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led to this ‘silencing’. How was it possible that their German intellectual socialisation that continued to inform their political thought became overlooked and indeed no longer even realised? It is argued that German émigrés and American International Relations (IR) constitute a case of successful integration. Before this argument is further expounded, it has to be acknowledged that émigré scholars partly caused this silencing themselves. After their forced emigration, they were at pains to adjust their research and teaching to the different intellectual and
The Arab–Israeli conflict has been at the centre of international affairs for decades. Despite repeated political efforts, the confrontation and casualties continue, especially in fighting between Israelis and Palestinians. This new assessment emphasizes the role that military force plays in blocking a diplomatic resolution. Many Arabs and Israelis believe that the only way to survive or to be secure is through the development, threat, and use of military force and violence. This idea is deeply flawed and results in missed diplomatic opportunities and growing insecurity. Coercion cannot force rivals to sign a peace agreement to end a long-running conflict. Sometimes negotiations and mutual concessions are the key to improving the fate of a country or national movement. Using short historical case studies from the 1950s through to today, the book explores and pushes back against the dominant belief that military force leads to triumph while negotiations and concessions lead to defeat and further unwelcome challenges. In The sword is not enough, we learn both what makes this idea so compelling to Arab and Israeli leaders and how it eventually may get dislodged.
existence of a transatlantic political dialogue. In other words, as this chapter will demonstrate, British and American traditions of political thought overlap to such an extent, and are so central to the experience of both countries, that they transcend national boundaries to form a plausible Anglo-American political culture centered on, but not exclusively consisting of, liberalism. LIBERAL IDEOLOGY AND ITS SCOPE IN BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES To develop the contention that liberalism is so rich and pervasive in both countries – and not simply in its own right
. But through it all, there was a belief in the actual unity of Christendom, however variously felt and expressed. This belief was a fundamental condition of all medieval political thought and activity. It reverberated through late medieval visions of a peaceful world. John of Paris expressed it in his plea for a government of Christendom ( De potstate regia et papali or ‘On Royal and Papal Power’ [ c. 1302]). And Dante Alighieri called for the establishment of Christian world state in his De monarchia (‘On Monarchy’ [ c. 1313]). Dante’s ideal monarch should be
-century theories were built around a mechanical vision of self-equilibrium, then nineteenth-century theories introduced an organic image of ‘progress’ or ‘evolution’. Chapter 6 first shows how international interaction was altered by the economic innovations of England’s Industrial Revolution and by the political ideals of the American and French Revolutions. The Enlightenment universalism of the revolutionaries triggered local and particularist reactions on the Continent. They fired up the modern idea of nationalism and of entire systems of political thought – most prominent
has received less attention so far. He shows how a distinctively German intellectual socialisation and a German style of argument continued to inform the political thought of the émigré scholars and how that fact became increasingly overlooked. As Rösch argues, it has to be acknowledged that émigré scholars at least partly caused this silencing themselves. After their forced emigration, they were at pains to adjust their research and teaching to the different intellectual and historical backgrounds of their American colleagues and students. They did so not only in
Walton and Colin Gray have argued that “true strategic stability is a platonic ideal, useful as a yardstick for judging real-world conditions, but inherently unattainable as a policy goal” – especially in a multipolar nuclear world order. 34 Though a stable strategic environment is not necessarily a catalyst for positive geopolitical change, a conflict between great powers is more likely when the current strategic environment is unstable and uncertain. 35 Political thought scholarship has demonstrated that
, 2006 ), p. 397 . 6 C. Sylvest , British Liberal Internationalism, 1880–1930: Making Progress? ( Manchester : Manchester University Press , 2009 ), p. 46 . 7 Sylvest, British Liberal Internationalism , pp. 200–6. 8 D. Bell and C. Sylvest , ‘ International society in Victorian political thought: T.H. Green, Herbert Spencer, and Henry Sidgwick ’, Modern Intellectual History , 3 : 2 ( 2006 ), pp. 207 – 38 , at p. 230 . 9 C. Hobson , The Rise of Democracy: Revolution, War, and Transformations in International Politics since 1776 ( Edinburgh
started arriving in the 1930s, America was hardly a blank slate as far as Germany was concerned. The new arrivals had to contend with existing perceptions of German political thought and institutions. This chapter will explore the lively interest American political science showed in the Weimar Republic and its Constitution. Perceptions and commentary on Weimar were framed in terms of historical continuity, comparison with the post-bellum US and larger questions about the nature of sovereignty during the interwar period. Positive American views of Germany, as explored
are produced, maintained, understood and contested by virtue of engaging not just with the ‘domain of the subject’, but also with the abjection that functions as its ‘constitutive outside’ – as well as with the dynamic, shifting boundary between the two. I proceed now to map this book’s course in more detail. I begin by making the case for an analytic focus on humour within IR. Noting what Bonnie Honig ( 2013 : 69) describes as the ‘uncontested privileging’ of tragedy within Western political thought, I argue that the discipline’s failure to think more widely