SPRINGER BRIEFS ON PIONEERS IN

SCIENCE AND PRAC TICE 41

Kalevi Holsti

Kalevi Holsti: A Pioneer

in International
Relations Theory,
Foreign Policy Analysis,
History of International
Order, and Security
Studies

123
SpringerBriefs on Pioneers in Science
and Practice

Volume 41

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Hans Günter Brauch, Mosbach, Germany
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Kalevi Holsti

Kalevi Holsti: A Pioneer

in International Relations
Theory, Foreign Policy
Analysis, History
of International Order,
and Security Studies

123
Kalevi Holsti
Liu Institute for Global Issues
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC
Canada

Acknowledgment: The cover photograph as well as all other photos in this volume were
taken from the personal photo collection of the author who also granted the permission on their
publication in this volume. A book website with additional information on Kalevi Holsti,
including videos and his major book covers is at: http://afes-press-books.de/html/
SpringerBriefs_PSP_Holsti.htm.

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My academic life’s work
was inspired and often aided
by my brother Ole Holsti,
by my late colleagues and friends
Mark W. Zacher and James N. Rosenau,
and by Raimo Väyrynen in Finland.
I am pleased to acknowledge their role in my
academic career through this dedication.
With friend and late colleague, Jim Rosenau, at Student Conference, Morelia, Mexico, 2006
Foreword

Kal Holsti was born in Geneva in 1935, but was a citizen of Finland until 1956. He
received all three of his degrees from Stanford, culminating in a Ph.D. in 1961.
Since 1962 he has been at the University of British Columbia. In 1984 he was
elected president of the Canadian Political Science Association, and 2 years later,
president of the International Studies Association. In 1985 he was elected a Fellow
of the Royal Society of Canada. In 1997 his university named him University
Killam Professor, only the seventh to be so designated since the founding of the
University of British Columbia in 1915. Holsti is now professor emeritus.
His initial impact on the field was made by a very widely used textbook:
International Politics: A Framework for Analysis, (1967, with 7 editions, the last in
1995). Many students had their first introduction to International Relations through
this book, and were treated to a clear and systematic setting out of the subject which
took seriously both theory and history: features which continue to be a hallmark of
Holsti’s work. There are two intellectual engagements that make his work stand out
within IR. One is his consistent and measured commentary on the state of IR as a
‘discipline’ (though he rejects the view that IR is a discipline). He has observed the
various ‘great debates’ in IR, perhaps most notably in his 1985 book: The Dividing
Discipline, maintaining a balanced view when many others resorted to ideological
position-taking, personal attacks, and total rejection of the view from the other side.

vii
viii Foreword

He has been a stabilizing force, caring for the trust and intellectual pluralism that
are essential to the academic enterprise. He has been skeptical about too great a drift
into philosophy of knowledge questions, but kept an open mind about the insights
to be gained from other approaches. Although adhering to a state-centric approach
to IR, he has been critical of the one-sidedness of Realists in focusing only on the
conflictual side of IR, and not on the collaborative one.
Both this pluralist outlook, and his commitment to the importance of history
reflect his second main engagement, which has been with the ‘classical’ or ‘English
school’ tradition. In much of North American IR during the core decades of his
career such an engagement put one outside the mainstream, and required intellec-
tual courage. His main contributions here have been studies on war and on the
institutions of international society as a way of understanding and theorizing change
in the international system. The engagement with change and institutions can be
tracked back to his 1991 book Change in the International System, and culminated
in his important 2004 volume Taming the Sovereigns: Institutional Change in
International Politics. His two books on war—Peace and War: Armed Conflicts
and International Order 1648–1989 (1991) and The State, War, and the State of
War (1996)—understand war as a systemic and a historical phenomenon repre-
senting the ultimate failure of politics.
I had the good fortune to be taught by him in 1965, when I was a second-year
undergraduate, and he was using the ‘Introduction to International Politics’ course
to develop his book. It had never occurred to me that one could stand back from the
details of history, and look not only at war, but also at the system that gave rise to it,
as a set of bold, abstract patterns. I became quite entranced as his story unfolded
week by week in a series of elegant and entertaining lectures. Kal showed his
students that Realism was a good place to start building an understanding of
international relations, but he left room for the idea that history matters, and that
Realism may not be such a good place to end up. For me, and I am sure for many
Foreword ix

others, Kal was the classic case not only of a teacher whose initial inspiration made
a real difference to one’s life, but also whose subsequent work continued to stim-
ulate and guide my own.

London, London School of Economics Barry Buzan

and Political Science Professor Emeritus
February 2015 Department of International Relations
and
Honorary Professor
Copenhagen and Jilin universities

Barry Buzan (UK) is Professor Emeritus of International Relations at the LSE, and honorary
professor at Copenhagen and Jilin University (China). During 1993 he was visiting professor at the
International University of Japan, and in 1997–1998 he was Olof Palme Visiting Professor in
Sweden. He was Chairman of the British International Studies Association 1988–1990,
Vice-President of the (North American), International Studies Association 1993–1994. In 1998 he
was elected a Fellow of the British Academy, and in 2001 he was elected as an Academician of the
Association of Learned Societies in the Social Sciences. His most recent books are: (with Richard
Little, 2000): International Systems in World History: Remaking the Study of International
Relations; (with Ole Wæver, 2003): Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security;
(2004): From International to World Society? English School Theory and the Social Structure of
Globalisation; (2004): The United States and the Great Powers: World Politics in the Twenty-First
Century; (with Lene Hansen, 2009: The evolution of international security studies (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press); (with Ana Gonzalez-Pelaez, eds., 2009): International society and
the Middle East: English school theory at the regional level (Basingstoke: Macmillan); (with
Amitav Acharya, eds., 2010): Non-Western international relations theory: perspectives on and
beyond Asia (London: Routledge); (with Mathias Albert, Michael Zürn, eds., 2013): World politics
as differentiation theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); (with both, eds., 2013):
Bringing sociology to international relations: world politics as differentiation theory (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press); (with Yongjin Zhang, eds., 2014): Contesting international society
in East Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); International security (London: Sage); An
Introduction to the English School of International Relations: The Societal Approach (Cambridge:
Polity Press, 2014); (with George Lawson, 2015): The Global Transformation: History, Modernity
and the Making of International Relations, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); Address:
Prof. Barry Buzan, Department of International Relations, LSE, Houghton Street, London WC2A
2AE, UK; Email: <b.g.buzan@lse.ac.uk>.
Acknowledgments

I was attending the presidential address at the International Studies Association

Annual meetings in Toronto, March 2014, when I ran into my old acquaintance
Hans Günter Brauch. After exchanging greetings, he showed me a copy of a
volume he had edited in the “Pioneers in International Relations” series. After
describing in some detail the series and the nature of the individual volumes, he
asked if I would like to contribute to the series with an edited volume of some of my
writings spanning an academic career of a half-century. I gave him an “I am
interested in the enterprise” answer, but made no commitment until I had had an
opportunity to examine one or more of the contributions to the series. Hans Günter
duly sent them to me so I gained a sense of what was involved. I thought it would
be an interesting exercise to review my writings going back to 1961 when I
received my Ph.D. degree. Making selections might present some challenges, but
the task ahead did not seem particularly onerous. I therefore accepted his kind
invitation.
I was to learn early in the enterprise what an extraordinary task Hans Günter had
undertaken as editor of the series. He had to discipline me in questions of format,
exchanging messages and texts by various unfamiliar computer programs, and set
target dates for completion of the various tasks. He did all this and more with good
humor and a gracious extended hand for dealing with my computer illiteracy
problems. He did it all, so I am pleased to acknowledge his initiative, patience, hard
work, and instruction. I am indebted to him for maintaining the optimistic view that
others might be interested in pieces I had written as long as 45 years earlier. He also
offered me an opportunity to look back over a long career and to examine again
those theoretical and policy questions in International Relations that had excited me
and continue to do so. My heartfelt thanks to you, Hans Günter.

xi
Skiing with friend and late colleague, Mark Zacher, Whistler, B.C., 1990s
Contents

Part I On Kalevi Holsti

1 Biography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1 My Father’s Career as a Finnish Diplomat. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2 Experience as a High School and University Student . . . . . . . 4
1.3 Start of My Academic Career in International Relations . . . . . 5
1.4 My First Books on International Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.5 Impact of my Stay in Fiji on Foreign Policy Analysis . . . . . . . 7
1.6 My Concern with War and its Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.7 Research, Writing, and Rewards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.1 Books . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.2 Chapters in Edited Books . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.3 Journal Articles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Part II Texts by Kalevi Holsti on International Theory

3 Introduction on International Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
4 Hegemony and Challenge in International Theory . . . . ......... 25
4.1 Consequences of Theoretical Profusion: Dialogue
or Confusion? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
4.2 Guidelines to Inquiry in the Classical Tradition . . . . . . . . . . . 30
4.3 The Hegemony of the Classical Tradition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
4.4 A National Academic Hegemony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
5 The Problem of Change in International Relations Theory. . . . . . . 37
5.1 Markers of Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
5.1.1 Trends. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
5.1.2 Great Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

xiii
xiv Contents

5.1.3 Great Achievements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

5.1.4 Significant Social/Technological Innovations . . . . . . . 43
5.2 Concepts of Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
5.2.1 Change as Addition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
5.2.2 Dialectical Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
5.2.3 Change as Transformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
5.2.4 Change as Replacement. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
5.2.5 Systemic and Lower Levels of Change . . . . . . . . . . . 47
5.3 A Source of Confusion: Defining International Relations . . . . . 48
5.4 Change and International Institutions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
5.5 Possibilities of Institutional Change. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
6 Along the Road of International Theory in the Next Millennium:
Four Travelogues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
6.1 A Crisis in International Theory? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
6.1.1 Promises and Pitfalls of Postmodernism. . . . . . . . . . . 59
6.1.2 Isomorphism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
6.1.3 Lack of a Core Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
6.1.4 The Problem of International Politics Is Solved . . . . . 62
6.2 Constructing Travelogues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
6.2.1 Oblivion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
6.2.2 Uncivil War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
6.2.3 A New Consensus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
6.3 The Fourth Travelogue: One Thousand Blooming Flowers. . . . 73
6.4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
7 Hindrances to Understanding in International Relations . . . . . . . . 79
7.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
7.2 On Understanding. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
7.3 Institutional Hindrances to Understanding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
7.4 Disagreement and Misunderstanding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
7.5 The Processes of Theoretical Innovation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
7.6 From Problem Identification and Choice to Diagnosis . . . . . . . 85
7.7 From Diagnosis to Prescription. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
7.8 More Sources of Misunderstanding: Defining the Field . . . . . . 88
7.8.1 The Search for a Grand Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
7.8.2 International Politics and International Relations:
Distinctions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
7.9 Different Motivations, Different Understandings . . . . . . . . . . . 91
7.10 Solutions? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
Contents xv

Part III Texts by Kalevi Holsti on Foreign Policy Analysis

8 Introduction on Foreign Policy Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
9 Restructuring Foreign Policy: A Neglected Phenomenon
in Foreign Policy Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
9.1 A Typology of Foreign Policy Restructuring . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
9.2 Prelude to Foreign Policy Restructuring: Disengagement . . . . . 109
9.3 International Relations Theory and Foreign Policy
Restructuring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
9.4 Describing and Explaining Foreign Policy Reorientation
and Restructuring: A Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
9.5 Organizing the Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
10 Exceptionalism in American Foreign Policy: Is It Exceptional? . . . 121
10.1 Five Essential Characteristics of Exceptionalism:
A Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
10.2 Messianism and the Liberation Mission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
10.3 The Exceptionalists’ Modus Operandi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
10.3.1 Freedom from External Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
10.4 Universalization of Threats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
10.5 The Need to Have an Enemy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
10.6 Innocence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
10.7 Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
10.8 The Moral and Ideological Foundations of Exceptionalism . . . 140
10.9 Grotius versus Vattel, Jackson versus Wolfowitz . . . . . . . . . . 142
10.10 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144

University of British Columbia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

Liu Institute for Global Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149

About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

About this Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

With wife Marilyn at IPSA meetings, Paris, 1985
 Part I
On Kalevi Holsti

Presentation of diplomas to course participants, Danang, Vietnam, 2011

2 Part I: On Kalevi Holsti

With brother Ole (left), Geneva, 1940

With brother Ole at Atlanta ISA meetings, 1992

Chapter 1
Biography

1.1 My Father’s Career as a Finnish Diplomat

I do not believe in genetic determinism, but there was

probably more than just chance that led to an academic
career in the field of International Relations. My
brother Ole and I were both born in Geneva in the
1930s. Our father, Rudolf Holsti, was at that time
Finland’s ambassador to the League of Nations.
Between 1919 and 1922 he had served as that coun-
try’s foreign minister, with the same post between
1936 and 1938. He had a Ph.D. in sociology from the
University of Helsinki, had been sent to London dur-
ing the late stages of World War I to seek Allied
recognition of Finland’s independence declared in
December 1917, and was able, through his connections with Herbert Hoover, to
obtain scarce food supplies to alleviate widespread hunger in Finland during its
1918 civil war. Our early years were thus spent in a diplomatic household, although
none of what transpired in our father’s life consciously made any impression on us.
We were too young. My only recollection of international conflict was observing
the throngs of Wehrmacht and SS troops in train stations as we wended our way
between Helsinki and Geneva in 1938. That was my first fearful experience.
After World War II began in September 1939, the days of the League of Nations
were numbered and, as an undiplomatic opponent of Hitler and Nazism, it was not
possible for us to return to Finland. Our father had toured the United States in
1930–1931 and had delivered lectures at Stanford University, then a small liberal
arts college. Herbert Hoover had a strong connection with the university and
through his assistance and that of his former deputy in Paris in 1919, Lewis Strauss,
he was able to secure for our father a visiting professorship at Stanford. We then left

© The Author(s) 2016 3

K. Holsti, Kalevi Holsti: A Pioneer in International Relations Theory, Foreign
Policy Analysis, History of International Order, and Security Studies, SpringerBriefs
on Pioneers in Science and Practice 41, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-26624-4_1
4 1 Biography

Geneva, wending our way to Lisbon by bus and train, across the Atlantic by boat,
and by train from New York to San Francisco.
Rudolf died unexpectedly several days before the conclusion of World War II.
Our mother, Liisa, had been hospitalized with tuberculosis since 1943, so Ole and I
spent six months in an orphanage in San Jose, California, until two Stanford faculty
families took us in and began the conversion of immigrant children into standard
issue American kids.

1.2 Experience as a High School and University Student

I went to public schools and recall no particular interest in international affairs. Nor
did I excel as a student. I was in an high school undistinguished ‘B’ cohort, but in
those days of lax standards, I was admitted to Stanford as a freshman in 1952. My
academic achievements at the beginning did not improve, so I dropped out of
school one term and travelled to Finland to become reacquainted with our numerous
relatives there. On hindsight, this was a good decision because after I returned to
Stanford, I had decided that, after all, I did have an intellectual interest in inter-
national affairs and history. I thus enrolled in the undergraduate International
Relations program and began to move into an ‘A’ category of grades. Most of my
courses were in history and area studies. When it came time to decide about
graduate work, I was persuaded by a history professor that there were few jobs in
his métier, but that Political Science might be more fruitful. I duly applied for an M.
A. degree, was accepted, and thrived in the environment of seminars, numerous
essays, and working as a teaching assistant. Two years later, in 1958, by default I
applied to the Ph.D. program and was admitted. By this time, thanks to mentoring
by James T. Watkins IV and Martin Travis, I had become familiar with the IR
literature and the “big names” that made the field sparkle with interest: Hans
Morgenthau, Quincy Wright, Morton Kaplan, Richard Snyder and even a few
Europeans such as Raymond Aron.
I returned to Finland in 1959–1960 as a Fulbright Scholar. My plan was to use
my father’s papers and other sources in Finland to make a decision-making study.
I was fully armed with self-taught rudimentary Finnish, the decision-making lit-
erature of the time, and I obtained unlimited access to the Finnish archives and
some of my father’s contemporaries for interviews. I wrote up the dissertation in
1960–1961. It was later published in Finland but not unexpectedly it failed to make
the best-seller list for 1961. However, through my work in Finland I was able to
make numerous friendships with Finnish academics and over the years, joined some
of them in reviewing applicants for positions at the University of Helsinki, eval-
uating the state of IR studies in Finland, and sitting on the selection board of the
University of Helsinki-based graduate consortium. In 2005 I was elected to the
Finnish Academy of Science and Letters for my work in that country. My first
serious publication dealt with Finnish-Soviet relations which, during the Cold War
years, never lacked interest for IR scholars.
1.3 Start of My Academic Career in International Relations 5

1.3 Start of My Academic Career in International

Relations

I completed the Ph.D. degree in the spring of 1961. During the last months of
writing the dissertation I began casting around for an academic appointment. In
those days, hiring was typically done through personal connections, rumors, and an
occasional circular to seemingly random lists of Political Science Departments in
the United States. Three of my applications resulted in offers subject to interviews.
I turned down an offer from Purdue. San Diego State looked more promising, but
my visit had indicated that the senior professor in the Political Science Department
wanted an assistant to run his errands rather than a colleague. I received an invi-
tation from Dean Frederick Soward at the University of British Columbia in
Vancouver for an interview. This was my first visit to Canada and I was imme-
diately impressed by both the university and the city. In those days job talks were
not necessary. I met a number of professors in the Departments of International
Relations and Political Economy and was impressed by their attitude toward
teaching and research. I also learned that the fringe benefits—sabbaticals every five
years, four month summers, and a good pension—were significantly more generous
than the norm in the United States. I accepted an offer as Instructor II with a joint
appointment in the two departments.
In the summer of 1961, I loaded by old Volkswagen beetle with household
goods and drove from Stanford to Vancouver. My wife and newborn daughter
followed by air. I took the rest of the summer to prepare lectures for the heavy
teaching load of 3 courses. I had been hired, among other reasons, to organize an
introductory course in International Relations and to teach the new fourth year
Honours Seminar in Political Science.
I quickly learned that teaching and research are mutually supporting activities.
I gained a great deal through my classes and student interactions. The task of
organizing a new introductory course in International Relations forced me to
evaluate the state of the field, particularly as it was encapsulated in the major
textbooks. I found it wanting in many respects. A typical text was unabashedly an
apologia for American foreign policy, theoretically incoherent, empirically weak,
an anti-communist tract, an updated version of current affairs, or some combination
of these. As an example, one standard text used the boxcar approach to the field. It
was a set of chapters linked to each other only by the binding of the book but by no
theoretical justification. There would be, for example, a chapter on power, followed
by separate chapters on diplomacy, international law, international organization,
great power foreign policies, and “roads to peace.” After imposing my own theo-
retical formulation of the field as the guide for the materials in the course, I decided
that I should write a textbook that might bring some coherence to a field that, at
least as seen in the major textbooks, was largely incoherent. Teaching the course
was the step that resulted ultimately in International Politics: a Framework for
Analysis.
6 1 Biography

1.4 My First Books on International Relations

I spent the next three years writing the book. I sent off four sample chapters to a major
American publisher. Several months later I received a phone call from the publisher’s
agent in Vancouver inviting me to dinner. In those days I ate out about twice yearly,
so I gladly accepted the invitation to dine at one of Vancouver’s better eateries, a
place I could never afford on my Instructor II’s salary. We enjoyed a wonderful meal,
and over dessert, the agent pulled out of his pocket a handwritten note on Harvard
University letterhead. Stanley Hoffmann, one of the predominant figures in the field
in the United States, had reviewed the four chapters, found them excellent and wrote
the note to the publisher strongly encouraging them to publish the book.
The book offered several advantages over the competition. It was the first to offer
a review of non-European international systems (ancient China during the Chou
era, the Greek city states, and the Italian city-state system of the post mediaeval
era). These were described in terms of a common set of categories, thus inviting
comparison. Second, it offered a typology for comparing foreign policies, centered
on the concepts of foreign policy orientations, roles, objectives, and interests. This
was somewhat more elaborate than usual practice, which was to define foreign
policy as any type of activity that went beyond the national borders. The more
precise “national interest” concept was also common but too vague for my purpose.
Third, borrowing unabashedly from Robert Dahl’s definition of power, I veered the
reader away from thinking about power in terms of economy, geography, and
military strength, but concentrating instead on how governments attempt to wield
influence in their mutual relations. These ranged from consultation and coordina-
tion, through persuasion, to threats, and ultimately to the use of force. The sub-
stantive chapters elaborated on this framework, looking at diplomacy, propaganda,
economic rewards and punishments, deterrence—an excellent chapter written by
brother Ole—and war.

I followed by looking at International Law not just as a

body of norms and regulations, but how governments
use law to pursue and defend their objectives and
interests and how law often limits their options. I took
the same approach for ethics. For international orga-
nizations, I was less concerned with their anatomy than
how successful they were in helping to resolve inter-
national conflicts. All of this had been influenced by
my graduate work, but the real impetus for the enter-
prise was the question I asked myself when planning
the introductory IR course: “how do I make such a
disparate set of approaches and subjects cohere?” Barry
Buzan, one of my students in the early years of the course, recounts in the preface
his reaction to the offering. I would never have written the book had I not been
assigned the pleasant teaching task.
1.4 My First Books on International Relations 7

The book was an unexpected success. I suffered through preparing seven edi-
tions, the last appearing in 1996. It was translated into Japanese and Bahasa
Indonesian, and even more gratifying, it was used as a text extensively in North
America, Great Britain, and the Scandinavian countries.

In graduate school at Stanford, I served as a teaching

assistant to Heinz Eulau, who had just joined the
Political Science Department. Among other benefits
from my discussions with him was a virtual tutorial
about the concept of role. He had applied it in an
analysis of the American Congress, but I thought it
might have relevance to foreign policy analysis. After
completing International Politics: a Framework for
Analysis, I developed a research project that would
look at the various roles governments identified for
themselves. During my first sabbatical in 1967–1968,
I spent four months doing research in the Royal
Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House)
library.
There, I combed hundreds of speeches, press conferences, and reports from
many government officials from different countries looking for evidence of their
self-conceptions: what duties, tasks, responsibilities, and obligations did they define
for their governments? Examples would include ‘faithful ally,’ ‘liberator,’ ‘peace-
maker,’ ‘bridge,’ ‘defender,’ and the like. I wrote a lengthy essay “National Role
Conceptions in the Study of Foreign Policy” that over the years stimulated others to
undertake research projects in the area. Up to that time, this was my first foray into
foreign policy analysis. I chose not to include the essay in this volume because of its
length….over 70 pages of text that must have troubled the editor of the
International Studies Quarterly, Fred Sonderman.

1.5 Impact of my Stay in Fiji on Foreign Policy Analysis

Serendipity often plays a role in scholarship. After the success of the textbook and
the lengthy article on foreign policy roles I had developed no future research
agenda. A five week say in Fiji changed the course of my work for the next several
years. Instead of the usual tourist hotels, I arranged to stay with a family residing in
what could be called the South Pacific version of a small favela. In addition, I was
able to spend several days in a village in the Fiji highlands, one not touched by
central government authorities, tourists, or modern communications. To the extent
8 1 Biography

that I had thought about the problems of the Third World prior to that visit, I had
accepted uncritically the common vision of an inchoate mass of poverty-stricken
peasants, fleeing the squalor of rural life for urban slums, where at last some limited
opportunities might be exploited by guile, coercion, or just plain luck.
Although aware that one cannot generalize from an experience in a single
country for just five weeks, the stay in Fiji changed my views about questions of
equity and poverty. There was no inchoate mass. There were large, extended
families or highly communitarian villages, with strong cultural traditions, firm
social bonds, and what can only be described as general contentment. There was no
opulence but poverty was apparent only if measured by the lack of Western con-
sumer gadgets and limited opportunities for occupational achievement. This was
not a question of fantasizing a “noble savage.” There was some petty theft, cruelty
(particularly to animals), insecurity, and other problems. But there was little misery.
In fact, the greatest source of tensions came through development: families torn
apart, small farms alienated for tourist hotels and airstrips, children wanting
Western technological gadgets that their parents could not afford, the decline of
local languages, the destruction of community-based welfare systems with little to
replace them, the disappearance of artisanship, new health problems accompanying
the consumption of fashionable and expensive imported foods, and the like. The
experience led me to undertake a serious review of existing stereotypes—including
mine—of what underdevelopment and development really mean.
I spent most of that sabbatical year reading the sociological and anthropological
literature on small communities in Third World countries. Most of the studies
confirmed what I had seen and experienced on a South Pacific island. I ultimately
wrote a paper designed to raise questions about our stereotypes of the state of
‘underdevelopment’ and presented it at the 1974 meetings of the International
Political Science Association in Montreal. Among the discussants was Alex
Inkeles, one of the foremost sociologists of the time. He offered a spirited rebuttal of
my presentation, arguing that not only is modernization an inevitable process (true),
but also one in which the gains vastly outweigh the costs. He was largely correct,
but I thought that at least the costs should be acknowledged, and that the term
‘modernization’ masks some paternalistic, ethnocentric, and sometimes outright
exploitative processes better termed ‘Westernization.’ Many of the most depressing
features of the state of underdevelopment are in fact the consequences of the
development process. It is economic modernization rather than being ‘underde-
veloped’ that helps create slums, pollution, social breakdown, class cleavages, and
the like.
The paper was eventually published in the American Political Science Review,
but it was rarely cited by others, so I believe my view of the problem remains safely
obscure. But I did learn through the experience that a certain type of travel and
residence abroad can be a critical source of scholarly work and speculation, that
stereotypes often diverge from facts “on the ground,” and that there is a significant
1.5 Impact of my Stay in Fiji on Foreign Policy Analysis … 9

difference between these and ‘data.’ None of those impressions gained by the five
weeks in Fiji could have been gained through theoretical or data-based studies.
And, finally, I was able to make a direct link between my observations of small
communities on the one hand and foreign policy behavior on the other. The
destructive aspect of ‘Westernization’, I argued, would lead some regimes to adopt
anti-Western policies, not to join the Communist camp, but to avoid some of the
worst costs of modernization. The foreign policy behavior of Iran, Burma, Bhutan,
and Vietnam in the 1970s supported the predictive parts of the essay.
My subsequent research derived from the Fiji experience. I became interested
again in the field of comparative foreign policy, with a focus on the problem of
isolationism. This led to an edited volume, Why Nations Realign: Foreign Policy
Restructuring in the Postwar World. My co-authors examined countries such as
China and Chile in the 1970s, while my substantive chapters explored the isola-
tionism of Burma and Bhutan. The theoretical introduction to the book is reprinted
in this volume. The book received good reviews, but, as noted in the introduction to
the section on foreign policy change, it got, as they say, no scholarly ‘traction.’
Even books and articles on foreign policy change that appeared two decades later
did not list the volume in their footnotes or bibliographies. While I learned a great
deal about the foreign policy problems and dilemmas of non-great powers, the
subsequent fate of the volume suggests that comparative foreign policy, or at least
my understanding of it, was not on the IR research agenda in succeeding years.

1.6 My Concern with War and its Analysis

I continued to write occasionally about the state of IR theory—again a legacy from

teaching the graduate seminar in this area, but my last years prior to retirement in
2000 focused mostly on the problem of war. I had long believed that researchers
ignore the problem of the kinds of issues that lead to armed conflict. This was an
updated version of my concern during graduate student days that a lot of behavioral
research emphasized context rather than political purpose. Governments decide to
take up arms not just because of their location, level of development, alliance
membership, or any number of other background conditions. Objectives, purposes,
ideas, dreams, and status considerations, in my view, are more important. I thus
designed a research project that took me back into diplomatic history more than
350 years. I devoured dozens of books and even more articles trying to find out why
men and occasionally women (Catherine the Great) took up arms. The result was
the book Peace and War: Armed Conflict and International Order, published by
Cambridge University Press in 1991.
10 1 Biography

I did part of the research while teaching at the

International University of Japan in 1988. It was a
marvelous experience living in rural Japan (in the
farmlands of Niigata prefecture) among ordinary
Japanese and in classes made up of students from all
over the world. I had no administrative chores and as
this was the age before email were common, I was
able to eke out almost every day several hours for
reading diplomatic history.
My wife and I enjoyed IUJ and rural Japan so
much that we returned again in 1992 and 1994, where
I did a good deal of research on the next problem,
contemporary war. This resulted in The State, War,
and the State of War. These two war studies were
best-sellers for Cambridge University Press for several years, and, unlike Why
Nations Realign, frequently cited.

1.7 Research, Writing, and Rewards

By disposition, I was a solitary researcher. With the exception of Why Nations

Realign and one article, I was the sole author of all my publications. I have always
preferred to work alone, having learned through experience that joint endeavors are
frequently held up by the slowest contributor. I wrote a chapter for an edited
volume in 1974; the work was released by the publisher almost a decade later, long
after I had given up hope that it would ever see the light of day. Most of my
contributions to edited volumes did not suffer such an extreme fate, but a three year
wait between the editors’ official deadline and actual publication was normal.
I worked alone also because of the generous sabbatical policy of UBC and my
good luck in getting research grants. I learned during my first sabbatical that it is an
error to remain in town. If you are in the vicinity of the university, you are “on call”
for everyone and everything. Before emails became common, I instructed the
Department secretaries to release my foreign sabbatical addresses only in case of
emergencies. The result was that I spent the better part of seven sabbaticals and
unpaid leaves abroad, writing my books and articles. The book on foreign policy
restructuring was written mostly in Montreal. I started The Dividing Discipline in
Australia while a visiting fellow at the Australian National University, and com-
pleted it in the village of Molivos on the island of Lesvos, Greece. The text of
Peace and War emerged from my bulky laptop computer in the town of
Montepulciano, Italy. A good portion of the research had been finished in rural
Japan. The State, War, and the State of War was translated from research notes into
a manuscript in the attic of a 17th century converted mill near the village of Laudun
in the south of France.
1.7 Research, Writing, and Rewards 11

I wrote other works in a lovely farm house outside of

Cotignac, again in the south of France, and my last
book Taming the Sovereigns was written mostly in
Orvieto, Italy. All of these venues, along with our
small summer house on Denman Island in British
Columbia, offered peace and quiet, and the impos-
sibility of telephonic or computer-based communi-
cations. I had learned early in my graduate student
days that I am not good at multitasking. My aca-
demic interest in foreign policy isolation also seemed
to be a necessary condition for my writing. Probably
less than 10 % of my writings emerged from my
office typewriter or computer.
The accumulation of writings, as well as confer-
ence papers and lectures at domestic and foreign universities (throughout Japan in
1982, in Korea, Australia, Mexico, Finland, Israel, Norway, Sweden in later years),
led to the usual invitations to contribute more formally to the academic enterprise.
In 1970 the International Studies Association invited me to edit their Quarterly.
I was happy to oblige because they accepted the proposal that Ole would be the
assistant editor. We worked out of a single office, with a half-time secretary, and
somehow managed to process more than 100 manuscripts annually. Several years
later, I agreed to become co-editor of the Canadian Journal of Political Science,
ably assisted by my colleague Don Blake. For this work, I received a one course
teaching load reduction.
Apparently my editorial work was sufficiently competent that the president of the
Canadian Political Science Association nominated me in 1983 to become his
successor. After completing my term as CPSA president I received a phone call
from the president of the International Studies Association asking me if I would
agree to standing for election to that organization. I was thus following in the
footsteps of Ole, who had presided over ISA several years previously. It was
through Ole’s encouragement that I accepted the invitation and was duly elected.
I was the first non-American to preside over that organization. In the midst of all
this activity, I also served as Chair of our Department and filled an elected two year
term on the University Senate. A two year stint on the Faculty of Arts Promotions
and Tenure committee helped me learn a good deal about university governance.
Finally, I also committed five years of service to the Canadian Institute of
International Peace and Security, a new think tank based in Ottawa. This required
frequent flights to Montreal and Ottawa All this frenetic activity justified my
escapes to rural Japan, France, and Italy for the peace, and quiet, of sabbatical
research and writing.
Thanks to the efforts of my UBC colleagues who were willing to undergo the
rigors of nomination proceedings, I was elected to Canada’s Royal Society in 1983.
I will always remember going to the village post office in Molivos, Greece,
informing me of my election. The Royal Society is Canada’s premier honorary
12 1 Biography

academic organization. Fourteen years later, my colleagues, led by Political Science

Chair Ken Carty, lobbied to have me named a University Killam Professor, the
highest honor accorded by UBC to members of its faculty. I was the seventh person
so named since UBC opened its doors in 1915. The title provided a teaching
reduction and a small research fund to use at my discretion. Both rewards were
instrumental in providing the time and funds necessary to write my last book,
Taming the Sovereigns.
I wish to pay tribute to those who helped me along the road of discovery in
International Relations. The first accolade must go to brother Ole who always
provided encouragement and who generously offered to read a large number of my
texts before they assumed final form. We have gone down separate paths of
Political Science, but he was always interested in my work. My colleagues at UBC
over 39 years were extremely helpful in many indirect ways, primarily by being
civil and harmonious. I never had to spend psychic energy and waste time fighting
turf, ideological, or methodological wars within the department. The departmental
culture was one of tolerance and support for teaching and research. This is one
reason why I never seriously considered invitations from other universities. The
other reason was that Vancouver offered an ideal venue to indulge my
non-academic passions for fly fishing, water polo, skiing, and the beach. Finally, I
am indebted to my wife, Marilyn, who led the way to many successful and
enjoyable sabbaticals. She is a true explorer and knows how to divert an academic
from scholarly overindulgence, and how to organize and appreciate a balanced life.
Chapter 2
Bibliography

2.1 Books

Suomen Ulkopolitiikka Suuntaansa Etsimässä. Helsinki: Tammi, 1963

International Politics: A Framework for Analysis. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. 1st
ed., 1967, 7th ed., 1996. Translated to Japanese, 1972, Bahasa Indonesian, 1987,
Mandarin (pirated)
Why Nations Realign: Foreign Policy Restructuring in the Postwar World. Boston:
Allyn & Unwin, 1982.
The Dividing Discipline: Hegemony and Diversity in International Theory. Boston:
Allyn & Unwin, 1985.
Change in the International System: Essays on the Theory and Practice of
International Relations. Aldershot, Hants: Edward Elgar, 1991.
Peace and War: Armed Conflicts and International Order, 1648–1989. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991. Mandarin translation, Peking University
Press, 2005.
The State, War, and the State of War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1996. Albanian translation, 2008.
Taming the Sovereigns: Institutional Change in International Politics. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2004.

2.2 Chapters in Edited Books

“Canada and the United States,” in Kenneth Waltz and Steven Spiegel, eds.,
Conflict in World Politics. Cambridge, MA: Winthrop Publishers, 1971,
pp. 375–96.
“The Study of Diplomacy,” in Gavin Boyd and James N. Rosenau, eds., World
Politics. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1976, pp. 293–311.

© The Author(s) 2016 13

K. Holsti, Kalevi Holsti: A Pioneer in International Relations Theory, Foreign
Policy Analysis, History of International Order, and Security Studies, SpringerBriefs
on Pioneers in Science and Practice 41, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-26624-4_2
14 2 Bibliography

“Types of System Change: Interdependence, Integration, and Disintegration,” in

Alexander George and Randolph Siverson, eds., Change in the International
System. Boulder CO: Westview Press, 1981, pp. 23–53.
“The CSCE and Increased East-West Conflict,” In Nissan Oren, ed., Images and
Reality in International Politics. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984, pp. 125–42.
“Who Got What and How: The CSCE Negotiations in Retrospect,” in Robert
Spencer, ed., Canada and the Conference on Security and Cooperation in
Europe. Toronto: University of Toronto Centre for International Studies, 1984,
pp. 134–66.
“The States System and Its Critics,” in Kinhide Mushakoji, ed., Tenkaki Sekai no
Rironteki Wakugumi (Theoretical Frameworks of the Contemporary World in
Transition). Tokyo: Yushindon Publishing Co., 1987, pp. 225–52.
“Paths to Peace? Theories of Conflict Resolution and Realities of International
Politics,” in Ramesh Thakur, ed., International Conflict Resolution. Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 1988, pp. 105–32.
“Rooms and Views: Perspectives on the Study of International Politics,” in Joseph
Kruzel and James N. Rosenau, eds., Journeys through World Politics:
Autobiographical Reflections of Thirty-four Academic Travelers. Lexington,
MA: Lexington Books, 1989, pp. 27–41.
“The Comparative Analysis of Foreign Policy: Some Notes on the Pitfalls and Paths
to Theory,” in David Wurfel and Bruce Burton, eds., The Political Economy of
Foreign Policy in Southeast Asia. London: Macmillan 1990, pp. 9–20.
“Farming, Ranching, and Accounting: Perspectives on Change in International
Relations,” in K. J. Holsti, ed., Change in the International System: Essays on the
Theory and Practice of International Relations. Aldershot, Hants.: Edward Elgar,
1991, pp. 37–62.
“International Theory and War in the Third World,” in Brian Job, ed.,
The Insecurity Dilemma: National Security of Third World States. Boulder, CO:
Lynn Rienner, 1992, pp. 37–62.
“Governance without Government: The Politics of Polyarchy in Nineteenth
Century Europe,” in James N. Rosenau, ed., Governance without Government:
Change and Order in World Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1992, pp. 30–57.
“A Zone of Civility in European Diplomatic Relations? The CSCE and Conflict
Resolution,” in Michael Bryans, ed., The CSCE and Future Security of Europe.
Ottawa: Canadian Institute for International Peace and Security, Working Paper
#40, 1992, pp. 50–84.
Article on the League of Nations for the Oxford Companion to Politics of the
World, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 528–29.
“Ethnicity and Canadian Foreign Policy,” in Dimitri Constas and Athanassios
Platias, eds., Diasporas in World Politics. London: Macmillan, 1993, pp. 137–52.
“A Zone of Civility in European Diplomatic Relations? The CSCE and Conflict
Resolution,” in Jyrki Käkönen, ed., Changes in the Northern Hemisphere in the
1990s. Tampere: Tampere Peace Research Institute, 1993, pp. 123–57.
2.2 Chapters in Edited Books 15

“The Post-Cold War Settlement in Comparative Perspective,” in Douglas Stuart and

Stephen Szabo, eds., Discord and Collaboration in a new Europe: Essays in
Honor of Armold Wolfers. Washington, D.C.: School of Advanced International
Studies, Johns Hopkins University, 1994, pp. 37–69.
“Constructing a ‘Community of States and Peoples’: Ideologies and Theoretical
Foundations of the Post War Euro-Atlantic Order,” in K. P. Bajpai and
H. C. Shukuls, eds., Interpreting World Politics: Essays for A. P. Rana. New
Delhi: Sage, 1995, pp. 235–54.
“International Relations Theory and War in the Third World: The Limits of
Relevance,” in Stephanie Neuman, ed., International Relations Theory and the
Third World. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998, pp. 103–32.
“The Coming Chaos? Armed Conflict in the World’s Periphery,” in John Hall and
T.V. Paul (eds.), International Order and The Future of World Politics.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 283–310.
“From Khartoum to Quebec: Internationalism and Nationalism within the
Multi-Community State,” in Kjell Goldmann, Ulf Hannerz, and Charles Westin,
eds., Nationalism and Internationalism in the Post-Cold War Era. London and
New York: Routledge, 2000, pp. 143–69.
“Hindrances to Understanding in International Relations,” in Jose V. Ciprut, ed.,
The Art of the Feud: Reconceptualizing International Relations. Westport CT:
Praeger, 2001, pp 27–46.
“Along the Road of International Theory in the Next Millennium: Four
Travelogues,” in Robert M. A. Crawford and Darryl Jarvis, eds., International
Relations: Still an American Social Science? Albany, NY: State University of
New York Press, 2001, pp. 73–100.
“From States Systems to a Society of States: The Evolution of International
Relations,” in UNESCO, Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), on
line, 38 pp.
“The Problem of Change in International Relations Theory,” in Yale H. Ferguson
and R. J. Barry Jones, eds., Political Space: Frontiers of Change and Governance
in a Globalizing World. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2002,
pp. 23–44.
“Performance and Perils of Realism in the Study of International Politics,” in
Michael Brecher and Frank P. Harvey, eds., Realism and Institutionalism in
International Studies. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 2002,
pp. 72–87. Printed simultaneously in Michael Brecher and Frank B. Harvey, eds.,
Millennial Reflections on International Studies. Ann Arbor, MI: The University
of Michigan Press, 2002, p. 95–106.
“Something Old, Something New: Theoretical Perspectives on Contemporary
International Peace and Security,” in Edward Newman, Ramesh Thakur, and
John Tirman, eds., Multilateralism under Challenge? Power, International
Order, and Structural Change. Tokyo, New York, Paris: United Nations
University Press, 2006, pp. 181–206.
16 2 Bibliography

“Theorizing the Causes of Order: Hedley Bull’s The Anarchical Society,” in

Cornelia Navari, ed., Theorizing International Society: English School Methods.
Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, pp. 125–47.
“The Diplomacy of Security,” in Andrew F. Cooper, Jorge Heine, and Ramesh
Thakur, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Modern Diplomacy, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2013, pp. 577–92.

2.3 Journal Articles

“The Use of Objective Criteria for the Measurement of International Tension

Levels,” Background: the Journal of the International Studies Association, 7,
2 (September 1963), pp. 77–95.
“Strategy and Techniques of Influence in Soviet-Finnish Relations,” The Western
Political Quarterly, 27, 1964, pp. 63–82.
“The Concept of Power in the Study of International Relations”, Background: The
Journal of the International Studies Association 7, 1964, pp. 179–94. This article
is reprinted in Peter A. Toma and Andrew Gyorgy, Basic Issues in International
Relations, Boston: Allyn and Bacon, Inc., 1967, pp. 105–18; in Robert
Pfaltzgraff (ed.), Politics and the International System, New York: Lippincott,
1969, pp. 134–148); also in B. Sanders and A. Durkin, Contemporary
International Politics (New York: Wiley, 1971), R. Romani (ed.), The
International Political System (Wiley, 1972), Eugene Rosi, ed., American
Defense and Detente (Dodd-Mead, 1973); and Charles Kegley and Eugene
Wittkopf, The Global Agenda: Issues & Perspectives. 2d ed., 1988, pp. 9–20.
“Resolving International Conflicts: A Taxonomy of Behavior and Some Figures on
Procedures,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 10 (1966), pp. 277–96. Reprinted in
Louis Kriesberg, ed., Social Process in International Relations (New York: John
Wiley, 1968), pp. 541–63. Reprinted in E. Gilboa, International Relations (Tel
Aviv, 1978), translated into Hebrew.
“National Role Conceptions in the Study of Foreign Policy,” International Studies
Quarterly, 14, 4 (September 1970), pp. 239–309. (Revised version published in
Stephen Walker, ed., Role Theory and Foreign Policy Analysis (Durham, N.C.:
Duke University Press, 1987) pp 25–43.
“Retreat from Utopia: International Relations Theory, 1945–1970,” Canadian
Journal of Political Science, 4, June 1970, pp, 165–77. The article is reprinted in
The Canadian Collection of Reprints in Political Science, 1973.
“Bilateral Institutions and Trans-governmental Relations between Canada and the
United States,” (with Thomas Levy), International Organization 28,(Autumn
1974), pp. 875–902.
“Underdevelopment and the ‘Gap’ Theory of International Conflict,” American
Political Science Review, 69 (September 1975), pp. 827–39.
2.3 Journal Articles 17

“A New International Politics? Diplomacy in Complex Interdependence,”

International Organization, 32 (Spring 1978), pp. 513–30.
“Detente and Peaceful Co-existence: Assessing the Possibilities,” Coexistence, 17,
(April 1980), pp, 1–19.
“Bargaining Theory and Diplomatic Reality: The CSCE Negotiations,” Review of
International Studies (London), 8,(July 1982), pp. 159–70.
“The Ambiguous Conflict: The Korean War in American Strategic Policies,”
Korean Journal of International Relations, No. 22 (1982), pp. 241–56.
“Along the Road to International Theory,” International Journal, 39 (Spring 1984),
pp. 337–65.
“The Necrologists of International Relations,” Canadian Journal of Political
Science, 18 (December 1985), pp. 675–95.
“Politics in Command: Foreign Trade and National Security Policy,” International
Organization, 40 (Summer 1986), pp 643–71.
“The Horsemen of the Apocalypse: At the Gate, Detoured, or Retreating?”
International Studies Quarterly, 30 (December 1986), pp. 355–72.
“International Theory: National or International?” Kokusai-seiji (International
Relations) 85 (May 1987), pp. 17–33. Earlier version published in Chuo-koron,
2 (February 1987), pp 171–83.
“Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Which are the Fairest Theories of All?” International
StudiesQuarterly, 33 (September 1989), pp. 255–62.
“L’Étate, et l’État de Guerre,” Études Internationales, 21 (Décembre 1990),
pp. 705–17.
“International Relations at the End of the Millennium,” Review of International
Studies, 19 (October 1993), pp. 401–08. (Review Article).
“Heikot Valtiot, Vahvat Valtiot ja Sota,” Ulkopolitiikka, 3–4,(1993), pp, 5–19.
[Weak States, Strong States, and War].
“Mitä Ykn tulisi oppia Bosnian tilanteesta?” Kosmopolis: Rauhan, Konfliktinja
Maailmanpolitiikan Tutkimuksen Aikakauslehti 23: 3, (1993), pp. 95–102.
“War, Peace, and the State of the State,” International Political Science Review, 16
(1995), pp. 319–39.
“Detente as a Source of International Conflict,” Korean Journal of International
Studies, IX (1977–78), pp. 51–60.
“The Dividing Discipline: New Challenges to International Theory”, Yonsei
Journal of Public Administration, 9 (1982), pp. 299–313.
Articles on Balance of Power, Detente, Autarky in World Encyclopedia of Peace,
Oxford, Pergamon Press, 1986, 1997.
“Revolution in the Revolution: World Views and Foreign Policy Change in the
Soviet Union,” International University of Japan Annual Review, 6 (1989),
pp. 363–76.
“The States System and War,” The Ford Foundation Lectures in International
Relations Studies. Baroda, India: The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda,
Department of Political Science, 1990, 55 pp.
18 2 Bibliography

“Scholarship in an Era of Anxiety: The Study of International Politics during the

Cold War,” Review of International Studies 24, special issue, (December 1998),
pp. 17–46.
“Territoriaalisuus,” Politiikka 42:1 (2001), pp. 15–29.
“The Changing Nature of International Institutions: the Case of Territoriality,”
Studia Diplomatica 53, 5 (2001), pp. 41–66.
“Dealing with Dictators: Westphalian and American Strategies,” International
Relations of the Asia-Pacific, 1,1 (2001), pp. 51–65.
“Herencias del imperialismo: Analisis de Postguerra Fria sobre los conflictos
armados en las pereferia,” Politica y Cultura: Escenarios de la Globalizacion.
Verano 98, numero 10, n.d., pp. 9–34.
“USA ja itsetehdytuhkavat,” [“the U.S. and the Construction of Threats,”]
Ulkopolitiikka. Helsinki: Finnish Institute of International Affairs, 2, 2004,
pp. 43–48.
Review of my Selection of the “Top Ten” works in International Relation published
in Politik 7, 4 (December 2004), pp. 78–91, with biographical introduction by
Barry Buzan.
“No Quest for Conquest: Patterns of Warfare in Hawaiian and British Columbian
Coastal Cultures,” in Graham Brazier, ed., Islands of British Columbia
Conference Proceedings. Denman Island, B.C.: Arts Denman (2005),
pp. 182–93.
“Exceptionalism in American Foreign Policy: is it Exceptional?” European Journal
of International Relations 17, 3 (September 2011), pp. 381–404.
 Part II
Texts by Kalevi Holsti on International
Theory
Chapter 3
Introduction on International Theory

I am not a theorist of international relations. Although I made a contribution to

foreign policy analysis in developing the concept of role, my written efforts in the
area of IR theory are mainly in the form of appraisals and critiques. There is nothing
in my bibliography that matches the magisterial studies of, let us say, Kenneth
Waltz, Alexander Wendt, Robert Keohane, or James Rosenau.
Since the late 1960s I annually offered a graduate seminar on “Theories of
International Relations.” Every year I had to review the reading list and to adjust it
in the light of new disputes, trends, and significant contributions. My class
preparation and our seminar discussions were largely devoted to evaluation, not
creation.
Looking back over 50 years of this exercise it is clear that not all fashionable
developments survived the test of time. Dependency theory was a significant
attempt to explain the sources and functioning of the hierarchical relations between
the industrial West, including Japan, and the rest of the world. It was an important
contribution because it originated in South America, and not the United States. This
was an analysis of relationships that had been mostly ignored in IR, or had been
seen solely through the lenses of the powerful. In the late 1970s and early 1980s
scholars from the West began taking the theory seriously and attempted to test it
against the empirical evidence. Some of its elements were confirmed, others were
rendered questionable, and a great debate ensued whether one could test a
Marxist-inspired theory using a positivist epistemology. Presently we look at
dependency theory as an interesting addition to the traditional canons of IR theory,
but one that did not survive the historically unprecedented change in the fortunes of
the ‘underdeveloped’ societies in the last quarter of the twentieth century. How
could one be a victim of the industrial countries’ ‘exploitation,’ when, for example,
Brazil grew to having the seventh largest national economy in the world? Or, where
Singapore’s GNP per capita exceeded that of most ‘developed’ countries? And
where Malaysia’s economic fortunes by the beginning of the 21st century outpaced
those of many former socialist states in Eastern Europe? Economic developments,
not academic disputes, rendered dependency theory obsolete. It was a theory for the
1970s but not beyond. It is now mostly a footnote in the history of the field.
Other perspectives, despite predictions of early demise, have continued tradi-
tions that were founded centuries ago. For example, Realism was an object of
© The Author(s) 2016 21
K. Holsti, Kalevi Holsti: A Pioneer in International Relations Theory, Foreign
Policy Analysis, History of International Order, and Security Studies, SpringerBriefs
on Pioneers in Science and Practice 41, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-26624-4_3
22 3 Introduction on International Theory

severe criticism throughout my career, and not an insignificant number of scholars

announced its demise. The end of the Cold War provided a particularly propitious
moment for announcing the “end of history,” which suggested that old fashioned
power politics were a relic of a Eurocentric past. In light of China’s often mysti-
fying external behavior and Vladimir Putin’s serious violation of the
well-established “territorial norm” through his 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s
Crimea, we can still benefit from reading treatises on the role of power in the works
of Hans Morgenthau and his predecessors going back to Thucydides. The truth is
that although in large areas of the world we have something approaching a Kantian
zone of non-violence, power struggles, rivalries, security dilemmas, arms races,
threats, and deterrence have not become obsolete.
However, some highly significant new perspectives breached the walls of the
Realist canon and introduced significantly novel ways of approaching the field.
Two, in particular, appear to have considerable staying power, meaning that they
have stimulated extensive research programs and a body of studies that today are
required reading in any graduate seminar. The “English School,” launched in its
modern format primarily by Hedley Bull, offers a via media between the stark tenets
of realism—which no longer relate to much going on in the European Union—and
the optimistic portrayals and explanations of international cooperation offered in
various forms of liberalism. American objections to some of the tenets of the
“English School”—that it cannot be tested empirically—has not stopped the surge
of research and publications emanating from Bull’s insights. My selection on the
problem of change in IR theory owes its inception to Bull’s earlier work.
The second major original contribution over the same period is termed ‘con-
structivism,’ and is symbolized primarily in the work of Alexander Wendt. It shows
how sociology, social psychology, and communications can enhance our under-
standing of the world of diplomats, merchants, and warriors. It forces the researcher
to get into the minds of the policy-makers to establish understanding of their
behavior rather than relying on some external observer’s later reconstruction from a
distance. A simple hypothetical scenario illustrates the power of constructivism. If
the representatives of two distinct tribes meet for the first time–they do not even
have foreknowledge of each other’s existence—how will they react? Through the
lens of Realism, they will struggle for supremacy, probably through the use of
force. For the liberal, they will probably exchange gifts as symbols of trust and
opening gambits for future trade and other relationships. For the constructivist, any
result is possible; nothing is pre-ordained. To understand, one has to examine the
perceptions, images, stereotypes, values, and other cultural artifacts to make any
predictions or post hoc explanations. Constructivism is, not strictly speaking a
theory, but an approach that seeks to broaden the realm of inquiry, explanation, and
understanding.
The selections that follow reflect some of the major controversies in the field
over the past half-century. The first piece, the opening chapter of my book The
Dividing Discipline, examines the field as I saw it in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
It is a limited survey of the field’s historical origins, plus a prediction of the field’s
normative core disintegration. The second selection, responding to Bull’s work,
3 Introduction on International Theory 23

criticizes the field for not examining in a disciplined manner the theme of historical
change. One of the problems in the field is that for some, all sorts of developments
seem to announce a “new era” or development that renders earlier perspectives
obsolete. Others see more continuity than change. How do we arbitrate between
these views? The essay offers some ways to proceed.
The 1990s were an era of protracted conflict in the field. Post-modernism,
borrowed from continental philosophers, opened up avenues for severe epistemo-
logical critiques of the field. A whole new industry of critical studies emerged,
some with un-academic onslaughts of personal denunciation. My selection “Along
the Road to International Theory in the New Millennium” reflects the mood of the
era. While the post-modernists and their post-structuralist cousins made some
significant and lasting contributions by inducing more epistemological
self-reflection among IR scholars, they had two fatal flaws: (1) in denouncing all
‘totalizing’ theories and generalizations, they were guilty of the same crime that
they abhorred: generalizations that transcended time, space, and location. Their
project was no less ‘totalizing’ than those of their targets. And (2) while they ranged
far, wide, and deep in their denunciations, they offered nothing in the form of
alternatives. Their substantive studies seemed to descend to nothing more than
repeating the tales and woes of Accra’s market women. These may have some
intrinsic interest, but through them one is hardly convinced that they should replace
analysis of the foreign policies of China, Japan, Russia, the United States, and
France, or even of Turkey or Canada. As of the time of writing these words,
post-modernism and its cousins seem to have suffered the fate of dependency
theory.
Of the ‘travelogues’ querying the destinations of international theory, the “let a
thousand flowers bloom” has become the predominant route. The annual meetings of
the International Studies Association, a five-day annual gathering of IR scholars
from all over the world, today features programs running over 200 pages, with about
60 sessions going on simultaneously. Not all have theoretical content—many ses-
sions explore the great and minor diplomatic/military/economic issues of the day—
but the remainder testify to the proliferation of perspectives on a field that no longer
has a core concern with peace, war, and order. Anything and everything is on the
scholarly agenda of this vast field labeled “international studies.” The discipline—if
it ever was one—has not only divided, but has exploded.
The final selection also reflects the controversies of the 1990s but some of the
difficulties are not due to arguments between various ‘schools’ of thought but to
broader problems in the field. It also offers an explanation of why the field seems so
fragmented today compared to forty years ago. The answer is simple, though sel-
dom acknowledge: it is that at its heart, the field is based on normative not scientific
concerns. We have many different areas in the field today because we no longer
agree that war, peace, order, and security are the primary problems at the inter-
national level. We must acknowledge, then, that there is no single ‘right’ approach
to the field. We have differing normative concerns and those will require different
theoretical constructs to help us arrive at explanation and understanding.
Chapter 4
Hegemony and Challenge in International
Theory

Everywhere, it seems, established patterns [in world politics] have either come to an end or
been greatly modified (Rosenau 1980, 13).
We are now in an era without a paradigm to provide a framework for questions we ask …
or [for] answers we expect to find sufficient as explanations (Morse 1976, xvi–xvii).

International theory is in a state of disarray.1 In the past decade, the

three-centuries-long intellectual consensus which organized philosophical specu-
lation, guided empirical research, and provided at least hypothetical answers to the
critical questions about international politics has broken down. New conceptions
and images of the world, and how it works in the diplomatic, military, and com-
mercial domains, have arisen. Scholars have offered trenchant criticisms of the
‘realist’ tradition, which goes back to Hobbes and Rousseau, severely challenging
the assumptions and world views upon which it is based. Some have outlined
alternatives, not so much because they promise better understanding through
methodological innovation, but because they are supposedly more consistent with
contemporary realities. The continued underdevelopment of many new states,
combined with the startling pace of technological transformation, have raised new
kinds of questions about international politics, questions which were not relevant to
the kinds of problems contemplated by our intellectual ancestors and most of those
working within the realist, or classical, tradition.
The “behavioral revolution” had little to do with the present debates. In fact, one
could write at the end of the 1960s that all was well on the international theory
front, once the vigorous quarrels between methodologists had subsided.
Researchers had, after all, isolated key areas of inquiry—areas which had com-
manded considerable attention from the philosophers of the eighteenth and nine-
teenth centuries. These were no less than the causes of war and the conditions of
peace. But disillusionment with “grand theory,” overarching statements about the
fundamental (and recurring) structures and processes of international politics, had
suggested that greater rewards could be reaped by focusing on more discrete
phenomena—alliances, power, integration, and the like—in the hopes that “islands

1
This text was first published as: “Hegemony and Challenge in International Theory,” Chap. 1,
pp. 1–14 in The Dividing Discipline: Hegemony and Diversity in International Theory. Boston:
Allyn & Unwin, 1985. The copyright was returned to the author.

© The Author(s) 2016 25

K. Holsti, Kalevi Holsti: A Pioneer in International Relations Theory, Foreign
Policy Analysis, History of International Order, and Security Studies, SpringerBriefs
on Pioneers in Science and Practice 41, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-26624-4_4
26 4 Hegemony and Challenge in International Theory

of theory” would eventually emerge (Holsti 1971). Research, whether quantitative,

ideographic, philosophical-historical, or comparative, seemed to be concentrating
on the critical questions. The linkage between theory and research programs was
secure: each fed upon the other.
Today, no such sense of well-being or satisfaction exists. There is no longer a
consensus on the subjects of inquiry and theorizing. The view that international
theory should be organized around the structures and processes of the states system,
the activities of the great powers and their decision makers, particularly as they
relate to war and peace, is no longer accepted by a significant number of scholars.
Newer theoretical variations propose different problematics,2 and entirely different
conceptualizations of the world. The thrust of the new work has centered on “grand
theory” and the ultimate philosophical problems of a discipline: How should we
look at the universe we wish to describe and explain? Are our models of interna-
tional politics reasonably consistent with realities? Who are the significant actors
and units of analysis in international politics? Should we continue to ignore eco-
nomic processes and actors? Do fundamental economic structures, on a global
scale, determine the main outlines of states’ external policies? What are the critical
normative problems in the field? Indeed, some have asked whether it is possible to
generate reliable knowledge of present realities if the assumptions we have held as
self-evident for more than three hundred years no longer hold. Do we really want to
study alliances, integration, decision-making, and the rest when critical questions
about the continuing relevance of traditional concepts such as power and the states
system need to be raised first?
Before examining the dimensions and character of the new theoretical activity,
we should first delineate the boundaries of the field, international theory. By this
field, I mean descriptive and explanatory statements about the structure, units, and
processes of international politics that transcend time, location, and personality.
This is a crude definition, but it helps exclude from the discussion the thousands of
books and articles that deal with discrete phenomena and events. Grotius and
Hedley Bull are theorists of international politics because they advance descriptive
generalizations about the sources of war and the comparative effectiveness of
various norms, procedures, and institutions in muting international conflict and
establishing order and stability. Their purpose is to discover commonalities, central
tendencies, or essential characteristics of states in their international behavior. To
the extent that their analyses also account for the genesis, change, or termination of
war, or the network of norms, institutions, and procedures in the states system they
move from description to explanation. Similarly, Rousseau and J. David Singer are
theorists because they are commonly concerned with the sources of crises and wars,
across time and space.

2
Some readers may be unfamiliar with this use of the word ‘problematic.’ It is a translation of the
French noun problematique and was imported first by structural anthropologists, I believe. It refers
to a subject area of study and the particular means of inquiry employed to analyze it.
4 Hegemony and Challenge in International Theory 27

Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye were among the first3 to criticize the classical
paradigm for ignoring transnational processes and non-state actors. By locating new
agents of action and their mutual relations, they vastly expanded the boundaries of
the field. And in proposing that issues other than war/peace/security/order should
command attention, they challenged a consensus among international theorists that
stretched from Hobbes and Rousseau to Ernst Haas and Raymond Aron.4 But while
Keohane and Nye wanted basically to add the possible influence of non-state actors
to more traditional conceptions of international politics, subsequent critics have
taken a further step by claiming that the whole nation-state paradigm is funda-
mentally unsound and inadequately consistent with present-day realities. It is not
just a question of adding new types of actors to analyses, but of reconceptualizing
both actors and processes in international life. For example, in 1974 Donald
Puchala and Stuart Fagan argued that the “prevailing security politics paradigm has
become overly restrictive,” and that “a number of us … sense that international
politics have changed structurally, procedurally, and substantively in the last ten
years” (Puchala and Fagan 1974, 249). Edward Morse’s view, quoted at the
opening of this chapter, provides an even more critical stance, echoed in Rosenau’s
claim that the “conduct of foreign relations and the course of international affairs
seem so different from the past as to justify an assumption of fundamental structural
change” (Rosenau 1980, 83).
The works culled for these quotations represent only a sample of the recent
critical literature in international theory. There is much more evidence of theoretical
ferment in the field. Academic journals such as International Organization have
been recast to include many articles dealing with new types of phenomena in
international politics, new perspectives on old problems, and extensive analyses of
concepts such as international regimes (a new idea, perhaps, but one with strong
roots in the Grotian tradition). Several important collections of essays appeared in
England5 during the 1970s, offering arguments supporting the continuing relevance
of the classical paradigm, or extolling the virtues of newer perspectives, such as
dependency theory. In North America almost every academic conference and
journal in the field has had sessions or articles devoted to new conceptions of a
“global society,” or to dependency studies where exchange, exploitation, world
capitalist system, and center and periphery replace the language of traditional

3
A variety of Marxists, in positing classes rather than states as the critical actors in international
life, and in claiming the unity of domestic and foreign policy, really made the first concerted
attacks on the classical paradigm of international politics. Historically this is accurate, but since
international theory as part of a discipline has mostly ignored Marxist views of international life
until recently, the Keohane-Nye volume represents an initial systematic critique of one of the main
features of the classical paradigm; more implicit critiques are observed in nineteenth-century
liberal thought and in the works of Karl Deutsch in the 1950s and 1960s. See the introductory and
concluding essays in Keohane and Nye 1972.
4
This position was not, however, inconsistent with views expressed by Jeremy Bentham and some
early nineteenth-century liberals. See below, pp. 28–9.
5
E.g. Donelan 1978; Kent and Nicholson 1980; Taylor 1978a. Australians have made significant
contributions as well: see Pettman 1979 and Miller 1981. This list is illustrative, not exhaustive.
28 4 Hegemony and Challenge in International Theory

international theory. To summarize the competing claims for theoretical novelty or

primacy, anthologies such as Marghroori and Romberg’s Globalism versus
Realism: International Relations’ Third Debate (1982) have appeared. That title
suggests that the sides are drawn up, the issues neatly dichotomized, and as in the
Realism versus Idealism, and Traditionalism versus Behavioralism debates of the
1950s and 1960s, one side is likely to emerge victorious.

4.1 Consequences of Theoretical Profusion: Dialogue

or Confusion?

But the debate cannot be simply between two sides; and it is not merely a question
of which picture or model of the world is more consistent with realities. More
fundamental questions are involved; they concern questions of the appropriate or
crucial units of analysis, of the core and peripheries of the field, and most important,
of the proper subject of study. The stakes in the debate are immense: if the debates
lead to an authoritative outcome or consensus, the research agenda of the future
may change profoundly.
Can a debate be conducted when we are not certain whom to include among the
participants? Globalism versus Realism suggests only a single cleavage in inter-
national theory, while most who have tried to classify the various schools or
paradigms in the field come up with at least three categories, and often more.
A brief review of some of the efforts to create taxonomies of contemporary inter-
national theory reveals the considerable theoretical confusion that reigns today,
making it difficult to organize a coherent debate, much less a dialogue leading to
constructive synthesis or to the emergence of a “super paradigm” that will once
again authoritatively guide inquiry, help organize research agendas, be substan-
tively accurate, and provide criteria for developing reading lists for undergraduate
and graduate students.
Contemporary writers in international theory do not agree on the means of
classifying the contending approaches: each uses somewhat different criteria so that
we do not have even a roster of schools, persuasions, or paradigms. Ralph Pettman
suggests that today there are two main paradigms, the pluralist and the structuralist.
These correspond roughly with the traditional state-centric international politics
model, with a multitude of states of unequal capabilities, each pursuing its per-
ceived national interests, and often engaging in war. A structuralist perspective, on
the other hand, “confronts global politics in terms of the horizontally arranged
hierarchies that run across geographical boundaries, throwing into high relief the
patterns whereby ‘overdeveloped’ states reproduce characteristic socioeconomic
and political forms within the underdeveloped ones in terms of the uneven spread of
the industrial mode of production, the uneven and complex character of the class
systems that have grown up in its wake, and the current global division of labor”
(Pettman 1979, 53–4). But Peter Willetts suggests that there are really three
4.1 Consequences of Theoretical Profusion: Dialogue or Confusion? 29

paradigms commanding attention in international theory: the realist, which is the

traditional state-centric model; the functionalist, which employs models charac-
terized by a multiplicity of actor types and issue areas (with corresponding varia-
tions in typical behavior); and the Marxist, the major concern of which is the
origins, character, and consequences of economic exchange in a world capitalist
system (Willetts 1981, 100). Christopher Mitchell likewise formulates a triad of
contending schools, but his differs from Willetts’s. Behavioralism, which in his
view has been confined largely to North America, is predominant, followed by
traditionalism, a preserve of British academics, and the Marxist approach, which
has been most influential in West Germany and Scandinavia, drawing its inspiration
from the Frankfurt School that rejects the positivist philosophy guiding behavioral
research (Mitchell 1980, 43–4). Rosenau also outlines three “major approaches to
world politics” (state-centric, multi-centric, and global-centric) but his categories
are based on criteria different from those used by Pettman, Willetts and Mitchell
(Maghroori and Ramberg 1982, Foreword).
With a better sense of the historical antecedents of contemporary international
theory and with an appropriate skepticism regarding the contention that every
innovative ‘paradigm’ is really new, Martin Wight outlined four main traditions in
the field, each of which is based on a different model of the world: Hobbesian
anarchy; a global community of mankind, following the Stoic, Roman, and med-
ieval Christian traditions; a Kantian model of world society; and the traditional
Grotian notion of a society of states (Wight 1966, 38). Hugh Collins (1982) has also
defined four theoretical ‘clusters’ in the field. And so the list of taxonomies goes on,
to a record of twenty-four types of theory that Kulbakova and Cruickshank identify
in their own classification (1980, 273). Such numbers suggest substantial confusion
in the field, lack of a commanding methodology, and no uniform philosophical
basis for academic inquiry.
If, as ArendLijphart has claimed (1974, 49), a single image of the world, or
paradigm—defined as a model or vision from which springs a “coherent tradition …
of scientific research unified the field until the advent of behavioralism,” then clearly
we have seen a significant change. We now appear to have many traditions, but it is
not easy to tell how many because commentators cannot agree upon the criteria to
use in making the critical distinctions between them. Rosenau, for example, uses a
single criterion, the main units of analysis; but Mitchell employs a combination of
methodological, geographical, and philosophy of science underpinnings, implying
that these will determine what we see and what we want to study. Collins is on safer
ground with his notion of clusters, because he comes close to defining approaches or
schools in terms of the object or subject of study. But despite this merit, his tax-
onomy cannot be compared to Pettman’s because the latter employs a broad crite-
rion, types of essential actors in the system, to distinguish between schools.
Thus, who will participate in the debate? How many will be invited? Can all
realists” really be lumped into a single Hobbesian tradition, particularly when some
of Hobbes’s ideas on international politics have been misunderstood? Can a
member of a Marxist school or approach speak on behalf of a global centric model
30 4 Hegemony and Challenge in International Theory

of the world? In some ways, the answer is yes, but non-Marxist globalists would
probably prefer to speak for themselves. Is an advocate of the study of transnational
relations really speaking on behalf of a competing paradigm?
As succeeding chapters will try to demonstrate, there is not much chance of
achieving an authoritative outcome of any debate. But in an attempt to create a little
more order out of the confusion that presently reigns, let me propose three criteria
for distinguishing among genuine paradigms. They have little to do with method-
ologies or conceptual tinkering. They are ultimately important because they help
identify the subject matter of international theory. To develop theory, before we can
discuss technique, there must be some consensus on what we want to examine. This
is the heart of the matter. Such a consensus has reigned in the field until very
recently. Hence, we can talk of a classical tradition. The serious challenges today
come not from those who want to add or subtract types of ‘essential’ actors, or those
who argue that not all of international politics can be characterized as a “struggle for
power.” The most serious onslaught against the classical tradition comes from those
who would change the core subjects of the field. This is essentially a normative
rather than scientific question.

4.2 Guidelines to Inquiry in the Classical Tradition

Rousseau and Morgenthau, Hobbes and Bull, Bentham and Haas disagree on a
number of matters; but they are also joined by a common set of questions or
problems that, implicitly or explicitly, establish the boundaries as well as the core of
the field. International theory has traditionally revolved around three key questions,
the first of which is absolutely essential, the raison d′être of the field, with the other
two providing the location for solutions to the problem. While the criteria are not
easily delineated, with some overlap between them and some conceptual fuzziness
at the edges, they have provided the guidelines for more than three hundred years of
inquiry in the field. They are:
(1) the causes of war and the conditions of peace/security/order; an essential
subsidiary problem is the nature of power;
(2) the essential actors and/or units of analysis;
(3) images of the world/system/society of states.
The first question (or criterion for taxonomy of approaches in the field) provides
the rationale for the study of international politics. While some may argue that we
have organized a field called international relations/politics because the phenomena
are ‘there,’ the truth is that we study them because of a deeply held normative
concern about the problem of war. Virtually every writer who has helped develop
the field has been animated by this concern, including Hobbes, Grotius, Erasmus,
4.2 Guidelines to Inquiry in the Classical Tradition 31

Vattel, Saint-Pierre, Rousseau, Kant, and all the moderns. Each has made some sort
of implicit or explicit statement about the causes of war and, perhaps more pro-
lifically, has proposed some sort of solution to the problem (although Rousseau,
having made his proposal, rejected it as impractical). Why this concern? Most
nineteenth- and twentieth-century authors have lamented the human and institu-
tional costs of war—lives lost, destruction of productive facilities, moral degen-
eration, and political upheaval. With the advent of nuclear weapons the problematic
becomes even more compelling. It is the problem of universal import. But it was
not always so.
For example, Greek and Roman writers pictured war as a normal activity of
political communities, ever present and always to be anticipated rather than pre-
vented. Some German and English writers of the nineteenth century, and some
writing in the Marxist tradition, have portrayed war as a progressive motor of
history, an opportunity for proletarian revolution, or a device for weeding out the
unfit and weak. But for the rest, from Hobbes and Grotius to the modems, war is the
problem to be analyzed, and at least equal energy must be devoted to outlining
avenues of escape from this endemic problem, whether through a confederation of
states, international integration, disarmament, foolproof deterrence, or some com-
bination of them.
War is also the central concern of international theory because it has been a
major source of historical change, a profound determinant of all political life. To
quote Hedley Bull, “war appears as a basic determinant of the shape the system
assumes at any one time. It is war and the threat of war that help to determine
whether particular states survive or are eliminated, whether they rise or decline,
whether their frontiers remain the same or are changed, whether the people are ruled
by one government or another… [and] whether there is a balance of power… or one
state becomes preponderant. War and the threat of war… are so basic that even the
terms we use to describe the system—great powers and small powers, alliances and
spheres of influence, balances of power and hegemony—are scarcely intelligible
except in relation to war and the threat of war.” (Bull 1977, 186)
Thus, the essential behavior to be described and explained in international theory
is that which relates to peace and war. Sub questions explore problems of security,
order, and power. To Aron (1966) and most others writing in the field, this is
diplomatic-strategic behavior, which has a domain of its own and is distinguishable
from domestic politics—and we might add, from international economics—because
it operates under the constant backdrop of organized violence. While the inter-
twining of domestic and external, and commercial and diplomatic concerns has
become particularly pronounced in the last few decades, this does not nullify the
traditional observation that there are fundamental differences between
diplomatic-strategic behavior and the activities of politicians and traders at the local
and international levels.
The second criterion, the units of analysis and/or nature of the essential actors,
was more often assumed than explored in the classical literature. Nation states are
the essential actors, not only because they share the legal attribute of sovereignty
32 4 Hegemony and Challenge in International Theory

and because many norms and practices are designed to protect their independence,
but because they are the actors that engage in war and are essential in organizing
the norms and institutions which provide more or less stability, security, order,
and/or peace for the system. Since the decline of the papacy in secular affairs, no
actor other than states could create peace and stability; and none, with a few
exceptions such as pirates, could make war. Since the 1950s, the state as actor has
been disaggregated to the extent that decision-makers and bureaucratic organiza-
tions have accounted for specific actions. But there has never been any question that
these individuals or groups are agents of the state. They act as trustees of the
national interest.
The third criterion—world images—is also important in helping us to distin-
guish among the current contenders for theoretical primacy. The argument is
whether to characterize the world in terms of a society of states, a global community
of individuals, a universal system of capitalist exchange, or a hodgepodge of citi-
zens, transnational organizations, bureaucratic interests, supranational institutions,
and the like.
Most writers of the classical tradition, including the moderns, have had little
problem with this issue. International theory properly focuses on the consequences
of a world made up of sovereign states, each possessing the capacity to make war
against the others, and all suffering in various degrees from the security dilemma.
The logical consequence of this image is, to use Stanley Hoffmann’s phrase, “the
state of war.”6 This has provided the protagonists within the classical tradition a
major debating point: Is war the only, or even the major consequence of the system?
To pessimists such as Rousseau, it was; observers in the Grotian tradition have
emphasized instead the possibilities of complementary interests, the relevance of
norms in restraining behavior, and in Bull’s terms, the important muting elements
of ‘society’ in the system of states. While war and peace, or the conditions for
security and order have been the major problems, modem writers have extended the
area of study to include all those forms of behavior, short of war, that also follow
logically from a system of states, including such phenomena as the sources and
nature of power, diplomacy, bargaining, crisis behavior, and deterrence (cf. Clark
1980, 19). This work has been undertaken within the classical paradigm.
To recapitulate, until recently the major contributions to international theory
occurred within a single paradigm. Despite numerous debates and disagreements,
there has been a consensus on these three questions: (1) that the proper focus of the
study is the causes of war and the conditions of peace/security/order; (2) that the
main units of analysis are the diplomatic-military behaviors of the only essential
actors, nation states; and (3) that states operate in a system characterized by
anarchy, the lack of central authority.

6
The most succinct analyses of the core ideas of the classical tradition remain Hoffmann 1965 and
Waltz 1957.
4.3 The Hegemony of the Classical Tradition 33

4.3 The Hegemony of the Classical Tradition

The term paradigm, like “discount prices,” ‘classic,’ and “national liberation,” has
been stripped of much meaning by those who claim for their innovations a certain
novelty. To have one’s own paradigm may be helpful for academic advancement or
notoriety, but the claim cannot be honored unless the innovations offer essential
differences of theoretical perspective, not just additions, or deletions from estab-
lished problematics and world views.7 I believe the three criteria outlined above are
sufficient, and probably necessary, to distinguish between genuine paradigms in our
field. If so, we can legitimately claim that the main figures in the classical tradition
have operated within a single paradigm, and that their modem successors have only
expanded, but not altered the fundamental features, of that paradigm.
Until the outburst of theoretical activity in the 1970s, the international politics,
state-centric paradigm, which I will call the classical tradition, provided the intel-
lectual framework for all facets of academic international relations: theorizing, the
development of normative positions and policy preferences, empirical research on a
vast range of questions, textbook writing, and teaching. Although some zealous
behavioralists dismissed the works of the founding fathers as ‘impressionistic’ or
‘non-scientific,’8 the fact remains that the debates of our field’s historical figures
have heavily influenced modem research agendas.
The current debates are fundamental. The real challenges to the hegemony of the
classical tradition come not from marginal additions or deletions (in Rosenau’s
term, ‘meddling’), such as acknowledging the importance of some non-state actors,
dis-aggregating the field in terms of issue areas, or focusing on crises rather than
wars; they come, rather, from new and entirely different conceptualizations of the
priority problems within the field, and from different ideas about the appropriate
units of analysis, the important processes, and the kind of context in which actions
and processes take place.

7
There are numerous definitions of paradigms, but for our purposes the notion of their functions is
most important. They are basically selecting devices which impose some sort of order
and coherence on an infinite universe of facts and data which, by themselves, have no ‘meaning.’
C.R. Mitchell discusses some of these functions and suggests that paradigms “focus attention on a
particular level of analysis, different units and unit attributes in order to explain a problem which-is
also, to some degree, determined by the paradigm” (Mitchell 1980, 40–1). While war and peace as
the core subject derive from normative concerns, they also derive from the third criterion, the
image of the system of states. Hence, the normative concern is a sufficient but not a necessary
condition for international theory. But most peace plans which did not take into consideration the
essential characteristics of the states system were doomed to failure. I realize this use of the term
paradigm is somewhat narrower than the meaning developed by Thomas Kuhn in his seminal The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). To him, paradigms are rooted not just in rationally
analyzable differences, but in transrational perceptions, or gestalts.
8
For example, the comment by J. David Singer, “How much longer will we believe that if one
person thinks such and such is true, that this constitutes useful knowledge” (italics in original),
quoted in Rosenau 1980, 209, n. 16.
34 4 Hegemony and Challenge in International Theory

The only two challenges which, according to the three criteria, qualify as sep-
arate paradigms are (1) world or global society models and, to put them together,
(2) dependency/world capitalist-system theories.
There are of course many different versions of these two paradigms. The debates
among the dependencia theorists, as well as the world capitalist-system advocates,
are furious and probably interminable. There are numerous branches and per-
spectives among the global society theorists as well, even if their debates tend to be
somewhat more muted. But like the different schools within the classical tradition,
all the contending factions within each of the challenging paradigms adhere to
common views regarding the three criteria. Since our purpose is to examine these
challengers only in terms of their relationship to the development of international
theory, we will not explore their internal debates.
How serious are these challenges? The second part of this volume will present
some evidence to analyze this question. Here, it is sufficient to note that class
reading lists, some textbooks, and numerous publications, both in journals and as
books, propound the virtues of the new paradigms. Large research programs on
dependency have been organized, not only in Latin America, the original home of
dependency theory, but also in Europe and North America. An American research
organization honoring one of France’s leading historians, Fernand Braudel, serves
as the home of Immanuel Wallerstein, who has contributed so much to conceptu-
alizing the image of a world capitalist system. Terms such as comprador bour-
geoisie, the global commons, center and periphery, and international feudal
hierarchies fill the pages of numerous international relations conference papers.
This is not the vocabulary of the classical tradition. There are, then, grounds for
believing that the challenges to the classical hegemony are not mere fads, to pass
away under the influence of the next cold war crisis which should reestablish the
paramountcy of traditional international politics. We are witnessing a true struggle
over paradigms, over intellectual priorities in terms of theory development, and for
future research agendas. Our tasks in the succeeding chapters will be to demonstrate
how and why these challenges are so important, to explore the possibilities for
synthesis with the classical tradition, and to assess the desirability of such a syn-
thesis. Or, as some suggest, perhaps there should be a wholesale abandonment of
the classical tradition. Should we then search for an entirely new theoretical
foundation to guide future work in international politics?

4.4 A National Academic Hegemony

The classical tradition represents not only a type of intellectual hegemony; it is also
a national academic hegemony—or at least an oligopoly. In the twentieth century,
most of the theoretical work in international politics has been done by English and
Americans, with several contributions from other predominately English-speaking
countries such as Australia and Canada. A few essential works have also come from
continental Europe. A discussion of the state of international theory ought to
4.4 A National Academic Hegemony 35

include consideration of this fact for at least two reasons: (1) if the domain of
international theory has been populated mostly by academics from several countries
is it not likely to be biased in its assumptions, models of the world, and prescrip-
tions? and (2) is it really desirable, assuming the value of a genuine international
community of scholars, to have just a few figures ‘producing’ international theory?
An ideal model of a community of scholars would suggest reasonably symmetrical
flows of communication, with ‘exporters’ of knowledge also being ‘importers’ from
other sources. This ideal model may find some degree of approximation among the
research-oriented institutions of the Anglo-American academic scene in interna-
tional relations (though probably not as symmetrical as one would find in some of
the natural sciences); but if we look at the global collection—one hesitates to use
the term community—of international relations scholars, the degree of asymmetry
is so high as to constitute a virtual national academic hegemony. The purpose of the
second part of the volume, then, is to offer a crude measure of the extent to which
contemporary international theory constitutes both a paradigmatic and a national
hegemony, and to look for evidence of diversity in both theory and scholarship.
Chapter 5
The Problem of Change in International
Relations Theory

Because we have an inadequate basis for comparison, we are tempted to exaggerate either
continuity with the past that we know badly, or the radical originality of the present,
depending on whether we are more struck by the features we deem permanent, or with
those we do not believe existed before.1 And yet a more rigorous examination of the past
might reveal that what we sense as new really is not, and that some of the ‘traditional’
features are far more complex than we think.2 Since no shared vocabulary exists in the
literature to depict change and continuity, we are not very good as a discipline at studying
the possibility of fundamental discontinuity in the international system.3

These observations about the nature of inquiry in international relations point

directly to a fundamental, if often hidden, dimension of all international theory. It is
the problem of change. Ruggie is right: we do not have even the beginning of a
consensus on what constitutes change or transformation in international relations.
The great debates among theorists of international relations have been implicit
arguments about the nature of change, its possibilities, and its consequences.4
Along with other dimensions that distinguish the various schools and strains of
international theory, mutability has been a major area of disagreement.5 Realists
commonly believe that anarchy creates a realm that predisposes states to behave in
certain ways irrespective of national attributes and policy-makers’ wishes.
Thucydides, Meinecke, von Gentz, Gilpin, and Waltz share a view of recurrence in
international politics, and are skeptical about the possibilities of transcending the

1
This text was first published as: “The Problem of Change in International Relations Theory,”
Chap. 1, pp. 23–43 in Yale H. Ferguson and R.J. Barry Jones, eds., Political Space: Frontiers of
Change in a Globalizing World. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 2002. The
permission to republish this text was granted by on 12 March 2015 by Sharla Clute, SUNY Press
in Albany, NY.
2
Stanley Hoffman, “An American Social Science: International Relations,” Daedelus (1977). 57.
3
John Ruggie, “Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations,”
International Organization 47. no. 4 (1993): 140–174.
4
Barry Buzan and R.J. Barry Jones, eds., Change and the Study of International Relations: The
Evaded Dimension (London: Frances Pinter, 1981), 2.
5
Yale H. Ferguson and Richard W. Mansbach, The Elusive Quest: Theory and International
Politics (Columbia, SC. University of South Carolina, 1988).

© The Author(s) 2016 37

K. Holsti, Kalevi Holsti: A Pioneer in International Relations Theory, Foreign
Policy Analysis, History of International Order, and Security Studies, SpringerBriefs
on Pioneers in Science and Practice 41, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-26624-4_5
38 5 The Problem of Change in International Relations Theory

consequences of anarchy through international institutions, learning, or sociological

and technological changes at the unit or transnational levels. Whatever their dif-
ferences, change in international relations is limited to narrow parameters such as
alterations in the balance of power, the poles of power, or the cast of great power
characters.
Many castigate Realists for not acknowledging that some things in international
life have fundamentally changed and that, therefore, the conceptual apparatus that
may have been useful for understanding and even explaining diplomatic/military
life in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe will not help us a great deal
today.6 Proponents of the view that the quality of international life today is fun-
damentally different are equally criticized for failing to acknowledge continuities.7
Absent some agreement on what we mean by change, how we identify it, and for
what purposes, these debates are likely to continue and to come to no resolution.
Liberals and constructivists emphasize the variability of state interests, the
capacity of policy makers to learn, and the prospects for progress away from
standard scenarios of realists such as security dilemmas and stag hunts.8 Even some
postmodernists join a variety of positivist-oriented critics in claiming that the main
conceptual categories of the realist tradition—for example sovereignty and
anarchy—are no longer consistent with the observed facts of international life.
R.B.J. Walker, for example, charges that mainstream versions of IR theory “remain
caught within the discursive horizons that express spatiotemporal configurations of
another era.”9 Susan Strange argues that “social scientists, in politics and economics
especially, cling to obsolete concepts and inappropriate theories. These theories
belong to a more stable and orderly world than the one we live in.”10 The result is
“one-eyed social science.”11 It is thus incumbent on us to accomplish an intellectual
‘jailbreak,’12 to move beyond ritual invocations of concepts that once had theo-
retical and descriptive uses, but that are no longer able to capture those things that
are truly new and novel in the world.

6
See, for example, K.J. Holsti, “The Post-Cold War ‘Settlement’ in Comparative Perspective,” in
Discord and Collaboration in a New Europe: Essays in Honor of Arnold Wolfers, ed.
Douglas T. Stuart and Stephen F. Szabo (Washington, DC: The Paul H Nitze School of Advanced
International Studies, 1994), 37–70 See also Susan Strange, The Retreat of the State: The Diffusion
of Power in the World Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
7
See, for example, Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics
(London: Macmillan, 1977), Chap. 10. See also John J. Mearsheimer, “Back to the Future:
Instability in Europe after the Cold War,” International Security 15, no. 1 (1990): 5–56.
8
See, for example, Emmanuel Adler and Beverly Crawford, eds., Progress in Postwar
International Relations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991).
9
R.B.J. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993), x.
10
Strange, Retreat of the State, 3.
11
Ibid., 175.
12
James N. Rosenau, Turbulence in World Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990),
Chap. 2.
5 The Problem of Change in International Relations Theory 39

But there is more than just change in the theoretical air. Increasingly, scholars of
International Relations are claiming fundamental transformations. We live in an era
not of marginal alterations and adaptations, of growth and decline, but in an era of
discontinuity with the past. Rosenau speaks of post-international politics13 and of a
contemporary “epochal transformation.”14 Yoshikazu Sakamoto characterizes the
contemporary scene as a new era involving fundamental transformations.15 Rey
Koslowski and Friederich Kratochwil suggest that the end of the Cold War con-
stituted a ‘transformation’ of the international system—not a change within the
system but a change of system.16
Postmodernists and many critical theorists read our intellectual predicament
somewhat differently. Rosenau and Strange, they might suggest, do not go far
enough because they remain wedded to positivism and to the idea that the trained
observer can through a variety of rigorous procedures encapsulate the amazing
complexity of the world into totalizing theoretical projects such as Rosenau’s “two
worlds of world politics.”17 The world, they claim, cannot be rendered intelligible
through ‘grand’ theoretical projects that attempt to distill complexity, paradox, and
change into neat theoretical packages and categories.
Rather, we now have to acknowledge that everything is in flux, paradox prevails,
and we can only know what we ourselves experience.”18 Generalization is a
Western logocentric practice that invariably contains a political program. To know,
literally, is to act, and since the record of action on the diplomatic front in the
twentieth century is not one to be proud of, it is probably better not to know in
the sense of generalization. Postmodernists basically claim that change has rendered
the pursuit of knowledge as we have known it since Aristotelian times not only a
fool’s game, but also ethically dangerous. The human mind is incapable of

13
Rosenau, Turbulence in World Politics, Chap. 1.
14
James N. Rosenau, Along the Domestic-Foreign Frontier: Exploring Governance in a Turbulent
World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 7.
15
Yoshikazu Sakamoto, “A Perspective on the Changing World Order: A Conceptual Prelude,” in
Global Transformation: Challenges to the State System, ed. Yoshikazu Sakamoto (Tokyo: United
Nations University Press, 1994), 15, 16.
16
Rey Koslowski and Friedrich Kratochwil, “Understanding Change in International Politics: The
Soviet Empire’s Demise and the International System,” International Organization 48, no.
2 (1994): 215–248.
17
Rosenau, Turbulence in World Politics.
18
Sandra Harding sums up this view: “ Coherent theories in an incoherent world are either silly and
uninteresting or oppressive and problematic, depending on the degree of hegemony they manage
to achieve. Coherent theories in an apparently coherent world are even more dangerous, for the
world is always more complex than such unfortunately hegemonic theories can grasp” (Sandra
Harding, The Science Question in Feminism [London: Milton Keynes, 1986], 164). For similar
sentiments, see Richard Ashley and R.B.J. Walker, “Reading Dissidence/Writing the Discipline:
Crisis and the Question of Sovereignty in International Studies,” International Studies Quarterly
34 (September 1990): 367–416. See also Jim George, Discourses of Global Politics: A Critical
(Re)Introduction to International Relations (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1995).
40 5 The Problem of Change in International Relations Theory

understanding the complexity of the world, and since change is ubiquitous, any
attempt to characterize it in general terms is bound to fail.
Analysis of change, then, has become almost a constant in the academic field of
international theory. A whole new vocabulary of clichés or analogies has invaded
debate “Globalization,” the “global village,” “new medievalism,” “post-Westphalia,”
“the borderless world,” and the like, suggest that we have entered, or are entering, a
new era or epoch in which contemporary ideas, practices, institutions, and problems
of international politics are fundamentally different from their predecessors. But
popular monikers, while evocative of things that are different, do not substitute for
rigorous analysis. Lacking in all of this claim of novelty is a consensus not only on
what has changed but also on how we can distinguish minor change from funda-
mental change, trends from transformations, and growth or decline from new forms.
The intellectual problems are both conceptual and empirical. This essay addresses
two questions: (1) What do we mean by change? and (2) What, exactly, has changed
in the major institutions of international politics? This implies a sub question, namely,
what has not changed?

5.1 Markers of Change

Change, like beauty and good skiing conditions, is in the eye of the beholder. From
a micro perspective, the international events recorded in today’s headlines consti-
tute change because they are not identical to yesterday’s news. The media, to
perhaps a greater extent than ever before, run on a twenty-four-hour cycle that
militates against notions of continuity, that emphasizes novelty, and that encourages
pessimistic framing of issues for analysis.19 To a historian of civilizations, on the
other hand, today’s events do not even appear on the intellectual radar screen.
Nothing in daily events suggests any sort of fundamental alteration of the persisting
dynamics and patterns of power, achievement, authority, status, and the nature of
social institutions. Somewhere between these micro- (media) and macro- (philo-
sophical) extremes, observers may note certain types of markers where, typically,
things appear to be done differently than they were previously.

5.1.1 Trends

Trends record one kind of change. Population grows, the membership in the United
Nations increases, communications networks and the messages they carry prolif-
erate and speed up (space and time are compressed), the volume of international

19
See, for example, Thomas E. Patterson, “Time and News: The Media’s Limitations as an
Instrument of Democracy,” International Political Science Review 19, no. 1 (1998): 55–68.
5.1 Markers of Change 41

trade grows at a much faster rate than total economic production, and the numbers
of people traveling abroad increases annually. Moving in the other direction, the
incidence of terrorist acts and airline hijacking declined before September 11, 2001,
as do the number of nuclear warheads and the incidence of interstate wars. What are
we to make of such trends? That they are noticeable or that they occur over a
relatively short period of time does not necessarily make them theoretically sig-
nificant. Change must have significant consequences. Otherwise the claim of
change is no more than one observer’s arbitrary judgment that things in a quanti-
tative sense are not the same as they used to be. We have many notable trends over
the past half-century, but their implications are by no means obvious. Population,
international trade, number of sovereign states, number of intergovernmental
organizations (IGOS) and nongovernmental organizations (NGOS), investment
flows, citizen competence, and the like may increase. But individually or collec-
tively, what is their import? This is the Hegelian and Marxist problem: At what
point does quantitative change lead to qualitative consequences?20
Traditional markers are also subjective and selective. How do we interpret the
dramatic growth of World Wide Web use against the less well-known fact that
one-half of the world’s seven billion souls have never made a telephone call? If you
choose the first trend you will infer very different characteristics of the world than if
you choose the second. Thus, inferring system wide transformations from increases
or decreases of selective quantitative trends is a tricky business indeed. Few of the
advocates of the ‘new’ international politics (or new paradigm, or whatever) have
made a convincing case that all the quantitative changes since 1945 or 1989—to
pick arbitrary dates—somehow constitute a revolution, a new era, or a transfor-
mation in the world.

5.1.2 Great Events

Others favor “great events” as the main markers of change. Change is not an
accumulation of many little acts, seen as trends. What matters are not quantities of
standard practices, but great variations from the typical. Significant change, many
argue, tends to be dramatic and compressed. The practices, ideas, and institutions of
international politics assume reasonably fixed patterns over the long haul, until a
major historical event—usually cataclysmic—changes them. Lord Bolingbroke
defined epochs in terms of chains of events (indicating regular patterns) being so
broken “as to have little or no real or visible connection with that which we see
continue.”21 Historians often use the device of a major discontinuity to organize

20
See, for example, R.J. Barry Jones, “Concepts and Models of Change in International Relations,”
in Change and the Study of International Relations, ed. R.J. Barry Jones and Barry Buzan
(London: Frances Pinter, 1981), 11–29.
21
As quoted in Ruggie, Territoriality and Beyond, 148.
42 5 The Problem of Change in International Relations Theory

their narratives. Since 1800–1900 would be a purely arbitrary designation of the

“nineteenth century” most historians prefer the period 1815–1914. The markers of
change here are the end of one great period of European war and the beginning of
another. An era or period is configured around major events that ostensibly caused
major disruptions or changes of previous patterns They are also the sources of
entirely new patterns. James Der Derian has termed these “monster years,” for they
mark a transition, not just some arbitrary point on a quantitative scale.22 Notice,
however, that the marker is still a chronological artifact and there is no guarantee
that major events in fact alter typical patterns.
The problems of major events as markers of change are nicely (if unwittingly)
summarized in Ian Clark’s Globalization and Fragmentation: International
Relations in the Twentieth Century. He summarizes a number of historians’ use of
periodization to characterize the twentieth century. Most use the great events of
1914, 1919, 1939, 1945, and/or 1989–1991 as demarcating significant changes,
even transformations, rather than continuities.23 But there is no agreement on these
dates. That they all contained significant events is beyond dispute, but there is no
consensus—indeed there is wide disagreement—as to whether or not these events
were the sources of change or transformation As with trends, choices tend to be
arbitrary.
Did 1815 or 1919 really constitute some sort of discontinuity? Woodrow
Wilson’s wartime and postwar perorations would certainly lead one to believe that
after 1919 the world would enter some sort of new age. Yet, the record of war,
imperialism, and national chauvinism in the 1920s and 1930s would justifiably give
rise to skepticism. Was 1945 a major marker separating significantly different
epochs of twentieth century history? Many analysts have made a compelling case
that it was; others have simply assumed it. Yet others, such as Clark himself,
vigorously dispute the dichotomization of the twentieth century into two clear-cut
parts. Thus one person’s discontinuity or great event is not necessarily a sign of
transformation for others. Arbitrary decisions remain, and because this is so, the-
orists of international relations are not likely to agree on their import.

5.1.3 Great Achievements

Another common marker is the “great achievement(s)” which stands in contrast to

the ordinary and mundane. Unlike “great events,” they suggest an ongoing pattern
of difference from previous eras. New patterns of social practice deriving from these
great achievements do not necessarily outlive their originators, however, and so

22
James Der Derian, “Post-Theory: The External Return of Ethics in International Relations,” in
New Thinking in International Relations Theory, eds. Michael Doyle and John Ikenberry (Boulder,
CO; Westview Press, 1997), 54–76.
23
Ian Clark, Globalization and Fragmentation: International Relations in the Twentieth Century
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
5.1 Markers of Change 43

change in this sense may be ephemeral. In eras marked by greater opportunities for
heroism or the unique contributions of leaders, the markers can correspond to a
dynastic reign, such as the Han dynasty24 or the age of Louis XIV. Or it can refer to
an era of great popular social, artistic, and cultural achievement as in the case of the
“golden age” of Greece in the fifth century B.C.

5.1.4 Significant Social/Technological Innovations

In the twentieth century, analysts have used many other types of events as historical
markers suggesting fundamental change. After 1945 there was a good deal of talk
about the “nuclear revolution,” a technological innovation that nullified the
Clausewitzian conception of war … or so it was believed. The record of war since
1945 is inconsistent with the conclusion, however. The “nuclear revolution” altered
the nature of relations between great powers, to be sure, but it did not terminate
violence between states.
Today, the computer has reputedly replaced the atomic bomb as the causal agent
of change or transformation. The bomb could only alter traditional security
thinking—away from how to win wars to how to prevent them—whereas the
microelectronic revolution has changed the daily life of several billion people. Its
influences are more ubiquitous, and therefore more transformative than nuclear
weaponry. Most of the discussion of ‘globalization,’ “the global village” or
“borderless world” derives specifically from a technological innovation. As with
“great events,” however, there is little consensus on the consequences of the
innovation. For some, ‘globalization’ results in the erosion of sovereignty; for
others it has strengthened the state. And there are innumerable positions between
these two extremes.

5.2 Concepts of Change

Markers only identify when or what causes significant change. They do not specify
what kinds of change are involved. Theorists in our field, perhaps astonishingly,
rarely take the trouble to define what they mean by change. But there are several
major conceptions of change. These include change as replacement, change as
addition, dialectical change, and transformation.25 Most authors fail to specify

24
Even in contemporary Japan, official dates are recorded not according to the Western calendar,
but to the year of the emperor’s reign.
25
This list is not necessarily exhaustive. It does not include the jargon of contemporary debates,
such as ‘shift,’ ‘move,’ or ‘moment.’ These terms are so nebulous that they cannot add to con-
ceptual clarity.
44 5 The Problem of Change in International Relations Theory

which kind they have in mind, yet the differences between them are theoretically
important, perhaps even crucial in estimating the validity of claims.

5.2.1 Change as Addition

Change can be additive—a new phenomenon is not necessarily a replacement, but

only adds complexity. It means, for example, that while behaviors consistent with
elements of realism persist in many areas of the world, new forms of collaboration,
cooperation, and governance are also developing. Stag hunts, security dilemmas,
and prisoners’ dilemmas (India–Pakistan, the South China Sea) coexist with
international regimes, global governance, integration, and the development of
pluralistic security communities (Sweden–Norway, Canada and the United States,
the European Union, and the like). Global “civil society” does not replace
national-level political activity; it only complements it. A significant proportion of
the debates about theories of international relations over the past several decades do
not claim that realism is wrong, but that it is incomplete. It is not the only game in
town and for the sake of comprehensiveness we need to add other perspectives and
other forms of activity. Similarly diplomacy is today much more complex and
involves substantially more people than before, but this complexity has not led to a
transformation, that is, the obliteration of older practices, norms, and etiquette.

5.2.2 Dialectical Change

Dialectical concepts do not solve all the problems of identifying change, estab-
lishing markers, distinguishing quantitative from qualitative changes, the problems
of micro- versus macro perspectives, and the like. But they do handle in a unique
way the old and the new. Change does not displace. But it is more than additive,
meaning greater complexity. It can represent new forms built on the old. Thus, there
is both novelty and continuity. It can combine the new and the old without total
replacement. But we must be wary of any teleological elements to dialectical
notions of change. In the Marxist idiom, the synthesis arising from the contradic-
tions between old forms always lead to a ‘higher’ form. This progressivist notion of
change may sound nice, but a synthesis can also signify reversal, corruption, or
decline.

5.2.3 Change as Transformation

Transformation can result from quantitative changes which, when accumulated over
a period of time, bring new forms to life. But, logically, the new forms must derive
5.2 Concepts of Change 45

from old patterns. They can partly replace old forms, but by definition they must
include residues or legacies of the old. One cannot transform from nothing. In the
case of social and political institutions, a transformation is distinguished from
obsolescence in the sense that old ideas, practices, and norms may remain rea-
sonably similar over long periods of time, but the functions of the institution
change. A good example is monarchy. In the Scandinavian countries, Japan, and
perhaps less so in England, many of the practices of monarchy, as well as protocol,
norms, and ideas remain similar over the centuries, but the functions of the
monarchy have changed from ruling, to symbolism and national identity. There has
been a transformation of an institution, but not its replacement. The old and the new
coexist.

5.2.4 Change as Replacement

The end of the Cold War stimulated a large industry of projections for the future.
Most of these heralded significant changes in the texture, structures, and practices
of international relations as we reach a new millennium. For Goldgeier and McFaul,
Singer and Wildavsky, and Koslowski and Kratochwil, the end of the Cold War
constituted, minimally, a fundamental change in the way the superpowers relate to
each other and, maximally, a true transformation of the international system26 For
Francis Fukuyama, also, we are in the midst of a major historical transformation
where for a variety of ideational and technological reasons, something resembling
perpetual peace—the dream of thinkers since at least the due de Sully in the
seventeenth century—will come to pass.27 For Samuel Huntington, in contrast, war
and violence do not end with the Cold War.28 Only the fault lines of international
conflict have changed from conflicts between states and their encapsulated ide-
ologies, to conflicts between civilizations. Notice that one common practice of
international politics, namely war, does not disappear; only the types of actors that
engage in it do. For Alain Minc, there is yet another area of change.29 The
breakdown of political authority in many Third World states and in the OECD
countries is giving rise to “le nouveau moyen age,” an era where we can expect less
safety of life and property than we have seen in almost a millennium. If Minc’s
prognostication comes to pass, clearly there will have been more than just a

26
James Goldgeier and Michael McFaul, “A Tale of Two Worlds: Core and Periphery in the
Post-Cold War Era,” International Organization 46, vol. 1 (1992): 467–492; Max Singer and
Aaron Wildavsky, The Real World Order: Zones of Peace/ Zones of Turmoil (Chatham, NJ:
Chatham House Publishers, 1993); Koslowski and Kratochwil, “Understanding Change in
International Politics.”
27
Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History?” National Interest (Summer 1989): 3–18.
28
Samuel Huntington, “The Coming Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs 72: 22–49.
29
Alain Minc, Le Nouveau Moyen Age (Paris: Gallimard, 1993).
46 5 The Problem of Change in International Relations Theory

quantitative change. The patterns and structures of the past will be replaced by vast
sets of novel conditions.
For Fukuyama, peace replaces war. For Huntington, civilizational wars replace
interstate wars. For Goldgeier and McFaul, Singer and Wildavsky, Mine, and
Kaplan, the relative stability of the Cold War is replaced by the “coming chaos”
characteristic of armed conflict in the Third World.30 Whether or not these changes
are true transformations can be debated endlessly, but all the authors take a common
stand in their implicit notion of change. A significant change is something new, and
that new thing is usually the antithesis of something old.
This is a discontinuous idea of change: new patterns replace old forms, so the
problem of transformation does not arise. Certainly nothing new develops without a
past, but the characteristics of the new may be so different from anything pro-
ceeding that transformation is not an appropriate word. Replacement means nov-
elty. Anthony Giddens, though focusing on macro social phenomena rather than
contemporary international politics, adopts the discontinuous view of history on the
grand scale when he argues:
Originating in the West but becoming more and more global in their impact, there has
occurred a series of changes of extraordinary magnitude when compared with any other
phases in human history. What separates those living in the modern world from all previous
types of society, and all previous epochs in history, is more profound than the continuities
which connect them to the longer spans of the past. . [T]he contrasts which can be made
will often prove more illuminating than the continuities that may be discerned. It is the task
of sociology to seek to analyze the nature of that novel world which, in the late twentieth
century, we now find ourselves. In a period of three hundred years, an insignificant sliver of
human history as a whole, the face of the earth has been wiped clean (my italics).31

This is not an organic view of historical change It is not similar to Braudel’s

concept of the “longue durée.” It is not analysis of trends, of systemic change at the
margins, or of the transformation of old institutions In elaborating his social theory,
Giddens makes it clear that contemporary social formations, and in particular the
modern state, have virtually nothing in common with what has preceded. For
Giddens, meaningful modern history is the story of discontinuity and replacement,
not of transformation.
Much of the International Relations rhetoric of the past decade implicitly makes
the case for concepts of change as replacement or transformation. This seems
natural following great events such as the end of the Cold War. Human propensities
to optimism are particularly pronounced when long eras of tension, war, and vio-
lence seemingly come to an end. But previous claims to a “new world order,”
whether in 1815, 1919, 1945, or 1989–1991 have usually turned out to be some-
what premature. Most often, the claims of replacement and transformation would

30
Goldgeier and McFaul, “Tale of Two Worlds”; Singer and Wildavsky, Real World Order, Minc,
Nouveau Moyen Age; Robert D. Kaplan, “The Coming Anarchy,” The Atlantic Monthly (February
1994): 44–76.
31
Anthony Giddens, The Nation-State and Violence (Berkeley and Los Angeles. University of
California Press, 1987), 33–34.
5.2 Concepts of Change 47

better be classified as additions or dialectical syntheses, where elements of the old

and the new coexist For example, if we do indeed live in a ‘Post-Westphalian’
order, there must be few traces of Westphalia remaining in it. We cannot use
‘Post-Westphalia’ legitimately if there are only new elements added to the old.
Similarly, if, as Rosenau suggests, we now live in a new epoch of postinternational
politics,32 then the main characteristics of international politics as we knew them for
about three centuries must be demonstrated to have disappeared and to have been
replaced by other (or new) practices, ideas, and norms. That we have more states,
that we communicate more rapidly, or that we trade more within the context of a
vastly expanded global population does not automatically entitle us to claim either
discontinuity or transformation. Yet, this is exactly the tone of much IR scholarship
today.

5.2.5 Systemic and Lower Levels of Change

Much of the popular discourse on contemporary change refers to systemic phe-

nomena. The indicators of change, be they trends, transformations, or replacements,
are universal. A new era in international relations, for example, does not refer to a
single country’s foreign policy alteration, but to properties of the entire system.
Population growth, compression of time and space, decline in the incidence of
interstate wars, or the waning authority of states are in most of the literature
statements about universal trends. The spatial hallmark of almost all International
Relations theory, indeed, is its unabashed—and therefore inappropriate—
universalism.33
There is, however, an approach to change that begins at the state or individual
levels. It is a theory of learning. We now have a large, mostly American-based,
literature of this genre.34 It examines the ways that foreign policy-makers redefine
state interests as a result of learning through participation in international organi-
zations and their encompassed epistemic communities. Change here is at the unit
level, whether a policy-maker or a state’s definition of interests. But it does not
automatically warrant claims of systemic change. This would be the ecological
fallacy in reverse. Although Lebow claims that “elite learning at the unit level has
systemic consequences,” it would require a very muscular state indeed to change

32
Rosenau, Turbulence in World Politics.
33
K.J. Holsti. “International Relations Theory and Domestic War in the Third World: The Limits
of Relevance” in International Relations and the Third World, ed. Stephanie G Neuman (New
York, St. Martins, 1998), 104–109.
34
Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984): Peter Haas, Saving the Mediterranean: The
Politics of Environmental Cooperation (New York Columbia University Press, 1990); Martha
Finnemore, National Interests in International Society (Ithaca, NY. Cornell University Press,
1997).
48 5 The Problem of Change in International Relations Theory

the entire texture of international relations in a given time period.35 Even the most
revolutionary leaders like Hitler and Stalin were unable to alter the basic institutions
of international relations although they tried. World War II, among other purposes,
was a war to sustain the Westphalian system, which means a group of institutions
that sustain the sovereignty and independence of distinct political communities
called states. Change at the unit level is not likely to alter such a system, although
when many states begin to emulate the changes of some ‘leaders,’ there may well
be some form of system change or even transformation.

5.3 A Source of Confusion: Defining International

Relations

Assertions of change and novelty abound in contemporary international relations

theory and in more descriptive and policy-relevant analyses. Regrettably, the
assertions are often more notable for their stridency than for their sensitivity to
important distinctions between concepts of change or to systematic empirical evi-
dence. We all seem to acknowledge obvious trends and tendencies, but we are
much less certain as to their consequences for international relations. Time and
space have been compressed; economics are being globalized; frontiers erode;
autonomy is constrained; sovereignty is dead; an international civic society is
developing to challenge the authority of the state; there are elements of a “new
medievalism,” and global problems have rendered solutions in terms of national
priorities obsolete.
Not everyone, of course, accepts these assertions. Adherence to “eternal veri-
ties,” whether conceptual or empirical, remains striking in both academic discourse
and in the ways that states conduct their foreign relations. Claims of a new world
order or escaping “conceptual jails” notwithstanding, the behavior of Pakistanis and
Indians, Israelis and Arabs, or Greeks and Turks toward each other is strikingly
reminiscent of Soviet and American relations during the Cold War, or of the
Anglo-German rivalry before 1914. Chinese military activities in the South China
Sea could be reasonably compared to French/Spanish/British struggles to control
the Balearic Islands in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Current
textbooks in international relations have not jettisoned concepts such as power, the
state, national interest, conflict, security, or international organizations despite
many claims that such ideas are dated, outworn, or part of an obsolete and closed
“modernist discourse.”
How are we to judge this proliferation of assertions and warnings? How are we
to distinguish the significant from the passing and ephemeral? How can we assess
the rival claims that changes constitute additions versus replacements and/or

35
Ned Lebow, “The Long Peace, the End of the Cold War, and the Failure of Realism,”
International Organization 15, no. 2 (1994): 276.
5.3 A Source of Confusion: Defining International Relations 49

transformations? How can we judge whether conceptual ‘jailbreaks’ are worth the
effort?
One of the reasons the great disputes in international theory cannot be easily
resolved is because analysts have different conceptions of the world that we are
trying to characterize, interpret, and explain. Realists are interested in the classical
problems of peace and war and consequently concentrate on the official relations
between states and between states and their international organizations. Others, in
contrast, are not comfortable with the world of international politics. They want to
examine ‘world politics,’ ‘global politics,’ or ‘globology,’ that is, any activities that
cross state boundaries. The intellectual mandate of world or global politics runs
from the activities of the secretary-general of the United Nations to African market
women and the wives of Zapatista rebels in Chiapas. The purview of ‘globology’36
is no less than the grand project of global social change. Since these perspectives
are so different from the focus of the “classical tradition”—that is, the relations
between states as they revolve around issues of war, peace, and security—they are
incommensurable. They are not right or wrong, but different. There cannot be,
therefore, some consensus on what has changed and what continues. For the global
sociologist, all sorts of trends suggest change, though not many would qualify as
evidence of a new epoch or transformation in the relations between states.37 On the
other hand, because many governments continue to behave in ways approximating
the tenets of realism or liberalism, those characterizations have a ring of truth that
hints more at continuities than at transformation.

5.4 Change and International Institutions

Though we cannot judge between conceptions of the world, we must, as Rosenau

insists, develop benchmarks from which significant deviations can be noted.
International institutions are one important candidate. This choice may not be
accepted by all because it is political rather than economic or sociological, and
because it is state centric. However, an essential foundation of a society of states is
the international institution. If, on the one hand, the fundamental institutions of
international relations, collectively, change to the point of transformation, as many

36
Sociology on a world scale, see Julian Saurin, “The End of International Relations? The State
and International Theory in the Age of Globalization,” in Boundaries in Question: New Directions
in International Relations, eds Andrew Linklater and John MacMillan [London: Pinter Publishers,
1995], 257.
37
The lack of agreement on the scope of the field is reflected in Jim George’s critical survey of the
field. He implies that the attempt to describe and explain the behavior of states is not a
high-priority intellectual activity because it is ‘framed’ in a “closed modernist discourse” based on
positivism and state-centrism. Resistance to ‘brutality’ at the “everyday, community, neighbor-
hood and interpersonal levels” is the proper focus of the field in his view. We should study family
violence rather than interstate or intrastate wars (George, Discourses of Global Politics, 116, 1991,
214–215).
50 5 The Problem of Change in International Relations Theory

contemporary analyses argue or imply, then with some authority we can make the
case that we are seeing the emergence of a new kind of international system. We
must specify, however, whether the change is a replacement, addition, transfor-
mation, or synthesis If, on the other hand, most international institutions maintain
their essential characteristics, though with some degrees of change such as added
complexity, then we have no solid basis for making the claim that in terms of
international politics, we live in a new world.
The institutions of international politics are fundamental. They are not to be
confused with organizations, such as the United Nations. I follow Hedley Bull’s use
of the term institution which, while not exact, implies the critical importance of the
combination of ideas, practices, and norms:
A society of states (or international society) exists when a group of states, conscious of
certain common interests and common values, form a society in the sense that they con-
ceive themselves to be bound by a common set of rules in their relations with one another,
and share in the working of common institutions. … In international society … the sense of
common interests .does not in itself provide precise guidance as to what behaviour is
consistent with these goals; to do this is the function of rules These rules may have the
status of international law, of moral rules, of custom or established practice, or they may be
merely operational rules or ‘rules of the game,’ worked out without formal agreement or
even without verbal communication. It is not uncommon for a rule to emerge first as an
operational rule, then to become established practice, then to attain the status of a moral
principle and finally to become incorporated in a legal convention. .. States communicate
the rules through their official words. . But they also communicate the rules through their
actions, when they behave in such a way as to indicate that they accept or do not accept that
a particular rule is valid.38

We can distinguish foundational institutions of the states system that emerged in

the seventeenth century from procedural institutions. Foundational institutions have
allowed analysts of virtually all persuasions—from realists to liberal institutionalists
and constructivists—to claim or assume that there is an international states system
(or society of states, to use Bull’s term) that is markedly distinguishable from
empires, migrant clans and lineages, the complex medieval system of overlapping
jurisdictions, leagues of cities, suzerainty systems, and other formats for organizing
distinct political communities.39 Foundational institutions define (1) legitimate
actors; (2) the fundamental principles on which they are based; and (3) the major
norms, assumptions, and/or rules on which their mutual relations are based The
foundational institutions of the Westphalian international system include states,
sovereignty, territoriality, and the fundamental norm of all international law, pacta
sunt servanda (treaties are binding).

38
Bull, The Anarchical Society, 13, 67, 71. I do not adopt the teleological aspects of this definition,
because institutional growth, development, and decline are not always accounted for by common
purposes.
39
K.J. Holsti, The State, War, and the State of War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1996), Chaps. 2–3. See, for example, Rosenau, Turbulence in World Politics-, Ruggie,
Territoriality and Beyond; Strange, Retreat of the State; Christopher Clapham, “Degrees of
Statehood,” Review of International Studies 24, no. 2 (April 1998): 143–158.
5.4 Change and International Institutions 51

Procedural institutions are those repetitive practices, ideas, and norms that
underlie and regulate interactions and transactions between the separate actors.
These institutions refer not to questions of “who are we” and “how do we claim
status and legitimacy,” but to more instrumental issues of how we behave toward
one another. They are important in helping us describe the essential characteristics
of an international system, but they are of secondary significance compared to the
foundational institutions A procedural institution such as war could disappear
without fundamentally altering the foundational institutions A warless (in the sense
of interstate war) world would be a wonder, but would it also be something other
than a world of states? The states system has survived the demise of the interna-
tional slave trade and colonialism, and with the new technologies available today,
we can at least conceive of the death of traditional diplomatic institutions, but the
foundational institutions might endure without substantial transformation.
Institutions are comprised, adding to Bull’s definition, of a combination of
(1) common practices; (2) a consensus of ideas underlying those practices; and
(3) commonly observed and accepted norms, rules, and etiquette All three inter-
connected components must be present to constitute an international institution.
Diplomacy is a procedural institution of international politics because it is a
common and patterned practice in the sense that thousands of government officials
are in daily contact for the purposes of representation, exchanging information,
persuasion, and formal negotiation. We can also predict with almost complete
certainty that they will do exactly the same tomorrow, this date next year, and
probably this date in 2025. It is precisely because diplomacy is practiced so widely,
so frequently, and according to such common procedures and protocols that we take
it for granted. Taking practices for granted provides one clue that they have become
institutionalized. If political units went to war to see which ones could send
diplomats abroad, if they regularly imprisoned, assassinated, or poisoned emis-
saries, and if major crises erupted over issues of diplomatic precedence, then we
could not claim that the practice was either regular or institutionalized. Second, the
practices of diplomacy are founded on or surrounded by (1) concepts that command
common understanding (e.g., diplomat, ambassador, conference, and the like) and
(2) sets of ideas and expectations about how governments should deal with each
other. There is no ideology of diplomacy, but there is something we can call a
“diplomatic vocabulary” or “diplomatic culture” that is based on ideas that com-
mand common recognition and understanding. Finally, diplomacy is surrounded by
an extensive and commonly observed network of norms, protocols, regulations, and
etiquette. Many of these have reached the status of law, as contained in the Vienna
Convention on Diplomatic Privileges, Intercourse and Immunities (1961) which
gave concrete form to and amended the conventional laws and practices of diplo-
macy developed in 1815 and subsequently. Although the practices of diplomacy
may have changed in many ways—for example in the incorporation of represen-
tatives of nongovernmental organizations or individual citizens in official diplo-
matic delegations—the institution of diplomacy has not been replaced or
transformed. The ideas, norms, regulations, and conventions of diplomacy remain
largely intact.
52 5 The Problem of Change in International Relations Theory

5.5 Possibilities of Institutional Change

There are four possibilities for institutional change. Institutions can (1) arise;
(2) change (add complexity); (3) transform, perhaps through dialectical processes;
and (4) disappear.
Institutions seldom just appear suddenly. They are themselves the consequences
of previous practices. When we say that they have arisen, we mean only that those
practices (1) have become generalized, predictable, and patterned; (2) have been
suffused with ideological justification or adorned with a commonly understood set
of concepts and ideas; and (3) have become surrounded with norms, regulations,
and etiquette.
Once institutionalized, a practice or activity may change quantitatively. Today
diplomacy encompasses the activities of hundreds of thousands of officials (com-
pared to hundreds in the eighteenth century), taking place annually in thousands of
multilateral meetings, and mostly practiced by issue-based experts in constant touch
with their superiors. This pattern contrasts with the few ‘gentlemen’ who received
general instructions from their sovereign and then disappeared to a foreign capital
for a decade or more to bring those instructions to life. The ideas, conventions, and
purposes or functions of diplomacy have not transformed, but the practices have
become much more complex.
Transformation is the third possibility. This is the case when change in the three
defining variables has been so profound—once again, an arbitrary judgment—that
even though the activity retains its original name, what really goes on is no longer
the same. A further indicator of transformation is change in function40 or purposes.
Forms, rules, and ideas may remain, but the practices and purposes of the practices
become transformed. War may be a current example of institutional transformation.
In the eighteenth century, it was characterized by a set pattern of activities (training,
mobilization, battle, command, and control), a commonly accepted set of justifi-
cations (e.g., raison d’etat), definitions (e.g., Clausewitz), and other ideas. War was
highly regulated by conventions, protocols, and etiquette (e.g., surrender cere-
monies, treatment of prisoners and wounded, respect for civilian life, uniforms,

40
There is no consensus on the meaning of the term institution. I prefer Bull’s version because it
refers to ideas and practices as well as to rules. An important analysis of the concept of inter-
national institutions is in Wendt and Duvall. They contrast the “English School” notion of insti-
tutions—similar to the idea of Gemeinschaft—with the neorealist notion that is akin to
Gesellschafi. Wendt and Duvall emphasize that institutions both regulate practice and are con-
stituted through practices. ‘Fundamental’ institutions “represent the shared intersubjective
understandings about the …preconditions for meaningful state action” and are thus more than
simply the results of calculations of state interests or the desire to reduce transactions costs
(Alexander Wendt and Raymond Duvall, “Institutions and International Order,” in Global
Changes and Theoretical Challenges, eds. James N. Rosenau and Ernst-Otto Czempiel
[Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1989], 53). Kratochwil also emphasizes the combination of
practices and norms (Friedrich Kratochwil, Rules, Norms and Decisions: On the Conditions of
Practical and Legal Reasoning in International and Domestic Affairs [Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1989], 64).
5.5 Possibilities of Institutional Change 53

ranks, declarations of war, and the like). The purpose of war was, according to its
main philosopher of the period, Clausewitz, to promote and protect the interests of
the state. Recent wars in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Tajikistan, and other places have
only killing in common with nineteenth-century wars. In every other way they are a
different phenomenon. Their purpose, or function, is not the pursuit of state interests
“by other means,” but to enrich small groups of kleptocrats whose private interests
are paramount. Mercenaries have reappeared. The distinction between war and
criminality has become increasingly blurred, as has the distinction between com-
batants and civilians. One of the major post-1945 trends that does suggest funda-
mental change is the pronounced waning of interstate, Clausewitzian-type wars, and
the luxurious growth of domestic violence where the practices, ideas, and norms of
classical warfare are notable by their absence.41 There is plenty of evidence to
sustain an argument of the institutional transformation of contemporary war.
Finally, institutions can disappear. Colonialism was a late-nineteenth-century
practice that became surrounded with norms and regulations, and was propped up
with an elaborate set of social and political justifications (e.g., la mission civil-
isatrice), an elaborate anthropological taxonomy that clearly demarcated superiors
and inferiors, and ideological principles. By the early twentieth century, notions of
self-determination gained currency as moral justification for the creation of new
European states from old empires. The rules of the colonial game also changed. The
main idea of the League of Nations Mandates system was to prepare colonial
peoples for self-government, if not independence. This was an idea that only
one-half century earlier would have been unheard of. By the end of World War II,
statehood became the great goal of liberation policies and the ideological props of
colonialism had been discredited by the barbarism of intra-European wars, by the
spread of liberalism, and by forms of proto-nationalism in places like India. With no
further ideological legitimacy, colonial practices gave way to the birth of over 130
countries in a matter of two decades. By 1960 colonialism was rendered illegitimate
by the fiat of United Nations resolutions.
The four possibilities—new institutions, institutional change (complexity),
institutional transformation, and institutional demise—do not necessarily take place
simultaneously in the international system. Some institutions die off as new ones
arise. All institutions change over time, but some may do so more quickly than
others. And some changes may lead to transformations, while others do not alter the
three generic characteristics we use to define an institution.
From the perspective of system change, presumably transformations in foun-
dational institutions are more important than those of procedural institutions. We
can chronicle institutional transformation in the practice of war, but this may not
have system-changing consequences. If, in contrast, the institution of sovereignty is
transforming, as an increasing number of analysts claim, there is a case for the view
that we are in the midst of epochal change in some critical characteristics of

41
Adam Watson, The Evolution of International Society: A Comparative Historical Analysis
(London: Routledge, 1992).
54 5 The Problem of Change in International Relations Theory

international relations. We are in the process of systems rather than systemic

change. Such a determination would provide a major filip for those who maintain
that older generalizations about the fundamental characteristics of international
politics are woefully out of date.
I conclude with a brief list of the major institutions of contemporary international
relations (Table 5.1). I have no rigid selection criteria (nor does Bull), but while all
may not agree that the list is exhaustive, there would probably be a reasonable
consensus that the main foundational and procedural institutions are included. In
the right column, I offer impressionistic observations about the kind of change that
we have seen in each institution during approximately the period since 1945.

Table 5.1 Continuity and change in international institutions

Foundational Major changes Current status
institutions
Sovereignty Increased complexity, some delegation of In process of transformation?
(EU); UN practices on humanitarian
intervention, quasi-states; international
criminal activity
State Reduced autonomy; growth of multiple Slow transformation?
loyalties; retrenchment of state functions;
fragmentation of weak states
Territoriality Increasing permeability but firmer legal Persisting/strengthening
status; reduced incidence of territorial
change, outlaw change by armed force
International Growing complexity, foundational Complexity (change)
law principles (pacta sunt servanda, reciprocity,
equality) remain
Process institutions
Diplomacy Growing complexity, ‘democratization’; Complexity (change)
foundational principles increasingly
elaborated and legalized
Commerce Growing complexity; quantitative increase, Complexity (change); increased
increasingly rule-bound; political influence institutionalization, thus
of TNCs, rise of drug trade and strengthening
international crime
Colonialism Collapse of an institution Obsolescence
Slave trade Human trafficking, but illegal Obsolescence
War Primarily within states; mostly civilian Transforming or replacement
casualties; laws of war not observed;
violence combined with criminality
Conflict Role of IGOs in controlling conflicts; Arising (compared to pre-1945)
management elaboration of PKO functions;
delegitimization of conquest in IR
Governance Vast elaboration of international regimes Arising (compared to pre-1919)
and management organizations; G-8, G-20,
IMF, environmental rules and regulations,
etc.
5.5 Possibilities of Institutional Change 55

This discussion will not end the debate about change in both the practice and
theory of international politics but it may help to discipline the proliferation of
claims about novelty, “new eras,” “new world orders,” transformations, and
post-this or post-that. On the one hand, one detects in these claims a large com-
ponent of wishful thought that seems to be replacing serious, empirically based, and
authoritative analysis. On the other hand, those who see nothing new and who
continue to think that Thucydides, Machiavelli, or Morgenthau described the
eternal verities of international politics will note, when examining international
institutions, significant changes and even the demise of some institutions that were
considered normal and quite permanent during their heydays. Not all may support
the notion of international institutions as the only or most appropriate benchmark
for noting change and continuity. But benchmarks of some kind are essential. In
their absence, we have little but trends of debatable consequences, arbitrary dates,
unsubstantiated epochs, eras, or systems, and no discrimination about types of
change. In the midst of the current cacophony of countering claims, now is a good
time to begin thinking systematically and in a disciplined fashion about the problem
of change in international politics.
Chapter 6
Along the Road of International Theory
in the Next Millennium: Four Travelogues

Like most disciplines, the field or subject of International Relations undergoes

change.1 In its narrative or policy-oriented guise, this is natural, as the problems
punctuating the world’s headlines change from day to day. As a theoretical
enterprise, on the other hand, change should not be ubiquitous or fundamental since
perennial issues of security, peace, equity, development, and quality of life tran-
scend location, time, and personality. Today, we can read translated clay tablets
dating from the third millennium B.C. or review accounts of relations between
Sumerian cities (Watson 1992) and find in them many characteristics and aspects of
statecraft that are commonly observed still today. Problems of honor, power,
commitment, reputation, and hegemony, also major themes in the Melian dialogues,
suffuse international relationships as much today as they did 2,500 years ago.
Nevertheless, our contemporary theoretical renderings of international relations also
reflect public moods and great issues of the day that may find no historical coun-
terparts. Theory is not divorced from the milieu in which it is developed
(cf. Ferguson/Mansbach 1988; Patomäki 1992), and milieus change in a number of
dimensions, though not as rapidly as the day’s events.
While we can accept and even applaud scholarly innovation, new perspectives,
and theoretical novelties if they help us make a complex world more intelligible,
international theory may be entering into an era characterized less by normal
scholarly debate and change than by crisis. An intellectual crisis includes some or
all of the following characteristics:
1. The foundations of knowledge claims erode or are assaulted to such an extent
that the intellectual community has no further confidence in the authority of
theoretical work.
2. The discrepancies between theoretical renderings of a subject—designed to
increase understanding and intelligibility—and the events, trends, and essential

1
This text was first published as: “Along the Road of International Theory in the New Millennium
Four Travelogues,” Chap. 3, pp. 73–99 in Robert M.A. Crawford and Darryl S.L. Jarvis, eds.,
International Relations—Still an American Social Science?. Albany, NY: State University of New
York Press, 2001. The permission to republish this text was granted on 12 March 2015 by Sharla
Clute, SUNY Press in Albany, NY.

© The Author(s) 2016 57

K. Holsti, Kalevi Holsti: A Pioneer in International Relations Theory, Foreign
Policy Analysis, History of International Order, and Security Studies, SpringerBriefs
on Pioneers in Science and Practice 41, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-26624-4_6
58 6 Along the Road of International Theory in the Next Millennium …

characteristics of international practice are so great that isomorphism and cor-

respondence are no longer possible.
3. The field of study no longer has any core questions or problems to investigate.
Scholars go their own way, intellectually, meaning that the ‘community’ of
scholars organized around a common set of problems disintegrates.
4. The social/ethical/moral problems around which the field originated and
developed-war and peace in the case of international politics-were solved at the
political level. That is, the problem no longer exists and thus scholars who try to
understand it, possibly in order to manage, control, or solve it, are now out of
business.

6.1 A Crisis in International Theory?

We have heard frequently that the study of international relations is in a state of

crisis because it lacks a normative, substantive, and epistemological consensus (cf.
Lapid 1989; Crawford 1996). But the term crisis in the sense of disagreement may
be used more for rhetorical effect than as a serious characterization of the theoretical
enterprise. After all, since at least the late eighteenth century there has been a
constant dialogue between various strands of thinking about international relations.
Debate, disagreement, and difference do not by themselves indicate a crisis, as
defined above. In fact, if there are heady disagreements, probably all is well.
Fashion and faddism in the field are normal. But when a field threatens to disappear,
become redundant, or fly apart into a maelstrom of intellectual individualism devoid
of common purpose or interest, we can say that there is a crisis.
Is this the case today? It is the opinion of many. John Ruggie, for example, has
argued that the predominant perspectives on international relations—in this case
neorealism and neoliberalism—are characterized by an “impoverished mindset”
(Ruggie 1993: 143). Rosenau charges that most IR theorists are stuck in “con-
ceptual jails” (1990: Chap. 2) that hinder the development of the field. George
(1994) is convinced that neorealism, in whatever guise, is fundamentally flawed in
its ontological and epistemological foundations. Walker/Ashley (1990: 375ff.) see
the discipline of international studies (sic) as just one area of crisis in a more general
“crisis of representation” that characterizes modernity. Bleiker (1995: 1) judges
approvingly that during the past decade the field has been in a state of “flux and
turmoil … Nothing has remained unchallenged. The railings and bridges of
orthodox IR wisdom have fallen into the water and numerous attempts to replace
them immediately met with the same fate. No consensus, no new and coherent
paradigm is yet in sight.” I recently observed (Holsti 1992: 401) that contemporary
international theorists do not see the world in the same ways, nor do they agree on
what is important to know, or how to know it. The testimonials of crisis go on at
length. There are many in the field who are disappointed dispirited, and dejected.
Others, in contrast, are elated because the ‘orthodoxies’ are under assault and
6.1 A Crisis in International Theory? 59

intellectual “thinking space” grows when there is no canon. That there can be such
different state of affairs suggests a kind of disciplinary schizophrenia.
We can readily observe these four symptoms of crisis at work in current debates
and discussions about international theory. The first symptom takes the form of the
challenges—and opportunities—posed by critical theory and postmodernism in
some of their many forms. The second derives from the uncertainties attending the
end of the Cold War and the emerging speculation about the effects of ‘global-
ization’ and technological innovation on political practice. The remaining two
symptoms are also prominent. Let us review some of the evidence which suggests
that we are in a condition far beyond the parameters of ordinary scholarly debates
and disagreements.

6.1.1 Promises and Pitfalls of Postmodernism

Change in the field in the past usually went along several trajectories. First there
may be change in the sense that a new normative/ethical problem is identified. This
problem requires theoretical attention and makes a claim for addition to the
repertoire of international theory. Some analysts, in contrast, take a very different
tack. The purpose of change and innovation, according to its adherents, is not just to
shift the theoretical focus onto other ethical concerns—a new theoretical agenda so
to speak–nor is it to add actors, such as nongovernmental organizations, to the
intellectual purview; nor is it to ‘soften’ the rough edges of Realism by acknowl-
edging the collaborative aspects of international relations; nor, finally, is, it con-
cerned about lack of isomorphism between the real world and theoretical
characterizations of it.
What is at issue is the nature of knowledge and communication. This is not the
place to engage in a dissection of postmodern thought, of which there are as many
strands as there are authors and for which no one individual can claim any foun-
dational authority. What we are concerned with is a claim about crisis in a field of
inquiry. Some critics of contemporary theories of international relations help to
create a sense of crisis by arguing that the foundations of all previous knowledge
claims in the field are wrong. Empiricism is a flawed epistemology. Knowledge is
linguistically and socially constructed; and, despite some possibilities for inter-
subjective consensus, ultimately it can be held only individually. Intersubjective
consensus is difficult to achieve because no two individuals occupy the same
emotional, cultural, or historical space. Most knowledge is only a ‘text,’ which, like
poetry, can be interpreted in numerous ways, none of which can lay claim to
authority. There is no acknowledgment that text is a means of communication
between author and reader (Nicholson 1996: 112). And since the Aristotelian notion
of a distinction between observer and observed is denied, ultimately there can be
nothing but individual truth or a ‘text,’ the meaning of which is not established
by the author’s intent, but by the reader’s response. No one can say which
60 6 Along the Road of International Theory in the Next Millennium …

interpretation is correct, or even better, for that matter (cf. Spegele 1995: 213). The
purpose of critical thought, in the view of some postmodernists, is not to alter the
field in the substantive sense of ‘adding’ to knowledge or evaluating knowledge
claims. It is, rather, to destroy ‘orthodoxies,’ to “open up thinking space,” to avoid
the contaminating effects of traditional concepts, and to play with language so that
clear prose, representing a form of intellectual domination, cannot impose ‘closure.’
Poetry, imagination, irony, paradox, and games must replace the somber
language-uses of ordinary scholarship. Some current exponents of
post-structuralism adopt a form of extreme epistemological individualism that is
hardly consistent with any standard ideas of theory, or of intellectual organizing
devices such as a ‘subject,’ ‘field,’ or ‘discipline.’ Indeed, the whole purpose of a
“discipline is just another form of intellectual closure designed to marginalize, to
silence, and to exclude. There is a disciplinary crisis precisely because in a “register
of freedom,” ethically conscious scholars will challenge all authority claims.
According to Ashley/Walker (1990: 398):
to read almost any dissident text is to find not only a formal refusal of paradigmatic conceit
but also a series of textual moves that function to disrupt any attempt to conduct a
memorializing reading and turn a text into a paradigm [sic] of any sort … Amidst a global
crisis of representation, paradigmatic conceits have become downright impracticable for
any scholarly enterprise that would expect not only to speak to something called global
politics but also to be taken seriously in anything approaching the global scope to which it
speaks.

There cannot be an integrated theory in such circumstances, and so, if some

proponents of epistemological individualism have their way there is no longer a
need to think about “the state of the field,” since there is no—or should not be—any
field to think about.
Some aspects of postmodernism, as well as critical theory, offer rich opportu-
nities for theoretical innovation in the more positive sense of the term. In this
reading, the development does not imply crisis so much as increased maturation.
Reflexivity, methodological self-consciousness, a willingness to explore concepts
and approaches that are, and have been, taken too long for granted, all offer avenues
for progress. Sensitivity to nuances, suspicion of ‘totalizing’ projects, and aware-
ness of paradox and the inevitability of “rough edges” as part of the human con-
dition, may all contribute to healthy disciplinary debate. We await in which
directions the contributions of postmodernism and critical theory will lead the field.

6.1.2 Isomorphism

A second source of crisis is the lack of fit between our theories and approaches to
the field and the appearance of new trends, phenomena, and social/ethical problems.
This is the issue of isomorphism. It has become particularly acute since the end of
the Cold War.
6.1 A Crisis in International Theory? 61

Consider some of the phenomena that are not consistent with any of the major
theoretical approaches or ‘schools’ of International Relations existing today:
1. The reemergence of private armed forces, reminiscent of privateers, pirates,
religious armies, and armed gangs of the past (e.g., armed drug-running orga-
nizations, warlords, armed fundamentalist groups with no distinct homeland,
and terrorists-for-hire). In many ‘weak’ states, the concept of sovereignty as a
state monopoly over the legitimate use of force is meaningless. In many con-
temporary wars, the distinction between combat and crime has broken down.
2. The ideological demands of global capital, or “the market.” A type of economic
orthodoxy ‘demands’ certain domestic policies—fiscal discipline—and impin-
ges upon and frequently overrides government priorities, seriously compro-
mising state autonomy.2
3. The decline of interstate war, to the point where the raison d’etre of security
studies, international theory, and the United Nations is being undermined (Holsti
1996a, b).
4. The collapse of sovereign states to the point where international efforts have to
be made to resuscitate them. Some call it “the coming anarchy” (Kaplan 1994).
I join those who raise the ultimate question about the transferability of the
Western state concept into societies and cultures whose political traditions are
significantly different from those that developed in Europe during the past five
centuries (Holsti 1996a, b; Choukri 1994; Badie 1992). Others have called it a
“new paternalism,” suggesting that the main task of international organizations,
indeed of the entire international community, is not to prevent wars between
states—the problem of international theory since the eighteenth century—but to
sustain or resuscitate states that have not made a successful transition from
colonialism. The immense movement and victimization of civilian populations
in wars surrounding collapsing states create an entirely new set of humanitarian
problems not factored into traditional approaches to the field.
These phenomena are on the verge of becoming more than anomalies. They are
trends, and in some parts of the world, they have become almost defining char-
acteristics. None of the major theoretical approaches to the field accounts for them.
If we add to this list all the problems associated with the unprecedented growth of
technological innovation, it seems evident that international theory is not keeping
up. Whether it is because our concepts are dated (Ruggie 1993; Rosenau 1996) our
perspectives are still Eurocentric (Holsti 1992), or our epistemologies are all wrong
(George 1994), is hard to say But whatever the problem, it is clear that existing
characterizations of international politics miss a good deal.

2
An analogy can be made between the current ideological hegemony of global capitalism and the
religious hegemony of the Church in Europe during the mediaeval era (Deibert 1996).
62 6 Along the Road of International Theory in the Next Millennium …

6.1.3 Lack of a Core Problem

While oversimplifying to a certain extent, we can argue that in each era there has
been an overriding problem that has attracted and stimulated change in international
theory.3 In the 1920s, the great problem was to create and sustain forms of inter-
national governance that could help prevent the recurrence of the Great War. By the
mid-1930s, the great problem was the Nazi/Fascist and Hitlerian threats to liber-
alism and the fundamental principles of the Westphalian system. Since 1947, the
Cold War and all the threats to security, freedom, and independence it entailed,
formed the political background in which the ideas of Realism flourished. Concerns
of equity, reciprocity, and justice animated the development of international
political economy and dependency theory in the 1970s, the era of détente. Today, is
there a commanding problem or challenge that animates theory and debate?
Looking at the lack of substance in most contemporary theoretical debates, one
might be led to the conclusion that philosophy has replaced international politics
and international relations: there is no core normative problem that drives sys-
tematic inquiry. Disciplinary disintegration is one consequence. Concern with
“how to” questions—epistemology, ontology, the connection between theory and
praxis—is another. In this milieu of epistemological soul-searching, questions of
substance—e.g., “what to study”—take a back seat.

6.1.4 The Problem of International Politics Is Solved

Closely linked to the symptom of crisis above is the political solution of the
problem(s) that gave rise to a field of study or discipline. War and peace were the
problems that stimulated the minds of eighteenth-century philosophers such as
Kant, Rousseau, and Bentham, as well as their nineteenth- and twentieth-century
successors. International Relations as an academic discipline began before but
flourished after the Great War and was, indeed, a major response to that tragedy.
There is now mounting evidence, however, that for whatever reasons, the proba-
bilities of major war between a large number of states in the system has declined
precipitously (Holsti 1996a, b: Chap. 2). There are existing or emerging “pluralistic
security communities” (Deutsch 1954) in North America, Western Europe, South
America, Southeast Asia, and a few other regions of the world. War within these
regions is an extremely low probability. And what few interstate wars do break out
are usually caused by internal armed conflict. Saddam Hussein’s assault on Kuwait
may be among the last classical interstate wars.

3
Change does not imply innovation. The major themes of international theory over the past three
centuries have remained notably similar, even if the vocabularies and styles differ. For an essay
that examines the underlying similarities in the field over an extended period of time, see Gabriel
(1994).
6.1 A Crisis in International Theory? 63

If these trends become characteristic, then we can speculate that at least one of
the main sources of the field of International Relations is drying up. The intellectual
turmoil in the field today may be a reflection of this fact. In the absence of a
commanding problématique, scholars have to turn to other issues, of which there
may be any number. But there may be another interpretation of this bit of evidence
about a crisis in the field.
It is that the apostles of change—liberal triumphalism, globalization, “identity
politics” and the idea that technology and modernity have obliterated space/time,
class, and national distinctions—fail to acknowledge the persistence of more tra-
ditional problems of world politics. The search for novelty takes on a momentum of
its own, and everything new is assumed to replace the old. Every analyst goes off
into new recesses to discover novelty, but that does not mean that the world
necessarily follows in the footsteps of academic theorists. More of this in the final
section, below.
This is the evidence of a crisis at hand. It is not overpowering, but it is sug-
gestive enough to warrant speculation or concern about the future.
The field of International Relations changed little in the quarter century after the
beginning of the Cold War. The behavioral revolution introduced a new panorama
of methodologies and attempted to cast the subject in the mold of science. But the
core problems, the ethical and normative concerns, and the basic images of the
world and its political actors, changed very little (Holsti 1985). An analyst in 1953,
let us say, could predict with some certainty that the essential contours of inter-
national theory would look strikingly similar two decades later. And she would
have been correct. Today, in contrast, one cannot predict with any confidence that
in 2030 international theory will resemble even slightly today’s efforts.

6.2 Constructing Travelogues

Most histories of the discipline of International Relations characterize it in terms of

a linear development of succeeding intellectual hegemonies focused on a major
problem in international politics. The crude characterization of the field, above, is
typical of our self-understanding. This view is, of course, a vast oversimplification
and is in some respects incorrect (Schmidt 1994), not the least because while some
approaches or schools may have commanded the era’s research programs, the field
has always been characterized by competing, multiple ‘voices’ (to borrow a post-
modernist term). Thus, in making predictions about the future, there is no reason to
believe that any single ‘school’ or approach will dominate to the exclusion of
others. Among other reasons, this is the case because the normative agenda of
international politics is growing and will probably continue to proliferate (Holsti
1996a).
I have chosen four travelogues to explore the future of the field. I do not claim
that these are the only possibilities. They are projections of some of the main
currents and tendencies in the field today.
64 6 Along the Road of International Theory in the Next Millennium …

Why use the term ‘travelogue?’ Because the alternative, scenario, tends to be
static. It is a photo of a state of affairs at a given time. In contrast, the travelogue
analogy suggests movement, development, the possibility of side-tracks, and no
certain destination. The point is not to get from A (today’s “state of the field,”) to B
(some imagined—preferable’—“state of the field”). The reader should develop her or
his own preference or predictions. Rather, it is to point out some of the available
routes, byways, and side-trips, as well as their main scenic characteristics. However, if
large numbers of theorists choose particular routes certain destinations—disciplinary
consequences—are likely to ensue.
The four travelogues can be termed (1) oblivion; (2) uncivil war; (3) new
consensus; and (4) one thousand blooming flowers. While these alternatives may
not exhaust the possibilities, they are mutually exclusive. Thus, there cannot be
combinations of them, some grand synthesis or reconciliation. Let us proceed with
each travelogue and explore various byways along the route.

6.2.1 Oblivion

In 1995, Bleiker (1995) delivered a paper at the Second Pan-European Conference on

International Relations entitled “Forget IR Theory.” The paper is erudite and delves
into some complex problems of language, the rise and domination of scholarly
orthodoxies, and Nitzschean philosophy. The essay, among other virtues, makes
some insightful observations about the use of language in scholarship. However, I am
less concerned with its contents than with its symbolism. It is symptomatic of a mood
in the field today: boredom. The substance of international politics—the ideas,
actions, and interactions of governments and other actors, and the problems they
create–seems no longer to be of interest to a growing number of international the-
orists. Rather, epistemology, social linguistics, ‘emancipation,’ ontology, the ideas of
fifteenth- and sixteenth-century commentators, and some forms of historical soci-
ology take over. They literally remove the world of past and contemporary practice
from cognizance and cogitation. Two hundred years of theory which sought to make
diplomatic, military, and commercial life intelligible through description, analysis,
and explanation, simply disappears. This byway leads to a dead end, or perhaps more
accurately, to a new road with a destination that bears little or no relationship to
international politics. Along this route we learn a great deal about the innumerably
contested ways of how to think about a subject matter, but almost nothing about the
subject itself. The scenery is decidedly scholastic rather than substantive. This
observation brings to mind Hedley Bull’s criticism of behavioral studies in inter-
national politics, those massive efforts that focused on methodology to the exclusion
of history, context, change, and politics. These studies, he suggested, “are as remote
from the substance of international politics as the inmates of a Victorian nunnery
were from the study of sex” (Bull 1969).
A second oblivion byway branches into many paths, each with interesting
individual characteristics and unique scenery. Collectively, the diverging roads lead
6.2 Constructing Travelogues 65

to a kind of neighborhood. We might call it ‘Identityville.’ Travelers along these

streets observe new epistemological identities; identity is the key word.
Appearance, rather than substance, defines the inhabitants of ‘Identityville.’ There
are postmodernists, post-structurahsts, critical theorists, feminist standpointers of
unlimited hues, hermeneuticians, empiricists, historical sociologists, symbolic
interactionists, and post-Marxists, just to name some of the more prominent (cf.
Smith 1995, for a similar, but more restricted categorization). We are likely to have
more candidates soon. Everything, in a sense, goes, and no one author or text
warrants more than passing interest. A prime characteristic of ‘Identityville’ is the
inhabitants’ narcissistic concern with who they are. It seems as if the purpose of
scholarship in ‘Identityville’ is not to come to greater understanding of a domain of
practice and experience called international politics, but rather to define the self.
Scholarship is about who one is, not what the subject is. This theme pervades some
of the feminist scholarship. Sylvester (1994: 59), for example, writes that:
Whereas standpointers admonish us to theorize from the lives of those we have designated as
‘others,’ or “reinvent ourselves as others,” a postmodern feminist may wonder whether it is
preferable within the feminist method to unlearn (deny) ourselves to hyphenate with others
empathetically in ways that avoid ‘progressive’ replications of past erasures and reborn
nostalgia for unity. Hence the emphasis on multiple standpoints, on being (ontologically)
several things at once in a prismatic postmodern world–a rural-black-mother-agriculturalist-
socialist-cooperator—and therefore, being homeless as a single-identity knowing Self.

Later, she concludes that “all feminisms are percolating through our postmodern
time, debating each other and all others, scripting and rescripting their own texts
and identities as they confront a world that once fixed us and now is a bit unhinged”
(Sylvester 1994: 155). It is difficult to see where an academic subject fits into these
forays into identity and subjectivities.4
A third byway has the street name ‘Forgetting.’ It branches off from
‘Identityville,’ but is still part of the neighborhood because part of the path of
subjectivism and identity is dependent upon forgetting our ancestors who did have
an overriding interest in substance. Moreover, many of these figures made truth
claims and commanded a certain amount of authority, both attributes rejected as
conceit by many of the denizens of ‘Identityville.’ Many inhabitants along
“Forgetting Street” see our ancestors as little more than egotists trying to perpetuate
themselves and their orthodoxies through graduate student groupies. Indeed, to
some, one important purpose of international theory is precisely to ‘emancipate’ us
from such authority (and for a few, ‘totalitarian’) figures. To achieve such eman-
cipation, we have to free ourselves from the shadow of the past. We learn only by
moving ahead, not by regarding our predecessors. Why should we bother reading

4
In some cases, questions of identity may affect politics, although I suspect they have been largely
overemphasized. In much of the contemporary theoretical literature, in contrast, the sources,
nature, and consequences of identity are becoming more important than interests and ideas in the
framing of foreign policy and its analysis. But if we think that the concept of “national interest”
was vague and subjective, problems of identity are infinitely more complex.
66 6 Along the Road of International Theory in the Next Millennium …

Quincy Wright, E.H. Carr, Raymond Aron, and any other number of antecedents
tainted by empiricism and other Enlightenment philosophical fallacies?5
“Forgetting Street” may indeed lead to a liberation of sorts. Anything will go,
identities will be established—however fleetingly—and for some, the political
agenda will command full-time attention. The subject, in the meantime, will dis-
appear either because of boredom or through a deliberate attempt to erase its
history. According to some inhabitants of ‘Identityville,’ intellectual emancipation
comes only when methodological and epistemological canons and foundational
figures or concepts have been eliminated. Critical “thinking space,” imagination,
and play will replace evidence as the foundation for scholarship.
Finally, the field may disappear because the distinction between the domestic
realm and the realm between states—the latter always imagined, according to some
—breaks down. This route is populated by many who do not accept the distinction
between inside and outside. Intellectual constructs, such as sovereignty, which
sustain the distinction, are coming under increasing critical scrutiny from numerous
directions Moreover, in using terms such as ‘governance’ or “international civil
society” to describe the international management of global problems or the growth
of a world community, the distinction between national and international also
begins to wear thin. The domestic analogy has always informed the analysis of
international politics, particularly in its reform guise. But if the domestic analogy
becomes a reality, then aren’t the problems of international relations the same as the
problems of political philosophy? O’Callaghan (1996: 14) writes:
There may be no valid ontological distinction between the international and domestic
spheres … [I]t needs to be asked whether it still makes sense to speak of international
politics at all … Indeed, it is appropriate to ask whether the discipline now only has an
arbitrary existence within the social sciences; an existence based on nothing more than
intellectual convention?

If we answer O’Callaghan’s question in the affirmative, we are either out of jobs

or we must become political philosophers and sociologists. This is a bold question
indeed and it needs serious consideration.

6.2.2 Uncivil War

It is possible, of course, that differences of identity, purpose, and epistemology can

coexist with a continued fascination with the subject matter of the field. There are
many virtues to intellectual pluralism. But coexistence must be based on certain

5
Commonly acknowledged as one of the greatest scholars of international relations of the twentieth
century, Quincy Wright’s works are rarely cited today. Beck (1996: 120, n. 13) reports that in a
“job talk” he attended given by an applicant from a major graduate program in the United States,
the candidate, whose theoretical focus was the problem of war, acknowledged that he had not read
any of Wright’s works. Forgetting is not confined to some post-modernists, though they may be
the only ones to adopt a deliberate strategy of erasure.
6.2 Constructing Travelogues 67

attitudes and mentalities. These would include either benign neglect or tolerance
based on mutual understanding and respect. The first attitude would not solve the
problem of oblivion, for incompatible epistemologies and methodologies would
likely lead to extreme fragmentation that may be inconsistent with the idea of a
‘field,’ ‘subject,’ or ‘discipline.’ The second attitude is not likely to predominate for
reasons enumerated.
The road of uncivil war is in fact already being chosen by some. Why? Because
the stance taken by advocates and activists of the various methodological and
epistemological persuasions often do not invite expansion, compromise, synthesis,
or reconciliation. Elsewhere (Holsti 1996a), I have spoken of the “monopoly
syndrome,” the attitude that “my approach to the subject is right, and yours is
wrong.” This is a zero-sum situation that does not accommodate strategies of
amendment, change, working at the edges, deepening, or broadening the field.6
Rather, the attitude promotes strategies of replacement, deletion, or total
non-acceptance. Zealots of IR as a science in the 1950s and 1960s adopted this
attitude, and we can see it today among some who argue that traditions, areas of
cumulation, or existing approaches to international theory are flawed because of
wrong-headed epistemologies/methodologies, or because the purposes of inquiry
are deemed illegitimate or are not sufficiently emancipatory. Usually it is a com-
bination of all. Likewise, some proponents of more traditional approaches to the
field have dismissed virtually all attempts at epistemological inquiry or interroga-
tion as ‘silly’ and worse.
But there is more along the road of uncivil war than the monopoly syndrome.
There is also deep suspicion and fear of conspiracy, hidden agendas, and unspoken
political motivations. The assumption of some postmodernists, Marxists, and crit-
ical theorists that theory and praxis are inextricably combined necessarily leads
them to look for non-benign, and sometimes nefarious, purposes in scholarship. The
claim that scholarship is necessarily political is likely to infuriate those who believe
otherwise. Those engaged in more conventional scholarship are equally convinced
that emancipatory purposes, whatever those might be, are inconsistent with the
canons of good science or the rigor demanded of high-quality analysis. But why is
this road ‘uncivil?’ Principally because of the incompatibilities involved, but also
because of the exclusionary devices developed to establish notoriety and distinc-
tiveness. Schools of thought sometimes take on the characteristics of an exclusive
club; at other times, they may resemble a gang. There are entry rituals, there is a
pantheon of intellectual heroes, there is a distinct jargon, and yes, there are even
distinct journals and publishers that cater only to specific groups. There are also
distinct denunciatory vocabularies (Rengger 1996: 226).

6
There is an inconsistency in some critiques of ‘orthodoxy.’ On the one hand, they promote the
value of ‘inclusiveness’ and open-minded dialogue. On the other, they deny any legitimacy to
‘orthodox’ representations and explanations of international politics. The purpose of the critiques
is not to amend, but to destroy, particularly all versions of Realism. For example, see George
(1994) and Bleiker (1995).
68 6 Along the Road of International Theory in the Next Millennium …

We saw these phenomena during the early days of the behavioral revolution in
the 1950s and 1960s. Today, we see similar symptoms of irreconcilability. The
objects of attack from the newer methodologies/epistemologies are not likely to
concede gracefully that 2,500 years of the study of politics based on observation,
classification, and comparison—the Aristotelian legacy—should be thrown out
because Nietzsche and other continental philosophers—but not experts on inter-
national relations—have declared that rationalism and empiricism are the sources of
much that ails the world today. There is, in other words, a great deal at stake. Much
of postmodernism and certain aspects of standpoint epistemologies are also inviting
targets for robust denunciations, critiques that are not likely to heal wounds or undo
deep cleavages. Along this road we are likely to see threats, denunciations, expo-
sures, and occasional name-calling.
There is some evidence that this road is attracting travelers, perhaps in increasing
numbers. George’s (1994) major study of Realism and neorealism has a great deal
to recommend it as a primer on alternative epistemologies and as a critique of
conventional approaches to international politics. Yet its tone is often denunciatory
rather than scholarly. The objects of his attacks are labeled either in his text or,
citing approvingly others’criticisms, as ‘totalitarian’ (p. 173), “of little substance”
(p. 119), and ‘shallow’ and ‘sterile’ (p. 133). Works of some repute in many
quarters ‘reek’ of empiricism or of ‘primitivism’ (pp. 132, 124, 127, 133).
There is not much of Realism that can be salvaged from George’s demolition
derby. One would certainly be convinced that reading Rousseau, E.H. Carr, Hans
Morgenthau, and Kenneth Waltz (in particular) would be a major waste of time at
minimum, but more likely it would be complicit with American imperialism, the
arms race, innumerable wars (including Bosnia and Kosovo), and the Holocaust.7
Realism and neorealism are not just abstract explanatory theories of a world “out
there,” according to George. They are major reasons why the world is as bad off as
it is and thus anyone who ‘subscribes’ to it by, or example, teaching it or using it as
an analytical framework, adds to the complicity.
The scenery along the road of uncivil war is not very pretty. There are many
victims—or at least scholars feel victimized—the vocabulary is often excessive, and
suspicion lurks everywhere. And uncivil wars among scholars, like those within
states, tend to be long, nasty, and brutish. The conflicts tend to become personalized
after enough uncivil behavior appears. The struggle over ideas may become a fig
leaf for more personal vendettas. The profession as a whole suffers, and outsiders in
particular will marvel at the ways that academics sometimes conduct their debates.
They will note that today theorists of international politics appear to quarrel over
metaphysical rather than substantive issues, and they will see little of relevance to
their own lives. In a decade or so we might look back—some with nostalgia, others
with relief—on the “Great Epistemological Pause” of the 1990s. Or, just possibly, a

7
One wonders how many critics of Realism have actually read Morgenthau’s works. Many ritual
denunciations reveal a serious lack of familiarity with his oeuvre.
6.2 Constructing Travelogues 69

new wave, fashion, theory, or problem will conquer everyone’s imagination, fas-
cination, dedication, and research funds.

6.2.3 A New Consensus

This would mean a new consensus. There would be a main highway that sustains
and guides traffic in one direction. Side-roads exist, but they are less densely
populated. Debates between the followers of this route refer primarily to technical
aspects of the way rather than to ultimate destinations. A new problématique,
accompanied by an epistemological consensus, would command moral, political,
social, and therefore, scholarly attention.
During the past few decades many problems have commanded theoretical
attention. These include issues of reciprocity and equity (international political
economy and dependency theory), social power relations (gender studies), issues of
quality of life and aesthetics (environmental problems), and international ethics.
This proliferation of moral/political concerns has led to the diversification of the
field and to the development of many competing and often incompatible theoretical
designs. All of them, nevertheless, go under the term “international theory.” I have
argued elsewhere that while all these endeavors have value, interest, and a proper
place in an expanded field, their theoretical renderings are essentially incommen-
surable (Holsti 1971, 1985, 1996a, b). Is it possible that, in contrast, any single
socially constructed problem will once again gain predominance, as the problem of
peace and war held for more than two centuries?
We might briefly list some candidates:
1. Equity, Reciprocity, and Affluence: Dependency theory had great appeal pre-
cisely because it addressed a glaring problem that remained outside the purview
of Realism and various forms of liberalism: the inequitable distribution of
welfare throughout the world. But there are many reasons why this problem is
not likely to unify the field of international theory. The United Nations annual
Human Development reports chronicle an amazing growth of human welfare in
the past decades, even though this record is marred by continued severe
deprivations and even worsening conditions in some countries since the 1960s.
In comparative historical terms, however, there has been a marked and pro-
gressive transformation in the human condition, and there appears to be massive
public optimism (or is it indifference?) that this progress will continue.
Moreover, financial shortages, high unemployment rates, donor fatigue, envi-
ronmental concerns within and among the richer countries, and the seeming
victory of orthodox economics also militate against the world equity
problématique. The persistence of massive corruption, human rights abuses, and
autocratic politics in poor countries do not help the cause either.
2. Global governance: This second candidate, linked at least in part to the first, has
numerous possibilities in both diagnostic and prescriptive dimensions. A variety
70 6 Along the Road of International Theory in the Next Millennium …

of questions come to mind: (a) under what circumstances is there likely to be the
rise or development of international means of regulation, management, or
reform? (b) how can these work effectively alongside national governments?
(c) what does the growth of international governance mean for the concept and
practices of sovereignty? and of political, social, and cultural diversity? (d) what
are the possibilities for and limitations of domestic analogies? (e) and from a
prescriptive point of view, how can we reconcile more global governance with
freedom and liberty? (cf. Waever 1996)
The study of global governance reemerged under the title of “liberal institu-
tionalism” in the 1980s and 1990s. This subfield has become among the most
fully articulated theoretical and comparative ventures available today. But the
idea of global governance may not be sufficiently attractive to form a new core
of international theory. Those concerned with environmental issues will con-
tinue to point to the need for state-coordinated, or centralized world manage-
ment. But others hold deep reservations about using domestic analogies,
particularly those emanating from Western liberal experience, as a template for
global management and institutions. Governance suggests control, influence,
power, and even dictation. It goes without saying that system-wide governance
of any form will largely reflect the values, interests, and policy priorities of the
rich. Global governance also clashes with some peoples’ desiderata of localism,
spontaneity, and ideas about a growing international civil society. There may be
a contradiction between the ostensible need for global and regional governance,
and the ideological preference for local action and, above all, for ‘emancipa-
tion.’ Another problem is that in these domains partisanship may clash with high
quality diagnosis and theory construction.
3. System transformation: There is already a vibrant literature that seeks to uncover
the essential characteristics of, and the main trends in, the contemporary inter-
national system. Since the end of the Cold War we have seen theses that there
will no longer be any basic ideological conflicts with the victory of liberal
capitalism (Fukuyama), or of a much more pessimistic bent, that conflicts will
become even more intractable because they will reflect deep cultural cleavages
(Huntington 1993) rather than mere state interests. Prognostications for the
Third World, or what remains of it, are even more pessimistic (Kaplan 1994).
Several have suggested that we are now entering an era of two different types of
international politics: the first will become an expanding pluralistic security
community where war will become an exceptional event, and where common
values will help mute commercial rivalries (Goldgeier/McFaul 1992;
Singer/Wildavsky 1993). The second will see continuing and even accelerating
conflicts, mostly surrounding the collapse of Third World states, and ethnic and
religious wars (Holsti 1992, 1996a, b). We will need, then, to employ different
conceptual apparatuses to understand the dynamics and sources of change in the
“two worlds” (for other examples, see Scott 1982; Elkins 1991; Rosenau 1990;
Zacher 1991; Spruyt 1994; Elkins 1995; Linklater 1996; Rosenau 1996; and
Deibert 1997).
6.2 Constructing Travelogues 71

Can the themes of systemic change reunify the field? At first glance, one would
think that many of the fissiparous tendencies of international theory over the
past decade could be reduced or slowed down by a problematique as interesting
and significant as system transformation.
But most analysts of systemic change have focused so far on all those elements
that seem to be bringing the world closer together and/or subverting the concept
and practices of sovereignty. We appear to be myopic on this score, for parallel
to the manifold processes of globalization are the continuing processes of
fragmentation. Political fragmentation, often manifested by the quest for
sovereignty, has been a trend with surely as much significance as integration or
‘globalism.’ I wrote (Holsti 1980) some time ago that the most significant
political trend is not the ‘withering’ of the state so much as the growing number
of new states. Any international system that grows from fifty-two sovereign
members to almost two hundred states in one-half century is undergoing a
transformation in the sense that, as Lenin argued, at some point quantitative
change produces qualitative change I also suggested that the blossoming of
statehood may be a response to the homogenizing forces of globalization.
Rosenau (1996) has similarly acknowledged that globalization is not the only
game in town, and that what he calls ‘localism’ may be in part a response to
those processes and forces that apparently ‘shrink’ the world. We thus have a
paradox that could set an agenda for significant theoretical work in the future: if
sovereignty as an institution, concept, and set of practices is being undermined,
or is waning, why is it that today we have almost four times as many
sovereignties as we did a mere half-century ago? And why is it that, given
present trends, we may have another dozen new sovereignties within another
decade?8 There are rich possibilities for significant theoretical work focused on
the problematique of system transformation.
There is a further problem. To what extent are the changes so notably theorized
about in the contemporary literature strongly biased by geography and culture?
Analysts of ‘globalization,’ “planet earth” the destruction of space/time dis-
tinctions, the “erosion of sovereignty” the growth of a universal “civil society,”
and the like, notably overlook some persisting characteristics that are more than
local artifacts or anomalies. For one, a large portion of the world’s 7 billion
inhabitants are not hooked cognitively, commercially, or emotionally into any
sort of community beyond their village or valley. Hundreds of millions remain
illiterate, have no conception of societies other than their own, scratch out a
subsistence living, and have absolutely no prospect of being “tuned in” or
‘wired’ during their lifetimes. The approximately one billion mostly
high-income, North American, Asian and European Internet users are hardly

8
Candidates include Quebec, the formal partition of Somalia and Sudan (already de facto),
Myanmar, Northern Ireland, Bougainville, Taiwan, Bosnia, and Cyprus.
72 6 Along the Road of International Theory in the Next Millennium …

representative of the global population. Other trends are equally problematic.

Despite the availability of global news media the overwhelming proportion of
‘news’ remains local and national. There is little evidence that most people are
today, compared to the past, better informed, more knowledgeable, or more
interested in events, trends, and practices outside of the communities with which
they identify.9 If universal system change is going to be a primary focus for
future theoretical effort, there must be a major attempt to rid the subject of its
cultural and geographic biases and limitations.
4. ‘Emancipation’: This term has been used both in the epistemological and
political sense, with an explicit connection between the realm of ideas and
action. This theme reflects the continuation of a long intellectual tradition, going
back to Marx and beyond. The claim here is that scholars have an obligation to
promote certain types of change. Theory and practice, a la Marx, are insepa-
rable, although frequently in this type of analysis the demands for change take
precedence over scholarly rigor. Nevertheless, many recent statements by
international theorists are making the case for emancipation as the predominant
function of the field (cf. Smith 1996). But, as in the case of terrorism, one
person’s emancipation could well be regarded by others as a means of intel-
lectual serfdom. A great discussion about the ends of political action is not likely
to promote values of scholarly discourse or the definition of a field. In the
absence of a new conception of the nature and purposes of scholarship, the
emancipatory agenda is not likely to form the core of future theories of inter-
national relations.
5. An entirely new perspective on international relations or international politics:
From somewhere in the world’s political peripheries, an entirely new concep-
tualization of international studies could emerge. It could have great appeal
because it will carry no Cold War baggage, or the conceptual apparatus of
classical European diplomatic/military institutions and behavior. It will reflect
processes that are at work in large areas of the world and which have significant
impacts on political-commercial-military life. Fundamentalist Islam is one
possibility. There are no other candidates on the horizon, but we must leave
open the possibility that someone will conceptualize the world, its trends, and
processes in ways that are at once intellectually attractive, politically relevant,
and non-parochial.

9
Some anecdotal evidence supports the claim. Figaro, a major national daily in France, in its
edition of May 19, 1995, contained less than one-half page of foreign news in a total of thirty-nine
pages for the issue. CNN’s “Prime News” on May 29, 1997 contained only 10 seconds of news
that did not directly involve the United States. CNN’s World News of the same date, a 1 hour
review of the day’s events, contained not a single item of news about events outside of the United
States. At the time, elections were going on in France and Canada, the new president was sworn
into office in the Congo, and many other foreign items in the New York Times of that date were not
even mentioned.
6.3 The Fourth Travelogue: One Thousand Blooming Flowers 73

6.3 The Fourth Travelogue: One Thousand Blooming

Flowers

The assumption that the field can be unified around a single normative problem, as
it was for most of its history, should not be uncritically accepted today. The past of
the field, constructed around the antinomies of international conflict and coopera-
tion, is no necessary template for future developments. Indeed, if we can avoid the
oblivion and uncivil war travelogues, we might continue along a trajectory that is
already established: the vibrant proliferation of problems, epistemologies, levels of
theoretical reflexivity, and issue areas. The pluralism of international theory,
expressed already in the age of Rousseau and Bentham, is blossoming today to
include all sorts of new developments. The increased number of journals and other
publications in the field reflects the luxuriant growth of perspectives, debates, and
approaches. There is much to be said for this view, and anyone who compares the
present state of discourse with what was available in the 1950s or 1960s would have
to acknowledge that the field is more intellectually vibrant today than it has been for
a long time. Indeed, one could argue that International Relations in its theoretical
guise is following the trend of other social science disciplines: increased special-
ization and fragmentation, but also increased theoretical self-awareness.
The thousands of flowers travelogue, featuring streets, paths, highways, tracks,
and culs-de-sac that go in no particular direction nor toward any destination, might
bring a good deal of discomfort for those who use frameworks, concepts, lenses,
and other devices that help make sense of complexity. Those who are comfortable
with all the ‘voices’ of international theory or who have presented antinomies,
argument, debate, and powerful insights—ranging from Heeren to Hertz, Rousseau
to Russett, Bentham to Bull, Wilson to Waltz, Kant to Keohane, and Hobson to
Hoffmann, to mention just a few—will miss the rich tapestry of high-level intel-
lectual debate. In a more populist, post-structural mode, however, we would listen
to the voices of all of those who have been marginalized and excluded in those
debates. Micro perspectives would replace macro-perspectives. The denizens of fish
markets, peasant rebellions, the members of the Talibans of the world, and other
marginalized and ‘silenced’ voices would provide the substance of a discourse
taking place in an environment of flux, paradox, fragmentation, and no known
certainties.
Can there be synthesis in this fourth travelogue? Can the best of the many
blooming flowers serve as some beginning point (as opposed to ‘foundation’) for
analysis? I think not. In previous debates in the field, there was a corpus of
intersubjective consensus on the means to knowledge and an agreement on what are
the crucial problems to explore and to explain. Disagreements arose out of ques-
tions of how best to describe and characterize the main features of a limited domain
populated by diplomats, governments, warriors, and commercial agents, how best to
explain patterns and anomalies, and how best to solve the problems that these
figures create for humanity. In the fourth travelogue, there is no agreement on
substance, but more important, there is not even agreement on the question of “how
74 6 Along the Road of International Theory in the Next Millennium …

do we know?” Indeed, as I have argued, most of the so-called Third Debate in

International Relations is a debate about thought, not about substance. The problem
is that the numerous positions that have developed on “how to think” are mostly
incommensurable and incomparable. Consider Table 6.1, which outlines some of
the main tenets of two epistemological extremes: a rigorous ‘scientific’ approach
compared to a poststructuralist approach.

Table 6.1 Characteristics of theoretical inquiry: two extremes

Main characteristics
Functions of theories
Main units of analysis
Role of
historical/political/cultural
context
Bases of truth claims
Substance of the fields
Results
‘Science’
1. Causal
analysis/correlations
2. Make complexity more
intelligible
3. Knowledge
4. Provide authoritative
foundations for
problem-solving/prescription
1. Macro (elitist)
(governments, systems,
leaders)
1. Variable, depending upon
theoretical framework, but
generally held constant to
enable cross-temporal and
cross-spatial comparisons
1. Disciplined observation
2. Replication
3. Consensus of peers
4. Confidence in data
5. Isomorphism
6. Previous achievement
1. Practices/ideas/purpose of
major actors
2. Sources, nature, and
changes in international
institutions
3. Dynamics/change of
international system
1. Cumulation
2. Confidence
3. Consensus—discipline
4. Theory
Poststructuralism(s)
1. Emancipation
2. Create identities
3. Empathy with marginalized
‘voices’
4. Interrogate all previous
knowledge claims
1. Micro (‘popular’) (exiled,
dissident, marginal ‘voices’)
2. Identities of ordinary people
3. Identities of scholars
1. All-important
1. Extent to which knowledge
advances emancipation
2. Truth claims are social
constructs and texts, open to
innumerable interpretations
and meanings
3. Epistemological
individualism
1. ‘Interrogation’ of truth
claims, critical examination of
concepts approaches,
paradigms, etc.
2. Listen to ‘marginalized’/
excluded ‘voices’
3. Locate identities
1. Situated knowledge
2. Celebrate paradox, flux,
change
3. Freedom
6.3 The Fourth Travelogue: One Thousand Blooming Flowers 75

The table demonstrates the vast distances that separate the two extremes in terms
of the functions of theory (the most important question), actors, the role of context,
and the like. There is nothing here to synthesize. One can become more sensitive to
the role of context in political analysis, which necessarily moves the diagnosis from
the pure science format to something that incorporates more judgment and indi-
vidual interpretation. But one cannot combine at once the desideratum of gener-
alization, which is the hallmark of theory, to a wholesale commitment to the study
of individual ‘voices’ and ‘identities,’ which are by definition highly contingent,
unique, and non-recurrent. And can one combine a commitment to rigorous
method, consensual knowledge, and replicability with a more overriding commit-
ment to emancipation? One can try of course, as Marxists did for more than one
century. Political necessity—emancipation—ruled ‘truth,’ or put in another way,
truth served the interests of emancipation and millions perished as a result. The
reader can judge to what extent there is room for synthesis in the remaining cate-
gories of the table.
The fourth travelogue, then, is an exploration of the benefits and costs (excuse
the logocentrism here) of hyper-fragmentation. However much some may decry the
notion of a ‘field,’ ‘discipline,’ or ‘subject,’ and the ways that they may constrict
and constrain, without some guiding notions of substance, there can be only the
conclusion of “anything goes.” This, of course, is a recipe for self-destruction and
since I have been one of the beneficiaries of the agonies and delights for several
decades of theorizing about international politics, I will not endorse this as a pro-
ductive road to the future. At some point, choices will have to be made. Some will
no doubt feel marginalized and victimized, but there is always the alternative of
migrating to intellectual homesteads that are more congenial to questions of iden-
tity, ethnography, and anthropology.
The solution to the problem of hyper-fragmentation, as Brown has suggested
(1994: 236), is neither to decry the loss of a central guiding problem, nor to
celebrate uncritically any noise that rings with the “register of freedom.” It may be,
rather, “a time for making distinctions, for (gently) weeding out seedlings that do
not seem likely to grow, while giving sustenance to others which seem to be taking
root.” The motto might be “growth with discipline.”

6.4 Conclusion

I have outlined several possibilities that might develop to bring a new coherence to
the field. All remain possibilities, some of them remote, others with a higher
probability. The reader no doubt can make his or her own judgments about the
future. My comments are designed to think about theory. As a subject for debate,
discussion, and policy prescription commentators on “international affairs” will go
on no matter what theorists do. But, I would argue, international theory has a
lengthy tradition and a valuable scholarly and public role to play: it can make more
intelligible a world often characterized by observable patterns, repetitions, and
76 6 Along the Road of International Theory in the Next Millennium …

structural regularities. Theory creates understanding of the larger picture, the

background, the basic trends, the links between what on first sight may appear
non-comparable, and the commonalties and differences that transcend time, place,
and personality. Theory also helps identify true anomalies, and shows us how
practices, institutions, and ideas combine to produce that which often endures as
well as that which is genuinely changing. There are just too many people who are
interested in more than the opinion on the latest events of the day. If we cannot
conceive of political science, sociology, or psychology without theory, it is equally
hard to envision the vast realm of international politics as one that fails to generate
systematic speculation, characterization, and explanation.
If am pressed to make a prognostication, it would be reasonably optimistic
despite the evidence that the roads to oblivion, uncivil war, and hyper-
fragmentation are already densely populated. I have faith that those who practice
erasing, exclusionary, or denunciatory strategies will ultimately tone down their
rhetoric and come to realize that there is much of value in the tradition of the field.
And those who resist new approaches, once they come to appreciate their contri-
butions, may well begin incorporating their perspectives. Rather than resist at all
costs, they can mine new epistemologies and methodologies for insights, analytical
frameworks, and other tools for a broadened scholarship. While international theory
will never again be a unified field because its normative sources differ (Holsti
1996a, b), in more optimistic moments we might envisage a field that matures in
philosophical depth and self-consciousness, but which is also aware of actual
political dilemmas in the world.

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Chapter 7
Hindrances to Understanding
in International Relations

7.1 Introduction

The academic field of international relations has developed through many diverse
routes: as an art (e.g., diplomacy, war), as a philosophy (e.g., theories of interna-
tional law), as history, and as science, broadly conceived.1 International relations,
compared, say, to economics or psychology, has always been a synthetic field
combining insights, concepts, and methodologies from diverse sources. Its ‘truths’
and understandings thus necessarily diverge depending on the theoretical and
epistemological perspectives brought to bear on a particular problem. The world
examined through the lenses of demography will look different than the world
scrutinized by social psychologists. We have accepted these diverse perspectives
for decades. But discussions of epistemologies seem to generate much more con-
troversy We should acknowledge that positivist, hermeneutic, and critical per-
spectives may all contribute to understanding—depending on what we want to
know—but if debates are conducted on the assumption that only one may make a
legitimate claim to scholarly authority, there is going to be a good deal of
misunderstanding arising from the resulting polemics. Because the discipline’s
epistemological, historical, and ontological sources are so varied, we will always
have ‘perspectivism’ and theoretical pluralism. Pluralism is also the product of the
vast domain that has to be made sensible. Whatever the units of analysis—whether
they be individuals, genders, groups, nations, states, organizations, or their literally
billions of historical and contemporary ideas, activities, transactions, and relation-
ships—these units have to be simplified into types, patterns, trends, and significant
anomalies. Without attempts at such intellectual ‘compression,’ there could be no
coherent field of study.

1
This text was first published as: “Hindrances to Understanding in International Relations,”
Chap. 2, pp. 27–45 in Jose V. Ciprut (ed). The Art of the Feud: Reconceptualizing International
Relations. Westport CT: Praeger, 2000. The permission to republish this text was granted on 10
March 2015 by the Copyright Clearance Center.

© The Author(s) 2016 79

K. Holsti, Kalevi Holsti: A Pioneer in International Relations Theory, Foreign
Policy Analysis, History of International Order, and Security Studies, SpringerBriefs
on Pioneers in Science and Practice 41, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-26624-4_7
80 7 Hindrances to Understanding in International Relations

7.2 On Understanding

The task is to examine hindrances to understanding. The latter term is itself con-
tested—it has no fewer than nine major lexical meanings—thus, a few words of
interpretation of it are in order. Hollis/Smith (1991) have provided us with a
valuable excursion of the differences between explanation (causation) and under-
standing, between formal scientific explanation and social construction. In my view,
both are necessary components of a more general understanding of the entities,
structures, and processes of international relations. Both empirical-positivist and
social constructivist research strategies may pay off. Whether one form of analysis
is more appropriate than another depends on the nature of the materials examined
and on the purposes of the inquiry. What they have in common is their concern to
make complexities more intelligible, or to impose some type of intellectual order on
phenomena that seem, at first glance, to be chaotic or lacking pattern or devoid of
underlying similarities. An analogy may illustrate.
To the proverbial person from Mars, or even to the average citizen in most
countries in the world, the game of cricket when observed for the first time makes
no sense. That is, we cannot understand it except for the vague knowledge that
because it is a competitive game the purpose of it must be to win. But without
knowledge of rules, the hundreds of distinct activities in the field may appear
senseless if not totally chaotic. While there may not be precise analogues to the
rules of the cricket game and international relations, we can make international
relations intelligible (understandable) only if from the welter of distinct activities we
begin to observe patterns, repetitions, regular processes, as well as some similarities
among and across actors. In international relations studies, as in cricket, we must
make classifications; classifications make sense only if there are repeated and
patterned behaviors. This is fundamental. Without classifications, we could not
identify statics, changes, trends, and anomalies. The act of classification of course
imposes some sort of order on ‘facts,’ but if the facts themselves did not suggest
some sort of order in the first place, the classification probably could not be made. It
is only because the players in cricket repeat their activities that we can begin to infer
what is going on. And by observing, we can begin to make sense; there is a bowler,
hitter, and fielders, and although the trajectory of the ball changes with each pitch or
hit, certain things repeat. Our understanding increases.
But if a fan of the game had told us at the beginning all the rules of the game, not
only would our understanding of it have been achieved more quickly and with more
authority, but we would also have been able to identify the unusual—the
anomaly—that may make the game more interesting. In seeking understanding,
then, we search not only for patterns, repetition, and rules but also for the excep-
tional event.
However, the game itself may not be all we want to learn. We may also want to
explore the ‘meaning’ of the game as a social phenomenon, as a metric of class
divisions, or as one of imperialism’s many exports. We may want to raise such
questions that are not made obvious from the data of the game.
7.2 On Understanding 81

These are mundane observations, to be sure, but in many of our scholars’

excursions into epistemology, ontology, and metatheory, we sometimes lose sight
of one of our common purposes as international relations scholars: to make a
seemingly difficult and often chaotic field of ideas, activity, and practice more
intelligible through the process of classification and, moreover, of contextualiza-
tion. Philosophical analysis may help identify biases, alert us to the political and
social implications of our findings, focus attention on things we did not examine—
the famous ‘silences’ of postmodernism—and render problematic assumptions and
concepts that we tend to use uncritically. These are all pluses. But philosophy (or
metatheory) is not the purpose of the study of international relations; it is an aid to
understanding, as are statistics, knowledge of foreign languages, research funds,
travel and firsthand experience abroad, adequate acquaintance with the historical
and contemporary literatures of the field, familiarity with bodies of knowledge,
reliable data and evidence, and many other supports of scholarship. Thus,
metatheoretical discussion should not be privileged over the numerous other nec-
essary components of intellectual competence.
These introductory words reflect my personal views toward some of the issues
that have generated debates and polemics in the so-called crisis of international
relations of the past decade. In these discussions, one often sees the roots of
misunderstanding, with scholars engaged in lengthy debates that seem ever more
distant from the subject we purportedly wish to understand better. How do we know
there is misunderstanding? There are at least two indicators: lack of mutual
awareness and intellectual closure. The first is demonstrated in the institutional
limitations to learning and dissemination of knowledge. The second is revealed in
the intolerance that sometimes pervades debates in the field. The first problem is
relatively simple because it refers to practices, habits, and constraints that can be
ameliorated through communication, determination, and funding. The second is
probably insoluble, although awareness may help bring more mutual tolerance and
understanding to the theoretical diversity that is a necessary characteristic of the
field.

7.3 Institutional Hindrances to Understanding

Some of the institutional barriers to mutual understanding are not always

acknowledged in many of the theoretical debates that surround the field today.
Knowledge of a foreign language, for example, may open up new worlds that help
create or develop understanding and insight.2 Lack of such knowledge necessarily
restricts a universalist understanding. Research funds help provide access not only
to information but also to time for speculation and introspection. Disparities of such

2
It is perhaps one of the curiosities of contemporary debates in international theory that the
relevant literatures happen to be predominantly in the English language.
82 7 Hindrances to Understanding in International Relations

resources help to explain the continuing gaps in qualities and quantities of

scholarship around the world (cf. Holsti 1985: Chap. 6).
Travel and firsthand experience increase the probabilities of enhancing under-
standing—understanding in the sense both of intelligibility/causation and of making
us aware of the extent to which our perceptions, theories, and other means of
organizing observations and knowledge may be bounded by space and time. The
inductive generalizations generated by policy makers are an often necessary anti-
dote to the abstract theoretical formulations of academics who occupy offices and
libraries and form their visions of the world through the New York Times and
television news. The tensions between theorists and practitioners are well known
and need no repeating here. Suffice it to say that communication between them ends
when the one is unable to make any sweeping generalizations from vast experience
in the field, and the other engages primarily in epistemological and lofty
metatheoretical argument. The one drowns in a sea of hyper-factualism, the other in
an ocean of metaphysics. Caught in the middle, the student learns little of lasting
value about international relations, and one social role of theory—pedagogy—
becomes compromised and, in some instances, maybe even impossible.
In wealthy societies, almost all these institutional and practical hindrances to
understanding can be overcome by funds, determination, and time. In poorer
societies, the working conditions of academics are such that it is difficult if not
impossible to travel and to launch sustained research programs, which have as their
main purpose the increase of knowledge and understanding, as distinct from
explaining, justifying, or buttressing the policies of the author’s government.

7.4 Disagreement and Misunderstanding

Academics read each other’s works, they cite each other, and some of them even
engage in coherent research programs. Numerous authors write of ‘progress’ in the
field, there is some evident cumulation, and occasionally research dead-ends are
acknowledged and abandoned. There are, of course lengthy debates and disagree-
ments on whether the field is a discipline, whether it can or should develop along
trajectories similar to those of the physical, natural, or other social sciences, and
which methodologies are most appropriate. I know of no field in which such
debates do not exist. Such disagreements lie at the heart of all scholarship and are
often essential for creating understanding. They indicate that the parties at least
agree on the questions, even though they may have different answers or strategies
for locating answers. Disagreement is not the same as misunderstanding. The latter
is indicated when people speak past each other. When is this the case? Usually, it is
when people believe they are right and all others are wrong. It is seen in the habit or
stance of arguing that my methodology or, worse still, my metatheoretical prefer-
ence is valid, whereas yours is not; that my school of thought (or, as current jargon
has it, my project) offers the only way to approach the field, whereas yours does not
7.4 Disagreement and Misunderstanding 83

(cf. Brecher 1995: 5). We can call this the “monopoly syndrome.” Why do such
attitudes exist?
Numerous explanations are possible. In an age when one’s ‘identity’ appears so
important, scholars may wish to pigeonhole themselves and others as means of
creating both distinction and distinctiveness. Other explanations derive from the
sociology of academic life. Those who launch or introduce a new ‘school’ or
approach to the subject may garner the greatest reputational and status rewards. The
exclusiveness, authority, and validity or a particular approach are of course com-
promised when other schools or approaches claim equal status. In some ways, the
academic enterprise, particularly in North America, is a zero-sum game. We should
also mention faddism, the need for one generation to make its theoretical mark in
order to distinguish itself from its predecessors; and the appeals of intellectual
constructs that are more complex, sophisticated, and suggestive than, for example,
the relatively simple desiderata of the scientific method.
But perhaps the greatest source of the “monopoly syndrome” in international
theory is the fact that theory’ involves value choices. Whatever methodologies,
approaches, or epistemologies are employed, ultimately the theoretical enterprise is
normative. Why is this the case?

7.5 The Processes of Theoretical Innovation

To get some clues, perhaps the best way to proceed is to chronicle what theorists of
international relations do and for what purposes. What theorists should do is
another matter and—given the nature of the materials with which we work and the
very different social contexts for different academics—one upon which we can
hardly expect agreement. The scenario described below offers only a rough rep-
resentation of the main types of activities of the theoretical enterprise.
Theory usually begins with the identification of a problem. A problem is often a
social construct. Depending on era or some particular culture, the condition may be
seen as a preordained act of god(s), a regular force of nature, or a case of historical
inevitability. This is how war was seen through most of recorded history. For as
long as war was deemed inevitable, it was not seen as a ‘problem’ in the sense that
one could or should analyze it and/or do something about it.
The study of international relations as a distinct field of inquiry developed as a
response to the problem of war. Until war was socially perceived as a ‘problem,’
whose sources resided in human agency (and which could be managed, controlled,
eliminated by human design), there was little systematic study of it as a phe-
nomenon. The problem of war, and its derivatives of peace, stability, security,
and/or order, has come to form the core intellectual question of international
relations over the past 300 years or so. Elsewhere (Holsti 1985), I have termed this
the “classical tradition.” Whatever the methodologies, the perspectives, or the
schools of international relations, writing, research, and pedagogy focused on this
problem. More recently, analysts have begun to identify other, and sometimes
84 7 Hindrances to Understanding in International Relations

competing, problems. These include trade, commerce, and technology, international

governance (though it is not a new field), quality of life as influenced by envi-
ronmental destruction, and relations between peoples, nations, genders, and
‘identities.’
To claim that these problems require systematic inquiry is to make a value
choice reflecting moral and ethical concerns. The focus on war expresses an abiding
priority with the security of independent political communities and with saving
lives. The problems of trade, commerce, and technology reflect values of efficiency,
equity, and reciprocity, as well as of the quality of life. Theorizing about envi-
ronmental problems indicates similar priorities but also adds both ethical and
aesthetic dimensions. Relations between individuals, classes, groups, genders, and
‘identities’ are templates of more general concerns surrounding power, equity, and
justice. When we enter into these realms, our debates about the ultimate value of
particular subjects, and over particular approaches or ‘schools,’ are likely to become
intense and often exclusionary.
Is it the case that all inquiry begins with the analysis of a moral/social/political
‘problem’? No. Curiosity is also excited by the unexpected, the unusual, the
unknown and novel, and the dramatic. We enter the realm of theory when devia-
tions from standard patterns or expectations appear. Witness the explosion of
explanatory studies on the end of the Cold War, the explorations of the “democratic
peace,” the fate of the state in an era of ‘globalism,’ the resurgence of ‘regionalism,’
and other topics that deal with current anomalies and trends. Notice also, however,
that because these studies converge on an identifiable problem around which there
is reasonable consensus, the debates are rarely exclusionary.
Finally, theory itself drives theory. Theory develops from the identification of
logical, empirical, or epistemological problems in existing renderings of interna-
tional relations. Epistemological debates, the tensions between theory and praxis,
and methodological concerns stimulate efforts to correct, improve, or replace
existing bodies of knowledge or theoretical perspectives. Lack of isomorphism
between conventional theoretical constructs and common observations of interna-
tional practice may spawn new perspectives. Many will challenge ‘truths’ dear to
the leaders of the profession. Currently, for example, the appearance of critical and
postmodern perspectives has stimulated significant debates at the metatheoretical
level but also some robust polemics that betray bruised egos on all sides.
Most important, certain new perspectives, such as those emanating from critical
theory, may broaden the parameters of the field by problematizing that which is
ordinarily taken for granted. Cox (1986: 201) summarizes it well:
[Theory] is critical in the sense that it stands apart from the prevailing order of the world
and asks how that order came about. Critical theory … 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. It is directed toward
an appraisal of the very framework for action, or problematic, which problem-solving
theory accepts as its parameters.
7.5 The Processes of Theoretical Innovation 85

Cox here attempts to broaden the perspectives of the field and to increase
understanding. It is a strategy of addition. There is no claim to delete what is known
from previous scholarship. But some approaches have less constructive dimensions.
They often adopt exclusionary and denunciatory coloration. The zealots of science
during the 1950s and 1960s, like some contemporary poststructuralists, signaled
intolerance by the copious overuse of invented vocabulary and complex jargon and
also by requiring a mastery of the works of a pantheon of intellectual heroes who
may be obscure in the field and who usually have no expertise in the subject.
A multitude of boundary-marking code words distinguish insiders from outsiders.
All that went on before is dismissed as wrongheaded and valueless. Scholars
sometimes deliberately use such exclusionary strategies to distinguish (and also
distance) themselves from others and to support their claims of having found the
ultimate truth.
Theory may also arise from almost pure acts of creativity New conceptualiza-
tions of the world, as Wright’s (1955) development of Kurt Lewin’s field theory or
Kaplan’s (1957) elaboration of Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s general systems theory,
do not emerge from identifiable or demonstrable moral/political problems or from
epistemological or philosophical critiques of existing theories. They are sui generis
and demonstrate the capacity of humans to imagine purely abstract representations
of complex phenomena. Because they are often radically different, unusual,
abstract, and detached, they face difficulties of operationalization and conversion
into research programs. But even in these, a moral/political purpose may lurk; often
the purely abstract rendering of complexity hides an imagined better world.

7.6 From Problem Identification

and Choice to Diagnosis

Once a topic is selected—and I repeat that, often, this is implicitly or explicitly a

moral/political choice—the diagnosis begins. The purpose here is, first, to identify
the nature and dimensions of the problem and, second, to locate its sources, that is,
its necessary and/or sufficient causes or conditions. In the case of war, we have a
rich literature that, as Waltz (1959) has summarized for us, locates sources at
different levels of analysis and with different degrees of explanatory authority and
validity. Since there are significant differences of authority and validity, there are
also numerous analytical/explanatory systems that compete with each other.
Rousseau’s explanation of war, via the stag hunt analogy, is a brilliant analysis if
we are content to understand why wars recur in an anarchical system. But it cannot
account for the variation in war incidence and participation by different countries
and regions of the world, and hence it may pass only the test of sufficient expla-
nation, without specifying the necessary conditions. For these, we have to turn to
different analytical levels.
86 7 Hindrances to Understanding in International Relations

Dependency theories demonstrate the same patterns. Once a problem (inequal-

ity) is identified, its essential characteristics and dimensions are described, often
empirically and then accounted for at different levels of analysis using different
methodologies. The theory remains contested, however, because of significant
anomalies, lack of consensus on the main explanatory factors, and different diag-
noses of those factors.

7.7 From Diagnosis to Prescription

Implicit or explicit within diagnoses is a ‘solution’ to the problem. The solution

may be epistemological, historical, political, or social; it can be realistic or utopian;
but if the diagnosis is sound—and there is rarely consensus that it is—then there
seems to be things individuals, groups, or governments can do to manage, alleviate,
control, or eliminate the problem. I take this as one of the meanings that Cox (1986:
esp. 207) conveyed in his famous statement that theory is always ‘for’ someone or
something.3
This observation, then, takes us to the final step: offering solutions to the
problem. It is at this point that the theorist may become a partisan. Rousseau,
Bentham, Mill, Wilson, Carr, and Waltz were all, in their own fashion, policy
advocates. They offered solutions to the problems they had analyzed.
Some, like Woodrow Wilson, were in a position to change the world, to
accommodate their diagnoses and prescriptions (and in the case of Wilson, they
demonstrated how the theories were flawed); others became publicists and even
propagandists, with variable influence on policy makers.
Is it possible to reconcile partisanship with scholarship? Were we to acknowl-
edge that the selection of problems for analysis is often a moral/political/social
choice, how could we go about diagnosing them in such a manner that our preferred
or assumed solutions do not take precedence over high-quality diagnosis based on
reliable evidence? Whatever the shortcomings of science, at least there is an explicit
concern with questions of the quality of evidence. Such is seldom the case with
partisan pursuits. Wilson’s championing of the concept of national
self-determination as a just solution to the problem of European wars, for example,

3
A less generous interpretation, and one that is open to serious criticism, is the thinking of some
postmodernist and poststructuralist critics who argue that theories of international relations are
little more than apologias for vested interests, in particular those of the American capitalist Cold
War state (cf. George 1994). This rendering displays little familiarity with the development of
international theory over the centuries. Rousseau’s highly critical stance against monarchism,
Woodrow Wilson’s theoretical subversion of the principles of Realpolitik, and Karl Deutsch’s
anti-statism may be for something, including knowledge, but they certainly did not promote
conservative interests, no matter how those might be defined.
7.7 From Diagnosis to Prescription 87

was—as Wilson himself later acknowledged—based on an erroneous, possibly

expedient estimation of how many ‘nations’ there really existed in post-World
War I Europe. Wilson’s worldview affected his search for reliable data to the point
of ultimately conducing to poor policy. Many other examples are readily available.
Is prescription a necessary result of diagnosis? Apparently not, for there is a
strong tradition of creating or gaining knowledge for its own sake or, as I will argue
below, for pedagogic reasons such as improving professional competence, citi-
zenship, and broadening understanding for those whose perspectives are limited by
lack of education and experience. Some exemplars? It is hard to see how, for
example, Russell’s survey of international thought (1936), Wright’s monumental
study of the discipline (1955), Rosenau’s foray into social trends affecting states’
autonomy (1990), or Halliday’s outline for a neo-Marxist perspective on interna-
tional relations (1994: Chap. 3) necessarily offer ‘solutions’ to basically
moral/political problems. Their justification for these works, and their intellectual
contribution, is foremost in the domain of knowledge itself. Their purposes were
essentially intellectual, not moral or political. They wrote, among other reasons, so
as to enhance our knowledge of the field’s genealogy (Russell) and conceivably
also to avoid repeating the claim that everything we read is new; toward bringing
order to a discipline characterized by intellectual chaos (Wright); toward identifying
significant new trends and anomalies and to note their theoretical significance
(Rosenau) or to fashion analytical categories and perspectives that have not but
might enhance understanding of some significant questions within the field
(Halliday). Only in the very broad sense are these major theoretical efforts ‘for’
someone or something. They are certainly not justifications for identifiable state or
class interests. They are for knowledge and pedagogy, for which no one should be
made to feel guilty or inadequate.4
It follows that if prescription is not a necessary consequence of diagnosis, neither
is partisanship in the political sense. One can be partisan toward one’s theories,
perspectives, and/or methodologies without taking on advocacy of a political
program or a policy solution to a problem. In other words, what I question is the
necessity for a connection between the theoretical diagnosis of a problem and
partisanship toward any particular political solution or order.

4
This discussion of what theorists do is by no means exhaustive. In addition to the activities
mentioned, there are others such as definitional and taxonomic work, the empirical identification of
trends, and speculation about their consequences as well as formal explanations of limited phe-
nomena such as alliances, regional integration, and the like. As for methodological work, Peterson
(1992: 6–9) mentions deconstruction of error, such as in eliminating ‘falsehoods’ generated by
sex-biased inquiry (but why not by nation- or class-biased inquiry?); reconstruction of fact (as
when incorporating women’s activities and perspectives); and the reconstruction of theory, which
involves a rethinking of fundamental relations among knowledge, power, and community.
88 7 Hindrances to Understanding in International Relations

7.8 More Sources of Misunderstanding: Defining the Field

So far, I have discussed primarily how we do things in international theory.

Misunderstanding also arises from what we do. Two practices are particularly
notable: (1) the search for a general, all-encompassing theory of international
relations and, related to it, (2) the failure to acknowledge the distinction between
international politics and international relations.

7.8.1 The Search for a Grand Theory

There has been, particularly in North American circles, an abiding expectation that
scholars can eventually develop an overarching, single theory of international
relationships. This is the idea of a “grand theory,” one of the centerpieces of the
behavioral persuasion but certainly not confined to it. Such a totalizing project—
similar in faith and hope, if not in form, in Marxism—still underlies the field. Yet,
as I have sought to demonstrate, the normative palette of problems today is large
and growing. There are also too many significant anomalies and new trends that
have to be explained. There cannot be a single, all-encompassing theory of inter-
national relations, a point I stressed more than a quarter-century ago (Holsti 1970).
Different moral discourses and problems lead to different forms of diagnosis and to
different prescriptions The world of international relations is multifaceted. This has
been acknowledged and underlined by theorists since at least the time of E.H. Carr.
Yet the presumption of a single explanatory system for these diversities continues
to drive much theoretical debate, even if the resulting efforts to combine or syn-
thesize theories encompassing diverse moral/political problems have had, indeed,
rather limited results (Crawford 1996).
The search for ‘the’ theory of international relations creates misunderstanding
and is one of the roots of the “I am right/you are wrong” intellectual posture. Efforts
to explain all socially constructed ‘problems’ through a single analytical structure or
framework are bound to create misunderstanding and heated debate that could be
directed more profitably to other projects and research programs. A good example
of wasted energy is the almost mantra like denunciation of neorealism, and par-
ticularly of Kenneth Waltz’s Theory of International Politics (1979), on the
grounds that it does not explain a whole host of problems such as international
governance, economic competition, quality-of-life issues, and gender relations,
among others. While even in its own terms Waltz’s effort may be lacking, the
author specified exactly what he wanted to explain: some big questions in the field,
such as recurrence of wars and balances of power, propensity of the system to
duplicate itself, inability of states to accept relative gains in security issues, and the
search for autonomy in situations of interdependence. That it does not explain other
problems should be irrelevant. Yet critics continue to chastise Waltz for not
developing a ‘total’ theory. This criticism assumes both its desirability and
7.8 More Sources of Misunderstanding: Defining the Field 89

possibility. I believe that such a goal is a chimera and logically impossible. Instead
of opening every article, or devoting entire books (cf. George 1994) to denouncing
neorealism, why not get on with the task of developing alternatives that explain the
same phenomena better or of building theories that explain other matters well? A
few analysts have used Waltz’s effort as the platform from which to launch better
explanations for security problems (cf. Wendt 1992; Buzan et al. 1993), but criti-
cism devoid of seminal proposals for the development of original alternatives
remains an unconstructive academic practice.
The lively enterprise of denouncing neorealism is founded on a misunder-
standing of what that theory is all about. It is an attempt to explain regularities and
anomalies in a circumscribed issue area or domain. This misunderstanding may also
illustrate the influence of social context on scholarship. It may be no accident that
the most robust critics of realism and neorealism toil in Phoenix, Canberra,
Victoria, B.C., Des Moines, and London, none of which is located close to zones of
long-range rivalry, periodic militarized crises, and occasional war. In contrast, such
criticism rarely arises from Jerusalem, New Delhi, Belgrade, or even from Athens,
where security dilemmas, profound mistrust, misperceptions, and preparations for
wars are part of daily life.
These comments do not, however, absolve some Realists from bringing telling
criticisms upon themselves. An analytical device that has been successful in helping
to explain some big, but not all-encompassing, questions in the field can also
become an ideology that is insensitive to changing historical, economic, and social
conditions. In particular, it fails to acknowledge that ideas, epistemic communities,
and reigning political assumptions, as often as power and power distributions, can
drive international politics (cf. Holsti 1994). Some Realists’ view on the future of
Europe, best summed up in Mearsheimer’s (1990) famous analysis, is a good
example of the employment of an analytical device without adjusting for altered
conditions or ideas. Mearsheimer argued that with the end of the Cold War, Europe
will revert to classical balance of power politics, meaning that there will be chronic
conflict and war. While power determinism may be a good analytical device for
explaining or understanding eighteenth-century European international politics, it is
of questionable utility for explaining parts of the nineteenth century and most of the
period since 1945.
If we wish to argue the relative merits of various schools and theories, then the
place to start is not so much with their inferences as it is with their premises. This is
a normative exercise. I believe that the problem of war, an activity that has cost on
average more than half a million lives annually since 1945, should command our
attention. Others are justified in arguing that the problem of economic inequality in
the world should command similar or greater attention. There are many who can
make a convincing case that international collaboration, governance, and the
management of environmental problems require systematic thought. Some, per-
suaded that the state can no longer serve its main purposes of defense, welfare, and
prosperity, wish to problematize it to try to develop a theory explaining the rise and
anticipated decline or transformation of the state. Women’s ‘silence’ in almost all
renderings of the field is now a problem that is drawing increased theoretical
90 7 Hindrances to Understanding in International Relations

attention, and we can well expect that in an age of increasing concerns with
‘identity,’ attributes other than gender will also stake out a claim for a ‘problem’ in
an international context that requires theoretical analysis. While there may be
connections between problems, it is unlikely that we will ever develop, or that we
should even seek to develop, a single perspective, approach, or theory that will
account for the character, sources, and dynamics of all of them. The problems of
feminist scholars in fashioning a distinct theory of international politics demonstrate
the difficulties involved: Having identified gender biases in the construction of
analytical concepts, they have not been able to construct an alternative to any of the
main theoretical schools in the field. Some day there may be a theory of feminism
and international politics, of women in international relations, but a feminist theory
of international politics/relations is not possible, because the problematique of the
role of women in international life differs fundamentally from the problematique of
the security of states.
International relations began as a synthetic field of diverse perspectives, meth-
ods, and theories and will continue to be so. No intellectual knockout punch will
establish any single moral/political problem as exclusive, although under particular
social conditions, one or more may predominate at any given time. Nor will
epistemological crusades or anti Enlightenment polemics result in a single, new
metatheoretical orthodoxy. As I have often reiterated (Holsti 1985, 1989), intel-
lectual pluralism and large doses of incommensurability are inevitable conse-
quences of the normative bases of our investigations.

7.8.2 International Politics and International Relations:

Distinctions

The second aspect of what we do—or in this case, what we fail to do—is to state or
acknowledge the differences between international politics and international rela-
tions. Realism is an explanation of the security problems that arise from time to
time between states. It is no more than that. It does not claim to explain or solve
other problems—be they of equity; quality of life; relations between individuals,
groups, genders, or classes.
It is one of the puzzles of our field that the distinction between international
politics and international relations is seldom acknowledged in theoretical discourse
but is a fairly standard practice in the classroom and among textbook authors. If we
examine textbooks, starting with samples from the 1930s and extend the search to
today, we will note that most include chapters or sections on various forms of
transnational relations and most clearly characterize the field as one encompassing
both the conflictual and cooperative aspects of relations between states and soci-
eties. Similarly, any well-rounded undergraduate program in international relations
contains courses in security issues as well as in international law and organization.
This is because international relations encompasses all forms of units, actors, and
7.8 More Sources of Misunderstanding: Defining the Field 91

activities between societies, whereas international politics focuses on the prob-

lematique of war/peace/order.5

7.9 Different Motivations, Different Understandings

Yet other hindrances to understanding derive also from the proliferation of authors’
motivations in theoretical writings on international relations. The diversity of
purposes is already apparent in the brief characterization of what theorists do. This
has revealed, for example, that some people are driven by creativity, some by
curiosity, and yet others by a determination to help ‘fix’ a problem or to change the
world in fundamental ways. I have a strong impression, but no solid body of
evidence to support it, that some of the most bitter debates in the field also reflect a
poor understanding of implicit motivations and social roles. Instead of stating their
social and/or pedagogical purposes explicitly, authors tend to fight their battles on
an intellectual turf, on the plane of ideas, whereas the sources of their differences
may derive from different intellectual stimuli and contending conceptions of roles
What are these competing motivations? A nonexhaustive list would include the
following: (1) pedagogy, (2) science/knowledge, (3) policy analysis, (4) policy
solutions, and (5) emancipation. In this brief array, single purposes can
overlap. Most diagnoses contain explicit or implicit ‘solutions’ to problems.
Pedagogy and knowledge, teaching and research, often are almost inseparable
activities. And policy solutions may take the form of emancipatory programs. But
sometimes theoretical enterprises in international relations take on one coloration to
the virtual exclusion of others, only to be criticized for failing to make a significant
contribution in another domain. Take pedagogy as an example. Presumably our
function as teachers is to help make a complex world more intelligible to our
students and to provide them with the theoretical and methodological tools they can
use to develop their own approaches, conclusions, and generalizations. But for
some critics, teachers only perpetuate their orthodoxies and create young duplicates
of themselves (cf. Ashley 1984: 230). Yet others see pedagogy in a broader light; its
role is not just to carry on intellectual traditions and generate new perspectives but
also to inspire good citizenship and to develop professional competence among
those who someday may make policy decisions (cf. Wright 1955: Chap. 7).
The failure to recognize the plurality of motivations in pedagogy may give rise
to serious misunderstandings. Teachers of future policy makers may be impatient
with the metatheoretical musings of various authors because the latter do not
address the problems and issues of the “real world.” In contrast, theorists may
dismiss as politically tainted the policy-oriented curricula of those concerned

5
There are some exceptions to the discussion. Rousseau, for example, viewed all forms of inter-
action between states and societies as mere instruments of state stratagems to deal with conflicts.
Hence, trade and international law were parts of the state’s armory for waging campaigns against
adversaries, rather than aspects of international cooperation and collaboration.
92 7 Hindrances to Understanding in International Relations

primarily with professional competence. Those whose agenda is primarily eman-

cipatory—whether philosophically, epistemologically, or politically—may have
little respect for ‘scientists’ who emphasize above all values such as reliability and
reproducibility of evidence. Some adepts of postmodernism reject positivism not
only on epistemological grounds but essentially because they seek to get on with a
new political agenda. They often dismiss work driven primarily by the search for
knowledge, deeming it conservative, protective of the status quo, and conspiratorial
in its ‘silencing’ or ‘marginalization’ of other voices (Ashley/Walker 1990). For
their part, scientists condemn those with an emancipatory agenda for playing
footloose with facts, ignoring bodies of authoritative information, lacking an
organized research agenda, and for valuing partisan aspirations above sound
methodological canons. In such debates, the issue of establishing a truth for the
emancipatory theorist seems less urgent, since what is more strongly desired here is
to change the world rather than to understand it. Many feminists, for example,
denounce Realists as purveyors of patriarchy, whereas researchers of significant
anomalies in the international system counter that feminists are driven by a myopic
political agenda rather than by the desiderata of reliable knowledge. Policy spe-
cialists in turn are impatient with the games meta-theorists play, whereas the latter
criticize technocratic “problem solvers” for their atheoretical, and above all polit-
ically inspired, work.

7.10 Solutions?

There are no easy solutions to these intricate problems. Resource hindrances can be
overcome, although there is hardly any evidence that by itself increased fundings
can correct parochial language and reading habits. Many scholars remain nationally
‘captured,’ barely deigning to read foreign publications (cf. Strange 1995: 290).
A cursory review of citations in American journals such as International
Organization or International Security suggests the existence of a fairly restricted
circle of authors who apparently read little else than each other’s works. On the
other hand, the working conditions of scholars in many developing countries do not
seem to improve. Of course, there are important exceptions in all countries, but the
habits and problems that I outlined in The Dividing Discipline (Holsti 1985) do not
seem to have changed yet, over more than a decade.6

6
Scholarship continues to harbor implicit and explicit national biases A comprehensive review of
the comparative foreign policy literature (Hudson 1995) demonstrates that a vast majority of
studies use the United States as their data or case study source. Of 228 bibliography items, I have
found only 24 (or 10.5 %) to be genuinely comparative or focused explicitly on a country other
than the United States. Those lacking in theoretically inspired foreign policy studies include
France, Germany, and England, to say nothing of Nigeria, India, and Brazil. Comparative foreign
policy, a subfield of international relations, that aspires to universal and comparative status, utilizes
only a single country out of more than a possible 185 as the predominant empirical basis for its
‘comparative’ generalizations.
7.10 Solutions? 93

What, then, can we do to reduce problems of misunderstanding for the many

who place precedence on the theoretical enterprise? No authoritative prescription
follows neatly from the diagnosis above. No one person can play the role of a
Martha Stewart in international relations: appear to fix everything neatly, and easily,
within the budgetary limits of a modest household. The best one can hope for is that
scholars in international relations (1) openly recognize and state their motivations,
be they a dose of healthy curiosity aroused by significant trends and anomalies or
loftier moral/political concerns; (2) willingly acknowledge that, consequently, there
cannot be an objective ‘grand’ theory of international relations; (3) readily admit
that what we choose to emphasize, and how we go about doing our work, will
inevitably be colored by whichever of the functions is at play. A more explicit
acknowledgment of our priorities and preferences in these regards may help reduce
the exclusionary, denunciatory, and eliminatory efforts that characterize so many of
the debates in the field today.
Is this a plea for intellectual pluralism? To the extent that we recognize the
inherent power of many different types of intellectual activity and roles to shape the
nature of theory, without failing to acknowledge the rigorous standards that govern
scholarly obligations, it is. There are, after all, limits to abusive scholarship. The
point of no return in such matters lies precisely where roles and purposes become
blurred in the mind and hidden in the heart of the scholar. Policy prescription
parading as science ultimately never succeeds. And scientific pursuits embedded in
national biases and motivated by parochial priorities cannot attain universal
recognition or acceptance. Some forms of partisanship are simply incompatible
with scholarship. The best solution for such ills is an honesty of purpose and an
acquired taste for straightforwardness regarding the why and the how of each of our
undertakings. To acquiesce frankly that we theorize because we are morally and/or
politically concerned with a social problem can only enhance the science of our
understanding and the understanding of our science. The canons of science refer not
to problem selection but to problem analysis.7 Those who place priority on
emancipation should specify clearly what emancipation means and if and in what
ways a redesigned field of international politics or international relations would help
solve such social problems, the majority of which take root in the family, region, or
national community. Requisite clarity in the definition of roles, purposes, and moral
choices should make it all the easier to face up to the fact that international relations
always has been, and will continue to be, at once an art, a science, and a philosophy.
Such awareness is not cause for angst, let alone for denunciation. It is when we
forget our own history that we create the greatest of all hindrances to a clear
understanding.

7
A succinct analysis of the science/value debate can be found in Nicholson (1996), esp. Chap. 9.
94 7 Hindrances to Understanding in International Relations

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London: Allen & Unwin.
Holsti, K. (1989). Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Which Are the Fairest Theories of All? International
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Johns Hopkins University.
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Kaplan, M. (1957). System and Process in International Politics. New York: Wiley.
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Russell, F. M. (1936). Theories of International Relations. New York: Appleton-Century.

Strange, S. (1995). ISA as a Microcosm. International Studies Quarterly 39: 289–95.
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Wright, Q. (1955). The Study of International Relations. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
 Part III
Texts by Kalevi Holsti on Foreign
Policy Analysis
Chapter 8
Introduction on Foreign Policy Change

The world in the 1970s seemed to be in a frozen stasis.1 The diplomatic patterns
observable during the Cold War changed little except for occasional crises such as
those over Berlin and Cuba. There was change at the margins, but students of
foreign policy paid little attention to them. In part this was also because the aca-
demic study of foreign policy was housed mostly in the United States and the world
outside of North America and NATO and the Soviet bloc commanded little
attention in the IR community.
During this time I was interested with the foreign policy orientation of isola-
tionism: the attempt by governments to seal themselves off from the outside world.
Burma was such a case and I wanted to learn more about its peculiar foreign policy
strategy, in particular why it changed from a typical post-colonial orientation of
dependency to one of isolation. I commissioned several area experts to help me
develop a book on the broader theme of foreign policy change. In our book Why
Nations Realign: Foreign Policy Restructuring in the Postwar World (London and
Boston: George Allen and Unwin, 1982), we explored six countries and their
attempts to alter their foreign policy orientations. The selection reproduced here is
the introductory theoretical chapter that sets out the framework for our comparative
analysis.
The reader can perhaps speculate, on the basis of this selection, why the book
was such a notable failure. It received good reviews at the time of publication, but it
failed, with a few exceptions, to launch any sort of research agenda for further
studies and comparisons. Indeed, twenty years later a book dealing with the same
subject, although focused primarily on the United States, did not even list Why
Nations Realign in its bibliography. Perhaps the book’s obscurity is well-deserved,
but the subject of foreign policy change, surely, should be a major theoretical
concern in the IR field.
The problem is not confined to our volume. The whole field of comparative
foreign policy, an area of so much speculation in the 1970s, never developed any
sort of a ‘fan’ base or research agenda. There are multitudes of studies on particular
countries’ foreign policy problems, thousands of hours of television pundits’
speculations about this or that issue in American, Chinese, Russian, British, and
1
This text has not previously been published.

© The Author(s) 2016 99

K. Holsti, Kalevi Holsti: A Pioneer in International Relations Theory, Foreign
Policy Analysis, History of International Order, and Security Studies, SpringerBriefs
on Pioneers in Science and Practice 41, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-26624-4_8
100 8 Introduction on Foreign Policy Change

Turkish foreign policy, just to mention the most talked about, but no one seems
interested any longer in comparison or even constructing typologies of foreign
policy. James Rosenau, in 1966, published a path-breaking theoretical piece on
foreign policy typology.2 While often cited, it also failed to ignite any significant
follow up.
We have typologies of political systems, of political parties, of economies, and
styles of leadership but except for some crude formulations in Realist theory (e.g.,
balancing, bandwagoning, non-alignment, and the like), we have no typology of
foreign policy behavior. My attempt to correct the situation never gained scholarly
traction.
My second selection is also in part motivated by Rosenau’s piece: to offer an
examination not just of foreign policy change, but to offer at least a modest step
toward resurrecting the field of comparative foreign policy. While a great deal has
been written about American exceptionalism, no one previously has explored it as a
foreign policy type.
The essay on ‘exceptionalism’ in American foreign policy is not germane only to
the development of a neglected academic field. It is also a timely interjection into
current debates about the direction of American and European projects to remake
the world in their political image. Among other dimensions, today we have two
contrasting images of how the world ought to be organized and the two views,
being incompatible, lead to all sorts of diplomatic quarrels. It is a struggle between
those who believe that liberalism offers the best avenue to world order, versus those
who adhere to the old Westphalian principle of tolerance for political diversity. The
most aggressive liberal nostrum for world order is to promote “regime change”
wherever polities are poorly governed. It is based on the simplistic formula that if
you want peace, you must have democracies. The opposite view, championed by
contemporary China and Russia and many post-colonial countries, argues that if
you want peace, leave other people alone. Do not interfere in countries’ internal
affairs. The whole purpose of the United Nations, they argue, is to preserve the
sovereignty and territorial integrity of its members. It is not possible to have peace
while some countries arrogate for themselves the task of overthrowing unpopular
governments.
There is not likely to be a reconciliation of these two images of the future world.
The “peace through democracy” school predominates in contemporary diplomacy.
Most government officials in what was known as the ‘West’ continue to treat the
reform of others as a worthy or even compulsory moral enterprise. Despite vast
differences in history, culture, economies, natural endowments, population, and
religion, the leaders of the West have been engaged in the business of trying to
transform others in their self-image. Resistance comes most vigorously from
Moscow, Beijing, and Muslim fundamentalists, but it also appears in other places

2
James N. Rosenau, 1966: “Pre-theories and Theories of Foreign Policy”, in: R.B. Farrel (Ed.):
Approaches to Comparative and International Politics (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University
Press): 27–92.
8 Introduction on Foreign Policy Change 101

and in other forms, such as the policies and practices of contemporary Bolivia and
Cuba.
The debates about these two world views go back at least three centuries. They
were no less compelling at the time of the French Revolution than they are today.
No one has successfully reconciled them. What we do know, however, is that the
history of “regime change” has seldom led to the hoped for outcomes. The ouster of
the Mossadiq regime in Iran in 1953 led to the restoration of the Shah and his
dreaded SAVAK. The ouster and murder of Lumumba in the new Congo Republic
in 1961, in which again the United States was complicit, was succeeded by
Mobutus’ kleptocracy, civil war, foreign intervention, and two decades of the
breakdown of public order. The overthrow of the Allende regime in Chile, in part
stimulated by American subterfuge in 1973, led to a quarter century of military rule
and mass murder by the regime. Iraq in 2015 bears no resemblance to the
‘democracy’ that America’s invasion in 2003 hoped would emerge after the ouster
of Saddam Hussein. The legacy of the American invasion is a deeply fractured
country, the rise of ISIS, the destruction of Iraq’s military capabilities, religious
strife, and corruption. Europe’s attempts to lure Ukraine from the Russian orbit via
membership in the EU and possibly in NATO, has led to war, the Russian
annexation of the Crimea, and Ukraine’s economic collapse. Libya’s regime change
has resulted in another failed state, not democracy. This dismal record suggests that
whatever the suffering of poorly-governed peoples, “regime change” rarely
improves matters and often makes them worse.
The selection on American foreign policy provides an analysis of the ideological
underpinnings of the liberal view of the world. By comparing American ‘excep-
tionalism’ with French revolutionary and Soviet foreign policies, I hoped to breathe
some life into Rosenau’s project: to look at foreign policy types, not just discrete
events. I also wanted to demonstrate that foreign policy is not just a game of power
and strategy, but is infused with ideas, myths, and even religion.
Chapter 9
Restructuring Foreign Policy: A Neglected
Phenomenon in Foreign Policy Theory

Between 1963 and 1965 the government of Burma undertook a series of domestic
measures and foreign policy decisions that fundamentally altered its orientation
toward the outside world.1 Except for maintaining essential trade and participating in
several minor foreign aid projects, the Burmese government drastically reduced its
external contacts and imposed a variety of measures which were designed to end
external penetration into Burmese society, economics and politics. Foreign aid offi-
cials, missionaries, foreign academics and researchers, correspondents and tourists
were expelled from the country. Foreign-owned enterprises were nationalized and the
government established strict censorship over incoming mail, films and magazines.
The Burmese government shunned all invitations to join various regional economic
and functional undertakings, vetoed a proposal to build the India–Singapore highway
through its territory, became inactive in international organizations and, with a few
minor exceptions, took little part in the meetings and diplomacy of the non-aligned
states. These actions constituted a radical departure from Burma’s traditional foreign
policy undertakings which had been actively involved in the non-aligned movement
in the United Nations, and in various programs of regional cooperation.
Burma is only one of many interesting cases of a government undertaking to
reorient its foreign policy. This study examines this important foreign policy
phenomenon, a type of political behavior that has been largely neglected in inter-
national relations theory, and only recently alluded to in analyses of Third World
states’ foreign policies.2

1
This text was first published as: “Restructuring Foreign Policy: A Neglected Phenomenon in
Foreign Policy Theory, Chap. 1, pp.1–20, in K.J. Holsti et al., Why Nations Realign: Foreign
Policy Restructuring in the Postwar World. London: George Allen & Unwin. The copyright is
owned by the author.
2
Marshall R. Singer’s Weak States in a World of Powers (New York: Free Press, 1972) con-
centrates on the measurement of dependence, but in places it touches upon the problems gov-
ernments face in reducing dependence through reorienting foreign policy. Douglas Anglin’s
‘Zambian disengagement from Southern Africa and integration with East Africa, 1964–1972: a
transactional analysis’, in Timothy M. Shaw and Kenneth A. Heard (eds), Cooperation and
Conflict in Southern Africa: Papers on a Regional Subsystem (Washington, DC: University Press
of America, 1976), pp. 228–89, is the one of the few works which examines empirically one
nation’s attempt to disengage from a dependent relationship.

© The Author(s) 2016 103

K. Holsti, Kalevi Holsti: A Pioneer in International Relations Theory, Foreign
Policy Analysis, History of International Order, and Security Studies, SpringerBriefs
on Pioneers in Science and Practice 41, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-26624-4_9
104 9 Restructuring Foreign Policy: A Neglected Phenomenon …

The term reorientation refers to the intentions of policy-makers to restructure

their nation’s relationships with other countries. For most countries, external rela-
tions—the numerous actions and transactions a government and society enter into
with others—are not randomly directed toward the outside world. Virtually all
accounts of nations’ trade figures, UN voting, visits of tourists, communications,
numbers and location of diplomatic establishments, military commitments and other
acts and transactions reveal that external ties ar patterned. Naturally these patterns
change over the years, as government officials and thousands of private individuals
respond to new conditions and opportunities in the external environment. Over a
period of a decade, for example, country A’s trade with B may grow by 50 %, while
its trade with C may diminish by a similar amount. Likewise, A may decide to
provide more external assistance for X, while reducing its commitments to Y. Such
changes are normal and are probably more indicative of natural adjustments to
changing conditions than to any intent fundamentally to alter a country’s relations
within a region or in the global system. They do not constitute foreign policy
restructuring.
The study is concerned with a type of foreign policy behavior where govern-
ments seek to change, usually simultaneously, the total pattern of their external
relations. The changes usually occur both in the pattern of partnerships (for
example, Cuba’s trade shifts from the United States to the Communist bloc in the
early 1960s) and in the type of activity (for example, a country withdraws from an
international organization). The sectors, in brief, may be either geographic or
functional. Where the intent (reorientation) has been followed by alteration of the
total pattern of external actions and transactions, we can say that a country has
successfully restructured its foreign policy. We thus distinguish normal foreign
policy change, which is usually slow, incremental and typified by low linkages
between sectors (for example, a change in foreign aid policy would not be reflected
in foreign trade policies), and foreign policy restructuring, which usually takes
place more quickly, expresses an intent for fundamental change, is non-incremental
and usually involves the conscious linking of different sectors.
Foreign policy reorientation is certainly no new phenomenon in international
politics. Balance of power theory requires governments to align themselves mili-
tarily only so long as a particular distribution of capabilities exists. If that distri-
bution is threatened, governments must be willing to establish new commitments.
Military threats were historically the common condition underlying such alterations.
The famous ‘renversement d’alliance’ of 1756 ensued from a variety of incom-
patible interests—and Kaunitz’ wiles—but at the core of the diplomatic revolution
was Austria’s earlier loss of Silesia to Prussia and its elaborate plan of retribution
against King Frederick. One hundred sixty years later the United States abandoned
its policy of non-involvement in European quarrels and joined the Entente against
Germany. The subsequent decision not to join the League of Nations-the return to
‘normalcy’—demonstrated that American isolationism had been abandoned pri-
marily because of a military emergency. Perhaps the most dramatic recent historical
example of foreign policy restructuring occurred in 1939, when the Soviet Union
abandoned its anti-Nazi foreign policy in order to sign the Non-Aggression Treaty
9 Restructuring Foreign Policy: A Neglected Phenomenon … 105

with Hitler’s regime. Prior to that agreement, the Soviet Union had played a
reluctant, though not destructive, role in the League of Nations, collaborated with
France in guaranteeing Czechoslovakia’s independence, generally eschewed revo-
lutionary policies abroad, and identified Nazi Germany as the main threat to the
Soviet Union’s security and to world peace. Though Russia’s trade was small, its
destinations were diverse.
After August 1939, the Soviet Union completely reversed its previous patterns of
activity. Attacks on the Baltic States and Finland (sanctioned in the secret protocols
of the Non-Aggression Pact) led to the Soviet Union’s expulsion from the League
of Nations; Soviet trade was drastically redirected toward Germany, and propa-
ganda tirades became directed predominantly against the Western democracies.
Within a matter of weeks, the Soviet Union had altered the role of champion of
anti-Nazism and international peace to one of military aggressor and accomplice in
Germany’s grand design to carve up Europe.
The reasons for this dramatic change are not difficult to pinpoint. Basically,
Stalin’s disillusionment over British and French appeasement, the Western
democracies’ vacillation over a proposed alliance with the Soviet Union, and
Poland’s refusal to allow Soviet troops to transit its territory in case war broke out
over Czechoslovakia, led the dictator to conclude that Russia’s security interests
could best be assured by buying time with the main threat, which was Nazi
Germany. In brief, security consideration dictated foreign policy restructuring.
The examples of post-World War II foreign policy restructuring are more dif-
ficult to analyze. While military and strategic concerns are underlying factors in
some, most have resulted from, or have been responses to, more complex domestic
and external conditions. Economic vulnerability, the social consequences of mod-
ernization, dependence, ideological disputes between factions, xenophobia,
neo-colonialism and nationalism are relevant. China’s turn toward self-sufficiency
and break with the Soviet Union occurred long before security issues and territorial
disputes came to the fore. Similarly Burma’s turn toward isolationism during the
mid-1960s can be understood more adequately as a response to extreme foreign
penetration and domestic turmoil than to a Chinese or general cold war threat.
Canada’s attempts to diversify trade and cultural contacts and to regulate the
amount of American penetration during the 1970s had nothing to do with military
concerns. If threats are perceived, they are of a distinctly economic and cultural
character.

9.1 A Typology of Foreign Policy Restructuring

Types of reorientation and restructuring can be distinguished on the basis of sig-

nificant changes in (a) the levels of external involvement, (b) the policies regarding
types and sources of external penetration, (c) direction or pattern of external
involvement and (d) military or diplomatic commitments. While these criteria do
not cover all aspects of foreign policy, they should indicate the major directions of
106 9 Restructuring Foreign Policy: A Neglected Phenomenon …

actions, transactions and commitments. The following types, with distinguishing

characteristics, result.
Isolation. Characterized by extremely low level of external involvement, com-
bined with comprehensive exclusionist policies. Military and diplomatic commit-
ments are avoided. Since externally directed transactions are few, direction is
relatively unimportant, and there are few discernible patterns in actions and
transitions.
Self-reliance. Trade, diplomatic and cultural contacts are diversified, but levels
of transactions are generally low. Any patterns suggesting dependence or vulner-
ability are avoided. Some selective exclusionist policies—usually in the form of
import substitution programs—are instituted. Military commitments which involve
dependence conditions (for example, vulnerability to cessation of arms shipments)
or support for other states’ interests that are not similar to one’s own, are avoided.
Dependence. Externally directed actions and transactions are at a fairly high
level, and are characterized by high concentration toward another state or group of
similar states (for example, EU). Essential economic, technical, communications
and military requirements come from abroad, usually from a single country. The
state is highly penetrated by outside actors, in the form of government advisers,
foreign investment, tourists, educators, communications and possibly military
personnel. Security is provided by a mentor power, often in return for base rights.
Non-alignment-diversification. This type is characterized by extensive externally
directed actions and transactions, but they are well scattered among many states and
groups of states. External penetration is often notable, but the government attempts
to maintain balance of diversity between numbers and types of foreign agents. The
government strictly avoids military commitments to any actual or potential mentor.
When one surveys the states of the contemporary world, it is clear that few fit
these types perfectly. The categories are based on continua of involvement,
diversification, commitments and exclusion of foreign penetration. Hence, it is
possible that states could rank high or low on some of them, but not on all. But
there are also examples of states that rank high or low on all dimensions simul-
taneously so that they typify the otherwise arbitrary categories. Burma in the
mid-1960s and Bhutan until the late 1950s certainly are examples of isolated states,
for they rank extremely low on all the continua. China in the early 1960s fits the
self-reliance type reasonably well. The Ivory Coast since independence perhaps
epitomizes the dependent state, while Tanzania since at least 1967 has systemati-
cally sought to reduce its ties with the former mentor to diversify its external
contacts and sources of aid, and selectively to exclude foreign agents or processes
which might re-establish patterns of dependence or somehow threaten the ruling
party’s domestic priorities. Most other states could not be so easily categorized.
The problem, however, is not only to delineate state A’s pattern of foreign
relations at time X, but to describe and explain change from one type, even if it
doesn’t fit perfectly, toward another type. By combining the four ideal types, there
are twelve theoretical possibilities for change. Figure 9.1 outlines these. One is hard
pressed to find post-World War II examples of each type of change. The cases in
our study thus do not represent an example of each theoretical type. Without
9.1 A Typology of Foreign Policy Restructuring 107

Fig. 9.1 Possible types of

foreign policy restructuring

completing the meticulous research required to categorize all known or suspected

cases, it is not possible to define the universe of foreign policy restructuring. At the
level of foreign policy studies, illustration of types is more significant than sample
size. But for those who might be interested in the consequences of foreign policy
change on the structure and pattern of transactions in the international system, full
information on the incidence, location and frequency of foreign policy restructuring
would be essential.
It might be interesting, nevertheless, to present a non-exhaustive list of
post-World War II cases of foreign policy restructuring. In addition to the twelve
theoretical possibilities of change, a further category of abortive attempts is
included. Changing from one dependence to another (‘switching partners’) is also
added. Table 9.1 does not include foreign policy restructuring which resulted from
victory or defeat in World War II (for example Finland since 1944), or from the
postwar communist revolutions.

Table 9.1 Foreign policy restructuring, 1945–79

Type of change Countries Approximate dates, begin and complete
From isolation to:
(1) Self-reliance None known
(2) Dependence Nepal 1948–50
Bhutan* 1964–67
(3) Diversification China* 1970–73
From self-reliance to:
(1) Isolation China* 1966–69
(2) Dependence None known
(3) Diversification None known
From dependence to:
(1) Isolation Albania? 1977–79
(2) Self-reliance China* 1959–66
(continued)
108 9 Restructuring Foreign Policy: A Neglected Phenomenon …

Table 9.1 (continued)

Type of change Countries Approximate dates, begin and complete
(3) Dependence
(‘Switching partners’) Guinea 1958–60
Iraq 1958–?
Albania? 1960–76
Cuba 1960–63
Indonesia? 1962–65
South Yemen 1971–?
Ethiopia 1977–78
(4) Diversification Yugoslavia 1948
Rumania 1960s
France 1962–68
Tanzania* 1967–72
Libya? 1967–?
Iran 1970–74
Guyana? 1970s
Canada* 1972–78
From diversification to:
(1) Isolation Burma* 1963–65
Iran 1979
(2) Self-reliance None known
(3) Dependence Israel? 1948–50
Brazil 1965
Abortive attempts:
Guatemala 1953–54
Hungary 1956
Chile* 1971–73
*denotes cases studies in the project
?denotes marginal case or lack of data

The provisional list indicates that a majority (sixteen of twenty-eight) of the

actual or suspected cases involve countries that are normally defined as belonging
to the Third World. Conspicuous by their low numbers are countries in the ‘First
World.’ France—a debatable case—and Canada, whose attempts are too recent to
be judged successful or not, appear in the list. No particular inference can be drawn
from this fact, but it does suggest either that the developed countries are more
‘satisfied’ in the basic pattern of their foreign relations than are the developing
states, or that the costs of restructuring are inordinately high for industrial countries.
Why the developing countries should be dissatisfied with their lot is now well
known; among the reasons is concern over a situation that contains many charac-
teristics of neo-colonialism.
9.2 Prelude to Foreign Policy Restructuring: Disengagement 109

9.2 Prelude to Foreign Policy Restructuring:

Disengagement

In many cases, countries that adopt a new foreign policy orientation systematically
destroy old patterns of diplomatic, commercial, cultural and military relations. For
some, it is forced upon them by the boycotts, embargoes and expulsions of mentor
powers. For example, the reorientation of Yugoslavia and Cuba, and to a lesser
extent Guinea, was partly a necessary response to the mentor power’s step to cut
traditional ties. The old relationships had been terminated for them by the Soviet
Union, the United States and France. For countries emerging from isolation, dis-
engagement is not involved because their external relations were so limited and
sporadic as to constitute no barrier to establishing new sets of relationships. Nepal
prior to 1948 and Bhutan before 1958 are cases in point. But isolation is not the
only condition where disengagement is not involved. As the study of Canada’s
relations with the United States reveals, restructuring can be attempted by selective
measures to reduce penetration and vulnerability, combined with vigorous actions
aimed at establishing balancing economic, diplomatic and cultural links abroad—all
without fundamentally altering or severing ties to the mentor.
Where disengagement does precede restructuring—or takes place simultane-
ously—it can usually be understood as a response to perceptions of dependence
and/or to extensive external penetration. By dependence, we mean a situation where
the ‘smaller’ state can act in its domestic and/or external policies only with the
implicit or explicit consent of another state, and where the capacity to threaten or
reward in the relationship is highly asymmetrical. To put it another way, the major
power—what we call the mentor—establishes the parameters for the political and
economic actions of the dependent state, and has the means to ensure conforming
behavior. Although there has been considerable controversy over the precise
meaning of dependence and the types of indicators that should be used to measure
it,3 this working definition should adequately suggest the essential nature of a
dependent relationship. Highly asymmetrical patterns of transactions between two
states (for example, 70 % of A’s trade goes to B, but only 5 % of B’s trade goes
to A) provide clues to the potential availability of coercive instruments; in this
example, B possesses economic leverage and a capacity to threaten or carry out
economic pressure against A. Such patterns also imply asymmetrical vulnerabili-
ties. Vulnerability is one consequence of a dependent relationship; not only does the
mentor possess coercive capabilities, but if they are applied, the costs will be

3
For theoretical formulae to measure dependence and vulnerability, see James Caporaso,
‘Methodological issues in the measurement of inequality, dependence, and exploitation’, in James
Kurth and Steven Rosen (eds), Testing Economic Theories of Imperialism (Lexington, Mass.:
D. C. Heath (Lexington Books), 1974), pp. 87–116. For further elaboration see Raymond
Duvall, ‘Dependence and dependencia theory: notes toward precision of concept and
argument’, International Organization, 32 (Winter 1978), pp. 51–78; and David A. Baldwin,
‘Interdependence and power: a conceptual analysis’, International Organization, 34 (Autumn
1980), pp. 471–506.
110 9 Restructuring Foreign Policy: A Neglected Phenomenon …

asymmetrical. B can hurt A, while the reverse is not possible. Moreover, because of
a high degree of economic integration, B’s domestic policies may significantly
harm A’s interests, without B even intending such harm. Efforts to restructure
foreign policy often have as a major objective the reduction of vulnerability.4
Disengagement may also be a policy response to extensive external penetration.
Characteristically, the bureaucracies of penetrated states are supervised by hordes of
foreign advisers and, in many cases, high civil service positions are actually held by
foreign nationals. Industrial, educational and cultural organizations are often owned
or staffed by non-citizens, as are the media. And the political process in the pen-
etrated state is often subject to manipulation, bribes and pressures from foreign
agents. Not all these characteristics exist simultaneously, but they are widespread
enough in many states to cause nationalist responses in the form of demands for
exclusionist domestic policies and termination of asymmetries. Leaders may con-
clude, for example, that despite the economic benefits of foreign aid or private
investment from a mentor power, the structural constraints imposed by such pro-
grams are not compatible with sovereignty, national dignity or some other value.
Such calculations, along with the sense of vulnerability and perceptions of other
types of threats, combine to produce demands for terminating penetration and/or
dependence.

9.3 International Relations Theory and Foreign Policy

Restructuring

We may ask, then, why such events—often dramatic, and often generating intense
international conflict—have not commanded attention. Numerous answers could be
advanced, but three intellectual perspectives in recent international relations liter-
ature deserve attention in particular: (1) emphasis on the cold war and its associated
problems; (2) narrow interpretation of the concept of threat in diplomacy; and
(3) the concentration on ‘interdependence’ and integration as inevitable and pro-
gressive trends, with a concomitant neglect of nationalism and disengagement.
Much of the literature on international relations since about 1948 focused on the
cold war and problems associated with it. Our ‘maps’ of the world commonly
featured only three kinds of states: the communist, Western, and non-aligned.
Movement from one type to the other was almost impossible because of the
sanctions bloc leaders could impose on the wayward or recalcitrant. Indeed, it was
not until the 1960s that the concept of non-alignment met with any enthusiasm in
Washington or Moscow. The world, then, was rigidly structured into patrons and
clients, with non-aligned states being assiduously courted by the superpowers.
Underlying these analyses of international politics, whether a pronounced, if often
unstated, concern for values, namely, the preservation of freedom against the

4
The literature on integration refers primarily to the European experience.
9.3 International Relations Theory and Foreign Policy Restructuring 111

onslaughts of revolutionaries and subversives. The defections of Yugoslavia and

Cuba from their respective mentors caused much discussion, but these were seen as
significant aberrations from the normal diplomatic line-ups, and certainly not events
upon which to theorize.
A literature with a particularly Third World outlook has developed only recently.
As detente became a relatively fixed feature of international life, international
theory has become increasingly concerned with the problem of inequality.
Dependence may have been an acceptable state of affairs in a world confronted with
military threats and possible nuclear war. It is no longer accepted with equanimity
today. The quest for greater equality and drives to end dependent relationships are
important characteristics of contemporary diplomatic life. Dependency theory,
appropriately, developed initially in Latin America in the 1950s and 1960s but did
not become a standard perspective in international relations theory until the 1970s.
Its great popularity among North American social scientists was symptomatic of
growing concern over the plight of the small and weak state.
Emphasis on military and subversive threats was a second important bias of our
‘maps’ of international relations. The international system was portrayed as basi-
cally benign except for the fulminations and plots of communists, or the military
build-ups of the two major communist states. Writers commonly assumed that once
these threats were dispelled through preventive war, nuclear supremacy, stable
deterrence, alliances, arms control, or even through unilateral disarmament, the
world could return to a condition of peace and stability with an orderly growth of
interdependence. Western academics and statesmen generally shunned the idea that
small, weak and/or vulnerable states could also face a variety of non-military
threats from the external environment, threats that have little to do with the cold
war in general or the moves of great powers in particular.
However, spokesmen from the developing world occasionally made the point
that their countries’ political independence, cultural integrity and economic fortunes
are threatened by a variety of non-military conditions in the international system,
including new developments in technology, communications, and business enter-
prise. Despite all the talk in Western industrial capitals about the mutually bene-
ficial consequences of growing international interdependence, about the potential
for development through private foreign investment, aid and tourism, and the
advantages accruing to all through a truly global communications system, many
radicals in the developing countries interpreted these institutions, trends, or pro-
cesses as posing threats to a variety of local values. The claims of these radical
nationalists occasionally won the support of even some conservative regimes in the
Third World.
For many industrial countries, non-military threats are perceived only intermit-
tently. Europeans have worried about America’s technological ‘invasion’,
Canadians constantly complain about the economic and cultural effects of the
American presence in the country, and the Arab oil embargo forced some
Americans to acknowledge that control over vital resources by hostile governments
could constitute a serious threat to United States security. Indeed, some influential
Americans even urged the government to broaden the concept of ‘national security’,
112 9 Restructuring Foreign Policy: A Neglected Phenomenon …

and to begin monitoring the international system for all sorts of potential and actual
threats to America’s economic position.5 But it is unlikely that foreign investment,
tourism, or foreign television will soon reach such proportions in the United States
that Americans will perceive them as constituting a problem demanding exclu-
sionist solutions or dramatic foreign policy change.6 Yet all these forms of external
penetration have reached extensive proportions in many developing countries.
Governments cope with them in different ways; among them are decisions to
reorient the country’s foreign policy, to establish more diversified or balanced
economic relationships, to exclude all foreign influences to the maximum extent
feasible with economic survival, or to glorify self-sufficiency.
Even abstract academic models of the ‘global system’ fail to incorporate the
inequitable features of contemporary international life. They too ignore the problem
of non-military threats and the restrictive reactions to processes which are termed
‘interdependence’. The literature characterizes our world as a ‘global system,’ where
all sorts of transaction networks criss-cross in a jumbled spider’s web. In these
networks, issues are ‘processed’ and alliances are constructed between transnational
actors. This mechanistic image of the world fails to raise a number of critical
questions: In which directions do communications flow? In economic transactions,
do benefits distribute equally or proportionally among participants? Who ‘processes’
global issues—that is, who wields influence, control or authority? Are solutions
designed to increase global equality in a variety of goods and values, or do they
maintain disparities and dependencies? Do processes support variety or homo-
geneity? Who commands the capabilities–financial, technical and intellectual—to
set up or alter the networks of transactions? Whose values are effectively promoted
in the system? Does a system seek ‘stability’ or homeostasis—often implicitly
defined as good? Or, for a system to survive, is radical restructuring of relations
necessary? Until recently, statesmen from the industrial countries seldom addressed
these problems, unless it was within the context of traditional remedies for
underdevelopment, that is, more aid, more trade, more tourism, and more private
investment. For a variety of reasons, academics did not raise such questions either
until the literature on dependence—despite all its shortcomings—emerged.
Disengagement and foreign policy reorientation have been neglected, finally,
because academics have remained largely unconcerned with the phenomenon of
nationalism. Somehow, nationalism does not square with the notion that increased
interdependence and regional integration are progressive developments or trends.

5
Maxwell Taylor, ‘The legitimate claims of national security’, Foreign Affairs, 52 (April 1974),
pp. 577–94.
6
There are regions in the United States where foreign penetration has become a local issue,
however. For example, Japanese investment in Hawaii has grown rapidly, causing some local
residents to call for controls. The amount of foreign investment and ownership in the United States,
particularly in banking and purchase of farmland, has caused some observers to demand restric-
tions. See, for example, John Congers and Marcus G. Raskin, ‘Taking over America’, New York
Times, 1 June 1979, p. A 25. In proportional terms, foreign investment in the US is only 10 % of
American investment in Canada.
9.3 International Relations Theory and Foreign Policy Restructuring 113

Yet, if anything, the demand for political, economic and cultural autonomy, and
exclusion of dominant foreign ‘influences’, has grown increasingly strident since
the end of World War II. One paradox of our age is that as the world ‘shrinks’, as
communications grow and as awareness of the outside world penetrates even into
remote villages, the desire for autonomy and separateness appears to have become
more pronounced. The fear that local cultures and languages will be overwhelmed
by outside forces exists among hundreds of groups and nations, from the Quebecois
to the Basques, from Amazon Indians to Australian aborigines. To many among
these people, integration and ‘interdependence’ imply cultural dilution and possibly
extinction.7
Despite these trends, increased interdependence and integration remain notable
desiderata in the international relations literature. The voluminous body of theo-
retical and empirical literature on European integration perhaps reveals this value
orientation best. No matter how rigorous the theorizing or empirical work on
integration, most studies have explicitly or implicitly applauded forward movement
toward eventual political unity in Europe.8 De Gaulle’s concept of a ‘Europe of
fatherlands’—at best, a loose confederation—was dismissed as reactionary or as a
mode of political organization that would assure France’s paramountcy on the
continent. Those governments which have agreed to customs unions, passport
zones and coordination of social and labor policies, as in Scandinavia, are con-
sidered poor integrationists because they will not take the final plunge into complete
political union.9 Many observers were shocked when the Norwegians voted nar-
rowly to remain outside the EEC. Yet the vote revealed that many Norwegians were
convinced that membership in the Common Market would result in massive foreign
penetration into Norway and national economic policies that would eventually
destroy farming and fishing. More than money was involved in this calculation, for
a good case was made that living standards would improve through membership in
the EEC. What was at stake, according to many, were traditional ways of life.
Although high on most indicators of integration, the postwar Canadian–
American relationship should have indicated clearly that the political will to inte-
grate is the critical variable explaining forward movement, and that unofficial and
unorganized processes leading to economic and cultural integration may lead to a
nationalist response demanding a slowdown of those processes.10 Yet neither the

7
It is significant that empirical studies of growth in transactions and interdependence concentrate
only on relations between industrial countries. See Richard Rosecrance et al., ‘Whither interde-
pendence?’, International Organization, 31 (Summer 1977), pp. 425–72. Yet diplomats constantly
talk of ‘global interdependence’.
8
For elaboration, see K. J. Holsti, ‘Change in the international system: interdependence, integration
and fragmentation’, in Ole R. Holsti, Randolph Siverson and Alexander George (eds). Change in
the International Svstem (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1980).
9
Cf. Amitai Etzioni, Political Unification: A Comparative Study of Leaders and Forces(New
York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1965), Chap. 6.
10
Joseph Nye has demonstrated in the African context that if integration assumes asymmetrical
characteristics, that is, an unbalanced flow of transactions between units, the desire for further
114 9 Restructuring Foreign Policy: A Neglected Phenomenon …

theoretical nor empirical literature on integration has adequately emphasized the

logic or emotions underlying the opinions of those who resist integration or more
‘interdependence’.11

9.4 Describing and Explaining Foreign Policy

Reorientation and Restructuring: A Framework

The cases we have selected all involve major attempts to re-pattern countries’
external relations. Many have also undertaken major changes in their policies
regarding types and extent of external penetration. Hence, the dependent variables—
what we want to describe and explain—will be defined in terms of (a) significant
changes in the patterns of externally directed diplomatic, cultural, commercial and
military relations, and (b) identification of new policies with regard to foreign
‘agents’ within the country. Where evidence is available, we will also add to our
dependent variables the policy-makers’ intent to restructure foreign policy, that is,
foreign policy reorientation.
The distinction between intent to change policies and actual re-patterning is
important. It also raises several problems. First, foreign policy rhetoric may not
change, yet in the realm of actions, re-patterning is obvious. This is true in the case
of Burma, where Ne Win’s foreign policy pronouncements in the 1960s changed
very little in tone and substance from those of the U Nu government of the 1950s.
Non-alignment and ‘peace’ continued to be the main themes. Yet the pattern of
externally directed activities changed fundamentally and, even more important, the
Ne Win government literally sealed off Burma from the outside world. In such
instances, we must rely extensively upon the ‘hard’ data to describe foreign policy
change.
The reverse problem is where policy-makers give strong evidence of intent to
restructure policy, but for a variety of reasons, fail to bring about degrees or types of
change that are distinguishable from the slow, incremental changes observed in the
actions and policies of all states. Mexico under the presidency of Echeverria may be
one example. Political rhetoric suggestion reorientation, but aside from Mexico’s
pattern of voting in the United Nations and a few symbolic acts designed to identify

(Footnote 10 continued)
integration will wane. See his Pan Africanism and East African Integration (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1965), pp. 259–60. Naomi Black has observed that as economic
integration between Canada and the United States mounts, nationalism in Canada inhibits further
integration. ‘Absorptive systems are impossible: the Canadian–American relationship as a
disparate dyad’, in Andrew Axline et al. (eds), Continental Community? Independence and
Integration in North America (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1974), pp. 92–108.
11
An exception is Robert Gilpin’s ‘Integration and disintegration on the North American conti-
nent’, International Organization, 28 (Autumn 1974), pp. 851–74.
9.4 Describing and Explaining Foreign Policy Reorientation … 115

Mexico as a leading ‘Third World’ nation, not much change in the pattern of trade,
cultural and diplomatic relations resulted.
How much change is necessary to constitute restructuring and/or disengage-
ment? The definition offered earlier provides part of the answer: restructuring
occurs when there is change in many geographical and functional sectors simul-
taneously. If Tanzania establishes diplomatic relations with China, that act in itself
is hardly sufficient to indicate reorientation or restructuring. But if in a reasonably
short period of time—let us say within three years—Tanzania drastically diversifies
its trade partners, establishes restrictive conditions on foreign investment, ceases
accepting aid from Great Britain (its former mentor), terminates long-standing
military commitments, and generally reduces the ‘foreign presence’ within the
country, there are grounds for arguing that reorientation was intended, and
restructuring was achieved. Obviously, some arbitrary judgments on degrees of
change have to be made. It is not possible, of course, to establish a priori how much
change must be achieved along each dimension before a country is categorized as
having changed its foreign policy orientation. But for a variety of reasons it is
preferable to work inductively, describing changes in intentions and policies for
each case, and allowing the reader to make the ultimate decision. One reason for
proceeding in this fashion is that not all types of change are comparable across
different types of nations. A country such as Canada, seeking to reduce vulnera-
bility and American penetration, may employ policies and actions quite different
from those chosen by China in the early 1960s to reduce its dependence upon the
Soviet Union.12 Change, then, may require different policies for different countries.
At least two types of explanations can be used in accounting for the changes in
externally directed actions and policies regarding foreign penetration. First, the
study can try to provide evidence about decision-makers’ perceptions of the
external and domestic conditions which give rise to dissatisfaction with one foreign
policy orientation and the desire to restructure external contacts. A variety of factors
may be involved, including perceptions of military and non-military threats, cal-
culations of costs and advantages of dependence, domestic political factionalism
where creation of an external ‘enemy’ becomes important, prestige (for example,
feelings of guilt about appearing to be dependent), ideological commitments of
groups, parties, or factions, cultural values (for example, suspicion of foreigners),
personality characteristics of key policy-makers, and the like.
A second type of explanation seeks to answer the question, “why did the
policy-makers choose a particular type of new orientation, as opposed to some
other?’13 The data do not always provide sufficient clues. Some governments
seemingly are more concerned with breaking down old patterns of relations than
explicitly defining the goals toward which they are striving. The goals may be

12
I am grateful to Jeanne Laux, University of Ottawa, for suggesting this point. The problem of
change on each indicator is discussed below.
13
Jeanne Laux proposed the distinction between the two types of explanation.
116 9 Restructuring Foreign Policy: A Neglected Phenomenon …

vague, or they may vary over time. Bhutan’s decision to end isolation was not
necessarily predicated on the understanding that the nation should become
dependent upon India. Or, even if that calculation was made (but not likely to be
admitted publicly), the government probably would argue that dependence is a
short-term goal, or a means to creating more diverse foreign contacts later on.
The framework which guided the research into the case studies is represented in
Fig. 9.2. This framework outlines only the most common explanatory factors. In the
research other variables appear, and for many of the cases some conditions are not
relevant. Lack of data prevents us from establishing linkages in some instances, and
in others, only weak associations can be suggested. The importance of historical
and cultural variables is notoriously difficult to establish with rigor, but some of the
research to date indicates they are significant in conditioning elite and popular
attitudes. Policy-makers’ psychological needs and personality characteristics can
seldom be established as important elements in explaining decisions and actions,
except where a single figure is clearly responsible for policy leadership and/or
implementation, and where reasonable evidence suggests that without such an
individual, intent and actions would have differed significantly.

Fig. 9.2 Accounting for foreign policy restructuring

9.5 Organizing the Data 117

9.5 Organizing the Data

Where available, statements by policy-makers indicate intentions to change foreign

policy patterns. Speeches, press conferences, party statements and radio broadcasts
serve as the basic sources of information. Where official pronouncements are either
misleading (Burma) or rarely available (Bhutan), the studies rely heavily upon hard
data and reported government activities. Restructuring of foreign policy is indicated
by significant changes in the following types of actions, transactions and/or
commitments:
(1) numbers of treaties signed (for example, a significant reduction per annum
would indicate isolationist tendencies since the world trend is significantly
upward);
(2) numbers and/or states as treaty partners (for example, while maintaining some
treaty arrangements with Britain, Tanzania rapidly increased its number of
treaties with China, the Soviet Union and East Europe after 1967, indicating a
pattern of diplomatic and commercial diversification and an attempt to reduce
the relationship with Great Britain;
(3) new commitments of military capabilities abroad, or terminating prior
commitments;
(4) significant changes in numbers and destination of students sent abroad to
study;
(5) voting patterns in the General Assembly;
(6) direction of foreign trade; degree of trade concentration;
(7) absolute size of trade;
(8) number and direction of visits abroad by head of state or government;
(9) numbers and location of diplomatic missions abroad.
Outward-directed actions and commitments are not the only indicators of foreign
policy. Governments also may institute a set of policies which is designed to reduce
or increase the amount of foreign penetration, whether official or unofficial. Which
foreign governments or non-governmental actors are allowed access to the state,
society, or economy? What sorts of policies are fashioned to monitor, control or
reduce foreign penetration? In the reverse situation, what sorts of restrictions are
reduced or terminated in order to allow in which sorts of foreign influences? Or,
does a government literally terminate the diplomatic, cultural and economic pres-
ence of one mentor or friendly state, only to allow in the agents and agencies of a
new friend or ally? A typical example would be the expulsion of all American
influences and institutions in Cuba after 1961, and their replacement by Soviet
technicians, party officials, military advisers, foreign aid personnel, literature and
films. The indicators in the studies include the following:
(1) expulsion or admission of foreign military personnel, bases and/or
equipment;
(2) expulsion of aliens living in the country; restrictions on new aliens entering
the country; lifting such prior restrictions;
118 9 Restructuring Foreign Policy: A Neglected Phenomenon …

(3) new restrictions on the size of foreign diplomatic establishments or on the

movement of foreign diplomats within the host country; liberalizing such
restrictions;
(4) closing the country to tourists from certain other countries, or erecting such
administrative barriers as to effectively discourage tourism; terminating such
restrictions;
(5) selective or total censorship of incoming books, periodicals, films, radio and
television, or liftingsuch censorship;
(6) restrictions on private investment from abroad, or from particular countries;
lifting such restrictions;
(7) nationalization or expropriation of alien property or enterprises;
(8) severe restrictions on numbers of students or academics coming from specific
countries; significant alterations to such restrictions;
(9) expulsion of foreign humanitarian, educational, or cultural organizations
already in the country or serious restrictions on those attempting to gain
access; changing such policies;
(10) restrictions against import of certain commodities from certain countries,
where other than economic reasons are given.
Any of these actions taken separately may, of course, be directed toward ends
other than reorienting a government’s foreign policy. Yet when a number of such
policies and actions are taken seriatim or simultaneously, thus fundamentally
altering traditional relationships and/or establishing significant new external rela-
tionships, we can use these data to demonstrate foreign policy restructuring.
The use of these and other indicators raises some methodological problems.
First, the lists are not exhaustive. Since a country such as Canada, whose economy
remains highly integrated with that of the United States, may require substantially
different policies to alter commercial patterns than would a former colonial territory
whose trade ties to the former metropole are weak and confined to a few com-
modities, other indicators may be more appropriate. Second, limitations on the
availability of data make it impossible to employ each indicator for each case study.
Moreover, change might be observed in many of the indicators, but not on all of
them. Judgment must be used to decide how many indicators must show significant
change before we can argue that restructuring is, or has been, occurring. Third, how
much change must there be across all indicators? Scientific precision might require
the researcher to establish benchmarks or ‘gates’ which must be passed before he or
she could argue that restructuring of foreign policy has taken place. Some might
claim, for example, that at least 50 % of a nation’s trade must be redirected before
this sector has achieved change. But such a figure would surely be arbitrary. Given
the great volume of American–Canadian trade, a change of 10 % could be con-
sidered highly significant, whereas a 30 % change in Burma’s diversified trade
pattern would be less noteworthy. And while some indicators are easily quantified,
others present more qualitative information. One new military treaty may be more
significant than a change of voting patterns in the General Assembly.
9.5 Organizing the Data 119

Fourth, should the indicators be weighted? The example of military commit-

ments versus votes in the General Assembly implies that some sorts of actions are
more significant than others. But, the importance of various actions depends upon
the entire web of relations within which a country operates. It is difficult, therefore,
to specify outside of the context of each case study which types of actions are more
important than others. A nationalization of foreign property in one nation might be
primarily of symbolic importance, whereas in another, its ramifications could
spread to the totality of its foreign relations. For Spain to establish an embassy in
Moscow or Peking is of greater significance than for Thailand to do so. It would be
unwise, therefore, to attach separate weights, a priori, to any of the indicators.
Finally, what unit of time should be used to measure significant change? Cuba’s
disengagement and restructuring occurred within a relatively brief span less than
two years. Tanzania’s attempts to diversify external contacts and limit foreign
penetration took much longer, even if the intent to reorient was made known over a
relatively brief period in Nyerere’s presidency. Although the intent to change was
fully enunciated by Canadian officials in 1972, the nature of the Canadian–
American relationship is so complex that some patterns—particularly trade—might
show no significant modification for several years. We are less concerned with the
methodological problems time may raise than with its substantive and theoretical
significance: given a certain degree of integration between two economies, is
fundamental change for all practical purposes precluded? Or can it be accom-
plished, but only very slowly? Can developing countries restructure their foreign
relations more easily than developed countries? In most of the cases, change was
attempted or occurred in less than five years. But the studies do not set this as an
arbitrary limit. The theoretical concern of the study is not the ‘suddenness’ of
change, but the intention or fact of fundamental change. Thus, it is only important to
distinguish ordinary foreign policy change from the deliberate intent and attempt of
some governments to recast their role in world politics and economics.
Chapter 10
Exceptionalism in American Foreign
Policy: Is It Exceptional?

In the realm of human affairs… one… needs a pretext. It is important to give it the rank of a
universal imperative or of a divine commandment. The range of choices is not great: either
it is that we must defend ourselves, or that we have an obligation to help others, or that we
are fulfilling heaven’s will. The optimal pretext would link all three of these motives. The
attackers should appear in the glory of the anointed, in the role of those who have found
favor in his chosen god’s eye (Kapuscinski 2007: 137).

Thanks to the policies advocated by America’s ‘neo-cons’ and often pursued by

the George W. Bush administration during its first term in office, there has been a
revival of discussion about exceptionalism as a theme in American foreign policy.1
The term ‘exceptionalism’ is seldom defined rigorously, but in common usage it has
two different, if overlapping, meanings. The first refers to the historical view
Americans have had of themselves. The United States and its founding constitution
were, in this view, unique experiments in governance and liberty. Its governing
arrangements (separation of powers, federalism, Bill of Rights, and the like) were
innovative and progressive experiments and have remained so. Today, American
values and political practices inspire others and serve as the main hope for peace
and freedom in the world. No other state has the combination of properties and
leadership qualities of America. The United States, because it is exceptional in the
world of states, has an obligation to promote freedom in the world.2
The second meaning derives from the first. While the international system is in
part a rule-governed sphere of activity, one which the United States is largely
responsible for creating (the League of Nations, Bretton Woods, GATT, the United
Nations, and the like), the responsibilities of leadership require the United States on
occasion to transgress prevailing norms in order to provide peace and security and
to promote American values—values assumed to be universal but in short supply in
a world populated by ‘enemies of freedom’, ‘rogue states’, ‘tyrants’, and ‘axes of

1
This text was first published as: “Exceptionalism in American Foreign Policy: Is it Exceptional?”
pp. 381–404 in European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 17, No. 3 (September 2011).
The permission was granted by Ellie Hodge, SAGE Publications Ltd. in London on 30 March
2015.
2
Ole R. Holsti and Paul Marantz made helpful comments and suggestions on an earlier version of
the manuscript. I appreciate their help.

© The Author(s) 2016 121

K. Holsti, Kalevi Holsti: A Pioneer in International Relations Theory, Foreign
Policy Analysis, History of International Order, and Security Studies, SpringerBriefs
on Pioneers in Science and Practice 41, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-26624-4_10
122 10 Exceptionalism in American Foreign Policy …

evil’. American actions on occasion must be exceptional because its responsibili-

ties, values, and capabilities are exceptional.
This article raises the question whether the ideas and actions that go under the
moniker of ‘American Exceptionalism’ are indeed exceptional. Is exceptionalism,
rather than unique to the United States, a type of foreign policy? In modern history,
have there been other states that have claimed similar rights and obligations? If so,
then we can reasonably make comparisons between them and suggest that
American diplomatic rhetoric and actions may be of a kind, perhaps rare, but not
exceptional. If exceptionalism is a type of foreign policy, the article also raises the
question of developing a typology of foreign policy. We have typologies of political
systems (e.g. Aristotle), constitutional arrangements (e.g. Montesquieu), and
political parties (e.g. Duverger 1966), but Rosenau’s (1966) pioneering effort to
develop a model for comparing foreign policies has never been developed. This
article offers the main features of one foreign policy type in a much broader but
undeveloped universe of foreign policy analysis.
Before proceeding, we need to anticipate one source of criticism: the possible
distance between rhetoric and action in foreign policy. Some, like E.H. Carr (1964)
and Hans Morgenthau (1948), argue that all foreign policy actions require forms of
justification that can help mobilize public support. What is in play, however, is
power. Rhetoric that emphasizes values or ideas such as ‘freedom’, bringing the
less well-off the ‘benefits of civilization’, or promoting ‘democracy’ is seldom more
than a fig leaf for more nefarious power-based purposes. Carr (1964: 75–76) sums
up this perspective well:
It will not be difficult to shew [sic] that the utopian, when he preaches the doctrine of
harmony of interests, is innocently and unconsciously… clothing his own interest in the
guise of a universal interest for the purpose of imposing it on the rest of the world.. He
argues that what is best for the world is best for his country, and then reverses the argument
to read what is best for his country is best for the world.. British writers of the past
half-century have been particularly eloquent supporters of the theory that the maintenance
of British supremacy is the performance of a duty to mankind.

More recent studies suggest that such rhetorical devices are more complex than
mere platitudinous justifications for self-interest. They express deeply held ideo-
logical convictions, mental frameworks, and social constructions that affect per-
ceptual processes, how issues (particularly crises) are defined, how friends and
enemies become categorized (with resulting elements of trust and distrust), how
identities are formed, and how policy choices are articulated. Trevor McCrisken
(2003: 187), who has studied numerous primary documents in the formulation of
American foreign policy since Vietnam, has concluded that:
exceptionalist language is not only used in public explanations of policy but is also used by
policy makers themselves behind closed doors. Presidents and their foreign policy advisers
frequently use arguments couched in exceptionalist language during private meetings and
in personal memoranda. They do so even when perfectly good practical arguments for
policy options exist and they often phrase even strategic, economic or political justifications
10 Exceptionalism in American Foreign Policy … 123

in exceptionalist terms. The belief in American exceptionalism, therefore, provides the

framework for discourse in US foreign policy-making even if it is rarely the main deter-
mining factor of policy itself.

Another study (Widmaier 2007) shows how exceptionalist ideational constructs

offered by Harry S. Truman in 1948 and George W. Bush in his first term condi-
tioned their policy choices, set the foreign policy agenda, and ultimately became
constraints on their ability to choose among policy options. In a sense, these
policy-makers became victims of their own rhetoric.
We will never know, from president to president and situation to situation, how
exactly the two notions of American exceptionalism function as the intellectual
bases of policy choices. Clearly, actions are often inconsistent with value pro-
nouncements. A most glaring example is the American rhetoric about its devotion
to democratic values and its mission of promoting freedom and democracy in the
world while subverting, occasionally overthrowing, or assassinating popularly
elected governments or their leaders. The record of military and other forms of
support for a variety of ‘strongmen’ and tyrants also brings into question the
supposed explanatory power of foreign policy rhetoric. We will leave for the
moment a definitive answer of the rhetoric-action puzzle and concur with
McCricken’s (2003: 6) conclusion:
The growing body of work on the belief in American exceptionalism and its influence on
US foreign policy shows that it should not be dismissed as ‘mere rhetoric’. In fact, it should
be acknowledged as an important and influential idea that contributes to the framework of
discourse in which policymakers deal with specific issues and in which the attentive public
understands those issues.

Evidence supports his claim that the liberation mission is more than just political
rhetoric. Of 93 US military interventions between 1898 and 1996, 33 had
democracy promotion as a major goal (Peceny 1999: 9). The 2003 Iraq aggression
raises the number to 34.
We have four remaining tasks: (1) to outline the main characteristics of this
foreign policy type; (2) to explore history to locate states that have shared some or
all of these characteristics; (3) to explain some sources of exceptionalism, partic-
ularly in the United States; and (4) to explain the normative foundations of
exceptionalism.

10.1 Five Essential Characteristics of Exceptionalism:

A Summary

There are at least five characteristics of an exceptionalist type of foreign policy:

1. A responsibility, obligation, and mission to ‘liberate’ others, usually defined as
entire societies suffering from some evil, exploitation, or fallen status. National
priorities are defined in terms of subordinating self-interest to a larger, assumed
124 10 Exceptionalism in American Foreign Policy …

universal good. It is messianic in the sense that the exceptionalist policy will
‘deliver’ the less fortunate.
2. Because of these special responsibilities, the exceptionalist state is or should be
free from external constraints such as rules or norms that govern or influence the
relations between ‘ordinary’ states. Redeemer nations should be free of
encumbrances when meeting their global responsibilities.
3. Exceptionalist states usually see themselves existing in a hostile world. Threats
are universalized. Problems with local etiologies are defined in terms of a
specific example of the broader category of universal threats.
4. Governments and societies of exceptionalist states develop a need to have
external enemies; for this reason, threats are often concocted or, where minor,
are inflated to extreme proportions.
5. Exceptionalist states portray themselves as innocent victims. They are never the
sources of international insecurity, but only the targets of malign forces. They do
not act so much as react to a hostile world. They are exceptional, in part,
because they are morally clean as the objects of others’ hatreds.
This list may not be exhaustive. A thorough historical review might uncover
other common traits, but these five seem to be prominent in almost all examples of
exceptionalist claims and behavior. Two further observations are necessary.
First, the typology is not built on the premise that all five exist at all times in all
exemplars. They should be viewed as variables, waxing and waning depending on
historical circumstances and the ideological proclivities of state leaders. It is also
possible that some states exhibit some but not all the characteristics at these critical
times. For example, the great French and British imperial project beginning in the
1880s, propelled in part by the exceptionalist rhetoric of a ‘civilizing mission’ and
‘bringing the gifts of civilization to the natives’, conformed to the messianic
dimension of exceptionalism, but since most of the other characteristics were sel-
dom visible, we will not consider them as exemplars of the foreign policy type.
Second, there is the distinction between difference and exception. The foreign
policy beliefs, rhetoric, purposes, and action of all states differ. No state’s foreign
policy is a duplicate of any other’s. However, most states most of the time do not
have universal aspirations that guide their foreign policy choices. Paraguay’s
decisions do not seek to foment or promote a universal reorganization of the
political map. Bhutan commits no resources to organizing a global revolution where
every government would adopt the concept of ‘gross domestic happiness’ as its
guide to economic policy. I use the term exceptionalism—and it is implied in
common usage elsewhere—to denote a rare form of behavior. When the five
characteristics appear simultaneously, a better label is perhaps exceptionalist syn-
drome. It has appeared from time to time in different historical contexts, and is not
unique to the United States. Even though rare, it occurs sufficiently throughout the
history of the states system to suggest that it is a type of foreign policy.
10.2 Messianism and the Liberation Mission 125

10.2 Messianism and the Liberation Mission

Some governments have proclaimed themselves as having a unique role or mission

in ‘liberating’ foreign peoples and societies suffering from some form of oppres-
sion. This notion has pervaded American foreign policy discourses almost from the
days of the establishment of the Republic. Quotations from presidential addresses
are legion, suggesting that the role of international liberator is deeply embedded
within American self-identity as a superior society that should be emulated uni-
versally (cf. McCartney 2006). From Hamilton and Jefferson to Truman, Kennedy,
Clinton, and George W. Bush, the theme is basically the same: the United States has
a duty to support others struggling for freedom. As Ronald Reagan put it in defining
the purpose of supporting the Contras in Nicaragua in the 1980s, the United States
has a duty to support them because they (the Contras) ‘are the moral equivalent of
our Founding Fathers’. To turn away would be ‘to betray our centuries-old dedi-
cation to supporting those who struggle for freedom’ (quoted in McCrisken 2003:
124). For Harry Truman, the only way to save the world from totalitarianism was
for the ‘whole world [to] adopt the American system’ (Pagden 2005: 53). For
George W. Bush:
America is a Nation on a mission, and that mission comes from our basic beliefs…. Our
aim is a democratic peace… a peace founded upon dignity and rights of every man and
woman. America acts in the cause with friends and allies, yet we understand our special
calling: This great Republic will lead the cause of freedom. (State of the Union Address
2004)

Lest we think this type of rhetoric was used solely for symbolic occasions, major
foreign policy planning documents such as National Security Council
(NSC) Directive No. 68 (1950), like Bush’s 2002 National Security Strategy
analysis, insisted that ‘our position as the center of power in the free world places a
heavy responsibility upon the United States for leadership… so as to bring about
order and justice by means consistent with the principles of freedom and democ-
racy’ (quoted in McCrisken 2003: 22–23).
These themes were prominent in all the major foreign policy problems the
Americans faced later in the 19th century: the expansionist war against Mexico, the
‘opening’ of trade with Japan and China—a major project justified as advancing
Western civilization—and the 1898 war against Spain to liberate Cuba. Missionaries,
traders, and politicians all joined together in the great American movement to the
west (including the Orient) fully convinced that they were performing a duty to carry
the blessings of civilization to others wherever they might be (cf. McCartney 2006).
Words expressed by Secretary of State William Seward in the 1860s have a familiar
ring today: ‘The rights asserted by our forefathers were not peculiar to themselves.
They were the common rights of mankind.’ The United States, he maintained, had
not just the opportunity but also the duty ‘to renovate the condition of mankind, to
lead the way to the universal restoration of power to the governed’ everywhere in the
world (quoted in Kagan 2007: 264).
126 10 Exceptionalism in American Foreign Policy …

Woodrow Wilson introduced another dimension to the civilizing mission

rhetoric. His thoughts surrounding the League of Nations project constituted an
early articulation of the democratic peace theory. Non-democratic polities are
inherently aggressive because they express the interests of narrow elites and ignore
the wishes of the broad population that are assumed to be pacific. One early vision
of the League was to be an organization bringing together only the world’s
democracies. Peace would be guaranteed because only democracies express man-
kind’s peaceful hopes and meet their treaty obligations (Holsti 1991: Chap. 8;
Smith 1994: Chaps. 3–4).
This theme was central to George W. Bush’s conception of America’s unique
obligations to bring the blessings of liberty to those who do not enjoy them. All the
19th-century words are to be found in his major foreign policy speeches: ‘mission’,
‘civilization’, providential support for the great democratization project, leadership
obligations, and, implicitly, the idea that others must become like us. To this brew,
he added an incorrect version of the democratic peace hypothesis. Genuine peace is
only possible among democracies; ergo, if you want peace, you must promote
democracy anywhere and everywhere. Thus, the attack on Iraq was motivated (or so
Bush argued, but only after the weapons of mass destruction were not found) not
only by a desire to liberate the long- oppressed victims of Saddam Hussein’s
tyranny, but also as a major step in the democratization of the Middle East. That
democratization would then lead to peace in the entire region.3
What of other cases? Members of the French Constituent Assembly had
renounced wars of conquest in May 1790, portraying themselves as the harbingers
of a new kind of international politics. Deep insecurities and perceptions of threat
emanating from Vienna and Potsdam (the Declaration of Pillnitz and Louis XVI’s
flight to Varennes), however, helped to lead France to war against conservative
Europe in 1792. In the course of military success, Belgium, Savoy, Nice, Spier,
Worms, Mainz, and finally Frankfurt fell to the French revolutionary armies and
were subsequently ‘liberated’. The Convention was not unified in a policy of
‘liberation’, but as Brussels and the Austrian Netherlands were seized, these vic-
tories had to be justified.
The French revolutionaries were universalists in the sense that they deemed the
principles underlying their project to be applicable everywhere. The idea that
sovereignty lies in the people rather than in the person of the king or queen led
logically to the principle of self-determination for all peoples. This meant that a
people not happy with their lot under one system of rule could opt to join or create
another, and as the principal initiators of these ideas, the French had a responsibility
to ‘aid all peoples who wish to recover their liberties’, as the Convention

3
Tony Smith (2007) presents a detailed intellectual history of ‘neoliberalism’ (his expression for
exceptionalism) and its co-optation of the democratic peace literature. He makes a compelling case
that the Bush version of exceptionalism is significantly different from the Wilsonian brand. It is a
doctrine justifying American supremacy, not community. Ish-Shalom (2008) argues that Smith’s
polemic, as well as the Bush administration, failed to understand the democratic peace hypothesis
correctly.
10.2 Messianism and the Liberation Mission 127

proclaimed in November 1792 (quoted in Kim 1970: 45). The responsibility to

‘overthrow all thrones, crush all kings and render universal the triumphs of liberty
and reason’ (quoted in Armstrong 1993: 86), became one of many instructions
issued by the Committee of Public Safety to the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
In subsequent conquests, the task of the victorious generals was to proclaim the
sovereignty of the people, to suppress established authorities, and to convoke the
people in primary assemblies. This was the French revolutionary version of ‘regime
change’ in the name of liberty and freedom. They also made it clear that freedom
meant the choice of governance according to French principles. The liberated
societies were not free to choose forms of governance that meant only ‘semi-liberty’
or that retained the position of privileged orders. French power would be necessary
to carry through a revolution that would be in the true interests of the conquered
peoples. Of course the decision regarding those best interests would be made in
Paris (Armstrong 1993: 97).
In less than a year, a putatively defensive war turned into an ideological crusade
to free Europe from its despots. To be sure, the considerations that went into this
policy had a good deal to do with securing the ‘natural’ borders of France (a
defensive priority), but French liberations went far beyond those necessities. That
these policies seemed to contradict the 1790 abrogation of conquest was handled
easily by the sleight of tongue, changing conquest into ‘liberation’. This was based
on the belief that peoples throughout conservative Europe longed to be liberated
(Kim 1970: 48–49). While the principles of revolutionary France initially excited
sympathy throughout Europe, liberation and occupation by foreigners seldom
generates widespread and enduring enthusiasm. Facing increased riots and armed
resistance from the ‘liberated’, the French abandoned the pretenses of liberation and
turned the wars, until Napoleon’s ultimate defeat, into systematic programs of
plunder, extortion, looting, and empire-building. In September 1793, the National
Convention decreed that:
The generals commanding the forces of the Republic… renouncing from henceforth every
philanthropic idea previously adopted by the French people with the intention of making
foreign nations appreciate the value and benefits of liberty, will behave towards the enemies
of France in just the same way that the powers of the coalition have behaved towards them;
and [the generals] will exercise with regard to the countries and individuals conquered by
their armies the customary rights of war. (Quoted in Blanning 1996: 159)

The early Soviet Republic and its successor the Soviet Union is the third case. In
the heady days of 1917 and 1918 after the Bolshevik revolution had established a
semblance of authority in Russia, the leadership maintained a universalist per-
spective on the plight of the oppressed working classes throughout Europe. The
Bolsheviks viewed the successful revolution in St Petersburg as the first of many
revolutions that would occur in the European turmoil surrounding the late stages of
World War I. The Bolshevik regime took upon itself the responsibility to support,
aid, and fund these situations wherever they sprang up. They subsequently offered
various forms of assistance—from propaganda to armed forces—to revolutionaries
128 10 Exceptionalism in American Foreign Policy …

in Finland, Hungary, Germany, and throughout the restive portions of the col-
lapsing Russian Empire. In the war with Poland 1920–2, the official Soviet version
was that it was supporting Polish revolutionaries, not engaging in a classical war of
conquest.
The failures of most of these revolutions, along with the costs exacted by the
Russian civil war, ultimately forced the Bolsheviks to abandon Trotsky’s notion of
‘world revolution’ in favor of Lenin’s priority to consolidate the revolution in
Russia. But the concept of a permanent obligation and responsibility to promote
liberation of the proletariat was never formally abandoned. Whether ‘permanent
revolution’ or ‘socialism in one country’, at the rhetorical level the Soviet regime
consistently proclaimed its foreign policy objectives as encompassing responsibil-
ities to grant fraternal aid in the great revolutionary historical project. The orga-
nization of the Cominform under Soviet leadership provided the organizational
structure for developing universalist revolutionary strategies and tactics, as well as
providing the ideological slogans justifying them.
After the 1950s, Soviet ‘liberation’ priorities became more focused on the
developing world. Whereas Lenin and Trotsky had seen post-war Europe as the
most natural site for the proletarian revolution, Khrushchev and his successors
placed more emphasis on aiding the struggle against colonialism and imperialism.
The forms of support included guerrilla training, foreign aid, support for
anti-imperialist resolutions in the United Nations, and occasional attempts at sub-
verting regimes that were overtly anti-Soviet. As with the American project of
promoting democracy, the actual policies and commitments depended very much
on local circumstances and the general international situation. However, in all major
foreign policy speeches, the great purpose of liberation remained a leitmotif until
formally abandoned by Mikhail Gorbachev.
At first glance, one might be mystified by a comparison of French, Soviet, and
American foreign policy rhetoric and actions. But if one adjusts for the unique
vocabularies in play, the structure of foreign policy role elaboration is significantly
similar. Each leader sees his country as historically unique; each elaborates some
sense of responsibility to ‘liberate’ those assumed to be victims of false ideologies
or oppressive governments (or classes); each assumes that others are pining for
liberation; and each hypothesizes that those who are liberated wish to become
carbon copies of their liberators. They also assume that their own core political and
social values are universal and that because their own country enjoys the blessings
of freedom or the end of class oppression, they also have universal responsibilities
for leadership. Exceptional domestic qualities give rise to exceptional international
responsibilities.
The messianic role conception does not predict any particular foreign policy
behavior. One can promote values and institutions with a range of means, from
seeking to perfect domestic institutions with the hope that others will imitate (this
form was predominant in the early years of the American republic and under the
Obama administration), to more active forms such as ‘teaching’ less fortunate
others through a variety of programs. The European Union has offered former
communist countries and Turkey the promise of membership on condition that they
10.2 Messianism and the Liberation Mission 129

Basis of Consensual Consensual Consensual Coercive Violent

Relationship
Target imitation requested reforms to reforms resistance,
behavior learning gain rewards through fear collapse,
of surrender
punishment
Instigator Perfect own teaching, promises of threats of armed
behavior institutions, subsidies rewards sanctions intervention,
practices invasion

Fig. 10.1 Modes of democracy promotion

adopt constitutional rule, respect minority rights, abandon territorial claims, hold
free elections, and adopt free market economies. This is democracy promotion by
offering carrots. At the other end of the scale, military force is used to effect ‘regime
change’. Throughout French revolutionary, Soviet, and American history, policies
have fluctuated between these means. Figure 10.1 illustrates the continuum.

10.3 The Exceptionalists’ Modus Operandi

10.3.1 Freedom from External Control

Most governments most of the time seek to maximize their freedom of action. In
that sense, there is nothing exceptional about exceptionalism. However, most
governments most of the time also recognize that in order to maximize their own
values and interests, it is necessary to enter into treaty and other arrangements to
obtain the outcomes they desire. International treaties, norms, conventions, and the
multilateral institutions that are often the venues for their design and negotiation
serve individual and collective interests. They are designed to solve international
problems for which go-alone policies would be futile and possibly dangerous to key
national interests. They often impose serious constraints on freedom of action but
they also enhance international trust, predictability, and cooperation in a variety of
issue areas. International society is a norm-infused domain and those who sys-
tematically violate those norms not only weaken that society but may also under-
mine their own foreign policy goals.
There is a venerable tradition of American foreign policy discourse that dis-
courages foreign ties, institutional memberships, and long-range commitments.
George Washington’s famous farewell address advised against entangling alliances
that would not only compromise American interests, but also lead to domestic
corruption. The isolationists who rejected Woodrow Wilson’s great project did so
primarily on the grounds that membership in the League of Nations would com-
promise America’s freedom of action, its sovereignty, and its ability to choose
among courses of action in response to various threats and opportunities in the
130 10 Exceptionalism in American Foreign Policy …

international system. The coterie of intellectuals and policy-makers dubbed the

‘neo-cons’, some of whom held top positions in the George W. Bush administra-
tion, averred that the United States in its moment of hegemony had to free itself of
the shackles imposed by out-of-date treaties, lugubrious institutions such as the
United Nations, and any other undertakings that might restrain freedom of choice.
These ideas were in tune with Bush’s priorities that were to deal effectively with the
major threats to American security, as he saw them, regardless of prior commit-
ments. The steps to free the United States of international obligations and the
cumbersome processes of multilateral diplomacy are many and constitute a book in
themselves. The list would include the following:
• Unilateral abrogation of the ABM treaty.
• Withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol.
• Removing President Clinton’s signature from the treaty establishing the
International Criminal Court.
• Refusal to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
• Virtual abandonment of the Non-Proliferation Treaty by making side-deals with
India.
• Invading Iraq without approval of the United Nations Security Council.
• Refusal to approve a new protocol to the Biological Weapons Convention.
• Opposition to a draft treaty to control trafficking in small arms.
• Vigorously maintaining that American sovereignty is inviolable, but insisting
that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of others can be breached when
American security requires it.
• Asserting that if the United Nations is to be relevant, its members must abide by
the body’s resolutions. However, the United States (and Israel) is not bound by
UN resolutions.
These and other acts were justified by the view that the best way to ensure
American security in a dangerous world is to shed constraints, whether bilateral or
multilateral, and to maximize freedom of action to address the range of threats
directed against the United States from named and unidentified parties (cf. Daalder
and Lindsay 2003/2005: 13).
The philosophical foundations of the French Revolution, in particular the notion
of popular sovereignty, led the French to suspect all treaties and norms that were not
validated by popular choice. They condemned the Peace of Westphalia on the
grounds that it was an agreement among princes. They questioned existing foun-
dations of international order because these guaranteed only the ‘tranquility’ of
despots, not of peoples who remained under the yoke of tyrants and privileged
classes. France, they argued, should be constrained only by the principles of natural
law (which they then interpreted to mean that France should expand to its ‘natural’
borders). As Dumouriez, who became the French foreign minister for a period in
1792 and who ultimately defected from the revolution, wrote: ‘a great, free and just
people is the natural ally of all people and must not have particular alliances which tie
it to the destiny and interests of such and such a people’ (Armstrong 1993: 87–88). In
the early stages of the revolution, the Legislative Assembly demanded that all foreign
10.3 The Exceptionalists’ Modus Operandi 131

policy engagements of the royal government be reviewed; several were subsequently

annulled (Whiteman 2003: 122–123).
In the case of the Soviet Union, as in many other post-revolutionary societies, it
rejected most of the legal foundations of the society of states on the grounds that
they reflected solely the interests of the bourgeois and imperialist countries. At first
the Bolshevik regime violated a la carte those tenets of international law that
constrained it. It abrogated the debts of the Tsarist governments and unilaterally
annulled a series of pre-1917 treaties, it violated the norms of diplomatic immunity,
it made a separate peace with Germany, and it frequently interfered in the domestic
affairs of other states. Subsequently, the Soviet regime set about establishing a
socialist international law, one that reflected class interests and was of a ‘higher
order’ than bourgeois international law. Class interests and workers’ solidarity
trump sovereign equality and non-intervention. International legitimacy does not
reside in Westphalian principles, self-determination, or international democracy; it
derives solely from the interests of the international proletariat and the cause of the
world revolution (Armstrong 1993: 126).
In subsequent years, the Soviet regime altered many of these views; indeed, it
became a champion of a traditional reading of sovereignty (at least for itself) and
regularly denounced violations of the norm of non-intervention when others
practiced it. When it became the instigator of armed intervention, as in
Czechoslovakia in 1968, it went through tortuous mental gymnastics and reinter-
pretation of ‘socialist international law’ to justify its actions.4 The Brezhnev doc-
trine, like the Roosevelt Corollary (1905), was a major deviation from standard
interpretations of international law, but it was necessary as an attempt to legitimize
Soviet freedom of action.
Maximization of autonomy and freedom of action are strong imperatives in a
formal anarchy populated by sovereign states (Waltz 1979). Despite violations of
norms and treaty obligations, the offending parties usually go out of their way to
proclaim that these actions are consistent with other norms or moral claims. But the
exceptionalist foreign policy type is characterized by claims of permanent immu-
nity from norms of the international society. Both the French revolutionaries and
the Bolsheviks made such claims. The George W. Bush administration never cat-
egorically or formally rejected international law or the norms of the United Nations
Charter, but when it deemed it necessary to protect national security or to promote
‘freedom’, it was willing to act unilaterally and to justify itself on a higher morality
such as national security or the responsibilities of leadership, international justice,
and world peace. The systematic repudiation of so many international treaties,
particularly during the first Bush administration, stands in contrast to most other
states and thus warrants use of the term exceptional.

4
Sergei Kovalev, quoting Lenin, offers one example: ‘A man living in a society cannot be free
from that society, so this or that socialist state, existing in the system of other states making up the
socialist community, cannot be free from the common interests of that community. The sover-
eignty of each socialist country cannot be set up in opposition to the interests of the socialist world
and the interests of the world revolutionary movement’ (Kovalev 1968: 5–6).
132 10 Exceptionalism in American Foreign Policy …

10.4 Universalization of Threats

Some governments have a tendency to transform discrete threats coming from

particular states or other agents at particular times into a universal, hostile
Hobbesian worldview. Threats are all-pervasive, limitless, and enduring. It is the
responsibility of the exceptionalist state to counter those threats by superior power,
by adopting policies of preventive and pre-emptive uses of military force, and by
refusing to negotiate with enemies who are perceived to be morally tainted and to
have unlimited will and capacity to inflict damage on the government and its
society. In the case of the United States, the examples are legion.
A prime example of the universalization of threat is the famous NSC 68 (1950).
Until the late 1940s, American officials typically viewed the Soviet Union as a
troublesome and ungrateful former ally against Nazi Germany, and one that posed
limited threats to post-war Europe (recall that the United States was a reluctant
founder of NATO). The Soviet atomic bomb tests of 1949 and the communist
victory in China changed this fairly selective view of the world in which the United
States was engaged. NSC 68 proclaimed, ‘the assault on free institutions is world-
wide now and in the context of the present polarization of power a defeat of free
institutions anywhere is a defeat everywhere’ (emphasis added). The Korean War
produced a broad consensus that the Soviet Union was a universal threat, its aims
were limitless, its choice of means was ruthless, and the only response was a drastic
build-up of American military might. President Truman endorsed the Hobbesian
worldview of NSC 68, and it remained as the leitmotif of American foreign policy
discourse well into the 1980s. The threat was universal. Communist machinations
lay behind every revolution or liberation movement in the Third World.
Democratically elected governments that had friendly relations with the Soviet
Union and/or China were suspect and, as in the cases of Guatemala (1954), Congo
(1960), Chile (1973), and Nicaragua in the 1980s, had to be overthrown.
The belief structure of the Bush administration’s view of the world was analo-
gous if not an exact replica of a universalized threat structure. ‘Terror’ is universal
and hidden, but it is strategically linked to rogue state actors constituting the ‘axis
of evil’. The connections between them are of course never verified, but the
nightmare that the administration attempted to popularize—with considerable
success at least in the United States—was of a world populated by evildoers who
want to harm innocent Americans. The responding ‘war on terror’ was equally
indiscriminate. The United States will ‘hunt down and bring to justice’ those
evildoers, wherever they are found. Pre-emption and preventive war are necessary
responses to those who operate in secret. According to Condoleezza Rice’s inter-
pretation of the 2002 ‘National Security Strategy of the United States of America’,
even the suspicion that certain actors are seeking to gain control of weapons of mass
destruction (never formally identified) warrants military action (National Security
Adviser [sic] 2002).
The universalization and amplification of threats are revealed not only in
political speeches mobilizing public opinion. These characteristics provide a
10.4 Universalization of Threats 133

perceptual foundation for intelligence estimates. During the Cold War and the
George Bush administration’s handling of the Iraq problem, National Intelligence
Estimates (NIE) chronically over-estimated both the capabilities and intentions of
America’s main adversaries (Lebovic 2009).
This exaggeration derives in part from a broader American public perception of
the world as a hostile place, an environment in which America must constantly
strive to control and eliminate evildoers before their malevolent acts hit the
American homeland. The popular and semi-academic literature portrays a
Hobbesian world, none of which is of American making, but which must be
controlled. For Huntington (1993), it is the ‘clash of civilizations’, in which the
United States must mobilize, lead, and protect the great Western civilization from
its enemies. For Barnett (2005) America stands as an oasis of civility and freedom
in a world populated by unspecified malevolent threats. Kagan (2003) argues that
Americans do indeed view the world as a hostile environment in which an innocent
United States must bear the burden of military leadership, not relying upon the
Europeans who see the world in more Kantian terms.
Historical analogues were prominent during the French Revolution and more
recently in the Soviet Union. In the case of the French, there was the highly
publicized fear of counter-revolution aided, abetted, and possibly instigated by
Europe’s major despots. Surrounded by hostile crowns, the links between them and
elements of the French aristocracy, Louis XVI’s flight to Varennes, and the 1791
Pillnitz Declaration, a decree that unmistakably registered conservative hostility to
the revolution, it is not surprising that many of the French reactions to these trends
and events attained almost hysterical heights and were used to justify numerous
excesses. The French came to characterize the enemy not as the courts in Vienna,
London, or Berlin, but an undifferentiated transnational ‘counter-revolution’ that
demanded extreme counter measures to save the achievements of 1789.
Revolutionary leaders perceived a vast network of interconnected conspiracies, all
magnified through rumor and hearsay (Sutherland 2003: 132). The great ‘Terror’
reflected extreme fears of counter-revolution as well as the losses French armies
were experiencing in the great foreign liberation project. War and terror became
mutually supportive. The answer to the problem of French weakness and vulner-
ability was a combination of foreign military conquests and executions of those
suspected of counter-revolutionary sympathies.
Bolshevik and later Soviet leaders consistently portrayed their revolution and the
Soviet state as permanently threatened by undifferentiated ‘imperialists’. This began
with the Allied intervention on behalf of the Whites during the Russian civil war, and
continued under various slogans such as ‘capitalist encirclement’, ‘imperialist
aggression’, and ‘German revanche’. We must not forget that the so-called Iron
Curtain was not just a device to keep denizens of the workers’ paradise safely at
home, but also to keep out foreign ‘saboteurs’, ‘enemy agents’, and foreign
‘provocateurs’. The degree of suspicion about all foreigners was extreme, and
government propaganda constantly played on the motif of malevolent foreigners and
the threat they posed to the workers of the Soviet state and to their leading party.
Stalin, in particular, viewed the Soviet Union ‘as an isolated and besieged island
134 10 Exceptionalism in American Foreign Policy …

precariously existing in an unrelentingly hostile capitalist sea’ (Marantz 1988: 25).

These perceptions of threat were not, of course, entirely fictional, but they were
amplified to such a degree that ordinary Soviet citizens could perhaps better tolerate
the many sacrifices they had to make to ensure the security of the Soviet motherland.
Stalin’s personal paranoia was reflected in state policies. Like the French revolu-
tionaries’ perceptions of threat almost two centuries earlier, he held that there could
be no peace until Russia’s enemies in particular and imperialism in general had been
destroyed. In Soviet diplomacy until the 1960s, all Western proposals were tricks,
the institutions of the international community were hotbeds of espionage against the
USSR, and any talk of arms control or disarmament was a ploy to weaken the
deterrence capabilities of the Soviet Union. The Soviet perception of unrelenting
threat did not wane until Khrushchev introduced a significantly more optimistic view
of the external environment (Marantz 1988: 31–47).
The main difference between the universalization of threats during the Bolshevik
and Soviet era on the one hand, and during the George W. Bush administration on
the other, is that in the former the threat perception was manufactured by the regime
for a population that had few if any alternative sources of information. In the United
States, the administration used all of its levers of persuasion to instill a sense of
heightened fear in the American population, but alternative voices were never
stilled, even though they were few and certainly not given much notice in the
mainstream media. A gullible American public and media accepted without serious
interrogation the administration’s assertions that Saddam would have the bomb
within a matter of months (Cheney, August 2002), that Saddam had strong ties with
al-Qaeda and ‘terror’, that Saddam was a threat more dangerous than Hitler (Rice,
January 2003), that members of the ‘axis of evil’ were soon to develop the
wherewithal to launch weapons of mass destruction at the United States, and that
the foes of freedom were mobilizing around the world to strike at the heart of
America. The American media played a leading and uncritical role in purveying the
administration’s threat scenarios (see Bennett et al. 2007).

10.5 The Need to Have an Enemy

For a variety of institutional, ideological, and cultural reasons, states that have
endured long periods of persistent (real or perceived) threat and fear tend to develop
a ‘need’ for external enemies. The transition from a fear-based perception of the
external environment to a more benign international scene may be difficult for both
individuals and institutions whose raison d’etre has been intimately tied up with
threat perception, identity, fixed roles, and crisis management. A permanent aura of
exaggerated insecurity may also help create and sustain the role and efforts to
liberate others. The democratic and socialist peace theories, prominent in all three
examples discussed here, provide a recipe for security: remove your adversaries
through ‘liberation’ and you will achieve permanent peace.
10.5 The Need to Have an Enemy 135

One gets a sense of the unease in the United States by regarding typical reactions
at the end of the Cold War. Even prior to the events that led Gorbachev to reject
traditional Soviet policies, many Americans had begun casting around for new
threats. Prominent among those was Japan in the late 1980s. The Japanese eco-
nomic miracle was moving ahead and there was much loose talk about a Japanese
challenge to American supremacy in the Far East. Novels, think-tank studies, and
sections of the popular media began hyping the new threat, old stereotypes of
Japanese secretiveness emerged in some of the literature, and the academic studies
of the growth and decline of the major powers earned a wide readership, including
among members of Congress. The rupture of the Japanese bubble undermined the
‘Japan as the new threat’ scenario but a sense of unease pervaded much foreign
policy discourse once George Bush senior announced the arrival of the new world
order in 1991. In the early 1990s there was the looming problem of Yugoslavia’s
break-up but that did not present any direct threats to the United States. The senior
Bush administration instead rummaged around for threats closer to home and
discovered the drug problem. Now the drug producers and expediters in Colombia,
Peru, Mexico, Ecuador, and Bolivia took center stage as the emerging threat to
America. The administration characterized the situation as predominantly a military
problem; armed aid was directed toward incumbent governments; there was talk of
using military forces for interdiction of drug traffic from South America to the
United States, and an aircraft carrier was dispatched to patrol the shores of the
continent. Nothing much came of this, but one has the sense that the Pentagon and
many people in the upper echelons of the administration were uncomfortable
without a clear-cut enemy of grand proportions.
The Clinton administration found it somewhat easier to conduct foreign relations
in the absence of national fear. Foreign policy problems such as ex-Yugoslavia
were dealt with cautiously, China was named a ‘strategic partner’, and the ill-fated
expedition to Somalia made everyone timid about armed interventions, even if only
of the humanitarian type. Rwanda was the product of this mindset. During this
period, outlays for military expenditures declined dramatically, followed by almost
all other governments in the world. Iraq remained on the agenda, but Clinton and
his advisors did not portray Saddam Hussein as an immediate security threat.
Despite the appearance of a relatively benign international situation in the 1990s,
numerous writers and think tanks in the United States continued to put forth the
view of a perilous world in which numerous agents and actors were seeking to harm
American interests and possibly challenge its hegemonic position. Within
Washington defense circles there was a vigorous debate between the ‘blues’ and the
‘reds’ as to whether China or post-communist Russia would pose the greatest
challenge to the United States. I have already mentioned several prominent analysts
who were convinced that the United States remained under serious threat in a
combination of new and old types of challenges.
Among the group of officials and editorialists termed the ‘neo-cons’, a perma-
nent enemy or enemies was a central tenet of their worldview. The United States
must remain militarily superior to fend off the threats of all those with malevolent
intent—and there are many of them. Resistance to American interventions simply
136 10 Exceptionalism in American Foreign Policy …

confirms the initial assumption of a hostile world. The world of the omnithreat
made up an important component of George W. Bush’s perception of the problems
the United States faced:
We’re certain that even though the ‘evil empire’ may have passed, evil still remains. We’re
certain there are people that can’t stand what America stands for…. We’re certain there
are madmen in this world, and there’s terror. (Quoted in Chernus 2006: 57; emphasis in
original)

A disciplined study of the French Revolution and Soviet diplomacy and

war-making would probably uncover patterns similar to those found in the United
States after the Cold War. In the case of the French, the liberation policy did not last
long enough to establish a long-term trend, but certainly a sense of fear was
manufactured as a means of promoting national military mobilization and the
excesses of the Terror. For the Soviet Union, manufactured fear was a constant
from the early days of the Bolshevik revolution to the more confident diplomatic
postures developed much later during the Khrushchev interlude.
The need to have enemies is a phenomenon that requires research. Any analysis
at this point is tentative and hypothetical. In much of the post-Cold War American
political analysis, hostility and victimhood are prominent themes. The influential
works of Kagan, Huntington, Kristol, and many others bear out this generalization.
When there is no real threat around, Americans tend to become uneasy and are
prone to invent new ‘monsters to slay’. This is a cultural habit or artifact, one with
deep historical roots, but also deriving from institutional needs such as the
military-industrial complex, xenophobic thought structures in elements of the
population, social needs to appear virtuous and charitable, and a host of other
predispositions relating to trust, attitudes toward foreigners, and displacement of
social fears onto outsiders.

10.6 Innocence

Underlying much of the need to have an external foe or enemies is the portrayal of
the exceptionalist as a victim of others’ hatreds and malign intentions. American
innocence is a prominent theme throughout the historical discourse on American
foreign policy. It is others who threaten American interests and values, and the
United States itself is seldom the perpetrator of actions that give rise to foreign
resistance. Americans typically dealt with the problem of ‘Indians’ as one of
punishment for barbaric acts of cruelty visited upon settlers by the savages. Rare
was the acknowledgment that the natives were fighting to survive as distinct cul-
tures in their traditional lands. But virtually all of the lands annexed by the United
States between the administrations of Jefferson and Jackson started out as
native-held territory, from which over the years they were expelled or exterminated.
10.6 Innocence 137

Expansion fed further expansion and those who resisted posed a variety of
threats to American society and security. In a rare fit of accurate self-analysis, a
report by the American navy’s Policy Board in 1890 frankly stated that American
expansion abroad was creating fear among others and that ‘war could come as a
result of American, not foreign, actions’ (Kagan 2007: 348). No one in more recent
times has conceded this as a possibility. The administration’s response to the 9/11
attacks is a case in point. At an impromptu press conference on the White House
lawn, George W. Bush stated in the perplexed tone of the virtuous innocent, ‘Why
would anyone want to hurt us?’ When asked by a reporter whether American policy
in the Middle East would change as a result of the 9/11 attacks, Deputy Secretary of
State Richard Armitage replied that he saw no reason why the United States should
change its policies. It seemed beyond the comprehension of the upper echelons of
power in Washington, DC that anything the United States did could be anything
less than noble, virtuous, and helpful. Apparently the reams of evidence about the
consequences of American actions in the Palestine issue—unremitting support for
Israel—or the hundreds of thousands of deaths produced by the boycott and
embargo of Iraq in the 1990s, or the construction of American military bases in
Saudi Arabia made no impression in Washington. Bush’s only public explanation
for the al-Qaeda attack was that these evil people hate everything America stands
for, particularly its freedom. Framed this way, one is the innocent victim, and one
thus does not have to indulge in any self-examination or enter into any dialogue
with the enemy. The enemy has no issues to discuss, but is only driven by hatred.
All that remains to be done is to root out the evildoers and bring them to justice.

10.7 Sources

The French mission to liberate Europe derived primarily from the idea that the
French Revolution was historically progressive, that its values were universal (the
Declaration of the Rights of Man, not of French men), and that the royal format of
rule was everywhere corrupt, degenerate, a source of constant warfare paid for by
innocent civilians, and tyrannical. The French Revolution stood for everything
opposed to the royal mystique: public virtue, civil liberties, the destruction of the
institutional hold of the Catholic Church, the main values of the Enlightenment, and
rule legitimized by popular support (popular sovereignty). The obligation to bring
the blessings of liberty arose not from being French, but from being free. Although
elements of nationalism were prominent in the discourse of the Committee in the
early 1790s, the essential character of exceptionalism—to destroy the old balance of
power and war system of the monarchs and liberate their subjects—was commonly
seen as historically progressive and the wave of the future. The French Revolution
was the political culmination of the Enlightenment, and the Enlightenment repre-
sented a progressive universal movement toward a higher civilization and toward
the perfectibility of man.
138 10 Exceptionalism in American Foreign Policy …

French perceptions of philosophical and cultural superiority were no less

important. Republicanism had prevailed in Venice and some other small states in
18th-century Europe, but this did not give rise to proselytizing abroad. Europe in
that era was notable for its political heterogeneity and the claims of righteousness
and superiority in play during the religious wars of the previous century had given
way to more tolerance. But the leaders of the Enlightenment had few reservations
about their path-breaking historical role. Coupled with France’s cultural eminence,
few had reservations about promoting French political philosophy and republican
institutions abroad.
The third source was fear. The liberation of Europe was necessary to save the
French Revolution from the plots and counter-revolutionary activities of Europe’s
remaining monarchs. Regime change in favor of republican governments would
remove these threats and thus allow the French to take their revolution to its final
steps. Exceptionalism was thus not just an ideological pose, but also a patriotic
duty. Already in 1792, some French politicians were expounding theories of
democratic peace: France could never be secure until all its neighbors adopted the
principles and practices of the French Revolution (Whiteman 2003: Chap. 4).
For the Bolsheviks, the great debates surrounding the appropriate strategies for
promoting revolution abroad constituted a main arena of ideological dispute. For
Trotsky and his followers, ‘permanent revolution’ was the duty of all Marxist
parties to promote. This meant unlimited support of revolutions abroad and the
rejection of the norms, rules, and games of the imperialist-led international society.
For others, saving the Bolshevik revolution was the highest priority and if this
required deals with the imperialists, they could be tactically justified. One cannot
have successful revolutions abroad without a successful center to provide ideo-
logical and material leadership.
Like the French Revolution, the other major source of exceptionalism was fear
of counter-revolution and foreign intervention. These constituted significant leit-
motifs in the Bolshevik mobilization of public support for destroying the institu-
tions of Tsarist and the young Russian capitalism. The Russian revolution was
unique in many ways and foreign intervention in the 1918–21 civil war proved that
the ‘imperialists’ would not accept its survival. Under such threat, Bolshevik for-
eign policy could not possibly accommodate its strategies and tactics to the reigning
norms and rules of European international relations. If the Bolshevik revolution was
historically exceptional, how could Bolshevik foreign policy be conventional, they
asked?
The roots of American exceptionalism go back to the colonial period, when the
Puritans and their followers regarded themselves as a unique social and religious
experiment. A main component of early Americans’ self-perception was that they
were uniquely free and that in their constitution they had created historically pro-
gressive political institutions and practices. America was free, virtuous, and
peaceful. Europe was in contrast fallen, corrupt, and warlike. The American Creed,
to use Samuel Huntington’s term (1981: 13–30), is constituted of a bundle of values
10.7 Sources 139

such as liberty, equality, individualism, the rule of law, and constitutional gov-
ernment. They serve as the intellectual platform for the idea that American values
and principles benefit all mankind and the assumption that others wish to become
like Americans. The major theme running throughout American history is the
perfection of the American political and economic experiment and its contrast with
others’ institutions and social habits. The underlying assumption is not just one of
difference, but also of superiority. It has historically provided the foundation of the
belief that the United States has not only an obligation, but also a right, to lead other
nations (McCartney 2006: 26).
Religion is another source. Providentialism started with the early years of col-
onization in the 17th century. While the term has had numerous meanings in
different historical contexts and was promoted by different groups, the underlying
assumption is that God has a special plan for America and that God has favored
America over other societies (Guyatt 2007). Superiority is not just a result of
man-made institutions, but has been earned through the Almighty’s capacity to
differentiate between peoples, to reward some and to chastise others. In territorial
expansion throughout American history, rather grubby motives of greed could be
endowed with more glorious foundations such as ‘manifest destiny’. More recently
such sentiments provided justifications for foreign policy actions. To Woodrow
Wilson, for example, the United States is a unique society developed as part of
God’s plan for humankind. His League of Nations project was part of that plan. In
similar fashion, Ronald Reagan intoned that American predominance in the world
serves the interests of civilization and is part of God’s plan for the world (Chernus
2006: 47). George W. Bush frequently implied that America’s struggle to make the
world democratic is part of a divine purpose.
The American Creed, then, rests on a mixture of religion, assumed superiority of
political, economic, and social institutions, and a combination of charitable and
paternal impulses to convert others to American values, principles, and public
mores. These are deeply embedded in American culture and bolstered by the his-
toric experience of two world wars. They do not have a commanding role in all
administrations, at all times, but they appeared significantly in the late 19th century,
during Wilson’s administrations, in the early years of the Cold War, and in the
junior Bush’s first administration. The famous 2002 ‘National Security Strategy of
the United States of America’ (NSS) claimed that America’s principles of liberty
and justice ‘are right and true for all people everywhere’ (National Security Strategy
of the United States of America 2002, p. 1). It reappeared in the 2006 version of the
NSS. The avowed goal of American statecraft, that document averred, is ‘to help
create a world of democratic, well-governed states’ (National Security Strategy of
the United States of America 2006, p. 1). This is not significantly different from
Woodrow Wilson’s aspirations, or, for that matter, from Theodore Roosevelt’s
goals in the Caribbean and Central America.
140 10 Exceptionalism in American Foreign Policy …

10.8 The Moral and Ideological Foundations

of Exceptionalism

States that adopt the liberation dimension of exceptionalism must base their
teaching, commands, or aggression on certain moral and ethical assumptions that
are embedded in their views of superiority. Why is there such certainty in the
messianic-liberation message? One cannot be a model, teacher, or instigator of
foreign regime change with a low view of national self-worth.
The French revolutionary program of ‘liberating’ Europe from the yoke of
despotism was, as suggested, the view that the revolution was the culmination of
the Enlightenment whose home had been France. For at least a century prior to the
revolution, France had been a source of inspiration, awe, and sometimes fear
throughout the continent. Much of it came from ‘soft power’. Louis XIV had set
himself up as the model European monarch, reigning over a society typified by the
royal mystique, superior literary and artistic culture, advanced manufacturing and
agriculture, and also superior in the arts of war. Versailles became the template for
all significant courts in Europe, while French was the recognized diplomatic lan-
guage of the era. As the saying went during Louis XlV’s heyday, ‘not a dog barked
in Europe’ without the permission of the king of France (quoted in Blanning 1996:
17). The French set the cultural tone of 18th-century Europe. In virtually all
manifestations of intellectual activity—music perhaps excepted—it was the leader
for others to follow. It was not by accident that Voltaire became a major advisor to
Frederick the Great. The idea of teaching and liberating others thus had a monu-
mental base of prestige upon which to make claims. Just as Athens had been the
educator of Hellas, France in the 18th century was the cultural, political, and
ideological beacon for Europe.
In the case of the Soviet Union, the moral basis of exceptionalist/liberation ideas
and actions lay in scientific Marxism. The appeal of the Bolsheviks abroad was not
based on Russia’s culture or Lenin’s personal mystique. It was, rather, the belief in
Marxism’s scientific foundations. A progressive view of history was already part of
late 19th-century European thought, buttressed by both Hegel and the social
Darwinists. Marx added the scientific element. The desire to end exploitation is not
just a charitable paternal motive, but also a necessary part in the historical devel-
opment toward a higher stage of freedom. The parallels to French thought at the
time of the 1789 revolution are pronounced: the Enlightenment replaced custom
and religion with reason, and reason applied to the political realm resulted in
liberation from dynastic tyranny. For the Bolsheviks, science was akin to the French
notion of reason, but even more authoritative. Right is not a question of faith or
belief, but of a truth validated by the scientific method. To advance the cause of
freedom by ending exploitation is a high historical calling, scientifically correct and
morally compelling.
In the later years of communist rule in Russia, the moral bases of liberation
thought and action came to be based increasingly on a materialist interpretation of
industrial achievement. Soviet propaganda ignored the finer points of scientific
10.8 The Moral and Ideological Foundations of Exceptionalism 141

Marxism and dialectical materialism while emphasizing dramatic increases in

production figures and the quality of Soviet science and technology, space
achievements in particular. Unlike the United States, however, the themes of
consumer satisfaction and material conditions of life played only a minor role.
In the case of the United States, the moral foundation of the liberation creed is
based on the twin pillars of political and economic ‘freedom’. Democracy is inter-
twined in the American mystique with the notion of free markets. Only Americans
have been wedded to both (Europeans are suspect because of their ‘socialist’ poli-
cies5) and they have helped produce a society of political liberty and unprecedented
economic opportunity. Americans can show the world how to achieve it. While
others may be technically free (there are many countries in the ‘free world’) and
similar to the United States in their political arrangements, none surpasses America
in the opportunity for and the amassment of wealth and a capacity for commercial
innovation. As politicians like to repeat, the United States is the ‘greatest nation’ in
the world, and this refers not just to military might but primarily to average wealth
and the opportunities to advance through the application of hard work and ingenuity.
American ‘soft power’ is also in play: pop culture—films, television, music, and
technological gadgets—are universally popular and massively emulated by others.
The entire American ‘way of life’, then, is seen as a model and the ‘last great hope’
for others. All of this is part of the American myth that in turn is the moral basis for
the liberation ideology and actions.
Finally, American actions have provided the evidence of charitableness and
superiority. Not only is there a rhetorical or religious American mission, but in
World Wars I and II, the Americans literally saved the Europeans from German
hegemony and Nazi slavery. History has proven America’s firm commitment to the
emancipatory mission.
The sources of exceptionalism, and particularly of its missionary dimension, are
significantly similar in the three cases under discussion. The political philosophy of
the Enlightenment and 18th- and 19th-century progressive views of history and
human perfectibility, combine with the 20th-century scientific foundations (the
democratic peace and socialist peace theories) to produce moral imperatives for
liberation and paternalism. These philosophical sources of exceptionalism trump
the 17th-century principle of cuius regio, eius religio underlying the Westphalian
system of tolerance and respect for difference in the social and political make-up of
states. But there is something unique about the American experience. Of the three
cases of exceptionalism, it is the only one that has survived. It appears from time to
time, only to be followed by more conventional foreign policy behavior.

5
American political figures as disparate as Dwight Eisenhower and Sarah Palin have made
derogatory comments about Sweden as a ‘socialist’ country.
142 10 Exceptionalism in American Foreign Policy …

10.9 Grotius versus Vattel, Jackson versus Wolfowitz

The rhetoric and actions taken under exceptionalist foreign policies create critical
problems for world order. There are two incompatible views of the type of inter-
national system in which states should operate. The debates are as old as
International Relations theory, with Grotius representing the view that state entities
should have recourse to armed intervention only in highly prescribed sets of cir-
cumstances (e.g. to seek compensation for an injury/attack), and Vattel, who argued
that armed intervention to end tyranny is permissible as long as the victims of that
tyranny request foreign assistance.
The prevailing Grotian and Westphalian norm is that no organization or gov-
ernment has the right to employ armed force against another state, or to interfere in
its internal affairs. This view reflects the values of tolerance of political diversity in
the world and the right of people to choose their own governments. This view has
been most forcefully argued recently by Robert Jackson (2000).
The opposing view, represented by some proponents of a perverted version of
the democratic peace theory such as Paul Wolfowitz and George W. Bush’s 2004
State of the Union message and his actions in Iraq and elsewhere, is that those who
are committed to freedom, democracy, and peace have an obligation (a mission in
Bush’s words) to alter the governing arrangements of societies that do not enjoy the
blessings of freedom. The virtues of freedom (nowhere expressed in detail by Bush
and his followers) are self-evident, but, in addition, freedom, as the democratic
peace literature suggests, is the road to universal peace. Political tolerance cannot
extend to those who because of their internal political arrangements represent
tyranny and a threat to others. These regimes are evil, and must be exorcised in
order to bring peace to the world and freedom to the victims of tyranny.
To date, the international community has not granted official sanction to the
latter view. The United Nations Charter and the parallel documents of contempo-
rary regional organizations represent the Grotian-Westphalian view, but have
moved slightly toward the ‘peace through democracy’ camp by acknowledging a
responsibility to protect victims of massive human rights abuses by governments,
and by instituting features of democratic governance in post-civil war reconstruc-
tion. Armed intervention for humanitarian purposes, however, is limited to outra-
geous assaults by governments against their citizens, or to cases where different
communities within a state wage war against each other with concomitant atrocities,
and in all cases requires community approval through the votes of international
organizations (cf. Arbour 2008). No government today has publicly stated that there
is a universal right to intervene militarily against governments just because they are
authoritarian or malevolent.
The victorious World War II allies were successful in democratizing Germany
and Japan, but throughout the developing areas of the world the installation of
actual or pseudo-democratic regimes through armed intervention has had a
checkered history. One recent study concludes that the ‘historical experiences of
imposed democracies… cast a bleak outlook for the durability of the current
10.9 Grotius versus Vattel, Jackson versus Wolfowitz 143

imposed democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not only do nearly 63 % of our

sample of 43 imposed democratic regimes fail during our period of observation
(1800–1994), but the mean durability of imposed democratic regimes is 13.1 years’
(Enterline and Grieg 2008: 342). Another recent study (Gleditsch et al. 2007)
concluded that forced democratization brought some measure of liberalization, but
nothing approaching the qualities of mature democracies. The targets tend to end up
as semi-democracies with political instability and internal conflict at much higher
levels than under autocracy. Bruce Russett (2005: 405) has summarized the record
of armed regime change. ‘Military interventions have sometimes installed democ-
racy by force, but they have more often failed, and the successes have been
immensely expensive in lives and treasure.’6
A more fundamental critique of the exceptionalist foreign policy type is that in
both the French and Soviet examples, the quest for liberating the victims of tyranny
or capitalist oppression ultimately led to imperialism. The French believed that the
populations of the rest of Europe craved to be liberated. It came as a surprise when
those same populations, whatever their beliefs about freedom, resisted obtaining it
through French bayonets. Soviet domination of East Europe could never have come
about without the chaos surrounding the end of World War II. The populations in
question no doubt were happy to be liberated from Nazi rule, but that did not mean
that they embraced Soviet rule. In the case of the United States, despite some who
use the terminology of imperialism, a better term is benign hegemony. The United
States has learned to tolerate diversity, but only up to a point. Mossadegh, Arbenz,
Lumumba, Castro, Allende, Ortega, Noriega, Hussein, and others have all paid the
price for their apostasies against America’s concept of a liberal world order.
‘Regime change’ was no invention of the George W. Bush administration.

10.10 Conclusion

Foreign policy exceptionalism is not exceptional but there are sufficient examples to
suggest that it is a type of foreign policy. The United States is not the first, and may
not be the last, to adopt messianic strains in its foreign policies, to claim exemption
from the most basic norms of international society, and to portray itself as an
innocent victim of generalized and universal threats. Indeed, these are hallmarks of
many revolutionary regimes (Halliday 1999). However, England during the heyday
of colonialism in the last 20 years of the 19th century, the United States, and the
Soviet Union in its last 20 years approximately, could hardly be termed ‘revolu-
tionary’ states. They were and are mature polities, with well-established domestic
regimes and lengthy foreign policy traditions, so it is not just revolutionary states

6
There is a growing literature, much of it based on comparative case studies or quantitative
analysis, regarding the outcomes of attempted democratization through armed force. Smith (1994),
Peceny (1999), and a host of more limited studies are available. Most of the findings justify
Russett’s conclusion.
144 10 Exceptionalism in American Foreign Policy …

that employ exceptionalist rhetoric and actions. What is exceptional about

American exceptionalism is its longevity. As a set of ideas, it goes back to the
eighteenth century. As a basis of policy making it appears in actions, periodically,
since the mid-19th century.
In all three cases considered here, exceptionalism was born of cultures that
encompassed perceptions of national superiority, linked to paternalistic and ideal-
istic compulsions to bring one’s own gifts to all mankind and to remake the world
in one’s own image. All the cases rested on assumptions that societies elsewhere
yearned to be ‘free’. As the French, the Soviets, and the Americans learned,
however, the gifts and good intentions of one’s own society may well end up
looking like imperialism, hubris, and intolerance of resistance for others.
From the academic perspective, if there are sufficient similarities between the
three cases to suggest a type of foreign policy, then we may ask if there are not also
other types that could help us construct a typology of foreign policy. The ‘hermit’
type, encompassing for example Communist Albania, and Burma and Bhutan until
recently, could be explored. And there would be many others. But that is a subject
for another project. Here it is sufficient to suggest that exceptionalism is not
exceptional.

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University of British Columbia

The University of British Columbia is a global center for research and teaching,
consistently ranked among the 40 best universities in the world. Since 1915, UBC’s
West Coast spirit has embraced innovation and challenged the status quo. Its
entrepreneurial perspective encourages students, staff and faculty to challenge
convention, lead discovery and explore new ways of learning. At UBC, bold
thinking is given a place to develop into ideas that can change the world.
As one of the world’s top research universities, for more than a century the
University of British Columbia has created positive change here and abroad. Today,
centered on our two major campuses—the Vancouver campus and the Okanagan
campus—we attract, nurture and proactively transform more than 58,000 students
from Canada and 140 countries.

Vision
As one of the world’s leading universities, The University of British Columbia
creates an exceptional learning environment that fosters global citizenship,
advances a civil and sustainable society, and supports outstanding research to serve
the people of British Columbia, Canada and the world.

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K. Holsti, Kalevi Holsti: A Pioneer in International Relations Theory, Foreign
Policy Analysis, History of International Order, and Security Studies, SpringerBriefs
on Pioneers in Science and Practice 41, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-26624-4
148 University of British Columbia

Values
Academic Freedom
The University is independent and cherishes and defends free inquiry and scholarly
responsibility.
Advancing and sharing knowledge
The University supports scholarly pursuits that contribute to knowledge and
understanding within and across disciplines, and seeks every opportunity to share
them broadly.
Excellence
The University, through its students, faculty, staff, and alumni, strives for excel-
lence and educates students to the highest standards.
Integrity
The University acts with integrity, fulfilling promises and ensuring open, respectful
relationships.
Mutual respect and equity
The University values and respects all members of its communities, each of whom
individually and collaboratively makes a contribution to create, strengthen and
enrich our learning environment.
Public interest
The University embodies the highest standards of service and stewardship of
resources and works within the wider community to enhance societal goods.
Website: http://www.ubc.ca/about/
Liu Institute for Global Issues

Named after Dr. Jieh Jow Liou, the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University
of British Columbia conducts and facilitates leading edge research and debate on
global issues—mobilizing knowledge into solutions and policy. The Institute takes
an interdisciplinary problem-solving approach to explore new ideas and ways of
learning to catalyze innovative thinking and positive societal change. Our three
main areas of strategic focus currently include: Sustainability, Security, Social
Justice.

Research
The Liu Institute serves as a hub for global issues research at UBC and provides
innovative learning and research opportunities for UBC graduate students, post-
doctoral fellows, faculty, and community members that help to bridge the gap
between academics and practitioners. We host regular workshops, panel discus-
sions, colloquia and guest lecturers which lead to in-depth reports, policy briefs,
books, academic articles and media coverage, on a range of technical and current
affairs topics. We engage researchers and students across disciplines through
partnerships with governments, NGOs and the private sector.
The Liu Institute also houses an interdisciplinary group of exceptional scholars,
conducting global research in cross-cutting fields including international develop-
ment, climate policy, food security, energy, law, business, political economy,
international relations, comparative public policy, socio-cultural analysis, and
socio-technical studies. Select current projects include:
• Global Food Security
• Civilian Self-Protection Strategies During Conflict

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Policy Analysis, History of International Order, and Security Studies, SpringerBriefs
on Pioneers in Science and Practice 41, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-26624-4
150 Liu Institute for Global Issues

• Resources Extraction and Recent Conflicts

• Energy Poverty
• International Relations in the Digital Age
• Climate and Air Quality.

Visiting Scholars and Distinguished Fellows

The Liu Institute for Global Issues invites leading scholars and distinguished
practitioners to take up residence and engage in research and teaching activities at
the Institute. Visiting scholars and distinguished fellows have focused their research
in corporate social responsibility; transitional justice and reconciliation; conflict and
development; conflict financing; climate and environmental governance; and
international law and civil society.

Postdoctoral Fellows
The Institute currently has two Postdoctoral Fellows in the areas of sport for
development and energy (electrification) in rural India.

Liu Scholars Program

The Liu Scholar Program brings together exceptional Ph.D. students from across
UBC to collaborate in cross-disciplinary research on global issues. Since its
beginning in 2000, the Institute has welcomed 181 scholars to the program from a
range of disciplinary backgrounds. Within the current cohort of 145 Liu scholars,
there are 4 Trudeau Scholars, 20 Vanier Scholars, 35 Canada Graduate Scholarship
and 22 Tri-Council Award recipients. A further 10 Liu Scholars have received
International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Doctoral Research Awards to
undertake thesis research in developing countries.

Liu Institute Networks and Research Groups

The Liu Institute encourages and houses a range of global issue networks and
research groups that connect researchers at UBC and provide a portal for infor-
mation and idea exchange between the university and the broader community.
A sample of these groups includes:
The Corporate Social Responsibility Network is focused on sharing leading edge
research and encouraging lively debate among academics and practitioners
regarding corporations and global sustainability.
The Global Health Network seeks to enable the development of broad, trans-
disciplinary conceptions of global health, towards a more inclusive approach.
Liu Institute for Global Issues 151

The Global Queer Research Group connects scholars, activists, and community
members around research and policy issues concerning lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender, and queer communities, both locally and globally.
The International Development Research Network is an inclusive social web,
designed to connect graduate researchers working on a broad spectrum of global
development issues ranging from sustainability to education.
The Working Group on Latin America and the Global Research Group inves-
tigates the relationship between Latin America and broader, global forces.

Global Policy Dialogue

The Liu Institute actively engages in global policy dialogue with the broader
community including practitioners from government, industry and civil society.
Select events and workshops include:
• Farming for a Sustainable Planet with Navin Ramankutty, Professor, Global
Food Security and Sustainability as part of The Future of Food Global Dialogue
Series.
• Confronting First World Hunger: Charity or the Right to Food as part of the
annual Splane Lecture on Social Policy, by Graham Riches, Emeritus Professor,
former Director of the UBC School of Social Work.
• Seafood in an Uncertain Future: From Scenarios to Policies roundtable,
co-sponsored by Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, and hosted by the
NF-UBC Nereus Program, UBC Fisheries Centre.
• Approaching Perpetrators: Ethnographic Insights on Ethics, Methodology and
Theory organized by Dr. Erin Jessee, Research Fellow.
• The Analysis of Absence: An Enquiry into Institutional Capacity to Respond to
and Prevent Conflict-Related Sexual Violence against Men and Boys presented
by former Visiting Fellow in Residence at Green College, Chris Dolan.
• ICCLR International Lecture Series with Eric MacDonald, Senior Trial Lawyer,
Office of the Prosecutor, International Criminal Court The Hague.

Liu Institute Facilities

The Liu Institute is located at the edge of UBC’s Point Grey Campus. The Institute
is an award-winning, sustainable building designed by Arthur Erickson. The Liu
Institute encourages government, industry and non-profit organizations to take
advantage of the ideal setting for their strategy meetings and retreats. Liu rooms
include the Multipurpose Room, the Case Room, the Boardroom, and the Research
Unit. The Lobby Gallery fosters alternative and artistic forms of dissemination of
research through critical artistic expression, enabling a space for creative dialogue
about global issues among students, faculty, researchers and the public. Exhibitions,
which run throughout the year, have included We are all the Same': Children, War,
152 Liu Institute for Global Issues

and Humanity in Northern Uganda and Taking Liberties and Policing Borders:
Arbitrary Detentions and Deportation of Refugees and Migrants.
Website: www.ligi.ubc.ca.
About the Author

Kalevi (Kal) Holsti, of Finnish origins, is a leading

Canadian scholar in the field of International
Relations. During his academic career at the
University of British Columbia, he was editor of the
International Studies Quarterly, Co-editor of the
Canadian Journal of Political Science, President of
the Canadian Political Science Association, and
President of the International Studies Association.
He has published numerous books, chapters in edited
volumes, and journal articles. Among the former are
his textbook (in seven editions), International
Politics: A Framework for Analysis, translated into
Bahasa Indonesian, Japanese, and Mandarin, Peace and War: Armed Conflict and
International Order, translated into Mandarin, The State, War, and the State of
War, translated into Albanian, and Taming the Sovereigns: Institutional Change in
International Politics.
The last 3 volumes were published by Cambridge University Press Holsti has
been a visiting professor or scholar at the University of Hawaii, McGill University,
the Australian National University, Kyoto University, and the International
University of Japan. In 1983 he was elected to membership in the Royal Society of
Canada, and in 2005 a foreign member of the Finnish Academy of Science and
Letters. In 1997, he was named University Killam Professor of Political Science,
the seventh scholar to be so honored since the University opened in 1915. Holsti is
currently housed in the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University of British
Columbia.
Address: Prof. Kalevi Holsti, Liu Institute for Global Issues, The University of
British Columbia, 6476 NW Marine Drive, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2.
Email: kal.holsti@ubc.ca
Website: https://www.linkedin.com/pub/kalevi-holsti/12/66/322 and http://afes-
press-books.de/html/SpringerBriefs_PSP_Holsti.htm.

© The Author(s) 2016 153

K. Holsti, Kalevi Holsti: A Pioneer in International Relations Theory, Foreign
Policy Analysis, History of International Order, and Security Studies, SpringerBriefs
on Pioneers in Science and Practice 41, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-26624-4
About this Book

On the occasion of Prof. Kalevi Holsti’s 80th birthday, this collection offers an
autobiography, comprehensive bibliography and key texts of this renowned
International Relations Scholar. His first texts examine: Hegemony and Challenge
in International Theory, Problem of Change in International Relations Theory,
International Theory in the Next Millennium, and Hindrances to Understanding in
International Relations. Two key foreign policy texts focus on: Restructuring
Foreign Policy and Exceptionalism in American Foreign Policy. These six texts
were previously published but address issues that remain on the international
agenda, such as foreign policy change and the ideological foundations of American
foreign policy. Prof. Holsti was president of the International Studies Association
and is the author of a major textbook that was translated into Mandarin, Korean,
Japanese, and Bahasa Indonesian. Thousands of undergraduates around the world
are acquainted with his work.
• As a Pioneer in International Relations, Holsti’s work influenced generations of
political scientists and scholars of international relations, foreign policy analysis,
and security studies.
• On the occasion of his 80th birthday, the book offers a short intellectual auto-
biography and a comprehensive biography of all his published works.
• Holsti is a former president of the International Studies Association.

Contents
Part I: On Kalevi Holsti—1 Biography—2 Bibliography
Part II: Texts by Kalevi Holsti on International Theory—3 Introduction on
International Theory—4 Hegemony and Challenge in International Theory—5 The
Problem of Change in International Relations Theory—6 Along the Road of
International Theory in the Next Millennium: Four Travelogues—7 Hindrances to
Understanding in International Relations
Part III: Texts by Kalevi Holsti on Foreign Policy Change—8 Introduction on
Foreign Policy Change—9 Restructuring Foreign Policy: A Neglected Phenomenon

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K. Holsti, Kalevi Holsti: A Pioneer in International Relations Theory, Foreign
Policy Analysis, History of International Order, and Security Studies, SpringerBriefs
on Pioneers in Science and Practice 41, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-26624-4
156 About this Book

in Foreign Policy Theory—10 Exceptionalism in American Foreign Policy: Is it

Exceptional?
University of British Columbia Issues—Liu Institute of Global Affairs—About the
Author
More on this book is at: http://afes-press-books.de/html/SpringerBriefs_PSP_
Holsti.htm.