Pierre P. Lizee - A Whole New World: Reinventing International Studies for the Post-Western World (Palgrave Studies in International Relations)

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MAKING EU FOREIGN POLICY

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A Whole New World

Reinventing International Studies for the Post-Western World

Pierre P. Lize

Chancellors Research Chair in Global Studies, Department of Political Science, Brock University, Canada

Contents

Acknowledgments

I started the research involved in some components of this book a few years ago, when I was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California at Berkeley. I was at Berkeley at the invitation of Joyce Kallgren, and I should thank Joyce for the kindness and interest with which she supported my work there.

I was then invited to join Brock University, near Toronto, as Chancellors Research Chair in Global Studies. In this way, Brock gave me the most precious gift one can give an academic: time. While at Brock, I had the time to travel, live, and do research across the world, and the time also to reflect and move my work forward. Without that support I could never have written this book.

I should thank as well three colleagues who have been extremely helpful to me as I was writing this text: Amitav Acharya, from the American University, in Washington, D.C.; Paul Evans, from the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver; and Brian Job, also from the University of British Columbia. It is often said that your enemies critique you behind your back, while your friends critique you to your face. By that measure, I can say, with a half-smile, that Amitav, Paul, and Brian; have been the very best of friends. They have critiqued me endlessly; they have forced me to revise every argument, and they have made me doubt what I assumed was certain: for all of this I am extremely grateful.

As I was writing this book, I spent different lengths of time living and teaching in Asia. Many colleagues with whom I interacted in this context have also been very supportive of my work. In particular, I should thank Jusuf Wanandi, the leading force at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in Jakarta; Mely Caballero Anthony, from the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, in Singapore; Carolina Hernandez, from the University of the Philippines, in Manila; and Sorpong Peou, from Sophia University, in Tokyo.

I should express my gratitude to Knud Erik Jrgensen and Audie Klotz, the Series Editors for the Palgrave Studies in International Relations, for their assistance and support. Alexandra Webster, at Palgrave Macmillan, believed in this book from the start, and for this I thank her. Christina Brian and Liz Blackmore, also at Palgrave Macmillan, were as efficient as they were helpful throughout the entire publication process. Two anonymous reviewers suggested important revisions to the text. I should also thank Melissa Mucci, my research assistant at Brock University, who helped me organize the final version of this book.

I should say a word, lastly, about my two children: Megan and Ethan. One of lifes melancholy truths is that children grow up too quickly and academics write books far too slowly, thus losing some of the time they should have spent with their children. Megan and Ethan have dealt with this situation, though, with the utmost understanding and grace, and for this I thank them. As is the case with everything I do, it is to the two of them that I dedicate this book, with all my heart.

Introduction: Understanding the Post-Western World

International studies is beset by an important problem: it is inherently Western-centric. Stanley Hoffmann, surely one of the key figures in the development of the field over the past few decades, once famously went so far as to describe it as being, in essence, an American social science. The images, concepts, and theories which underlie international studies, Hoffmann argued, must be recognized for what they are: products of the post-1945 era, when to study United States foreign policy was to study the international system and to study the international system could not fail to bring one back to the role of the United States.

The situation described above has placed the entire discipline with unavoidable and crucially important questions. What exactly does it mean to say that international studies is Western-centric? What has been overlooked or misunderstood, when it comes to the international politics of the non-Western world? Furthermore, what would a discipline which is no longer Western-centric, one which pays greater heed to the realities of the non-Western world and integrates them in its logic and its claims, actually look like? These are vexing questions for all of us who work in international studies, not least because the field does not yet appear to have the intellectual tools and insights that would allow us to answer them in full.

More to the point, these questions are troublesome because they leave us with a great deal of uncertainty and ambiguity in everything we do in the field. When we discuss or critique the notion of balance of power, for instance, are we describing a fundamentally Western-centric concept, which requires Western understandings of the state, power, and rationality, in order for it to make sense? If we use that notion in a non-Western context, for example to probe how power balancing is likely to operate between China and India, do we know what we are overlooking or misinterpreting because of that ambiguity? Is it possible for us to formulate, then, a more inclusive understanding of the balance of power, one which is also sensitive to the realities of that part of the world and gives us a greater degree of assurance when we discuss how the notion operates there?

How far should we go, finally, in this reinvention of the field? What is claimed and debated in international studies always follows from a series of key premises. We go to Machiavelli or Morgenthau to comprehend power and violence; we read Kant to learn about peace; and, more recently, we have started studying Foucault or Wendt to understand the forms of rationality and knowledge at play in the work of these other authors. It is these debates that we engage in, these notions that we use as we advise policy makers and as we teach our students the rudiments of the discipline in undergraduate courses. Is all of this, though, eminently Western-centric? When Hobbes talks about the state, is he overlooking significant aspects of what makes the state unique in the non-Western world? Conversely, how, then, should we read him to garner from his writings insights which will also apply to the non-Western world? How would that principle apply to all the other authors that form the canon of international studies should we study and teach Machiavelli, Morgenthau, and now Wendt differently, in order to address all such issues? These are all important questions, and yet we still lack answers to them.

The issue today, though, is that global politics is such that finding answers to all these questions can no longer wait. We live in a world which is less and less Western-centric. The key transformation at play in global politics is the rise of the rest, as Fareed Zakaria puts it, Non-Western powers China, India, and the like constitute some of the worlds dominant economies. Their capacity to influence or shape geostrategic realities and to challenge, for instance, the supremacy of the American military in many parts of the globe is growing accordingly, and will continue to do so in the medium and long term.