Louise Arbour presents a pleasant picture of international society in her article on ‘Responsibility to protect’ (R2P) as a ‘duty of care’ – one where states not only have a moral responsibility but also a legal responsibility to intervene in some of the worst situations on the planet. However, this argument is misleading and based on faulty legal assumptions which pose significant problems for Arbour's case. This response will argue that upon examination, Arbour's legal case is not very strong or persuasive. Even more importantly, even if we accepted Arbour's legal arguments, it would not make much of a difference to how states respond to international crises. Arbour seems to misunderstand that the problems facing R2P have always been those of ‘will’ and not law – and this must be understood as a political rather than legal problem.

In a recent article in the Review of International Studies, Stephen Hobden does a great service by initiating a critical evaluation of the potential for historical sociology in international relations theory. Hobden considers seminal studies by Michael Mann, Theda Skocpol, Charles Tilly, and Immanuel Wallerstein, and concludes that each is inadequate for building an historical sociology of the international system. Articles such as Hobden's are particularly important in international relations, where many major theories are dependent upon the assumptions and methods of other disciplines. From time to time, we need to ask, in a comparative manner, just how useful such methods and assumptions really are.

In his article Aid and Sovereignty: Quasi-States and the International Financial Institutions, David Williams, ‘Aid and Sovereignty: Quasi-states and the International Financial Institutions’, Review of International Studies, 26:4 (2000), pp. 557–73.David Williams claims that ‘(t)he activities of the IFIs [international financial institutions, RL] in their relations with many developing countries certainly suggest that the substance of state sovereignty does not amount to very much more than a show’ (p. 573). In my reply, I beg to differ with respect to the causes of the changing state sovereignty in developing countries and the role of international financial institutions, and of the World Bank in particular, in this process.However, as Stephen Krasner has sophistically shown, the violation, compromise and truncation of sovereignty has been a central feature of international relations since the very inception of the ‘Westphalian system’ in 1648. See Stephen D. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999).By offering a comparison concerning the structure of the interactions developing countries have with the IFIs and private capital markets, respectively, I conclude that the relationship between developing countries and private capital markets has more substantial effects on the changing nature of state sovereignty in the developing world.

During the Iraq War, some US soldiers refused (re)deployment. While liberal states appear to protect individuals’ right not to fight against their moral convictions by allowing the right to conscientious objection, those whose objections do not align with the regulations have to break the law in order to follow their convictions. This article explores how the legitimation of liberal war is challenged when we listen to the stories such refusers tell. Focusing on the United States, it briefly sets out the normative context such soldiers faced, highlighting the distinction between permissible conscientious objectors and contemptible deserters. Drawing on Judith Butler, it then focuses on two refusers by reading their own accounts of themselves in their memoirs. Despite not being eligible under the regulations, both invoke their conscience to make their refusal intelligible. By listening to their detailed accounts, the article traces the production and disruption of their subjectivities in relation to the prevailing moral order. Although invoking conscience appears to provide the chance to embrace an authentic self in a bid to resist the problematic moral order, subjectivity remains fractured due to relationality. Put differently, the sovereign subjectivity required by liberal war is simultaneously undermined by it.

Colin Gray's ‘Clausewitz Rules, OK’ was the one contribution to the Interregnum special issue of this Review that engaged the problem of modern war in general. Issues of war and peace were represented only patchily in a volume aiming to reflect on the ‘post-Cold War’ decade, but put together before ‘9/11’ brought it to an abrupt end. The Balkans didn't play a large part in William Wallace's account of Europe; unstable Asian great-power rivalries and local wars, which could make Rosemary Foot and Andrew Walter's ‘Pacific Century’ anything but pacific were barely noted; while Caroline Thomas wrote about the Third World without mentioning Africa's wars. The Middle East, Rwanda and genocide were not covered. Bruce Cumings' wise reflections on the military bases of American liberalism, a brief discussion of the ‘new interventionism’ by Geoffrey Hawthorn, and dutiful mentions of Kosovo across the chapters, hardly compensated for these omissions.

In recent years there has been a marked tendency to assess French foreign policy in terms of continuity and change in the aims, organization and actions associated with General de Gaulle and his pursuit of national independence. Analysts have found that in spite of major personality differences between de Gaulle, Pompidou9 Giscard d'Estaing and Mitterrand, and a presidential system of government that maximizes the opportunities for personal direction,, there has been paradoxically a high degree of continuity in French foreign and defence policies. Until recently it was possible to account for this by emphasizing the influence of the GauIIist party in government and the National Assembly, but now that it is no longer the largest party nor enjoying a share in power it is necessary to seek other explanations for continuity in policy. Moreover, the return to power in 1981 of men of the Fourth Republic who continue to maintain many of their predecessors’ policies reveals the inadequacy of Gaullism as a basis for analysis and the need for terms of reference allowing for a longer view of the French role in world affairs. If that role has been so consistent in spite of changes in society, economy, political leadership and even regime is it not time to seek reasons for continuity by analysing external influences on French foreign and defence policies in the light of international relations theory? This is particularly appropriate in view of current French interest in systemic approaches to international politics. The intention here is to examine some relevant developments in the theoretical study of the international system and to consider their implications for existing interpretations and future study of French foreign policy and its claim to independent The French case is of obvious relevance to the situation of other middle-sized powers pursuing an ambitious role in world affairs, yet finding access to power and independence severely restricted.

Gibraltar provides an instrumental lesson in the study of international affairs. In some areas, and on some subjects, reasoned rational compromises and solutions to disputes and differences between peoples and sovereign states are rendered impossible because of the emotional arguments which are introduced and which lead to entrenched, immutable negotiating positions. No issue is more likely to generate these situations than disputes over areas of land and differences over sovereignty. History supports this conclusion; territorial disputes concerning rights to entitlement have proved the most common cause of disagreement leading, first, to acrimonious relationships, then to the breakdown of communication and, finally, to overt physical hostilities and war.

Josip Tito first met a leading British statesman, in August 1944, when he had discussions in Naples with Winston Churchill about the future of the Yugoslav resistance movements.1 After the war however the Yugoslav communist leader did not meet another leading statesman from the West until September 1952. The visitor on that occasion was Churchill's Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden. Between the two dates there had been remarkable changes in Anglo-Yugoslav relations. In the years 1944–1948, as the world slipped towards Cold War, the British aid given to Tito's guerillas in wartime seemed to have been wasted; Yugoslavia apparently became firmly rooted in the Soviet bloc. Many now argue that Churchill ought to have supported other Yugoslav resistance groups who were supporters of the Yugoslav monarchy and, presumably, more pro-western. British support for Tito during the war, however, had logical force: Tito was popular with his countrymen and able to unite them, a capable leader who knew how to use the geography of his country against its enemies, and a man who was ultimately able to liberate Yugoslavia without large-scale Soviet assistance.2 And, in 1948, to the surprise of many in the West he proved that he was no mere Russian puppet either. He opposed attempts from Moscow to extend its influence over Yugoslav government and politics and, in June, was expelled by Stalin from the Soviet-led ‘Cominform’ Faced by economic blockade from the East, Tito turned increasingly to the West for support. In November 1951 he took a major step by accepting American military aid. As yet there were limits to his western commitment: he was still a communist, on poor terms with some of his western neighbours (especially Italy), and determined, whilst accepting western aid, to keep his distance from both power blocs. But it seemed that he could be won over securely to the West in the long-term. Recently released British files on the Eden visit reveal much about the state of Tito's relationship with the West at this time.

Charles Anthony Woodward Manning, a distinguished authority on law and jurisprudence, a controversial writer on South Africa, and for over 30 years (1930–1962) Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science in the University of London, died at the age of 83 at Constantia, Cape Province, South Africa, on 10 March 19780 Though most of his life was spent in England – he went to Brasenose College, Oxford, as a Bishops Rhodes Scholar in 1914 – he left for his homeland for the last time in September 1977, a few months after the death of his wife Marion (or ‘Maisie’), whom he married in 1939 when she was a pupil of his at the LSE. They had no children.

Brian White has taken me to task for my review article on British Foreign policy “claiming that an important opportunity in this journal was lost” and that the tone of the review was “complacent”. My two broad responses to these comments may sound contradictory. The first is that he was less than fair on the review article and the books which formed its basis, but second I applaud his initiative in raising a debate about the study of British foreign policy.

Writing on international relations frequently makes reference to the use of force, but rarely integrates changes in its nature into a central role in the explanatory model. In particular, force, in the shape of military capability, is often seen as the ‘servant’ of ideas about its appropriate use, and thus of the norms of the international system, rather than as an independent element, let alone playing a central role in affecting the latter. This article addresses the issue with particular reference to relations between the West and the ‘non-West’, arguing that the contested relationship between the different narratives of military history impinge directly on the character of international relations.

This article argues that the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) would not have been possible without protecting the inalienable rights of states to pursue nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. While some Western states and NGOs have pushed to ban all applications of nuclear technology, this was unacceptable to a large number of disarmament-supporting states from the Global South and the Non-Aligned Movement. Without support from states across the Global South, the TPNW would not have achieved the required number of signatories to be adopted. Thus, we argue that to properly understand the TPNW, an appreciation of states’ interests and motivations beyond their more widely discussed frustrations with the pace of nuclear disarmament is essential. We also argue that nuclear weapons scholarship must pay more attention to perspectives from the Global South and the concept of Nutopia – a belief in both the dystopian potential of nuclear weapons and the utopian possibilities of nuclear energy – in its understanding of nuclear politics, past and present. Global South perspectives are often overlooked, and as such, current regimes of nuclear arms control and disarmament remain only partially understood in Western literature.

Arab social science scholarship, and IR in particular, has been systematically underfunded and sidelined by governments across the region. As such, IR scholars in the Arab world have struggled to produce scholarship in hostile and authoritarian environments, let alone address efforts to decolonise. Of the few initiatives of indigenising social science that exist in the Arab world, the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies (DI) and its founding institution, the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies (ACRPS), are the main examples. In this intervention, I will review the attempts to indigenise and decolonise IR within these institutions. I focus on how the DI is implementing three main approaches: increasing access to the discipline, rethinking how we teach IR, and facilitating theory production from the region. I demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of the three abovementioned approaches by drawing attention to performative measures on the part of regional scholars, and pretending localism on the part of scholars in the Global North, which together help to perpetuate neomarginalisation. The shortcomings discussed permeate and distort attempts to decolonise the discipline within the Arab world.

Before International Studies can confront the future, it needs to get a better grip on its past and present. The discipline lacks agreement on both its own name and the name of its object of study. More importantly, key concepts used to describe phenomena have changed continuously: no concept emerging in the 19th century has remained untouched, no envisioned future of the past could have prepared us for the present. Old concepts have been discarded, new ones adopted, and existing ones modified. This implies that any exercise in ‘futurology’ must necessarily come with an openness towards conceptual change, and that a key challenge for International Studies going forward will consist in matching our conceptual toolbox to an ever-changing world. The importance of conceptual change has until recently been neglected in the study of global politics. Thus, in this paper we start by presenting the empirical case for incorporating conceptual change by laying out key past and present conceptual changes in the international realm. We then move on to a presentation of conceptual history and the tools it provides us for grasping conceptual change, before discussing how to tackle conceptual developments when thinking about the future of global politics.

The question of the Israeli settlement in the occupied territories has become a focal point for the political system, an issue of ‘high politics’ affecting values and symbols important to Israeli society as a whole. Indeed, the settlement issue may be described as having a significant bearing both on the domestic scene and on Israel's posture In the international arena. Domestically, it has been a subject of acute controversy and intense power straggles. Externally, the. settlements have aroused widespread international opposition and criticism.

The study of modern international relations is carried on, essentially, by two main types of scholars: diplomatic historians, and political scientists. There may be other types, like economists and sociologists, who recognize and take account of the importance of international politics in their own fields of study; but foreign affairs, and the processes that take place within the global system of relations, are not of central concern to them. By contrast, diplomatic historians (by which is meant here, not merely those who research into the rather narrow past actions of diplomats alone, but also those interested in the history of foreign policy and_what has affected it) would simply not exist if there was no perception and acceptance of international relations as a field of study; and this would be equally true of that well-defined sub-division of political science which has as its essential concern the analysis of relations between nation-states and of other ‘actors’ in the world system.

New political thinking on international relations during the Gorbachev era of Soviet politics received considerable attention in the West from government agencies and academics. Much of the analysis was concerned with matters of immediate policy relevance, and the relatively few attempts to assess new thinking in more theoretical terms tended to assume that one state-directed ideology (or official belief system) was now giving way to another in order to justify the radical shifts in policy being dictated by domestic economic factors.

Because arms control negotiations and agreements may serve many ends, not all of which will be fully supportive one of another, the assessment of their value and implications must be inconclusive. For so long as a broad commitment to detente policies remains the general line of foreign policy, then for so long is a SALT II treaty close to inevitable. In terms of the identifiable political, strategic and economic benefits of the SALT exercise thus far – six years on – it is debatable whether or not SALT has any justification beyond the fact of its existence. Even unproductive institutions can be costly to dismantle. Before exploring the possible strengths and weaknesses of a putative SALT II regime, it is worth recalling the ends that SALT,could serve.

In her article on the early history of the Cold War, Beatrice Heuser throws out at a challenge to those of us who have, over the past few years, cast doubt upon the idea that the USSR represented a serious military threat to the West after the Second World War. Basing her argument upon ‘American intelligence estimates’ as well as other sources, she attempts to show that Western policy-makers, hither to much criticized by many academic analysts for having exaggerated Soviet capabilities and over-dramatizing its intentions, had good reason to be fearful of the Soviet Union. ‘American and British governments’, according to Dr Heuser, ‘had information which led them to fear Soviet aggression in Europe and elsewhere’ after 1948. In the light of this information—not to mention the North Korean attack upon the South—rearmament, she argues, ‘may well have been an appropriate response to the Soviet threat’. It certainly ‘worried Stalin’ and possibly prevented Soviet aggression in Europe. It was, in short, a reasonable response to a real problem and probably contributed (although by how much can never be known) to the successful containment of the USSR. NSC-68 may not have been such a flawed document after all.