Imagining futures of war and peace has always been a core concern for the discipline of International Relations (IR). Over the last decade several IR scholars have been inspired by conceptual insights from the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) to examine how these visions are being shaped by the accelerating pace of technological change in fields including Artificial Intelligence (AI), human-enhancement, quantum computing, robotics, directed-energy weapons, hypersonics, space technology, additive manufacturing and ‘clean’ energy. Of particular interest has been the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries which, as first developed by scholars including Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-Hyun Kim,describes how collectively held understandings of (un)desirable futures associated with science and technology are formed, overcome resistance, and gain institutional support to shape policy decisions (Jasanoff & Kim, 2009; Jasanoff, 2015a).

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One area of sociotechnical imaginaries research that has remained largely overlooked by IR scholars concerns the contribution science fiction stories make to shaping how audiences understand new technological developments and their impact in the world. We recently started to address this important gap in IR scholarship by co-editing collection of short interventions in the journal Critical Studies on Security (McCarthy, 2026b; Ruppert, 2026; Watts, 2026b; Watts & Depledge, 2026; Zhang, 2026). We were inspired to do so by conversations with policymakers who had directly referenced works of science fiction when discussing their expectations of future war(fare)

We are aware that we are not the first group of IR and Critical Security Studies (CSS) interested in science fiction (Carpenter, 2016; Daniel & Musgrave, 2017; Kiersey & Neumann, 2015; Weldes, 2003). This genre has also received considerable attention within the wider social sciences with some accounts also drawing from the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries (Alonso, 2026; Belsunces, 2025; Tutton, 2021). What made our exchange original was our focus on studying how the stories presented in science fiction may contribute toward (de)stabilising sociotechnical imaginaries of future war. By examining this issue from a range of empirical perspectives, we highlight the continued importance of science fiction as a repository of popular thinking about war at a time of rapid geopolitical, technological, and environmental change. Extending the insights developed in recent studies (Depledge, Santos and Hobson, 2025; Watts, 2026a), we also show the many contributions which the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries can make to the study of future war.

Building on the themes explored in this exchange, this article has four aims. We begin by outlining what distinguishes science fiction from other forms of imaginative storytelling before introducing some of the vast literature on this genre. The second section introduces the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries and outlines how this concept can contribute toward IR scholarship by providing an analytical framework for studying science fiction as a repository of background understandings which various audiences can draw from to imagine the future conduct of war. The final two sections of this article summarise how our collection of interventions contributes to the literature on sociotechnical imaginaries and future war and identify several areas for future research.

Science Fiction and Future War

Works of science fiction are designed to both challenge and entertain their audiences. Whilst the question of how to define this vast genre of imaginative storytelling remains unsettled (Roberts, 2006: 1-36; Weldes, 2003: 8), all works of science fiction involve the depiction of alternative social realities which differ from our lived experiences based on a substantial difference in science and technology. This is underpinned by the process of cognitive estrangement involving a clear break from an audience’s everyday reality (e.g. an “estrangement”), which is caused by a loosely plausible scientific discovery or technology (e.g. “cognition”) (Suvin, 1972). Understood in these terms, science fiction can be distinguished from other forms of imaginative storytelling such as fairytales through the use of a “novum” as a plot device which fundamentally reorganises the universe in which the story is told (Suvin, 1972).

The motifs presented in science fiction have been subject to longstanding debate (Sontag, 1965). Within IR scholarship, the genre has been studied as providing a window into “imagined futures” whose narrative content can tell us a great deal about contemporary concerns and anxieties (Weldes, 2003: 1). The stories told in works of science fiction can provide audiences “synthetic experiences” of imagined worlds that can shape their interpretations and expectations of real-world politics (Daniel & Musgrave, 2017). Science fiction has also been studied as a social resource that different actors can use to shape wider political norms and ideas. Charli Carpenter (2016), for instance, has used the methods of elite interviewing and participant-observation to trace how science fiction references have impacted the global governance debates on autonomous weapon systems, arguing that references to works of science fiction have helped shape the social context in which these technologies are discussed.

The capacity of science fiction to influence collectively held visions of what war is, and how it will be fought in the future, has been widely recognised. Some defence analysts argue that reading science fiction “can nurture the imaginative mindset in the military and national security professional” (Ryan & Finney, 2021). Works in this genre are promoted as helping “inspire divergent thinking about advanced technologies and how to apply them in concert with new ideas and new organizations” (Ryan & Finney, 2021). Consistent with these understandings, science fiction writers have been recently hired by military establishments to help anticipate future technological, geopolitical, and environmental trends (Paccalin, 2023; Pomerleau, 2017).

Reflecting these real-world developments, the use of science fiction as a tool of strategic foresight (Roussie, Adam-Ledunois & Damart, 2024) has received scholarly attention. What has been subject to less debate in IR scholarship, however, has been how works of science fiction that are not expressly written for the purpose of directly informing policymaking, but which nonetheless circulate through everyday culture, may also perform important political work. This matters because, as with other forms of popular culture, engagement with works of science fiction can be a “key way that society builds trust and sets rules for technology” (Alonso, 2026: 1). This gap, we argue, can be productively addressed through the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries.

Sociotechnical Imaginaries and Future War

The term ‘sociotechnical imaginaries’ describes “collectively held, institutionally stabilized, and publicly performed visions of desirable futures, animated by shared understandings of forms of social life and social order attainable through, and supportive of, advances in science and technology” (Jasanoff, 2015a: 4). A key feature of sociotechnical imaginaries is that they provide a normative set of “background understandings” that help their audiences understand what does and does not constitute legitimate forms of technology and scientific knowledge (McCarthy, 2026a: 4). These background understandings can help legitimise specific visions of what role science and technology should play in war.

During the past decade, the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries has been increasingly used by IR scholars (Biegon, Ølgaard & Watts, 2026; Csernatoni, 2022; Depledge, Santos and Hobson, 2025; Mawdsley & Martins, 2025; McCarthy, 2026a; Watts, 2026a). Largely absent from the growing IR and CSS literatures on sociotechnical imaginaries, however, has been a detailed consideration of how the various social resources contained within works of science fiction can be mobilised by actors struggling over what expectations and visions of the future to take seriously. This is a surprising oversight because Sheila Jasanoff (2015a), one of the two original architects of the sociotechnical imaginaries’ framework, has highlighted the relevance of science fiction to the study of sociotechnical imaginaries. According to Jasanoff (2015a: 4), Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, amongst other texts, are “fabulations of social worlds, both utopic and dystopic” that offer a window into the social anxieties of the times in which they were written (Jasanoff, 2015a: 1). More recently, scholars from across the social sciences have drawn from the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries to examine the relationship between science fiction stories and a range of subjects including the visions of human space travel promoted by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs (Tutton, 2021) and public expectations of what constitutes appropriate AI governance (Alonso, 2026).

Despite these contributions, much of the existing defense and security orientated scholarship on sociotechnical imaginaries published by IR has been largely inattentive to the productive power of science fiction (for an exception to this trend, see Watts & Bode, 2024). For the most part, this literature has drawn from the detailed empirical study of official governmental publications and statements. These studies make an invaluable contribution to our understanding of the (un)desirable visions of technological futures held by policymakers. Nonetheless, they are generally inattentive to how works of science fiction may shape the many background understandings that other audiences draw from to evaluate what constitutes legitimate visions of future war. The current lack of attention given to works of science fiction is analytically significant because, as Rudek (2022: 228) argues, “[s]earching for imaginaries of progress and future only in state documents, media coverage, or expert knowledge and at the same time avoiding pop culture products limit the range of answers about the circulation of sociotechnical imaginaries in the public sphere as well as their origins”.

Contributions Made by Our Exchange

Our collection of recently published interventions aims to broaden the range of empirical artefacts studied within the IR scholarship on sociotechnical imaginaries to include a greater focus on various works of science fiction including the Ironman (Ruppert, 2026), Matrix (McCarthy, 2026b), Terminator (Watts, 2026b) and The Three-Body Problem (Zhang, 2026) franchises. It also contributes to IR scholarship on sociotechnical imaginaries by bringing these debates into greater dialogue with Michel Foucault’s concept of the “archive” (Ruppert, 2026), the social science literature on monsters (Watts, 2026b), and utopian social theory (McCarthy, 2026b).

To summarise some of the contributions made by the interventions in our collection, Ruppert’s (2026) text explores how some NATO members reference the Iron Man franchise to legitimise their preferred forms of human enhancement while distancing themselves from the “killer robot” imaginaries popularised in The Terminator. Sharing a focus on The Terminator franchise, Watts’ (2026b) intervention challenges the popular misperception that responsibility for Judgment Day in these films lies solely with the malign superintelligence Skynet rather than with the human policymakers who designed, activated, and subsequently abandoned this system. Zhang’s (2026) account examines The Three-Body Problem and The Wandering Earth I and II franchises to highlight some of the similarities between American and Chinese sociotechnical imaginaries of future war. Concluding our collection, McCarthy’s (2026b) piece makes a wider methodological contribution to the study of sociotechnical imaginaries. It demonstrates how Frederic Jameson’s four-fold methodology of literal, allegorical, moral, and analogical textual interpretations can help researchers situate representations of future war within the wider sense-making processes which audiences rely on to make sense of their social reality.

When taken as a whole, our collection makes three wider sets of contributions to IR and CSS scholarship. First, building on the earlier IR literature on this genre (Carpenter, 2016; Daniel & Musgrave, 2017; Kiersey & Neumann, 2015; Weldes, 2003), we demonstrate the continued relevance of science fiction as a subject of serious object of academic inquiry. Second, through our study of science fiction as a distinct genre that “carries with it its own memory” (Kiersey & Neumann, 2015), this collection helps situate the recent wave of imaginative thinking about future war within its wider historical context. At a time when many long-held assumptions about war are being challenged by geopolitical and technological trends, we highlight how the study of science fiction provides a set of resources for studying how visions of military futures are shaped by the concerns and anxieties of the present. And third, through our shared use of the sociotechnical imaginaries’ framework, this collection provides an alternative, conceptually informed account of how science fiction helps audiences “experience the future long before we reach it” (Coker, 2015: 21). In this respect, our collection addresses the recognized need for new approaches to studying future war at a time of rapid technological and geopolitical change (Gruszczak & Kaempf, 2024; Lacy, 2023).

Conclusion: New Avenues for Critical Security Studies Research?

As outlined in this article, our collection of recently published interventions in the journal Critical Studies on Security has examined the processes through which visions of future war emerge, spread, overcome resistance, and can become “institutionally stabilised” (Jasanoff 2015a, 4). Through these contributions, our exchange highlights how the visions of future war depicted in science fiction can inform how various audiences anticipate the future. In addition to those we have discussed elsewhere (Watts & Depledge, 2026), our exchange points to three areas of future research for IR and CSS researchers interested in contributing toward the debates on sociotechnical imaginaries, future war, and science fiction.

First, future scholarship could look beyond the films and television shows examined in this collection to explore how future war is depicted in the many other types of science fiction that were not examined by the contributors to our exchange. Amongst others, these could include works of anime, novels, comics, video games, board games, and tabletop games. Examining how and to what extent stories told about future war  vary across these media provides a framework for examining whether the medium through which audiences interact with visions of future war can influence the (de)stabilization of sociotechnical imaginaries. It also invites more detailed study of whether audiences have developed distinct expectations about what are considered appropriate depictions of future war in these mediums and how these have possibly evolved over time.

Second, the findings of our collection of interventions highlight the need for more detailed research into the processes through which audiences reconcile the many (and often competing) stories told about future war within the same science fiction franchise (Watts, 2026b). This apparent puzzle invites further refinement of the methods used to study the social processes through which sociotechnical imaginaries of future war come to be (de)stabilised. For instance, future studies could make use of semi-structured interviews with policy officials to develop a more granular understanding of how policymakers have interpreted the meaning of certain science fiction stories and how these understandings may have, in turn, shaped specific defence initiatives. Building on the use of focus groups within the popular culture and IR literature (Pears, 2016), future studies could similarly employ focus groups with members of the public to develop a more sophisticated understanding of how and when depictions of future war in science fiction come to be “collectively held” (Jasanoff, 2015a: 4).

And third, future research could adopt a self-consciously “critical” approach to the study of sociotechnical imaginaries to better understand which individuals, groups, or organisations benefit when science fiction is used to stabilise or destabilise visions of future war. As others have also argued (Taşkale, 2026), public references to science fiction are not politically neutral acts. Speaking in January 2026 for instance, Elon Musk described the ambition of his SpaceX company as wanting to make the “Starfleet Academy” featured in the Star Trek franchise “[r]eal, so that it's not always science fiction, but one day the science fiction turns to science fact” (Musk quoted in Taşkale, 2026). Referencing science fiction in this way serves a clear instrumentalist purpose: building support for Elon Musk’s optimistic vision of space travel (Tutton, 2021) and continued orders for his company (Taşkale, 2026). As the influence of Big Tech companies like SpaceX on defence planning continues to increase, developing a more conceptually sophisticated understanding of the various forms of power associated with public figures reference science fiction becomes even more timely. This is because struggles over which sociotechnical imaginaries are taken seriously shape not only visions of desirable futures, but also the allocation of resources needed to make those futures possible.

Ultimately, the study of future war can play a major role in “[…] preventing armed conflict and to ensuring that nations and their militaries are prepared to respond to threats and resolve crises at the lowest possible cost in blood and treasure” (McMaster in Coker, 2015: vii). Both the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries and the genre of science fiction can support these efforts. When brought into greater dialogue, they provide IR scholars with new resources for studying the processes through which audiences learn about, make sense of, and sometimes challenge visions of future war.  At a time of rapid technological, geopolitical, and environmental change, we hope science fiction continues to receive detailed empirical and conceptual attention.

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Tom F.A. Watts is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow based at the Center for War Studies, University of Southern Denmark. His research examines the relationship between great power competition, imaginaries, and military applications of AI.

Duncan Depledge is a Senior Lecturer in Geopolitics & Security in the Department of International Relations, Politics and History at Loughborough University.

Disclosure statement: Dr Watts’ contribution to this work was supported by a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Research Fellowship (ECF-2022-135). His contribution to this work was also supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 852123 (AutoNorms).

History and the politics of memorialising the past are never far from the surface in Central and Eastern Europe, particularly in the complex border regions of Poland and Ukraine. Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, Warsaw has been one of Kyiv’s strongest backers and has also emerged as one of Europe’s leading states in terms of defence spending. However, as the war has gone on, tensions have started to simmer again, from protests by Polish farmers and concerns over immigration, to now most critically, the veneration and naming of a military unit in Ukraine after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). To many Poles, the UPA was responsible for collaborating with the Nazis to commit massacres against ethnic Poles and Jews in the regions of Volhynia and eastern Galicia in World War II. The pursuit of independence and the dark realities of World War II required some Ukrainian nationalists to align themselves with the Nazis and ‘overlook the fact that they had to wear uniforms and swear allegiance to Hitler’, in the words of historian David Marples.

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The politics of memorialisation are not unique to Ukraine, however, and something Polish President Karol Nawrocki and the right-wing Law and Justice Party (PiS) which backs him, are particularly familiar with. Nawrocki previously served as director of Poland’s Institute for National Remembrance, a body responsible for researching and investigating crimes committed on Polish soil from 1917 to 1991. Nawrocki was also the director of the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk, which was subject to its own controversy over its politicisation by PiS. PiS has used Poland’s western neighbour Germany to exploit nationalist causes and increase its support ahead of elections, including on reparations and guilt over the Holocaust and atrocities committed by Nazis on Polish soil. Now, Nawrocki has accused Kyiv of providing Moscow with ‘a lot of oxygen for disinformation’ by glorifying the UPA, and he wants to take away Zelenskyy’s Order of the White Eagle, one of Poland’s highest honours.

This latest incident has repercussions not just for Ukraine but for Poland as well. It is a reminder that Poland’s status as a powerful state in Europe may have come from its integration towards the west, but its future as a state whole with its past and with its neighbours still comes from the east. Four years after what many assumed would be a lightning Russian operation to take Kyiv, Ukraine now has the confidence as a state to even consider dredging up controversial figures from the past in order to attempt to consolidate its position in the future. There is too much at stake for both nations to be hobbled by the deep-rooted disputes of nationalism.

Unlike the rise of nationalism globally, this dispute is not about providing future economic growth or the protection of borders and immigration, for which Poland is one of Europe’s strongest performers with a deep-rooted tradition of sovereignty. Rather it is a nationalism tied to the role and the legacy of historical figures and groups, something Poland is perhaps more cognisant of as its own position in Europe has grown more powerful. So long as a PiS-backed leader holds the presidency and the party can win the next parliamentary elections in November 2027, a more exclusionary and combative version of Polish nationalism will continue to fester alongside Poland’s strong history of Euroscepticism, which can be a constructive force. Both Poland and Ukraine will have to reconcile with the fact that their positions in a Europe whole and free rests on the resolution of disputes over history and the creation of new frameworks for integration in the east.

For Polish President Nawrocki and former President and Solidarność leader Lech Wałęsa to both condemn President Zelenskyy’s actions speaks to the gravity of his decision. For Zelenskyy, the decision is likely a raw political determination based on maintaining his support base within the Ukrainian armed forces, not too dissimilar to moves made by PiS in Poland in the past. It is not a long-term calculus but one that risks a sharp short-term deterioration of relations at a time when the risks of conflict spillover in Poland, Romania, and the Baltic states are at one of their highest points since the start of the war. Ukraine is by most accounts winning the battle to secure its territory and its place in Europe, drawing on recent positive developments such as the election of Peter Magyar in Hungary. Not just within the EU but further afield in Armenia, Russia’s influence is waning, with direct implications on votes in the EU related to Ukraine’s EU accession, further sanctions towards Moscow, and the delivery of critical weaponry to Kyiv.

For Ukraine’s allies in Europe and further afield, it is important to remember that there is no black-and-white, clean-cut version of history when it comes to the historical borderlands of Central and Eastern Europe that were torn apart by competing great powers. Ukraine, Poland, Russia, Belarus, and the Baltic states still have complex battles over identity and historical memory to settle that risk inhibiting their growth as a common region. Part of the answer may come from the easternmost large Polish city of Białystok, whose Sybir Memorial Museum reflects on the complicated role of geography, both physical and emotional, in fully reckoning with the past. ‘There must not be any iron curtain between Poland and the East, because Poland is also there, in the East’, says the museum’s director. ‘Many Polish names are uttered in the East with respect’, Polish cemeteries are there, the traces of Polish lives, descendants and ‘many of our compatriots are heroes shared by Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania.’

No one individual will have the same historical memory on either side of this complicated border region, but it is a shared emotional space deserving of a nuanced understanding of the flawed, collaborationist and even criminal characters who populate its stories. The memory wars in Poland and Ukraine will persist so long as the political and military dynamics on the ground continue to evolve and the events of the Second World War become more distant in the memory of both nations’ citizens. However, the war in Ukraine has increased the importance of resolving the memory wars as it has sharpened the intentions and the nature of the modern Russian state, which under Vladimir Putin can be seen as a direct descendant of previous brutal eras in Russian history. Crimes committed in Ukraine by Russia are not dissimilar to those committed by the Red Army during World War II, and many graves or potential mass grave sites in Russia and Belarus remain inaccessible to Poles so long as Moscow and Minsk are ruled by Putin and Lukashenko. This is a strategic and deeply personal goal that both Warsaw and Kyiv share, and a memory war that can help bind their common future.

As two democracies, one fully integrated with the formal institutions of Europe, and one still very early on in its path, Poland and Ukraine will contest these battles through vitriolic but ultimately peaceful means. Just like Poland, Ukraine’s strength as a European state will come from its accession to the EU, but reconciliation between both Ukraine and Poland will likely come from their respective capitals and not from Brussels.  Warsaw would view an EU mediation role as meddlesome and an infringement on Polish sovereignty and history, coupled with the fact that bilateral or regional forums are now becoming more fashionable in Northern and Central Europe. However, the true path to reconciliation also rests with those nations that have not yet made the leap into constructively engaging in their shared historical space, namely Belarus and Russia. Until then, Poland and Ukraine will fight a battle that remains many years from its completion, but whose outcome will determine whether historical memory will be allowed to breathe and to be interrogated as a positive force that is ultimately for the benefit of all of Europe.

Alexander Brotman is a political risk and intelligence analyst with a focus on EU politics and security developments. He has written for several political risk publications, including Global Risk Insights, Foreign Brief, and Geopolitical Monitor, and has provided direct research support to a leading scholar of Russia and Eurasia in Washington. Alexander received his MSc. in International Relations from The University of Edinburgh. He is currently based in Washington DC.

He writes in a personal capacity and not with any professional affiliation.

On the last day of BISA 2026, Prof. Kimberly Hutchings came and spoke with Marianna (University of Birmingham, @Faloulah) and Kieran (University of St. Andrews ⁠⁠⁠@kieranjomeara⁠⁠⁠) about her keynote speech at the conference. In this she explores violence, non-violence, peace, whether non-violence is always possible, advice to early career researchers and much more.

Kimberly Hutchings is Professor of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary University of London. Professor Hutchings works in the area of political and international theory and philosophy and has developed ideas in the areas of international ethics, feminist philosophy and international political theory. Her books include Women’s International Thought: Towards a New Canon, co-edited with Patricia Owens, Katharina Rietzler and Sarah Dunstan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022); Violence and Political Theory, co-authored with Elizabeth Frazer (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2020); Can Political Violence Ever be Justified? Co-authored with Elizabeth Frazer (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2019).

Thinking Global’s episodes on Women’s International Thought Towards a New Canon featuring Professor Kimberly Hutchings with Professor Patricia Owens, Dr. Katharina Rietzler, Professor Kimberly Hutchings, and Dr. Sarah C. Dunstan can be found: Part 1 and Part 2.

If you enjoy the output of E-International Relations, please consider a ⁠donation⁠.

At the U.S.–China summit in May 2016, Xi Jinping stated that if the Taiwan issue was mishandled, China and the United States could fall into the Thucydides Trap. While some continue to use the original metaphor employed by the ancient Athenian historian to explain the current Taiwan issue, others point out that Xi’s underlying message was a warning to President Trump not to provoke war by interfering with China’s plan regarding Taiwan. It is critical to understand the real meaning of Taiwan’s Thucydides Trap in the context of Taiwan to avoid a possible war in the Taiwan Strait.

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The original metaphor of the Thucydides Trap described the seemingly inevitable conflict between a rising Athens and a dominant Sparta, derived from the growth of Athens and Sparta’s fear. Taiwan’s Thucydides Trap involves three sides. The U.S. may block China from taking Taiwan. When Athens challenged Sparta, Sparta’s counterattack was certain; U.S. military involvement would be possible but not guaranteed. Moreover, China’s goal is not simply to replace the United States but to achieve unification with Taiwan, a process that involves a wide range of Asia-Pacific and global interests related to territorial sovereignty, global trade, and technology.

All the three sides—China, the United States, and Taiwan— are currently trapped in a vicious cycle: They seem to believe that military power can solve the ultimate conflict. China seeks unification through the enhancement of its military power; the United States relies on military power to maintain its deterrence strategy; and Taiwan emphasizes peace through strength as a core pillar of its national security strategy. However, if all three sides depend primarily on military buildups, they will escalate tensions instead of solving the potential Taiwan Strait crisis. The Thucydides Trap in this scenario is therefore not only a structural trap derived from conflicting interests, but also a trap of misperceptions and miscalculations among the three sides.

First of all, for decades, the United States has relied on strategic ambiguity and strategic deterrence to discourage both Taiwanese independence and Chinese military unification with Taiwan. The United States has believed that strategic ambiguity creates a balance: Beijing hesitates to attack Taiwan, and Taipei avoids provocation. However, ambiguity can also trigger miscalculation by leaving room for dangerous assumptions, because China might interpret the policy as a lack of U.S. resolve, believing Washington would not defend Taiwan. Taiwan could overestimate American support and neglect its own defense preparations. These misreadings could become a Thucydides trap, sowing confusion that sparks the very conflict they seek to prevent.

Strategic deterrence is based on the assumption that American comprehensive national power remains significantly stronger than China's. However, if U.S. capabilities can no longer support credible deterrence and fail to prevent Chinese military action, it might be dragged into direct military confrontation with China. In that situation, the United States could find that its defense industry is not prepared for a long, high-intensity conflict between two global superpowers. At the same time, its domestic political polarization, high inflation, low public support, and insufficient cooperation from its traditional allies could weaken America's ability to defend Taiwan effectively when a crisis occurs. Indeed, it is time for the United States to revisit its assumption of strategic deterrence and bridge the gap between its strategic goals and its actual capabilities, and to rebuild the credibility of its deterrence through concrete actions.

Another assumption of strategic deterrence is that China will not attempt to take over Taiwan by military force if it is convinced that the costs of a military campaign against Taiwan would far outweigh the potential gains. Essentially, from the CCP’s perspective, the political considerations of unifying Taiwan far outweigh the economic considerations. Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, achieving national reunification has been a consistent political goal for successive top CCP leaders. The Taiwan issue has become increasingly urgent under the Xi Jinping administration. Xi has repeatedly stated that the Taiwan issue must not be handed down from one generation to another, as resolving the Taiwan issue would symbolize the formal end of the Chinese Civil War, complete China's territorial claims, justify the CCP's governing legitimacy, and eliminate the ripple effects of Taiwan's democratic system.

Unlike China, the United States treats Taiwan as an international security issue. Although Washington does not formally recognize Taiwan as an independent state, it supports Taiwan’s right to self-govern, emphasizes the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, and provides defensive arms to Taiwan as a democratic partner. However, China insists that Taiwan is an inseparable part of China’s territory, regarding reunification as a matter of national sovereignty, territorial integrity, and historical justice, and considers it the red line that the U.S. should not cross. This fundamental divergence in views of Taiwan has created a real Thucydides trap in U.S.–China relations.

Second, while many international observers believe Taiwan is already on the edge of war, more than half of Taiwan's population does not see the situation as being so severe. Many hold the belief that war can be avoided as long as no accidental military clash occurs. According to recent polls, about 90% of Taiwanese people support maintaining the status quo. However, from Beijing's perspective, an indefinite continuation of the status quo effectively resembles de facto independence. Although military unification remains China's last resort, strategic miscalculation is often the most dangerous and most overlooked factor in the transition from a strategic frontline to actual war. In the past, China's relative military weakness limited its options for unification. As China's military advantage grows, the preferences of the country's top leader become a decisive factor in determining whether military action is considered. China’s political power is becoming extremely centralized, and experienced military personnel have been ousted from the CCP’s Central Military Commission, which makes it easier for the top leader to make a decision on a military campaign.

Taiwanese politics are deeply divided, caught in a futile dilemma of either aligning with the United States to resist China or accommodating China to ensure coexistence. Such a debate is natural in a democratic society, but a highly divided Taiwan not only creates greater uncertainty for the future but also delays preparations for a possible war. In Taiwan today, the energy supply is fragile; basic infrastructure such as water, power, and finance lacks strong defenses against cyberattacks; natural gas reserves can sustain demand for only about 11 days; the communication system is vulnerable without a satellite backup system like Starlink; Taiwan’s asymmetric weapons rely heavily on imports and lack support from a strong domestic military industry; civilian defense awareness is extremely limited; although Taiwan has many reserve forces, their training is inadequate and unrealistic; and the mobilization speed of military and civilian defense forces in emergencies remains untested. These weaknesses could encourage China to attempt to seize Taiwan through military means.

Third, the Chinese political system has a persistent problem of bureaucratic filtering. Officials often report good news while hiding bad news, which can mislead the CCP’s top leadership regarding the strategic dynamics of the global context. If Beijing completely believes that "the East is rising while the West is declining" and ignores its own weaknesses, the top leader of the CCP could press the button for war under certain circumstances. To avoid the real Taiwan’s Thucydides Trap, it is wise for Beijing to make an objective assessment of both China's comprehensive national power and the international opposition. If China ignores its weaknesses and miscalculates the response of the international community, a military campaign against Taiwan—expected to be a quick victory—could turn into a prolonged war of attrition or end in a stalemate. The consequences could threaten China’s social stability and even create risks of regime collapse. Any attempt at military unification would not simply involve military risks; it would amount to a gamble on China's entire modernization project.

Finally, wars do not always result from miscalculations. In some cases, all sides might fully understand others' intentions, capabilities, and the likely costs of conflict, yet the risk of war remains. On the Taiwan issue, China may clearly understand that a war could bring enormous economic, military, and political costs, but it may also conclude that the long-term strategic costs of inaction are even greater. Washington may also understand that confrontation with China is not in the best interest of the United States, while recognizing that choosing not to intervene could cause it to lose its global influence and ultimately its position as the world’s leading power. Therefore, Taiwan’s Thucydides represents not only a trap of misperception but also a trap of structural rivalry. Even if all three parties possess accurate strategic assessments, they can still fall into the Thucydides Trap, as each side is willing to pay substantial costs to achieve its goals. Given the history of the CCP’s development, the possibility that China may be willing to take extraordinary risks cannot be dismissed.

Dr. Jinghao Zhou is an associate professor of Asian studies at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in New York. His research focuses on contemporary China, and U.S.- China relations. His latest book is Great Power Competition as the New Normal of China-U.S. Relations (Palgrave 2023).

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FIFA, the 2026 World Cup, and the Politics of Involuntary Sportswashing
– Franco Laguna Correa

Why the Original Thucydides Trap Fails the Taiwan Strait Crisis
– Jinghao Zhou

Interview – Niharika Pandit

Can Iran and the United States Overcome the Deadlock of Red Lines?
– Abed Akbari

Interview – Brent J. Steele

Review – Westlessness: The Great Global Rebalancing
– Khulan Bud

ESG and the Rise of Regulatory Substitution in Africa
– Christopher Burke

Theory Will Not Decolonize: Material Decolonization in IR Knowledge Production
– Min Young Park

Interview – Mark Ellis

India’s Nationalist Rhetoric Threatens Bangladesh’s Water Security
– Shafi Md Mostofa

Traditional Knowledge and its Role within the BBNJ Agreement
– Piyumani Ranasinghe

Thinking Global presented highlights of all three days of the British International Studies Association (BISA) Conference 2026 in Brighton. Stay tuned, we have more to come next week.

E-IR x BISA 2026 – Day 1

E-IR x BISA 2026 – Day 2

E-IR x BISA 2026 – Day 3

As the world marked World Environment Day on 5 June, it is worth reflecting on a landmark development in international environmental governance that entered into force earlier this year: the Agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ Agreement). Adopted in June 2023 after nearly two decades of negotiations, the Agreement entered into force on 17 January 2026 and has been celebrated as the most significant development in ocean governance since the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

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The treaty seeks to strengthen the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ), the high seas that fall outside the control of any individual State yet remain integral in the planetary systems. While much attention has focused on the Agreement's provisions relating to marine genetic resources, environmental impact assessments, marine protected areas and capacity-building, one of its most significant features has received comparatively less attention, i.e. its recognition of traditional knowledge. At first glance, the inclusion of traditional knowledge may appear to be a technical addition to a conservation treaty. In reality, it raises a more profound question: whose knowledge counts in governing the global commons?

International environmental law has historically relied on scientific expertise as the primary foundation for environmental decision-making. This approach is rooted in a dominant Euro-Western understanding of the relationship between humans and the natural world, one that often conceives of nature as external to human society and available for management, conservation or exploitation. Within this framework, expert-led and technical governance structures have become the primary mechanisms through which environmental policies are formulated and implemented. At present, one cannot negate the value of scientific knowledge in understanding biodiversity loss and ecological change, especially given the multifaceted challenges present today. However, it is vital to remember that it is not the only way of knowing and relating to the environment.

According to World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and Fikret Berkes who has written extensively on traditional ecological knowledge, conceptualises traditional knowledge broadly as the knowledge, practices, beliefs and skills developed and transmitted across generations through communities' long-standing interactions with their environments. Such knowledge is often place-based and relational. They can be obscured and are adaptive. It encompasses not only observations about ecosystems and species but also cultural understandings of coexistence, stewardship and responsibility.

It is in this context that the BBNJ Agreement emerges particularly significant. Traditional knowledge is woven throughout the treaty rather than confined to a single provision. Article 7 recognises the importance of respecting and considering traditional knowledge in the implementation of the Agreement. Article 13 addresses traditional knowledge associated with marine genetic resources and requires States Parties to take measures to ensure that access to such knowledge occurs with the free, prior and informed consent, or approval and involvement, of Indigenous Peoples and local communities who hold that knowledge. Other provisions relating to marine protected areas, environmental impact assessments, scientific adviceF and capacity-building similarly acknowledge the relevance of traditional knowledge to biodiversity governance. Taken together, these provisions signal an important shift in international ocean governance. They recognise that the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity cannot rely exclusively on scientific expertise and that Indigenous Peoples and local communities possess valuable knowledge relevant to understanding and protecting marine ecosystems.

However, it is vital to note that recognition alone does not necessarily dismantle the hierarchies of knowledge that have historically shaped environmental governance. Decolonial scholars such as Aníbal Quijano and Walter Mignolo have argued that colonialism established enduring systems of power that continue to influence whose knowledge is regarded as authoritative and whose knowledge is marginalised. This is termed coloniality of power. Environmental governance has often reflected these dynamics, privileging scientific expertise as universal while treating Indigenous and local knowledge systems as supplementary or anecdotal. Viewed through this lens, the BBNJ Agreement's recognition of traditional knowledge represents more than an exercise in participation. It can be understood as a challenge, however modest, to the longstanding assumption that environmental governance should be based on a single epistemological framework.

Moving towards the "pluriverse" envisions a world where many worlds are possible. Arturo Escobar, who explores the concept comprehensively, argues that contemporary environmental crises cannot be addressed through a single universal worldview. Instead, he advocates for a world in which multiple ways of knowing, being and relating to nature coexist and are recognised as legitimate. An important caveat is that the pluriversal approach does not reject science. What is challenged is the assumption that scientific knowledge alone should determine how environmental governance is designed and implemented.

This perspective has important implications for ocean governance, particularly in the context of implementing the BBNJ agreement. For many States and other institutions, the ocean is understood primarily as a space to be managed, regulated and utilised largely in light of the euro-western dichotomous thinking. Yet for many Indigenous Peoples and local communities, such as communities who have generationally lived along the coast, artisanal fishers, Indigenous groups as well as island inhabitants, the ocean is also a source of identity, spirituality, livelihood and reciprocal relationships linking humans and non-human species. These are not merely different perspectives on the same reality as they often represent fundamentally different ways of understanding the place of humans within the natural world.

For Indian Ocean States, especially Sri Lanka, coastal fishing communities have long relied on intergenerational knowledge of monsoon cycles, ocean currents, fish migration patterns and marine ecosystems. Such knowledge has enabled communities to navigate and adapt to changing environmental conditions for generations. Yet these forms of knowledge rarely occupy a central place in contemporary ocean governance. For instance, evidence shows that Indigenous knowledge relating to fisheries in Sri Lanka, including non-codified community norms governing fishing restrictions, spawning seasons, fish behaviour,and marine ecosystems have been overlooked by authorities in the past. Continuing to overlook such knowledge can contribute to a disconnect between communities and authorities. Thus, even in implementing the BBNJ agreement, the challenge will be to ensure that local ecological knowledge is recognised as knowledge embodying distinct understandings of stewardship and sustainability. A key question that will (and ought to) recurr is whether and how such knowledge can meaningfully shape the institutions and practices that emerge during implementation. This requires moving beyond symbolic recognition towards genuine participation, equitable governance and respect for the rights of knowledge holders.

The significance of the BBNJ Agreement therefore lies not only in its potential to protect biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction but also in the vision of governance it makes possible. The present planetary crises raises deeper, more critical questions about power, justice and the understanding of human-nature relationships. As we observe World Environment Day, the treaty offers an important reminder that environmental governance can recognise diverse ways in which people relate to the oceans and more broadly the environment. For policymakers and practitioners alike, responding to contemporary environmental challenges requires a willingness to question the assumptions upon which systems are built. As Escobar reminds us, responding to ecological crises may require embracing a pluriverse, a world where many worlds fit. Thus, future of ocean governance may ultimately depend not only on what we choose to protect, but also on whose knowledge we choose to value.

Piyumani Ranasinghe is a researcher and an Attorney-at-Law in Sri Lanka. She currently serves as a Senior Research Fellow at the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute of International Relations and Strategic Studies (LKI). She is also a visiting lecturer for environmental law at the University of Peradeniya. Piyumani holds a MSc in Human Rights and Multiculturalism from the University of South-Eastern Norway, and a BSc in International Relations from the University of London. She also holds a LL.B. degree from the University of Peradeniya.

India’s water politics has once again come under scrutiny following the remarks of Nishikant Dubey, a Bharatiya Janata Party Member of Parliament, who on May 30 publicly criticized the India–Bangladesh memorandum of understanding on water sharing. Speaking in Parliament, Dubey alleged that “Farmers in Bihar, Jharkhand, and Uttar Pradesh are committing suicide without water; silt has accumulated in the Ganga, but the water goes to Bangladesh? The Teesta River is the lifeline of Sikkim--we could generate electricity and irrigation, but the water goes to Bangladesh? The Brahmaputra is the lifeline of Assam and Bengal, but the water goes to Bangladesh?”. His statement reflects a growing nationalist discourse in India, where transboundary agreements are increasingly framed as concessions that weaken domestic priorities. While such rhetoric may resonate with constituencies in Bihar, Jharkhand, and West Bengal, it obscures the realities faced by downstream countries like Bangladesh, which already receives a minimal share of water due to its geographical position.

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The controversy comes at a critical juncture. The Ganges Treaty, signed in 1996 for thirty years, is set to expire in December 2026. That the agreement was hailed as a landmark in South Asian hydrodiplomacy provided Bangladesh with guaranteed dry-season flows at the Farakka Barrage. Yet even under the treaty, Bangladesh has struggled with ecological degradation and economic hardship. It is evident that reduced flows have contributed to riverbank erosion, salinity intrusion in coastal areas, and declining agricultural productivity. Farmers in northern Bangladesh complain of shrinking irrigation supplies, while the Sundarbans mangrove ecosystem has suffered biodiversity loss due to rising salinity levels. These impacts translate into displacement, rural poverty, and mounting pressure on urban centers as communities migrate in search of livelihoods.

India’s increasingly assertive stance on water sharing reflects a hegemonic approach to regional resources, which is completely against India’s own foreign policy, that is, the neighbourhood first policy. By consolidating control over shared rivers, New Delhi signals that domestic political imperatives outweigh cooperative arrangements. Dubey’s remarks, echoed by other nationalist voices, frame water as a realist zero-sum resource where any allocation to Bangladesh is portrayed as a loss to India. This narrative disregards the principles of equitable and reasonable utilization enshrined in international water law, including the Helsinki Rules and the UN Watercourses Convention. It also ignores the fact that Bangladesh, as a downstream nation, is structurally dependent on flows originating outside its borders—over ninety percent of its freshwater comes from rivers that rise in India, China, Bhutan and Nepal.

Bangladesh has attempted to respond with a more assertive diplomatic posture. In 2025, Dhaka acceded to the UNECE Water Convention, becoming the first South Asian country to join the framework. This move was widely interpreted as an effort to internationalize its water concerns and strengthen legal leverage in negotiations. More recently, in May 2026, the Bangladeshi government approved the construction of the Padma Barrage, a project intended to enhance water storage and irrigation capacity. While the barrage reflects a desire for self-reliance, critics warn that it risks replicating the ecological damage associated with Farakka if not carefully managed.

The expiration of the Ganges Treaty presents both risks and opportunities. India has signaled that climate change and rising domestic demand necessitate a renegotiation of terms, potentially reducing Bangladesh’s share. For Dhaka, this is a moment to insist on transparency and accountability. Joint monitoring of flows at Farakka has long been a demand from Bangladeshi negotiators, who suspect that diversions exceed agreed allocations. Establishing robust mechanisms for data sharing and verification would help rebuild trust and ensure compliance. At the same time, Bangladesh must push for basin-wide agreements that cover all fifty-four shared rivers, not just the Ganges and Teesta. Fragmented treaties leave smaller rivers vulnerable to unilateral diversion, compounding ecological stress.

The stakes are high. Water scarcity in Bangladesh is not merely an environmental issue but a matter of national security. Declining flows exacerbate food insecurity, undermine rural economies, and fuel social unrest. They also intersect with broader geopolitical dynamics. China’s dam-building on the Brahmaputra and Nepal’s hydropower projects add layers of complexity to South Asia’s river politics. In this context, India’s unilateralism risks destabilizing regional cooperation and eroding its credibility as a responsible power. For Bangladesh, aligning with international frameworks and mobilizing global support is essential. By highlighting India’s behavior in forums such as the UNECE Water Convention, Dhaka can draw attention to the asymmetries of power that characterize South Asian hydropolitics.

Bangladesh’s negotiating position must be firm and principled. It should emphasize that equitable sharing is not a concession but a legal and moral obligation. Invoking international law, Dhaka can argue that upstream diversions which cause significant harm to downstream states violate established norms. It should also underscore the ecological consequences of reduced flows, from salinity intrusion in the Sundarbans to declining agricultural yields in Rajshahi and Khulna. These impacts are not confined to Bangladesh; they reverberate across the region, undermining food security and biodiversity. By framing water sharing as a collective challenge rather than a bilateral dispute, Bangladesh can appeal to broader regional and global audiences.

At the same time, Dhaka must prepare domestically. Projects like the Padma Barrage should be pursued with rigorous environmental safeguards to avoid repeating the mistakes of upstream interventions. Investments in water-efficient agriculture, groundwater management, and climate-resilient infrastructure are critical. Strengthening research and data collection will also enhance Bangladesh’s bargaining power, allowing it to present evidence-based claims in negotiations. Civil society and academic institutions can play a role in amplifying these concerns, ensuring that water politics remains a matter of public debate rather than elite diplomacy.

The nationalist rhetoric emerging from India, exemplified by Dubey’s remarks, is a warning sign. It suggests that future negotiations may be shaped less by cooperative principles and more by domestic political calculations. For Bangladesh, the challenge is to resist being cornered into accepting diminished flows. This requires a combination of principled diplomacy, international advocacy, and domestic preparedness. The expiration of the Ganges Treaty is not merely a technical deadline; it is a watershed moment that will determine the trajectory of South Asian water politics for decades to come.

As the clock ticks toward December 2026, the choices made by both India and Bangladesh will shape the destiny of millions. If rivers become instruments of cooperation, they can sustain livelihoods, ecosystems, and regional stability. If they become flashpoints of conflict, the consequences will be dire. The responsibility lies with both governments, but for Bangladesh, the path forward is clear: resist unilateralism, uphold principles, and fight for a future where water flows not as a weapon of power but as a source of shared prosperity.

Shafi Md Mostofa (PhD) is a theologian and security studies scholar with broad interests in political Islam, authoritarianism, modern South Asian history and politics, and international relations and the clash of civilizations. He is an Associate Professor of World Religions and Culture at Dhaka University’s Faculty of Arts and an Adjunct Lecturer at the University of New England, Australia. He is the author of Islamist Militancy in Bangladesh: A Pyramid Root Cause Model (Cham, Springer) and Dynamics of Violent Extremism in South Asia: Nexus between State Fragility and Extremism (Singapore, Palgrave Macmillan). He is also a guest editor of the Journal of World Affairs, SAGE.

In June 2025, Nielsen’s Global Sports Report identified the United States as one of the world’s most promising football markets: 62 million fans, 62 percent of them expecting their interest to grow around the 2026 World Cup, 76 percent of them Millennial or Gen Z, 34 percent earning over $100,000 in household income, and more receptive to brand sponsorship than any other football market globally except Brazil. FIFA’s projection of $12 billion in tournament revenue was not irrational optimism. It was the logical consequence of concentrating the world’s most popular sport in the world’s most commercially receptive market. Football, as Nielsen documents, attracts 41 percent of all sports sponsorships globally; the 2026 edition was positioned to deepen that dominance in a market where, as the report puts it, the fanbase is “eager to spend with aligned sponsors.” That report was published eight months before the United States launched Operation Epic Fury. On February 28, the US and Israel began “official” military operations against Iran. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed and a conflict involving twelve countries ignited across the Middle East. Iran is a qualified participant in the 2026 World Cup; its group matches are scheduled to take place on US soil, in Los Angeles and Seattle. All of a sudden, the tournament that was designed as FIFA’s commercial and institutional apex has become, in the words of Kristian P. Alexander, an event unfolding “against a geopolitical backdrop that few planners anticipated.”

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The most clarifying frame for understanding this moment comes not from sport management scholarship but from political philosophy, as filtered through football. Mads Skauge, paraphrasing Prussian general Clausewitz, renders a conjecture newly urgent amidst the politicization of football: “Football is the continuation of politics by other means.” The provocation is not merely rhetorical. Skauge departs from Christos Kassimeris’ The Politics of Football (2024). Kassimeris documents the historical depth of the football-politics entanglement—from Mussolini’s instrumentalisation of the 1934 World Cup to the geopolitical weight of Iran’s defeat of the United States at France 1998—to argue that the politicization of football is not an intrusion but a structural feature. Along this line, Skauge suggests that “Anyone claiming that football and politics must not be mixed is ignorant. Football has started and ended wars and elected and dismissed heads of state.” The 2026 tournament does not contradict this thesis. It represents its logical, if extreme, intensification: a case in which football has not merely reflected geopolitical tension but has been physically located inside of it.

Additional theoretical contributions, assembled into a single framework, clarify the structure of what is happening. In the introduction of The Geopolitical Economy of Football (2024), Simon Chadwick and Paul Widdop describe football as “a dense network of interconnected nodes and relationships, which bring with them complexity and sensitivity but also contradiction and, possibly, accusations of hypocrisy.” The dominant node in 2026 is the United States. When that node is destabilised—by a war of its own making—the disruption propagates across the entire network: sponsors, federations, co-hosts, broadcasters, and the governing body itself. Chadwick and Widdop observe that “without exception, this is surely the most difficult period in the sport’s modern history,” a diagnosis written before Trump’s second term and before Operation Epic Fury, yet now more prescient than its authors could have anticipated.

Another theoretical layer concerns image laundering and sportswashing. In a chapter included in The Geopolitical Economy of Football, Argyro Elisavet Manoli, Ioannis Konstantopoulos and Georgios Antonopoulos define sportswashing as the process by which “individuals, organisations or regimes/countries use sporting events or teams to improve their public image.” The canonical cases they analyse are intentional: a Gulf state purchases a club, a regime hosts an Olympics, an oligarch acquires a Premier League franchise. The 2026 case presents a structurally different configuration, including the fact that FIFA did not choose to launder the Trump administration’s image. Yet a sequence of institutional decisions—each individually defensible and each commercially rational—has produced the functional equivalent. I propose the concept of “involuntary sportswashing” to describe this configuration: a situation in which a sporting institution is captured by a host state’s political agenda through structural dependency rather than deliberate choice. The distinction from Manoli et al.’s framework is one of agency. Where conventional sportswashing is initiated by the reputationally damaged actor, involuntary sportswashing is imposed on the sporting institution by the dominant network node.

Kristian P. Alexander’s analysis of the 2026 security environment supplies the structural stabiliser that explains why resistance to this capture is so difficult. The tournament, he argues, is “widely viewed within the football world as ‘too big to fail’,” more so with 48 teams participating and FIFA projecting revenues of $12 billion. This financial anticipation implies that, “for national associations, qualification brings major financial rewards, sponsorship opportunities, and prestige. Walking away from the tournament would therefore represent not only a political statement but also a significant economic sacrifice.” This economic gravity acts, as Alexander notes, as “a stabiliser” that prevents meaningful institutional defection. The Nielsen data gives this abstraction a commercial face: the US football market is not merely the largest available venue; it is, per the 2025 Global Sports Report, the demographic future of the global game. For FIFA, challenging the host is not merely diplomatically awkward, but also commercially suicidal.

Moreover, the Iran-World Cup crisis is the empirical spine of this argument, and it unfolds in four phases that collectively map the anatomy of involuntary sportswashing in real time. The first phase precedes the war. In December 2025, Iran’s Football Federation boycotted the World Cup draw in Washington after the United States denied visas to several senior members of its delegation, including federation president Mehdi Taj. Iran demanded that its group matches be relocated from the United States to Mexico; a request that FIFA refused, and the draw proceeded without Iranian representation. These events were consequential before a single missile was fired: they established that the host state’s immigration apparatus operated as a geopolitical filter on the tournament’s participation, and that FIFA would not—or could not—intervene.

The second phase begins with Operation Epic Fury on February 28. Within days of the military campaign’s launch, Iranian Sports Minister Ahmad Donyamali declared on state television: “Considering that this corrupt regime has assassinated our leader, under no circumstances can we participate in the World Cup.” The statement was unambiguous. The host nation had killed the head of state of a qualified participant. When asked about Iran’s possible withdrawal, President Trump said he “really doesn’t care” whether Iran plays. The two statements—placed side by side —compress the geopolitical condition of the tournament into its starkest form. Football’s governing body, in the interval between those two statements, was trapped. Chadwick and Widdop’s observation that football’s network actors face “difficult decisions that, almost inevitably, result in difficult choices needing to be made and the consequences of these decisions having to be managed and evaluated” describes the situation precisely—with the significant caveat that the difficult choice was made not by football but by the dominant network node.

The third phase focuses on negotiation. A fragile and failed ceasefire took effect on April 8. FIFA Secretary General Mattias Grafström met representatives of the Football Federation of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Istanbul on May 16. Iran presented ten conditions for participation, among them visa guarantees for members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Two weeks later at the FIFA Congress in Vancouver on May 30, President Gianni Infantino confirmed that Iran would compete. Their matches remain scheduled for US soil as originally planned—a decision reached, with notable irony, in the same week that Mehdi Taj was denied entry to Canada to attend the Congress itself. The fourth phase is the present. As of a few days before kick-off, the ceasefire is described by analysts as unsteady. A potential group stage encounter between the United States and Iran in Dallas looms as the tournament’s most freighted fixture—a rematch, in an active ceasefire, of the game Kassimeris identifies as a textbook instance of “power relations” enacted on the pitch, when Iran defeated the United States at France 1998.

The Iran crisis is the most concentrated instance of the tournament’s access problem, but it is not the only one. Chadwick and Widdop note that “geography as an influence upon football is somewhat undervalued,” and the 2026 format makes this undervaluation consequential. The US–Mexico border—the physical seam of a tri-national tournament—is a politically weaponised membrane whose permeability is determined by the dominant node. In January 2026, ICE agents shot Renée Nicole Good, intensifying concerns about the treatment of visitors during the summer. Reports emerged of fans staying away from the preceding FIFA Club World Cup, held in the United States, out of fear of apprehension. A travel ban covering twelve countries, including Iran and the qualifying nation Haiti, created a tiered global access architecture that formally contradicts football’s universalist claims. Palestinian officials were denied entry into Canada to attend a FIFA meeting. The tournament that introduced the expanded 48-team format—explicitly designed to broaden global participation—is the most access-restricted in the history of the competition.

Nielsen’s data illuminates a structural contradiction embedded in this access problem. The US football fanbase is 22 percent Hispanic—the demographic most directly exposed to the host state’s immigration enforcement apparatus. The community most commercially valuable to FIFA’s sponsors is the community most vulnerable to the political conditions that FIFA’s institutional alignment with the host has helped to normalise. This is not incidental. It is the demographic face of involuntary sportswashing: the sport’s growth market and the state’s enforcement target are the same population.

Alongside geopolitical conflict and immigration enforcement, there is a third dimension of the security environment that has received less sustained analytical attention but which the data now makes impossible to ignore: the persistence of mass gun violence across the United States in the weeks immediately preceding the tournament. In the period between 1 May and 6 June 2026—the five weeks before the World Cup opens—recorded data from the Gun Violence Archive documents over fifty mass shooting incidents across the country, spanning states that include Texas, Florida, California, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri, Michigan, and New York. The incidents range from shootings in Dallas— one of the nine host cities, scheduled to stage the most matches of any single venue—to events in Philadelphia, Kansas City, and Minneapolis, all of which will receive international visitors for tournament fixtures. This is not a series of isolated incidents. It is the statistical baseline of a country that, in 2026, will host 78 of the tournament’s 104 matches, including every fixture from the quarterfinals onward, both semifinals, the third-place playoff, and the final at MetLife Stadium in New York.

The analytical weight of this data is distinct from the geopolitical threats discussed above. The Iran crisis, the travel ban, and the immigration enforcement climate are all products of deliberate state policy—conditions that could, in principle, be altered by institutional or political decision. Mass gun violence in the United States is not a policy deployed against the tournament. It is an endemic condition of the host society that the tournament must absorb. Alexander observes that for the 2026 security environment, “mega-events like the World Cup already involve extensive security preparations, including intelligence coordination, counterterrorism policing, cyber monitoring, and surveillance technologies,” and that “the United States is expected to treat the tournament as a national security event of the highest order.” But the security architecture designed for counterterrorism and geopolitical threats is a different instrument from the one required to address the quotidian reality of gun violence in cities that will host hundreds of thousands of international visitors. The distinction matters: one threat can be managed through border and intelligence operations; the other is embedded in the civic fabric of the host itself.

Chadwick and Widdop’s network framework is useful here. They argue that football’s geopolitical economy creates conditions in which “everything is connected,” and that organisations involved in the sport “must constantly reconcile competing demands.” The gun violence data adds a node to the 2026 network that FIFA did not model and cannot address: the risk is not external to the host, as a terrorist attack would be, nor is it a product of the host’s foreign policy, as the Iran crisis is. It is constitutive of the environment in which the matches will be played. Kassimeris’ observation that football’s symbolic infrastructure includes stadiums as “religious territory in football religion” carries a different resonance when those stadiums are located in cities where mass shootings occurred in the calendar weeks before international fans were scheduled to arrive. The question that the data poses is not whether a shooting will occur during the tournament—that is a probability calculation beyond this article’s scope—but whether a society with this statistical profile of gun violence can serve as the credible guarantor of the security it has committed to provide.

The mechanism of involuntary sportswashing is traceable in a chain of institutional acts, each individually defensible, collectively constituting a performed political alignment. In December 2025, Infantino presented Trump with the first-ever FIFA Peace Prize at the World Cup draw in Washington—held at Trump’s insistence at the Trump National Golf Club in Doral, Miami. In the weeks that followed, Infantino made multiple visits to the Oval Office alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and Vice President JD Vance. In May 2026, FIFA confirmed at Vancouver that Iran would play on US soil, providing the Trump administration with a normalising sporting narrative around a ceasefire whose military consequences remain ongoing. None of these were choices to endorse a war. In sequence, they constitute its functional legitimation. Kassimeris’ framework explains the baseline: “football has been instrumental in forming national identity, facilitating international relations and serving political propaganda.” What 2026 reveals is the inversion of that dynamic: it is no longer a state using football as an instrument; it is football being used as an instrument by the state, without the sport’s consent and beyond its capacity to resist.

The commercial network is fracturing under the same pressures. Up to 40 percent of tickets remain unsold at the time of writing. Hotel room rates in Dallas, Miami and Philadelphia have fallen by approximately one third from their peak earlier in the year. The resale market has pushed prices below face value across the majority of US fixtures. These figures stand in direct contrast to Nielsen’s 2025 projections of a market primed for record brand engagement. Chadwick and Widdop observe that non-state commercial actors are “fundamentally re-shaping the sport” and that their involvement carries “complexities and challenges which, even 20 years ago, the sport did not face.” FIFA’s global commercial partners illustrate the point. Kia-Hyundai, a Korean manufacturer whom Trump labelled a “job killer” and subjected to trade tariffs, will display its logos across stadiums in the country of the president who targeted it. Hisense, whose ownership links to the Qingdao province state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission—an entity that ensures alignment with Chinese Communist Party economic and political goals—operates in a commercial environment defined by the same US administration that has identified China as a strategic adversary. The geopolitical turbulence that FIFA cannot address has been absorbed by the sponsors that depend on it.

Against this institutional silence, a counter-network has formed. Kassimeris’ analysis of football’s symbolic politics—of how “crests, mythologised players, stadiums, anthems, flags and banners” function as “important symbols and an integrated part of clubs’ cultural heritage,” and of how supporter mobilisation constitutes a form of political agency—frames the resistance that has formed around 2026. Ninety civil society organisations wrote an open letter to Infantino warning that FIFA risks being used as a public relations instrument to rehabilitate an administration whose policies threaten the safety and dignity of the tournament’s visitors. Political figures and fan groups in France called for a boycott. England’s LGBTQ+ supporter organisation, Three Lions Pride, urged fans to stay away over concerns about immigration enforcement and civil liberties. Dutch parliamentarians received a petition to the same effect. Spanish women’s handball players appeared at an international match wearing pro-Palestinian symbols on their shoes. These are not peripheral gestures. They are the exercise of what Kassimeris identifies as football’s counter-political potential: “that spontaneous street protests reverse a decision made among the world’s most powerful in 48 hours could not happen in any other sport.” The Super League collapse is an example; the 2026 question is whether equivalent collective pressure can move an institution whose too-big-to-fail logic is worth $12 billion.

What 2026 demands of football’s stakeholders is a question that all theoretical sources raise without fully resolving. Kassimeris notes that “describing a phenomenon is easier than doing something about them.” Manoli et al. argue that the conditions enabling sportswashing require structural regulatory responses, not merely individual critical mindsets. Chadwick and Widdop call for stakeholders with a “sharp sense of cause-and-effect” allied to geopolitical risk literacy. Alexander identifies the specific pressure point: that FIFA “risks appearing aligned with US policy if it ignores boycott calls or discourages political expression by players and fans.” Nielsen’s data reframes the normative question in commercial terms: if 67 percent of global football fans find sponsor brands more appealing, those same fans are now watching FIFA perform institutional silence in the face of a war, a border enforcement regime, and the statistical reality of mass gun violence in the cities where the matches will be played. Three obligations follow from this convergence. FIFA must acknowledge publicly, not merely manage privately, that its commercial dependency on the United States has produced a condition of involuntary sportswashing—silence is itself a political act. National federations must protect their athletes’ right to political expression without requiring FIFA’s permission. And the academic and policy community must develop frameworks adequate to the genuinely new configuration that 2026 presents—one in which the threats to a global mega-event are not imported from outside the host society but are constitutive of it.

The 2026 World Cup will proceed. The too-big-to-fail logic, Iran’s eventual confirmation, and the financial weight of 48 nations’ participation ensure that. But proceeding is not the same as succeeding, and a successful tournament is not the same as a moment of global solidarity. The concept of “involuntary sportswashing,” proposed here, names the structural trap that FIFA cannot escape through goodwill alone: a situation in which the laundering effect is produced not by intention but by the accumulated weight of commercial decisions that have made genuine institutional autonomy impossible. Nielsen documented the promise in June 2025: 62 million fans, the most brand-receptive audience in global football, a demographic future of which any governing body would want to be a part. The country that hosts those fans recorded more than fifty mass shootings in the five weeks before the tournament opened. Its government is in a ceasefire with a team scheduled to play on its soil. Its immigration apparatus deters the very visitors whose presence justifies the commercial projections on which the entire enterprise rests. Infantino presented Trump with a Peace Prize in December 2025 and confirmed Iran’s participation on US soil five months later. The coin that Skauge says football and politics share—paraphrasing Prussian general Clausewitz—has never been more dangerous to hold, and FIFA is holding it with both hands.

Franco Laguna Correa holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies from UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a remote Research Associate at the University of Pittsburgh and works as an immigration legal analyst in Mexico City. His scholarship focuses on the intersection of biopolitical dynamics, border studies, and deterritorialization processes in global migration.

Decolonial international relations (IR) scholarship has proliferated, yet the colonial nature of knowledge production has persisted. This paradox raises two fundamental questions: how do we understand decolonial theory and what should be expected of it? Epistemological decolonization has taken off in the last three decades (Sen 2023, Lugones 2016, Mignolo 2007, Quijano 2000), though its roots date back over fifty years in non-Western social sciences circles (Ake 1979, wa Thiong’o 1986). Since then, contemporary works have compellingly contended why IR requires decolonial approaches in research (Sharma 2021, Blaney and Tickner 2017, Acharya 2014, Krishna 2012), in the classroom (Sharma 2024, Boer Cueva, Catterson, and Shepard 2023), its role beyond discourse, (Kapoor 2023, Sondarjee and Andrews 2023), importance of differentiating between decentring the Western gaze and decolonializing (Sondarjee 2023, Orbie et al. 2023), and influence of the Eurocentric approach on expectations of knowledge production (Behera 2021). This article departs from these conversations by challenging the fundamental expectations of decolonial theory itself. It argues that today’s decolonization movement in IR requires more material action, not extensive intellectual elaboration. It invites scholars to wrestle with the idea that the discipline does not need another decolonial theory. It does, however, urgently require reparative action in its knowledge production processes and focus on the material dimension.

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International Relations was established as an academic discipline in 1919 following World War I. At the time, political leaders began deploying the idea of “national self‑determination” and enshrining a new world of equal, sovereign states. However, instead of creating an equal international order, international politicking continued to produce similar asymmetrical power structures to the previous era. In parallel, international relations (IR) as an academic subject was established with the same logic, consequently extending the colonial-imperial realm through ”assumptions, concepts, and language… infused with imperial and colonial reasoning” (Saurin 2006, 24; Sen 2023). As a result, decolonial IR understands IR as “...purpose-built to forefront the perspectives of the metropole, while also marginalising the experiences and knowledge of the ‘darker ... races’” (Ibid 340, Clapton 2023). This tension has animated recent IR scholarship, particularly (non) Western and (de)colonial, specifically as to whether IR studies world politics or general politics through a Western lens.  

In reaction to the intellectual exclusion, the sub-field of non-Western IR has proliferated and established several principles that critique and offer alternatives to Western (traditional) IR’s epistemological  and ontological foundations: (Viramontes 2022, Hobson 2012, Bilgin 2010). For example, since the Enlightenment, Western philosophy has prized the notion of truth and objectivity (Kurki and Wight 2014). This affinity has permeated into IR and its scientific explorations, shaping the discipline’s positivistic expectations for theory testing, validating findings, and deeming what questions are worthy of inquiry.

Decolonial scholars contend that remaining objective throughout the research process is unattainable; researchers themselves cannot wholly divorce themselves from their own context, epistemological positionality, confirmation bias, or internal points of reference. Black Feminist, Chicana, and non-Global Minority intellectuals articulated early on (Collins 1990, Moraga and Anzaldúa 1983, Dussel 1977) that researchers speak and write from a “particular location in the power structure” (Sharma 2021, Grosfoguel 2011, Castro-Gómez 2005). If researchers cannot be objective, then the traditional IR claim that Western scholarship produces universal knowledge becomes suspect.  

To organize through the researcher’s subjectivity, some scholars have sketched out avenues for how subjectivity and reflexivity can fit into IR theory (Guillaume 2002), as well as the need for a radical reflexive turn overall (Hamati-Ataya 2012). From a process perspective, practices such as requiring positionality statements, reflexive and subjectivity analyses in methods sections, and structured cross-examinations in ethics processes are part and parcel of interrogating assumed objectivity. These practices are not meant to be panaceas nor are they immune to colonial thinking (Gani and Khan 2024). Nonetheless, they remain a valuable opportunity for the researcher to map out avenues and cautions in which their position could impact their processes and outcomes. However, the issue remains: as long as the discipline continues to standardize objectivity without critical practice, works that align themselves accordingly gain an epistemological advantage over explicitly positioned non-Western scholarship. This produces continued fracturing and marginalization of non-Western knowledge and traditions.  

Building upon this foundation of prizing objectivity, the discipline has also established generalizability as a standard of theoretical validity (King, Keohane, and Verba 1994, Sartori 2014, Levy 1997, and Wolfers 1947), with more worthwhile theories being those that explain more cases across the globe. As Aradau and Huysmans noted, “in most of the literature the concepts of method and methodology mobilise a demand for rigour, systematicity, scientificity, or generalisability” (2014, 10). Interestingly, recent empirical work has challenged whether the theoretical generalizations produced by traditional IR are truly universal. Bysan-Nagate et al. (2025) found that IR theories are overwhelmingly based on evidence coming from the United States. This echoes the aforementioned contradiction: scholars operating in the traditional IR paradigm argue that their theories are universal precisely because they were derived through rigorous scientific methods applied to diverse cases. Yet, empirical analysis shows IR’s empirical and theoretical foundations remain Lilliputian and Western-dominated. 

On a more philosophical basis, non-Western and decolonial scholars assert that an emphasis on universality privileges reductionism, as pursuing generalizability as the standard of validity requires theories to be reduced, if not significantly uprooted, in their own contexts. Consequently, context-specific knowledge from non-Western scholars appears "particular" rather than "universal" and therefore less rigorous. Considering generalizability as an institutional value, these privileges work that align themselves accordingly, leading to rapid expansion of one type of knowledge to the exclusion of the others (Anderl and Witt 2020, Chatterjee 2021, Escobar 2018, Reiter 2018). These critiques point to a larger question as to whether IR truly embodies the international (Acharya 2014, Hoffman 1977). Indeed, theories aiming to improve the understanding of world politics that are based upon a handful of countries are provincial, not international.  Other cases have illuminated the constraints involved in mobilizing classical IR theories for the non-Western cases. For example, Safi, Momand, and Safi’s (2025) research argue drawing upon indigenous paradigms to study Afghanistan, such as the Loya-Jirga, could enhance dominant paradigms in understanding varying contexts.  

Another issue arising between Western and non-Western scholars centers on the challenges of developing theories of a context far away and unfamiliar. Specifically, the risk of exoticizing or commodifying societies and people as units of analysis, effectively orientalizing and essentializing the non-West (Lee 2023, Ramakrishnan 1999). Although this is not unique to IR, several patterns and ways of categorizing are relevant to how the field conceptualizes states, societies, and power. This includes binary templates between colonizer vs. the colonized (Bhabha 1994) and Global North and. Global South (Deridder and Eyebiyi 2025). Apart from the ethical issues that arise in mobilizing totalizing binaries, these templates lack the infrastructure to show how the world is interdependent - economically, politically, socially, technologically, and more. In sum, they flatten and simplify relationships that would otherwise lead to rich contributions to International Relations.  

Calls for decolonization in IR research have coincided with movements for diversity, for epistemological pluralism, active inclusion, and the recognition of marginalized ways of knowing and histories (Lim 2025). Chipato and Chandler (2022) argue that decolonial approaches by expanding the field beyond Western and Euro-centrist approaches in a bid to repair and reconstruct a more diverse International Relations.  Simmons and Smith (2025) offer alternatives to classic generalizability, such as using the lessons of translation: “...a recursive process of making sense of ideas or phenomena across two or more contexts with the goal of illuminating family resemblances in the concepts, political practices, or causal processes among them.” 

Yet, decolonializing IR is not only about remaking knowledge, but transforming how it is produced. "Decolonisation, after all, is not simply a ‘topic’ to be covered in classrooms but a politics aimed at promoting access to critical learning and knowledge production by all – and by the subaltern first” (Kapoor 2023, 353). Basing his argument in development studies, Kapoor names epistemic decolonization and material decolonization as avenues to redress the discipline’s "colonial past and neocolonial present” (250). The former involves remaking knowledge production while the latter consists of a “range of strategies at the level of the university,” including universal access to higher education for marginalized populations throughout the globe, pushing back on neoliberalization, privatization and corporate-making of the University, all of which have pertinent lessons for the IR discipline.  

What remains unaddressed is that most work from this tradition, particularly from Western institutions, rarely includes mentions of addressing material dimensions of decolonizing knowledge production, save for a few that touch upon its political economy (Ibid., El Kurd 2023, Sen 2023, Behera 2021, Kamola 2020). The lack of material mention is ironic in a discipline devoted to studying the impact on the exchange of both material and immaterial goods between entities. If the field is to take seriously the impact of material dimensions in global politics, it cannot neglect the material and hierarchical conditions that shape its own knowledge production. This oversight suggests that calls for decolonization may remain incomplete and/or performative (Two Convivial Thinkers  2024).  

As noted by Kapoor (2023), fighting for one dimension without the other is a step backward for the decolonial IR project. In the spirit of moving forward, this article addresses an aforementioned trap laid by focusing on epistemology alone: “the goal here is to rethink, for example, the privileging of theory …" (Kapoor 2023, 351). Decolonization cannot stop at diversifying ideas or increasing representation in curricula and hiring committees. At its core, decolonization requires material redistribution of resources and epistemic authority. The notion that decolonial theory will lead to decolonization is conceptually contradictory. Theories by nature carry no commitment to action. Hence, decolonial theory and the epistemic dimension alone cannot deliver on tangibly changing the discipline. As Sen (2023, 340) observes:  

From the appearance of a multiplicity of articles and special issues in the major IR journals to panels and roundtables at large international conferences focused on the colonial makings and imperial workings of IR, there seems to be a reasonable degree of mainstream recognition of the discipline’s coloniality. But as was also evident during my department seminar, recognition does not necessarily lead to the acceptance of reparative strategies. 

Decolonial as theory is misleading because it categorizes decolonization as first and foremost an intellectual exercise – critiquing colonial epistemologies, proposing alternative frameworks, and centering marginalized voices in analysis. Albeit important, this collapses the decolonial project into a cerebral one, side-stepping conversations that demand action to redress palpable colonial harms. Even well-intentioned decolonial scholars cannot bridge this gap while only relying solely on intellectual tools. 

To be decolonial in IR knowledge production is to intellectually and practically interrupt and resist the cycle of domination, hierarchy, and rentierism. If the goal is to decolonize the field holistically, in methodology, approach, theory, and practice, then scholars must accept that decolonization is not a cerebral activity. In other words, teaching curricula are not decolonial. Reading lists are not decolonial. Analyses are not decolonial. But what is done afterward can be (Kuang 2024). Based on this definition, there are two spaces in which decolonial action can occur. One, which is well addressed by the literature, is within the knowledge itself. But another, which has gone largely untouched on a systemic scale, is within knowledge production practices inside the academy. Applying decolonial action internally is chiefly about resisting the normalization of exploitative knowledge production practices. This includes paying “regional” or “local scholars” less for the equivalent (but oftentimes more) work conducted than if they were from the Global North.  

When working toward material decolonization, scholars should take caution to differentiate between support and solidarity. A decolonial praxis favors solidarity as support “... can be occasional. It can be given and just as easily withdrawn. Solidarity requires sustained, ongoing commitment” (hooks 1984, 67). Solidarity for decolonial scholars is acting on decolonial principles inside research processes and community in a concrete way. It has become evident that the consequences of not integrating material action alongside decolonial verbiage are what led to the paradox of the two co-existing from the start.

Min Young Park is a researcher at Charted LLC, a women-owned consultancy specializing in humanitarian-focused data analysis, research, design, and GIS. She was a doctoral researcher at the University of Glasgow, funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council. Prior, she was an Information Officer for the World Food Programme’s Emergencies Department and an evaluation and communication consultant for the International Organization for Migration – Iraq Office. She completed her MA in International Security from Sciences Po Paris, and BA in International Studies and Arabic from Emory University, and is a Questbridge scholar.

The Thinking Global Team brings to you the highlights from Day 3 of the British International Studies Association (BISA) Conference 2026 in Brighton. Kieran (University of St. Andrews ⁠⁠⁠@kieranjomeara⁠⁠⁠) and Marianna (University of Birmingham, @Faloulah) speak to Juliet Dryden (BISA), Rong Wei (University of Birmingham), Chris Featherstone (University of York), Myriam Fotou (University of Leicester), Sabrina Medeiros  (Lusófona University Lisbon), Saoirse McGilligan (University of St. Andrews) and Theo Poward (Leeds Church Institute) about the conference and their work.

Also, stay tuned for our exclusive interview with the keynote speaker of the conference – Prof. Kimberly Hutchings (Queen Mary University of London), which will follow this in a stand-alone episode. Thinking Global joins BISA for the second time in 2026 to record insights of the conference directly from Brighton. Follow us on social media and make sure you subscribe to our newsletter!

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Westlessness: The Great Global Rebalancing
By Samir Puri
Hodder & Stoughton, 2024

Samir Puri's Westlessness engages with a key debate in international relations: whether the weakening of Western dominance indicates systemic decline, hegemonic transition, or structural normalization. The central question is diagnostic: how and why is Western centrality becoming diluted across multiple domains of global order? Puri's use of “westlessness” is not purely idiosyncratic; it explicitly echoes the term’s policy lineage. The concept gained prominence at the Munich Security Conference (2020, p. 6), which framed the idea that “the world is becoming less Western” and that “the West itself may become less Western, too.” Puri’s contribution is to translate that agenda-setting diagnosis into a longer historical account of “westfullness”, a period in which Western power saturated the institutions and norms of globalization, and then to track how that saturation is thinning. The book positions itself less as a prediction of Western collapse and more as an attempt to name a structural condition: Western authority persists, but alternative centers of legitimacy and rule-making increasingly contest it.

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The book unfolds through a conceptual introduction followed by four thematic parts, each designed to illuminate a different mechanism through which Western centrality becomes increasingly contested. 'Westfull World', reconstructs the historical foundations of Western predominance. Puri traces how geographic advantages, maritime expansion, colonial extraction, and industrialization collectively enabled European powers and later the United States to shape the architecture of globalization. He emphasizes that this concentration of influence was “far from inevitable”, thereby challenging narratives that portray Western leadership as a natural endpoint of political development (Puri, 2024, p. 37).

In 'People', Puri treats demographic redistribution as a slow but decisive driver of geopolitical change. He draws on UN population projections to show that “whereas in 1950, almost 30% of humanity lived in Europe, North America and Australasia, this is projected to drop to just 12% by 2050” (p.122). His point is not that population size translates directly into power, but that the long-term arithmetic of human capital, labor markets, and consumer demand is gradually pulling economic gravity away from the transatlantic core.

The 'Power' section tracks how material and strategic capabilities are diversifying beyond the traditional Western core. Puri pays particular attention to middle powers such as Turkey, India, and the Gulf states, which increasingly pursue hedging strategies and transactional partnerships rather than aligning with Western security frameworks. He cites projections that the E7 (China, India, Brazil, Russia, Indonesia, Mexico, and Turkey), the largest emerging economies, “are expected to overtake the G7 in economic size during the 2030s” (p. 206).

Finally, Planet extends the analysis to climate governance and resource competition, arguably the section in which “westlessness” poses the sharpest practical dilemmas. Puri argues that Western-led frameworks like the Paris Agreement require buy-in from states whose interests often run counter to them. He is blunt that “the climate debate will have to change from an adult-to-child tone towards a more adult-to-adult tone if the Western countries want to have credibility in engaging with the Global South countries” (Puri, 2024, p. 309). In other words, westlessness is not simply multipolarity; it is multipolarity combined with weakened presumptions of Western rule-setting.

The institutional resilience argument holds that cooperation can outlast hegemonic dominance because rules and expectations become embedded and self-reinforcing. However, more recent work stresses that the liberal international order is experiencing not merely power diffusion but deeper legitimacy contestation. For example, David A. Lake (2026) argues that the order is now “deeply contested,” emphasizing challenges to the authority of rules themselves. Puri’s formulation of contested Western influence fits squarely within this emerging literature. The picture that emerges is not one of coordinated resistance to Western leadership but of fragmented, interest-driven calculation, states making case-by-case judgments about where alignment serves them and where it does not. This is a more textured and persuasive account than the familiar “rise of the rest” narrative because it avoids treating the Global South as a coherent bloc and instead foregrounds the messiness of a system in which no single center of gravity commands reliable followership.

One of the book’s most significant scholarly contributions lies in its implicit challenge to Eurocentric security frameworks. Rather than treating Asia, Africa, and the Middle East primarily as passive arenas of great-power rivalry, Puri consistently portrays actors across these regions as strategic agents operating within an increasingly fluid international environment. Living and working outside the West, Puri reports hearing perspectives ranging from ‘abject fear that the West might retreat’ to ‘all-out ranting in which the West can do no right’ (Puri, 2024, p. 89). This deliberate engagement with non-Western viewpoints aligns closely with contemporary debates on postcolonial security and strategic autonomy. The empirical chapters substantiate this repositioning. Puri’s discussion of the China-US rivalry illustrates how contemporary bipolar tensions unfold within a structurally plural landscape rather than a tightly ordered hierarchy. Similarly, the examination of global football politics surrounding Russia 2018 and Qatar 2022 (Puri, 2024, p. 29) demonstrates how symbolic authority, legitimacy, and soft power are increasingly contested in arenas no longer monopolized by Western hosts or narratives.

For Global South actors, Puri stops short of suggesting that rebalancing produces a fundamentally more equitable international order. Instead, he depicts an emerging system that remains structurally uneven even as Western dominance becomes more contested. As he acknowledges, “nothing is guaranteed in the forward passage of emerging economies,” even as the broad trajectory points toward economic decentralization (Puri, 2024, p. 213). This analytical restraint ultimately strengthens the book’s credibility. By avoiding both declinist pessimism and multipolar romanticism, Westlessness offers a nuanced framework that speaks directly to current debates on structural inequality, the transformation of global governance, and the evolving strategic agency of the Global South.

The book is most useful for shifting the conversation from whether Western-built institutions will survive to what political bargains they will need to strike. Keohane’s work on institutional resilience assumed a world in which participants broadly internalized the leading state’s preferences; Puri’s contribution is to ask what happens when that internalization breaks down, but the institutions remain standing. However, two concerns remain.

First, the diagnosis of rebalancing is persuasive, but the book provides limited guidance on what durable security cooperation might look like under conditions of persistent contestation. If Western leadership is thinning but institutional frameworks remain formally intact, the mechanisms sustaining collective action require fuller theoretical development. This gap is particularly notable given Keohane’s emphasis on institutional adaptation during hegemonic decline. The answer, which the book gestures toward without fully developing, is that institutions become sites of negotiation over terms rather than mechanisms for implementing a settled consensus, a condition that demands analytical tools different from those offered by either hegemonic stability theory or straightforward liberal institutionalism.

Second, the concept of “the West” can at times lack clear analytical boundaries. At different points, it appears geographic, institutional, and civilizational, creating a degree of conceptual elasticity that weakens the measurement of “westlessness” across cases. If “westlessness” is now a durable condition, the hard question is not whether diffusion is occurring, but what institutional designs can sustain cooperation when legitimacy is pluralized and ‘the West’ itself is internally contested. Because the argument ultimately hinges on the West’s relative position within the global order, greater definitional precision would strengthen the framework’s explanatory clarity and enhance its utility for comparative security analysis.

Westlessness makes a serious intervention in how we think about the Global South’s place in international security. Puri grounds his analysis in historical contingency, treats non-Western actors as agents rather than objects, and insists that order is contested rather than collapsing. The book would be sharper with greater definitional precision around “the West” and more on what cooperation looks like when legitimacy is no longer concentrated in Western hands. Nevertheless, “westlessness” as a concept does genuine analytical work; it forces a move past triumphalism and declinism toward a harder question: how do states cooperate when power is diffusing but inequality is not?

References

Ikenberry, G. J. (2018). The end of liberal international order? International Affairs, 94(1), 7–23. https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iix241

Kennedy, P. (1987). The rise and fall of the great powers: Economic change and military conflict from 1500 to 2000. Introduction. Random House. https://cheirif.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/paul-kennedy-the-rise-and-fallofthe-great-powers-19891.pdf

Keohane, R. O. (2012). Hegemony and after: Knowns and unknowns in the debate over decline. Foreign Affairs, 91(4), 114–118. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23218044?seq=1

Lake, D. A. (2026). The end of the liberal international order? Globalization, deep contestation, and the future. Chinese Journal of International Politics, 19(1), 10–24. https://doi.org/10.1093/cjip/poaf016

Morey, M. (2025). Review of Westlessness: The great global rebalancing, by Samir Puri. International Affairs, 101(1), 344–346. https://academic.oup.com/ia/article-abstract/101/1/344/7942173

Munich Security Conference. (2020). Munich Security Report 2020: Westlessness (PDF). https://securityconference.org/assets/user_upload/MunichSecurityReport2020.pdf

Puri, S. (2024). Westlessness: The great global rebalancing [Kindle edition]. Hodder & Stoughton. https://www.hodder.co.uk/titles/samir-puri/westlessness/9781399714091/

Rodriguez, J. L. & Thornton, C. (2022). The liberal international order and the global south: A view from Latin America. Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 35(5), 626–638. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09557571.2022.2107326

Khulan Bud holds a Master of Public Policy from the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy, and a Bachelor of Arts in International Development from King’s College London. He researches the intersection of finance, data, and public policy, with broad interests in economic development, financial inclusion, and the use of quantitative methods to inform policy.

Editorial Credit: Felipe Crowhurst Pons

One of the most significant obstacles to any durable agreement between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States is the divergence of their strategic red lines. While Washington has, over the past two decades, consistently sought to make Iran’s missile capabilities, military capacity, and regional influence part of the negotiation agenda, Tehran has considered these areas non-negotiable components of national security and deterrence, refusing to discuss them. The result has been a persistent deadlock, one that has not only hindered broader agreements but, particularly over the past year, has contributed to heightened tensions and even the risk of military confrontation. The central question, therefore, is whether a pathway exists to overcome this deadlock—one that neither requires Iran to compromise its core red lines nor ignores the concerns of the other side.

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The answer may be found in the historical experience of arms control among major powers. During the Cold War, despite unprecedented ideological, political, and military rivalry, the United States and the Soviet Union gradually recognized that an unchecked arms race could threaten both parties’ security. Consequently, a series of arms control agreements emerged, among the most notable of which were the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), and the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). These agreements were not designed to eliminate the opposing side’s military capabilities but rather to strike a balance between maintaining deterrence and curbing the uncontrolled escalation of the arms race. In essence, the fundamental principle was that sustainable security is achieved not through eliminating the adversary’s power but through regulating competition and managing disputes.

This experience can offer valuable lessons for Iran-U.S. relations. While the Middle Eastern strategic environment differs significantly from the global context of the Cold War, the underlying principle remains: it is possible to engage in discussions regarding military capabilities without relinquishing deterrence. In such a framework, negotiations would focus not on the existence of military power itself but on its scope and limits. Just as arms control agreements among major powers concentrated on two domains—quantity and quality of weaponry—any prospective mechanism between Iran and the United States could similarly address quantitative and qualitative indicators. Quantity refers to the number of systems and platforms, while quality encompasses features such as range, accuracy, destructive power, and other technical characteristics. Crucially, these limitations only make sense if two foundational principles are preserved: sustained deterrence and the maintenance of regional power balance.

For Iran, these two principles are particularly critical. Over the past decades, Iran’s missile capabilities have become its primary instrument of national deterrence. These capabilities were developed in an environment of restricted access to advanced weapons systems and the pervasive U.S. military presence in the surrounding region. Therefore, any discussion of potential limitations must be premised on preserving Iran’s deterrence. Equally, the regional power balance must not be disrupted. Limitations designed so that only one party bears costs while the other reaps benefits would not only be unsustainable but could become a source of new instability.

A central challenge arises from how the United States perceives the negotiation process. A significant portion of Washington’s strategic calculations appears influenced by a logic described in game theory as the “Chicken Game.” In this scenario, each side attempts to convince the other to back down at the last moment by escalating pressure. Success is achieved not through compromise but through demonstrating greater willingness to endure risk. U.S. behavior toward Iran in recent years can largely be interpreted through this lens. Even during periods of ongoing negotiations, Washington has simultaneously implemented new sanctions, intensified economic pressures, increased military presence in the region, and strengthened deterrent alliances against Iran. This approach reflects an underlying assumption in parts of U.S. decision-making: that the Islamic Republic will ultimately yield on some red lines to prevent the escalation of crisis.

The problem with this perception is that it can lead to miscalculations. If both parties assume the other will back down at the final moment, the risk of unintended confrontation increases. Cold War experience demonstrated that strategic stability arises not from unilateral pressure but from mutual recognition of power realities and limitations. Accordingly, the simultaneous application of military and economic pressure alongside negotiations conveys that the aim is coercion rather than reaching a balanced and sustainable agreement. In this context, a proposed mechanism based on mutually agreed military limitations could offer several advantages for Iran. First, it could prevent negotiation deadlocks. When the other side insists on raising missile and security issues, Tehran could respond not by outright rejection but by presenting an alternative framework—one that preserves deterrence while keeping channels for dialogue open. Second, such an initiative could enhance Iran’s international standing. Historically, arms control agreements have been negotiated primarily among major powers. Iran’s participation in such dialogues, regardless of the final outcome, would signify recognition of its strategic weight in regional security calculations.

Nonetheless, this approach is not without challenges. The most significant is ensuring compliance. The U.S. withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) demonstrated that even formal agreements can be affected by domestic political developments. Hence, any new mechanism must incorporate enforceable guarantees and effective monitoring arrangements. Furthermore, before presenting any proposal, internal consensus among Iran’s political, diplomatic, and military leadership on the scope and limits of engagement is essential. Decisions about which areas can be subject to limitations and what concessions should be demanded are not merely technical—they are directly tied to national security and long-term interests.

Ultimately, the success of any diplomatic initiative depends on two fundamental conditions: domestic consensus and alignment with international realities. If these conditions are met, a viable option exists that goes beyond absolute resistance and unilateral concession—one rooted in managing competition, preserving deterrence, and maintaining balance. Historical experience demonstrates that even the deepest security disputes do not render dialogue impossible. The key question is not whether Iran and the United States disagree, but whether both sides are willing to define rules for managing those disagreements rather than attempting to force the other to yield. If such a willingness exists, overcoming the deadlock of red lines moves from aspiration to a tangible possibility in international politics.

Abed Akbari is Deputy at the Center for Strategic Studies, Presidential Office of Iran. He earned his PhD in History and Political Sciences from Shiraz University and previously served as a lecturer at Allameh Tabataba’i University (ATU) in Tehran. His broad research interests include international security studies, European studies, and Iran-Europe relations. He regularly contributes policy analysis and commentary on geopolitical issues and Iran’s foreign policy for SpecialEurasia.

Editorial Credit: Zeinab Nikookar

The Thinking Global Team brings to you the highlights from Day 2 of the British International Studies Association (BISA) Conference 2026 in Brighton. Kieran (University of St. Andrews ⁠⁠⁠@kieranjomeara⁠⁠⁠) and Marianna (University of Birmingham, @Faloulah) speak to Ayse Polat (University of Oxford), Karoline Färber (University of Erfurt), Patrícia Nabuco Martuscelli (University of Shefield), Gah-Kai Leung (University of Warwick) and Alexandros Koutsoukis (University of Lancashire) about the conference and their work. Stay tuned for Day 3. Thinking Global joins BISA for the second time to record insights of the conference directly from Brighton. Follow us on social media and make sure you subscribe to our newsletter! If you enjoy the output of E-International Relations, please consider a ⁠donation⁠.

Mark Ellis is the Executive Director of the International Bar Association (IBA). He served as Legal Advisor to the Kosovo Commission and advised the OSCE on the creation of Serbia’s War Crimes Tribunal. Dr Ellis worked alongside the ICTY, the Iraqi High Tribunal, the Cambodia Tribunal and presently with the ICC. In 2015, he was appointed to the UN Advisory Panel on Defence Counsel and in the same year launched eyeWitness to Atrocities, a mobile app for documenting war crimes. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Dr Ellis has led the IBA’s support efforts for Ukraine and, as a result, has been sanctioned by the Russian government. He was awarded Ukraine's order of merit, one of Ukraine's most distinguished state honours conferred by the President. His latest book, The UN Charter: Five Pillars for Humankind (Springer 2025), is co-authored with Ambassador David J Scheffer.

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Where do you see the most exciting research/debates happening in your field?

One of the most important developments in international law is the increased use of universal jurisdiction. Universal jurisdiction is the idea that atrocity crimes, such as war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity, are an affront to the world and every state can, and arguably must, prosecute these crimes. This is different from standard forms of jurisdiction, such as those based on the location of the acts or the nationality of one of the parties. There is an increased push to use universal jurisdiction, with over 50 cases open in 14 countries using absolute universal and over 100 more across 6 additional countries using either active or passive personality. In the last year, universal jurisdiction has been used by Finland to convict a Russian paramilitary leader for acts in Ukraine in 2014, and in Germany, Netherlands, and the United States against numerous former Syrian officials. Universal jurisdiction is not perfect, states are hesitant to risk overstepping their legal authority and there are difficulties gaining custody, but it provides a pathway towards justice where it otherwise has been denied. Even the threat of universal jurisdiction has an effect, limiting where those accused of serious crimes can freely travel without concern.

How has the way you understand the world changed over time, and what (or who) prompted the most significant shifts in your thinking?

The most dramatic change in my understanding of world affairs has been the rise of populism and nationalism. This phenomenon has emboldened the arbitrary exercise of state power. We are witnessing populist leaders targeting anything that criticises or constrains their authority. As a result, populists attack the media, the bureaucracy, universities, the judiciary, and civil society. Much of this is driven by loyalty to a populist leader who employs anti-establishment rhetoric to amplify perceived losses of cultural identity and economic security. Populists rail against multiculturalism, presenting themselves as the sole defenders of the “ordinary people.” Often, the populist leader is also a nationalist leader, characterised by an “us versus them” mentality and frequently accompanied by xenophobia, venomous intolerance, and the weaponisation of hatred toward others. The rise of both populism and nationalism over the past decade has been dramatic, and to me, deeply troubling.

You have described the UN Charter as “the world’s most important secular document.” At its core lies Article 2 and the prohibition of the use of force against the territorial integrity and political independence of states, a principle closely tied to the crime of aggression. At a time when this principle appears to be increasingly contested, how critical is the prosecution of aggression to the survival of the post-1945 international order?

I recently wrote in Just Security, that when the framers of the United Nations Charter enshrined Article 2(4) at its adoption in 1945 in the wake of the Second World War, they established one of the most enduring principles of modern international law. It provides: “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.” Those 38 words capture the essential objective of the Charter. The STCA, therefore, stands as the bridge between the Charter's aspirational promise and the practical reality of holding accountable those who choose to violate it. The Charter established the prohibition against the crime of aggression; the STCA is the mechanism through which this prohibition is finally given effect. And there is no clearer example of the crime of aggression than Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Thus, the STCA seeks to close one of the most enduring gaps in international criminal law and, in doing so, complete the trajectory that began with Nuremberg and with the promulgation of the Charter itself.  

The International Bar Association has played a prominent role in advancing the idea of a Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine, which has now taken concrete institutional and legal form. Yet this reveals a deeper paradox: in order to uphold the UN Charter’s prohibition on aggression, supporters of the tribunal have effectively had to act outside the UN system itself, due to Security Council paralysis. Do you see this as a sign of institutional resilience or of a deeper crisis in the post-1945 collective security order?

Both. The resilience of the UN Charter can be seen in the fundamental concept of justice; it encourages a concept that is core to the STCA. International law has revolutionized itself several times in search of an efficient system of justice, from Nuremberg to the ad hoc tribunals like the ICTY and ICTR to the independent investigatory mechanism such as the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM) and the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism for Syria (IIIM). The function of the STCA is similar to past ad hoc tribunals; a new approach to the same sense of justice and order. But at the same time, international law has been at a standstill for a while. While the ICTY and ICTR were effective in pursuing justice and creating lasting peace, both were created following the collapse of the Soviet Union where there was a willingness from the Security Council to experiment. This willingness no longer exists. Other entities such as the ICC are doing what they can to fill the gap, but the creation of the STCA will allow an additional approach to the promises of the UN Charter.

Discussions surrounding the Special Tribunal are taking place in a highly fluid geopolitical environment, where the pursuit of peace may come into tension with demands for international criminal accountability. At the same time, proposed peace frameworks advanced by key actors in the Russia–Ukraine negotiations have included provisions for broad amnesty. How can a project such as the STCoA survive in a political environment where justice is often treated as negotiable?

The political influence in international law is worrying. If politics denies justice to the victims of the war, then law has failed. However, this should not undermine our collective conviction in the dedication of peace and justice that underlie international laws. Any proposed peace settlement that does not provide justice is non-negotiable. Justice is something that must continue to be fought for in all forms, and the STCoA is an important part of that.

A common criticism of international justice is that it often appears either elusive or painfully slow. Yet the STCoA has seen an unusually rapid level of political and institutional mobilisation. To what extent does this reflect the importance of collective political will, strategic legal mobilisation, and the relationship between international institutions and affected communities in making international justice possible today?

We must acknowledge the reality that politics play a role in the implementation of international law. International law is at the tension point between the competing desires to implement a universal standard of international law and the political desire to advance national interests. While we must be wary of the influence of these factors, there can also be benefits where positive political will can be used to advance international law and establish norms. The Nuremberg trials were supported by the political widespread will, and it laid the groundwork for international law going forward. A similar statement can be made for the ICTY and ICTR. This is where strategic legal mobilization comes in: international law can garner support for popular or desired projects and use them to get the legal precedent to universally address all situations in the future. This is not a call for selective justice – all wrongs must be legally pursued and advocated against strongly – but by beginning with the widely condemned crimes, the political roadblocks could be lessened in the pursuit of universal justice. The crime of aggression has not been since Nuremberg prosecuted, and the political desire to investigate Russia can be the groundwork for activating this crime. The relationship between international institutions and the affected communities is especially important because of the role political will plays in jumpstarting or slowing down international procedures. While political mechanisms may be slow to support new initiatives due to political inertia, the affected communities will have great interest from the start. This interest can complete much of the legwork in collecting evidence and documentation.

One of the most persistent criticisms of international criminal justice is that it often appears selective, shaped by geopolitical power. In the case of the STCoA, some have noted that several states supporting the tribunal were also involved in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which did not lead to comparable accountability efforts for aggression. How can the tribunal avoid reinforcing perceptions of selective justice?

The perception of double standards is arguably the greatest existential threat to the legitimacy of international criminal law. When states that championed or participated in the 2003 invasion of Iraq (an action widely criticized as a violation of the UN Charter) become supporters of a new tribunal like the STCA, scepticism is both predictable and justified. To avoid reinforcing these perceptions of selective justice, the tribunal cannot be seen as an instrument of victors’ justice or geopolitical convenience; it must be grounded strictly in principles that apply equally to all sovereign actors, regardless of their geopolitical alignment, aligning with the rigorous standards outlined in widely accepted legal standards that are embedded in the UN Charter.

The tribunal appears to adopt a cautious approach to the personal immunities of sitting state officials, avoiding a direct confrontation with the logic of the ICJ’s Arrest Warrant judgment. At the same time, this leaves some of those most responsible beyond its immediate reach. Does this strengthen the tribunal’s legal viability, or reveal the deeper limits of international criminal justice?

The decision to respect the traditional boundaries of personal immunity for sitting state officials - realigning with the logic of the ICJ’s landmark Arrest Warrant Judgment - is a calculated compromise. It represents a pragmatic choice to prioritize legal viability over immediate, comprehensive accountability. By respecting the immunities of sitting heads of state and foreign ministers under customary international law, the tribunal shields itself from accusations of judicial overreach and ensures broader state cooperation. In a fragmented global order, a court that lacks enforcement mechanisms cannot afford to alienate the very state apparatuses it relies upon to execute warrants and gather evidence. However, this caution undoubtedly exposes the painful, inherent limits of the international legal order. It creates a paradigm where those holding the highest levers of power remain temporarily untouchable, leaving a gap between the aspiration of universal justice and the reality of state sovereignty. This does not mean the tribunal is toothless, rather, it shifts the strategy to a long-term game.

You describe the UN Charter as a “vibrant document of hope and vision” despite growing geopolitical fragmentation and pressure on universal norms. Yet the UN enters its 80th anniversary amid Security Council paralysis, financial strain, and a broader crisis of multilateralism. What is the greatest challenge facing the UN system today, and how can the normative achievements of the post-1945 order still be defended realistically?

The greatest challenge facing the United Nations system today is not structural paralysis or financial strain, but a fundamental crisis of trust and compliance among its most powerful members. As the UN recently celebrated its 80th anniversary, the paralysis of the Security Council, driven by the frequent use of the veto by P5 members, has severely undermined its primary mandate to maintain international peace and security. When the very custodians of the UN Charter bypass or violate its core normative tenets, the fabric of the post-1945 order is stretched to its absolute limit, fostering a dangerous cynicism about the efficacy of global governance. Defending these normative achievements realistically requires moving past romanticized expectations of the UN and focusing on its resilience. The defence of international law is increasingly shifting away from a frozen Security Council toward the UN General Assembly, regional coalitions, and specialized international courts. The STCA is one of those new mechanisms.

Many students, young scholars, and practitioners in International Relations and International Law feel deep cynicism and disappointment about the effectiveness and consistency of international institutions and legal norms. How can these fields retain their legitimacy today, and what would you say to those who question whether they are still worth studying and defending?

The cynicism felt by young scholars and practitioners today is a clear-eyed response to a world where power frequently trumps principle. It is entirely understandable to question the utility of international law when compliance appears optional for the powerful. However, the legitimacy of these fields is maintained precisely because international law is not a static system of enforcement, but a continuous site of political struggle. Without the framework of international law, the alternative is a return to unmitigated raw power, where the weak have no recourse whatsoever. To those questioning whether these disciplines are still worth defending, I would point to milestones like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which demonstrate that international law is most critical precisely when it is most challenged. Every major advancement in human rights, state accountability, and global cooperation was born out of crisis and perceived failure. Legal norms provide the essential architecture for future reform and the standard by which injustice is measured and condemned. Studying and practicing in these fields is not an exercise in idealism but is a necessary commitment to holding power to account and tilting the global balance toward justice.

Editorial Credit: Konstantina Oikonomou

Dr Brent J. Steele is the Francis D. Wormuth Presidential Chair and University Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of Utah. He has been the co-editor in chief of Global Studies Quarterly, a journal of the International Studies Association, since its inception in 2020. Before moving to Utah, he was at the University of Kansas from 2005-2013. He is the author of Vicarious Identity in International Relations (Oxford University Press, 2021), with Chris Browning and Pertti Joenniemi, and Restraint in International Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2019), which co-won the ISA Theory section book award for 2020. His most recent articles have appeared in the British Journal of Politics and International Relations, Australian Journal of International Affairs, Global Environmental Politics, and Cooperation and Conflict. He teaches courses on US Foreign Policy, Interpretive Methods, International Ethics, and International Relations.

E-International Relations will always be free to read on our website and on substack. We rely on reader support to make this possible. Please consider subscribing to support our mission.

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Where do you see the most exciting research/debates happening in your field?

I’d point to three areas, one within my own research community and one beyond it. The first, within ontological security studies, is more of a general trend of innovation by early and mid-career scholars doing excellent conceptual work within OSS. I’m risking naming those folks here because there’s so much going on that I fear I’m leaving some folks out, but the work on anxiety in OS drives has been vibrantly engaged and retheorized because of the contributions of Nina Krickel-Choi (again among many others), as has the reinvigorated debates on state personhood that Bianca Naude’s book fostered. I also find the new twists on old concepts, like Lauren Rogers’s work on ‘ontological stress’ and Ben Rosher’s on ‘intergenerational anxiety’, so useful towards gaining better precision in OS studies. Finally, I’ve been lucky enough to be in a working group on ‘Creating Ontological Security’ that includes a lineup of earlier career scholars, which has culminated in a forthcoming special issue of European Journal of International Studies co-edited by Cornelia Baciu.  Of course, those examples only scratch the surface of what work is being done in OSS that has pushed it forward as a research community.

A second, which I see as related to that last thread in the above paragraph on creativity, is illustrated by work on ‘creating’ and ‘making’ in International Relations, including forms of art as resistance to violence. This is reflected in the outstanding recent special issue of Security Dialogue that Marie Berry and Milli Lake edited on ‘Creative and caring resistance to violence’, as well as a forum that we published in Global Studies Quarterly on ‘Making International Things, co-edited by Jonathan Luke Austin and Anna Leander. I often assign Michelle Weitzel’s article from that forum to my students on ‘Material-Aesthetic approaches’ because it is a vivid example of the many forms of expression beyond writing that we as scholars can and do engage in to think creatively about the world. It’s probably because we’re in an era where AI mish-mash is being shoved down our throats from almost every direction, so I find expressions of artistic creativity in the context of global politics refreshing and uplifting.

Third, the Women in the History of International Thought (WHIT) project has in my view revolutionized the way in which we think about and teach International Relations. We published a special issue of GSQ that was one of the expressions of that project, which gave Jelena and I even more appreciation for it.

How has the way you understand the world changed over time, and what (or who) prompted the most significant shifts in your thinking?

Some of my ways of viewing the world have changed, but I also just generally think I’ve gained a bit more complexity on how I approach studying and teaching it. I suppose if there are changes it’s that (1) I’m not sure there are socially meaningful ‘formative experiences’ that bind together generations anymore, since most of younger folks’ experiences are so mediated and fragmented (as I note below), and (2) I used to see disruption, just general dislocating practices or ontological insecuritizing moves, as productive. But I’m probably a bit more conservative now in that I see order, routine, ritual, rhythm, and even some structure, as incredibly important for resistance. So much of the past quarter century of US politics and US foreign policy has been based on disruptions, grooving on the rubble, and ever-present ‘flare-ups’ that I have swung in the opposite direction a bit more. And while writing my book on it, I gained a bit more sympathy to practices and perspectives that value restraint (including the traditionalist Just War one, noted below).

You serve as co-Editor in Chief for the Global Studies Quarterly, an Oxford University-associated publication that prioritizes submissions on topics underrepresented in academia. What subjects, regions, or perspectives do you feel are sorely missing in traditional conversations on international relations?

There will always be perspectives sorely missing in traditional conversations but that dynamic should not be a barrier - both to locating those perspectives beyond those conversations and making traditional ones more inclusive. I think what’s most important is being willing to change the traditional practices that marginalize those subjects, regions and/or perspectives. And I do think IR is becoming more inclusive of voices in those conversations, both because of the work we have tried to do at GSQ as well as what I’m seeing more broadly at journals and presses.

GSQ’s founding mandate was for better outreach to the Global South. We realized early on that only so much of that can happen in traditional ways, ie: through CfP’s and outreach at the annual ISA meeting. It’s difficult of course because of restrictive visa policies during conferences, symposia, and workshop in the Global North, for scholars from these regions to travel. During my time as co-EIC, it’s been somewhat easier for the reverse - for us to travel to conferences in the Global South and meet with scholars there, chat with them about the submission process, etc. I think that has slowly but surely moved the needle. I am not sure what the other ISA journal rates are, but most estimates put Global South representation in ISA at around 20%, which is in line with where we are going. Our editorial board at GSQ is around 20% Global South, our submissions as of our last report were also around 20% from the Global South, and our publications with at least one author from the Global South are just short of 20%. That’s not perfect, we hope it will be more, but it’s better than when we started. And I’ve enjoyed meeting so many excellent scholars based in the Global South that I wouldn’t have if not for GSQ. That said, if we are looking more broadly for better and broader representation in academia, we have to keep working at it. I think and hope we will.

In an essay from 2014, Norms of Intervention, R2P and Libya, you speculate that the 2011 U.S.-led intervention in Libya was propagated by statecraft practitioners influenced by the foreign policy failures of the 1990s. What is the definitive failure that the next generation of diplomats and statesmen will be influenced by?

I’m glad you asked a generational analysis question, because this is one area where my thinking has changed markedly (as noted in my answer to your earlier question). While I think generational ebbs and flows explain US foreign policy (and the foreign policies of some other countries), and can be useful to frame our expectations for struggles over foreign policy perspectives, I think the notion of a ‘definitive failure’ is harder nowadays to be internalized or shape or form across a generation in ways in which those failures did through the early part of the 21st century. The fragmentary social media landscape with algorithms that reinforce priors, and platforms that involve the proliferation of AI slop, make it harder for emerging generations to be ‘formed’ by the same thing. Normally I’d say that the catastrophic US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq should loom large for a while, but I always had a sense that despite proclamations by commentators and even some scholars that Trump was a ‘dove’ or ’isolationist’, I always knew he and his base were looking for future adventures, albeit conducted in slightly different ways than the neoconservatives and liberal interventionists before them. So we have Venezuela and Iran, and his ‘antiwar’ base hasn’t left him. That base includes plenty of Gen Xers, Millennials and even Gen Z. The hope with a generational transition is that course corrections can and  eventually do happen. But I’m not sure that occurs anymore, precisely because the notion of ‘a’ formative experience is less apparent.

Your academic publications sometimes frame strategic and methodological questions in international relations through the lens of history. For example, your 2005 article, Ontological security and the power of self-identity: British neutrality and the American Civil War, where you proposed an alternative understanding for Britain’s decision to remain neutral in the American Civil War. Is this an approach that should be utilized more often?

Yes, and I wish I’d never abandoned doing historical work during the few years I did (late 2000s and early 2010s). I always loved getting lost in history but sidelined that for a bit mid-career. Three developments helped get me back to being more historical. First, the creation of the Historical IR section of the ISA in the mid-2010s was big, because it got me back into conversations and attending panels and meeting people who are very historically oriented. A second was a series of papers on ‘critical security history’ that culminated in an article I really enjoyed writing with Faye Donnelly, that got me thinking about the relationship between security, identity and history. A third development, and during the brief time I was on twitter when it was still functional, was being exposed to the amazing work of historians, reading their works and listening to them on podcasts. It’s ironic, I think, that in the same era that has involved a dreadful collapse of humanities jobs in academia, some of the most exciting and powerful work in the discipline of history continues apace, through both published works but also other outlets like podcasts, lectures, and the work of directors and curators of museums and memorials. All of this has shaped how I’ve approached a number of my arguments and projects. I find historical cases and contexts so useful for both my research, in tracing out arguments and concepts and seeing them work ‘back then’, as well as for lectures and illustrations in my teaching. The latter is where you can really make history ‘alive’ for students in ways that chatbots and AI platforms simply can’t, despite what higher ed administrators and the EdTech industry might confidently tell you.

In the early 2000s, you expressed skepticism regarding the just war doctrine, citing the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan as examples of how it can be abused for political purposes. How have recent U.S. interventions in Venezuela and Iran influenced this perspective?

I was much more averse to the Just War Tradition (JWT) back then because I saw it so easily manipulated by those in power. But nowadays, in those two cases you mention, where basically no Just Cause was provided by policymakers for their aggrandizement and aggression, I think the JWT can be useful as a vernacular for having discussions, especially in a classroom. I’ve been enjoying working with my longtime collaborator and friend Eric Heinze recently on a series of articles that engage the Just War tradition broadly, and the work being done within and beyond the JWT nowadays is so vibrant. This has made me more driven in exploring the ethics of war (and violence) within that tradition, while also giving me a vernacular to express my extreme discomfort over [gestures at everything].

Your 2021 book, Vicarious Identity in International Relations, explores the concept of vicarious identity within the context of international relations. Specifically, how state and non-actors obtain identity through the experiences of others. What is an example of this in practice?

In the book, Chris, Pertti and I argue this happens every day through our sports teams and family members.  I vicariously identify, with all of my heart and soul, with the Chicago Bears, for instance. Likewise, I had such joy when my daughter’s basketball team won a tournament, and celebrate whenever my son does well on an exam he spent time studying for. And so we applied vicarious identification as a process happening between actors in international relations, including but not limited to states. There’s been a growing interest in vicarious identity demonstrating additional examples - perhaps the most vivid ones are seen in British and the Baltic states’ identification with Ukraine, intergenerational Vicarious Sacrifice and heroism in the UK (Joseph Haigh’s work), and Minseon Ku’s fascinating examination of a 1972 China-US summit that served as a way for each countries’ publics to experience vicarious identification. Conversely, when vicarious identification is challenged, as I think happened in the case of Denmark vis-a-vis the US (a vicarious dyad we explored in the 2021 book) over the issue of Greenland earlier this year, that can also be a dynamic worth exploring. Danes took to the streets in Copenhagen in late January and clearly expressed the shock, and anger, they were experiencing with the turn that the US had made under Trump. Something similar seems to be happening with the US-UK ‘special relationship’ (another chapter of our book), at least between Trump and Starmer.

What is the most important advice you could give to young scholars of International Relations?

Don’t take too much advice from people like me, old and imperfectly recalling what their past was like let alone projecting that on to you. I see so much autobiographical extrapolation via bad mentoring, scholars putting their re-collections on to ‘saving’ you that it just ends up as bad advice. This happened, on steroids, on old twitter, which I probably and unfortunately contributed to as well. But it still happens in all sorts of micropolitical spaces. So, take the advice you get from mentors and mentoring networks with some circumspection. That stated, surround yourself as best as you can with supportive, positive and engaging people. You’ll find plenty of people who criticize and interrogate everything, and that’s useful, and ok – up to a point. But you need supportive and enthusiastic folks too. I’ve been incredibly lucky to have a group of folks who are some of the best friends I have in life, to share not only accomplishments but also to work through challenges with over the years, and decades. Their support and enthusiasm helped me push through some dark times, and there’s always dark times.

Finally, try and find joy in, and be passionate about, not only the outcomes and accomplishments we seek in our work. Dig the processes that go into those too, like writing and revising (on your own, NOT with generative-AI), reading, listening, thinking, conversing, and exploring. Those processes, those moments of intense focus and concentration when you are just immersed in something intellectually (and even politically) important and uplifting … that’s the juice that keeps you going.

Editorial Credit: Caleb M. Mills

The Thinking Global Team brings to you the highlights from Day 1 of the British International Studies Association (BISA) Conference 2026 in Brighton. Kieran (University of St. Andrews ⁠⁠⁠@kieranjomeara⁠⁠⁠) and Marianna (University of Birmingham, @Faloulah) speak to Maia Harrison (University of Sussex), Carmen Chas (Comillas Pontificate University @ChasCarmen) Simon Rushton (University of Sheffield and BISA Programme Chair), Archishman Ray Goswami (University of Oxford), David Wilcox (University of Birmingham @DrDavidJWilcox), Gemma Bird (University of Liverpool @gemmakristina) about the conference and their work. Stay tuned for Day 2 tomorrow. Thinking Global joins BISA for the second time to record insights of the conference directly from Brighton. Follow us on social media and make sure you subscribe to our newsletter!

A mine can hold a valid license and still lose access to finance. A coffee exporter can comply with domestic law and still be locked out of European markets. A cocoa trader can satisfy national regulators and still fail a buyer’s traceability test. Regulation no longer comes exclusively from the state. The market increasingly decides who is credible, who is bankable and who is allowed to trade. This shift reflects a hard truth. Governments and multilateral systems too often fail to enforce the rules they create. Many African states have mining codes, environmental laws, land legislation, forestry rules and labour protections. The challenge is implementation – weak monitoring, selective enforcement, poor data, underfunded regulators, political interference, limited trust and corruption.

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Where public authority fails to act, markets move in. Buyers, lenders, insurers, certification bodies and downstream firms begin to impose the discipline that states struggle to deliver. This is regulatory substitution with private standards; finance rules; environmental, social governance (ESG) requirements and due-diligence systems performing governance functions where public regulation is weak, contested or slow. It does not suggest ESG should replace the state. It cannot. The state remains the only institution with public authority and a duty to protect the common good. However, the rules of economic participation are embedded in supply contracts, lender covenants, procurement policies, insurance requirements, certification systems, sustainability reporting and market-access laws.

The European Union’s (EU’s) Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), in force since 25 July 2024 demonstrates this shift. It requires large companies to address human-rights and environmental impacts across operations and value chains, pushing firms linked to Europe to prove more about risks beyond its borders. The European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) applies the same logic to land-use. Covering cattle, cocoa, coffee, palm oil, rubber, soy and wood, the EUDR requires relevant products exported to the EU be deforestation-free. Implementation has been delayed, but producers and exporters will be required to prove origin and deforestation status. This matters for Africa because coffee, cocoa, timber, beef, rubber and palm oil are not just commodities. They are livelihoods, export earnings and rural economies. Geolocation data, chain-of-custody records and deforestation-risk screening are no longer compliance tools; they determine which producers gain recognition, trust and access to markets. 

Mining shows the same pattern. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Due Diligence Guidance for minerals from conflict-affected and high-risk areas establishes a framework covering management systems, risk assessment, risk response, audits and reporting. It is not a national mining law, but it shapes how companies, buyers and financiers treat minerals affected by conflict, corruption, informal mining or environmental damage (OECD). Finance is another channel. The International Finance Corporation (IFC) Performance Standards require clients to manage environmental and social risks. The Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management established by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) demonstrates how investor expectations and corporate adoption can make safety standards powerful even where they are not statute everywhere.

ESG is becoming an operating licence. It affects who gets financed, insured, purchased from and considered bankable. Regulatory substitution can improve accountability where state enforcement is thin. The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) Standard provides a global benchmark for transparency in oil, gas and mining. This transfer of regulatory power to markets is not without danger. Left unmanaged, it will deepen inequality. Large corporations can hire consultants, build traceability systems and absorb compliance costs. Smallholders, artisanal miners, informal traders and local small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) often cannot. The poorest producers may be excluded not because they are irresponsible, but because they cannot prove compliance in the language demanded by distant markets. This is especially sensitive in land-use sectors. The Food and Agricultural Organization’s (FAO’s) Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure promote secure tenure rights across public, private, communal, Indigenous, customary and informal systems.  Traceability systems that overlook customary tenure or informal land claims may make supply chains look more compliant on paper while excluding vulnerable communities from formal markets.

The answer is not to reject ESG or market-access rules. These systems are already shaping trade, finance and investment. The challenge is to make them fairer, more democratic and more developmental. Compliance must be made affordable for smallholders, cooperatives, artisanal miners and local SMMEs. Traceability, certification, soil testing, land documentation, audits and digital reporting cannot be treated as private costs alone. In the absence of public, concessional or blended finance support, compliance will become a barrier that rewards the already powerful.

African states need national verification systems that reduce dependence on foreign auditors. Public land registries, geospatial data, environmental monitoring, mine inspection, laboratory testing and grievance mechanisms require strengthening so that ESG builds domestic capacity rather than outsourcing authority. Customary and informal rights must be recognised before supply chains are cleaned up. A deforestation-free, conflict-free or responsible-sourcing claim is incomplete while it erases land users, women, tenants, pastoralists, Indigenous communities and informal workers who lack formal documents, but hold real rights. Market access should include social protection. If new standards exclude vulnerable producers; adjustment funds, technical assistance, transition periods and aggregation models through cooperatives should be built in to ensure equitability and strengthen sustainability. Responsible markets should not punish poverty.

Affected communities need an enforceable voice. Consultation is not sufficient. Communities require grievance systems, benefit-sharing arrangements, access to information and the ability to challenge projects or supply-chain decisions that affect their land, water, labour or livelihoods. African institutions must shape the rules. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) aims to strengthen Africa’s voice in global trade negotiations. This ambition should extend to ESG, due diligence, minerals traceability and sustainability standards. Regulatory substitution is already happening. The market is taking control because governments have failed to enforce, verify and protect. The question is whether this new market governance will deepen dependency or help rebuild public authority. ESG will only be legitimate if it strengthens African institutions, reduces inequality and protects the poorest and most vulnerable. The test is whether ESG becomes a pathway to inclusion or another mechanism for exclusion.

Christopher Burke is a senior advisor at WMC Africa, a communications and advisory agency located in Kampala, Uganda. With over 30 years of experience, he has worked extensively on social, political and economic development issues focused on governance, extractives, agriculture, public health, the environment, communications, advocacy, peace-building and international relations in Asia and Africa.

Niharika Pandit is Lecturer in Sociology in the School of Society and Environment, Queen Mary University of London. She co-runs Insurgent Knowledges, an anticolonial feminist political education collective, and co-convenes BISA's Colonial, Postcolonial, Decolonial working group. She is the author of Occupying the Everyday: Militarisation and Gendered Politics of Living in Kashmir (Oxford University Press 2026).

Where do you see the most exciting research/debates happening in your field?

My research is located in political sociology, gender and feminist studies, post/decolonial theory, and critical international relations. It is driven by a central intellectual commitment: to reconceptualise power, violence, and resistance by foregrounding liberatory thought from the margins of the Global South. I am interested in analysing contemporary formations of coloniality and carcerality as social processes of everyday life while insisting that marginalised communities are active producers of critical theory. My first book draws on and contributes to Critical Kashmir Studies, which has radically shifted how Kashmir needs to be understood as a context of military occupation and settler colonial governance, and beyond the nation-states of India and Pakistan and their assimilatory or nationalist narratives that erase Kashmiri demands for self-determination. Within gender and feminist studies, there are ongoing debates, especially post-2023 genocide in Gaza, about feminist complicity in settler, imperial, and fascist projects and how liberatory queer feminisms must consider questions of coloniality – whether of gender (binary), postcolonial nation-states, or settler entities. I am interested in these debates and engage with critical lines of thinking across disciplines to understand the logic and circulation of contemporary coloniality and people’s ongoing resistance to it.

How has the way you understand the world changed over time, and what (or who) prompted the most significant shifts in your thinking?

My work is contemporary in nature, and I am interested in understanding how peoples at the margins of political formations understand oppressive power and organise in resistance to it. Within gender and feminist thought, I have been inspired by black, third-world, and queer thinkers who refuse to untether questions of imperialism, class struggle, and anticolonialism from gender and sexual freedoms. The feminism I think of is liberatory: it is insistently anticolonial, antiracist, anti-caste, trans-inclusive, and anti-capitalist. Over the years, I have been asking broader questions about social and anticolonial liberation and have placed them at the centre of gender and feminist studies because there can be no feminism without anticolonialism, and no anticolonialism without feminism. I am also inspired by abolitionist thinkers because they insist that we think creatively and imaginatively beyond the conditions of life that are present and considered possible today. Abolition contains a wide array of possibilities and hopes that push us to do away with the logics of carcerality, punishment, control, and reform (of oppressive structures and institutions) that abound in our personal and collective lives. I am keen to extend these conversations to wider political structures beyond prisons and think with marginalised political communities and spaces.

Your book Occupying the Everyday conceptualises militarisation in Kashmir as a “logic of coloniality.” How does this challenge dominant IR understandings of militarisation and the postcolonial state?

I began this project, which was my PhD, as an analytical mapping of India’s militarisation in Kashmir. But soon enough, I realised how dominant understandings of militarisation – including feminist ones in the Western academy – do not pay sufficient attention to coloniality and imperialism. Their overemphasis on the militarisation of everyday life without attending to its entanglements with structural power and violence (for instance, capitalism, nation-state, developmentalism) did not fully account for the brutal and abject violence conditioning our world today. As such, thinking with Kashmir made it imperative to centre how people living under occupation conceptualise their conditions of oppression and to use these conceptualisations to sharpen my analysis. Through ethnographic mapping and attention to my interlocutors’ experiences, I argue that militarization is a logic of coloniality in postcolonial states like India, especially as it unfolds in Kashmir, where military-led occupation, control over land and resources, control over movement, and control over everyday life are aimed at domesticating resistance in the service of the nation-state. This shift challenges the idea that militarisation is an exceptional mode of power or an aberrant force. Instead, logics of militarisation are built into modern/colonial formations like the state. This approach also shows how postcolonial states are replicating and reinventing colonial logics and violence against dissident communities, and, as such, what is really post about the postcolonial. In addition to the book, I have developed this argument in my article here. 

Much of your work centres the “everyday politics of living” under occupation. What does focusing on the everyday allow us to see that more conventional analyses of conflict and resistance might miss?

Rather than being a sterile, unimportant, or passive site, feminist and Marxist thinkers have shown us how the everyday is where structural power takes hold, but this is also where violence can be mended. I draw on Ilana Feldman’s idea of politics of living through which she destabilises simplistic representations of people surviving dispossession, settler coloniality, or military occupation as either victims or resistors. I locate this politics of living in everyday Kashmiri life by mapping spatial militarisation, checkpoints, military camps, siege-like lockdowns, communication bans, and encounters with armed soldiers in markets, shops, shrines, and intimate spaces like the home. This frames the everyday as a site of myriad possibilities, complexities, and ongoing negotiations with asymmetrical power, demonstrating how occupation structures daily routines and how people navigate, refuse, and resist militarised state discourses and practices. Through the everyday politics of living, we can begin to see how the colonial project of occupation, while inflicting violent oppression, is not yet total but, rather, ongoing, where people constantly navigate militarised spaces and devise survival practices while remaining steadfast, even in silence, in their desire for self-determination.

In your research, gender, sexuality, and racialisation are central to how occupation is experienced and resisted. How do these lenses reshape our understanding of political agency in militarised contexts?

Given my location in anticolonial feminisms, it is imperative to locate gender, sexuality, and racialisation not as an afterthought but as organising both colonial domination and violence as well as resistance to it. As such, I think about social relations and resistance in insistently interlocking ways where class, gender, sexuality, racialisation shape how people experience occupation and are able to organise (or not) in defiance of it. I also analyse how the state uses discourses of gender and sexual freedoms to justify the occupation of Kashmir, whose majority Muslim people are racialised as homophobic, misogynist and suspect. If we do not pay attention to gender, sexuality, and racialisation as organising state power, we miss how this power infuses materially and in everyday life – through military practices of cordon and search, blowing up of civilian homes, spatial militarisation, and carceral practices of sexual violence, disappearance, mass killing, and blinding. Thinking of social relations in interlocking ways, we can sharpen our understanding of how power works – for example, coloniality and militarisation widen asymmetrical gender relations – and how scripts of resistance are grounded in specific social contexts. Such an analysis enables us to resist the exceptionalisation of Muslim communities as overtly patriarchal or homophobic while attending to how coloniality and other structural forces intensify existing social oppressions.

You have written about anti-gender politics and rising authoritarian or fascistic tendencies in India. How do you see the relationship between these developments?

This book chapter, co-authored with my dear friend Nolina Minj, offers the first sustained analysis of anti-gender and anti-feminist politics in contemporary India, arguing that we cannot separate the rise of anti-gender politics from the global rise of fascism. It makes an urgent contribution to transnational feminist scholarship by challenging Eurocentric genealogies of ‘anti-gender’ discourse and situating India as a key site through which contemporary anti-gender politics is produced and reconfigured through right-wing fascism. Through a detailed mapping of recent policy, legislative, and socio-political developments affecting gender, queer, and trans communities, alongside an analysis of the ideological formations of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the chapter demonstrates how anti-feminist politics are deeply embedded in Hindutva nationalism. It shows how these dynamics are operationalised through state surveillance, disciplining of dissent, and normalisation of violence against Muslims, Christians, Dalits, and those in the borderlands, including Kashmir, thereby linking gender governance to broader regimes of exclusionary citizenship and authoritarian statecraft. This has proven empirically prescient. For instance, in 2026, the Indian state passed the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act, limiting the definition of trans to social groups legible in the Hindu ways of being, insisting that gender policing is entangled with authoritarian state power.

What are you currently working on, and what can we expect from your future research?

I am currently working on a project that maps feminist imaginaries of anti‑militarism and anti‑capitalism. Through a series of workshops, I have been collaborating with artists and activists involved in South Asia and doing anti-militarism work – we are currently finalising a zine, which explores how militarism infiltrates everyday life and imagines futures beyond it. As part of this project, I am also thinking through the entanglements of militarism and contemporary fascism. My next monograph will focus on carceral sites in the Global South and how we can think beyond the contemporary and increasingly colonial and capitalist nation-state as an inevitability.

What is the most important advice you could give to young scholars of International Relations?

We are at a conjuncture of heightened violence in all forms. I don’t think we can continue to produce knowledge that is untethered from the communities we work with, are accountable to, and the wider social and political struggles. The stakes of cultivating knowledge are high, so it is really important for young scholars to think about what we are creating knowledge for; who is represented or unrepresented; who we think with; who we are aligned with – whether with power or with oppressed communities; and what our collective responsibility as scholars is. These questions, I strongly believe, must guide our intellectual commitments regardless of what stage of the journey we are at. And of course, be curious, attentive, and imaginative!

For decades, Hong Kong’s June Fourth commemorations centred on a single demand: 平反六四 — the vindication of June Fourth. The phrase carried meanings beyond remembrance. It implied acknowledgement, rehabilitation, and the restoration of historical truth. Yet after the National Security Law, even public commemoration itself has become politically dangerous within Hong Kong. Previously, I argued that Britain’s selective nationality response after 1989 — granting full citizenship to only 50,000 families through the British Nationality Selection Scheme (BNSS) while leaving most Hongkongers with the more limited BN(O) status — shaped Hong Kong’s later political trajectory in profound ways (Wong 2026). I suggested that the unequal distribution of British citizenship contributed to divergent political incentives and anxieties within Hong Kong society during the post-handover period, culminating in the 2019 Hong Kong protests. This raises a further question: if meaningful historical reckoning can no longer occur openly in Hong Kong, what might a truth and reconciliation process connected to Hong Kong actually look like?

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Rehabilitation Without Truth?

In recent years, the Hong Kong government has increasingly adopted the language of “rehabilitation” in response to the social divisions that emerged from the 2019 protests. Special rehabilitation initiatives for young people arrested but not prosecuted, alongside reintegration programmes for convicted offenders, suggest an official recognition that punishment alone cannot fully resolve the political and generational fractures exposed by the unrest.

Yet the concept of rehabilitation raises a deeper question: rehabilitation into what historical narrative? Existing programmes largely frame participants as individuals who were “misled” and who must be reintegrated through national education, mainland exchanges, and renewed identification with the Chinese nation. The underlying assumption is not that multiple interpretations of 2019 may coexist, but that social stability depends upon acceptance of a single authorised account of the crisis (Chan 2026). This differs fundamentally from the logic of truth and reconciliation processes seen elsewhere. In such processes, reconciliation is not achieved through ideological correction alone, but through testimony, acknowledgement, institutional self-examination, and the preservation of contested historical memory (Peacock 2011, 320). The annual Hong Kong demand to 平反六四 historically reflected precisely this impulse: the belief that social healing requires truth before closure.

Ironically, while open commemoration has now become politically restricted in Hong Kong, the emergence of rehabilitation discourse after 2019 may unintentionally reveal the continued absence of a genuine mechanism for historical reckoning. If the authorities themselves recognise that prosecution cannot fully repair the social rupture left by 2019, then the question becomes not merely how to rehabilitate individuals, but whether a broader process of truth recovery remains possible at all.

Selective Citizenship and Hong Kong’s Unresolved Fracture

Previous proposals for reconciliation in Hong Kong, including calls for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission after the 2019 protests, have largely focused on the immediate social and political divisions exposed by the unrest. Discussions often centred on tensions between the “blue” and “yellow” camps, police conduct, or the restoration of public trust (Richburg 2019). Yet such approaches risk addressing only the visible symptoms of Hong Kong’s crisis rather than its deeper historical foundations.

One overlooked dimension lies in Britain’s post-Tiananmen nationality policy. Following the Tiananmen killings, the British government created the British Nationality Selection Scheme, granting full British citizenship to a limited number of Hong Kong families while leaving the wider population with the more restricted BN(O) status, which was not inheritable. Before 2021, this status provided no pathway to full British citizenship for its holders or their descendants. In doing so, the policy fostered a perception that some Hongkongers were regarded as more worthy of British citizenship than others (Jowett, Findlay, and Li 1995, 245).

The long-term significance of this selective citizenship structure was not simply legal, but political and psychological. As I have argued elsewhere, for a small elite, full British citizenship offered a secure exit option should conditions in Hong Kong deteriorate (Wong 2025b). For the wider population, however, no comparable guarantee existed. In the decades that followed, the governing elite increasingly aligned themselves with Beijing’s political order, leading some British political figures to compare them to Vidkun Quisling, the Norwegian politician who collaborated with Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Protected by British or other foreign citizenship while administering the erosion of Hong Kong’s freedoms, these governing elites came to symbolise a class that had accommodated itself to the enemy force at the expense of the society it governed. The resulting asymmetry contributed to a society divided between the British who possessed a secure political future, and the British whose status remained conditional and constrained.

This does not mean that full British citizenship mechanically determined traitorous behaviour. Individuals responded in very different ways. Jimmy Lai, despite being a British citizen and the ability to leave Hong Kong, chose instead to remain and publicly resist Beijing’s encroachment, ultimately facing severe legal consequences for his continued advocacy of liberal-democratic values in Hong Kong. In contrast, figures within the post-handover governing elite, for instance Carrie Lam, engaged with and adapted to the institutional framework of the new political order, prioritising administrative stability under Beijing’s claimed territorial sovereignty over Hong Kong. The contrast illustrates that British citizenship alone cannot determine loyalty or betrayal.

Nevertheless, the BNSS shaped the broader environment within which such choices were made. By distributing British citizenship unevenly after 1989, Britain unintentionally contributed to a political landscape in which questions of loyalty, resistance, compromise, and survival became increasingly fractured. The wider Hong Kong population and later generations, despite largely being denied full British citizenship, continued to uphold liberal values associated with Britain. Meanwhile, those of the governing class, previously loyal to the mother country, now served in political roles within a Communist regime that has violated the Sino-British Joint Declaration (Peck, Meulbroek, and Anguelov 2024, 1085).

As I have argued previously, Carrie Lam’s case illustrates an important point: that of survival (Wong, 2025a). I wish to expand on this argument by examining how Carrie Lam’s quisling-like collaboration with the occupying regime reshaped the political conditions experienced by Hong Kong’s subaltern population. Tuck and Yang (2012, 4) describe the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as a form of settler empire, illustrating this through Chinese rule in Tibet. Drawing on this framework, Lee and Law (2016, 91) argue that colonialism not only dispossesses the colonised of their identity, traditions, and self-representation, but also assimilates local elites into the ideological framework of the coloniser. Once empowered, these elites often reproduce the governing logic of the dominant power, enforcing assimilation while marginalising those who resist incorporation. This concept of internal colonialism can be applied to post-handover Hong Kong, where the governing elite aligned themselves with the political priorities and discursive practices of the CCP. Regina Ip’s assertion that democracy was never promised in the Sino-British Joint Declaration personifies this dynamic. Ip advances a deeply distorted political discourse that transforms civic virtue into culpability, recasting democratic conviction as a form of moral and legal transgression. Beijing’s authority is maintained through what Tuck and Yang (2012, 5) describe as “particularized modes of control,” manifested in Hong Kong through the National Security Law, policing, and the restructuring of the education system.

Yet, as Lee and Law (2016, 90) note, colonised peoples frequently resist by reconnecting with suppressed identities and forming solidarities with other subordinated subjects. In Hong Kong, this resistance contributed to the emergence of a distinct local consciousness and intensified struggles over identity and belonging (Lecours & Dupré 2018, 11). However, the implementation of the National Security Law severely constrained civil society and dissent, leaving diasporic communities abroad as some of the few remaining spaces through which Hongkongers can continue to advocate for their political freedoms. In light of Chinese state narratives that impose a singular and politically enforced categorisation of Hong Kong identity as inherently “Chinese,” any reconciliation must examine not only the events of 2019, but also the deeper historical processes through which alternative identities have been delegitimised and subsumed under totalitarian state-defined categories. This trajectory was shaped in part by the BNSS, which, by granting full citizenship only to a limited number of families, reproduced a hierarchy of belonging that left the majority of Hongkongers in a structurally precarious position and embedded a long-term asymmetry in political agency and security.

What Would a UK-Based Hong Kong Truth Commission Look Like? A Policy Proposal

I have argued in my doctoral thesis that a Hong Kong Truth and Reconciliation Commission (HKTRC) should be established in the United Kingdom, functioning as an independent, non-judicial body tasked with constructing a structured historical record of Hong Kong’s political transformation across multiple overlapping periods of crisis. Its purpose would not be adjudication or political determination, but the systematic collection, preservation, and organisation of testimony relating to the long-term consequences of key constitutional, legal, and nationality policy decisions affecting Hong Kong.

At its core, the Commission would respond to the absence of an agreed or openly contestable framework through which the post-1989 and post-2019 political developments can be collectively understood. Rather than replacing existing narratives, it would create an institutional space in which competing accounts of the past can be recorded and preserved within a coherent archival structure, ensuring that political memory is not reduced to fragmented or restricted sources. The Commission would operate on the basis of truth-seeking, respect for human dignity, inclusivity of testimony, and transparency of archival process. It would not possess judicial authority, nor would it determine legal liability or assign criminal responsibility. Its function would instead be historical and documentary: to assemble a record that spans multiple jurisdictions and generations, and that is otherwise dispersed across diasporic communities, institutional archives, and constrained informational environments.

Participation could be organised across three interrelated layers. The first would consist of direct historical witnesses, including individuals involved in or directly affected by the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, participants in the 2019 Hong Kong protests, and journalists directly engaged in political junctures during these periods. Their testimony would provide primary accounts of lived experience, institutional action, and political decision-making at the moment of crisis.

The second layer would include institutional actors, such as former British officials, diplomats, civil servants, legal advisers, and policy architects in both British and Hong Kong governance structures. Their contributions would be essential for reconstructing how nationality arrangements, constitutional assumptions, and administrative decisions were formulated, justified, and implemented over time, and how these decisions shaped the evolving political relationship between Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, and the People’s Republic of China.

The third layer would consist of post-event and inheritance-generation participants, including members of the Hong Kong diaspora, BN(O) status holders, and younger generations whose political identities have been shaped by the long-term consequences of earlier historical developments. Their testimony would not function as eyewitness reconstruction, but as reflection on inherited conditions of political life, including legal precarity, memory transmission, and the evolving meaning of citizenship and belonging in the post-2019 context. This inclusion ensures that the Commission does not treat historical truth as confined to direct observation alone, but situates it within a broader framework of consequence and continuity.

The Commission would examine the period from 1989 to the present, beginning with the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square Massacre and the introduction of the BNSS, and extending through the 1997 handover, the development of the BN(O) citizenship pathway, and the Chinese-imposed National Security Law in 2020. Within this arc, attention would be given to how assumptions about sovereignty, political continuity, and institutional stability shaped British policy decisions, and how these decisions contributed to the formation of divergent political identities within Hong Kong society.

The Commission would produce a series of thematic interim reports alongside a final comprehensive report intended for academic, policy, and public historical use. Its outputs would therefore function not only as documentation but also as a structured public archive capable of supporting historical education and future policy reflection. In this sense, the HKTRC would aim to reconstruct a fragmented historical record while providing an institutional mechanism for clarifying the long-term consequences of political and nationality decisions affecting Hong Kong.

A potential critique of a UK-based Hong Kong Truth and Reconciliation Commission is that it risks privileging diaspora voices or excluding those unable to participate due to geographical, financial, or political constraints. This limitation reflects the broader difficulty of conducting open historical inquiry under conditions where political space for testimony is unevenly distributed. However, rather than undermining the Commission, this constraint reshapes its mode of operation. Participation could therefore not be limited to physical presence, but could include written submissions, recorded testimony, and archival documentation, allowing the Commission to function as a distributed mechanism of historical reconstruction rather than a territorially bounded forum of hearings.

To illustrate how a Hong Kong Truth and Reconciliation Commission might operate in practice, the following is a proposed opening statement, adapted from my thesis. It signals the Commission’s commitment to truth, recognition of historical harms, and the pursuit of reconciliation:

The Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland sincerely apologises for the policies and arrangements, including the British Nationality Selection Scheme (BNSS), which, in the years leading up to and following the 1997 handover, contributed to divisions within Hong Kong society and constrained the political agency of its people. We recognise the pain, anxiety, and structural pressures imposed on Hong Kong citizens navigating these circumstances. We acknowledge in particular the collective trauma experienced during the 2019 Hong Kong protests and the imposition of the National Security Law, which led to widespread arrests and incarceration of civic voices. For these consequences, and the enduring impact on Hong Kong society, we say sorry. This apology forms the opening of the Hong Kong Truth and Reconciliation Commission (HKTRC), which seeks to examine the historical record, acknowledge the consequences of policy choices, and explore avenues for understanding and reconciliation.

By linking past policy decisions to the contemporary BN(O) citizenship pathway, the HKTRC can frame the latter as a corrective mechanism, reinforcing the continuity of civic agency and the preservation of Hong Kong’s liberal-democratic identity. In the context of the proposed Hong Kong Crown Dependency, this process not only documents historical injustice but also establishes the institutional foundation for a diaspora-led, exit-based model of political resistance and governance outside the direct control of the People’s Republic of China, thereby helping to fulfil the promises of the Sino–British Joint Declaration.

Conclusion

The demand to “vindicate June Fourth” (平反六四) has never been solely about the past. It has expressed a broader insistence that political reconciliation requires historical truth rather than enforced forgetting. Yet in the contemporary Hong Kong context, where public commemoration has become increasingly constrained and official responses to political unrest have taken the form of rehabilitation rather than open historical inquiry, the possibility of such truth-seeking has become structurally limited. In this light, a UK-based Hong Kong Truth and Reconciliation Commission is not proposed as a mechanism for adjudicating political blame, nor as a substitute for domestic political change, but as an attempt to preserve and organise a fragmented historical record shaped by colonial transition, selective citizenship, and post-2019 political rupture. Its significance lies less in resolving contested histories than in ensuring that they remain publicly knowable, collectively accessible, and open to future interpretation.

Ka Hang Wong received his PhD in History from the University of Technology Sydney in 2026. His thesis provides a historical analysis of BN(O) status and how it evolved from being a token of British nationality into a tool of political resistance against a totalitarian party-state’s assault on Hong Kong.

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