This chapter considers the relevance of postcolonialism to the discipline of ‘international relations’ (IR). It argues that postcolonialism advances a powerful critique of traditional approaches to IR (see chapters on realism and liberalism) since it calls into question the discipline’s foundational ontological and epistemological assumptions. In particular, it challenges the dominant assumption that states are the basic units of IR and that we should examine the relations between these units in the context of an anarchical system. Postcolonialism refocuses our attention on the constitutive role played by colonialism in the creation of the modern world and sees international relations as hierarchical rather than anarchical. It sees academic disciplines such as IR – and Western rationalist, humanist and universalist modes of thinking in general – as complicit in reproducing colonial power relations and seeks normatively to resist practices of colonialism in its material and ideational forms, whether political, economic or cultural.

This chapter explains the legal and political features of the United Nations. It begins with a short introduction to the UN Charter, which shows the framework of international law that defines, limits and empowers the organisation. It then puts these into a more practical setting, which emphasises how the United Nations is at the same time an actor, a forum and a resource for governments.

This chapter provides a brief introduction to the ethics and laws of war. The first part outlines what international law and the ‘just war’ tradition say about war; the second explores the conduct of war; and the third examines two recent dilemmas as examples of moral and legal debate: the legitimacy of pre-emptive self-defence and the use of cluster bombs.

The purpose of this chapter is to introduce the contemporary political debates surrounding globalisation. It illustrates the main features of protests against the social consequences of a globalised economy, and it identifies some of the key political issues that scholars and students of International Relations must face when addressing the promotion of justice and effective governance within a more densely connected world.

This chapter tracks the emergence and acceleration of global environmental problems since the end of World War II and delineates the field of global environmental politics. It also introduces the proposed new geological epoch called ‘the Anthropocene’ and the concept of planetary boundaries along with the key global environmental discourses of limits to growth/degrowth, sustainable development/green growth, ecological security and environmental justice. The chapter then examines how scholars working in the major theoretical traditions of International Relations – realism, liberalism, Critical Theory, constructivism and English School theory – have approached global environmental challenges. The conclusion reflects on the pivotal roles of the United States and China in tackling global warming.

This chapter makes three main arguments. First, ideas and practices of diplomacy have a multi-millennial history – much longer than is generally thought. Second, this long history has been characterised by both continuity and change. As a result, diplomacy has been as much adaptive as resistant to change. And third, that diplomacy is not diminishing in importance. To assess these claims, the chapter first addresses the issue of defining diplomacy, before examining the evolution of diplomacy in terms that may be characterised broadly as pre-modern, modern and postmodern. Finally, the chapter evaluates the relationship between diplomacy and the study of international relations.

This chapter offers an historical grounding in interwar international relations. It tracks and analyses the progress of international relations in the period between World War I (1914–18) and World War II (1939–45), both of which are rightly seen as two major and formative conflicts in international history and indeed for the study of International Relations. It is sometimes assumed that the two World Wars were primarily European affairs, at least in their origins, and reflected the persistence of European predominance in a fast-changing world. Yet these were truly global and globalising wars, as reflected in their causes, courses and consequences, the technologies they employed and the ideas they helped generate. The period in between the wars was a turbulent and unstable one. It foreshadowed European decline and witnessed the rise of the United States, the challenge of the Soviet Union and the Far East and, more gradually, of peoples around the world subject to imperial rule – in short, the interwar period provided the foundations for the international system that developed over the following decades. Many of its contours are still visible today.

This chapter introduces the concept and practice of security in international relations. It explores the dilemmas faced by states, individuals and the global community by first looking at contemporary crises and disagreements about security; second, examining how security has been differently defined and focused; and third, surveying how different theoretical approaches have understood and analysed security.

This chapter reflects on the tradition of Western political thought known as realism. Its main purpose is to identify who realists are, and to explain what realism is in the study of international relations. The first part of the chapter introduces students to some important thinkers, both ancient and modern, ascribed to the realist tradition. It also identifies two broad strands of realist thought: ‘classical’ and ‘structural’ or ‘neorealist’. The second part investigates attempts to conceive realism as a unified theory and practice of international relations. It highlights realism’s central concepts of the state and anarchy before reflecting on realism’s normative dimension.

This chapter discusses the historic antecedents to modern day international criminal tribunals. It begins with a discussion of the post-World War I 1919 International Commission on the Responsibility of the Authors of the War and the failure to prosecute Kaiser Wilhelm Hohenzollern, despite the Treaty of Versailles providing for such an arraignment. It then turns to the experience of World War II, and the adoption of the London Charter, which formed the basis of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal (IMT). It describes the operation and convictions of the IMT, followed by an assessment of the critiques which label this tribunal as an example of victor’s justice. It then turns to the operation and convictions of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo, and assesses critiques that this tribunal also was an example of victor’s justice. The chapter concludes by consider domestic prosecutions of World War II crimes, both under Control Council Law No. 10 and through military commissions in the Pacific sphere.

This chapter discusses the emergence of crimes against humanity, the main definitional features, and the most important jurisprudence on crimes against humanity. The chapter reviews historic references, the Nuremberg Charter, and evolution through international jurisprudence. The chapter examines the meaning of ‘widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population’, including the controversy over the meaning of ‘civilian’ and the many controversies about the ICC Statute Article 7 requirement of a ‘state or organizational policy’. The chapter reviews the jurisprudence on the prohibited acts (also referred to as ‘inhumane acts’), including murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, forcible transfer, imprisonment, torture, rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, other sexual violence, persecution, forced disappearance, apartheid, and other inhumane acts.

This chapter begins with a discussion of the standard definition of genocide in the Genocide Convention, which is replicated verbatim in the Statutes of the ad hoc Tribunals and of the International Criminal Court. It turns to a discussion of its historical development as a response to the Holocaust, considers its relationship to crimes against humanity, and considers the underlying nature of the crime. The chapter then considers the protected groups (national, ethnic, racial and religious) and the challenges associated with identifying these groups. It considers the prohibited acts: killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. The chapter explains the contextual element, and the mental elements of ‘intent to destroy’, ‘in whole or in part’, and ‘as such’. It ends with a discussion of other modes of participation.

The chapter outlines the distinct features and challenges of the legal regimes for the cooperation by states with international criminal jurisdictions. State compliance with the tribunals’ orders or requests for cooperation is key to their effective functioning absent direct law-enforcement and given the necessary reliance upon national authorities for executing arrests, obtaining evidence, enabling the collection of evidence, carrying out coercive measures, enforcing sentences, and so on. While being in theory more stringent than the ‘horizontal’ schemes for inter-state cooperation in criminal matters, the cooperation regime remains the Achilles heel of international criminal justice in the lack of failproof mechanisms for compelling compliance. The chapter sets out the scope, parameters, and addresses of the obligations to cooperate with UN ad hoc tribunals and the International Criminal Court; the extent to which such obligations can be allowed to prevail over conflicting duties; and the ability of parties in the proceedings to seek cooperation from the respective duty-bearers. It also discusses issues arising in connection with the cooperation for the arrest and surrender of suspects and related to other forms of assistance to international criminal jurisdictions, as well as the challenges of enforcing cooperation obligations and addressing non-compliance.