Neta C. Crawford

The Passion of World Politics: Propositions on Emotion and Emotional Relationships

Theories of international politics and security depend on assumptions about emotion that are rarely articulated and which may not be correct. Deterrence theory may be fundamentally oawed because its assumptions and policy prescriptions do not fully acknowledge and take into account reasonable human responses to threat and fear. Similarly, liberal theories of cooperation under anarchy and the formation of security communities that stress actors’ rational calculation of the beneats of communication and coordination are deacient to the extent that they do not include careful consideration of emotion and emotional relationships. Further, it is no wonder that postconoict peacebuilding efforts too frequently fail and wars reerupt because peace settlements and peacebuilding policies play with emotional are that practitioners scarcely understand but nevertheless seek to manipulate. Systematic analysis of emotion may have important implications for international relations theory and the practices of diplomacy, negotiation, and postconoict peacebuilding. International relations theory has lately tended to ignore explicit consideration of “the passions.”1 Even realists, who highlight insecurity (fear) and nationalism (love and hate), have not systematically studied emotion. Why this ostensible neglect?2 First, the assumption of rationality is ubiquitous in inter-

Just War Theory and the U.S. Counterterror War

This article addresses three sets of questions. First, the George W. Bush administration claims that its cause and conduct in counterterror war are just. Such a claim invites moral assessment. How do normative beliefs and ethical concerns affect U.S. conduct in the counterterror war? Is the war just in cause and conduct? Second, many observers argue that warfare is “transformed.” How so? And is it possible to fight a just counterterror war in this context? Third, the transformation of war raises new questions for just war theory itself. Is the framework still useful? I argue that it is extremely difficult to fight a just counterterror war given the nature of terrorism and the realities of contemporary warfare. Yet I show that the Bush administration has made an effort to engage in a just counterterror war by meeting the criterion of self-defense and seeking to avoid noncombatant harm. Even so, current U.S. policy and practice in the counterterror war are not just. But any government would have a problem fighting a just counterterror war in the current context; indeed, the utility of just war theory itself is challenged. I discuss 12 conceptual and practical problems that arise at the intersection of just war theory and counterterror war, including the limits of self-defense, preemption, last resort, and discrimination. Despite these problems, I argue that just war theory is a useful method of inquiry into the problems of contemporary war. Our nations cause has always been larger than our nations defense. We fight, as we always fight, for a just peace—a peace that favors human liberty …. Building this just peace is Americas opportunity, and Americas duty. —George W. Bush Bush 2002 . The Americans who conduct those operations are a tough and proud bunch. Their cause is a just one. Its to stop terrorists from killing Americans and others.—Donald H. Rumsfeld Rumsfeld 2001e . This is not a linear war; this is not a sequential war …. This is a different kind of conflict. This is asymmetric warfare. We have to use all the instruments of national power.—General Richard Myers Myers 2001b .

Institutionalizing passion in world politics: fear and empathy

Emotions are a ubiquitous intersubjective element of world politics. Yet, passions are often treated as fleeting, private, reactive, and not amenable to systematic analysis. Institutionalization links the private and individual to the collective and political. Passions may become enduring through institutionalization, and thus, as much as characterizing private reactions to external phenomena, emotions structure the social world. To illustrate this argument, I describe how fear and empathy may be institutionalized, discuss the relationship between these emotions, and suggest how empathy may be both a mirror and potential antidote to individual and institutionalized fear.

A security regime among democracies: cooperation among Iroquois nations

In precolonial and colonial North America five Iroquois nations, which previously had fought for generations, stopped wars among themselves and lived in peace for about 325 years. This history raises several questions: why did the Iroquois nations stop fighting each other; did the fact that each nation was a democracy have anything to do with the end of war among them; and what are the lessons of this peace for international relations scholars? A security regime formed by the Iroquois in 1450, known as the Iroquois League, accounts for the peace. Comparing the Iroquois League with the Concert of Europe indicates an important role for norms and institutionalization in ameliorating the security dilemma. Further, the five democratic nations that formed the Iroquois League exemplify Immanuel Kants idea of a system for “perpetual peace.” Finally, the history of the Iroquois League challenges realist claims of cross-cultural and timeless validity.

Homo Politicus and Argument (Nearly) All the Way Down: Persuasion in Politics

Much theorizing about world politics and many policy recommendations are predicated on a rather thin view of homo politicus, often assuming that humans are rational and self-interested strategic actors and that force is the ultima ratio of politics. This thin notion should be replaced by a richer understanding of homo politicus that includes the characteristic activities of political actors: we fight, we feel, we talk, and we build institutions. This understanding helps illuminate the scope and limits of strategic action, argument and persuasion in world politics in both empirical and normative senses. I describe the spectrum of political action that situates the role of argument and persuasion within the extremes of brute force on one side and mutual communication on the other. I also discuss barriers to argument and communication. Noting the role of argument in this spectrum of international and domestic political practice suggests that it is argument (nearly) all the way down and that the scope of argument can be and in some cases has increased over the longue duree. Coercion, by itself, has a limited role in world politics. The claim that there are distinctive logics of argumentation, strategic action, or appropriateness misses the point. Argument is the glue of politics - its characteristic practice. Understanding politics as argumentation has radical empirical and normative implications for the study and practice of politics.

Roundtable: Humanitarian Intervention After 9/11

Tom Farer opens the roundtable by outlining a five-part test for legitimate humanitarian intervention and questioning the utility of the term ‘cosmopolitan’ in this context. Five responses are offered. Daniele Archibugi highlights the problem of legitimate authority for intervention and offers a separate four-stage process which he believes contributes to institutionalizing cosmopolitanism. Chris Brown questions the value of creating a set of criteria to help policymakers balance the competing moral intuitions surrounding humanitarian intervention. Neta Crawford problematizes the threshold for interventions and argues for a reappraisal of transitional administrations and the idea of global interconnectedness generally. Thomas Weiss defends cosmopolitan force and cautions that the real problem is not to be found in the lack of guidelines but instead in the lack of political will to motivate humanitarian interventions, though he warns against the increasing use of cosmopolitan arguments as a cover for pre-emptive warfare. After examining the role of motives and the ‘spike test’ in Farer’s criteria, Nicholas Wheeler emphasizes the central legitimating role of the UN Security Council in humanitarian intervention. The roundtable concludes with a set of responses by Farer to these arguments. His theme is that the chronic violation of human rights requires a reconception of the national interest and international systems of cooperation; this goal is something that 9/11 might have inadvertently encouraged by bringing together humanitarianism and national security more explicitly than hitherto.

Emotions and international security: Cave! Hic Libido

More than 30 years ago, in a special issue of International Organization, Susan Strange titled her critique of regime theory ‘Cave! Hic Dragones,’ a reference to the locations on medieval maps of the world that urged caution, for fear of dragons. Her argument, in part, was that regime theory was a fad, a ‘temporary reaction to events in the real world but in itself making little in the way of a long-term contribution to knowledge’ (Strange 1982, 479). My intervention here is not a critique, but it is a caution, of sorts, on three levels. Level One: Emotions are everywhere in world politics and we ignore them at our peril; unlike dragons, they are real. Cave! Hic Libido. Most theories of politics assume that humans are rational or at least take for granted that ‘the assumption of rationality is a productive one’ (Schelling 1960, 4). On this view, emotions are reactions, deliberately manipulated by leaders, or an unconscious pernicious influence on decision-making, in whose absence a rational/correct decision would have been reached. Contrary to the dominant view, humans are both thinking and feeling, and emotions are an inextricable element of social life. Just as it is impossible to separate emotions from cognition in a healthy brain, there is no way to divide the passionate from the ‘rational’ in politics (Damasio 1994). Ruthless efforts to relegate emotions to the residual may lead to incomplete description, mistaken analysis, or ineffective policy prescriptions. On the other hand, emotions are taken for granted in world politics. Specifically, as I argued in an article more than a dozen years ago, many scholars of politics believe they already know what there is to know about emotions (Crawford 2000). Both explicit and implicit assumptions, arguments, and assertions about the role of emotion abound. For example, deterrence theory’s working assumption is that if a threat is communicated clearly, and if the threat is sufficiently, well, ‘threatening,’ the object of the threat – if they are rational – should back down. In other words, the deliberate production of fear works to get an adversary’s attention and induce their compliance with your demands. Indeed, this belief – that fear can be successfully manipulated in others – is at the core many behaviors we study including brinksmanship, arms racing, and negotiation. Level Two: Why, if emotions are everywhere in world politics, and deeply embedded in the assumptions of our theories, hasn’t theorizing about emotions become more central to our work? There are legitimate reasons, at the level of epistemology and ontology, for

How Sanctions Work: A Framework for Analysis

How do sanctions work, if they work at all? Do they convince actors to change their behavior and/or beliefs, or do they primarily alter the capabilities of states? Alternatively, when do restrictions of customary interactions provoke defensive isolation or retaliation? The conventional wisdom, mirroring the League of Nations concept of collective security, assumes that sanctions must be comprehensive to be successful. For collective security to work, a potential aggressor must believe that all or most other states will rally against it. Similarly, scholars of international trade highlight the financial incentives governments and corporations have to sell restricted commodities to embargoed states, evident in the long historical record of sanctions “busting”. Does imposition and enforcement of sanctions have to be comprehensive, “watertight,” to be effective, or can “leaky” sanctions influence the target? Which types of sanctions are best suited for particular purposes? Are there “smart” sanctions that can be focused on decision makers and have little adverse affect on non-target populations within the target state and neighboring countries?

Imag(in)ing Africa

Despite the lament that there is little press coverage of Africa, there are many stories about Africa in the U.S. media. Why is so much written detailing “unimaginable” horror and suffering about a place we imagine is ignored? Perhaps the dire tone that characterizes the coverage facilitates Africas marginalization or paves the way for “benevolent” interventions into Africa. Perhaps these imaginings are not so much about Africa as they are about the United States—American identity, history, dreams, and fears—in a multicultural society increasingly ill at ease with itself.

How Arms Embargoes Work

Apartheid South Africa was the object of a long-term international embargo of armaments and other military equipment. These were actually voluntary and mandatory, multilateral and unilateral, embargoes that began in 1963 and were in force until mid-1994. Initially intended to halt weapons and technology flows that the minority government could use for internal repression against the majority population, sanctions were also later intended to decrease South Africa’s ability to threaten its neighbors, and to undermine South Africa’s ability to continue its illegal occupation of South West Africa/Namibia. What impact did the arms embargo have on South Africa?