Where are the women?

There can never be enough critique of the Western perspective in any discipline, let alone International Relations (IR). In a field dominated by Eurocentrism, writers and theorists like Lily Ling, Arlene Tickner, Karen Smith, David Blaney, Aparna Devare, and Pinar Bilgin are dismantling the impracticality of an “international” field of study that is entirely missing international perspectives. Drawing from a variety of texts, both from subaltern voices and those who make up mainstream IR–including (Neo)Realist and (Neo)Liberal perspectives–this essay will argue that it is actually the mainstream theorists who have gone too theoretical. In a world of sovereign nation-states in an anarchical system, (Neo)Liberal and (Neo)Realist hegemony focuses too heavily on theoretical conversations about human nature, the inevitability or preventability of war, power, security, and the nation-state itself; these discussions are all yang and no yin (Ling, 2014). They fail to include something imperative to a constructive, applicable IR theory: femininity, religion, and non-white, non-Western perspectives. This failure is not an accident, it is an act of violence.

Unlike the conventional IR authors, Lily Ling provides an introduction to the basics of International Relations (both what it is and what it could be) in a way that is digestible to anyone; not just those who already populate the discipline. Through the fable of Sihar and Shenya, Ling demonstrates using Daoist principles that perhaps instead of pursuing a balance of power between nation-states, we should reflect first on the way that in this field “no teaching exists of non-Western, non-masculinist approaches to the world, world politics, or IR” (Ling, 2014, p. 30). Forget balancing state power; contemporarily we are not even able to achieve an international balance between feminine (yin) and masculine (yang) despite that half the globe is comprised of the feminine perspective. Instead of parity, the masculine and feminine perspectives are dichotomized and hierarchized; only the masculine is valued in mainstream IR. Ling’s notion is grounded by Aparna Devare who connects the gender binary to the binary between the West and the non-West. Mainstream IR regards the West as masculine, empirical, based in reason, and obtaining power, while the non-West is feminine, backward, religious, and weak (Ling, 2014; Devare, 2020). One implication of this dichotomization is the perception of religion as a fragility (because it is associated with the non-West) while secularism is seen as a strength, despite evidence that modern violence related to secular ideologies surpasses violence related to religion tenfold. How many people have died in the name of capitalism and development (Devare, 2020, p. 169); in the name of Realism and Neoliberalism?

A Realist like Hans Morgenthau, influenced by Hobbes or Thucydides, might respond to this by saying that the violence we see today–which often manifests itself in war–is a result of human nature, not products of human nature like secularism or religion; binaries or hierarchies. Morgenthau’s first principle of political Realism is rooted in Hobbesian theories of the natural state of man which perceive humans as fundamentally motivated by fear and aggression. “Realists see the perpetual threats of conflict and war because they are trapped in a cycle of fear caused by lack of trust and/or a competition to dominate the system” (Daddow, 2017, p. 85). Operating under the baseline assumption that the international system is made up of nation-states in a condition of anarchy, Realists frame world politics as a constant battle between states driven by “human” nature. War in this context is unpreventable. But what if the definition of human nature is flawed? Is there any yin in this hegemonic view of human nature? No IR theorist has ever lived in a world where the prevailing system of socialization is not patriarchy. How can an entire theory of IR be so heavily based on a theoretical idea of human nature when we do not know what true, untouched humanity looks like? We are all products of socialization. Framing world politics in this way is like building a house on an uneven foundation; it will not stand when hit with the wind of Postcolonialism, Poststructuralism, or Feminist IR theory.

Kenneth Waltz remedies these concerns somewhat in his reconceptualization of Realism (though likely not because he was worried that patriarchy influenced Hobbes’ definition of human nature). In Man, the State and War, Waltz challenges Realism’s emphasis on human nature asserting that “international relations are characterized by the absence of truly governmental institutions, which in turn gives a radically different twist to the relevant processes” (Waltz, 1959, p. 11). In other words, IR is characterized by anarchy, not human nature. Through Neorealism, Waltz refocuses IR’s object of study to the structure of the system. He, like Morgenthau, would deny that war is merely driven by human ideology, but rather suggest that the anarchic structure of the international system “compels states to preserve their security by constantly building up their power” (Daddow, 2017, p. 103). For Waltz, the inevitably of war is the product of the system that nation-states operate within. Yet, his argument is still missing something important: the fact that warmongering behavior is exclusive to (or at least characterized by the behavior of) Western states.

At a very basic level, even the definition of power used in IR is Eurocentric; Ling emphasizes this in the way that Professor Miller describes power to his graduate students: “International Relations is about power. And, like sex, power means A making B do what B would otherwise not do” (Ling, 2014, p. 255). What he’s describing is coercion, and in a sexual context coercion results in rape. The (Neo)Realist obsession with aggression and power enables and excuses abuse at an individual level, which can then be replicated and reinforced in the international system. Bilgin recognizes this important defect in the Realist and Neorealist schools of thought, illustrated by the way they narrowly define security in the context of the global North, and then universalize it. “There is a politics to deciding whose security could be addressed at the expense of whom” (Bilgin, 2020, p. 189). There is also a politics in deciding who has power and how that power is balanced. Bilgin suggests that (Neo)Realists not only have a limited (and problematic) understanding of how to balance power, but the projection of Western insecurities on the non-West has resulted in a misunderstanding of how the world operates in the IR discipline. Mainstream (Neo)Realists are not solving any problems in IR, they’re creating new ones that needn’t exist by blatantly ignoring reality.

​​Most textbooks suggest that IR’s object of study is the state (system); dominant theorists, from Waltz to Morgenthau would agree. This means that in the Western imagination, mainstream IR’s history begins in the European interwar period (Blaney, 2020). However, David Blaney implies that this may not be true. He illustrates, through descriptions of Amerindians in North America, and the Silk Road in Asia and beyond, that IR is a “multilayered narrative” (Blaney, 2020, p. 39). By examining subaltern, colonized perspectives, Blaney demonstrates that the “where” of IR is not necessarily Europe, as mainstream scholars suggest, and the “when” was likely well before the Peace of Westphalia (Blaney, 2020, p. 47). This observation, which was made by closely examining the lives and perspectives of those who are almost entirely excluded from conventional IR (except as research subjects, not producers of knowledge), completely destabilizes the notion that the “what” of IR is the nation-state or the system in which it operates. Blaney suggests that based on his observations, IR is perhaps “a study of the world and its peoples in all their variety, interactions and intersection” (2020, p. 48) rather than solely about Eurocentric nation-states. What if, for all of their efforts, Realists and Neorealists were not even focused on the right object of study? Ling demonstrates in her fable that it is possible that the entire epistemology of IR is wrong. By taking IR out of its “normal” Western context, she exhibits that five iconic elements of IR (power, wealth, love, security, and knowledge) are discoverable in other non-European traditions, like Daoism’s fire, metal, earth, wood, and water. Through the story of Sihar and Shenya, the reader learns that balancing the elements–whether in the form of Chinese tradition/nature or mainstream IR/human desire–is a formidable object of inquiry for IR. This proves Blaney’s point that IR happens outside of the Western imagination, yet the lessons learned from alternative perspectives are still relevant to the discipline.

Having explored Realist and Neorealist perspectives, it is also necessary to consider how a Liberal theorist would respond to these observations and critiques. Liberalism, at least, is slightly more optimistic than Realism in its emphasis on cooperation. Woodrow Wilson was a champion of Liberalism in the period during and after the First World War. His ‘Fourteen Point’ program acknowledged the importance of self-determination for all nations and challenged the Realist notion that war is inevitable (Daddow, 2017). However idealistic as he may have been, Wilson would not have seen IR that happens “outside” the Western world as valuable to his goal of international cooperation. Instead of turning toward subaltern narratives, he chose institutions (such as the League of Nations) as a solution to escape the problems associated with anarchy.

Neoliberalists built upon their predecessor’s notions of cooperation, observing that “there [are] relative stability patterns of international economic cooperation despite the uneven distribution of international economic power around the world” (Daddow, 2017, p. 107). They attribute this to institutions, organizations, and “international regimes” (such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade). As much as nation-states are important to their understanding of IR, Neoliberalists begin to recognize that nonstate actors also play an important role in the international system, and can even promote cooperation. Encouragingly, Robert Keohane might look at evidence of exclusion in IR laid out before him, and suggest that a national hegemon is not necessary for the economic stability of the international system (Keohane, 2014). This could be interpreted as a departure from the domination of Western interests in IR. However, in the real world, we do have a hegemon (or did in the period following WWII). And that hegemon, the United States, has not always produced international regimes that benefit those who fall outside of the West.

Ultimately, in the discipline of IR, dominant Eurocentric epistemologies and methodologies exclude subaltern voices. Mainstream theorists (Realists, Liberalists, Neorealists, and Neoliberalists alike) commit “epistemic violence” against the non-West by gatekeeping, dismissing, silencing, and even actively erasing knowledge produced outside of the West (Smith & Tickner, 2020). A major implication of this within the discipline is an inability to understand world politics if the United States is not at the center of the conversation (Smith & Tickner 2020, p. 3). Keohane dipped his toes in the water by imagining a world after the end of U.S. hegemony, but his theoretical prophecies fail to address the harm that Western hegemony is actively causing the rest of the world. By dominating the knowledge production process, mainstream scholars have constructed the “non-West” or global South as “pre-modern” and “backward” which reinforces the discipline’s geo-epistemological biases (Wiebke Wemheuer-Vogelaar et al., 2020). Understanding this is essential to the practical application of IR theories by state leaders, diplomats, and other powerful actors in world politics. Lily Ling and the various authors included in International Relations Theory from the Global South give mainstream IR an important reality check: we do not live in a world entirely made up of men who wake up every day and choose between war or cooperation, global governance or national governments. But we do live in a world where the discipline of IR is committing “epistemicide”–defined as “the systematic suppression and destruction of subaltern knowledge” (Smith & Tickner, 2020, p. 7)–against entire populations of people who could produce and contribute valuable and decisive information to this field. The discipline needs these counter-narratives if it wants to provide pragmatic solutions to the problems IR faces; without critique, mainstream IR will continue to uphold–and even produce new–structures of oppression.

References

• Bilgin, P. (2020). Security [E-book]. In A. B. Tickner & K. Smith (Eds.), International Relations from the Global South: World of Difference (pp. 181–196). Routledge.

• Blaney, D. L. (2020). Where, when and what is IR? [E-book]. In A. B. Tickner & K. Smith (Eds.), International Relations from the Global South: World of Difference (pp. 38–55). Routledge.

• Daddow, O. (2017). International Relations Theory (3rd ed.). SAGE Publications Ltd.

• Devare, A. (2020). Religion, secularism and nationalism [E-book]. In A. B. Tickner & K. Smith (Eds.), International Relations from the Global South: World of Difference (pp. 161–180). Routledge.

• Keohane, R. (2014). After Hegemony: Cooperation & Discord in the World Political Economy (1984). In K. A. Mingst & J. L. Snyder (Eds.), Essential Readings in World Politics (5th ed., pp. 338–354). W. W. Norton & Company.

• Ling, L. (2014). Imagining World Politics: Sihar & Shenya, a Fable for Our Times [E-book]. Routledge.

• Smith, K., & Tickner, A. B. (2020). Introduction: International Relations from the global South [E-book]. In A. B. Tickner & K. Smith (Eds.), International Relations from the Global South: World of Difference (pp. 1–14). Routledge.

• Waltz, K. (1959). Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis. Columbia University Press.

• Wemheuer-Vogelaar, W., Peters, I., Kemmer, L., Kleinn, A., Linke-Behrens, L., & Mokry, S. (2020). The global IR debate in the classroom [E-book]. In A. B. Tickner & K. Smith (Eds.), International Relations from the Global South: World of Difference (pp. 17–37). Routledge.

This was originally written for my International Relations Senior Seminar and has been adapted for this platform.