Gramsican approaches in International Relations (IR) have sought to outline the relationship between ideas and material forces in the construction of world order. Scholars working within this broad school have sought to emphasise that ideas are material forces, and must be considered as concrete historical structures (Cox, 1987) central to the establishment of particular historical and hegemonic blocs. This literature has primarily focused on the discursive construction of hegemony by international elites and the impact this has on political practices. While these insights are important in understanding the construction of world order, it is necessary to extend them to include the creation of actual physical structures – that is, it is vital to link the ideational aspects of hegemony with actual material processes. I will argue that a consideration of the role of technology provides an ideal vehicle for this process, building on the preliminary work of Bieler and Morton in this regard (2008). Technological structures are the product of particular cultural values and embed these cultural values within their very structure. Physical material factors thereby express ideational values constructed by specific social forces. Social practices are thus not only a function of the dominance of certain ideological formations, but also the product of the material environment itself and the manner in which the human metabolism with nature must function through these physical constructions.

This article examines the impact of the utilisation of the RMA on the part of the Colombian and US governments vis-à-vis the Farc. The central argument is that the RMA as applied in Colombia relies on newfangled and sometimes clever conceptions of force that have weakened the relative power of the Farc, but which fail to address the root causes of insurgency in the country that centre on profound economic inequity and violent political exclusion. Over 75 per cent of the $6 billion so far divulged through Plan Colombia has been devoted to military and police assistance, with the rest going to institutional programmes and to a lesser extent to social programmes. Although the insurgents are indeed weaker, as a result both of the RMA as well as misguided policies on the part of the guerrillas themselves, they are by no means ‘broken’. Violent conflict in the country will likely persist into the foreseeable future.

Questions of uncertainty and responsibility have been central to the political and legal investigations of the failed UN/Dutch peacekeeping mission in Srebrenica. The official Dutch NIOD report on the peacekeeping mission has reconstructed the fall of Srebrenica as a surprise attack and as an ‘intelligence failure’. The report and its understanding of tactical uncertainty has led to a call for more intelligence in UN operations. I argue that the report builds its claims on a problematic epistemology of intelligence studies drawing upon a politics of ‘hard knowledge’. A similar epistemology can be identified in the proceedings of the war crimes tribunal in The Hague (ICTY) in the legal approach of criminal intent for the violence in Srebrenica. Although it is recognised that the political responsibility to prevent genocide and the juridical responsibility to punish those who have committed crimes have different implications for what can be called relevant foreknowledge or criminal intent, both the juridical and the political approaches close off paths for the mobilisation of histories that are more sensitive to the productive workings of language and images and thus to their bearing on possible futures.

In January 2002, images of the detention of prisoners held at US Naval Station Guantanamo Bay as part of the Global War on Terrorism were released by the US Department of Defense, a public relations move that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld later referred to as ‘probably unfortunate’. These images, widely reproduced in the media, quickly came to symbolise the facility and the practices at work there. Nine years on, the images of orange-clad ‘detainees’ – the ‘orange series’ – remain a powerful symbol of US military practices and play a significant role in the resistance to the site. However, as the site has evolved, so too has its visual representation. Official images of these new facilities not only document this evolution but work to constitute, through a careful (re)framing (literal and figurative), a new (re)presentation of the site, and therefore the identities of those involved. The new series of images not only (re)inscribes the identities of detainees as dangerous but, more importantly, work to constitute the US State as humane and modern. These images are part of a broader effort by the US administration to resituate its image, and remind us, as IR scholars, to look at the diverse set of practices (beyond simply spoken language) to understand the complexity of international politics.

Within the field of International Relations, theoretically informed explanations of the long peace in Europe since 1945 tend to focus on Western Europe, especially the revolution in Franco-German relations. In contrast, German relations with Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) are ignored, despite the fact that this nexus was a major cause of instability prior to 1945. This article focuses on why the German question in CEE ceased to threaten the stability of Europe after 1945. The article empirically examines the development of the German question in CEE since 1945, which refers here mainly to the Oder-Neisse line and the plight of ethnic Germans expelled from CEE after World War II. It provides a theoretically integrated and chronologically sequenced explanation. First, it argues that Realism primarily explains the successful containment of the German question in CEE between 1945 and the late 1960s. Second, it argues that the Constructivist process of cultural change, which altered German intensions, was primarily responsible for subsequently increasing the depth of peace and stability between Germany and CEE, especially after the Cold War. Finally, it is argued that prior Realist factors and Liberal processes constituted a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for cultural change.

Although deterrence theory was a central focus in the study of International Relations during the Cold War, attention has shifted away from deterrence since the end of that conflict. Nonetheless, deterrence is a general phenomenon that is not limited to any particular time or space. Moving beyond a simple focus on the US-Soviet relationship, scholars have recently begun further explorations of deterrence, through development of theory, analysis of policy alternatives, and empirical analysis. This article seeks to evaluate where deterrence theory stands today through: (1) a consideration of distinctions between different strands of theory; (2) a discussion of the assumption of rationality in deterrence theory; (3) an examination of three important distinctions in deterrence; (4) an evaluation of the difficult task of testing deterrence theory, and (5) an overview of recent theoretical developments. The primary conclusion is that perfect deterrence theory provides a logically consistent alternative to classical deterrence theory and therefore provides the most appropriate basis for further theoretical development, empirical testing, and application to policy.

After the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 Ulrich Beck placed terrorism alongside other potentially catastrophic events such as global warming, nuclear disaster, and influenza as one of the ‘dimensions’ of risk society. In risk society, executive governments take ‘precautionary measures’ and parliaments pass ‘preventative laws’ allowing them to accumulate information, detain terrorism suspects, freeze funds and prohibit various groups, in order to stop catastrophic risks from eventuating. International Relations and legal scholars have used risk society theory or the ideas of Michel Foucault to criticise such excesses of the executive and parliamentary branches of government. Most studies either ignore the judiciary or argue that it stands in opposition to the other branches of governments, that it imposes checks and balances in order to uphold the rule of law and protect individual rights. The article argues that this view is naïve and does not acknowledge a long history of judicial deference to the will of the executive and parliament. Through an analysis of case law from Australia and Canada the article explores parallels between early 21st century judicial reasoning and previous periods of crisis, including the Cold War, while identifying some new ‘precautionary approach’ aspects. The judiciary defers to the executive, asserts that the executive is more accountable than it, and seeks to avoid responsibility for engaging in this ‘precautionary justice’. Furthermore, seized by the same fear of terrorism as executive governments, the judiciary shows an ability to adapt existing legal concepts to the exigencies of risk society. The article concludes that as the memory of the 9/11 attacks fades some of the most draconian preventative measures may be scaled back but the judiciary cannot be relied on to keep the executive or parliament in check.

This article looks at the significance of Barry Buzan's 2004 reformulation of the English School from the perspective of the normative dimension of English School theory. Picking up a challenge that Buzan set, but which has largely gone unanswered, for those who see normative theory as a key aspect of the English School's contribution, the article assesses three possible responses. It rejects a stance denying the relevance of Buzan's approach to normative theory and is dissatisfied with a second line that distinguishes methodologically between Buzan's social structural theorising and an approach to normative theory that draws principally on political theory. Instead, it argues for the inherent normativity of Buzan's position because of its reliance on values, arguing that many of the analytical benefits of Buzan's approach can also be deployed normatively because of the way he highlights contested and competing dynamics in play at different times and at different levels. The article suggests that this has the potential to revive pluralism as a normative position in the English School in a way that retains and extends the enhanced analytical power that Buzan's reformulation offers.

Scholars from various subfields have recognised a dangerous novelty for ethical thought on war in the combination of a detached, or virtual, technical ability to wage war and the ethical imperatives of human rights norms – deemed ‘virtuous war’. This article begins by discussing the contention that the just war tradition acts as the enabling discourse for virtuous war, and the further contention that the wars being enabled are paradoxically unjust. After assessing the validity of the virtuous war claim it is argued that the just war tradition's core ethical commitment not only remains the most sound starting point for thinking about the morality of war, but is a commitment that those in the virtuous war literature suggesting alternate ethical doctrines on war implicitly reject. It is contended, though, that the addition of a third pillar to the just war structure of cause and means criteria – a justice after war or jus post bellum – has arisen due to the virtuous war reality, and is necessary in order for the just war tradition to remain committed to its core ethical principle in a 21st century marked by virtuous war. Lastly, I present a brief sketch of jus post bellum informed by the article's key claims.

Following recent acts of terrorism in many parts of the world, Islam has become an object of fear. While the threat of violence is undoubtedly an element that inspires this fear, Islam's counter-hegemonic threat is not limited to violence alone. Given its 1.2 billion following, Islam also offers a challenge to the central values that describe the dominant neo-liberal world order, particularly those values that legitimate the global political economy. Although tolerance is an important value in liberal thought, tolerance cannot be exercised where counter-hegemonic threats include challenges to the central tenets of liberalism. This article argues that the current fear of Islam is motivated by just such a challenge. By looking at four central concepts where liberal and Islamic thought diverge – reason and revelation, private property, rights and duties, and government and state – this article seeks to gain a more nuanced insight into current attitudes towards Islam and the fear of counter-hegemony.

Since Martin Wight's famous LSE lectures in the late 1950s, the English School scholars have brought China into the conception of international society. As the English School scholars have been ‘inventing’ an international society, China's status in the conception, or conceptions of international society has also been invented and reinvented. The Chinese case vividly demonstrates how a non-European (or non-Western) country, as one of ‘the others’, has been dealt with and brought into the conceptualisation of international society by the English School. China's status in the conception of international society, to a great extent, has been invented by some of the English School scholars with Eurocentric bias.

A not infrequent musing on the growing European integration is that the process may signal a historic discontinuity with the logic and functioning of the modern state, forming an alternative to the Westphalian order. This article takes issue with this notion, holding that, more accurately, the interaction in Europe between the currents of post-national integration and the nation-state may have reduced the integrated Europe to a mere parody of the nation-state. In articulating this argument, the article draws on the ‘hybrid’ anxiety placed by Homi Bhabha at the heart of the encounter between the coloniser and the colonised – a binary perversely reproduced, the article claims, in the dichotomy between the European integration and the European nation-state. Next, through a discussion of ‘catachresis’ and ‘time-lag’, strategies of reversal introduced by Gayatri Spivak and Bhabha, respectively, the article rehearses ideas as to whether or not something of a post-Westphalian order can still be salvaged from the ongoing process of integration. Throughout, the article seeks to rely on the later Wittgenstein on meaning, especially his privileging of what is conventionally treated as secondary in meaning formation; namely appearances, difference, absence, mimesis, and the burlesque, as opposed to a transcendental essence, presence, or identity.

This article argues that risk is central in (re)producing the unaccountable commercial military/security markets that are a normal part of our political reality. The argument is twofold: first it is suggested that risk rationalities and the associated ‘preventive imperative’ has a depoliticising effect – accentuated by the impersonal spread of risk rationalities and the strategies of risk professionals – which lowers the eagerness to seek accountability. However, and second, depoliticisation is significant above all as a serious obstacle to the innovative thinking that is the sine qua non of effective accountability. The enmeshed, ‘hybrid’, nature of the market places it in the ‘blind spot’ of law and is as such fundamental to the current lack of accountability. Consequently, moving beyond established regulatory frameworks and technical understandings of accountability (that is, politicising the market) is a precondition for more effective accountability. Failing to do so, will leave the current rapid legal innovation impotent while reinforcing impunity as the focus on and confidence in established regulatory frameworks grows. The failure to politicise creates an ‘accountability paradox’ where the pursuit of accountability diminishes it. The article develops this argument with reference to Blackwater's (now Xe) role in the so called CIA ‘Killing Program’.

The discourse about the morality of humanitarian intervention – though undeniably well- (over-?) trodden in recent years – has two critical gaps. First, despite its central moral concern with the rights and lives of individuals living under massively oppressive states or terrible conditions, and despite its powerful attacks on traditional notions of state sovereignty, the discourse remains statist. Humanitarian intervention understood as something that states do, and if there is a right or responsibility to intervene it is a right or responsibility held by states. The second gap in the discourse follows from the first: because we think of humanitarian intervention as something that states do, the role of the individual soldiers who make up the intervening force – their rights and responsibilities – has been undertheorised.

This article argues that a reconsideration of the role of individuals in the context of humanitarian intervention not only helps us to ensure that interventions are carried out in a manner consistent with their own justice claims, but also to recapture the moral heroism of those individuals who willingly sacrifice for the rights and lives of others. Although the moral issues raised here may demand a more constrained politics of humanitarian intervention, they also ultimately have an emancipating effect.

The quest for perpetual peace is a modern phenomenon, associated with a progressive view of history which emerged only in the Enlightenment. In addition, boredom – a feeling of ennui associated with a loss of the ability to act – is a fundamental mood of the modern age. Modern societies are thus, simultaneously, becoming more peaceful and their inhabitants are becoming more bored. As a means of overcoming our boredom, we are increasingly fascinated by violence, and war is glorified as a means of restoring our ability to act. Empirical illustrations of this thesis are drawn from World War I and from the Bush administration's ‘global War on Terror’.

Republicanism is getting increasing attention in International Relations. Engaging Daniel Deudney's Republican Security Theory, it is argued that republicanism should be interpreted in ideological terms, that it is a polysemous tradition of political thought, and that it matters because it is socially embodied in world political practice. Special attention is given to republicanism's relationship to the question of technology. A short case study of the Cold War illustrates the central claims of the argument.

In the 21st century, it is a great event in the field of international politics that both China and Africa are marching towards revival and more cooperation among each other. The old international order which centered on the West can no longer meet the demand of the changes of African geopolitical pattern. Therefore, it is high time to establish a multilateral cooperation mechanism concerning Africa's peace and development. The authors argue that there are differences in historical experience, diplomatic ideas and principles as well as extensive common grounds of diplomatic strategy and national interests between China and the West in respect of their relations with Africa. Both China and the West should promote talks which are more open, more cooperative and more conducive to a win-win end. In doing this, they can achieve a win-for-all result for all the parties involved.

This article aims to reassert the relevance of the international society approach by highlighting the value it could bring to the project of understanding the effects of unipolarity. Bull's approach to war and international law as ‘institutions of international society’ could help to frame our understanding of the way in which preponderance has impacted on war and law. Examining the phenomenon of bilateralism suggests that there is also value in a more general attempt to trace the effects of unipolarity on international society.

The significance of ideas to foreign policy analysis remains contested, despite a plethora of empirical studies applying ideational frameworks. Drawing on social constructivism, this article proposes a causal understanding where ideas derived from tradition define the political space for contemporary debates and effect foreign policy behaviour. This ideational approach is substantiated by a historical study of guiding principles in British and French foreign policy, which establish a set of baseline expectations for the analysis of Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac's speeches on Iraq. The empirical study shows that whereas Chirac largely stayed within a French ideational framework, Blair applied a more complex combination of ideas from both traditions. Conceptualising Blair as an aspiring (but ultimately unsuccessful) norm entrepreneur is a fruitful interpretation of this role.

The article ventures a critique of the logic of ‘temporal othering’ in contemporary International Relations (IR) theory. Originally articulated in the field of European integration, this logic presupposes a possibility for a political community to constitute its identity without any spatial delimitation by means of casting as Other its own past, whose repetition in the future it seeks to avoid. While the image of contemporary Europe as ‘othering’ its own past has been subjected to empirical criticism, this article makes a conceptual argument for the indissociability of temporal and spatial aspects in any act of othering. Drawing on Alexandre Kojève's reading of Hegel, I argue that any historical action is necessarily spatiotemporal, combining the abstraction of temporal negation with the concrete actuality of a negated spatial being. Alternatives to the logic of sovereign territoriality are therefore not to be sought in the temporal aspect of othering, but rather by pursuing the possibility of self-constitution in the absence of any negating action whatsoever. The article concludes with an outline of such an alternative ethos, developed on the basis of Giorgio Agamben's reconstruction of the Hegelian-Kojèvian problematic of the end of history and his theory of the subject.