Hans Morgenthau and the Lasting Implications of World War I

ABSTRACT

World War I was an epochal event that permanently redefined international politics. Yet, there is no consensus about what kind of international system it erected. This article argues that since 1918 to the present day, there is a unique revolutionary/revisionist system in existence. To confirm the argument, this article will revisit the mid-twentieth century writings of political realism's founding father Hans J. Morgenthau. His political thought is premised on the co-constitutive relation between ethics and politics, which characterized international politics throughout the Westphalian era and which was irreversibly lost in the tragedy of World War I. By sketching some of Morgenthau’s main arguments on the political and ethical transformations brought about by total war and total politics, the article argues that World War I generated a revolutionary system indifferent to political and non-political spheres, where insulated ethical systems clash in a kind of “global civil war”.     

Pragmatism over principle: US intervention and burden shifting in Somalia, 1992–1993

ABSTRACT

The conventional wisdom about the 1992 US intervention in Somalia is that it was a quintessentially humanitarian mission pushed by President George H. W. Bush. This article challenges that interpretation, drawing on newly declassified documents. The Somalia intervention, I argue, was largely a pragmatic response to concerns held by the US military. In late 1992, as the small UN mission in Somalia was collapsing, senior American generals worried about being drawn into the resulting vacuum. Hence they reluctantly recommended a robust US intervention, in the expectation that this would allow the UN to assemble a larger peacekeeping force that would take over within months. The intervention ultimately failed, but the military learned useful lessons from this experience on how to achieve smoother UN handoffs in the future and thus effectively shift longer-term stabilisation burdens to the international community.     

Rethinking strategic culture: A computational (social science) discursive-institutionalist approach

ABSTRACT

The strategic culture approach has been suffering from a prolonged theoretical stalemate, despite a surge in case studies, which culminated in the Johnston-Gray debate and subsequent schism. The present paper outlines a new approach designed to overcome this deadlock, and consists of three arguments. First, the three previous generations of strategic culture studies have failed to explain how strategic culture influences behaviour. Second, aligning strategic culture theory-building with discursive institutionalism offers a way to overcome this fundamental fallacy. Third, a research programme for strategic culture should draw on computational social science to enable it to present and test middle-range theories.