Search results
of law as its remedy. Tragedy, on the other hand, presents the violence from which law breaks as arising not from natural drives or sheer arbitrariness but, on the contrary, from an order of iron necessity: Law, as tragedy’s realism indicates, results from the objection to the violence of retribution. Retribution, however, is a form of the implementation of justice. The violence that law overcomes is not the violence that, according to the philosophical fiction, constitutes the state of nature, but the violence of a first, an earlier order of justice: the violence
translation of that scene’s ‘impression’ on the mind of the painter.1 We are several steps removed from reality. Representing that reality needs a human filter. So too for history; yet while positivistic modes of representing the world – realism, naturalism – have lost their totalising grip in the artistic world, a certain ‘scientific’ kind of history still chases that goal. Another mode of history writing is more impressionistic. Channelled through the storyteller or the historian, the past is recognisable, striking, but not an exact replica of ‘what actually happened
dimension, but equally have been characterised by intra-state conflict. Further, the general pattern of inter-state security relations in Europe has been more that of cooperation than conflict. The inaccuracy of Mearsheimer’s prediction stems from the logic of his theoretical starting point, that of neo-realism. For Mearsheimer states exist in an international system that is anarchic in the sense that there
Department, was a former pupil of Leo Strauss and, more importantly, for his future development, of rightist nuclear strategist and academic, Albert Wohlstetter. Wohlstetter’s lines of argument, especially regarding the war-fighting potential of accurate missiles, themselves became neoconservative weapons to be hurled at détente and at the “realism” of Henry Kissinger. From 1973, Wolfowitz worked under Fred
Luke ‘realist discourses and designs for world order are decaying’. (1993: 230; see also Vasquez, 1997 ) Neo-realism’s failure to predict the largely peaceful end of the Cold War raised serious challenges to its orthodoxy. For George, the realist tradition was ‘exposed as a politico-philosophical emperor at best only scantily clad’. (George, 1996: 33; see also Baldwin, 1995; Lebow, 1994 ; Sørensen
empirical research on neutrality that engages with IR theory and moves away from chronological analysis (Hakovirta, 1988 : 1-2). Only traditional idealism (Wilsonian internationalism) and realism have commented on neutrality, but neutrality remains of marginal interest to both, given the nature of their own projects and investigations. Traditional idealism, with its universalist assumptions and emphasis on collective security
to read security is through the state, and in this way ‘security’ both writes and rights the state in its claim to sovereign authority for disciplining space and people. In this discursive context, ‘security’ therefore follows the old script of political realism that defines the security problematique as the field and the operations that touch upon the survival of
laid the accusation that idealism could not explain world events (such as Manchuria, Abyssinia, the failure of the League and the descent into WWII). Realism on the other hand, could explain such events and could also predict patterns and prescribe actions (Wilson, 1998: 6). For traditional or classic realists, a state-centric account of the world was a more appropriate way to explain what
– either characterized as that of ‘problem-solving’ or that of ‘political realism’ – established its own institutional life in the Asia-Pacific? In this chapter, I interrogate the above questions through an examination of recent security discourses in China, using ‘critical’ lenses provided by ‘two main streams’ of critical security studies identified
of their security services in capturing terrorists within their borders. 46 This seemed inadequate to Bush. Realists stress the impossibility of achieving perfect security or eradicating all enemies. Instead, vigilant maintenance of a credible deterrent posture, and adroit management of alliances, can reduce the overall level of threat and keep conflict to a minimum. But at the core of realism is the