industry, founded in 1988, sustains a network of businesses across the region, convenes regularly, and supports a number of regular events (SAARC CCI 2020). The SAARC-­sponsored South Asian University in New Delhi opened its doors to students from across the region in 2010. Nonetheless, at the time of SAARC’s founding, the political scientist Mohammad Ayoob (1985) identified the “primacy of the political”2 as the defining characteristic of regional cooperation in South Asia: the idea that political and security considerations overshadow any interest in economic cooperation when it comes to the question of regional integration. That defining characteristic continues today, but it is not the only impediment. A parallel process of economic integration between the states of South Asia reveals key structural as well as political challenges. The separate economies of South Asia moved from Cold War import substitution, high tariff barriers, and self-­reliance to liberalization policies at different rates from the late 1970s onward, accelerating this proc­ ess in the early 1990s (Weerakoon 2010). During the same period, SAARC Member States commenced a gradual process of reciprocal trade liberalization by negotiating successive rounds of preferential tariff concessions (Sawhney and Kumar 2007). A SAARC Preferential Trade Arrangement (SAPTA) was signed in 1993 and launched in 1995. Although considered a significant political achievement as the Association’s first regional agreement on economic cooperation, its implementation was stalled by drawn-­ out negotiations over trade concessions on various commodity types (Saez 2014). Products imported under SAPTA concessions ultimately comprised only 15 percent of intraregional imports and thus the agreement did little to boost regional trade (Weerakoon 2010). A three-­year hiatus in SAARC Heads of State Summits from late 1998, owing to Pakistan–India tensions, meant that negotiations toward a South Asian Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA), to replace the SAPTA, did not commence until 2004. At the time of SAFTA’s scheduled implementation in July 2006, nearly 53 percent of import trade among SAARC member countries was excluded from the proposed liberalization tariffs, raising the prospect that “a substantial proportion of trade within the south Asian region may in fact be excluded from the principle of ‘free trade’ ” (Weerakoon and Thennakoon 2006, 3920). Such pessimistic projections proved correct. Member States’ sensitive lists—detailing products that are exempted from tariff liberalization—remained extraordinarily long. These lists intended to offer a level of protection to the weaker South Asian economies: the granting of preferential market access by the smaller economies to India is more problematic than vice-­versa. South Asian countries are uniformly low-­income (on a per capita basis) with abundant labor, and the import and export structures of most South Asian economies are significantly similar. Overlapping trade baskets of agricultural commodities such as paddy rice, wheat,

South Asia’s Limited Progress toward Peaceful Change   675 c­ ereals, and oil seeds and manufactured goods such as textiles are vital to South Asian economies’ external trade (Bouet and Corong 2009). The result is that the potential for comparative advantage-­driven trade within South Asia is reduced and, indeed, can be risky. The overall picture is that South Asian economies often compete with one another in the same industries in the international market​, and as the far larger economy, India has a comparative trade advantage in a larger number of industry groups than other SAARC countries (Weerakoon 2010; Khan 2014). Moreover, smaller South Asian countries have far less diversified trade than India and suffer greater income volatility (Bouet and Corong 2009). Despite this picture, at the launch of SAFTA, an extensive 2008 report argued that trade complementarity had improved considerably over time for Bangladesh, India, and Sri Lanka (though not for Pakistan) and that enormous potential now existed for intraregional trade (ABD and UNCTAD 2008, xii). However, the report also underscored that Afghanistan, Bhutan, the Maldives, and Nepal would benefit far less from full liberalization of trade tariffs while the larger economies of Pakistan and India would double their exports within SAARC, and Bangladesh would see significant welfare gains due to increased industrial and household consumption (ABD and UNCTAD 2008). A decade later, intraregional trade continues to hover at around 5 percent of the region’s total trade (Kathuria  2018, 28). However, in absolute terms, intraregional trade has seen some growth. For example, India’s exports to South Asia more than tripled from USD 9.9 billion in 2008 to USD 30 billion in 2018, while its imports grew from USD 2.0 billion to USD 3.9 billion during the same period (International Monetary Fund n.d.). This reveals a marked trade imbalance between India and the region, but not stagnation in intraregional trade. Nonetheless, under SAFTA, long sensitive lists persist, and free trade has also been hampered by opaque “para-­tariffs”—particularly within Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka—that is, duties such as levies, surcharges, and other fees imposed on imported goods but not on their domestically produced equivalents, with the aim of protecting domestic industries. Since para-­tariffs are seldom transparent in their application, they do not feature in free-­trade negotiations (Kathuria 2018). Currently, around 36 percent of trade within South Asia still falls outside the remit of SAFTA (Kathuria 2018). SAFTA is circumvented by bilateral arrangements: India has long-­standing free trade agreements (FTAs) with Nepal and Bhutan, and India concluded an FTA with Sri Lanka in 1998 (the terms of which are more beneficial than SAFTA) and a preferential trade agreement (PTA) with Afghanistan in 2003 (Government of India  2020). Pakistan signed an FTA with Sri Lanka in 2005 (Government of Pakistan 2020). Notably, however, there is minimal formal trade between India and Pakistan: trade between them stands at USD 2 billion, but it has the potential to reach USD 37 billion (Kathuria 2018). Following WTO rules, India granted Most-­Favored Nation (MFN) status to Pakistan in 1996. Pakistan’s cabinet unanimously decided to grant India MFN status in 2011, but the decision was never implemented (Haider 2011). In 2019, the Indian government then revoked Pakistan’s MFN status following the terrorist attack on Indian security personnel at Pulwama in Jammu and Kashmir, which was attributed to Pakistan

676   Rajesh Basrur and Kate Sullivan de Estrada (Suneja 2019). Simply put, economic cooperation between the two countries has failed because of political and/or strategic tensions in the bilateral relationship, but also because the Pakistan government was unable or unwilling to implement its decision in favor of MFN status for India. Informal trade among SAARC countries complicates the picture further (a 2005 study estimated informal trade to comprise 72 percent of formal trade), but reliable and recent data are scarce (Taneja 2005). By contrast, extraregional trade flows have flourished. Significantly, China’s growing economic inroads in South Asia and India’s post–Cold War outreach to Southeast Asia have diverted trade away from the region. Pakistan concluded an FTA with China in 2006 and with Malaysia in 2007. India sought economic integration with East and Southeast Asia through its “Look East” (from 1991) and “Act East” (from 2014) policies and concluded an FTA with ASEAN in 2009. A 2018 report showed that 35 percent of South Asia’s trade is with East Asia and a further 25 percent is with South East Asia (Kathuria, 2018). These figures demonstrate how structurally, geographically, and politically reciprocal trade among the countries of South Asia is a far more complicated affair than is trade between individual South Asian countries and those in the wider region. Economic interdependence holds little promise as a vehicle for peaceful change in South Asia. Or, put another way, it makes little sense to think of South Asia as an economically interdependent region at all. Overall, India–Pakistan cooperation is the bellwether for regional cooperation in South Asia. With the exception of the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty, which has seen success until today owing to the relative depoliticization of implementation and robust institutions that foresee third-­party involvement in dispute resolution (Tremblay and Schofield 2005; Zawahri 2009), other opportunities for cooperation across the India–Pakistan border have been plagued by tensions in the bilateral relationship. Construction on the Turkmenistan-­Afghanistan-­Pakistan-­India (TAPI) natural gas pipeline commenced in 2015 in Turkmenistan, but the full delivery of the project will depend on whether or not Indian and Pakistani fears regarding the securitization of the pipeline can be allayed. Plans for an Iran-­Pakistan-­India pipeline have also stalled, partly due to India–Pakistan tensions. Instead, Pakistan is increasingly excluded through emerging subregional and extraregional arrangements such as the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-­Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), the Mekong-­Ganga Cooperation, India-­ Myanmar-­ Thailand trilateral highway, and the South Asia Sub-­ regional Economic Cooperation (SASEC), which brings together six South Asian states and one Southeast Asian state to improve economic cooperation.3

Conclusion Overall, our analysis reveals that South Asia shows limited progress toward peaceful change owing to a number of factors.

South Asia’s Limited Progress toward Peaceful Change   677 First, structural tensions among the region’s states persist, most notably between India and Pakistan. India’s dominance of the region causes other states to be wary— though less so than before—of drawing closer to it. Pakistan’s dominant position vis-­à-­ vis Afghanistan has had a similar effect. However, the negative effect of India’s dominance has been offset by the ability of some states (Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka) to seek closer links with China. Second, China’s increasing presence in the region has tended to cause tension between India and some of its neighbors. This has been compounded by internal tensions within some states, where some elites have sought to balance India’s dominance by leaning toward China (the Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka). In other cases, where bilateral relations with India have remained cordial over time (Afghanistan, Bangladesh since 2009, and Bhutan), the China factor has not caused tension with India. Third, domestic conflict and tensions have from time to time spilled over into neighboring states, thereby exacerbating interstate tensions. For example, India’s pro-­Hindutva policies under the Modi government have generated concerns in Bangladesh and tensions with Pakistan; the Madhesis’ quest for a bigger role in Nepal’s polity has led to India–Nepal friction; and the Tamil–Sinhala conflict has infected India–Sri Lanka relations. Fourth, the prospect of growth in economic relationships has been limited owing to the far greater engagement of the region’s states with extraregional economies and the persistent failure of India and Pakistan to develop a meaningful, reciprocal trade relationship. Fifth, SAARC as an institution has been slow to deliver regional integration owing to the political constraints hampering cooperation among its member states, especially between India and Pakistan. This is evident in the limited growth of the intraregional trade share of SAARC member states which is also curbed by wider structural factors. Overall, there has been some positive movement in comparison with the Cold War era, but the prospects for peaceful transition remain relatively low. The pursuit of peaceful change in South Asia will therefore need to comprise either improved India–Pakistan relations or an acknowledgment that “South Asia” is unlikely to function as the central regional container for the pursuit of peaceful change. Key features of and contemporary realities within South Asia suggest that regional cooperation will tend to expand and contract to mirror what is politically feasible rather than what appears to be functionally most desirable.

Notes 1. These include the promotion of human welfare and quality of life; the acceleration of economic growth; social progress and cultural development; collective self-­reliance; mutual trust and understanding; collaboration and mutual assistance in the economic, social, cultural, technical, and scientific fields; and the strengthening of cooperation with other developing countries, among themselves in international forums, and with like-­minded international and regional organizations with similar aims and purposes (SAARC 2020).

678   Rajesh Basrur and Kate Sullivan de Estrada 2. As Ayoob (1985, 445) phrased it, “The primacy of the political factor thus demonstrated in the early years of independence has continued to haunt all subsequent efforts aimed at promoting economic cooperation within South Asia.” 3. Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.

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Chapter 37

Peacefu l Ch a nge i n Northeast Asi a Maintaining the “Minimal Peace” Bhubhindar Singh

The study of peaceful change in Northeast Asia is not an easy or straightforward exercise. The region is usually defined as comprising China (including Hong Kong), Japan, Mongolia, North and South Koreas, Russia, Taiwan, and the United States.1 The focus here is on the core states, namely China, Japan, North and South Koreas, Russia, Taiwan, and the United States. This list comprises former imperial powers (Japan and Russia), a former militarist power (Japan), a former superpower (Russia), a rising power (China), and the only remaining superpower (the United States). With this cast of actors, it is no surprise that explaining peaceful change in Northeast Asia is a challenging endeavor. This region has had a turbulent history and remains a volatile region today. The turbulent history is visible from the regional order transition of Northeast Asia since the Chinese world order. This could be divided into five distinct historical periods: the Chinese world order (circa AD 618 to the mid-­nineteenth century); the arrival of Western imperialism in East Asia, which led to the breakdown of the Chinese world order (mid-­nineteenth century to 1930); the period of fascism (before the First World War to the end of the Second World War), when Japan joined Germany and Italy to challenge the US- and British-­led international order (1930–1945); the Cold War (1946–1989); and the post–Cold War period (1990–present). Of these five periods, only the shift from the Cold War to the post–Cold War era was peaceful. Not only was the transition peaceful, but Northeast Asia has also experienced “­minimal peace” since then. This chapter aims to explain the reasons for this ­outcome and assesses the durability of the minimal peace condition as the region is arguably in the early stages of another transition, fueled by the stiffening Sino-­US competition since 2010.

684   Bhubhindar Singh To explain Northeast Asia’s minimal peace, this chapter relies on three realist-­liberal factors that are grounded in the American-­led liberal internationalist order. First, favorable strategic stability has been offered by the hegemonic leadership role of the United States since the onset of the postwar period. Not only does America have long-­standing political, strategic, and economic interests in the region, its hegemonic position has had a pacifying effect on the strategic aspects of Northeast Asia. For example, it has prevented regional crises from escalating into conflict, resolved diplomatic spats between states, and prevented a full-­blown arms race in the region. Second, the growing economic interdependence between states (especially between China, Japan, and South Korea) has ensured states focused on prosperity and development, while being cognizant of the high costs conflicts would have on these objectives. Third, the subregion is experiencing strengthening institutionalism in Northeast Asia, along with the Northeast Asian states’ strong engagement in the East Asian multilateral structure (ASEAN-­led and non-­ASEAN-­led order of East Asia) covering economic, political, and security issues. This feature promotes regional cooperation, regularizes dialogue, and builds familiarity between states.2 The transition from the Cold War to the post–Cold War period and growth of minimal peace conform to the minimalist understanding of “peaceful change” used in this volume, defined as “international change and transformation without the use of military force and war.” Though Northeast Asia also somewhat meets the maximalist definition of change brought about by “not only the absence of war, but also the achievement of sustained non-­violent cooperation for creating a more just world order” through economic interdependence and institutionalism, the region is far from achieving the condition of “deep peace” (see Paul in this volume, 4). This is due to several challenges in the region, such as China’s strategic rise and increasing assertiveness in the maritime domain, instability on the Korean peninsula resulting from North Korea’s rapid advancement in nuclear and ballistic missile programs, and the presence of unresolved territorial disputes. Moreover, unlike other subregions, the historical antagonism remains an important determining factor in shaping bilateral relations in Northeast Asia. These issues have caused serious political tensions in Northeast Asia and have even resulted in the failure of some states to sign peace treaties following the end of the Second World War (such as between Japan and North Korea). As the subregion is home to four major powers of the contemporary period (the United States, China, Japan, and Russia), their clashing interests have made it difficult to resolve some of the key regional strategic and political challenges (Kim 2004, 5). Northeast Asia is also the least institutionalized subregion in East Asia. In fact, the Northeast Asian regional architecture is still defined by vestiges of the Cold War period, such as the alliance network supported by a large-­scale US military presence in Japan and South Korea, Communist or Stalinist regimes (China and North Korea), and divided states caused by the Cold War (Korean Peninsula). This chapter is structured in the following manner. The first section provides a brief overview of Northeast Asia’s transition over the five historical periods/phases: the Chinese world order; the age of imperialism; the period of fascism; the Cold War; and

Peaceful Change in Northeast Asia   685 the post–Cold War period. The second section focuses on the post–Cold War period, discussing the three factors that contributed to the minimal peace in Northeast Asia: American hegemony, economic interdependence, and institution building. The third section assesses the durability of minimal peace in Northeast Asia with the worsening Sino-­US competition since 2010. Though it is too early to say, the chapter argues that the organizing ideas of liberal internationalism, namely economic interdependence and institution building, will survive the transition. However, the condition of minimal peace will be determined by the outcome of the US-­China competition. The conclusion offers a summary of the argument and outlines some areas for future research.

Transitions of Northeast Asian Order Northeast Asia’s international relations can be divided into five distinct historical periods: the Chinese world order (circa AD 618 to the mid-­nineteenth century); the arrival of Western imperialism in East Asia, leading to the breakdown of the Chinese world order (mid-­nineteenth century to 1930); the period of fascism (before the First world War to the end of the Second World War), when Japan challenged the US- and British-­led international order (1930–1945); the Cold War (1946–1989); and the post– Cold War period (1990–present). Each of the orders was defined by a unique “system” (Alagappa 2002). Of the five periods, only the shift from the Cold War to the post–Cold War was peaceful. The Chinese world order was structured based on China’s view of itself as the Middle Kingdom. China was the core/center of East Asia, and the other political units in the region were subordinate to China in a strict hierarchical system. China’s position at the top was justified by its superiority in terms of size, culture, political system, innovation, and military power. The governance occurred through the tributary system, which defined the political interactions between China and the rest. These interactions ensured Chinese supremacy, and in return China recognized the independence of the other units in the system. While some have argued that the Chinese hegemonic order introduced stability in East Asia (Kang 2003, 2007), others argued this conclusion left out China’s use of force and invasion to maintain the regional order (Acharya 2003/2004, 154). The Chinese world order collapsed with the arrival of imperialism in East Asia. The Western great powers colonized East Asia, resulting in the region being carved up into separate political, economic, and military systems linked externally to the imperial powers. Even China—the core of East Asia—had to give up control of its territories to the imperial powers, beginning with the ports in the coastal regions. In 1853, US naval commodore Matthew Perry arrived on Japan’s shores with his modern ships (known as the “black ships”) to open a “closed” Japan to international trade. To avoid China’s fate, Japan, led by the Meiji government, undertook a range of reforms that facilitated Japan’s emergence as Asia’s first modern and industrial power. It pursued a policy of expansion

686   Bhubhindar Singh and territorial aggrandizement like other Western great powers through war and ­colonization. Japan defeated the main regional powers, China and Russia, to gain control over a large territorial area in Northeast Asia that included Korea, Taiwan, Liaodong southern Sakhalin, and the (southern) Manchuria Railway Zone (see Hatch  2010; Takahashi 2001; Suzuki 2005). The end of the First World War brought about a period of temporary peace as US president Woodrow Wilson introduced the notion of a new world order based on the universalistic principles of sovereignty and self-­ determination under the liberal Western norms and values, known as the Washington System. Wilson pushed for the breakdown of the imperialist structure and was keen to implement an international open economic system. He led the formation of the League of Nations—an intergovernmental organization—to ensure world peace through a collective security system (Layne 2018, 91–92). However, the Washington System failed, and the imperialist structure persisted throughout the early twentieth century. In Northeast Asia, the temporary peace broke down after Japan replaced its Taisho democracy (1912–1926) with militarism. Japan gradually became frustrated with the new US- and British-­led international order, feeling it was being treated unfairly and the Western powers were hampering its progress as an imperial power. Internally, the rise of nationalism within right-­wing groups in Japan ushered in military rule and militarism in Japanese society. The militarists were convinced that Japan should revise its strategy to undo the unequal treaties and unfair treatment by the Western imperial powers. Japan resigned from the League of Nations in 1934 and chose to side with Germany and Italy to challenge the international US-­British order. It pursued an assertive strategy that challenged the United States head-­on in the Pacific War from 1941 and the rapid colonization of the US, British, and Dutch colonies in Southeast Asia under the banner of creating a Pan-­Asian Greater East Co-­Prosperity Sphere. Eventually, Japan was defeated following the dropping of two atomic bombs by the United States, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in August 1945 (see Pyle 2007). The turbulent end of the Second World War ushered in the postwar period, which was defined by the bilateral confrontation between the United States and Soviet Union. Northeast Asia was directly affected by the Cold War. The bipolar structure at the international level was clearly reflected at the subregional level. Northeast Asian states were divided between the two bipolar camps and experienced two large-­scale wars—the Korean War (1950–1954) and the Vietnam War (1960s–1975)—that caused widespread physical, human, and psychological devastation, along with a long-­term division of the Korean Peninsula. The United States installed an extensive alliance network with military bases in Japan and South Korea to support the largest US military deployment in East Asia, which was crucial in countering the threat from Communism. Japan, a serious threat in the previous order, underwent a transformation to become a positive contributor to the stability of East Asia by allying with the United States. It withdrew from military-­strategic affairs and focused its energies on economic growth and development, which facilitated its emergence as an economic superpower. Japan became a critical engine of growth for East Asia’s economy through its trade, investments, and aid (see Pyle 2007; Samuels 2007).

Peaceful Change in Northeast Asia   687 Along with Japan, China also underwent transformation from the 1970s. From participating in the Korean War, supporting Communist struggles in East Asia, and experiencing the disastrous effects of the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution (social-­political campaigns beginning in the 1950s), China emerged as a capitalist state that not only changed the geopolitical and geoeconomic environment but contributed to the stability of Northeast Asia and beyond. The process started with the Sino-­US rapprochement triggered by the Nixon-­Mao meeting in 1971. This meeting led to the normalization of US-­China relations and, consequently, the weakening of the Communist bloc in favor of the America-­led liberal international order. Guided by the dictum “hide your strength, bide your time,” Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping implemented reforms from the late 1970s that resulted in China’s progress through economic development and economic globalization (Zheng 2005). This strategy also transformed China’s confrontational foreign policy posture (Wang 2011). From a country that had territorial disputes with all its neighbors (twenty-­three in total), China began resolving these disputes through bilateral agreements, even compromising on sovereignty in some instances (Fravel 2010, 507). Though the Cold War ended with the Chinese government’s violent crackdown on a democratic movement led by students in 1989, Deng’s economic reforms laid the foundation for China’s rapid rise as a dominant economic, political, and security actor in the post–Cold War period. From the 1970s, the American-­led liberal order became entrenched in Northeast Asia, and this strengthened American leadership in the region. Owing to its features, such as promoting open and free trade, building resilient international institutions (such as the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the  General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), and promoting liberal democracies (Ikenberry  2018, 15–16; also see Layne  2018, 90–93), this order was successful in strengthening cooperation, dialogue, and interdependence between states. Northeast Asian states saw the benefits of supporting this order firsthand, as it brought prosperity and economic development. Also, for the allies especially, the alliance network was perceived as a source of stability. This strategy was so successful that it not only resulted in the collapse of the Soviet Union, but also made sure that the United States had no competitor in the post–Cold War period. This facilitated the peaceful transition of Northeast Asia from the Cold War to the post–Cold War period.

Minimal Peace in Northeast Asia The post–Cold War period introduced a sense of optimism that the global order was moving away from interstate conflict (Singh 2011). Yet at the same time, there was high uncertainty in Northeast Asia. While the Cold War had ended in Europe, this was not the case in Northeast Asia. The Northeast Asian order was defined by the vestiges of the Cold War, such as a divided Korean Peninsula, the US-­led alliance network, and the presence of Communist China and Stalinist North Korea. In fact, analyses shaped by various shades of realism argued that the regional tensions in East Asia, including

688   Bhubhindar Singh Northeast Asia, would escalate in the post–Cold War period (Friedberg  1993/1994; Betts 1993) due to various factors, such as the instability related to American unipolarity (Waltz 2000; Layne 1993), China’s rise as a regional hegemon and its dissatisfaction with the status quo (Mearsheimer 2001, 2010; Friedberg 2011), and North Korea’s insistent investment in ballistic and nuclear programs coupled with its belligerent behavior (Byman and Lind 2010; Cha and Kang 2003). The skepticism of realists was supported by the ‘return of history’ in Northeast Asia. The unresolved historical legacy stemming from Japanese colonial practices raised nationalistic sentiments in China, Japan, and South Korea, which have, in turn, strained bilateral relations and hampered regional integration (Berger 2008, 2012; He 2007). In short, the end of the Cold War ushered in more uncertainty in Northeast Asia. Despite ongoing tensions and uncertainty, Northeast Asia has maintained minimal peace. Others have used the term stability to describe this situation. Choi (2016) discussed two types of stability: “crisis stability” and “general stability.” The former is when “two or more parties facing a military conflict consider themselves highly secure because of their military capabilities, namely punitive second-­strike capabilities, and can thereby wait out any possible surprise attack with full confidence that they can respond with severe counterattacks” and the latter when “two powers greatly prefer peace even to a victorious war—whether or not crisis stability exists—because war has become inconceivable as a means of solving their political conflicts” (289). Choi argues that Northeast Asia is defined by crisis stability, which explains the lack of war or “major militarised disputes,” and the Northeast Asian order is increasingly defined by general stability due to the prominence of emerging liberal elements, such as “intensified economic interdependence and idea of war-­aversion” (290). For Kang and Ma (2018), this is not surprising, as stability is the norm for East Asia. Rather than focusing on the stability or peace of East Asia (Acharya 2003/2004; Bitzinger and Desker 2008; Kivimaki 2010), this chapter is a contribution to the limited literature on the subject, focusing on Northeast Asia (see Choi 2016; Calder and Ye 2010; Chung 2011; Kang 2003). Even though many factors could be incorporated into the discussion, as previously mentioned, this chapter focuses on three realist-­liberal factors grounded in the US-­led liberal international order to explain the condition of minimal peace in Northeast Asia: the American hegemony that ensured strategic stability; the growing economic interdependence between Northeast Asian states that promoted cooperation and growth; and the strengthening institutionalism in Northeast Asia that promoted and regularized cooperation and dialogue.

American Hegemony Though not geographically located in Northeast Asia, the United States has been integral to the subregion’s strategic stability. Being the largest economy in the world, America’s political, economic, and security interests have been intertwined with the

Peaceful Change in Northeast Asia   689 interests of Northeast Asia. The origins of US strategic hegemony in the region lie in the onset of the postwar period. After the end of the Second World War, the United States constructed a security architecture centered on the hub-­and-­spoke system of alliances, a critical feature of the San Francisco System (Calder 2004). Through promoting economic prosperity and development (through its ally Japan) and security (through the network of alliances), America solidified its role as a source of strategic stability in Asia, which facilitated its playing a “pacifier” role in East Asia (He 2019, 143). This “pacifying” role has endured into the post–Cold War period, with the United States the only remaining superpower following the demise of the Soviet Union. This resulted in a stable US-­led unipolarity that preserved American interests and the American-­led liberal order. US hegemony ensured a stable balance of power in Northeast Asia that mitigated the serious security dilemma concerns between the states (Wohlforth 1999; Brooks, Ikenberry and Wohlforth 2012/2013, 37). Supported by the hub-­and-­spoke alliance system, US hegemony acted as a deterrent against regional strategic challenges, namely North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities and China’s rapid strategic rise. Moreover, US conventional and nuclear deterrence precluded new challenges from emerging in the region. This was important in light of the strengthening military capabilities of the other Northeast Asian states, such as Russia, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, that could have been targeted at each other (Choi 2016, 295–296). The US hegemon made sure Japan and South Korea did not acquire nuclear capacity or strengthen their military capabilities to levels that could make China uncomfortable. At the same time, the US presence was crucial in maintaining diplomatic stability between its allies, Japan and South Korea, especially during periods of high political tensions caused by the unresolved historical legacy. The dominance of the United States in the regional security architecture contributed directly to the stability of the region’s economic order. Its ability to ensure safe global commons at sea guaranteed free commerce that was absolutely critical for the stable geoeconomic order of Northeast Asia. Through this proactive strategy, the United States was able to maintain its position as the largest economy in the world through the promotion and strengthening of globalization, free trade, and investment in the region, as well as to achieve its interests in Northeast Asia and sustain its regional leadership (Brooks, Ikenberry, and Wohlforth 2012/2013, 40–41). Though China’s rise was described by Beijing as “peaceful,” especially during the mid-­ 2000s (Zheng 2005), it has emerged as a formidable challenge to the US-­led order. This is due to China’s rapid economic, political, military, and technological rise, along with strengthened nationalism and more assertiveness in promoting and protecting Chinese interests in the region at the expense of US interests. Despite this challenge from China, the United States has been able to sustain its leadership role in East Asia, including Northeast Asia. This is due to its superior military might, edge in technology, and resilient global economy. Though the US-­led order is resilient for the coming decades, it is incrementally losing its dominance in the political, economic, and even military domains of the region. This point is addressed in the third section.

690   Bhubhindar Singh

Economic Interdependence A key source of the continued stability in Northeast Asia is the concerted effort by Northeast Asian states to pursue economic development. The foundation of this was laid in the US-­led order during the Cold War, based on a free market system, American and Japanese investments, a robust institutional economic structure, and strategic stability that facilitated cooperation. Northeast Asia hosts economic powerhouses, with China and Japan being the second and third largest economies in the world, respectively. China’s GDP makes up almost 17 percent of the global economy, and it is already the largest economy in the world based on purchasing power parity indicators. Though Japan lost its position as Asia’s largest economy in 2010, it still contributes 6 percent to the global economy (Bajpai 2020). South Korea is Asia’s fourth largest economy and the twelfth largest economy in the world. These three states have achieved sustained economic development through the promotion of international trade and export-­oriented strategies that have also served as engines of regional and global economic growth. Despite the occasional trading disputes when economic relations were ‘weaponized,’ such as China’s halting of rare earth products to Japan in 2010 and Japan’s imposition of export constraints against South Korea in 2019, China, Japan, and South Korea have strengthened intra- and interregional economic cooperation through trade and investments, resulting in strengthened economic interdependence. Though the three countries have failed to sign a formal free trade agreement, this economic interdependence has been critical to each state’s economic development and ensured stability in Northeast Asia in light of the political and strategic tensions between states (Choi 2016, 302–303). There have been two main driving forces for strengthening interdependence in Northeast Asia: China’s rapid economic growth and integration into East Asia and the 1997 Asian financial crisis. China’s economic reforms, which started in the late 1970s, picked up speed in the post–Cold War period. China pushed economic reforms at home and supported international economic globalization, reinforced by its membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) from 2002. This strategy lifted millions of Chinese out of poverty, rapidly expanded China’s GDP per capita, integrated China into the world’s economy, and resulted in China becoming the largest trading partner to all its neighbors in Northeast Asia. What is unique about China’s emergence as an economic power is that it happened while it was integrated into the US-­led political-­economic order. This US-­led order brought immense economic, political, and security benefits to China, along with strategic stability that facilitated China’s rapid economic and strategic rise. Within this structure, China strengthened its foreign policy with other states, including its neighbors and beyond, and became a strong proponent of multilateralism, free trade, and economic globalization. Robust economic policies have been critical elements in China’s strategy, even when it is perceived to challenge the US-­led order. The implementation of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) under President Xi Jinping is a good example. This initiative promotes economic growth for China, along with its neighbors, through investments in and the development of infrastructure projects to increase interconnectivity

Peaceful Change in Northeast Asia   691 between Northeast Asia and other regions. Though there have been several concerns over the BRI (such as China laying a debt trap for recipient states, the lack of transparency, and the project being part of China’s ambitious plan to build a competitive China-­led order), most states, if not all, in East Asia have participated in this initiative. Even Japan, which was skeptical of the BRI, reversed this view when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe decided to participate selectively in the initiative to gain potential economic benefits. The 1997 Asian financial crisis affected East Asia substantially. The crisis boosted intraregional interactions, trade interdependence, deepening intra-­industry linkages (such as in auto and electronics), and growing production networks through government-­led and business-­led initiatives (Calder and Ye  2010, 129). Though the United States remains an important trading partner for all Northeast Asian states, the share of total exports to the United States for China, Japan, and South Korea has decreased since 2002 (Calder and Ye 2010, 130). In fact, intraregional trade between China (including Taiwan and Hong Kong), Japan, and South Korea has increased— indicating strengthening and deepening trade dependence—supported by increased investments among the Northeast Asian states that have strengthened economic integration (Calder and Ye  2010, 130–137). These efforts were not short-­lived but were strengthened following the 2008 global economic crisis, as well as in response to the Trump administration’s policies of promoting America-­first policies and reduced ­support for globalization and global free trade efforts. China, Japan, and South Korea, which make up 90 percent of Northeast Asia’s GDP (Chi  2019), launched negotiations for a China-­Japan-­Korea free trade agreement (CJKFTA) in 2012. This was mainly to promote intraregional economic cooperation and protect the subregion from adverse effects of global and regional economic crises. Though the CJKFTA has yet to be signed, the three states signed a trilateral investment treaty in May 2012 that was launched in May 2014. Efforts to promote economic integration and interdependence have incrementally progressed both at the subregional and regional levels in other ways. Within Northeast Asia, Korea and China have signed a bilateral FTA in 2015. However, Northeast Asian states have been active in signing FTAs with ASEAN states individually and collectively (such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, RCEP). Economic interdependence among the Northeast Asian states has mitigated political and security challenges from escalating into all-­out conflicts in the region.

Institution-Building Economic interdependence as a source of stability is supported by the strengthening support of institution building efforts by Northeast Asian states. Though the region is integrated into the global (for example, the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, G7/8 and G20) and interregional (Asia-­Pacific Economic Cooperation, APEC) multilateral orders, Northeast Asia itself is the least institutionalized subregion of East Asia. Its experience in regionalism has been described as “stunted”

692   Bhubhindar Singh due to the high level of mistrust and suspicion between states (Rozman  2004). Nevertheless, a closer look at the region reveals a track record that comprises several types of formal and informal institution building attempts. Northeast Asia has attempted to form or participate in formal region-­wide (Northeast Asian Trilateral Summit, NEATS) and less institutionalized minilateral institutions (Tumen River Area Development Programme, TRADP). It has formed arrangements to address specific regional challenges, such as the North Korean nuclear issue (Trilateral Coordination and Oversight Group, TCOG; Korea Energy Development Organization, KEDO; and the Six-­Party Talks, SPT), and arrangements that focused on a range of political (Tripartite Cooperative Secretariat) and economic (Chiang Mai Initiatives) issues. All Northeast Asian states are committed to the institution building process in the region and beyond. This process was boosted by the 1997 Asian financial crisis (Calder and Ye 2010; Terada 2003). The financial crisis not only strengthened the participation of Northeast Asia in the East Asian multilateral process, but also resulted in enhanced agency on the part of Northeast Asian states to shape or build East Asian multilateralism. The financial crisis triggered the creation of East Asia–wide institutions meant to solve regional problems through regional solutions. This led to the formation of the ASEAN-­Plus-­Three (APT) and East Asia Summit (EAS) and several other multilateral initiatives, such as the Miyazawa Initiative (1998), Chiang Mai Initiative (2000), and Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization (2009), which required a large injection of funds from Northeast Asian states to support the creation of a financial safety net through bilateral currency swap agreements. One significant consequence of the Asian financial crisis was China’s proactive support and implementation of regionalism. China took bold steps, such as initiating the ASEAN-­China FTA, which led to strengthened institutional links with ASEAN, and provided thought leadership in strengthening multilateral cooperation in Northeast Asia through several initiatives, such as the Boao Forum for Asia and the Shanghai Cooperation Dialogue (SCD). China’s strong support of regionalism policies led to its integration into ASEAN-­led, East Asia–wide multilateral structures through multiple platforms, such as the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), ASEAN Plus Three (APT), East Asian Summit (EAS), and ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting-­Plus (ADMM-­Plus). Along with Japan’s long history of engagement with ASEAN that began in the 1970s, China’s robust support of the ASEAN-­led multilateral order was crucial in integrating the Northeast Asian region into the ASEAN-­led multilateral order, not only through political and economic institutions, but through security ones as well (He, 147–148; Goh 2007/2008). Specific to Northeast Asia, the Asian financial crisis boosted Northeast Asian regionalism by starting discussions on a new regional mechanism comprising South Korea, China, and Japan (Chung 2011; Terada 2018). Though discussions were first initiated in 1997, the leaders of the three countries only started meeting informally on the sidelines of the APT from 1999. Subsequently, all three members recognized the fruits of these  meetings and that the ASEAN-­led institutions were not suitable to address Northeast Asian issues. In late 2007, South Korean president Roh Moo-­hyun proposed a

Peaceful Change in Northeast Asia   693 formal annual meeting between the leaders in their own territories. From an informal gathering on the sidelines of the APT without an extensive agenda, the trilateral meeting developed into a more formal arrangement that promoted policy talks and developed cooperative projects in a range of areas (Yoshimatsu 2010, 253–256). Despite the limited institutionalization of the trilateral meeting (evinced by the setting up of a secretariat in South Korea), the three countries have been very clear in their focus on economic issues, and this has been the main driver of the process. It is important to note that Northeast Asian institutionalism is not separate from the East Asian order but is part of the robust “complex patchwork” of the East Asian order—including bilateral alliances, ASEAN-­led institutions, and non-­ASEAN-­led institutions—that has ensured stability in the region (Cha 2011; Yeo 2019).

Fraying of Minimal Peace in Northeast Asia? Many argue that Northeast Asia, especially since 2010, is on the cusp of another transition. This is due to several factors, but is mainly fueled by the intensifying structural US-­ China competition, which has strained almost all domains of the bilateral relationship and challenged the US-­led order. It is important to ask if the factors outlined above— grounded in US-­led liberal internationalism—could survive to provide minimal peace in Northeast Asia in the coming decades. Key states in Northeast Asia strongly subscribe to liberal internationalist principles, especially organizing principles such as economic interdependence, free trade, multilateralism, and globalization. These organizing principles will continue to define the Northeast Asian order. However, there is uncertainty whether these principles will exist within an American-­led order, a new Chinese-­led order, or a shared American- and Chinese-­led order. The challenge to the US-­led liberal international order has come from two factors. The first is China’s emergence as the “new hegemon” and “driver of global change” (Economist 2018). Having abandoned Deng’s dictum of “hide your strength, bide your time,” Xi’s China is arguably pursuing an assertive strategy (Poh and Li 2017). China has pursued rapid military modernization in qualitative and quantitative terms. With vast investments in defense spending,3 it has produced a more agile and high-­tech military able to project military power. In terms of foreign policy, China has shown stronger assertiveness toward Taiwan and its maritime territorial disputes, namely the South China Sea and East China Sea (Liu 2016). China has introduced bold initiatives, such as the BRI, described as the “project of the century.” The BRI made available large investments for infrastructure projects, such as ports, railways, roads, and industrial parks, to promote trade and economic development in Asia, Africa, and Europe. This project is supported by the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which made available vast amounts of financing for the infrastructure projects. China has also made headway

694   Bhubhindar Singh in overturning its image of being decades behind the United States in terms of technological development. It has incrementally gained an edge in innovation and technological areas, such as artificial intelligence, green technology, and e-­commerce. At the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party held in October 2017, President Xi announced that China was on the path of being a “great modern socialist country” and “a global leader in terms of composite national strength and international influence” by 2050 (China Daily 2017). With the removal of the presidential term limit during China’s National People’s Congress in March 2018, there is a strong possibility that Xi could remain in power for more than the usual two terms and oversee China’s rise to be a great power by 2050. It is not far-­fetched to conclude that a rising China, like all rising powers, would seek to change elements of the US-­led regional order that it perceives to be detrimental to its interests. In fact, China has openly shared its preferred elements of a regional order, namely states from a “network of partnerships” and not alliances, the promotion of equality between big and small states, and no targeting of any third-­party country (Zhang 2018). The other factor explaining the transition is the relative weakening of American he­gem­ony (Layne  2018; Heath and Thompson  2018). This is due to internal factors exposed by the 2008 economic crisis, as well as external problems revealed by the prolonged war on terror and failure to reform the international order to adjust to the new power configuration (Pape 2005; Paul 2005; Ikenberry 2018, 18–21). Though this process began before 2016, the accession of the Trump administration to power has exacerbated discussions surrounding the weakening of US hegemony (Layne  2018). The Trump administration’s “America-­first” policy, which has led to the questioning of the utility of the alliances with Japan and South Korea; US withdrawal from the TPP; and its relinquishing of support for multilateralism, free trade, and globalization, have been harmful to its regional and global leadership. The administration has focused on China as a persistent challenge to the US-­led order. The US “National Security Strategy” published in 2017 stated that China, along with Russia, is working to “shape a world antithetical to U.S. values and interests. China seeks to displace the United States in the Indo-­Pacific region, expand the reaches of its state-­driven economic model, and reorder the region in its favor” (White House 2017, 25). In his speech at the Hudson Institute in October 2018, Vice President Mike Pence said, “China wants nothing less than to push the United States of America from the Western Pacific and attempt to prevent us from coming to the aid of our allies” (White House 2018). The adversarial relationship was most visible in the tariff war between the two great powers, which was meant to correct America’s trade imbalances with China, and was further amplified during the global coronavirus pandemic that started in China in December 2019. The shift in the relative balance of power between the United States and China outlined above has the potential to cause major instability in the region in terms of causing a hegemonic war and the unraveling of the US-­led liberal order (Gilpin 1988; Allison 2017; Friedberg  2011). However, it may be too soon to call the end of the US-­led order. The United States is a resilient power (Beckley 2011/2012, 2018). It remains a security

Peaceful Change in Northeast Asia   695 ­ rovider and a geopolitical stabilizer with an enduring presence in Northeast Asia. p In economic terms, the United States retains its superiority over China. Though the Northeast Asian economies now rely less on the United States, it is still an important market and partner for investments and trade. Despite the questioning, the Trump administration’s officials have recognized the importance of the alliance network by describing the alliances with Japan and South Korea as, respectively, the “cornerstone” and “linchpin” for regional security and stability that facilitate the large presence of US military personnel and assets in Northeast Asia (Harold 2020). Through maintaining a strong military edge in terms of technology, a large-­scale military presence, and conducting freedom of navigation operations (FONOPS) in the South China Sea and training missions in the region involving the US navy and air force, the United States has been able to sustain regional leadership and the US-­led order (Johnson 2020). Though China adopted capabilities that could hurt American interests and strategy, such as Anti-­Access/Area-­Denial (A2AD), the US military remains the strongest in the world in terms of capability, capacity, and battle experience (Beckley 2011/2012, 75). The defense component is supported by America’s edge in the defense industry as it dominates the conventional arms market (Beckley 2011/2012, 75). Instead of relinquishing regional leadership, the United States has been alert to China’s ambitious initiatives. For example, the United States announced the “free and open Indo-­Pacific” vision, a material and ideological counter to China’s BRI (White House  2017). Through the implementation of new initiatives, such as the Asia Reassurance Initiative Act and the Better Utilization of Investments Leading to Development (BUILD) Act to promote infrastructure and economic development, and the renaming of the Pacific Command to the Indo-­Pacific Command, the United States retains strong engagement and leadership in the region. At the same time, it is unclear if China is seeking to build an overarching alternative order in East Asia. Though it would certainly be logical for Beijing to aspire to this goal, it is also true that China would face resistance to such order-­building attempts beyond the economic realm—externally from America and its East Asian allies, and internally from its own domestic challenges. While China may have the economic resources to build an economic order, it does not have the strategic resources and goodwill to support such an ambitious endeavor in the political and strategic domains. Such attempts would be viewed in suspicious terms by Northeast Asian states. Hence, the emerging picture appears to be that China, while seeking to delegitimize America’s leadership in East Asia in the short to medium term, is happy to exist in accordance with what it thinks are other, broadly accepted aspects of the regional order (see also Ikenberry 2004, 361–363). Though the regional states are unable to influence the outcome of US-­China competition, these states are nevertheless stakeholders who could shape developments in critical ways. The regional states, especially the American allies, continue to support the preservation of the US-­led order premised on a strong American military presence in the region.4 To manage the major power competition, these states have adopted a flexible approach in their regional strategies. On the one hand, they prioritize the US-­led

696   Bhubhindar Singh order. For instance, the emergence of the “free and open Indo-­Pacific” promoted by Japan is a way to keep the United States engaged in the region and deter Chinese attempts at regional dominance (MOFA, Japan, 2007). When the United States withdrew from the TPP in 2017, Japan took the lead to garner support from the remaining eleven countries, leading to the eventual signing of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-­Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). On the other hand, all Northeast Asian states, including US allies, are aware of the realities of China’s greater push to recalibrate this order. They have strengthened interdependence with China and recognized the importance of the rising power to their economies. In short, regional states are comfortable to exist in both the US- and Chinese-­led orders. Though US hegemony is weakening, the organizing ideas of liberal internationalism that ensured prosperity, development, and minimal peace in Northeast Asia will remain key features of the Northeast Asian order in the coming decades. It is important to separate the United States from its successful organizing principles. Ikenberry (2018) wrote that “[t]he American hegemonic organization of liberal order is weakening, but the more general organizing ideas and impulses of liberal internationalism run deep in world politics” (8).5 This applies to Northeast Asia as well. The organizing principles, such as interdependence and institution building, are not only supported by all states in Northeast Asia (except North Korea) but have also been internalized in their national strategies. Even China, seen as the main challenger to the US-­led order, supports these organizing principles. For example, China has created institutions, such as the AIIB, the BRI, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), and supports the extant global and regional multilateral structures. It is a strong proponent of open globalization and free trade, which set the stage for strengthening economic interdependence with the rest of Northeast Asia. Whatever the configuration of the order that emerges, the problem will not be in the liberal organizing principles but with how the US-­China relationship is managed, not just between these two great powers but also with the surrounding states in Northeast Asia. For now, it is clear that the regional order transition for the next few decades is most likely going to be complex, with a combination of competition and cooperation, as the great powers and surrounding states are aware of the high costs of conflict (Mastanduno 2014; Goh 2013).

Conclusion Northeast Asia is a not a typical case to study peaceful change. However, this chapter has shown that peaceful change, whether understood from the minimalist or maximalist definition used in this volume, could be applied to this subregion. Northeast Asia experienced a peaceful transition from the Cold War to post–Cold War period, and the minimal peace has endured. This has been due to three realist-­liberal factors: America’s hegemony, strong economic interdependence between the Northeast Asian states, and a stable and growing institutional structure both in Northeast Asia and in East Asia as a

Peaceful Change in Northeast Asia   697 whole. These factors have facilitated economic growth and development and mitigated the negative effects of the regional political and strategic challenges. The minimal peace in Northeast Asia is being challenged, as the region is arguably on the cusp of another transition. The US-­led order supported by liberal internationalist features is weakening, and there are hints of China’s crafting its own version of regional order. This shift in the balance of power could cause instability, possibly even a hegemonic war. Though interdependence and institution building will continue to be crucial in shaping the emerging order, the stability of the order will be determined by the ongoing US-­China rivalry and how the regional states manage this competition. There is a lot of work ahead for the United States, China, and the surrounding states to protect Northeast Asia’s minimal peace. The region requires the United States to act like a regional and global leader. To overcome the decline in its relative power and influence, the United States has to strengthen relations with its allies and partners and preserve the alliance network in the region. It has to restore its faith in the features of the liberal international order, such as free trade, globalization, interdependence, and institutionbuilding. China has to be aware of the responsibilities of being a great power. This would mean refraining from adopting an assertive approach to achieve its national interests, protecting the liberal international order that it has gained from, and respecting the rules-­based order. To avoid a major conflict, both great powers should not treat each other as adversaries, but rather as competitive actors within a liberal international order. Surrounding states play a critical role in supporting the liberal organizing principles that have brought peace and have mitigated US-­China competition. Economic recovery in Northeast Asia following the pandemic of 2020 is dependent on these states developing closer relations with each other. As they are essential trading partners for each other’s economies, the rebound of those economies will not be possible without stronger cooperation and the restoration of the regional supply chains disrupted by the pandemic interdependence (Tachikawa 2020). Furthermore, scholars could also contribute to the understanding of peaceful change in Northeast Asia. Two areas particularly need future research. First, there is space for a detailed comparative analysis of the five historical periods that would involve identifying stable periods when there was no interstate conflict, the factors that contributed to the stability, and causes for the stability to falter. With this detailed analysis, we would be able to form a profound understanding of the key factors that led to the stability of the region and key factors that led to the unraveling of the stability. Such an analysis is critical to understand the sustainability of the three factors outlined above to explain Northeast Asian stability in the post–Cold War period. Second, the extant analysis on the regional order in Northeast Asia has largely focused on the United States and China. There is a lack of focus on surrounding states in Northeast Asia, such as Japan, South Korea, and Russia. While the question related to stability or instability would be largely determined by the US-­China dynamic, the role of surrounding states is critical in managing the negative effects of the great power rivalry and preserving the features of the liberal international order that have contributed to the minimal peace in Northeast Asia.

698   Bhubhindar Singh

Notes 1. The United States is usually included in the region’s analyses, even though it is not ­geographically located in the region. This is because of its intertwined history with the region; vast political, economic, and strategic interests; and entrenched military presence through its extensive alliance network. 2. Even North Korea, which is the most isolated country in the subregion, has been a member of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) since 2000. 3. China is responsible for 60 percent of the total increase in global defense spending since 1990 (Economist 2018). 4. For Japan, see Singh et al. (2019, 29–31). 5. See also Ikenberry (2012).

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chapter 38

The M iddle E ast a n d Peacefu l Ch a nge Arie M. Kacowicz and Galia Press-­Barnathan

The Middle East is often considered a war zone, and it rarely comes to mind as a region that includes cases of peaceful change. That being said, we can trace several examples of peaceful change at different levels of analysis: international, regional, interactive, and domestic. Identifying peaceful change in the region is in itself a complex task, as the concept is inherently contested. First, we need to consider what peaceful change is contrasted with. We can focus on the nature of change processes: whether they are peaceful or violent. Alternatively, we can discuss the issue of peaceful change. Peaceful change in this sense is contrasted with a lack of change or the maintenance of the status quo, which is the default option preferred by most of the countries in the region, except Iran, several of the Kurdish and Palestinian nonstate actors, and radical Islamist groups. In a region characterized by multiple regional rivalries and challenging subnational and transnational ideas and groups, the maintenance of peace has often been associated with stability and the ability to maintain the status quo, rather than bringing about change, whether peaceful or violent. Furthermore, we should keep in mind that peaceful change can be identified at different levels of analysis. In the introduction to this volume, T. V. Paul identifies global-­systemic, regional, and peaceful foreign policy change. In this chapter we consider two additional levels of analysis: the bilateral/interactive level, which focuses on peaceful territorial change through cessions, secessions, unifications, and status change of territories, and peaceful political changes at the domestic level. In geographical terms, we define the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) as the region encompassing the twenty-­two members of the Arab League—Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine (which is not a full-­fledged state), Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen—and three non-­Arab countries: Iran, Israel, and Turkey. The Middle East has been fraught with violence: conventional wars

704   Arie M. Kacowicz and Galia Press-Barnathan involving Arab countries and Israel (1948–1949, 1956, 1967, 1969–1970, and 1973) and the Iran–Iraq War of 1980–1988; the Gulf War of 1991 following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990; wars led by foreign powers, such as the US-­led coalition in Iraq in 1991, the second Gulf War in 2003, and the air strikes on Libya in 1986 and 2011; violence spearheaded by violent transnational actors, such as ISIS in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Egypt; numerous civil wars with varying degrees of international intervention (the North Yemen civil war of 1962–1970, the Lebanese civil war of 1975–1990, and in the past decade ­virulent and bloody civil wars in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen); and several asymmetrical conflicts (the Israeli wars in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip). At the same time, there have been several instances of peaceful territorial change in the region, including Iraq’s cession of parts of the Shatt-­al-­Arab straits to Iran in 1975 (reversed by Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran in 1980); the return of Sinai and Taba from Israel to Egypt in 1979–1982 and 1989; the peaceful reunification of Yemen in 1990; the change in the legal status of the Gaza Strip (1994) and the West Bank (1994–1995) as part of the Oslo process between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO); the return of Jordanian territories in the Arava Valley from Israel to Jordan in 1995; the most recent return of the islets of Sanafir and Tiran in 2016 from Egypt to Saudi Arabia; and several territorial cessions and exchanges among Arab states. A comprehensive list of peaceful territorial changes in the Middle East since 1945 is included in table 38.1. How has peaceful change occurred in the Middle East? What are the current and future prospects for peaceful change in the region? There are several theoretical explanations for peaceful change that are relevant for analyzing the Middle East. Realist arguments tend to focus on the balance of material power as a key factor to explain negative peace (the absence of war). While realists tend to focus on maintaining the status quo, there are examples in the region in which a certain distribution of material power facilitated more substantive processes of peaceful change. For instance, Israeli military capabilities and US material backing from the late 1960s onward and the inability to overcome them in successive military campaigns played an important role in the gradual Arab acceptance of the very existence of the State of Israel and later on served as a key background condition that enabled the historic peaceful change in Egyptian-­Israeli relations (Kacowicz 1994, 119–149). Beyond realism, the most prominent theories to explain peaceful change emerge from the liberal paradigm. Among these, the most important reside within the neoliberal institutionalist literature, which elaborates on how institutions can facilitate the peaceful resolution of conflicts through the provision of information, transparency, building trust, and facilitating cooperation. In the regional context, we explore the role of the two main regional organizations: the Arab League (AL) and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). A second key relevant component of liberal theory is the economic dimension, which suggests that peaceful change is more likely to occur when clear economic benefits are apparent to all the parties involved. In this context, we assess the role of economic incentives in the Egyptian-­Israeli and Israeli-­Jordanian peace processes, as well as the impact of economic interactions between regional states and the global market,

The Middle East and Peaceful Change   705 Table 38.1  Peaceful Territorial Changes in the Middle East, 1945–2018 Year

Gaining party

Ceding (“losing”) party

Type of change/territory

1958 1959 1961 1965 1969 1972 1975 1975 1976 1979-­1982 1980 1989 1990 1992 1993 1994 1994-­1995 1995 2004 2016

Egypt Egypt (UAR) Syria Jordan/Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia/Kuwait UAE Iraq/Saudi Arabia Iran Morocco Egypt Morocco Egypt North Yemen Yemen/Oman Kuwait PLO PLO Jordan Yemen Saudi Arabia

Syria Sudan Egypt Saudi Arabia/Jordan Kuwait/Saudi Arabia

Union/United Arab Republic Status change/Wadi Halfa Secession/from UAR Exchange of territories Exchange of territories Union after independence Exchange of territories Cession/parts of Shatt-­al-­Arab Western Sahara Cession/Sinai Western Sahara Cession/Taba Union Exchange of territories Cession Status change/Gaza Strip Status change/West Bank Cession/Arava Valley Cession Cession/Sanafir and Tiran Islands

Saudi Arabia/Iraq Iraq Spain Israel Mauritania Israel South Yemen Oman/Yemen Iraq Israel Israel Israel Saudi Arabia Egypt

Note: Based on the Correlates of War [COW] data set and Kacowicz (1994). The table does not include independence from colonial powers and mandates or territorial changes as a result of violence or war. “Gaining party and losing party” are categories from COW, reflecting usually revisionist versus status quo positions.

among regional states themselves, and between them and powerful extraregional actors. Finally, the third liberal component regarding the likelihood of peaceful change is the importance of democracy and democratization. In this context, we critically explore two important factors. One is the prominence of authoritarian regimes in the region, which has only two full-­fledged democracies, Israel (within the 1949–1967 borders) and Tunisia. The second factor is the implications of the democratization attempts that erupted in the Arab world in the 2011, so-called Arab Spring, for regional peaceful change. The third main international relations (IR) approach discussed here is constructivism. In the context of the Middle East, it refers to the important role of competing norms and ideas about regional order and identity in either facilitating or challenging the likelihood of peaceful change. In more concrete terms, three central norms have played a crucial role in the region: pan-­Arabism; state nationalism; and the increasingly relevant role of political Islam both as a powerful domestic source of identity and as a powerful transnational idea leading to challenges to the existing regional order, as exemplified in the al-­Qaeda terrorist attacks, the violent territorial campaign of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in 2014–2017, the Iranian spread of Shi’a from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea, and the transnational reach of the Muslim Brothers (see Barnett 1993; Sela 2019).

706   Arie M. Kacowicz and Galia Press-Barnathan In the following pages we examine the realities of peaceful change in the region. Our analysis is organized according to different levels of analysis rather than theoretical approaches. We first critically examine the impact of the broader global/systemic level analysis on the prospects for peaceful change. We then explore the regional level of analysis, exploring the Kurdish question and the Arab-­Israeli conflict as a central axis of change, the role of the Arab League, and the case of the Gulf Cooperation Council. We then examine the interactive, bilateral level of analysis, exploring peaceful territorial change in the context of the Arab-­Israeli conflict. Next we explore the domestic level of analysis, focusing on domestic politics, the nature of ruling coalitions, and the implications of the domestic turmoil of the Arab Spring in Egypt (2011–2012) and Tunisia (2011–2015). The last section of the chapter draws conclusions from each level of analysis and explores their implications for the prospects of peaceful change in the region.

Great Powers, Global Structures, and Regional Peaceful Change An ongoing debate among IR scholars and regional experts is about the extent to which extraregional great powers or systemic conditions influence regional dynamics (Acharya 2007). The Middle East is no different. Whereas much of the IR literature has viewed regional dynamics as a derivative of global Cold War politics, regional experts have suggested that the impact of extraregional powers is in fact much more limited. When thinking about the role of extraregional great powers in facilitating or preventing peaceful change, several issues need to be discussed: the impact of colonial heritage, the specific function of great powers in pushing for peaceful change in bilateral settings, the impact of broad systemic changes (namely the shift from bipolarity to unipolarity and to multipolarity in the post–Cold War era), and the role of extraregional powers in promoting economic and political developments as a potential mechanism for peaceful change. The modern states of the Arab Middle East emerged from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the post–World War I settlement. In February 1916, the French and the British negotiated the postwar partition of the Ottoman domains, in what came to be known as the Sykes-­Picot Agreement (Rogan 2013, 37–43). Following Sykes-­Picot, the League of Nations granted “mandates” to individual European powers, which allowed Britain and France to control nominally independent states created from territories that previously were part of the Ottoman Empire. The formal boundaries defining the new states—Syria and Lebanon, Iraq, and Palestine—were thus products of postwar great power politics (Tétreault 2000, 130–131). That agreement, and ensuing colonial negotiations on the partition of Arab lands, could be considered colonial and postcolonial projects of peaceful change, framed among the winning great powers in the aftermath of World War I, as new states emerged and borders were drawn and redrawn mostly by peaceful means. Yet these changes were negotiated largely by extraregional powers, with

The Middle East and Peaceful Change   707 local leaders and population having limited ability, if any, to decide their geopolitical futures. The dramatic collapse of the Iraqi army in the face of ISIS military operations nearly a century later, in 2014, provides clear evidence of the fragile nature of the peaceful change that was brought to the region by its former colonial rulers. Despite the ongoing involvement of extraregional powers in the region—first the European colonial powers, the United Kingdom and France until 1956, and then the United States and the Soviet Union (later Russia) through the present—their role was much more dominant in maintaining the status quo than in promoting peaceful change. Miller (1995, 2007) argues that during the Cold War, the Middle East experienced competitive great power involvement that sustained a regional cold war, punctuated by short regional hot wars that the great powers were unable to prevent and were at most able to terminate through successful crisis management (Miller 2007, 224–225). The superpowers actually prolonged the Arab-­Israeli conflict by providing their respective clients with weapons and diplomatic and economic support. By contrast, the end of the Cold War and the transition to a unipolar system gave cause for some optimism regarding the ability of the United States, as the hegemonic power, to bring about a peaceful resolution of the Arab-­Israeli conflict in general and the Israeli-­Palestinian conflict in particular (Miller 2007, 246–255). However, the last twenty years have demonstrated the limitations of the United States in bringing about regional peaceful change, despite ongoing and active US involvement in the negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization between 1996 and 2014 and even the recent cacophony regarding the stillborn Trump plan of January 2020. In the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War of 1973, the growing US influence in the region and its direct involvement in the peace negotiations between Egypt and Israel in 1978–1979 played a paramount role in the successful transition to peace between Egypt and Israel. Beyond the involvement of President Jimmy Carter in the Camp David negotiations of September 1978, the United States provided significant security reassurances to Israel and huge economic benefits to both parties in the form of large annual economic and military aid (Bar-­Siman-­Tov 2000, 224). The United States also played an important role in the signing of the peace treaty following the bilateral negotiations between Jordan and Israel, through the provision of attractive economic incentives, including the signing of the Qualifying Industrial Zone (QIZ) agreement with Jordan and Israel, which allowed joint production from designated industrial zones to enter freely into the US market (Press-­Barnathan 2009, 70–80). In general terms, extraregional powers have played a more significant role in maintaining the status quo in the region or in the prevention or reversal of violent change—as was the case with the US war in Iraq in 1991 following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and with the efforts to help local forces counter the violent territorial campaign of ISIS in Iraq and Syria in 2014–2017—than in bringing about significant changes. When these two goals clashed, preference for regional stability won over the desire to prevent violent domestic changes, as manifested in the reluctance to intervene on a massive scale in the civil wars in Syria and in Yemen in the past decade.

708   Arie M. Kacowicz and Galia Press-Barnathan As an alternative avenue for the promotion of peaceful change, another significant extraregional power, the European Union (EU), has embarked on an ambitious project of promoting domestic economic liberalization across the Middle East through its European-­Mediterranean Partnership (a.k.a., the Barcelona Process, initiated in 1995), which merged into the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) in 2004 (see Attina 2004; Del Sarto and Schumacher 2005; Miller and Mishrif 2005). In a similar vein the United States, in the aftermath of the events of September 11, 2001, embarked on a large project aimed at eventually creating a Middle East Free Trade Area (MEFTA) and began signing bilateral investments agreements (BITs) and trade and investment framework agreements (TIFAs) with individual states across the region (see Lawrence 2006; Momani 2007; Lobell 2008). These strategies, which focus on building the appropriate infrastructure to allow individual states in the region to successfully engage the global economy while promoting regional economic integration, may prove to have a greater impact in the long run on both the motivations and the ability of regional states to peacefully resolve international conflicts (see also Lobell and Ripsman 2016). Yet the results so far have been insufficient, due to the relative weakness of regional institutions, the lack of economic interdependence, and the need for preliminary significant domestic reforms to enable such economic activities.

The Regional Level: Ideas, Institutions, and the Challenges to Peaceful Change Two overarching dynamics have shaped the Arab Middle East over the last decades: competition among Arab states for regional hegemony and the Arab-­Israeli conflict (including the “Palestine question”). Within each, different factors have influenced the likelihood of peaceful and violent changes. These factors include both material and ideational components. We focus here on the nature of regional institutions and the competing organizing principles for the regional order, which are embodied in these institutions. Within the Arab world, the core organization that set as its goal the peaceful management of inter-­Arab relations has been the Arab League (AL). The AL has embodied the contradictory ideas of transnational pan-­Arabism, which declined after the 1970s, and a clear statist-­nationalist approach focusing on the role and interests of the independent Arab states (Sela 1998, 2019). The rise of statist-­nationalist ideas offered greater freedom of action for individual states to pursue and reject national strategies such as peaceful change. The most intractable regional conflicts (the Israeli-­Palestinian and Kurdish questions) reflect a combination of contested boundaries and issues of national identity, which have prevented the ­emergence of an Arab Palestinian state and of an independent Kurdish state. Moreover, the rise of pan-­Islamic ideas, as epitomized by the Islamic revolution in Iran

The Middle East and Peaceful Change   709 in 1979, followed by the proliferation of Sunni Islamic fundamentalism in the form of al-­Qaeda and ISIS, has become a powerful source of violent change and challenge to the status quo in the region (Sela 2019, 118). In the first subsection we refer to the Kurdish conflict as a challenge to regional peaceful change. In the second subsection we address the AL and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the main regional organizations that have played a limited positive role in promoting peaceful change.

The Kurdish Problem as a Regional Challenge to Peaceful Change Like the Palestinians, the Kurds are a stateless nation. They were promised an autonomous territory by the European powers under the Treaty of Sevres following World War I. However, a large slice of “Kurdistan,” the Kirkuk area, was among the first oil-­ producing regions in the Middle East. Because of its oil, the British decided to attach Kirkuk to the mandate in Iraq. As a result, the Kurds, a non-­Arab, non-­Turkic people, were divided among five adjoining states: Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and the former Soviet Union (now part of Azerbaijan). The persistence of Kurdish ethnic enclaves is a function of an isolating mountainous terrain, the authority of tribal leaders over local populations, and internal Kurdish disagreements, as well as tensions between Kurds and the governments of the affected states (Tétreault 2000, 144). Displaying their own national identity, the Kurds have shown strong separatist tendencies in Turkey and Iraq and have been used and manipulated by rival states against their enemies. For instance, Iran’s support under the shah for Iraqi Kurdish separatism engendered bitterness between the two states until 1975, when Iran ended its support for the Kurdish insurgency in return for Iraqi concessions on the Shatt al-­Arab waterway, which they shared. Similarly, Kurdish rebellions during the Iran-­Iraq War led to Saddam Hussein’s murderous razing and gassing of Kurdish villages in March 1988. The US destruction of the Iraqi Baathist central government following the invasion of the country empowered Kurdish autonomy, alarming Turkey, which has been embroiled in chronic conflict with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) insurgency in the country’s southeast (see Hinnebusch 2013, 155). Nowadays, as a resolution of the war in Syria is approaching with the reconsolidation of power by President Bashar al-­Assad and the US decision to withdraw its troops aiding the Kurds, the future of this Kurdish autonomy in Northern Syria remains very fragile, considering Turkish opposition and its preponderant role in the region. In sum, despite the fact that the Kurdish problem has involved several countries, there has been no concerted regional attempt to resolve that issue. This reflects the dominance of status quo statist-­nationalist ideas among all regional states. While many of these states gained their borders through early colonial decisions, they now fiercely guard this status quo against any attempt to change. Consequently, a peaceful change that would carve out a Kurdish state remains unlikely.

710   Arie M. Kacowicz and Galia Press-Barnathan

The Arab League as an Agent of Peaceful Change? Middle Eastern states were pioneers in regionalism. The AL was founded in 1945. It introduced a ‘Westphalian order’ in the Arab Middle East, based on the principle of a decentralized system of equal sovereign states. Like the Latin American and African regional systems, the advent of the Arab system was marked by a strong call for political unity (Sela 1998, 12; 2019, 113–116). However, from the outset this regional organization was weakened by the contradictory quests for legitimacy derived from the competing norms of pan-­Arabic solidarity (kawmiyah) and the promotion of Arab independent states (wataniya), a dual identity that promoted both sovereignty of its member states and Arab unity (Sasson 2017, 103; see also Barnett and Solingen 2007). Moreover, the AL has been unable to progress beyond a very low level of regional integration, as it has grown beyond five closely neighboring states, four of which were strongly Arab nationalist (Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon; the fifth founding member was Jordan) to more than twenty states spread across North Africa and Western Asia, many with vastly different histories, economies, and political cultures (Tétreault 2000, 152). The decline of pan-­Arabism as a dominant discourse following the 1967 war, coupled with the degradation and internal failures of the radical national Arab regimes, gave way to a growing sense of local and national identity, as well as the rise of Islamism, an alternative transnational political ideology (Sela 1998, 13). This decline of the norm of pan-­Arabism was important, as it created an opening for bilateral attempts at peaceful change vis-­à-­vis Israel. Given its relative weakness, the AL did not play a significant role in preventing violent change in the region, as illustrated in the Iran-­Iraq War in the 1980s and the Iraqi-­ Kuwaiti crisis that escalated into the Gulf War of 1991. Yet it managed to contain and mediate some inter-­Arab and intra-­Arab conflicts, such as the 1970–1971 Jordanian-­ Palestinian civil war and the Lebanese civil war, and it provided international legitimacy to the Arab coalition against Iraq in 1991 (Pinfari 2009; Sela 2019, 115). In 2011 the AL went out of its conservative way to ally itself with the internationalization of domestic protests against some Arab regimes, particularly against Libya and Syria (Korany 2013, 94; Wajner 2013). In the case of Libya, the AL provided the official regional legitimation for the enforcement of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) no-­fly-­zone, which was used to justify the US-­European bombing campaign (see Beck 2015; Wajner and Kacowicz 2018). Overall, the AL remained quite marginal vis-­à-­vis the ongoing civil wars in Syria, Libya, and Yemen. At the same time, the role the AL played in hindering or facilitating peaceful change regarding the Arab-­Israeli conflict (see Sela 1998, 349; 2019, 115–116) is worth examining. The central role of this regional organization lies in its ability to express a collective symbolic voice that can, in turn, either raise or reduce the costs of peaceful change attempts vis-­à-­vis Israel. Consequently, the shift to state sovereignty necessitated a parallel proc­ ess of “normalization” of the conflict with Israel (Sela 1998, 341–342). In November 1967, following the Six-­Day War, the AL agreed at Khartoum on the “three nos”: no to negotiations, no to recognition, and no to peace with Israel. Twelve years later, in March 1979, Egypt abandoned the collective norm that rejected any political contacts with

The Middle East and Peaceful Change   711 Israel by signing a separate peace treaty. Egypt was initially expelled from the AL, but in practice, given its regional importance, the implications of the expulsion and the ensuing official boycott were limited, and Egypt under President Hosni Mubarak returned to the organization in November 1987 (Sela 1998; 2019, 116). We can contrast the collective negative statement regarding peaceful change vis-­à-­vis Israel embodied in the 1967 Khartoum summit with the March 2002 Arab summit in Beirut that adopted the so-­called Arab Peace Initiative (API) to peacefully resolve the Arab-­Israeli conflict. The API was presented to Israel at the height of al-­Aqsa Intifada and therefore did not elicit a serious Israeli response. It has actually remained on the Arab agenda since then, regularly reconfirmed by successive Arab summits, but successive Israeli governments have either ignored it or have not recognized it as a viable peace initiative (Podeh 2015, 30). The initiative calls for a full Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied since June 1967 and Israel’s acceptance of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, as well as the resolution of the Palestinian refugee problem, in return for the establishment of normal relations between the Arab states and Israel in the context of a comprehensive peace. Moreover, the plan explicitly states that Israel should withdraw from the Golan Heights. While still setting a very high bar for a peaceful resolution of the Arab-­Israeli conflict, in contrast to the rejectionist “three nos” of the Khartoum summit of 1967, the API offers “three yeses”: yes to peace with Israel, yes to recognizing Israel, and yes to negotiations with Israel. Thus, though the AL has no mechanism to implement its decisions, the API embodies a moral commitment of all Arab states to pursue a peaceful solution to the Arab-­Israeli conflict (Podeh 2015, 317–319). Consequently, it can still play an important role in the legitimation of any major peaceful change agreements with Israel, especially at the regional level.

The Gulf Cooperation Council and Peaceful Change in the Gulf Region The GCC, which was launched in 1981, enjoyed relative success in advancing regional cooperation during its first decade. The GCC includes the six states of the Persian Gulf: Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. In a region divided by competing notions of the relationship between ethnicity, religion, and nationhood, GCC states agreed on a particular conception of ummah (Islamic community) that departed from both the revolutionary Islam of Iran and the secular Arab nationalism of Iraq (see Kupchan 2010, 253–254; Sasson 2017, 104). In the aftermath of the Iranian revolution of 1979, the strategic setting also favored regional cooperation, so security considerations became a major motivation for its members (Priess  1996; Gause 2003; Del Sarto and Schumacher 2005). After its launch in 1981, the GCC was involved in the management of several territorial disputes with limited results, such as that between Qatar and Bahrain over the

712   Arie M. Kacowicz and Galia Press-Barnathan Hawar Islands, which lasted from 1982 to 2001 (see Guzansky 2016; Hassan 2019, 103–106). While the GCC failed to resolve the conflict on its own, it played a positive role in preventing the escalation of the dispute. Early on, GCC members took ambitious steps to respond to the external threat posed by the Iran-­Iraq War in the 1980s, including establishing a joint military force. Some analysts refer to the GCC as an incipient pluralistic security community, with the emergence of a new transnational “Gulf ” (haliji) identity and the peaceful resolution of several territorial conflicts, while others remain very skeptical about that (see Barnett and Gause 1998; Kupchan 2010, 254–255). This skepticism has become mostly apparent with the recent crisis involving Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which erupted in June 2017 in the face of accusations of Qatari support for terrorism, leading to a prolonged boycott of Qatar by its fellow GCC partners, lasted until January 2021. Since its creation, the paramount goals of the GCC have been to maintain the status quo of the ruling authoritarian monarchies in the region and to face the challenging revisionist moves of Iran vis-­à-­vis Saudi Arabia (the GCC leader) and the Gulf region at large. Thus, the outrage against Qatar was in large part linked to its alleged support for Islamist groups and its friendly relations with Iran, the Shiite regional power, which were challenging the ruling regimes in the Gulf. As such, the GCC was not created as a regional organization to bring about peaceful change, but rather to prevent changes, even by violent means. This was most clearly reflected in 2011, following the domestic protests in Bahrain, a small country with a large Shiite population ruled by a Sunni minority, which called for political and social reforms (the Pearl Roundabout uprising). In response, the Bahraini regime invited GCC intervention, and the regional military force, largely a Saudi force, intervened and successfully repressed the uprising (see Kamrava 2011; Khalaf 2013; Hassan 2019).

The Interactive/Bilateral Level: Peaceful Territorial Change in the Arab-­I sraeli Conflict Beyond the regional level, several important attempts have been made at the bilateral level to promote peaceful territorial change in the context of the Arab-­Israeli conflict. The most dramatically successful case was the signing of the Israeli-­Egyptian Peace Treaty on March 26, 1979. Later on, the Jordanian-­Israeli peace agreement of October 23, 1994, formalized a de facto peace between the two countries that had existed since 1967. It also included a territorial dimension of peaceful change, by which Israel returned to Jordan about 340 square kilometers of Jordanian territory occupied since 1967 as part of the skirmishes against the PLO and the Jordanian army, returning to the colonial border set in 1922. Conversely, the Israeli-­Syrian peace negotiations over the future of the Golan Heights continued intermittently between 1991 until 2011 without a breakthrough;

The Middle East and Peaceful Change   713 with the outbreak of the Syrian civil war there are no prospects for peaceful territorial change for the time being (Kurtzer et al  2013, 104; Rabinovich  2013). Similarly, the Israeli-­Palestinian peace process includes both successes and failures. We next discuss in further detail the successful Israeli-­Egyptian case, in contrast to the stagnant, if not moribund, peace process involving Israel and the Palestinians.

Israeli-­Egyptian Negotiations, 1977–1979, and Their Aftermath Some regional changes have more significant regional implications than others. The peace treaty between Israel and Egypt was one such change, as it was the first in which an Arab state officially recognized the legitimate existence of Israel. In terms of facilitating future peaceful changes, the Egyptian move played a crucial role in changing the regional norm of nonrecognition of Israel and consequently created the necessary (though not sufficient) condition for any future peaceful accommodation with Israel. The Egyptian-­Israeli peace negotiations of 1977–1979 led to a successful example of peaceful territorial change in the Arab-­Israeli conflict. Israel wanted to establish formal peace and diplomatic relations with the most important Arab state while removing the possibility of another two-­front war after the trauma of the October War of 1973. Egypt sought to regain its lost territory in Sinai, including some important oil fields (Kacowicz 1996, 219). In 1982 Israel returned to Egypt the Sinai Peninsula, an area about 184 percent its own size. Egypt had to make substantial concessions as well, though not territorial ones. The peace between the two states has remained a “cold peace” over the years, as Egypt insisted that normalization of relations could only occur after the resolution of the Israeli-­Palestinian conflict. However, despite the ongoing Israeli disappointment with the quality of the peace, in practice this treaty has endured over forty years, remaining intact despite multiple challenges, and has witnessed in the last few years a growing level of strategic security cooperation and increased economic cooperation through the QIZ agreement between the two states and the United States, as well as the recent export of gas from Israel to Egypt. The successful, peaceful cession of Sinai was a result of the asymmetrical interests of Egypt and Israel, their degree of cooperation, and strategies of reciprocity, as well as the painstaking bargaining process that took place at Camp David on September 4–17, 1978, with the successful mediation of US president Carter. Sinai was extremely important for Egypt for ideological, political, and symbolic reasons, whereas Israel attributed strategic value to Sinai only as a buffer zone. Unlike the Palestinian-­Israeli conflict, the Egyptian-­Israeli conflict was a territorial and strategic dispute, not an ideological struggle over sovereignty, Jerusalem, and the Palestinian refugees. Moreover, the unique geographical character of Sinai made it an ideal buffer zone between the two countries (Kacowicz 1996, 223). While realist balance-­of-­power arguments cannot explain peaceful change, they can clarify the emergence of the conditions that may be necessary for such change to occur.

714   Arie M. Kacowicz and Galia Press-Barnathan The concept of a “mutually hurting stalemate” (Zartman 2001), which is necessary to generate ripeness between the parties to make a risky and costly move toward peaceful change, is directly linked to such power realities and the inability to achieve violent change at an acceptable price. In this case, peaceful change only came after several bloody wars attempting to bring about violent change, including the 1948–1949 war, the Sinai/Suez war of October 1956, the 1967 Six-­Day War, the Attrition War of 1969/1970, and finally the 1973 Yom Kippur/October War. Those wars generated the realization in Egypt that using force was not a viable option. The dire economic conditions after the 1973 war also raised concerns about the stability of the regime itself (see Shamir 1978, 125; Barnett 1992, 128–152; Press-­Barnathan 2009, 36–38). While the problem was less existential, in Israel the trauma of the 1973 war, and the growing reluctance of Israeli society to carry the burden of high taxes, also created a greater sensitivity to the costs of continued conflict (Barnett 1992, 185–209). Moreover, the history of Egyptian-­Israeli relations since Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem suggests a dynamic interaction between political and economic logics. The relative importance of political and economic considerations has changed over time. The initial logic behind the peace treaty was economic for the Egyptian regime but largely political for the Israeli government. Once the treaty was signed, however, the political logic became dominant on the Egyptian side, with economic normalization directly linked to political progress on the Palestinian front. At the same time, on the Israeli side, greater attention was given to the economic component, since Israelis believed that only economic interaction could give substance and hence credibility in the long run to the treaty signed in 1979 (Press-­Barnathan 2009, 55–56).

Israeli-­Palestinian Negotiations, 1993 to the Present While there are other cases of failures of peaceful change, the Israeli-­Palestinian dyad is of special importance due to its wide impact (real or perceived) on inter-­Arab relations and relations of individual Arab countries with Israel. Compared with the other interstate dyads of the Arab-­Israeli conflict, the case of the West Bank and Gaza is sui generis. Since Jordan formally relinquished its territorial claims over the West Bank to the PLO in 1988, the fate of the occupied territories was not part of the Israeli-­Jordanian Peace Treaty of October 1994. When the PLO, and since 1994 the Palestinian Authority (the PA), are introduced into the equation, the territorial conflict between Israelis and Palestinians can be classified as a peculiar case of secession, decolonization, or quest for independence. The Palestinians want to establish a sovereign state in the West Bank and Gaza on the basis of self-­determination, though they never had a state before the Israeli (1967–) or the Jordanian/Egyptian (1949–1967) occupation of these territories. Following the Oslo Agreements between Israel and the PLO, which included the Declaration of Principles of September 1993, the Cairo Agreement of March 1994, and the Interim Agreement of September 1995, the territorial status of the Gaza Strip and of

The Middle East and Peaceful Change   715 parts of the West Bank has indeed changed, so there has been a significant process of peaceful territorial change. These agreements established a Palestinian interim self-­ government in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip that was supposed to last for a transitional period of up to five years, though it has lasted for twenty-­six years so far. This case clearly illustrates the importance of adopting different time perspectives, as these interim agreements of peaceful change, as well as the failure of negotiations at Camp David (July 2000) and Taba (January 2001), eventually led to a relapse into violence, as embodied in the lethal second intifada of 2000–2005, and the collapse of any significant political negotiations since 2014. The Israeli-­PLO negotiations, completely stalled if not moribund nowadays, did not lead to a whole territorial cession but rather to a change in the legal status of territories and a sharing of sovereign attributes in the West Bank, with Palestinians having limited autonomy over 40 percent of the territory. A peaceful resolution of the Israeli-­Palestinian conflict remains highly unlikely in those disputed territories until an adequate resolution of the sovereignty issue, which does not seem feasible in the foreseeable future. Furthermore, this case demonstrates that failed attempts at peaceful change might backfire and lead to greater violence, like the second intifada in the aftermath of the Camp David summit of July 2000, due to growing frustration and failed expectations (see Kacowicz 2005; Dowty 2012, 256–266). The failed attempts over the years of US and European mediators to bring about a breakthrough in the Israeli-­Palestinian dispute clearly illustrate the limitations of extraregional involvement in bringing about regional peaceful change, if the parties are reluctant to move in the direction of peace. Furthermore, any comparison to the peaceful changes between Israel and Egypt and Jordan also points to the problematic challenges of a peaceful settlement between a state and a nonstate actor (see Barak 2005). In the Israeli-­Palestinian case, there are also transcendental and nonmaterial issues—such as the future of Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees—beyond the territorial issue.

Domestic Political Changes and Regional Peaceful Change What role do domestic factors play in enabling or frustrating attempts at peaceful change? Several factors seem relevant here: the nature of the ruling coalition, the authoritarian regimes, and the impact of democratization processes across the region in what came to be known as the “Arab Spring” beginning in 2011. Solingen (1998) has argued that the existence of economic-­liberalizing coalitions is likely to facilitate attempts to resolve regional conflicts in order to free up resources for economic development and attract foreign investment. In the context of the Middle East, Solingen asserts that the emergence of liberalizing coalitions in Israel and its neighbors in the early 1990s played

716   Arie M. Kacowicz and Galia Press-Barnathan an important role in the attempts to promote conflict resolution at the time. More broadly, Solingen suggests that the relative inability of the Middle East to become a zone of peace stems from the political survival models adopted by many regional leaders relying on inward-­looking self-­sufficiency, state and military entrepreneurship, and nationalism (Solingen 2007). A second domestic factor often associated with the likelihood of peace is regime type and especially the role of democracy. The obvious reference to the democratic peace theory is of little relevance here, given that the theory explores the impact of shared democracy across a dyad, and no such dyads currently exist in the region, perhaps with the partial exception of Israel and Lebanon (considered a semidemocratic regime). The political popularity of democratic peace theory has influenced the foreign policies of the United States and the EU in favor of regional democratization, as was evident in US discourse after the war in Iraq, as well as in President Barack Obama’s Cairo speech in June 4, 2009. However, a process of democratization in the Arab Middle East does not necessarily translate into growing support for peaceful change vis-­à-­vis Israel, but rather the opposite, as was evident in the attempts at political liberalization within Jordan in the mid-­1990s or the free elections in Egypt in 2011. While scholars often lament the authoritarian nature of most Arab governments and its negative implications, the ­historical experience in the region suggests that stable regimes may be more important than democratic ones for initiating moves toward peaceful change. This paradoxical observation challenges liberal assumptions about peace, underlining the negative role of authoritarian regimes in repressing domestic opposition while promoting unpopular peace moves. This issue emerged most dramatically in the context of the wave of mass protests that swept across the Arab world beginning at the end of 2010, calling for greater democratization. In Tunisia and Egypt, the military refused to suppress popular protests, and rulers were ousted with relatively little violence, although in Egypt a military coup occurred in 2013 and was followed by massive repression by the army (see Barak and Miodownik 2019, 2). Yet the relative ability of some Arab states to undergo a domestic process of peaceful change should be emphasized. Egypt experienced a relatively peaceful revolution that deposed Mubarak in 2011, bringing about the free election of Mohamed Morsi in 2012, who was later deposed in the coup of 2013. Tunisia, where the initial protests started in 2010, went through five years of instability and domestic violence, though in 2015 it became the first Arab state to be judged fully “free” by Freedom House. It remains unclear, however, whether these domestic changes influence the likelihood of international peaceful change. Since the domestic democratization processes involve a significant growth in the political power of Islamist parties, they are unlikely to support peaceful change with Israel (see Solingen 1998, 195; Kurtzer et al. 2013, 270–271). Similarly, public surveys in several Arab states suggest that while there is high support for democracy, this is not at all translated into a more accommodating view toward Israel (see Khatib 2018). Thus, any simplistic association of democratization and ­support for peaceful international change should be avoided.

The Middle East and Peaceful Change   717

Conclusions This review of the dynamics and prospects for peaceful change is far from comprehensive. Yet several conclusions can be derived. First, when discussing regional peaceful change, we should refer to its international context. External changes in global politics can raise the costs of continued violence at the regional level, thus facilitating a shift to peaceful change. External changes can also change the willingness of extraregional great powers to engage the region and invest material and political resources, as in the US attempts to mediate peaceful change efforts in the Arab-­Israeli conflict, especially in the post–Cold War era. Yet external involvement in the Middle East has been more effective in conflict management than in bringing about peaceful change, with the exception of the paramount role played by the United States in the Egyptian-­Israeli peace negotiations of 1978–1979. Second, at the regional level, the two Arab regional organizations—the AL and the GCC, played a role, often limited, in maintaining the status quo and even promoting peaceful change in the Middle East. The AL diametrically changed its position vis-­à-­vis the Arab-­Israeli conflict between 1967 and 2002, following the successful instances of peaceful change involving Egypt and Jordan and despite the failure of the Syrian-­Israeli negotiations and the deep stagnation in the Israeli-­Palestinian track. Nowadays, the Iranian challenge to the regional order, alongside the transnational Islamic disruptive activities of ISIS, have brought about an informal rapprochement between Sunni countries and Israel. This rapprochement to maintain the status quo against Iran in the region, however, is likely to remain partial until the peaceful resolution of the Israeli-­Palestinian conflict. Third, this chapter demonstrates the paramount role of constructivism—namely, the role played by ideas, identity, and norms in influencing the likelihood of peaceful change at both the regional and bilateral levels. Shared regional ideas and norms have been institutionalized through regional institutions in the Middle East, impacting the effectiveness and legitimacy of institutions and state actors in promoting peaceful change at the international, regional, bilateral, and domestic levels. The AL, though weak from a neoliberal institutional perspective, still plays an important role in providing legitimacy for contentious moves like peaceful change with Israel. Fourth, the domestic political context is also important to understanding the possibility of peaceful territorial change in international relations, raising several questions of political and normative relevance. For instance, the Egyptian and Jordanian peace agreements with Israel became possible because these two Arab countries sustained authoritarian rather than democratic regimes. Thus, the peace treaties were signed against the will of most of their citizens. Hence, a successful democratization process will not necessarily promote peaceful cooperation with Israel. A normative dilemma in the region (and for extraregional actors with an interest in the Middle East, like the United States and the EU) remains whether to give preference to promoting democratic

718   Arie M. Kacowicz and Galia Press-Barnathan change, which risks violence, or to fostering stability and maintaining the status quo. In the Middle East, the correlation between democracy and peace may not mean that democracy causes peace, but that peace causes, or facilitates, democracy—at least when other conditions are right (Mueller 2011, 147, 154). Thus, any normative discussion of peaceful change in the Middle East should be critically examined. Finally, in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, we have witnessed a resurgence of great power politics being played out in the region, by both regional and extraregional powers. For instance, the growing Russian involvement in the Syrian civil war, alongside Iran and Turkey, has created new alignments and potential conflicts with the United States and Israel. Under these complex circumstances, given the revisionist intentions of Iran, the relative weakness of regional institutions, and the domestic vulnerabilities of many states in the region, the prospects for peaceful change remain tenuous.

Acknowledgments We would like to thank Oren Barak and Daniel F. Wajner for their comments and suggestions, as well as those of Harold Trinkunas and Deborah Larson.

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Chapter 39

Ex pl a i n i ng Peacefu l Ch a nge i n Cen tr a l a n d Easter n Eu rope Alexander Tabachnik and Benjamin Miller

Some countries in Central and Eastern Europe transformed into relatively stable democracies following the demise of the Communist regimes. On the whole, this dramatic change took place peacefully. These countries notably include Poland, Hungary, and the Baltic States. Czechoslovakia, for its part, dissolved peacefully into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. All the countries that have undergone peaceful change have enjoyed considerable levels of stateness (state strength or capacity). At the same time, in seemingly similar conditions, change in a number of East European and Balkan countries was accompanied by violent ethnonational clashes. The former Yugoslavia experienced a number of highly violent ethnonational wars, as did a number of former Soviet Republics: the Nagorno-­Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan; the Georgian-­Abkhazian and Georgian-­South Ossetian wars in Georgia; and the Transnistrian conflict in Moldova. These confrontations resulted from the emergence of separatist and irredentist groups and of private military formations that acted as independent units. How can we explain such major variations in key political changes: in some cases peaceful, while in others—even if in the same neighborhood—violent? We argue that such variations in the peacefulness (or in the levels of violence) of change can be explained by the state-­to-­nation (S/N) balance theory,1 namely, that peaceful change is the result of state strength of countries in transition and the congruence between the division of a given region into territorial states and the nationalist aspirations and identities of the various peoples in that region (the S/N balance). Incongruent and strong states also tend to undergo a peaceful change, especially when they are not endangered by competitive intervention of great powers. At the same time, violent change could be explained by the S/N imbalance: large-­scale violence is likely to

722   Alexander Tabachnik and Benjamin Miller result from a severe incongruence between the division of a given region into territorial states and the nationalist aspirations and identities of the various peoples in that region magnified by the state weakness of involved countries. The probability for violent change is higher when, together with the S/N imbalance, there is also a competitive intervention of great powers or their disengagement from the region. The theory highlights two key independent variables: the level of national congruence and the level of stateness in the region. A key intervening variable is great power intervention, which can stabilize or destabilize regional conflicts, partly depending on the level and scope of the S/N balance in the region and to what extent—and how—the great power addresses the regional imbalance. For the explanation of the phenomenon under investigation, we examine in-­depth the peaceful transition of Czechoslovakia following the collapse of the Eastern bloc. This peaceful change is contrasted with the violent change in the former Yugoslavia. Moreover, we analyze how the type of great power engagement influenced transformations in the Balkans, Central Europe, and Eastern Europe. Finally, we provide a brief analysis of the nine additional post-­Soviet Republics.

Realist Explanation for Peaceful Change and Its Limitations According to realists, peaceful change in the late 1980s and earlier 1990s could be explained by the rapid entrance of Central and East European countries (including the Baltic countries) into the Western sphere of influence under American leadership. Such change took place following the Soviet demise and in a context of Russian weakness. The S/N theory has some important similarities to realist theory, especially regarding the influence of great powers. However, there are also some differences. Realist theory focuses primarily on the material international systemic incentives for great power intervention, while accepting the S/N issues as exogenous factors, mostly of secondary significance. The S/N theory analyzes regional developments differently; it accepts the realist architecture as exogenous (more precisely as an intervening variable), while the S/N issues are the core factors that influence key regional developments. Realists highlight the destabilizing influence of great power security concerns under anarchy. Particularly destabilizing is the security threat posed by a great power penetration into the sphere of another power. Thus, realists explain the instability and wars in the post-­Soviet sphere by the destabilizing effects of great power competition. In this way, a recent leading realist’s account of the Ukraine crisis, for example, explains Russian behavior as a security-­motivated defensive response to post–Cold War Western expansion into Russia’s backyard, as manifested by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and European Union (EU) enlargement in Eastern Europe and the post-­Soviet Republics, notably Ukraine (Mearsheimer 2014).

Explaining Peaceful Change in Central and Eastern Europe   723 Similar to realism, the S/N theory accepts the importance of great power security concerns. However, it also accepts the potentially key role played in conflict initiation by non-­great power actors and by non-­security motivations. These actors include small and weak states, including failed ones and violent nonstate actors. Other factors analyzed by the S/N theory are transborder ethnonational groups, which transcend international boundaries, and non-­security motivations, which include domestic politics and ideology, especially nationalism. Some realists might recognize nationalism’s power, but they see it as an instrument that the state uses in its competition with other states, for example, to motivate people to go to war against the state’s rivals (Posen 1993, 80–124; Mearsheimer 2001, 365). In contrast, the S/N theory proposes that under an S/N imbalance, nationalism is a force that may be independent of the state and may even challenge it.

The Theoretical Framework: The State-­t o-­Nation Balance According to the S/N balance theory, the combined effect of the two variables that constitute the balance—state strength (the degree of success of state-­building) and national congruence (the congruence between political boundaries and nationalist identifications in a particular state)—provides a compelling explanation of variations in the war- and peace-­propensity of states and regions. Thus, the theory specifies the conditions for peaceful change (Tilly 1975; Mann 1993; Miller 2012). While this combined effect is the most important, an additional factor can mitigate or aggravate these effects: great power intervention in the region. Great powers can stabilize or destabilize regional conflicts and processes of change, but they cannot resolve the core regional problems of state-­building and nation-­building in the postcolonial age (Miller 2007, 2015). We introduce four values of the independent variable, as states can be strong and congruent as well as weak and incongruent. States can be weak and nationally congruent, for example, many South American states in the nineteenth century. Additionally, states may possess strong security apparatuses and institutions but can be nationally incongruent, like contemporary China or Iraq under Saddam Hussein (Miller 2007, chs. 4, 7).

The Extent of State Strength (or the Success of State-­Building) and the Degree of Congruence (or the Extent of Successful Nation-­Building) In a strong state, the central government is the single power center, which possesses and implements an exclusive monopoly over the use of force, tax collection, legislation, and

724   Alexander Tabachnik and Benjamin Miller effective law-­enforcement systems over the entire sovereign territory of the state. On the other hand, in a weak state, the central government lacks effective institutions and resources to implement its policies and to fulfill key functions, such as control over the means of violence in its sovereign territory. The degree of congruence refers to the level of compatibility between the states’ political borders and the national identities of the people in these states—that is, the legitimacy of the states’ borders. Therefore, the degree of congruence defines to what extent the current political borders of a certain state reflect the national affiliations of the main groups in that state and their aspirations to revise the existing border or even establish their own state. Congruent states are characterized by ethnic homogeneity or by strong civic nationalism. On the other hand, states can be incongruent in two primary senses:

1. A number of ethnonational groups may reside in a particular state. This condition defines the internal dimension of incongruence and produces a higher probability of civil wars, especially in weak states. 2. The same ethnonational group may reside in more than one state; this is the external dimension of incongruence. It may have major implications for ­revisionist policies (Miller 2012).

The State-­to-­Nation Imbalance and the War-­Propensity of States The S/N imbalance affects both the willingness to use force and the capacity to do so. External incongruence may influence motivations for interstate wars, inspired by nationalist revisionist ideologies such as irredentism and wars of national unification. At the same time, the level of domestic incongruence influences the motivation for intrastate wars of secession. The level of state capacity, for its part, influences the capability of states to conduct interstate wars and the creation of opportunities for the outbreak of civil wars and for foreign intervention in other states. However, the level of state strength of internally incongruent states affects the opportunities of a strong revisionist state to initiate civil wars or conduct interventions in the territory of a potential victim state. When the potential victim state possesses a strong institutional framework, an intervention of a strong revisionist state becomes less feasible and effective, especially by hybrid methods. The first proposition: Regions with nationally congruent and strong states will be  characterized by peaceful change. Also, incongruent, but strong, states tend to undergo a peaceful change under the condition that there is no competitive intervention of great powers. The second proposition: Weak and internally incongruent states motivate intrastate wars of secession and provide a tempting or ‘inviting’ target for an intervention by a

Explaining Peaceful Change in Central and Eastern Europe   725 neighboring strong state, which can manipulate internal incongruence inside its weak neighbor to advance its own strategic interests in the region. Therefore, in such states a change is expected to be violent.

Types of Great Power Regional Relations: The Intervening Variable The balance of great power interests in a particular region, in combination with their relative capabilities in this region define the patterns of their regional relations. Therefore, one can distinguish four major types of great power relations in regions: dominance, disengagement, competition, and cooperation. A situation in which several great powers are involved in a particular region can be defined as competition or cooperation. Under the conditions of disengagement, none of the great powers are involved in the particular region. A situation in which one of the great powers possesses superior capabilities and has high interests in relation to a particular region can be defined as dominance. The type of great power relations in a particular region has the following effect on regional war-­propensity: The third proposition: Great power competition or disengagement under a regional S/N imbalance causes a regional cold war interrupted by hot wars. Under the conditions of great power disengagement from a particular region, the regional states will be independent of the influence of great powers. Thus, the outcome of the regional conflict will depend on the resources and motivations of the regional states. Similarly, great power competition further aggravates regional conflict between local antagonists by providing support to their local clients. The fourth proposition: Great power cooperation or hegemony under a regional S/N imbalance mitigates regional conflicts and brings about cold peace. In the following section, we test these propositions in the East/Central European case studies.

Peaceful Change in Czechoslovakia versus Civil War in the Former Yugoslavia The rise of Gorbachev in the USSR in 1985 and the subsequent policy of Glasnost’(openness) and Perestroika (restructuring) changed Soviet foreign policy, notably by weakening the Soviet grip over Central and East European countries. Consequently, “[I]n October 1989, at a meeting of Warsaw Pact Ministers of Foreign

726   Alexander Tabachnik and Benjamin Miller Affairs held in Poland, the ‘Brezhnev Doctrine,’ permitting military intervention by the USSR in any member state, was formally removed.” These developments played a crucial role in unleashing a democratization process in Central and Eastern Europe, anticipating demolition of the pro-­Soviet regimes following the removal of Soviet support. At the same time, without Soviet support, the local regimes could not withstand the pressure of rising democratic movements (Kirkpatrick 1989; Lee 2001, 99–100; Kolesnikov 2018). In parallel to the Soviet retreat, the United States and Western European countries increased their involvement in the region through the promotion of human rights and support for local democratic movements. The Reagan administration was especially active in this process. Around 1989, Central European countries gradually moved from the Soviet to the “Western,” and particularly American, sphere of influence (Lee 2001, 100). Overall, the process of democratization in the region took place due to internal processes in Central European countries, although Soviet dominance was a key factor that had prevented earlier development of these processes (Kopecký 2001, 320).

Czechoslovakia “When it became clear in 1989 that Soviet sponsorship of the communist regime had been withdrawn, mass demonstrations in Prague and elsewhere persuaded the regime to negotiate a comprehensive and immediate transfer of power to the leaders of Civic Forum” (Dryzek and Templeman-­Holmes  2004b, 241). The democratic opposition Civic Forum (OF) was established in Czech lands and Public against Violence (VPN) in Slovakia. Both organizations encompassed a wide range of groups, many of whom had emerged in the preceding decades. Thus, toward the end of 1989 the Communist government started to surrender its monopoly of power to the OF and VPN as representatives of the civil society. Eventually, on December 29, 1989, Václav Havel—a common candidate of the OF and VPN—was elected president of Czechoslovakia by the Federal Assembly, thus completing the peaceful “Velvet Revolution” (Kopecký 2001, 320–322). Three years later, at the end of 1992, the federal parliament legislated the dissolution of Czechoslovakia. Like the “Velvet Revolution,” the divorce between Czechia and Slovakia was peaceful due to clear dividing ethnic lines between the two parts of Czechoslovakia and absence of disputed territories (Dryzek and Templeman-­Holmes 2004a, b, 173, 241). Thus, “on 25 November 1992 the Federal Assembly voted to put an end to the seventy-­ eight-­year-­old Czechoslovak state” (Kopecký 2001, 331–332). Eventually, on January 1, 1993, independent Czech and Slovak states were peacefully established (Auer 2004, 95). The peaceful dissolution was possible due to a number of factors. In Czechia lived only a limited number of ethnic Slovaks, about 3 percent of the population of the Czech Republic,2 who also were not characterized by ethno-­geographic concentration.3 At the same time, ethnic Czechs comprised only 1 percent of the population of the Slovak Republic.4 Overall, at the time of dissolution, Czechia was an ethnically homogeneous republic. Moreover, Czechia was characterized by a high level of economic development, a strong central government, a deep historical democratic legacy, and proximity

Explaining Peaceful Change in Central and Eastern Europe   727 to the West. These factors contributed to the consolidation of constitutional democracy, effective economic reforms, and development (Dryzek and Templeman-­Holmes 2004a, b, 204, 242, 251–252). Furthermore, the dissolution was facilitated by the features of the federal structures. According to the 1968 Constitution, Slovakia and Czechia were two autonomous administrative-­territorial units, “with republican assemblies, councils and governments. The federal government was responsible for foreign policy, defense, federal legislation and currency.” Moreover, each republic acquired a relatively high degree of autonomy to run its affairs within its jurisdiction. Education and cultural affairs in particular were exclusively the republic’s domain (Kopecký 2001, 326–327; Macek-­Mackova 2011, 619). This strengthened the local authorities of the republics.

Democratic Transition and Nationalism in Czechoslovakia The democratic transition stimulated the resort to ethnic identification, especially among Slovaks, and consequently aspirations for independence, especially among elite groups (Macek-­Mackova 2011, 616, 621–622). Over preceding the decades some portions of Slovak society, especially elites, had already been striving for greater autonomy within Czechoslovakia, or even complete independence (Dryzek and Templeman-­ Holmes 2004a, 174a). Furthermore, the rise of nationalism and separatism following the collapse of the pro-­Soviet system was facilitated by the federal system, which institutionalized ethnicity through formal recognition of ethnic differences between the republics and the building of separate republican political structures. The temporal economic hardship following the transition from the socialist to capitalist system also provided incentives to the elites, especially in Slovakia, to use nationalism as a tool of legitimation. However, ethnic nationalism, which could have caused ethnonational conflict between the Czechs and Slovaks, remained at relatively low levels in both republics, especially in Czechia (Spencer and Wollman 1997, 178–179). Overall, the separation between the republics was driven by elites, not by nationalist masses (Dryzek and Templeman-­Holmes 2004a, 175a). It is noteworthy that the Slovak leaders perceived Prague’s economic assistance as a type of colonialism, while Czech leaders claimed that they funded Slovak development (Macek-­Mackova 2011, 626). Furthermore, the separation was facilitated by the different interests and goals of the Czech and Slovak elite groups. The Czech government of Václav Klaus strived to accelerate market-­liberal reforms, privatization, and movement toward a market economy, while the Slovak government of Vladimír Meciar was more statist and nationalist. These differences between the Czech and Slovak governments undermined reformist efforts of the Czech side and paralyzed the federal structures, which were de facto dependent (at this stage) on the policy of the republican structures. Moreover, the disintegration of the civic-­society movement VPN in 1991, and the subsequent formation of Vladimir Meciar’s Movement for Democratic Slovakia (HZDS),

728   Alexander Tabachnik and Benjamin Miller increased the influence of ethnic nationalism in Slovak politics. Consequently, the separation of the two republics suited the agendas of both prime ministers and their parties (Kopecký 2001, 329–330; Dryzek and Templeman-­Holmes 2004a, b, 174–175, 241; Macek-­Mackova 2011, 620, 622–623). At the same time, a potential conflict between the two sides was mitigated by the interest of both Czechs and Slovaks in a rapprochement with the EU and the United States, and in the strengthening of Western influence in the region (Macek-­ Mackova 2011, 626). Moreover, following the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, Slovakia and especially Czechia developed into stable liberal democratic countries, while demonstrating significant socioeconomic development (Auer 2004, 96; Dryzek and Templeman-­Holmes 2004a, 178). All this was made possible, particularly the peacefulness of the change and dissolution of Czechoslovakia, by the two key attributes of its components: both Czechia and Slovakia were congruent and strong republics, without mutual ethno-­territorial claims (Hyde-­Price  1996; Kuklik and Petras  2017). Notably, peaceful democratization was made possible by the absence of national minorities who aspired to secede. The key element in a democracy—the peaceful transfer of power—might have been made more difficult if it had involved national minorities who were not widely accepted as part of the nation or the ‘people.’ Irredentist claims are less likely to emerge in the absence of large groups of members of the nation who live beyond state borders, in neighboring states. Considerable levels of state capacity, for their part, reduce the likelihood of large-­scale violence and make possible peaceful democratization.

Yugoslavia In contrast, Yugoslavia is an example of violent change. The disintegration of Yugoslavia and the subsequent civil wars, especially in Bosnia and Herzegovina, became the bloodiest conflict in Europe after the Second World War. The S/N theory would expect a violent transition process, considering that Yugoslavia was a highly incongruent and structurally weak state, like most of the republics that composed the federation—notably Bosnia and Herzegovina with their Serbian, Muslim, and Croatian minorities. After the formation of Yugoslavia in 1945, the stability of the federal system was maintained mostly by the dominant role of the local Communist Party under the leadership of Marshal Tito (Josip Broz) and his personal authority. Yet the Yugoslav Communist Party lacked any democratic or effective institutions that could independently maintain the system (Slack and Doyon 2001, 142). In 1971 Tito initiated reforms directed at decentralizing the central republican power. In 1974 he enacted a new constitution, and Yugoslavia was turned into a de facto confederation of six republics. Moreover, every federal unit, including the autonomous provinces of Serbia—Kosovo and Vojvodina—could impose a veto power on any decision accepted on the Yugoslavian federal level (Hodson, Sekulic, and Massey  1994, 1540; Slack and Doyon 2001, 142).

Explaining Peaceful Change in Central and Eastern Europe   729 Policies of decentralization produced a fragmented political structure with eight de  facto independent Communist parties (including the autonomous provinces of Serbia), each formally having monopoly over its own territory and the ability to impose a veto on federal decisions. After Tito’s death in 1980, the central Yugoslavian Communist Party gradually lost its ability to effectively control and balance the ­centrifugal forces unleashed by the decentralization policy under Tito’s leadership. Moreover, the situation in Yugoslavia was aggravated by the economic crisis that started in the 1970s and significantly deepened during the 1980s (Hodson, Sekulic, and Massey 1994, 1541). Furthermore, from the early 1980s the republics de facto controlled the composition of the federal presidency, enjoyed a significant level of economic sovereignty, and even engaged in trade wars at the republican level. The efforts of the federal center to restore its control over the Yugoslavian economy in order to deal with the economic crisis and operate according to the International Monetary Fund stabilization program failed. “As early as 1986, in fact, federal fiscal sovereignty was emasculated by delinking the federal and republican budgets, following republican claims to resources on their own territory and the withholding of contributions to the federal budget” (Skalnik-­ Leff 1999, 225). Eventually, in January 1990, the Yugoslavian Communist Party created by Tito ceased to exist as a result of a split at the party congress and the departure of the Slovenian representatives. In the same year, Yugoslavia had its first democratic elections. The two most anti-­Yugoslav republics, Slovenia and Croatia, were first to vote. Toward the end of the year, the vote took place in the rest of the four republics, including Serbia (Skalnik-­ Leff 1999, 218; Zimmermann 1995, 6). As a result, during the period of multiple transitions in 1990, the federal center finally lost its ability to coordinate a policy of state maintenance. This significantly strengthened the struggle between the republics, which addressed the issues at stake among themselves bilaterally, because the framework of federal coordination was paralyzed (Skalnik-­Leff 1999, 225–226). The erosion of central power was absolutely evident and predated the dissolution of Yugoslavia, and later the civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The loss of control over the monopoly on the legitimate means of coercive force and revenue extraction capacity was the central issue in the dissolution of Yugoslavia in the final stages (Skalnik-­ Leff 1999, 223–224). Similarly, after the 1990 parliamentary election in Bosnia, when members of the major ethnic groups supported exclusively (as in other republics) their ethnic parties (Zimmermann  1995), the Bosnian authorities lost control over revenue extraction and the monopoly over legitimate coercive power. Consequently, already in 1991, independent centers of power were established in Bosnia: Serbian, Muslim, and Croatian. In late June 1991, Slovenia and Croatia declared independence (Zimmermann 1995, 12). In March 1992, Bosnia and Herzegovina proclaimed independence following a referendum, which was boycotted by the Serbian minority. Furthermore, in March 1992 the Bosnian Serbs proclaimed their own independent Serbian Republic: Republika Srpska (Zimmermann 1995, 18). Consequently, in April 1992 the Bosnian War started between

730   Alexander Tabachnik and Benjamin Miller the Bosnian Serbs, who had established the Republika Srpska, and the Bosnian Muslims and Croats, who supported the formation of an independent Bosnia and Herzegovina, resulting in more than 100,000 casualties (Smajlovic 1995). As we explain later in the chapter, the extremely violent change and disintegration process resulted from the combination of state weakness and a very low level of national congruence in the former Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia was characterized by ethnonational and religious heterogeneity. In 1981 the Serbs comprised about 36.3 percent of the Yugoslav population of nearly 23 million people. The majority of the Serbs, about 59.8 percent, lived in Serbia (without Kosovo and Vojvodina); an additional 16.2 percent lived in Bosnia, and about 6.5 percent lived in Croatia. Additionally, 16.2 percent of Serbs lived in the Serbian autonomous provinces of Vojvodina (13.6 percent) and Kosovo (2.6 percent). Further, in Yugoslavia lived about 1.3 million Muslims (Bosniaks); about 1.7 million Slovenes, who lived entirely in Slovenia (97.7 percent of all Slovenes in Yugoslavia); about 4.5 million Croatians; 1.3 million Albanians; and about 1.2 million Macedonians, who were concentrated in Macedonia (more than 95 percent of all Macedonians) (Hodson, Sekulic and Massey 1994; 1543). At the same time, Yugoslavia had failed to develop a unifying ideology or civic nationalism. The dominant identity in the former Yugoslavia at the end of the 1980s and in the early 1990s, during the time of the collapse of the state’s and the Communist Party’s institutions, was ethnic identity (Flere 1991, 193). Bosnia and Herzegovina could be especially defined as an internally incongruent republic. In 1991, the population of Bosnia and Herzegovina was about 4.3 million people, 44 percent of whom were Bosnian Muslims, 31 percent ethnic Serbs, and about 17 percent ethnic Croats (Smajlovic  1995, 103). The ethnic Serbs rejected the independence of Bosnia from Yugoslavia. From the point of view of the Serbian population inside Bosnia and outside of it, Bosnia was an illegal formation that pretended to control the Serbian lands and part of the Serbian population. Moreover, an independent Bosnia under Muslim domination was perceived as a threat to the physical security of the Serbian population and to Serbian culture and identity, which had existed in Bosnia for more than a thousand years. Thus Serbs considered the territories they populated in Bosnia as exclusively their own ethnic territory, an inseparable part of their history and identity (Flere 1991, 192). Consequently, the borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina were perceived by the Serbian population as illegitimate. Furthermore, the existence of the autonomous provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina, which formed parts of the republic of Serbia, was also defined as illegitimate by Serbs (Flere  1991, 190). Slobodan Milosevic exploited the situation in Kosovo in order to strengthen his position in Serbia, while Serbian ethnic nationalism was used as the major tool for mobilization under the slogan of “reunifying” Serbia (Sekulic 1992, 125). Moreover, the demise of communism and a process of democratization caused the rise of ethnonationalism as a new source of legitimacy by the local elites in the various republics seeking greater independence from the federal center (Flere 1991, 192; Skalnik-­ Leff 1999, 220). Consequently, Croatians, Slovenians, Kosovars, and Macedonians also perceived the Yugoslav intrastate borders as illegitimate.

Explaining Peaceful Change in Central and Eastern Europe   731

Great Powers’ Influence and the Conflict-­P eace Continuum in Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and the Baltic States In Poland, Czechia, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Baltic States, the EU and NATO expansions facilitated peaceful change, economic reforms, and democracy building (Saydak 1998; Wiarda 2002). Despite the accession of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary into NATO only in 1999 and Slovakia, Slovenia, the Baltic States, Romania, and Bulgaria in 2004, and all of them into the EU only in 2004 (Romania and Bulgaria in 2007), by moving toward Western-­style ideas of democracy and free markets, these countries had already joined the West ideologically by the end of 19895 (EUR-­Lex 2007; NATO 2009; Braithwaite 2016). This was so even though the Warsaw Pact continued to exist until July 1, 1991. The starting point of this process was the abolishment of the Brezhnev Doctrine, when the Soviet leadership revoked its policy of intervention in the countries of the Soviet bloc in case of a threat to socialist rule (Ouimet 2003). Thus, in 1989 Soviet hegemony in Central Europe was replaced in a short time by Western hegemony. The same process took place in the Baltic States, with a delay of two years. The Baltic States reestablished their independence informally following the failed antidemocratic coup in Moscow on August 19–21, 1991. Formally, the Soviet Union recognized the independence of Estonia and Latvia in September 1991. Finally, on September 17, 1991, the three Baltic States were admitted into the United Nations. Toward the end of 1991, the three Baltic States moved to the Western camp by also adopting Western ideas about regime and economic system (Lieven 1993; Kramer 2012). The early entrance of the Central European countries into the Western camp facilitated the transition toward democracy and mitigated possible disturbances, including the rise of ethnonationalism, and intra- and interstate conflicts (Auer 2004, 56). The preparations for NATO’s eastward expansion played a special role in this process (Lanoszka 2020). The elites, a significant part of the Central and East European population and also the West, had incentives for NATO’s expansion. Besides providing protection from external threats (such as a potentially resurgent Russia), the accession to NATO could downscale a threat of intrastate unrest and potential conflict between the former Soviet satellites. Furthermore, NATO expansion could provide assistance to the joining countries to complete domestic pro-­democratic and pro-­market reforms, deepening their integration into Western Europe. Moreover, the preparations for acceptance into NATO and the EU were accompanied by massive Western economic assistance and structural changes, which boosted the development of the former socialist countries (Bene 1997; Szayna 1997; Lynn-­Jones and Miller 2001). At the same time, following the demise of the USSR, the major Western counties, and above all the United States, strove to adapt NATO to the new reality. This reality included

732   Alexander Tabachnik and Benjamin Miller the acceptance of new functions such as collective security and confidence building (including resolution of potential tensions between member countries and their neighbors), the promotion of certain norms and democratic values, civil-­military socialization, and peacekeeping. NATO’s paramount task became maintenance of stability in Europe by shaping an environment that would allow a more peaceful and integrated continent. Thus, by extending eastward, NATO hoped to do what it had done for Western Europe during the Cold War (Bene 1997; Szayna 1997). As expected by the S/N theory, great power hegemony (in this case a Western he­gem­ ony) has helped peaceful change, democratization, and socioeconomic development. Specifically, Western hegemony helped prevent potential intrastate conflicts in Slovakia (with its Hungarian minority), in Romania (with its Hungarian minority), and in Estonia and Latvia (with its very significant Russian minority). Western hegemony also helped mitigate interstate tensions between Hungary and Slovakia and Romania caused by the presence of a Hungarian ethnic minority in these countries (Driessen 1996–1997; Stratfor 1997; Spiegel International 2009; EURACTIV 2013). Similarly, Western he­gem­ ony became one of the factors preventing a more active Russian intervention in the internal affairs of Latvia and Estonia when Russia recovered from the decay of the 1990s and became stronger and more proactive in the 2000s (Kuhn 2018; Flanagan et al. 2019). Table 39.1 compares the real changes that took place in the former Soviet satellite states (in addition to Czechoslovakia) and the assumptions about these under the S/N theory. At the same time, the EU and NATO enlargements to the East worried Russian leadership. The enlargement was seen as an existential threat for Russian national security and its immediate sphere of influence. Particularly, Western efforts to penetrate into the post-­Soviet sphere (such as the Association Agreement with Ukraine)—which had been defined by the Russian leadership as Russia’s exclusive sphere of influence (with the exception of the Baltic States)—were seen in this light. The post-­2014 Ukrainian crisis is the most prominent example of such a confrontation between the West (led by the United States) and Russia (Black 1999; Karabeshkin and Spechler 2007; Bond et al. 2014; Dempsey 2015; Larrabee et al. 2017). The outbreak of the Ukrainian conflict was the result of competitive intervention of Russia and the West in Ukraine. The efforts of the new pro-­Western Ukrainian government to distance itself from Russia in February 2014 became the trigger that unleashed Russian intervention in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine (Giles 2015; Fox and Rossow 2017; Larrabee et al. 2017; Cohen and Radin 2019). The Ukrainian conflict therefore confirms the proposition of the S/N theory that great powers’ competitive intervention in a weak and incongruent state (as Ukraine is due to a significant ethnic Russian minority in Eastern Ukraine and a majority in Crimea) will encourage a hot war—for example, the Russian seizure of Crimea and the war in Eastern Ukraine, carried out primarily by Russian proxies (State Statistics Committee of Ukraine 2001; Friedman 2009; Taylor 2011; Kuzio 2012; Korostelina 2013; International Institute for Strategic Studies  2014; Hirst  2015; Pyung-­Kyun  2015; van Herpen 2015; Bukkvoll 2016; Galeotti 2016; Gould-­Davies 2016).

Explaining Peaceful Change in Central and Eastern Europe   733 Table 39.1  Former Soviet Satellite States Country

Peaceful or violent Congruence change that took place

State Great power strength intervention

Expected result according to S/N theory

Polanda

Peaceful: no conflict

External incongruence: Strong insignificant Polish state minority in Lithuania

Joining the Warm peace Western sphere of influence in 1989

Hungaryb Peaceful: no conflict

External incongruence: Strong significant Hungarian state minorities in Romania and Slovakia

Joining the Cold peace Western sphere of influence in 1989

Romaniac Internally violent: Romanian Revolution against Nicolae Ceaușescu’s regime— political conflict.

Internal incongruence: Relatively Joining the Western sphere significant Hungarian strong state of influence in minority. 1990–1991 External incongruence:

Bulgariad

Cold peace Internal incongruence: Relatively Joining the significant Turk ethnic strong Western sphere minority state of influence during the first half of the 1990s

Cold peace

the Republic of Moldova from the Peaceful: no ethnonational conflicts point of view of Romanian nationalists or conflicts with other states. Peaceful: no conflict

Lee  2001; ETHZurich, https://growup.ethz.ch/pfe/Lithuania; Auer  2004; Dryzek and TemplemanHolmes 2004a, b. b MAR—Hungary, ETHZurich, https://growup.ethz.ch/pfe/Hungary. c MAR—Romania, ETHZurich, https://growup.ethz.ch/pfe/Romania. d MAR—Bulgaria, ETHZurich, https://growup.ethz.ch/pfe/Bulgaria. a

In other words, the S/N theory leads us to expect that Russia, as it became a relatively stronger but still externally incongruent state in the 2000s and especially in the 2010s, was likely to promote an expansionist/revisionist policy toward the weak and incongruent states of the former Soviet Union. Particularly regarding Ukraine, Russia was expected to support separatist/irredentist movements of ethnic Russians and the Russified/Russian-­speaking population. The domestic incongruence of Ukraine is likely to affect the motivation for domestic wars of secession and ‘invites’ Russian intervention. The Ukrainian state’s weakness, for its part, produces opportunities for developing secessionist/irredentist movements of local Russians/Russian-­speaking populations and affects the opportunities of Russia (a strong revisionist state) to initiate civil wars or conduct interventions in the territories of Ukraine.

734   Alexander Tabachnik and Benjamin Miller

Post-­S oviet States The S/N theory helps explain additional peaceful and violent changes in the post-­Soviet sphere, as discussed further here. Beginning in 1988, the Soviet Central government started to lose control over the situation in the country following Glasnost, Perestroika, and the rise of ethnonational separatist movements in various Republics. The USSR had undergone a process of gradual weakening, which culminated in the collapse of the USSR at the end of 1991 (Cockburn  1989, 168, 179; Motyl  1991, 510–511; Tishkov  1991, 618; Leff  1999, 219). Moreover, in the first years of its existence as an independent state, Russia remained a weak state due to the socioeconomic and political processes that took place there, while Russia’s ability to project power outside its borders was limited. The political conflict inside Russia included prolonged conflict regarding the division of powers between the Russian president Boris Yeltsin and the Russian parliament, supported by the conservative and ultranationalist forces. This conflict devolved into direct armed clashes between the sides on Moscow streets and ended with Yeltsin’s victory on October 4, 1993 (Stern 1994, 40, 42, 54–55; Lapidus 1998, 10–12, 16; Alexseev 2001, 102; Lankina 2002, 1037, 1040). From 1991 to 1994, Russia’s capabilities and political will to intervene outside its borders were limited (great power disengagement). Table  39.2 compares the real changes the former Soviet Union Republics experienced (excluding the Central Asian Countries) and the assumptions about them under S/N theory. In sum, in all of these post-­Soviet cases, the S/N theory provides a powerful explanation of the variations between peaceful and violent changes.

Great ­Power Intervention in the Former Yugoslavia The S/N theory also demonstrates its usefulness in the case of great power involvement in the former Yugoslavia. As is expected by the S/N theory, great power disengagement from the Balkans until 1995 resulted in large-­scale violence and ethnic cleansing, during which the Bosnian War alone resulted in more than 100,000 casualties. At the same time, the United Nations Protection Force in Bosnia (UNPROFOR), which operated in Bosnia from 1992 until 1995, demonstrated low effectivity and failed to implement its missions (Daalder 1998; Bartrop 2016). For over three years after the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the onset of the civil wars in Bosnia and Croatia, the United States refused to take the lead in trying to end the violence and conflict. The US president consistently refused to deploy American ground forces in Bosnia. This reluctance is partly due to the American casualties following the

Table 39.2  Former Soviet Republics (Excluding Central Asian States) Country

Peaceful or violent change

Armeniaa

Congruence

State Great power intervention strength

Expected result according to S/N theory

Violent: Nagorno-­Karabakh War External incongruence: Armenian from 1992 (fighting)—1994 minority in Azerbaijan

Weak state

Russian disengagement at the initial stages of the fighting due to the disintegration processes in the USSR and sociopolitical transformations in Russia

Hot war

Azerbaijan Violent: Nagorno-­Karabakh War Internal incongruence: Armenian from 1992 (fighting)—1994 minority in Azerbaijan

Weak state

Russian disengagement as explained above

Hot war

Georgiab

Violent: Georgian-­Abkhaz (1992–1993) and Georgian-­ South Ossetian (1991–1992) Wars

Internal incongruence: Abkhaz and Weak South Ossetian minorities in Abkhazia state and South Ossetia respectively

Russian disengagement as explained above

Hot war

Moldovac

Violent: Transnistrian War 1992—active phase

Internal incongruence: Russian-­ speaking minority in Transnistria. Predominantly ethnic Russians and Russified Ukrainians

Weak state

Russian disengagement as explained above

Hot war

Estoniad

Peaceful: no conflict

Internal incongruence: significant ethnic Russian minority

Strong state

Joining the Western sphere of influence in 1991

Cold peace

Latviae

Peaceful: no conflict

Internal incongruence: significant ethnic Russian minority

Strong state

Joining the Western sphere of influence in 1991

Cold peace (continued)

Table 39.2  Continued Country

Peaceful or violent change

Congruence

State Great power intervention strength

Expected result according to S/N theory

Lithuania

Peaceful: no conflict

Congruent (considering the very small Russian minority)

Strong state

Joining the Western sphere of influence in 1991

Cold peace

Belarusf

Peaceful: no conflict

Congruent

Strong state

Russian sphere of influence

Warm peace

Yamskov (1991); Kaufman and Hardt (1993); Rutland (1994); King (2001); Rosefielde (2002); Cameron (2004); Murinson (2004); International Crisis Group (2005); Horowitz (2010); Voronkova (2013). b Murinson (2004); King (2008). c Kolsto, Edemsky, and Kalashnikova (1993); Crowther (1998); Williams (1999); Horowitz (2010); Blakkisrud and Kolsto (2011). d Kolsto (1993); Vetik (1993); Park (1994); Juska (1999); Commercio (2008); Raun (2009). e Kolsto (1993); Vetik (1993); Park (1994); Juska (1999); Commercio (2008); Raun (2009); Rosefielde (2002); Muiznieks, Rozenvalds, and Birka (2013). f MAR, http://www.mar.umd.edu/#:~:text=The%20Minorities%20at%20Risk%20(MAR,population%20of%20at%20least%20500%2C000. a

Explaining Peaceful Change in Central and Eastern Europe   737 Battle of Mogadishu (1993) during the US humanitarian intervention in Somalia. Only in summer 1995 did the United States decide to take a leading role in ending the war in Bosnia. The very high number of civilian casualties, particularly in the Srebrenica massacre in July 1995, conducted by Bosnian Serb forces, was a major cause of American intervention in the Bosnian War (Daalder 1998). Operation Deliberate Force, designed to undermine the military capabilities of Republika Srpska (VRS) in the Sarajevo area, began on August 30, 1995, “when sixty NATO aircrafts took off from bases in Italy and the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, striking targets south and east of Sarajevo” (Schinella 2019, 25). Following the operation, which was conducted under US leadership, on September 14, 1995, Bosnian Serb leadership signed a joint communiqué in Belgrade, agreeing to halt VRS (Army of Republika Srpska) offensive operations, open access to Sarajevo for humanitarian traffic, and withdraw all heavy weapons from the Sarajevo exclusion zone. Consequently, NATO suspended air strikes against the VRS, while Bosnia’s final ceasefire between the Serbs on one side and the Muslim-­Croatian coalition on the other side went into effect on October 12, 1995 (Bartrop 2016; Schinella 2019, 33–34). At the same time, NATO officials stated that the purpose of NATO’s air operation was to cause Bosnian Serbs to accept the UN Security Council resolution regarding Sarajevo and influence the Serbs’ willingness to negotiate peace, not to support the Croat-­Muslim ground campaign against the Serb forces (Hendrickson 2005; Schinella 2019, 35). Thus, NATO strove “to level the playing field enough to compel greater Bosnian Serb compliance but without inflicting so much destruction that the Bosnian Muslims and Croats could exploit a newfound military advantage” (Schinella 2019, 36–37). The idea was to create a military balance between the parties and thus to facilitate a negotiated settlement of the conflict. The outcome of great power intervention and the consequent changing balance of power between the local parties was the Dayton Peace Accords, signed on November 21, 1995. The US hegemonic intervention transformed Bosnia from being torn apart by a bloody civil war into a country at relative peace that could be defined as ‘cold peace.’ This peace was enforced by the Implementation Force (IFOR)—a 60,000-­person-­strong NATO force deployed in Bosnia, among them approximately 20,000 American military personnel, who comprised a key element of the IFOR (Daalder 1998). The Dayton Accords split Bosnia along ethnic lines, recognizing the balance of power and control over territory by the parties a day before they signed the accords (Spencer and Wollman 1997, 183). Following the Dayton Peace Accords, Bosnia remained a highly incongruent and weak state, with two independent armies and governmental structures (O’Hanlon 1998). Great power hegemonic intervention, however, enabled the rise of a cold peace, which still persists since 1995. In 1996, IFOR was transformed into Stabilisation Force (SFOR), and the number of peacekeepers was diminished to about 31,000 people. Later in 2004, SFOR was transformed into European Union Force Bosnia and Herzegovina (EUFOR), and the number of peacekeepers was further diminished (Schinella 2019, 41). Overall, the cold peace in Bosnia “has since been maintained by an expensive and continuing commitment—albeit a diminishing one—of international boots on the ground, still there more than two decades later” (Schinella 2019, 42).

738   Alexander Tabachnik and Benjamin Miller

Conclusion This chapter examines the post–Cold War historical developments in Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans, particularly how peaceful the change from an authoritarian regime to a democracy was. We show that the key independent variables explaining variations in the levels of peaceful change are variations in national congruence and state strength (jointly composing the S/N balance) and the intervening variable: great power involvement. The combination of considerable levels of state strength and congruence, as well as great power hegemony, leads to peaceful change from an authoritarian system to a liberal democracy. Nationally, incongruent but strong states (such as the Baltic States) also tend to undergo a peaceful change from an authoritarian regime to democracy, especially under conditions of great power hegemony. In contrast, weak and incongruent states are likely to experience large-­scale violence when they engage in such a transition (for example, the former Yugoslavia). This is especially the case when the great powers disengage from the region. An intervention later on by a hegemonic power might result in peaceful change, even if only a cold peace emerges. Overall, the S/N theory has proved its usefulness in accounting for variations in  peaceful change. It is able to explain peaceful change in the cases of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. At the same time, it is also able to explain the changes that were accompanied by hot wars in the cases of the former Yugoslavia, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Moldova. The S/N theory also complements realist theory, accepting realist factors as exogenous inputs. Realist theory defines when conflict is likely to take place (under rising competition between the great powers). The S/N theory not only defines under what conditions conflict will take place and in what forms, but also specifies where this conflict will take place (in the areas with the lowest S/N balance).

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

This theory is advanced in Miller (2007). Czech Statistical Office (2020). ETHZurich (n.d.). Infostat (2009). In Romania and Bulgaria this process took place several years later.

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chapter 40

Cen tr a l Asi a A Decolonial Perspective on Peaceful Change Timur Dadabaev and John Heathershaw

Central Asia is remarkable for its absence of armed conflict compared to other postcolonial regions and the rest of the former Soviet Union. But there is a considerable debate about the way in which the continuities and changes in the periphery of the Soviet Union, namely, post-­Soviet Central Asia, are understood and interpreted in international relations (IR). On the one hand, the region is an exemplar. Central Asia—consisting of the five republics of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan—has been one of the regions most exposed to the changes in modern history brought about by decolonization as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the ‘waves’ of US democratization, the retreat and return of Russia’s Eurasian ambitions, and the rise of China and its decolonizing and neocolonizing agenda, just to mention a few recent developments. Prior to the Russian Revolution (1917) and the birth of the region’s Soviet republics (1924), these states were part of the Russian imperial administrative structure under the Turkistan governor-­generalship. Their emergence as Soviet republics (from 1924 to 1936) had two symbolic meanings: these territories were freed from tsarist rule but at the same time were recolonized by the Soviets into an “affirmative action Empire” (Martin 2001), which transformed the region until its collapse in 1991. Central Asia is a paragon of regional peaceful change in that, in over thirty years of independence, it has seen no major interstate wars and only one civil war (in Tajikistan, 1992–1997), which had relatively little effect on the wider region. Only 0.08 percent of the world’s terrorist attacks took place in the five post-­Soviet Central Asian republics from 2000 to 2018.1 The post-­Soviet Central Asian region hosts a population of around seventy-­two million, stretching for four million square kilometers across Eurasia between Russia, China, Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan, and other countries. Authoritarian transitions have occurred or are ongoing (in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan), Chinese power has

746   Timur Dadabaev and John Heathershaw risen and challenged Russia’s primacy, and transnational economies and ecologies have remade the region. And yet some form of ‘peace’ remains. On the other hand, Central Asia (CA) has been poorly explained. ‘Centered’ accounts of change cannot explain such peaceful change; we need to consider the margins of international politics. The theoretical frames used to explain and depict the relations of major actors in CA’s international relations have remained largely limited to positivist arguments along the lines of rivalry, domination, spheres of influence, and a rhetoric of “the great game” on a “grand chess board” (Brzezinski 1997), particularly in Washington’s policy circles. In the postindependence period (1991), their economic and political transition has been branded a “catapult to independence” (Olcott 1992, 108–130), “new Afghanistans” (Olcott 2002), a “failing state” (Hill 2004), the “second chance” (Olcott 2005), and a “forgotten region” (Zabortseva 2012, 168–176), among many other labels. Their authoritarian stability has been termed a “curse” (cf. Kendzior 2013) for failing to produce Western liberal democracy. More promisingly, some have employed “local rules” (Cooley  2012), “manipulation from below,” and “heartland” (Chen and Fazilov 2018) assumptions to attribute to smaller CA states the agency “to manipulate” and “free-­ride” by trading on their loyalties to Russia, the United States, China, or other major powers. Others criticize the identity of the CA region altogether, calling it a “territorial trap” (Azizov 2017). But underlying these arguments is a narrow range of theoretical camps. There have been attempts to challenge the mainstream narrative regarding subaltern regions, including the CA region, “from Marxist to Feminists, post-­colonial and subaltern thinkers, but [the] realism-­idealism family of thought remains firmly dominant without occasional acknowledgement of the other” (Zondi 2018, 20). Many of the more promising recent developments in international theory are yet to make it to the study of CA. The post-­Soviet CA region has remained marginal to IR for a number of reasons. First, this region has often been associated with the geopolitical presence of Russia. Thus, for many scholars this region has been approached by analyzing Russian and post-­Soviet policies, while the Asian perspective on CA states’ interactions has been shadowed and largely hijacked by Russia-­related scholarship (for instance, see Kirkham 2016; Freeman 2018). Second, those few studies that did pay attention to the CA states’ interactions with Asian powerhouses from a comparative perspective tended to focus on these states’ participation in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) or their foreign policies related to the recently announced Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) (Obydenkova 2011; Alimov 2018). Thus, once again, the framing of the CA region’s coverage within Asia’s political space has been hijacked by the attention paid to China-­related initiatives (Li 2018), despite the fact that China’s influence is limited outside of the economic realm. Third, those studies that intended to cover CA states’ engagements with each other and other countries frequently focused on individual case studies of the relations of these states with the United  States, the European Union, Russia, China, Japan, and South Korea (for ­individual case studies see Dadabaev  2016; Fumagalli  2016; for comparison see Dadabaev 2018b, 2019, 2020).

Central Asia: A Decolonial Perspective on Peaceful Change   747 Very few studies, if any, have attempted to explain whether and how CA’s peaceful change amid great power competition, decolonization, and globalization is as exceptional as it appears to be in the international system. While sub-­Saharan Africa and the Middle East faced very high levels of armed conflict at the end of empire, and neighboring Asian and former Soviet regions have also seen greater incidences of war, CA bucks these trends. Without such inquiry, scholars will continue to reproduce and reproject assumptions made regarding other regions to explain seemingly similar developments in the CA region, which may be misleading. This continuous reproduction will eventually lead to the ‘neocolonization’ of this region through the imposition of ideas that have little relevance to it. In order to illustrate the severity of the problem, this chapter raises the following questions. How is peaceful change explained in CA? To what extent do these explanations account for empirical evidence about security events and political transformation? What are the limitations of existing narratives focused on security and danger, if any? This chapter deals with these questions in the following three sections. The first section demonstrates the problems of peace with respect to the CA region by critically engaging its post-­Soviet international history. The second section discusses the phenomenon of ‘illiberal peace’ in CA and how this puzzle arises in terms of the dominant theories that are rooted in Western political and philosophical thought. The third section shifts the optic to postcolonial change and asks what kind of peace emerges in decolonizing conditions and where ‘non-­Western’ questions are raised. In lieu of a conclusion, we advocate a comparative and global approach to understanding peaceful change in CA, including attention to transnational and subnational features that do not necessarily fit within narratives centered on state power and/or socialization according to Western norms.

Post-­S oviet Peaceful Change and the Untold Agency of Central Asian States The story of the formation of CA since 1991 as a region of sovereign states in the international system is most often told with respect to the external initiatives and intergovernmental organizations of great powers. These include but are not limited to discussions regarding the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS 1991), Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO 1992), Central Asian Economic Union (1994), Shanghai Five (1996), SCO (2001), Central Asian Cooperation Organisation (CACO 2002), Eurasian Union (2011), US New Silk Road (NSR) strategy (2011), and BRI (2013). These schemes have been subject to Russian (CIS, CSTO, and Eurasian Union), American (NSR), and Chinese (Shanghai Five, SCO, and BRI) sponsorship and mentorship. They have included attempts by external powers to peacefully manage transition (CIS and CSTO), resolve long-­standing border disputes (Shanghai Five), and involve

748   Timur Dadabaev and John Heathershaw the region in the resolution of the civil war in Afghanistan (NSR). Attempts to generate a purely Central Asian grouping, such as the Central Asian Cooperation Organization (CACO), have been short-­lived. Even the identity “Central Asia” is disputed and was only introduced by the region’s officials after independence. It is therefore not surprising that such cross-­regional schemes have been interpreted in terms of what they mean for great powers—with Central Asian agency considered secondary at best. In general, these regional schemes have been considered by the region’s political and cultural elites from two main positions. The first position is the instrumental value of engagement and/or connectivity under the auspices of an external great power (such as Russia’s Eurasian Union, China’s BRI, and America’s NSR). Most schemes offered to CA states have involved methods of engaging them and forming closer relations among their economies and with countries outside the region. To some extent, these attempts may be seen as empowering CA states and their elite networks through the diversification of their infrastructure and trade partners and an effort to attract foreign investors to the region. However, although most of these schemes have resonated with the intentions of the CA regimes, they have not produced many tangible outcomes. In contrast, the concept of cooperation has been corrupted by the great number of these schemes and their lack of productive outcomes beyond specific rent-­seeking opportunities. Such inefficiency has led to claims within the region that most of these schemes were initiated as a result of attempts to dominate and control the CA region and to access regional resources. For many of these CA governments, engaging with larger states inevitably results in contestation, which they attempt to use as a bargaining tool to receive larger amounts of developmental aid. This has resulted in a framing of the “Great Game” from below, implying manipulation by these smaller states of their larger partners (Laruelle 2015). Some scholars have argued that this resourcing has enabled regime stabilization and further rentier behavior (Cooley 2012), especially the aid and peacekeeping received by Tajikistan after its civil war (Driscoll 2015). The second position is more civilizational, that of cultural commonality and/or potential political integration. While the first position on change is cyclical, this second position is teleological. The discourse of the creation of a common new Eurasia has been approached differently by different states (largely by Russia but also by Turkey, South Korea, and Japan). Some have conceptualized the issue of Eurasian cooperation from a conventional integration perspective, suggesting that elements such as historical ties and common linguistic and civilizational features constitute the basis of and an asset for cooperation. In Russian political master narratives, these elements are mostly related to “common belonging” to the former Soviet space. References have also been made to the notions of Eurasianism and shared geography. According to these notions, geography and common history produce a common identity, which then leads to the commonality of approaches to conceptualizing cooperation. Under this view, the notion of common Eurasian norms has been frequently emphasized as part of a shared patriarchal value system that has helped CA states integrate with Russia and other post-­Soviet ­constituencies.

Central Asia: A Decolonial Perspective on Peaceful Change   749 However, civilizational, ethnic, and historical commonalities have also not been effective in binding the region and have not sustained the motivation of the participating states. To illustrate such schemes, the best examples are the CIS and CACO. Over time, these schemes were more associated with attempts by Russia to dominate this region or, in the case of CACO, with contestation between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan for dominance and leadership in the region. Given the multiple and contrasting teleological claims to civilization, the institutions themselves appear “virtual” (Allison 2008): simulacra of rather abstract civilizational discourse. And yet substantial resources have been deployed in such abstract schemes. The most consequential of these initiatives have been those led and bankrolled by the rising power China. The Chinese schemes have largely been a response to the problems existing in relations among member states, such as the border delimitation of the Shanghai Five (on the evolution and deconstruction of the “win-­win” principle, see Dellios 2017). The Chinese have attempted to create schemes that are not necessarily (initially at least) based on the notion of “common belonging” but have more of a problem-­solving, reactive nature, such as the SCO, BRI, and the related Silk Road transportation network, which exemplify this pattern. They can also be considered a response to the deficiencies of previous schemes, such as the deficient functioning of the CIS. This problem-­solving approach to engagement has several connotations. It serves the functional purpose of resolving particular problems but at the same time is most effective if the parties develop common approaches, norms, and mutual trust, thereby leading to common norm creation. However, as scholars of China-­Central Asia relations correctly point out (Liao 2019), China’s presence in the CA region has been understood largely in terms of its functions for China rather than the instruments and institutions it offers to states and elite networks in the region. These interpretations range from China being an “emerging superpower” (Bohr  2004; Swanstrom  2005; Petersen and Barysch  2011) to China being a regional power, which is discursively counterposed to the naïve expectation of the early 1990s that the United States would be the only “global power” (Brzezinski 1997). Some claim that China is being drawn into an imaginative “Great Game” and now rivals the United States and Russia (Liao 2019, 5). In addition, there is a portrayal of discursive rivalry between different variations of “Silk Roads,” which once again are often considered through rationalist lenses (cf. Laruelle 2015). Such “imaginary rivalry” is played out in contrasting the Chinese Silk Road narrative to Japan’s Eurasian/Silk Road Diplomacy, which emerged as early as 1997 under the administration of Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto (Dadabaev 2013, 2018b), South Korea’s 2009–2013 “Silk Road”–related initiatives, and the much-­discussed Chinese OBOR/BRI (Dadabaev 2018a). In turn, these projects are pitted against a new Russian challenge with respect to these “Silk Roads” in the form of a Eurasian Economic Community and the Eurasian Union. In these schema CA states are imagined as “weak,” “small,” and client states that have no choice but to sign up, on the terms of these large powers. These schema also ignore the pivotal roles played by CA states like Uzbekistan in shaping SCO (without which it would just be the

750   Timur Dadabaev and John Heathershaw Shanghai Five) or Kazakhstan’s initiatives toward the construction of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA), which is perhaps the first confidence-­building scheme covering the whole of Asia. In order to better understand peaceful change in the region, we need to provide accounts of Central Asian behaviors and attitudes regarding these various schemes for regional commerce and cooperation. Eurasian political space is in a continuing process of construction that involves mutual recognition of national discourses, governance practices, and perceptions of threat. Illustrating this point are the Kazakh-­initiated Nuclear Weapons Free Zone and CICA or the Uzbek-­championed ad hoc series of consultative meetings of CA presidents based on the spirit of a Central Asian neighborhood. Such region-­making initiatives also involve the process of counterposing what Eurasia is and is not. In such a process of construction, the notions of “practicality” and ‘functionality’ are key norm-­generating criteria for CA states that contribute to the process of trust and norm building, which intersubjectively develop into a common identity. Thus, for CA states there is no tension between the Russian Eurasian engagement discourse, the Chinese Silk Road strategy, and the initiatives of other states, as they are not considered to be mutually exclusive or to rival each other. They effectively coexist in the same political space and serve different purposes both for the global powers that initiated them and for the states of the CA region. No single grand narrative will make sense of this emergent regionality.

Illiberal Peace? A Local and Global Transition What both regionalist positions just outlined—instrumental and civilizational—share is a ‘centered’ vision of international relations in which it is concentrations of power in Washington, DC, Moscow, Beijing, and other centers that matter. To the extent that Central Asians matter, it is in the form of their heads of states reacting and responding to great power projects by instrumentally profiting from connectivity schemes or expressing loyalty to supposedly civilizational norms. The weakness of these accounts of change in the international politics of CA are evinced by a cursory glance at those changes that lie outside this field of vision. Discarding the systemic level of analysis while remaining focused on core matters of IR (armed conflict, borders, nuclear weapons, pipelines, etc.), we may see several remarkable examples. In these cases, the principal object and subject of security remains the collective actor of the state. But by focusing on the formation of Central Asian states as newly independent entities we find agency at both their center and their margins. The ‘peace’ they are changing is largely negative and structurally violent—in the terms identified by Martin Luther King and Johan Galtung—but it is infused with substantive content in terms of ideas about the stability and legitimacy of political power. Such peace may be best understood as a legitimate

Central Asia: A Decolonial Perspective on Peaceful Change   751 order that is constructed across multiple interpolating levels of analysis, both local and global (Heathershaw 2009). At the local level, we may consider how peace has emerged subnationally in regimes of power and at the margins of the state. Central Asia is remarkable for its absence of armed conflict compared to other postcolonial regions and the rest of the former Soviet Union. The region lacks the breakaway regions and irredentism that have characterized the other regions of the post-­Soviet south including the north and south Caucasus, Moldova, and Ukraine. It has seen low levels of ethnic conflict, despite widespread structural discrimination against ethnic minority groups since the end of the Soviet Union’s formal and structural internationalism among the fifteen republics and dozens of recognized national identities (natsionalnosti). Where ethnic conflict has broken out, as in southern Kyrgyzstan in 2010, it has not been national governments or international interveners that have contained the fighting but deal making between local elites and the coping strategies of nonelites (Khamidov, Megoran, and Heathershaw 2017). Central Asia has also seen very low levels of terrorism compared to other regions, despite constant warnings of the dangers of “radicalization” (Matveeva and Giustozzi 2018), significant recruitment of Central Asians to fight in Iraq-­Syria (ICG  2015), and several high-­profile cases of foreign terrorism committed by persons from the region in the West (including attacks in Istanbul, Stockholm, and New York). In the Central Asian states themselves there appears to be little fertile ground for radicalization such as that which has fostered Islamism in parts of neighboring regions such as the Middle East, South Asia, and the Caucasus (Heathershaw and Montgomery  2014). ‘Centered’ accounts of change cannot explain this phenomenon; we need to consider the margins of international politics. Some consideration of variation within CA is necessary to make this point. Peaceful change has not been uniform and consistent across the region. In Tajikistan, civil war broke out as a result of chronic state weakness and centripetal forces caused by competing demands between the regions. Regions like Rasht and Gorno-­Badakhson, which were less integrated into the center and possessed ‘lootable resources’ in the form of trafficking routes, saw conflict last longer and recur more than ten years after the formal peace agreement (Markowitz 2013). Turkmenistan (in 2006/2007) and Uzbekistan (in 2015) both saw peaceful transitions after the death of long-­standing dictators. Intra-­ regime dynamics between regional elites, hidden from view, managed the emergence of Gurbanguly Berdimuhammedov and Shavkat Mirzaiev, respectively. In Kyrgyzstan, by contrast, regional elites have twice (in 2005 and 2010) successfully removed a sitting government from power—on the second occasion with minor armed conflicts breaking out. In each of these cases, the bargaining between Central Asian elites at the center and margins explains the outcomes of ‘peaceful’ (and occasionally violent) political change. There has been little formal process and no significant role for international intervention. IR scholars may object that the agency of Central Asian subnational actors extends only to domestic or peripheral processes such as migration and trafficking. However, local elites remain important in a variety of significant international and transnational

752   Timur Dadabaev and John Heathershaw episodes of peaceful change. For example, the borderlands of the Ferghana Valley between Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan are demarcated by famously convoluted borders, with each state containing a series of exclaves and enclaves. As these became variously securitized and militarized by governments of the newly independent states from the late 1990s, it was common sense to assume this process was entirely driven by central elites and their nation-­building projects. But CA research has shown how the actual practice of peaceful change has also been shaped by local elites and traders who have protected cross-­border spaces (Reeves 2014), while in other cases borderland communities have been destroyed by central government actions, with any resistance to this being short-­lived (Megoran  2017). In both cases the actions and responses of subnational groups have been important in ensuring that the creation of sovereign states has proceeded peacefully, insofar as it has avoided large-­scale violence. A second group of ‘decentered’ actors that have been integral to peaceful change of an illiberal kind is transnational corporations and professionals, who have facilitated the financial arrangements that have (re)connected CA to the global economy. Despite being regular features of the market, which have been enhanced under globalization, these arrangements are illiberal in that they are bereft of real transparency and accountability. Tajikistan’s aluminum company TALCO—its national champion—has its profits routed into an offshore company that legally owns the business and strikes deals with major transnational corporations; these profits have been shown to pay for shopping trips and to fund the business interests of members of the presidential family as well as financing investment in the business and its hidden lobbying in the United States (Heathershaw  2011). The resource-­rich states of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan have also used offshore routes to ensure that their elites benefited from the country’s (re)integration to the global oil and gas economy (Cooley and Heathershaw 2017). Even security relations have been shaped by these offshore connections. Kyrgyzstan hosted a US airbase for many years during the “global war on terror,” while elites close to presidents Askar Akaev and Kurmanbek Bakiyev accrued profits offshore from the lucrative business of supplying the airbase with vast quantities of jet fuel (Toktomushev 2015). These examples are central to how CA has become more integrated into the global economy and international security architecture since independence. Yet they each entail a considerable role for networks of Central Asian elites and their allies in business and the professions—a form of transnational clientelism (Honke 2018). The enabling of such corrupt yet ‘peaceful’ change takes place transnationally as monies and reputations are laundered from a Central Asian kleptocracy to dollar- or Euro-­denominated accounts and major social and economic investments such as real estate, education, philanthropy, and second citizenships. Some of these enabling processes are perfectly licit and emanate from processes of legal globalization, including the creation of offshore shell companies and the legal “round-­tripping” of transactions; the weak enforcement and multiple loopholes of anti-­money laundering (AML) rules; and legal outsourcing and arbitration, whereby a dispute in CA may be resolved in a court in London, Stockholm, or Washington, DC (Cooley and Heathershaw  2017, 33–42). In addition to these corporate transactions, a transnational “uncivil society” has emerged

Central Asia: A Decolonial Perspective on Peaceful Change   753 of kleptocrats working with enablers who acquire certain goods for them, including second citizenships and residences, luxury real estate, school and university places, reputational goods such as access to elite networks and institutions, and even private intelligence and security services to be used against one’s political opponents (Cooley and Heathershaw 2017, 42–50). London has proven to be a hotspot of such services, and it is no surprise that two of the first unexplained wealth court orders, announced in 2019 and 2020, were against the laundered wealth of the Hajiyev family of Azerbaijan and the Aliyev/Nazarbayev family of Kazakhstan. The fact that the sources and beneficial ownership of the wealth are obscured in such cases is a consequence of the sophisticated practices of enabling and weak systems of regulation and enforcement in the world’s liberal democracies. The implications of this analysis are considerable. Peaceful change in CA will be poorly understood if illiberal processes and subnational and transnational Central Asian actors are disregarded (Lewis, Heathershaw, and Megoran,  2018). The end of Soviet rule created a momentary space for liberal ideas to become hegemonic, foreclosing debates over alternative viewpoints that may better explain CA realities and contribute to the theoretical reasoning of these events. A focus on CA agents—and their enablers, who carry on the transnational relations that erode the supposed boundaries between illiberal kleptocracies and liberal democracies—not only provides a fuller account of peaceful change but also provides a decolonizing narrative of the region that disturbs the presumed hierarchy. Such an approach implies “decolonization of subject matter, management of knowledge and of concepts and methods, and academic independence or, potentially, interdependence” (Odoom and Andrews 2016, 4). In addition, without empirical cases that go beyond current theoretical assumptions, the prospects of developing new theoretical assumptions and observing new patterns of peaceful change are limited. In this sense, decolonizing IR in the CA region or other regional contexts (as represented by the need to decolonize the cases of Africa, Latin America, and other subalterns) presents the next debate in IR.

Postcolonial Change and the Decolonization of IR in Central Asia There is an ongoing debate about how the discipline of IR treats the countries of the Global South (Acharya and Buzan 2007; Chen 2011; Hutchings 2011; Makarychev and Morozov 2013). Political science makes assumptions regarding state behavior based on European experience, and those assumptions are then adopted and imposed on non-­ European regions, distorting interpretations of events happening there and creating additional filters through which knowledge is narrated, regenerated, and reproduced. Traditional theories are faced with the challenge of being sensitive to regional peculiarities but at the same time being generalizable and applicable beyond the regions in question.

754   Timur Dadabaev and John Heathershaw This has led to a search for non-­Western IR (Acharya and Buzan 2007), with national variations such as Chinese, Japanese, and Russian as well as other IR school forms. Many of these, however, have been reactions to the overdominance of Western IR while repeating its tendencies toward state-­centric analysis. This chapter does not call for a CA-­specific theoretical school but instead emphasizes the need to critically approach the region in its broader global and comparative contexts without overemphasizing state agency. In this sense, engaging the IR discipline in the CA context is reflective of the need to decolonize IR in the Global South. Otherwise, as many suggest, a discipline designed “to describe, explain and theorize cultural diversity” might end up ignoring its subject (Odoom and Andrews 2016, 3). As a result of such treatment (of the CA region and other peripheral regions), many scholars note that the discipline is dominated by the agenda of “combatting terrorism, securing sovereignty, sealing borders, maximizing utility and winning the games that nations ostensibly play” (Krishina 2012). The frame of reference here is exclusively that of the nation-­state. By contrast, scholars define the decolonization of the IR discipline at multiple levels (Capan 2017). First, the decolonization of IR implies seeking answers to ‘how’ questions, as opposed to simple ‘what’ questions. Second, it has the implication of delivering the narratives of colonized/developing/ silenced nations. This is also related to the need to counter the tendency to accept the ‘meanings’ of concepts from other regions and to apply those ‘meanings’ to various regional contexts. Third, the decolonization of IR necessarily implies a rejection of the idea that state behavior is static, unchanging, and repetitive over time and geographic/ social space. In sum, far greater plurality and diversity of perspectives is required to better interpret peaceful change (in CA). In the CA setting, decolonizing the field of IR requires attention to the importance of knowledge production. Decolonizing regional IR necessitates CA-­owned narratives (of both governments and epistemic communities of scholars) to depict the present and future of the region. In addition, there is a need to position these CA voices at the center of debates regarding the region, as opposed to the current situation, in which they are placed in inferior positions in the hierarchy of other “voices,” whereby CA agency “works within the structural confines of Western power” (Hobson and Sajed 2017, 549), with both CA states and Western influences being “mutually embedded and co-­ constitutive” (551). There is also a need to integrate pre-­Soviet and Soviet experiences of these states into the explanation of their current relations with other states. The exclusion of pre-­Soviet and Soviet colonial periods from the narrative of CA IR does not lead to a better understanding of new regions, because for these new regions the understanding of notions such as sovereignty, the norms of state behavior, and the process of their construction is formed by the combination of pre-­Soviet, Soviet, Western, regional, and subnational influences. To exemplify these points we refer to a concept accepted as the backbone of the IR discipline: state sovereignty. The concept of sovereignty is a colonial creation in the CA region that appeared only at the time of the establishment of the Soviet Union. For CA states, which had already experienced different forms of self-­governance (such as city

Central Asia: A Decolonial Perspective on Peaceful Change   755 states, tribal structures, and socialist republics) prior to the Soviet Union and during the Soviet era, constructing self-­governing institutions does not necessarily imply negating “regional sovereignty” or “sharing” their sovereignty. Sovereignty has a different connotation, one that instead relates to the facilitation of foreign and domestic policy implementation, taking into account the interests of “others,” as opposed to Western (and often positivist) notions of sovereignty, which mostly relate to the “autonomy” from and “noninterference” with “others” in decision-­making. The application of the positivist notions of sovereignty, as imposed by international organizations and treaties and narrated by Western IR, has not served our understanding of this region and its peaceful change. However, it has benefited the dictatorial leaders of these states, who have used and gained from “noninterference” by monopolizing power and narratives and by creating political systems that contradict historical-­political practices and the wishes of their putative publics. Similarly, the postcolonial relations of colonizer (Russia) and colonized (CA states) also illustrate the limitations of an epistemic community in which Central Asian voices are barely heard. In the post-­Soviet setting, Marxist-­Leninist interpretations were replaced by Western interpretations. The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union were depicted as a triumph of Western values that liberated the CA states. In this narrative, the CA region is treated as a mere consumer of Western models, in which knowledge of these is already generated by, for, and in the West. The nationhood of these states is often depicted as dangerous and prone to violence but for external security providers. Their participation in post-­Soviet structures such as the CIS is depicted as a form of “civilized divorce,” and joining the SCO is depicted as a move to “bandwagon the dragon.” The difference between “us” and “them” is constantly emphasized and reproduced in IR studies, and the Central Asian “us” is always inferior to the knowledgeable Russian or Western “master narratives.” This structure sustains itself by continuously referring to CA states as “transitional,” “new,” “emerging,” and “newly independent.” According to this logic, for peaceful change to stop being “transitional” and to become “normal,” it must be recognized according to conventional Western ideas. As such, Central Asian international politics appears to mimic external institutions and redeploy resources to serve private interests and local agendas (Owen, Heathershaw, and Savin 2017). In these postcolonial conditions, what is left of the putative “Great Game” for peaceful change in CA? What is remarkable is how this discourse of geopolitical competition survives among political and cultural elites despite the fact that it provides a very partial and misleading image of the international politics of the region. In our research, we have heard repeated tales of geopolitical intrigue and Russian, Chinese, or American dominance from elite interviewees. Studies of political discourse by elites have repeatedly demonstrated the witting or unwitting reproduction of “Great Game” thinking, Russian hegemony, Chinese menace, and associated conspiracy theories in the speech of actors (Heathershaw 2012; Owen, Heathershaw, and Savin 2017). This may be remarkable, but it is surely not surprising that these actors are unwilling to recognize their own responsibility. Such tales are effective denials of agency by the very persons who are exercising

756   Timur Dadabaev and John Heathershaw power in their diplomatic initiatives and in stealing from and diversions of great power political projects. In the two states in the region that are arguably the weakest, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, China’s investment partnerships have led to the capture of further sections of the economy by elite networks; in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, this led to a political scandal and the fall of the government in 2018–2019 after the botched renovation of the city-­wide heating system (Heathershaw, Owen, and Cooley 2019). As such, the geopolitical narrative of great power relations is important insofar as it provides cover for the actual local and transnational politics of peaceful change in CA.

Toward a Comparative and Global Approach to Change in Central Asia While the stated goal of this chapter is to illustrate the differences between Western-­ Eurocentric approaches to peaceful change and those in and from CA, this does not necessarily mean that non-­Western approaches need to contrast with and be dramatically different from those of the West. Rather, decolonizing approaches to CA imply that this region does not necessarily follow the patterns of development, agency, and state behavior paved by the European experience. In addition, there seem to be very few conversations between the various Western and CA visions of the IR discipline, which limits the dialogue between them. In many cases, this limitation results in either mimicking Western and European approaches to describing state behavior or rejecting them under the pretext of tradition and the indigeneity of local culture. In such a structure of interaction of ideas, indigeneity becomes a shield for standing one’s ground, as opposed to an operational approach to delivering the voices of CA states to the international community. The image with which the Central Asian region has been associated in the field of IR has several connotations that relate to the limits of the discipline. First, there is a tendency to overlook the connection between the recent Soviet past (which, by its very nature, is colonial) and the new tendencies regarding the CA region, which have neocolonial features. Second, there is a reductionism that tends to reduce the CA states to dependent clients helping themselves in the international system. Thus, descriptions of the new Great Game or attempts to dominate the CA region are often at the center of analysis. Third, the absence of agency or the attribution of limited agency to CA states remains the central problem, emphasizing the need for decolonization of the discipline and narrative. However, as claimed in this chapter, CA agency does not exist by counterposing itself to the Western “other,” nor does it mimic being a victim of Western discourses. Rather, it exists in parallel to Western IR narratives and has yet to be revealed in scholarship on the region. The lack of a critical deconstruction of concepts and terms leads to a lack of understanding regarding how certain concepts dominate the narratives in the region.

Central Asia: A Decolonial Perspective on Peaceful Change   757 A better account of peaceful change in CA is both global and comparative. The ­former requires that transnational actors be taken into account that connect CA to regions that it might otherwise be wholly disconnected from (such as the Caribbean, with its company registries) and enable its elites to profit financially from their rule. The latter suggests that postcolonial patterns and the decolonization of knowledge in CA may be compared with other regions in Asia and Africa that have undergone transition to independence before the former Soviet states. Uncovering local agency in hybrid political arrangements and mimicry of former imperial powers—both of which CA has in droves—is a task best pursued when we recognize that CA’s transformation is not entirely unique. Peaceful change in CA is not a byproduct of great power competition, the region’s incorporation into international law and institutions, or its socialization to global norms. It is not well explained by IR theories that emphasize these things. A global and comparative area studies that gives Central Asian scholars themselves a voice offers a more promising avenue to improve our understanding of this poorly understood region.

Note 1. According to the University of Maryland Global Terrorism Database, a total of 71 out of 90,690 successful attacks took place in the five states (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan). These are unambiguous attacks for which definitional ­criteria for terrorism are adjudged to have been met. The Central Asian region is home to approximately 1 percent of the world’s population. https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/access/.

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pa rt V I I

C ONC LUSIONS

chapter 41

A R esea rch Agen da for the Stu dy of Peacefu l Ch a nge i n Wor ld Politics Deborah Welch Larson, T. V. Paul, Harold A. Trinkunas, Anders Wivel, and Ralf Emmers

The Handbook is an attempt to reinvigorate the study of peaceful change in international relations (IR) and to locate its historical origins, key perspectives, sources, and mechanisms, as well as how states, especially great powers and regional actors, have attempted to apply such ideas in their foreign policies over the years. Despite the neglect of peaceful change in traditional IR theory, the authors have found numerous instances of it in different regions and national strategies. They have presented novel explanations, casting doubt on conventional liberal theory that economic interdependence, institutions, and international organizations are the only key to peaceful change. Realist theory, especially on great power accommodation and hegemony, also has a role in explaining peaceful change under specific circumstances. Constructivism and critical ideas appear throughout as causal forces, and some challenge the notion that peaceful change is inherently good. Our effort at defining the concepts of peaceful change focuses on a few dimensions. First, we elucidate the contrast between maximal, or deep, and minimal peaceful change. Second, the differences between changes within international systems and transformations from one system to another are discussed. We also highlight episodic versus random changes and analyze the markers and mechanisms underpinning change. Finally, we examine how change might be sustained, for example, in the context of relations between states and their territorial settlements. The systemic, domestic, individual, and ideational level explanations for change, in addition to learning and adaptation, all have some place in IR theory. More systematic examination is necessary to unravel these dimensions

764   Deborah Welch Larson et al. comprehensively, and this Handbook represents an effort to catalyze that study. To this end, we examine the changing meanings of peaceful change since the interwar period, when this concept was first introduced.

Historical Perspectives The twentieth-­century interwar period holds a special place in the introduction and serious contemplation of peaceful change in IR. What is remarkable is the high policy relevance and impact of scholarship conducted in the public sphere, although ­surrounded by controversy over the reasons for failure of peaceful change overtures by established powers. It should also be noted that the inter-­paradigmatic debate between idealists and realists occurred in this context, and the later evolution of the discipline owes much to the arguments made on both sides. Torbjørn L. Knutsen discusses the origins of the concept of “peaceful change” at a 1937 International Studies Conference, part of a series of conferences of intellectuals and academics that was sponsored by the League of Nations. The debate among the participants over the possibility of peaceful change in international law and the distribution of territory was occasioned by the withdrawal of Germany, Japan, and Italy from the League of Nations. E. H. Carr’s Twenty Years’ Crisis (1939) was inspired by the debate between what he called “Utopians” and “Realists” over whether states could rationally accommodate the need for change in the international order according to law without the use of force. This debate, according to Cornelia Navari, contributed to the formation of the English school of IR, a major intellectual tradition that explores many other questions on order and change. The evolution of the study of peaceful change received a jolt in the context of World War II, the defeat of the revisionist states, and the onset of the intense Cold War rivalry between the United States (US) and Soviet-­led blocs. Peter Marcus Kristensen traces changes in the understanding of peaceful change in the post–World War period, when many scholars identified peaceful change with previous appeasement of Hitler. The lesson drawn was that the international community had to stand firm against potential aggressors. The Soviet Union was identified as an expansionist, revolutionary power relying on violent Communist ideology; hence, peaceful change had to be consistent with morality as well as expedience. Whereas the 1937 peaceful change conference was concerned with avoiding war in Europe, after World War II, decolonization and pressures for self-­determination created new problems of how to change treaties and territorial distributions among the waning European colonial powers. The migration of the field of IR to politccized the interwar study of peaceful change as utopian, idealistic, and naïve. Realists regarded great power concerts—based on accommodation, force, and willingness to compromise—as the key to peaceful change. Despite the realist ascendance, theories and policy perspectives on peaceful change still persisted as a result of the liberal school’s active presence in Europe and America. The European Union and the deeper peace among democracies of Western Europe, as

A Research Agenda for the Study of Peaceful Change   765 well as their economic interdependence, attracted the attention of many IR scholars and policy makers. The end of the Cold War and the relatively peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact without major violence undermined realist assumptions about change and the possibility of systemic change without war. Mikhail Gorbachev’s “New Thinking” offered much room for the possibility of ideational forces shaping international politics, more than is acknowledged in standard IR theories. In the post–Cold War period, unipolarity, liberal hegemony, and deepened globalization have been touted as contributors to peaceful change. Jeffrey W. Taliaferro finds that these conditions have had decidedly mixed effects, even if we define peaceful change as “resolution of social problems mutually by institutionalized procedures without resort to large-­scale physical force” (Deutsch 1957, 5). Unipolarity did not eliminate security competition between the United States and major powers. Major powers such as China and Russia adopted asymmetric strategies to counter overall US power, depending on hybrid warfare, intermediate range ballistic missiles, and anti-­ship cruise missiles. The United States went to war against recalcitrant states such as Serbia, Iraq, and Afghanistan and nonstate actors such as the Taliban, al Qaeda, and the Islamic State. After World War II, the United States established the liberal international order of rules and institutions, which was extended in the post–Cold War era to include Russia and other former Soviet allies. The liberal order consisted of rules and institutions led by the United States, which provided security and economic openness to other states while exercising voluntary self-­restraint. But the United States violated the rules of the order by intervening without United Nations authorization in Kosovo and Iraq, which encouraged second-­ ranking states to resort to institutional and other soft balancing mechanisms to restrain the hegemon (Paul 2018). Debate continues about whether or not globalization has been a force for peaceful change. Clearly the rise of China and the partial rise of India and Brazil and several other pivotal regional states have been facilitated by intensified globalization. China’s accommodation to the world trading system occurred in this context. However, as globalization advanced, it became clearer that China’s massive growth, sometimes obtained through flouting of trade and investment rules, occurred as a result of its insertion into globalization, and imperial expansionist tendencies have once again sprung up under Xi Jinping. While the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) may contribute to China’s peaceful rise, the chances of violence have increased in the Indo-­Pacific region, with Beijing aggressively engaging in territorial revisionism in the Pacific and Indian Ocean regions and the United States determined to thwart that possibility. Russia, after initial interest in joining the Western liberal sphere, under Vladimir Putin has chosen a challenger role, as its status and power seem more important than anything else (Larson and Shevchenko 2019). Regionally, globalization has contributed to peace in Europe but not in conflict-­ prone regions such as the Middle East and South Asia. These contrasting changes call for more understanding of the phenomenon of peaceful change than we have today. Why do we obtain peaceful change for a period, and why do states subsequently abandon such strategies? Do policy failures, unmet expectations, and misperceptions cause such alterations? What role do systemic, domestic, individual, and ideational forces play in

766   Deborah Welch Larson et al. change, especially peaceful change, and subsequent alterations? The chapters in this Handbook answer some of these questions.

Theoretical Perspectives There is evidence in favor of both liberal and realist perspectives on the causes of peaceful change. Domestic institutions are a key conditioning factor. Socialization to rules and norms has been important in contributing to a secular trend toward negotiated solutions. In the introduction and elsewhere, it is assumed that realism more often predicts conflict between states, especially during a power transition between a rising and a declining power. Peace is often equated with stability, which depends on having a predictable balance of power. Neorealism (Waltz 1979) and its variant, offensive realism (Mearsheimer 2000), in particular, are built around these premises. Despite the pessimism in realism, Joshua Shifrinson points out that there are at least two examples of successful macro power transitions: the Anglo-­American rapprochement at the turn of the twentieth century, and the breakup of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Realism allows that states may settle their differences without warfare. Shifrinson identifies several conditions conducive to peaceful change in different variants of realism. According to defensive structural realism, geographic distance and secure borders can facilitate negotiations to settle differences without war. Weapons technology that emphasizes defense over offense is also helpful. Even offensive structural realists predict that adversaries may resolve their differences if they have a shared enemy. An insular state surrounded by water may be more relaxed about the advance of another potential power. From a “neoclassical realist” perspective, a state that is unable to mobilize sufficient resources for war may turn to peaceful resolution of conflicts. Among the three mainstream theoretical traditions—realism, liberalism, and constructivism—liberalism has focused the most on mechanisms for peaceful change. We reflect on this in several of our chapters dealing with international institutions, democracy, and economic interdependence, the three dominant liberal mechanisms for peace and peaceful change at systemic, regional, and interstate levels. Alexandra Gheciu traces how liberalism, following Emmanuel Kant, has prescribed a particular type of political system in order to achieve peace, a state with a republican constitution. In addition, to achieve peaceful change, democratic states should adopt international norms, increase economic interdependence, and establish international institutions. Peace is achieved from the inside out. International institutions are one of the three pillars of the liberal peace, along with economic interdependence and democracy. While noting their many contributions to peaceful change, Frédéric Mérand and Vincent Pouliot find that institutions may have perverse consequences, freezing the status quo or excluding states from participation, forcing them to resort to violence. United Nations peacekeeping operations may become

A Research Agenda for the Study of Peaceful Change   767 tools of power politics by Security Council members, regional actors, or participants in the conflict. Characteristics of international institutions that facilitate peaceful change are adaptability, absence of vested interests, and voice opportunities for member states. John Ravenhill reviews a number of statistical studies of the relationship between economic interdependence, globalization, and peace. Although the results are equivocal and contingent on variables such as democracy or the type of goods traded, Ravenhill concludes that the lack of support for the theory probably reflects inadequate data and measurement of the theoretical concepts. This is especially the case for measurement of global value chains, which is one of the phenomena of globalization. Qualitative studies of regional peaceful change may be a better means of assessing the role of economic interdependence and globalization. He warns that continued weakening of the liberal international order and the World Trade Organization could have detrimental effects on prospects for peaceful change, and these deserve more scholarly attention given their high relevance for state policies. Overall, the international system has become more rule-governed during the past seven decades. This can be explained by social evolutionary theory as the outcome of artificial selection by human agents. Shiping Tang envisions a five-­stage process: (1) generation of ideas for specific institutional arrangements, (2) political mobilization by supporters of specific ideas, (3) struggle for power to design and dictate specific institutional arrangements (i.e., to set specific rules), (4) setting the rules, and (5) legitimatizing/stabilizing/reproducing. Institutions are not the product of rational design, whereby powerful states struggle to determine the rules, but the outcome of political struggle that serves the interests of specific parties. Ultimately, the competing forces in the material world are the test of the validity of ideas. Their failure can provide the motivation for social change. Beyond liberalism, other perspectives such as the English school also offer many ideas on peaceful change and order building. According to Cornelia Navari, the English school envisions peaceful change as derived from structures and processes. The great powers have a responsibility for maintaining order and achieving justice, where possible and necessary. Peaceful change also occurs within the context of regional security communities, not just in Europe, but potentially wherever there are regional institutions, shared economic interests, and recurring interactions among leaders, diplomats, bureaucrats, business organizations, and interest groups. Imposing some structure on the loose and discursive constructivist tradition, Erna Burai and Stephanie C. Hofmann identify three theoretical building blocks that explain peaceful change: factors (such as culture or identity), actors (such as norm entrepreneurs), and mechanisms (such as persuasion and socialization). Peaceful change involves changing collective understandings and meanings that underlie social institutions and conventions. Individuals may act as norm entrepreneurs in promoting proposals for change, especially if assisted by epistemic communities, such as scientists or international lawyers. A major shortcoming of constructivist work is its preoccupation with ‘good’ or rational states and the production of ‘good’ social norms, rather than actors that challenge or transgress peaceful norms. Constructivists would explain the peaceful

768   Deborah Welch Larson et al. transition between British and American hegemony in terms of compatible identities. This means the US-­China transition may not be feasible without ideational and identity changes in one or the other contender. In contrast, varieties of critical theories of IR posit that violence may be necessary to achieve a maximalist definition of peace as incorporating social justice and prosperity for all. Annette Freyberg-­Inan points out that both liberalism and realism are oriented toward preserving the status quo. Critical theorists envision peaceful change as coming about through changes in culture and discourse from the level of civil society. There is a major connection between social activism and change in these perspectives, as many question whether deep structures involving power relations can be changed without a revolution. Gender perspectives have added substantial contributions to international and domestic transformations involving, in particular, women’s role in peace, peacebuilding, and social justice. Karin Aggestam and Annika Bergman Rosamond offer a succinct analysis of the areas in which peaceful changes have taken place, especially in terms of gender mainstreaming, policy changes at national and international organization levels, and increasing participation of women in the diplomacy of peace and security. In recent years, IR scholars have begun to focus on civilizational factors for change and persistence. Civilizations and the cognate religions in Asia have both peaceful and nonpeaceful variants, as Victoria Tin-­bor Hui elucidates. Whether peaceful or warlike tendencies predominate, she argues, depends on the strength of domestic inclusive institutions. Indonesia’s constitution, for example, discourages narrowly defined ethnic parties. In contrast, corrupt, dictatorial regimes promote militant Islamism. In India, the possibility of peaceful change through elections has helped to keep ethnic rivalries in check, which is now changing as a result of the ascendancy of majoritarian Hindu nationalism. In Communist China, a pluralist civilization has been transformed into ethnic nationalism.

Sources and Mechanisms of Change Some authors focus on macro processes and structures, while others identify specific agents of change confirming that the sources of peaceful change are complex and contingent. Jennifer M. Welsh argues that international law has contributed to peaceful change through rules on the use of force and for the recognition of new states. Beginning in the twentieth century, international law reflected and codified de-­legitimation of the use of force for changing the status quo. After the end of World War II, priority was given to recognizing states within existing borders, a principle that was continued after the Cold War with the breakup of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, regardless of the presence of national minorities. International law’s function in preserving the existing order happens sometimes at the expense of justice, a trade-­off identified by E. H. Carr (1939).

A Research Agenda for the Study of Peaceful Change   769 Technology can be an important source of peaceful change. Anne L. Clunan examines the three-­dimensional impact of science and technology on peaceful change—the sociology of knowledge, the shaping of the interests, and social purposes of key actors— which could potentially reshape international politics as a result of the introduction of emerging technologies. Michal Smetana asserts that nuclear deterrence has prevented hegemonic wars between great powers, allowing a transformation of the US-­Soviet relationship from the late 1980s to 1990. On the other hand, possession of nuclear weapons has allowed China and Russia to make coercive territorial gains without having to fear resistance from the United States. The danger of cataclysmic destruction has generated many contradictory views on the weapons’ relationship to peaceful change and debates about whether nuclear weapons are revolutionary forces or instruments to preserve the status quo, debates that remain inconclusive. Climate change poses numerous threats to peaceful change in the future, including competition over water resources, loss of land, and increasing population migration. But these challenges are also encouraging increased cooperation among states to engage in collective action, according to Ashok Swain. Recognition of the shared threat has led to mutual cooperation. For example, 196 states signed the Paris Climate Change Agreement in 2015. International organizations have provided financial assistance to riparian countries to provide effective sharing of water resources, although water sharing and climate change–induced migrations still remain major sources of conflict, among the many other existential challenges climate change poses to the daily lives of millions of people. The political economy sources of change, beyond liberalism, deserve further attention. Lars S. Skålnes finds that the relationship between economic interdependence, trade, and peace is more complex than assumed in liberal theory. While intra-­industry trade and globalized supply chains can inhibit states from going to war, regional trade agreements can increase tensions if they are discriminatory. Thomas Davies raises questions about whether democracy and international institutions are solutions to the problem of peaceful change in the contemporary era. He observes that the emerging powers or BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) include two states, Russia and China, that are not democratic, along with two others (Brazil and India) that have been criticized for democratic backsliding. Some significant recent institutional initiatives—the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank—have been instigated by China, an authoritarian state. Democracy at the global level is lacking, as institutions such as Bretton Woods and the United Nations Security Council are weighted to favor the great powers. The study of social movements and peaceful change departs from the standard realist view of states and anarchy to examine changes occurring at the domestic societal level. Constructivists view social movements as transnational actors that can promote new ideas, norms, and interactions and bring about positive change, such as respect for human rights, democracy, and environmental protection. However, Alejandro Milcíades Peña cautions that these movements may become radicalized and take a revolutionary path if repressed by the state.

770   Deborah Welch Larson et al. While power transition theory posits that a rising power may use force to change the system out of a desire for greater status, Xiaoyu Pu finds that the quest for status can lead to peace if the aspiring power uses social creativity in seeking preeminence in areas other than geopolitical superiority, such as promoting new norms. A rising power might also attain increased status and recognition by providing public goods. Great powers must have followers, which increases the need for moral leadership by them, if they wish to have legitimate and durable status in the international system. An illustration of moral leadership is provided by individuals who have played an important role in promoting peaceful change. The Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev played the most important role in ending the Cold War peacefully and freeing Eastern Europe from Soviet domination. In Germany, leaders—Konrad Adenauer, Willy Brandt, and Helmut Kohl—were very important in overcoming domestic opposition in favor of Germany’s contributions to European integration and eventually reunification.

Great Powers and Rising Powers as Agents of Peaceful Change Although historically they are the biggest and most consequential war-­making states, great powers have the capacity to contribute to peaceful change among themselves and other states through their willingness to restrain their own power and provide an umbrella of security for others. Deborah Welch Larson argues that the United States has contributed to peaceful change through its hegemony and advocacy of liberal principles. The United States extended the Monroe Doctrine to the Western Hemisphere, which prevented European countries from trying to recolonize Latin American countries and maintained US separation from European power struggles. The Anglo-­American power transition in the Western Hemisphere at the beginning of the twentieth century was peaceful because the United States used the implicit threat of force, while Britain had more important interests in the Mediterranean and Europe. After World War II, the United States extended the Marshall Plan to Europe and sponsored the Bretton Woods institutions to prevent the instability that had led to the Great Depression in the 1930s. The United States provided a security umbrella that freed Europe and other US allies to engage in trade without having to worry about regional rivalries. Beginning with the détente era in the 1970s, the United States helped to integrate the Soviet Union and China into the international order, a process that was not completed until the end of the Cold War. Andrej Krickovic recounts how Russia under Mikhail Gorbachev carried out a revolutionary policy of promoting peaceful change in a maximalist sense, involving a transformation of the world order. A set of ideas—the New Thinking—was formative in directing actions toward peaceful international change. The New Thinking contradicted realism, in that it prescribed that states act on the basis of universal values rather than

A Research Agenda for the Study of Peaceful Change   771 national interests. Neither force nor the threat of force was considered to be a legitimate instrument of foreign policy. Russia expected reciprocity and recognition from the West in return for its unilateral concessions that ended the Cold War. The Western countries took advantage of Soviet concessions in Afghanistan and Eastern Europe but did not adopt the principles of the New Thinking. Russia’s geopolitical disappointment has led Putin to use forceful methods and internal political meddling to promote a multipolar order that would replace US unipolar dominance. Kai He and Feng Liu discuss China’s “peaceful development” strategy, adopted in 2003 to reassure other states that were potentially threatened by the increase in China’s military and economic capabilities and to maintain an international environment conducive to continued economic development. China has sought to improve relations with its neighbors through economic development and trade, exemplified in the China-­ ASEAN Free Trade Agreement and the Belt and Road Initiative of infrastructure building. Further examination is needed of why the peaceful change strategy has undergone revisions under Xi Jinping’s authoritarian leadership. Among Europe’s major states, Germany occupies a primary position in the area of concrete ideas and strategies of peaceful change. According to Klaus Brummer, Germany has fostered peaceful change on a regional basis by fostering, promoting, and enlarging rules, norms, and institutions, in particular through European integration. Germany did so initially out of self-­interest, in order to recover its sovereignty and status in the aftermath of World War II. On the other side, Thomas U. Berger contends that Japan’s efforts at peaceful change have had only partial successes, largely because of a harsher regional environment in which competitive nationalism still prevails and institutional structures similar to those in Europe do not exist. Despite the challenges, Japan is still maintaining a pacifist outlook, with some changes to face the security challenges from the regional system and domestic pressures to become a normal power. Among the rising powers, India experimented with peaceful change ideas and strategies during various phases before and after independence. According to Manjeet S. Pardesi, India’s peaceful transition from a British colony to an independent state through nonviolent struggle is an exemplar case of peaceful change. This structural change took place as a consequence of Mohandas Gandhi’s leadership, Britain’s declining power after World War II, and the rise of Hindu-­Muslim tensions. India has also bequeathed important ideas to interstate discourse, such as Panchsheel or the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence and nuclear disarmament. Pardesi stresses the importance of viewing peaceful change as a process rather than an outcome, as in this case. Muslim-­majority Indonesia offers a case of a state that has practiced many peaceful change policies, despite some violent episodes in its existence as an independent state. Dewi Fortuna Anwar’s analysis of Indonesia suggests that a state does not have to be a great power or a full-­fledged liberal democracy to promote peaceful change. Indonesia has acted in the role of middle power in mediating conflicts, acting as a good citizen and trying to form a bridge between conflicting parties in Southeast Asia. Indonesia has also been a leader of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), which encourages regional economic interaction and development. For example, Indonesia took the

772   Deborah Welch Larson et al. lead in developing the ASEAN Declaration of the Code of Conduct for the South China Sea. In 2011, Indonesia helped mediate conflict between Cambodia and Thailand. China’s increasing assertiveness in the South China Sea, however, may place limits on Indonesia’s ability to fulfill the middle power role in the years to come. Peter Vale relates how South Africa was able to negotiate a peaceful change from apartheid to majority rule, providing a model for other states. In a 1993 Foreign Affairs article, Nelson Mandela articulated an approach to foreign policy centered on human rights and democracy. Showing the importance of individuals, South Africa has played a less prominent role in regional efforts at peaceful change since the presidencies of Mandela and his successor Thabo Mbeki.

Regional Orders and Peaceful Change Each of the major regions of the world illustrates peaceful change, although in some cases there is merely a negative peace consisting of the absence of war. Liberal variables of trade and economic interaction seem to play an important role in explaining the variation in most regions. Both the maximalist and minimalist variants of peaceful change are evident in specific regional contexts. Each of the key theoretical paradigms—realism, liberalism, constructivism, and critical perspectives—finds resonance in different regions in different manifestations, showing that eclectic approaches may offer better handles on explaining and predicting peaceful change in the regions. Anders Wivel views peaceful change in Western Europe through the lens of three theories: realism, liberalism, and constructivism. During the Cold War, peace was maintained through US hegemony and balancing against the threat of the Soviet Union via the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Successive US governments encouraged European economic integration as the best means for Europe to balance Soviet power. Since the end of the Cold War, the Western European countries of the European Union have tried to encourage the extension of peaceful change to Central and Eastern Europe by admitting new members in return for their accepting EU treaties, regulations, and standards of good governance. This has laid the basis for minimalist peaceful change beyond Western Europe. Consistent with liberal theory, beginning with Robert Schuman, who suggested formation of the European Coal and Steel Community as the basis of the EU, rational, far-­sighted leaders have agreed to pool sovereignty and to resolve their differences peacefully. Constructivists might view Europe as a normative power, promoting new norms of democracy and peaceful settlement of disputes. But the process of integration seems to have stalled, potentially at a minimalist conception of peaceful change. In the early twentieth century, peaceful change in North America was a byproduct of Britain’s accommodation of US dominance of North America. After Canada was no ­longer part of the British Empire, but instead a member of the Commonwealth, the democratic institutions of the United States and Canada made war between them unthinkable, even apart from the imbalance of power. According to David G. Haglund,

A Research Agenda for the Study of Peaceful Change   773 the North American peace is buttressed by institutionalized defense cooperation between the United States and Canada, dating back to the period before World War II. This institutionalized cooperation excluded Mexico, which is not part of the North American security community, although this has changed somewhat with the introduction of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and its amended new variant. Although the Middle East has witnessed many wars and conflicts, there have also been some peaceful territorial changes between states. Contrary to liberal claims, in their chapter Arie M. Kacowicz and Galia Press-­Barnathan found that democracy did not facilitate peace in the Middle East. Rather, authoritarian governments in Egypt and Jordan were able to overcome domestic opponents to make peace with Israel. On the other hand, they find that constructivism is correct in that institutions such as the Arab League, elite norms, and ideas contributed to peace through legitimizing interactions with Israel. Southeast Asia has also established a record of peaceful change since resolving the conflicts in Cambodia and East Timor in 1991 and 2002. Ralf Emmers and Mely Caballero-­Anthony argue that Southeast Asia demonstrates the complementarity of realist, liberal, and constructivist approaches to peaceful change. The US alliances with Thailand and the Philippines and informal ties with Singapore have provided an umbrella of security for the region. The establishment of ASEAN and the ASEAN Free Trade Area has promoted increased economic interdependence. The “ASEAN Way” of settling conflicts with consensus building and persuasion illustrates the constructivist principles of building a collective identity through interactions, despite anarchy. Africa has adopted maximalist conceptions of peaceful change, at least as an ideal, according to Markus Kornprobst, including liberation from colonialism, pan-­African unity, economic development, peaceful settlement of disputes, and democracy. Yet African countries have found it difficult to free themselves from external interference from the ­former colonial powers, the superpowers during the Cold War, and now China. While Africa has not experienced many interstate wars, proxy civil wars continue to be a major problem. The continent also lags on economic development and democracy. Latin America as well only qualifies for a minimalist conception of peaceful change, in that states in the region have resolved territorial disputes through diplomacy and use of international arbitration. Harold A. Trinkunas observes that Latin America, despite numerous attempts, has few effective regional organizations, little economic integration, and no serious epistemic communities. Peaceful change in Latin America can be explained by a combination of realist and constructivist theoretical approaches. From the realist perspective, Brazil has been an important regional hegemon, restraining its power and agreeing with Argentina to give up nuclear weapons. Consistent with constructivism, Latin American countries have a sense of regional identity through the development of two approaches: pan-­Americanism (which is inclusive of the United States) and Bolivarianism (which is not). Moreover, Latin American states served as early international norm entrepreneurs, promoting norms of sovereignty, sovereign equality, and noninterference, all concepts later advocated by Global South states and

774   Deborah Welch Larson et al. the Non-­aligned movement and accepted, albeit grudgingly at first, by the United States and former imperial powers of Europe. Although Northeast Asia is the locus of recurring interstate conflicts, the region remained peaceful after the Cold War ended, a peace that has endured. According to Bhubhindar Singh, this has been due to American hegemony, strong economic interdependence between Northeast Asian states, and a robust institutional structure. The United States helped prevent regional crises from escalating into conflict; resolved diplomatic disputes between its allies; and prevented an arms race in the region between Japan, South Korea, and China. Northeast Asia includes three economic powerhouses— Japan, South Korea, and China—that trade extensively with each other. Future challenges to this peace include US-­China rivalry, China’s increasing assertiveness in the maritime domain, instability on the Korean peninsula due to North Korea’s acquisition of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, and unresolved territorial disputes. Rajesh Basrur and Kate Sullivan de Estrada find limited progress toward peaceful change in South Asia, especially since the end of the Cold War. As India, which dominates the region, has become more prosperous and powerful, it has become more comfortable about reaching agreements with its smaller neighbors, such as Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Nepal, and perhaps more willing to do so given its competition with China for influence in the region. Liberal theory has little applicability to South Asia, as the main regional institution, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), is weak. There is little intraregional economic interdependence, as states of the region trade more with outsiders than with each other. Democracy is not an aid to peace when domestic ethnic and religious divisions promote intrastate conflict. Liberal theory is also of limited use in understanding peaceful change in Central Asia since the breakup of the Soviet Union, according to Timur Dadabaev and John Heathershaw. The Central Asian region has been a paragon of peace for thirty years, with no interstate wars and one minor civil war in Tajikistan. While Central Asia is usually viewed as the object of external great power competition, Dadabaev and Heathershaw suggest that peaceful change derives from the efforts of local substate actors, such as local elites and traders of the Ferghana Valley, which borders Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. To understand peaceful change in Central Asia, the authors suggest, it is necessary to compare the region with other areas that have undergone decolonization. Alexander Tabachnik and Benjamin Miller explain variations among states in Central and Eastern Europe in making a peaceful transition to democracy after the end of the Cold War in terms of the congruence between national identities and aspirations and state borders, state strength, and the presence or absence of great power intervention. Even countries that had internal divisions among religious and ethnic groups, however, were able to make a peaceful transition if they had a strong state. External intervention by great powers could exacerbate preexisting internal divisions in weak states. Thus, both systemic and subsystemic factors were in operation to predict peaceful change.

A Research Agenda for the Study of Peaceful Change   775

Future Research Agenda The various chapters in this Handbook offer a treasure of ideas for future research on peaceful change in IR. The preceding discussion points to the need for more rigorous study of peaceful change as an academic subject in IR. The current preoccupation in IR theory with delimiting paradigms may have produced limited progress in this subject area, as we have patterns of change occurring in different time periods as well as domains that fit or disconfirm one or the other paradigm. Perhaps more eclectic, context-­driven, and conditional explanations for change and the processes and causal mechanisms would produce better results. Moreover, ideas about whether we can expect teleological, cyclical, or episodic change would help in understanding peaceful change more concretely at different temporal and spatial levels. Eclectic approaches may be valuable given the rise of China and the potential decline of US hegemony in a context of partial liberal and partial realist mechanisms at work in the Asia-­Pacific. Questions for future inquiry could include the following: What are the structural conditions and unit-level factors most associated with peaceful change or its opposite, violent change? Who are the most likely candidates for initiating peaceful change or accommodation, and who are the likely candidates for engaging in preventive wars to arrest relative decline or power transition conflicts to quicken their passage? More broadly, what is the relationship between peace and peaceful change? In addition, we still need to know more about the two-­way relationship between domestic level changes and international level changes, especially in the domains of conflict and peace. Today, with the prospects of a return of great power rivalries, we are in an era of major changes in world politics, brought about by rapid improvements in technology, the emergence of violent transnational forces, and ecological changes and biological threats, all of which represent challenges to peaceful change arising from forces beyond states. While some changes, such as digital technology and the internet, allow for the mobilization of vast transnational social justice movements (e.g., Black Lives Matter and #MeToo) with unprecedented speed and scale to cooperate for peaceful change across state borders, the same technologies also represent risks. Cyberwarfare and digitally enabled disinformation campaigns conducted via social media enable even small and medium-­sized states to affect adversaries at scale, speed, and distances not possible before, and at relatively low cost. Although this became more salient as a result of Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election, recent research has just begun to show that these types of attacks may increase the risk of international conflict (Trinkunas, Lin, and Loehrke 2020). Because of difficulties in attribution and because such campaigns are conducted on platforms provided, maintained, and controlled by transnational technology corporations, states are finding it difficult to cooperate to counter what many still perceive as measures falling short of war. Although this Handbook has focused mostly on great or rising powers, the international system also contains states that have limited capabilities to govern their own

776   Deborah Welch Larson et al. territories, which offer their own challenges to peaceful change (Clunan and Trinkunas 2010). In part because of the absence of “state death” since the founding of the United Nations in 1945 (Fazal 2004), but also because of obstacles to institutional and economic development, some states have functional holes and capacity gaps that create spaces for nonstate actors to step in and take a role in governance (Williams 2010). Moreover, rapid technological change means that nonstate actors have acquired capabilities once limited to states. In some cases, such as with transnational trafficking in illicit goods and services, organized crime crosses state boundaries, for example linking Mexican drug cartels with Central American gangs and Colombian insurgents in a drug trafficking value chain. In other cases, armed nonstate actors attempt to establish new polities, as the example of the Islamic State illustrates (Felbab-­Brown, Trinkunas, and Hamid 2017). Finally, it is difficult to imagine that climate change or biosecurity threats such as the 2020 novel coronavirus pandemic can be addressed without interstate cooperation. The successful networking activities of small states during the pandemic focusing on good practices, economic recovery, and international cooperation as well as how to support human rights and development in times of crisis may provide lessons on how states from different regions and with different societal models and interests can nevertheless cooperate in meeting specific challenges and avoid conflict (Pedi and Wivel 2020). The difficulties in collectively addressing climate change, highlighted by the US withdrawal from the Paris Accords under the Trump administration, and the ragged and uncoordinated international response in the first year of the novel coronavirus crisis, reinforce this Handbook’s recognition of the many limits on peaceful change that yet exist in the current international environment. Facing these collective action challenges requires the cooperation and coordination of all states, especially the major powers. Forestalling a slide from rivalry into war among great powers requires new thinking on peaceful change. More importantly, regional orders are changing, as Europe, the cradle of a pluralistic security community, is now becoming less pluralistic, and Latin America is increasingly returning to left-­right ideological polarization among states that are threatening regional norms supporting peaceful change. The current crisis in the liberal international order makes it even more difficult to meet these challenges. Even policy makers and state leaders from liberal democratic states now increasingly advocate transactional and power-­based self-­help politics and openly disagree on how to calibrate a future order, one that takes into account rising and declining great powers as well as the vast majority of states that are not great powers. One important aspect of the crisis of the current order is the re-­emergence of “spheres of influence” as a central tenet of IR (Allison  2020). While this is reminiscent of great power politics in the past, it has the added complexity of being embedded in a world that is globalized and subject to rapid technological developments. Rigorous methodological approaches and research designs are needed to understand the sources, mechanisms, and markers of peaceful change. Quantitative and qualitative approaches relying on cross-­sectional and longitudinal data need to be developed to assess change and its trajectories. Interdisciplinary approaches may be necessary to utilize the significant works on social change in disciplines such as sociology, anthropology,

A Research Agenda for the Study of Peaceful Change   777 economics, psychology, geography, and history. Due to space limitations, the Handbook only covers a few countries. We need further examination of different states, including smaller ones, as well as of nonstate actors that contribute to or benefit from peaceful change. In some cases, this Handbook may very well be most relevant for the foreign policy of a small state whose existence and prosperity depend on the peaceful change and peaceful norms of its neighbors. The roles of individual leaders and their ideas deserve more attention as many changes have occurred due to their agency, showing that structure is not as immutable as often projected in some IR perspectives. Yet we also need to know when and why structural changes occur or deep-­rooted structures persist. The specific roles nonstate actors and transnational forces play in maximalist and minimalist changes in the international arena also need further elucidation. The fundamental weakness of singular approaches to peaceful change is revealed by the periodic return of not-­so-­peaceful change or illiberal forces shaping national and international agendas despite the victory of liberal or progressive forces. Globalization, for instance, has opened up many avenues for peaceful change, especially for rising powers, but it also has produced winners and losers, both nationally and internationally, igniting deglobalization pressures as well as the rise of populist leaders and ideologies. A theory of peaceful change must also address non-­peaceful change as well as the possibility of reversals in each direction.

References Allison, Graham. 2020. “The New Spheres of Influence: Sharing the Globe with Other Great Powers.” Foreign Affairs 99, no. 2: 30–40. Carr, Edward H. 1939. The Twenty-Years’ Crisis: 1919–1939. London: Palgrave. Clunan, Anne L., and Harold A. Trinkunas, eds. 2010. Ungoverned Spaces: Alternatives to State Authority in an Era of Softened Sovereignty. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Deutsch, Karl. 1957. Political Community and the North Atlantic Area. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Fazal, Tanisha M. 2004. “State Death in the International System.” International Organization 58, no. 2: 311–344. Felbab-Brown, Vanda, Harold Trinkunas, and Shadi Hamid. 2017. Militants, Criminals, and Warlords: The Challenge of Local Governance in an Age of Disorder. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Larson, Deborah W., and Alexei Shevchenko. 2019. Quest for Status: Chinese and Russian Foreign Policy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Mearsheimer, John. J. 2000. The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. New York: W. W. Norton. Paul, T. V. 2018. Restraining Great Powers: Soft Balancing in World Politics. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Pedi, Revecca, and Anders Wivel. 2020. “Small State Diplomacy after the Corona Crisis.” Hague Journal of Diplomacy 15, no. 4: 611–623. Trinkunas, Harold  A., Herbert  S.  Lin, and Benjamin Loehrke, eds. 2020. Three Tweets to Midnight: Effects of the Global Information Ecosystem on the Risk of Nuclear Conflict. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press.

778   Deborah Welch Larson et al. Waltz, Kenneth N. 1979. Theory of International Politics. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Williams, Phil. 2010. “Here Be Dragons: Dangerous Places and International Security.” In Ungoverned Spaces: Alternatives to State Authority in an Era of Softened Sovereignty, edited by Anne  L.  Clunan and Harold  A.  Trinkunas, 34–56. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Index

Note: Page numbers followed by an italic “t” indicate a table on the corresponding page. For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages. A2/AD capabilities by China  79–80 ABACC mutual inspection regime  610 Abacha, Sani  543–4 abandonment of war  14–15 Abi-Saab, Georges  53 Abkhazia 295 abolition of slavery  14–15, 178, 181, 215–16, 269–70 absolute weapon  301–2 The Absolute Weapon (Dunn)  49 Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq  175 Abyssinia 434 accommodation, defined  8 Accountable Now  360, 362 Accra Declaration on Africa’s Development Challenges 626 Acharya, Amitav  552 acquis communautaire 576–7 active non-member  492–3 active organic development  59–60 Additional Protocols  291–2 addition in change  16 Adenauer, Konrad  481–6, 489 Adler, Emanuel  391, 580–1 Adler-Nissen, Rebecca  132 advanced nations  293 advocacy networks  176–7, 410, 413–14 Afghanistan Cold War impact on  666 domestic political continuity  670 Islam in  244 Pakistan’s dominance over  669 peacekeeping missions in  75 regime change in  440

Soviet military interventions  438–9 United States relations  70 US war in  67, 70–2, 120–1 Africa Francophone Africa  629–30 geographical proximity issues  199–200 Ubuntu concept  538, 547, 627–8, 635n.6 US policy toward  436 water conflicts and climate change  339–41 African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance 630 African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights 628–9 African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) 626 African Liberation Committee (ALC)  623 African National Congress (ANC)  539–41 African Nuclear Weapons Free Zone  634n.4 African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) 628 African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM)  547, 626 African Renaissance  544, 625 African Standby Force (ASF)  628 African Union (AU)  17, 345–6, 621–2, 624–5, 628–9 African Union (AU) Non-Aggression and Common Defence Pact  628–9 Africa’s peaceful change challenges to  631–3 conflict management  627–9 democracy and  629–31 economic development and  625–7 international relations and  622–4

780   index Africa’s peaceful change (Continued) introduction to  621–2 pan-Africanism  544, 624–5 summary of  633–4, 773 unity and  624–5 Afrikaans academic/policy discourse  537 agency in social interaction  175 Ahtisaari, Martti  542 Akaev, Askar  752 Alaskan border disagreement  432 al-Assad, Bashar  709 al-Bashir, Omar  545 Alger, Chadwick  52 Algeria 517 All-African Peoples’ Conference  623 All-German People’s Party  489–90 alliance-based security  9 Alliance for Progress  611–12 Alliance of the Bolivarian Peoples of the Americas (ALBA)  609 Allison, Graham  369 al-Qaeda  70, 244, 418, 705 “America First” policy  575, 694 American Revolution  284–5 American Society of International Law  43n.2, 54–5 Amphictyonic Panama Congress  606 analytical biases  180–1 Anand, R.P.  53 The Anarchical Society (Bull)  194–5, 197–8, 310 anarchy collective identity vs. 773 competition factors  94, 654–5 cultures of anarchy  570 European peaceful existence vs.  292–3, 570 as factor in change  96, 98, 101–2, 104t, 172, 769 hegemony vs. 93 international levels  6–7, 572–6, 578–9, 653 Kantian culture of  200 regulation of  116 security concerns under  722 Southeast Asia and  653 structural realism and  94–5 transformational change and  92 Wendt’s argument of  241

Andean Pact  604 Angell, Norman  37, 148, 287 Anglo-American rapprochement  766 Anglo-American scholarship  36, 42–3, 92, 98–9, 386–7, 430–3 Anglo-German scholarship  97–9 Angola  438–9, 536, 539 Anthropocene age  385–6 anthropogenic climate change  210 Anti-Access/Area-Denial (A2AD)  695 anti-austerity movements  412 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty  304, 470–2 anti-ballistic missile systems  501–2 anti-China alliance  451–2 anticolonialism  52–4, 409, 455 anticommunism  50–1, 412 anti-Communist army  553–4 anti-conservative peaceful change  408–9 anti-elite movements  395, 412, 419–20 anti-liberal political platforms  114, 123 anti-militarism  18, 232, 508 anti-modernism  240, 390, 396–7 anti-money laundering (AML) rules  752–3 anti-negotiation platform  248 anti-nuclear countermovements  388–9 anti-occupation campaigns  413 anti-personnel land mine bans  176–7 anti-regime campaigns  413 anti-ship cruise missiles  765 anti-slavery movements  410 anti-totalitarianism 51 Apache helicopters  501–2 apartheid in South Africa  535–8 appeasement politics  8, 50–2 Arab-Israeli conflict  706–7, 711–15, 717 Arab League (AL)  703–6, 708, 710–11, 717 Arab Peace Initiative (API)  711 Arab Spring  71–2, 415–16, 418, 715–16 Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army  249–50 Argentina  176, 373, 413–14, 606–8, 612–13, 773–4 Argentine-Brazilian Agency for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials  610 Argentine-Brazilian geopolitical competition 610 Arielismo 612

index   781 Ariel (Rodó)  612 arms control during Cold War  9 countermovements of  389 by Germany  493 liberal institutions and  73, 123, 310–11 of nuclear weapons  176, 301, 304–5, 308–10, 391–2 by Russia  466–7 by South Africa  541–2 technology and  390 treaties for  141 arms races  5, 304, 371, 416–17, 476, 684, 774 Arrighi, Giovanni  209 artificial intelligence (AI)  274 artificial VSI/SVI  266–7 Art of War (Sun-tzu)  253 ASEAN-China FTA  692 ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting-Plus (ADMM-Plus) 692 ASEAN Economic Community  651–2 ASEAN Free Trade Arrangement (AFTA) 651–2 ASEAN-Plus-Three (APT)  692 ASEAN Political and Security Community (APSC)  561, 654–5 ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF)  509, 646–7, 692 Asia. See also individual countries agents of peaceful and violent change 242–3 Confucianism  239, 241, 251–5 geographical definition  239 heterogeneity in  240 Hindus/Hinduism  239–42, 245–6 Islam  239, 242, 244–5 plurality of civilizations and religions  240–1 post-essentialist framework  255 US policy toward  436 water conflicts and climate change  339–41 Asian Development Bank  509 Asian financial crises  552, 647–8, 690–1 Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB)  76, 359, 456, 650–1, 693–4, 769 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC)  74–5, 374, 509, 557–8, 646–7, 691–2

Asia Reassurance Initiative Act  695 assassination forms  396–7 Association for the Protection of Race and Religion 250 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)  17, 135, 355, 454–5, 509, 525, 554, 556–8, 560–2, 643–57, 667. See also Southeast Asia’s peaceful change “Atoms for Peace” proposal  522 Attrition War  713–14 AU Constitutive Act  628, 630 Aung San Suu Kyi  239, 249–50 Australia promotion of peaceful change  75–6 resistance to peaceful change  10–11 as traditional middle power  555 Austria decline of  92 German annexation of  434 German-Austrian coalition  98 in Holy Alliance  430 Austria-Hungary alliance  98 Austro-Hungarian Empire  293 authoritarianism fears/threats of  504–5, 571 GCC and  712 increase in  123, 331, 363, 378–9 liberal democratic systems against  14–15, 412–14, 471, 610 nature of Arab governments  715–18 persistence of  545, 666, 704–5, 769, 771 roots of  355 with state-led economies  332 transition from  354, 374–5, 543–4, 559, 561–2, 651, 738, 745–6, 773 US support of  8–9 Ayoob, Mohammad  673–4 Bahrain 711–12 Baker, James  74, 440 Bakiyev, Kurmanbek  752 balance of power  11–12, 58, 713–14 Balassa, Bela  153–4 Baldwin, David  325 Baldwin, James  535–6 Bali Democracy Forum (BDF)  562–3 Balkans  118–19, 468, 482–3

782   index ballistic missile defense  508 Baltic States  731–4. See also Central and Eastern Europe’s peaceful change Bandung Conference  52–3, 551, 556 bandwagoning  69–70, 606–7, 613, 671, 755 Bangladesh  239, 665–6, 670–2 Ban Ki-moon  346 bargaining theory of conflict  149–50, 157, 160 Bártok, Béla  30 Basic Japanese Policy  509 Basic Principles Agreement (BPA)  438–9 basin-based cooperation  344–5 Bay of Bengal  526–7 Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) 676 Beaufre, Andre  536–7 Beck, Ulrich  388 Bedjaoui, Mohammed  53 Begin, Menachem  486 Beijing Consensus  355 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action  221, 358 Belgium  196, 572 Bell, Christine  227–8 Bellanwila (monk)  247 Belo, Carlos  239 Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)  10–11, 67, 76, 323, 454, 473, 488, 511–12, 650–1, 669, 690–1, 746, 765–6 Ben-Gurion, David  485 Bentham, Jeremy  112 Berdimuhammedov, Gurbanguly  751 Berlin, Isaiah  194 Berlin Congress  196–7 Berlin Wall, fall of  10 Best, Joe  373–4 Better Utilization of Investments Leading to Development (BUILD) Act  695 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)  246, 670 Bhutan  246–7, 670–2, 675–6 “bigism” in South Africa  545–6 Biko, Steve  622 bilateral agreements  347, 485, 687 bilateral financial cooperation  344–5, 454 bilateral investments agreements (BITs)  708 bilateralism  484, 589–90, 666, 703

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation  358 binationalism 589–90 Binational Planning Group (BPG)  597–8 bin Laden, Osama  244 bioengineered grain  389 biological evolution  263–5 biological weapons  12–13, 74 biotechnology 396–7 bipolar international system  613 Bismarck, Otto von  576–7 Black Lives Matter  15–16, 215–16 Blainey, Geoffrey  369 Blair, Tony  74, 117–18 Bloomfield, Lincoln  54–5 Blyden, Edward Wilmot  622 Blyth, Mark  395 Boao Forum in China  446, 692 Bolívar, Simón  606, 611 Bolivarianism 418 Bolivia 606 Bolivia-Paraguay Chaco War  607 Bonnevie, Christine  30 border disputes  448, 454–5, 631, 644–6, 747–8 Bose, Subhas Chandra  245–6 Bosnia and Herzegovina  729–30, 734–8 Bosnian War  571, 734–8 Boulding, Kenneth  14 boundary disputes  294–5, 668 Bourgeois, Léon  30, 36, 42, 287 Bourquin, Maurice  34, 39, 41–3, 193 Boxing Day tsunami in Indonesia  552 Brandt, Willie  51–2, 486–7, 491–3 Brazil democracy and global governance  354–5 foreign policy  613 IBSA forum  547 nuclear disarmament  773–4 populism in  15–16 as potential threat  606 request for permanent seat in United Nations Security Council  137–8 right-wing politics in  123 settlement of interstate disputes  612 soft power in  17 status quest  375 strengthening of military power  373 US relations with  606–7, 617n.1

index   783 Brazilian Primeiro Comando da Capital  605 Bretton Woods  359, 363, 395, 429–30, 435, 769 Brezhnev Doctrine  725–6 BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) countries  11, 319, 326, 354–5, 374–5, 456–7, 769 BRI development  457–8 British Guiana  430–1 British Round-Table group  42 British Royal Navy  430 Brodie, Bernard  301–2 Brooks, Stephen  393–4 Brownlie, Ian  286–7 Broz, Josip  728–9 Brundtland Commission Report  395–6 Buddhism  239–40, 242, 246–51 Bulgaria  116, 576–7 Bull, Hedley  191, 194–5, 197–8, 283, 310 Burma  249–50, 505–6, 556 Burundi 544 Bush, George H. W.  73–5, 77, 440 Bush, George W.  76–7, 242, 304–5, 439–40, 611–12 Buzan, Barry  89–90, 199–200, 524 Cairo Agreement  714–15 Callendar, Guy Earl  399 Calvo, Carlos (Calvo Doctrine)  607–8 Cambodia  118–19, 246–7, 438–9, 505–6, 558, 644–5 Cambridge Law Journal 193 Campbell, Donald  261 Canada Alaskan border disagreement  432 commitment to liberalism  123–4 gender equality in  221 NAFTA and  74–5 national identity  592 as traditional middle power  555 UNDP and  208 US relations with  590, 593–8 WPS agenda  231–2 Canada–US security community  593–8 Canadian-American alliance  597 canonical ambiguity in Asia  240–2 “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (Spivak)  210

capitalism democratic capitalism in Russia  465 fight against  210 global value chains and  393–4 inequality and exploitation with  209–10 market capitalism  390 peace of  133 socialism vs. 9 state-capitalist economies  329–30 Caribbean  431, 605–6 Carnegie Memorial Trust  42 Carr, E.H.  7–8, 35, 56–7, 150–1, 194, 197, 288, 352, 386–7, 764, 768 Carter, Ashton  322–3 Carter, Jimmy  707 Casablanca Group  624 cataclysmic warfare  7–8, 49, 769 Catholicism  414, 570–1 Cecil, Robert  287 Centeno, Miguel Angel  612–13 Central African Republic  544 Central America  153, 605–6 Central American Parliament  604 Central and Eastern Europe’s peaceful change in Czechoslovakia  727–31 great-power relations  725 great powers and  725, 731–8, 733t introduction to  721–2 post-Soviet states  734, 735t realist explanation for  722–3 state-to-nation (S/N) balance theory  721–5, 728, 732, 738 summary of  738, 774 war-propensity of states  724–5 in Yugoslavia  728–31 Central Asia  239, 243–4 Central Asian Cooperation Organisation (CACO) 747–9 Central Asian Economic Union  747–8 Central Asia’s peaceful change comparative and global approach to  756–7, 774 decolonization 753–6 illiberal peace  747, 750–3 international relations  745–7, 753–6 in post-Soviet Central Asian region 745–50

784   index Central Party School of the Chinese Community Party  446 Central Treaty Organization (CENTO)  666 Chamberlain, Neville  7–8 change, defined  398 change through rapprochement (Wandel durch Annäherung) policy  486–7 Charter of the Organization of African Unity (OAU)  621–3, 626, 628, 630 Chase-Dunn, Christopher  209 Chatham House, London  33, 42 Chaxugeju mode  377–8 Chazov, Yevgeniy  421n.5 checkbook diplomacy  494 Chemical and Biological Weapons Conventions 12–13 chemical weapons  74, 173–4 Chiang Kai-shek  251–2 Chiang Mai Initiatives  691–2 Chile  612–13, 628 China A2/AD capabilities by  79–80 ancient civilization of  239 ASEAN relations  646–7 asymmetric strategies by  765 Belt and Road Initiative  10–11, 67, 76, 323, 454, 473, 488, 511–12, 650–1, 669, 690–1, 746, 765–6 Boao Forum  446, 692 border disputes  448, 454–5 Buddhism in  246–7 Chaxugeju mode  377–8 in CJKFTA  691 Confucianism  239, 241, 251–5 in current international order  180 democratic peace hypothesis  354–5 dual-engagement strategy of  456 economic growth of  76, 319–20, 325, 445, 449, 510 extensive trade ties of  320–1 Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence with China  515–16, 519–22 foreign direct investment of  608 GDP  319–20, 445, 508, 690–1 globalization impact  79 global value chains in  322 great-power rivalries  644–9

growing power of  123, 429, 668 Han Chinese  251–4 human rights in  582–3 hybrid interference  71 impact on Latin America’s peaceful change 615 international institutions and  457 Japan’s peaceful change and  510–12 material advancements in  8, 13 Middle Eastern wars and US  72 military power of  685, 693–4 new world order strategy of US  330 Nobel Peace Prize winners  239 nuclear disarmament  515–17 Paris Climate Conference  343–4 peaceful change in  10–11, 89–90, 201–2 as peer competitor to US  67 postcolonial ideology  370–1 power gap between US and  450 realism and  267 regional hegemons in  99 relationship with Germany  488–9 relations with Pakistan  676 security competition and  70 selling of US Treasury bonds  332 Sinocentric nationalism  252 Sino-Indian relations  668–9 Sino-Japan relations  453–4 Sino-Pakistani entente  522 Sino-Russian relationship  453 Sino-US rapprochement  687 South American trade with  605, 608 stability transformation  687 status quest  369, 374–9 systemic change and  68 territorial revisionism by  76 Tibet and  250–1 TPPs and  322–3 trade war  615 Trump presidency impact on  159 unlawful acts of  42–3 US bilateral relationship  451–3 US-China security competition  454–5, 458, 563 US-China trade war  450 US détente strategy  436–40 violent internal conflicts  505

index   785 WTO and  74–6 zone of peace  352–3, 355 China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (FTA) 454 China-Japan-Korea free trade agreement (CJKFTA) 691 “China’s Peaceful Development Road” paper 446–7 China’s “peaceful rise” strategy. See also Northeast Asia’s peaceful change “China threat” theory  448–51, 457–8 future of  457–9 introduction to  445–6 origin of  446–8 in practice  451–7, 771 China’s Reform Forum  446 “China threat” theory  448–51, 457–8 Chinese-American tensions  99 Chinese Communist Party (CCP)  76, 446, 458, 519–21 Chinese nuclear program  522 Chinese world order  685–6 Christensen, Thomas  93 Christian Democrats (CDU/ CSU)  486, 489–90 Christians/Christianity  239, 242 Churchill, Winston  134–5, 518 Chushi-Gangdruk 251 Citizenship Amendment Act  246 civic nationalism  16, 724 CIVICUS 363 civil disobedience  245, 517–18 civilian power concept  481–3 civilizational peace  18 civilizational state  254 civil-military socialization  179, 731–2 civil nonstate action  361 civil society  213, 347, 408–9, 411–15, 614–15, 630 civil wars  155–6, 182n.1, 286–7, 291–2, 703–4, 707, 710, 724, 728, 733–7, 738n.1, 773 clandestine diplomacy  71 Clark, Ian  198 “clash of civilizations” idea  240–1 class struggle  210–12 Clausewitzian means-end construct  387, 407 Clayton-Bulwer Treaty  431–2

clearance operations  249 Cleveland, Grover  431 climate change collective action against  344–8 fear of conflicts  339 impact on South Asia  663 insecurities and  338–42 introduction to  5, 13, 337 large-scale population migrations management 345–7 meeting challenges of  399–400 migration and conflict potential  341–2 peaceful change through global partnership  347–8, 769 water conflicts  339–41, 344–5 Clinton, Bill  74–5, 77, 440 Clinton, Hillary  231–2, 319, 525, 611–12 cluster munitions bans  176–7 Code of Conduct (CoC)  649 coercive action  115 coercive sanction  283 cold peace  14, 19–20, 713, 725, 733t, 737–8 Cold War. See also post-Cold War peaceful change defensive realist argument impact  97–8 East-West divide in  56 efforts for peaceful change  8–10, 48–9, 60 end of  101–2, 169–71, 180–1, 199–200, 408–9, 467–8 ideological blocs during  307 ideological polarity of  117 impact on South Asia  665–8 NATO alliance during  436 peaceful change after  41, 50–1, 201 structural transformation and  292 US-Soviet Union relations during  70–1, 97–8, 169, 244, 302 cold wars  14 collective action  344–8, 605 collective defense  130, 141, 598, 649–50 collective goods provision  4–5, 396, 605, 609 collective identities  129, 134–6, 653 collective learning  390, 394 collective legitimization  141–2 collective mobilization  407 collective security  31–2, 39, 42, 57, 116–17, 212–13, 476

786   index Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) 747–8 Colombia  231–2, 416–17, 603–4, 606, 609–10 Colombo powers  556 Colonial Study Group  52 commercialism 612 commercial peace  133, 148–9, 152–3, 160–1 Committee of European Economic Cooperation (CEEC)  574 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting 543–4 Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) 747–8 communal inclusion/exclusion  115 communism anti-communism  50–1, 412 anti-Communist army  553–4 Cold War and  8–9, 14–15 concern over  504 dangers of  579–80, 686 expansionist ideology of  582 grassroots anti-communist movements  412 Marxian communism  51–2 US-Indonesia relations and  554 Communist Party  251–2 Communist Party (KPD)  489–90 Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC)  604, 609 Comoros 544 compétence de guerre 287 Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP)  322–3, 695–6 Concert of Europe  3, 7, 57, 139–40 Conference of Institutions for the Scientific Study of International Relations (CISSIR)  30–1, 32t, 35–7 Conference on Cooperation and Security in Europe (CSCE)  134 Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) 749–50 Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE)  9, 440, 489, 491–2 conflictual change  129–30 Confucianism  239, 241, 251–5 Congress of Vienna  197

Congress Party  246 conservatism  48, 503 conspicuous giving behaviors  377 constitutional structure  284–5 Constitutive Act of the African Union (AU) 621–2 constructive partnerships  453 constructivism actors in peaceful change  169–80 biases in  180–1 changes in Soviet Union  467–8 contributions to peaceful change  177–80 critical constructivists/constructionism  171, 174–5, 206–7, 216n.1 factors in peaceful change  169–75, 763 introduction to  13–14, 169–70 in IR traditions  89, 169–71 Latin America’s peaceful change  611–12 mechanisms of peaceful change  169–80, 767–8 origins of  170–1 power of  171–2 promotion of peaceful change  130 social constructivism  195–6 in Southeast Asia  653 summary of  181–2, 773–4 understanding of international law  283–6 Contadora Group  604, 613 containment politics  50–2 contested state  295 conventional constructivists  171, 173–4 conventional weapons  68, 71, 77, 97–8, 523 Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA)  539–40, 547 Corfu Channel incident  296n.6 coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic  67, 153, 158–9, 161, 273–4, 355, 359, 363, 389, 391–2, 458, 511–12, 655, 776 cosmopolitan humanism  209, 212 Council of Europe  489–90, 492 Council of Foreign Relations  33 counterhegemonic forces  180, 213–14, 412–14 countermovements  385–6, 388–9, 396, 416–19 counterrevolutionary coup  418 counterterrorism  78–9, 452, 632 coup d’états  630 Court of Justice of the European Union  134

index   787 Cox, Robert  206–7, 215 Crawford, Neta  14–15 creative destruction  393–4 Crimean War  196 crisis stability  688 critical constructivists/constructionism  171, 174–5, 206–7, 216n.1 critical international relations (IR) ­theories. See also international relations defined 206–7 fundamental change in  211–15 introduction to  205–6 summary of  215–16 violence with  207–11 Critical T/theory, defined  206–7, 211–15 Croatia  729–30, 734–8 cross-border migration  337 Crucé, Eméric  148 Cuba  539, 607–8, 613 Cuban Missile Crisis  9, 607 cultural genocide  251, 252, 255n. 1 culture, as factor in change  173 “culture of peace” concept  626 cultures of anarchy  570 Curie, Marie  30 Curtis, Lionel  42 cyber conflict  396–7 cybersecurity 5 cyberwarfare 775 cyclical change  11 Cyprus conflict  577 Czechia 731–4 Czechoslovakia  571, 574, 727–31 Czech Republic  471, 487–8, 725–31. See also Central and Eastern Europe’s peaceful change Dalai Lama (Fourteenth) of Tibet  239, 251, 520–1 Darwin, Charles  261, 263 Davies, Tom  414 Dayton Peace Accords  737 decentralization policy  729 decision-making process authoritative process of  283 by international institutions  130 international stakeholders  5

science and technology impact on  389, 394 on security and peace  227–8 Declaration of ASEAN Concord II (Bali Concord II)  561 Declaration of Conduct of Parties  558 Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States  296n.7 decolonial imaginists  622 decolonization process  9, 16, 52–3, 179, 293, 516–19, 528, 553–4, 753–6 deconstruction of gender  225, 228–9 deep peace  4–5, 14, 16–17, 372, 463, 467, 481, 569, 684 defense-friendly barriers  96–7 defensive realism  93–100, 266–7t deferential parliamentary politics  197 De Klerk, F.W.  539–41 delegitimization of intervention  291 democracy Africa’s peaceful change and  629–31 alternative conceptions of  412 elimination of war  13 flawed democracy  244–5, 563 Guided Democracy policy  551–3, 563 Indonesia’s transition to  552–3, 559–63 Kant on  3, 12 liberal-democratic institutions  113–14, 122–3, 593–6 liberal economic policies of  319 liberal focus on change  12, 180–1 Middle East/North Africa (MENA) peaceful change  704–5 national democracy  351–6 respect for  579–80 social democracy  151, 396, 485–7, 489–91 spread of  407 Taisho democracy  686 transnational democracy  360–3 Western liberal democracy  746 democracy and global governance future prospects  363–4 historical perspective on debates  351–2 national democracy  352–6 in peaceful change  351 peaceful change and  356–60 transnational democracy  360–3

788   index democratic backsliding  243–4, 354–5, 609, 615–16, 769 democratic capitalism in Russia  465 democratic governance  73–4, 354, 408 democratic peace  201, 354–5, 610, 651, 667 Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)  543–4, 629 democratization  447, 605, 610, 622, 704–5, 716, 727–8 Deng Xiaoping  10–11, 267, 447, 687, 693–4 Denmark  75–6, 98, 571, 573 Dennett, Daniel  263 de-securitizing logic  232 despotism 292–3 Destined for War (Allison)  369 détente strategy  9, 51–2, 436–40 Deudney, Daniel  388, 395, 398 Deutsch, Karl  4, 92, 129–30, 135, 199–201, 281, 580–1, 652–3 Deutsche Mark vs. euro  490–1 dialectical change  16 dialectical materialism  390 Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute  454–5 dictatorships  14–15, 243–4, 485, 610, 612 Diego Garcia  526–7 “diffusion-proofing” strategies  418–19 digitally enabled disinformation campaigns 775 digital technologies  396–7 diminishing value of territory  89–90 Diop, Cheikh Anta  622 diplomacy, defined  221 diplomatic bargaining  16, 57 diplomatic interaction  134–5 diplomatic mechanisms of change  6–7, 56–7 direct negotiations  193–4 direct violence  208 discipline, as factor in change  175 discourses, as factor in change  174 discursive power  212–13 disinformation campaigns  13, 71, 775 displaced persons  14 dispute resolution/settlement  3, 5–6, 621 diversity regimes  180 Djalal, Hasjim  558 Doha Round negotiations  322 domestic coalitions  20, 330–1

domestic level of peaceful change  6–8, 703 domestic national development strategy  451 domestic political change  329–31, 715–17 double movement concept (Polanyi)  385–6 doux commerce thesis  133 Doyle, Michael  112–13 Drago Doctrine  607–8 drones 177 drug trafficking value chain  775–6 dual-engagement strategy  456 Dulles, John Foster  51 Dunn, Frederick  40, 49–51 Dutch colonial forces  551–2 Duterte, Rodrigo  363 East Asia  67, 99, 239 East Asia Summit (EAS)  509, 557–8, 692 Eastern Europe  486–8, 572 East Timor  118–19, 239, 509, 552, 645–6 East-West divide  56 Ebadi, Shirin  239 Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) 635n.7 economic discrimination  324–5, 330–1 economic globalization  11, 67–8, 77–8, 80 economic imperialism  394 economic interdependence bargaining theory of conflict  149–50 dependent variable measures  156–8 as enhancement to peaceful change  148–50 globalization and  19, 158–60 global value chains  153–4, 158–61 independent variable measures  151–6 interstate conflict with  150–1 introduction to  147 Kant on  3 militarized interstate disputes and  156–8, 160 Northeast Asia’s peaceful change  690–1, 693 opportunity costs of containment policies 154–5 overview of  19, 320–4 Russia’s approach toward integration  476 summary of  160–1 trade and  155–6, 161n.1, 320–4 economic liberalism  393–5 economic liberalization  121–2, 330, 708

index   789 economic sanctions  328, 330–1 “The Economics of Territorial Sovereignty” (Robbins) 192 economic statecraft  19–20, 320, 322, 324–32 Economic Statecraft (Baldwin)  325 economic welfare  148, 151 Ecuador  603, 606, 608 Egal, Mohamed  627 Egypt  418, 440–1, 542–3 Egyptian-Israeli peace process  704–5, 713–14 Einstein, Albert  30 Eisenhower, Dwight D.  51 Eiskau, Satō  508 Elias, Taslim  53 El Salvador  628 Elshtain, Jean Bethke  223–4 Elysée Treaty  484 empathetic cooperation  224–5 English-language literature  42 “English School” theory Great Power management  191, 193, 196–9 introduction to  191 order and justice  194–6, 767 participants in symposium on  191–4 regional rules  199–201 summary of  201–2 Enhanced Forward Presence (NATO)  487 Enlightenment principles for change  14–15 Enlightenment rationalism  386–7, 390 entrapment/entanglement risks  70 environmental degradation  208–9, 389, 396 environmental networks  411 episodic change  11, 16–17 epistemic communities  175–6, 179, 271–3, 391–2, 408, 754, 767–8, 773–4 Equatorial Guinea  631 Erhard, Ludwig  484 Eritrea  544, 631 Escudé, Carlos  607 Esquipulas Peace Agreement  613 Estonia 75–6 Ethiopia  31, 48, 438–9, 544, 631 ethnic cleansing  119, 182, 240, 249, 734 ethnic homogeneity  724 ethnic minorities  14, 79 ethnic nationalism  16, 727–8, 730, 768 Eurasian Union  76, 747–8

Euro-Atlantic pluralistic security community 117 European Atomic Energy Community  577–8 European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC)  470–1, 483–4, 489, 577–8 European Community  60, 117 European Economic Community (EEC)  9, 490, 509, 577–8 European Enlightenment thinkers  3 European imperialism  285, 606 European integration and transformation  173, 489–91 European Neighborhood Policy (ENP)  577, 708 European orientalism  240 European Recovery Program (ERP)  574 European Security Treaty  476 European Union (EU) Covid pandemic impact  273–4 democratic peace hypothesis  355 European Commission  577 European Neighborhood Policy  577, 708 foreign relations with China  451–2 institutional framework of  353 institutionalization of  177 institutionalized cooperation  139 large-scale population migrations management 345–6 military power of  153, 434 multilateral cooperation  358 normative power Europe  580, 772 origins of  435 peaceful change and  9, 15–16, 60, 78, 117 realist accounts of origins  101–2 RTAs in  322 Sino-EU relations  453 European Union Force Bosnia and Herzegovina (EUFOR)  737 Euroskeptic movements  414 Eurozone crisis  395 evolution, misunderstandings of  263–5 evolutionary theorization biological to social evolution  263–5 five key issue domains  273–4 future of states and state-building  273 of international relations  265–8 introduction to  261–2 niche construction theory  270–1

790   index evolutionary theorization (Continued) nontraditional security  273–4 rule-based international system  268–70 security strategy changes  271–3 social evolution paradigm  263–9, 271–2, 274–5 toward humane society  262–3 variation-selection-inheritance  262–3, 266 exceptionalism  593, 595–6 Explaining the East Asian Peace: A Research Story (Tonneson)  553 export restrictions by US  450 Extinction Rebellion  419–20 Falklands/Malvinas War  607 family of nations  292–3 Fanon, Frantz  210 Far Right  412 fascism  396, 685 fax machine technology  388–9 fear of conflicts in climate change  339 Federal Republic of Germany  486, 489–92 Fei Xiaotong  377–8 feminism/feminists foreign policy  222–3, 231–3 gender-just change  225–9 in international theory  222 networks of  411 theory of  13, 206–7 Fettwis, Christopher  72 F-35 fifth-generation jets  501–2 financial flows  155 Finland 116 Finlandization of Germany  491–2 “The Fire to Come in South Africa” (Halberstam) 535–6 First Industrial Revolution  393, 396 Fischer, Joschka  495n.3 Fisher, John  432 Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence with China  515–16, 519–22 flawed democracy  244–5, 563 Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) 492–3 forced international migration  346 Foreign Affairs  541–2, 547 foreign deployments  494–5

foreign direct investment  608 foreign policies. See also United States (US) foreign policy Africa 631–2 Brazil 613 of constructivists  174 economic policies  329 economic statecraft and  324–31 Germany 483–9 human security  12–13 Indonesia  551, 555–63 moral foreign policy  378–9 nuclear weapons and  97 peaceful change in  373 peaceful foreign policy change  6–7 in post-apartheid South Africa  541 former Yugoslavia  728–31, 734–8 foundational institution  281 Four Policemen  435 Four Power Agreement  486–7 “Fourteen Points” speech (Wilson)  116, 433 Fourth Industrial Revolution  385–6, 396–400 Fox, W. T. R.  50–1 France Algeria’s independence from  517 anti-war coalition with Russia  471 commitment to liberalism  123–4 decline of  92 European integration and transformation 173 gender equality in  221 German-French reconciliation process  490 German reunification and  98 Germany’s relations with France  483–5 promotion of peaceful change  75–6 Radical-Socialism 30 Treaty of Dunkirk  572 US against Soviet aggression  435–6 Francophone Africa  629–30 Frankfurt School  206, 212 Franklin, Benjamin  587 Freedom and Unity (Nyerere)  624 Freedom House  354 freedom of navigation operations (FONOPS) 694–5 freedom-unity-development nexus  625 free markets  74, 330, 613, 731

index   791 Free Trade Agreement (FTA)  454, 691 Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) 613 French and Indian War  591 French Constitution  287 French Foreign Office  41 French Ministry of National Education  41 French Revolution  284–5 Fridays for Future  215–16 Fukuyama, Francis  14–15, 542 functional/behavior typology  555 functionalist theory of peace  59–61 fundamental change in international relations 211–15 Gaddafi, Muammar  76, 119 Galtung, Johan  14, 208–9, 225, 750–1 Gambia v. Myanmar 249 Gammeltoft-Hansen, Thomas  132 Gandhi, Mohandas  7, 239, 243, 245–6, 255, 419, 515, 517–18, 536 Gandhi, Rajiv  523 Garcia-Amador, F.  53 Gaulle, Charles de  484 Gavin, Francis J.  68 Gayoom, Maumoon Abdul  667 Gaza Strip  704 G-7 countries  74, 691–2 G-8 countries  74, 487, 691–2 G-20 countries  11, 129, 359, 691–2 Ge Jianxiong  252–3 gendered violence  229–32, 249 gender equality  223, 225–7, 231–3 gender-just change deconstruction of gender  225, 228–9 feminism and  225–9 feminist foreign policy  222–3, 231–3 introduction to  221–3 strategic essentialism and inclusion  225, 227–8 summary of  233–4, 768 transformative peace  225–9 war and conflict  223–5 women-peace hypothesis  223, 225–7, 233 WPS agenda  221, 226–34 gender mainstreaming  221, 227, 231–2, 234n.1, 768

General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)  73–5, 80, 131 general stability  688 Geneva Conventions  291–2 genocide  240, 249–52, 255n.1 Gentili, Alberico  290 geoeconomics  71, 325–32 geopolitics in Asia  650 excluded from ISC debates  43 influence on peaceful change  8–9, 38 postwar changes  47–50 by Russia  471, 473–4 Type I peaceful change and  92 US-China relations  687 US foreign policy and  441 US-Russia relations  465 Georgia 471 German Advisory Council on Global Change 339 German-Austrian coalition  98 German Bundestag  485 German Democratic Republic (GDR)  486–7, 489–90 German-French reconciliation process  490 German Wars of Unification  92 Germany anti-war coalition with Russia  471 border dispute with Italy  200 commitment to liberalism  123–4 democratic institutions in  436 European integration and transformation 173 Finlandization of  491–2 foreign deployments  494 hegemonic wars of  449 institutionalized Munich  50–1 international impact of  29 interwar period  7–8 League of Nations nonmembership  29, 434 National Socialism  31–2 Nazi Germany  31, 50–1, 99, 485 Ostpolitik  9, 51–2, 491 postwar anti-militarism  17 promotion of peaceful change  75–6 as radical left-wing governments  41 rearmament of  191–2

792   index Germany (Continued) remilitarization of  31, 48 request for permanent seat in United Nations Security Council  137–8 reunification of  98, 170–1, 440, 467, 493 rise of  97 self-sufficient state and  40 status quest  376–7 unlawful acts of aggression  42–3, 116 Germany’s peaceful change as civilian power  481–3 CSCE and OSCE  489, 491–2 European integration  489–91 NATO and  483, 574 pursuit of  483–94 relationship with rising powers  488–9 relations with Eastern Europe  486–8 relations with France  483–5 relations with Israel  485–6 summary of  494–5, 771 Ge Zhaoguang  254 Ghana 621 Gheciu, Alexandra  179 Gilpin, Robert  49–51, 56–7, 67–8, 72–3, 216n.7, 386–7 give and take policy  50–1 Glaser, Charles  90, 93 Glasnost’(openness)  9, 725–6, 734 global commons command  70–1 Global Compact on Refugees  346 global diversity  178–9 global economy  323–4, 393–6, 450 global financial crisis (GFC)  451 global governance, defined  357 global governance and democracy. See democracy and global governance global hegemony  93, 102 global inequality  5, 211 globalists 13 globalization defined 77 economic globalization  11, 67–8, 77–8, 80, 446 economic interdependence and  19, 158–60 glocalization and  398 ideological infrastructure of  411 impact of  67, 78–9, 765–7

liberal globalization  121–4 in Northeast Asia  693 post-Cold War peaceful change and  77–9 regionalization and  324 of sovereign political form  293 global justice movement  411 global partnership in climate change 347–8 Global Peace Index  571–2 global politics  223–4, 385–6 global power transitions  58, 386 Global Reporting Initiative  360–2 Global South  123, 138–9, 294, 338, 413–14, 616, 754, 773–4 global supply chains  89–90 global value chains (GVCs)  153–4, 158–61, 322, 332, 393–4, 767 global warming  15–16, 198, 270–1, 274, 337, 341–3 Global Water Partnership (GWP)  344–5 glocalization  393–4, 398 Godse, Nathuram  246 Good Friday Agreement  542 Good Neighbor period  611–12 Gorbachev, Mikhail  9, 58–9, 176, 420n.2, 440, 463, 465–8, 645, 764–5, 770–1 Gradual Reciprocation in Tension Reductions (GRIT) 475 Gramsci, Antonio  13, 212–14, 216n.5, 216n.6 grassroots anti-communist movements  412 Great Britain deferential parliamentary politics  197 democracy in  180 as global power  378 impact of Russian ascendancy  98 peaceful change and  7–8, 32 peaceful power transition between US and 429–33 rise of Germany and United States  97 Type I peaceful change  92 US against Soviet aggression  435–6 Great Depression  42–3, 770 Greater Eurasia vision  473, 476 The Great Illusion (Angell)  37 “Great Irresponsible,”  198 Great Powers America as  595

index   793 Central and Eastern Europe’s peaceful change  725, 731–8, 733t competition in Southeast Asia  644–9 peaceful change and  288–9, 469–70 peaceful rise of  17, 449–50, 770–2 politics of  5, 17, 353, 390 Great Recession  67, 395 Great Transformation  393–5 Great War (1914–1918). See World War I “Great War on Terror” (GWOT)  471 Greece  116, 573 Greek Civil War  571, 573 Green Climate Fund  353 greenhouse gas emissions  337, 342–3 Green Revolution  389 Gregory, T.E.  192 gross domestic product (GDP) in China  319–20, 445, 508, 690–1 global supply chains and  158–9, 161 India 664–5 in Japan  508–9, 511 Northeast Asia  691 Grotius, Hugo  285, 290 Guatemala 151 Guevarist Tupamaros in Uruguay  413–14 Guided Democracy  551–3, 563 Gujral, Inder Kumar  668–9 Gujral Doctrine  668–9 Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)  557, 704–6, 709, 711–12, 717 Gulf War  703–4, 710 Guzzini, Stefano  171 Haas, Ernst  60, 390–1, 580–1 Habibie, B.J.  645–6 Hague Treaty  287 Halberstam, David  535–6, 538 Hall, Thomas D.  209 Hallstein Doctrine  486 Han Chinese  251–4 Hansen, James  399 hard power  69–70 Harvard University  446 Hasina, Sheikh  671 Havel, Vaclav  7 Hay-Pauncefote Treaty  431–2 health in economic interdependence  152

hedging strategy in peaceful change  10–11 hegemony anarchy vs. 93 counterhegemonic forces  180, 213–14, 412–14 global hegemony  93, 102 Gramscian understanding of  213 liberal hegemony  68–9, 72–7, 80, 429, 441 regional hegemons  99, 104n.3, 449 reluctant hegemon  490 socialization under  102–3 stability in Indonesia  557 stability theory  180, 325 understanding of  180 of United States  449, 469, 572, 575, 581, 607, 688–90 voluntary compliance in  72–3 Hegemony (Clark)  198 Heinemann, Gustav  489–90 Helsinki Effect  134 Helsinki Final Act  51–2, 486–7, 491–2 Helsinki process  9, 354 Heraclitus 262 Herz, John  49, 57 Hezbollah 418–19 Hideki, Tojo  503 Hideo, Ōtake  507 Hillary doctrine  231–2 Hindu Right  667 Hindus/Hinduism  239–42, 245–6, 517–18 Hirschman, Albert  325 Hitler, Adolf  7–8, 50–1, 764 HIV/AIDS  358, 389, 632–3 Hobbesian Western European peaceful change  572–5, 579 Hoffmann, Stanley  112 Hofmann, Stephanie  177 Holland 196 Holocaust 485 Holy Alliance  430 Holy Roman Empire  570–1 homeland security  597 hot wars  14, 707, 725, 732, 735t, 738 Huawei 5G controversy  450 Hudson Institute  694 Hu Jintao  10–11, 446, 453–4 human behavior  37–8, 397

794   index Human Development Report (UNDP)  632 humanism  14–15, 111–12, 209, 212, 548n.2, 624 humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) 654 humanitarian crises  121–2, 195, 198, 294 Humanitarian Initiative  309–10 humanitarian intervention  78, 296n.8, 734–7 humanitarianism  140, 181 humanitarian nongovernmental organizations 362 human rights activists 395 in China  582–3 democracy and respect for  353 liberalism and  121 respect for  579–80, 616 spread of  407 violations of  208–9, 552 women’s rights as  221, 223–4 Hume, David  39 Hungary  98, 123, 355, 363, 571, 731–4. See also Central and Eastern Europe’s peaceful change Huntington, Samuel P.  240–1, 536–7 Hurd, Ian  282 Hurrell, Andrew  195–6, 200–1 Hussein, Saddam  74, 286, 704, 723 hybrid interference  67, 71, 79 hybridization 254 hybrid warfare  765 Hyde-Price, Adrian  581 hypersonic weapons  303, 472–3, 476 IBSA (India, Brazil, and South Africa) forum 547 idealist peaceful change  3, 5, 56–9, 92, 173 ideational-materialist divisions  397 identity anarchy vs. collective identity  773 collective identities  129, 134–6, 653 definition process  114 as factor in change  174 in international relations  535 national identity  592 social identities  13 systemwide distribution in great powers 180

identity-building processes  411 Ikenberry, G. John  89–90, 117, 121, 395, 436 illiberal peace  747, 750–3 immoral doctrine of equality  193 imperative propositions  283 imperialism  151, 285, 394, 418, 455, 606, 685 Implementation Force (IFOR)  737 incremental peaceful change  16–17 India ancient civilization of  239 border disputes with China  454–5 Cold War impact  665–8 as Colombo power  556 Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence with China  515–16, 519–22 globalization impact  78 Hindus/Hinduism  239–42, 245–6 IBSA forum  547 interstate dynamics  664–5 Japan-India relationship  525 material advancements in  13 military power of  524–5, 668–9 Muslim population  241 Nobel Peace Prize winners  239 nuclear disarmament  522–4, 528, 771 nuclear weapons and  671 Paris Climate Conference  343–4 populism in  15–16 postcolonial ideology  370–1 relationship with Germany  488–9 request for permanent seat in United Nations Security Council  137–8, 439 resistance to peaceful change  10–11 right-wing political forces in  123 Sino-Indian relations  668–9 Sri Lanka relations  667 status quest  369, 374–5 strategic relations with Vietnam  525 strengthening of military power  373 Tamil–Sinhala conflict  677 violent relations with Pakistan  241, 526–7 India–Bangladesh maritime boundary  668 India–Bangladesh relations  670 India-Myanmar-Thailand trilateral highway 676 Indian National Army  245–6 Indian National Congress  245

index   795 India-Pakistan cooperation  675–7 India-Pakistan War  522, 669, 673 India’s peaceful change decolonization efforts  516–19, 528 Indo-Pacific relations  526–8 introduction to  515–17, 516t “Look/Act East” strategy  515–16, 524–6, 528 nuclear disarmament  522–4, 528 Panchsheel policy  515–16, 519–22, 528 summary of  528–9, 771 India-Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement (FTA) 669–70 Indo-British relationship  517–19 Indonesia  241, 244–5, 353, 505, 517, 645–6, 655–6 Indonesia Matters: Asia’s Emerging Democratic Power (Acharya)  552 Indonesian Communist Party (PKI)  551–4 Indonesian International Islamic University 560 Indonesian Islamic Centre in Kabul  560 Indonesia’s Pancasila  17 Indonesia’s peaceful change “free and active” foreign policy doctrine  551 introduction to  551–2 moderate Islam and democracy  559–63 political trajectory  553–5 role as middle power  555–9 summary of  563, 769 Indo-Pacific relations  452, 526–8 industrialism 37 industrialization  148, 153, 395–6, 508 Industrial Revolution  270–1, 274, 394–9 informal governance  136–7 information and communication technology (ICT)  391–2, 614–15 information technology (IT)  76–7 inside/outside approaches  113–14, 397 Institute of Peace and Democracy (IPD)  562–3 institutional dynamics of war and conflict  130, 223–4 institutionalization  50–1, 131, 193, 391–2, 492 institutions/institutional mechanisms of cooperation  12 defined  283, 311n.2 for dispute resolution/settlement  6

foreign deployments  494 memberships/privileges 5 Northeast Asia’s peaceful change  691–3 South Asian limited peace  672–6 instrumental value of engagement  375, 748 instruments of conflict  325 Integration and Cooperation Program  201 interaction change  4–5, 67, 216n.7 Inter-American Democratic Charter  605, 609 Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (“Rio Pact”)  296n.4, 598 intercolonial phase of ethnic conflict  591–2 interdependence  133–4, 323–4, 330. See also economic interdependence interest-based contractual relations  579 intergovernmental organizations  149 intermediate range ballistic missiles  765 internal violence  5 international anarchy  572–5 international arbitration in disputes  434 International Atomic Energy Agency  131 international bureaucracies  176 International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons 420n.3 International Campaign to Ban Landmines  420n.3 international civility  294 International Commission for Intellectual Cooperation (ICIC)  30 International Commission of Jurists  250–1 International Commission on Human Rights and State Intervention  133 International Conference of American States 43n.3 International Conference on Cambodia 645 international conflict  3, 90, 129, 147–9, 156–8, 161, 325, 369–72, 379–80, 775 International Court of Justice (ICJ)  134, 149, 249, 291, 294–5, 609–10, 631 International Criminal Court (ICC)  12–13, 119–21, 178, 353, 358, 545 international economy  320–1, 332 International Force for East Timor (INTERFET) 645–6 international humanitarian law  173–4, 291–2, 308, 389

796   index International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation (IIIC)  30, 54 international institutions Chinese-led 457 constraining state behavior  130–2 defined 130 exclusionary effects of  138–40 fostering norms  132–3 Kant on  3 peaceful change and  129–42 power politics/struggles  140–2 promotion of interdependence and trust  133–4 social interaction and collective identities  134–6 status quo bias  136–8 summary of  142 US-led 456 internationalist perspectivism  408–9 International Labor Organization (ILO)  30, 492–3 international law challenges to  53 constructivist understanding of  283–6 defined 283 discourse on  13, 47, 281 international humanitarian law  173–4, 291–2, 308, 389 neoliberal institutionalist perspectives on 283 post-World War II peaceful change  54–6 realist perspectives on  282–3 summary 295–6 systemic change and  292–5 traditional international law  53 understanding 283–6 war and peaceful change  291–2 International Law Commission (ILC)  345 international legal system  39, 283 international level peaceful change  6–8 International Monetary Fund (IMF)  73, 123, 133, 435, 456, 622–3, 691–2, 729 international monetary system  16 international nongovernmental organizations  360, 362 international order and peace  111–15 international organizations  178, 385–6, 389–93, 769

international pacific union  353 International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW)  421n.5 international political economy (IPE)  325–30, 332, 385–6, 394 international relations (IR). See also critical international relations (IR) theories Africa’s peaceful change  622–4 Anglo-American IR  386–7 Central Asia’s peaceful change  745–7, 753–6 China’s “peaceful rise” strategy and  448 constructivism in  89, 169–71 contemporary trends in  48 evolutionary theorization of  265–8 feminist-informed international theory  222 functionalist and neofunctionalist IR  59–61 historical perspectives on peaceful change 764–6 in Indo-Pacific region  526–8 international institutions and  129 international law impact on  281 Latin America’s peaceful change and  616 liberalism and  3, 111–15 Middle East/North Africa (MENA) peaceful change  705–8 norms of  132–3 peaceful change debate  3, 47 peaceful change defined in relation to  4–7, 41–3 post-World War II peaceful change  54–6 realist IR  388, 764 research agenda on peaceful change  763–4, 775–7 Russia’s peaceful change  463–4 science and technology in  42–3, 385–9 social movements and  407–9 transformational change and  13, 15–16 international security system  388–9 International Studies Association (ISA)  202n.1, 415 International Studies Conference (ISC) Executive Committee of  31–2 historical perspective  764 introduction to  29–30 peaceful change under  31–4, 41–3 post-World War II peaceful change  54–6 scholarship and science  35–41

index   797 summary of conferences  41–3 tensions surrounding  34–5 international systems  39–40, 58–9, 594 international tensions  89–90, 100, 320, 331–2, 371, 438 international voluntary societies  360 International Women’s Strike initiative  226 Inter-Parliamentary Union  129 interstate conflict  150–1 interstate peaceful change  89 interstate violence  225 interstate warfare  68, 156–8 interwar idealism  7–8, 47 intra-industry trade  153–4, 158–9, 321, 332, 333n.3, 769 intrastate violence  140, 225, 605 Iran globalization impact  78 Hussein’s invasion of  704 Kurdish nation problem  708–10 Nobel Peace Prize winners  239 Russian relations with  473 unipolar politics and  70 US intervention in  355 Iraq Abu Ghraib prison in  175 civil conflicts in  416–17 invasion of Kuwait  506 Islam in  244 Kurdish nation problem  708–10 regime change in  440 unipolar politics and  70 United States relations  70 US war in  67, 70–2, 75–6, 120–1, 154, 286, 707 Irish Republican Army  542 Islam  239, 241–2, 244–5, 559–63. See also Muslims Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)  70, 243–4, 414, 560, 655–6, 703–5, 717 Islamic terrorism  243, 560 Islamophobia  414, 559–60 Israel Arab-Israeli conflict  706–7, 711–15, 717 Arab Peace Initiative  711 Egyptian-Israeli peace negotiations  713–14 Egyptian-Israeli peace process  704–5, 713–14

Germany’s relations with  485–6 globalization impact  78 Jordanian-Israeli peace agreement  712–14 nuclear deterrence  301–2 policy toward the Palestinians  486 right-wing political forces in  123 Israeli-Jordanian peace process  704–5 Israeli-PLO negotiations  714–15 Israeli-Syrian peace negotiations  712–13 Italy border dispute with Germany  200 international impact of  29 occupation of Ethiopia  31, 48 as radical left-wing governments  41 self-sufficient state and  40 unlawful acts of  42–3 unlawful acts of aggression  116 withdrawal from League of Nations  29 Jackson, Patrick  241 Jackson, Robert  194 Jakarta Informal Meetings (JIM)  558, 645 Japan ancient civilization of  239 Buddhism in  246–7 in CJKFTA  691 Cold War and  8–9 democratic institutions in  436 economic growth of  76, 503 foreign relations with China  451–2 international impact of  29 invasion of India  245–6 invasion of Manchuria  31, 191–2 Korean-Japanese strategic rivalry  517 militarism in  686 military power of  503, 506–7, 509 peacekeeping engagement  173 postwar anti-militarism  17 as radical left-wing governments  41 regional hegemons in  99, 449 request for permanent seat in United Nations Security Council  137–8 resistance to peaceful change  10–11 self-sufficient state and  40 Sino-Japan relations  453–4 stability transformation  686 status quest  376–7 strengthening military capabilities  689

798   index Japan (Continued) Taisho democracy  686 Trump presidency impact on  159 unlawful acts of aggression  116 US-Japanese defense alliance  502, 505–6 US-Japan “Guidelines on Defense Cooperation,” 508 US occupation of  503–6 withdrawal from League of Nations  29 Japanese National Security Council  511 Japan-India relationship  525 Japan Socialist Party (JSP)  503 Japan’s peaceful change. See also Northeast Asia’s peaceful change China and  510–12 genesis of  503–6 introduction to  501–2 “peace nation” (Heiwa Kokka) 501–2 in practice  506–10 summary of  512 Jarret, Mark  197 Jervis, Robert  69, 93 Jewish ancient civilization  239 Jewish refugees after WWII  485 Jiang Zemin  10–11 Joint Cooperative Plan of Action (JCPOA) 75–6 Joint Declaration on a Common Nuclear Policy 201 Jones, Mervyn  193 Jordan 707 Jordanian-Israeli peace agreement  712–14 Judaism 239 jus ad bellum 286–91 jus contra bellum 288 jus in bello  286, 291–2 just war tradition  224 Kacowicz, Arie  14 Kaldor, Mary  388 Kanding Rebellion  520 Kant, Immanuel  3, 12, 111–16, 119, 149, 158, 408, 593–4, 605, 651, 664, 672 Kantian Western Europe  579–81 Karimov, Abduganiyevich  243–4 Katsuya, Okada  509 Katzenstein, Peter  240–1 Kaunda in Africa  624

Kazakh-initiated Nuclear Weapons Free Zone 749–50 Kazakhstan. See Central Asia’s peaceful change “keeping-a-low-profile” policy principle  447, 458 Keita, Modibo  627 Kellogg-Briand Pact  288–9 Keohane, Robert  391 Khartoum summit  711 Khmer Rouge regime  644–5 Khomeini, Ayatollah  415–16 “Khotso ken ala” (“peace is prosperity”)  625 Kim Dae-Jung  239 Kim Jung-un  134–5 Kindleberger, Charles (“Kindleberger Trap”) 378 King, Martin Luther, Jr.  7, 419, 750–1 King George’s War  591 King Philip’s War  591–2 King William’s War  591–2 Kissinger, Henry  252–3, 429–30, 435–40 Knudsen, Tonny Brems  199 Knutsen, Torbjørn L.  764 Kohl, Helmut  484 Koizumi, Junichiro  453–4 Korea  8–9, 159, 246–7, 505, 691. See also Northeast Asia’s peaceful change Korea Energy Development Organization (KEDO) 691–2 Korean-Japanese strategic rivalry  517 Korean War  456, 504, 686 Kosovo  75–6, 173, 295 Kosovo War  74, 571 Kozyrev, Andrey  468 Krasner, Stephan  132 Kumaratunga, Chandrika  669–71 Kupchan, Charles  14–16, 588 Kurdish nation problem  708–10 Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) insurgency 709 Kuwait  74, 506, 707 Kyoto Protocol  342–3 Kyrgyzstan. See Central Asia’s peaceful change labor-rights activists  395 Lancaster House Agreement  627–8 Lange, Christian  41

index   799 Laos 246–7 large-scale population migrations management 345–7 Latin American advocacy networks  413–14 Latin American Nuclear Weapons Free Zone 610 Latin American Parliament  604 Latin America’s peaceful change Cold War and  17 constructivist approaches to  611–12 introduction to  603–5 liberalism and liberal institutionalism 608–11 past and future trajectories  614–17, 773–4 realism and neorealism  606–8 regional transformation  612–14 unipolarity and  614 US policy toward  436 Latvia 75–6 Lauterpacht, Hersch  33–4, 54–6, 193, 196 League of Nations advocacy of  429–30 Article X of Covenant  288 creation of  116 failure of  59–60, 441 formation of  686 Great Power responsibility and  197 impact of World War I  37 institutional context  30–1, 137 international arbitration in disputes  434 international politics and  115–21 International Studies Conference  764 introduction to  3–5, 29 “mandates” to individual European powers 706–7 preamble of  129 scholarship and science  35–41 territorial integrity of members  191–2 League of Nations Covenant  294–5, 296n.2 League of Peace  433 Leander, Anna  177 learning-by-doing effects  323–4 Lebanon 416–17 Lebow, Richard  370–1 left-wing intelligentsia  503, 505 legal argumentation practice  284–6 legal imperative procedures  193–4

Lenin, Vladimir  287, 393–4 Lesotho 544 LGBTQ community  614–15 Lhakar cultural resistance  251 Lhasa 520–1 liberal-democratic institutions  113–14, 122–3, 593–6 Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)  504, 507, 511 liberal economic policies  123, 319, 387, 468–9 liberal globalization  121–4 liberal hegemony  68–9, 72–7, 80, 429, 441 liberal institutionalism  12–14, 73, 436, 608–11 liberalism ASEAN Economic Community  651–2 contemporary challenges to  121–4 “disembedding” of  395 economic liberalism  393–4 historical take on  19 impact on peaceful change  766 international order and peace  111–15 in international politics  115–21 international relations and  3, 111–15 in IR traditions  89 Latin America’s peaceful change  608–11 legacy of  209–10 neoliberalism  213, 216n.5, 266–7, 390, 395 notions of progress  172–3 ordoliberalism 582 science and technology impact on  390, 393 technologies of destruction and  49 Western liberalism  13–14, 746 liberalization  74–5, 121–2, 153–4, 161n.1, 321–2, 328, 330–2, 674–5, 708, 716 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)  247–8 Liberia 227–8 Libya  120, 355, 418, 440, 631–2, 703–4 Life magazine  51 Lima Group  604 Linklaters, Andrew  194 Lithuania 75–6 Little, Richard  198 Liu Xiaobo  239 Locarno treaties  596 Locke, John  112 Lockean perspective on Western Europe’s peaceful change  575–9

800   index Logistics Exchange Memorandum Agreement (LEMOA) 526–7 London School of Economics (LSE)  33, 191–2 “Look/Act East” strategy  515–16, 524–6, 528 lootable resources  751 Lorge, Peter  252–3 Lown, Bernard  421n.5 Lushi chunqiu text  254 Luthuli, Albert  538, 622 Luttwak, Edward  325 Luxembourg 572 Luxemburger Abkommen (Reparations agreement) 485 Maas, Heiko  487–8 Macaes, Bruno  251 Macedonia 417 Mackenzie King, William Lyon  596–7 Mackinder, Halford  35 Macmillan, Harold  134–5 macro-level mechanisms of change  16–17, 177, 179, 397 Macron, Emmanuel  579 Madhav, Ram  240 maihomushugi (“my home-ism”)  507 Mair, Lucy  192–3 malaria 389 Malaysia  200, 505 Malaysian Federation  553–4 Maldives 668–9 Mali 627 Manchester Congress Declaration of the Colonial Peoples of the World  623 Manchuria  31, 191–2, 288 Mandela, Nelson  7, 536, 539–48, 622 Manila Pact  649–50 Mann, Thomas  30 Mannheim, Karl  35, 37–8, 40–1, 192–3, 386–7, 390–1, 400n.1 Manning, C.A.W.  34, 50, 191–3, 197 Maoism 396 Maoist Sendero Luminoso in Perú  413–14 Mao Tse-tung  267 Mao Zedong  250–2 Mares, David  604 marginalization  18–19, 47, 49–50, 122, 213 marginalized groups  222, 224–5

market capitalism  390 market economy  133, 546–7, 727–8 Marshal, Alfred  261 Marshall Plan  429–30, 435–6, 440, 574 Marsudi, Retno  558 Martin, Kimberly  77 Marx, Karl  393–4 Marxism/Marxist theory  13, 38, 51, 151, 205, 209, 390, 393–4, 396 Marxist-Leninism  465, 755 mass migration  341, 577 materialism  206–7, 390, 393–4, 398, 612 material power  8, 69, 385–6, 396–7, 518, 651, 664–5, 668, 704 maternal care  223, 225–6 maximalist peaceful change  4–5, 376–9, 579 Mazower, Mark  285 Mazrui, Ali  541–2, 622 Mbeki, Thabo  544–6, 622, 625 McCuen, J.J.  536–7 Mead, George Herbert  261 means-ends rationality  388 Mearsheimer, John  99, 407, 574 mechanisms of peaceful change  169–80, 767–70 Meciar, Vladimir  727–8 Meiji government  685–6 Mekong-Ganga Cooperation  676 Men and Citizens in the Theory of International Relations (Linklaters)  194 MERCOSUR  133, 200–1, 604, 610 Merkel, Angela  484–5 meso-level mechanisms of change  177, 179, 397 Metaphysics of Morals (Kant)  113 methodological bias  181 #MeToo movement  15–16 Mexican Sinaloa Cartel  605 Mexican Zapatistas  413–14 Mexico  74–5, 589–90, 598–9, 604, 612–13 micro-level mechanisms of change  16–17, 177–8, 397 Middle East  199–200, 239, 241, 243–4 Middle Eastern wars  71–2, 468 Middle East Free Trade Area (MEFTA)  708 Middle East/North Africa (MENA) peaceful change Arab-Israeli conflict  706–7, 711–15, 717

index   801 Arab League and  703–6, 708, 710–11, 717 domestic political change  715–17 Egyptian-Israeli peace negotiations  713–14 Gulf Cooperation Council and  704–6, 711–12, 717 international relations and  705–8 introduction to  703–6, 705t Israeli-PLO negotiations  714–15 Kurdish nation problem  708–10 regional level challenges  709–12 summary of  717–18, 773 Middle East Peace Process  577 middle powers  359, 555–9 migration concerns climate change and conflict potential 341–2 cross-border migration  337 forced international migration  346 international law and  292–3 large-scale population migrations management 345–7 mass migration  341, 577 resettlement processes  345–6 militarized interstate disputes (MIDs)  156–8, 160 militarized masculinity  232–3 Military Cooperation Committee (MCC)  597–8 military coups  551–2 military/militarism alliances 328 armed conflicts  320 climate change impact  338–9 foreign policy  100 interventionism 267–8 in Japan  686 spending reductions  78 technology 94 WPS agenda and  229 military power of China  685, 693–4 of Europe  153, 434 gaps in  319–20, 328 of Great Britain  432 of Great Powers  198 great powers abandonment of  376 of India  524–5, 668–9

of Japan  503, 506–7, 509 maximalist peaceful change and  376–7, 379 of Pakistan  373 restricting use of  49, 94 of Soviet Union  501–2 of United States  437, 449–50, 572 Mill, John Stuart  112, 148 Millennium Development Goals  358 Miller, Benjamin  14 Milosevic, Slobodan  75 Mine Ban Treaty  12–13 minimalist peaceful change  4–5, 302–3, 310, 373–6, 388 Minority Treaties  293 minority white rule in South Africa  536–8 Mirzaiev, Shavkat  751 Mishra, Pankaj  251 Mitrany, David  59–61, 408 Mitterand, François  484 Miyazawa Initiative  692 mobilization capacity  96t, 100 modern international law  285 Modern Synthesis  270 Modi, Narendra  135, 246, 515, 524, 670 monarchy dominance  3, 606, 670 Mongolia 246–7 Monroe, James  430 Monroe Doctrine  429–31, 441 Monteiro, Nuno  70 Montevideo declaration  43n.3 Montreal Protocol  358 morality of peaceful change  50–1, 57–8, 212, 378–9 Morgenthau, Hans  54, 56–8, 386–7 Most-Favored Nation (MFN) status  675–6 most-probable threat assessments  6–7 Mothers and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo in Argentina  413–14 Movement for Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) 727–8 Mozambique  536–7, 544 Mubarak, Hosni  441 Mueller, John  14–15, 388 Mugabe, Robert  545–6 Muhammad, Prophet  239 multi-actor governance  389 multiculturalism 243

802   index multilateral cooperation  322, 345–6, 358, 429, 481, 650–1, 692 multilateral institutions  122, 138, 491 multilateralism  122, 173, 440–1, 492, 545, 580, 690–1, 693 Murray, Gilbert  30 Muslim Brotherhood  418, 441, 705 Muslims  241, 246, 252, 556, 559–63. See also Islam mutual adaptation and acceptance  5, 68–9, 372 mutually hurting stalemate  713–14 Myanmar  239, 246–51, 505–6, 509, 655–6 Nahdlatul Ulama  560 Namibia  539, 632 Nardin, Terry  194 Natalegawa, Marty  559 national action plans (NAPs)  221, 231–2 National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party  694 National Conventional Arms Control Committee 542 national democracy  351–6 national elites  100, 170–1 nationalism binationalism 589–90 civic nationalism  16, 724 ethnic nationalism  16, 727–8, 730, 768 European 573–4 Northeast Asian  686, 689 Russian 467 Sinocentric nationalism  252 transnationalism 77–8 transnational social movements  407 Nationalist Party  251–2 national liberation movements  418–19 National Party in South Africa  539–40 National Power and the Structure of Foreign Trade (Hirschman)  325 national purpose  100 National Security Strategy (NSS)  173, 320, 451, 526, 694 National Sinhala Heritage Party (Jathika Hela Urumaya, JHU)  248 National Socialism  31–2 nation-state level of peaceful change  6–7, 15–16 Nazi Germany  31, 50–1, 99, 485

negative integration  575–6 negative peace  14, 20–1, 60–1, 208, 225, 604, 616, 634, 656, 704, 772 Nehru, Jawaharlal  516–18, 520, 522–4 neoclassical realism  11–12, 90, 92–5, 99–101, 104n.4 neocolonialism  120, 622–4, 747 neofunctionalist theory of peace  47, 59–61 neo-Gramscian theory  206–7, 213 neo-imperialism 455 neoliberal institutionalism  283, 392 neoliberalism  213, 216n.5, 266–7, 390, 395 neo-Marxism  13, 151, 206–7 neorealism  56–8, 606–8, 766 Neorealism and Its Critics (Keohane)  58 Nepal  670–1, 675–6 Netherlands  75–6, 517, 571–2 The New Cyneas (Crucé)  148 New Delhi–Malé relationship  670 New Development Bank  456–7 New Eastern policy (Neue Ostpolitik)  486–7, 491 Ne Win  249 new interdependence  323 New International Economic Order (NIEO)  53 new materialism  206–7 New Order government  551–4 New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) 626 “A New Path for China’s Peaceful Rise and the Future of Asia” (Zheng Bijian)  446 New Peace  68 New Thinking (NT) (Novoe Mishlenie)  463–8, 476, 770–1 Newton, Isaac  39 new world order  117–18, 330, 590–1, 686 Nguyen Tan Dung  525 Nicaragua 613 niche construction theory (NCT)  270–1 Niebuhr, Reinhold  54 Nigeria 542–4 Nixon, Richard  374–5, 429–30, 435–40 Nkrumah, Kwame  622, 624 Nobel Peace Prize  239, 508, 538, 540–1, 571–2 Nobusuke, Kishi  503–4, 511 “no-first-use” of nuclear weapons  132 nomads  239, 253 “nonaggression” pact  537

index   803 Non-aligned movement (NAM)  9–10, 551 nonalignment, defined  516 noncooperation civil disobedience campaign 245 nondemocracies  13–14, 330–1 non-discrimination 284–5 non-governmental experts  360 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)  78, 138–9, 227, 360, 411 nonintervention  290–1, 608–9, 611, 613–14, 616 nonliberal communities  115 non-military means of interference  71 nontraditional security (NTS) threats  80, 273–4, 647, 654, 656 nontransformational changes  262 nonviolent resistance  21n.1, 413 Normandy Format  487 norm contestation  177–9 norm diffusion  169–70, 178–9, 181 norm externalization  200–1 norm life cycle model  177–8 norm localization  177–9 norms, as factor in change  173–4, 177 norms entrepreneurs/entrepreneurship  176, 178, 286–7, 373, 605, 611–12, 614, 616 North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) 597–8 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)  74–5, 133, 322, 598, 772–3 North America’s stable peace introduction to  587–90 Mexico and  598–9, 772–3 “zone of peace,”  587–8, 593–8 “zone of war,”  589–93 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). See also Western Europe’s peaceful change Arab League and  710 Central and Eastern Europe’s peaceful change 731–4 Eastern European states to  429, 435–6, 440 establishment of  296n.4 into former Warsaw Pact countries  134 Germany’s relationship to  173, 483, 574 global hegemony and  102 liberal democratic governance and  73–4 “partnership for peace” program  492 in post-Cold War era  10

strategic concept  579–81 transatlantic security community and  117, 119–20 Truman Doctrine and  573–4 US foreign policy and  429, 435–6, 440–1 US relationship to  75–7, 80 Northeast Asian Trilateral Summit (NEATS) 691–2 Northeast Asia’s peaceful change economic interdependence  690–1 fraying of  693–6 hegemony of United States  688–90 institution-building 691–3 introduction to  683–5 minimal peace  687–93 summary of  696–8, 774 transitions of  685–7 Northern Ireland  416–17 North Korea  70, 249–50, 501–2, 507, 510, 687–8. See also Northeast Asia’s peaceful change Norway  75–6, 221, 231–2, 571, 573 “no-war” community  60–1 nuclear deterrence/war advent of  48–9 impact of  301, 307, 689, 769 overview of  301–5, 308–11 nuclear disarmament Argentina 773–4 Brazil 773–4 China 515–17 India  522–4, 528, 771 Japan 508 overview of  181, 301, 304, 307–10 Russia 476 South Africa  541–2 steps toward  305–6 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)  12–13, 132, 301, 305–8, 439, 508, 522–3, 541 Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG)  305–6 Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty  12–13 nuclear weapons anti-nuclear countermovements  388–9 arms control/disarmament  301, 304–5, 307–8, 391–2, 516–17, 522–4 Cold War and  9 cost impact of  70 as deterrence  90, 301–4

804   index nuclear weapons (Continued) “hyperpersonic” nuclear weapons  472–3, 476 introduction to  301 key linkages and conflicts  308–10 nonproliferation  301, 305–6 nonuse norm  301, 306–10 in North Korea  501–2 post-state system and  388 summary of  310–11 Nye, Joseph  378, 391 Nyerere, Julius  622, 624 Obama, Barack  71–2, 76, 242, 322–3, 439, 452, 597, 611–12, 716 Occupy movements  360–1 O’Connell, Mary Ellen  286 October War  713–14 offensive realism  90, 94, 98–9, 104n.2 Ogdensburg Agreement  597 Oguni activists  543–4 Olney, Richard  431 open-ended change  213–14, 385–6, 397 Operation Allied Force  495n.10 Operation Deliberate Force  737 opportunity costs of containment policies 154–5 “Orange” Revolution  471 Orbán, Viktor  363 ordoliberalism 582 Organ for Peace and Security  545 organic intellectuals  213–14 Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)  9, 489, 491–2 Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons 131 Organization of African Unity (OAU)  17, 294, 543, 621–5 Organization of American States (OAS)  557, 604, 608–9 organized crime  775–6 organized hypocrisy  132 Orientalism (Said)  210 Oslo Agreements  714–15 Oslo Conference  542 Ostpolitik of Germany  9, 51–2, 491 Ottoman Empire  196–7, 293, 418, 706–7

“outside” approach to peace  113–14 overall trade interaction  153–4 overseas development assistance (ODA)  508–9 Owen, John  124 Pacific Basin Economic Council (PBEC)  509 pacific federation  115–16, 119 Pacific-rim states  74–5 Pacific settlement of disputes, Africa  627–9 pacifism  129, 247, 254, 288–9, 410, 501–2, 504–5 pacta sunt servanda (agreements must be kept) 56 Pakistan bifurcation of  665–6 Cold War impact on  666–7 as Colombo power  556 dominance over Afghanistan  669 globalization impact  78 India–Pakistan cooperation  675–7 India-Pakistan War  522, 669, 673 India’s “no war” pact with  516 military power of  373 Most-Favored Nation (MFN) status  675–6 nuclear weapons and  671 relations with China  676 Sino-Pakistani entente  522 violence in  239, 241 violent relations with India  241, 526–7 violent suppression in  438 Palestine  295, 486, 559–60, 714–15 Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)  707, 712–13 Palestinian Authority  714 Pan-African Association  624 pan-Africanism  544, 624–5 Pan-African Parliament  624–5 Pan-African University  624–5 pan-Arabic solidarity (kawmiyah) 710 pan-Arabism  418, 708 Pan-Asian Greater East Co-Prosperity Sphere 686 Panchsheel policy  515–16, 519–22, 528 Panel of the Wise (PoW)  628, 630 Pannasiha (monk)  247 pan-Slavism 418

index   805 parabellum society  253 Paraguay 606 Paris Climate Change Agreement  769 Paris Climate Conference  343–4, 347 Paris Peace Agreement  558 Paris Peace Conference (1919)  7–8 Park Chung Hee  508 Parsons, Craig  173 Partial Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (PTBT)  522 “partnership for peace” program  492 parvenu powers  370–1 passivism 56–7 patriarchal power relations  223–4, 232–3 Paul, T.V.  68–9, 78–9, 111–12, 118–19, 129, 199, 211–12, 372, 407, 569 Pax Africana 622 Pax Americana 180 Pax Britannica 180 Pax Europaea 570–2 Peace and Security Council (PSC)  544, 630 peaceful change. See also post-Cold War peaceful change; post-World War II peaceful change; realism/realist peaceful change; individual countries peaceful change actors in  169–80 anti-revolutionary peaceful change  408–9 cold peace  14, 19–20, 713, 725, 733t, 737–8 Cold War efforts for  8–10 commercial peace  133, 148–9, 152–3, 160–1 constructivist contributions to  172–80 defined  240, 516 defined in relation to international institutions 129–30 defined in relation to IR  4–7, 41–3, 43n.3 defined in relation to realism  91–2 factors of  169–75 foreign policy and  6–7 great-power interventions  17, 449–50, 770–2 historical perspectives on  7–11, 764–6 idealist peaceful change  3, 5, 56–9, 92 “in-between” definition of  68 incremental vs. revolutionary  16–17 international law and  291–2 international level  6–8 in international relations  764–6

interstate peaceful change  89 interwar period debate  7–8, 47 introduction to  3 maximalist peaceful change  4–5, 376–9, 579 mechanisms of  169–80, 767–70 meso-level mechanisms of change  177, 179, 397 micro-level mechanisms of change  16–17, 177–8, 397 minimalist peaceful change  4–5, 302–3, 310, 373–6, 388 morality of  50–1, 57–8, 212, 378–9 nation-state level of  6–7, 15–16 negative peace  14, 20–1, 60–1, 208, 225, 604, 616, 634, 656, 704, 772 nontransformational changes  262 nonviolent resistance  21n.1, 413 open-ended change  213–14, 385–6, 397 “outside” approach to  113–14 overview of  18–21 peaceful territorial change  6, 17, 59–60, 703–6, 714–15, 717–18, 773t perpetual peace  12, 113–14 perspectives beyond paradigms  14–16 political change  49, 58, 248, 251–2, 291, 392, 412–13, 415, 419, 715–17, 751 post-Cold War era  10–11 rapprochement  15–17, 433, 450, 486–7, 491–2, 588, 594–5, 607, 612, 687, 717, 728, 766 regional cooperation  344–5, 378, 454–5, 509, 552, 554, 557, 563, 581, 652–3, 664, 673–4, 676–7, 684, 711, 774 regional orders  17–18 regional transformation  17–18, 772–5 research agenda on  763–4, 775–7 shallow peace  14 societal level  4–5, 17 state-centric  119, 201–2, 215, 351, 361, 407, 654–5, 753–4 subsystemic level  6, 20–1, 612–14 systemic change  4–5, 20–1, 67, 292–5, 612–14 technological changes  13, 15–16, 47–50 tension-free peaceful change  91 theoretical perspectives on  11–17, 766–8 transformational change  16, 68, 92, 172, 214, 225–9, 262

806   index peaceful change (Continued) Type I  91–2, 99–101 Type II  92, 101–3 union in  15–16 unipolarity and  69–77, 79–80, 614, 688–9 use of term  33f weak sense of  302 we-feeling peace  60–1, 135 Peaceful Change conference (1937)  52 Peaceful Change (Dunn)  50–1, 56–7 “peaceful rise” strategy of China. See China’s “peaceful rise” strategy peaceful territorial change  6, 17, 59–60, 703–6, 714–15, 717–18, 773t peacekeeping  4, 117, 140–1, 173, 229–30, 358–9, 456, 544, 579, 616, 628, 635n.7, 731–2, 748 peacekeeping missions  75, 508, 665–6 peacekeeping operations (PKOs)  118–19, 493, 556, 558, 766–7 “peace nation” (Heiwa Kokka) 501–2 Peace of Constance  570–2 Peace of Paris  196–7 Peace of Vereeniging  536 “Peace Without Victory” (Wilson)  433 Pearl Harbor attack  371 Pence, Mike  694 Penttinen, Elina  175 People’s Liberation Army (PLA)  250–1 permanent general responsibility for peaceful change 196 Permanent Joint Board on Defense (PJBD) 597–8 Peronist Montoneros in Argentina  413–14 perpetual peace  12, 113–14 Perry, Matthew  685–6 Persian ancient civilization  239 persuasion, as mechanisms of change  178 Perú  413–14, 606 Peru-Ecuador wars  607 Phase One agreement  450 philanthropic organizations  42 Philippines  123, 243–4, 320–1, 354, 363, 505, 646, 649–50 Pinker, Steven  14–15 piracy 269–70 pivotal states  5, 8, 20, 175, 177–8, 180

pluralistic security communities  13, 179, 587–8 Poland  116, 123, 355, 471, 487, 574, 725–6, 731–4. See also Central and Eastern Europe’s peaceful change polarization  416–18, 614–16, 776 policy entrepreneurs  15 polio 389 political change  49, 58, 248, 251–2, 291, 392, 412–13, 415, 419, 715–17, 751 Political Community at the International Level (Deutsch) 652–3 political economy domestic political economy  329–31 economic interdependence  320–4 economic statecraft  324–31 geoeconomics  71, 325–32 international political economy  325–9 introduction to  319–20 neoclassical study of  394 summary of  331–3, 769 political independence  289–90, 294–5, 433–4, 623 political movements  111, 243, 539, 554 political-strategic objectives  329–30 political violence  58, 413–15, 420, 539–40, 547 Politics among Nations (Morgenthau)  56–7 Pol Pot  644–5 polyethnic heritage  247–8 populism  13–16, 79, 122–3, 181, 192, 412, 494–5, 582 Portugal  603–4, 606 Posen, Barry  71, 93 positional good  370, 374, 475 positive integration  322, 575–6 positive peace  14, 208–9, 211, 225, 421n.6, 656 post-Cold War peaceful change. See also Cold War Chinese foreign policy  447 economic sanctions  328 ethics of statecraft in  195 global governance arguments  356–7 globalization and  77–9 hegemonic stability theory  180, 325 international security system  388–9 introduction to  10–11, 67–9 liberal-democratic principles  117–19 multilateralism 440–1

index   807 peaceful change among EU states  576–7 peaceful change among nuclear states  132 South Asian limited peace  668–72 state recognition  295 unipolarity and  69–77, 79–80 US liberal hegemony  68–9, 72–7 postcolonialism  180–1, 206, 210, 370–1, 622–3 post-conflict reconstruction  118–19, 224–5, 229–30, 233, 494–5 post–Industrial Revolution  390 postindustrial social order  392–3 post-Soviet Central Asian region  745–50 post-Soviet Russia  463–4 post-structuralism  212–13, 215, 411 postwar anti-militarism  17 post-World War II peaceful change bipolar international system  613 from colonial to anti-colonial  52–4 functionalist and neofunctionalist IR  59–61 geopolitical and technological changes  47–50 idealism-realism debate  3 idealism vs. realism  56–9 international politics and law  54–6 introduction to  47 pluralistic security community  587–8 politics of appeasement and containment  50–2 postcolonialism and  210 settlement 435–6 summary of  61 post-World War I peaceful change  3 power. See also military power balance of power  11–12, 58, 713–14 civilian power concept  481–3 Colombo powers  556 colonial forms of  210–11 of constructivism  171–2 discursive power  212–13 distribution of  90–1, 112 feminist-informed international theory 222 Great Power management  191, 193, 196–9 hard power  69–70 of images and objects  177 imbalances in  79–80 material power  8, 69, 385–6, 396–7, 518, 651, 664–5, 668, 704

middle powers  359, 555–9 military power  224–5 parvenu powers  370–1 patriarchal power relations  223–4, 232–3 politics of  407 private power  360, 362–3 soft power  6–7, 17–18, 69–70, 135, 483, 487, 547, 581 superpower relations  9 Power Politics (Schwarzenberger)  56–7 Power Politics (Wight)  50–1 power transition theory  4–5, 631 preferential trade agreements (PTAs)  74–5, 321–2, 332 prefigurative politics  360–1 Primakov, Yevgeny  469 prime international politics  91 private power  360, 362–3 private security firms  78 problem-solving theory  206–7 Prodi, Romano  577 progressivism  14–15, 56–7, 122–3 “Prompt Global Strike” program  303 Protestantism 570–1 Protestant Reformation  414 prudent yielding policy  50–1 Prussia  92, 98, 430, 576–7 Puerto Rico  607–8 Putin, Vladimir  10, 71–2, 75–6, 135, 328, 453, 464, 470–4, 765–6 Qaddafi, Muammar  441 Qatar 711–12 Qianlong, Emperor  253 Qin dynasty  253 QIZ agreement  713 Qualifying Industrial Zone (QIZ) agreement 707 quasi-member country  492–3 Queen Anne’s War  591 “Quiet Diplomacy” policy  545–6 race abolition of slavery  14–15, 178, 181, 215–16, 269–70 apartheid in South Africa  535–8 biotechnology impact on  396–7 Buddhism and  248

808   index race (Continued) critical race theory  206, 214 in international relations  535 peaceful change and  4, 6, 68, 229, 372, 569 redistribution-poverty-race nexus  546–7 wars over  614–15 racial equality  269–70 racism/racial discrimination  12, 15–16, 210–11, 614–15, 624 radical Islam  243–4, 703 radicalism  206–11, 215–16, 249, 411, 418 radicalization  179, 243, 416–18, 751 radical left-wing governments  38, 41, 413–14 radical right-wing governments  41 Radical-Socialism 30 radical vices  50–1 raison d’état justification  289 Rajapaksa, Mahinda  248, 669–70 Ramaphosa, Cyril  542 Ramos-Horta, José  239 Rao, Narasimha  524 Rapp-Hooper, Mira  75–6 rapprochement  15–17, 433, 450, 486–7, 491–2, 588, 594–5, 607, 612, 687, 717, 728, 766 Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)  246 Rathana (monk)  247 rationality in change  12, 595 rational thinking  3, 111–12 reactionary internationalism  412 reactionary revisionism in Russia  470–4 Reagan, Ronald  176, 725–6 realism/realist peaceful change Central and Eastern Europe  722–3 defensive realism  93–100, 266–7t fundamental change and  211–12 idealism-realism debate  3, 92 idealism to  56–9 international law and  282–3 introduction to  11–14, 19, 89–91 Latin America  606–8 liberalism and  112 neoclassical realism  11–12, 90, 92–5, 99–101, 104n.4 offensive structural realism  94, 98–9, 104n.2 peaceful change, defined  91–2 research agenda and  103–4, 764–5

review/reprise of  92–5 state-centric ontology in  215 technologies of destruction and  49 Type I peaceful change  91–2, 99–101 Type II peaceful change  92, 101–3 realist IR  388, 764 realpolitik practitioners  89–90, 409, 512 rebus sic stantibus (as things stand)  56 reciprocal protection  247 reflexive objectivity  390 reformasi era  559, 563 regional coexistence norm  589–90 Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)  323, 511–12, 525, 691 regional cooperation  344–5, 378, 454–5, 509, 552, 554, 557, 563, 581, 652–3, 664, 673–4, 676–7, 684, 711, 774 regional hegemons  99, 104n.3, 449, 616 regional integration theory  59–61, 482, 560–1, 604, 606, 611–12, 616, 663, 672–4, 677, 687–8, 710 regional security. See also security/ security systems ASEAN-led frameworks  646–50, 654–6 community formation  60–1, 202 global changes to  643–4 peaceful change and  767 reliance on  78, 80 South Korean contribution to  695 US contribution to  68–9, 525, 587, 589–99, 689 regional security complex theory (RSCT)  199–200 regional trade agreements (RTAs)  74–5, 322, 332 regional transformation  17–18, 20–1, 612–14, 672–3, 772–5 religious minorities  14, 667 religious movements  410 religious sovereign authority  389 religious terrorism  239 reluctant hegemon  490 Reluctant Realism  502 representations, as factor in change  175 republican constitutionalism  113–14 Republic of Indonesia Pancasila  553 Republika Srpska (VRS)  737

index   809 research agenda on peaceful change  763–4, 775–7 resettlement processes  345–6 resistance to peaceful change  10–11 responsibility to protect (R2P)  12–13, 119–20, 133, 141, 373, 635n.8 responsibility while protecting (RwP)  373 Retreat from Doomsday: The Obsolescence of Major War (Mueller)  14–15 revisionist strategies  5, 472 Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (Fretilin)  645–6 revolutionary peaceful change  16–17 revolutionary radicalization  417–18 revolution movements  415–16 Rhodesia (Zimbabwe)  536, 627–8 Ricardo, David  393–4 rinderpest 389 Ripsman, Norrin  17, 75, 78–9 Robbins, Lionel  192 Robinson, Arthur  353 Rockefeller Foundation  42, 54 Rodó, José Enrique  612 Rohingya terrorists  250 Roh Moo-hyun  692–3 Romania 576–7 Rome Statute  120–1, 635n.8 Rome Treaty  200 Roosevelt, Franklin D.  54–5, 435, 597 Roosevelt, Theodore  432 Rosecrance, Richard  89–90 “Rose” Revolution  471 Roussel, Stéphane  593–4, 596 Ruggie, John  391–2, 395 rule-based international system  268–70 rule of law  180–1, 250–1, 488, 577, 579–80, 630 rules-based international order  481–2, 492–3 Rummel, R.J.  251–2 Rumsfeld, Donald  75 Ruskin, John  518 Russia. See also Northeast Asia’s peaceful change anti-war coalition with Germany and France 471 ascendancy of  98 asymmetric strategies by  765 China-Russian relationship  453

democratic capitalism in  465 democratic peace hypothesis  354–5 domestic transformation  468–70 foreign relations with China  451–2 globalization impact  79 growing assertiveness of  123 in Holy Alliance  430 hybrid interference by  67, 71, 79–80 impact on Latin America’s peaceful change 615 influence on ASEAN  646 League of Nations nonmembership  434 military intervention in Ukraine  158 military resurgence of  582–3 new world order strategy of US  330 nuclear disarmament  476 nuclear war and  68 security competition and  70 shrinking sphere of influence  10 territorial revisionism by  76 zone of peace  352–3, 355 Russian Civil War  418–19 Russian revanchism  470 Russian Revolution  745–6 Russia soft balancing strategies against US 468–70 Russia’s peaceful change New Thinking (NT) (Novoe Mishlenie)  463–8, 476, 770–1 reactionary revisionism and  470–4 Soviet/Russian expectations of reciprocity  474–7 US-Russia relations  470–4 Rwanda  627, 632 SAARC Preferential Trade Arrangement (SAPTA) 674 Saar Treaty  484 Sachlichkeit 36 Sadat, Anwar  714 Saez, Lawrence  673 Said, Edward  210 San Francisco System  688–9 sangha (monastic order)  247–8 Sarkozy, Nicolas  484 Saro-Wiwa, Ken  543–4 Sarraut, Albert  29, 41

810   index SARS health crisis  647 Sato, Eisaku  239 satyagraha philosophy  245, 517–18, 536 Satyarthi, Kailash  239 Saudi Arabia  78, 473, 486 Sayyaf, Abu  243–4 Scandinavian Defense Union  573 Schake, Kori  180 Schmidt, Eric  421n.12 Schmidt, Helmut  486, 491 scholarship and peaceful change  35–41 Schuman, Robert  483–4, 577–8 Schumpeter, Joseph  393–4 Schweller, Randall  90 science and peaceful change  35–41 science and technology (S/T) in world politics climate change challenges  399–400 conceptualization of  396–9 Fourth Industrial Revolution  396–400 global economy and  393–6 international organization in  385–6, 389–93 international relations and  42–3, 385–9 introduction to  385–6 security studies  386–9 scientific rationalism  386–7, 390, 392, 397–8 scientific reasoning  14–15, 394 Second Hague Convention  611 Second Hague Peace Conference  607–8 Second Industrial Revolution  391, 396 securitization theory  212–13, 229 Security Communities (Barnett, Adler)  200 security regimes  200 security/security systems. See also regional security alliance-based security  9 collective security  31–2, 39, 42, 57, 116–17, 212–13, 476 communities  15–16, 59–60, 117, 135, 200–2 competition for  69–70 cybersecurity 5 as factor in change  172 homeland security  597 international security system  388–9 nontraditional security (NTS) threats  80, 273–4, 647, 654, 656

pluralistic security communities  13, 179, 587–8 private security firms  78 sociology of knowledge on S/T  385–6 state security  208–9 strategy changes  271–3 transatlantic security community  117 Self Defense Force  504–7, 511 self-defense wars  6–7, 242, 284, 286–7, 289–91, 435, 504–5 self-determination  52–3, 68, 287, 293–4, 413, 433, 686 self-disciplinary duties  114–15 self-help politics  40, 193–4, 776 self-legislation 284–5 self-sufficient state  40 Sen, Amartya  240–1 Senanayake-Chelvanayagam Pact  248 Senegal 625 Senghor, Léopold Sédar  622, 627 separatism  440, 467 September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks  67, 80, 291, 413, 648 Serbia  70, 75 Seventeen Point Agreement  250–1 sexual abuse  229–30 sexual violence  223–4, 229–30, 232–3, 247–9 shallow peace  14 Shanghai Cooperation Dialogue (SCD)  692 Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)  11, 355, 359, 456, 473, 696, 746–9, 755, 769 Shanghai Five  747–8 Shi’a law  705 Shigeru, Yosida  503–4 Shiite militias  71–2 Shintarō, Ishihara  507 Shinto religion  239 Shinzo, Abe  511, 690–1 Shi Yinhong  254 Sierra Leone  628 Silk Road  243–4 Sima Qian  254 Sinai/Suez war  713–14 Sinclair, Timothy  215 Singapore 200 Singh, Manmohan  524 Sinhalese Buddhist  248

index   811 Sinocentric nationalism  252 Sino-EU relations  453 Sino-Indian relations  668–9 Sino-Japan relations  453–4 Sino-Pakistani entente  522 Sino-US rapprochement  687 Sino-Vietnamese War  509–10 Six-Day War  710, 713–14 Six-Party Talks (SPT)  691–2 Sjoberg, Laura  224 Skelton, Oscar Douglas  596–7 slavery abolition  14–15, 178, 181, 215–16, 269–70 Slavery Convention (1926)  116 Slovakia 731–4 Slovenia 729–30 slow violence  224–5 small/light weapons regulation  176–7 smallpox 389 Smith, Adam  39, 393–4 Snyder, Jack  93 social constructivism  40–1, 172, 177, 195–6, 210, 216n.1, 306 social conventions  171 social Darwinism  261 social democracy  151, 396, 485–7, 489–91 Social Democrats (SPD)  486–7, 489–90 social evolution paradigm (SEP)  263–9, 271–2, 274–5 social identities  13 social injustice  208, 243–4 social interaction  129, 134–6, 175, 177, 373–5, 377 socialism  9, 12, 394–5, 446, 465, 467, 624 socialization approaches to  13, 93, 408 in Central Asian region  757 civil-military socialization  731–2 defined  179, 272–3 under hegemony  102–3 human nature and  114 international bureaucracies and  176 as key to diplomacy  134–5 liberal democracy and  119–20 peaceful change and  102–3, 170, 177, 179–81, 747 to rules and norms  766 top-down process  181

social justice  209, 214, 241–2, 546–7, 551, 553, 654–6, 768, 775 social learning  13, 202, 272 social movements  337, 362, 407–9. See also transnational social movements social norms  13, 39, 767–8 social-psychological nature  40–1 social science  36–7, 198–9, 387–8 social superstructure  40–1 societal injustices  225 societal level peaceful change  4–5, 17 societal solidarism  408 Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT)  324 sociology of knowledge  385–7, 390–1, 769 sociology of science  35 soft balance/soft balancing  451–2, 607–8, 611, 616 soft law  132 soft power  6–7, 17–18, 69–70, 135, 483, 487, 540–3, 547, 581 Somalia  631, 734–7 Somaliland 627 South Africa  75–6, 231–2, 431, 541–2, 547, 627–8 South African War  536–8 South Africa’s High Commission  543–4 South Africa’s peaceful change apartheid 535–40 Mandela’s impact on  7, 536, 539–48 ongoing struggle for  546–8 placeholder words for  538–40 post-apartheid  540–8, 772 soft power  540–3 vocabulary of  536–8 South America  74–5, 373, 375, 605, 608 South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC)  557, 666, 672–7, 774 South Asian Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA) 674–6 South Asian limited peace  199–200, 239 Cold War era  665–8 institutions and  672–6 introduction to  663–4 post-Cold War era  668–72 regional interstate dynamics  664–5 summary of  676–7, 774

812   index South Asian University in New Delhi  673–4 South Asia Sub-regional Economic Cooperation (SASEC)  676 South China Sea disputes  454–5 Southeast Asia  199–200, 239, 244, 524 Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty 296n.4 Southeast Asia’s peaceful change historical perspective  644–9 impact of  654–6 introduction to  643–4 management of  646–7 power rivalries  648–9 summary of  656–7, 773 theoretical perspectives on  649–54 transnational security challenges  647–8 South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) 666 Southern African Development Community (SADC)  545–6, 631 South Korea  239, 353, 454–5, 689. See also Northeast Asia’s peaceful change South Ossetia  295 South Serbia  417 South West Africa  536 Soviet Union dissolution of  67, 77, 92, 117–18, 182n.1, 294–5, 325, 447, 612, 646, 687 German Democratic Republic and 489–90 Glasnost’  725–6, 734 global hegemony  102 as “Great Irresponsibles,”  198 growing power of  429 military power of  501–2 as military threat  579–80 overview of  8–9 perestroika policy  9, 465–6, 725–6, 734 Post-Soviet Russia  463–4 as radical right-wing governments  41 relative decline of  77 as revolutionist, expansionist, and ideological power  51 support of armed struggle in South Africa 538 threat to Japan  507 US détente strategy  436–40

US relations during Cold War  70–1, 97–8, 169, 244, 302 World War II impact on  572 Spain  32–3, 603–4, 606 Spanish America  612–13 Spanish-American War  431, 607–8 Spanish Civil War  418–19 Sperling, Elliot  250–1 spheres of influence  5, 776 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty  210 Spruyt, Hendrik  266 Spykman, Nicholas  57 Sri Lanka  246–9, 556, 667, 675–6 Staatsraison (reason of state)  485 Stabilisation Force (SFOR)  737 stability-instability paradox  306–7 stable peace  14, 17, 111. See also North America’s stable peace stakeholder democracy  360 Stalin, Joseph  435–6 Stalinism 396 standard of civilization  292–3 Starr, Frederick  243–4 state, as factor in change  172 The State and Economic Life (IIIC)  31 state and state-building  273, 292–5 state-capitalist economies  329–30 state-centric peaceful change  119, 201–2, 215, 351, 361, 407, 654–5, 753–4 state security  208–9 state-to-nation (S/N) balance theory  721–5, 728, 732, 738 status quest international conflict and  370–2 maximalist peaceful change  376–9 minimalist peaceful change  373–6 peaceful change and  369, 372–3 summary of  379–80 status quo bias  55–6, 95–6, 136–8, 211–12 Stein, Gertrude  593–4 stereotypical gender roles  223–4, 228 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)  632 Stone, Laurel  227–8 Strange, Susan  395–6 Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT)  304, 438

index   813 strategic competitors  453, 488 strategic essentialism and inclusion  225, 227–8 strategic overstretch  375 “strike hard” campaigns  252 structural aggression  14 structural functionalism  262 structuralism  94, 212–13, 223–4 structural realism  58, 90, 93–9, 104n.4, 262t structural violence  14, 208–9, 225, 364 subnational actors  175, 177, 179, 751–2 subordinate classes  213–14 sub-Saharan Africa  78 subsystemic level peaceful change  6, 20–1, 612–14 “sub-war” conflicts  156 Sudan 544 Suharto, President  554, 559 suicide terrorism  240 Sukarno, President  551–4, 563 Summits of the Americas  613 superpower relations  9, 388–9, 436–7, 439, 449, 465, 470–1, 474, 522, 572, 631–2, 683, 686, 689, 749–50 sustainability in peaceful change  4 Suu Kyi  249–50 Sweden  75–6, 116, 177, 221, 231–3, 573 Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs  232–3 Swedish Social Democrat-Green coalition  232 sword of Damocles  301 Syatauw, J. J. G.  53 Sykes-Picot Agreement  706–7 Syria  71–2, 244, 416–18, 440–1, 708–10, 712–13 systemic change  4–5, 20–1, 67, 292–5, 612–14 Taisho democracy  686 Taiwan  295, 320–1. See also Northeast Asia’s peaceful change Taizong, Emperor  254 Tajikistan. See Central Asia’s peaceful change Taliban 70 Tamil minority  248 Tamil–Sinhala conflict  677 Tamil terrorism  242 Taoguang Yanghui (hiding strength and biding time)  447

Taoism 239 targeted killing  295, 396–7 Tashi, Gompo  251 technological changes  13, 15–16, 47–50 teleological change  11 territoriality  16, 289–90, 621 territorial redistribution  50, 289 territorial revisionism  16, 18, 76, 765–6 terrorism in Africa  632 counterterrorism  78–9, 452, 632 Islamic terrorism  243, 559–60 religion-based 239 Rohingya terrorists  250 September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks  67, 80, 291, 648 suicide terrorism  240 Tamil terrorism  242 threats of  647–8 war on terror  507 THADD issue  454–5 Thailand  159, 246–7, 558, 649–50 Thein Sein  249–50 Third Industrial Revolution  391, 396 Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) 53 Thirty Years’ War  148, 570–1 Thomas, Daniel  134 Thompson, Kenneth  57 Thompson, Robert  536–7 “thou shall not” international organization 59–60 threat-based contractual relations  579 “Thucydides’s trap” argument  369, 457 Thunberg, Greta  15–16 Tiananmen massacre  252 Tibet  239, 246–7, 250–1, 519–22 Tik-Tok 389 Tilly, Charles  388, 409–10, 570–2, 612–13 TIT FOR TAT policies  475 Tolstoy, Leo  518 Tonneson, Stein  553 torture/torturing  175, 177, 247–8, 251–2 “toutes les forces vives de la nation” (“all strands of the nation”)  629–30 Towards a Japan That Can Say “No” (Shintarō) 507

814   index Towards the African Renaissance (Diop, Modum) 622 Toynbee, Arnold  30, 42 Trachtenberg, Marc  99 trade barriers to  435 economic interdependence  155–6, 161n.1, 320–4 intra-industry trade  321 overall trade interaction  153–4 preferential trade agreements  74–5, 321–2, 332 regional trade agreements  74–5, 322, 332 value chain trade  159 trade and investment framework agreements (TIFAs) 708 trade on a value-added (TVA) basis  159 trade union movement  538 traditional international law  53 transatlantic security community  117 transformational change  16, 68, 92, 172, 214, 225–9, 262 transnational activism  389, 417–18 transnational advocacy networks  176–7, 410 transnational corporations  155, 361–3, 752 transnational democracy  360–3 transnationalism  77–8, 361–2 transnational nonstate actors  408–9 transnational organizations  176–8 transnational social movements civil society divide and  411–15 definitions and overview of  409–12 introduction to  15–16, 19–20, 407–9 radical approaches to  360–1 summary of  420 violence and  415–20 transnational women’s movements  227 Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)  75–6, 322–3, 511–12, 615 Treaty of Aachen  484 Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle  591 Treaty of Amity and Cooperation  657n.2 Treaty of Amsterdam  580 Treaty of Brussels  572–3 Treaty of Dunkirk  572 Treaty of Friendship  666

Treaty of Ghent  592–3 Treaty of Paris  577–8, 591 Treaty of Pelindaba  634n.4 Treaty of Rome  575, 577–80, 582–3 Treaty of San Francisco  504 Treaty of Sevres  709 Treaty of the European Union  577 Treaty of Tlatelolco  616 Treaty of Westphalia  132 Treaty on European Union  579–80 Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. See Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons 308–10 triangular diplomacy  437–8, 605 Trilateral Coordination and Oversight Group (TCOG) 691–2 Trinidad 353 troop-contributing country (TCC)  558 Truman Doctrine  573–4 Trump, Donald  75–7, 123, 134–5, 138, 159, 331, 354, 450, 510, 650–1, 694 trusteeship system  293 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)  540, 627–8 Turkey  15–16, 123, 239, 473, 571, 573, 708–10 Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus  295 Turkmenistan. See Central Asia’s peaceful change Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) natural gas pipeline  676 Tutu, Desmond  538 The Twenty Years’ Crisis (Carr)  7–8, 35, 50–1, 56–7, 194, 197, 764 “Two Concepts of Liberty” (Berlin)  195 Ubuntu concept  538, 547, 627–8, 635n.6 Uganda  544, 627, 632 Uighurs in Xinjiang  252 Ukraine  158, 440, 471–2, 487 Ukraine Crisis  464, 472, 474, 722 ultima ratio force  57 Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK)  536 UNAIDS 358 unarmed neutrality (hibusō chūritsu) 503

index   815 UN Arms Trade Treaty  12–13 UN Charter  54–6 UN Climate Change Conferences  347 UN Climate Science Panel  337 UN Declaration on Granting Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples 293–4 UN General Assembly  307, 345, 356–7 Union of International Associations  420n.1 Union of South American Nations (UNASUR)  604, 609 unipolarity and peaceful change  69–77, 79–80, 614, 688–9 United Fruit Company  151, 153 United Kingdom  571–2 United Nations Charter  201–2, 284, 288–91, 293–4, 296n.4, 353, 358, 363–4 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 208 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) 492–3 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC)  342–3 United Nations Human Rights Council  355 United Nations Office for Sustainable Development 353 United Nations Protection Force in Bosnia (UNPROFOR) 734 United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR)  221–2, 227, 229–30 United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Cambodian conflict  645 Germany’s election to  493 impact on peaceful change  117–18, 120 international institutions and  130–1, 136–9 international law and  286–7 peacekeeping forces from China  456 permanent membership in  20, 137–8, 359, 439 power politics by  766–7 South Africa as potential candidate for 542–3 status quest and  374, 378–9 US relationship with  74–5, 80

United Nations (UN) accession of Germany to  492–3 China’s seat in  455 debate over reform of  542–3 gender equality and  221, 227 history of  137–8 as inadequate  52–3 institutionalization of  177 liberal democracy and  73 liberal institutionalization  12–13 power politics/struggles  141 registering arms sales with  542 Russia’s veto power in  469 South Africa and  542–3 transnational actors and  363 trusteeship system  293 veto-holding in  363 veto system and  117 United Nations (UN) Conference on International Organization at San Francisco 435 United Nations University  625 United States State Department  353 United States (US) Alaskan border disagreement  432 Canada–US security community  593–8 Canadian relations with  590, 593–8 China-US bilateral relationship  451–3 China-US competition  67, 454–5, 458, 563, 669 Chinese-American tensions  99 democratic peace hypothesis  354–5 foreign relations with China  451–3 Germany’s peaceful change and  483–9 global commons command  70–1 global hegemony  102 as global power  378 as “Great Irresponsible,”  198 gross domestic product  445 hegemony of  449, 469, 572, 575, 581, 607, 688–90 hybrid interference  71 impact on Latin America’s peaceful change 615 international institutions  456 intervention in Central America  153

816   index United States (US) (Continued) intervention in Guatemala  151 invasion of Mexico  612–13 lack of geoeconomic instruments  328 liberal hegemony  68–9, 72–7, 80 liberal international order  765 Middle Eastern wars  71–2 military interventionism by  267–8 military power of  319–20, 437, 449–50, 572 National Security Strategy  694 new world order strategy  330 occupation of Japan  503–6 Paris Climate Conference  343–4 peaceful power transition between Great Britain and  429–33 power gap between China and  450 presence in Caribbean  431 realist accounts of origins  101–2 regional hegemons in  99 relations with Brazil  606–7 rise of  97 RTAs in  322 Russia’s soft balancing strategies against 468–70 security competition with  69–70 September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks  67, 80, 291, 648 Sino-US rapprochement  687 Soviet Union relations during Cold War  70–1, 97–8, 169, 244, 302 status quest  374–5 as superpower  67 systemic change and  68 Taliban peace deal  244 Type I peaceful change  92 waning global predominance of  170 war in Afghanistan  67, 70–2, 120–1 war in Iraq  67, 70–2, 75–6, 120–1, 154, 286, 355, 707 war on terror  507 United States (US) foreign policy Anglo-American leadership transition 430–3 détente strategy  436–40 introduction to  429–30 post-Cold War multilateralism  440–1

post–World War II settlement  435–6 summary of  441–2 US and British peaceful power transitions 429–33 Wilsonian internationalism  433–5 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 12–13 Universal Postal Union  129 University of London  194 University of Maryland Global Terrorism Database 757n.1 unreasoned disregard  282 UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET)  645–6 Uruguay 413–14 US Central Intelligence Agency  251 US-China security competition  454–5, 458, 669 US-China trade war  450 US-India relations  305–6, 526–7 US-Indonesia relations  554 US-Japanese defense alliance  502, 505–6 US-Japan “Guidelines on Defense Cooperation,” 508 US-Mexican relations  598–9 US-Mexican security community  589–90 US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) 598 US New Silk Road (NSR) strategy  747–8 USSR. See Soviet Union US State Department  54–5 US Treasury bonds  332 US-USSR strategic competition  505 utilitarianism 393 uti possidetis juris principle  294–5, 611, 614, 627 utopianism  35, 390, 764 Uzbekistan 243–4. See Central Asia’s peaceful change value chain trade  159 Vandenberg, Arthur  435 variation-selection-inheritance (VSI)  262–3, 266, 270 Vattel, Emer de  290 Veblen, Thorstein  261

index   817 Venezuela  430–1, 604, 606, 608–9, 615–16 Versailles Treaty  31–3, 37, 191–2, 429–30, 434 Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF) 487 veto-holding 363 Victoria, Brian  242 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations 131 Vienna Treaty  196 Vietnam  246–7, 320–1, 505–6, 525, 644–5 Vietnam War  439, 649–50, 686 violence critical international relations (IR) theories 207–11 direct violence  208 gendered violence  229–32, 249 in internal conflicts  505, 553 internal violence  5 intrastate violence  140, 225, 605 maximal definition of peace  768 nonviolent resistance  21n.1, 413 Pakistan and  239, 241, 438, 526–7 political violence  58, 413–15, 420, 539–40, 547 sexual violence  223–4, 229–30, 232–3, 247–9 slow violence  224–5 structural violence  14, 208–9, 225, 364 transnational social movements and 415–20 violence-constraining rules  173–4 virtual unanimity  55–6 Viségrad group  487–8 visual representation  175 voice, in international relations  535 voluntary compliance in hegemony  72–3 Wade, Abdoulaye  625 Wæver, Ole  200–1 Wahhabism 244 “Wake Up, Krasner! The World Has Changed” (Strange)  395–6 Wallerstein, Immanuel  209 Walsea, Lech  7 Walt, Stephen  93 Waltz, Kenneth  90, 103

Wamba-dia-Wamba, Ernest  629 war. See also Cold War; nuclear deterrence/ war; post-Cold War peaceful change; post-World War II peaceful change; specific countries; specific wars abandonment of  14–15 cold wars  14 of extermination  591–2 gender-just change and  223–5 international law and  291–2 of manoeuvre  216n.6 of position  213, 216n.6 post-World War I peaceful change  3 race wars  614–15 self-defense wars  6–7, 242, 284, 286–7, 289–91, 435, 504–5 technologies of destruction and  48–9 on terror  507 theory of origins  266 “zone of war,”  589–93 War and Change (Gilpin)  56–7 Ward, Steven  371 War of the Austrian Succession  591 War of the League of Augsburg  591 War of the Pacific  609–10 War of the Spanish Succession  591 Warsaw Pact  9, 102, 440, 725–6, 731, 764–5 Wasatiyyat Islam  560 Washington Consensus  355, 395 Washington System  686 water conflicts  338–41, 344–5 Wazed, Sheikh Hasina  669 weak sense of peaceful change  302 wealth distribution  79 weaponizing interdependence  324, 330 weapons. See also nuclear weapons absolute weapon  301–2 biological weapons  12–13, 74 chemical weapons  74, 173–4 conventional weapons  68, 71, 77, 97–8, 523 hypersonic weapons  303, 472–3, 476 small/light weapons regulation  176–7 taboos with  390 weapons of mass destruction  286 Weber, Max  388, 393

818   index Webster, Charles K.  351–2 we-feeling peace  60–1, 135 well-being of individuals  112 Welsh, Jennifer  14 Wendt, Alexander  241, 570 Wen Jiabao  446 West Africa  611 Western Enlightenment  210–12 Western Europe’s peaceful change Hobbesian perspective on  572–5 introduction to  569–70 Kantian view of  579–81 Lockean perspective on  575–9 Pax Europaea  570–2 summary of  581–3, 772 Western liberalism  13–14, 746 Western rationalism  392 Westphalian understanding of sovereignty 294 WhatsApp 389 Widodo, Joko  558 Wigell, Mikael  71 Wight, Martin  50–1, 191 Wilhelm II, Kaiser  431 Williams, Jody  420n.3 Williams, Michael C.  114 Wilson, Woodrow  3, 116, 429–30, 433–5, 686 Wirajuda, Hassan  561–2 Wohlforth, William C.  69–70 Wolfers, Arnold  54 Women in the Peacebuilding Network (WIPNET) 227–8 Women Peace and Security (WPS)  221, 226–34 women-peace hypothesis  223, 225–7, 233 women’s rights  221, 223–4, 232 Women Stats project  222 Working Peace System  408 World Bank  73, 123, 133, 341, 358, 456, 622–3, 691–2 world community formation  59–60, 194–5, 415, 419–20, 463 world financial crisis (2008–2009)  11 World Health Organization  355 world public opinion  351–2, 438 World Social Forum  360–1, 411

world systems analysis  4–5, 209–10, 216n.2 World Trade Organization (WTO)  74–6, 80, 133–4, 161, 319, 356–7, 429–30, 675–6, 690–1, 767 China and  449, 456 World War I  7–8, 37, 287–8 World War II Jewish refugees after  485 Kellogg-Briand Pact  288–9 League of Nations failure to prevent 137–8 maximalist peaceful change  376–7 multilateralism impact on  173 peaceful change after  41, 43n.4 post–World War II settlement  435–6 realism paradigm  35 World Water Council (WWC)  344–5 The Wretched of the Earth (Fanon)  210 Wright, Quincy  54–5 Wright, Thomas  89–90 written act of faith  59–60 Wu, Emperor  253 xenophobia  545, 616 Xianbei Tuoba  253 Xi Jinping  72, 75–6, 135, 375, 447, 452–3, 597, 650–1, 690–1, 694 “Yanqui” imperialism  418 Yan Xuetong  254, 378–9 Yeltsin, Boris  74, 463–4, 468–70, 734 Yemen 418 Yeo, George  525 Yom Kippur/October War  713–14 York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards 131 Yousafzai, Malala  239 Yudhoyono, Susilo Bambang  559, 561–2 Yugoslav Communist Party  728–9 Yugoslavia  728–31, 734–8 Yunus, Muhammad  239 zero-sum game  374 Zhang Jingwu  520 Zheng Bijian  446

index   819 zhongguo, defined  252–3 Zhou Enlai  519–20 Zia, Khaleda  670 Zimbabwe  536, 545–6, 627–8, 632 Zimmern, Alfred  30, 42, 352, 356 Zionism 559–60

zone of peace  352–5, 587–8, 593–8, 643–9 Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality (ZOPFAN) Declaration  644–5 zone of war  589–93 Zuma, Jacob  542 Zunghar Mongols  253