A History of International Political Theory: Ontologies of the International

A History of International Political Theory

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A History of International Political Theory Ontologies of the International

Hartmut Behr Professor of International Politics, Newcastle University, UK

© Hartmut Behr 2010 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–0–230–52486–6 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

To Mathias

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Contents Preface

ix

Acknowledgements

xi

Introduction The problematic and research questions Implications Conceptual remarks The structure of the book

1 1 5 11 17

Part I I.1

I.2

Universalism in Greek and Roman Antiquity and Christian Political Philosophy

Greek and Roman Antiquity 1. Thucydides 2. Cicero Christian Political Pragmatism and Ethical Universalism – Aurelius Augustine and Thomas Aquinas 1. Prolegomena 2. Political pragmatism in Augustine and Aquinas 3. Transcendental universalism and the intelligibility of order: Peace and justice

23 23 35 50 50 53 60

Part II Universalistic Thinking from Early Modern Times to Enlightenment II.1

II.2

Universalistic Thinking in Christian Legal Philosophy – Bartolomé de las Casas and Francisco de Vitoria 1. Prolegomena 2. Universalistic human rights and their extension beyond Europe 3. Jurisdiction as landmark and guarantor for universal human rights and just war Universalistic Frameworks in Early Modern Political Theory 1. Niccolo Machiavelli 2. Thomas Hobbes 3. Immanuel Kant

vii

75 75 80 88 100 100 115 130

viii

Contents

Part III The Emergence of Particularism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries III.1

III.2

Philosophies of ‘National Interest’ 1. Hegel on ‘international law’ 2. National monumental historiography 3. Geopolitical thought Manufacturing Inter-National Cooperation – The English School 1. Hegelian legacies and the ‘international system’ 2. From Hegel to international cooperation?

141 141 152 161 177 177 186

Part IV The Triumph of Particularism in Twentieth-Century International Relations Theory IV.1

IV.2

Neo-Realism and the ‘Scientification’ of International Political Theory 1. Solipsistic ontology and epistemology 2. The inevitability of conflict ‘Misreadings’ in IR: Reassessing Morgenthau, Ideology Critique, and the Reification Problem 1. The ‘realism’ – neo-realism ‘unity’ 2. Explaining misreadings: Ideology critique and the reification of ‘the’ political Part V

V.1 V.2

197 198 207 210 211 219

Instead of A Conclusion – Towards Renewed Ontology(ies)

Universal, Universalistic – Universalized A Loss of Ethics, or the Reinvention of Universal Thinking in Global Politics? 1. Outline of an ethics of humanity in the international/world/global 2. Questions towards discourses on/of global politics

229 238 241 245

Notes

247

Bibliography

272

Name Index

293

Subject Index

297

Preface This book is motivated and informed by several concerns and approaches, and each can serve as an avenue to its themes and arguments. The further my writing progressed, the more and more perspectives and themes of this study came to mind, sometimes to a point which scared me and where I was wondering whether, and how, I could resist the temptation to pack too much into a single piece. The reason for this fear and wondering lies in the many miracles, surprises, and astonishments about the discipline of International Relations, experienced by someone who has not been trained in an US or British department/school of International Relations, but who, though sniffing the air of such places, has been educated in continental European academia as a student of political philosophy, history, and sociology. From such a (valuable) outsider’s position, some synoptic views might have arisen and may come to bear in this study which were otherwise eventually obstructed; and I dare to say that one sees many such miracles, surprises, and astonishments in and about IR, especially with regard to how the discipline invents and invented, defends and defended itself, particularly its US and UK artifacts. Such strategies of invention and defense always depend on myths, stories, and historiographies about the world (of international politics) and the discipline’s (and its representatives’) location in, and position towards, this world. And these myths, stories, and historiographies are the ‘material’ of miracles, surprises, and astonishments. To be more concrete – and the following are avenues to, and side arguments of, the core problematic of this study – my perspective was and still is wondering about the invention of a ‘realist tradition’ in international political thought and IR, which ostensibly started in Greek antiquity and culminated in the twentieth century. I was and I still am astonished by the prevalence and sustainability of this myth as well as by the methods and scholarly attitudes which stand behind those who tell the myth as well as those who believe this story. I was and I still am surprised about the historical and historiographical consciousness, inquiries, and beliefs which float around in IR about ‘structures’, ‘systems’, and ‘societies’ of international politics, their seeming realities, and thereby conditioned perceptions (and legitimizations) of power, war, and violence. I was and I still am astounded about the absence of ontological, epistemological, and ethical self-awareness of the discipline’s mainstream(s), the consequences of this absence, and the widespread domination of methodology and ideology over theory. And last but not least, I trust that the core argument of this study may be well connected with these miracles, surprises, and astonishments, and vice versa.

ix

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Preface

This core argument consists in the observation of two fundamental ontological and epistemological shifts in the history of international political thought and International Relations Theory – from universal to universalistic and, even more decisive, from universalistic to particularistic thinking. These shifts concern nothing less than the manner and concepts of how we as individuals, academics, and politicians alike think about mankind and humanity, war and peace, the relations among political organizations, and the recognition of differences. The imaginations and concepts, which ‘we’ envision with regard to those questions, finally determine ‘our’ locus and positioning in and towards these themes, that is, whether ‘we’ think in universal or particularistic ontologies and epistemologies and with which consequences for mankind and humanity, war and peace, the relations among political organizations, and the recognition of differences; and which forms of agency ‘we’ can think of as academics and politicians to act upon such enduring problems. One might well understand – and I hope the reader will – the difficulty and the apprehension I experienced while I tried to cope with all these concerns in one book, which, however, arose and manifested as intellectual responses to the miracles, surprises and astonishments mentioned above. What I feel I can deliver is to throw some light on distracted but serious problems of which I think they are important for the discipline of IR and its self-awareness. If this book succeeds in delivering such a contribution, I shall be relieved, particularly because my considerations of the last years might then not only have helped me to see more clearly, but they might also inform other students of international politics about further perspectives on and problems of the academic field called IR. Blacksburg, VA, April 2009

Acknowledgements Drafting, conceptualizing, and finally writing a book depend on academic discourses, written and oral, as well as on eventual retreats in egocentrisms and loneliness. Both are embedded in social interaction inasmuch as discourses, on the one hand, need colleagues and academic friends who show themselves interested in one’s own work, topics, and arguments; and retreats, on the other hand, need to be accepted and even eventually encouraged by one’s social environment. Therefore, the end product of academic work is always indebted to colleagues, friends, and family for providing both forms of social interaction, and I am in the lucky position to have found both. I wish to express my gratitude to David B. Bobrow for his encouragement to proceed and investigate my initial questions and arguments; to Helmut Hubel and Manuel Froehlich for their invitation to the Guest Lecture Series of the Department of Political Science, University of Jena; to Harald Kleinschmidt and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science JSPS for their invitation to and funding of a visiting professorship at the University of Tsukuba in 2004/2005 while I had a chance to do intensive readings and to learn from many discussions with Harald; to Thom Brooks, Peter Jones, and Ian O’Flynn for their comments on written chapters and many discussions; to Felix Rösch and Joseph Turner for hints on literature and their interest in single arguments and chapters; to Mustapha Kamal Pasha for his invitation to the Sixth Century Politics Lecture Series at the University of Aberdeen, which provided an excellent forum for discussing a final version of my arguments; to Dietrich Jung and the Danish Institute of International Studies for their invitation to present my research and their delivery of an instructive forum for debate; to Michael C. Williams for his intellectual support, discussions of some of my main arguments, and his comments on the manuscript; to Rob Walker for his comments and engagement with my arguments throughout the manuscript; to Gemma d’Arcy Hughes, Alexandra Webster, and Renée Takken from Palgrave Macmillan for their support of this project and their professional guidance through the publication process; to the students of my classes on International Political Thought and International Relations Theory at Newcastle University for their lively participation in inspirational debates on single authors and concepts; to Ioannis Stivachtis, Bettina Koch, and Timothy Luke, Department of Political Science at the Virginia Institute of Technology, for providing collegial support and a great atmosphere while I was finishing the manuscript during my stay as visiting professor in Spring 2009 and their comments on single chapters and

xi

xii Acknowledgements

the whole manuscript; to the School of Geography, Politics, and Sociology at Newcastle University for granting me an extended research leave, which gave me the necessary time to finish the manuscript; as always and ever, Louisa; and last, but certainly not least, to my wife Manija for her great support of my work and her love.

Introduction

Act so that thou canst will that thy maxim shall become a universal Law whatever may be its end. (Immanuel Kant, On Perpetual Peace, Appendix) The substantive weal of the state is its weal as a particular state in its definite interests and condition ... Thus the government is a particular wisdom and not a universal providence ... in relation to other states, the principle justifying its wars and treaties, is not a general thought ... but the actually wronged or threatened weal in its definite particularity. (G. F. W. Hegel, Philosophy of Rights, §337)

The problematic and research questions The two quotes, which may serve as the starting point for my considerations, indicate a difference in thinking about international/inter-national politics that could hardly be more profound. Whereas the first statement, by Immanuel Kant, suggests universal law as the point of reference for individual action and politics, the second statement, by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, claims that the particular well-being and interests of the state provide such referential framework. The question which immediately arises from this juxtaposition is whether these two statements, more or less arbitrarily, stand for just two different positions, such as there are endlessly many on a variety of topics in the history of political thought; or is there more substance to discover with regard to their distinctive difference about universalism and particularism? This study suggests that they represent indeed much more than just a juxtaposition of two individual standpoints, but rather a substantial historical shift in political thought when particularistic conceptualizations of inter-national politics started to prevail over universal and universalistic frameworks. 1

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A History of International Political Theory

At first glance, the profound difference between these two frameworks, of which Kant and Hegel are just two representatives, lies in their diverse, and altered, ontology: while universal and universalistic ontologies have notions such as ‘humanity’, ‘humankind’, and ‘men’ in general as their final referential focus, particularistic ontologies of inter-national politics are ultimately focused on the individual nation-state, its welfare and power. The two different frameworks of universal/universalistic and particularistic thinking not only focus on different images of the world – one divided into individual, solipsistic units, the other constituted as a common assembly of peoples and political communities – but also are informed by different intellectual backgrounds. On the one side, we can observe a cosmos of universal anthropological, divine, legal, political, and ethical concepts which allow to establish a likewise universal focus on humanity, humankind, and men; on the other side, we find particularistic conceptions of a national self, ‘national interest’, national sovereignty, and, over all, national moralities which establish an ontology which is referentially focused on self-contained entities. This study will discuss the shift from universal and universalistic to particularistic ontologies and finally emphasize the emergence of national, particularistic moralities which are part of this shift and which contribute to a loss of ethics in inter-national political thought and theory in the twentieth century. This shift becomes obvious when we look at ideas on war and peace. The shift when particularistic notions began to dominate inter-national political thought and replace universal and universalistic frameworks involves, in addition to an ontological dimension, a transformation of epistemologies from holistic philosophies of order to structuralism and determinism. With the emergence and solidification of particularistic ontology, epistemological dogmas have become popular, which created dualisms between the own nation (‘the self’) and the other nation(s) out there; dualisms which rested on the precondition that such entities are constructed as anchoring ontological fixed points of inter-national politics in the first place. New epistemologies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries believed incisively in the existence of external realities and their permanent structures, which provide the conditions and determinants for inter-national politics and foreign policy strategies of single nation-states. Paradoxically, however, such external realities and structures are constituted by nothing but by nation-states themselves. Here, in the nineteenth century, the (irresolvable, because epistemologically and ontologically grounded) quandary of the primacy between structure (anarchy) and agent (states’ agency), which not only typifies twentieth century ‘neo-realism’, but also largely influenced the theoretical discussions of the whole discipline, has been given birth. Finally, and as a consequence of particularistic ontology and epistemology, a distinct positivist methodology evolved throughout the nineteenth century and influenced the inter-national political theory to come, which, in contrast to

Introduction 3

traditional hermeneutic, interpretative, and speculative metaphysics, considered ‘external realities’, and thus structures of inter-national politics in general, as objective and objectifiable, measurable, and quantifiable. Particularistic ontology, epistemology, and methodology represent the legacies in which the establishment of International Relations (IR) as an academic discipline, especially its neo-realist mainstream, is embedded. These legacies are very different from the myth about a perennial ‘realist’ tradition, which would trace throughout the history of political thought and would date back to Greek antiquity, a myth which was constructed by IR mainstream as a consequence of the particularistic paradigm and its ideologization. This paradigm is liable for selective (mis)readings of political thought and contemporary ‘dissident voices’ – which were and are, even though well positioned within the discipline, critical towards the mainstream (as, for example, Hans J. Morgenthau in the early decades of the discipline) – , ignoring and neglecting their universal and anti-particularistic frameworks. In the light of this development, this study will discuss authors and schools of political thought from Greek and Roman antiquity, the early and late Middle Ages, the early modern times, of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and finally from the discipline of IR, and contextualize them in the spectrum between universal, universalistic, and particularistic thinking.1 Throughout this discussion, the argument will be developed that particularistic ontology and epistemology are phenomena of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and that the discipline of IR is a child of these particularistic intellectual legacies as they primarily emerged through, and manifested in, Hegelian philosophy, national historiography, and geopolitical tenets; whereas until the end of the eighteenth century, we witness the dominance of modes of political thought which, with obviously different degrees and varying styles of universal and universalistic conceptualizations, retrieved their ontologies and epistemologies from visions of political order which transcend political communities and hence integrate them with reference to some general ‘common good’.2 Meanwhile, while the twentieth century has come to an end, a body of literature emerged in IR which is critical to our discipline’s theoretical and methodological development, asking for and claiming new approaches in an era of global politics. However, neither nationalism nor particularistic ontology appears to be outdated, neither in the discipline, nor in foreign policy conduct. The ontological, epistemological, and methodological shortfalls of particularistic, dualistic, and structuralist theorizing became nevertheless more and more obvious to the discipline. What does this mean for the problematique of universal and particularistic thinking? What are the ontological and epistemological frameworks of (post-positivist) theories of global politics, global society, and global justice? Do they, and do they want at all, revitalize and retrieve universal notions of politics? Or do they dispose over alternative frameworks, outside historical patterns of universalism and/or

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A History of International Political Theory

particularism? These are questions, which arise and pressure for answers since those new theories look explicitly beyond the nation-state at global politics and society. What, so has to be asked finally with regard to the problematique of this study, are the practical implications and consequences of universal and/or particularistic ontologies and epistemologies in theorizing relations among ‘states’? This question touches upon one of the big themes in international political thought and IR: that of war and peace. How is peace thinkable, how can peace be theorized, and what are the political implications for peaceable politics in a world divided into monadic entities, which are perceived (and which perceive themselves) in structural opposition to other, likewise organized units? And is war a normal condition, a continuation of politics with different means (Clausewitz), in a world of, and under the ontological conditions of, dualistically constructed national interests? Is the jus ad bellum of sovereign nation-states a logical consequence of actors who seek – and who need to seek because of the ontological and epistemological architecture of dualistic conceptualizations of oppositional ‘self’ and ‘other’ – for permanent affirmation of their identity and power? What are the answers of authors who advocate universal and universalistic ontologies to the problem of war and peace among political communities? And how far do they differ from particularistic outlooks? These are the kind of questions around which this study and its discussions centre. An interesting coincidence is that the authors who shall be studied here to investigate patterns of universalism and particularism raise those questions themselves by thematizing war and peace, providing very different answers and considerations according to their fundamental ontological outlooks. Nevertheless, the discussion of thoughts on war and peace serves as an authentic foil which reflects the problematique of universal and particularistic theorizing, and vice versa. Debating different conceptualizations of war and peace, and related questions, throughout the history of international political thought and in IR should not preclude, however, any balanced assessment of the positives and negatives of both universal/universalistic and particularistic patterns. However, the argument made above about the emergence of particularistic thinking in the nineteenth century and its legacies in twentieth-century IR and a subsequent loss of universal ethics is inclined to conclude that a genuine conflict pattern exists of a world divided into national units and entities and to criticize its theoretical, and practical, affirmation by an intellectual climate of related ontologies and epistemologies. Saying this does not imply uncritical praise of universal and universalistic thinking or a naïve assumption that international political thought and practice based on, and informed by, these respective frameworks would be, or would have been, genuinely more peaceable. Nor does my argument imply that there would be some kind of linear, evident, or easy way

Introduction 5

from particularistic to universal/universalistic politics, or the other way around. I am also aware of the undesirable tendencies of both universalism/ universality and particularism, respectively, to develop either into political imperii or solipsism and nationalisms. There is, however, one theoretical consideration which leans towards the presumption that universal/universalistic notions are more conducive to international sociability and community among political bodies than particularistic ones: and that is with regard to the crucial question of How can we create international order which is common, sociable, and peaceable to all its members? What are the ontological and epistemological principles of such creation and construction? And can such creation succeed from the starting point of units construed as substantially singular, divided, and solipsistic? Here, universal and universalistic approaches have at least a heuristic advantage over particularistic concepts, and they yet seem epistemologically necessary to be principally able to create, open up, and mutually debate options for commonalities, common goods, and common order – according to the metaphor implied in the narration of Henry David Thoreau, a nineteenth-century American dissident in a culture of nationalism, about his conversation with an Indian, named Polis: ‘I have much to learn of the Indian, nothing of the missionary. I am not sure but all that would tempt me to teach the Indian my religion would be his promise to teach me his’ (quoted by Connolly, 1996, p. 149). Or, to quote R. B. J. Walker: ‘The most pressing questions of the age call not only for concrete policy options to be offered to existing elites and institutions but also, and more crucially, for a serious rethinking of the ways in which it is possible for human beings to live together’ (Walker, 1993, p. 7; italics mine) and hence to negotiate and renegotiate the current ontological and epistemological conditions under which such political ways and possibilities can be found. Implications What frameworks exist for theorizing and finally acting upon the problem of commonality and sociability among political bodies? Is it common interests, such as in security, development, environment, and so on? Is it shared political goals and common goods? Is it cultural heritage and values? Is it common ethics? Is it the similarity of domestic political systems which generate common agendas and goals in foreign politics? Is it their association with common legal standards? Is it shared economic interests? Is it international/inter-national law? Or are political bodies genuinely egocentric actors who link with others only because of temporary individual advantages and selfish interests? When we consult international/inter-national political thought, both historically and as it manifests in twentieth- and twenty-first-century IR Theory, we find a wide spectrum of very different answers. At the same time, the historical background of those answers is made up by a wide spectrum of different forms of ‘international’ order constituted by political

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A History of International Political Theory

bodies as divergent as poleis and city states, empires, states and nationstates, and global polities. Regardless of their embedment in different historic epochs and sociopolitical contexts, however, there is a lasting debate in political thought and modern IR about the question of what grounds international co- operation and sociability.3 A historical perspective reminds us that political order can have very different shapes and can be constituted upon a multitude of principles; we also learn that what underpins the dominant paradigms of nineteenth-century inter-national political thought and twentieth-century International Politics/Relations,4 namely, the assumption that political bodies are organized as nation-states and are functionally similar (as the predominant neo-realist paradigm teaches), is far from being a historical truth or ‘structure’. There is no naturally or structurally set international/inter-national order and subsequently no evident answer to the questions mentioned above. The question of what constitutes international cooperation and sociability has been discussed by philosophers and politicians throughout human history, regardless of their social, political, and cultural differences. For students of political thought and IR, the question arises how to categorize those answers. Many categorizations have been made: the most prominent one is presumably Martin Wight’s differentiation of ‘rationalist’, ‘realist’, and ‘revolutionist’ approaches (Wight and Butterfield, 1967); others talk of patterns of international political theory such as ‘empirical realism’, ‘universal moral order’, and ‘historical reasoning’ (as Boucher, 1998). All such categorizations appear to operate along the basic differentiation and assume the existence of two basic trajectories in international political thought called ‘realism’ and ‘idealism’ (or ‘moralism’ and ‘normativism’) and assign authors across history into one or the other camp. Instead of grouping authors into an ‘idealist’ and ‘realist’ dichotomy or to identify common intellectual frameworks across history into which they can be pigeonholed, I agree with Edward Keene who criticizes the notion ‘that theories can be grouped into schools of thought or intellectual traditions’, an effort which had ‘occupied an extremely prominent place in the history of international political thought’ (Keene, 2005, p. 35) and who argues that ‘more attention needs to be paid to methods which help us to appreciate the importance of change and discontinuity in the field’ (of international political thought and IR theory; Keene, 2005, p. 5). In contrast to Keene, however, who puts emphasis on ‘the immediate historical context within which ideas about international politics have been developed’ and who is concerned ‘with identifying and explaining the fundamental ideas and concepts that thinkers have used to make sense of their international political environments’ (2005, p. 5), I shall suggest a different focus on genealogical shifts in the theorizing of international/international politics.6 Such a genealogy suggests two major shifts. First, we can observe a transformation which occurs at the beginning of the nineteenth century with the rise of nationalist thought and the

Introduction 7

nation-state as the prevailing pattern of political order. This transformation is characterized by the decline of universal thinking. Whereas international political thought prior to the nineteenth century showed strong tendencies to envision and to found unifying principles between political bodies, which created some form of communalities, connectedness, and ‘in-between’, inter-national thought arising at the beginning of the nineteenth century started increasingly to view political bodies as nationally self- contained and solipsistic political entities. Paradoxically, each of these units is being construed as an entity superior to other such entities. Such entities, as becomes most obvious in, and was set out by, the German philosopher Hegel, were thought of as being interested above anything else in their individual well-being.7 According to this particularistic ontology, cooperation and common politics shall only be initiated when, and as long as, they correspond with the particular interest of the individual state. This outlook means a fundamental break in constructing and thinking about international politics since political thought prior to this shift was informed by political, economic, legal, cultural, noetic, and, last but not least, ethical principles which apply, or should apply, universally to all political bodies and would thus create some form of universal unity among them.8 This first part of my categorization suggests a view on international political thought which is at odds with two mainstream assumptions widely popular in the discipline of IR. It shares, however, common views with an emerging body of critical literature in our field.9 This view is critical to the construction of a historically long-standing ‘realist’ tradition in international politics which is construed as dating back to the ancient Greek historian Thucydides and as comprising authors like Niccolo Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes. Contrary to this construction, it will be argued here that a realist understanding of international politics can be explicitly found in, however not before, Hegel while from Hegelian philosophy there is a direct line leading to the IR school of thought of neo-realism. What authors from such different times and political settings as Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Hobbes – but also other pre-nineteenth-century authors as, for example, Bartolomé de las Casas, Francisco de Vitoria, and Immanuel Kant – have in common, and what at the same time differentiates their outlook from the way of viewing inter-national politics, which became predominant in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (with some exceptions), is their ontology of connecting and unifying principles which are said to exist among political units and which refer to universal/universalistic doctrines. There is another important consequence of this interpretation, which affects our understanding of international politics and the construction of its history: It appears to be a popular assumption in, and reading of, international politics that different political principles operate ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ a political body. This assumption holds that there would be ‘order’ inside and ‘chaos’ and ‘anarchy’ outside, and that those principles ordering

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A History of International Political Theory

a political body domestically would be repealed outside in the inter-national sphere. We will see, however, that this understanding is quite modern and emerged only because of the abandonment of premodern concepts of universal unity among states and of universal principles of political order which would operate both ‘inside’ and ‘outside’. In contrast, the modern outlook posits a plethora of atomistic sovereign states and thus replaced the belief in the existence of unifying, universal principles which are held to be valid for all politics. ‘When the modern state system arrived’, Jens Bartelson notes, ‘this distinction [between the domestic and the international; HB] has been integral to international political theory by marking it off from theories of domestic politics ... If the domestic “inside” gradually has become associated with the presence of unity, order, and peaceful progress, so the international “outside” has simultaneously been characterized by the absence of these conditions. It is the realm of plurality, anarchy, and war’ (Bartelson, 1995, p. 255; also Walker, 1993; Onuf, 1998). The modern ‘inside’-‘outside’ dichotomy and its solidification in international political thought throughout the nineteenth century and in the twentieth century is not only a contingent phenomenon due to the loss and abandonment of universal international thought, but it also ignores the politicohistorical reality of international politics, which throughout history was, aside from wars, also one of cooperation, treaty systems, and mutual cultural influences between communities. In addition to this, this dichotomy is ignorant of the reality of domestic politics which is, not less than international politics, characterized by violent struggles about the ‘right’ order (and problematizations of political legitimacy, resistance, social contracts, and common goods). Domestic politics is far from being ‘naturally’ ordered and peaceful. Thus, the ‘inside’-‘outside’ dichotomy is not only a narrowing and constricting intellectual feature in and of international politics, but also a misleading pattern to model political reality in general – not, however, for understanding the ontology and epistemology of modern IR. The subsequent question is now when this gradual association, which Bartelson observes, took place. The answer to this question can be given by repeating and reformulating the central argument of this study, namely, that this development and the respective divide between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ was foreign to political thought prior to the nineteenth century and is a result of particularistic ontology. Contrary to popular tenets in modern IR, which teach that Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Hobbes – to pick out three thinkers who are represented as paradigmatic founding fathers of realist thought – would represent such an ‘inside’-‘outside’ divide, this study aspires to demonstrate that all three ‘heroic figures’ developed principles of political order which operate both in domestic and international politics. These principles are thus of a general ordering character and transcend possible divides between an ‘inside’ and ‘outside’. There is no ‘inside’-‘outside’

Introduction 9

distinction in Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Hobbes, and the absence of such an ontology is much more the case in other pre-nineteenth-century philosophers, such as Cicero, Augustine, Aquinas, las Casas, and Kant (as will be discussed here).10 There is, as stated above, a second shift in the genealogy of international/ inter-national political thought – a shift of which we are contemporarily witnesses and which can be traced back to the early 1990s. This shift finds its roots in ‘post-cold war’ and ‘new world order’ discussions. In a theoretical perspective, this shift is characterized by an emerging body of literature which draws mainstream assumptions of our discipline into question and critically reinterprets traditions of thought and individual thinkers. A primary focus of this critical debate is on ontological, and subsequently epistemological and methodological, questions of international political thought and IR. It has to be asked, in relation to the main questions of this study, whether this second shift is also about reestablishing universal political thought. Can we identify current efforts to (re)found and (re)intervene universal approaches in the study of global politics whose ontological focus is explicitly on phenomena beyond the nation-state and concentrates, for example, on global civil society and global justice? Did globalizations of politics bring universal thought back in, since there is increased cooperation among states and private actors across borders as well as an awareness of global problems which encourage, and even force, us to think beyond the political unit of nation-states and their self-interest? There might be two major objections to the argument of this study: First, it could be argued that there are also universal and universalistic approaches in the nineteenth and twentieth century; for example, the nineteenth century ‘standards of civilization’ (according to Fisch, 2005), Woodrow Wilson’s approach of inter-national democratization and the establishment of the League of Nations (very instructive here Ninkovich, 1994), or finally the building of the United Nations on explicitly universal standards of human rights and states’ equality. This objection might hold that the argument made in this study fails, and hence has to be taken very seriously. At first glance, this objection sounds reasonable. However, it is philosophically superficial because it equates metaphysical perceptions and conceptualizations of universal political order, as they were typical for pre-nineteenth century political thought, with an artificial universalization of political principles. To be more precise: Whereas the metaphysical perception of universalism and holistic concepts of political order are grounded in universal and universalistic ontologies, the proclamation of general standards in nineteenth-century international political thought and twentieth-century IR is based on individual political beliefs, particularistic ontology, and the assumption of their universalize-ability. They lack a universal backing which grounds in perceptions of transcendental principles of order.

10 A History of International Political Theory

I do not immediately sympathize here with one or the other mode – universal, universalistic, or particularistic – however, it seems important to elaborate their ontological differences as well as their respective epistemological consequences. It is especially with regard to those consequences that these differences become crucial because they dramatically influence the way of our thinking about and conceptualizing political order among states as well as dealing with current world problems. I will develop the argument that, whereas universal and universalistic thinking, even if it might be controversial with regard to distinct tenets, founds the possibility for international and intercultural dialogue and for agency across political bodies, particularistic thinking operates as a solipsistic discourse with which one can associate, or not. Particularistic ontology, on which universalizations regardless of their intentions are based, creates, in its epistemological consequence, dualistic worldviews. Whereas the ontological unit (in the sense of what is the basic unit and reference of focus for theorizing the international11) in pre-nineteenth-century thought emerged from some ordering principle beyond the individuality and particularity of the nation (such as universal ethics, eternal legal principles, divine laws, and so on) and thus has been universal in its own right, the ontological unit in post-nineteenth-century inter-national thought became the particular nation-state. Thus, if a particularistic unit represents the ontological foundation and reference, interconnectedness among political units can hardly be thought of on a universal basis, but either can be declined (in a nationalistic sense) or be drafted at best as a mosaic of single individual units which come together only on the basis of standards universalized by one or the other party (as in twentieth- century internationalisms). These standards, however, are not debatable on common grounds, but are only acceptable or not. Since politics and the creation of political order are – and this not only contemporarily in the twenty-first century but in principle – in need of cross-cultural and cross-national dialogue and agency in order to find ways of ‘living together’ in a common world, scholarly attempts to rethink and eventually to (re)invent universal approaches seem most relevant. Thus, without judging whether universalism or universalizations and particularism will finally make a ‘better’ world, it has to be acknowledged at least that principles based on universal ontologies enable a dialogue to debate over principles of common political order: there is a potential for discovering compatibility, commonalities, and joint socialization, whereas particularistic ontology creates exclusion, or at best forced assimilation.12 In the sense of Andrew Linklater, the challenging question for current international political theory is not whether to replace historic patterns of universal thought or to refer to hegemonic universalizations, but how to bridge national and cultural pluralisms in a globalized world and how to balance between pluralist identities and necessary universalisms (Linklater, 2000).

Introduction 11

This question can only be answered normatively and, I would argue, by a genealogical study of international/inter-national political thought and modern IR, investigating their ontologies with a special emphasis on universalism and particularism. I am aware that there might also be critique of my argument and approach from within the discipline of IR, mainly from its neo-realist mainstream. The major critique will presumably lie in the circumstance that, according to their reading,13 there is a well-established ‘realist’ tradition and realist agenda in international political thought on which current IR can draw and which comprises authors like Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Hobbes; a claim which here is declared to be invalid and a misreading (see also Behr/Heath, 2009). The argument about misreading shall claim that ideological interests of IR scholars, interests which emerged in the 1940s and 1950s and prevailed the discipline at least throughout the Cold War, can be declared responsible for constructing a ‘realist’ legacy by selective reading and idiosyncratic interpretation (more on that in the following section, ‘Conceptual remarks’). Therefore, neo-realism has to be understood as an ideological enterprise itself which constructed its narratives about its own past and its historical determination; and it can be further asked how far the establishment of IR as an academic discipline is the result of the particularizing and nationalizing of intellectual frameworks and ontologies in the nineteenth century. This study shares this suspicion with a few representatives of our discipline who would admit that IR scholarship, primarily in the United States, has entertained ‘kitchens of power’ designing and legitimizing US power strategies (as Stanley Hoffmann critically diagnosed IR in 1977 and as Miles Kahler reviewed our discipline 20 years later; Kahler, 1997).14 Conceptual remarks This book is an interpretative study which aims at elaborating a genealogy of the ontological unit of international/inter-national political thought and IR. Some of the authors discussed are unusual to the study of international politics, such as Cicero, Aurelius Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Bartolomé de las Casas, and Francisco de Vitoria; others, such as Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Thomas Hobbes, who belong to the historical canon of International Politics/IR, will be presented in a new light. The interpretations of this study will use thoughts on war and peace as they can be found in each of the interpreted authors as an empirical mirror to illustrate the genealogical developments and shifts from universal and universalistic to particularistic thinking. It is evident that approaches to war and peace, including questions of the legitimization of war and ‘just war’ as well as of the possibilities for peace, differ widely throughout history due to divergent sociopolitical and intellectual contexts of specific authors; also universalism and particularism are not present in all of them to the same degree. Furthermore, grouping

12

A History of International Political Theory

them together in three hugely time-spanning blocks (roughly stated, Greek and Roman antiquity and [European] Middle Ages, [European] early modern times, and the nineteenth and twentieth centuries) may show ignorance of the different cultural contexts of the authors and their writings as well as of individual voices resistant to prevailing mainstream patterns. It may also be inevitable that interpretations focusing on such huge compartments will be unfair to some parts of it. Nevertheless, it appears that the differentiation between universalism and particularism does apply as a category for understanding developments of international/inter-national political thought and modern IR. In a comparative methodological perspective, the analysis is a comparison of most divergent cases, which is usually deemed to be the heuristically most fruitful method of inquiry. Taking the variety of political orders throughout the targeted centuries (constituted by poleis, empires, city states, nation-states, and global polities) into consideration, it is particularly interesting to realize that, regardless of this variety, premodern authors seemed to share notions of ontological universalism and epistemological ‘meta-vocabulary’, whereas authors who wrote under the influence of the emerging and then consolidating political order of the nation state lost that notion and adhered to particularistic (national) ones. The discussions of single authors are sometimes based on comprehensive quotations from their original writings. I perceive this to be necessary because some authors will be re-interpreted in contrast to mainstream notions which often read selectively and ignore paragraphs which are here, however, seen as important. In order to illustrate the nature of their writings and statements according to the presented (re)interpretations, I think that eventual full quotations of distinct arguments are instructive and sometimes indispensable. It is hoped that the reader will thereby experience and encounter ‘another’ Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and so on, compared to image he or she might be familiar with. The interpretations in Parts I and II will discuss individual authors; Parts III and IV will focus on schools of thought (apart from Hegel in Part III). These changing perspectives can be explained by the historical development of inter-national political thought itself. The nineteenth and even more the twentieth century, when International Politics/IR became established as an academic discipline, witnessed an increase in both the amount and scope of scholarly work in the realm of humanities and social sciences. This increase was accompanied by a differentiation and systematization of the intellectual field. In contrast to earlier centuries when the writings of single philosophers appear – or are narrated to appear according to historical perceptions and constructions of subsequent posterities – as exclusively more outstanding, social sciences and humanities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries developed into academic schools of thought. Saying this does not deny that individual figures are (deemed as) more representative and sometimes more important than others due to their writings and

Introduction 13

activities to initiate or even found specific epistemologies and methodologies. The discussions of schools of thought in this study shall hence draw upon and emphasize certain authors more than others. I am aware that I will not be able to avoid some form of canonization and consequently may do injustice to some authors discussed here, but the amount of authors who could be discussed to represent inter-national political thought in the nineteenth century and IR in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is simply too huge to proceed with the same methodology of discussing single authors as in Parts I and II. The very selection of authors and schools does, of course, not claim to be comprehensive, and one might argue that important authors are missing and that those would be more relevant to the argument of this book than the authors actually discussed – so why de Vitoria and not Francisco Suárez; why las Casas and not Hugo Grotius; why Hobbes and not Justus Lipsius; why Halford Mackinder and not Friedrich Ratzel? Two rationales determined the selection of authors in this study. The first rationale is the assumption of their individual significance and their school’s general significance to stand for universal and/or particularistic ontologies. This rationale was enhanced by the idea that the authors also represent an interdisciplinary cross section, including traditions which contributed to the development of international/inter-national political thought in their own right or which directly influenced the ontology and epistemology of twentieth century IR, such as Roman universal-imperial thought (Cicero), Christian views of just war (Augustine and Aquinas), and international legal philosophy (las Casas, de Vitoria) in the first instance, and national historiography (represented here mainly by Heinrich von Treitschke, Jules Michelet, and Thomas B. Macaulay) and geopolitical thought (represented here primarily by Mackinder and Nicholas Spykman) in the second. The second rationale has to do with a conclusion of this study and its interpretation of the development of international/inter-national political thought and its intercourse with the discipline of IR in the twentieth century. This conclusion relates to my earlier observation about misreadings of authors of political thought in combination with the paradigmatic IR-ontology of ‘national interest’ and its inclination to construct and posit a consecutive and perennial history of ‘realist’ thought which is said to augment in neorealist theory. The main authors which were sacrificed on behalf of this interest were Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Hobbes. Thus, they not only belong to the canonized knowledge of IR, but also immediately appear in the focus of this study because they have been seized under the paradigm of particularistic ontology. The argument about misreadings does not claim to present a/the one and rightful or ‘authentic’ interpretation of the authors discussed. This claim would not only be presumptuous, but also unredeemable facing several hundreds of meters of bookshelves filled with interpretations on these authors from very different disciplines. What I rather intend to demonstrate is that

14

A History of International Political Theory

Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Hobbes can not be read as realists (or what ‘realism’ was assumed to be under the particularistic paradigm) because their thoughts are either clearly opposed to ‘realist’ tenets by sharing universal/ universalistic ontologies and by advocating ethical, normative principles. At least they are much more ambivalent in their claims about international politics than IR mainstream narratives want us to believe and thus cannot be used for the construction of a ‘realist’ tradition in international political thought. In methodological terms, the interpretations put forward here do not claim to reveal some authentic meaning of classical and modern texts, but rather to rule out certain IR interpretations due to their hermeneutic inexactness, biases, and ‘Whiggish’ accounts.15 What raised my initial suspicion of the construction of a realist legacy and the neo-realist and neoliberal misreadings and manipulation of a history of international thought16 can be explained by the following three examples (which will be discussed in greater detail in Parts I and II). First, when the mainstream of our discipline interprets Thucydides, scholars consequently neglect his reference to universal legal and ethical standards explaining and condemning the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War. Instead, they only refer to the pattern of Athenian hegemonic power growth which scared the Peloponnesian peoples so that they allied against Athens. This is, at best, a misunderstood interpretation which, however, fits perfectly, or has been made to fit, into neo-realist terms; at worst, this is an intentionally misread interpretation because the Athenian power growth is, according to Thucydides, just one reason for the Peloponnesian War. The other reason could be found in the break of legal commitments and ‘international law’ between Athens and Sparta – a point which is emphasized by classical philosophical studies, which would have destroyed, however, a ‘realist’ interpretation of Thucydides. Second, when IR mainstream scholars interpret (interpreted) Machiavelli, they primarily refer to The Prince, picturing Machiavelli as an all-out power politician; only a few pieces also refer to Machiavelli’s main work, The Discourses. This is not only a text selection, which only tells half of the story, but it also ignores a good part of widely established Machiavelliinterpretations which we know from political philosophy and political thought. These interpretations approach Machiavelli as a political sociologist who was interested in revealing the mechanisms of power as they operate both in principalities and republics. Thus, a sharp line is drawn between The Prince and The Discourses, each dealing with a different type of political order. This understanding is last, but not least, suggested by Machiavelli himself. Third, when mainstream IR/International Politics interprets (interpreted) Thomas Hobbes, the main question seems to be whether or not the ‘state of nature’ between individuals can be applied to relations among states. Although it has to be admitted that Hobbes makes statements according to

Introduction 15

which such an application may appear possible and international politics performs as a ‘war of every man against every man’, there are good reasons to doubt that this question is really central to interpreting Hobbesian international politics. I share this doubt, together with some critical reinterpretations in our discipline, because we find in Hobbes’s political philosophy – apart from the question whether the state of nature applies to states, and states can be treated analogous to individuals – an explicit mechanism among sovereignty, legitimacy, and security which operates between domestic and international politics – even if Hobbes addresses international politics only sporadically. As far as I can see, there are two publications which have their basic problematique in common with this study. These are Bartelson’s discussion of ‘internationalism’ (1995) and Linklater’s Critical Theory and World Politics (2007). Bartelson sees a ‘threat of the total fragmentation of the international system’ into atomistic nation-states – a complaint (and warning) which I share – and criticizes the ‘absence of any shared metavocabulary’ to overcome this fragmentation (Bartelson, 1995, p. 261). However, it appears that he does not see that such a ‘meta-vocabulary’ did indeed exist prior to the nineteenth century. Consequently, Bartelson shares the view of an anarchical structure of international politics, historic and present-day, and, missing a ‘meta-vocabulary’, he searches for compatible and interconnecting approaches of ‘internationalism’. In order to do so, he sees a profitable approach in Kant, although does not realize that Kant himself is part of a tradition of universal thinking, and that investigating this tradition would provide him with answers and insights conducive to his search for meta-vocabularies. Linklater explains his interest as investigating the ties that bind together the members of political communities and simultaneously separate them from the remainder of the human race ... [an investigation which is] linked by a specific interest in the relationship between the duties that individuals have to one another as citizens of separate states and the obligations they have to all other persons as members of humanity’; and he further declares ‘the relationship between >>community>cosmopolis>think through>can