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

The
IS
attributes
behavior,
an d their interactions. Why must those obviously
important be omitted1 They mus t be omitted so tha t we can distinquish
between variables at the level
of the units and variables at the level
of the system.
Anarchic Structures  nd
Balances of Power
Two tasks remain: f irst , to examine the characterist ics of anarchy and the
expectations about
outcomes associated with anarchic rea lms; s econd, to
examine the ways in which expectationsvary as the structure of an anarchic sys
tem changes through changes in the distribution
of capabilities across nations.
The second task, undertaken in 7, 8, and 9, requires comparing differ
ent international systems. The first, which I now
turn to, is best accomplished
by
and outcomes in anarchic
1. VIOLENCE AT HOME AND ABROAD
The state among states, i t is often said, conducts i ts a ffa irs in the brooding
shadow of violence. Because some states may at any t ime use force, a ll s ta tes
must be prepared
mercy of their militarily more
vigorous
neighbors. Among states, the stateof nature is a state of
war. This is meant
but
in the sense that,
with each state deciding
for itself whether o r not to use force, war may a t any time break out. Whether in
the family , th e community, or the wor ld a t large, contact without a t least
occasional conflict is inconceivable;
an agent
to manage
or
to
manipulate confl icting part ies the use of force will always be
avoided canno t be realistically entertained.
Among
men as among states,
anarchy, or the absence of government, is associated with the occurrence of
violence.
The threat of violence and the recurrent use of force are said to distinguish
international from national affai rs . But in the history
of the world surely most
rulers have had to
bear
i n m ind tha t their subjects might use force to resist
or
Anarchic Orders and Balances of Power 103
overthrow them. If the absence of government is associated with t he t hr ea t o f
violence, so a lso is i ts presence. A haphazard list of
national tragedies illustrates
the point all too well. The most destructive wars of the hundred
years
following
the defeat of Napoleon took place not among states bu t within them. Estimates of
deaths in China's Taiping Rebellion, which began in 1851 and las ted 13 years,
range as high as 20 mill ion. In the American Civil War some 600 thousand people
lost their l ives. In more recent history, forced collectivization and Stalin's purges
eliminated five million Russians,
some Latin American countries, coups d'etats
and rebellions have been normal
features of national l ife. Between 1948
and
civil strife. In the middle 19705 most inhabitants of Idi
Amin's Uganda
must have fel t their l ives becoming nasty, brutish,
and
short,
nature.
If such cases constitute aberrations,
t hey a re uncomfortably common one s. We easily lose sight of the fact
that
power,
kind
of justice within states, may be bloodier than wars among them.
If anarchy is identified with
chaos, destruction, and death, then
the
distinc
tion between anarchy and government does not tel l us much. Which is more pre
carious: the life of a state among states, or
of a government in relation to its sub
jects?
some times,
the actual or expected occurrenceof violence is low. Within some states
at
some
or
expected occurrence of violence is high. The use of force, or
the constant fear of i ts use, are no t sufficient grounds for distinguishing inter
national
from
an d the actual use of force mark
both
national an d international orders, then no durable distinction between the
two realms can
be
drawn in terms of the use or the nonuse of force . No human
order is proof
must
look
distinction
between international an d national realms of politics is not found in
the use
or
the
nonuse of force bu t in their different structures. But   the dangers o f being
violently attacked are greater , say, in taking an evening stroll through
downtown
are in picnicking along the French and
German border,
practical difference does the difference of s truc ture make?
Nationally
as
internationally,
contact
Th e dif
ference between national and international politics lies not in the use of force bu t
in the different modes of
organization for doing something
of legitimacy, arrogates to itself the right to use
force-that is, to
apply a variety
by
its
government
has
on
 
128 Chapter 6
tude was well expressed by Tro tsky , who , when a sked wha t he would do as
foreign minister, replied, I wil l issue
some revolutionary proclamations to
joint (quoted
235). In a com
petitive arena, however, one party may need the assistance of others. Refusal to
play the political game may risk one's own destruction. The pressures of competi
tion were rapidly felt and reflected in the Soviet Union's diplomacy. Thus Lenin,
sending foreign minister Chicherin to the Genoa Conference of 1922, bade him
farewell with this caution:  Avoid big words (quoted in Moore 1950, p. 204).
Chicherin, who personified the carefully tailored traditional diplomat
rather
than
was to refrain from inflammatory rhetoric
f or t he sake of working deals. These he successfully completed with that other
pariah
power and ideological enemy, Germany.
The close juxtaposition of states promotes their sameness through the disad
vantages that arise from a f ai lu re t o conform to success fu l p ract ices . I t is thi s
  sameness, an effect of the system, that is so often attributed to the acceptance of
so-called rules of state behavior. Chiliastic rulers occasionally come to power. In
power, most of them quickly
change their ways. They can refuse to do so , and
yet hope to survive, only if they rule countries little affected by the
competition
of states. The socialization of nonconformist states proceeds at a pac e that i s set
by
the extent of their involvement in the sys tem. And tha t is another testable
statement.
leads to many expectations about behaviors and outcomes. From
the theory, one predicts that states will engage in balancing behavior, whether or
not
balanced
tendency
toward balance in the system. The expectation is not tha t a balance,
once achieved, wil l be maintained, bu t that a balance , once disrupted, will be
restored in one way o r another. Balances of power recurrently form. S ince the
theory depicts international politics as a competitive system,
one
namely, that they will imitate each other
and become socialized to their system.
In this chapter, I have suggested ways of making these propositions more specific
and concreteso as to test them. In remaining chapters, as the
theory
systems and
showed how
behav
ior and outcomes vary from one system to another. Chapter 7, 8, and 9 compare
different international systems and show how behavior
and
outcomes vary in
systems whose ordering principles endure bu t whose structures vary through
changes in the distribution of capabilities across states. The question posed in this
chapter is whether we should
prefer larger or smaller numbers of great
powers.
I
How
should we count poles, a nd how can we measure power? These questions
must be answered in order to identify variations of structure. Almost everyone
agrees that
the was bipolar.
Few seem believe
that i t remains so. For years Walter Lippmann wrote of the bipolar worldas being
perpetually i n t he process of rapidly passing away (e.g., 1950 and 1963). Many
others now carry on the t radi tion he so firmly established. To reach the conclu
sion that bipolarity is passing, or 'past, requires some odd counting. The inclina
tion to count infunny ways is rooted in the desire to arrive at a particular answer.
Scholars feel a strong affection for the balance-of-power world of Metternich an d
Bismarck, on which many of their theoretical notions rest.
That
maneuvered for
advantage. Great
Stu
a t o ther conditions. The ability
or inability of states to solve problems is said to raise
or
the next one were written as a study of interdependence
for the Department of State, whose views
may
160 Chapter 7
compared to those of chess. Neither game can be successfully played unless the
So fa r I have
shown that smaller are better than larger numbers, at least for
those states at the top. Defining the concept, and examining the economics, of
interdependence didnot establish just which small number is best ofal l. We could
not answer that question because economic interdependence varieswith the size
of great powers
and their size does not correlate perfectly with their number. In
the next chapter, examination of mil it ary interdependence leads to an exact
answer.
8
Structural
Causes
 nd
say tha t few are better
than many is
not to sa y th at two is b est o f all. The
stabili ty of pairs-of corporations,
of
polit ical part ies, of marriage partners-has often been appreciated. Although
most students of international politics probably bel ieve tha t sys tems of many
great powerswould be unstable, they resist the widespread notion
that
two is the
best of small numbers. Are they right t o do so? For the sake ofstabili ty, peace, or
whatever, should we prefer a wor ld of two great powers
or a world of several or
more? Chapter
8 will show why two is t he bes t o f small numbers. We reached
some conclusions,
by
considering economic interdependence.
Problems of national security in multi- and bipolar worlds do clearly show the
advantages of having two great powers, an d
only
of dif
was
no t
by having two, three, four, or
more principal parties in a system. We must do so
now. By what criteria do we determine t ha t a n system
changes,
and
conversely,
Political scientists often
stability. I did
this in 1964
effective management of international affairs, which are the respective concerns
of this chapter and the next one. I t is important, I now believe,
to keep different
Anarchic systems are transformed
by changes in organizing principle
and by consequential changes in the number of their principal parties. To saytha t
an international-political system is stable means
two things: first,
International ffairs
If power does not reliably bring control , what does it do for you? Four things,
primarily. First, power
wield. Second, greater power permits wider ranges of
action, while leaving the outcomes of action uncertain. These two advantages we
have discussed. The next two require elaboration.
Third, the more powerful enjoy
wider margins of safety in dealing
with
the
less
will be played and
Schnore
have defined power in eco logica l t erms as lithe ability of
one cluster of activities or niches to set the conditions under which others must
function (1959,
independent
ones, bu t the latter have more effect on the former. The weak lead perilous lives.
As Chrysler's chairman, John Riccardo, remarked: We've got to be right. The
smaller you are , the more right you've got to be
(Salpukas,
March 7,
1976, III,
p. 1). General Motors can lose money on this model o r t ha t one, or on all of
them, for qui te a long time. Chrysler, if i t d oe s so, goe s bankrupt.   they cor
porations
or states, those who ar e wea k a nd hard pressed have to be careful.
Thus with the following words Nguyen Van Thieu rejected the agreement for
ending the wa r in Vietnam that Kissinger, the ally, and Le Duc
Tho,
of 1972:
You are a giant, Dr. Kissinger. So you can probably afford theluxuryof being
easy in this agreement. I cannot. A bad agreement means nothing to you. What
is the loss of South Vietnam if
you look at the world's map1 Just a speck. The
loss of South Vietnam may even be good for you. It may be good to contain
China, good for
your world strategy. Buta little Vietnamesedoesn't playwith a
strategic map of the world. For us, i t i sn 't a questionof choosing between Mos
cow
and Peking. It is a question of choosing between lifeand death (quoted in
Stoessinger
Weak states operate on
mistimed moves
strong states can
More sensibly, they can react slowly and
wait to see
apparently
threatening act s o f o thers a re t ru ly so. They can be
indifferent
to
most
threats
because only a few threats, if carried through, can damage them gravely. They
can hold
moment for effective action will
be lost.
Fourth, great power gives i ts possessors a big stake in their system
and
the
ability t o a ct for i ts sake. For them management becomes both worthwhile and
possible. To
why managerial tasks
are performed internationally
is the subject of this chapter. In self-help systems, as we know competing parties
consider relat ive gains more importan t
than
become more important as competition lessens. conditions make it possible
for the United States and the Soviet Union to be concerned less
with scoring rela
tive gains and
more
with making absolute ones. Th f ir s is the stability of
two
second-s