This chapter discusses the complicated relationship between international alw and domestic law, focusing on international law is received by domestic legal orders

Waltz claimed that although functional differentiation is inherently a feature of the structure of political systems, the units of anarchic systems are functionally undifferentiated. But states clearly perform differentiation functions than nonstate actors. And, as Waltz emphasized, great powers perform managerial functions in international systems that lesser powers do not. Furthermore, his focus on the similarity of great powers ignores this functional differentiation in the system in favor of attention to particular attributes of one type of parts. Turning to the distribution of capabilities, Waltz’s focus on system polarity (the number of great powers) looks not at how capabilities are actually distributed but only where they are concentrated. This is especially unfortunate because the relativity of power means that the places where capabilities are not concentrated is of great structural importance. And Waltz perversely excludes inequalities of power and relations between the strong and the weak from his account of international political structures.

This chapter assesses the effects of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War on the Cold War consensus and compares the Nixon and Carter administrations realist and liberal policy appproaches.

Why are progressives often critical of US foreign policy and the national security state? What would a statecraft that pulls ideas from the American left look like? Grand Strategies of the Left brings the progressive worldview into conversation with security studies and foreign policy practice. It argues that American progressives think durable security will only come by prioritizing the interconnected conditions of peace, democracy, and equality. By conceiving of grand strategy as worldmaking, progressives see multiple ways of using foreign policy to make a more just and stable world. US statecraft – including defense policy – should be retooled not for primacy, endless power accumulation, or a political status quo that privileges elites, but rather to shape the context that gives rise to perpetual insecurity. Progressive worldmaking has its own risks and dilemmas but expands how we imagine what the world is and could be.

Why are progressives often critical of US foreign policy and the national security state? What would a statecraft that pulls ideas from the American left look like? Grand Strategies of the Left brings the progressive worldview into conversation with security studies and foreign policy practice. It argues that American progressives think durable security will only come by prioritizing the interconnected conditions of peace, democracy, and equality. By conceiving of grand strategy as worldmaking, progressives see multiple ways of using foreign policy to make a more just and stable world. US statecraft – including defense policy – should be retooled not for primacy, endless power accumulation, or a political status quo that privileges elites, but rather to shape the context that gives rise to perpetual insecurity. Progressive worldmaking has its own risks and dilemmas but expands how we imagine what the world is and could be.

This and the following chapters offer substantive applications of a relational/systemic understanding of international systems. This chapter looks at how international actors are differently placed (and shaped) by their authority, status, and roles; by the principles, norms, and rules that govern their actions; and by the institutions and practices in which they participate. The chapter offers three illustrations. First, I suggest that international systems can profitably be understood as having constitutional structures composed of principles and practices of international legitimacy, principles and practices of domestic legitimacy, foundational functional practices, and hegemonic cultural values. Second, I look at the great variety of types of security systems, including (various types of) systems organized around unit autonomy, systems of hierarchical subordination, and transnational security communities. Finally, I look at the transformation of post-World War II international society through norm-driven processes that abolished aggressive territorial war and overseas colonial empires.

Why are progressives often critical of US foreign policy and the national security state? What would a statecraft that pulls ideas from the American left look like? Grand Strategies of the Left brings the progressive worldview into conversation with security studies and foreign policy practice. It argues that American progressives think durable security will only come by prioritizing the interconnected conditions of peace, democracy, and equality. By conceiving of grand strategy as worldmaking, progressives see multiple ways of using foreign policy to make a more just and stable world. US statecraft – including defense policy – should be retooled not for primacy, endless power accumulation, or a political status quo that privileges elites, but rather to shape the context that gives rise to perpetual insecurity. Progressive worldmaking has its own risks and dilemmas but expands how we imagine what the world is and could be.

Why are progressives often critical of US foreign policy and the national security state? What would a statecraft that pulls ideas from the American left look like? Grand Strategies of the Left brings the progressive worldview into conversation with security studies and foreign policy practice. It argues that American progressives think durable security will only come by prioritizing the interconnected conditions of peace, democracy, and equality. By conceiving of grand strategy as worldmaking, progressives see multiple ways of using foreign policy to make a more just and stable world. US statecraft – including defense policy – should be retooled not for primacy, endless power accumulation, or a political status quo that privileges elites, but rather to shape the context that gives rise to perpetual insecurity. Progressive worldmaking has its own risks and dilemmas but expands how we imagine what the world is and could be.

This chapter outlines the foreign policy approach of the Biden administration, seeking to restore traditional US global roles and address new challenges from emerging powers and new technology.

This chapter discusses how international courts operate, and how their jurisdiction is dependent on consent of states. It goes systematically through notions of jurisdiction, admissibility, interim measures, and compensation, ending with a discussion of advisory opinions and the possibilities for judicial review

This chapter compares the values, beliefs, and policy actions of the Clinton administration after the end of the Cold War and those of the George W. Bush administration after the events of September 11, 2001.

This book explores some implications of studying international relations from a systemic perspective. This chapter takes on the preliminary tasks of defining systems, identifying distinctive characteristics of systemic explanations, and situating systems approaches in a broader context of relational framings. A system is a bounded set of components of particular types, arranged in definite ways, operating in a specific fashion to produce characteristic outcomes, some of which are emergent. The arrangement and operation of the components produce “emergent” “systems effects;” properties and outcomes that cannot be fully understood through knowledge of the parts considered separately. I emphasize the relational character of systemic explanations and their reliance on mechanisms and processes, in order to foster developing a relational processual systemic perspective within a pluralistic IR.

In sharp contrast to dominant (Waltzian) understandings in contemporary IR, I argue that anarchy neither is an ordering principle nor has determinate effects – and therefore is not central to the structures of international societies. Anarchy, understood as the absence of a government, is not an ordering principle. (It tells us one way in which a system is not ordered.) Understood as the absence of hierarchy, anarchy is not the ordering principle of international systems. (For example, great power states systems are defined by the hierarchical superiority of states over nonstate actors and of great powers over lesser powers.) Furthermore, the absence of a government has no determinate effects (which I show both by identifying a wide range of consequences of the absence of a government and by looking at the empirical case of simple immediate-return hunter-gatherer societies). I also show that framing the absence of an international government as anarchy, and making anarchy a core concept in IR, is largely attributable to the impact of Waltz’s Theory of International Politics (1979).