Emilian Kavalski

The struggle for recognition of normative powers: Normative power Europe and normative power China in context

Who or what is a normative power? In response to this query the article suggests that normative powers are those actors that are recognized as such by others. This qualifies Ian Manners’s oft-quoted proposition that normative powers are only those actors that have the ability to ‘shape what can be “normal” in international life’. The proposition is that the definitions of the ‘normal’ are not merely undertaken by normative power, but they emerge in the context of its interaction with others. Recognition, in this setting, is indicated by the specific reactions of target states. In this respect, the issue is not merely about being and becoming a normative power, but also about being recognized as one by others. The article details this proposition through a parallel assessment of normative power Europe and normative power China. The intention of such comparison is to elicit the key elements of normative power in global life.

The fifth debate and the emergence of complex international relations theory: notes on the application of complexity theory to the study of international life

The climate of post-Cold-War interactions remains uncertain. Rather than a transitory stage, the resilience of the pervasive randomness of international life has challenged the dominant frameworks for the study of world politics. Some commentators have therefore advocated the infusion of international relations theory with the conjectures of complexity theory. This article brings together the claims of the different proponents of such intersection and suggests the emergence of complex international relations theory. Although it requires further critical elaboration, the claim here is that this theory outlines the fifth debate in the study of international life and proffers intriguing heuristic devices that both challenge conventional wisdom and provoke analytical imaginations. It is also possible that hard imaginative thinking has not increased so as to keep pace with the expansion and complication of human societies and organisations. That is the darkest shadow upon the hopes of mankind.          HG Wells (1945, 34)

Shanghaied into Cooperation: Framing China’s Socialization of Central Asia

This article offers a much-needed conceptual analysis of China’s emerging international agency in Central Asia. In particular it engages with the apparent susceptibility of Central Asian states to China’s normative power. The contention is that the emphasis on the dynamics of international socialization offers a relevant framework for evaluating Beijing’s capacity to engage regional states. By relying on its normative power, China has gradually attracted Central Asia into its sphere of influence through the promotion of various initiatives for regional cooperation consolidated in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Such conceptualization of Beijing’s conditioning propensity reflects upon China’s international role(s) in the region.

The Complexity of Global Security Governance: An Analytical Overview

By suggesting predictable and controllable patterns of development, the literature on global governance seems to simplify the world for decision-making tractability. In this respect, security narratives often remain analytically frozen, while the dynamics of global life are not. Relying on complexity thinking, this article both comments on the construction and potential reconstruction of the concept of security as it relates to the question of global governance and engages with the cognitive multiplicity of the notion of global security governance. Such an exploration suggests the need for the complexification of the discourses and practices of security governance through the adaptive contingency of “security as resilience”, which rejects the detachment between human and natural systems and the ability of the former to control the latter. The argument is that the logic of “security as resilience” is more appropriate than the conventional logic of “security as control”. In policy terms, therefore, the complexity of global security governance intimates an ability to cope with vulnerabilities, defy adversity and construct a new proficiency in response to the uncertainty, cognitive challenges, complex unbounded risks and the need for continuing adaptation prompted by the alterations in global life.

The new Central Asia : the regional impact of international actors

This book focuses on Central Asias place in world affairs and how international politics of state-building has affected the Asian region, thus filling the gaps in ongoing discussions on the rise of Asia in global governance. It also attempts to generalize and contextualize the “Central Asian experience” and re-evaluate its comparative relevance, by explaining the complex dynamics of Central Asian politics through a detailed analysis of the effects of major international actors – both international organizations as well as current and rising great powers.

Timescapes of security : clocks, clouds, and the complexity of security governance

This article pulls together the disjointed complexification of security studies. Such analytical overview suggests that the perspective of “timescapes” allows for exploring the complexity that shapes meanings and practices of security and its governance. In this respect, it is the imperative to change that suggests the significance of complexity thinking to security studies—that is, it is alone in taking the discontinuities of global life seriously. Security, in this regard, is not merely about the clockwork of survival, but is redefined through the cloudlike adaptive contingency of “security as resilience.” In this setting, the security governance of complexity is identified through its dancing to the timescaped rhythms of uncertainty, cognitive challenges, complex risks, and exaptation prompted by the heterogeneity of global life.

The EU–India strategic partnership: neither very strategic, nor much of a partnership

While formally labelled as ‘strategic’, the European Union (EU)–India partnership is more often than not described as ‘lukewarm’ and ‘reluctant’. Thus, by process-tracing the EU–India relationship, this article reveals the significance of 1999 as a crucial point that has urged both Brussels and New Delhi to significantly alter both their outlook on global life and on each other. The bilateral relationship will be shown to be a story of two actors aspiring to global prominence, who—to their mutual frustration—find themselves consigned and constrained to play a leading role only in their respective neighbourhoods. The bilateral relationship seems only to reinforce this marginalization in global affairs, as neither of the strategic partners considers the other significant enough to develop meaningful relations with them.

The Hoax of War: The Foreign Policy Discourses of Poland and Bulgaria on Iraq, 2003–2005

An analysis of Polands and Bulgarias foreign policy articulations on Iraq provides a discursive platform not only for the manifestation of national self-positioning in the international arena, but also for the expression of national fears and the re-contextualization of historical narratives. The claim is that the Iraq war became a ‘hoax’ for public expressions of the ‘essence of the nation’. Despite the different conditions and historical experience, in both Poland and Bulgaria the foreign policy discourses on Iraq conjured up a fictitious construct of the nation, which, while playing on the (apathetic) credulity of the public, facilitated the radicalization of the political discourse in both countries by undermining the assertion of diversity as a precondition of politics and instead has invoked the imagination of ethnic and moral unity. The conclusion, therefore, is that the foreign policy discourses on Iraq attest to the possibility of the erosion of politics in the post-communist countries.

Relationality and Its Chinese Characteristics

Chinas expanding outreach and diversifying roles have provided a novel context for the ongoing reconsiderations of world politics. As a result, inquiries into how China thinks and in what way its history and traditions inform the idiosyncrasies of Chinas international outlook have grown into a cottage industry both in International Relations (IR) and across the full spectrum of the humanities and social sciences. In this setting, Beijings external relations draw attention both because of their agency and due to the specificities of Chinas individual engagements. What has remained overlooked, however, is that such preoccupation with China has been paralleled by the emergence of a relational turn in IR. One could argue that this is not a mere coincidence. Relationality in IR has become prominent not least because of its simultaneous appropriation by both the so-called Western and non-Western (especially, Chinese) perspectives on world affairs. In this respect, the three books under review seem to have a shared interest in interpreting Chinas growing significance on the world stage through such relational lenses. Together the three books under review illustrate vividly that the complex patterns of global life resonate with relationality and dynamism, rather than the static and spatial arrangements implicit in the fetishized currency of self-other/centre-periphery/hegemon-challenger models underpinning the binary metanarratives of IR.

From the Cold War to Global Warming: Observing Complexity in IR

Few international relations (IR) experts will challenge the profound effects that environmental degradation has on the relationship between human and non-human systems and on their ability to survive. Yet this acknowledgement does not seem to produce an agreement on either the conceptualisation of an appropriate IR paradigm, or the best way for mainstreaming the environment in IR. This article provides an overview of the dominant perceptions of climate change in IR: either as a security concern, as a foreign policy issue or as a task that needs to be addressed via a global governance mechanism. The claim, however, is that the inability of IR to grapple convincingly with the issues of climate change reflects its neglect for the ecology within which human affairs are embedded. Thus, current criticisms emanate not because IR offers a truncated representation of the reality of world affairs, but because of its failure to acknowledge that this truncation is only one facet of a much more complex field of observation. The article concludes with a sketch of the likely future trajectories for the IR conversation on the environment.