International relations: the 'how not to' guide (September 2022, 98:5)
International Affairs
Celebrating over 100 years as a leading international relations journal
The September 2022 issue of International Affairs seeks to better understand how catastrophic failures in foreign policy can be avoided, engaging both with policy-makers and academics. To this end, guest-editors of this issue, Daniel W. Drezner and Amrita Narlikar have brought together 14 authors to ask what we can learn from the past to create more successful policy together.
This table of contents provides a guide to each article in the issue, presenting case-studies, key words, and a short blurb to help you to decide which articles to read first. The whole issue is free to download until 11 December 2022.
International relations: the ‘how not to’ guide - Daniel W. Drezner and Amrita Narlikar
Key words: Introduction, foreign policy analysis, diplomacy
Blurb: While much of foreign policy analysis seeks to replicate successes, this special issue asks whether it might make more sense to examine how to avoid catastrophic failure. In their introduction, the guest editors outline the goals of the special issue and explore whether a Hippocratic oath for international affairs would be enough.
Read the article here.
How not to run international affairs – Richard Toye
Key words: British foreign policy, historical analogies, international history, international organizations, appeasement.
Case study: Munich crisis 1938, Suez crisis and war of 1956, Iraq war 2003.
Blurb: This article draws lessons from the Munich crisis of 1938, the Suez crisis and war of 1956 and the Iraq war of 2003. While failure was over-determined in these situations, there are many everyday crises that actors who understand ‘how not to run international affairs’ stop from turning into disasters.
Read the article here.
How not to sanction – Daniel W. Drezner
Key words: Economic sanctions, the global economy, global governance.
Case study: 1990s UN sanctions against Iraq, Donald Trump administration’s re-imposition of sanctions against Iran after 2018.
Blurb: This article examines sanctions imposed on Iraq between the two Gulf wars and on Iran from 2018. In both cases sanctions imposed crippling costs but the primary goals weren't achieved. Drezner warns against sanctioning states not articulating clear and consistent demands, as well as weak linkages between scholars and policy-makers.
Read the article here.
How not to negotiate: the case of trade multilateralism – Amrita Narlikar
Key words: International organizations, multilateralism, global trade agreements, global South, economic policy, geoeconomics.
Case study: World Trade Organization negotiations, including the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) negotiations beginning in 2001.
Blurb: The WTO has become an almost perfect example of how not to negotiate. This article outlines the breakdown in the organization, then examines the bargaining failures responsible for this. It concludes by sharing the main ‘dos’ and ‘don'ts’ for trade negotiation.
Read the article here.
How not to solve a financial crisis – Harold James
Key words: The global economy, global governance, financial crises, recession, economic policy.
Case study: The Great Depression, 1997 Asia crisis, the Great Recession, 2008.
Blurb: When learning from financial crises, whether we adopt a long-term or short-term perspective matters. The response to financial crisis in 1931, 1997 and 2008 initially looked successful but immediate responses, driven by the sense that past mistakes needed to be avoided, set the stage for the next crisis.
Read the article here.
How not to manage crises in the European Union – Cecilia Emma Sottilotta
Key words: Regional integration, European Union, crisis management.
Case study: EU management of the Eurozone crisis, 2008, and COVID-19 pandemic beginning in 2020.
Blurb: EU policy-makers should learn lessons from key policy failures during the eurozone crisis and the COVID–19 pandemic. The mistakes were a result of delayed action and a gap between research and policy. If comprehensive reforms can't be made, policy-makers should find a middle ground between supranationalism and intergovernmentalism in crisis situations.
Read the article here.
How not to think like a hegemon – Janice Gross Stein
Key words: Hegemony, political economy, power diffusion, the liberal international order, US-China relations, network power.
Case study: US hegemony and contemporary Chinese growth.
Blurb: The narrative on US decline and China's rise is currently too focused on hard measures like GDP. Whether and how a hegemon declines is shaped by the strategic choices that both the challenger and the hegemon make. Nine possible futures over the next two decades are posited, dependent on the policy choices that leaders make at home.
Read the article here.
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How not to deal with a rising China: a US perspective – Joseph S. Nye, Jr
Key words: Foreign policy analysis, great powers, the liberal international order, US-China relations,
Case study: Thucydides trap, 1914 run up to World War One, current policy-making in Washington and Beijing.
Blurb: Chinese elites expect to replace the US as the leading global power by 2049. How should the US respond? Two prevalent historical analogies are misleading: a Thucydides trap about power transition and a new Cold War. More promising is the cautionary narrative of sleepwalking into the First World War.
Read the article here.
How not to deal with a rising China: a perspective from south Asia – Amitabh Mattoo
Key words: Foreign policy analysis, the liberal international order, great powers, South Asia, India, China.
Case study: Chinese involvement in Pakistan’s nuclear programme from the 1980s, Sri Lankan infrastructure and Chinese investment from the 2010s, ongoing China and India border disputes.
Blurb: Debates on China's rise often focus on the continuity of the United States' hegemony and the liberal global order and ignore regional actors. Instead, this article suggests that as China rises it will first aim to secure regional primacy, by examining China's relations with India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
Read the article here.
How not to interfere in another country’s domestic politics – Igor Istomin
Key words: International interventions, major powers, war and conflict, foreign policy, Cold War, Russia, China, US.
Case study: Assistance from the Soviet Union to the Chinese communists from the 1920s to the 1940s.
Blurb: Is foreign interference in domestic politics as effective and cheap as anticipated in current policy debates? This article draws on the Soviet assistance to the Chinese Communists from the 1920s to the 1940s to point to its short-term benefits and hidden costs, including unreliable proxies and problems for future relations.
Read the article here.
How not to war – Stephanie Carvin
Key words: US foreign policy, military interventions, conflict, technology, security and defence, cultural frameworks.
Case study: US led military interventions in Afghanistan, 2001 and Iraq, 2003.
Blurb: This article questions why the West hasn't learned from failed interventions since the end of the Cold War. It argues that in the wake of the failure of ‘easy wars’ policy-makers turn to automated weapons. The lesson that technology cannot conquer the ‘fog of war’ to create costless victory is never learned.
Read the article here.
How not to mediate conflict – Valérie Rosoux
Key words: Third-party interventions, conflict resolution, reconciliation, negotiation, post-conflict peace building, victims, survivors of conflict.
Case study: Survivors of the genocide in Rwanda, 1994, and survivors of conflicts in the Balkans, Middle East and Colombia.
Blurb: Political reconciliation is a widely accepted narrative used by mediators as a guideline for action in all regions of the world. Yet the article draws on the case of Rwanda to show that reconciliation is not an unequivocal goal that mediators should pursue whatever the circumstances.
Read the article here.
How not to learn from history – Yuen Foong Khong
Key words: Foreign policy analysis, international relations history, great powers, rising powers, Cold War, East Asia.
Case study: US and other western policy-makers' use of Cold War parallels in considering contemporary US–China relations.
Blurb: Based on the errors committed by policy-makers in learning from the past, the article identifies four ‘how not tos’ when learning from history. It then explores the extent to which these inform contemporary debates that view US–China relations through the lens of the Cold War.
Read the article here.
How not to bridge the gap in international relations – Naazneen H. Barma and James Goldgeier
Key words: International interventions, international relations history, US policy, foreign policy, Iraq war, post-conflict peace building.
Case study: Policy application of ‘democratic peace’ theory, 1980s and 1990s, and use for 2003 Iraq War, and peacebuilding scholarship, 1990s and 2000s, and use in international interventions in post-conflict contexts.
Blurb: This article identifies the four key dimensions of how scholars engage in policy and public debates. Paying careful attention to these can help avoid common pitfalls when ‘bridging the gap’. These four factors are applied to two case-studies: theory and policy in the US on ‘Democratic Peace’ and the ‘cult of relevance’ problem for scholars trying to contribute to peace-building in post-conflict states.
Read the article here.