The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

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Economic and social commission for asia and the pacific

Therefore, the seeker after the truth is not one who studies the writings of the ancients and, following his natural disposition, puts his trust in them, but rather the one who suspects his faith in them and questions what he gathers from them, the one who submits to argument and demonstration, and not to the sayings of a human being whose nature is fraught with all kinds of imperfection and de‹ciency. Thus the duty of the man who investigates the writings of scientists, if learning the truth is his goal, is to make himself the enemy of all that he reads, and, applying his mind to the core and margins of its content, attack it from every side. He should also suspect himself as he performs his critical examination of it, so that he may avoid falling into either prejudice or leniency. (Ibn al-Haytham)1

국제정치이론 = Theory of international politics

The new US security strategy released by the White House in September 2002, is a remarkable document which requires more analysis than that received in the main media, perhaps partially because of the massive attention given to the Beltway sniper(s). The new strategy would justify pre-emptive strikes for the first time against any countries which the current or future US leadership believe might pose a threat in the future such as China or resurgent Russia or any other country or a group of countries. This bold assertion is justified by the threat of even more miniature weapons of mass destruction coupled with the hatred of America. This important document and the accompanying commentary provide essential and thought provoking reading.

The national security strategy of the United States of America

This article is devoted to an analysis of cyber security, a concept that arrived on the post-Cold War agenda in response to a mixture of technological innovations and changing geopolitical conditions. Adopting the framework of securitization theory, the article theorizes cyber security as a distinct sector with a particular constellation of threats and referent objects. It is held that “network security” and “individual security” are significant referent objects, but that their political importance arises from connections to the collective referent objects of “the state,”“society,”“the nation,” and “the economy.” These referent objects are articulated as threatened through three distinct forms of securitizations: hypersecuritization, everyday security practices, and technifications. The applicability of the theoretical framework is then shown through a case-study of what has been labeled the first war in cyber space against Estonian public and commercial institutions in 2007.

Digital Disaster, Cyber Security, and the Copenhagen School

In closing his monumental study of 2002, The Shield of Achilles, Philip Bobbitt declared, ‘We are entering a fearful time, a time that will call on all our resources, moral as well as intellectual and material’.* Without deferring to alarmism and scare-mongering there is, nevertheless, mounting evidence that we are entering a period of profound insecurity – a truly fearful time. The extreme limits of industrialized growth, the marginalization of the ‘majority world’ and militarized responses to conflict are converging in an international system that has never been as connected and interdependent as it is today. If Bobbitt is right and such times call on our intellectual resources like never before, then the second edition of Alan Collins’ impressive textbook on security studies could not be timelier. In fact, the book is not so much a primer on studying the provision of security as the careful analysis of the causes and manifestations of insecurity. As in the previous edition, Collins has divided the book into three sections: approaches to security, deepening and broadening security, and traditional and non-traditional security. Within this structure he has gathered an impressive array of talented scholars to provide introductions to each topic, a summary of the main controversies and debates that characterize the academic literature as well as the popular discourse and a set of study questions and suggestions for further reading. Seven new chapters have been added to this edition across the three sections. Particularly welcome are the additions of Christine Agius’ theoretical chapter on social constructivism, Nana Poku’s chapter on globalization, development and security (which works well to complement Pauline Kerr’s existing chapter on human security), and a specific chapter on energy security by Sam Raphael and Doug Stokes. Other standout contributions which rise to Bobbitt’s challenge include Jon Barnett’s insightful chapter on environmental security and Paul Rogers’ discussion of the evolution of the sub-discipline of peace studies. Barnett manages to navigate the conceptual debates involved in taking environmental stresses and degradation seriously as a security issue, whilst still

Contemporary Security Studies

A central theme of the literature on rising powers is that new aspirants to great power status pose a challenge to the underlying principles and norms that underpin the existing, Western-led order....

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Rising Powers and Order Contestation: Disaggregating the Normative from the Representational

The structural effect of what is known in the International Relations (IR) literature as the ‘polarity’ of any given moment has been a central theme in mainstream theories and across the discipline more widely. Yet there are at present competing perceptions of polarity across popular and scholarly discourse. Is the United States still a unipolar power? Are we currently in or about to enter a multipolar era? Or will the US-Sino relationship dominate world politics in the coming decades creating a new bipolarity? 

This thesis proposes a redefinition of the concept of polarity in order to be able to theoretically account for such competing visions of global order. It argues for the continued utility of the concept, particularly given its widespread use by practitioners and analysts alike, but that polarity analysis needs to be re-configured along more analytically eclectic lines than is the case in the existing literature. Using the English school of IR, the thesis builds a theoretical framework for redefining polarity, not as the distribution of material capabilities in the international system, but instead as the number of states that hold a particular status in international society. This framework is then applied to the period of 1815-2012 in order to understand the difference this makes to a macro-historical analysis of changes in the inter-state order. The historical analysis is used to demonstrate both the need for a new definition of polarity but also to draw a number of conclusions regarding the sources of perceptions of polarity.

http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/4099/1/Zala13PhD.pdf

Rethinking polarity for the twenty-first century: perceptions of order in international society

This article considers what the nineteenth century can tell us about the nature of great power management under conditions of ambiguity in relation to the holders of great power status. It charts the development of an institutionalised role for the great powers as managers of international society but with a specific focus on the mutual recognition, and conferral, of status. Such a focus highlights the changing, and sometimes competing, perceptions of not only which states should be thought of as great powers, but also therefore whether the power structure of international society remained multipolar or shifted towards bipolarity or even unipolarity. The article argues that a ‘golden age’ of great power management existed during a period in which perceptions of great power status were in fact more fluid than the standard literature accounts for. This means that predictions surrounding the imminent demise of the social institution of great power management under an increasingly ambiguous interstate order today may well be misplaced.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/8254616F98713B70B1953BF7F8030AF0/S0260210516000292a.pdf/div-class-title-great-power-management-and-ambiguous-order-in-nineteenth-century-international-society-div.pdf

Great power management and ambiguous order in nineteenth-century international society

The special rights and responsibilities of the great powers have traditionally been treated as a key component – even a primary institution – of international society in the English School literatu...

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Benjamin Zala

Papers

Contemporary Security Studies

Rising Powers and Order Contestation: Disaggregating the Normative from the Representational

Rethinking polarity for the twenty-first century: perceptions of order in international society

Great power management and ambiguous order in nineteenth-century international society

Interpreting great power rights in international society: Debating China's right to a sphere of influence