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Counterinsurgency, the violent suppression of armed insurrection, is among the dominant kinds of war in contemporary world politics. Often linked to protecting populations and reconstructing legitimate political orders, it has appeared in other times and places in very different forms - and has taken on a range of politics in doing so. How did it arrive at its present form, and what generated these others, along the way? Spanning several centuries and four detailed case studies, 'The Counterinsurgent Imagination' unpacks and explores this intellectual history through counterinsurgency manuals. These military theoretical and instructional texts, and the practitioners who produced them, made counterinsurgency possible in practice. By interrogating these processes, this book explains how counter-insurrectionary war eventually took on its late twentieth and early twenty-first century forms.

AbstractThis paper investigates the art world as a setting for hegemonic status or prestige politics. Powerful states engage in art world status-seeking but appear to face challenges distinct to the art world in so doing. To explain, I adopt a Bourdieusian forms of capital approach, framing the art world as a social field with distinctive contentious dynamics and symbolic politics. I argue states must work through art world networks and institutions to pursue status there, observing local rules in so doing. I frame art world prestige as symbolic capital—the overt, observable pursuit of which tends to undermine any gains. Hegemonic incumbents and challengers face differing such constraints. The existing global art world models rules and standards by homology on that of the current hegemon. A challenger must adapt to this status quo before they can revise it. I unpack these dynamics in the cases of America, China, and India. I focus on their shifting standing in the global art market and performances of national aggrandizement at a recurring global art world event: the Venice Biennale.

How did Kenneth Waltz read canonical theoretical texts? Waltz understood himself first as a political theorist and remained committed to interpreting political thought throughout his career. This paper briefly delineates Waltz's method for reading political theory. I identify four elements of Waltz's approach: it was purposive, explanatory, textualist, and anti-esoteric. First, he thought texts could best be linked to one another and compared purposively, by aligning the questions they asked. Second, he understood the primary purpose of theoretical texts to be explanatory: normativity was a secondary concern. Third, he was a relatively strict textualist, taking little interest in historical context. Fourth, he took no account of esoteric writing. I then track his intellectual influences, through his graduate training and early academic career. I show this set of methodological tenets was, taken together, largely his own invention. I argue Waltz's reading method shaped his own theoretical work, providing concepts and informing his structural and parsimonious style of theory. I track these effects in his later theory-building project in Theory of International Politics. By extension, I suggest, his approach influenced much of postwar International Relations theory, both in terms of its specific conceptual toolkit and its approach to theory as such.

AbstractHow did Kenneth Waltz read canonical theoretical texts? Waltz understood himself first as a political theorist and remained committed to interpreting political thought throughout his career. This paper briefly delineates Waltz's method for reading political theory. I identify four elements of Waltz's approach: it was purposive, explanatory, textualist, and anti-esoteric. First, he thought texts could best be linked to one another and compared purposively, by aligning the questions they asked. Second, he understood the primary purpose of theoretical texts to be explanatory: normativity was a secondary concern. Third, he was a relatively strict textualist, taking little interest in historical context. Fourth, he took no account of esoteric writing. I then track his intellectual influences, through his graduate training and early academic career. I show this set of methodological tenets was, taken together, largely his own invention. I argue Waltz's reading method shaped his own theoretical work, providing concepts and informing his structural and parsimonious style of theory. I track these effects in his later theory-building project inTheory of International Politics. By extension, I suggest, his approach influenced much of postwar International Relations theory, both in terms of its specific conceptual toolkit and its approach to theory as such.

How do hierarchical cores or metropoles legitimate their influence or rule? How do their approaches to legitimation inform resistance? This theory note rethinks how legitimation operates in hierarchies, with a focus on variation in cores' legitimation strategies. I argue that varying claims to hierarchical legitimacy shape both action at the core and resistance at the periphery. I develop a four-part typology of legitimation strategies, differentiated along two axes. On the first, cores may be universalist, recognizing no legitimate equals, or competitive, recognizing other cores as peer rivals. On the second, they may chiefly innovate legitimacy claims internally, drawing them from their own political traditions, or externally, borrowing the claims of others. These strategies shape available options for revisionism by rivals and resistance by hierarchical subordinates. I illustrate with historical examples.

AbstractInternational relations (IR) has seen a proliferation of recent research on both international hierarchies as such and on historical IR in (often hierarchical) East Asia. This article takes stock of insights from East Asian hierarchies for the study of international hierarchy as such. I argue for and defend an explanatory approach emphasizing repertoires or toolkits of hierarchical super- and subordination. Historical hierarchies surrounding China took multiple dynastic forms. I emphasize two dimensions of variation. First, hierarchy-building occurs in dialogue between cores and peripheries. Variation in these relationships proliferated multiple arrangements for hierarchical influence and rule. Second, Sinocentric hierarchies varied widely over time, in ways that suggest learning. Successive Chinese dynasties both emulated the successes and avoided the pitfalls of the past, adapting their ideologies and strategies for rule to varying circumstances by recombining past political repertoires to build new ones. Taken together, these phenomena suggest new lines of inquiry for research on hierarchies in IR.

AbstractA growing literature in IR addresses the historical international politics of East Asia prior to Western influence. However, this literature has taken little note of the role of Eurasian steppe societies and empires in these dynamics. This article offers a corrective, showing that relations between China and the steppe played an important role in regional politics. I argue that Chinese elite conceptions of the steppe as other played an important role in maintaining China's ontological security. Imperial Chinese elites pursued a deliberate strategy of 'othering' steppe societies, presenting them as China's political-cultural opposite. Doing so both provided a source of stable identity to China and justified their exclusion from the Chinese 'world order'. Empirically, I proceed in three sections. First, I consider Chinese identity building, framed in terms of ontological security, both under the founding Qin and Han dynasties, and under the later Ming dynasty. Second, I address recent historiography of the steppe, showing Chinese conceptions of it were inaccurate. Third, I address the long history of hybridity between the two regions.

AbstractMilitary attachés and wartime observers have received surprisingly little attention in international relations. Why do states exchange attachés, permitting uniformed foreigners to gather intelligence on their territory and during their wars? To explain, we adopt a broadly practice-theoretic approach, focusing on the individuals who developed the role by living it, showing how they both innovated a distinct military practice and established institutional legitimacy for attachés. We address an early historical case in which the practice proliferated: the Russo-Japanese War, throughout which observers represented multiple European states, on both sides of the conflict. Sometimes termed the first modern war, the conflict saw Japan's entry into the Eurocentric great power system. In this context, embedded attachés had a dual effect. On the one hand, a professional attaché community established itself: we show how local innovation by embedded officers, in the context of this structurally destabilising event, permitted the creation of a new institutional role that might otherwise have been impossible. On the other, the Japanese made use of the attachés as witnesses for Western governments, observing their performance of great power-hood, as they defeated Russia. The argument has implications for understanding both the military attaché system and communities of practice as such.