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AbstractIt has become fashionable among International Relations scholars to draw on the concept of 'autoimmunity', which some call 'the ultimate horizon in which contemporary politics inscribes itself'. To these scholars, most of whom draw on the thought of Jacques Derrida, such logics open systems up to a future to come. At the same time, they tend to identify such logics with Europe, America, Western modernity, and/or democracy. Implied, and sometimes explicit, in their accounts is the denial of autoimmune logics at work outside such an imagined configuration.This article challenges that denial through arguing that the system of 'harmony', deployed in contemporary China, also works on an autoimmune logic. If autoimmunity opens up a system to the future, this is not only so for European democracy or its derivatives. Moreover, the expulsion of 'non-Western' others from accounts of autoimmunity undermines their rethinking of difference by falling back on an immunitary logic, denying China an open future. This exclusion is their condition of possibility. At the same time, this exclusion is what keeps open their promise of its future to come. Paradoxically, the exclusion of the 'non-West' is what keeps the idea of an autoimmune 'Western' or European democracy alive.

Against a surprising level of agreement between Clausewitz, contemporary military doctrines and critical war studies on an ontology of war as fighting, we suggest that the study of contemporary warfare needs to focus more on war as processing. Through Jean Baudrillard we argue that at least some of what is referred to as 'war' is no longer characterised by encounters through fighting. We exemplify our argument by how the repetitive battle-rhythm of military targeting strives for perfect war. What remains is not war as an object in itself, but a reified 'war' that obscures the disappearance of that very object. The debate on war contributes to the reification of such a war, as an imperative telling us: 'we have a concept, you must learn to think through it'.

What role can friendship play in contemporary politics? This article answers this question by showing how friendship supplements one of the central tropes of modern European thought: community. It argues that both the recent phenomenon of populism and more traditional political practice rely on this trope. This results in a politics which focuses on identity and difference, inclusion and exclusion. Ultimately this form of politics seeks an immanence which is impossible to achieve. In contrast, friendship offers a new way of thinking about politics as it focuses on open-ended relations between persons based not on sameness, but otherness and difference. The article articulates five key features of this understanding of friendship: (1) that it is a relationship, (2) between self and other, (3) which exists between the friends, which is (4) extendable into a network but not a unity and (5) it eschews all programmes or projects. In this way, friendship suggests not a project or a programme but an ethos. This article concludes by claiming that friendship is the open-ended and ongoing encounter with the other, and its politics holds a shared space open for the potential that this encounter brings.

Bringing together leading scholars from Asia and the West, this book investigates how the dynamics of China's rise in world politics contributes to theory-building in International Relations (IR). The book demonstrates how the complex and transformative nature of China's advancement is also a point of departure for theoretical innovation and reflection in IR more broadly. In doing so, the volume builds a strong case for a genuinely global and post-Western IR. It contends that 'non-Western' countries should not only be considered potential sources of knowledge production, but also original and legitimate focuses of IR theorizing in their own right