It is time we had a new theory of international relations. Hume, the empiricist, observed and wrote on the balance of power; Kant, the rationalist, constructed a model for perpetual peace. With Hegel we have the march of ideas; and the states that embodied them marching across each other’s territory. The end of the 19th century produced Marxist theories of international class struggle, Leninist theories of imperialism and Darwinist theories of racial struggle. These theories were enough to ruin most of the 20th century and perhaps we have done well to avoid new ones for a while.
The intellectual context has now changed and our theories need to change with it. Christopher Coker does not put forward a new theory, but he looks at international relations from an existentialist/ post-modern perspective. Is this not right for the spirit of the times? International relations today is about values and identity at least as much as it is about ideas of balance or plans to engineer peace or romantic idealist theories of progress.
Identity has long been important for the internal cohesion of nations. Nations, as Benedict Anderson taught us, are imagined communities. A nation must first exist in the mind of its citizens before it can hold together on the battlefield or football terraces; or before its parliament can exact loyalty and taxes. This book is about the imagining of international communities, and about the re-imagining of the countries that make them up.
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