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This article reflects on Nicholas J. Rengger's 1997 article in International Affairs on 'The ethics of trust in world politics'. The article has received comparably little attention, which is a shame because as I explore in my contribution it remains two decades on a highly important intervention in the on-going debate over the possibilities for developing and sustaining trust in an anarchic international system. Rengger argued that international cooperation, and the idea of international society it rests on, cannot be sustained in the absence of what he called 'a presumption of trust'. However, he viewed this presumption in late modernity as an increasingly fragile one, and whilst he offered some ways to shore up the crumbling foundation of trust, his moral skepticism as to the possibilities of realising this run through his thinking. Rengger's concern was that as the practices that 'ground' trust erode, cooperation will come to depend solely on rational egoist, interest-based calculations, and that such a basis is unstable and prone to breakdown. The problem that Rengger identified of how to ground authoritative practices of trust in international society remains an urgent one at a time when great power relations are characterised by increasing distrust. Having engaged with some of his key arguments in the article, I end by briefly identifying three problems that his essay would have benefited from considering further. These are (1) the relationship between trust and trustworthiness; (2) the neglect of security community theory; and (3) the potential of 'godparenting' (a concept Rengger borrows and develops from the moral philosopher Annette Baier) in international relations.

This interview with Robert Jervis explores the early influences on his career, his time working with Thomas Schelling and Erving Goffman, that led to his path-breaking 1970 book, The Logic of Images in International Relations, and his more widely known (although according to Jervis himself less original) Perception and Misperception in International Politics. The rich and wide-ranging interview goes on to explore his views on the nuclear revolution, nuclear proliferation, security communities, US foreign policy, the theory–practice divide, the security dilemma and signalling and perceptions. It concludes with Jervis' reflections on what are the fundamentals that any student and scholar of International Relations should know.

This article investigates the role that diplomacy-especially at the highest levels-can play in transforming adversarial relationships. Building on Martin Wight's exploration of these issues, in particular the question of how two adversaries can convince each other that they are serious negotiating partners, the article contends that achieving a significant de-escalation of a conflict depends upon the growth of trust. In contrast to Wight's limited conception of what diplomacy could achieve in terms of ending conflicts, the argument made here is that particular types of communicative encounters between diplomats, and especially leaders, can build a level of trust at the interpersonal level which can lead policy-makers to make conciliatory frame-breaking moves. To make good on this claim, the article employs a case-study of the summitry between US President Ronald Reagan and his Soviet counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev. The key contention here is that the face-to-face encounters between Reagan and Gorbachev promoted a level of trust between them that made possible the fundamental de-escalation of the Cold War that took place in the second half of the 1980s. Rival explanations focusing on nuclear weapons and Soviet economic decline are analysed, but while these were enabling conditions in the transformation of relations, the article argues that it is necessary to recognize the critical role that interpersonal trust between US and Soviet leaders played in achieving this diplomatic transformation. (International Affairs (Oxford) / SWP)

In 1981 Kenneth Waltz published a controversial Adelphi Paper, 'The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May Be Better', in which he turned the conventional wisdom on its head by arguing that the spread of nuclear weapons would not be a terrifying prospect. This article rejects the proposition that fear of nuclear destruction can serve as a permanent basis of international order, and argues that securing order depends upon the building of trust between nuclear-armed and arming powers. A key contribution here has been the theory and practice of security communities, which opens up the promise of replacing nuclear threats by a new international politics in which force has been delegitimated as an instrument of state policy. This article discusses the potential for nuclear trust-building through the example of the security community that developed between Argentina and Brazil in the 1980s. Both countries had the potential to develop nuclear weapons by the end of the 1970s, and there were concerns that their rivalry might lead to a regional nuclear arms race. Having explored the factors that promoted trust between Buenos Aires and Brasilia, the article considers the lessons that can be learned for nuclear trust-building elsewhere.

It is well known in the literature on security dilemma theorising that John Herz coined the concept in the early 1950s, with Herbert Butterfield developing a very similar concept at the same time. What is less well appreciated is that Butterfield powerfully argued in his 1951 book History and Human Relations that there was no prospect of state leaders and diplomats overcoming the dynamics of mutual suspicion and distrust that created what he had chosen to call a condition of `Hobbesian fear'. Herz parted company with Butterfield on this fundamental question, considering that two adversaries could come to appreciate that what they perceived as the other's hostile behaviour was a defensive response to their own actions. This article revisits this fundamental question that divided the pioneer theorists of the security dilemma as to whether better mutual understanding between potential rivals might be the key to mitigating fear-based hostility. The article discusses this question in relation to Herz's ideas about surviving the nuclear age, and shows how he believed that knowledge of the security dilemma was critical if the superpowers were to mitigate their security competition. Having examined how far the end of the Cold War supports Herz's position, the article concludes by showing how Herz became increasingly disillusioned that the United States was capable of acting to mitigate the security dilemma in the post-Cold War world.

An examination of the changing boundaries of UN Security Council interventions during the 1990s supports UN Secretary-General Kofi A. Annan's contention that there is a "developing international norm" to protect civilians threatened by genocide or ethnic cleansing. Competing theories of the relationship between power & norms are assessed in relation to humanitarian interventions. The significant expansion of the boundaries of legitimate intervention that occurred in Somalia & northern Iraq is pointed out. Although the material power of Western states was instrumental in those cases, a materialist based explanation is seen as inadequate because it fails to consider changed normative context at the domestic level in Western states. Ways in which norms constrain the behavior of states are discussed & the Rwanda case is used to illustrate the moral limits of new norms of protection. The impact of 11 September 2001 on the likelihood that states will use force to protect humanitarian values is explored. Evidence from Afghanistan & Iraq suggest that states will articulate humanitarian rationales to legitimize the use of force against terrorist threats. J. Lindroth