International Relations Theory

and the Third World

Edited by Stephanie G. Neuman

St. M artin ’s Press

New York

&
 TWO

Subaltern Realism:
International Relations Theory
Meets the Third World

M ohammed Ayoob

he importance o f theory in International Relations is now well rec­

T ognized. Theories arc lenses., that one puts on to view, understand,

structure, or construct reality (depending upon where one stands in
the debate between positivists and post-positivists on this issue). The.cen­
tral questions we ask about our subject are determined by our dieorctical
preferences. Theories, therefore, both explain and occlude, include and ex­
clude. It is this process o f inclusion and exclusion, in other words, o f selec­
tion, that we refer to as parsimony Parsimony is perceived to be a positive -
aspect o f theorizing because it simplifies complex realities and makes their
comprehension an intellectually manageable exercise. Buc in doing so, theo­
rists are often tempted to oversimplify and tnay well end up constructing a
reality that is not in accord with all the important dimensions o f the “real"
reality out there.2
This process o f inclusion and exclusion is extremely important because it
helps to reinforce, reproduce, and perpetuate images of reality on which an­
alysts and policymakers base their prescriptions, dccisions,.and policies.
Therefore, inadequate or faulty theories can lead to policies and practices
that may be either irrelevant or, worse, turn out to be counterproductive be­
cause they grossly misrepresent “reality”— thus making empirical d.qta.sub-
ject to jh e requirements o f wishful thinking.
It goes almost without saying that all theories of International Relations
have a perspective, sometimes explicit buc often implicit. Given the nature
o f the phenomena that scholars have to deal with in this field this is in­
evitable. These perspectives, as Robert .Cox has pointed out, “derive from a
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32 Mohammed Ayoob ‘ L‘ '" ’’ '*'" A a

position in time and space.”3 In other words, theories o f International Rcl;

tions, no matter how refined and complex they may be, derive their pci
spcctivcs from their historical and geographic contexts. Most theorists ten
to make claims o f universal validity for their theories. However, almost a
paradigms in International Relations are, in the final analysis, the produci
o f theorists’ perceptions o f what they see around them. These perception
arc in turn shaped by the theorists’ experiences, and theories, therefore, be
come prisoners o f time and space.
However, all dieorics that claim to capture or closely approximate rcalit)
even if they are modest enough to claim to do so within the parameters sc
by historical time (and many dicones and theorists arc not), must possess th
power to describe, explain, and predict the behavior o f their subjects to til'
uncommitted majority if not in all cases and circumstances then at,least it
a majority o f cases and circumstances within the historical epoch in which
and about which, they claim to theorize. Additionally, in the case o f Inter
national Relations, as political sociologist Michael Mann points out
“W h a t. . . outsiders really want from IR is substantive theory on its mos
important issue o f all: the question o f war and peace.”4,
Therefore, at this juncture one o f the major functions o f any successfu
paradigm in International Relations should be to diagnose and predict tin
basic sources o f present and future conflicts. Equally important, it must b(
able to explain the behavior o f the large majority o f die members o f thejtv
ternational system especially in relation to issues o f conflict and order. Tht
expansion o f the international system in the last half century to include tht
entire planet has resulted in an unprecedented proliferation in the member
ship o f that system.5 Most analysts’ twin obsessions with the bipolar struc­
ture o f the postwar system and with the issue o f nuclear deterrence had led
to a grave underestimation during the four decades o f the Cold War o f the
long-term importance o f this expansion in the system’s membership. It had
also led to a serious underrating o f the potential impact o f conflict and dis­
order in the global periphery, the Third World— where most o f the new
members o f the international system are located— on the international se­
curity agenda, especially in an age o f globalized travel, information, and
communication.6 This underestimation was primarily the result o f the
propensity among analysts to provide Cold War-centered explanations for
the origins of almost all o f the conflicts in the international system from the
late 1940s to the late 1980s.
The undervaluing o f the impact o f the unparalleled enlargement o f the
membership o f the international system on issues o f international order has
had a seriously limiting effect on the explanatory capacities o f theories that
purport to provide holistic explanations for the workings o f the international
system, especially as they relate to the paramount issues o f war and peace,
 <K ~
„ )v Subaltern Realism 33
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order and anarchy. Consequently, major theories o f International Relations
on offer today fail to pass the basic test o f adequacy primarily because they
do not concern themselves with the behavior o f the large majority o f mem­
bers o f the international system and, therefore, fail to provide adequate ex­
planations for the causes ol most manifestations o f conflict and disorder in
the system. As a corollary to this failure, such paradigms do not provide ad­
equate theoretical bases for the exploration o f avenues for the management
and resolution o f most conflicts witnessed in the international system.
It may be argued by some that given the near-total concentration o f
power— military, economic, and technological— in the hands o f the indus-®j£*-y'~ le.
trialized countries o f the global North and the consequent inability o f the c!q-i '
conflict-ridden periphery to have any major impact on the security concerns
o f the major powers, it is not imperative for the powerful states (and analysts c
residing within them) to be overly concerned with conflict and disorder in ¿ jjf . ^
the periphery'. There is, therefore, little need from a prescriptive perspective
for a theory that focuses on issues o f war and peace as they relate to the Third
World because these issues are marginal, if not irrelevant, to the Norths
principal concern in this arena, namely, the prevention o f conflict among the ,
major powers.. -- : ■“
1 believe that such a perspective is shortsighted in the extreme. First, at
least two o f the major military powers in the international system— China
and Russia— share many o f the characteristics o f prototypical Third World ^ s-
countrics, especially in the political arena where their state boundaries, state
institutions, and governing regimes are under challenge to significant de-
grecs. They also possess economies that are gravely distorted, both sectorally
and regionally, and are in a state o f asymmetrical interdependence with the .
core countries o f the global North. As a result, they arcsubject to many o f
the same internal and external pressures that operate upon much o f th e .
Third World and that create fertile ground for internal and interstate con­
flict within and among them. If the fragile political and economic balances
within Russia and China shift to any substantial degree, the two polities arc
likely to become extremely vulnerable to internal disruption, even chaos,
that may lead to major regional conflicts involving one or both o f them.
Secondly, given the relative yease with which human beings and weapons s >■
can now be transported across great distances, it is wishful thinking on the •J1 -' .
part o f the industrialized democracies to believe that they can insulate them­
selves from conflict and disorder in thcThird World. Movements o f refugees ct> .t,v.
on a massive scale as a result o f intrastate conflicts have so. far. largely'.been o-V-
limited within regions and from one Third World country to another. How­
ever, this is a pattern that may be subject to change and movements o f peor
pie from the South to the North on a major scale cannot be ruled out if the,
present trends relating to conflict and disorder continue in some parts o f the
 34 Mohammed Ayoob

Third World. Such migrations arc expected to accentuate racial and social
tensions in the developed world and in some countries, such as France and
Germany, have already begun to do so.7
Moreover, there are already expatriate communities from Third World
countries diat reside in substantial numbers in the countries o f the global
North. It will not be far-fetched to assume that they will inevitably begin to
export some o f the conflicts from their home to their host countries, espe­
cially if the latter arc perceived as taking sides in the formers internal con­
flicts. This has already begun to happen .in the case o f North African
expatriates in France, Turkish and Kurdish populations in Germany, and
veterans o f the Afghanistan war in the United States and elsewhere.
Furthermore, acts o f terrorism and drug smuggling, both intimately
linked, either as cause or as effect, to conditions o f domestic disorder and
•to conflict in parts o f die Third World (for example, in Afghanistan, Burma,
i Pakistan, and Central America), can target, and have targeted, major powers
in the global North, as well as countries in die global South. Finally, the
growing economic interdependencies witnessed in the last few decades, even
... S'- if asymmetrical in character, have intertwined the fortunes o f the developed
and developing countries to such a degree in terms o f access to markets, raw
materials, production facilities, investments, and so on, that large-scale dis-
.. order in the Third World is bound to affect the economies and lifestyles of.
the industrialized" countries in a deleterious fashion. In short, the “zone o f
peace” cannot insulate itself cpmpjetcjy, or even in large measure, from the
“zone of conflict” as we reach the end o f the twentiedi century. A Lockean
core can no longer exist engulfed as it might be by a Hobbesian periphery. ,
It is, therefore, essential for analysts o f the international system, includ­
ing diose in the global North, to fashion tools o f analysis that can explain
and predict the nature and intensity o f conflict in the large part o f the in­
ternational system that we term the South, especially as the Third World is
likely to dominate the international security agenda in the twenty-first cen­
tury.8 “Subaltern realism,” my alternative to the currently dominant para­
digms in International Relations, attempts to do just that. It presents a
coherent explanation for the largemajority o f conflicts in the international
system by tracing.their origins, both as beginnings and causes, to the pre­
mier ongoing political endeavor in the Third World, namely, that o f state-
making (and its obverse state breaking and state failure). Its explanatory
capacity is further enhanced by its ability to demonstrate the linkage be­
tween this primarily domestic activity and issues o f regional Jbalances_pL
power, and by laying bare the impact o f global structures, international
norms, and great power policies on the evolution and course o f both the
state-making enterprise and regional conflicts. As a consequence, I believe
it possesses explanatory power relating to issues o f war and peace, order and

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 Subaltern Realism • 35

disorder, that is far superior to other paradigms that are currently available.
It, dterefore, possesses m uch greater predictive and prescriptive capacity
than either neorcalism or ncolibcralism in the arena o f conflict and conflict
resolution.
However, before we move on to explicate the basic assumptions and pre­
dictive capacities o f subaltern realism we need to make a case for the inade­
quacies o f the major-theories jh a t dominate die Internationa! Relations *•*
literature. It is but appropriate diat we begin with a discussion o f structural
A*.-/?
or ncorealism because it professes to be die dominant paradigm in Interna­ ¿«Jí'sir „'t-—
tional Relations and “in an important sense . . . continues to define the dis-_
cipline.”9 Structural realisms preoccupation with the systemic level o f
analysis, and its fundamental premise that the anarchical nature o f the sys­
tem determines die behavior o f units, (or states), is based upon a clear and
rigid distinction between anarchy outside the state and order within it— die
formeF71¿termining its search for relative advantage in terms o f power
and/or security, and die latter facilitating rational behavior on the state's part
in search o f diosc goals.
There arc minor differences o f emphasis within the ncorealispschool as
to whether states balance against power or against threats./0 Occasionally,
a perceptive historian like Paul Schroedcr may point out that the structural
realists’ reading o f European history from the seventeenth to die nine­
teenth centuries is incorrect because frequently states, and more particu­
larly major powers, balanced neither against power nor against threat but
attempted to bandwagon or hide in the face o f both power and threat. J*
Even Schroedcr’s corrective, however, docs not significantly challenge the
primacy o f third-image determinants that ncoreafistsjiavc made the ljncli-
pin of their theories.12
As is die case with neorealism, its main challenger, ncolibcralism (in its
many variations), also provides a primarily system-based explanation for the
behavior o f states. Neoliberal ideas have been,challenging the dominance.of_
realism since die 1970s.13 However, die end o f the Cold War has given a
great boost to this challenge by demonstrating the presumed failure o f neo­
realist theory to account for the end o f the Cold War.1'1 The neoliberal chal- \
lenge has been further augmented by the assumed irrelevance o f ncorealism
to “the profoundly altered attributes o f the post-Cold War setting.’’^15
Unlike neorcalism, neoliberalistn is based on the premise that cooperation
among states, especially among the major industrialized states, is not only
possible but necessary. Scholars working within this paradigm emphasize not
so much the distribution o f power among die major powers as the economic
and technological, and, diercforc political, interdependence among the in­
dustrialized states. This interdependence is augmented by the transnational
character o f their economies and by die information revolution diat have

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 36 • M oham m ed Ayoob

wiped o ut the distinction between issues o f “high" and “low” politics and
thus drastically reduced the salience oF traditional security issues in the polit­
ical calculations of these countries.16
Neoliberals argue that suites— especially the major industrialized powers—
arc, or if they are not should be, more concerned with absolute gains that they
can achieve in cooperation with one another than with relative gains thatjhcy
can achieve at one another’s expense or by competing with one another. Since
the absolute gains they are likely to achieve by cooperation in an interdepen­
dent world are expected to be so much greater than the relative gains theyjnay.
achieve by competition, it is no longer rational for them to indulge in adver­
sarial modes o f conduct toward one another. Therefore, war and conflict are
(or must be) ruled out as instruments o f policy by the industrialized states (in­
cluding the Great Powers) at least in their relationship with one another.
W hat is most remarkable is that with the end o f the Cold War one sees
clear evidence o f a convergence between neorealism and ncoliberalism. The
end o f bipolarity has led some scholars to give an interesting twist_to_thc_
structural realist paradigm. They have argued that, given the change in the
nature o f power at the end o f the twentieth century and the lack o f identi­
fiable enemies after the Cold War, Great Powers in the international system,
arc no longer engaged in primarily balancing against one another but have
begun to bandwagon with one another and thus have created a concert of..
..- powers or an international security directorate that has assumed the.piirne
responsibility for maintaining international ordej. Adopting a basically real­
ist perspective, Barry Buzan has termed this new phase in the global balance
“unipolarized multipolarity”— “multipolar in the sense that several indepen­
dent great powers are in play, but unipolarized in the sense that there is a sin­
gle dominant coalition governing international relations.”17 Arguing from a
neoliberal position, John Gerard Ruggie has similarly concluded that “the
most promising Institutional mode! from the past is diat o f a concert o f
powers— or perhaps overlapping concerts o f powers— performed, at least in
I
part, through the UN.”18
It is in this convergence between ncorealism and ncoliberalism that one
sees die maturation of, what Ole Waever has termed, a nco-neo synthesis
whose beginnings can be traced to the 1980s. According to Waever, “no
longer were realism and liberalism ‘incommensurable’— on die contrary
diey shared a ‘rationalist’ research programme, a conception o f science, a
shared willingness to operate on the premise o f anarchy (Waltz) and investi­
gate tllC evolution o f co-operation and whether institutions matter (Keo-
hane) . . . Regime theory, co-operation under anarchy, hegemonic stability',
alliance theory, trade negotiations, and Buzanian security analysis can all lie.
. seen as located in this field.”19
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 Subaltern Realism • 37

I lowcver, to the discerning observer it becomes clear that the most sig­
nificant tiling that neorealism and neolibcralism share is their preoccupation
with Great Power relations (or, to use the imagery preferred by ncoliberals,
the major industrialized democracies), whether manifested in terms o f bal­
ance or concert, o f competition or cooperation, to the near total exclusion
from their selected universe o f the large majority o f members o f the inter­
national system. Where the latter figure, they figure as objects o f die policies
o f Great Powers (or o f the industrialized democracies) with very litde au-
tonomy o f their own in terms o f their capacity to have an impaction the lev­
els o f order, stability, or welfare in the international system. In this sense
both ptcorealism and neolibcralism share a neocolonial epistemology, diat
privileges the global North over the global South,,the powerful minority
over die weak but numerous majority.
However, as a result o f its epistemological limitations this iico-neo syn­
thesis captures only a partial reality within the international system. Neither
the clear-cut distinction between anarchy outside and order inside the state
nor the postulate about increasing harmony o f interests among states, corre­
spond to the reality in much o f die international system outside o f North
America, Western Europe, and Japan. However, it is in the global periphery
outside the industrial heartland that three-quarters o f the members o f that ’ 1
system and 80 percent o f the worlds population are located. In many states (
in the Third World, elements o f anarchy clearly coexist with those o f order 1
within the boundaries oTtlic state. In several such cases elements o f anarchy J Cj.'TiA
dominate die political landscape to such an extent that little semblance o f '
political order is visible within their juridical boundaries. Moreover, the no­
tion o f harmony o f interests among Third World countries (with the partial
exception T>f certain subregions, and even there such' harmony is more ap­
parent than real) is conspicuous by its absence. The ^proliferation o f in­
trastate and interstate conflicts (and tlic symbiotic relationship between
them) attest to the existence o f conditions in large parts o f the Third World
that are significantly different from those existing in Western Europe and.
North America— the primary points o f reference for both neorealist and ne­
oliberal theories.
In the context o f this wide divergence in the conditions prevailing be­
tween the different categories o f states, it is at best problematic anti at worst
absurd to accept the assumption about the sameness of states on widely
much o f neorealist and neoliberal analysis is based. The image o f the proto­
typical state as the successful version o f the Westphalian model is contrary
to the reality witnessed in much o f the international system. The principal
concern or preoccupation o f most Third World states is not the conduct J)f.
interstate relations according to the Westphalian script, that is, balancing
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38 • Mohammed Ayoob

against other powers and/or against external threats (neorealism). N or is it

to move beyond Westphalia to construct economic and secu ruy^ q m m u n i-
tics based on die harmony o f interests reflected in the term interdependence
anil encapsulated in die concept of regimes (neoliberalism).
Their principal concern js, in fact, to be able to m ove to w ard the ideal
' ' o f the effective and legitimate state that can become the true repository o f
•\ . sovereign power as envisioned in the W estphalian discourse. T he critical
importance o f approximating this ideal o f the sovereign, territorial state re­
sults from the undisputed fact diat there is no alternative form o f political
organization on the horizon that is able or willing to address, tackle, and
manage the issue o f political order within com m unities.(This is w h y groups
that desire to secede from existing states demand their ow n states and not
a fundamental restructuring o f the system o f states. T his lack o f alternatives
tó A feítate in the performance o f the quintessential political task o f pro­
viding order and security has been aptly underlined by Jo h n Herz in the fol-
- lowing words: “For the tim e b e in g . . . it is not in tern ation alism ,
universalism, or any other supranational model that constitutes the alter­
native to the territorial . . . system, but genuine, raw chaos.. T h is process
o f providing and m aintaining political order is prim arily dom estic in char­
acter, albeit one that is crucially affected by external variables, including th e ,
operation o f international norms and interventionary policies espoused by
the major powers.21
Ncorcalist and neoliberal theories equally neglect dom estic variables af­
fecting conflict and order. This explains their inability to account lor die ori­
gins— in both senses o f that word, as beginnings and causes— and evolution
o f the large majority of conflicts currently prevalent in the international sy $ ^
tern. Computations made by scholars from a variety o f backgrounds dem on­
strate that the overwhelming majority o f conflicts in the international
system since 19 4 5 were, and continue to be, located in the Third W orld.
W hile some o f them have had participants from the industrialized w orld,
their geographic locations and their target populations have been firm ly sit­
uated in the Third W orld.
A few illustrations will suffice to demonstrate the validity o f this asser­
tion. Evan Luard concluded from his com putations diat the T h ird W orld
was the scene o f 9 8 percent o f all international conflicts between 1 9 4 5 and
19 8 4 .22 Kalcvi llo ls ti calculated that 97_gerccnt o f all m ajor wars and armed
interventions between 19 4 5 and 1989_ occurred in the T h ird W o rld .23 A c­
cording to the latest set o f figures compiled by Holsti, out o f 1 6 4 arm ed con­
flicts worldwide between 1945 and 19 9 5 all but five (three in W estern'
Europe and two in Eastern Europe) were located in either die traditional
T hird W orld (Asia, Africa, and Latin America) or in the new T h ird W orld
(the Balkans and the non-European parts o f die form er Soviet U nion).24
 Subaltern Realism 39

Holsri, however, excludes anticolonial wars o f national liberation from his

¿ata. If one includes those figures the concentration o f conflict in the Third
World would appear to be even more dramatic.
What is equally important is that even a cursory analysis o f conflicts in
the Third World contradicts the fundamental nco-neo (but especially neo­
realist) assumption regarding the primacy o f systemic factors in explaining
state behavior. Once again, figures from a variety o f sources demonstrate
that the large majority o f conflicts arc primarily intrastate in character (what
are euphemistically termed “civil wars”). To give just one illustration, ac
cording to Holsti 77jperccnt'of die conflicts between 1945 and 1995 were
internal in character although 30 percent o f such intrastate conflicts in­
volved external armed intervention.2] Once again ,jfon e includes anticolo­
nial wars (which Holsti excludes), which were in essence internal wars o f
regime change, the proportion o f intrastate to interstate wars would be
much higher^„
Furdiermore, if one looks behind many conflicts in the Third World that
ostensibly appear to be interstate in character, one would find that the ori­
gins o f many such conflicts are deeply rooted within the domestic polities ol
at least one o f tJuTparticipants. The Iran-Iraq War o f 19 8 0 -8 8 is a good il­
lustration o f this point since the Iraqi regime w’as propelled into conflict
with Iran primarily by its fear o f the demonstration effect o f the Iranian Rev­
olution o i f the Iraqi populace and the consequent threat to the Ba’adiist
regime.26
These findings also challenge the validity o f the ncorealist (and, indeed,
the nco-neo) assumption dtat there is order inside the state and anarchy in
die sphere o f interstate relations. They make it imperative, in R. 13. J.
Walker’s words, diat we “begin by examining the account o f political life
widiin autonomous communities which makes possible the claim to a real­
ist tradidon about relations between such communities.” It is “the absence
o f any serious theory o f die state” in neorealism that is the Achilles' heel of
that theoretical tradition.27 The proliferation o f internal conflicts in the in­
ternational system can only be explained in the context o f a theory that
makes the process o f state-making and the building o f political communities
its centerpiece.
Such a theory— and I call it subaltcrnjealism, a term that I shall explain
later— would involve, among other things, a return to the most basic in:
sights o f political diinkcrs who, it is couunonly.ac.cepted, have laid the foua-.
dations o f realist diought in International Relations. Unlike structural or
neorealists, the classical propounders of realism— Machiavclli and Hobbes
foremost among them— were, as theorists, primarily interested in the for­
mation and ordering o f political communities and only secondarily in die
analysis o f international structures. As Walker points out, Machiavelli’s
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 <10 • M oham m ed Ayoob

principle concern in The Prince was to address issues o f political community,

political life, virtu (in essence issues o f political order) within states at__an
early stage o f state-making. Machiavelli is, therefore, “more usefully under-
stood as a theorist o f political practice, of the possibility o f creating new
forms o f political community, rather than as the theorist o f th*c unchanging
realities of ren/politik."2s Michael Williams points out, much in the same
vein, that “Hobbes’s ideas lend support not to contemporary analyses that
focus upon the structural determinations o f anarchy but to those that focus
upon the interrelationship between domestic political structures and global
processes. ” 29 '

The primary insights of both Machiavelli and I lobbes as they related to

the international system were that issues o f international order cannot be
analyzed, leave alone tackled, in isolation from the problems o f domestic
political order, for the two are inextricably intertwined, and domestic
order deserves analytical priority because it is an essential ingredient on
which the foundations o f international order are based. Sovereignty, ac­
cording to Hobbes’s formulation o f social contract theory, is a combina­
tion of coercive power and consent, and it is this Combination that-
provides legitimacy to political authority and resolves the problem o f order
within societies. A well-ordered imcrnational system is constituted by
well-ordered states where sovereigns are both powerful and legitimate be­
cause this prevents the exportation o f domestic anarchy to interstate rela­
tions and vice versa.
As Williams has pointed out, “The coercive powers o f the sovereign will
alone, Hobbes argues, never be sufficient to maintain a political order.
Only if the people understand why the polity must be ordered as it must,
and only if they continue to view the sovereign as a legitimate authority and
trust in its judgement, can a political order be secure.”30 Richard Peters suc­
cinctly summed up this symbiotic relationship between power and legiti­
macy, coercion and consent, in the construction and preservation o f the
Leviathan by stating that Hobbes “used the social contract theory to
demonstrate the necessity o f an absolute sovereign— by consent." At the
same time, “Although he held that government was by the consent o f the
people . . . there could be no legitimacy, he argued, without power.’’31 For
Thomas Hobbes, power and consent, effectiveness and legitimacy, are two
sides o f the same state-building coin.
There is no abstraction of international structure in Machiavelli and
I lobbes to the near-total neglect o f the constituting units and their internal
dynamics. This is why classical realism captures the security predicament o f
the majority o f states in the international system that are,currently at an
early stage o f the state-making process more clearly and honestly than either
ncorealism or neoliberalism does. 'Hie primary intellectual preoccupation of
 Subaltern Realism • 41

these leading progenitors o f realism reflected the historical context in which

they were operating and this is what makes tlipnt so relevant to the current
predicaments facctl by the majority o f states today. Most o f the latter are cur­
rently at the same stage o f historical development in terms ol consolidation
and legitimation of state power as Florence was in the fifteenth century or
England in the seventeenth century, respectively the historical and geo­
graphic settings within which Machiavclli and Hobbes lived and wrote.
Classical realisms relevance to the Third World situation today lies in the
fact that, unlike in neorealism, in the classical writings on realism “the state
is no absolute; the state is historicized.”32 •>
It is this focus on historical time and their openness to possibilities o f
change that make Hobbes’s and Machiavelli’s concern about the right mix
between power (effectiveness) and consent (legitimacy) so relevant to the
central problem o f political order facing Third World states today. In much
o f the Third World, the basic conundrum confronting state elites is that
without power they suffer from a lack o f legitimacy, and without consent
they may possess coercive force but little political capacity, For, as Robert
Jackman has argued, power without the exercise o f force is the true measure
o f the political capacity o f states.33
However, unlike their counterparts in early modern Europe, political en­
tities in the Third World that emerged into independence have had no <-
choice in terms o f determining the organization o f their polities according
to their felt needs.. They have been obliged to adopt the model o f the sover­
eign, territorial state (with the corollary that every state must evolve into a
nation-state) as the exclusive form o f organization to order their political
lives. The options that had been available to political entities in late medieval
and early modern Europe included city-states and city-leagues, not to men­
tion the revival and/or reassertion o f feudal and imperial forms o f political
organization, in addition to the sovereign territorial state.3'*These other op­
tions were no longer available to colonial populations at the time o f decolo­
nization. The sovereign state, having triumphed over its competitors several
centuries ago in Europe, had become the only legitimate form o f political
organization sanctioned by the international system and it was the bench­
mark o f a political community’s independent existence. Therefore, sovereign
state-making— including both domestic authority and external recognition
over clearly demarcated territorial domains— became absolutely imperative
for the participation o f Third World countries in the international system.
Building states and controlling them became synonymous not only with po­
litical order but with political existence itself.33.
A major reason why neorealism and neolibcralism fail to come to grips
with the relationship between state-making and conflict is the nhistorical na­
ture ofbodt these scholarly traditions, which concentrate on the present (or
 42 • Mohammed Ayoob

at best on the immediate past) diac is of direct concern to their intellectual

and^pojitical.constituencies. Had scholars belonging to these two schools
delved.deeper into the historical record o f West Europe and North America
and charted the course of state-building in England underjhe Tudors and.
the Stuarts., France under the Capcuans and the Bourbons, and the United
States in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (especially concentrating
on the period of die Civil War, not to mention the conflicts involving Eu­
ropean setders and native Americans diat led to the virtual decimation o f the
native population), they would have realized the validity o f the proposition
that state-making and what we now call “internal war” arc two sides of the
same coin. It needs to be pointed out that we currently characterize such,
conflicts as internal in character because we assume die territorial legitimacy
of.postcolonial states within their colonially crafted boundaries. In early
modern Europe the distinction between internal and external wars was far
more uncertain as territorial domains were continuously contested (and
changed hands olten) without the notion o f legitimacy privileging any one
party over the other until quite late in that historical process.
It is no wonder, therefore, that states caught in the early stages o f state-
making are more prone to conflict and that much o f this conflict takes place
■T within rather titan between states. However, this does not mean that the ex­
ternal or interstate dimension is completely missing from conflicts in thy
Third World. All it means is that the external dimension is usually secondary
in character and comes into play largely because o f die existence o f sources
of disorder that inhere widiin states and eidier drag unwilling external actors
into these conflicts or allow such actors to take advantage o f domestic con­
flicts, thus turning them into interstate ones.
Neighboring states are likely to get involved in internal conflicts in the
Third World primarily because colonially crafted boundaries o f most Third
World states paid little attention to the populations’ precolonial affinities
and shared myths and loyalties. As a result, these borders often divide pop­
ulations that are tied to each other on the basis o f kinship, tribe, religion,
and so on. Domestic conflicts in postcolonial states can, therefore, easily
spill across political boundaries into contiguous states whose populations
may provide aid and succor to protagonists in such conflicts, thus involv­
ing neighboring populations and eventually neighboring states into these
conflicts.
One cannot deny the fact that many such conflicts also involve re-,
gional dynamics usually relating to divergent conceptions o f preferred
local power balances. However, these regional balance o f power consider­
ations normally become salient because favorable regional balances are
perceived by state elites as essential for the success o f their state-building
enterprise, especially since this is an activity usually undertaken concur-
 Subaltern Realism • 43

rcntly by neighboring states that arc at the same stage in the development
o f their polities.' Construction o f favorable balances, in such contexts, be­
comes a necessary component o f state-building strategy because it facili­
tates state-making on the part o f the stronger state at the expense o f its
weaker neighbors. This is especially the case, as in South Asia, the M id­
dle East, the Morn o f Africa, or the Balkans, where one or more o f the lat­
ter may be engaged in contesting the former’s control over demographic
and territorial space over which, according to them, they also have legit­
imate claims.
Neorealism totally neglects the domestic dimensions of state-budding',
and their interaction with the dynamics of regional balances as well as with
global power rivalries anti international norms,tas explanations for conflict
in the international system. Since an overwhelming number of conflicts in
cite international system today have their origins in thcstntc-making process
(and the simultaneous operation of this process in contiguous and proximate
states) and in its obverse phenomena, state-breaking and state failure, neo-
realism’s inability to explain and predict these conflicts and, consequently, to
prescribe strategics for their management should come as no surprise.36
NeoliberaJism is even less concerned with the dynamics of these conflicts
than is ncorealism. Its narrow, ethnocentric focus on the changing nature of
interstate interaction in the interdependent world of industrial democracies
renders it incapable even of conceptualizing the problem of disorder and
conflict in much of the international system/
What is needed, therefore, is a paradigm that can combine the funda­
mental insights of classical realism with an appreciation of the dynamics of
conflict currently clearly visible in large parts of the international system. It
is only such a hybrid paradigm that can succeed in providing adequate ex­
planations for the level and intensity of conflict and disorder in die system
today. Hopefully, it will also prove capable of suggesting prescriptive strate­
gies for the amelioration and management of the large majority of conflicts
currently prevailing in the international system. A v.v
Such a paradigm can only be constructed by marrying the diagnoses for
disorder and prescriptions for order provided by classical realists like Machi-
avclli and Hobbes with the perceived realities of political life within Third. Vv-.'-t
World states, including their struggle to balance the need for effectiveness,
with the requirements of legitimacy at the early stage of state-making at - ,
which they find themselves. As in the time of Hobbes, coercion and consent
are both seen as essential to the success of the siatcjnaking project.at\d the.
consequent provision of order and security within territorially demarcated
political communities. Such domestic order is now, as it was then, an essen­
tial prerequisite for die construction and maintenance of a stable and legiti-
rnate international order. n , f rr
______ _________ ____ J 1).- ' •> ^
'I ‘I • M oham m ed A yoob

I lowever, certain very crucial new factors have etnergetl on the global
scene that have made this task immeasurably difficult for the new entrants
into the international system. These variables have materialized partially be-
cause o f the existence o f effective, responsive, anti represeiitauyc statcs i(i_
West Europe and North America that have had tremendous demonstration
effect on the rest o f the international system. Their existence has put enor­
mous pressure on Third World states to emulate b othjfieir effectiveness and
their representative and responsive character within a drastically shortened
time frame! What European states had four or five centuries to achieve,
Third World states arc expected to achieve in four or five decades by tele­
scoping different (usually sequential albeit overlapping) stages o f state­
making into one mammoth process.3^ This has created colossal overloads on
their political systems and contributed directly and indirectly to the exacer­
bation of domestic disorder as states in the ThircTWorld alternate between
repression and appeascnient o f different segments o f their populations.
The workings o f the international system, now more securely established
than in the sixteenth or seventeenth century with a well-developed set o f
norms and with, a jnuch more sharply delineated hierarchy o f power,, have
also made the task o/Third World state-makers infinitely more difficult than
was the case with their counterparts in early modern Europe. The contra­
dictory demands placed on Third World states by international norms,
which require them to be both effective as well as humane in.their treatment
o f their populations (both individuals and groups), have left many o f them
in a perpetual state o f schizophrenia.38 Furthermore, the Third World states’
lack o f effective control over their economic resources in the context o f an
international division o f labor that perpetuates dependency (a propensity ac­
centuated by the globalization process) and detracts from their sovereignty
has put the legitimacy_pf their political orders in grave jeopardy.39 Again, the
sustained policy o f the major powers (witnessed very clearly during the Cold
War) of exporting their conflicts to the periphery in order to preserve sta­
bility at the core o f the system in the nuclear era, has had extremely delete­
rious effects on the state-building enterprise in the Third World. It has done
so by virtually holding this process hostage in many instances to the re­
quirements of global Great Power rivalry.40
In short, the operation o f all these international factors has made the
process ol building and maintaining political order infinitely more difficult
than was the case in Europe between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The systematic incorporation o f these experiences o f the global South into
International Relations Theory can only be done by fashioning a perspective
on state-building and the construction o f domestic order that looks at this
enterprise from the inside and in its own right as a major variable that af­
fects the level o f order and conflict in the international system. At the same
 t-* * ...t .V 1. a . 1- A-<5-* e*-l

Subaltern Realism • 45
S-\ 1
time, such a perspective must be extremely sensitive to external variables that
impact upon such state-building activity and crucially influence its trajec­
tory. It is this combination o f perspectives that I have termed subaltern real­
ism because it draws upon the experience o f the subalterns in the
international system that arc largely ignored by the elitist historiography o f
the system popularized by both neorealists and neoliberals as a result o f their
concentration on the dynamics o f interaction among the Great Powers and
the industrialized states o f the global North.
The dictionary definition of the term subaltern denotes those that are
weak and o f inferior rank. I lowever, it is the common experience o f all
human societies that these are the elements that constitute the large major­
ity of members in any social system. The term, Gramscian in its inspiration,
is borrowed from the subaltern school o f history, composed primarily o f his­
torians o f India, that is engaged in studying the rolejofjdic less powerfiil
elements— peasants, artisans, and so on— within societies, elements that
form a majority within their societies but whose histories arc ignored by elit­
ist historiography o f the traditional kind, which tends to focus on the activ­
ities o f the powerful. " Third World states form the quintessential subaltern
element within the society of states given their relative powerlessness and the
fact that they constitute a large majority in the international system.
It is clear that the subaltern realist paradigm, even in the preliminary
form in which it is presented here, is based on the following assumptions:
first, issues o f domestic order and those o f international order are inextrica- I
bly intertwined, especially in the arena o f conflict and conflict resolution;
second, issues o f domestic order, which arc primarily the by-products o f the
state-making enterprise within states, must receive analytical priority if one.
is to be able to explain most conflicts currently underway in the interna^. <- }
tional system for the simple reason that they arc the primary determinants
o f such conflicts; third, issues o f domestic ordcr/conflict are, however, not
immune to external influences, either regional or global, especially given the
permeability o f the majority o f states by external political and economic ac-
tors and, therefore, such external variables must be integrated into any ex>.
planation o f the course and intensity o f domestic conflicts and the behavior
o f states in the international system; and fourth, the linkage between do­
mestic and external variables also explains the nexus between intrastate and '‘
interstate conflicts, and the intertwining o f the state-making enterprise with
regional balance o f power issues.
When examined in die light o f these assumptions, it becomes clear that
subaltern realism wilj be able to predict the location and intensity o f con-
flicts as well as map out strategies for dicir amelioration by looking at the
following variables: first, the stage o f state-making reached by a particular ju-
ridically sovereign state is an important factor. This can be determined by
 46 • M oham m ed Ayoob

the level o f political Rapacity (ascertained by combining the variables of ef­

fectiveness anti legitimacy, or coercion and consent) attained by that state.
1 he more primitive the stage o f state making and the more incomplete the
states capacity to control and/or gain the acquiescence of the large majority
oi its population, the greater the possibility o f internal conflict and disorder.
Second, the ethnopolitical composition o f a state’s population, especially
as measured by the popular acceptance o f definitions o f political community
that differ radically from the one adopted by state elites must be considered.
In other words, the balance o f approval or attachment between the state-
defined conception o f nationalism and its (usually ethnically defined) alter­
natives must be analyzed. The greater and more coherent the challenges to
the state-defined conception o f nationalism, the greater the possibility of in­
ternal conflict and disorder.
Next, the existence or otherwise ol contested territorial and demographic
space between contiguous states undergoing state-building concurrently
should be looked at. The more the contestation, the greater the possibility
both o f the intensification o f internal conflicts (because of the provision of
external encouragement and support to domestic dissidents and/or seces­
sionists) and the likelihood o f their transformation into interstate conflicts.
We also have to consider the impact o f Great Power rivalries on, and the
nature o f great power policies toward, particular states/regions and the ca­
pacity of major powers to exacerbate or alleviate conflicts within dtosc
states/regions. The greater the proclivity o f one or more of the Great Pow­
ers to intervene in domestic conflicts against those in control of the state and
the greater the capacity of one or more of the Great Powers to carry out such
intervention politically, economically, or militarily, the greater the likelihood
o f the exacerbation o f domestic conflicts. Similarly, the greater the procliv­
ity o f Great Powers to support regional antagonists engaged in disputes over
contested territorial and demographic space, the greater the resistance of
such conflicts to strategies ol conflict management and conflict resolution
will be.
Finally, die existence and impact o f international norms that promote or
discourage intrastate and/or interstate conflicts relating to state-making, in
particular the permissive or restrictive character o f such norms in relation ty
the breakup of existing states needs to be examined. The more such norms
are perceived to permit the breakup o f existing states (as in the immediate
afterm ath o f the end of the Cold War), the greater will be the possibility of
the intensification o f wars o f state-breaking and the incidence of state fail­
ure in the international system as a whole.
T h e affinities o f die subaltern realist perspective with drat of classical re­
alism, as witnessed in the writings of Machiavelli and Hobbes, is striking.
However, there are also differences. Subaltern realism does not under-
 S u b a lte r n R e a lis m •17

estimate the influence of the anarchical, anil especially die hierarchical, na­
ture o f the international system on state behavior. In fact, it is very sensitive
to systemic influences not only of structure but o f the policies o f individual
Great Powers that emanate out o f Great Power rivalries but that have a cru­
cial impact on the political liycs ofThird World states. It is also sensitive to
the effect o f the international division o f labor, and the consequent depen­
dence ofThird World states on the centers of international economic power
concentrated in the global North, on both the legitimacy and the effective­
ness o f Third World states vis-a-vis their populations.
These differences with classical realism emerge out of the fact that the
classical theorists o f realism were writing at a time when modern states and
the states system were evolving simultaneously and the impact o f the latter’s
dynamics on the former was minimal. Similarly, the evolution o f the inter­
national capitalist economy was in its infancy and its long-term impact on
the political project o f state-making was not at all clear. W ith a well-
developed structure, elaborate international norms, and a highly stratified
global economic, military, and political hierarchy, this is no longer the case.
Therefore, subaltern realism acknowledges more than classical realism the
influence of external variables emanating out of the hierarchical nature o f the
system on the behavior of states, especially o f the majority o f states drat consti­
tute the subaltern element in the system. However, it docs not make the struc­
ture o f the international system the sole or even the predominant independent
variable determining such behavior. According to subaltern realism, die major­
ity o f states suffer from a security predicament that is much more complex and
much more driven by domestic factors dian the security dilemma that neoreal-
ism posits. .Subaltern realism may not provide explanations for all that goes on'
in the international system. Insights from the nco-neo synthesis that explain the
nature o f Great Power relations, or of interactions within die industrialized core
o f die system dial may be operating on the premise o f complex interdepen­
dence and absolute gains, will still be necessary to supplement die explanations
provided by subaltern realism. But its explanatory' power in terms o f unravel­
ing die sources o f die large majority o f conflicts in tile international system and
illuminating the internal and external behavior of die large majority o f states far
surpasses that o f any other dicory available.
Paradigms in the social sciences in general, and in International Relations
in particular, need not explain everything in every situation. In the absence
of other paradigms with more comprehensive and more powerful explana­
tions o f issues o f war and peace in the international sy'stem, subaltern real­
ism fills a principal gap in the theoretical literature because it has the
capacity to explain what, at the current juncture, is the most crucial dimen­
sion o f international Relations— the origins and sources o f the large major­
ity o f conflicts in the international system.
 *18 • M oham m ed Ayoob

This explanatory power also provides it with the capacity at least poten­
tially to help map strategics for the management and alleviation o f such con­
flicts, if not their resolution. If policymakers in the major capitals o f the
world become conversant with this paradigm and use its lenses to view the
majority o f conflicts in the international system today, they will be better
able to understand the fundamental nature o f these conflicts. Such compre­
hension may well act as the beginning o f wisdom for die fashioning o f in­
ternational strategies to contain and manage conflicts.
By using the insights o f the subaltern realist paradigm, world statesmen
and political analysts will begin to realize that such conflicts arc neither the
reflection o f ancient hatreds nor are they primarily the result o f external
machinations. They arc part and parcel o f the state-making odyssey of the
new entrants into die system o f states, an exercise that is made almosi im­
possibly difficult by the operation o f international norms and the policies of
major powers. Furthermore, they will begin to understand that moving be­
yond Westphalia and creating regional confederations based on weak states
will not provide the remedy for such conflicts.
Such a paradigm will also help policymakers and analysts comprehend
the fact that Historically states have preceded the creation o f nations. Na­
tionalism, as Ernest Gellncr has argued, “emerges only in milieux in which
die existence o f the state is already very much taken for granted. The exis­
tence o f politically centralized units, and o f a moral-political climate in
which such centralized units are taken for granted and are treated as norma­
tive, is a necessary though not sufficient condition o f nationalism.’“1' The
fact that the civic nationalism o f countries such as Britain, France, and the
United States today is the linear and direct descendant p fa state-defined na­
tionalism that triumphed over more particularistic definitions o f political
identity (invariably by the force o f arms as the American Civil War demon­
strated very clearly) confirms the dependent relationship o f the nation on
the state. Where this order has been reversed it has been a recipe for grave
disorder (for example, the Balkans).
Once having understood this historical process, policymakers are also
likely to recognize that relaxing international norms regarding the inviola­
bility o f the boundaries o f existing states and sanctioning the creation o f eth­
nic states (as happened in the case of the former Yugoslavia) will not solve
the problem o f disorder in the international system. It will not do so for the
simple reason, as William Pfaff has pointed out, that “The ethnic state is a
product o f the political imagination; it does not exist in reality. . . . The idea
o f the ethnic nation thus is a permanent provocation to war."43 As the
Balkan experience demonstrates, ethnically defined ministates will only pro­
vide the incentive for the creation of even more ethnically pure microstates
since there are hardly any unadulterated ethnic homelands left anymore.
 Subaltern Realism • 49

The comprehension o f this fact is likely to make policymakers under­

stand that the notion o f self-determination needs to be delinked from the
idea o f secession and linked to the concept o f political empowerment. This,
they will discern, is also the surest way of making states both legitimate and
effective. At the same time, they will realize that there are fundamental ten­
sions between the imperatives of state-making and the consolidation o f state
power on the one hand, and the demands for political participation and em­
powerment on the other. They may, therefore, conclude that a delicate bal­
ance needs to be maintained between the requirements o f effectiveness and
those o f legitimacy of states because they are two sides o f the same state-
making coin. Democratization by itself is unlikely to solve the problem o f
conflicts within states unless it is accompanied by a concentration o f the in­
struments o f violence in the hands o f the state.
It will also lead them to conclude that the strengthening and not the
weakening o f die Westphalian order, espccjallyjitthelevcfofthe unit, (state),
is essential for the_effective management o f most conflicts in the inter-
national system. In turn, this is likely to lead the Great Powers to be more
circumspect in intervening in the internal affairs o f states, especially if such
intervention involves a serious derogation o f the sovereignty o f the target
state (for example, Iraq).
Neorealism and neoliberalism (theories in which policymakers in the
major capitals o f the West are often, and frequently subconsciously, social­
ized) do not possess adequate explanatory and predictive capacity, especially
in the arena o f managing and alleviating the majority o f conflicts in the in­
ternational system. Their inability to do so emerges out o f die fact that these
conflicts arc inextricably enmeshed with the process..of state-building and
the formation o f political communities that both the above-mentioned the­
ories either do not address or do so very inadequately. The subaltern realist
paradigm, on the other hand, makes this process its centerpiece, thus equip­
ping itself at the present juncture with explanatory and predictive power in
matters o f conflict and order that is far superior to that possessed by the tra­
ditionally dominant paradigms.

N oles

1. For an interesting dialogue between positivists and post-positivists on the rel­

ative merits o f their approaches, sec Steve Smith, Ken Booth, and Marysia Za-
lewski, eds.. International Theory: P ouaviun a n d B eyond (NY: Cambridge
University Press, 1996).
2. Despite all the postmodernist and social constructivist critiques of the as­
sumption that there is a "real" reality out there independent o f our construc­
tions and perceptions, one has to posit such an object if one is to theorize
50 Mohammed Ayoob

meaningfully within any of the social sciences. Otherwise, one will be con­
stantly engaged in deconstruction for its own sake thus turning it into a truly
nihilist exercise.litis docs not deny that one’s construction of reality is affected
by one’s perceptions and that the latter, in turn, arc to a substantial degree
products of one's cxpetienccs and are dependent upon where one is situated in
terms of time, space, social class, political predilections, and so on. 1 Iowcvcr,
even the concept of perceptions makes sense only in tire context of an object .
that the pcrcciver is trying to perceive. In the absence of such an identifiable
object (even if the meaning of that object is contested), die concept of percep­
tion will make no sense at all. The same applies to the concept of construction.
One cannot construct meaningful phenomena (for example, state, sovereignty)
that are totally out of sync with the requirements of tim e and space. Devoid of
meaning and utility such constructions will die a very quick death. 1 hereforc,
while it is essential to explore who perceives and who constructs reality, taking
such exploration to the absurd limit of denying the very existence of all objects
that arc perceived and constructed becomes a meaningless exercise.
/ ($ ) Robert Cox, Approaches to World Order (NY: Cambridge University Press,
1996), p. 87.
4. Michael Mann, "Audioritarianism and Liberal Militarism : A Contribution
from Comparative and Historical Sociology,” in International Theory: Posi­
tivism and Beyond, eds., Steve Smith, Ken Booth, and M arysia Zalcwski (NY:
Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 221.
5. Mohammed Ayoob, "The Third World in the System of States: Acute Schizo­
phrenia or Growing Pains?” International Studies Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 1
(1989), pps. 67-79; Medley Bull and Adam Watson, eds., The Expansion o f In­
ternational Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984).
6. Mohammed Ayoob, “The New-Old Disorder in the Third World," Global
Governance, vol. 1, no. 1, (1995b), pps. 59-77.
7. Myron Wiener, "Security, Stability, and International M igration,” in Global
Dangers: Changing Dimensions oj International Security, eds., Scan M . Lynn-
Joncs and Steven E. Miller (Cambridge, MA: M IT Press, 1995), pps.
183-218.
8. For a convincing statement of diis argument, sec Amiiav Acharya, “ I he Pe­
riphery as the Core: The Third World and Security Studies,” in Keith Krause
and Michael Williams, eds., Critical Security Studies, (Minneapolis, MN: Uni­
versity of Minnesota Press, 1997), pps. 299-327.
9. Ethan B. Kapsicin, “Is Realism Dead? The Domestic Sources of International
Politics,” International Organization, vol. 49, no. 4 (1995), p. 751.
10. Kenneth Waltz, Theory o f International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison-
Wcslcy, 1979); Stephen Walt, The Origins o f Alliances (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1987).
11. Paul Scluoeder, “I listorical Reality vs. Neo-realist Theory,” International Secu­
rity, vol. 19, no. 1 (1994), pps. 108-48.
12. For first, second and diird image assumptions, sec Kenneth Waltz, Alan, the
State and War (NY: Columbia University Press, 1954).
 Subaltern Realism 51

13. Robert O. Kcohane and Joseph S. Nye, Jr., eds., Tramnational ReLuions anil
World Politict (Cam bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972).
14. Richard Ned Lebow, “ I he Long Peace, the End of die War, and die Failure of
Realism,” in International Relations Theory a n d the End o f the Cold War, eds.,
Richard Ned Lebow and Thomas Risse-Kappcn (NY: Columbia University
Press, 1995). pps. 23 -5 6 .
15. Charles W. Kegley, Jr., “ 1 he Ncolibcral Challenge to R ealist! hcorics ofW orld
Politics: An Introduction,” in Controversies in International Relations Theory,
cd., Charles W. Kcglcy, Jr. (NY: St. M artins Press, 1995), p. 9.
16. Joseph S. Nyc, Jr., “W hat New World Order?” Foreign Affairs, vol. 71 (1992),
pps. 83-96.
1 7 . ' Barry Buzan. "New Patterns o f Global Security in the Twenty-first Century,”
_ International Affairs, vol. 67, no. 3 (1991), p. 437.
18. John Gerard Ruggie, “Peacekeeping and U.S. Interests,” in O rder a n d Dis­
ord er A fter the C old War, cd., Brad Roberts (Cam bridge, MA: M IT Press,
1995), p. 212.
19. Ole Wacver, “The Rise and Fall of the Inter-Paradigm Debate," in Interna­
tional Theory: Positivism a n d Beyond, eds., Steve Smith, Ken Booth, and
Marysia Zalcwski (NY: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pps. 163-64.
20. John H. Herz, “The Territorial State Revisited,” in Classic Readings o f Interna­
tion al Relations, eds., Phil W illiam s, Donald M . Goldstein, and Jay M. Sharitz
(Belmont. MA: Wadsworth, 1994), p. 105.
21. For a detailed analysis of the intcracuon between the internal process of state-
making in die Third World and external variables, sec Mohammed Ayoob, The
Third World Security P redicam ent: State-Making, Regional Conflict, a n d the In ­
ternational System (Boulder, CO : Lynne Rienncr Publishers, 1995).
22. Evan Luard, War in International Society (London: I.B. Tauris, 1986), pps.
4 4 2-46.
23. Kalcvi J. Holsti, Peace a n d War: A rm ed Conflicts a n d International Order,
1648-1989 (NY: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pps. 274-78.
24. Kalevi J. Holsti, The State, War, a n d the State o f War (NY: Cambridge Univer­
sity Press, 1996), pps. 22, 21 0 -2 4 .
25. Ibid.
26. Mohammed Ayoob, “ I he Iran-lraq War and Regional Security in the Persian
Gulf,” Alternatives, vol. 10, no. 4 (1985), pps. 581-90.
27. R. B. J. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (NY:
Cambridge University Press, 1396), pps. 48, 117.
28. Ibid., p. 45.
29. Michael W illiam s, “Hobbes and International Relations: A Reconsideration,"
International Organization, vol. 50, no. 2 (1996), p. 215.
30. Ibid., p. 220.
31. Richard S. Peters, “Introduction to Collier Books Edition," in The Leviathan
by Thomas I lobbes, eds., M ichael Oakcshott and Richard S. Peters (NY: Col­
lier Books, 1962), pps. 11-12.
32. Robert W. Cox, Approaches to World Order, p. 502.