Abstract
Over the last 25 years, international intervention has become an increasingly significant topic — during this period, humanitarian intervention, for example, has become an important issue in light of interventions in territories such as Kosovo and Libya and the lack of intervention in places such as Rwanda and Darfur. Other issues such as state failure and the appropriate response to mobile terrorist groups that may be located in a particular country also raise questions concerning the circumstances in which intervention in another state is legitimate. Added to this are debates over whether particular actors have the authority to conduct such interventions. Recent experience has shown that individual countries or groups of states have been willing to undertake interventions both with and without official authorisation from the United Nations Security Council.1 This poses further questions regarding the contemporary applicability of supposedly key norms of international society, such as sovereign equality or non-intervention.
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Notes
Yee-Kuang Heng (2006), War as Risk Management: Strategy and Conflict in an Age of Globalised Risks (New York: Routledge): p. 26.
Beck, World Risk Society, p. 1. Also see Anthony Giddens (1990), The Consequences of Modernity (Stanford: Stanford University Press)
Anthony Giddens (1991), Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late-Modern Age (Cambridge: Polity).
John Handmer and Paul James (2007), ‘Trust Us and Be Scared: The Changing Nature of Contemporary Risk’, Global Society 21(1): p. 120.
Claudia Aradau, Luis Lobo-Guerrero and Rens Van Munster (2008), ‘Security, Technologies of Risk, and the Political: Guest Editors’ Introduction’, Security Dialogue 39(2–3): pp. 147–54.
Beck, Risk Society, p. 22; Richard V. Ericson and Aaron Doyle (2004), ‘Catastrophe Risk, Insurance and Terrorism’, Economy and Society 33(2): p. 136.
Gabe Mythen and Sandra Walklate (2008), ‘Terrorism, Risk and International Security: The Perils of Asking “What If?”‘, Security Dialogue 39(2–3): p. 223.
Darryl S. L. Jarvis (2007), ‘Risk, Globalisation and the State: A Critical Appraisal of Ulrich Beck and the World Risk Society Thesis’, Global Society 21(1): p. 30.
Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen (2002), ‘“9–11”: Globalisation, Security and World Order’, Working Paper 2002/2 (Copenhagen: Danish Institute of International Affairs): p. 6.
William Bain (2003), Between Anarchy and Society: Trusteeship and the Obligations of Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press): p. 5.
James Gow (2005), Defending the West (Cambridge: Polity): p. 59.
Christopher Coker (2002), ‘Security, Independence and Liberty After September 11: Balancing Competing Claims’, introductory paper presented to the 21st Century Trust, Klingenthal Castle, near Strasbourg, France (12–18 May 2002), http://www.21stcenturytrust.org/post911.htm (accessed 27 February 2007).
Also see Christopher Coker (2009), War in an Age of Risk (Cambridge: Polity).
Australian Department of Defence (2007), Australia’s National Security: Defence Update 2007 (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia): p. 14.
CASE Collective (2006), ‘Critical Approaches to Security in Europe: A Networked Manifesto’, Security Dialogue 37(4): p. 468. Luhmann argues that risk is traditionally conceptualised as ‘a controlled extension of rational action’, meaning that rational action can aid in the estimation and management of risk. This conceptualisation is shared by Power in his work on risk management.
See Niklas Luhmann (1998), Risk: A Sociological Theory (New York: Walter de Gruyter): p. 13
Michael Power (2004), The Risk Management of Everything: Rethinking the Politics of Uncertainty (London: Demos).
Claudia Aradau and Rens Van Munster (2007), ‘Governing Terrorism Through Risk: Taking Precautions, (un)Knowing the Future’, European Journal of International Relations 13(1): p. 96.
Ulrich Beck (2000), ‘Risk Society Revisited: Theory, Politics and Research Programmes’, in Barbara Adam, Ulrich Beck and Joost Van Loon (eds), The Risk Society and Beyond: Critical Issues for Social Theory (London: Sage): p. 219. In more recent work, Beck seems to have shifted further towards a constructivist understanding of risk, introducing the concept of’ staging’ — the imagining and identification of risk. As he suggests ‘For only by imagining and staging world risk does the future catastrophe become present …’
Ulrich Beck (2009), World at Risk (Cambridge: Polity): p. 10.
William Clapton (2011), ‘Risk in International Relations’, International Relations 25(3): p. 287.
Ian Clark (2001), ‘Another “Double Movement”: The Great Transformation After the Cold War?’, Review of International Studies 27(5): pp. 237–55.
Francis Fukuyama (1992), The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Avon Books)
Robert Cooper (2004), The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-First Century (London: Atlantic Books).
For a further critique of contractual or rationalist conceptions of hierarchy, see J. C. Sharman (2013), ‘International Hierarchies and Contemporary Imperial Governance: A Tale of Three Kingdoms’, European Journal of International Relations 19(2): pp. 189–207.
Gerry Simpson (2001), ‘Two Liberalisms’, European Journal of International Law 12(3): pp. 537–71.
The White House (September 2002), The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Washington D.C.): p. 1.
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© 2014 William Clapton
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Clapton, W. (2014). Risk and International Society. In: Risk and Hierarchy in International Society. Palgrave Studies in International Relations Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137396372_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137396372_3
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