Description
Established theoretical perspectives in International Relations (IR) accord little time to rigorous engagement with anarchist and pacifist contributions concerning the analysis of core IR themes such as war and peace, the international order, and the ethics of political violence. As some recent scholarship has demonstrated, however, both anarchism and pacifism do offer valuable and nuanced arguments to contribute to rigorous debate on such issues. An anarcho-pacifist perspective in particular offers a focused vantage point from which to gaze upon the international order. The pacifist grounding enables: a critique of the dominant fetishization of the instrumentality of violence; a warning about the self-fulfilling nature of militarism; and a rich set of nuanced and varied reflections concerning the limits to the legitimacy and effectiveness of political violence. The anarchist lens adds to this: a diagnosis of the international system as one embedded in a variety of intersectional kinds of domination; a set of reflections about alternative structurings of the international order; and an unorthodox understanding of agency in international politics. This puts an anarcho-pacifist theory of IR in a position to either acknowledge or dispute claims central to more established schools of IR including classical realism, neorealism, classical liberalism, neoliberal institutionalism, constructivism, as well as Marxist and feminist theories of IR. An anarcho-pacifist theory of IR thus offers a refreshing reading of the international order, drawing attention away from common realist and liberal conceptions and towards a sharp critical analysis of the global stratification of political, socio-economic and strategic interests and organisations, and reformulating ethical questions and pathways for agency in the process.
