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The radical Right has turned to the Left’s iconic hero Antonio Gramsci for inspiration and guidance on how to launch a counter-hegemonic struggle against liberal cultural and political domination. Gramsci provides a powerful way to understand the globalisation of the Right, and many of Gramsci’s ideas, particularly cultural hegemony, historic blocs, and counter-hegemonic movements have been self-consciously and strategically appropriated by the Right. What radical Right intellectuals call ‘metapolitics’ provides them with a global sociological, ideological, and political framing, as well as a political economy with capitalism and class at its centre. It provides a strategic direction that seeks to mobilise social forces produced and marginalised by liberalism and globalisation by bringing them to self-consciousness, turning them from classes in themselves to politically aware and active classes for themselves. The global Right is not ideologically unified, nor does it have centralised controlling institutions. Instead, their counter-hegemonic ideologies enable diverse actors and agendas to find common cause despite their differences.
Indian foreign policy towards the Gulf has seen a tectonic transformation over the past three decades. From its active pursuit of non-alignment during the Cold War to a steadily growing pragmatism in its approach towards the Middle East, contemporary Indian engagement with its western extended neighbourhood has been progressively expanding. India's unprecedented economic development ever since its economic liberalization during the last decade of the twentieth century has seen its gross domestic product (GDP) rise from USD 458.82 billion in 1999 to USD 2.875 trillion in 2019. Consequently, India's growing economic interlinkages with the rest of the world have gradually increased its stakes as well as their associated vulnerabilities. India of the post–Cold War world seeks to position itself as a leading power on the global stage, seeking to be a rule-maker as opposed to a rule-taker away from the idealism of the past.
Accordingly, India's relationship with the countries in the Gulf has evolved since the end of the Cold War with New Delhi's newfound pragmatism forming the foundation of its new partnerships. This evolving international system, India's transforming perception of its role on the global stage, and the resultant implications on New Delhi's relations with the Gulf have been scrutinized by scholars of Indian foreign policy. Researchers have used a variety of theoretical tools from mainstream, constructivist, and critical international relations (IR) theories to help better explain these changes. However, as Robert Cox states that ‘theory is always for someone and for some purpose’, the question of analysis for this chapter is to understand what the implications of the shifts in global and regional distribution of power are for India's foreign policy in the Gulf. To answer this very question, this analysis primarily relies upon theoretical tools drawn from the mainstream IR school of realism with their positivist ontology.
Putting the last three decades into perspective, this chapter proposes that as India's relative material capabilities have increased, so has its tactful diplomatic engagement with the Gulf intensified, transforming its role in the region.
Smith’s chapter focuses on the continued influence of the idea of Weimar Berlin in contemporary popular culture. The chapter takes as its starting point recent cultural expressions, such as the television series Babylon Berlin, focusing on previously unexplored aspects of how Weimar is depicted as a modern Babylon. Smith identifies two particularly salient aspects in these depictions: first, that the portrait of right-wing political cultures within Weimar are given more depth and nuance than are afforded center-left and left-wing ones; and, second, how the depiction of sex and violence leads us back to Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz and its apocalyptic vision of Weimar, along with Anglo-American visions of Weimar that have particularly long staying power, in particular Christopher Isherwood’s depiction of 1930s Berlin and its iterations and adaptations on stage and screen. The chapter demonstrates the ways in which Weimar retains its grip on aspects of our contemporary popular culture and how the particular forms these cultural expressions take may tell us about the lessons drawn from Weimar.
Chapter Four focuses on US compliance with international law. The perception of former officials was that US compliance with international law was robust. When asked about the reasons that the United States complies or does not comply with international law, the former officials’ responses tracked many of the factors they listed for states in general. The chapter then explores the interplay between law and policy, exploring how policymakers balance these competing concerns. Former officials were clear that while international law was generally followed, it was not always dispositive. Legal issues were considered as one factor among a variety of factors, essentially involving a cost–benefit analysis. The salient considerations driving compliance or noncompliance, as revealed in the interviews, appeared to be the nature of the national interest or policy at stake; the nature and significance of the international legal rule involved ethical considerations; the views of allies; the ambiguity or precision of the legal obligation; and the weight of domestic political and bureaucratic concerns. The chapter next examines factors that may affect policymaker perceptions, including party affiliation, and concludes with a description of instances where the United States either bent international law or complied scrupulously.
Chapter Five examines the role of international law in State Department policymaking. It describes the formal and informal decision-making processes within the State Department, focusing on the influential role of the Legal Adviser and the Legal Adviser’s Office. The chapter then examines closely the weight given by policymakers to legal advice and the nature of the interaction between policymakers and lawyers. Policymakers, at least at higher levels, generally have final decision-making authority, but the views of the Legal Adviser’s Office can be determinative in the relatively rare instances when the lawyers deem a course of action conclusively illegal. Otherwise, the lawyers’ advice is influential, but its weight may vary depending on the circumstances, including the nature of the national interest involved. Many former officials indicated that the development of policy was often a collaborative and constructive process. The lawyers were usually willing to work with policymakers, and they were often willing to find alternative courses of action within the law, though they would not usually budge on an interpretation of the law. Some former officials indicated that their relationship involved greater contestation, resembling a negotiation. When international law conflicted with significant policy interests, policymakers could sometimes seek to overcome those obstacles.
The introductory chapter argues that the near universal rise of the radical Right is more than a series of national coincidences and that despite differences in their ideas and policies, a globally connected Right is emerging. One indication of this is the emergence of global networks and events such as the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the NatCon Conferences, and the Madrid Forum. However, the globality of today’s radical Right goes beyond mere transnational networks, and requires a wider rethinking of its relationship to the global in two ways. First, the radical Right is constituted by transnational interactions operating at multiple scales. Second, it defines itself and is co-constituted by its relation to the global, not just to the national. The chapter also discusses the vexed issue of defining the Right and the difficulties of studying the Right.
The chapter examines how the radical Right’s counter-hegemonic struggle relates to other struggles for power in contemporary world politics and attacks on the so-called liberal international order (LIO). Drawing on recent literature on struggles for recognition, we show how the radical Right has built powerful transversal, global alliances based on a logic and discourse of difference and diversity rather than claims to Western superiority. We illustrate this through an analysis of an emerging global alliance in defence of the ‘natural family’. The radical Right’s civilisationalism and calls for multipolarity also enable complex, strategic convergences with illiberal states such as China and Russia, as well as states and people in the Global South. The multi-polar, civilisational world order envisioned by the radical Right is not anti-hierarchical and inclusive, but legitimises new differences and new forms of exclusion through its claims to cultural diversity. It is a more sovereigntist vision of the world in which exclusionary illiberal forces would be able to operate with fewer international constraints.
This chapter extends the analysis of the origins and consequences of China’s national security institutions into the post-Mao era. It first discusses the political reasons why fragmented institutions persisted after Mao’s death and why Chinese leaders subsequently opted for siloed, rather than integrated, institutions. It then presents a medium-n analysis exploring the differences in crisis performance between fragmented and siloed institutions. The decision-making processes leading to the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War and the 2001 EP-3 Crisis demonstrate the distinct pathways by which fragmented and siloed institutions cause leaders to miscalculate. Whereas Chinese leaders received incomplete information prior to the Sino-Vietnamese War because bureaucrats feared speaking truth to power, Chinese leaders received inaccurate information prior to the onset of the 2001 EP-3 Crisis because bureaucrats were dissuaded from contesting one another’s reporting. Both cases advance the book’s argument regarding the importance of information quality as opposed to political accountability.
Ahmed engages recent works that have sought to harness the lessons of Weimar to offer guidance to ailing democracies around the globe. Utilizing a Weberian evaluation of ideal types, it examines the model of democracy and democratic defense employed within these accounts. The chapter demonstrates that what they offer as a general or universal model of democracy defense, comes to reflect in its construction a very particular model that emerged in the postwar context of Cold War competition. This model, Ahmed argues, misconstrues the terrain of political conflict and misses opportunities to open up space for a revisioning of democracy that would serve as the basis of a more robust democratic defense.
The chapter provides a detailed analysis of global managerialism, the core ideological content of the radical Right’s understanding of the world. In this view, the essence of contemporary world politics is not the age-old story of realist power politics, the liberal tale of progress through institutions, or the corrosive spread of neoliberal capitalism. It is instead the rise to power of a global liberal managerial elite, the so-called New Class of experts and bureaucrats. Detached and unmoored from their national identities and cultures, the interests of this elite lie in yet further globalisation and liberalisation that erodes traditional national values and local communities. This managerialist sociology provides the radical Right and its supporters with a common enemy – the global liberal elite – which may have different faces in different geographical locations, but that nevertheless facilitates powerful equivalences and transversal alliances that spans nations and regions.